Coming to an end

It’s our last day of the honeymoon and we’re staying in the city of Wurzburg about an hour from Frankfurt. We’ve had a great time but I think we’re both ready to get back home. The fur babies miss us!

 

We spent two days in the town of Villach in southern Austria, a place I had never heard of but seemed convenient as it was just on the north side of the border. It turned out to be a very nice place and we were treated very well at the guesthouse where we stayed. In fact, I think we were the only guests there at the time and the woman who owns it (can’t remember name) was very nice and very helpful.

 

Grabbing an English map we went for a drive on Tuesday and decided to check out a local alpine drive and check out the views. They were pretty good but as we have hiked many times in the Rockies, it wasn’t overwhelming. After driving up a narrow and windy road for 16km, you reach the top, where the is a parking lot and a bierhaus (of course!). And a 1.5 hour hiking trail to the very top of Dobratch. Since we wanted a relaxing day…

 

We hiked it!

 

So up we went, once again sweating our way along, winding up a well maintained road that led to the top where there was another beer house, a church, and a shrine. All very cool! You certainly don’t see those sort of things in Canada at the top of a mountain, especially a church that is hundreds of years old. And the view was incredible as the altitude was 2167 meters and it was a warm, clear day. Someone once told me that Alps were ‘civilized’ and now I understand. From that point you are looking at three countries as well; Austria, Italy, and Slovenia.

 

We took lots of photos and then high tailed it back down to the car for the drive back to Villach. From there we did some geocaching which led us to more churches, fortresses, and farmer’s fields before calling it a night.

 

Yesterday we headed to the town of Berchtesgaden, which anyone who knows of the 3rd Reich knows that Hitler built the Eagle’s Nest at. And we also encountered the first rain and cool weather we had seen in weeks. Unfortunately by the time we reached the town, it was too socked in and we didn’t bother going up for the view, as it would have only been of clouds. The cooler weather was a nice relief, though, after weeks of very hot and sunny. Too bad my tan is still so uneven.

 

We grabbed a room at a guesthouse suggested by the tourist office and were a little surprised they didn’t have an internet connection. Annoying but not the end of the world. We also discovered this morning, that they also didn’t have hot water. That was more annoying as we both skipped the shower and just hit the road after dinner.

 

That said, we went for an early dinner in Berchtesgaden that was outstanding, albeit about 8000 calories, before taking a walking tour of the town. This was a self-guided tour that the info office provided. Good tour, but a little lacking on the signs and street names on the map. We ended up in some weird neighbourhoods on the outside of town in which I kept waiting for some Nazi hold outs to come running out screaming. But we did get some great views of the area before calling it a night.

 

Most of today was on the road again to get to Wurzburg and we picked up some geocaches along the way. Geocaching in a foreign language can be a real challenge sometimes but most of the time, we can still find them though. Not always; there was one day where we were getting stumped repeatedly.

 

Arriving in Wurzburg was like several other cities along the trip; get to the tourist office, find a room, check out the area. In this case, we quickly found the office, got a room, but spent way too long looking for parking after we got the room. In the end, it felt like we parked 1/2 the city away as we walked our bags to the hotel. But this hotel has internet, and hot showers, so it’s well worth it.

 

All we really did here was go for dinner and we made it one last hurrah of German food before we go home. I pigged out once again on sausages, beer, and sauerkraut and waddled my way around the city for a couple of hours, grabbing some ice cream along the way. I think I may have undone 6 months of hard exercise and dieting with this trip!

 

One neat thing about many European cities is that they often have an ‘old town’, that is usually quite small and can be seen in a relatively small period of time. As Wurzburg has a population of 180,000, it’s easy to walk the old town and see the major sites.

 

And now this is it; tomorrow we complete the drive to Frankfurt and head on home. We’ve travelled through six countries and put 4000km on the car, eaten way too much ice cream and fatty foods, and have had the best honeymoon anyone could want. Amassed hundreds of photos, raced along the Autobahn, puzzled over weird traffic signs and lights, swam in the Adriatic, hiked in the Alps, and just generally bumped around many times without a plan and savoured all of it.

 

Now I have to be careful not to get a speeding ticket back home as I’m used to driving at 160 on the highway!

 

Northward bound

We’re now on our way back to Germany and Frankfurt on the tail end of our vacation. It’s funny that’s it’s actually our honeymoon and that we’ve spent a total of about two hours actually sitting and relaxing on the beach. It’s been a go, go, go sort of trip.

Yesterday we left Split and made the long drive north into Austria. We figured we would do a long drive and then we would only have a few shorts hops to make to get back to the airport on Friday.

We had to get up really early and get packed and underway as we headed to Plitvice National Park to hike and around and see the area. That ended up being a three hour drive in which we arrived about 11.30am. After a quick lunch, which was about the greasiest thing I’ve ever eaten, we hit the trails along with loads and loads of other people.

The park is divided into the upper and lower lakes and one can walk around all of it or walk some and ride the boats and buses between them. We decided to walk to the upper lakes as it’s only about 3km and for us, that’s an easy stroll. It was very pretty weaving through the trees and seeing all the little ponds, lakes, and waterfalls throughout the hike although it there were quite a few people along the way. Much of the hike takes place on boardwalks over the water, so at times you felt you were going to get knocked over the side. We were quite surprised that no one did! And as there is no fishing in these lakes, there are an amazing amount of fish just lingering near the surface. It made me wish for a fly rod.

Once we reached the top, we hopped on the bus and went down the lowest lake where the biggest waterfall is located. And there we met the real crowds. It felt like half of Europe was out there on the trails walking and it made it really hard to stop and take any photos. It was back to back people all the way to the falls and all the way back along the lower lakes to the boat launch. After seeing these crowds, I can see why Europeans love coming to Canada to get away and be able to enjoy the outdoors. It sort of drove me mad just negotiating through this many people for an hour. I felt like just running along and pushing people off the sides of the boardwalks!

After leaving the park, we headed north towards Zagreb. Since our expressway vignette (pass) expired at the end of the day, we wanted to get through Slovenia and into Austria. Otherwise we would have to buy another one and they cost about $30.

This drive is where you could really see signs of the Croation/Serbian war. All over the place were monuments, graveyards, and many houses and buildings that were destroyed or still showing damage. And as we passed through the town of Karlovac, we came across an armoury of sorts. We stopped for a look and they had a variety of tanks, artillery, and other machines of war on display as well as some boards with some information about the fighting that went on in the area. I learned that Croatia calls it the ‘Homeland War’ and that is was conducted to deal with Serbian ‘aggression’. I’m sure the Serbs have a different view of it.

Incidently, the first shots of the war were fired in Plitvice park where a police officer died and this region as well was part of the short lived Serbian Republic of Krajina until the Croatia army’s offensives recovered the land before the war ended. Along with the armour, there were a few buildings left behind with pre-way pictures to show the damage sustained during combat.

From there we were back on the expressway for an easy drive to the village of Villach, Austria and we arrived about 9pm. We met and talked for awhile with the owner (whom I can’t remember the name) and exchanged stories of travel. She found it curious as well that we had come from Croatia and weren’t all brown and tanned! We had to explain that we’re just not beach people and only have farmers’ tans as we spent our time exploring.

We’ve decided to spend two nights here and look around a bit. It’s nice not to travel every day and since we’re now in the Alps, we might as well hang out for a couple of days.

A whirlwind couple of days

We’re down to our last night in Split before we head north on our way back to Frankfurt. We’ve spent the last two days just exploring the area and not venturing too far from our home base. Split is an amazing place and I would highly recommend it for anyone who is thinking of coming to Croatia. It’s a bit busy, as it is a seaport city, and it’s been very hot but there is so much to see and do I’m sure we could fill a few more days easily.

We spent yesterday touring off the beaten path and seeing some of the more obscure things our the city that don’t really show up on the tourist map. Most of the tourism here is centered in the old city and while there is much to see, there are plenty of other things just a short drive away.

We started by visiting the ancient Roman ruins of the town of Salona. In modern Split, it’s the suburb of Silon now but 1900 years ago it was a city of 60,000 people and the ruins are in relatively good shape. Surprisingly, the ruins are not a protected site or park so you can roam at will over the entire area. It was kind of novel but also kind of sad that the place is not roped off to keep people from messing it up.

All that really remains are the walls of old buildings including a couple of basilicas, the forum, the baths, and the amphitheater. The amphitheater was particularly interesting as it was able to hold 17,000 people in it’s prime and hosted gladiator matches up until the 3rd century AD. After that is was people vs animals, all for the amusement of the populace. But the city was leveled by a Slav invasion in the 7th century and that was that.

For the most part, Salona is roped off but it’s surrounded by houses and it looks like some of the walls used by homes came from the remains of this city. It would be nice to see this become a more formally protected site.

From there we headed up to the local fortress, a common site in many European cities, by the name of Klis Fortress. Once again, there was almost no information about it except what we found online with google. In any case, for a small fee, you can freely roam the grounds and get some great views of the city. Views that would be better, however, if it wasn’t so smoggy here. But it was worth it. Later on, we read there is actually an arms and armour museum in the castle but we saw no sign of it while we were there.

Today we figured that we had better take advantage of a beach day as it’s our last day in Split. Split isn’t really known for sandy beaches as most of those are down south but we did read that it’s quite nice to head out to some of the nearby islands to hit some beaches.

Rising early (we’ve done that way too often this trip), we caught the 8.30am ferry to the town of Stari Grad on the island of Hvar, which is a two hour trip. Once you arrive there, you hop a bus for a 20 minute ride over to Hvar Town. Most of the action takes place there and it’s known to be super busy during the height of summer. Busy it was but not too bad as it’s past the peak season now. Hvar Town was pretty damned nice and the blue waters of the Adriatic Sea definitely called to us.

We didn’t have a lot of time for the day, so we decided to hire one of the local water taxi’s for a ride to some of the smaller and quieter islands, which is quicker and way more convenient than one of the big tourist excursion boats. Plus you have the added bonus of phoning when you’re ready to be picked up.

Luka, the owner of the taxi, dropped us off at a small marina on the island of Svetog Klement, one of the larger islands loaded with remote coves and great places to hang out. From the marina, we did the short hike to a popular beach on Vinogradisce Cove to swim and tan. My taste must have been good as I ended up picking a location for the towels right next to the topless sunbathers! Sometimes that is a good thing, sometimes, not so much. I appreciate Europeans desire to let it hang out but sometimes you gotta know when to keep your clothes on, haha. And I’ve seen far more speedos than I care to think about.

Regardless, we spent a bit of time swimming and then tanning but it wasn’t long before I felt like I was roasting like a steak on a rock and we decided to hike the far side of the island. Great plan on a 30 degree day! It wasn’t too bad though and was only a few km’s so we made it over and found a better, more quiet cove with a bar nearby. Raegan went swimming again, and I went off to get beer. It was damned nice sitting on the sea with a beer in my hand on a hot day.

Once we had enough of that, we called our taxi for a pickup but they weren’t able to find us right away. I didn’t know the name of the cove and I guess the name of the beach I saw painted on a sign didn’t mean anything to Luka so it took a couple of phone calls before they located us waving from the rocks. After getting back onboard, we ripped back to Hvar Town, onto the bus, and back on the ferry for the ride back to Split.

And so ends our five days in Split. I look forward to coming here again someday with some more time to explore more areas around here. In particular, the town of Mostar in Bosnia is highly recommended but we just didn’t have time to get there.

Tomorrow we hit the road early to get to Plitvice National Park in northern Croatia before high tailing it to Austria tomorrow night. It’s going to be a long day but we’re trying to get through Slovenia before our expressway pass expires and we have to buy a new one.

 

Hanging out in Croatia

We’re now on our 3rd day in Croatia and the weather has been really hot and sunny. In fact, a couple of people we have spoken to have said that this is an unusually long summer and it’s usually much cooler by September. That said, since we’re on a honeymoon, it’s kind of nice to have some beach weather. Although we have not yet been to the beach! Haha, no time with all the site seeing and road trips.

We decided yesterday that we would travel south to the city of Dubrovnik which is one of Croatia’s oldest and most important cities. On a map, it’s only 250 km away but the tourist agency did say it could be as long as a 4.5 hour drive. I found it hard to believe but now we know the truth. We figured we would follow the coast highway south and enjoy the scenic view but we soon discovered it was a seriously slow way to travel. Town after town at low speeds so we decided to head up into the mountains to the expressway where the speed limit is 130km/h.

You start following Croatia’s 2 year old expressway south until you reach the end of it north of the town of Polce. And then the fun begins. Each time I think I have driven a challenging road in Europe, along comes something like this goat track up and over and through mountain valleys, with no shoulders, hair pin curves, and some incredible scenery. After weaving through this, you arrive back on the coast and follow along the sea all the way to Dubrovnik. This is a hairy drive with lots of steep cliffs on one side and some scary drivers on the other. I kind of got a thrill ripping along these roads but Raegan wasn’t nearly as impressed as I was, haha. Having a manual transmission makes it kind of fun to run into curves, downshift quickly, and punch it up coming out of the curves. I think I satisfied some of my desire to drive a race car.

Arriving in Dubrovnik, the road more or less lead us to a brand new parking garage which was welcome after some of the previous parking nightmares we’ve had. From there it was a short walk to the old city.

And what an impressive place it is! Dubrovnik has been a major port city throughout it’s existence so there has been a massive walled city for a lot of years. But it’s seriously busy as cruise ships stop here and disgorge thousands of people to tour the city. I think we arrived at the same time as several ships.

One of the biggest draws of the old city is to walk the walls. Sounds pretty straight forward but the wall is more than a mile long, it was over 30 degrees outside and it’s a lot of up and down old staircases. I think someone said there’s about 450 steps alongs the way. But it was really worth it and rewards one with some great views of the city and the Adriatic sea. I have never seen water like this and colours and clarity of the water was amazing, particularly in contrast to the bright red brick roofs of the city. Most of these roofs as new as the city was sieged during the war in 1991 which left about 65% of the roofs destroyed. It’s hard to believe war raged through here just 20 years ago but here and there, you would see destroyed building and walls that have not yet been repaired.

Finishing up on the wall, we wandered around a bit, snagged a nearby geocache, and got on our way back to Split. It’s a long 9 hour drive for 4 hours of visiting but it was worth it.

Curiously, you have to drive through Bosnia-Herzegovina to get from Split to Dubrovnik which means passing through the border twice. Passing through though was pretty well a  wave through and they only scanned my passport and not Raegan’s. Hmm, I must be more shady looking. Since we passed through BiH, we figured we would stop in the town of Neum for dinner at a pizza place. Europeans really know how to do pizza; none of that silly stuffed crust, mile high cheese crap that you get in Canada.

While sitting there in BiH, we noted there was a geocache about 16 km from town out in the countryside. Now technically, we’re not supposed to have our car in BiH but we figured just driving through between the two cities was ok but a drive into the countryside, maybe not so much.

After debating for a bit, we decided to get the cache as it was located at an old Turkish fort which offered a chance to see some old ruins. Off we went and it wasn’t long before the road got really, really narrow. So narrow in fact, that you often had to stop or really slow down to pass oncoming vehicles. I was sweating a bit and hoping for no scratches as I didn’t want to explain to the car rental agency where I picked them up. 16km in a straight line worked out to what felt like 30 weaving on this road. We did arrive at the fort, found the cache, and took some photos just as the sun was setting. Very scenic and very quiet and remote feeling.

So now we had a drive back in the dark with Raegan at the wheel after we crossed back into Croatia. I don’t think she likes the crazy mountain driving quite like I do, especially in the dark, haha. After a couple of hours, we arrived back in Split about 14 hours after we left. It was a long day.

And that resulted in us sleeping in today but we don’t have any huge plans. Some searching on Google has brought up some relatively unknown ruins and castles in the area and that will probably be our day.

Where the Dalmatian got its name

We left the tourist farm two days ago and aside from a couple of brief detours to see a castle in front of a cave, we pretty well just drove straight to Split, which is along the coast of Croatia, the Dalmatia region, for five nights at an apartment we rented. By brief detours I mean some stops to see the sites, get some geocaches, and just weird roads that my GPS has led us on. Occasionally I doubt the logic of the device but overall it has been quite accurate and incredibly helpful. But don’t just follow it blindly; sometimes you have to question where it leads.

Leaving Slovenia we were off the expressway and onto a single track highway that led through into northern Croatia. Since I was following a car pulling a recreation trailer (a fairly common thing to see), I couldn’t just open it up and see how the car would handle on the narrow, twisty roads. These are the sort of roads you see car chases in filmed in Europe on. Cool to drive if you’re into that sort of thing.

After crossing the border you reach Croatia’s very new, and very modern expressway that leads almost the south of the country. It’s a fast drive but frankly, it’s not the most scenic once you get to the city of Zadar. From there to Split, it’s typical Mediterranean with lots of rocks and scrub land. Not much grows along the way and there ain’t much to see.

Arriving in Split with Raegan at the wheel, we got our first taste of truly crazy European style chaos, I mean driving. Since our apartment was in the old town, we had hoped to drive there and find a place to park near the apartment. Hahaha, the roads were built for horse carts and donkeys and it was amazingly stressful getting in and finding a place to park. There are a million parking zones in the area but we needed somewhere to park for five days. Not to mention 1/2 of the people in the world were walking around with very little regard for cars.

Raegan just ended up backing into what looked to be a spot and off we went to meet the property manager in a nearby square.

I should mention that I really like my GPS but in narrow streets surrounded by 3-4 story buildings, the accuracy tends to be a bit dodgy. Finally we found the location and met the manager who led us to our place. Unfortunately, she had very little idea of where to park long term but did suggest the nearby national theater. Once she left us, we decided to just park nearby, unload our luggage, and then seek out somewhere better to keep the car. With that we headed to the nearby handicap zone and proceeded to unload. Raegan was observant enough to notice that all the cars around us had handicap tags. We did not, and I doubt our German plates would have given us a free ticket out if some bylaw person came by.

So we packed back up, and starting looking for parking. More craziness; I think I damned near drove around for an hour, running a couple of stops signs, having a cab honk at me, and proceeding up at least one 1 way street before we came across a building that said tourist info. I just parked in the street like the locals, threw on the flashers and Raegan ran in to see about a place to park. I guess they didn’t really care about that sort of thing but they did suggest a place literally 50 meters from where I was parked. So we headed in there but I admit, I was a little concerned because it looked kind of seedy. But 24 hours later, the car is still there and not up on blocks so I’m feeling a little better about it. Plus I noticed that there is a police station beside the lot. Maybe that’ll deter would-be car thieves…

We spent the day wandering around the old town for the most part using Rick Steeves’ book as a reference for self guided walking tour. The old town of Split is the remains of a Roman town built in 350AD, so it’s about some of the oldest building we’ve seen so far. And for the most part, they are in very good condition and there are still excavations going on to uncover more. It’s a neat place of narrow and twisting streets aboveground centered around a large tower which we headed to the top of for some great views of Split.  This is the first time we’ve used one of his books and it’s been really nice to have. We have now visited several locations that he is fond of and haven’t been disappointed.

Once the old town was under the belt, we headed west to the Croatian Sculpture Museum. This turned out to be a surprisingly long walk and it was a really hot, plus it’s quite a high humidity around here.  Our walk took out to the west side of Split and for the most part, we followed the seawall, except where there is some construction going on, where we had to sidetrack to the streets. The museum was cooler but not air conditioned and the local cafe, which advertised as being open until midnight, was sadly closed. There were plenty of neat sculptures to see but very few explanations so often, we weren’t entirely sure what the statue was or who the artist was.

One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed between western and eastern Europe is how museums are handled. In countries like Germany or France, every sign has English as it’s the universal language on this entire continent. Not so much in the east; it’s a hit or miss experience and I remember walking several museums in Hungary without knowing anything about what I was looking at. That said, it can still be an enjoyable experience. Particularly in art museums where the pictures tell you everything. Most of the time.

With us having a fully equipped apartment, we’ve been able to buy groceries and cook our own meals and that is a nice change after eating out for a week up north. And the experience of shopping in foreign grocery stores is always fun; there are plenty of things I don’t even know what they are, and some funny packaging.

It’s night now and tomorrow we will be up early to hit south to the city of Dubrovnik for the day. It is known for it’s Roman fort and ruins as well as it’s many pieces of marble architecture and is supposedly not to be missed while touring in the region. But being a 3+ hour drive, we’ll have a long day to get there and back in one day.

 

Hello from a farm in Slovenia

It’s been a bit of an experience getting here but last night we stayed in a fantastic ‘tourist farm’, which is the same as a bed & breakfast back home. It’s a far cry from the communist era room where we stayed in Ljubljana two nights ago.

We spent Sunday in Prague wandering around, most with a walking tour group. There are quite a few tours available but I’ve always been a fan of the New Europe tours, which are ostensibly ‘free’ in that the guides work on tips so you pay what you feel the tour is worth. This one was led by a woman from the US who lives in Prague and she did a great job explaining the sites and the history behind many of the attractions in the city. I think this was my fourth tour with this company and they haven’t failed to provide me with a great tour.

We headed out of Prague Monday morning eastward to the town of Kutna Hora. This place is popular due to its famous bone church, the Sedlec Ossuary, which was the result of a woodcarver organizing the bones of 40,000 people into mounds, chandeliers, and other things. It’s a bit of a macabre place, needless to say.

From Kutna Hora, we made the long drive south to the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana. We tend to think of Europe of being small compared to Canada but it was a 6 hour drive, even on the high speed freeways through Czech, Austria, and Slovenia.

Along the way, we just randomly stopped at the town of Mikulov near the Austrian border for some lunch. Mostly because we could see some cool ruins and a very large fortress overlooking the town. After grabbing a bite to eat we drove around the town to get some good views to take pictures, which led me to taking a wrong turn and driving right into the middle of the town square! That made for some angry looks from some of the locals but since we have German plates on the car, hopefully they’ll forgive a confused tourist, haha.

Once you hit the Austrian border, you need to purchase a vignette to drive on the freeways in both Austria and Slovenia but fortunately, when we stopped for gas, we were able to buy passes. And you don’t want to not buy them as fines in Austria run from 550- 5000 Euros! That’s a big fine! We think our Slovenia pass is good for 7 days but we’re about to find out today.

Raegan took over the driving at this point and I just got to sit back and enjoy the view which was much nicer than Czech Republic. Driving there is like driving through the prairies so aside from the neat towns along the way, there isn’t much to see. Plus it was really hazy and smoggy throughout most of the Czech drive.

Our route at this point took us past Vienna and onward to the city of Graz where we crossed the border into Slovenia. It was a very nice drive as we weaved up and over mountain passes, through long narrow valleys, and some long tunnels. And the highways here are in great condition with almost no bumps so it makes for a very smooth ride. It makes one want a car that can easily cruise 200km/h or more to just rip through this area.

Arriving in Ljubljana got a bit stressful. We had enquired about a room via email but we found out that there was no room available at the hotel. So the next best plan was the tourist office as they are usually quite helpful with finding rooms. As the office closed at 9pm and we were arriving around 8pm, that didn’t seem like a problem. But, it wasn’t quite that easy. As we came into the city in the dark, it started to rain. And as we discovered, this city does not have a lot of street lights so it’s really quite dark and hard to see anything in the rain. It ended up with us driving up several tight, dark streets, sometimes the wrong way on a one way (doh!), and just driving in circles. Finally we just randomly made a turn and ended up in a large, modern parking garage. That was a huge relief!

So now it was 8.45 pm so we had to literally run to the tourist office but we made it with 5 minutes to spare. The girl at the desk said there wasn’t much available but she was able to get us a double room at a nearby hostel. And so the adventure began.

We retrieved our luggage from the car and walked to the hostel which proved to be very busy with loads of people just showing up. The receptionist had already given our ‘secured’ room away but did offer a private apartment nearby and all we had to do was wait for a driver to pick us up. So we waited for about 1/2 hour before that happened.

There’s nothing like getting into a vehicle in a foreign city and getting driven around with absolutely no idea where you are or where you are going. It really makes me love my GPS so that I always can find my way back. After about 1/2 hour in the van, we arrived at a seriously run down, communist era apartment building. One thing I have to say about Communists, they don’t put a lot into aesthetics when it comes to buildings. Bigger is better and that’s about it.

Our driver then led us up the 6th floor where we were introduced to our room, which cost 50 euro’s, cash. It wasn’t much of a room but it was probably the lap of luxury 30 years ago. It kind of reminded me of the communist era train we road to Bucharest two years ago. I was thinking it was a bit of a dodgy way to do business but at this point, I wasn’t inclined to continue searching for another place. We also found out that the lack of rooms in the city was due to thousands of people heading home after a large festival in Croatia over the previous weekend.

So we accepted the room and wandered down the street to get some dinner at a Chinese restaurant at 11pm. Which was quite a good meal, I might add.

After a sweltering sleep in which the room felt like it was 30 degrees all night, we skipped the morning shower and called for our driver. The bathroom and shower were a bit dubious and we just wanted out of there. Our driver arrived and took us back to the garage where the car was so we dropped off our luggage and wandered around the city center for a couple of hours and enjoyed the views from the castle on the hill before heading west towards Italy.

Using the Rick Steeves book as a reference, we headed for the Skocjan Caves about 70km away and we also decided to stay at a tourist farm he recommended along the way. We arrived at the farm without a reservation but they were able to secure a room for us so we went off to the caves for a few hours until the room was ready.

The caves are near the town of Divaca and are one of several in the area. Due to the geology of the area, it lends itself to many cave systems. We signed onto a 1.5 hour guided tour which is the only way in and descended hundreds of meters into the ground. This was a breathtaking tour and I have never seen anything like it. Massive caverns, huge stalactites and stalagmites and a river running hundreds of meter below in the deep underground canyon. At one point, you cross a bridge that is 147 meters above the bottom of the underground cavern. Breathtaking!

After the tour we headed back to the farm for a badly needed shower and some dinner. After our previous night in Ljubljana, this was an amazing place to be. Clean, modern, very nice people running it with a great dinner and free wifi! And we got a laugh when a young child served us alcohol with our dinner. Dinner was followed by a much better sleep than the last couple of nights we awoke refreshed and to an awesome breakfast of local eggs, homemade bread, and a bunch of spreads and cheeses.

It’s now morning and we’re getting ready to leave for Split in Croatia. The GPS figures about 5.5 hours drive, so we have a long day ahead. But our destination is a private villa for the next 5 days and we’ve both looking forward to that.

Touring Prague

It’s now our second full day here in Prague after a fairly uneventful drive from Nuremburg on Friday. Getting here was easy but trying to get a washroom key from a gas attendant who didn’t speak English in a small town we stopped in, not so much. After a bit of trial and error and confusion, I was able to make her understand that I didn’t want cigarettes!

Driving into Prague was definitely a bit stressful! Our hotel is just south of the old town on a busy thoroughfare and as I drove past it a couple of times, it necessitated some block circling until we noticed there was parking right outside of the hotel. And circling the block is not quite straightforward as there are plenty of one way and dead end streets. I wouldn’t consider the car we’re driving as large but there were a few times in which it felt it was while trying to negotiate up some of these streets and around parked cars.

Once we got checked in, the receptionist hopped into the car with me to guide me to the parking garage. Unlike Nuremburg’s large and easy to drive around parking, this was literally a hole in the wall. She had me just park right in the street while she unlocked the doors so that I could drive in. Now this was a tight space and it took about a  19 point turn to get backed in with literally an inch to spare by the mirrors to get into the garage. That said, I was glad to not be driving in this city for now.

Our room is in another typically Eastern European pension in that it was probably a Communist apartment 20 years ago. But it does have A/C and includes breakfast. And the A/C has been nice since it’s been about 30 since we got here.

The central part of the city can be walked for the most part so we have not yet ridden the metro or the tram although the heat makes it a bit of a bitch during the middle of the day.

One of the first places to check out in Prague is the Charles Bridge that joins the new town and old town. Talk about a busy place! Even being September, there are thousands and thousands of people wandering around. There are some amazing buildings here but we started by visiting the Prague Castle which sits on a hill overlooking the city. Typical I guess since there was a time in which these castles did have to defend the countryside.

I hate to sound blase but the castles I’ve seen in Europe are starting to blend together a bit. Particularly regarding cathedrals; they’re massive buildings that showcase some amazing architecture and art but in a way, they have started to look the same to me. Uh oh, I’m getting jaded… I guess after four trips it’s time to broaden my visiting horizons.

But there are certain sites that one must see while visiting foreign cities and castles usually top that list.

Eating here is a slow and deliberate process. I don’t think we’ve managed to sit and eat a meal and leave in under an hour or so. Not sure if it’s usual or just a sign of slow service, haha. Probably a bit of both as we have had some surly servers. On the other hand, we had a dinner at a nice river side restaurant Friday night in which three waiters hovered over us ready to meet our every need. Which made sense when we got the bill!

Our evening was pretty well a write off as we had some beer after we got back to our room and pretty well passed out for almost 12 hours. I’m guessing the heat really took it out of us yesterday.

Today we’re going to do a walking tour which I have always found to be one of the best ways to see things and learn a bit of the history after in which we will tour around the Jewish Quarter and check out some of the sites there. It promises to be another 30 degree day so it could be a hot, hot walk but I’m sure it’ll be worth it.

Sometimes 160 just ain’t fast enough

Here we are in Nuremburg after spending the first night in Frankfurt. It’s 8am now and I’m actually feeling a little alive today unlike yesterday when we dragged ourselves around in a jet lagged daze. But I have to say; Europeans know how to do breakfast. We’re in a pension, which is sort of like a bed & breakfast, and they always seem to include the most amazing breakfasts. Cheeses, meats, eggs, cereals, a variety of bread, and pretty well every kind of spread that one could want are provided to guests and you can’t help but to smile when starting a day off with a meal like that.

I have a new first for a trip; renting and driving a car in Europe. I can’t deny there was a first white knuckle moments but I managed to negotiate our way out of Frankfurt (the wrong direction) and make it to Nuremburg in one piece.

As the parking garage was underground, we had no GPS when we left the rental agency and that resulted in us heading south of Frankfurt, which was the wrong direction. But this being Germany, there is a ‘rasthaus’ it seems every 10 km so we pulled over, punched in where we were going, and headed on our way, after a few wrongs turns and a little bit of anger getting of the freeway and turning ourselves around. And we started on the autobahn. Now that is quite the road to drive. The recommended speed limit is 130 but unless you’re doing 200+, you had better stay out of the fast lane and more than once, while I would be doing 140 or more, cars would go ripping by. It was kind of crazy with the amount of traffic but everyone seems to know what they were doing. One neat thing about driving here is that there are rest stops and parking areas quite frequently along the way so it’s always easy to stop for a break if one wants.

While on the highway, we decided to grab a geocache along the way which led us off the road to a wooded area where we wandered around in the forest for 1/2 hour trying to locate the cache. There was a man relaxing by his car whom I think thought we were crazy near the cache. Especially as we waded through thorns in shorts getting scratched up. I felt obligated to chat with him and explain but I still think he thought we were slightly nuts! And he asked ‘you came to Germany for this!’ as he shook his head. Hahaha.

Nuremburg was my first real city driving experience and it was a little hairy. Fortunately I didn’t make any wrong turns but there was a close call in which I almost turned into oncoming traffic! I’m still learning the lines and sometimes they seem a little vague. Not to mention the road signs that we haven’t figured out yet!

We did manage to get to the tourist office and inquire about a pension which led us to windy road thru narrow little city streets like you see in the movies to an amazingly modern parking garage. Fortunately, you don’t need to know the language to figure out how to park. From there it was a short walk to our room where we crashed out for a few more hours.

We didn’t have a lot of time to look around but we wandered on over to the Haptmarkt and did manage to sample some of the local gingerbread, which is one of the things that Nuremburg is known for. Along with Nazi war crime trials, that is. And finger sausages. LOL.

As we had eaten plenty of meat and potatoes, we decided that Thai would be a nice break for dinner and I punched that into my GPS and found a nearby restaurant. I must say, the place was amazing! It was one of those hole in the wall places in which there was only about 6 tables and most were reserved. Luckily the waiter spoke relatively good English and we muddled our way into ordering beer, appies, and dinner. Truly, it was some of the best Thai food I’ve ever had and it shows that sometimes you just gotta walk into a place and take a chance. After dinner we wandered around for a bit, partially lost, until we found our room and called it a night.

We’re planning on driving to Prague today as we have a room booked for three nights but we’re going to go tour the local castle first before we head on our way. Prague’s about 250 km so we expect we’ll be there sometime this afternoon. Tomorrow the real siteseeing begins as we have a lot to see there.

Europe 2011

Well, here we are back in Germany again. We were last here in 2009 but elected to skip international travel last year and took a road trip instead. The one that ended up with us being married last week!As this is the honeymoon,  I’ll have to skip some of the details of the trip, haha.

Jet lag is a bitch. There’s nine hours of diffrence between home and here and it certainly makes for some oddball sleeping patterns for the first few days. Although upgraded  airlines seats were pretty sweet to have, I wasn’t able to sleep much on the plane and arrived feeling quite zombie like.

We just pretty well got to our room, and slept most of the day. We did a quick trip around the neighbourhood and got some dinner and that’s pretty well it, so I don’t have much to write about at this time. It is worth noting, however, that every time we use our bathroom, we give people at a nearby bus stop a show as the window is frosted glass that only covers about 2/3 of the glass. Self-consciousness goes quickly on this continent.

The real excitement begins today after I pick up the rental car. Our plan is to drive to Nuremburg today and spend the night before heading on to Prague tomorrow. Methinks driving here is going to be … interesting.

We have no place to stay so we’re pretty well just making this day up and will find somewhere later to spend the night.

Our last day in Europe

This has been our last day in Europe for this year and we fully intend to do it again next year. That’s twice now that I’ve been in Munich in the weeks prior to Oktoberfest and we will be at it next year.

We had a pretty mellow day for our last day in Munich and more or less just wandered around with some stops to eat. Our first stop of the day was at the Marienplatz as we had to see the glockenspiel do it’s little dance at least once while here. We made it just in time for the 11am and watched the whole thing, which was fairly long at 10 minutes. Ordinarily the glockenspiel only dances twice a day but they increase it to 4 times per day over the summer months for tourists.

From there we headed over the Frauenkirche church to take a look. This is another one of the landmark churches of Munich, being built from 1668-1688. Still got the new church smell to it, compared to some of the others that we have seen. We found that we could go up the south tower, which is several hundred meters high and see the view. I was a little dismayed as I eyeballed the spiral staircase going up, as thoughts of the Stephansdom in Vienna came back to me. Luckily for us, you only had to climb up a short ways, and then catch a lift to the the top. That was quite nice as I wasn’t too sure about the slog to the top.

Once up, though, the views were incredible. There were 12 viewing windows in the tower and you can could see all of Munich laid out below and even vaguely make out the Alps through the smog. We walked around from window to window and took many pictures. Like most towers, as well, there would be a little guide at each window that marked what each building or structure of significance was that one could see.

After heading down from the tower, we headed into the church itself. It was a bit of a surprise to see how spartan it was inside. Many of the churches that we have visited are very ornately decorated with many statues and paintings inside. This church had only a handful and the most colourful thing about it was the stained glass windows. There is a local legend that the devil tried to enter this church before it was consecrated and at the first entrance there is a black footprint burned into the floor, complete with the spur off the heel. From that spot, one cannot see any of the windows on the inside of the church, so the devil had laughed and thought the church was no good. He then proceeded to walk forward and suddenly he could see the windows and became angry and tried to blow the church down with a strong wind. That failed and to this day, a strong wind surrounds the church at all times. So the legends say.

It was time for some postcards and food at that point, so we made our way to the nearby Virkualien Markt. This is a large, open air market that sells pretty well everything and has a large number of restaurants as well. Raegan and I stopped at a place that looked like it had beer (important criteria for restaurant selection in Germany) and had a break. We filled out postcards, drank beer, and had some lunch before heading out to find some souvenirs.

Unlike Bucharest, there are souvenirs stands almost everywhere in Munich and prices can really vary. It pays to wander around a bit before buying anything as one can save more than a few dollars just by walking halfway down a block. We had it in mind to get some beer steins and we were able to grab some near the Hofbrauhaus. Now we were loaded down and headed back to our room to unload some things.

We took a brief break at our room and walked from there to the Residenz. The Residenz was the city home/palace of the Bavarian kings when they were in the city. We walked around a bit but didn’t do the tour as I had been inside before. We decided instead to head to the Englischer Garten, the English Garden, so called because of the style which was popular back in 1789 when it was built.

With so much time spent wandering around cities and such, it is always a nice break to wander some greenspace. We did the same back in Budapest and this was no different. The garden is really one massive city park that extends about 8 km and is up to 2km wide. There was a lot of people walking, biking, suntanning, you name it. We just walked aimlessly for some time until we had a plan. Along the way, we even got to see some people surfing the river; it was quite novel as well as some really large fish that hang around bridges waiting for food.

One very large beer garden is in the park that seats 8000 people, so we headed for it. We found it by following the sound of the Oompah band through the forest. It turns out the beer garden is located at the Chinese Tower and the band actually plays up in the tower. Rather interesting, I think. There are a few places to get food and beer and we decided to have dinner here. Once again, we had some good beer and some traditional German food. It was a great way to spend an evening and we hung out for awhile.

Our last stop of the night was at the Oktoberfest grounds on the way back to our room. Oktoberfest starts on September 19th, but most everything there is already setup and ready to go. It’s hard to believe the size and some of the tents house as many as 10,000 people. Now that’s a lot of beer and sausage. And over 6 million people will attend. It is definitely one massive event.

So comes the end of our trip. We just chilled out and packed for leaving and called it a night. Our bags have definitely gained some weight for the return trip.

This has been a great two weeks and we have thoroughly enjoyed everywhere we have been. I can’t really say I have a favourite location, as each city has something cool about it. As I have travelled to Germany a couple of times before, I always enjoy Munich and the surrounding areas. On the other hand, the wildness of Budapest and particularly Bucharest was a lot of fun. It was a bit more of an adventure in eastern Europe as those countries struggle to get everything together on par with Western Europe. I do much prefer the bathrooms of Germany and Austria though.

So thanks everyone who has been reading this and sending me comments and emails. This is my way of keeping the memories alive as much as the photos that I take along the way and I’m happy to share my experiences.

I’ll see everyone back in Canada.

Jeremy