Trips for this year...

Because I am so ridiculously excited about them, I'm going to outline the trips I've got planned for this year so far:

• The first and most minor (but still exciting) is the melbourne weekend. We're going on the first weekend of May to melbourne for the Friday and Saturday nights... now, it was recently pointed out to me that Monday of that weekend is in fact a public holiday, but I didn't realise this at the time of planning the trip or we would have stayed Sunday night as well. We got super-cheap flights from Tiger air (departing gold coast... what to do with my car? Do you think that it will get towed away if I leave it parked somewhere near the airport? haha), though I've heard mixed reviews of the airline so we'll see how we go. It's not like we're on the flight for long enough that it should matter if they're a little dodgy, as long as the pilot knows how to fly and the plane doesn't fall apart mid air I'm sure we'll be fine. Soooo, it will be my first visit to Melbourne. It's also a day after ankonick's birthday, and the third happens to be our 1.5 year anniversary (haha), how romantic. Should be fun! :P

Now for the good part: On August 15th (friday morning) we'll be departing from Brisbane for our big europe-uk-hk trip... here's what it looks like so far:

• 15th & 16th of August: Tokyo. We'll be flying qantas, and arrive fairly late in Tokyo, but we'll have all of the 16th to explore before we leave on the 17th. We're staying (hmm hold on, where are we staying... I swear I booked somewhere but now I can't find it... let me see... ok found it) here: http://www.villa-fontaine.co.jp/eng/
• 17th & 18th: Zurich. This wasn't a stop over we were going to do originally, but was only $100 as we're flying swiss air, so why not? Zurich looks really pretty. We're staying here: http://www.booking.com/hotel/ch/hotelarlette.en.html
• 19th & 20th: Paris. The city of love (and ridiculously expensive coffee, or so I'm told). We're flying in from Zurich with swiss air, and my brother will be back from his Paris adventure (and cat-sitting our furbabies), so we'll have lots of advice on what to see and do whilst there. One of the things I'm most excited about doing in europe is eating cheese every breakfast... very thrilling indeed. We're staying here: http://www.hotelebermars.com/
• 21st, 22nd & 23rd: Newcastle. We're going to a wedding in Darlington, the UK, so will be heading from Paris to Newcastle on the afternoon of the 21st. Jules and Chris, my long time internet buddies, shall be meeting us at the airport, taking us for drinks and then back to Darlington with them. We're flying easyjet for the paris-newcastle trip, and I've heard many a terrible thing about them but I really don't care; it's an hour long flight, how much can really go wrong? I don't care if they don't give us food and have rude staff, lol. The wedding is being held at a golf course, and this is where we shall probably stay as well: http://www.foliohotels.com/hallgarth/
• 24th & 25th: Amsterdam... the city of red light wonderfulness and joints in cafes. We fly from Newcastle to Amsterdam with British Air, stopping in London for a few hours (but I'm not sure if this means we will actually have time to go out of the airport... if we do, I'd like to go outside just so I can take a picture and say that I have actually been to London, ha). Amsterdam looks very interesting. We're staying at this weird and wonderful place: http://www.chicandbasic.com/eng/hotel_amsterdam/
• 26th: Dusseldorf. We're going by first class train from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf using our five day Benelux train pass from eurail (I should probably remember to see if this needs to be booked at some stage...). We're stopping in Dusseldorf for the night to stay with my gorgeous fellow psychology friend Joan, who will no doubt go to great lengths to ensure that we experience all that dusseldorf has to offer, at least as far as beer and a good meal is concerned.
• 27th - 1st September: Munich. Actually, we won't be quite in the centre of Munich as we're staying with ankoNick's relatives from Unterbachern, which is very close to Dachau (half an hour from Munich). The aunt we're staying with doesn't speak english, and his relatives have been known for taking his siblings to naked spas without disclosing the nature of the 'swimming' trip until they get there... let's hope that they don't engage in such events during summer! His cousins, who do speak english and will be on holidays while we're over, are going to take us around and show us the sights of Bavaria.
• 1st Sep - 5th Sep: Berlin. This part of our trip is particularly exciting, because we might get to stay up later than 9pm and pretend that we're not old. If we don't go anywhere else, we're going here: http://www.water-gate.de/ you should check out videos of watergate on youtube to see how wicked their lights are... many an awesome artist plays at this club, and the lights are so unreal. Yes, I'm going to berlin so that I can see pretty lights. But seriously, I'm sure there's lots of other fun things to do in Berlin, which we shall discover once over there... We're getting there by train, obviously, and staying here: http://www.booking.com/hotel/de/friedrichshain.en.html
• 6th - 12th September: Hong Kong. Ohhh, hong kong is going to be much fun indeed! I'm attending the ISPCAN conference (along with my boss, sadly as this means I must go to most sessions!). Disneyland and market shopping shall be on the agenda for this part of the trip. We should be staying in this very beautiful hotel (thank you qld health! :P), although I booked over a month ago and yet to get any sort of confirmation, so who knows. Anyway, here it is: http://www.islandpacifichotel.com.hk/

So, that's it... pretty damn thrilling if I do say so myself! Now I just need to pay off the rest of our flights and save about 20345745747 thousand dollars for food and spending. I think I may also go to Melbourne later on in the year to present at a conference there (again, thank you qld health). I also applied to present at a conference in New Zealand for July, but don't know if this will actually happen.

Ok, must go now as this entry is very long and my laptop has been doing this lately. It's the matrix!