On the road again... part one

I have been on the road again… this time for a month long holiday in the European summer sun. It is simply not possible to do justice to the places I travelled to on this blog… but I’ll do my best to give you just a mere taste of the journey & wonders we encountered. Our trip covered six countries including Italy, Vatican City, Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Germany.

Our journey started in Italy, a country that I was particularly looking forward to exploring. My expectations were exceeded. Venice was lovely. We stayed in a B&B on one of the 118 islands in Venice. Despite the fact the town is flat we surprisingly had to climb plenty of stairs as we crossed the 400 odd bridges that linked the islands. Below are photos of Venice, including the Rialto Bridge and the Piazza San Marco (with St Mark’s Basilica & bell tower in the distance).

From Venice we flew to the busy (& crazy town) of Naples. We checked out some of the local castles, admired Mt Vesuvius from afar, tasted the local traditional delicacy (aka pizza!) and wandered around the ruined Roman town of Pompeii.

Rhine & reisling

I have flown over it, been on a train under it, but it was now time to cross it on a boat. What am I talking about? Well, it is the 34km stretch of water known as the English Channel. While it took Susie Maroney 17 hours 14 minutes hours to swim across and back, my journey from Dover to Calais took 1½ hours each way.

The destination of my journey was Bad Salzig, a small town located in the German Rhineland. The Rhineland is the general name for land on both sides of the river Rhine, which itself is 1,320km in length and remains a key waterway for the transport of goods from the Netherlands to France. On a beautiful balmy Sunday afternoon we cruised along a stretch of the waterway for approximately 2 hours. We passed many castles and prehistoric fortifications along the Rhine, including Marksburg - the only surviving medieval castle on that part of the Rhine.

The Rhine region is also known for the being the origin of riesling grapes (a personal favourite). There are several vineyards that line the river banks, many of which still hand pick the grapes due to the sheer gradient of the land. The tour of the region would not have been complete without a few tastings of reisling & ‘ice wine’ from the local Weinhaus.

The weekend was topped of with an afternoon stop over in the Belgium town of Ghent. The town has plenty of medieval architecture and impressive buildings including: Saint–Nicolas Church, Belfry and Saint Bavo Cathedral.

Welsh summit

I climbed Mt Snowdon (1,085m) last weekend with a few friends in support of the Motor Neurone Disease charity. There were about 50 people doing the walk both in support of the charity and Jason’s colleague who was recently diagnosed with the disease.

If you would like to support the MND cause (in either $ or £), feel free to follow these links… http://www.mndaust.asn.au/make-a-donation (Australia) or http://www.justgiving.com/high-altitude (UK).

There are numerous alternatives for walking up Mt Snowdon and it is certainly a popular activity. We walked along the Llanberis Path which generally follows the same line as the Snowdon Railway which we went on last year when it was snowing. This path is a 9 mile (14.5km) return trip, climbing an elevation of 972 metres. It is one of the longer paths up Snowdon and is generally considered one of the easiest ways up.

Overall, the walk was tougher than I was expecting, especially considering it was meant to be the “easier” trail. The weather conditions were pretty ordinary as well and I was glad I was prepared for the worst. We encountered rain and strong head-on winds as we climbed up the mountain. Victoria & I had to crawl the last up the last few steps to reach the summit as we were being hammered with hail. As you can imagine, we didn’t stick around for long and proceeded to hike down the mountain. Going down was significantly more dangerous with the gale-force winds pushing us down some nasty slopes. I was “flying” at one point… I was thankful that I was being blown away from the edge not over it. There was no permanent damage, just a few bruises to add to my normal collection! Some others on the mountain were not so fortunate. We watched the rescue helicopter land on the mountain to lift two people who had suffered broken limbs from the conditions. The round trip took around 4½ hours in the end. After all was said and done, we treated ourselves to a dinner out and a little relaxation.

City of bikes

I took advantage of the May Day long weekend by heading to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a beautiful city, with the canals weaving in and around the city. The city is home to approx 800,000 people and 1.6 million bikes.

After a hectic few weeks at work, it was a great opportunity to unwind and relax. We managed to see a fair bit of Amsterdam in the three days we were there. Below are some of the highlights:

• Keukenhof, the world’s largest flower garden (see just a couple of the pics above… I took plenty of photos – even with my small point & shoot camera it was a photographer’s fairyland!)
  
• Walking through Anne Frank’s house where Anne & her family hid from the Nazis for two years before being captured and sent to concentration camps. She is well known for her diary which was published by her father (the sole survivor from the family) post WWII.


• Tasting the local brew at the home of Heineken (see Michelle & Dwaine to the right).


• And finally we rounded out the weekend with a cruise around some of the canals.

Easter in Praha

I celebrated Easter and the long weekend in capital of the Czech Republic, Prague. Prague is one of the few European cities to survive WWII relatively unscathed and is rich with original architecture. Travelling in Prague is quite easy for the backpacker, with most people willing to speak English and navigation (with the standard map provided by the information desk at the airport) quite easy. The added bonus that this weekend afforded was the gorgeous weather. With temperatures around 20 degrees, it was a perfect opportunity to pull out the summer t-shirts.










We stayed in a hostel in the Old Town, walking distance to many of the attractions. It was a fairly relaxed weekend as we wandered along the cobbled streets admiring the architecture and various landmarks along the way. We did all the general things that I like to do when I go to a new town… including:

• Climbing a tower and appreciating a bird’s eye view of the city (top left – view of Old Town square from the top of the Old Town Hall tower)
• Understanding a bit of the local history at the Czech National Museum (top right)
• Eating the local grub & brew (bottom left – eating a Trdlo (pastry) from the Easter markets)
• Visiting the local castle (bottom right – In this case the 9th century Prague Castle, the world’s oldest castle in use, stands in prominence over the city. As well as a quick walk through the grounds, we checked out the impressive St Vitus Cathedral.)

  

  

In the evenings we enjoyed the local culture, including a contemporary ballet at the National Theatre and attuned our ears to the sound of a viola ensemble performing a selection of Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi & Dvorak. We wrapped up the long weekend with a visit the Karlstejn castle, located about an hour of Prague by train.

Most cities have a few “unique” features and Prague is no exception. Here are just a few…

• Astronomical clock, which not only tells the time but provides the relative positions of the sun, moon and zodiacal constellations. Every hour the tourists flock to the clock to take to watch the “procession of the 12 apostles” who pop out briefly on the hour.
• A statue of a crouching man, build by the letters & symbols from every language in the world… pretty cool.
• The Freedom wall, a memorial to John Lennon and his ideas for peace and a monument for free speech.
• And finally there was an interesting mechanically statue which apparently moves to write the quotes of famous Czech residents. If you combine the picture with your imagination, I’m sure you’ll get the idea… bizarre!