Brisvegas Adventurers

The Black Valley! This place was amazing, with a tiny winding road barely wide enough for a single car.

Ballycarberry Castle built 1594

Ross Abbey. Due to thick mud I was unable to explore any further than the bordering road, although I did try and turned my sneakers into a terrible mess by bogging myself!

Land Ahoy! ...if only these words were said a few decades earlier...

A typical corner on a class three highway in Ireland.

Leaning back on a small stone wall to capture the view below.

The Ring of Dingle scenic drive. Stopping somewhere along the route to take a photo.

Farming land in Ireland

The cliffs of Moher. One of Ireland's premier natural attractions.

Scenic photo!

Erika bravely entered the woods alone, she came out alright though after she gave the wolf a talking to about brushing correctly to keep those shiny teeth.

Dating back to 3000BC, this tomb housed the remains of 33 people.

The Twelve Ben's mountains and lakes and a sheep.

Yep, so we splashed out and got a car by ourselves. After doing some figures on how much it was going to cost to get public transport everywhere, and the time we would have spent waiting for the afore mentioned transport we hired a car from Irish Car rentals (just to support the locals - and because they were the cheapest).

Let me backtrack a few days and get St Paddy's day covered off...

There was some drinking, some singing a little bit of dancing and a whole lot more drinking filled up with some great people and a great venue. I was a little hesitant with some of the local brews so I sampled a few of them through a half pint glass - DO NOT TRY THAT IN IRELAND!!! St Patricks day in Cork was almost stopped because of that little mistake... After a few friendly words and explaining to them that I was Australian and everything thing was ok, the music was turned back on and up a little bit louder.

I also managed to get two hats for myself and Erika - with a little bit of bartering using a stain glass lampshade that was adorning a light next to me at the time, much to the Irish mans glee and the barmaids distress... We finished up in the wee hours of the morning with me feeling slightly under the weather and with Erika feeling a little bit hungry.

St Patricks day + 1

So with the car organised the first thing we did was go out and get drunk! We met a few people and ended up inviting 4 other people with us so we ditched the two who seemed like the least fun and opted for two Canadian guys. After packing the Opel (Europes Holden) Astra with all our gear we set off towards the Ring of Kerry. Now the highways in Ireland are not really highways, they are very narrow and very winding roads with a speed limit of 100kph on them! As hard as a tried I just could not get to the speed limit - after the first few wheel slides I decided to stop trying, especially considering that 90% of the corners are blind and there was often quite a steep drop or sheep running across the road! But the scenery is amazing and the changing weather is also mid blowing, it was sunny for a few hours then it was hailing for 30 minutes, then raining, then bucketing, then hailing, then sunny, then hailing, then really windy and hailing!

St Patricks day + 2

With the Ring of Kerry done and dusted (and some mighty fine seafood chowder consumed) we went on to our next destination, Kilarney. This little town was great, the hostel was also great - with a very mad and dirty Irish man behind the counter this is what I thought Ireland would be like. The hot water tank exploded and the Irish guy wanted to spit on all the girls to clean them! There was a lot more he wanted to do as well and his open hate for all things related to tourists was such a laugh (if you know my brother Ben he was like him but smaller and 10 times as angry).

St Patricks day + 4

With the sights around Kilarney conquered we drove on to Galway. Armed with our trusty map with sights cleary marked on it we drove past most of them! Seriously this map was placing things up to 15kms off target and with Irelands reputation for great signage (there is none!!) we just took any random road to see where it would take us. After seeing a waterfall for the second time we decided that it was in fact the one we were looking for and parked the car, only to find the only sign deep within the carpark itself stating that we were in fact at the waterfall. We have not yet planned our trip for tomorrow but that is something we will worry about when the time comes!

Urinal on the street in Berlin

Sachenhausen Concentration camp, this is the memorial for all of the killed victims in WWII, this is located in the area of the old gas chambers!

TV tower revolving restaurant - Berlin

View of the castle in Prague

Carnivale (Switzerland), Josh playing the white elephant!

Fondue in an Igloo - this photo is taken from the opening of the man made igloo that seats upto 12 adults.

Simplon Pass - Taken just after arriving in the chalet in the alps, and moments before Josh popped the question!

Mt. Leone - Swiss alps

Erika and Bari - taken at a ski slope that had a mini festival on...yes it was snowing!

Hop Visp! Fianl game of the premiership - yes we won!

Florence by night

Street in Naples

Us leaving Capri on the ferry

View from Capri - a neighbouring Island.

Capri - clear blue water and a perfect day, we could have stayed here for months.

One of the excavated streets in Pompeii - you can see the vulcano Vesuvius in the background.

View of Pompeii - Josh climbed above and beyond for this one.

Trevi fountain.

Vatican Post - i hope that you all recieved your postcards from Italy's most reliable postal system - oh and the Pope blessed the stamps!

Having a laugh - making some faces, Erika was in histerics.

The view from Palatine Hill

Colosseo - formerly known to the Romans as the 'Flavian Ampitheatre'.

Hello all!

So you have all read the news that Josh and I are now engaged, what a surprise that was - i nearly lost my breath, not only due to the high altitude but over the shock of the event at hand, it was actually perfect and that is the only word that i can use to explain it.

So further more, now we are in Italy.
We started off in Florence, I must admit that when we got off the train we were grossly shocked at the state of the streets and the smell of this place we were in.
We got to our hostel and that was nothing worth mentioning, the "guest kitchen" was not even a kitchen, it was a room with a sink and 2 little electric hot plates - no fridge and no kettle or microwave!!!!
So after we got over the shock of the disgust, we journeyed around the city - personally i was starting to like Florence, bridge Vecchio (the longest standing bridge in florence) is worth marvelling over as it is full of goldsmiths and jewellery shops, oh and not to mention the polizia that patrol the bridge that Josh thought were strippers after his first glance at them.
We saw the Duomo that is quiet amazing and the Michaelangelo square are also tourist sights to see..... here we had our first taste of Italian pasta and gelati (yes they are the best ever).
The next day we took a day tour to Siena and San Gimignano which are in Tuscany and the drive there was just like the movies - Siena holds an anual horse race around the octagonal town square which is the event not to miss here....Tuscany really is a beautiful part of Italy.

After Florence we headed to Naples and travelling there we werent sure what to expect as we had heard so many bad stories about this city. However, as we had already accepted that there is alot more pollution here than our lovely clean country of residence, arriving was not so bad.
My personal hate is the walk from the train station to the hostel as we are carrying our 15kg+ backpacks and are totally helpless. Naples when we got off the train was busy with scooters speeding through the streets and ignoring the pedestrians, i was a little afraid doing this walk....
Our hostel here was nice though and really quiet homely, however there was a great flight of stairs to climb.
We did a day tour to Capri during our stay here and absolutely loved it, the water was clear blue and the sun was shining brightly... we easily could have stayed here for a week - I would strongly recommend Capri to anyone.

The next day we did a trip to Pompeii, the city that was covered over by the vulcano Vesuvius and then later rediscovered and left to its original state.... i think the vulcano erupted in 79AD and excavations did not commence until the 1700s.... some buildings still have the frescoes on the walls and one particular building worth mentioning is the brothel that is still intact and has concrete beds in each room and frescoes on the walls of "compromising positions"! (the brothel is not in use at present however and has not been since the vulcanic eruption)
I took alot from Pompeii as walking through these cobblestone streets that are now a tourist destination and able to see the vulcano, how immense and extreme this natural disaster would have been.

So leaving Naples we were off to Rome, a much nicer and relatively clean city, the hostel once again is not worth mentioning.
Firstly, Vatican city was cool, St peters Basillica (the largest cathedral in the world) is really quiet large!
And secondly the Sistine Chapel was fascinating - Michaelangelo and Boticelli and other famous artists climbed the walls to illustrate these fabulously colourful and meaningful pieces of work!
I could have sat in here for hours, 'the last judgement' by Michelangelo is the one that will remain my favourite.....
Other sights that we have seen on our walking through the city are : the monument dedicated to the unknown soldier, the pantheon, the trevi fountain, the spanish steps i will mention however they were full of italian teenagers so not alot to build a judgement on....
You may be wondering why i have forgotten to mention another huge tourist destination in Rome..... the Colosseum, well we havent been there yet - we still have 3 more nights here so we are doing that on Monday!

So now we are planning our time with Josh's parents that we meet in Paris in 2 weeks - we are looking forward to spending time with them and driving through Europe (i in particular am looking forward to some female company, and josh some male company).
So i will say goodbye and you should hear from Josh soon about the rest of Rome and some of Ireland (we are going there for St. Pattys day)

As the Italians say "Ciao"