Troy and I are leaving Belfast on the train having had a brilliant time over the last few days. There isn't a great deal to do in Belfast but we were not here for long anyway. As the birthplace of the Titanic (and the two sister ships) it was something we had to go and see. Getting an understanding of the scale of the building and the difficulties in making something that large in those days was interesting. It was also interesting to see the dry docks that could empty 2 swimming pools worth of water every minute as well as learning that in fact there were two other sister ships identical to the titanic called Olympic and Gigantic.

We arrive at the hotel, Plus Prague, and are told to hand over our passports and we can collect them and pay in an hour, something as an Aussie your told never to do. We will later realise this is standard practice. We are in an 8 bed dorm this time so we are pleasantly surprised to find that the dorm is partitioned and we have more privacy in this room than in the others. After I have a quick Sauna and dip in the pool (unfortunately not heated) with Peter and another traveler or two the three or us decide to wander in to the city for dinner. Plus Prague is a little way out (5km by foot) so the 15 tram gets us into and later out of the city. If you use it there doesn’t appear to be anything forcing you to buy a ticket as cheap (18 Krona) as they may be.

The day starts in Amsterdam bright and early, we make our way out to the Bus About pickup point which is just outside our hostel, perfect. I would recommend staying at the Bus About pick up point hostel just for the ease of pickup alone but having said that a few of the stops are not nice even for a hostel. Avoid the hostel for Munich, Nice and La Spezia (because it is too far out). We make our way from Amsterdam to Berlin on the bus and its no where near as painful as I expected, there is about 30 people on a bus which can carry 50, plenty of room, stops every 2 hours. We get to Berlin, our tour guide, Amy gives us some history lessons as we arrive which I find unusually interesting, I guess because this is a short trip.

Amsterdam has been interesting so far. We went on a walking tour which we ditched halfway through because it felt slow and dragged out. Obviously a walking tour isn't going to be super quick but when you stop every few meters to explain the significance of just about everything it gets a bit boring. We went to Teddy's cafe which just felt wrong, walking into a cafe, seeing people who have probably been there for hours attempting to play chess whilst sampling the goods a coffee shop in Amsterdam has to offer was both not normal and rather amusing.

Well we arrived safe and sound in Amsterdam, well I say that but the first thing I realise in Amsterdam is this feeling we aren’t safe which is like nowhere else we have been. We get out of central station which we caught from the airport and the place is filthy, we later discover that the garbage men have been on strike for at least 7 days. No matter, we move on, we arrive at the hostel thanks to the tram driver who was very helpful, and Freda who seemed to know where to go (lucky she is a planner). We have a few drinks at the hostel bar and take the place in. It’s probably a good choice of words because when we checked in we were told we could smoke anything in the smoking room attached to the bar and it was obvious some people were. One guy in particular seemed somewhat incapable of doing anything, how he managed to keep smoking is beyond me. We go to bed so we can get going at a decent time in the morning. During the night as people come and go there are obvious noises and its no Hilton but its also half the price of any hotel we could find. Add to that most of the people seem friendly at the hostel (the Flying Pig) and there are a large number of Aussies as well which makes it feel a little comfortable.

It's Christmas (well nearly) and things in the UK seem to change when Christmas comes, prices for everything go up (like 30 percent xmas service charge in a fairly cheap all you can eat restaurant), the tube will be closed on the important days, its very odd. We wont be here to see it but I am lead to believe that London becomes somewhat of a ghost town. We have booked our tour around Europe and paid the deposit and I have booked my return trip to Australia in February.

A few weeks have passed and not a great deal has been going on but a lot of planning has been happening. Having said that we (Freda, Connor and I) planned a 10km run for a few weeks ago. The unfortunate thing was that the weather was expected to be garbage (very wet, not good for a run) for the next 4 days, we didn't realise that getting there would be 40 pounds each and we had Neil's (Carmel's boyfriend) birthday the night before the run.
We eventually decided not to go and then the weather on the day would have been perfect for running, cool but dry. Oh well. We can say I entered a 10km run, nobody has to know we didn't finish.

Well we have had a two week break since a visit from Jenni and Ryan (friends from Australia). It was a whirlwind two week visit which was predominantly filled with eating, drinking and sleep. It all started innocently enough. I took the day off to meet them, they arrive after a 24 hour flight, we find our selves in a pub by midday. We hop from pub to pub until Freda joins us at about 5pm. The pattern continues till Friday morning when we get on the Eurostar to go to Paris (well there was some sleep in there somewhere).

We are now back from Greece and the Big Chill festival and had a great time. It started a little problematically as our flight out was delayed by two hours (so we only had three hours in Greece to get to the boat (going from Athens to Naxos Island). We eventually get to Athens and then down to the boat, to my surprise the ticket station is actually open at 7am on a Sunday to print our tickets for us (I was a little nervous about this because we had been told by the Greek operators it would be fine but the language barrier meant I wasn't confident we had communicated with each other very well). I hadn't told Freda that.

Well it is now only a week before we go to Greece and I thought I should update on a few things before we go. I have just managed to clear most of a cold/flu out of my system in time for out trip which I am very happy about. We are both ecstatic about going away again. I have been brushing up on my Greek thanks to some audio CD's (Rapid Greek by Earworms) which I would recommend to anyone who needs a quick few sentences for a holiday. Freda as usual is packed several days before we are scheduled to leave and I will as normal leave packing until the day we leave. It was a little odd how one review of the hotel indicated he didn't want to take a photo for fear of upsetting the naked people on the beach. It made sense when I found a website listing the beach as a nudie beach. More specifically clothes are optional. Whilst doing all the preparation for our journey and I found that turning on global roaming for Freda's phone required a 250 pound deposit to make sure that we don't skip the country. A bit harsh really, that is roughly 500 Australian dollars which we don't get back for three months.

My phone should arrive in time to leave so I have working GPS (and phone for that matter) so we can navigate ourselves around the world if we get lost on the islands which is highly likley.

We went to see Paul Aiden www.paulaiden.com (Saskia's boyfriend) live again this week. Was a good night, Paul did a brilliant job, best performer on the night again. This pub was slightly smaller but that meant the place was packed which made for a great atmosphere.