Ok, so although we were headed for Naples, we actually saw no more of it than the train station....not that by the sound of it we missed anything. We caught the train between Rome and Naples and had to sit by these extremely loud Italian women...i swear that i have never heard a louder culture, everything is loud...to the point where it constantly sounds like they are arguing, even when they are just speaking. Caleb was getting sooo mad at them, at one point a lady further down the train even said a super loud Shhhhh, which kept them in check only for a bit. Anyway, we were heading for our hostel (which was amazing by they way) and it was just out of Naples at a little fishing village thing. We got a wee bit lost getting there, which was pretty funny cos we had just been singing our own praises at our navigational skills, and straight away stuffed up. lol. But we werent too screwed and we managed to sort it out. My birthday was very cool. We spent time at Pompeii, the ruins of a city that was buried by mount vesuvius erupting, and it was cool because the mountain had actually erupted on the 24th of August which was the day we were there. We also spent time in Sorrento, which i guess is best described as a wealthy hang out for both tourists and celebrities. Its a gorgeous town, perched on the cliffs. It was here that we savoured the european beach experience of chilling at the beach whilst lying on a deck chair on a floating wharf....slightly different from the NZ version, really quite bizarre. It was nice to be able to get in the water, even if we had to pay quite a lot for the privelege...weird! Caleb got absoloutely roasted...kinda like a roast carrot...lol im sooo funny. Lucky its me writing these blogs.
We headed back to rome for the night before joining our tour and stayed back at the slightly dodgy hostel we had stayed at previously. We were stoked cos this time we got AC, but the owner nearly drove us mental. We think he is suffering the effects of the bad feedback posted on line, so he was going out of his way to try to be accomodating, instead driving us mad. The morning that we were leaving there he knocked on our dorm room door but noone got up cos we were all still in bed...so he let himself him! Ok so he had breakfast with him,but still....leave us alone. Then about an hour later he returned, no one had eaten the breakfast cos we were still in bed and he got really offended, asking if we didnt like the breakfast, what was wrong with it.We really didnt say much in reply, i mean what do you say to the crazy italian man. Then he started asking me questions in broken english about my email...had i checked it? what did i write? i was sooo confused, didnt know what he was goin on about...and then...he gets me out of bed saying i needed to check my email!!! What the heck! but im silly and go with him. He waits for me to log in and then stands behind me to tell me to fill out the feedback form for his hostel. Im useless at saying no, so i filled it out while he watched...he then asked me to change some of my answers to higher scores....i didnt cos i had already been generous because of him watching over my shoulder, so i was a little bit assertive i guess. Anyway, i went back to the room and told Caleb, who was pissed!!!! Lucky the guy asked me or Caleb would have told him where to go! So yeah, thats our annoying as hostel owner. Unluckily for him, because we stayed there twice, we slammed him on the second feedback, when noone was looking over my shoulder.

We left our part of Rome on the 26th to head to further out where we were meeting our tour...again we were pretty pleased with our navigation skills, and super impressed with the fact that Rome has free buses....who would have thought. We werent sure about the bus fares, so we stood back and watched a couple of buses load on etc and saw noone was paying, so when our bus rocked up, we jumped on and got dropped off at our stop. It was only later as i was singing the praises of the free buses to another girl on our tour that she put me right.....no such thing as free buses, you have to pre purchase a ticket and carry it with you. Random checks are carried out and if you are found without a ticket, instant 50 euro fine!!! Whoops! She herself had been the recipient of a fine.....so we were very very lucky. We have seen our fair share of fines being given on the trains....so im not sure what we were thinking re the buses being free...as if!

Our tour has started well....spent first night in Rome, then the next day travelling. We stopped in at Verona, which was incredibly gorgeous and clean compared with Rome. Got to see Juliets(from Romeo and Juliet) balcony etc, not very long there, but enough to appreciate the city. It has well preserved ancient city walls too which are mean. Our final destination was Venice where we have just spent the day. It really is quite cool....bridge after bridge after bridge connecting the 117 islands or something. Went on a gondola ride...tick that off our bucket lists, and saw the main sights. Another hot day, but probably only in the 30's which is far more bearable. Tonight we have a toga party....so should be interesting!
Looking forward to heading to Austria tomorrow, heard lots about it and sounds gorgeous. dont know if you know but the hills are alive with the sound of music....(apparently).
Later gaters!

Italy!

So....we have moved out of the land of Englishness and into our first non english speaking country....do you think its arrogant to wonder why the signs arent in English???? surely they know that we dont speak Italian...lol. Anyway, the Rome customs was awesome, we strolled up, got our passports stamped and then wandered on...mint! No worries, even beat all the people from the EU countries as they had to go the other line and we were the only ones in the non-EU line...sweet. Had a wee bit of drama however on the other side...so the smarty pants that i am decided that i wouldnt get Euros out till we got here, of course i would be able to find an ATM at the airport...right! Well finding the ATM turned out not to be a problem, however the fact that all of the airports ATMs were down was a wee bit worrying. Not to worry tho, cos we decided to just get cash out on our visa at the travelex and change that to Euros, however for whatever reason of course our stupid card kept getting declined. Mint! Literally stuck in Romes freakin airport with NO money whatsoever! We are sooo smart.
Luckily someone then told us that we could use our visa to pay for the train ticket we needed to get into downtown, where we were able to find useable ATMs. So that was our slightly stressful intro to Rome. When we got off the train, i was fairly confident that i knew where i was going and blissfully ignored Calebs ideas/pleas to buy a map of the area, so for about 30 min i wandered a wee bit lost around the train station looking for the street i knew was just round here somewhere....teehee. Anyway, we made it to our hostel???if you can call it that, kinda bizarre, but not too bad. The guy on the desk likes us so gave us a free upgrade to a private room, no complaints here. However it is 41 degrees, and we dont have airconditioning, so its kinda like a sauna at times, but we have the fan working overtime to make sure we keep the hot air circulating! lol. Caleb is a special fan of the bed cos its quite short and he actually cant fit on it...oh well, it works well for me. Just before we left for Rome, Jess looked up our hostel on Tripadvisor and we had a good laugh(all be it nervously) as we read about how previous people would in no way recommend the hostel to anyone because of the blood on the floor and the bountiful supply of bedbugs....fortunately we have not been blessed with either!

Spend a long but amazing day today looking at things that i thought Caleb and i would find tedious and boring....who woulda thought that people of our great intellect and education would find classical history and art history at all interesting! But we were pleasantly surprised. We were wowed by St Peters Basilica and then by the arty stuff in the Vatican museums, the sistine chapel is pretty sweet too. Then we went and saw the spanish steps, Trevi fountain, Pantheon and the Colosseum. A long, incredibly hot day, but very very cool. Caleb and i are still tripping out over all the free water that is available around the city from various fountains etc and it comes out icy cold, definately needed on days like today. So far has been an amazing introduction to Italy. Heading out tomorrow for Naples. If we can avoid being murdered by the mob and the pickpockets im sure our holiday will continue to be mint. Sweet off to savour the delicious gelato options next door, to wash down my pizza! Ciao!!! (oh my gosh im so cultured!)

Allo Allo

Kiaora kids....so we made it here to London town finally....and i was soooo nervous at customs...i have been stressing for ages about how strict the customs man would be about our money etc in our bank account....literally had mean butterflies about it. Anyway we rocked up to the customs person and he DIDNT even ask for anything. Just stamped our visas.....what a let down. Here i was ready to have to plead my case to let us stay...not that we dont have enough money or anything, just was totally nervous. Anyway so now that is done and we are here to stay...for a while. Arriving at this time of the year is gorgeous...everything is green and warm and lovely and its nice to be sleeping in a bedroom of our own. Only been here a few hours but loving the differences...e.g beautiful architecture, black taxis, double decker buses etc. Cant actually believe we are here for the long haul, kinda freaky.

Before we came to London we spent a couple of days in NY. It was crazy busy, tourists everywhere and generally not that amazing. We did however see Brooklyn, which has become probably our favourite part of NY, really diverse and incredibly different from Manhatten. One exciting part was our hostel....in the middle of HARLEM! Its hard not to stand out when you are walking thru a crazy busy street with suitcases on wheels and being the only lil whities....kinda stand out a mile. We werent worried about staying in Harlem (i mean whats the worst that could happen!), but on our first night there was a shooting just 5 blocks from our hostel...very exciting! We also got to go clubbing at NY's biggest nightclub which was pretty sweet too....even Caleb got his groove on! There were 4 floors with all different types of music, including a salsa floor, pretty sweet!

So we are here for 5 days, gotta hook up all the boring things like recruitment agencies, bank stuff, dr's etc...and then hopefully be able to get jobs after we return from our tour. Gonna spend the next few days gettin lost in London! Fun fun fun.

LATERS.

Fun times

Ok so i would have written earlier, but.....Caleb said it looked way to geeky to have blogs close together, so i listened to his wisdom??? But i have now the time and the inclination to fill you in on what we have been doin recently. So Chicago was amazing, we managed to time our visit to include the hottest weather they have had this whole summer...like 96 degrees or something (farenheight) and it was very very warm. However we did manage to get tans so we arent complaining. We got to eat at some very yummy mexican food in Chicago....honestly until you have tried the mexican here, you just aint had real mexican...it was brilliant.
We have spent the last couple of days here in Michigan, Lansing to be exact, staying with a Bethany and Justin. I lived with Beth in Chicago 6 years ago...man time flies. Its really nice to be seeing the real side of America, like day to day living as opposed to big cities and tourist traps. We feel so rich as we are driving a pontiac rental car, wee bit flasher than our old school corolla...it was real cool at the rental place cos they just pointed us towards the back of a car lot and said, pick any car you want. Pretty sweet. So anyway we drove up here to Michigan, well actually Caleb drove. Its a 4 hr drive mainly on the freeways, so not too scary. I was the navigator and i like to think i did a pretty mean job. Yesterday we went shopping...bad idea. We were already struggling to shut our suitcases and i really actually cant lift my bag, but we still managed to spend a whole day and ridiculous amounts of money (although it was an outlet mall) and had a mint time, however now we face a tough time of making our bags fit...and what is worse is that our domestic flights here are tough on weight....so we may be making last minute evictions from our bags tomorrow before we get to NY!!!lol.
OOOh we are driving back to Chicago today and we managed to score a mean deal on a room at the Hyatt right by the airport, so we are looking forward to living it up tonight.
Anyway this is probably a really disjointed blog cos i am having a conversation about the Treaty of Waitangi with a fellow social worker/lawyer....and like i am prone to, i am solving the worlds problems while writing this.
But hopefully this fills you in a bit. We put photos on facebook if you wanna look.
Luv ya

This is way easier than email...

Yo g's....i thought i should write and email to everyone, but it turns out that its way too much hard work as i really dont have everyones addresses in my address book etc, and this way only people who really care will access this blog, and i wont go around filling everyones inbox's up with our lame stories...especially the ones that we think are hilarious but you know...you had to be there.
Anyway, we had a fantastic flight over, probably our best long haul...i got some sleep, caleb didnt! The day and half in San Fran was mint except for the minor hiccup where i thought Caleb had the wallet and he had given it back to me...however we left it sitting by the computer that we were using! RETARDS! Lucky for us some amazingly honest guy handed it in and wouldnt take a reward...score! Took heaps of mean pics in San Fran, its pretty cool...not as cool as San Diego, but not bad.
Then we came here to Chicago, been eating lots of amazing Puerto Rican (thanks to Priscilla!) and we spent the last 2 days in the suburbs with a friend Diana. WE had a blast at Six Flags amusement park which also has a water park, so we were roller coasted out! Caleb nearly died of fright on the last roller coaster, its real old skool, a wooden one that actually seems like its gonna derail on every corner...amazing! Caleb says its just like the one on 'Step by Step'...(go Suzanne Sommers you foxy cougar!)
Have been to Lincoln Park Zoo and to the beach, which always trips me out cos its on a lake! We have a couple more days here then we are road trippin to Michigan to see some more friends.
Having a blast getting sunburnt and spending tons of money!
Let us know how you guys are getin on and whats hapnin.

P.S Oh Sam we saw a Segway tour in San Fran and immediately thought of you, you geek!

P.S Cougar, Puma, Mountain Lion and Panther are all technically the same thing, props to Lincoln Park Zoo!