TravelStream™ news feed for member kitty on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/kitty en-us Copyright ©2010 TravelPod.com Sat, 20 Sep 2008 11:53:54 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/kitty/2/1218037260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/kitty/2/1218037260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/kitty/2/1218037260/tpod.html Sat, 20 Sep 2008 11:53:54 -0400 Josh, Kitty and Bruce The Van take to the roads less travelled!

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Granada, Andalusia, Spain and Canary Islands

We drove across to Figueres, home town of our favourite artist, Salvador Dali. It is here that Dali created the Teatre-Museu Dali, when you visit you are taken on a journey, viewing a substantial amount of his life's work, including the Taxi Plujos (rainy taxi), built inside his Cadillac in which he supposedly drove his dead wife around in on her last journey. Further east is Cadaques, a whitewashed town built around a picturesque rocky bay. It is here that Dali spent some of his younger years on holidays and you can certainly see by looking around the bay where he got his inspiration from. A fantastic town called 'Castellfollit de la roca' stands on the top layers of petrified lava, you wouldn't want to fall out your back window that's for sure! It was so hot here we had to have an afternoon siesta.

We stayed in a place called Mont Gat (Mount Cat) just along the coast from Barcelona for a couple of days and used it as a base to explore Barcelona. Mont Gat is a beach with a mountain of rocks at the end of it, home to lots of stray cats who are looked after by people from around the city who come to feed them. As well as visiting the obvious sights; the gothic quarter, La Sagrada Familia, La Rambla, Gaudi's park, we spent a few hours looking through the Casa Batllo, an apartment block designed by Gaudi that seems to come alive with themes of the underwater world as you walk through it. We also visited La Pedrera, another apartment building designed yet again by the genius Antoni Gaudi with chimney pots decorated like knights.

We sweated our way across the scorching hot Sierra Nevada with only our Mexican style air conditioning (winding the windows down) to Granada. It was at least 40 degree's and just too hot to sleep with the doors or windows shut. We visited the amazing Alhambra and explored the Arabic style streets and shops.
It was a little disappointing to see a most of the tapa's bars closed for the month of August, but I managed to find the one that Id been to two years previously and we made this our local for the few days we were in town. The owner ended up giving us free tequila shots to go with the already free tapas you get when you purchase your cerveza's. The more beer you buy the better the free tapas get!

Seville... to be continued..........
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Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Across we drove to Venice, the floating city, with singing gondoliers and pigeons that outnumber tourists. We took a canal ride along the Grand Canal soaking in the atmosphere, getting off at Plaza san Marco. After seeing the major sights around the san Marco area we headed off to explore the quieter quarters of the city, past Castello, where there are almost no tourists. We came back to explore more of Venice later in the night, Venice has a somewhat magical feeling to it at night and being here in August you can escape the heat, but unfortunately not the crowds. We walked around the lit up Rialto area, crossing the beautiful Rialto bridge, listening to the sounds of the gondola captains singing as they wade down the emerald green maze of canals.

We spent a couple of days in Florence exploring the cities Renaissance art spread throughout the cities chapels, galleries and museums. We visited the Duomo, the fourth largest chapel in the world. Here we climbed our way to the top of the dome investigating more closely the work by Donatello on the way up. From the top the views over Florence are absolutely marvellous. We saw the famous David statue by Michelangelo, Ponte Vecchio the famous bridge loaded with jewellers and spent a lovely evening up at the lookout watching the sunset over Florence. Josh had met some other photography enthusiasts earlier in the day on the top of the Duomo who had hinted that the lookout was a great place to get pictures from. So he met up with them again that night at the lookout and whilst they were exchanging stories about lens sizes and megapixels, I was busy being harassed by a group of Chinese ladies, who kept trying their pressure point massages on me and giving me freebies all with the words ''God is love you'' written on them.

We spent some time wandering around Siena marvelling at the beautiful views of the Tuscan countryside surrounding the town, and being intrigued by the fantastically decorated deli's with giant boars and other animal heads peering down at you as you enter the store. Most roads in Sienna lead to the Campo, the main square in which the Palio, a mighty bareback horse race, is held every year which id love to some back to watch some day.

Out of Florence we set off down road number 222 through the beautiful Tuscan countryside passing through Grassina, Strada in Chianti, Greve in Chianti, Castellina in Chianti, Colle div al d'elsa to San Gigimano. Along the way stopping to sample a few fine bottles of Chianti Classico, would be rude not to of course.

San Gigimano is an absolutely stunning Tuscan village perched up on a hill, surrounded by vineyards and beautiful landscape. When we arrived there was a huge thunderstorm coming in over the hills, the sky was a really dark grey and you could see the rain about to come through and soak up the town. We decided to risk it and walk around the town anyway and because it was a setting sun with an afternoon storm coming through it lit up the town, giving it a grey backdrop which gave a great contrast to the colours in the valley - because of all these factors Josh managed to get some spectacular photo's. The best views are obtained from the grounds of the Wine Museum, where you can climb the towers for even higher 360 degree views out over the countryside. I have to add in case anyone decides to visit -that San Gigimano is home to the four times world champion gelati makers whom were winning so easily they had to be asked to leave the competition, so we definitely went in for a purchase to see what all the fuss what about! Best ice-cream ever, im talking nutella icecream at its best, giant gooey chunks of nutella and whole hazlenuts inside! Yes I know I talk about food too much!

As we drove out of San Gigimano we pulled up in the van and stayed on some farmland, where we woke up for sunrise the next morning and watched the sun come up over the fields. These are the photo's attached of the hay bails in the fields. From here we drove through more and more small villages and over to the west coast of Italia. We visited the leaning tower of Pisa and then drove on towards Cinque Terra, where we spent three nights at a camping ground in Levallo just outside the Cinque Terra NP. We walked the Cinque Terra trail from Riomaggiore to Monterosso on an absolute scorcher of a day I think it got up to around 40 degrees that day. Luckily we had packed our snorkelling gear in our day packs and stopped for a great snorkel in Vernazza. This was the second time ive done this walk and it was as beautiful as ever, walking through the olive plantations, all five fishing villages are so charming and the views are spectacular out over the rocky cliffs and down into the turquoise ocean.
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Toulouse, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Very excited to be driving along some coastline, particularly as it was the Cote D'Azur we headed across to Nice, the capital of the French Riviera. We headed straight to the beach to enjoy the warm weather and the warm waters of the ocean. The drive from Cannes around the coast to St Tropez was beautiful, as well as marvelling at the huge and luxurious house's and boats belonging to the rich and famous there were many rocky coves with emerald green water to enjoy.

Avignon is one of the major artistic centres in France and it definitely has a very artsy bohemian kind of feel to it. We were there for the Avignon festival so street performers and leaflet flyers were out in full force advertising their operas, films or musical acts.

We then visited the very impressive 'Pont du Gard' once part of a 50km long aqua duct system still standing in all its glory after being built 19BC by the Romans! Impressive! Unfortunately we were unable to stay in the carpark at Pont du Gard so we set off to try and find somewhere to park for the night. After driving for a few hours we were tired and decided to park at a truck stop on the motorway. At 2am I was woken by the crackling sound of our sun protectors on the front passenger side window. After realising it couldn't be the wind making it move that much I whispered to Josh to wake up. He saw someone's hand coming in the window with a torch and quickly whacked the window hard and started blaring our air horn. Luckily the intruder decided to leave, got in their car and drove off, only taking our window with them. They had cut the rubber seal with a knife and taken the window out. We searched around in the darkness for the window, but I was a little shaken up to be sticking around that spot, so we stuck some cardboard to the window and found a very well lit up service station to sleep for the rest of the night. The next day, Sunday, we went to eight different camping grounds trying to find somewhere to stay with no luck and four different police stations only to find out that police stations close on the day of the Sabbath. We were feeling quite miserable by this stage, after finally getting a police report we still had to try and call a windscreen repair company and neither of us can speak a word of French, so the task was going to be difficult. We had met a very friendly French couple when we parked our campervan next to theirs at a camping ground in Bratislava and they had said for us to give them a call when we were close to their house in Toulouse. So we decided now was probably a good time to call them and ask for their help. They very kindly invited us to stay at their house, luckily they had a huge garden so Bruce could sleep safely in that and they booked us into a windscreen repairer for the next afternoon. Sometimes you meet people for a reason and I think this was definitely the case here. Our friends were so kind to us taking us on a guided tour of Toulouse so we could see the airbus factory as well as the new Qantas A380 - Carl you would have a field day here! They also took us out to a very posh French restaurant to sample foie gras, pidgeon and the local cheese's from this region. Hopefully we will be able to return the hospitality to our friends when they visit Australia someday.

After leaving Toulouse with our new window we headed off to explore Carcassonne and Foix a lovely town on our way through the Pyrenees.
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Bled, Slovenia

After already visiting more than twenty countries on this trip, we arrive in Slovenia to get the first stamp in our passport. As well as a stamp we got our fridge searched by three separate custom officers on the one border crossing. I think they could smell Josh's spaghetti bolognese a mile away.

Our first stop was a little town called Ptuj, which was once one of the most important trade towns in central Europe. The area between the castle hill and the river Drava was the stopping point for everyone passing through these regions for thousands of years. Today you can explore Ptuj and its medieval interior without bothering the guard to draw down the drawbridge to let you into the city. The narrow streets of Ptuj snake around to meet the castle at the top of the hill, the crumbling Baroque style, red roof houses line the street making it a great place to explore and a very charming place to visit.

We visited the beautiful Lake Bled, its island home to the church of Sv Marika Bozja, a cliff top castle and the Alps as the backdrop to this stunning place. We also visited the wilder Lake Bohinj and on our way to Bovec we took a wrong turn and ended up back in Austria?!?! We then tried to cross back into Slovenia after having a nice little tour of some random towns in Austria only to find that we had to cross the Alps. We were really hoping there would be some way back through a valley so it wouldn't be too steep for Bruce but the only road back was a mountain pass and the more we went on the road signs warned us to have our chains on, that trucks were not permitted on these roads nor were any vehicles with a trailor. Up and up we went winding around the mountain until holy smokes the road turned into a 18% gradient we had the pedal to the metal but Bruce was barley going anywhere. It was so scary we didnt know how much longer the road was going to up like this for so we saw a break in the road and aborted our mission!! We turned around and went back down and then we had to through the Italian part of the Alps to get back to Slovenia. These roads were very steep but not 18% thank God, but what they lacked in steepness they made up for in narrowness and winds. So this wasn't the most relaxing drive I tell you what, I actually had to have a few sneaky swigs out of our hazelnut liquor bottle to calm myself down a bit. We made it to Bovec in the Slovenian Alps late that afternoon after detouring through two extra countries. Bovec is home to the amazingly aqua blue Soca river. Here we went Canyoning and White water rafting. The white water rafting was more of a friendly boat ride down the river, the scenery was spectacular so it didn't matter too much but a few more rapids would have been nice. Canyoning was really fun we had 17 slides and jumps down natural rock slides and off cliff edges in the gorge. Some slides you slid down on your back, some you went down front first into the chilly rock pools below. The last slide was a scary 12m vertical slide down into a huge pool.

We visited Postonja caves where you are whizzed through the first section of the cave on a train and then taken on a spectacular 1.5km guided walk through other parts of the cave viewing the fantastic rock formations, stalagmites and stalactites; lights are turned on when you enter each section and then turned off again when you leave to minimise the effect the tours have on this fragile environment. The cave is also home to the endemic eyeless salamanders (walking fish) which they used to display in a shallow viewing tank at the end of the tour so tourists could snap away taking photos of them, how they survived this I don't know and thank God when Slovenia joined the EU, they had to stop this to abide by EU animal captivity rules. Luckily we didn't see any salamanders, I hope they are living happily deep inside the cave far away from the bright flashes of any tourist cameras.

We had a superb trip through the Vintgar Gorge in the Triglavski Narodni Park. We walked along the wooden walkways and bridges down the 1600m long gorge, it was very very pretty.

We were hanging to have a swim in the ocean so we detoured to the pretty seaside town of Piran, bordering Croatia. Piran has narrow alleyways with houses tightly packed on top of each other, old ladies hanging out of their windows high above talking to their neighbours and best of all we got to dive into the ocean for the first time since our chilly dip in the ocean back in Ireland.

Before crossing into Italy we visited Lipica, getting its name from the Lipizzaner horses relating to the Spanish riding school. We had a guided tour of the stud farm to see the magnificent horses that are products of a refined breeding program dating back to 1580. Austrian Archduke Charles formed the farm with the aim of adding Spanish and Arab blood to the Lipizzaner strain of horses that were first used by the Romans for chariot racing.

In my opinion Slovenia is one of the most beautiful countries in Europe, with so much to offer in the great outdoor, lakes, caves, gorges, mountains, rivers, forests you name it.
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Europe, Hungary

Do Do Dooo looking out my backdoor
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Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia

From Vienna we drove across to Bratislava, these two cities are the closest capital cities in the world. Our camping ground in Bratislava was quite old and dodgy, but situated right on a lake and very accessible to the town centre. Oh and I can't forget to tell you about the showers. These are the showers that Kramer was persuading the Russians to install in his house in that old Seinfeld episode. Heavy duty, mega strong, fire hose like showers. The type of showers they'd put you in if you were to go through quarantine after living in a rubbish tip for 3 years, they seriously almost blew my ears right off! I was a little bit apprehensive about coming to Slovakia as I'd scared the living daylights out of myself in London watching the series of horror movies 'Hostel' all filmed and based in Slovakia. Because we all know, that what we see in the movies, always happens is real life. So what if I went to Slovakia and fall in love with a beautiful Slovakian woman just like in the movie. But then I found out she was just pretending to like me and was really a psycho evil killer, then she'd take me to an underground Slovakian basement and cut me up into little pieces? Just like the movie.

Central Bratislava has been beautifully restored and because of the care they have put into this, it is a very clean and extremely pleasant place to visit. The outskirts of the city still have the grim looking concrete apartment blocks from communist times, but the centre is very different with quirky statues hidden around the old town. My favourites were the man peeping out of a hole in the ground, and the photographer taking a picture from around a corner - Josh did a great job of imitating this one and became a model for a bus load of Japanese tourists. You can also play outdoor chess in the square on a giant chessboard, and there are plenty of peculiar street performers; my favourite was a man who had dyed himself green the same colour as the water in the fountain and was sitting on the side holding goldfish like some sort of swamp monster.

The Bratislava castle, burnt down by its own drunken soldiers in 1811, was pretty unimpressive but is worth the walk up to for the views of the city and to take a look at some of the derelict yet characteristic houses on the way up.

Mileage - 220
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Cesky krumlov, Southern Poland, Czech Republic

Czesky Krumlov has everything you could ever want from a medieval town; a Renaissance castle, gorgeous stone streets with medieval houses all surrounded by the river Vlatava connected by little wooden bridges and waterwheels. The castle comes complete with a bell tower offering fantastic views of the town, real live bears that live down in the moat area, a dungeon and beautifully manicured gardens. Czesky Krumlov is an absolutely gorgeous little place and was definitely worth the detour here from Austria and we would recommend anyone make a detour here if they get the chance.

Mileage - 114
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Salzburg, Austrian Alps, Austria

Thunderstorms and bucket loads of rain forced us into a caravan park in Innsbruck for a few days. After a whole day inside and nearly a whole series of 'Prison Break' later we set off on a hike up to a refuge up in the mountains. The steep tracks were quite slippery from all the rain but the refuge near the top was dry as it was set out on huge opening in the forest so we could sit down and admire the views of Innsbruck.

The guide book told us that "Central Vienna will bowl you over with its grandiosity" and I think this is a pretty good way of describing it. We walked and walked and walked, attempting to take in as much of the cities architectural treasures as we could. St Stephens was very beautiful as was the Imperial Palace. The Kunsthisorisches museum and the whole area around the Heldenplatz were also spectacular. Meanwhile back at our tram stop we were ready to get the tram back to our car when we discovered some rude member of the transport bureau had decided to close down our tram line for the day. We had no idea why, until we'd stood around for about half an hour thinking anout what we were going to do next, when we kind of got the vibe of the day's festivities. In the distance we could hear George Michael booming and people were gathering along the sides of the streets. The gay pride celebration floats were coming down the streets in their hundreds - YMCA booming, tight black bondage outfits being sported by some, bright feathered costumes by others and some wearing only their birthday suits. The atmosphere was electrifying; everyone was dancing and so happy to be there. So we stayed and watched part of the celebration before heading off on the long walk back to our car.

We drove through the picturesque Hohe Tauern National Park in the Alps. The Grossglockener Hochalpenstrasse, aka hwy 107, is considered to be one of the most beautiful highway routes in the world climbing 2000m, past alpine farmland, glaciers and waterfalls. The climb to the highest point on the mountain road was a bit hard for poor old Bruce, particularly as he weighs in at a hefty 3.5 tonnes. You could definitely smell everyone else's car engines at the top too, by the time we got to 2060m everyone's car had been given a fair workout.

In Salzburg I decided to be a nice girlfriend and not to put Josh through the pain of sitting on a bus full of 30 women singing 'How do you solve a problem like Maria' and 'Rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens' and to go on our own little Sound of Music tour, just the two of us, instead of going on a pre arranged tour. So all he had to listen to all day long was the sound of me singing 'doe a deer a female deer, rae a drop of golden sun'.... even better! They say the old town of Salzburg looks much the same as it did when Mozart was born here. I know its tacky but I had to get at least one token photo of me at one of the sound of music movie locations, so you can see attached me praying at the Stift Nonnberg Abbey where 'Maria' was first found in the movie. The view from the hill, up where the Salzburg fortress is situated, is the best way to see the wonderful Old town and the surrounding areas.

Mileage - 454

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Vilnius, Lithuania

Smooth roads awaited us in Lithuania, as did some huge thunderstorms with deafening thunder. We drove straight through all of this, to the town of Siauliai, where, 10kms from there we visited the 'Hill of Crosses'. The Hill of Crosses has a very moving history and it really is something you have to see with your own eyes to believe. It is an ever-growing assortment of over half a million crosses. Apparently the first crosses were placed at the site sometime before the fourteenth century to honour warriors who died in battles. In pagan times crosses were put there as offerings to Gods and sacred fires were lit. In the Soviet era crosses were placed there to honour loved ones who had been killed or deported, and despite the hill being bulldozed numerous times by the authorities the crosses kept appearing. People would visit at night time, sneaking past barbed wire fences and guards to place their crosses. The soviets even planned to build a river straight through the area, but luckily this never went ahead. The hill holds some great tales; one of which involves a march of people led by a priest who had come out of exile, marching with a huge cross on his back marching the towns to the hill of crosses where he held a service on the hill - forbidden at this time. All these people were later arrested and convicted, and I think stories like this and the fact that the hill has survived shows the determined spirit of the Lithuanians. Nowadays there are crosses placed there by people of all nationalities, commemorating such things as the nine eleven disaster and other terrorist attacks and nowadays the hill is a symbol of world peace. Josh and I both bought crosses and hung them on the larger crosses as a prayer for the people we have both lost since we've left on our trip.

On to Klapedia, we got on the worlds shortest ferry trip (don't quote me on this, but it really felt like it) across to the Curonian Spit. We spent two nights here at this fabulous 97km long, 4km wide island covered with sand dunes and pine forests. We climbed some huge dunes, one of which you could see across the sandscape to the Russian owned side of the spit. There was a lagoon which had these awesome pagan sculptures floating in it, one was the Taurus symbol, and another was a fire goddess at certain times of the year they light them on fire, which from what I could see in the pictures looked spectacular. A town in the middle of the island, Juodkrante, had an amazing wooden sculpture trail through its forest called 'Witches Hill'. The trail had over 70 folk legend themed sculptures, so we spent a good part of the afternoon walking the trail admiring the witches and devil like creatures carved out of the forest trees. It was fantastic! A little out of Joudkrante there were massive colonies of cormorants and heron colonies, so looking up into the treetops they were just everywhere, circling around there huge nests high in the tree's.

Mileage - 403
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Warsaw, Central Poland, Poland

The Polish border has been the strictest for us so far. We have been through thirteen countries so far and still we haven't got a single stamp in our passport. We've had to show our passports a few times, but the customs police have never given us a stamp. Anyway we were stopped twice on the Polish border crossing, and about five policemen started banging the sides of our van. Poor Bruce copped a hiding. We had no idea what they were doing. Then the police asked for our passports, and once they'd had a look they asked if we were carrying any kangaroos, all using the same tone of voice and not showing any signs of humour. Maybe that's why they were knocking, to see if skippy the bush kangaroo would jump out from the back of the van?

In Warsaw Josh discovered a skate park inside a shopping centre, so we've attached some of the photo's of him there. Warsaw has a fantastic Old Town and they have a "buddy bears" exhibition on at the moment where all of the countries in the world have decorated a bear. Some countries have done some fantastic designs, but Australias was so dodgy. It was designed by good old Ken Done in his typical style. We didn't even bother to get a photo of it, Josh liked the Irish bear dressed up like a leprechaun the best, and I liked Iraq's because it had kids riding a magic carpet.

After Warsaw we decided not to take the route that most tourists take travelling on to Krakow and Auzwitch, instead we went to Klodzko a little town in western Poland. It was great coz there wasn't another tourist in sight. On the way to Klodzko we spotted a gas filling station, and stopped to see if we could get our bottle filled there. The owner of the station, Valvick had Dutch, German and nearly every other fitting except for UK fittings L But after Josh bought the bottle out and Valvick felt it was empty he was super determined to fill it for us, but you could tell he had no idea how he was going to do this. He was scratching his head and saying to Josh 'problem, no problem'. Then out came his mate Christo and the three boys firstly tried taping the thread of the dutch connection to make it tighter, close but no cigar. Next idea was to totally empty the remainder of our gas bottle and then for Christo to sit on the bottle whilst Valvick put all his weight on the hose to make an air tight connection, meanwhile Josh was controlling the gas flow. The whole time all of this was going on Valvick was looking around to see if anyone was watching, as im sure even in Poland what they were doing is a big no no, but for our mate Valvick 'problem, no problem'. Surprisingly the bottle started to fill until Valvick slipped and lost the seal and gas started spraying absolutley everywhere, there was a cloud of white gas all around the boys until they could close the valve. Valvick and Christo both got frost burns on their arms and the top of the gas bottle was pure white. But the result of all of this meant our bottle was half full, and both of our new friends were rubbing the burns on their arms saying 'no problem, very good'. So back they went for more, and this process was repeated once again. They got the gas bottle one kilo from being full and Josh said he was happy with this. Josh was too scared to fill it even more as he felt a major catastrophy was about to happen. But this wasn't enough for our new Polish mates they wanted it full to the brim so they filled it yet again, I think we got that kilo and a bit more in the last try. So who knows how much gas we've got sitting back there under our sink, but its full and we have Kristo and Valvick to thank for that!

Mileage - 523
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