Tokyo 2016: 2012-01-01

1/1/12

The next day we got up at about 9am and got some continental breakfast, which didn't include toast. We then proceeded to spend the whole day walking around the maze-like streets of Venice, looking at shops, buying masks, taking photos and Jess pointing out every single little dog in the whole city. We had lunch at another pretty average restaurant, but for dinner we found a slightly better place, where we had Lasagne and Pizza, which was the best yet, but still not great. We then headed back to the hotel and watched a couple movies before bed.

New years eve 31/12/11

We woke up at about 6:30am to pack up all of our crap and headed off to the train station. It was about 0 degrees and raining in Bern, but after a short trip to the main station, we got on a fast train up into the mountains to switch trains to Venice. Up in the mountains it was snowing A LOT. There was about 1 ft of snow on everything of which I took a few photos. We then continued on to Venice station, travelling through the beautiful mountains and northern Italian villages. Ariving in venice we found an infromation centre and and made our way to our hotel; a tiny little place with tiny little rooms, but more than adequete for sleeping and bathing. We then were about to go out when we noticed that there was an ad for a laundrette, something we had not visited during our whole trip yet. We were completely out of clean clothes, so we spent an hour and a half doing laundry. the only other people in the laundry were Aussies too; the Kathmandu clothing gives us away every time. We then wandered the streets of Venice, but it was dark and everything was closed, so we just found a little restaurant and got some pizza/canaloni, which was terrible. We then went and found St Mark's Square, hung out for a bit, then realised we had 5 hours before it was New Years. We went to a little bar and had a few drinks, but it was kinda dull and there was no buzz or excitign atmosphere anywhere, so we went back to our hotel for a bit, where I then fell asleep. Luckily Jess didn't, and we headed back out at 11pm, stopping at a cocktail stand on the way, picing up some pina coladas. There were about 50, 000 people in the square, mostly drunk and ALL smoking like trains. It was like being in a pub before smoking laws, but this was outside and still choking after the countdown there were some fireworks over the harbour, which you couldn't really see from the square where everyone was... stupid. It was a great location, but it was a typical New years, slightly disappointing. We then went home to bed.

30/12/11

- By Jess

Last day in Switzerland and we didn't do a great deal. We slept in (because we could) and, since we saw the whole city yesterday and couldn't actually afford to buy anything, decided to have a very short trip to the shopping centre adjacent to our hotel. Like the rest of the city, everything is massively overpriced but very stylish. We did find that the supermarket has a cool cafeteria/cafe thing where you can get really awesome food for some more reasonable prices, so brunch was a papaya, orange and vanilla smoothie, and spiced winter lemonade with spinach quiche and apricot custard tart for each of us. We then came back to the hotel and chilled out, and then we'll head back for some more cheap(ish) dinner and maybe a drink or two in the hotel bar. Tomorrow is New Years Eve in Venice so an early night is probably in order.

29/11/12

- By Jess

Day two in Bern was excellent. We had a beautifull sunny day of close to 10 degrees, which we spent walking around most of the whole city. We started with a breakfast of pretzels which we munched on whilst walking up and down the main streets of the downtown area and then headed toward the bear park on the other side of the riviera. Of course, bears hibernate in winter, which we only remembered when we actually arrived at the park. But it didn't matter because the scenery was exquisite! From the bridge over the river we could see the whole town, down into the medieval sections, and up the valley towards the chalais' in the hills. It was breathtaking. We decided to follow the trail by the river towards another bridge so we walked along it until we reached the next bridge and then headed to the museum district. We went past all of the museums, including the gorgeous Historical museum, but we were happy to take photos of the beautiful buildings and forego the exorbidant entry fees.

We then made our way back to the main historic part of Bern and bought a cheese platter and some fresh bread for lunch, which we ate in the park in front of the houses of parliament, overlooking the river. We took a lot of photos - it was like everywhere we looked was a postcard. After lunch we continued wandering the idyllic streets and stopped for some awesome hot chocolate from a tea house. It's like drinking liquid lindt - sooooo good. We wandered some more and found a couple of antique bookstores which you'd have to be a millionaire to buy anything from, and we found a brilliant game store which had some awesome editions of many of the board games we enjoy playing back home. For dinner we stopped at a pub and had more artery hardening, lard inducing, traditional swiss fare in the form of a dish (Rosti) sereved in its own frying pan. It's fried thinly sliced potatoes, smothered in gruyere, with ham and egg on top. We learnt out lesson from the night before and ordered one between us...it was still too much food. It makes sense why everyone runs about and it very outdoorsy here - they have to burn off the damn food! On that note, we've seen so many people on crutches and in wheelchairs here. As Dylan Moran said: "Why go skiing when you can sit in the comfort of your own home and break your knees with a hammer?"

Switzerland 28/12/11

- By Jess

Day one mostly consisted of airports and trains. We caught an afternoon flight from Berlin and landed in Zurich at about 3.30pm, meaning it was nearly dark already. Zurich has a lovely airport in comparison to elswhere we've been so far. From there we had an hour train trip into Bern, where we were staying. We got to the Holiday Inn Westside at around 6pm and then, after dumping out luggage, headed into town for some fondue.

Bern is so unbelievably beautiful! And frighteningly expensive. We went to a restaurant described by the hotel receptionist as the 'best fondue in town' and she wasn't wrong: it was a massive cast iron bowl of the yummiest fondue ever! Andy had gruyere on toast with an egg on top and an amazing salad, which doesn't sound anywhere near as awesome as it was. We stayed in the restaraunt for a good couple of hours and then slowly made our way back to our hotel, stopping occasionally to gawp and roll our eyes at the outrageous cost of everything here. To give some perspective, the fondue alone was about $25 AUD.

27/12/11 Day 4 in Berlin

- By Jess

Shopping, shopping and more shopping! We headed to the two major shopping districts where we spend hours upon hours of zigzagging into clothing and shoe stores. We found the lego store, and Andrew bought some cool little lego star wars magnets, and we found some very stylish Berlin botique stores. Unfortunately, along with the excellent styling came excessive prices, but it was good fun looking at and trying on some really unusual designer couture.

We eventually made our way to Arkadia - essentially a giant shopping mall with Christmas markets outside. We finally bought a gorgeous little candle driven windmill-type Christmas nativity thing, as they were heavily reduced as Christmas had been by now. I also bought a couple of tops, some new socks and undies and did copious amounts of window shopping. Andrew dutifully shopped too, but he didn't find much to interest him. We had a late lunch at an 'American Sports Bar' where I tried to get through the biggest baked potato with chilli I'd ever seen. Andrew had a delicious (also giant) cheesburger and after some more shopping (we'd been at it for about 7 hours by now) we thought it might be cool to see a movie at the Sony centre. We found an English screening of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and we went and saw that. The film was very enjoyable but thoroughly ridiculous, and we discovered that German audiences can be just as irritating as Australian ones - the girl sitting next to Andrew started playing with her phone. Too bad I didn't have any jaffas...An excellent ending to our stay in Germany.

27/12/11 Day 4 in Berlin

- By Jess

26/12/11 - Day after Christmas

- By Jess

We did SFA today on account of two reasons. One; I (Jess)was horribly sick and had been hacking my lungs up all night, so a day of rest and warmth seemed like a good idea and; two; Nothing - repeat - nothing was open today. So it was a good day of sitting in our apartment and watching movies/chilling out. We did however eventually head out at about 5.30pm to a local fancy restaurant and had some of the best food yet. I had wood pigeon(ginea fowl) on a scampi base with wild rice and snow pea accompianment with truffle sauce and Andrew had a wild deer steak on a bed of foie gras with truffle sauce and an accompianment of potato gratin. For dessert we shared a chocolate maderia thing with wine soaked pear. Not a cheap meal, but because it was the only one we paid for today, we could justify it.