Around the World with Charlie,Leon&Woods

Deciding we hadn't had quite enough beer, we moved on to Prague to sample the renowned cheap and awesome Czech beer (and wine for Leon, apparently not convinced by oktoberfest)

Whilst there we trialed the traditional Czech food of pork, dumplings, and more dumplings and also appreciated the beatifull architecture around the city.

Seeing as we were enjoying the cheapness of the Czech Republic so much, Katherine and Charlotte decided to head to another city near Prague - Cesky Krumlov.
Known as a mini Prague, Cesky Krumlov also had lots of cheap beer, including Budweiser - the original beer from the town Budvar in its best form, Super Strong!

Although after doing a tour through the local beer brewery in Cesky, which we suspect has not been updated or cleaned since it was built in the 1800's we decided to move on from the Czech beer and head to Austria!

In Germany possibly the most important day in Charlotte's life arrived - OKTOBERFEST. Thats right, 1 litre jugs of beer from 11am - 10pm, our memories are hazy but they did involve a hell of alot of beer, dancing on tables, pretzels, german sailors and spanish pilots...
Even Leon drank beer - and we have the photo to prove it!

After we recovered from our intensive 2 days of Oktoberfest drinking we headed to Fussen, the home of Neuschwanstein, the castle that Walt Disney based his fairtytale castle from. Needless to say the scenery really was amazing.

Continuing with nice scenery, we next headed to the Rhine Valley. Basing ourselves in Mainz at the end of the Rhine River, we took a cruise all the way up until we got stuck in a random little town and basically drank wine until the next boat (4 hours later...). Once again, the countryside - with medievil castles, vinyards and cute towns was spectacular.

Next we hit Germany's capitol - Berlin which we found to be possibly one of the most interesting cities for its recent and past history which has left its traces throughout the city.

Whilst in Berlin we also visited a concentration camp just outside the city which was both informative and depressing. Needless to say Germany has not forgotten its recent past and the giant Jewish memorial is a testament to this.

The last stop in Portugal was Porto, renowned, yes you guessed it, for its Port. While in Porto we did a day trip to Coimbra; a small university town a few hours away with the 3rd oldest University in Europe.
Whilst in Porto of course we also sampled the port... Several times.
First we did a port tasting at a local bar, and we liked it so much we spent the entire next day doing a port crawl along the banks of the river where all the local port cellars were.
We are now official old men who enjoy a nice port in the afternoon (especially 20 year old tawnys).

From Porto we went to Belgium to visit our dear friend Kate who took us in for 3 nights in Brussels (Thanks Katie!).
We spent a very relaxing 3 days, enjoying having our own couch and the entire box set of sex and the city possibly a little too much...

Being the home of Beer, chocolate and waffles, Belgium became very dear to our hearts and stomachs and on our nights out with Kate we grew to appreciate their super strong beer (9.5%) as well as the local specialty - Moules Frites (mussels and fries).

After a sad farewell to Kate we made our way to Amsterdam, to experience a different way of life.
Coffee Houses (that sell alot more than coffee), the red light district and some crazy nights out corrupted our clean morals forever.

(This is one of the windows that the prostitutes stand in half naked but sorry boys, its empty...)
And then finally, after many weeks of nervous anticipation, possibly the most important day of Leon and Katherine's lives arrived.... The Geelong Grand Final Day!
Being avid Geelong fans we of course found the only pub in amsterdam playing the game live and got up at the ungodly hour of 4.30 am to be there for the 5am pre-game entertainment, only to be kicked out due to licencing reasons until the 6.30 bounce.
Thankfully Geelong won and all was well with the world.

From lagos we headed to the Portugeuse Capital of Lisbon, which was just the right mix of seedy and nice. It was quite pretty with a gritty edge, an old castle overlooking the city, cool student area up the hills in the Bairro Alto (where we were staying), old yellow trams shuttling through the tiny streets and the best custard tarts in Portugal in Belem next to its iconic cathedral.

From Lisbon we did a few day trips to towns in the area including Obidos and the fairy tale like town of Sintra with its Moorish Castle high on the hill overlooking this cute village.

While in Lisbon it was also Leons birthday (the big 23!) and even his parents managed to be there to celebrate which made it even more of an occasion.
We all headed out to a famous local restaurant for a nice sit down dinner and later headed to the hostel which had hosted a little party for Leon.

After a hectic time travelling through Spain we took the bus to Lagos on the Algarve coast of Portugal for some time to chill out and rejuvinate.
Its true what they say of the place, come for a day and stay for a month, fortunately we managed to escape after 4 relaxing nights of rest and days spent at the many beaches.

In fact the only vaguely touristy thing we managed to accomplish while there was a boat trip, or should I say a Swan Love Boat tour through the grottoes.