Ok that was corny, I promise I'll try to keep the sound of music quotes out of this entry. On our first day in Salzburg Jill, Kristen and I just went on a self-guided walking tour around the town. Salzburg is in a basin of some sort formed when a couple lakes from the ice-age dried up. At least thats the gist that I got - really though all that matters is that its in a valley, with green rolling hills nearby and the alps in the background. Unfortunately when we were about as far away from our hostel as we planned on going it started to pour down on us. So we busted out the ponchoes, umbrellas and hoodies and trudged back to the hostel. Early night that night as we all needed some good shuteye after Munich.

The morning of the second day marked a big occasion - my first time watching the sound of music. I actually really liked it - guess I should have listened to Julia all those times (Sorry Julez!). It was a feel-good movie, with a bunch of unintentionally hilarious parts in it to boot. After watching it Jill (an avid sound of music fan) got a glint in her eye and took off on the sound of music tour while me and Kristen explored the local fortress. The fortress was interesting as it was the seat of arch-bishops governing over Salzburg from 1400-1800 (roughly - please don't wikipedia me on this trevor!) and had never been taken by force - only willingly surrended to napoleon on his jaunt through europe. After heading back to the hostel and meeting up with Jill we went to another beergarden for the night. This one had 2L steins and a crazy friendly group of swiss-germans in it. The swiss-germans seemed to take a liking to us backpackers and brought us over for a traditional snuff snorting ritual of sorts. At the time I wasn't 100% sure what it was but there was a couple of grandmas beside me doing it so I figured it had to be ok!

On our last day we took an organized tour to the nearby icecaves. They are the largest discovered icecave in the world (I think) - it took over 1km to walk to the back of them. The formations were really impressive, as was the ride there through the alps. Plus we had a wicked funny aussie tourguide that played Akon on the ride there as his wife was into it. Sorry no photos from inside the caves though - it wasn't allowed.

At this point I'm splitting up with Jill and Kristen - they head to Croatia and the Dalmation coast while I continue up to Vienna. I had a great time travelling with these girls and will be sad to see them go.

Stealing the ladders from my hostel

Jill and I hamming it up in the Mirabell gardens

Jill with the Romanian woman who taught her to make Hungarian sweetbread

View of old-town salzburg from the fortress

Traditional Austrian hat complete with not-so-traditional tourist

Jill, me and Kristen at the biergarten

Group from hostel

Prost dass die gurten nicht verrost! (cheers so you're throat won't go rusty)

Snuff ritual with the swiss-germans

Salzburg at night

Entrance to the ice caves -that's Jill and Kristen in the foreground

Some wannabe-thug showing that the icecaves were cold (surprise)

Kristen and Jill with the castle at Wurfen in the background

Salzburg remains copyright of the author Joncoelho, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We stayed in a place called Euro Youth hostel. On the first day I just wandered around the streets of Munich. Think lots of churches, wide flowing streets and a good amount of greenery. That night I actually ran into the same group of girls I had met up with in the Cinque Terre. After meeting up with a group of brazilian fellows and Andrea, a great girl from Ottawa, at the hostel pub we took off to the Hofbräuhaus. The Hofbräuhaus is Munich's most famous beer garden complete with a traditional German band, lots of liederhosen, and steins filled with a litre of beer each. Had the brilliant idea to go running through fountains on the way there - we were worried that the fountain might be turned off on the way back. This made for a very wet and very cold beer garden experience but I still had a great time. On the plus side I even managed to catch the first period of the Ottawa vs Anaheim game on the way back before hitting the hay.

On the second day it was raining pretty heavily but we decided to make the best of it and took off on a tour of the city. I once again ended up very cold, very wet and quite happy by the end of it. The tour gave a lot of history on the city as well as some interesting local insights. Turns out Munich is such a safe city that the most common crime is bicycle theft and once the police even stole a something from the airport themselves out of boredom. After picking up some ponchoes we took the same group with a few more additions - including Jay and Mike, a couple of fun-loving fellows from Toronto - back to the Hofbräuhaus again.

Third day we went to a contempary art museum in the morning before going to the englischer gardens - the 2nd largest metropolitan park in Europe, complete with Germans surfing the river and nudist sections. Contemporary art was a nice change from the majority of artwork I had been seeing over the past few days and with Andrea being an art history major I was even able to understand one or two of the displays. Unfortunately I didn't run into either of highlights of the englischer gardens but did manage to chow down on some traditional bavarian grub in the beer garden in the park. At night Jill, Kristen, Andrea, her friend Greg, Jay, Mike and I all went on a pub-crawl where we had a really good time and met quite a few characters. The biggest of which was an aussie fellow named shaun - not only did he add a few good aussie words such as 'pissbolt' to our vocab he was carrying around the shards of a tooth that had been broken to send back to his ex-girlfriend stapled to a postcard. Guess you had to be there!

The 4th day was a more somber affair. We went to Dachau, which was the first concentration camp of the nazi regime and the model upon which the other camps were based. While it wasn't a death camp along the lines of auschwitz it was horrifying to see the conditions that the prisoners were faced with. While I had known a little about the concentration camps it was a shocking and surreal experience to visit the grounds in person and something I would recommend to anyone spending time in the area.

Off to Salzburg with Jill and Kristen to take in the soooound of music and run through the hills that are alive. Oh, I've never actually seen the movie.

Jill, Kristen and Mike at Hofbräuhaus

Me and Katie

Jill, Sarah and Andrea

Jill conducting the band

Us with the brazilians

Kristen and Jill chowing down on some German sausages

Giant german pretzel = great pubcrawl grub

Munich remains copyright of the author Joncoelho, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Innsbruck has a certain resort town feel that reminds me of Whistler in a lot of ways. The main town is set in the Austrian alps and along with the surrounding holiday villages has played host to the olympic games twice. The setting is stunning and the surrounding areas make for some great hiking. I had picked this town just for the hiking and was stoked to learn beforehand that there was a mountain club that provided free transportation, guides, and a traditional nightime siesta. This sounded too good to be true to me and it turned out it was... sorta. The program started at the beginning of June and I was there at the end of May, hah.

Deciding that I still had to make the most of the mountains I set off for some independant hiking on my two full day there. It was good to get some activity in and the sights were impressive. I had a bit of a run-in with some of the natural inhabitants on my second day though. On one of the trails I was hiking the path ahead was blocked by a mountain sheep/goat. Since the path was pretty narrow and my knowledge of mountain sheep in the alps is rather limited I decided that trying to get around this fella on a narrow trail with a steeeeep fall wasn't the greatest of ideas and I had to tuck tail and turn around.

The hostel I stayed at was a quaint bed and breakfast - probably the coziest hostel I've ever been. Met some interesting girls from Hong Kong that had all quit their jobs to travel around for awhile, as well as a group of siblings from the states. However I think I might be a little over-relaxed from the past week as I'm feeling restless and looking for to the big city hostels and beer gardens of Munich where I'll be going to next.

Since I've been blogging for the past hour and a half and I've got a pretty severe head rush from all the smoke I'm going to go get some fresh air now!

At the summit of Patsch - one of the ski hills in the area

Blocked by a mountain sheep

Giving said mountain sheep a piece of my mind (trust me, it's there in the background)

Hiking the nordpark on my second day

Alpine hut used by mountaineers

Innsbruck remains copyright of the author Joncoelho, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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wake up groggily

7:30 AM: crash, bang, crash, bang - construction from one house over

groan and roll over

7:50 AM: Faaaallalalalalla - Opera singers from my hostel
8:00 AM: DONG!

Reluctantly give up on sleep and get out of bed.

Pretty much to the minute this was my morning routine in the town of Riva del Garda. A little background on why I ended up in this sleep-depriving location - I was feeling a little burned out from the tourist trail that I had been following so I decided to try to take a bit of a detour from the usual route. I ended up choosing a lakeside town in Northern Italy as there was only a tiny blurb on it in my travel guide. Upon arriving I found out that I was successful in getting off the typical backpacker circuit - a little too successful as I didn´t meet another backpacker in my 3 days there. Unfortunately what I didn´t count on was that apparently this little town was a major destination for vacationing austrian families. It´s also a windsurfing and mountain biking hotspot so there was no lack of travellers when I was there. Oh and just to make things more interesting, about 90% of the people in my hostel were opera singers preparing for some big opera competition in town.

Arrrrrrghhh!

It wasn´t as bad as I make it out to be really - I had a very relaxing 3 days of laying on the beach, swimming, and reading. The town itself was in a gorgeous setting, and it had an interesting fusion of Austrian-Italian culture (this area only became a part of Italy following the first world war). And while it wasn´t my most social stop I did get to meet a couple of interesting locals and some guys from Northern Africa. However lesson learned - back to the beaten path for me!

Ciao,

Jon

Collectively the bane of sleeping-in

View of the lake - see it's not so bad afterall

Riva del Garda remains copyright of the author Joncoelho, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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This pretty much sums up my time in Venice. It may just be the world's easiest city to get lost in. When the numerical addresses do not have a pattern, the concrete sidewalks are often only shoulder width wide and the main 'street' is shaped like an S it's quite easy to lose your sense of direction. I headed out with just that intention though as I stuffed away the city map and just meandered my way along the sidewalks, canals and bridges - by the end of my two days here I sure was glad I had brought along a good pair of runners!

In my opinion the best part of Venice just may be the pigeons - with all due respect to the Grand Canal which is very impressive in its own right. The main piazza of Venice is jokingly said to be the only place in Italy where birds outnumber tourists. The good part about all of this though is when you get to feed the birds as after putting some food in each hand you will be flocked by about 4 or 5 birds per arm pecking at you hand. It's great to people watch as depending upon their initial reaction you may see anything from ear to ear smiles or a scene out of some attack of the birds horror movie. Feeding the pigeons does not come without some drawbacks either as my hostel roommate had an unexpected suprise left in his hair afterwards. Sorry in advance for all the bird pictures - I got a little carried away at this point!

Oh and as far as I can tell Venice is not a real town. The only industry is tourism and you will find three kinds of people in Venice. Those producing goods for the tourists, those selling these goods to the tourists, and the tourists themselves. Oh and the gypsies. It's also kind of sad to see but Venice itself is sinking - there seemed to be alot of abandoned first floors on my walks around the city. Also during the summer time when water levels are at their highest the main square floods along with all the famous buildings in the area.

My days in Venice were pretty low-key to be honest. While I had a good group of people in my hostel there was a couple of things that put a damper on events. Firstly, a lot of the locals do not actually live in the lagoon instead they head to the mainland portion of Venice after work. The other was that the hostel I was staying at had a strictly enforced curfew. Venice is notorious for having lacking accomodation options though so hopefully my I won't run into this problem in other cities.

Cheers,

Jon

Feeding the birds

Feeding the birds with San Marco basilica in background - the important church that floods every summer

Some bird overly fond of the camera

Gondola in the Grand Canal

Side canal with gondola boats

'Po-Po' Venetian style

Passing of the birds

Attack of the birds

My roommate who got shat on - I call this one shitting of the bird

Venice remains copyright of the author Joncoelho, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Duomo in Florence with belltower in foreground

View from the top of the duomo

Naked sculpture from sculpture museum

Similar naked sculpture outside the Uffizi

Yet another naked sculpture, only this time I know about it - it's David (the picture is actually of a postcard however, no photos were allowed inside the building!)

The Uffizi - the very famous building I did not go into

Random figure who poses with tourists for money - there's lots of these guys, some as Roman legionnaires, some as carnival characters. I took a picture of this guy cause he was a character - he kept blowing kisses at the women passing by trying to seduce them

Cinque Terre

Manarola - 2nd town on the Cinque Terre

Kirby, Ashley, Katie and Brian - the reasons I now say y'all

Corniglia - 3rd town

Vernazza - 4th town

My burn lines the day after hiking

Some Italian guy gave me this flower at the bar - I guess Italian men really don't care who they hit on.

Sunset over the Cinque Terre

Riomaggiore at night

Photos from Florence & the Cinque Terre remains copyright of the author Joncoelho, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The Cinque Terre is a group of 5 villages along the Italian Riveria. The coastal hike spanning the villages is 9km long and has some breathtaking viewpoints. It was originally built by the farmers of the towns - I want to say because they needed to stratify the surrounding lands for agriculture but I could be very very wrong. The towns themselves are vibrant and really worthwhile to spend some time in as well - built directly into the cliffside, it seems as if the houses are built on top of each other (hopefully some of the pictures can capture this).

This stop was meant to get away from the cities and get a good amount of R&R in. I was also really interested in giving some of my time back to the area. Apparently the massive influx of tourists over the past 10 years or so has started to cause a lot of erosion on the trails and in my guidebook it mentions that travellers can volunteer with the local park service to help maintain the trails. I was pretty stoked by this, thinking I could help shore up the integrity of the trail with some locals... unfortunately as it turns out you're nothing more than a glorified garbage-picker. Ah but I had good intentions!

And while my tastes for Italian art may still need some acquiring I think I'm starting to take a liking to Italian wine. I may be getting the hang of this 'culture' thing afterall!

Still no pictures - hopefully tomorrow I'll get them up.

Hope y'all are doooing wellll.

Cinque Terre remains copyright of the author Joncoelho, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Despite not being able to tell the top from the bottom of most of the stuff I really did enjoy my Florence stop. Getting to see David (one piece of art I actually knew about!) in real life was great. It was cultural week, so all the state run museums had free admittance. While great for my wallet this was rather trying on my patience as the queues were for the most part massive. Also explains the museum hang-over I experienced from this part of the trip! The church or duomo here is the third largest in the world - trailing only Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's in Rome and London respectively. I actually thought it rather plain in comparison to many of the churches I had seen in Rome; but the architecture of the building was nonetheless very impressive.

Oh and I discovered that Italians really know how to make a mean pesto. Surprisingly enough, pizza has been rather hit or miss so far.

This was my first stop back on the 'backpacker' circuit. Initial impression is good though theres a couple things that I've noticed. It appears that your typical backpacker in Europe is a bit different than some of the other places I've visited. It really seems to lend itself to those on a three week jaunt with a rolly-bag over your long-term traveller - even at hostels. I'll have to give this some more time however as I am in a very touristy part of Europe still and other areas may be different. The other thing was that I had a mini-stress attack after realizing that the better hostels can fill up pretty quickly even though it is not yet peak tourist season. This has led me to have to book ahead about a week in advance - while this guarantees me a bed at a decent spot it does take some of the spontaniety out of it.

Unfortunately I'll have to wait a couple of days before I can post pictures - the only internet point in the town I'm in doesn't have any program to compress images and I have an upload limit. Oh and when I do get around to posting the pictures sorry about all the scenery shots, hopefully I'll remember that photos with people in them are just as interesting!

Ciao,

Jon

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On my second day in the city I spent a good chunk of it at Porta Portese - Rome's largest flea market - with Roxanne. It was Rox's last full day so she was on a bit of a bargain shopping spree and really seemed to enjoy the rush from bargaining. It was great to do some haggling at the market itself as it reminded me of south east asia. One of the more comical things were the illegal vendors. From what I can gather you need a permit to sell your goods at the market, however a bunch of sellers, usually foreigners, were setting up shop in the middle of the lane without one. Where the fun came in was when the police showed up and all of a sudden there was 4 or 5 guys from Africa or the Middle East with 50 fake prada purses between them booking it in the other direction. I've seen this a few times now in Italy and will have to try and grab a video of it when I get the chance!

The next day in town, I spent with my parents at the Vatican city. No joke the line for the Vatican museum must have been 1km long but my Dad budged in somewhere near the front (setting a great example there!) and luckily we managed to get inside in about 10 minutes or so. The sheer collection of art in this museum was staggering and the sistine chapel did not disappoint at all. Even as someone who does not usually enjoy museums I really enjoyed myself. Unfortunately in some areas no flash photography was allowed and in others no photography of any sort so I have few pictures and most of these are of the blurry variety.

The real highlight of Italy so far may just be the food however. I've been chowing down on gnocchi for the past few days and gelato seems to have become a daily staple of my diet. The people here are for the most part very friendly and helpful, italian women are unbelievably stylish (read: hot) and it's been fun trying out my backpacker's italian. While there is still an abudance of trendy mullets among the guys, it's a little more toned down than it was in Portugal. The flamboyance seems to be mainly in the shoes - I don't think I've ever seen so many shiny golden shoes in one city before.

Unfortunately it wasn't all peachy on this leg of the trip - my mp3 player broke down (a backpackers nightmare), my parents were mugged on the metro, my dad's luggage was delayed for a day and my mom's is still MIA after 6 days. I know you have to take the ups with some downs but after this stretch hopefully it's smooth sailing for the rest of the trip!

The family vacation ended in Rome - Roxanne is now back in Canada, Mom and Dad flew to Paris on the 15th and I headed north to Florence and then on to the Cinque Terre. Hope all is well with everyone.

Ciao,

Jon

Outside one of the Santa Maria chuches

Roxanne pretending to be a bug with her oversized Italian sunglasses outside Porta Portese

'Racing' along the Circo Massimo

Hammin it up, SPQR style.

Piazza Vittoria Emanuele II - where Mussolini gave his addresses

The Colosseum

Roman Forum

Sunset over Rome

The Last Judgement (I think) - in the Sistine Chapel

Me, Mom & Dad outside Saint Peter's Basilica

Rome remains copyright of the author Joncoelho, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Azorean coastline

Touristas!

Hamming it up at the thermal hotsprings in Fuernas

Dock in Norteste where my dad used to swim as a kid

Roxanne struggggling on the uphill climb

Some of my Dad's family in Norteste

Azores Pictures remains copyright of the author Joncoelho, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Hey all,

As most of you probably know I'm in Europe for a couple of months travelling. It starts out as a family vacation/graduation present from my parents before I head off on my own for a little while. No definite plans right now but I'll hopefully wander my way along the mediterranean going eastwards. I'm going to try and keep a travel blog so I don't pester the beegeezes out of you guys with mass emails, so hopefully this works out!

So I'm about ten days in and most so far it's all been in the homeland (Portugal - actually my parents homeland). After a suprisingly pleasant overnighter from Vancouver and a stopover in Heathrow I arrived in Lisbon with my sister. Lisbon itself is a gorgeus city. I had sort of been told that in Europe the city's are almost museums in themselves but I couldn't wrap my head around the concent until I actually saw firsthand. Practically everywhere you go downtown there's a castle, monument, charming street - it's almost sightseeing overload really. Did the tourist thing for the first few days in and around the city, played some golf, relaxed on the riverbanks. I think we may have gone overboard on the castles to start - one thing I've realized is that you sort of have to pick and choose the ones you really want to see - I hate to say it but it really becomes just another castle after you've seen a couple in a day! I also managed to take in a football game - we watched Sporting (one of the big three clubs in Portugal) play in an domestic match. The stadium was built for Euro 2004 and the atmosphere was something even though you weren't allowed any beer in the stadium! I was a little shocked at that at first but I think it's because of all the fights afterwards.

After a few days in the city we flew to the Azores. It's an island chain in the Atlantic and where both of my parents were born. This part of this trip has easily been my favourite so far. The islands themselves were gorgeous - apparently it's the law for all the buildings to have the same colour scheme which makes for a really nice setting. I got to meet family from both sides who I had no idea that existed. I think after a few days I became an expert in carrying a conversation with my relatives through much hand waving and facial expressions! The younger ones speak english well though - I ended up playing some racing games with my cousins and heard a lot about 'North American cars? bad on fuel' and how I needed to 'brake more and show some European handling'. Wish I could have spent more time there but we had already booked flights for this part of the trip ahead of time.

As far as the people go, everyone has been really friendly so far. I don't think I've ever quite seen so many faux-mullet mohawks in my life though. That and I think the Portuguese are single-handedly trying to bring back in those shaved lines on the side of you hair back. Oh and the sheer amount of people who smoke, and the fact that they smoke everywhere is still taking some getting used to.

In terms of the travelling itself I feel a bit more of a tourist than a traveller at times. Sort of a different way of seeing a country and while I am looking forward to getting back into hostels (my liver is in embarassingly good condition for this point of a vacation) the nice meals and a hotel bed aren't too bad either.

So right now we're just waiting around for a day before we fly to Rome tomorrow morning. We're there as a family for a few days before my sister heads back home, my parents fly to France and I continue on to Northern Italy. I'll try to update this semi-regularly and hopefully my blogger ability improves. I've included some photos from our trip in and around Lisbon - I'll get the ones from the Azores up soon hopefully!

Cheers,

Jon

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