Venice

The train to Venice(Venezia) was very scenic. The German and Austrian part was mountainous with gorgeous Chalets nestled into the hills. They were white, with red roofs and red flowers lining the windowsills and verandas. They were just so picture perfect, like out of a storybook. There were many old castles perched up on hilltops, staring into the horizon and lands below. As for the Italian part- vineyards ruled the land. They also looked as they should appear in an alter reality, rolling hills covered in rows of grapes with some brick Italian homes and wineries popping up on the edges.

The train station in Venice was right on the canal, so pretty much when you walk out of the train station it's just an instant wow factor. We crossed the bridge and found a hotel without too much difficulty. But we had to face the facts...If you want to go to Venice you gotta buck up! And that was just what we had to do, we ended up paying 150€ ($205) for a room! It was an absolutely gorgeous room though, one of the nicest I have ever stayed in. It was small but beautiful. From the gold gilded decor to the flower pots on the window sill, everything was spic and span. All the hues harmoniously complemented each other and the wood beam ceiling was a nice touch.

We ate dinner at an Italian trattoria and had some amazing seafood pastas. The next day my mom and I took the boat (sea bus they call it) down to Piazza San Marco. We took a little spin through the extravagant Basilica San Marco before attempting a walking tour back to our hotel.

The walking tour that was written in our Lonely Planet Guidebook was very complicated so we gave up after a little while. My mom bought an Italian leather purse and some murano glass stuff. I bought a tapestry bag, murano fish pendant and an Italian leather change purse.
For lunch we stopped and got an amazing slice of pizza each followed by some tasty gelato. For dinner, pasta it was!

Since we were short on time, two days was all Venice was rationed, so we could squeeze lots in. Venice was a magical city, all the winding canals and the hundreds of bridges.

The next day we hopped on the train to Florence.

Munich

Our flight from Delhi to Munich was great, we flew with Lufthansa. The plane was massive, one of the biggest I have ever been on (I have been on LOTS)! It was an Airbus A340 and you had to actually go downstairs to go the bathroom, where 5 of them were located. The breakfast was pretty good and also really huge. I think my favourite part was the drinks, the stewards and stewardesses came around close to 10 times handing out drinks! The flight a lot longer than I had anticipated, about 7ish hours.
Once in Munich(Müchen) we caught the S-Bahn(metro) into the city. We got off at Hauptbahnhof, it's the central station, near the town centre and where our train to Venice left from the next day. After a fair bit of looking we found a pretty good hotel with a shared bathroom and breakfast for 80€ ($108). It was a huge price difference from Asia, but we were expecting it.

For dinner we took the S-Bahn to nearby Marienplatz to get some dinner. Munich is totally famous for it's beer so we headed to Munich's most famous beer hall-Hofbrauhaus. My dad got a huge 1 litre mug of beer, while my mom and I ordered other drinks. For dinner we got yummy sausages and sauerkraut (and really good mustard), an amazing pork knuckle and some tasty German bread.

Back on the S-Bahn we went and headed back to Pension Central (our hotel). The following morning we wandered our way to Karlsplatz and the surrounding shops after an great breakfast of cold cuts, cheese and buns. There were some great (and pricey) souvenir shops around where we walked to. They sold absolutely gorgeous cuckoo clocks and beer steins, along with lots of other beautiful German souvenirs. The cuckoo clocks were my favourite, but came with a wallet-draining price tag. After a morning of gazing at cuckoo clocks we headed to Hauptbahnhof and got on the train to Venice.

Delhi

Wow! Delhi is a crazy, crazy city! I really can't describe it-hectic, chaos, mayhem, they all kinda suite the title, but still don't do it justice. The traffic plays a starring role and one word that comes to mind is honking. Lots and lots of honking! And what leads to all this honking, you ask? Impatience, that is a key word. They ALL have a lack of patience, it's not the majority, it's EVERYONE. I swear it must be in their genetics, it's gotta be! Probably also mob mentality, 'if those people in front of me aren't gonna wait, then why should I?'. Another key factor is their parents, if your parents drive like maniacs and your parents parents do as well...etc, etc, etc, they are lead by example.

We had a VERY hard time finding a hotel with clean sheets and wifi. The wifi was pretty important because we were flying to Germany the next day and really were quite clueless. Finally after finding a place with wifi, the sheets were dirty, so we had to ask for them be changed . What do you know, after they said they would fix the wifi, it still didn't work. After shower problems and room changes we pretty much gave up expecting things to work. Since there wasn't a whole lot to do in the hotel room we wandered around the market before greasing up at our first McDonalds in India. We were pretty happy to leave Delhi and head to Munich the next morning.

Manali

The drive to Manali a a long one, we has to stay overnight in Keylong on the way. The drive was gorgeous though! You really can't fully take it all in unless you are there. The mountains are just so huge and majestic, just so darn impressive! The scenery was quite varied, even just from looking on your right and then to your left you could see two completely different kinds of rocks. Sheerly sliced shale on one side and crumbly dry sandstone on the other.

We were really excited to sleep in a tent in Keylong, we thought it would be a neat experience, just like camping back at home (which we do lots). We were VERY sorely mistaken! The tents were in a hotel parking lot! As for an atmospheric camping setting, you can't get much worse than that. We were so disappointed by the tents that we went inside and booked an overpriced, not-so-clean government hotel room. I can't complain about the buffet dinner though, it was pretty good, just the usual Indian fix- roti, dal, curry, rice. Breakfast was nothing to rave about, just some really greasy roti things and curry. After another day of scenic driving we arrived in Manali.

We were surprised by how similar the climate and vegetation were compared to home. There were even some of the same wild flowers, we notice while hiking in BC. We had a look around that day and the next day we did some shopping. There were so many power outages in Manali, several hours per day there is no electricity and it's at totally random times too. Leh was really bad for power outages too. I got a poncho sewed for me and of course, while the guy was sewing the power went out. Since it is totally normal, the guy sewed the rest by spinning the wheel manually.
Once we were all finished our Manali shopping we waited in the hotel until 5pm and got on the night bus back to Delhi. I'm sad that we are finished with all this wonderful driving in the Himalayas, but at the same time I'm glad that all this driving-on-the-edge-of-cliff-constantly is over. It was always worrisome being up so high on such a narrow road. At one spot we looked over the cliff and there were three trucks turned into piles of rubble laying on the valley floor below. They had all driven straight off the side of the cliff, probably due to bad road conditions...the roads up there are only open for 4 months per year, due to excessive snowfall in the winter.
Those mountains have some serious skiing potential, but there is pretty much no infrastructure here in the winter, because of the mass amounts of snow. Speaking of all this coldness, we stopped in a town called Drass, in between Srinigar and Leh for a tea break. There was a sign there that said Drass was the second coldest inhabited place in the world.

Leh

Our flight from Delhi to Srinagar was a little under an hour and a half. Srinagar wasn't anything too special, just a rather dingy town (or more like city) with some cheapo dankish hotels. We got a prepaid taxi from the airport and our irritating taxi driver kept wanting to take us to the houseboats. Finally we had to demand that he took us to the Tourist Reception Center and we got there with a few detours by the houseboats.
On our drive from Delhi to Agra my Dad's knee started getting sore and by the time we were in Srinagar it was very inflamed and painful. So once in Srinagar we decided to go the the hospital right near our hotel. The doctor suggested it was sprained and he should keep it elevated and give it lots of rest.
The following day we got on the bus to Leh with an overnight stop in Kargil. Luckily the whole front of the bus was like a flat padded platform, so my dad got to sit up there with his leg up, with the driver and the conductor. The drive was absolutely gorgeous! The mountains were so ginormous and amazing, it's really hard to describe. Even pictures can't do those things justice! The drive to Kargil wasn't really high up but we were on the edge of a cliff almost the whole time so it was pretty sketchy. It was still really high up, but not as high as the other ones we were yet to go on in Northern India. That evening we got to Kargil and found a decent hotel quite quickly. In order to get some sleep for our early rise the next morning. After a bit of confusion with the taxi drivers we made it to the bus station by 4:30 in the morning, just in time to get on the bus to Leh. That stretch of the drive was equally beautiful, getting a bit higher and dryer with less greenery and more barrenness.

By the time we were nearing Leh, we were fully immersed into the Great Himalayas. The town of Leh itself, was very beautiful at 3500m above sea level. There were prayer flags strung across the street and plenty of little souvenir shops to poke your head in. Leh was really quite a nice place to wander around. We stayed in Leh for about 4 days. One of which my mom and I ventured up the monastery. It really wasn't that far to hike up the the monastery, but it was a lot of work. My mom and I were both getting headaches, a symptom of altitude sickness and there was zero shade on the way up. It was very beautiful at the top. The view of Leh was gorgeous and there were many prayer flags blowing in the wind. I love prayer flags, they are so picturesque, strung across Himalayan mountain peaks. I just had to buy some to put in my room!

Once my mom and I were finished at the monastery we headed back down to Leh and to our favourite little Tibetan restaurant. Tashi Tibetan Restaurant was amazing! The food was great and the prices were dirt cheap. You could get a really good bowl of veggie soup for a dollar! Oh and the cinnamon cardamom tea was some of the best tea I have ever had and it was only 25 cents! For breakfast we would have a piece of naan bread topped with jam for 35 cents. The food in India is the second cheapest we have had, with Myanmar in the lead. Hotels in India are cheap also, only about $20 for a decent triple room-we have had some trouble with cleanliness though.

We were debating whether to go to Nubra Valley but in the end we decided that we would. Nubra Valley is an area outside of Leh famed for scenic landscape. But most of Nubra's pride and glory comes from the road to get there. Or even more specifically, the pass-Khardung La Pass. Khardung La is the highest motorable pass/road in the whole world. So pretty much when you are at Khardung La Pass, you are as high up on the world as any vehicle can go. That's a pretty big feat, so I bought a plaque at the little souvenir shop on the top. We posed for a few photos by the sign before getting back on our way to Nubra. Ooops! I forgot to mention the most important part...the height! Khardung La is a whopping 18,380 feet (around 5,602 meters) above sea level. The drive to Nubra was great, the towering mountains peering down at you as you drive by. The best part was the variety- you would be in a lush green forest, then all of a sudden in the arid desert and then drive alongside a raging river. We bunked down in a small town called Diskit and then went up to see the giant Buddha statue nearby. The next morning we headed back over Khardung La and continued on back to Leh.

We arrived back in Leh just in time to do some last minute shopping. The next morning we rose early to catch the bus to Manali.

Agra

We arrived in Delhi in the afternoon and got picked up by a taxi right there at the airport. In Bangkok we had called and arranged for a taxi driver by the name of Raju to pick us up. He had been recommended by a friend of a friend that drove around with him for 2 weeks. And there he was standing there at the airport with our names on a piece of paper. We were glad he showed up because over time we have had quite a few taxi no-shows.
There was no need for us to stay in Delhi, so Raju took us to Agra-home of the Taj Mahal. The drive was about 4 hours with a samosa stop on the way. Mmmmm, samosas, our first taste of Indian food, it was great! He took us to a good cheap hotel called Maya Hotel, only about a 10 minute walk from the Taj Mahal. That evening we ate some really good Indian food for dinner. Indian meals usually work by ordering a few different dishes and sharing them, with some roti or naan on the side to dip with.
The next morning we had an early start in order to be at the Taj by 6am. Wow. Wow. Wow. The Taj Mahal was AMAZING! It was so much more than I expected! The whole entire thing is made of beautiful white marble. From a distance it just looks nice, but you can't fully take it in until you have been up close. The intricacy and detail is mesmerizing. It is full of what looks to be flowers painted onto the walls, but they aren't actually painted, they are inlaid. Every single flower is carved of numerous semiprecious stones and then inlaid into the marble. These stones were shipped from all over the world just to make the Taj. The Taj was built some 350 years back by an emperor named Shah Jahan for his third wife Mumtaz Mahal. He built it for her as a memorial, as she died giving birth to her 14th child. It took an estimated 22 years to build by 20,000 workers. Now every day about 10,000 people visit the Taj Mahal everyday.

After gazing in awe at the Taj for a while, we headed back to the hotel for some breakfast and rest. Once rested and well fed we headed out again to do some souvenir shopping. By far the most popular souvenirs in Agra are made of marble, lots and lots of marble! I bought a miniature Taj made of marble and my parents bought a pile of other marble stuff.
My mom and I continued on to visit the Agra Fort, while my dad went back to the hotel to rest his sore knee. The Agra fort was amazing, a really unique style. It kinda reminded me of a medieval fort with the huge red brick walls and moat with a drawbridge. Part of the interior continued on with that theme, while other parts were marble. The fort is very old and has been passed along through many generations but there is one story that most people know it by. I should of mentioned earlier that the Taj cost over $500,000 to build 350 odd years ago! To give it more perspective it would cost about $40million dollars to build today. As you may think not everyone in the picture would be happy with Shah Jahan spending that much money to build something for his dead wife. The person who showed their dismay most was Shah Jahan's own son Aurangzeb. Shortly after the completion of the Taj Mahal, Aurangzeb overthrew his father and imprisoned him in the Agra Fort. Shah Jahan was imprisoned for eight years (until his death) in the Agra Fort. Probably the most important thing to mention about the Agra Fort is, where Shah Jahan was imprisoned there was a great view of the Taj. I guess it would be bittersweet looking out at your creation everyday for eight years and knowing it was the reason you were in the situation you were in. But it would probably also give you some emotional strength knowing your beloved wife was buried inside of there and waiting for you. And after those eight years he got reunited with his wife at last, his body got brought down from the fort and buried beside his wife inside the Taj. After seeing the area where Shah Jahan was imprisoned, I didn't really feel that sorry for him, it was really a gorgeous place with white marble and stone inlays and a spectacular view of the Taj and the river below. I enjoyed walking around the fort, it is huge above ground but it also has many blocked off corridors and dingy rooms used to house servants underground.

We headed back to the hotel and booked some train tickets to Delhi for the next morning. Once we arrived in Delhi the next morning we hopped on a plane to Srinagar.

Bangkok

It took about an hour and a half on the boat and about 8 hours in the bus before we reached Bangkok. We checked in at Bhiman Inn, close to Khao San Road, but not so close that you can hear the thumping music. Khao San Road is an iconic landmark in Bangkok, known for it's bars, restaurants, accommodation and shopping-all at a cheap price. It is of the most popular backpacker hotspots in all of Southeast Asia. Since we got in to Bangkok rather late we just got some cheap pad thai and had a little it if a wander to check things out. While on our walk about we found some amazing street food-another thing Bangkok is famous for.

The following day we decided we were going to walk to a temple called Wat Pho. On our way a suspiciously friendly Thai man confronted us and we talked for a little bit. We told him that we intended to go to Wat Pho, but he said it was closed until 12:30pm(it was about 9am when we started off). We believed him and we were also on the look out for souvenirs, so he suggested that we go to a certain place. He arranged for a tuk tuk to take us their for only 50baht ($1.50) and we agreed. The tuk tuk took us halfway across town to a fancy jewellery factory. As soon as we pulled in and saw ladies with fancy dresses we knew it wasn't where we belonged. We tend to shop at cheap local markets not upscale gold and silver jewellery manufacturers. We peered inside and turned right back around to flag down a taxi, which luckily is very easy, even in remote parts of Bangkok. Obviously there were some commissions being paid to the involved parties in the scam. It wasn't really a bad scam, we didn't loose anything except a bit of time, but it was aggravating to know we couldn't just assume that people would be honest and helpful instead of trying to rip you off.
After the scam we went back to the hotel to have a swim and relax before my mom and I headed out to Wat Pho. And of course when we arrived we soon found out it wasn't actually closed till 12:30pm. Wat Pho is home to Thailand's largest reclining Buddha. Wow! It sure lived up to it's title because the Buddha was absolutely enormous. It is 46m long and 15m high! The reclining Buddha was the first and most impressive attraction in the temple compound, but there were many other ponds, statues and pagodas as well. Since we walked over to Wat Pho we decided to take the river boat back. The river was a rather hectic place with boats constantly stopping and starting, going in all directions. It was a neat experience and the view of the city was great-a different perspective than from the road.

The next morning we checked into a different hotel a bit closer to the Khao San action, but still not noisy. The room was nicer and we also got English TV channels.
After we got all checked in we took a taxi over to MBK-the most well known mall in Bangkok. MBK is known for it's cheap stuff, you don't go looking for Louis Vuitton and Chanel. There is a good variety too, it's quite boring looking around a mall with only clothes or only electronics, MBK has a bit of everything. We did a bit of shopping and browsing around MBK before searching for a hotel for the following night nearby. There are several other malls in the same vicinity so we thought the location would be great. And great it was, we found a hotel called A-One Inn, only about a 3 minute walk from MBK. We then booked the hotel for our next two days in Bangkok (since we already had one on Khao San Road for that night).

Back to Khao San we went, after we knew we had a new hotel in a great location for the next night. On that evening we took the river boat to Asiatique night market. We had a long and fun river boat ride to Asiatique, the boat constantly cruising into the docks at full speed and then hammering on the reverse, meanwhile the conductor is blowing piercing noises out of the whistle. I gotta say the boat ride to the market was quite a bit better than the market itself. It was overpriced and the shopkeepers wouldn't even look (let alone talk!) at you when you said you could buy it somewhere else cheaper. In my opinion Thailand in general did not live up to it's reputation of being the 'land of smiles', there were just so many miserable people. I think it's because they have had so many tourists that they don't care any more and we are a nuisance to them more than anything else. I'm not saying all Thai people weren't friendly, but there were lots that were. I think by far the friendliest people we have met in Thailand, were from Myanmar working. The Thai people don't have to pay the Burmese (Myanmar) people as much money as they would other Thais, and even at that the Burmese still make more money than they would back in Myanmar. The Burmese were appreciative that they could get a job in Thailand and were happy to help the tourists. I think that the Burmese both in Thailand and Myanmar were the most friendly I have met abroad. Now back on track...we didn't stay long at the market but it was worth going just for the boat ride. We passed some very beautiful and nicely lit up temples on our way up and down the river. There were also some very fancy dinner cruise boats we passed on the river, most of them almost empty.

That next morning we did some last minute t-shirt shopping on Khao San Road before checking out of our hotel. On Khao San Road there are also many vendors selling all kind of insects to eat. My dad decided to try some scorpion, cricket, cockroach and larvae. Yuck, yuck, yuck, definitely not for me!  Once we got the taxi to MBK we dropped our bags at A-One Inn and went shopping. We checked out some of the other nearby malls but wandered back to MBK in the end, because it was our favourite.
For dinner that night we ate at an amazing restaurant inside MBK. I don't remember what it was called but it was spectacular! It was all you can eat hot pot, sushi, ice cream and juice for an an hour and fifteen minutes. There was a conveyer belt going around with all sorts of stuff to cook in your built in hot pot table. The sushi bar was also great, with loads of different types of sushi. It was a VERY good meal for 300 baht ($10) each. It was expensive for Asian standards (we usually eat at little cheap places on the side of the road) but it was well worth it. You would NEVER be able to get something like that at home for even a remotely similar price. Evidently word had gotten out about the great deal because there was a big lineup just to get a table.

The next day was our last day in Bangkok. So we made the most of it and full out shopped all day. An early start was made so we could head out to Chatuchak Weekend Market and beat the heat. Chatuchak market is absolutely huge! It is 35 acres and has about 15,000 stalls. Luckily we came on Saturday so it wasn't very busy and not all the shops were open. I'm glad they weren't all open because we made out just fine with the hundreds or thousands that were open. It would be too overwhelming with all if them and all the people. We bought lots and lots of souvenirs there and even found some obscure and difficult to find carvings we saw on Koh Tao. We were overjoyed that we finally found them, because we had been looking all over Bangkok for them. We did a bit more shopping in MBK and I found a really cool retro Pan Am Airlines bag.
Finally we headed to the post office to mail home our hoards of stuff. 25 kilos actually! After a lot of packing up the parcels we headed back out to shop yet again!
This time we headed over to Pratunam Market. It was a not bad market but there wasn't a lot of variety, so I bought a change purse and a t-shirt. We ate some lab kai and papaya salad at a tasty sidewalk restaurant before continuing shopping. There were some stalls set up on the side of the road with very nice stuff that we checked out on our way back to the hotel. The stuff I thought was a lot better looking than the stuff in the market itself and was also quite cheap. So I bought some shorts and a tank top and my dad bought some really cute baby outfits for his friend's kids.

After an exhausting day of shopping and walking we headed back to our hotel to catch some sleep, before our flight to Delhi the next morning. We walked A LOT in Bangkok, on our last day alone we walked at least 10km, we left at 9am and never really had a full rest until we got back at 9pm. We were totally ready to do some sitting for a change, on our four hour flight to Delhi.