Planes, trains and automobiles

2007-12-05T23:56:00.000+10:30

New Zealand

New Zealand

2007-12-05T23:10:00.001+10:30

California

2007-08-31T02:27:00.001+09:30

26.08.2007

Another early start as the shuttle to LaGuardia airport came at about 7.25am. We flew United to Denver airport. In there airport there are signs every now and then showing where the tornado shelters are.

We arrived in San Jose and were greeted by Neda’s childhood friend Suzana, her husband Robert and their cute 3 year old daughter Madelynne. Last time we were in the States, we stayed with Suzana and Robert where they lived in Seattle. Since then they have moved to San Jose (Silicone Valley) about a 45 minute drive from San Francisco. It was great to see Maddie, last time we saw her she was 6 months old. Now she is a very lively and talkative (once she got over being shy) little girl. Robert and Suzana live in a residential community that immediately reminded us of the suburb of ‘Agrestic’ from the TV show ‘Weeds’, very pretty and well manicured. We spent the night catching up on the last few years and Suzana made a beautiful meal. By about 10pm we were pretty tired though due to the early start and the 3 hour time difference. Neda and Suzana stayed up talking til 1am though.

2007-08-31T02:26:00.000+09:30

24.08.2007 – 25.08.2007

We had been to New York for another previous visit, so we have already seen a lot of the big monuments and buildings so we set out to see a few other things we didn’t have time for the previous visit. We started up 5^th Avenue and soon came upon a curious sight of at least 1000 firefighters in their ceremonial uniforms lining up along the street. We asked a local who couldn’t believe that we hadn’t heard that during the previous week a couple of Firefighters lost their lives fighting a fire in an old bank building near Wall Street. This was the funeral procession. It was quiet and the line of firefighters stretched as far up the road as we could see. They paraded the coffin on the back of a fire-truck and the families followed.

We then had a look in a few shops, including Saks on Fifth. We headed up to Central Park. Last time we only saw the park at night time on a horse drawn cart. We spent some time exploring the southern 3^rd of the park. The gardens are pretty with lots of places for children to play and climb rocks, and lots of people laying about on the grass. There is a zoo, lots of large grassy fields for playing sports, and gardens with lakes and statues. It is really serene in contrast to the metropolis surrounding it which is guess is the point. We exited the park on the West side to go and explore the American Museum of Natural History. They had a special frog exhibit so we went to that as well.

The following day we looked through the Guggenheim Museum. The building itself is really something to see. The building is shaped like a slightly deformed cylinder and when you look up from the foyer, you can see all the way to the roof of the building. The path through the gallery spirals up along the walls of the main part of the building and there is an annex where they show more collections. We found some of the conceptual art a bit of a stretch to interpret, but a lot of the modern art from the early 1900s was really impressive.

We also spent time in the Soho area, and Little Italy and right down to Ground Zero and Wall Street. Ground Zero didn’t really look much different to when we saw it 3 years ago, just a bit tidier maybe. Wall Street was quiet because it was a weekend, mainly just tourists. We then headed along the south east bank below the Brooklyn Bridge where we were offered numerous opportunities to buy fake Rolexes and hand bags.

2007-08-31T02:25:00.001+09:30

23.08.2007

4am and we are up and packing. We said goodbye to Eveline and found our way to the car drop off. We flew to Frankfurt for the connecting flight where we found that we could not get a seat next to each other. I guess the Germans are too quick with their internet check-ins or something. This happened to us last time we were flying from Frankfurt to New York. Last time they upgraded us to Business Class, fortunately they were feeling generous again J. We spent the 8 hour flight traveling in style and comfort. Still, when we arrived at Newark Airport, we were a little groggy. We arrived at our hotel pretty late and tired and decided to have a bit of a disco nap, which ended up lasting til morning, whoops.

2007-08-26T10:22:00.000+09:30

22.08.2007

Our last full day in Europe. The 3 of us took the train into central Amsterdam. We all had umbrellas because today had 80% chance of rain.

Our first view of Amsterdam straight out of the train station is the canal, and a 3 storey bicycle parking building, the stock exchange and a lot of shops. Straight ahead was the busy main square where the rarely used royal palace is.

Amsterdam is pretty. It has many canals and crooked houses. All of the buildings are built on poles because the ground is too soft, but most of them seem to be leaning on each other, or to the side or even looming over the sidewalk below. We saw the outside of the Anne Frank Museum and the 100m line up to get in, that was enough for us. We spent most of the day strolling through the ‘9 streets’, a section of Amsterdam where nine parallel streets cross canals (Is it 7? Not sure). This area is very trendy, and most shops here are quite expensive as well but very cool. We had a quick look inside a typical house-boat, some people live on boats on the canals.

We saw some flower markets, selling bulbs of just about any variety of Tulip that you could want (as well as marijuana starter kits). Tulips aren’t in season now so we could only admire the pictures.

We walked through the red light district (while it was still light). It is an interesting place, but I wouldn’t call it pleasant. There are the famous ‘coffee shops’, not as prominent as I had imagined. There were also the buildings with full length window booths in which the prostitutes stand and pose on display waiting for their next customer. It was either not their regular working hours or they were all with customers as most of the windows had curtains drawn. We left the red light district for the railway station area where we hopped on a canal tour of the city. It was good to see Amsterdam from a different angle. While waiting for our train, we bought some Dutch junk food, a cone of chips with mayonnaise, and a couple of deep fried treats called kipcorn (nothing to do with corn) and Krocket. These are crumbed and deep fried parcels filled with pureed meats, not sure which ones. Not a health food but a must for connoisseurs of fried foods.

2007-08-26T10:04:00.001+09:30

21.08.2007

We decided that we would spend our 2 whole days in Nederland with one day in Amsterdam and the other exploring a nearby national park that Eveline knew followed by a tour of Zwolle. The weather report showed a 70% chance of rain today and 80% the next day so we decided that we will visit the park on the day with the marginally lower chance of rain. That was this day. We drove for about 45 minutes to find the De Hoge Veluwe National Park. The park is a mixture of forests and plains covered in tall grasses and purple flowers. It was a really welcome change to spend some time in nature again. With the exception of some of Croatia, the last few weeks feel like they have been city after city. A different thing about this park (for us, not for the Dutch) is that almost no-one walks, everyone is riding bicycles. They supply these free white bikes for people to borrow. We spent a couple of hours riding around and taking pictures. We had lunch in the park restaurant. We then road off to look at an old hunting lodge in the middle of the park. It started to rain a bit as we started our 15km ride back to the car. It still seemed nice to be riding in light rain while the trees provided some shelter, but that didn’t last long as then it started bucketing down. I went through stages of thinking ‘okay, my jeans are completely drenched and my shirt is sticking to me, but at least my socks are dry. Ten minutes later it was ‘okay, I need to let the pools of water out of my shoes but at least the underwear is dry. Then it was ‘oh well, we can’t get any wetter’. I could hear Eveline starting to sneeze behind me. At least the weather was still warm.

At the time we dropped off the bikes and walked into the car park the rain actually stopped. We all saw the humour in it, but the ride home was a wet one. In Zwolle it was hot showers, warm clothes and hot tea and lots of chocolate to try to avoid getting sick. Once fully recovered we went into Zwolle for a tour. Eveline tried her best to answer all of the tourist questions that we were firing at her. The old town is surrounded by a canal or moat. We took in tours of the shopping strip, two of Eveline’s family's restaurants Poppe and Pampus, and tried a few pubs. One of the pubs was hosting its weekly ‘Murphy’s’ quiz night (though the pub doesn’t actually stock any Murphys). We were able to help out Eveline’s friend in the music round, taking them to a position of second to last.

2007-08-26T10:00:00.000+09:30

20.08.2007

Bye bye Berlin. Even when we were about 10 km out of the city we still caught a glimpse of the TV Tower. We rode the Autobahn for most of the way to the Border with Nederlands. Once into Holland, we found the terrain very flat and very green. Once we made it to the city of Zwolle, we parked and called our friend Eveline for directions to her apartment. Driving in Zwolle was a bit scary because there are more bicycles on the road than cars and I didn’t want to hit one.

We got to Eveline’s new apartment just a short walk from the town centre. It is very nice and Eveline was kind enough to sleep on her guest bed so we could have her double. We met Eveline when she stayed at our friend Eddie’s house in Adelaide as she was traveling around Australia with Eddie’s Cousin B (Bertha). We chatted for a while to catch up, before freshening up for dinner. Eveline,s parents own and run 3 restaurants in Zwolle, and tonight Eveline treated us to a magnificent dinner at ‘The White Goose’. If you want to enjoy a nice night at a restaurant, try dining with the restaurant manager . The setting is a small village just out of town, surrounded by fields, and trees. The atmosphere is great. Eveline talked me in to trying a ‘surprise’ menu, where you choose between 3, 4 or 5 courses (we chose 4) and you simply tell the waiter of any foods you don’t like. They then bring out 4 courses that are a total surprise (sometimes even for the manager). Each course was superb with the highlight for me being the meat course of Ostrich Meat. I have never tried that before but I like it. There really should have been the demand for it that they were expecting in the Ostrich Farm phase. The meat is like really nice beef, very red. Neda’s meal was nice too, she ordered beef steak from the menu.

Eveline did not put us up to this review, it was honestly the best meal we had on the trip.

2007-08-26T09:28:00.001+09:30

2007-08-26T09:20:00.000+09:30

19.08.2007

At the time of writing this (New York – we got a little behind again), I have already posted home the Lonely planet guide to Europe, so I apologise for the numerous mis-spellings of places or inaccuracies of explanations here-after:-

We jumped on the metro to Haymarket Square again. Here we wanted to look at a famous market area called Haymarket Hoff, a warren of about 12 connected courtyards housing shops and apartments. Unfortunately most shops we found in Berlin were closed on Sundays. We walked south to the square again where you can clearly see the ‘TV Tower’, a 368m tall spire, with a restaurant and viewing platform at about the 200m mark. This tower is actually visible from almost anywhere in Berlin and is very handy for orientation. We headed south west through the Museam Island, an island in the river that has 4 different museums on it. We continued onto Unter Den Lindon, the main street of East Berlin. It runs from the Museum Island right through to the Brandenburg Gate. The street is lined with a university, various embassies and important buildings. On one of the squares at the Humbolt University we saw a memorial of the first of the Nazi book burnings. This is made up of a glass floor in a part of the square that looks down to empty bookshelves below.

On our way to the Brandenburg gate, we noticed about 50 police trucks, each full or surrounded by about 12 police. When taking photos of the gate, we asked a local why all the police. She told us there was a demonstration for free speech or something happening within the hour.

The gate itself used to be the main entrance to the city and connects East Berlin with the Tier Garten (the central park) and was incorporated into the Berlin Wall as one of the major checkpoints. North of this we visited the Wall victims memorial (191 people died trying to cross the wall) and onto the Reichstag. The Reichstag is an old parliament building where a fire broke out in 1933 which Hitler blamed the communists for and allowed him to take power. The building is stunning, and beautifully set on the rivers edge. It also overlooks the Tier Garten. We spent some time walking through the Tier Garten which was a very nice park, with gardens and forest in the middle.

We exited on the south east side and made our way into Sony Centre. This is a massive steel and glass comlex surrounding a central courtyard that is sheltered by a tent like peak of glass and wire. Quite impressive. There is an Australian restaurant here, but we resisted the urge to have some damper with cheese.

There is a section of the wall outside with some explanations of the ‘death strip’. The wall itself was on the actual border between the east and west or Berlin, there was another wall a few metres in on the East side. Between these walls the border gaurds patrolled and this was called the Death Strip, I think the Sony Centre is on these grounds, might be wrong. We headed south along the path of the wall to try to see the Topography of Terrors and Checkpoint Charlie but our path was interrupted just next to the former site of Hitler’s Bunker by council employees guarding some red taped border. After asking someone, we learned that the area was roped off for the shooting of Tom Cruise’s new movie Valkyrie so we had to take a large detour. I took a photo of some of the set including an old truck. We heard later that on that night a bunch of cast were injured when they fell off a truck during filming, I wonder if it was the same one :-)

We saw the Topography of Terrors, a section of wall which has details of the events and methods used by the SS but we didn’t get anything out of it because it was only in German. There is almost nothing to see at Checkpoint Charlie, except the sign still standing saying ‘You are now leaving the American Sector’. We then headed back to Unter Den Lindon for some well deserved Hagen Daas ice-cream.

That night we went for dinner on Haymarket Square and later to a bar further north called the Berger Bar, a cool little indie joint which apparently hasn’t been redecorated since the GDR days. It also hosts regular “Russian disco” nights.

18.08.2007

The drive to Berlin was long enough after only a short sleep. The countryside is really pretty the whole way. Just as we were about to reach the German border we started seeing these little wood cabins on the sides of the road, with prostitutes in their underwear and long coats waiving towards us. It was a sad note to our last few minutes in this country.

After the German border we were treated to some nice villages (think Hahndorf but even more German) before happily arriving on the famous German Highways. The Megane handled an average speed of 160km comfortably. On our way into Berlin, we drove past our first glimpses of the remains of the Berlin Wall. We arrived at the Holiday Inn in Mitte in time for a bit of a snooze before heading out for dinner.

We got a little dressed up because it was a Saturday night. Neda wore a dress. Once we got out of the Metro Station, we got some funny looks. After looking around we noticed that we couldn’t find any women in dresses, they were all wearing pants or jeans and top, usually a T-shirt. It seemed as if legs were a rare sight. Neda got a bit annoyed with all the staring. We ate Japanese at this nice little courtyard near Haymarket. Neda ordered a wine and I ordered a beer. The waitress came back with a wine and something green in a fat cocktail glass with 2 straws. Upon enquiring I found that this was the beer I ordered, a typical Berlin Weiss beer brewed with some kind of flavour which the waitress couldn’t remember the English for. I will do some research. To me it hardly tasted like beer but is very refreshing. Doesn’t go well with raw tuna though.

2007-08-26T09:11:00.000+09:30

2007-08-26T08:53:00.000+09:30

17.08.2007

We decided to stay on another day in Prague. Apart from wandering around, we spent a lot of the day in an internet café updating the last few weeks of the blog and adding photos as this was all long overdue. It was good to slow down for a day.

That night we took a break from schedule and went out for dinner and a movie. Dinner was at a really nice restaurant in the ‘New Town’ (only new in comparison to ‘old town’). I had the biggest calzone I have ever seen, until I stuck the knife in and it literally deflated. It was too big anyway. The movie was another cultural experience; Transformers J

At about 12.30am we made sure to see what we were told we couldn’t miss; the Karlovy Bridge at night time. The bridge is lit up with the ornate street lamps and you can see all of Prague and Prague Castle lit up and reflecting off of the water.

16.08.2007

Today we took a day trip out into the countryside to visit the town of Kutna Hora. This town was a very powerful town some centuries ago due to a wealthy silver mine which supplied a great deal of Europe’s silver. It was nice to stroll around another, quieter city in Czech Republic. We finally found evidence of the famous cheap eating in Czech Republic, trick is you need to be out of the centre of Prague. Here we spent about $6 for 2 pizzas that were too big to finish and 2 soft drinks. The people here (or at least the few we spoke to) are very nice. Once we parked the car, we needed to get a map to see where things were and we couldn’t find the tourist centre. We stopped in a local trinket shop and I asked the lady to point out what direction the tourist office is. Instead of pointing, she called her daughter in to come and watch the shop and asked us to follow her out to the street. We kept expecting her to stop and give basic directions as to where to head, instead she actually walked us through about 500m of street right to the actual tourist centre. We were a little embarrassed at this but grateful.

On the outskirts of Kutna Hora there is the Sedlic Ossuary, better known as the bone church. It is a small chapel in the middle of a grave yard, but the inside is decorated with the remains of about 30,000 people, most of whom died from the plague. There are four bells, one in each corner of the room, about 4x4x4m in size, all made entirely of bone. There is even a chandelier that includes at least one of every bone in the human body. We cannot say that it was enjoyable, but this was something we wanted to see. It is a very strange place, made to feel even stranger when the tourist bus turns up and you see children playing tag next to the ‘décor’.

Given that we had access to a kitchen and to supermarkets, we took the rare opportunity of cooking pasta for ourselves tonight. It might not seem exciting but after such a long break it is nice to have a simple meal.

15.08.2007

We set out to explore Prague in daylight. We saw the old Astronomical clock perform its little show on the hour, a couple of doors open each side of the clock and you watch little models of the 12 apostles parade past while a small skeleton rings the bell. We toured through the streets of Stare Mesto (the old city). The old town of Prague is like no other city we have seen. With winding narrow streets weaving between old buildings, many of which have some sort of interesting theme, packed together into a strange fairtale like montage. It is hard to explain with words, unless you studied architecture through history I guess but the photos should explain some I hope.

We left the Stare Mesto for the west side of the river. We crossed via the Karlov Most (Charles Bridge), the most famous bridge in Prague. Everything about this bridge is ornate, starting with the towers at each end, the statues that line each side of the bridge the whole way across to the view all around that takes in the west façade of the old town, the river and the islands, including Kampa (see further down) and of course the spectacular Prague Castle up on the hill north west of the bridge. Street vendors are everywhere here.

There is a superstition that the rubbing of two particular spots at the base of one of the statues along the bridge brings good luck. As a result there is always a crowd of tourists (us included) who gather around to touch the dog and the lady for luck. There is so much of this that those parts of the statues are perfectly polished and smooth whereas everything else is a weatherworn brown like a new copper coin.

One the other side, the township is similar to the east side. We weaved through the streets and up a lot of stairs to reach the castle grounds. The palace is situated on an area that appears to be about half the size of Stare Mesto itself (though I could be mistaken). It is extensive, and quite stunning. In the centre of the grounds is a huge cathedral. The castle grounds are surrounded by small gardens and the best views of Prague below. After taking this in we made our way down the long stairs to the town below, on the way stopping to have a brew in what claims to be the oldest pub in Prague. I can’t recall the exact year but it was somewhere in the late 1400’s. It seems more people are happy enough to have their picture taken outside with the ‘Golem’ mannequin. We walked south along the west bank, and onto the small ‘Kampa’ island which is mainly taken up with parks and restaurants (they are everywhere).

2007-08-17T06:20:00.000+09:30

Hey, for those of you who prefer to look at the pictures than read, we have now finally managed to upload photos to the last few weeks of entries, so please have a look. Leave some comments too. (there are a lot of photos of rellies, sorry, but it is our blog).

love to everyone from Prague. We will write about Prague soon.

2007-08-17T06:18:00.000+09:30

14.08.2007

Because we were leaving Vienna today (because we wanted to be in Prague tonight for a particular concert) we got up and did the fastest self tour of Vienna that we could. We wondered the streets and saw some great sights. We saw numerous churches, buildings and took a tour of Mozarthaus. This is one of the apartments that Mozart stayed in in his time in Vienna and today is a museum dedicated to him. We took the tour, but unfortunately the musical performances are currently on summer break. We walked through the Hofburg palace complex, which includes the Spanish riding school and the famous Lipizzaner horses. Unfortunately the riding school is also on summer break so we couldn’t see the horses either, good time to visit Vienna L.

The drive to the Czech border was reasonably quick but soon slowed right down as the Highway disappeared and we found ourselves overtaking endless caravan convoys of Czechs and Italians on a road that seemed to pass through every town it could. I think that our GPS was to blame as we later saw that there was a Highway that would have halved our time on the road.

The Old town of Prague is nestled in the kink of the river Vlata, and is full of squares and small alley ways meant purely for pedestrian traffic. Finding our way through this to our hotel on the other side was an experience. I would gladly sign a petition for the local council to more clearly mark the borders of vehicular accessible and pedestrian only areas as we found ourselves more that once backing out of cobbled squares with lots of bemused onlookers.

Our room in this guesthouse is awesome. We didn’t think that anything could top Singapore, but this might. We have a huge apartment on the top floor of our building. From our balcony in the roof we can see the spires of the Gothic Church in the old square, just next to the famous Astronomical Clock Tower.

After parking the car and cleaning up, we raced to the venue for the concert of one of our favourite bands “…and you will know us by the trail of dead’. We got there shortly after they started (9pm! What’s up with that?). They played a great set, even though the 2^nd guitarist was sick and couldn’t stand to play. They apparently hate their latest album, calling it a total failure and so played a set probably the same as any set from four years ago. Pity because we like that album anyway.

We then had a late dinner in the old square, right next to the astronomical clock.

2007-08-17T06:17:00.000+09:30

13.08.2007

Neda’s birthday, Yippee!

We started the day with a breakfast that Ivana prepared for us before she had to go to work. We packed up and headed into town to meet Ivana at the Art Gallery where she is a curator. She took us on a private tour (it is closed on Mondays). We said our farewell and picked up a couple of things from some shops in town before starting the drive to Vienna.

The drive took about 5 hours, one of which was spent in a bottleneck before the Croatia Slovenia border. It was really cool to watch the changes in both the landscape and the styles of houses as we drove from Zagreb, into the hills of Zargorje and then over the border to Slovenia and then Austria. It is hard to describe but this is one of the reasons we chose to drive ourselves through Europe. Both Slovenian and Austrian countrysides look very “cute” with perfectly arranged hills and fields and cute houses surrounded with flowers. Like a children’s storybook.

Anyway, by the time we reached our hotel room, it was already 8pm. We headed out for a walk and dinner. As we strolled through a restaurant and bar area we happened upon a place that looked to us to be what we thought is typically Viennese. After spotting the number 1447 on the menu amongst some German text, I asked our waiter and we found that that was the year the restaurant opened and that Griechenbeisl is the oldest restaurant in Vienna. Fluke. Previous patrons included Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner and more. The service and food were great and we enjoyed a particularly nice bottle of Brut to mark the occasion.

2007-08-17T06:16:00.002+09:30

12.08.2007

After a big breakfast we all headed back to Zagreb for a big family lunch
(lamb on the spit). After saying goodbye, we left to catch up with Ivana again at her apartment near the city centre. We wandered the beautiful streets of Zagreb before settling into a nice Italian restaurant not far from the Cathedral.

2007-08-17T06:16:00.001+09:30

11.08.2007

Today is our last day in Slavonia (the name of the region of Croatia in which Slavonski Brod is in). We spent the morning visiting and saying goodbyes before heading off for the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Neda’s cousin Ivana (Kreso’s sister) kept us company on the trip as she lives in Zagreb. After dropping Ivana off at her house, we proceded to where Neda’s dad’s sisters and their families live in the suburbs. There we met everyone and shared a few drinks and food before Goga, Alen, Mima and us headed out to a village Majkovec where Goga and Alen have built a house. A great spot for country piece and quiet a short drive from the city. After some drinks we all retired for the night.

2007-08-17T06:15:00.002+09:30

10.08.2007

Big day for Topolje: Kirvaj! We basically spent the whole day eating and talking and visiting with more eating and talking. Lots of people visited, all the relatives come to visit Dida and Baka on this day so we got to see a lot of the family.

2007-08-17T06:15:00.001+09:30

9.08.2007

We spent the morning taking Baka to the huge cash and carry supermarket in Slavonski Brod and then visited Neda’s Teta Nada with her. We then left to meet our friend Jasenka in the main square of the city for lunch. Jasenka was visiting her parents in their holiday house in Vojvodina and was able to meet us in Slavonski Brod. It was good to catch up with her, it felt like no time had past since we last saw her in Sweden 3 years ago.

The next day is a special day in the village of Topolje. Every year, each village celebrates it’s own specific saints day known as Kirvaj and tomorrow is the Kirvaj for Staro Topolje. Teta Nada and Tetak Miro were over at Dida and Baka’s to help prepare for the lunch the next day. This included collecting the cooked pig and cutting it up into manageable pieces. There is never any shortage of help in this task as everyone is keen to break off a piece here and a piece there for a preview of tomorrows meal.

Neda and I walked 2 doors down to visit neighbours who have been very good friends of Neda’s family for a long time. It was a fun and interesting evening because the conversations were always made up of several languages. Davor (who speaks Croatian, Italian, French and English) is married to an Italian girl, Stefie (who speaks all of those languages too), Davor’s sister Ana (Croatian and French) and her Swiss husband and 2 sons (French and a little Croatian) and Davors mum Danica (Croatian). It all felt very international.

2007-08-17T06:13:00.000+09:30

8.08.2007

After saying bye to all in Bosnia, we crossed back to Slavonski Brod on the Croatian side of the river. Our first stop was to visit Neda’s mum’s sister Teta Nada’s house. We spent some time with Nada and Miro, and Neda’s cousins Mirna and Mirko. Mirko is laid up with a broken leg at the moment after he tried to fly a motorcycle recently. Scary but he is definitely on the mend now and catching up on daytime TV. We got to meet Mirna’s 6 month baby girl Tea for the first time, really cute and chubby.

We made our way to Staro Topolje again and we spent the afternoon catching up with Neda’s Dida (grandpa) Frano and Baka (grandma) Mara. That night we went for dinner at Neda’s mum’s friend Suncica’s house.

2007-08-17T06:12:00.000+09:30

5.08.2007 – 07.08.2007

After saying goodbye to Kreso and Lili, we managed to leave Zadar at about 7am for Neda’s home town of Bosanski Brod in Bosnia. The drive was about 500km and we were very tired when we finally saw the familiar sight of Slavonski Brod (the city of the Croatian side of the river Sava) and the Chimney Stack of the Bosanski Brod Oil Refinery. We first took a pitstop in the Croatian village of Staro Topolje, just outside of Slavonski Brod, to visit Neda’s grandparents (mum’s side). They were as usual happy to see us and annoyed that we had to leave only half an hour later.

After the border crossings, which were not too bad at only half an hour to cross one river, we made it to Bosanski Brod. On the way to Neda’s Aunt and Uncles house on the outer reaches of town, we drove past Neda’s old house. The house was burned in the war by a grenade, but the new owners have done little more than put a new roof on the structure. It is always a sad sight.

At Tetka (Aunty) Nada and Tetak (uncle) Lazo’s House, which also includes the home of their son Slobodan and his family, we were also greeted by Neda’s Teta Maruska and cousins Mima and Goga and Goga’s 3 year old son Lovro who had made the trip from Zagreb and Teta Tina and Cika (uncle) Marko who made the trip from Darda in east Croatia to meet us for lunch.

We spent the next 3 days walking around town, visiting family, childhood friends and neighbours. We visited Neda’s sisters grave. We also went to a stunning forest in the hills (where Neda’s dad’s family still own a large area of forest) where there was a celebration of St Petka’s Day. There was a blessing of a new Orthodox Chapel, lots of food, beer and rides for the kids.

Slobodan and Vesna have two sons, Zoran (10) and Ognjen (5) who spent a lot of time with me, playing and showing off whatever English they knew and even giving me some tips on my Croatian.

Overall, we ate a lot, visited a lot and had a good time.

2007-08-17T06:11:00.000+09:30

4.08.07

After the late night drive the previous night we had a very slow day, chatting to and eating with family. We had one last excursion to the beach of Biograd and finally got our first dose of perfect weather since Krk, just sun, no wind. We swam and played ball in the water with Neda’s cousins. Tonight we were heading to Zadar to spend the last night on the coast with there. Before we took our trip back to Zadar for the night, we spent the evening chatting until Neda’s cousins and Bozica’s husband Mica picked up the guitar and treated us all to a set of old Bosnian and Croatian songs. Everyone sang along and had a great time. There was a lot of wine flowing too. We said our goodbyes til next time, which is always hard.

In Zadar, Kreso was good enough to supplement for the shortcomings of our GPS and our own orientation and meet us on his scooter at about midnight to show us the way back to his apartment.

2007-08-17T06:10:00.002+09:30

3.08.2007

We set off early for a day trip down the coast. Our first stop was to visit the city of Split, the 3^rd biggest city in Croatia. Like most coastal cities, Split has an old town that is surrounded by the sprawling newer developments. But Split is centred around the remains of the Dioclecian Palace from which it originated as early as 300AD. We were amazed at how much of the original buildings and infrastructure still stand amongst the businesses that operate on the surface of the complex. We also toured through preserved under-levels of the roman palace, which span the entire area of the palace remnants above. These halls would have been used for practical purposes such as storage and labour to service the palace above.

After touring Split, we continued on to Igrane, a small coastal town about 16km past Makarska. Our friends from Adelaide, Ivana and Ana, and Ivana’s 4 month old baby Mia are holidaying here. It was good to see some familiar faces from Oz again and to see Mia enjoying the water. We hung out on the beach and hung around for dinner at Ivana and Ana’s friends house before taking the long trip home in terrible rain. Thank God for the highway, the coastal roads can be a bit scary even in good conditions.

2007-08-17T06:10:00.001+09:30

2.08.2007

Today we left Zadar and arrived 32km down the coast at the town of Biograd. Neda’s mum’s uncle Ivan and aunt Iva have a house there where all of their children and grandchildren come to stay in the summer for endless barbecues and sunbathing. After catching up for a while with family, we headed off for the beach with Kreso who came down for the afternoon. The beach area in Biograd is quite different to most places I have been. One section is sand beach, with Volleyball courts etc, while only 40 metres on either side the shore is rock and concrete, with pebble seabed. Ice-cream shops and cafes form a continuous boundary around the area and sunbathers cover most of everything in between. The water itself is full of people swimming, paddleboating, and there is even an aquatic fun park for the children. On that note, Kreso and I paid the required entry to the fun park to get a chance the climb a floating inflatable mountain / iceberg. Think wet indoor rock-climbing. After a couple of failed attempts, we were about to give up when the father of one the kids trying to do it came and showed us how crap we were. With that kind of humiliation we had the necessary motivation to finally reach the summit.

We had a beautiful dinner with relatives back at the house, before we went out for icecream in town with Neda’s mum’s cousin Nada.

2007-08-17T06:08:00.000+09:30

31.07.2007 – 1.08.2007

We spent the last couple of days relaxing with Kreso and Lili in Zadar. We swam each day, despite some windy conditions and the water was nice as always. We went through the old city again to have another look around, before sunset. We climbed to the top of the tower of St Stosija Church with the best view of the old town of Zadar, and unwittingly timed our descent past the bells right on the hour so our ears were still ringing when we toured St Donat Church (12^thcentury church, cylindrical in shape). We spent our last night in Zadar eating dinner together in a really nice restaurant right on the water on the edge of old town called Fosa. My favourite Dalmatian dish of Risotto with cuttlefish ink and meat was as good as I had ever had it.

2007-08-01T01:14:00.005+09:30

30.07.2007

We got up and went for a swim again in Krk before heading off around 1pm to drive to Zadar. The drive to Zadar was a bit scary, it was cliff side roads all the way, stunning views of the sea but there were strong winds to the car actually shook a bit. So we drove very slowly. We got to my cousin Kreso and his girlfriend Lili’s place in the afternoon. They are both very hospitable and have been great to be with. Lili made us dinner and after that we headed out to the old town of Zadar for the Night of the Full Moon Festival. The city was packed with people. Zadar is stunning as always, and Philip was happy that he was in a familiar place again. We spent a lot of time here on our last trip. After strolling the “riva” (walkway along the water where boats are tied to the stone paths) we had a drink in this really funky huge bar. I’ll put a photo up as it’s hard to explain how it looked. Along the Riva, they also have a “sea organ”. There are pipes built under the sea with air holes in the stone walkway so the organ gets motion from waves in the sea and the wind above. The sound is really good, especially when a boat passes and creates waves.

2007-08-01T01:14:00.003+09:30

29.-30.07.2007

After finding out that there was “roadworks” on the Grand Canal and the water bus could not take us to the car park, we had to walk across all of Venice with our luggage to get to the car. It was fairly early in the morning so the onslaught of the tourists hadn’t started yet so at least it was easy to move around. We are very grateful our suitcases have wheels, but there are many bridges with stairs to cross, so Philip got some exercise carrying the luggage over canals.

We got to Croatia, to an island called Krk, to the place Krk, around midday. We stayed with a an old family friend of my family who lives there. After a short catch up with them, we walked through the old town before going for a swim in the beautiful Adriatic. The water was like a swimming pool, calm and warm. It is very salty so you can float really easily. One of the best things about Croatian towns is that you can often swim while having an amazing view of an old town right next to the beach. It was fantastic. We ate by the water that night and strolled though town until we found a bar situated on the rocks by the water so we drank there. That was pretty special.

2007-08-01T01:14:00.001+09:30

27.-29.07.2007

We drove from Nice to Venice and arrived around lunch time. On the way we stopped at a road house and unlike in Australian roadhouses, this one was on cliff above Monte Carlo with great views. And we were in a cloud which was cool. Venice was fairly easy to park in, as soon as you cross the long brige over the sea to the island there are several large multi level carparks. We left our car there and caught a water taxi to our hotel. It was a nice introduction to Venice as we got a tour of all the little canals as well as the Grand Canal. However the ride was not cheap, but in Venice everything is extremely expensive. We decided we wouldn’t take a gondola ride during our stay as they were all 150 euro, that’s more than 230 AUD. Our accommodation was excellent and it was just near the Rialto bridge so it was well situated too. The first night we had pizza for tea and then strolled to St Marco’s Piazza. It is really stunning. I’ve seen it in pictures a lot but none of it really compares. The night atmosphere was great, all the bars have classical and jazz music playing outside (and if you sit down for a drink you have to pay for the privilege of the music as well! We had the most expensive drink of the trip there thanks to all the add ons, ie music, service, seat, they charge for everything). At midnight the bells start, first one church for a few minutes, then the tower etc. It was really nice.

The second day in Venice we followed a route that our hotel guy suggested and covered a lot of ground visiting different churches etc. It was insanely hot and there is no beach to go swim in so it was a bit tiring. Also the thousands of tourists you have to climb over are a bother, we have never seen so many people in a tiny place before. The whole city is beautiful and one or two days are definitely enough, as once you’ve seen everything, the only thing left to do is eating and drinking. We had a nap after walking all day in the heat and then headed out for tea and we went to a performance of baroque music and opera arias. That was definitely a memorable evening. Both the orchestra and the singers were very good and the building it was set in definitely added to the atmosphere.

2007-08-01T01:13:00.002+09:30

25.-27.07.2007

We drove the 600 odd kilometers from Barcelona to Nice and arrived there in the evening. The accommodation was not that great, so that was annoying but we soon forgot about that as we headed for an evening swim and then a walk around the old town. The town is small and pretty, a real holiday resort. I have never seen so many women tanned to extreme, dressed up in bright tiny clothes with major bling all over them and the rich husband next to them, often with a tiny dog. It’s quite funny. Seeing we only had one full day in Nice and we needed rest, we decided not to do the day trips to Cannes and Monte Carlo that we planned and instead rented sun lounges at a private beach and spent the whole day swimming in the Mediterranean, lounging and eating icecream. It was much needed rest for us both. The water of the Mediterranean was pure aqua, really beautiful. At night we had dinner and strolled through the old town. We found an ice cream shop that sold about a 100 different flavours and Philip was in an experimental mood and got Lychee, Cactus and Grapefruit. He didn’t think much of Cactus, I tried it too and it was not great. I stuck to chocolate flavours! A really fun thing we got to see both nights in Nice was a group of young breakdancers who get together on an old square and people watch them and then give them a few euro. It’s the best busking I’ve ever seen. They were extremely good and really got the crowd going, we filmed them a bit.

2007-08-01T01:13:00.001+09:30

22 – 25.07.2007

We picked up our lease car (Renault Megane) from Paris airport and headed down to Barcelona. The GPS was really great and she has a nice voice! The distance was huge, about a 1000 km so by the time we got to Barcelona it was midnight and we were buggered. We found a safe carpark with the help of our very good hotel proprietor who actually met us on the streets of Barcelona at midnight on his bicycle and we followed him through the city to our destination. It was quite funny. Our accommodation was right in the middle of the Gothic area in a tiny cobbled street. The building stairwell looked worrying and old but then when you got into the apartments they were all brand new, it was quite bizarre.

We spent the first full day in Barcelona walking around town and a bit of shopping (shopping is excellent there, especially as it was half price sale time!). The marinas on the sea are extensive. The city is really beautiful. We met up with friends of our friend Melanie; Hilary and Mark, who have lived in Barcelona for a while. We went with them to a contemporary art gallery, then to a bar for a drink and then dinner at a really cool organic Spanish restaurant that makes traditional Catalan food (as Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia). Hilary and Mark were really lovely and fun and gave us some tips on what to see etc. It was a fun night.

The second day, after more shopping, we headed down the Gaudi trail. Gaudi designed all these very strange but beautiful buildings and parks around Barcelona, the most famous being the Sagrada Familia, a huge Catholic church which is still not finished (construction started in the 1800s). The highlight was the Guell Park, which is a park above the city with fantastic views. All over it are things Gaudi designed, like cool mosaic tiled terraces, walkways etc. The night ended with more food and drink and hanging out in the Borno area of town, next to the Gothic area. We did mean to do a bit of clubbing in Barcelona, but most clubs play r’n’b and house, which is not our cup of tea.

Overall Barcelona has been a real highlight of the trip so far. It is a city that feels really familiar in a way and very welcoming. The people we encountered were all really friendly. The city is very beautiful and the hot weather suited us just fine. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to explore its beaches but hopefully there will be a next time.

2007-08-01T01:12:00.004+09:30

2007-08-01T01:12:00.003+09:30

2007-08-01T01:12:00.001+09:30

2007-07-22T16:04:00.001+09:30

2007-07-22T09:24:00.000+09:30

21.07.2007

We caught the train to Versailles. Here is the Chateau de Versaille, the French royal residence up until the end of the monarchy. You can see where so much of Frances money went back then. The word is opulence. The Chateau itself screams of pure luxury. Every ceiling is a work of art and there are paintings and sculptures adorning every wall. Louis XIV, who built the Chateau dominates, with numerous paintings and sculptures of himself. Of course Marie Antoinette’s rooms and paintings attract a lot of interest. The gardens were definitely the highlight of the visit to the Chateau, beginning with the immaculately groomed and planned gardens and fountains, and the canal, all of which stretch beyond sight behind the Chateau. Neda used the words ‘obscene beauty’ which worked pretty well for me. We both found Marie Antoinette’s estate to be the most charming and interesting part of the day. Particularly the ‘Petite Trianon’ and it’s lush English gardens and little farm and village, all ordered to be built by Marie Antoinette for her own use and pleasure. Ewen accurately described it as an 18^th century theme park.

We had a gloriously sunny day to enjoy the beautiful nature in Versaille. Our feet were very sore and quite filthy by the time we made the train for Paris by about 8pm.

We caught the Metro in Paris to Montmartre, the hill where a lot of the artistic population live, more famous for the Moulin Rouge and the spectacular white church, the ‘Sacre-Ceur’. This is quite high up and this is another great vantage point to take in the views of most of Paris. We walked for a long time, trying to locate the Moulin Rouge, working up an appetite on the very hilly streets. We eventually found it, it wasn’t that spectacular. Might have been more interesting if we were willing to fork out 160 Euro each to see a show, no thank you.

Seeing as it was 10pm, we decided to find a place nearby that was still serving dinner. We found an Italian place, memorable because Neda found a great meal of a Schnitzel with a side of spaghetti. This is significant because we haven’t come across anyone on the trip yet who has been familiar with schnitzels. In Ireland, my relatives had not heard of them.

Now I am writing this blog in the Hotel room at midnight while Neda is scrubbing the dirt from her feet and legs (Versailles’ paths are all gravel, great with thongs (flip-flops)). We will now try to get some sleep before the long long drive to Barcelona tomorrow.

Paris has been great. Very busy (as our feet keep reminding us) but no rest now, there are many countries and cities yet to tire us :-)

2007-07-22T09:23:00.003+09:30

20.07.2007

After a long previous day of walking we were very tired and slept well. We discovered the importance of alarm clocks as we awoke in shock to find it was 12.20pm. I can recommend this hotel for its thick curtains that no light can penetrate.

We raced to the Louvre. It is hard to write much about the Louvre. You sort of have to see it for yourself. Needless to say, we saw the major attractions like the Mona Lisa, and the Venus de Milo, but it is all of the pieces from all times and places in the world that you see as you stroll the corridors (amazingly ornate themselves) that really make this something to remember.

After the Louvre we walked to the Notre Dame church. We have never seen so many gargoyles (and there are lots in Paris). We went inside and saw the end of a Mass. Some of you might be thinking that we are church crazy, but it is in the churches that you will often find so much history and grandeur. For instance, this is the church where Napoleon and Josephine’s coronation took place (there is a painting in the Louvre and Versaille).

After Notre Dame we strolled around the very busy part of the St Germaine area, filled with bars, restaurants, buskers and creperies. We had dinner at a brasserie and ate crepes for dessert at a creperie.

2007-07-22T09:23:00.001+09:30

2007-07-22T09:20:00.002+09:30

19.07.2007

Weather is perfect here. Sorry to everyone in Adelaide. We are enjoying a comfortable 27C. We both got our first sunburns of the trip, tsk tsk. We firstly started walking north on Rue La Rome when we thought we were heading south, but happened to get a tour of an area that seems to be devoted to musicians. I am not exaggerating to say that every second or third business either sold sheet music, pianos, wind instruments, guitars or violins etc, for about 3 blocks! Anyway, we toured that a second time once we realized we were on the wrong path.

We had a look in Madeleine Church. It is different to any church I have ever seen. It has a rectangular base, with columns all the way around, with a blunt rectangular roof, kind of like the old roman buildings (my layman’s architectural appraisal). Inside the altar was simple yet stunning with awe-inspiring winged angels as the centerpiece.

We headed down the Av de Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. I was surprised by the size, the shots in the movies don’t do it justice. We entered and started up the 284 steps to the top, stopping at the small museum. From the top there are some great views of Paris, especially because the Arc sits in the ‘Place Charles de Gaulle’ which is like the centre of all these major roads that are like spokes from it, so your view from the top is straight down each road. This was my first view of the Eiffel Tower. Neda has seen pretty much all of this before on her last trip and so was a decent guide :-)

You get a lot of beggars in the Tourist areas, mainly gypsies. The main ploy we saw was a girl who stops you and asks “speak English?”. If you stop they will show you a piece of paper with a sob story and press you for money. After the first, we knew to ignore anyone holding a piece of paper asking “speak English?”.

From Champs Elysees we walked down av George V which has some beautiful and strange buildings. I managed to steer Neda away from all of the expensive shops that line the street, all of which do amazing designs I am told. She did get one pair of earrings, and Sarah you scored a pair too. :-)

We walked to the Eiffel Tower next. This is where a great portion of our day was spent due to the enormous lines throughout the experience but as is a theme throughout this blog, it was well worth it. The views from the 2^nd level were great, and the height dwarfed the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. We took the final elevator to the 3^rd level. Mum, you would not have liked this, everything looks small from up there, but you can see forever.

From here we strolled through the area called St Germaine in search of a shoe shop that Neda had to see. We didn’t find the shoe shop but we stumbled across a restaurant in the middle of an expensive residential area next to a church. A huge church, but in Paris so insignificant it doesn’t show up on the tourist maps. Upon securing a table at La Basilic, we learned from a fellow diner (some Americans who were kind enough to translate the menu) that this restaurant is very old and very famous, especially for its meats so it was a lucky find. After a great meal, we made our home around 11pm.

2007-07-22T09:20:00.001+09:30

18.07.2007

Bonjour

Today we arrived in Paris. After saying goodbye to Elisa, we hopped on the Eurostar train from Waterloo station to Paris. This is a great way to travel, interesting scenery and quite comfortable. We faced the initial challenge of the Metro Underground system but were soon at the hotel on Rue St Lazare. In contrast to Singapore, this is the first of the sensible hotels of the trip, simple, clean, secure and well located in the Opera district. We settled in and almost immediately fell into nap mode. After a couple of hours we arranged to meet our friend Ewen. Ewen is originally from Brittany, but is now a Parisian and we met up with him and his South Australian girlfriend Yvette and a friend of theirs, I think his name is Aron (sorry, I know I got it wrong). We met up at this really cool bar which was situated by the canal. It had tables inside and a DJ playing a mix of Alternative rock and dance, with stuff like the crazy frog and some other weird crap mixed in. We sat out on the edge of the water, which most patrons were doing. The atmosphere was so relaxed and the beers were nice too; Ambre and 1664. Next door, is the fire station. Every time they go out on a call they have to beep or use the siren to move the drinking masses out of the way of the trucks. Not very compatible neighbours but it makes it more interesting (for both).

2007-07-22T09:19:00.001+09:30

17.07.2007

Today we went to the Tower of London. We had previously only seen the tower from the outside but this time we were keen to go on the tour. We joined the throng of people following a tour guide through the tower grounds. We saw the Bloody Tower and the prison building in which the ‘private’ executions were held. We would have more facts to share but we had a hard time hearing, let alone understanding the Yeoman (otherwise known as a ‘Beefeater’) who was conducting the tour. We did get to hear the response to the question as to why they are called Beefeaters; No-one knows. It started about 500 years ago where the earliest references were made but no reason is recorded as to why. We also went through the building where the Crown Jewels are kept. How much money did these people have?! Every item in the collection is literally covered in diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires etc. The world’s biggest diamond is housed at the head of one of the scepters. I am sure a lot of you would have already known this, but we asked one of the guards what the fur was at the bottom of the crown, white fur with little black dots. It is ermine, a small white stoat which has a black dot at the end of its tail. So whenever you see a royal wearing a cloak made of white fur with little black dots, the number of dots is at least the number of skins used (not counting the off cuts).

We then finished up with a look through the torture dungeon where examples of such devices as the beggars daughter, the rack and the manacles. Nasty. The readings here say that although the tower holds a reputation for torture, apparently it was not often used and only on few of the prisoners.

After looking around town again we met up with Tal and Elisa and another friend from Adelaide, Grant and his new girlfriend Christine at the Angel Bar in Soho for a few pints before Christine had to depart for band practice and the rest of us went for Indian nearby. We had a good meal and it was great to catch up with Grant, and to spend some time with Tal and Elise before we left for Paris the next day. From talking to Grant, we also learned that one of our favourite bands …And you will know us by the trail of dead are playing in London in a few weeks. Once we got back to the house, found that they were playing in Prague the night before we are scheduled to arrive there. Hmmm. (we have now changed our plans and will leave Vienna early to make the show, we’ve got tickets)

2007-07-22T09:18:00.000+09:30

16.07.2007

Today we went out to have a look in town. We strolled through streets like Oxford, Bond, Old Bond looking through shops. We ate sushi in Green Park by the river, with views of Buckingham Palace. After that we took a tour through Westminster Abbey. Last time we only looked on from the outside. We have seen a few Churches on the trip already, and on our last one, but we haven’t before seen a place so ornate and decorated. Every square inch of some parts of the church are intricately carved, painted and gilded. Here are the tombs of so many monarchs, including Queen Elizabeth the 1^st, who is buried with her sister Mary. There is also Mary Queen of Scotts and of course Isaac Newton is here too. The Coronation chair is also on display. Overall, the impression is very grand, inside and out.

We walked on past Parliament and Big Ben, across the Thames to the Eye of London. The Line up for tickets is fairly large, but the experience is worth it, with views spanning miles around London. We then had pizza by the Thames and were served by the angriest waitress we have had since Don Giovanni’s closed in Adelaide. She wore a permanent scowl and managed to make you feel like a pest for asking for anything. The pizza was nice though as was the view. We then walked across to the north side of the river to Somerset House, a large building with four wings that enclose a central cloister in which they host outdoor concerts. Tonight we saw Lily Allen play. She was quite good, even better than we had expected. The highlight of the show was the venue itself; being surrounded by the beautiful old building with the central dome sitting high above the temporary stage dome. Some people had stayed late at work in the buildings so they could just hang out of the windows to watch the show for free.

2007-07-22T09:16:00.000+09:30

15.07.2007

Sunday so Tal and Elisa didn’t have to work so we spent the day together. Tal and Elisa's place is a really funky apartment on the ground floor of a terrace house in West Hampstead. Neda and I went for a jog around the area and managed to get a bit lost this morning. We had homemade waffles for breakfast before heading out to the Camden Markets. The markets are a maze of aisles weaving between stalls of Indian clothing and jewelry, vintage clothing, antiques, odd books, manga and a lot of shops with cheap but funny T-shirts. The rain held off until we were about half way through when it came bucketing down. Even people with umbrellas wouldn’t go out into it. Elisa had one, but the rest of us didn’t so the only thing we purchased was a couple of umbrellas.

We then headed to a nearby pub where a friend of theirs was having her going back to Sydney party. The rain had stopped and the sun was out so the umbrella covered balcony had a sort of tropical feel to it while we downed a few pints.

We had decided that seeing it was Sunday, we had to have Sunday roast at one of the pubs, so we went to a pub on a river for dinner.

2007-07-22T09:09:00.000+09:30

14.07.2007

Today didn’t feel very good in the morning, but we still managed to get up, and say goodbye to Catherine and Dash (the cute “schipperke” dog) before heading out to fly to London. We are staying with our friends from Adelaide Elisa and Tal and we arrived at their place at about 3pm. They live just a short walk from the West Hampstead station and the house is really nice. We caught up for a while because we haven’t seen each other since their wedding in January. That night we went out for dinner in the Banking district at a French restaurant where the food and the service were excellent and then we went out to a cocktail bar not far from Elisa and Tal’s.

2007-07-14T00:26:00.001+09:30

13.07.2007

We got up and braved a very cold morning with rain and went for a run on the beach. It was all good until we turned back against the wind. We are happy to have our ears on still. Afterwards we had a lovely breakfast by the fireplace at Jim and Ita’s. They are extremely hospitable and it is really lovely to be staying here. We visited a few sites in Youghal including Irelands oldest church and college and the resting place of Richard Boyle (the first Earl of Cork) and family (including Robert Boyle, the chemist who came up with the famous ‘Boyle’s Law’.

We went for dinner in Midleton with Jim, Ita, Catherine and John. Then we went out on a pub crawl through Midleton with Catherine, John and a few friends which ended up at Joe’s Pub with lots of drinking, singing and sledging. Drinks for the night consisted of Beamish Stout, Smithicks Red (which doesn’t seem very popular with anyone except John but I really liked it) and Murphy’s Stout. This was definitely the Craic (a good time) and well worth the next mornings headache. We finished up around 2.30 as the annoyed publican had to push us out the door after closing. Thanks to Catherine, John, Nile (I don’t know the correct spelling, sorry), Michael, Stephen and Barry for a great night.

2007-07-14T00:25:00.000+09:30

12.07.2007

We packed up our bags and braved the traffic to head out of Dublin headed for County Cork to visit my cousins Jim & Ita in Youghal in Ireland’s south. After looking at the distance on the map I had told Ita that she could expect us late morning. She later informed me that she knew that I was being hopelessly optimistic. We left the city for the tangle of the roads that lead to the M50, which Jim refers to as the biggest parking lot in Europe. Once we reached the main road to the south we found Irelands tax dollars at work with roadworks on every second stretch of road. Apart from proving my initial ETA very wrong, the beauty of the countryside and the various towns along the way made the slow journey quite entertaining. There are so many horses everywhere on the green fields, and all the fields are separated either by stone walls or hedges, just stunning. We stopped briefly in Kilkenny and went for a short walkabout an old castle by a river, and bought some local berries, including raspberries, gooseberries and redcurrants. We passed through Waterford, and eventually made it to Youghal at 5pm. Luckily Ita had dinner prepared since 5 hours earlier. We had a great time catching up before heading out to see their daughter Catherine were we also met her daughter Melanie. Catherine and John live on a farm on a hill with a view over the town of Cloyne and their many horses. All of Catherine’s daughters are accomplished equestrian riders. The views are stunning everywhere you look, including from our bedroom at Jim and Ita’s. The weather today was also really good in the afternoon, 22 degrees and sunshine.

2007-07-14T00:23:00.000+09:30

11.07.2007

The long flight from Singapore to London can really throw you. The flight took 13 hours and we arrived in London at about 5am (less than rested). I learned to accept long ago that most seats are designed for a maximum height of 5’10”. Unlike Singapore Changi Airport, Heathrow still manages to make the whole transit thing a trying experience, with customs giving you the third degree even if you are only connecting through to Dublin. We got through to Dublin, customs were very easy going there. We picked up our car for the next three days, an Opel Astra. We got a comprehensive tour of Dublin, north of the river Liffey as we spent about an hour trying to locate our Hostel with only a very undetailed tourist map that we managed to get off another Australian tourist who we asked for directions. As we were driving around in a daze, the car next to us signaled to down the windows so he could speak to us. I was wondering what it was that I must have been doing wrong. He turned out to be a South African asking us for directions to his hotel. Blind leading the blind. Mind you, by the time we found and settled into the Adelphi Guest House we had a pretty good idea of where a lot of things were. The Guest House is really nice. We missed the porters from the Hotel in Singapore when we were lugging the suitcases up the stairs, happy with our choice of the 1st floor room rather than the 3rd floor room that was offered.

After some freshening up we headed out to see as much as we could of Dublin in the one night that we had here. Dublin immediately struck as a beautiful city, and very lively too. O’Connell Street and Temple Bar area were both buzzing with people and it was hard to maneuver the sidewalks.

We headed straight to Trinity College, South of the river in the more affluent district. The College itself has a lot of history and is aesthetically beautiful. The tour includes entry to the Old Library, which is the world’s largest single room library (beating Cambridge by 2 metres) and houses an enormous number of very old books. Since most of them are hundreds of years old, and because they are catalogued by their volumetric dimensions, before title, subject or Author, they are only really used by scholars. The Library also holds the Book of Kells, which is a copy of the 4 gospels as old as 800AD, with very intricate detail.

We then went through to see Dublin Castle (from the outside), Christ Church (an Anglican Cathedral) and St Particks Cathedral. Both cathedrals were breathtaking with displays of many historical artifacts in the Christ Church crypt.

In contrast, the next stop was the Guinness Brewery. We were walking blind because the tourist map we were using stopped listing street names near the brewery so we had to rely on some helpful locals to show us that we were on the right track. Ironically, the map we were using was published by the brewery. The brewery tour itself takes you through the process of brewing, finishing with a complimentary pint on the seventh floor. The pint and the view were well worth the time and the admission fee, especially as Neda cant stand beer and so I had a bit more time to savorur the view and the brew as I had her pint.

We caught a bus back to the temple bar area (the main hot spot) for a very late dinner of Irish Stew. As the sun sets very late it was still light at 10pm. John Villis will be disappointed that at this time, our Jetlag came on with a vengeance and we were falling asleep waiting for our meals and so retired for the night without sampling any of the pubs that line dot every street. We did attempt one but it was too crowded to get near the bar. We consoled ourselves with the knowledge that there will be many pubs to try in County Cork in the south the next day.

So far Ireland is expensive, especially compared to Singapore. We took a taxi back to our room which was 5 euro which would have been about 3 Singapore Dollars in Singapore. The food is quite pricy too, but if the dinner we had is anything to go by, it is well worth it.

2007-07-11T15:53:00.000+09:30

Eddie, we saw a few desert places in Singapore with weird fruit stuff that you like. Unfortunately we can't bring them to you.

2007-07-11T15:33:00.000+09:30

10.07.2007

Today we went out to Santosa Island for most of the day. We didn’t really know what to expect, and unfortunately it wasn’t that great. It is basically an island theme park. We took the monorail to get to it. We spent time at the beach, underwater world, the army fortress (which was the one thing that was actually real, it gave us an insight into Singapore’s world war 2 history) and we saw a dolphin show. We took the cable car back to mainland. That was a bit scary for me and very amusing for Philip as he got to take photos of me looking very tense. It was a long and very hot day. We didn’t get to do a few things, like visit Raffles, because of lack of time but I’m sure there will be more opportunities in the future. We are now at Singapore airport waiting for our flight to London then Dublin.

9.07.2007

Today we had a healthy start- we used the hotel gym and did a workout which felt good. The swim from the night before was great too. Exercise helps you justify eating tonnes of food on holiday. We spent most of the day in the city, mainly Orchard Road, which is basically one giant shopping mall. Singapore very much looked like a big glossy magazine until we went to Bugis Street markets, which definitely had more character but were quite dodgy. Again, one thing we like is how you can have these giant shopping malls with super expensive brand name adds on them and then across the road a square which might as well be thick impenetrable rainforest. That is quite stunning. The city is so clean, Philip was extremely paranoid about not littering, to the point that he wouldn’t let me eat pistachio nuts while walking around for fear of dropping the shells on the floor. He’s scared we’ll get caned for littering (which happens here). After the day in the city we went to the Night Safari at Singapore Zoo. Now this is well worth seeing. Firstly we had dinner there, they have an outdoors food court and then we saw an animal show which was ok. We then got onto a tram ride through the safari and got off the tram in the middle to do one of the free walks around the animals. It was beautiful to be in the middle of a forest in the middle of the night with only small lights around us checking out all the animals. Unfortunately the photos are not very good as we weren’t allowed flash photography. After the safari, around 10pm, we were extremely tired but wanted to check out this huge shopping centre in Little India called Mustafas which is open 24 hours a day. When we got there we were happy to see that Little India was a busy energetic place and it was not a pretty clean “poster” city like the centre of Singapore, it had lots of character. Unfortunately the department store, Mustafa’s, was absolutely horrible…. The whole store had shelves from floor to ceiling and only room for one person between them. It was impossible to move in there and the prices weren’t as good as we were told so we pretty much walked in and out, we were too tired to fight with the crowds. We were told it is packed all the time. Tomorrow we will visit Santosa island. We’ll write more then.

2007-07-08T21:19:00.000+09:30

Hello. We are fresh off the plane in Singapore and this is the first entry. Here are a few pics from the hotel as we arrived. From the drive from the airport, we can tell Singapore is really pretty and clean. The thing that we liked the most is how lush and green it is amongst all the skyscrapers. Our hotel is really nice and is on the river of which we have a view. It is 27 degrees and humid so we are off to hit the pool deck before venturing into town for some dinner and exploration. Stay tuned for more updates in the following days.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

2007-07-02T17:25:00.000+09:30

Oh my goodness, I can't believe how long it can take before holidays arive.

We haven't left yet, so this is not going to be the most interesting post, more of a trial really. It will be a long week before there will be something worth writing about when we will finally be in Singapore for our first time for a couple of days.