Sunday 5th July - Split + Bol

Our brief stay in Split is nearly over, but we decide to make the most
of it whilst we are here. We head out down towards the water, through
Diocletian's old palace. Split have a number of information boards
around the city that explain some of the history of the features which
is handy.

We decide to climb the hill west of the city, through a park and up to a
nice lookout point, which provided a suitably spectacular view of the
city. We continue climbing up past a little chapel (with a couple taking
wedding photos, although no other people around so I assume the ceremony
didn't actually take place here), as we continued to climb however we
realised that we were going around the other side of the hill, and would
not be able to see anything any more, so started our descent.

Back towards the palace, we decided to take a tour of the basement of
the palace, as it was one of the coolest (as in temperature) places to
be when the teperature outside is pushing 40. We get inside and start
reading the information boards...hey I've read this one. And this one!
They're all just repeated throughout the display, some of them even had
two the same right next to each other, but with different pictures!
Lazy. Anyway it was still interesting to see.

We were pretty much out of time at this point, so we returned to pick up
our bags, and headed down to the port, where we alighted the Karolina,
our catamaran for the journey to the island of Brac, specifically to the
port town of Bol.

Bol is a beautiful spot, quite small though, as I think it's main claim
to fame is the beach "Zlatni Rat", which is Hrvatski for "Golden Horn"
(incidentallly "Hrvatski" is Croatian for "Croatian"). We jump off the
boat, hit the turistico office for a map of the town, and start walking
to our hotel. This is about a 10 minute walk, but not unpleasant. The
hotel is quite nice with an inviting-looking pool, but we're here for
the beach. Drop the bags and whack on the togs, and we're on our way to
the big Horn.

By the time we reach Zlatni Rat, it's around 18:30, which is good in
that a lot of people are clearing out around this time to go to dinner,
but bad in that the worst of the heat of the day has passed, and the
water is slightly chillier than ideal. However if this is the worst that
I have to complain about at this moment (which it pretty much is) I
figure things are going pretty well.

We spend about an hour going in and out of the water, drying off,
jumping back in, before hunger starts to take over. We swing back by the
hotel to pick up the camera again, and head down to the port to pick up
some dinner.

Dinner is very pleasant, overlooking the bluey-green waters of the Bol
coastline, this is a very agreeable lifestyle indeed.

5885 - Seaside promenade @ Split

5954 - View from partway up the hill

5967 - These trees grow at right anges to the ground for some reason
instead of straight up, like every other tree anywhere.

5981 - Underground in the former sewerage facility, under Diocletian's
palace

6005 - Split really is beautiful

6012 - nice way to end the day in Bol

Saturday 4th July - Ljubljana to Zagreb to Split

We leave Ljubljana today to go to Split, a seaside town on the border of
Croatia, which is pretty much the gateway to the Croatian airlines.
First though is a 2 hour train trip from Ljubljana to the capital of
Croatia, Zagreb. We get stopped just inside the border of Slovenia for
passport checks, then again just over the border. Croatia is not part of
the EU so yay I get another stamp in my passport :) We arrive in Zagreb
with about 2 hours until our connecting train to Split, luckily the
Zagreb town planners thought of this very eventuality and were nice
enough to put a nice big park right out the front of the main Railway
Station. We feast on a breakfast/lunch meal provided by our hotel in
lieu of the all you can eat buffet, since we checked out at 06:30 in
order to get the earliest possible train.

After relaxing in the park for a while, we wander back across to the
station and find our train heading down to Split. This is a much longer
ride (~6 hours), luckily we have reserved seats for the trip (reserving
seats on these trains is an additional cost to the ticket itself - you
don't have to do it, but you risk standing the whole way). We settle in
for the trip and play spot the accent for a little while - I reckon the
girls across from us are one Canadian, and one British, but Celina
swears they're both Irish.

Skip forward about 6 hours (because the train trip was really boring),
and we arrive in Split. I had some concerns that it would be like
Pirraeus, the Greek port town from where we departed to Santorini last
year, but Split is miles ahead of Pirraeus. The map we had printed out
was not a huge amount of help unfortunately, and we did get a little bit
lost trying to find our lodgings, and then of course the rain came
pouring down (and I mean really pouring). We found ourselves out the
front of a pastry shop of some description, and ended up asking the lady
who worked there whether she knew where "Tolstojeva" was. She wasn't
sure, but shouted to her friend who came out to have a look at our map.
She tried to explain it to us in Croatian (as neither of them spoke a
word of English), but we didn't quite get it, so she disappeared again
for a minute, then came back with an umbrella and started guiding us to
our destination, in the rain! These people are really friendly. After
she had deposited us safely at our accommodation she waved goodbye and
headed back. I like this country a lot already.

We drop our bags without unpacking (we're only staying here for a day),
then wait for a little while for the rain to die down. It doesn't
unfortunately, so we dash out into the rain with our brollies towards
the restaurant recommended to us. I have some local specialty with beef
and gnocchi (sp?) and Celina gets some seafood thing (seafood is really
cheap here).

After we finish dinner the rain has died away it seems, so we take the
opportunity for a bit of a wander. I have not brought our big camera or
my phone as I didn't want them to get saturated when we went out for
dinner. This turns out to be A Bad Move, as we end up down by the
waterside for what seems to be the opening night of the "Split 09"
festival, and somehow end up in some VIP only section inside the
audience compound. Behind us there are cops refusing everyone entry, and
here we are enjoying the show, and I don't have ANY camera on me d'oh!

We hang around for about 5 songs (there are various performers doing
songs, all in Croatian of course so we can't understand a word), and
then decide to head back home. At home we turn on the TV to watch the
Split 09 festival (it's being broadcast live, I had a quick look inside
their OB truck it was quite nice), and both agree that watching it on TV
is not as good as being there.

Friday 3rd July - Lake Bled

Friday sees us heading to a large lake in Slovenia called Lake Bled
(pronouned "Bleyd" sort of...). This is a beautiful Lake setting which
used to be the setting of various summer housess for royalty throughout
Europe, including the omnipresent Habsburgs.

There is an island in the middle of the lake, which we decide we will
probably visit later in the day. You can either pay someone to take you
out there in their boat, or for less money, row out there yourself.
Being the wily ones that we are, we decide to walk around to the other
side of the lake, where there is a shorter distance between the shore
and the island, so more time spent exploring the little island, less
time rowing! More on that later.

The first step was to climb the surrounding mountainous terrain, up to
the obligatory castle at the top (see pictures below). After the climb
we came back down, grabbed some lunch, then started heading around the
lake to find the shortest possible distance between shoreline and island.

As we ambulated along, we noticed the gathering clouds, which was a
slightly worrying sight. However with my usual "she'll be right"
attitude winning out again, we exchanged 10 Euros for 1 hour of fun with
a row-boat.

The trouble started about 5 minutes in, and by trouble, I mean rain. I
was rowing as quickly as I could, and Celina was encouraging me to row
as quickly as I could, and also struggling to get an umbrella up. We
reached the island and managed to chain up the boat in what I guessed
was a secure manner, and then dashed inside the church that is located
on the island, where the rain really started to hammer down.

This church has a bell that is ring-able (?) by people, and supposedly
if you make a wish and ring it three times, your wish will come true.
Celina thought about her wish very thoroughly before giving the bell a
ring. I wished that it would stop raining.

We had a bit more of a look around the island, which pretty much
consisted of a souvenir shop unfortunately. There were a bunch of poms
who had been a bit heroic and swam out to the island, who were now
debating what their options were for getting back. I don't know what
they were worried about, getting wet???

As it turned out the bell must have worked, because the rain did
eventually take a break, and not a moment too soon. With 15 minutes to
go on our boat-hire window, we rushed back to the dock and hit the oars
(I hit the oars, Celina took up motivational duties again). But of
course we were not going to escape that easily, and yep, the rain
started again about 5 minutes from shore. It was more of a gentle shower
this time around though so was not as unpleasant as the first time, and
I managed to land the boat quite well, with 5 minutes up our sleeve.

After returning the boat, we had a quick look around the market that was
going on, but found nothing of interest. I purchased my usual souvenir
(a cow bell in this case), after which we called it quits and headed
back home. We ate at the place we had eaten on our first night in
Ljubljana, and I got another massive pizza, which I quite successfully
polished off nicely. Tomorrow is our next country - Croatia!

5791 - that looks like a postcard to me, but then again, I took the picture

5802 - yep it's really that blue

5806 - there's the island

5817 - another postcard

5842 - I'm laughing because I started saying "Stroke, stroke... he he
stroke"

5846 - Rain Rain, go away...

5881 - Whoa...

5883 - You pig

Tracklogs for today -

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Thursday 2nd July - Skofja Loka

Today we have a (relatively) early start, and since we've started going
to sleep at normal times, and subsequently waking up at normal times,
this is something of a struggle. We manage to get down to breakfast by
7am, and JUST find a table, unfortunately in a wifi-free zone, so I
forego my morning fix unfortunately. We make it to the bus station to
catch our 0815 train to Skofja Loka, a little medieval town that will be
compared with the mighty little medieval town of all little medieval
towns, Czech Republic's Cesky Krumlov. This one made a very big
impression on both Celina & I last year.

The bus trip to Skofja Loka is a fairly uneventful ride, although we had
a couple of kays walk in front of us to get into town. We set out and
after about half an hour's walking, we found the information office and
obtained a map and some information about hiring bikes which would come
in handy later. One way the Skofja Loka tourist board is working to
attract more visitors seems to be by hiring girls who like short shorts,
really short shorts.

We walked down into town and set out on our little orienteering
adventure of finding landmarks and points of interest. When we reached
the main bridge into town, we also discovered the bus station. Grrr. We
had been told that the bus and train station were "about the same
distance" from the town, which is obviously bollocks. Anyway, I digress.

We had a bit more of a wander around town, visited the castle that had
been turned into a museum (where the staff out-numbered us!), and then
headed back to the tourist info. office. We noticed when we were in
there earlier that they had bikes for hire and thought we might give
them a bash. It was one Euro extra to hire a helmet, which we said yes
we would like please, to which the reply was "Ok hang on I'll have to
give the guy a call as he hasn't delivered them yet" (!) She made a
quick phone call, and within 10 minutes the brand spanking new helmets
had turned up, to go with the (as we just found out) brand spanking new
bikes they had only just received the day prior to us arriving. How
convenient!

We set out on their recommended path towards a little town called
Crngrob (my spell-checker is having a coronary with some of these place
names). This was better than we expected, for even though they weren't
dedicated cycle tracks, only absolute lunatics drove real cars up there.
We had a ride around for a couple of hours, and rode back through the
old town, and handed the bikes back, luckily unharmed.

Just enough time for a quick ice cream, before beginning the trek back
to the railway station.

5743 - Our glasses at our hotel had been DES Infected!

5750 - pretty town Skofja Loka

5778 - bike riding - that's the "road" behind Celina

Riding through the forest

Additional - not sure if this will work or not, as this is a bit of a work in progress, but hopefully you can see something similar to our tracks for the day here -

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Wednesday 1st July - Postojna Caves & Predjama Castle

Today is a day-trip from Ljubljana out to Postojna Caves, a large
complex of limestone caves. This is a bus trip for about an hour out of
Ljubljana. There are very few photos of this day because Goofeth here
forgot the camera, but I managed to take a few plus a couple of videos
on my phone.

We got the bus and arrived at the bus-stop at Postojna with about 10
minutes until the 10am tour in English. Rushed inside the bus terminal -
"How do we get to the caves please???" Down there, then turn right, then
keep going straight. Ok great, thanks. Out the door, in the general
direction, hmm there seems to be a lot of roadwork happening here, as
in, they're building a road. We sort of look at one of the construction
guys, with a "please let us through!" look, and he waves us through, so
in we go, over the broken stone everywhere, wait, wait, ok run UNDER the
backhoe, then we're through. Start running as we're not sure how far it
is. Of course we JUST make it, and jump on the last train thing which
takes you deep into the caves.

These caves are amazing, apparently the stalactites and stalagmites grow
at a rate of 1mm every (approximately) 50 years. We were pointing out
pairs that had almost joined, saying things like "ooh that one's
probably only got about 5000 years to go!" "Check out this one, I reckon
it'll be about 25000 years for these to join".

At the end of the tour there was a bit of a bonus, with the
reconstructed skeleton of a Mamenchisaurus, which for some reason had
the longest neck of all the dinosaurs, apparently up to 11m. I have no
idea why, as it didn't extend vertically, like a giraffe, to be able to
eat stuff up high, but out horizontally, to provide a really easy way of
killing it if you wanted to, for example, break it's neck. It's no
wonder these things died out.

After the dinosaur, it was another ~10 minute train ride back out into
open air, man it's bright out here. Grab some lunch quickly, then catch
the tourist bus to the other attraction in the area, Predjama Castle.
"Predjama" literally means "in front of cave/hole", because this castle
was built halfway into a cave. Good way to save on building materials.

We do the rounds of the castle, including the secret exit they had which
went through a number of caves and came out some miles away, although
you couldn't do the whole thing unfortunately. We still had an hour and
a bit to go until the turistico bus turned up so we amused ourselves
with some travel Boggle (Thanks Chez & Ka :) )

Activities not allowed at Ljubljana Castle

Clockwise from top left -

-No dogs
-No cars
-No nose-picking
-No levitation
-No dividing scooters by bicycles
-No Putting Your Hands Up For Detroit, even if you do Love This City.

Tuesday 30th June - Ljubljana

Try saying that 10 times fast, or at all to begin with.

Another morning of waking up at, no wait, 6am! Hurrah, we're getting
better. Except that Slovenia is an hour ahead of the UK, so technically
we're still awake at 5am, what gives??? This can't last much longer surely.

Breakfast at hotels can be a bit of a hit & miss affair, luckily this
one is quite good. Heading out for the day, the first stop is at the
Spar (supermarket) to pick up some water. 22 Euro cents per 1.5L bottle,
bargain! Slovenia is looking like a pretty good value country so far.
This view is further reinforced when we climb the hill overlooking the
town to have a look inside Ljubljana Castle, no entry fee! This is amazing.

Slovenia as a country seems to be gearing up a lot to try and increase
tourism. There is a lot of construction going on around tourist-type
areas and lots of new "information" presentation points around the city.
It's interesting to see it as it happens, and would be even more
interesting I think to go back and have a look again in a few years,
after their tourism industry inevitably ramps up.

After exploring the Castle, we head back down towards the town, past a
restaurant called "Vodnikov Hram", which may amuse Borat fans. I believe
"Hram" actually means "Temple" which may provide further amusement. We
pass through the fresh fruit & veg. market, where Celina attempts
several "arty" shots of produce, which don't seem to be working until I
tell her the trick is to just zoom in. Et voila!

This market is also the first time I have ever seen a milk vending
machine. It doesn't give you like a popper or a botte of milk, it
actually gives you a cup, then fills it with milk. Looking at the size
of the thing, I 'm half inclined to believe there is a cow inside that
gives you fresh milk.

Through another couple of churches, we move past the Town Hall. We then
continue south west, to find the remains of a Roman wall. Those Romans
and their walls, they got around to everywhere. It is around this time
that we spot a billboard for Harvey Norman (!), in Slovenian! A very
incongruous piece of home.

Last stop for the day is a series of Gardens, including their war
museum, where I take advantage of an opportunity to take a photo next to
one of their huge tanks. See if you can spot the difference.

Because we're in a foreign country, Celina is very into eating authentic
local cuisine. We find a "Gostilna" which is apparently a very
traditional style restaurant. I order the equivalent to a "mixed grill",
and do the brave thing by just eating whatever is on the plate (except
the sauerkraut, I hate that stuff but Celina loves it, so she has it).
After I'm finished, I ask the guy to run through what was on my plate.
As Celina suspected from the beginning, that black sausage thing, was
indeed a blood sausage, made of congealed pig's blood. Well, that's
another thing that I swore I would never eat that I can mark off!

We round out the day by just chillaxing around the Three Bridges, and
then taking some funny photos on the way home. Well, funny to me.

5633 - Milk vending machine

5667 - Zdaj Harvey Norman, ZDAJ!

5670 - Huge Tank

5698 - Warp Speed!

5701 - *snigger*

5704 - Errr... I'll pass thanks...

5705 - World famous hair-stylist, straight from Australia, Stevo!

Monday 29th June – London to Ljubljana

Woke up this morning at... 5am again, WTF??? Something is wrong with our brains. My excuse is that I wake up this time every morning to go to work anyway, and despite the fact that we have changed time zones, my body still remembers this. I have no idea what Celina's excuse is.

It is at this time that I begin to check all the technical bits & pieces that I have brought along to make our life "easier". I only now realise just how much does not work the way I hoped it would.

The first thing is that for some reason Nokia Maps will not start on my phone. It tells me, in its infinite wisdom, to update to the latest version. This will not be as easy as before, where I have installed it via my PC, and now I only have the Eee, which does not run Windows and will definitely not run Nokia PC Suite. However I track down the standalone installer for the latest version, that can be installed direct on the phone. Transfer it, run the installer, completes, and tells me to update to the latest version the next time I try to run it. Grrr.

I'm now thinking more desperate measures are required. I look up how to perform a full backup of the phone to the memory card, perform this action, then format the phone to factory default, losing contacts, messages, the lot. Try running Maps again, same problem. Run the installer for the latest version, same problem. At thispoint i'm rapidly running out of patience, and am looking for any sort of tools to help with the problem, when I try running Maps without the storage card in the phone. Bam, starts first time. You bastard.

Ok so there is something corrupt on the storage card. I delete the folder on the card that Maps creates to store all its, well, maps and stuff. Great, still works. Except now I have no maps at all. What use is a GPS with no maps??? (None, in case you weren't sure). So now I'm in a bigger pickle, because to load the maps to the phone you need to use the Nokia Map Loader, which definitely only runs on Windows.

Google once again comes to the rescue, some smart cookie out there has analysed all the HTTP traffic that Nokia Map Loader creates when it's in use, and has extrapolated the locations of all the individual map files. His abundance of spare time is to my benefit as I download the required files, and unzip them to my storage card. I now have a fully functioning phone, with maps! Hurrah! (actually the "volume down" button seems to be playing up but this is small potatoes at this point).

Next problem I find – I have brought along an 80GB external USB HDD, for taking backup copies of every photo we take. I have brought 2 USB cables just in case, however neither one of them has 2 USB connectors on the one end, as this drive obviousy requires. It seems the drive is able to draw enough current from my real computer, but not enough from the Eee. So I am now carrying a currently useless paperweight.

A-ha, wait, I have a lot of space on the memory stick on my PSP, I can use that as a backup mechanism. Connect via USB, and BAM, the Eee can see the PSP but not the memory stick inside. If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.

At this point, I decide to give up, as Celina and Reenie are well awake now and we have to get on with the business of actually going on holiday. A quick breakfast, check we have passports etc, and we're out the door, forging towards a rendezvous with the Easyjet Easybus that will transport us to Luton Airport.

The bus arrives, kisses and hugs farewell to Reenie, and we're away. Traffic is particularly bad this morning, so progress is slow, but moving at least. We hopped on the bus at 10:58, and our flight is at 2pm.

I begin to get a little nervous about an hour into the trip when I start noticing the signs by the roadside indicating the distance to Stansted airport, one of London's other international airports. I point this out to Celina, but she's sure the front of the bus said Luton. I can't remember.

A few nervous minutes pass, and Celina asks another passenger "are we going to Luton airport?" "No, Stansted" is the reply, at which point the expletives start coming thick and fast. We are confused, as our ticket clearly states Luton Airport, and the bus driver checked and stamped this before letting us on the bus. The frenzied phone calls begin to Reenie and Naan to try to get a phone number for Easyjet, and some information on how to get from Stansted to Luton airport. Naan gets back to us and says "Ok there is a bus that goes between Stansted and Luton, it arrives there at 2:30pm". No cigar, the flight's at 2. How far are they apart, maybe we can catch a cab and bribe the driver to break the speed of light for us. They're 90km apart. Hrmmm don't think that's going to happen. Reenie in the meantime has found the number for Easyjet customer service. I try the number, talk to a machine for about 5 minutes, then give up. Celina, being made of harder stuff than I, rings the number back and yells at the machine until we get a human. She explains the situation calmly and rationally and enquires as to whether there are any flights flying out from Stansted instead of Luton to Ljubjlana this afternoon. Apparently there is one at 2pm, but it's fully booked. Strange, that's exactly the same time as our flight was leaving Luton. But Celina can only remember there being one flight to Ljubljana around this time. The gentleman on the other end of the line is able to check the booking details for us, and yes we are indeed booked on the flight from Stansted at 2pm. We are now on the wrong bus heading for the right airport.

The blessed feeling of relief is short-lived however, as the traffic has now slowed to a crawl. The impossible task of arriving at Stansted and getting to Luton in time for a 2pm flight has now become the more achievable, but increasingly less achievable, simply making it to Stansted for a 2pm flight. The bus arrives at Stansted at 13:25. We rush to the check-in desk and throw our bags onto the conveyor. Ok good, our bags are going to make it. Now we have to get to Gate 14 ASAP. Wait around for the stupid conveyance train thing, tick tick tick. Jump on, wait nervously, jump off, run like startled rabbits for the Gate. I don't know why we rushed, we arrived at least a good 5 minutes before the final boarding call was made. After that excitement (and the unexpected exercise), combined with not having had any lunch, I was feeling a bit tired on the plane, and managed to sleep for quite a decent portion of the flight.

Land at Ljubljana International Airport, which is about the same size as Proserpine, on the Whitsunday Coast. Ok it's a bit bigger, but not a huge amount. We walk outside, and I instantly take a liking to this country. There is a bit of an Alpine feel to the place, lots of pine trees etc. around. Very nice. We board the coach which will transport us into the heart of Ljubljana.

First night in Ljubljana is very pleasant. This is a really nice city, and we spend a couple of hours just wandering around. We end up at a pizzeria, not quite traditional but pizzas twice the size of dominos/pizza hut for half the price.

dear Aives and Pete

I'm really really sorry I don't know how didn't write you guys in, I even have photos! We're having issues at the moment so can't make a big post but I just wanted to say so sorry! Hope we can still be friends!

Sunday 28th June - London City

Arrived @ Heathrow today, and managed to go out to dinner with
Celina's family, but not much morethan that, promptly fell into bed and
for some unknown reason awoke at 5am this morning. Had a quick
breakfast, then caught the tube to Marylebone, where we set out for the
trek to Casa del Reenie/Bei.

45 seconds later we arrived, marvelling at the location of their pad.
Once we got inside, I was even more impressed, this place is huge by
London standards. They are on to really good thing with this place. We
unfortunately were an hour early, and rudely awoke poor Reenie from
slumber, but she was still one of the best hosts we have ever had, to
the point of providing us with keys and a map! This is better than most
of the hotels we have stayed at!

Since we were meeting up with Kenny anyway, we left Reenie's place
fairly swiftly to allow her to get some more rest, although looking at
the feast she provided later in the day I think she just got straight
into the food preparation. More on that shortly. We met up with Kenny in
the cinema district around Picadilly Circus, unfortnately he couldn't
stick around as he had to drive the 6 hours back home. Gee we've got
some good friends. We spent around 4 hours just chatting and catching up
which was great fun.

On the way back to the tube, it started raining, which threatened to put
a kybosh on the proposed picnic in Regents Park, which we had been
greatly looking forward to. We got back to the apartment, scared the
crap out of Reenie by standing in front of the door just as she was
opening it (sorry :)), picked up our umbrellas, and then realised that
the rain had stopped. Seizing the moment, we made a dash for the park to
find any cover we possibly could, just in case the rain returned. Which
it did, several times throughout the afternoon, at sporadic intervals,
luckily for us however we had managed to find some reasonably dense
foliage under which we could take refuge.

The afternoon was great fun and absolutely flew by, thanks so much to
Reenie primarily for organising and providing a massive amount of food and
drink, thanks also to Stu, Yve, Naan, Liz, Sarah, Suze, Kate, Simon, and
Warren for taking time out to come and catch up with us at the picnic.

Had some drinks at the "Volunteer" across the road, which my cousin
Sally attended, great to see her again after however many years it's
been. She has been living in London for a couple of years now, but
before that was in Melbourne, so it's stil been a while.

By around 10:30 it was getting to matchsticks under eyelids time again,
so we retired back to the apartment, and once again fell into bed and
straight to sleep. I slept for a while, but that's pretty boring so I'll
end this blog entry here.

Have been having issues getting workable offline blogging setup going, but I think I'm onto it now, so hopefully future entries will be more timely.

Addendum – for members of my family and other pedants, "This is better
than most of the hotels at which we have stayed".

Hong Kong

Well sort of, we're waiting for our flight transfer to London, and we never officially went INTO HK, having said that the airport takes up a sizeable area of real estate so I feel like I have seen quite a bit of HK just through the airport windows.

Nothing more to report at this point, the flight was not delayed which is always a bonus, and I was only sick once, although it was touch and go at the end of the flight, where we seemed to be "beginning our descent" for about half an hour.

Next post will likely be from London where we fleetingly try to catch up with friends & family, before heading out on Monday to Slovenia. I think. I'd better check that.

Anyway London people we'll hopefully see some of you today and/or tomorrow!

Braza Churrasco

I finished all 19 different types of meat, except the chicken's hearts, don't know about those. No dinner for me tonight!

So I just worked out how to get my blog to update on Facebook...

You go into "Notes", then "Import Settings", and put in the URL of your blog, and it does the rest! Hopefully if I've done this right, this entry will show up as well! Fingers crossed :)

Kiama today

With the two loves of my life (not the bloody lighthouse).
Saw an S13 Silvia with two stickers on the rear bumper, usually associated with sliding doors, saying the word "slide" and an arrow pointing out each side - very clever :) Had a nice day, pity have to go back to work tomorrow :(

World Tour Madness

Thanks for coming over guys,had a great night :)

Day 25 - 2008-07-20 Travelling to Prague

Day 25 – 2008-07-20

Travelling to Prague

We are up and out of bed at 06:30 in order to catch the bus to the airport. Travelling through Thessaloniki at 07:30 on a Sunday morning gives a pretty good “people-free” view of the city, and it's apparent that Thessaloniki is a much nicer city than Athens. We had tentatively planned to spend a bit more time here and have a look around, but it wasn't meant to be on this trip.

Arrive at the airport, blah blah blah, land in Prague. We catch the bus to Dejvicka (“Day-Vis-Ka”) station, then catch the Metro to our hotel. Well actually we're not staying in a hotel this time, it's an un-serviced apartment. For the location we have, this is a lot cheaper than getting a hotel room. It works out well for both sides I think – if you have an apartment for rent, you would get a lot higher rates renting it out like this than having a tenant permanently, and we get a bigger area than we would in a hotel room, plus the convenience of having our own kitchen etc.

We drop our bags and immediately get out to see the city. It's quite an amazing city – it seems every 10 seconds you need to stop to take another photo. It's extremely picturesque. It's not hard to see why so many movies have had city scenes shot here. It's got a real olde-worlde charme to it.

Unfortunately photos don't really convey the beauty of it but I'll give it a shot-



We go on a mini sight-seeing tour, drinking in the beauty of the city, as well as taking in some of the more quirky sights. For your edification, here is a guy riding a dead upside-down horse.


We are also just in time to see the Astronomical Clock do it's hourly show. This is a large clock that as well as showing the time also shows the day of the year, and how the zodiac signs are aligned (I think). On the hour, then bells chime, and some little figures pop out the 2 windows at the top. It's pretty funny, certainly more impressive than the world's largest cuckoo clock which we went to see in Germany, which did deliver what it promised, a really big cuckoo clock, but then it was just a really big cuckoo bird popping out of a really big hole, in the really big clock. I thought there might have been more to it, but maybe I'm just a difficult bugger.



House at the Stone Bell (below)


Prague meridian line – apparently 14°25'17" east longitude. I have a GPS track of this day so I'll be checking this (notice that I refrained from saying “Czeching this” - oh damn it's started)



As we are heading back to our house, we notice a couple of tourists taking a photo of the roof of some non-descript building – we have a look at their target and see this-


Weird! Prague it turns out seems to be full of “easter eggs” like this – I'll elaborate on this one in a couple of days time (when we found out what it was).

Day 24

Day 24 – 2008-07-19

Another travel day today – we are catching a train to Thessaloniki, which is the second largest city in Greece, to catch a plane to our final stop (if you don't count heading back to Blighty) of our trip, Prague.

We check out of Vienna Hotel for the second time, and go and do a quick spot of souvenir shopping. The train doesn't leave Athens Larissa station until 14:53 so we basically kill some time by walking around and catching up on any last minute sight-seeing we may have missed out on.

After making sure we've done everything there is to do, we catch the metro up to Larissa station. This is apparently the “central railway station” of Athens, which I found hilarious given Strathfield station has more platforms than Larissa. It seriously has 2 platforms, and just looks like some country town station. Very bizarre.

We board our train and find our seats, which some opportunistic dude has tried to snaffle, luckily he knows he is in the wrong and jumps out when we get our tickets out. We must have ticked the wrong box when we bought the tickets, and asked for the “misbehaving children” carriage. So many little mongrels it wasn't funny. There were a couple who were alright but the majority of them were a pain in the neck for all concerned.

We leave Athens right on the dot of 14:53, which surprises me, as every form of transport we have taken so far (I may have mentioned this previously) has been late. Aha, I speak too soon. The trip is supposed to take approximately 5h 45m. It gets to 9pm and we are not at Thessaloniki. I get the N95 out and start checking the names of the stations we are stopping at. Hmmm at the rate we're currently travelling, we won't arrive in Thessaloniki until 22:30, nearly 2 hours late. That's more like what we're used to.

We do end up arriving at almost exactly 22:30, luckily we have chosen our hotel well, we walk out of the train station (which is a proper big train station by the way, much more impressive than Larissa), and can see their sign lit up from the station. A 5 minute walk and we're there. Straight to bed as we have to get up early in the morning to get out to the airport on time!

Day 23

Day 23 – 2008/07/18

Today we are going up the hanging rocks of Meteora to see the spectacular monasteries on top of the world. And the bloody camera battery has gone flat.

I can't believe it. I charged every other device last night (as you will know this is a few devices) except for this one. The problem is it does last for a long time, and I forget about it. I think the last time I charged it was just before I left Sydney.

So all the photos bar about 8 that I managed to eke out of the Eos before the batter went stone dead, are from the N95 or Celina's camera.

As it turns out this is not too massive a problem, as most of the places inside the monasteries you're not allowed to take photos anyway. Some old fart in one of the areas has a big go at me when I take a photo in a place you're apparently not supposed to. He calls me over, and is now about the 4th person on this trip to assume I am Italian and starts berating me in Italian. This is pretty easy for me to brush off as I have no idea what he's saying. He eventually gestures for me to give him the camera and collect it again when I leave. I flip him a universal gesture that pretty much anyone should understand (a shake of the head indicating “no” - what did you think?), which he doesn't take too kindly to, but I basically tell him that the camera is not leaving me, however I won't take any more photos. I think he gets bored of the conversation at this point and starts muttering to himself, so I go back to where Ceilna has been patiently waiting.

This really irritates me because I am pretty good about this sort of thing. I always note the signs that say no pictures (or “NO FOTO!” etc.), and I went back and checked, there was not one sign on this area or anywhere around it that said not to take photos. I should post up the photo I took for a laugh.

So anyway back down off the high horse, the first monastery we visit (where the above incident occurs) is the highest, and therefore most popular. The Grand High Monastery of Meteoron is an impressive building indeed. At the door Celina is forced to don some sort of sarong arrangement, as girls in pants are not allowed for whatever reason. Also men in short pants are not allowed, except if they come below the knee. At least I assume this is the deal. Other men who are not stylish enough (like me) to wear big baggy shorts, are forced to put on a big pair of island-pant looking things.

The monastery was built by the great Meteoron after he'd climbed up this rock and lived on it for a couple of years. I have no idea how they exist up here, what they eat etc. but they seem to have survived to this point in time. I won't comment further on the lifestyle of a monk because they had some information on it that made me very angry, so I'll leave it off this page.

The views from the monasteries are, as expected, spectacular. After visiting the great Meteoron monastery, we visit the second-best one, named Varlaam. This one is a definitely a poor second to the first, doubly so on this visit because there are some sort of renovations going on and we can only get access to about half of the place. Plus at this point my shorts are adjudged to possibly give some knee exposure, so I am forced to pull on the baggy pants this time as well.

We spend a little bit of time here but as there is so little to see we decided to move onto the other monasteries, but mostly to just take photos from the outside as the return on investment (of time and money) is not really worth it after visiting the first place. We visit a couple more monasteries, then hit the highway yet again to begin the trek back to Athens.

We have a pretty straight forward run back to the main city, and it goes by largely without incident. Once we begin to get closer to Athens and hit the Friday night traffic (this is around 6pm on Friday night) it gets a bit hairy, and we almost bypass Athens completely, but I luckily take a last minute exit which gets us on the right track.

We have booked another night at the same place we have been staying in Athens, as even though it's a bit of a dump, it's got a fantastic location, and we already know where it is etc. Better the devil you know. We contemplate stopping at the hotel before returning the car, however think better of it when we realise just how difficult this would be. This city is a maze of one way streets and No Right Turns and all sorts of other traffic rules which I have not quite learned in their entirety. We instead set about the business of just finding the way back to the car rental place. This itself is no easy task, and we end up going around the same block 3 times, each iteration gaining us a slightly wider circuit, as we fumble for the right street.

Finally we manage to get everything aligned correctly and stop the car in exactly the same spot we picked it up. There are no extra scratches, there is a full tank of “gazoline”, so we are off. Back to home sweet home, the Vienna Hotel, where we stayed previously in Athens. We are disappointed to find out the guy who had been on every day whilst we were staying there, and who had come to recognise us and have our key ready for us before we even came through the door, was not working this day. Kind of sad. Plus we had a different room, although still on the 8th floor. They must know about Asians and 8 ;)

Day 22 – 2008-07-17

We unfortunately leave the Hercules a bit later than hoped this morning. Mainly due to the notorious “snooze” button, it's just too tempting.

Back on the road at 9am, we struck out North in search of Meteora. Meteora is an area with amazing rock formations, that some genius monks thought it would be a great idea to build some monasteries on top of. It certainly did keep them secure – you would have to have the dedication of a monk to get up there in the old days. Nowadays it's just a matter of driving up to the carpark, then going down & up around 200 steps. Child's play when you compare it to some of the rope ladders etc that they used to use, or being hauled up in a basket using a simple pulley system.

Anyway we are well aware of the route to take by now, having studied the maps, viaMichelin & Google Maps instructions, as well as Nokia Maps on my N95. If anyone is well prepared, it's us.

As this was the biggest driving day, and not much else happened, now is probably as good a time as any to describe the driving conditions in Greece. I have driven one other time overseas, and that was in France and for a small part, Paris itself. I still have nightmares about returning that car in Paris, we could not find the place, it was raining, and it was 5pm. Shocking drivers too. Anyway in Greece, on the “highways” in particular, where there is only one lane in both directions, they have a “courtesy” system where each driver moves over to the right, so they are driving half (or more) on the hard shoulder. When both directions of traffic do this, hey presto! An extra lane for the nutters who are a in a real hurry. If you were to take a very narrow view of this in theory, you could come to the conclusion that this is, in fact, a “good idea”. You would of course be wrong. The hard shoulder actually performs a useful function, allowing people to stop safely in the event of trouble with their car. This is one of the key situations where the whole system comes to a screeching halt – literally and figuratively. The way the system works is, say you are travelling faster than the people to your right – you utilise the “overtaking” lane, all the while leaving your indicator on and possibly flashing your headlights to let other drivers coming the other way that you are “out there”. This gives them some more reason to pull further over on their side – nobody wants to have a head-on. Except now you've got a stationary car where you were going to go, and some clown flashing his lights at you telling you to go and hit that stationary car so he can get past. Decisions, decisions.

There are a whole host of other situations where the “system” falls over in a screaming heap, but I'll let you work those out for yourself. I'm not sure whether this is actully a “road rule” here or has just become so ingrained in the national driving psyche that it is useless to try and stop it, but either way, it's a bad idea (IMHO). *jumps up on high horse* A system such as driving has to have rules that are hard and fast and not open to interpretation. This goes for stupid laws back in Australia such as getting booked for “accelerating too fast”. Ok let me know what the acceleration limit is around here, and I'll just check my accelerometer, and whoops, I don't have one, and there isn't one.

For the last 2-3 hours of our driving, we are travelling on a very interesting section of road that I believe is currently having a bypass for it built, and good thing too. If you have ever watched the World Rally Championships, and seen the mountain tarmac stages in Spain or Greece, it was kind of like that. Except I wasn't in a good car like a Focus rally car, or even a Skoda rally car, I was in a Fabia. Anyway it was a very long time spent driving for very little (relatively) ground covered. Celina was a bit green around the gills by the end but bag count remained at 0 (unassisted).

We arrive in Kalampaka, which is the closest town to Meteora, but still on the highway. The address of our hotel is given as “Kastraki, Kalampaka”, so we cruise around looking for a Kastraki Street. There is nothing doing in this area, so we stop and I ask a guy at a milk bar, who doesn't speak a word of English, but through a system of elaborate hand gestures, I am able to glean that we go up this bit, then around and around for a little, then we are at Kastraki, and that Kastraki is not a street, but another “suburb”. We head off in the general direction, and bang, there is the Hotel Dellas, smack bang in between Kalampaka and Kastraki. So that's what that address meant.

By now it is 5pm, and all of the monasteries are closed except for one which is open until 6pm. We decide to save them for the morning, rather than try and rush up there for just one at this time of day, as the one that is still open is not even in our top 2. We check in and relax, and are asked whether we would like a welcome drink, to which we both reply “just water I suppose would be great”. This shocks our hostess who then offers ice cream, which we cannot refuse. Very good service. Very nice ice cream!

Dellas is by far the nicest place we have stayed at, despite being only rated 3 stars. The place was only completed 2 months ago, so everything is brand new, and it looks like it's been done well, not on the cheap. Obviously the price we got was kind of an “opening special” as they are probably still trying to build up a reputation. Celina & I are both of the opinion that they shouldn't have any problems, the place is excellent. It would be quite a competitive field as well I imagine, there are a LOT of hotels around that area. I hope they do do well as they have done a great job so far.

We head into town to have a look around and grab some dinner. There is not a huge amount to see in Kalampaka, but the backdrop of Meteora makes for some spectacular shots, especially at this time of day. Celina finds a new favourite, a dish called Briam which is basically a whole lot of different vegetables fried in a pan from what I can tell. I have souvlaki and no I'm not getting sick of it.

After dinner we have a bit more of a look around, then retire back to the hotel to get an early night, so we can be at the monasteries as soon as they open at the crack of dawn, 9am. Lazy monks!

Day 21 – 2008-07-16

We're on the road today. We have booked a hire car so we can get out of Athens and see other parts of Greece at our own pace (i.e. very fast). The car pick-up does not go smoothly. We have already done a recce on the location of the car hire spot, so we turn up actually about 20 minutes early. We have checked out of our hotel and left our bags there, the plan being to grab the bags once we have a car, cos when we've got a car we can go anywhere! This seems like less and less of a good idea the more traffic we walk past. By the time we arrive at the car hire place we have changed our minds to thinking that this was a distinctly bad idea. The first thing you want to do when starting to drive in Athens is not go for a bit of a drive around to the hotel, find a place to stop, pick up some bags, then find your way back out again – you want to get the hell out of Athens. At least that was my feeling, your mileage may differ.

Anyway we arrive at the place, and the guy informs us that the car has not arrived back yet. He makes a phone call, and then tells us that the car now has arrived, but there is a “major problem” - they haven't been able to wash it. We're not taking it to the Auto Salon, we're going to drive it around Greece! He's fine with this, and we agree for them not to bother washing the car. Then we strike a problem on our end. We have not printed off the booking form voucher thing saying we have paid for the car hire, as it was done through a 3rd party broker. If we cannot provide the voucher they are going to charge us the standard rate until we can provide it. At this point we are getting pretty annoyed. The guy calls the broker and they end up saying they will fax it through to him. Why they car rental place didn't have a copy of this in the first place is absolutely beyond comprehension. Anyway after about 10 minutes it still hasn't come through, so we inform the guy that we are going to return and grab our bags and come back, and we will try to print out our voucher as well.

So we hop back on one of the busiest Metro sections in Athens at 08:00 on a weekday morning, which is bad enough, grab our bags from the hotel, are lucky enough that the people on the front desk are friendly and able to help us print out our voucher, then hop back on the metro, fully laden. I'm sure there were a few people quite peeved at us on that train.

Back at the car hire place, they have received our voucher by fax, and now have our printed copy as well. All systems go. We go outside to pick up... our Skoda.

Skodas have improved greatly I believe since the bad old days where they had pretty bad reputations. Still, I am a bit apprehensive about putting in over 1000 kays in a foreign country in the car that has arguably been the most frequently targeted as the butt of automotive jokes in history.

Now that we have finished the trip I can tell you it performed fine and we had no major problems.

Getting out of Athens is relatively easy, 3 traffic lights, a couple more corners, then we're on the expressway, sort of, road. Ancient Corinth, the first stop, is only 70 kays away and we arrive there quite swiftly, after taking an unnecessary and foolish detour to modern day Corinth, which is basically just another town like any other.

Ancient Corinth on the other hand has some great ruins, plus quite a few artifacts that have been saved. You can walk around the whole site and get a feel for how the place would probably have run – we're walking down the main street, there's the row of shops there, etc. There are also a few temples etc. and my knowledge of Greek gods and what they are the gods of is stretched to the limit (I know Apollo Creed was the god of boxing or something).

Gyros for lunch in Ancient Corinth – 2 Euros. Bargain lunch.

Back on the road again, and the next stop is Ancient Olympus. This is the site where the original Olympic Games were held, until they were cancelled by one of the Roman Emperors (I think it was Constantine?) around the 4th century AD because they pagan games were at odds with the Christian religion. This site is absolutely massive. Before we got to the site, we actually checked in at our hotel, the Hotel Hercules. This place is 2 star, but it was a pretty good 2 star. We walked up to the reception and told the old chap behind the desk that we had a reservation for tonight and he goes “Sure, number 5” and drops the key for us. Ok great thanks!

We walk down to the Ancient Olympus site itself, and manage to spend over 2 hours just walking around it all to try and cover the entire thing. It really is a huge place which included housing for the athletes, saunas, the main competitive field of course, training areas, and of course the place where the Olympic flame is lit still today for the modern Olympic Games. This last one was a bit of a disappointment actually, I can't remember what it looks like on TV when they show it every 4 years, but it's pretty ordinary in real life.

Many goofy photos are taken of “action” sequences in the training areas – discus hurling, sprint starts, shadow boxing etc etc. Quality work.

We have a great dinner, which we think is possibly the best deal yet on the trip, although once again it takes about an hour to come out.

After dinner and a quick look around the town (it only needs a quick one there's not much to see there – having said that it is a lovely little town), we retire to the Hercules (not the plane, the hotel) to get some rest.