You may have come here via a direct link and have no navigation buttons. Click here to go to the main Europe 2002-3 page.
Mon, 08 Dec 2003
Back to Reality ( )
OK, so it took me almost two weeks to update the website to say we were home - there's been lots happening! Celebrating my brother Peter's wedding, trying to organise a bedroom, computers, cycling around our new old world and of course meeting up with people.
I know we are still missing a week in France and Belgium back there, that will come soon, as will a tidy up of a lot of things. I'm not sure what will happen with all of this, I'd like to put together a DVD version with more photos and a better interface. Soon. Maybe.
Note also the new Tree-View in the Journal Archives. It's not finished yet but you can play around with it.
But besides that, the Europe 2002/2003 trip has drawn to a close. I'll continue ranting and raving over here, so update your bookmarks accordingly if you are interested. For my first entry, I've started with some excitement about how we were about twenty metres away from up to fifty shots fired and the surrounding chaos with friends yesterday.
We travel around the world for fifteen months with no (safety) problems whatsoever and the first pub we go to back home we have to run away from mad shooters.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 24 Nov 2003
Touchdown! ( )
After getting up very early to get ourselves on the road, squeezing four people and all our baggage into Meaghan's little Corsa/Barina, we were on the road. It wasn't long before we were glad of our decision to leave so early - a five car pileup on the M1 and then standard Monday-morning traffic on the M25. The trip was about two hours, after which we bid Meaghan and Dave a farewell for at least a year (at this stage!), thanking them for making our last journey to Heathrow so much easier.
Not much later, we had boarding cards all the way to Sydney (a good thing - I was a little aprehensive that we might have problems with our tickets, since they had come to us from a non-conventional travel agent cheapestflights.co.uk, but I needn't have worried. Similarly for our concerns about getting all our baggage on the plane - both our cases were about the 5kg-over-regulation 25kg we were told we could take, and our excessive hand luggage was professionally ignored. It was all easy from here!
No stamps out of the country for us, and before we knew it we were killing time in departures, spending up the pounds (Liz predictably bought a giant Toblerone, quite a tradition now) and euros (breakfast at an Irish pub there) we couldn't change. The gate appeared and we were off to do some more waiting.
The first flight was no drama other than quite a bit of turbulance. Singapore Airlines amazed us as always, doing their level best to make the long flight go faster with excellent service and plenty of gizmos to play with.
We didn't get much sleep, and by the time we had to get off and change planes in Singapore it was starting to catch up with us. My memory of the free wireless proved hazy, so we just sat for a bit, also amusing ourselves on the moving walkways. Two hours after our first touchdown, and we were ready to board our final flight before home!
It wasn't going to be quite that easy, as an announcement came over the speaker for a doctor to come to the desk asap. Liz is close enough when there is an emergency, so off she dashed. It turned out that an old lady had over-done it and had perhaps suffered a stroke. As always, Liz handled the situation amazingly well and calmed the poor dear down while we awaited the airport doctors' arrival.
We were the last two on the plane (they had held it for us), and after removing the old lady's baggage we were ready for take-off. The second flight was much faster (catching the wind which blows west-east across Australia), and much smoother. No sleep came here either, but after another great flight we were back in Sydney!!! What a strange concept.
Being the good citizens we are, we declared lots of wood and food we were carrying (no problems at all there), and walked out of the terminal building to a huge crowd of people. The smaller but still impressive group of our friends and family who had come to meet us was an amazing sight to see - fifteen months earlier we had left them from not far from here at all, and now after seeing so much we were home.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 23 Nov 2003
Last Full Day on This Side of the World ( No photos )
Perhaps our longest sleep-in this entire trip came today, finally dragging ourselves out of bed about 1pm. Meaghan seemed to be doing the worst of all from the excesses of the previous night, but a big fry-up breakfast soon put everything right.
Besides convincing them all to pose for a photo, not really much was done today. A few trips out here and there for supplies, Dave had to work, some TV got watched, and Liz and I caught up with journal.
Now we just have to finish packing our suitcases and hope and pray that they aren't overweight (or at least Singapore Airlines choose not to bother us about it if they are), and order in a pizza for the night.
It's funny that the whole trip is finally coming to an end - the emotions are a mix of sadness, disbelief and nervous excitement that we will return to the 'real world' for quite a while at least. Can't complain for a second - we've had a fantastic trip that we look forward to telling you all about (if you want to hear it, that is!). And of course there is plenty more of the world to see yet.
If there is as I seem to remember wireless net access in Singapore I'll put an update online from there, otherwise see you all in Sydney!
Flight Details: Tomorrow we leave here about 5:30am to get to Heathrow for the 11am SQ317 flight to Singapore, arriving 07:40 local time 25/11. After a two hour stop-over, we actually make it to Sydney on SQ219 at 8:15pm on Tuesday the 25th. Feel free to drop down to Kingsford Smith and say hello! We'd love to see as many faces as possible, of course!
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 22 Nov 2003
Australia Falls to the Poms ( No photos )
We were all up early, Liz, Meaghan and I keen to show Dave (who is English) that the Aussies were going to clobber those pesky Poms in the Rugby World Cup Final. We donned jerseys, hoisted flags and headed into the big Weatherspoon's pub in central Milton Keynes in Meaghan's new car.
Shunning all reasoning, we got a few pints and sat down to watch the 9am kick off. Myself and the two girls were pretty much the only Aussie supporters there, against a crowd of the 'barmy army' in red and white. This didn't stop us from cheering loudly, but everyone was good sports about it.
As Jonny put that final kick over, we knew our vocals would come back to haunt us, but we just had friendly handshakes with the supporters, conceding that England had been the better team on the day, it was a fantastic game, and that the poms deserved to win. Oh well, we only have to be in the country for a couple more days to deal with the constant phone calls and text messages from English friends keen to rub it in!
The next thing after all that early-morning drinking and some post-match chatter was some food, and Meaghan and Dave led us to one of the pubs near the Snow Dome (one of the stranger things to find in a place such as Milton Keynes). We ate a great hearty meal before heading back to their place.
It wasn't too suprising that we ended up sleeping for most of the afternoon, which worked out well actually as we were heading back into town for a big bender for the night. A taxi drove us in, and after being sniffed by a sniffer dog and given the seal of approval, we were let into the noisy Lloyds bar. Plenty of Meaghan and Dave's friends were on hand to chat to, but overall the place was too packed and over-noisy to get much chatting done with heads more than one foot apart.
We set off about 1am to find a cab back to their place and crash for the evening.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 21 Nov 2003
Milton Keynes Again ( No photos )
(Continued from London 4)
We eventually found our way into Milton Keynes, through most of the 138 roundabouts, on the phone to Meaghan as she gave us directions to their incredibly hard to locate new house. The directions I had printed out from Multimap were basically useless, but eventually we were there.
Their place is a nice little open-plan two-story house, plenty big enough for the two of them and in a nice quiet street.
After dragging our bags inside, and of course a cup of tea, Peter went off with Dave in search of accommodation for the night. Dinner came in the form of a great pasta and salad, after which we spent the night chatting on various topics from travel and sport through to politics, and of course language differences between English and Australian.
(permanent link to this story)
Final Farnborough Frolic ( No photos )
It was time to battle the London traffic for the final time, Peter expertly piloted his new Peugeot 307, which he calls "Son of Percy". He purchased it from the same place we obtained Percy from after being impressed with the original Percy. This one is of course newer and better, with enough buttons to keep the driver occupied for years to come.
Our first stop was Farnborough, where Peter and Liz's mother Margaret were brought up. We drove up Starts Hill Avenue to look at the house and around the area in general. There is far more traffic and traffic lights of course, but not a lot has changed with the house itself.
Next it was on to the cemetery where Peter's parents (and hence Liz's grandparents) are buried. There are plans afoot for a new memorial plaque, but that won't be organised for quite a while, so we braved the rain to have a look around before deciding to move on.
It was of course Peter's birthday! So, a celebration was called for, and the venue was to be none other than the Change of Horses, our favourite Farnborough-ish pub. We had lunch there, our shout for Peter, and I just had to order one final serving of spotted dick (photographed here with Liz and Peter) before we left the country. Liz and I gave him a Swiss Card for his birthday, purchased of course on our way through Switzerland.
Back on the road, we battled south London traffic to get across to Pearly, where Margaret Knight lives, a friend of Peter and Margaret from way back. We had visited her with Margaret quite a while ago, but arrived a little too early this time. We went for a walk up on "the common", meaning a grassy reserve. In this case it was up on the hill, and a wonderful reminder of how beautiful London can be on the outskirts, complete with fog and drizzle. Wonderful.
After a bit of a walk through this area, excellently preserved from development by the Corporation of London, we went back to Margaret's house to find she was now there. We didn't have a long time to stay around, but a cup of tea and a chat, getting her up to date with at least some of our travels since we last met worked out well.
We wanted to get moving, as we had to get through rush our traffic up to Milton Keynes to stay with Meaghan and for the night. As it turned out, the traffic on the M25 and then the A1 was horrific, the journey taking several hours. We sat and listened to the radio to all sorts of characters ringing in with their opinions about the two news headlines - George Bush's visit to Tony Blair's local pub where he ate Fish, Chips and Mushy peas. The town had its usual population of 1500 swelled to 3000 just with security staff and media for this event. The locals were amazed as they told tales of how Bush had said the place was nice and other assorted small-talk.
The next story of course was the impending Rugby World Cup final, where the excitement was reaching fever pitch. The next morning we would see how it all played out.
During this, we drove onwards to Milton Keynes.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 20 Nov 2003
Meeting Peter, Les Misérables ( No photos )
Midway through the day, after Liz and I had done some serious packing and organising of our luggage (so much to sort through!), a knock on the door heraled the arrival of Peter, Liz's uncle who we stayed with so much up in Carlisle.
He was down to say a last goodbye for a couple of nights before Liz and I head off, and also to see some sights with us around London.
After Les and Pearl provided plenty of cups of tea, we borrowed Peter and his new car for a drive into Hornchurch to post lots of things back to Oz. A little while later, we had 20kg of books and things packed into two boxes on their way back to Oz. One is going airmail so it may actually beat us home!
Peter found us a nice pub in the main road for lunch, where we ate a hearty lunch with a couple of ales before heading back to Les and Pearl's for the afternoon.
A little later, Peter mentioned that he would like to treat Liz and I to a night in a West End theatre! Not ones to complain at such ideas, we grabbed the papers and set out to find something we all wanted to see.
It didn't prove too difficult for Liz and I to come to the conclusion that the one thing we really wanted to see that we hadn't was Les Misérables, showing at the Palace Theatre. Peter approved of the idea (he'd seen it before, but mentioned quite rightly that it has probably changed quite a bit in the ten years or since he saw it, and even more so in the eighteen(!) years it has been running).
So, we got our walking shoes on (Liz's blister had healed quite a bit), and walked up to Romford station. It is quite a marked change from a year ago now when we were spending time up with Peter in Carlisle just how keener Liz and I now are to get on our feet and walk! Second nature now, and it was good to have this in common with Peter, a long-time walker.
Changing at Stratford onto the Central Line (and crossing our fingers as we passed along it through Chancery Lane, site of the derailment that stopped the line for three months earlier this year), we got off at Tottenham Court Road and walked down Shaftesbury Avenue to the Palace Theatre. We couldn't have missed it if we tried with the huge sign out the front, the crowds of people and touts standing at the door, un-ashamed of their trade.
Despite an annoying start with ushers checking tickets right in front of us due to some mix-up or other, the musical was highly enjoyable. Liz's smile didn't fade the whole time, and we were all bopping along to the music, Liz and I having played the pieces in Georges River Concert Band when it existed and Peter having sung many of them in his various choirs. Liz and I didn't know much of the plot line, which was interesting to discover, but the highlight had to be the very clever props (with a big rotating stage), and the shere professionalism of it all. That they can do it night after night is amazing.
Les and Pearl had kindly offered Peter a bed for the night (saving the hassle of finding a B&B and of course the cost), so we all went back there and got some sleep for the coming day.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 19 Nov 2003
Lost in London ( No photos )
Another slow morning before we got motivated to get into the city and do a few last things which needed doing.
First was a trip to Harrods to answer Meaghan's request for one of the famous Harrods bags. My sanity left me and I let Liz lead us to where she thought it was, but we were quite mistaken! To be fair, I had no better idea than she, and we enjoyed our walk to the correct area (Knightsbridge), after lunch at Spittalfiends market, our last red bus ride (a Routemaster on route 8 from Liverpool Street to Oxford Street), a walk down Oxford Street then across Hyde Park.
The security all across the city was truly amazing, all for 'president' Bush's visit. In the middle of the park there were hundereds of police on horses, in four wheel drives and vans. Most had fully-automatic weapons, and almost all were sitting around reading the paper, happy to be paid for doing not much except for the fact that all their leave had been cancelled.
If we were still taxpayers here we would have been pretty angry at the fact that £5 million or so has been spent for a three day handshake visit so Bush can put a photo with the Queen in his re-election portfolio.
So, that behind us, we wandered further through the park we had been to a few times before, seeing it this time in a different season, and rather pretty light.
The main aim for the night was one last catch-up with my old work mates at (suprise, suprise) The Gun, the 'local' near my old work.
Plenty of people turned up, it was good to chat to people we hadn't seen for a long while, and also for the people to chat to others they hadn't seen since we left London. We're gonna miss those guys, and, dare we say it, that pub.
After closing time, we somehow found our way back to Les and Pearl's place for the night.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 18 Nov 2003
Sore Feet ( No photos )
It's quite funny really - Liz and I have walked around most of the cities of Western Europe and Scandinavia, all with no blisters at all on our feet. After wandering around London on Monday night, however, Liz had a massive blister on one of her heels. That's what happens when you wear silly fashionable boots!
As such, we didn't get up to much at all, just a wander up the road to find out postal rates back to Sydney for our excess stuff. Much more expensive that they were in The Netherlands, but not much else we could do.
We were tempted to get around London to see a few more things, but decided to wait until the next day, due to the rather high cost of transport from out here in zone 6.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 17 Nov 2003
Meeting up with Mates ( No photos )
We spent the morning doing some organising of things we need to get sorted before we leave for home. Things like Liz's tax, travel insurance and claims for the problems with Rosie.
At about 12:45, we headed out in the teeming rain to get into London. This involved first getting some pounds from an ATM (when will they give up and adopt the Euro!!) as the bus/train ticket seller at the newsagents didn't take cards. Completely covered in rain on the outside, it failed to get through our nice thick coats - a big change from when we didn't have them.
The bus took us to Romford station, then we jumped on the First Great Eastern service into Liverpool Street. Seeing all these places again was quite strange - on one hand it feels like home as I walked around this area every day for six months, but on the other hand it's just like we are tourists now, seeing the sights rather than just walking past them to get somewhere else.
We did eventually get somewhere else - my work's Local pub The Gun, where we met with Trevor my old boss. It was good to catch up, and we traded silly stories and generally boasted about how each other's respective countries stand no chance in the forth-coming Rugby World Cup Final.
Some pool playing and several British beers later, Liz and I set out for a walk to see a place we hadn't quite made it to last time - All Hallows by the Tower Church. The tower in the name is the Tower of London, and as such we needed to walk south from The Gun along Bishopsgate towards the Thames, then turn left at Monument Tube and walk for a little while.
The reason we wanted to see this church is that one of Liz's uncles was lost at sea in 1979, and his name is entered into a big book there which is reserved for people who have been lost at sea. The book itself was in a locked case, but one of the church attendants was happy to let us have a closer look.
The church itself was interesting - smaller than many and not exactly quiet due to its location and the number of vehicles driving by. Still, it is a fitting place for a book which contains such memories.
That done, we walked back the way we had come, and stumbled across a STA Travel office with a sign for cheap travel insurance on the door. We hadn't been successful earlier in the day organising this, and luckily so. We ended up getting a special youth insurance which covers us just for the flights (which is exactly what we want) for about 20% of the price we were trying to pay earlier in the day!
After spending a couple more hours at The Gun where we were joined by Alwin (a Kiwi) who was of course hassled for the way his rugby team lost to the Aussies last weekend, Liz and I were eventually the only ones left.
We had been shunning Indian food for the previous few weeks as we knew we would get back to London and wanted to go to the famous-for-good-curries Brick Lane. So that's exactly what we did. The hawker out the front of Dawaat Bangla Cuisine was the most convincing, so we sat down to a meal of way too much excellent food. Hey, that picture looks a lot like one from back in Singapore!.
No problems getting home with the tube from Aldgate East to Liverpool Street, then the train and bus back to Les and Pearl's.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 16 Nov 2003
Feet Firmly Up ( No photos )
After such a busy day, and as it was a Sunday, we had no grand plands for this day. We got up nice and early to watch England beat France in the Rugby World Cup semi-final. Nice that they beat someone finally, especially after loosing the League Ashes series yet again. Liz and I are actually starting to hope that England win the final next weekend just so they feel a bit better. The tabloid papers never stop having a go at their sporting 'heroes' at every opportunity.
Several nice conversations with Les and Pearl on various matters took up quite a bit of the day, along with using their fast internet connection to find out what was happening in the world.
Pearl's sister came over and the five of us ate a magnificent roast dinner, Liz and my first for a long long time. Somehow we fit in servings of a wonderful dessert also.
We unpacked all of our things we had carried, plus the suitcases we left here while we travelled around and put it all in different piles. By the time we had done that, we were in no mood to do any more, and it all just sat there on the bed in different piles until we wanted to go to sleep!
We also dosed up on English TV, glad to see that not much had changed at all. So many lifestyle shows, text-in-now-to-vote shows and celebrity gossip garbage!
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 15 Nov 2003
Mad Rush of a Morning ( No photos )
We had left plenty of time to get ourselves organised, but it never seems to be enough in situations like this.
Things which somehow managed to get worked out were chucking out lots of rubbish, more clothes to the clothing bin, a final check of every cupboard and nook and cranny in Rosie, and then signing a contract for the sale on consignment to her next owner after repair.
Once we had all our bags attached to our bodies, the scale of the task ahead of us became apparent. The walk to Utrecht Centraal to catch the train to the airport was probably the hardest either of us have ever done. Both our bodies were shaking, our hands were red and swollen and we were very worn out. The worst part was over by this stage, but we still had a long way to go.
We had just missed the train we wanted, but they were running well and frequently so the next one wasn't far away. It rattled us to Duivendrecht where we had to change for a very full train to the airport. With that much gear there's not much point finding a seat, so we just waited in the vestibule areas all day.
When it came time to put my pack on, a nice Dutch lady helped me get the strap onto my shoulder - obviously not jealous of all we had to carry and wanted to help us out.
At Schiphol station (I just love the idea of combined airport and station, makes so things so easy for travellers), we stumbled straight into a luggage cart! Needless to say, we dumped our bags onto it quick as a flash and took stock of how most of our muscles in our bodies no longer wanted to behave themselves.
Next target was the check-in desk, where the line was short and the girl at the end confirmed that our reading of the fine-print had been correct and we could bring three bags between us, as long as the combined weight was less than 40kg. Infact, we had been carrying 36kg between us just in hold baggage, and I'm quite glad that she chose not to bother us about the weight of our cabin baggage as I think it would have topped another 20kg, double the allowance.
We were glad that all this had gone so well, and with boarding cards in hand and big bags gone, we wandered off to find our gate in the huge airport. This done, the nearest café supplied us with a slice of pizza and huge coke, which we complimented in true backpacker style with some peanut butter sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs!
There was about six euros left in coins in our wallet, which I let Liz go off and wander to spend since banks won't change them at the other end. Not too suprisingly (it is what she does on pretty much every international journey), she returned with a giant Toblerone! The rest of the change made it to a donations box (which, out of interest, seemed to contain more currencies than we have ever seen in any one place), then we packed up and went to wait for our plane.
It was delayed about fourty-five minutes, but eventually it came, we all filed on (quite orderly considering there are no allocated seats, it's just first-in-best-dressed) and went through the standard pre-flight checks. The crew on EasyJet are always so relaxed, easy going and play jokes over the intercoms regularly. Makes for a fun trip.
The flight was just fine, nice and smooth as we headed once again for England, waving goodbye to "proper joined-on Europe".
(permanent link to this story)
Back off the Continent ( No photos )
(Continued from The Netherlands 4)
Back into British airspace, we encountered something that on previous flights in and out of the place we hadn't - the weather actually looked better than it had in The Netherlands!
The ridiculously short flight was at an end with a safe touchdown at London Luton, and we all filed off the plane, once again thinking that EasyJet might be a cut-price airline, but they do everything very well. Not one whinge out of us.
After a quick look back at the plane, we filed into the terminal building. Immigration gave me no problems, and once we had passed through customs it dawned on us that that meant we had everything back into the country!
Once again a luggage trolley assisted us carrying our way-too-much luggage, and we purchased train tickets through to Romford. There was lots of track work going on, which wasn't that much of a suprise, but perhaps our journey would work out ok. The shuttle bus took us to the station, past places we remembered from when we last used this airport on our way to Amsterdam back in April.
Despite having to use three different trains and hence lug our bags on and off them, the trip went ok. People stared at us funny as we had so many things to lug around, but it didn't bother us - this will probably have been the last time we need to move things like this!
From Romford we took a cab to Les and Pearl's place, bringing our total number of means of transport for the day to nine - a Walk to Utrecht Centraal, train to Duivendrecht, train to Schiphol Airport, plane to London Luton, bus to Luton Airport Parkway, train to West Hampstead, train to Stratford, train to Romford, then cab to Les and Pearl's!!
We arrived there about 4pm, and not too suprisingly all we wanted was to dump our things and have a shower. Pearl cooked us a great English meal of fish and chips, and we watched a bit of TV and chatted before it was time to collapse exhausted into bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 14 Nov 2003
Posting Rosie's Contents ( No photos )
Awaking from the excesses of the previous night rather late, we spent the day getting ourselves organised. The contents of Rosie needed to be extracted. The array of stuff we have accumulated is quite bewildering, and it is at this stage of the trip that we pay for wanting to buy so many nice things and bring the home!
We ended up sending off two separate boxes, the first 14.5kg and the second 8.6kg via post back to Oz. Each had to be packed, and then I lugged them the three kilometres or so into town though the Westfield-like centre on top of the station, out the other end and the into the main Post Office.
There, the queues were about twenty minutes, and the staff at least spoke English, and were mostly helpful. The prices weren't too bad, and since they are going sea mail it will take six to eight weeks for them to arrive back home. It will be just like Christmas, only we know what is in the boxes!
Once we had both of those out of the way, the rest of our bags could be packed. So much stuff was being left with the van, but there was no way we could have taken everything. The next owners are going to love it, because it is fully kitted out with crockery, cutlery, saucepans, gas, electric cables, bbq, outdoor chairs, pillows, dooner, sheets, soccer ball and even a frisbee, all of which we added from when we purchased the van.
The dinner was great, Liz cooking up a great risotto and both of us putting in a last big effort to get through the alcohol backlog. No waste here!
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 13 Nov 2003
Farewell to Hamburg and Seb and Jessi ( No photos )
We awoke with not too much to do for the day, besides pack up and head off.
Sebastian invited us to meet him for lunch at his Uni, which we thought a great plan as it was across the other side of the city. It was a nice walk up there, the locals suprised that we had chosen to use our feet rather than pay for the trains. To be honest our feet wanted to walk again, they are so used to it now!
We found the Uni up to the north of the city, and then the Mensa building and Philosopher's Tower where we were to meet. Seb came out a little later and we wandered with a friend of his into the food hall.
It was so weird to be back in a Uni after so long - the posters and flyers might have been in Deutsch, but their messages were the ones shared by students world wide - don't increase our prices and don't reduce the quality of our education. The sad fact is that in Germany, education is still free, whereas Liz and I (and everyone else in Australian Unis, of course) paid huge sums of money via HECS, and still had to face price rises and quality cuts as these people were here.
After an amazingly cheap student lunch, we walked out, grabbing on the way a sample bag each from a magazine company, filled with toiletries and things, which we could use, and of course a newspaper and magazine, which we could try to read. Great for the bus.
Not far up the road, we bid Sebastian farewell until next year some time when he aims to come and study in Australia for six months (must be a great place if he is considering changing from paying nothing to paying huge fees just to study out in Oz!). Once again they were suprised when Liz and I elected not to get public transport to the Hauptbahnhof where our bus was leaving from, instead just having a nice walk in the awful weather.
Our one remaining task for Deutschland was to find a fridge magnet to complete our collection, but it seems that Hamburg just isn't touristy enough to warrant decent tourist garbage shops, and the closest we could find was a keyring. Not what we were after, so we will have to try and find one online when we get home.
We found our way to the bus station, where our bus was already waiting, and climbed aboard nice and early to get a seat this time, happy to be together instead of strewn across the bus. It didn't look like we would get to sleep, but since it was only 2pm that didn't really bother us too much.
Leaving on time, bus eventually found its way across the border back into The Netherlands.
(permanent link to this story)
Ticking Off the Countries ( No photos )
(Continued from Deutschland 4)
Not suprisingly, there were no border formalities as we crossed back into The Netherlands. The Dutch don't have much to fear from outsiders - there's nothing that is illegal there which is legal elsewhere anyway, plus they are very tollerant of foreign people. Oh, and also, they respect the Schengen agreement which they have signed, unlike the Germans the other day!
The remainder of the journey passed un-eventfully, neither of us drifting off into sleep but that was ok - we had a bed to get to at the other end, and night was approaching.
Back at Utrecht Centraal, we just had a short wait for our bags before walking through the cold back to Donna's house and Rosie bus. We had a little bit of a shock upon opening the gate to see a different, much larger van where Rosie had been, but she had just been moved back to make room for some other people to camp there for the night.
The were a nice Canadian couple, also finished their travels, also with a blown engine, theirs the fault of Italian mechanics! That's not a good average for the mechanically-inclined people of Italy.
We cooked up some pasta and sauce for dinner, then slept to recharge for the big packing day.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 12 Nov 2003
Lazing Around ( No photos )
It's been a while since we had one, but we did pretty much nothing this day. Lazing around in bed, catching up with journal, making use of the internet connection, and cooking ourselves some wurst for lunch.
In the evening we chatted as usual on various topics with Seb and Jessi, before we went out with Seb to a pub for some drinks. It was cocktail happy hour, and we made good use of this fact. Ollie, the drummer from his band Mindcuffed also turned up, who's interesting claim to fame is that he plans to wear a G-string to their forthcoming gig.
An animated cab driver got us home in the small hours, and eventually it was all over.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 11 Nov 2003
Still Waiting... ( No photos )
Just under an hour late, the bus arrived heading to Hamburg. We had been standing for too long in the cold (no bus shelter or even seats), and even I with all my warm clothes was starting to feel it quite badly.
Not unsurprisingly, no apologies were forthcoming from the driver, as he grabbed our bag and ushered us upstairs - apparently the heating wasn't working downstairs. Great - half the bus not usable, which of course meant that upstairs was packed.
So packed infact that Liz and I ended up having to sit about ten seats apart - her towards the front next to a huge rude guy who refused to let her have any more than about half of her own seat, while he spread his legs wide in comfort. I fared a little better back in the middle of the bus, next to a quiet girl from who knows where.
Infact, the variety of people onboard was quite interesting, as we were to discover a little later.
The bus pushed on, but neither of us were able to grab much sleep. Liz couldn't even get her seat to go back, not that she would have wanted to fall asleep incase her head rested on her seating 'companion' anyway.
As we passed various stops and people got on and off we looked around for seats together, but there were so many others hogging two seats for their bags or whatever that never seemed to happen.
While I was dozing off, we crossed the border from The Netherlands into Deutschland.
(permanent link to this story)
Back to Hamburg ( No photos )
(Continued from The Netherlands 3)
At the border crossing into Deutschland for our fourth and final time, we had by far the most thorough border check. At about 3am, we were awoken from half-sleep by an announcement that passport control was coming onboard the bus. Strange, considering that due to the Schengen agreement there isn't supposed to be any between these two countries.
After the one border guard spent ages going through the entire bus, going very thoroughly over the suprisingly huge variety of passports being offered for inspection (Liz and I had no dramas at all for a change), the huge rude guy next to Liz was given a second visit. He spoke little of either English or Deutsch, so another person was brought on, but the big guy wasn't giving them an easy time. Another person towards the back of the bus was taken off, including their luggage - perhaps this was the reason for the unusually thorough border checks.
The remainder of the trip passed uncomfortably, but at least we were able to sit together after Bremen. Not much sleep came though, and by the time we arrived at Hamburg Bahnhof I had totalled about two hours and Liz closer to two minutes. And, despite running close to two hours late due to the late start and the border check, the bus driver actually got us into Hamburg ten minutes early!!! Making good use of the Autobahns, I guess. Pretty scary ride at the front of the bus up top though.
As we got off, we spotted Daniel who we had met in Brugge! We had a few quick words but weren't in the mood for socialising, so we parted ways - he off to find his hostel and us in search of coffee. This took us to a dingy little place where we lack of sleep made my rusty Deutsch even worse, but we obtained what we were after. I'm not sure how the only other customer there was managing beer at 7am, but he was.
By 8am, we moved to McDonalds to waste some more time, and eat some grease to keep us going. We over-stayed our welcome there for a while, with me using the translation dictionary to work at a snail's pace through a magazine, before deciding that it was time to move towards the city.
The rest of the morning was spent at a café which suprisingly had free wireless internet where we read books and purchased just enough drinks to keep the waiters happy, before we went for a walk around part of the Aussenalster, Hamburg's large outer lake. The weather was notably colder than the last time we were in this city, making an interesting contrast.
We ambled back into town about 2pm, grabbing some local 'cuisine' in the form of a wurst or two, before walking the couple of kilometres to Sebastian's house. He was working until 2pm, and aimed to be home by 3pm. We passed a bit of time in a funky café up the road and then walked down and said hello.
It was a little funny returning to the place where we have spent time both with them and on our own. A week or two ago Jessi had a tangle with a car on her bike, she is ok but her knee is pretty sore. No permanent damage and it could have been much worse.
Liz and I were very tired, so we anti-socially crashed asleep while Jessi studied and Seb went to his final band rehersal before their first gig next week. When he came back we sat awake for a while, drinking and chatting about various things, which ended up with just Seb and I discussing quantum mechanics while mostly asleep. With that, we called it quits for the day!
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 10 Nov 2003
Around then out of Utrecht ( No photos )
We awoke to a lovely Dutch day - apparently Penny and Jono didn't sleep too badly, but were quite cold all the same. They can't say we didn't warn them! After doing very little for quite some time, Jono and I eventually dragged ourselves up to the supermarket to grab some breakfast gear. Also there was a large clothing bin, into which we put an amazingly large number of items of clothing that Liz and I had decided were not going to make it home. Quite a score for the recievers of such things as the clothes are still fine, but the task of getting tatty yet warm clothes to the other side of the world was going to cost us too much.
I cooked a bacon and egg breakfast for the hungry masses - much appreciated after so much baguette and bread!
After probably the most touristy photo we've taken in a place tourists probably never get to, we headed into town as we all had things to sort out - Jono and Penny tickets to their next destination Frankfurt, and Liz and I further north in Deutschland, once again back to Hamburg to visit Sebastian and Jessi. This was all done through Eurolines, the big daddy of bus companies over here.
After stopping to sample some local cuisine known as Oily Balls (kind of like donuts with fruit pieces and much oilier, covered in icing sugar), we went further into town, where Jono and Penny went off to check their emails while Liz and I put on a much needed load of washing at a laundromat. We also checked out postal rates for sending stuff home from the van - sea mail is quite cheap, so we purchased a large postpack to fill with stuff and post when we return to Utrecht in a few days.
The town overall was actually much more scenic than I at least had expected - nice canals and old buildings everywhere, even the post office was quite an impressive building inside.
While we were waiting for the laundry to finish, we found a café across from it, staffed by some very friendly locals and a huge cat called Tom Cat. We still miss our animals! Not too suprisingly, we played a few rounds of cards while there, and eventually decided to head back to the van to organise a cheap dinner.
The chosen meal was spag bol, so we got some mince for that and a large serving of frites (hot chips) to snack on, eaten as by the locals totally smothered in about a jar's worth of mayonnaise.
Back at the van, Jono and I did the washing up while the girls prepared dinner, but the 240v light in the van was knocked down (again), blowing the bulb and taking the fuse of half of Donna's house with it! Apparently that's fairly common as her house does support a mechanic's workshop, lots of people and now us sitting in the driveway.
So, we ate our dinner candle-lit, which was rather nice anyway, and everyone pitched in with a big effort to make a dent in our rather large alcohol collection which will never make it back through customs. We had a great night in the van, just chatting, laughing and enjoying the last time we would all see each other until at least August next year, when they return from their round-the-world trip.
Just before eight, Penny and Jono saddled up and walked up to the station to get their bus - it's been great being able to meet up with them here and there, share tales and suggestions. Enjoy the rest of your trip guys!
We convinced Donna's Turkish mechanic to have a look at the blown fuse, and the power was restored. We installed a light-bulb that Penny had generously walked up in the cold and purchased from the supermarket, and then we had light! In retrospect, the candle-lit dinner was cooler anyway.
Liz and I now had some packing to do, and then we read until it was time to head off to the bus stop at Jaabersplein at the front of the station for our turn. The bus was due at 23:55, but by midnight there was nothing but people waiting in the freezing cold.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 09 Nov 2003
Re-United with Rosie! ( No photos )
The first ones out of bed, we packed our gear and trudged to the nearest Metro station, using up some of our already-purchased Metro 'strips' in the process. Plus, it would have been quite a long walk to get there.
Emerging once again in Rotterdam Centraal, we had a quick look around the place but generally settled on two train tickets to Utrecht Centraal, electing to get there sooner rather than later to see our beloved bus.
As it happened, the train that we picked was an infamous "Stoptren", meaning it was an all-stations one, stopping at every little no-horse town along the way. No real matter, we weren't in that much of a rush and we both have books to read now, although the scenery is always interesting in the endless flat Dutch landscape.
It shuddered us into Utrecht, and we started to get our strange sense of deja vu - this is where our trip 'started' when we first picked up Rosie all those months ago. We half-remembered the way out of the station, and the GPS did the rest, and before long we were walking along the beautiful canal-lined street with windmills and fold-up bridges that leads to Krugerstraat, Donna's street. This walk was quite scary, ramming home the fact that we are really coming to the end of it all after so long.
We rounded the corner, and there our big bus was! The elation was pretty amazing, seeing her safely parked in a back street, not a scratch on her. Liz gave her a hug to say hello, and then we checked and noted that inside nothing was even slightly out of place. Amazing. The thing has been towed half-way across Europe and with no hassles at all. Such a relief!
The rest of the day was spent organising all of our belongings into various categories based on whether they are definitely coming back to Sydney with us, maybe, or were going straight to the bin. There were also plenty of clothes we put in bags to take to a nearby clothing bin.
It was so weird to be in the camper once again, and we both temporarily wanted to do it all again - driving over mountain passes, stopping wherever we wanted, camping when we felt like it and cooking whenever, wherever it took our fancy. But then reality hit us - running out of gas to cook with, the cold weather now with no working heater, and of course the fact that the engine is cracked somewhat in half combined to make us once again happy to be packing our things, heading for home.
After a while, Donna's mechanic came out and put a spare battery in Rosie, started her up and drove into Donna's driveway. We didn't think it would start at all, but it did, albeit with some truly horrible sounds to let us know all was not right. The mechanic's English isn't that good (although, as always I have to say far better than my Dutch), and we thought perhaps he wanted to work on it, but it turned out he just wanted us off the road, safely inside. That also meant that we could connect the electrical hook-up cable up, giving us light!
No need to find a supermarket, as we had so much food still left in the van. Starting on the long process of using up as much as possible, Liz cooked risotto and we got stuck into the Czech beers.
Just before the final scene in the DVD of Saving Private Ryan, the mobile started ringing. Very strange - it turned out to be Jono and Penny, back at Utrecht Centraal station! They were supposed to stay with a friend but she wasn't answering the phone, so they wandered if they could use our Lonely Planet to look for hostels.
I rugged up against the bitter cold, and walked up to the station. Seeing them in the third city around Europe was great fun, and we attempted to work out some accommodation for them. They tried once more and were able to get through to their friend, so madly we dashed around, found the bus stop to get there, dashed for the last bus stop and I waved them farewell, picking a meeting spot for the next morning.
I was just about to turn off the canal street into Krugerstraat when my mobile rang again! Apparently the bus had just gone back to the station and sat for ages, and they wouldn't make it to their friend's place in time. So, only remaining option was one we had discussed a little earlier - they came back to sleep with us in Rosie!
It was a bit cramped, but we made it work. After a bit of manouvering, all four of us fitted in - Liz and I in the bed (although the wrong way around as it was on a slope), and Jono and Penny on the floor. They had sleeping bags, but even in them and with beanies, scarves, jackets and gloves fully deployed they still felt the cold overnight.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 08 Nov 2003
Rotterdam ( No photos )
On Saturday morning, it was sunny in Rotterdam, but very windy and cold. Breakfast was provided by the hostel, so we stocked up on lots of food before putting on our warm clothes and heading outside.
We had decided that as we were now so close to the van in Utrecht, we could take our time getting back there, so we thought we would stay in Rotterdam a second night. But the hostel was a bit more than we wanted to pay, so we walked up to the train station and found a place called Use It. It is basically a tourist information centre, but much more helpful than the usual travel infos, and more importantly it was aimed at budget travellers like us. They were really helpful, and found us a much cheaper place to stay, and although it was a bit further from the middle of the city, it turned out to be not too far from the hostel where our bags were.
Once that was organised, we walked through the wind back to the hostel, got our bags and checked out. From there we made our way to the new place, which seemed to be a privately-run hostel. It took us a while to get there, partly because our bags were so heavy, and partly because we got a bit lost. Anyway, we found the place, and were shown to our six-bed room. It seemed like a nice enough place, so we claimed two beds and gratefully put our bags down.
While we were at the Use It office, we picked up a walking tour of Rotterdam guide, so we used that to have really good look around Rotterdam. The guide, which is produced by the Use It people, turned out to be very informative, and I think we say nearly everything in Rotterdam!
We skipped the first part of the tour, because it was about the area around the train station, which we had already seen. Instead, we walked from our new hostel into town, and into one of the busiest earliers, with shops bars and restaurants.
We stopped for some food because we were already quite hungry, and then we started the walk.
The first part took us around the area we were in, pointing out popular squares, the best street for shopping, and a huge square called Schouwburgplein, surrounded by modern buildings and complete with a few huge red lamp-posts. Using some buttons on a stand in the square, you could move the lamp-posts around in different positions - quite bizarre! Nearby we saw The Beurs, otherwise known as the World Trade Centre.
Next was the Hoogstraat, a street lined with shops and on Saturday lots of market stalls. We bought a book from one of the stalls, and then continued on down the length of Hoogstraat. At the far end were heaps of market stalls, and the area was crazy with Saturday-afternoon shoppers.
In this area we saw lots of modern architecture: the city library with huge yellow pipes curving over the roof and down the sides. Then there is the "spaceship", the roof of the train station called Blaak, which looks like a flying saucer that has crash-landed. Next, and most interesting, were the cube houses which were build between 1978 and 1984, and are probably some of the most interesting buildings I have ever seen. They were much bigger than I had thought they would be, and are still used as residences today.
From the cube houses, we walked out to river Maas, where we had the big red Willemsbrug to our left and further up to our right Erasmusbrug, two bridges that stretch across the Mass. We walked along the river-side, up towards Erasmusbrug, with the sun making the bridge a pretty silhouette. Once we reached the bridge, we turned away from the water and walked down a road that has a Rotterdam "walk of fame" with lots of famous signatures, hand-prints and foot-prints in the cement. It was quite fun picking out names we recognised, like Jackie Chan and Tina Turner.
The next part of our walk took us through some crowded back streets, and then through too big parks. The first one was Museumpark, and as the the name suggests, it has quite a few museums around its edges, or in the streets nearby. The second park, called "The Park", was full of lots of pretty autumn colours, with lots of brown and yellow leaves on the ground.
We had to walk a little way along the edge of a busy road, but then we came to a nicer street, where we chose a busy but nice bar to sit in. We had a few drinks and a nice long chat, before deciding that we were quite hungry. It was dark outside, but the wind had died down a little.
We walked a short way to West Kiurskaed, otherwise known as Chinatown for its many Asian restaurants and grocery stores. We found a cheap but nice little Asian eatery, and the food was really tasty and filling.
After dinner we walked back to our hostel, and spent the evening relaxing and watching the TV that was in our room.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 07 Nov 2003
Back to NL ( No photos )
(Continued from Belgium)
We recognised Dutch signposts and lots of Dutch numberplates as we crossed the border.
We got off the bus in Breskens, and found ourselves conveniently outside the ferry terminal. I went and asked the bemused ticket seller how long it would be until the ferry left, we quickly bought tickets and boarded the ferry.
The crossing took about half an hour, and the boat hardly had any passengers. On the other side of the channel, we were in Vlissingen. We walked off the boat, over the road and into the train station.
We hadn't decided where to go next, so we sat in a nice café and had a cup of tea and a snack, and spent a while working out where to go.
After much discussion, we bought tickets to Rotterdam and then boarded the "Stoptrein". As it implies, it stopped at lots of stations, but the scenery was beautiful - very flat with lots of farmland, canals, villages and towns. I saw pheasants in the fields and a rabbit racing away from the train in fright. We were quite excited when we recognised a spot where we had been before - a huge lock where we had had to wait a long time in the van for the bridge to open. I think this was where we spent quite a while searching for a supermarket.
At Roosendaal, we had to change trains and by the time we made it to Rotterdam, it was quite dark. We didn't have a map of the city, but somehow we found our way to the tourist office, where we were given directions to the hostel, and half an hour later we had lugged ourselves and our bags there.
For dinner, we ate at the hostel, buying our meal at the bar there. After a couple of drinks and a game of pool, we headed upstairs to bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Bus out of Brugge ( No photos )
On Friday, the weather was still perfect, but it certainly wasn't getting any warmer. We fixed our own breakfast at the hostel again, and then packed up our bags. We went out for a last walk around Brugge and bought a couple of typical Belgian things - lace, chocolate, beer glasses. We bought frits with mustard and sat in the middle of Markt to eat them.
Back at the hostel, we got our bags and then walked to the train station. Our walk took us through some lovely quiet streets, and past more pretty canals with colourful views.
At the train station, we bought bus tickets, but we still had fourty minutes to wait for our bus, so we lugged our bags into a nearby bar. There was just enough time for one last beer in Belgium!
Just before 1pm, our bus left and we waved goodbye to Brugge. It was quite a slow journey, as the bus stopped regularly to pick up and drop off passengers, and it took us an hour and a half to get to the coast.
Along the way, we crossed the border and found ourselves in The Netherlands.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 06 Nov 2003
Cycle Tour out of Brugge ( No photos )
On Thursday morning, Tim and I organised our own breakfast of tea and bread with peanut butter, and the we spent a couple of hours at the hostel trying to catch up on our journals.
Some time after 11am, we headed out to explore a bit more of Brugge. We looked around more of the streets, and spent a while looking in a few of the lace shops and other tourist shops. We also bought a serving of frites and sat in the middle of Markt to eat them and enjoy the sunshine.
For the afternoon, we went on a bike-ride tour that took us out of Brugge, through the pretty country-side, into the villages of Damme and Ostkirke, and almost as far as the border with the Netherlands. Riding through the country-side was great. The guide told us about the farm crops, and the nearby cows, the many canals we rode over or alongside, and an old German gun bunker that we stopped at. The countryside around Brugge is packed full of interesting history, most of which I knew nothing about, so apart from enjoying the ride, we learnt heaps.
The villages we stopped in were small and simple, but very pretty and again we learnt a lot about the history of these villages. We saw a couple of old flat-topped towers that we learnt were once used as light houses when boats had been able to come much further before the land silted up.
About half-way through the ride, we stopped in a small village to chat, and Tim and I had another Belgian tradition - waffles. They were much lighter and tastier than I had expected, and I really enjoyed mine.
Back on the bikes, it was now getting very cold outside, so it was good to get moving. We stopped a few more times to learn more, enjoy the gorgeous views and take a couple of photos. We got back to Brugge shortly after sunset, and although we had ridden close to fifty kilometres, I was suprised that both Tim and I felt quite good and not too tired out.
We stopped at a supermarket to get some food, and then back at the hostel we cooked and ate our dinner. Later on, Tim, myself and Daniel (a guy from Brisbane who we had met the day before) went out to a couple of pubs together. The second pub was nicer than the first, and we tried a few more Belgian beers before heading back to the hostel for a good night's sleep.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 05 Nov 2003
Around Brugge ( No photos )
On Wednesday, we again had breakfast at the hostel, then packed up our bags and checked out. We then walked from the hostel to one of Brussels' main train stations, and twenty mintues later boarded a train for Brugge.
We arrived in Brugge at about 10:30am, and then took a bus from the train station through the city and got off near the hostel we ended up staying in - the Snuffel Sleep Inn.
Our first glimpses of the very pretty city were only a taste, but the bus drove through a main square which was surrounded by beautiful buildings and which a busy market going on in the middle.
We found the hostel and paid for two nights before going up a wobbly spiral staircase to our dorm room to dump our bags, then we went out to explore Brugge for the day.
Between the 12th and 15th centuries, Brugge was a very active and prosporous town. It once had a huge harbour, was a cloth-making town and also attracted a lot of talented artists. But when the Zwin estuary silted up, trade from the city ceased, and the talented and prosporous people moved away. So Brugge itself has not changed too much since the 15th century, and has one of Europe's best-preserved medieval cities. This, of course, makes it a very popular tourist attraction, but as it is no longer summer, there are less tourists around, so the town was not as busy as it may be in the summer months.
From our hostel, we walked back towards the main square that our bus had driven through, and we crossed over a lovely little canal on the way. There are lots of canals around the town, all of them very pretty, and now because it is autumn, the colourful leaves on the trees reflect off the surface of the water, making the views of the canals even more beautiful.
We came out in the main square - the Markt, and there was indeed a busy market going on in the middle of the square. At the edges of the square were lots of expensive restaurants and above them the many pretty buildings with stepped facades on the top floor at the front. We stood in the square looking around us and enjoying the sunshine.
From there, we looked down a street going off the square, and when we found a stand selling frites, we treated ourselves to a serving and sat under a tree to enjoy them.
We then spent an hour or two just wandering through the pretty streets seeing many of the canals and little bridges crossing over them. We saw lots of chocolate shops, lots of lace shops and lots of other shops selling random tourist items, but we only looked in a few of their windows.
In a small arcade, we found an "Australia" shop, so we looked in there but found nothing of huge interest.
We then found ourselves in a very touristy area, with lots of little pubs and cafés and shops. There were also some very pretty views of the canals there. From here we walked back towards the middle of town and on the way we went past Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk, a large and impressive church, which appeared to be closed so we kept going.
Back through Markt and along a lace-shop lined street, we came out onto the second big square called Burg. This too was lined with lots of beautiful buildings, including the oldest Stadhuis or Town Hall in Belgium, and Heiligbloed-Basiliek (Basilica of the Holy Blood) a church that has a scrap of cloth that is said to have a few congealed drops of Christ's blood on it.
We went into the tourist office, which was off to one side of the square, and after that we left Burg via a small archway into Blinde Ezelstraat, or blind donkey street. On the other side we found the fish market, which was packing up for the day, and some more beautiful views of the canals and old buildings.
We walked more, enjoying the beautiful weather and pretty views. By the canal was a large flock of swans, geese, ducks and even a seagull or two. We sat here to eat some bread and relax in the sunshine.
Nearby was the Begijnhof, an area where in the 13th century single or widowed women lived. There is also a convent and a beautiful old church. It was really quiet here - all we could here was the wind blowing gently through the trees. We were just walking past the locked church when a nun came and unlocked the door and invited us in. It was so quiet inside and very beautiful.
From there we made our way back past the Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk, which was now open, so we went it. Inside the church is Michaelangelo's Madonna and Child, his only sculpture to leave Italy in his lifetime. We saw the sculpture and the interior of the chruch before heading back outside. We had now covered most of the sites, and seen a lot of very pretty streets, so we decided to do another favourite Belgian thing - drink beer.
Using Lonely Planet, we found a fantastic little bar virtually hidden away in a tiny alley. It was a really cosy little pub called DeGarre, and when we sat down we were handed a menu. Thinking it was for food, we were startled and pleasantly suprised to see that one page was for food, and another ten or twelve pages were all for beer! They had three beers on tap, but another two hundered or so listed with the beer's name, the cost and whether a blonde, brown or amber beer.
To begin with, we each tried a different beer from the tap, and although mine was very different to what I usually drink, I quiet enjoyed it. With our drinks we were given a little dish of cheese to nibble, so we sat eating, drinking and chatting for a long time. Next, we had another beer each, but this time they were bottled beers. Each came to us with it's own glass with the name and symbol of the beer on the glass. It was all very new and different to us, and although my beer was again quite different, I liked this one even more.
Our last drink was a pot of tea for me and a coffee for Tim, and when we did eventually leave, it was almost sad saying goodbye to the charming little pub and the friendly proprietress!
We headed back towards our hostel, and found a supermarket to get some food. We cooked vegetables and rice in the hostel kitchen, and got chatting to lots of other friendly Aussies. After dinner, and a few beers from the hostel bar, Tim, myself, and some of our new Aussie friends headed out to find a pub.
We found a nice little place and spent a few hours drinking and talking, before Tim and I took them back to DeGarre where everyone had some more beer, and I had a very nice glass of wine.
Late at night, we headed back to the hostel to sleep.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 04 Nov 2003
Around Brussels ( No photos )
On Tuesday morning, we had a good breakfast at the hostel, and then went out to explore Brussels for the day.
On first impressions, Brussels was probably one of the most un-interesting cities I have seen. It is full of ugly high-rises and a dozen or more cranes building more high-rises. And the cloudy and misty weather didn't really help to improve things. We started out by walking through the botanic gardens, which was really pretty. There was lots of colour from the changing autumn leaves, and statues and fountains scattered here and there. We walked out of the bottom end of the gardens, past a large construction site, and then turned down a wide pedestrian street lined with clothes and shoe shops.
A little further on, we started getting into the older part of town, with nicer buildings and cobble-stone streets. Then we came to the Grand Place. This, as the name suggests, is a very grand looking square surrounded on all sides buil beautiful old buildings topped with golden statues, and these buildings were once the rich craft guild halls.
Next we walked out of one side of the square and here we found a statue of Everard 't Serclaes, a 14th century hero, and we rubbed his shiny torso for good luck. Now we were in the pretty part of town, and the obvious tourist spot too, judging by the number of tourist, Belgian chocolate and Belgian beer shops.
We saw Manneken Pis, a statue of a little boy peeing, and after seeing all the tourist parephanalea based on him, he seemed to be Belgium's biggest tourist attraction!
We made our way back to the Grand Place, and then out the other side into Galeries St Hubert, Europe's oldest glass-covered shopping arcade, and more importantly, the place that contained Neuhaus, one of the oldest chocolate shops. We went in and looked at the huge amount of expensive chocolate, and bought a small taste of chocolate to share between the two of us.
We walked through the arcade and out the other end, and then through a few more of the old streets. From there, we started going up hill, through Mont des Arts, a very pretty little park, and then higher and higher up some steps. The view out over the city from here was actually quite pretty. At the top of the hill was a large square, with trams and cars running through it (a tram driver even tooted and waved at us!) and a large church looking out over the city.
We sat on the church steps eating a snack and enjoying the view, but moved on quickly - it was cold!
We went up the road and around the corner to see the front of Palais Royal, which had a couple of guards marching out the front.
Next, we re-traced our steps a short way back to the Musée des Instruments de Musique. It boasts the world's biggest collection of musical instruments, many of which were very interesting. We were given headphones and as we walked around the museum, various songs by instruments in nearby display cases were played through the headsets. It was great to hear so much music and to get an idea of the sounds made by instruments I had never seen before.
We spent a few hours in the museum, and when we got back outside, we walked down to the Mont des Arts park to eat some food and rest our feet. We then went to a train station to find train times and prices for the next day, and then to a supermarket to get some things for dinner and a couple of incredibly cheap beers.
From the supermarket, we walked to Parc de Bruxelles, where we sat on a bench to drink our beers. It was about 3pm and we looked like homeless people, which we thought was quite hilarious! The beer wasn't nice. Mine was a raspberry beer that tasted awful, and Tim's was a 12.5% alcohol beer that tasted worse. We tried to drink them but they both got tipped out!
From the park, we slowly wandered back to our hostel, we bought some frits and mayonnaise and sat in the garden of the hostel to eat them and relax. When it got colder we moved inside.
Dinner was pasta and more cheap beers from the bar, then we sat playing cards before having a game of chess - and I actually beat Tim!! After a quick shower in the lukewarm water we went to bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 03 Nov 2003
Into Brussels ( No photos )
(Continued from France 2)
We arrived in Brussels, the capital of Belgium about an hour after we had left Paris. We had driven through Belgium earlier in the year when we drove Rosie to London, but we hadn't stopped anywhere then, so it was almost like being in yet another country.
From the train station, we caught the Metro to the other side of the city (and up the hill!) Once here, we spent a little while hunting around the streets for the hostel, and eventually we found it. It was a nice hostel, and we even got to be in the same dorm. Even better, it had a kitchen - the first once we had seen since Barcelona!
We dumped our bags and walked about fifteen minutes to the supermarket. Dinner was a delicious combination of chicken wings, chicken soup mix, rice and veges, and it really filled us up. Accompanied by a few nice cheap beers from the hostel bar, it was very nice meal. We decided to save a night of drinking Belgian beers on the town for another night, and went to bed early.
(permanent link to this story)
Back to Paris one last time ( 8 photos )
On Monday morning, the weather wasn't looking much better, which was disappointing as we had wanted to stay another day and do some walking in the surrounding countryside. Instead, we packed our bags, checked out of the hotel and went in search of a French patisserie breakfast to quieten our growling stomachs. But we had no luck here either - both of the nice-looking patisseries were still shut at 10am, so we gave up waiting and trudged off to the train station, where we bought train tickets to Paris, and sat down to drink coffee while we waited for the train.
Back in Paris, we walked to a different but very close-by train station (Gare du Nord???) and bought tickets that would take us from Paris to Brussles, Belgium later that day.
By now we were both starving, so we walked a short distance from the train station until we found a nice pub. We stuffed ourselves with fresh bread and beer, and then I had a huge cheese omlette and Tim had a steak. Finally we had some proper food in our bellies, and we sat chatting and feeling full for a while.
We walked back to the train station, and boarded the Thalys train that would take us to Belgium. Thalys is basically the same as the TGV, so it goes really fast! Using the GPS, we saw that we reached a whopping 306km/h!!! Even the train conductor was interested to see what speed we were getting up to.
Somewhere we left France far behind and zipped into Belgium.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 02 Nov 2003
Épernay ( 27 photos )
The weather looked pretty awful outside, but we rugged up and went to make our way outside to explore Épernay and maybe even a champagne house.
On our way out of the hotel, the nice owner lady came up to us. We did our best to understand her French, and in the end we worked out that we had ordered breakfast by accident when we had arrived the evening before. It was a bit annoying as the breakfast added more to the room price, and it wasn't exactly the biggest breakfast to pay for. But it was nice to sit in the dining room and enjoy our croissant, baguette and hot drinks.
After breakfast we went outside and found a junk market on a nearby street. We spent a while looking at various bits and pieces, but didn't find anything of real interest.
We walked through the town and made our way to ave de Champagne, the long street lined with impressive old mansions and a number of champagne houses.
The first one we spotted was the famous Moët & Chandon, so we chose to go on a tour there. It was actually very interesting, and quite different from wine making. We learnt a lot about the history of the buildings and the champagne making, had a walk through the cellars which were suprisingly large, discovered the whole champagne production process and of course had a glass of the stuff to drink at the end of the tour. We learnt heaps and now we can appreciated what champagne is and know a lot more about the different types and what the names mean. For example, brut champagne has more reserve wine added so it has a stronger flavour which is more appealing to men than to women.
After the tour the weather was bad, so we went back to our hotel.
In the afternoon we went for a walk, first to the train station to try and work out where we would go to next and how much it would cost us. Then we walked a long way along ave de Champagne. We checked out the prices of tours in a couple of other champagne houses, but decided that the one we had done in the morning was enough, so we made our way back to the town and had a walk around the town centre. We found a place to go for dinner after looking at some different menus, but as it was still quite early, we went back to the hotel to be lazy again.
Later on, we went to the little pub we had chosen to have dinner in, only to be told that they didn't serve food on a Sunday night. We had a beer each and then wandered through drizzling rain to find somewhere else to eat.
To cut a long and slightly miserable story short, quite a lot of places didn't serve food on a Sunday evening. Quite a few more were way out of our budget and the remaining ones were unappetising fast-food. So, feeling defeated, we bought a baguette from the bakery (we are sick of eating baguette!) and a couple of small things from the expensive supermarket. Dinner was an un-enthusiastic picnic in our hotel room, but at least we were out of the rain and cold. We finished off the evening watching a DVD.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 01 Nov 2003
Eiffel Tower, into Épernay ( 38 photos )
Saturday was our last day in Paris, and unfortunately it was overcast once again. We had breakfast at the hostel and then checked out, leaving our bags in the storage room.
From our hostel, we walked down to the Seine and along the river bank for quite a while. It was really pretty with all the colourful autumn leaves being reflected in the river.
We had been planning to go to the Eiffel Tower one afternoon so that we could see the sun setting over Paris, but the weather had been so awful that we missed our chance. But, we decided that we at least wanted to see the Eiffel Tower up close once more, so we kept walking all the way along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. It was actually quite a long walk, and as we walked along the clouds parted and the sun came out! We decided if the sun was out then we would go up the tower and see Paris from the grandest viewpoint.
It took us a while longer to walk all the way to the Eiffel Tower and the clouds kept covering the sun and then parting. The last part of our walk took us through part of the park that the tower sits in, and the autumn leaf colours in the sunlight were beautiful.
At the tower, we had to join a large queue to get tickets, but it moved along quicker than we had expected it to. Once we had our tickets to go up the tower, we joined another queue for the lift. It was a double-level lift and it was quite large, which meant that lots of people fitted into it in one go.
The lift took us to the first level, and then the second level where we had to change lifts, so we had a bit of a look around. Already we seemed very high up and the views were pretty spectacular. We took a few photos and then joined the next queue for the lift to take us to the very top.
This queue seemed to take the longest, but the ride up in the lift and the views from the very top were well worth it all.
We could see a long way into the distance. We picked out the Arc d'Triomphe, the (now very tiny looking) hill with Sacre Coeur on top, and tried to pick out various other places that we had wandered through in Paris. The views of the Seine river stretching away to our left and right were also very pretty.
We stayed up the top for quite a while, walking around and doing our best to ignore the cold wind before queueing twice more to catch the lifts all the way back to the ground. It had been great to go up the Eiffel Tower, even if we didn't get to see a sunset, and it was a nice way to finish off our last day in Paris.
We caught a train from a station nearby back to the Notre Dame area. Once we got there we spent a while finding a pub to watch the World Cup Rugby, only to find out we had missed the game due to the time differences!
Instead we walked to the small park that is behind Notre Dame and sat and ate some food.
Before we left Paris, we decided to go back to the internet place we had bene to earlier in the week and quickly do a few more things. Everything was going well - we finished up, packed up the laptop, paid the guy (a different man to the other day we had been there) and were about to walk out when he asked for another ten euro for plugging the laptop in. He spoke very little English and we had already paid the fee for using the connection, so we were quite confused at first. Then we figured out what he was on about and we told him "No" and that we hadn't had to pay that much the other day when we had come here, and that nowhere on the price list did it say anything about a ten euro fee. But he kept babbling to us in French and saying we had to pay ten euro. So we walked out! We think that he knew we were tourists, so he was just trying to dupe us out of some more money.
Anyway, after all that excitement, we quickly walked back to our hostel to pick up our bags. Along the way we stopped for a kebab as we hadn't eaten much all day and were hungry. The kebab guy was so friendly, and as we were about to leave he gave us some of his home-made mint tea free of charge. So within about thirty minutes, we experienced a not-so-nice Parisian and a lovely friendly Parisian!
We got our bags from the hostel and used our last Metro tickets to get us to the train station we were going to be leaving Paris from.
Our train left about ten minutes after we got on it, and took just over an hour to get us to Épernay in the Champagne region. Our hotel was about ten minutes walk from the train station, but we had no map so it was a bit of guesswork finding the place. It turned out to be a really lovely little hotel, and our double room had a shower which was a nice treat after hostels.
We lazed around for a bit and went out to a town pub for a few beers. For dinner we just bought some yoghurt and biscuits as we weren't feeling too hungry after our kebab.
It started raining outside - not the best looking weather for the coming day.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 31 Oct 2003
A Big Wander ( 12 photos )
No particular plans for the day - the weather was ugly but dry, so we were hoping it would blow over for an afternoon Eiffel Tower ascent.
We started the day just heading up towards Sacre Coeur in Montmarte, about 10km walk from where we are staying. This pleasant stroll was spent chatting, and taking in more of the city's interesting little back streets, watching the locals go about their lives, and noting with interest how we could tell whether we were in an area frequented by tourists just by the prices of coffee.
One of the more interesting diversions on the walk was a stop to watch the lock lift a canal boat up on Canal Saint Martin. It's quite a pretty scene right in the middle of such a large city, and always a worthy diversion and rest for our feet.
But you can't rest too long or you freeze from the inside, so it was soon time to walk further along. Into the Montmarte district itself, which is interesting because the lower-down areas are almost completely populated by immigrants in dense housing, with kebab shops galore and rubbish everywhere. But then you walk up the stairs towards the towering church and it could be a different country - perhaps the wealthy are moving more and more up towards the church as time goes on.
We had been inside the main church the last time we were here, but a fact that our ageing tour guide at Notre-Dame had slipped in is that Paris' oldest church is right next door, missed by almost everyone. Èglise Saint Pierre is a little place reached by walking around off the beaten track, a fact which has no doubt saved it from it's neighbour's tacky fate.
After stopping for a little while to ring my parents who are just back from holidaying, we went into the church for a look around. Very spartan, yet nice and extremely quiet for reflection, it is such a pleasant change from the huge famous places that we didn't really know what to do. So, we sat and planned what to do from there, admiring the few old paintings and ancient walls with leaning-out columns. The stained-glass windows were some of the most interesting I've seen also.
By now the weather had turned to drizzle, putting an end to our Eiffel Tour plans, so we had a bit more of a look around up top of the hill at the heavily-touristed place du Tertre where artists displayed their paintings, some wanting up to 1900 euro! That's almost as bad as the Italian mechanics, and the fact that they had visa machines there meant that this was really going beyond what one-man stalls are supposed to be all about.
Liz declined to take up one man's offer of "I can make you beautiful", talking about a drawing but perhaps missing what is implied by that statement when translated into English, and we worked our way back down the hill.
In this whole trip, our feet have held out suprisingly well considering the walking we have been doing, but today mine finally sprouted the beginnings of a blister, so we cheated and jumped on a Metro back to our hostel. The timing worked out quite well to get back into our room at 3pm, which we did to relax for a while after our big walk.
Not much later, I found a bed and crashed asleep with little effort, leaving Liz to write some emails and update some journal - thanks!
We have been content just to spend the evening in, and the weather looks to be getting a bit better, so perhaps tomorrow, our last day in Paris, will be an Eiffel Tower day after all.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 30 Oct 2003
Suprise Meet-up ( 14 photos )
First task for the morning was to move hostels - I came downstairs to find Liz had been up for ages already, thanks to the large noisy single-sex dorms.
We ate, exchanging our breakfast tickets for nasty coffee from the I-hate-my-job-and-I'm-going-to-take-it-out-on-you kitchen helpers, seemingly quite common at hostels in this part of the world.
The move proved little hassle, and we dumped our bags in the far-cheaper Auberge Internationale des Jeunes where we had a room of our own, but couldn't get into it until 3pm (the joys of hostel living).
It was another great day weather-wise, so we picked out Jardin des Plantes just across pont d'Austerlitz (from where we could see the next bridge, pont Charles de Gaulle bears quite a resemblance to a bridge of our own) on the Left Bank for a wander. It was a nice little place, the gardens full of roses being tended at the tax-payer's expense. At the end there was an interesting-looking museum which we couldn't see the price for. We decided to wait the twenty minutes in the sun until opening time (the weather was better, but still no more than six degrees or so), when we learnt that it was quite expensive. Besides, we wanted to make the 12pm tour of Notre-Dame.
It was around then that we got a phone call from Jono and Penny - since we had seen them they had flown to London for a few days and then back to Paris, since that was cheaper than flying direct or train! Or, notably, our fifteen hour bus ride. It pays to be organised in advance, which Liz and I definitely aren't.
We arranged to meet them for the 12pm tour as they weren't staying far from there, and set about our business. In the back streets, we stumbled across a likely-looking internet café where we were able to plug the laptop in for the first time in ages and update the website!
Just before the tour, we wandered back up to Notre-Dame and found the guys out the front. We managed to get on a tour run by a retired history professor who really knew his stuff - this was obviously his life and he kept us totally entrhalled for an hour and a half, talking about the facades, history and various parts of the interior. Far better than some of the tours we have paid lots of money for, and hence well worth doing.
But being interesting didn't change the fact that by the end we were freezing cold, so the four of us set off in search of coffee somewhere warm. Our wanderings took us past the bizzare Centre Georges Pompidou where the architect has been given just a little bit too much freedom. It is built mostly out of plastic, and all the pipes, lifts, stairways, etc. are on the outside. Apparently it is the city's most visited attraction (yes, even more than Eiffel Tower and Louvre), and the queue out the front certainly seemed to match that. We had no desire to queue in the cold, so we wandered on.
No cafés were found in this area of town in our budget, so we ended up in a supermarket grabbing picnic supplies, which we ate at a bus-stop area, much to the entertainment of the locals. One asked us kindly not to feed the pigeons, and a couple of others wished us "Bon Appetite", while everyone else just looked at us kind of weirdly.
They had train tickets to organise, and we had to move into our room (since if we left bags in luggage storage at the hostel past 8pm we couldn't get them, which was better than if we had left them longer than twelve hours total when they would have been taken away and destroyed. Serious.), so we split for a while, Liz and I wandering back to our hostel past Bastille.
This non-existant monumental prison was destroyed in 1789 after being stormed, and the place is now marked by Colonne de Juillet in the centre of yet another crazy traffic intersection.
We met up again just after 5pm at their hostel, wandered to a local pub for some more-expensive-than-expected beers with free tapas thrown on the table to make up for it. Next we decided to do another supermarket run and take the spoils back to Liz and my room. However, this plan was foiled when the rather rude guys on the door wouldn't let them in, even to sit and eat for a while.
So, instead we went back to Penny and Jono's hostel, where we were looked at a little strangely but otherwise left to eat our bread, cheese, ice creams and bits and pieces in peace. After which, they needed to organise train tickets for the next day over west to visit their friends. We walked down to Gare de Lyon, where tickets were purchased, Jono excited that they had tickets on a nice fast TGV in the same way that I was.
We had purchased a six-pack of beer from the supermarket, chosen from its price tag purely on price per litre (a fantastic law that exists in many countries over here is that this has to be displayed, making bargain shopping much easier). However, what we had actually ended up with was a peach-flavoured lemonade and beer drink. Yuk. Liz managed one sip, me three, Penny about half a can and Jono crazily most of the rest of it all, before we decided enough was enough.
So, we needed to get that really nasty taste out of our mouths, wandering to a random back-street café for an intensive coffee and 500 (cards) session, before bidding them a farewell. It turns out we may actually cross paths in Utrecht sometime in the next couple of weeks.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 29 Oct 2003
Waste then Walk, Musee d'Orsay ( 18 photos )
After our standard breakfast, yet again missing out on the nice table by the window and being placed with the same French family, we went back up to the room, did some washing, etc.
Coming back down to pay for our remaining two nights with a new receptionist, we were a little taken aback to find out that there was no booking for us for the night. The other day, we had been told that there would be four nights, just pay for two at the time, which we did. So, there appeared to be nothing else for it but to pack up and find somewhere else to stay.
After doing that, we headed down into the cold (weather far worse than yesterday with constant drizzle and cold cold cold), along to a phone box, where I waited with the bags while Liz ran off to get us another phone card, since the first one was used up. Quite a waste just to make one call, but none of the phones take coins, so there wasn't much other choice. There was a room available at another cheap pension further out for too much money, so we rang one of the cheaper hostels which said that there were rooms left but they don't take bookings!
So, fast as we could, we went to a tube, found it was the wrong one, picked another, walked half way across Paris under ground to get to the right platform, went three stops, changed to another line by walking almost as far then went one stop. It would have been quicker in retrospect to just walk it, but with all our gear we had decided not to. We would have covered less ground though.
Upon arriving at the hostel, we heard the people in front being told that there wasn't any rooms left for the night! No matter, the helpful guy was happy to tell us of another hostel just down the road, which was quite a bit more expensive, but this guy could offer us a double room for the following two nights, which we took. That gives us three more nights in Paris.
So, lugging gear again down the road to the larger hostel, which is pretty damn horrible. Not in terms of cleanliness or anything, but the receptionists are rude, we are consigned to single-sex dorms (I thought that finished in the 70s?), security is non-existant, we are a lot further out of town and we are paying through the nose for it! Don't waste any time at the MIJ in Rue Titon, 11e if you can avoid it.
So, dumping our bags, we set about exploring the town. The only good thing about this area is that it is way cheaper than the middle. For example, whereas we would pay about 7 euro for a beer in the middle of town (yes, that's actually worse than London), out here it is more like 2.60. We celebrated finally having moved around with a couple of one euro coffees (about a third the price of the middle!) just down the road. The little guy running the bar was quite amused to see tourist-types around, methinks.
First item on the agenda for the day was to book our way out of here, now that we have paid for our last three nights in Paris and leave on the 1st. We headed down Boulevard Diderot to Gare de Lyon, one of Paris' six main intercity and international train stations.
We first tryed to coerce a computer ticket machine into selling us a ticket, and four goes later, we finally had it organised, but it decided that even though it had a sticker on the front saying "Visa", it no longer wanted to accept Visa cards. Or, it goes without saying, cash.
So, we walked over and waited in a line for ten minutes before a helpful girl sold us two tickets on Saturday's 16:15 train to Épernay, the heart of the French wine region. Should be good fun, but for now we had more of Paris to see.
The day's drizzle didn't deter us from stopping along the south bank of the Seine to munch on yet another baguette-and-fruit lunch. We weren't too far from one of the tourist-boat stops, and when one pulled in, a guy wandered if we wanted to jump on board. He didn't appear to be doing much business on such a day.
But no, we pushed along to the river, noticing out of one eye Australian Dream, best described as an Australian stuff shop. We of course had to go in and have a look around, but it was quite disappointing - not even a chance to stock up on our Vegemite supplies, although we could have paid large sums of cash for Violet Crumbles, VB or of course didjeridoos, boomerangs and kangaroo signs galore. The signs were even in French!
Not much further along was famous Shakespeare & Co. bookshop, positioned just back from the water right in the middle of town. This English-language book shop has been running for fifty years or so, and is the brain-child of one guy who just collected a random assortment of obsolete books. In the end, after an hour or so I had to drag Liz out of the shop - we could have bought half the books in there - every second one one or both of us said "Hey, I've always wanted to read that". For now, books are dead weight that we can best avoid.
More pleasant strolling finally found us at the object of the afternoon's wanderings - Musee d'Orsay. We didn't really know what it housed, but the fact that it was set in an 1900s train station was enough to get our tourist dollars and be our token musem for the city. The queue proceeded much faster than expected, and after the lady actually looked in our backpack (she gave up looking for bombs when she saw our beanies and baguettes!), we checked it into the cloakroom and went wandering.
Having pretty much no idea what to expect turned out to be a good thing. There was plenty of same-ish art, sculpture and the like, but then we found some really interesting things. First was a small collection of Gaudi pieces, fresh in our mind after seeing so much in Barcelona. Next was an amusingly-named artist whom neither of us had ever heard of called Camille Pissarro. We both profess to not really appreciate art much at all, nor know much about it, but his impressionist works had both of us, independently, captivated.
The building itself was suitably impressive, and there were lots of other rooms, too much to take in even if we had have had more than an hour and a half before closing time to look around.
Hunger had come yet again, and we decided to walk back to the dingy part of town we found last night, up on Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis in 10e. The long walk felt almost normal after so much, yet our bodies don't really stop complaining - my knees and Liz's back. We consoled ourself with some cheap Chinese at the far end of the street, but it was no match on the stuff we get at home, had in Singapore or indeed Jono and Penny had in China.
We had originally intended to have a stop in a cheap pub or two, but we were exhausted. Just enough energy (and will to save money and keep fit) remained to propel us on the walk back down to the crappy expensive hostel, where we are spending the evening doing some long-overdue journal catchup.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 28 Oct 2003
Fantastic Parisian Weather! ( 49 photos )
Breakfast went by almost as a replay of the previous day - same seats, same family nearby and same strange woman running the show.
But outside, it was a different matter. Gone were the clouds of the day before - the weather was absolutely fantastic! Not a cloud in the sky, so we put everything else by the wayside and went out to explore.
After an attempted visit to Shakespeare and Co. bookshop (it was closed), and looking for one of the nearby internet cafés (they and the ones around wanted twelve euro just to connect the laptop to their network!!!), we consulted Lonely Planet for some outdoor things to do around town.
First on the list, and reasonably nearby, was a visit to Jardin du Luxembourg. Everywhere around town, the autumn colours in the trees are gorgeous, leaving amber everywhere (although the street-sweepers are amazingly efficient at cleaning the leaves all away), and the city's gardens are no exception. We wandered through trees, spending time in the sun where possible (still very cold, especially with no clouds about), swapping cameras with some English tourists for a photo shoot, then settling down across the pond from Palais du Luxembourg for some serious relaxing. Here we ate our standard fare (at least it has changed from the standard fare of pasta and sauce a while back, I suppose) and did not much.
Another park was beckoning next, and after a quick trip back to the hotel for some cutlery and supplies, we went to soak up the rays (albeit warmly clothed) in Jardin des Tuileries, next to the Louvre. The hotel strangely provided free copies of The Guardian (English paper similar to The Sydney Morning Herald), or at least we thought they were free, and took one anyway. We read this in parts each for quite some time, enjoying the water, parklands and glorious weather all around us.
After so much lethargy, it was time to get the walking shoes on - this time in a new direction, north. We went through Place de L'Opera, a traffic-choked plaza in front of Paris' impressive Opera House. I've heard it described it as ugly, and perhaps compared to Sydney's it isn't fantastic, but still it is far more attractive than the last piece of property we owned, Rosie the big red bus, so I don't think people can really whinge.
While I remember, Parisian drivers are crazy. They break for pretty much nobody who doesn't have a siren blaring, and few people that do. There are lots of places where there are pedestrian crossings on the road but you'd be pretty foolish to assume that you, as a pedestrian, will actually get braked for. Also, getting from A to B on a map is a slow process here, since there are so many pedestrian crossing lights to navigate - we even have special "Green Man" songs to sing, urging him to appear so we can get somewhere.
Right, back on track, further next we followed the expensive restaurants north along Rue Blanche to arrive at one of the most let-down sights in the city - Moulin Rouge. Sure, we've seen the movie a few times, and obviously didn't expect it to be much like the movie, but we were still dissapointed. Just an ugly building, with an ugly red windmill (hence, of course, Moulin Rouge), and price tags that nobody earning legitimate income could afford. That of course excludes us completely, since we have earnt no income since June.
So, we settled for a few touristy photos, before pushing north in search of a few other interesting-looking things on our tourist map. Up the hill a bit further, there are a couple of other windmills. These at least could actually have been used, since they are not blocked all around by other buildings like Moulin Rouge's one is. Also, I guess, there isn't much need for grinding wheat in that place.
The area from here started to get much more attractive, easily a part of Paris that the tourist buses avoid (actually, they couldn't navigate the windy cobbled streets even if they wanted too), and we spent quite a while looking in pokey little places, walking down the other side of the hill to Paris' last remaining vineard (nothing but vines and signs in French only though), taking a photo or two looking north into the suburbs of Paris, before stumbling back into tourist-land. It was like being woken out of a great dream only to find that actually you are in a really crappy hostel and everyone is snoring and it's only 4am and now you won't get back to sleep. But I digress - it really was sad to get back to the part of town where tourists walked (from the other direction, more on that soon), only to buy truck-loads of Chinese-made garbage and get back on the buses.
Walking past the expensive bars and cafés, it wasn't hard to see why they were all here - the huge church Sacre Coeur and it's views over the city to the south. On such a day they were really out in droves, so it was amazing to see that when we walked into the church for a look around (on our church-scale, it gets about a 4 out of 10 - we are really fussy now), most people actually followed the instructions, being quiet and not taking photos! That is so rare these days - one of the problems of mass tourism is that people forget that Disneyland and a religeous site are not the same thing, and as such different behavior is expected.
Next we enjoyed the view down over the city, taking it all in, spotting the sights, but noticing that a haze sat over the view, like so many other places. There was a funicular back down but we elected to walk, following pleasant meandering paths down to the bottom, where yet more tourist touts tried to sell us things to put in our hair, barking dogs that run around the ground and of course the ever-present Eiffel Tower keyring.
We walked south-east along the ugly dirty Boulevard de Magenta, turning right randomly into what turned out to be exactly what we had been looking for since we arrived - the cheap part of town! The city is so expensive in the core area (the standard measures are coffee 3 euro, half-litre beer 7 euro and Cornetto Soft 3 euro), that we had pretty much assumed that was the same most places. Instead, it turns out that is just anywhere within say 2km of an open-top tourist bus stop.
Here, we had found where the 'locals' live - dirty, but as multi-cultural as you could imagine, with the food to match. Standard measures dropped to 1 euro coffee, 3 euro beer and 1.50 cornetto! Tempted to drop in and enjoy it all, we restrained ourselves to a cheaper-still baguette to take back with us. On the way we passed a McDonalds which, strangely had been closed - not something you see every day. However, this one had copies of newspaper stories plastered all over it, the gist of which I got was that people had protested about dodgy labour practices and perhaps dodgy food, forcing the place to be closed! If only the rest of the world would follow suit...
Crossing the last few bridges to our hotel, we were presented with one of the most beautiful sunsets we have seen for a long time. Wow. Picture says a thousand words and all that, I'll just shut up on this one.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 27 Oct 2003
First Paris Wanderings ( 53 photos )
After a great night's sleep after the bus the night before, we packed up our things as we needed to move to a cheaper room. But first breakfast came, and we missed our chance to get the nice window seat. There wasn't really enough places for breakfast for the amount of people staying there, but I guess you can't really complain too much for a zero-star hotel!
The breakfast was good enough, plenty of hot drinks and of course the French baguette, to become our staple diet of the next few days. After moving to the smaller, no-view but still clean enough for our needs room, we dumped our things again and went out to explore the city.
About two minutes walk away is one of the city's most famous sites - Cathédral Notre-Dame. It too is on Île de la Cité, the other end to our hotel. It wasn't hard to work out what it was when we spotted it thanks to the cameras and bus-loads of tourists around, but I have to admit I expected something more impressive. It is one of those buildings who's front face hides a lot of interesting things inside.
And what an inside it has, as we found out with a great wander around the place. It's huge of course, with plenty of stained glass like most other similar churches, but this has also lots of great frescoes.
To me the interest of places like this is from an architectural point of view, and that is just as well. I think if I were more of a religeous person, I would have been sorely disappointed. They allow free entry (good, it's built for the people after all), photography (wonderful, it doesn't damage anything), flashes (bad, bad, bad - very distracting and also potentially damaging), but worst of all loud talking and mobile phones.
It's all well and good to hope that people will be nice and give the place the respect it deserves, but it will take more than the stares of Liz and I to make people like one Japanese buiseness man doing a loud deal on his phone as we wandered around change their ways. Others didn't really even notice, since they were talking so loudly themselves. A sad state of affairs, really.
After that, we walked outside for a breather, escaping about 98% of the tourists by simply walking around the other side of the building into a rather pleasant park there. Liz pointed out and explained the flying butresses on the building - something I had never heard of but which she told me were hold the higher walls of the building in. Learn something new every day!
At the far-east tip of the island we wandered into Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation - the city's holocaust memorial. It was different from others in other places we have seen, with strange haunting architecture designed to evoke understanding of the conditions people lived and died in. Reading the names on the walls of the concentration camps we visited in Germany was spooky enough for us, it's almost beyond imagination what the actual experience must have been like.
Even though the weather was so terrible that we could no longer pick out the Eiffel Tower from where we were, we decided that a walk over to that part of town would be worth while, with a few detours.
First through Jardin des Tuileries next to the Louvre, where we admired all the grounds as we wandered along westward - plenty of proper outdoor chairs which no doubt were packed full on better days than this with people all around the fountains and ponds, enjoying living and working in such a beautiful city. At the end of the Jardin, we entered Place de la Concorde. Or I should say cautiously waited for the crossing, as this is one of those amazing French intersections with lots of roads all coming together, governed by very few rules. There is an Ejyptian obelisk in the middle, pilfered like so many others we have seen on our travels - when we ever make it there there will be nothing left of the place. By this stage we could make out the Eiffel Tower, except for the top. Very misty though.
It was still plenty cold as we made our way along Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the famous wide street leading up towards the Arc de Triomphe. We just kept on walking, waiting for lights to cross, snapping the occasional photo when less than ten million cars were in the frame, and dodging scam-artists who curiously wanted us to buy bags and wallets for them, with cash, since their duty-free allowance had been used up. Steer well clear of that one.
Eventually we were at place Charles de Gaulle. This place is totally crazy - the world's largest roundabout. As earlier, there are no lanes marked out, just thriteen different roads from which drivers attempt to fight their way to another road somewhere on the other side a long way away.
I say a long way because in the middle is the dominating Arc de Triomphe, built by Napoleon to celebrate just how good he was. How modest. It is a very French thing though, with a massive French flag flying underneath leaving you in no doubt where you are.
We would have been stupid to attempt to get to the arch with any other method than the underground passage - a bit sad, but offset by the fact that there were some great panorama photographs underneath. We said no thanks to the lift operators about a ride to the top, instead appearing just next to the arch to have a look around. There is a flame burning in rememberance of unknown soldiers, and of course that truly massive flag. Plenty of nice sculpture too.
Having come this far into tourist-land, there wasn't much left for it but to power on to the Eiffel Tower and get it all over and done with in one go. The weather meant that we didn't want to go up it today, but we still wanted a look.
We wiggled our way through streets, over bridges, then more little streets, taking the shortest path on our weary legs. For most of the last part we couldn't see it due to the high (but not skyscraper) buildings all around, and there it was! Right up there with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Colosseum and Big Ben, the most touristy sight in Europe trip was finally in sight.
Clearly we had arrived by a strange path to the place, from the north on the other side of the river - a path yet to be discovered by enterprising tourist-junk sellers, as we didn't see one until we were right near Pont d'Iéna, the bridge leading to the tower. Curiously, it was actually quite cheap, and Liz grabbed a scarf since the weather was so chilly and ours are back in, you guessed it, the van.
Just on the other side of the bridge, the real pestering began, but so did the fantastic views - the tower truly is huge, way bigger than we had imagined. Hard to believe it was almost pulled down in 1909, spared only because it was a great place to hang antennae for radio transmissions. With the mind-boggling array of souviners available displaying it and the shere quantity of people queueing for lifts up even in the terrible weather, I'm sure the French are glad it was saved after all. Plus, even given all that, it's still kind of nice to look at.
Walking out the other side, we took more photos of course, but none really that good due to the weather. We set across the city, via a post office where the helpful guy told me that he could either sell me a package for eighteen euros to post my CDs home or I could go to the newsagent ('Library') across the street, buy a package for one euro then he could sell me the stamps. Then, as the French say, Whalla! (Not sure of the spelling, though).
Next came the best news in ages - we finally got through to Donna from the Netherlands to find out when Rosie was being picked up for towing back there, only to hear that all systems are go and she should arrive in the next few days! Didn't expect that, things look to be working well for a change.... (touching plenty of wood on this table here).
We weaved our way back to our hotel via Place Vendôme with its interesting bronze central column and 'fashionable' shops, an Irish pub (hey, we miss the place!) which was hideously expensive and the saving some money by getting dinner from one of the big Monoprix supermarkets, near Pyramides Metro. These places are kind of strange, because they have a K-Mart type shop on the street level, then a supermarket (and maybe restaurant, ...) underneath. This makes getting a large quantity of shopping out difficult, but we managed our small haul just fine.
The trip also passed us through the Louvre - it's very strange having such a famous place as just something we pass through in our travels around town. Opening the doors to the hotel a wave of warmth came over us - it is getting truly chilly outside now, and we are looking forward in earnest to meeting up with our warm gear in the coming weeks.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 26 Oct 2003
Into Paris - Louvre ( 30 photos )
(Continued from España 1)
It's a little confusing due to the fact that daylight savings stopped but the bus clock didn't follow suit, but I think it was around the second 3am that I got sick of the annoying bus seats, rolled over and noted that people on the other side were lying back in considerably more comfort than us.
We had searched in vain when first getting into our seats for the button to make the backs lean back, but now my search started again in earnest. This was so uncomfortable that I just had to find that button! In the end it was in the one place we hadn't looked, and upon pressing it in my sleepy state, a kind of nirvana was entered as the back rest slowly glided back!
I hastily woke Liz, but hers proved even harder to find as she had the window seat. Still, it was managed and we slept much better after that. Our backs never really forgave us for that journey, but that's the price to pay for cheap travel I guess. The guy behind us was a bit disappointed that we finally worked it out also, as he had been enjoying the extra space. Tough luck!
Around 6am we stopped again at a no-name truck stop where people (including myself) heaped in coffees to enable them to face the day - it would be far worse than our situation to have to go to work after a night like that.
A little while back now, when Rosie blew her last puff of smoke, Liz and I sat down and made a list of the things that we would miss most if we flew home directly from Padova, calling it quits. Most of those we have done - Rome, Spainish Food, etc., but first and foremost on the list was Paris.
Some of the places we go to are pretty obscure (although less so now that we don't have the van), but Paris is one that doesn't really need much explaining. Even if you ignore the tourist sites such as the Eiffel Tour and the Louvre, it is still a pretty compelling city. And, as we were to discover, an amazingly beautiful one.
The bus finally trundled into Gare Routière Internationale, on the eastern edge of the city. The 15 hours had passed amazingly quickly, even though the first half had been done without the aid of the seat's magic button. We were more than glad to get off at the end, however, and try to learn another city's Metro system to get us into the middle of town.
I really love Metro systems - it's most probably an extension of my childhood fascination with trains. The Paris one is really old, on par with London's, and just as big and confusing, if not more so. We found a really cool old board where you pressed a button next to the name of any of the three-hundered or so stations, and it lit up the path through the Metro system, showing you where to change and so on, helping you to navigate between the 16 Metro lines, 5 RER lines and two tram lines.
We walked to a ticket counter and purchased a carnet of ten tickets, and the girl even voluntarily gave us a map of the system! I think the stories of the nasty-tempered unhelpful French are slowly receeding into myth.
We journeyed from Gallieni smack-bang into the middle of town, emerging top-side once again at pont Neuf. Since pont means bridge, we had found ourselves right on the Seine, the river running through Paris. It divides the city into the Left Bank (south) and the Right Bank (north). However, we had chosen a hotel right on an island in the middle of the city, Île de la Cité. This place stood out as amazingly cheap and amazingly well placed.
We walked over pont Neuf onto the island, then into place Dauphine, a quiet goregous little square at the western end of the island. Hôtel Henry IV shows its 250-year age well, being very run-down, creaky, smelly, yet with the two features we needed - cheap and central. Time Out magazine describes it as a "deluxe dive", and that's pretty apt really.
We hadn't booked, which was pretty brave, but it turned out that we could get ourselves a more expensive (and much better) room for one day, then a cheaper one for two more. Taken.
One of the virtues of being so amazingly central in a city such as Paris is that you have all this cool stuff about five minutes walk away. Just back across pont Neuf and a little west, we found our way into The Louvre.
We had heard so much about how long the queues were that we really hadn't intended to bother, but by some strange miracle the queue was really short and also, being a Sunday, it was cheap day also. We didn't need to be told twice, and quickly passed security, going down under the big glass pyramid into the reception area to grab a couple of tickets.
My plan was to go towards the Mona Lisa as fast as possible, get it out of the way and then go on from there. But this proved a little more challenging than first planned, so we went via quite a few other places, enjoying pretty much everything we saw.
The Mona Lisa itself was surrounded by six security guards and of course behind bullet-proof glass. We were urged to keep moving, giving us about thirty seconds to look at it before being moved on along the one-way traffic system. A bit sad, but I guess now we can say we saw it.
As we have mentioned before, we're no art buffs, so any art gallery inevitably becomes just a wander and work it out affair, going wherever takes our fancy. We saw plenty of Objets d'art, Antiquities, of course Paintings and some sculpture for good measure. The latter was best represented in Cour Marly, a large room which has been made to look like the park where all the sculpture in it used to reside. The natural lighting and space work well. Infact, the whole museum is suprisingly spaced out, nothing ever feels like they have tried to fit everything they possibly can out on display. Which is good, because we still didn't take most of it in.
I particularly liked a couple of pieces from around the place - the Eagle of Abbot Suger which is a shiny relic vase thing no doubt worth more than I'll ever earn and an amazingly ornate chess board, complete with little people under glass all around it in varying poses.
We had a break for lunch in nearby Jardin des Tuileries, where we found it amazingly cold - a theme to be repeated for most of our time in Paris. Sitting under a tree, we watched people go about their business in such a beautiful city, walking under the Arc de Triomphe de Carrousel and through the park grounds. We would get back here more than once, being so handy.
By the end of it all, we were pretty tired from lack of sleep and really needed to go and sleep. It's a shame that the tickets aren't valid for two days or something, because we felt that we could have seen so much more, but that's the common problem with museums. Leaves something for next time anyway.
Back to the hotel for an afternoon nap (funny how we did that after we leave Spain and its famous Siestas!), after which we spent the night in, noting the beautiful place Dauphine out the window.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 25 Oct 2003
Leading up to The Big Bus Journey ( 13 photos )
We awoke with not a good situation on our hands - Liz was not feeling well at all. By this stage we had worked out it must have been some bug or other in her system, as we eat almost identically and I was feeling fine.
I organised us out of the hostel, putting our things in the storage area, before we decided that not much at all was going to get done today. Instead, we rested, taking the opportunity to get some journal done sitting in the hostel. We would have liked to see some more things, but we had infact seen a lot in our days around the city and thought some R&R would be the best thing.
Around 2pm, we jumped on a Metro down to Marty's to pick up our big bag we had left there previously. First we went into the huge supermarket there to grab some supplies for the bus journey, where we bumped into Katherine. She was also leaving shortly, flying out on a plane a couple of hours before us - lucky thing!
We walked up to Marty's, managing somehow to press the right doorbell button and get inside. Since we had to get moving and Liz still wasn't feeling the best, we didn't stay too long, bidding them both farewell until we see them in Sydney over Christmas.
Our next stop was to the EasyEverything internet café to use up the credit we had purchased when first arriving, which had lasted us well. It turned out we could use it on two computers at the same time, leaving us both to get through some emails.
We also wanted a wander up and down La Rambla once again, this time with me with digital camera on hand for some snaps around the place, including Monumnent a Colom at the bottom of La Rambla. This done, it was back to the hostel to organise some dinner, and by this stage Liz was feeling much better. Perhaps getting out and on the town a little had fixed her up.
There wasn't much left in the day but to wander slowly to the bus station with all our gear to catch our 8pm bus to Paris. Along the way we found a really cheap barber, so I sat down and let him go more than a little overboard, happy that however bad it looked at least it cost five euros. And even that I had found earlier in the day on the ground :)
After a little bit of a scare (the bus company we had booked with was actually operating under a different name), we located our bus stop and just had to wait until it arrived. Once it did, we chucked our bags in the back, and went through the crowds to get inside. It was a huge double-decker bus, and the bottom level was full, which didn't bode well for our travel sickness concerns. The top level was also pretty full, but we managed to convince a couple to stop hogging two seats each, leaving us together for fifteen hours or so towards Paris.
This couple also had a young baby, which was more than a little concerning, but he behaved himself amazingly well, and was more than a little interested in us strange-looking Aussies.
It turned out that we didn't feel sick at all!! This was an amazing breakthrough, as my parents will no doubt attest to just how sick I used to get just driving around Sydney, let alone on long journeys. We made our first stop around 11pm back in Girona, then we dozed off for the night, lulled to sleep by the dark lighting and people deciding to be quiet around us.
Somewhere along the way, we crossed the border back into France.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 24 Oct 2003
Parc Güell, La Sagrada Familia ( 72 photos )
On Friday I woke up feeling much better than I had been feeling for the last few days, so we both enjoyed our breakfast's before heading outside to explore more of Barcelona.
Our first stop was at an internet café to check our emails, and then we caught the Metro and travelled across the city.
From where we got off the Metro, we climbed steeply uphill, making use of a few escalators that were in the centre of the road going up. At the top of the hill, we entered Parc Güell, a huge and beautiful park that was designed by Gaudi, the same man who built and designed a lot of La Sagrada Familia.
From the park we had excellent views out over Barcelona, with the sea in the distance and the sun shining brilliantly over everything. We spent quite a while enjoying the view and had a nice walk around the top of the park, before heading downwards.
Further down through the park, we saw the main areas of Gaudi's influence - his own beautiful house, the water fountains and seating areas all decorated with colourful broken tiles, the two 'gingerbread' houses, which I particularly liked, and the very famous 'Drac', a mosaic covered dragon.
We explored all around before exiting out through the bottom end of Parc Güell.
From there we took a long walk to La Sagrada Familia which took quite a while, but at least it got us off the busy tourist trail for a while. We stopped along the way for a snack from a bakery, and enjoyed looking around a different section of Barcelona's many streets.
After a while, we reached La Sagrada Familia, only we were at the other end of the church to the end we had seen the night before. But first, here is a bit of information about La Sagrada Familia...
La Sagrada Familia is a church that construction started on in 1882, and today, in 2003, it is still not even half-way to being finished. Gaudi had a lot to do with it's design, and he also did most of the work on one end, the Nativity Facade, the end of the church that we had seen on Thursday night. Unfortunately, Gaudi was run over by a tram in 1926, and died a few days later, for a long time construction slowed down or stopped altogether, partly because nobody knew just how Gaudi had planned how to build such a huge and complex building, let alone keep it upright for years and years. Now, they have a tentative finishing date of sometime in the 2020's, but a lot of people feel that the church should be left as it is, as a tribute to Gaudi.
So, Tim and I now stood at the Passion Facade, built long after Gaudi's death, sometime in the 1950's. It is instantly different to Gaudi's end of the church, and I have never seen such contrasting sections of the same church.
The Passion Facade still had biblical scenes, as does the Nativity Facade by Gaudi, but the stone carvings have very straight, severe lines, and it looks very modern, and hardly like a church at all. In comparison, Gaudi's Facade is full of flowing lines, soft curves and a lot more detail. Gaudi's Facade even has a tree carved high up, and the tree is covered in doves to symbolise peace. It's hard to explain....you'll just have to go and see it yourself!
Tim and I bought tickets to go inside, but before we went in, we stood and stared at the newer Passion Facade for quite a while. Then we went into the church.
It is quite strange to follow to line of a pillar, up and up and up, and then it just ends, with no roof, just a patch of blue sky. And only two or three windows, of the ones that have been built, have stained glass in them. There is scaffolding everywhere, and even some drink dispensing machines, which we thought was wrong. It is a church, after all.
You can walk around a little way inside the church, but there is scaffolding or machinery in most places, so once you see a bit of the inside, you pop out at the other end, underneath the Nativity Facade by Gaudi.
Here, Tim and I sat and stared and stared at all the detail. I could go on and on about this facade, because it really is quite amazing, but once again, you'll just have to go and see for yourself :)
Next, we climbed up into one of the incredibly tall towers, nearly to the top, crossed a bridge, and then wound our way down again. We went really high up, so we had great views looking down into the church and also out over Barcelona. We were so high up that I felt dizzy, especially after winding up and down all the stairs! Being up so high gave us a chance to see a lot of Gaudi's work up close, which was fantastic.
Back down on the ground, we had a bit of a rest while still admiring the church, before finding the nearest Metro station and catching the Metro to a station near our hostel.
We spent a while back at the hostel, relaxing and catching up on our journals, before cooking pasta and sauce for dinner.
Once we had eaten and done our washing up, we headed back outside and walked from Barri Gótic up to the Musical Fountain, which sits just below Palau Nacional where we had walked up to the day before. Here, they put on a show similar to, but nowhere near as good as, the Magical Fountain on Sentosa, Singapore. It had lights and music, but the views out over Barcelona were better than the fountain.
We met up with Marty and Katherine there, and after Tim and I had taken a few photos, the four of us headed off on a tapas and bar hopping spree.
We went to three or four different pubs, and at most of them had a plate or two of tapas (olives or potatoes bravis or calamari) and a drink. It was lots of fun, and the last bar we went to was the Wax Museum bar where we had been once before, with all the wax trees and so on, before heading back to our hostel.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 23 Oct 2003
Olympic Site, Crazy Café ( 44 photos )
When we woke up on Thursday morning, we had breakfast at the hostel, and then Penny and Jonno checked out and went off to find a place to stay that was closer to the bus station as they had to catch an early bus the next morning to take them to the airport. Tim and I stayed in the hostel we were in, as it was nice and central and was one of the few hostels in Barcelona that had a kitchen. So we spent our morning checking emails and organising a way to get from Barcelona to Paris.
This ended up being a bus to Paris, all the way from Barcelona, 15 hours in total. We booked it for Saturday night, and although it was the cheapest transport option by far, neither of us was too excited about such a long time on a bus.
We met up again with Penny and Jonno at Midday and decided to walk from the main bus terminal where we were to the 1992 Barcelona Olympic site, across the city.
The walk took a long time, but the weather was really nice (our first perfect sunny day in Barcelona), and it gave us a great chance to look around the city.
We stopped at a busy but nice place for lunch, and sat at the bar eating our food and watching all the drinks and food being prepared.
A bit more walking, and then we came to Plaça d'Espanya, a huge and busy square that lead us up a long wide road, complete with a fountain along it's length (although it wasn't turned on). At the end of this road, we could see the huge and grand Palau Nacional, that contains the Catalunya National art museum. The building looked very impressive up on the hill, and the view out over the city as we climbed up the hill was also very impressive.
Much further up the hill, we walked through a small park, and then came to the Olympic pool. Further up the road was the Olympic Stadium, where we wandered around it's outside for a bit, before going and having a look inside the stadium. It was suprisingly smaller than Stadium Australia, but it was good to see it.
Back outside the stadium, and around the other side, we started going back downhill. There were lots of beautiful views of the city, especially when we came to the Olympic diving pool, with the spectator seats all lined up on one side of the pool, and all looking out across Barcelona and the diving pool. It would have been brilliant to sit there and watch Olympic diving as well as getting to enjoy such a nice view of Barcelona!
On our way down the hill, and guy called out to Penny and Jonno, and it turned out he was an Austrian whom they had met on their travels through Spain. The five of us decided to go for a coffee, so we made our way all the way back down to town and found a small bar/café to have a hot drink. The drinks were good, but the barman was a bit mad. He got all excited that we spoke English and spent half an hour explaining an American movie plot to us (in Spanish) and getting us to teach him some of the words from the story-line in English. At least that was what we think he was doing! In the end we had had enough of him, and wandered on a bit further.
We said goodbye to Jonno and Penny's friend, and went to a supermarket where Jonno and Penny bought some supplies. From there we caught a Metro to La Sagrada Familia.
Tim and I went back to La Sagrada Familia the next day for a good look around, so I will say a bit about it in a minute, but to see it that first time was amazing. The spires of Gaudi's uncompleted church towered above us as we came up from the Metro, and we just stood and stared at it for quite a while. Anyway, more about it later, but it was spectacular by night, so we couldn't wait to see it the next day.
The four of us found a small bar and sat playing cards for a while before meeting up with Marty and his girlfriend Katherine. Then all six of us went out for a drink and then dinner.
Dinner was nice, with Tim trying a Spanish speciality - pig's cheek. We all spent many hours talking, drinking and eating.
After saying goodbye to Marty and Katherine, Tim, Penny, Jonno and I caught a taxi back to the Gothic quarter, and there we said goodbye to each other, as Penny and Jonno were leaving for London early the next morning.
Back at our hostel, Tim and I flopped into our beds.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 22 Oct 2003
Back to Barcelona ( 21 photos )
On Wednesday morning I woke up feeling sick, so I didn't eat much of the breakfast that was supplied by the hostel, but Tim, Penny and Jonno seemed to enjoy their breakfast's.
We had decided to find somewhere to stay that was in the middle of town, as although it would cost a little more for the accommodation, we would save on transport costs and perhaps have a kitchen to cook some meals in too. Tim called a few places and found a hostel in the Gothic quarter, about five minutes walk from La Rambla, and they said they would hold beds for the four of us for an hour.
We caught a bus into the city, with me feeling quite sick along the way, and very happy to get off the bus at the end.
After a bit of walking through the Barri Gótic, we found the hostel, Alberg Palau, and claimed our beds in the dorm room with a small balcony overlooking one of the Gothic quarter streets Carrer Palau.
Jonno and Penny went out for a while to collect a package from the post office, while Tim and I went to an internet café on La Rambla and then came back to the hostel.
The weather was bad again - lots of cloud and rain, so the four of us sat inside the hostel for a couple of hours, eating lunch and playing cards.
At 3pm, the clouds broke a little and the sun shone through, so we went out for a walk.
From our hostel, we walked through lots of the Gothic streets and up to Esglesia de Santa Maria del Mar, a large and beautiful church, with some gorgeous stained glass windows inside.
We kept walking and made it to Parc de la Ciutadella, a huge park, complete with duck ponds, a very pretty cascade, lots of green trees and a concrete Mammoth! It was very nice to wander around the park and get some fresh air and a bit of sunshine after being cooped up inside for a lot of the day.
It started getting cool, so we headed back to the hostel, stopping for a coffee in a small café along the way, and exploring yet more of the Barri Gótic streets.
For our dinner we cooked at the hostel which had a kitchen, and made a big stew with chicken, beans and vegetables, all topped off with some wine and our own version of Sangria. It was all delicious, and it was great to have a kitchen to cook in after not being able to cook for quite a while.
After dinner, we sat around playing cards, chatting and drinking hot chocolate until quite late, and then we all went to bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 21 Oct 2003
Tarrrrrrragona ( 5 photos )
For breakfast on Tuesday, the four of us had coffee in the bar downstairs, accompanied by a few of our 'Magdalena' cupcakes that we had bought many of the day before.
We spent a while working out what to do for the day, and decided to go further north to Tarragona, another town right on the coast of Spain, but still a little way south of Barcelona.
Jonno and Tim went for a walk to find out about a bus that might take us there, but without much success, so we all checked out of the hotel and walked up to the train station.
Here we also had troubles. There were no seats available on the train until 4.30pm that afternoon. It was only about 10.30am, and Tim and I were especially un-keen about the wait after all our other hours spent waiting recently, but we decided that getting tickets for the 4.30pm train was better than nothing.
So, after getting our tickets, we shouldered our bags once more, and started the long walk back to the beach, about half an hour away. Along the way we stopped at a supermarket and got some food for a picnic on the beach, and then we spent the day sitting on the beach, eating, drinking, talking and playing cards.
It looked like it was going to rain, so we walked back to the train station and sat on the platform playing cards. We were also entertained by a cute little dog with huge bat-like ears, and an older man that came and stood silently watching our game of cards over our shoulders, looking as though he would give Jonno a tip on how to win the game at any moment!
The train arrived on time and took us to Tarragona in an hour.
Our plan was to find some cheap accommodation for the night, but after ringing around lots of places, and Tim and Penny walking to hotels near the station, we still had not found a place to stay. We even carried all our bags up to the town centre, high on a hill and overlooking the sea, and had a look all around there for somewhere to stay. But we still had no luck finding anywhere that wasn't too expensive.
In the end, we decided to go back down to the train station, passing all the expensive shops along the way, and catch a train to Barcelona. Luckily, there were plenty of seats, and we caught a train that got us to Barcelona not long after 8.30pm.
The place we ended up staying the night at was the HI Alberg Mare de Déu Montserrat, a bit out of central Barcelona, so when we had to catch a Metro to get there and then walk uphill a little way to find the hostel. It turned out to be a nice hostel, set in an old stone building and beautifully decorated inside with mosaics and coloured marble.
We dumped our bags in the dorm room and then went and caught a bus into town to find some dinner.
It was quite last by now, so most places in the Gothic quarter, where we were looking for dinner, had stopped serving food, or were simply out of our budget. We ended up choosing a kebab place where we had some beer as well and then sat playing cards until they dimmed the lights and turned the music up. So we went to another bar and sat playing cards until the wee hours when they kicked us out.
We caught a taxi back to the hostel, and went to bed sometime after 3am.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 20 Oct 2003
Vinarós ( 12 photos )
We left the pension for a final time and walked strapped to our packs to the station. Trains back north were full, we were told. Not good news for us, and yet another transport annoyance in Spain.
We could get as far as the edge of the Metro system back in Castello, so that we did (at least it was cheap). From there however, there was only one train and that was going to cost us heaps. So, it was back to waiting at the bus station - the same one we had hated with such a passion days before.
This time, a bus turned up almost on time, and we payed the rather cheap fare up north to Vinarós. However, the limitations of bus transport rapidly became apparent, as it was quite full and we had to put our packs on our laps for the whole journey.
The bus stopped at about a thousand stops through the suburbs of Castello, which didn't bode well for us getting to our destination any time that day. But once outside the city, it stopped only once all the way there, so that was much better. We watched the country roll by, strange to be back on the road again (as opposed to some rails). It's a pretty place to travel through, but hard to do justice to buried under large packs and not able to stop whenever we want. That's for next time.
We stopped in Vinarós, jumped off and had absolutely no idea where we were. There's not much going for this place besides its rather nice beach and the fact that almost no tourists want to go there, so it is cheap. We followed the only signs we could see, walking through anonymous streets line with similar shops, searching for a sign to the centre.
One eventually made itself found, and we walked past yet more little cafés, bars, shoe shops, markets, squares and the like until we sighted the beach. There we plonked ourselves and picniced, not having any better plan until we heard from Jono and Penny. The beach was one of the nicest we have seen in recent times, having almost real sand but still a little too polluted. The water was quite a bit colder than Nice a few days earlier, due mostly I guess to the storms.
Jono rang, saying that they were at the train station and would walk down to meet us on the beach. Here, the station is about half an hour inland, which Liz and I had noticed when we came through it on the train a couple of days ago.
I almost fell asleep in the sun, but was awoken by the sight of two very fit people saying hello - Jono and Penny, fresh from several hundered kilometres of walking around Spain. We haven't seen them well and truly since Sydney, so it was great to catch up on the beach for quite a while, trading travel tales. But eventually we needed to find somewhere to sleep for the night.
We had no real opposition to staying in this town, so we set off in search of a cheap pension. They both speak quite good Spanish (one of the reasons they are here is to teach English), so this proved no real problem. We found one back towards the station above a lively little bar filled with locals. It was pretty basic, but very cheap and we were happy enough there.
Dinner was next on the list of requirements, so we headed back to a large supermarket Penny had spotted earlier, stocking up on bread, meat, cheese, amazingly cheap wine and beer, all of which added up to a great meal for not much money at all.
We searched for a little while to find a place to eat it all, settling on an area just near the beach overlooking the port. Here we sat for ages, just chatting yet more, munching, and everyone enjoying the opportunity to talk to other people after so long with nobody really other than each of our partners to blather at.
The sunset over the port was gorgeous, and we stayed until after dark, ducking into the nearby bar when nature called, hoping nobody noticed!
Back to the pension, we retired to our separate rooms for the night.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 19 Oct 2003
Valencia ( 20 photos )
One thing you usually don't get in a pension is a breakfast included, and this was no exception. So, the first mission for the day was to find a cheap breakfast somewhere.
The place was right near Plaza del Ayuntamiento, a triangular-shaped thing with a fountain in the middle, lined with pleasant if a little touristy shops. But on the whole, the city is far from over-touristed. I think we only saw one actual souviner shop the whole time.
Not too far north, we passed a few cafés before choosing one offering a cheap croissant and coffee deal. We sat down upstairs, with plenty of locals doing the same, just reading papers and doing not much at all. Liz ordered English Breakfast tea, which was actually real leaf tea in a strainer thingy, something very rare here where almost nobody drinks tea at all.
Further north, we passed L'Almonia, the heart of the Roman town of Valentia, where there are on-going excavations. Next door was Plaza de la Virgen, where hundereds of locals were gathering doing whatever it is that locals do on a Sunday morning in a Spanish square. Also, there was an area where people were madly swapping football cards, huge piles of them with about fifty people all wandering around trying to find that elusive player. Mums were even there with a printed list of the cards that little Hosé needs to finish the set off. It was all quite interesting - the Spanidards are truly fanatical about their football.
Next we crossed another interesting feature of Valencia - the old river-bed which once carried plenty of water through the city, now carries local kids playing football and a plethora of great gardens under the banner of Jardines del Turia.
Over one of the bridges which are no longer really required but most people use anyway, we located the tram station for a ride towards the beach. The port and beach area to the east of town are where the locals head in droves every lunchtime. If I had a three hour Siesta each day to sit and eat, I would do the same, so that's exactly what we intended to do this day.
We didn't have change to buy a ticket for the tram, so intended to buy one from the conductor onboard, but one never turned up. Just as well, since the first tram was the wrong direction anyway and we had to come back. We got off and walked a few minutes down to the beach, Playa de la Malvarrosa. Along this was a promenade of restaurants called the Paseo Marítimo. We took our time picking one, as there were so many all looking great. Eventually we followed our noses, sat down at a table facing the water and soaked in the atmosphere.
Our paella arrived, and we devoured it with great gusto. It's a great dish, so tasty and filling while still remaining quite healthy. Here, where the stuff was invented, was a great place to eat it, washed down with a couple of local beers and just watch the sea do its thing infront of us.
To settle that down, we took a walk out along the headland where some surfers were bravely battling the still-rough waters after the stormy days. Plenty of people were watching these two guys, but the best waves were breaking right onto the rocks infront of us where nobody dared to surf. However, the local cat population had set up house there, with about thirty cats and kittens all sitting on the rocks and occasionally running away from waves. Somebody appeared to have been feeding them, but they all looked pretty mangey.
We decided to walk back to town rather than get another tram, as it appeared to be quite direct. Short it wasn't however, and we spent a couple of hours pushing towards town, stopping only for an ice cream and some water. We crossed back over the Jardines del Turia "river" at Plaza de Zaragoza, where there were lots of gardens both above and below the "water line".
The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent trying to decypher Spanish and strangely enough German TV which was a novelty, not having seen it for so long. No dinner required after a lunch of that magnitude.
Jono and Penny rang us from Morella to find out where we were, and we told them the bad news about the buses. We agreed to meet up the next day back north in Vinaròs, and as such this was as far south as we were going to get in Spain.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 18 Oct 2003
NOT to Morella, but Valencia ( 4 photos )
Our general aim for this day was to get a town called Morella, inland in the Valencia province, where we wanted to meet up with Jono and Penny who have been walking around Spain for a month or so. I went to uni with Jono, and interestingly when we went out for dinner back home a few times, we always ended up at Spanish restaurants. So now we were keen to go one better while we were here with them.
Up early, we left our large blue carry bag at Marty's (a welcome change with all the weight in it), and got the Metro back to Sants, where a ticket guy who spoke little English did a little 'running' mime to indicate that the train we wanted was about to leave and we should be quick. Very helpful, and we got the point and high-tailed it down to one of the platforms.
To get to this little town, we had to get a bus in from either Vinaròs or Castello, both stations on the train line south from Barcelona to Valencia City. Marty had helpfully phoned the bus company and used his Spanish to extract from them that there was no bus from Vinaròs (the closest station to Barcelona) on a Saturday, but there was one from Castello - a bigger town but further away. And none from anywhere on Sunday, which often isn't counted as a day here in Spain at all. For instance, buses run "every day" from some places, but if you ask what time the bus on Sunday is, they say "oh no, not Sunday". Weird.
We spent the hours on the train looking at the citrus trees all around the area, and doing the maths, basically working out that we would probably make it in time for this only bus at 1:30pm by about fifteen minutes. All was going well right up until two stops or so out of Castello, where the train proceeded to stop. We egged it on, knowing that our chances of meeting up rested on this useless slow train getting moving again. Soon a fast train sped past us, but still we didn't move. Something eventually spurred the driver into action, just in time to get us into Castello about three minutes after the bus left.
We ran around like mad things trying to find another way, ask people or just generally get to Morella in anyway possible. Disheartened, we were about to go back inside and get on a train to Valencia City when we noticed on the electronic bus noticeboard that there was another bus to Morella at 3:50pm! All we can guess is that this one is operated by a different company that we didn't know about.
So, we sat and waited, doing some supermarket runs for food, but cursing the fact that carrying books to read would mean more weight, so we don't really do it.
I amused myself for a while playing with my new camera, a Kodak CX6330 (3.1MP, 3x optical zoom) which takes great pictures, weighs not much at all and is tiny. However, it's designed for people who just want the photos and as such is pretty dumbed down. No arguments from me, it's going to be just fine for what we want it for, and it was cheap!
By 4pm, plenty of buses had come and gone, and we had asked all of them if they were going to Morella, but none did. We could have gotten to Romania though. By 5pm, we were part of a growing crowd not happy that there was now no way to get to this little place until Monday. Once most of that crowd got into a car that they had hired or borrowed or something at around 5:45, we decided that we had done enough waiting for the day, went inside and got on a train to Valencia instead.
This was much better, as we were actually at the far northern reach of the city's Metro system, so the journey in, while stopping at every little stop, was nice enough and plenty efficient. Not so the buses around this region.
Valencia City didn't look significantly different to anything else as we walked North from the train station, and to Hostal-Residencia Alicante, a pension (cheap hotel) located above Calle de Ribera, a lively pedestrian street with cafés and bars. The price was good but not fantastic, so we had a quick look at a few other options before deciding that we had had enough for the day and just taking it.
The room was great - a little double with its own shower and sink, very clean and also convenient. We relaxed, not having to wait for something for a change, except for our stomachs to start rumbling.
When the eventually did, we headed out for a wander around the town, where a cheap tapas run by a lively local turned out to be a great option.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 17 Oct 2003
The Rain in Spain, New Camera ( 4 photos )
On Friday, Tim, Marty and I all had a long sleep in until 10am after our big night our on Thursday. And then we didn't really do much but sit around relaxing, eat a big greasy breakfast complete with bacon and sausages, have hot showers and chat to each other. The weather was still awful outside, so that made it a big incentive to stay warm and dry inside!
At 3pm, the weather cleared a little, so we got off our lazy bums and walked out to the beach. The surf was really rough, and we got sprayed by sea water, but it was really nice to walk along the beach and listen to the waves breaking.
The storm over the last few days had washed away most of the sand on the man-made beaches and the water was very brown and there was quite a lot of rubbish on what was left of the sand, so it wasn't the best looking beach, but we still had a nice long walk all the way to the harbour where we had been the day before.
We stopped there for a late lunch. There were about eight small fast-food places to choose from, so I had fish and chips and Tim and Marty had burgers.
Feeling satisfied, we headed up La Rambla and then we turned off it to find some camera shops. We spent about two hours looking around various shops and exploring through the back streets. The good news is that Tim found a camera that he liked and at not too steep a price. So we bought it. It doesn't have as many features as the camera he lost, but he is much happier now he has a camera again, and we both think it is definitely worth having it for the memories.
It was now dark and raining once more. We made our way through the rain to a movie cinema that showed some movies in English, but finding none we were keen to see, we decided to get a taxi back to Marty's flat and stay out of the rain for the night.
We had some pasta and sausages for dinner and sat around chatting until we went to bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 16 Oct 2003
Into Barcelona ( No photos )
On Thursday, we had a bit of a lie-in before going downstairs and having breakfast at the hostel. It was quite good - breads, cheese and sliced meat, hot and cold drinks, and delicious lemon cupcakes.
Back upstairs, we packed our bags and then checked out and made our way to the train station. Along the way we got a few photos of the medieval streets of Girona and the residental areas along the river-bank.
At the station, we were on-time for our intended train, and even better, the train itself turned up - only five minutes late!
So we went from Girona down to Barcelona, and at midday we were standing in the central train station - Barcelona Sants.
We put all our bags in a locker, and gave up trying to get a city map from the very slow and busy tourist information.
Our next twenty minutes were spent trying to locate the Metro station near Marty's (Tim's uni mate) house on the station maps. For some reason, we just could not see the station we were looking for. Afterwards we found out that the station we were looking for was quite new, so it obviously hadn't made it to the maps we were looking at. In the end, we asked an assistant where the station was, and he pointed it out on yet another map.
Marty was at work, so Tim and I bought a T-10 (a public transport ticket that gives you ten trips on all transport) and caught the Metro to a station that was close to the first things we wanted to see.
Unfortunately, the weather was very overcast and later on in the day it rained heavily. Walking around Barcelona in bad weather didn't really do the city justice.
We found a large square that had thousands of pidgeons, all keen to get food from all the humans to the point where they kept jumping onto our feet, or even onto the bench next to us. We at some of our bread and peanut butter, and shooed the pidgeons away, and then decided to keep walking as we were getting quite cold sitting there.
Our first adventure was La Rambla. La Rambla is Spain's most famous street and stretches all the way from Catalunya Square to Colom, a huge Colombus monument. Down the middle of La Rambla is a wide pedestrian boulevard and two single road lanes either side, then more footpaths and shops, cafés and old buildings at the sides. The middle is lined with huge trees all along the length, and looks very pretty. But, it is most famous for the bird stalls, flower stalls and vibrant buskers and beggars.
The first section we walked along had the bird stalls - little stalls packed with cage after cage filled with parrots, pidgeons, chickens, ducks, even rabbis and baby turtles. It was interesting, but a bit sad seeing many birds squashed into small cages, and quite a few of them showing signs of distress. Tim and I also wondered if some of the exotic parrots we saw had maybe been smuggled from their native countries.
Next were the flower stalls with a huge array of brightly coloured flowers and plants. Along the sides were buskers or human statues, people on stilts and even a "Michael Jackson" dancing to music. And of course, lots of other tourists.
We went off to one side and had a look through a few souvaner shops, walked more along the pedestrian bit in the middle, and then crossed to the other side to go into Mercat de la Boqueria, a large and busy food market. We walked all around the market, smelling olives, fruit and seafood, seeing lots of fresh meat - so fresh that poultry was dead and plucked but otherwise whole, and suckling pigs and so on. A bit gross, but I guess that's what we eat most of the time.
We went back out onto La Rambla, and walked all the way down to the Colombus monument looking around us as we went.
The Colombus monument was quite tall, with a statue standing on top, and we had a good look before heading onwards down to the waterfront. We crossed a footbridge going past hundereds of yachts moored at the marina and looked up to the hill on our right, which was the main sight of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. On the other side of the bridge was Moll d'Espanya, a former wharf which is now a big shopping centre complete with restaurants on the harbourside.
We walked through the shopping centre, then went back across the footbridge and back up La Rambla a little way.
We turned right and headed into Barri Gòtic, the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. It is full of lots of little grubby streets, tapas bars, coffee shops and above all the shops and bars are lots of flats. It is full of rubbish and there are lots of beggars, but it still has a certain charm and was quite fun to explore around the many streets, often getting quite lost!
This was what Tim and I did now, wandering randomly through the streets, occasionaly coming to a small square.
We saw Catedral (not Cathedral), a big church but it was covered in scaffolding and green mesh, which obscured nearly the whole building. In the square outside was a junk market, which we looked through for a bit and then we came to a wide pedestrian street which was lined with expensive shops and department stores.
By now, it was quite cold and windy, so we caught the Metro back to Barcelona Sants, got our bags out of the luggage locker and caught the Metro to the station near Marty's house.
Outside, it was even colder and raining too - not the sort of weather we had expected to have in Spain!
Marty came and met us outside the station, and we went up to his flat where we stayed inside for a few hours and watched the miserable weather through the windows.
Tim and I hadn't had anything to eat for ages, so Marty cooked us some pasta and fried eggs. It was delicious - we hadn't had eggs for ages, and as a bonus Marty was cooking for us!
Later on in the evening, we did go out even though it was still raining heavily. First we checked our email, then we ran through the rain to a huge shopping centre where we got some food for later and where Tim had a look at digital cameras.
We then caught the Metro into the middle of the city and our first stop for the night was the Wax Museum Bar. Incredible - the whole bar was full of waxwork trees, with hidden faces that were really expressive when we finally managed to pick a few out. It was like being in the Enchanted Forest and I loved it. We had a few drinks there, and when it closed at 1am, we did more running through the rain to a wine bar for a few drinks.
We got back to Marty's place about three or four am after catching the night bus and getting soaking wet and freezing cold!
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 15 Oct 2003
We Made It! ( No photos )
(Continued from France 1)
Depending on what you chose to believe, Port-Bou was either in España (Spain) or France, but when we arrived it was clear we had crossed the border. Signs were different, French was now the third language, behind Catalan (the regional dialect) then Español (Spanish). English was nowhere to be seen - hooray!
Not really being prepared to wait two hours for the next train, I gave up the idea of explaining that we wanted long return tickets all through España and back again, opting just for two (dos) singles to Girona.
Another town picked for the location of its hostel, and the fact that it lie about half-way between the border and Barcelona, Girona was a little more interesting than we expected. The train station was quite a wander away from anything of interest, but at least the information office woman was able to communicate that the tourist office lay in 'that' general direction, which we set off in search of.
Back pretty much as we crossed the border, the weather had turned quite sour. This was not what we had expected at all from sun-soaked Spain. We zigged and zagged through anonymous streets, crossed the river Riu Onyar and found the tourist office. There a girl who had at least some grasp of English showed me on a map where the hostel was, then proceeded to explain on the list of hotels that this was the "price" and these are "hotels" and these are "pensions". She seemed so excited to be able to communicate in English, something she was only fairly new at. Good on her - our Español thus far stretches to "Non hablos Español" and "¿Hablos English?", which is of course "I don't speak Spanish" and "Do you speak English?". The most important phrases in any new country! Oh, and love the upside-down question marks at the beginning of sentences!
The HI hostel Alberg de Joventut proved to be not far from the tourist office, through into the far more attractive old section of town. We checked into the hostel, which unfortunately is always a bit of a let-down, because it's pretty much all in English, so we could have been anywhere.
We dumped our stuff then set out to explore the city a bit. We had heard of the legendary cheap and excellent Spanish food long long ago, and were keen to check it out after so much pasta-and-sauce. The reception girl drew a few places on our map, and we set off out into the rain in search of a couple of them.
First stop was a nice wine bar overlooking the river off Plaza Independéncia and a few of its cute bridges, where we sat for an hour or so before going a few shops away to an empty but cheap and reliable looking tapas restaurant.
For those who don't know, tapas is a concept where you get lots of small servings of food, so that you eat about seven courses, each quite different. We had chicken, spicy potatoes, ham croquetes and all sorts of yummy goodies, finished off great with desserts that we couldn't quite fit in after all that.
We wandered back to the hostel, glad that for a while at least the French regional rail system was behind us, and we could make some progress with our trip.
(permanent link to this story)
Waiting for Trains II ( No photos )
Getting up the earliest we had for a long time, we easily beat the sun out into the world, heading straight for the station and the 8:07 train.
Only it didn't exist. That's not a huge problem, except that there were two other options to get us to Port-Bou. Firstly, we could pay up 44 euros extra on top of the ticket price we had already paid and get on some ultra super-dooper fast train at 8:46. No thanks, these tickets cost us enough already.
That left us with option number two - the 13:29 slow cheap train. Pausing briefly to wonder just how useless and out of date the timetable at the hostel which mentioned the 8:07 train must have been, we trudged out of the station to get some breakfast and begin a long wait in the town Perpignan with seemingly nothing whatsoever to do.
We sat for a couple of hours at the first café we found, having a hearty breakfast of croissants, juice and coffee as we generally sat and planned all the things we want to do should we ever get anywhere via train.
Upon leaving, we asked for an Internet café and were directed further down the main road of town (there's only one of note) to Hotel Meditteranian. There we fought with silly French keyboards for a while, tapping away and reading mails. Not much chance of plugging the laptop there, we thought.
But we were wrong - as we were leaving, a guy was sitting at the bar with a laptop, wireless card hanging conspicuously out the side! How silly, one of the few places we didn't bother to check, and there was free wireless net access in this crappy little town! A few clicks and we were away, updating the website and doing other things we haven't done for ages. The girl didn't even charge us for the wireless bit because she didn't know she had the system there! No arguments from us.
It was finally time to go back towards the train station, where we sat for another eternity before the train appeared on the boards and went to wait for it on the platform.
The poor old run-down thing rattled into the station, and clattered us towards Port-Bou. Remember we still haven't made it to Spain yet, which has been our goal for two days or so now.
Just before Port-Bou station, we crossed the border into España.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 14 Oct 2003
Waiting for Trains ( No photos )
This was a day where not a huge amount was achieved, mostly due to the poor connections between trains across the south of France.
First we waited in Nice for a train which would take us to Marseille, then we waited outside the station there. I did a run down to the cheap food shops, returning with a couple of huge kebabs and some pasta sauce.
We plotted a route towards the famous yet hard-to-reach border station with Spain, Port-Bou. But by the time we had managed the changes in trains, we decided that a good place to rest for the evening was a few stops short in Perpignan. The main reason for this was there was a HI hostel only 400m from the station.
Arriving there, we found the town really didn't amount to much. A helpful woman at the station pointed us towards the hostel, where we trudged along for a while (notably further than 400m, though). In the dark this ugly town looked even worse, so we weren't expecting much. It turned out to be alright though, in a nice old Catalan-style house where everything was clean and functional, if far from new.
After waiting while the rather rude guy talked to his mates for twenty minutes as we just sat there with the bags waiting to check in, we did so. He seemed a bit apologetic and gave us a cheaper deal.
The kitchen was outside, where we had to elbow in for some space on the two burner stove (Campingaz, no less!), to cook guess what. Liz attended to that while I went for a walk with a Canadian guy called Mark, returning with some refreshments for the night.
We took note of the trains for the next morning, setting alarms to get up early for the 8:07 train to Port-Bou.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 13 Oct 2003
Beaches - Monaco, Nice ( No photos )
The weather was excellent as we awoke, so I dragged my shorts out from the bottom of our pack, we ate the great included breakfast and then it was time to head off to soak up some sun.
Getting from Nice to Monaco on the train again was less hassle this time, rolling into the station and out the far exit, we found ourselves at a little fruit market in place d'Armes. That such a thing could exist in a place of such oppulence was at first suprising, but the more we looked around, the more it was apparent that not just the ultra-rich lived here, but more 'average' people called this place home also.
It took a while to work out how to pay for the apple we selected for consumption, but that done, it was off in search of touristy shops. We were running low on cash, which turned out to be a very good thing - not much could be afforded at all! Even our fridge magnet for the collection had to wait until we could find an ATM - something which was far harder than we expected in such a place. Perhaps if you are rich you just have accounts everywhere and don't need cash.
We walked down the quay on the south side of Port de Monaco, past billions of dollars worth of yachts, hyper-expensive restaurants, and generally feeling quite out of place. That's a feeling that didn't really leave us - nobody was actively rude to us, but there is an atmosphere of exclusiveness, something backpackers aren't really all about.
Next around the Port to the northern side, where we had the general aim of exploring Monte Carlo and finding an ATM for some cash. There are lots of streets going the same way here, but each is terraced higher than the next, so as to provide a way of getting around on such a steep landscape. We chose one of the lower ones, which still wound fairly high through the side of the mountain, with great views of the water out of the one open side.
There was a lift up into the famous casino here, which I guess explains the presence of a tourist shop. They have the standard stuff available, with an emphasis on Formula 1, due of course to the fact that one of the races is run here in late May. We had tried to pick pieces of the course out during our walks (it's all run on the streets), but settled for the fact that driving anywhere around this place at 300km/h is going to be pretty nuts. With fantastic views, however.
Out the other side of the mountain, and past an amazing piece of architecture in the Jardin Japonais towards our holy grail - Monte Carlo Beach.
It has been so long since we saw a piece of coastline, let alone in fantastic weather, with huge fish swimming right up to the water's edge and in a place as famous as this. The stones were even much smaller than in Nice (perhaps the rich employ people to break them in to smaller pieces?) In no time at all, we were lazing around, soaking up the rays and cursing the fact that our swimming costumes are back in Rosie. Who would have thought that mid-October in Europe would be swimming weather. Plenty of people, I guess, since there were others around too. Most of these, however, were so over-tanned that their skin was sagging middle-aged women, obviously living here while hubby was away earning millions, with nothing better to do than laze on the beach all day.
It wasn't such a bad plan, and it was quite a task to tear us away from the place, but there was more to see, and a beach, although not as pretty, was awaiting us in Nice also. We looked pretty silly there anyway, being the youngest there by about thirty years, and the whitest since we tan incedentally to our travels only, not as an occupation.
We found our way up a couple of tiers, and walked back past the famous Casino de Monte Carlo where so much rich people's money has been moved to other rich people that we felt it deserved a photo, but not our patronage. Besides, I don't think we quite fit the desired clientele profile.
Almost back to the train station to hitch a ride out of there, we remembered that we didn't have a magnet yet. The fastest way back due to the fact we were now a long way up from the water and hence the cheapy tourist shop was to go back in the station, down a huge long lift into the mountain where the station is, then walk down some more steps and ramps, arriving at place Ste-Dévote. The return journey to the touristy place was eased by the fact that we also grabbed a couple of ice creams, our first in weeks and quite justified in the heat of the day.
The last of our little coastal trains was waiting for us, which pulled out eventually and chugged back to Nice, stopping again at all of these tiny little stations, which I imagine only a month or so ago were totally clogged with rich tourists staying places where the poor dare not to tread.
The beach in Monte Carlo had given us a taste, and now there was only one thing for it - get a picnic and spent the afternoon and evening doing pretty close to nothing on Nice beach. We spent five hours there in total, doing nothing but chatting, munching, drinking, and looking forward in no small terms to doing exactly the same back on Cronulla beach in a month or two. And there, there is actually sand, which our bums would have loved after five hours of sitting on large stones.
The sun went down early, which coupled with the fact that it doesn't get light until about 8am now (very strange after our travels to North Cape) means that daylight savings must be on the way, which we look forward to.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 12 Oct 2003
Marseille, across Côte d'Azur to Nice ( No photos )
Shunning the not-included-at-HI-hostels breakfast, we shouldered packs early, having learnt that the bus we had taken to get there the day before didn't run on Sundays, and hence we would have to take another one.
We walked around the local soccer field where plenty of morning action was going on, interestingly with the spectators outside the fences. This bus-stop proved a little tricky to locate, but we did so on a side-street. Reading and understanding the maps and timetables proved to be almost impossible, so we just sat back and waited for a bus to arrive with the correct destination on the board.
Two more tickets got us back into the centre of town, and then it was back to the train station. After dumping our bags at the station for a ridiculous sum of money, we were quite naughty and fell for a Sunday morning McDonalds breakfast, tasting pretty much the same as it does back home.
Being France's second largest city doesn't really do much to change the fact that it is grotty and doesn't do much to hide that. We set off in search of the soul of the city, buried under kebab wrappers and all the rest of the rubbish. We headed first west along la Canebière, down directly towards the water. Strangely, as we did so, the city cleaned up its act just a little. I guess it is similar to leaving some parts of Redfern in Sydney.
Along quai des Belges at the end of Vieux Port, there was a fish market which paled in comparison to others we have spent time in such as Bergen. The fish were all fresh enough though, most being in buckets out the back, and prodded on the stands to show that they were still kicking. Not quite what we wanted to see to entice us into a purchase.
So, instead, we headed north to see a few interesting places with little time to do so before our annoyingly 'booked' train. We walked west along the north of Vieux Port, along quai du Port. Randomly choosing a side street, we turned north in search of adventure. I'm not sure we really found that, but this whole area, the Panier Quarter, was certainly quite different. Steep narrow streets were the order of the day, and although not quite immaculate, the area was much cleaner than we expected it to be.
Prices were high at most of the little shops, but at least they were open. We didn't grab anything to cook with there, instead just pushing through towards the station. We eventually hit boulevard des Dames, and followed this back east towards the station Gare St. Charles.
Massive roadworks made our progress slow and frequently we had to dodge into the middle of the road to get around. At least the French drivers try not to hit you, unlike the Italians did!
It was almost time for our train, so we trudged back up the huge staircase to the train station, where I went back to get our bags out of the lockers. In the second incident in recent times, there were four Australians giving us bad names in the locker room. If you insist in swearing your head off in foreign countries, at least do it without an Australian flag on your pack.
The much-slower-than-the-TGV train took us along the pretty coastline, weaving our way towards Monaco, the main famous part of which is Monte Carlo. First we had to change in Nice though, and we had an hour or two with nothing to do. We were hungry again, so split a pizza at a place near the station, one of the cheapest reliable eats we can find around the place.
We boarded the local train towards Monaco, which sits on a blurry line between a country and state of France. Technically its a Principality, but it's only 1.95km square so for most practical reasons it's part of France.
Whatever the case was, we got off the train there in the spiffy new train station, picked a random exit and set off in search of our hostel. The change from Marseille was absolute. Since the residents of Monaco pay no taxes, you can imagine that the rich all feature quite prominently. Ferraris and BMWs were all in evidence parked under/around the huge high-rise buildings with views over the sea.
Our exit from the station had been through a lift which took us high up the hill, so at least our search for the hostel was all downhill from there. After a few wrong turns, we found ourselves outside the right building. Only the demolition company's sign, the huge crane overhead and the rubble all around did not bode well. Checking the sign above the building confirmed that we had infact found Centre de la Jeunesse Princesse Stèphanie, but it appeared that the Princess had long since deserted the place.
We threw our bags down to have a think about this. Here we were, in one of the world's most expensive cities, with the only cheap place to stay boarded up. We checked a couple of times, but it seems that the entry in our February 2003 Lonely Planet is somewhat out of date. Infact, for the city, they show the train station in the right place, but the hostel description is relative to the old train station, now nothing but a shell!
So, we did what any budget travellers not prepared to pay 85 euros for the next cheapest option would do - we trudged back to the train to get back to Nice. We could have asked the Tourist Information if there were any other places, but they were all closed - both offices.
All this finding accommodation stuff was getting to us, so we rang ahead and booked a room in Nice in what was actually a hotel, although which strangely had a double bed in a dorm room, Hôtel Belle Meunière. We laughed away the hour or so we had to wait for a train back thinking that the place we were about to travel through might sound like a pile of manure, but at least they answered the phone.
It turned out to be right near the station, and a great little place too. France and Spain seem to have a number of hotels where they do dorm rooms, or even proper double rooms for very cheap prices. Just not so in Monaco.
One thing the place didn't have was a kitchen, so it was off to our third take-away meal for the day, not very good at all really. At least we push for cheap stuff, which in some cases is less than the cost of cooking. We located a kebab shop (a bit harder task than it was in Marseille, but not much) and grabbed some food, which we wanted to eat on the beach washed down with a beer. Three of the local lads thought it would be amusing to throw their pistachio nut shells at us as we waited for our food - we glared and said 'Pardon' but only got laughs in return.
When I went into a shop to grab a beer to take with us, it turned out that one of the shell-throwers was running the store. I made it quite clear that he wasn't going to get any money off me, put the beer back and off we went. Stupid idiot.
We found a drink somewhere else (cheaper!), and capped off our dinner with a nice long walk along the beach front. The beach was only about 1km from our hotel, and was covered in 1-3 inch stones, not quite the sand we have back home! Still, they were rounded and quite easy to walk along. Our walk back went via some of the centre of town, blundering our way along but generally having a ball exploring the city.
Arriving not too late, we didn't wake up our room-mate in the single bed (we had a double, remember), Hayley from the US.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 11 Oct 2003
Into Marseille ( No photos )
Being in separate dorms which we aren't quite prepared for, we only have one alarm clock. We had chosen quite an early time to meet downstairs, breakfast and get on the rails, but Liz didn't show! She wandered in quite a while later, having had not the best night's sleep. Happens now and again, unfortunately.
After our breakfast, we decided to leave Lyon, and hence headed back to the main train station. Discussions the night before had meant that we wanted to spend little time in the middle of France, instead heading for the famous "South of France", on the French Riviera, or Côte d'Azur, to spend quite a bit of time there.
Our journey was through the scenic Rhône Valley, to change trains at a previously-unheard of place called Nimes, where we intended to buy an extra return ticket to Monaco. Most of this went fairly well, although we had to get another train through to Marseille before we could head further east. The annoying thing about having tickets on the French train system is that you have to specify specific times you wish to travel, and in many cases pay suppliments.
We had happily paid the suppliment to travel from Lyon down to Nimes, on one of the trains I had wanted to get on ever since I was a little kid and learnt all about trains of the world. The pride of the French train fleet is the TGV, an ultra-fast way to get across the country. The GPS proved to us that we were infact screaming along at 295km/h, easily the fastest we have ever travelled while still having something joining us to the earth.
By the time the connecting train got us late into Marseille, we only just made it to the next train, where we found other people sitting in our reserved seats and a train number that didn't quite match up. Confused, we chose to break our journey there and changed our reservations to the next morning.
Looking into the great little French Youth Hostel Association guide book, we found that we could get to a HI hostel there with just a simple bus ride. Lonely Planet describes the city as "not in the least bit beautified for the sake of tourists". What an apt description. There was rubbish everywhere, beggars, and generally not much to bring a traveller there at all, except maybe as a stop if you were passing through. It did manage to have such a concentration of kebab shops that at one stage we saw three right next to each other - a feat not achieved even in Istanbul.
After waiting for a while on the busy arterial la Canebière, the bus arrived, and we somehow managed to get a ticket from the driver, and it wound its way towards Auberge de Jeunesse Château de Bois Luzy, in a neighbourhood about 5km out of town. The place itself is rather interesting, being in an old castle, rather run down, but that is part of its character. We had to lug our bags there quite a way from the bus stop, but it was all worked out in the end.
We couldn't quite check in yet, so I went for a wander back down to the shops to gather some foodstuffs for dinner, communicating with the shop-staff how I do not know, and coming away with a couple of cake things, some pasta sauce and a two euro bottle of wine. Not a bad haul really.
Paying up the tiny suppliment for a double room (far better than being split apart, although when they say double room here, they mean twin), we dumped our bags and set about dinner.
Saying that the place had a kitchen was a little over-kind. Infact it had gas burners that wouldn't have passed safety standards in 1950 (which at least boiled the water in about two minutes flat), and a set of cutlery, crockery and pots and pans that were extremely close to useless. We salvaged one glass to drink out of, pulled a handle off one of the pots (which actually made it better), and enjoyed a good meal.
We weren't sure where to sit at first because there was a huge conference of people all getting together and speaking rapid French (not suprising, I guess). We have no idea what it was all about, but after a while we did notice that there was not one male among them, a fact I found a little dis-concerting as I ate my dinner, the only male in the room of a hundered or so.
That all done, we continued our habit of retiring early to wake and get on the move as soon as possible.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 10 Oct 2003
Goodbye to Switzerland ( No photos )
We showered then organised ourselves for check-out, then transported the getting-rather-heavy packs down the road to the train station.
After sitting for a while at a café typing up some emails, we tried to use up our Swiss phone card (most of them only work in one country here :( ) to phone people back in Oz, but it seems that there was something wrong with the international lines. We talked to a few people in the UK and checked in with the progress of the Rosie transportation to Netherlands, but could not get through to friends and family back home.
Next we went up to the helpful internet café while where there was one, where the guy wanted to see my "Laptop Virus-Free Pass". Tune out about now unless you think you will chuckle at something nerdy. It seems that they have had quite a bit of trouble with viruses there, which they have tracked back to people with laptops coming in. I replied to him that "It's a Mac". He said "Oh, OK - you can plug in over there then". And that was that!
Internet done, we set about finding a train to France. We had heard that reservations were needed, but this turned out not to be the case. There were actually special platforms for trains going to France, complete with their own customs and passport control. Since the reason for this is that Switzerland is not part of the EU or Shengen and France is, I was a little worried that I would have a repeat of the Estonia/Helsinki incident. I needn't have worried, as the guy there didn't even look at our passports. Nor did he give me a stamp when I asked for one.
Up on the platform, we had about twenty minutes to kill, but there was no phone around to use up the phonecard. So, we boarded the first train to Lyon in France. Immediately different sounds for announcements and door opening and closing could be heard - we were on our way to another new country!
About ten kilometres later, we crossed the border into France.
(permanent link to this story)
Into Lyon ( No photos )
(Continued from Schweiz)
No dramatic changes as we crossed the border. Infact, we had technically
been in France some months back, when we drove Rosie (R.I.P.) back to London from the Netherlands. The changes you see on the road as you drive around the place are far more pronounced than those on the trains.
On maps Lyon doesn't look all that far from the Swiss border, but it took quite a while to get there, proving the fact that France is the largest country in Europe. We hadn't chosen Lyon for any particular reason, other than it sounded interesting, was about the right distance for a day's travel, and Meaghan and Dave had been there a week or so earlier.
Alighting at the Gare de Perrache train station, we headed off in search of the HI hostel. This proved quite a hike away, across River Saône and up some amazingly steep streets to the hostel on the hill. The hike with the packs was quite strenuous, and we stopped a few times just to admire the cobbled old streets down below us and catch our breath.
Finally making it to the top, we followed the road down towards the hostel - as luck would have it, we had chosen the steepest path up (not knowing otherwise), and we had a bit of a run back down hill a way to where the hostel actually was. The bulding was huge, and admittedly had great views across the city, which has two separate World Heritage listed areas in its old towns. It seemed to take as long as the walk from the station for the girl to check us in, people jumping infront of us in the 'queue' all seemed to not have Youth Hostel cards and hence took ages to check in.
We were put in separate dorms which is most annoying with only one set of gear, so we stashed our stuff, waited twenty minutes or so to give our keys back to the receptionist, grabbed a town map and set off for a look around.
Our busy day hadn't left much time to eat, so we set off to the recommended Café 203, taking a walk through town to get there along the pedestrianised rue de la République. We ate the set menu, which was quite interesting to say the least, the 'highlight' being my dessert which was like a tart with carrot in it - very strange but edible. Sitting there was marred a little bit by the group of eight or so Australians sitting near us who decided that burping and farting would be a great way to pass the time. I think they were several under each, but that doesn't really excuse the bad wrap they are giving us to everyone else.
Looking for nothing in particular, we wandered back through the town, taking in the central square place Bellecour and then crossing back over one of the footbridges to take the shorter path back to the hostel.
We spent the evening getting our journals up to date in the communal area of the hostel, which, being a Friday night, was unfortunately doubling as a disco. The effect of the lighting was annoying enough, but the noise was just getting silly. We gave up after a while and went our separate ways to our rooms, where I had a great view out over the town from my window. All things considered, we slept quite well.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 09 Oct 2003
Genève ( No photos )
No included breakfast at this place, so we got on the road fairly early, grabbing a croissant at the station where we had wandered to plug in the laptop. This proved to be easy, and we emailed and chatted for a while.
Just on the side of the station, a bike company called Genève Roule does a very strange thing - it lets you have bikes for free. They get kick-backs from the advertising on the bikes, which turned out to be less in-your-face than we had expected.
We left a deposit, and set out to explore a bit of the city on the rather impressive bikes. Heading firstly north, dodging traffic in the infernal mess that the city is due to roadworks, back past the non-existant hostel of the previous day, we made our first stop at the Musee International De La Croix-Rouge Et Du Croissant-Rouge. For you and me, that's the Red Cross Museum, right here in the city where it was founded and is based.
As part of a deal which we were only too happy to accept, we got half price by showing our room keys. The wander around the place for a couple of hours was quite enlightening - we didn't realise what a major part the organisation had played in getting prisoners of war repatriated and organised, for one. As a museum, it was quite old by modern standards, even using a bewildering array of twelve slide projectors for one show, the effect of which was admittedly very good.
We learnt all about the history of the organisation, and saw videos and the like on more modern work, such as training young people in developing countries to look after other young people, often on the streets.
After a quick morning tea in the canteen there, we headed just across the road to the second big thing we wanted to see - the Palais des Nations, which is the international headquarters of the United Nations. We had to show our passports and have our bags scanned to get in, then we found ourselves on an hour-long tour through the building's old and new wings.
The tour guide seemed a little in-experienced, but the subject matter was worth the effort - some amazing paintings around the place, and everywhere gifts from various countries adorning the walls, floors, and even used in the construction in the form of marble and the like. We went into three different conference rooms (the building is the world's busiest conference centre, with up to 4000 per year), ranging from horrible 1970s through to fantastic 1930s.
One interesting fact is that the land on which the complex is built was gifted from the city, which in turn was bequeathed from a private land owner. This land owner made only two stipulations on the city when he handed over the land - one was that there should always be peacocks roaming in the impressive parkland, and there is - about thirty we were told. The second was that the parkland should always remain open to the public. It is sad where we live in a world where the wishes of a dying man can no longer be obeyed, citing "security concerns" as the reason for the fact that the public can no longer wander around and enjoy the treasures the park has to offer. I guess incidents like the recent UN headquarters in Iraq bombing are not going to reverse this decision any time soon. My sincere sarcastic thanks to those involved.
Next we rode back through the train station, and out the other side towards the centre of town. We had to dodge trolley-buses and buses all through the area towards Pont du Mont-Blanc, one of the bridges over the Rhône river. Liz nearly got sandwiched, but they seemed rather accommodating really for such obvious tourists as us.
First stop was the famous Jet d'Eau, a 140m high water spout spraying out of the lake, Lake Burley-Griffin in Canberra-style. We elected not to walk out and get covered in water, although plenty of other tourists weren't quite a wise. Some dodgy-looking lads prompted us to move onwards a bit, happily cycling in the sunshine east along the south bank of the lake.
Once past the city limit signs, we decided it was time to turn back in search of the old town of the city. This involved doubling back, then a pleasant detour through the nice city park Parc La Grange. Liz had a habit of changing gears in the wrong direction when she started on a hill, resulting in a few get-off-and-push moments! Out the other side, we headed into town along Route de Frontenex.
We stopped at a tram stop to eat some newly purchased grapes and chips, watching the world and one stinky old man go by. Further into the old town, we picked some random streets and tackled the traffic. This was done with a mixture of riding on the road and riding on the footpath - the latter didn't go down too well with a kindly old police man just like the one in the old Yoplait ads. He gesticulated for a while, but it was quite clear what we had done wrong. A quick 'pardon' and we were on our way, on the roads.
Not really knowing our way around very well, we ended up in a bit of pickle - we had picked a street which ended in a rather steep set of stairs. We could back track for a few minutes or push on up the stairs, pushing the bikes. We chose the latter, but by the top it was apparent that we would not be making that choice again for a long time. These bikes were heavy, much more so than our mountain bikes back home (actually, they're called "city bikes" most places over here, and are indeed much more practical in cities such as this one. Except when you choose to lug them up stairs).
At the top, we rode along into Cour de Saint-Pierre, a bustle-free but gorgeous square right infront of Cathêdrale Saint-Pierre. Liz sat and rested from the exertion for a while, as I wandered down to check out Jazz House. A great little jazz-only record store run by an old guy who obviously was living out his hobby, I managed to keep my money in my pocket, looked lustfully at the baritone saxophone in the window and went back to see Liz.
We'd seen enough of the city for this trip, and as with so many others, we hadn't seen the half of it. It's a shame to be rushing through things now, but we can always come back next time!
We rode down the both-brakes-on very steep Rue de la Cité, scattering pedestrians and loving the wind in our hair! Then back north across the strange bridge-island-bridge combination of Ponts del L'île, through the traffic again back to the train station. Being peak hour, we had to walk the bikes a reasonable part of the way, not being 'local' enough to ride like manics through the traffic as the other bike-riders were doing. Perhaps we spent too much time in Italy to trust the drivers even a little bit.
No hassles getting our deposit back from the rather strange bike shop, I also handed over one part of the advertising that had fallen off and had to be carried in our pack. We walked up to the hostel, stopping to get some bits and pieces for a pasta and sauce dinner (what else?!!), which we ate conversing with an American father and son. Again we were suprised because the son had been away for such a long time (almost three months!) that the dad had come over to visit him! Weird Americans.
There was no strange sort-of-there-but-not people in our room that night, we had the place to ourselves for less than half the price of a double room.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 08 Oct 2003
Lausanne, into Genève ( No photos )
We got down to breakfast a bit later than initially planned, but so had Matt and Meisha, as we discussed plans for the day. Leaving our bags at the hostel, Matt came with Liz and I as we walked down towards massive Lake Geneva.
The town actually has a "Metro" (railway) system, although it's not much like those of other cities. There are only two or three cars, running up one track climbing the steep hills upon which the town is built. We elected to walk instead.
Once down to the waterfront, the impressive setting of the town became even clearer - across the lake were huge snow-capped peaks, all reflecting in the sunshine that was abound on this much better day.
Our destination for the morning was Musèe Olympique Lausanne, aka the Olympic Museum in the town which is the home of the modern Olympic movement.
When we got there, Matt rightly decided that he didn't have enough time to look through it properly before he had to catch his train to Paris, and as such we bed him farewell.
We hadn't been to keen to make the effort to go there - it was Matt's suggestion actually, but we were very glad it was one he made. First thing on the agenda was reliving the memories of the Sydney 2000 Opening Cemremony in the 3D theatre! Dispite the film being horribly produced and directed, it was quite entertaining to see Victa lawnmowers and the girl in the pink suit everyone said would have a huge career but now seems forgotten (?) coming right at you in 3D. We even wore the silly glasses. Liz reported being very home-sick after that, and I have to admit I probably felt a touch also.
A further couple of hours was spent wandering from exhibit to exhibit, taking in plenty of Olympic history, medals, equipment, and scandals, all presented wonderfully and easy to navigate. They seem genuinely wrapped in the Sydney 2000 Olympics - we feature highly, and even got chills up our spine as we read about Kathy Freeman in the 400m - Liz and I were both there and remember it well.
Only small criticisms can be made - the main one being that the museum is totally dominated by the Summer Olympics. Plenty is given over to the Winter Olympics, though you get the feeling the organising committee almost thinks it a token effort. Even worse is the coverage for the Special Olympics - only one tiny stand about it, compressed in the middle of the room where most people would have walked around the walls, missing it totally. The three should be on even footing, in my humble opinion.
That was enough museum-ing for a while, so we headed back up the steep streets, watching the Metro buzz back and forth under us, taunting us for not wanting to pay the fare. We stopped in the station to grab something to cook for lunch, and ended up cooking a pasta and sauce all-in-one thingy because it was going to be cheap and easy back at the hostel. Fed up for a while, we shouldered the pack and headed back to the station.
We had considered for a while heading up to a chalet hostel in the vaud Alps at Gryon, which there was a poster for in the hostel. The Swiss Alp Retreat boasted friendly Aussie hosts, lots of skiing and cheap prices. However, the train fare there and back was not quite so cheap. We'll put it on the 'next time' list.
Instead, we boarded the next train to Genève. This passed rather un-eventfully, as most transport in Europe seems to do. At least when we had Rosie every day was an adventure of things not working.
Genève (Geneva in English) turned out to be a lovely city. Situated, funnily enough, at the end of Lake Geneva, there are lots of alpine views all around. Plus, the city just has a 'nice' feel to it, something you can't explain, but doesn't exist in every city by a long shot.
We picked a hostel called Centre Masaryk, a little way north of town (and hence not central at all), but within walking distance (just). The building itself was not difficult to locate, but as we arrived half an hour's walk or so later we looked and looked but could not find evidence of a hostel there at all. Once past the denial stage, we looked up another hostel and headed back towards town.
A little lady could tell what were after, and pointed us the last distance towards City Hostel Geneva, an ugly but functional and well-located place. We checked in and dumped our stuff in the three-bed room, quite a let-down after the amazing place in Lausanne.
Totally exhausted after our long walk, we managed to summon the leg-power to walk down the road to an English Pub. These places are funny, because I walk in expecting someone to speak English quite well, but ordering a pint of Kilkenny (which I know is actually Irish) proved a little challenging. Besides, they don't serve pints, you get a half litre. Somehow, that 85mL missing makes a difference and it's just not quite right.
The drink didn't increase our enthusiasm for cooking, so instead we wandered in search of something cheap to eat - quite a challenge in what we worked out was a very expensive city. I've heard Genève described as more belonging to the world than to Switzerland, and this was certainly evident in the variety of food available. We settled for Lebanese kebab and felafel plates for a rather high price in Swiss Francs (which is a mental barrier, because they are worth quite a bit less than Euros, almost the same as the Aussie dollar, actually).
We were waiting until 9pm when we had read that one of the internet cafés near the station had cheap internet access, but by the time we got there, the signs on the wall told us that we could plug the laptop in, no hassles! This has become so rare, that we decided to come back the next day instead with the laptop and communicate with the world.
As such, it was back to the hostel for the evening, where we noted that a third person had joined our room, but she didn't actually sleep there at all. We saw her a couple of times and by the morning, there was no trace of her at all. Very strange.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 07 Oct 2003
Bern, Into Lausanne ( No photos )
Another reasonable breakfast to start the day, and the weather also could be described as reasonable. Your standards get lower when you have horrible days - this day was just ok - no rain, but overcast and hopeless for spotting the mountains we had had such a great time at doing the day previously.
We saddled up and walked back into town, stopping for a few more small errands before finding ourselves a train towards Genève (Geneva in English, Graf in German). It's quite confusing, because Switzerland has three official languages - German on the east, French on the west and a little bit of Italian down south.
Pushing in to Bern (which is still, but just, in the German-speaking region) to change trains, we had a bit of a read about what attractions it had. To put it lightly, not really much. We decided that as we were going through there anyway, we would have a look around to say we had and get on a later connecting train south-west.
We locked our bags into the station lockers, helping some British people who were there also, but seemed completely incapable of reading the signs, even in English. Once outside, the weather was putting a dull note on what was already a dull city. It's the capital, but only the fourth-largest. Pushing on because we had come this far, we battled rain and wind to take in the place's most famous sights - a fountain of a giant eating small children and a large clock that dings and clangs like so many others.
Also we made a supermarket trip, but didn't have enough bag space so we were carrying a triple-pack of pasta all around the city with us! We went down into the bowels of a building chasing an internet café which would let us plug the laptop in. We had to push a huge red button to summon someone to help us in the silent basement, the style of button that they use in cartoons with a huge "do not press" sign next to it. She eventually came out and told us no show with the laptop.
Further on, we looked through a few markets before getting back to the station. Sure, we could have seen more, but the city is very low on Lonely Planet's recommended things to do when in Switzerland, and the only other thing at all we could find of interest is the city is where the official mascot comes from - the bear pits. Apparently there is a bear show where they perform tricks and the like in horrible concrete surroundings - hardly the sort of place we wanted to patronise with our limited tourist dollars.
So, we got back on a train and headed across the invisible border that marks the end of our travels speaking German. The effort we put in to pick a little of it up was worth it, but now we might as well be in China. We pulled out our European Phrase Book and started to learn a bit of basic French to get by. As always, the first thing we need is "I don't speak French", which we are both quite fluent at now!
As the train approached Lausanne, we decided to break the journey to Genève just a little more, and spend a night there. The train announcements by now had changed to be French first, then German, and also the conductor spoke with a heavy French accent. Amazing how quickly things change across this invisible border.
Lausanne is quite a small place, and has one backpacker's place only. As such, we headed there, quite close to the train station (lucky, as the rain was back). Lausanne GuestHouse & Backpacker turned out to be one of the best places we have yet stayed in. All newly renovated to the highest environmental standards, everything is non-allergenic and spotlessly clean.
Since we had gotten there before the reception was open due to the horrible weather, we sat and played as Swiss version of Memory (you know, lots of cards face down and you have to make a pair), which was interesting as the scenes were of some places we had seen, others not. Enough to remind us that we need to return someday.
The reception opened, and two of those amazing European girls who can speak about a thousand different languages checked us in, except now with a French accent. The room was gorgeous, all wooden beds and floors, with clean, fresh paint on the walls. Quite unlike most hostels around the place!
We sat down in the cosy living area to read, there being little point in being outside in the horrible weather. After a while, I heard a voice checking in at reception that sounded familiar - it turns out it was our Canadian lawyer friend Matt from the hostel in Interlaken. Bumping into people again is quite common - there a fewer around at this time of year, either going one way or the other.
We ended up spending the evening in with a few bottles of wine and some communal pasta, being joined by another Canadian Meisha staying there. She had spent some time working off a boat going around Africa helping out developing nations - there's so many great ways to travel these days.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 06 Oct 2003
Around Interlaken Region ( No photos )
After a night's sleep which was better than we had expected due to our colds, we were awoken to the sound of what sounded like an over-enthusiastic radio announcer. We knew there was piped music in the place, but this was something else. It turns out that the American voice was actually someone on a microphone, drumming people into enthusiasm for the day! Not quite what we expected from a hostel, but perhaps we should have guessed from the 'summer camp' billing this place gets.
We had our included breakfast, then got on the road suprisingly early, in through the middle of town to have a look around and get a few things organised. In common with weather-announcers world-wide, the Swiss ones got today very wrong - the prediction for horrible weather to continue was proved wrong as the blue skies let the sun shine through - we were in the real Interlaken at last.
The first and most important thing, now that it was a Monday, was to get some warmer clothes organised. The lady at the tourist office pointed us at a supermarket with a clothing section, but in the end we got a beanie each from there and gloves and a jacket for me from a sports store nearby. A marked improvement over what we have been wearing up until now.
Next, we needed to get some things organised for the tow of Rosie back to the Netherlands - notably payment and sending through the registration documents to the towing company. Both were handled quite well by the Post Office, and should be through to the recipients in a few days. From there, let the towing commence.
We had a stop in at Interlaken West Bahnhof to see if there was any news on my camera. They couldn't help much, and suggested that I call the report number again, which I did, but they couldn't help either. The general idea seems to be that they will get through to me if they find anything, which I guess is reasonable, but doesn't settle me down any.
So, warm clothes in hand, on head and around body, we set out to do some cheaper sight-seeing than we had really wanted to do (the hyper-expensive Junfraujoch railway that goes up 3500m, the highest in Europe), instead taking a bus up a windy road to a little village called Beatenburg. It was strangely nice to be on windy roads again, although weird to not be the ones doing the driving.
Nethertheless, we enjoyed the trip a great deal, soon passing up into where huge quantities of snow had fallen. Roofs, cars and pretty much everything were coated in snow, yet the place moved on, unlike what happens when the same thing occurs in London.
At the end of the windy mostly one-track road, we pulled in at the railway station. Only, not in the traditonal sense - you could either get the funicular railway back down the hill to another village, or a cable car another 1000m up. Figuring this was going to be our Swiss Alps experience for the time being, we forked over the money and jumped in the cable car.
We hadn't expected it to go for quite so long - it just kept climbing and climbing, up through the clouds and amazingly beautiful snow-covered trees, over mountain chalets, and past yet more people going about their business as if nothing strange had happened at all. Which I guess it hadn't.
The end of the ride was not terribly far from the peak of Niederhorn, 1950m high, which makes it about 1400m up from Interlaken, which looked amazingly small down below.
We set of trudging through the foot-deep snow, our sneakers being the one thing we haven't replaced, getting soaked almost instantly. Yet it was a huge deal of fun, each step an adventure of will we fall over, strike ice or just have our foot sink at times up to two feet straight down through the soft powdery snow? We completed all three with a great deal of style.
We threw plenty of snowballs before climbing right to the peak, not far but a long journey due to the incline and our lack of co-ordination and equipment. The views no matter where we turned were jaw-dropping. The weather was still fantastic, and we could see clearly for hundereds of kilometres in each direction, until our views were interrupted by the many snow covered peaks. From the top, we could see down into a valley on the other side, where a car driving along a road was like a tiny spec, and the houses even harder to spot due to the deluge of snow surrounding them.
It would be a truly amazing place to live, you wouldn't have to convince people particularly hard to stay here, although we just kept remembering the weather of the previous day. Given clear days, this is one of the most naturally beautiful places we have seen.
Eventually having our fill, we got back on the return cable-car for the trip down. We had considered walking part of it, but really that would only have been sensible with the right equipment and two replacement knees for me.
Back down at Beatenberg, we decided to walk for a while, winding our way back through the gorgeous chalets, all resplendent with flower boxes and animals nearby. The whole area seems to speak a strange mix of German and French almost interchangebly, with "Grüssie" for hello (presumably shortening of Grüss Gott, a German hello) and "Merci" for thanks/goodbye. After about an hour walking down the mountainside-road, we picked a bus stop to hitch a ride for the remaining trip down.
Once back in Interlaken, Liz went on a bit more clothes shopping to replace her jeans (which are about six months overdue in need of replacement, and now they are the only pants she has with us), while I stayed on the bus in the vain hope that Interlaken Ost train station had some news on my camera. No joy.
We met back in the centre of town (it's quite hard to get lost in), then returned to the hostel to cook some dinner, have a happy-hour beer, and catch up on some journal.
I think travelling fatigue is finally catching up with us, although the colds aren't helping much either. We are looking forward to pushing through back to London and then on our way home again, although we still have such a great time each day. I think we have just had too many stresses to deal with recently, so we both crave normality for a while.
Soon we will have plenty, and I'm sure we will be itching to travel again.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 05 Oct 2003
Luzern, Into Interlaken ( No photos )
After another stuffy night with colds, we awoke to throw together ourselves a nice cheap breakfast. We organised our packs and left them at the hostel for a final look around Luzern.
Walking back into town, we again detoured into the fairground for a bit of a look, although we managed to hold onto our purse-strings well. We had no particular place to wander, other than generally get the feel of the town on what was infact a very quiet Sunday morning.
Not long after this, we noticed that there was quite a bit of snow on the peaks that we were sure wasn't there the day before. The weather was once again very cold, although the sun was trying to break through here and there. We were missing our warm clothes back in Rosie, and thinking that perhaps we had to spend yet more money on getting some more.
That being the case, we turned down the expensive yet recommended cruises on the lake, which would have been rather nice, but frightfully cold. Instead, we settled for a walk around the far side for a while, until we turned inland in search of warmth.
After Liz called to have a chat to her Dad, we went into a Starbucks and hence had a nice warming American coffee in Switzerland. Well, the place was convenient and we just wanted to rest. Not quite as bad as McDonalds, which we have stayed away from for quite a while now.
From there, it was time to get back to the hostel to get our bags, and head onwards to a new place of interest. There were a few sights we would have liked to have seen in Luzern, but perhaps next time, when the weather is better and we are better prepared.
Packs shouldered, we walked to the train station and grabbed a few snacks for the journey on the train westwards to Interlaken. As we are travelling on big complicated tickets, we just hopped on the first train we found, which the conductor failed to appreciate as our tickets went a different way. No matter, he gave us alteration tickets (in German and French, neither of which we understood), and smiled once again.
The train travelled an extremely scenic route over the Brünig pass, along mountain valleys, past inland seas and other places of huge attraction. We had a great look, swapping seats as the most scenic places popped into view to get the best look at it all.
To get over the pass, the train had to do something neither of us had ever seen before - it actually went on a rack. Trains typically have a problem with going up hills (must be something to do with metal on metal not gripping too well), so what they did here was have a little ratchet wheel actually climbing up a ladder of sorts in between the tracks. In this fashion, we climbed up slopes that would have had most cars back in first or second gear, all in a 'normal' passenger train!
We passed through tiny mountain villages where people got on and off, and plenty where nobody did - perhaps nobody lived there anymore and noone had told the railway company. Why they would have left would have been a mystery however, as the huts tucked away in mountain passes, with no roads in were a sight to behold. Add plenty of cows with loud bells (they're everywhere here), and the snowline which even now was only about another 100m higher, and you have a very beautiful place to live indeed.
Back down the other wide, we followed the beautiful lake Brienzersee into the city of Interlaken. The setting is really something else. Described as 'the real Switzerland' by plenty of different places, the city has it all - huge green fields with tinlking cows in the middle, towering mountains all around (the largest is Jungfrau, at 4100m or so), and the two blue-green lakes on either side. However, this day it was not at its best. The weather was absolutely appalling, rain being thrown down hard.
It was in this horrible weather that we made the fifteen minute treck or so from Interlaken Ost (there is also a West) station to our hostel Balmers. By the time we got there we would have accepted any room at any price, but there were enough cheap ones left in mixed dorms, so we were happy. It is a highly American place that has been running since 1945 and is more like a summer camp than a hostel. They cook plenty of meals, there are two bars, and of course so many Americans here. No major problem, us Aussies are putting in a good show also.
The place is two big old houses with massive jumbles of rooms throughout, making it quite difficult to navigate. Luckily, we had prepared for it being a Sunday with all the shops closed, plus there was not much chance of us going out in the terrible weather anyway, so we stayed in and got chatting to some interesting people.
It is very strange by this time of our trip when we ask people "Have you been travelling long?", and they reply "Yes, about five weeks". We let them rattle along for a while about what they have seen, and when the return question comes to us, they are absolutely floored when we say that our travels are approaching fifteen months. Americans especially do their travel in one or two month blocks, then go home again. This means they have more money for each thing they want to do (they bought dinners while we cooked pasta), but we get it all over and done with. Well, for a while anyway.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 04 Oct 2003
DISASTER! And Luzern ( No photos )
(Continued from Liechtenstein)
Unfortunately, crossing the border didn't mean that the weather got better, so we continued onwards in the rain until we came to Buchs central train station.
At the train station, Tim went and got us some train tickets, while I sat and waited with our bags. When he came back, he had tickets that would take us all the way to Port-Bou, a stop on the France/Spain border. I wasn't expecting to get tickets for so far already, but it actually will work out a lot cheaper in the long run. And we can still get on and off the train as much as we want. The ticket expires long after we will be home in Sydney.
At Buchs, our train was delayed, but we got one about twenty minutes later. We then changed trains twice at Sargens first, and then at Thalwil. Our destination was Luzern (Lucerne in English).
But, along the way we had a disaster - poor Tim left his camera on one of the trains. We realised too late when we were on another train arriving in Luzern. We repored it immediately to the Swiss train system's lost and found, but we have heard nothing yet, which probably means noone has handed the camera in. We are both really dissapointed, Tim much more so, although I really admire how well he is dealing with the fact that he probably won't get his camera back. It is good that we have my camera to make sure we still get lots of photos, but loosing the expensive digital camera is a huge loss.
So that all kind of left us feeling quite flat and down in the dumps. We walked from the station to our hostel Backpackers Lucerne, hoping that someone would be honest and hand our camera in.
At the hostel, we waited a while for reception to open, and then were put in a four-bed dorm with another couple. The great thing about this hostel was that it had a kitchen we could. So many hostels before then had had no cooking facilities, which meant we were having to go out and buy lots of meals from restaurants and fast food places. And on a tight budget, that takes up a lot of money. So being able to cook was great, and we made heaps of pasta and sauce which was delicious.
After dinner we went for a walk through the town. Luzern is set at the end of a huge lake, the Nierwaldstättersee, which has huge mountains all around it, and the whole place is really beautiful. From our hostel, we walked along the lake's edge through the town fair, having a look at a few of the stalls and up to Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge). This was really beautiful with the bridge, nearby tower and buildings all being reflected in the water. The bridge is old, first build in 1333, but in 1993, a lot of it burnt down, destroying many of the old and fascinating painted panels on the bridge. Even though much of it has had to be re-built, it still seems very old and you can also still see much of the fire damage.
We walked around many of the backstreets, peeking in closed shop windows and enjoyed wandering around. Eventually we slowly made our way back to the hostel, stopping at the train station along the way to get some food supplies.
We both have annoying colds at the moment, and because of this we did not sleep too well.
(permanent link to this story)
Leaving Liechtenstein ( No photos )
On Saturday morning the weather was still awful - lots of cloud obscuring a lot of the mountains, and it was raining constantly.
We didn't feel too bad from all the bike riding the previous day, just sore bottoms! We had breakfast at the hostel and packed up all our stuff and headed out into the rain. From the hostel, we walked up towards the Rhine and then walked alongside the river until we came to a bridge, where we could cross over into Switzerland. So, we waved Liechtenstein goodbye and crossed over the borderline into our new country.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 03 Oct 2003
Around Liechtenstein (almost completely) ( 27 photos )
When we woke up on Friday morning, the weather wasn't looking too good. The sky was very overcast and it was raining on and off. We had breakfast at the hostel and also decided to stay another night at the hostel. But instead of staying on the double room, we decided to switch to the dorm rooms to save some money. However, the guy at the desk said it was too much trouble, so he let us stay in a double room for the dorm bed price! Bargain.
From the hostel, we hired a couple of bikes as this seemed like quite a good way to see most of the country. The brakes and gears all worked, and the bikes even had a lock-up system to leave them outside and so on, and lights for night-time.
We rode a short way down the road to Vaduz first. Vaduz is the capital of Liechtenstein, but is still just a tiny town. We looked in a few of the shops, and that was about it.
The whole of Liechtenstein seems to fit quite neatly in a long valley with Austria on one side and Switzerland on the other. And because it is in the valley, there are huge towering and very beautiful mountains all around. Even though the weather was pretty awful, the mountains looked so tall and it was nice to see clouds floating across and covering up the little hillside villages.
From Vaduz, we could see the Royal Castle nestled in between the hills up on the mountainside. We kept riding south, stopping at a Tourist Information to get Liechtenstein stamps in our passports, riding part of the way up a steep hillside and then giving up, and stopping to get a loaf of bread and jar of jam from a small supermarket. We also stopped quite regularly to dodge the frequent rain showers. At some stage we went and found a bike track going right along side the Rhine River, which is also the border with Switzerland. We came to a bridge and crossed over to Switzerland - a new country! Unfortunately it was still raining in Switzerland, so we crossed back over into Liechtenstein.
We ended up riding all the way down to the southern tip of the country, and came to another border with Switzerland. We rode into the little town of Balzers and got really wet from heavy rainfall. From then on the rain was almost constant, and it got colder too, but we were still keen to see lots more.
We just kept riding and riding, accidentally got lost in someone's farm, stopped under trees to try to shelter from the rain and got very wet! We also went back out to the Rhine and rode alongside it. The sun came out for about ten minutes, which warmed us up quite a bit, but then the clouds closed in again.
After a really long day of riding, lots of kilometres, wet clothes and sore bums we made it back to the hostel where we had nice hot showers and relaxed for a few hours.
We were going to get some food from the local supermarket for dinner as the hostel didn't have a kitchen, but the supermarket didn't really have much food, so our last resort took us to a nice restaurant just near the hostel. It wasn't as cheap as cooking for ourselves, but the food was delicious and for fifteen euro we each a huge bowl of soup, bread, salad, and a beautiful main with sliced beef and cheese noodles. It was all really rich and tasty food, and we really enjoyed it all.
We went back to the hostel going past the cows in the field with the tinkling cowbells, and had a good night's sleep.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 02 Oct 2003
Quickly Through Österreich ( 7 photos )
(Continued from Deutschland 3)
Near Lindau, the train went alongside Bodensee (Lake Constance), which was really beautiful, especially with the huge mountains on the horizon, and the sun setting behind the mountains, making the lake and the sky so many different colours.
Our last part of the journey was in the dark. The train stopped at
Feldkirch, and from there we caught a bus into Liechtenstein.
(permanent link to this story)
Into Liechtenstein ( No photos )
(Continued from Österreich 3)
Liechtenstein is so tiny that it is ridiculous. From north to south it streches 25km, and from east to west just 6km. It is kind of amazing that such a small scrap of land can actually be deemed a country. They even have their own stamps and bus system, although they use the Swiss franc, and the Swiss postal system.
We drove into the country on the bus, and we were even pulled over and a border guard got on to check everyone's passports - that must get annoying for the locals.
We passed the border and the bus took us into Schaan, one of Liechtenstein's towns. The incredibly helpful bus driver told us which bus to get next, and where from, and even came and told our new bus driver where we wanted to get off! How's that for great service?!
So, we were told where to get off our new bus, and even given directions to The Hostel (the only one in the country!) by yet another friendly and helpful bus driver. It took me a while to understand the German instructions (the German sounds quite different down south), but we found the hostel easily.
We treated ourselves to a double room for a slightly extra cost - we had had enough of dorms after our thirty bed dorm in Munich, and we just wanted a good night's sleep. Our room was small but nice, and we soon went to bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Leaving Munich ( 3 photos )
On Thursday, the day after our big Oktoberfest day, I didn't feel too bad - just tired. I would love to go to Oktoberfest all over again, just perhaps another year!
We had our breakfast at the hostel, and packed up our bags. We chatted to some of our Aussie dorm mates for a while, and after leaving our bags in the hostel storage room, we went out for one last wander around Munich.
We made a quick stop at the internet café to check our emails and to sort out a few details to do with getting Rosie towed. From there, we walked towards Marienplatz although not quite as far as the square itself, bought some tourist junk, and then headed back in the other direction to Oktoberfest.
It was about 11am, and the place was starting to get busy and fill up. We walked through the showground again, bought a nice souvenir for ourselves, and even came across two Aussies we had met in the beer hall the day before and had a quick chat.
Tim and I couldn't quite face any more beer, but we did go back into our Hofbräu tent and sat with two half-litre Cokes, and shared half a bbq chicken, which was very tasty. It was tempting to get one last beer, but we had had plenty the day before, so we reluctantly said goodbye to our beer tent, the huge lion that bellowed "Löwenbräu", the wooden pecking chickens at the pecking chicken stall, the big wooden cow being turned on a spitroast over the top of one of the beer halls, the wonderful smells and the colourful atmosphere of Oktoberfest.
On the way back to the hostel to pick up our bags, we stopped at a hairdressers where I had a quick haircut. Then we went and got our bags, and walked up to the train station.
We were at the station for quite a while, waiting for a privately-run (but incredibly helpful) tourist office and ticket-seller to open. I stayed with the bags (we have bought a cheap carry bag to cart around our extra stuff), and Tim went off to organise the tickets. When he came back, we had train tickets that would take us to Liechtenstein that afternoon, so we went to our platform and boarded the first of three trains.
A lot of the journey was quite scenic. Just out of Munich, we went through beautiful rolling farmland and small German villages. We changed to our second train in Kempton, and then our third in Lindau, near the Germany/Austrian border.
This took us across the border south into Österreich once again.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 01 Oct 2003
Oktoberfest! ( 16 photos )
On Wednesday morning, we got up early. We were keen to get to the beer halls early, as people had told us that there had been no seats left at 9am. But that had been on a weekend.
We at breakfast at the hostel, and then walked up to Oktoberfest. It was about 8:30am and the place was much emptier than it had been the night before. It turned out that the beerhalls only opened at 10am on a weekday, but we didn't mind being there early. It gave us a good chance to look around at the whole showground and watch the Oktoberfest come to life.
We had planned to go to one of the Löwenbräu beer halls, but as we were about to go inside, a guy popped out of the kitchen and in an Aussie voice said "Are you guys looking for the Australian tent?" We didn't know how he knew we were Aussies, but we said yes and he told us to go to the HB tent. So off we went. We found the right tent - Hofbräu and went inside to a very big, fairly empty, and very nice looking tent.
We got ourselves a seat and started the say with half a litre of Coke each! Many people were already on their first beer, but we decided to wait just a bit.
At about 11:30am, we ordered our first litre of beer each - huge big glasses so heavy it was hard to lift them up to drink, but the beer was very very nice.
And so, we spent a whole day at Oktoberfest drinking many beers (Liz = 4, Tim = 5, we think!), meeting many nice people (Aussies and Germans), eating big bread pretzels, listening to the fantastic band, singing German beer songs, laughing, talking, and drinking. I had so much fun and would love to go back there again another year. We even forgot to eat for most of the day because we were having such a fantastic time. We made heaps of new friends and chatted to so many people and of course drank many beers!
At about 9pm, we decided we had drunk plenty, said goodbye to everyone, and slowly made our way back to the hostel.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 30 Sep 2003
Looking around München ( 20 photos )
(Continued from Österreich 2).
At about midday, we arrived in München (Munich). We had two nights' stay booked at a hostel, which was conveniently close to the station, so we went there first and checked in, but had to leave our bags in a storage room.
From the hostel, we stopped quickly at an internet café and then wandered up to the centre of town.
We didn't actually do a lot of sight-seeing as such, but just spent hours and hours walking around the city. We came to a big fountain and then wandered along a busy pedestrian shopping street until we came to Marienplatz, a square dominated by a huge neo-gothic building, the Neues Rathaus. We stood and just enjoyed the busy square for a while, before heading onwards.
From Marienplatz, we walked through lots of streets, some busy, some quiet. We saw market stalls, cafés and restaurants, with lots of people drinking beer. We walked over a bridge crossing the Isar River and went into a large and very beautiful park - Maximilian Anlagn. There were lots of green trees, with some of the leaves changing colour, and the sound of running water from the river. It was really relaxing and peaceful just strolling along.
We crossed back over the river and went into Englischer Garten, a huge park filled with woods, streams and wide open grassy areas. We kept walking past a large beer hall, and we sat on a patch of grass to eat some fruit and watch all the people and dogs walk by.
We came out of the park and made our way back through the city to the Internet café, where we got all our good news about having the van towed. From there, we went back to our hostel, found our beds (in a thirty bed dorm! but nice and clean, split up into groups of ten), and met the other newly-arrived Aussies around us.
Of course, everyone was in Munich for Oktoberfest, so after a while Tim and I went to see what it was all about. It was ten minutes walk from the hostel, which was very convenient and made it easy to get to.
The whole place was really cool - a bit like the Easter show, with lots of rides and stalls selling yummy food and soft toys. And there is beer! There about twelve beer 'tents', which are actually huge buildings that fit about ten thousand people in each one. Each tent comes from a particular beer company, so if you want a certain beer, you go to that tent. We walked into the showground, bought some delicious showgrounds covered in mustard, and just wandered around trying to soak everything in. The delicious smells of roasting nuts, sausage, chicken, popcorn were all around us. There were flashing lights and loud music, and crowds of people, then we wandered into one of the beer halls. I don't think I have ever seen so many noisy happy people all at once! Lots more yummy smells, so many people, and so much beer! We went into four or five different tents, just standing still or having a bit of a walk around. Each tent had a great band playing, and everyone was singing, drinking, clapping, cheering, eating, and standing on the tables. Everyone was having such a good time - I couldn't wait for the next day when were going to spend a whole day at Oktoberfest!
After a good look around, we decided to go back towards the hostel and get a bit more food there where it would be cheaper. Along the way, we stopped at a bar and had a small beer each (well, we had just seen so much of the stuff!!).
We grabbed a bit of food, and then went back to the hostel where I slept fairly well, but Tim was kept awake by lots of noisy, drunk people coming in.
(permanent link to this story)
North into Deutschland ( 2 photos )
On Tuesday, we again had a lovely breakfast at the hostel, packed our bags and headed up to the train station.
Austrians are obviously much more efficent that Italians - the train arrived and left on time, and was even on the right platform.
The countryside was beautiful - huge forest-covered mountains, and little farms with cows and fruit-trees on the valley floor.
We crossed the border north into Deutschland.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 29 Sep 2003
Innsbruck ( 40 photos )
On Monday morning, we had a delicious buffet breakfast at the hostel and then we headed out to explore Innsbruck.
We crossed the River Inn and went into the old part of town. The tall and narrow houses looked beautiful and we saw the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof), a beautiful little building with a roof made of 2657 gilded copper tiles, which would have glinted beautifully had the sun been shining, but still looked very nice as we wandered along.
We looked through a few touristy shops and wandered around a lot of the small streets before heading out towards Markthalle, a large indoor market with lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, bread and meats. We bought some fruit and a pastry snack to eat during the day. From there we walked a short distance to an internet cafe to check our e-mails and so on.
After that we decided to see some of Innsbruck's past Olympic sites. Innsbruck hosted the Winter Olympics in 1964 and 1976, and the city is certainly in a great position for winter sports, with lots of snow during the cold months and mountains all around it.
We could see the Bergisel Stadion from where we stood, but it was at the edge of the city and it took us quite a while to walk to it. The last bit we had to walk up to get to the bottom of the Stadion was very steep, but then we were there, and the bottom of Bergisel Stadion, and Olympic ski jump stadium.
I had no idea how steep these things were, but I guess if you want to launch yourself into the air, you have to be going pretty fast downhill first.
We caught a little cable car to the lookout tower at the top, and even just going up in that made me dizzy! In the tower, we caught the lift to the very top and walked out onto a viewing platform where we could look down the length of the ski jump out over Innsbruck and across to the huge mountains opposite. We could see the big central train station, the line of the river, and we guessed the spot where we were staying, and saw the graveyard at the bottom of the jump where people who missed must end up. A rainbow even came out over Innsbruck and it all looked very pretty.
We caught the cable car back down, getting out about half way down for a bit more of a look around at the very bottom, Tim sat down and I climbed up to the other side to see a good view of the whole ski jump, and the place where the Olympic flame had been lit.
From the ski jump, we made our way back down the hill and walked to the old stadium, which turned out to be run-down and closed. Along the way, we stopped at a bell-makers and looked in the shop at the many different bells of all different shapes and sizes.
We stopped to have a bit of lunch and just sat and relaxed for a while. By now it was about 3pm, and Tim and I decided to phone the Italian garage to see how Rosie was going. We had phoned our insurance company the week before to see how it was all going, and were assured we would get a call when everything was ready, or if there where any problems. So when we called the garage in Italy on mondy afternoon to see how it was all going, we had a huge shock - they hadn't even ordered the part yet, let alone started the job!!! They said some rubbish about waiting for authorization from our insurance company which is crazy because they got authorization the day we were in Padova and approved the go-ahead for the repair.
So we had just spent a week and a half travelling around and waiting for nothing. Seeing everything we have seen has been great, but we were both very frustrated and angry about this, as we were hoping to get the van back at the end of the week. Also, the garage was now going to increase their fee from 2500 euro to maybe 3000 euro, maybe more, as well as taking weeks or months to repair it.
To cut a long story short, we contacted our insurance company and we phoned our contact in the Netherlands, and we have now decided not to go ahead with the repair in Italy, but for a much cheaper price to have the van towed from northern Italy to the Netherlands. Once in the Netherlands, the van will have a whole re-conditioned engine put in for about a third of the cost of half a brand-new Volkswagen dealership engine.
So at the end of Monday afternoon, we were feeling lots of emotions that we shouldn't be feeling when we are on holidays. But at least now it is all sorted out, we are saving heaps, and we can continue the last bit of our travels by train. The only unfortunate side is that because we were expecting to get back to the van after two weeks, all of our warm clothes, shoes and so on are in the van while we are here getting colder and colder. But still, we are very happy.
After that we went back to the hostel, had sandwiches for dinner and went to bed early.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 28 Sep 2003
Into Innsbruck ( No photos )
(Continued from Italia)
At the border station Brenaro/Brenner, the train stopped for quite some time, with plenty of armed Austrian police wandering up and down the train. It turns out this was just routine, and also that the driver seems to get out and is replaced by an Austrian one. We had thought that maybe we would need to change trains, but this was not the case.
We travelled the remaining distance to Innsbruck in no time at all, arriving at the presently being upgraded Hauptbahnhof. Being a little more organised than usual, we had rung ahead from Italia to see if there were rooms available at one of the hostels on the other side of town (but still the closest in), Jugendherberge St Nikolaus.
Walking there, it became readily apparent that we were in another country - no vespas, taxis were Mercedes instead of FIATs, we crossed roads without fear of death, and everything was calm and serene. We were going to like Innsbruck, we could tell already.
We crossed the river Inn (since bridge in Deutsch is brücke, Innsbruck is named after the main bridge) at a small footbridge Inn Steg, finding our hostel/pub/restaurant combination just on the other side. It was a pleasant, lively place, filled to the brim with Aussies. Almost everyone was either going to or coming from Oktoberfest, thinking the same as us that this was quite a pleasant convenient place to stop over.
We were once again in separate dorms, which we don't really mind but all our stuff is packed into the one pack, which makes showering and finding clothes a little difficult. My dorm was the strangest yet I have seen. Picture a bunk bed, one up down. Got that? Now picture a double bunk bed, so that there is a double-sized bed on both the top and the bottom. Still with me? Well, this room was completely filled with a quintuple bunk bed - five up, five down. I was more than a little concered about finding myself sleeping next to a large blubbering drunk Aussie, but I needn't have worried. They cleverly fill up the positions with spaces in between, only filling the other ones when they are really full.
(permanent link to this story)
Verona ( 16 photos )
We awoke to a darkness that foretold bad things to come. The power was out. Getting organised for the breakfast, we noted the reception was lit by a candle. After being totally impressed by the way that the kitchen was run with no power as if it made no difference, we chatted to the receptionist about the power outage. She said that she had been talking to someone about 300km away and they had no power either! Oh dear, not good for the electric rail system we had planned to travel on.
There were only three buses running into town that morning being a Sunday (at least they weren't electric too like some of the others around), and we got on one of these, rode for a while and alighted at our stop by the markets once again. Arriving at the train station, we observed that things weren't going well at all.
Trains were over three hours late, but we picked one supposedly going to Verona and went to sit on what we thought was the right platform. However, the station signs told otherwise. It turns out that the platform numbers go 1-8, but then there is a separate set of platforms numbered 1-3. Pointing and extremely basic Italian found the right platform eventually, and we wandered across the tracks (when in Rome... all the locals were doing this despite signs advising to the contrary) to the other set of platforms.
The train was there, but it took a walk to the front to speak with the driver to find out if it was the correct one. I asked when it was leaving, and he replied in broken English "One hour. Maybe?" This train by now was about four hours late, but it was the only one going our way, so we just sat there for a while. Eventually without warning it just started moving away from the platform, heading off north to Verona.
The journey was another pleasant one, as all in Italia have been - the seats are comfortable and it is a good way to travel for not much money at all.
Pulling into Verona, we checked our big pack into left luggage for a few hours, intending to have a brief look around the city and then get a train to Innsbruck in the evening.
The extremely helpful information office gave us a great map with a walk around the town, and we limped the twenty minutes or so into the centre.
It lived up to its billing as one of Italy's most beautiful towns, with ornate marble pavements everywhere, great cafés and a medium-sized Roman Arena smack-bang in the middle. We had quite a good walk around the town which was overall quite pleasant, but with no amazing highlights.
Following our budget theme, we didn't go into any sights, just looked, sat, walked and walked, past the many 1st century BC and AD bridges, theatres and probably the most famous place here, "Juliet's House". Yes, the city is famous for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and we looked in the place where the heroine supposedly "lived", now with lover's graffiti over the walls under the famous balcony. All a bit blown out of proportion for a work of fiction really.
We'd had our fill, and decided to try and make it back for the 3pm train to Innsbruck. We made it with quite a bit of time to spare, but we needn't have bothered. Once again, the trains were in chaos, as we sat on platform six where it was supposed to leave from. Plenty of other trains came and went, but the Munich (or Monaco as the Italians inexplicably call it, much to our confusion) via Innsbruck train was not to be seen.
I limped yet again down to the station information office, waited in the queue and spoke to a guy who didn't speak English. I resported to my paintented One-Word-and-Hope technique, saying "Munich?" This did the trick, as he pointed to a piece of paper saying nothing but "17:00". This was the time of the next train we had first been going to catch - I gathered the 15:00 one was cancelled.
The joys of travelling! Luckily, the Italians seem to be prepared for the total lack of efficiency and organisation inherent in their systems, providing an excellent waiting room where we sat for an our or so, and could have even watched a movie in a small cinema there had we understood Italian.
Up to platform 7, our train finally arrived. We were powered across the landscape, further and further north as the darkness surrounded us. The train crossed into Österreich at the Brenner Pass, where it occurred to us that we had left Rosie and a sizeable proportion of our belongings in another country.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 27 Sep 2003
Around Bologna ( 20 photos )
We got up and ate the included breakfast at the hostel - again a nice touch at this HI hostel.
Slowly limping and all the while cursing my near-useless knees, we walked over to the bus stop. Today the drivers seemed to be more happy, and a bus turned up soon after. At the far end of the ride, we found ourselves near some markets. We slowly had a look around at all the things available, pondering the fact that no matter where you are in the world, the same Chinese-made odds and ends can be purchased at the local markets. There was quite a lot of the market stalls on two sides of the road, and we spent a while just wandering around the place.
We had no set plans for the city, as none of the major attractions were free enough to warrant our attention. In the central square Piazza del Nettuno, we first had a look at the interesting fountain of Neptune. However, it wasn't long before a better sampling of Italian culture made itself known to us with some loud growly sounds - a judging event of the Italian Ferrari Owners Club.
All manner of old and new Ferraris were on display, with the owners' level of care varying from extreme to fanatical. Most were being pushed into place rather than driven, and all of them seemed to have arrived on a truck. Feather-dusters and plenty of polish were all being used to clean them up for judging. There must have been about fifty there, ranging from 1948 through to 2003.
Liz's enthusiasm for boys and their toys didn't quite match mine, so we set off to explore a bit more of the town. Bologna is apparently famous for lots of red buildings, but to be honest you wouldn't have really known it just from looking. Pretty for sure, and as Italian towns go it had a good vibe to it. We wandered fairly aimlessly, looking for places to sit, making some phone calls, ducking in and out of back alley-ways, getting lost and then finding ourselves again.
Not far up the road we found Piazza di Porta Ravegna, where there had originally been forty-two towers. In the great tradition of Italian buildings, they had all developed horrible leans. Now only two remain, and we took the photo which we wanted to get in Pisa but weren't allowed - Liz pushing one of the towers back up.
We bought a loaf of bread and found ourselves back in Piazza del Nettuno, sitting in the seats which had presumably been set up for people to watch the final judging of the cars on the podium with ramps in the middle of the square to eat it.
Liz sat for a while while I ran around taking some photos of the cars, keeping us both happy. After a trip to an internet café where we booked two nights in a hostel in München/Munich (very lucky to get them as it is Oktoberfest after all), we decided to go to the train station to find out about train tickets to there via Verona and Innsbruck to continue our trip. This turned out to be quite a task.
I went to the automatic ticket machine while Liz waited in the human queue, the result of which was that we could easily get trains to Verona, but for international travel we needed to go to ticket window 17. We waited in a queue for quite a while only to learn that it wasn't infact the queue for window 17 - that was a separate queue.
So, into the next queue, which was very very slow progress. There was one person running it, capable only of extreme slow progress, looking everything up in books. There was a British guy in front of us we got chatting to who was putting his car on a train to Belgium, but this took the best part of forty five minutes to explain and pay for.
We weren't expecting much when our turn came to explain our multi-part journey, but in the end a combination of English, Italian and what we had written on a piece of paper got the explanation across fairly quickly. It was organising the tickets which took an eternity. He had to look the fares up in books and then write out manual tickets. Fair enough, it must be quite difficult to book tickets across international borders, but I would have thought they could have organised a more efficient system after so many years of the trains running.
Once again in a chatty relaxed mood, we spent the evening in a cheap recommended restaurant Trattoria da Danio, where we ate a fixed price menu which was great value. Of course, we just had to try the Spaghetti Bolognaise in Bologna, which turned out to be quite different to what we had expected - far less tomato-ey, but very full of flavour.
We had intended to get a bus back to the other bus stop where the bus leaves for the hostel, but our knees and backs and everything else which is wearing out seemed to be much better after sitting down for a while. When we got back to where the bus left for the hostel, it turned out that we had missed it for the day, no more were running!
Instead we got on another bus which went about 1km away from the hostel, and through a combination of Liz's excellent directional memory and a hint from the bus driver, we found our way back after a twenty minute walk or so in the dark.
We just made it back before the 11pm lock-out, and slept soundly in our twin room.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 26 Sep 2003
Into Bologna ( 10 photos )
On Friday morning we left the hostel (yay!) and after a quick stop at the internet café, we headed towards Duomo. As we had all our bags with us, we took it in turns to go inside and have a look around while the other waited outside with the bags.
Wow. It was enormous and it looked so enormous inside because it was fairly plainly decorated, and had little furniture and so on to clutter it. Just huge soaring marble columns and a ceiling that seemed a long way away.
I had a bit of a look around, and admired the frescoes and the size of the cathedral and I was almost about to walk out of the exit when I spotted the inside of the huge dome. It was beautiful - covered in brightly coloured frescoes.
Back outside, we shouldered our bags and made our way to the train station, where we tried to get tickets to Bologna. Due to a transport strike, there was a sign saying we could purchase tickets on the train, so we went to our platform and boarded a train from Florence to Bologna.
The journey took about an hour and a half and maybe due to the strike, no conductor turned up so in the end we got our journey for free!
In Bologna there was chaos due to the strike, and people were standing around everywhere. We got out of the station and sat outside in the gardens to eat some of our bread. From there, we walked five or ten minutes up the road where we could catch a bus that would take us to the hostel, 4km away. Unfortunately, the buses were also affected by the strike, so we ended up waiting at the bus stop for an hour and a half. Finally buses started turning up, but not the one we needed. Feeling frustrated, we got on one that went vaguely in our direction. A few stops later, we saw the bus we needed infront of us. So we rushed off our bus to catch it. Poor Tim - his knees gave out and he nearly fell down the bus step. We missed our bus, but another one came soon after and took us right to the hostel.
So we made it to the hostel where we got beds and got chatting to a bloke from Leichardt.
We had planned to go into the city for dinner, but due to Tim's sore knee, we decided to have food at the hostel and then we watched a movie.
(permanent link to this story)
Quick Updates ( 10 photos )
Just a quick news flash as we haven't quite got the website fully up to date.
We are in Florence/Firenze right now, have been for two nights and are now leaving on a train, heading to Bolognia.
Longer term plans include heading up to Munich/München for Oktoberfest, then down through Switzerland, all via train.
We have had no more news on the van, only "we will call you when we hear something". As such, we aren't going to hang around, just do things as we see fit, trying to holiday without our home.
Big thanks to the many people who replied interested in our plight of head-gasket problems, with suggestions. The big thing we have learnt since is that it is a new head, not just the gasket. As such, we are basically paying for an entire new engine. It comes with a two year warranty on parts and labour, but yes it is costing us a lot.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 25 Sep 2003
Firenze ( 18 photos )
After getting up, scrathing our itchy selves, a cup of tea for breakfast, and getting journals up to date for most of the morning, we set off to wander around the city and see if we could find some redeeming features.
First stop was the impressive sculpture collection on display in Piazza della Signoria at Loggia della Signoria. The most famous, of course is Michelangelo's David. Sure, it is only a copy of the original (housed behind expensive doors at nearby Galleria dell'Accademia), and it was surrounded by horrible scaffolding, but it was good enough for us. We're here to take in a smattering of things cheaply, not attempt to appreciate every last detail. The rest of the sculpture there was also great to look at, and we sat right inside the veranda where it was all housed, looking over the square through these priceless pieces of art.
At the risk of duplicating information easily found elsewhere (notably once again our friend Bill Bryson's writings), Italy doesn't do a particularly good job of maintaining its amazing array of history. The budget to do so is tiny, and the amount of important historical things we could easily have attacked with a knife or some such has bewildered us all over the country. Artifacts just "dissapear", and countless volumes of history could have been written from what has just been pulled apart or built over.
We mulled around for a while, not quite sure exactly what to do. After some research, we decided to wait in the hour-long queue to enter the Galleria degli Uffizi. It contains "some of the most recognisable Renaissance artworks", which sounded like a good way for us to reach our museum quota for a week or two.
After the first hour queue, made all the worse by listening to some Texans behind us read out every last detail of the museum from their guidebook they had bought in advance (what's wrong with just working it out when you get in there??), we got inside past the metal detector (a token effort at looking secure - they guy supposed to be watching the TV for offending items in the X-ray machine was infact reading the paper), paid our huge sum of cash (no discount for me, EU people under 26 magically have less money than everyone else in the world under 26 and hence are allowed discounts though) and joined another queue to be let in.
We stopped and paid yet more to get an audioguide, allowing us a self-paced tour around the place, looking at what we did and didn't want to. We elected to save a bit of money with one audiomachine and two sets of headphones. This had the curious side effect of making the person holding the audiomachine effectively leading the other around the museum like a little dog. As such, we took turns.
The collections that the museum houses were interesting enough to make us forget the hassle and cost involved in getting in, which is quite a lot of praise. A lot of the art (almost entirely paintings, with a little sculpture for good measure) was religeous in nature, but the audioguide was quite good in that the little man in the box told us all about how the art styles developed, as we were looking at the priceless works infront of us. It could have gotten too bogged down in details, but we found the pace excellent.
Apparently there is plenty more art not on public display owned by the gallery, including some that the budget hasn't yet been allocated for cleaning since a flood back in the 1950s. That's a shame, but we have to admit that there was plenty to keep us entertained for this visit.
Outside the gallery, we went back to our favourite supermarket for some things to make ourselves a picnic up on the hill to watch the sunset. This done, we picked the rest up at the hostel and walked again up the challenging hill, determined to get to the top before the sun dipped.
We had no problems with this, neither did the hundereds of tourist buses dropping their loads to walk around for five minutes before continuing. We had a more leisurely pace planned - some bread rolls, salami, tomato, cheese and of course the rest of the bottle of Chianti to get through, drunk out of plastic cups one of the drink-vendors gave me with a smile.
And so our second silly dinner of our trip proceeded (the first being, of course, at North Cape), cutting away at bread, sipping wine from plastic cups and watching the sun leave its last tendrils draped across Firenze as people walked past and stared. Off to hundered-euro dinners in five-star restaurants wearing cocktail dresses, they weren't going to have nearly as much fun as we did.
The tripod gave us some nice night-time shots along the river once the sun had faded, and we got a few more as we walked back down the hill, our silly picnic over.
Back to the hostel for what was to be our final flea-infested night, we slept much better as Liz took the other free top bunk rather than the dog-bed bottom one of the night before.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 24 Sep 2003
Pisa, Into Firenze ( 36 photos )
Getting up, we had to shuffle back and forth a bit as we were in separate dorm rooms to have a shower and we share lots of toiletries. Liz jumped the queues for the girls showers by getting in the empty boys one (perhaps my room was so stinky because the boys don't shower here?).
All done and organised, we headed into town on the bus once again. Wandering back past the tower, we booked ourselves into the slightly later tower tour, forked over thirty euros for the entrance (AUD $60. Ouch.), and had some breakfast at a little café which for the closest one to the tower was suprisingly good and cheap.
Once our tour was ready to go, we joined in the queue, ready to work out how our tour guide was going to give us a guided tour, given that everyone in the group spoke different languages. They solve that problem quite easily. They don't say a word. Instead we were escorted by two armed guards up to the top of the tower and back down again. Ingeneous, and a wonderful way to take vast sums of cash of hapless tourists for very little in return.
The ascent was fun, sometimes the steps are very steep, and at other times it is almost like you are walking on the flat ground. We were suprised that it was far easier a climb than Basilica San Pietro's dome had been, reaching the top in no time at all despite having climbed over three hundered steps.
They appear to be doing quite a lot of restoration work on it - people were chisleing away with hammers at strategic places around the middle levels under the belfry. Yes, there are actually bells up there, although we couldn't really see them very well through the scaffolding. It is quite amusing to watch from the ground as a massive crane was in place moving pieces of scaffolding around, but it looks like it is holding the tower up!
At the top, we saw the high end of the crane, heightening the fact that we were infact a long way up in the air. No suprises then that the view was awesome, the weather was great and walking around the circle that is the top of the building is fun whether going uphill or down.
After a good look and a few photos, we had had our fill and descended the staircase, which only seemed like it took a minute or so. We walked back towards the bus stop, stopping only to grab a very cheap and even more tacky little leaning tower model thing. The lady smiled as she handed it over, knowing that no matter how crappy these things are, people like us are still going to shell out for them, keeping her in business.
We jumped quickly onto a train to Firenze (Florence). After another un-eventful ride, we found ourselves at Firenze Stazione di Santa Maria Novella, reading our guidebooks and attempting to work out where to dump our bags. After the completely un-helpful tourist office told us that they couldn't even answer our questions about where to find a hostel, we head off randomly to see what we could find.
Not even out of the station gates, we had been approached by plenty of people trying to get us hotel rooms. Out of our budget, one finally called over his mate who ran a hostel. Sure, we were a little un-sure about whether to go with him as he took us to a private hostel, but his story all matched up and he didn't ask for money, saying we could take a look at the room and then decide.
He lead us across to the other side of the city, passing the huge and impressive Duomo church in the middle, which we intended to explore at a later date. The hostel turned out to be conveniently located, other people were there as well, but we took all of our valuables with us when wandering anyway, locking up the bags tightly.
The guide helpfully pointed out lots of interesting sights on a map of the city, including importantly things we could do for free. After a stop at the post office, we investigated one of these first - the supermarket.
We grabbed a BBQ chook, some just-baked bread and milk and headed off to find somewhere to eat it all. We settled for a spot right on the bank of River Arno which divides the city in half, relaxing in the sun for a while. We intended to do quite a lot of what the Italians do best in Firenze - nothing at all.
Over to the south side of the river thanks to Ponte alle Grazie bridge, we walked east in search of a way up the hill to a look-out point that the hostel guy had recommended. Eventually discovering the zig-zagging sets of stairs which climbed at quite a rapid rate, we were exhausted as we made it to the top, Piazzale Michelangelo. It was a little disapointing to see so many tourist buses and of course their accompanying tourist garbage shops had made it it, but this was more than offset by the fantastic view north over the river, looking at the city with its protruding buildings (note the dominating dome of Duomo).
Having had our fill of the view, but intending to return again for a sunset, we walked back down the hill, in a very chatty mood. We stopped at another litle park to continue our planning conversation, and attempted to work out how to operate the water fountain to re-fill our by now almost empty water bottles.
We settled on a walk to the famous Ponte Vecchio, a bridge across the Arno which by law is filled with silver- and gold-smiths. Being so famous, we had to wind our way past the people, catching glimpses of price tags which were more than a little on the inflated side. Rowers on the river made a nice shot towards Ponte alle Grazie.
Happy just to wander a little through various squares, markets and winding back streets which make up the centre of town, we were however a little dissolusioned by the whole place. It is interesting to note a few different opinions we have heard of the city. Travel writer Bill Bryson has been here (at least) twice - once in the early seventies, and again in about 1990. His first visit he thought was amazing, just getting into museums, palaces, and generally gaping at the beauty of the place. My parent's recommendation to come here echoes this, infact it was their favourite Italian city, even including Venice, from their trip also during the seventies.
However, on Bill's second visit, he just couldn't warm to the place. Almost nobody was speaking Italian, no locals were to be found anywhere - just camera after camera, tacky junk following yet more tacky junk. From our perspective, the last thirteen years since Bill wrote of his visit have certainly not seen things improve. Sure, it is a pretty city, but it seems to have lost its soul.
Another trip to the supermarket found us suitably stocked on pasta, sauce and the local specialty wine Chianti (cheap and comes in huge bottles with cane/wicker around the bottom), and we headed back to prepare our staple dinner. We hadn't been in bed long when Liz thought she felt something crawling on her body. Our best thought on that, and the resulting marks that we both had is that the cute dog of the house, Key, had fleas. He also had a habit of sleeping on the dorm beds. Uncomfortable, yes, but things could have worked out much worse.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 23 Sep 2003
Roma IV - Pantheon then Pisa ( 17 photos )
There were just a few things remaining for us to look at in Roma, then it was time to head onwards.
We had to get our bags out of our rooms, so saddling up the big pack, we walked a little way down the road to a place where we could store it for the day, a pokey little back room underneath a very dodgy internet café.
As you have to do with these places, I inquired whether we could plug our laptop in there. The answer we got back was a little confusing - yes, but only after 4pm when his boss was there to supervise.
Not too worried by that, we chose to push on to see our site for the morning - the Pantheon. This strange round building hidden in the wonderful way of ancient monuments tucked away in the middle of busy urban streets, we were suprised to find actually didn't have an entrance charge. In fact, there's not a lot to it at all. It's just one massive room, the top half of which is a large dome with a hole in the top. I read that you could fit a perfect sphere with a diameter of the height of the building inside.
The Christian church have chosen a different path, turning it into a religeos building by the addition of small chapels and frescoes around the sides, but it is amazing the way that your eyes almost skip over them. The focus of it all is surely looking ever upward at that hole. There is a couple of big signs in many languages saying "Yes, there is a big hole in the middle of the roof. Yes, rain does come in. No, it doesn't flood because there is a drainage system in the floor". I guess that answers those questions then.
We sat in the entrance veranda part on the bases of some of the massive marble columns, overlooking Piazza della Rotonda. Continuing our trick of picnicing our way around the world, we munched away and watched the drunks with dogs trade beer and chicken for their dogs to eat with each other. More entertaining than looking the other way, which would have let us see the people in period dress trying to sell horribly over-priced Opera tickets to hapless tourists.
Originally we had intended to see a couple more things around the place and then get going, but to be honest our legs were not interested. We managed to convince them to take us back to get our pack via a shop or two in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore for a couple of last touristy goodies, a café for amazingly cheap amazingly good coffee (because it was not where tourists typically walk), and a couple more attempts at internet cafés.
When we returned to where our pack was, I noted that there was now two people on duty there, surely enough for me to be able to plug the laptop in. But no, the excuse had changed to "It is not possible!" Fine, we walked away to take our business elsewhere.
Finding the ticket office at Roma Termini proved a little challenging, but having learnt from our previous mistakes, we just assumed they spoke English, purchased two singles to Pisa Central and found our platform. We topped up our water bottles with more of that great free Roman water, grabbed an expensive copy of The Times from London and jumped on our train.
Sure, there was more to do in Roma, but there is just so much to do in Roma that there's no way we could have done it all anyway. Besides, now we have a reason to return, as throwing the coin over our shoulders into the fountain means we will. A great city which we are extremely glad to have made it to.
The country-side flew by in a blur as the train got itself moving, for what turned out to be a fairly un-eventful journey. For a while we were following the water, something we hadn't seen for a long time, but then we ducked inland for a bit of a wiggle through some hills before making it back to the coast on the way into Pisa.
The station information office told the story of what this place was all about - huge signs with maps everywhere saying "You are here. Here is the tower. Walk 15 minutes this way or else catch bus number 3". It really is a one-attraction town. Once inside the information office, the lady was happy to show us on a map where the youth hostel was - a bit out of town on the far side. Famous bus number three would get us there also.
After eventually de-cyphering where the bus went from, we stood for quite a while as every other numbered bus stopped then left. Finally bus 3 limped in, and we got on along with a few other backpackers, all obviously doing exactly the same thing we were. We struck up a conversation with one of them, a girl from Nottingham (England) called Katherine. Between the three of us we managed to work out where to get off for the hostel, although to be honest her Italian asking the bus driver was what did it in the end.
The hostel was a strange one - in an old church or maybe covent which had been fitted out quite well with little rooms everywhere, and some extra buildings on the back. Since it was the only place in town within our budget, and we had talked to a guy at the information office who had spent two hours wandering around every hotel in town with no success, we were a bit anxious about whether we would get a room there. It turns out that we were saved by the fact that the hostel only opened at 6pm, a little before we arrived and waited for a long while in the queue.
No problems getting beds, Liz in a big dorm with lots of other girls including Katherine, and me in a four-bed dorm with three other stinky blokes. Note that I did include myself in the stinky bit :)
After settling in a little, we went back out to the road to catch a bus, and luckily there were some Deutsch girls there who pointed out that we had to get the bus from the same side of the road we had been dropped off on - it does a big loop back to town.
So, we got off at the central square of town, and wandered towards probably the most over-marketed tourist attraction in the world. You couldn't miss it if you were deaf, dumb and blind - a really big leaning tower which admittedly leans lots more than we had expected. Just feel your way there past the fifty or so touristy shops in a row all selling exactly the same crap - leaning tower lighters, cups, mugs, statues, lights, t-shirts, you get the idea.
We were actually suprised by the surrounds of the area - there's quite a bit more to see besides the tower itself, including the huge neighboring cathedral, but our time and budget wasn't going to include them.
We grabbed some shots in the ailing light, before turning our attention to our stomachs. We stumbled across Katherine again (it's not a very big place), whos budget was in the very low range with ours. We found a back-street place with no cover charge and small but filling and good portions, washed down with a bottle of that great cheap Italian vino.
It was good to chat to someone else for a change (not just me saying that, Liz also!), especially since Katherine turned out to be a medical student. Liz and her traded horror stories in the way that only those used to doing hideous things to human bodies can, while I just enjoyed the atmosphere of our table on the street.
Eventually time to head home for the night, we managed to just miss a bus. Between the three of us, we picked out the road home and walked it, dodging vespas and cars with no intention of following the speed limit along the road to the hostel.
I resigned myself to falling into a slumber in the stinky room, while Liz and Katherine found people playing board games with no intention of sleeping and chatted awake for quite some time.
A huge lightning storm was right over the building, the first we had heard in a long time. It made me miss the storms you get in Sydney pretty much every night in summer, something we will enjoy seeing again very soon now.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 22 Sep 2003
Roma III - Vatican Dome and Musems ( 53 photos )
Not to upset the trend too much, we jumped on bus number 64 on this morning, heading for our old friend the Vatican City. By now we dreaded getting on it for the packed, sweaty journey across the city. However, in the thrity degree heat it was preferable to an hour or more's walk.
Being a Monday, things were once again open a bit more for us to explore around - first on the list being the dome of San Petro Basilica. Once again we had to dress 'conservatively' to be allowed access, and once again we were approached by several people offering free tours. Very kind, but been there, done that.
This time, we had the quickest of looks around the impressive building on our way down through the crypt and out the other side to the queue for the trip up the dome. It is actually quite interesting - you can either pay four euro and walk the whole way, or pay five euro, get the lift part of the way, but still have over three hundered steps to walk! Call me strange, but on a hot day like this one was, my body really isn't going to understand the difference between three and four hundered steps, plus getting to skip the half an hour queue for the lift and save a euro each in the process was more of a bonus.
However, by the time we had walked up to where the lift ended, we had a nice rest, consoling ourselves that if we had have paid up for the lift we would still be standing down the bottom somewhere. This level was on top of the main part of the building, right behind the facade of the building itself. The statues comprising this impressive facade looked far more massive from this level, and it was a good shock for the system considering how small they look from the ground.
Jolting our bodies into action, we had more climbing to do. A hundered steps later, we were puffed, but had an amazing view down inside the dome at the tiny little people below, where we had been a couple of days earlier. It was amazing to be so close to the mosaics which had looked tiny from floor level, which now seemed to fill our entire view.
Two hundered steps later, we were pouring the water in and stopping for breathers whenever we could make it. Three hundered steps later and we were at the top. What a view.
Thanks to the local law, this was the highest you could get in the city, and as a result there was plenty to see. So many other people had made the trek also, but we were lucky to get a couple of good viewing spots, making the most for some photos and just to stand staring out at the great view. We tried to pick out the Colosseum, but the haze over the city made that only just not possible, despite it being a very bright clear day.
On the other (western) side, we had a great view over the Vatican Gardens, very impressive from this height, but something to save for next trip in terms of actually visiting.
Passing back down through the strange sloping staircase around the dome, we had a quick look in the touristy shops which somehow are permitted around the building. To be honest our main interest was to get inside out of the heat, but their products weren't any less tacky than that available at street-level. At the bottom we made a much-needed refill at the ornate fountain in the courtyard where our tour had ended a couple of days earlier.
Next stop on our wander around this part of town was a trip to the Vatican Museums, and their one main attraction, the Sistine Chapel. Famous for Michelangelo's paintings completely covering the walls and ceiling, we gladly paid the extortinate entry fee, comfortable that it was our only one for a few days and we had saved a lot by walking around. Probably lost a bit of weight too :)
You wouldn't want to be old and just wanting to see the Sistine Chapel, because right from the start, we would have guessed from the signs that it was just the next room. Instead, we were lead on a not un-pleasant two or so hour wander through the amazing collection of gifts and spoils that comprises the Vatican Museums. There were octagonal rooms, circular rooms, tapestry rooms, animal sculpture rooms, a great map room/corridor, and of course countless (seriously) rooms of truly amazing painting and sculpture, all religious in nature. There's no way it can be done justice here, and to be honest it was a case of museum overload by the end.
Which was a shame, because by the time we finally made it to the Sistine Chapel, turned off our cameras and lowered our voices as per the polite signs outside, the noise and brightness of camera flashes inside the chapel was really quite terrible. Add to this the shere volume of great art we had seen thus far and it was a shame that it didn't really look all that amazing to us.
Sure, it was all wonderfully done, but perhaps it was just knowing that the reason we couldn't use cameras was because the recent restoration work had been paid for by one of the American TV networks, which now owns the copyright, or perhaps it was the rukus and people very obviously dis-obeying the requests of what at the end of the day was supposed to be a chapel. In common with some of the previous frescoes we have seen (notably in Padova), it is a shame that the room is now used for something entirely not what the original artist had intended. Its success is its own un-doing.
Once again we found ourselves in our favourite fountain courtyard, before heading out to the colenades for yet another cheap meal of bread and vegemite sitting in the shade and contemplating what a great city Roma is.
We wandered back towards the hostel across the bridge, getting the bus as by now our legs had all but written us letters of demand for rest. Seriously, in all our walking we had done, this day had really slaughtered us in terms of heat and vertical distance covered.
Cooking up another pasta and sauce storm even though we really couldn't find the energy to do so, we originally intended to go for a wander to a couple more places but instead found ourselves collapsing in a new room as our one from the previous nights was booked out. The other occupants eventually went to bed, not really their fault but we had had enough rather early.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 21 Sep 2003
Roma II - Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, Colosseum ( 61 photos )
On Sunday morning, we got up and had breakfast at the hostel, and caught the bus to the Vatican City. The sight of the Vatican City was just as amazing as it had been the day before, but on Sunday we went there for just one thing: to see the Pope! On Sunday mornings, he comes to his study window and looks down on the crowds below and blesses them. On this particular Sunday, however, he didn't appear and we have since found out that he is ill.
But anyway, we spent a very pleasant fourty-five minutes sitting at the side of one of the colonades and gazing up towards the Pope's study room window and looking out at the beautiful square and St. Peter's Basilica.
After a while, we walked out of the Vatican City and started walking towards Piazza Venezia. Along the way, we looked at several Rome tourist books and guids, but didn't end up buying anything.
At Piazza Venezia, we went along the right-hand side of the square and then up some stairs at the side of the huge monument. We crossed the hill and walked down a short way, before getting a marvellous view over the Roman Forum. We took some photos and bought a guide to Rome complete with very interesting pages showing what old ruins like the Colosseum and the Roman Forum look like today and what they probably looked like when newly built and all in one piece. It also has lots of interesting information about each site.
Then we walked down into the Roman Forum, and along its length for the second time. We actually planned to go back a third time and have a really good look at the whole thing, but we ran out of time and probably were too exhausted anyway. So here, I will take a short detour, and go on all about the Roman Forum...
The Roman Forum was the commercial, religeous, political and legal centre of the city in ancient times but until the last two hundered years or so, it had actually become pasture land. So it was pretty amazing to see the huge amount of marble columns, paving, arches and carvings that remain today.
The whole thing is in a valley between the capital Capitoline and Paletine hills and both times we walked through, we went from the Capitoline end to the Paletine end, where we got great views of the Colosseum.
On the left as we walked into the forum was a huge arch - the Tempio di Antonino e Faustina built in 141 BC, and on the right-hand side were the remains of the Basilica Aemilia, built in 179 BC, but then had most of its marble taken away during the Reneissance. From there, we walked down going first to the right hand side, and then to the left, gazing at everything we saw. Here and there lay chunks of marble with beautiful but worn carvings, or a column of coloured, but dull and unpolished marble.
Everywhere were remains of buildings, sections of columns, or ancient paved roads. It feels like you are walking through and abandoned city, which I guess in a way you are. It is quite amazing to imagine ancient Romans living here, walking along the same paths, and looking up at the same impressive buildings - undoubtedly more impressive in ancient times! The Basilica of Maxentius would have been breathtaking to see when it was full of bronze and marble, and it still looks very huge today.
Of course there is more to the whole place than I have mentioned - the two books I am looking at give conflicting names and dates, and because we just enjoued wandering through we didn't really note down names of any of the buildings. I would highly recommend a tour through the Roman Forum.
So, to go back to Sunday, after we had enjoyed the very impressive view of the forum, we again walked along it, seeing new things everywhere we turned. As we came out the opposite end, with old marble columns towering on our left, we again had that great view of the colosseum. But instead of going into the Colosseum just yet, we turned away and headed right, where we got tickets to Palatine Hill.
Palatine Hill overlooks the Roman Forum, the Colosseum and a lot more of Rome too. It was where wealthy Romans built their homes and it is believed to be the site of the founding of Rome - a square furrow ploughed into the ground by Romulus in 754BC or 753BC.
After getting our tickets and before we started climbing up the hill, we sat in the shade drinking lots of cool fresh fountain water and eating some food. It was another incredibly hot day, and we were both feeling sticky and worn out, but the rest did us good.
We made our way to the top of Palatine Hill and then spent an hour or so wandering among heaps of ruins. We saw the Domus Augustana, and internal court with a large motif and fountain - obviously no fountain anymore, and the palace of Domitian, or the House of Augustus (as in the Emperor), the best bit of which was the 'stadium' or hippodrome. We also saw the Domus Flavia, an elliptical fountian, which although is very old, still looks in pretty good condition. And apart from all that, lots of old ruins, arches, carvings and baths.
It was better than I had expected, and most of it was very well preserved.
We even saw the Circus Maximus from the top of the hill, although at the time, we didn't even realise it! It stands beneath Palatine Hill and was once the site of chariot races, up until the 5th century-AD. It was, and probably still is, the biggest building ever built for entertainment purposes (accommodating 300 000 spectators!). Today, all that remains is a sunken oval ditch, but it gives quite an idea of the size that the circus used to be.
So, after lots of nice views out over Rome, and lots more looking around, we crossed to the other side of the hill and began descending. About halfway down, we had another great spot to look down on the Roman Forum, and even better was a view through overhanging trees of the Colosseum. Continuing downwards, we popped out into the Roman Forum and walked out the last section until we were outside the Colosseum.
We decided that we were hungry, so we went in search of a late lunch and found a small and fairly cheap restaurant about five minutes walk from the Colosseum. The food was ok, but the service was really slow and unorganised. At least it gave us a good chance to rest out tired legs and aching feet while we waited for food and drinks. We finally managed to get everything we had ordered, and pay the bill, and then we headed back to the Colosseum.
The tickets we had bought to go up Palatine Hill also gave us entry to the Colosseum, but with the added bonus that we didn't have to wait in a huge long queue at the Colosseum to get our tickets. So we walked straight past the hordes of waiting people and into the cool and dark of the Colosseum.
This place is simply amazing. What stands today is massive, and a lot of it has been pinched and pilfered over the years, so long ago, it was even bigger. I was also expecting it to be quite round, but inside as you look down into the stage area, it is very oval shaped. We could see down into the areas where they used to send lions and so on from their cages, along a ramp and up into the arena., and there was also a section with a 'false floor' to show how it would have looked when the Colosseum was in use. The only seating section that remains is a few meters across and about five or six rows up, but it still gives you an idea of what the seating would have been like all around the Colosseum.
Overall, it was just so fantastic to see such an amazing building and to imagine lions and bears popping up onto the stage floor from the chambers below. We walked all around the upper level, stopping and staring and trying to take everything in at once. We also went along the ground level bit, where you can go about halfway around before exiting. It would have been nice to stay and wander around for days, looking in all the little sections and it would be even better if we could go down into the underground chambers, but, we were worn out and had seen a lot.
From the Colosseum, we walked back to our hostel, going the same way as we had the day before. We cooked pasta for dinner and were happy to have a nice long rest.
After dinner and when it was dark, we ventured out again and caught a bus back up to the Vatican City. We had decided to get some night time photos of St Peter's and the Colonnades, but just as we had set the tripod up, and Tim had taken his first shot, a police car drove up and they told us no tripods were allowed in the Vatican City! We were quite suprised, as we hardly looked like professional photographers, and we weren't doing any harm. So we packed up the tripod and went and sat at the edge of a section of the colonnades. Here, we were sneaky, and used my little tripod to take as many photos as we wanted!
From there, we caught the bus back towards Piazza Venezia, but got off before there and walked along a few back streets until we found ourselves in a beautiful little square. We sat and had some beer and enjoyed relaxing in such a nice setting.
Our last mission at the end of a very long and full day, was to walk to the Tivoli Fountain and take some photos there. It looked very pretty all lit up, so we took some photos and then packed up and dragged our tired bodies back to the hostel where we collapsed into our bunks. What a long but very exciting day!
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 20 Sep 2003
Roma I - San Pietro, Overview ( 83 photos )
A couple of days earlier, teetering on the edge of calling the rest of the trip off, two main things emerged that we didn't want to go home not having seen. One was Paris, but top of the list was Roma (Rome). We are amazingly glad we made it here.
The night before stumbling off the train and trapsing around for a hostel could really have been in any city, with the possible exception of the cars and scooters parked literally anywhere they would fit, but there was of course a lot more to be seen.
Still the only ones in our room, we went downstairs for some breakfast, which we were suprised to find out was included in the price. It was nothing amazing, but we weren't complaining.
Since there is so much to see in this city, we had picked a particular chunk to explore for the day - the Vatican City. On the opposite side of the city from where we were staying, we boarded bus 64, worked out how to validate our tickets (lucky as we were inspected twice) and got off at the other side ready to have a look around.
Not quite knowing exactly where the bus went, we got off a couple of stops early and walked up some back streets. After a peek through some buildings, we rounded the corner and there it was. Saint Peter's Basilica - the largest church in the world, the largest basilica in the world, and (by law) the highest building in Roma.
Just as impressive is the Piazza San Pietro in front of the basilica, created as a space where Christians of the world could gather, and surrounded by four rows of colonades, focusing on the central obelisk "borrowed" from ancient Egypt.
You could say we were stunned. After so many streets which looked like Just Another City, here we were, technically in another country (Vatican City is the only country in the world with a stable population), staring at the centre of the Christian world.
We didn't have to stand around for long looking like tourists until we were approched by a guy asking if we spoke English. More than a little defensive, we answered yes, only to be invited on a free tour, no obligation. It turns out this is very common here, they attempt to sell you (low pressure sales) further tours with their company.
We wandered over to join our small tour group, lead by a kiwi girl about our age who had been in Roma for two years - it's quite easy to see how she fell in love with the place and is happily spending so much time here.
After passing the clothing police (they strictly inforce no shorts, no shoulders and no short skirts, leaving both of us in jeans in the thirty degree heat, and Liz having to wear a jumper), we were lead inside, and our jaws dropped once again. The tour guide was right - there is no way that your eyes can understand just how huge this place is, they just sort of give up and allow you think it is smaller.
Walking over hundereds of mosiacs, admiring the marble carvings (one especially where one of the hardest types of red marble had been made to look as soft as cloth), past Michelangelo's Pietá (one of his first pieces of sculpture, from when nobody knew who he was), and just around and around this huge place we walked.
One of the most interesting facts I thought was that this huge bronze altar piece, over twenty-nine metres high and truly massive up close, would fit inside the tiny little bit sticking out from the top of the dome with enough room left over for a small truck to drive around.
As we wandered, my eyes were constantly tricked as they looked up at the dome - things didn't move by at the right speed for the size my brain thought it was. Truly a huge huge place. We walked down into the crypt, where the tombs of many people of significance in the religious world were. Most notably of course was that of Saint Peter himself. His bones were only re-discovered relatively recently, and are now inside a NASA-designed casing just to the side of the obvious place in his rather elaborate tomb.
From the crypt, we exited to the courtyard area where the sell for the paid tour of the Sistine Chapel began. We decided the asking price was a little high for our budgets, instead tipping the girl for her work. We went back inside for another look around to get some more photos of the place and admire specific works up close. You can photograph everything inside, because it is all stone - even the parts which look like paintings have infact been replaced with mosaics - a detail you only notice when you get up close.
With early closing times on Saturdays, we decided to leave the Sistine Chapel, a walk up the dome, and the Vatican Museums for other days. There was no real rush, we wanted to enjoy this city.
So, we elected to explore a bit more of the north-west shore of the Tiber River, heading first towards Castel Sant'Angelo. This place had a turbulent history, starting out first as The Mausoleum of Hadrian, a monumental tomb for Hadrian and his successors from 130AD. By the fifth century however, its usefulness as a defensive structure was noted, and it was converted into a bastion. Five hundered years later and it was a fortress, complete with turrets and an imposing look more than enough to scare any invaders coming from the north.
Across the Ponte Margherita bridge, we entered Piazza del Popolo. The again plundered central tower and fountain were impressive, but no match for the view you got from standing there and looking south at the three roads around/between two identical buildings. You could see for a long way in all the directions, and we chose the left path, leading us down Via del Babuino towards another famous Roman monument we couldn't dare miss, the Spanish Steps.
The French should be seething about this one, as the only real Spanish involvement is the fact that their embassy is nearby - the money came from Paris, and the church at the top is French also!
The funky boat-shaped Barcaccia fountain at the bottom was great to splash our faces with, but by now we had become addicted to the Roman spring water which flows all over the city to drink all day long in the heat, and none was to be found near here.
Wandering south through plenty more piazzas, past horrifically expensive shopping streets lined with Gucci, Armani, et al., we made it ticked off another famous monument at Fontana di Trevi. This is a very ornate fountain, rather attractive if you can find it through the tourists. We indulged in the famous tradition of throwing a (very small) coin over our shoulders, said to mean we will one day return to Roma.
Further we wandered down to Piazza Venezia. This square is totally dominated by the central Monumento Vittorio Emanuele II, an over-blown huge building complete with chariots on top, all to comemorate Italian unification. We sat there for a while on the grass, eating more of our half-loaf of bakery bread with peanut butter (much cheaper than the four euros one vendor tried to charge us for a hot dog, although his price dropped rapidly as we turned and walked away) and watching the poor horses which run carts through the city on such a hot day.
We had a few more things in mind for our overview day of Roma, mostly in the direction of the Colosseum. There were plenty of on-going excavation works, trying to decypher the mess the Romans have created with their still-current policy of building new things right over the ruins of old things.
Stumbling across the Roman Forum, which is the centre of the old Roman world complete with temples and political buildings galore, we had a bit of an overview before ear-marking it for another day. We walked out the bottom end, and there it was, the sight which graces a million picture postcards world-wide, the Colosseum.
Seeing it this way, after so much other history during the day, it was actually quite hard to appreciate that this was actually it. There is a busy enough street running most of the way around it, and the ever-present tacky expensive tourist garbage sellers. Sure it was great to look at, but we would only come to appreciate it fully when we got inside in the coming days.
After a walk around its outskirts, we picked a road up the hill behind and followed our rather useful map back towards the hostel, another reasonable walk after a day of plenty of others.
We passed under the train station, stopping in a supermarket there for some pasta sauce, odds and ends and a bottle of ridiculously cheap Italian wine. This was all thrown together for a cheap satisfying dinner (I think if you want to sell pasta sauce in Italy, the standard is going to have to be pretty high), before we met some new room mates (Chris and Marie from Melbourne) and flaked out, exhaused after our Roman overview.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 19 Sep 2003
Getting on With Things ( No photos )
Well, chin up and all that, we have moved on from our set-back.
We set ourselves a target of about 2pm to wander around the industrial area of Padova in search of a better quote. We used Babelfish to get a translation of our problem into Italian, in the hope of showing that to some garages.
After a couple of failures (including one guy who just pretended we didn't exist when he found out we didn't speak Italian), we stumbled across a Fiat dealer who initially gave us a heart-leaping quote of much lower than we had expected, in his rather good English. However, he rang through to the Volkswagen place where the first quote was done, and found out just why the quote was so high. In our translation, we had been told that the head gasket was cracked, however it turns out that it is the whole head itself. Much more expensive, and more in line with our intitial quote.
Second opinion in hand, we resigned ourselves to paying the money and continuing with our travels. It is still a better option than either filing off the identification numbers and dumping it or getting it towed back to the Netherlands.
So, we finally got that translation through to the VW guys and they gave us a rather long estimate of about two weeks for the repair. We were pretty much prepared for that, said ok and caught the bus back into town.
After collecting our bags from the hotel, we looked like real backpackers once again and entered the train station. After waiting in the queue for a while, we arrived at a window and asked the standard polite "parlo inglais?" (do you speak English). After being answered no and then showed to another teller who also replied no, we tried to point at our guide book indicating the type of ticket we wanted. "No" once again came the answer.
We were stumped. How to get a ticket without being able to ask for one? Next option was the automated machine, which at least was in English, but couldn't give us the type of ticket we wanted either. Next to the tourist information office for some advice on our conundrum, but that was closed in the great Italian tradition of the three-and-a-half hour lunchbreak.
Nothing else for it but to get back in line, wait ten minutes again and do what we think is quite rude and assume that the tellers speak English. Suprise, suprise, it worked. I think they get defensive and decide it is best not to say they speak English if they only speak a little. We didn't want to trade Shakespeare with them, we just wanted to buy a ticket! Giving up also on the type of ticket we wanted, we settled for two singles to Roma Termini.
Lugging our bags to the platform, we boarded the late-running train, south bound and finally out of Padova.
It pushed on for an hour and a half before we had to change at Bolognia. Here we grabbed some quick snacks and worked out how to validate our tickets (had got told off for not doing that on the first leg), before boarding another regional train, this time to Roma.
We got quite a shock when, after a ten minute pause at Florence station, the train headed off in the opposite direction! Adding to our confusion was the fact that everyone else in our compartment of six had gotten off! We thought the teller had forgotten to tell us about a change, but after a hurried run through the train to the nearby dining car, it was explained that all was normal.
And arrive in Roma it eventually did, albeit 45 minutes late. The ride had been a fun trip through Italy's country-side, passing through quite a few more tunnels than we had expected, each time making our ears pop with the pressure and the speed.
From the station, we wandered along to the highly-rated Fawlty Towers (!) hostel/hotel, not far at all away. However, after lugging our bags up into the place, cramping into the tiny lift with one poor other Canadian guy and our huge pack (lift only designed for three people and that is quite a squeeze), and dragging ourselves into reception, we found out that it was very very full. No beds the following night either.
No matter, as the helpful Canadian guy Andrew offered to take us to where he was staying, another hostel place. Back down the lift, walked about five blocks then up the lift again (I'm not quite sure why, but Roman hotels and hostels all seem to be built vertically, all inter-mixed across several floors, so that in the space you would normally expect to have one hotel there is actually six), only to find that was full too.
We'd had enough lugging around by now, so Liz and the luggage were left to rest in the foyer of that place while I went out in search of a bed for the night. Luckily I didn't have to look too far, a few streets away I found the Stargate Hostel, and the guy promised me he would hold some beds. Back to get Liz, load up with the packs, back to the hostel and it was well and truly time to relax. We checked in, paid the reasonable sum (for central Rome, anyway) and were the only two people in a dorm room of six. Once again, it was five floors up, with a lift which only holds three people and is exceptionally slow.
We had originally planned to cook to get on the money saving boat as soon as possible, but we didn't have the energy. Instead, a short walk down the street we found a restaurant with tables on the street with suprisingly cheap prices - perhaps we were just used to the Venezian prices. We didn't expect much from the food but it was fantastic.
We enjoyed a beer or two and got chatting to a Norwegian guy sitting next to us, who is travelling all over the place, had only had one day in Rome and was leaving the next day. It was interesting to be able to put memories to the places he was talking about from his home, and also for him to hear that we still regard Norway as the most gorgeous place we have seen.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 18 Sep 2003
REALLY BAD NEWS (we're safe though) ( No photos )
Well, we were sailing along quite well on this holiday, and now one of the worst things that could have happened to us has just happened. Rosie's problem is a blown head gasket.
The insurance we have are helpful, but don't provide cover for the entire 2500 euro cost (= AUD $5000) which we have been quoted for repair. We are currently waiting to hear back from them to see if there is any movement on this very high price we have been quoted.
We have been in touch with the person we bought the van off in Netherlands, and she is helping quite a bit also, however would be of most help if the van was back there. She believes, as we do, that the quote we have been given is excessively high.
We have spent the best part of the day trying to work out just how we are going to spend the remainder of our holiday. We certainly don't have that sort of money just to throw around the place, the end result of which is that we will definitely be cutting our travels short.
Our options include towing it back to Netherlands (even more expensive than fixing the problem), travelling the last few countries by train/plane/backpack/hire car, or even flying home now. This last one isn't quite as bad as it might sound - we have seen a huge amount of the continent, but there are still a few things we want to see, most notably Paris, Spain and Rome.
If we can get a cheaper quote, we are leaning towards adding the costs to our mounting pile of debt to deal with later, and doing a "blitz" trip for a month or so of just the main things we want to see.
We would then either go back to England for the remaining month and stay with friends to keep the costs down, or move our flights forward if it won't cost us too much.
So, a "bad thing" has finally happened, but nothing is stolen, neither of us is hurt, and we remain mostly optimistic about what we are going to do.
Now we are going for a wander back to the internet café to get out of the hotel room and clear our minds a bit.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 16 Sep 2003
Marking Time in Padova ( 2 photos )
Not much was done after a late hotel breakfast. We have made good use of the TV with its English movie channel, and had a bit of a random wander around the city here and there.
We had lunch of pizza in Piazza Del Santo, in the shadow of Basilica di Sant'Antonio where the tomb of St. Anthony attracts plenty of visitors for the blessing of the Saint's powers to find lost things. Dispite not knowing exactly where Rosie was, we were comfortable in the fact that the insurance company was handling it, and elected not to visit and pay the hefty entry fees.
One of the tourist offices pointed us to Internet Point, an internet café where we were actually able to plug the laptop in, sending emails and getting the website up to date! We read news of the world and chatted to a few people, which was good fun to give us something to do.
We bought some things to read from the train station, and got a call saying that Rosie's diagnosis wouldn't arrive until at least the morning. As such, we checked ourselves back into the same hotel and spent the night watching yet more TV and not doing too much at all.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 15 Sep 2003
Padova, and more Rosie problems :( ( 3 photos )
We got up early to use an alternate means of travel to explore a new city, Padova (Padua), about 30km west of Venezia. The bus we had used to get to and from the caravan park helpfully keeps going all the way to Padova, so we jumped on that heading the opposite way, and had a slow old journey. The trade-off was that we didn't have to worry about parking or anything.
The main attraction of the city is the Capella degli Scrovegni, a chapel housing frescoes Giotto painted between 1303 and 1305. Unfortunately, the bus station had no information on where this was, so we wandered randomly in what turned out to be totally the wrong direction, asked a local University girl how to get back to the centre of town, and walked back past the bus station into town. How about signs for people getting off the bus with directions to the city's major tourist drawcard!!
Anyway, we found the place, paid our entrance fees and had to wait in a queue to get in. The environment inside is so controlled to prevent degredation of the frescoes that you have to sit in a climate-controlled anti-chamber for fifteen minutes for the air to stabilise before you are allowed in, and then only in groups of twenty-five.
It was worth all that rigmorole to see. Places like this I find interesting not at all from the religious perspective (the paintings document the life of Christ and Mary) but due to the technical abilities of the artist, so long ago. The three-dimensional aspect of the work on a two-dimensional surface was I thought the most striking detail, along with the grotesque rendering of hell on the massive end wall.
Overall it was amazing to see this place, but a little dis-heartening to think that the building is now a historical treasure, never used for its original intended purpose as a place of worship. I wonder how Giotto would have felt about that.
We were running late by the time we had been through there, so hot-footed it back to the bus, sat on it again for quite some time and checked out of the caravan park. Our drive was then back through Padova (not needing to stop and look around).
It was as we were driving through the city traffic in Padova that another van pulled along side us, the drive shouting "Fuma, Fuma!!" and pointing to the rear of Rosie. After a split-second just dismissing him as yet another crazy Italian driver, it occured to both of us that the smells we had just put down to city pollution were getting much stronger. A quick look in the rear-view mirror (engine in the back, remember) made it obvious that Rosie was doing her best Thomas the Tank Engine impression, billowing out vast quantities of steam and/or smoke.
We pulled over safely into what was luckily a loading zone on the side of the road, albeit right near a pedestrian crossing. As quick as we could manage, engine was off, battery disconnected and I was moving things around to get access to the engine bay while Liz got out our fire extinguisher - we were well prepared at least.
The white stuff gradually cleared, then we called our insurance to explain that yes, once again, we needed their help. Hours passed in the coffee shop which luckily was right next to us as we waited for a call or assistance. At some stage we attempted some do it yourself diagnosis, noting that the water resivoir was totally empty. Following the pipe, the next one (equivalent of a radiator in this vehicle, I think) was also completely empty.
After waiting for it to cool, we filled both up with some water, only to see it all run out the bottom of the engine bay onto the road! So, there was our major problem. Nothing we could do except wait for a tow.
One did eventually turn up, a nice enough Italian guy who didn't speak any English. As he was attempting to speak Italian to me to work out whether the van was drivable up onto the back of his truck or not, he struck upon an idea. "Finito?", he asked, pointing at the van. "Si", I replied. We pushed her along a few times until she was on the lift at the rear of his truck, then we were away.
Liz and I sat up in the cabin of his truck, getting a tour of Padova's outer areas as he took us first to the arranged Volkswagen mechanic, which it turned out only worked on newer, smaller and possibly far less problematic Volkwagens, not big, old error-prone ones like us. Maybe they were just scared of a challenge!
So, we were towed in the direction of another one, getting stuck in major traffic on the way out of town. He made some calls in rapid Italian, the gist of which we worked out meant that all the garages were closed by now (it was quite late), so what did we want to do? Here the Caravan Club insurance excelled themselves, having an Italian-speaking operator John on hand to help out. He translated for us, the result of which was that our driver was taking Rosie to be locked up somewhere for the night, and us to Padova train station to sort out some accommodation for the night.
We packed a few things into some bags to do us while we were away from the van (it is becoming a more regular occurrance than we had wished for, but staying in a posh hotel every now and then is a nice break). We got to the tourist information just as it was closing for the night and grabbed a city map and a list of hotels. Picking a few in our price-range, we headed off in search of them.
Down the main drag Corso del Popolo, we stumbled upon Hotel Corso pretty much as the first one along the road. We headed in, found their rooms were available and priced right for the insurance to cover it. The room turned out to be just fine, overlooking the river and town walls. The main draw-back is that it is very noisy, but that's the problem with being central I guess.
Wandering into the city for a Lonely Planet recommended dinner at Trattoria al Pero, we ate in style the Italian way, which is a first course of pasta then a main course of meat. They usually add in a few more courses, but our stomachs were full just as our budget was too.
Back to the hotel, we reflected on our broken bus yet again, but at least in a city with transport to the world and insurance sorting everything out for us.
As a couple of asides, some guy jumped off the bell tower to his death in the middle of San Marco Piazza in Venezia the day after we were there as the clock struck midday. Also, late at night in the caravan park there we felt Rosie shake for a while. I thought it was Liz rolling around and she thought it was me. We both agreed it was neither of us, and we read in the Herald Tribune (English-language paper you can get around the place if you are willing to pay through the teeth) yesterday that it was indeed a magnitude-five earthquake, centred further south from here in Bolognia. Nobody hurt, but interesting all the same. We survived an earthquake!
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 14 Sep 2003
Around Venezia ( 44 photos )
We got an early start, back on the bus, into Venezia for what was going to turn out to be one of the top three days of our entire trip (the other two being ANZAC Day and North Cape). The weather had turned fantastic, providing blue sky, warmth and much better photo opportunities than the previous day.
Almost the entire day was spent just wandering, sometimes with a general goal in mind, other times just aimlessly. All the time, admiring the little things which combine to make this city different. The uniformity of the round concave doorbells on all the dense houses, the washing lines strung across the streets shared by neighbours, the music in the background, the Carnivale masks everywhere, street cafés and of course the ever-present water.
We met with a couple from Manly, exchanging cameras for photos on the waterfront. They were staying in a hotel where the management had little care for the fact that they had been kept awake all night by rats - a problem we at least don't have to face with Rosie! Also, the fact that they only had about two weeks left for their Europe trip due to work rammed home the fact that we should view our over two months still remaining as quite a long time, even though it doesn't seem so!
It was fantastic to be in a city where you had to walk everywhere, except for long distances (although we walked those too) which could be covered by boat. No cars, no vespas (the scooters which the Italians invented and weild relentlessly at pedestrians in all other cities here), and suprisingly no hawkers.
We stumbled across an Internet café somewhere, where we paid a rather large amount of money to just check our emails. We may not be able to plug the laptop in anywhere in this country, as the government requires even users of the normal computers in the internet cafés to have their identity logged - we had to give my student card over to be photocopied! Talk about paranoia.
After going back through San Marco Piazza once again, getting some photos in the far better light, we pushed further and further east, to the ends of the island that only the brave tourists seem to tackle. It was suprisingly just how quickly the crowds thin out, replaced by far cheaper places to eat and locals going about their business. This was infinitely preferable to the thousands of shops selling almost identical combinations of tourist junk and over-priced ice cream.
We got to the park at the end of the island, and decided that all our money saved by walking everywhere and cooking ourselves had earned us a bit of a splurge, we found a great little café frequented by locals. The friendly people running the place took our order as we sat in the sunshine and just enjoyed being off our feet, which were starting to hurt considerably. The fantastic food was about half the price we would have paid in the touristy sections, and as a bonus I think we saw about four other touristy-looking people wander past the entire time we were there. Nice and quiet relaxing there for an hour or so.
Saying goodbye to the serenity, we pushed back west through areas we hadn't seen, back-tracking a lot to try and get around. We hadn't got a decent map and didn't really care - everywhere you look there were people really worried about which street they were on and where they were going. Not the city to do that in. Just learn which rough direction the bus station is in and enjoy being very very lost.
At one stage, we found a little old man who appeared to be going somewhere interesting. Not having any more firm plans, we elected to follow him around White Rabbit style. He led us through some amazing back streets, at each intersection pausing and looking each way before deciding which way he wanted to go. Perhaps he was just as lost as us, we didn't care. It was another way to see places which even our random decisions probably wouldn't have taken us to.
Somehow we lost him, but he had gotten us back near one of the main drags, where we got a gelati to cool down on such a hot day. Next rough area to explore ws the north-shore, past Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo, an old church and square, parts of which are now the current hospital under restoration, as so much of the city is. We paused somewhere for a tripod shot.
Great view from the north prompted a stop for coffee to recharge our weary legs. Again away from the tourism a little, the prices were very cheap, considering we sat down at the outside tables (prices vary here depending on where you drink).
By now my knees and both our feet were giving us grief, so we considered Venezia thoroughly explored and headed back to the caravan park. It was a city we really didn't want to leave, and we felt that you could make a holiday just on its own. If only these places were a day trip away from Sydney...
A light dinner was cooked before we collapsed very weary from all our wandering.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 13 Sep 2003
Into Venezia ( 30 photos )
Leaving the caravan park, we drove south towards Venezia (Venice), following the slow roads all the way. This means no motorways, leaving us free to watch the scenery roll by - the best here being the flat plains we were driving on looking south contrasting beautifully with the huge ridge of Dolomites mountains to the north.
We once again had to play the "find the caravan park in a big city game", following signs which are good for a while then suddenly the road deviates down into one lane going in the wrong direction and they sort of forget to sign post it. Lots of turning around eventually led us over the bridge to Venezia, which we knew was very very wrong - there are no cars allowed, let alone caravan parks on the island.
A bit more turning around later, and guessing a bit when the signs were forgotten or just completely wrong, we found our way to Camping Serenissima, on the mainland and about 12km to the west. It was quite a nice spot, run by friendly people and quiet enough for a big city camping place.
After setting up, we caught the bus into Venezia from outside the camping place, about a half an hour ride. It was funny to re-trace our steps, finding out where we had turned wrongly earlier in the day, and then to go once again across the 4km bridge to the island, this time intentionally. The weather was not the best, raining intermittently and overcast all day long.
Even from the carpark at the bus terminal, it just looked kind of like any other big city. It wasn't until we walked a little way further and we saw our first canal! That is of course really what sets this city apart from others, so a trip up the Canal Grande was of course in order.
There are a few ways to travel on the water, ranging from the reasonably-priced packed like a cattle-truck ferries through private gondolas (very expensive) and then water taxi (even more expensive). Needless to say, we took the former option. The signage for the public ferries was pretty terrible until you looked long and hard, which resulted in us going on a ferry the wrong way to start with. As it turns out, this was a blessing in disguise. Since we had gone one stop back before the main tourist jumping-on point, our return ferry was almost completely empty, leaving us to take the best seats in the house right up the front.
I'm not sure just how much detail to go into about Venezia. The city is so totally amazing, but pretty much everything we did is what most other people would do, except perhaps the huge amount of walking and heading out to the remotest non-tourist-infested areas we could find.
We had a great ride up the canal, past the leaning old buildings, getting glimpses of bridges, alleyways and all things Venetian. It was a great way to get a feel for the city before intensive exploration.
Getting off the boat at San Zaccaria, we wandered through markets on the waters edge and watched the gondolas drift by. We were both amazed when we saw our first tiny alleyway, unaware just how many we would see following.
We found our way to San Marco Piazza. Wow. There's something about the place which just works so well - the huge old buildings surrounding three sides, the amazing Basilica on the fourth and the bell tower soaring high in one corner. I'm not really sure just how to describe the place. Of all the areas of Venezia, this is truly one you just have to experience for yourself.
From there we started what was a most satisfying way to discover Venezia - just pick a direction, wander for a long time (three or four hours in this case), over bridges, through alleyways, into squares which just pop out here and there, find dead-ends and try to work out how to keep going in your chosen direction. It's just a Choose Your Own Adventure book, where you try to get to some goal, get stuck going the wrong way and have to back-track, and eventually forget your goal anyway. The maze that this city is is probably even more compelling than the fact that its primary means of transport is on the water.
Eventually we wanted to get back to the van to cook some dinner, as Venezia is widely regarded as the most expensive city in Italy, one of Europe's more expensive countries. This in itself was an effort as we actually needed to get back to a certain place! There are signs, but they are approximations at best. An hour or so of being able to see when we got out to the water where we wanted to go but then having to work out how to get there later, we found the bus station and jumped on a waiting bus for the return journey.
The rain was teeming down as we tried to peer out the window for the sign 412 (representing 412km from the start of the road somewhere) which we knew meant we were nearly at our stop. This proved quite difficult, but eventually I caught a glance of it, jumped up and ran through the bendy bus to stab at the button. We didn't even have time to get our umbrellas out, dashing through the pouring rain for cover. Umbrellas out, we got back to the van and cooked up dinner, before sleeping to do it all again the next day.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 12 Sep 2003
Descent into Italia ( 4 photos )
(Continued from Österreich 1 (Austria)).
We pulled in at the border to attempt to get some stamps in our passports. It was amazing how quickly things changed - there were huge Cinzano signs, those bottles of wine with cane around the bottom all for sale, and accents were completely different.
After taking a photo or two next to the border sign to prove we made it, we went in search of the stamps. The official border post was closed and looked like it had been since about 1972, so the next move was to approach one of the shop keepers.
Despite my primary-school Italian, I couldn't work out what to say! My brain was producing a strange muddle of English, German, Italian and gobbledy gook, so in the end I resported to the universal "stamping the passport" hand-action. She pointed and said "restaurant", so we followed that. Joking that only the Italians could make a restaurant the dispenser of official border crossing stamps, we were soon suprised to see that what we actually got was more a stamp advertising the restaurant, in our official passports! Still, it had the name of the mountain pass if nothing else. We will have to drop in at a police station later on.
Shaking of the hitchikers wanting a ride (luckily the wrong way), Liz started her expert piloting of Rosie down the precarious pass. The first-gear, almost completely stopping hairpin bends as the sun was shining and Italian language radio came into range was truly a great way to enter the country. Forget motorways, this is how it should be done.
Progress in terms of straight-line distance was very slow, but we didn't care, just looking down and around the valley. After we eventually made it down, small villages came and went, with completely different architecture to the Austrian ones only an hour or so earlier.
The game to play rapidly became "spot the Fiat", as the Italian national car overtook at all angles in all conditions, but suprisingly not much worse than the rest of Europe so far (and notably Czech).
We drove further south, with the rough plan that we would make it to Venezia (Venice) the following day. We opted not to use the motorways for now (you pay a toll for each journey you make on them in Italia), instead taking the very scenic back roads towards a little nowhere town called Gemona del Friuli. The tight streets coupled with little cars, old wandering Italian people, great looking restaurants and sunshine all made us feel very happy we had made it to a place we had long wanted to visit.
We pulled into Camping Ai Pioppi, were glad that the reception guy spoke a little English, and pulled up to enjoy the sunshine - a very welcome change after the non-stop rain in Österreich.
Enjoying having use of the gas, we cooked up some pasta (what else?) and enjoyed the evening sun before it disappeared and the night-time cold came to remind us that the alps were just behind us.
(permanent link to this story)
Into the Alps ( 12 photos )
On the road for what turned out to be a mostly driving, exploring day, we headed back to the motorway the across east towards a couple of mountain roads which we had heard were very spectacular.
We wanted to go up and/or down the Großglocknerstraße, one of the highest mountain roads in the area and supposedly full of spectacular scenery. I picked a different road to take us up north of there so we could drive back down it, heading generally to Italy. However, after winding our way up towards one of the towns on the road (Mallnitz, which was a beautiful little town in its own right nestled into the mountains under snowy peaks), it became apparent that the only way forward was to put Rosie on a train which ran through a tunnel under the mountain!
I'm not quite sure why it couldn't have just been a road tunnel like so many others around the place, but we decided the cost was a bit high and the wait was going to be too long.
So, aborting our first attempt to cross the Alps, we retreated south, then pushed further west, intending to go this time up Großglocknerstraße. It was a great climb up to the start of the pass, through yet more villages nestled around the place, one of which had a huge chicken advertising "Backhenfest", starting the next day. What a shame we wouldn't be around to see that.
Pushing Rosie higher and higher (to about 1500m if I remember correctly), we eventually came to the toll gate for the start of the pass proper. The van infront of us had to reverse out, we were not sure why. However, we had to do the same after asking the little man there if we required snow chains. "Ja" came the simple answer, couple with a bit of laughter at all the stupid tourists around today. A look at the sign up the road with tyres complete with chains should have also given it away!
So, figuring we had plenty of time for mountain passes complete with snow if really wanted to do that, we aborted Alps Crossing Attempt Number Two, grabbed some photos, and decided that the cold and rain were all bit depressing. What better way to cure that than to head south to Italy!
There are plenty of different passes from Österreich into Italy, so we chose the closest one, Plöcken Pass/Monte Croce Carnico (in Deutsch and Italiano respectively). To get across you have to cross two separate mountain ranges, both a part of the Dolomites. Singing the 1980s theme from Commonweath Bank's children's bank accounts, we drove out of our last "major" Deutsch-speaking town Oberdrauburg due south, heading for another country.
The interesting thing about Europe is that if we had have pushed about fifty kilometres east instead of south, we would have ended up in Slovenia, speaking yet another language, with different cultures, customs and food. But I don't have visas for there - perhaps next time.
We wound our way up the first ridge of mountains over Gailsbergsattel Pass (982m), then back down the other side into the road and tiny towns built between the two ranges. Still beyond us were the imposing peaks of the second range, jutting like huge sharp teeth into the sky. Slowly we chugged up more mountains, overtaken at speed by fast German-made cars, and increasingly Italian-registered Fiats.
I was reminded of the movie Italian Job by all the fantastic scenery - and interestingly, in a manner reminiscent of driving into and out of Wales, the weather looked far far better on the other side!
Coming out of one of the strange half-open tunnels which are so common here (perhaps just to keep snow off while still giving you a view?), we dodged a couple of sheep who had found their way in, and then we saw the huge EU-compliant "Italia" sign!
There were zero formalities as we pushed across into Italia.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 11 Sep 2003
Graz, Pushing West ( 29 photos )
Waking in the mist and fog of the forested caravan park, we ended up driving over to the amenities block to do our washing up as the rain was so heavy. We paid the guy - the downside to knowing a little German is that people assume you know a lot and can understand it rapidly. It is certainly a good exercise in learning how people who can't speak your language must find it difficult to get by.
We headed south through the mountains, the wind and rain un-ceasing. There were some great views despite this, as we wound our way first up and then down one of the three mountain ranges which run from east-to-west across Österreich.
We stopped for some morning tea in a little bus stop perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking a valley. We could see our road wind all the way down and then off into the distance.
However pretty this way of travelling is, it is quite slow, so eventually we re-joined the motorway and followed it into Graz. This is one of the towns which are interesting here and there around the place, but which we don't really have days and days to explore. We set ourselves the general task of exploring the World Heritage listed old town and finding the one place Lonely Planet mentioned which tickled our fancy.
We parked in the town (surrounded by plenty of roadworks) next to a tramline, paid a reasonable parking fee and then walked into the old town across the river Mur. Plenty of narrow streets fired out in all directions from the central Rathaus square, and we followed some of these, Murgasse then Hofgasse as the worked their way up hill. There were refreshingly few touristy shops, which for once was not what we wanted - we are yet to procure a fridge magnet from Österreich and will leave for Italy soon!
At the top of the hill, we found the city had approved, as many have, a weird modern art installation. In this case, a carpark had huge mirrors on walls all in it which we wandered in and around. This had the rather un-nerving effect of making the group of fifty Japanese tourists look more like five hundered, all taking their own photos in the mirrors. We did the same, however, but then hastilly headed off further up the road to our main target. In the Burg complex there is a double-winding staircase which plays tricks with your mind. We had it all to ourselves for a while, running around and generally being confused. However, we heard the Japanese tourist group approaching, covering the only way out. Even if there was only fifty of them, we still needed to get out somehow!
After that battle, we picked another random street to head back down into town. There were quite a lot of buildings and parks of interest, but not really enough to compete with Wien, a city far more worthy of your time.
We wandered up towards the entrances to Schlossberg, the castle on the hill. It is famous as the symbol of Graz for having the hour and minute hands reversed on its clock. You can get up there either by the attractive stairway, funicular railway or lift straight through the rock. We chose none of these options, all castled out recently and needing to get back before our parking ran out.
After a quick photocopying session to claim our insurance from the work on the van (which seems to have worked wonders, as it happens), we tried about four exits from the town before we found one with a signpost to the motorway, or indeed a signpost at all. Some towns really need to send their civil engineers on a tourism course - when you travel all over the place, good signs are important!
Eventually on the A2 motorway, the views were pretty amazing when we weren't in the tunnels along past Klagenfurt, through the outskirts of Villach then Velden to eventually find our selected caravan park (Camping Weisses) on the south side of the Wörther See. This pretty piece of the world is far enough from the motorway to be reasonably quiet, and is quite pretty with an accompanying high price tag (seems to be a very popular tourist destination).
As we drove in there was plenty of mist coming off the See - the weather is changing here fairly rapidly.
There's plenty of snow on the mountain tops around the place now, and it is quite cold overnight and in the mornings. It's only about two weeks out of summer!
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 10 Sep 2003
Wien Again, Wachau, South up the Mountains ( 22 photos )
Remembering this time to take my camera, we set into town once again for a bit more of wander. Our time was limited as we had to leave the caravan park.
First was a walk around the north-section of the Ring, starting at Schottenring U-Bahn and walking anti-clockwise past various attractive buildings. This took in Schottentor, then down the most interesting Western section. All the way the incessant rain didn't leave us, but the city still looked passable.
We walked past the University, then the Rathaus and its accompanying leafy Rathasplatz. On from there to the huge Parliament buildnig with statues and flags waving proudly. Perhaps the most pretty part was suprisingly the Museum of Fine Arts and its grounds with sculptured rounded trees, known as Maria Theresien Platz.
We walked around the grounds of the Hofburg before re-tracing some our steps from the previous day for photographs. We had hoped the weather would be a bit better but no matter - some of the best parts were undercover, while others a bit of juggling the umbrella, guidebooks and camera gave the desired results. Yes, we look totally like tourists wherever we go.
Back through Michaelerplatz, into Stephensplatz and then it was time to get back. Wien is a city we could have spent a month in, but that is not to be this trip. There's so much more to see, and you seem to have to have quite a lot of money to spend to do the big things such as Vienna Boys Choir or classical music performances.
Getting on the road, we found our way back out of the city, heading around the A21 and then along the A1. Despite the horrible weather, we decided to detour up one of the most popular sections of the Danube in the Wachau valley between Melk and Krems. We have plans to get back to some sections of Österreich at a later date (notably Saltzburg), but this would be a bit far and the weather most probably would not be much better anyway.
The drive was nice if not amazingly spectacular (it's going to be tough to match Norway's fjords), and at the end after a little asking around, we found our Holy Grail - a Campingaz 907 cylinder!! For so long we have eaten out, cooked barbeques in silly places, but generally spent too much money, and now we could be self-sufficient again! The excitement was such that Liz was actually jumping up and down in the van when I returned triumphant. We didn't even care that it cost significantly more than it really should have.
Back down the otherside, we were on a much smaller road, all lined with vineards, grape vines and fruit trees everywhere. The tiny villages were all along the banks of the river, bringing the 100km/h traffic down to 30km/h through tiny little gaps in the houses we just fit through.
Not being one to be boring, I picked us a path well and truly off the motorways through to our next target - Graz. Of course this meant much slower going, but we really didn't mind. We heard on the weather report (BBC World Service gets through here and there) that there was going to be snow above 1700 metres, and although we didn't get quite that high, we certainly burrowed through clouds as we wound up and up along the backroads of the 25, 28, 20 and then no number at all roads.
This journey didn't get us far at all towards Graz, but we didn't care - the scenery was amazing with lots of little villages with their old buildings and spires all surrounded by mist and fog. We got thoroughly stared at in a place called St. Anthony - perhaps the locals thought we were lost as they surely don't get much passing trade. Most people are sane and boring and take the motorways.
Probably the best stop was at a village called Puchenstuben, perched atop a ridge, overlooking the misty valley. Magical.
We ended up stopping for the night north of Mariazella at Camping Erlaufsee, in St. Sebastian. The place is surrounded by forest, quite a way even off our un-beaten track we were following. After a fight with the gas fittings (the regulator valve screw fitting was giving me grief), we had a working stove once again!
Dinner followed swiftly, strangely happy to cook boring pasta and sauce which went down well after the long day. I'm sure the novely will wear off pretty quickly.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 09 Sep 2003
Into Wien ( No photos )
(Continued from Ceska Republika (Czech Republic)).
Across no-mans land from Ceska, we slowed and stopped at the next border post, Drasenhofen, this one belonging to Österreich. We were expecting more grief about my Shengen visa status (I'm still all legal, my passport just doesn't quite look that way), but the guy on the desk was more interested in Liz.
We had to find first then produce her driver's licence (an example of which he had obviously never seen before), then the green card (rego papers) for the van. There were no problems in the end, and perhaps it was good that he had all this to distract him from me.
In the end, we waved Ceska goodbye, and stopped at the first service station. Similarly to Ceska and a lot of European countries, Österreich requires you to buy a vignette (windscreen sticker) if you want to use the motorways. So, we removed our Ceska one for safe-keeping and attached instead a shiny new one. It was quite strange to be back in a country where only 2km north I couldn't understand a word that was going on, but now we could communicate, even on a basic level.
The rain started hounding down, accompanied dramatically by wind as we pushed due south to Wien (Vienna), the capital city. In terms of our luck recently, finding Camping Neue Donau on the east side of town was a walk in the park - only about three wrong turns! Since our caravan club guide book is written mostly by elderly British caravaners who we can imagine probably bicker between themselves over whether they turned left or right to get there, we are not totally suprised when the directions end us up in totally the wrong place. So, Wien was a pleasant suprise.
The guy on the desk put us near two vans full of about eight kiwis - perhaps he thought "they're from your hemisphere, you put up with them". They had all sorts of kiwi slogans and icons painted all over their vans - I suspect their chances of selling the vans when they are finished travelling are somewhat reduced now.
We wasted little time getting organised and getting down to the bus stop for a bus to the U-bahn (underground train) into town. However, we missed the bus by ten seconds or so and had a half an hour wait. We used this time to read up and get ourselves oriented in the city. When the bus did arrive, the guy on-board wouldn't sell us a ticket. Wien has moved to the same system as the vast majority of European cities we have encountered - you need tickets before you get on, and they typically last for 24 hours.
Luckily, he just waved us past and we bought our tickets at the other end. The wait for the U-Bahn at Kaisermühlen (Vienna International Centre). This got us to Karlsplatz near the south of the centre, from where we walked down to Naschmarkt. This is an arrangement of little shops and markets in the middle of a wide street, from where we got what we intended to be a snack until we cooked dinner later, but turned out to be huge meals.
It was about here that I worked out I hadn't brought my camera in with me. First time I have forgotten that for a while, but no real matter as we had planned to come in again the next morning and could get some snaps then.
We wandered up Kärntner Straße into the centre of town at Stephansplatz, dominated by Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral). Not a vast open square like many others, this was instead surrounded by plenty of shops build tall and seeming to overhang. The whole time the rain was just annoying enough for us to need umbrellas, but not drenching.
From there we wandered out to Michaelerplatz, which fronts onto the Kaiserappartements and the famous Spanish Riding School. The latter Mum had suggested was worth a visit, however the one-month wait for tickets coupled with the huge sums of money they demanded meant this wasn't going to happen for us this trip.
We walked past some excavations of old buildings which existed here hundereds of years ago through the archways and found ourselves in Heldenplatz. This is surrounded by the massive Hofburg (Imperial Palace), which is so big it plays funny games with your eyes as you walk past it.
Onto Burgring and Opernring, two of the roads which combine to form a ring around the city (well, not quite a ring, but the Danau/Danube river fills the remaining part). We had heard about the famous Viennese coffee houses, and Lonely Planet recommended Café Sperl as one of the most un-spoilt. We whole-heartedly agree. The place had an amazing charm, complete with centuries old upholstered bench chairs, billiard tables and of course fantastic coffee. We were a little taken aback at the small size of our supposed großer (large) coffees, but this was a case of quality over quantity any day. The waitress even humoured our horrible attempts at Deutsch, and brought us a great mineral water which dissapeared rather quickly - it was hot in there.
Next was a trip back into the heart of the city to have a look at the interesting-sounding Haus Der Musik (Das Klangmuseum). This turned out to be a wonderful way to while away a few hours, with everything from the city's famous sons Mozart, Beethoven, Schönberg, etc. through to an interesting (for me anyway) network of computers which automatically made real-time compositions over the Internet. There were rooms where you could push buttons to mix together human voices in strange ways, explorations of the nature of sound, and plenty of ways to do very strange things with sounds.
Done there, it was time to think about "home" and dinner, so we re-traced our steps to the caravan park via the Stephensplatz U-Bahn station. This time a bus was only a couple of minutes wait away, returning us to the caravan park to cook in the kitchen there. It was strange to eat in the van again after so long.
(permanent link to this story)
South out of Ceska ( No photos )
After packing up and working out how to pay the old dear running the site of our night's accommodation, we set off around the south-west side of Brno.
We stopped to grab some cheap Ceska fuel and breakfast for ourselves, before heading the 50km or so south to the border with Österreich (Austria).
Unlike the border crossing into Ceska, this one was split in two. We first drove up to the Ceska side of the border, convincing them to let us out. Once again we had no problems as our paperwork was all in order. Also, it is generally easier for countries to let you out rather than in.
Stamps entered in our passports (Liz got her first in her British passport - the downside to the freedom it gives), I got out and tried to work out how to get a stamp for entering Österreich. After giving me another Ceska stamp, one of the Ceska guys told me that the Österreich border crossing was another kilometre further down the road!
So, we drove along in no-mans land, not quite sure what country we were technically in. No matter, as around the corner we saw the next border post. Getting through that was our first experience in Österreich (Austria).
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 08 Sep 2003
Telc ( 13 photos )
Not wanting to brave a breakfast at the camp site, we tried to use the bathrooms we had used the night before, only to find someone had put bricks infront of the doors! I guess it was easier than trying to explain it to us in English.
So, we pushed into the town of Telc. Another World Heritage place, however this one was much more deserving in our humble opinions. Parking on the outskirts, we walked across a bridge and into the huge open square that the town is built around.
There are a few churches here and there with nice steeples, and the famous Château, but we were content just to sit and have breakfast at one of the restaurants overlooking the square. This was a good thing, as Monday appears to be the one day of the week that every single one of the tourist attractions is closed.
After walking around pretty much every one of the bakeries, cafés and restaurants in town looking for something to eat, we came to the conclusion that the Czech people just aren't that interested in breakfast.
We eventually settled on an restaurant with an outside terrace, and some interesting almost breakfasty things. Liz got an omlete with asparagus and I had toast with cheese and honey - both interesting, but near enough to breakfast that our bodies didn't complain too much.
After a further wander around the beautiful town and checking our emails in the tourist office, we went back to the van and set off in the direction of Brno. Czech is really two separate parts - Bohemia on the west and Moravia on the east. Praha (Prague) is the capital of Bohemia and Brno is the capital of Moravia.
Things started out badly when the motorway exit from which our directions to caravan parks started was closed. So, we got off at the next one and tried to wind our way back. An hour or so later, we found one of the sites listed, in the outlying village of Ostrovacice. It was a driveway into a house with closed gates. However, there was a sign pointing in and a button to press, which I of course did.
We were about to turn away when a dog came running to the gate, followed much more slowly by a woman in her eighties. After gesturing at the huge red van about two metres away, she got the idea, opened the gates and let us in. We drove through what was basically her backyard into a huge field which was yet more of her backyard. I suspect she found herself with this great big house and all this space and decided to let campers use it. Good idea, I say. She has rabbits, dogs, and was even spotted herding chickens, right before she shook one of the plum trees to get all of its fruit off.
She doesn't speak English or German, but we were able to find out where the toilets and electricity were, and how to get into Brno via bus. We elected not to do this, as we had other cities to see, and there appears to be nothing much special there.
So, we read up on our next challenge (Austria), before walking to the next village and spending the night there eating our last cheap dinner. Being our last night in Czech, I was determined to try an item which has been on the menus every single place we have been. It is listed under the "Warm Drinks" section, and named Grog. I kid you not. So, it was ordered, and Liz captured on film the moment of my first taste, closely followed by complete and utter disgust at the stuff. At least I can say that I have tried the "real" Grog. Won't be doing that again in a hurry.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 07 Sep 2003
Kutna Hora ( 9 photos )
Making the best of the available wireless internet connection, after breakfast at the caravan park we spent the morning getting up to date with various things, even into the early afternoon.
Eventually it was time to give up this luxury and get on the road. The weather was great as we drove ourselves out of Prague. This city was hard enough to get in to, but getting out was not much better. We stumbled along, following the signs for the road we wanted to be on, but as is so common, they just sort of disappeared, leaving us driving along tram tracks, dodging pedestrians and Skodas as we randomly choose roads which might lead us in roughly the right direction.
This finally paid off, as we joined the E59/D1/E50/E65 (couldn't just call it one thing) heading south-east towards Brno. However, this wasn't quite what we wanted, so we deviated a little north towards Kutna Hora.
This was yet another World Heritage town, but after a bit of a drive through, we were less than impressed. The tourist office was well closed and pretty derelict. Compared to other such towns we have seen, this barely rated a mention.
We pushed a little out of town in search of the other attraction this place has to offer - Sedlec Ossuary. Seeming as it is such an attraction, I have no idea why it was almost impossible to find. We drove back and forth a few times, eventually stopping at a large church which had a map on the front of how to get to the ossuary. It seems lots of people do exactly the same thing.
Eventually we found our way there, parked the van and walked in and paid. The history of this place is interesting - some sacred dirt scattered in the church grounds lead to people far and wide wanting to be buried there. This lead to massive overcrowding and hence piles of human remains everywhere. Not wanting this to go to waste, people used the bones as decoration - we saw chandileers, altars, countless decorative strings and four massive pyramids all built out of bones and skulls. Macabre, sure, but not nearly as bad as we were bracing ourselves for. In fact, it was a little underwhelming, perhaps because we have been to lots of places outlining Nazi history recently.
From there, we pushed south for a couple of hours along crazy roads dodging insane drivers, in the direction of Telc. We elected not to go into the town itself, instead heading out again to a quiet campsite in the middle of nowhere. It was very strange, seeming to have no working toilet block and very few patrons. The old Czech reception man told us to drive in and pick a spot, all in German (plenty of the older generation speak that here, rather than English) - he was quite nice and perhaps a little suprised to see anyone turn up at all.
After driving past locals haphazardly parked on the driveway (no tourists expected, I guess), we parked then walked back up to have a dinner at their restaurant. We pointed and gestured for the benefit of the young Czech-only speaking girl, and eventually Liz got a meal which was just average, while my specialty of the house (three meats in four spices) was great.
We slept soundly in the near-total silence - very uncommon for us.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 06 Sep 2003
Prague ( 44 photos )
We had breakfast at the caravan park and then walked down the hill to the little bus stop. From here we caught a bus and then a tram, and found ourselves in central Prague.
Around the corner from where we got off the tram were the municipal house and the Powder Gate, both very beautiful buildings.
We could already see that the city was packed with other tourists - Prague is now one of the most popular destinations in Europe - I can't imagine how busy it would have been at the height of summer.
From the Powder Gate, we walked down a wide street filled with Saturday morning shoppers. We found the tourist information, but it proved to be of little use, so we wandered on. We turned right, had a look in one or two touristy shops and then found ourselves in Staromestké námesti, the old town square. It was a beautiful sunny day and the spot was gorgeous. We just stood and looked all around us, trying to take it all in. One one side was the old town hall with its high tower and a fifteenth century astronomical clock below the tower. Across the square is Týn church (1365), an amazing gothic building with twin steeples soaring across the square. All around the rest of the square are beautiful old buildings and the whole place makes you want to be able to see in all directions at once.
We sat at one of the outdoor cafés and treated ourselves to a couple of small but expensive beers - you pay for the view at more than five times the cost of beer just outside the square. So we stayed for ages drinking in the sights, listening to a great little jazz band nearby, and watching the thousands of tourists enjoying the square just like us.
At 1pm we joined a huge crowd infront of the Astronomical Clock and watched its little wooden people marching in and out of the clock as it rang out. Then we went inside the building, paid a small fee and began winding our way up through the tower and out to the top where we had 360 degree views of Prague. The square looked even better from this height and if it weren't for the number of tourists up there I would have happily stood up there for a few hours.
But we had lots more to see, so we made our way down and out and walked into the Jewish Quarter. Like everywhere else in this beautiful city, there were so many amazing old buildings. We found ourselves stopping every few steps to look down a small passage way or up at an old building. We kept going like this until we found ourselves at the Vltava river that runs through the city. Across the river from us and up on the hill was a giant metronome ticking back and forth. We have no idea what it was all about - maybe some wacky piece of art?
We walked along the river-side and then across a bridge and up the road until we came to the old castle steps. It was another hot day and a steep climb, but the view from the top was pretty cool. We could see the tower we had climbed up earlier.
A bit further up hill we were rewarded with the breathtaking sight of St Vitus Cathedral. It is a breathtaking building (building started in 1344) and after walking around one side, we went into the cathedral which if possible was even better. It is a huge cathedral and today contains the crown jewels which we had seen a replica of at Karlstejn castle the day before.
Back outside, we walked through the courtyard with St Vitus Cathedral on one side and Prague castle on the other. In the next courtyard was the Basilica of St George, the oldest building in this little section (1142).
Back down the old castle steps, we spent an hour or so just wandering around the streets of Prague, going through the occasional small square or busy tourist spot.
At Malá Strana we sat in a park for a bit before getting on the funicular railway where there are old castle walls and lots of parkland. We walked halfway back down the hill to get great views out over Prague and then caught the train back down to the bottom.
We made our way back towards the river and walked along the edge, looking across to Karluv Most (Charles Bridge) and the opposite bank. As we walked, we realised we were getting quite hungry and our feet were tired, so it was nice to stumble across a pub/restaurant. We sat in their walled courtyard and enjoyed Pilsener beers and shared a huge serving of pork ribs complete with mustard and pickle all served up on a huge wooden platter. After all that and another beer (it was Prague, after all!) we decided we still had more to see so off we went.
A bit further along the river we came to Karluv Most built in 1357 and complete with thirty statues from the 18th century. It is now a pedestrian bridge, and is lined on each side by people selling tourist knick-knacks and lots of artwork. The view looking up and down the river was so nice - the sun was going down and there were some really good buskers on the bridge. It all made for a great atmosphere.
Back on the other side of the river we were in serious tourist land - shop after shop packed full of anything a tourist could ever want or need (and a lot more besides) and full of lots of tourists, us included. It was actually quite a lot of fun just wandering along a looking in the shops. Before we knew it we were back in the old town square.
We were still keen to see a bit more so we went up another little street and just kept wandering. Eventually when it was quite dark, and we were quite worn out, we found a tram stop, caught our tram and then our bus, and took ourselves back to the caravan park.
It seems like we did heaps, but I think I could have happily looked around Prague for a week, or even just enjoyed the atmosphere in the bars and cafés, but at least we got to see most things.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 05 Sep 2003
Karlstejn and around Prague several times ( 11 photos )
On Friday morning, we were happy to be able to use the camping ground's gas stoves to heat up some water and then we enjoyed lots of tea and coffee while we could. Our spot by the lake was beautiful in the morning sunshine, with mist drifting over the top of the water.
From Pilsen we drove north-east on the motorway and got stuck in traffic for a while where there had been a bad accident between a few trucks, but we left the motorway soon after. We drove along a very windy little road, complete with big mirrors on the bends to tell you how many crazy drivers were coming at you from the other direction.
We stopped at Karlstejn. A boring little town, until you spotted its highlight - a 14th century castle standing at the very top of a high, forest covered hill.
We had to park right at the bottom of the hill, where we couldn't even see the castle, and from there walk to the top where the castle was. The walk up was actually quite fun - it was a narrow little cobblestone street, and either side most of the way up were lots of little shops selling lots of little tourist goodies. We hurried past them all as we decided to look at the shops on the way down.
The last part of the path up to the castle was very steep. It was a hot day and cobblestones are pretty, but they start to hurt your feet after a while! But we made it to the top just in time for a tour around the castle in English.
The tour was interesting with all the history of the castle, but not much of the inside of the castle is how it was in the 14th century. The whole place used to be full of frescos but none remain and there is only one piece of original furniture. However, the view from the castle looking all the way down the mountain was beautiful, and the outside of the castle was pretty spectacular.
By this stage, we were both very hungry so we stopped at one of the little restaurants on the way back down. For an insanely cheap price (less than $10), we both had big bowls of fresh home-made chicken soup, Pilsener goulash with bread dumplings, delicious apple pie, tea, coffee and half a litre of beer each. And all the food was just so good.
Feeling completely satisfied, we spent an hour or so looking all the little shops. Czech has a 0.0% blood alcohol limit, so after our beers it was good excuse to spend lots of time shopping. Most of the shops had Bohemian crystal and lots of it. Tim found himself a very nice crystal whisky decanter, and we got a few other small things before slowly heading back to the van.
Our afternoon was then spent driving the last short distance to Praha (Prague). We got stuck in a huge traffic jam, and then spent a long time trying to find our chosen caravan park before giving up in frustration, and going to one we had spotted a bit further out of the city (Triocamp). It has turned out to be a very nice little place, and as an added bonus they have a wireless internet connection here so we have been making very good use of that.
We had a nice dinner at the caravan park and shared a very good bottle of local wine, and spent the evening chatting away.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 04 Sep 2003
Litomerice, Terazín, Plzen ( 10 photos )
On Thursday we drove into town and spent an hour looking around the town square and a few of the narrow cobblestone streets of Litomerice. There were lots of old buildings, old cars and so on. We had coffee and some biscuits which we thought were shortbread, but which turned out to have sherbet in side. Nice, but a bit weird for breakfast. We found a little town market, where I got a backpack and a few other things.
The thing about the Czech republic is that just about everything is dirt cheap. Food, drink, souviners, even petrol, so all this cheap stuff is very nice after paying lots of money for our airline tickets the other day.
From Litomerice, we drove about two or three kilometres to Terazín. The whole village was turned into a ghetto for jews and other "undesirables" before and during World War II. It was run by the Nazis and conditions in the place were appalling. People had just over 1m of living space, hardly any food, hygene was terrible, I could go on and on about how awful the place was, and it was often the last stop-off point before the people were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. Not many people survived - even most of the children at Terazín ended up in the gas chambers. It was all very sad and depressing, but it was a really well set out display, and it was very interesting to learn about the history of Terazín.
We hit the road and spent an hour or two driving through lots of farmland, winding our way through village after village.
Driving in Czech takes a bit of getting used to - the roads are narrow, bendy and often bumpy, but the drivers here (especially the crazy Skoda drivers) don't really obey speed limits, overtaking zones or for that matter most other road rules. Most cars are full of dents and rust, and we even saw a Skoda that caught fire while it was just driving along the other day. At least with all these mad drivers we are having fun dodging them as they play games of chicken trying to overtake each other.
In the afternoon we came to the outskirts of Plzen (Pilsen), the original brewing place of Pilsener beer. We easily found our caravan park (Autocamp Ostende Plzen) on the outskirts of town, found a nice little spot by the lake and then headed into town. We had a ten minute walk and then a tram ride before we came to the central square, complete with huge towering church. We walked around the town for an hour or so. It is not the most exciting of places, but we still had fun exploring, before finding a busy little pub and enjoying two very big and very frothy pilsener beers.
Dinner was next, at a pizza place with delicious food and more beer. Feeling nice and full, we wandered before a bit more of the town before catching the tram and making our way back to the caravan park for the night.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 03 Sep 2003
Into Czech ( 1 photo )
(Continued from Deutschland 2)
The countryside has been very different - lots more hills and mountains around the place, so it hasn't been quite as flat as most of the parts of Germany that we have been through.
The most startling thing as we drove through the first part of Czech was seeing prostitutes all standing by the side of the road! And there are a lot, all wearing not much and mostly near a hotel or shack. We supposed that with the many truck drivers going through, they must get a fair bit of business!
Our first big town we drove through was Teplice, and we immediately saw lots of ramshackle old buildings, all falling apart. There were lots of nice buildings too, but it was like they just hadn't bothered pulling down the old, unused buildings. We didn't stop there, but drove on to Litomerice where we pulled in to a tiny little caravan park next to a river.
Our first converstation with a Czech person went well - he was quite drunk but spoke some English. We paid for our camping spot and spent the evening at the caravan eating nice food and drinking nice frothy big Czech beers.
(permanent link to this story)
Towards the Czech Border ( No photos )
On Wednesday morning, after a bit of catching up with journals and another breakfast at the hotel, we got ourselves packed up and moving fairly early.
On previous days in Berlin, we had done our best to find Internet cafés where we could plug the laptop in, but all to no avail. So on wednesday we went to a Starbucks where we paid a high price to get a very good and fast wireless internet connection. We had an hour and we certainly used it well. The main thing we did was book our airline tickets to get us back to Sydney. We now have tickets from Amsterdam to London and then on the 24th of November we fly out of London Heathrow and arrive in Sydney on the 26th of November, going via Singapore.
I'm glad we booked the tickets, but also a little sad because it will mean the end of travelling for a while.
Anyway, after the internet stuff was done, we caught a train back to the mechanics and picked Rosie up. They have replaced the fuel filter, and no wonder it needed replacing - it was chock full of dirt. Hopefully that will mean our problems are all fixed for a while. We have done a fair bit of driving since Berlin, and we have had no shaking and stalling trouble since (touch wood).
So, we drove south out of Berlin following the same path we had taken to Dresden a week before. In Dresden we got quite lost and spent a long while looking for the road we wanted. There are huge amounts of busy road work going on in the old East Germany - it seems the Soviets didn't keep the roads in top condition, and everywhere we have been around Eastern Germany has been full of frantic roadwork. This often means roadsigns are missing, and routes have changed to what is on our maps. It certainly makes driving interesting!
After driving right through central Desden, we kept going south towards our border crossing into Czech. Again, we were stuck in traffic jam after traffic jam because there are roadworks everywhere. But, after driving through some beautiful forest areas (Germany has lots of forest and lots of farmland), we made it to our German/Czech border crossing at Zinnwald.
The Czech registered car infront of us took a very long time to passport control, so we were expecting them to keep us for ages, but we actually went through very quickly. I guess because Tim had all his paperwork sorted out, and I was fine with my British passport.
And so we drove into the Ceská Republika (Czech Republic).
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 02 Sep 2003
The End of Berlin ( 26 photos )
After a nice buffet breakfast in the hotel, we got ourselves organised and went out for a wander.
We were looking for an Internet café and found plenty, but none who would let us plug in. Very strange indeed for such a large city. We found a Starbucks with wireless but they wanted 7 euros to get online. Ouch. Perhaps we will have more luck in Czech.
Mid afternoon a call came in about Rosie which we decyphered to mean that they had driven her around for a long time and eventually replaced a fuel pump, filter or both. It was ready to collect, but we had already told the hotel we would stay another night, intending to head off early in the morning.
We eventually decided to go check out the Spanish / Portugese restaurant just across the road from the hotel for an early dinner, which turned out to be a good move. I had Paella for the first time ever while Liz enjoyed her trout. We both enjoyed that someone else was paying :)
After dinner, we decided that a visit to Berlin's top tourist attraction was most probably worth it - the re-constructed glass dome on top of the Reichstag building. A bus and a walk got us there, via a huge travelling circle of painted ceraming teddy bears, one from each of 132 countries around the world.
We queued for a long time outside the Reichstag, but apparently less than average. After the metal detector and a big lift, we were up the top and there it was! The original dome was destroyed long ago, and this re-design is proving quite popular. We could see down into the parliament (only one "house" in Deutschland), but there was nothing going on there this late at night - everyone seemed to be a floor or two up, just below us, at a rather swanky looking ball. They may have been having nice food and drink, but they were in the fishbowl and we were looking in!
We wandered up the spiral ramp to the top of the dome, but the central part was closed for renovation, so we had to come down the same way. The views were great, but it's funny how some architectural things just work and others don't. This one did, and the dome itself stole the show.
After returning to the bottom of the dome, we spent half an hour or so wandering around in a circle, viewing the history of the building which is very interestingly displayed all around.
We'd had our fill, so we walked out, looking for a coffee shop. We hadn't gone far when we heard a voice say "are you guys from Australia?" Perhaps the huge aussie flag on my backpack gave it away, but there we were, talking to Jacqui from Aus. After whittling it down, it turns out that she is from Carss Park, Carwar Ave, right opposite the bowling club. Grew up about 200 metres away from me and here we are, meeting for the first time on the other side of the world! Also, her best friend is Pandora Zahar, who lives two doors up from our old house in Erang Street.
We chatted for a while over a coffee on Unter Den Linden, said "It's a small world" a few times, then agreed to try and meet up through Pandora at some stage in a year or two.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 01 Sep 2003
Rosie Goes to Meet Her Maker ( No photos )
No, not that sort of maker - she's been taken to a proper Volkswagen dealer and mechanic at the expense of our Travel Insurance.
After speaking to the Melbourne couple, we decided to get ourselves organised while we were still in an interesting city (the capital of the country Volkswagens come from, no less), just in case the repairs take a few days.
First on the agenda was getting into town, back to the Czech embassy and finding out whether my Visa was ready again. Infact, it was, so I handed over a reasonable sum of cash for my one-entry thirty-day Visa. Liz pays nothing for her much greater freedom (on a British passport), the trade-off being that she doesn't get a pretty little sticker thing in her passport.
We then rang the insurance company to set some wheels in motion, before heading back to the caravan park to drive rosie a couple of suburbs in to the VW dealer at Zehlendorf, Auto Mann. Luckily there was someone there who spoke English, and poked and prodded at her as if he had worked on these old things since he could walk. We'll call back soon to find out what the situation is.
So, this left us without somewhere to stay for the night, and yet again our insurance has proved it was worth the expense. Since the British pound is so strong at the moment, when we are given a fixed number of pounds for hotel and dinner, that means plenty of Euros. We elected to find our own hotel, which we pay for and then claim back.
A room-finding service (hey, why not? We're not paying for it) at Berlin-Zooligischer Garten station pointed us to a very central hotel, quoting a price which he expected us to balk at. "No worries" we said, for it was still quite a way under our allowance. We tottered off to dump our stuff at the Hotel Remter, about thirty seconds off the main drag in this part of town in Marburger Straße. The place is nice, quite old but spotless and with good service.
We dumped our things, before heading off to an Internet Café where we had no chance of plugging the laptop in, instead just checking our emails (we will reply soon!) and doing a bit of research into some flights from Amsterdam to London.
Next, we needed to look more into flights so went in search of an STA Travel office. Eventually finding it, we waited for quite a while before being told that they can only book Air New Zealand from London to Sydney (but anything from Hamburg to Sydney), which is fine, but there are very limited seats available. Prices aren't bad, but we are going to look around a bit more first.
Now it was dinner time, and with someone else still paying, we ate in style at the very nice Joe's Mirtshaus Zum Löwen, a branch of the big Löwenbrau chain (there's one in The Rocks in Sydney called Löwenbrau Keller). A couple of nice steaks washed down with a couple of great beers and it was time to head back to the hotel.
We originally planned to head back out for coffee, but the lure of big beds we didn't have to fold out, mind-numbing TV and hot showers put rest to that plan.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 31 Aug 2003
Goslar, Quedlinburg ( 21 photos )
It wasn't far from the campsite north to Goslar, the second town on the Heritage Loop, and what a great town it was.
Seemingly endless rows of well-preserved half-timbered houses lead in to the central Markt square, adorned with even more ornate versions of the same.
You might just be able to pick out Liz in that photo on one of the chairs at the far right - that's where we ate our breakfast of cheese, salami, eggs, bread, toast, juice and coffee. Our treat to ourselves after making do with bread for one or two meals a day for quite some time.
We just wandered around town for a while, looking in craft shops (including a set which were in an old church with low entrance doors padded with pillows), touristy shops and many buildings with really old dates on their plaques out the front. On the way out of town, I saw a sign saying that the town celebrated its millenium in 1994, and some of these buildings wouldn't have been much younger than that.
We had come as far west as we intended for the time being, and now it was time to head back towards Berlin - but first, one more World Heritage town on the way - Quedlinburg.
We parked quite close to town, followed our noses into and around the place almost devoid of life. It is strange how so much of Europe seems to shut down on a Sunday, which makes it a great time to avoid the crowds.
By far and away the most pretty place here was the Markt square once again, containing probably the most gorgeous Rathaus (Town Hall) we have seen to date.
However, we chose not to dally for long, and pushed along the roads back to Berlin. The drive took longer than it should, because of the amount of road-work and hence detours around the place (a bridge was totally closed at one point which would have added about an hour, but Liz sniffed us out another one nearby), and also Rosie's bad behaviour.
We drove back into the same caravan park as before, located at the corner we were entering the city. Tonight we met and got speaking to Heather and Steve from Melbourne, who are doing almost the exact same thing we are doing except in the other direction. She's a Nurse, he's in IT, and they have been living in London also. Strange.
Amongst our conversation, we got as all combi-drivers do to the topic of mechanical problems - they have had plenty more than us so far. The interesting thing for us is that Steve has suggested that the problem we are having is the same as he had with a previous Combi - the valves need grinding as they sometimes don't close properly, letting fuel in to flood the engine.
At least it is a labour job so the insurance should cover the cost, but we aren't sure where we want to stop for that long yet.
Tomorrow we head back into Berlin hoping that my Czech visa is ready, and that we can find an internet café somewhere.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 30 Aug 2003
Erfurt ( 8 photos )
After managing to checkout and get a couple of coffees from the guy running the place with only a few bits of laughter at my German, we were on the road.
It wasn't far from our overnight stop into the town of Erfurt. The first of three towns forming the western part of our loop back to Berlin which are listed on the World Heritage List, it did not dissapoint.
We parked on the outskirts and caught the Park-and-Ride tram into town, after the driver attempted to explain how to buy a ticket. If there's one thing that the Deutsch do well it is to make things complicated. We ended up with five tickets, each worth a Euro, and no idea what to do with them. After a little bit of observation of fellow travellers, I discovered that by sticking one into a little box on the tram, it came back with a stamp on it. There was no indication as to how many we needed per journey, so I settled for one each, leaving us with one un-stamped one. No, there was no mechanism to buy four.
Through the town we amused ourselves for quite a while stopping in a bakery, dodging the rain, buying umbrellas (lost ours somewhere), looking into the Rathaus, around the Fishmarkt, Domplatz and just generally admiring the handsome buildings which somehow dodged the bombs.
There was a display in the Rathaus about the composer Pachabel which we didn't understand (it is not uncommon to find nothing at all in anything other than Deutsch this far away from the standard tourist sites), so we moved on to a couple of huge bookshops, just browsing around.
We jumped on a return tram to the Park and Ride and drove north through the town. After quite a bit of progress, Rosie decided to show us that all is not well mechanically. Although it has been much better, she got up to her old tricks yet again. We know how to handle it, so all is safe, but it is a little dis-concerting when it happens.
We made it into Camping Okertalsperre, just north of Altenau. To get there we had wound our way up through the mountains, not huge tall ones but quite different to the flat landscapes of our previous few weeks. The weather has become quite a bit cooler of late, and the rain seems more constant. We also see lots of places where the wind is so persistent that the trees on both sides of the road lean to the side.
We had a look around the park itself, playing in the playground like kids before noting on the way out the sign saying "Under 12 only". Whoops. A snacky dinner followed yet again, paving the way for something better in the morning.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 29 Aug 2003
Leipzig, Buchenwald ( 13 photos )
Liz and I got ourselves organised reasonably early, and decided that driving into town would be less hassle than getting the tram, probably cost about the same and anyway, it was raining cats and dogs!
After parking in roughly the same place as the previous day, we had a coffee in one of the stylish arcades the city has on offer.
From there we headed to the Rathaus and the markets out the front to meet up with Baz, but in the end he was running a little late and had to go straight to the train station instead.
The rain had subsided for a while, so we turned our attention across the square to the dominant Thomaskirche, which houses the tomb of one Johann Sebastian Bach in front of the altar, one of Leipzig's most famous exports. There were also some instruments from his time on display, catching our musical minds' attention.
From there we wandered to the edge of the town to the Stasi Museum. The Stasi were the East German Secret Police in the time before the fall of the wall, and hence part of the Soviet Empire. The museum documented the total distrust of everyone everywhere, as they had collected everything from intercepted mail to scent and saliva samples in jars of pretty much everyone in Leipzig. The place has been kept pretty much as it was when it was invaded by citizens in 1989, stopping the destruction of the evidence that had been in process. It was fascinating to wander around, looking at lots of rooms full of tools of the trade, but would have been better if either our German was better or there was a more comprehensive English translation of much of the material.
We had just enough time before our parking ticket ran out to visit the temporary exhibition site of the Musical Instruments Museum of the University of Leipzig. The universal language of music helped us out here, especially when the helpful attendant threw a barrage of Deutsch at us, as we could see by her demonstrating the very interesting square organ complete with bird whistle, spinny flower things and of course lots of pipes. They had some really old clavichords, harpsichords and weird thirty-stringed lutes and even violas which we just about took in with the little time we had.
From there, it was out of town, heading west further on our "Old East Germany Ring Trip". Next stop was the Buchenwald concentration camp. From the outset we had a reasonable idea what we were in for - you don't visit places like this for an easy-going enjoyable afternoon. Once again we were a little let down, this time by the fact that we couldn't get an audio-guide despite the place not closing for many hours to come. We had to just wander and read a bit, not quite a way to do the horrific memories justice but still interesting to see the place where something like 56,000 people lost their lives.
There was a museum on the outskirts which was actually about the building of the memorial (getting the Allies and Soviets to agree on anything almost always involved enough to-ing and fro-ing to fill an entire museum), which contained an audio recording that an American reporter broadcast a day after the camp had first been discovered at the end of the war. That pretty much said it all for us, and coupled with the fact that the rain had come back we decided not to venture much further around the place.
Instead, we headed back to the motorway and a little way back east toward Weimar, where we checked ourselves into a nice little caravan park in forest land a long way from anywhere.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 28 Aug 2003
Into Leipzig ( 6 photos )
The morning was spent lazing around Meißen, making full use of the electricity (or "energy") we had paid for by doing some work on the journal, before we got ourselves on the road in the direction of Leipzig.
This would be a continuation of our loop designed to take up a few days while we awaited my Czech visa back in Berlin. Also, it would get Dave one step closer to his next destination.
Off the motorway, I spotted a gas specialist and, in my deranged state still held the belief that maybe, just maybe they would have the right type of gas. Not the case at all, but they directed us to a large Hardware House type place up the road to look there. Not suprisingly, they didn't either, although Baz was in his element, and we found a 240v lamp to use when we are plugged into the mains which cost us slightly more than the price of a bulb to go in it.
From there into the centre of town (another place with no caravan parks central), we parked just off the funnily-named Martin-Luther-Ring (the city's ring road) and wandered into the town proper.
A girl Dave had met on the bus on the way over here had issued a formal invitation for him to go and stay for a while, at a little town called Aschaffenburg East of Frankfurt am Main. Much of this afternoon was spent trying to work out how to get him there - we eventually booked a hotel for the night here (sleeping on the front seat, floor and outside was taking its toll!) and a train to said town for the following day (at the Hauptbahnhof, which is Europe's biggest train station).
After dinner, we wandered back through town to Rosie as her parking was running out, then drove Baz to his hotel. After saying our goodbyes, then negotiating for Rosie's release from the car park, Liz and I drove a little way north of town along one of the tram lines to the closest caravan park.
Campingplatz Auensee turned out to be quite a nice place, where the guy running it and I had a couple of interesting conversations, he speaking English and me German, both attempting quite humorously no doubt to get our points across.
Having decided to do our city sight-seeing the following day, sleep soon followed. We assume Baz slept better as well.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 27 Aug 2003
Dresden, Meißen ( 44 photos )
With the assistance of some helpful locals amused at our attempts to decypher the highly complicated Dresden local transport map, we found ourselves on a bendy bus heading to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station).
From there, we walked into Dresden itself, finding ourselves first at the tourist office. Here, for the sum of 26 euro cents (apparently 25 cents wasn't quite covering the costs), we purchased an English guide to the city, complete with self-guided walking tour. Great!
We needed coffee, and the efficent-as-a-robot girl at the first-floor café in a shoe store helped us out no end. Although the tea that David and Liz managed to acquire was of unknown type - certainly not English Breakfast or similar like they thought they were getting. It seems that unless they get used to drinking coffee (which is universal), this sort of thing is going to become very common.
I bought some cheap tacky thongs (the ones that go on your feet, British people!) as my other pair which had come over from Sydney with us had fallen apart a while back. You need them for the showers in the caravan parks, which can be a bit grubby.
Next, we headed to the start of our tour at the Rathaus. We almost walked past it, as it isn't in a square as most others are. There were some great brass statues out the front which looked like they could use a bit of a polish - Baz suggested a school group should be given a few bottles of Brasso and told to keep themselves busy for the afternoon.
Inside, there was a photographic exhibition, some of the entries of which were quite humorous, but most of the rest of the building was off limits. Or at least that's what we thought the signs said - the Deutsch language has a habit of making really nice things sound really nasty!
From there, we wandered in and around quite a lot of the Altstat (Old Town), which, curiously enough, is mostly newer than the Neustat (New Town), due to almost total destruction during World War II. We ducked our heads into the Kreuzkirche which was undergoing renovation, then into the Altmarkt, the city's oldest and largest square.
Fairly random wandering (it was difficult to follow our tour) then brought us to the breath-taking Fürstenzug, on Augustusstraße. This is a huge long mosaic of 24,000 tiles shows all the rulers of Sachsen from 1124 to 1904, made of Meißen china (more on that later).
From here, Baz decided to wander across the bridge to Neustadt, eventually finding an Internet café to organise some flights and things, while Liz and I first turned our attention to more of Altstadt.
The square right on the south side of Augustus-brücke (bridge) was quite a sight to behold. On all sides were huge old buildings - a Cathedral (which we ducked our heads inside - less ornate but still more beautiful than most we have seen), old towers, walkways and bridges all around us. It is really quite difficult to imagine that most of it is less than fifty years old, you wouldn't know to look at it.
We wandered west, taking in the also-amazing but strangely named Zwinger. This "outer bailey" is a vast couryard surrounded by old buildings and a wall. The Police Orchestra was playing at one end, which we sat and watched for a while, missing our Georges River Band quite a lot. We spent quite a while just taking photos and soaking up the atmosphere of the area - the city is famous for its music and there were little combos, buskers and here a full band everywhere you look.
The nearby Semperoper (Opera House) also had a large sign promising Jazz, but there appeared to be no way in other than for a concert at night or via German-language-only tour.
Now it was time for Liz and I to turn our attention north of Augustus-brücke to the Neustadt. Here we walked along the banks of the Elbe river (it gets around, flowing through at least Hamburg and Meißen also, and I'm sure quite a lot more) to the strangely-located Japanese Palace. Then on to Königstraße, a potent symbol of how Dresden used to look (you hear that quite a lot here). A few churches and interesting streets later, we were on Haupt-Straße. This long pedestrianised street is the focus of this part of town, lined with eateries, cafés and poky little shops.
It was here that we ate a snacky lunch, before delving into a book shop to see what it offered. What we ended up purchasing was an album designed to store all the different Euro coins. If you didn't know, all the Euro notes are the same everywhere, but the countries are allowed to produce coins with their own designs on one side, hence providing good grounds for a collection.
It hasn't taken long to gather the entire Deutschland set, of course, but other countries are proving significantly more difficult. It's a shame we didn't start earlier, having travelled already through Ireland, Finland and Netherlands which are on the Euro, but I'm sure we will work it out.
At the south end of the street (and hence the north end of Augustus-brücke), there is probably the most glittering gold statue I have ever seen - the Goldener Reiter (Golden Rider). This is of Augustus the strong, and was hidden away in safety during the war, before being un-veiled again in 1956 for the city's 750 year anniversary.
We spent a few minutes resting our legs and quenching our thirst in a café on Albert-platz, before heading back across the bridge. We met up with Baz once again, and wandered our way back in turn to the bus stop then Rosie, whom we had parked outside the camping place.
Not too much of a drive away was the fantastically-preserved little old town of Meißen. Famous for its china / porcelan (see earlier), there were refreshingly few places attempting to sell it to us. However, the ones which were were breathtakingly expensive - AUD $2000 for a tea service!
Perhaps it is because this is old East Germany which tourists have avoided for so many years, but the place was great. We wandered aimlessly amongst the entirely cobbled streets, and then up the hill to the Dom (cathedral) and Schloß (castle) perched right on top. There was a great view across the valley to the other parts of town.
By now it was dinner time, and we found a restaurant which promised great views according to the sign on the front. They weren't lying - we sat on the balcony of a restaurant which has been operating since the fifteenth century, looked out over the town and just tried to take it all in.
Something else we tried to take in was the menus. This proved rather difficult, however, as they weren't even (for the most part) written in Deutsch (which we can kind of fudge our way through now) - they appeared to be an old Saxon languange! The waitress obviously saw our distress, and offered us some English menus - much better!
We sat there and ate some great traditional meals, drank a couple of local beers, and were suprised (well, relatively) at the reasonable prices - methinks the fact that tourism hasn't quite discovered this place is a blessing in more ways than one.
From there, we walked back down through town to Rosie parked by the Elbe, and located a caravan park some way north of the town in Niederau. The intriguingly-named Campingganmeldung (careful how you pronounce that one) came complete with the most amusing English-speaking Deutschlander we have found. It was definitely a you-have-to-be-there sort of thing, but his phrases and vocabularly obviously learnt from American movies made for much amusement for us. Examples included when he came to "give us energy" (plug in the electricity cable), and the instruction to "follow with me into the meadow" (a word almost nobody uses in day-to-day English). For all that, he spoke far better English than any of us did Deutsch, so we were grateful.
The caravan park had a "pool", which actually turned out to be a small lake complete with ducks, and hence completely filled with duck-muck. Swimming out of the question, we elected to feed the ducks for a while, before doing very little and eventually sleeping, tired from our first day with two separate places in quite a while.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 26 Aug 2003
South to Dresden ( No photos )
We got up bright and early, and again made our way into Berlin. We went back to the Visa department of the Czech Republic, where Tim filled out forms to get a visa. Unfortunately it takes three to five working days for the visa to become valid, so we are now waiting for it to come through and travelling around this part of Germany for a few days.
We found a small café and had tea and coffee, then decided to go back to the caravan park and get on the road. Back at the caravan park we packed up, paid the grumpy staff member who had a dummy spit about Tim disturbing his lunch to give him money, and drove south out of Berlin.
It was not a big drive - about 180km to Dresden, but we stopped for some lunch about half way.
In Dresden, finding the caravan park we had chosen proved to be very difficult, especially as, like all the old Communist areas of Germany, most of Dresden was undergoing major roadworks so many signposts were missing. In the end we found Campingplatz Dresden-Mockritz, and it was quite a nice one. We got some food from the local supermarket and spent the afternoon relaxing with Tim cooking up a storm on the barbie.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 25 Aug 2003
Berlin on Foot ( 15 photos )
First task this morning was to organise some hot water for a coffee (still no gas). I amused myself and a helpful woman running the caravan park's café by asking in German whether I could have some hot water. She helfully provided a thermos full, and we enjoyed the change of our own brewed hot drinks.
Back into town via bus 620 to Wansee then fast-train RE1 to Friedrichstraße (we were getting the hang of this by now), we wandered down Wilhelmstraße to the Czech embassy. I'm not sure what John Howard or his predecessors have said to the Czech people, but Australians are amongst the few remaining people who need a visa to enter the country. The embassy was open five days a week (better than most), however only from 8:30-11am - we had arrived too late.
So, from there we set about finding a late breakfast / early lunch - and the tour guide's suggestion that the huge, visible from everywhere TV tower (Fernsehturm) was cheaper than you might think was sounding good.
After walking along there along Unter den Linden, standing in the queue for a while, taking a reasonably fast lift up to the top and then standing in another queue for a table at the restaurant, we were there!
The tower itself has an interesting history - concieved by the Soviets as a display of their engineering talent, they infact had to sub-contract to the Swedes about half-way through when it was clear that they didn't know how to build the rest. Knowing that were were in safe Swedish hands, we enjoyed the fantastic views from the restaurant all over the city, rotating twice an hour which is much faster than in Centerpoint / AMP tower in Sydney.
Back down on the ground, there was a couple of museums we wanted to look at we had passed at speed on bikes the day before - firstly the Mauermuseum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, back at Allied Checkpoint Charlie. This museum was first started just a couple of years after the wall went up, and has been in a constant state of change ever since. It documents the terrible history surrounding the wall, escape stories (home-built submarines, tunnels, hot air balloons, smuggling people in cars) and the ever more deadly technology to stop said escapes. We spent a few hours slowly wandering around taking it all in - a truly great place to do so.
Our next stop was a little way away, back into the former Soviet sector then along the wall's previous path (the bottom bricks of the wall have been left in the tarmac, showing the path it used to follow). A few sections still remain, amongst them a part housing the Topography of Terror exhibition in the former Gestapo Headquarters.
This was quite a chilling place to be, complete with audio-guide explanations of the otherwise German-only descriptions of orders surrounding the holocaust, all inside the place most of them were ordered from. Pictures completed the explanation.
It was quite interesting to see just how the entire population was swayed with propoganda, and that the hatred often directed at the German people in general for past wrongs really only stems back to a few nasty people, far from the entire 80 or so million living here today. Those who stood up against it (and there were plenty of them discussed here) were all sent to pretty much the same fate - one of the many concentration camps.
By now it was dinner time, and some random wandering landed us at a Chinese Bistro off Friedrichstraße. The menu was quite difficult to navigate, so in the end we resorted to "pick a number between 40 and 80", and ordered the dish with that number. The worst that resulted was that Liz's choice had some seaweed (we think), but otherwise it was all quite good and cheaper than expected.
Waiting for our train, we went back to a bar for a coffee, but eventually caught another fast train home with no problems.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 24 Aug 2003
Berlin by Bike ( 28 photos )
In the morning Tim and I caught the bus from just outside of the caravan park to the nearby S-Bahn station, Wansee. From there, after a bit of confusion about which platform we had to catch the train from, we eventually got on an express train to Berlin (geez, that thing went fast!). It didn't stop at any stations until Charlottenberg where we got off, and it really zipped along at a speedy pace.
At Charlottenberg, we bought tea and coffee and then walked up the road to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche (memorial church). This was quite amazing - a huge church that had been bombed in World War Two and so it still had most of its spire missing, and ornamental stone-work blown out of the windows.
Just here by the fountain was where we met Dave. We sat and chatted for quite a while before going into the nearby tourist information to find out where we could store Dave's suitcase for the day. This could be done at one of the nearby train stations, which seemed to be three stations in one - an S-Bahn, a U-Bahn and a big Central Station. Anyway, after asking lots of non-english speaking Germans how to store the suitcase by pointing wildly at said object and gesticulating excitedly, we finally found our way to the lockers, located a big enough one for the suitcase, and locked Dave's belongings away.
Whilst in the tourist information, Tim had picked up a brochure that had lots of tours around Berlin advertised, and all were in English. The Insider Tour Berlin by Bike tour appealed to us most of all, as it covered most of the sights we wished to see. As an added bonus, seeing Berlin by bike would save a lot of walking - it is a very spread-out city. And bikes are lots of fun too!
So, from the Zoological Gardens train station we were at, we caught two trains out to where our tour would start. This was a big adventure - when Tim (in quite good German) asked the platform attendant which side of the platform we should catch our train from, the guy spoke rapid German and pointed first at one side of the platform and the the other. Dave and I were standing to one side trying not to laugh, and when Tim came over, he smiled and said "he said go here!", pointing to the first platform.
As it turned out we managed to get the right train! Two stops later we had to get out, cross to the other side of the platform, and catch another train to continue our journey. Now it all made sense, and we understood why the platform attendant had pointed at both sides of the platform.
Another two stops later we got off at Friedrichstraße S-Bahn station, and sat in a café and had lunch. We another hour to go until the tour started, so we walked across a bridge over the river Spree and found a small park to sit in a sunny spot and relax before our big ride.
At three pm we were at the meeting point for our Berlin by Bike tour, at, funnily enough, a bike shop. We were each given a bike of suprisingly good quality (the brakes even worked - our last bikes in Singapore didn't even have brakes!) and then asked to hand over a passport or credit card for security.
The tour was four hours long, but we were not on the bikes as much as I thought we would be. At each sight we came to, we stopped and were given a spiel on the building or the area, including lots of history (which Berlin is bursting with). We even stopped for a coffee break after a couple of hours.
We saw heaps of sights - our first stop was the Reichstag - the parliament house, an impressive buiding built in 1894. It was partly gutted by fire probably started by Hitler and his cronies, but has been rebuilt and is a beautiful building. From the Reichstag, we rode to the Brandenburg Gate, once the boundary between East and West Berlin. Further up the road, we stopped at an old remaining section of the Berlin Wall. I found it suprisingly un-impressive - an ugly concrete and steel wall with huge chunks missing out of it. The next stop was a car park. Doesn't sound too impressive, but it was the exact spot where Hitler had his bunker, and where he committed suicide. The whole bunker has been blown up and covered over. There is no plaque or anything there to say what it used to be, because they don't want Neo-Nazis to come there and pay tribute to Hitler.
At each stop, and sometimes in between, our guide Kenny would tell us about the area, the buildings, and most importantly the very interesting history. We learnt more from the guide than we could have from any book. There was certainly a lot of interesting history in and around the area of Hitler's bunker - all about the massive building that once stood here where Hitler ruled from, about Hitler himself and how his staff tried to hide his and his new wife's bodies.
Further up the road we came to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the crossings between East and West Berlin, where there is a replica building of the checkpoint standing in the middle of the road. Just near here was where we stopped for a coffee break.
Back on our bikes, we rode a bit and then stopped in a big open square which had some beautiful old buildings in it. Soon after this we stopped in some old university buildings where a massive book-burning of, among others, Einstein's works took place.
Another stop was at an ugly building in a state of dis-repair. This was where the communists had their headquarters, but it is about to be pulled down. Just up the road was the preserved balcony where the declaration which had effectively started World War I was made. Also visible from here was a beautiful church.
Our last stop was in a park with a statue of Karl Marx, and we were told the last bit of history and war information about the area. The last bit of the tour was riding ten or fifteen minutes back to our starting point. It was a really good tour and we saw so much stuff - a great way to see Berlin.
At the train station we bought some food to cook on the bbq, and made our way slowly back to the caravan park, collecting Dave's baggage along the way. It took us quite a while to get there, as we caught a slow train, so by the time we managed to get the barbie going and some food cooked we were all warn out. At 11pm we fell into bed, Dave sleeping on the passenger seat.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 23 Aug 2003
Drive to Berlin ( 12 photos )
After loading up the bus, and cleaning the flat, we did one last run around Aldi before heading off.
However, we had one last stop in Hamburg - Liz's father Ingo's old house in Gryphiusstraße. We hadn't walked here earlier as it was quite a way from where we were staying. Liz took some photos around the area while I parked illegally (very busy area now), before we headed back through town.
It was a little harder than expected to locate the autobahn out of there, but in the end we were on our way to Berlin.
Some of our initial plans had included making it to the Berlin Love Parade, but in the end we didn't quite do that. Here we just drove and drove, through strange dust blowing of freshly-ploughed fields which looked like brown smoke in the distance.
It was interesting driving the bus again - a little more power, quite a bit less wobbly on the roads, but still being blown around in the strong winds like only a top-heavy high-top combi can.
Upon reaching Berlin, we drove down the western side towards one of the camp sites picked at random, the best of a bad bunch. This is the closest, and it is 15km out of town! I guess tourism has only become high on the priority list since 1990 or so, so perhaps this will improve with time.
After our drive, it was quite late in the day, so we decided against finding our way into town, instead opting to relax at our site by the river, and eat some bbq-ed steak cooked at the outdoor restaurant here. When it became apparent to the cook that he couldn't quite get his point across about what type of meat it was we were able to purchase off him, he completed the picture by snorting, making some truly great piggy noises.
Bill Bryson (the travel writer) describes travelling in foreign countries as being like a child once again. You don't know what the signs mean, people are saying, or what meat you are eating. It's nice when someone is willing to jump in and help out like that!
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 22 Aug 2003
Site Updates ( 12 photos )
At long last, we have put something of interest on the Rosie page (also linked in the header above). Have a look at our "home" in the big red combi bus.
Also, we have done something right out of the ordinary and made some plans! Read about our current attempts to fit in everything we want to see before going home on the Itinerary / Photos page.
(permanent link to this story)
Rosie Returns ( No photos )
After meeting up with Jens early afternoon, we were treated to a guided three-bus tour of Hamburg's suburbs out to the mechanic's place.
This is actually little more than a house with people interested in cars living in it, but they have done a good job for very little money. Contacts come through again, thanks guys.
So we drove Rosie (complete with new antenna, spark plugs, two new rear tires and far less water in the fuel filter) back to Jens' place, where we sat and had a chat over a few beers. We were happy to speak to someone else who spoke English, and he was happy to give his English a work-out.
We then went back towards Seb and Jessi's place, located a parking place and headed inside.
We spent a slow evening packing the place back up, getting organised to pack our lives back into the van again. It's strange missing a "real" house, but we were itching to get back on the road again.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 21 Aug 2003
Around Hamburg Again ( 5 photos )
After spending most of the morning watching yet more videos, we decided by mid-afternoon that walk into and around town was in order.
This took in the Rathusmarkt, where a huge international food and drink festival thing was happening. All manner of international cuisine, local wines and beers were available. Not to suprisingly, the temptation to try a little was strong, and we caved in. Not to badly though, just a cheapish meal and a couple of drinks.
We also took a walk around Binnenalster, the Inner Lake of Hamburg (couldn't quite get across the train tracks and roads to the Aussenalster - Outer Lake). A fairly dull day limited good photo opportunities, but this is a marked change from when we looked around this area in the overpowering heat last time.
Wandering back to the flat, we settled in for another relaxing night, getting to bed early quite tired.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 20 Aug 2003
Away one year! ( No photos )
It doesn't seem like it, but today marks three hundred and sixty-five days since we left Sydney!
Wow, we have covered so much, yet still feel we have plenty to see. Every time I look at a world map it seems we have seen so little, yet a quick browse back through the journal shows the contrary.
To honour this amazing feat, we decided to do pretty much nothing. We worked our way through Seb and Jessi's video collection, whiling the day away in a very lazy manner. A bottle of duty-free champers helped the celebrations, before I turned my hand to learning some more Deutsch from the language learning CD we have.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 19 Aug 2003
Rosie Goes to the Doctor's ( No photos )
We had until 2pm until we had to meet Kristina to take Rosie for a bit of TLC, and we passed it doing very little.
Liz decided to stay while I went out to battle a strange city with no map (although I found out later that Seb had left us one in plain view which I hadn't seen). Either Jens' directions or my ability to follow them turned out to be lacking (probably the latter), and a few SMSs, phone calls and crossing motorways I wasn't supposed to be crossing later, all while driving a big bus in a small city, I arrived fourty-five minutes late to meet Kristina.
She turned out to be such a friendly and helpful person, claiming not to be worried that I was so late. I followed her to the mechanics, where she explained in Deutsch too rapid for me to follow the problems which needed attending too.
After handing over the keys, I got into her tiny VW Golf (everything is tiny compared to Rosie - I felt like my knees were just under my chin), where she helpfully drove me back to Seb's place in the torrential rain via her own for a quick stop.
Not much happened for the rest of the evening, continuing our trend of relaxing in one place after being in so many different places for so long.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 18 Aug 2003
Back to Hamburg ( No photos )
(Continued from Danmark 2)
We fueled up across the border, noting with some anxiety that there was no 98 octane fuel available. Bracing ourselves for a rockier ride, we pushed on towards Hamburg, stopping at a road-side place for some lunch and an ice cream. The weather was quite warm, pushing and perhaps exceeding thirty degrees.
Into Hamburg from the North this time, we had no real problems finding our way to Paul-Rossen Straße where Sebastian and Jessi usually live. I say usually because they are currently in Scotland, on a band tour! However, they have kindly allowed us to use their place while they are away.
They left their keys with a friend (vocalist Jens from the band we went to the rehersal for last time we were here), so while waiting for him to finish work we stocked up at ultra-cheap supermarket Aldi and relaxed for a few hours, reading and resting in Rosie.
Jens' address flashed up on the phone, and off I went, walking what turned out to be one of the longest possible ways to his flat on Stresemann Straße. Upon arriving and chatting, I told him we were basically here to get the van fixed at any random place we happened upon. Before I knew it, he had recommended a place, and organised his sister Kristina to guide us there and back! Wow, thanks so much to these two for all their help, it has made our life much easier. They even translated what is wrong with the van into Deutsch for us.
Walking back to the van in half the time (and hence appearing from the other direction and confusing Liz), we found our way into Seb and Jessi's flat. Big thanks also to them for leaving their home to people from another country for a while when they themselves are far far away. They left the place spotless, so now we have quite a cleaning job when we leave!
It is good to be back in a "real" house where you don't have to clean up piles of clothes and books to get to the sink, and the bed is there all the time, no un-folding required. As such, we used the oven (how strange!) to cook some dinner, before starting on our long period here of doing very very little.
(permanent link to this story)
End of Scandinavia ( No photos )
We drove into town to get some cash to pay for the night's accommodation, and returned to pay like the good people we are.
From there, we drove the remaining thrity or so kilometres to the Deutsch border. Now remember all the trouble I have had with my passport because I don't have stamps to show where I have been? I decided to do the right thing, so we pulled into the border crossing where I fudged my way with some Deutsch and discovered that to get a stamp in my passport I would have to go to the tiny border crossing about ten kilometres west! That's very strange, as surely about 99% of the traffic crossing the border uses the massive fast motorway.
Not wanting to upset Rosie, we got back in the van and drove stamp-less into Deutschland.
And thus endeth our tour of Scandinavia. We had a great time, and stretched our initial time estimate of three weeks to five, without minding a single bit. It was a fantastic place to see, so varied from north to south, country to country. I think we have taken enough ferry rides to last us a good long while, and spent enough cash to require us to keep a tight hold on the purse-strings from now on.
But we wouldn't have done anything different. Fantastic memories, we hope to re-live them at some time in the future, intending to return to brave a Scandinavian winter some day.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 17 Aug 2003
Danish Castles ( 30 photos )
This morning the showers were good and hot, so we enjoyed those while possible (something you have to do while travelling - the next one could be days away).
Driving out of the city and electing not to find the Carlsberg brewery for a tour, we needed breakfast and had little to eat. Another service station fixed this problem with cheapo coffee-and-cake deals while we poured more of Kuwait's finest into Rosie. Which reminds me, they have a service station over here called Q8. Get it?
There are plenty of famous Danish castles, but we had chosen to restrict ourselves to just two. First on the list was Kronborg Slot in Helsingør, at the top of the island of Zealand, about an hour north from København. This is famous as the castle from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and in fact we had by only days missed the "Hamlet in Hamlet's castle" performance of said play. Nevermind, would have been in Danish anyway.
Instead, we wandered around the courtyard and looked in the places we could without shelling out for a ticket. This place was interesting, but not amazingly so. The moat and surroundings certianly were attractive, but we had a bigger fish to fry.
This was Frederiksborg Slot, half an hour or so south-west in Hillerød. This highly-impressive castle spread across three islands was not only fantastic in its own right, but seemingly every square inch of the walls in the endless series of rooms across four floors are plastered with paintings, forming the Museum of National History.
After wandering down the long approach road, through the beautiful grounds, past the symmetrical Baroque Garden and into the castle proper, we spent hours wandering, attempting to absorb it all but failing miserably. You could honestly spend about a month just in this place, looking at the furniture, maps, books, astronomical equipment (old, working model of the Copernican system).
Highlights included a special chair-lift for the king to be lowered from one level to another, built in 1680 or something and still apparently in working order, and the huge mural paintings in the great hall (and elsewhere), which I could have studied for a day or so each, and the ornate chapel with amazing old organ.
There was just so much to take in, with even the boring rooms having amazing roof murals and furniture worth more than the GDP of most countries.
I was also most impressed with the way visitors were treated - a few simple "please don't touch things", and strings across the chairs were all that came between us and priceless antiques. They also highly impressed me with their photographic policy - a simple "no flashes please". I am constantly amazed at the number of places which won't let you take photos of anything. Why? I'm not damaging anything, merely catching some light through my camera rather than my eyes. If I was planning on selling them then ok, I understand, but I can't afford to buy the offical guide book at every single place we go. Sorry, rant over now :) .
Needing some late lunch, we went back to a café in the grounds and had to revert to pointing at what we wanted (very rare here), but it arrived and we ate it happily.
From there, we needed to push south fast while Rosie still wanted to. We drove across the two remaining bridges (yes we had to pay those extortinate tolls on the way back too), before finding another caravan park which claimed to have gas but was conveniently located for a night's stop anyway, in the town of Åbenrå, imaginatively named Åbenrå Camping.
The only problem was that we had spent the last of our Danish cash paying the tolls, and had originally intended to get through to Deutschland that night where we could use euros. No matter, as the slightly strange man was happy for us to pay the next day. Very trusting for a caravan park owner. The place was nice enough, and we cooked an improvised meal with what little we had left in our cupboards, before retiring for the night.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 16 Aug 2003
København ( 33 photos )
(Continued from Sverige 2).
Getting used to the Danish road signs again, we picked a random entrance into København (Copenhagen in English), and stumbled across exactly what we were looking for purely by luck - another Autocamper place, located just as conveniently as the one in Stockholm was, this time near Fisketorvet (old fish market, now modern shopping centre).
After chatting to the amusing attendant at the Autocamper for a while, he showed us where to get the bus into town. But after the walk around Stockholm, this was going to be nothing at all. So, map and GPS again in hand, we wandered off in search of the fabled free bikes you can use in the city for a small deposit. However, the combination of perfect hot weather, summer and Saturday meant that these were well-and-truly spoken for, leaving us on foot. No real problem, but would have been nice for a change.
We walked through an industrial area (in fact, looking back, much of the city has that feel) past the Hovedbanegården Central Station to the interestingly-named Wonderful Copenhagen tourist office. Lonely Planet describes this place as having long and fretful queues, but that didn't quite prepare us to have to push past people just to get in the door. After about thirty seconds, we decided to go it on our own.
Just next door is the famous Tivoli Gardens century-old amusement park, which we later found out has the world's oldest still-operating roller-coaster. Deciding to save our money and see the town instead, we pushed on to Rådhust-pladsen (Town-Hall Square). The Rådhus itself was closed, however.
This amazingly busy square had a noisy concert going on, and we decided that all our walking we were doing meant we were able to be naughty and have some KFC for lunch. After this, we spent most of the afternoon on Lonely Planet's København walking tour.
This took us first along Strøget, billed as the world's longest pedestrian mall. It's actually quite a few of them joined together, with roads in between, so I'm not sure if it really counts, but the locals didn't seem to care. There were so many people, so many shops (mostly selling "modern" things), all along these amazingly beautiful old cobbled streets lined with tall old buildings.
One interesting place we stopped in was The Amber Specialist. Amber seems to be a specialty here in the way you associate crystal with Waterford, but we were only interested in the fact that this shop had a huge model of Sydney Opera House made out of the stuff!
We stopped along strøget in between Gammel Torv (Old Square) and Nytorv (New Square) to eat some wonderful peaches bought from a fruit-seller, and admire the surrounding architecture. There is an impressive fountain in Gammel Torv which was drawing the crowds on such a hot day also.
We wandered down through plenty more squares, past plenty of statues and generally overloading the senses. This photo shows the inter-twined dragon's tails spire on top of the Børsen (Renaissance stock exchange building) on the left, and Christianborg Palace on Slotsholmen on the right.
A couple of hours was spent in the interesting diversion of the Guinness World Records Museum. Not too suprisingly, it focused heavily on Danish entries, but there was plenty enough to keep us entertained. A movie of 1.5 million dominoes being toppled (not actually the record, though) was less worrying than the movie of the fastest oyster eater.
The huge not-really-square square Kongens Nytorv has the interesting Nyhavn canal leading off from the far side. This was dug to allow merchants to bring their goods into the heart of town, but now holds plenty of people on its sidewalk cafés enjoying the weather. One previous occupant was Hans Christian Andersen, who's house we looked at from the outside. He is now a big tourist drawcard for the city, as is evident in every touristy shop we visited.
Through some back streets and along the docks, we sat down at one café where after fifteen minutes of waiting, a waiter actually came and cleared our table without taking our order. Needless to say, we got up quick smart and walked along. Sure, we may not be sixty with greying hair and diamonds hanging from everywhere, but we still have money to spend and it is annoying when people assume otherwise.
Not much further along, we walked past yet another fountain and into the cobbled square Amalienborg Plads, which is surrounded by four mansions forming Amalienborg Palace, home of the royal family. Once again, we had timed it right for the changing of the guard, although this was far less elaborate, you would have missed it if you didn't look hard.
North from there, we felt compelled to go and see the Little Mermaid statue, as it appears on every variant of tourist junk imaginable. It was built in 1918 or so under design from H.C.Anderson, and came to fame with the modern movie based on the same tale (or so I believe). In fact, it was the most disappointing tourist "attraction" we have ever bothered to walk a long way on a hot day for. About a metre high on a rock behind a concrete barrier with an oil refinery or something as a backdrop, we grabbed a snap just to say we had been there, skipped the queues of hundereds of people waiting to have their photo taken with it (geez people, see the real city), and sat down for a while. After resting our legs, we headed into town through Kastellet, an old castle surrounded by a moat in the middle of an attractive park in search of a cheap meal.
We came across a café in the right place which looked from the outside to not be too good, but the food was excellent and reasonably priced, so we stayed a while to rest. We noted with interest that the people on both sides of us were also Aussies. What a coincidence.
Looking into our guides for something to do for the night, and noting that København is famous for its jazz, we decided to go to the Copenhagen JazzHouse on Niels Hemmingsens Gade just off Strøget. This is the most famous jazz place here, and the night had a cheap cover charge with cheap-ish drinks. Perfect.
It wasn't open for a while when we arrived, so we watched the street musicians and people trying to ride an amusing back-to-front handle bars bike (you turn left, it goes right).
Eventually getting in, we spent a great few hours totally immersed in the great live jazz from some local unknowns, Tao Højhaard Organgrinder. The four piece had an organ (playing bass with pedals), drums, guitar and tenor sax, and each was a great musician. The drumer was especially entertaining and very good at his chosen "instrument".
When the band had finished at 12:30am or so, we pushed our way out through the crowds that had formed to go to the night-club that the place turned into at 1am, proudly wearing our daggy clothes (me shorts!) amongst all the dolled-up glamor of the clubbers. Pushing the "home, James" button on the GPS, we dragged our weary bodies back to the van. Still no bikes to be seen anywhere.
(permanent link to this story)
Through Malmö Again ( No photos )
Awake bright and early, we drove down the road to a servo to put some of the expensive fuel in Rosie and some caffeine in us (still no gas, so we can't make our own).
Next, we drove the remaining hundered or so kilometres to Malmö, finally joining up to the motorway where we had driven a month earlier. I had a recollection that there was Campingaz available in the caravan park we stayed in there, but after a detour there it was apparent my memory was doing strange things.
From there, it was a drive across the Øresund Fixed Link and onwards back into Danmark.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 15 Aug 2003
South from Stockholm ( 1 photo )
I was the one to do the manly thing and go and discover that the showers had no hot water this morning. Liz declined to find out for herself, taking my word for it.
Hitting the road, we found our way out of the confusing jumble of roads heading basically south-west towards Malmo along the E04.
By this stage of our trip, we had decided that we weren't going to take any side-trips unless they were really worth it. For one, we had already spent about two weeks longer in Scandy than originally intended (no real problem, but there is plenty more to see before we go home in November), but more worryingly, Rosie was starting to chuck wobblies at the wrong time - literally.
Several times she has started to shudder at speed, sometimes we can save it by pushing the clutch and trying to rev it back, but usually it is a stall. Not good at 100km/h. This is not really too suprising, since we have driven her about 20,000km since we bought her, and done nothing other than add water and a little oil. I suspect the fuel system is at least part of the problem, as the problem is much less apparent when we use high-octane (98) fuel instead of the normal 95 or even 91 stuff. As an aside, last I heard, 91 is the norm in Oz and 95 is the expensive premium unleaded. We don't really want to have to pay for 98 unless we really have to.
Although we pulled in to one small town when it was particularly bad and
rang our insurance company, the general feeling was that we didn't want to be
stuck in a crappy small town for days again, and would rather push our luck and try to make it to Hamburg.
It was a horrible rainy day, although we had some great views as we drove slong the shores of Vättern, a big inland lake north of Jönköping. It was a little lost on us, however, as we were more worried about the van suddenly deciding to die on us.
We dropped into a service station to gather some sausages, bacon and whatever we could manage to bbq for dinner.
Even though it was relatively early for us, we had come a long way and decided to pull in when Rosie was playing up on a single-lane road with no safe place to pull over should she stall.
We ended up cooking on the bbq and deciding to stay there in the road-side stop for the night, saving ourselves some money and having a reason to get up in the morning (the noise) as a bonus.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 14 Aug 2003
Stockholm ( 54 photos )
(Continued from Finland)
We awoke in a new country - ok, we had been to this one before, but not this part of the country - the capital Stockholm.
Driving off the ferry, our first task was what to do with the van so we could have a look around the city. For this we have typically two options - either find a central and usually expensive caravan park, or park in a parking lot somewhere.
First attempt was stopping at an "i", which we managed to find in Centralstationen, but which was next to useless.
Next option, we pulled out one of our many caravan park guides, and located a very central "Autocamper" park. This is different to a normal caravan park in that it is effectively a big parking lot with a mobile toilet/shower block dumped on the side. In this case, the receptionist even wore a shirt with the name of the parking company - obviously they worked out they could get a bit more money from a not-quite-central car park by turning it into an Autocamper.
It was located under a bridge on one of the 24,000 or so islands which make up Stockholm, Långholmen. As you can imagine, that many islands leaves plenty of room for bridges, and plenty of stress when you miss the turn-offs and can't turn around again for several kilometres. Stockholm easily gets the award so far for Most Difficult City to Navigate via Vehicle.
After a quick chat with the helpful attendant, we got out the GPS and started the first of what turned out to be around twenty kilometres of walking that day, heading towards the Old Town of Gamla Stan.
This part is located on its own island (there's plenty of them to go around), and is the oldest part of the city. We had lunch in a nice café along the main touristy yet attractive narrow cobbled street, Västerlånggatan. This runs almost the length of Gamla Stan, and from it various interesting narrow side streets run, creating a confusing tangle of cute little places.
After a look through some of the shops, we found ourselves at Kungliga Slottet, the 'new' royal palace. In terms of number of rooms (608), it is the largest in the world. We had no real intention of going in there, but happend to be in the right place at the right time to see the highly ceremonious changing of the guard. This consisted of plenty of horseback instrumentalists playing standard pomp music and lots of yelled military commands of the type you don't even expect to understand when they are in English, let alone Swedish.
Wandering a little further, we stumbled across the base of the visible-from-everywhere Tyska kyrkan (German church). It was closed for restoration, but it added fuel to the fire in our minds attempting to understand yet another language!
After not managing to be in northern Sweden at the right time of year (winter) to see the Ice Hotel, we decided that a stop into the summer showroom of the place, the Ice Gallery was worth it. The Hotel is just what it sounds like - an entire hotel built solely out of ice, including bar, cups, beds, everything. They can only keep it going in winter, so we didn't bother taking a side-trip to see it when we were up that way. The gallery attempts to give you a taste of it, with a bar, cups and some general carvings inside what is basically a big fridge (-7 deg C). They provide furry warm coat things which were quite happy to wear, although the room was much smaller than we expected. It completed its task, however, of making us want to go the hotel should we ever make it back at the right time of the year.
From there the rain started tumbling down, so what else to do other than duck into a bar and watch people outside get wet.
After it died down, we wandered across Vasabron bridge into the new part of town, the only part on the mainland (ie. not an island). We found our way to the hideously ugly Sergels Torg (central square - most of the locals hate it too), where there were plenty of people. Most were young kids on school holidays partaking in skating demonstrations with loud music, etc.
Here, we went up to the eleventh floor of one of the buildings (good view!) where the Australian Embassy is located. There we found out some more details about my requirement for a Schengen Visa, and chatted to a girl who had just moved to the city from Sydney to be with her boyfriend. She didn't speak the language much, and we were all happy to hear each other's accents for a change! She had joined a club for the apparently two thousand Aussies and Kiwis who live in the city, centred around the Dancin' Dingo Aussie Pub.
Next to the tourist office to find about internet cafés, but it was next to useless and full of loud-talking Americans, so we gave that a swerve. The internet café near there wouldn't let us plug the laptop in, but pointed us one Metro stop north to Hötorget, where we found a dark and dingy place lit only with uv-lighting which was more than happy to take our money and let us plug in.
We spent an hour or so updating the journal, sending emails and chatting to various people from home. I also got in contact with the only person I "know" in the city, Jonas Salling of Salling Software, whos piece of software Clicker has won many awards and I have helped out testing with a little. We carried our converstation on in sms.
Next target was Djurgården, a couple of islands to the east which we had read about in various places (Bill Bryson and Lonely Planet) and wanted to see. Basically entirely given over to parklands, museums and a zoo, we walked there along the waterfront Strandvägen past some amazing monuments which used real-time information on everything from wind speed to air pollution and pollutants in the water to display huge colourful graphs.
The island was great with lots of pretty gardens and the like, and our random wanderings eventually found us at Skansen. This was the world's first open-air museum with old houses and the like, but we had only one thing we wanted to see. When buying our tickets, we asked the guy "Do you have any moose?". We were damned if we were going to leave Scandinavia without seeing one. He said "Is that all you want to see?". We answered basically yes, and he laughed and sold us some tickets.
The enclosures here were amazing - so much space, all interesting shapes and sizes, and the animals were actually mostly visible! We saw bears and foxes in the same enclosure, the bear digging around his den while the foxes got as close as they dared. Fascinating watching just that, could have done so all day. But, we had to find this Moose.
And find we did - a big, huge thing much bigger than we had expected, with huge fuzzy horns. Didn't move much but it was nice to finally see one after all the trouble we had been, and driving close to 10,000km with signs for at least half that distance saying "Watch our for moose"!
On the other side of the enclosure was the female and two babies asleep. She was quite interested in Liz, and the babies were cute enough to want to take one home. Until they grow to eight feet tall, that is. Also notable were the funny boars play-fighting and wolves doing very little.
Finally satisfied, we needed to address our rumbling stomachs. This was done at Djurgårdsbrons Sjöcafé, on a pontoon floating on the river under the bridge joining to Djurgården. We had some great meals and a glass of wine, feeding the inquisitive ducks right next to us what we couldn't fit in ourselves.
Wandering all the way back through town and out the other side at Kungsholmen, it was time for Liz and I to part. From here, Liz wandered back to the Autocamper across Västerbron bridge, only getting a bit lost in the rain and darkness.
I met up with Jonas, and spent a nerdy few hours discussing various bits and pieces over a few beers (had to buy him something for the great software he has written which he basically gives away for nothing). He has gone from writing things on the side to being able to support himself off it, which is amazing for any independent software developer these days.
We went back to his office, where he showed me the next secret version of his software on his massive monitors (a prize from Apple) and pre-release Ericsson phones. Gadgets galore!
From there, I followed Liz's path back to the van, a little darker and rainer, and a lot longer than it had looked on the map. Still, there we were, safe, sound and thoroughly exhausted, but feeling we had seen Stockholm plenty well enough.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 13 Aug 2003
Goodbye Helsinki ( 12 photos )
Having both run out of our three day tourist ticket and things that we really wanted to do, we spent the morning lazing in for the first time in a while.
Around 3pm we got organised, packed up the bus and drove into town to locate the Viking Line terminal.
During our wait in the queue, where we were kept for a long while as they found a space our unique-height van could best occupy, we took some photos showing the size of our vessel - the Mariella. This was something quite different to all other ferries we have caught, and I was constantly reminded of a trip on the now-defunct Fairstar the Funship I took with my family many years ago.
Eventually aboard, we set out to explore the ship. Numerous bars, several restaurants and cafés, obligatory duty free and our cosy little cabin were all highlights. We were up on one of the higher decks and to our suprise had our own toilet and shower - the girl had certainly done the right thing by us when she couldn't book exactly what we wanted.
We were up on deck in the fantastic weather as the ship pulled away from the docks, staying there for quite a while just taking in the fabulous vistas, including the Zoo and Suomenlinna where we had visited - we almost felt like locals.
In fact, it felt like we were going somewhere for months, not permanently! There were people waiving and everything, and this was only a sixteen hour ferry ride. There was some on-deck entertainment for a while, but the wind eventually got the better of us, so we headed inside.
We settled on a Grill House for dinner, which was a little more expensive than we would have liked, but the fun of dining in a moving restaurant made up for it.
We had a look through the duty free shop, not wanting to buy anything major after our huge stock-up on the Estonia trip, but instead found some everyday items very cheap - coffee, olives, etc.
The night was spent watching some entertaining (in a laugh-at-them-not-with-them way) Swedish or Finish karaoke - no idea which, it didn't really matter. The sight of people singing along horribly to songs you have never heard with backing videos shot out of someone's car as they drove through a city will stay with me for a while, whether I want it or not.
Declining to join in, even though we would have done better than some of the participants despite not having a clue what we would have been singing about, we headed back to our little cabin, and enjoyed a great night's sleep.
Somewhere during the night, our clocks changed an hour and we crossed back into Swedish waters.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 12 Aug 2003
Suomenlinna Sea Fortress ( 21 photos )
Heading back into town, we had the general task of getting ourselves a ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm.
But first, two main things. One was to satisfy my nerd-knowledge a little for a change, heading to the Department of Computer Science of the University of Helsinki. Some among you many realise that this is the birthplace of Linux. If you don't know or care, skip to the next paragraph. I just wanted to find out if there was anything there as a tribute of sorts to Linus Torvalds' time there, and some fairly helpful and suprised to see me people basically explained that there wasn't. After a bit of a nose around and a coffee in their cafeteria, we caught a tram back into town.
Next was a means to save ourselves some money - an International Youth Travel Card. This is accepted almost everywhere (we have found), entitling us to so-called "student" discounts which are sometimes as much as 50%. Why we didn't find out about this earlier I don't know, but some careful reading of Lonely Planet pointed us at the Student Travel Association, which conveniently have an office smack-bang in central Helsinki.
So, after waiting there for a while (where we noted that travel to Australia and NZ is very heavily promoted - they even have a special information night), we forked over a measly ten euro each for another photo card to prove who we are in our wallets.
This turned out to have been a very good move, as our next stop was the offices of Viking Line, one of the ferry companies sailing to Stockholm. After a bit of negotiation, we managed to score ourselves good cabins on a ferry for the following day, the student cards saving more than ten euro each right away.
So, this left us with a day more to spend in Helsinki. This worked out well, giving us time to get the tram around a little (a couple of embassies which were closed), then get back to the fish market for a ferry across to the Suomenlinna / Sveaborg Sea Fortress.
The fifteen minute, already paid for with our tourist ticket ferry ride across to the set of islands was nice enough, and we soon set about wandering around the place. This is yet another World Heritage Site, a 250-year old sea fortress built by the Swedish into a city with more inhabitants than Helsinki itself. What remains is a series of interconnected islands with museums, parks and plenty of history.
Our wanders were fairly non-specific, taking in plenty of old buildings and lazing in the parkland. One thing of interest was the Submarine Vesikko, the only remaining Finnish submarine (the rest were destroyed). Saving huge sums of cash by waving our shiny new student cards, we got a glimpse into what life must have been like cramped into a tiny tin can under the water for months on end.
After a long wait for a return ferry (no problem, just relax and enjoy the view across the water), we got back to the other side and then the caravan park to pay for another night's accommodation. This bought another nice suprise for the day - the fourth night is free!
We rounded off a cheap day (well, except the ferry tickets) with a home-cooked meal and some duty free beers.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 11 Aug 2003
A Quick Evening ( No photos )
(Continued from Eesti)
We located a taxi since the Metro had long stopped running (it was approaching 1am), who drove us rather quickly back to our camp site. More than worn out, we managed to organise the bed and crash asleep.
(permanent link to this story)
Estonia - Tallinn ( 37 photos )
(Continued from Finland)
After a while the ferry (a SuperSeaCat) arrived, and people pressed hard to be the first through the gates. We just watched in amusement, and walked past most of them straggling their way towards the boat. It was almost exactly like getting on a plane - long walkways up to the entrance door, even the seats were almost identical, tray tables and all.
As we glided away so gently I didn't even notice, it soon became apparent what this trip was all about to most of the locals - a huge duty-free booze binge. There was a group of six old biddies just over from us, constantly taking in rounds of whatever spirit or liquer someone brought back, enjoying themselves no end. Like most others on the boat, they had little trolleys especially designed for bringing back the exact customs limit worth of alcohol and perfume.
Given the very high Finnish prices for such things, it came as no real suprise, but was funny all the same. The ninety or so minutes passed quickly, and before we knew it, it was time to get off and explore a new country (ok, city) in about eight hours.
I don't usually go in for such things, but since Eesti (Estonia in English) is such a new country, let me provide a bit of history, blatantly plagerised from Lonely Planet.
Danmark conquered the region in the 12th century, then sold it to Deutschland in 1346. In the great tradition of land trading, various countries such as Sweden had infuence at times, but eventually by 1721 the area fell to Russian power. In World War I, Russia abandoned the area to Deutschland in 1918. World War II brought more confusion, secretly putting Eesti under Soviet control.
Murmurs of discontent started around 1980, and by 1989 enough action had taken place for Moscow to grant economic autonomy. Full independence was announced on 20th August 1991, although Russian troops didn't leave until August 1994. Their strange currency the kroon came in 1992.
And, last I heard, Eesti is poised to join the EU, ready for assimilation into the greater Europe.
All this combines to give a country with an interesting past, quite confused, but with some strong influences apparent - plenty of people speak Russian, and that culture is evident in many places (for example the ubiquitous Russian doll offered to tourists everywhere). Younger people speak English quite well. It is interesting to think that possibly as late as eight or so years ago, there was close to zero chance of us being able to explore the country.
Tallinn itself is obviously a city in the middle of change. Eesti's capital has plenty of amazing old architecture, so much so that the Old Town is World-Heritage Listed. Yet there are areas where the touristy shops are just a little too thick. However, the general feel is that you are not far away from a very un-spoilt place - the alleys in the city lead to much lower living conditions, every thing is very very cheap (won't last long after joining the EU), and not much has been built in say the last four hundered years. There are of course repair works going on here and there, including a horrible cement-rendering of the Oleviste Church in the Lower Town. It is one of the many countries you want to see now before the hand of modernisation/westernisation takes over.
So, back to what we specifically did. Not wanting to miss our already checked-in return ferry at 11pm, we set a waypoint on the GPS and started wandering in a new country. Road signs and brand names were all different, but we are getting used to that now. It didn't feel quite as foreign as Istanbul did when we arrived there.
We wandered to the northern-most corner of the amazingly well preserved town walls, in through the Great Coast Gate which used to be the port exit back in medieval times. Here the modern tarmac gave way to old style ankle-damaging but oh-so-cool cobble stones. Quite a while looking at places on a general wander, absorbing the best preserved Old Town in Eastern Europe. Highlights of the Lower Town included the Fat Margaret Bastion, and the 120m high spire of the Oleviste Church (from which the architect fell to his death).
We headed then down some nice side streets into the centre of town, which is the beautiful Raekoja Plats square, with the amazing Town Hall on one side and plenty of open-air cafés around most of the others. The Town Hall is the only surviving Gothic one in Europe, with a 1530 weather vane on the top and dragon heads sticking out the side.
Next was a walk up the hill to the focus of the town, Toompea (Upper Town). The walk through the 1380 gate tower and up Pikk jalg where artists were selling paintings to the awesome view of the 19th century Russian Orthodox Alexandr Nevsky Cathedral. The size of this thing was quite amazing, with dome roofs and plenty of ornamentation. Around Toompea we saw some of the original 1219 towers from the Danish castle, which are now part of the Parliament building, and Toomkirik (Dome Church), which we ducked inside and noted the amazing coats of arms and carved tombs.
After a look at the highly-ornamental gilded interior of the Alexandr Nevsky Cathedral, we headed along the south walls of town to search for somewhere to relax. There was a strange shop where a teenage girl was selling fishing and hunting gear, on the phone to a friend as we looked in amazement at the guns on a rack on the wall. Different laws around different countries make for interesting travelling.
Not much wandering later, we found Olde Hansa, an obvious tourist trap of an outdoor pub/restaurant where they were all in costume, the menus were attempted ye-olde-style and the prices were about double everywhere else. We thought a little while about the appeal of drinking beers out of stone mugs, but instead plonked ourselves down across the road at the far cheaper Gildi Kelder, in Suur-Karja. Here we had great meals and two or three hours worth of beer for about $28 Australian. It's been a long time since we last did that.
If you are sitting in Australia thinking "what's so special about that?", then consider that a tank of fuel for Rosie typically costs us about $120, lasts one day, and that a meal out is so rare due to it costing a similar amount.
Next we headed back to the main square for dessert and some different cheap drinks, sitting at one of the many cafés and noting the sword-fight being played out at the next one in an effort to draw the tourist dollars in. That's the way it should be done, not with flashy neon signs and loud dance music.
Now time to find our way back to the ferry, we walked once again through the pretty town, feeling a little sad that we had spent so little time there, and knowing that perhaps we might not come back to anything quite as we remember it.
No problems with immigration getting back out of Eesti, so we boarded the ferry and spent the trip back grabbing as much amazingly cheap duty free as we could carry, now understanding why the day-trippers brought their little trolleys.
We both got quite a grilling from immigration at the other end, Liz being
let off once she got her British (and hence EU) passport out, but me having to
explain my lack of stamps yet again. We thought we might not be allowed back
in - lights had been turned off in the terminal, and we were the only
passengers left! Eventually being allowed to pass, we found ourselves once
again in Finland.
Eesti was a wonderful side-trip from Helsinki, we enjoyed ourselves greatly and have another set of memories to last for years to come.
(permanent link to this story)
A Quick Morning ( No photos )
After not doing much in the morning, we had some breakfast and made some sandwiches, to keep our costs for the day down.
Back into town on the Metro, we headed once agian to the Tourist Office, stood in a queue for ages to ask about a ferry to Tallinn, only to find out that she couldn't book us on one since they were already boarding. So, we raced down to the docks, located the right office, went in, paid some money and wandered up to customs. We were on our way to another country!
On the way out, the immigration guy was concerned about my passport. It seems that Finland has recently joined the Schengen agreement, which means that if I intend to stay more than three out of any six months in any Schengen countries, I need a visa. Never heard about that before, but you don't argue with immigration people.
Not a problem, as I haven't yet spent three out of six months, and can get a visa in the future. However, at most border crossings you don't get a stamp, so it looks as if I have been in Schengen countries since entering Netherlands the first time back in April.
Luckily, I have been keeping my boarding passes from each international journey we take, so after a while I could convince him to let me out. We will get a visa sorted fairly soon for me, and now start insisting on a stamp at each border.
So, that sorted, we were in a queue with lots of people, headed across to
Eesti (Estonia).
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 10 Aug 2003
Exploring Helsinki ( 21 photos )
It has been nice not driving at all today - the last time we did that was in Bergen, which seems like quite a long time ago now. Instead, we have been giving our three day Helsinki tourist travel card a workout, travelling on the Metro and buses all around the city.
We caught first the Metro then a Bus this morning, taking us in the cheapest possible way to Helsinki Zoo. We spent a pleasant few hours wandering around the place. In some ways it was great - there were some interesting animals you wouldn't see in many other places, but in other ways it was quite disappointing. For instance, many of the animals were nowhere to be seen, leaving us to wander if they were there at all, or just had signs for people to read about them, look aimlessly around the enclosure for a while, then keep walking.
But by far the biggest disappointment was in that they had no moose! Imagine this - you are a tourist from a far-off land, and every two kilometres or so for the last five thousand you have driven, there have been signs saying "look out for moose!". Yet, you haven't seen even one. So, you decide that it's cheating a bit, but perhaps you can see one at the zoo. You fork over your cash, wander around in the heat for a while, and then learn that their enclosure is undergoing renovations so they aren't there!!! Oh well, worse things could have happened, and for now my stuffed toy moose will have to do.
So, back into town to begin our wander around. First to the Tourist Information to ask plenty of questions - where is an Internet café which will let us plug the laptop in? Ferries to Tallinn? Ferries to Stockholm? The poor girl did a great job, and according to her badge, could have done so in six different languages. We read our emails there while waiting in the queue which was nice.
We headed to the café which ended up having wireless net access, but which was a very expensive pay for 24 hours one which we didn't really want to do. So, we had a nice lunch snack there before heading on.
This took us back through the impressive Senaatintori (Senate Square), which is totally dominated by the huge Tuomiokirkko - a Church. When we first saw this yesterday as we wandered around the corner, we were both a little lost for words. Apparently this square is used by third-rate film-makers when they want an "authentic" Russian look.
Which reminds me, we would be very keen to take a side-trip into St Petersburg (only about 300km from here) were it not for both of us needing visas which take about twelve days to process at the least.
Further south to the Fish/Produce/Tourist Garbage market, we wandered around for a little while, purchased our Finland fridge magnet (we have one from each country we have been to), then some raspberries which we ate by the water. There was a strange, perhaps not-quite-all-there busker who was hitting pots and pans near us, enough to make us move onwards.
Deciding to be just a little organsied for a change, we jumped on to part of Lonely Planet's Helsinki walking tour. This lead us through plenty of interesting places, including the Havis Amanda Fountain and Mermaid Statue, Market Square, which is regarded as one of the symbols of Helsinki. Then along Esplanade Park - a long thin strip of parkand which stretches for several blocks along the city, where huge numbers of people were out enjoying the sunshine.
About here we cheated a bit and jumped on a tram to continue our "walking tour". Picking one at random, and having no idea where it went (everything in Finland is in both Finnish and Swedish, as there are two official languages), I followed our path through the city on our map, trying to pick out the tiny street signs they have here as we actually ended up almost exactly where we wanted to be - the Olympic Stadium from the 1952 Olympics which were held here.
First though, we wandered past the much newer Finnair Stadium, where the FIFA Under-17 World Cup is currently being held, before approaching the older stadium. Here, dechyphering the security guard's broken English we discovered that the National Athletic Championships was currently in progress, so we couldn't just wander in for a look around.
Being half-tempted by sitting back and watching other people play sport, we wandered down to the gate to enquire of the ticket price, but decided fifteen euro (still haven't found that on my keyboard) a bit much. However, walking through the stalls set up outside the gates, we spied an outdoor beach volleyball tournament taking place. No-one challenged us as we walked in and took seats right by the ring (even passing the balls back when they went out), and spent an hour or so watching various teams play, relaxing in the sun like so many Finns also seemed to be doing, the Olympic Stadium in the background.
Back on the tram, our walking tour finished for the moment (we have seen most of it when combined with the looking around we did last night), we needed some food, and found it at Eatz. The snacky bar-food filled us well and fairly cheaply, and was washed down with a bit of the local brew. Well, you have to try things in these cities...
Just across the road to the train station, we came back to the caravan park, showered, and are about to head to bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 09 Aug 2003
First wander around town ( 8 photos )
The look around town went quite well - more detail in tomorrow's update, but suffice to say we got ourselves oriented, took some interesting photos of the sunset over the old city buildings and generally learnt how things worked.
Of interest specifically were the "onion-bulb building", the Uspensky Cathedral, so nick-named due to the 13 bulbs which adorn the roof representing Christ and the disciples. We just thought it looked cool, especially reflecting the sunset.
After a wander along the docks (and an ice cream, just as the wind picked up), we headed generally for somewhere to spend a couple of hours before returning home. We found this to the north of the city at Storyville - a jazz venue with expensive beer but nice surroundings. The band only started as we were about to leave, so we didn't stay around.
On our way there we walked past perhaps fifty people carrying trombones. I thought that perhaps one of the most horrible-sounding orchestras ever was in town, but it turns out that it was the Finnish Trombone and Tuba convention. Very strange.
Nothing much else to do for budget-conscious people such as ourselves, so we headed back for the night.
(permanent link to this story)
South to Helsinki ( 8 photos )
We awoke to make the most of the showers which seem to be included in the rather hefty caravan park fees in Finland (no free-camping allowed here), have some breakfast than see if we could convince Rosie to get moving.
She seems to dislike some of the fuel we are putting in her - works quite a bit better on the more expensive 98 octane stuff than the usual 95. Also a few other small problems developing, but nothing bad enough to slow us down. We intend to stop for a few days perhaps in Hamburg while we put her through a full service, quite a bit overdue.
So, Liz took the driver's seat first as we pushed directly for Helsinki, stopping only for fuel just before running out (phew), coffee and things like that.
We eventually made it to Helsinki ring-road where we followed our noses towards the only caravan park here, Rastila Camping. It's quite large and fairly soul-less, but serves it purpose and the metro/train station is 50m out the door.
An interesting side note is that even though we have driven so far south now (similar distance as one corner of Great Britain to the other since North Cape), we are only back at the same latitude as the Orkney Islands, above the top of Scotland!
We intend to go into town tonight for a look around, and over the next couple of days explore both the city and also nearby Tallinn, capital of Estonia an 80km ferry ride south.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 08 Aug 2003
South, South and more South ( 1 photo )
Today we set and alarm to get going nice and early, and them promptly went back to sleep! We still managed to get on the road before 8:30am, and drove a short distance north-east to Ranua. There was a Scandinavian Wildlife Park there (it even had a Moose!), so we were very keen to go, but the weather was terrible - rainy and cold. We sat at the park's cafe and had a hot drink, trying to decide what to do. There was 3km of outside walking which we decided wouldn't be to pleasant, and the animals would probably also be hidden away out of the weather. So we gave it a miss and headed onwards.
A lot of the rest of the day was spent driving. Tim has just worked out that today we have driven as far as the south-east corner of Ireland to the north-west corner. Not bad really.
It has rained quite heavily for most of the day as we passed through more and more forests. There are still a few reindeer here and there but no moose!
We stopped in Kajaani for a while to call Tim's mum (her birthday today - Happy Birthday!), look for an internet café, do a bit of grocery shopping and then stop at an all we could eat pizza place. We stuffed ourselves and didn't have to eat for the rest of the day.
Tonight we are just outside of Kuopio at a huge caravan park, Camping Rauhalahti, that happens to be having a motorcycle rally this weekend. We came here primarily because it has the world's largest wood smoke sauna. We went for a walk up to the sauna throught lots of very wet forest, but it was all closed up even though it is supposed to be open on Friday evenings.
So we came back, bought a beer and an apple and lemon cider (interesting but nice) to relax with in the van.
Rosie has been playing up a bit (loosing power, but different to last time), but it got worse today so hopefully we will make it to Helsinki before repairs are needed.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 07 Aug 2003
Santa Claus' House ( 6 photos )
After my late night staying up for a while then giving up looking for the sunrise due to cloud and tiredness, it was a late start getting on the road this morning.
When Liz did eventually drag me out of bed, we packed up then drove about thirty seconds into town to have a good look around the Sami handycraft shops. There was plenty of Made in China touristy garbage around, but if you looked under the cover, you could see silversmiths working on the pieces in the back of the shops, weavers weaving and the like.
After walking around the town and seeing what was on offer, I eventually parted with not too much money for a very nice Sami knife in a pouch. Holding the real ones next to the horrible touristy ones I was glad I had waited until here to buy it.
We then hit the road for lots of what was basically a long driving day, heading almost due South along the E75. It is amazing what a difference being able to drive at 100km/h makes - we get so much further it is constantly suprising us.
The only real stop of interest all day was half an hour or so spent wandering around the "official" residence of Santa Claus, Santa Claus' Village. Built on top of the Arctic Circle crossing for maximum tourist potential, we were shocked to find out we didn't actually have to pay to get in. Also, it was all quite well done.
We saw the "real" Santa (although Liz claims he is a fake just because he was wearing grey tracksuit pants), and marvelled at the dazzling array of Christmas garbage you could buy. So, to make up for not having to pay an entrance fee, we bought some.
We also poked our heads into Santa's Official Post Office, where there were letters from all around the world filed away. I'm not sure if they have one from me on record, but it's interesting to look at the pigeon hole where it would have sat, thinking about how far away it seems when you are sitting in Sydney.
We used the excuse of it being the northern-most in the world to stop off at the McDonalds in Rovaniemi just south of Santa's House. Tasted just like it did in Tasmania.
Pushing south back out of the Arctic Circle, we drove on towards the town of Tornio / Haparanda. This place has two names since it is actually a city in two halves. One part, Tornio, is in Finland, and the other is over the bridge in Sverige. Just how the locals manage to change their watches by an hour every time they cross the bridge is beyond me.
That reminds me of a golf course that Lonely Planet points out here where "you can tee off in Finland and hit the ball into Sweden, which means if you start at, say, 12:30am, the ball will remain in the air for an hour and land in yesterday." Makes me wish I had kept my golf up just for the novelty value.
We drove around for a while looking at signs on the roads and trying to find them on our Lonely Planet map, until it emerged that Liz was trying to navigate us with the map of Turku, some 700km south of here! Needless to say, we ended up feeling our way towards the closed Tourist Office, where we got a brochure and made plans to head towards our stay for the night, Camping Tornio.
We have rested here for a while, Liz catching up her journal, and me happily whittling away some wood with my new knife. We have to make some plans tonight as we aren't sure exactly what to do next.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 06 Aug 2003
Into Finland ( No photos )
(Continued from Norge)
Perhaps it was the sight of a very dirty red high-top combi van with Dutch plates and Australian flags approaching which alerted the border guard, or maybe he was just looking for someone to pick on. We were pulled over, after very quickly deciding, perhaps incorrectly, that we had nothing to declare.
We hadn't expected anything at all - all other border crossings we have done have been nothing more than a sign and advice of the new road rules. That is most probably because that has all been within the EU. Since Norge isn't in the EU, we were now driving back in to it and hence the high security.
We showed our passports, explained how we came to be driving a Dutch van, gave our rough plans, said that we did have alcohol on board (I have my Scotch whisky bottle collection with us - maybe not the cleverest thing to be driving across European borders with), and were eventually given the all clear and a friendly smile. Also forthcoming was a "drive carefully - their are reindeer and moose on the road". Reindeer are old hat now, but a moose is still high on our must-see-before-we-go-elsewhere list.
So, we now have a bunch of useless currency we need to exchange somewhere (Finland uses the Euro - something we understand at least), and the possibility that this entire country might not have stopped using butane and maybe we can cook for ourselves again.
Once again able to drive at reasonable speeds (100km/h instead of 80km/h on a wide long straight road in the middle of nowhere), we rapidly covered the distance to Inari. This was our target due to billing as a great place to find genuine Sami bits and pieces, and its posession of a nice little caravan park.
We spent the evening cooking in the kitchen here, did some washing, and now I am still awake many hours after midnight getting my journal up to date. I think I'll stay up for the sunrise now, it can't be long.
(permanent link to this story)
Starting the Long Journey South ( 3 photos )
Eventually giving up fighting the bright light and waking up, we had a further look around the complex, taking the obligatory photo next to the official marker.
We considered for a while a walk around to Knivskjelodden. This is the actual end of the continent, which you can see quite well from North Cape. In a similar fashion to John O'Groats, North Cape gets all the glory since it has a road and parking for tourist buses, while Knivskjelodden has two things against it. For one, it requires an 18km round trip walk, and secondly it has a name which is hard to pronounce and doesn't immediatelly mean "right up north" to anyone who hears it. Isn't marketing wonderful?
For us the first of these two things meant it wasn't going to happen for us, as the weather was sour and looked to be turning worse. As we drove ourselves back South (haven't done that for a while), we rapidly decided we had made the right choice. Windscreen wipers on full speed and holding the big bus against the wind, we were content with what we had seen and done up here.
Back to Honningsvåg, we grabbed some coffees (one thing we can't do on a BBQ - anyone want to send us a billy?) and breakfasted in the carpark overlooking the water.
We spotted plenty more reindeer on the way out again, paid the same huge toll to use the bridge to get off the island (I wander what they do if you refuse?), then wound our way down through uncharted territory.
First stop was Karasjok, the town which is the centre of the Sami parliament. We had a little look around, and drove out to a place where they sell Sami knives (I have had my eye on these for a while, but want a genuine one rather than the touristy ones you can get pretty much everywhere). It was, however closed by the time we made it there, so on the road again as we headed towards the Finnish border.
We saw it coming with the bridge on the river, and it was time to bid Norge a very fond farewell. I think we spent a great amount of time here, and it has provided us with some amazing memories.
(Our travels continue in Finland).
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 05 Aug 2003
Nordkapp ( 20 photos )
Hitting the road, we drove not too far down the road to the town of Alta. On the outskirts on the way in, we found what we were looking for. The target was another thing on the World Heritage List (we are collecting quite a few now) - the Prehistoric Rock Art.
First though, we had a wander through the more-interesting-than-expected Alta Museum which the rock painting entry fee also covered. Topics were mostly local, but presented in interesting ways and worth the time we spent.
Wandering out into the cold to have a look around the rock art, we decided to just look at half of them due the to the size of the place. The works have been dated back to 4000 BC, with the typical stick figure being supplimented with plenty of reindeer, moose and boats. Most of them have been painted in red-brown in recent years to make them more viewable to the un-trained eye.
As is altogether too common, we were presented with a guide which told us "what the paintings meant". Is it too hard for people to say "well, we don't actually know, but here's a few educated guesses"? We had a decent look around before hitting the road.
By now we needed coffee badly, so we pulled into a service station where I managed to put the machine out of order with only one coffee in hand! We shared this as we pushed on towards our major goal - North Cape.
The first shock of the day came when Liz squealed as she was driving along while I was reading about where to go next. It turns out she had nearly driven into the antlers of a huge reindeer just off the road! By the time we stopped, it was a bit hard to get back along the narrow windy cliff road, so we let our zoom lenses do the important work.
Nothing we should have worried about however, as coming on our way into the Skarvbergtunnelen, our jaws dropped at the sight of about twenty reindeer just off the road looking at the scenery! We parked not more than ten metres away from them, and noted that the tour buses all slowed to a halt for their contents to get shots. Not that we were much better - this was what hundereds of signs since we had started heading north had shallowly promised we would see, now right here in front of us.
Driving the final sixty or so kilometres to North Cape (including an 8km tunnel across the island of Mågerøva where North Cape itself is which had a huge toll unexpectedly attached), it turns out that the entire area is set a side for Reindeer Husbandry, meaning we saw plenty more and even had do dodge them on the road in Honningsvåg, where we stopped for information. They were eating from people's front gardens!
It was here that we learnt that North Cape was not just a piece of land where you could sit on the edge of the continent and soak it all in. It has gone the way of Land's End and John O'Groats in the UK and turned into North Cape Land 2000 Plus. Or something. The brochure it says that this was "in response to increasing demand for new experiences and facilities". What is that? We just want to go as far as you can, and expected nothing more than a bit of land and maybe a seat.
We have to admit, the extortinate fee charged to enter this place was actually almost worth it. Driving over the mountain pass to get there, it enters your sights and before you know it you are forking over money to the guy on the gate. Here the blow was greatly softened - the tickets are valid for two days, and we could camp for free in the grounds. Much better than expected.
Walking out to the top end of Europe, we were suprised just how few others were there at the time. It was quite an amazing experience - a turning point for us as we often looked at maps and thought we wouldn't make it all this way. Other people's most common reaction was "do you know how far away that is??" Well, here we finally were, and it felt great to have made it.
After taking in the panoramic video experience, looking in the obligatory souviner shop and then travelling deeper into the bowels of the complex (well, we had paid by now, so it seemed silly to not have a decent look around), we sat with a cuppa at a bar called The King's View. This looked straight out at the water, due North. Nothing but water until you hit ice and then, in 2,100 km (only twice the distance from Sydney to Melbourne), you hit the North Pole. For reference, it was 2,160km south as the crow flies to Berlin, so we had driven a long way just from Deutschland, and were now closer to the pole. Wow.
Next task was some dinner, and it had to be cheap. Luckily earlier in the day we had grabbed some steaks and baking potatoes in foil, so we put the little barbie together again and fired it up (far less nailpolish remover needed this time - we are getting better!). In no time at all, were were freezing cold, huddled like crazy people over the coals blowing them to get them to catch, blocking the wind, and of course flying the Aussie flag, beer in hand while we looked out off the end of the continent into the vast emptyness.
The result was one of the greatest meals we have had for ages, probably because of the effort required, or maybe that we haven't had a BBQ since Australia Day back in Golders Green.
Not too suprisingly, we got lots of strange looks, although we made friends with a Deutsch family parked next to us who must have thought we were totally off our rockers. Perhaps we were, but it will remain a fantastic memory to the end of our days.
Having saved money on dinner, it was time to spend it again. This was easily accomplished by heading back into The King's View for two special souviner glasses of champaigne, sipped very slowly as we reflected on our travels so far for hours.
We would have liked to see the sunset (23:30), but that was not to happen due to the heavy cloud cover. Same for the sunrise only two hours or so later (01:30). We missed the midnight sun by a few days but it is still very light all night.
We are so glad we made it here, and had such a great night we don't think it could have been topped. It's all downhill from here, well down the continent anyway.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 04 Aug 2003
Around Tromsø, the North ( 16 photos )
First on the agenda in the morning was to get some more of our money's worth by having another long hot shower. A nice change seeing that we are going a few days with out, saving money by not going into caravan parks where possible.
We drove into Tromsø itself, over the bridge then down to the south end of the island to have a look around the Tromsø Museum Universitetsmuseet. We headed there mainly to learn more about the indigenous population of northern Norway, Sweden and Finland - the Sami. There was an exhibition which was interesting, but most of it was set up in the 1970s, since when much has changed.
Sure, we learnt a bit, but the wildlife sections proved to be more interesting, showcasing stuffed brown bears, polar bears, wolverines, wolves, and highly strange whales with two metre tusks. All good since we haven't seen much wildlife in the wild.
Next on the list was a visit to the world's nothernmost (you hear those words a lot in Tromsø) brewery, Mack. This is attached to the Ølhallen pub, the oldest in the city at seventy-five years of age.
The tour was quite a bit more intimate than the one you get at the Guiness factory, for example. Here, you are escorted around the place by one of the owners in a group of twelve or so, watching the bottling, brewing, and monitoring of the beer.
Oh, and then at the end you get to taste some of course. We have tried a little of their beer as we have headed north, and it's quite good. They also bottle Coca-Cola, and claim it is the best in the world as they can just get the water out of the source, no chemicals required for purification.
Sitting for a while sampling the products in the pub (although not too much what with Norge's 0.02 blood alcohol limit), Liz decided to try some dried fish stuff out, presumably similar to that we have seen drying on racks around the place. Perhaps not too suprisingly, quite a lot of it went un-eaten.
Still on the trail of some gas, we headed to the North end of the island in search of a place who specialised in the stuff. It turned out they were next to useless, sending us instead to the huge hardware store next door. There, a helpful guy took one look and said "you won't get that in Norway". It seems that about three years ago, all of the Butane was taken out of Norway, replaced all over with Propane. No, we couldn't put Propane in our Butane container. So, at least we have a reason now, annoying as it is.
Heading south out of the city, we stopped in Nordkjosbotn for some fuel (it's cheaper than in Tromsø, perhaps the fuel truck has to make a special trip in there so the prices are higher?). Struck by inspiration, I spotted a cheap barbeque at the service station which was fairly rapidly purchased along with some coals. We were going to have cheap dinner yet! Next task was something to cook, and just across the road a shop provided the answer - Grillpølse. They looked kind of like sausages, so we grabbed them and hit the road.
We stopped to fire the new toy up just south-east of Olderdalen, alongside a beautiful fjord. Half a notebook, several brochures, and most of a bottle of nailpolish remover later, we had a fire! Opening up our food purchase, we noticed we had purchased the equivalent of frankfurts - they eat them everywhere here, but you wouldn't call them fantastic food. No matter, as it was better than tuna sandwiches we would have been eating otherwise.
Happy with ourselves for managing to organise hot food once again, we hit the road. Not much farther, we slowed to a halt for half an hour or so at a bad-looking traffic accident. No need to attempt to offer our help as the ambulances were already there. The sound of people being cut out of their cars reminded us to be careful on these roads.
We drove on until after midnight, taking in what I can honestly say is the most amazing sunset I have ever seen. We were constantly saying "look at that bit over there!" as we rounded every corner. No words for it, just pictures. Eventually we found a nice spot on a hill off the road a little to free-camp again, with not too much distance to cover North the next day.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 03 Aug 2003
North to Tromsø ( 4 photos )
After the last couple of days spending our time looking around Lofoten not really making much headway, we decided to drive quite a bit today.
This lead us winding first east to the main road E6, then further north towards Tromsø, the largest town for quite a long way.
The journey was not really notable, other than a service station that wouldn't sell us fuel (easy, just drive to the next one!), a couple of stops along the way for food (including a French war memorial complete with flags where we ate breakfasty food at lunch time), and a few more places which had no idea where to get the gas we need from.
Eventually we wound into Tromsø, a pretty place which is known as the world's most northerly University town, and also the town in Norge with the highest number of pubs per capita. Coincidence?
We found the town's campsite, which is nice but quite expensive. After locating a spot, we drove back across the rather impressive bridge into Tromsø proper. There are three parts to the city - the mainland (where we are staying), a small-ish island where most of the city is, and a much larger island where many of the suburbs are.
From the city, it was quite easy to see the Tromsøbrua (bridge) and Arctic Cathedral, which combined form Tromsø's answer to Sydney Harbour - the Cathedral has more than a passing resemblance to one of the sails of the Opera house.
Not to suprisingly, much of the town was closed down being a Sunday afternoon, so we had a bit of a wander around the town before deciding to head back to the caravan park and cook dinner.
It was tempting to buy something from town, but since we are still without gas, we thought it good to cook while we had access to a kitchen. We almost changed our minds since the kitchen had a TV playing crappy American sitcoms like Full House (complete with subtitles, of course) - the sort of thing we have not seen for months now and don't miss one little bit.
That sorted, we made the most of the free showers (probably why the site costs so much), before doing some travel planning and not much else besides.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 02 Aug 2003
Around the Lofoten Islands ( 38 photos )
We got up and organised reasonably early, and headed straight down to the tip of the islands - a town called Å. Yes, just a capital "a" with a circle on top.
This was a nice enough place, most of which has been made into the Norwegian Fishing Village Museum. Choosing not to pay the official price and have the tour of things we didn't really want to know, we wandered for quite a while just looking at the old red huts built on stilts above the water and rocks, plethora of fish-drying racks, and interesting old buildings.
One of these old buildings was a bakery from 1844, where we grabbed some sweet rolls cooked in the old ovens to suppliment our earlier breakfast looking over the water on the way down.
Resisting the urge to sample the produce of Europe's oldest cod liver oil factory, we re-traced our path north, noting all the way just how harsh the scenery is, yet how people have managed to build and exist on land you would not expect them to. This is of course due to the plentyful fishing reserves all around the area.
One of the notable places we stopped into looking for an early dinner (still no Campinggas) was Henningsvær. Described in some places as 'The Venice of Lofoten', it was indeed very pretty. More so than Å, although this was at least partly due to the improvement in the weather.
After a little deliberation, we decided to eat at a café of sorts serving up an interesting menu, but we shunned the recommended local dish in favour of some rather nice chicken burgers. At the prices we are paying, we want to make sure we enjoy the food as our only meal.
Continuing the deceptively long drive North, we drove back through Svolvær where we grabbed some more cash from an ATM (lots of places don't accept foreign credit cards, notably for fuel, which is rather annoying).
The road lead us North until the road went no more at Fiskebøl, where we waited for a couple of hours for a large ferry to arrive and shuttle us across to Melbu. We relaxed with a couple of coffees as the half-hour or so ride was one of the roughest so far, which is to say not very rough at all.
From Melbu, we drove further north to Sortland, where one of our camping guides says that the caravan park has gas, but this proved to be incorrect. I think perhaps Norway in general has none of the required gas, but we have definitely seen it elsewhere.
The weather had turned great by this stage, and watching the sunset reflected across onto clouds and mountains provided some magic vistas as we drove along happily.
By now it was rather late at night, and we were thinking that our decision to eat in Henningsvær was a good one. The next decision was where to sleep - solved by the large number of people free-camping by the road, making us feel quite safe in joining them.
We pulled into a nice little area by a lake, and enjoyed a suprisingly quiet night's sleep.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 01 Aug 2003
Towards the Lofoten Islands ( 22 photos )
It seems like we didn't come too far today, but we have seen quite a lot.
After taking it very easily this morning, getting our journals up to date (thanks Liz!), we hit the road and drove into town, seeking Campingaz. This is the magic stuff which lets us cook, and the way it works is you buy the first cylinder (which we of course have done), and then exchange it. It's actually just butane, but in a certain bottle which is supposedly easy to exchange across Europe.
The gas has lasted us a month and a half of fairly solid use, but finally gave in last night, meaning we were lucky to be able to finish cooking on the kitchen there - not all caravan parks have kitchens.
So, we had bene told that the local service station had the gas, but this was not so. Not to daudle, we sent off some post and did a little shopping before getting on the road once again, heading North.
We stopped in a few little places along the way asking after the gas, and eating our lunch, but in general had no luck.
At Ulvsvåg, it was time to turn West towards the coast to get a ferry across to another recommended part of the world - the Lofoten Islands. After waiting in the queue for an hour or so (so many holiday makers!), the ferry arrived to take us on the trip across to Svolvær, the capital of Lofoten.
Due to the length of the trip, the ferry was much larger than most we have been on, with a café, seating, and lots of people lounging in the fantastic weather.
The views here are quite different again to the fjord areas. There are few trees, lots of very high ragged mountains, and sparse scatterings of human settlements around the water's edge.
The ferry presented plenty of opportunities for photos which we of course didn't miss out on.
Upon arrival, we drove Rosie off looking for the Information centre. This suggested a few places to try for the gas, but with no luck. By now it started to occur to us that the only places which are going to carry it are camping places, not service stations. So, we will look for a large camp site to get some from in the next few days.
This left us not quite knowing what to do for dinner, as we had bought some mince and the fridge ain't too good either. No real matter, as we pulled into a campsite along the road which had a kitchen (however hard it was to find). It's also a very nice place thrown into the deal, although the young guy checking us in was more interested in the American sitcom on TV than serving us.
Here Liz cooked up some great spag bol, which we ate overlooking the fantastic views we can also see from the van. After dinner, we wandered down to the first pub we have seen out of a city here, and the first we have been into since Ireland.
We sat and chatted, mulling over the rather expensive beers while enjoying the views over the islands with the sun making its very slow way down behind the mountains (23:06 sunset tonight!), lightning striking nearby and boats making their way across the tiny harbour.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 31 Jul 2003
Into the Arctic Circle ( 11 photos )
On Thursday, most of the day was spent driving North along the E6.
We noticed a number of police doing speed checks along the road. The number of deaths on the road in Norway is high, and the national speed limit on nearly all roads is just 80km/h, so it was good to see the police enforcing this. It was a little alarming, however, when about 20 minutes later we were pulled over by a bunch of police, but it turned out they were pulling everyone over for breath-testing. Tim was quite excited as he was driving and it was his first ever breath-test. He was under the 0.02 limit (it was after all only 11am!), and after the Norweigan Policeman squinted at Tim's Aussie licence for a few minutes and discovered the expiry date, he gave us a smile and a wave and sent us on our way.
So the rest of the day ticked by as we roared by forests of fir trees, rivers and cascades, mountains and valleys, and patches of snow.
The most exciting point of the day was driving into the Arctic Circle. We were about 80km north of Mo-i-Rana when a sign appeared saying "Arctic Circle in 2km". So we pulled in at the big tourist shop, took some photos of the marker stone with Tim in shorts and T-shirt eating ice cream, and looked around the fairly barren rocky landscape.
Here it was raining heavily, so we got back on the road still heading north. After a while the sun came out again, and we had a nice evening sitting in the sun in a little caravan park just outside of Fauske, and enjoying the view of Saltfjorden and the mountains.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 30 Jul 2003
Trondheim ( 8 photos )
Wednesday was nice and hot, and we ended up spending quite a lot of the day in Trondheim.
Although we were still quite a distance from Trondheim, we had already paid a toll to get in about 45km out of the city. Then on Wednesday, as we drove into Trondheim, we were hit with another two tolls! Now three toll charges just to get into one little city is a bit much, but it was either that or a few extra hundered kilometres going around the city on roads marked with toll charges anyway.
We parked in Trondheim and wandered up to the town square where a produce market was being held. From there we went down to the fish market where we bought some fresh fish for our dinner. Then we spent an hour or so just wandering through the streets. The city is quite small and the main streets are all contained within a few blocks.
After a nice long chat to Tim's parents, we found an outdoor café where we sat chatting and drinking coffee and not moving much.
Earlier in the morning Tim had spotted an Internet Café, so went in to ask about connecting up the laptop and then did so.
By now it was getting late in the afternoon, so we had a walk around the town cathedral before driving out of Trondheim.
Now, after all those tolls in the morning, they expected us to pay a hefty one to get out of the city, but our Trondhiem guide told us how to get around that, enjoy the scenic coast and the join back up with the main road just outside the city.
We spent a few hours driving north, stopping at a picnic spot to have dinner and then stopping about a hundered kilometres north of Steinkjer. Here we spent the night at another picnic spot, where a caravan had also stopped for the night. We were close to the road and it was a bit of a noisy night, but free of charge.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 29 Jul 2003
Geirangerfjorden, Trollstigen Road ( 51 photos )
On Tuesday morning, we set the alarm nice and early, both had a quick shower, and then drove back down the road to the ferry port in Hellesylt.
We caught the 8am ferry and were one of the few people on board at that time of the morning.
The ferry took us up one of the most scenic fjords in Norway - Geirangerfjord, and we had chosen a fantastic day weather-wise to take the 1hr trip up to Geiranger.
We sat at the front of the boat, and although the sun was on us for a lot of the journey, it was still very chilly.
The on-board commentary, in five different languages, told us all sorts of interesting things... this fjord was over 200m deep (not much considering the deepest fjord in Norway is 1.5km deep), and stories about people who had tried farming on the steep desolate mountainsides and long-ago deserted their farms.
The views from the boat were great, but I think the best view we had that day was once we drove off the ferry (view from Geiranger), and up, twisting and turning and climbing steeply, until we stopped a viewpoint overlooking the fjord. Wow. The view was spectacular - gorgeous green-blue fjord water, green fur trees standing tall, rocky mountainside and clear blue sky. Another place I could have stood and enjoyed the view for a whole day.
But there were was lots more to see, so off we went again heading North.
We didn't have far to drive (and only one stubborn cow in the middle of the road to dodge) before we boarded our next ferry. This was a much shorter trip, from Eidsdal to Linge, and then we continued driving North.
Our next exciting drive was Road 63, up to and over Trollstig Pass, which is the next part of the Golden Route. This one had warnings all over our brochures and books to not take campervans and caravans along it, but Rosie is such a tough old bird we thought she would manage it. We needn't have worried, the road ended up being full of tourist busses crawling their way along the road.
The first part of the drive climbed gradually and we noticed quite a few large snowdrifts even though the sun was hot.
We were stuck behind a bus, so stopped in a great little spot next to a small lake with a waterfall cascading nearby and mountains all around us. We enjoyed the view and a cup of tea here and could have happily sat there for a week or two.
As we drove on, around the corner was the big tourist centre - filled with bus-loads of people - we thought we had definately enjoyed the best spot in the area.
The next part of driving along the pass took the longest - simply because we were behind a tourist bus that wasn't really built for hairpin bends, and had to do three-point turns all the way down the mountain! It took ages, but we got to enjoy the spectacular view of the waterfalls and the valley stretching out in front of us.
Down in the valley and past the bus, the road was all ours for a bit. We stopped in Åndalsnes for a quick toilet break (take note: use a flushing toilet whenever possible - most toilets out of service stations and big towns are pit toilets and not nice ones a lot of the time).
The afternoon was spent driving along a winding route gradually heading north to Trondheim. We passed lots of scening waterways, lots of tiny towns and a lot of farms. Everywhere we go there are farms, but it just shows how big Norway really is - only 3% of Norway is arable land.
At Rökkum, we caught our third and final ferry for the day across to Kvanne and kept going.
We started looking for somewhere suitable to camp for the night, but in the end we stopped about 40km out of Trondheim at a caravan park (Tråsåvika Camping og Hytter) overlooking the water and the sunset. It was very hot, so after dinner we walked down to the beach for a dip. Our "dip" involved us going in up to our knees, wading around for a bit, marvelling at the number of red starfish all around us, and then wandering out again! The water was so icy - it took twenty minutes for my toes to get their circulation back!
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 28 Jul 2003
Mountain Passes ( 30 photos )
Monday was quite a big driving day. The rain had stopped and the sun soon came out, so we had very pretty views over the rest of Sognefjell (named after the Sognefjorden, Norway's longest, widest and deepest fjord).
We stopped at one spot to admire the view (still cold outside the van!), and as we prepared to drive off, a girl came up to the window and started speaking. Once again, she was Dutch, saw our numberplates and had started speaking Dutch to us! Again, we explained we were Aussies and had bought Rosie in the Netherlands. We weren't going where she and her friends were headed, so we waved goodbye and drove off.
In the bustling town Lom, we stopped to buy food and sit and enjoy our breakfast, then it was my turn in the driver's seat but not for long. We soon came to our next Scenic Road, marked for experienced drivers only, and no way was I going to do that so we swapped over.
This road, the 258, was another pretty route (so many of them), and like the Sognefjell Pass, and many others, it is closed for six or months of the year in snowy and icy weather.
The first part of the drive was quite scenic, with mountains towering high above us, and although our road was windy, it was not steep.
Then we did come to the steep bit, only we were already up high and just had to wind our way slowly backwards and forwards all the way to the bottom of the valley.
The view looking out over the valley, with snow capped mountains in the distance was again very beautiful, and I snapped away with Tim's camera while enjoying the view.
There were also some big waterfalls cascading down by the road with the spray misting over us as we puttered by.
At the bottom, we drove along the valley floor, and then through a few more tunnels.
We stopped by a pretty patch of water to stretch our legs, before driving in to Stryn for fuel.
While we were there, it started raining heavily again and the next bit of windy road down to Olden was a bit difficult in the wet. However, the view over the very tip of Nordfjord was worth it, even in the rain, and we parked close to the water and enjoyed our lunch.
Back into Stryn, and then on a new bit of road heading west and then north through lots of forest and past signs warning of Moose in the area (still waiting to see one!).
The rain had stopped for quite a while when we drove into Hellesylt. This was where we were getting our next and most scenic ferry from, but as the weather was still very cloudy and not so good for sightseeing, we headed a short way up the road to a very nice and very cheap camping spot.
The afternoon was spent washing clothes (me), re-wiring part of the van (Tim), and enjoying our dinner. The sun even came out, giving us a nice sunset over the surrounding mountains.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 27 Jul 2003
No Trains Today, but a big long Tunnel ( 28 photos )
We had set an alarm to run around, have quick showers and try to get down to the train for one of the morning runs. We even got their 45 minutes early to get a ticket.
However, after standing in the queue for a good long while, we found out that the trains were booked up until mid-afternoon. The tour buses, cars and motorhomes full of people all wanting to do the Sunday trips were just not going to let us get on. We thought for a while, but would have been writing off an entire day, not getting back until late afternoon. And what to do with the morning?
So, we turned tail on the train, going back to do a few things we hadn't quite squeezed into the morning, like Liz's shower and breakfast. Being a Sunday the shops were closed, a fact we had forgotten yet again, meaning breakfast was a great thrown-together affair.
That all done, we found another challenge - the Aurlandsvangen-Lærdalsøyri Road Tunnel. Not just any tunnel, this one is the Longest in the World! Good fun, we thought, heading into the 24.5km of darkness.
Strangely, the distance was split into three by wide sections where they had all lighting set up, mostly blue and yellow. Is this a strange animal caught before dawn or just Rosie in the middle of the world's longest tunnel? You decide.
Perhaps it is an indication of the way the roads are valued and kept well in this country (and Scandinavia in general), but we expected a toll at the end but this was not to be. I'm sure if that was opened in Australia we would all be paying $20 per run for the next forty years until the private contractors were paid off and had made a tidy sum besides. Here, you just pay $20 for a coffee instead. OK, not quite.
We took a quick sojurn east along the E16 looking for a waterfall marked on one of our maps, but couldn't find it. Perhaps this is one of the ones they only turn on for a while, using them at other times for hydroelectricity. Or, more likely, our map was just wrong.
I say this because the very same map just a bit further west along the same road clearly shows a bridge, but the road just ends. Suprised, we looked around for a little while, before asking the kindly man running the ferry service, clearly used to silly tourists, whether the ferry went to Sogndal, one of the towns we knew to exist on the other side. Yes, came the answer. No sign of a bridge anywhere.
No real matter, we enjoyed the break from driving to arrive at the other side, and wound our way North before turning off onto the 604, a non-through road heading up to glacier country. We found the most amazing roadside stop purely by luck. Pulling in to have a closer look at what by now has become very common - strong blue-coloured water. Dipping our hands in, we knew straight away what it was all about - that thare's glacier water.
But this roadside stop had more in store - as I was turning to leave my perch from the middle of the rapids, I noticed a little further up a rope bridge across the fast-moving freezing waters running over rocks. Excellent!
We had to walk a little way through a very overgrown path to get to the end, but it was all worth it. The bridge was complete with rotting timbers and missing planks, all of which added to the Indiana Jones-ness of it all. Liz bravely showed she could do it to, crossing in style while making sure of every step.
Besides stopping in the middle to take movies and pictures, we basically got back to the van and drove onwards, searching for the source of the icy waters.
We had to stop to pay a toll to actually get right into the most accessible glacier - Nigardsbreen. As we did so, we were approached by a couple who said to me "asdfjkh34w5kjhsdf asdfj4ewh5 akhjweiu?" Well, it might as well have been, and I asked if he spoke English. A little confused, he said that he and his female friend had booked a boat trip across to walk around the glacier itself, but didn't know it was 3km walk away, and it left in ten minutes. We happily let them clamber into the back of Rosie, pushing some junk out of the way and trundling on down the road. As we chatted, the full picture was revealed - they were Dutch, and due to our numberplates, thought we were too! This wasn't the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last. We need to learn how to say a few choice phrases in Dutch to explain our confusing situation.
Anyway, they made their boat and we were stunned almost to wordlessness (quite an achievement for Liz!) by the view before us. As is so often the case, photos don't really do justice to the scale of the glacier, the blue colours of the ice and the way it looks like it is just one big river frozen as it attempts to wander down the valley. Look closely at that photo and you might just be able to make out people walking on it.
Deciding that an expensive guided tour and wander around the glacier itself was beyond both our budgets and equipment we had brought with us, we took a quick look in the visitor's centre before heading off.
Next we headed south to re-join the 55 east, another of the National Scenic Routes fabled for being amazing drives. It did not disappoint, taking us to another record - the Highest Mountain Pass in Northern Europe. Not suprisingly, it is both closed in winter and marked as not for in-experienced drivers. Both of us are becoming more and more experienced piloting Rosie, let me tell you.
Our path up to Sognefjell Pass was long and winding, lots of hairpins to keep us going. The heat of the driving was getting a bit much for Rosie, and we stopped a few times to make the most of the view for photos while she cooled down. However, she didn't disappoint, getting us to the top in style.
In the space of a few short days we have changed climates totally. Here at the top, 1440 metres above sea level, we were surrounded by glaciers, snow, rain and wind, and had to be well rugged up in our winter warms we haven't worn in quite some time and almost didn't bring with us.
A little way down the other side, we found a place to stay called Krossbu which offered not much other than toilets, but we were at least with other people in a designated safe place in the horrible weather. We found a spot to park which was beside a not far from freezing lake.
The heavy rain which pounded us and the van we thought might fill up the lake and sink us but this didn't appear to be happening so we braved the night.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 26 Jul 2003
North-East from Bergen, Flåm ( 18 photos )
After packing up at the caravan park, we headed back East (this was as far west in Norge that we intend to go), stopping in Kvamskogen to try to locate a youth hostel that my parents stayed in many years ago. The story goes that nobody there spoke English, and they were presented with an over-large breakfast that never seemed to end. To this day they are not sure whether they were supposed to pay or indeed whether someone had accidentally dropped a wedding banquet off for them to finish between them.
A helpful local pointed us at what is now the Kvamskogen Inn, and matches the description. I'm not sure if the Youth Hostel Association dropped this particular one after it found out about the over-spending on breakfasts. (Update quite some time later: May parents believe this was not the place. Have to look again next time.)
Pushing further on, we rounded the head of the relatively tiny Eidfjorden, before taking a detour into the town of Ulvik. Tucked away in the middle of several mountains miles from anywhere, we had a lunch at this pleasant location, only interrupted by a local fisherman who we suspect wanted the spot we had parked the van in. Not wanting to face the wrath of his granny-mobile, we had finished anyway and followed our path back up the steep winding road and out of there.
Pushing on North, we passed through the town of Voss, which we didn't really feel in the mood to explore.
We are challenging poor Rosie with the trickiest roads we can find here, and as such Stalheimskleiva, the road up to the Stalheim hotel was a must. Billed as one of the steepest roads in Northern Europe, we actually ended up going down it, which was a nice enough change. Don't worry, we found plenty more.
We got out for a brief wander around Gudvangen, the port at the head of Næroøfjorden. As you might expect, there were some touristy shops there where we grabbed a couple of bits and pieces (holding back quite well overall, though), before driving through some long tunnels to Flåm.
I had wanted to come here to check out the highly-recommended Flåm-Myrdal Flåmsbana Railway, which heads up and up through the mountains, giving you a great view in the process. However, it was late at this stage, so we elected to go just up the road to the caravan park for the night, planning to do the train the next morning.
The caravan park was something else. After paying at the front gate, the lady told us that her husband would show us to our spot. Strange, we thought, usually we get a map or some simple directions. Following him on his bike like Alice chasing the White Rabbit, we rapidly found out why. We had been given the highest spot in the place, with amazing views out across to the trains, ferries and of course the fjord and surrounding mountains. Best spot so far. A word of advice - do without electricity for your van if/when you can - we have consistently found that we get better spots when we don't have to be near power connections.
Dinner was washed down with a strange invention we haven't seen anywhere else and just had to try - Hansa Pilsener (a beer), sold in 1.25 litre plastic bottles like coke. Didn't even taste too bad, and given how hard the government try to make drinking not worth the expense due to the hefty taxes they put on all alcohol, it was even reasonably priced.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 25 Jul 2003
Bergen ( 24 photos )
We have just spent a great day exploring Bergen - a quaint little city which it is hard to be believe is the largest for a big distance.
We spent a slow morning doing the washing up, some washing and lazing around a bit, before paying for another night staying at the same caravan park, and getting a Bergen Card each. This covered all our sightseeing expenses, bus trips into the city and quite a few other things. We were a little peeved to find out that many of the museums are only open short hours, so unless you plan your day very well, you aren't going to get the best value out of your card. Nonetheless, we had enjoyed ourselves.
The bus dropped us off at the central bus station, from where we stumbled our way around a bit before finding the stretched octagonal lake Lille Lungegårdsvann which forms the focal piece of the city. We located the old city gate, then wandered past the first and possibly strangest museum that our card covered, the Leprosy Museum. With a nurse in tow, we had to wander in to take in Norway's contribution to the eradication of the disease. Interesting, but in hindsight we spent too much time there as the other museums were all closing!
From there we wandered up to a great internet café, where I plugged the laptop in and performed a long-overdue journal upload, email check, and learning of exchange rates (important!), while Liz got oriented around the city. Sorry it has been so long, but Internet connectivity up here is patchy at best.
We wandered down to the Fishmarket which Liz had located, looking at the large number of stalls all competing for business. We settled on a couple of bread rolls with various seafoods on them, a nice hearty lunch which filled us up for quite a while, sitting by the docks with their famous view across to the old part of town.
We were very close there to the Fløibanen Funicular Railway. For those not familiar with the term funicular (I wasn't), it seems to mean "climbing really steeply up the side of a mountain". Similar to the Scenic Railway at Katoomba if you know that. Flashing our Bergen Card, we jumped in a queue before being rapidly transported to the top of the mountain. The view from there was totally amazing, as the clouds which blighted the latter part of the day hadn't quite made it in, so we could see for miles around.
We wandered around a little, again resisting the tourist shops there before grabbing the train back down, savouring the views along the way.
We did quite a bit more wandering around the streets of town with nothing particular in mind for a few hours, stopping for a while for a coffee on one of the pedestrianised streets. We also saw the Bryggen area (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) where the old historic buildings had been converted in to, you guessed it, touristy shops selling all manner of things that would probably get confiscated by Kingsford Smith customs - knives, antlers, deer hooves, and lots of different animal skins.
We asked at the main tourist office if there was any live jazz going on in town, but they couldn't locate any, before settling in for a good relaxation session just outside in the expansive area filled with people chatting, eating and drinking. Not to be the odd ones out, we ordered a pizza and couple of rather expensive beers, sipped them very slowly and enjoyed the view.
We typed replies to a few emails before dropping back into the internet café to send them - don't know when we will find a connection again. Dad was online at home so we had a chat to him for a while which was good - always nice to "hear" friendly voices when we are over here.
By now it was time for home, so we navigated back to the labyrinth of a central bus station and stumbled across the correct bus back to the caravan park.
Since then we have done little other than chase a hedgehog around trying to get it to stand still for a photo with little luck. It's our first piece of non-bird wildlife over here, we have expected to see more actually.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 24 Jul 2003
Hardanger Fjorden ( 27 photos )
After spending a night "roughing it", we set off early from our camping place so as to not disturb the locals, finding ourselves a great little spot nestled amongst some rocks by a lake for breakfast with the sheep and the four other cars which drove past in the half an hour we were there.
On our way back down the mountain to complete the loop, we stopped for the five-minute-ly photo stop (don't worry, we take more as we drive along as well) on a flat section of a long hair-pin wind down the hill. There were some sheep there, and one amazingly tame and inquisitive one came over to see what the big red bus was all about. Liz dug around and found some bread which the sheep and her two lambs snapped up. We have never seen a sheep that didn't run away from humans, this one almost jumped in the van with us!
After passing some goats which we had to carefully drive through (they were sleeping just a bit more than a car's width apart on the road, oblivious to the dak-dak going by), we re-joined the RV13 for a while.
This brought us past a waterfall we had seen the day before, but not stopped at due to there being no parking (there are so many people travelling around these parts - we see the same people over and over). Called Låtefoss, there were two falls which passed under a road bridge, making plenty of splash and noise in the process. Someone had cleverly built a tourist shop right there, so we had a quick wander around before managing to keep most of our money.
Back to Odda which we had passed through yesterday, we tried to operate a cheap petrol pump with no humans around which just takes cards, but none that we had, before taking a different road through the newly-built (so new it's not even on our 2003 Europe Road Atlas - we found out it existed in Lonely Planet) 11km tunnel under the Folgefonni mountains. That's the longest we have found so far, and we stopped half way to take some pictures of the seemingly never-ending low-lit blackness either way.
Emerging the other side, we found that we had to pay a toll which we didn't know about either (we are pretty much used to handing over money here, it's either that or go home). A little further on, our road passed over another huge powerfall waterfall which warranted a stop - all this water spray is making Rosie just that little bit cleaner - ok, not really - she has a pretty amazing collection of bugs on the white high-top at the front.
We drove down to the village of Rosendal, where we stopped for a wander around some shops, tried to get fish and chips but had to settle for just the chips, learnt that the exchange rate for Norweigan Krone against the pound means that things aren't quite as expensive as we were fearing, and learnt that there was a ferry not marked on our Road Atlas which would make our lives much easier, from just back up the road at Løfallstrand.
Heading there, we drove luckily drove straight onto a nearly-full ferry, which took us across the fjord to Gjermundshamn (no, we can't pronounce these names, but typing them is easy) via Varaldsøy, a village on an island in the middle of the fjord. Enough people seemed to live there, and a very nice place to live it would have been too.
One wrong turn later, we were off the ferry and heading North again along the RV49 on the West side of Hardanger fjorden, through the district of Kvam. All along here there were the most beautiful little settlements, there's no real words to describe them, so try a picture instead.
After joining back with the main 7 road at Norheimsund, we quickly stumbled on Steindalsfossen, yet another huge, powerful waterfall, but with a difference - this one you could walk behind. Awe-inspiring stuff, just watching vast quantities of water in free-fall in the foreground with nice mountain scenery behind.
Having seen pretty much enough for a little while, we drove on through plenty more tunnels towards Bergen, choosing a random caravan park which turned out to be very nice. We are overlooking a lake which people were swimming in earlier, and there are canoes around for hire too.
Tomorrow we aim to get the bus into Bergen for a look around for the day.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 23 Jul 2003
Exploring South a Bit ( 38 photos )
Setting off to have a look around in a southerly direction, we didn't make a huge deal of progress on this day, but saw so much.
First on the list was the better-than-it-sounds Hardangervidda Natursenter at Øvre Eidfjord. This started off with an amazing sickness-inducing panoramic video presentation all about the amazing scenery around the area. Think IMAX, only of places we have just been to from different angles, and places we might get to soon. As Liz said when we left "well, we can go home now".
The remainder of the place was also quite interesting, with displays on fishing, wildlife, camping, and various recreations you can partake in in the area.
At the exit, there was an excellent scale model of the area showing roads and the like - we were down in the valley pointed to by the red flag. This is some seriously steep country-side.
We managed to find our way from there to the road leading to Kjeaason (Great photo I wish I had thought to go and take), a farm which someone had the interesting plan to stick 600m up the side of a fjord. To get to the place itself, we had to wait for a few minutes before we could drive up the 5km tunnel to get there, as it is all one-way and every half an hour it changes from up to down! Liz piloted well, and we emerged at the top, wandered around and were stunned to realise that from the top it just looks like any other piece of farm land. Only it's 600m up in the air, on much more of a slope, and until twenty years ago, only reachable by rope ladder.
Driving south along the RV13 beside Sørfjorden, we stopped for a snack at one of the villages where Liz only just managed to stop me from jumping in for a swim. The water was not as cold as we expected, though I suspect I would have thought differently once I was in.
There were a couple of particular roads that were recommended from various places, and we plotted this day's travels around them. The first was the 13 which we were already on, taking us along Suldalsvatn (another fantastic water-course) towards the town of Sand. Here, we queued for a ferry across to Ropeid which put us on an even more spectacular road (and noted as "only for experienced drivers" when driving anything bigger than a car), the 520. It was along here where we stopped beside the road, a few hundered metres up and cooked dinner. We had views from our "dinner table" all along the Ryfylke of mountains, clouds and of course plenty of forest.
Not too much further along, we found other people camping in a small area up high in the mountains, and decided to join them and save some money for the night.
This meant that we had almost completed our loop for the day, and boy was it worth it. At least one of those roads is pending "National Tourist Route" status, and I'd vote for either of them any day. The rocks, hairpin bends, tunnels, single-lane roads, closed-in-winter mountain passes, sheep and almost total lack of other traffic made it a great day's drive.
So many pictures of waterfalls lakes and amazing back-drops have been taken that it's all we can do to try and sort through them for the best ones.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 22 Jul 2003
Forest, Frost and Fjords ( 32 photos )
A very diverse day yesterday, as we drove East towards the coast along the RV7 road, which interestingly is the same road my parents drove along the otherway back in 1976. We were in forest to start with, as we wound our way along through Gol and stopped at Ål to watch the Bergen-Oslo train go through and have some lunch.
Not much futher along, we were winding up through the mountains to the closed-for-seven-months-of-the-year Hardangervidda Pass. About here we started to wonder what those little specs of white were far away on the hill tops.
Our suspicions were confirmed when we stopped to go and play with the stuff. Snow. In Summer. Getting out to walk over to it for the obligatory snowball fight and photos, we were immediately hit with a cold wind, the reason the snow still exists from the winter falls. But we were swimming only a couple of days ago!
Back in the van to warm up, we kept east until the road started to fall back to sea-level in the most fascinating way. It was as if someone had taken a giant cork-screw and attacked the mountain with it, the resulting tunnels were then turned into roads where you drove in the top and out the bottom.
Upon reaching the bottom of a series of four or five such tunnels, about four kilometres in total, we stopped at a little "museum" in the middle of nowhere (well, actually right next to some very high steep fjord cliffs) to work out what these things were and where we were (none of this was on our maps).
It turns out we had missed the one thing in the area which we have circled and under-lined on our maps as Do Not Miss, and to get back to it we had to go back up the cork-screw thingamies again! This we did, and eventually noted the poorly-signposted turn-off to Vøringfossen just at the top of the corkscrews.
Perhaps the tourist buses, cars and campervans should have given it away, but we were too busy admiring the scenery the first time. This is a huge noisy waterfall with a hundered and fifty metre or so vertical drop, the highest in Norway. We wandered off through the forest in the direction of the noise, taking care to stay away from the cliffs (no child and adult proof fences in this country - they expect people to look after themselves, which I think is good since you see everything in its natural state).
It was quite a spectacular sight, as we trudged through a bit more forest then back to the start for a drop into our first Norge tourist shop, cloaked in the local fashion with grass and plants on the roof, presumably for insulation. Strange that we have seen so few such touristy shops, but I guess that's because we have stopped in so few big touristy places. I purchased the obligatory Moose soft-toy, which is now named Chocolate and sits to guard the van when we leave it for a while.
We then walked the other way to the "official" viewing platform where you got a good big-picture view of the falls, but not as close.
From there, we needed to attack the cork-screw one final time to head onwards, and we found a caravan park not far from the bottom. Both tired, we stopped in and got a site here in the quiet only interrupted by the noise of the river. From our van door, we can see the clouds around the high cliff-faces all around us - a nice area to spend a while.
I cooked dinner last night, but it had to be done again properly by Liz after I managed to drop the first load of pasta onto the ground as I was draining it. So it was more of a combined effort :)
We did some planning last night and will spend a day or two driving south from here along some highly-recommended scenic roads, maybe take in a bit of the coast, before heading back north through Bergen and continuing our journey mostly that way.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 21 Jul 2003
Oslo and Surrounds ( 35 photos )
(Continued from Sverige 1)
Now into yet another country, this one is Norge, which English-speaking people refer to as Norway.
We stopped just over the little-marked border with Sverige for a look around the private landscape that comprises Berby. The forests, lakes and waterfalls of this particular area are all technically privately owned, but practically the area is no different to anywhere else nearby.
And by that I mean absolutely beautiful. We had a quick wander around for some photos before jumping back in the van and working on fixing our first problem for the day - our rumbling stomachs.
This was done by pulling into a supermarket at Halden, and working out another problem - that we didn't have any Norwegian Krone. Yet another currency to find a pile for. It turns out we could pay with Visa, which we did with a happy checkout girl who was over-excited to be able to say "Thank You!" to us in English - we think that not many tourists make it to this particular town.
Driving up the road looking for somewhere to eat, it became fairly rapidly apparent that there are not nearly as many rest places on the roads here as there are elsewhere we have been. Or perhaps that was because we were on a smaller road. No matter, as we solved this problem by parking in someone's very long driveway for a while. They didn't mind, as their house must have been about 3km away over a hill.
Relaxing in the sun and not doing much except reading about yet another new country, we resolved to head North to Oslo. Our path there took us through more great country side, before getting lost and finding ourselves again on the jumble that is the entrance to Oslo.
Another thing about Norway as distinct from other countries up here is that there are lots of toll roads. Needing to pay a toll to get into Oslo itself, not having any of the local currency at all, and noting that Norge is not in the EU, let alone the Euro, we needed some cash fast.
Someone had helpfully put a service station right at the toll gate, so I went inside and joined a cue of lots of other people doing the same thing to withdraw some cash. Once again, not really knowing the exchange rate is either a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it, so I pressed a button and was presented with some more strange papery notes. One of these I exchanged for a Coke and a pile of other notes and coins with the service station attendant, and one of the resulting coins was close enough to the toll required to enter the city. Great!
So, enter the city we did, following our noses to find some parking in the centre near an information place, run there to grab some maps, run back to the van and then drive to some more permanent parking on Tordenskiolds gate, right in the heart of the city. This required paying for, of course, which I was able to do with a credit card, thereby not loosing any more cash. Very handy, but we can only guess at how much it really cost us.
Lonely Planet Scandinavian Europe in hand, we took in a suggested city walk which started not far from where we were and took in plenty of the city sights. We had managed to catch the city on an exceptionally rainy day, where we had to wait in alleyways for quite some time for rain to clear, and carry our bags on our fronts to protect the contents while huddling under an umbrella.
Along the way we wanted to plug the laptop in to update the journal, but one cafe wouldn't do it and the other one was flooded. What we did manage to see included the Domkirke (cathedral), which we entered more to get out of the rain, but was impressive in its own right, Eidsvolls plass (a square filled with fountains and statues), the Nationaltheatret, University of Oslo and the royal palace Det Kongelige Slott.
From there we wandered down to the dock area, home to the Rådhus (Town Hall), which is decorated with scenes from Norse mythology, plenty of statues and fountains, and of course lots of boats in the docks.
There was a fishing boat selling prawns to the unwitting tourist, so of course we had to have some to eat for dinner. Curiously, they were sold by the litre...
Sufficiently drenched by now, we wandered not far at all back to Rosie, where we changed clothes, before Liz took the pilot seat for a drive "somewhere North" to a caravan park. However, not far out of the city, we actually did some thinking, changed tact, and headed North-West instead, eventual destination the Western Fjords and Bergen.
Locating a caravan park which looked cheap enough (no sleeping rough tonight, I haven't had a shower since... (censored for when Mum reads this!) ), we picked some more back roads, taking us through Roa and Hønefoss to Elvenga Camping, on the 7 road. Plenty of pretty scenery was to be seen, including our first fjord (all though not one of the crazy ones) Randsfjorden.
We ate our prawns, the rest of the lunch cheese and salami we grabbed earlier today and some bread, before taking me to the shower for decontamination and removal of my ape-like layer of face-fuzz. I am now much more presentable.
(permanent link to this story)
North Into Norway ( No photos )
Awaking reasonably early due to our twenty metre or so proximity to the motorway, we noted that the carpark we had chosen was almost totally full of people doing the same. It seems the whole area was full, hope that doesn't happen too often.
At least we managed to be on the road for the earliest time in recent memory, and as such we decided to head inland to see what the scenery of this place was all about. Wow, were we blown away.
Turning off at Skee to take the back way across the border, we were suprised at how quickly the trees and lakes surrounded us. This was quite a change from the flat farmed landscapes which dominated the sides of the motorway thus far. The great views means that whoever is driving has the bad job - the other can look around and take photos at their leisure.
In this similar fashion, we drove across the small back-road border into Norge (Norway). Yes, that's another different country. We're going to stick to this one for a little while now, promise.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 20 Jul 2003
Lund, Driving North ( 16 photos )
Not much to report from today - we awoke reasonably early and went for a swim down at the beach. We didn't want to get in due to the chilly nature of the place, but eventually I splashed Liz a lot and we had to get in from there.
Our aim was simple - drive a long way North. First stop was for a look around the town of Lund. We grabbed some supplies and brunch before wandering over to the main attraction - the cathederal with its very interesting astronomical clock, which did its animated thing at 1pm. Plenty of people were there to see this happen, basically consisting of a few animated figures of the three kings start their journey to the child Jesus.
By now, the urge to hit the road proper was with us, and so we headed futher north, stopping for a journey down to Mölle on Kullen Head to look at the rocks at the end. They turned out to be quite a hike from the road, so we let our telephoto lenses do the work, before munching on an ice cream (weather is still very hot, about twenty-four degrees each day and no clouds, non-stop sun all day), deciding not to swim on the beach that wasn't a beach, and driving back to the motorway.
We covered a lot of distance (that's going to become common with the huge spaces between everything here - kind of like Australia, actually), stopping again for fuel outside Göteborg (Gothenburg).
By late afternoon, it was time for a caravan park, so we attempted to find one around the Grebbestad area. However, of the four we tried, all were full - must be the good weather, and of course the school holidays.
As such, we are spending the night in a road-side stop off the E6, where there are lots of others doing the same (there exists a concepts of Right of Free Access here, meaning you can stay wherever you want within reason), so we feel fairly safe. Saving some money helps as well.
As a bonus, it seems that so far Scandinavia is proving to be not nearly as expensive as we had braced ourselves for. Sweden especially is fine, at least as far as we can tell as we haven't seen any current exchange rates. Will have to find some when we arrive in Oslo, Norway tomorrow morning to look for an Internet cafe.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 19 Jul 2003
Around Malmö ( 4 photos )
(Continued from Danmark 1)
And so, we were heading for our third country in two days, Sverige, which most of us know as Sweden. Home to Volvos (seen plenty already), Ericsson, and of course the famous Swedish Chef, this one is going to be fun. This site is supposed to have lots of interesting information on the country, if you have time to read a bit more.
Continuing over the bridge, the signs suddenly changed colour, we needed to learn a new set of speed limits, and oh look, another currency. I really do appreciate just how much the Euro helps tourists out - it must have been a complete pain to change money at every border. Of all of Scandinavia, only Finland uses the Euro, the other countries use their own versions of the Krone - hence we now have Danish Krone and Sverige Krone, with more to come.
So, you can imagine our relief when arriving at the toll gate at the other side, we were able to pay in Euro, which we still have some of. Mind you, at once again the equivalent of about AUD $60, we aren't going to be making too many of these crossings.
We stopped just along the road at SkŒnegŒrden, a tourist office designed for people entering from Danmark, which is exactly what we were doing. A quick look around and a coffee later, we had a destination in mind for the night's stop and to get our bearings in a foreign land - Sibbarps Camping, on the beach looking back at the bridge and København.
A much faster than yesterday check-in process completed, we were directed to a field and told to pick a spot. We did so against a tree, with views of the sunset behind the bridge in one direction and open green space on the other. Very nice indeed.
We wandered along the beach for the afternoon, and I was even brave enough to go in for a couple of swims up and down the beach. The water was chilly, but warmer than the last few times we have thought about jumping in. It turned out to be one of the most refreshing experiences in ages, and we are hoping to do it again tomorrow morning.
Dinner and a few photos of the bridge/tunnel and sunset later, bed is calling.
(permanent link to this story)
Across Denmark, Into Sweden ( 1 photo )
This morning we got updated with journals and photos for a while, before checking out of the caravan park. The place was quite well catered for, with large jumping hemispheres (for want of a better word) for kiddies, and a crazy-looking game called Snooker-Golf.
We got on the road, and headed East towards Sweden. Since we don't want to spend too much time (and hence money) in Scandinavia, we are heading up through the more distant countries first, then spending time in places like Danmark on the way back as we see fit.
It is only relatively recently that bridges have been built joining parts of southern Scandinavia together - we drove across several of these today.
The first joins Danmark's islands of Jutland and Funen, arriving at the amusingly-named town of Middelfart where we stopped for a quick break and a photo of the sign. From there, we basically followed the motorway further East, crossing the bridge joining Funen and Zealand. This one was the first where we got hit with the amazingly steep toll of about AUD $75! I guess that's not too bad compared to a ferry, but still...
We were pushing it on fuel just outside København (Copenhagen), so pulled in for a very quick look around the outskirts looking to fill up. We did so, and intend to get back and spend at least a couple of there on our way back through.
From there, we drove onto the newest of the bridges (opened 2000), the Øresund Fixed Link. This is a bizarre combination bridge-tunnel where you go underground for the first third or so, only to appear in the middle of the sea, drive up onto a bridge and continue the remainder of your water crossing above water! This amused us no end, and is actually a very picturesque feat of engineering.
Half way across this bridge, we were officially in Sverige (Sweden).
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 18 Jul 2003
Legoland ( 57 photos )
(Continued from Deutschland 1)
Liz powered Rosie along what had suddenly turned into horrible rainy motorway - was this a sign of things to come in Scandy? The new country we had found as Danmark (or Denmark).
We rounded the city of Kolding, and headed off through the back roads, winding our way towards Mecca for so many children - proper Danish Legoland, just outside of Billund.
We found a place to park but were not quite sure how to get out again. Trusting the gods of Lego, we wandered over to the park entrance where we noticed they had thoughtfully placed a cash machine. I say thoughtful because Denmark does not use the Euro, preferring to dictate its own monetary policy for fear of being swept under the carpet by the stronger nations (only 5.5 million people here versus about 85 million on Deutschland alone). As such, we withdrew some Danish Krone and joined the first of many queues to buy a ticket to get in.
The rather steep price was offset by the fact that all the rides and things were included, but to be honest we would have preferred a cheaper ticket and to pay for the rides, most of which we avoided like the plague due to their huge queues.
Here's a fun game - can you spot the tourist?
The place is divided into lots of zones - Pirates, Castles, etc. Most of the place was a complete waste of time and space. Of mild interest was the Power Builder - a ride where you can program how you want it to twist you around yourself, then you get in and it behaves accordingly. Opting not to join the immense queue, we instead headed towards the exit, thinking by now that we should have taken everyone's advice and avoided the place.
But, the fat lady had not yet sung - we still had to exit past Miniland. This is where it all started, before they built the rest of the garbage to suck the kiddies in. This part of the park was absolutely fantastic. Think entire villages, towns, famous landmarks, all re-created with thousands of man-hours and millions of Lego bricks. Trains which ran on tracks, only to stop while a bridge opened and boats went under, before resuming on their journey between three or four of the different displays underfoot. Airports with moving planes and baggage being loaded. Cars which drove around the place on their own (not quite sure how yet - magnets?). Interactive exhibits where you could fire water cannons, take movies in Hollywood, race drag racing cars and lots of other stuff. I say give us a cheaper ticket where we can wander around this part for the day and forget the rides.
By now the crowds had thinned, so I whinged like a little kiddy until Liz came with me on the Lego Train, Lego Monorail and Lego Mining Train. We then found where the crowds had gone in the overly-packed shop, where we resisted spending up big on bricks, instead grabbing a few little token things to remember the place, before fighting stroller-weilding families for the exit.
We had been given a ticket to get out of the carpark, and from there it was a short drive to Billund Camping, where, after fourty-five minutes wait in the slowest queue I could have possibly picked, we were booked in. Dinner was cooked and bed was constructed.
(permanent link to this story)
Kiel and Flensburg ( 5 photos )
We set out north, destination Danmark. This took us through Kiel where we stopped for our last naughtly McDonalds stop while we could still afford it.
Onwards North, we found cheap-ish fuel in Flensburg, before passing through the rather intimidating border into Danmark.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 17 Jul 2003
Lübeck and Timmendorfer Strand ( 9 photos )
Sebastian was getting up early for a lecture, so we had breakfast before getting our things organised and updating the website. We left with Jessi at about 10:30, dumping our things in Rosie before going to what would have to class as the world's cheapest supermarket, Aldi.
Actually, I'm sure the ones in Australia are cheaper, it's just that Aldi is so much cheaper than where we have been shopping recently that it was quite a shock. Needless to say, we stocked up fairly heavily for not much money with enough pasta, sauce, rice and anything that won't go off to last us through expensive Scandinavia.
We needed to get our spare tyre fixed since the episode on the ferry, and finally located a convenient place in the suburbs of Hamburg. Communicating with the staff was quite interesting at best, as only one of them spoke a little bit of English, but in the end we organised two replacement tyres (the old ones were very worn), and a spare from the old ones. We should get the other two changed at some stage in the future, but they are quite pricey.
Onwards from there, we headed up the A7 motorway to take the scenic route across to the city of Lübeck. We located the Park and Ride on the outskirts, fired up the GPS and got the bus to the Hauptbahnhof (central train station). From there, it was a quick walk across the river which surrounds the city, past the impressive huge, inwards leaning gate tower to the city itself.
Besides a nice walk around the town square where we ate some fresh raspberries and a strange street with British flags everywhere, by far the highlight of the town was a trip to the Lubecker Marionettentheater Fritz Fey, a puppet theatre. Everyone else there was either a child under four or looking after one, so we felt a little out of place. However, combining our almost total lack of understanding of the language with a great display of puppetry, a plot we have no idea about, and fifty or so three year olds constantly screaming out the Deutsch equivalent of "behind you!" (we think) whenever the goodie was looking for the baddie was a sure-fire winner. Just laugh when everyone else does and you will be fine.
With the combination of the American military's satellites and Liz's excellent memory for streets, we decided to walk the three kilometres or so back to Rosie at the Park and Ride and save some money. Being quite a hot day, we grabbed some water first, and were tempted to stock up at The Bierspezialist we found along the way, but made it in the end.
It wasn't far from there at all to the village of Timmendorfer Strand. This was on our destination list due to it being where Liz's father Ingo was born. However, we suspect the town he remembers is not very similar to what exists today. Plenty of high-rise tourist accommodation, expensive beach huts, shops selling lots of things nobody really needs and map-dispensing machines which eat your money. Should have learned my lesson after Chester, but I'm a sucker for information. As it turned out, the actual Information Centre was right behind it, but was only given away by the tinyest of plaques. We dropped in and were directed to Vogelpark - which was essentially a carpark nearby to camp in.
Driving there, we relaxed for a while before going off for a wander down to the little harbour. If you look around hard enough, this is still a great little place. As we walked around the beach, past plenty of boats and trying to ignore those trampoline-with-bungie cord tourist traps, we found what is almost a different town.
Back to relax at the van until the morning.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 16 Jul 2003
Around Hamburg ( 26 photos )
After late wake up, we took a train into the city, now experts in buying tickets, at least for this city. Sebastian showed us around a few of the city's sights, including the impressive St Michels church, the city's old dock area (now home to residential areas and the Hamburg Dungeon), the bombed and not rebuilt St Nicolai church (quite a moving experience), then a drink by the city's central lakes.
From there, Sebastian had to go to work for an hour or so, so Liz and I amused ourselves wandering into shops, around the Rathaus with its quaint fountain in the central courtyard, and generally not doing too much due to the heat.
We met up again and saw what appeared to be the Indonesian Navy band wandering through town, watched that for a while before escaping down to the underground once again. Sebastian took us down to the docks for a ferry ride along the river to the Fischmarkt, a good cheap way to see the river Elbe. From the market, we wandered down to watch the Elbtunnel in amazement. It is an old tunnel under the river, which now has lifts at each end for cars to be hoisted twelve metres up to road level. It's amazing that it still survives in this day and age, but plenty of cars were being hoisted around.
Sufficently entertained by that, we wandered back to the flat. Dinner was rung-in Pizza, since Jessi is studying for exams, and we didn't want to spend too much.
A much more tame night was spent at a local pub where one of Sebastian's friends was DJing for the first time, and learning just how fanatical the Deutsch people are about table football, as Liz and I were reduced to complete humiliation at the hands of Sebastian and a random local keen to show off his goalkeeper high-kicks to score.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 15 Jul 2003
Bremen, into Hamburg ( 21 photos )
We awoke wanting to have a look around the city of Bremen, so that's pretty much what we did. Liz drove Rosie out of the park and up the road to a parking lot, which appeared to have people wandering to a nearby beach. More on that later.
A walk back up the road past the park and a little further brought us to a tram stop. The driver waited while we ran and jumped in, and we expected to be asked to pay. No such luck. In fact, try as we might, we couldn't work out how to pay for the ride. Many cities appear to have chosen their own way of accepting fast payments with a special card, thus increasing the speed of payment for the locals who use it a lot. Unfortunately, by doing this it means that the tourists, such as us, have absolutely no idea how it works.
Perhaps a conductor would come and fire some Deutsch at us we thought, but no such luck. We alighted near the centre of town for a look around. With Liz around, it's hardly suprising that we found a chocolate shop fairly quickly and made a purchase which was quickly opened and "tested".
Attempting to see some things around the place, we wandered around the pretty central pedestrianised section of town, taking in quite a few of the sights, such as the Rathaus (town hall), obligatory over-bearing St Petri-Dom cathederal and plenty of street cafes. Also, we wandered down the Bötterstrasse, a re-created medieval alley with lots of little shops attempting to snare the tourists in. We managed to avoid spending more money, heading instead to the Schnoorviertel. This was a similar place, instead focusing on the history of fishing in the area. There were some great little shops and alleys however, and we wandered in and had a look around a music shop, where Liz bought a notebook.
Lunch was next, and we attempted to decypher the menu of the cheapest looking place in the central square, eventually settling on zwei rostbratwurst, meaning two large sausage things in two tiny bread rolls. Oh, and zwei Coca-Cola to wash that down. We're getting better and better at spending as little as possible in these places, including dodging the expensive tomato sauce in favour of the free mustard.
We needed to post some things at the post office, so we of course needed to find it. Liz cheated and asked for directions in English, which at least meant that we found the place alright. Letters sent, it was time to head back to the van. Again we attempted to find a way to pay for the tram, but no luck. We promise to spend more in the next city to make up for free-loading on Bremen's public transport.
Re-tracing our steps, we got back to the van and decided to find out what the fuss wass all about with the beach nearby. By now the carpark was overflowing with people, so there had to be something interesting going on. We wandered down the forest path for a while, and eventually it opened up to the beach with lots and lots of people. With a difference. We had wandered into a nudist beach. Trying to look unfazed, we walked a little while down to the beach itself, past people ordering ice creams, wandering down paths and playing games all stark naked. Deciding this was not for us, we turned and wandered back. Sorry, no photos from there are available.
Next on the itinerary was a drive into Hamburg, to meet and stay with friend Sebastian (and his girlfriend Jessi), who was an exchange student at Sydney Technical High School when I was there, and we got to know each other well due to his musical interests. We met them a little while ago when we were in Amsterdam the first time.
A hot drive later, we found our way into the middle of town via his directions, parked, and called him up to come find us for the last tricky part of our journey. We opened up all of the doors for some cool air while parked in a little back street awaiting him to wander down, which he did after not too long.
He guided us to a good parking spot just down the road from his place in Paul-Rossen Straße, St Pauli, where we climbed the stairs to arrive at the great little flat they live in.
After a while of cooling down, he took us out for a wander around the western area of the city to get familiar with the layout of the place. This included a wander down the nearby Große Freiheit, Hamburg's famous Red-Light district (quite an eye-opener, even after Amsterdam), then down to the Fischmarkt, which still operates on Sundays. Wandering along the Elbe River, we cut back through the city along the Reeperbahn, then grabbed a few European plugs and adaptors at a cheap electrical place on Talstraße.
After a genuine Deutsch dinner (or so we are told!) prepared by Sebastian, he had a band rehersal for his band Mindcuffed. Not having any other plans, we tagged along. This involved a ride through the city on the underground train to a place in an industrial area (with a few brave souls living nearby) where rooms were rented out for bands to use as practice space. Luckily we had Sebastian with us, as he had enough trouble figuring out how to buy a ticket, so I hate to think how we would have done.
Liz played Wonderboy on the laptop as I bravely attempted to insert some saxophone lines on Sebastian's Alto we had brought along into the band's heavy guitar riffs. It was good playing again, as I don't have my sax with us and am missing playing it after almost a year(!).
After the rehersal, we came back to the flat before heading out for a night at one of the local bars. This involved riding there on bikes - quite an experience with four of us on only two bikes. Liz manged to balance well on the back of our bike, better than I can say for myself riding it as we swerved and nearly topped while dodging traffic. I didn't care what gear I was in or give more than a passing thought to the road rules, but it was a huge amount of fun.
The night was passed chatting to various friends of people, who, on discovering that we were from Sydney were suprised and interested, but mostly a little worried that they would have to speak English to us. This didn't stop some whose English was very good (as in far better than our Deutsch), and we had a great chat to lots of people, not even noticing that the clock ticked over to something like 3am before we decided that pushing the bike back was a better idea than trying to ride it.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 14 Jul 2003
Driving into Bremen ( 1 photo )
(Continued from Netherlands 2)
Coming across the border, as always, is new and exciting thing. We have both been quite interested in Deutschland since learning (or at least trying to) the language at school. Also, Liz's father Ingo came out to Australia from the country at age six, so she has wanted to see what the place is all about.
As a side note, you may note that we are calling it Deutschland, not Germany. From speaking to Sebastian (our friend in Hamburg), the word Germany is only ever used when communicating with people speaking English. So, we are going to try, where possible, to use the local names of places and things as we launch further and further into the non-English speaking world.
So, back to the border crossing - besides small signage style changes, and the obligatory speed-limit changes (you mean we can attempt to push Rosie to 130kph now? No thanks!), not much is noticable thanks to EU semi-standardisation of most things.
We pulled in to get some fuel and cool down at a road-side services, where I was rapidly required to test out my Deutsch on the attendant to pay for fuel. Back on the road, it wasn't far before we noticed the first occurance of the word Autobahn, accompanied with a sign showing the number 130 with a line through it. If you haven't worked out by now, that means there are no speed limits. We kept Rosie to a sensible 100kph, as chosen by her lack of fifth gear, lack of overtaking power, tendincy to swerve all over the road at the slightest breeze (let alone taking over a truck), and massive fuel consumption at anything faster.
As such, little dots in the rear-view mirror rapidly turned into screaming Audis and BMWs as they overtook, leaving a space-shuttle like slip-stream in their wake to rock us around.
And so it went as we drove ourselves into the city of Bremen. We had directions to a caravan park of which at least the first half were correct, but they rapidly turned into a work of fiction. We were able to follow the signs and arrive at Campingplatz Bremen, staffed by an extremely helpful woman keen to see that we had a great time wandering around the city by providing good advice and helpful directions.
Picking a space in the half-empty park was fairly easy, where we sat in the sun for a while before walking around to check out the BBQ (we would have to locate fuel for it), doing some washing, then cooking a Chicken Tonight with rice. The remainder of the night was spent watching the second half of the Lord of the Rings DVD, resulting us having watched the movie over two countries.
(permanent link to this story)
Groeningen and Surrounds ( 2 photos )
Since the weather is so fantastic at the moment (25-30 degrees each day), we decided this morning would be a great one for sunning on the beach. This we did before breakfast, taking the short walk down to the river beach and reading books for a while.
We considered a swim but the water was quite murky (ok, and too cold), so we just relaxed for a while instead.
Finally getting ourselves organised, we cooked breakfast then headed on the road to find a supermarket which would now be open. This search brought us to the city of Groningen, where a few driving manouevers of questionable legality and waiting a long long time for lock gates to open brought us to a supermarket. It had taken Liz's sharp eyes to find it, as we have no idea what the names of the supermarkets are, and this one only gave away its presence by the posters offering cheap deals on Pringles on the outside.
Wandering around the place was great fun - some things are easy to pick while others remain a total mystery. Also strange is that this place took no credit cards, or our EFTPOS-style switch card! We had to delve into the secret cash stah we have to pay for our goods at the checkout, making it by one euro cent. Phew!
After a lunch in the carpark, a drive to the bank was high on the priority list, so we stumbled across one of those which conveniently allowed us to execute a U-turn and get back on track.
There was not much more for us to do now except drive East into Deutschland (Germany).
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 13 Jul 2003
Northern Netherlands ( 8 photos )
A bit of a driving day this one, we headed first for an interesting feature on our map - a fourty kilometre or so long causeway joining the provinces of Noord-Holland and Friesland. Called Afsluitdijk, it was quite interesting to drive along. About a third of the way across there was an information centre where we found out that it was actually a dam, created to increase farming land. The scale of the thing was quite impressive, and driving along it the road in the distance shimmered as if not there. As in many other places here, there are bridges that open up while yachts sail through, leaving the motorists to get out of the cars and wander around for a while, which is a pleasant change from the monotony of diriving around.
With no fixed plan and only knowing that we needed a supermarkt to take on supplies, we headed into the town of Leeuwarden for a bit of a wander. Finding a supermarket when you have no idea what they are called can be a bit tricky. Eventually taking the easy option and pulling into a service station, we were directed to one but told to expect it closed as it was a Sunday. This turned out to be true, so we headed onwards.
Heading up to the coast, we pulled into the town of Holwerd for a look around. Seemingly completely devoid of life, it was still nice to look at the way the gardens are all immaculate and the streets perfectly clean.
From there, we headed out to the ferry port for the little island of Ameland. There was a huge car park, almost completely full for day-trippers to the island. Being reasonably late in the day by now, we had no real desire to head over. Instead, we marvelled at the children playing in the mud, while their respective adults sat on the wharf as if were a beach, getting a tan.
We headed a little further along the coast to the holiday town of Lauwersoog. Like almost every town along the coast here, it had a caravan park which looked good enough for us. For no real reason over any other, we pulled into Camping Lauwersoog. While Liz negotiated to get a site in the reception, I negotiated the children on ride-on toys and adults with much bigger toys in the form of massive caravans to hold a place in the entry queue.
This done, we pulled into a cosy spot where someone else had taken our power connection. The standard "do you speak English?" asked, we had actually found someone who didn't very well for the first time. We managed to gesticulate and use nouns and verbs enough for me to discover that his connection wasn't working. After he plugged back into it though, it seemed fine this time.
While Liz had a walk around the site, I managed to fall asleep in the afternoon for the first time in ages, soaking up the sun and narrowly avoiding getting burnt.
Dinner cooked from what little supplies we had remaining, we watched half of Lord of the Rings on DVD before night-time beckoned us to sleep.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 12 Jul 2003
Amsterdam ( 16 photos )
Getting ourselves organised, we were on the road again for the reasonably short drive to Amsterdam. Of course, we had been here before, but that was mostly a social visit, where we had decided not to see any of the touristy sites. That's why we were back this time.
As always, we needed a place to stay, so we drove to Camping Vliegenbos, the only camp site in Amsterdam. As you might expect, this meant that the prices were high and conditions not ideal. Infact, we were camped in no better than a parking lot, surrounded by other people in tents and a few in motorhomes. That's what you can get away with if you are the only camp site in a big city, I guess.
Still, it was a convenient ten minute bus ride from Centraal Station, which we took to start our wandering around. Without going into "we walked left, then turned right" detail, our day was a lot of wandering, sitting in cafes, enjoying the amazing hot weather in a beautiful city.
We took in some of Amsterdams more interesting museums, the Schuttersgalerij (Civic Guard Gallery withh huge paintings), ate some hot chips (they seem to love them over here), tried to get into Anne Frankhaus (the house of Anne Frank of "The Diary of Anne Frank" fame) but thought the hour-long queue was a bit excessive, especially since the place looked more like a modern art museum from the outside than a well-preserved historical building.
Lunch was at a nice back-street cafe-bar on Spuistraat.
There was a strange guy in a little boat on one of the canals who played the organ and trumpet at the same time, serenading a wedding party in a most unusual way. Great entertainment.
We found a modern bar which also doubled as an Internet cafe where I did some uploading and email sending while Liz wandered the streets taking it all in. She located a part of the city where there was some good foot to be had, so we headed there and found great Tapas for dinner overlooking the busy Nieuwendikj and sipping sangria at Joselito Tapas cafe.
For our return home, we tried the free method - a ferry across the picturesque harbour with the locals, then a GPS-aided walk back to the campsite. Worked a treat, gave us some exercise and proved a good way to see the city.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 11 Jul 2003
Den Haag ( 19 photos )
Getting ourselves out of bed and organised, we checked out of the camp ground and parked about 100m up the road. We did this due to the fact that there was a bus from the campsite right into the centre of Den Haag, which we spent the day looking around.
The city is amazingly beautiful, there are tree-lined cobble-stone streets, sculpture exhibitions all around, and plenty of on-street cafes to while away the hours.
Our bus dropped us off conveniently not too far from our first museum of the day - one of the three royal palaces (Het Paleis Lange Voorhout) which houses exhibitions. The walk there was along one of these nice streets with lots of interesting sculptures to look at.
The one we were looking at was Escher in het Paleis. This exhibition was of original prints, drawings and sketches of Escher, famed for his perspective drawings and metamporphisms. Great stuff, and by the end a couple of prints. There were some clever interactive displays around.
The accordian player right outside the door encouraged us to sit and have a light lunch at the cafe there, complete with its own funky sculpture. Interestingly, after being in the UK for so long everything here seems reasonably priced.
From there we basically wandered around the city for a while, up to the tourist information centre, or VVV as they are called in The Netherlands. We were trying to find an Internet cafe but decided to wait another day.
Eventually, we found our way back to the bus stop (via the very pretty houses of parliament - Den Haag is the political capital of The Netherlands - set right on a lake-with-fountain in the middle of town). Three more strips on the Stripkaart each later (that's how you do most public transport here), and we were back at Rosie.
We had a quick wander along the beach there, but it appeared to be closed, so our swimming had to wait until another day. Plus the water was cold too, which may have helped our decision just a little.
We had found another caravan park on the other side of town, which was more of a "just the site, thanks" park than the all-singing, all-dancing, all-charging one we had stayed at the previous night. On the way, however, we stopped off to take in a couple more of the museums that Den Haag is so famous for - Fotomuseum Den Haag and the contemporary art museum GEM. These easy to find but hard to park at museums, which we accessed by dodging across the ever-present tram lines, were interesting, but not amazingly so. The exhibitions in both were fairly startling to say the least, but proved a pleasant way to kill a few hours before heading to our new campsite.
Camping Duinhorst was tucked away in a wood on the outskirts of the city, but the signs once again guided us in with no problems. Another busy site, we spent the evening trying to play table football (it didn't work properly though), reading, doing lots of what holidays are about - nothing.
As an aside, the North Sea Jazz Festival started in Den Haag this evening and ran through the weekend, but the prices were way out of our budget. Quite a shame, but it would have cost us something like 75 euros each to see some of the big names. Next time maybe.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 10 Jul 2003
Another Ferry ( 3 photos )
(Continued from Across England)
This ferry was different to the one that took is to Ireland and back in several respects, not the least that all our meals were included in the price. We had actually organised quite a good deal with the Caravan Club, and this was a nice suprise.
We ate a hearty breakfast in the sun, watching the world go by, before having a look around the ferry itself, which proved to be rather boring.
Due to the lack of trade restrictions in the EU, there is no such thing as Duty Free, so shopping is a waste of time too.
This left writing emails and sleep. I chose the former, Liz the latter. There was a place to plug the laptop in, so for the trip I caught up with some emails which have been waiting for replies since March (sorry Kim!).
The sailing was almost dead flat, far less rough than the Ireland trips were, to the point that most of the time you wouldn't have even known that we were moving. Move we certainly did, however, and six hours later we saw "proper joined on Europe" once again, sailing into the port of Hoek van Holland (Hook of Holland).
The call came to return to the vehicles, which meant wandering back down into the rather spacious bowels of the ship, where upon returing to Rosie a kind soul pointed out that we had a flat tire! Uh oh, not good news.
A quick consultation with the staff later, we got out the gear to organise a tyre change. The jack on this is unlike any we had ever seen, but we soon had it sorted out. Next task was to get the wheel nuts off. Much harder. The problem was that the spanner device we were using is one size too big, and also the nuts were of course put on with a pneumatic tool which is far stronger than I. We got three of the five off by standing and jumping on the tool, but the other two kept slipping (since the thingy was too big).
No problem, as by now we were the only vehicle left on the boat, so we were attracting plenty of attention from the staff. Their replies to our worried querying of "when does the ship sail again???" were along the lines of "no worries, we'll sort it out". A few minutes later, someone appeared with a socket set with the correct size bit, and before we could blink, a new tyre was on and we were quite literally ready to roll.
Since this was the first time we had used that tyre, we were cautious, especially with all the bumpy driving off the ferry, but no problems with it so far.
Our next problem was where to go. We needed to get to a service station to put air in the "new" tyre, so we headed off randomly looking for one, once again on the right-hand side of the road. It actually feels correct again, even though we keep looking the wrong way at intersections. The simple rule is "follow everyone else", which has worked just fine thus far.
We eventually found a service station, where we filled up the tyre and were free to wander. It's strange driving here, because we have Dutch plates, so people actually don't look twice at you. Not used to that at all.
So, where to go? That question was answered by the road we ended up on, which showed that the closest big town was Den Haag (The Hague). So, that's where we aimed. There was also a campsite listed there, so all the better. The sign posts here are eons better than in England (don't even get me started on Ireland), so finding the place was a doddle, even through the rather complex intersections that seem to dominate the landscape.
The place in question was Kijkduinpark, best described as a holiday town. It has a swimming pool, bar, kiddy play centre, supermarket and pretty much everything you would ever want should your idea of a holiday be "go somewhere and do as little as possible". As such, the price tag matches well. Not having any other information and not wanting to drive much further (our body clocks were further thrown out by loosing an hour). Half an hour's check-in process later, we were ready to roll.
The place was absolutely packed, so finding our spot was a little challenging. This first problem solved, we were ready for the pool. If we are going to pay for this stuff, we are sure going to use it. The pool turned out to be very difficult to get in to (they're good at this here), meaning that we actually had to walk through what looked like toilet cubicles and out the other side to gain access. We were quite confused for a while, but just tried to look like we knew what we were doing. The swim was nice, but too warm, and there were too many kids, so we were soon back at Rosie, doing some journal updates, getting changed, then back to try the strange Dutch beers in the sunshine.
This was enough for the day, bed called out loudly.
(permanent link to this story)
Drive to Harwich ( No photos )
Awaking feeling much better than the night before at the ungodly hour of 4:15 am (body clock going very strange), we tried as best we could to be quiet as we packed our things.
After all their help I hope we didn't wake them up, but the throaty gutsy roar of Rosie in the morning probably didn't help matters much.
On to the totally empty roads, we again tackled the problem of getting in/out of Romford, failed, tried again, got fuel, and were on the way to Harwich.
This rather pleasant drive took about an hour and a half, leaving us plenty of time to enjoy a cup of tea and a thrown together breakfast in the car park of the ferry terminal.
As the gate eventually opened we drove through only to be pulled aside by an elderly lady. On reflection this wasn't too suprising since we were by far the cheapest looking vehicle beside all the monolithic motorhomes with screaming kids. Worried at first, we ended up having a great old chat with the woman who was quite impressed that we had thrown all our jobs away and were seeing the world. Not sure what she was intending to do (full search of the van? of us?), but as we drove away she said to her friend "Not even going to bother with that one". Strange. Maybe we're just nice people. And nice people don't smuggle drugs or weapons of mass destruction.
We drove onto the ferry, which was rather huge, locked up the van, and wandered upstairs to enjoy the eight-hour journey to Hoek van Holland, The Netherlands.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 09 Jul 2003
Tidying Up in London ( 2 photos )
We hadn't planned on getting back into London, but that is just what we did on this day.
After a hearty breakfast, we got packed some more things into our suitcases we have left at Les and Pearl's, noting that we pretty much have a full suitcase ready to send home to Oz. Deciding to leave it for the moment, we walked down to get a bus to Romford mainline station.
From there, we got straight onto a train to Liverpool Street. Odd, as I'd spent a reflective fifteen minutes just staring around the place last time I was there, thinking it would be my last for quite some time.
Finding the well-hidden post office there, we put a few things into the post to various parts of the world, before Liz wandered over to NatWest, her bank, to attempt to close her account. By the time that the first queue had put us into a different queue only to have her name taken for an interview (remember we just wanted to close a bank account), I decided that I would head off to complete one of our other tasks.
The main one was a trip to Russell Square to visit Carlo, who lives in our old place at Cricklewood to collect our mail. This task completed, I said a goodbye to Carlo, hoping to meet up with him somewhere around Europe when the get into travels sometime around September.
Back on the train, it was a last stop at The Gun, the local hangout for the Capita (my London work) people, to say a farewell final to Trevor and Danny.
Several hours later, we found our way back to Romford, located the correct bus and were completely suprised to find another fantastic meal awaiting us. Our original plan was to drive there and then up to Harwich for the next morning's ferry, but I had a sudden migrane and a need to be confined to bed.
As I did this, Liz went online and chatted to Sebastian in Germany, trying to work out plans for the weekend. Partly due to what he and Jessi wanted to do, we chose not to go to the Berlin Love Parade as origninally intended, and instead spend a few days looking around The Netherlands.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 08 Jul 2003
Kindly Les and Pearl ( No photos )
(Continued from Ireland 2)
Back into the strangely sunny England, Liz had a sleep in the van and I was considering the same, but remembered not to as I was driving. The strange hours have wreaked havoc with our body clock. It's these late night ferries we get to save money. All part of the fun.
After a coffee stop somewhere along the M4, we got stuck in really heavy traffic around the M25, then getting lost with the hopeless signposting that exists around Romford and Hornchurch making us a few hours later than intially guessed to arrive at Les and Pearl's place in Essex.
How fantastic these people are. There's not much we wanted more than a huge baked dinner, and there it was. Wonderful stuff, followed with a great dessert as well. Thanks in public for a job well done!
A bit of chat then bed for us, tired once again.
(permanent link to this story)
It's still foggy and empty ( No photos )
On our previous journeys through Wales, you may remember that we were not too kind to the place, owing to the horrible weather and seeming lack of anything vaguely interesting to do.
This time we were not disappointed - Wales put on a great show, more than enough to convince us that our initial impressions were correct.
To be fair, it started back at the ferry port in Ireland - there was heavy fog all over the place, but this was just an omen - Wales was only a three hour ferry ride away after all. When we arrived, more and more fog had been assembled to greet us.
We drove on through the pea soup, headlights on during the day to see where we were going and warn oncoming traffic on the far-better-than-Irish roads that a large red box-like object was coming their way.
Deciding against stopping in many places on our way back to Les and Pearl's in England, we had morning tea for two in St Clears, and Liz failed to find anything resembling a bakery anywhere in the town for something to eat. Very strange, so we pushed on, stomachs rumbling.
This was eventually rectified at a motorway services near Swansea, where a Little Chef provided us with a couple of hours reading the paper, eating pizza and cheap desserts before we were back on the road again.
Crossing the M4 toll bridge without paying this time, we waved Wales goodbye until such time as we can return to give it justice, and we drove drove out of the fog (no seriously) into England.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 07 Jul 2003
Leaving Dublin, and Ireland ( 6 photos )
Wow - so much to catch up on - it's been a few busy days in Dublin recently, so much so that we haven't even thought of the journal until now, as we sit on the ferry, in the docks at Rosslare. Let's try to get this all down.
[ entries separated ]
Which brings us to today - Monday. The morning wasn't too bad, we said our goodbyes to Gail (she is planning to come out to Oz in March so it's not all bad), before cleaning up after ourselves and heading back into town to find the bus out to the caravan park. Finding the bus stop proved not too much of a problem, but getting a bus was another matter. An hour and a half of waiting later (during which Liz had a wander as I stayed with the bags), we were on bus 69, trying to get back to our beloved Rosie.
We came towards the caravan park in quite a different way to that which we left it, so where to get off became a guesswork exercise (I suppose we should have asked the driver but that seemed a bit to easy). This left us not quite where we expected, jumping off the bus, wandering one way until we found a service station to ask for directions, then wandering back the other way for a mile or so to the park.
Along the road there was what I guess is called a commune - a bunch of old beat up caravans parked on the side of a four-lane highway with quite a lot of people living there, in reasonable squalor. We have seen several of these here, not sure how they get away with it, but nobody seems to mind.
So, we extracted Rosie from the lockup, threw the bags in and hit the road. Choosing to avoid the cursed semi-ring-road, we headed west out of town before Liz carved us a great way through the back roads, taking in the beautiful Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin. We stopped for lunch hidden away totally in a picnic spot beside the road, where the silence (except for the ringing in our ears from the nights in Dublin) was total. We ate from what food we still had in the van, making some sandwiches once again which hit the spot nicely.
Choosing not to stop after that, we headed straight for Rosslare, through the increasing fog. We arrived very early for our 21:50 ferry back to Fishguard, and so cooked some dinner in Rosslare town carpark, before enjoying one final pint of Guinness (well, ok, Liz had some cider) then driving on to the ferry.
So here we sit, feeling a little queasy on the ferry, and having totally enjoyed Ireland. Like everywhere I guesss, we feel as if we could have spent more time here, but there's always next time.
This is one place we feel there definitely will be a next time for.
We now head back Across England.
(permanent link to this story)
Crashing back in Wales ( 6 photos )
The remainder of the ferry ride went quite well - nothing much to report as I went to sleep fairly rapidly.
Upon waking, I somehow managed to convince Rosie to shuttle forward from her precariously parked position (on an angle right at the back of the boat - we were well and truly last off), back to the same carpark where we spent the night before we came over. Plenty of other people had the same idea, we all slept rather rapidly.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 06 Jul 2003
Dublina, Temple Bar ( 11 photos )
Sunday morning, our decision to have a light night payed off as we let ourselves out to explore a bit more of the city while the late-stayers slept for hours more. Breakfast was at a cheap but not to amazing cafe, a far cry from our favourite morning-after food at Nulla Nulla cafe, in Cronulla.
We decided that a visit to Dublina was worth a visit, and it proved a pleasant way to kill a few hours and learn something in the process. Set in Christ Church Cathedral, there is a wander through where you learn plenty about Medieval Dublin - the best I thought was the scale model of the city as of 1500 with commentary where they talk you through each part in turn. Correlating this with what we already knew about the city was a great geography lesson.
We just had to drop next into The Old Jameson Distillery, but this time no tour, just a quick stop in the gift shop which had nothing in store for us, we headed on to partake in the final part of our Dublin experience - the musical pub wandering.
There are a few official such things around the place, but ours was from the guide books. This was basically a wander through the more famous pubs in Dublin, with a view to finding some traditional Irish music to our liking. The basic outline was something like this: the Patrick Conway, nasty but filling chicken burgers somewhere, John Mulligan's (where Liz chatted to members of the Wexford hurling team who were drowing their defeat), a fantastic dinner at an American-style Diner, some great music at a pub under a hotel (where Liz had a chat to the old Norwegian flautist after the show, getting his recommendation on where to get an Irish wood flute from), then the Temple Bar. This was enough for us, having had our fill of music and other things, and needing to get home for Gail to let us in.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 05 Jul 2003
Sugar Club ( 1 photo )
Early Saturday afternoon when we awoke, the day looked like a good one to do not much in from the start.
First thing was first, we needed to do some shopping. Gail had organised our combined birthday celebration (hers is on same day as mine) for that night, at a trendy place where you had to wear any shoes except Trainers (that's sneakers for Aussies). Guess what the only pair of shoes I had bought in with me were. So, with the advice of Gail and her sister Emma (who spent the afternoon at Gail's house where they all fussed over her eleven month-old girl Eimier), we headed for a cheap place to pick up clothes and did so. First day in living history where I came home with new clothes and Liz didn't!
Lunch was at O'brien's Irish Sandwich Bar, which I had been to the London branch of and was quite impressed, before we headed home with our spoils (including a cheap Gameboy for the long nights when we have run out of books to read in the van).
Gail's invited friends arrived late to eat small portions of the huge quantities of assembled snacky foods, have a few drinks and then embark on the fifteen minute walk to the venue for the night's entertainment, the Sugar Club. Not being clubbing people ourselves, Liz and I weren't holding out for much and at first we weren't impressed. The hefty entry charge, and the fact that we were taking it easy after the excesses of the previous days meant that the hot smoky environment had us asking for the keys for the walk home at about midnight.
But, little did we know, there was something special waiting in the wings to save the day/night - The Camenbert Quartet. This was easily one of the best bands I have ever seen play live, having a go at anything and everything, multi-media presentation looping away in the background with "Buy Now" flashing across the stage as they mentioned their own album, and above all playing good funny music, having a good go at themselves in the process.
Two hours later, we retired our battered ears to the relative silence outside the club, walking back to Gails place to once again inflate our air mattress, build a room and flake out. Just like the van!
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 04 Jul 2003
Into Dublin ( 23 photos )
We'd hoped that Friday would be a bit more successful, and we were right. First thing was to work out what to do with the van while we were going into Dublin for a few days - no parking in there, and we were to stay with Gail, a friend of mine from working at RTA in Sydney. Chatting with the manager of the park, we managed to put the van into secure storage for the extended weekend for fifteen euros, way cheaper than we thought we could organise.
A bus helpfully pulled up right at the park and took us straight into the middle of the town - no fuss at all.
Now in the middle of yet another strange city, we needed to work out a plan of attack - first stop was the nearest cafe. Consulting city maps, we found the tourist office where we asked about places that could store our heavy pack for the day, and found one nice and central at one of the internet cafes. Of course, we popped our head into a few touristy shops to see if Dublin was any better in this regard.
By now we had a bit of a feel of the city, and it has a great vibe to it. It's been said that it's not a pretty city, it doesn't have fantastic museums, but it has plenty of life. The people we had chatted to thus far seemed genuinely happy and wanted to chat. That is strange in a commercialised big city - how Dublin does it I'm not sure, but it works well.
For lunch we found our way to the Dublin Castle, where we sat in the courtyard and ate sandwiches we had brought with us. On from there to wander the city semi-randomly, taking in the awesome Saint Patrick's Cathedral and accompanying Park, a few more tourist info places where we gathered intelligence to refine our attack on the city.
We had to get one thing out of the way - the Guinness Storehouse, home of the dark brew which you just have to drink when in Dublin. Despite the high price, the tour was suprisingly self-guided, although after a while we didn't really mind. It's not where it's actually brewed anymore - that's done down the road. Think of an all-singing, purpose-built Guinness World and you'd pretty much have it.
The history, brewing, transport, cooperage (very interesting) and other aspects of the world that is Guinness were explained in just enough detail. The highlight of the tour is the included pint in the Gravity Bar, easily giving the best views over Dublin you can get (the city has no high-rise buildings), and, the best pint of Guinness you can get anywhere. Supposedly. Even Liz drank hers, and described it as slightly less awful than usual, so that's saying something.
On the way down from there, we were suckered into the "Perfect Pint Machine". This is where they train you how to pull a pint of Guinness properly - it's not a simple task to get correct. We both had a go, and, oh whoops, had to drink the result. Great fun and we have the certificates to prove we are experts in it now.
Our ongoing text-message communication with Gail resulted in a call to meet up the road for the first time in two years or so, and we all seemed happy to see each other. After a quick wander back to get our bag from storage, we went to her place - a very new one-bedroom in central Dublin (walk everywhere!) which she had generously lent us the lounge-room of with an air mattress.
The night was supposed to be a gentle welcome of Thai dinner and then maybe a few drinks (several other friends were with us), but it somehow developed into a 3:30am arrival home, having visited a great Thai restaurant (going well so far), the trendy and truly massive "French cafe bar" Cafe en Seine (looking a little shaky) and then making it to "the biggest pick-up joint around" Break For The Border (oh deary me). It was such a great night, a good introduction into Dublin night-life.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 03 Jul 2003
Newgrange, around Dublin ( 14 photos )
Thursday we started off the morning at the farm hostel, and headed to the one main attraction in the area - Bru na Boinne, the best known part of which is Newgrange. This (along with its lesser known cousins Knowth and Dowth and a few hundered others in the area) is a five thousand year old passage tomb. The most striking feature is the outer quartz wall, which is a reconstruction, but the rest of it is pretty much original. There's one long passage you enter which, during a Winter Solstice, the sun shines down all the way as it rises in the morning. There are three little chambers at the end of this passage, forming a cross shape.
We reached the monument after a brief wander through the visitor centre (very good, as they go), then clambering on a bus to the site itself. From there, we were given an hour or so worth of guided tour, chat and wandering around the impressive construction itself.
After the tour, we watched an audio-visual thing, the most annoying aspect of which was that there was lots of speculation presented as fact. Pseudo-science is a dangerous thing.
From there, we were to tackle our biggest city in a while - Dublin, so we allowed plenty of time to bugger it up. Good move.
There is a ring-road around it, which we headed to first (from the North, of course), and drove around to the south-side heading to a caravan park recommended all over the place to check in for the night. There had been one more junction added since our map was printed - no suprise really, but I was suprised that the ring hadn't actually been completed. It's more of a half-ring road, which then dumps you un-ceremoniously in the suburbs to fight your own way to where you want to go. We later heard on the radio that there is a conservation fight going on as the proposed path of the motorway goes through an old castle. They seem to have come to some compromise - not a moment to soon for the drivers and tourists around the place.
That was all fine, we had dealt with worse, so we drove on to the target town of Shankill, south of Dublin itself but on the train line. Only the caravan park wasn't there anymore. It had closed down, despite a friend having stayed there recently and the February edition of Lonely Planet Ireland recommending it too! Oh well, back on the road, back through the city, trying to find the semi-ring-road to the only remaining caravan park in Dublin, Camac Valley, on the N7 near Rathcoole.
Quite a nice place, we cooked dinner, Liz went for a walk around the local park before we collapsed into bed, worn out from our tricky city driving.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 02 Jul 2003
Louth and Meath ( 1 photo )
(Continued from the Northern Ireland section)
We only had one go at it this time, but we still managed to miss the border itself. No signs at all that we saw, only the switch back to Republic-style signs, markings, and the steady degredation in road quality.
We bumped our way south through Dundalk the joined a motorway (our first in Ireland, somehow not up to the British standards, but since everyone drives at 60mph instead of 90mph it doesn't matter too much anyway) heading towards Drogheda.
Here, we attempted to enter the town Information Centre, only to note that there was not any parking areas we would fit in. Cars would fit in one part (well, very short ones), and the rest was taken up by the bus station, which was attached to the Information Centre.
Unphased, we parked in a bus stop and Liz ran in to ask for the nearest caravan park (our guides didn't really show any in this area), while I awaited military action. Then I remebered that, since we had crossed the border, everybody was too busy having a good time somewhere else to worry about it, and I relaxed.
After a while of explaining what she wanted to the phased staff, Liz and I were directed to where I currently write from - fifteen kilometres down the road at the Slane Farm Hostel. This pleasant little place is just what it says on the box - a working farm which also contains a hostel, and allows camping in the basic but nice back field.
There is a big world map at reception where you can put a sticky-star on your place of origin - there were already plenty from Sydney so we didn't bother. Interesting to note how far and wide people are from.
We are parked in some form of holidaying pecking-order here. We arrived first, parked wherever it suited us and unpacked to relax for the afternoon. A little while later, a massive motorhome of the needs-its-own-postcode variety pulled up to one side of us (this perplexes us - we have more than we need in this little one, not sure what more two people could need), followed soon after by two cyclists on the other side who have pitched their tent. There's plenty of ways to see the world, we're happy being somewhere in the middle. Some of the weather this country has pitched at us certainly isn't cycling weather.
(permanent link to this story)
Towards the South ( 1 photo )
This morning was an un-surprisingly slow affair, with some reading, a bit of breakfast organised, and much apathy. We kicked the soccer ball around for a while, tiring ourselves out before loading up Rosie for another day.
There was not too much pointed out to us of interest in the area between Belfast and the border with the Republic, and we were running low on fuel, so we drove on south through Newry, before seeking out much cheaper fuel back in the Republic of Ireland.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 01 Jul 2003
Belfast and Castlewellan ( 27 photos )
Eventually we got on the road, heading more-or-less straight south to see what Belfast had to offer. In a nutshell, not a lot.
Cleaner and more lively that the few other big cities we have been into recently, there were certainly places of interest. We managed to park somewhat in the city centre almost by accident, and unloaded to take a wander around. This took in the dominant City Hall, the leaning Albert Memorial Clocktower, un-impressive St Anne's Cathedral (not being religious people, we look at the architecture of them and this was rather bland), and famous Crown Liquor Saloon, where we lunched in the extravagant surroundings, enjoying a birthday pint, great food and very rude service. Can't have everything, I guess.
The first we noticed of the city's scarred past was reading about the Grand Opera House, across the road from our lunch location. In 1991 an IRA bomb caused massive damage to it, millions were spent doing it up again before "another well loaded ruck was parked outside in May 1993". You wouldn't know now, but this was just one sign of the way the Troubles have affected the city.
It does become a lot more obvious when you drive a little out into suburbia, as we did next, to where there is the massive ugly "peace fence", separating the Catholic areas from the Protestant. Towering at least ten metres high, there are security camera monitored gates which only open during daylight hours (which, as an aside, we are still having until at least 10pm here). We got some stares as we tried to look closer, mothers clutching their children and the like, so we decided not to push our luck, taking a few snaps from afar with zoom lenses.
Next stop was whowhatwherewhenwhy, a similar place to Questacon in Canberra for those who have been there. In the "we're too cool to have decent signage" way of many places, however, we couldn't even find the way in! This hurdle easily overcome by walking in the exit, we were almost instantly transfixed by the strange and amazing sights - massive marble balls on water you could spin around, musical stairs with a different note on each step (Liz's favourite), a fire tornado, and lots of interesting hands-on experiments. Worst criticism of the place was that a lot of the stuff was geared a little too much for the younger ones. No problem, as we had a great time in the "adults must be accompanied by a child under eight" section playing shop, firing balls around the place and playing with water toys.
We could have spent a lot more time there, but the place hadn't quite removed our bad taste of the city in general, so we wandered out (when we could work out what floor that was on - the organisation of the place was rediculous).
Having had enough of the city and its very strange, tense feeling, we headed out in a southerly direction. It wasn't long until we hit a massive traffic jam. Not sure for what the problem was as we crawled in the direction of our next caravan park, we soon found out - at least fifty army jeeps, police, etc., all weilding automatic weapons were surrounding a park, directing traffic in a different direction. We have no idea what the problem was, as there were still children playing in the park as best we could see, but when we asked later that night if anyone knew about it, suggestions ranged from pipe-bombs to bomb hoaxes. Like water off a duck's back, nobody seemed phased - it was just a normal occurrence in the city.
Very glad to be out of the city, we headed south looking for somewhere to go. This lead us more or less directly to Castlewellan, where there was a local Forest Park complete with camping facilities. Plenty of other people, a good atmosphere and proximity to the town made it a sure-fire winner for us, as we unpacked, relaxed, and headed straight into town to unwind and celebrate my birthday as best as we could.
The basic plan was sound - wander around the village's eight or so pubs, sample the delights of each, find some food somewhere and then stagger back home. First pub there was only two really old guys in there and the bartender, who turned down the volume of Wimbledon on the TV as we entered, as if to listen to our conversation.
We had decided that we would proceed around the town in a circular manner, not allowed to jump pubs to get to the food, and as luck would have it, the food place next door was closed, so we had to get to another pub instead. This one was in a B&B place, where we watched the next set of tennis and then some cooking show, chatting with two old biddies about such and such. Despite claims on the signs outside to the contrary, this place wasn't serving food.
No matter, as we only had a couple of pubs between us and the food, the first being a tiny, old, horrible little place run by a crazy paranoid old woman named Mary (the one on the left, smartypants) who was nevertheless quite accomodating (she practically had to open up to serve us, as nobody else was in there or appeared to have been for half a century). She said that Ireland was a nice place to travel around (we agree), but everywhere bigger than this eight-pub, one-horse, two-food-outlet town was evil, and you would get stabbed, everything stolen, and generally have a really bad time there. She'd never travel to London since it was to big and dangerous. We pretended to heed her advice, but still intend to see places a little more adventureous than Castlewellan on our travels. Oh, and her Guiness was terrible.
Taking the by now obligatory photo outside the pub, we wandered past one pub that was closed (what's with that!), the next one was the last on one side of the street - half way there! We had a chat with the very friendly owner, who's son had recently returned from Australia, he astounded us by shouting us a round of drinks! I suppose the old adage is true - "the first one's free", and combined with free Jukebox and cheap pool table, our Castlewellan pub crawl had run off the rails. We played for a while, had another round of drinks (had to pay for something there - we felt bad).
By this time the rest of the pubs were closed, but luckily one of the town's "food" outlets was still open. Not at all fussy what we ate, it seemed ok at the time and has caused no ill effects, so it must have been alright.
Somehow managing to navigate back through the Forest Park to the caravan park (we had cleverly parked near both the entrance and the toilet block), we set up the bed then crashed heavily.
(permanent link to this story)
Happy Birthday to Me! ( 27 photos )
Yes, that time again - one year older. We are spending it doing very little at a caravan park where we are parked about a metre from the ocean. We have been listening all night to the waves breaking right near us. It is of course very relaxing, and we are taking our time getting on the road today.
Liz has been harbouring some presents from far away, thanks to Mum and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, and all those who sent birthday wishes - it's good to hear from everyone.
And now I'm off to ring the folks back home, who have been trying to get through to me this morning without much luck thanks to the international phone systems.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 30 Jun 2003
Giant's Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede ( 47 photos )
Getting on the road on Monday, we spent most of the day driving around the very scenic North-East coast of Northern Ireland, taking in the towns of Portstewart, Portrush and Portballintraie, a quick stop to have a look in the gift shop at the Old Bushmills Distillery, before tackling the two big tourist attractions in this area.
First was the Giant's Causeway, famous world-wide, although I have to admit to not having heard of it. It consists of 38,000 (or so, we didn't count) strange pentagonal and hexagonal stones, all stacked in columns by the sea. We didn't expect much (that's the best way with these attractions), and after a quick look at the Bushmills to Giant's Causeway Narrow Guage Railway, we then parked down the road from the Causeway Visitor's centre (which we ignored) to avoid paying the hefty parking fee, we wandered across the top of the cliffs for a good view from above.
It wasn't until we got nice and close (after a walking down the cliffs admiring the huge "The Organ" built of similar stones nearby) that we truly appreciated just how strange this place is. There's a pretty complicated geological explanation, of course, but we just thought it was cool, and happily walked all over the place, glad that nobody has been silly enough to fall off and turn the place into a "view from a distance" tourist attraction like so many others.
Walking back to the top, and hence shunning the expensive mini-bus that so many others took (if you are disabled, then sure, but lazy is not good enough - it was a lovely day!), we decided that rather than take in the "twelve minute audio-visual Causeway experience" we were glad we had seen the real thing the way it is meant to be seen, and headed back to the van.
Onwards not far around the coast to the stunning scenery of the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. We had expected this to be a big, expensive attraction that you do just because everyone else does, but were pleasantly suprised to find a small, National Trust-run area where the bridge took second place by far to the stunning scenery. The clear blue waters far below, nesting birds all up the cliff faces and the ones diving for fish a hundered metres or so below, all while you walked along almost totally un-spoilt coast-line and tiny islands once you had made it across the bridge. The bridge itself was rather non-scary, only 20m or so above the sea below.
Back in the van, we drove around probably the most picturesque drive of the trip so far - the coast road between Ballyvoy and Cushendun. This two-tonne-or-less hilly, windy road ducked and turned all along the coast line, until we had to wait ten minutes or so for some cows to wander along the road! The farming family were all out in force making sure the cows made it along safely.
From Cushendun, we looked in the Glenariff Forest at the caravan park there but were quite un-impressed. We attempted to have a "Tim's Birthday Barbequeue" yesterday by purchasing some meat to this site as it was listed as having a BBQ, but upon arrival we found it almost totally devoid of life, nothing to do, in the middle of a forest and certainly no BBQ.
Back to Cushendun, we spent the night in the caravan park where we still sit. We didn't quite have a BBQ, but Liz did a great job of dinner last night (kind of like a BBQ, but inside), and some bacon and eggs for breakfast this morning.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 29 Jun 2003
Northern Ireland - Derry ( 15 photos )
(Continued from the Ireland 1 section)
Driving across the border was a strange affair. At first, we didn't even notice. No signs, no nothing. But all of a sudden, little things are different - the road markings switch back to UK-style, road distances are back to miles, petrol soars in price, and the roads are far far better. Also, the money is Northern Ireland pounds which are worth the same as UK pounds but have different notes. No Euros here. Confusing!
We drove in to Derry/Londonderry for a look around. This place was the centre of some of the worst "Troubles" which I won't attempt to provide history for here. Suffice to say, there was some concern that we were travelling there, even though nothing has been a problem since 1997. Parking on the outskirts, we wandered towards the centre for a look around.
A few more changes became apparent the more we looked - the big chain stores such as Sainsburys appear again, signs no longer had the gaelic equivalent displayed as prominently, and everywhere you looked, if a sign originally was printed with Londonderry, you could be sure that someone had scribbled out the London part in grafitti.
We tried un-successfully to connect the laptop at an internet cafe on The Diamond, which is the central square of the walled part of town. Derry is one of the only cities around which still has a complete wall, having never been penetrated. If only this had helped those who were slaughtered at the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972, the memorial to which we took in soberly, hidden away in suburbia.
Considering wandering further around town, we instead decided that some lunch was in order to rest our weary bodies - Liz's back is particularly bad. We were directed to one of the only places to eat - a great little pub where we ate a huge three-course meal for a rather reasonable price, before setting off on a wander around town.
It was about here that I remembered that now we were back in the UK, I could use my dial-up access on the phone once again, so we didn't need to look any further for an Internet cafe.
Having had enough of a look at specific sites, we walked down a different way back to the van. Finding a Levi's shop, and noting that I desperately needed some new pants, I tried on a pair of jeans, liked them straight away and grabbed them. Trying not to convert the price back to Aussie dollars (thought I was over that!), we bought a soccer/foot ball on the cheap as well - good to kick around caravan parks for some exercise.
After a quick dash back across the border to stock up on some much cheaper fuel, we drove on to tonight's port of call, Drumaheglis Marina & Caravan Park, not far from the little town of Ballymoney. This is a pleasant place, on a lake, which we have had a walk around. Don't think we will need to cook dinner tonight after our lunch!
(permanent link to this story)
Grianan of Aileach ( 5 photos )
Getting on the road rather late due to our sleep-in, we dragged our weary bodies towards the Grianan of Aileach, an impressive stone fort built on top of a hill near the Northern Irish border at Burt.
We wound our way up a very steep hill, holding up traffic as we pushed Rosie up in first gear, greatful that the clutch is now working just fine.
The place itself was rather similar to Staigue Fort we saw the other day on the Ring of Kerry. Walls four metres thick, twenty three metres in diameter, it was built around two thousand years ago and is currently undergoing re-construction. Despite the warnings that you were only allowed to look at it, people were all inside it and all up the walls, so we followed suit accordingly, taking in great views all around.
From there, we drove on into Northern Ireland, which, since it is a separate country, is in a separate section!
(permanent link to this story)
Rest after the Climb ( 5 photos )
This morning, since it is Sunday, we are enjoying a well-deserved sleep in, not wanting to get up and go just yet as our aching muscles and joints attempt to get back into working order.
I keep forgetting to mention that Ireland is currently hosting the Special Olympics. This is like the olympics, only for people who are special, such as those with Down Syndrome. This is the first time it has been held outside of America.
The hospitality they are being extended is very warm, every town has a sign up saying who they are hosting, and the other day we think Rosie was in a road-cycling event, as we drove past several cyclists pushing onwards towards a little town. It was great fun.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 28 Jun 2003
Donegal - Mountain Climbing ( 28 photos )
On Saturday, we set an alarm to wake up earlier than other days, as we had been getting on the road later and later each day.
First stop was Rossnowlagh Beach, not far from our overnight accommodation, where after a quick wander across the very flat sand, we noticed that everyone else had their cars down there. Not poeple to miss an opportunity, we jumped in Rosie and hoped we didn't get bogged as we drove her up and down the beach, true Aussie-on-the-other-side-of-the-world style.
We found cheap fuel on the way through the city of Donegal (which, despite being the county town, only has 3000 people living there), and thought that perhaps another recommended Island was in order, heading out to Burtonport for the ferry to Arranmore. We sat and had a light lunch while deciding whether to get the ferry or not - it was quite expensive, and we would have had to wait around for a while. I noticed a local teenager who was feeding coins into a pool table, practising against himself, who might like an opponent for a change. A round of good luck saw me just winning, although I have to admit that their rules they play here are quite lenient compared to some.
In the end, we decided that the Island could wait until next time, and instead took on a far more challenging afternoon.
This started with a drive to Dunlewy, behind probably the slowest driver in all of the country (Rosie's not so good at overtaking), where we found the lake-side Information Centre. We had headed here for information about climbing the imposing 752m (2440 feet) Mount Errigal, the highest in Donegal. This we began by driving around to "base camp" parking lot, where there were so many other cars we had trouble parking.
In the end, we scrambled up over bog, stones, and very narrow ledges to reach the summit in an hour and a half, where we rested for a little while while trying not to be blown off the top down the almost shere sides. It apparently has one of the smallest caps (about 2m square) in Ireland, meaning that we had to keep our wits about us at all times. Getting the last hundered feet or so was across a very narrow ledge where we felt like tight-rope walkers, focusing on our path while to either side of our vision the world scrolled by rapidly, so far down.
Going down was easier than we expected, my almost-useless knees somehow held out, and we both only had a few trips, and those at the safe parts. We collapsed into Rosie, warn out and sore, but very glad that we had made it, not exactly being experienced mountaineers.
We wanted to head quick-smart to a caravan park, and found ourselves one up on the shores of Sheephaven Bay. Driving there was another challenge, on possibly the worst roads anywhere, ever (Ireland's roads are of a pretty poor standard across the board, in some places there are signs showing that EU cash has been used to replace them, and those sections are very good. However, the vast majority of the tarmac is lumpy, bumpy, potholed, and looks like people come along every few months, dig massive holes, and fill them in haphazardly).
We took a turn towards a town which we thought to be kind of where we wanted to go (our map for Ireland is not very detailed), which was a single track road where the two cars in front decided they had gone the wrong way and wanted to turn around. However, we pushed on and somehow, this magic road took about an hour off our journey, dumping us much closer to our goal than we had imagined! From there, we pushed on towards the town of Downings, where we checked into the caravan park, before wandering to the nearest pub that served food and devouring whatever came, too tired to even think about cooking.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 27 Jun 2003
Mayo, Sligo - Seaweed Baths! ( 13 photos )
We eventually found where to pay for Thursday night's accommodation - it was the local post office/service station/shop/caravan park and probably everything else in the town, run by one little old guy who I think had major problems dealing with the fact that when I walked in there was someone else in there as well. Two customers! He got a little flustered, but worked it out in the end.
Leaving that one horse town on Friday morning, we drove out towards Achill Island, described as "full of villages deserted in the middle of the 19th century and others deserted outside of summer every year", we headed off in search of the former.
Stumbling we know not how across a tiny "Internet cafe" inside what seemed to be an Adult Learning Centre, I added a quick update so people knew we were still alive.
We did find Slievemore Deserted Village, some of which was the summer residence of cattle grazers and the rest of which the inhabitants have been traced as moving elsewhere. But nobody ever asked them why. It was a great spot, nestled in the rolling hills, now only the sheep and the occasional tourist wandered around the ruins.
About here we decided that those who had deserted Achill Island probably had the right idea - there was very little going for it, and the weather was terrible. So, when in Achill, do as the 19th century inhabitants do and desert the place.
The drive out there just to discover that we shouldn't have bothered had taken up a big chunk of our day in the wrong direction, so we drove and drove up through county Sligo, where the weather almost immediately turned much better. We didn't like Mayo very much. We found the picturesque Lough Talt (think lake) near Glencask for a rest and driver change, before heading eastward through the interestingly named Tubercurry, then north-east towards the town of Sligo.
Turning off just before Sligo, we went to Strandhill, where my Irish friend Gail had mentioned that there was something called a seaweed baths there. We were not sure what to expect, but poked our heads in the door anyway. We chickened out and had a look at their rocky beach and strange monument, before deciding that if Gail said it was good, it must be.
In this place, Liz and I shared a room where you alternate between a steam room and a bath full of none-other than seaweed! It was a very relaxing hour, even if our skin was all slimey from the seaweed gel, we felt most refreshed after it.
Looking for a caravan park not too far away, we drove into county Donegal and onwards to Ballyshannon, where we checked into a nice little caravan park by the lake. We set up, then wandered into town, around the steep streets then settled into a lively little pub for the night.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 26 Jun 2003
Galway, Connemara ( 15 photos )
The horrible weather today has meant that we did little other than drive around the place, winding up the coast.
Driving in the direction of Galway, we went through the strange landscape of The Burren. Formed by tectonic activity pushing the sea-bed up to form ragged landscapes, there were lots and lots of rocks around the place, used as dry-stone fences, and also used in the 5000 year-old Poulnabrone Dolmen.
This apparently is one of the most famous images of Ireland, although we are yet to see any. You could describe it as just a bunch of rocks, although the place has been carefully excavated after the covering earth gradually eroded. It's a sad sign of the times that there needs to be a sign saying "do not climb on this." I guess the alternative is Stonehenge-like fencing off. Not sure which is worse.
After a quick cafe-stop in Ballyvaughan, we drove into Galway for fuel and an evil McDonalds snack. Not much more looking around as we had some miles to cover and plenty to see, plus the weather was urging us back into the dry haven that is Rosie.
Most of the rest of the day was driving through Connemara - a Gaelic-speaking district of almost total isolation, hugely separated tiny villages, and heavy fog.
The most interesting stop of the day was tucked away in the middle of nowhere - Roundstone Music, Craft and Fashion. This little place is the world centre for Irish musical instruments, having supplied such famous events as Riverdance, and you could watch their specialty bodhrans being made, read all about it and of course buy one made to order. Also on display were flutes, whistles, and plenty of instruments that we don't really need but which would be fun nonetheless.
From there, we drove through the misty mountain passes towards a less-interesting nowhere town Belcarra, where we are staying at the nice and cheap (well, we think - there was noone here to actually pay so we just drove in and set up) Carra Caravan and Camping Park. The weather has slowly calmed down, but it is still a night in watching DVDs that we have planned.
(permanent link to this story)
Kerry and Claire ( 15 photos )
Today we awake to do it all again, however there aren't so many things we want to see and plenty of distance to cover as we drive further up the West coast, so it could be a big driving today methinks. Plus the weather is terrible, raining the hardest it has since we arrived.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 25 Jun 2003
Kerry and Claire - Bunratty, Cliffs of Moher, Doolin ( 42 photos )
We headed off early, driving through the city of Limerick (many people had mentioned that you didn't want to waste your time there, and especially didn't want to park a camper van there - we didn't need to think hard about it).
Instead, after missing it totally the first time, we eventually made it to Bunratty Castle and Folk Park, Bunratty. So many people had said this was worth seeing, that we didn't even mind paying the high fee to get in (as an aside, all prices in our Lonely Planet, published only in February, have gone up quite a lot, some by almost double), and we weren't disappointed.
We had come only for the castle, but actually enjoyed the folk park more. Think Old Sydney Town, but with lots of different types of dwellings, quaint shops, people you can watch make apple pie and the eat some next door, or some cake on the peat fire topped with butter made that morning. And somehow it avoided being totally tourist-tacky despite all this. You didn't feel there were thirty coach-loads plus a carpark full of cars worth of people there, even if there was.
We lunched on their replica main street before taking on the castle itself. Built in 1425, it is almost totally intact, and everything inside is at least two hundered years old. This is attributed to a great restoration project in the 1970's where huge amounts were spent by private owners then the whole thing bequeathed to the Irish people. Very generous of them. We wandered around the place, dodging up tiny spiral staircases between coach-loads of French tourists (we learnt "thankyou" and "excuse me" very quickly), before deciding that as great as it sounded, the Medieval Banquet they hold twice-nightly complete with serving whenches, mead and lots of carved-up animals would have to wait until next trip, when we were on better terms with the bank manager.
We drove through the county town of Claire, Ennis, which had almost nothing going for it, stopping instead at the little town of Ennistmon, which Lonely Planet had pointed out had free internet access in the library. We didn't need to be told twice, as Liz and I both sat there for an hour and a half catching up with the world's events. Unfortunately, we couldn't plug the laptop in so no website upload from there.
Next on the list was the spectacular Cliffs of Moher, which once again had been discovered by people from as far as Asia, and even some old ockers wearing John Farnham T-Shirts. There were local buskers of course, playing some sea shanties which managed to fit in rather well with the views.
And weren't they great. You are about 200m up from the sea, and if you get far enough away from every one else, you can just hear the faint crashes of waves below. Sea birds squark in the distance, circling and nesting on the rocks, almost as oblivious of the heights as those moronic people who choose to stand right on the edge and look over, despite the massive piles of broken rocks at the bottom where millions of years of erosion has seen the cliffs move further and further back.
The section you can officially walk along is actually rather small, and the rest is private property, but that didn't stop plenty of people moving in for a closer look. The views we got were plenty good enough to make us not think too badly of the four euro charge just to park your car. Guess the government has to get some money from it somehow.
Onwards to Doolin, a small town in three parts in the middle of nowhere, by the sea. Apparently people come from far and wide just to hear the traditional music in the pubs each night, so we had to check that out of course. This we did after dinner and walking ten minutes or so from the caravan park to where the pubs were.
We went into the most famous/popular pub, O'Connors, where our plan of arriving early to get a decent seat (around 7:30, music at 9:30) almost didn't work - the place was jammed. We grabbed two seats at the bar and relaxed, awaiting the band. A local turned up and sat next to us at the bar, who turned out to be a guitarist who plays there on the weekends, checking out the competition. We had a good chat, then he wandered off as the band started.
They played amazing well a combination of ballads, reels and jigs, and the spirits were high all night. Walking carefully back to the caravan park (we have a great little site, right beside the river), we retired after yet another full day in Ireland.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 24 Jun 2003
Kerry and Claire - Killarney, Dingle ( 17 photos )
Our attempts on Tuesday to find out just what a Bog Village is were thwarted on two counts - the huge numbers of tourist buses there and also our lack of cash. No great loss.
Driving into Killarney a happy service station attendant fueled up the bus and chatted about the weather and the like, all with a smile before running off to do the same elsewhere. A bit further on we went in to a big Tesco in Tralee to stock up on essentials to make dinner for the next few days. We ducked as we cleared a 2.6m maxiumum height bar - just.
Next diversion was down the Dingle Peninsula. This had been recommended by several different parties, so we were keen to see what the fuss was about. The most interesting part there was driving over the Conor Pass, a high, winding road over the mountains which form the central part of the peninsula and make it the highest mountain pass in Ireland. It has to be said, it wasn't as difficult driving as when we drove up Hardknott Pass in England, but that was in a small car!
We were by far the biggest vehicle in the car park at the top, which the funny looks from other tourists confirmed. Or perhaps we were just really ugly.
Back down the otherside to the town of Dingle, nestled in between the hills. This place is famous for the resident Dolphin, Funghi. They do boat trips where you get your money back if he doesn't come and dance around the boat like it some kind of a game, but we were not in the mood to part with such lumps of cash. Instead, after a quick walk around the town, we drove down a one-track four-wheel-drive-only kind of road which dumped us at a tiny carpark on the beach. From there, we had a great view across the bay, including Funghi rolling around in the limelight.
Driving back inland along a slightly easier road, we headed towards Tralee, the onwards to Castleisland for a rest after our large amount of driving. We had a quick look around the town, stretching our legs before picking a place to aim for the night.
We considered finding a place off the beaten track, and as such drove generally towards the town of Adare, but zig-zagging of the main road looking in a few little back-water towns. It turns our they were just a bit un-lively for our liking, so in the end we made it to probably our favourite caravan park so far, a couple of kilometres out of Adare.
We ate dinner in the blazing sun, sitting by the van and soaking up the rays in a way you still have to enjoy when it happens here.
The town had been mentioned as particularly beautiful, so we headed in after dinner to check it out. We found a nice little pub with a friendly guy running it who had lived in Sydney for quite some time, and he actually had an Ettamogah Pub poster on the wall, although he didn't think it was real! We quickly let him know just how real it was, and that, infact we used to play band gigs sitting there, and gossiped about so-and-so while standing there. Not at all what we had expected in a small town like that!
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 23 Jun 2003
South-West Cork and Kerry ( 23 photos )
Monday was the day to put some serious miles on the clock as we headed around the wonderful coastal landscapes of south-western Cork and Kerry. First was Mizen Head Peninsula, where we drove right down to the lighthouse along some treacherous one-track roads, had a look around the visitor's centre where a great little old Irish guy was playing an accordian and singing folk-songs. We listened for a while, and became charged once again to find a pub doing the traditional music, which has thus far been hard to come across.
Morning tea stop was at a little cafe where they had donkeys and horses in a field which we fed before getting back on the road, heading towards the famous Ring of Kerry via great little towns such as Bantry and Glengarriff.
The Ring was reached through a high mountain pass with tunnels and the like - Liz was having a ball! We joined the ring at Kenmare, where we drove west along the Kenmare River, constantly in awe at the views. The reputation this area has is certainly justified. There's not really words for it, you just have to see it for yourself.
One stop we made was at the 2000 year-old Staigue Fort, 4km of the beaten tourist track up very narrow one-track roads we just managed to squeeze through. The dry-stone fort was built in such a location that you have a great view of the water on the river, but it is almost impossible to see from the river itself.
Pushing ourselves, we viewed most of the ring from the van on our way around, as each little town could have taken a few days of exploration, but the thousands of tourists on coaches really blighted the thought of that. Perhaps next time, off season.
We did stop at one stage at a pub which claimed to have "the most famous view in Ireland". I wouldn't disagree, it was such a wonderful vista over the islands below, and the weather held out well to provide a stunning scene.
The night was spent in the Glenross Caravan and Camping Park, on the outskirts of the town of Glenbeigh. More expensive than we were hoping, it was nice but now it's time to push on - we are aiming for the curiously-titled Kerry Bog Village Museum.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 22 Jun 2003
Blarney Castle, Cork City ( 35 photos )
Sunday our luck changed and we actually managed to see things. First thing was first - back to the Blarney Castle, where we were some of the first in, dodging the huge crowds arriving as we left. The place is extremely picturesque, and you get the feeling that if the story of the stone (kissing it gives you the "gift of the gab", or "the ability to tell lies for seven years" as Elizabeth I said) wasn't around, it would be a lovely little un-spoilt place. Going straight up the precariously-winding staircase which somehow managed to cope with the heavy tourist traffic, we emerged on the top, and took in the great views of the surrounding area. It's about six stories high, straight up like a needle, and the kissing part happens at the top. You lie on your back, hold some handles, and get pushed off the edge backwards to where the well-worn stone is. Not for those with vertigo, we both braved it and now talk much more. I think.
Pushing our luck, we took a third swipe at getting into Cork city. This time, we found that Sunday is a day where the place is almost completely deserted in the morning, presumably because of the vast quantity of church-goers performing their weekly tasks. As such, parking was not too hard to find on the side of the road, and we grabbed the Lonely Planet for a walk around town. First we found a net cafe, where I uploaded the last update. The guy only let me plug my laptop in because it is an Apple - he had one as well and was quite pleased to have someone to blather on to about them.
Taking off on a wander around the city, we saw plenty of interesting old buildings, but found that in general the hype people had built up about how it was a great place to see was somehow not lived up to. Sure, there were nice bridges over the rivers through town, but they weren't half as nice as in Amsterdam. The massive ugly roadworks didn't help things much either, and in the end we jumped back in the van to continue onwards.
We were hoping that recommendations of the town of Kinsale, a little while south of Cork city were closer to the mark, and we were not disappointed. The description of "picture postcard prettiness blighted by traffic in summer" is spot-on, as it its reputation as the gourmet captial of Ireland.
First on the agenda was some lunch, this was our big spend for the week. We stopped at a fish and chips restaurant (they don't really exist in Oz, think of a nice restaurant which just happens to serve seafood, including fish and chips, not a greasy corner shop), before wandering around the quaint little town, dodging cars but still enjoying the old buildings.
Pushing further along the south coast, we stopped in just-as-beautiful but not nearly as popular towns with names such as Timoleague, Courtmacsherry (where we had a little picnic beside the road), and Clonakilty.
Our aim for the night was The Hideaway Camping and Caravan Park, Skibbereen. Not far out of town, we parked and set up before wandering back in to spend the evening soaking up the friendly small-town atmosphere.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 21 Jun 2003
Cork ( 20 photos )
We took a first swipe at going to kiss the fabled Blarney stone, about 3km from the caravan park. However, as we arrived and had just completed the rather long leaving-the-van routine of locking everything and putting valuables out of sight, etc., wandered over to the ticket office and it started raining.
Sure, that happens plenty of places, but the castle and its grounds are quite expansive and almost all un-covered, so for our hefty entrance fee, we wanted to enjoy it.
So, back in the bus and on to the next port of call, the Old Midleton Distillery. After dragging the girls to lots of distilleries all around Scotland, this was to be my one and only one over here - distillers of my favourite Jameson whiskey. This place actually has been superceeded by one down the road, but it was great to see the way things used to work, and since it wasn't running, you get a lot closer to the action. At the tasting at the end, Liz even started to like the stuff...
Next, we wandered down the road to the town of Cobh (pronounced "cove"). A nice little sea-side resort, it was the last port of call for the Titanic, and as such has the "White Star Line Hotel" and other such tourist-isms. We escaped most of this at a little cafe for a light brunch, before wandering back up the steep hills to the van.
People had mentioned to us a few times that the town (as opposed to the county) of Cork was worth visiting. So, we tried. However, the Irish seem to have a huge dislike for labelling their streets in any fashion. Road signs are an approximation at best, and we don't have particularly detailed maps which doesn't help much either. So, trying to park an over-height van in the middle of a city was always going to be a challenge. We discovered all manner of interesting back streets, but ended up almost totally lost. Giving up, we returned to our caravan park to attempt to get into Cork another way.
For our second attempt, we drove the van into the town of Blarney, where there is a bus that goes into the centre of Cork. "So", you might say, "you just got on that bus". Well, we found the bus stop eventually (the map of that town is even worse than the one of Cork), and got there at 3:25, just in time for the 3:30 bus. By about 3:55, we thought that the 4:00 bus might turn up. By about 4:20 we figured if a bus ever did turn up, most things in the town would be closed anyway, so we gave up Cork Attempt Two, heading to the Blarney Stone Hotel for a quiet drink with the other tourists. There was a noisy wedding driving past to presumably kiss the stone together, so we decided against going to look at that again.
Back to cook dinner, before wandering around the Blarney Golf Course next-door.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 20 Jun 2003
Ring Peninsula, Lismore, Lisgoold, into Cork ( 36 photos )
We awoke this morning a little later than usual (we are slowly getting our bodies out of the habit of waking up early), packed up and headed off down the road. Our ever-trusty guidebook pointed us at the Ring Peninsula 12km south of Dungarvan.
This is one of the few Gaeltacht areas in Ireland - which means the primary language is Gaelic, as reflected in the street signs, etc. Elsewhere in Ireland you get both languages or only English, but here it was as if we had finally made it to a completely different country.
Passing only two or so other cars along the amazing drive from Dungarvan, we arrived at the end of the road on Helvick Head. Along with the fantastic views across the harbour, there was a disused monastery and even an Irish language college.
Heading inland for a while, we came to the quaint little town of Cappoquin, where we had some morning tea and a look around the little shops. Running low on cash (as always), we went in to the post office to ask whether they changed cash. The answer came "no, but the bank at the end of town does - you'll have to hurry, they close in five minutes". Five minutes to get to the end of town! And it was only 12:25!
We should have remembered that, as home to only a thousand people, the end of town wasn't far away. About five shops, in fact. Upon entering, we were both totally amazed to be greeted straight away by an amazingly friendly teller, given some postcards, asked about our travels in a genuinely interested way, have our accents picked, and then be given cash out of what amounted to not much more than a pile of money within easy reach over the counter. Try that in the NAB. We were waved off, Euros in hand, and wished a pleasant journey. Total shell-shock. That's small-town Ireland.
About 6km out of town, we came to the Mt Melleray Cistercian Abbey, an amazingly huge thing built by some Irish monks expelled from France. Good place they picked, too. Beautiful grounds, almost totally silent. Only thing which disturbed it was the huge coach-load of school kids, just enough to convince us not to bother having a look around inside.
Back in our bus, we trundled through to Lismore. Twinned with Lismore in New South Wales, this one is far prettier. It is totally dominated by Lismore Castle, and built on the River Blackwater. We walked along the river-bank for a while before returning to have a look at St Carthage's Cathedral perched up on the opposite hill to the castle - a simple affair, we both thought it fitted in just right with a town of 750 people. Not so for the massive castle, which is only viewable by private hire for an extortinate sum of money.
Following some back-roads in the general direction of Cork, we stopped for a general rest at The Thatch pub in a village which we didn't know the name of at the time, but later believe was called Lisgoold. An Omen?
The pub itself was a nice friendly place, where we got chatting with drunk old local men, the middle-age land-lady who has recently taken over with her family and is discovering how little the locals like change, and the young bar-girl with a Melbournian boyfriend. Everyone is interested, and everyone wants to suggest ways of helping out. Great friendly country, this.
We drove on in to county Cork to our stop for the night, Blarney Caravan and Camping Park. From here we plan to explore Cork, Blarney and Kinsale over the next couple of days, and perhaps a little more of this rest we keep thinking a holiday is supposed to be about.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 19 Jun 2003
Ireland! - Wexford and Waterford ( 22 photos )
(Continued from South England 2)
It has long been a dream of Liz and I to make it to Ireland, and it nearly didn't happen on two counts: for one, we didn't quite know how to fit in driving one way to Ireland then going back across England to continue travels around Europe, and secondly, due to our mechanical problems.
The latter seem to be ok now, the old girl is battling on around the country, and Liz is driving her more and more. It's quite different to driving a nice tight little car like Percy - the steering is an approximation, gears are miles apart, the whole car is backwards, and about a foot wider and three feet higher than a normal car. Not to mention that driving at any speed over about 80km/h leaves you at the total mercy of the wind - lots of fun when overtaking trucks on motorways. So Liz is doing just fine!
So we are now safe and sound here, enjoying our travels around the countryside.
In the morning our ferry was reasonable - a little rough but nothing much to complain about. Getting up and convincing our bodies to so something useful at 2:30am after going to sleep only two or three hours earlier was a little challenging, but we were awake enough (we think) to notice that nobody on either side of the crossing checked our passports at all. I thought everyone was clamping down on security?
These Stena Line ferries are pretty big, we got squashed in on the truck deck because we were too tall for the normal car section.
We tried to grab some sleep with a little success, but in all we were playing for the rest of the day on about three hours sleep.
Driving off the ferry at the other end in Rosslare, we thought it was an appropriate time to plan what we were going to do. First decison: right or left? In the end, we are going in a clockwise direction around Ireland, starting at the south-east corner.
It rapidly became appropriate that Ireland is a confused little place. Speed limit signs are in mph, but distance measurements are in kilometres. After using miles for so long, I have decided that I like kilometres much better because they pass so much faster as you are on a long drive!
We had (obviously) no real plans, so after a quick consultation with our friendly Ireland Lonely Planet, we headed for the little fishing town of Wexford. Famous for almost nothing, we looked at the old town gates and walls, and got our first Euros out of the bank.
Of much greater scenic interest was the Hook Peninsula a little further along. Home to the world's/Europe's/Ireland's (delete depending on which source you choose to believe) oldest lighthouse, and some scenic coastline which boasted a huge boulder high up which had been washed up a couple of hundered years ago in a huge storm.
We had a fairly interesting tour of said lighthouse, run by one of the local girls with only Liz and I as the tour group. It was fairly early, but we had been up since 2am. Not sure what she thought of two un-washed, un-shaven (well me anyway) Australians prancing around with cameras, but I guess they get it often.
We travelled back up the peninsula looking at the haunted Loftus Hall, a ruined medieval church used by the Templar Knights, then a little further on to Dunbrody Abbey.
Here we left county Wexford and entered county Waterford, driving into the town of the same name. We wanted to have a little look around the town itself, so attempted to park in one of the many places to do so (Lonely Planet describes the town as one long parking lot), where Liz had to get out to get a ticket (it's on the wrong side, you see), got one, and I then noticed one of those height-restriction bars. Problem. 2.2 metres is less than 2.5 metres, so I reversed carefully on to the main road and sped away from the approaching traffic. Liz ran down the road after me.
So it was out of the town centre for us, onwards to the one thing of merit - the Waterford Crystal Visitor Centre. Not being collector of such things (I don't even claim to understand the attraction of it all), we were pleasantly suprised by the variety on offer, the friendliness of staff (see above for description of our appearances), and just how interesting it was. The prices were enough to bring us back down to earth however.
Next item of business was to organise a place to stay for the night. Job was done as we selected a caravan park just out of Dungarvan. By this time, a shower was well overdue, so we went straight to pick a pitch, get some shower tokens and relieve the world of our uncleanliness.
Although it was not our first night in a campground, we became very aware of plenty of people staring at us. Almost without exception, everyone else has a huge (I mean a truck-size huge) British or Irish registered white caravan or campervan, TV antennae, awnings, flashy cars to tow their vans, sewerage pipes, chocks for the wheels, microwaves, ovens, and enough other bits and pieces to re-define the term "mobile home".
Even though we don't see it as most stay for several days at a time, I imagine that their set-up process is about a two-hour task. We take three minutes. First, reverse the van on to the pitch. Secondly, connect the electricity. Third, get out our two folding outdoor chairs. Lastly, relax and do nothing after a job well done.
Sure, we have a laptop and other fancy gear with us, but we are happy to be away from a "home", meaning no TV, no microwave and certainly no satellite dishes!
So our bright-red, (relatively) small, Aussie-driven, Dutch-registered, quick-to-set-up van always gets people interested. Everyone says hello, while some want to chat for a long time.
That evening we wandered down the road to a nearby hotel bar where we had our first Irish drinks - including of course a Guiness (yes, it does taste different here to England, and it is a different drink all together to what you get in Oz).
Back to cook dinner in the van before reading a little and crashing very very tired to bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 18 Jun 2003
Rosie Runs, across Wales ( 6 photos )
This morning, the helpful and apologetic mechanic had another look, declaring the problem to now be the clutch slave cylinder. Sounds interesting, just get us a new one please! Once again, nobody in town had the part, so it had to be shipped in from London on the parts round. That eventually arrived around 1pm, by which time we were even more sick of Yeovil and just wanted it all to work. The mechanic took it for a decent length drive before declaring it ok. That remains to be seen, but no problems thus far.
We took a different road today, avoiding the jinxed A37 and instead driving down to the M5, then taking the bridge across to Wales (the nice lady at the toll gate noticed that even though our vehicle was technically a van, we were using it as a car and charged us only £4.50 - otherwise it would have been £9!).
Funny thing happened. Last time we were in Wales, the weather was horrible even though the surrounding days were fine. The same happened again today. Constant, dreary drizzle of the type we haven't seen for quite some time.
Anyway, we saw less of what we intended, but are now at the ferry port in Fishguard, camped in the parking-lot, where we cooked dinner before getting up to date with our journals and trying to get a few hours sleep before the 3:15am ferry.
All being well, we should touch down in Ireland tomorrow. Where we expect the weather to pick up, having left Wales.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 17 Jun 2003
More Yeovil ( 1 photo )
Having Tuesday morning to kill, we walked back in to Yeovil to see if it was any more exciting in daylight. There were markets, and the beautiful church and gardens in the middle made a great place to sun-bake (we almost have tans again!), but in truth we ran out of things to do fairly rapidly. Or, more truthfully, Yeovil ran out.
Struggling by now, we found an Internet cafe where I attempted to explain to a local how I wanted to plug my laptop in to his network. Three "experts" later and I just took the cable and did it myself. That's where the last update came from.
Down the hill to Weatherspoons (one of the big chain pubs here, but they're actually very good), we sat and did some puzzles and read for a while until we got a phone call that Rosie was ready! How over-joyed we were!
It was further walk back to the mechanic that we had thought, but we arrived, sweating yet looking forward to getting back on the road.
We did so, but luck was not on our side. Sure, the clutch was fantastic (from how well it works now, it must have been half way gone when we bought it), but by about twenty miles out of town, I was having a lot of trouble getting it in to gear - at one traffic lights I had to start in third as nothing else would go in!
Clearly this could not go on, so we once again pulled off the road (we had abandoned the prospect of the Eden Project and Cornwall by this time and were heading straight North) into another, smaller than Yeovil town called Midsomer Norton. I just managed to get into a side road, but it wouldn't go into reverse, so Liz had to push!
"At least we will be able to see a town that isn't Yeovil", I spoke way too soon. It was agreed with the insurance people that going back to the mechanic who already knew what had been done was probably the best bet, but there was little chance of me driving it this time. So, we waited around for a (different) mechaninc, who took a quick look before loading Rosie onto a flat-bed tow-truck, bound for none other than our favourite town Yeovil. Joy was us.
Through the twenty miles of winding (beautiful, it must be said) countryside, holding our breath as we just made it under a low bridge, we sat in the back of the tow truck looking behind us at Rosie's big VW badge. "At least we will save on fuel".
Opting to camp in the grounds of the mechanic (we weren't desperate enough to go back to the Preston Hotel, even if we didn't have to pay for it), we cooked our first meal in the van and had a great night reading and relaxing - what we had long-imagined our trip had been like. Except it was in an industrial estate carpark outside a mechanics in the back-streets of possibly the most boring town in England.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 16 Jun 2003
Stonehenge, Rosie throws a Clutch ( 28 photos )
By all rights, our body clocks told us that Monday morning was time for work. Not so, we had something else in mind - a trip to Stonehenge! To be honest, we had expectations held reasonably low on this one. Plenty of guidebooks have commented about how you are so far from the stones themselves that you might as well be somewhere else. Well, we were pleasantly suprised by it all.
Sure, there were way too many tourists there (it has to be said - the Americans certainly don't do much to fight-off their stereotypes when they travel in large groups, talk loudly, and generally complain about anything they can find), and it wasn't as good we felt as many of the sites we had seen up in Orkney, but we can now say we have done it.
In stark contrast, nearby and relatively unknown Woodhenge we visited earlier had nobody there but us, and we could walk all over it. This was not as visually impressive, however, the visible posts being concrete replicas of where the wooden ones were found to have stood.
It wasn't too far out from Stonehenge, in the rough direction of Cornwall, that I started to notice something was not all right with the Big Red Bus. We lost a lot of power climbing hills, and it seemed to get worse and worse. By the time we had jumped off the main road looking for the nearest town and landed in Yeovil, I had surmised the problem was with the clutch.
We limped in to the centre of town, and both agreed we had made a good decision in taking out Motoring and Travel insurance with the Caravan Club. We rang them up, they found us a local garage and directed us through.
Cutting out a lot of boring detail, we eventually found a garage not far out of the town centre who had the replacement clutch on overnight order. That sorted out, we only had to work out what to do with ourselves! First job was finding somewhere to stay. We stumbled on the less-than-impressive Preston Hotel, which provided average rooms, average food, and above average bills (Well, we have just started getting used to £8 per night caravan sites, so £55 is a big jump). Luckily, this was all paid for under the insurance, but we didn't like the look of the food on offer, so took a bus (number 001 - there's not many bus routes in Yeovil) into town to see what Yeovil was all about.
Honestly, not much. They have a pub called the Alice Springs, complete with over-the-top Steve Erwin-style Aussie-isms, but it was closed. As were plenty of others around town, and we had just missed the coffee shops. Later, as we wandered back to our hotel, we noted that the most lively place in town was the Yeovil Conservative Club. No joke.
In the mean-time, however, we made ourselves the first customers (and, actually, second-to-last) at what must be the biggest hotel in town. Ordering a drink, we grabbed the local paper for a read, and a "what's on" guide. Is it just me, or is it a bad omen when an already-thin guide to a city's night-life is half-filled with jokes? Not even funny ones, just ones obviously picked to fill the space so that perhaps visitors would not notice that there was nothing to do in such a place.
Eventually deciding that since our dinners were being paid for by the insurance, we would order as extravagantly as the town could provide, we went through to the lushly-appointed yet still somewhat lacking Dining Room, where the lights were turned on for us, and the CD player fired up with what we later found was Yeovil's only CD - a dreadful muzak compilation of concert-band mutilations of perfectly good pop music.
We ordered a food, then noticed with amusement that we were the only ones there. Not even a bartender was at the bar, just us and the muzak. We chatted about our poor luck with the van, and hoped that this was to be the worst of it.
The food arrived just as the Only CD finished, so the waited went over to change the CD. Only he didn't - he just pressed Play again. Wonderful. The food made up for the disappointment however, and the thought that we didn't have to pay the bill made it even better.
Somewhere during dinner, The CD finished, and a different bar-person decided that Play should once again be pressed. How we managed to sit there any longer I don't know, but by the time the CD finished again, we left. As we were waiting for the bill, I reached over the bar and pressed Play - somehow, this was what Yeovil wanted.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 15 Jun 2003
Back on the Road ( 2 photos )
Tracing back to our departure from London:
Many people had commended on the stupidity of getting up early on Sunday after the big night before to drive half-way across the country. As it happens, we weathered it suprisingly well.
First we needed to pack Rosie, who we parked right outside the front door to throw things in. Mark helped, as he was getting a free ride half-way home, so he didn't have much choice!
That was less painful than expected, as we opted to simply throw things where they fit, rather than attempting to organising anything. There was plenty of time for that later.
Next task was far harder - waking up our housemates to say goodbye. In the end, Carlo and Nicole were roused, followed by the sleepy Maddie, Panella and Liz. We will miss them of course, but that's what this travelling stuff is all about.
Bus loaded, we proceeded to enter McDonalds across the road for only the second or maybe third time since we have lived there, and grab some breakfast. As an excuse, we had packed up all our kitchen stuff so had to eat something!
We jumped in and drove around the North Circular, first stop was Romford station to pour Mark on to the train (he lives further out in Essex but on the same line), then on to Les and Pearl's.
Big thanks to them for helping us out at late notice with a place to store our suitcases, a big help as other friends are unsure as to what their futures hold. We had a cup of tea, then Les helped me out with a bit of DIY on the van (we are going to have to get good at that), before he jumped in the pilot seat. Liz later commented that it looked like he could happily have driven around Europe sitting there!
We said our goodbyes, then found our way back to the motorway, heading away from London to commence the second South England leg of our trip.
(permanent link to this story)
Hillside ( 9 photos )
(Continued from Working in London 2)
We said our goodbyes, then found our way back to the motorway. General aim for that day was pretty basic - get to Hillside Caravan Club site in one piece, relax, and organise the van a bit.
This all worked just fine, as we enjoyed our first relax in the sun with our outdoor chairs, a walk around the beautiful site, and a dinner at a great little nearby country pub with a fantastic and large outdoor section. Weather has been great!
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 14 Jun 2003
Huge Capita Farewell ( 6 photos )
It would have been nice to sleep in Saturday morning, but that was not to be, as we had things to do - bags to pack, odds-and-ends to buy, and Liz had generously organised a relaxing facial for me as an anniversary present! Who was I to complain, soaking up the good vibes while struggling to stay awake.
The main aim of the day, however, was the big farewell party at our favourite London pub, the oft-visited Bull and Bush, North End. We arrived at 3pm, and it wasn't long until we were joined by my work-mate Ian, his wife and toddler. By 6pm plenty were sharing the fun, and by 10pm or so, only the battlers remained, with plenty of work mates offsetting the slight disappointment that not many of our other mates were able to attend. Can't have everything.
The fun lasted until 11pm closing time (won't miss that when we leave), when we staggered back down the considerable hill to Golders Green station, Mark from work in tow, and grabbed a bus back to Cricklewood. He stayed over the night, proudly being the only pom in a house of Aussies.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 13 Jun 2003
Goodbye to House-mates ( No photos )
Friday afternoon, people from both our jobs suddenly became nice to us and seemed to genuinely regret that we were leaving. At least the several job offers Liz recieved means that if we need to head back here at any stage, that could happen.
That evening, we had organised a night out with the people from our house - those that could make it were Carlo, Nicole and the other Liz. This was again down at the Brondes Age (spelt it right this time) restaurant, which apparently is a bit of a house tradition. We capped off a good night by wandering down to one of the Aussie Pubs in Kilburn, where my plan of not coming to the other side of the world to pretend you are back home seemed to have been a good one. Plenty of Aussies do, however, and we chatted awhile before wandering back to the house.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 12 Jun 2003
Whitehall Walk ( 43 photos )
Going back what seems like a long long time to Thursday 12th, I took my camera into work to capture a few last snaps of the area. This rapidly paid off, as they were filming a period commercial using some of the old Victorian buildings near work, as well as there being a life-size human table football game. This consisted of people paying money to be strapped to large metal bars, and work as a team to chase a ball left and right across the table. Very strange to watch.
The real reason I had taken the camera was to do the last of the Eccentric London walks we intended to - around Whitehall. Friend from work Mark accompanied us around the area.
My work at Spitalfields was smack-bang in the middle of it, and I was glad that we hadn't chosen to this walk earlier, because right at the exit of my work was one of Jack the Ripper's murder sites! We tramped around quite a few other interesting places including the Blind Beggar pub (still containing crimson carpet incase anyone wants to commit a third murder there), the house of the freak-of-nature Elephant Man, a closer look at Christ Church, and the Dickensian Artillery Passage, all riddled with plenty of gory history. Liz was dying for a Brick Lane curry (that's the place to go if you want a curry in London), so we partook in one of the random places which seemed to have a suitable menu. It was great.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 11 Jun 2003
Only Four Sleeps to Go! ( No photos )
Wow - that's not long until we jump in the combi and get on the road. It has gone so fast, but looking back on what we have done, we have managed to squeeze quite a bit in to our time here.
I am writing this from Australia House, Aldwych, awaiting my turn to get my Australian Driving Licence renewal form witnessed. Not a bad excuse to get into work late anyway, and see a bit of London in the process.
[ Tim's update has been broken out into separate entries ]
That may be the last update for a while, as after Friday we will be back on to mobile-phone net access for the most of our travels. Photos will be thin on the ground as they take a long time to send through the expensive phone, and can't be sent if we do updates from an Internet cafe.
Rest assured, we will do our best, and hope that people continue to email us as we travel around Europe like we originally set out to do!
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 08 Jun 2003
Shakespeare's Globe ( 22 photos )
Sunday morning, we had a bit of a sleep in before awaking the sleepy-heads Meaghan and Dave, who had spent the night uncomfortably on the couch. It could have been worse, since there were also two extra people there staying (for a total of twelve) - Ben and Liz who used to live here, have been travelling and have come back to look for work. Luckily they had squeezed themselves into somebody else's room for the night.
Staggering slowly on the walk down to the cleverly-named Bronds Age restaurant/pub (it's at Brondesbury station, just past Kilburn), Meaghan noted that she had been there before visiting Clinton, who lived here during his Big Europe Adventure a year or so ago. It was not a night she wished to recall, apparently.
This places serves the best full vegetarian breakfasts - we ordered one each and relaxed in the funky, nothing-matches-at-all atmosphere of the pub, complete with "hand" chairs, Julius-Caesar style lounge-chairs, and so many other things that if you don't like what you are sitting on, just pick something else from close at hand.
Jumping on the tube at Kilburn, we waved farewell to Meaghan and Dave for the next month or so (we should be able to visit them on our way across England from Ireland to Holland) at Finchley Road, the target for Liz and I was the replica Shakespeare's Globe theatre at Southwark.
Not being the hugest fans of the master's work, we had none-the-less had this listed as a "must-do" before leaving London. We had put it off all winter as they only run plays during the summer months.
It was so worth the wait.
The building itself is very impressive - reminding me constantly of my English classes at Sydney Tech where we studied the original and how the audience were participants. Picture a shrunken football stadium, round, with vertically-stacked stands around the outside, a stage at one end of the middle and the "plebians" watching the show from the ground. That was us, and at £5 a ticket it is one of the best investments so far.
The show itself we went to see was an all-female production of Richard III. This I found interesting, as back in Shakespeare's time even the female parts were played by males, so this was quite uncommon. Richard II is also on there at various times, so I was a little wary about booking tickets to the "sequel" without seeing the original (or, for that matter, Richard I!), but my worries were un-founded.
Standing for three hours (with interval) passed quickly, and the cast dealt amazingly well with the weather (there's no roof for us in standing-room), which they weaved into the plot to great effect when the rain started pooring down. The rain dried up, but we both freely admin to a few tears at the end, such was the quality of the performance.
Best thing in London so far. Although there has been plenty of contenders to that title!
We then wandered next door to the Tate Modern. Even Liz who freely admits she's not a big fan of weird modern art was impressed by the strange array of things on display. Of most note were the strange massive inflatable sculptures out the front, visible from miles away that you can actually walk inside, and an exploded shed, captured with suspended bits of abandoned junk as it would have been micro-seconds after the explosion, with a light bulb in the middle that casts amazing shadows all over the room the display has to itself.
Would have liked to have spent more time there, but I guess we can't have everything.
We found ourselves at the dingy little Black Friar pub at, funnily enough, Blackfriars a little later on. We had wandered up here on our Eccentric London Blackfriars and Fleet Street walk a few months ago, but the pub was closed at the time. It turned out to be an amazing little place, complete with mosaics on the roof, very dingy little corners which the two of us just squeezed into, squinting to read the menu in the gloom. Great stuff. It was a bit of a toss-up between travelling into Chinatown near Leicester Square for some Chinese food or staying in the pub.
Eventually, the ability to get a train straight back from Blackfriars to Cricklewood won us over, and we did so, retiring for the night after a weekend well-spent around London.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 07 Jun 2003
Anniversary Proper ( No photos )
Saturday, in contrast to Friday, was a day of doing things with the van (how romantic!). I went down to gather it early in the morning from Hanwell, returning awaiting my cooked breakfast I had been promised for the two-hour trip, only to find Liz just struggling out of bed! No matter, we ate and then jumped in the van for a morning of collecting various bits and pieces - an electrical hook-up cable, gas bottle, stereo, cigarette lighter (for connecting all sorts of goodies), 240v inverter (ditto), etc.
Returning to rest our not-too-well bodies, we eventually got in touch with Meaghan who was coming to meet us for the last time. It was decided that we head to the eye-opening Camden for a look at the markets, aiming to see the night's show at the Jazz Cafe, but they only had one table left with no view of the band, so we wandered around grasping for alternate plans.
Meaghan and Liz dragged Dave (Meaghan's boyfriend) and I around the markets for quite some time, while miraculously only managing to purchase one T-Shirt between them (one for Liz which says "Feed me Chocolate!").
Wandering up to Chalk Farm station, we caught the tube to Golders Green, then the bus up the hill to probably our favourite London pub, the Bull and Bush on North End Road. This little place suits us so well that we are having our leaving do there this Saturday afternoon once again!
There, we relaxed outside before retiring inside for some great food and a good cold chin-wag. Eventually, we wandered slowly down the hill to get the night-bus from Golders Green to outside our house - there's a lot to be said for living in the thick of things, great transport is the one perk we will miss.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 06 Jun 2003
Boring ( No photos )
Friday we again continued our tradition of not too much besides work.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 05 Jun 2003
Anniversary Celebration ( No photos )
Saturday the 7th was Liz and my six-year anniversary. Celebrating in typical low-key fashion, we started out on Thursday by dropping in at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Hampstead - a nice little place with great food for not large amounts of money. We've both been quite sick with colds and the like recently, so we didn't actually stay too long.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 03 Jun 2003
Looking Around London a few Last Times ( No photos )
It's getting to the point where we have precious little time remaining in London, so we are attempting to make the most of it. This is one of the reasons why the journal is falling by the wayside.
We have just made a rough plan for what is going to happen once we do leave London on Sunday the 15th June (less than two weeks away!). We are taking a very round-about way first to Stonehenge and then The Eden Project way down in Cornwall. From there we drive through South Wales, having a very quick look around before piling onto a ferry bound for Ireland from Fishguard.
Ireland for two and a half weeks (including my birthday spent with Gail, who used to work with me in Sydney, and also has the same birthday!), then ferry back to Fishguard, drive across England stopping off possibly in Oxford and Cambridge, before getting a ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland.
Or maybe we'll do something completely different!
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 01 Jun 2003
Bits for Rosie ( No photos )
Sunday was less painful than I expected, so Liz and I took a walk up the road to Halfords, looking for bits for Rosie. We have a reasonable list of outstanding equipment, including a stereo - quite important we have discovered on our last few trips without one. We picked one out and put a deposit on it.
Liz noticed that across the road from there was a Sainsburys store (big supermarket). Sure, there are supermarkets closer than that to us, but she knows from a mile away that she can get her favourite Raspberry and Custard Danishes there, and there's no stopping her!
We got the bus back home and spent the rest of the afternoon doing some planning for our forth-coming trips.
House-mates Maddy and Panella managed to convince us to go out for the night to the Walkabout at Shepherd's Bush. We hadn't been to that one, but it is the most popular one around, so we thought we'd give it a go. After a journey with a fun mini-cab driver, the pub turned out to be very packed, hot and dirty, not really our scene at all, so we had a couple of Snakebites and left, back home on the bus.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 31 May 2003
Go-Karting! ( No photos )
The week was spent as most are of late - we both work forty-hour weeks, go home and make dinner (yes, I cook now and then!), before some more planning kicks in for the coming weeks, followed by maybe some reading (we bought Bill Bryson's amusing Down Under) before sleeping, preparing to do it all again the next day.
Which brings me to Saturday. My boss Trevor had approached me the previous day asking what I was doing on the Saturday. "Not much at this stage", I replied. "Well, why don't you come to Danny's Stag Day go-karting and then drinking-fest?" What was I supposed to say to that?
It was actually the first day Liz and I had been apart for quite some time, she was hoping to get a shift but there wasn't any, so she relaxed with the other housemates while I proudly came second out of fifty or so go-karters racing around a track way out somewhere. Great fun, my arms and back are still a bit sore from it all (three hours of racing!), but the little trophy coupled with the thrill of beating the poms at yet-another-sport made it all worth it.
From there we drove with some of the ten people who had come (half from work, half were Danny's mates) back to Danny's local pub at Stansted Mount Fitchet. This little town reminded me constantly of those little towns up in the Blue Mountains - one railway station, plenty of trees, a few pubs and everyone knows each other. Very nice indeed.
Everyone threw some money into a pot behind the bar, and many hours later, after making some great new friends, I managed to navigate my way back home (no mean feat after a night like that, involving the last train to Liverpool Street, the second-last tube to Farringdon, working out that my next train didn't stop at Farringdon, dashing to get the last tube to Kings Cross, then making the last Thameslink North to Cricklewood!).
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 29 May 2003
Turkey Finished!! ( No photos )
Many thanks to Liz for getting around to putting the finishing touches on our Turkey Journal, which, almost exactly one month after we have returned we can call complete!
Find it all either with that link just above or by scrolling down the page.
Also, we have again made slightly more accurate plans in the Itinerary section.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 26 May 2003
Tower of London ( 46 photos )
Enjoying our long weekend, Monday we again headed back into town to take a walk up the Thames from Blackfriars towards the Tower of London. This was something we had thought about doing way back when we first arrived in London, but balked at the cost. It's strange how it doesn't seem so bad anymore, but if anything the prices are actually higher.
We had a great Yeoman Warder tour guide (who actually lives in the Tower) showing us around who genuinely seemed interested in what he had to say, coping well with the huge public-holiday crowds.
Things in there we saw included Traitor's Gate (where water access allowed people-smuggling for many a year), the Ravens, the White Tower (the dominant part of the Tower which houses lots of armour and the like), lots of ghastly torture and execution gear, and of course the Crown Jewels. The latter we viewed from the comfort of a travellator thing which meant you had to read very fast and attempt to appreciate it all. I guess it keeps the crowds down at least.
Wandering out the exit feeling rather hungry, we found a satisfactory cheap-ish lunch at a restaurant by the Thames before wandering home to while away the afternoon and evening.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 25 May 2003
Farnborough Again ( No photos )
A very lazy Sunday morning saw us watching Matrix on DVD, in preparation to go and see Matrix Reloaded (which we still haven't done).
Dragging ourselves out of bed, we took a trip way across London to Farnborough, where we have been a few times before. We rushed and rushed (well, as fast as four or five different modes of public transport could take us) down there to try to get there before 2pm to have pub lunch at the great Change of Horses pub there, got there about 1:58 only to find out they served lunch until 3! Very rare around here. In the end the weather turned foul fairly quickly, so we took a trip down to the church where Liz's grandparents are buried with some flowers we picked up in Beckenham on the way through.
Electing to return a slightly different way, we made our way back to Beckenham then took the tram to Croydon. This is a nice little place we have looked around before, we were aiming for the markets (a little late unfortunately) and then the Walkabout. This is the main chain of Aussie pubs around the place, there's quite a few in London but the Croydon is by far the nicest (in our opinion anyway).
We retuned by the more direct method of the Thameslink straight back to Cricklewood from East Croydon.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 24 May 2003
Goodbye Percy, Abbey Road ( 15 photos )
First thing on Saturday, a lovely young man named Adam came and gave us a large sum of cash in exchange for Percy! It was sad to see the back of him (Percy, not Adam) in a way, since we saw so much of the country driving around in him, but we have the big red bus now so it wasn't so hard.
Next we walked down to Kilburn to check out a caravan and camping shop there - quite useful things which we need were mostly there, which we aim to pick up this coming Saturday. Liz also picked up some thong-type-shoes.
Just up the road back towards Cricklewood is Brondesbury station, right next to which there is a great little pub almost entirely out of character for such an over-populated, pound-saver, traffic-jam area of London. Here we had some brunch which filled the spot quite nicely. We didn't feel so bad eating out with all that cash back at home!
In our typical lack-of-planning fashion, we took the shoes and our other goodies back to Cricklewood to look at what we intened to do for the rest of the day. One of those things is visiting Abbey Road (of Beatles Fame), which, it turned out, was about ten minutes walk from the caravan shop where we had just been!
So, we gave our travelcards a workout, taking the bus to Abbey road to see what it was all about. Having no idea where along Abbey Road the famous crossing was, we just got off at the first stop and walked down it until we arrived at the un-mistakable place. Not only the original album cover, but the thousands of imitations somehow made me know we were there even before we found the other tourists, Abbey Road Studios and the wall where Beatles fans have written all sorts of messages to their heroes (and anyone else who cares to read).
We dodged in and out of traffic for a while trying to get a decent picture of us crossing the road - in the end we got one of Liz on my camera and one of me on hers. At least we weren't as bad as the oriental guy who was there with his handy-cam filming himself walk across the crossing!
Continuing into town with the rough aim of visiting Westminster Abbey, we jumped off the bus to have a bit of a look around Selfridges (another big Harrods-like shop which turned out to be just that) and their much-more-impressive food hall. We held each other back from the acres of interesting food, using our current standard excuse "it will taste much better if we can afford to eat when we get to the country it comes from".
Jumping on the Jubilee line tube down to Westminster, we arrived only to find that Westminster Abbey itself was closed as of 2pm on a Saturday afternoon. Oh well, we can try again some other time. We relaxed in the grounds awaiting inspiration for our next move.
This came in the form of some vouchers we have had for months which are used at the Elusive Camel, a chain of Aussie pubs in central London. The nearest wasn't far away just across Westminster Bridge in Waterloo, so we took a walk there. The place didn't turn out to be that crash hot, but the fact we weren't paying made that seem less of a problem.
Even though Liz has been before, I still hadn't seen any West-End theatre, which seemed like a bit of a crime after living in London for so long. So, we trundled back to Trafalgar Square to the half-price ticket place, and grabbed two tickets to see FAME the Musical. This was quite enjoyable, very colourful, although we got the impression that the actors had definitely settled into "mid-season" mode - two performances per day appeared to be taking its toll.
We wandered back to Trafalgar Square and grabbed a bus home.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 19 May 2003
Turkey and Itinerary Updated ( 15 photos )
Like the heading says, Liz has been hard at work getting the ANZAC Day online, and it's now to be found below!
You can also use this link to see all the Turkey entries in one go.
Also, we have made slightly more accurate plans in the Itinerary section.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 18 May 2003
More Family Members Met ( 22 photos )
We have just awoken on Sunday, to face the reason that so many of the Holladay family have gathered here - the Chester Half-Marathon. Liz and I aren't personally running, and even the Holladay contingent seems depleted this year, but we will be there giving some moral support at the finish line.
(Continued 08:45 BST 19/05/2003, from Spitalfields, London, England)
Carol prepared us a great breakfast, giving us just enough energy to wander up and watch the runners about one mile from the finish line. Andrew set the fastest time, just under 1:29, while the two brothers Norman and Dave stepped over the line together at just over two hours.
Being right on the outskirts of Chester, there is lots of parkland, and even horses around the place. We wandered back through all of this, just dodging the rain.
A little while after we had arrived back at the house, the runners stumbled in and collapsed on the floor. Carol had prepared a great meal for all of us which dissapeared rather quickly, topped off with some home-made apple pie.
More chatting with these extended family followed, reminding Liz and I often of our missed family and friends back home.
At around three o'clock, James led the way as we drove South to London. He managed to hold his speed back to that of the bus until we made it to the motorway, but then with a wave, he was gone.
Rosie trundled home with only a quick stop for fuel (she uses quite a bit more than Percy...), where we had only a snacky dinner before bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 17 May 2003
Retrieving Rosie, up to Chester ( No photos )
We had originally planned for Alwin from my work to drop Rosie off on Saturday morning at our house (he was working night-shift), but some thoughtful souls had left about an inch on each end for maneuvering space. In a big bus, that's a problem. So, Alwin left a couple of notes which seemed to have done the trick, since he rang me at 6:30am on Saturday as I was on my way to pick her up, saying it was all ok.
That journey involves the 266 bus from just around the corner to Acton Mainline Station, then a small two-car train which sounds more like a truck along to Ealing Broadway station (only one station), where I went and got a coffee and croussant while waiting for another train which actually stopped at Hanwell. A suprisingly nice journey at that time of morning, topped off with a five minute walk to Alwin's place.
There appear to be no major problems with leaving her there, except for occasionally being parked in. When I arrived, I noticed that the cars on either side had left around half a car-length for me to get out!
Thanking Alwin for his attempts to get Rosie to us (which had made him late for work), I drove off along back past Ealing Broadway to hit the North Circular for the drive back to Cricklewood.
Liz had managed to drag herself out of bed by this stage, so we finished our packing in reasonable time, jumped in the van and headed north.
Not much to report from the journey, except that it took us about four hours of driving and another hour of being stuck in traffic once off the M6 pointing at Chester.
After a short detour into North Wales (it's about a mile down the road from where we are), we arrived at the target for our travels - Gladys and Reg's place. These lovely people are related to me by my Nan on my father's side being Gladys' cousin. That part seems simple, it gets much more confusing though!
Also there were David (one of Gladys and Reg's sons) and his wife Sue, and we were later joined by Norman (the other son) and two of his sons Andrew and James, who we have met before.
We had some lunch and chatted the afternoon away, even looking at a very old photo of when Mum and Dad came and visited them on their big Europe tour.
After a while, it was time to head off to a dinner booking just inside Wales. This seems to be quite a popular option as it is apparently a little cheaper and there were plenty of other people doing the same. The place was a thirteenth century pub in the middle of nowhere, accessed only by single-track road. Quite a change from Cricklewood high street!
However, Sue noticed that some of the overhead beams had been made to look old by chiseling bits out of them - cheating in any language. Still, it was a nice enough place, the food was fine even if the complex ordering system meant that the service was pretty average.
Sue and David were then brave enough to take a trip in Rosie as we headed back to Norman and Carol's place for the night. We sat around talking before everyone looked over-tired and it was time for bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 10 May 2003
Greenwich Again ( 12 photos )
We took a trip to Greenwich once again (we did a walk around there a while ago), this time with the main aim of attending the highly-recommended National Maritime Museum. This was a great day wandering around the exhibits, including an impressive model of the Endeavour and all of the crew, which we just managed to fit in before closing time. We had a quiet drink at one of the great pubs on the Thames down there before heading back to Joel's sister Eve's place at Camden.
This was a house-warming party for a new housemate where we met lots of new people, ate a great BBQ (a strange event over here!), and had quite a wild night.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 06 May 2003
Turkey Updates tricking in ( 12 photos )
Over the long weekend Liz has done quite a bit of work on her (book) Journal, and some of that is starting to be duplicated here.
It's filed under the date it refers to, which means you'll have to scroll down the page to find it.
More as we get a chance!
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 05 May 2003
Rosie goes to Milton Keynes ( No photos )
Monday morning we arose after a reasonably comfortable night's sleep in the van, flushed out the water system (which works really well), Liz had a bit of a drive (she's getting better!), then we set off for Milton Keynes.
A fairly un-eventful drive later, we pulled the van into Meaghan's grandma's place, quite a bit more imposing than last time we were here with Percy. Meaghan's first sarcastic words were "It's not quite big enough, is it?" It's just right, thank you very much!
We had a cuppa and a chat before her boyfriend Dave turned up and we all headed off to a pub somewhere in the Milton Keynes Lakes for lunch and a getting-to-know-you session with Dave. The food was great, and I think Dave was only a little bewildered by a side of Meaghan he had never seen before when she and Liz get chatting :)
Driving straight home, we off-loaded some gear before returning Rosie to Alwin's place then navigating the buses home again. A nice little weekend.
As for slightly longer-term plans, it appears that we have people to move into our room on the 21st of June, when we plan to head first to Ireland for a week or two (perhaps in the van, depends on cost of ferries versus cost of flights plus accommodation). Then the big Europe trip begins - not far away now.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 04 May 2003
Welwyn Garden City ( No photos )
It was strange to wake on Sunday and still have two days of the weekend left - these past few weeks have been so hectic between Norwich, Amsterdam and Turkey that we have all but forgotten what free time felt like.
After ringing and waking up Meaghan, much to her disgust, we eventually decided that a short trip in Rosie would be a good way to fill in a couple of days. A bit of consultation with the bus maps later, and we found that a bus right near us takes us to Acton Main Line station, from where we can get a train to Hanwell, which is where Rosie is parked near Alwin from work's house.
However, this train doesn't run on Sundays, so it took a bit of wandering around with the A-Z (that's British for street-map) before we caught a bus instead. Eventually locating the right street, we were over-joyed to see our expensive future home once again, all in good order. We grabbed the keys and drove back to Cricklewood, a much faster journey than the one there had been.
Loading up with a doona, pillows, and many other "essential" items, we then drove off to a site of the Caravan Club, up in Welwyn Garden City.
They journey went suprisingly well, I hesitate to say it lest something go wrong, but I am getting used to this sitting-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-car thing quite well. Judging by the smaller number of panic attacks Liz is having, I am even staying in the lanes a lot better now :)
We arrived at the caravan park around 4:30, where the kindly old couple running the place happily signed us up as members of the club (it looks quite good, they have all sorts of tips and tricks, as well as lots of advice for "first-timers" like us), and showed us to our little lot.
We still need to gather a few bits and pieces for the van, one of which is an electrical hook-up cable. No problem for the night, as the helpful owners lent us one of these too! Trundling around to our campsite, we set up for the night and plugged Rosie in. After fiddling for a while, it turns out that everything inside works just fine with the exception of the fridge, which doesn't seem to get cold. Will have to get that looked at soon.
The evening passed with us wandering down to the rather sparse local shops for some Chinese and a good chat at the pub.
We returned to the van, where Liz tackled some of her journal while I read some Australian newspapers that Alan Heighway has unbeknownst to us been sending over for a while! Good to read that not much has changed back at home in the nine or so months(!) since we left.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 03 May 2003
Cabinet War Rooms ( 13 photos )
Awaking on Saturday morning, we took stock of what we wanted to do with our long weekend (Monday was a bank holiday). After having a look over what we want to see in the few remaining weeks we have in London, we decided to head into the centre of town to have a look at the much-recommended Cabinet War Rooms, right next to Number 10 Downing Street.
This is where Churchill and his off-siders effectively ran the British side of World War II from, in secrecy under several metres of bomb-proof concrete. Many of the rooms have been kept exactly as the were left as the various "enemies" surrendered, making the place a fascinating insight into how it must have been during those years.
After are audioguide tour was over (an increasingly-popular way of running a guided tour of these touristy sites - like an over-grown mobile phone which rabbits on at you as you wander around the place), we walked across the road for a bite to eat at the pub - quite different food to what we were eating only a week ago in Turkey.
Next on our wanderings was a bit of shopping - some books about caravan parks around Europe, then trip to the Australia Shop for some much-needed supplies of real food, badges and Aussie-flag stickers for the combi, before we wandered back to City Thameslink for the journey back to Cricklewood.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 02 May 2003
Back to London ( No photos )
After we returned home still sick from food poisoning in Turkey, we had a slow couple of days at work on Thursday and Friday. Friday night was a party of sorts to celebrate the "going-live" of the Congestion Charge way back in February, but the party failed to be anything very interesting. We went back home and flaked into bed.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 01 May 2003
We are back! ( No photos )
(Continued from Turkey)
All safe and sound back in London, although we haven't had time to get the journal up to date. This will be a task for the coming long weekend.
We made it with no real problems. In a nutshell we had a great time, the only problem being two nasty bouts of food poisoning which almost everyone else there also had. Could have been much worse.
We are now planning our next trip...
(permanent link to this story)
We are back! ( No photos )
All safe and sound back in London, although we haven't had time to get the journal up to date. This will be a task for the coming long weekend.
We made it with no real problems. In a nutshell we had a great time, the only problem being two nasty bouts of food poisoning which almost everyone else there also had. Could have been much worse.
We are now planning our next trip...
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 29 Apr 2003
Last Day in Turkey ( 6 photos )
Tuesday was our last day in Turkey. We got up early and skipped the hotel breakfast (just in case that was the cause of the food poisoning), and we headed up to the Grand Bazaar because there were a few last things we wanted to get. After more bargaining, we bought the following: a Turkish fridge magnet, two Turkish tea sets, complete with apple tea, Turkish delight, and an evil eye. This is a blue glass 'eye' which the Turkish believe will ward off evil if you hang one or more up near you. I am a bit sceptical of this, as our first Bus Number 5 had three or four evil eyes attached to its interior, but they didn't seem to help much. Nonetheless, we now have our evil eye inside the van, warding any evil away (we hope!).
We had a while before we had to get to the airport, so we went and sat outside one of the tea houses and enjoyed a last Turkish tea and coffee. It was wonderful to sit and relax in the sun and chat about our adventures in Turkey.
Back at the hotel, we grabbed our bags, met one of the guys from our bus in the foyer, and then the three of us caught a taxi to the airport. We even managed not to get ripped off like we did on our first day in Turkey when we got a taxi from the airport to our hotel.
We checked in (after the security staff scrutinised us and our luggage), and then went through to departures, wandered around duty free, had some food with the last of our Turkish lira, and then finally boarded our plane.
The flight back was good, and before we knew it, we were back in cloudy old England, safe and sound!
So that was our trip to Turkey. Both Tim and I had such a great time, and we saw so many wonderful and beautiful sites. One of the most exciting experiences was trying to communicate with the Turks who often only knew a few words of English. We will never forget Anzac Day when we were in Gallipoli, and we are so glad that we went to support the diggers.
Turkey was nothing like I thought it would be, and now I know a lot more about it, I can't wait to get back there again sometime in the future.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 28 Apr 2003
A Long Drive to Istanbul ( 3 photos )
On Monday morning we had an early start, as we had a long drive all the way back to Istanbul. Some people awoke with very sore heads, but Tim and I managed to be some of the first few at breakfast.
The rest of that day was spent on the bus driving North through Turkey back to Istanbul. We had a few breaks for food and toilet stops, and one ferry trip to save on some driving, but it was a pretty long day. We were on the bus for about 12 hours, and we filled our time by sleeping, eating lollies, chatting and watching the countryside, villages and towns roll by. We started off with snow-capped mountains around us, and then we were in flat green farmland, and finally drove through bigger and bigger cities.
At about 8 o'clock that night, Bus Number 5 (mark 2) pulled up outside our hotel in Istanbul. We were back at the same hotel we stayed in before we left Istanbul, a few days earlier.
We gave our fabulous tour leader, Kaan, a huge big cheer, because with all our buses problems and our food poisoning, he had held the whole thing together, as well as giving us loads of information about his country and its people and traditions. I almost feel like I now know more about Turkey than I do about Oz!
The tour was over, but Kaan, being the wonderful tour leader that he was, said he would take us all out to dinner and teach us more about Turkish food and Istanbul nightlife.
An hour later, we all met in the lobby, and then we piled into five taxis.
Now I think I talked about crazy Turkish drivers before - just to refresh your memory, these are the people who see a 'one way' street sign, and then happily proceed to drive in the opposite direction. Speed limits, road rules, red lights, you name it - on Turkish roads they are all optional. So when these five taxi drivers had us all in their cars, they sped off - and then decided to have a rally drive through some of Istanbul's main streets in order to be the 'winning' taxi, and reach our destination first. I have honestly never been on such a nail biting drive (and that's including the time Tim managed to test the speed of the old yellow Laser. Disregard last sentence if you are Tim's mum!). One of the taxis really did run a red light, just to try and come first, while another came a bit too close to knocking down a pedestrian. Our taxi driver was so intent on winning that he went past where we were meant to have stopped, and then realised in his excitement that he had forgotten to turn on his meter!
We all leapt out of the taxis, laughing, but a bit shocked and more than a little scared :)
Kaan took us to Taxim - the nightlife spot in town, and we went to a restaurant near where the fresh fish sellers are. The food was delicious, and we had so many dishes that its hard to remember them all. We started out with mezzes - a whole load of dishes of little appetisers - little fishes, potato, dips, beetroot...and heaps more. Then there was fresh fish which tasted very nice, a Turkish dessert that was a bit like peanut butter, fresh fruit, I could go on and on!
It was nice having Kaan there, because he could tell us what we were eating and what it was called and so on.
After dinner, we went to a local club with a band playing. Later on in the evening, Tim and I caught a taxi back to the hotel - much slower and safer than the previous taxi.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 27 Apr 2003
Ephesus ( 70 photos )
After breakfast on Sunday morning, we drove a short distance to Ephesus - one of the greatest ruined cities in the western world. It started out as a greek city in about 1000BC, but the city that stands today was built in the 4th century BC. Most of the city ruins that remain today stand in a valley between two towering hills.
As we got off the bus at the entrance gate, all the hawkers started yelling at us to come and but their wares. One ingenious guy, who was selling bottled water, had a classic line: 'Yesterday, five men went in there' pointing towards Ephesus. 'They bought no water from me...and now they are all dead!'. Its a big city, but really!
We decided we would survive with our own supply of water, and then we spent the next couple of hours being led around the ruins by our guide, Kaan.
The city has been preserved remarkably well. There are statues, tile mosaics on part of the ground, little shops, a huge roman bath equipped with hot and cold water pipes, latrines...I could go on and on.
One of the best sites, and what one of the city's main roads leads to, is the Library of Celsus (seen here with the people from our bus). This huge stone structure towers above you as you walk up to it. It is almost too good looking - like it has been built for a film set!
There is also a Temple of Hadrian - the same person who has Hadrian's wall in England. The temple entrance is pretty much all that remains of the temple, but this alone is awesome itself. It is covered in beautifully detailed carvings of mythical gods and goddesses.
Another fascinating view here is the theater. It is apparently the biggest in the world, though it isn't as steep as the one we saw at Pergamum. They still hold concerts here, although they only hold classical concerts now, because when Sting played there a few years ago, the huge crowd caused damage the theaters foundations. The classical crowds aren't quite as destructive!
There were so many beautiful sites in this one amazing tourist spot, and it was well worth going to.
Back at the bus, we soon noticed a strong smell of diesel fuel coming from our bus, and discovered a large amount of fuel running out near the front wheels. Tim was out having a look at the large puddle of diesel that had formed under the bus when the bus drivers 18 year old son came to fix the problem. His version of 'fix' involved opening up one of the storage bins under the bus, putting an old towel in to soak up the pool of diesel and then closing the bin again. He then turned to Tim, gave a big grin, and said the only English he knew: 'No worries!' :)
Fortunately for us, it was decided that the fuel leak was indeed a worry, so after lunch and a drive of about an hours distance (with the smell of diesel strongly in the air), and then a wait at a roadside stop for another hour, a new (and much nicer) bus turned up to a cheering crowd of Bus 5 people.
We did a few more hours of driving before we went through a quaint little Turkish village with a strange old tradition. Among its old houses complete with falling in roofs, there were a number of roofs with a glass bottle perched all the way up on the ridge capping, a few of which were smashed. We were told that it used to be this villages custom to place an unbroken glass bottle on their roof when they had a girl of marrying age in that house. Any would-be suitors had to shoot and break the bottle to declare they wanted the girl. If the girl's family accepted that man, the broken bottle would be left on the roof. If the family did not want that particular man to marry their daughter, they would take that bottle down and put a new unbroken one up again. Talk about hurting a blokes feelings!
Shortly after driving through that village, we arrived at Pumukkale - a town with a series if white terraces, formed by water from thermal springs which deposit layer upon layer of limestone. The white terraces looked beautiful as the sun set behind the mountains in the distance.
Before the sun went down, we trooped into the nearby pool - a thermal pool filled with broken columns and the like, and the only tourist swimming spot left in the area. For a bit of a hefty price, we enjoyed a swim in the pool. The water was so clear and warm, and little bubbles were constantly floating to the surface and fizzing around us. The bubbles stick to your skin, and as we discovered, you can leave a handprint or even write something in the bubbles on your skin. We also discovered what a hilariously strange sensation it was to open your mouth under water and stick out your tongue and feel the bubbles tingling and tickling - a bit like warm soda water!
None of us wanted to get out of the water, but eventually it was closing time. It felt very cold when we got out, so we rushed to get changed and then a few of us went down to the terraces for a last look at the setting sun.
Our bus then took us down into the village to our hotel. We all had dinner, and then spent the rest of the night in the hotel's pool, which was full of thermal water. A lot of us had very pruny skin by the time we got out of the water, although some of the boys were in the pool for most of the night. Even a power cut to the hotel and the entire village didn't coax them out of the warm water.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 26 Apr 2003
Pergamum ( 34 photos )
Ok, so I know we've now been back from Turkey for quite a few weeks, but our London lives have been busy of late, so I am only just getting towards the end of our time in Turkey. I last left off at the end of Anzac Day, in our hotel in Ayvalik, so here is all about the rest of our adventures in Turkey from Saturday 26th April:
The night before, we had gone to bed without our luggage, as it had been marooned with our bus a couple of hours away. So when we woke up, Tim went down to the lobby to discover our bags all piled in a big heap. The joy of clean clothes!!
Next was breakfast in the hotel. All the breakfasts in the hotels were pretty much the same: hard boiled eggs, cucumber, tomato, cheese, olives, bread, jam, honey, tea and coffee. This is a fairly typical Turkish style breakfast, and it was a nice change from the usual cereal and toast we have at home.
We got back on our bus which had had its wheel fixed and was back to working order (at least for now), and drove a while before coming to Pergamum. This is an ancient city (originally settled in 8th century BC), and it is up on top of a very high hill, which now looks out over the city of Bergama.
The old city has a lot of stone work, some of the best sections being huge marble columns or the library passage - all of which remains are a long row of the column stumps. Even better is the steepest theatre in the world, with a capacity of about ten thousand. Sitting at the top made me feel very giddy, and I foolishly decided to walk all the way to the bottom to take some photos, and then had to drag my puffing body back to the top. It was very, very steep.
The view overlooking the city of Bergama in the valley below us and of the surrounding mountains was really beautiful, and the nice sunny weather made the view even better.
After stopping for lunch in Bergama, our next stop was at a Turkish carpet weavers warehouse. We learnt all about how the wool or silk is prepared (they even show you how to get silk from the silk worm cocoons), and how to weave a carpet (at least we watched it being done), how many knots are tied on different carpets, the length of time a carpet takes to make (a silk carpet 30cm x 30cm takes about a year to make!), and what the various patterns and colours mean.
Then they sat us all down and served us drinks and showed us hundreds of different carpets and kilims. It was obviously to try and sell to us, but the information the gave about each carpet was great, and the number of different styles and colours was mind boggling.
I came very close to buying a beautiful carpet, but decided the money could be better spent on travelling. I will just have to get back to Turkey one day when I'm rich, and spend up big on a couple of nice carpets!
Back on the bus, and we had a long stretch of driving ahead of us, so for a few hours we entertained ourselves with games and jokes and getting to know more people.
We arrived in Kusadasi and found ourselves in another beautiful resort. After dinner, we went outside to the beach where the hotel was holding a party, complete with bonfire, music, games and fire twirlers. We spent the evening chatting away to people and warming ourselves next to the bonfire.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 25 Apr 2003
ANZAC Day Proper ( 40 photos )
At about 4am on Friday 25th April, an Aussie singer (never heard of him and unfortunately cannot remember his name) got up on the stage and he spent the next hour or so telling stories of the brave Anzac's at Gallipoli, and we all sang along to Waltzing Matilda. It was a nice start to the morning.
Next, we heard the Band of the Royal Military College of Australia (they were fantastic), and then the Dawn Service began.
It was freezing cold, but it felt so awesome to stand and look at the Australian flag as the light slowly crept into the sky. Tim and I stood for the whole service, and even though we could see the flag poles with Australian, New Zealand and Turkish flags on them, we couldn't quite see the stage. There was a huge screen not far from us, so we watched the ceremony on that and we could see what was going on quite well.
At the end of the service, the band played all three national anthems, and Advance Australia Fair was sung loudest of all - I felt so proud of myself and all the other young (and old!) Aussie's and Kiwi's that had made it to Gallipoli. Numbers were apparently about half compared to last year, but there was still a huge crowd there.
After the Dawn Service finished, we quickly packed up our belongings and then headed up to Lone Pine.
It's about a 2km walk, a lot of which is up a very steep and winding dirt track, and even though the Australian Memorial Service wasn't starting for another three hours or so, we wanted to get a good spot, so we hurried as much as our cold sick bodies would let us! I don't think I have ever had such cold feet before - it was like dragging around a couple of blocks of ice attached to the end of my legs, but the walking soon warmed me up.
We were glad that we hurried, because we found a great spot to sit - close to the ceremonial area, and in the sun but out of the wind. I have no idea where they would have put everyone if more people had actually come, because within an hour, the whole cemetery was packed out. They had huge stands all around the edge, and they were all filled up too.
As Tim and I sat in the sun, we kept dozing off, and our beanie covered heads would bump into each other, waking us up to do it all again. It must have looked hilarious.
At 10.30am, after more music from the Band of the Royal Military College of Australia (including some very familiar Ed Wilson tunes), some two-up in the crowd and big waves going all around the stands, the Lone Pine Service began.
I can honestly say that this was one of the most moving events I have ever been to. The speeches that told of the hardships the Anzac's endured were awe-inspiring, and it was so nice to sing along to the hymns rather than playing them this year. It was such a special ceremony and Tim and I were so proud to be there. The site of the Lone Pine memorial is where a large number of men were killed, and it was a very emotional morning for a lot of people.
Again we all sang Advance Australia Fair, and it was great to hear so many young Aussie's showing their support and recognition of the Anzac's.
Afterwards we walked around and looked at many of the gravestones - so many of those poor men were so young - younger than me at 23. Our night in the cold was nothing compared to what they went through.
We also went and walked around some of the other nearby cemeteries. Huge numbers of the gravestones say 'believed to have fallen here' or similar. There were so many people killed that there wasn't time to bury them all. A lot of the dates of death are also unknown. It really hits home how horrific the whole situation was when you start walking around the cemeteries.
We had a look at some of the old trenches which was really interesting. They have become quite eroded over the years, but we could still see them quite well. In some areas, the Anzac and Turkish trenches were only a meter apart, so they used to throw food and cigarettes to each other before resuming the fighting. And here's a pretty Australian-type thing to do: When the Anzac's were leaving Gallipoli, a few of them left a table set with dinner for the Turks to find and enjoy. How nice is that!
We had a long wait for the New Zealand service to finish before the bus picked us up. In the meantime, six jet planes did a fly-over to commemorate the Anzac's.
Once we were back on the bus, we drove to Eceabat to catch another ferry - this time across the Dardanelles to ‚anakkale. This ferry trip was much quicker, and after about 20 minutes we got off the boat and the bus headed south along the coast.
Everyone was tired out, partly from being sick, and partly from lack of sleep, so the whole bus was asleep for the three hour drive. At least, we would have slept all the way, except that as we were passing through a small town, one of the wheel suddenly started making a weird noise. The bus was stopped, and we discovered that of the twelve wheel nuts that were supposed to be holding the wheel on, only three nuts remained! It was going to take an hour or two to fix, but luckily they managed to squeeze us a few at a time on other buses from our tour company as they went by. We had already been dubbed the 'food poisoning bus' by the other groups, so now they thought it was even funnier that we had had more troubles on Bus Number 5.
We reached the town where our hotel was, Ayvalik, and drove up to our hotel, which turned out to be a beautiful resort right on the coast!
Our bags were still on our bus (which didn't make it to the hotel for another five hours), but there was shampoo and soap in our rooms, so at least we could have a hot shower.
Dinner was a buffet, Turkish style, and after that we dragged ourselves to bed!
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 24 Apr 2003
So Sick Before ANZAC Day ( 29 photos )
On Thursday the 24th of April, Tim and I dragged ourselves out of bed and onto the bus. Because of the food poisoning, we had not had much sleep the night before, so we spent a few hours asleep on the bus that morning as we drove towards Gallipoli. The drive took 3 or 4 hours, and we had a couple of stops along the way at service stations.
When we arrived at the Gallipoli Penninsula, we could already see that security was tight, even though we were still about 20 minutes drive from Anzac Cove. They had a lot of police and army personnel, and there were checkpoints everywhere we drove.
We drove around the Gallipoli Penninsula, and were shown the beach where the Anzac's were supposed to have landed. There is an unconfirmed story that the allies had a buoy near this beach as a marker to show the soldiers where to come ashore. The Turks discovered this buoy and cut it loose so that it drifted along the coast to the spot where the Anzac's did land - a tiny beach with no protection, but cliffs looming overhead where the Turk's were lying in wait for them.
It was so hard to look at the very beautiful Anzac Cove and imagine the horror that so many men suffered here.
We left Anzac Cove and headed up to the Lone Pine Memorial, which is the Australian memorial cemetary. We had a short while looking around up there, but would have more time on Anzac Day for a good look around.
Back on the bus, we drove to Eceabat, about 20 minutes away, and then we boarded a ferry for a cruise all around the Gallipoli Penninsula. The cruise went on for more than two hours, and as we didn't know what areas of land we were seeing, plus the fact that a lot of us weren't feeling the best, it wasn't the best part of the tour. We would have preferred to spent that afternoon exploring Gallipoli some more.
Once the ferry docked, we got off and had a barbeque nearby. Tim and I sat on the beach for an hour watching the sun setting over the water and then we went and had some food from the barbeque.
By now it was about 10pm and dark, so we headed back to our bus which was parked near the barbeque area.
The bus was supposed to drive straight to Anzac Cove and drop us off, but long before we reached there, we were refused entry by a group of soldiers. It turned out that they weren't letting any buses through certain roads, so to get anywhere near Anzac Cove, we had to drive all the way around the Penninsula which took close to an hour.
When the bus stopped, we got off and walked the rest of the way, which was only about 500 meters. We found a patch of grass on the hill, and settled down for the night. Most of us were worn out from being sick, but it was very cold and windy, so getting any sleep was a challenge.
(Continued 08:35, 18/05/03, from Saltney, Chester, Cheshire, England, by Liz)
They had music playing for most of the night, so every now and then people would start singing along to 'I am Australian' and things like that.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 23 Apr 2003
The Tour Starts ( 38 photos )
On Wednesday, the tour really got going. After breakfast, we went down to the lobby and then got on what was going to become the rather infamous Bus Number 5.
We started out by meeting our guide, Kaan, and then we had a drive through a small part of Istanbul, having various sites pointed out to us, before we stopped at the Hippodrome. This is a long narrow stretch of park and gardens near the Blue Mosque, and was once a giant stadium where chariot races were held. All that remains now are a couple of ancient obelisks and a section of the top of the wall that used to separate the chariots as they raced.
Next, we walked across the road and into the outer courtyard of the Blue Mosque. We were told of its history and then taken around to the tourist entrance where we removed our shoes and the girls donned blue headscarves. It was nice to have something wrapped around my head to keep me warm, because it was very cold once we got inside the Mosque!
It is called the Blue Mosque due to the large amount of blue patterned tiles covering the interior. When were told more interesting information about the Mosque as we stood inside, but it was hard to soak up its beauty due to the huge crowds of tourists everywhere.
After a rushed look at the inside of the Mosque, we went out and then across to Aya Sophia. Along the way, we came across some ornately dressed men, carrying big metal urns on their backs. When they bend forward, juice pours out of a spout and into the cup they hold. Tim and I had come across these funny little men the day before, and for a small fee, they'll give you a glass of apple juice and let you take a photo of them.
Apart from them, there was also the usual myriad of men selling postcards, hats, whistles and any other touristy rubbish they could get their hands on.
The next part of the tour was going into Aya Sophia, but as Tim and I had done that, we went back to the nice outdoor cafe in Sultanahmet Square and enjoyed a Turkish tea and coffee in the sunshine for an hour.
We met up with everyone and the bus then drove us to the Grand Bazaar, where we were free to wander on our own for an hour or so. Tim and I ended up buying an onyx chess set after some haggling, so that should come in quite useful as we travel around in our van. We also bought a couple of salad rolls from a deli. The rolls had salami on them, and I think this was the probable cause of a bout of food poisoning we both suffered over the next few days.
Once again we all got back on the bus and were driven down to the water where we boarded a ferry for a cruise on the Bosphorous. We tried to sit outside, but it was too cold, so we found a spot inside and admired all the nice views from there.
We went past the Galata tower, which seemed a lot higher up than it had appeared from the top, and then out onto the Bosphorous, up along one side up to the second suspension bridge, and then back along the other side. One of the guides provided some commentary, and it was nice to know what we were looking at.
After the cruise, we went back to the hotel. By now I was feeling pretty sick, so we ended up staying in for the night, apart from a short trip up the road for Tim to get some food (I didn't feel like eating anything). Unfortunately, both Tim and I spent the rest of the night being quite sick, but at least we weren't alone, as it turned out most of Bus 5 also had food poisoning.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 22 Apr 2003
Catching up ( 57 photos )
Well, although it is now the 5th May, I am about to go all the way back to Tuesday the 22nd of April, which is the day our Turkey tour officially started. Even so, the only thing that was happening all day was a 'meet and greet' party at 8pm that night. Which meant that Tim and I had another day to ourselves to explore Istanbul.
We started off with breakfast in our hotel, which consisted of hard boiled eggs, bread, olives, cheese, tomatoes and cucumber. This is a fairly typical Turkish breakfast. While we were eating we met a couple of other Aussie's who later turned out to be on our bus. One of them even knows where Connells Point is (his Grandma lives there), and they both live about 10 minutes walk from where we are in London! Small world.
After breakfast, Tim and I headed up the road, past the Grand Bazaar, and then made a stop at the internet cafe' we had visited previously. We then went to a nearby outdoor tea and coffee house in Sultanahmet Square where we sat in the sunshine enjoying Turkish tea and coffee.
Feeling nice and refreshed we walked across the road and found the Basilica Cistern or Sunken Cistern. This is a huge underground water storage place, where the towns water supply used to be kept. The roof is held up by 336 columns, some of which have been stained a beautiful green colour by the water.
We walked all around a platform, watching fish swim in the water, and listening to dripping water and classical music. At the furthest corner, two of the columns are supported by giant stone heads, one of which stands on its side, and the other upside down. These are Medusa heads, and are evidence of plundering by the Byzantines from earlier monuments.
The whole place is beautiful and very relaxing to wander around, although some of the darker sections are a little spooky :)
Next, we continued wandering along the tram tracks through the city until we were back at the edge of the Golden horn where the fish sellers and ferries are. We crossed the Golden Horn via one of the bridges which was full of men dangling huge fishing rods over the side of the bridge in the hope of a catch, and then we were in the area known as Beyoglu.
We spent quite a while walking around backstreets here - it is quite a big residential area, and is obviously not kept as nice as the more touristy areas. There were bare-foot children playing soccer in the street and scrawny-looking stray cats wandering everywhere.
We headed to the Galata Tower, built in 1348, a tall conical building at the top of a very steep hill (we were puffing when we got to the base of the tower!). This was first used as an observation tower to see which boats were coming up the Golden Horn or the Bosphorous, and when we got to the top of the tower, we could see fabulous 360 degree views of Istanbul. On one side we could see the Golden Horn and the bridge we had crossed earlier, and on the other side was the shiny blue Bosphorous with its two giant suspension bridges that cross it. We could also see a huge number of Mosques poking up between all the other buildings, and the sun made our view even better.
We were very high up, and at the top of the tower, there is only a very narrow platform to walk around. I was feeling dizzy every time I looked down, and clutching the hand rail as hard as I could :)
Once we got our feet back on the ground, we did some more walking around a part of the city that is frequented more by locals than tourists. There were lots of shops selling food, drink, household supplies and even Turkish musical instruments.
We decided to head back to our hotel, which involved a long walk in the warm sunshine, firstly heading back down to the Golden Horn and crossing a different bridge (also filled with fishermen), and then following one of the main roads through Istanbul until we made it back to the Laleli district where our hotel was.
On the way, we had a great view of, and eventually walked under, a huge series of viaducts, which we later found out were what was used to bring water into Istanbul for storage facilities like the Sunken Cistern we had visited earlier.
We also saw just how crazy Turkish drivers can be. As we walked along what could be termed as a freeway, we noticed a car that seemed to have taken the wrong exit, so the driver decided he would reverse back onto the main road, even though there were vast numbers of oncoming cars, buses and trucks swerving all around him! Apparently road rules in Turkey are just there as a suggestion. One way signs are ignored, as are no entry signs, pedestrian crossing, red lights, other vehicles on the road, and generally anything that gets in their way. If they have bothered to stop for a red light, the absolute instant it turns green, the driver behind the first car will toot his horn. Sometimes they even give a toot before the light changes, just incase the guy infront has forgotten he is sitting at the lights. It is also worrying how many dents there are in all the yellow taxi's driving around, and as we learnt on our very last night in Istanbul, it is not suprising that they have so many dents! More about that story later...
Back at out hotel, we spent an hour or two resting our tired feet, before we met up with the people we had met at breakfast and walked about 20 minutes up the road to the venue of the 'meet and greet' party. The night was spent enjoying some Efes (Turkish beer), finger foods, a belly dancer whose main priority was to wobble her boobs infront of any single men until they stuffed cash down her top (Tim firmly stood me infront of him to protect him!), chatting to people and dancing away to the music.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 21 Apr 2003
Contact with Home for Easter, Spice Bazaar ( 45 photos )
Happy Easter to those back in Christian countries, it's easy to forget it all here since we have only seen one (yes one) chocolate bunny in all our wanderings around here. We have to admit it is nice to be away from the constant "buy chocolate now!!" advertising that has become all to much in our culture. I'm not a religious person, but for those who are, it's a pretty astounding place here in Istanbul. Their beliefs, whether you agree with them or not, are followed closely, and stuck to through thick and thin, although it is easy to see this becoming less so in the younger generations.
This morning we awoke to call the traditional Gould family Easter gathering back home at Mum and Dad's place, so we wandered down to a phone box, put in our phone card we purchased yesterday for about seven aussie dollars, which gives you one hundered "credits". This lasted all of about four minutes, during which we were quickly passed around for a "hello, are you going well?" with everyone there. Great to hear voices, it was however a shame that we couldn't chat longer. The government has a strong monopoly on telecoms here which means that there are no ultra-cheap phone cards like we can get in the UK. Oh well, can't have everything I guess.
Before I forget, how would you like one of these at the end of your road? We have one here - very pretty if you can deal with the Call to Prayer five times a day!
After the phone call, we wandered into town in search of breakfast. That meal here seems quite elusive. You can either have one of several breads/pastries, something sweet, or a kebab. None of these really appealed, and we searched out a little cake shop / cafe where we got some half pastry half meat thingies (ok, still pastries but we tried!) which were nice, as well as cheap.
After eating those sitting in the park, we decided that we wanted to head off to the Spice Bazaar. Similar to the Grand Bazaar we have been to a few times now, this one specialises in all things tasty and good, so we needed to search it out. Heading off in the rough direction, we eventually made it down to the water on the North side of the Istanbul peninsula (that's under the Golden Horn), where Liz had some barbequed fish on a roll which they cooked on a boat attached to the water-side. An interesting concept, the boats rocked crazily whenever a ship passed by (which was very frequent).
From there, we fought off touts, and found peace under the Galata Bridge, where we had our first beer in days (they drink very little here compared with England). After relaxing in the great weather for a while, we were approached by what we first assumed to be just another annoying local attempting to find a new home for our foreign currency. However, this man turned out to be friendly enough, having friends in Australia, and just wanting to talk. Perhaps he wanted to practice his English. It is sad in a way that the Turkish touts do the rest of their country-folk a disservice by making the tourists weary of anyone walking up for "a chat". Everyone seems friendly, but then just want to sell you something or other.
As it turned out, this guy owned the kebab and fish restaurant next door and simply said "if you are back here some time, why not drop in?" Well, we might just do that.
Some of the great lines we have had layed on us as we walk around the stores:
- "Shall I wrap it up for you?", delivered approximately 1.5 seconds after Liz's eyes flicked at a Turkish carpet.
- "You are walking past my shop!", as if we had missed it accidentally - how silly of us!
- "This shop is paradise, we are the angels - we may not look very good but we are", from an un-shaven but otherwise nice enough Turk.
- [Us looking up at random Mosque we have wandered near] "Do you know what mosque that is?" "No" "That is Nuruosmaniye Mosque. And this is Ali's carpet emporium, neighbour of Nuruosmaniye Mosque. Will you come inside?"
- "Hello? Bonjour? Guten tag? Bonjiorno?" They speak a lot more languages than we do here.
- Plenty more, will have to add some of them as they come back to memory. It's great fun here, but you have to be prepared to deal with the pushy locals! We have seen plenty of people who fall for all of their tricks and no doubt end up parted with cash for things they don't really want/need. I guess that is all part of the fun though.
Next stop was the Spice Bazaar. This is probably our favourite thing here so far. The variety of things available for purchase is quite mind-boggling, and the aromas as you wander around, well you'll just have to imagine for now.
Not suprisingly, we got asked to sample lots of things, which we did, including strange nuts, and plenty of varieties of Turkish Delight. Liz decided to purchase a couple of the latter, which I'm suprised to stay are still intact - they're one of her favourite!
On the side of the Spice Bazaar, we found the Pet and Garden Bazaar (don't think too hard about a correlation between the different Bazaars - there's no evidence of anything but cleanliness and healthy handling everywhere). In the Pet Bazaar, you could purchase anything from a dog to a leech! Despite the fact that these animals are all in small enclosures, there seemed to be higher turn-over of stock than in Pets Paradise shops and the like in Westfields back home.
Next, we decided to work out a quicker way back to our hotel than the way we had arrived there, which had been following the tram line. Instead, we picked the most direct route our noses pointed out, which took us through some amazingly steep and narrow roads, where it looked like no tourist had set foot in centuries. Exactly what we were after. I guess we shouldn't be surprised at how much the prices change between the central tourist areas and the areas where the locals eat, but we still are.
Back to our hotel for a while, we rested for the afternoon before setting out with one target in mind - a visit to the Blue Mosque. However, contrary to all information we could find, it was closed for tourists by the time we arrived at 6:30pm or so, so we intend to get back there tomorrow morning. On the way, we had a strange Turkish Pizza (not pide), which was flat with a small amount of cheese and tomato topping, wood-fired with parsley and lemon juice. Nice stuff, and about 60 Australian cents!
After we had been down to the Blue Mosque, we then looked for a proper dinner. First attempt was a open roof-top cafe, which turned out to be the most disappointing meal thus far - paying more for the atmosphere (great sun-drenched location) than the chefs.
Next try (yes we thought we were still hungry after all that - Turkey does that to you!) was a restaurant we had walked past a few times earlier, on the main tram-line-road, where they had the only live Turkish music we had seen. However, we should have guessed that it would have been a massive tourist trap, full of Aussies here on ANZAC tours (pot calling kettle black, I know!), and supplying silly Sultan's turbans, fezs (little round hats which have actually been outlawed here for 70 years but still somehow have that tourist appeal) and other traditional garb which you could get dressed up in.
Between the annoying serenading live music (they were quite good, but pointing to the 1,000,000 lire note already under the violin's bow and saying "excuse me sir" was a bit much given the food prices), and the waiter's closing comments ("Don't you want more food?" - we had only ordered an entre and not eaten much of it, and as he put the bill down "Remember, service charge not included"), this all strengthened our opinions that the only real way to experience foreign cultures is to spend the vast majority of your time and money where the locals do.
Arriving back at our hotel, we noticed for the first time since we arrived that there are now signs for On the Go around the place, informing us that there is breakfast provided tomorrow in the hotel between the un-godly hours of 7am-9am, and listing our names in groups on the busses. It appears that there is only myself and one other male on our bus! How am I going cope with fourty or fifty nagging females? ;)
After that, we aim to wander back to the Internet cafe we found the other day before ticking quite a few items off our Istanbul sight-seeing checklist.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 20 Apr 2003
Hagia Sophia ( 63 photos )
Today we have wandered around the Hagia Sophia, which I will do a more complete write up complete with photos some time soon.
We have found an Internet cafe not far from the centre of town in a Hostel called the Antique Cafeteria and Internet. Quite a quaint little place really.
OK, going now, we are both well and the weather is much better today!
(More at 16:28 EEST 21/04/2004, from Gentürk Cadessai 29, Laleli, Istanbul, Turkey (SULTAN), by Liz)
In the morning, we had a quick shower and then headed off in the direction of Sultanahmet, via the Grand Bazaar (which is closed on a Sunday, but as we discovered, there are still plenty of people trying to sell stuff around the place). We had bread again for breakfast, but I'm hoping to try something more adventurous in the coming days.
We then went past a Turkish Tea House, so we decided to go in. It was a very relaxing place, with lots of brightly coloured chairs and tables to sit at. We ordered two teas and they came to us in the proper Turkish way - a little glass cup that you hold by the rim, on a saucer, and a couple of cubes of sugar. We found you need a suprising amount of sugar for such a small amount of tea. It has a strange taste, but I think I could get used to it.
After sitting there a while, we walked futher onwards to the Hag(h)ia Sophia. This is a massive building steeped in history - more than 1400 years old.
The building that stands there now is built over two earlier churches which were both burnt down (or maybe just the second one was burnt down). There is no trace of the first one, and a small excavation of the second one.
The building that stands now was built in under six years (incredible when you look at the height of the dome, let alone all the pillars and giant marble slabs everywhere. It was finished in 537AD, and the architecture is spectacular, as are the mosaics, paintwork and generally the enormity of the building.
It started out being a Christian church, and then in the 1400s it was taken over and became a Mosque until 1935 when Atatürk (the founder of the Turkish Republic) put forward that it should be a museum, and it has been ever since.
The height and size of Hagia Sophia is breathtaking. It is one of the seven wonders of the world, and I can easily see why.
The mosaics of Christian scenes - mostly with Christ or the Virgin are beautiful and very detailed. Unfortunately, large sections of some are missing, as they are made of hight quality gold, and others remain covered up by plaster from when it was a mosque.
The decorative paintwork on the walls and high ceilings soaring overhead, the marble columns, the few stained glass windows, the height of the dome are all incredible. It is well worth the expensive entrance fee, especially if the majority of the money goes to the upkeep and restoration of the building.
I could write all day about the beauty of this place :) The outside is comparitvely quite ugly - a lot of it has been added on to reinforce the original building.
We then decided to go for lunch - and the food was almost as breathtaking as t the Hagia Sophia had been - stuffed tomatoes, potatoes and zucchini, meatball (kofte) and potatoes and chicken goulash.
It all tasted delicious, and I would be very happy to eat that kind of food every day!
Next we wandered to an Internet Cafe we had seen the day before - attached to a youth hostel. It was quite nice inside, and we were lucky to be able to connect the laptop up. We were there for about an hour, emailing and ICQing to Tim's parents.
After that we wandered back to our hotel, stopping to buy some baclava along the way (delicious as well!), and then we went and had tea again at the same tea house (Tim had a coffee that was thicker than yesterday's one!). I also bought a hairclip from a street stall, and then we made it back here to our room.
The weather today has been much better. It is still cold outside, but the sun has been out quite a lot, which has made it a very pleasant day to be walking outside. It will be nice if the weather stays like this.
I was really expecting it to be much hotter here, but it is cooler than last week was in London.
There are quite a lot of Aussies wandering around here, and we will get to meet some in a few days when our tour starts.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 19 Apr 2003
Looking around Istanbul ( 22 photos )
This morning I was awoken around 6am (still dark though) by the Call To Prayer. For those who may not know what this is, allow me to attempt to explain. Istanbul contains lots of Islamic people who generally worship at mosques all over the city. One of the five pillars of Islam is that they should worship five times a day - once before sunrise, again in the morning, after lunch, before sunset, and when it is dark. Each time this happens, the Call to Prayer is sounded from each mosque.
The Call itself consists of a heavily-amplified male voice singing a short verse, heavily embelished, in one of those voices which sound particularly grating to the Western ear.
Where we are staying, I counted five such calls this morning, each over-lapping by about a minute, lasting ten minutes, and totally ignorant of each other.
Exactly how Liz managed to sleep through all this is a mystery to me, perhaps I will get used to it. No matter, it is due to start again soon!
Awaking again at around 10, we did little but relax in our room for a while, before deciding that we should go find some breakfast, and look around this historical city we are in.
After getting some pastry-bread stuff that the many street touts have to sell (great advice for travelling - eat what the locals do), our first stop was the Grand Bazaar. This mind-blowing place used to be a bunch of streets with shops selling shiny things, carpets, and bascially anything you could ever want. A while back someone had the great idea of putting a very impressive roof over it all, and making it a pedestrian-only zone. The result is a labyrynth of good deals, rip-offs, good and bad products, but generally a very interesting experience.
It was here that it really became apparent that we stick out like sore thumbs. The bred-on-the-streets seller of wares can spot a tourist with strong foreign currency a mile away, and will stop at very little to get your business. Of course, they all speak Turkish here, but as we wander around, we have been greeted in German, Italian and English, just trying to get a reaction from us. The best by far, however, was a man who delivered the very well-rehearsed line "I have exactly what you are looking for in here" just as we walked past! He actually had no such thing, but it was all we could do to not giggle at him as we wandered off to push off more people.
Eventually, we bought two things for Liz - a beanie and a bag, both of which worked out quite cheap. For the beanie, we started by asking how much. "Fifty million" came the immediate reply. Using the convient rough conversion of one million TL = AUD$1, asking $50 for a beanie was a bit much. Very quickly his price tumbled, eventually letting it go for Twelve million. I wonder if anyone ever falls for the first price? I'm sure we could have done better. Similarly for the bag, where we were bargaining in Euros. Starting at 40, we decided we wanted to look around a bit more, walked away and increasingly low prices were hurled at our backs as we wandered away. A quick trip around the block, and we came back to pay 14 euros for a nice leather backpack/bag for Liz.
Besides the Bazaar, we have today wandered around the outskirts of the European side of Istanbul (since the river down the middle, the Bosphorous divides Europe and Asia), where we took a cold walk on a wall before a quick lunch/afternoon-tea stop at what turned out to be the pub where our tour group is meeting on Tuesday night.
Liz has just awoken from her sleep, proving even she cannot escape the sound of the 8pm Call To Prayer.
(More 14:18 EEST 20/04/2003, from Sultanahmet, Istanbul, Turkey)
Last night we wandered up Urdu Cudasai towards the Bazaar, looking for somewhere different to eat. We ended up at a small little eating place where we ordered a couple of pide, some Turkish Apple Tea and had a relax on the first-floor above the shop itself.
To order, we had to resort to pointing at the menu and trying to read the items back to the guy, so at least it was nice to be away from the tourist traps.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 18 Apr 2003
Off to Heathrow ( 6 photos )
The train to Heathrow was reasonable, if slow, and upon arrival we faced no huge queues to check in. Worked out quite well, actually.
We had a bit of a look around the shops before deciding that there wasn't really anything of great use there, but we are probably going to get some extremely cheap booze on the plane which will be a bonus - Turkey is cheap, so we need to take advantage of that after England!
Soon enough it was time to board our flight to Turkey!
(permanent link to this story)
In the Sky Again, Then Istanbul ( 1 photo )
(Continued from Working in London 1)
No major problems so far - we are about an hour from the end of our flight to Turkey and all is well!
(More at 19:16 EEST 19/04/2003, from Gentürk Cadessai 29, Laleli, Istanbul, Turkey (SULTAN) )
The remainder of the flight went just fine, we found the staff to be courteous and the food much better than we had expected.
Upon touch-down, we floundered around the airport for a little while before locating the Visa desk, where we each forked over Fifteen Euros for our three month visas. I got the feeling that the Turkish don't like the Americans much, as their visas cost a whopping $100 US for one month. Ouch.
Luckily we had some Euros left over from last week's
trip to The Netherlands, as these have come in handy. I suspect in a few years time, the governments of many countries may have to consider adopting the Euro as at least a semi-official currency, as it is accepted all over the place here. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that one euro translates into 1,750,000 Turkish Lira, about the price of a cup of coffee.
While waiting in line for the Visas, Liz ducked off and became an instant millionaire at the ATM, withdrawing 100,000,000 Lira for use around the place. This turns out to have been a good move.
We then wandered on to baggage collection after passing passport control with no problems, where we once again were suprised at how quickly our bags were available. Perhaps only Sydney airport is inefficient in this regard?
Next task was to try to get to our hotel. I had rang the tour company the day before, asking whether to expect a hotel transfer, since they only typically offer them two days before the tour starts (ours starts Tuesday), but we had been told we would get one. The answer was that there might be one, just look out for a sign, otherwise keep your reciepts.
Well, we wandered around the arrivals section looking at lots of strange signs, but none had our name on them. The closest was a person who approached us directly saying he was from Fez tours. Nothing registered then, but Fez tours is the Turkish partner of On The Go tours, so we suspect that was our transfer. I had been specifically told to look for an On The Go sign, otherwise it might have rung bells in my head.
Anyway, we jumped in a cab, showed him the address and were rapidly taught how the Turkish drive. Badly. We scrambled in vain for the seat-belts but none were to be found. Instead, we held on and tried to admire the scenery as we hurtled towards central Istanbul at roughly twice the speed limit.
We had to walk the last little bit to the hotel as the traffic was pretty heavy, but he got us there ok. However, we think he ripped us off, claiming (and showing us) that we had handed over a smaller note than I thought I did. Only later did I realise that the notes were definitely all the same - they had come from the ATM! In all the hustle and bustle we had also forgotten to get a reciept. Live and learn, and expect to get ripped of by taxi drivers, especially in countries which have huge amounts of zeroes on their notes.
We settled for a little while in our room on the sixth floor of our hotel for the next few days - the "Sultan Otel", located fairly centrally, complete with semi-English speaking concierge (better than none), a lift which has the door attached only to the building itself (stand back as five floors whiz by!), and a cosy, clean yet quite old room.
After gathering our thoughts, we wandered off in search of food. This is where Turkey really excels. There is of course the ubiquitous doner kebab, rendered relatively healthy by the fact that over here it is a common family meal rather than a greasy beer-sponge after a big night out. We haven't yet sampled too many different types of food, and last night we just located a local family-run kebab shop, and had a great tasty meal.
After a slight diversion home, we retired for the night.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 17 Apr 2003
Back in the Big Smoke ( No photos )
Now that we are settled a little back into work in London, it's almost to time up-root and travel to Turkey.
We are flying Turkish Airlines on-stop from London Heathrow. Our flight leaves at 11:45am tomorrow (18/04/03), and should take four hours or so.
From the 22nd April, we are on an organised tour with On the Go Tours, the local contact for which is Andrew Bailey, Fez Tours, +90 212 516 9024. We have also registered with the Australian Consulate just in case.
Here's a few more interesting Turkey-related links: Turkish Travel Planner, Australian Embassy, Turkey, and The Visit Gallipoli Page, which has information on the Dawn Service we will be attending.
Pretty exciting time for us to get to get going once again! After this trip we will have a month and a half or so in which to work hard before throwing it all in and travelling.
In other news, Percy had a nice visit from someone with a white vehicle, the result of which was some rather unpleasant scratches down his side. The evening we discovered that (Tuesday), we drove him out to Les and Pearl's, where he is now resting in the driveway. I just received an email from them saying that they have been kind enough to polish the majority of the scratches off! Thank You Both!
So he will stay there, while Rosie is living with friend from work Alwin, who drove her home from work the other morning (after I had driven her in through the rush-hour London traffic!), and almost kept going to Dover! He was pretty nostalgic, since he has done the combi tour thing before and wanted to keep going! He resisted, however, and that brings to two the number of vehicles now parked relatively safely at friend's places, on opposite sides of London for the duration of our Turkey trip.
The weather in London is stupid at the moment, I think today is the first day since we arrived back in August where the London temperature, at 22 degrees, is higher than the temperature reported in Sydney (18 last I checked)!! I actually didn't wear my coat to work for the first time!
I have re-signed my contract here through until the middle of June now, and there are people confirmed to take our room at Cricklewood, so that means the only outstanding issue is to find a buyer for Percy when we return from Turkey. Liz aims to just get as much work as she can handle from the Nurse Bank at her current hospital, since now that she has "proven" herself there seems to be plenty on offer.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 15 Apr 2003
Brief Update ( No photos )
Quick update, just go upload the only Dutch news we've had chance to do yet. Also, there are plenty of photos but I haven't had time to put them on the website.
As a summary:
- We are back in London safely, complete with van.
- We still aim to go to Turkey. Yes we are concerned. Yes we will be careful. Yes we know all the dangers but are comfortable with the fact that the Australian government is encouraging people to go, and sending plenty of secret police. I hope people can respect this.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 14 Apr 2003
Across a few Countries ( 4 photos )
Awaking somewhat painfully on Monday morning, it was nice not to be at work, but instead three countries and a big lump of water away. Still, our aim for the day was to get back there in time for work the next morning, so that's what we did.
Choosing to bee-line it straight for Calais, we stopped only twice for brunch, fuel and the like as we crossed through the bottom of the Netherlands and then the tops of Belgium and France. It would have been nice to have taken longer, but plenty of time for that later. Today we had to get home. Sure, the scenery was nice and varied quite a bit, and the road signs were all different, but it was just a long, if interesting, drive on a motorway to us.
We arrived at Calais very early, 3pm for a 6:40pm ferry. After asking in my worst high-school French if the man there spoke English (I expected he would, but thought it might have been rude to presume so), everyone in the office laughed at me! Well, I think I said the right thing...
Anyway, he asked if we wanted to go on the 3:15pm ferry instead - so we did, eager to get home earlier. The trade-off is that we didn't have time to sample any of the famous Caliais cheap produce that the British love to come and bring back in huge quantites on day trips. There's always next time.
So, Rosie rumbled her way on to the ferry, where we had a relax in the bar before a bit of a wander around the ship as we waved goodbye to "big proper joined-on Europe" for the moment. We grabbed a few essentials at the on-board shops, and before we knew it (1:15, actually), we were back in Britain.
No problems with customs on either side, and in fact for two Australians arriving in a Combi on Dutch plates we expected a lot of scrutiny. Both sides of the channel were happy to see us, and we drove basically straight through, back onto English soil.
(permanent link to this story)
Back in England ( 1 photo )
(Continued from Netherlands 1)
I had expected to see more signs reminding you which side of the road to drive on once back in Dover, but you just sort of had to work it out. We managed ok, my brain more than a little confused, but no major problems as we now had to check competely different blind spots for passing cars.
Only one stop on the way back to Cricklewood, before we arrived home fairly early, got all of our gear out of Rosie, locked her up good and tight, demolished some food and retired to bed.
What an adventure. We are both very keen for more travel, both to Turkey on Friday an dour big Europe trip, starting mid-June. We'll keep you posted.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 13 Apr 2003
Amsterdam Botanic Gardens ( 42 photos )
Sunday we awoke later, our first real day off as we had no firm plans until the afternoon. Sebastian suggested that we wander towards the city's botanic gardens, one of the few things he hadn't seen in his many trips to Amsterdam. This we did, taking a nice ambling walk in the once again perfect weather, eventually navigating the insane street names to arrive at the gardens.
A little disappointing overall, since most things were probably just about to bloom, their collection did however contain a strange collection of plans - even some Australian ones! The heat almost became too much as we wandered into the greenhouse, but the spraying mist made it bearable. Anytime we thought it was getting to hot, a little chill reminded us that we weren't in Sydney's botanic gardens after all.
Well, I think our train is almost here, so I'll try to get up to date in time to upload it all at work tomorrow.
(More 19:26 BST 16/04/03, from Spittalfields, London, England)
I will try to make this this last Amsterdam entry as it is almost time to go to Turkey!
That afternoon it was time to say goodbye to Jessi and Sebastian, and head once again to Utrecht. We did it in the best way, with one last beer in the Old Nickel Pub where we had been staying. We should meet them sometime soon on our way through Germany, and even have an offer to stay with Sebastian's parents!
Heading back to Amsterdam Centraal station (gee we were glad that it wasn't far from where we were staying), we had all our gear with us this time. This time managing to find a non-smoking carriage and a fast train, we arrived not much later in Utrecht.
Walking down from the station to Donna's yard where Rosie was waiting for us, we stopped along the canal for an obligatory windmill photo, our only one the whole trip!
After spending a good half hour working out with Donna what all the gadgets did in the van (even though that's her job, there were still a few which kept her guessing). We discovered that it has a warm-air gadget which is quite expensive, and we think Donna may have charged us more if she had know it was in there!
Since we had been backpacking thus far, we didn't have any quilts or pillows to sleep with for the night, so once again Donna helped us out by lending us a quilt for the night. Directions to the local camp-ground followed, and then we were on the road!
As Liz will hastily tell you, the first corner that I had to take found us on the wrong side of the road. A quick adjustment, and we drove onwards in search of our destination for the night - Berekuil Camp Ground in Utrecht. Between Donna's directions, the local signs and a bit of help from the locals, we found our destination. One of the wrong turns found us in a huge car-park where Liz happily jumped in the driver's seat for a quick spin, only to quickly declare that she would never get the hang of it. I'll convince her yet!
The camp ground turned out to be a beautiful place hidden away off the road, and surrounded by water (as so much of The Netherlands is). We had to get the bar-tender to open the gate for us (being a Sunday, the reception wasn't open), and while asking there Liz discovered the wonders of the self-cleaning toilet seat! We meant to get back there to take a movie of it since it really defies description and scared her senseless, but we failed to do so.
Next we parked Rosie in a nice little area, and rapidly started to play with all of her goodies. I just love the rotating front passenger's chair, very comfortable after a long day on the road, or indeed a short one.
We walked across the road to the service station for a snack, fed some of that to the ducks, and took a slow walk to the nearby hotel for dinner. Next time we can cook our own, but we didn't have the gear with us at this stage. The hotel was quite a bit classier that we expected, which was strange after walking through a bowling alley to get in there. Dinner was great (steaks for the first time in ages), and a suitably slow walk back to the bus followed.
The night was a bit uncomfortable sleeping, due to the multiple cushions you use as a bed, not having any real pillows and only a single dooner, but it worked out in the end. Much better next time we sleep in her.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 12 Apr 2003
Getting to know Amsterdam ( 15 photos )
Liz and I awoke quite early on Saturday since we had to get to Utrecht, about half an hour train ride south of Amsterdam by 10am. Sebastian and Jessi managed to drag themselves out of bed for breakfast (a strange all-in-one bacon and eggs mixture which worked suprisingly well) back at the hotel (we were staying in an annex building up the road), but later we found they went back and slept until midday!
Then Liz and I wandered up to the station once again, now experts (or so we thought) at navigating the Dutch transport system. We did make it fairly successfully through to where we were going, albeit on a train which stopped at places with only one other building besides the station.
Utrecht, our destination, was where we were to meet Donna, who runs a website which we had chosen as our source of campervan. After withdrawing yet more cash from the bank at the station, we rang her and she helpfully picked us up.
After quite a lot of stress the other week when she didn't have a van for us yet we had booked ferry tickets back, she managed to find a van down in a small town called Sprang-Capelle about seventy kilometers away from a dealer she had previously got vans from. She has been so helpful for us, driving down there previously to take photos and send to us, and this day was no exception. She again drove the seventy kilometers, this time in a blue campervan with me in the front and Liz in the back.
This was our first ever experience of being on the "wrong" side of the road, and boy are we glad that someone else was driving! Before she moved to The Netherlands in 1971 she was in America, and hence has always driven that way. A few hairy moments of tourists(!) not quite knowing where they were going and we eventually made it. Along the way we had seen some great little back streets of the country that we never expected to see.
The dealer in Sprang-Capelle, a Mr Timmermans, spoke only Dutch so whether he and his workers were laughing at these silly Australian tourists buying a van we will never know, but he took us for a drive in it to the post office (registration documents had to be organised), and all seemed ok.
Liz is hassling me to put the computer away and go to sleep now, so more news later!
(More 22:49 BST 15/04/03, from Platform 4, Farringdon Station, London, England)
It seems that my stop in journal-writing lasted a little longer than expected, since we are now safely back in London, so I'll try to pick up where I left off.
It's a NEW CAR! (or bus/van)
After various transactions and a quick look-over of the bus, Liz and I said "yes", and the deal was done! We were now the proud owners of a Big Red Bus, which, contrary to earlier plans, we have decided deserves the name Rosie. Bet you can't guess why. Various other names were tried but didn't quite fit, including a close second of Mr Whippy, but Rosie it is!
The next task was to get her from Sprang-Capelle to Utrecht, my first ever experience of driving on the left-hand side of a vehicle and the right-hand side of the road. I have to say that I didn't really do much other than follow Donna in her blue van in front of us, oblivious to road signage and speed limits (made more interesting as Donna's speedo didn't work) as I got used to driving the bus.
Changing gears with my right hand proved reasonably easy, and overall it was quite like driving the big SES truck (quick mention to Kogarah for winning the Rescue comp - yay guys!), only backwards and with no power steering. And Liz sitting next to me giving a running commentary of everything I was about to hit!
But no disasters came, and we made it back to Utrecht with a quick pit stop to relax in the sun at McDonalds (can't get away from them).
It wasn't quite time for our adventure in the bus to begin, so we jumped back on the train to Amsterdam, hoping our newly-purchased expensive posession would be ok parked there in Donna's yard.
Back in Amsterdam, we caught up with Sebastian and Jessi who had slept in until 12:30 (still used to the uni lifestyle - it will be all over soon...), and then wandered around the local touristy flea-market. Like other places all around Amsterdam, there is plenty of live entertainment in the squares, and even more people waiting to relieve you of your wallet while you watch it.
The remainder of the day was spent having a few relaxing pilseners and coffees in various local establishments - a great way to soak up the local culture as it unfolds around you. Dinner was Mexican at a nice little place, far better than the terrible service we recieved at a Haagen-Daas earlier on.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 11 Apr 2003
Departing England ( 3 photos )
A busy last few days have seen us work work work until Thursday, by which time we were both very keen to get on the road.
No problems at all on the flight over here, starting on Friday with a Thameslink train up to London Luton airport (London has four or five airports all around it), which was a pleasant way to spend the morning. It's always strange to go the other way on the train line you use every day.
After a few phone calls from my work asking questions I didn't really want to answer (I'm trying to be on holidays here guys!!), we arrived at Luton Airport Parkway station. From there, we got on to a shuttle bus to the airport itself.
By this stage, we realised just how useful the backpack/rucksack we bought the other week is. We fitted everything into it (it has a main pack and a zip-on "daypack" which is a smaller pack which can be separated), and strapped me into it, and that's all we have! A great change from the lugging-around of suitcases we started out with. The only thing we have forgotten to bring was a comb/brush, but that has now been replaced.
So, this big pack of ours is much easier to take on and off trains, buses, etc. At the airport we purchased a Europe road atlas so that we could find our way back to Calais with the van (more later!), and Liz found a replacement for her broken hand-bag she liked, but decided against it.
We had to pay attention to the screens in the terminals as there was no obvious way of knowing where to go, but we managed it the end.
The flight on EasyJet airlines was just fine, with very tight security. As evident by the police with assault rifles wandering around the airport which Liz found in her face as she turned around! OK, not quite in her face but scary enough. We half-expected to find TV cameras there, since that is one of the airports where they film that TV documentary/soap/reality show Airline, but no such luck.
Eventaully we were off to The Netherlands!
(permanent link to this story)
A Flight into Amsterdam ( 15 photos )
(Continued from Working in London 1)
It was strange flying out over the UK, as we were up quite high and hence couldn't see the ground for the cloud-cover. We joked that the end of the clouds we could see up ahead was where the UK's own ever-present personal layer of cloud probably ended. But it was true! We looked back under the clouds to see that indeed, we had now left the UK for what I termed "proper joined-on Europe". Depending on who you ask, UK people don't think they are in Europe at all anyway.
Mark from work was joking the other day that the flight to Amsterdam was very quick, since you climb, the flight-attendants rush around with sandwiches and the like, then you buckle-up for landing. Very true.
Flying in over "the continent", we saw just how amazing a place The Netherlands is in terms of water. They have Europe's busiest port in Amsterdam, as the huge queues out to sea of ships showed. The harbour areas go on and on. We were of course very excited to see our first cars driving on the "wrong" side of the road from the air!
The humorous American pilot talked us through our taxi into Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, as we did a few U-turns while he tried to find the correct bay to "dock" in. Good-natured airline, EasyJet.
Our first Dutch language signs served to confuse us greatly, but luckily almost all have English equivalents, and most people speak English at least a little.
No hassles getting bags or through customs, although since Liz was showing her UK passport, she just went through the "fast" lane, and didn't get a stamp. Most annoying, since that's part of the fun of travelling.
So we wandered through the airport, following the little picture of a train as we needed to get from there (a little way out of the city) to Amsterdam Centraal station. This proved quite simple to locate, and the ticket-machines easy to use once we worked out where the English button was, and that it didn't take cash.
The trains run quite frequently, so no major problem waiting for one, after we had worked out that platform 7a and platform 7b are different ends of the same platform. We fumbled our way onto the train, noting immediately that people were smoking on it. Everywhere. It seems that there are little signs on the outside of the carriages telling you whether they are smoking or non-smoking. Although, it's a pretty nominal suggestion - there's just less smoking in the non-smoking carriages.
The train only stopped at Amsterdam Centraal, although we weren't really sure since there were no signs on the platform. We just wandered around a bit until we realised that our location fitted in quite well with the map we had.
(More from 21:30 CEST 12/04/2003)
We wandered around for a while, attempting to work out which direction to look before crossing the roads, and eventually found a tourist information place. We had a coffee at the attached cafe, Liz bravely being the one to go and order, while I talked to the info people about how to get to a bank to get money out. Also, we grabbed a map from the map machine, despite being a little sceptical since the machine back in Chester ate our money and gave nothing in exchange. But everything in Europe works better!
We located our hotel, which turned out to be very handy to the Centraal station - wonderful since we used it quite a bit on the subsequent days. The land-lady seemed to have been indulging in some of the local past-times a little too much, and her cat wasn't much better.
After dumping our bags in the great modern room, we wandered in search of money exchange, which we found in Amsterdam Square (Liz in a clog!). We had our first of what turned out to be many relaxing sits in the sun, soaking up the atmosphere and generally not doing much at all, before wandering back in search of our friends.
Arriving on the stroke of 7pm, we stood outside Centraal station, looking for anyone who looked vaguely like they might be the person I had last seen in Year 11 at Sydney Tech and his girlfriend Jessi who we had never seen. Luckily, they had been looking at this website and seen recent photos of us, so they walked straight up and said hello!
That night, Sebastian showed us his local knowledge by directing us fairly well through to some of the interesting little areas further out from the city centre. We had Italian for dinner, and continued exploring the Dutch culture.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 08 Apr 2003
2000 Hits ( 15 photos )
By the time you read this, that little hit counter above should have hit two thousand! Sure, to a big site that's not much at all, but for a little log of our adventures around the world, that means a lot of people have logged on to have a look at what we are doing.
Thanks very much to everyone for tuning in, it makes it worthwhile when we know someone is listening to us blather on!
(permanent link to this story)
Travel Plans Update ( No photos )
Well, I tried to get Liz to do the weekend away updates, but she had a headache last night and I am taking the morning off work, so I'm afraid you're stuck with me again!
Some general news:
- Some nice person decided that Percy only really needs two hubcaps, so decided to relieve him of the other two. How considerate! The ad to sell him goes in to Loot today, so fingers crossed.
- We are on-track to pick up his replacement this coming weekend in Amsterdam, which should be great fun. Driving a Left-Hand drive vehicle for the first time ever on the right side of the road, then coming across the channel and putting it back on the left side of the road should do wonders for our poor little brains.
- Liz has been quite sick on and off but is generally on the mend now. Neither of us are 100%, but it was amazing to go away from the London smog for a weekend and see how much better it felt. We look forward to moving on permanently.
- The weather here is strange now - some days it makes it to eighteen degrees(!), but then a biting wind comes along to remind you of where you are. Still wearing our coats most places, along with beanies, scarves and gloves. I am still constantly amazed at how little rain we have seen - quite contrary to the stereo-type.
- The sun rises before seven and doesn't set until nearly eight - it will be interesting to experience how that plays out during summer. It is strange now working twelve hour days and experiencing daylight at both ends!
- I am about to re-sign a contract which will end on the 13th June 2003, so that is when we can up-root and drive back across the channel! Nice to finally have a date to put in our itinerary.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 06 Apr 2003
A Day at the Races ( 42 photos )
The breakfast was good, as we discovered upon waking on Sunday. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, but eating in the conservatory at the back of the house was still very pleasant, munching on home-made bread covered in peach jam. The franting ringing of the massive church tower just across the road somehow seemed to make it a great Sunday.
Again we loaded Percy, and were waved of by the land-lady with words of "make sure you tell your friends about us" and a genuine smile. So, we travelled onwards, destination this time Norwich.
Since I keep getting it confused, let me explan that Norwich is the main city in the county of Norfolk. The city itself seemed that it could be explored in one of two ways - either (as we did) rather quickly, taking in the two main tourist sites - the Castle and the imposing Anglican Cathedral, or very slowly over two days or so. This latter approach would leave you time to see through the many interesting several hundered year old buildings which are dotted around.
But were were in a hurry, so we noted that the castle was closed until 1pm, and used it instead as a vantage point over the city, allowing us to spot and then walk to the cathedral. Arriving there, we noted that a service was underway (it being a Sunday and all), so had a look around the grounds before returning to the car, locked deep in an under-ground parking vault.
Next stop was the aim of the weekend's travels - Snetterton circuit, twenty miles south-west of Norwich.
Neither Liz or I were prepared for just how much fun we were going to have here - I'm a self-confessed "it's just a bunch of cars driving around in a circle" kind of person, but this was something different entirely.
As we arrived, some mini-formula 1 cars (presumably formula 3 or 4 or something) were screaming around the track, and we were able to wander across the pit lane to see them driving down the back straight at 100mph about two metres away from us. The signs "hearing protection must be worn" seemed like good advice, but nobody was following them.
After these cars came a Ferrari race - plenty of horsepower, not much grace, as was evident by the which caught on fire driving down the back straight (that's going to be expensive), and the one which failed to make it out of a turn properly, plummeting straight through a tire barrier and causing the race to be cancelled.
Friend Greg from work was busy tinkering with his car while these other races were going on, but eventually it was his turn (note the Aussie flag proudly displayed next to his surname Clough!). His car had three drivers who did fourty-minute stints throughout the four hour race.
The length of time went amazingly quickly, as Liz and wandered around the inside of the track, trying to find the vantage which offered a good view combined with protection from the biting wind. Plenty could offer the former, but none the latter.
At one stage, Greg offered me the keys to his newly-purchased motor scooter, which I happily accepted. Never having ridden anything more powerful than an eighteen-speed mountain bike, this was an interesting challenge to me. I was just coming back from a few loops around the carpark to pick up Liz when it stalled. Out of fuel apparently. Either that or someone up in the sky was warning me that motorised two-wheeled transport is not for me. So, we handed the keys back, but Liz has already decided that she wants one.
Despite starting in third-last place (the positions were drawn out of a hat), by the end of Greg's fourty minutes he was in first position, even after taking a knock from another driver and finding himself spinning in the rough. The other driver was out for half an hour or so as they bolted bits of his car back on.
At the end of the race, Greg's team was almost a whole lap clear of second place, Greg had set the lap record, and the team quite rightfully held their trophies proudly (Greg on right).
Liz and I are now both keen to get to Bathurst when we next make it home, in keeping with the tradition we have never quite managed to take part in.
Liz decided that the cold was too much, so we piled back in the car as I drove us home. I was secretly glad that she wasn't driving, after being just a little too excited about the fast cars all day!
We headed back to London.
(permanent link to this story)
Back to London ( No photos )
(Continued from Essex and East Anglia)
Straight back to London (well, with a few nice detours off some side-roads through forests and the like - motorways are quite boring ways to travel), we dropped in to our old house to check for mail (none), and then came back to our little room in Cricklewood.
Liz had missed a call from Meaghan, so she rang her back and they chatted as we went up the road for some take-away Chinese for dinner. We eventually crashed in bed, somehow exhausted after all the excitement.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 05 Apr 2003
Out to Norfolk ( 16 photos )
Awaking Saturday morning, we had a great breakfast and chatted about all sorts of things, including how they thought that I look like Dad (no way!), and of course how they remember when I was born. It's always great to visit distant family friends and somehow feel like you are home.
We took some photos around the place, Les commandered me to fix a couple of things on his computer, before we said our goodbyes, loaded up Percy and traveled ever onwards.
Opting to really just drive straight up the coast towards our destination, we looked around a few small villages and enjoyed driving on the back roads of England once again. Stopped for lunch at a great sea-side pub where we had one of the best pub meals yet, and finally made it to our B&B at Winterton-on-Sea.
This great little place came complete with house-cat, home-made preserves and very friendly land-lady, making it a very relaxing weekend away from the hussle and bussle of London.
We walked down to the sea, where we struggled down the steep sand banks to the beach, before performing the now obligatory stick-your-hand-in-the-sea-to-find-out-how-much-colder-than-Cronulla-it-is trick. It was plenty colder.
Walking back through the one-shop, one-pub village, we noticed a road called "The Lane", which sounds even smaller than the signs we had noticed in two other villages for "The Street". Small-town England at it's best.
That night, we walked up to The Pub and found that everyone from 50 miles around must have decided this was a good pub. No seats, and a couple of old ladies also looking for tables that we would have had to push out of the way to get one when one became available. This, coupled with the fact this was 7:30 and The Pub was only going to be open until 11pm anyway, meant that we decided to just get a couple of bottles of wine at The Shop and head back to the B&B.
Our stomachs were saved by the Les-and-Pearl provided care package, comprising sausage rolls and apples, which proved to be more than enough after our massive lunch. Besides, we had a full English Breakfast awaiting us in the morning.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 04 Apr 2003
Hi Les and Pearl ( No photos )
(Continued from Working in London 1)
Friday night Liz succeeded in driving in to pick me up from work - much better than last time! We drove onwards, juggling between maps to work out how to get to Les and Pearl's place. A few wrong turns later, we arrived at 24 Hayburn Way, at the end of a dead-end in Hornchurch.
By the time we arrived, Pearl buried us in food, and that was about all our bodies could take, crashing to bed relatively early. It was strange to think that this was probably the same bed that Mum and Dad slept in way back when they were over here.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 01 Apr 2003
April Fools ( No photos )
Haven't found any really silly jokes yet, bit of a let-down really. They don't seem to get on board with the jokes as much as they do back home.
So, where are we? I have just sent off the email to The Netherlands picking a Volkswagen Bus for us to drive at long last! I'll post details later once they are confirmed, but it should be quite a nice little machine.
Liz seems better this week and now as a "line" of work in an Endoscopy ward which she seems to being enjoying. She was working with four other Aussie girls in the ward yesterday, so seemed to fit in well.
As plans form for this weekend, we are aiming to drive out to Les and Pearls at Hornchurch late on Friday night, then head up to stay at the Tower Cottage Bed and Breakfast in the little coastal village of Winterton, on the coast in Norwich on Saturday night after having a decent look around, before heading back inland to see Sunday's racing action at Snetterton.
I am on nights next week, which should do my body clock lots of damage.
[We journeyed to Essex and East Anglia that weekend.]
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 30 Mar 2003
Hyde Park and Kensington ( 38 photos )
Sunday we awoke and decided that our faithful tome Eccentric London was again the thing to read, aiming for a walk around Kensington via Hyde Park.
We got the 16 bus in to Marble Arch from just across the road from our front door(!), before walking through Hyde Park towards Kensington. This nice wander took in Speaker's Corner (complete with a pro-war Aussie rambling away much more as a tourist attraction than being taken seriously), a nice cafeteria by the Serpentine River and the Serpentine Gallery, which was displaying a modern-art exhibiton. Next was the completely over-the-top Albert Memorial, which really defies description, sticking out amid a sea of trees in a city of grey.
What amazed me was the sheer size of the park - it took a good half hour of admittedly random wandering to get across it, and there are so many different areas to see - the river, wide walks, trees, planted areas, and even keen sun-starved British on deck-chairs!
So we had a great walk around the park and Kensington in general, taking in various streets with massive four-story mansions and price-tags well into the tens of millions of pounds, some nice parklands, and of course the occasional cosy little pub.
But far and away the highlight was a place we would never have found with out the book - the extraordinary Leighton House Museum. Lord Leighton was an artist of great talent and eccentric taste, and both are displayed well in his old home. The central focus is the amazing dome room (see photo on linked page), complete with fountain.
Suprisingly for London, entry was totally free, but unfortunately no photography was permitted.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 29 Mar 2003
House Party ( No photos )
We decided to take it easy on the weekend, involving a very slow Saturday, terminated with an impromptu house party with all residents present! Was a great time as we cranked up the music and got to know our house-mates quite a bit better.
Liz has been quite sick this past week, meaning that she stayed at home, missing out on most of her shifts. SO annoying that she has had no work for so long and now that she has some, she gets sick!
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 25 Mar 2003
Plans ( No photos )
Upon waking up this morning, Liz decided that her sore throat and the lack of sleep that had caused was too much to make it to work.
Plans are shaping up for the future - we are organising a trip up to the one remaining part of England we haven't seen - East Anglia. This has worked out well as Greg from work is racing cars up there that weekend just outside of Norwich at Snetterton. We aim to stop at long-time family friends Les and Pearl's place for the night on Friday night before having a decent look around the area.
For the weekend after that, our flights to Amsterdam are booked (the beauty of the Thameslink train near us is that it goes straight to Luton airport in about 30 mins!), and we are still trying to finalise the purchase of a kombi and how we are to get back (probably on a ferry).
Then the weekend after that, we are off Turkey for two weeks, US bombing patterns and international relations permitting.
I hope to have another couple of months work after we return, and that leaves us just in the middle of June, when we want to hit the road for Europe!
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 24 Mar 2003
Hard Work for One of Us ( No photos )
Monday saw us both working twelve hour days, Liz much harder as I am not doing much at work at the moment, so she is feeling pretty wrecked.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 23 Mar 2003
Work on a Sunday ( No photos )
Sunday morning was a little slow as the true scale of the previous night dawned on us, but no rest for the wicked as we were awoken to the sound of my mobile ringing - being called into work! Aaaaargh! So we piled into Percy (yes, Liz came too, complete with dark glasses), and drove into work. I was only there for three hours, during which Liz had a good look around the very busy Spittalfields markets, coming away with some great olives, cheese, a chicken, general lunch stuffs and a plant for our room.
My laptop power-supply has been playing up recently, and the sparks it was emitting, although colourful, were enough to convince me that one of the cables needed replacing. The computer market near work came to the rescue as Liz physically restrained me from buying more goodies. Damage - £4.
Most of the afternoon was spent basting and preparing our huge chicken for roast dinner (yum!), relaxing on the lounge, chatting to house mates and then finally watching a video. All that excitement was enough as we headed to bed very early in preparation for our big week.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 22 Mar 2003
Camden, Mill Hill East, The Crown ( 29 photos )
After first heading down to the parking shop to get some more "visitors passes" which let Percy have a place to sleep (we have decided to just keep getting these as it is much less hassle than trying to get a proper resident's permit and will probably work out the same cost), we then drove him back and parked him, noting where the previous body damage had been fixed during the week.
Down to the local hairdressers for a much needed pair of haircuts, where the rude woman promptly ignored pretty much everything I had asked for and cut lots more off than I wanted before I realised what she was doing. Oh well, it will grow back.
On the Thameslink to Camden Town (changing at Kentish Town), we spent the morning avoiding the advances of body piercers, chinese food sellers and other more questionable things as we took in the over-dose of culture that is Camden Markets.
We had been aiming to attend a beer festival that day, but the organisers organised a beer festival to finish during the day on Friday. Is it just me or is there something fundamentally wrong with that? So instead, we continued our wanderings before heading home.
For a couple of pretty weak reasons, we decided to head up to the sort-of-end-of-the-line tube station at Mill Hill East. Firstly, it was just something we wanted to be able to say that we had, but secondly, we wanted to pass over the highest viaduct in the tube system, which was actually fairly un-impressive.
Ten minutes sitting at the end of the tube line (note new haircut) later, we rattled back south, changed at Kentish Town en-route to Cricklewood.
Deciding to make up for the lack of the beer festival, we organised for Joel to come to The Crown (pub across the road) for a few drinks, arriving just in time to watch Liz and I eat our dinner after watching Die Another Day on the laptop.
This was the first time we actually had a look around the place properly, and we hadn't realised how big it was. There were two different private parties upstairs (we accidentally wandered into one and would have stayed but it was too crowded). We eventually got comfortable in some huge chairs in the back room where a band was setting up.
To summarise, we had a great night dancing to well-played pub-rock/pop music played by two guitarist/vocalists (with Joel and myself both doing cameo performances on tamborine!), and made some new friends including one Scotsman from Falkirk (we have been there - that's where that silly wheel thing is) who would have been hard to understand even if he had he had not been drinking since 7am, but considering that he had...
Strangely enough, they didn't close until 1am or so which was not at all what we were expecting - and very strange considering we have been tucked into bed early for many months now.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 21 Mar 2003
Proof that Liz is Working! ( No photos )
WOW - Isn't she gorgeous?! ;) She actually commented that that uniform would actually have no pants back home - their dresses are as long as that blue top is!
So despite the fact that she had all the good intentions in the world, she didn't make it today and has called in sick for tomorrow due to a sore-throat and generally not feeling well. Seems to be a strange bug going around once again.
Most of the week progressed quickly, just lots of work until the weekend.
Friday night we pretty much stayed in and relaxed, which left us in a strangely happy and ready-to-do-something mood on Saturday morning.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 18 Mar 2003
Site News ( No photos )
Updates to the Home In London and Itinerary / Photos pages, including new photos and info about our house.
I've also taken the RSS link out of the header since I didn't explain what it did and most people don't need it. If you're interested, it still should work with this link, and you can learn more about what it does by searching for RSS at Google.
(permanent link to this story)
Work for Liz! ( 1 photo )
The good news for the moment is that Liz has found some work! They have contacted her from the Royal Free Hospital, and she is working twelve hours today and eight hours a day for the rest of the week! Congratulations to her, this has been a long time coming. They claim to be able to give her a few month's guaranteed work starting real soon, but for now she's out doing what she intended to be doing many months ago, and that's a great thing.
As you will be able to see on the Itinerary page, plans for our Amsterdam trip are all but finalised. Should be a great weekend away.
My desire to travel has been renewed thanks to Greg from work bringing in his Europe Road Atlas where he plotted his trip all around Europe via Kombi a couple of years back. Plenty of advice, which is exactly what we need.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 17 Mar 2003
St Patrick's Day ( No photos )
Monday was St Patrick's day, where my Irish boss insisted that I go down to the pub for a pint or two of Guiness. Who was I to say no? There was plenty going on at the local pubs as well that evening, but tiredness overcame us as we ate dinner and chatted to Sarah, one of our housemates.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 16 Mar 2003
Hampstead Gardens ( 28 photos )
On Sunday, all this running-around was beginning to take its toll on my 60-hour-a-week worked body, so it was decided that a nice leisurely stroll around the nearby Hampstead Gardens, which are a part of the massive Hampstead Heath was in order. Spring has come on amazingly fast here, with lots of pretty colours peeping through.
Of course, while we were there we had a fantastic lunch at the Bull and Bush pub, before feeling like little kids as we lined up for the Ice-Cream van. No, they aren't called Mr Whippy vans here.
Liz went for a walk again that afternoon, as I processed some photos, before we enjoyed dinner in.
(permanent link to this story)
A Move and Lots More ( 28 photos )
Ok, so seeing this hasn't been updated for quite a while, this is going to be a nice long section. Have you got a cup of tea next to you? (This is what happens when you are in England too long...you become addicted to tea, and you can't function without it.)
[ Liz's Mega-update has been split into the individual days ]
Our travel plans are currently moving along quite nicely. Our trip to Turkey is all booked and payed for, and we head off there in about a month. We are also in the middle of planning a trip to Amsterdam to meet up with Tim's friend Sebastian (he came out from Germany as an exchange student and went to Sydney Tech) and his girlfriend Jessi. As well as lots of getting to know each other, and seeing the sites of Amsterdam, Tim and I are trying to purchase a Kombi from a company near Amsterdam, and then drive it back to London. All of this stuff has to happen within a few days due to Tim's work, and we can't wait to get there and explore the place. At the moment, we are probably going to Amsterdam about the 11th, 12th and 13th of April, and coming home for a few days before heading off to Turkey.
So, how was all that? I have probably even left stuff out, and if so I'll add a bit more later on. Congratulations if you made it all the way to the end :)
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 15 Mar 2003
Greenwich ( 37 photos )
Now that Liz has easily taken the cake for the longest website update in history, I'm back to tell you about our weekend and how this week is shaping up - rather well!
Saturday we awoke and were once again living the care-free life, wondering just what to do with ourselves. So many options! After the success of last time, we once again took a walk as recommended in our Eccentric London book (thanks Peter Bowyer for this - we're getting lots of use out of it!).
This time we went down to Greenwich. Famous as the Greenwich in "Greenwich Mean Time", Liz dutifully stood with a foot in either hemisphere (that's east and west, not north and south!) as part of our view around the place.
Since there's quite a lot to do, we decided that since it was such a nice day, we would do all the outside things, and leave the interesting things for the far more common days when it is raining cats and dogs.
We walked from our new home down to the nearest tube station at Kilburn, where we jumped on the Jubilee line. This is a line which has only recently been extended, and now offers a great fast trip across London.
We got off at the huge and truly impressive Canary Wharf station, which has won lots of design awards, before going on the Docklands Light Railway. This was Liz's first trip on this tram-like thing which operates without a driver, and sitting right at the front as we plunge at 60mph into a black tunnel (no headlights needed, of course), it's great fun. The DLR took us down to Greenwich station where we aimed to start our walk, but promptly got lost straight from the station!
Improvising our way around, our walk eventually took in plenty of sites around Greenwich, including the impressive and history-rich St Alfege Church, the family-run for many years Goddard's Pie House (where we grabbed some great hot fruit pies), the Cutty Sark, and quite a few different market areas.
We walked through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel across to the Isle of Dogs, which our guidebook pointed out has a heavily-reinforced section at the North end where a German bomb struck it in World-War II. The dripping part in the middle didn't inspire a lot of confidence either. But there is a lift at each end which is still operated by a man who presses the buttons for you! Don't see that very often.
The view South from the Isle of Dogs towards Greenwich is really breath-taking, especially on a great day like we had. See the view of the Royal Naval College, for example.
We went quickly back through the tunnel before heading along the waterfront looking at the great little pubs and old almshouses. Great views back towards the Millennuim Dome as well, even though it's not used for anything.
Wandering then South-ward, we entered Greenwich park where there was a great big sundial smack-bang on the meridian which was actually fairly accurate.
Ambling through the chilly breeze up on top of the hill, we battled the crowds near the Old Royal Observatory to see the "offical" place where time and location start on the planet, as well as the "offical" set of imperial measures, should you ever want to use such a thing. The huge numbers of people there discouraged us from entering, and we still had a bit of wandering around to do anyway!
Passing back through the pack, we turned down the offers of the London Fan Museum (that's fans as in hand-held, wave back-and-forth to cool yourself fans) on our way to grab those fruit pies and check out some last bits of markets before returning to the station, stopping to check some notably strange architecture along the way.
There are a few strange shops down there, including the "Junk Shop", which is very accurately named, and a couple of places specialising in strange, best-forgotten 50s-80s memorabilia that I had to literally drag Liz out of. "No Liz, we don't need those pink flamingo lights, and perhaps we can wait until after we buy a kombi to get the fluffy dice!"
Back in Cricklewood, we were walking home and walked past a video shop we had not previously noted. Choosing a DVD for the night, we were then amazed as the young French lad showed us how we can hire a movie twenty-four hours a day by using an atm-style machine out the front, which takes credit off our card and spits out the DVD! Returns can similarly be done any time, meaning we only pay for six hours' hire - 99p a movie. That's very cheap for anything over here.
So, we settled down with Nicole and Carlo to watch 40 Days and 40 Nights, which was a nice relaxing evening.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 14 Mar 2003
Hi Joel ( No photos )
On Friday I dropped Meaghan off at her work before heading home. Later that night I spent 35 minutes standing in the freezing cold waiting for the train before heading into town to meet up with Tim, have dinner and then meet up with Joel who arrived out here just over a week ago.
We went and found a nice little pub near Charing Cross, and spent the evening catching up and voicing various travel plans.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 13 Mar 2003
Meaghan's Again ( No photos )
On Thursday, I jumped in the car and headed up to Meaghan's Grandma's house in Milton Keynes. I had a much better trip up there this time, and got there in under an hour, without getting lost or stuck in traffic. Meaghan and I spent the morning doing a bit of shopping and then we went for lunch before heading back to her Grandma's for a bit. That night we went out with some of Meaghan's friends to one of the local pubs.
I also received a phone call in the afternoon from the Royal Free Hospital offering me a job in their endoscopy unit (using special cameras to look inside various body orifices) for a few months. I used to do this at my old work, so it wouldn't be an entirely new thing, but it would be very good experience. It is not definite yet, so I will keep you posted. Hopefully it will all work out, because it sounds perfect.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 12 Mar 2003
Scratched Car! ( No photos )
On Wednesday I went to pick the car up from its service. I payed up the £250 and went out to the car - to discover a scratch in the drivers door, and chunks missing out of the plastic trim. After paying that much money, I wasn't terribly impressed, so I went back inside to complain. Someone came out and looked at the damage, and tried to tell me it looked like the scratch had been there for quite a while. I was furious, because I guess he thought I might back down and not make them repair it. Anyway, he said he would call me to arrange a bodywork appointment, which he never did. I got Tim to call the garage yesterday to find out what was going on, and they tried to suggest we had to pay to have it fixed! So now, I am taking the car back up there tomorrow to have it fixed, and probably to argue with them that I will not be paying for the repair.
Anyway, the rest of my day was spent looking for more work, and being a bit lazy and reading on the lounge for a few hours :)
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 11 Mar 2003
Some Work for Liz ( No photos )
On Tuesday I had a shift (!) at the Harley Medical Group - a private clinic near Oxford Street. They have one operating theatre, and seemed to specialse in plastic surgery. The staff were really nice, and despite being nervous, I had a great day. And as a bonus I got to see liposuction for the first time! Sorry, you probably arn't quite as excited about that as I am, so I won't go into details. They also payed for my lunch - simply because they had more than two patients that morning. Sweet! I am really hoping that I get a few more shifts there.
After work I headed off to the Royal Free Hospital At Hampstead because I have been declared disease free (see previous entry), and I am now officially on their nurse bank. This is like a casual pool, where they just send me anywhere in the hospital that requires a nurse, so I am hoping to get work from that (again, more about that in a bit!). I was supposed to pick up my uniform and id card, but there were no id cards left, which meant I couldn't get a uniform either, so I went home.
Once I got to our front door, I found I couldn't get in. There are three locks on the door, and the deadlock isn't working (if you shoulder barge the door, it will open), so at the moment we are also locking the bottom lock. For some reason my key wasn't working and I couldn't get the door open. No-one was home, so I did what any sensible aussie would do, and headed across the road to the pub, to wait for someone to arrive home. I had a glass of wine, read the paper and chatted to some old Irish guy at the bar, before heading home to find that now the front door miraculously opened (?).
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 10 Mar 2003
Percy Gets a Service ( No photos )
On Monday, Tim headed off for another week of twelve hour days, and I took Percy up the road for a well deserved service. The car has done about twelve thousand miles since we bought it last September. Not bad considering the total milage is less than thirty-five thousand and the car is about eight years old.
The rest of my day was spent doing bits and pieces like looking for work and changing our address with various people.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 09 Mar 2003
London Transport Museum Depot ( 31 photos )
On Sunday, we caught the ThamesLink (an overland train), from just near our house, into the city, and we went to The London Transport Museum Depot. This is a huge warehouse where they put all the old tube trains and double decker buses and various bits of transport memorabilia that doesn't fit in the actual museum itself. The Depot is only open to the public a few times a year, so we were lucky that we were around on one of the days it was open.
We spent a couple of hours wandering around old tube carriages (build in the 1930's, or even older), old buses that had to be hand cranked, models of what the tube system looks like underground, and hundreds of old signs from all the tube stations.
Next we headed to Earl's Court for some lunch at the Earl's Court Tavern, and then we met up with Marty who works in nearby Trekmate (similar to Kathmandu). We then became the proud new owners of a rucksack, complete with daypack and also a moneybelt. We came out here with two large suitcases and one medium sized backpack, but have decided that we need a larger pack for our trip to Turkey and Amsterdam (more about that in a bit), and so we finally got around to making a purchase.
We headed home and spent the evening making Nachos and watching TV.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 08 Mar 2003
Moving Day! ( 2 photos )
Saturday was Moving Day, and we were both so happy to be going to our new home. It took us about an hour to pack up all our possessions and we even managed to cram it all into Percy in one load. And then before we knew it we were on our way to our new place.
Our new home is only about five minutes drive from our old one, but due to major road works and a big construction site across the road from our front door, it took us about half an hour to get there, but you still couldn't have wiped the grins off our faces.
Parking is a problem. You have to have a permit, or you have to park an hours walk away. So we did what any sane person would do and triple parked illegally in the carpark behind our house. Due to the big menacing signs all around saying any cars discovered illegally parked would be clamped, one of us stayed with the car, while the other rushed around the corner to the front door with an armload of stuff.
Having emptied the car, we went and parked it slightly more legally (but still not quite legally), and went inside to meet and greet the rest of the household. Its turns out, that even though there are meant to be about nine people living here, a couple are off traveling, and everyone else is hardly ever here.
And now, about the house:
We live on a very busy and very noisy main road. There is a huge construction site across the street, and the traffic is constantly heavy due to major roadworks going on. Luckily, our bedroom is at the very back of the house, so we don't hear any noise when we are in there. And it's quite pleasant to fall asleep feeling the house rock as the buses roar by!
We are surrounded by shops and fast food and pubs. McDonalds is across the street, Burger King is two doors up, there is a Kebab shop either side of us, and KFC just up a few doors on the other side of the road. As for pubs, there are about five or six within two minutes walk. We have only been to one of the pubs...it is called The Crown, and is just across the road, and its really nice. Big comfy lounges, a roaring fireplace and lots of charm.
We also have a supermarket across the road next to the pub,. and another one just around the corner. There are about five butchers, and loads of stalls selling fresh fruit and veg, so with all that, I don't think we are ever likely to go hungry.
We have mostly resisted all the fast food...one kebab on our first night here (they are made differently over here - not all rolled up, but in an open piece of bread, out of which the contents always fall onto your nice clean clothes), and I had some greasy chicken the other night.
Our bedroom is a bit smaller than our last one, and there is a lot less storage space, so I went out this week and found a bookcase kit Ikea-type thing (only not from Ikea). Tim and I put it together when he got home from work that night, and I am still suprised that it lasted 24 hours, let alone nearly a week. It has a very dangerous lean on it, but I can't work out if thats more because the bedroom floor is a bit uneven or if the bookcase is really that dodgy. But it should last us a few months until we head off again.
This house is quite a bit bigger than the old one (we now have two bathrooms instead of just the one - will come in handy if all nine of us are actually ever home at the same time, and everyone here is really friendly. One of the girls (and also her friend that is currently dossing here) are both nurses, and they have been really helpful suggesting a couple of things I can do to get some more work. Everyone seems much more relaxed here, and we are both very happy to have moved to such a nice household.
Right, so we had made it to our new home, and we had now met a most people in the house - a mix of Aussies and Kiwis, (Carlo and Nicole, who are married, Maddy, who we saw for about five seconds before she ran out the door to go travelling, John, Sarah, and Lucinda, who is dossing), so our next mission was to get our car legally parked. We spent a while locating Carlo (this house really is quite big), and then went with him for a short drive to The Parking Shop, where we payed for a booklet of visitor parking permits. We can't apply for a permanent parking permit until we have signed the lease, and we are still waiting for the landlord to turn up so we can do that.
We spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking most of our stuff, realising that our new bed is bigger than the old one, going out and buying a new bottom sheet, and then cooking dinner a bit later on.
After dinner we decided to go and visit the pub across the road (with the comfy lounges), and whiled the evening away chatting and enjoying a couple of drinks.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 07 Mar 2003
Site News ( 2 photos )
I've just uploaded a fairly major site update.
In terms of new content, have a look at the Home in London page. A little sparse at the moment, it has however been updated for our new home.
There's lots more behind-the-scenes change to speed it all up and make it easier to maintain.
The URL you want to be accessing this Europe page through is http://www.reverb.com.au/europe/ - please update your bookmarks if you are still using the old page (you will know because the URL will end in .cgi) - this will be removed shortly.
As always, please let me know if you find any strange bugs around the place. Nobody's perfect, myself most definitely included.
(permanent link to this story)
Tim: Left to fend for myself ( No photos )
Liz is up in Milton Keynes visiting Meaghan. She drove up yesterday morning, got stuck in traffic on the M1 for three hours (ouch), and spent the night there last night.
I don't know exactly what she has been doing, but I got a call late last night where it sounded like the two of them had been having a celebratory night our together. And that was only 9pm! It must be that silly 11pm closing time that is the law here.
She should be back down here today some time, and is planning to come in and meet me after work, when I intend to have a relaxing time after eighty-plus hours work in the last nine days.
We are aiming to move to our new place tomorrow, which should keep us busy. We don't actually have a parking permit yet so not sure how we will handle that one.
This morning I noticed that Blackalicious are doing their thing at the Jazz Cafe in Camden tomorrow evening. We haven't been out to anything like this for a while so I'll see if I can convince Liz to come along. That is assuming, of course, that the move goes well.
(permanent link to this story)
Liz: Having a Ball! ( No photos )
On Friday, Meaghan and I awoke feeling slightly worse for wear, before we headed back up to Meaghan's work for her next shift, and then I headed back down to London.
The drive home was almost as bad as the trip up there. The weather was shocking (I know, I should expect that in England), and most of the way home the rain was so heavy that it was virtually impossible to see the car just in front of me. I made it safely home with all my limbs intact, and not a scratch on the car (more to come about that in a bit...), and spent the rest of the day being lazy and watching TV, only moving when food supplies were desperately needed.
Tim arrived home from work late that night, and we went up to the local chain pub for dinner and to try and remember what each other looked like because we had hardly seen each other all week.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 06 Mar 2003
A Move and Lots More ( No photos )
I am going right back to Thursday 6th March, which was when I was up in Milton Keynes with Meaghan. My trip up there took 3 hours longer than it should have due to a couple of accidents, and also because I got lost in Milton Keynes :) Anyway, I eventually arrived at Meaghan's place of work (a coffee shop in a building where you can do indoor skiing!), and spent my afternoon writing in my journal, reading the paper, writing a letter, and of course, drinking copious amounts of tea.
After Meaghan finished work, we went shopping, and then for a few drinks. Dinner was next, followed by a few more drinks and then I was very excited to have my first ride home in a black taxi (I love those things and if I could I would buy one and ship it home, but a certain someone says I'm not allowed to...meanie).
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 04 Mar 2003
Feeling a Little Off ( No photos )
Not quite sure what the actual problem is, but both Liz and I have stomach bugs at the moment, hers seemingly worse than mine. A few others at work report similar symptoms so it seems like it is just something going around.
Thought I'd get the bad news out of the way first - most everything else is going quite well. Liz has been offered a shift here and there, and is currently getting some blood tests done. Apparently they think the Australian nurses are going to bring all sorts of horrible diseases over here. And here was me thinking they just wanted to bring their skills over...
I am now doing twelve hour days, still working in the same place. That's a lot of work, and it's making me fairly tired of course. Liz is trotting around the place tidying up various loose ends.
After not having any bank account at all for a long time, we now have two - one each. Wonderful.
Other than that, there's not a great deal of news. We are planning on moving to our new house on this coming weekend, which will be interesting due to the fact that it is right on a high street, and hence parking is at a premium. We have to apply for a parking permit for Percy.
Looking slightly longer-term, I am contracted here at work until the 18th of April, just in time for our ANZAC trip. After we return from that, we will probably be looking for a Kombi van (if not earlier), in which we plan to drive across to France and continue our exploration of this side of the planet in April-May.
Speaking of the ANZAC trip, Liz has been reading up on Turkish food in the book she got for her birthday, and as such is really keen to get moving. We will be able to come back and talk to the lads at Brothers Kebabs in their own language too - her research is coming along well!
Oh, and apologies to those who couldn't get the email link to work to wish Liz well for her birthday - I forgot to mention that it probably wouldn't work for those who use Hotmail or similar to access their email.
We could have predicted it. Just when we want to send money home to pay off rising credit card bills and HECS, the exchange rate goes completely in the wrong direction and we stand to loose hundereds. Annoying Australian economy!
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 02 Mar 2003
Hi Again Meags ( 10 photos )
We drove up to Milton Keynes to visit Meaghan, who is once again living with her Grandma. We went down to a great little pub on the river-side for some lunch, and also had a couple of great walks around the area.
We then went back to the massive Milton Keynes shopping centre for a relaxing coffee and a flip through our Scotland photos, which I have recently been scanning in on Ryan's scanner. Will aim to put some up here soon, especially ones from Orkney.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 25 Feb 2003
Some Great News! ( No photos )
Hearty congratulations to my brother Peter and his girlfriend Inshirah who have announced that they are engaged to be married! The news came through whilst on night-shift this week, and it has taken a little while to sink in. Tentative plans put the date somewhere in November, so perhaps we now have a definite end-date for our Europe trip.
The work-all night thing finally caught up to me, and much of the weekend was spent asleep. I'm back on day shifts now which aren't so bad.
It has been back to the drudgery this week a little, although things are looking up for Liz as she now has two shifts this week, the first of which is tomorrow. They are once again at the Charing Cross hospital (nowhere near Charing Cross), and are great to get her out and doing things. She has also applied with a few other agencies, and has two interviews this week. Now she's a busy girl!
We are probably planning on moving either this weekend or next week, since we have agreed to start paying rent at the new place. The person we are taking the room off has been quite kind in holding it for us for this long, plus we are pretty keen to get out of the current place.
Our interest in getting up and travelling again has been renewed, and tentative plans for selling Percy and obtaining a Kombi called "Ethel" (can't quite remember how we made up that name - it's not like we have picked one out yet!) are taking shape. We think we will try and buy one here (as in London somewhere), load it up with gear and drive over to the continent. Seems easier than attempting to ship everything over there, the trade-off being that they are quite a bit cheaper to buy over there.
We made one un-successful excursion to The Van Market on Caledonian Road, not far away from here. While it was a nice drive, and the greasy spoon breakfast was better than expected, we couldn't find the market. It was just for research anyway.
Today Liz met me in town and we caught an old Routemaster bus (my first!) down to the Strand where we trundled off to Australia House (no Kombis for sale outside there, although we hear they usually are). This journey was to find out what we have to do to vote in the up-coming state election. However, the answer we got from the officially-dressed but Aussie-speaking desk clerk was "don't need to". A little suspicious, we probed him further - "It's not like they are going be able to find you in the middle of a Brazilian forest, is it?". Well, no, but we think we might vote anyway. Turns out we can get the postal vote form online and do it that way.
After that we wandered back down the Strand, intending to work our way to the TNT (Aussie magazine over here) offices to pick up a T-shirt I ordered. Ducking into a tiny little pub squeezed between two enormous buildings that has been there for several hundered years (love this part of London), we ordered a pint while I attempted to work out where we were going. Turns out I didn't have any details with me, but Liz didn't want to budge, so we spent a little while there before jumping back on the Tube home.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 23 Feb 2003
Blackfriars Wander ( 22 photos )
I managed to surface to travel into Blackfriars for a walk around Fleet Street and surrounds, as recommended in our Eccentric London book. This gave us great views of St. Paul's Cathederal, the Old Bailey, the amazing St. Bartholemew the Great church (where Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shakespeare in Love were set), Smithfield Markets, St. Bride's (which is the model for the world's wedding cakes), and St. Clement Danes. Also, it pointed out all sorts of interesting little niches we never would have found on our own.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 20 Feb 2003
Happy Birthday Liz! ( 7 photos )
Liz's birthday was a success for the part I was awake, as she somehow managed to accrue the world's supply of chocolate, along with several other goodies. Hearty thanks to those who sent wishes, I know she appreciates hearing from you all.
In the evening, we met up with Meaghan again (hooray!), and went out for a few of those evil two-for-one cocktails at brb in Chinatown, where we were joined by Marty who is back in London for while. He has recently travelled to Spain to learn how to teach English to Spanish people, and will return there in a couple of months to continue more of the same.
He guided us to one of the cheap but decent places to eat nearby, where we had quite a good meal, all told, before he headed home, while Liz and Meaghan went back to sleep at Golders Green and I trundled off to work.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 19 Feb 2003
Doctor Registration ( No photos )
Today we finalised the doctor situation by being signed up at a local clinic, as well as Liz making two trips across London to get our bank account finalised. We finally have a bank account to call our own (well, Liz's anyway), so if anyone wants to send us some pocket money, feel free! (You might consider a donation, or at least an email for Liz's birthday tomorrow).
We even got the website up to date as a group effort!
We have to recommend 1st Contact if you need a bank account in London. It took all of half an hour, no sending photocopies of things from home, no need to find proof of current address. Wish we had of known that when we first arrived here.
Now that Meaghan is back here (she's living again with her grandmother in Milton Keynes), we are planning on meeting up with her for Liz's birthday (hint, hint!) tomorrow in town somewhere, and then probably being joined by Marty for dinner.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 18 Feb 2003
We'll be Moving House ( No photos )
Tim's body clock was trying to get back on track, and we looked at a new place to live. This is quite a long story which we won't bore people with here, but basically we will most probably be moving out of this house quite soon and into a place in nearby Cricklewood. More details to come.
We also started knocking off our long list of things which needed to be done, including registering with a local doctor (what a stupid concept - Australia is much better in this respect), travel insurance, and a bank account (since the one Tim was trying to organise through work is taking way too long). Tim off to work again in the evening.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 17 Feb 2003
Night Shift means a Day Off! ( No photos )
On Monday, Tim changed over to night shift, which meant that we had the day together - not at all what we expected on the first day of the Congestion Charge. We caught the bus in the morning to the Royal Free Hospital at Belsize Park (three tube stops back towards London), which is one of the places Liz is trying to find work. After picking up some paperwork, we stopped in a nearby swish-looking pub for a great lunch, before returning home and doing some food shopping. In the evening, Tim went off to work.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 16 Feb 2003
Work / Pub ( No photos )
After not seeing him much really (we knew that would happen, but it was good to catch up when we could), Peter left early on Sunday, and Tim had to work again, leaving Liz to go into a pub near Covent Garden with some housemates to watch a few bands play (and have a few drinks!)
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 15 Feb 2003
Work / Zoo / March ( No photos )
On Saturday, Tim went off to work and Peter to the anti-war march through central London, so Liz decided to take herself to the London Zoo. Due to the freezing temperatures, most of the animals thought better of it and were hidden away in their enclosures. The zoo itself was quite a lot smaller than she expected, but she still spent most of the day there wandering around.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 14 Feb 2003
Valentine's Day ( No photos )
We had a table booked at Mythos in Edgware, and started the evening a nearby cheap pub. Here we had a great time singing along to Stevie Wonder and other fun times together. The dinner itself was fantastic, and Liz is currently dribbling as she thinks about how good the food was.
Among other things, Liz gave Tim a Bill Bryson travel book for Europe, and Tim gave Liz a bracelet with little roses on it. It was a nice, simple, great night out together.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 13 Feb 2003
An Imbalance of Work ( No photos )
Needless to say, I have been giving the guys at work plenty about England's soccer/football loss, and there's some great headlines here as the tabloids pull no punches against their national team.
Back in the real world, Liz is still having a lot of trouble finding work, her latest contact sounding not quite as good as she was hoping. It's so much hassle signing up with other agencies, so she is trying to avoid that if possible.
I have been lucky enough to be working plenty (yay overtime!), including one night where I was here till just after midnight, then had to be back at work at 8:30. As the deadline approaches, there's lots to do. And with the major disaster which were actually in fixing that night (no details can be published!), it drove home just how big a project this one is. The press are keeping an eye on it, with huge countdown reminders, just in case we forget.
The rest of the week has been just mostly work for me, while Liz has been out and about at the movies (she saw Chicago), attempting to volunteer some of her time at the Battersea Dogs Home (they merely regurgitated what it says on the website - that she has to fill in a form and wait), and generally exploring areas of London.
I'd really love to spend more time looking around with her, but this week work is ruling. Bad timing, what with Valentines Day tomorrow (we have a table booked at a Mediterranean restaurant in Edgware), Peter Bowyer arriving tonight to stay for three nights (he's going along to the anti-war protest in London on Saturday), and Liz's birthday on the 20th (send her birthday wishes!), this is not going to be a good time to have a go-live date.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 12 Feb 2003
Take That! ( No photos )
What a game !!! Liz and I went up to the local pub, which is adopted home to plenty of the local Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans. Cheering very loudly as we watched England loose yet another sport to the Aussies. This one is a big one though - there was no way we were expected to win.
The few English who wandered around the pub looked a little scared at what would happen surrounded by so many non-England supporters, but it was all good sport in the end.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 09 Feb 2003
Camden ( 3 photos )
We set off early to have a look around Camden Markets. We weren't quite prepared for just how big this place is - stalls take over everything, and seem to be selling almost anything. Although there was an abundance of women's clothing, it was actually I who bought a T-shirt (and some cheap CDs and DVDs), with Liz showing a lot of self-control. We also puchased a light-shade, banishing the bare bulb until such time as we move on.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 08 Feb 2003
Weekend at Work ( No photos )
So here I am, sitting at work on a Saturday, doing absolutely nothing. I'm over at our "contingency site" (which is an entire separate building, complete with duplicate computers and everything, incase the other one gets bombed. Gulp.), where I am on hand to assist with any problems which may occur as they test things.
None so far.
The (I think) final word on my contract at work is that I am staying in this job until mid-April, working almost all day shifts (due to the other UNIX guy Emmanuel wanting to work all the night shifts), with a small increase in pay. Things do tend to work themselves out in the end.
Liz has had a bad headache for most of the week, and her not being able to register with a local doctor (long story) here isn't helping that. It seems to be better today, after our big night our last night. Perhaps it was something in the Indian...
She has been chasing work a bit more, but it seems that her agency is going down the drain and hence doesn't have much work to give her. Since there is clearly lots of work out there somewhere, she has been looking into other avenues, including registering with another agency who she hopes can place her in a "line" of work. This means she works in the one place for a month or longer, but under agency conditions. Or perhaps she can get placed in a full-time position. It's all very draining on her, she's wishing she had never bothered registering in the first place.
There's a few more friends heading over here in the near future, including Joel Sarakula and Stuart Heldon, so it will be good to see some more familiar faces.
Later that day...
We are spending a night in today, getting some home-delivery with Taija and her friend Kirsty, which should prove nice and relaxing after my boss forced me to spend most of the afternoon at the nearby pub in a "team building" exercise. Who am I to resist?
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 07 Feb 2003
Brick Lane Curry ( 1 photo )
After work went out for a few drinks with some friends from work at the local pub "The Gun". Was a good night, and it ended up being just Liz, myself and a great guy called Mark. We had some Indian in nearby Brick Lane, where we were approcated by many hawkers trying to get us into their respective establishments by offering 25, 30 or even 40 percent off cards! What a deal!
The place we picked had none of these, but instead had good food. Not quite sure what we ate, but we are both ok today so can't have been too bad.
I was overjoyed to receive a package in the mail from my grandfather which was a "Learn to Play Harmonica" book - the perfect partner for the harminica he sent over with Margaret a while back which I have been struggling to make decent sounds out of! Not sure what the flat-mates will think of my practising, but I will attempt it all nonetheless.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 03 Feb 2003
Site Update ( 1 photo )
Just a bit of news that you may have worked out by this stage - I've upgraded my weblogging script to a later version, tweaked it a bit and given the site an overhaul.
But why do you care? Well, if you go to the Itinerary / Photos section, you can now see the journal entries from the relevant time as well as the photos.
You can also get straight to all the entries from the current "section" by clicking that long link just above this labelled section. Try the ones further down the page, as this entry is now in the special "Site News" section whereas most other entries are actually attached to the geographic region from which we posted them.
And next to the section, you can click to go straight to the current photos.
There's a few other clever things as well, which I'll make easily accessible as time goes on.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 02 Feb 2003
Another week comes to a close ( 12 photos )
Most of yesterday was spent in rest after the excesses of Friday night!
Today we decided to head into London to tick off a few of the more touristy sites. First on the list was The London Dungeon, which Lonely Planet summarises as "long on gore, short on substance". We tend to agree, although the ticket price was just right as we had a two-for-one voucher. Not worth full price.
Next stop was the Shipwright's Arms pub just up the road (we were near Tower Bridge and London Bridge for most of the day) for a great cheap lunch before heading to Winston Churchill's Britain At War Experience.
This, similarly to the London Dungeon, seemed to cater more to the child's attention span than a proper museum would, as there was a lot less in it than we expected to find. However, what was there was quite engrosing - this one was worth the trip.
A walk around the area took us to a bookshop where we purchased the Lonely Planet Turkey guidebook. We have been most impressed with the Europe and Britain guides we have so far, and Liz as I write is eagerly reading all about the place.
Weather is still what they call "mild" here, which means good. In Australia that means bad. Anyway, it's better than the frozen days earlier this week - almost everything has thawed now. There is just a sad-looking pile of white debris where once the snowman stood.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 31 Jan 2003
Liz Enjoys Work, Meeting some Holladays ( 14 photos )
A mixed bag would be a good description for this week. It has been one where overall good things have happened, which is what we want, this being a holiday and all!
Liz's first shift as a qualified nurse went just fine, and she is looking forward to more. The people turned out to be quite nice and helpful, which she was dreading wouldn't be the case for an agency nurse. However, it seems that her agency is not going to be getting her a lot of work.
Possible ways forward include her adding a few more agencies to her list, or going and looking for a full-time job. It will remain to be seen what she ends up doing - she's just playing it by ear for the moment.
My previous delight at being able to work until the end of March has been turned on its head. It seems that at the end of my current contract (end Feb.), there will be a new contract to sign up. They have offered me the job, however there are a couple of little details - the pay stays the same (it wasn't fantastic to begin with, but I could have lived with just that), and the hours would change to 7pm - 3am!!
I wouldn't mind it too much (it's only for six weeks) if they were willing to give more pay, but having to get in there during the evening peak and find my way home at 3am will mean either driving in (which Percy is not insured for - back to the insurance saga again...), or getting a night bus every night.
So, I'm going to approcach my boss (who isn't the one making the offer, it's his boss) and let him know that I don't plan to accept unless the deal is sweetened at least a bit.
So this means things look a little different with regards to travelling, and we will have to be a bit more careful with what we do. However, it will all still work out in the end, as things always do!
Friday night (after I was just a little too close to a bar brawl involving my boss at the local near work), we met up with James and Andrew Holladay, and James' girlfriend Jenny. The way we know these people I think is that James and Andrew's grandmother Gladys was my Nan on my father's side's cousin. Got that? A while back they got in contact and suggested that we meet up for a meal, which we did at Ruby in the Dust, a great little restaurant in Camden.
The inevitable strangeness of dining with complete strangers was soon alleviated with the help of them being very friendly people, and the three bottles of wine before we went to the pub after didn't hurt much either. We went home at the ridiculous closing time of 11pm.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 30 Jan 2003
London Grinds to a Halt ( 5 photos )
Walking back from our National Insurance interview this morning (in an original condition 50s government building, complete with loads of graffiti from those who obviously didn't get their government benefits), it started to snow. Just a little bit, but snow nonetheless. However, as I went in to work, it had stopped.
This afternoon, upon leaving work in town, I had had a look at this page, which shows in real time which tube lines have problems. Right now, it looks very bad. Every line where it goes above line in the North of London is closed.
It took me almost three hours to get home from work - a trip which took in the usual fifteen minute walk to Moorgate, then crammed onto a tube to Camden Town, change there to get crammed onto another tube to Golders Green, where the tube line comes out of the tunnel. That's as far as tubes are now going.
In good conditions, it's about a fifteen minute walk from there to home. Today it took me fourty-five minutes, slipping and sliding on the ice that covers everywhere. Not usually too much of a problem, however I injured my knee again on the weekend and it is not fully recovered.
Enough whinging from me, Ryan still isn't home and he has to drive on the icy roads, so hopefully he'll be ok.
As I mentioned, London really has ground to a halt - cars are going nowhere, motorways are closed, trains and tubes are wrecked and buses are being cancelled. As people have mentioned, all this because of two inches of snow!
The Central line is still closed and will remain that way for at least another two weeks, just about the same time that the Congestion Charge is due to start, so anyone who has to drive because they can't get a tube will have to pay for the privilege!
Sydney isn't looking so bad after all...
Now for the good news - Liz does her first shift as a fully-qualified nurse tomorrow! It's doing ward work at the Charing Cross hospital (which is nowhere near Charing Cross - it's actually near Hammersmith). However, if there's no tubes running, that will be a difficult journey to make half way across London for a few hours work. Still, it would be difficult to pull out of her first shift there, but since everyone else in London may be having the same problem.
Everyone in the house is secretly hoping that the tubes won't run tomorrow, so we can claim an extra day off!
And some more good news - we have our trip booked to Turkey! We fly Turkish Airlines (the only other option was British Airways, and they wouldn't accept non-British credit cards!) to Istanbul for six nights on the 18th of April, travel around to see lots of things (more details to come), and get back to London on the 29th of April.
We are of course looking forward to the trip, and the possibility of others coming and joining will only add to the excitement!
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 27 Jan 2003
Liz is a Nurse (again)! ( No photos )
No, this time for real!!! She actually has various fairly un-impressive pieces of paper to prove it!! She gave up waiting for the courier, went in and vented at the agency and recieved said documents in exchange.
We have an appointment later this week to get a National Insurance number (somewhere between a Tax File Number and a Medicare Number), and need to get letters from our relevant agencies saying that we are who we say we are. Of course, that was too hard for Liz's agency to have organised (they didn't even know they could until today), and offered to send it out to her.
Fat chance.
So, Liz is planning on heading back in later this week to pick it up, hopefully just in time.
I have found out that my place of work will employ me at least until the end of March, which will be just in time for a couple of weeks off before Gallipoli. That's another load off my mind.
Now, if we could just open a bank account...
Worked back a couple of hours tonight to fix a major configuration problem they didn't even know they had. They have agreed to pay whatever overtime is needed, since the deadline for the project is splashed across all forms of media here, and people are starting to worry it isn't going to work out well. Which sounds just like every other project anyone ever does!
There has been a Tube derailment here, we were nowhere near it and are not affected by it. However, it is the busiest line in the network (depending on how you measure it), and still closed. This, combined with tomorrow's fourty-eight hour fire strike is causing no end of fun to keep us interested.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 26 Jan 2003
Liz is a Nurse! ( 64 photos )
Well almost. She rang up on Friday to see what was happening, and they actually had her registration sitting there on someone's desk since the day before! Imagine that. So, she quite rightly insists that it be couriered out to her as soon as possible. No problems, they said, it will definitely be delivered before twelve noon Saturday.
This was to be a minor inconvenience to us, as we had plans for Saturday, but were prepared to wait since it has now been almost ten months since she first started applying, and she (and I aswell) need some form of closure on this.
We woke early, Liz not daring to go for a walk (for it was fantastic weather and we were both home) or take a shower incase they came to the door (she has to sign for it).
Twelve O'clock came. Then one, and before you know it it was five, our day had disappeared and there was no sign of any couriers. Ho-hum.
So we spent the day together, not even stepping a foot out of the house, but enjoying putting our feet up none the less.
Liz spent the week pottering around and looking through museums - the Science Museum and the Museum of London.
Today, we decided to squish Saturday's plans in aswell. This involved driving out to High Wycombe, the place of Mum and Dad's residence here in the mid-70s, and about 25 miles from our place in Golders Green.
I had a short chat to the guy who lives there now, who was quite rude and not really interested in being helpful. However, as we wandered back later, I noticed that there is a sign outside the house saying that they sell honey! What better way to meet and greet, telling the story. The mother proved to be more chatty, but alas had no honey to sell me - it was awaiting bottling later this week. So if we make it back at a later stage, there is the possibility that she will let me in to have a look around, which would be great!
After a walk around the nearby park with associated Sunday rugby kids, we headed into town to have a look at the high street. A few more photos of the place where Dad used to work, before we headed back to Golders Green.
Of course, today is Australia Day. Not ones to let such an event slip by un-noticed, we decided that a good old Aussie-style BBQ was required. Crowded House blaring out on the radio, Ryan and I created the heat and flipped the meat which Liz and Chantelle had done a great job of preparing.
The strange thing was that we hear that due to total fire bans, even if we were back in Sydney, we couldn't have had a barbie at all! So our wet, slippery-grounded, smoky-coal-powered-fire meal was about the best Australia Day meal we could have managed anywhere.
That's not to say that we don't miss standing up for 12 hours parking cars with SES like must have happened today, but we hear even the fireworks were cancelled - what happened there?
Curiously for London, the weather held out and the sunset was fantastic.
We have decided to go on the tour to Gallipoli for ANZAC day (roughly April 18th-30th). The particular one we think we are going to do is this one. It is eight days, and takes in all major places we are interested in seeing in Turkey, including of course the dawn service.
We plan to fly in with British Airways (the cheapie airlines don't fly that far!), and get there a few days early and have a look around Istanbul on our own. Hopefully we can book it all tomorrow.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 19 Jan 2003
Another Week ( No photos )
Yes, due to working they are starting to really fly by now. The only consoloation is that we can start to look forward to travel again. Oh, and of course Liz finally being able to work - she's still awaiting her registration. At this rate it will come in just before we leave!
Going out on a limb once again and talking about plans we are bound to change, we have one major thing on our horizon - a trip to Gallipoli for ANZAC Day. Since we have for many years got up hideously early to do dawn service marches around Sydney, and we are going to miss it this year, we thought we'd go one better.
This was all ok when we first thought of it, but now apparently John Howard has come out and listed it as a possible terrorist target at that time. While making us a little nervous, we still think we will get over there, stay out of the cities and packed-areas, surfacing only for the all-important dawn service.
Far from having a set plan as yet, Liz is researching some of the organised trips to see what the deal is. We may end up renting a car for a week or so, and having a look around Istanbul, making a little "holiday within a holiday" out of it.
Since the last update, we have of course done a few things:
- Liz did some wandering around local shops in the first half of the week, generally biding her time awaiting her registration to come through.
- I was at work, doing more of the same, except for Friday when I went to our Disaster Recovery (aka. standby or contingency) site down at Docklands. Interesting place, it is served by the Docklands Light Railway, or DLR to its friends. This was a strange experience - basically a tram, but with no driver! You can sit right at the front and watch the track come right at you. Technology these days...
- On Thursday, Liz came in to meet me at work for lunch at the nearby Old Spitalfields Market, before she headed off to the nearby Body Worlds Exhibition. Her review could be summarised as "confronting, strange, yet somehow interesting".
- Friday night was a big night up at the Local with Ryan, Chantelle and a few other friends. My first Karaoke experience is still haunting me. Let's just say I'll never listen to Bohemian Rhapsody in quite the same light. Saturday was a write-off, watching four movies and generally being lazy.
- Today we finally went and saw The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, at the Muswell Hill Odeon. Of course, a fantastic movie, but the combination of a completely packed cinema with way too many kids all talking for three hours made the overall experience somewhat lack-lustre.
Weather is still managing to suprise us, with it getting to about ten degrees by 8:30 most days (according to the thermometer near work), staying there, before plummeting to around three or four overnight. No more snow unfortunately.
We are edging closer to having a bank account open over here - the pre-requisites are enough to make us want to leave it open forever once we finally get it open. Pay wasn't going to come in from my job until the middle of Feb(!), but I hope to get something organised soon on that front. It's quite hard not having worked since August!
We have an interview for a National Insurance number in a couple of weeks. It's similar to a Tax File Number, and you need one to work. We had heard it could take up to eight months just to get the interview, so lucky that came through faster than we had braced ourselves for.
Oh, has anyone seen or heard from Jade Chin? We have been trying to contact her for a while now with no success.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 12 Jan 2003
Goodbye Margaret! West Finchley ( 29 photos )
Well, Margaret should have touched down in Sydney an hour ago - we haven't heard from her since she left here last night, but I'm sure it was all ok. It's been good having her here for a while, and now of course she is going to be missed. Not the least by Liz!
In the past few days it has been finishing off the week of work, and spending a bit of time relaxing.
In the great tradition of breaking our plans totally, we have now decided to keep Percy a little longer. Basically we are back to paying a huge amount for the insurance, but since it is being spread out monthly and I'm working now it's not so terrible.
So, we set off today to have a look at the place where my mum and her friends stayed when they were living here many many years ago - up at 7 Western Court, West Finchley. By a large fluke, that's only about ten minutes drive from where we are living. Strange how things play out. Hopefully this will help revive some long lost memories!
After we wandered around for a while, we drove over to Cherry Tree Wood in East Finchley - a very pretty little woodland tucked away in suburbia.
Liz has just found a message left on our home MessageBank thingo (like an answering machine that lives in phone-company land) from her nursing agency. Apparently, her registration has come through, but she needs to now pay another hundred pounds for the registration itself, and then wait at least ten days after that before she can work.
A mixed blessing, because she now is not sure what to do for that period of time, while I'm at work. We'll keep you posted.
The weather has been much warmer - about two or three degrees each day now. It took about four days after the heavy snow for the ice to melt - until then the hospitals were full of people who had fallen over. It was all we could do to not join them!
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 11 Jan 2003
Nice Weather ( 3 photos )
Since the weather was nicer for a change this morning, I took some photos of our house and street.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 09 Jan 2003
Dinner with Housemates ( 1 photo )
Thursday night we went out for dinner with everyone else from the house to one of the Italian restaurants up at Golders Green. A good night out, it was nice to chat to people in a sit-down way, rather than waiting for them to wander past during the week.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 08 Jan 2003
Let it Snow! ( 7 photos )
It has arrived a little late, but our "White Christmas" has finally arrived! There's a few new stories at places like this, which will tell you that we have had two inches of snow in Central London - the highest in nine years!
I went out for a walk at lunch time and it was amazingly beautiful. Had a snowfight in the courtyard outside work, and then trudged slowly and carefully off to get some food from the local Spittalfields Market.
There's a huge amount of black ice around, so you have to be very careful - my hiking boots are proving not to be too useful with their large amounts of flat sole, and as such my knees are taking a battering. Still, no complaints here! Bring on the snow!
In other news, we have all but decided to sell Percy now - he's proving too expensive to keep. The only problem now is how to sell him when we can't let people out for a test drive while he is not insured. I'm sure we will work something out.
Liz and Margaret went to the Savoy Theatre this afternoon to watch HMS Pinnafore, but it was part of Margaret's Chirstmas present from us. I am going to try to convince her to write a bit about it later on.
No other real news, except make sure you keep an eye on the photos page for lots of snow pictures.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 07 Jan 2003
Snow and Ice ( 4 photos )
Took some very dark pictures this morning before going to work of the snow all over our street!
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 05 Jan 2003
Happy Birthday Peter! ( 15 photos )
I think I've used that title before, however this time it's for a different Peter - my brother, who is celebrating his 21st today. I hear it all went well, and a good time was had by all. Congrats mate for making it through!
The main news of late people have been asking about is my job. As I mentioned the other day, it is for a company who have the contract for the imaging component of the Central London Congestion Charging. What this actually means is that as you drive into London on several key roads, your number plate is photographed, sent to the data centre where I work, and processed to extract the numbers from it, and packaged up for forwarding on to other people who then check whether you owe money.
What the main part of my job is is running a couple of servers who are responsible for storing these little packages of pictures and information permanently on what is effectively a bunch of over-grown CD burners. This is for reference in case anyone ever wants to dispute the fact that they were driving along that road at that time.
I am also there to help out the other fifteen members of the team who are effectively "Windows guys" with any questions on the running of the UNIX servers. I'm producing some documentation on the systems, since, as I arrived, there was precisely zero. Nobody knew how they had been set up. This makes for a challenge when at least three different companies and their staff have had access to the machines in the last few months and could conceivably have put anything at all on there.
That said, I actually have someone else to help do all this, who started the same day I did, with basically the same job description. The strange thing is, we actually solved a Windows problem for them as the first thing we did - that's supposed to be what they are the experts at!
What makes this job really challenging are couple of little details:
- They don't have any computers for us to work on. This means that any work we want to do, we can turn up and hope to find a spare computer (difficult because they are all earmarked for other duties), or we can work standing up in the server room all day, via a convoluted chain of technology.
- "Fine", you might say - "you have a laptop over there - use that". I'd love to, but that is against company policy. Only company-owned computers can be connected to the company-owned network. Except they don't have any company-owned computers to give us!!
It's just going to be an interesting job, fine for the two months I am contracted for, but probably not too much more. I work roughly 8:30 - 4:30, and it takes about fourty-five minutes to get there, which isn't too bad.
To other matters for a little bit, the other morning Taija claims she saw it snowing when she was up at 6:30!!! Nobody else is sure if she is to be believed, but it certainly is possible - it's about three degrees max here, and everything is covered in ice for most of the day and all night. Here's hoping we see some more soon!
Liz's nursing registration appears to now have travelled from the Registration Board to her Agency, where it has now been mis-placed somewhere. Great. She is hoping to have it through soon, as she is now home alone all day during the week, and wants to get out and do things. Once she has it, she can either get some shifts with her current agency (although there aren't many going over Christmas, apparently), or she can leave them and apply for a full-time job directly with a hospital.
Margaret is back with us now after a mostly-successful trip to Dublin for the week, and is staying here last night and tonight. Then she's back to Beckenham (South London) for a while before returning here for one night next weekend then flying home to Sydney.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 01 Jan 2003
Last Night of Freedom ( 1 photo )
This morning we awoke late-ish, spoke on the phone to a few people and wrote some letters. We plan to have a big-night-in tonight, celebrating my last night of freedom before hitting the 9am start tomorrow morning.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 31 Dec 2002
Happy New Year! And a Job! ( 38 photos )
New Year's Eve was another interesting day. Early on, I was quite suprised to answer the mobile to a job offer! They didn't even want an interview - just turn up on Thursday ready to go! Who was I to say no - the money is good enough, and it's only a two-month contract, so it fits in nicely with us saving hard and running off to travel around the rest of Europe, and still maybe making our August return tickets.
I don't know a huge deal about the job yet, except it is quite near Liverpool Street station (about 30-40 mins travel time), and working for an outsourcing company who have the government contract for the Transport for London Congestion Charging project. They seem to want me for a UNIX Support/Admin role, which sounds interesting, if a little different to what I was aiming for.
So, after the excitement of that had worn down, we sat down to work out what we were going to do for the evening to celebrate the New Year. We had had a few offers, but nothing really ticked our fancy, so we decided just to jump on a tube and let the rest work itself out.
First stop was Leicester Square, where we eventually found some truly terrible food and service at one of the many Aberdeen Angus steak houses (read someone else's opinion of them here, which is not to dissimilar to ours). I refused to pay the "compulsory" service charge (the service was non-existant and the food terrible), so we left quickly, looking for somewhere better to spend the rest of the evening.
Eventually we located one of the only places you could get a drink without a twenty-five pound ticket, which was a great little bar just off Leicester Square. After a while though, we were treated to some more great British hospitality, and rudely told that we had to move our table, because they needed the room. So we did, but found the new location was right between four smokers. Left there pretty quick.
Here started our big wander around Central London - taking in Oxford Circus, Whitehall, Westminster, Southwark (where they had some pretty blue lights near the London Eye) and a couple of bridges along the way. We decided that we would spend the new year watching Big Ben chime away, along with several thousand other revellers packed outside Westminster. It was a nice relaxing way to do it, until the huge crush of people madly deciding they wanted to get out caused several sore bones. No lasting damage was done, and we eventually made our way back to the only open tube at Charing Cross, then came straight home.
So it wasn't the most outrageous, crazy New Years we have ever had, but it was certainly quite memorable. We were on the whole un-impressed with London's efforts compared with Sydney - no fireworks, Trafalgar Square was closed (complete with huge signs saying "Nothing to see here, move along", or something to that effect) - we had chosen the most interesting place, apparently. There was something going on at the Millenium Dome, but we only found that out the day after.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 30 Dec 2002
Back at Golders Green ( No photos )
(Continued from Carlisle for Christmas).
We have received email, phone call and letter from a previously-unknown part of my family here. Apparently Mum and Dad put the address of this website in a letter to them with their Christmas card, and the rest is history. We now have an invite up North to stay for a weekend (some live in Cambridge and some in Chester), and an offer of a "few beers" with plenty of people I've never met. Sounds great!
The never-ending insurance saga still doesn't end. We are very close to selling the car, now that we have done the vast majority of our travel we have planned in the UK. The quantity of money they are now asking (very different to last time we talked, of course) just isn't going to be worth it.
We have bought some speakers for our room now, which make it quite a bit more like home. Will have to watch the volume - have already been asked to turn it down at bedtime by Vicky!
Margaret is now in Dublin. She is spending a week over visiting her friend Anne. Departing on Sunday from Stansted airport North of London, Liz took the train ride out there with her. Whilst this was occuring, I acquainted myself with the local Brent Cross Shopping Centre, which is quite big, but almost 100% women's clothes and shoes. Ho hum. And the sales are just to get you in the door to by the decent things, still expensively priced. No real surprises there.
Where there was a surprise however, was walking around the local Golders Green high street. The place is really amazing for a set of local shops. To give you an idea of the expanse of the place, there is a Starbucks next to a Costa next to a Coffee Republic (for non-UK people, that's three big coffee shops in a row), and they were all full! There's plenty of great places to eat - we intend trying some of the Kosher food (this being a big Jewish area) to see what all the fuss is about.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 28 Dec 2002
Driving "Home" ( No photos )
Some time while in Carlisle, we also went ten-pin bowling to kill an evening, where Liz will proudly tell you that she beat me. Actually, I'm surprised it slipped her mind in the her updates!
The driving day from Carlisle went fairly as un-eventfully as the one there, but as always it seemed to drag on.
We arrived back at our new house, ready to Work in London.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 27 Dec 2002
Dalston ( 1 photo )
On Friday, Tim and I went up to the local computer mega-store to look at getting a set of speakers for our room. They don't seem to be nearly as crazy about the sales over here as people are in Oz. A lot of the stores don't open until after Boxing Day.
Not finding quite what we wanted, we went back to Peter's and then decided to go to the pub. We have been to a nice little pub in Thursby a few times (just outside Carlisle), but when we got there it was closed. Tim jumped in the drivers seat and took us for a high-speed spin around the country back lanes (don't read that bit if you are a mum/dad/protective relative!), before we came across another pub on the outskirts of Dalston. We had a great afternoon enjoying a few drinks, some games of 8-ball and me learning all about how a gear box and clutch work (at my insistence).
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 26 Dec 2002
Boxing Day with Graham and Rosie ( 22 photos )
Boxing day was wet, cold and foggy, but still no snow :( We jumped in the car and went and visited my Mum's 2nd cousin Graham, his wife Rosie and son Ivan at their beautiful big house in the middle of nowhere (otherwise known as just North of Newcastle). They even have their own woods! After the obligatory cup of tea, we all went out for a walk in the woods and down to the river. I can't describe how difficult it is to walk around when you are wearing nine layers of clothing that make you look like the Michelin Man. Try it sometime.
After our walk, we had a huge big lunch, and sat by the log fire for the afternoon. Tim and I rugged up again and went outside with Graham to show him how to use his new chainsaw to chop up the trees in the woods. We haven't touched a chainsaw in months, so it was great to start one up, and I was surprised to discover I still remembered how to use the thing after so long.
After more cups of tea, we left and drove back to Peter's.
(A bit more by Tim)
While at Graham and Rosie's place, I managed to catch a native red squirrel with my camera. These are quite rare now, all but displaced by the evil and much more common grey variety. There were plenty of birds there, right outside their window. Very close to nature indeed.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 25 Dec 2002
Christmas Continues ( 21 photos )
The rest of Christmas day was spent eating chrissie dinner, chrissie nibbles, drinking chrissie drinks and looking at chrissie presents. We all stuffed ourselves too much, and we were still left with loads of food at the end of the day.
(permanent link to this story)
Merry Christmas! ( 21 photos )
I know it's now a little late, but then most people aren't going to be reading this over Christmas anyway!
We have had a nice slow morning, doing not much until present-opening-time somehow arrived. Thanks to friends and family who have sent us wishes, cards and presents. We got a few text messages from people we haven't seen in a long time, which was great.
Liz was kind enough to give me a webcam (the one I am using at the moment is on loan), so we can engage in more of the video chatting we did with family back home. It was great seeing them all together, people we haven't seen for over four months now. From what I've heard, they liked seeing us too, even commenting on my haircut which Liz gave me yesterday. No, it's not too bad.
I gave her the book of "Jamie's Kitchen", which is a cooking show on TV here staring Jamie Oliver, aka. The Naked Chef, who is extremely popular over here. I'm not sure if she has managed to integrate any of the recipies into the Christmas dinner, which I can smell roasting away in the oven. It's nice to actually walk into the kitchen and enjoy the heat of Christmas dinner cooking - something which was always a pain back home. That's Australia home, if you are getting confused. Not London.
Other presents included a few books, more warm clothes, and some coasters from Mum and Dad saying "Tim's Bar". Not sure if they are trying to tell me something... Also a boomerang from Celia and Peter in Oz ("make sure you come back", says the card), and Liz of course accrued enough girly things to open her own shop.
We aren't even close to a White Christmas here. We awoke to sun streaming in our window, and the ever-present wet everything (although curiously it doesn't rain much). The temerature is even bearable. It was a cold snap a few weeks ago which has now gone, leaving us with 12 degree days. Not what were expecting (or hoping for, even) at all.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 24 Dec 2002
Not Much ( 2 photos )
Lazing around the house today, waiting for Christmas to arrive.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 23 Dec 2002
Across to Newcastle ( 4 photos )
We took a drive across to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne to watch (and join in with) Peter sing Christmas carols with the Newcastle Symphonia Choris in the Newcastle Catholic Cathedral. Stirring stuff, and just topped-off our carols for the year nicely.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 22 Dec 2002
Relaxing around Peter's Again ( No photos )
There are some very rough plans taking shape for us to go across to Newcastle tomorrow to watch Peter sing carols at lunchtime, then have a look around what he describes as "England's answer to Sydney Harbour".
We shall wait and see...
I have borrowed a webcam to attempt some Christmas video-chatting, so if you have one too, or even if you just want to watch us be silly in front of a camera, get in touch and we can sort something out.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 21 Dec 2002
A Great Suprise ( 5 photos )
(Continued from London 3).
As we walked in to Peter's place (he was out and had left a spare key hidden), we saw that he had put up a fairly comprehensive array of Christmas decorations! Everything from a real tree right through to the little Frosty and Santa heads sticking out of our beds! Perhaps this was to make up for the news that there is little chance of a White Christmas, although almost 100% certainty of a wet drizzly one.
The night was spent relaxing and cooking nachos for dinner after a walk to the local supermarket (Liz on leaving the house: "It's not that cold"; Liz on arriving back at the house: "It's bloody freezing out there!!!").
(permanent link to this story)
House Photos before Driving North ( 4 photos )
The weather was finally good enough this morning for me to grab shots of the front of what I guess we should call our "home", just before we set off for the long drive north to Carlisle.
We did this via Peter's "secret" route, which is the M1, then A50, then M6. He had heard that yesterday was supposed to be the worst possible day for travelling in the Christmas build-up period.
But, we are not sure whether it was the route that was right or the news that was wrong, as we had a fantastic drive, easily the best so far. Fairly close to a five hour drive, with two half-hour breaks, before we arrived in Carlisle for Christmas.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 19 Dec 2002
News on the Work Front ( No photos )
The last few days have been pretty hectic - getting more things organised for our room, having Margaret over for dinner, and of course Liz and Margaret going for a two-hour shopping trip through Tesco, dragging me along.
What has been interesting, however, is that I went for a job interview today. Even more interesting is that I got the job.
However, I turned it down. Basically, they wanted me to be on call for the Christmas period, at a fairly low rate of pay. This would have meant that I would have been sitting around down in London, and missed out on the White Christmas up in Carlisle at Peter's place.
So, I got my first contracting role here and said "no" on the same day. I intend to look at the supposed rush of New-Year contracts as they occur.
In other news, it must be getting pretty cold here, since there is a pretty thick layer of ice covering Percy every morning, and piles of the stuff on the paths and stations. Have to be pretty careful. We haven't seen actual snow yet, but are hoping that the reported -4 temperatures up in Carlisle pay off when we arrive there on Saturday.
Liz is once again doing an all-night shift at the same place, and this may be her last one. She has heard un-officially that her nursing registration has finally come through, however the idiots have sent it Second-Class post.
For the non-British audience, over here you can either get guaranteed next-day or the day after delivery, known as First Class, or you can save about two pence and get Second Class, which might get there someday. Maybe. But perhaps not over Christmas.
So, despite having spent several hundered pounds on her application and waited nine months to get thus far, when it finally comes through they are too cheap to spend up for First Class post to let her Agency know about it. Grrr.
Only Vicky will be at our place over Xmas - Liz and I are of course going North, Ryan and Chantelle are heading to Austria, and Taija is off to San Francisco. So many places to go, so much time...
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 16 Dec 2002
A Change of Scenery ( 6 photos )
I have again moved a little further on the job front, and again have nothing concrete. It's quite possible that I will have to wait until the new year for work to eventuate - most hirings are understandably on hold. At least a number of places have said that I have a strong CV, but how many candidates do they say that to? If IT work falls through, I have an interesting plan or two for non-IT work to bring some money in...
We of course ate out at several places around Beckenham and in at Leicester Square over the time we spent down there, some good and some not so good. The Ye George Inn, Pizza Hut and the Local Kebab Shop (complete with kebabs which are supplied as what can only be described as a pile of ingredients) come readily to memory.
We are going back up to Carlisle on Saturday to meet with Peter for Christmas, and plan to stay around a week. If anyone in London has any suggestions for New Years, we are all ears!
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 13 Dec 2002
Move Complete! Jade's Birthday ( 8 photos )
So we've moved in to our new home! The move went fine - we were most suprised at how little time it took us to get here (granted it was on a Sunday), and how little went wrong.
We are really enjoying it here - the single room in the B&B was getting a little claustrophobic. There's lots of new things to learn about - which cupboards are ours in the kitchen, which part of the fridge, which jobs you have to do in your section of the housework. At least it makes it nice and simple for everyone here with a few reasonable ground-rules.
One of the most useful things about the place is that it has 24hr fast internet access, meaning you can feel free to email, ICQ or just generally contact us as you wish!
Even though it's been a little while since our last update, not a huge deal has been accomplished besides the move. Liz has done a couple more nursing shifts, still in the same place she was before. She is not over-enthusiastic about the work, but it is money coming in which is greatly needed. She is actually working a night shift at the moment.
While Liz was on night shift, the timing worked out for me to go into the infamous brb Bar in London (we have been there a couple of times before), where I met with friend from Sydney Jade to celebrate her birthday. I met a huge number of new people, mostly also in IT, and with the exception of one, all from Oz or NZ. Strange how that happens on the other side of the world. We wandered randomly around Chinatown afterwards and eventually ate at a Chinese Restaurant of some description.
My journey home involved becoming acquainted with the night-bus system, which is considerably more confusing than the one in Sydney. Also, nobody at the station had the vaguest idea how it worked, and sent me on a wild goose chase attempting to work out how I would get home.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 10 Dec 2002
-7 celsius! ( 19 photos )
Well, that's the temperature when you include the wind chill factor. It's around 2-4 if you don't - the winds are truly cutting. And it's only just started being winter!
The last few days have seen a few things get better. Liz has done one shift at work, doing what they call "Escorting". Basically, she helped a well-to-do old resident of a well-to-do nursing home place into and out of a taxi, pushing the wheelchair around, etc. while he had to go to a hospital for a test.
She must have impressed, she's got three more shifts out of them already - Friday, Monday and Thursday nights! Remember, she hasn't got her actual Nursing Registration through yet (come on, it's only been nine months), so this is slightly more menial tasks. However, the money coming in (well, when it does) is a lot better than none at all. Especially in pricy London.
Oh, and when she was in the taxi, the driver noted that it was snowing! Sure, you wouldn't know unless someone told you, but it's still snow!!
I've made some progress, actually getting to have a decent conversation with a few of the phone-drone recruiting people, and one actually understood what it is that I do! There's one job in my "strong lead" pile at the moment, and a few more on the way.
In case you're interested in the ever-exciting insurance saga, it's now all sorted out. Maybe. Since our second cover note had expired this morning, I decided that waiting two months for the two return phone calls I had been promised was getting a bit much, and rang them back. At the end of it all, we've settled on a reasonable (but not amazing) price, whereby they ignore any past no-claim bonus. It was just all too hard for them, despite all the paperwork we had organised. We were quite close to selling the car and giving it all up this afternoon, but that was averted.
As a celebration, we took Percy for a drive for the first time in two weeks, albeit only to the other end of Beckenham in search for something new to eat. We settled on a Spanish Tapas Bar, where the food was great and suprisingly cheap.
Other things we have done recently include me today finishing up my look around the Museum of London, another trip to Bromley, a visit to Covent Garden and the Covent Garden Walkabout pub (an Aussie pub chain, complete with Aussie beer and plenty of Aussies - nice to see now and then).
We're relaxing watching TV tonight, and soon "Extreme Ironing" is coming on TV. Yes, it really is what it sounds like. Truly Bizarre.
We are of course looking forward to moving into our new place on Sunday.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 08 Dec 2002
Wander through London ( 2 photos )
A general wander through London late at night.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 07 Dec 2002
Baritone Band and Knightsbridge ( 13 photos )
Margaret led us into town today - first to the Royal Festival Hall to see a great free lunchtime jazz conert by the Baritone Band. While watching this concert by four barintone saxophones, I got talking to a couple of old blokes there who invited us to the 100 club at 100 Oxford Street where they have Jazz every Friday lunchtime. One said that he'd buy us a drink if we ever turned up! Can't argue with hospitality like that. We intend to take him up on that offer sometime soon.
Next it was into Knightsbridge to see Harrods and Harvey Nichols. These were of course just huge expensive shops, where I have to say you could easily get very lost for a day and enjoy it, but I think they were quite over-hyped. The alley out the back where the Bentleys sat waiting complete with chauffers summed it all up for me.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 06 Dec 2002
Trafalgar Square Xmas Tree Lighting ( 21 photos )
On Friday we all went into Trafalgar Square with another from the endless supply of Margaret's friends, Debbie. This was for the lighting of the Christmas Lights on the big tree. This is donated each year from Norway, as part of a long-running tradition. Like so many other things here! Afterward we tottled off to Porters, the English food restaurant nearby.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 04 Dec 2002
It's getting chilly ( 4 photos )
Well, the last few days have been quiet. Tim has a bad cold and so we have not been very active.
We went and met our prospective housemates (oohh...just like Big Brother!) on Monday night and they are all really friendly. There will be six of us in the house, with just one bathroom, but they assured us it usually works out just fine. An hour after we left their house, we received a phone call saying they'd love us to move in.
We are both very excited, and can't wait to move into our new home. Roll on Saturday week!
Apart from that, we have found a replacement for Tim's glasses which he lost on Sunday. They are the really cool flexible ones that bend into bizarre shapes without breaking. As an added bonus they really suit Tim. Now that he can see again I think I'm going to drag him to the latest Harry Potter movie later today.
Up until the last day or so, the weather has been cool, but not too bad, but now there are freezing winds blowing in from Russia (-10 degrees C or so), which are starting to make things very cold. We aren't too bothered at this stage though, as it simply means there will probably be more snow, which means we get to build a bigger snowman at Christmas :)
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 03 Dec 2002
Dog Walking Again ( 1 photo )
Another walk with the dogs today!
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 02 Dec 2002
A place to live? ( 7 photos )
Well, we have been galavanting all around London these past few days looking at places to live. There's so many to choose from, and a lot (though not all) of them are pretty good, with very nice people.
We have chosen a place up in North London in a place called Golders Green. It is two minutes drive from the M1 (major motorway into London), two minutes walk from the tube (which goes straight to Kings Cross and Leicester Square), and has a large amount of other things going for it.
We are heading up there tonight for a meet and greet with all the other household members (like everything else we can actually afford, it is a share house with four others - three Aussies and a Kiwi). The ones moving out however aren't planning on doing so for almost three weeks. Although the manager of the B&B (view out our window) is being great in letting us have this room for as long as we want at the current cheap price, it's quite cramped, and a reasonable distance from the Centre of London. We'll keep you posted with the progress, of course.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 01 Dec 2002
St. Paul's Cathedral Advent Carols ( 7 photos )
Last night the three of us went in to St. Paul's Cathedral for the Advent Carol Service. It was quite unlike any other any of us had been to before, and great so be able to say we have been to.
After wandering around Soho for a little while, dinner was then in Leicester Square, at one of the many chain Italian restaurants (we ate at another the other night), where the food was great, and not too badly priced, all things considered. Our brains are slowly coping with the cost of living over here.
On the job front, Liz's nursing registration is now looking a little better. We made the trek into the actual office that does them the other day, where they were quite rude, which was no real suprise. Her agency is jumping up and down on her behalf, which makes a difference.
With all the effort to get a house organised, I haven't spent a huge amount of time looking for work. I am sending off some more resumes now, and hopefully these will receive some response. There are some great jobs available, and eventually someone will have to crack and give me a chance.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 28 Nov 2002
Research, Planning ( No photos )
At the moment, we're about to go to the Internet Cafe to do some research on share housing, and jobs for me. We took the dogs for a very muddy walk in the local woods this morning, and have been trying to get them to play nice with each other back here. They are fine while walking but very territorial in the B&B.
We are planning a possible trip to Dublin between Christmas and New Years - Margaret has another friend over there, and Liz and I would love to meet up with crazy Gail I used to work with.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 27 Nov 2002
Nothing goes according to plan ( No photos )
(Continued from Lincolnshire)
You didn't really expect us to stick to all that planning, did you?
We set out with good intentions yesterday, motorway-ing our way around to London - note to self - make sure we do it in the middle of the day all the time. There was almost nobody on the M11 and M25, making it very smooth going all the way into Beckenham.
As Margaret said, we didn't expect to arrive back in London to sunshine - the weather is great again today, a pretty normal top of twelve or so degrees.
So Liz and wandered down to the local Internet Cafe to check out places to stay in Reading. We found the one recommended to us by Liz's friends there, got the details, lots of maps on how to get there, and came back to the B&B (the Goodwood, where we have stayed twice before) to ring them up.
After the phone had eaten plenty of our money, it finally relented and allowed us to talk to the recommended Inn in Reading. "Sorry, no rooms available tonight, and when there are, they cost £89 per room". Wow. That's a lot of money. So, we thought about it for a while, involving a trip down to the pub to think a little more over a pint or two. The outcome of that was that last night we stayed in the Goodwood, in their only spare room - a single room with a fold-out bed. The cost was somewhat more reasonable, at £25 for the room (not each) - that's the price of a hostel! So, we're going to stay here again tonight. When you are on a good thing, ...
So it looks like we may not end up in Reading after all. We wanted to be a little out of London, but in the end it may work out for the better:
- There's plenty more to do in London - the Lonely Planet doesn't even mention Reading
- Save £18 pounds or so train fare each day if I had to travel to London for work (which it seems is going to be the case)
- Wider variety of work choices for both of us
- Liz's nursing was proving quite difficult to organise in Reading - here she can go and yell directly at the Nursing Registration people and ask why a completely qualified nurse can't work anywhere when they are crying out for more nurses.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 26 Nov 2002
Lincoln ( 41 photos )
After a late and lethargic morning, we set off for a walk through the foggy fields towards a nearby village. A wonderful sight, but getting mighty cold in the exposed parts.
Eventually wandering back to Jill's place, we lunched before heading into Lincoln proper. Lonely Planet summarises it thusly: "a compact medieval centre with some wonderful Tudor architecture and one of the steepest urban climbs this side of San Francisco." We parked at the top, opting for a walk down first, then up later.
The city is completely dominated by the cathedral. We were in awe of it's size, but unfortunately the friezes on the outside were undergoing restoration, spoiling the effect somewhat. We decided that the entry fee (most cathedrals and the like ask for a donation - quite different) of £3.50 each was a bit steep, considering there was five of us. So we took some photos from the doorway and headed across the road to the other major structure - the castle.
We spent a great hour or two wandering around, taking in the castle's varied contents: a prison (complete with a chapel kitted out in a way only one other in the world survives - in Port Arthur, Tasmania. We've seen that one too, which made for interesting comparison), Lincoln's copy of the Magna Carta (which was shipped out to Brisbane for Expo '88, but we didn't see), and the very high Observatory Tower (which we climbed up). A nice walk around the walls completed our tour.
Next was to take in the famous Steep Hill on our way down to Just Another Overgrown High Street. In truth, there are some surviving historical buildings, such as Britain's only cafe built on a bridge, where we had afternoon tea, the 12th century Jew's House and of course the lolly shop Goodies, where Liz and Margaret stocked up on nourishing health snacks.
Eventually hungry, we headed a little out of town for a great dinner at a strange British institution, the Fish & Chips Restaurant. Imagine a greasy fish and chip take-away shop on one side, tacked on to a sit-down, licensed, table-service, and very clean restaurant. It still serves the same food, albeit packaged a little more pleasingly. Quite a strange creation indeed.
We piled back into Jill's little car (five of us in a two-door Barina/Corsa!), and headed back to relax at home.
Tomorrow, Liz and I are going to London to drop Margaret at Beckenham for a week, and then head out to Reading to stay in a hotel near our friends there while we work out how our life is going to play out.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 25 Nov 2002
Motorway Madness ( 3 photos )
(Continued from Carlisle 3)
A huge motorway driving session today, which looked easy on paper. The slight technicality of two hours worth of delay due to not quite sure what lengthened the journey somewhat.
Once finally off the motorways, next challenge was the complete lack of light you get here at 4pm. Yes, it is totally dark very early. Combined with very heavy fog and small back streets, Liz did wonderfully well to keep us on track.
We're now in a small town a few miles south of Lincoln. Tomorrow we might head into town - not sure yet. Plans are still something we don't need!
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 24 Nov 2002
A Few Days In and Around Carlisle ( 15 photos )
Peter's party went off without a hitch, although I was not well enough to pop out more than a few times. Everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves, and Peter now has a great collection of strange alcoholic beverages people have given him. Liz and I provided a crockery set, which came in handy with all the people, and Margaret a book of David Attenborough's new series The Life of Mammals, which has just started.
I'm now feeling much better - it was an annoying little bug that stuck around for a few more days than it was welcome, but good to have it gone.
Other things we have done included Liz and I going out last night to see Die Another Day (the new James Bond flick). They are plugging it so hard here - there's two or three things about it on TV/radio/magazines every day. All in all, it was quite good, although our particular screening of it was a little spoiled by the fire alarm going off right at a crucial moment, taking the movie with it.
Since we are in the middle of an eight-day fire-fighter's strike at the moment, this was a cause for a little concern. Proved to be a false alarm however, and a few moments later we were back into the crazy action.
Today we all went for a drive to a truly country village called Mungrisdale, where we took part in the now traditional Sunday lunch. My appetite is still not fully returned (probably a good thing), so I had a jacket potato instead.
A quick walk around the area before we headed back to Peter's place, stopping off at an over-grown tourist information place along the way.
Where we will be in the next week or so is completely up in the air at this stage. Liz is trying a new tact with her nursing, meeting with a different agent and her friend on Thursday to discuss some plans. I've applied for more jobs, and need to make some gentle prodding enquiries tomorrow as to exactly what they are doing about them all.
Tomorrow we drive to Lincolnshire.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 21 Nov 2002
Happy Birthday Peter! ( 10 photos )
Despite earlier theories that he was going to cancel it, today is Peter's birthday. There's a party of sorts tonight where several friends are coming over here to celebrate the occasion.
On a different note, I have unfortunately been quite sick these last few days. I'm not sure whether it is food poisoning or a virus, but I haven't kept any food down for a day and a half. The only good side is that I feel much better today, out of bed and wandering around. Still quite a way from 100% unfortunately.
No major plans for anything in the next few days, except are planning to spend a couple of nights with another friend of Margaret's Jill on the way down to London.
A few leads, but nothing concrete on the job front. Everyone says that the market is down, so I may end up pulling beers in a bar after all.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 19 Nov 2002
Barrow, Carlisle ( 6 photos )
(Continued from South England 1)
A reasonably un-eventful day saw us visit Barrow-in-Furness on the way to Carlisle.
Reason for this visit was to say hi to Margaret's friends from days gone by Rem and Fred. Proving quite an interesting couple to converse with, our day was a good way to relax with some home-cooked soup and news of old friends.
Back on the motorway, we are now at Peter's, relaxing before the big party day on Thursday.
I have just applied for some more jobs, and plan to follow Jade's suggestion of ringing to hassle them shortly after, so here's hoping I at least have some leads to chase when we head South again next week.
Still no more news on Liz's nursing registration, so it's pretty hard to say what will happen there.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 18 Nov 2002
A few more familiar faces ( 25 photos )
Awaking in the Cotswolds once again, we breakfasted, then headed off to nearby Broadway, where we had dinner last time we were in the area. This time, we took in some touristy shops which were even more outrageously priced than the rest of England.
Most of the day was spent covering lots of miles on the motorways. Lunch was at a services at Stafford. This wasn't far from Stoke-on-trent, where apparently my Grandmother's father was born and raised before coming out to Australia. I wanted to go in and take a photo or three of the house, so needed to find my way around. How else would a poor Aussie do this? Why, by taking a photo of the map in a newsagent for later reference, of course!
Unfortunately, my plan fell apart when the street name I had actually occured three times, with no further information. Perhaps we can find out a bit more and try it again later.
Going once again with what we knew, we are staying at Thornton House, where we have been before. We remembered it as expensive, but were quite happy to find our memory had failed us.
We passed the afternoon wandering around Blackpool. Happily, now out of the tourist season, it wasn't all that bad. The "illuminations" (lots of flashy light things all along the promenade) are now finished, and most of the endless amusement arcades are closed for the winter.
What we did do was spend a few pounds playing various strange amusement games - shooting, driving, playing air hockey and of course in the end loosing lots of our hard-earned.
Weather has been fantastic today - we took some pictures of one of the most amazing sunsets we have seen for a long time, bought some "rock" candy and then drove back to the B&B.
A little later we attempted to find some dinner. First pub (the one just across the road) said "we have just taken over and will serve food in December". OK, back in the car and on to the next - "we have just taken over and will serve food soon". Third time lucky, we ate at a suprisingly reasonable chain pub where we ate more than we really should have, given the huge breakfast we have ordered in the morning.
Tomorrow we head to visit another friend of Margaret's in Barrow-in-Furness, before arriving late in the day back at Carlisle at Peter's place. That's almost our "South England" leg of the trip over.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 17 Nov 2002
The Manor Farm, take 2 ( 27 photos )
Today we drove quite a distance - much more than we expected to, at any rate.
Leaving last night's accommodation, we drove not far at all to the totally unique sea-side town of Clovelly. The entire town is built on an extremely steep piece of the land, winding itself down to the harbour. The cobble-stones are regularly serviced by donkeys in summer - the only vehicles which could make it would be four-wheel drives, and the laneways aren't wide enough! We managed to get in just before the visitor centre opened - lucky, because the £3.50 charge just to wander around the village (ok, you get to watch annoying historical videos as well) is pretty steep.
We ventured next straight through the middle of Exmoor Forest. Another picturesque place, yet different to Cornwall and Devon.
A quick leg-stretch stop at Dunster before we found a pub doing Sunday lunch off the beaten track at Bradley Green. Since Margaret is now addicted to the concept of Sunday lunch, there was no way we would be allowed to miss out. Luckily, it was a fantastic meal, no dinner needed tonight!
We next headed up to the one place we had any real desire to visit - Portishead. Why? Because there is a band named that, of course! On the coast next to Bristol, there is nothing of real interest there, but we had a good time feeding the ducks at a lake by the sea.
Jumping back on the Motorway, we thought we may have some luck finding a B&B near the town of Stroud - possibly in the area around Leonard Stanley. No luck, however, and as we evaluated our options parked in a bus stop near the closed "i" in Stroud, a thought struck Liz. "What about the Manor Farm - are we close to that?"
The Manor Farm is the one B&B that we call a "lucky find" constantly. Horses, dogs, cats, and of course great hosts, we last visited here on the 21st of September. Half an hour later, we arrived and found accommodation was actually available. A long day's drive finally at an end, we are now not doing too much at all.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 16 Nov 2002
Watergate, Boscastle ( 14 photos )
Today has been a beautiful day weather-wise. The sun has shone nearly the whole day, and it has been very pleasant driving along.
We started out driving through a nearby village called Cadgwith, which is an old un-changed fishing village, and also happened to have some of the narrowest streets we have driven through.
Heading North, we went through Helson, Redruth and Newquay, and then stopped for a while a Watergate Bay, where Mum used to come for holidays with her parents. The beach there was a "surf beach", and although it had some medium-sized waves, it wasn't a patch on Cronulla. The towering cliffs either side of the beach were awesome to look at as we walked along the sand.
A little further North, we came to Wadebridge where we had lunch in a village cafe, before driving on again and stopping in a village called Boscastle. This was a beautiful place with a steep winding road going down to the shops and the tiny harbour. We spent a while looking around the shops, walking by the river down to the harbour and watching the ducks.
The rest of the afternoon was spent driving further north through farmland, and a short while looking for a B&B. We are staying in a really nice farm B&B (the farmer was in the middle of milking the cows when we arrived!) in Horn's Cross near Bideford.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 15 Nov 2002
Down at the other end ( 11 photos )
It doesn't seem like long at all since we were up at John O'Groats - the far North-East corner of the British mainland. Today, we're near Land's End.
This morning saw us drive down to Land's End, which is the most South-West point of the mainland, and famous for the fact that people attempt the Land's End to John O'Groats journey in the silliest ways possible. Walking backwards, riding unicycles, in old cars, etc.
A quick stop on the way was in Penzance, which suprised us in not really being all that interesting. We stocked up on some medicine, junk food and the Lord of the Rings DVDs.
Land's End has been turned into a tourist Mecca (hardly suprising, since the same company owns both this and the similar bunch of self-appointed "attractions" at John O'Groats). A significant place, but otherwise just another piece of land that we had to pay £2 just to park at.
We spent the afternoon at another old friend of Margaret's, Lindsay, who lives in a tiny village called Mawnan. They bought an old sheep barn from a farmer and proceeded to turn it into a fantastic house, something we all admired quite a lot. Could happily settle down in a place like that somewhere in the far future.
Tomorrow we start the scenic route North to Carlisle. There's quite a few plans in place for possible places to stop at.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 14 Nov 2002
Fowey, Helston, Lizard Point ( 11 photos )
We left out from Kingsbridge, heading again generally West. First stop was at the picturesque harbour town of Fowey. Built on a very steep cliff-side, we parked right at the top then walked down and had a good look around the town itself, along with a morning-tea snack. Just made it puffing up the hill back to Percy before it started hailing so hard we worried about dents! No damage however.
Next down the road was the larger town of Helston. Following the trend, it too had a steep overall design, however this was a steep narrow main street, not near the water. Lunch here.
Quickly back to the car before our parking time ran out, we drove onwards to the Southern-most point of the mainland, Lizard Point. Nobody else braved this one for some reason, so I wandered around in the rain for a little before seeing their point.
After trying a few small towns for B&Bs (including Helford, a extremely compact village built around a river with the narrowest roads yet), we eventually settled at Tregaddra Farmhouse, a wonderful B&B run by a fifth-generation farming family and an armada of kittens. A little on the expensive side, but wonderfully appointed with four-poster beds and all the country-house works. So we decided to stay here again tonight!
Dinner was down the road at The Old Inn in Mullion. Unfortunately Margaret has a bad cold (and no drugs to help at the time), so the slow service there didn't help matters much.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 13 Nov 2002
Lyme Regis, Exeter, Kingsbridge ( 19 photos )
Sorry for the slackness of the updates here - we ate up all the phone credit doing the photo uploads, and had to find a convenient place to recharge it. Thanks Liz for the update - I know people get sick of hearing from me all the time. Sights on Margaret next.
Today we awoke to find it had been raining all night, but the weather was now ok. The sun behind the chapel on the hill next to the blue sea was a great sight to see (and of course photograph).
We headed towards Lyme Regis, a place Liz remembered from a previous trip. An hour's wander around the town produced some interesting finds, and was worth the effort.
Heading Westward through Devon, we next went to Exeter - one of the biggest cities for miles. We took advantage of a "Park and Ride", and had a good look around the very impressive cathederal there, as well as taking in a lunch.
Heading then South, avoiding Torquay, we are now staying in Kingsbridge, not too far from Dartmouth. The town is quaint, but we are totally blown away by the friendliness of the hosts. After ringing, we got directions and arrived to find the guy standing outside with an umbrella in the pooring rain, waiting to guide us in! Tea was forthcoming, along with many chats about relatives and in Australia, before a recommendation for a great pub in town.
Due to the weather, I dropped the ladies off at the pub before spinning around the one-way system (another very common arrangement) many times looking for a place to park. Despite protestations, I braved the rain to pick them up as well. Would have sounded much more sincere if Liz had have typed this bit :)
Still no major plans for tomorrow - who needs plans?!?
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 12 Nov 2002
Wareham, Portland, Abbotsbury ( 16 photos )
We were quite suprised to notice as we were leaving the B&B that one of the New Forest ponies was quite happily munching away on the proprietor's front garden and lawn! Everywhere has cattle grids to stop them getting in, but they happily eat anything they can find.
Travelling onwards, we drove through floods to a town Liz had heard had a HSBC bank (she has been trying unsuccessfully to get an account opened to start nursing), while I organised a replacement tail light for the car - necessary in the torrential rain that is all too common.
Next stop was the town of Wareham, where we lunched, rested by the river (which is one of the town's "walls"), and walked a little around the three other actual walls enclosing the town.
Driving South to the Portland (a now-joined Isle off the South coast), we took advantage of the fantastic weather to see for hundereds of miles in each direction from the lookout.
B&B searching time again, and before a successful find, we had to wait for a horse and cart driving down one of the myriad of one-track lanes at one stage. The obligatory friendly wave that you get for waiting in a passing place felt quite genuine - they were very slow.
The final port of call was the small craft village of Abbotsbury. Before the rain made us turn back, we took a walk around the shops - the best of which was a wood-work shop with some truly amazing things in it. Such a shame that we have heard of customs taking wood off people attempting to get back into Sydney. At the prices here, not worth the risk.
Dinner was at the very under-patronised local pub, and from the dinner we could see why. Dessert and coffee instead were nine miles away in the larger town of Bridport.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 11 Nov 2002
Liz speaks more!!! ( 41 photos )
Today, we were surprised to wake up to rays of sunshine streaming in through the curtains, and the it stayed sunny for most of the day.
We drove for most of the morning, mostly along motorways, but also taking a short detour through a few English villages that are apparently unchanged by time.
After a stop for a cup of tea, we headed into the New Forest. This place is gorgeous. All the trees are golden brown, and there are wild ponies all over the place - even on the road. We are staying in a farmhouse B&B, which has some very friendly horses just across the road.
We spent the afternoon at Beaulieu. We saw the National Motor Museum, where we saw heaps of cool cars (I liked the Rolls Royce Silver Ghost the best) and learnt how they were designed, manufactured and driven. The museum had so many different cars - from the first ones ever made in Britain, to the fastest land speed record wheeled car. They even had a 'Ladies' car, just for me. Unfortunately, it has no reverse gear, so you have to get out, lift the back up by the handle, and spin it around in the direction you want to go!
After a short break for afternoon tea, we had a ride on an old restored red double-decker bus (very bumpy!) and then we went into the James Bond Car and Boat Exhibition. I, being a James Bond nut, had a ball. They have the Lotus from 'For Your Eyes Only', Little Nellie from 'The Spy Who Loved Me', The white shirt Jaws wears, and so much other James Bond memorabilia. Fantastic!
Next, we spent a few hilarious minutes playing with remote control cars on their own miniature dodgem track, until the rain started pouring down, forcing us to run for cover. We had a quick ride around the park on the monorail, and then headed back to our B&B.
Dinner was at a pub just up the road (all-you-can-eat-indian!) and then we spent the evening relaxing back in our room.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 10 Nov 2002
Liz speaks!!! ( 15 photos )
On Sunday, we left the B&B and drove to Battle, which is just North of Hastings. This is the site where William the Conqueror defeated King Harold for the crown in 1066.
We did a self-guided tour, where we were given hand held radios which talked us through the battle between the two armies. Tim and I walked right around the battle-field site, and it was rainy, so we both got covered in mud. It was quite amazing to imagine what might have happened there so many years ago, and as there aren't many records of what actually did happen, imagination has played a key part in the story.
After all that, we decided to enjoy a Sunday roast lunch at the 1066 Hotel (yum!) and then we drove South. We stopped at Pevensey Bay, which is where my Mum used to go for holidays when she was a child. We went up to the 'beach' which consisted of pebbles, but for a change, there were a few good waves :) The pebbles must be a killer on bare feet though!
The rest of the day was spent driving around, finding a place to stay for the night, and that was about it due to the rainy weather. We ended up staying up in Offham, just North of Lewes.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 09 Nov 2002
Country Kent, Dover ( 21 photos )
(Continued from London 2)
Finally leaving the noisy shackles of the B&B at Beckenham, we headed in a general South-East direction.
First stop was the little village of Plaxtol, buried in the middle of semi-rural Kent. This was where Margaret's mother was brought up. We saw the chapel where she got married (now a house), as well as where the farm used to be that she lived on. Quite a nice little town, and good to wander around on the narrow country roads.
Slightly hungry by this time, we headed over to Sandwich for a sandwich. We fed the ducks, and were perplexed when we couldn't actually find a sandwich shop.
Heading further down the coast, we spent an hour or two at various stops near Dover - famous for it's white, chalky cliffs. The weather was once again in our favor today, and we had a great time wandering around what was a suprisingly well-organised area. We had a great view down to the huge international ferry terminal, the main one to France.
Speaking of France, as we drove towards the coast, or phones beeped at us, saying "Welcome to Vodafone France!" Suprised to say the least, we could actually see France across the water, and found that we could tune into their radio stations too!
After a little driving around some random back areas looking for B&Bs to stay in for the night, we have ended up at the "Owler Lodge" guest house, in a little village called Alkham, three miles North-West of Dover.
Dinner was at a fish and chip shop in Dover (Liz gets things in her head and there's no changing her mind), before returning for a drink and dessert at the local pub in Alkham.
We're watching the Rememberance Day concert at the Royal Albert Hall on TV. Since the Queen is there, Margaret discovered yesterday when she wanted to go in for a look around that the security has been pretty tight.
People singing in memory of those injured or lost at war seems quite surreal given how strongly the government here seems to be wanting to go to war with Iraq.
I've nearly convinced Liz and Margaret to do some website updates, so stay tuned!
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 08 Nov 2002
Science Museum ( 12 photos )
Today we visited another of Margaret's old friends - Dorothy in Chiswick. Yet more great hospitality and another nice place to relax in.
Some time was spent today wandering around the Science Museum. All of us were blown away with what was on offer - in the four hours we only just covered the first floor out of seven, and even that felt like we were skipping things. Displays included Space, Making the Modern World, Power, and Liz looked at what was apparently a fantastic "Glimpses of Medical History". The number of original items there was staggering - the first X-ray machine, Stephenson's Rocket (the first train, of sorts), the first Cray Supercomputer, etc. Now we need to spend more time there looking at the remaining floors!
Dinner tonight was at the local Indian restaurant, which we didn't think much of given the price.
Tomorrow we head off South from London, probably heading towards Dover for a look around the South-East, before we head West along the South coast. After that it's North towards Carlisle for Peter's birthday party!
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 07 Nov 2002
Wandering around London ( 12 photos )
Well, we have done quite a bit in the last few days. To summarise:
- We have visited one of Margaret's old friends - another Margaret in Purley. Treated of course to the typical wonderful English hospitality, we saw her nice place and surroundings.
- I spent a few hours wandering around the Museum of London. This gives a great account of the history of London itself, right back to 450,000 years ago. Suffice to say there was too much to look at in one day, so we'll have to head back there at a later date.
- Liz has had a mild degree of success with her nursing registration and work. She went in to see them and had a good chat, and as a preliminary measure saying that she/we might like to work in Reading, with her friend Siobhan from Uni.
- I have applied for a couple of jobs, but heard nothing back. Talking to Jade (from uni, working over here) last night, she suggested a few tricks which may help out my cause. Intend to follow this up more soon.
- We ended up back at brb bar in Chinatown with Jade, taking in some more of those evil two-for-one cocktails. This was made yet more evil when Jade discovered that she knew some of the people behind the bar. It then became three-for-zero cocktails. We also met some interesting people who we had never found before, and ended up giving us a name and address in case we ever want to crash somewhere in London, along with some tips and help on finding jobs! See, drinking isn't all bad...
- Dinner has been at the local Indian restaurant, and Poons Chinese restauraunt just off Leicester Square.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 05 Nov 2002
The Real Guy Fawkes Night ( No photos )
Just a quick update. Liz and Margaret spent the day wandering around Bromley shopping for various things, while I opted out. Liz bought a replacement pair of shoes for the ones which have fallen apart she brought over with her.
Instead, I went to the nearby internet cafe and spent a couple of hours online chatting to people and looking for work. I'm about to send off a couple of applications, so who knows what will end up happening.
We did some washing at the local laundrette (as they are called over here), which ended up being quite expensive, but it was almost all our clothes we have with us, and hasn't been done since we were on Orkney!
We went up to one of the local pubs for dinner again tonight, where we all had the same - Steak and Ale pie.
Tomorrow will probably bring a trip around the county of Kent if the weather is reasonable. Lots more fireworks tonight for the real Guy Fawkes night - the other night was just an excuse to blow things up.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 04 Nov 2002
London Eye ( 28 photos )
Slowly awakening this morning, we breakfasted before taking a trip into Charring Cross (near Trafalgar Square) for a guided tour from Margaret. This took in the Royal Festival Hall (lunch there), National Museum, several bridges across the Themes, and then the two most important things:
- The London Eye: obviously very touristy, it was however a great thing to do - the weather was strangely clear and sunny, we could see for miles. Just like a huge ferris wheel with enclosed cabins.
- The Australia Shop! We stocked up on the most important things we can't get anywhere else here - Vegemite, Cherry Ripes, Caramello Koalas, a real vegetable peeler (British ones are very silly), Twisties, etc. The prices were obscene, so we took it fairly easy.
After this, we split again - I headed off to Olympus to ask politely for a camera case (they didn't return mine with the new camera), and ended up walking away with an ultra-luxury leather model, so no complaints there. Meanwhile, Liz and Margaret took in a few more sights before heading home.
Tomorrow will probably mean tackling our huge pile of dirty washing and other assorted odds and ends.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 03 Nov 2002
Farnborough Again ( 48 photos )
Yesterday was spent driving (via an alternative route) to Farnborough. This is the village (now a suburb) where Margaret grew up.
We visited where her parents are buried, and took a nice walk around through some parkland which was beautiful to Liz and I, but "not quite like it used to be" to Margaret. It was still quite a change from elsewhere in London, and even from last time we were here - huge quantities of Autumn leaves are everywhere.
Next was Sunday lunch at the Change of Horses pub, where Liz and I visited last we were here. A huge roast meant that dinner was not a hugely important proposition.
We visited a few more of Margaret's old haunts, before going our separate ways for the night - Liz and Margaret took a walk around the Beckenham area before relaxing at the B&B. I was off to a party in West Kensington for friend from uni Marty, who's share house is breaking up. Suffice to say, a good time was had by all, and I made it back to Beckenham on the last train around 1:30am (after waiting at the station for an hour, though). I met a few good contacts for possible jobs, so here's hoping.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 02 Nov 2002
Back to London, Hello Margaret! ( 6 photos )
(Continued from The Cotswolds)
Well, Margaret is here, safe and sound. Apparently her flight was not bad, but she's pretty tired. I'm going to try and get her to write a bit for the journal, as well as reminding Liz that people like to hear from her as well!
The drive into London was not to bad - the motorways are very good, and signposting makes everything very obvious. We arrived at Heathrow terminal three, parked and headed off to the Arrivals area.
As we waited for the plane to land, we were both quite excited. Since Meaghan has left, it's good on our own, but always a little bit more fun with others around to talk to. Eventually, Margaret arrived!
The drive from the airport to Beckenham was one of the most challenging so far. The fog, heavy rain, and confusing motorways combined to keep me constantly on highest alert. Heavy traffic meant we made the last ten five in about an hour. Not good at all.
Arriving at the Goodwood B&B where we were last time, we were all very happy to get out of Percy, unpack our things and then head off to one of the pubs for dinner. The rain has been quite heavy all around the area, so the walk was brisk back to the B&B where Margaret is tacking the jet lag, Liz is watching TV and I'm typing away madly.
The batty old women who run this place are fun to be back with - their dogs can get more walks from us tomorrow, and in turn we listen to the same stories over and over again about the dogs' operations, and how they don't serve sausages any more since the mad cow crisis.
It is Guy Fawkes night here tonight, or just plain cracker night, so not sure how much sleep we will end up getting.
(permanent link to this story)
Towards London ( No photos )
We left Stow this morning in heavy fog, and attempted to go to the Motoring Museum in Burton-on-the-Water, another Cotswolds town. However, it was a total tourist town. We pulled into what we thought was the parking for the museum, only to be told that it was residents only. After a quick look up and down the street (no parking for miles), we decided to head towards Oxford and have a look around.
Once again, however, we were foiled by the weather. Traffic was also heavy, and we decided to have a quick run around the Ring Road (a fantastic British thing - a motorway all the way around the big cities, with exits a key points heading into town - highly recommended). Liz spotted in the road atlas that Legoland was not far away on the outskirts of London, on the way to the airport.
It was a reasonable drive into Legoland, however after a bit of reading we found that the entry price was about £18 ($55)!! Not quite worth it for an hour or two. Even the Lonely Planet guide took a dig at the prices.
So, we sat in the free parking (there was a Park-and-Ride - another great British thing where you park your car on the outskirts of a city and get a bus in) at Windsor reading our books from Hay-on-Wye until it was time to head into the airport in London.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 01 Nov 2002
Wildlife Park ( 30 photos )
This morning we rose to take in a few of the attractions, but the weather has limited us to only one - The Cotswold Wildlife Park. We spent the morning there looking a just the right sized collection of animals, before the rain forced us to return to the car. We still got a good look around, only missing a few enclosures.
We are going to stay here again tonight, as it is only a couple of hours drive (touch wood) to the airport to pick up Margaret tomorrow. The hostel itself is quite nice - we're sitting in the kitchen at the moment because the rest of it is locked up during the day, but we are glad just to be out of the rain.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 31 Oct 2002
The Cotswolds ( 9 photos )
(Continued from North Wales)
Back into England, the remainder of the day was spent driving towards Stow-on-the-Wold, where we are now. As usual, we were attracted by the presence of an open Youth Hostel, but soon found it is quite a nice little town in its own right. The drive took in The Golden Valley, which looked decidedly less golden since we last drove through it (very foggy now), Ross-on-Wye, and many other great little English towns.
We are now in the middle of The Cotswolds, a famous picturesque area we have looked around a little, but many things we wanted to do are now closed for the winter.
We had a good chat in the pub last night, before cooking a great pasta dish.
(permanent link to this story)
Books, books, books! ( 7 photos )
Awaking in our B&B, we wandered downstairs for a great breakfast where we could watch the ducks out the window. I was of course painted the bad guy by saying that no, we couldn't take a pair of ducks away with us, despite the lady being quite happy for that to happen, and Liz, of course, also being quite for the idea.
So we fed them for a little while, before being told that we could and should leave the car parked at the B&B and walk into town - Thursday is the day that the parking inspector is active, and market day as well. Love that local knowledge.
So we waddled into town, and spent a few hours wandering around the town that has more books in it than all the universities and libraries in Wales put together. We purchased a few good reading books (Liz is reading one to my right now), but I couldn't find a couple of specific ones I was after, even though I checked most of the fifty bookstores!
After having our fill, we left Wales behind for now and drove across the border towards the Cotswolds.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 30 Oct 2002
Empty, Foggy, Empty Wales ( 16 photos )
Wales, for the moment at least, is on hold. We're still in it, but only by a mile or so.
This morning we left the hostel after a great Continental breakfast - a very welcome change from the "full cooked" we get almost everywhere. Heading straight down the road to the slate mine nearby.
Due to recent storm activity, there's lots of debris on the road. Following behind a semi-trailer which had to swerve to avoid it, we came across a large branch blocking half the road. Our SES training came back as Liz pulled the car up, and I did my best to clear it out in the 60mph zone. Just as I was tidying it up, my horrible knee reminded me that it had been a long time since it last played up badly, and promptly collapsed. Agony ensued. Suffice to say, it's nice and swollen, and Liz has been driving all day (quite well, I might add!).
Arriving at the slate mine, we went on an underground train tour, where we were shown how the mining was done 150 years ago - truly horrible conditions. These days, it's all done from the top, much faster, and with a little more regard for the humans doing the work. Not a bad way to spend the morning.
Driving South, we headed past several touristy places, and then into the big town of Aberystwyth. A few spins around the block found us the "i", where we learnt that the only thing interesting in the area that we had wanted to do - a thirteen mile narrow-guage train ride through the mountains - stopped last week. If we were going to be around, would we be interested in a ride next Easter?
By this stage getting a little late, we turned our thoughts to accommodoation. Possibilities included hostels (almost all closed), expensive hotels, or of course B&Bs. The "i" had told us that central Wales is almost as interesting as Northen Wales (not very).
So we drove directly East, heading for England, land of the non-Welsh speaking, and interesting things to see and do.
We are now in the town of Hay-on-Wye, famous for its bookshops which we intend to spend the best part of tomorrow exploring. The B&B is expensive, but very new, clean, and welcome after a fairly stressful day. This involved hilly drives through one-track roads at night in fog! One of the trips was to a YHA hostel about twenty miles from nowhere, which ended up being closed!
We're hoping to find a hostel for a couple of nights tomorrow and then drive to the airport to pick Margaret up! Wow, that's gone fast...
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 29 Oct 2002
In and Around Snowdonia ( 26 photos )
New Photos Online!
Our muzak-free breakfast was better than we expected from a pub, and the landlord proved herself the friendly type, having friends in Marylands, Sydney.
Liz took Percy's reins, and we headed off towards the Isle of Anglesey - the bit of Wales at the North-West corner. Two bridges link it to the mainland, and we had to cross them before we found a town with a functional "i".
This ended up being the town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Those fifty-eight letters give it the longest place name in Britain, and that is the sole reason for its existance. Dreamt up purely to get the tourists in, it certainly managed to do so. We declined the offer to learn how to pronounce it.
Otherwise, only one place of interest was really found on the Isle - Beaumaris Castle. Built in 1295, the £3 we spent here was easily better than the cost for the castle the other day. It is mostly intact, and has a moat surrounding walls surrounding towers surrounding walls and towers. We took a walk around and through the walls, seeing all sorts of arrow slits and dark spaces. Well worthwhile.
After a nice lunch at a nearby tea room, we set off towards the Llyn Peninsula, just south of the Isle. Billed as the "most staunchly Welsh part of the country", we gathered that from just how little there was to do. In the vast quantity of literature we have accrued on Wales, nobody has anything interesting to say about the place.
We cut South missing most of the area, and headed inland North through Snowdonia National Park. Truly a beautiful area, the heavy fog combined with light rain is the most vivid image of Wales I have so far. A great deal of nice driving, and, perhaps next time, lots of nice walking.
There is a railway that goes up Snowdonia (highest mountain in England and Wales) to the summit, but the weather isn't making the £15 fare look worthwhile.
As it gets dark very early now (around 5pm), we are tending to look for accommodation earlier. Tonight we have ended up in the Capel Curig Youth Hostel, in our own room. Cooked a vegetable and rice dinner, and are now relaxing in the lounge, working out the plan for tomorrow.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 28 Oct 2002
Into Northern Wales ( 1 photo )
(Continued from Carlisle 2).
It does all get quite different fairly suddenly as you go over the border, in terms of signs being in Welsh and also more subtley in terms of the general "feel" of the place. Hard to describe.
We came into Wales along the North coast, with no particular target other than a Tourist Information place. Which was closed for the season. So, next thought was to get some accommodation. After driving around with no idea where we were (back roads are quite messy here), looking for a B&B or similar, we stumbled upon a large town.
Still not knowing what town it was, we found a pub with accommodation which looked reasonable, and went inside. Speaking to the owner, we organised a room, negotiated rates, and had a pint while we awaited our room to be cleaned.
We eventually found out what the town was called by reading the notices on the corkboard! We had dinner here, and promptly crashed into bed.
Nearly breakfast time, we're going down hoping that the horrible Elton John muzak which seemed to be on infinite loop yesterday is at least called off for breakfast.
First stop is an "i", to work out what exactly is worth seeing in Wales in general.
(permanent link to this story)
Who needs plans? ( 11 photos )
The morning was spent organising all of our things, vacuuming Percy and attempting to plan where we were going.
We have until Saturday to kill, and a convenient way to do that is to drive South through Wales. Which is where we ended up.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 27 Oct 2002
A long day's drive ( 11 photos )
Heading straight South today, it has to be said that we didn't see anything of major interest.
Of course, the scenery we drove through continued to be fantastic, especially around Loch Lomond.
We stopped for a lunch break at a motorway "services", where lunch cost £8 for two sandwiches, a donut and a piece of cake. Sure, that's expensive, but it's just silly when you hear that Liz bought a warm jacket similar to mine just outside the door for £10!
Shortly after that, we crossed back into England.
(permanent link to this story)
Back into England ( 7 photos )
(Continued from Isle of Skye)
Arriving back in England and then Carlisle, I have to admit that I've spent most of the afternoon playing with my new old toy - the camera. You're all bored of hearing about it by now, but suffice to say that it is great to have it back and the added features of this model are very nifty.
We will spend tomorrow cleaning Percy out, finalising(!) the insurance, and then starting our drive London-ward.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 26 Oct 2002
Around the Isle of Skye ( 7 photos )
Today we made ourselves breakfast at the hostel (where we slept soundly), and did some reading upon just what is worth looking at on the Isle. A book that Peter lent us recommended the drive across from Brogaig to Idrigill was worth it. Very true - the mountain pass looked fantastic in the clear sunny weather.
Next stop along the road was the Dunvegan castle, home of the MacLeod clan and its generations and generations of people called Norman. They used to be feuding with several other clans, and past leaders were plundering villains, even in the eyes of their own clan.
I believe the present leader is the biggest villain of them all however, charging £6 each for entry, and £3 for a guide book! The castle itself was interesting, but certainly they were quite full of themselves. Lots of long lost artifacts, clan pendants, historical swords, etc. The walk around its gardens was probably the highlight.
What was of interest was the dungeon. About ten metres from the main dining room, it is a hole in the ground ten feet deep, with no other way out. The only way in besides that hole was an arrowslit through which smells of the kitchen wafted to the prisoners slowly going mad and dying of hunger.
The cafe on the way out was (suprise, suprise) expensive, and the second gift shop selling clan gadgets was wearing thin. Still, worth a look, if only the price was more reasonable.
Further down that road, we went to an iron-age house called a broch. It used to be a fort, and was most interesting because there was no admission charge! The story about the Scotts being tight on the dollars certainly rears its head everywhere.
We paid our dues once again to get off the island (!), before driving South along roads we've covered two or three times before. Eventual place of rest for the night is a little town called Onich, right on Loch Linnhe, a little way South of Fort William. We're in a very homely B&B looking straight out our window at the snow-capped peaks across the Loch. Wonderful vista indeed.
Dinner was in nearby "big" town Ballachulish, at a pub recommended by the proprietor. And what a recommendation - one of the best meals we've had so far this trip, and of course a dessert had to follow.
Daylight saving finishes here tonight. I believe it starts in Oz tonight - anyone care to confirm for us? By my rough calculations, that makes the difference eleven hours now.
We're aiming to stay at Peter's back in Carlisle tomorrow night.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 25 Oct 2002
Yet Another Isle ( 7 photos )
(Continued from Scotland 3)
This isle isn't so bad however - we can drive back to the mainland whenever we want, as long as we can locate the £4.70 toll!
The Isle of Skye hangs off the Western side of the mainland of Scotland, and in the last few years, much to the disquiet of the locals, a bridge has been built joining it to the mainland.
We called in for a bit of a brochure collection run, to find out just what there is to do here. All this preparation was wasted when we decided to "just drive to the end of the thing". Travelling through towns such as Uig, Flodigarry and Broadford, the road signs in both Gaelic and English reminded us that this at least used to be quite a far away place. The ever-present thousand B&Bs told us that the locals being worried about loosing their independence was perhaps not groundless after all.
For such a small Isle, it has a huge number of very high peaks. In the hostel here, there's lots of walkers staying. Speaking of which, we're staying in the "Portree Independent Hostel", in Portree, which serves as the largest town on the isle. An old post office, it is very warm and friendly, and we have a room which would sleep four in bunks, however we are the only two in it.
We cooked dinner in, had a good chat before retiring to our respective reading materials. Tomorrow we are aiming to take in all the Isle has to offer, before heading back across to the mainland and South a bit further.
Oh, and Peter has actually received my replacement camera!
(permanent link to this story)
Yet Another Isle ( 7 photos )
This isle isn't so bad however - we can drive back to the mainland whenever we want, as long as we can locate the £4.70 toll!
The Isle of Skye hangs off the Western side of the mainland of Scotland, and in the last few years, much to the disquiet of the locals, a bridge has been built joining it to the mainland.
After leaving our B&B this morning (fantastic breakfast, didn't need to eat anything else until 3pm), we headed further South along the East coast, in search of affordable fuel. Eventually topping up at a Q8 (that's just like a BP or Shell - not sure if the reference to Kuwait is intentional), we then headed across one of the few mountain roads through to the West coast.
Plenty of snow was to be found, though it only reached the road at one point. So we just had to stop and have a snowfight! Liz will tell you that she won when I stepped into a hidden puddle, six inches deep with both feet, however I think I covered her with more snow. And that's what snowfights are really about!
The highlands through here were beautiful the first time we came through, but seeing the snow on the peaks, then all around us really makes them special.
Eventually arriving on Skye, we called in for a bit of a brochure collection run, to find out just what there is to do here. All this preparation was wasted when we decided to "just drive to the end of the thing". Travelling through towns such as Uig, Flodigarry and Broadford, the road signs in both Gaelic and English reminded us that this at least used to be quite a far away place. The ever-present thousand B&Bs told us that the locals being worried about loosing their independence was perhaps not groundless after all.
For such a small Isle, it has a huge number of very high peaks. In the hostel here, there's lots of walkers staying. Speaking of which, we're staying in the "Portree Independent Hostel", in Portree, which serves as the largest town on the isle. An old post office, it is very warm and friendly, and we have a room which would sleep four in bunks, however we are the only two in it.
We cooked dinner in, had a good chat before retiring to our respective reading materials. Tomorrow we are aiming to take in all the Isle has to offer, before heading back across to the mainland and South a bit further.
Oh, and Peter has actually received my replacement camera!
(permanent link to this story)
Towards Skye ( 7 photos )
After leaving our B&B this morning (fantastic breakfast, didn't need to eat anything else until 3pm), we headed further South along the East coast, in search of affordable fuel. Eventually topping up at a Q8 (that's just like a BP or Shell - not sure if the reference to Kuwait is intentional), we then headed across one of the few mountain roads through to the West coast.
Plenty of snow was to be found, though it only reached the road at one point. So we just had to stop and have a snowfight! Liz will tell you that she won when I stepped into a hidden puddle, six inches deep with both feet, however I think I covered her with more snow. And that's what snowfights are really about!
The highlands through here were beautiful the first time we came through, but seeing the snow on the peaks, then all around us really makes them special.
Eventually we arrived on Skye.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 24 Oct 2002
We made it! ( 7 photos )
(Continued from the Ornkey Islands)
Back on the "real" part of Scotland. The ferry wasn't too bad once it got going, although it was pretty rough out on the open sea.
We made a quick stop in John o' Groats before heading South down the East coast - a way we haven't been before. Travelling up and down the mountains, we caught our first glimpse of snow on the far peaks! Imagine our suprise when we eventually drove past some on the side of the road! We didn't get a chance to stop there anywhere, but it was quite exciting all the same.
We are staying at a B&B in Navidale, run (as most are) by a charming old woman who just can't help enough. The water is brown from all the rain (but safe, we're told), and more snow is due overnight.
We wandered down to the town of Helmsdale for dinner, eating at a completely strange restauruant thingo. The menu had about a hundered different items, ranging from seafood (although none was available due to the weather stopping the boats from sailing), lots of fish, etc., all the way through to crocodile, emu, and kangaroo. Not what we expected to find here at all. It also had no space on the walls, what with the movie limited edition paraphenalia (original negatives, signed posters, etc.) and printouts of emails from paranormal mailing lists. A very strange place indeed.
Best news of the day, however, is that Olympus have actually boxed up and sent me a brand new camera, the model ahead of what I originally had, and it is arriving at Peter's place tomorrow. Definately a case of "I'll believe it when I see it."
(permanent link to this story)
Ferry Delayed ( 7 photos )
We're sitting here in a pub, awaiting our ferry to Scotland which has been delayed. The weather was horrible this morning - very low visibility, with lots of hail covering everything, including Percy.
However, it's much better now and the ferry should sail around 2pm, two hours late.
A quick "have a good trip" to Meaghan, who is on her way back to Oz tonight. Give her a call in the next few days to see how she's doing - she wasn't feeling well here, and will enjoy having someone to talk to back "home", I'm sure!
We did some washing in the main street this morning, as well as grabbing a few bargain CDs from the back of the jazz section (itself at the back of the store). Amazing what you can find. We also bought American Pie cheap on DVD the other day, and got a few laughs last night watching it.
Rough plan for the next few days is to drive this afternoon until we find some where to stay, then drive to the Isle of Skye for a look around. Head back to Peter's, hopefully collecting a camera and finalising insurance problems.
Yeah right! It's never that easy...
[The ferry eventually took us back to mainland Scotland.]
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 23 Oct 2002
Still Alive... ( 7 photos )
We're back in Kirkwall, on the Orkney mainland. No major problems on the ferry back here - a little rough but no real complaints.
We're staying in the same hostel we had before, albeit in a different room this time. We went straight for a supplier of decent lunch when we arrived, ending up in a pub where Liz had the first steak since we left Oz - meat is so expensive over here!
This afternoon's ferry to the mainland was cancelled, so there was not much chance of us getting back down there. Instead we are booked on the midday ferry tomorrow, but the weather outlook isn't looking much better. Should be calm after that, at least.
Even when we do get back down, the roads South from the top of the mainland are very flooded, so we will have to plan our route carefully. Glad we have left lots of time to do it in.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 22 Oct 2002
Flooding ( 7 photos )
Well, we knew we were having lots of rain around the place, but have just heard that there has been huge flooding across Southern Scotland, and we're in for severe gale force winds up here tomorrow.
There's no ATM on this island, and we only have enough cash for tonight's accommodation, so here's hoping that we can get across!
Once we get back to the Orkney mainland, next task will be to get to Scotland proper - we heard that the ferry that does that had to be dirverted for the first time ever! What fun this journey could be!
Today we took in everything that Hoy could offer us, in the horrible weather it insisted on showing us. This included several memorials, a war museum, some defence towers and the town Rackwick. This is the start of the walk to the Old Man of Hoy. However, between the extreme winds, us not knowing where we were going, and the sign "There is no mountain rescue available here", we thought better of it.
We did wander in to The Dwarfie Stone, a 5000 year old tomb carved into a piece of solid rock. We climbed inside it, took some photos, and dribbled back into the car.
Just for the record, we are wearing on average a shirt, then windstopper vest, then a fleece (or two jumpers in Liz's case), followed by a huge waterproof warm coat (me) or a rain jacket (Liz). It is not warm, calm or dry here.
An interesting little island, this Hoy. Everything seems like decay has set in - lots of people have gone away for indeterminate periods of time, plenty of ruins all over the place, and there's almost nobody visible anywhere. It's certainly very different than what either of us thought it would be. It's supposed to be seal season, but even they seem to have deserted the place - we haven't seen any.
So we're aiming to get the ferry to the mainland proper tomorrow, weather permitting. As nice as this B&B is, spending half the day here has been long enough!
(permanent link to this story)
Hoy Ahoy! ( 7 photos )
Well, that's a pretty sad joke, but we're now on the island of Hoy. This is the second largest in Orkney, and lies to the south of the Orkney mainland.
We had our first taste of island life last night, when looking for dinner at 6pm, we drove all the way to the other end of the island, only to find that pub was "closed until further notice". Heading back towards the shop we had seen earlier, we found another Inn. No food there. Then to the shop across the road (the only one on the island). It was closed!
So dinner last night was improvised from rice crackers, cheese and chips (which are called crisps here). At least we had enough to improvise with. Lesson two - find food early.
Lesson one was find accommodation early. Out of the first four places we tried, two no longer offered accommodation, and two could not be found. We ended up at the St. John's Manse B&B, where the owner was shocked that we'd come to an island with no accommodation organised! That's how we've done our whole trip so far!!
On our way back from a failed attempt at one of the places, a lighthouse, we ran into some traffic on the road in the form of two cows. They had wandered out of their gate and up the road. Obviously, traffic here is very light. We managed to herd one of them into the gate, after they had waddled up the road as fast as they could away from Percy. The second missed its exit, and we had to drive along behind it until we got to a passing place, where the turbo pulled us past the poor thing as fast as it could!
Working further backwards in time, we got the ferry down here from Houton to Lyness, Hoy yesterday afternoon after being queue-jumped for the lunchtime ferry. A reasonably smooth ride, everyone stayed in the cars, which was a new experience. We were going to have a round-trip via the tiny island of Flotta, but the ferry terminal guy told us not to bother - it's just an oil refinery. Even the much bigger Hoy only has one road on it.
Before the ferry trip, we followed the advice of the Lonely Planet and went into a garage supposedly selling some funky hats, but it seemed that information was out of date :( We grabbed some non-perishable food supplies instead.
First off on Monday, we visited the Highland Park distillery, where the tour was the best so-far. The trip around the malting floor was great fun, we saw the barley actually sprouting. Our guide was great, and like so many people up here, really seemed to enjoy life.
Sunday we went around trying to find a few more places of interest - first stop was Mine Howe. This strange discovery is twenty-nine steps descending into the ground, with a few chambers scattered around for good measure. Theories on what it was range from a drowning place to a ceremonial ground-god contact point and lots of ideas in between. Unfortunately closed for the winter, we looked around the grounds instead, where various excavations had taken place.
We then stopped at Dingieshowe, a sandy isthmus built to join the mainland to Deerness. It has a great beach on one side, where we skimmed some rocks (Liz is getting better!) and walked amongst the weed.
Next we drove around the North-East part of the mainland. This area is all single-track road, and has a few interesting war memorials, burial sites, sheep and cows scattered around. We took a walk down to "The Gloup" - a blow-hole style thing created by the ocean eroding away a cave under the land, and some of the land eventually collapsing. We were quite high up as we walked around it, the constant wind reminding us to stay alert and away from the edge.
A drive around the point of Tankerness failed to find anything particularly interesting, so we headed back to Kirkwall. The relaxing afternoon was spent watching our black-and-white TV with dial-tuning (very retro), and making the decision that we aren't going to Shetland after all. Deciding factors included:
- Quite high cost of the ferry, which is an eight hour overnight ride
- We can get there from Norway enroute to Iceland, so we could conceivably get there next year
- It would be a rush to get down to London in time to meet Margaret
- Lots of people said that there wasn't a lot to do there. Then again, the Orcadians would say that...
Today, we'd like to take a hike over to The Old Man of Hoy. It's a famous rock formation on a beach, around three hours round-trip from the nearest car park. However, the weather is pretty horrible, top of six degrees, windy and rainy, so we'll just see how it is around lunch time. There's quite a few other interesting things on Hoy, so we'll also take those in before our return ferry trip tomorrow lunch-time.
We're not decided whether we are going to take in another island, but at this stage we will probably head back to the real mainland (ie. the bit with London on it) and start making our way south, via the Isle of Skye.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 20 Oct 2002
Around the Tourist Trail ( 7 photos )
Setting out yesterday morning, we had the intention of taking in as many of the famous Orcadian tourist sites as we could stand.
First stop was the amazing Skara Brae, a 5000 year old well-preserved village, complete with dressers, boxes and beds. It is quite mind-numbing trying to take in the age of it, especially with the freezing wind, rain and hail assaulting us - it's right on the western coast. We actually thought the visitor centre there was almost as good as the real thing - some great interactive displays, and a re-construction of one of the houses.
Next we stumbled across was the Ring of Brogar - thirty-six of the original sixty stones from a huge stone circle. Fairly close to Skara Brae, it is quite possible that these things were all used by the same people.
Aiming for Maes Howe, we actually first found the Standing Stones of Stenness - sheep standing around four of the original twelve 4500 year-old standing stones was quite an interesting sight!
Eventually making it to Maes Howe, which is "the finest chambered tomb in Western Europe". Think of a small chamber with storage areas on three sides, and a ten metre long, one metre high access path on the other, and you'd be pretty close. Also about 5000 years old, this one was plundered in 1200 A.D by the Vikings, who left some very interesting runic graffiti.
Heading up to the North coast, we came to Birsay which has the ruins of a 16th century palace, just there in the middle of the town. A bit further along the road is the Brough of Gurness, a Iron-Age (100 A.D.) settlement. We had a quick look at this before deciding not to pay and enter - so much history in so little space.
Returing to the town (Kirkwall), we went for a walk, grabbing some dinner supplies and a few odds and ends around the town. This included brochures on the ferries both around Orkney and Shetland.
Next on our agenda is to decide what we are going to do for the next few days. Being a Sunday today, nothing much happens, as most here respect the Sabbath quite seriously. So we'll stay here another night, but tomorrow we will probably get a ferry down to Hoy, the second-biggest Orkney island, and it's smaller sister Flotta. We're still not sure whether the expensive overnight ferry up to the Shetland Islands is the way to go. They are also accessable from Norway, then on to Iceland, so that is another option we could take up next year some time.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 18 Oct 2002
Planning to go across the High Seas... ( 7 photos )
A strange feeling this morning as we were the first to be awake and down to breakfast. Typically, we have scraped in by about ten minutes before they stop serving! Driving straight to the ferry, Liz didn't want to get out and see the ferry dock, to give you an indication of the wind strength.
Was quite a bit of fun driving the car onto a ship, and the journey itself was rough at times, but generally bearable. Memories of my trip on the Fairstar ten years or so ago came flooding back, while the Maxalon kept breakfast from doing the same.
This ferry powered us towards the Orkney Islands.
(permanent link to this story)
Across the High Seas... ( 7 photos )
(Continued from Scotland 2)
Driving Percy off the ferry at St. Margaret's Hope, on the southern-most island of Orkney, South Ronaldsay, we headed around a little to get our bearings. The first thing that struck me was that it is all quite a lot bigger than the maps would have you think.
Consulting the stack of tourist paraphenalia, we noticed that on this island there is also the Tomb of the Eagles. Discovered in 1958 when a farmer ploughing his field struck something not meant to be there, it actually consists of two sites. The main one is the Tomb itself, which is a hut around 10 metres square, stoneage (3000 B.C. or so), which you have to get on a skateboard-type-thing and slide into. Inside there were initially lots of skulls, bones, etc. Quite interesting, and a little scary.
The other is the Bronze-age (500 B.C.) hut. This could be a sauna, cooking-house or basic dwelling, depending on who you ask. It boasts a fire, cooking area, and enclosures for bedding or seating, along with a nearby used-stone disposal area. This was great to look at!
By this time very hungry, we gravitated north to the capital (of sorts) Kirkwall, on the main island. This saw us crossing over three other islands to get there, between which they have built roads, the main purpose of which were to keep the German U-boats from sinking their fleet anchored nearby.
Here we eventually found somewhere to eat (a cafe not all that good), somewhere better to eat (a bakery serving yummy things), and the i. We call it the i, because that's what their sign says. Same as anywhere else, it is the source of all knowledge, the Tourist Information Centre. We added to our brochure collection, and gained directions to the independent Peedie Hostel in Ayre Road, where we are now staying. Quite small and quaint, it is still a nice little place, with a great view across the bay to the Northern Orkney Islands.
We took a walk around the lakes across the road (big circular thing on a Kirkwall map) down to Safeway to grab some dinner ingredients. Cooking in the tiny kitchen, we made a nice meal of chicken fajitias.
No firm plans for tomorrow, but we intend to explore "The Mainland" (here, that doesn't mean the bit of Scotland with Loch Ness, etc., it means the main island of Orkney) for a few days before considering our options for ferries north to other Orkney islands, or the eight (!) hour journey up to Shetland.
(permanent link to this story)
Across the High Seas... ( 7 photos )
A strange feeling this morning as we were the first to be awake and down to breakfast. Typically, we have scraped in by about ten minutes before they stop serving! Driving straight to the ferry, Liz didn't want to get out and see the ferry dock, to give you an indication of the wind strength.
Was quite a bit of fun driving the car onto a ship, and the journey itself was rough at times, but generally bearable. Memories of my trip on the Fairstar ten years or so ago came flooding back, while the Maxalon kept breakfast from doing the same.
This ferry actually saw us arrive at St. Margaret's Hope, on the southern-most island of Orkney, South Ronaldsay. Driving Percy off, we headed around a little to get our bearings. The first thing that struck me was that it is all quite a lot bigger than the maps would have you think.
Consulting the stack of tourist paraphenalia, we noticed that on this island there is also the Tomb of the Eagles. Discovered in 1958 when a farmer ploughing his field struck something not meant to be there, it actually consists of two sites. The main one is the Tomb itself, which is a hut around 10 metres square, stoneage (3000 B.C. or so), which you have to get on a skateboard-type-thing and slide into. Inside there were initially lots of skulls, bones, etc. Quite interesting, and a little scary.
The other is the Bronze-age (500 B.C.) hut. This could be a sauna, cooking-house or basic dwelling, depending on who you ask. It boasts a fire, cooking area, and enclosures for bedding or seating, along with a nearby used-stone disposal area. This was great to look at!
By this time very hungry, we gravitated north to the capital (of sorts) Kirkwall, on the main island. This saw us crossing over three other islands to get there, between which they have built roads, the main purpose of which were to keep the German U-boats from sinking their fleet anchored nearby.
Here we eventually found somewhere to eat (a cafe not all that good), somewhere better to eat (a bakery serving yummy things), and the i. We call it the i, because that's what their sign says. Same as anywhere else, it is the source of all knowledge, the Tourist Information Centre. We added to our brochure collection, and gained directions to the independent Peedie Hostel in Ayre Road, where we are now staying. Quite small and quaint, it is still a nice little place, with a great view across the bay to the Northern Orkney Islands.
We took a walk around the lakes across the road (big circular thing on a Kirkwall map) down to Safeway to grab some dinner ingredients. Cooking in the tiny kitchen, we made a nice meal of chicken fajitias.
No firm plans for tomorrow, but we intend to explore "The Mainland" (here, that doesn't mean the bit of Scotland with Loch Ness, etc., it means the main island of Orkney) for a few days before considering our options for ferries north to other Orkney islands, or the eight (!) hour journey up to Shetland.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 17 Oct 2002
Top o' the Mainland 2 ( 7 photos )
Right, now we're up to today.
Before setting out from Durness, we had a bit of a look around the town itself. A "Wax and Wine" museum failed to be all that interesting, which was certainly not the case for our walk on the beach. You see, up here, it is extremely windy. The rain comes along when it feels like it. Both were present as we walked around this sandy beach with great rock formations, enclosed in as many layers of clothing and waterproofing as we could locate.
After leaving there, we noted the people we had seen set up camp beside the sea were still walking around. Not sure how they felt after a night of hard rain and strong winds, but they seemed ok.
Next stop was "Smoo Cave". Initially we had decided to go there just because of its exceedingly strange name, but we were soon very glad that we had. Used years ago for smugglers and the like to hide out in, it is the result of a river running to the sea eventually breaking through into a cave underneath it, creating a sink-hole with a huge waterfall. The walk down to it and then standing about 10m away was very scary - the forces of nature are not to be tampered with. The power of this waterfall was amazing, and in the small little cave even more so.
The drive from there across the top of Scotland was one of the most memorable we have ever done. The landscape is almost all rock, wind-swept reeds and grasses, sheep and the windy, hilly single-track road which we clung to in the wind. Running out of supurlatives here. It was great.
A windy pit stop was at the end of the road in Bettyhill - very quick as we decided that Percy was a great place to be after all. Heater on quick smart.
The rest of the day was driving around looking at B&Bs, and walking in the wind (bent into it trying to walk) in the areas between Thurso and John O'Groats. This took in John O'Groats itself (for some reason thought of as the most North-Westerly town on the mainland. It's not - instead just find touristy shops and our first pay-to-pee toilet for a while here), Duncansby Head (actually the most North-Westerly town on the mainland, where it was so windy that plastic bins in the car park similar to what you put out your garbage out in each week had the lid constantly being blown open, and that was the sheltered area), and Dunnet Head (the Northern-most point of mainland Britain). Whew!
A little apprehensive after reading Lonely Planet describe the ferry to Orkney as "two of the most stomach-churning hours spent", we were quite happy to discover another ferry operator working a different route that takes only one hour! We are booked on the 9:45 ferry tomorrow morning from Dunnet Bay. That's about fifteen minutes drive from where we are staying, the Seaview Hotel in John O' Groats.
Here, we got what we paid for (not much), with moldy ceilings, broken TV, and noisy pipes. Admittedly it has character, but I hope the food is good...
(permanent link to this story)
Top o' the Mainland 2 ( 7 photos )
Right, now we're up to today.
Before setting out from Durness, we had a bit of a look around the town itself. A "Wax and Wine" museum failed to be all that interesting, which was certainly not the case for our walk on the beach. You see, up here, it is extremely windy. The rain comes along when it feels like it. Both were present as we walked around this sandy beach with great rock formations, enclosed in as many layers of clothing and waterproofing as we could locate.
After leaving there, we noted the people we had seen set up camp beside the sea were still walking around. Not sure how they felt after a night of hard rain and strong winds, but they seemed ok.
Next stop was "Smoo Cave". Initially we had decided to go there just because of its exceedingly strange name, but we were soon very glad that we had. Used years ago for smugglers and the like to hide out in, it is the result of a river running to the sea eventually breaking through into a cave underneath it, creating a sink-hole with a huge waterfall. The walk down to it and then standing about 10m away was very scary - the forces of nature are not to be tampered with. The power of this waterfall was amazing, and in the small little cave even more so.
The drive from there across the top of Scotland was one of the most memorable we have ever done. The landscape is almost all rock, wind-swept reeds and grasses, sheep and the windy, hilly single-track road which we clung to in the wind. Running out of supurlatives here. It was great.
A windy pit stop was at the end of the road in Bettyhill - very quick as we decided that Percy was a great place to be after all. Heater on quick smart.
The rest of the day was driving around looking at B&Bs, and walking in the wind (bent into it trying to walk) in the areas between Thurso and John O'Groats. This took in John O'Groats itself (for some reason thought of as the most North-Westerly town on the mainland. It's not - instead just find touristy shops and our first pay-to-pee toilet for a while here), Duncansby Head (actually the most North-Westerly town on the mainland, where it was so windy that plastic bins in the car park similar to what you put out your garbage out in each week had the lid constantly being blown open, and that was the sheltered area), and Dunnet Head (the Northern-most point of mainland Britain). Whew!
A little apprehensive after reading Lonely Planet describe the ferry to Orkney as "two of the most stomach-churning hours spent", we were quite happy to discover another ferry operator working a different route that takes only one hour! We are booked on the 9:45 ferry tomorrow morning from Dunnet Bay. That's about fifteen minutes drive from where we are staying, the Seaview Hotel in John O' Groats.
Here, we got what we paid for (not much), with moldy ceilings, broken TV, and noisy pipes. Admittedly it has character, but I hope the food is good...
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 16 Oct 2002
Top o' the Mainland ( 7 photos )
Time to update the journal again - skipping days is generally bad news. First yesterday, then a separate entry for today.
Driving north from Braemar yesterday, we went through some amazingly foggy ski areas, including Lecht. They're not in use yet (still no snow sighted), but it's clear from how many there are that they do get used a lot fairly shortly.
Stopping and grabbing a pizza at a newly-opened Safeway for lunch in Inverness, we had a bit of a look around the town that gave its name to the street where we used to live. A fairly un-notable place, it sits beautifully on some great pieces of water - obviously Loch Ness on one side and Moray Firth on the other. Very scenic when the weather is willing, as it was. Then it wasn't. Then it was. etc.
We followed a similar route north that we did last time we came through here, but this time heading towards the North-West corner of the Scottish mainland.
A drive out on a tiny little road to the coastal town of Sheigra on the Eastern coast was supposed to locate us a place to stay for the night. Great scenery all around the Lochs, but nothing besides a B&B closed for the night and a hotel wanting to charge us £45 per person, or roughly $270 for the night. Back in the car quick smart.
The next possibility was Durness, up on the North coast. Despite only discovering half the town (very hilly here making it quite confusing), we still were quite happy with our accommodation and meal. The meal was at the local "Lounge Bar" - a dimly-lit table overlooking the sea. Lovely. Accommodation was provided at the Parkhill Hotel, recently renovated.
We made a mad dash back to watch The Bill (it's become compulsory viewing over here) at our hotel, where the friendly girl running the place told us that they were prediciting possible snow over-night. That's the first thing that Liz looked for in the morning, but none was sighted. Won't be long...
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 15 Oct 2002
Back into the Highlands ( 7 photos )
(Continued from Carlisle 1)
Setting out around eleven this morning, we headed straight up the motorways in a rather un-eventful way. Several times this trip Liz has commented that she'd like to take Percy back to Oz with us. The costs wouldn't out too well, though I'm forced to admit I would love to as well.
Not too far north of Glasgow, I took over the driving and managed to "accidentally" find another distillery - The Famous Grouse, near Creiff in Perthshire. This time, we both had a great time - Liz bought a couple of posters of their amusing advertising, and posed next to "The Big Grouse".
As a side note, the whole "Big-Thing" concept (eg. Big Banana, Big Marino, etc.) is quite rare here. This was the first we'd spotted, and quite a good replica of the ones which still decide it's a great idea to chase Percy doing 60mph when we drive by. Overtly inquisitive animals. Or just really stupid.
Lunch was generic food at a generic "Services" - all the motorways here have them about twenty miles apart. Fuel, food, toilets, etc. Weather not boring at all, changing from sunny blue skies to torrential rain in a matter of minutes. Most of the time it's somewhere in between.
Liz is filling the role of the "Transitions" glasses for me - constantly swapping between my normal and sun glasses, as the day goes on. Much easier if it just stayed drizzly and grey like it's supposed to!
We're back in Braemar now, the two of us alone in a room normally for six. CDs were retreived intact (stupid me left them here last visit), and we cooked a great pasta before retiring to reading about the Orkeneys. We're excited!
(permanent link to this story)
On the road, finally?? ( 7 photos )
We hit the road again this morning, with a few things still not quite how we'd like them.
I'm getting sick of writing about them, but basically we still have no camera, and the insurance is sorted but not finalised, at a higher figure than earlier projected. The joys of life.
We've of course heard quite a bit about the Bali crisis over here. Yesterday there was even a talkback radio linkup between one of the radio stations here and a Perth station. Very strange to hear Aussie accents again! Wonder how they'll sound when we get back home...
The little things on Percy are attended to - good to have a car 100% (except for pretty dirty) before we head out on the road, or run out of warranty.
Was up very early this morning online, searching for ferry information to Orkney (in short: prices reasonable, should be ok), and fired up ICQ. Who should be there but lots of work people from the RTA! Had a great chat with them, glad to hear Craig is taking over where I left off by randomly un-plugging servers then enquiring which servers they are.
Read an entire novel yesterday - The Bourne Identity. Quite good, but not as good as the feat may suggest. I just wanted to do it. Also we have been brushing up on our German. Silly to waste all those years of education.
[Later that day we headed off north into Scotland again.]
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 13 Oct 2002
Photos up! ( 7 photos )
Find them on the Photos page - there's new ones in both Scotland and North/Central England sections.
Looking forward to getting my digital camera back...
(permanent link to this story)
Sunday Lunch ( 7 photos )
A lot more reading has been undertaken, as well as organising all of our things. We have clothes everywhere, and need to get them organised this afternoon before we get back on the road.
Today we went in to Carlisle to pick up the photos from development - the best of which are now online!
After that we went to Thursby to grab a bite to eat at the Ship Inn, where we have had a drink before. Being a Sunday, sunday lunch was the order of the day - a great meal including Yorkshire Pudding, which we still can't quite used to.
Forgot to mention a couple of things - when we were in Lanark the other day we went for a walk up to the Falls of Clyde where I had been before - still nice and scenic, of course. Also, when in Scotland, do as the Romans do - I tried haggis, which was interesting but not quite to my tastes. My stomach also had a bit to say on the matter, but all settled down now!
Percy needs a wash and a vacuum - we'll get around to it at some stage.
While in the pub today we discussed the plans for the coming weeks. The general idea is to travel first to Braemar (to pick up what I left there last time), then around the north coast for a day or two. Jumping then on a ferry across to Orkney Islands, stay a few days then up to the Shetlands. Once complete, we basically make our longest run yet back down the country, possibly detouring into Wales, before eventually intending to pick up Margaret in London on the 2/11, where we stay for a week in the Goodwood B&B as before.
The Itinerary page has been updated to show this as best as possible.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 12 Oct 2002
Relaxation ( 7 photos )
Enjoying doing not much. Today was spent in pajamas until about 3pm, reading various books.
The concert last night at the Tythe Barn was great! Peter sings in several choirs, and this one, The Abbey Singers, is celebrating its 40th anniversary year - playing a selection of the choir's favourite songs, which actually managed to fit quite nicely with the crowd's favourites (Liz and I included). We've been humming and singing the tunes all day since. Thanks to Peter for the invite.
Peter was out for most of the day, so Liz and I decided to organise some dinner. However, at 5:30pm on a Saturday, the only place selling meat would have been the supermarket. Which was unfortunately "under new management" and not able to sell us meat. Sure, we could have had vegetarian, but we're a little worn-out from that from travelling around with Meaghan for a few weeks!
Dis-heartened, we grabbed some essentials instead, and returned home to discuss the possibilities with Peter. Since he had been singing all day, he wasn't in a mood to cook either, so we decided to grab some Chinese take-away.
We're now dividing our time between watching England's first European Cup football (you know, soccer) qualifier and the snooker.
We are intending to stay here tomorrow night, get the car fixed up on monday morning (only niggly things - a door handle stuck, a fog-light out, and a wiper sprayer that doesn't spray), then head back up into Scotland.
More details as we completely change our minds!
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 10 Oct 2002
The good and the bad ( 7 photos )
(Continued from Scotland 1)
The bad:
- We of course had to say goodbye to Meaghan today. It's been really great to travel around with her, and was both good and bad to wave her off. Good because she's going home, which is what she wants, but bad because we're going to miss her.
- Nothing else bad really. Can't complain too much.
The good:
- Percy is insured! The story is that we tried un-successfully with the AA (ie. NRMA) to get our current insurance sorted out, but they just didn't want to be helpful in any way. I then jumped online and eventually found a place specialising in insurance for young drivers, got a quote and decided to finalise it tomorrow. However, a guy from the company actually rang me!!! I couldn't believe it either. His quote actually bettered any others we had found, and we are now insured for two hundered pounds less than we were paying before!
- Peter has generously "lost" two tickets in our direction to a concert of his tomorrow night, so Liz and I will stay here for a little longer yet.
- I rang Olympus about the complete lack of reply on the camera. The guy disappeared for five minutes, came back and said "It's been too long - that's not acceptable." "Couldn't agree more", I replied. "I'll get you a new one by the middle of next week", came yet another totally un-expected development for the day.
- We have a place to relax for a day or a few. Makes a nice change.
Will take Percy in to get a few niggly things sorted out while we're sitting around here tomorrow, but nothing major.
Liz and I are both quite releived by the goings on, but a day or two's rest will see us right. Especially if we can get the camera back to travel the Scottish Isles!
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 09 Oct 2002
Glasgow ( No photos )
We're back at New Lanark youth hostel tonight - we knew it was good, and it was quite close to where we spent the day today - Glasgow.
A strange city, we wandered around a little and saw the Cathederal (dated 1277 or so), town square and some other interesting places. Not quite as interesting as Edinburgh, we easily decided to leave once we had seen most of the major tourist places.
Having lunch was one of the enlightening things - the waitress was very rude - a typical Glaswegian? Most of the rest of them were reasonable however.
The breakfast at the B&B was great this morning - a very nice lady running it all. We then drove to a retail complex on the shores of Loch Lomond. Not quite what we expected to find, the scenery was of course fantastic as we had a nice walk along the shores, skimmed some rocks, and did the general touristy thing.
It was only a small drive from there to Glasgow. A supermarket run produced lots of vegetables for a curry tonight, along with some ice cream which we had to then find a place to store. The friendly girl running the hostel (which Liz and Meaghan are convinced has the hots for me) happily found a place for in her private freezer. Not comment from me.
Being Meaghan's last night with us, we had a great excuse to consume cider, beer and lots of wine while trying to make ourselves feel better. We'll miss her of course, but are happy that she is returning home.
Liz and I will be driving back to Carlisle after dropping Meaghan at the station tomorrow morning (with the obligatory teary goodbye, of course) to stay the night with Peter and attempt to sort this insurance garbage out.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 08 Oct 2002
Back on the road ( No photos )
We took off this morning after spending two nights in Oban. It's quite a nice place there, and we may end up there again due to it being a fairly major ferry port for the Hebrides, Mull and Skye, etc.
We headed down the Cowan Penninsula in search of a place to stay for the night. This nice trip through the great mountaenous regions took in Inveraray (a wonderful pub lunch stop in a place staffed by Aussies), Strachur, and then the loch-side town of Tighrabruaich. A few little B&Bs around the place were either unstaffed or full, so we decided to head back to the Youth Hostel at Loch Lomond.
This meant driving basically back where we'd come from, then along to the town of Luss. However, contrary to what we have found so far, the guy running the hostel was quite rude, and there was no way to get a room with the three of us together. This is due, and I quote, to "putting boys and girls together is just asking for trouble". That's quite strange, considering that the place offers family rooms, according to the youth hostel book. Oh well.
Not much further down the road, we came upon the Polnaberoch B&B. This nice little house has four dogs and a proprietor who seems to live only to garden. It's quite spectacular actually. Since we got here we have just had some tea before relaxing for the afternoon. Dinner is coming soon.
The not-so-good news today has come from two fronts:
- The AA are not accepting our insurance no-claim-bonus, which means a huge increase in the premiums. We're going to have to head back to Carlisle on Thursday to make some phone calls and get it sorted. Again. We're currently insured until Friday.
- Apparently there are bad fires all around Sydney again. Best of luck to the SES and other personnel involved - we're thinking of you all. Meaghan is eager to get back and re-join the Rural Fire Service. She was hoping for a gentle ease back into it but that may not happen. If you have any news on this let us know via email - Aussie news is hard to come by over here.
We're in Glasgow tomorrow and then the next morning to wave Meaghan goodbye. Contact Us - we'd love to hear what is going on over there!
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 07 Oct 2002
A Blinding Flash of Inspiration... ( No photos )
... has seen me realise that I have been carrying around enough tech-gear to get online anywhere with our mobile phone and a bit of initiative. The cost is high, but if we keep it quick...
Just some light wandering around the town today, which is good, since Meaghan decided that we needed to hit the town last night. We're staying here again - it's very nice, and after all our wandering it's good to not have to pack everything up. We can actually relax.
We're toying with the idea of wandering over to the Isle of Mull, but at the cost of £61 for the ferry ride (taking Percy), we're not quite sure just how to approach it. That's pretty steep for an island we can see about a mile away.
We found a great little pancake shop while wandering around yesterday, so guess where we had a massive breakfast this morning. None of us made it through, but it was a good change from toast, jam and coffee.
The girls and I went our separate ways this morning around town - I found a great little War and Peace museum, and a quick stop into the tiny Oban distillery, while they stocked up on gossip and retail therapy.
The rest of the day will be more of a rest before we head out for dinner somewhere.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 06 Oct 2002
Loch Ness ( No photos )
Well, I got in some better sleep, but the girls still managed to find a good snorer. Meaghan was planning on throwing pillows and apples, and Liz's evil plans were not printable here!
Since the rest of my room was up at about 6:30am, I got up nice and early and tidied up the car while Meaghan eventually dragged herself out of bed.
We took a slow drive north around Loch Ness, up the quiet side before coming back down the busy side. Wow! The scenes were all of course fantastic, and the return of fantastic weather meant blue skies with some nice low-lying cloud in the middle of the Loch. There's nothing much to say about it that you haven't already heard, only that it's much larger than I ever thought. We managed to avoid the tourist areas this time, so no cheap Nessy garbage. I'm sure we'll manage to find them again...
We then drove back south past where we stayed last night, and down to the sea-side town of Oban. The biggest thing for miles, the Lonely Planet book still describes it as "there isn't much to see or do", but we still think it quite nice. The Youth Hostel here is four stars - very nice, and we have a view over the bay. Not bad for only £2 (we filled up a youth hostel reward card, and get a free night. Paying a little extra got us our own room).
Not really an overly adventurous day, we're planning a trip off to the Isle of Mull tomorrow - we can see it across the bay. Cooking some veges and potato bake for dinner, and will have a nice relaxing night in with hopefully some decent sleep for all. Now they only have to poke me if I snore and I usually shut up!
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 05 Oct 2002
A day of Lochs and Locks ( No photos )
Yesterday we eventually got checked in, and found ourselves not in our own room for the first time. This weekend they are runing a promotion for the Year of The Mountains, so the hostels are packed out. This was most evident in that none of us got any sleep (snoring, creaky bunks, lots of people slamming doors, talking, etc.), and are ready to retire early tonight (again in shared dorms).
After checking in, we went for a walk back to the aforementioned one store in the village - the girls' excuse was to get a drink. The twenty minute round-trip saw us get sopping wet - little wonder these mountain youth hostels have drying rooms!
The night was tied up with a puzzle, writing postcards, cooking dinner and then attempting sleep. Which didn't happen.
So today, we woke (not that we were really asleep) to the sound of a large group of boy scouts or similar running a breakfast. Joy was us as we dragged ourselves through beds, showers, etc., and then to leave the rooms by a ridiculous 9:30am. Such is the pain of cheap rooms in the mountains.
We then drove about 150 miles directly to our next location - Loch Lochy. This took us through some more amazing scenery - Ben Nevis (not that we could see the top, of course), the "Five Sisters", and of course endless sheep, waterfalls, rivers and rolling hills.
A trip this afternoon while awaiting check-in took us to Fort William - the nearest "big" town for miles. It actually has a pedestrian-only area in it!! Here we found me a nice warm jacket which has been long needed to replace my aging one, the girls of course found lolly/chocolate/nibbly shops, and Percy found some cheap fuel.
We came back, checked-in, and checked out the kitchen (necessary because some of them don't have working ovens, etc.). We took a walk down to Loch Lochy itself, and observed a lock lift the boat of some touristy types' boat up into a higher section of the river. Interesting, but not as fan-dangled as the Falkirk Wheel of a few days ago.
Next we decided to drive to nearby town Spean Bridge to procure necessary dinner ingredients. However, the entire town seemed to have lost electricity supply, so it was another trip back to Fort William to find a supermarket.
Dinner consumed, we are now occupying ourselves with journals and books, and it will probably be quite an early night to make up for lack of sleep.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 04 Oct 2002
Some "proper" weather at last ( No photos )
Wouldn't you know it, after earlier today saying how we were having fantastic weather, of course we then see just how bad it can get. It's drizzling non-stop, coupled with occasional heavy rain, strong winds, and mist reducing visibility in all directions. Liz is doing well driving through all this on more single track roads.
We made our way fairly directly here, but even though Ullapool and Torrindon are on the same page on the map, this most direct route still took half the day. This is probably due to the huge (1000m, cloud-obscured peaks) mountains we're surrounded by. The one(!) shop here has an entire rack of mountain-climbing books and not too much else. There's not even a pub!
The coast road on the way in was once again spectacular - lots of climbing and falling, and no-where dry to stop for lunch.
We have to wait until 5pm when the counter is open again for us to check in - there is a nice, warm-looking section downstairs, but we need a PIN code to get in. So, the girls are reading and I'm doing web updates. Luckily we bought our own food to cook tonight - there's nowhere to buy/eat nearby.
(permanent link to this story)
Driving through The Highlands ( No photos )
Before leaving the castle yesterday, we took in the neighboring forest with an hour or so's walk. It's rather different up here to anywhere else we've been - the trees all go directly up, pencil thin, fighting for some sunlight. Also, the current Autumn colours make for a nice spectacle.
It wouldn't have been too long a drive from the castle over to Ullapool, but Liz quite rightly chose to direct us on several scenic routes. There seems to be a Loch by every road up here, and the view across some of these to little islands with ruined castles on them is definately unforgettable. Also adding to the experience is that we are somehow managing to once again have fantastic weather. It was actually described by us as hot at midday yesterday, although the wind is admittedly trying.
After visiting a few towns including Dornoch, Rosehall, and Lochinver (situated on Loch Inver), I was directed to drive us a little way North of Ullapool, and onto a nice little windy road. About twenty miles long, almost completely single-track-with-passing-places, it took us by the coast and through the mountains in some amazing scenery. Lots of rocks-through-the-grass sea-side land, plenty of stupid sheep on the road, and the ever-present even stupider drivers doing 40mph coming the other way around blind corners. Lots of fun!
Back on the main road, we made our way back to Ullapool. This drive was directly up and over a mountain range, so it was great to see some more little lochs up in the high parts of this - not at all what we expected to find.
Ullapool itself is quite interesting - we quickly spotted a seal or two in the bay directly out our hostel window. They haven't re-appeared, but we have been keeping a lookout just in case. We wandered the shops for a while before looking for a place for dinner. At one restaurant, we enquired what the "vegetarian meal of the day" was. The reply came that it wasn't very good, and we should try a restaurant up the road. So we did!
In the end, we passed on that other restaurant (with the over-Aussie waiter), and ended up in a little bar/pub/hotel. Here, the Russian waitress served us various types of lasagne, followed by a trip to the sweet menu.
Stumbling home, we watched some TV before calling it a night. I'm not sure what time we need to be out of here this morning, but nobody looks like they're in a rush.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 03 Oct 2002
A Night in a Haunted Castle ( No photos )
We took advantage of the SYHA (Scottish Youth Hostel Assn)'s ability to book and pay for places ahead yesterday, and organised both last nights accommodation (at the SYHA's pride-and-joy Carbisdale Castle) and Friday night's - they have a £5 deal which we had to book early for. Quite handy, it meant we could arrive later and know we had a room organised. Quite a change!
Before leaving Aviemore, we fuelled up Percy and did a few dabbly things in town - trying to hook up to the net (no luck), make a few phone calls (Happy Birthday Mrs Meaghan's Nanna!), and stock up on some more junk food.
I managed to convince the girls that we needed to visit a few last distilleries, and they kindly obliged. No more tours, we just had a quick look around and then visited the shop.
At one point on this little tour, we drove past a man pushing his hand down in the universal "slow down" sign. I obliged, although we didn't know what to expect. A little further, a woman was walking along the road, around a corner. This time her hand signals were not as clear, so we slowed down even further. Imagine our suprise when about fifty cows come walking, ever so slowly, around the corner. Liz just had to take a photo, so while we waited by the side of the road for them all to pass, she proceeded to snap away. However, a passing bull decided that he needed a closer look. The power window was deployed upwards with full force, just in time to get a great "clack" from the bull-ring against the glass. He snuffed and snorted a few times at Liz's red shirt, before deciding that opening this can was going to be a little difficult to open, and continuing his wander onwards. Eventually the road cleared, and the woman following the herd came over and laughed with us all.
After finally leaving the Whisky trail, we ventured North around Inverness, and through some great scenery. This took in the coast drive to Comarty (where we almost caught the ferry across to Balnapaling), then north through Dingwall and plenty of other little towns. Our destination was Carbisdale Castle. After a quick stop at Tain for supplies, we finally made it.
The place is amazing. It was bequeathed to the SYHA completely intact, and now functions just like any other Youth Hostel. With the exception that it is a massive castle, sleeping two hundered people or so. All sorts of paintings, statues, and plenty of strange little rooms made for a memorable experience.
We cooked ourselves dinner (sweet-and-sour veges) and enjoyed it in one of the dining rooms, before retiring to a little alcove by a window on one of the massive landings with a drink or two.
While getting up during the night, both girls reported sightings of the resident ghost. I'm not so sure...
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 01 Oct 2002
A Hard Day on the Whisky Trail ( No photos )
Let's hear it for Meaghan after her first update! And I only had to correct about fifty spelling and grammatical errors before it was suitable for public consumption! Not that my spelling or grammar is all that good...
This morning saw another massive B&B breakfast - a nice change after all the Youth Hostels. I even tried some porridge. Still don't like it, however. Liz struggled to get through a massive serving of scrambled eggs.
Up here we are on the so-called "Whisky Trail", in the heart of Scotch Whisky country. So, when in Rome, try their porridge. And whisky.
First stop was the Strathisla distillery, famous for its Chivas Regal. We toured the sites, tried the "nosing", then the tasting (which the girls didn't appreciate much!), then on to the shop. I've started a collection of miniature bottles - the big ones are too expensive and need to be carried home somehow.
Then, we moved on to the Glenfiddich distillery. This was much more popular (probably something to do with the entry/tour being free, and you still got a free sample at the end), different, yet still mostly the same. A nice late picnic lunch was had there, as we decided our fate for the evening.
This ended up with us deciding on another youth hostel in Aviemore. It's another nice place, yet is run by the first non-nice person we've found so far. Guess it had to happen.
We did some shopping and cooked our own dinners, before retiring to a quite evening in with website updates and reading.
(permanent link to this story)
Meaghan speaks! ( No photos )
Ok, so yesterday we decided to treat ourselves to breakfast in the town of Braemar after looking through all the crappy touristy shops much to Tim's delight! we then headed north or east depending on whether you ask Liz or Tim we found this small stone circle which was kinda cool and then continued our journey and found this quaint seaside village with a
great beach that even had sand as opposed to the standard pebble beach I have encountered since being over here.
We decided to go for a nice stroll along this beach and were having a pleasant time when this massive golden retriever decided it wanted to play with us and came bounding down the beach headed straight for us and rather than stopping or slowing down like we thought he would he knocked Liz's legs straight out from underneath, which was absolutely hilarious, although I don't know if Liz would agree.
So after our beach shenanegans we headed off again on a quest for a B&B and found this fantastic farm that was harvesting tatties (potatoes) and was run by this lovely lady who was probably the fist really Scottish person we have met. She use lots of Scottish words like "aye", and "its wee bonnie", it was really hard to keep a straight face! They had two really cute dogs except one of their names was Meaghan which was a bit off putting.
Finally we hopped in the car again to find some dinner and drove through this great coastal village with load of really steep winding streets and Liz got plenty of driving practice i think she could be a rally driver now! I would have just stalled a million times. We finally got dinner in The Highland Haven, in Macduff before retireing back to our farm B&B.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 30 Sep 2002
Into the Highlands ( No photos )
From the hostel in Falkland yesterday, we drove East through Fife to Crail which is a busy little village on the coast, and here we began to get into golf course territory, much to Tim's delight.
We drove on to St Andrew's, the home of golf, and spent an hour or so looking around the St Andrew's Cathedral ruins and its graveyard. We came across some (empty) old stone coffins that had been uncovered, and Meaghan and I were horrified when Tim suggested we 'get in and lie down for a photo'! Suprisingly we refused, and went and had a look around the famous golf course which apparently costs £90 a round.
It was a very popular place, with cars everywhere, so Tim was dragged away, and we drove north over the Firth of Tay Bridge, which seemingly went on forever over the river, through Dundee and then headed inland looking for a B&B, and before we knew it we were in the Scottish Highlands. The scenery was indescribable, so you'll just have to come over here and see it for yourselves. There were huge mountains either side over us, and Tim had lots of fun driving over the rolling valley roads.
We ended up skipping the B&B, and instead went to the hostel in Braemar, which was set amongst the woodland. The area around us was a very popular hiking spot, and there were also a lot of ski lifts that, whilst not in use at the moment, probably don't stop in the winter. I am hoping to come back here to ski early next year. I'll have to see if I can get Tim on a pair of ski's :)
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 29 Sep 2002
Off again ( No photos )
Once again heading away from the internet access, here's a goodbye for another week (at this rate, anyway).
We tried to find a dinner last night but left it too late - all the pubs/restaurants were too expensive or full. So instead we made our own dinner, from whatever we could buy at the little supermarket thingo. Quite good!
Spoke to mum and dad, as did Liz and Meaghan, so we've had a good rest and a catch up here.
Off for some more adventure!
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 28 Sep 2002
Some of Fife ( No photos )
Sorry - the updates are going to come thick and fast while we have the ability to do so!
After Liz woke up at 1:30pm (not feeling well), we finally got moving for the day. We covered more or less the central section of Fife, including the coast line from Elie back to the bridges over the Firth of Forth. We then came back via our first proper Loch!
We're in a slow, do not very much mood, so tonight will probably just be a dinner then bed. There are a few nice little pubs and cheapish restaurants around here, so we'll see what we can find.
The people running the B&Bs and the hostel staff have on the whole been very friendly, advising on various pubs to check out and of course which to avoid.
Not sure if the girls will be able to sleep tonight after doing so for most of the day :)
Tomorrow we will probably head out north via St. Andrews, and the eastern end of Fife.
A few more random observations on British Life:
- Radio here is terrible, unless Classical is your thing. The three most common songs we hear on the radio (no matter what station) have been called Songs 1, 2 and 3. They appear almost non-stop.
- There are still plenty of bad drivers on the roads.
- It's very hard to get lost anywhere - all the signs are very good.
- The media here is so much worse than Australia. There seems to be nothing that is sacred, and large-scale death and destruction is routinely relegated after news of celebrity boob-jobs.
(permanent link to this story)
An update at last ( No photos )
The last day or two has in general see us move Northish from Edinburgh towards Fife, which is the region we are in now.
Yesterday we had a look at the Falkirk Wheel - a strange boat lift thing the likes of which I can't really describe. Just have a look at the website!
Next we came north, stopping at the Wallace Monument - a tribute to the Scottish hero William Wallace, of Braveheart fame. Quite interesting, but the prospect of another 270 steps after all our previous walking meant we didn't actually climb up it.
We've also taken in Arthur's Seat - a 250 metre or so mountain in the middle of Edinburgh - a pain to climb with my horrible knees, but a great view (and photos of course) from the top.
Last night we went to a local around the corner for a few drinkies and a bit of food. It was good all round, and these Youth Hostels we have stayed in the last few days mean that we are saving money in general. More to spend later!
Today (when the girls eventually wake up, that is), we're probably going to take in the surrounding areas in Fife - that includes St. Andrews with it's famous golf course, and quite a lot of the costal surrounding areas. We will probably stay another night here - the price is good, and it's only been open for the last few months after a major re-furbishment.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 27 Sep 2002
Woohoo! ( No photos )
It's been a week since we left Peter's house, and I've finally found a net connection where we can plug the laptop in. How annoying it's been. The girl running the Youth Hostel was quite happy for me to tinker around for a while - many thanks to her!
I'll write a more detailed update later. Cheers!
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 26 Sep 2002
Edinburgh ( No photos )
I'm writing a quick update in the hope that I can find a decent Internet cafe somewhere today - all found so far have no laptop facilities.
Yesterday we had the most amazing breakfast so far - porridge, yoghurt, chopped fresh fruit, scrambled eggs, etc. Didn't need to eat for hours. That B&B had the hugest bathroom any of us had seen - I had a bath - great way to unwind after the day.
We then drove into Edinburgh. After parking in the street to find a tourist information place, we moved the car to a car park nearby where we drove him into a "bay", locked him up, then the door closed. What happened next, we don't know. He must have been taken on a conveyor belt somewhere - it took a little while to get him out later.
We started out on a walk that Liz had found in a little Edinburgh By Foot book that she found, but rapidly got side-tracked at tourist shops, Whisky centres, and fudge-land. Of course, we ended up buying five huge slices of fudge, along with numerous touristy things.
We spent a little time looking at some hostels to stay at, but they were quite expensive and had nowhere safe to park Percy.
The main thing we did was a trip through Edinburgh castle. It's so high up, and you wind around and around towards the top. We saw the crown jewels, the place where the piper stands at the tattoo, the war memorial, etc. The weather turned nasty just to remind us of where we were, and we spent a fair bit of time looking around in general. The girls liked some mead that we tried, so we may have to purchase some of that.
We decided to stay out of Edinburgh, and found a youth hostel at New Lanark - a tiny little village tucked between a river and a cliff-face. We couldn't even find the road in at first. The hostel itself is great - we're going to spend tonight here as well - it's cheap, clean, quiet, and almost smack-bang in the middle of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dinner was take-away Chinese and a bottle of red, at the hostel.
This morning the girls slept in until 10am when I returned from a three mile walk. This was along side the river, up to The Clyde Falls - Britain's highest. However, it pales in comparison to the falls we have in Australia at only 27 metres high.
We're going to head back into Edinburgh now, taking in Arthur's Seat and looking a little more seriously for a decent Internet cafe.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 24 Sep 2002
Border Country ( No photos )
(Continued from North and Central England)
After rising to a great breakfast this morning (though Meaghan was a little slow after last night), we set off to finally make it over the elusive Scottish border.
We took the path through the Northumberland National Park, which meant that the actual border crossing was upon the top of the hill with great views for miles across Scotland. Here, there were huge stones with "England" and "Scotland" on the appropriate sides, and a bag-piper busking infront of the sign. Not touristy at all! Much to the girls disgust, I organised someone to take a photo of the three of us.
We took some nice little back-road trips around the place, including a snacky lunch at Etal, sea-side stops at St. Abbs (looking to stay at a Youth Hostel there, but the owners appeared to have been taken away for Police questioning) and a wonderful drive along the Eastern Scottish coast (we're still below Edinburgh - plan to get there tomorrow).
All in all, not much has changed coming across the border. I've been told "you're not allowed here with an accent like that!" (jokingly) by a local, the shops sell Haggis now, and a "Full Scottish Breakfast" now appears amongst our breakfast options, along with porridge and haddock.
This afternoon we went for a quiet stroll around the village, where Liz made friends with a bull (whilst both her and I were wearing red tops - I kept away!).
There some updates on the Itinerary page - Meaghan is now getting a train back to Bletchley on the 10th of October, whilst Liz and I travel to the more remote areas of Scotland. Up until then, we'll see the standard tourist places. This probably means Edinburgh, Glasgow, Loch Ness, etc. That's more than enough planning for now!
(permanent link to this story)
Border Country ( No photos )
After rising to a great breakfast this morning (though Meaghan was a little slow after last night), we set off to finally make it over the elusive Scottish border.
We took the path through the Northumberland National Park, which meant that the actual border crossing was upon the top of the hill with great views for miles across Scotland. Here, there were huge stones with "England" and "Scotland" on the appropriate sides, and a bag-piper busking infront of the sign. Not touristy at all! Much to the girls disgust, I organised someone to take a photo of the three of us.
We took some nice little back-road trips around the place, including a snacky lunch at Etal, sea-side stops at St. Abbs (looking to stay at a Youth Hostel there, but the owners appeared to have been taken away for Police questioning) and a wonderful drive along the Eastern Scottish coast (we're still below Edinburgh - plan to get there tomorrow).
All in all, not much has changed coming across the border. I've been told "you're not allowed here with an accent like that!" (jokingly) by a local, the shops sell Haggis now, and a "Full Scottish Breakfast" now appears amongst our breakfast options, along with porridge and haddock.
This afternoon we went for a quiet stroll around the village, where Liz made friends with a bull (whilst both her and I were wearing red tops - I kept away!).
There some updates on the Itinerary page - Meaghan is now getting a train back to Bletchley on the 10th of October, whilst Liz and I travel to the more remote areas of Scotland. Up until then, we'll see the standard tourist places. This probably means Edinburgh, Glasgow, Loch Ness, etc. That's more than enough planning for now!
(permanent link to this story)
A long drive north ( No photos )
After finally managing to check our emails yesterday (and paying credit card bills - grr), we caught the bus back to Bletchley, had some lunch and then headed North on the M1/A1/A1(M). We left at about 1:30pm, so we spent the rest of the day driving. There was a nine mile traffic jam along the way, where it looked like police and forensics had found a body or something.
We arrived at our B&B - The Chirnells - at 7:30pm. It is just out of a small village called Thropton, and is right in the middle of farms - cows were mooing in the middle of the night.
Dinner was at a nice (but expensive) pub/restaurant up the road, accompanied by a few drinks. Even though it was pricey, the food was a bit fancier than we would normally eat, and quite nice!
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 23 Sep 2002
A long drive north ( No photos )
After finally managing to check our emails (and paying credit card bills - grr), we caught the bus back to Bletchley, had some lunch and then headed North on the M1/A1/A1(M). We left at about 1:30pm, so we spent the rest of the day driving. There was a nine mile traffic jam along the way, where it looked like police and forensics had found a body or something.
We arrived at our B&B - The Chirnells - at 7:30pm. It is just out of a small village called Thropton, and is right in the middle of farms - cows were mooing in the middle of the night.
Dinner was at a nice (but expensive) pub/restaurant up the road, accompanied by a few drinks. Even though it was pricey, the food was a bit fancier than we would normally eat, and quite nice!
[Next morning, it was on to Scotland]
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 22 Sep 2002
Re-united ( No photos )
Leaving the great B&B, with it's strange toilet (3/4 full with water most of the time!), yet fantastic surroundings, we drove almost directly east towards Milton Keynes.
Today's interesting diversions included a stop at a little steam railway called the Glocestershire-Wawrick Railway. We were considering going for a ride until we found a sign saying "This is a high-theft area, leave nothing un-attended." Since our entire lives at this stage are in Percy, we thought better of leaving for a half-day steam excursion.
Since today was a Liz driving day, that left me navigating. All was going well, yet I had failed to notice that the green roads on one map page which looked like they joined up with the one on the next actually didn't. So, we took half an hour's back-street bonanza to get through to where we needed to be.
Upon approaching Bletchley, we rang Meaghan for directions to her Grandma's House. She gave them. They were terribly wrong. We should have remembered - this was Meaghan we were dealing with. A call back saw us arrive close - just on the wrong side of the road, a little way down - she had given us the wrong street number. Hooray for Meags!
After settling in for a little while (we are staying here tonight), Meaghan's Grandma mentioned that the reason that the Spitfires were flying over head was that Bletchley was of course the home of Bletchley Park. Wandering down there, we went on a two-hour wandering of the estate, where we saw how the British war effort had cracked the German Enigma machines, and saved the world. All played up a bit, I had to prod the girls awake a few times, but it was worth a visit.
Tomorrow we intend on heading into Milton Keynes proper to get connected and get updated. Then, we'll probably have a nice long drive up into Scotland to enable us to start looking around as soon as possible.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 21 Sep 2002
A Good Fun Day ( No photos )
Last night we ended up having some dinner at a great little pub in Pembridge, which is one of the famous "Black and White" towns. Basically, these are villages consisting mainly of the Tudor(?) style of construction - exposed woodwork on the outside, painted black, contrasting against otherwise white walls. Surely you've seen a picture somewhere. Most were built before the invention of the spirit level it seems, with beams going off at all angles, and many buildings looking like they're about to fall over.
The meal was pretty good, and of course we had to try the local brew - in this case the area is strong on Ciders. A Dunkertons Black Fox Dry was followed by a Stowford Press - both unique and tasty.
After the most amazing breakfast, we said goodbye to the proprietors (including the dog Pippa), congratulating them on having the best B&B we'd found so far. We then wound our way towards London, taking in Hereford, Gloucester, Cheltenham and of course lots of other little towns before ending up at Wormington.
On our journey, we managed to find the Dunkertons cider mill. Very interesting, we saw how it all worked before the obligatory taste testing. A huge range of flavours, ranging from the extremely sweet to the extremely dry - both well out of the range of what we'd ever tasted before.
Back on the road, I pulled in at a golf driving range where I showed just how much I had forgotten about how to hit a ball, and Liz did very well for her first real attempt at swinging a club. She was hitting some great shots, and had a good time - we should do it again.
Again, it's a Saturday night so we spent quite a long time looking for a B&B - it would be nice if they took their signs off the road when they're full! We finally drove about two miles off an already not-very-main road, and found this place called the Manor House. It's a working farm, complete with three dogs, two cats, a few horses, quad-bikes and a good dose of country hospitality.
We took a little walk about half a mile down the road towards an abandoned mill - great countryside, and the weather is fantastic at the moment, if a little cold at night.
For dinner, we headed as recommended into Broadway - the nearest "big" town, although it still has the smallest font possible on the map! We found a little pub called The Crown and Trumpet, and used one of their this-pub-only Ales to wash down a Chicken Pie (with apples - weird) and a Lasagne.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 20 Sep 2002
First bit of Wales! ( No photos )
We drove almost directly south today, taking in Whitchurch, Shrewsbury, Church Stretton, Ludlow and finally settling in a great little B&B at Lyonshall called The Woodlands.
Even though we've had it all along, this is the first B&B we've thought to look up in "The Green Book" - a listing of the private B&Bs personally recommeded by a particular team. From the looks of this one, I'd agree so far.
It lists 75 B&Bs around Scotland, the majority of which seem to close around November. So we're just going to slip in on that one, and we should have enough to choose from.
Before landing here, we stopped at Beeston Castle, not far from where we started out in Cheshire. Built in 1225 (but the site was used back to 2000 BC for similar purposes), it stands right onto of a huge hill surrounded by a moat. Fantastic views from the top, in all directions. Will have to get the photos up here soon.
Also, we took in "The Golden Valley" and surroundings (including a few one-lane 25% gradient runs over the hills), to get to which we actually had to drive into Wales and back out again. We were very suprised at just how different everything gets, even in the two miles or so that we actually saw.
Obviously, the countryside doesn't dramatically change, but all of a sudden the signs all take on two languages (if you are lucky), and the radio seems to have three Greek stations on (which of course they aren't, it just sounds that way to my untrained ears).
Our Welsh so far extends to knowing that for "slow" you use a four-letter word starting with A which we have forgetten already. Haven't attempted pronounciation yet, we have a guide in the back of our Lonely Planet book so I'm sure we can suitably embarrass ourselves given time.
So now we're about three miles back into England. The B&B is a private house, nice gardens, friendly dog, and run by an old couple, obviously set up when their children left home.
A few more quick reflections on England to cap off our one-month travelling Anniversary, focusing on the driving experience:
- Drivers here seem to be quite a bit better (a generalisation, of course). We must drive through an average of thirty round-abouts similar to the Miranda one (ie. three lanes, seven exits, traffic everywhere - is the Miranda one gone yet?) each day, and everyone can deal with it.
- Drivers are much more considerate - if you are turning across another lane, and drivers are banking up behind you, rest assured someone coming the other way will slow down from 50mph, flash their lights and let you go. Very strange the first time we saw that. In Sydney you'd probably just sit there and rot. Similarly for turning out of a side street. Nobody behind will honk either.
- Due to everything being closer together and there being many more people, the roads here are fantastic. Apparently it's roadwork season, which means lots of slow-down-to-30 or even wait-at-the-lights-and-then-use-the-other-side-of-the-road passages. The trade-off, of course, is fantastic roads everywhere, even if they only have one town on them and lead nowhere.
- Our car is a large car by UK standards. Most are 1-1.6 litre jobbies, similar in size to our Corollas, etc, which over here are billed as family cars (serious!). There's certainly no "I'm going to grow up and get a V6 (let alone V8) Commodore" mentality over here. Fuel would be way to expensive, and there's no room on most of the roads.
(permanent link to this story)
One Month On ( No photos )
It dawned on us this morning that we've been gone from Sydney a month. My my. How time flies and all that.
We feel that we've seen most of North/Central England quite well, which is of course what we actually set out to do. Hopefully we can carry this on for the remainder of the trip.
Of course, we miss you all, and getting the occasional email, silly forwarded garbage and SMSs are a great way to remind us that there is still a world back home somewhere. As always, keep them coming!
Last night we spent in Helsby, a little village on the road to Chester. We stayed at The Robin Hood Inn, where dinner, breakfast and the room were all "good" but not "great".
Peter recommended that we see Chester, which we did yesterday. Quite an interesting place full of old Abbey/Cathederals dating back (possibly) to the 8th Century, and surrounded by a huge wall. Living "in" or "out" of the wall must make it a strange city to live in. We walked around for quite a while, taking in the sights.
We got suckered in by a machine claiming to dispense maps of the area. "What a great idea!" we thought - us being total tourists and knowing nothing about the place. The machine happily ate our pound (which we're trying really hard to not remember is almost three dollars), and smiled contemptuously. No map was forthcoming.
A saviour arrived as a freecall number next to the map-machine claiming to offer assistance. "Nobody can take your call, please try again later" came the curt automated reply upon our SOS. I'll try again later today, just for the principal.
Today we'll most probably head closer to London - we're about two hundred miles away now, and we don't actually have to get that far.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 18 Sep 2002
Never an un-eventful day ( No photos )
First and foremost, two site-news items:
- We have some new photos online! Have a look!
- The link just above here saying where we posted this from is now click-able. It will point to where this was posted from so you can see a map of it.
Just when you think the day is going to be nice and boring, interesting things always find you.
Take today, for example - we went into Carlisle proper to get ourselves some picnic gear - you know, thermos flask, cutlery, etc. Quite a nice walk actually (about half an hour).
Our investments complete, we take the bus home. Liz gets on and asks the driver "So haw maach iz it, mate?". To which he replies "A pound ninety." Liz hands over the coins, apologising for the change. "There's no dollar coins in there, is there?" comes the smart reply at Liz's thick Aussie accent!
She comes back with me, beetroot red (the same as her top, incidentally), and we joke about it a bit. An attempted pickup!
On the way off the bus, he asks where we are from. "Sydnee, mate" we reply almost in unison. "So you're swans fans then?" "Not really" we reply. We get off the bus and walk up the street.
Then the previous flirting at Liz story rears its head again as he pulls the bus up to talk to her again, lifts up his sleeve to flex the muscles, and says "The reason I asked is because I'm a North Melbourne Kangaroos fan", pointing at a tattoo on the aforementioned arm. Imagine that - a small city in the north of England, we find a pom with a North Melbourne tattoo. Strange. We tell him to go away. He does.
We also topped up Percy with anti-freeze (which Peter laughed at - apparently that's usually done about December here). Tried to buy an ice-scraper for the windscreen but no luck there. I guess the locals just know how to time it a bit better.
Rang and spoke to Jane today - apparently Lucky is going well - thanks guys! Also had a quick chat to my grandparents, which seemed to make their week.
Tomorrow we head south towards London to meet up with Meaghan on the 21st or 22nd. Liz and I have packed all our stuff into one suitcase - this worked well for our one or four night trips, but might be a bit of a stretch for the whole month in Scotland. Still, it's far better than lugging two large suitcases up narrow pub staircases every night.
Once again, Internet access will be patchy at best, so we'll try our hardest to keep you all updated.
(permanent link to this story)
Washing day ( No photos )
Yesterday was spent doing not much - I've been keeping my mind on programming by writing a little program which calculates mileage figures (5.57 l/100km or 50.7mpg last tank!), and Liz went into town with Peter to get some more films developed.
Today is going to be equally exciting - we're going to do a whole load of washing at a laundromat. Thus far we have been handwashing at Peters, but the backlog is too great, and the weather isn't nice.
Thanks to Dad for pointing out uk.multimap.com. This is a good site where you can punch in any of the little towns we are going on about, and get a scroll-able, zoom-able map of the area. You can even put postcodes in - try CA26TT which is Peter's house where we are staying at the moment. I'll try to incorporate this into the link we put up top there saying where we currently are.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 16 Sep 2002
A familiar bed ( No photos )
We're back in Carlisle now, after another great day on the road.
Setting out from Fridaythorpe, we looked a little more around Yorkshire, before heading on our chosen back-road path "home" to Carlisle. This took in the wonders of the North York Moors National Park (nice farmland), and Bishop Auckland, before crossing our previous foggy-path near the back road B6277 through Middleton-in-Teesdale.
Fate landed us in a town called Alston, which seems to have an obsession with railways and memorabilia. This was evident in their weekends-only narrow-guage railway, Hazel's cafe (situated on the platform), and a great old cars/motorbikes/anything museum staffed by old locals.
Liz had to drag me away from a model railway exhibition and shop hidden away down there - staffed by an old local couple. Reminded me of our old train set we used to have in our old house.
The road out of Alston was the A686, voted as one of the top ten scenic drives in the world. It certainly was great to wind up the pass, see fantastic countryside over one way, then cross the peak and see miles and miles of different farmland the otherway.
Both we and our wallets were weary from our travels, and so decided to head straight back to Peters via the nice fast motorway.
There are lots of fighter planes flying overhead - they do training nearby in the Lake District (as we found out the other day when they flew almost lower than us as we were up on the peaks). I wonder if their increased activity has anything to do with Tony Blair's stand on Iraq - a constant news item over here.
Liz has had some photos developed, so we'll see what we can organise to get them on here - Peter has a scanner. I should make some noise about my camera as well.
Well, time to upload all this and read some mail.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 15 Sep 2002
The Wash ( No photos )
Leaving Wisbech this morning, we headed first around the south side of The Wash - a bay of sorts in the east coast of England.
We made it along to Hunstanton, before turning and heading back around The Wash in the direction of the famous Carlisle. Once again, all the good vantage points were tourist havens, including the cities of Skegness (very similar to Blackpool in its lights and "amusement" parlours.
We took in lots of gorgeous countryside before heading back through the city of Hull which we visited the other day. We accessed this via the Humber Bridge, at the rather extortinate toll price of £2.50.
North through Hull, we eventually ended up at Fridaythorpe, another great little one pub town in the middle of nowhere (a little to the right of York on your handy UK map). We had a walk around the village, but you can only walk for about three minutes in any given direction before you hit open farmland.
Another long-ish driving day, we filled Percy up once again, noticing that we've done about 1500 miles in the short time he's been with us. We had a great lunch at yet another small pub-town somewhere, partaking in what seems to be a huge institution over here - Sunday Roast Lunch. Yum!
A few small observations on English life that don't quite fit in anywhere else:
- Warm beer isn't that bad
- You will get a maximum of five minutes driving between all country towns. This place is dense.
- Forget translating into Australian Dollars. It's too scary.
- People here know how to use roundabouts but have no idea about speedlimits. Even when doing 80mph on the motorways, expect to be overtaken by people doing more like 110mph. The police don't seem to care.
- Even though the Premier League Football (aka Soccer) is world-famous, it's not on TV here. Pay only. God love media monopolies.
- The English are scared of Australian sporting prowess. Barely a moment went by in the recent England vs. India cricket test without a mention of how they would have to shape up before meeting the Aussies down under.
- People don't even understand the term "Gday" here. I've got some strange looks. I mean, I understand when they greet me with "Wot u wont?", but they don't even understand our one unique greeting!
- Everyone here watches either Neighbours or Home and Away. Everyone.
- They don't have your good old-fashoned two-tap showers like we do back home - everything is high-tech, push-button, select temperature and flow-speed. We haven't found the same type twice and are yearning for the tried-and-true Aussie-style taps.
- The weather isn't as bad as everyone says. Yet.
(permanent link to this story)
A few days on the road ( No photos )
Since we left Elswick, I've been quite slack updating this, but luckily Liz has been doing her "real" journal fairly dilligently, so I can read about what we have done!
The night of Friday the 13th saw us staying at a B&B in Thornhill, nestled in the Peak District National Park. Our way there saw us typically following some main roads, missing a turn-off, and then following lots of back roads to attempt to get back. It's a wonderful way to see around the place - try it sometime.
We have been through some great landscapes - plenty of villages in hills, pine forests, around Ladybower and Derwent dams (where the noisiest things were the sheep), and some great straight fast driving along canals.
Yesterday morning we took a trip to one of the many caverns near Castleton, which was named "Divilarse" in Old English. No prizes for guessing what it translates as. Quite similar in concept to Janolean Caves (except without the horrible entry road), we went on a tour of the caves which had around eight hundred years of documented history. Very interesting.
We are currently in a town called Wisbech, which is not many miles north of London - so we've come a long way. The place we're staying in is the most expensive so far, and the least nice. The B&Bs seem to be much more sparse over this part of the place, so we're on top of a pub called The Angel, which it definately isn't.
Food has generally been very good at the small B&Bs - great breakfasts, and easily reached good lunches and dinners. We're getting reasonably good at eating fairly cheaply for the day. However, we were tired last night after looking for so long for somewhere to stay, and ended up with a couple of bags of grease labelled fast food. Not good.
Today we head back to Carlisle up the East Coast - not sure how long we are going to take, but we have the motorways if need be. These can get us all the way back in a day basically, which is great for when we've had enough. But we haven't yet!
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 12 Sep 2002
Blackpool, Elswick ( No photos )
A reasonable distance was covered down the motorway this morning, before turning off to have a look at the seaside town Knott End, on the west coast. A great lunch was followed with a walk along the very strange "beaches".
It looks like you could walk out for about a kilometre - the water is so shallow, hundreds of birds use the beach for a resting place.
We then headed south around the point, which basically consists entirely of the city Blackpool. A very strange place, the entire point is basically hotels on one side, a strange bus-train hybrid on the other, and "illuminations" over the roadway. These strange creations are light-up representations of everything from Disney characters and Postman Pat to "Kodax" film - a rip off of Kodak and obviously the sponsor of the whole thing.
We decided that it was way too touristy for our taste, and headed inland to find that elusive great B&B. We succeeded. It's called Thornton House, and is a recently-redone rustic place, run by a nice couple, in a little one-pub town called Elswick (the pub is fine - we checked).
Breakfast is yet to be rated, but the sound of what it is was enough to make us think we could manage without a dinner. Also, the ever-present cost of everything helped our decision!
Tomorrow, we will probably head further south to take in more of this fantastic country side while the weather holds - clear blue skies, temperatures around the low 20s.
(permanent link to this story)
Heading South for the Winter ( No photos )
The updated, and suitably un-detailed plan for the next few days consists of "head south along the motorway and get off somewhere". That should do us! Everything else will just sort itself out.
Not sure whether we are going to be able to get internet access anywhere, so we may not get a chance to update this for a while.
Also, we have just sent out an email to lots of people - feel free to forward it to anyone who may be interested if you received one.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 11 Sep 2002
Another Lakes Walk ( No photos )
Today we set ourselves a simple task - a nice, low impact walk through the Lakes District.
Peter once again was our helpful guide as we took an easy two-hour stroll around Lake Buttermere. As expected for the area, the scenery was great - I'm really missing my camera so I can show you how all it looks. I guess you'll just have to take a trip over here yourselves.
Tonight Liz and I drove into Carlisle and had a coffee at one of the cafes - let's just say that the nightlife is calm. :)
We then headed out to a little back-road country pub where we enjoyed a quiet ale (ok, Liz had a scotch and coke) before coming home to relax and log on.
We think we might head off for a few days trip around central England starting tomorrow. The fuel is too expensive to keep coming back to Carlisle all the time.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 10 Sep 2002
A trip back home ( No photos )
Well, we're back at Peters from the one-night trip over to the East Coast.
We left in the morning, after having a great little snack at the Bakery right next door - fantastic food, and much cheaper than the B&B's breakfast! Liz tried a Cornish Pastie and was suitably impressed. We looked a little more around the town before heading off.
We headed out to the coast, through much more fantastic farm scenery. Eventually we made it to Scarborough on the coast. We found what we assumed was Scarborough Fair, took some photos, and got away - very touristy there. Also, their "beaches" are very sad compared to Aussie ones - we spent just enough time there to appreciate Cronulla then left.
We then drove down the coast, through such little towns as Hornsea and Withernsea. Lunch was at a "chipper" right on the sea - a non-healthy lunch of chips and chilli, and a great fish and chips.
Refreshed, we set off to explore the penninsula south towards spurn head. After a reasonable amount of driving, it wasn't really all that interesting. In the end, it was a private road which we decided against driving along. There were lots of people which we assumed were doing bird watching - lots of camera gear with huge zooms, tripods, etc. Very strange indeed.
Once again tackling some great back roads, we wound our way west through Hull (where that boat which has recently been in the news with a fire onboard set out from) and the hopping on the motorways for a trip back to Carlisle.
Almost back at Carlisle, we decided to hop off the motorway and take some new and interesting B roads to avoid the traffic in the middle of Carlisle.
Today was a huge amount of driving, so the things that we saw all kind of melded together. We think we'll have a rest day tomorrow - perhaps some walking in the Lake District - not as strenuous as last time however - and generally relaxing before another trip in a few days.
We finally filled Percy up, after doing 530 miles on 58 litres of diesel. Not bad at all. By my maths, that's about 6.8 litres/100km.
(permanent link to this story)
A drive East ( No photos )
Percy took a trip to the Auto Electricians yesterday morning, but they were unable to get the light to come on - grrr. Of course, as soon as I drove it away, the light came on good and strong. We will have to leave it for them to test drive it later in the week. At least we got the tyre sorted out.
Starting from Carlisle, we headed East in search of adventure. We had a vague destination of "the east coast", and everything else just sort of happened.
Plenty of main roads were interspersed with a fair splattering of B roads, driving around through fog, pheasants, sheep plagues, and the ever-present rain.
We are in the area that has been in the news for flooding recently, and the roads certainly reflected that. We didn't actually find any flooded areas, but parts of the road had puddles which required major swerving.
Along the A170, we kept looking for a place to stop for the night. The criteria were simple - it needed to be a B&B, and have food available nearby. We ended up at an Inn called The Black Swan in a town called Kirkbymoorside.
Conveniently, a few real ales and selection of reds were available at the bar to wash our meals down - Liz a rump steak and myself burger-type-thing with a great salad.
We got the room for £15 each, skipping breakfast (we got snacks instead) - cheap because the room was over the common room and had a squeaky floor! Let's just say that after our long day, we crashed straight to sleep, regardless of the supposed room quibbles.
The remainder of today will get us to the coast, look around, and head back to Carlisle most probably. The weather seems to be improving, so anything could happen.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 08 Sep 2002
Oh no Percy! ( No photos )
Just been out to do a little shopping in Carlisle central - we were looking at sleeping bags, camp gear, etc., as well as a little food for tonight's dinner (pizza).
Upon returning to Percy, we noticed a very flat rear right tire. It most probably was caused by a slow leak from yesterday. So here are Liz and I, changing a tyre in the middle of one of the main streets (with cars driving by at reasonable pace less than a metre away). The work completed, I then attempted go get us out of the very tight parking space we were in.
Immediately, we heard a horrible scraping sound. Surely there was nothing more to changing a tyre on a Peugeot than any other car. So, after a little initial investigation, we decided to get off the main road, bear the screeching noise, and look closer in a side street.
Upon driving around the corner to the most horrible clatter you have ever heard from a car, Liz came running up laughing. The way these cars work, the spare tyre is on the outside, with a bracket holding it up under the car. We had failed to put the bracket back on. How silly we (mostly I) felt.
This fixed, we returned triumphant to Peter's place and brought our washing in before the rain comes again.
(permanent link to this story)
Today's plans ( No photos )
Today will probably be a relaxation day, with a bit of shopping and a lot of nursing Liz's feet back into good health for the travels to come.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 07 Sep 2002
A drive through the Lake District ( No photos )
Another late start on a trip out around the Lake District. If you were to look at a map of the west coast of Britian, there is a big "gap" right in the middle. Inside that, there is a part that sticks out, sort of opposite Isle of Man. That basically contains the lake district, with Carlisle at the top and Barrow-in-Furness at the bottom.
So, we set out on a driving trip with Liz at the wheel nursing some very badly blistered feet. She got us as far as Silloth, where we had a nice snack at a place called George and Liz's cafe - not flashy but edible. She had been doing very well, but eventually listened to her feet and forced me drive the rest of the way.
We started heading south along the coast road, which took in Maryport, Workington, Whitehaven and Gosforth. Our initial plan was to head as far south as Barrow, but the seemingly ever-present roadwork told us that if we ever wanted to get home before dark, we should head inland sooner rather than later.
And we are so glad that we did! Turning in on a tiny back road at Gosforth, we headed in through such one-horse villiages as Santon Bridge, Eskdale, and Boot before finally arriving at something we had been warned about via signs much earlier. Hardknott Pass.
Basically a Roman road passing through the mountains, it was only one lane, winding up the mountain and down again, at around 35% gradient. It had signs at the start saying "don't do this in winter, no matter what your vehicle". Of course, we just had to do it! Peter later told us that he once took a school mini-bus over there loaded with kids, only to be later pulled into the Principal's office and advised of the school's no-Hardknott-Pass policy.
The rain only added to the effect as Percy proved his ability to flawlessly climb wet mountains, using mainly 1st gear. We stopped half-way up, one wheel off the road to allow passing traffic, on a very hard slope, to take a photo. We had a little stress restarting in such a difficult place, but I can thank my SES 4wd training for this stretch of road.
The road was basically one-lane for much longer, where we took in Wrynose Pass (similar to but far less taxing than Hardknott). Eventually we re-joined civilisation, taking in Ambleside before heading back to Carlisle via Keswick, Penrith and the very fast M6 motorway.
The scenery was awesome for all of this day-trip - so many beautiful little houses, churches, etc. nestled into the rolling hills, the windy little roads, the ever-present mist, cloud and rain. Britain has A roads (big, fast, maintained and used a lot), B roads (catalogued and numbered, but less-well travelled), and all the rest. The most interesting things we have seen so far by far have been driving on these smaller back roads. This certainly the best way to see the place - a coach or train would have had a little trouble with Hardknott Pass, methinks.
Liz and I cooked dinner (a Tikka Marsala) before retiring to the "goggle-box" (Peter's term) for some hard-earned rest.
Today will probably be a relaxation day, with a bit of shopping and a lot of nursing Liz's feet back into good health for the travels to come.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 06 Sep 2002
Hadrian's Wall ( No photos )
On this morning we took the car back to have its one remaining niggle looked at - it has a "water in fuel filter" light which intermittently comes on to say hello.
The kindly garage guy put a new filter in after making it quite clear that there actually wasn't any water in there. It seemed ok for a while, but came back again. I'm just back from the garage again today where he said that an auto electrician would have to look at it. Sound expensive? Perhaps, but that three month warranty is real nice here. Booked in for monday morning.
The remainder of the day we spent driving in a general easterly direction under the guidance of Peter, crossing over the Scottish border (yay!) and having a pub lunch. The curious thing is that "pubs" dont really exist in Scotland - they disappear at the border to be replaced by drinking houses almost always connected to a hotel. Quite strange.
Refreshed, we journeyed through Kielder forest - a man-made forest surrounding the largest man-made lake (via a dam) in Europe. Very nice surroundings, and lovely to drive through. The dam itself is quite unlike all the Australian ones I have seen - the back wall is actually grassed over and sheep graze over it!
The return journey was along Hadrian's Wall - the roman wall built to keep the "barbaric" northeners out of the roman-conquered south. It runs almost the width of England, and parts of it even run through modern-day cellars of houses. The part we saw was partially excavated, and we also took in Housesteads fort - one of sixteen "big" forts along the length of the wall. Here, we saw the remains of a hospital, wheel ruts from carts, and probably the earliest central heating system anywhere - dated 124 A.D. or so. As Peter pointed out, it would have been over a thousand years before anything as clever was re-developed elsewhere. Similar for their nifty latrine system!
Percy willingly brought us home, un-daunted by the prospect of water in his fuel filter. The roads are all so empty and great to drive on. He has also done almost two hundred miles (320km) on about about twenty litres of diesel. Very thrifty, which will be handy given the fuel prices over here.
(permanent link to this story)
Will they fit? ( No photos )
Today we are going to attempt to work out in slightly more detail what we're going to do for the next few days - some day trips and perhaps a few overnight ones.
Oh, and we have to see if our suitcases fit in our new car :)
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 05 Sep 2002
It's a new car!!!!! ( No photos )
(Continued from North England)
The first half of this day was spent fighting with insurance agencies over here attempting to organise insurance for Percy. Not as simple as it might sound, we ended up with the AA (equivalent of NRMA) finding us one for a reasonable sum. This is interesting, as when we talked to them earlier that day, they estimated almost three times as much.
In the afternoon we headed back into Carlisle, and went into Ottakars. This is basically a big chain bookshop with a coffee shop inside - very similar to Dymocks. I believe Meaghan was working in one in Milton Keynes. Being the cheap Aussie that I am, I spotted a book on a special for 99p - over here books are more like £9, so I was quite happy with that. The other day I also picked up a "How to Solve Cryptic Crosswords" book - an art I've never quite had time to understand.
The big news comes in the form of the National Australia Bank actually getting something reasonably organised for a change - the money for the car found its way across into Peter's UK bank account, allowing us to write a cheque for Percy!
The result of this is that he's now all ours, parked out the side of Peter's place. We spent the rest of the day playing with all the high-tech buttons, discovering no end of creature comforts. The only problem is that it will be hard to let go of him and purchase a thirty year old combi instead when we go to Europe!
Of course, we just had to test him out a little (you should have seen the smile on Liz's face when she was driving and the turbo kicked in for the first time!), so we went for a spin across to Silloth - a town on the estuary which eventually becomes the sea. We drove down the coast a little, where we could easily see across to Scotland before it got quite dark.
Some random back streets made for quite entertaining driving, especially in a new car at 60mph when the roads aren't quite wide enough for two cars!
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 04 Sep 2002
Mountain Climbing ( No photos )
We now have a few extra blisters and aching limbs courtesy of Peter and couple of his friends taking us for a walk up a 2000ft mountain (damn these Imperial measurements!) and back down again. This was about half an hour south of Carlisle, into the Lake District. The valleys were beautiful, and the lakes viewed from the top were icing on the cake.
A very nice way to blow a few hours, the view was fantastic in what continues to be extremely good weather. I'm beginning to suspect the story of bad pommy weather is all a myth. I'm sure I'll eat those words later.
One of Peter's friends David brought his two dogs Badger and Rocky, the latter being the only member of the expedition to rival me for unfitness, although at fifteen years old that isn't saying much for me.
We had a late lunch at a pub at one end of the lake, where Liz had chicken something, and I had a beef steak, mushroom pot-pie and veges. A great cheap pub meal.
[The next day, we started exploring North and Central England]
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 03 Sep 2002
Around Carlisle, and a Pug ( No photos )
Peter showed us a little of Carlisle city itself, including Tulley House, a museum of Carlisle's long and sordid history, and many other historical places. It's very strange seeing buildings advertising dates that show they were built before the First Fleet arrived in Australia. Of course, many are quite a bit older than that.
The other piece of news is that we have put a deposit on a car. It's a grey 1995 Peugeot 306, and if you're not interested in the details tune out now. It's an XRDT, with a turbo diesel 1.9, 5 speed, electric sunroof, power windows, power steering, nice stereo, alarm, immobiliser, 5 door hatch, only 23,000 miles (grr), and very nice to drive. I believe it is going to be named Percy. Percy the Pug. Sorry Mighty Mouse, we would have brought you if we could.
Now we're just waiting on the bank to get their act together (sound familiar?) before we can actually pay for it. Hopefully this will happen before the weekend, which would be roughly inline with our schedule - something I've just tided up and hopefully you have had a look at!
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 02 Sep 2002
Into phase three! ( No photos )
(Continued from London 1)
I'm writing this from Peter's place - we've arrived safely, and, according to him, amazingly on-time. Apparently Virgin, although omni-present, are almost omni-inefficient.
On the train I updated the Itinerary page with our future plans - please peruse it at your leisure, and then be completely un-suprised when we do something completely different!
(permanent link to this story)
Virgin Trains ? ( No photos )
It's been a little while since an update since we have been fairly quiet, enjoying our last days in London for a while a least.
We're on our way on a Virgin Train to Carlisle - I didn't know just how much of an empire Virgin had over here. The morning has been hectic - what a suprise. Getting on and off the tube, up and down stairs, escalators (did you know that even though people drive on the left here, everyone walks on the right?). Liz and I managed to get separated at Victoria station - those tube doors wait for no-one.
We had our last breakfast and said goodbye to Betty and Betty the proprietors of our B&B. I guess that's B&B's B&B. We're booked again for later in the year when we come back to London to wave Meaghan off and pick up Margaret. Infact, we have a full shell of a plan done - I'll put it up here soon.
I think I'll break the entry up into separate days. Hope to get connectivity soon at Peter's in Carlisle.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 01 Sep 2002
Walking the Dogs, Farnborough, Bromley, Beer, Wine ( No photos )
Writing this from on the train, I'm splitting it up because otherwise it will get too cluttered.
Yesterday we started the day with another great walk with Tiggy and Molly, who were getting kinda used to us before we left. As was Lucky, who Zadro assures us is doing just fine. Sniff. This walk took us again up to the woods, but this time we were a little more adventurous, finding our way through a golf course where the dogs being walked seemed to outnumber those walking them by about two to one. Everyone in this area seems to have three dogs. Except us. Sniff.
Then, we jumped on the 358 bus to Farnborough, where Liz tidied up her grandparent's graves, and we again payed our respects. We walked a little more around Farnborough, including their old church (which was deserted by this time - about 3pm).
The local pub again called us, where we had shared a roast turkey dinner and a Ploughman's Lunch (which I had to inquire the contents of). Liz embarrased us both by asking what "that thing with the roast was". It was, of course, a Yorkshire Pudding. Locals laughed at us. It was great!
We then jumped back on the 358 to head back to Bromley. Unfortunately, being a Sunday, Liz's favourite dispensers of strange sausage roll substances were closed, much to her dismay. Her temporary sadness was quicky alleviated with a trip to the nearby Squirrel Gardens.
Thanks to Roy and HG, the only phrase I could remember whenever I saw a squirrel was "squirrel-gripper". Thanks guys. They were kinda cute, but didn't want to come over for Liz to pat them. Similarly for the geese and ducks.
Leaving Bromley on the now-famous 358, we headed back to Beckenham. The call of the local pub there was too much to resist one last time, so we had a quick pint there in the sunshine (which there has been an abundance of over here - very strange), before heading back to B&B's B&B.
We just had to finish off our bottle of wine, since carrying it was going to be a royal pain. So we did. This helped ease the pain of sleeping in the lumpy bed, with the dogs shaking the house to be let out, and doors slamming all night. Strangely, I'm still going to miss that place.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 31 Aug 2002
Elephant & Castle ( 3 photos )
We've now been to Elephant & Castle. Jade is living in a share house with four others. We weren't expecting much from inner-city London living, and we were pleasantly suprised.
Her place is very new, well-appointed, and she's living with great people. A far cry from the dirty, drunken image we had. That's not to say that that sort of thing doesn't happen. It's just that you can get something better if you look hard enough.
She's actually just got a "real" job, so this was half a new-job celebration party. Any excuse! She cooked us a great meal, followed up with some yummy expensive ice-cream. Liz watched The Matrix while Jade and I worked on reducing her China / Zurich photos to web-site size with my trusty laptop. She assures me they'll be online soon.
E&C itself is a big mess - subway walks all over the place serve to completely confuse the traveller. I'm forced to admit that they attempt to make it easier by the placement of maps telling you which places are in which directions. This would be great if these maps actually had a "You are Here" arrow on them. The end result is a lot of random wandering looking for streets and bus stops. This is common London-wide.
Home early, Liz proceded to watch her favourite TV show over here, "I'm a celebrity - get me out of here!". This survivor-style show, set somewhere in the Australian Outback (!) consists of sixteen or so of the whinyest poms you'll ever meet, stuck together for weeks to whine at each other. Complete with the "dial 123456 to vote off Tara now!!!", I'm tempted to ask for a "vote all off now" number to ease the pain.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 30 Aug 2002
Two-for-one Cocktails are Evil ( No photos )
Yesterday, we had a reasonably slow one, starting out with taking two of the four(?) dogs, Molly and Tiggy, that are at our B&B out for a walk. Not really knowing where we were going, we ended up in a wood taking a nice stroll. Very different from Sydney.
Then, we jumped back on the British Rail System for a trip to knock off a few more tourist destinations. First Buckingham Place, where we saw the changing of the guard, although not the pompous silly hat variety. Then, we took our first double-decker red busses for a trip up to Madame Toussads (which we didn't go into), and the next-door London Planetarium. This was a little dissapointing, going more for the pretty flashing lights, designed to grab the tourist dollars, than presenting any useful scientific information. Perhaps I'm just a nerd, but they could have done a lot better.
Back on the bus, we went back through Oxford Street - enough to convince ourselves that we don't need to walk through there on foot. Way too many people. The bus deposited us at Trafalgar Square, where we saw people swimming in the fountains, and lots of pigeons thinking "didn't we get a good feed here before?" - feeding them is now illegal.
On to Charring Cross tube station, we caught the tube to Leicester Square, to meet up with Jade.
We had a great night out with her - she took us around Chinatown and Leicester Square, pointing out where to eat, where to drink, and where to stand if you want the contents of your pockets removed.
The night started out at "brb", a yuppy-style bar, which we were at because Thursday nights are two for the price of one cocktail nights. Let's just say Liz is a little slow this morning.
Then on to a little Malaysian restaurant, where the food was good if a little hot. We weren't sure if we could handle the concept of Seaweed Jelly desserts, so Jade showed us to Ben and Jerry's - an ice-cream shop in Leicester Square.
We parted ways with Jade and then made our way back to the B&B, with Liz not giving her drunkenness away too easily to passers-by, except for the gentle swaying motion, sleeping on my shoulder and occasional maniacal laughter.
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 29 Aug 2002
A trip to Farnborough ( 4 photos )
Yesterday saw us take a trip to, as the title implies, Farnborough. It's not too far from Beckenham where we are staying - about twenty minutes bus ride further south.
There were a couple of reasons we went - first was to detour via Bromley and sample some cold pork sausage rolls which have been high on Liz's memory list since I've known her. We had a great lunch of these and a punnett each of strawberries and raspberries - yum!
The next reason was to have a look at the house where Liz's mum Margaret grew up, and then pay tribute to Margaret's parents at the cemetery. It's a very nice place, and quite memorable on the lovely day that yesterday was.
On the way back from there, we decided we should check out how the local drinking establishments were. My first warm pint was experienced in the form of a London Ale. Great stuff! Not as bad as the concept might seem - it was more lukewarm than warm.
Today will be another slow-starting day, before probably heading into London after lunch for a bit more of a look around, then we are meeting up with good friend Jade Chin. She and I did quite a bit of Uni work together, and she has been in London for a couple of months now, living at Elephand & Castle.
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 28 Aug 2002
Quick word from Tim ( 2 photos )
Well, the laptop seems to have survived Liz's update, so perhaps she'll be allowed to do some more in the future, by popular demand!
The Singapore movie is now online! Click the movie icon on the left to view it. It's around 4.3MB, and as before, you may need to install QuickTime to view it. Make sure your speakers are turned on, and be sure to let us know what you think!
The camera will be gone for two or three weeks, so no photos unless we find cheap development and a scanner somehwere.
(permanent link to this story)
Trip to Portugal ( 2 photos )
Well, Tim has finally released his grip on his precious laptop, so now its my turn to tell you about all of our latest exciting adventures!
We now have a mobile number - have a look on the Contact page above for details.
We spent yesterday getting to know a small part of London. Our travels took us to Big Ben, Westminster Cathedral, London Bridge and The Tower Bridge. Unfortunately we can't show you any photos, because Tim's camera has gone on a holiday of its own. To Portugal.
As you may remember, the digital camera has been playing up the last few days, so yesterday we took it to the UK Olympus Head Office. Once there we found an exceptionally nice pom (not at all whingey!), who tried to fix the camera, failed, and then sent it off to Portugal to be fixed. So now we just have my 35mm 'normal' camera.
Tim has been very eager to sample every beer in every pub we have come across (and there seem to be an excessive amount of pubs around here), so I have had to accompany him as The Official Drinking Buddy, and assist him in his quest to drink all the beer in London. Luckily they have some tasty (if very expensive) girl drinks in all the places we have visited so far!
Breakfast at our B&B is still very tasty and filling, so we have been surving on that, a small snack and a pub dinner the last few days, but it is very tempting to try food in all the trendy little pubs, cafes and food type establishments.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 26 Aug 2002
Connectivity Again ( 4 photos )
Just a quick note now that we've found an Internet café not five minutes walk from where we are staying. Good stuff.
Our money isn't going to go far here - everything is just about the right price, if you change the pound sign (which I still haven't found on my laptop) into a dollar sign. You just have to forget the exchange rate and everything is fine!
We had a great breakfast this morning, and have spent the remainder catching up with Meaghan, looking at photos, etc. It's nice and relaxing. The jet lag isn't too bad - I just managed to convince my body that inserting an extra nine hours into the day is perfectly normal. Liz seems ok as well, which is great.
Gotta go - this is costing a lot, and there's still emails to reply to - keep them coming!
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 25 Aug 2002
Touchdown! ( 11 photos )
Well, that's the flying part out of the way for quite some time. It all went smoothly once again, with the exception of us thinking we were going to die when the plane landed - we did a little zig-zag on the runway at high speed which was the talk of the passengers for hours to come. Quite scary.
So I got through immigration OK - I got asked to recite what the conditions of my Visa were, which was fine since I have studied them in fine detail. By the time I had found our baggage carousel (Murphy's Law dictates that when faced with a random choice between two possibilities, you will always pick the wrong one - I went the long way), Liz had already got it all stacked up on a cart. I've got her trained well!
Then, we walked out and were greeted with the fantastically smiling, if very short and hence quite hidden face of Meaghan! She guided us through the underground in a way that only an Aussie who has been in London for eight months can, and four trains, one bus and many many tall staircases to lug suitcases up later, we eventually located Beckenham Junction - the closest station to the Goodwood B&B where we are staying.
There was one slight moment of panic, where we were given about ten seconds warning that due to trackwork, we had to get out at the station we were at to get a bus to Beckenham. Only Liz made it out in time. Myself and Meaghan were left madly pressing buttons next to the door, but to no avail. We were re-united after Meags and I got off at the next station, and got a train back.
Our first meal in London was supposed to be a pub meal, but all the pubs had stopped serving food. So, we went to an Italian restaurant and I drank an Italian beer. Not quite warm lager, but I suppose there's plenty of time for that.
The B&B is homely, small, and run by two old biddies who are an endless source of amusement. Meags is staying tonight, and will go home later tomorrow. They apparently have no double/queen rooms available, so Liz and I have a twin (two single beds). At least Liz won't steal my covers.
Now that I've been up for almost 24 hours, it is probably high-time to go to sleep. Looking forward to the jet lag...
(permanent link to this story)
Up in the air, we fly ( 11 photos )
(Continued from Singapore 1)
No major dramas getting back on the plane. We had two separate busses attempt to pick us up this morning - which is far better than zero. A funny little man with a very slow Combi van, was it a sign of things to come for us?
Check-in went smoothly, and the bottle of Jameson in the overhead locker above me is the sign that duty-free shopping is not totally lost on us.
Breakfast on the plane was ok, but not spectacular, and we now have a load of drinks to re-fill our bladders. Hooray for economy class!
Liz did the most amusing thing so far on this trip, when our breakfast arrived earlier. We had this strange little packet of cereal, which had the milk in it's lid, and a clear cover over the cereal itself. Far be it from Liz to notice said clear cover, and she proceeded to empty a packet of sugar all over the now infamous clear cover. The look on her face was priceless as she attempted to come to terms with what had just happened. I'll give her that it has been an early morning - we're both feeling sleepy. That's a good thing with ten hours of flying time still to go.
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 24 Aug 2002
A slow day, some site updates ( 3 photos )
Before getting into the details of today, take a little time to note that the header box above now has a working Itinerary/Photos link, as well as an added Contact link. We've got ten photos from Singapore online. The number we get to put up depends on how much time/money we have for Internet access. Plus, only having a few forces us to pick out the best ones!
Breakfast was in the hotel today - $20 each, so we ate like you wouldn't beleive, only to be outdone by a Greek couple at the next table who looked like they were intending to build The Acropolis with the personal bread supplies on their table. Dinner was at a food court where we ate cheaply but very well. $5 each or so, for a great curry (Liz), and some Thai (me).
We didn't do too much today - wandered up to the Internet place to catch up (as you may have noticed), and then across to Orchard Road to see what the fuss was all about. To cut to the chase, not a lot. If you imagine twenty Miranda/Hurstville Westfields together, with a few streets stalls and banks promoting credit cards (???) for good measure, you've got it. I guess we're just not shop-a-holics. Liz must be getting tired, because she usually is!
The only good thing that we did find (tune out now if you're not interested in nerd-detail) is that the Apple store there was running a promotion for the release of Mac OS X 10.2 - where I scored a free mouse (with no buttons!) and a T-shirt with my purchase. The T-shirt is great because it means we can go one day longer without washing. Which is a bonus because we (ok, Liz) was drying our clothes with a hair dryer earlier today in preparation for tomorrow's plane journey.
Which is the next item on the agenda - it seems that our time here has gone very quickly, and we now have a twelve hour flight ahead of us, touching down 15:30 Heathrow Time. Transfers are all organised, as is the wake-up-call (no SIM in the phone means we can't use the alarm - how very clever of us).
However, we've almost had enough of Singapore - Liz has a huge blister on her little toe from walking around so much, which she refuses to let me pop, and we're both looking forward to seeing Meaghan again (yay!), as well as getting out of this heat.
[The next day, we were on our way towards London.]
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 23 Aug 2002
Sentosa Island ( 70 photos )
Our first "real" touristy thing here, we spend the day on Sentosa Island. We were both expecting it to be very over-the-top touristy, but it wasn't as bad as we thought.
After a long walk which got us about half way, then a taxi for the rest as we gave up in the heat of the day, we took the cable car over to Sentosa, refusing the glass-bottomed variant on offer.
Suffice to say we have had yet another very good day, including a monorail ride, rainforest walk, beers on the beach, feeding peacocks, spotting monkeys, butterfly enclosure, Liz touching a snake, swimming, etc.
The only down side to the day is that my camera is playing up. Seems to dislike being powered on and off. However, we still managed to get enough shots in for the day, which is the main thing. I'll now have to try to get it serviced somewhere in London, which could be another adventure. Of course, this all happens after the three weeks of extensive testing before we left Sydney.
We're not sure what tomorrow will hold - will probably wander up to the Internet place again. Most of what we wanted to do has been done, yet it seems a waste to laze around by the pool.
It's mighty tempting though...
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 22 Aug 2002
Little India, Pulau Ubin ( 36 photos )
What a great 24 hours! Without going too far into the history or politics, Singapore is traditionally divided into three main Ethnic Quarters. Our hotels have been near "Chinatown", and yesterday, we went for a walk up to "Little India". A huge eye-opener! We went on a walking tour around the area, and saw a huge variety of Indian traditions - gold jewellery, saris, body art and of course food.
We suprised ourselves by walking into a vegetarian restaurant, and doing the "I'll have one of what they're having" trick. Liz was excited when the menu came, since it was in English. Imagine our deflation when we realised that while the letters were English, what they came together to form was certainly not something we had encountered before. The communication with the waiter was quite amusing - he came back to ask if we wanted one of the things or the other. "You'll have to suprise us", I said.
But, as you can see on the left, it was all worth it - fantastic food, highly recommended. We just have no idea what it was. It was about a 45 minute walk from our hotel - in the heat, we're both sleeping a lot and feel very fit from not yet taking a taxi, even though they seem to make up around 50% of the traffic.
Today we followed on a suggestion by Alan Heighway, and took a trip out to Pulau Ubin. Pulau seems to mean "Island", and Ubin is the particular island. It is quite a long way off the beaten tourist track - in the strait between Singapore and West Malaysia, but governed by Singapore. This involved a walk to Outram Park station (about fifteen minutes), train to Pasir Ris - the end of the line (CityRail could learn a lot by sending a few representatives over to observe the trains here - they are absolutely fantastic), a bus to Changi Village (at the North East corner of the main Singapore Island), then a ferry to Pulau Ubin (actually called a "bumboat"). Yes, it was a very interesting trip.
The island itself seems to survive mainly on tourism - most of the shops hire out bikes, which we of course did. Liz had two out of fifteen gears working, mine managed four. We ate lunch out there before heading back, utilising all the modes of transport that we did before.
This was the first part of the trip where the GPS has worked - in the city the tall buildings obscure the signals, since there are very few satellites directly overhead (being so close to the equator). It was very handy, but we've found our way around most places using low-tech maps and memory.
We feel we've accomplished and seen a lot here already, and still have a few days to go! Might need to spend a little more time in the hotel pool (pictured right, from our room's window), and we're still intending to get to Sentosa - possibly tomorrow.
Until next time...
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 21 Aug 2002
Woohooo connectivity! ( 24 photos )
A nice little internet cafe which will let us use the laptop. I'll attempt to bundle some pictures for the next update.
The new hotel is the Novotel, and it is quite a bit nicer than the last one. The pool is actually outside, which is a strange concept here. We've both worked on our tans a little (don't worry mum I'm not pink yet!).
This cafe is right near the Raffles Hotel, which has some historical significance in that some guy landed here, walked up the beach a bit and built a hotel. Or something.
I managed to restrain myself as we walked through eight levels of heaven at the I.T. Mall - so many computers! Liz had to physically restrain me as we walked into some of the shops. Interestingly enough, they had a few "girl" shops (Liz's term, not mine) to keep the women occupied. This worked well enough so that I bought an extra set of batteries for the camera.
Enough for now, will write again in a couple of days. Cheers!
(permanent link to this story)
Concorde Hotel ( 24 photos )
(Continued from Before Leaving Australia)
We've successfully survived a flight, transfers, lots of queues, two meals and a very hard bed.
It's been great so far - last night we went to a place called the Heng Heng Fish Head Steamboat (I'm serious) for dinner. The food was great, washed down with a few Tiger beers. However, it was a bit overpriced. We stand out a mile away over here - taxis stop and beep to see if we want a lift, and the menu prices are only shown if you ask enough - some not at all. It was late, and we just wanted some food.
So, this morning we set out to get miles off the beaten tourist track, and instead had breakfast at a little "cafe" in the middle of a business district. Prices (suprise, suprise) were much cheaper, and the food just as good.
The hotel is reasonable - we're on floor eight out of twenty-seven, and there's open-glass style lifts in the middle which are lots of fun. The "entertainment" at the bar downstairs last night was four young kids and a drum machine doing Abba hits, so we stayed well clear.
I had to teach Liz how our shower worked last night - it's one of those ones where you only have one set of taps for both shower and bath, and you have to pull a little button up to get the shower to come on. I think they are going to become very common sights from now on.
We're just having a bit of a break now before we transfer to our other hotel, which I can see out our window so it's not a long haul, and then head up to Orchard Road to hunt out Internet connectivity, change some money and perhaps spend some of it.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 20 Aug 2002
A teary goodbye ( 10 photos )
Many, many thanks to friends and family alike who came to the airport to wave us off. It was really appreciated - a great memory for us both.
According to the video screen on the seat in front of me, we're travelling at 903km/h, 9753 up, it is -34C outside, and we should arrive in Singapore half an hour ahead of schedule. Not bad at all. It must have a GPS driving it. Mine has trouble tracking satellites up here, so I haven't been able to compare figures.
No real dramas so far - the biggest has been that I couldn't claim the GST back on my camera - I need to send the original receipts to Canberra. Another job for my ever-helpful family!
The food was fantastic - easily the best plane-food I've had. We've just watched Ice Age on our in-flight computer-y thingo. Very nifty. Liz has just started watching Spiderman, and I think I'll join her. Bye!
(Continued in Singapore 1)
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 19 Aug 2002
Last transmission ( 7 photos )
This is it folks, we're off in about 12 hrs time - I'll be busy sleeping and panicing, so won't do an update until we're in the air.
We're all packed (we think), car is sold (thanks Bryan!), and the flight should be on time (no thanks to a scare from striking Qantas workers who run the Singapore Airlines check-in).
My parents have all sorts of interesting information should you need to contact us about anything in particular, or if there are any affairs which need tidying up.
My suitcase is currently a bit over-weight (must take after it's owner), so I'm either going to have to smile sweetly, pay more, or throw some of it out.
Next log from the plane!
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 17 Aug 2002
The big noise is over ( 2 photos )
Just a quick one - I'm out of a job, and the leaving celebration was great - an afternoon/evening wandering around The Rocks, sampling some beverages. My crazy (and cashed up, apparently) work mates bought me a Garmin eTrex GPS!! It can successfully navigate us around the block, and we waypointed some of the pubs around the place, so maybe we can use it for some more important things in our travels :)
The party last night was great - thanks to all who made it to say goodbye - we're gonna miss you all. The clean-up wasn't even all that bad. For those who didn't make it, the theme was Aussie Yob, just to remind us of what we're going to miss. There is definately something to be said for a party where the clothes I've been wearing all day for the setting up (complete with ugg boots) are also what you wear at night. Photos to come...
(permanent link to this story)
Thu, 08 Aug 2002
Happy Birthday Mum! ( No photos )
Despite not yet having our bond back, everything is getting rather scary.
We're now about as settled into Margaret's as we're going to be and we have our plane tickets and accommodation vouchers! Many thanks to Kim Bartlett from National World Travel for all your hard work.
Liz today bought an Olympus mju Zoom 140 camera - a nice little 35mm jobby to take "real" photos with. Supposedly weather proof as well, so we might just have to see how true that really is...
I've thrown together a little movie of our experiences so far. Entitled Our World is Changing (8.8MB - you might need QuickTime to view it), it's my first effort using Apple's iMovie software, and I have to say, I'm very impressed with what it can do. My camera can take movies (although without sound), and merged with some pictures, transitions, music and titles, I came up with this little thingy.
Let me know what you think, we might do this now and then to show you what we're up to.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 06 Aug 2002
Nail-biting stuff ( No photos )
Everything is now out of the house that's coming out, cleaning is all but done, and the final inspection is in two hours!
It's come up quite well - certainly as good if not better than how we found it. This, coupled with the fact that we saved the Real Estate agent the trouble of finding a new tenant, leads us to believe that we shouldn't have any trouble getting our bond back.
Which is nice, considering I just had to pay $4000 in HECS. Ouch.
We've had a fairly small amount of damage during the move - the major casualty has been my thumb. Ouch again.
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 04 Aug 2002
I can hear my voice echoing in here... ( No photos )
Well, we're almost out of the house. I write this from Liz's mum Margaret's place, where we slept the night. The bed hasn't quite made it over yet, so we slept (badly) on the fold-out sofa bed.
To my right there is about twenty boxes of our stuff, packed up, and I'd guess that there's still a couple to come before the big stuff (bed, wardrobe, table, etc) can be moved out. Hopefully this will all be finished today, leaving tomorrow for cleaning before the inspection on Tuesday.
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 02 Aug 2002
As far as the real plans go ( No photos )
Thought I'd split this away from the mega-tech post so that it could actually be noticed.
We've booked eight nights in a Bed and Breakfast in Beckenham, which is apparently a twenty minute train ride from the "real" part of London - enough to be not in the thick of things all the time. With a bit of luck, Meaghan is going to join us for a few of these days before she heads off to Italy for a month or so.
This should be about all our bank accounts can bear, then we head on a train (also booked) up to Carlisle (North England) to meet with Liz's uncle Peter. That's about all we have planned - and it's more than enough for now. Let's keep ourselves guessing.
Also, I'm going to have to work out how to use a "pound" sign, then a "euro" sign on my laptop.
Back home, the phones are signed over to Mr John-Claude Zadro, who is moving into our little house in Penshurst along with Jane and possibly one other. This is because we move out of it tomorrow! It's gone so fast. We have the lease until Tuesday, but we'll have to get everything out this weekend so we can clean and fix up the place for the inspection on Tuesday.
Still yet to work out how we are going to move the wardrobe and the mattress anywhere - they came in a big truck, and they ain't going back that way...
(permanent link to this story)
All tech-ed up, somewhere to go ( No photos )
Well, we're now surrounded with enough tech gear to break into the pentagon.
Last night, I purchased an Olympus C-720. It's a 3MP Digital Camera, with a big 8x zoom. Haven't had much chance to play with it yet, bit it will certainly do the trick. I picked it up at Harvey Norman Caringbah, which was not as painful as expected, along with lots of accompanying gear. Expect lots of photos from it here as we gallavant around the world.
Also arriving yesterday was my Bluetooth Adapter, which allows my laptop and phone to talk to each other. Not very interesting? Think Liz and I, in the middle of Europe somewhere, in the combi with no sign of Internet connectivity anywhere. Except, that is, on the mobile phone network.
My recently purchased Ericsson T39m mobile phone also has Bluetooth, so it fits the bill perfectly. Bianca the iBook will the be able to talk out through the phone to the big wide world, sending and receiving emails, updating this website, etc.
Already, I can move contacts back and forth while my phone is still in my pocket, which is nice in terms of synchronisation and backup, but the real value will come with GPRS-enabled internet connectivity roaming across Europe. Hurrah for technology!
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 16 Jul 2002
Rolling Along Nicely... ( No photos )
It seems that perhaps most of the hardest stuff is out of the way. This is quite a nice feeling!
Sure, we've still got to organise vehicles, jobs, mobiles, bird cages, cars, music, itinerary, tax and a bas, but we're getting somewhere at least :)
It looks like friends of ours Zadro and Jane will move into our place and take over the looking after of Lucky (pictured left), which is nice of them.
There's also a back up plan, so when they get sick of looking at her and/or dealing with her annoying ways, they can palm her off to some other poor unsuspecting victim. Hooray for choice.
There's a minor problem with our itinerary which I hope to have sorted Real Soon Now, and we still haven't organised accomodation in London. I'm waiting to hear back from some friends who are going to buy a place there, as any money we can save in a city as expensive as London has to be a good thing.
Meeting up with Meaghan again should be good, so that's definately something we're looking forward to, although I suspect I won't get a word in edge-wise as the girls do some hard-core catching up.
Oh, and in a funny twist to last month's bank statement fiasco, guess what arrived in the mail a few days ago? Yes - a very late bank statement, original version. Glad I chased it when I did.
Thats all for now...
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 26 Jun 2002
Fitzroy Falls ( No photos )
I'm away on the Sydney South East band camp, which is for kids years 5-7 who are pretty good musicians for their age. I'm tutoring sax, which is always lots of fun!
My Visa is back - a fairly good turn around time, all things considered. If only their process could be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th (yes, 20th) century. This means that I now have a Visa (erm, sorry, "Entry Clearance") for my entry into the UK, and a Passport as well! Good stuff.
The only real outstanding as far as I know so far is to find a home for Lucky. If you, or anyone you know is interested in a female Blue Cattle Dog, we have just the one for you!
Cheers.
(permanent link to this story)
Mon, 17 Jun 2002
Sick at home ( No photos )
The nasty flu-thingy has bitten me and I'm spending some time at home today.
Nothing heard back from my Visa application yet (suprise). We've been organising all sorts of little things that need to be organised before we can go away - changing the memory in my laptop, trying to get my phone repaired, buying suitcases and cold-weather gear, etc.
Oh, and I've organised an interview for someone to take over my job at work, which is kinda weird but I went to uni with her, so I know she's capable!
We've almost decided to buy a car for UK, then put off the combi purchase until Europe (ie. February 2003-ish), for the following reasons:
- Side-of-the-road: UK is the same as us here in Australia, most of the rest of Europe is the opposite. One less headache.
- Diesel: I'm yet to see a UK combi that is diesel, whereas quite a few of the European ones seem to be. With Unleaded at $2 a litre, and diesel getting better economy as well as "only" costing $1.20 a litre, it's the better choice.
- Accomodation: we expect to spend most of our time in hostels / friends places around the UK anyway, so the "house-on-our-back" snail-style is probably overkill.
Until next time...
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 07 Jun 2002
Statement of intent ( No photos )
The bank statement arrived yesterday - not too bad, after all. I've left early to get the Visa stuff sent off. Now, how many more hurdles can I find... ?
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 05 Jun 2002
Train's the way to go ( No photos )
We're on the train on the way to work, Liz is reading the paper, and I thought I'd throw together a quick rant incase anyone is interested. I'm sure nobody is, but it might make me feel better.
One of the things you need to get a Visa or Entry Clearance into the UK is evidence of how much money you have to get you by. This typically comes in the form of a bank statement.
This would not normally be a problem, except for the fact that my latest bank statement never made it to me. "Fine", I thought, "I'll just go into a branch and get a new one." How naieve I was.
Upon arriving at the branch near work of the bank in question, I went to the admittedly helpful teller (or clerk or Personal Finance Enginner, whatever...), and bestowed upon her my tale of woe. It was then that the first problem came through. Their computer system could, wait for it, only print me out the transactions since my last statement was issued.
How helpful! For the Visa application, you need to show a full month's transactions, which of course this "transaction listing" (not even a statement, and which I was about to be charged $4 for the privilege of recieving) did not.
So, I went home, rang the statement help line, listened to an eternity of on-hold music, and eventually spoke to an operator who informed me that their computer system was just as useless. He offered to send me an "official" version of the same "transaction listing" (ie. less than one month's worth), which I accepted and arrived a few days ago. However, it would take, wait for it, one to two weeks for someone to find my missing statement, and send me a copy, which would be marked "duplicate".
Aaaah, making life easier for the customer. Love it!
So, my Visa application is now waiting for someone at the bank to wander around the place, find my statement (it seems that they can't actually get it out of their computer system, even though their Internet Banking system can go back 100 days), copy it, stamp it and send it to me.
My rant is over, and I'll keep you posted on the application status...
(permanent link to this story)
Sun, 02 Jun 2002
ENG:SWE 0:0 ( No photos )
I've updated the post ordering some more. It was putting months in alphabetical order by month name. This behaviour was interesting, but less than correct.
Also I've fixed the Journal archives when the current month doesn't happen to be 3 characters long, as May was. Doh!
I must remember to submit my changes back to the author of blosxom.
(permanent link to this story)
Watching the world cup ( No photos )
Initially I wanted to get to the world cup on the way to our world trip, but that didn't happen. I'm just watching it all on TV/net instead. Try it!
Back on topic, Liz has all her passport stuff organised, just waiting on her Nursing Registration which she sent off today. I have my passport, but now have to send it off to Canberra to apply for my United Kingdom Visa. Aaah glad to see progress has made life easier!
This wouldn't be so much of a problem if I had all the bits and pieces of stuff you need to organise such a thing, but it seems that the National Bank really wants to help and has managed to loose my statement which I need to send off to prove how much money I have. I'm just glad I started it all early.
Oh, and Liz's nursing registration takes an average of 5 months (yes, months) to process.
Make sure you start these things nice and early.
(permanent link to this story)
Tue, 14 May 2002
Up in Newcastle ( No photos )
I'm "at work", waiting for some servers to arrive that were sent to the wrong place... no real suprises there.
It seems that the
Olympus C-720 may be the camera to get when it launches here in June-July-ish. 3MP, 8x Zoom, not too pricey (hopefully). Otherwise, the C-3020 is a good price but only 3x Zoom.
Time ticks away...
(permanent link to this story)
Wed, 08 May 2002
Hit counter installed / Cameras ( No photos )
I know it's kind of lame and SO 1997, but I've installed a hit counter to keep track of how many people have a look at this site.
Thought I'd add CSS to the whole site while I'm at it. It's such a nice change.
Also of interest are the digital cameras that I'm looking at using to take overseas with us. Here's the current shortlist:
- Nikon CoolPix 885
- Olympus C3020
I've been looking pretty closely at lots of cameras, and slowly whittling down the features that I do and don't need. Richard from work has helped in this process by showing me a Sony 1.3MP camera and also a Canon 4MP (S40). This has helped me to find where in the range I want to go. The Canon is all singing-all dancing, and a large quantity of cash. The Sony is a nice size, but lacking features and picture quality.
Let me know if you have any recommendations.
Tim.
(permanent link to this story)
CSS Added ( No photos )
Well, isn't it pretty. Nice to learn how it works. I don't think I've learnt anything new in html for about 4 years...
(permanent link to this story)
Sat, 27 Apr 2002
Better now? ( No photos )
I've massaged blosxom and its data files - seems to work OK. Imagine that...
(permanent link to this story)
Post ordering ( No photos )
I'm modifying my weblog script to see if I can get the file order and dates to survive the ftp process.
At the moment, they all show up at the remote server with the same "post" time, which is when I actually uploaded them.
Obviously this isn't going to work particularly well for us when overseas, since we're going to go for days/weeks without connectivity, and then upload in batch.
Hope I can get something sorted out. At least it's a good excuse to brush up on my perl skills while I'm away... :)
(permanent link to this story)
Fri, 12 Apr 2002
Updates ( No photos )
Added the Journal Archive and current location, which is a link to Lonelyplanet.
(permanent link to this story)
Access Problems? ( No photos )
There seem to be problems accessing the site from my work, though I suspect that's just some broken proxy server somewhere.
Tim.
(permanent link to this story)
The site is (almost) up! ( No photos )
Well it's 3:30am, and I think that I'm doing quite well to get a website redesign working.
I've just been playing around with getting blosxom integrated into the Europe page, and it seems to do its job quite well, and I almost even understand what the code does. Nice little package.
Enough for now, off to do more site work...
(permanent link to this story)
(customised)
On Wednesday morning, we got up early. We were keen to get to the beer halls early, as people had told us that there had been no seats left at 9am. But that had been on a weekend.
On Sunday morning, we got up and had breakfast at the hostel, and caught the bus to the Vatican City. The sight of the Vatican City was just as amazing as it had been the day before, but on Sunday we went there for just one thing: to see the Pope! On Sunday mornings, he comes to his study window and looks down on the crowds below and blesses them. On this particular Sunday, however, he didn't appear and we have since found out that he is ill.
After a nice buffet breakfast in the hotel, we got ourselves organised and went out for a wander.
Eventually giving up fighting the bright light and waking up, we had a further look around the complex, taking the obligatory photo next to the official marker.
On Thursday, most of the day was spent driving North along the E6.
We have just spent a great day exploring Bergen - a quaint little city which it is hard to be believe is the largest for a big distance.
And so, we were heading for our third country in two days, Sverige, which most of us know as Sweden. Home to Volvos (seen plenty already), Ericsson, and of course the famous Swedish Chef, this one is going to be fun. This site is supposed to have lots of interesting information on the country, if you have time to read a bit more.
A bit of a driving day this one, we headed first for an interesting feature on our map - a fourty kilometre or so long causeway joining the provinces of Noord-Holland and Friesland. Called Afsluitdijk, it was quite interesting to drive along. About a third of the way across there was an information centre where we found out that it was actually a dam, created to increase farming land. The scale of the thing was quite impressive, and driving along it the road in the distance shimmered as if not there. As in many other places here, there are bridges that open up while yachts sail through, leaving the motorists to get out of the cars and wander around for a while, which is a pleasant change from the monotony of diriving around.
Awaking Saturday morning, we had a great breakfast and chatted about all sorts of things, including how they thought that I look like Dad (no way!), and of course how they remember when I was born. It's always great to visit distant family friends and somehow feel like you are home.
Sunday we awoke and decided that our faithful tome Eccentric London was again the thing to read, aiming for a walk around Kensington via Hyde Park.
WOW - Isn't she gorgeous?! ;) She actually commented that that uniform would actually have no pants back home - their dresses are as long as that blue top is!
Now that Liz has easily taken the cake for the longest website update in history, I'm back to tell you about our weekend and how this week is shaping up - rather well!
Saturday we awoke and were once again living the care-free life, wondering just what to do with ourselves. So many options! After the success of last time, we once again took a walk as recommended in our Eccentric London book (thanks Peter Bowyer for this - we're getting lots of use out of it!).
On Sunday, we caught the ThamesLink (an overland train), from just near our house, into the city, and we went to The London Transport Museum Depot. This is a huge warehouse where they put all the old tube trains and double decker buses and various bits of transport memorabilia that doesn't fit in the actual museum itself. The Depot is only open to the public a few times a year, so we were lucky that we were around on one of the days it was open.
We drove up to Milton Keynes to visit Meaghan, who is once again living with her Grandma. We went down to a great little pub on the river-side for some lunch, and also had a couple of great walks around the area.
Liz's birthday was a success for the part I was awake, as she somehow managed to accrue the world's supply of chocolate, along with several other goodies. Hearty thanks to those who sent wishes, I know she appreciates hearing from you all.
Walking back from our National Insurance interview this morning (in an original condition 50s government building, complete with loads of graffiti from those who obviously didn't get their government benefits), it started to snow. Just a little bit, but snow nonetheless. However, as I went in to work, it had stopped.
I know it's now a little late, but then most people aren't going to be reading this over Christmas anyway!
Well, we have been galavanting all around London these past few days looking at places to live. There's so many to choose from, and a lot (though not all) of them are pretty good, with very nice people.
After a late and lethargic morning, we set off for a walk through the foggy fields towards a nearby village. A wonderful sight, but getting mighty cold in the exposed parts.
Peter's party went off without a hitch, although I was not well enough to pop out more than a few times. Everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves, and Peter now has a great collection of strange alcoholic beverages people have given him. Liz and I provided a crockery set, which came in handy with all the people, and Margaret a book of David Attenborough's new series The Life of Mammals, which has just started.
Awaking in the Cotswolds once again, we breakfasted, then headed off to nearby Broadway, where we had dinner last time we were in the area. This time, we took in some touristy shops which were even more outrageously priced than the rest of England.
It doesn't seem like long at all since we were up at John O'Groats - the far North-East corner of the British mainland. Today, we're near Land's End.
Sorry for the slackness of the updates here - we ate up all the phone credit doing the photo uploads, and had to find a convenient place to recharge it. Thanks Liz for the update - I know people get sick of hearing from me all the time. Sights on Margaret next.
Today we visited another of Margaret's old friends - Dorothy in Chiswick. Yet more great hospitality and another nice place to relax in.
Slowly awakening this morning, we breakfasted before taking a trip into Charring Cross (near Trafalgar Square) for a guided tour from Margaret. This took in the Royal Festival Hall (lunch there), National Museum, several bridges across the Themes, and then the two most important things:
Well, Margaret is here, safe and sound. Apparently her flight was not bad, but she's pretty tired. I'm going to try and get her to write a bit for the journal, as well as reminding Liz that people like to hear from her as well!
Wales, for the moment at least, is on hold. We're still in it, but only by a mile or so.
New Photos Online!
Well, that's the flying part out of the way for quite some time. It all went smoothly once again, with the exception of us thinking we were going to die when the plane landed - we did a little zig-zag on the runway at high speed which was the talk of the passengers for hours to come. Quite scary.
