tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68349104542174605542024-02-19T20:03:32.796+10:00Andre & Leah in EuropeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-6666398245045829492012-10-03T23:32:00.000+10:002012-10-05T22:42:37.580+10:00Trip Summary & Recommendations<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This is a brief summary post of our trip that I'm writing specifically for fellow users of the ThornTree and BootsNAll forums which I also used while planning out trip. It's a bit of a thankyou for their help and also a way of providing what I hope is some of the most useful information we can share for others using the forums who are planning a similar trip.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">London</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent: </u>5 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation: </u>MacDonald Hotel near Kings Cross Station. 70 pounds/night for triple room. Includes an excellent breakfast (bacon, eggs, sausages, baked beans, toast, cereal, yoghurt, coffee, tea, juice. Shared bathrooms although there is a handbasin in your room. Water pressure in shower a bit miserable and temperature difficult to regulate. Rooms were a bit tired-looking but beds were comfortable and the place was clean. No lifts so if you are mobility impaired this is not the place for you. Wi-fi was free and signal was dodgy. Would recommend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did:</u> Tower of London, Warner Bros Harry Potter Leavesden Studio Tour, Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace (pro tip: Don't bother crowding in front of the palace. Watch it from the roads leading to and from the palace), British Museum, chasing/feeding/photographing squirrels in Hyde Park</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done:</u> Gone inside Westminster Palace and Westminster Abbey</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I would say don't bother doing:</u> Going inside St Paul's Cathedral. I wish we'd gone into Westminster Abbey instead. The view from St Paul's was nice and the church was interesting but I don't think it was worth 18 pounds. Andre liked it though.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Paris</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent:</u> 5 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation: </u>self-contained apartment at 69 Rue St-Martin in the 1st arr. 80 euros/night and it sleeps up to 4 people. Excellent location and close to metro. Walking distance from Notre Dame and many other central-Paris locations. Close to mini supermarkets. Beds comfortable and kitchen, bathroom & laundry were well-equipped. Franck (the owner) was very friendly and helpful. Wi-fi was free and signal excellent. Would recommend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did:</u> A Sandeman's free walking tour. These guides work for tips so they put their best in to the tour. Our guide Jacqui was very friendly, a native english speaker, yet having lived in Paris for several years also spoke good French and knew Paris very well. She was very knowledgeable and made Paris's history come alive. Other things: Eiffel tower (we went up it and came back to see it at night); Louvre; Notre Dame; Montmartre (this included seeing Place du Tertre [the artists' square], Moulin Rouge [we didn't go in to see a show] and Sacre Coeur Basilica); Musee d'Orsay</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done:</u> Andre really wanted to see Versaille but we didn't get the chance. I also would have liked to look around the Latin Quarter some more.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing: </u>If paintings are not your thing, then perhaps don't bother with d'Orsay. However I am into paintings so I enjoyed it. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Tignes</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent: </u>3 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation: </u>self-contained apartment at Belambra Club IV. 70 euros/night for a room that sleeps up to 4. Kitchen not well-equipped and as it was the end of the ski season the place was poorly staffed. Laundry not well signed so we had difficulty using the laundry until we bumped into the one employee we saw the whole time we were there. Could have been cleaner. On the plus side it was ski-in ski-out which we LOVED. Nearly everything in Tignes is ski-in ski-out though. We used a booking website and there seemed to be some communication issues between Belambra and the booking site in regards to our payment. Wi-fi was free and signal was dodgy. They communicate via snail-mail rather than email which is absolutely absurd when we're in Australia and they're in France. Keep sending letters requesting payment after we have paid. Would not recommend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did: </u>Skiied and snowboarded! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done: </u>started skiing & boarding earlier in the day</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing:</u> Nothing. Spend all your time on the slopes! We were there in the last week of the season and conditions were spectacular. Temps meant the snow was pretty slushy by about 3pm but snow cover extended right down to the village (unusual for that time of year).</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Lauterbrunnen</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent:</u> 3 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation:</u> Valley Hostel. 99CHF/night for triple room. Shared bathroom, kitchen & dining room. We stayed in the guest house with self-catering resources, not the hostel. Apparently the place was booked out when we were there but we saw like 2 people the whole time. Always had the kitchen and dining room to ourselves. Awesome views of the valley from our bedroom. Wi-fi was free but I can't remember what the signal was like which probably means it was good. Would recommend. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did: </u>we chose to go to the Lauterbrunnen Valley with the intention of doing nothing - a few days to chill. However we did enjoying going down the valley to see the Trummelbach Falls.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done: </u>I wish we had been there a few weeks later and able to do the via ferrata, which is closed most of the year except for summer. A lot of people also recommend the Jungfrau but at over 100 francs each we didn't bother. If we had a bigger budget and maybe a bit more time I would like to do it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing:</u> We took the cable car up to Murren one afternoon. We were there in off-season and in alpine places like Murren that means the place is dead. This might have been ok if we didn't pay about 30CHF per person just to get there & back. The weather was also very unpredictable and while cloudy, drizzly and freezing when we were up there, twenty minutes after getting back to Lauterbrunnen it had cleared up again and the sky was blue and sunny! I'd say don't bother visiting Murren in off-season. I don't know if the other little villages are any better.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Rome</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent:</u> 5 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation:</u> Eleven Rome B&B. About 65 - 70 euros/night for a triple room via wotif.com. Included breakfast but not a very big one. If you need a decent breakfast you will need to buy more breakfast when you go out. Good location, we walked nearly everywhere. Friendly host but he made us move rooms half way through our stay with no explanation. Comfortable beds and clean rooms. Shared bathrooms. Might recommend. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did:</u> Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Roman Forum, Trajan's market (from the outside), Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Vatican Museum, St Peter's Basilica, via Appia Antica (the Appian Way), Giolitti's Gelato.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done:</u> I had been really keen on seeing Ostia Antica, the ancient Roman port just outside Rome, but after several days of seeing lots of really old stuff we were just over old stuff so spent our last day chilling and walking through parks! I would still like to see it though. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing:</u> Unless it particularly interests you I'd say don't bother going inside Trajan's market. In all fairness we did go and see it after a big day of walking through lots of other ancient Roman sites and as much as ancient Rome fascinates me I was ready for a break. Also, don't bother going to any gelato shop other than Giolitti's. Ok, just kidding. Kind of. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Florence</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent:</u> 3 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation:</u> Camping Michelangelo. 16euros/night each in a permanent three-bed tent. Tents are clean and beds are comfortable. No catering facilities but there is a mini-mart on site and a pizzeria. Excellent location with a great view. 12 hours free wifi only if you buy something from the bar. Good signal. Bit of a walk from the city centre - tougher when you are walking back uphill. Just get the bus if you have difficulty with the walk. Would recommend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did:</u> Leonardo da Vinci's machines; Piazzale Michelangelo; just wandering around looking at Florence's beautiful buildings; going to the Accademia to see David; bus tour of the Tuscan countryside where we saw San Gimignano, Monteroggiorni, Siena and a winery.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done:</u> Due to our short stay in Florence we did not go to see the Uffizi and as we spent Sunday in the city were not able to go into the Duomo unless we wanted to attend a service. I also would have liked to have seen <b id="internal-source-marker_0.9649881995283067" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Basilica Santa Croce which houses the tombs of Galileo, Michelangelo etc.</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing:</u> The Accademia was a bit disappointing aside from David. I wouldn't go so far as to say don't bother doing it, as David is worth seeing, but not much else was.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Venice</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent:</u> 3 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation:</u> Hotel Bernardi. 85 euros/night for a triple room. Shared bathrooms, includes a reasonable breakfast but nothing special. Right in Venice itself, not on the mainland, so it's a great location. Beds were a bit hard but didn't bother me. Free wifi with reasonable signal. The place was clean and the hosts friendly. Would recommend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did:</u> Gondola ride; San Marco's Square; wandering through markets (esp. in Cannareggio); Rialto Bridge markets; trip to Murano to see glass-works</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done:</u> I'm still not sure if I wish we'd gone inside to see Doge's Palace or not. I've heard good things about it but I'm not completely sold it's a must-do. I do wish we'd seen the Bridge of Sighs. Can't believe we forgot that. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing:</u> San Marco's square was interesting to see as it's iconic, so I wouldn't go so far as to say don't bother doing it, but you don't have to allocate much time to it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Salzburg</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent:</u> 4 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation:</u> Stadtalm. 19 euros each per night if in a dorm; 45 euros per night for a double room. Includes breakfast. Shared bathrooms although they are clean. Rustic furniture and rooms were clean enough but could do with a bit more sweeping. Double-booked our double room but gave us a good discount so we stayed in a dorm room. No self-catering facilities and the restaurant closes at about 6 in the off-season. On a cliff with amazing views. Free wifi and reasonable signal. If you don't mind a hostel environment I would recommend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did:</u> visited the music festival that was on while we were there; Hellbrunn trick water gardens; Hohensalzburg Fortress; wandered around the old city including going through markets; Schloss Mirabell gardens; Eisriesenwelt Ice Caves south of Salzburg</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done:</u> Nothing really. We saw a lot of Sound of Music sights but did not do an actual 'Sound of Music tour' which you might like to do if you are really keen on the Sound of Music.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing:</u> Nothing really. A lot of people say not to bother with the houses where Mozart was born and raised. We didn't bother with them so can't say for sure if they're a waste of time or not!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Cesky Krumlov</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent:</u> 3 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation:</u> Pension Merlin (NOT Hostel Merlin). 660KC for a double room. Private bathroom but shared kitchen & dining facilities. Saw hardly anyone else til our last night there. Free wifi with excellent signal and they have a PC there for you to use for free. Comfortable beds and very clean. Would recommend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did:</u> Kayaked down the Vltava River; visited the Krumlov Castle; had trdelnik; visited a traditional marionette museum. And the food. Wow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done:</u> Nothing really.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing:</u> Nothing really. The gardens of the castle were a bit underwhelming but I think that was because of the time of year we were there and it seemed they were in the process of replacing some plants. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Munich</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent:</u> 4 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation:</u> Max Emmanuel hotel. 65 euros for a double room and that was on special through a booking website. Supposedly self-contained but kitchenette very poorly equipped. Wi-fi costs and signal was absolutely dismal, even in the foyer. Breakfast costs extra and is expensive - we didn't attend the hotel breakfast. Beds comfortable and it was all very clean. Bathroom very good. Would have been fine except for the price we paid (and the price they normally charge!) you'd expect much better. Would hesitate to recommend. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did:</u> Sandeman's free tour. Perhaps not quite as good as our Sandeman's Paris tour but still very good and our guide Liz was very knowledgeable, especially in regards to Nazi history and the old Bavarian rulers. Other things: Dachau Concentration Camp; Hofbrauhaus; Augustiner Beer Hall; Munich Residenz; Marienplatz.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done:</u> Visited one of King Ludwig's palaces that he built rather than the one he was born in (Schloss Nymphenburg, which we did visit). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing:</u><i style="text-decoration: underline;"> </i> Schloss Nymphenburg. It's an impressive building with even more impressive gardens but most of the building is closed to the public. There are a few interesting rooms but I don't think it justifies the price to get in or the time required to get to and from the palace (it's located in the suburbs so depending where you stay it can take a bit of time to get there). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Bacharach (Rhine Valley)</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent:</u> 3 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation:</u> Pension Im Malerwinkel. 56 euros per night for a double room. Includes an excellent breakfast. Bacharach is so small everything is located a short distance from everything else. Beds comfortable, private bathroom, everything clean. Would recommend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did:</u> Burg Rheinstein above St Goar, just downriver from Bacharach; wandering through the streets of Bacharach.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done:</u> Visited a vineyard/winery. We saw plenty of vineyards but I would have liked to actually visit one and maybe do a tour or some wine-tasting. Would have also liked to visit Rudesheim am Rhein but on the day we considered doing that it was rainy and expensive to get to (thanks to the cost of the ferry) - weren't willing to fork out that much when chances were we'd end up spending most of the time indoors!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing:</u> Burg Reichenstein upriver of Bacharach near Trechtinghausen. Not set up well to cater to visitors. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Brugge</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Time spent:</u> 4 nights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Accommodation:</u> Hotel Keizershof. 45 euros a night for a double room. Simple breakfast included, might not be sufficient for everyone - basically bread-based (toast, bread, rolls) with various spreads, juice, tea and coffee. Rooms a little shabby. Beds comfortable for me but a bit too soft for Andre. Shared bathrooms but showers were great. For about 7 euros they also do the laundry for you - washed, dried, folded and returned to you. Excellent service. Hosts very helpful. Wi-fi was free and signal was excellent. Would recommend if you're on a budget and don't mind staying somewhere a little tired-looking.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Favourite things we did:</u> Canal tour; Choco-museum; brewery tour; chocolate-shop-hopping (I highly recommend the hot chocolates from Chocaholic!); bus tour of Ypres Salient (we went with Quasimodo Tours). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things I wish we'd done:</u> We did virtually everything Brugge has to offer, so nothing really.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><u>Things we did that I'd say don't bother doing:</u> We were disappointed by the waffles on offer. It might have just been the shops we went to, or maybe Brugge just isn't that great with waffles! I guess it's still worth having at least one but get recommendations for somewhere good.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-63121711822622068572012-06-23T00:20:00.000+10:002012-12-31T15:37:19.166+10:00Homeward Bound<br />
5 June<br />
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By Tuesday, 5 June, our holiday had essentially come to an end. We were due to return to London for one last night before getting on a plane to go home. We had a relatively early train, so we checked out at breakfast and went straight to the train station. Brugge train station is very easy to navigate and so we found our train without any problems.<br />
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From Brugge we took the train back to Brussels, where we arrived about fifty minutes before our Eurostar train back to London was due to depart. We went straight to border control because we knew it would take time as we were leaving the schengen zone (a group of European countries who allow free travel between borders - border control only applies when you are leaving the zone and entering a country not in the zone. Every country we visited was in the schengen zone, except the UK). We had a pretty long queue to wait in, but the staff were efficient and after asking a few brief questions about our travels (how long have you been in Europe, why are you going to London, where are you going after that) we were through. Then we had to queue to get up the escalators to the train platform, and after a bit of a mix-up about where we were sitting (the train came in the opposite direction to what was expected, so our carriage was down the other end of the platform) we were on the train. The people in our carriage took a long time to be seated, so a lot of us were stuck standing for the first ten to fifteen minutes of the trip while people messed around with luggage and seats.<br />
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The train ride was fairly uneventful and we arrived in London at about 12, realising after a text message from a friend in London (Sean, who we had met in Rome) that we were arriving just in time for the final festivities of the Queen's Jubilee weekend. If we'd had nothing else to do we would have been able to make it to somewhere along the procession route to see the royal family, however we had to get to Greenwich and check in to our hotel. By the time we recharged our Oyster cards which we'd kept from the last time we were in London, got the train out to Greenwich and checked into our hotel, we decided it was probably too late to get a good place to see the procession. So we just watched it on our TV in the hotel room!<br />
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For our last night we had chosen somewhere a bit flasher to stay - a 4 star hotel in Greenwich (which we still got a decent price on through a third party booking website). It was possibly the most comfortable bed we had the whole trip! Unfortunately I had booked it when we thought our flight the next day was leaving at 1pm, so would have plenty of time to get to the airport. However due to Michelle's scenario, we discovered it had been moved to 9:45am, so we would have to leave early to get to the airport on time. If I'd known it was an earlier flight I would have booked a hotel at the airport!<br />
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That night we met up with Sean for dinner. He took us to an english pub near Trafalgar Square which served cheap but yummy meals. Again, we stayed up late chatting for hours, but not as late as we had in Rome as Sean had to work the next day and we had to be up early for a flight and hadn't finished packing yet!<br />
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The next morning we were up early to head to the airport. The previous afternoon we'd used an online journey planner to figure out what trains we had to take to be at the airport by 8:45, an hour before our flight was due to leave. Nothing we had told us how early we had to be there, but if we were going to get there much earlier we would have had to wake up at 5! In hindsight we should have allowed more than an hour, but we'd only needed an hour when leaving Australia so I didn't think it would be any different flying out of England.<br />
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But of course, did our train get us to the airport by 8:45 as the journey planner said it would? No, it was slow, and only got us there minutes before 9. And then of course we realised that the trains come in to the South Terminal, and Vietnam Airlines operates out of the North Terminal, so we have to catch the light rail to the North Terminal. Fortunately we got to the platform about a minute before the next train came in so we didn't lose too much time doing that. We got to our check-in counter 40 minutes before the flight was due to leave, and of course it was a mad rush - check in had technically closed, so the airline staff rushed our check-in, gave us priority passes and directed us to take our baggage round to the oversized luggage drop-off to be fast-tracked to the gate. Our priority pass got us straight to security where there were only about two other people going through and we arrived at our gate just as they were commencing boarding.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-65178278179115798522012-06-16T23:56:00.000+10:002012-06-16T23:56:08.017+10:00Chocolatey BruggeOur last full day in Brugge was cold, windy, and rainy. We started the day again with that wonderful chocolate spread on bread & croissants and were generally lazy. We eventually headed out with the mission of buying chocolate. Belgium is, after all, pretty much the chocolate capital of the world, and we hadn't really eaten very much belgian chocolate yet.<br />
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The first shop we stopped at was Chocaholic. We bought a few chocolates as presents there, and a box of various pralines to sample ourselves. (It made the flight home a bit more tolerable). They were also advertising cheap hot chocolates, and as it was such a miserably cold and drizzly day outside, we bought some. What they served us surprised me at first; a cup of hot frothed milk, and one of their hot-chocolate sticks that they also sold separately. Basically it's a paddle pop stick with a chunk of chocolate on the end, and you stir it round and round in your cup of hot milk until it has all dissolved.<br />
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It was like drinking hot melted chocolate. It was divine. I have resolved to figure out how to replicate it at home!<br />
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We then window-shopped at a few more chocolatiers before stopping in at Dumon. They had less variety and were a bit more expensive than Chocaholic, but we bought a little block of their chocolate for comparison's sake before going off to find lunch.<br />
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Afterwards we came across a lolly shop filled with far more than just chocolate, and we found actual cuberdon lollies! We had a laugh when we realised our waitress from the night before had probably mistranslated - rather than nose-shaped, they were cone-shaped. Andre reasoned that was still basically nose-shaped. So we had to buy a bag of those as well. Andre also bought three belgian beers to sample at a local shop. Unfortunately they were unrefrigerated, however when we got back to the hotel we just set them outside on the window sill and by the time we returned to our hotel after tea, they were cold enough to have one or two!<br />
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We had tea at the same place we had waffles on our first day where Andre had a flemmish beef stew made with belgian beer and I had belgian sausage. And of course, for dessert: waffles! As we'd had the Brussels (thick, very light and crispy) waffles previously, we had the normal 'sugar' waffles this time. I got strawberry sauce and Andre had the same butterscotch sauce I had previously.<br />
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I was disappointed with the waffle. Andre said his was good, but mine wasn't cooked properly and was still a bit doughy in the middle. Overall not that impressed by my belgian waffle experience. We headed back to the hotel via the Minnewater again to take more photos of swans and ducks, and packed our bags ready to leave first thing in the morning.<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-4993857151438978502012-06-09T22:54:00.002+10:002012-06-23T01:39:06.247+10:00Ypres Salient Tour<br />
3 June<br />
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The next morning I had an email from the first tour company saying they didn't have any space in their tours for that day, as I had expected. So I called the second tour company, Quasimodo tours, and fortunately the man I spoke to said yes, they had space! We arranged to be picked up in front of the train station just minutes down the road from our hotel at about 9am. Breakfast was only served at our pension from 8:30, and I wanted to find an ATM to get cash out as I wasn't sure if we could pay for the tour on card, so we skipped the pension breakfast to get to the train station early enough to find an ATM. It was a cold and drizzly day so we had our jackets and scarves on for the first time in weeks. We had no problems locating the ATM to get cash, then went inside the train station to find somewhere to get breakfast. The first thing we saw when we walked in was a little fast-food type bakery, so I got a chocolate pastry & fruit juice and Andre got a muesli, strawberry & yoghurt breakfast cup. We ended up at our meeting spot with heaps of time to spare.<br />
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A little after 9 we were picked up by Phillip in the Quasimodo bus. He had already collected a few people, and we picked up about another fifteen from another meeting point nearby. In total there were around 20 people on the tour, not small but not too big either. The tour ended up being very good. It was all located around the Ypres salient, about 30 - 45 minutes' drive south of Brugge, depending on the weather and roadworks. Phillip and his Australian wife have been running these tours for over ten years (I think he might have even said twenty years?) so he knew a lot about the area and World War I. I had read a lot about the three battles of Ypres and the battle of Passchendaele before we went, but didn't really understand how it all fit together. He painted a perfect mental picture of how the war started, how the Belgians were caught up in it, and the part the battles of Ypres played in it all.<br />
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He took us to see Hill 60 where the Australian 1st Tunnelling Company dug and maintained the tunnels below the German front at Passchendaele ridge during the Battle of Messines (featured in the movie Beneath Hill 60). We were able to see a british bunker there, and the remains of a German bunker that has now mostly sunk underground into the muddy clay soil. There are still a lot of undetonated munitions in the ground, so he warned us that we might want to stay to the well-worn path, although there are no fences restricting where you walk. Beside Hill 60 there was an Australian war memorial, which ironically, now bears holes from World War 2 bullets. We also saw several Commonwealth war cemeteries, the largest being Tyne Cot near Passchendaele.<br />
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We also saw another at Polygon Wood, the site of a significant battle involving Australian troops, where there now stands a memorial dedicated to the 5th Division of the Australian Imperial Forces, which I thought was the division my great-grandfather's cousin served in, but it wasn't. He was in the 3rd Division, which did still fight alongside the 5th Division in, among others, the Battle of Messines and the 3rd Battle of Ypres, which included the Battle for Passchendaele, the 'suicide mission' where the allies decided to launch an assault on the Germans, rather than the other way round as had been the case for the first two Battles of Ypres (which turned out to be an utter catastrophe).<br />
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We also saw the Canadian war memorial, 'The Brooding Soldier', possibly one of the best war memorials in Belgium, and the German Langemark War Cemetery. Unlike Commonwealth war gravestones, German gravestones are black rather than white (a condition of the Treaty of Versailles). They also normally lie flat on the ground, not upright, and this particular cemetery is modelled not like a garden (like the Commonwealth ones often are), but is covered in plain grass and tall oak trees, a german symbol for strength.<br />
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The trip also included a visit to the Hooge Crater museum (the crater itself has since been filled in) where we had lunch (somewhat disappointingly, just a sandwich, but it was included in the price so can't complain too much) and to Ypres where we saw the Menin Gate, engraved with the names of Commonwealth missing soldiers from WWI bar the New Zealanders (who requested their names be recorded at memorials located at the actual battle sites). We also saw one of the few restored trenches in the area and even that has not been very well restored. Our guide Phillip was very critical of the poor effort the Belgians have put in to conserving their trenches and bunkers, in comparison with countries like France that have done a very good job. Belgium has now realised the opportunities they have missed out on and is now scrambling to recover and restore as much as it can (I think he said they are even digging and building new trenches), spending much more than they would have originally if they had just restored trenches and bunkers as they discovered them. I think he said there are only two restored trenches in the Ypres Salient area.<br />
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Phillip also took us to a farm off a side-road to show us some of the 'iron harvest', the various shells that farmers still, reasonably regularly, recover from their fields. Belgians recover, on average, 200,000kg of munitions each year, one third of which is still live. They just leave it by the side of the road for the military to recover, which can take a few weeks! As a result, these shells just sit by the road for anyone to come and look at and take photos of. One lady in our group asked, "so how do you know these won't blow up right now?" Phillip looked at her, at the shells on the ground, then back up at her and shrugged and said "I don't really! But they've been there for 90 years and haven't blown up yet so they're probably ok. I wouldn't go throwing them around though!" I loved it because I thought there was no way in the world that would ever happen in Australia!<br />
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Despite getting very wet feet from walking around in sodden fields in perpetual foggy rain all day, we had a very good trip. Not only did we see some of the most important Commonwealth WW1 sites, but Phillip was very knowledgeable and seemed to know pretty much everything there is to know about Belgium and the Commonwealth's involvement in WWI.<br />
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That night we decided to have our anniversary celebratory dinner, and 'went out' for dinner at the restaurant right next door to our hotel. Andre had marinated pork ribs with mashed potatoes, and I had sugared ducks leg served with roasted potato and baby carrots. The ribs were a bit dry, but the mashed potatoes were excellent. My duck's leg was very well cooked, the best duck I've ever had - not at all dry, I kept referring to it as chicken by mistake. The veggies were also very tasty. For dessert Andre had cuberdon ice-cream and I went with what belgians know best and had chocolate mousse. At first we didn't know what cuberdon was, so we asked the waitress who took our order.<br /><br />"It's, uh... hmm, I am not sure how to say in english... it's a lolly, it's very flemmish, it's.... umm, I am not sure how else I can describe it... it is nose-shaped, it's a nose-shaped lolly." Intrigued by this, Andre decided to go ahead and order it anyway.<br /><br />It was a very, very familiar flavour, but we couldn't pick it for the first ten minutes or so. It was a pinky-purple coloured ice-cream with crushed musk lollies on top. After a while, I picked it - "fairy floss! The good fairy floss, like from The Show, not the free stuff you get at O-week. Raspberry! Pink raspberry fairy floss!" And that's exactly what it tasted like. The mousse was also very good, though perhaps not quite as set as I'm used to.<br /><br />Overall it turned out to be probably one of our favourite days out of the entire trip!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-72911154023572770862012-06-09T22:45:00.000+10:002012-12-31T15:40:40.983+10:00Brugge2 June<br />
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Our first day in Brugge turned out to have beautiful weather. Breakfast was a little bit odd, they only served various breads with spreads - white & wholemeal bread, raisin bread, toast, bread rolls and croissants. No cereal, fruit, yoghurt etc. But they did have an amazing chocolate spread. It tasted just like my favourite chocolate spread which was the stuff Woolworths' homebrand used to make about fifteen years ago before they added hazelnuts.<br />
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We first decided to visit a local brewery which has now been operating for six generations, De Halve Maan (The Half Moon). We took a guided tour of the brewery, with the traditional beer-making methods explained. It was a pretty interesting tour as far as breweries go and they had some good displays with a lot of the old equipment retained. After some beer tasting at the end (I don't like beer at all, so Andre had mine), we had waffles and ice-cream for lunch. We got Brussel waffles, which are much thicker than the ones we typically have in Australia, but very light and crunchy. I had butterscotch sauce on mine and Andre had chocolate on his. They were quite good but I didn't think they were anything especially better than the ones we make ourselves at home.<br />
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Afterwards we went to the Choco-Story Museum which was pretty interesting. It's a museum about the history of chocolate, featuring the Aztecs, Mayans and Spanish, its development from being a popular drink for the European upper class into a common sweet, the different equipment used in its production and consumption over the years, how it is made, how it is grown and about fifty years' worth of different chocolate packaging. It also had a chocolate-making demonstration where you got to eat the final product, but it was a hazelnut praline so Andre got the rest of mine. Europeans seem to have this obsession with putting hazelnut in all their chocolate!<br />
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After the chocolate we walked across to the northern end of the old town to see some old-school windmills. None of them were open, but it was interesting just to get to see them. Then we walked back into the town to take a boat ride through the canals. Brugge is very pretty from the water, and one bridge we went under was so low we had to duck our heads! There are also lots of swans, ducks and geese around the canals in Brugge, and many of them had ducklings and we even saw a cygnet!<br />
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That night at home I checked my emails to check the details of a battlefields tour I had booked for the next day. Or so I thought. Once I read the email, I realised the tour was supposed to have been that day. Whoops. So I raced off a very apologetic email to the tour company, and tried to figure out how I was going to organise a replacement tour within two days. In my email I asked if they happened to have any places on their Sunday tour, but when I went back and read my original emails requesting a booking, I noted that they didn't have any space on the Sunday or Monday. Hmmm. I had a look at the pamphlet for another company I had considered booking with, and they said that we could call anytime between 7:30am and 10:30pm. It was just past 10:30pm by that point, so I decided I'd call them first thing the next morning to see if they had any spaces on their Sunday tour, as they didn't run tours Mondays.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-35627918606971041562012-06-07T22:14:00.001+10:002012-06-07T22:19:54.867+10:00Bacharach & Brugge<div><p>31 May & 1 June</p>
<p>Our second day in Bacharach also happened to be our wedding anniversary. As we had been to see castle ruins the day before, we decided to go and see an intact castle. We were tossing up between two near the little town of Trechtingshausen south of Bacharach, Burg Rheinstein and Burg Reichenstein. We decided on Reichenstein as it was a shorter walk from the town.</p>
<p>We actually ended up being a bit disappointed with it. They seem to be more interested in attracting functions, especially weddings, than tourists, although they do put out tourist promotional material, so I'm not really sure what their target audience is. There was absolutely no interpretive signage, printed or audio guides, although they had photos of weddings everywhere on the lower level. It was also poorly lit- although we saw electric lights everywhere, none were turned on. Daylight could still get in but lighting would have made the place look better. To our surprise, we were also the only ones there.</p>
<p>We still enjoyed getting to go inside a castle, especially as there was access to the top of one of the exterior walls with a good view of the valley. It also didn't cost very much so we didn't feel ripped off, although we did wonder if our time would have been better spent at Rheinstein, or even at one of the castles near Koblenz, a 40 minute train trip down river.</p>
<p>We decided then to take the train down to Bingen and get the ferry across the river to Rudesheim. Once we got to Bingen though, it began to rain, and didn't look like it was moving on anytime soon. We decided it probably wouldn't be worth paying for the ferries to and from Rudesheim just to spend only an hour or so there in the rain. So, back on the train we got to Bacharach, after first buying our onwards tickets to Belgium for the next day.</p>
<p>We chose a little cafe overgrown by climber vines for dinner. We chose a cheaper place as we had already had a few more expensive meals in Germany, and decided we would have a fancier anniversary meal in Belgium. However it was very good value, and André had a rabbit dish. We also got very German desserts- apple strudel with ice cream, and a black forest (schwarzwald) ice cream sundae (vanilla and chocolate ice cream with cherries, chocolate sauce and cream).</p>
<p>The next day it was time to move on to Brugge (or Bruges) in Belgium. Our trip required a few change overs - first 40 minutes to Koblenz, then on to Köln (Cologne), then a high speed train to Brussels in Belgium. We had a bit of a break in Brussels before catching a regional train to Brugge.</p>
<p>Our pension ended up being a very short walk from the train station, just inside the old town. We got there at about 3pm so after we checked in we had time to wander into the town square and investigate the shops, including taste-testing the fries that Belgium is famous for. Not terribly impressed, and the whole eating fries with mayonnaise is weird. They still offer you ketchup though (I don't know why Europe has adopted the American term) which André liked, especially as Belgian ketchup seems to have more sugar in it than Australian tomato sauce, and a spice that I first thought was cinnamon but now think might have been nutmeg. For dinner we found a cheap little döner & kebab shop among the more expensive restaurants in our area with a friendly owner who lives upstairs from his shop.</p>
<p>The daylight hours in Brugge were crazy. It was the furthest north we had been in several weeks, and now that it's summer, it didn't get dark until about 10:30. This resulted in some late nights because it just didn't occur to us to get ready for bed while it was still daylight!</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-66680785355281810712012-06-07T13:19:00.001+10:002012-12-31T15:29:34.358+10:00Munich to the Rhine Valley<div>
29 & 30 May<br />
We did not pre-book our tickets from Munich to Bacharach in the Rhine Valley as we had checked on a ticket machine previously and found the necessary trains ran reasonably often. So we decided we would take an afternoon train to give us a bit more time in Munich. <br />
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In the morning we first went to the hoptbahnhof, or central station, to put our bags in lockers. We also bought our tickets then so that we could make any necessary seat reservations. From there we went back to Marienplatz to explore the markets that had been closed the previous two days. We bought some cherries and a beer for André but before long it began to rain. We headed back in the direction of the train station, ducking into a few shops along the way to escape the rain and buy a few more presents and souvenirs.<br />
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Because the rain seemed to have set in, we went back to the Hoptbahnhof early, where we found a post office to send another parcel back to Australia. Lucky we did go back early, because there was quite a line up in the post office. After that it was pick up the bags, get some lunch and find our train to Bingen am Rhein. We switched trains in Bingen, to a local train that took us the last twenty minutes up the valley to Bacharach.<br />
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Bacharach is only a very little town, with one main street a few hundred metres long and half a dozen smaller back roads. It's filled with old half-timbered buildings and has vineyard-covered hills behind it, with a castle on top (which is now a youth hostel). Our pension was located down one of the side streets, and was a half-timbered building built onto the old city wall. The room was very spacious and was actually a triple room just for the two of us, and we got a private bathroom again! The first night we had dinner at a small restaurant just down the road from our pension, and sat by the front window which opened onto the cobble stoned street outside.<br />
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For our first full day in Bacharach we walked up the hill behind our pension to see the castle Burg Stahleck. It wasn't a long walk, and along the way we also saw the ruins of a gothic chapel. Once we got to the castle we couldn't go in to see too much, as it's a youth hostel, but they did have a courtyard we went into. It gave a good view of the valley below and part of the castle exterior.<br />
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We didn't spend long there before catching a train north to the little town of St Goar. We explored the idea of taking a ferry, but it was so slow, didn't run often from Bacharach and even less often in the direction we wanted, and was a lot more expensive than the train. We went to St Goar primarily for the complex of ruins of the castle Burg Rheinfels which stands on the hill above it. Part of the castle has been restored into a 4-star hotel now, and part into a restaurant and gift shop. Otherwise it stands in ruin, but when you purchase entrance (only 4 euros) you are given a leaflet which outlines two routes around the complex, explaining what each area was. The directions on it weren't always easy to follow, but we did both paths around the castle and ended up with a good understanding of how the castle once was. The ruins are in pretty good condition, with a lot of rooms, tunnels, towers and passageways still intact.<br />
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We spent most of the day at Burg Rheinfels and watched ferries go by on the river while we waited for the next train back to Bacharach. Dinner was at a restaurant with an open courtyard surrounded by half-timbered buildings where we were appropriately German and André had pork roast while I had what I think were pork sausages and fried potato. We finished the day with gelato! I had mango and lemon which was very good, but still not quite Giolitti's!</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-25681898680242499782012-06-06T01:12:00.001+10:002012-06-06T01:12:01.698+10:00Palaces & Concentration Camps<div><p>27 & 28 May</p>
<p>The problem with Munich is that it's catholic. And the problem isn't theological (although there's that too). Because it's catholic, everything closes on Sundays. The main tourist attractions are open, as are the restaurants in the main tourist areas and the public transport. But grocery stores, souvenir shops, bakeries, markets, snack bars, restaurants outside of tourist areas are all closed. This is also the case on catholic public holidays. Of course, we were in Munich on Saturday, Sunday, and a catholic public holiday Monday. Fortunately on Saturday we bought pre-made sandwiches at the grocery store and kept them in the fridge at home for our explorations on Sunday. But it made finding other food a bit harder, especially cheap meals.</p>
<p>On Sunday morning we decided to visit Hofbrauhaus to actually go inside. André got a beer and we bought a large heart-shaped gingerbread biscuit which we saved for lunch. The inside of the building is entertaining to see too, as the ceiling is covered in murals and they often have oompah bands playing, such as when we were there. It's also interesting to see the stamptisch signs hanging over certain tables. Stamptisch is a permanent reservation for locals, which gives them the right to kick out whoever may be sitting at their table. To gain a stamptisch in a beer hall, a local must drink in the same establishment three times a week for fifteen years. Then you get a sign with your name on it to hang over a table as a permanent reservation!</p>
<p>After the Hofbrauhaus we caught a train out to see Schloss Nymphenburg. This was the palace the famous 'mad king' King Ludwig the second was born in. We had our sandwiches and gingerbread for lunch in the gardens before we went inside. The gardens are enormous, we saw only a fraction of them, but they were very pretty and the weather was wonderful for being outside.</p>
<p>Inside the palace actually ended up being a bit of a disappointment. There was an impressive elaborately decorated entry hall/ ballroom and two or three other fancy, beautifully furnished rooms, but otherwise it mainly displayed art collections (and not many) of the various kings who lived there. Our combination ticket also got us into another section of the palace to see a collection of carriages, sleighs, and horse equipment and one of the mini-palaces out in the gardens (a summer hunting lodge of one of the queens). On the whole I think someone would be better off, if they had the time, to take a daytrip out to one of the palaces Ludwig built himself in the Bavarian forests and mountains.</p>
<p>After Nymphenburg we took a tram back to one of the train stations to get a train to the Englischer Garten (English garden, or park). Here we took a walk and spent half an hour in a paddle boat on the lake in the middle of the (very large) park. The Englischer Garten is Munich's equivalent to central park in New York. We saw lots of ducks, geese and swans, but no squirrels to André's disappointment.</p>
<p>We returned back to Marienplatz to find dinner, and ate at the Augustiner beer hall, as we had been informed Augustiner was Munich's best beer and André had tried it once already and been very impressed. I has pork escalopes (scallops) with chips and side salad while André had venison with mushroom sauce and potato dumplings. My side salad was excellent (Germans and austrians know their salads!) but the pork was a bit average, but André said his meal was excellent.</p>
<p>The next day we intended to go out to the Dachau Concentration Camp. We were tossing up whether to go with a paid Sandeman's tour or by ourselves. We ended up going by ourselves as the tour was 5 hours long and we could do it cheaper ourselves too.</p>
<p>We realised why the tour took five hours. It takes half an hour just for the train out there, and we spent three hours there until closing and could have spent a fourth. We got lunch from a little snack bar right by the train platform (I was amazed it was open on the public holiday, I thought we would be stuck with McDonalds for lunch) before catching the bus to the concentration camp. We got a bit of a fright when the bus sign said the memorial was closed on Mondays, but we confirmed on the website it was definitely open every day except Christmas Eve (which is what I thought).</p>
<p>Entry to the memorial is free, but it's a good idea to get an audio guide if you don't have your own guide. They are only 3.50 so not expensive. Many of the buildings are original nazi constructions, including the watch towers, although the dormitory buildings were demolished by the liberating forces, so two have been reconstructed. The Americans also used the other buildings for their own purposes after liberation, so in many parts layers of paint have been removed to return sections of the buildings to the condition they were in the 30s and early 40s. Aside from Nazism, modern German history and WW2 in general, the memorial also tells the stories of many individuals who were imprisoned at Dachau, which was the first concentration camp built by the nazis.</p>
<p>We spent the rest of the day there until it closed at 5. We had our last dinner in Munich at the Augustiner again where André had a platter of German sausages with mashed potato and sauerkraut and I had a grilled half-chicken with side salad. André was not impressed with their sauerkraut but everything else was very good.</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-63018789969826629622012-06-04T07:13:00.001+10:002012-06-04T07:38:46.173+10:00Munich<div><p>26 May</p>
<p>Our first full day in Munich was a Saturday. For our first exploration of the city, we decided to take another Sandeman's New Tour like we did in Paris. On our way to the meeting place in Marienplatz, we got breakfast in a bakery and wow, I want to bring a German bakery home. We both got pastries and they were both excellent!</p>
<p>Our tour started off in Marienplatz in front of the new town hall just in time to see the glockenspiel go off at 11am. It's really just a bunch of bells playing an old song nobody really knows, with some wooden mechanized statues doing a simple performance. Again, contrary to the stereotype (myth?) of German efficiency, this is not yet automatic, and a man has to climb the stairs at 11 and 12 every morning to press a button for the glockenspiel to start. Our guide said once during Oktoberfest, he never actually turned up. What's more, the bells are actually out of tune, despite being sent to the Netherlands for tuning several years ago. The Dutch, who are supposed to know their bells, sent back all the 'C' bells playing C#. The Germans reckon this was on purpose.</p>
<p>Our tour guide took us round to many of the well known and some less well known sights in Munich, including the cathedral, Hofbrauhaus (the most famous beer hall in the world), the Munich Residenz, the opera house, the markets, the street of the Munich Putsch (google it) where Hitler was arrested, still as a near-nobody, and subsequently charged with treason (a charge that normally attracted the death sentence or life in prison -the nazi-sympathising judge sentenced him to five years, of which he served less than ten months) and she showed us many of the little, often unnoticed, signs of the nazis that still remain. An example is the nazi eagle which was put on everything the nazis built. The Germans have left the eagles there, but decapitated them, so all over Munich on buildings, bridges, monuments etc you can find headless eagles.</p>
<p>After our tour we decided to visit the Munich Residenz. It's the old residence of the Bavarian rulers -electors, dukes and kings, whatever title they had at the time. It was very damaged during the second world war and was reconstructed in a basic fashion, with the facade painted on, as they did not have the time or money to reconstruct an elaborate facade. The real facade is only now being rebuilt, slated to be complete in fifteen years. Our guide suggested it would be more like twenty. Inside however, much was preserved, with paintings and furnishings removed before the war and returned afterwards. We spent several hours walking through the bedrooms, state rooms, dining rooms, etc of the old kings, who were only deposed in 1918 after the first world war.</p>
<p>Afterwards we did a bit of grocery shopping for breakfast food, fruit and chocolate (you know, the essentials), before having tea at a tavern-type restaurant down the road from our hotel.</p>
<p>Oh- funny story from our tour. A few hundred years ago, a new opera house was built in Munich. One day, a fire started inside as often did in theatres with all the candles. The architect said- never fear! I built in this great gadget that will save the day!</p>
<p>He had built an upside down dome into the ceiling with a hole in the roof above it. The idea was that it would collect rain water, and when necessary, you could pull on a rope which would open the dome, releasing all the water onto the theatre below. So he pulled the rope. Nothing happened.</p>
<p>You see, it gets very cold in Munich. The water has frozen, and was stuck in the ceiling.</p>
<p>So everyone panicked because their opera house was still burning down. Then someone realised- hey, we don't have much water, but we have lots of beer! So they formed a line from the nearest beer hall to the opera house, and started passing the barrels of beer along. But Munichers are very much like australians, in that they really like their beer. So as the barrels got passed to each person, they took a swig before passing it on. The barrels reached the end of the line empty.</p>
<p>They still threw the wooden barrels onto the fire. The opera house burnt down.</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-79464488373145852192012-06-04T07:00:00.001+10:002012-06-04T07:00:22.358+10:00From Cesky Krumlov to Munich<div><p>25 May</p>
<p>We initially had some problems with arranging transport from Cesky Krumlov to Munich. Two days prior, about the time we would normally book our onwards travel, we heard from Michelle that Vietnam airlines had changed the time of her flight and nobody had told us. We didn't know if they had notified Flight Centre and Flight Centre hadn't told us, or if they just hadn't told Flight Centre. As a result, Michelle had missed her plane out of London back to Australia. For the rest of the day, if we weren't actually doing something in Cesky Krumlov, we were in contact with her or other people about the issue and kind of forgot to plan our transport to Germany.</p>
<p>When we realised this the day before though, we weren't too worried. We contacted Daniel to see if he happened to be free to drive to Munich the next day, or possibly Linz in Austria. Our Plan B was to get one of the regular trains from Linz to Munich. Well, he wasn't going to Munich, but he did have a car going to Linz. At 8am. We decided that was too early for us at this late point of the trip and said no thanks. There were other shuttle companies in town that we would try in the morning, or otherwise get the train out. We knew we would have a few changes, but we'd get there.</p>
<p>Well, none of the other shuttle companies were running cars or buses to Linz or Munich the next morning, although one said they would be able to take us to Munich at 3pm, getting us there close to 8pm. We decided that was a bit too late, and the price wasn't any better than getting a train. (At this point we realised we should have just booked Daniel on the day we arrived in Cesky Krumlov, but because we weren't familiar with the exchange rate at that stage we weren't sure if he was offering us a good price.) So we decided to take the train. We got a taxi up to the train station (would have been a 20 min walk, minimum, uphill, and the taxi was about AU$6) and found a ticket office to buy tickets into Munich. No ticket machines in Cesky Krumlov station, and even if there had been, ticket machines often can't handle more complicated international connections. The lady was able to sell us tickets no worries, and even printed us an itinerary with the stops and changes we needed to make, including listings of the other stops we would pass through. We had good timing, as the train we needed out of Cesky Krumlov came along about ten minutes later.</p>
<p>The Czech regional trains were the oldest trains we travelled on for the whole trip, and the stations were the least technologicised (yes I made that word up). No LED displays on the platforms telling you where the next train was going, no ticket machines, the train carriages were the old-school ones with slide-down windows and had the destination printed on an A4 piece of paper stuck to the inside of the carriage window in a plastic slip. The train took us to Cesky Budojivice (home of Budweiser), where we got off at a deserted, unmanned, closed-looking platform for our connecting train. Double-checked our itinerary, yes, this is the right one. Ten minutes later, along came another train with the familiar Austrian QBB on the side. On we got, and it took us on to Linz, back through Salzburg. At Linz we had an hour to kill before our next train, so we found a cafe to have lunch. Before we knew it, it was time to get our final train which took us in to Munich, arriving about 6pm. </p>
<p>Once we got off our train in Munich, we realised we needed to take a city train to get us closer to our hotel. So we visited the Info Centre to get a rail map and some other info about the town. Munich rail defies the stereotype of German efficiency. There are two rail operators who run the two services, the U-bahn and S-bahn. Their platforms are in different parts of each train station, and directions to the platforms are not clearly marked, especially considering how large many of the main stations have to be to deal with several lines from two different rail services. </p>
<p>Then there's the ticketing process. If you are using a single trip ticket, you need to validate it by date-stamping it in a stamping machine before boarding. No magnetic strip tickets like you get in Paris, London, or even Sydney, and that's not new technology. We didn't notice any NFC passes being used, or the technology for them (like London's Oyster cards or Brisbane's Go card). There is something wrong when Brisbane out-technologies a German city of equal size. Day passes don't need to be validated from what we could tell, because they have the date already printed on then. </p>
<p>Fortunately the guy in the Info Centre told us all about this, so we got to our hotel fine. We were quite impressed with the hotel too. It's the only real 'hotel' we have been to the entire trip, a 3-star establishment with a rather spacious room, nice bathroom, mini-bar (with free beer and mineral water) and even a little stove-top. Remarkably, it was the cheapest place I could find in Munich without going too far out into the suburbs (booked via a hotel booking site, so cheaper than the normal advertised price). It is still the most expensive place place per person that we stayed the whole trip. And it didn't even include breakfast!</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-83122653098353964102012-06-01T05:15:00.001+10:002012-06-04T07:01:01.008+10:00Canoes, Puppets, Trdelnik & Mead<div><p>24 May</p>
<p>For our second day in Cesky Krumlov, we decided to start the day with a canoe down the Vltava River that runs through the middle of the town. I read before we left that it was a popular activity and Daniel reinforced that during our drive. </p>
<p>He explained there are a lot of camp sites placed along the river, and people are able to row between campsites, set up camp for the night, then move on the next day. Some companies offer arrangements where they have everything you need at the campsite, so all you need with you as you row is yourself, a wallet, and perhaps some clothes. Alternatively you can be relatively self-sufficient and take your own tents, food etc in your boat. Daniel told us you used to be able to pull up and camp wherever you like, and while you still can, they are trying to discourage it and encourage people to stay in camp grounds.</p>
<p>Obviously we couldn't do a multi-day rowing trip, but we ended up choosing a one-hour trip through the town itself. The companies will either drop you off elsewhere and you row back, or you leave from the town and they will pick you up. Other popular trips are to be taken up river and you row back to the landing (about 1 to 2 hours) or to leave from the landing in town and row to a town downriver (about 3 to 4 hours). </p>
<p>I wasn't keen to take up most of the day with the rowing trip, but André wanted to row through the town itself, something we couldn't really do with the 1 to 2 hour trip because the landing place in town was before you got a chance to go through most of the town or past the castle. So we just went with the short town row. It was very enjoyable though and didn't require much work because the river flows quite smoothly. For people who come from upriver, there are a few little weirs which have little canals built beside them for the boats to traverse the weir. Those are mostly upriver from where we left though, so we didn't go through any of those. There would normally be one for us to go through, but it was being reconstructed so we had to get out, carry the canoe below the weir, then get back in the water. The day before we watched a group try to take their 6-person raft over the weir itself which ended pretty disastrously (getting stuck, people falling out backwards, hitting rocks, filling up with water etc). But we and the two guys nearby who were watching it happen were all laughing (the American blokes thought it was hysterical). What's worse is that they did this straight after they saw a raft of their friends get stuck doing the same thing! André and I bet they were either American or Australian. While we were eating dinner at the hospoda, the same group turned up to the hostel next door, returning from their rafting trip, and it was all we could do to stop ourselves bursting out laughing when we heard their Australian accents. Yup.</p>
<p>So, we went rowing the next morning with nowhere near the same amount of trouble. Afterwards we did a bit of souvenir shopping and visited a puppet museum where we also got to play with a few traditional marionettes. We found some wine called 'André', so obviously we had to buy a bottle of that, and we had lunch at Deli 99, linked with Hospoda 99 and the Hostel 99 next door! While shopping we decided we needed to have another trdelnik, but this time we had one with chocolate. As well as having sugar and cinnamon on the outside, the inside was coated with a nutella-like chocolate spread (but not too hazelnutty so I didn't mind it). André also had some mead, which he quite liked. Before dinner we walked up behind the castle to see the castle gardens which we didn't get to see the day before. It was a combination of manicured flower beds and tall forest trees, ending with a large pond covered in lilies with ducks. André was especially excited when he spotted a squirrel in the gardens, a much darker variety than we saw in London.</p>
<p>All up, we decided we very much liked Cesky Krumlov. It had great food, interesting history, entertaining culture and activities and overall, very cheap!</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-23086778376419840692012-06-01T03:06:00.001+10:002012-06-01T03:06:45.138+10:00Cesky Krumlov<div><p>Unlike most first-time visitors to the Czech Republic, our czech destination was not Prague, but rather a little town of about 14,000 people in the southern state of Bohemia called Cesky Krumlov. We picked it because I was looking for a smaller destination to break up all the cities we would be visiting, wanted to see somewhere in the Czech Republic, and because I saw pictures of it on Trip Advisor and loved it.</p>
<p>It ended up being possibly one of our favourite places. We spent three nights there, and on our first full day had a lazy start (hooray for sleep ins!) before spending most of the day exploring the castle that towers over the old city. There is actually more to Cesky Krumlov than the old city, but it's a bit further away. </p>
<p>The castle doesn't really look like a castle, possibly because it's passed through a few owners who have added their own touches and because it was never a defensive fortress of any sort, but more of a palace. There are several entry fees, depending which parts of the castle you want to see. We bought the Cesky Krumlov card which ended up being a waste of money for us because we didn't go to enough of the attractions on it to make it worth the price, but we ended up only being 50 crowns down each, or about $2.50. But the card got us into the castle tower and museum free. The museum was interesting, but we didn't spend a lot of time in there because we had to catch another tour. The tower gave a good view over the old town and river so was a good opportunity for photos.</p>
<p>We also took two tours of the castle (neither of which the card covered)- a general tour and a tour of the baroque theatre. The theatre was the most expensive tour but also the shortest and you saw less than in the general tour. However, the theatre is special because it is one of only two baroque theatres in the world which still operate with their original sets and stage machinery. The other is in Sweden. Despite not getting to see a lot, we did get to go beneath the stage and see the timber machinery that moved the sets around, and some of the sound-effect equipment. While most of it is original, it has all been pulled apart, cleaned and repaired as necessary, then reassembled.</p>
<p>The general tour was also quite interesting, and as there was only André and me and two others, it was nearly a private tour. We saw bedrooms, dining rooms, sitting rooms, formal audience rooms where the royalty would have held audiences with people, and an elaborately painted mask ball ballroom. The walls are covered in paintings of people dressed for a masked ball, and the painter has specifically arranged each person to be looking at someone or something else in the room. So there are some interesting little stories between some of the painted characters around the room.</p>
<p>We had a very late small lunch after we came out of the castle- just a small burger to hold off the hunger until dinner! As we walked through the town, we stopped at a bakery to watch something being cooked that smelled amazing. We asked what it was and were told <i>trdelnik</i>. It was only 50 crowns so we decided to try one. The best comparison to something Australian I can think of is donuts. It's a dough that is rolled into a long log, then wrapped around a metal log and baked over heat so it forms a tunnel. So it's breadier than donuts, and baked, not deep fried. They can be served with a few different toppings, but most commonly it's sugar and cinnamon. Very tasty!</p>
<p>For tea we went to a 'hospoda' that I read about before we arrived (basically a cheap restaurant), Hospoda 99. The food was excellent, and cheap. André had chicken in a mustard sauce with potato dumplings (Daniel told us dumplings are a traditional Czech food) while I had a chicken and bacon salad, and we had a side of garlic bread. We both got dessert too- André had pancakes with raspberries and 'warm vanilla cream' (custard) and I had homemade sesame ice cream with chocolate sauce and 'caramel chips' (shards of toffee on top). The sesame flavour was a little odd to associate with ice cream at first, but I got used to it and it ended up being quite good. I also had hot chocolate which was excellent, and nearly as good as the one we got in Florence! André had a Czech beer and locally made liquer which had a very strong cinnamon flavour. And it all totalled less than $30! We returned to our pension <i>very</i> content that night.</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-65366021782536488242012-05-31T06:40:00.001+10:002012-06-01T02:18:43.611+10:00Salzburg to the Czech Republic<div><p>The day we left Salzburg started early for Michelle and me as we woke early for her to catch an 8:30 flight. The night before, while we waited for the laundry, Michelle booked a taxi for the trip to the airport. So the next morning we got up, she finished packing and had breakfast (which she bought from a supermarket the day before as the hostel breakfast didn't start early enough), woke André up to say goodbye, and we headed out the front to wait for the taxi that was due to arrive at 7.</p>
<p>A few minutes after 7 and the taxi hadn't turned up. But then Michelle got a call from the driver who had clearly gotten confused and, we think, went to the other hotel on the cliff where our hostel was located. A few minutes later he turned up though, and she got to the airport without any other dramas.</p>
<p>I decided to go back to bed then because breakfast wasn't served until 9 anyway. When we did get up, we had time to finish packing and have breakfast and didn't leave until a bit after 10. We had arranged to take a shuttle bus from Salzburg to our next destination, Cesky Krumlov. It was a last-minute arrangement, but the cost was cheaper than a train, especially as we got a discounted last-minute deal, and the trip was simpler. We had arranged to be picked up in front of another hostel in town as vehicles aren't allowed up in the park where our hostel was (unless they have a permit which taxis like Michelle's did).</p>
<p>We were a little surprised to be met by a driver with a spacious car rather than an actual shuttle bus and we were the only passengers. Our driver, Daniel, was very friendly though, and eager to tell us all about his hometown of Cesky Krumlov. For only the second time on our trip, we had the opportunity to see the countryside from the road rather than from a train. As we drove, Daniel told us about how the Czech Republic is still working to recover from communism, and how the community in Cesky Krumlov is excited that tourists have begun to notice them. He was also very critical of the EU's demands that the Czech Republic adopt the euro within six years, especially considering the current condition of the euro. </p>
<p>Even from the car, we could see how communism has left its mark on the country. We passed an unused border checkpoint, and Daniel slowed down for us to take a photo of the relatively new EU Czech Republic entry sign, not the old checkpoint ("that is just ugly grey building!"). Many things also just look run down and haven't been maintained as well as in other countries and the trains are visibly much older.</p>
<p>We got to Cesky Krumlov just before 3pm, and Daniel dropped us right to the hostel where we had to check in for our pension (guest house). Check-in was easy enough, and the lady took us down the road, across the river and up a small hill to the pension we were booked into. There were five rooms on the guesthouse, each with its own bathroom (we hadn't had a bathroom to ourselves since Tignes!) and a shared kitchen and dining room. Our room was spacious and looked out onto rooftops of houses down towards the river, and a large high-set church across the river. Shortly after we dropped our things off, we went for a walk to get some groceries and have lunch. We were reminded just how cheap things are in the Czech republic when we bought a loaf of bread, 4 apples, 2 oranges, 1L juice, 0.5L beer, three yoghurts, butter, chips, and two muesli bars for around $15. </p>
<p>We chose a restaurant right on the town square (The Old Inn) for lunch where André had a salmon pasta dish and beer while I had marinated chicken with a large side salad and huge garlic bread for about the equivalent of $20. The food was excellent as well. Very happy with bellies full of excellent food for a good price we headed back to our pension. It was such a late lunch and such a large meal that we didn't even bother having dinner!</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-5091729276723654622012-05-31T02:58:00.001+10:002012-06-01T03:06:35.808+10:00Salzburg - Castles and Palaces<div><p>On our last full day in Salzburg we set out to see two of the most famous places in Salzburg- Schloss Hellbrünn and Hohensalzburg (Fortress Salzburg). Breakfast was the standard for the hostel- German bread with cheese and cold meats, jam and juice. I decided on the first day I wasn't a fan of the German bread, but we had a few of the chocolate croissants leftover from Florence so I had those with cheese, ham and juice.</p>
<p>Salzburg's bus system is similar to Italy's in that you can buy tickets from tobacconists, newsstands etc. However unlike in Italy, you can still buy tickets on the bus, it's just more expensive. Unfortunately we generally got stuck buying tickets on the bus because there was nowhere near our hostel that sold them. So after the 332 steps down the cliff (we only paid for the elevator on the days we were carrying our packs), we jumped on a bus out to Schloss Hellbrünn (Hellbrünn Palace). The palace itself is not terribly impressive (it's pretty, but not in great condition and not very big), but the real attraction at Hellbrünn are the trick fountains. The palace and fountains were built around 500 years ago by the prince archbishop of Salzburg as a day residence, so there are no bedrooms there. The extensive grounds include a network of fountains, including secret hidden fountains perfectly placed for the archbishop to play pranks on his friends. Our guide clearly loves his job, demonstrating the trick fountains both when we were expecting it and when we weren't! Michelle and I figured out straight away though to look for the dry patches on the ground where the fountains obviously don't reach, and stand there!</p>
<p>We had lunch back in the old town where we went on a hunt for 'Salzburgers' that we saw advertised on our first day. It didn't take too long to find the same food stand, and it was worth the search- one of the best burgers I've ever had! After lunch we took the funicular up the hill to Hohensalzburg, the castle you can see from nearly anywhere in Salzburg. It was interesting not just in itself, but also because it gave a really good history of the city too, which was first mentioned as a settlement in the 900s, and the fortress was built not long after that!</p>
<p>We ended up not being able to spend quite as much time up there as we would have liked because it closed. We had to do laundry anyway, so went back to the hostel to get our washing and went on a hunt for a laundromat. We had a map and knew specifically where we were going, but the problem came after we put the washing on and wanted to find dinner. We were well out of the tourist area and it was past 9pm, so many places were closed. We walked up and down the street, avoiding the pizza place because we overdosed on pizza in Italy, only to be told several times that kitchens had already closed. So back to the pizza place it was. It actually turned out to be pretty good pizza, and the Indian owner was friendly and chatted to us while the pizza cooked.</p>
<p>We returned, with our pizza, to the laundromat fifteen minutes before closing only to discover our clothes had not been dried in the dual washer-drier which was also supposed to dry them. Then André realised he had only put it on a wash cycle, not wash and dry. This was possibly fortunate as we realized there were some things in the wash that shouldn't be put in a drier. So we had to pull all the washing out, throw it into a drier, and put the drier on the hottest and fastest cycle possible. For future reference: 90 degrees for ten minutes dries everything. Even jeans. It was finished by 10, at which point the machines automatically turn off, so we were able to relax and eat our dinner. Then when we finally got back to the hostel near 11 we realised Michelle still had to pack for her 8:30 flight the next morning. Oh well.</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-48002910372267684292012-05-31T02:51:00.001+10:002012-05-31T06:43:40.900+10:00Ice Caves<div><p>We chose our second day in Salzburg to take a day trip to visit the Eisriesenwelt ice caves. The caves are near Werfen, a little town about 45 minutes' train ride from Salzburg. So we got a bus to the train station in Salzburg and hopped on a train to Werfen. From the train station we walked about ten minutes to the car park where the shuttle bus to the caves picks you up. The bus wasn't too expensive, 6 euros each for the return trip.</p>
<p>But the trip doesn't end at the end of the bus ride. It drops you at the visitor centre where you buy your tickets, and from there, it's a 15 to 20 minute walk, uphill, to the bottom of the cable car. If you're super keen you can skip the cable car and hike up, but it's your choice between a three minute cable car ride or an extra two to three hours of walking. Literally. I know what I'd choose. Because then, at the top of the cable car, you have another 10 to 15 minute walk. Still uphill. We stopped at the top of the cable car for lunch (Austrian Mac and cheese for André and toasted sandwiches with side salads for me and Michelle) before continuing up to the caves.</p>
<p>They warn you that it's zero degrees inside the caves regardless of the outside temperature, so we came prepared. We emptied out my backpack (easy when you have packing cubes!) and André carried it for the day with our jackets, scarves, beanies and gloves in it. At the entrance to the cave we put the extra layers on except for the gloves. Disappointingly we discovered the tours were only in German with a printed English translation on a piece of paper. This can be difficult to read when there is no electrical lighting in the caves, only the gas- yes, gas- lanterns they gave us to carry. What is this, the 1800s? Do they not have head lamps or at least battery operated hand held torches? Nothing on the website suggests you should bring your own torches either.</p>
<p>You are also not allowed to take photos in the caves. According to the website it's so that guides don't get 'blinded by flashes' (which wouldn't be necessary if the place was lit better) and so nobody slows the tour down because tours leave 'every six minutes' - they don't, they leave every half hour. So by ten minutes into the tour, we were not very impressed- no electric lighting so we couldn't even appreciate the ice formations properly (could just see them via our lanterns and the magnesium flares the guide lit), hand-held gas lanterns, no English speaking guide and no photos. However a bit further into the caves the pace slowed a bit and the guide climbed in behind many ice formations to light longer-lasting flares. Permanent electrical lights still would have been more effective, but we were able to see things better. André also managed to get some video on his phone but got told off about half way through the tour! I started reading the translation but was also carrying a lantern so passed the translation to Michelle to read. So I basically went through it without any commentary, but it was still interesting and very different to anything I've seen before. Everything its covered in ice. In many places you can see the rock through the ice- it's so clear it's like looking through water. There are enormous frozen waterfalls, some 'pouring' down through holes in the ceiling to form ice columns, others 'flowing' down through the cave. Some tunnels were so low even I had to duck my head. And because it's ice and re-forms every year, nobody cares much if you touch it either (although there are large long-lasting formations that do break over time). We went about a kilometre into the cave network, which extends a further 41km into the mountain.</p>
<p>If you have the opportunity to see other ice caves that are better set up it probably isn't worth the cost and effort to get to Eisriesenwelt, but as we'll probably never have the opportunity to see something similar again, it still ended up being a good experience. </p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-89000932869197948442012-05-31T02:49:00.001+10:002012-05-31T03:00:03.993+10:00Salzburg<div><p>We got into Salzburg late afternoon. After a little bit of trouble figuring out buses we visited an Info Centre where a lady there pointed us towards the right bus and explained how to get to our hostel. We got off our bus at the bottom of a cliff, where we got on an elevator to the top of the cliff where our hostel was! </p>
<p>All did not go smoothly straight away though. The girl who was checking us in realised her boss had double-booked our room. We had booked a double room for André and me, and a dorm bed for Michelle. Somehow, they had double booked the only double room in the whole place. The girl was able to rearrange some bed assignments to at least have the three of us in the same room, and also offered us the first night free. With the offer of a free night-and the fact it had such a great view being at the top of a cliff behind the old town- we decided to stay. We didn't want to sit around looking for somewhere else to stay when we had somewhere cheap and interesting to stay anyway.</p>
<p>On our first night we took a bit of a walk around the park on the cliff where our hostel was situated. We found a small food outlet where we bought wurst hotdogs and André had a beer while Michelle and I shared something called an apple spritz. It turned out to be similar to appletiser, but not as sweet. We had other spritzes while in Austria and figured out they were just juices with mineral water. We had a bottled one that evening but often in restaurants they are offered as the juice alone or with mineral water as a spritz.</p>
<p>As we headed back to the hostel for bed we could hear music coming up from the old town below. Someone joked that it was the nuns rocking out, but we discovered the next morning that we had arrived in the middle of a music festival. It was all woodwind and brass bands playing a mixture of traditional music and covers of popular music like Queen. It was right in the middle of the old town, and meant there were lots of food stands set up. Our first day was also a Saturday, which meant there were the normal Saturday markets running. So we spent the morning looking through the markets and shops of the old town where we got an apfel bezel (apple pretzel) big enough for the three of us to share for morning tea, and then stumbled across the music festival while looking for the information centre. We stopped there and got lunch (wurstl, schnitzel, chips, semmel, beer and coke) from one of the stands and ate at one of the dozens of tables they had laid out in front of the stage. Clearly Europe doesn't have the same attitude to sun protection as Australia does- all the tables were spread out in the sun, which was actually a bit of a nice change after London and Paris had been so cold and drizzly and Florence and Venice's weather had been temperamental too. We also noted a lot of people in town still wear traditional dress. Most don't, but enough do that in a crowded shopping street you'll see several people walking around with lederhosen or drindles on, which we found quite amusing.</p>
<p>In the afternoon we went for a walk up behind the old town to see Nonnberg Abbey where scenes from The Sound of Music were filmed, and where the real Maria started her training. We could only walk around it, and didn't really recognise anything from the movie. We just decided we would have to watch the movie again when we get home! In our walk through the old town we had also seen the fountain where they filmed Maria's 'I have confidence' scene. Afterwards we crossed the river and walked along it to see Schloss Mirabell's gardens which Salzburg is famous for. A few other Sound of Music scenes were filmed there including the children and Maria singing 'Doe, a deer'.</p>
<p>We had a proper Austrian meal for dinner that night. André had Berner wurstl, which is a wurstl wrapped in bacon, while Michelle and I both had tirder gröstl, which is chopped beef and pork (we suspected these were beef and pork sausages) with chopped roasted potatoes served with a fried egg on top. Both meals came with a side salad which was served first (something we have found standard in counties with German influence) and was very tasty. It had cold potato in it too, and while that sounds weird with a green salad and I normally don't even like potato salad, it worked well.</p>
<p>Our first day in Salzburg already made it one of our favourite places.</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-86434483444423550572012-05-29T06:33:00.001+10:002012-05-31T06:44:20.834+10:00Venice<div><p>Our stay in Venice was quite relaxed compared to some of the other places we stayed. There really isn't a lot to do in Venice and it's all contained in a small area close together. It's mainly gondolas, glass, masks and shopping, shopping usually related to the first three items on that list.</p>
<p>On our first day, the first order of business was to find a laundromat. We found one that wasn't self service and wouldn't have our washing back to us for two days. Fortunately as we were saying no and getting ready to leave, an English backpacker came in and told us about a normal self-service laundromat. We didn't have too much trouble finding it, and the machines were fast. While the washing was on we went for a wander and found a bakery/ confectioner who sold enormous meringues. We had seen large meringues before, but they normally looked like those grocery-store 'fake' ones. These looked like proper home-made meringues and were a bit cheaper, so decided to give them a go. And they were good! About the size of my hand, they were too big to eat all in one go so we had to save the rest for later. Michelle had a chocolate one, André's was plain and I had a strawberry one.</p>
<p>Most of the rest of the day was spent looking through markets and shops. We did the tourist thing andd went to see San Marco's Square, which I was thoroughly underwhelmed by. The buildings were all dirty, although it looked like they were in the process of cleaning them, possibly for the America's Cup which we saw being advertised everywhere. We found a great little place for lunch where André got pizza and decided it was the new best pizza he's had on the trip. </p>
<p>Just before tea we decided to go for a gondola trip. It was 80 euros, which was what we expected, and between the three of us not too expensive. It was late afternoon on a weekday, so while there were other gondolas out on the water, it wasn't too busy. It was very peaceful and relaxing and gave us the chance to see parts of buildings and areas we wouldn't have seen otherwise.</p>
<p>On our second day we spent half the morning first looking for a post office to send souvenirs home, and then when we discovered how poorly stocked they were, a shop that sold bubble wrap. We didn't find any bubble wrap so just used newspaper, but by then the post offices had closed anyway (about lunch time!). After having some lunch we bought ourselves leather gloves from one of the market stalls, as we had found a lot of places in Europe, while they might not be too cold during the day, can get quite cold at night, and neither André nor I brought gloves with us! </p>
<p>Afterwards we bought vaporetti (water bus) passes and headed over to Murano to see a glass making demonstration. I've seen glass blowing before but this guy also sculpted a glass horse for us which was impressive to watch. I was surprised to note many of the buildings in Murano look more modern than in Venice, and the streets are much wider with more space, and cleaner. It also seems very residential which also surprised me. We had a look in a few glass shops, and while I was surprised that a lot of the prices were not exorbitant, I also saw things for considerably more than I had seen them being sold in Venice. I might have actually bought one or two things if it weren't for the problem of carrying or posting them home! That evening we took a vaporetti up and down the grand canal for a bit of sight-seeing before having a late dinner at a restaurant right near our hotel. It seemed a bit touristy and pretty empty, but it was late and a lot of other places were closing! The food was good though.</p>
<p>The next day we moved on to Salzburg. We were having problems figuring out the connections online, so the day before we dropped by the train station to get a staff member to help us book the right trains. We ended up having to get a monorail from the main Venice train station to a larger transport depot, from which point we got on a bus to Villach in Austria. </p>
<p>When we arrived in Villach we spotted a post office, so I went in to send the parcel of presents and souvenirs while Michelle and André went to look for some lunch, agreeing to meet on the train platform. I sent off the parcel no problem, and headed back to the train station. I found the right platform, with our train already there, and waited for André and Michelle. And waited. And watched the hands on the clock tick by. Departure time. Doors began to close. I heard somebody yell, and saw Michelle and André running from the other end of the platform. I ran towards them, we hit the button on the closest door and it opened for us. Jumped on and the train began moving about one minute later as we walked through the train to find our correct carriage and seats!</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-76632361800831372962012-05-24T07:26:00.000+10:002012-05-24T07:26:08.672+10:00Pisa to VeniceBack when I was still planning our trip, I thought we might go from Rome to Florence via Pisa, that is, get a train from Rome to Pisa, spend the day there, then get a train on to Florence for the evening. Well, with the booking of trains a few days before we needed to leave Rome, of course I forgot that plan. And we didn't have time to visit Pisa while we were in Florence. So, we reversed the original plan. We decided to visit Pisa before moving on to Venice. Pisa is not far from Florence, about an hour on the train, so even though it is west of Florence while Venice is east, it didn't cause any problems. <br /><br /><br />We had a bit of a late start to the day because we knew we didn't have a time that we had to be on the train. Trains run regularly from Florence to Pisa so we decided not to book one. We had another breakfast from the minimart in our campsite — croissants, yoghurt, bananas, juice, cereal — and eventually got onto a train to Pisa. We got to Pisa about lunchtime and actually had some difficulty getting to the leaning tower, which we really shouldn't have as it's basically down one road from the train station, but we followed a sign that must have been moved and so took a bit of a detour! We got there eventually though and walked around the tower and its other associated buildings like the church and baptistry. We didn't go into any of them or up the tower, but it was fun just to see them and take photos — of the buildings and of the scores of people lined up with their hands up in the air, having photos taken 'supporting' the leaning tower! We got a late lunch close by — between the three of us we shared a huge pizza, salad and fries and Michelle confused the poor waiter by ordering lemonade, which he wasn't familiar with, explaining it as lemon soda, which he did know, and then changing it to pineapple juice when I ordered one! The prices were very good, as most Italian food is, especially considering we were one street away from the leaning tower, although the drinks were a bit on the exy side, also something we have found is typical in many places where the food is cheap!<br /><br /><br />After a few hours in Pisa we had to be on the train back to Florence in time to catch a train on to Venice. Fortunately we had no train problems there, although for some bizarre reason the booking system for the Florence to Venice train did not let us choose our seats and assigned us two together and one further down the train. We assumed the other seats must have been all booked, but the carriage was 90% empty, including the seats beside Andre and me. It was nice to be back on a highspeed train though, as the trains to Florence from Rome and between Florence and Pisa were all lower speed regional trains. We pulled into Venice's St Lucia train station at about 8pm as the sun was setting. I was surprised to find Venice was a little cool, something I had not expected for a coastal (island!) town. One of our first impressions after walking out of the train station was how wonderful it was to be in a town where we wouldn't be subjected to sirens as we had in Florence, Rome, Paris and London, because there were no cars! (An impression that was blasted to smithereens on our last day, which I will get to later!) <div>
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In most of the places we stayed, after about a day I began to get a basic feel for the area around where we stayed and had some inner navigational ability. I never achieved that in Venice, other than the street and square immediately at the end of our street! But with a map we found our accommodation easily enough and got checked in. We headed out for a late dinner and found a place close by with pretty cheap food, but true to previous experience, the drinks prices were through the roof. Andre decided to try a beer
— I think I've only ever known him to drink beer about twice
— and actually quite liked it, but it cost 7 euros. My main meal cost 8! And they added a 12% service charge on! 12%! Needless to say we didn't go back there during the rest of our stay in Venice, which I will blog about later, as it is now past 11 and I have to go to bed!</div>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-41117096135774185142012-05-23T05:07:00.000+10:002012-05-24T07:35:22.044+10:00FlorenceAfter five nights in Rome we moved up the coast to Florence. This was one of the simplest legs of the trip, just one train the whole way. We were in a compartment with four others (two small children shared a seat). It was a noisier, slower, older train than others we've been on, but the seats were more comfortable than some others. We were a little worried at first that the train wasn't airconditioned, as Rome was pretty warm and when the train was stopped the airconditioning was off. But once the train started moving the aircon came through and it was all good.<br />
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Florence was very warm too when we arrived, probably about 30 degrees. We had some trouble finding our bus, as the bus stops had changed since the instructions we had were written. It was right by the train station though, and we found a news stand nearby that sold tickets. In many Italian cities you can't buy bus tickets on the bus and need to buy them beforehand, normally from tobacconists or newsstands. This can be a pain after hours or on Sundays when such places are closed, so it's good to buy a bunch at once if you know you're going to be taking a few bus trips.<br />
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We couldn't tell from the bus map if it stopped outside our caravan park or not, so we got off a stop too early at Piazzale Michelangelo. This wasn't a bad thing though, as the view from the Piazzale is excellent - and nearly matched by the view from the deck at the campsite. We only had to walk about another 200m (if that) to reach the campsite. We were staying in a three-bed permanent tent, about half way down the campsite (which is on a hill to the south of the historical centre of the city). From the tent there wasn't much view, but at the top of the campsite at the bar/restaurant the view was excellent. We spent our first afternoon at the Piazzale taking photos of the view and watching a few dozen kites, including one enormous one that would have been a good 5m squared, with tails. We got burgers from a snack stand for dinner (cheap but pretty lousy food) then spent the evening having drinks on the deck at the campsite.<br />
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Our first full day in Florence ended up being cold and drizzly. In the morning I bought some breakfast items from the campsite minimarket - chocolate-filled and jam-filled croissants (which we had discovered in our B&B in Rome), yoghurt, juice poppers, and cereal. This was our sole day to explore the city, so we spent time walking around, seeing the Ponte Vecchio, markets, Duomo, and other impressive buildings, and visited the Accademia (to see Michelangelo's David) and a Leonardo da Vinci museum. We decided to skip the Uffizi due to time contraints - we decided we'd seen enough art museums for now and were more interested in Leonardo da Vinci and specifically wanted to see David. Florence is a very pretty city, prettier than Rome. Rome is big and imposing and impressive, but Florence is pretty.<br />
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For dinner we had pizza and salad on our campsite deck - the pizza was reaonable, a good base but the toppings were a bit average, so still not as good as the pizza we discovered on our last night in Rome. The plastic 'walls' had been fastened down around the deck though due to the cold wind that had been around all day, so the view wasn't quite as nice as it had been the night before. We got hot chocolates after dinner, and WOW, they were the best hot chocolates ever! It was like drinking hot chocolate cream! We needed them as the evening was very cold. In fact all three nights in Florence were cold, something the locals told us was very unusual, which was unlucky as we were in a tent! Andre and I squished into one bed one night (we had a bunk bed and one single) to keep warm but it was a bit uncomfortable so the next night we went back to separate beds, though half way through the night I woke up so cold even with two blankets that I considered moving into his bed again!<br />
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For our second (and last) full day in Florence, we had booked a bus tour of the Tuscan countryside. We just had croissants for breakfast as the minimart wasn't open yet and I'd bought two packets the day beforehand, so we had spares! For our tour we met outside a cafe at 8:45am and drove out of Florence a little after 9. Our first stop was Siena, a medieval walled city. We were supposed to have an hour of free time before our guided tour, but due to some elderly americans who complained very loudly about going "too fast" and "not being able to see" the guide, we took much longer to get into the town centre (as it's car-free, the buses have to park outside and we walked in). This meant we only ended up with about half an hour of free time, so we didn't go very far. We then had a local take us on a tour of the town, through the cobblestone streets and into the elaborately decorated cathedral (covered in marble, including a parquetry-type marble floor, the only one of its type in the world). After the tour was lunchtime, where we had the option of eating at a place reserved by the guide with others from the tour. It was eleven euros each and basically all you can eat pasta, cold meats & cheese, salad, bread (served with olive oil and balsamic vinegar), wine and water so we decided it was a pretty good deal. It was a good opportunity to meet some of the other travellers on the tour, and we chatted with some Indians, Americans from Oklahoma and Canadians.<br />
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After lunch we left Siena and moved on to Monteriggioni, which can't even be classified as a village - it's really just a castle on a hill surrounded by farmland. We only had an hour there, enough time to climb the wall and look at the view over the countryside and look through the shops that now inhabit the castle walls, before we moved on to a winery for some wine and olive oil taste-testing which Andre had been looking forward to all day! We met some other Canadians there, Duy and Anita, and swapped gelateria recommendations with them - they were heading to Rome so we recommended Giolitti's, and they had just left Venice so recommended a gelateria there! I didn't mind the white wine that we tasted but wasn't a fan of either of the reds, but I never like red wine. We didn't buy any of the wine or oil there, but did buy some of the lavender honey that they also produce - I'm hoping we don't have too much trouble getting it back into Australia!<br />
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Our last stop was San Gimignano, another medieval walled town on a hill, known for its towers that can be seen from all across the countryside. Again we only had an hour there - not enough to explore it really as it is much larger than Monteriggioni and could be classified as a small town, but we did taste some of the gelato there and bought some postcards.<br />
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On our return to Florence we decided to try and find a restaurant that Duy had recommended for dinner. Easier said than done. It took us more than an hour as Andre had recorded the restaurant name on his phone, and his phone battery had gone flat. So we had to find a cafe with a power point where we could plug the phone in to check the restaurant details. That took long enough, but then Google Maps pinned the wrong spot on our map (even with the correct address), and TripAdvisor flatout gave the wrong address. We ended up finding it eventually though and we ended up not being extremely impressed. Andre said his steak was excellent, but Michelle and I got lasagna which, while it tasted good, had next to no meat in it and no tomato sauce at all - not sure if that's traditional or not, but none of the other lasagna we had in Italy was like that. We did have very tasty bruschetta though. The late dinner meant we didn't have a chance to do any laundry as we'd wanted and were up late clearing photos off our SD card onto Andre's phone.<br />
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We did enjoy our time in Florence, even though it was cold we liked semi-camping as something different to the B&Bs, hotels and apartments we'd had up to that point.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-41857489859678926292012-05-19T03:54:00.001+10:002012-05-19T03:56:21.186+10:00Rome & the Vatican<br />
15 May<br />
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Apologies for the delay in updating! We have just left Florence and our accommodation there (a permanent tent in a caravan park) didn't have wi-fi - it was only accessible in their bar area, plus our days were quite busy!<br />
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But back to Rome. On our second full day in Rome (last Wednesday) we had booked tickets for the Vatican museums, having heard how very long the line can be. So off we headed for our 10:30 time slot. As we got closer the area was very busy as we expected, but as we neared St Peter's we began hearing people talk about tickets to see the pope. Sure enough, we had picked a morning when the pope was giving an address in St Peter's Square. This was both good and bad for us. It was on at exactly the time we were due to enter the museum, so this meant the queue for the museum was only about five minutes long. The bad part was, the queue was only five minutes long - so we had wasted an additional 4 euros each by pre-booking our tickets (thankyou catholic church for your ridiculous charges).<br />
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The Vatican museum was much bigger than I expected - we spent a good three hours in there. It had some impressive pieces in its collections and I particularly liked the hall of old maps and another hall of tapestries illustrating various bible stories, including some I didn't expect like Herod's massacre of all children under two in his effort to kill Jesus. However I also couldn't help but be a little disgusted by the enormous wealth that the catholic church has obviously put into relatively trivial things like the interior decorations of the building - frescoes, ornamental sculpture, etc.<br />
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The museum included a visit to the Sistine chapel, and although we had guards who were strict on their 'no photos' policy, we did manage a few photos. Michelangelo's paintings were quite impressive, although it looked to me like one or two down the far end actually seemed unfinished.<br />
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After the museum we went to have a look in St Peter's church itself. The line to get in was ridiculously long, and it was hot, so we decided to get gelato from a place nearby that I'd heard was good. It was a disappointment. My black cherry had that fake medicine cherry flavour and the caramel was more like vanilla with swirls of caramel through it. Note for anyone else: Old Bridge gelateria not worth it.<br />
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I was over walking by that point, so after looking round inside St Peter's for a while I went and sat outside while Michelle and André climbed the dome.<br />
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The next day we explored via Appia Antica, or the Appian way. It's a road that runs through southern Rome and is lined with roman ruins. Tip: most of it is not pedestrian friendly except for Sundays when it's closed to traffic. This seems absurd to me as one would think it's quite a popular tourist destination, but maybe it's not as there wasn't much in the way of food shops around either. So after much walking and re-routing we eventually made our way there. We should have taken advantage of the archeobus that runs that route, but somehow I hadn't heard of it before we got there.<br />
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We got there eventually though, and visited the catacombs of San Sebastian which were apparently the first catacombs used by the christians in ancient Rome. I didn't realise catacombs were also used by pagans and even after christians were no longer persecuted. After visiting the catacombs we walked along a more pedestrian-friendly section of the road (much of which still has the original roman paving) and saw a few other ruins including the mausoleum of Cecilia Metella. We debated whether to go across the park to see some aqueducts, but it would have required changing buses twice and still a bit of a walk, and we were also interested in seeing the Baths of Caracalla which closed shortly and were simpler to get to. So the baths won out.<br />
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I was actually a little underwhelmed by the baths complex, I think mainly because my expectations were too high. I had heard about how huge they were, and they weren't that big at all. The building was still impressive and appears to have been multi-storey, but compared to the Forum and Palatine Hill, they are nowhere near as extensive. The information boards did a good job of describing the original structure though, something that I found lacking in many other ancient roman sites.<br />
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We did so much waking that day we really were not up to eating out, so decided to eat in our room and buy something from nearby. While André went to put on a load of washing at a nearby laundromat, Michelle and I went looking for food. We found a great little place just down the road which sold the best and possibly cheapest food we had in Rome. We bought two meals for 9 euros each, and each contained a pasta primi (first course), secondi (meat-based second course) and a side of veggies. This means we took home a meal of lasagne, pork kebab with potatoes and peas, and an unidentified pasta dish, meatballs in tomato sauce and carrots. Between the three of us there were still leftovers and it was all very yummy.<br />
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For our final day in Rome, after a bit of a sleep-in we headed up to the Villa Borghese, a park to the north. This presented more of a dilemma than it should have. See, while Rome's metro system is not extensive at all, it's cheap (1 euro for a one-way trip) and we had a line running very close by our accommodation which would have taken us straight to the park. However when we turned up to the metro stop, we discovered it was closed for some reason and wouldn't be running again until 5. Wonderful. This meant figuring out buses, and do any of the bus stops have bus maps? No. We tried the bus operator's website from André's phone, and it was terrible. Purely by chance we came across a bus stop for a line that would take us to the park. The next bus was due in three minutes. Hoorah!<br />
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It was too full. We seriously could not fit on. Obviously as the metro was closed, everyone was on the buses, and the Italians are not as good at cramming onto public transport as Parisians and Londoners. Fortunately the next bus was only another fifteen minutes away, so we got onto that one, and after a 25-ish minute un-airconditioned ride we got there.<br />
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The park was quite pretty and had a wonderful look out. After lunch we hired a golf buggy to drive around and explore, and after getting a little lost initially, ended up spending about half an hour cruising around the park. We walked home via another gelateria which had good reviews. It was quite good though I found my lemon was a little too lemony (not sweet enough), and the caramel was more like butterscotch - yummy, but not quite what I was after. So Giolitti's remained our favourite. In accordance with this, I am fairly certain André intentionally took our route home past Giolitti's so that he could make our last gelato in Rome our favourite. As we had just had a gelato, we shared one between the three of us and each chose our favourite flavour, so our final gelato ended up having caramel, watermelon and pineapple.<br />
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Once we got home it was dinner time, so we decided to return to the same place we had bought dinner the previous night and try their pizza. We ate in the restaurant this time, and they sell their pizza by the kilo! It was very cheap and the best pizza we had in Rome, a great end to our stay there.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-41269672216026773692012-05-12T16:19:00.001+10:002012-05-12T16:19:54.826+10:00Food we wish we could bring home<br />
Giolitti's gelato, specifically the mango, caramel, pineapple, watermelon and chocolate; the chocolate-filled croissants we've been having for breakfast in Rome; the banana and chocolate crepes from France (I'm totally going to make those though); cheese fondue from Switzerland (I can always make cheese fondue but I doubt it would be that good); the pizza we had for dinner last night (finally found excellent pizza in Rome!).<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-29626705543300202182012-05-11T08:27:00.001+10:002012-05-12T06:50:56.991+10:00When in RomeAfter our 'break' in Lauterbrunnen, we headed south to warmer climates in Rome. While this looked like it would be our longest trip, it went much smoother than our trip to Lauterbrunnen, although we almost had to run for our change in Milan. We pulled in to platform 1 and had to find platform 11 in ten minutes instead of 25. Fortunately Milan's main train station is quite straight forward and we didn't have any problems finding it.<br />
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We got into Rome at 2pm, and our b&b was within walking distance of the train station. Fortunately the clouds only thought about raining and we got there dry. The address was easy enough to find but the b&b was not marked (it was an apartment building). Lucky for us another guest was leaving just as we arrived so was able to let us in and show us the way up.</div>
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The place is in central Rome on quite a busy street, but is quiet enough at night time. Italians are not big breakfast eaters so there is not a large selection of breakfasts, but we've been having croissants with chocolate in them, juice, and André has coffee.</div>
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The first afternoon we decided to join a free walking tour. It was not the same company we used in Paris, as they don't operate in Rome. While it wasn't a bad tour, it wasn't as good as the one in Paris. We saw the Spanish steps, the pantheon, Trevi fountain, and several other churches and monuments. We had dinner at a little restaurant near Trevi fountain -not too expensive but the food was average. Strike one for roman pizza, although Michelle said her lasagne was reasonable. Afterwards we got gelato from a place recommended by our tour guide. I had caramel and chocolate, Michelle had pineapple and lemon, while André had coffee, baileys and chocolate. It was amazing. It was like gelatified flavour, not flavoured gelato. I would never have picked pineapple gelato but I tasted Michelle's and it was fantastic. It's called Giolitti and is near the Prime Ministerial house, if anyone wants to know!<br />
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That night while finding our way home we ended up going down the road that leads straight to the Colosseum. We crossed a road, turned down another street and there it was in front of us! The street was scattered with other ruins too, and while stopping to take photos we met another traveller, Sean, who is a Canadian working in the UK. We got talking for two hours and decided after midnight that we should meet up the next day!</div>
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So the next day we met up with Sean and spent most of the day looking through the Colosseum, roman forum and Palatine Hill. I didn't realise how extensive the complex on Palatine Hill is and we spent quite a bit of time there. We spent a good three hours at the Forum and Pallatine Hill alone. I was surprised to learn the original roman senate building is still nearly entirely in tact.<br />
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In the afternoon we went to see Trajan's market. Waste of money. It was of average interest level, to me, especially as we'd just spent the rest of the day at far more interesting complexes, and it charged 11 euros when it had cost 12 for the Colosseum, Forum and Palatine hill combined. It might have been OK if it only charged 5 euros perhaps, but at 11, I don't think it's worth it. We visited another gelateria for afternoon tea, near the pantheon. They were also very good but I still preferred Giolitti's. I had chocolate fondente and mango, Michelle had Mars bar and cookies, while André had coffee and chocolate, he thinks, but can't quite remember!</div>
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Dinner was at a restaurant near the pantheon. At the same time was a protest with riot police, though the police only had to intervene for a short time when a few individuals got aggressive. From what we could gather the protest was something about cruelty to dogs, but we couldn't figure out exactly what was going on. Dinner was pizza and cannelloni. The pizza was reasonable but still not amazing. Strike two for roman pizza. The cannelloni was pretty good though. For dessert we took Sean back to Giolotti's and this time I had mango and watermelon (the best mango gelato I've ever had, and the watermelon reminded me of the watermelon sorbet mum makes!), Michelle had caramel and nutella, and André again had coffee with something else. It was another late night but it was an excellent day. I will update again later but for now I have to go to bed!</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-37160201418158052922012-05-07T01:34:00.000+10:002012-05-07T01:36:00.375+10:00LauterbrunnenAs I said when I finished off my last post, we are currently in the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Switzerland. The scenery here is amazing. Lauterbrunnen is in the bottom of the valley, with huge cliffs hundreds of metres high on either side. Then beyond those cliffs are mountains more than twice as high again. From here at about 700m above sea level, we can see peaks over 3000m high, and there are more over 4000m which we would be able to see if the clouds hovering over them would go away. There are 72 waterfalls in the valley, many of them glacial, and we can see one of the biggest, Staubbach Falls, from our window. Staubbach Falls is nearly 300m high, about the same height as Wallaman Falls, and is virtually a single drop, except it falls onto rocks shortly before it hits the bottom.<br />
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Just getting here was an adventure in itself. First we missed our bus from Tignes to Bourg St Maurice to catch our train by one minute. We called a taxi instead and between the three of us the cost wasn't bad, and the driver was very friendly and acted as a guide to the area for us during the drive. Got the train from Bourg St Maurice with no problems, but it got into Lyon ten minutes late, which meant our 18 minute changeover became 8 minutes. We found our next train with about 3 minutes to spare, which took us on to Geneva in Switzerland. From Geneva we then had to buy another ticket to Lauterbrunnen as they were unreservable trains. This was simple enough and we then headed off to Bern. Our next train from Bern was supposed to be 20 minutes after our last one got in. However, it got cancelled as someone jumped in front of it and killed themselves before it got to our station (pretty much my worst nightmare at train platforms). This resulted in us having to wait another hour before the next one came along. We got into Interlaken, our last stop before Lauterbrunnen, about two minutes before 9. The next train to Lauterbrunnen left at 2 past 9. Did we make it off the train to the next platform in time? Of course not. So then we had to wait another hour (in which time we walked into Interlaken to get tea). We finally got in to Lauterbrunnen at about twenty to 11. Fortunately our hostel was easy to find and the room key had been left out for us. The room is spacious, there is a shared kitchen and dining room and we hardly see anybody else.<br />
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Yesterday we walked up the valley to see the Trummelbach Falls. It is a glacial waterfall inside the cliff - all you can see from the outside is where it comes spilling out at the bottom. However tunnels and caves have been excavated into the cliff and lights have been installed, so for a price you can go in and see the falls making its way down through its own tunnels in the rock. It was pretty impressive and extremely loud. In the late afternoon we took a cablecar up to Murren on the eastern side of the valley, but the clouds came over to ruin the view. We did get a bit of a view though, and it gave us great perspective as a little village on the western side that we'd previously looked up at was now way below us, yet the mountains were still easily twice as high as we were. We had a very Swiss dinner at a hotel down the road- rosti with locally made pork sausage, cheese fondue and chocolate fondue. There is a well stocked supermarket nearby (unlike the supermarket at Tignes which was half empty), although small, so we've been able to make our own lunches and breakfasts. It also means we've been able to buy a few Swiss chocolates!<br />
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Today has been pretty lazy as we've mainly just wandered around the village, done laundry, uploaded photos, bought postcards and took a little walk up the hill to eat our picnic lunch with a view. Lauterbrunnen was chosen as a place to have a bit of a holiday from our holiday, so it's been nice and relaxing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-16054179989053834202012-05-04T21:23:00.001+10:002012-05-10T17:17:35.131+10:00Tignes<div>
Fri 4 May<br />
Please note we can't always publish these posts the day they're written due to lack of wi-fi. So I'll put the date at the top of the post so you'll know what day it was intended for!<br />
Today we are on the train from Tignes to Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland. The trains took a bit of figuring out but that's another story. <br />
Our two days in Tignes were excellent. The snow conditions were far better than we could have imagined. This week is the last week of the season and we were only expecting the glacial ski runs to be open (these runs have snow on them all year and are reopened later for summer skiing). However it's been an amazing end to the season and there was snow all the way down to the village, meaning we could ski in and out of our apartment building. It snowed the first two nights we were there. The second night it was a bit warmer and all the new snow was gone by the morning, but the first morning there was a good two to three inches of snow on exposed surfaces that hadn't already been walked or driven on. <br />
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The first day we spent most of the morning getting the rust off our skiing and snowboarding skills on an easy run near by. Before lunch we decided to try another longer run on the opposite side of the valley. It was hard. It was only marked as a blue run but it had some long, bumpy and steep bits that took a lot of work. Steep is OK if it's not too long and there's enough flat at the bottom that you can afford to get some decent speed up (which this one didn't have until the very bottom), and as long as it's not so bumpy that you risk your ski getting stuck in a rut or bump and sending you flying. It was also a cloudy day which really doesn't help with skiing on bumpy runs. Michelle stacked it half way down and twisted her knee, which meant I had thoughts of dislocated knees, medivacs and travel insurance going through my head as I stood there waiting with her to see how her knee was, melting in the sun that showed its face just long enough for the toughest run we did that day. Ugh. And then we had to get the rest of the way down the run, after which it was time to rip off the gloves, unzip the jacket and lie in the snow for fifteen minutes. André says he was awesome and ripped up on his snowboard, but he thought it was hard too. <br />
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Lunch was definitely a welcome break then, so Michelle and I had hot dogs (made with baguettes!) and André got a cheese burger and we shared fries.<br />
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After lunch we went back to the easier run we'd done earlier that day till about 3 o'clock, another unexpected perk as we had read that late season skiing generally was only good until lunch time.<br />
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The second day was a lot of fun with no injuries, although Michelle's knee was still sore. We found another long blue run to do which was a really fun run to do. The snow was a little icy the second day, but I found I handled my skis better, probably because I am used to Australian snow which is often a bit icy! The run we did had a steep section also, and the ice made it a bit hard going, but it was a sunny day, there were no bumps, and there was a nice flat at the bottom of it to cruise across before the next downhill. The rest of the run was steep enough that we got some nice speed, no long flats to give André problems on his snowboard, and the snow was just soft enough that it made turning nice and easy and we could just swerve our way down the mountain. Probably the best skiing I've ever had.<br />
It was a long run though, so tired us out, so after doing it a few times decided to get morning tea in the form of a banana and chocolate (not nutella!) crepe. After morning tea we decided to head up the glacier. We decided not to take our skis up as there are mainly red and black runs on the glacier and we didn't know how easy or hard the blue run down from it would be. If we weren't so tired we would have tried it anyway, but as I was tired and Michelle's knee was still giving her problems, we decided just to go up as foot passengers for the view.<br />
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And it was a spectacular view. 3400 metres up (the top of the mountain is 3456m) and you're up with the clouds.<br />
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We played in the snow, took photos and André got dizzy from the altitude. Afterwards we had lunch (the best cheeseburger I've ever had) and returned to the run we did that morning. However by 3 pm it was slushy and super cut up. It took a lot more work than it had that morning, but we still got some good video of each other coming down the mountain.<br />
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So now (missing our bus from Tignes to Bourg St Maurice and having to get a taxi to get to our train on time) we're on our way to Lauterbrunnen via Lyon and Geneva.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6834910454217460554.post-55720975507523630212012-05-03T01:44:00.001+10:002012-05-03T02:11:00.996+10:00These Gauls Are Crazy!<div><p>While in France we have noticed the French can do some things pretty weirdly. For instance, our hotel room here in Tignes does not have a toaster and to flush the toilet you don't push the button down, you pull it up. They also like mayonnaise on potato chips (as in fries) but I think I read that came from Belgium. </p>
<p>And the traffic in Paris! It's insane! The road rules are more like guidelines really, that is if they exist. Lanes don't exist on many roads, except to separate oncoming traffic, so you might have a road that is six lanes wide and only has two three-car-wide lanes marked, one going one way and one going the other, and the cars all going in one direction just fit in and push in wherever they can until about the last fifteen metres before an intersection where the individual lanes will be marked. The round-about around the Arc de Triomphe is the worst. Apparently there is a car crash on that round-about every half hour. And they have ketchup and mayonnaise in little single-serve paper packets like you get sugar in cafes in Australia. These gauls are crazy!</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2Tignes, Tignes45.491997 6.921169