So its my birthday! We should see Mt.Fuji from a cable car today and then head off to Kyoto on a Shinkansen. I am really glad we got the JR pass. It ends today and from tomorrrow on we will have to pay for our JR trains. Since its the last day we are going to use it to get to a mountain in the western side of Kyoto and feed the monkeys. That is, if we get there in day light. Its a 3 or 4 hour train ride from here and we might be on a slower train because we are at a small train station now (Hakone). Maybe we will do it tomorrow. We might eat breakfast and go back to bed. Lisa feels worse. As long we we check out at 11. This is a nice hotel-- the only night in one on this trip. We may as well stay in it longer, right?
Yesterday we went to a big fancy onsen. Yunnesan, I think was the name. Along with the regular onsen they had baths with green tea, coffee, wine, charcol, and sake. It was pretty neat and we could wear swim suits in the fun pools. We swam in the normal pool some too. I hadn't done laps in the longest time.
Sorry for the lack of posts. We messed up our travel plan and paired with lack of sleep, we both got sick. It doesn't look like Lisa will get to go to Karaoke again because she won't have a voice. I have a voice this morning at least.
The " ' " is shift+7.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
Cairns
We made it to Cairns without any trouble. The airport security is much more lax than the US- at least for a domestic flight. We left our shoes on, and since I checked in at one of their computer things and only checked my bag, Lisa's ID was never checked! Isn't that different. You just walk through with your ticket and the TSA equivalent looked very bored :).
We went on a jungle tour today and tomorrow we are going scuba diving! I am excited about scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef!!! The weather here is warmer than the weather in Sydney.
The jungle tour included: Mossman George (the water was clear and cold), Port Dougles, a Daintree River Cruise where we saw 5 alligators, and Cape Tribulation.
I am hungry. We should go eat :)
We went on a jungle tour today and tomorrow we are going scuba diving! I am excited about scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef!!! The weather here is warmer than the weather in Sydney.
The jungle tour included: Mossman George (the water was clear and cold), Port Dougles, a Daintree River Cruise where we saw 5 alligators, and Cape Tribulation.
I am hungry. We should go eat :)
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Sydney
Lisa and I are getting toward the end of our “week” in Sydney. We have been to the Sydney Opera House and bought tickets for Edward Scissor Hands for tomorrow. It is a ballet.
Taronga Zoo is across the harbor, and we took a ferry to get to us. The ferry was from Circular Quay (pronounced “key”). We saw a bird show in the zoo and a seal training. I was really impressed with the seals. Peacocks were walking freely around the zoo. We must have seen about 8 of them, and a few were in the café where we snacked! I guess they like the crumbs :p The giraffe enclosure overlooks the harbor and the Sydney bridge. They were in the same enclosure as a “cute fat zebra,” as Lisa called it. The giraffe had food (branches) hoisted up on a chain so they were the correct height. They looked really funny when eating off the ground because their front legs were spread way apart. Of course, the zoo experience had koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, echidnas… but the platypus was MIA.
Hyde Park and the Botanical Gardens are really pretty. There is a hole garden of herbs that Lisa and I went around smelling. We never found any mint. Maybe it is the wrong season. Leaves for curry smell good, so did a bush, and some random unnamed plant. Mom, we found Stevia- plant form. I took a picture.
As I was told the food here is more expensive. In the grocery store apples are about $2.5/kg, milk is $2.7/L, eggs are stored in an open (not cooled) spot, a loaf of plain white bread is $2.7, orange juice was $6, and bananas were $1.5/kg. I can’t think of anything else more specific now. Lisa bought Vegemite.
The city appears to be about 30% Asian. Our hostel is in Chinatown, and Chinese is the second most spoken language in Sydney. There are almost no blacks or Hispanics- just Asian and Indian. Lisa keeps eavesdropping on the Asian languages.
Tomorrow we will hopefully go on a Blue Mountains tour and Saturday we are meeting up with my friend from Sydney (we met in Prague) and going to The Rocks market and then our ballet. I have lots of questions for her- schools, uniforms, gas (haven’t seen a station – we walk everywhere), manual cars, busses, snow…
BTW: I have seen 5 Miatas :p
Taronga Zoo is across the harbor, and we took a ferry to get to us. The ferry was from Circular Quay (pronounced “key”). We saw a bird show in the zoo and a seal training. I was really impressed with the seals. Peacocks were walking freely around the zoo. We must have seen about 8 of them, and a few were in the café where we snacked! I guess they like the crumbs :p The giraffe enclosure overlooks the harbor and the Sydney bridge. They were in the same enclosure as a “cute fat zebra,” as Lisa called it. The giraffe had food (branches) hoisted up on a chain so they were the correct height. They looked really funny when eating off the ground because their front legs were spread way apart. Of course, the zoo experience had koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, echidnas… but the platypus was MIA.
Hyde Park and the Botanical Gardens are really pretty. There is a hole garden of herbs that Lisa and I went around smelling. We never found any mint. Maybe it is the wrong season. Leaves for curry smell good, so did a bush, and some random unnamed plant. Mom, we found Stevia- plant form. I took a picture.
As I was told the food here is more expensive. In the grocery store apples are about $2.5/kg, milk is $2.7/L, eggs are stored in an open (not cooled) spot, a loaf of plain white bread is $2.7, orange juice was $6, and bananas were $1.5/kg. I can’t think of anything else more specific now. Lisa bought Vegemite.
The city appears to be about 30% Asian. Our hostel is in Chinatown, and Chinese is the second most spoken language in Sydney. There are almost no blacks or Hispanics- just Asian and Indian. Lisa keeps eavesdropping on the Asian languages.
Tomorrow we will hopefully go on a Blue Mountains tour and Saturday we are meeting up with my friend from Sydney (we met in Prague) and going to The Rocks market and then our ballet. I have lots of questions for her- schools, uniforms, gas (haven’t seen a station – we walk everywhere), manual cars, busses, snow…
BTW: I have seen 5 Miatas :p
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Australia and Japan 2008
My sister Lisa and I are about to leave for our big trip. The Australia part of the trip is more open because there wasn't anything to work around like the 7 day Japan Rail Train pass. Here is the plan:
26 May- arrive in Sydney - day trip to Blue Mountains too
1 June- fly to Cairns - Jungle tour, scuba/snorkeling, parasailing?
5 June - fly to Osaka - stay with Lisa's host family
6 June - Mt Koya
7 June - Himeji Castle, Hiroshima, and Miyajima Island
8 June - Tokyo
11 June - see Mt Fuji
12 June - Kyoto
15 June - Nara, return to Osaka and host family
16 June - visit Lisa's old family etc
17 June - head back to the US
26 May- arrive in Sydney - day trip to Blue Mountains too
1 June- fly to Cairns - Jungle tour, scuba/snorkeling, parasailing?
5 June - fly to Osaka - stay with Lisa's host family
6 June - Mt Koya
7 June - Himeji Castle, Hiroshima, and Miyajima Island
8 June - Tokyo
11 June - see Mt Fuji
12 June - Kyoto
15 June - Nara, return to Osaka and host family
16 June - visit Lisa's old family etc
17 June - head back to the US
Monday, May 28, 2007
28 May- Last Day
This is it, tomorrow morning we get up head to Victoria Station on the Underground to get a National rail train to Gatwick, fly out and land on Atlanta around 4. This is going to be a 29 hour day.
This trip has been a lot of fun! I am glad I took these three weeks away from my internship. I can now check off many cities and little travel goals I had. Today we went to Stonehenge which is a pile of neat rocks,
I am looking forward to having a normal schedule again and eating what I want when I want it. Mom's cooking for my time in VA will be very welcome.
Tis the end of my summer travels abroad...
This trip has been a lot of fun! I am glad I took these three weeks away from my internship. I can now check off many cities and little travel goals I had. Today we went to Stonehenge which is a pile of neat rocks,
I am looking forward to having a normal schedule again and eating what I want when I want it. Mom's cooking for my time in VA will be very welcome.
Tis the end of my summer travels abroad...
Thursday, May 24, 2007
24 May- Praha, Czech
I really like Prague. The hostel is not in the city center but the area is nice. Everything seems so clean! This might be because Italy was filthy with piles of garbage everywhere and garbage on the ground. We arrived from the airport and bus and metro around 2 and left our bags at the hostel. The lady at the front desk told us a good local place to get lunch for cheap. We got up at 5 am and were starving. I ate a huge lunch of a traditional Thanksgiving diner with heat, beef, cabbage, veggies, a potato like patty, and other patty that I can not recognize that was maybe squash and zucchini. I was so stuffed.
We chilled at the hostel a while in the afternoon. I went for a walk around the area and Ethan napped. Then we went to a bookstore, and into the city center. We went to a torture museum and took a lot of pictures of the city at night. I an very tired right about now and plan on sleeping until I have to get up (which is like 11 since breakfast ends at 12 and we paid 100 Kr for it).Prague feels like Austria or Germany to me. Lots of beer here, too. Its the first place on this trip where the locals wear tshirts and dress more causal like Americans. They are not all skinny either. My Teva's will even look normal here. Oh and everyone speaks some English.That's all for now!
We chilled at the hostel a while in the afternoon. I went for a walk around the area and Ethan napped. Then we went to a bookstore, and into the city center. We went to a torture museum and took a lot of pictures of the city at night. I an very tired right about now and plan on sleeping until I have to get up (which is like 11 since breakfast ends at 12 and we paid 100 Kr for it).Prague feels like Austria or Germany to me. Lots of beer here, too. Its the first place on this trip where the locals wear tshirts and dress more causal like Americans. They are not all skinny either. My Teva's will even look normal here. Oh and everyone speaks some English.That's all for now!
Pompeii and Almalfi Coast details
The city of Pompei is very small with two train station- the national line and the regional line. We took a train from Rome to Naples and then to Pompei one morning after checking out and buying some stuff in Rome. The train ticket lady was the most unhelpful person ever, she had the trains to Naples and costs memorized but would only tell us stuff on a specific one we said. So we had to look up others on the table and she would rattle off the costs with no problem. So she knew where and when we wanted to go, but told us to go to information on the other side of the station (we didnt) when there was a train 2 minutes after the one we initially had in mind. It was ridiculous.The hostel in Pompei was probably the cheapest we have stayed in- the Casa de Pelligrino. My room had 8 beds and about 5 females. Ethans room was just him in a room for 8. We are definitely traveling before the main tourist crowds. The restaurants in Pompeii like to have 'tourista' menus which i found weird because tourists dont want tourist food. They would be a meal with sides (since they are all separate) and desert for a set price. We didn't eat in one of those.
The Pompei ruins are huge and about 70% excavated. You can walk down streets that were thriving in 70 AD and see the old shops, bakeries, and homes. The homes of the traders and others with money were beautiful. You need to get an audioguide to understand what you are looking at and they only sell them at one end of the ruins- and we came in the other side since it was close to the hostel so we had to hike across to get one. The ruins are amazing. There was a theatre that seats 300, 000 people which is more than any in existance i believe.Almalfi Coast:Not too much to see there, just town and beautiful places to take photos of. I just wanted to go there for the view. You take a train to Sorrento and then a bus on the SITA line along tiny twisty roads with far drops to the water for an hour just to cover 20 km. The bus ride was making people sick. We got off the bus in Positano (the typical picture of the Almalfi Coast you see) and took some photos. I bought some tiny little peaches (we used to be able to get them at the fruit farm Mag Maggies I think). I miss eating fruits and veggies. Eating out all the time is something I will not miss. There was another ride about the same length to get to Almafi where we ate lunch and sat on the beach. It was a nice calm day.
Then we took a boat to Salerno, where we took a local bus for 2 hours back to Pompei. It was impossible to know when to get off the bus so we started asking the locals. In broken English we got of and basically were on the street or our hostel. A man on the bus found it really amusing that I was asian (which he indicated with squinty eyes) and spoke English.Italians are rude and pushy it seems. Especially the older ones. When boarding the boats the old Italians were pushing like a mob when we all knew the boat was not going to leave themThere havent been any waits at all for us. For example Ethan got in the Vatican in 15 min (just security) on the day the Pope returned and two years ago I spent an hour to get in in June.
The Pompei ruins are huge and about 70% excavated. You can walk down streets that were thriving in 70 AD and see the old shops, bakeries, and homes. The homes of the traders and others with money were beautiful. You need to get an audioguide to understand what you are looking at and they only sell them at one end of the ruins- and we came in the other side since it was close to the hostel so we had to hike across to get one. The ruins are amazing. There was a theatre that seats 300, 000 people which is more than any in existance i believe.Almalfi Coast:Not too much to see there, just town and beautiful places to take photos of. I just wanted to go there for the view. You take a train to Sorrento and then a bus on the SITA line along tiny twisty roads with far drops to the water for an hour just to cover 20 km. The bus ride was making people sick. We got off the bus in Positano (the typical picture of the Almalfi Coast you see) and took some photos. I bought some tiny little peaches (we used to be able to get them at the fruit farm Mag Maggies I think). I miss eating fruits and veggies. Eating out all the time is something I will not miss. There was another ride about the same length to get to Almafi where we ate lunch and sat on the beach. It was a nice calm day.
Then we took a boat to Salerno, where we took a local bus for 2 hours back to Pompei. It was impossible to know when to get off the bus so we started asking the locals. In broken English we got of and basically were on the street or our hostel. A man on the bus found it really amusing that I was asian (which he indicated with squinty eyes) and spoke English.Italians are rude and pushy it seems. Especially the older ones. When boarding the boats the old Italians were pushing like a mob when we all knew the boat was not going to leave themThere havent been any waits at all for us. For example Ethan got in the Vatican in 15 min (just security) on the day the Pope returned and two years ago I spent an hour to get in in June.
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