The Adventures of Wickse, Eric & Sharon

Parma

2007-09-13T14:31:00.000+01:00

Well here we are finally in the big cheese of cheeses in Parma! Ok so some may know Parma for its famous brand of air cured hams but for me this is just a nice extra next to the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese that is made in these whereabouts. Otherwise known to most people as Parmesan cheese but that mearly indicates the style of cheese.

Parmigano-Reggiano logo vigorously defines this brand

The Parmigiano-Reggiano is the original cheese of this style and a very strict set of cheese making methods must be adhered to. Most importantly is the regional basin where the cows must graze. This extends right down to the coast near San Marino and was once covered by the sea and is fed by alpine rivers. This along with a mix of skimmed afternoon milk and full morning milk that is never pasteurised helps to make this unique cheese.

We made sure that we were able to make it to the 8am start for the guided tour of a nearby Parmigiano-Reggiano factory. The tour took us through the whole process from receiving the fresh milk through to placing the cheese in the mould. Amazingly the whole process only takes two hours, but after that it needs to be aged for at least 12 months before being able to be sold.

After the rennet is added the cheese starts separating from the whey

Adding the fresh morning milk, that's the good stuff just ask any mum!

Separating the congelled cheese

Once the cheese gets to just the 'right' consistency it's allowed to settle to the bottom

This cheese house has just 12 vats, each makes 2 cheeses. that's 24 a day. Just about enough for me?

Freeing the settled cheese from the vat

100 kilos in each big cheese

Molding in its first stage mould

Eeeuw!!! Getting a bit stinky in here

The day being Thursday also means that it's Ricotta day, with the soft cheese being made from the leftover whey... OK, so it's a tradition that goes back centuries but one that's not enjoyed very much by the cheese makers.

The loathed task of making the Thursday batch of ricotta

Bathing in salt baths, which act as a natural preservative

The stencil used in the secondary mould to identify the cheese, nothing but cheese is used

Hmmm, the cheese aging warehouse

Mine all mine! OK, a whole new meaning to having cheese dreams??

Gratuitious pack shot :-)

The finished product ready to be gobbled up!

Luckily that the ban on importing unpasteurised cheeses to NZ has finally been lifted and next time we won't have to go so far to get our supplies!

Florence

2007-09-11T11:08:00.000+01:00

After the sheer laziness of a week on Elba, and the indulgence that was Chianti we really needed to get on that road north. It would be complete insanity however not to spend at least a day in the cradle of the Renaissance, Florence. Especially considering that it was only 28km away!! (and especially if you're still in the market for Italian shoes and handbags!!!).

The fabulous Duomo

The Florentine skyline from the Torre d'Arnolfo to the Duomo

View of the Ponte Vecchio over the Arno river

"Cheese!"

We had spent a good few days in Florence on our last Euro trip seeing the sights and soaking up the atmosphere, and just totally being wowed by the place. This time around we felt that we could get away with less sightseeing and more soaking. Unless of course your definition of sightseeing includes shoe shops, boutiques and gelateria. And so we did.

Reflection on the Arno

Il Duomo. Up close and personal

It brings me much sadness to report however that we didn't manage any shoes or handbags, but rather a solitary leather wallet and a duo scoop of gelato (caffe/straccitella and passionfruit/fig respectively (what was I thinking??!!!)).

Parking, Italian style

Recharging. Electric vehicles!

Shopping, or should that be browsing aside, we did find the time to take in a little culture. This came in the form of a (quick) visit to the Museo del Bargello, which according to the trusty LP houses "Italy's most comprehensive collection of Tuscan Renaissance sculpture", including several Michelangelos, a couple of Cellinis and an absolutely stunning Donatello. The piece in question is a very neat, very tidy bronze David, apparently the the first freestanding sculpture since the time of antiquity to depict a fully nude male (aside from his helmet of course)! Unfortunately I can't share a kodak or two with you as they totally ban photography :( Not even a sneaky one! But here's what he looks like anyway...

David, courtesy of Google Images

Along with the sculpture, the museum was home to quite a lot of overthetop gold embellished religious works, some great Islamic art and quite a number sculptured coat-of-arms from the upwardly mobile Florentine families of the Renaissance era. We've since learnt that the fabulous building that the museum is now housed in was in turns the residence of the chief magistrate of Florence, back in 1254 (can you even imagine??!), and then a police station, complete with city gallows...

Hercules beating the Centaur Nessus (1599), Loggia della Signoria

...in detail

Marzocco, the symbol of Florence

But soon enough, it was time to get back on the bikes, ride back up the hill, and climb back on board for the drive to our next newest country, the teeny-weeny city state of San Marino...

Lunch!

Il Chianti

2007-09-10T14:29:00.000+01:00

We were well keen to leave behind the crowds in Siena and climb back aboard Wickse for a tour of the famous rolling countryside of Il Chianti. These rolling hills, littered with cypress and olive groves, and rows upon rows of well tendered vines were definitely a sight to behold, and allowed me another opportunity to improve my skills at "campercam".

Casting aside the good old Lonely Planet in favour of the Tuscany chapter of our 'Wines Of The World' guide, we followed the SS222, or as we prefer to call it the 'Strada del Vino', as it snaked its way north from Siena through the villages of Chianti.

Vines, glorious vines!

Cypress madness

Recently harvested Chianti grapes

The famous sunbaked hills of Castellina in Chianti

We passed Wine village after wine village, plodding on towards our end destination of Greve-in-Chianti. In a fabulous case of coincidence, we were due to arrive on the final afternoon of the annual Greve-in-Chianti wine festival, or as it is known in these parts, the XVII Rassegna del Chianti Classico, and our very own opportunity to sample some of the world renowned local fare.

A Chianti taste meister

Chianti Classico, as we were soon to learn, is infact a blend of both red and white grapes, and a very tasty drop too. Upon arrival we were each presented with tasting glass and notebook and sent forth to sample the produce from several dozen local producers. For Chianti novices such as ourselves it was quite daunting, but we put on a brave face and ventured forth. It was great to be able to chat with the wine producers themselves, many of whom were good, honest, family outfits, and to see locals of all ages from Greve and the surrounding region out enjoying themselves on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The whole event was just so civilised and tasteful - if only the Devonport Food & Wine Festival could be like this!

The Sangiovese grape, heart of the Chianti Classico

Chianti Classico-ing in Greve in Chianti

The evening was finished with a very Italian style rock concert and an impressive pyrotechnic display, well from what we heard of it later that night whislt tucked up in bed in Wickse, it did sound pretty impressive!

But fabulous wine is not only what this little corner of Tuscany has to offer. Greve is also home to Macelleria Falorni, a long established (try 1729!) butchery renowned throughout the whole of Tuscany for its wild boar and Chianti infused pork products....yum! It is indeed rather like the Selfridges of butcheries, you could spend forever browsing the shelves and taking in the sight of meat in all its glorious forms. A true carnivore's paradise.

Salame di Cinghiale or Salame Magro Montanaro?

Skinny white truffle salami

Crikey! These ones still have tails on!!

3 kilos and €30 later

Half an hour later, having been relieved of almost €30, and armed with a few kilos of cured cuts, it was time to hit the road to Florence...

SJ

Siena

2007-09-09T14:30:00.000+01:00

Siena is one of those places that I guess you just have to see - people who've been there rave about it, and others still travel all the way from the UK just to get married there. We attempted a visit on our last trip back in '98, but as we discovered then it's no town for a van - parking anywhere close to walled town is a nightmare, not to mention expensive, and you need plenty of perserverence and stamina just to get through a day's sightseeing.

Forewarned is forearmed as they say, so being the smart travellers that we are, scheduled our visit for the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning - free parking, minimal numbers of tourists, and if we could get in and out quick sharp we could still make it to the final day of the annual Greve-in-Chianti annual wine festival some 80km north!

An early morning appreciation of Torre del Mangia

A lone tourist on the Piazza del Campo

...while just an hour later (9am)

Despite my reservations, Siena is one enchanting town. While neighbouring Florence basks in all its Renaissance glory, Siena's architectural and artistic beauty comes from an even earlier movement in history - Gothicism. It's medieval centre is completely brimming with churches (and believe us when we say there are many - having visited on a Sunday morning we heard them all!!) and all manner of fabulous civic and private buildings. It's the kind of place where you don't even need to go anywhere in particular, you can soak up so much of the atmosphere solely by wandering about, drinking espresso, eating gelato - and remembering to look up!

Windows

Hmmm, now that's what I call a real bike!

Washing day

Houses of Siena

Romulus, Rhemus and the She Wolf - Siena being founded by the son of Remus, these guys are everywhere!

As the morning progressed, so did the crowds, as the devout citizens, stopping for post-church cappucinos and martinis, mingled with the tourist groups now arriving by the bus load, alongside the day's first English wedding couple. And you had to sympathise with the pair - posing nervously together for a photo in front of the town's famous bell tower, their photographer jostling for space alongside a dozen or so other tourists also lining up a shot. As a future bride-to-be I was really quite perturbed by the lack of respect for the happy pair - tourists barging in desperate for a photo, bicycle tourists wheeling their bikes if not over, then definitely too close to the hem of the bride's dress. A total lack of respect. It was only 11am yet her hems were already coated in dust and muck. Getting married in Siena, perhaps not as romantic in real life eh?

The imposing Gothic cathedral, begun in 1196

...in detail

Siena's cathedral is one of Italy's greatest Gothic churches don't you know?

Despite the beauty of it all, our tolerance for loud, ignorant Americans and kodak snapping Koreans was running low. To add insult to injury, our much anticipated and overpriced scoop of banana gelato was anything but! Fake banana flavouring just does not cut it for Eric, and as unfortunate as it is, Siena's reputation will long remain tainted by such an insult.

Oh, but it looked just so fabulous!

But it's fake banana!!!

Elba

2007-09-06T14:28:00.000+01:00

With the crowds thinning, the temperatures cooling and the dawning of shall we say a mild dose of travel fatigue, realisim began to sink in. Our commitment to our original plan of heading back to Sardinia and on to Corsica was on the wane - perhaps we needed to re examine our options. I wasn't done with beaching however, and was desperate for another plunge in the Mediterranean before heading back to the autumnal confines of Northern Europe. And so we consulted the map book.

To our pleasant surprise we were able to locate another Italian island, though one not so far from the mainland, and pretty much direct on our path north! Isola d'Elba, just 28km long and 19km wide, lies a short hour's ferry ride from the Tuscan port of Piombino and is most famous for being home to Napolean during his short exile here in 1814 (short as he went on to escape within the year). It's a very pretty island, with bush clad hills rolling down to white sandy beaches. Pretty hard to imagine, but yes this is Tuscany, right down to the vineyards and olive groves.

Isola d'Elba - all bush clad hills , blue water and white sandy beaches

Also the home of Italian yachting - Mascalzone Italia are based here, Prada around the corner

Blue, blue seas

The plan was to spend a couple of days, longer if I was to have my way, relaxing on the beach and chilling out in the last of the summer sun before heading north up to Florence and beyond. But as it does happen, those couple of days stretched into a couple more, and then a couple more, and before we knew an entire week had passed doing little more than reading, swimming, sunbathing, eating, drinking, kayaking...

Lacona beach, our home for the next few days

making ourselves at home

This is the life! (Shame about the book)

Sea monsters aplenty

Odd spot of kayaking

All beached out

Heading out for dinner

Rome

2007-08-31T14:27:00.000+01:00

The heat had really got to us, so having got our heads together in the cool of Mt Etna we decided to get back onto to the mainland and head due north. A full day's driving later we arrived in one of the world's mightest capitals, and one of our favourite cities, Rome.

Now driving in Rome isn't one of our most favourite activities in life, and certainly isn't recommended for the faint of heart, so here's the bit when we send our utmost thanks and love to our very own special friend TomTom. To be honest we would have been totally lost without him directing us through the traffic in search of the camping ground. Heaven only knows how we managed this last time around in the technologically inept TanVan. But sure enough there we were, navigated direct to the reception (humour and relationship intact) and our home for the next four nights.

Romulus & Remus with the She Wolf - iconic symbol of Rome

We had last visited Rome back in 1998,and we keen to revisit the Camping Flaminio, a sort suburban train right from the central city. The girl on reception informed us that there had been quite a few changes to the camping since then, but nothing could have prepared us for the shock - or rather pleasant surprise which was to await us at the shower blocks... What were once humble ablution facilities had been totally replaced with a fully marbled beauty complex, with full length mirrors, skylit showers, automatic flushing WCs, a beauty room complete with magnifying mirrors, and to top it all off - opera and classical music was being played through the stereo!!

Being our second visit to this magnificent city, we really were able to relax and enjoy ourselves a little more. While we certainly had places to go and things to see, we weren't in such a rush to cram in all the tourist sights, which left us plenty of time for soaking up the atmosphere, enjoying the food and engaging in another of life's pleasures, shopping!!

Ensuring our return to Rome, tossing a coin at the Trevi Fountain

The shopping fest aside (I think we've seen at least every shop in Rome, some even twice, and it's much better than in Florence should anyone be interested), we did manage to revisit some of our favourite sights (the Parthenon, the Colosseum, the Forum, the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Plaza Navona, St Peters - including the trek to the very top of the dome), as well as a few new ones - the Capitoline Museum, the Basilicia di San Giovanni (Rome's cathedral), Via Sanni market, the very spooky skeleton construction of Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione, where everything including the chandeliers are made out of the bones of generations of our old friends the Capuchin monks, hmmm must say it's not a terrribly good look...

I won't bore you with too many more details, but rather let the photos do the talking.

Unfortunately, yet again these Capucin monks aren't too fond of the paparazzi so we don't have any snaps of the skeletal chapel to share with you : (

The masive Basilica di San Giovanni, the city's cathedral

The Colosseum

Admiring the view at the Forum

Just the two of us, the Forum

Lat in roots

Sanduwiches galore!

"You don't say!" - Swiss Guards gossiping at the Vatican

St Peter's Square

The Roman skyline

Pigeon and friend, Ponte Sant'Angelo

Detail, Fontana del Nettuno, Piazza Navona

However the Capitoline Museum was without a doubt the highlight of our visit, and deserves particular mention. It is perched high upon Capitoline Hill, standing proud over the Forum and Colosseum beyond. It also happens to be one of the world's oldest museums, founded in 1471 when the pope of the day donated a few bronze sculptures to the city. It also happens to be one complete and utter knockout for anyone remotely interested in art and history, crammed to gills with one exceptional piece of sculpture after another, the very original version of Romulus & Remus with the She-Wolf (the enduring symbol of Rome), and pisellos galore! Here's just a few of our favourites...

The equine

Spinario (boy with splinter)

Watch your step

Constantine

Toes

View over the Forum

Peachy bottoms

More toes

Eyes

Fingers

Suffice to say, Rome remains one of our very favourite cities in the world. In fact, following this visit, we love it even more!!

SJ

Mt Etna

2007-08-26T14:52:00.000+01:00

While still sweltering on Sicily it seemed that there was a sure way to avoid the heat (which was still pushing the upper limits of the 30's) and that was to head up the side of Mt Etna to the mountain station at 1900m, only just over half way up this 3300m ish towering volcano. An amazing drive from the coast winds up the forested slopes and cuts straight through the lava flows to where the base camp and winter ski field has been built.

Smoking Mt Etna looms up on the horizon

View down to Catania, destroyed and now rebuilt following the 1669 lava flow

The base camp at 1900m is a very interesting place to build a tourist village that's for sure. Not only is it on the side of one of the most active volcanoes in the world, but these cooled lava slopes are also on the same side of the mountain where the lava flows every time the mountain erupts. The last time this happened was only in 2001 so maybe they believe there'll be enough time to make money before the next one wipes them off the face of Etna?

There's a two story house somewhere under all that lava

Older craters and lava flows - would make for great ski terrain in winter?

The jet black volcanic ash and lava fromtop to bottom

Enjoying the fresh, if sulphuric air

Jagged lava flow from the 2001 eruption

Wickse parked at a cool 1900m

Amazing sight and a nice place to cool off as it stayed below 30 the whole time, the first time in months. I even trekked up a further 800 vertical meters to the start of the craters, one of which was blowing ash in my face every few minutes with huge vents of sulphur and ash.

Trekking up the ski field of Mt Etna

Eruption from one of Etna's upper vents

Humm, getting bigger and closer...

Oops I might be a little in the way...

Cough splutter! Still one very active mountain side!

Pretty exciting stuff but as it was getting dark I was keen to try to catch a lift down the mountain in one of the 4x4 jeeps, but unfortunately there were none up top when I finally got there. As the sun was setting as I arrived I couldn't stay for long and hightailed it back down over the volcanic sand and scoria encrusted mountain side, just making it back down before it was completely pitch black.

EH

Palermo

2007-08-25T14:27:00.000+01:00

We were very much looking forward to spending a couple of days in Palermo, however we weren't quite sure what we were going to find there. The city itself is a very intriguing blend of east and west, being in turns an Arab Emirate, the seat of a Norman kingdom, the German House of Hohenstaufen, passing then to the Holy Roman Emperor, then to the French, the Spanish and the Austrians, until the Spanish Bourbons united Sicily with Naples in 1734, and it later became part of a unified Italy. This final transition happened as recently as 1860, so it's no wonder that we had more than a bit of trouble identifying the people and their city as being 'Italian', something they certainly do as well.

Porta Nuova, gateway to central Palermo

...in detail

Fontana Pretoria, otherwise known as the 'Fountain of Shame' to the many church going Palermitans who were offended by the flagrant nudity back in 1573

But look around and you can see evidence of this cross cultural history everywhere, from the proud Norman palazzos to churches which look more like mosques, and grand baroque buildings. Compared to other towns and cities in Sicily which we've visited so far, it's quite an architectural hotch-potch, but I guess that's exactly what makes Palermo as interesting as it is! It must be said though, that this city certainly isn't going to win any beauty pageants. It is dirty, dusty, decayed and really quite shabby. As our friend Cheryl says, it's hard to tell whether you're in the Med or in Cairo. But again, it's a working city, and that's what makes us like it.

On the streets of downtown Palermo

There certainly are many things to see and do in this town, but with the temperature still pushing into the high 30s we decided to take it easy, and concentrate more on soaking up the atmosphere rather than dashing from one tourist queue to another. And so we did.

Marionettes in a shop window

Acqua anyone?

The highlight for me was undoubtably the Capuchin Catacombs. Now, you know what a catacomb is going to be like - We've been to the ones in Paris, where having run out of space in the cemeteries, Monks went around stacking up skeletons and skulls and bits of bones along a network of tunnels in disused limestone quarries. But ladies and gentlemen, the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo are quite a bit different...

In what is at best a seriously macabre tourist attraction, but also a rather extraordinary historical record, over 8000 Palermitans from the last few centuries have been dehydrated, perserved, embalmed (call it what you will) and dressed in their favourite clothes before being strung up or laid down, some in glass cases, within the excavated tombs beneath the city.

Apparently this was originally only intended for the Capuchin monks, but it seems it fast became something of a status symbol to be perserved in this manner along with the monks, and many prosperous citizens requested to be preserved here, dressed in specific clothing, in their wills. Some also asked to have their clothing changed at frequent intervals!!!

Within the spooky, spooky corridors there are many different areas specifically set aside, one for monks, for professionals, for men, for women, for children and even for virgins. Some of them were just well spooky, with bits of their skin falling off, and others stuck for eternity in poses which make then look like their final moments were spent in utmost pain. Or maybe that's the rigamortis? Either way, this has to be the most spookiest, shockingest, seriously bizarre place I've ever visited in my life, and even though it was me that was desperate to visit, I found myself needing to get out after only a few minutes. Everywhere you look there'd be even more eyeless faces or skeletons scaring out, some with their arms outstretched towards you. Ugghhhh!!!

It is still completely beyond my comprehension just why so many parents were intent on dragging their small children through the corridors of this horrible place. Or maybe they were paying respects to their great grandfathers??

Yet again, photography was not allowed, but I just can't resist just one to show you courtesy of Google Images...

Capuchin corpses

If you'd like to see some more embalmed and otherwise Capuchin corpse action however, click here

I'll leave it up to you...

Souvenir shopping at the catacombes

Embalmed bodies aside, we took a tour - in Italian - of the Norman Palazzo (now the seat of the Sicilian government) and the intricately mosaic-ed (or so they tell us as it was all being renovated and hence covered up) Palatine chapel.

The imposing facade of the once Norman fortress

The three tiered loggia of the Palazzo dei Normanni

We also stopped by the magnificent cathedral, resplendent in its distinct Arab-Norman style - all ziggurats and geometric patterns - which is unique to Sicily. The Norman conquerors it seemed, were so in awe of the cultured Arab lifestyle they found when they arrived on the island, that they shamelessy borrowed and improved upon it, spending vast amounts of money on palaces and churches, and encouraging a cosmopolitan atmosphere at court. They say that William II, the grandson of the conquering Roger I, even had a harem!

Amongst all this wealth and decadence I guess it was only a matter of time (400 years apparently) before Norman rule of Sicily collapsed...

Cathedral of Palermo

The Cancerian line

Architectured-out we ambled further downtown, ate absolutely superb gelato - the best of the trip in fact, and wandered, rather cautiously through the streets of La Vucciria. Not the most comfortable of places to walk around actually, even in broad daylight. It's no wonder I guess as I currently read LP's description of the area as "marking the medieval chasm between the rich and poor that existed in Sicily right up until the 1950s", it's infamous street market once being a "heaving den of crime and activity".

A few quick snaps and maybe it's time to head home...

On the mean streets of La Vucciria

Hanging out in the piazza

These streets have definitely seen better days

Even the supermarket's gone

Agrigento

2007-08-23T09:51:00.000+01:00

Agrigento, stretched across a hill overlooking the glorious blue of the Mediterranean enjoys its status of being Sicily's oldest and busiest tourist site. Although the town today is rather more infamous for being home to a number of the island's more notorious Mafia famililes (as many a burnt out building can bear witness to). We, along with many busloads of tourists had come to see the mighty Valley of the Temples.

Back in the 8th century BC this part of Sicily together with the regions of Calabria and Basilicata on the toe of the mainland formed a series of formidable independent Greek city-states collectively known as Magna Graecia. The reconstructed ruins here at Agrigento bear testimony to the success and wealth of this civilisation, with Agrigento, or Ancient Akragas, widely considered to be the most luxurious of them all.

Remains of the Temple of Hercules

Built towards the end of the 6th century

Temple of Concord

...built around 440BC and converted into a Christian church in the 6th century AD. Shame

Temple of Juno

Pretty massive eh?

Here were some truly amazing examples of ancient architecture, standing proud on a ridge above the sea... While three major temples have since been restored, the most magnificent, the Temple of Jupiter, which was never in fact completed, now lies in a pool of rubble. It would have covered an area of 112m by 56m with columns rising 20m high, supported by colossal human statues known as telamoni - totally massive.

A reconstructed telamon - once supported the very massive Temple of Jupiter

To give you some sense of scale...

One of the other more intriguing sites was of the blocks carved with what looks like a giant U. These were part of an ingenious pulley mechanism which enabled these early peoples - or rather their slaves - to hoist the blocks up into place.

Check out the U shapes on these blocks

We managed a good three hours or so wandering around the ruins on what had to be the hottest, most oppressive days of the trip ever. You know the kind, where sweat is literally running off you and your clothes are plastered to your skin, and you then run out of drinking water, and there is not a scrap of shade to be had anywhere. Oh the lengths one goes to in the pursuit of culture! Fortunately the archaeological museum managed to provide many a cool, dark room in which to recover, but the 1km walk to it, following the traipse around the temples very nearly did me in, and the afternoon had to be spent recovering at the beach...

!!!!!!!!!

Villa Romana del Casale

2007-08-21T13:06:00.000+01:00

Being very big fans of mosaic art we were drawn to the small, provincial town of Piazza Armeria to pay a visit to the nearby Villa Romana del Casale. This stunning 3rd century AD Roman villa was once the home of Marcus Aurelius Maximianus, and in keeping with being the hunting lodge of the co-Emperor of Rome, it needed to be decorated to a suitable standard...and so enter the very best mosaic artists of the day!

First visitor of the day, at the unassuming entrance to the Villa

The villa itself was buried under mud following a flood in the 12th century, and the mosaics remained hidden for 700 years before being rediscovered in the 1950s. The mosaics cover almost the entire floor area of the villa - some 3500sq metres, and are considered to be some of the foremost and extensive examples of this form of Roman art in Italy. The range of subject
matter is quite considerable, ranging from classical Greek mythology to battles, African hunts and fishing expeditions. They are however in quite some state of disrepair, and it was both very interesting, but also quite alarming to watch the teams of young archaelogical(?) students undertaking the painstaking restauration work...it all seemed quite casual, and we didn't see
as much respect for this ancient art as we'd expect.

We were also quite surprised at the housing of the complex. A clear plastic roof had been erected over much, but certainly not all of the works, with narrow catwalks for the tourists to file past. The plastic material would have made it totally impossible to linger very long in the heat of a summer's day (luckily we'd made the extra effort to arrive at opening time!), and didn't appear to provide the mosaics much shelter from the elements either. We had to wonder whether this was indicative of a rather omnipresent sense of Sicilian ambivalence, or whether they just really couldn't afford anything more. Although with over 2000 visitors a day paying €8 a pop I'd hedge my bet on a case of the former rather than the latter. (And what of the ring of vacant and burnt out souvenir stalls in the carpark? Well we are in Mafia territory after all).

Restorers at work with the gear placed randomly over the original works

Despite timing our arrival with the early opening of the complex, the light just wasn't on our side, and unfortunately many of our photos just don't do any justice to these fabulous works of art. Here's a few (quite a few actually) for you to enjoy...

A successful boar hunt

A successful hare hunt

A cupid

Peachy bottoms on the bedroom floor

Three eyed cyclops (?)

...in detail

More hunting scenes

Deep sea scene

... in detail

The children's hunt

Pan

Flamingo drawn chariot

More cupid in deep sea extravaganza

Detail of Archilles defeating the giants

Cupid with grapes

The kill

The famous (and highlight) "Ten Bikini Girls" - actually ten female athletes, the winner receiving a crown of flowers and wreath

...in detail

...more detail

The Weightlifter

Noto

2007-08-19T10:22:00.000+01:00

Perhaps the most picturesque of all the towns we've visited in Italy so far, Noto sits quietly and unassumingly 10km inland on the south eastern coast of Sicily. It is crammed with churches, and some of the most beautiful examples of Baroque architecture on the island. The original town was totally destroyed by an earthquake in 1693, and subsequently rebuilt by the noble families of the town in the favoured style of the day, Baroque. A similar story then to Napier, NZ, which was itself totally rebuilt following an earthquake in the style of the day (1930s), Art Deco. Funny how things of such beauty can be created out of such destruction.

Eric on the steps of the San Nicolo Cathedral

Detail of the bronze cathedral doors

Baroque facade of Chiesa del Collegio

The fabulous balconies of Palazzo Nicolaci di Villadorata

...in detail

...in more detail!

View of the cathedral from the rooftop of Chiesa del Colegio

We passed a leisurely afternoon wandering the streets, eating ice cream and soaking up the (manageable) heat. That evening we, together with the population of Noto and surrounding villages were treated to a most unexpected treat - a free performance of Italian comedic theatre on the steps of the cathedral. And time yet still for just one more treat before bedtime, taking part in the quintessential Italian ritual of passeggiata - the evening stroll...

Play on!

An enthralled audience on the steps of the cathedral

Checking out everyone's style during the passegiata

Puglia - the Heel of Italy

2007-08-09T09:41:00.000+01:00

Puglia is a vast sun drenched region which stretches from the 'spur' of Italy down to the heel. It's dry, hot and particularly busy at this time of the year. No, in fact scrub 'particularly' - it was exceptionally busy!! But I guess we should have figured that travelling anywhere in Southern Italy in August (when the whole of Italy, plus many of its neighbours are on holiday!) was going to be sheer madness...

The maddening crowds in Alberobello were quite sympathetic compared with what lay in store for us, but somewhere amongst all of this - most notably in the small inland towns we managed to find some respite, a quiet corner in the heat of the day (now that's another story!) and many a good gelato...

Here are some of our highlights...

OSTUNI

A wee detour en route to Lecce, Ostuni is a beacon of white washed buildings draped across a hill overlooking the dry, olive tree covered plains that marks the end of Truilli country and the start of the Salento peninsula - otherwise known to you and me as the heel of Italy.

Ostuni - where you need your sunglasses on to combat the glare

The view out over endless olive groves to the Adriatic

Enjoying the view

Wandering around the neighbourhood

It was also the home of our very first gelati, which we enjoyed whilst taking a stroll through the atmospheric streets and alleyways of the old town. And can I just say that the yoghurt flavoured gelato absolutely rocks!

Falling all over ourselves in anticipation of the long awaited gelati!!

LEECE

The university town of Lecce was one of our top destinations on the Salento peninsula, famous for it's incredibly 'madcap' Baroque architecture. So madcap infact that it's given birth to its very own style of Baroque, known as Lecce Baroque. According to Lonely Planet, one 18th century traveller of note thought it the most beautiful city in Italy, while another - one Marchese Grimaldi thought that the facade of the Basilica di Santa Croce looked like a lunatic's nightmare...

Make what you will of it, but it certainly is different. To me, rather like an intricately yet grotesquely sculptured ice cream cake. Unfortunately we couldn't manage to capture an image of the entire church in one photo, so here's a series of frames of the detail. What do you think??

Basilica di Santa Croce

Unlucky fellow

Supporting this church isn't just a man's job

They've even brought in the beasts

A lunatic's nightmare?

Great town to spend a morning, and given its student population, made for some interesting grafitti. Having just read a book on Berlusconi, Eric was quite taken with this one. Sometimes the most poignant things can be said most with the most little words.

Brief but to the point

Gig advertisement

Nice touch of Roman antiquity

OTRANTO

The last town of note on the 'heel' was Otranto, which once enjoyed fame as Italy's major port to the Orient. Today however, a very picturesque walled town beside the sea, with little evidence of its previous glory - with the exception of course of the 11th century Norman cathedral...

Perving at the locals seems to be becoming a favourite pasttime for these two

Pleasure boat madness

Back in 1480, 18,000 Turks besieged the town, killing 800 faithful Christians who refused to convert. Having taken the town, the Turks then thought nothing of using the cathedral to stable their horses. Amazing then that some of the most fabulous floor mosaics we have ever seen - if not the most simplistic in design, ever managed to survive. They are truly amazing! Depicting some really bizarre scenes of heaven and hell, with a menagerie of animals - monkeys, snakes, sea creatures - to our mosaic loving eyes they looked more like comic book animations than actual classical designs. It's really unfortunate, but no photography was allowed, and we didn't even manage to sneak in a quick one : (

The other truly weird thing about this church, is that the locals somehow managed to gather up the skulls and bones of the 800 or so marytred Christians from the 1480 siege, and have used them to decorate the side chapel. And I mean floor to ceiling stackings of the things. Lovely.

We love a good defensive fort

Today, aside from the ghoulish freak show in the cathedral, the main attractions in the old walled town appear to be the endless supply of delicatessens, gelaterias (from which we managed to abstain) and souvenir shops. Give me the skulls anyday!

Locals enjoying a taglio of pizza

Plastic tat with your sightseeing Sir?

Alberobello (Truilli Town)

2007-08-07T12:16:00.000+01:00

Our first stop back in Western Europe again - great to be back to the relative normality of southern Italy a place that most Europeans tend consider fairly 'extreme', a great first stop for us however to ease into Italy. Having arrived at Bari we quickly headed out of the city, it's really one of those places which even waiting for a ferry to can seem like too long to dwell here for. Heading up from the coast to Alberobello was magic, the road winds up a plateau away from the coast and the ridge is lined with the typical postcard perfect Italian villas. Another amazing thing was the clarity of the air as we'd only

just left the plumes of Balkan forest fires that enveloped the region, I guess we kind became accustomed to it there but now it meant that we had a clear view to the sea.

As we approached Alberobello we found signs of what we'd been drawn here for, the truly amazing truilli buildings!

Truillitown!

truly impressive vista

Truilli tops

and more Truilli tops

These circular roofed houses were originally built entirely without mortar, the idea was that if the taxman came along demanding his dwelling tax, they could quietly dismantle them into a pile of untaxable rubble. A very picturesque town with

very picturesque buildings that aside from the humble dwelling place have been turned into every imaginable use - churches, doctors surgeries, shops, museums, although most of the truillis that we saw were rammed with an odd assortment of tacky tourist souvenirs seemingly unrelated to the truillis at all.

Truest of churches?

Truth is it's just a house

another truly lovely house

True, a truilli vineyard!

Trulli streets

OK so the truth of the matter is that the truilli jokes did begin to wear a little thin, fortunately we had Natalie to pick up from the Brindisi airport the next day so someone new to replay our truely silly jokes on. Sorry Nats! Natalie flew from New Zealand via a stop in London to tour southern Italy with us for the next 10 days

Natalie and Sharon at the truly magnificent sunset ;)

Humm truly interesting construction technique

Truly in ruins

It was a great place to hang out and catch up with Natalie, a fine campground with a big pool and not to crowded. A far cry from the modest 'campgrounds' of the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

Little did we know that as it wasn't on the coast it had also missed the mid season madness which meant that most other accommodation in the south of Italy was fully booked til the end of August! From here onward we struggled to find a place to park for the night, having to compete with all 60 million holidaying Italians, all of which seemed to be holidaying in the south.

EH

Montenegro

2007-08-03T09:01:00.000+01:00

One of the most anticipated adventures on our travels was to be a jaunt through the world's newest nation, Montenegro. This little place squeezed between the southern border of Croatia and Albania was lumped together with the Serbs following the demise of the former Yugoslavia, but following a referendum in 2006 has managed to separate itself and reclaim its own identity. And so much so that is now being fast tracked for entry into the EU, and will remain completely untainted by its former relations with Serbia, who is effectively barred from EU entry until, amongst other conditions, it agrees to hand over various nasty war criminals to the courts in The Hague and it resolves the issue of Kosovan independence. And as if to ensure this promise of EU membership - or to rub Serbia's nose in it - it's already using the Euro as its national currency, even though it is still at least a year away from becoming an EU member! Guess it saves on minting a temporary set eh.

A very stern looking Montenegrin

We had so looked forward to this part of the trip - to drive along the shores of continental Europe's deepest fjord at Kotor, to wander around the medieval walled towns of Budvar and Herceg Novi, to bathe in the turquoise blue sea, and following our trek across Eastern Europe, to just generally bum it around at the beach. But we were in for one huge disappointment...

The fjord was magnificent, the water completely amazing yes, but what may have been (according to the the travel section of The Times of London) Europe's 'best hidden secret' (or something to that effect), it was anything but! It seemed that the entire population of the former Yugoslavia, all 15 million of them, (excepting of course Slovenia and Croatia who have their own coastline) was on holiday, and where else would you go if your "country" does indeed have the bluest, most amazing beaches this side of the Med? Where you've always gone - to the coast of course!

On top of the world at Kotor Fjord

It's a long, long way down

How weird it must really be, to now be in the situation of Serbia, and to a lesser extent Bosnia & Hercegovina and Macedonia, where you no longer have any coastline, and a trip to the beach involves remembering to pack your passport along with your towel and sunblock. And will Serbians have to apply for a visa to visit their favourite former beaches once Montenegro joins the EU? If that's not enough, it throws up all sorts of other perplexing questions... what now happens to the once mighty Serbian navy languishing in the now Montenegrin port of Bar?

So there we were after our madcap dash through Albania, idling stationary amongst bumper to bumper traffic, wedged in between some seriously flash vehicles - late model Audis, glistening black Jeeps, convertible BMWs, various other assorted American vehicles, and you just can't help wondering, where does all the money come from? For a land whose peoples were suffering deeply in a crippling war only ten years ago,you've got to wonder about all this wealth on the roads. And of course it doesn't help your imagination from running away with itself when you notice that many of these vehicles are not displaying licence plates, or identification of any sort for that matter. Especially those still displaying foreign parking permits long since expired.... Yes, it makes you wonder...

The socio-political situation aside, Montenegro, outside of high summer, would indeed be very beautiful. Despite being nestled cheek-by-jowl between tents and ancient caravans, being sounded out by (yet again) 10 year old dance music and fanta-d up children, there was something very intriguing to be surrounded by a complete casserole of up until quite recently, peoples intent in wiping each other off the face of the universe. Serbs, Bosnians, Kosovars (still actively pursuing their independence from Serbia, and still suffering greatly) all enjoying their seaside vacation right here alongside Wickse and a couple of other intrepid travellers. Tito would be proud.

It must be said however, that this wasn't the friendliest of destinations, but I guess given the historical circumstances, you can't expect to see each of the different nationalities greeting each other with little more than a sense of resigned suspicion. 10 years (and still counting from the Kosovian perspective) is not a long time.

On the EU membership front though, it does seem a little futile that the EU is about to admit Montenegro, and steadfastly maintaining its offensive position against Serbia. It did very much appear from our point of view, that Montenegro may still well be a little more than a southern region of Serbia, given the amount of obviously permanent Serbian residents, investments and wealth still concentrated in these coastal shores. Entry via the backdoor maybe?

Wickse & Eric in our own little square meterage of Montenegro

Back again to the sights...despite the hideously overpopulated beaches, we did manage to find our own rocky little patch of the Med, (which we discovered afterwards was the allocated nudist cove (of course, what else does the sign "PKK" mean?)), which was totally beautiful. We gave up fairly early on on the hope of a wander around the medieval walled towns - the effort to get there, not to mention the extreme sport known as "old-town-by-the-beach parking rumble" meant that this was just totally out of our reach.

It's my rock and I won't share!

Crystal clear waters of the Med

The real saviour of the trip however was a short boat ride out onto the island-church of the Lady of the Rock, an artificial islet deep in the Kotor Fjord which was created from the hulls of 87 captured ships (of whose origin we never managed to find out). A peaceful, silent retreat away from the maddening crowds.

Very picturesque town of Perast

Our Lady of the Rock

Chilling out

Beautiful!

So, Montenegro in a nutshell? Definitely deserves a greater perserverence - outside of high summer, and perhaps once EU regulations have sorted out the dodge...

SJ

Driving Albania

2007-07-28T11:23:00.000+01:00

While wasting some time away at Lake Orchid by crossing over the Albanian border and back (just for kicks it must be said), we were quite stunned to find that the moustachioed Albanian officials didn't have any insurance to sell us for Wickse. This seemed like a bit of a worry for us, and also added to the puzzlement of the Macedonian border guards who were not used to people driving back and forth, out and back into their country all in a matter of 20 minutes. They were certainly not impressed at the lack of organisation of their southern neighbours that's for sure! Exasperated would be a better word for it. We figured that we'd try again the next day at a bigger border crossing further around the Lake, and were chuffed to earn a page full of Macedonian passport stamps in the process, and even more so for our first crack at Albania!

Amusing oneself whilst losing an hour or so at the Albanian border

We didn't want to stay too long in Albania, it just happened to be the shortest route through to Montenegro. We'd heard one too many stolen car stories and also learnt that they've only just had access to cars - and driving licences - in the last 10 years meant that a.) the roads would be basic at best and b.) that their driving skills would leave much to be desired!

How many Germans do you know living in Albania?

Anyway here we go....

First impressions weren't that bad, plenty of police around who didn't seem to need backhanders to pass, nicely sealed roads (ok, this is the one main road here so if any were good this should be it), and the driving wasn't too shocking either. Perhaps we've just been getting used to the driving antics of these parts? I can certainly say that it was much more relaxing that Romania with cars actually waiting for a clear stretch of road before making an overtaking manoeuvre. Impressive. It's been said that most stolen Mercedes in Europe end up in Albania and judging by the number of them on the road it easy to understand where the theory comes from. It seems that here they are even a perfect replacement for a ute.

No ute? No problem!

Learning to drive in a stolen Mercedes so you can be confident in your own stolen Mercedes

Hot Hot Hot!

Hot in more ways than one

The paranoia of the previous Albanian dictator is shown to good effect by the mass of mini bunkers that litter the border areas. They were built in haste after Albania turned it's back on Russia in 1961, leaving it with no friends in the world (apart from China apparently), having severed relations with the west a long time ago. In order to ensure that these bunkers were going to work, they strength tested them by placing the architect inside one and shelling it with tank fire! The poor shell shocked fellow emerged alive and the Soviet tanks of the day didn't try to roll over the border so maybe the deterrent worked after all.

The hills are alive with the view of bunkers

With no friends in the world you need all the defense that you need eh

The backyard edition. Sure would look cute in Titirangi

At one point the road narrowed to single lane, headed into the hills and then took the most peculiar route across a mountain range, quite literally following the ridge line across! Great views but with sheer drops of several hundered metres on either side with little or no side barriers left Sharon as white as a ghost. Fortunately the oncoming traffic was surprisingly courteous as there was often little room to pass and sometimes they even stopped to let us through.

There must have been good reason for the road and it dropped us in the middle of Tirane with not much indication on where to go next. And what an interesting place Tirane is! For a long time a very dull and grey looking city full of Communist style housing blocks, now repainted in all sorts of garish colour schemes - brights, pastels, circles and stripes. It's amazing what a lick of paint can do.

Blue blocks

...and yellow blocks

Hope they got a good deal with Dulux

Somehow despite the heat of the day (heading into the high 30's) and rush hour we managed to get through unscathed heading in the general direction of Montenegro. The real scare came on the way out of Tirane by means of a giant maintenance hatch that had lost its manhole cover, thus leaving a huge gaping hole in the road which miraculously passed between our wheels and not under them, but apart from that our exit from the capital appeared pretty straight forward ;)

Making use of a road to nowhere

And so we emerged at the other end of Albania 5 hours later and all in one piece in Montenegro.

5 km to the border... woohoo!

Lake Ohrid

2007-07-27T15:16:00.000+01:00

After a short while fantasising about white sand beaches on Corfu, we got back to reality and steered our compass north west to the Macedonian border. It appeared that the news reports of the state of emergency we were reading were at least a day old, and if there was to be any trouble at the border we could always divert at the last moment. Fortunately that moment never appeared as we drove over the border with ease, and following a tentative query as to the state of the fires ("no problem, no problem!"), the handing over of E50 to purchase additional insurance and a slightly dodgy Euro for Dinar dealing, we were treated to a broad smile and a very genuine "Welcome to Macedonia!" from the border guard.

Smoke in the hills

We were headed to Bitola, and along the way we could see the tell tale signs of smoke billowing from the hillsides, but as we approached the town evidence of anything more serious had all be cleared up and the citizens of Bitola were going about their regular early evening activities. The camping ground we were heading for never materialised, and with daylight still on our side we decided to push on through to our main Macedonian highlight, Lake Ohrid.

On the shores of Lake Ohrid

At 294m, Lake Ohrid is the deepest lake in the Balkans, and also the oldest in Europe. You can see that it is also a very beautiful place indeed, with calm, crystalline waters stretching out along the Byzantian church strewn south eastern Macedonian shores and down to Albania. Although, it would have been even more beautiful minus the absolute hordes of holidaymakers escaping the heat. Add to this traffic jams, 10 year old techno music blaring from the numerous "beach bars", overcrowding of the rather primitive camping grounds and you may begin to get a clearer picture of its beauty in the heat of July.

It was quite an assault to the senses after the last few days lazing in the likewise calm and crystalline waters of a semi deserted beach in Paradise. Still very beautiful Lake Ohrid remains. We did manage to squeeze in some moments of calm amongst the chaos, but were nevertheless really pleased to see so many Macedonians out there enjoying themselves in the beauty of their own country.

Hmmm, that'd be a right then

You have been warned!

Sveti Naum monastery near the Albanian border

Checking out those Albanians

It's a funny place Macedonia. Home of Alexander the Great, with an equally impressive ancient history, but alas a rather murky more recent one. Being in turns occupied and then carved up all over the place by its more powerful neighbours, then being snaffled up into the post war creation that was Yugoslavia ('Slavs of the South' apparently), it was 1992 before it was able to negotiate (the only fully peaceful) separation from that bind and become fully independent. What has since ensued is a running argument with Greece over it's right to use the name Macedonia, a name which Greece uses itself to name its northern province. This pressure forced it to use the name Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM, and Greece instigating all sorts of trade embargos, but I think those Greeks are just going to have to stop being so childish and grow up. Who wants to be known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of anywhere??

Exactly!

Back to the lake then. Despite all the crowds, it is truly beautiful. The highlight of our visit was a sunset boat trip out along the shores of the old town of Ohrid to catch a glimpse of the iconic Sveti Jovan, a 13th century church perched right on the cliff edge. The water was so clear that even at this distance from the shore you could gaze over the side of the boat and peer right down into its depths. It was just so great to see so many people out on the water enjoying such beautiful surrounds.

Escaping the heat

Eric with Sveti Jovan

Sveti Jovan at sunset

A red hot dilemma

2007-07-26T15:09:00.000+01:00

It wasn't until we'd had as much heat as we could handle and had to leave Paradise that we eventually got onto the internet to discover that what we had foolishly assumed to be typical July conditions in this part of the world was actually a heat wave.

We had managed four days on the beach, either submerged in the Ionian Sea or cowering under our awning (superb purchase that!). Sleeping wasn't much fun either with the mercury barely dropping below 31 throughout the wee small hours. So we decided to push on and into Macedonia. In preparation for this next mission into the unknown there we were online, reading about how while Britain was experiencing torrential rain and heavy flooding, a heatwave was scorching south Eastern Europe, causing many heat related deaths and triggering massive forest fires. Most shocking for us was to read that the government had declared a state of emergency in Macedonia as fires were totally encircling the southern town of Bitola - our supposed destination for that very night! With expected temperatures of high 30s to early 40s predicted for the week ahead and the Macedonian army out in force it didn't sound like the picture was going to get any better.

We sat and debated our options. We had just under 2 weeks to reach Brindisi to meet up with our great friend Natalie, who is flying all the way out from NZ to join us for the Southern Italy leg. That meant we could either stick with our plan, ride out the heat and push on through Macedonia, Albania and on to the ferry from Montenegro, or head due west to Corfu and spend the rest of the time on the beach before ferrying direct to Brindisi. What were we to do?

SJ

Sithonia

2007-07-23T14:40:00.000+01:00

The heat was getting to us. That and having being sated on all things cultural in Turkey we fancied a bit of a rest, a little holiday before our Balkan assault. Our travelling friends Kim & James had suggested a wonderful spot on the Greek peninsular of Sithonia - the geographic middle finger if you will - and we were well keen to go and investigate...

Wow, what a beach huh?

How clear do you like your water?

Hanging out in the Ionian

The spot was as close to paradise as you can get - as we free camped between two ancient, gnarled olive trees, right on a beach with the clearest, warmest water imaginable. Three days of sheer and utter bliss - reading, swimming and drinking what must have been absolute gallons of water!

This is how we like to camp!

When it's too hot to read on the sand...

...there must always be a better way!

Room with a view

Time for a spot of travel planning

Some friendly villagers

Gallipoli

2007-07-21T16:35:00.000+01:00

We left Istanbul a little late as we just couldn't keep ourselves away from the city;) Keeping on heading east would have been great but the insurance just would have been crippling (£1500 as some fellow travellers had paid). So this was to be the start of our return back West. A turning point in our travels you could say. For one it now meant that we'd be driving into the setting sun, something that hadn't really occurred to us until now, which would mean having the sun beating down onto us at the wheel at 30 degree plus temperatures. Oh oh, not being morning people this could be tricky...

Road to Gallipoli looking out to the Marmara Sea

From Istanbul we headed further south west into "European Turkey" so we could make the great Antipodean pilgrimage to our most sacred overseas memorial, the Gallipoli Peninsula. This narrow strip of land forms the northern coast of the Dardanelles, the narrow mouth to the Marmaris Sea, which leads up to the Bosphorous at Istanbul and then into the Black Sea. At an early stage of the Great War (WW1) it was decided that it would be a priority to control these straits. If this could be controlled, then it would force Turkey out of the war, allow the Allies to ensure a direct shipping route into Russia, and in theory save many (Allied?) lives.

Model of british landing force, with the bay in the background

The campaign commenced with a British naval attack which was fought off by the barrage of guns emplaced high on the hill overlooking the narrow straits, sinking many Allied ships including an Australian submarine (we weren't even aware Australia had any during WW1, let alone that they were able to get this to Turkey).

What it was all about, the Dardanelles

Shortly afterwards the ANZACs landed further up the peninsula and many more British forces further north. What was expected to be a quick battle went from bad to worse after the ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Armed Corps) were mistakenly directed to land at the wrong point. Instead of embarking at a nice flat beach, this meant they arrived in the black of pre dawn beneath a heavily defended cliff and into direct enemy fire, whilst being ordered to fight their way up a near vertical incline to claim the intended position. We read some very tragic stories of soldiers who were found dead at daybreak, clinging to their landing craft, having been shot before they could even get ashore.

ANZAC cove, where it all began and ended for so many

ANZAC cove, nice place for a swim not a war

Yet despite many setbacks the forces were ordered to push on, commanders instructed to ignore the early mistakes. Bloody, close and futile trench warfare thus ensued and both sides fought with incredible valour, neither side willing to concede - only a couple of kilometres of territory, firstly won by the ANZACs and then regained by the Turks, were ever traded during the entire campaign. Numerous other strategic failures later, the death toll was over 200,000 in the span of just over 8 months.

Monument with Ataturk leading the charge

Such was the resolve of the Turks not to lose this strategic headland that at one point an entire battalion was lost. It was here that a certain young Turkish officer, Mustafa Kamel turned to face his 57th battalion, who had been completely taken by surprise, and uttered the famous words 'I do not order you to fight, I order you to die'. During the ensuing fray, Mustafa himself was spared death by his pocketwatch that caught a piece of shrapnel directly in front of his heart. Mustafa Kemal then went on to become none other than Ataturk (Father of the Turks) - still revered reformer of the Turkish Empire. The 57th Batallion however was completely wiped out. To this day the Turkish army does not have a 57th batallion as a sign of respect to those lost their lives at Gallipoli.

Memorial to the 57th Batallion

Reading the sobering stories and accounts at the central museum

The peninsula today is calm and quiet, with pine forest regenerating over what once were bloody trenches and battlefields. There are a number of memorials linked by a one way circular route you can follow that commemorate strategic events during the campaign. What was most compelling for us was the number of Turks who were visiting to pay their respects to their own valiant soliders. At times we forget it isn't just about the ANZAC's, foremost this is a Turkish memorial to their own lost fathers and sons. It was the Turks who lost more than half the total casualties, over 100,000 Turkish soldiers lost their lives defending their homeland. In fact during our two days on the peninsula we only encountered one small minibus of backpacking "ANZACs", whilst we were journeying behind numerous Turkish plated cars.

Turkish soldier helping an ANZAC soldier

One of the most memorable stories you will hear on the pensinsula however is that of the humanity of the Turkish solider. History has it that the Turks were one of, if not the most gentlemanly of all soldiers, being famous for their compassion shown to the enemy soldier. There are numerous accounts of Turkish soliders physically carrying and attending to wounded ANZACs during ceasefires in the campaign. For us this was most eloquently summed up by the below quote from the head of the ANZAC troops...

EH/SJ

Istanbul, Constantinople

2007-07-17T14:16:00.000+01:00

Our eastern most point of our journey was quickly appearing before us as the sunset behind us. We'd managed to get here without hardly any trouble having expected all kind of delays at the Bulgarian/Turkish border. But they weren't to be and we even met some Polish travellers who were also heading our way. En route we discovered that they were also heading to the same campground on the edge of Istanbul.

Istanbul's approaching suburbs

Now that we were arriving the traffic had quickly built up and we found that we were not the only ones heading this way for the holidays. At times the motorway came to an abrupt standstill, without any apparent reason, quickly followed by the appearance of icecream salesmen! It seems that they'd stalled the traffic in order to get extra sales in, bizarre!

Traffic jams? No just a dedicated team of icecream salesmen on the Motorway!

Many other European plated cars were also headed this way. On closer inspection it was clear that they were merely returning to their homeland for the holidays. Turkey may not yet be part of the EU but looking at the variety of plates, Austrian, Swiss, plenty of Dutch and German too, they have already won the freedom of travel and judging by the quality of the cars doing pretty well for themselves too!

Luckily our sat nav TomTom appeared to have a map of Istanbul so we were able to pinpoint where the camping was and focus on the mad hat driving rather than worrying about directions too. Or so we thought! The traffic was thick but TomTom never missed a beat and we weaved our way through a spaghetti of on and off ramps on to various ring motorways. We'd compared notes on Istanbul with our Polish travelling companions and there was some debate as to how many people lived here, our guide said 16 million theirs 12, in actual fact we discovered that it's actually nearing 20 million people!

Before we knew it we'd landed in the middle of downtown Istanbul, I was adamant TomTom was right but when the next turn off would have taken us accross the Bosphorous then something must be wrong, we should have been on the other side of Istanbul, plus the insurance only covers us in 'European' Turkey. After nearly driving past the Blue Mosque, we made our way to where the camping should have been. Unfortunately on arrival we found an abandonded camping ground and gas station. Luckily a few other campervans were there and the gas station was selling its parking services. It seems that the government had closed down and bulldozed every campground in Istanbul due to 'problems' they had had. No one could quite explain what the problems were but many of the other places closed earlier in the year were teahouses built illegaly along the water front. It all had happened quite recently so one would have to speculate that this may have something to do with the forthcoming election who's banners we'd seen all through town.

The last time I'd vistited Istanbul was more than 10 years ago on a foray into the Middle East with my sister Julia and friend Tane. Tane and I hadn't seen each other for a while so spent much our time here in the Orient hostel bar drinking 'wodka' and orange. Much to Julia's dismay we spent the next days well hungover not seeing as much as we should. Tane and I were backpacking but Juila was only here for a week.

The cooling spray of water fountains outside the Aya Sofya

I could vaguely recognise the layout of the city but it had certainly moved on in leaps and bounds. The boulevards were all well kept, trams very modern and efficient and as always the Turkish people were welcoming and friendly. One evening we even went backto the Orient hostel below the Aya Sofya. This area had changed beyond recognition, the sleepy little back alley was now bustling with flashy resuraunts and the hostels had become more like hotels. One thing that was still there was the dilligent baker who sold bread till the wee hours of the night at around 10 cents a substantial loaf.

The Blue Mosque was wonderful to see and the central square between it and the Aya Sofya, a favorite spot for the classic postcard pictures of them both. as below ;)

The famous blue mosque

Surprisingly, the Mosque doesn't seem blue, but closer inspection reveals that the interior upper terrace is covered in blue tilings, which is where it got it's name from.

Northern entrance to the Blue Mosque

It's a great place to hide from the heat, especially when it's been pushing beyond 30 degrees, and also to contemplate the history of Istanbul, which really does define the term 'east meets west' so well.

Appropriately dressed for the occasion

Amazing interior designs

Sun setting on the spires of the Blue Mosque

No one can deny that back in the 1600s when Sultan Ahmet ordered a mosque to be built that would rival the Aya Sofya in terms of beauty and grandeur, that he really did succeed. But given that the Agia Sofia was built 1000 years prior, back around 500ad when the Roman Empire had recently split in two, it's a very impressive building and remained the largest Christian church in the world for over 1000 years.

The Aya Sofya wasn't quite as calming as the Blue Mosque, with it being over run by tourists in a way that mosques never would allow. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,the much revered reformer of the Turkish republic, turned this once church, then mosque into a museum as part of his secularisation of Turkey in the 1930's. This, along with the banning of the Fez and of the Turkish script alphabet (in favour of a latinised version) were all steps that were intended to bring the whole of Turkey closer to the west.

Modern art inside the Aya Sofya

The grand entrance to the Sofya

A window to the West looking out at the Blue Mosque

We wandered around the city for several days taking in all the sights and sounds, getting a long overdue shave, and down to the riverside for lunch at the local snack bars. We cleverly left the grand bazaar to the end of each day, knowing that we would not be leaving empty handed.

Inside the cooling shade of the Grand Bazaar

I give you special price!

The experience of haggling with the stall holders is always a laugh and we met some real characters, many were very interested to hear our opinons on Turkey after discovering this was our fourth trip to Turkey. After one intense discussion with an interested local, I even managed to seal his voting decision for the coming weekend.

Not quite sold on the hat, after all aren't they illegal?

After several nights risking the 'camping that wasn't' we drove in to spend a morning in the city, only to find ourselves ushered into a carpark directly beneath the Blue Mosque. We'd been in that area for a few days now and a local had recognised us, and introduced us to the lady who owned the parking, who in turn allowed us to stay over night and even offered the use of her shower too! Very typical Turkish hospitality - at its best! It turned out to be the best camping yet and with an abundance of Turkish baths in town what more would we need?

Serious game of Tavli on the Bosphoros water front

In all the stay was fabulous, Istanbul firmly became Sharon's favourite city ever, and it was sad to say goodbye to both the city and our local 'neighbourhood'. Luckily we weren't leaving Turkey just yet!

EH

Bulgarian Black Sea

2007-07-14T14:14:00.000+01:00

After the coastal experiences in Romania we we're hopeful that it couldn't get worse in Bulgaria. Firstly we were pleasantly surprised by the easy border crossing. Some fellow travellers had warned us of several hour delays and dodgy taxes to be paid but it seems that EU membership has had some positive effects on the border. The border post is now a set of abandoned buildings with a sleepy border guard to wave you past! Someone was there to collect our road tax but not even a exchange both was available.

Near deserted Romania-Bulgaria border post

Our first coastal stops weren't promising and we quickly moved on as the temperature was rising into the 30's and we were in need of some actual swim-able beaches. Fortunately we'd been recommended a spot by Kim and James and so headed to Albena which in fact turned out to be a relatively famous Communist era beach resort. At first we had our doubts, but the concrete architecture wasn't too bad and peppered with relatively tasteful low rise buildings near to the beach. Being there really did feel like a bit of a holiday away from our holiday, everything was very cheap and there was a entertaining strip of market stalls with live cover bands of dubious taste synthesising away into the night, some even quite good!

Soaking up the Black Sea sun

After we'd managed to absorb as much sun and resort tack as we could handle we pressed on down the coast to some of the other beaches. Our trusty European map has campgrounds marked so that usually makes finding a place to park by the beach easier. Unfortunately however it seems that the camping trade has made way for the relentless surge of property development and we struggled to find a single stretch of beach that wasn't covered in towering apartment blocks or soon to be apartment blocks, usually right where the campground would have been.

Endless coastal development

Further south of the second biggest city of Varna we ended up at a beautiful beach and old town of Sozopol. The campground left much to be desired but the beach was great as was the township. Camping with the Bulgarians was interesting as they really do seem to have a different sense of personal space. As the weekend began we woke on Saturday to find tents and hammocks set up right up close and around our spot. We're unsure how they put up with the lack of facilities and poor hygiene, but lucky for us we had our trusty solar shower and a nearby beach bar with more pleasing facilities.

Sozopol's main beach with a 50 cent pint

Trying my hand at some wind surfing

Yes that's right, real Bulgarian caviar!

The real shock however was to come from our neighbouring English caravaning couple from Doncaster. Astoundingly they have the dubious honour of being the first people from the UK I've ever met that didn't know we speak English in New Zealand. Somehow they had driven all the way to Bulgaria with their caravan in tow, but were totally unaware that it was possible to drive to Greece and Turkey, dispite being less than 100km from the border of both. They had been ripped off all the way - imagine being charged over E300 pounds to drive across Serbia, and on another occasion, having been relieved of over 3000 euro and £4000 in cash out of their caravan and still not "believing in plastic". Certainly the least travel savvy people I've met and ever hope to meet!! I'm not sure what they expected to find in Bulgaria but I hope they managed to get back to Doncaster.

EH

Romanian Black Sea

2007-07-09T13:39:00.000+01:00

Ever since I was a little girl it has been a dream of mine to stand on the shores of the Black Sea.

In the moments between "bedtime!" and actually falling to sleep I would sit up with the atlas and trace with my finger the outlines of distant countries, oceans and seas. And it was the Black Sea (along with the Yellow and the Red) that intrigued me the most - was it really Black??

So it was the fufillment of a childhood dream you could say to be standing knee deep in the Black Sea, south of Constanta on the Romanian coast.

Oh the thrill of an English language newspaper!

Our drive to get here had taken us through the grimy industrial suburbs of Bucharest and along the newly constructed motorway to Constanta, where the driving seemed to be as relaxed as any we had encountered in this country so far. We were originally aiming for the beach town of Mamaia, but on arrival, the absolute hordes of holidaymakers, coupled with a primitive camping and being charged a fee to drive in and out of town, together with the not so appealing hulk of an industrial plant perched right on northern end of the beach (not so romantic huh?) didn't inspire us so much. So instead we headed south towards the intriguingly named resorts of Neptune, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn.

A truly inspiring beach town

At first we thought that given the names of these towns someone was having a bit of fun, but on closer inspection I'm not quite sure who's sense of fun they consulted. Strips of sand cluttered up to the eyeballs with low rise concrete blocks, pumping techno and shops overflowing with gaudy inflatable beach toys and semi-pornographic beach towels galore. Up until the revolution of '89 Neptune was the exclusive resort of the Communist party, and still today incredibly popular with local Romanians and holidaying Russians alike, I'm not sure if anything has changed. Given the size of the traffic jams and sun worshipping crowds, this coast is still a real draw for many, if not for us.

Being typical Kiwis, we opted for the furtherest, quietest stretch of sand...

The locals on the other hand prefer to press the flesh

The relief of being back home!

And as to the big question, is the Black Sea really black?
Well, not really black, but not exactly blue either.

SJ

Transylvania WHORRR HORRR HORRR HARRR!

2007-07-08T13:04:00.000+01:00

Despite the traffic we managed to steer Wickse across the Hungarian border through the chaotic driving to Sighişoara and into the heart of Transylvania. The plains we passed through were dotted with the most impressive fields of sunflowers and very green picturesque rolling hills. It wasn't too far but slow going with the roads mostly being single lane making for more madcap overtaking manoeuvres from the locals. We opted to stay behind something big even if it took us longer.

Fields of sunflowers in the Romanian countryside

It is here in Sighişoara that Vladimir 'the Impaler' Dracula was born. Judging by the view we had on arrival it seemed more than appropriate with the skies very red and spooky!

Sun setting over Dracula's medieval village of Sighişoara

In actual fact however Vlad didn't drink blood by night and sleep by day, but he was quite a ruthless ruler who did torture people and enjoyed watching his victims being impaled with a stake through their spine. Not very nice, but as it goes with Chinese whispers, by the time Bram Stoker got around to telling the story of Dracula's undead, it all started here.

Spooky nightlife in these parts!

Vlad was born just on the right

Great little town despite being firmly on the tourist trail, well on the trail of backpacking Americans anyway and abounding with plenty of undead souvenirs. They hadn't managed to Disney-fy the town just yet but judging by all of the construction underway I'm sure that will happen soon enough.

Great view from the top!

We traversed through Transylvania's rolling hillsides towards Brasov, where we dropped by to spend an afternoon before heading off to Bran. Brasov really surprised us and despite the cheesy Hollywood sign displaying BRASOV on the hillside (just in case we'd forgotten where we were, duh) it really turned out to be pretty flashy.

Guess where we are?

We had to pinch ourselves to remember where we were, Romania as we'd imagined it was not, looking more like a smartly presented Scandinavian township. Chic cafes lined the side streets and the buildings were all brightly coloured in coordinating hues.

Romania or Sweden?

One giveaway however was the ever present private security guards hovering about on the edge of the wonderfully renovated city centre. It seems that the city felt it needed someone independent of the police to watch over their precious tourists, and their euros too of course!

A short drive south of Brasov was Bran where we'd come to see 'Dracula's' castle.

Could this be Dracula's castle?

Well that's what we'd heard it was, but after cross examining the guide books we were disappointed to find out that no undead had walked the streets and that Vlad Dracula had only spent a few nights here during one of his campaigns against the southern counties. We should have realised when we read that it was 'strangely' popular. It seems the local marketing board had managed to place a few Vampire rumours about the place, realising that the blood sucking undead sold better than the reality of a restored residence of Princess Marie of England (daughter of Victoria) who had been married off to a minor Romanian king.

Courtyard of Marie's residence

It was once a working castle guarding the pass through the mountains into Transylvania, but all those traces had mostly been removed. Queen Marie renovated the residence from a border castle to a rather bohemian chateau in the early 1900's and it's this story that is told here. It was a good insight into her life here and shows how it was decorated by her in a mix of Near Eastern and Western styles, One can imagine that it would have been quite a change of pace from the English court in London but it seems that she adapted well and enjoyed a rather salubrious existence, vampires or no.

Arrrrrrgh, look out I vont to trink your blood!

Bucharest

2007-07-08T12:22:00.000+01:00

Okay, so I admit we only paid a fleeting visit to Bucharest, but I can safely say that's enough for us. I'm sure there are plenty of lovely non Communist sights to see and it has apparently some great museums. But after a couple of days vamp(ir)ing around the lolling countryside of Transylvania, and with the beaches of the (much anticpated) Black Sea beckoning, a somewhat ratty, hot and oppressive city was not the top of our priorities. Especially after the night before!

I see they really get into outdoor advertising over here

After a very long and slow drive from Bran, we reached Bucharest quite late. We were quite eager to push on through to the coast, but with another 3.5 hours of driving ahead to a relatively unknown destination, parking up in an ACSI (Dutch camping association) approved campsite on the outskirts of Bucharest sounded like the better option. If only! Lord knows how ASCI managed to pass this one. A lot of money must have changed hands is all I can imagine. The "camping" as it was, was little more than a small carpark between a series of seriously ugly chalets, painted all manner of distasteful colours. (Of course, as culturally insensitive as we are, we forget that "camping" to many Eastern European nations we've visited means staying in chalets, not tents and most definitely not campervans!). The most humourous part of the whole situation was that they wanted to charge us significantly more to sleep in the van in the carpark than to hire a chalet! After repeatedly pointing out the illogicality of this, and a bike ride down the road to pay a visit to the very moody and increasingly irate manager, we defiantly hired a chalet, paid the money, then promptly ruffled up the bedclothes and nicked the hopsitality soap before retiring to Wickse for a night spent locked in with the security straps belted on (lest the manager or someone else dodgy decided to come visiting). And then the party started! The sounds of Eurovision pop-cum-techno blaring away until daybreak courtesey of the neighbouring disco. Nice.

Hmmm, that corn doesn't look too appetising

Nocturnal experiences aside, we decided an early morning rip through Bucharest en route to the coast may be in order. Lonely Planet describes Bucharest as a "fascinating working experiment of mixed eras...wide boulevards with century old villas, fashioned in the best Paris style, mingle with (scattered and hidden) 18th century monasteries, communist-built housing blocks and statement-making government headquarters". Hmmm, quite a melange then. Curiously enough, it goes on to include in its 'Top Five Bucharest' the centre on a Sunday. And I can only guess why!

Arcul de Triumpf. Looks quite familiar doesn't it?

Architecture aside, in order to appreciate the state of this city (and the entire country I guess) you need to understand a little about its more recent past... Nicolae Ceausescu came to power in 1965. It's fair to say his rule was both chaotic and meglomaniac, creating posts not only for his brothers, but for his wife and son as well. He gave birth to some really bizarre policies. Not only content with the 'systemisation of agriculture' which entailed the resettlement of villagers into concrete city apartment blocks, some of his more famous ones included instituting power cuts to save money, and exporting much needed national food supplies in order to eliminate foreign debt and look good in front of the world - which in turn resulted in rationing of even the most staple of food stuffs. If this wasn't enough - and if you were game enough to oppose him, there was even more instore - his experimental methods of torture - which included the cancer causing radiation of his political opponents. Nice. You can begin to appreciate then the pleasure of many of Romanians in watching Ceausescu and his wife being executed by firing squad on live TV when they finally caught him in 1989.

Nonetheless we were well enough intrigued to spend a stress free Sunday morning hour's drive around this very odd city. Here's some of our highlights...

Ceauşescu's pride and joy - Parliament Palace - the 2nd largest building in the world

Hmmm, a red fountain

They really do dye the water here in Bucharest

Look, there's a green one too!

View down Bucharest's own Champs Elysee, but they had to make their one 6m longer than the original

Nice to see a bit of Unilever in downtown

Ceauşescu didn't like churches so he built up around them to hide them

The former securitate building, destroyed during the revolution and now nicely renovated into a cafe

Down with Ceauşescu and his oppressive monsters! Demonstrating outside the former Communist Party HQ

Thoughts on Romania

2007-07-07T15:08:00.000+01:00

It was with much anticipation, a little trepidation and a whole swarm of butterflies in the belly that we crossed the Hungarian border into Romania. As children, it's fair to say we both were quite in awe of the whole Count Dracula, Vampire thing. But as adults, we (well, specifically me) were quite taken by horror stories of a different kind - the travel ones. Before we left many people were more than keen to share their own doom and gloom stories of travelling in Romania, warning us and wondering aloud why we'd even want to go there, especially with the van. But funnily enough, this was all from people who'd never even been there! Our new English friends Kim and James had been through there last summer with their motorhome and had nothing but encouraging words to share. The only thing of any dodgy 'interest' they wanted to point out were the border formalities, which included being made to drive through a pool of disinfectant and being made to pay an 'ecology tax' - more thriller than horror don't you think?!

As it was, things had moved on very fast since Romania (and Bulgaria) joined the EU on January 1st this year. Gone was any sense of border as it was, and the only one at home was a single border guard - either Hungarian or Romanian, we couldn't even tell! There we were, left to our own devices without even a single quesion or (more importantly!) a stamp in the passport! To be honest, I was a bit put out actually.

Welcome to Romania! Our first sitings of the ubiquitous horse & cart

Now, the other thing that everyone had been bleating on about before we left was the state of the roads. But it must be said, that with a couple of exceptions, we found the roads perfectly adequate - better even than Poland and Slovakia - and a hundred times better than some of the roads in Ireland back in 1999. So on we drove through the absolutely beautiful rolling pasture land of Western Romaina - much of it reminding us of parts of the North Island in NZ (except for the horse and carts) - and onwards towards the much anticipated destination of Transylvania!!!

Western Romania or the North Island of NZ?

Now one thing we debated on as to the similarity with the North Island was the driving. It can get pretty bad in NZ, but it didn't take long for both of us to reach the conclusion that the driving here is a million times worse. Talk about 'death wish'? These guys must have been on the highway to hell! We must have seen at least four rather serious accidents on the first 3 hour drive to Sighişoara, all pretty fresh, yet it just seemed to continue all the way until we got to the coast. And When we say 'death wish' - check out this series of photos I snapped out the window...and concentrate on the distance to the oncoming traffic!!! (for NZ/UK readers, remember you drive on the right here).

Poverty is another thing that Romania is rather 'famous' for, and something we'd heard that travellers find quite difficult to stomach. While there certainly were areas that were certainly deprived (especially in the cities), and Romania is certainly one of the poorest nations in Europe, on the whole this wasn't as overwhelming as we'd expected. The land looks really abundant, with local produce for sale along the roadside and fields of sunflowers and newly harvested wheat stretching out as far as the eye could see. But I guess it depends how you define poverty. I've heard people wax on about the horse and cart thing - sure these people are using fairly ancient farming and transport techniques, but given their age (most of the villages seem to be home to the older generations while the youngies are off in the cities) and their experience and expertise do you really think such farmers would suddenly embrace state of the art tractors and combine harvesters? And plus the horses are some of the best looking ones I've ever seen. In my humble opinion I think they'd be quite happy to carry on as they've always known. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Depressing sights in the city

Hope it wasn't a car accident

But look at the gorgeousness of the countryside!!!

A way of life in these parts

No tractor needed here?!

Blue skies and hay stacks

Fields of gold

How do you like your honey?!

More horse & cart action

Something that was really quite sad to drive past though were the numerous Communist era chemical plants, all blackened out, dilapidated and deserted. They say they were so dangerous to local communities that until the early 90s, some two thirds of children in these areas showed signs of mental illness.

Driving and (former) industrial pollution aside, Romania was a real treat. Everyone was really friendly, the roads were totally fine, and the toilets (at least the ones we experienced) aren't bad either. We weren't overly impressed with Bucharest - but then who's really into a large sprawling former communist captial city 'enhanced' by totally oppressive meglomaniac anyway??

Budapest

2007-07-04T14:42:00.000+01:00

We had last visited Budapest in January 2004 and went about seeing the sites in sub zero temperatures. We did a pretty good blat of the city on that occasion, so this time decided on using our time to attend to a bit of business - notably getting the car alarm fixed, buying a new CD writer for the laptop (very important to be able to back up all these digital photos!), and a visit to the dentist. That's right, Budapest is the dentistry capital of Europe, and has single handedly developed the concept of 'dental tourism'. We were well impressed with the surgery we visited, which was actually the upstairs of someone's house in suburban Pest. A checkup, clean and polish later we were feeling our sparkly best and set of to attend to the rest of our errands.

The bronze boy with Castle Hill behind

We were very fortunate to find a great campsite right in the city itself, and were very pleasantly surprised to run into our very first travelling Kiwi couple, Sean and Julia, also travelling in a VW camper. They had just had one right mad escapade up from Greece, driving nonstop from the Greek border through Albania and Montenegro en route to Croatia, and in turn up to Budapest.
So it was a great opportunity for a good exchange of travel stories and general Kiwi banter, and at their suggestion enjoyed an amble through the local flea market...check it out!

All manner of things you can buy at the Esceri flea market!

Fancy a knife with that sir?

...or maybe an AK47??

We did manage a little sightseeing during our time though. I was very keen to check out the so called 'Terror Haza', or House of Terror, which is a museum based in the former Hungarian Nazi headquarters on a plush central boulevard. Its purpose is to educate and present the truth and facts about life during the dual occupation of Hungary by first Nazi Germany and then the Soviet Communists up until total independence in 1989. This is a piece of history that we were both totally ignorant about - I guess they didn't call it the 'Iron Curtain' for nothing huh?

The Hungarian people really suffered. (I would imagine all of occupied Europe suffered). Just as they were celebrating their liberation from the total oppression of the Nazi regime, along come the Soviets ready to impose a further 40 odd years of communist oppression, and this in particular was something that we had known nothing about. Life during this time was especially difficult. This was a time when the secret police ensured everybody lived in absolute fear, with constant informing, spying, torture and the constant threat of the Soviet work camps (they actually transported "criminals" from Hungary to heinous work camps scattered across Russia and Siberia, where many, assuming they survived, were never able to return). In some cases there were Auschwitz survivors who, once liberated and returned to Hungary, were then redetained and sent to Russia. Apparently, the last prisoner only returned to Hungary in 1999.

Terror Haza - HQ of firstly the Hungarian Nazi party, and then the Secret Police

In keeping with the communist theme, we paid a return visit to one of our favourite ever sites - Statue Park. This could best be described as a statue graveyard, where now rest dozens of communist statues which were rounded up and dismantled from their original homes following the withdrawal of the Soviets in 89. It's a real credit to Hungary that instead of destroying them - as in many other former communist controlled countries - they actually kept them as a memento from the past, to serve as a poignant reminder and to educate future generations and tourists alike. Here are some of our favourites...

Hungarian-Soviet friendship (if you can really call it that?)

The man himself

...and again

The righteous Communist worker

...and just to give you an idea of the size of this behemoth!

The quintessential Soviet solider

Another proud Communist worker

Comrades from Franco's regime over in Spain

Those Communists start them young over here

Onward Communist soldiers!

Eger

2007-06-28T14:17:00.000+01:00

Eger, the home of Bulls Blood, the famous Hungarian wine, so how could we possibly go past this one? OK, so we have been getting comments on how we always seem to have a glass of wine in hand but the only campground in Eger was in 'stumbling' distance from over 30 different wine cellars so how were we to resist ;)

En route here from Poland we whizzed back through Slovakia and into Hungary, and along some of the smaller roads barely marked on our map book but thankfully TomTom knew the way and we passed some magnificent countryside and little villages I'm sure not many tourists have ever tread. It was quite incredible to see how the features and even colouring of the people in the villages we passed changed within such a small geograpy. It's just amazing how much more of the world this expanded European Union has opened up for us.

Minorita Templom - Baroque loveliness in downtown Eger

The town of Eger is a lovely baroque city with a grand castle perched above it. It was here that the Hungarians of 1552 halted the Ottoman advance into Europe, and on an Hungarian language tour of the castle that we accidentally ended up on they were very keen to show off all the tricky defences they had in place. Most of that was through the sprawling catacombs of the castle which made for good effect, especially considering we were down so deep underground and we weren't quite sure when it would end or how to get out!

Detail of Dobo Istavan and his mates routing the Turks in 1552. Not very nice at all.

Secret stash of weaponary inside the catacombs

It was also during this siege that the infamous Hungarian Bulls Blood wine got its name... The defenders of the castle were badly out numbered so in a final push to see the marauders defeated, captain Dobo fortified his soldiers with red wine. The Turkish invaders seeing the red stained beards believed that they'd been drinking bulls blood instead (to increase their strength), and according to legend were well terrified. Easy mistake I guess??

View of Eger from the castle

Dobo Istvan square

Sharon in the campaign tent

Here's a surprise - Europe's northen most remains of the 16th century Ottoman invasion

An alfresco evening

Funnily enough, during our two day stay we also met the most British travellers of our entire journey so far. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that in this town you can bring your own empty plastic water bottles of any size and fill wine by the litre right? And sure enough, although we had our own little wander around the wine cellars of Szépasszony völgy (the attractively named 'Valley of the Beautiful Women'), had a little tasting here, and another there, and finished off with the most delicious goulash ever (although in Hungary goulash is actually a soup not a stew), it took our newly befriended English campers Kim and James to show us how it's really done in these here parts. On our second night, with the desire to make a little more effort on the wine front, and with them all empty from the nights before, James produced two empty water bottles and off the boys went to hunt and gather. 15 minutes later they were back with 4 litres between them for the grand sum of €8!! And a long night ahead...

Szépasszony völgy

Deliciousness in the shape of not 'Goulash'

Auschwitz-Birkenau

2007-06-24T17:39:00.000+01:00

I don't really think either of us possess the eloquence required to give a true impression of this place, so I think we'll let the pictures tell the story.

Although, there's just a couple of things that we'd like to share.

Firstly that Auschwitz is actually made up of three camps, two of which are still possible to visit today, Auschwitz and Birkenau (ie all that remained at the time of Soviet liberation, as the Nazis attempted to destroy all evidence once they realised the war was about to end). Auschwitz was originally considered a 'work camp' for Polish prisoners of the Nazi regime, before it was expanded for the purpose of extermination. Birkenau was designed later in the war to function purely as an extermination camp, capable of holding up to 200,000 victims at a time. They had only managed to build "accommodation" for 100,000 before the Soviet liberation.

I guess the one thing that stood out for us is the sheer scale of Birkenau. Remnants of barracks and the barbed wire fences that enclosed them stretch out to the horizon as far as the eye could see, separated down a middle aisle by the remains of infamous one-way railway line. We were told you would need 2-3 days just to properly visit Birkenau alone.

Auschwitz

Birkenau

Krakow

2007-06-22T10:18:00.000+01:00

Here we are again in another city that we have long been keen to visit, yay!

After a lengthy drive from Spis Castle and through the Dukla Pass, we crossed the border for our first visit to Poland and headed towards Krakow. Quite a round about way to get from the Slovakian High Tatras to Krakow it must be said, and the very poor conditions of the Polish roads made it even more tenuous. But well worth it once we got there.

Parking up and getting ready to explore!

Cloth Hall, focal point of Rynek Glowny - the main square

Krakow was once the royal capital of Poland, and is crammed with medieval buildings, cobbled alleyways and Europe's largest medieval market square measuring something like 200m x 200m. It is filled with all sorts of interesting legends and remnants of history, quite nicely intertwined with modern day life. My favourite would have to be the hourly bugle call played from the highest tower of the very large St Mary's Church in the main square. The melody, which was played in olden times as a warning call, breaks off abruptly to symbolise the moment (according to legend) when the throat of a 13th century trumpeter was pierced by the arrow of an invading Tatar (Mongol). Nice touch in the 21st century huh.

St Mary's, with the trumpeting tower top left

Town Hall Tower

Poland is also the home of the famous composer Chopin, and so his legacy can be seen, heard and tasted throughout the city. Seen and tasted in the form of a commemorative vodka displayed in many a liquor store window, and heard wafting from many a street performer. We spent a very enjoyable evening sampling some of his aural legacy, along with a smattering of Mozart and Bach by a string quintet in St Peter and St Paul, one of the many glorious churches in the old town. In fact music was something that seemed to punctuate our visit to Krakow. Following the classical concert we ambled out into the main square to be greeted by the sight and sound that is the Polish Beatles, rockin' and rollin'and head shaking their way through such classics aas 'Hard Day's Night', 'She Loves You' and 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand'. I was quite transfixed by the hair actually. I couldn't work out if it was truly real or just wigs. Pretty impressive either way. One thing about the Beatles though, it's amazing just how easily their music cuts right across the generations, evidenced by the sight of children and their parents, young lovers and oldies all getting jiggy together, right there in the main square of Old Krakow town. Amen.

Church of St Peter & St Paul

Free live music, although of a completely different calibre, had been on offer the previous night too. We happened to be in Krakow on midsummer's night, and in accordance with tradition, the city was gearing up for the Festival of Wianki, where young maidens were going to prance around wearing a circlet of flowers before throwing them into the river (or at least that's the understanding I got from the waitress at the bar in the Sheraton where we had seeked refuge to watch an America's Cup race). And in order to get the maidens and everyone else in the midsummer mood the city fathers threw a giant outdoor 80's concert. The young chap at the information centre had very proudly shown me the set list and I was absolutely overwhelmed to see my own personal 80s favourites Bananarama on the play list!! Unfortunately though, the songs they had chosen to play for their two song set were more than a little before my time, and once we were back at the camping and safely sheltering from the cold in Wickse, nothing could get me out into the city again...not even a (potentially lipsynched version of 'Cruel Summer'.

Art for sale in the Old Town

Another highlight of the city was visit out to the salt mine of Wieliczka. Now normally a mine of any sort isn't such a massive drawcard for me, but Eric was chomping at the bit, and given my enthusiasm for the mockup at the Deutches Museum in Munich, I thought I should give it the benefit of the doubt - especially since it was going to be financed from the 'culture budget' and not the entertainment one. Once we and the 30 others on the English tour had manually descended the 135 odd metres into the bowels of the operation - or at least as far as they allow you access too - it was a different story, it was thoroughly amazing! They have been mining here since the middle ages, if not earlier, and we must have walked for at least 2km through this fascinating subterranean world. In almost every chamber there were superbly carved culptures hewn out of the salty rock, and even more compelling were the chapels (the miners over time had become devoutly religious, working as they did in such a dangerous environment). The largest and most glorious of them all measuring 54m by 17m and 12m high, complete with incredibly large chandeliers, crafted out of salt crystals. The chapel is regularly used for Sunday services and they also hold weddings here - can you just imagine!

Salt sculptures recalling the history of the Wieliczka salt mine

Chapel of the Blessed Kinga

Salt sculpture

The High Tatras

2007-06-20T07:16:00.000+01:00

After Bratislava, the main highlight of Slovakia has to be the beautiful countryside, in particular the mountains. And so it was that we found ourselves heading back to the ski fields... only this time we'd be happy to find the pistes bare and not a snow flake in sight!

The High Tatras (on a good day!)

The High Tatras are a narrow range of mountains bordering Slovakia and Poland which happen to be the highest in Eastern Europe. But they are only a mere 25km wide, soaring up from plains extending out to the north and south and, do actually appear to have just been plonked there quite out of place. The sight of these 2,600m plus mountains rising from the flat countryside below is supposed to be very striking, but the drama of it all was diminished somewhat by the rain clouds that seemed to be clustering around them the whole time we were there.

View through the storm ravaged forest

It has a very similar feel to that of National Park, our local ski area in the North Island of NZ, which is based upon a rather large (volcanic) mountain which also appears to have been dropped there in the middle of it all, rather like a pimple. The sleepiness of the resort was another similarity, as were the open fields of grassland around Tatranska Lomnica, the village we stayed in. However this was not always the case; this vast area was previously covered in quite mature forest that was almost entirely destroyed by a huge storm in 2004. What's left are the gnarled and mangled tree stumps, looking like a giant had just come in and trampled all over it. Most of the logs were removed to be used for their timber, with the stumps being left in place. It's quite a sight, and it's hard to imagine the forces that must have been required to tear these trees apart. And quite hard to comprehend that the damage from this one storm is going to need 100 years to recover.

A very depressing sight

At a few points along the Tatras there are lifts to take people up the mountains, normally to ski in winter, but they also run in the summer months for sightseeing opportunities. At Tatranska Lomnica there is a two stage gondala that rises to 2600m from the township at 800m. Unfortunately the top half was absolutely clouded in so there was not much point going up for a totally obscured view! Plenty of treks left from the half way point at 1900m so we took a one way ticket up and then intended to trek across the mountain to a waterfall and the back to Lomnica via a different track.

The view at mid station

The information center was surprisingly blase about treking in the alpine regions and this came as quite a surprise knowing that mountain conditions can change very rapidly. After some very vague directions of which tracks to follow we ended up treking to the wrong waterfall and actually getting tantalisingly close to the Polish border too, by heading up a 2000m pass. So what was billed as an easy 4 hour walk ended up in a 6 hour sunset trek... The scenery was well worth it and we had a great day out in the fresh alpine air, but our legs were definitely going to pay for that the next day!

Crossing the snowline, en route to Poland!

The waterfall we were supposed to reach, several hours later!

Early morning in the High Tatras

The next day brought more walking on our exhausted legs around the remains of an amazing fortress, Spis Castle, that is famed for managing to hold out against the Tatars (Mongols to you and I) in the 13th century. Although parts of it are in ruins, it is still pretty much intact and had a great exhibition inside, displaying some rather gruesome torture instruments and ancient weapons. I even got to fire an antique musket pistol!

Spis Castle - the largest in Europe

Bang!

From there we cruised up to the border of Slovakia and Poland, via the Dukla Pass which witnessed some severe fighting during WWII. Today Soviet and German tanks, and the occasional gun emplacement still line the road, left in situ following the Soviet liberation of what is now Slovakia at the end of the war.

Eric the Liberator!

Bratislava

2007-06-18T11:54:00.000+01:00

In a fabulous case of coincidence, it turned out that our friend Cath was going to be in Bratislava on business on the exact date we were planning to be in the Slovak capital! She was able to change her flight to arrive from London on the Sunday afternoon, ahead of her Monday meeting, allowing us to have a great catch up and our very own private tour guide.

One night in Brat

A bit early for your Monday meeting Cath!

Bratislava is a very quaint little city, the development of which is happening right under your nose. In the couple of years Cath has been coming here she reckons it has changed so much, with EU and foreign investment flooding in. Quite disconcerting nevertheless for a giant Tesco to be the focal point of the commercial district!

The main square

Man at work

It's Tesco, but not as we know it!

We had great fun barhopping through the outdoor cafes of the old town and noting how sophisticated it all seemed - not exactly what we were expecting from a nation shrugging off its recent communist past. But I guess that's the point really.

The old and the new, cheek by jowl

Hmmm, what were they thinking?

As with Cesky Krumlov, the city seemed to have survived the worst of the war - and ensuing communist rule, with its 18th century Rococo buildings and sidewalk cafes lovingly renovated in pastel hues. However you don't have to look far to see some really heinous buildings of obvious Soviet design. In fact you only need to turn your gaze across the river from the ancient castle to see row upon row of institutional concrete housing blocks known as Petrzalka, and the so called 'New Bridge' over the Danube, which quite obviously resembles a UFO... Big Brother is watching you!

The Soviets destroyed a good swathe of the old town in order to create this road

The so called 'New Bridge'

A tiny snapshot of Petrzalka, which seems to go on for miles

It was really great to catch up with Cath and enjoy a night out in the big smoke, but it was soon time to climb back onboard and head (quite literally) for the hills...

The Danube Valley

2007-06-15T11:52:00.000+01:00

One of the earliest routes we had planned before we left London was the highly scenic stretch of the Austrian Danube between the towns of Melk and Krems. Eric had journeyed through here with the family back in '87 and could remember 'lots and lots of castles', but add to that the mighty Danube river, cycle paths and vineyards galore and you have quite an attractive mix really. Plus after years of belting out Strauss's 'Blue Danube Waltz' in the school orchestra, I was dead keen to see if the Danube was really blue...

A boat load of John Deere tractors cruising on the Blue Danube

Room with a view, Grein

Our first stop was a place known as Stift Melk, and despite its name it's a quite a serious place really. It's one massive behemouth of a Benedictine abbey, originating from the 11th century, rebuilt in flamboyant Baroque style following a fire in the 18th century (as the saying goes, if it's Baroque, don't fix it).

Stift Melk

The library. Wow! check out the ceiling!!

As impressive as it really is, a visit through its museum, coupled with the heat, did get quite heavy going at times, with the highly overwhelming religiousness of it all - relics of somebody famous' fingernails and all. The grotesqueness of a skeletonal saint enclosed in a glass case in a side chapel of the cathedral really finished me off and I was keen to move right along down the river before the 'melk' curdled for me any further.

Yes, that really is a skeleton in a glass case

Enlightenment

Krems is a very pretty town half an hours' drive down stream. It is also situated in the heart of the Wachau wine growing region, and was full swing in the middle of its spring wine festival. Every town in the region appears to have a "kellergesser", a street where all the wine growers live, and whose gardens form the actual vineyards as such. In good Wachau tradition, each neighbour takes it in turn to throw open the gates to their backyards and create a mini wine garden, offering the fruits of their labour, coupled with some seriously good home cooked food (if only at 1b Fisherton St!). It was quite an experience to be sitting in someone's backgarden of a late Saturday afternoon and sampling their wares at 80 cents a pop!

A neighbourhood tasting

Hey-diddly-ho neighbour!

As friendly as the locals were, it didn't take long for someone to offer to come and photograph us. In this case it was a very interesting older Austrian gent, whose excitement at finding out our origin led to a story about his former pupil's decision to immigrate to NZ a few decades ago (quite radical I gather from the conversation). Turns out this chap henceforth met and married a Kiwi, and their daughter happens to be none other than Claudia Reigler, our current NZ Olympic representative skier! (gotta love Austrians!).

View from the kellergesser

We had great weather during our time here in this particular bend in the Danube, so that offered us the perfect opportunity to hit the cyclepaths. We headed back up stream past a couple of likewise pretty villages - Durnstein and Spitz, passed ruined castles, wild flowers, the flowing river and more vineyards. Thirsty work indeed!

Cycling past Gruner Vetliners

So privileged to be travelling here alongside yet another mighty and famous European river, and quite exciting to know that we will be hooking up with her again soon - as she journeys through the big smoke of Budapest, and on to create the border between Romania and Bulgaria on her way to the Black Sea...we'll report back on her soon!

Dusk falling on the Danube

Cesky Krumlov

2007-06-14T10:32:00.000+01:00

We had been wanting to visit Cesky Krumlov for several years now, with so many of our friends raving about it. Lonely Planet calls it a "pocket sized Prague", and given that the capital wasn't on our itinerary this time around we were even more keen to get to Cesky.

Most importantly though were the bears. Our mate Tane had been going on for years about there being bears in the castle moat in Cesky Krumlov, but for most of this time I hadn't believed him. I mean, how could there be bears in a castle moat? In this day and age?? (Perhaps he was meaning 'beers'?!). We just had to go and see for ourselves...

The very pretty town of Cesky Krumlov

The town of Cesky Krumlov sits in a bend of, in fact almost encircled by, the Vltava river, watched over by the impregnable fortress-castle. It is indeed a very quaint, and very picturesque village full of very well restored Renaissance and Baroque buildings, narrow cobblestone lanes and an elegant town square. It seems to have managed to escape much of the wrath of two world wars.

View of the castle

Pretty, pretty, pretty!

We had a good amble around the old town, through the castle grounds and to the local brewery, but once again we were quite keen to limit our exposure to the crowds of tourists descending upon us - although it was pleasing to see as many local tourists and school groups as American summer schoolers and large Texan families.

View from the Round Tower

The artisticly "interesting" example of 'Tromp l'Oeil' architecture - there's no blocks, it's just painted on!

The other priority for Eric was of course the Pilsner. It was a bit of a shame that we didn't manage to make it to Plzen, the actual spiritual home of the frothy amber liquid, and Eric's favourite beer in the entire world, Pilsner Urquell (well next to Grolsch at least). But we were able to taste a fresh brew at the local Eggenberg brewery followed by a trip to the supermarket to obtain a bottle of Urquell with our very last Czech Koruna, which made a good compromise.

Oh, and about those bears? Yes! There were indeed bears in the castle moat!!!

And here's some proof...

If you look really hard...

Blimey it's a real bear!

And yet another!

Isn't he cute?

Munich

2007-06-10T10:26:00.000+01:00

Munich has long been on our list of places to go but one too many horror stories of the infamous Munich Octoberfest beer festival has put us off til now. Here you can be sure that any local can quickly spot an Antipodean accent, as this is where over the past few years plenty of Kiwis and Aussies have continued to work on lowering the tone to new depths.

Despite these stories Germans we have met on our travels have always recommended Munich highly, and wow were we pleasantly surprised by what we found!

We stayed at a fantastic campground on the side of the Munich river 6kms up stream of the city. A cycle path follows all the way along the river into town making for a nice cycle in each morning. The river has been landscaped in such an impressive way too, with forest and parkland on either side. All the way along this stretch canals have been created to control the flow and divert it however they choose. One section was covered in beaches; another made to look like a fast following mountain river with rapids and rock pools, and the regular sight of beer gardens adds a nice touch too.

One of Munich's may city riverside beaches

The weather picked up nicely when we arrived and the whole of Munich seemed to be out enjoying the river. In true sign of holiday brain we thought it was Thursday and marvelled at how the 35 hour working week was being used to great effect. A day later we actually found out that it was Saturday! Oops.

A very entertaining English guide led us on a walking tour of the city pointing out all of its quirks and history, the English Garden being an interesting highlight where nude sunbathing is the norm and only just a stone's throw from downtown. To be honest, to us it seemed any bit of park or riverside was fair game for stripping sunbathers! Before anyone gets too excited, be warned that 90% of these are elderly men and have been in the sun for far too long already!

Also on the tour we encountered another use that the citizens of Munich have found for the river; no coast in sight so why were there so many people wandering about with surfboards? Answer was the standing wave, where keen locals attempt to ride on man made rapids! Brilliant! check out the pictures...

Looking down the rivers rapid

Surfing on the standing wave

Hum... not that anyone took any notice!

After the tour we went in search of the beer gardens Munich is so famous for. It seems quite the done thing in this town, and we were impressed to see people from all different walks of life enjoying a beer in the afternoon sun. There were even a couple of wedding parties (sophisticated ones too) being hosted in a beer garden! The one thing we couldn't quite get our heads around though was the size of the beers everyone - including a few grandmothers - were drinking, an entire litre at a time!! Impressive to say the least.

Was that the first or third litre?

But the one highlight for the both of us had to be the Deutches Museum. Now normally a science and technology museum wouldn't be a top draw for Sharon, but it has to be known that this one was so thoroughly enticing that we both lost an entire day in its 6 floors of exhibits, everything from a complete reconstruction of mining through the ages, to how metals are created, tooling workshops from last century through to now, welding, musical instruments (including some very scary bagpipes with the animals still attached), printing presses, food technology, the development of flight (although we were disappointed not to see any mention of Richard Pearse or Jean Batten) complete with real Messerschmitts, several floors on astronomy and space exploration, mapping and geodesy, textile production, the development of computers and programming, electronics, telecommunications, marine navigation, bridge construction, pharmacology...and the list goes on! We were so utterly exhausted by the time we were escorted out at 5pm, but had only managed to see about half of it. You could really spend an entire day just trying to absorb one subject matter. And of course, what made it really interesting for us was to see the development of some of these areas from a German perspective and not neccesarily a British one for a change.

1800's engeneering work shop, all in working order too!

One of the first 'minature' steam tirbine engines

Amazing aviation section over 4 stories high

We really enjoyed Munich, a really great, compact city, and the Deutches Museum was an absolute thrill for us - definitely one of the top highlights from the entire trip so far! We definitely hope to come back sometime...

The Rhône Valley

2007-06-07T10:06:00.000+01:00

Our original plan, before embarking on a rather long detour down to Valencia, was to travel up the Rhine and down the Rhône. But Team New Zealand qualifying for the semi finals of the America's Cup's Challenger series put well pay to that. Instead, it offered us the opportunity to follow the Rhône up from the Mediterranean towards its source in the Alps, on our way back on track to central Europe.

Chateauneuf-du-Pape was our first stop. After this we made a beeline for another, more natural beauty - the Pont d'Arc - the world's largest natural stone arch. Funnily enough, we hadn't even heard of this, until back in Dongen at the start of the trip Christien showed us some postcards of when she and Opa had holidayed there with Eric's mum. It looked amazing then and was even more impressive in real life!

great view of the pont

The weather wasn't quite on our side so swimming beneath it didn't quite have the same appeal as we thought it would, so we skipped that in favour of a drive down the twisting and turning Gorge d'Ardeche which begins at the Pont and led us nicely back into the Rhône valley.

end of the gorge d'Ardeche looking out to the Rhone valley

It was comforting to be back on a river and with the age of towns along it mostly being medieval, it's a great reminder of how important these routes were in those times. Plenty of old castles, ruined or otherwise, lined the hillsides, testifying to how much these waterways were once fought over and depended upon to extract as many tolls from passing traffic as possible.

Veiw across the Rhone from a castle top

Further up the valley the Rhône began to narrow quite suddenly with the hillsides rising up dramatically. This signified the begining of the upper Rhône wine regions which generally are more sought after than those in the wide open valley to the south. Every south facing hillside of this stretch is covered in beautifully terraced vines. The piece de resistance beng the hill of Cotes Hermitage, which has for many centuries been prized well above all the rest.

Cotes Hermitage

Being in a bit of a rush to head east we didn't dare stop for too long, long enough though to pick up a kilo of freshly picked cherries and apricots for lunch. We said goodbye to the Rhône at Lyon where its course veers off to the east towards Geneva. We still had some way northeast to go to find Munich.

Chateauneuf-du-Pape

2007-06-05T08:42:00.000+01:00

On our last tour with the Tanvan in '98 we drove right through the Neuf du Pape without even blinking an eye, so we were well keen to repent our sins this time around, and stop in to pay our respects.

Chateauneuf du Pape was built in the 14th century as the summer residence of the pope. It also happens to be the home of one of the most powerful and celebrated wines not only of the Rhône, but of the whole of France. All we can say is that the pope obviously must have had very good tase in sacriment wine!

Remains of the "Pope's New Palace"

Eric lounging in the bay window

View from the palace with the Rhône in the distance

The town itself is very pretty, very Provencale, with honey coloured buildings roofed with red tiles. It reclines against a hill in the sultry shadow of the popes's palace, standing proud and strong - even in it's ruin - casting an eye out across the vines towards the Rhône as it snakes by. The streets are, of course, lined with cellars inviting you downstairs and inside for taste of the papal juice. Very hard to resist.

Chateauneuf-du-Papes with the Chateauneuf-du-Pape in the background

The wine itself is a melange of 13 different grape varieties, (of which the two of us could only name 4), and is rich and luscious and very expensive. So we were very ready to take up the generous offer of a tasting as we browsed the shelves of a particularly inviting cellar. The cellaress was more than obliging, particularly after inquiring upon our country of origin - la Nouvelle Zelande, oh la la!

Eric with a new friend

Castles of Carcassone, plus Nimes extra

2007-06-02T09:31:00.000+01:00

While Sharon was in the UK for a family bereavement I went in search of some seriously medieval castles. Sharon flew out of Carcassone which is a great part of France for castle action as the area was formerly the border between France and Catalonia (or north western Spain as it's often called), a fact that is still seen in today's landscape by the way of bilingual road signs. Great also for Sharon too as I didn't need to drag her about the ruins, which needed plenty of imagination to understand what it was like before becoming ruins.

The border was contested by the Cathars (and others before them) in numerous wars from the 10th century onward and these castles were are built in various periods around 1100-1200s to protect it and the local citizens. A treaty was signed in the 1600s which moved the border further south to the Pyrenees. This made all these castles obsolete and hence pretty much all of them were abandoned and left as they were to this day. Great as many of the castles we've seen in the past have since been converted into palaces with all the trimmings... ho hum, give me a real castle any day ;)

A short drive from Carcassone was the castle of Lapradelle which we gimpsed on the mountain range the previous day. Great castle with fantastic saw tooth walls built 500m above the village of Puilaurens. Not so well known, but my favourite as it turned out in the end as it was the most authentic and also hardly a tourist about.

Precariously pearched on the 500m high ridge

Inner courtyard, complete with intact catacombs below!

Nice view too!

From there I went to some of the more well known castles in the direction of Perpignan, passing through plenty of famous Roussillon wine regions.

Maury vinyards at the foot of Cucugnan

Ominous aproach to the castle up the zigzagged pathway

View from the top across to Perpignan and the coast

Next up was the Cucugnan whose only entrance was on one side of a rocky outcrop 750m high, the other sides were sheer cliffs! Great views and a good tour about the castle gave a great impression of how it was in times of seige when they often had to hold off armies for months on end before help arrived. All the goodies there, places to pour boiling oil down, precisely angled slots for longbows and crossbows too, plus a really neat dungeon to top it all off. Amazingly it only took 20 people to defend the whole castle!

Across the valley from here was the castle of Peyrepertuse, actually more of a fortress than a castle per se and it sprawls along a ridge above the village.

Look closely and you may spot the citadel on the ridge above the town

Look closely and you may spot the citidel on the ridge

Looking back accross to Cucugnan castle in the distance

Huge ruins and took a few hours to ramble through them, by the end of this one I was definitly a bit castled out and the inner castle geek in me thoughly exhausted... well for now at least!

Ok just one more , spoted this en route... Aguilar castle

From here I went up to Nimes where Sharon was flying back the following day and went mountain biking around the Pont du Gard, nothing better than finishing this off with a swim beneath the Pont, my all time favorite roman site. A truly remarkable feat of engineering, several 100ft high aqueducts that supplied Nimes with fresh mountain water.

Great place for a swim

Truely amazing engineering and 2000 years old!

Managed to get lost on the way back to the campground (should only have been 2 kms away) after following one too many brilliant downhill tracks that I couldn't pass up, and subsequently had to walk back up after ending up in the wrong place. Them's the breaks but still made it back in time to visit Nimes amphitheater and pick up Sharon on time too.

Nimes amphitheater with hommage to the Toreros

Costa Brava

2007-05-28T08:27:00.000+01:00

By the time we had left the bars of Valencia and traipsed through the many streets of Barcelona we were ready for some relaxation, lucky then that beaches of the Costa Brava were calling!

Our guide book described the Costa Brava as once being the "package holiday, chips and sangria" destination of our worst nightmares, but went to pains to explain that it is also the most unfairly maligned and misrepresented stretch of coast in Europe. Satisfied that we could head north to avoid the worst of it, on we drove, armed with the list of towns and villages personally recommended by Iolanda.

Chilling out in the Costa Brava

"Costa Brava" means "rugged coast", and you can certainly see how it gets its name. It's here that the Pyrenees meet the Mediterranean, resulting in wild sea cliffs and many small coves, rather than the long stretches of sandy beaches further south. It has also a very rich heritage of art and culture, being the home of Dali, Picasso and many others over the past century. Definitely worth some time exploring.

A day at the beach at Calella

Unfortunately though,the weather wasn't quite as optimistic as we were, and although we did manage a couple of great days on the beach, it really was just two. What followed was a series of really amazing thunder and lightning shows that really did inject some drama into the rugged landscape - with pelting rain and thrashing seas - some of those nights where you're really happy to be indoors and not in a tent!

We must have spent almost a week in this small corner of Spain - to keep it brief, here are a few of our selected highlights...

Exploring the well preserved beauty of Girona...

The medieval streets of Girona

The river Onya as it flows through Girona

Wandering around the perfectly restored medieval town of Pals, housing what would have to be my very favourite home and garden ever...

Picture perfect in Pals

Cava tasting (from the bottles bought at Cordoniu a few weeks earlier) underneath the pine trees at lovely quite camping in Calella...

Refreshing and delicious

Absorbing the absurdity that was Salvador Dali's life at his house in Cadaques...

Dali's house in Cadaques, built from a series of fisherman's huts

Yes, that's a stuffed polar bear folks!

The artist's studio

Strolling the shops of Platja d'Aro, where we managed to find several things for the wedding, including the very important bridal shoes. Who would have guessed in such a small resorty town?!

The perfect camping shoes!

But alas, after a good week of relaxation, rain and gazpacho, it was time to head north.

Barcelona

2007-05-22T08:05:00.000+01:00

We last visited Barcelona in 1998 on our last European tour and have been looking for an excuse to come back ever since. Lucky for us then that it was directly on our path north up to Central Europe!

We were very keen to revisit the numerous works of the celebrated local architect Gaudi, including the Sagrada Familia - his world famous cathedral - still very much a work in progress almost 100 years on.

The Sagrada Familia

Fighting off the hordes of tourists was no mean feat, but we managed a good hour wandering around gazing upwards at his stunning nature inspired designs - such as the inside columns inspired by trees in a forest. There was a great exhibition displaying further how his love for nature had inspired almost every nook and cranny of his master project, but the quantity of material on display, coupled with the heat and the endless stream of tourists did limit the amount that we were able to take in.

Interior support provided by a forest

A luckless turtle providing some external support

Overall though, it was really quite hard to notice what had changed since our last visit, (but I'm sure we'll notice when we find our old photos) and we were quite disappointed to find that it has still got another 13 years to go before it will be completed! Oh well, I guess than means another return visit!

It's still got a long way to go...

...which means a return visit!

After the cathedral, we headed on up the hill to Park Güell, another of Gaudi's works, with it's amazing mosaic tiled pavillion. Great view from up there, but unfortunately yet another view totally obscured by the thousands of tourists milling around. We literally had to fight for some space to enjoy our lunch, but was it worth it? Yes definitely!

Park Güell

A great view on albeit a moody day in Barcelona

Spot the Eric amongst the throng

Detail of tile mosaic

The famous Park Güell gecko

It was also great to be able to catch up with Iolanda, and old friend and colleague from our Amsterdam days, who we hadn't seen in about 9 years. She hadn't changed a bit, although is now the proud mum of the very gorgeous Nora, who kept us amused all afternoon - despite our non existent Catalan and our up-til-now lack of enthusiasm for Teletubbies! Iolanda proved a great source of information on where to visit in the Costa Brava (our next adventure) and it was great to reconnect again after all this time.

Although it was Barcelona we had come to visit,we opted to stay down the coast a bit further in the coastal resort of Sitges. A very salubrious neighbourhood indeed, although very much a resort, which was quite a shock to the system after our recent destinations. It had a series of lovely beaches, catering for all sorts of preferences if you know what I mean. Barcelona was an easy train or bus ride in, and it provided a nice and relaxing alternative to staying in the big smoke, which to be fair is almost impossible now that they have removed pretty much all of the camping grounds in Barcelona proper.

The America's Cup in Valencia

2007-05-20T09:37:00.000+01:00

Proxy 'Home of the America's Cup'?? Hopefully not for very long!

We took a bit of a detour from the original plan to come down to Valencia to watch the semi-finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup, which will eventually determine who is allowed to challenge for the America's Cup against the current defender Alingi of Switzerland...

The Auld Mug, can't spot the axe marks though!

Switzerland, not being known for its extensive ocean coastline, opted to hold the competition in Valencia after it was won 4 years ago by sailing circles around our sinking defending yacht in New Zealand. Long story but Team NZ is here to bring it back!

The Team NZ base (the black shed on the left)

A friend of ours Grant, is also about to be married so this was a great opportunity for the boys to come out from London and see the fun unfold too. I left Sharon at a nearby campground with the English couple we'd met in Tarragona and spent the weekend with the lads, details from here on in shall remain suitably vague so as to protect the innocent :)

Rob & Eric

Coincidentally, our good friends Cheryl and Jase were also in town for the weekend, so it was great to meet up and share in the festive environment, and for Sharon and Cheryl to indulge in a spot of vino rosado!

Cheryl and Jase

Cheryl & Sharon

It's a big money game the America's Cup, and Valencia has spent around €100 million converting the port into a suitable base for the teams. A great job has been done too but nothing can alter the fact that the main city centre is quite disjointed from the port area, and at the end of the day we could have been anywhere. The transport around town was quite ill prepared too and meant that travelling from our hostel to the port could take up to an hour. Maybe if we'd been able work out the subway system as well as we could the bars then may be we'd have had more success??

Cup exhibit in town - one of the few signs of the event being held here

Team NZ returning to the shed after a day on the water

The four teams entering the semis were Team Oracle BMW (USA) frontman being Larry Elison owner of Oracle, Luna Rossa Prada (Italy), Desafio Espana (Spain) and Team NZ. As Team NZ topped the previous round robins, we were allowed to choose our opponent from the remaining three... Oracle being the favorite and Luna Rossa looking tough, Team NZ opted to race the Spanish team who'd only just managed to get through after some surprise wins.

The lads enjoying the views from a spectator boat (Grant as El Matador!)

It would be fair to say that we brought a great atmosphere to the Cup Village, (especially with Grant being dressed up as a Spanish Matador), as it seemed to us that not many locals were even aware that their city was hosting the event on behalf of Switzerland. But with the Spanish team now into the semi finals, there seemed to be alot more interest!

Desafio Espana celebrating a well earned second win

After a couple of wins by Team NZ, Spain managed to get a surprise win back and the racing became a whole lot closer than expected. Desafio Espana wasn't giving anything away! Sunday we were hoping to win the last race to secure our entry to the finals, but the light shifty winds allowed them to go to a 2-4 race score. Our friends from London headed back on the Sunday so we also left town to head back up north and back on track to head to Eastern Europe as we'd planned.

Team New Zealand subdued return following the loss to the Spanish

Team New Zealand managed to get the final win a few days later, sealing our place into the final of the Louis Vuitton Cup against Team Luna Rossa.

Luna Rossa after a convincing 5 -0 win over Larry Ellison's Oracle BMW team

NB: Following a comprehensive 5-0 victory over Luna Rossa in the Louis Vuitton Cup, Team NZ has secured its place to challenge Alingi in the America's Cup which commmences June 23...

Tarragona

2007-05-16T22:11:00.000+01:00

Tarragona, the 'Rome of Spain' as it was billed, but it was also a great place to finally be camped up on the beach front!

Unfortunately along with beach and coastal towns comes a few security problems. Such easy access to the beach means that any one can wander into the camping off the sand. A few dodgy people were around and an English couple next door had someone try to break into their tent the first night we were there! While we didn't have any problems it was a reminder to be vigilant after the quieter small towns we'd previously been in.

Location, location location! Our beachfront home for the night

We headed in to the city to view the medieval old town which is built on the remains of an important roman city founded in 218BC, the remains of which are being extensively excavated. The plan of modern Tarragona is arranged in the same way as it was in Roman times, split over three levels each leading higher up a hill. Firstly the Roman Circus, where chariot races and other such entertainment took place. Here the stands which surrounded it later became the bases for the fortifying walls around the city and a medieval market town. They have recently had a go at excavating right below the city to gain access to the Roman remains, giving a great picture of what once stood there. The next level up was the Forum and further up the Temple Of Apollo. Conviently, and as in many other such cities, this is now the exact space where the current cathedral complex stands!

Ok a bit of imagination needed here, this is the edge of the Roman Circus ;)

Nice spot for an amphitheatre!

Looking accross the medieval old town

More imagination needed here to see what the Roman Circus main stands looked like

A good set of museums around town explained it all well and we even managed to catch it during an "open doors" arts festival allowing us free access to them all ;)

Cava

2007-05-12T13:52:00.000+01:00

I love bubbles! We both love bubbles!! So what could have been more exciting than realising that our journey down to Valencia was going to take us right through the heart of Spain's Cava making district?!!!

So with TomTom set for Sant Sadurni d'Anoia, off we set...

When I think of Cava I think of Freixenet. Now I do know that it's not that exotic, and in the past I've been known to buy it on special at Foodtown Grey Lynn, but I won't have a bad word said about it. I love it! So naturally it was the first place we headed.

Freixenet!!

Unfortunately we missed the last tour of the day by 20 minutes, but fortunately it isn't the only Cava cave in town. So off we set into the unknown...

Cordoniu is, alongside Freixenet, one of the most prominent Cava producers in the business. It owns not only the biggest cellars in the world, but a also the most spectacular Art Nouveau "chateau" - or at least the Spanish equivalent of a chateau, so was definitely worth a visit. And more importantly it was willing to let us join the tour that had already started, so we were guaranteed of a tasting or two.

Josep Puig i Cadafalch's early 1900 Art Nouveau masterpiece, the Codorniu Cava house

Almost like a (cava) house of workship!

To be honest, we've seen the insides of more than a few wine producers over the past few years, but here there was certainly something exciting about watching the bubbles being poured into the bottles, the corks being squeezed on,and their cages being wired on. And the high speed miniature train ride through the aisles and aisles of subterranean cellars - 5 stories underground - surely couldn't help bring out the inner child in me! The expectation was mounting!!

Degorgement of pink cava - they're full of bubbles now!

5 stories under...

Just in case we've forgotten where we are

And so to the tasting...a generous glass of Codorniu Ultra Brut. And the conclusion? Crisp, taut, with good finesse, but a little too on the dry side for my liking.

A bubbly connoisseur at work

Hmmm....

Luckily for us then that we bought a couple of different styles to sample later....I'm really not that fussy!

Opening the bottle wasn't supposed to be this hard!!

Burgundy

2007-05-11T13:29:00.000+01:00

Burgundy! O beautiful, bountiful Burgundy!
Even the name condures up so much colour, so much romance and allure and gorgeousness.

I probably don't need to write much more for you to get the picture...we both just totally fell in love with the place, and can't recommend it enough.

From the foot of the Black Forest, and with a bit of a drive through France to the west, we arrived in one of our most much anticipated regions of the trip. Burgundy extends from Dijon, the grand home of mustard, south towards Lyon, gateway to the Alps. I had originally assumed that as with most of the famous wine regions of France, we would be following the meanderings of some great river, so I was quite surprised to find that there was not one in sight. Instead, the vineyards are concentrated in tiny allotments spread out across gentle hills, rather like a lumpy patchwork quilt.

Planning a route

We've never really gotten into the wines of the region, mainly due to the rather substantial level of investment required to gain access. But I did know that the whites are made from one of my most favourite grapes, Chardonnay, and that our good mate and wine connoisseur Toby just can't stop waxing lyrical about the merits of the great Montrachet. It just had to be done.

Sharon's spiritual homeland?

I guess that's a right turn ahead

We chose as our centre the compact and appealingly named Beaune, quite encouraged with Lonely Planet's description of it being one of the best places in France for wine tasting. It is absolutely beautiful - with honey hued buildings, flower beds on every corner, filled to the brim with medieval architecture, including the magnificent Hotel Dieu (a medieval charity hospital designed more like a grand chateau with its improverished patients eating from silver platters and lounging in red velvet draped beds) - and a certain je ne sais quois. Absolutely stunning.

Hotel Dieu, Beaune

More like a hotel than a charity hospital in the 1400s huh?

It also housed a fascinating wine museum, and the totally absorbing 'Marche du Vins', where we embarked upon a self guided, wine tasting wander through subterranean wine cellars, sampling 18 different wines, including premier and grand crus! It was just totally crazy, and we'd never seen anything quite like it. You're given a flat, silvery 'tastevin', rather like a Scottish quaich, and allowed to wander freely around in the eerie candle light, filling up your vessel from the opened bottles left out for you to taste. And the building itself was magnificent - the tour passed through the ancient tomb-cum-crypt of a former church, eventually leading up into the grand hall of worship itself, although in here it's all about worshipping of a different sort!

Here's what it's all about folks!

Tasting by candlelight

The big boy! Chassagne Montrachet Grand Cru

After all this fun, we just couldn't leave the area without a good cycle through the fields of vines, just to see where it all begins. Fortunately for us, the council had thoughtfully signposted each individual plot, so we could identify the birthplace of each of these famous crus. We had been diligently attempting to study all the differing geologies and soils, climatic conditions and solar angles of the region in order to try to understand the concept of 'terroir', but at the end of the day, it's still really hard to grasp just how one particular 50x50m plot can command €100 more per bottle than its neighbour...

Tearing through the vines

Hmmm, you'll be paying at least €100 for a bottle from this field!

The Rhine Valley

2007-05-08T09:25:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately the weather finally took a turn on us by the time we reached the much anticipated Rhine Valley (between Koblenz and Mainz) so it all did seem to be a lot greyer than it would normally be.

A very grey view across the Rhine to Lorch (taken from our campsite!)

The quaintness of the Mosel had gone and the Rhine was definitely looking more like a working river - or rather canal as not much of its banks seemed to still be following its natural course. The villages were amazing and immaculately preserved (for all the tourists no doubt) but the dual railways on each side carrying freight and thousands of VWs non stop day and night on both sides of the river did detract from it somewhat. The river traffic seemed to have more urgency about it too.

But we did manage to find a very pretty little village, Bacharach, and spent a morning dodging rainshowers and strolling about admiring the half timbered buildings and neatly manicured vines.

Mmmm..lekker!

Admiring yet another 'romantic' half timbered house

The very pretty town of Bacharach

The nobel Riesling itself

Winegut? I guess that's what you get if you drink too much!

From the Rhine we were aiming to cross into France and spend some time in one of the most anticipated regions of our voyage - Burgundy. To get there we needed to head further south through Germany, which provided us with the perfect chance to pop back into the Black Forest!

As we drove though the rolling forested hills we passed by the famous German ski fields - all sprouting with buttercups and spring flowers. Could there really be enough snow to allow skiing we chuckled? I guess not this season. It looked as if nothing had been open for ages.

Driving into the nearby town of Todtnau, famous for being the home of German skiing - where it was first introduced in the country no less, we stumbled across a downhill mountainbiking track. So off came the bikes and up we all went on the chairlift for a nosey around the Black Forest terrain and one terrifying downhill ride (well at least it was for the one of us capable of doing it!!).

Taking the chairlift, Todtnau

Cheese

Biking in the Black Forest