Hanauma

Mai Tai

Honolulu 3

Sunset on the water

Sunset in the harbour

Honolulu 2

Birds at our hotel pool

Fireworks at the Hilton Friday night.

Honolulu

Vancouver, Canada

We kept being reminded of the cold weather in Vancouver while we were on the plane trip...we weren't looking forward to it. When we arrived however, it was beautifully sunny with blue skies - still that mountain chill lingers in the air because of the surrounding ranges. We paid some duty tax because we were over the free limit for Canada (honest little travellers we were....we were afraid because of all the stories we had heard about customs, but in the end we could have walked through without a second glance!! But...we didn't want to risk our souvenirs being confiscated, and any fine we got would have been much worse than the duty we paid!!) We arrived at our hotel - which we booked in advance on a cheap net rate - and found we had one of the biggest and best rooms in the place!!

We are just outside the city - but it's a lot smaller than we imagined and walking into the CBD only took us about 20 minutes. We walked into town on our second day here, and it started pouring rain (quite normal here....) lucky we came across a theatre showing films from the Vancouver Intl Film Festival. We watched a Canadian film about Easter Bunnies called Hank & Mike. It was good fun and got us out of the rain!!



On the way home we stopped at a nice upper market car-yard to check out the Jeeps / Dodges / Chryslers. The car salesman (called Prince...) showed us around the new SUV's & took us for test drives in the new jeep Grand Cherokees (we did tell him we had just moved to Vancouver and were looking to spend around $50,000 on a new recreation vehicle for ourselves....whoops!! It was a Sunday and he had nothing else to do any way!!)



When we left Germany, we flew 10 hours but arrived here an hour after we left. (time difference....). Dee has had a hard time adjusting to the new time zone after being in Europe for so long, and the first couple of nights kept crashing out by 6pm. She is trying hard to stay up 'late' - at least until 8! The first couple of nights she was awake at 2 - 3 am again ready for the day.....after five days we have almost caught up with ourselves. We have walked around the area here and found a great little second hand book shop (for Dee) with a great second hand comic store (for Ivar) right next door, and a nice coffee shop to drink tea in and read our old books. The area is quite nice and very reminiscent of inner Sydney. We found a nice little Thai place with great lunch specials, a laundromat for our clothes and a bargain supermarket.



Tomorrow we leave our hotel here for a CBD hotel, where we are right in the middle of the main strips. We are looking forward to being a little closer to the shops and city life, where we will have 5 days to check out the city before flying to Hawaii!!

Last days in Europe...

We spent our last day in Bavaria having a Grillfest (barbeque), we thought Germany was throwing us a national party - but it turns out that the day is a national day for the uniting of East & West Germany. We still enjoyed the party..... We left early the next morning on a train to Weinheim, where we picked up more bags of souvenirs and clothes!! We now have three times the amount of luggage we left with - we are lucky we chose to travel East to West around the globe and not the other way around - because this way we are allowed so much luggage, but if we had chosen to travel in reverse, we would be spending our Hawaiian money on luggage, and spending a week in the airport waiting to get home! We left Germany & Europe on a drizzly Friday - even Die Bahn (German Rail) was sad for us - the drivers held a strike to try and stop us getting to the airport ! (I think it was more to do with money than us leaving the country actually...)



We checked in for our flight (or tried to - we had to go away and lighten our pack weights a little before we were allowed on the plane!), then we checked in and boarded our flight to continent number 3. We spent 10 hours in the air to Vancouver - it was well spent - we had a whole row of four seats to ourselves, and spent the time snoozing, eating, watching films and snoozing some more.

Oktoberfest!

We spent the next week or so enjoying our last European city - Munich. We visited our favourite cocktail bar, mexican food eatery, our favourite icecream shop & the largest outdoors/camping shop we have seen! We also spent two days at Oktoberfest! We hadn't planned to visit the festival (Wiesn in German) but just happened to be in Munich at the same time. We were curious to see how it all looked compared to our imagination (lots of drunk aussies, lots of beer and women with large breasts popping out of frilly tops). It was pretty much exactly like that - but a whole lot of fun. The first day, we went to brunch at a local restaurant with friends - where Ivar started the day with a beer and weisswurst (Bavarian white sausage). We headed over to the festival about lunchtime. It took us over an hour to get into the Hofbrau tent. We lined up out the back of the tent (all of the tents were full by 9am that day!! It was a long weekend in Italy and the weekend is actually known as the Italian Weekend because most of Italy ups and moves to Munich for the three days - camper vans are parked EVERYWHERE and raucous football cheers sound randomly on the streets). After waiting in the hot sun for ages - watching at least three people stretchered into ambulances, and countless others passed out on the hill behind us (remember - only lunchtime so far!!), eventually a waitress spotted us and made the security guard let us in, she took us to an empty table where we were joined by two Bavarian brothers and a feisty Italian couple (sorry Milano! couple...."Italy...pfft!!!!"....they only told us about 8 times. They didn't speak any English but managed to convey that they are Northern Italians, and don't dare group them with Southern Italians....). We spent the next few hours drinking the largest mugs of beer ever, and eating Weisswurst & Bavarian chicken with our hands. The lines to get into the tents were larger than ever, and because security was so busy trying to keep the crowds from coming in, we slipped out with a souvenir mug ;) We wound our way home through the streets - Dee totally gone with a newfound like for beer, and Ivar also taken by the effect of the Bavarian brews! We sobered up a little in our apartment, and then headed out for dinner before allowing ourselves to pass out!!





The next day, we returned to Oktoberfest! (Of course.....) We had some drinks with friends & friends of friends, and enjoyed more Bavarian wurst and beer.

To Munich Via Berlin

After 3 hours on a plane, 30mins to Berlin HBF on a train, a 5 hours wait at the station and another 9 hours on a train we arrived in Munich!

Flying out of Eesti

We headed to Tallinn airport after checking out the Songfestival Grounds and the presidents palace.
Thats it for Eesti!

Koluvere and Marimetsa

We spent our last day in Estonia by exploring one final little town complete with cemetery & church, and walking through a sticky bog. Dee fell in the bog. Twice. We had really nice weather and walked about 1km through broken and flooded wooden planks to a small inland lake and viewing tower.

Vormsi

We explored our third Eesti island today, Vormsi. This island is manly inhabited by Swedish/Estonians and was the smallest island we explored.

Haapsalu

Today we were taken on a tour of the coast, north of Haapsalu. We stopped by an old restored manor and were given a tour by the local caretaker, we saw the ‘surfing beach’ (wind surfing only….no waves)

Saaremaa

Today we boarded another ferry to the biggest island – Saaremaa. On this island, we found more windmills, deserted beaches and old farms. We spent the night camped in the backyard of an old lady who was a friend of a friend of a long lost relative we found in Estonia. It was free.






The second day we drove to the Sorve peninsula, where we saw a big old lighthouse, and Ivar made it to the southernmost point. Dee was distracted searching for amber in the pebbles and seaweed that she didn’t make it that far!








We had dinner in a windmill, and returned to the tent armed with Saku and a bunch of Eesti Kroons for our newly adjusted poker game. (Four handed poker with two people and double the chance of winning!) It was the last night in our tent for the entire holiday. We have spent about 3 months in the tent, so it was a little emotional. It is covered in bugs and dirt from around 10 countries, but it got us to the end. Even so, we are glad to be finally out of the tent and in proper beds until we get home!! The next morning we left early to catch the ferry to the mainland. We took a detour on the way, searching for an old fortress…we ended up driving through waterlogged muddy bog streets and seeing nothing but old cows.