Bicycles, wooden clogs, and a whole lot of canals

We had a surprisingly smooth journey all the way to our hostel in Amsterdam, and we were excited to reunite with Ana and our Belgian friend Gary, who we'd met in Barcelona. While Sarah and Ana rested, Gary and Renee did a self-led walking tour around Amsterdam. After dinner, we went to the bar at the hostel (I think Ana, Sarah and Renee were the only three females there) for a drink. We then met with one of Ana's friends at a close by pub. No wild shenanigans were too be had that night. 

We woke up to a glorious hostel breakfast to pump us up for our bicycle marathon that day. Gary, Renee, and Sarah rented some bikes and toured around the city.

 We need to brush up on our rules of the road on bikes, as the only thing we know how to do is ring our bells and hope we do not get run over by a car or other bikers. 

We ran into Ana later randomly on the streets and shopped around the red light district and the Dam plaza where the palace is located. After our day of cruising we are now inspired to return to Canada, spiff up our hot rod two-wheelers and tear up some pavement on our way to school (Although both of our routes to our schools are only about 200 meters away.. Gotta start somewhere. Look out Tour de France). 

We had to say goodbye to Gary unfortunately. Good luck on your exam. We will miss you very much! 

As we were meeting Ana's friend at the pub, we were approached by two pub crawl promoters. Sarah and Renee were hooked by the words, "free t-shirt." We left our stamps on each dance floor that night with our signature dance moves. Amsterdam now knows how terrible Canadians are at dancing. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the red light district at night. Our trip here was way too short. We will save that for our next adventure here. 

Now here we sit on our plane ride home, reminiscing on all the memories we have created with the friends that we have made. It feels like it was all a dream. As much as we will miss Europe, we are very excited to see our family and friends back home.

Goodbye for now, Europe. 

Hello, reality :( 

Thanks for following our blog on our European adventure. We hope we fulfilled our goal of keeping you entertained longer than your grandma's favourite game of bingo. 

Game over. 

That's all they wrote. 

Renee and Sarah

Platz and Straße and Bretzels.. Oh my!

It's been a whole week since we've last wrote. Our week in Berlin went by faster than we expected and left us with only a taste of what Germany is like.

Our first day was low key; we toured around our hostel neighbourhood and checked out the bar on the top floor of our hostel, the Wombar, for some casual drinks with our new roommate, Andy (Bet you can't guess what country he is from... Australia of course).  

We thought we'd start out our time in Berlin with a walking tour so we could get an idea of where we wanted to check out during our time here. We ran into our Australian friends that we met in Edinburgh and saw some historical landmarks including:

• Brandenburg gates

• The Berlin Wall

• Checkpoint Charlie

• The memorial for the murdered Jewish individuals in the holocaust

• Humboldt University, where Einstein and John Lennon studied

• location of Hitler's bunker

• Concert House

 • the square of the book burning memorial

• Luftwaffe headquarters

• and, much more!

We finished off our afternoon with some souvenir shopping too of course!

That evening we spent a night out on the town in Berlin.. Which may be another city that never sleeps. 

The next morning we woke up bright eyed and bushy-tailed, excited for the arrival of Renee's friend, Lily.

We took Lily on a mini tour and visited the museum located below the holocaust memorial. 

We headed to the Wombar once again, but because it had started raining we decided to stay in and chat with our friends from the hostel. 

We got up early to check out the flee market. Renee was excited to support two local buskers and purchase their cd.

Got a bit lost on our way back, which meant we got a uber cool tour of some neighbourhoods in Berlin. Next we checked out checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin wall. We were sad to say goodbye to Lily, but happy she could make it for the night. 

Potsdam was on our list of things to do, so we headed there with our friend Andy for the day. We explored the palaces and gardens. Wouldn't mind having property like this one day. 

After lunch in the adorable city centre, we headed back to Berlin. Renee went out exploring and Sarah and Andy checked out White Trash Fast Food Restaurant. 

The next day the three of us headed to Sachsenhausen, a former concentration camp, just outside the city. The weather was crazy and really set the mood for the day. As soon as we got off the train the 35 degree weather disappeared and the clouds started forming a spinning vortex. At one point on the tour it started to pour, and Renee found herself and ten other poor individuals, hugging the wall of a building to shield themselves from the wind and hail storm.

It was incredible learning experience and we highly recommend that everyone visits a concentration camp in their life. It really opens your eyes to our past history.

Renee went and explored random parks that afternoon, and found herself caught yet another rain/wind storm.

The next day we did another waking tour, Alternative Berlin, that focuses on local street art and lesser known areas of Berlin. Check this tour out of you find yourself in Berlin. 

We cruised by Victoria park for the afternoon to see a waterfall. For the four night in a row, lightening was filling the sky, so we decided not to go out again.

For our last day we walked to the Reichstag, the German parliamentary building, and meandered we through the park beside it. Renee went to the Berlin Wall documentation centre to learn more about it and saw some of the original preserved wall.

We checked out that morning because we were catching a night train to Amsterdam the next day, so we hung out in the hostel lobby for the evening. 

We spent the latter half of the evening and wee hours of the morning in a coffee shop inside the train station. We saw many interesting individuals, even woke up to one dude throwing up his hands in a surrender from trying to get near our stuff, but we caught him red handed. Get stuffed bud!

We were happy to find out our train was leaving one hour earlier (and also very thankful to find this out by chance, or else we would still be sitting in Berlin right now.. Although we wouldn't mind having a longer stay there). Off we went to Amsterdam!

Sarah and Renee 

Luck of the Irish

Needless to say we had quite the entrance to Dublin. Please refer to previous post. We headed straight for our hostel to check in and meet up with our friend from Finland, Johanna. Sarah and Johanna went to the Guinness factory, while Renee had some R&R after the traumatic flight experience.  

Sarah and Johanna arrived back at the hostel with a bottle of cheap Irish wine, in preparation for the pub crawl. We filled ourselves up with Guiness (Renee - baileys), fun Irish music, and new friends. 

We woke up in a rush for breakfast and feeling fab from the night before.  After breakfast, Renee was curious as to why multiple people kept on giving her strange looks. In that moment Sarah realized not only was her shirt inside out, but her shorts were on backwards. Question resolved. It's unfortunate when things like that happen at the start of your 5 night stay. 

We figured we would conquer the day regardless of how we were feeling. We stopped dead in our tracks as we rounded a corner and saw a sign advertising Tim Hortons. Since the start of the trip Sarah has been craving a Timmy's coffee. 

We wanted to pick up some Irish souvenirs so we stopped by one of the main Irish shops. With our purchases in hand we picked up some lunch at a local grocery store. Sarah got caught trying to steal a plastic bag, and declined when they asked for 22 cents. We opted to be eco-friendly and use our paper bags from the souvenir shop. Bad decision. As soon as we left the grocery store there was a torrential down pour. Being islanders this did not phase us. We were slipping and sliding in our flip flops, no jackets, and summer shorts, clutching our paper bags, heading back to the hostel. Sarah laughed as Renee's bag started to rip. Sarah, feeling invincible, started swinging her bag in the air proudly. This lasted all of one second. Moments later Renee looked up just in time to see the contents of Sarah's bag sore through the air, buns skeetering across the flooded sidewalk, and a wee cry of upset as she realized her postcards were lying in a puddle. Renee being the good friend that she is, was keeled over laughing, turned away from the scene (If she looked at the sad scene of Sarah and the scattered contents of her bag, she surely would wee her pants.. Not that it would have made a difference, as she was already soaked through from the rain). Renee finally gathered up the strength to pick up the soggy buns, but by that time a kind Irishman had already stopped to help the poor Canadians. He offered to carry our stuff back to where we were going, but we were so close and couldn't get any words out through our laughter, so we respectfully declined. Thank you kind Irishman, you are a real gentleman!

We arrived back to dry off and eat some food (that seems to be the only thing we do). Once dry and full, we joined Johanna for some more shopping that afternoon. We got caught in another down pour.. Who knew a place could have more rain than raincouver itself. Attempted to partake in the free movie and popcorn night, but apparently they didn't have any popcorn and the movie room was filled with people more interested in drinking. We went back to our hostel and learned that the hangout room in the basement was flooded. All signs pointed to an early night.

We woke up this morning with a pleasant surprise of a sunny day. We seized the opportunity to visit the beach town, Howth. We lucked out as it only drizzled a little bit while we were there. We could hear the thunder showers in the distance. If you have the chance to visit Dublin, take a day trip to Howth. It is an absolutely beautiful little fishing town. We met a few old Irishmen fishing in the harbor, but were not having much luck. We also met a seal we named Murray, who was probably to blame for the lack of fish being caught. We had a lovely day down by the water. To hide from the rain we stopped at Mauds cafe for a spot o' tea. Of course there was some people watching involved too!! 

Day three. We got up early and headed out on a bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher and the City of Galway. It was a long day, but well worth it. The cliffs of Moher were absolutely spectacular. Our tour guide warned us of the wind, but we did not realize just how strong it was. We nearly got blown off the cliffs. We heard that Harry Potter and the half blood prince was filmed here. Another stop on Renee's impromptu Harry Potter tour of Europe. The pictures do not do the cliffs justice. The only thing that scared us away, were the rapidly approaching rain clouds. 

On our way to Galway we stopped at Burren Atlantic edge walk. Miles of granite is actually a pretty cool site. Even the country side is post card worthy.

Next, we stopped at the city of Galway for a little bit. We toured the city center and had a delicious lunch at a local cafe. We enjoyed learning about the Irish history from our tour guide along the way as well. Brushing up on the local history is always a bonus. Our tour guide told us of an Irish drinking game, which would work quite well back in the farmlands of Black Creek and Merville: every time you see a cow, you drink. On this  6 hour bus ride we would have been a wee bit intoxicated in the first ten minutes. Another very successful day in Ireland. 

Day four. We joined in on the walking tour around the city. It was interesting, and bit heartbreaking to find out that St.Patrick himself wasn't even Irish and his name wasn't even Patrick. He was Welsh and we couldn't even pronounce his real name. Universe shattered yet again (Although it will take a lot more than that to stop us from celebrating St.Patty's day in the future!).

That evening we went out to a cool Irish pub for dinner and some good live Irish music. We made friends with the singer and he played the only two Irish songs that we know, along with some Beatles. 

We were up before the sun to catch our flight to Berlin. We are really going to miss Ireland and their friendly accent!

On to another country. Only a week and a half left :(

Renee and Sarah

Play by play on our experience in Heathrow Airport

Let's start off by giving a formal warning to anyone else that is making connecting flights through Heathrow airport: it will take you 45-60 minutes to get from one terminal to the next. Heathrow airport is a small city. We arrived in London thinking that we would have time to sit back and enjoy some tasty lunch before our connecting flight to Dublin.

We hopped on a bus that would take us from terminal 5 to terminal 1. Finding ourselves listening to bumpin' beats and a friendly conversation with the bus driver, lulling us into a sense of ease of making our connection. We waved goodbye, and tootled off towards the security gates, taking some candid photos throughout the airport along the way. 

Our slow saunter led us to customs, at which time Sarah realized that we has fifteen minutes until our gate closed. We panicked for a second, then figured there would be no problem. The guard laughed at us when we asked how far it was to our gate and replied telling us it would take 25-30 minutes. Challenge accepted.

We then proceeded to get an eye scan with red lasers for what felt like five minutes. Then we found ourselves in line for a security scan (since when do you have to go through security again for connecting flights). It was now five minutes until we had to be at our gate, so Renée asked the line up of people if we could budge ahead. They replied with "good luck," and let us pass. Once through the bag check, we figured we were golden and that our gate would be on the other side. Little did we know, there was yet another eye scan. Renée: "Sir, we have three minutes to make our flight! Do you know where the gates are?" Guard: "The faster you look at he flashing red light, the faster you will get out of here." In a frenzy, we stood for another five minute laser scan, then ran to the departures board. All Renée saw was: Dublin - 12:00 - Gates closing - Gate 84. We looked at each and starting running! 

Sarah trailed behind most of the run, due to her unwise choice of wearing flip flops over her sneakers. Have you ever wondered how many hallways you can jam pack into one terminal? We lost count after running through so many. We passed by a sign that read gates 80-100: 10 minutes. At that moment Sarah gave up secretly in her head. Renée led us up the wrong escalator so we had to double back and run down more hallways (Renée wanted to boast about her swish free throw of the gum into the rubbish bin mid stride down the hundredth hallway). We finally emerged at get 84 only to be told that we were too late. It was now 12:03. They looked at our boarding passes and told us that we weren't even flying with them. It was a different airline to Dublin. We searched frantically for a desk to flip, but none were to be found. 

At that moment, Renée's hope had grown two sizes. There was still a chance.  We looked at the gate sign once more and saw Dublin - 12:05 - Gate Closing - Gate 8. Renée's new found hope vanished as quickly as it appeared. Sarah threw in the towel, took off her flip flops and sat down for a cold one. Just kidding, she followed along slowly as Renee kept on trekking. "Renee, why are you walking so fast? We have nowhere to go!" Renee paused for a moment and then proceeded to sprint down an unmarked hallway. Sarah collected her back informing her that we had never been down that hallway in the first place. Renee was delirious, but still decided to take off sprinting once again. 

Somehow the next hallway was labeled gates 7-8. Why on earth are gate 7-8 randomly (and fortunately) located in the gates 70-100 section? We had finally arrived... or so we thought. We saw another guy sprinting by, so we used or last ounce of adrenaline to follow behind. Gates 8 A-F were insight. Not sure why there has to be so many gate 8's. The world was out to get us that day. Gasping for air and thirsty for some H2O, we approached the counter. We think we felt the clouds parting and heard the angel harps playing. The gate staff were letting us on. Not sure what we did in our past lives, but it must have been good. Sitting down in our seats was the best feeling in the world at that moment. Victory! 

Off to Dublin we were. 

Maybe we will have more luck with the Irish!

Renée and Sarah 

Renee tuckered after our flight! 

The tales of Edinburgh

Where to begin! From the moment we tumbled off the bus with our backpacks and various other trinkets onto the Edinburgh sidewalk, we knew we were in love. It has such a laid back, cool atmosphere. All of the modern buildings have been built in the same style as they were in the 1800's, so it felt like you were steeping back in time. The streets were always bustling, and we noticed immediately that there is about as many pubs and taverns as there are sushi restaurants in Vancouver. 

We were excited to find out that our hostel was located just off the royal mile. 

Our first day we toured around the city a bit, then enjoyed some drinks with our new Australian roommates, Emma and Jess. 

The next morning we planned to climb Arthur's seat despite the fog, however we decided to cancel those plans as soon as the lightening and thunder showers started. We finally put our jackets to good use! Instead we went on a walking tour, and even met another Renée. We didn't realize Edinburgh has such a gruesome history. We saw lots of the Harry Potter inspirations, and Renée was excited to get a picture with Thomas Riddle's grave. To warm up after the tour, we joined our Australian friends at an adorable tea room, Clarinda's. 

Later on when we were hanging out in the chill room, we met even more Australians and decided to join them on a pub crawl. We went to some pretty cool pubs with lots of good music, and even tried out some Irish dancing. Pub crawl night successful!

The next day we did some exploring (well Renée did, and Sarah caught some z's), had some great food: we went for dinner at Henderson's bistro, and thought it was really neat when the waiter had given us a hand drawn picture on  the receipt. It wasn't until later when we pulled it out, that we realized it was actually a portrait of Renee eating her soup. Not sure whether to be creeped out or impressed (Let's just say Sarah is happy it wasn't her portrait). Then we finished off our night in the chill room. 

The next day we went to the Edinburgh dungeon. We were shaking in our booties, as little wee ones were sucking on eye ball lollipops having the time of their lives. We survived even after walking around in the mirror maze for a good ten minutes. We went for lunch and then headed to the national museum of Scotland. Contrary to her initial belief, Sarah found out in the animal exhibit that llamas do not have humps. 

Following the learning experience, we decided to go on a quest up to Arthur's seat. Much to our dismay, the fog was so thick you couldn't even see higher than fifty meters. We felt like we were caught in a field of sheep; a white abyss. Hike up Arthur's seat, take one, unsuccessful.

Day five, our final day in Edinburgh, we knew we had to make it count. We woke up early, saw the sunshine, and headed straight for Arthur's seat.

Our new Russian fried Yulia joined us for the hike. It was a steep but beautiful hike with sites of Edinburgh stretching for miles at all angles. There was no actually seat at the top , but we sat regardless to enjoy the views.

Following the hike, we relaxed with a cup of tea at Clarinda's once again. Next we walked through Princes park to enjoy extra large seagulls (size of small labrador dogs) and views from below the Edinburgh castle. To finish off our last night, we went back to Whistle Binkies, the first stop in our pub crawl, to enjoy some live music. The bass player in the rock band look awfully similar to Renee's dad. She tried to take a stealth photo, but her cover was blown when the flash blared. The acoustic performer, was a lovely Scottish man, lovely enough to earn a tattoo spot on Sarah's arm, next to the existing tattoo of the lead singer from the Seattle yacht club. Pictures to follow (Sorry mom). 

All packed up and early out the door, we were on our way to Dublin Saturday morning. 

Airport story to follow (It's cray as fish fillet, so we thought it is worthy of its own blog post).

Renée and Sarah