mickeyandjess

After an early start from Santorini, our connecting flight from Athens landed us into Istanbul about midday. A slight hiccup with the transfer to the hotel had us chilling in the airport for an hour or so longer than needed but no harm done. Our hotel was located in a nice part of the city, and within easy walking distance of a lot of the major attractions. Which in a city of 14,000,000 people, this is a nice thing to have! The hotel was called the Golden Horn, and it was certainly living up to its name. Gold paint, gold carvings, gold wallpaper and gold pretty much everything else made you feel like a millionaire! We have been very lucky this trip to have had nice accomodation which was safe and clean and tidy. Magically the towels got washed and the beds got made too. Quite convenient really!

We set out to find some dinner later in the day, and with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in progress, the majority of the population are fasting during daylight hours. So as soon as some hungry looking tourist stop in front of a menu board you are pounced upon before you know it! We ended up in the roof top restaurant of a neighbouring hotel and by crikey we had the works laid on! Chairs pulled out, napkins laid onto laps and the glasses kept refilling themselves. Our newest Turkish friend, Salian our waiter was certainly after his 10% service tip for the night because he was busting out all the stops. Mickey ordered a lamb dish and it came out under a shiny copper lid on a big platter. Salian the waiter took great delight in crashing together silver spoons, banging lids onto plates and serving the meat and vegetables with much pomp and ceremony. The restaurant wasn’t overly full but the other people who were there had a front row seat to Mickey and Jess’s meal! Wish I got a picture with him – it would have made his day I reckon.

Next morning with some form of agenda we wandered off in the direction of the Blue Mosque and the Basilica Cistern. We had been through a reasonable number of churches on this trip and it was of course different to all the rest to enter a mosque. Jess had to cover her hair, shoulder and legs, and I had to either wear pants or cover my legs too. Shoes off at the door and into a little plastic bag to be carried through. 

 

 
  
  

The Basilica Cistern is one of several hundred Roman cisterns under the ground in Istanbul, built in the 6th century. Historical records say that over 7000 slaves were used in the construction of it. The cistern is capable of holding over 80,000m3 of water, but is virtually empty today apart from a light covering to keep the ugly fish residents happy. Water came from a river over 19I’m away, through water channels made by the Roman Emperor Justinian. Another amazing piece of historical engineering.

  
Another thing to achieve while in Istanbul is to take a boat ride on the Bosphorous. Istanbul is a unique city, in the fact that it is spread over two continents. Asia is on one side of the Bosphorous Strait and Europe is on the other. It is a crazy busy passage of water that leads to the Black Seam and the oil fields of the East. Overall length is 31km, and it gets down to 700m wide at one skinny point. Even with the number of vessels in one area they sure don’t hang around, and I guess the attitude of small boat gives way to big boat is in practice. There are several bridges over the Bosphorous, with the largest being a shade under 1000 metres in length. We opted for a Government run ferry instead of all the local ‘options’ of hawkers on the street trying to sell you a trip in a rusty old bath tub with no plug in it. Neither of us have any knowledge of shipping, but it was quite cool to see huge oil tankers and cargo vessels (Nigel informed us they are vessels, not ships or boats!) passing very close to us. There is a fancy palace right down by the shoreline and lots of other nice houses. This is where the wealthy have lived for many many years.

 

 
  
The Grand Bazaar is a grand mess. A huge market place of over 3000 shops, but they probably only sell 50 different products over all of them! But unless you wanted imitation clothing of all description, handbags, shoes or jewellery it wasn’t for us. Massive crowds of people, with apparantly 300,000 to 400,000 people visiting each day! Again one of those places some would love but didn’t hold too much attraction for us. The spice market is a smaller version of the Grand Bazaar but sells spices obviously, tea sets, boxes of tea, Turkish delight, scarves, nuts, towels, vases, plates and probably kitchen sinks! We enjoyed this market more and some Turkish retailers went home with less than they expected after the bargaining powers of Jess!

One night after dinner, and another explanation that we were in fact Kiwis and not flipping Australians, we went to the top floor of our hotel to try get some pictures of the city lights and have a bit of dessert. The lights were cool, Jess got some nice pictures but we were let down by the hot chocolate and tea that we paid $5NZ for as it was the exact same drink from the machine we use for breakfast for free! The “Turkish dessert plate” was leftover cakes from the breakfast table that morning too. Ahhh well I guess they can go and buy some more gold paint with our tourist dollars!

  
After visiting so many cities over the last 6 weeks it was a bit difficult to get excited and charge around Istanbul like madmen, but the parts we did see we were very impressed with. For a huge place, there were alot of workers sweeping streets and tidying rubbish and lots of nice flower plots and garden areas. I think we can safely say we both have reached city saturation point and it will be nice to have quiet Gore again!

It’s been an awesome, jam packed six weeks full of sights, sounds, people, places, foods and hotel rooms and we’ve loved it all. We are still married, we have all our finger and toes and hopefully our bags when we get to Invercargill but home will be amazing!

See you soon!!!

The trip to Gallipoli was organised by the same company we went through Europe with so everything was planned and somewhat organised. I say organised because at some points it was like a bunch of blind shepherds herding a bunch of cats but we all got to where we were supposed to be with no harm done. 

A five hour bus trip after a 7am hotel pickup got us to Eceabat, which is a town of 5,500 people and is the closest settlement to the battlefields. A light lunch was provided as part of the ticket price and into the bus again in a group of about 12.

The trip took in all the significant landmarks and areas of the campaign, and at each stop our guide explained the site and what happened there.

 

   

The whole area has been declared a national park by the Turkish Governenment. 36,000 hectares in total are not allowed to be developed, only farmed in continuation of its current use. 2,000,000 visitors a year visit the area, and numbers are increasing of people from all the countries involved in the conflict.

 The Australians were famous for a battle which took place in August 1915 at an area called Lone Pine. This was to be one of the only successes of the whole campaign. The main battlefield was an area the size of one footbal field, around 100 metres. The Australian memorial now stands there and is the cemetery of 1,167 soldiers and the memorial to 471 soldiers whose identity remain unknown.
 

The New Zealand memorial is at Chunuk Bair. This was the sight for another August battle in 1915 which the Wellington battlion would suffer devastating losses. Out of 760 men who reached the summit of the hill during the attack, 711 were either killed or wounded. When the NZers were relieved by British soldiers, the Turks counter attacked and the position was lost. It was after this that the commanders really began to realise the futility of the whole campaign and evacuation plans were seriously considered.

 

Chunuk Bair cemetery contains 632 New Zealand graves and 850 names on the memorial for those unidentified. A fitting final resting place, being the highest point captured during the battle with a impressive view over the Dardenelles.

 

Another sobering place to visit but beautifully presented and maintained cemeteries with the memorials as well. To see the country that the Anzacs had to fight in against strong defensive positions was incredible to even imagine.  It was hard to believe such carnage occurred in what is now a beautiful place, unlike Auschwitz it wasn’t haunting but rather peaceful and a feeling of great respect for the fallen. Overall a real credit to the Turkish people and well worth the trip.

   

We also went to a new museum dedicated to the Gallipoli campaign. At a cost of $20,000,000NZD it was an impressive beast and was made up of 10 mini movie theatres that each played a 10 min clip depicting various parts of the campaign. It was from the Turkish perspective obviously but was very interesting and quite different from the other museums we have been to on our travels. Lots of artefacts and other such stuff from the battles too. The whole museum is shaped like a Battleship too which is a cool touch.

  
Through no endeavour of our own our accommodation for the night was a B&B run very tidly by the local mayor and his wife! The travel site Trip Advisor informed us of this after we arrived which explained the man on the couch wearing his blue suit! Very minimal English was spoken by everyone there, but with a combination of smiles, guestures and other actions we had a massive dinner which we ate every scrap of to be polite and a filling breakfast. The whole setup was a little odd though as we were the only people in the whole place! Next morning we had asked the company who took us through Gallipoli if we could get a taxi to this museum which was a 10 minute car trip from the town itself. We were expecting a crummy local taxi, but once again we had great luck in having the managing director of the tour agency personally drive us there and back in his very modern and stylish black Mercedes! Like most nationalities we have encountered on our trip, the Turks are very friendly people and they will do anything to see you right.

A delayed flight from Venice got us into Santorini around midnight Saturday night. I felt sorry for the van driver and the travel agent lady who had been waiting since 10:30! Bundled into the van and off to our hotel and bed!

Next morning after a hearty breakfast put on by our newest travel acquaintance, Mr King Thiras himself (no idea of his actual name but King Thiras was the name of the hotel so King Thiras he will be),we set off exploring. Santorini is the largest and most populated of a group of islands about 300 kilometres south of the Greek mainland. One of the islands is also a volcano that apparantly could erupt any day. Tourist trap? Unsure.

Wandering the old streets of Thira town (capital) made for next to no efficient navigation, as there were building numbers, but no street names, and it appeared that the Greeks had employed a gang of rabbits to plan their streets. Add in the thousand or so people dropped off by a cruise ship that had docked in that night and you have yourself a grand old time.

At the bottom of 600 steps is the old port of Thira. King Thiras (hotel man) suggested this would be a worthwhile trip down, and if we wanted we could take a donkey ride or a gondola similar to the ones in Queenstown back to the top. We chose to run the donkey gauntlet and walk down. All the donkeys wore bright coloured bridles and saddles and had bells so you could hear them coming and you had to move out of the way very smartly as donkeys don’t use indicators, or keep to one side of the path. Jandals versus donkey hooves wouldn’t be ideal. Even though the donkey gauntlet was a bit of a mission we were both glad we decided to control our own descent, as we did see a couple of other tourists go zooming past looking very uncomfortable and quite possibly scared senseless. The donkeys had one speed going down and it was fast! It didn’t help the donkey owner was hard behind them cracking a whip and shouting encouragement at his animals. The faster they went up and down, the more money he made for the day.  

   
 Donkey dodging complete, we paid the money to catch the gondola back to the top of the hill and save the sweat and travel insurance claim by walking back up. A little bit of shop browsing and that was the day done.
  

There is no water supply on the island, so we were brushing our teeth with bottled water and showering in de-salinated water which was still very salty. Not too sure what the locals drank, but I would say they were on bottled stuff too. Like everywhere else we had been, water was cheap.

We jumped on the local bus system and took a trip to the excavation site of a Miona Bronze Age village. The village was buried by a volcanic eruption in 1627BC and heaps of the buildings, art and other objects are perfectly preserved. The area has been under excavation since 1967 and thy have build a 1.4ha roof over the ruins to preserve them. In 2005 there was a bit of a whoopsie as a section of this flash roof fell on top of someone and they were killed. We tell you this after we have been like clever travellers so no mothers would become concerned.

 

 

Santorini has many different coloured beaches that get their names from the colour of the rock around them. There are black, red and white beaches.  

There is another town on the island called Oia. Every tourism brochure you see tells you that the sunset in Oia is the best in the world. For a fee you could take a boat out on the sea and have a nice dinner, Greek wines and Greek dancing and watch the sunset – along  with multiple other tour boats doing the same thing. But the thing to do is to make your way to Oia (along with 1,000’s of other tourists jostling for ‘the’ spot) and watch the sunset from among the white washed buildings and blue domes. These are all great plans if the sunset decides to play the game and put on some nice colours. We decided to flag this ludacris situation and watch the sunset from our part of town – even it was busy enough!

 

 
  
Another attraction with the Greek Islands was this fascination with brides getting their pictures taken down the streets. The majority of the brides we seen were Asian and in some elaborate dresses. Accurate Google research failed to provide an answer as to why this happens but it appears to be very popular with the Asian people! However, due to the low rooflines of the houses, posing on rooftops doesn’t go down well with locals!

  
 

 

We decided to be wise and practical tourists that we are, and head to Oia in the day time to get some cool photographs of the houses without thousands of others blocking the view. Even in the day it was still quite a busy place. It would be frustrating as a local to know that every day at sunset your personal space and even your roof would be invaded by tons of people with cameras, no sense of direction or respect for your space and the dreaded, and ridiculous “selfie sticks”.

 

 
After a “traditional” Greek souvlaki for lunch ( it’s like a Turkish kebab but wrapped in pita bread with French fries) an afternoon holding down a beach lounger at the beach was a great way to say goodbye to Santorini. A definite highlight on our trip for both of us.

 

 
Greek food highlight – Mickey ordered calamari for tea, expecting the usual calamari rings you would get anywhere else but this monster arrived! It was stuffed with cheese and peppers and after careful inspection as to how dead it was it took some eating! A salty squid, complete with tentacles, cooked in salt water and after swimming in the sea and showering in salt water there was no danger of me suffering from sodium deficiency!

  

 

 
The last stop of our whirlwind tour of Eastern Europe was to the famous city of Venice. Lots of waterways, bridges, boats and tourists! Tourists by the boat load! Literally by the boat load.. I am well aware that I am now a tourist (not for too much longer) but this place was crazy.
  
Our trip leader Agata gave us a vague map and told us to meet her at a certain location for the farewell dinner for the group. Venice is very confusing to navigate. Narrow walkways, not too many street names and tall buildings make you very disorientated. Throw in a decent thunder storm with huge Italian rain drops, and we had an interesting afternoon. Luckily we adopted the pack mentality, and five of us lived to see another day. Kudos to Elliot and his Google maps as without it we may have still been lost in Venice. Mickey was trying to bargain street hawkers for 5 plastic ponchos, as we had forgotten our practical, fast drying travellers coats, but the deals were not happening so Mr Street Seller went home hungry. Amazing how fast they can swap ponchos for selfie sticks when the rain stops!

Not much time for building/landmark visitation as we arrived mid afternoon but still interesting just to be apart of it.  

  

 
 After the farewell dinner for the tour group, Jess and I had most of a day on our own before flying to Santorini that night. Some members of the group were carrying on with another tour through Italy, some were going travelling on their own and some were heading for home Like our travel buddy Elliot (who we have to write nice things about now that we know he is reading this!!) We headed over to Murano Island which is a place very famous for its glass – plates, vases, jewellery, cows and sheep too! 
It was a Saturday, so not everything was open, but we managed to stumble on this glass demonstration by accident and got a seat just before it started. 

 

   

The furnace the glass comes out of to be worked is 1200 deg celcius. It would have been awesome to see him make a massive creation. A trip to the shop afterwards resulted in no purchases, but more importantly no purchases due to clumsiness and butter fingers! There was a glass spaniel, but he was slightly out of proportion and €50 or $75NZD made me put him back!

Got ourselves caught in another Italian thunder clap, and those Italian raindrops sure can rain down in style! Luckily this time we had our travelling rain coats, as the poncho sellers were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they can’t swim?

 

An airport transfer that never showed turned into an amazing race style taxi ride and ensured we left $70NZ in the local economy for the 15 minute trip, but it was goodbye to Venice and off to the sun of the Greek Islands. To be honest I probably wouldn’t go back there but it’s another cultural experience ticked off the list and now I can say I’ve been and Jess can say she has been twice! Santorini however, is new ground for the both of us. Hooray!

Both of us had been looking forward to this little town for quite a while. It was nice getting to the end of a trip that was focussed on main centres to spend some time in a quiet little town and take things a bit slower. Apparantly we timed out run well, as peak tourist season in Europe is just starting to get into gear, and Bled swells with people such as ourselves! Bled is a town of approx 6000 people and is close to the Austrian border. It was a bit backward, but we left Vienna (Austria), took a train through Austria to Budapest (Hungary), spent time in Budapest and then retraced our steps back across Austria to Vienna, and then into Slovenia. Rail companies love tourists!

 Travelling as an organised group has its benefits when getting onto a train…. All our seats are pre booked and reserved when possible, but a lot of people don’t seem to understand this reservation system. Train carriages can be divided up into cabins of 6 seats or just rows of two. It’s quite satisfying evicting 5 of the 6 people in a cabin by pointing at their seat number, grunting and or mumbling ‘that’s my seat’ and then pointing to yourself and your travel companions. On the other hand it’s a bit awkward when the corridors of the trains are backed up with the rest of the group and their luggage, and the problematic tourist in question and his 4 woman travel buddies want to get past you with their house sized suitcases for a nice standing spot in the corridor for the next 45 minutes. Trains – keeping deodorant companies in business since ages ago!

 

   

Since leaving home, vegetables have been in short supply on the dinner table. The restaurant we ate at on our first night had a plate of mixed grilled vegetables on the menu and boy did they hit the spot. Vege plate, pork fillets and bottomless bread baskets made for a nice meal out. Shame these nice meals weren’t in Polish or Czech restaurants where they are a bit cheaper!

Next day we hired a couple of push bikes and navigated our way out of the town, through a nice piece of countryside and into the start of the Vintgar Gorge. A nice place to wander and Geof would have been busy with his fishing rod too as the clear waters allowed us to see heaps of fish!

  

    

Push bikes returned and it was off across the lake to visit the island courtesy of a big strong local guy and his traditional flat bottomed row boat. 

  
The island has a church sitting on top of 99 steps. A wedding tradition is that a groom must carry his bride up these steps, during this time the bride must remain silent. The church bell can be rung if you require good luck, but if you can carry someone up 99 steps you don’t need luck, you will be strong enough instead.
  
  

Bled is also well known for its Bled cake. Seeing as our trip has been highlighted with cakes and other associated treats, Bled cake was next on the list. According to the critic that consumed the cake, it was ” a pretty good piece of custard square”. The little bit I got was pretty good…while I stuffed my tummy with a large slice of layer cake. Coffee wasn’t bad either.

  
 

A sweet place to come and hang out after a busy trip. Could have spent another day or so there but off to last stop Venice tomorrow.

  

Budapest is the second last big city on our tour, and the third last destination. After efficiently stacking five of our tour group friends into a 4 person elevator with all their luggage we checked into the hotel which was across the road from the train station. Our tour leader is Hungarian and spent a good chunk of her life living in the city so she was keen to show us round. Some of the group were taking a cycling tour of the city so we dropped them off and fell into formation behind Orsi.

 

 
    

This was a memorial we had heard about, so we made a extra effort to hunt it out. It is another one dedicated to the Hungarian Jews in the war. Towards the end of the war, when the Germans knew it was lost, hundreds of Jews were lined up on the edge of the Danube River, shot in the head and kicked in. First they were made to take off their shoes, as shoes were a thing of value and could be reused. The sculptor created sixty pairs of period-appropriate shoes from iron. Some were men’s, some women’s and some children’s. Very simple but effective memorial.

 

 
  
  

The Freedom Bridge connects Buda and Pest across the Danube. Yes I didn’t know either, but Budapest is actually two cities, but they get joined to form the name we know of Budapest. There’s another Europe history fact for you to put in your scrap books. The bridge was finished in 1896 but suffered war damage and has been repaired since.

So when in Hungary last time Jess and the girls went to the Hungarian bath house. If your lucky she will tell you the story of what happend there. This time her big tough husband came along to make sure the return trip was a bit more as planned. To be honest, it was nice and the hot pool was relaxing for the walking and train riding muscles, but we didn’t have time to take advantage of all the baths had to offer so just settled for a dip in a couple of the pools. No cannonball dives allowed so very controlled. A nice way to chill out after a couple of hot days in dirty cities.

Our Hungarian tour leader had booked us into a restaurant for a traditional Hungarian meal (Even if it wasn’t traditional, we wouldn’t of known any better, but it was goulash, bread, chicken, gnocchi, pickles and token lettuce leaf garnishes). It was nice to sit down as a group and eat, people were at the stage now that you could have some good conversations with them…we educated our Aussie friend Jen that NZ was in fact 2 main islands and Elliot had her convinced that there is a half hour time difference between Christchurch and Southland!  A fun night but slightly spoiled by the over zealous accordion playing man who would of sat on your lap and played if you let him!

Off the next morning to Bled in Slovenia, a place we have been looking forward to.

Another town, another hostel, another change in language and currency. It was a stinking hot day for a walk but off we went in our Indian file line like well behaved ducklings to explore the main haunts of the city. Vienna struck me as a city wearing lots of different hats. It had the old buildings, the art and cultural side with opera houses and many museums, and then the new modern part as well. I guess this is the same as a lot of other places we have been, but perhaps Vienna didn’t seem to mix them together as well as others. I could be wrong, but that was how I felt about it all. 

  After quite a hot and uncomfortable night in the hostel it was off to Schonbrunn Palace to see if it was for sale. The answer was no, unfortunately, so we had to pay the man so we could wander around his backyard and through one wee part of his sweet accommodation. The whole thing was incredible – the sheer size of the gardens alone was massive and we only looked at a small part. To think that people lived in places such as this back then is quite incredible. I mean this place has 1441 rooms and almost 2,500,000 visitors a year. Imagine the amount of staff there would have been to make the place function back in the day. No offence Mrs Queen of England, but I think this house is cooler than yours. 

The Schonbrunn Palace in its current form was built and remodelled in 1740 by empress Maria Theresa who received the estate as a wedding gift. Must have been an awesome wedding if she got a 1400 room house for a present! The Hapsburgs have been a dominant family in Austrian history over the last few hundred years up to the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire after WW1. Franz Joseph, the longest reigning monarch of Austria was born there and spent a great deal of his life at Schonbrunn. Following his death in 1916, the palace became property of the new Austrian Republic and was preserved as a museum.

  

    

 
 

So Vienna is famous for its cake. After a comprehensive Google search we located “the cake shop” and indulged. Similar to Harrods in London for both price and sophistication, we choose the renowned Sacha Torte from the huge menu which was nice I will admit and you could purchase more elaborate flavour combinations I’m sure, but I think Grandma Gardyne’s chocolate sponge would go pretty close to getting on the menu.

  

In both Dubai and London, we have used a bus touring company. With half an afternoon to spend we decided to do the same here. Unfortunately we didn’t enjoy the tour nearly as much as the other 2 however it was nice to see parts of the city we would never of seen on foot.

 

 
Prater Park used to be a hunting ground exclusively for royalty in the reign of the Hapsburg family. Succeeding monarchs and rulers decided to gradually open the area up to the general public to keep the public happy and keep themselves in power. The main Ferris wheel has been operating for over 100 years! And back in the day the park was host to Freak shows containing midgets, overly hairy people and Siamese twins. Obviously not today! Today it is home to dodgy carnival folk that entice you to try their simple looking throwing or shooting exhibits but in fact you have very little chance of success due to guns with bent barrels and balls made of stockings. Nobody was game enough to try a roller coaster so the fair ground didn’t make millions out of our visit.

 

 
Home to the hostel for one last night in the oven bedroom and off to Hungary the next morning.

A 3 hour bus ride in the flashiest bus I’ve ever been on too us to a cute little town in the southern part of Czech Republic. This bus had tv screens in the back of the headrests, leather seats, drinks, snacks and the most important commodity to live in modern civilisation – WIFI. The majority of our group are addicted to their technology. As soon as you go somewhere new, be it a restaurant, hotel or public transport everyone whips out their phones and is scrolling away.

 

 
Basically it is a little town built on the Vltava river and has a mighty impressive castle built into a whopping big cliff face and lots of cute buildings with orange tile roofs. We only had one day to spend here and it was nice to have a bit of change of pace from the bigger cities. Another walking tour taken by a local lady organised by our tour leader took us around the town and she pointed out helpful things like where the best Gelato was (necessary as it was another 32+ degree day).

The castle is quite a unique one being built into the cliff as some others we have seen have been built on top. They don’t have a moat and drawbridge anymore but they do still have bears living there!

 

It was a day that made you want to go swimming in the river, but the colour of it wasn’t all that appealing so we settled for a gelato ice cream and a bit of a paddle in the shallow end instead.

 

   A brief visit but relaxing visit and off again to Vienna (Austria).

After a confused Polish man who refused to admit he was lost (men don’t get lost anyway) delivered us to our train with two minutes to spare we arrived into Prague after a 3 hour train trip. Dumped our bags in the accomodation and Orsi (tour leader) took us for a brief orientation walk. Prague has a main central square with all its little streets running off it. Jess and I, along with Eliot the car salesman from Christchurch went for a general wander with no real objectives, apart from finding some cough syrup for Jess’s cough she had picked up.

A famous bridge in Prague is the Charles bridge. Until 1841 this was the only bridge connecting the Castle with the Old Town this also meant Prague became an important trade route between East and West Europe. It was standing room only trying to get across, with souvenir sellers, artists and selfie sticks by the thousand! On the other side of the river is the John Lennon wall – filled with John Lennon inspired graffiti and excerpts of Beatles lyrics

 

   Locating a chemist wasn’t too difficult, but trying to find cough medicine in Czech was the difficult part. Luckily Eliot translated ‘cough syrup’ into Czech on his phone and upon showing it to the shop assistant, we left with a small bottle. Luckily for us we had our friend with his phone, as we were convinced that the bottle we had was the right one, only to translate the label into English and finding it was for for urinary tract infections!! Phew!

Out for tea to a traditional meal, once again the meat and bread dumplings were dominant but I was adventurous and had steak and chips. Jess had soup and a bun – literally it was stew (goulash) served inside a big round loaf of bread with the middle hollowed out. Dinner and two drinks = $15NZD. 

Next morning Jess and I took a free walking tour which was interesting. These walking tours are everywhere and are quite similar in content. They are not completely free, you are just a asked to pay at the end what you think they are worth. So it is in the guides best interest to work as hard as possible.

 

 
Our guide was very informative and tells us obviously about the history of various buildings and landmarks, but also the interesting facts and legends that you would probably never find in a guide book. Like the designer of the big clock in the picture above for example. Legend goes that Mr Clockman was asked by another town to design them a sweet clock too. Prague didn’t like this idea much, so they cut out his tounge and blinded him so his secrets could not be told to anyone else. Mr Clockman didn’t appreciate this that much so he went and sabotaged his clock, and anyone who tried to fix it either went insane or died. The clock remained broken for 100 years. To this day there are still some of the original mechanisms working inside, from back in 1410. The clock is the third oldest astrological clock in the world, and the oldest one still working.

The second day we had in Prague was a real scorcher. After a giant croissant for breakfast we were off adventuring on foot. The last time Jess was in Prague she remembers climbing lots of stairs to get to the Prague castle in the stinking hot sun. Well this time wasn’t too much different. Slowly we got to the top and the view was quite spectacular.

 

 
Prague Castle and the St. Vitus Cathedral overlook the city and have quite a good spot. We were not exactly sure what else all the buildings were used for, but judging by the men with guns and flash cars, one could assume that Parliament buildings were in the vicinity. The cathedral is a Gothic one built similar to Westminister Abbey, and since I am now a learned cathedral appraisal officer, it was deemed satisfactory and aesthetically pleasing but not worth the entrance fee with several bus tour groups. Jess got some cool pictures of the stained glass with sunlight coming through, but one again they don’t do it proper justice.

  
  
Down the hill and back towards the accomodation for a group dinner out and early night for an early 6:00am start to Cesky Krumlov. Food fact from Prague: An afternoon tea snack of nachos and iced tea cost us the same price as dinner the previous night! For a handful of chips out of the bag, salsa and sour cream we felt very hard done by.. Win some loose some I guess.

We met up with our Intrepid group before leaving Berlin – 16 people, a mixture of mainly Aussie’s and Kiwis, and variety of ages.  That night we boarded a night train to Kraków in Poland, a journey of 11 hours. According to our Hungarian tour guide this was a ‘Sleeping train’. She wasn’t far wrong, a sleeping position was the only one you could really do! Not a wink of sleep, glad it was only for one night. A great way to make friends fast when it’s only standing room for one person at a time!

  

  
Accommodation on our trip is meant to be 1 and 2 star hotels and apartments. The only down side of European hotels are that you  can’t check in until mid afternoon. So on arrival in Krakow, it was a quick breakfast at the hotel (which was pretty amazing, they have cakes for breakfast, along with cheeses, salami and ham, cream cheese and all sorts of random stuff!) Breakfast accomplished we were off on a walking tour with a local American Polish named John. John was intrigued by the fact that sheep die at around 4 months of age, a sheepdog would cost him around $10,000 in his own currency and the science behind the number 8 wire philosophy of New Zealand farmers. Quite a good chat with him really! But however, he was telling us all the interesting things about Kraków.

  
 This clock tower has a little team of men that every hour, on the hour of every day, of every year put on a funny hat and coat, climb out the little door beneath the clock face and play a funny tune on a trumpet. Why I hear you say? The story has it that way back in the early days of Kraków, a soldier was keeping watch up there and spotted an invading Mongol army approaching. He jumps on his trumpet, starts to play a warning tune, and promptly gets shot in the neck with an arrow. So the modern day musicians play the part of the song and then just cut it off right in the middle of a note like what happened that day. There you go, a fun educational fact for you all the way from Poland. 

  
  
This dragon is parked up by Kraków castle. The castle itself is not all that impressive, I know yes I am a castle professional now but the dragon has a bit of a story attached. Apparantly Mr Dragon was taking all the young girls of the city and they were being consumed. Many brave Knights tried to kill him and win the hand of the kings daughter but failed. A brave young shoe maker decided to marry for land and money and not wealth so he took a sheep, filled it with sulphur, and put it at the dragons front door. Mr Dragon at the sheep, got a bit of a gut ache and went to the nearby river and proceeded to drink half of it. Now sulphur and water do not mix all that nicely, and Mr Dragon ended up as multiple Mr Dragons and the shoe maker got the girl. Cute story eh? So now there is a statue with a gas bottle attached and you get the above picture.

Poland’s Jewish population suffered horribly during WW2. This memorial was to all the Jews of Kraków that met in this very square and were sorted by the Nazis like sheep. People who were old and unable to work were on the next train to the concentration camps and the others were locked into the ghetto in the city. Empty chairs = empty families.

 
The ghetto was created as a way of containing the Jewish population to one area. Conditions were horrible, but the Nazi propaganda made it appear otherwise. Other citizens of the city were forced to pull the blinds and shut the windows of the tram when it was driving through the ghetto so they would not see the truth that was happening behind the walls.

Not far from Kraków is the Wieliczka Salt Mine. This mine dates back to the 13th century, and produced table salt right up to 1996, when production ceased due to low salt prices and flooding.  The mine still produces 35T of salt per day just from the de-salinisation of the water pumped out of the mine to keep its structural integrity.  The mine reaches a depth of 327 metres and is over 287km long. The tourist route only covers 2% of the total distance of the mine. It has some elaborate statutes and art work carved by the miners over the centuries which are quite impressive to see. There is an under ground lake which is saltier than the Dead Sea, several ‘rooms’ some of which are 20m in height to the ceiling. All the wooden supports which are used throughout the mine are perfectly preserved from the salty air, and apparantly the air is so good it can cure your asthma. The salt chapel is the most impressive of all. Obviously everything is made of salt, from the tile floor, statues, alter and chandeliers. You can get married down here if you wish, but only if your dress fits down the narrow 380 step staircase or in a tiny lift!

  
 
  

 

 

Mickey took himself to Auschwitz concentration camp one day, Jess had already been so decided to stay behind as its something that you probably don’t want to do more than once It’s not a place to really explain much about, and the explanations would be horribly inaccurate of it all. We know what happened there in terms of mass murder of Jews etc, but to see the buildings, the fences, the massive gas chambers, crematoriums and the railway sidings where families were drafted like sheep, never to see each other again was a surreal experience. Not much else you can really say about it, it is one of those places in this world that everyone would draw their own conclusions and feel different emotions.

So in our search to become authentic Polish tourists it was advised to try Polish cuisine. Why not? Apparantly Polish ‘pancakes’ are like hash browns so we ordered them at Grandma’s – a restaurant recommended by our local guide John.  This turned out to be somewhat of a translation error as what turned up was what we would call crepes with half a Fonterra tanker of cream and a small apricot buried underneath.  A better experience were the chimney cakes at a stall across the road from our hotel which were a cross between doughnuts and a pinwheel scone cooked into a tube with a choice of toppings like Nutella spread on the inside.