it costs two euros for fifteen minutes at a interent cafe in paris thats six nz so i will blog later when its cheaper heres a few pics though

belgium baby land of plenty= of beer and chocolate

brussels day two = 20th birthday in brussels

woke up in belgium on my 20th birthday and had half a packet of instant noodels for brekfast to try save money for dinner. we headed out chocolate shopping = the rumors are true belgium has the worlds best chocolate streets are simply lined with glorious chocolate shops , choclate fountains in the windows, belgium is food central , frites and waffles are sold from vendors along the streets and christmas markets sell hot cinamon wine and hot beer. we were leisurly with our sightseeing in brussels , not knowing about any of the cites we were not disapointed to miss any, brussels is very small and easy to complete in a few days , we saw the grand palace and surrounding square of old buildings. we saw manekin piss = yes piss. which is the cities trademark, its a small statue of a little boy peeing, natuarlly you can buy all sorts of hilarious memorabilia to do with this , little boy corkscrews where the screw comes from.......well you can guess use ur imagination. lots of lovely sites in belgium and a little bit of snow. we headed out in teh evening for birthday celebrations = party of two, we ate a three course meal for just 12 euros drinks included. the street where we ate is packed full of sefood resturants which are famous in brussels and the waiters haggle with you to get you in. we ate , oysters, smoked salmon salad and bread for starters, then mussels and poached salmon with frites and then flan with caramalised alcahol on top, all washed down with cherry beer.yummmmmmm
after dinner we got a tad lost trying to find the pub that holds the guinness world record for most flavours of beer and absinth = their working on tequila. its overwhelming the choices, we settles on chocolate and coconut beers, although we were excited about our chocolate beer it turned out to be undrinkable and quite nasty , cocount beer is to die for and tastes like pina colada but better, we headed back to teh hostel to find there was a couple on the bunk beneth me sharing a bunk grosss and very illegal in the hostel lol yuck yuck

brussels day one = chocolate chocolate chocolate

Paris nord train station nearly killed us at 5am it was so cold i have never experienced anything like it i thought my nose would turn black and fall off at any second , frostbite was imminent, i need earmuffs for sure screw looking stupid.
after two hours on the train we arrived in Brussels and found our first impression to be clean and organised unlike Rome and Paris , escalators and lifts for luggage and friendly personal willing to speak English and not resenting you for not speaking french, joy.
caught a tram to our hostel , kind men and women helped us with out suitcases and directions , Paris shoved us outa France and Brussels has welcomed us with open arms, due to booking late we are staying in a more expensive hostel called 2 go 4 which i recommend, free Internet and big screen surround sound TV , i havent seen let alone watched a TV in 5 months wow. we were in a 14 person room with allot of snorers first night but managed to sleep like a baby and woke up to unlimited hot drinks and a kitchen = best hostel yet. we explored Belgium a bit our first night Brussels is quite small in the centre easy walking distance to everything , we got chocolate waffles and frites, their are beautiful Christmas decorations everywhere i loooooooovvveee Brussels.

paris day two = scamed and ripped off = does paris hate me?

we headed out early day two to the montemare district and went first to the sacre cour we walked up what felt like a million steps and explored and enjoyed the beautiful views across all of Paris, next to the various museums in the area and the square that host all the portrait painters some good some my cat could do better. as we headed back down from sacre cour we saw some men heading towards us asking us to do a magic trick with string = having gotten the gist of scams in Rome we turned the other direction saying no Merci non Merci , one followed us insisting we try his magic trick , we continued to refuse and walked briskly away from him unfortunately another of his friends came from this direction and they cornered us insisting we try their magic trick and grabbing our hands, they then made crappy woven bracelet things on our hands and tried to charge us 10 euros 30nz dollars for them , we refused saying we never wanted them and had said so several times , they insisted on a donation and we quite scary and force full so we tried to pay them 2 euros but they we so close to us peering into our wallets that they pointed to another euro and insisted we had plenty for a 'donation'. so we ended up paying 3 euros each $9 nz for the sort of thing u make in primary school, no a pleasant experience , i believe Paris hates me. angry at being ripped of we headed into montemares red light district in hunt of the moulin rouge which is not the beautiful theatre seen in the movie unfortunately, the day was freezing and appeared that little was going right for us. we headed to the Arc De Triompe that symbolises Napoleons victory somewhere, as we are in Europe for longer things begin to look more and more the same and the neo classical buildings in Paris are somewhat disappointing after Rome. Paris has its unexpected delights though i am not entirely pessimistic , there are musicians = buskers in the trains that are very talented and it makes using the metro allot more pleasant, i am highly complemented that Parisians or at least french people keep asking me for directions in french , i believe this means i look Parisian yay;
we strolled down the cities most expensive boulevard and back to the concord and Madeline, we attempted to save and make dinner from teh supermarket so bought bread salami and tomato. disaster ensued. we have paper plates and a suitcase as a table. the meal was crude with badly cut plastic knife hacked tomato and dry bread, hilarity, we have a photo, to make up for this a defeating the purpose of trying to save we went and bought cake = lili tiramisu and me flan = like custard. its yum. we woke up at 5am next morning to go to Brussels

paris day two = scamed

ripped off even though i tried to run away it sucks stupid paris

camenbert cheese , paris part one

arrived in france around 6pm on staurday night , freezing weather which only got worse, got very lost trying to find hostel which was cruely just off the map i had paid for at great price. had a chance to paractice my french tho asking for directions. first night in teh hostel we were staying with a south african lady who is a teacher , the hostel turns a blind eye to the fact is for under 25s. paris seemed to spite us from the very begining, no lifts or escalators and pointless stairs that go up and then down again straight away and then up with no particular purpose. not enjoyable with heavy suitcases, like rome i found that paris was very dirty and there are alot of homeless people sleeping in the metro stations, not as many beggers but still more than this small kiwi girl is used to. im off two minds weather to belive the travel books and ignore them or give them change and have faith that its not a scam. i was all on my lonesome sightseeing first day in paris, we are staying inbetween the area bastile and the latin quarter, i walked along a long wide boulivard that is called haussaman and stoped at the food markets and sites along the way, including a beatiful church whos name i have no idea where a cute father and son where playing patonk of the frosty grass, so cute, the madeline whcih looks alot like the parthenon in rome, concorde which is a huge area with stautes and stuff along teh river seine, i walked leisury along the river on that beutifully sunny but cold day past the lourve and other sites and buy camenbert to munch on

when in rome part two

Friends Romans, countrymen.
Rome day two:
We woke up early ready and eager to explore Rome , after a dismal breakfast at the hostel we headed out on foot. First we returned to the area around the colosseum with the buildings tempio di saturno, via sacra, basilica giulia, I rostri, arco di settmio severo, la cura, basilica emilia, basilica di massenzio, tempio di Antonio e faustina, colesseo, palatino, colonna di foca, tempio di giulo cesare, arco di tito, tempio di vesta, casa dei vestalli, tempio di castore e polluce. (Deep breath) we went photo crazy as you can image, and took photos of the police on horses and of me hugging columns. We came across the ruins of some building that is full of cats I now understand why there are cats in the all the postcards, literally hundreds of them just prancing about it made me miss my cat tigga so much. We tackled the map rather unsuccessfully and headed towards some outdoor markets, people on the streets start talking to you and the easy answer is simply

‘no palo italaiano’

(I don’t speak Italian) however one such man (who I thought was drunk at ten am as he was waving a glass of red wine round) reacted very angrily when I said ‘no palo italiano’ and swore (I assume) at me in Italian. We later deduced he wasn’t talking to us but was perhaps praying or something and we had disrupted his prayers.
We came across an outdoor market (piazza novona) where we browsed at marzipan, street performers and various souvenirs. Next we headed to the pantheon, which is ridiculously stunning it’s almost too much to handle. There is a hole it the ceiling and surprisingly no rain gets in despite the fact it is about 4 metres wide in diameter. We passed the tempio Adriano and the st ignazio church which is literally the most stunning building I’ve ever seen and by far surpassed both st peters and the Vatican. Next, to the mall palazzo montecitorio a rather up market affair in a grandeur building, we got lost trying to find the Trevi fountain and I had to ask several times

‘dovet fountain trevi’

eventually we found it and its stunning, there was a momentary lapse in the rain that had plagued us all day so the photos from the trevi look almost sunny, naturally it was swamped by tourists such as ourselves but we did our best to get photos. Next to the Spanish steps, which unfortunately are not that interesting in the winter and certainly not one of my favourites from the trip. It was absolutely pouring by this stage. Luckily one of Rome's oddities is that men selling umbrellas pop up the second a single raindrop falls they walk around the streets arms laden with umbrellas of various colours, they make a mad dash when police drive by and jostle and hustle with their competitors. I haggled for a 3euro umbrella and headed up the stairs. With two umbrellas between three, taking photos was a very wet affair, but a kindly old man held his umbrella over me while I took photos. We hunted around for a cheap lunch in the poshest district of Rome with designer stores that surround the Spanish steps. Unsuccessful in our hunt due to the fact there are always service charges and on top of this many resturants require a further fee for a table. With the rain everything was packed but we found a darling little restaurant of average price. 16euros for a pizza advertised for two but big enough for ten. Vic and me tackled our pizza, which was a combination of eggplant (my new obsession), olives and many other exciting ingredients. We all had expresso afterwards to warm ourselves up in preparation for heading outside it was almost 3pm and already getting dark as we made our way to piazza del popolo which was my favourite site of the whole trip. It was twig light and gorgeous. Statues and fountains and small temples around an open circular stadium of sorts. We walked uphill in the near darkness to a small temple with gushing water coming down it and looked out across the view of the piazza and Rome. We had walked between 3/6 km I estimate and it had taken us 6 hours Vic and I had completely ruined our new boots on Romes cobbled streets. We headed back along Via Del Corso the main road that has lots of nice shops, some with funny names like ‘expensive’ and ‘ok’. I bought a tourist poster of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory peck in roman holiday (vacazione roma), it had to be done I couldn’t help myself. We swung by the trevi fountain again to see it at night when it is even more spectacular. It took us just over two hours to come back directly but we were exhausted and rested at the hostel for a few hours waking up around 11pm to forage for food. Because Rome seems to be open 24/7 we had no trouble finding an open nearby restaurant of a reasonable price. Not as spectacular as lunch but satisfactory. We had brushetta for 3 euros and expresso once again. We tried to communicate as much as possible in Italian but only achieved to say pepe (pepper) not exactly difficult. We browsed some of the boutique stores around the hostel before heading home just past midnight. Lili wasn’t feeling well so she settled in for an early night while me and Victoria headed once again to the libera café/bar. We didn’t know the guests this night so chatted happily to each other whist drinking margaritas that were literally pure alcohol, no ice! Which took us a bout 2 hours to drink just one. We started chatting to leather jacket guy and some other guys who were brazillain and worked in nearby hostels. Leather jacket guy’s sister is living on a marae somewhere in NZ – small world huh. He asked me confusingly why she kept calling him a pakeha and laughing at him. We had a very multicultural conversation for a few hours with people of various nationalities swapping travel stories and attempting to learn some Italian. The hostel workers laughed their heads off at my phrase book and wouldn’t stop teasing my pronunciation. I learned that Italian has the same vowels as Maori. (Ae ei I ow ou.), Vic believes I’ve become very patriotic. It was a really great-relaxed night out. We declined to go clubbing around 3am knowing we had a big day ahead of us.

Vacazione Roma
Day three in Rome:
We accidentally slept in and were late getting to the Vatican; we headed to st Peters cathedral first which was a blessing (excuse the pun) as we arrived in time to see the pope on a rare appearance during winter. He was blessing what appeared to be the higher rankings of the Italian army. About 300 men in very grand uniforms. It was a beautiful ceremony, choirs, organs, orchestra, incense. Vic and me were both a bit teary from the intensity of it despite neither of us being catholic. St peters is almost scary there’s a glass case with one of the dead popes in it, But the architecture and such is breathtaking. We were disappointed to learns that the Vatican itself closed at 12 30 during winter so we were too late to go that day. But discovered instead the castel sant Angelo. A kind of fort/castle – it has a moat and runs along the river Fiume Tevere. The views are spectacular and its very fun winding your way through the tunnels and bumping into people you met at the hostel the night before. From the fort you can see the whole of Rome with st Peters in the forground. The weather was starting to brighten as we crossed a beautiful bridge the Ponte St Angelo. We walked along the river back to the hostel, which took about 4 hours. We went to many sites along the river like the St Giovanni dei florentini chapel, the palazzo spado and the synagogue. The best was the teatro Marcello that is very similar in architecture to the colosseum but less famous and therefore more tranquil because of the lack of tourists.
Just next to this is a small island in the middle of the river (connected by bridges to both banks) called Isola on which clusters of villas are built. In the sun it was very pretty, I have my future house picked out. By now we were back in the area of the colosseum and hiked up to Capitol Hill to look over Areo Di Tito (the collection of ruins). Stopping for more gelato we headed back to the Roma Inn for another late afternoon nap. Before heading out for our last night in Rome. We hit the tourist shops and gathered up a collection of junk. Then went and sat outdoors at a cute restaurant in a street that resembled an alleyway just a few minutes from roma inn. We had to fight off the hawkers from our table, men playing musical instruments, selling roses and other tourist junk. Some were nice like the musicians but others forceful and had to be shooed away by our waitress in Italian. We found a nice fair trade store and bought Italian coffee, pasta and hot chocolate at more reasonable prices than the tourist shops, and I believe more authentic. We couldn’t help ourselves and went again to get more gelato around midnight before heading back once more to the hostel.

We were all getting the flu from walking in the wet weather in damp clothing so
tried to get a good nights sleep.

When faced with poverty do as the Romans do.
Day four in Rome
The next morning we woke early determined not to miss the Vatican on our last day. We caught the metro and arrived at 8am even though it didn’t open till ten. We had a very expensive breakfast of pure melted hot chocolate with hazelnuts and pastries at a boutique café near the Vatican. We arrived at the Vatican at 8 30ish to discover the line was all ready around the block. The poverty we had seen coming into the city is most obvious around tourist spots like this. Beggars sit along the Vatican walls. In the rest of the city they are mainly scarved women begging on their hands and knees but here they are people with obvious deformities, amputees, with little clothing and no shoes, and one man who had what appeared to be tumours (about 3 or four and bigger than a tennis ball) growing out of his neck and head. The tourists- overtly cautious from guide books, try their best to ignore these beggars assuming that, like the beggars in London they do not need to be on the streets- that the government will provide for them. The Italians however give the beggars notes not just change and give their coffees or food to the beggars or even just say kind words which are obviously appreciated, I realise the tourists are naïve and that the Italians know that their government is not providing for these people who have to hobble away when the police drive by. Victoria and I both regretted not having Euro coins to give to these beggars and in retrospect I wished we had given notes. We had to que over an hour to get into the Vatican and I felt that it was not as beautiful as St Peters. Unfortunately flash is forbidden in most rooms but the tapestries paintings and especially ceilings were worth the whole trip. Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel is in our opinion not the best of the murals in the Vatican (see bebo or facebook for the ones we liked the best) but it is nonetheless very grand. It is very easy to get lost following the non sensical signs that eternally point to the Sistine chapel and you go up and down and up again on the levels. We left the Vatican around 12 and went to a nearby resturant for lunch. We had a wonderful reception there, the restaurant is run by a family who were constantly checking if we were ok, gave us free bread and olive oil a free pizza and free desert, no service charge no table charge. They are great I have the name somewhere if you go to Rome you have to go there it’s the warmest reception in Italy. Sadly we had to leave Rome and go sit at the airport for 4 hours waiting for our flight. In London we

literally ran

with our backpacks to catch the Gatwick express to Victoria station, we had just 5 mins to spare to catch the last train back to Rochester – dreading the prospect of sleeping at the station. We made it just in time and arrived home around 12 30 for some much needed sleep.

when in rome.... do the romans day one in rome

when in rome do the romans- i wish they are gorgeous!!!! we arrived in rome around 11am local time and caught a bus to the airport with minimal language dificulties. vic and lili fell asleep - probably for the best because the first impresion of rome is not the nicest slums as far as you can see all painted a bright orange but nonetheless not disguising the poverty. whole 'villages' of shacks stretch for hundreds of metres along the moterway, made of cardbored ,couragated iron and other junk where people huddled over fires in garbage bins trying to keep warm in the minus degree temperatures. our impression of rome didnt get much better at the main metro staion 'termini' where trains are completly covered in grafiti and windows are so covered in dirt you cant see inside ,we didnt dare sit down it here even if there had been space, and cramed in as we were we held tightly to our bags having been severly and frequently warned about pickpockets. we arrived at 'cavour' and attempted to follow instructions to our hostel and eventually gave up and bought a map for four euros ($12!) we later discovered we had been decidedly ripped of. once in possesion of our map we realised our hostel was about a minutes walk down the road from the station when we had initailly gotten of. feeling a little ashamed and downhearted by our first impressions of rome we headed up a cobbled street with beautiful old buildings of varying shades of orange - i later realised this typified all of rome, the entire city is orange. our hostel 'roma inn' was barley identifiyable with the tinest of plauques on a green door, we got stuck in a weird european style lift and had to drag our weary feet up the marble stairs. the hostel is in the oldest part of the city literally 5mins walk from the collesium and the veiws are amazing. its a weird layout but wonderfully vibrant. we were given a free map which is avaliable almost everywhere.( mr cute glasses as we named him) who was behind the desk was shocked to discover we had paid 4 euros for a much more inadequate map. there was no power at the hostel at that time a power cut i assume, quite hilarious in retrospect and added to the flavour of the trip so he lead us towards the best icecream in town -the sicilian icecream and pointed us in the direction of the collesum. rome may be dirty at first but the sights around the colluseum are to die for , you have not lived till you have seen rome. we almost didint want to take photographs because it looked like a movie set or a postcard and just couldnt be belived , the essence of the city cannot be captured on film. around the colluseum are many many ancient bulidings and we explored these for hours till we could ignore our hunger pains no longer. we headed back to our hostel for dinner which was three euros. eveyrone sits around on square red seats in the reception as there is no comon area and the dorms doors are all in this tiny room. due to the power shortage the chef (mr chef man we nicknamed him i cant keep up with the italian names ) had attempted to cook with candellight with no succes so dinner was late. while we waited we chatted to the remaining two members of staff mr cute glasses and leather jacket guy who gave me and vic some italian wine which i think is very similar to tequilla as it has worms in it and which u drink in shots , its very strong but quite nice on the throat, they were using it in the dinner and it is wonderfull in cooking. we had apatisesers of a 5 star quality of bread with olive oil, basil avacado (which we have been mising in the uk ) and prawns and mini quiche with ham and tomatoe. the dinner was as promised one of the best in rome and much much cheaper. and consited of a pasta bar with fetuchini , raviolli and tortalinii of various flavors. after dinner the three staff members (chef ,leather jacket ,and glasses ) took whoever wanted to come -(most of the guests) to the nearby 'libera' bar/cafe, much to the italians amusement we misheard and thought they said they would take us to the libary and were quite confused. the cafe is just a second up the road and is very picturesque, it has a upstairs and downstairs with various oddities in the decor such a scarves and beads hanging from the celing , broken couches , books ,mismatched coffe tables. we thought it was fabulous , so cute and bohemian. the area is quite a musical and arty scene and there were musicians and people carying instruments in the surounding streets. we had tequila shots and expresso(short black ) at libera with some of the guests and for the second time i got into a fight with some australians who had been imitating the kiwi accent not having realised i was one. the australian couple were very emabrassed and actually quite nice , the other guests were mainly american or spanish speaking from various countries and all very friendly. we left the cafe around 2 am and went to find icecream , everything is still open and all the shops seem to be open almost 24 hours. we went back to the scicillian icecream shop we had visitied that afternoon and i returned to my new found obsession (almond gelato)which tastes like marzipan. i attempted some italian and got laughed at but most people are willing to speak english so no problems there. outside the icecream store at the guiness pub there was a lage group of about 50-60 italian skin heads who were quite scary and who looked at vic and lili quite menacingly as they are asian , i hurried vic along as she hadnt been aware of the significance and with the inocence i love about her said 'alot of people with shaved heads around arent there'. we arrived home around 3 am and fell straight to sleep barley meeting our american dorm mates, who are are studing in madrid belguim and barcelona on exchange, one of them who is asian-american warned us that he had seen many neo-nazi skin head rallies in his travels around europe and cautioned us to be wary in particular of the italian skin heads, luckliy being blonde in italy is a blessing.

all roads lead to rome

we left our house friday night quite drunk to go and celebrate vics 21st birthday and went clubbing in leister square, fun fun partyed in teh vip room which had a chess borad and a mini libary - weird , we left around 2 30am and went to our friend alexs house to pick up our backpackes for rome and then grabbed a taxi and literally RAN to victoria station to catch the gatwick express to the airport which we reached at 3. 30 we then did all that customs buisness and finnally caught our plan to rome!

this week in Amanda (aka peanut sunshine) land.....

Saturday i went to London to do my Christmas shopping , made a start at Shepperd's bush where i was disappointed to find a severe lack of squirrels. next we went in search of the Kenzo store which has eluded us thrice before - this time- great success! kenzo was found however it was completely useless because we needed to take photos and because life just hatttttesss me - there was scaffolding and i couldn't see anything. next we went to Camden - i officially love Camden there is no crazier place in the world we were starving so i has a spring roll and the sugariest fattest and best ever doughnut - Bavarian cream with chocolate topping with nuts and white chocolate. crazy! there was no seating so we perched on pot plants with what must have been every other tourist in London. we scoured the markets and shops for a blissful few hours before there was a huge down pour - oh dear and so thousands of tourists tried to leave Camden at the same time - tube mayhem. eventually we made it to oxford street the high street mecca of London where we happened apon the oxford street festival - i love London you just stumble across things happening! so there where sales! and there was street performers and the whole street was closed and there was beautiful fake snow which quickly became annoying and lili and i were soon shouting "lili help! its in my eye" "Amanda !some went in my mouth ew ew". lili went to meet a friend so i went shopping on my own buying gifts and things for people and having a grand old time despite the pouring rain and violent mob that is the Christmas shopping crowd. i almost caught the wrong train home and panicked because i had run to catch a train that was leaving, luckily i had panicked for nothing and rather embarrassed myself.

Sunday there was a Charles dickens Christmas festival in our town (Rochester) home of Charles dickens!. there was a parade where all the local dressed up in what was supposed to be Victorian time dress but which got a bit historically confused as im sure there was some elizabethan in there but fabulous all the same , next to the fair where there were Ferris wheels and carasols all with the castle in the back ground - gorgeous! bagpipers and carolers , candy floss and crepes and hot chocolate - all my favorite fair time fun! we explored Charles dickens house with has a a cats of characters pretending to be Victorian , very funny the maid got fired in our viewing slot. hilarious