Welcome - Bienvenue

Hello folks and welcome to our travel website!

As most of you know, we like to wander and check things out. We hope to use this website to keep up with everyone and also to document our trips, large and small.

This year is quite a big year for us in terms of travel:
1-Seattle in a couple of weeks;
2-Russia, Mongolia, China and UK in about a month;
3-Buffalo to see the Green Bay Packers play the Bills (Erik only);
4-San Francisco and Vancouver for X-mas holidays.

There will also be short trips in between.

In the summer of 2001, we backpacked through a portion of Europe after Natalie graduated from law school. Click on the Rough Guides under "Recent Entries" to go down memory lane. They're our emails from that trip. Thanks Sacha for digging them out of the vault. (And please ignore the NUMEROUS spelling mistakes.)

In the days to come, we will be describing our routes and are hoping for some feedback.

Take care and welcome aboard!!!

Natalie et Erik

ps-please feel free to leave comments by clicking the comments link under each post.

Rough Guide to Europe Part I

Date: Thursday, July 5th, 2001

Subject: Rough Guide to Europe

Hey guys,

This is our first contact with the real world since we left on Tuesday. Things are good, tiring, sweaty, and hungry but we are happy and seeing cool things. We are in Barcelona today (Thursday) and have spent the day walking up, around, and everywhere in this great city although not understanding much. Little known fact: the Spanish do not exactly like street signs!!!!

Apres un maudit vol de 9 heures, nous avons aterri a Paris. Nous avons marcher autour de Paris et visiter la Tour Eiffel. Cest une tres belle vue. Par apres nous avons embarquer sur un train pour 13 heures!!! Nous sommes arrive a Barcelone cet apres midi. On a eu notre premiere douche dans 60 heures!!! Crisse qu´on puait!!!

We plan on staying in Barcelona for a few more days. We visited a street called the Ramblas today. It`s a great and colourful pedestrian walkway filled with restaurants, bars, entertainment etc.... It really is quite something. We are now heading down the street to hang out by the dock (On the Mediteranean!!!!). We have plans to visit the Picasso museum tomorrow and taste some more of the great food here and I think Erik has plans on visiting the Red Light District!!! We´ll keep you posted whenever we run accross another Internet Cafe.

A part la chaleur et le manque de someil, tout est parfait!!!

Wish you were here! HAHAHAHAHAHA!

A la prochaine,

xoxox

Natalie et Erik

Rough Guide to Europe Part II

Date: Tuesday, July 10, 2001

Subject: Rough Guide to Europe

Hi everyone, glad to hear some feedback from some of you (as for the rest of you; what are we, chopped liver?). Since we last wrote to you we have visited Nice in the South of France. What a beautiful place. We spent most of our time at the beach and also visited the Matisse museum (insert a 45-min long and arduous walk uphill) which was beautiful. Nice is pretty much everything you read about. Blue water, lots of cool restaurants and tons of oiled up French people in itsy bitsy bathing suits. Funny phenomenon that we noticed - most French women are MUCH better looking than French men! We spent two days in a small One Star hotel but it was SO much more quiet than a hostel and really kinda quaint.

We are now in Rome after pretty much the trainride from HELL. 1. It was 10 hours long 2. We got moved around because we did not have a reserved seat (at 3 am!!!) and 3. We had the pleasure of sharing a cabin with 3 drunk Italian men, one of which showed me his unit while trying to explain to me how all the beaches in Rome were nude (wonderful, really). The hostel that we are settled at now seems pretty good. We visited the Colliseum today and Erik was kinda like a kid in a sandbox. Suffice to say that he was very impressed with all the crumbling stone! Well, we will now leave you as it is finally time for us to get check into our hostel and finally get some sleep.

We really hope all is going well for everyone. We miss you all and hope to hear from you soon.

Nat & Erik

Rough Guide to Europe Part III

Date: Sunday, July, 15, 2001

Subject: Rough Guide III

HI everyone, it is day 13 of our trip and we are in the beautiful city of Venice. It is pretty hard to describe unless you can see it for yourself. Nor pictures, postcards or movies can really do this city justice. Through a stroke of luck, we arrived in this city on the best weekend all year. It is some kind of annual festival this weekend. Last night we were treated to 50 mins of spectacular non-stop fireworks on the harbour. We have been spending our days walking around in awe and being amazed at exactly how expensive things are here.

Nous avons vu des choses spectaculaires. Sur l'ile de Murano nous avons vu une equipe dhommes en train de construire un chandellier en vitre (glass blowing). Cetait impressionant.

Avant Venise nous etions a Rome ou Jules Cesar fu assassine et ou la Chapel Cistine reside. Cest difficile a croire que tant d histoire peut etre retrouve dans seulment une ville!!! Nous avons visite le Forum avec un guide Irlandais qui etait cristement drole.

Today is our last day in Venice (wish we could stay forever) and our next stop is Munich. We leave tonite on another night train (which are the bane of our existence at this point in time) and should get there by six thirty tomorrow morning (fun fun fun).

We miss all of you tons, and hope that all of you are having a good summer.

Carole, your new niece is really cute (although Erik thinks she looks like Winston Churchill) please congratulate Michel and Brigitte for me.

Mom, it was really good to hear from you!!!

Manon, keep taking care of my family for me!

Anne, we are arriving in Toronto on the 26th and fly out of Hamilton on the 30th. Hope we can get together.

There are too many others to personnaly write to, but....you are in our thoughts and we look forward to showing you pictures and making you insanely jealous!!!

Lots of love

Nat & Erik

Rough Guide to Europe Part IV

Date: Friday, July 20, 2001

Subject: Rough Guide IV

Hey folks,

We are now in Prague on day 18 of the journey. It seems we have reached the drinking phase of our trip after leaving the Beer Halls in Munich to land in a place where you can buy a large bottle of beer for 45 cents at the corner store.

As mentionned, before Prague we were in Munich. The city was quite a surprise as it was beautiful and possibly the best organised city in the entire universe. During our stay we took a 'Third Reich' tour of the important sites where Hitler and the Nazis originated. It was very interesting to be standing on the very streets where this history took place. The following day we went to Dachau which was actually the first ever concentration camp for the Nazis. It was eerie, disturbing and interesting all at the same time. However, the subject was handled in a very sensitive manner which promoted respect and understanding. I can't really do it justice by describing it, but we do have some good pictures. We didn't do too much in the way of nightlife. However, we did eat at a famous Beer Hall where 95% of the entire menu was focused around meat. Strange culinary practices....but the beer was good!

Je (Erik) suis victime de cette diete allemande base sur la viande. Javais des maux de ventre et du gaz pour les prochain 4 jours!!! Nous avons pris le train le matin de Munich a Prague. Une fois arrive en replique czech, ils nous ont demander pour nos passeports et nos visa touristique. It was some scary shit. Tu ne sais pas vraiment a quoi tattendre dans un pays qui est un ancien pays communiste et un pays de leurope de lest.

Prague et nous, n'avions pas commencer sur le bon peids. Aussitot descendu du train t'avait des crisses de tanants qui voulais nous rendre mille et un service pour vraiment "cheap", yeah, whatever. Cest un gros tourist trap Prague. Et ca continue... Une fois arrive a l'auberge, ils avaient perdu nos reservation mais heureusement il restait de la place. Toutefois, pour echanger nos cheque de voyage, la commission a payer etait ridiculment haute, anything to make a buck! Ensuite on rentre dans notre chambre et il a 50 autres crisse de personnes dans notre fucking chambre! Cetait seulement un vieux gym avec un paquet de bunk beds avec des lits dures comme la roche.

Apres une petite sieste (il devrait avoir des siestes au canada), nous avons manger et ensuite essayer de trouver un club de jazz. Crisse, pas capable de rien trouver dans grosse pluie en plus que jetais en train de mourir de crampes causees par mon experience culinaire allemande. On a ete se coucher...bin crisse, ca pris 3 heures avant de tomber en dormis car 20 des 50 personnes ronflais et un autres dix etait sur le gros party dans le salon a cote. Toutefois, la journee suivante etait spectaculaire...

We didn't start the day too early (see 50 beds in the same room here) as we were kinda sleep-deprived. We did eventually make it up to the Prague Castle which is kinda like a whole village behind ancient 14th century brick walls. Everything in Prague is kinda like a mixture of the stateliness of Munich in Germany and the ornate decorations of Paris. It really is something to see. The colours are vibrant, but the buildings are pretty simple in architecture. We walked around town for the rest of the day and then took another Siesta (God Bless siesta time!)

Taking advantage of the cheapness of Prague we then went out in syle to a restaurant that is actually in a cave where there are crystals and rock formations in the ceiling. We sampled Czech food at its finest and pretended to be grown-up tourists! haha...We then headed to a Jazz Bar (which Prague is quite famous for) which was named after a Miles Davis album. We listened to some good Jazz, drank some cheap alcohol and smiled and nodded at the Czech coolio people which were sharing our table. The party then continued back at our hostel where the bar was still open serving 75 cent pints!!!! Needless to say we have a bit of a headache today, but everything is still intact. We are heading to the Jewish cemetary today and then taking the night-train to Amsterdam. Our trip finishes at the next stop which is Paris. We will no doubt have very interesting stories from Amsterdam and our hostel does have internet access.

Take care Everyone

Salut tout le monde

Erik et Natalie