Home Again

Been home for nearly a month now, but thought I would finish off the blog 'cause I hate leave things uncompleted!

Spent about four days in Split. When I'd spoken to some backpackers in Zagreb they'd all said it wasn't a place where they had spent a lot of time and definately hadn't been there for long. So, I was really surprised, because it ended up being my favourite city in Croatia. Second day there caught a ferry out to Hvar Island. Very touristy but had a really nice holiday feel to it. Another really hot day, so it was a bit of a struggle climbing up the hill to a fort overlooking Hvar Town. Walked around the island a bit, but couldn't get into this fancy resort - but in my shorts and singlet it looked like I would have been really overdressed anyway!



Next day took another ferry out to Brac Island (not bad for someone who has a tendency to get sea sick!). Docked at Supetar which was cool, but again filled up with English and European holidaymakers. So, took a little bus around to a tiny fishing village called Milna. The bus ride was nearly more fun than the place itself - we winded around some pretty tight roads and got a good idea of what the rest of the island looked like. Milna was fantastic, very few tourists but just a gorgeous place.



Took a bus to Dubrovnik, where my very friendly host at the B&B picked me up at the bus station - which I was very grateful for seeing how high above the city we were. Spent the afternoon walking around the city walls surrounding the old town which took me a lot longer than it should have. So interesting looking down into the city and seeing people in their gardens and putting out their washing. For nosey people like me it was awesome. Next day I just explored the city and all the little shops and lanes. Good thing about a country which doesn't have the euro is that you have to spend all your kuna before you leave :) In the afternoon I took a little boat out to Lokrum - heard there was a nudist beach, but as hard as I tried could not find it! Spent the afternoon swimming, the water was so clear and blue - blissful. They had very cool stairs attached to the rock dropping into the water, which was very handy.

Next day, flew back to London. A bit of a relief to speak English again and not suffer from the guilt that you get when you can't speak the native language of the country you're visiting.


Spent the following day in Oxford, unfortunately a bit drizzly and cold, but it is England after all so I wasn't expecting anything less. The University was very old but pretty and I had a look around the museum as well. Nice old people who thought they were getting in my way kept saying sorry even when there was nothing to say sorry for - only the English do that, very funny.



Last day in London spent the whole day along Oxford Street, spending the last of my money on clothes to fill up my pack. Primark was an experience in itself - felt like the busiest shop you can imagine on Xmas Eve ....... times 10. It's a very cheap shop where people were piling clothes into these big baskets like they would never see the inside of a shop again! Best bit about English shops are that they have jeans with different lengths - genius! So good for shorties like me who always have to pay someone to bring their jeans up.

Then, had to go home, which I was happy about at the time, but now have itchy feet again. Getting out of Heathrow was an experience in itself, their computer system had failed, but after standing outside for 6 hours, our flight was the last to get out that night. Meant that my 2 hour transit in Singapore was literally cut to about a 2 minute run through the airport, so that was fun. But, in the end it is nice to be home and with Spring here now, can start thinking about my next trip .....

Cycling and Wine

This is going to be a long post I think, since it must be nearly 2 weeks since I've written anything and I've done so much. Sorry, not going to post any photos because my memory card was playing up so I've started using another because I don't want to lose my photos like Rebecca did.

Left Grenoble a couple of weeks ago and had the longest train ride ever. Took 3 trains to get to Graz, Austria which included an overnight train between Zurich and Graz. I only had 10 mins to race through the train station to get to the train, didn't want to think about having to sleep in the station overnight. Arrived at Graz early the next morning and spent the rest of the day exploring the city before meeting up with the people on my bike tour for a few drinks in the evening. Graz is the second largest city in Austria after Vienna, but doesn't seem to be too crowded with tourists. They've tried to modernise the city and have a couple of weird structures around the Mur river running through the city. One of the buildings resembles something out of the Alien movies, and houses the modern art gallery (figures!!).



Had such a great time on the bike tour, it was so nice to not have to think for 10 days since everything is done for you. Never thought I would like an organised tour, but I think it helped that we were cycling around instead of being driven around in buses, and the sightseeing was mostly what we saw along the way rather than stopping at lots of museums. I was a little bit worried that I'd be the youngest there and there would be mostly couples, but there were a couple of us in our 20s and only 3 couples out of 16 people on the trip. They were mostly Brits except for one Canadian guy, but since Explore is a UK company they only really concentrate on marketing in the UK. Everyone was really nice, and the whole group got on really well together. Our guide was a Polish guy in his mid-20s called Michal, extremely good looking and we had a running joke between the girls about his preference for light grey lycra bike shorts (as you can imagine there is a reason why most guys go for black shorts!!). Needless to say, the scenery wasn't the only thing that the girls were admiring along the trip :)



Anyway, each day we cycled between 30 and 70 kms. Started off in Graz, then went on to Slovenia and finished in Hungary. Of the three countries, Slovenia was definately the most picturesque. It has small rolling hills covered with little old houses and vineyards.

The locals were really friendly, and it seemed that whenever we stopped some toothless old lady would appear and want to know where we were from and what we were doing. One of the best days was biking to a thermal bath (really a cross between Hanmer and Jelly Park - with hot pools and hydroslides). Had the craziest experience of somehow getting involved in a fitness class in one of the hot pools together with all these old overweight Slovenians. One minute they were lazing around and the next there was some instructor at the front of the pool getting them all to do the Macarena!! That afternoon we biked up to a little village called Jeruzalum. We had a very gay guide show us around the little church and give a talk about the history of the place. He was so enthusiastic, but I'm sure he was making up most of what he was saying because it was so implausible. He was telling us that they have a belief that if you ring the church bell, your wishes will come try. While he was saying all this he was giving Michal meaningful looks, so afterwards we were giving him such a hard time about what this guide was wishing for! That night we had dinner and a winetasting overlooking Croatia (we were only a few kilometres from the border).



During the tour we went to three vineyards to sample the local wine. Slovenian wine is very good, which meant that we tended to have a little too much of it and were a bit wobbly on our bikes for a bit afterwards. The best tasting was at a family run place just before we crossed over into Hungary. The old grandmother made us bread fresh from the oven that she wrapped around pieces of straw so that it was all twisted, the best bread I've ever tasted. Interesting border crossing, because since there are no longer border controls we just crossed through through the bush carrying our bikes. Felt like we were trying to illegally enter the country but Michal assured us it was perfectly ok.



Spent a few days biking around Lake Balaton, which is 75 miles long and seems to be where all the Hungarians and Germans spend their holidays. Lots of them were swimming in it, but it looked a bit murky to me so I wasn't so keen. Finally got to Budapest, where we finished the tour. The day we arrived there was the Hungarian Grand Prix, so the place was buzzing with lots of petrol heads. I spent an extra day there to see some more of the sights. So glad I did now, since the place is huge with tremendous old buildings.

Now I'm in Croatia soaking up the sun before going to chilly London before heading home. Started off taking a train from Budapest to Zagreb. Zagreb is lovely, but unfortunately all the locals are having their holidays so not much was happening.




My second day there I took a bus out to Plitvice Lakes for the day. These lakes are classified as UNESCO protected, which when you see them is totally understandable. Never seen anything like them, there are a series of lakes with the clearest blue water that flow one into the other creating spectacular waterfalls.



Just come from Zadar where I spent the day yesterday. The old town is enclosed within old Roman walls and is so cute. I spent ages just lying next to the waterfront, because they've put in a sea organ which plays as the sea washes into it, so relaxing.


Arrived in Split this morning, seems to be backpacker central. Really hot, has to be in the mid 30s.



Staying in a nice little hostel run by some Aussies, really handily placed within the old town, next to the sea. Got a couple of days here before heading to Dubrovnik then London.

Grenoble

We'll, I'm all by myself now, since Rebecca left to go back to NZ on Sunday. It's definately not the same when you're on your own, but I've got the hang of having no one to check that I haven't left my bag on the bus, remembered the key for the hotel etc. I'm also having people come up to me and ask where I'm from and have a chat, which is nice except when they launch into their life story and how they we're locked up in a psychiatric unit 20 years ago (from a nice lady I spoke to yesterday!).

On Rebecca's last day in Paris we had a look around the Père Lachaise cemetary. If it wasn't for all the graves making it a bit morbid, it's a really nice quiet place. Found Jim Morrison's grave and Oscar Wilde's grave but very difficult to find any of the other famous people buried there since it's such a huge place. We also went down to the catacombs, which is fine until you realise that there are millions of skeletons lain out down there. Very creepy. Before Rebecca flew out we went up to Sacre Coeur, together with most of Paris by how many people were there! The inside of the church is not that exciting but the views over Paris from the top are pretty sweet.


After Rebecca took off, I took the train down to Grenoble in the hope of catching some of the Tour de France. Hasn't worked out though because to get to the Alpes d'Huez you had to spend two nights there and since the ride is closed, it's pretty much impossible to get there by public transport. At least it gives me a reason to come back to France so that I can follow it properly and be better prepared (not that I need a reason to come back to France, it's definately my favourite country I've been to so far).

So with no Tour de France to go to (I've only seen it on the tele) I've had to make do with exploring the parts of Grenoble we didn't see when we were here a couple of months ago. I decided to splash out and get the Grenoble Card - mostly so I could go for a ride on the mini train! Yesterday I went on a walking tour of Grenoble with our guide and a nice Spanish couple. Halfway through he said that a local journalist was doing an article on tourism in Grenoble, so we had our photo taken sampling some walnut chocolates, which apparently are a specialty in Grenoble. Very glad that no-one I know is going to be seeing that newspaper though!

I've also had another trip up in the pods to the fort, since it was so much fun last time. This morning I decided to get out of the city and headed to a little village on the outskirts of Grenoble to take a tour through the caves. Have to say not as cool as the caves in NZ, but it didn't help that they had these neon lights lighting up the caves, seems by themselves the caves are not exciting enough.

Tomorrow I'm off to Graz, Austria to join my bike tour so I'm excited about getting on a bike again, not so excited about the overnight train to get there though!

Prague

Taking full advantage of the free internet at our hostel at the moment, cause it's never fun when you have to pay (especially when you try to convert it to kiwi dollars!).

Our last morning in Mykonos, we took a little boat out to Delos, this little island 1 mile away from Mykonos. It's only about 6 square kms, but it has all these old ruins. We couldn't understand how the Greeks we're able to build these amazing temples on the island, it would have been a real effort transporting the materials. We then took a 5 1/2 hour ferry ride back to Athens, a lot nicer than our trip to Mykonos since it was a much bigger ferry.

We had a couple of hours sleep since we had a flight at 4.20am to Prague (you've got to love those cheap flights!). We obviously weren't looking that great because the Greek security guy at the airport was chatting up the two Aussie girls in front of us, but we barely got an hello :-) It was 27 degrees when we left Athens, and a chilly 16 degrees when we got to Prague at 6 o'clock, so we're using our cardies again. As you can imagine we weren't really up to much sightseeing that day, just had a bit of a nosey around our neighbourhood. We're right opposite the river, which is really handy to everything. The building is really old (like everything here), it even has a few cute little gargoyles.

Feeling a lot better the next day we got up early to bet the crowds to Charles Bridge. It was pretty cool to look at at 9am, but when walked back along it later that day, you could barely move for people! There are loads of statues lining the bridge, and it took us awhile to look at them. We spent the rest of the day at Prague Castle, which is really made up of a few castles joined together with courtyards. Saw another changing of the guard (must be our third or fourth now), this one was my favourite though because they had this band that played from the windows of the castle, sounded a bit like the star wars theme. There were some interesting areas within the castle, like a cute little lane of houses which are now used as souvenir shops, and this creepy exhibition of medievel torture instruments.

Today, we took in the astronomical clock, loved the little skeleton that rang the bell when the hour struck. We also had a look around St Nicholas church, a very elaborate baroque church (seen the inside of so many churches now, definately more now than the whole of the past 25 years!). Spent the rest of the afternoon at the Jewish museum, which is actually a number of synagogues with displays. It also included the Old Jewish cemetary, where there are apparently 12,000 people buried on top of each other, and all the gravestones are crooked. Quite weird.

Tomorrow we're back off to Paris and then Rebecca heads home and I'll be a bit of a loner for the next month or so!

Greek Islands

Arrived in Athens about a week ago, seemed to have a very good transport system I'm guessing this is because of the Olympics in 2004. Nice to have most things in English because you can't even guess what the words are because the Greek language is so different from English. Although it was still hot, in the early to mid 30s it didn't feel as bad because they have this cooling wind which helps a bit.

Really liked Athens, probably more so than Rome. The Greeks are generally a lot friendly than the Italians have been and they all seem to speak really good English. We spent our couple of days in Athens looking around at all the old stuff. The Acropolis is amazing, shame that it's been under scaffolding since 2000 with all the restoration work. You can figure out wherever you need to go by using the Acropolis as a reference point, you can see it from wherever you are in Athens. Temple of Olympic Zeus was huge, all that's really left are a few of the columns, but they are just enormous you just couldn't imagine how they managed to get them to stand.


That night we took a cable car up one of the hills for really good views over the city and Acropolis. The cable car was really expensive though and when we got up there we realised that there was a nice path leading up there anyway, which was a bit frustrating but nice to walk down there on the way home.

Next day we spent quite a bit of time at the Archealogical museum. Pretty packed with tour groups, but we're used to that by now. Rest of the day we had a look around the lesser known sites like Ancient Agora and Roman Agora.

We took an overnight ferry to Hania, Crete. This was such a beautiful place. Lots of English and German tourists around, but at least that means everything is in English. Our accomodation was right on the waterfront in the old port. Beautiful all lit up at sunset. Not a huge amount of sights in Hania, but it was nice to have a swim and have a look around the shops. After all, we haven't really had much down time so far!

Right now we're in Mykonos. Had a very rough ferry ride to get here. It was supposed to only take 4 and 1/2 hours but ended up taking about 7 hours because the sea was so rough. We were very glad that we had remembered to take our travel sickness pills though because everyone around us was making good use of the sick bags. Didn't help that we had a really anxious Greek woman in front of us who kept making the sign of the cross on herself and getting really worked up when the boat was rolling around. She ended up freaking out and throwing herself out of her chair. At least it distracted us from feeling sick ourselves though!

We've been having a look around the town this morning. All the houses are white with different coloured doors, exactly like all the pictures we've seen. Also been up to see the windmills, now I understand why they have so many after our trip here yesterday. Might have a swim this afternoon, we have a lovely beach a few hundred metres from where we're staying.

Mafia country

Moving on from Rome, we headed to the tourist resort of Sorrento to relax after hectic Rome. Lovely place, but quite expensive. First day we had a bit of a look around Sorrento, not a lot to see but a much nicer base than Naples, which seems to be the crime capital of Italy. It was a bit of a long trip with our packs on the train from Naples though. We were obviously looking a bit hot and tired, because this old Italian guy with no teeth was feeling sorry for us and trying to widen the gap between the doors to let more air in. It was very sweet, but the older people are a lot nicer generally than the Italians our age who won't even make eye contact with you when you ask for something!

Next day we were off for some celebrity spotting in Capri. Didn't actually see any celebrities though, I'm sure they would just hide out on their yachts anyway. Instead there were just a lot of wannabes with their ripoff YSL bags and sunnies, probably picked up from the street vendors in Rome. Once you get away from all that though it really is a beautiful island. We walked around the coast and didn't see anyone for ages.

We spent the whole of the next day in Pompeii, and we really needed all the time to try to see everything. People are right when they say it's huge. Like everywhere, once you get away from the tour groups it feels like there is hardly anyone there which is really nice. Some of the frescoes were amazingly intricate and well preserved, the paintings in the brothel though were quite interesting to say the least. You could really see how they lived though - much easier to imagine compared to the Forum in Rome.

Had a very windy trip along the Amalfi Coast to Amalfi. The scenery is spectacular but the roads are very narrow which is interesting when two buses are trying to pass each other. We finally got off the bus an hour and a half later feeling a bit sickly. Not a huge amount to see in Amalfi, though it is very stunning.
Instead we hopped on a sightseeing bus to take us round the coast to Ravello. Ravello was the most beautiful place I think we've been to so far. It's very green with terraces where they grow lemons and olives.
We checked out some gardens on the coast where there was stunning views around the coast. The terrace stretched out over the cliff though which was a bit freaky.


Our last day in Sorrento, we went to Herculaneum. This was another city which was destroyed when Mount Versuviaus erupted. It isn't as big as Pompeii, they're still excavating it and it looked like the modern town had been built over the ruins. This was where the rich people lived and you could really see the difference from Pompeii. They had a lot of huge mansions some even with a couple of storeys. Train trip there was a bit interesting, I had this slimey Italian bloke sit next to me and try to put his arm around me - yuck!!! We moved to another carriage after that, but we can see what people mean about Italian men though now.

Nearly missed our ferry to Sicily that night. We made sure we left in plenty of time but once we got to Naples we realised we got off at the wrong port and spent the next hour and a half walking towards the main port. Once we got there we were told we had to go to another port, by this stage we were running short on time so we just got a taxi. Sure we got ripped off though, since it was less than 5 mins to get there and he charged us 15 euro!!

Ferry ride was great though. We're in Palermo right now. Spent yesterday looking around the city but there wasn't a lot to see because it being a Sunday, everything was closed. Today we're off to Cefalu, a little town around the coast - might even get a swim! Next stop, Athens were it looks like it is going to be even hotter!!!!

Roma Bella

Well, we've been in Rome for 4 days now. The heat is stifling again, like everywhere else in Italy - sorry for going on about it for all of you in NZ shivering away. We wake up each morning and don't even need to look outside to know that it's going to be sunny and hot.

First day was the Palantine and Roman Forum. Had to try really hard to imagine what it might have been like back in the day since now it's mostly all rubble. The little things are what make it really interesting, like stumbling across cute little mosaics and Latin inscribed in marble. We also checked out Trajan's Column, hardly any tourists were looking at this, but Rebecca remembered it from studying Classics at high school. It's this huge marble column with amazingly detailed carvings spiraling up around it. Colosseum was next, we're now experts on Roman arenas since we've seen them in Nimes and Verona. Not as big as we expected, but you got more of a feel for its size on the inside. Managed to avoid all the gladiators trying to get tourists to have their photo taken with them outside the colosseum, most were too old to look like real gladiators anyway!

Next day we were a bit all over the place. Started off in this little church, visiting the capucian cemetary in the crypt of the church. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen, made up of designs from the bones of 4000 monks. It sounds really odd but the effect is stunning, felt a bit faint though didn't like the thought of being around all those dead people. Carried on to the Spanish Steps. Still a lot of tourists milling around even though it was still a bit early. Decided it would be the perfect place to trip over myself which was very embarassing and I still have a couple of bruised knees for souvenirs. Hobbled over to the Trevi fountain - Rebecca didn't have much sympathy and wouldn't piggy back me, but felt better after we got some gelato.
We threw our coins in like all the tourists, beautiful fountain but a bit of a scrum to get close to it. Highlight of the day was the Pantheon. I didn't realise how beautiful it would be inside, we even had a choir sing for us which was nice.

Today we went to Vatican City. Huge queue to get into the Vatican Museums - this is where the Sistine Chapel is. Queue was fast moving though so we got in quickly. The mueseums leading up to the Sistine Chapel were really interesting, but obviously the real reason everyone was there was to see Michaelangelo's ceiling. Very surreal actually seeing it having read about it, our necks hurt from looking up at it so can't imagine how he did it. St Peter's Basilica was by far the best church we've seen so far. From outside you just don't realise how enormous it is. The artwork inside is incredible - definately one of my favourite places so far.