Excellent Journey
Well, since the last post we've made our way to Salzburg. On the way, we've enjoyed nights in Florence, Pisa and two nights in Venice.
Venice is Mel's favourite Italian city. It is pretty special. We stayed at a campsite on the mainland so went to Venice by boat! We also took a gondola ride that was very expensive but very romantic.
Off to Interlaken tomorrow... more soon.
Atrani is a shortish walk from Amalfi around the bays. It has the most amazing architecture. There's a big road running around the coast but tucked in behind it is a small village. Most of the village seems to consist of a large, rambling, very old building. Possibly part of a monastery or similar. The hostel was just as much of a rabbit warren. Very basic but still pricey...due to it's being on the Amalfi coast no doubt.
We had a very nice meal down by the water. The next day it was on to Salerno by bus to pick up the train to Florence. This was all very uneventful.
Florence was nice. It was good to see it in the evening without all the tourists.
We had hassles with the accommodation though. The youth hostel couldn't guarantee us a double room and wouldn't let us book in advance. They said to ring on the day. Even then they said it was probably okay. We went there anyway and bad signposting saw us walk the wrong way! Still, we got there in the end. The guy on the counter ignored us for several minutes and was very abrupt when he did serve us. The hostel is in a great building but the customer services sucks! We ended up in the quad room. It was just the two of us so it appears that they'll let you have a room for just the two of you if they can't get more people for it. They didn't explain any of this which is a bit naughty. We were going to spend two nights there but decided to leave after seeing Florence and head to Pisa.
Time's nearly up on the PC so I'm off again. Bye...from both of us.
With time running short we wanted to maximise what we could see. And to select which options to take and which to leave. Unfortunately, we had to give up on seeing Pompeii. A real pity but we elected to go to Capri instead. We could have done a day trip and spent another night in Sorrento. We decided to look at other options and found that we could get a boat to Capri and one back from their to Positano or Amalfi.
After ringing around we found a place in a little town walking distance from Amalfi. This was going to mean we got to see more...including seeing Positano and Amalfi from the sea.
Anyway, Capri. A mad place. I described it to Mel at one point as a wanna-be Monaco. There are many rich tourists and many jewellery shops and the like. And few people actually overnight there. Still, it's very pretty. Very green and quite rugged. That is there are quite high hills with sharp cliffs around the flatter towns of Capri and Anacapri. Capri island is famous for it's blue grotto. We knew that this would be overpriced but having missed out on seeing Croatia's blue grotto we kind of had to check it out.
We caught the bus to the grotto although many people take a boat from the port. When you arrive you are confronted by a sea full of little boats (holding 4-6 people plus the captain(?)). There are bigger boats further out that are loading up the little boats. The little boats also collect people from the shore. When you board the boat you are taken across to another boat that's set up to collect the cash. It's only then that you find out that it's over 8 Euro each. Too late then! To get into the grotto you have to go through a hole that is not much wider than the boat. You have to lie flat in the boat whilst the captain times his entrance. The swell is quite large at times with some swells completely filling the hole. There's another guy in a boat directing all this traffic. When the time is right you lie down in the boat whilst your driver pulls you through the hole using a rope as leverage. Once inside it is quite spectacular. The colour of the water is an amazingly bright blue from the light outside. Getting out again is just as much fun. A big swell blocked the entrance just before we were due to go out. All part of the adventure.
We caught the ferry at about 5pm and Positano is as pretty (or more so) than the pictures you may have seen. Amalfi was not much to look at though. We found the hostel that we were staying at. More about that in the next blog.
We had a long travel day when we left Santorini. We caught the bus to the ferry at 6:30am and the flight to Rome at 6:30pm eventually finding a hotel around 9pm local time (10pm Greek time). The next morning it was off again on the train to Naples. We'd been told that Naples wasn't that great and on a tight timeframe we decided to give it a miss. We stopped for lunch though and had a couple of lovely pizzas!
From Naples we caught the "round Vesuvius" railway line to Sorrento. Sorrento is quite small. It is on the coast but quite high above the water. There's a narrow but deep gorge running through the town. In many places this is built over so you don't know it's there, but in a couple of spots it is very impressive. At one point, you look down into the gorge to see the old mill building. It's four to five stories high but only reaches a quarter or so up the gorge. At night, it's lit up and looks amazing...pretty amazing during the day too.
Not much else to say about Sorrento. Quite nice...hotels are expensive though.
Santorini was awesome. It was completely different from Spetses. Santorini is the remains of a vast volcano. There are stories that Santorini is where Atlantis was located before the volcano erupted and sunk itself and the city. There are remains in the town of Akrotiri that are thousands of years old and indicate that the residents had running water and multi-storied houses. Whether this is the site of Atlantis or not there was still much to admire. Santorini is part of the rim of the volcano - the caldera. Many buildings have built on the near vertical slopes. The next quake or volcanic activity will be interesting!
Highlights were:
- great food again. The Greeks know how to eat! Including the best bruchetta (sp?) anywhere with eggplant of all things on it.
- a visit to the famous Red Beach with rusty red sand
- an evening trip to Ia to see the sunset. Spectacular.
- a boat trip that included walking to the summit of the volcano, a swim in waters heated by thermal activity and a meal on the island on the opposite side of the volcano to Santorini.
Another great place to go. Two days wasn't enough as we didn't get to the Black or White Beaches.
Hi.
Too busy booking accommodation to blog...
We're in Sorrento at the moment. We flew into Rome yesterday and headed straight down here. Off to the island of Capri tomorrow. Don't think we'll have time to check out Pompeii unfortunately. We're going to head to Florence and then Venice. Mel's very keen to get up to Austria and Switzerland and check those out.
All going well. Hope to tell you more soon!
Athens was hot! Athens has a reputation of being quite ugly and not very nice. We actually found it quite nice. I think that things might have improved a lot with the Olympic Games. Certainly, the metro is very clean and modern.
It's not the prettiest city but from certain points it can be quite impressive. The Plaka area with lots of restaurants and marbled streets is a great area to dine. The ancient sites are very impressive as well.
We went on a walking tour organised by the hostel we stayed at. It covered most of the main historical sites and gave us a good overview of the city. The only problem was that is was so hot. We kept stopping in the shade and taking frequent breaks. Still, all very interesting.
We are off to Santorini island this afternoon for three nights. Should be good!
We've just had a wonderful day on the Greek Island of Spetses. We hired a scooter and rode around the island. We were the only people wearing helmets! The island is only about 20 kms or so in circumference. We stopped at a lovely beach. It's obviously off-peak now as only about 5% of the sun loungers were occupied. Still, the temperature was in the high 20s. We got some sun. I got to windsurf for an hour, although the wind was quite mild so I didn't get going very fast at all. Still, any windsurfing is good windsurfing.
There's also a cool cave at one end of the beach. While we were trying to locate it we meet an American couple. They were at the entrance to the cave but weren't convinced that they were in the right place. The hole into the cave is quite small. It looks like it used to be larger but a rock obscures most of the gap. I wasn't going to give up so I had a bit of a look and figured the gap was big enough. Actually, it was easy. Once inside the cave really opens out. It's open to the sea at one end. Apparently, there is a tale of villagers hiding out there at some time in the past. I must get the details.
The four of us sat in the cave for sometime chatting. That was good as our eyes became adjusted to the dark and we could better see how impressive the cave is.
We've arranged to have dinner with the American couple. In fact, Andrew has just turned up at the Internet cafe.
Off to Athens tomorrow afternoon. In the morning we'll check out the Bubulina museum. Bubulina was the only female admiral in the world...according to the brochure I have. The museum is in her house and is still owned by one of her decendents.
Current plan is Athens for two days then off to Santorini. We are going to try and fly from there to Rome. It's a little pricey but will stop us wasting at least a day getting to Patras to catch a 15 hour ferry and then train connections across Italy. The flight sounds great. You are in a smaller aircraft (20 seater?) to Athens so we'd be able to get a good look at the islands from the air. From Athens you pick up a regular flight. I hope it all works out.
Right...off to find some yummy seafood, I hope.
P.S. I've changed the settings so you should be able to leave comments now. No complaints about spelling or grammar please. I'm writing these blogs as quick as I can so I'm not checking such things very carefully :)
Napflio was great. It's south of Corinth. There is a fantastic old fortress (actually two of them) on the hill in town. There's also a beautiful Venetian fortress in the bay. We arrived late in the evening but the next morning we went exploring and loved the place.
More later, it's time for dinner! We're in Spetses. An island 2 hours from Athens. I'll try and get the blog up to date soon!!!! Promise!
From Delphi we decided to head down to a little place called Dhiakofto. Unfortunately, it was a bit of an effort getting there. The bus to Delphi had involved a change of bus and some waiting around but the trip to Dhiakofto was much worse.
It all started well with a spectacular breakfast (just an omelette and yoghurt, honey and fruit but very tasty). Our first change of bus was fine but then the bus took forever to get to the next interchange. It went through every small town it seemed and some of the roads are extremely tiny. Slow going! We changed buses again and then had to change to yet another to cross from andirio to rio ("andi" meaning opposite like in "antipodes" with slightly different spelling). Actually, we had a Greek shop keeper tell us in Delphi that we know lots of Greek words because English has borrowed so many. Yes, really, just like in My Big Fat Greek Wedding...the movie that is...I'm not trying to break any news or anything!
The crossing was a big bridge across to the Peloponesse (South-west Greece). Once we had crossed we thought the bus would stop for us at the right place. We'd told the conductor where we were going when we put the packs onboard. Unfortunately, the bus didn't stop. Once I realised we'd gone too far we got the bus to stop near the next town. We walked for about 15 mins or more to find nothing there but a service station. They were very helpful but couldn't do much for us and they didn't speak any English. Luckily we were able to hail a cab and get to Dhiakofto. Never mind these things do happen. If we'd got off the bus where we were supposed to we would have had a mammoth walk to the town and it wasn't clearly signposted. In the end, it probably worked out quite well.
Anyway, Dhiakofto has a rack-and-pinion railway which was highly recommended in the guidebook. You hop on a little 2 carriage train and head into the mountains for an hour to a pretty little town. We quite enjoyed it although it perhaps didn't quite live up to my expectations.
The next day, we met an English guy who thought it was the trip of a lifetime. I still rate the train up to Jungfrau in Switzerland as way better. We had a nice day though.
Okay, so I programme computers using Delphi and Oracle so how could we miss out on going to Delphi and learning about the Oracle???
This was one of our highlights. Not much in Delphi to be honest. The ruins only take an hour or so to wander around. They are good though. We did this as the sun was going down. Then we found a restaurant with a view over the valley below. Delphi is well into the mountains but you can see the gulf of Corinthia from up there. Amazing. The food was really nice too.
We had the best hotel too. Views over the valley as well and friendly staff. All for 25 Euros. Ask for Nicolas at the Hotel Athina!
Because we'd elected to go to Igoumenitsa rather than Patras as that was the only option that gave us a cabin we had to look at our options on where next to go. We'd seen Meteora in the guidebooks but discounted it as too far North and we'd never get there. Now we could. We found the bus station in Igoumenitsa after some struggle. We asked about tickets and found that the next bus left in 15 mins. We were extremely lucky we found out later as this was a 5 1/2 hour bus trip and there was probably only a few a day. As is the way with Greek intercity buses we got dropped off on the outskirts of town. Luckily we'd been warned of this by a Swiss guy on the bus and he told us to cross the road and head up the hill and we'd find the town. We'd also got talking to a couple of French-Canadian girls who where also going to Kalumbaka (one of the towns near Meteora). They'd already organised accommodation so we tagged along with them. We ended up staying in the Koka Roka rooms. Arthur and his Mum took great care of us.
Anyway, Meteora is literally "rocks in the air". The area has phenonmenal geography. Rocks jutting out of the plains and on top of them monasteries have been built. Just incredible. We spent most of a day walking around getting some amazing views and going into a couple of the monasteries. Well recommended.
Mel said I shouldn't bother with a blog on Bari. Still, here it is.
Nothing happens there! A very boring town. We arrived at 10pm hoping to get an 11pm ferry that a rumour told us existed. We couldn't find it so we had to stay in Bari. I couldn't get hold of anyone at the youth hostel (which was 8kms out of town anyway), so we stayed centrally. Not cheap though! Our friendly taxi driver was trying to tell us that there was an event on in town that meant that accommodation was limited. We never saw a sign of this. Never mind.
The next problem was finding a ferry out. The ferry to Patras, Greece, didn't have any cabins left. We had resigned ourselves to another long ferry ride in aircraft-style seats. However, we saw that another company also had ferries to Greece but to Igoumenitsa only...but they did have cabins. This is quite far to the north so the ferry trip is shorter and a bit cheaper.
The cabins sold the idea to us. We then had to wait until 8pm for the departure. We wandered the streets for a long time. Most things were shut during the middle of the day. An Italian siesta if you like. Tourist towns don't seem to do this so much but Bari does!
When it came time to board the ferry we found it to be very basic. Still, we had a room and had bought bits for dinner from a supermarket. We had a meal in our cabin and then slept like logs until 8pm in the morning. I haven't slept so well in ages. Shame the boat trip wasn't longer!
We got off the boat just as the ramp touched the wharf. Welcome to Greece!
We caught an early bus from Korcula to get to Dubrovnik. Unfortunately, we could only afford to spend one night in Dubrovnik. I guess we could have stayed longer but ferry schedules would have meant another couple of days at least. We loved Croatia but there's a lot more to see before our flight out of Germany in early October.
We did get a good look at Dubrovnik in the 26 or so hours we were there. It's not a very big city. The biggest we'd seen in Croatia but tiny really. The population is about 50,000 but the old town is considerably smaller. What's amazing about Dubrovnik is the size of the walls. They really are incredible. It's possible to see how Dubrovnik has remained "free" for so long. They have a city slogan of "liberty" and are very proud of having defended themselves against many different aggressors over the centuries.
Apparently, 68% of the buildings in the old town were damaged to some extent during the war in the early 90's. Most have been repaired. There are quite a few ruins but it's hard to tell if they have been like that for 10 years or 100.
We stayed in a nice place just outside the city walls. The owner goes out to Sydney quite regularly and works in a Balkan restaurant that her family owns. Mel and I will have to check this out when we get there! I wonder if we can get a discount.
All in all we had a great time wandering the streets and the city walls. The main street is the place for people to strut their stuff. Although it's generally closed to traffic we did see a wedding couple being driven up and down the street in a vintage car. Very cool.
There were a couple of cruise ships moored just out to sea. Whilst we were walking the walls they put to sea. Quite a site. The walls are approximately 4-5 stories high and the biggest of the cruise ship was easily visible above these as it moved at great pace towards the open sea. Amazing. We've seen some impressive cruise ships on our holiday. Including one with a curling water slide that you'd expect to see at a water park. It's unbelievable how big some of these boats are.
We were happy that we'd seen enough of Dubrovnik to give us a good feel for the place. Could have spent longer but we were happy with what we had done. From there it was the day ferry back to Italy (Bari specifically).
Korcula is picture postcard stuff. We stayed in Korcula town. The old town of which is the beautiful walled town I mentioned. We had an apartment looking out towards the mainland and some other islands. The view was partially obscured by pine trees. This just added to the effect. Boats and ferries kept going backwards and forwards all the time. We could walk across the very quiet road outside the apartment, climb down the steps of the town wall and go swimming. The water was amazingly clear. We borrowed snorkelling gear off Steph and Michael and saw quite a few fish and an eel caught in a cage.
We had only planned on spending a day or two in Korcula but things conspired against us. Firstly, poor Jackie tripped and injured her ankle. Mel and I had arranged to meet the others at a cool bar on the roof of one of the defensive towers of the town. When Jackie arrived it was dark and she didn't notice a concrete slab on the floor. It's part of the structure of the building but was poorly marked. Worse still, getting to the bar meant crawling up a steep ladder and through a small hole. Jackie successfully negoitated all of this but we decided that it wouldn't be good for her to travel with it like that so we stayed another night.
Strange ferry schedules and full buses meant that we ended up staying three nights in all. We were a bit lucky to get Jackie on a ferry to Split to catch her flight.
Whoops.times nearly up. Bye
We're in Bari, Italy, at the moment. The only reason we are here is because the Croatian and Greek ferries come through here. There are no direct ferries from Croatia to Greece. Apparently, it's something to do with both countries believing they have the best island group and are not interested in helping people compare them! Not much to do in Bari and it's Italian Siesta at the moment. Luckily, the Internet cafe is open.
We arrived on the ferry from Dubrovnik last night and head out to Greece this evening at 8pm.
We loved Croatia. We spent one day in Split, three in Hvar, three in Korcula and one in Dubrovnik. Split was quite pretty. We were very impressed. Our standards were too low though. Hvar was even better. I was expecting a quite port town but this place was buzzing. There are some excellent restaurants and some interesting bars along the waterfront. It's a bit of a promenade really. Lot's of trendy people walking around strutting their stuff. We stayed in private accommodation - as you tend to in Croatia. However, they were basically running a hotel. We had a 2 bedroom apartment with Steph and Michael. Jackie was in another room very close to ours. Our hosts were very nice. They quite enjoyed the fact that they could speak with Michael in Croatia. Seems that most of their guests are foreign so the language side of things must be hard work for them...they didn't speak much English. The wife ran the show but I think the husband was quite happy when Michael asked if it was possible to watch the handball final in the Olympics (Croatia vs Germany...Croatia won). The TV was in the kitchen but we could see it from outside. We were invited in to watch the game and even given beers. All very pleasant.
We did a day trip from Hvar to Vis. There is a Blue Grotto that is supposed to be quite amazing. The boat sails into the cave and you are surrounded by amazing colours. Unfortunately for us, the weather was marginal. Halfway during the crossing we were informed that they'd just heard that we wouldn't be able to go to the cave. I was also ill on the crossing...Mel wasn't feeling so good either but kept breakfast down.
Instead of the cave we just spent more time on the island of Vis. We went for a swim and lunch. I couldn't face fish for lunch especially with another 2 1/2 hour boat trip ahead of us. That was a real shame as this was where Steph and Michael had the best seafood of the trip. I tried a piece of Michael's Langostine (crayfish/prawn cross thing). It was wonderful...even with a dodgy stomach. We survived the return trip quite easily. The wind direction and swell were much more favourable.
From Hvar we went to Korcula. Korcula is a very small walled city on a peninsula that you can walk around in about 10 mins. It's exceptionally beautiful. More on that in the next blog...
From Bologna we caught the train to Ancona. We had a lovely meal in the restaurant across the road from the station. They had a set menu "tourist menu" which was actually very nice. I had a lovely seafood pasta. Mel had a simple tomato pasta... but very tasty. Second courses were lovely too...including a very nice piece of pork.
From there it was down to the ferry port. We had hoped to get a cabin. Certainly that was going to cost a bit more but the alternative was "airline" seats. We had decided to spend the extra money after having tolerated the night train to Nice. Unfortunately, they were all booked. The airline seats were fine and it was a very some crossing. We got about 6 hours sleep each.
Arriving in Split, Croatia, was amazing. A perfect morning and a beautiful town. Look it up on the Internet! We`ll show you pictures when we can but it is beautiful. As is the rest of Croatia.
I`m writing this from the town of Korcula, further south, towards Dubrovnik. This has to be the pick of places so far. But everyone says that Dubrovnik is the "jewel in the crown". But I`m getting ahead of myself.
When we hoped off the boat we were accosted by people offering rooms. In Croatia it seems that a lot of accommodation is still in private houses. They all await the arrival of boats and offer rooms. A bit daunting for a start. I`m glad we had everything sorted. We found the hotel easily enough after having some breakfast looking out over the bay.
Luckily we were able to get into our room almost immediately. This meant we could freshen up as we were both feeling a bit yucky after the night on the boat. After that we went exploring. Getting rid of the packs meant we stopped being hassled for accommodation! Actually, they were all very polite and would leave you alone as soon as you said you didn`t need accommodation.
I`m running out of time in the Internet cafe again! After Split we caught the ferry to Hvar and stayed there for three days. Another beautiful spot. From Hvar we came to Korcula. Lots more to tell but it`ll have to wait...
Bologna was another struggle to find accommodation but we finally found one for a pretty reasonable price. After dumping the bags we went looking for dinner. We`d passed a nice looking restaurant on the way to the hotel so went back there. We discovered that it was actually an Irish bar\restaurant so we nearly kept going. But it did look nice. And they did do Spaghetti Bolognese...we actually that`s not what they call it. To them it`s Spagetti al Ragu. And then it was with Fettucine but, hey, it tasted pretty good.
Did some washing in Bologna as well. Bologna does have some pretty streets and isn`t a bad place. Not overrun with tourists like some other places. Still, not much happening there.
Before getting onto Verona...I´ve just looked up some details on the Lady Moura that we saw in Monaco. It is the 6th largest yacht in the world and is 344 feet long!!! Oh, and it has a helicopter on one of it`s decks.
Verona: we arrived in Verona very late and found that the hotels were expensive. We found a reasonable on at 60 Euros for the night...list price was 95 Euros so I think we got a discount due to how late it was....about 10:30pm. We had hoped to spend a couple of nights in Verona but it proved to expensive. Even the hotel we were in was going to charge us 95 Euros for the second night. And it was only a 2-star at that.
We started our day in Verona by popping into a coffee shop that did these really nice croissants with ham and cheese filling and Oregano on top. Lovely. The coffee was top stuff too. A very good start to the day. We had some logistics to attend to after that. Organising trains and all that. After that we went wandering. The very hard to find tourist office had a good map (really needed that a bit earlier!) with a suggested walking tour. We followed that and saw the Arena (a mini-collegian where the opera Aida was being performed ... hence the expensive hotels), several churches, some nice bridges, Juliet`s balcony and some nice town squares. Yes, there is a balcony that is claimed to be the inspiration behind the Romeo and Juliet story. And the courtyard below the balcony was full of tourists. Lots of people had stuck little "me and you for ever" type messages to the wall. Quite sweet really.
For lunch we went to the cafe I`d been to when I`d been in Verona with my Contiki tour. Last time I`d had the most amazing tiramisu desert (a coffee sponge with cream). Could it live up to the image in my mind? You bet! Mel hates coffee so it was just me indulging in this. But it was simply fantastic. Our mains were really nice too. Look out for "Famous Zacs" in front of the arena if you are ever in Verona. Note that prices are something like 20-25% more if you dine outside. Although the view is good.
Since Verona hotels were expensive we had to choose a new place to stay. Bologna was in the right direction to get to Ancona for our ferry to Croatia so off we went...
Sorry for the long time between updates - again. Finally managed to get a little time to do some updating. Mel and I arrived in Nice on the overnight train. We arrived before the information place was open and were standing around outside the station deciding what to do next when we were approached by the owner of the local youth hostel. He told a good story about the place and we decided to go with the hostel. The hostel was a bus trip away although we got a lift up there with other guests that had already arranged to stay at the youth hostel. The owner was very disorganised but the room was nice. Lovely views...no curtains though. The whole place was under renovation. Lovely big breakfast room too.
Nice was fun. The water is an amazing turquoise. We only got as far as wading in the water...which was warmer than the water on the Costa del Sol - surprisingly.
We didn`t do much except wander around and have a look at the place. We did do a day trip to Monaco. It really is something else...the harbour is filled with some fantastic yachts. One, in particular, dwarfed everything else. That was the Lady Moura.
All in all a great stop. From there we caught the train to Verona. We had wanted to go to Florence but the train times were awful. And I had enjoyed Verona the last time I was there. Anyway, more in the next blog on that.
A log of our great European and Egyptian trip :)
