SUMMARY Through the last six months on our journey we have some end stats: Motorbikes hired - 5 Turtles hit - 1 Other Kiwis we met on our journey - 4 Number of people who asked us if New Zealand is in Europe - 4 Times we got sick - 9 Times we heard Dave Dobbyn on the radio in Europe - 1 1.5L bottles of water consumed - 450 Walled medieval towns we accidently drove through - 1 Elephants ridden - 1 Number of trains caught - 27 Combined weight loss - 30kg Rugby games watched - half Broken suitcases [View Full Entry]

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Starting the trip in Canada proved to be tougher than expected. Matt's dizziness took a turn for the worst in New York and after being bedridden for 4 days, we planned to cancel the flight and stay in New York. This was a tough situation as money was low and accommodation was full in New York, so staying appeared to not be an option. Waiting for us at the other end was the wonderfully hospitable Hindley's who we knew would kindly look after us...if we could just get on the flight. Without any dizziness medication, Matt relied on strong sedatives and [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at JFK airport after a slow, turbulent flight from Iceland. At JFK we finally got in a yellow taxi, Brooklyn bound. The driver did everything he could to get us lost, but with GIS maps in the back seat we fought back pretty hard and managed to get to our BnB despite his deliberate turnoffs and detours. The guesthouse is great; a warm cosy brownstone house on 38th St in Flatbush, Brooklyn. We found out that famous people who were born in this area include Busta Rhymes, Shaggy, Barbara Streisand (?) and Notorious BIG. Wahoo! Waking up the next [View Full Entry]

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Paris and Iceland Driving west of Switzerland, we entered France. Staying one night in an African themed ‘room above a pub’ in some small eastern French village was interesting. We drove into Paris to return our rental car and our last leg of continental Europe. Driving into Paris we fluked it and didn’t get lost navigating our way to one of their three airports. After a few metro trips and a good walk we arrived at our hotel in La Defense, western Paris. Paris was great; stylish, diverse, old, clean, picturesque, leafy, classic but of course touristy and large. On the [View Full Entry]

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We left Budapest, and drove North to Vienna/Wien. After a long anticipation, arriving in Austria was great. The smell of cow manure filled our noses, the sounds of Mozart our ears and our eyes the beautiful green grass and mountains. Our first stop was Salzburg; home of Mozart (and Mozart Balls), The Sound of Music (and the real Von Trapp family), lots of salt (salz), lakes, mountains and churches. We stayed in a tent in the local campsite, which gave us our first taste of being cold at night in over five months (go thermals). We spent our time in and [View Full Entry]

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Driving south of Croatia took us into the world’s newest country (and maybe one of the smallest) - Montenegro. Montenegro became independent from Serbia two years ago, and is (slowly) finding its place in the world of tourism. We drove to Budva, the largest coastal town, which is a very busy summer holiday destination (and not much else). This is the type of beach you imagine when you think of Europe; very overcrowded, hot, polluted water, umbrellas and chaos! Budva’s new claim to fame is that it is hosting Madonna next month on one of her European tours; although we don’t [View Full Entry]

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Slovenia and Croatia. Crossing the northeastern Italian border we drove into Slovenia, and the Julian Alps. From there we made our way to the beautiful Lake Bled, the iconic lake with a church on it’s central island; pretty cool. The differences we noticed in Slovenia are the people look like eastern Europeans, the houses all look Austrian (we are only a few kilometres from the border), the people are friendlier and far more hard working than the Italians and there is empty space and greenery again. After feeling the major culture shock in Italy, we felt we could breathe slightly easi [View Full Entry]

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Toscan and Venezia After a few hectic days in Rome, driving into the Tuscany countryside was such a good break. Taking our new leased car through the central Italian countryside, we ended up in Siena, a small gothic town. The campsite was great; quiet and away from everything, under big oak trees. We tried to slow the pace a bit in Tuscany, and spent most of our time driving between small medieval villages and the Tuscan landscape. The land was yellow and green with acres of sunflower fields between hay bales dotted along the hills. The small towns were also great [View Full Entry]

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Amalfi and Rome Arriving in the big old Italian boot from Greece proved to be a long day. It started with walk, bus, ferry, bus, walk, train, walk, train, train, collapse! And arriving at Naples (Naplio) late at night with no booked accommodation is pretty much a don’t in the guidebooks. If Naples is home to the mafia, guns and drugs then the train station is like the cesspool in the middle. Getting off the train we walked through drunks, homeless, drug addicts, prostitutes, etc and that was still in the train station! Finding out that there is no way to [View Full Entry]

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Being behind on the trip planning we woke up one day with nowhere to stay and decided to try heading to the Peleponesse. We caught a train to Corinth (Korinthos) and were stoked to find a near empty campsite right on the beach. It was exciting to go to Corinth and imagine Paul’s journeys and the meaning behind his letters to the Corinthians. Corinth is a cute seaside town with some ancient ruins beneath the Acrocorinth fort perched over the city. We had heard the Peleponesse was beautiful, but didn’t realize how much so until we hired a car for a [View Full Entry]

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