October 2011
9 posts
7 tags
Roma: 30th September
Sorry this has been so long coming, I got very behind and then stopped posting completely, but I’m back home in NZ now, so I will endeavour to get them all done before I forget everything.
Started my day with a little passeggiata down Via del Plebiscito on my way to the Piazza Navona
I passed the Largo di Torre Argentina, with the ruins of several temples. Seriously Roma is just...
9 tags
Roma: 29th September
I started the day by walking around the corner from my hotel (literally, about 30 seconds’ walk) into the Piazza Venzia, where I basically nearly died from general wonderment.
The sqaure is a manic mass of cars, bikes and people, with so much traffic attempting to get through it that there was a dude directing traffic - I snapped a picture ‘cause he looked so elegant doing it, like...
5 tags
Copenhagen - Rome (sort of): 28th September
Oh god, this was the day from hell. And thus, it gets its very own devoid-of-photographs post.
It started out like a normal day, aside from the fact that I was awake before 6am. The normal airport-train-taking day quickly devolved into a nightmare of Tom-Hanks-in-an-airport proportions. (I may be exaggerating, but I’m celtic so I’m allowed).
I made it onto the budget airline plane...
6 tags
Copenhagen: 25th - 27th September
The train trip was very very easy and relaxing - I saw lots of gorgeous countryside, but the train-window was very dirty and it was a high-speed train, so I didn’t take any pics. My hotel was about five minutes walk from the station and had a shower which was actually in the same place as the bed and wasn’t communal (YES!)
I had a very nice dinner at Lê Lê Nhà Hàng, a Vietnamese...
5 tags
Stockholm (Lots of awesome Moderna Museet...
After a lazy start I ventured into the hippest part of Stockholm (Södermalm or SoFo) for breakfast - the classic coffee (which was excellent) and kanelbullar (cinnamon roll) at this little place just down from the most hipster shop I have ever seen (Grandpa - buy your child a tiny bowtie and yourself an overpriced pair of coloured headphones).
I had a wander around the shops, including Pet Shop...
4 tags
Stockholm: 22nd-23rd September
The flight to Stockholm was entirely uneventful and the express train from Arlanda to Stockholm Central is so easy I could have laughed out loud. In fact I did. Especially when I discovered the free wifi on the train.
To add to how easy it was, my hostel was just five minutes walk from the station.
The hostel was honestly the most hipster place I have ever stayed in. I forgot to get a picture,...
4 tags
Berlin: 21st September
I started my first solitary day (after the initial teary goodbye to my mother outside the hostel) with coffee and smoked salmon scrambled eggs at Blaues Band, while sampling the delights of their free wifi. Mr Super-Kool-Ponytail wasn’t there though.
I managed to navigate the U-bahn and made it to the Jewish Museum, which is worth a visit just for the architecture.
The whole building is...
7 tags
Berlin: 20th September
We began the day with breakfast at Blaues Band, which lasted rather longer than usual due to their free wifi. The dude who worked there was so Super-Kool with a capital K. He had a little ponytail and smoked cigarettes out on the street as if he was oblivious to the goings-on in his café.
We had a wee explore around our neighbourhood of Berlin Mitte, which is THE MOST HIPSTER place I have ever...
6 tags
Berlin (Extra Special East Side Gallery Post):...
When we arrived in sunny Berlin, it was in fact, raining.
We made our arduous way on the bus to our hostel (that’s right, is has an ‘s’ in it. Don’t worry no bunk-beds were involved), which we couldn’t check into ‘til 2, so we got on the 100 bus and rode around on it for a bit.
We had a slight drama upon check-in, as we were sent to the wrong room (about a...
September 2011
19 posts
1 tag
midnightskywalker asked: where are you from and how old are your glasses?
6 tags
Salzburg, then Bavaria, then auf wiedersehen...
To say that we started the last day off well would be an understatement.
We set out with our local guide Christina (who I think I liked best of all the guides) for the magnificent Alps, ready to go on our excursion to see the Eagle’s Nest, which is kind of like Hitler’s treehouse. Except instead of being on a tree, it’s on a freakin’ ginormous mountain.
Sadly (but not...
6 tags
Salzburg: 16th September
We had a lovely drive from Vienna, through the beautiful Austrian countryside:
We had a lovely walk around Salzburg, through the Mirabelle gardens (which were used in The Sound of Music by the way)
It was a beautiful day, and it real is a gorgeous town.
And we spotted some more love padlocks on the little footbridge:
We saw Mozart’s birthplace (which funnily enough has...
6 tags
Wien (Vienna): 15th September
We didn’t sign up for the trip to see Schönbrunn Palace, so got to have a nice sleep-in in the morning, before jumping on the bus for the sightseeing trip.
I spotted this cool bit of grafitti:
which I would quite like on a t-shirt actually.
Our local guide was called Sylvia and she had a refreshing take on the people of Vienna - she told us about the tendency of the Viennese to hate...
2 tags
Ranking of Cities by Hipsterishness
This may be controversial. And I know I haven’t got to most of these places in the blog yet, but I think this is too important to wait.
In reverse order of hipsterishness:
10: London. Come on, that is like so 40 years ago.
9: Salzburg. The Sound of Music was filmed there. And it wasn’t even ironic.
8: München. It could be cool maybe, if you like went to Oktoberfest ironically or...
3 tags
Vienna: 14th September
We began our visit to Vienna by rejoicing at the coolness of our hotel room and by heading out way into the outskirts of Vienna to the town of Marchfeld.
There we visited the most remarkable restaurant I have ever been to: Marchfelderhof.
When we arrived, what seemed like the whole staff was waiting outside for us, waving and holding up umbrellas.
They laid a red carpet out on the road for...
5 tags
Budapest: 14th September
The morning began with a visit to the Vajdahunyad Castle, which was built in 1896 to celebrate Hungary’s millenial as an exhibition, torn down, then rebuilt by popular demand. Even though all the buildings are actually replicas and mostly just facades, it is a lovely place - a peaceful and beautiful spot in the middle of a bustling city.
The castle has buildings from different...
8 tags
Budapest: 13th September
We began the day early, not ‘cause we had to, but ‘cause we woke up. Did I mention the lack of air con? One upside to our hotel was the view across the Pest side of the city, towards the Buda side, with the moon still in the sky:
We began our sightseeing tour with Sophie at Hero Square, which frankly is almost too spectacular to be real.
It is full of figures from Hungarian...
5 tags
Bratislava and Budapest: 12th September
We were sad to leave Prague, if only for the simple reason that it was actually hotter in Budapest. We had a very nice lunch stop in Bratislava (yeeeees I always have lunch in Bratislava daahling. I don’t know, it just seems weird to be able to say I’ve had lunch in Bratislava. ANYWHO) which is very pretty.
We had lunch at a very nice italian place before taking a wee look...
7 tags
Praha (Prague): 11th September
I should warn you all, this will be a long post, simply because I think I took about 300 photos on this day.
We had an early start on our first day in Praha (in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m endeavouring to use the local names for places, ‘cause it seems silly to me that we have our own special ‘English’ names), which was a good thing, ‘cause it was hoooooot....
9 tags
Nürnberg and Praha: 10th September
We had an early start and all crammed into the bus (all 52 of us - 54 including our driver Harald and our tour director Noel) and headed off for Prague. We had a nice mix of people on the bus - lots of Americans and Canadians, a healthy spattering of Aussies, a Swiss lady, a Brazillian lady, an Israeli dude and another pair of Kiwis! (with whom we became buddies fairly quickly).
Little did we...
6 tags
München: 9th September
And so begins the Cheesy Bus Tour.
We managed the sprint across Munich Airport to the Tour Bus just in time, so made it to the hotel reasonably early in the day. The hotel was way out in the waps of the city, so we had a wee adventure finding some lunch - we went to a hotdog stand (or really a wurst stand) and I had to attempt to speak German. It turned out fine really.
(I look really weird...
4 tags
The Midlands: 5th September – 8th September
Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?
Don’t be fooled, the Midlands are very very exciting.
Cough.
No, but really, we stayed with my Uncle Alun in Catherine-de-Barnes, a lovely wee town near the seething metropolis of Solihull (cough). We mostly just relaxed and read books (I read the first two Hunger Games books in about 36 hours - my goodness they’re good), but we did head out into the wide...
6 tags
London: Sunday 4th and Monday 5th September
Sunday was our only dreary day so far, so we started the morning off with a visit to Tate Britain, which houses the best of British art. It’s a gorgeous collection, including a whole room full of Turners and lots of those odd paintings of entire families looking bemused. I didn’t get any photos, partly because I didn’t want to be ‘that’ annoying person, but also...
6 tags
Yes, Minister and Much Ado About Nothing - London:...
We began another glorious day with a wander around Westminster, all the time expecting to see Sir Humphrey Appleby and Malcolm Tucker wandering along the street, arguing vociferously.
Boudicca oversees the debacle that is London traffic and no doubt tries to keep Westminster and Whitehall in check.
Even though I know it’s just a clock, I always get a little thrill when I see Big Ben and...
3 tags
Another post will be forthcoming, I promise.
But just for now, the English are obsessed with motorways.
I’m writing this from the M6.
True story.
4 tags
6 tags
Doctor Who! Greek Food! - London: Friday 2nd...
Warning: this is the longest post in the world.
It was hoooot today. Apparently it got to 26, though it felt like at least 30 in the Underground (especially while I was standing wedged between a dude in a suit and a kid with the worst bleach job I’ve ever seen).
We started off the day with brekkie at our hotel (by the way, you should all see the stunning view of Earl’s Court from our...
9 tags
Words. Type them into blog. And pictures. Pictures...
Bllllllllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeerg.
Basically. So jetlagged right now. Loooooooooong flights.
Got to London about 7ish (in the morning, though I still have no earthly clue how time zones are supposed to make sense, and stood in the most epic immigration queue I have ever been in. We took the train to Paddington and partook of the absolute delight that is the West Cornwall Pasty Company...
August 2011
2 posts
4 tags
14 DAYS
In two weeks I shall be leaving for Europe!
TWO WEEKS
Terrifying/awesome.
Anyway, I’m going to be posting all my travel experiences on here, so if you’re interested you should follow!
The final itinerary is:
London
Munich
Prague
Budapest
Vienna
Salzburg
Berlin
Stockholm
Copenhagen
Rome
Florence
Bologna
Venice
Milan
Paris
(DON’T...
July 2011
1 post
May 2011
1 post
January 2011
1 post
November 2010
9 posts
Prague!
Ano! (For you beginners, that’s yes in Czech. At least that’s what the phrasebook tells me.)
We’re going to Prague! We’ll see this:
And this:
And hopefully some of this:
It’s so pretty! And the language is so inscrutable.
Ne, nemluvím Czezh. Máte náhradní leguána bych mohl půjčit?
Excellent road trip song courtesy of Ted and...
2011. It's on.
Stay tuned for all the deets of Liz and Cailtin’s amazing trip…
