in fair verona, where we lay our scene

Visiting Europe was an analysis of romanticisation v. reality. Where Paris - city of lights, city of love, etc, etc - was found to be lacking, Italy was really charming. It does occur to me it may only be because it's the backdrop of Romeo and Juliet, but there's something about Verona. The result of "Hey, Verona is halfway between Venice and Milan, do you want to visit?" crammed Verona into five hours, following this fantastic guide.

Y'know, just a casual first century amphitheatre in the city centre because.

I had braced myself for the crowd at Juliet's Balcony, but people came in waves and there was sometimes no one else there at all. Winter is good. Go in winter.

Rubbing Juliet's right breast is a tradition of good luck, but it's an uncomfortable realisation when you remember she's only thirteen in Shakespeare's play and sixteen at best in the original poem, and you see grown-up men doing it. Well, all the fortune in love for you.

Where the Montague house may have been, the complementary matching plaque graffitied all over.

hello from cologne

I'm in Germany! Cologne is the first of the German cities I'm visiting this trip. I'm staying in this wicked hostel, in a themed capsule queen-sized dorm bed! Best combination possible? I think so too. I'm almost sad to leave, but there are more countries to visit and cities to see. Heidelberg is the next stop, as long as I find the bus. (Finding bus stops is migraine inducing. There was a lot of panic in Ghent. Running through my head was a litany of swear words before I found the small sign signalling the Eurolines stop.)

Anyhow this is Cologne, of the famed cathedral. The detailing is incredible.

And the last of the many Christmas markets I've been to. Photos below are a combination of the many in Cologne. The one in Neumarkt was my favourite, with the canopy of lit-up stars and carousel.

here be a london tourist post

The good thing with jet lag - if it could be ever considered a good thing - is that I have a lot of time in the mornings. The past two mornings I've been waking up at the ungodly hour of three, where I crawl out of bed into the living room and woe at my body clock. My friends have been telling me it'll take me about a week to recover. In the mean time, I will attempt to keep up some schedule so I don't reach that stage where there are too many photos to edit that I throw in the hat. My poor laptop doesn't know what to do with so many raw files.

Starting off the day with breakfast before taking the tube to Westminster. It was a grey and slightly wet morning.

Met up with my friend at the British Museum but didn't stay very long. We came to the realisation that museums are not places to catch up. Alas, I'm going to head back there today to enjoy it at my own pace. Time to pull out that high school history list of things to see!

Because tourists. When in London, y'know.

i'm in london

...and I'm so incredibly jet lagged. Two twelve hour flights and a six hour layover where I was mad enough to dash out of Beijing Airport and meet up with friends over coffee. (I had a sunset airport photo I was going to insert here, but I managed to delete it without exporting it because I'm brilliant like that.)

My friend lives in outer London, and I feel like I'm staying in Privet Drive, in one of those square brown houses. I'm incredibly charmed. That, and very exhausted. I woke up at 4:30AM this morning and read two-thirds of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and ate all the chocolate in this One Direction advent calendar. My friend picked me up from a tube station and presented it to me as a "Welcome to London!" gift. What can I say? She knows just how incredibly uncool I am.

cherry picking in young

Young is Australia's cherry capital. My family decided to go again this year, and I dragged my friend along for the four hour ride from Sydney. Olympic Highway is where we found the majority of the orchards, and we visited three in total in Goldilocks fashion. The first one was Allambie Orchards. Cherries were $6 a kilo and weren't very big or sweet, so the five of us barely filled a bucket together. The second one isn't even worth mentioning - required a minimum of 3kg per person so we didn't enter the orchard. And the third and preferred one was Ballinaclash, where we sat on the back of a pick up truck on hay bales. Cherries were $7 a kilo and better, though I think two more weeks would've had sweeter and riper cherries.

Pick your own? More like all you can eat. My friend and I sat down because we were tired from tasting each tree. It was a process of taste, taste, taste, empty that tree.

There is now almost twenty kilos of cherries in my fridge. It feels like Summer.