Steve & Ella's Excellent Adventure

Introduction to Tokyo!   Today, Steve and I woke up in a bit of a daze really. Its a feeling hard to explain, but if any of you have had those incidences where you've had to sleep in a strange new house you have to reacquaint yourself to the new lay out. Wire in a new navigational map for those middle of the night moments when you wake up needing a trip to the bathroom and wonder to yourself "Now which house is this one?" Perhaps that is the feeling we had this morning.   Our first real day in Tokyo started at the Narita Airport Resthouse with an included breakfast as part of the room deal. We both ventured out inspired to see what was on the breakfast menu in Japan . Quite honestly as Steve mentioned in his post - I was not yet awake enough nor adventurous enough to sample the local diet. I chose to stick to a Western style breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausage followed up with a delicious croissant and a questionable coffee!! Steve on the other hand made his fir...

Our first day in Tokyo started with breakfast a Narita Airport Resthouse. Ella kept to the western menu of bacon and scrambled eggs and I tried some Japanese items such as a mackerel piece, bean curd and a cream coloured ball that tasted like chalk.   After finding our way to our second hotel in Akihabara (thanks to street view we knew the way, because we couldn't read the street signs) we set out to ride the subway to the city centre. Tokyo metro is a lot like other big cities like New York and London. Coloured lines, numbered stops and multiple interchanges. You just need to ensure you go in the right direction. The city centre was quite today, owing to a public holiday, so it was easy to get around. We took a walk around the imperial palace and stopped for a rest by a statue of a samurai, with drinks from a vending machine (cold milk tea is an acquire taste).   In the evening we walked the park in Ueno before hitting the neon lights down nearby alley ways. The numb...

Welcome to TOKYO!! Today's journey started in Melbourne - actually it started at the RIDICULOUS and INHUMANE hour of 3am. Yep - that's it, you heard it here we were up and at the airport before the birds! The day before after a complete panic and last minute preparations we arrived at the Ciloms Airport Hotel just a hop, skip and a jump away from Tullamarine Airport. This morning we were forced to comply with the somewhat crazy hour of the morning wake up call for our scheduled flight departure time of 6AM.  Thanks JETSTAR...  ;o)   I don't know if any of you have ever attempted to get up at such an hour? Frankly, its a bit of a rude shock to your brain when that alarm goes off - you sort of think to yourself "Hang on, didn't I just get to sleep?" At this point you realise you've actually been asleep for maybe 3 hours max but it really feels like its only been about 20 mins because your brain has not had its scheduled number of REM cycles. So he...

The BLOG is BACK!   The blog is back - after a long hiatus or perhaps from your point of view, a large time frame of sheer procrastination since 2008. We never got around to finishing our blog from the big European Tour of 2008 which lasted from early April right up until October. A lot has happened since then - a hell of a lot of time has passed and well somehow have found ourselves on some level completely different people. Where to start?   This trip has somewhat been a long time in the making or at least it has been in the back of our minds for some years. I've always wanted to go to Japan since I was a teenager, Steve (and myself to some small degree) has always had South America in his dreams or plans. So here we are...  Circumstances have perhaps pushed this trip forward a bit and  partly the need to get  to Poland to visit family has somewhat inspired us to go crazy (and quite honestly - we never seem to do things by halves when we travel!) ...

Köln : Laundromat & Internet Day! Greetings! Alright, so Tuesday (22nd April) I think we both made a mental decision to have a bit of a lazy day and abuse the privilege of the free internet in our hotel (which was on selectively during working hours) and catch up on some correspondence and draw some maps for our next four German cities after learning our lesson heavily with Köln! Not making THAT mistake again... Great thing about google maps, they really are so very helpful. They even provide you with information on S-bahn/U-bahn station locations and any trams/buses. Really COOL! So we spent the morning looking up Frankfurt, Münster and Düsseldorf and the location of our hotels and drawing primitive maps! ;o) We had also had breakfast included in our nightly rate, so we had to be up at a decent hour anyway to make it in time for our breakfast otherwise we would have gone hungry! The day before we had also found a supermarket and supplied ourselves with some basic foods - bread, m...

Destination : Köln (Cologne!) Hi all! Monday (21st April).... saw us wake up in our comfy hotel room and the anticipation of catching a train to Cologne, Germany. Another train? Well, we decided earlier on it would be easier to catch trains rather than go through the hassle of going through security etc if we caught a flight. Besides I like trains... Since the station was a hop, skip and a jump from our hotel room it didn't take us very long to relocate ourselves. One positive thing was that we didn't have to weave through the madness of the market which we had arrived to on the Saturday afternoon. We also had left early enough to avoid any crowds in the shopping plaza as well... Cool! So standing on the platform waiting for our train, which was actually to Düsseldorf we grabbed our first glimpse of the German ICE (Intercity Express) train. WOW! It is really a remarkable train.. Maybe the locals aren't so impressed with them.... Silly tourists... ;o) I spose it is much lik...

Utrecht : Armin Only! Sunday (20th April), the day after our "Armin Only" experience.... we had crawled into our beds around 8 O'clock in the morning after a night out at an all night "Hardcore Dutch Dance Party".. and I spose that is just what it was. Steve was completely excited and enthusiastic about the event. Me? I decided to go in there with an open mind. I still enjoyed Techno/Dance/House music on some level, mainly when I was in the mood for it. I have to admit that around 4 days after my illness in Brugge, I was feeling a bit worse for wear and more than likely dehydrated on some level still... and knew that I wouldn't have the energy to be up on my feet constantly. Not like these hardcore party people anyway! On the way to Jaarbeurs (the trade centre) where the whole thing was going to be held, we grabbed our dinner at the shopping centre at Utrecht Centraal Station. We arrived promptly on time around 10pm. There were a few people wandering around...