Hello everyone, it’s been a long time!

As promised I’ve finally made it online long enough to update the long dead Online Epiphany. The last year has been a busy one which has mostly taken me offline when I’m not at the office, and now sees me with my girlfriend Jasmin on a northern Europe backpacking trip.

We started out on August 2nd in Toronto and caught an 8:30PM flight to Heathrow airport in London. From there we took a short bus to Gatwick to stay with an aquaintance of Jasmin’s family named Piki. After a lovely day with Piki exploring the burgs around London, we bought EuroLines passes and hopped onto the bus to travel to Brussels, Belgium.

Brussels is magnificent, as our first taste of the mainland and it’s tall tall buildings and cozy little streets, it did much to impress us - that is until we entered the Grand Place, where buildings, churches and a museum built in the late 1600s climbed the sky and surrounded us on it’s cobblestone streets. We immediately got our tourist hats on and sat down for les moules frites, which were the best mussels I’d ever had. Stuffed we went to sleep in a cozy hostel outside of town near an impressive botanical garden, and prepared for the next 2 days exploring a beautiful city. By now it was Friday, August 6th.

Next we hopped on the bus to Amsterdam, and unfortunately arrived too late on a busy Friday to get a room. We packed our things into a locker and prepared to tough out the night outside, exploring the canals and shops of the ‘Venice of the North’. After sampling some ‘coffee shops’ we sat down for a long night’s sleep on a bench, before awaking and booking into the first hostel we could find - and what a great hostel it was!

Our 3 days in Amsterdam were spent mainly exploring, being trapped in the tourist areas for most of the time but finally sneaking off to the Central Canal Ring to see some of the high rent areas of the city, and finally to see Anne Frank’s home. Many trips through the Red Light District at night showed it’s pretty overrated, but amusing to see the men leer and pick up the women for sale lining the streets.

From Amsterdam, we got onto yet another bus (this time a double decker!) and arrived in Copenhagen on Wednesday, August 12th. Since we’ve been here, we’ve decided that this is the most romantic city we’ve seen yet. Last night we sat in a gorgeous park, and then sat by one of the canals completely unaffected by what would have been tons of people and lights if we were in Amsterdam.

This morning we met up with Leon at Netgroup who gave us a driving tour of Copenhagen and has now brought me in to do a little work. Tonite perhaps we will check out the waterfront or the Tivoli, after we sneak over to a beach to swim in the ocean (which I haven’t done since I was a kid in Florida with my father).

I will try to write again soon, sorry for the abridged version, but I’ll have many pictures and stories when I return home on the 22nd!

PS. We have booked a bus for tomorrow morning to take us into Berlin for the day. We should arrive at 2PM and then will book another bus to leave Berlin at 11:30PM and take us to Prague. From Prague we’d like to see either Warsaw or Krakow before heading back towards the UK and hopefully spending our last 2 days in Edinburgh before heading on train back to London for our flight out. See you all when I return!

Love,
Ryan & Jasmin