Part II - St. Petersburg - Bringing Sexy Back

View along Nevsy Prospekt (street described below)

We arrived in St. Petersburg mid-afternoon. We weren't quite sure what to expect at the airport however many of our fears were abaited once we saw English translations on most signs (good start). We made it out of the migration section and our first challenge was getting to our hotel. Cosmopolitain-Erik took control and actually bartered (quite fiercely, I might add) with a local driver (official taxis are almost non-existant so you literally get into strangers' cars). As soon as he pulled out of the airport drive-way, we knew we weren't in Kansas anymore...

The view from our hotel window
La ride de taxi etait une aventure en sois-meme. Nous avons appris tres vite que tout affichage, toute ligne routiere ainsi que les vois, ne sont que des suggestions. C'est une anarchie vehiculaire!!! Nous sommes arrives a l'hotel qui paraissait comme un dongeon du dehors. (On s'est presque fait lutte par l'ascenceur) Heureusement le patois "l'habit ne fait pas le moine" etait apte ici.

We decided to venture out into the St. Petersburg night for food and possibly some vodka. We started walking and soon realized that we had landed on Saturn. The cyrillic alphabet is really impossible to understand (for us anyway, at least on such little sleep). We finally found a restaurant (3 hours later) but not before consuming at least 2 beer each on the sidewalk like all the other locals and gasping several times at the unexpected beauty. The main drag, Nevsky, is a lively mix of shopping, restaurants, bars and beautiful women. Interesting observation....ALL women in St. Petersburg wear high heels.....ALL the time. And most of these heels are of the 6inch spiked heel variety. Disturbing, fascinating and interesting....all at the same time.

Finalement, a 11h30pm, nous nous sommes rendu a notre restaurant qu'Erik avait choisit. Il avait fait un excellent choix! Le "Senat" etait dans la cave d'un ancient batiment gouvernemental qui hebergeait un genre d'entrepot pour archives. Apres le caviar, le canard, le vodka, l'agneau, le chevreuil, le vodka et le vodka, nous nous sommes rendu a un petit bar quelques minutes de marche du restaurant.

One of our drinking stops. Cool huh?

Erik once again proved his awesomeness when he stopped a young local couple to ask them where THEY liked to go for drinks. They pointed us in the direction of an awesome bar called Novus. The DJ played US songs from the sixties, the beer was cold and the vokda was cheap. We had a great time! (emphasis on great). It was more than a little funny to see all the cute Russian kids dancing to the Beatles. The story goes on like this...we walk, walk and walk some more...we get lost, and an hour later we finally get to the hotel at 6am (see Natalie and Erik for further details!)

Hermitage

Le lendemain nous nous sommes rendu a l'Hermitage. Le muse est reconnu comme un des plus grands au monde et contient au moins 5 differents edifices. La collection d'art est remarquable, les queues pour se rendre au musee etaient tout a fait aussi remarquables! L'Hermitage se trouve dans un ancient palais royale qui est vraiment spectaculaire, peut-etre la chose la plus impressionante a date.

Erik is working IT at the Hermitage...even when on holidays.

(Chris, please feel free to use for propaganda purposes! Hahaha!)

***

Note to our parents:

Despite Russian plane crashes and Russian bombs...

We are still alive...barely!

Smoke Smoke Anywhere!

Hey el pere! (mom, print ceci pour papa): Tu aimerais bien ca St Petersburg. Tu peux boire une biere en marchant dans le milieu de la rue sans te faire harceler par un policier. Tu peut fumer dans les aeroports, places publics, restaurants, etc! Tu peux fumer anywhere...ANYWHERE!!!

For those of you who aren't fluent in both official languages, the rough translation to the above is, "HEY Dad, you can smoke anywhere here. You can also drink, literally anywhere. "

St. Petersburg is crazy that way.

More to come. Heading to Moscow tonight.

ps-we got in this morning at 6:30am!!!
pps-Lou, how's the dude, Genghirino?

Part I - London - Not vanilla ice cream

Gros Ben
London in itself was a realization to me. Kinda like finding out that you really like something that you never really gave much thought to. I have always considered London akin to store-bought vanilla ice cream; good but not great and certainly not all that interesting. I am really glad to be wrong about this one. London is anything BUT vanilla ice cream. The people are interesting, the architecture is eye-catching and the history is so rich with pride, tradition and scandal (what a great mix).

Nous avons commencer Londres du bon pieds: avec une pint de biere au pub le plus pres de notre hotel. En parlant d'hotel, notre chambre est tellement petite que meme un schtroumph (smurf) aurait de la difficulte a se trouver de la place! Ah oui, est-ce que j'ai mentionne que ca fait environ5 jours que notre hotel n'a pas d'eau chade? On prend nos bains avec de l'aide de la bouilloire!

London Tower Bridge

We started off our first day by sleeping in, eating at a local bakery and heading to Buckingham Palace. We're still not really sure what is so interesting about this building (the Queen aside)...there were literally hundreds of people lining the gold-tipped wrought iron gates taking pictures of a concrete structure....a boring building really. Erik and I had more fun taking pictures of the people than of Buckingham Palace itself. We then hopped on the top of a double-decker bus. We opted for the double-decker in order to get a better feel for the city and its sights. Great choice. Highly recommended.

Speakers' Corner (Not the Much Music one)

Un de nos arrets les plus interessants etait le ''Speaker's Corner''. Grand bastion de la liberte d'expression, sauf pour quelques exceptions(pas d'insultes liees a la famille royale). Les gens se presentent chaque dimanche a Hyde Park avec une boite (ou une echelle) sur laquelle ils prechent de tout et de rien: de religion, de guerre, de politique et de coneries. Les debats sont nombreux avec des centaines de personnes qui sont a la recherche de discours interessants. Assez impressionant!!!

St. Paul's Cathedral

In riding through the streets of London, we saw many things. We saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, the London Eye, the London Tower Bridge, Shakespeare's Globe and, of course, the infamous Harrod's. We finished the day at a great Indian restaurant with a mediocre bottle of wine. Lots to digest for such a short stop but a great beginning to our adventure.

Next stop: St. Petersburg...

***

Train Trip

(Click on image for a larger and more detailed view.)

Well, here it is. Here is the reason why we created this blog. Here is THE post which details our our trip across Eurasia. It consists of 10 steps (along with facts that you KNOW Natalie did not draft) .

We leave from Bangor Maine on August 19th and fly to London England, where we stay for 2 nights. Natalie is looking forward to sipping afternoon tea, drinking lukewarm pints and visitng the fabled Harrod's. We then fly to St. Petersburg where the real adventure begins and Natalie's knowledge of the world dwindles. Lonely Planet, anyone?

1-St-Petersburg (once known as Leningrad)
Peter the Great's window to the Western world. We are only here for a couple of days. Home of the Hermitage, the Peter and Paul Fortress and many things Russian.

2-Overnight train to Moscow
Hopefully this overnight train will not be as bad as the overnighter when we met those Italians (see Europe posts below). It's an 8 hour train ride. Should not be too painful...especially if a sufficient Vodka is bought prior to departure.

3-Moscow
Here for three days. Well what can we say about this place? Home of the Kremlin, Red Square, Lenin's Tomb...It's Moscow man! What else do we need to say?!?!?!?!?!

4-Four day train ride across Russia
This is where our patience and resourcefulness will be tested. Not much food, not much drink other than vodka (recent vodka training will no doubt come in handy), not much service and not much English, nor French. No showers, no baths!!!

5-Lake Baikal stay
For those big RISK players, you know where Irkutsk is: Siberia. Lake Baikal will be our home for about 4 days. A family will be hosting us for a couple of these. Again, recent vodka training will no doubt come in handy.

6-Two day train ride to Ulaanbaatar
Another train ride talking with some locals and hopefully get some cool hints as to what adventures await us in Mongolia.

7-Jeep ride in Bayangobi
This is where Erik get's excited: We are going to the ruins at Karakorum, hopefully (ancient palace of Genghis Khan' ancestors), and to a monestary at Erdene Zuu. We heard rumours that there are only 81 miles of asphalt in Mongolia. Holy jeep ride! Can you say "middle of nowhere"...

8-Stay in Ulaanbaatar
Capital of Genghis Khan's Mongolia, celebrating 800 years since the world's greatest empire. We really don't know what to expect on this leg of the trip. We can imagine alot of walking around and statements to the effect of "Holy Shit, we are in Mongolia". FUN

9-Two day train ride to Beijing
Again, hoping to get some insight on Beijing from other riders. One cool thing we heard about this leg of the trip: there is a time during the train ride where they have to go so slow, you can actually walk beside the train. We might test this rumour out... lol

10-Beijing
Confucius, Sun Tzu, Tian'an Men Square, Forbiden City, Great Wall, dim sum...Home of a great civilization (and hopefuly our first daughter).

We will also be stopping in London, UK for a couple days post Eurasia to cut up the travelling.

Well folks, that's the gist of it. More to come.

Please fasten your seatbelts and get ready for takeoff!!!

SEATTLE!!!

We are cutrrently in Seattle; after spending over 8 hours in the air, 4 hours on the ground(layovers) and 3 *wonderful* hours driving. Erik had the joy of "delayed baggage" via Air Canada...(editorial from Erik: fuck I hate Air Canada).

Now we are finally relaxed....(editorial from Natalie: VERY relaxed) We are currently at cousin Warren and cousin Julia's home enjoying their jacuzzi and their beach.

Seattle wheather is much more enjoyable than Fredericton weather: 26 degrees in Seattle and 26 degrees in Fredericton are surprisingly different (humidity, anyone?). We've also had the opportunity to eat a wonderful Thai meal in dowtown Seattle, a great lunch in the Mountains outside of Redmond and a meal cooked by our host...cousin Warren... (also Natalie's boss) extraordinaire...coupled with wine from his fabuloso cellar (yea...I know...rough life!)

This afternoon brings us to La Conner Washington for a wedding, dinner, dancing and fireworks. Life should always be this fun.

Natalie & Erik

First Stop: Seattle!

July 27 to August 2: Our first big stop will be Seattle! Big city, big mountains, big ocean.

Natalie had to be there for work and Erik cashed-in some airmiles and voila, free trip!

There are a few things we really want to see like the Orcas, Pike Place Market, San Juan Islands, some sushi spots and a few things in between. At the same time, we will be going to a friend's wedding.

For those of you intimate with this cool city, please post a comment or fire us off an email with your suggestions. Merci.

(Now if only our visa to Mongolia could be approved asap, everything would be great.)

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