Tales from the Clio

Macau

2007-11-13T04:46:00.003Z

(October 24-25)

Macau is a peninsular about an hour west of Hong Kong by fast ferry. It is the world's new Las Vegas with flashy casinos being built on all available turf. Indeed, Macau's gambling revenues are now greater than those of the Las Vegas Strip. However, our guide book which was published three or so years ago failed to mention casinos at all despite gambling providing 50% of the area's GDP! (Note to selves: we still shouldn't trust those pesky guide books!)

Macau has a similar history to Hong Kong in that it was governed by a foreign power for many years, except the Portuguese were invited to move in after helping the Chinese rid the area of pirates; the British just took HK. After a buoyant few years for the Portuguese in Macau, Britain's subsequent move into the region made sure Hong Kong became the dominant trading port. Macau stayed under European rule until 1999 when it was handed back to China although, like Hong Kong, it remains a Special Economic Area, and is likely to stay that way considering the loot it's drawing in.

Here's a little taster of the type of jaw dropping architecture that's gracing the shores of the Pearl River Delta:

It's not all casinos and gambling - there's also some monuments ...

And then there are some more casinos - even themed ones:

The places we have visited over the last 5 months have been very kind and put on events for our arrival and Macau was no different. The second indoor Asian Games started whilst we were there - and here was the team from Tajikistan to greet us:

Joanna preferred the Macau Games Duck:

But what you really want to know is - did we get into the swing of the gambling and lose our fortune at the Blackjack tables? Well, no. In fact, we made a bit of a discovery in Macau: Joanna is tighter with money than Ben. He would have been happy to splash out 6 squid a pop to have a go on the roulette, but Joanna was a big ole killjoy. She puts it down to watching too many Las Vegas films where the only winner is the meanie casino owner like Al Pacino or Andy Garcia who sit in their control rooms counting the pots of money that the punters are throwing away. In other words, if you want to go gambling, don't take Joanna, it's no fun!

But Ben still managed to get into the Las Vegas vibe ...

Hong Kong I

2007-11-11T09:02:00.000Z

(22-23 October)
To tell the truth we didn't do that much in our first couple of days in Hong Kong, other than organise 2 days in Macau & 6 more days in Hong Kong... We did have a nice walk about, and some yummy Chinese food (especially at the "Best Shanghai" restaurant). And did a bit of blogging, skyping parents etc. Nothing exciting to write about. But we were on a relax mission by this point. And a prepare to go home mission. Ooo, yes, Ben bought sandals, as we were back into our shorts. Lovely. And we were enjoying the no smoking inside, or indeed in the public parks. And all the Public Service messages telling us to Love & Care for Your Family, Vote, Stand Still on the Escalator, etc. And they've solved the escalator problem of the hand-rail going at a different speed to the steps. Handy when they've got an escalator that goes 800m up Hong Kong Island.

And we went on the Star Ferry back from Hong Kong Island - costs 11p (each!).
View (They signed the hand-over treaty on top of the flat building in the middle):

Ben:

Bangkok

2007-11-07T09:00:00.000Z

(21 October)

We weren't in Thailand for long, just an overnight stop-over. But long enough to wander out for a nice dinner (Nabe - style), and for completion of the drink challenge:

Joanna found a nice vanilla shake for her part-time drink challenge:

We watched the movie "Goal" rather than be sensible and go to sleep, but sometimes it's exciting to see TV in English.

Almaty

2007-11-07T05:18:00.000Z

This post will be brought to you by the Apple and Camel Marketing Board.
We were in Almaty for the nights of 15 - 20 October.

We found new friends in Almaty. Tara, a friend of a friend, offered to put us up, which was very kind of her. It was very nice to be in domestic circumstances again, and with a young baby about the place, Joanna could ask lots of pertinent questions about our own impending circumstances. We've not had much chance to talk / think / read about what is soon going to hit us, so it was good to get a glimpse of how such things can work... And they had a very nice bed for us too! We stayed with them for a couple of nights before Tara's folks came to visit her.

Almaty is the most cosmopolitan city in central Asia. They're not used to backpackers though. Without our backpacks we could blend in without anyone giving us the slightest look; with them, everybody gawked open-mouthed.

There's a few cool things to see around Almaty. Here's a church made without any metal:

The nails are made of wood. We looked closely however, and despite what the guidebooks say, there's plenty of metal attached to the outside now.

And here's 15 soldiers bursting out of the 15 states of the former USSR, to protect it:

They're both in one of Almaty's many lovely parks. In fact, Almaty, with its lovely leafy boulevards is a city that looks like it was built in a forest:

There's nice mountains to the south too, even if it is all a bit smoggy:

We went up a great cable car to get that look of the city, and as the weather was nice, Joanna felt it appropriate to have a nap:

Autumn makes it all very pretty:

There are a few apple sculptures, marking the fact that the name of the city means "Father of the Apples":

Bonus points for spotting some of the many camels too:

That camel is at the foot of the big obelisk in "Republic Square" that shows their new national symbol, the Golden Man:

The Golden Man is an archaeological find in a funeral site of a body that was covered in gold, and latest research suggests instead of being a mighty warrior, the person might have been a young girl. The Kazakhs brush over that however. There are versions of it all over the place as they seem quite proud of it. We saw it at the National Museum, as well as in a couple of places in Astana.

We also went up into the lovely mountains, first to the ice-skating rink at Medeo:

All the USSR's speed-skaters trained here. There's a 10,000 seat stadium around it:

And that's super pure water in the swimming pool from 3 separate streams in front of it. Ben's not keen on ice-skating, ever since he skated over his own hand at university. So we headed up 800 steps:

And then took a minibus and cable-car:

Up to the lovely Chimbulak ski-field:

Joanna was happy to climb a mountain again, even if we did cheat this time (with not actually doing any climbing).

On other days after that we went to places that didn't photograph so well. There were more parks, and an absolutely amazing food market ("The Green Market"), with hundreds of vendors offering gorgeous fresh fruit & vege, spices, knick-knack stalls, fresh meat including horse and, yes, Ben's drink challenge drink Shubat, or fermented camel's milk.

We did get some. Ben did drink some:

He wasn't impressed:

It wasn't just the lack of alcohol (it's about as alcoholic as ginger beer), it just didn't taste good.

We mentioned in previous posts we were going up a canyon: it didn't happen. The weather in Kazakhstan was fabulous, until the last day. So as we waited at the bus stop, and waited, and waited... it was quite cold. Turned out the tour company had given us the wrong time. We got our money back, but all a bit disappointing. The tour company were very disappointed too. You get the feeling that as Kazakhstan gets so few western tourists, that they really want to get it right with each one...

Party!

2007-11-05T05:49:00.000Z

Well, we weren't content with ending our travelling in Auckland; so as a little surprise, we went down to Wellington for Saturday night.

It was Ben's brother's engagement party, and although he'd put on the invite that there were relatives coming from Kazakhstan for it, we had told him we weren't going to make it. So David and his fiancee Katrina were very happy to see us. And we were pretty happy to see them too...

We'll get on with filling in the gap from Kazakhstan to New Zealand now. And then maybe think about getting a job, joining the real world etc.

Home! / New Home!

2007-11-02T09:56:00.000Z

We made it! We survived the flight through Singapore and are now safely ensconced in the parental Clark household, with Kimba:

We'll largely recover for a the next few days, along with finishing off this blog, adding way more photos to the photo site, cleaning clothes, and maybe even buying some new ones that don't smell. But NZ immigration let Joanna in, so she's fine to stay and gestate the bump, and Ben can start thinking about getting a new job, us a new house etc...

Train & Tea

2007-10-30T13:11:00.000Z

(October 14)
The old capital of Kazakhstan, Almaty, is a day away from Astana by train, so another overnighter beckoned! This time we had the top bunks in our cabin and were lucky to be sharing with two lovely Kazakh ladies; one who spoke brilliant English (and German) and another who understood English. It's their custom to offer foreigners and guests hospitality and were very embarrassed because they didn't have any treats to share. We, on the other hand, had come prepared with Tetley tea and lots of biscuits! The only thing we didn't have was a teapot - no problem! Kazakh trains provide china teapots and tea cups free of charge for passengers' comfort. Even Ben managed a cup of tea to celebrate this marvelous service!

Very civilised.

Kazakhstan has picturesque steppes that they all think are flat and boring. We found them flat and beautiful:

Unfortunately the beautiful lake on our trip passed by in the dead of night.
And the nice english-speaking lady informed us of all the things we should have seen in Astana. Like the aquarium that is the world's furthest from water, and actually going in the golden dome thing in front of the presidential palace.

(Only 2 more sleeps until we fly to New Zealand and our adventure is over - and the next one begins.)

Astana

2007-10-28T15:02:00.000Z

(october 11-13)

Firstly and most importantly Joanna pictures. The sideways shot in Astana (in the park in front of parliament):

And she takes an alcoholic bent on her own drink tour. You're not allowed beer without a straw if you're a lady in Kazakhstan:

Ben will complete his drink challenge in our Almaty blog post soon...

Now, MikeB likes taking pictures of cranes. MikeB would be very happy in Astana:

No building is complete without a crane on top finishing it off:

Most of the city is being built in one go so it looks a lot like a vast building site at the moment. Some of the main infrastructure of the new capital has been completed to the south of the river, away from the old town/village, so we went for a walk...

This isn't a flying saucer, it's the circus:

This is an apartment block, the "Triumph Astana":

Here's the city's landmark globe, in front of the presidential palace (or "White House"):

A nice new mosque, although the Kazakhs could hardly be called religious (vodka-drinking, pig-eating muslims...):

In fact the call to prayer was what alerted us to take a photo, and it was only us heading towards the mosque...

And here's a monument to independence or something...:

Beyond that the main touristy thing we did was go to the most bodacious President's Museum. We ended up looking at the gifts various countries had given the President for quite a while before we found the most excellent yurt room. Yurts are the tents the nomadic Kazakhs used to live in. They had all the appropriate horse and camel apparatus too.

One thing we expected to be a right pain was registration of our visa (must be done within 5 days of entering the country. But they seem to have made things easier, as we found the appropriate government building, went straight to an english speaking woman, chatted to her for about a minute whilst she put all the appropriate stamps in the right places, and we were done. No big $$ charges or anything. So they're obviously getting ready for tourists, not that they're actually expecting any. Everyone was very surprised that we were tourists, and most interested as to what we thought of their country... Fortunately we could say we liked it.

Astana means 'Capital'. Apparently the previous name of the village/town meant 'White Tomb', and the president had too many jibes about moving the capital there... so he changed the name.

And one last point on where the money for all those new buildings is coming from. Here's the oil pipeline running through town...:

Train

2007-10-26T10:58:00.000+01:00

We're back in Hong Kong btw. And we're updating the map, if you want to know where Vladimir is.

(October 8 - 11)

Back in Moscow, we had some time to kill before our appointed time to collect (hopefully) our Kazakh visas. We made it to the State History Museum in Red Square which covers the country from pre-historic times until WWI - mostly in Russian. So if osmosis works we're now experts ... but we have our doubts. We also had a wander round some more sites including the Monument to Victims of Totalitarianism. The building in the background was the KGB HQ and Lubyanka Prison for victims of Stalin's many purges:

It's now the FSB's HQ - the KGB's successor.

Then it was back to the Kazakh embassy and yes! everything was ready for us and in order. Joanna was very relieved, thanking the "gate-keeper" official profusely on the way out after becoming such good friends with him during our many visits!

So we boarded the train destined for Kazakhstan and Astana ... three days in our little kupe carriage with two strangers (one who snored quite a bit) and not really many photo opportunities except this one:

Please note: Joanna is not keen on it but it's our only one on board the train so has to be included!

Now, many would think a three day train ride would necessitate a buffet car ... but not on this puppy! There's a timetable which lets passengers know how long the train is stopping at each station and you have to pop off and grab whatever is on offer on the platform. Lonely Planet talks of delicious homecooked goodies sold by babushkas ... but reality involved pot noodles, chocolate bars and beer. Because the train was running late the stops were shorter than expected which worried Joanna as the train started to depart from Samara and there was no Ben to be seen! After a mad dash to the guard's cabin shouting, "moya moozh!", "my husband!", Joanna was extremely relieved to see Ben turn up from the next carriage having jumped on the train when it began moving. We should tell you at this point that he had been out getting a second lot of snacks for Jojos who seems to need a lot of feeding these days ...

After that kerfuffle we got the knack of the stops and there were no more incidents, even at the Russian border, where Joanna was certain they were going to stop us and send us to a Siberian gulag. That was until we were woken by the woman in charge of our carriage to get ready for our Astana stop. Up until this point all stops had been on Moscow time, so we thought we had hours to get ready for the stop. Not so - we'd jumped 2 hours to Eastern Kazakh time, and the train arrival was imminent. Suddenly sheets had to be removed, bags packed and tea sculled ready for Astana!

Vladimir

2007-10-25T07:32:00.000+01:00

Just a quick update first: we're in Macau, the world's new gambling capital, and Joanna is failing to be converted. We flew happily thru Bangkok to Hong Kong, and from there we've popped over on a ferry ride to Macau. Still all safe, and only 7 days until we fly home! Can't believe how fast time's flown. Anyway, that means in a couple of weeks there'll be a whole lot more photos up etc...

But back all the way to Russia, and Vladimir. We had a weekend to fill whilst we waited for our Kazakh visas, and we were keen to get out of expensive busy Moscow. Our 3 hour bus ride (according to Lonely Planet - when will we learn not to believe them?) to Vladimir turned into 5 hours as heavy traffic & numerous car accidents slowed us considerably. You'd think they only designed roads for the elite few who had cars to drive on them, not having everybody wanting to use them. Also there was a bit of rain on the Friday after many days of gorgeous sunshine, so the road may not have been perfect for insane Russian driving. I'm sure that was the excuse for the half-dozen fresh accidents we passed, as well as the few slightly older ones we saw... We were glad we weren't driving the Clio at any rate.

Vladimir is another Russian city that can lay claim to being the first Russian capital. It was founded by Vladimir, but it was a different Vladimir nearly a century odd later who made it a city to be reckoned with. He managed to move the centre of the Russian Orthodox Church from Kiev up to his new stronghold, and it became the biggest Russian city for a century or so before the Mongols came through and destroyed most of Russia. There's still some impressive cathedrals though, including in our opinion the best church in all of Christendom.

On with the photos:
Joanna happy to be out of Moscow (near the fantastic church):

Here's the brilliant church, or Assumption Cathedral, as it is also known. It has a real corpse in it, and you can see the hand! It was some patriarch from the 13th century, but no guide books or internet resources seem to mention the actual dead body on show, and we've now forgotten his name.

The long distance artistic shot:

The church is astounding inside with all the sarcophagii and altars, paintings etc on show. It served as the model for the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin (now the centre of Russian Orthodoxy), but is way cooler. It seemed to have lots of Russian Orthodox pilgrims turning up, who didn't seem bothered by the towns other sites.

We were though. Next door is St Dimitri's. It is the epitome of Russian White Stone work from the 12th & 13th century:

It is amazing up close:

All around Russia - and indeed in Serbia & Romania, one name kept popping up. Alexander Nevsky was the great Russian Hero (as cannonised by Peter the Great). He has a lot of cathedrals named after him, and was buried in the aforementioned cool Assumption Cathedral (his casket is still there), before Moscow got strong and moved him there to assert their dominance. Ivan the Terrible brought all the religious / national treasures he could to Moscow. Ben's just read the wikipedia article on him - what a dude.
Anyway, here he is with Joanna's hero (*bleurck*):

And here's another sculpture, this time of Vladimir who made the town great, behind the Assumption Cathedral:

Here's the Golden Gate, which was the entrance to the medieval city, and is now a roundabout which it is necessary for all local bridal parties to drive around several times whilst hooting their horns. We had our picture of 2 brides in St Petersburg, but if we'd had a wide-angle lens we might have got 7 on a mound behind St Dimitri's. Seeing other brides obviously isn't something that they're worried about here.

We had fun at the local history museum too, despite it being all in Russian. But Joanna's very good at making up stories.

It was a weekend of achievement too, for Ben managed perhaps his simplest leg of the drinking challenge:

It may look like a tumbler of water, but that's vodka, russian style.

All managed rather gracefully.

Monday morning we were on the train back to Moscow, we hoped to pick up our Kazakh visas and head to Kazakhstan in the evening. We needed to in fact, as the train trip was 3 days and we had 3 days left on our Russian visas...

Moscow II

2007-10-19T12:56:00.000+01:00

Where we start with a sideways pic of Joanna:

Sorry if that's a bit disappointing, we have more up-to-date shots with a bit more tummy, but you'll have to wait. She has however been told 3 times this week how neat she is for 6 months, so is very proud of that.

When we left you, we were covering our Moscow Tuesday. We went and saw the Armoury in the Kremlin, after the ticket lady told us we didn't have time to see everything and that was the ticket she was going to sell us! It's splendid, although very much a no-photographs sort of place, sorry. Faberge eggs, all the tsar's gold & silver gifts from the last few centuries, and their carriages, thrones and clothes. It's all there. And they seemed to get a lot of presents. None from NZ though, and just a few from Blighty.

Wednesday we couldn't go to the Kazakh Embassy so it was mega-tourist day. After a sleep in, obviously. But when we got to the Kremlin this was the sight that awaited us:

There was a "Young Russia" rally going on, with some serious security. This was the back-up, in case there was trouble:

So we didn't make trouble, and like everyone else quietly walked the long way around to Red Square. We said hello to Lenin (very quietly, no noise in the mausoleum please - or pictures), who was looking somewhat waxy.

Red Square was a bit emptier, the rally appeared to have frightened off some people. Young people had been bussed in fom the provinces and given flags, t-shirts etc ... although some seemed to be taking the opportunity to investigate Moscow's shopping. It's all a bit scary when the Yoof Of The Day support those in power - particularly when they do so so ardently.

We sneaked back past the rally to go see the rest of the Kremlin. It has palaces, including Puti-babes current residence, Stalin's favourite hold-up etc, but you're not allowed into them. Not even the ugly empty one where Communist Party conferences were held. You are allowed into the 5 cathedrals. Yes 5, which seems a little excessive for the Tsar and his family. We guess if they had a falling out on a Sunday morning they could all go somewhere different. The Patriarch (head church dude) has his residence open too, but his stuff has no English. And we weren't allowed to take our camera in, so we'll jump straight to St Basil's:

and it's interior:

Which is quite amazing and not very church-like inside. More like a rabbit warren. Had some nice singing inside though. And some impressive altars and other artwork.

That wasn't quite enough sight-seeing for one day, we also got to ... a shopping mall! Yes, Joanna conquered her fears and made it inside GUM, which it turns out has the only free loos in Moscow. It's too posh to charge. It is, in fact, very very posh. You've had the outside, here's the interior:

So Thursday we were back on the Kazakh visa trail. But we weren't quite quick enough off the mark. Although we made it out of the hotel at 9.30, and to the embassy before 10.30... they still hadn't processed us by the magic shut-off time of 12 o'clock. Come back tomorrow. D'oh. We were quite keen to leave over-crowded Moscow by this point...

So Friday we were very on the ball. 9am opening? We say: get there at 8.30. 2nd in the queue, we were done and dusted by 10. Well, "all submitted, come back Monday" dusted at any rate. So off we went to book tickets to Astana (Kazakhstan), and escape this town... Which took us quite a while, particularly with the world's most confusing train station that liked to send us from desk to desk. We eventually took a bus to Vladimir.

Moscow Part I

2007-10-13T14:11:00.000+01:00

(Sept 30 - Oct 5)
We ended up in Moscow all quite a bit longer than planned.

We took an overnight train from Novgorod, with us both on top bunks (4 beds to a cabin in 2nd class). Joanna managed admirably, Ben struggled a little with the serious heat whilst we were trying to sleep... But a great way to travel - your night's accommodation sorted, and you wake up in a new place. At 5.30. Our hostel wasn't to be open until 9.30, so we sat about the train station eating our pastries we'd bought the previous night in preparation. Then we set off on the Moscow metro. Quite busy on a Sunday, but not too bad with our packs - it was only later that week we got the feeling that all >9 million daily users were trying to get into our carriage. Cyrillic reading all going well, we worked out our changing lines and made our way quite north of the city to the "Hotel Street" our hostel was on. Indeed the hostel was located on the 3rd floor of a hotel. We took our time working out where the entrance was, so by the time we got to the hostel office (which was just in a room on the 3rd floor) we were perfectly on time... Shame the hostel people weren't. So we waited... Until nearly 11, having had a good kip on the hotel couches... Apparently our booking hadn't been made, but they had space. Accommodation prices in Moscow take the breath away somewhat - there is no cheap or mid-priced sector really. But you do what you have to. Although we eventually discovered it was cheaper for a double at the hotel than the hostel...

After getting ourselves settled we went into town to have a look at the big sights, wandering around the Kremlin and then onto Red Square. St Basil's Cathedral isn't actually called St Basil's, that's just one of the chapels inside:

Also on Red Square is GUM, the famous mall that had nothing in it in later Communist days - these days it is all designer stores: very Posh.

Here's a view of the whole square:

That was enough for Sunday, Monday we headed to the Kazakh embassy to try to get the ball starting rolling on that front, but no go. In Moscow it turned out we needed an hotel reservation confirmation, which we wouldn't've needed in Blighty. So off we went to try and organise that... which didn't turn out to be so easy. The internet didn't come up with much, and whilst we filled in a couple of forms requesting reservations they still haven't got back to us! We did find a great wee local eatery chain though - Moo-Moo, so at least we had some success on our Monday... After it became clear things weren't happening on Tuesday, Joanna came up with the bright idea of going to a travel agents. Which worked brilliantly. Expensive hotels only available, but reservation was achieved... although unfortunately we got to the Kazakh Embassy at 12.30, and the visa applications shut at 12... and there's no Wednesday service...

So we had a wander down from the embassy again - we got to know the central area reasonably well... There's almost as much stuff being renovated as in St Pete's. Here's the Bolshoi Ballet Theatre:

The next image would've been one of Joanna sideways, as these shots are regularly requested, but this internet cafe doesn't do USB. So just the 5 images I uploaded at an Astana cafe, sorry. We'll have to continue the tale of hot, sunny, overcrowded, over-bustling Moscow someplace else.

Quick slice of life thoughts from the Russian capital though:
- No-one knows where they're going and we look Russian. Everybody seemed to ask us for directions. Although occassionally when we looked quite lost enough people would ask if they could help us with directions... which they generally couldn't.
- Sheets aren't allowed to be big enough for beds in Russia (and we've discovered in Kazakhstan too). Admittedly you don't use the sheet under the pillow, but seriously, cloth can't cost that much...
- They must worry about the great gob shortage in the west of the last few decades. We don't know where the men get all their phlegm from, but it seems to need constant expulsion from their mouths. Even whilst smoking. It may be phenomenal, but it's not a phenomenon that needs witnessing...

We're in Almaty (18 October), which is beautiful and leafy and gorgeously sunny. Turns out we didn't need to pack the thermals. Saturday we have a trip up a canyon before flying early on Sunday. We'll try and get Moscow finished tomorrow...

Update from Kazakhstan

2007-10-13T13:54:00.000+01:00

So we're in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. And yes, a bit behind on the blog. Not always so easy to find good places to blog, particularly with USB ports to upload photos (because we know you're all about the photos).

But we thought we should update on a change of plan. We're cheating. We're going to fly from Almaty to Hong Kong. We decided that after the difficulties we had getting our Kazakh visa (Moscow post next up...) - both for what that foreboded with our Chinese visa and with the time it left us; and the difficulties that Joanna's belly was going to pose - both with the picking up of the pack and the fear of the Chinese food we'd be putting in it... we thought we'd better sack the China plan.

But on the plus side, as we're overnighting in Bangkok Ben will be able to complete that part of the drink challenge. And it gives us a bit more time to explore Kazakhstan, Hong Kong, and now: Macau.

Novgorod

2007-10-13T13:09:00.000+01:00

We stopped for a night & a day in Novgorod, which is between St P'burg and Moskva. We arrived just after dark, and just went for the first hotel we found. Which meant we had to take a suite with a spa bath, but it cost about as much as a hostel in St P'burg (and less than Moscow), so we probably deserved it or something. Joanna still isn't entirely in tune with the weiners and salad for brekkie though.

This will obviously be your immediate expectation of what inner European Russia looks like:

Yes that is a beach. A river beach. Suddenly it became clear what we'd been reading about Novgorod being an important trading town for the Vikings - they could get their boats up this far. Novgorod is one of a few Russian cities that has claim to being the First Russian Capital. Apparently the Vikings, working on trade with the Middle East (I'm not making this up), were the ones to organise the Slavic locals into civilisations, countries etc. So Novgorod was set up as a trading port a bit over 1200 years ago, and was the capital of the first Russian state (of which there were to be quite a few) 1100-odd years ago.
Here's the Millennium of Russia monument they put up to celebrate it:

They built a great church in 1050, St Sophia's, where we got to learn a bit about Russian Orthodoxy as we tuned into a guided tour:

It was quite interesting. Although 2 hour services with no seats, or even any hymns sounds quite hard work. Also a bit weird watching all the women covering their heads.

Here's a different view of the Novgorod Kremlin (or "fortress" as we non-poetic anglo-saxons would call it):

And yes, we know you can get in trouble for taking pictures of stranger's kids, but we had to show you what was cool in town: autumn leaves. All the girls were collecting them, and some really cool cats knew how to turn them into a hat:

Final historical note for the history geeks: Ivan the Terrible is not popular here. He razed the town with his "storm-troopers" (not just in Star Wars apparently), stopping it being a major trading town forever more. Novgorod had survived the Mongols coming through Russia, as they were put off sacking it due to it being a boggy day when they arrived; this had left it as by far the prettiest Russian city before Ivan's men went to work on it. Oh well, a man can go a bit doolally after his wife dies I s'pose...

St Petersburg Part Dva

2007-10-08T14:01:00.000+01:00

Where we get to tell you about how you can't move in St Pete's for sushi bars...

After the first day wandering about generally being amazed by the beauty of the whole of central St Petersburg (or at least the half that isn't being renovated), the second day we went into St Isaac's (no pictures inside, as usual, sorry) which was spangly. From there we went into the Hermitage (defo no pictures!), which was somewhat overwhelming. We didn't even go into the Gold Room (the room with all the gold). But we saw the 25 Rembrandts and however many Van Goghs, Picassos, Matisses, Monets & Manets etc etc... No glass covers on any of them, not really anything to stop you touching them, save a stern old lady in the corner of the room. It's all a bit jammed in across 3 palaces walls, but if you've got that much stuff (and only about 1/20th of their art collection is on show), it's going to get crowded, even if your palaces are massive and 3 stories high. It seems that Catherine 2 was a bit of an art collector - she certainly wasn't a looker, despite all those stories about her many lovers.

We wandered through the Mars field after, with its eternal flame. The Russians seem quite keen on eternal flames. We had to come back the next day for the Summer Gardens next door, which were in fact, somewhat autumnal:

Peter's Summer Palace is in the Gardens, but isn't very big unlike the Winter Palace of the Hermitage. So on we went ovber the river Neva to the Saints Peter & Paul Fortress. Peter I - the Great - established St Petersburg roughly 300 years ago after taking the area off the Swedes. To make sure they never took it back he built the fortress, with the centrepiece being this cathedral:

Orthodox churches are quite different, there are no pews - except one for the tsar, and one for the patriarch, and they are more thrones. Here's the view down the middle: (photos inside - yay!)

Here's the pulpit - would the Reverend Doctor David Clark like to preach from here we wondered?

All but 2 of the tsars since Peter I have been laid to rest here so the church is full of sarcophagi - and here's the great man himself:

It's hard to move around St Petersburg without bumping into Peter reminders. Indeed the whole of Russia has its share - even Moscow who he snubbed by moving the capital to St Petersburg. At that point it was just a swamp that he was having drained into canals, so the bureaucratic civil servants complained - but he didn't really like them anyway... Who'd have thought victory over Sweden would make you the country's number 1 hero?

Just outside the fort's walls we spotted these late September sun worshippers. Apparently in St Petersburg the only way to get a proper tan is to stand, tan lines just won't do!

Ben didn't get to go to the Liverpool Bar around the corner from our hostel, but they've not been doing so well since we came to Russia anyway. And we're not even mentioning the All Blacks.

St Petersburg

2007-10-02T16:20:00.000+01:00

(September 25 - 27)
We arrived in St Petersburg quite late after our train journey from Helsinki. It was rather nice to cross a non EU border without any hassle - the officers just took our passports away and returned them with a nice stamp in it!

Ben was back to reading everything he could in Russian to show off his knowledge of Cyrillic - which came in handy when the first thing we needed to do was hop on a tube train. They come along every three minutes in St Petersburg and even more often in Moscow, Londoners would love it!

Our first day we headed out to walk around all the major sites, and to give you an idea of just what an architectural wonderland St Petersburg is, the next three snaps were all taken from the same spot!

Hermitage: Winter Palace. (Alexander I Column in front - everybody who beats Napoleon deserves a column, eh Nelson?)

Admiralty (now a naval college):

General Staff Building:

This is apparently the typical tourist picture that gets taken at the side of the Hermitage looking back over St Isaac's Cathedral ... but more on that later.

Our walking tour snaked around the city, past the Royal Stables, the house Pushkin died in after his duel and to the Church of Christ the Saviour on Spilled Blood. It seems to be a popular spot for couples to have their wedding photos taken beside ... someone really should have warned them not to wear the same colour!

The church gets its gruesome name as it was built on the spot where Alexander II (he who freed the serfs) was assasinated by the People's Will terrorist group in 1881.

We wandered on past many pretty buildings. Kazan cathedral was very beautiful, but Joanna doesn't like the face she's pulling in that photo.

The city council buildings and many others were former palaces, but back to St Isaac's:

The communists turned it into an anti-religious museum. It's now still a museum, but not anti-religious. It does have occassional services for big Christian events. The huge doors and all the gold and paitings are all very impressive. Actually the paintings on many Russian Orthodox church walls are amazing.

The view the other way from St Isaac's, across the river is brilliant too:

Massive fountains just in the middle of the river. Beautiful museums, and the Saints Peter & Paul Cathedral. The Cathedral is in the middle of St.s Peter and Paul's Fort. We went there on the day we left St Petersburg, but are having trouble finding a place we can get the photos off the camera. So we are going to do St Petersburg in 2 posts, as this one's been waiting for ages. The other one will be much smaller.

Helsinki

2007-10-01T16:34:00.000+01:00

(September 23 & 24)

So we made it back to Helsinki and the saga of parting from our faithful Clio continued. We had a few near misses with one charity and a former work colleague, but it wasn't meant to be so the Finnish Government "kindly" took it off our hands for free! We were given this tip off by a nice lady at the British Embassy who had come up against the same problem. Customs just give you a piece of paper and that's it! So here's us with the clio in our last moments together:

As it took us quite a while failing to give the car to anyone charitable, and then running around finding a customs person who actually knew the correct procedure, we didn't end up doing anything touristy in Helsinki. The buildings were very pretty though:

We went down a street museum which had what the "street furniture" was in different decades from 1800 on, but that didn't make for good photos.

Here's Ben completing the Finnish leg of his drinking challenge though:

As Finland wasn't on the original itinerary, we had to find out the drink ourselves. It turns out not to be Finlandia, but Kossu, and even better a liquorice version of Kossu called Salmari. It tastes just like chewing on a stick of liquorice. The barman, intrigued by our story also gave us a shot of a version the kids are all drinking these days: Fisu. It tastes exactly like chewing on a Fisherman's Friend sweet. Weird.

(we're currently in Moscow in mid-twenties sunshine. Our heavy coats we brought are all a bit much...)

Turku

2007-09-28T09:41:00.000+01:00

(September 21-22)
Turku was once the capital of Finland, under Swedish rule. When the Russians took over in 1808, they put their provincial capital at Helsinki. Finland was never a country until this century, but somehow still managed to keep its identity.

So the main thing to see there is the castle:

The castle would appear to have been fairly rubbish, because although Finland stayed Swedish for several hundred years, it was always getting conquered. It's surprisingly big on the inside compared with how it looks from the outside. It had us busy for several hours despite the fact very little of the explanations were in English. Finland's second language is Swedish, so there was no chance of us understanding any of that either!

Hence, there was lots of cool stuff like this very old fresco, but what with our lack of Finnish or Swedish we can't tell you anything about it ;0)

And here's Saint Martin watching over Charlton Athletic's fortunes. He was apparently a 4th century French bishop with a penchant for helping beggars who was for some reason very popular in Finland:

We popped into a Viking Festival they nicely put on for us. The Reindeer was yummy! But we'd just learnt in the museum the potatoes it came with weren't at all traditional.

Our first night was in a hostel that was nothing special, but they had no room for us the 2nd night and we ended up at a great B&B. They even have their own "Hotel Inspector", here investigating Joanna's pack:

We caught up with a family friend of the MacKenzies. Tiina came out to see us even though she had a poorly foot and gave us a good rundown of Finnish culture and history. She still can't believe we made it to Turku before Ma and Pa Mackenzie. We put them to shame!

And lastly, some of Finland's beautiful autumn colours - they were gorgeous all over the country:

Clio gone!

2007-09-24T15:30:00.000+01:00

We've just donated the Clio to one of the world's least corrupt organisations: The Finnish Government! So it will be efficiently dealt with and cleaner than it's ever been when it's sold at auction! We tried to donate it to a charity but they were unfortunately unable to take it - although they did take the car safety kit and our tools! Finland's import duties are prohibitively expensive so that's why we couldn't simply give it away, but we hope it will find a good home. We'll post pictures of our last moments with the Clio when we get to a better cafe in Russia; Finland doesn't really do full featured internet cafes, just fully priced.

Next chapter: packs on our backs and the train to St Petersburg tomorrow. We'll still update this blog even though the Tales will no longer be from the Clio ...

Tallinn

2007-09-23T17:06:00.000+01:00

(18-20 September)

The rain seems to have been following us around lately, which is very disappointing. There was a torrential downpour when we arrived but it hasn't coloured our judgement of Tallinn's Old Town. It's absolutely gorgeous and the sun even came out for a few hours on the second day so we could take pictures of it in all its glory.

The Öld Town didn't suffer too badly in WWII although large sections of the outskirts were destroyed in one night of Soviet bombing in 1944.

We'll let the pictures do (most) of the talking about the Old Town's beauty:

Town Hall:

Wall:

Russian Orthodox Church:

Parliament:

Overview:

Tall Herman:

Lutheran Church:

The main thing was just to wander around the Old Town, but we popped into the City Museum and the Museum of Occupation for a good dose of history too. Fascinating seeing different country's views on the past... At the City Museum there was a very cool exhibition of clothes made by Estonian women during the Soviet era showing how they managed to keep up with western fashions with recycled material and a few buttons! The 80s gear was especially impressive - Dynasty eat your heart out!

Finally Ben also met his drinking challenge, Vana Tallinn:

Riga, Latvia

2007-09-22T17:35:00.000+01:00

(15-17 September)

We skipped across the Lithuanian/Latvian border and were in Riga in time for lunch! That's what becomes of staying in a Youth Hostel - early starts! On our arrival we decided to follow the signs to a campsite even though the weather was reasonably "baltic". However, what we found at the city's campsite was more like a parking lot for campervans than a lush paddock for tents. So we headed back into town to find a hostel.

It took quite a bit of organising but eventually we found a hostel right in the centre of the old town and a spot for the clio not too far out. We'll come back to the hostel in a moment ... Being a famished couple of travellers we grabbed Latvia's version of fast food - deep fried meat filled pancakes and for pudding, more pancakes filled with banana and cream cheese. Heaven!

From there we headed to the country's museum of occupation - yes, it's as depressing as it sounds but it really does give you some idea of what the people suffered for five decades under the Soviets, Nazis and then Soviets again. We ended up spending a good 4 hours there and probably could've been there longer.

After that much achievement in one day, surely there couldn't be more?!? Oh yes, Ben scored an A+ for his drink challenge - Riga Black Balsam:

Back to the hostel. Apparently rooms are hard to get in Riga so we were pleasantly surprised when the hostel had no trouble accommodating us. We should have smelt the rat then! The hostel bar was open until 6 o'clock in the morning and inconveniently located under our room. We are both champion sleepers, but when they play the same 80s cheese on a loop there is a limit to what a person can put up with. But the hostel round the corner, where we spent the next two nights, was lovely!

Riga's old town is gorgeous, although as we learnt many of the "old" buildings had been rebuilt generally since independence. Here's the "House of the Blackheads":

The Blackheads were the Guild for unmarried merchants and those from out of town, so a few parties were no doubt held here. Apparently they named themselves after their favourite patron saint, who was black. Also in the main square is the town hall:

A short distance away from the central square is the freedom monument. Latvians put flowers there regularly throughout the Soviet occupation despite the threat of deportation to Siberia if the practice continued. Today, it is guarded by two soldiers and people are free to lay as many flowers as they like.

Joanna has been feeling left out of the drinking challenge so has made one up for herself. Yes, it involves large amounts of tea!

And lastly, eagle eyed Ben spotted this interesting logo on the side of a car. It maybe doesn't translate as well to English!

And a small addition to this post: Riga's cathedral. It has a Kellog's cockerel style weathervane, but this picture doesn't really show that much detail, sorry! But we had a wander inside and there were lots of artifacts from Riga's past in the cloister. Including the retired weathervane (saw service early 1500s to 1985).

As ever there's celebrations on our arrival, Riga's contribution was impressive fireworks. They may have been for the local TV channel's b'day but we prefer to think they were for us...

We'll do Tallinn soon, but internet is mad expensive in Finland...

Update

2007-09-21T15:43:00.000+01:00

There's a few things that don't fit into any particular post, so I'll just throw them all together.

The Google Map link: our journey now goes onto 2 pages. If you want to see where we have gone after Latvia you'll need to click to go to page 2. Very impressed with ourselves that we don't even fit onto 1 page!

The poor wee Clio... we're still hoping a charity in Finland might take our trusty stead so it doesn't have to go to the knackers yard. But it's going to stop here in Finland, which nobody guessed (or even knew we were going to); so that at least saves us on chocolate fish! But seriously, we think we'll have 2 winners. Ben's brother's political answer of going "all the way we want it to" (no country specified) is most correct and we can see how he got his job. Closest by both geography and kilometres will be Peter Burton. So we guess we'll be giving them 5 choccy fish each. We've just clocked 10,000 miles since Calais today, so it'll end up at something over 16,000 km.

The one last point of order: we've had a few requests from some ladies for a pic of Joanna sideways. This from the City Museum in Tallinn:

Also, her new hat!

She's also just got some new maternity troos, and discovered that it was her old trousers that were uncomfortable, not her tummy. We'll try to get a pic of the groovy pants soon!

We're in Turku, and fortunately Ben isn't uncomfortable with people staring at him. Somehow his Hawaiian shirt and blue corduroy shorts don't fit in... Yes we've just done a big load of washing...

Lithuania

2007-09-20T17:59:00.001+01:00

As we drove through the towns of Lithuania it became clear where Poland's vowels had gone. We made our way to Siauliai (no good for Scrabble like all those Polish places), a moderate sized town on the road to Latvia.

When we arrived everybody looked grim-faced, but we found a very helpful tourist information kiosk, a lovely hostel, and by the time we were out foraging for dinner everybody seemed happy. The difference between the home-from-work crowd and the going-to-the-pub crowd!

We found a nice pub with traditional Lithuanian food so Ben could complete the customary drinking challenge:

Lithuania were playing Croatia at the European Basketball Champs, which provided a bit of noise about the place. They evidently won from the car horns through the night. Always nice when the locals do well...

The next morning we visited the Hill of Crosses. Lithuanians have been putting crosses on this small mound since the 14th century. Many are memorials to people deported to Siberia. The Russians bulldozed it at some point but the Lithuanians snuck past guards and barbed wire and planted more. It´s now more than 100m wide and 100m deep with crosses.

Kaliningrad

2007-09-19T15:53:00.001+01:00

(12-13 September)
After a cheery entry into Kaliningrad from a friendly border guard ("welcome to Russia!"), we set off to find somewhere to spend the night. Little did we realise that our two Lonely Planet books were worse than useless. Prices had doubled, so we wouldn't recognise a bargain, and Svetlogorsk is no pretty wee village to spend the night. There is no camping, or even a beach. It's not far from a beach, but still, you can get these things right...

So we ended up back in Kaliningrad city, at the Hotel Kaliningrad. For an ex-Soviet hotel it was actually very nice. It did face onto the worst monstrosity the Soviets built after their arrival:

This was built on the site of an amazing 12th century Prussian castle, that was badly damaged in the war. Rather than repair it, they replaced with something hideous instead that has never even been used! They later discovered it was built on hollow ground - tunnels that had once connected the castle to the cathedral.

Konigsberg, as it was before the Soviets grabbed it after WWII, was one of the finest cities in Europe by all accounts. The old pictures show an amazing place with stunning buildings and a vibrant city life. Most of the buildings were destroyed in the Soviet assault in 1945 - which could have been largely avoided but the Nazi commander refused to surrender until the Red Army was knocking at the bunker door.

We went to the bunker, which Hitler had used for a lot of his planning earlier in the war. The details of the assault and damage to the city were all somewhat depressing. Similarly depressing was the ethnic cleansing the Russians then carried out - from an almost purely German population there are now virtually no people of Germanic descent living there. People either fled or were carted off to Siberia.

On a brighter note, since the fall of Communism, the city has started to be re-built. The Cathedral, which sat damaged for half a century, is being resurrected:

The cathedral also has the tomb of Emmanuel Kant and his museum. After 15 years it is still under-going work, but is well on the way to recovery.

In the last few years the city has enjoyed much better times economically, which has also allowed some new buildings that are not concrete tower-blocks. Here´s the new Orthodox cathedral (also not finished):

The main thing that Kaliningrad is famous for is amber - it produces 90% of the world´s supply. The Amber Museum was impressive with its works of the fossilised sap.

We had another good drive around the Kaliningrad region as we attempted to leave. We hadn't learnt not to trust our guide book and followed their recommendation to cross to Lithuania via the (apparently) very picturesque Curonian Spit. However the Russians make it prohibitively expensive to take a car that way, so we were diverted back to the main route, only getting slightly lost on the way. Joanna's cyrrillic reading is improving though.

Warsaw

2007-09-17T16:18:00.000+01:00

Before we left Krakow we tried to get a russian visa from the consulate there... but to no avail, they only process locals. So we drove north, faced with torrential rain and the prospect of getting our visa from the main embassy in Warsaw.

It was dark by the time we got to Warsaw, which didn't help our search for a campsite. Neither did its apparent non-existence. Hostels turned us away at the door, and it was looking like we'd have no room at the inn... Our only option was to stay in a suite at the Metropole - you've got to do what you've got to do!

After quite a bit of toing and froing, and a wack of cash we got the visas. It would have been near impossible, due to Russian tourist bureaucracy complications beyond our control, without a very splendid lady at the embassy. She had had an English professor from Oxford and was very keen to chat and help two harmless looking stragglers out!

Whilst we were being processed, we popped out to see Łazienki Park on our visa lady's recommendation. This has to be one of the most stunning parks in the world and could take days of your time meandering through it. Here are some of the highlights:

The park's so great it still has red squirrels!

Having had such a battle looking for accommodation for the previous night we decided to head north to the scenic town of Olsztyn. So we did a quick bit of drive-by sight-seeing on Warsaw's city centre. In WW2 85% of the buildings were badly damaged, and needed rebuilding - so they did, exactly as it was before the Germans came. It took them decades, and even longer to pay for it. So we felt a little guilty we weren't spending more time as we wendled our way around the picturesque streets.

We made it up to Olsztyn; it was pleasant enough, but the real attraction is meant to be the forests and lakes to the east. We couldn't dawdle though; we had a date with some Russian border-guards...

Clio for Free!

2007-09-15T18:20:00.000+01:00

We've had a little change of plan. We were looking at logistics and it was going to be too difficult to get rid of the car in Russia/Kazakhstan; also we would be driving constantly to get to China in a few weeks' time.

So we decided it would be nicer to sleep whilst a train driver did the miles.

Which means the Clio is going to be left in Finland.

And it's either going to have to go to a very special Clio retirement home; or if someone knows someone who wants a free car - with only the small catch that it'll need picking up from Finland - it's theirs!

We'll be wanting to get rid of it in Helsinki on 24/25 September...

Any takers?

Krakow

2007-09-15T16:11:00.001+01:00

(3 - 9 September)
Well we did quite a bit in Krakow, although a fair bit of it involved wandering about in the rain. We were there for a whole week, which is the longest we've been stationary since early June, and will probably be the longest we're somewhere until early November.

Krakow has the largest medieval town square in Europe apparently. This is half of it, the clothmarket building is in the middle of the square.

Sorry for the rain in all the pictures, but the only fine day we went to Auschwitz (more on that later).

Also sorry for the darkness of this picture, but we'd been the largest gothic cathedral, in Seville, so a photo of the largest gothic altar was necessary (this in a church on the town square):

The church, St Mary's Basilica, also has a trumpeter who plays all around its tallest tower every hour on the hour, all day and all night. Very impressive. We went to see him many times...

We spent our first couple of days in Krakow camping in the rain, before Joanna's parents flew over to join us, and convinced us we'd be better off in a nice hotel. We hadn't done too much sight-seeing before then as we attended to some admin, and wanted to wait to see things with Joanna's folks.

After we'd shown them the wet town square, we managed to make a trip to Wawel Hill, which is the spiritual heart of Poland for the religious and atheists alike, apparently. It has the cathedral where most of the Polish Kings, Queens and Heros were buried from way back in the 13th century onwards. And it also has the main palace from when Krakow was the capital.
Hill:

Palace:

It was raining of course:

In the cathedral there is King Sigmund's Bell:

We went to the inn where the Bell ringers have gone after ringing it for the past few hundred years - they each have their own numbered tankards. And they serve nice food there too.

As we said before, the only (vaguely) sunny day we decided we couldn't handle the sudden cheeriness and went to Auschwitz.

Due to a slight wrong turn we ended up at the Birkenau (Auschwitz II) camp first, which was the death camp where most people were killed.

About 1.5 million people were murdered there, almost 90% Jews. The scale is all pretty hard to comprehend. Auschwitz was the only camp that they tattooed prisoner numbers onto their bodies as they were killing in such volumes it was hard to keep track any other way. They think 1.1 million went to the gas chambers (with the scale increasing until the end of the camp - particularly as Hungarian Jews started arriving in numbers in late 1944); the rest were worked to death on starvation rations.

This is the inside of the gate to Birkenau that would have been seen as victims were getting off the trains for "selection" - where about 90% (including virtually all women & children) were selected for death in the 4 gas chambers.

After a long old wander around Birkenau, past the huts where Mengel & other doctors did hideous experiments and other nightmares, we went back to the main camp, Auschwitz I, actually in the Polish town of Osciewim - although all the locals had been forced out. This was better built as it had been a Polish barracks (at Birkenau they built wooden huts of a design intended for a few dozen horses but housed hundreds of people instead), but living conditions were still fairly horrendous.

In Auschwitz I is the museum, filled with horrifying things like 2 tonnes of human hair, all the confiscated shoes, brushes, combs etc of the gassed victims. There's also the wall where shooting executions were done, the parade ground where the prisoners were forced to stand at attention for up to 12 hours in a day, and the cells where prisoners were sentenced to starve to death. It's all very sobering.

Ben was probably a bit naughty taking this photo of his mother-in-law going into the main camp's gas chmaber:

The next day, to cheer us up, it of course rained. But it was National Dachshund Day (it's always an occassion when we show up):

And just for good measure another couple of pretty Krakow buildings; the Florian gate:

and a church with the Twelve Apostles out front:

And then it was time for Ma & Pa MacKenzie to go home. It was great having them over for a few days. Although after getting excited planning family visits to NZ with them it was bit hard getting travelling again. But we're back into the swing of things now. We're in Latvia, having made it in and out of Russia & raced through Lithuania. But we'll catch up a bit more on the blog whilst we're here in Riga, we plan to take things a bit easier the next couple of days...

Zakopane

2007-09-13T14:17:00.000+01:00

(2 September)
We just spent 1 night on the Polish side of the Tatra mountains, having already had 3 days on the Slovakian side walking our boots off. So we mainly hung around the very nice resort town of Zakopane. It's very well set up for skiing, hiking etc.

Before heading off to Krakow we took the easy ride of a funicular up one of the lower mountains. Still pretty stunning views:

And Ben couldn't resist the luge:

We didn't really do too much, but sometimes it's just nice to absorb the atmosphere.

Next stop, a wet week in Krakow, but that's a long post, so next time. In the meantime: we've made it to Kaliningrad (Russia), heading to Lithuania tomorrow.

Levoca, Slovakian Tatras

2007-09-10T11:12:00.000+01:00

(30 August - 1 September)
We stopped for a couple of days in a camping ground in Levoca, near the Slovakian Tatra mountains. The nice man at the campsite gave us a very "small wooden house" for the same price as the tent. It wasn't much bigger, but it was solid and we could stand up to put our underwear on.

The first day we had a wander in the foothills around Levoca, in preparation for a bigger hike the next day.

You'll note that we're no longer in our vests and shorts. A short time span between Romania and Slovakia, but a big temperature gap.

The name of the peak that we climbed we unfortunately can't find right now, it's in a map in the car across town. But it was over 2300m. It was a good 6 hours up and down.
There were chains to get up/across some rocks, so we got actions shots of Joanna. Not bad for a pregnant lady:

It was a well worn path and there were enough other people going to make us feel confident despite the inclement weather. But when we got to the top:

Or at least within a few metres of it (the last bit needed climbing equipment & better weather) we suddenly discovered there was nothing on the other side... well, a chain down into the mist. But it was only about 5m down and then it was an easier path:

As is the way, once we'd finished our walk through the mist and rain and had no view from the top ... the weather cleared.

Great fun, but maybe the last mountain we climb for about 5/6 months.

Update

2007-09-09T13:16:00.000+01:00

We're in Krakow still, having good fun catching up with Joanna's folks, but that does mean we're not doing much blogging. We'll get to it soon, this cafe is lovely - and so fast.
It's a bit wet out:

So we feel a little bad for telling Ma & Pa MacKenzie to skip going to Rome, come and see us it'll be lovely in Poland too... But who could predict it'd rain for a straight week?

You'll be glad to know the Clio is in good shape, with new oil and a couple of bulbs replaced. Mechanics are so good here (and speak english!) that it seems worth driving over here for a service...
I've just added a few more photos on the Flickr bit, but I better get back to the coffee drinkers... We'll give you the full story on Slovakia's Tatras, Zakopane and Krakow as soon as we can...

Spissky Hrad

2007-09-05T18:15:00.000+01:00

On our way to the Tatras there was a rather large castle to see. It covers 4.5 hectares, making it one of the larger castles about, and looks very impressive, so we're not quite sure why it's not more famous.

Hrad means castle by the way. Here's a view down from an upper window:

We've a few more shots too, but not to bore you, it's a 12th century castle that each century they modernised a bit and added and extra layer. Until the 17th/18th century when it got all a bit much to upkeep. It saw off the Tartars and the Mongols. Not bad.
Their knights must've been a bit better than this fella though:

It was brilliant, and we saw gophers too, thus proving they're not a made up animal. They're quite small so the pictures don't look so great though.

Then we went on to Levoca, where we based ourselves for 3 days camping. Well in a very small wooden hut, as the guy gave it to us for the same price as a tent.
Ben completed the drink challenge on the first night there:

This one wins the best glass challenge so far, and it's just lucky Ben likes drinking straight gin.

Kosice

2007-09-05T17:41:00.000+01:00

Joanna has gone on about Slovakia previously, having visited there on her university holidays. So we had to go back. And it's just dead brilliant. People are lovely, the countryside is beautiful, everything's set up wonderfully, everyone speaks english, their town centres are very nice...

It's not very citified either. Kosice is the 2nd city, with about a quarter of a million people. The capital, Bratislava, is only twice that size. But that's far west of where we got to. We made it to Kosice in the dark from Ukraine, so we're not sure what the east of the country looked like either.

As a slight warning, only pizza places seem to be open after 10pm in the city. We're a bit bored of pizza. Forget American cultural imperialism, it's Italian pizza you can't get away from all over Europe. You're out looking for local cuisine, and what do you find? Pizza, pizza, or, indeed, pizza. So we were forced to have McDonald's. We guess one should occasionally give them some money to keep up their international toilet facilities.

We were only in Kosice for 1 night, and that was the only downside. The central square is beautiful, with this church in the middle:

And the historic city centre is beneath - you can go down and look.

And whilst the bell tree played "Yesterday" to signal the hour:

We got a text from Ben's brother announcing his engagement: Well done David & Katrina!

The excitement got a bit much for Joanna:

And then it was time to head off to the Tatras for some walking...

Number plates

2007-09-03T17:44:00.000+01:00

Just an update on the number plate game... We spotted Moldova in our Bucharest campsite, Russia by the Romania-Ukraine border, and Belarus on the way from Chernitsvi-Lviv. Michelle: we have spotted a Virginia plate, but only on the wall in a cafe in Turkey, not on a car sorry...

We've made it to Krakow. We'll be here for a bit. We've a bit of admin to do (incl. working out a Russian visa), and Joanna's parents are popping over so it'll be great to meet up with them.

Oh, and one thought on Ben's drinking challenge: he may have missed a few of the drinks, but has managed to have local beer everywhere but Serbia. Zlatibor was obviously too flash to have local things...

This cafe's only open for 15 minutes, so we'll be off to Tescos then (yes, they've conquered Poland, and Slovakia ...). More updates in the next couple of days: we will get up to date!

Happy Birthday Mike!

Lviv

2007-09-02T17:21:00.001+01:00

(27/28 August)
Lviv is beautiful. The Germans failed to bomb it in WW2, so it's full of gorgeous old buildings. Before WWI Austria-Hungary owned it and had it as a local administrative capital, so they built lots of beautiful places. The Opera House is particularly famous:

That's Glory on top, Drama & Comedy to the left and Music to the Right.

The main square is just one big show-stopper of 18th/19th century buildings:

They've so many they can use this building for their polytechnic:

It's alright, they've still got a flasher building for the university:

And even this for their Scientists to hang out (the balcony at the House of Scientists is even better, but hidden behind trees to ruin photos):

Not a lot of people seemed to speak English, and Ben failed the drink challenge as we couldn't find a place with horlika, but we generally loved the place. We did stay in a dodgy ex-Communist hotel to add to the authenticity. All the other hotels seemed dead flash actually. But we stayed in the only ugly grey tower block in the centre of town. We climbed the local hill that the town was first founded on around 1200, and could see an ugly suburb in the background, but our hotel with its dodgy floor-ladies and security guards and pass-cards was the only ugly thing where we were.

When we went back to the main square on the 28th the Nazis, having failed to do too much damage in WW2, were back:

Not quite sure what movie it was but it was all a bit exciting.

A lot more exciting than the next day. After our fine we were very careful with our driving in the Ukraine (no point in provoking the dodgy police - so no more than 90km/h), but got to the Slovakian border in reasonable time. But then we waited 5 hours to get across. For the first couple of hours or so there was much cursing of the Ukrainian's border control people, but they were lovely when we got to them and we then discovered it was actually the Slovakians who were the hold up. They were searching every car for smuggled goods. As ever, when official people look at our boot they soon give up. There's something about strewn backpacking clothes that just doesn't excite them.

Chernivtsi, Ukraine

2007-08-30T20:51:00.000+01:00

We got to the border after working hours on a Sunday night, but it all turned out to be alright. The border guards humoured our lack of organisation, and you don´t need car insurance for the Ukraine, so no worries there. We did get insurance, for those fretting, there were insurance stalls just over the border.

We pootled along to the first town, which turned out to be lovely, and buzzing with teenage nightlife. Or at least lots of teenagers with alcohol hanging about. We felt like we´d been transported back to Newcastle...

We only stayed the night, but enjoyed the much more friendly people than in Romania. There wasn't a lot of english spoken, but suddenly communicating across a language barrier became fun again. We also got a plush hotel room for 20 squid!

Only downside was on the way out of town in the morning some dodgy cop decided that we'd committed some "offence", so we got a fine. Ben got carted off to sit in his car and produce the readies, but he didn't have as much as the cop hoped for so he just took the big notes we had... Hmmmm...

Brasov, Romania

2007-08-30T20:22:00.001+01:00

So we headed off from Bucharest and challenged Romania´s scary drivers to stop us getting to Brasov. Romanian drivers are our new worst drivers - managing to edge out tough competition from Portugal and Serbia. We´d heard Ukranian drivers were awful, but we´ve been there now, and they´re really relatively sane. Much of eastern Europe is ahead of them in the bad driving league.

We stopped for lunch in Sinaia, named after Israel´s holy mountain. It´s also where Romania´s last monarchs had their summer palaces for when they could escape from Bucharest. The palaces are very picturesque. Here´s Carl´s:

And his nephew and successor Ferdinand fancied something a little different, and had his designer wife kit this one out:

They´re impressive inside too, but you have to take the tour, and they´re not fond of you taking pictures.

Moving on from there we made it to Brasov, which is becoming quite the tourist town. It´s understandable when this is the town hall in the main square:

The Black Church, just off the main square:

And this on the square next to the hostel where we were staying:

It´s so touristy they´ve got this on the hill:

Unfortunately touristy means tourist prices, and there´s something frustrating about knowing you´re paying 10 times more than you would in the village down the road. One couldn´t help feeling a little ripped off, and the locals could´ve at least looked a little pleased about the extra money they were getting. We were starting to appreciate British service...

We went to Bran, and not just because it´s Joanna´s favourite cereal. No, it´s home to Romania´s top tourist attraction, Dracula´s castle. Only problem is Vlad the Impaler of Dracula fame never actually went there. Still, the castle is pretty, if a little over-crowded:

On the way back from Bran there´s the peasant´s citadel at Rasnov. It held off numerous assaults, and has a well that 2 turkish prisoners spent 17 years digging to be allowed their freedom. Here´s Ben with his impression of working that hard:

And here´s the citadel:

Finally, as we drove north out of Romania, and the forests and mountains got more beautiful, and the litter got less, we were very impressed by the stork nests on top of telephone poles, so couldn´t resist this piccie:

Bucharest

2007-08-30T11:24:00.000+01:00

(August 22/23)
Driving into & around Bucharest was a bit of an eye-opening experience. The ring road on the map turned out to be more of a dirty track, but try telling that to the big hordes of traffic. We think this is the side they try to hide; it doesn't give the impression of a city on the cutting edge to say the least. As soon as we turned onto the road to the airport (which was near the campsite) it was a different story. Similarly when we tried to pop into Carrefour supermarket after getting set up we wandered through dirt, dust and litter until we went in through a back door, and Bam! we were in a super-clean and shiny American-style mall. Capitalism is at its rawest here it seems. Certainly by the way everything is covered in advertising.

About the one thing that isn't, is the main tourist attraction. Ceaucescu's nasty great big palace he had built for himself:

We saw the 5-ton chandelier:

The 2,200 sq.m. ballroom (never used - and the massive spaces for paintings of Mr & Mrs C never filled):

and the 1 million cubic meters of marble:

Well, actually we didn't see all the marble, the tour only goes over most of 1 floor and a bit of 2 others. There's 12 floors and it's the 2nd largest building in the world in terms of usable space. And it was free because Ceaucescu just commandeered all the materials which were all sourced in Romania. It's impossible to describe the monstrosity of what he did to build it, but here's the wikipedia article.

While we were having a look around the main cathedral we picked up a little friend, Ciprian:

He offered to show us around some of the old city in exchange for practicing his English. Good deal. Ciprian explained that the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church had passed away a couple of days previously which is why the entrance was swathed in black cloth and there were lots of people there paying their respects - so we didn't like to take any photos. The building is small but very impressive in its ornamentation.

Next was Bad Vlad's Pad! He of Dracula fame.

Ciprian gave us a good overview of the city, of the beautiful churches and buildings that survived communism, but also the problems the country faces recovering from 50 years of abuse. We saw where Ceaucescu delivered his last speech - and the memorial to those who died in the booing crowd. Around the corner was this beautiful building, the Athenium:

Everything in Bucharest is contrast & contradiction it seems. It can be a bit hard to stomach sometimes.

On the plus side Ben met the drink challenge with Palinka:

Update...

2007-08-28T17:30:00.000+01:00

Just so that folk know we're still alive... We're in Lviv. Unfortunately in an internet cafe that we can't plug camera / memory stick into, so no photos, so will wait to do other posts when we can. Because we know it's all about the photos with you people. We may even try to upload a video next, although it may be a bit big.

So the short story to keep you going until we give you the long story: Bucharest is a capitalist paradise, with advertising everywhere, ignoring the poor folk living in slums next to it. There were some fancy castles and nice mountains further up. We avoided any vampires despite going right through Transylvania. We really like Ukraine except for dodgy police officers. Our guide book says Bucharest is the hidden gem of eastern Europe, but we think it's Lviv.

Off to Slovakia tomorrow for more camping. Hopefully away from any cities but right next to a very good internet cafe ;).

Aladzha Monastery

2007-08-25T17:32:00.000+01:00

We only popped in here briefly on our way to Romania and Bucharest. But it was pretty intriguing. It's not what you'd expect from a monastery as there were no buildings - instead the monks had lived in a cave complex that they had built into the rock during the 12th century. It was possible to climb up into what had been their chapel, cells and kitchen.
Upstairs chapel:

Main Church:

We also visited the Catacombs near the 'monastery':

And we were on our way to Romania ... you'd think it would get cooler driving north but it only continued to get hotter and more humid.

Varna

2007-08-24T21:08:00.000+01:00

(20/21 August)
We made it to Varna the next day, after Joanna had tussled with a long long line of traffic. Obviously car ownership has gone up, but the roads haven't caught the trend yet. We had a little difficulty finding where everything was as the road signage was minimal. But soon we sorted our hotel and everything and went for a walk in the large Sea Garden, a lovely park with fountains & funfairs, museums & monuments.

The next day we got on with the tourist attractions to give us a chance to swim in the Black Sea before sunset. Sorry, no photos of that, or even of the cigarette littered beaches. Anti-smoking campaigns haven't got a lot of traction here.

But we did make it to Bulgaria's largest ruin, the Roman Bath House (2nd century AD). It would've been quite impressive in its day, but has sadly fallen into disrepair:

The prize bit would have been the public toilet which is apparently in reasonable repair and has dolphin fountains for hand-washing... but that bit was closed :(

After a quick wander through the main square for lunch, and past the cathedral we made it to the very impressive Archaelogical Museum. Apparently you're not allowed photos or guns:

We're not entirely sure why they have to specify no guns (banks do too - you'd think it was obvious), but the museum was well catered for english readers, and we learnt some very interesting things. Varna was actually the site of the first European civilisation, in 5000BC - before Egypt or Mesopotamia. There were examples of the first human worked gold in the world - and lots of it! Unfortunately the Black Sea rose 10m and the community had to be abandoned, until the Greeks set up there in 600BC. There was quite a lot of cool things from Greek and Roman times too.

The drinking challenge was also met. This Bulgarian drink was in fact 2 spirits mixed. One of aniseed lollies, and the other mint-ish (it was hard to tell over the aniseed):

This is one of Ben's favourites.

Burgas

2007-08-24T20:36:00.000+01:00

(19 August)
So it turns out leaving Turkey is all a bit of a process. As it was getting in, but there each desk told us to go to the next desk, so we could follow our noses. Here only the last guy was helpful so we had to keep going back to him to see if we'd got it right this time... The car, we realised, had a visa too, and it needed to be checked out of the country. Anyway, after quite a bit of chasing our tail we worked it out, and having entered Bulgaria once before we knew what to do there, and flew through that.

It still left us somewhat late on the road (particularly us with our famous early starts), and the Bulgarian roads weren't particularly speedy. The horse and carts didn't slow us much (Ben's still disappointed we were moving too fast to get a picture of the cart before the horses), but the potholes did... So we only got as far as Burgas.

Lonely Planet isn't particularly kind to Burgas, despite it evidently being a reasonably popular tourist destination. We can't claim to have made it to the beach on our overnight stop, but the bars and cafes all seemed excellent. And our dinner waiter was a Liverpool fan (he even went out and got his new shirt to show us), so we got on very well...

The other thing we noticed about Burgas (and would notice about Varna) was the sheer number of Real Estate agents aimed at British customers. Presumably the locals aren't as exciting to sell to, but it must be quite a hot market. Somehow we resisted buying our own slice of Bulgarian heaven, as lovely as we're sure it'd be...

Now it's Istanbul (was Constantinople)

2007-08-21T22:35:00.000+01:00

(16-19 August)
So we rocked up to Joanna's friends after our ferry journey and a few evening circuits of Istanbul's Trafalgar Square equivalent (Taksim Square - we got a little lost due to a police diversion). It was great to see Sevil again, and her husband, Devrim. They took great care of us and it was lovely to be in a real home again (and get our washing done!). They also took us to lots of fantastic cafes - we saw a very cool trendy side of Istanbul we can definitely recommend.

Our first day there they took us on an orientation tour. We went up Galata tower which is one of the oldest towers in the world (5th century, although burnt and rebuilt in stone 14th century). Apparently some Turkish Da Vinci type organised a flying contraption off there after the Ottomans took over (1453 Constantinople fell), and got across the Bosphorus. The Sultan was going to praise him but got scared and exiled him instead - some reward! Anyway, it has great views:

(That's the Bosphorus to the left, Topkapi Palace, Agia Sophia, and the Blue Mosque across the land, and the Golden Horn inlet in the front).

We also then went on a trip along the Bosphorus. Joanna, full of confidence after the ferry trip to Istanbul, coped with some ease:

It was good to go along the Bosphorus to get a sense of the city (and say: look we're in Asia! Look we're in Europe!), and Devrim filled us in on a lot of the sights and history of the places along the way. There's a fair few Ottoman palaces!

The next day we let our host and tour guides get some work done, and we headed off to the main sights in Sultanahmet (which as well as the area is the local name for the Blue Mosque). Now if you start your sight-seeing at 3 in the afternoon due to too much sleeping in and chatting you must see the main sights in the order we did...

First up was Topkapi palace - where the sultans ruled from Mehmet, who finally conquered the city, until the mid 19th century. The main thing to see is the harem, where the royal family actually lived. Here's Ben in the Eunuch's Rooms:

and Joanna in a throne area between the harem living quarters and the Sultans:

There was an awful lot of palace to see, from the circumcision room to the kitchen, the weaponry, and especially the treasury, with amazing emerald, diamonds, gold swords etc. It's massive, and amazing.

From there we headed to the Basilica Cistern. Don't be put off by the toilet sounding name, it was a 5th century water reservoir for the Byzantium Roman Emperors' palaces:

Next on the late tourists' schedule is Agia Sophia:

Converted to a mosque, they covered lots of fantastic mosaics like this with plaster:

But Ataturk, great fella that he was, converted it to a museum, and restored some of the mosaics - so now it has elements from both religions. Ben went a bit snap happy, so there'll probably be a few photos on Flickr of Istanbul when we get a chance.

That was it for closing times, as the Blue Mosque has to be open for worshippers:

Outside the Mosque we were accosted by a gentleman trying to sell us a carpet. He seemed quite a persuasive fella but was couldn't handle the googly Joanna threw him, "I'm sorry, we don't need a carpet. We don't have a house!" He knew he was beaten!

To round off our Istanbul top five tourist attractions in one afternoon we moseyed outside the Blue Mosque to the Roman Hippodrome (now a roundabout road), which has 4th century Egyptian columns in the middle:

On our last day in Istanbul, we took a trip out to Belgrade forest on the outskirts to visit Sevil's parents. Along with Sevil and Devrim, they gave us some good history lessons about the area, so we hope we've got most of our facts right! They also had lots of very useful advice for our travels following their own motoring adventures around Europe. And we were treated to some lovely food - Ben has to admit Turkish lamb is pretty good - which is high praise indeed from a kiwi! It doesn't matter where you are in the world, or how old you are, going to parents' homes is always fabulous!

Finally, the drinking challenge. 2 drinks were fulfilled. We've been carrying around a bottle of Cava since Valencia - we've not had a fridge, and Ben didn't fancy drinking the whole bottle by himself. So with chilling apparatus and friends we could finally do it:

Also, we Turkey's drink, raki:

Aniseed-y, as all the drinks of this region seem to be; Ben loves them, even if he does have to brush his teeth before he's allowed anywhere near Joanna again.

Cunda

2007-08-18T23:35:00.000+01:00

(update)
2 things: realised we have a picture from Cunda (which is actually an island with a causeway and bridge to it); and failed to mention an intriguing sight... The Cunda set weren't a big headscarf set, but there was the odd one about. Including one woman who was swimming (not that unusual, the devout women go in fully clothed), but had a very skimpy bikini on. We think she hadn't quite got the full idea about the headscarf being about covering yourself... (sorry, failed to get a pic of that, probably would've been impolite).

(15 August)
C in Turkısh is pronounced as a J ın English btw. In other Turkish language news we've now discovered that 'ben' means 'me', whıch explains some confusing conversations we were having:
- My name Ahmed, you?
- Me. [Ben]
- You?
- Me. [Ben]
(Turkish person gives up). Benjamin doesn't work much better. Charles they're quıte happy with. Although to be fair we're in İstanbul now, where everything's a whole different kettle of fish from the small towns previously. Suddenly everyone speaks english instead of no-one, there are less head-scarves etc. The English is probably a good thing as our Turkish was progressing very slowly.

But Cunda. We'd been recommended it because of its fish restaurants, which were amazing. We went for a swım first, which was also lovely. We can't confess to doing much more, which was probably for the best as ıts an expensive wee town for 2 travellers on a budget. There are obvıously plenty of people in Turkey doing well for themselves as the tourists were pretty much exclusively local.

As unable as we were to fınd anyone who spoke english the day we arrıved, the next morning at breakfast the woman running our (lovely) pension spoke perfect English. She'd been away the previous day seeing her friend off back to New Zealand. In fact she'd spent 2 years living in Queenstown. The New Zealand connection's never too far away!

Our frıends ın Istanbul had been very good to us and organısed a ferry, so we got on the road wıth a deadlıne to meet. Not that dıffıcult a deadlıne, just somethıng to get us movıng ın the mornıng. And we made ıt to Yanova ın plenty of tıme, and Joanna coped admırably with the ferry. So we're safely ensconsed ın İstanbul, as we have been for a few days now. Sorry about the lack of posting, but we've been busy relaxıng.

On the road agaın tomorrow though, so its bedtime now. Sorry the Istanbul report will have to wait until we reach Varna (Bulgaria).

Bergama (Pergamon)

2007-08-18T22:17:00.000+01:00

(13/14 August)
In January we went to Berlın and saw the Pergamon museum. It ıs astoundıng, and contaıns the Temple of Zeus from Pergamon. Whıch ıs massıve, partıcularly to fıt ınsıde a buıldıng. It also contaıns the walls of Babylon (admıttedly at 3/4 sıze), but we're not goıng there. Anyway, the Ottoman Sultan, corrupt as he was, gave the Temple of Zeus away. It was here:

Whıch ıs all a bıt of a pıty for the locals. But there's stıll a load of old stuff ın Bergama. The Acropolıs ıs crowded wıth temples, palaces and other structures, some seen here:

Here's Ben ın some of the Roman structure that they added to be able to support more temples up top...

And ındeed here's the one bıg Roman Temple on top of the Acropolıs (as opposed to Greek), whıch happens to be the one thıng that the Turks are reconstructıng. It's a Temple to Zeus and the Roman Emperors (completed by Hadrıan, as though anythıng ın the Roman Empıre wasn't...):

Now we had a good old day up the Acropolis. The prevıous day we went to see the museum, and had aımed to see a bıt more. But Premıershıp footy got ın the way, and we were busy makıng frıends wıth the securıty guards at the museum. They wanted to feed us ıce-cream, and who are we to object? We made frıends wıth the securıty guards on the walk up to the Acropolis too - dıd we mentıon how friendly the Turks are? They all seemed very impressed that we were marrıed - as happy as we are about the fact, we're not used to ıt makıng strangers happy too...

Anyway, as we followed our pensıon owner's suggestıon and walked up as well as down (normal people take some form of transport to the top, and ındeed most people don't even walk down, whıch mıght have been why the security guards at the amazıng mosaics half way down were pleased to see us), we ended up spendıng quıte some tıme on the hıll, and got moderately knackered. Stıll we managed to see the Red Basılıca at the bottom, whıch we'd ıntended to see the prevıous day:

This buıldıng ıs apparently mentıoned in the Bible, even if it looks like a modern ruin wıth its red brick. It was built in the 2nd century AD, as a temple, probably to some Egyptıan gods. I'm not sure when the gospel of John was wrıtten, but it can't have been too long before they stopped that and buılt a church ınsıde ıt I guess.

We had a look through Bergama's fantastic market after that. So much fruit & vege of so many varietıes. We had trouble explaining to a woman that we only wanted 2 of her peaches, not 2 kilos; once she realised she gave us them for free as we were buying such a pitiful amount. We felt bad, but we really didn't have anywhere to put any more than that... Still Joanna bought a shirt (see if you can spot it in photos after this post), so we managed to support the Turkish economy a little...

We didn't manage to get to the Asklepion after our big day, so that had to wait until on our way out the next day. We were a bit worried on our way there as we seemed to be going to a military barracks, but the soldiers assured us we were headed in the right direction. Luckily the Dubrovnic Pharmacy had told us a bıt about the Asklepion as there wasn't too much info actually there.

The Asklepion at Pergamon was the height of medicine before the Roman Empıre fell to bits and the Dark Ages etc began. They were doing autopsies and moderately advanced operations with quite sophıstıcated tools before the Barbarians ran through and knowledge fell back. Whıch ıs all a bıt weird.

Thıs tunnel lınked the excellent patient areas wıth the sacred pools ın the mıddle of a massive (110m x 120m) courtyard wıth a couple of temples in it:

Apparently they also used to talk to mental patıents through the sunny vents in the top so they'd think God was telling them stuff.

There was a 3500 seat theatre at the medical complex, not a bad wee feature, even if significantly smaller than the main one on the Acropolis... Joanna felt the need to play to her crowd:

Fortunately for those who had forgotten to buy a gift on the way to the hospital, the 1 km long street lınkıng the Acropolis to the Asklepion was lined with shops (no doubt all selling grapes and flowers), although none of them stıll appeared to be open:

We didn't go very far on leaving though, as we fancıed a beach day.

On the road to Bergama

2007-08-14T12:23:00.000+01:00

So why dıd the chıcken cross the road? Well from our experıence ıt's because ıts frıend ıs already on the other sıde, and wants to vısıt.
Now why dıd the tortoıse cross the road? We're not sure, but we're quıte surprısed by the lack of crushed tortoıse-shells on the road. They must be quıte successful crossers despıte theır lack of speed.

In other great news we pulled up at some traffıc lıghts next to the bus drıver who helped us wıth the Clıo on Chunuk Baır, just north of Bergama. And we thought Turkey was a vast country....

Clio gets emotional

2007-08-12T18:58:00.000+01:00

So the RAC had to be called ın. We'd managed to carefully cajoule the clıo back down the hıll to our hotel for the nıght, and the next mornıng a nıce man wıth no englısh turned up ın hıs tow truck. He was goıng to take us to someplace Bigger. We thought he just meant across the ferry (to Asıa!) to Canakkale, but a couple of hours drıve later we dıscovered he was takıng us to someplace called Bıga! Where there was a Renault garage.

They soon ıdentıfıed the problem as a bust water pump that was goıng to take 3 hours to fıx, and then set about kıllıng us wıth kındness. A nıce bıg lunch ın theır canteen was followed by endless glasses of Turkısh tea. Joanna actually had to turn down more than she drank!

After fıxıng the water pump they suggested (wıthout Englısh ın any of thıs) that we get a new Alternater Slıde... And now the Clıo ıs runnıng smoother and quıeter than when she was bought. Who'd ever thınk of takıng ıt to a Renault mechanıc?

Anyway, once the lovely mechanıcs had fınıshed enjoyıng the rıght-hand drıve we got on our way. We made ıt as far as Edremıt before stoppıng for the nıght ın a rather flash hotel wıth a jacuzzı ın the ensuıte - can't rough ıt all the tıme. Today we made ıt to Bergama - but more on that later.

(sorry, we really should've got photos of the nıce mechanıcs too...)

Gallipoli

2007-08-12T18:25:00.000+01:00

The Turkısh border was chaotıc, but they let us ın eventually, after each person had added a stamp or sıgnature to at least 1 of our passports. Ben got ın for free as a New Zealander, Joanna had to pay 10 of your englısh pounds (no scottısh ones allowed) ın hard currency. Ben now thınks he's ahead - Joanna got ın for free to the Athens Archaeologıcal Museum as a journalıst, but that only saved us 7 of your greek euros. However, beıng a journalist seems to pay off as that's not the first museum which lets the fourth estate in for free - although thıs was the fırst tıme we realısed before payıng...

On we went to Gallıpolı, or Gelıbelu as the Turks call ıt. We went through the town as ıt's a wee way from the bıt of the penınsula we were wantıng to see. The nearest town ıs Eceabat, so we stayed there, after drıvıng along the blue blue waters of the Dardenelles - they're really not that wıde!

Here's the beach the Anzacs landed on on the 25th of Aprıl 1915 (now called Anzac Cove).

We were of course vısıtıng thıs bit of Turkey for Ben to have hıs NZ pılgrımage. Lıttle dıd we realıse the 10th of August ıs the day for Turks pılgrımage to the exact same spot!

The maın NZ memorıal ıs at the top of Chunuk Baır, whıch the NZers successfully took on 8 August 1915:

Rıght next to thıs ıs a massıve statue of Mustafa Kemal - later known as Ataturk. The 10th of August ıs the day he "was gıven to the natıon". Brıtısh forces had replaced the NZers on 9 August, and on the 10th he was the commander that led the raıd that drove them off the hıll. He snuck up rıght to the Brıtısh lınes and cracked hıs whıp to start the attack. Durıng fıghtıng he was hıt by a bullet ın hıs pocket watch - whıch was dırectly over hıs heart. He had the scar for months but dıdn't tell anyone untıl the fıght was over so the men wouldn't be scared.

We had vısıted a couple of other NZ memorıals as well, and apparently thıs had got all a bıt much for the Clıo - she started cryıng. A kındly bus drıver came over to help and we put more water ın - and the bus drıver showed us where ıt was comıng back out!

Thessaloniki

2007-08-12T18:16:00.000+01:00

We dıdn't do much ın Thessaloniki, but for completeness' sake...
We went around the outsıde of the maın landmark, the Whıte Tower, whıch wasn't that whıte. Joanna bought sandals and made Ben stay ın a nasty hostel. We also topped up on campıng gas. That's really about ıt.

We dıdn't vısıt any of theır fıne Byzantıne churches (Thessalonıkı was the 2nd cıty of the Byzantıne Empıre, so I guess 2nd cıty of Greece ıs a bıt of a come-down for them). We made only skırtıng use of theır great cafes, and none of the apparently fıne nıght-lıfe. Ben found 6.95 euros for the cheapest beer and 4 euros for hıs 250ml Fanta a bıt much, but they were lovely cafes, and we probably should've looked at the prıces before goıng ın.

Athens

2007-08-10T20:32:00.000+01:00

We set off from Delphi early (ıf there are odd i's ın thıs post, ıt's the Turkısh keyboard), and got to Athens for lunch! We parked ourselves up in what seems to be Athens' only campsite, and the nıce lady seemed to have given us the best plot, wıth lots of shade.

It was too hot to do much after the exertıon of puttıng up the tent, so we dıdn,t make ınto town until later. Did some recon to set ourselves up for the next day, Ben had his Ouzo (see Mt Olympus post), and we spotted this dog on the way home:

Greek laws on transportation may be a bit more lax than we're used to.

We made an early start of ıt the next day, well early for us but we weren't the fırst to the Acropolıs:

The Parthenon ısn't the only thing on the Acropolis, there are a few temples. The one to Athena Nike is currently away being repaired, but the Erechtheum with its Porch of Maidens is still. The Maidens (now plaster casts, as 1 is in the British mueum, the rest in the currently closed Acropolis Museum) are one of the most photographed thıngs up there:

We went a bıt snap-happy lıke everyone else up there, so here's another Acropolıs photıe:

There are stunnıng vıews of the cıty, here's the Temple of Zeus whıch we vısıted later (yes those ants are people, the columns are massıve):

There are a couple of theatres at the base of the Acropolıs, whıch were very bıg ın theır day. Thıs one, the Theatre of Dıonysus, took 17,000 people:

İsn't Ben lookıng slım? Also note hıs new haırcut from the day before (see Ouzo photo) - Joanna dıd very well late the prevıous nıght ın the dark.

After poppıng ınto the Temple of Olympıan Zeus (started 515BC by the then tyrant Pisistratus - who seems to have been quıte a good bloke for a tyrant - and fınıshed ın 168AD by Hadrıan), we went by the Roman Stadıum. Handıly completed ın the 4th century BC, there were no worries getting the 1896 Athens Olympic bid together.

Over dınner in a nıce Noodle bar (okay; we couldn't face kebabs every nıght) we heard that the 2007 jugglıng festival was in town - and oddly we then walked past them on the way back to camp:

Oh, now we dıd mentıon that we appeared to have the best plot ın the campsite... Now as it turns out the fact that we were on the sıde that was ın spıttıng dıstance of a major motorway wasn't a problem. Nope, more of a problem was that we'd set up ın the middle of some stray kıttens' play area - and our tent was the new toy in town! This resulted ın trips in the mıddle of the night to remove guy ropes etc - anythıng moveable - from the outsıde of the tent. Still, they were very cute...

Next day we went to one of the world's top museums, Greece's National Archaelogical Museum. We largely turned our braıns to mush as there was far far far too much ınfo to take ın. Stıll, as Heraclitus says: "Everythıng Flows". Ben ıs endeavourıng to drop that ınto conversatıon regularly now. Here he is trying to spread this phılosophy to another kouros (young man):

We generally were amazed at how old stuff was (up to 6th millennia BC), and learnt lots about Mycenaens, sculpture, Greek hıstory... untıl our braıns went to the aforementıoned mush.

We managed to fıt ın an Agora (ancıent marketplace) before closıng. The Roman (or new) one:

Ben was very ımpressed by its Tower of the Wınds... typical:

That's that for Athens - we had very tıred wee legs from mıles of walkıng. And now fıngers from typıng...

Delfi, and the absent Oracle

2007-08-08T21:36:00.000+01:00

We had aimed to get straight to Athens but our lunchtime stop turned into an overnighter! Delphi - or Delfoi - takes a while to get to, particularly when you start at lunchtime and go past the Leonidas and the 300 monument twice. Still, it was good to see they didn't make all of that movie up.

Starting of at the Archeological museum, it's easy to get way laid. There is so much information and history to take on board. One particular item and story caught our eye though; the twins of Argos. They helped their mum out by carrying her in her cart to a temple because the mule had gone AWOL. So impressed was she with their love and dedication she prayed for them to get what was best for a man ... they went to sleep and never woke up again. They may be remembered years later as heroes but what a rubbish way to go. Here they are (Ben wasn't allowed to pose with them, but he'll make up for it later):

On from there is the actual site of the temple (dedicated to Apollo) where the Oracle doled out her prophesies (appropriately interpreted by some priests).

Around the temple complex sprung up all the appropriate amenities, like an amphitheatre:

And treasuries, for all the big cities to put their gifts in (this one is Athenian):

And indeed other temples, this one the biggest, to the Goddess Athena:

Delphi is a bit of a one stop tourist shop, but what a shop...

Anyway, from there we went to Athens, but that's a big ol' post and it's late, so you're getting that next time. We're in Thessaloniki at the mo' by the way. Not many tourists, but a great place with lots of bars & restaurants and shopping - even Joanna bought some new shoes... well sandals...

Mt Olympus

2007-08-06T19:49:00.000+01:00

From the Bulgaria monastery we headed on down through Greece to try to find a Greek God.

Oop, sorry, that's Ben drinking his Ouzo in Athens, not sure how that got there.

We stopped at Litochoro, at the base of Mt Olympus, and tried to have our first real Greek kebab/gyros. But it turned out they were out of that, so the waiter came out with a piece of chicken and chips instead. Oh well. There's no camping in Litochoro (don't believe the Lonely Planet), but it was only 5km to the beach and a few campsites there. The first one we went to was full (never heard of a full campsite before...), so we went next door. We knew we'd stumbled on a real locals place when there weren't any dutch people there! A couple of Germans, but it was all pretty Greek. And somewhat established Greeks to - with caravans that didn't look like they'd move, patios and gardens with picket fences and watering systems! Still, it was a lovely beach, great views of the mountain, and they had real Gyros for us for dinner.

Next day we headed up the mountain. Well, more next afternoon. And due to our inability to get an early start we didn't make it up quite as far as hoped. The mountain is 2918m, so we weren't planning on reaching the top anyway, so not too much disappointment. The Clio took us 1/3 the way up:

We made it about 2/3 the way probably (we didn't take out altimeter to be sure). Great views!

Almost as far up as we got there were some horses/mules working on the path. Well, technically the men with them were doing the work, they were busy posing with Ben:

We got a bit further on from the mules but didn't manage to bother any Gods. Got back to the campsite and Ben had a great swim in the Aegean Sea which was more like a heated swimming pool. Joanna thought the wave machine was a bit much though. And finally, here's a wee caption competition from our walk, entries in the comments below...

Rila Monastery, Bulgaria

2007-08-05T15:40:00.000+01:00

After a couple of leisurely days in Sofia we thought we'd try a bit of hard graft at a monastery. Rila is renowned in Bulgaria as the place that kept alive their culture during the centuries "under the Turkish yoke". It's a wee hike up into the mountains off the beaten track but nothing the clio can't cope with.

As it turns out there was no hard graft in exchange for staying the night, just ten Euros each. The hard graft we could have had was getting up at 6.30 to go to this church, but on deliberation we felt we wouldn't get much out of the experience as our Bulgarian is limited to say the least. But we did get to stay in a monk's cell:

The monastery was founded by Saint John of Rila who was a hermit in the 10th century. In the church there was a small alter with a draw of relics; most people seemed to be a bit overcome so we didn't like to ask which bits of which saints were there!

It was our first day of rain in weeks which made the setting very atmospheric in the morning mist. Our new found serenity went well with our breakfast of donuts from the local bakery that was doing a roaring trade (helps to have a monopoly on brekkie).

Ben failed to shut the roof fully the night before so the rain not only gave the outside of the clio a much needed wash ... everytime we turned a corner, we got a little shower as well. Still we weren't as wet as these travellers on the road.

The great Greek washer crisis and the Knights who say Ne!

2007-08-03T20:11:00.000+01:00

Please send washers now - Greece appears to have a crisis. If there's a tap it's dripping, if not running. The EU cannot be pleased about the water wastage!

Also, something we meant to mention about Bulgaria - they shake their heads for yes, and nod for no - confusion awaits! Thankfully they still have a familiar 'no' word, 'Ne'. Unfortunately for neighbourly relations the same word (and head movement) means yes in Greece. We're not sure how they've got on all these years...

Sofia

2007-08-01T17:43:00.001+01:00

Exiting Serbia we got our first passport stamps - Fantastic! Ben was particularly excited. First stamp he's managed to get in his British passport. Getting into Bulgaria wasn't the usual hassle-free experience one expects with the EU, with about 5 stops to get disinfected, have passports checked, insurance checked, pay road tax etc... Bulgaria is also an hour forward, so as we drove off into Bulgaria it was suddenly quite late. And although the driving was on the improve, the roads weren't, with lots of pot-holes to negotiate.
So we got to Sofia quite late. The first reasonably central hotel looked good (Bulgaria doesn't really "do" camping), and we popped in there. The attached restaurant had a singer with an amazing mullet, a retro-synthesizer style, and the speakers turned up to 11. So dinner may have tasted nice enough, but the ears did bleed a little...

Next day we set out with a hiss and a roar... well, okay, we managed to get out of the hotel before midday at least. We popped into Sveta Nedelya, a church bombed in 1925 by communists trying to assasinate the king (failed, but killed lots of innocents). Orthodox doesn't seem so dissimilar from catholic, but we're no doubt missing fine points.

Next we found St George's Rotunda famous for hosting the Serdica conference on Christianity in 343 (okay, the theology geek comment is added purely for the Rev Dr David Clark). Sofia was a thriving city by the name of Serdica in Roman times, it changed names a couple of times until before settling on Sofia in the 14th century, after the name of its most famous church (we popped in there too). St George's Rotunda has some amazing (very old) frescos, but, like all their churches, you aren't allowed photos inside - so here's the outside:

Sofia's main picture-postcard is St Alexander Nevski Cathedral, with its gold domes. It's also the biggest cathedral in the Balkans:

That being plenty enough churches we got Ben his Bulgrian drink, Rakia. In contrast to the difficulty of the previous countries, in Bulgaria there are a long list of Rakias to have with your appetiser-salad. If you don't want milk, which seems a popular bar drink here.

We moved onto dinner, with which Ben inflicted more Bulgarin culture on Joanna. But enough of the yoghurt jokes. There was a stage show of Bulgarian music and dancing, which was...

In other achievements: into the 2nd trimester and Joanna finally manages to finish a plate of food:

Next stop: Monastery in the middle of nowhere.

Serbia

2007-08-01T16:45:00.000+01:00

Well on we drove through Serbia, initially thinking that the insane Serb drivers had calmed down now that they were in their homeland. No sooner had Ben aired this thought than in the next 5 minutes 2 drivers separately were screeching and swerving as they sought to make an impression in the poor Clio's rear bumper. Unscathed we were much more circumspect about making such comments again.

Although we were enjoying all their new bridges (no doubt thanks to a little NATO air campaign), it was nearly 8, we were low on fuel, weren't going to make it as far as we hoped, and Lonely Planet had nothing on anything between Belgrade & Kosovo; so we decided to rely on our road map. It underlines "Places of tourist interest", so the only place anywhere near where we were with an underline we decided to stop at. Although there was a sign on the side of the road where we turned off for this place, it had seemingly disappeared, and been replaced by Zlatibor. We knew immediately we'd found a "place of tourist interest" though. There were a lot of people, an active market stall area with all shapes of grilled beef (okay, there wasn't much variety on the fast food front), candy-floss, dodgems, bumper boats, trampolines, and, yes, that undeniable measure of tourist interest: Latvian Folk Dancers. Unfortunately the information places had disappeared with the town on the road map, and what with the vast hordes of (mainly Serb) people, Joanna put her pessimistic hat on. Despite this the first hotel had rooms; albeit not at bargain-basement Montenegro prices. But then this did appear to be Serbia's top holiday resort (think a classy Blackpool, though miles from the sea), and it was for friday & saturday night.

Joanna had freshly returned to the "interested in food" bandwagon, and number 2 on her list of "foods she'd like to eat" that she'd been compiling for the entire car journey to Zlatibor, was salted corn-on-the-cob. Well, they weren't likely to have proper Miso Soup, like you can only get in Japan (being number 1), but they did have large amounts of heavily salted corn-on-the-cob. No corn forks, but she coped admirably.

Other than the Latvian dancers (who I'm not sure everybody was understanding when they were issuing their call to visit Latvian Folk Dancing Festivals), English doesn't seem to be that common in Serbia (or Montenegro for that matter), and signs are largely in the Cyrillic alphabet. Ben's 1.5 years of Russian at school have been coming in very handy.

Now, as a resort town there didn't actually seem to be much to photograph. There was lots of walking to be done, and we visited this monument to revolutionaries fighting the fascist insurgents in 1944:

There were men laying a new path up to it, although they largely seemed to be playing giant-sized Jenga with the cobblestones. We waited for quite a while, but the piles never seemed to crash down.

Unfortunately, for the 2nd country in a row, Ben failed the drink challenge. In Montenegro his carefully planned excuse involved only being there one night and Cetinje suddenly becoming far too loud with its 2 competing discos for Granny MacKenzie to stay out. Serbia - well Zlatibor seemed a bit too upper-class to have slivov vitz I think. They didn't even have domestic beer. They did have lots of sports people though, I think it might be a Serbian La Manga too.

After a nice relax, the next day we were off to Bulgaria. Joanna took to not watching the Serbian drivers passing on blind corners, and Ben made good utilisation of his defensive driving skills. We stopped in the place we'd originally scheduled for our Serbia stay for lunch, and were glad we'd found Zlatibor. After lunch the roads improved, and the drivers got more sane, and soon we were safely to the Bulgaria border, about to enter the EU.

In other stories, for those following the Number Plate Scrabble, we've clocked up Illinois & Ontario in Serbia; and Greece, about 20 metres before we reached the Greek border today... Yes, we're in Greece. Mt Olympus. In a very busy gaming cafe, feeling a little bit old with all the 10-year-old kids. Hope to go someway up Mt Olympus tomorrow, see if we can find Zeus. Although if he's at the top, we're not going to reach 2918m; that might be a bit too far.

Montenegro

2007-07-31T12:10:00.000+01:00

Not particularly prompt departure from Dubrovnik, but we're not famed for our early rises. There was quite a queue at the Montenegro border crossing, probably because most people, like us, had to buy car insurance and it wasn't possible to do it before the check point. All that bought and approved (and Ben having had to use the world's worst toilet, think Trainspotting but worse - lucky he's a boy) we were on our way.

First stop, Kotor. An amazing walled town nestled into a fjord ... yes they have them in southern Europe too! The town is overlooked by some impressive walls and fortifications:

Inside the town the streets are like a labyrinth; it's lucky the place is very small so you're never lost for long. This church, from the 1200s, was in a square at a jaunty angle which maybe doesn't come across in the picture:

After getting lost and finding ourselves reasonably quickly, we got on the road to the day's final destination: Cetinje. The route we took was non-direct to say the least as it snaked up the mountain. But Ben enjoyed the hair-pin turns and it meant we were able to get some fantastic views of the fjord and Kotor:

And for those who have been wondering how the clio is getting on ... here she is in all her dirty glory!

With all the winding and twisting we managed about 40km in a couple of hours! Cetinje is the former royal capital but has seen better days. Looking for somewhere to stay was a little tricky as there didn't seem to be any hotels, hostels or information. Luckily we asked the right people for help who invited to stay with them for the princely sum of 10 Euros. Tight old Ben was very impressed. They had a lovely little granny flat and kept trying to feed and water us; Joanna left with a couple of boxes of tea because they decided she must be missing it!

Not so much to picture here, but this is the monastary which apparently is home to St John the Baptist's mumified hand and a piece of the cross:

Got a bit caught up in the town's museums because Ben was keen to practice his reading of the cyrillic alphabet - show off! The museums were fascinating, charting the history and culture of a country we didn't know much about. So we didn't end up leaving Cetinje in the morning so much as after 4pm ...

Although it doesn't look far on a map, getting to the Serbian border took quite a bit of time because of the all the narrow, windy roads carved into the steep mountain sides:

The landscapes really are amazing, with the tunnels roughly hewn into the rock, and the steep, steep, cliffs on the box-like mountains.

Got to Serbia around 6, not sure if we needed a green card. Insurance offices still seemed to be open, but after a long time recording all our details and various forms of ID, we didn't turn out to need any. We're pretty sure we didn't anyway, as they certainly didn't make us buy it...

And so we drove on into Serbia, unsure where to spend the night...

Driving Table

2007-07-29T00:03:00.000+01:00

Well here it is, my table of our actual driving. Now it's up, I'll try to keep it updated. As it shows we're in Serbia at the moment, aiming to head to Sofia, Bulgaria tomorrow. That obviously means we're still a couple of updates behind, but we'll get to that asap.
Also updating our Flickr album, adding some photos there (including some back in Spain...). The link to our Flickr page is on the side bar. The map stuff all gets a bit hap-hazard east of Italy, so my Montenegro locations are necessarily a bit of guess-work.

Date	Trip	Country	Distance (miles)	Total Clio Trip Miles	Distance (kms)	Total Clio Trip kms	Total Clio Miles
June 11	Calais - Rambouillet	France	214	214	342	342	131258
June 12	Rambouillet - Bordeaux	France	342	556	547	890	131600
June 13	Bordeaux - San Sebastian	Spain	183	739	293	1182	131783
June 15	San Sebastian - Bilbao - Llanes	Spain	184	923	294	1477	131967
June 16	Llanes - Vila Real	Portugal	386	1309	619	2094	132353
June 17	Vila Real - Porto	Portugal	108	1417	173	2273	132461
June 19	Porto - Tavira	Portugal	372	1789	597	2870	132833
June 22	Tavira - Alcala de Guidaira	Spain	142	1931	228	3097	132975
June 23	Alcala de Guidaira - Sevilla	Spain	26	1957	42	3139	133001
June 24	Sevilla - Granada	Spain	167	2124	267	3407	133168
June 27	Granada - Valencia	Spain	363	2487	582	3989	133531
June 30	Valencia - Barcelona	Spain	237	2724	380	4369	133768
July 3	Barcelona - San Remo	Italy	515	3239	826	5195	134283
July 4	San Remo - Verona	Italy	272	3511	436	5632	134555
July 8	Verona - Postojna	Slovenia	259	3770	415	6047	134814
July 9	Postojna - Ljubljana	Slovenia	35	3805	56	6103	134849
July 11	Ljubljana - Maribor	Slovenia	136	3941	218	6321	134985
July 12	Maribor - Ely	UK	0	3941	0	6321	134985
July 17	Ely - Maribor	Slovenia	0	3941	0	6321	134985
July 18	Maribor - Plitvicke Jezera	Croatia	159	4100	255	6576	135144
July 20	Plitvicke Jezera - Trogir	Croatia	197	4297	316	6892	135341
July 22	Trogir - Split - Bosnia Border - Gradac	Croatia	139	4436	223	7115	135480
July 23	Gradac - Mostar (Bosnia) - Dubrovnik	Croatia	166	4602	266	7382	135646
July 26	Dubrovnik - Kotor - Cetinje	Montenegro	91	4693	146	7528	135747
July 27	Cetinje - Zlatibor	Serbia	177	4870	284	7811	135914
July 29	Zlatibor - Sofia	Bulgaria	280	5150	448	8261	136194
July 31	Sofia - Rila	Bulgaria	75	5225	120	8381	136269
Aug 1	Rila - Mt Olympus (Plaka)	Greece	215	5440	344	8726	136484
Aug 3	Mt Olympus - Delphi	Greece	229	5669	366	9093	136713
Aug 4	Delphi - Athens	Greece	125	5794	200	9293	136838
Aug 7	Athens - Thessaloniki	Greece	316	6110	506	9800	137154
Aug 9	Thessaloniki - Gallıpolı (Eceabat)	Turkey	343	6453	549	10349	137497
Aug 11	Biga - Edremit	Turkey	140	6593	225	10574	137637
Aug 12	Edremit - Bergama	Turkey	68	6661	109	10684	137705
Aug 14	Bergama - Cunda	Turkey	48	6709	77	10761	137753
Aug 15	Cunda - Yanova - Istanbul	Turkey	269	6978	430	11191	138022
Aug 19	Istanbul - Burgas	Bulgaria	228	7206	367	11558	138250
Aug 20	Burgas - Varna	Bulgaria	93	7299	149	11707	138343
Aug 22	Varna - Bucharest	Romania	258	7557	414	12121	138601
Aug 24	Bucharest - Sinaia - Brasov	Romania	109	7666	175	12296	138710
Aug 26	Brasov (Bran roundtrip) - Chernivtsi	Ukraine	318	7984	510	12806	139028
Aug 27	Chernivtsi - Lviv	Ukraine	193	8177	310	13116	139221
Aug 29	Lviv - Kosice	Slovakia	240	8417	385	13501	139461
Aug 30	Kosice - Levoca	Slovakia	62	8479	99	13600	139523
Sep 1	Tatras Roundtrip	Slovakia	88	8567	141	13741	139611
Sep 2	Levoca - Zakopane	Poland	65	8632	104	13845	139676
Sep 3	Zakopane - Krakow	Poland	98	8730	157	14003	139774
	Auschwitz & other day trips	Poland	150	8880	241	14244	139924
Sep 10	Krakow - Warsaw	Poland	218	9098	350	14594	140142
Sep 11	Warsaw - Olsztyn	Poland	138	9236	221	14815	140280
Sep 12	Olsztyn - Kaliningrad	Russia	156	9392	250	15065	140436
Sep 14	Kaliningrad - Siauliai	Lithuania	222	9614	356	15421	140658
Sep 15	Siauliai - Riga	Latvia	93	9707	149	15570	140751
Sep 18	Riga - Tallinn	Estonia	210	9917	337	15907	140961
Sep 21	Tallinn - Turku	Finland	115	10032	184	16091	141076
Sep 23	Turku - Helsinki (and the end of the road)	Finland	131	10163	210	16301	141207

Dubrovnik, Croatia

2007-07-28T22:08:00.001+01:00

First day in Dubrovnik was a beach day. We were staying in Kupari 6km south which we think may have been a swanky resort in its day, but has seen much better days. The "Homeland War" obviously took its toll on the sea front hotels:

Still, it's freed up what was a private beach for the locals and us! So we had a lovely sunbathe and swim in the incredibly clear waters of the Adriatic. Dubrovnik's sea must be seen; it brings new meaning to crystal clear.

Don't think we've forgotten the drink challenge, oh no! In the old town that evening, Ben got his grubby mitts on some Pelinkovac, the official Croatian drink on the list. And bitter only goes some way to describe it!

Day 45 of our travels was spent in Dubrovnik's old town, again in quite sweltering heat. Spent a couple of hours up on the city walls learning about its history and how it too has largely had to be rebuilt after the war. UNESCO coming to the rescue with the cash and new roof tiles. The old walls were so well built, they still managed to protect the inhabitants from modern artillery.

And after being up there in the heat, it was ice cream o'clock:

As an extra note, ice cream o'clock comes from Slovenia where the natives are rarely to be seen without one. How do they stay so slim?!

We also dropped in on Europe's third oldest pharmacy. It's been in continuous operation since the 1300s, unfortunately we didn't need any drugs.

When we returned to our tent it had developed a bad case of dandruff, on later inspection this turned out to be forest fire ash. The clio was also covered, but some seriously strong breezes in the night (all of which were warm) meant everything was clean (by our standards) by the morning ready for Montenegro!

Mostar, Bosnia

2007-07-28T21:38:00.001+01:00

As we were trying to leave our hotel in Gradac, we got waylaid by the owners for coffee and stilted chats in English. Turns out a lot of their family are living in New Zealand and have been for about 50 odd years - making wine in Auckland. Which proves Joanna's point that no matter where you go, everyone has a New Zealand connection ... well maybe not everywhere, but a lot of places!

And we were back on the open road (with mole and toad - guess which is which), retracing our steps to the Bosnia border. Much simpler process on Mondays than on Sundays and we were waived through with our new insurance papers. The main road to Mostar wasn't at all bad, despite Lonely Planet warnings.

On the way into the town we started noticing lots of buildings had signs like this:

There are still a lot of abandoned buildings that need mine clearance / demolishing so the signs of war haven't been totally eradicated yet. However, at Mostar Bridge it's all shiny, new and very touristy:

It was destroyed in November 1993 during the war and rebuilt in 2005 as a symbol of peace and reconciliation. As we learned in the museum, it was originally built by the Turks in 1566 and UNESCO got them back to rebuild it in 2003/4.

Also rebuilt was this mosque on the east side of the town - the before and after pictures were amazing:

Our route out of Bosnia was not quite as well trodden as the way in. We decided to take a back route to Dubrovnik ... which turned out to be a long way for a short cut. Ben enjoyed the windy, single track road with bonkers Bosnian drivers playing chicken coming the other way. We always lost.

On the way we saw a number of forest fires, some of which the aged fire engines were having difficulty getting to:

Our back route meant we had to disturb a lone Croatian border guard who was very disgruntled at having to leave the shade to deal with us! But we made it safely to our campsite outside Dubrovnik.

Split

2007-07-24T21:10:00.001+01:00

We got up early and broke camp. Seriously, we were driving by about 9.15! We had plans to spend the night in Bosnia, and wanted to see Split first.
A short drive down the coast later we headed straight for Diocletian's Palace. For those without an in-depth knowledge of 3rd century history he was a Roman Emperor from the point at which they decided to have 4 emperors. He chose Split as his retirement place, and built a rather large garrisoned palace there, which has to some extent survived. He was one of the last to persecute the Christians so it is with some irony that not only are there lots of christian marks on the building blocks, but his mausoleum was turned into a cathedral in the 7th century.

We had a good wander around his basement as well:

Ben tried to make Joanna go to the Archaeological Museum, but it was shut due to being Sunday. So we just had to poke our heads through the bars.

Also shut on Sundays is Bosnia. Well, to those who need to buy special car insurance on the border. Bugger. We were trying to get to Mostar where the men of the town were doing their annual jumping off the famous bridge to impress their lady friends. Ben'll have to wait till next year. So we back tracked a few miles to a lovely seaside resort by the name of Gradac which really wasn't too much of a hardship. We thought there was going to be no room at the inn, but in the end we didn't do too badly with one of the last rooms in town:

For kiwis reading, yes, Joanna has been listening to a little too much Fred Dagg.

Next day, to Bosnia & beyond...

Trogir

2007-07-24T20:42:00.000+01:00

From Plitvisčke we headed on down the coast, stopping for lunch in Zadar. Nice old town, and we were happy to find a park in the shade.

A bit of pizza and sweating later we swapped drivers and Ben drove almost to Split, along some amazing coastlines. Talk about scenic. Joanna didn't sleep through too much of it (and she deserves her afternoon naps). And besides, there's over 1000 islands, the odd one missed won't be noticed... Our campsite coincided with a UNESCO site just north of Split at a place called Trogir. We've since discovered virtually everything here is a UNESCO site...
We set up camp in the mad heat and went for a swim on the beach at the campsite. Lovely. Although the water had a bit much floating vegetation, and Ben had just got paranoid about sea-urchins after reading the Lonely Planet, so sandals got a bit wet.

Next day we made it into Trogir, and started investigating what made it UNESCO worthy. Except it was 40C. Seriously. We were hoping for sea breezes, but there was nothing. We have since spotted a cloud in Croatia today, but it was very small. Apparently it's over 40 days since it last rained here.
So much sweating was done, but we discovered Trogir is an island (we'd walked over the bridge and wandered about a bit before we realised), settled by the Greeks, but made famous by the Romans for its marble & marble artisans. They've kept at it, so there's great buildings from the 9th-19th centuries still in good shape.

Anyway, dead pretty, here's a couple of pics of the marble stuff:

Weightloss programme thwarted

2007-07-22T13:23:00.000+01:00

Our confession is that we came back to the UK briefly a week or so ago (sorry for not popping in, UK people) ... and also that we've been tardy at updating the blog. It transpires that we're a little bit pregnant and if all goes well, we should have a little whipper-snapper in late January. Our trip to Cambridge was to have a scan and check all is going well. At three and a bit months, it is.

Due to this wee development, the trip schedule needs a little updating... We'll cut off south-east asia, and head out of Hong Kong in early November.

We've been back on the road since Tuesday 17th, and have largely been in Croatia (see below). We're currently in Split, which we'll write about soon, honest.

Plitvicke Lakes, Croatia

2007-07-22T12:53:00.000+01:00

Whilst in Maribor, we caught up with Bianca & Brett, who were passing through Slovenia on a wee break. Had a huge dinner, but still couldn't find Ben the Slovenian national drink, despite it being top of the menu. Mission failed.

So we headed out of Slovenia to Croatia, our first non EU country. We're getting used to the Croatian Kuna which is taking some brain power after the simple Euro. After a short walk around Zagreb, we made for the most famous Croatian national park, Plitvicke. On the way there, we stopped so Ben could chat to a nice young lady who was minding some tanks in Karlovac. He got his fill of (recent) war history even though some of the equipment looked like it had been used in the second world war as well. We also started noticing the shrapnel damage to buildings along the road.

We arrived in Plitvicke and set up camp. Ben achieved instant success with a Croatian National Drink:

The next day we set out to explore the Jezera, as the locals call Lakes. Ben continued to enjoy his game of number plate scrabble ... and in the car park it got really interesting ... there was no Ireland, Turkey, Portugal or Russia but pretty much everything inbetween. Wow.

Joanna managed to drag Ben (while containing her own excitement) off to see the lakes - which rightly deserve their UNESCO status. Here's a few photos from around the park:

Waterfall, was, well, Big. In Croatian a waterfall is a Slap.

Unfortunately there was no swimming allowed, despite the Lakes' pleading with us to jump in. It's been quite hot in Croatia. We're yet to see a cloud or experience a day less than 35C.

Ljubljana

2007-07-17T18:52:00.000+01:00

Slovenia's capital is a fantastic place, but not the best for pictures. There's lovely hills in the distance. The castle's quite cool (and the only real tourist attraction), but we couldn't work out a good angle on it (too many trees in the way). The best we could do was the freaky heads on a door of the cathedral:

There's a better shot on our flickr site, which you can get to from the side bar, but unfortunately I foolishly don't have that photo with me.

Beyond that there's just a good photo of Joanna looking geeky at the castle's 3D history film of the city...

Well, it made Ben laugh.

The city has a lovely cafe/bar culture, even if there's not a lot of touristy things to see. Seriously nice, relaxed place to hang out. Not much to report back.

Beyond that we moved onto Maribor (Slovenia's 2nd city), which we've just arrived back in. We have a small confession to make, but we'll give ourselves a day or 2 to work ourselves up to it...

Lord of the Rings Special

2007-07-15T16:38:00.001+01:00

So after our exciting border crossing we journeyed through beautiful green Slovenia. We did however fail to take a picture of any of the many houses adorned amazingly in flowers. We took back roads, as suggested by the border guards, because Byways Are More Exciting Than Highways. Such a spacious country as well, the people just seemed to disappear after Italy.

And so we made it into Postojna, which we were later to realise is Slovenia's main tourist attraction. Bled is the other main place to see, but we didn't make it there. Postojna's great though. Quite quiet and sleepy, even if having a major horse festival the day we turned up. It hadn't taken us very long from Verona (despite stopping in the world's most confusing services for lunch, which took us a while to work out), so we had time to go see a local castle at Predjama.

As you can see, it's built halfway up a cliff, mostly in a massive cave. It is Helm's Deep, from Lord of the Rings' Two Towers. It is a bit confusing whether you're "inside" or "outside" at the back, as walls aren't there, where the cave will do. Quite a good fortress though. The cave goes for miles back, eventually coming out at some cherry-growing village. A famous knight from the days of yore, Erazem, held out here for "a year and a day" (sending down roast bullock and cherries to the frustrated sieging forces), until a servant was bribed to reveal his wearabouts. When Erazem went "where even the Sultan must go alone", the servant turned on a light and the catapult smashed the appropriate outhouse...

Now we said Slovenia was green, but this is possibly taking it a bit far:

This was a little Noah's Ark that we found the next day when we visited Postojna Jama (Cave).

Once in (2km train ride in from the cave entrance), we discovered another Lord Of The Rings set: The Mines of Moria. With lots of Joanna's Gimli impressions we went for a 1.5km walk, with vast caverns, and very exciting stalagtite & stalagmite formations. There were amazing curtain things, and ones that looked like spaghetti which were hollow and grew only 1mm every 80 years. There were white ones, red ones, green ones...

Also in the cave were "human fish" - pink (pigment-less) eyeless salamanders, (kind of amphibian lizard things), which spend there entire lives in the dark - hence no need for eyes. They can live 80-100 years, and only need to eat every 8 years. Freaky.

Map

2007-07-15T14:10:00.000+01:00

It's what you've all been calling for, a picture of our route... We'll update it each time we get a chance... (click on picture to make bigger)

Venice

2007-07-11T16:34:00.000+01:00

We kept our camping spot in Verona and took a day trip through to Venice on the train. Our slow start, plus just missing a bus and train, meant we didn't get there till 2 - but hey, there's not that much to see is there?

Our main achievement was finding the only free museum in Venice; there wasn't much to see inside but it was cool on a hot day and it had toilets! We moseyed on getting generally lost on purpose and soaking up the atmosphere. Didn't do much else, but of course hit all the famous spots and got all the appropriate tourist pics.

Ben also managed to have the local drink: Sprizz Aperol. Bitter.

Next day we headed to Slovenia, where we are now. We'll post more about that in a bit, but as a summary: it's beautiful & friendly and everyone has nice gardens. Slovenia in Bloom must be a really hard-fought competition.

Verona

2007-07-11T12:28:00.000+01:00

So Joanna decided it was her turn to drive, at least halfway. She got the exciting tunnels and bridges over the sea, that descended into dull motorway. Ben got the exciting back-roads. As we approached Verona the storm clouds gathered, and the winds picked up. It all looked very portentous... But we drove in anyway. It's an incredibly pretty city. We did our usual thing of going straight to the tourist office to get the city map and find out where the camping is, and after quickly posting you about San Remo we headed up a small hill to the campsite. There were some young hippy type folk running the joint (we're getting very jealous about how many languages everyone else seems to speak), and they were very helpful. A very cool campsite if one ever goes to Verona. Some what higgledy-piggledy, camp spots above each other, little terraces and wondrous views over the city:

We had a quick wander down into the old city and found some good city life for our dinner.
Next day we set off to explore Verona properly. We started at the Arena - the world's third biggest and possibly best preserved Roman Amphitheatre. We bought the "Verona Card" on the way in which means cheap entry into all the main attractions - be sure to investigate this if you are taking a trip here. Stage crews were setting up for the evening's performance of Aida - so we couldn't have a good dig around ... but we felt like proper Roman's sitting on the top seats watching the world go by.

Next to Juliet's house - it was owned by the Capello family who are thought to have been Shakespeare's Capulet clan. It's well preserved but really it's mainly good for the photo opportunities ...

Also hit the medieval castle (with 14th century art museum) and the Roman theatre close to our campsite. So we made good use of the Verona Card!

Meanwhile, back at the campsite the nice hippies had secured us tickets to the evening's performance of Aida. However, they neglected to tell us to take our own refreshments for the 4 hour show or pillows to sit on ... stone can be quite tough on the posterior after a while! Anyway, the show was spectacular and well worth the €50.

Around 22 thousand people squeezed into the arena for the performance ... most of them in the cheap seats with us!

After our late night at the Opera, the next day was spent lazily by Lake Garda, sunbathing and enjoying the views ... it's a tough life.

Travel notes

2007-07-09T12:41:00.000+01:00

Just little thoughts...

We had our first proper border check going into Slovenia. All the Italians just pretty much got waived through, but we got asked to park over there please. What?! We thought, we're EU too, why are we in trouble? We turned the car off, got out and waited for a battle ... But no, the nice man just wanted to give us some tourist maps and say hello. Slovenia's lovely.

We got through quite a bit of Slovenia without seeing a Dutch car. But we knew when we got to the campsite it'd be alright: it's not camping if there aren't Dutch people. And sure enough, the car coming out as we arrived was Netherlandish.

When on our long drives it's exciting (?) to see which cars are driving about. No eye-spy for us. So far all Ukrainians drive vans. Monaco people drive at million miles an hour, as do Andorrans. We've only just clocked up our first Estonia and Croatia. Turkey was spotted in France, along with some Arabic number plate from who-knows-where?
11/7 update: first Finland spotted - and first Californian! Now that really puts us in the shade.

Other thought: We mentioned all the road bridges in Spain, but that did us no good when we went to eat locally to the campsite in Barcelona. Only able to turn right out of the campsite wanting to go a short way left there were suddenly no cross-over bridges. Had to drive almost to Barcelona proper to turn around, and then do a couple of illegal U-turns to get back to the road we wanted... Ended up about a 20 mile trip to go a mile the other way, and a very late dinner even by Spanish standards. Can't trust any stereotypes we make.

But onto more exciting Posts: Verona about to come...

Barcelona!

2007-07-09T11:42:00.000+01:00

Yes, we´re finally putting this post up... mind any typos, this Slovenian keyboard is crazy. About to go into some caves, but first making use of some free library internet! Yay!

Spain seems quite a while ago now. We found a nice campsite on the beach, under the airport take-off point. Didn´t disturb our sleeping or anything, but they were there all the time. The guy running the campsite loved Ben´s Magnum PI shirt (which has been used a number of times now to be recognised - nothing like a loud shirt to stand out in a crowd).
Our first day we just checked out the beach and got settled in. Second day we went into Barca on the bus, and largely just wandered along La Ramblas (main pedestrian street), checked out the statue of Chris Columbus on a very high plinth, and wandered into the cathedral. Nothing like Sevilla´s, but still pretty impressive, and with a lovely cloister. Like most cathedrals it seems it´s in the process of being fixed, which didn´t make for the best pictures. We worked out the metro system with only a little difficulty, and headed up to Park Güell, which Gaudi designed as part of a failed scheme to have a communal Park between about 30 houses.

Most didn´t sell, although Gaudi lived there the rest of the life. Dunno how much he saw of it though, as he appears to have been a bit of a workaholic. Still couldn´t finish a cathedral though...

The next day started with cutting Ben´s hair, much to the amusement of the cleaning staff, who all offered each other as Joanna´s next subject. Hair suitably shorter, we headed off on the bus again to check out more of Barcelona. A somewhat more successful day, as the previous day had been Sunday: shut day. We dodged the Casa Batlló, as the €16.50 entry for a house clashed with our tightness, but the Pedrera was much better as it included the Gaudi museum as well. Amazing buildings he designed, this Gaudi fella. And so much of it makes so much sense. He liked to use nature as a source of inspiration, so came up with curving buildings that are naturally strong and stable, and rain naturally runs off, instead of square things. And then he´d design interiors so that chairs fit bottoms, not vice versa...

He also came up with some cool architecture techniques of hanging chains, and inverting the shape. You end up with paraboloids, hyperboloids, helicoids, and lots of other great mathematically strong shapes (yes, Ben is writing this one). He put all this to best use in his masterpiece La Temple de Sagrada Familia:

Didn´t manage to finish it (or the other big church he started), and it´s half built after 125 years. Still going strong though. We went there after the Gaudi Museum and were suitably inspired. Dad: you must come and see this, it´ll greatly excite your engineering brain (And Mum will love seing the church aspect, so you´ll both be very happy :). Do go see the Gaudi Museum/Pedrera first though, to get an idea of what he was on about. We did it by accident, but it was a good idea...

Eastern Spain Smells - but not as much as San Remo!

2007-07-04T16:12:00.000+01:00

In Spain's case it's quite literal, from Murcia up. Indeed the day we left Barcelona was the day the campsite was getting a little too fruity. And we made it to San Remo last night, over 500 miles for the wee Clio, which coped admirably. But by that point it was getting late, so we popped into San Remo just in Italy. We found the local campsite, and thought a bungalow might be convenient for a quick overnighter... €89! Okay, camping... €45! well, it's too late to find anywhere else... But then we found it was like this:

But too late to change... Admittedly the bathrooms did have gold-plated taps (well, not quite), but still, ouch.

On the plus side I got to continue the drinking challenge with limoncello in a restaurant (which served very nice pizza):

PS: Oh no ... the dreaded vest (singlet) has beeen found ;0)

In an update on the drink challenge, pastis & champagne were missed in France due to drink-driving laws, and the fact that service stations don't seem to sell them. Beer & ordinary wine, sure...
And Spain, well we've still got the Cava - it was meant to be popped with a Team NZ win in Valencia, but those dang Swiss got in the way. Sherry... well don't believe all those UK Tapas restaurants saying sherry has come back into fashion in Spain...

Valenica

2007-07-02T20:25:00.000+01:00

Valencia was added to the itinerary to incorporate the America´s Cup. Morocco will always be there; the America´s Cup won´t be in Europe again for a while we predicted, over-confidently. So we rock up in Valencia in time to watch the fourth race which as we now know was won by those Swiss dudes. Ben´s uni friend, Kylie, kindly sorted us out with some accommodation and we were good to go. Except we had turned up in time for a rest day! So we spent the first day mooching around in the very different world of the have-yachts, catching up with Kylie, and organising our viewing for race 5.

Ben´s mate Evan kindly pointed us in the direction of a kiwi expat from the States who was willing to take NZ supporters out in his boat to watch the races. Now, after many boat trips all ending the same way - violently ill - Joanna should have said "no thanks" to going out on the water. However, she´s invincible and it won´t happen this time ...

For the price of a bottle of wine we hopped aboard the Dreadnaught (registered in Otago) and set sail (or at least motor). It didn´t take long for Joanna to feel a little green and start Day One of the America´s Cup diet. It wouldn´t have been so bad if TNZ´s spinnaker hadn´t split and they had kept ahead, but it wasn´t meant to be. But we had a great time on the boat, so thanks to Stanley (middle) for have us aboard, Jo (left) for arranging it all for us and Joe (right) for rubbing Joanna´s back.

Here´s what Ben was looking at whilst Joanna fed the fishes:

Next, Barcelona ...

Granada

2007-07-01T12:35:00.000+01:00

Granada, our favourite Spanish city! (and we´re not just buttering up Juanvi)

Joanna drove us and we got there relatively early, especially for us (being on the road by midday is an achievement, so being at our destination shortly after lunch is a serious result). It was hot, but not quite as mad as Sevilla - still wouldn´t fancy working in the afternoon - lunch and a siesta seem much more sensible! The clio was a bit of a sty, so we a good old relax, sorting through and repacking things, and slowly putting the tent up, with plenty of sitting in the shade to be done. With the loss of the laptop, there is now space for a 3rd person in the car at least... We went for a long walk to find a good internet place (there was an update...), and by the time we got back we just had some food (including free tapas) at the camp restaurant. Can´t do mad stuff everyday, and relaxing days are definitely enjoyable.
Whilst we were internetting Juanvi got in contact and volunteered his sister as a Granada guide, so our next day was sorted.

We met Rocio at two and headed straight for a drink and some tapas ... our kind of lady! It´s a hard concept to grasp coming from Britain where everything costs something ... but the tapas with your drink in Granada is free. After another wee sit down Rocio`s friend, Laura joined us and we moseyed off to soak up the city`s atmosphere. First on the list was a monastery which now appears to be a nunnery! Either way, it has a stunning chapel where Juanvi was confirmed and wonderfully cool courtyard with orange trees in the middle.

Monday means that many of the tourist places were closed so we had to make do with looking at the outside of the basilica, later on the cathedral and the tombs of The Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. We also took a wander through the stunning Arabic quarter which looked out onto Granada`s mighty Alhambra ... more on that later.

We rounded off our day with Rocio and Laura with some more tapas and a look at another stunning church hidden behind a simple facade on one of the main streets. Legs had had enough so it was cheerio to the girls and back to the campsite ...

Day three in Alhambra started with a morning of achievement, achievement, achievement! We divided to conquer, Ben getting the more exciting tasks. He went to get the car window fixed, although we had grown quite fond of the cardboard window! Joanna was on hand washing duty. Not much to say about that, except if you ever catch her complaining about using a washing machine, give her a stern look and a waggle of the finger!

Right, so Alhambra. If you ever get the chance visit this place. Whatever we write here won`t do it justice (neither will the pictures, when we eventually post them!) It`s a gargantuan complex of palaces, gardens and fortresses and seeing is believing dating back to 8th century after the Moors had invaded Spain. It became a vital post in the empire and the last stronghold. The Moors turned it from a barren hilly area to lush green vegetation with amazing feats of irrigation. Many rulers had built, rebuilt, modified and made the complex majestic and there is a campaign to rightly include it the new 7 wonders of the world.

No more bets, ladies and gents!

2007-07-01T12:21:00.000+01:00

We`re in Barcelona, about to add some updates but it´s the first of July so we hope everyone got their sweepstake entries in to win the chocolate fish. The clio´s still going and it`s done about 2650 miles (approx) so far. We enjoyed going out on the water for the America´s Cup in Valencia (thanks Evan!), but first we better get our post in for Granada, our favourite city so far (although Porto was pretty cool too).

[oh, 3 things we forgot to mention about Sevilla cathedral: Christopher Columbus´tomb is in there; it´s the largest Gothic cathedral in the world; and there´s a massive painting with St Antony, the patron saint of finding lost things in one of the dozens of mini chapels around the side - he was cut out and stolen, but found himself in New York a few months later - an art dealer thought he´d bought a copy, realised it was the original and sent it back... A powerful saint indeed!]

Sevilla, part dos

2007-06-26T20:40:00.000+01:00

As you´ll note from the title, our spanish is improving. Just having a wee break from Granada´s free Tapas (free with every drink bought) to try and catch up. We´re off to Valencia tomorrow, for some serious America´s Cup action. I´m looking forward to it, Joanna seems quite accepting...

But Sevilla. We drove into town and parked in a spot near where we´d parked the previous day. But possibly not so much pedestrian traffic. Which we now know is important. We set off to the Cathedral. Amazing. Still has some of the original mosque (as this was all Moorish country, so when re-conquered they converted the Mezquitas to Cathedrales), including the big tower for calls to prayer, which is now part of the bell tower. Everything had to be bigger and more impressive of course... But the cathedral is seriously amazing. Massive, with tons of chapels all around the side.
Serious gold in places. Fantastic architecture. And great to go up the bell tower. We then went for some lunch - Granada, tapas free; Sevilla, no. Sevilla very expensive. Then we set off for a pension. In theory very expensive like the rest of Sevilla, but we found a small room with no bano (bathroom) or windows for 32€. Lovely other than lack of facilities, so: brilliant. Had to be in by 3 though (these early to bed spanish types!). With that sorted we headed to the Alcazar. A 14th century palace built by King Pedro I. Pedro was apparently called The Cruel by his aristocrats, but got on better with the common people. All very Mudejar style: christian-arabic mix. Carlos V, Holy Roman Emperor did a bit of remodelling work in the 16th century, as you do. Lovely gardens too. The current monarch pops in from time to time and has the upper floors, which we didn´t get to visit for some reason.
So afer a nice ol´ time there we headed back to the car to drive it near the pension before heading out for some grub. And that´s when we found the window smashed, and the laptop missing from its hiding place (and indeed those things hiding it moved elsewhere). Nothing else taken, except for useful wires in laptop bag. So headed to police station. First (very big) station told us to go to another one, and on our way out of there a man on a moped offered to get us our laptop back. Tres dodgy. Kept him talking and once he discovered we weren´t "helped" to park by anyone he wasn´t interested. There was a parking "helper" (beggars who generally point out parking spaces) not a million miles from where we parked though...
Anyway had a bit of a wait at the police station, but eventually got our report in. Nice policemen once again. Made a cardboard window and parked in the a nice secure parking place near our pension. Dinner expensive again. Sevilla may be very pretty, but it doesn´t half cost...

Sevilla, part 1

2007-06-26T10:46:00.000+01:00

So we left Tavira, not quite the 9 o´clock get to the internet cafe we planned, more 12 and it had shut for lunch, so we better head to spain... Stopped to post a couple of postcards whilst Portugese stamps still worked (nephews are getting cards from each country), grab some lunch... We hadn´t filled up on fuel as Spanish fuel was so much cheaper. And there´d be a station just across the border right? Nope. Capitalism can´t be quite as strong as in Anglo-saxon countries, although we did pass 2 being built, so maybe it´s starting to be... Got further, tank got lower... no services on map now we look... So had to leave the main road and search for a town. Decided on Gibraleon. We found it, but a lot of the streets weren´t paved... didn´t seem particularly wealthy shall we say... Fuel light´s been on for a bit... So we stopped for our 2nd encounter with Spanish policemen. We´ve had 3 now and the spanish police seem lovely...
No english, but they pointed us in the right direction (basically keep going 500m and you´re there...), and thirsty Clio was happy again.
On we headed. Sevilla wasn´t too far, but as much as we were complaining about the rain in the northwest of Iberia, the sun got too hot, so we had to stop for a bit for food and water. We got to Sevilla, where it was 37C. Toasty. No wind. No left turns either. So when the tourist office was on the wrong side of the road... well we had difficulty. And then it turned out to be shut with sign to go to the main office. So we walked there. Nice man recommended a Pension over the 3 camp grounds. We knew better. The car needed a right old organise (we have too much stuff), and that´d be easier (and cheaper) at a campsite. So after a brief wander (wow, what amazing buildings Sevilla has, where can we get some fluids... mmm, Seville Orange juice...), we headed out of town for Camping Oromana in Alcala de Guidaira, 15k outside Sevilla. It was late by this point, and there weren´t the best signs. Firstly for negotiating the town (which turned out to have impressive ancient walls & buildings on hills entering the town), and then there were none for the campsite. Some would take this as a bad sign, but it was late, and we were determined. A kindly Pharmacist (no english), helped us some way, as did the Hotel Oromana (we knew we were near then). Hmm, campsite felt like something out of Psycho. Bungalows with caved-in roofs, locked toilet blocks that look like they´ve seen better decades... But eventually we found the "new" fairly nice toilet/shower block, and the fact that it was 9.30 and about to go dark and we were miles from anywhere else decided that we should stay. Besides there seemed to be lots of kids running about, so surely we couldn´t be in a horror film, it wasn´t empty enough (although not really any adults beyond the manager...).
So we quickly cooked up dinner, ate, and then slept like babies (nothing can stop us!). In the morning we packed up for our day in Sevilla, and maybe a pension in town wasn´t such a bad idea...

Driving...

2007-06-26T10:33:00.000+01:00

Just in a web cafe briefly whilst car window gets fixed. Don´t have camera with me, and indeed this web cafe isn´t as good as the last so no pictures - maybe tonight. We´re off to see Alhambra today, Granada´s main attraction. Looks amazing from the outside. Yesterday Juanvi´s sister and her friend very kindly took us around Granada. Amazing place to walk around and amazing Tapas! You can´t buy a drink without getting food though, which left me very full, and quite thirsty... You can´t turn such yummy food down...
Hopefully I´ll get Sevilla done before I have to go back to the car, but that´s quite a long story, so first some observations, or rather a couple of questions for Juanvi. There are lots of serious bridges unattached to any real roads (maybe a farmer´s track though) over major roads in Spain.. why? I´m sure the farmer couldn´t afford them, so is the government just very kind? And there´s lots of speed camera/radar signs about, but I´m yet to se any speed monitoring device (or cars slowing down) - I´m guessing the signs are just to scare people? or are the cameras just well hidden?
At any rate we were about to leave Portugal in our last update - it was a relief to leave the Portugese drivers. They are very scary. In Spain there´s a lot of horns, but less just plain swerving around you to get where they want, without warning. The driving was still a bit scary a short way over the border but by Sevilla it had calmed down... phew!
But now to see if I can get Sevilla done in 15 minutes... (I don´t think so...)

Tavira

2007-06-24T18:46:00.001+01:00

From Porto we headed for the Algarve. We stopped in a town called Santarem, our first place with a big obvious bull-ring. It was initially a very ugly town, but we had a wee search for a cafe (more GCSE french coming in handy... it seems easier when everybody´s on their second language), on our way back to the clio we found a really nice plaza, some places just need a bit of searching out.
As we continued south we got overtaken by a van of Ukrainian surfers, and were in convoy with a van of Austrian surfers. Whilst they proved that we´d come a relatively little way compared to some, it got us wondering: how do they get into it? I´m sure the Black Sea can´t have good surf, and Austria doesn´t have a coastline...
As we crossed the hills into the Algarve the rain cleared and it was sun sun sun...
We settled on Tavira near the Spanish border for our beach part of Portugal. We got there and discovered the campsite was a short ferry ride away from the town and any roads. The town´s coast is protected by islands, with one main one; and the main beach is on the island. The campsite is on the beach, no cars allowed. So we had to have a re-package and work out what we could carry onto the ferry, and we were off to the beach.

So there was much beach lolling about done, and we took a great photo of a chameleon on the dunes ...
There were lots of boobies out for Ben to look at too (no photos though).

We did a very commendable impression of washer women one morning, and not only felt for the women of the Ganges, but determined to wear fewer clothes for longer.
Also, Ben realised his great calculations hadn´t entirely included travel time, so countries / towns need ditching. Morroco´s out, Hungary´s looking precarious, and we´ll visit fewer cities in Spain on our way to Valencia for the 5th America´s Cup race. We´ll just have to come back to places at some point in the future - too much world to see!

Porto...

2007-06-24T18:14:00.000+01:00

But back to Porto. A wee while ago. It´s an amazing city, beautiful in its run-downness... If that makes sense. We had a good old wander and can´t understand why the people aren´t all obese given the number of tempting patisseries.
Visited the Calem Port "Cave" or cellar too (on the other side of the river - Gaia seems in a less decaying state than Porto), and learnt lots about port on a quick tour. We didn´t even know white port existed... 3 drunk brits (well, 2 drunk & 1 driver) were on the tour as well - they were in Porto to build a massive tidal electricity project. Apparently it´d been raining for weeks. We were lucky not to be flooded out of our tent in fact. Our "cleverly" chosen spot (chosen for shade from sun, not rain) turned out to be firmer ground that for those around us. It was still pouring when we left. It was a quick pack-up, trying to keep as much dry as possible...

But back to the drink, and the port was another local beverage ticked off the list of The Steve Farrar Drink Challenge. Joanna tried to join in, as the picture show, but only managed a sniff of the port before definitely deciding once and for all port just isn´t gin and tonic!

Later, we added another drink to the list - Vino Verde. Another Portugese drink which is a young green wine ... and here´s the proof!

Clio violated!

2007-06-24T18:03:00.000+01:00

Some nasty people in Sevilla have broken into the poor wee Clio, and nicked the laptop. It was well hidden, but the dastardly crooks moved stuff about (cunning devils!) and found it. Didn´t nick anything else; I don´t know what was wrong with our dirty underwear. So a few photos lost (got Porto onwards on the camera still), and there´ll be no picture of the big floral cat outside the Guggenheim on that update, we´ll just cherish that in our memories.
Whilst that was going on, we were busy looking at Sevilla: very pretty. We´ve also made it Granada now, and found a nice campsite, so we´re ready to organise repairs to the window in the morning (Spain is closed on Sundays). There´s currently a cardboard window - I knew we brought gaffer tape and too many boxes for a reason.

At the Beach...

2007-06-21T13:12:00.000+01:00

At Tavira in the Algarve, Portugal for a beach break. Just quickly as our free internet time is over already and we´re waiting for them to kick us off...

We´re getting browner, although Joanna looks like she´s been hit as an insect bite under her eye has swollen up...

Porto was great, although very wet, we´ll give more details later. Photos will also be forthcoming.

We´ve decided to ditch Morocco as we don´t have time to do it justice and still make it to the America´s Cup (such hard decisions...).

And please add comments - we love reading them.

Lots more sometime soon. Here tonight, and then heading to Seville.

Vila Real

2007-06-18T16:11:00.000+01:00

Somewhat of a diversion on the way (due to some creative map-reading by a sleepy Joanna), but we made it to Portugal. Torrential rain wasn´t really helping either, and it was seriously heavy by the time we had to stop in Vila Real. Not too bad a town and Joanna found a great wee Pensao with a lovely proprietress. We also went out and got (other than wet) a wonderful dinner of roast kid goat. Yummy.

We´ve moved on to Porto - "charmingly dilapidated" as the guidebook correctly puts it, and are exploring it today. Don´t worry Steve, Port will be consumed, as well as Green Wine, the other speciality we´ve discovered.

All good in camp Clio; sorry for the intermitent updates. MikeB has recommended atom feed to let you know when we do get internet access and there´s something new...

Llanes

2007-06-18T15:56:00.000+01:00

Another great recommendation by Juanvi. We note he didn´t recommend Torrelavega which was a truly horrendous smelling place we drove by - we were amazed to see eaterie signs; Rotorua had nothing on this place...
But Llanes is really lovely. A little excitment on the way in as we got pulled over by the Guardia Civil, and had all our papers checked. But the Clio passed the test, and we were through! Here we discovered that cider should be poured from a great height and mostly miss the glass ... another local beverage downed, and another photo opportunity missed. More great tapas and a great place to spend a Friday night. There´s a lot to see in the town; historic, modern, beaches and some art work along the harbour ...

Next morning on our quick getaway - embarrassing details will only be given in person - we had to quickly grab supplies; unfortunatley the juice Joanna grabbed turned out to be a carton of Sangria. Not so unhappy for Ben´s drinking challenge (and we have a photo!)

Bilbao

2007-06-18T15:48:00.000+01:00

Popped in briefly to take a whirl around the Guggenheim Art Gallery. Pictures of the titanium structure don´t do it justice - it really is something to behold. As was the ginormous flower cat outside ~ photo to follow ... The art works inside however, did need a bit of explanation; when someone talks about the "spirituality of concrete" I smell a rat. Anselm Kiefer also takes his inspiration from stairs ... enough said. We continue our philistine´s tour around Europe apace ...

[other random Bilbao thoughts - pretty ugly city after San Sebastian, although it does have the odd pretty bit... and up to this point we were wondering if there was any parking in Europe; things have improved since]

update...

2007-06-18T15:45:00.000+01:00

Oh, I was going to put our actual route in the same table as my exquisitely planned out itinerary. But I´ve realised the reality differs far too much from the plan and needs a whole seperate table, which I´ll organise for next time we have internet access...

San Sebastian

2007-06-18T15:19:00.001+01:00

Made it out of Bordeaux and onto the autoroute bound for Spain. Landed in San Sebastian (credit to all the cool places we visit in Spain goes to Juanvi) and found a campsite that also doubled up as a building site = no sleep ins. First day we just popped into town of an early evening and got supplies for our first campsite dinner, and joined the general promenading the locals seemd to be doing. Next day we explored the lovely beaches, the gorgeous old town (Parte Veija) and Monte Urgull, a hill/fort that overlooks the old city. The city was only ever conquered twice, the second time being freed by Anglo-Portugese forces from Napoleon, although they accidentally burnt almost the whole city down in the process. There´s an english cemetry on Monte Urgull for gratefulness (not ironic), and the only street to survive was renamed 31 August St to commemorate the day... There´s a massive Statue of Christ above the fort (and hence the city) as well - we´ll add a photo later.
That evening we went back into the Parte Veija for the Pintxos - local version of tapas that you get at bars. It´s all laid out on the bar looking tasty, and you laregly help yourself. We thought they would keep track of what we ate, so it was a bit of a recall session at the end of the night when they asked what we ate & drank...

On the road

2007-06-13T09:06:00.000+01:00

Schedule already out of the window as we decided to enjoy some Bordeaux wine ... in Bordeaux. (sorry no photographic evidence for the steve farrar drink challenge - see comment to previous post)
Can't really say we've been "roughing" it so far - stayed with some chums south of Paris on the first night and met their gorgeous wee baby Ella. Thought we might plough on to Spain for Day Two ... but decided it was best if we stayed another night in France to find out how the GCSE French was holding up - badly.
About to head off - Joanna's driving today ...

Ready to go!

2007-06-07T21:45:00.000+01:00

Joanna's got her New Zealand visa! Brilliant. We were thinking we'd have to fly back to pick it up, but it came through in double quick time - go New Zealand Immigration! (yes, we're disorganised as ever)
So we went in and picked up today, all nicely printed in Joanna's passport. And we're ready to go. Or at least we will be once we've finished (& indeed started) packing tonight. Tomorrow we head off for a family weekend, so everything has to be done by then. We head straight to France from there on Monday. We just need to buy a camp stove in the morning (we've a little one, but for this I think we can justify something a bit better for a journey like this).

Oh yes, we sent out an email to friends yesterday for those who want mass emails every 2-4 weeks along the way. But in our recent transferals of email addresses from machine to machine we're pretty sure we've lost an email address or 3 - email us if you want the mass emails and we missed you off the list (sorry). Thanks to those who've already replied.

Righty we better go pack.

Preferred method of transport

2007-06-04T17:02:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately we don't get to take this:

One week to go ...

2007-06-04T15:59:00.000+01:00

We're into the final stretch of organising ourselves now for our big adventure - which is proving to be the hardest stage. We're staying at Joanna's Mum and Dad's in Ely and generally cluttering up their house with stuff!!

After a quick trip to Middlesbrough and Leeds we were confident that the car would make it to Kazakhstan until disaster struck on the way home! We had to stop on the A1 after steam started billowing out from under the bonnet; after closer inspection it transpired the hose hadn't been attached to the new radiator properly during the car's service. The RAC man sorted it all out and now we're confident that we can make it to at least Turkey.

Farewells in Cambridge (at Strawberry Fair and after) were a lot of fun in gorgeous weather over the weekend - it seemed appropriate to have our last party where we first met all those moons ago ;0)

Here's a picture of Joanna with one of her favourite party guests, the other one didn't sit still long enough to have his picture taken!

Car's ready

2007-05-25T10:59:00.000+01:00

Clio's been serviced, so it's all ready to go, new belts / filters etc etc, even a new radiator, so it won't overheat any more... So we're ready to go.

Also: Last Day at work today (they've been very nice); but have a couple of weeks with Joanna's family & doing a northern farewell tour before heading off.

Sweepstake!

2007-05-18T17:35:00.000+01:00

So after many requests we are setting up a sweepstake for how far the clio gets.
And the prize? 5 chocolate fish. For those without kiwi knowledge please follow the link; there's no actual fish involved - they're scrummy. So the contest goes:
a) which country will the clio make it to?
and as a tie-break:
b) how many kilometres/miles will we have done by then?
Entries below in comments please, only entries posted before the end of June / when the car dies (whichever is earlier) will be considered valid for the chocolate fish (and only from people we know too, sorry strangers).

Some tips: don't choose Morocco, the clio won't be going there, only us. And it's probably only fair to admit that we're not sure the car will make it into China - the permits are looking ridiculously overpriced on current quotes. And the distances between countries in the route I planned out are if we drive direct. We're very unlikely to do that, rather more likely to get distracted and wander off the path.
No laughs for those who choose Dover either - we've heard it before. Car goes in for its big service next week, so it should be in good enough shape to at least get to France...

Go on, click the comments, put your guess in...

more happens...

2007-04-21T00:10:00.000+01:00

Joanna's put in her visa application, so we've got all our paperwork done and dusted and everything's kinda irreversible now. Time to organise leaving parties!

Proposed Route

2007-04-18T23:07:00.000+01:00

Our proposed route - we'll show the actual once we're going...

Place	Distance (km)		Total km	Days There	Last Day
				Start:	11-Jun
Rambouillet	331	(calais - rambouillet)	331	1	12-Jun
Bilbao	877	(rambouillet - bilbao)	1208	2	14-Jun
Portugal	863	(bilbao - lisbon)	2071	7	21-Jun
South Spain	583	(lisbon - cadiz)	2654	1	22-Jun
Morrocco	696	(cadiz - casablanca - cadiz)*	3350	7	29-Jun
Madrid/Barca	1119	(cadiz - barcelona)	4469	6	05-Jul
Venice (Verona)	1239	(barcelona - venice)	5708	3	08-Jul
Slovenia	300	(venice - ljubljana)	6008	3	11-Jul
Croatia	475	(ljubljana - split)+	6483	6	17-Jul
Serbia	776	(split - belgrade)+*	7259	4	21-Jul
Bulgaria	621	(belgrade - varna)	7880	5	26-Jul
Greece	1120	(varna - sparta)+	9000	9	04-Aug
Turkey	2650	(sparta - bodrum - istanbul)+	11650	10	14-Aug
Bulgaria	502	(istanbul - varna)+	12152	1	15-Aug
Romania	277	(varna - bucharest)+	12429	6	21-Aug
Ukraine	916	(bucharest - kiev)+	13345	9	30-Aug
Hungary	1097	(kiev - budapest)+	14442	6	05-Sep
Slovakia	201	(budapest - bratislava)+	14643	3	08-Sep
Poland	650	(bratislava - warsaw)+	15293	8	16-Sep
Kaliningrad	316	(warsaw - kaliningrad)	15609	2	18-Sep
Lithuania	400	(kaliningrad - vilnius)	16009	3	21-Sep
Latvia	289	(vilnius - riga)	16298	3	24-Sep
Estonia	307	(riga - tallinn)	16605	3	27-Sep
St Petersburg	369	(tallinn - st petersburg)	16974	4	01-Oct
Moscow (& Novgorod)	717	(st petersburg - moscow)	17691	4	05-Oct
Gen Russia	1384	(moscow - ufa)	19075	6	11-Oct
Kazakhstan	1400	(ufa - astana)~	20475	8	19-Oct
West China (Xinjiang)	2200	(astana - urumqi)~	22675	10	29-Oct
central / Xian	3200	(urumqi - xi'an)~	25875	10	08-Nov
southern, head to Laos	2200	(xi'an - mengla)~	28075	9	17-Nov
Laos	650	(mengla - vientiane)~	28725	9	26-Nov
Thailand	763	(vientiane - bangkok)~	29488	8	04-Dec
Malaysia	1720	(bangkok - kuala lumpur)~	31208	9	13-Dec
Singapore	392	(kuala lumpur - singapore)~	31600	2	15-Dec
			Total Days:	187
	(GoogleMaps except *mapcrow, +RAC, ~beastly estimates)

Wednesday

2007-04-18T21:22:00.000+01:00

I found a link today, that lets you highlight countries. Say where you've been in the world. But here's the countries on our planned tour here.

Also today I handed my resignation letter in. Told them yesterday, just did the formals today. We tried to hand Joanna's NZ residency application in on Monday, but we had the wrong birth certificate. So we're waiting for the long version, hopefully it'll arrive tomorrow and we can get the application in on Friday. Other than that the application is apparently "perfect"...

The First Post

2007-04-14T22:08:00.001+01:00

We're still some way off leaving - just under a couple of months - but we're starting to get things organised. Our stuff has been picked up and is to be put on a ship this week; we apply for Joanna's NZ visa on Monday; we've started organising being able to drive in China (the tricky place); and we've worked out which countries to visit. We're not going the most direct way, and we're going to cheat by flying the second half (from Singapore or Kuala Lumpur), but we're going to try and visit lots of interesting places. We aim to be in New Zealand for Christmas.

The picture is of our wee sticker ceremony we just had. We already had a GB sticker from previous European trips, so we added NZ for where we're going...