Friday 29th June–Off to Madrid

This morning I wasn’t as refreshed as I had hoped, waking up with bright red eyes with lovely big bags under them. Not exactly the way I wanted to look when meeting up with Andy after four weeks, sigh. Up anyway and time to get moving! Check out was relatively easy, excepting a short moment where one of the other girls locked herself in the bathroom with my makeup bag and then couldn’t open the door when I asked (it got stuck). Julie got up to say goodbye, this was always going to be sad – she has been the perfect travel companion (as expected) and continues to be an amazing friend. We both made a ‘5 year rule’ (which involves making sure we see each other again before the five years are up) and I hope very much we can stick with it!

Then I was on my own again. I managed to find the train station with little difficulty and (with some help from the info desk lady) found my way to the platform with 40 minutes to spare. Soon I was on the train in my allocated seat – already I can see that this train is fancy and that my three hours on it will not be a chore at all. I watched in bemusement as the train attendants brought me hot towels, newspapers, headphones and then a full breakfast of eggs, bacon, tomato, croissants, bread, jam, fruit and orange juice! I knew I had paid a lot of money for the seat but I had not expected this!

I settled in quite happily, watching the sunny countryside roll by, enjoying my reclining seat with a pillow and reflecting on Spain so far. As I’ve said, Julie and I both loved Barcelona – it has the perfect mix of culture, gothic architecture, weird colourful Gaudi architecture, a waterfront, trees everywhere and parks to relax in…plus everything in the central area was in walking distance. I could have easily stayed there longer. As I sat on the train I really wasn’t sure what to expect of Madrid at all – I know Andy likes it but I imagined it would just be another big city. I was mostly just looking forward to seeing Andy though and was happy to see what the new city would bring.

After arriving at the train station I managed to find my way to the hostel with no difficulty – it was only one metro stop away, nice and easy! I found Andy in the dorm and we had a lovely awkward reunion as the cleaning lady mopped around us. The hostel itself has the most amazing common room, with a stained glass roof and tiled walls. The facilities themselves are rather dodgy – you have to sit on the toilet on a angle cause your knees won’t fit in the room, there is nowhere to hang your clothes in the shower and the dorms are rather cramped… still, I guess the common room and location makes up for it.

The first thing Andy and I did in Madrid was… put washing on! This was amazing, I was so deliriously excited at the possibility of having fresh clothes again. As the clothes were in the dryer we walked down to Plaza Mayor to have Andy’s favourite food in the world (or so it seems), Spanish calamari sandwiches and beer. For someone who doesn’t enjoy fish I have to admit the sandwich was nice and the square itself is beautiful – clearly we were going to be spending some more time there.

    

A quick stop back to the hostel to pick some clothes and then back to Central Madrid. We wandered around for a while before settling on a patch of grass in the shade outside the royal palace. We stayed here for at least half an hour just chatting and relaxing, before getting up again and going to do some shopping. Andy got his bag and glasses fixed and I finally bought my first dress of the holiday.

Soon, more relaxing was in order so we took the metro to Madrid’s giant El Retiro park. This park is very big, very green and very pretty and we hopped from multiple park benches, including sitting next to the big lake and watching everybody row boats around it. After spending about an hour here we headed back for a little bit more shopping, including the purchase of some very delicious frozen yoghurt, some shoes for Andy and some other little necessities for me. Whilst we were out and about we did stumble upon a big concert for ‘Mr Gay Pride’, including a song called ‘Sex Dance’ with choreography that was basically just that.

     

By now it was around 9pm (still light of course) so we headed back to the hostel to freshen up before heading back to Plaza Mayor for dinner. I know that on the square they overcharge, but our little table with a white tablecloth right on the edge of the square as the sun set was just perfect. We ordered three tapas, asparagus, beef and pork and well as a main meal of inverted chorizo – all very yummy. We sat here for a couple of hours, drinking rose and being serenaded by an accordion player who we generously tipped. After a quick walk around the square and  looking into a random telescope (with a random dot that was meant to be Saturn) we headed back to the hostel, hitting the beds at around 1am.

Thursday 28th June–Barcelona

Last night was surprisingly good in our cramped little room. We had air conditioning and all the people who came to bed after us crept around in dark so that we didn’t even realise they were there. Perfection! Julie and I got up at the average 7.45am in a bid to get to the main tourist attraction here, the Sagrada Familia, without stupid amounts of tourists.

The walk down to the church took us around 20 minutes, down a tree filled street in an already balmy 27 degrees (at 8.30am). Our prebought tickets got us straight in. If you haven’t seen pictures of this church before I can certainly tell you that it is very unique, very Gaudi, weirdly gothic. All of the architecture is inspired by trees, oceans, nature and light – which means loads of stained glass windows and no straight lines. Very pretty. I think. It’s certainly one of the more memorable churches I have been to – when you see so many in Europe the unique ones quickly become your favourites.

    

We also had the option of paying three Euros to go up 50m in a lift to the top, which we took. This was actually rather unexciting, the view wasn’t anything special and we were right in the middle of a construction site (the church is still unfinished). After looking at the view we had to go down a narrow spiral staircase, getting stuck behind anybody who wanted to take a picture. Yay.

After spending sufficient amount of time at the church we caught the Metro back to our hostel area to search for two of Gaudi’s most famous houses. The first we quickly found but it wasn’t that special – we headed on to the second, Case Batlo, which is the most famous house here in Barcelona. We payed a rather large amount of money to go in and see some of Gaudi’s interior architecture. This house was bizarre, so many different themes on each level and the same Gaudi principles of playing with light and using no straight lines. We did get an included audio tour but both Julie and I abandoned it after it waxed lyrical about molluscs and dragon scales for just a little too long. 

   

From here we walked down Passagia de Gracia (the shopping strip on which we were staying), back down to Las Ramblas, where delicious icecream was purchased. We then wandered around the Gothic Quarter a little bit more, saw the big Catedral (another church) and eventually found ourselves a random little cafe for lunch. Nothing too special about this place – we ordered Chorizo sandwiches and homemade lemonade for a very small price.

By now it was around 1pm and we agreed to head back to the hostel for a bit, for boring things like blogging, packing, leg shaving and general avoidance of heat. At around 2.30pm we ventured back out again to the Palace of Catalan Music. This was a ticket I had prebooked and in hindsight this was a really random purchase – the Palace is essentially a big music hall. I must have read on the internet somewhere that it was one of the highlights although it is really out of the way and obscure here. Anyway, we had a ticket so off we went! This concert hall wasn’t designed by Gaudi but by somebody similar – it was full of sculptures and stained glass windows and was generally very pretty. We were sad to hear they had a flamenco show there on Saturday nights, to see a concert there would have been something!

    

After the Palace tour we headed over to the area where the Magic Fountain show is at night… we’d decided to go see it, except problematically we were five hours early! We spent some time walking around the big park here, with another view over the city and lots of outdoor escalators (we love these things!) We didn’t feel like  going into the big Catalan art museum so instead we sheltered from the heat in the big shopping mall across the street. Neither of us really felt like we had enough energy for shopping, so we sat with a drink for a while before finding somewhere for dinner.

Dinner for me was a rather yummy mushroom and asparagus risotto, whilst Julie had a ‘big sausage of the country’. We of course grabbed some Spanish wine as well and settled in for a couple of hours, eating, drinking and playing two person Euchre (another good game to add to my card playing repertoire). At 9pm we headed up to the fountains… as it got steadily darker all the lights came on. The best way to describe the show is a LOT of lights and a LOT of water. As the water shot up into the air they played dramatic classical music, plus the ET and Titanic theme songs thrown in. There were crazy amount of people here, clearly this is the spot where the entire tourist population of Barcelona goes at night.

    

We didn’t stay until it was really dark (having watched the same show on repeat for about an hour). Instead we went back to the hostel to finish packing and to prepare ourselves for the next travelling day. It was a relatively early night at 11pm.

Wednesday 27th June–Off to Spain

It seems like the nights at the hostel got progressively worse – last night involved a bunch of Aussies coming in at 2.30am to discuss whether they should set up a drinking party in the room and a whole bunch of drunken guys with loud music serenading us outside our window at 5am. As such, little sleep was had and Julie and I felt less than stellar getting up just before 7am to catch our next flight.

The metro to the airport was uneventful and we arrived just before check in opened. A little more waiting in line and we were soon waiting in line for security – dumb blonde moment here, I’d accidentally packed my sunscreen, deodorant, shampoo and conditioner in my hand luggage (despite knowing I can’t take liquids on the plane). Oh well, the man was friendly about it… but bin time for all of those items. 

Our time in Paris has been interesting – again, marred by rain. I like the city very much however and there is so much more that I haven’t seen yet… all the more reason to come back one day! A part of me feels like I haven’t had a very authentic French experience but then I’m not sure what I was expecting in a big city like this. It makes me want to go the French country side a lot. That being said, I think we had our fair share of baguettes and pastries and I am looking forward to something a little different in Spain for a while.

The gate was pleasant enough to wait in and then on to our flight! Again, this was uneventful, mostly filled with sleeping. Soon we were on the train to central Barcelona, with hyped up vigilance against the dreaded pick pockets here. We found our hostel with no difficulty – the location of this place is great, right on the central shopping strip and close to the metro. The common rooms here have a lots of character although our 6 bed dorm is rather small and squishy (with two powerpoints and one shower to share between all of us).

By now it was around 2pm and we decided to head to Park Guell, a Gaudi designed park overlooking the city (there is a looot of Gaudi architecture here). The new environment took a bit of getting used to – after three weeks in Central Europe an hour and a half flight suddenly takes us to this place full of palm trees, sun, the ocean, sand, new architecture… we love it here already. We strolled around the park (hopping between shady spots, oh how the tides turned) and eventually settled down at a cafe with a litre of cold Sangria and a view of the whole city. What had defined our time here so far has been a distinct lack of rushing around – we sat here for a least an hour just enjoying the surroundings and chatting.

    

After that we headed down to La Ramblas – a really long street covered in trees, artists, icecream bars and the inevitable souvenir shops. During our walk down the street there was a quick stop over to restock all the liquids the airport had taken from me, and then down to the waterfront. We strolled along here for a bit (lots of strolling today) and then walked around the ‘local’ area to find somewhere for dinner. We settled for a tapas bar in a small square – dinner consisted of salted asparagus, sizzling chorizos braised in cider (so good!), chicken kebabs and over roasted lamb. For dessert I ordered a traditional Catalan crispy pancake, which was basically a pappadam type thing covered in sugar and a licorice tasting liquer. And of course there was Spanish wine.

  

There was only one way we could spend the night after this… Spain was playing Portugal in the semifinals of the Euro Cup (which we have been following on various TV screens in various cities over the past few weeks) so of course we had to watch the game. We found what we thought was a local bar, ordered another bottle of Spanish wine and settled in for the match. Turns out we were surrounded by Canadians, French people and Germans but there were enough locals to keep the Spanish spirit high! The game itself was rather uneventful (0-0) which meant penalty shoot outs which were very intense! Spain ended up winning, which means that I will be in the country when they play in the Grand Final on Sunday night. Fun times!

After that back to the hostel to creep back in the room without lights – after a long day bed was amazing!

Tuesday 26th June–Giverny & Versailles

Last night was another night of minimal sleep due to main light being turned on multiple times and people drinking below our window until 4am. Oh well, up nice and early anyway… so much so that the hostel breakfast hadn’t opened yet and we needed to grab chocolate croissants on the way to the metro (this was tough). We walked through the rain to our meeting point with minimal dramas and soon had cups of steaming hot coffee to warm us up.

Today we had booked a full day tour of Giverny and Versailles, our one time in one of the big touristy bus full of people of all ages. They are not ideal but they suited our purpose for today… the reclining seats and comfy chairs meant lots of sleep on the bus happened between stops and we didn’t have to worry about getting to and from places at all.

The trip started with an hour and a bit bus ride in which we all slept, even through the heavily french accented lady’s commentary about Monet’s house and gardens (she was a bit tough to listen to and I failed at my multiple attempts). The view outside the window was minimal due to the bad weather again – to give you an idea, we could only see half of the Eiffel tower due to fog. As such we were in a bit low spirits but soon we were at our first stop.

Monet’s garden and house at Giverny lifted my spirits a lot. I am such a flower person are there are 100,000 of them there! So many pretty colours and different flower types (I can only imagine what it would look like with shining sun). It was also amazing to see the place where Monet spent half his life and the gardens that inspired his most famous works. It took us about an hour to wander around the garden and through the small house… this really gave us a taste of French Provincial life. It was nice to get away from the city and the huge crowds if only for a little bit – there were many comments about how easy it would be to live there.

    

We had a whole two hours at Giverny so ended up spending the rest of it in a little cafe eating Blackberry pie inside. The rain had pretty much stopped by now… it was still overcast but we will take what we can get! Most of us were back at the bus in time, excepting two people who we waited for for half an hour and then left without them! No idea what ended up happening there.

From Giverny it was a quick 15 minute drive to our lunch spot, an old water mill. Lunch was the typical mass produced tourist meal… there was a pate that no one really ate, chicken and potato as a main and an apple pie for dessert. Nothing amazing but edible none the less. There were also two bottles of wine on the table which hardly anyone was drinking – Julie and I drank what we could (how can you leave free wine?) but gave up after about three glasses each! This led to some rather amusing mid day conversations whilst waiting for the bus to leave again.

    

Next, another one hour trip with more sleep. At around 3pm we arrived at Versailles. My first impressions were how big the palace was and how many people there were. The place was absolutely crawling with tourists and even our ‘reserved entry’ took about 15 minutes to get organised. Eventually we got in and managed to side with the less accented younger guide who turned out to be very interesting. She took us through 17 out of the 2000 rooms in the palace. Most of the furniture had been previously sold so it was mostly empty rooms, excepting a few beds. Despite this the rooms are certainly impressive, covered with gold and art. Our guide gave us some good insight into the French court and some royal history… it was also very impressive to be standing in the Hall of Mirrors where the peace declaration at the end of WWI was signed.

One thing I have to note is that the amount of tourists did take away from the experience a little – some doorways we were literally packed liked sardines with people pushing at every side. As a result, we spent more time in the less impressive rooms, purely because we couldn’t handle being in the really pretty ones. After about an hour we were free and out in the open again, giving us about half and hour in the gardens. We wandered around the back of the palace, thinking we could see sufficient amounts from there….and then we saw a map. The gardens are HUGE. I understand why people recommend a full day trip here because it would take hours upon hours to get around the gardens properly. Added to the next time list!

Eventually it was time to go home – after another 40 minute bus drive we arrived back in Paris at 6pm. This was dinner time for Julie and I so we headed to Montmarte to stroll around its cobbled streets and find somewhere to eat. We eventually settled for a place filled with locals, drank Bordeaux wine and ate Beef Burgandy (I could attempt to spell the French version of this but I would fail). There was also lots of people watching – it amused us how many locals were walking around with handfuls of baguettes. I ordered a creme caramel for dessert, which was actually a little burnt and rather disappointing – first dessert I haven’t finished here!

Then back to the hotel to pack properly for our flight tomorrow. I enjoyed putting my jeans and jumpers right down the bottom… I certainly won’t be needing them in Spain anymore! Bring on the sun!

Monday 25th June–Day two in Paris

This morning we decided to sleep in. Properly. This was mostly because we’d decided to go on a walking tour late morning and doing anything beforehand would have meant 6am something starts. So, sleep it was, until 9am! The morning became a bit complicated when the lock I was using on my ‘box’ under the bed decided it didn’t like my combination anymore. After a trip to reception the maintenance man was used a hand saw to cut the lock off and all was well again! Time for the lock to go in the bin.

The lock issue didn’t delay us too much and we were in the square on time, ready to start the Sandemans New Europe walking tour in Paris. We’d been feeling a little too ‘touristy’, like we were only scratching the surface of the city, so we were keen to get some stories and history behind us. Our guide was an American named Amanda and she was just as good as the guide we got in Prague. We walked past Notre Dame, the Louvre, strolled through gardens, over bridges and learnt about kings, revolutions and other nifty random facts. The tour went for three and a half hours and we really enjoyed walking around in the sunshine (it lasted for the duration of the tour and then disappeared again).

    

After the tour finished (around 3pm, the day went quickly!) we had the option to head to a cafe with the tour leader which we took. This ended up being quite far away and took up a good couple hours of our day… we enjoyed talking to a couple of the other tour people though and I ate both frog legs and snails! Neither of them are actually as dramatic as that sounds – the frogs legs tasted like a mix of chicken and fish and were completely full of bones (hardly any meat at all actually). The snail I ate was a little chewy but mostly just…garlicy. I’m up for eating more snails in the future!

    

At around 5pm we made it back to Notre Dame, which we still hadn’t seen inside. We realised at this point that we were going to have no time to see the Louvre. Oops. It feels really odd to have come here and not seen it, although I did see the museum that I really wanted to see. Next time!!  We did get to go through Notre Dame though and I really liked it. It’s different to most other churches I’ve seen, very gothic and dramatic with beautiful stained glass windows – its easy to imagine a hunchback running around there!

After the cathedral we headed to a church around the corner – Saint Chappelle, which is apparently one of the prettiest churches in Paris. Unfortunately we got there just too late, they closed the line two people before us. Another thing to add to the next time list! Instead we headed to the Arc de Triumphe to say we’ve seen it (it’s a big arc, the one in Laos was bigger!) and then down Champs Elysees to buy some amazing macarons (I had Vanilla, Lemon and Strawberry and Poppy). After this Julie headed back to the hostel and I addressed my shoe situation. My ballet flats were finally at the point of no return – not only were the outer soles half ripped off, both inner soles had completely come out and the inside was disintegrating bit by bit. This meant new shoes had to be purchased. Not having a lot of options I picked up some thongs and some bright white sneakers (we’ll see exactly how long they stay white for!).

Then, back to the hostel to meet up with Julie again… it was around 8.30pm at this point so we headed around the corner to a recommended place to grab dinner. The whole menu was in French so Julie did her best to translate for me… I ended up ordering veal with normady sauce. I have no idea what was in that sauce apart from chives, cream and mushrooms but it was one of the best meals I’ve had here so far. Authentically french too!

The evening after that was spent blogging and sorting through photos… we have an early start tomorrow for our day trip and got to bed nice and early at 11.30pm!

Sunday 24th June–First day in Paris

Today it was 18 degrees and rained the whole day. It’s probably best to get that fact out of the way first, just to give you an idea of the general theme of the day. Last night’s sleep was less than ideal – it WAS Saturday night in Paris afterall and this meant lights on until after 1am and people coming home until 6am in the morning. The perks of sleeping in a twelve bed dorm! I met Julie and Dave downstairs for breakfast – cocopops and baguette dipped in Nutella, nom. By 8.30am we were ready to head off to the number one tourist attraction – the Eiffel tower.

The first thing we did after coming out of the metro station was buy coffee, which warmed us up on the rather freezing Parisian summer morning. We took our obligatory tourist photos and headed down to the lines. Julie and I had both prebought our tickets so we parted with Dave for a bit – he headed off to the Arc de Triumphe, whilst Julie and I gleefully ‘dance walked’ past the giant line to our special reserved ticket spot. Due to technical difficulties only one lift was operating so we were extremely lucky to by pass all the grumpy tourists!

    

Our smugness was a little short lived however. Julie and I spent a whole hour at the tower, and a whole five minutes actually looking at the view. So much standing in line and waiting! It's a must do though – the view was great despite the clouds and its amazing to say I’ve been up the tower now. By 11am we were back down again – we met up with Dave and headed off to our next spot. This included a quick stop over at a French cafe to get hot chocolate and baguettes for lunch – very yummy! It also included an epic battle of wind vs. umbrella which the wind consistently won – my umbrella turned inside out six times on our walk.

    

We eventually arrived at the Musee D’Orsay, the second most popular museum here in Paris. It focuses mainly on impressionism and it was the museum that I wanted to see. Unfortunately, the first sight we were confronted with was a massive line. Dave and Julie are not really art people so we agreed to go our separate ways… they headed off together and I stood in that line with my umbrella for one hour before I was finally inside the museum (isn’t standing in line the quintessential tourist experience anyway??) Splitting up actually worked really well… Julie and Dave got time alone and I was left to go round the museum at my own pace. And I really did like this museum. It is housed in an old railway station, with high ceilings and big clocks… the building itself is just as impressive as the artwork. I saw Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Seurat – I really enjoyed not looking at the map, turning corners and being surprised by art works I grew up admiring. I also really enjoyed looking at the Impressionist art close up, seeing the individual brush strokes is amazing! Plus, did I mention the museum was warm and dry??

After about an hour and a bit I headed out again, making my way back to the hostel to meet the others. During this time an extra strong burst of wind completely annihilated my umbrella, giving me no choice but to throw it in the bin. I’ve gone through two umbrellas now!  By the time I got back to the hostel and met Dave and Julie it was absolutely teeming down, giving us not much choice but to scrap plans to explore Montmarte and stay in and teach Dave Whist instead. After playing cards and ordering food and drinks Julie and I checked into our new room together, Dave left for the airport and Julie and I were ready to head off on our next adventure.

We had prebought ticket to the Moulin Rogue which started at 9pm – however, I had read on the internet that there is always a line and that it is best to get there early. As such, we arrived eagerly at 7.30pm… to find no line at all. This meant we could go to the cafe across the road to order crepes, wine and creme brulee. Our seat meant we could eat and drink whilst looking at the (very small) windmill and the rest of the rather tacky, sex shop filled district.

By 9pm we were seated at our table (no photos allowed, sorry!) and chatting to the two Mebournians next to us. We also began enjoying our bottle of real Champagne that came with our tickets…. and then the show started! What to say about the show – it was lipsynched, the choreography was extremely basic, the dancers were out of synch and any dancer I know would have ripped it to shreds. However, you can’t help but be swept up in it all – the costumes, the sets, the spectacle. The ‘in between’ acts were actually our favourites, jugglers, acrobats, mime artists, audience participation – these were the real stars of the show. Julie and I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening and ended the night feeling very glad that we went indeed.

    

At 11pm we headed back out onto the street for the much needed night shot of the windmill (the rain had stopped – great excitement!). Then we tipsily decided to travel two stops on the metro to wander through Montmatre at night (which is essentially just souvenir shops) and head up to Sacre Cour for a night view of Paris. This was a lot of fun and a great spontaneous idea! And now we can say we’ve seen the night lights of Paris :) We were back at the hostel by midnight to find a very quiet sleepy room, very different to the last. Tomorrow, another crazy day!

Saturday 23rd June–Off to Paris

This morning marked the end of our two week Central Europe tour :( We were lucky to have a flight out at 11.40am – a nice and reasonable time that meant we didn’t need to leave our hotel until 8.30am. This gave us time for a big breakfast and a chance to say goodbye to everybody. Saying goodbye to the particular people we had become close to was really hard, as expected, and there were many offers of couches and guest rooms for everybody’s travels in the future! It is nice to have Facebook these days, keeping in touch will hopefully not be too hard :)

At 8.30am Julie and I caught our transfer taxi to the Budapest airport. Getting on the plane was one of the more annoying airport experiences I have had – a lot of lines and a lot of waiting (made slightly better by the purchase of Milka and Pringles). Everything with our tickets and luggage went smoothly enough and we were at our gate with plenty of time to spare.

    

The flight over was a non-eventful one -  I spent most of it listening to music and sleeping. And then we were in Paris. My first impression of this city was just how many people there were – a shock after coming from the ‘quieter’ central European countries. Also, on the metro to our hostel I’d say there were equal number of African French people, which was something I wasn’t really expecting at all. The area that we are in is quite dirty and a bit run down (but this I had expected) and our hostel itself is very modern and HUGE. It clearly has a strong party vibe going on and I think we will enjoy staying here a lot.

We met up with Julie’s boyfriend Dave (he is with us for one night) and went our separate ways for a bit to freshen up. Then it was time to meet again and plan our stay here! Our plans for the first night were relatively tame – we ordered a quick snack (Nachos and Magnums, not very Parisian yet) and then headed in the general direction of Notre Dame, in order to prebuy tickets to an evening cruise along the Seine.

After the half hour+ it took on the metro from our hostel we walked out to see the beautiful church behind us, in perfect photo weather too. We didn’t go in at this point, we plan to do that later, but it was certainly very impressive on the outside. I couldn’t help but hum Hunchback of Notre Dame songs in my head the whole time.

We didn’t have a whole lot of time before the cruise so we looked for dinner at a place that was cheap and close – unfortunately our best option was a little Italian restaurant down a side street (big guilty feelings eating here). We did enjoy some very good French red wine with dinner and my Panna Cotta for dessert was amazing. I continued to attempt to speak French, abandoning most of it pretty quickly – ‘merci’ is going to be my staple word I think.

Soon it was time to head back down to the boat for our one hour cruise along the Seine. We got seats very close to the front and settled in… one thing we hadn’t quite anticipated was how cold the trip was going to be, with the wind blowing in our faces (it was only about 19 degrees during the day here). Despite this, it was quite a lovely introduction to Paris, cruising down the river as the sun set. I got my first full glimpse of the Eiffel tower, a quick look at the Louvre, the Musee D’Orsay… there were other quirky things too, like the ‘love lock’ bridge where hundred and hundreds of couples have written their names on a padlock, attached it to the bridge and then thrown the key in the Seine. I’ve seen this all over Europe, but not quite to the scale that it is here. Julie and I also enjoyed watching the locals gather along the edge of the river with wine and baguettes – we made a mental note to attempt to do this once in the next three nights here.

    

By the time the cruise was over we were ready to head back to the hotel and prepare ourselves for three days full of sightseeing. I think I’m going to enjoy this city very much – yes it is a big city, but it has a lot of charm, personality and history and I look forward to exploring it tomorrow!

Friday 22nd June–Budapest

A quick check at the weather yesterday revealed forecasted thunderstorms for today. Luckily, the storms occurred at the very best time possible – between 6 and 7am when were all snuggled in bed listening to it outside. By 8am we were all packed and breakfasted, ready for another epic travelling day. We clambered into our mini bus and all had extremely excited looks on our faces when we realised that our seats reclined!

The five hour bus trip to Budapest was actually quite pleasant. Comfy, air-conditioned seats meant sleep was possible (the view outside was covered in fog so we weren’t missing much by closing our eyes). Chatting to Andy on the phone for 40 minutes also helped pass the time! There was a mini stop over at a small Slovakian town for hot chocolate and the purchase of chips, but other than that there is not much else notable to report.

At around 1.30pm we arrived at our hotel in Budapest and after settling in we headed out on an orientation walk. Julie and I only had the one afternoon in this city so we soon left the group, deciding instead to grab the Hop On, Hop Off bus around the city. The first of these busses that we jumped on was very full and we were stuck in the unairconditioned downstairs. After a quick stop off, however, we were lucky to grab the spot up the top right in the front (even if it still didn’t have air-conditioning). The whole bus trip took two hours all up and we were back at the hotel by the required 7pm for the group dinner.

    

Julie and I are both incredibly undecided about this city. Everyone had told us that Budapest was amazing and that we would really regret not having extra time here… perhaps that gave us too high expectations? I think we were a bit skewed by the fact that the majority of the bus trip was spent driving down busy streets, often stuck in traffic, and neither of us are big city people. We stopped off at the City Park for a bit but didn’t see anything that stood out to us. What was really lovely was when the bus drove up to the castle district and the Citadel. From here you could see the Danube and the very impressive Parliament building. If we’d had the extra two days like the others we would have spent all our time up there just relaxing and enjoying the view. And then rest of the time would have been spent in the thermal baths.

As it is, Budapest was nice but it didn’t really win us over as much as other cities had done. We seem to be alone in this opinion though, all the others love it here and perhaps one day I do need to come back and give the city another try. Anyway, at 7pm most of us went to the final group dinner, except Dan and Sarah who had gone to see a ballet. I ordered a Hungarian Goulash – I had been stoically avoiding goulash the whole trip so as to have the proper thing here. Unfortunately apparently an authentic goulash is actually only watery broth with chunks of meat in it. Not really what I was expecting! I much preferred the apple and pear crepes I had for dessert.

    

After the dinner Hamish, Marissa, Julie and I went back to the square surrounding the big church here – we sat at an outdoor cafe, drank a bottle of Hungarian wine together and watched Germany beat Greece on the TV screens that are everywhere. We then headed back to the hotel in the hope of catching Dan and Sarah – they had left us their room number and after knocking on their door, calling their room and receiving no answer we assumed that they had not yet returned. This meant that we sat downstairs and drank a Chardonnay, whilst waiting for them to come back. At 1am we conceded that perhaps they were actually sleeping in their room and all headed up to our own rooms to sleep!

Thursday 21st June–Tatra Mountains, Slovakia

Another relatively early morning today! We were downstairs having breakfast at 8am, ready to catch the two trains to our hiking spot. One hour later we arrived and discovered that ‘hiking’ was really walking up an asphalt road for a while, to a lake with a restaurant. Apparently sometimes the tour goes on an actual hike up a mountain but, due to the varying levels of fitness in this group, Vicky opted for the easier option instead. The walk up was nice, mostly uphill but nothing scary. It was a typical forest walk (so, lots of trees) except that there were swarms of flies everywhere. I was steadily third in the pack and enjoyed walking on my own with no one else in sight.

    

Hamish, Dan, Julie and I arrived at the lake restaurant first (after about an hour walk) and waited around quite a while for everybody else. The opportunity was taken to skip stones  on the lake for a while but mostly, we just stood around for a while. I should note that at this point the weather was cloudy and cool which was actually really refreshing for walking but really not great for photos (so they all look bad again).

Eventually, everybody arrived and soon talks began of walking back the way we came. Hamish began eyeing off the mountain we were at the bottom of and investigations revealed it would take about an hour to get to the top. So, everybody else went home and Hamish, Dan, Julie and I headed off for the hour uphill trek. I was clearly the least fit of the group (the first conversations were about how many push up and tyre flips people could do) but I managed to keep up alright. The middle bit was the hardest, but then Dan and I got talking about books and Agatha Christie conversations made the last third much much easier!

    

In about the expected hour, we reached the top. The weather was pretty cloudy so we couldn’t see very far but it was still quite impressive. It was mostly exciting to know we’d done some actual hiking and achieved what we’d set out to do. After about 15 minutes relaxing up there, posing for lots of photos and taking in the view we began our descent back down.

Then things got interesting. About two thirds of the way down a thunderstorm hit, complete with thunder, lightning and very heavy rain. Hamish was very lovely and gave me his rain jacket but still things got saturated. And by things I mean everything – my hair, my clothes, my socks, my shoes. We all gave up rock hopping and ended up walking in the creek/path instead. There was no point in being upset and I couldn’t help but be greatly amused by the situation.

The walk back to the train station from the top took just under two hours I think, where we missed the hourly train back by eight minutes. This meant a very cold 55 minute wait and then an hour train ride back (in which we were all very quiet and focusing on pretending to be dry and warm). Once we were back at the hotel we all ran to get hot showers which were AMAZING. I then covered the hotel room with everything that had gotten wet – this included everything in my backpack!

At around 6.30pm the usual six of us decided to leave the group dinner and head back to the place we went last night, at which I ordered the same meal (chicken with parprika sausage sauce, mmm). There was also consumption of wine, Tatra honey cake and hot chocolate that was basically just melted chocolate in a cup. We were all entertained by a Slovakian band downstairs playing violins hideously and then by the wild stag we met on our walk home!

Once back at the hotel Dan, Sarah, Julie and I had our fifth 500 decider match which Dan and Julie won with a killer misere hand (but we don’t really need to talk anymore about that). Tomorrow is our very last day of the tour, which went by extremely quickly! We are not looking forward to saying goodbye to people at all, so we’ll just have to make the most of our one day in Hungary!

Wednesday 20th June–Back into Slovakia

Today might win the record for the shortest blog yet. We were due to leave again for Slovakia but not until 11.30am – this meant a chance to do one more thing in Krakow and, on the recommendations of others, Hamish, Julie, Marissa and I headed off for the town castle (yes, another one). It was a very lovely castle with an eclectic ten domed cathedral and very intricate carvings inside. We also bought a ticket to go inside the state rooms – this mostly involved looking at lots of impressive tapestries, marble floors and staircases and fancy gold ceilings (no photos allowed). One particular room also had 30 wooden heads attached to it, staring down at you. Really not sure what that was about!

    

We still had a little time left so we popped into the ‘Dragons Den’, a cave under the castle that was apparently formed over 12 million years ago. It was just a cave, but interesting because of its location and the legends associated with it (legends are apparently behind how the town got its name, google it if you want!). I always love a good legend.

After that, back to the hotel to check out and head off to bus station. What followed was three buses, none with air conditioning, uncomfortable seats, aisles full on people – we were all pretty relieved when we arrived in a new country five hours later, at 4.30pm in the afternoon.

Right now we are near the Tatra mountains in Slovakia, in what is usually a little ski resort in the winter time. We are surrounded by lots of trees and huge mountains behind our hotel – it reminds me a lot of Austria. The weather has been lovely, with the breeze rustling through the trees making it all very peaceful (despite all the souvenir shops). Lots of photos tomorrow, I promise.

    

After buying some snacks for hiking tomorrow we chilled in our room for a bit before heading out for another group dinner. This dinner was really nice, we sat outside with the mountains as our background. I thoroughly enjoyed my chicken, my wine and getting to talk a bit more to our tour leader. Then back to the hotel for some rounds of Whist with our card playing group. I don’t think I’ve ever played so much cards in such a short time in my life…and its fantastic! Bed time was quite early, 10.30pm, all ready for our hike tomorrow!

Tuesday 19th June - Kraków

This morning we woke up at 8am after five hours sleep. Not surprisingly, I was feeling a little under the weather but there were things to do and places to see so we soldiered on anyway! The morning was thankfully an easy one and it was not until 9.45am that we left the hotel and headed down the street to catch a tour. Soon six of us from our tour were in the minibus and headed towards the Wieliczka Salt Mine. This is one of the oldest salt mines still in operation and is also on the UNESCO list of must see sights.

To reach the salt mines we needed to descend down a shaft with 378 steps – the deepest we were on the whole tour was around 135m. We also walked almost three kilometres but saw only 1% of the whole mine. It was clear from the beginning that our guide was going to be hilarious – he really did make the whole experience something special. He led us past a lot of art carved from the salt rock, three underground lakes and numerous chapels carved by the miners themselves. There was a particularly impressive one with multiple salt crystal chandeliers and art carved on all of the walls. Apparently they have approximately 12 weddings a year down there! My photos of the whole mine unfortunately don’t do it much justice at all, due to lighting issues. It was all very pretty though.

    

After the mine tour (which lasted around two hours), Hamish, Marissa, Julie and I requested to be dropped off at the Oskar Schindler Museum – it is, after all, the first thing I associate with this place. We stopped quickly for lunch then headed in. The museum is housed in his old pots and pan factory and is in fact more dedicated to World War II in Krakow, rather than Oskar Schindler himself. There was a LOT to read but they did a very good job of setting up the rooms… we wandered down real cobbled streets, through big art installations, into rooms set up like real houses. The information itself is of course difficult material and it took us all an hour and a half to go through it all. Highly recommended for any history buffs out there. Of course, we all left wanting to go watch Schindler’s List again.

  

After the museum we grabbed a very amusing little tourist cart back into the old town, where we sat in the sunny square and ate apple pie with icecream (much enjoyed). Then it was back to the hotel for a couple of hours to relax before dinner (I won’t lie, there were naps in there too!) At 7.30pm seven of us met for dinner – we were headed to a recommended restaurant that apparently served giant portions of Pork Knuckle, the speciality here. Right after we sat down the waitress didn’t hesitate suggesting a banquet for seven, a selection of the best things on their menu. This sounded pretty good so we said ok – then in came out at it was HUGE. So much meat! It was mostly chicken and pork done in about ten different ways, including a giant pork knuckle in the middle. I am proud to say I ate a portion of every single thing on the plate and it was all very good. Five out of seven of us were also brave enough to try the free horseradish vodka shots the waitress forced into our hands. They were hideous, but least we’ve ticked that off the Polish to do list! 

   

Afterwards back up to our hotel room for two rounds of 500 with Dan and Sarah – Sarah and I did woefully, making it 2-2 now and leaving it open for an epic decider before the tour is ended. Very full and very tired we all headed to bed around 11pm… another big day of travelling tomorrow!