sometimes it's easier to draw things

EUROTRIP

SO we are coming to the end of our Europe travels. We landed in Amsterdam on the 6th of may and are now in Berlin for a good week, off to Stockholm afterward's, then that will close our Europe chapter!

It's only been 2weeks of travel but by golly it feels like months. In those two weeks we have been toooooo *drum roll*... Amsterdam, Paris, Annecy, Florence, Zurich, Lucerene and Barcelona. Quite an accomplishment I feel. In most places we only had two full days to explore. So things have been pretty mental.
have arrived in Berlin with some pretty poopy weather, it has forced us to kinda slow down a bit which is good. we have plenty of time here so my inner sloth will now blossom once again. Not that we even woke up ridiculously early during those two weeks.. but a 9.30 wake up compared to 10.30.. can make or break me. I keep blaming genetics. it's a thing I swear.
 When people harp on about their body clocks getting accustomed to early work schedules after a few weeks or whatever... pffft.. that's some sort of medical marvel in my eyes. My body will never, ever allow such a thing. Mornings will always be some sort of gateway to hell. I know that sounds absolutely over the top, but that's how I feel in the morning okay? Don't mess with morning k-dog ya hear?


Any waaaaays. What i'll do for you now kiddies, is break this shizzle down. A bad ass euro rap up (wrap up? see what I did... I'm going to wrap things up with a rap? YEAH?)
of events, you dig?


Erin pretty good at making up rhymes sometimes
so she gun chyme in all in good timin'

ok ok check check the mic one, two. KJ knows whats coo'
Amsterdam attic was manic, Erin couldn't speak.
throat swallon lyke some sort of freak.
KJ and cuz Emma strollin tha streets all day. Got lost three times over.
but we ain't got no grudge to hold
YEAH WE BE REPPIN DEM AMSTY STREETS LIKE CRAYI!
Erin checks in on day two, feeling better, woopy doo!
 We shop till we drop.
Them Amsterdam dayz flew.
Pce out amsty, our hearts belong to you.

hold up, now we in PARIS!
Sleeping next to a renovation site, them hammers be smashin all night!
Talkin to some locals with Belgium beers.
 won dem waiter boiz hearts while we be all "cheers!"
 We be putting on that aussie girl charm.
Dem French can be.. "French" but they don't mean no harm.
So I say to Paris, MERCI BEAUCOUP. Hold on up, hold it awn up!!
I am now finished with this loop.

Erin checks in raw. who needs to rhyme. Erin ain't got the time.

"Let's skip ahead now to Barcelona. Where the sun don't set till late.
Full day of sightseeing and too much Sangria.
we danced into the night and the beats were great.
Primavera was freaken cool, filled with bearded men, cheap booze and fun.
Had one beer. fuck that- give me water and coffee yeah woo!
Us old peeps can party too."

woah woah, let's bring it back now that shit was raw.
Let's bring it back to where we shwas.
 No no that ain't no typo, that my slang.
Get use to dem werds while you be hur reading this thang.

let's roll on down to Florence shall we.
 3 trains to get to this city, by the end we were going crayyyyzeee.
Them trains, dey  will play with yo mind.
good thing we had a knowledgeable seat buddy who was very kind.
she  be all "yo i'll watch over yo bags so they don't get stolen!"
she was like our mum, This lass was golden.
Florence stole my heart. From the wining and dining to the scenic driving
IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT OKAY?! THAT COOL WIT CHU?... yei uh, stay wit me now.

It's here that I finish with Zurich bishes, so listen closely or y'all miss this
Hey now listen up Z-dog!
you remind me of home, where everything costs and arm and a leg.
If we didn't eat-in every other night we'd be forced to beg!
from our balcony we had a great view of you!
we played chess in your parks and wandered your canals which was pretty Coo'.
you gots a mean shopping strip. but we caught your public holiday!
 no shopping for us, maaan dat be kind of a trip!
ya gettin me G's!?
Zurich we dug ya okay?!
 would have liked to stay longer what more can I say!

I CAN'T SAY NUFFIN  NO MORE! I'M OUTTA CITIES TO TALK ABOUT.
THIS IS K-DOG TELLIN YA I'M OVER N OUT!

_____________________________(I hold absolutely no responsibility for the time you may have wasted reading that pile of ... ACE RHYMING...my suggestion would be to sing it to your favorite gangster beat)

photos of contiki life

here's some happy snaps of contiki for all your beautiful eyes.

 sleepy heads were a continuous theme

 FFL (friends for life)

 Ireland scenes!

 Scottish scenes!

Amsterdam was Fully Sick

Thinking I'd be physically fine after a 16day contiki tour is a bit of a stupid thought.

I was initially pretty proud of myself for not getting some form of flu/crazy cough...but thinking about it.. many hours of breathing the same air as 53 fellow travelers in a bus with no opening windows. HAH!

First night in Amsterdam and I'm forcing my cousin Emma to touch the golf ball that is protruding out of my neck "feel it! It's amazing"
Next morning I awake to discover that the golf ball hit puberty and is now a tennis ball with a first born child located on the other side of my throat. Thank you contiki!!

When i awoke the next morning, as well as the inability to swallow, I generally felt pretty unwell and it would have been cool to see if an egg could be scrambled on my head.
Sooo, Kath and I went off to find a medical centre.
First time..unlucky - no chance of an appointment, but they sent me to another centre around the corner. This was promising, the initial lady was awesome and said I could book an appointment...then the official admin lady told me I probably wouldn't need a doctor...
"It's not that bad, these things happen, you'll be fine by tomorrow so just take some paracetamol and losengers, go to the chemist and they'll fix you up. it probably feels worse than it actually is"
I think it was hard for me to convey to this lady that when you're traveling in a foreign country and spend the entire day seeking medical advice, it usually means you have zero bars of health left on your "game of life" screen, but hey - kudos to her for attempting to soften the blow.
I followed her advice and just went into a chemist and asked if they could give me anything to fix me...and yes...the advice given "you need to see a doctor" joyfull joy joy.

As much as I'm bitching and moaning, it all worked out in the end, the chemist gave me the address of a good medical centre and I booked myself an appointment. Huzzaah!
I Waltzed through the streets on my lonesome while Katherine and Emma skipped along canals and had amazing adventures! I got lost a few times, but eventually got there and now I feel fantastical.

Amsterdam, thank you for you kind medical advice.

Erin

Contiki lyfe

Contiki
Well, let me tell you folks. It has been one heck of a month. Apologies for the lack of updates, but um yeah.. Contiki barely gives you time to scratch your own arse so a blog entry was just out of the question.
I don't really know where to start with Contiki... what a crazy whirlwind of amazing scenery, places, and last but not least. PEOPLE.
I don't know if we hit the lottery with the people on our  tour but it sure felt like we did. I have met people from around the globe that i can safely say are friends for life! And now we have some pretty cool people to meet up with during our American adventures! Wooohoo.
Okay just a funny tidbit, i can am currently on a train leaving Amsterdam, and... my ipod has just started playing colplay-Amsterdam?. LIFE IS WHACK?!?
OK. A typical Contiki day involves:
*Waking up at some ungodly hour. 6.30/7ish. And no.. it doesn't get any easier. Ever.
*Eating a free breakfast. Win. I had bacon, eggs and beans prooobably 13 out of the 15 mornings. Healthy n stuff.
* Driving through lovely scenes, stopping off in towns along the way to our main destination.
*Bus singalongs, history lessons on the places we were visiting. (York had crazy history. Ireland was just out of this world for me personally. Let's just say i didn't pay a lot of attention in history classes, so learning about "the trouble" and civil war blew my face off.)
*climbing some sort or medievil ruin or sussin out a kick arse castle
* checking into our hotel.
Usually around 6pm
*hit 8pm we're out eating and drinking at a local pub!
*10pm we move to our pub/bar of choice, dancing and sing a longs with the locals.
*12pm. Time for erin and Katherine to head home while the energy filled Contiki kids head to another bar. Could safely say we were part of the granny clan.
*pack bags for tomorrow, finally hit the hay by 1/2am
*RINSE AND REPEAT!
Yep. Pretty full on for 16 days straight. But an amazing experience that we will never forget or regret.
Just ah.. couldn't do many more of them. Maybe if they were a little shorter. The early mornings would eventually kill me i think. Some people were getting straight into another 45dayer Contiki after ours. I reckon that would be some form of torture for erin and I.
Great times. We totally cried when we had to say goodbye to our new friends :( Also, i don't think i have ever laughed as hard as I did during those 16 days. We spent, an entire dinner time at our loch ness lodge, in hysterics. 1 and a half hours of pure insanity. There's no point going into details... because things are never too funny when you try and explain them.
But YEAH, Contiki was great guns. We love our Contiki family!

More stories to come when we stop having fun! Which will be like...the few times we are stuck waiting for boring dumb planes.
Trains are the shit by the way, I was so sleep deprived because I couldn't stop looking at the amazing views while we

Katherine signing out

The burden of silence

I don't know what it is about this apartment we're living in that makes it so quiet. Maybe the LACK OF NOISE!? But seriously.
Apart from the chavs that yell and rave at about 5pm on the dot every day. It is so so so sooo quiet. We don't really have a tv arial, so can only watch dvds, which means we rarely have tv playing at night during our "down time".
Now you're probably thinking. That's lovely. "A nice quiet getaway after your London day adventures". Which is true.
BUT! erin and myself are pretty ridiculous people. And we are finding it very hard to deal with eachothers loud eating habits, even water drinking habits AND EVEN the way we breath at times. We have no ambient noise to cover anyyy of these grating sounds from our overly sensitive ears.
I'm actually listening to my ipod as I write this because erin is eating cauliflower and cheese, and let me tell you. The sound of her chewing, makes me want to harm people.
 Erin has actually tapped me while typing this, and told me to pull out my headphones so i can watch her dramatize the way i've been breathing for the past 2minutes. She is in hysterics over it. Aparrently I breathe like  a pug while lying down and typing. .... okay .. hilaaarioous.
the first time she brought it up it was funny, she was aaalll laughs. Now she's got her serious voice on and telling me I need to control my breathing a  little better. She's being polite... kinda through her teeth though? Where you know she just wants to punch me.

We just can't win! Breakfast time doesn't even happen at the same time anymore. We haven't discussed why. But secretly I think we both know.

people and places

Blog tiiiime.

Hey all! This is Erin giving you the gift of London today :D

So at the moment most of our days start by us waking around 9/10am...because why would I want to wake up any earlier...I have my whole working life for them early mornings people! 

We've been busaaye. Our amazing cousin and her male friend have been showing us an awesome side to London. Lots of markets, nice eats and we've been walking to most destinations which is a great way to see the city. I'll post some photos as the end of my rants so you can see the fun things we've been up to!

Before I treat you with that, I have STORIES!

Now...I know it seems there's an underlying theme of transport in most of these blog entries, but really...there is nothing quite like a good transit fuck up to put you in a good mood. This happened about 2 nights ago while Kath and I were heading to Leicester Square to have some cocktails with our friend Vicky and her brother.

Google maps was the first evil in this scenario. Why did I listen to googlemaps? God knows...but we decided we would do the 10min walk from our apartment to the 'Highbury and Islington' station, this 10min walk turned into an hour walk because we had no freaking clue where the station was and google maps is a piece of Shiite.

Anyway...we found Canonbury station instead, yahoo. We looked at the tube map and had a pretty good idea that we needed to catch the Victoria line and then change over to another line to get to where we wanted to be, but just to be sure, we thought we'd double check with the transit information box. I can't even describe how wrong his "help" was and I can't even put it into words. So below is a map of our chaotic tube journey.

 red= our amazing journey         green= how it should have gone down

A trip that should have taken under an hour...took 2. And now we are masters of the tube stations.

Another thing we're starting to notice in our time being out in the big wide world is that odd people exist everywhere...and for those of you at home who are lucky enough to hear a good Jago rant, it usually involves some interaction with a fellow human. And the human is usually a bit out of sorts and/or totally beyond self awareness it hurts.

This great trait of attracting colorful characters has definitely followed us in our journey. I think we must have kind eyes or some kind of jovial banter vibe about us.

The other night kath, myself, cousin Mel and her man Dan  were traveling home on a bus. We hear this loud disorderly voice travel up the stairs to the top level of the bus and he's already locked his eyes on our little "posse". By the end of this interaction I had held a crusty jam jar once filled with beer, Dan had held the mans umbrella for the entirety of our journey and we were each offered multiple sips of beer from this jam jar. Harmless man but annoying man, just sit down crazy man...and let us sit in peace.

Another fun time happened to Kath and myself last night while bussing back to our apartment. This woman and her son waltz onto the bus, crazy drunk...so so drunk, but happy drunk..so it was entertaining to watch. Her son sits on the seat in front of us and then his mother slumps beside him and tilts her head back, so her eyes are now level with our eyes :) YAY! 

She then starts a great old rant about how her husband abandoned their son because he couldn't handle the fact that she, his wife, had left him for another woman and that her son was also gay, she then yells "BUT WE'RE ALL A BIT GAY ANYWAY AREN'T WE?!" At this point I love this woman, she's a champ and THEN some.

 When I thought things could t get any better, she locks eyes with us again and starts singing Dancing Queen by Abba...kath and I actually started to join in, but our singing was just whispers and as we all Stepped off the bus the mother and son team could still be heard singing Abba at the top of their lungs.

I love you mother and son!

So the fact is even though people are odd, sometimes it can be very entertaining - like the mother and son team...and other times it can be frustrating and boring - like holding a drunk man's jam jar.

Now I leave you with photooo's!!

 parker, the curious pooch, somehow creeped into the city farm and caused a ruckus

 I know it's meant to ve a sword. But all we could see was a cameleon vomitting

 Hackney flower markets. people and flowers everywhere!

Beer and Pizza and SUN, at crate. on the canals