We've got 3 large entries with loads of pics in the pipeline at the moment. Be patient!
We miss everyone! 10 weeks til we come home for a while!!!!!
WOOHOO!
Happy 40th Wedding Anniversary to Mum and Dad!
Happy Birthday to Tara!
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Munich Oktoberfest 2007
Time to get some updates done. (Pics to follow)
First night we did a little shopping in the main area of Munich and checked out Marienplatz, Glockenspiel and central Munich. We were both fairly impressed with how well organised Munich was, but I guess that's to be expected out of the Germans. For dinner on our first night, we went to a genuine small little beer hall for dinner and damo had bratwurst and sauerkraut and a couple of weißbier. After this we wandered back to our hostel accommodation (AO Hostels) which was brilliant - anyone heading to Munich - this is a GREAT cheap place to stay.
The next day we woke up and headed up to the Glockenspiel to meet up with Mike's Bike Tours to head off for our tour of Munich. There was a heap of people, and we were separated into 2 groups. Nik was clever enough to realise that there was a heap of raucous people all together and going into one group - we joined in with them. The people were a bunch of Texans that had flown over for Oktoberfest, and they were all top shelf people. We went cycling around Munich and were shown many cool things. We went and had lunch in a Chinese Beergarden in the middle of the Englisher Garten Steve-O tour guide getting in fight, checking out the Englisher Garten, Nudist Meadow, Stationary Wave, piss up afterwards with Texans at the Hofbrauhaus Beer Hall til laaaate.
Woke up late, moved accommodation from A&O Hostel to Jaegers. Did a bit of shopping for Lederhosen etc. Can't remember what we did that night. Probably not much as we wanted to get to bed early so we could get up early the next day. Didn't get much sleep at the new hostel, so woke up a bit late, and met up with Jason and Steph and the rest of the fighter pilots at the Hofbrauhaus beer tent at the Oktoberfest. Stayed there til about 10pm, and ran into the Texans again, and also Eion and Paul.
Woke up late. headed back to Oktoberfest later in the day (about 8pm) and met up with the fighter pilots again (less Jason and Steph, and much phone confusion involved). Ended up staying til closing time at the Paulaner tent, and met up with a local and got chatting to him and then headed into central munich to some nightclub that was at a hotel and stayed there until about 2.30am. Walked home, and met up with a bloke from Boston in the lobby of the hotel and we got chatting to him and we ended up making it to bed at about 5am.
Wrecked for all the next day. Woke up about 2pm and went and got food, and made our way back to the O-fest, but this time we were both fairly keen to give the grog a bit of a swerve. We went on a few rides (Ferris Wheel, Hession mat down a slippery slide, Wildemaus Rollercoaster), and bought a few souvenirs and generally just checked out the carnival. This was our last night, but we were both rocking a fairly bad hangover from the night before, so we gave the grog a miss, but still ended up meeting up with Eion and Paul at the Hofbrauhaus tent again. We stayed with them until closing time, made our way home and packed as we were to fly out the next day.
First night we did a little shopping in the main area of Munich and checked out Marienplatz, Glockenspiel and central Munich. We were both fairly impressed with how well organised Munich was, but I guess that's to be expected out of the Germans. For dinner on our first night, we went to a genuine small little beer hall for dinner and damo had bratwurst and sauerkraut and a couple of weißbier. After this we wandered back to our hostel accommodation (AO Hostels) which was brilliant - anyone heading to Munich - this is a GREAT cheap place to stay.
The next day we woke up and headed up to the Glockenspiel to meet up with Mike's Bike Tours to head off for our tour of Munich. There was a heap of people, and we were separated into 2 groups. Nik was clever enough to realise that there was a heap of raucous people all together and going into one group - we joined in with them. The people were a bunch of Texans that had flown over for Oktoberfest, and they were all top shelf people. We went cycling around Munich and were shown many cool things. We went and had lunch in a Chinese Beergarden in the middle of the Englisher Garten Steve-O tour guide getting in fight, checking out the Englisher Garten, Nudist Meadow, Stationary Wave, piss up afterwards with Texans at the Hofbrauhaus Beer Hall til laaaate.
Woke up late, moved accommodation from A&O Hostel to Jaegers. Did a bit of shopping for Lederhosen etc. Can't remember what we did that night. Probably not much as we wanted to get to bed early so we could get up early the next day. Didn't get much sleep at the new hostel, so woke up a bit late, and met up with Jason and Steph and the rest of the fighter pilots at the Hofbrauhaus beer tent at the Oktoberfest. Stayed there til about 10pm, and ran into the Texans again, and also Eion and Paul.
Woke up late. headed back to Oktoberfest later in the day (about 8pm) and met up with the fighter pilots again (less Jason and Steph, and much phone confusion involved). Ended up staying til closing time at the Paulaner tent, and met up with a local and got chatting to him and then headed into central munich to some nightclub that was at a hotel and stayed there until about 2.30am. Walked home, and met up with a bloke from Boston in the lobby of the hotel and we got chatting to him and we ended up making it to bed at about 5am.
Wrecked for all the next day. Woke up about 2pm and went and got food, and made our way back to the O-fest, but this time we were both fairly keen to give the grog a bit of a swerve. We went on a few rides (Ferris Wheel, Hession mat down a slippery slide, Wildemaus Rollercoaster), and bought a few souvenirs and generally just checked out the carnival. This was our last night, but we were both rocking a fairly bad hangover from the night before, so we gave the grog a miss, but still ended up meeting up with Eion and Paul at the Hofbrauhaus tent again. We stayed with them until closing time, made our way home and packed as we were to fly out the next day.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Slackness on Blog posting and Aussie musings
Okay - we've been particularly bad - worse than normal - at keeping the blog up to date.
This is the start of changing things around.
We've got a lot that we've got to catch up on, but this post isn't for that.
Since the last Monaco post, we've been to Belgium, Greek Islands and Spain (and perhaps another trip to Wales too...). There will be further posts with more detailed entries about them (and lots of piccies....)
This post is just to let everyone know that we're getting back in touch with our Aussie roots, and Damo is getting in touch with his for the first time.
We've just been sitting on the floor of our flat eating Milk Arrowroot biscuits with butter and Vegemite on them.
That's right - Damo has been eating Vegemite for the first time in his life, and HE LOVES IT!!!! We were just chatting about it, and he reckons that the last time he tried Vegemite was probably literally about 20 years ago!!!
Strange how your taste buds change.....
We're coming back to Oz for about 6 weeks at Christmas time this year, and we CAN'T WAIT to see everyone.
We miss you all heaps and can't wait to see you all!
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Alonso takes the Chequered Flag! (No Pics yet)
... (continued from Part 1). So we pretty much spent the rest of the Friday just wandering around Monaco, checking out all the Superyachts and the Ferraris and Lamborghinis and other exotic cars. It was a very surreal experience. We walked the entire lap of the circuit, and when you see it first hand it is VERY difficult to believe that they can lap around here at race speeds.
We went up to Casino Square, and it was like a zoo up there - a lot of obviously EXTREMELY wealthy people, putting on a show for the ordinary punters - it was hilarious how many old men were with young supermodel looking women... We were sure these girls were with these blokes for their sparkling personality and charming wit... heh heh.
Not long after this we headed back to Nice for the night, and found somewhere to have dinner again. There was an overabundance of tourist restaurants (over-inflated prices, average food and poor service...), so it was always difficult to find a decent place to eat, but things didn't end up too bad for us most of the time luckily.
We spent another very bad night in the stifling heat and excessive noise of the rat-pit that pretended to be a hotel room, however Damo put earplugs in this time and ended up getting a fairly decent nights sleep.
Damo woke up early the next morning and made his way towards the train station for qualifying. On the way he found a boulangerie that sold some of the nicest french pastries he'd ever had. After grabbing a handful of these and a cup of coffee, the walk to the train station continued. Our hotel was about 20 minutes walk to the train station, so a few pastries later he was there! The train to the track only took about 10 minutes, and is very easy. With it organised like this, you definitely don't need to spend the money to stay in Monaco for the race, that's for sure.
Once arriving at the track mega-early, Damo set about trying to find a Red Bull Racing team shirt to buy, and also going and getting Kangaroo TV which is a really cool handheld tv that you hang around your neck on a lanyard and it gives live timings of all the events (ie. Porsche Supercup races, Renault World Series and GP2 as well as F1...). The racing action kicked off at about 8:45am, and Damo was well and truly settled into his seat by the time the first engines fired up.
The Porsche Challenge was first....
Followed by the Renault World Series...
Damo loved all of the racing, but after all this, was the F1 morning practice session! It was awesome, however just before it started, it started raining, and left things in a very strange state - over the session, the Spyker driver of Adrian Sutil ran the fastest! They say that rain is the great car equaliser, but based on this Adrian Sutil is the star of the future!
This was followed by the GP2 (which is the driver feeder series for F1 these days - Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen both graduated from there last year....) which also has Bruno Senna racing this year (Ayrton Senna's nephew).
The practice session was great, but the qualifying was better. Kimi Raikkonen hit the wall at the exit to swimming pool, which was right near where I was sitting, and I could see it from my seat! In Monaco, if you don't qualify well, it pretty much means that your race is screwed. So that was pretty much the end of Kimi. Apart from this, all else pretty much went as expected with the Mclarens on the front row.
The day all in all was excellent, and after the F1 qually there was another Renault World Series race and another GP2 race, and by this time it was about time to head back to Nice.
Whilst Damo was off gallavanting around Monaco, Nikki spent her time shopping around Nice. A pretty good day for both of us really! Damo met up with Nik in the afternoon at about 6pm and did a little more shopping, and then we both headed for dinner. We spent a little time watching some street performers, and then we settled in for a meal. After dinner we were both pretty exhausted, so we pretty much headed back to the hotel for bed. By this time it was fairly late anyway, so we sort of just flaked.
The next day was race day, and we both headed off for the track pretty early. We stopped at the same place that Damo stopped for brekkie the day before and got a few handfuls of french pastries and a couple of cafe au lait's again. We got to the train station and there were hundreds of people dressed in all sorts of different team gear - it was brilliant to see, and just a hint of what lay ahead!
We made our way to the track early and found our way to our seats. As we were on our way to them, we walked past the Ferrari dealership in Monaco - very cool. A couple of F430's parked out the front, amongst other things - they were sensational.
We entered the circuit, found our seats and got ready for the action to begin. Once again, we had all the support races in the morning, which were all great, but really we were only there for the main event.
As it turned out, the race was excellent, and the atmosphere in Monaco during a race weekend is very difficult to describe apart from that it is electric. The backdrop is amazing and they yachts incredible. Not to mention that Monaco itself is a very pretty place.
Alonso ended up winning, with Hamilton coming 2nd and rounding out the podium was Massa in the Ferrari.
After the race we decided to go for a bit of an explore around Monaco and decided a walk up to Prince Rainier's castle in Monacoville was on the cards. It was a lovely sunny afternoon, and this part of Monaco was very pretty - a lot older - we wandered around up here for quite a while after the race, and then found somewhere to have a glass of wine and a bite to eat - the food in Monaco/Nice/Cannes (Cote d'Azur) was all very Italian influenced, and pizza was fairly high up the list of things to eat. Damo was unhappy with this.... ;-)
Monacoville is set very high up in the cliffs overlooking Monaco, and the view from there over the track and harbour was spectacular. We spent a good couple of hours checking out this area and admiring the view of the track and the harbour. It was good to see a different perspective of the whole area.
After we'd finished up here, it was about 6.30pm, so we decided to make our way back down to the track to the La Rascasse corner where there was a massive dance party happening with Hed Kandi playing. It was awesome, and they had the music absolutely cranked up, and the party was happening with the DJ on the decks up on a balcony outside with absolutely gigantic speakers thumping music out across all of Monaco - it was THAT loud! We were enjoying some of the wicked music, and just chilling out for a bit when we start seeing all of the team transporters pulling up near the pit lane entrance (which is right next to La Rascasse). Of note was the Vodafone Mclaren Mercedes transporter - and all of a sudden we see a Mclaren F1 car getting wheeled out the pit lane entrance right in our general direction - if we didn't move we would have gotten hit. Damo grabbed out his camera and started clicking - he'd never been so close to a real F1 race car in his life, and this was Fernando Alonso's car - The race winner! AMAZING!!!! We watched as they hoisted it up into the transporters, and we thought that would be that, when all of a sudden Lewis Hamilton's car comes next. What an amazing end to our time at the Monaco GP. Here we were standing at the pit lane entrance at Monaco, listening to the sublime beats of Hed Kandi, looking at the race winning car and 2nd place car and they were no more than 30 centimetres away from us! It really couldn't have gotten any better than that.
(The rest of our Nice trip to follow....)
We went up to Casino Square, and it was like a zoo up there - a lot of obviously EXTREMELY wealthy people, putting on a show for the ordinary punters - it was hilarious how many old men were with young supermodel looking women... We were sure these girls were with these blokes for their sparkling personality and charming wit... heh heh.
Not long after this we headed back to Nice for the night, and found somewhere to have dinner again. There was an overabundance of tourist restaurants (over-inflated prices, average food and poor service...), so it was always difficult to find a decent place to eat, but things didn't end up too bad for us most of the time luckily.
We spent another very bad night in the stifling heat and excessive noise of the rat-pit that pretended to be a hotel room, however Damo put earplugs in this time and ended up getting a fairly decent nights sleep.
Damo woke up early the next morning and made his way towards the train station for qualifying. On the way he found a boulangerie that sold some of the nicest french pastries he'd ever had. After grabbing a handful of these and a cup of coffee, the walk to the train station continued. Our hotel was about 20 minutes walk to the train station, so a few pastries later he was there! The train to the track only took about 10 minutes, and is very easy. With it organised like this, you definitely don't need to spend the money to stay in Monaco for the race, that's for sure.
Once arriving at the track mega-early, Damo set about trying to find a Red Bull Racing team shirt to buy, and also going and getting Kangaroo TV which is a really cool handheld tv that you hang around your neck on a lanyard and it gives live timings of all the events (ie. Porsche Supercup races, Renault World Series and GP2 as well as F1...). The racing action kicked off at about 8:45am, and Damo was well and truly settled into his seat by the time the first engines fired up.
The Porsche Challenge was first....
Followed by the Renault World Series...
Damo loved all of the racing, but after all this, was the F1 morning practice session! It was awesome, however just before it started, it started raining, and left things in a very strange state - over the session, the Spyker driver of Adrian Sutil ran the fastest! They say that rain is the great car equaliser, but based on this Adrian Sutil is the star of the future!
This was followed by the GP2 (which is the driver feeder series for F1 these days - Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen both graduated from there last year....) which also has Bruno Senna racing this year (Ayrton Senna's nephew).
The practice session was great, but the qualifying was better. Kimi Raikkonen hit the wall at the exit to swimming pool, which was right near where I was sitting, and I could see it from my seat! In Monaco, if you don't qualify well, it pretty much means that your race is screwed. So that was pretty much the end of Kimi. Apart from this, all else pretty much went as expected with the Mclarens on the front row.
The day all in all was excellent, and after the F1 qually there was another Renault World Series race and another GP2 race, and by this time it was about time to head back to Nice.
Whilst Damo was off gallavanting around Monaco, Nikki spent her time shopping around Nice. A pretty good day for both of us really! Damo met up with Nik in the afternoon at about 6pm and did a little more shopping, and then we both headed for dinner. We spent a little time watching some street performers, and then we settled in for a meal. After dinner we were both pretty exhausted, so we pretty much headed back to the hotel for bed. By this time it was fairly late anyway, so we sort of just flaked.
The next day was race day, and we both headed off for the track pretty early. We stopped at the same place that Damo stopped for brekkie the day before and got a few handfuls of french pastries and a couple of cafe au lait's again. We got to the train station and there were hundreds of people dressed in all sorts of different team gear - it was brilliant to see, and just a hint of what lay ahead!
We made our way to the track early and found our way to our seats. As we were on our way to them, we walked past the Ferrari dealership in Monaco - very cool. A couple of F430's parked out the front, amongst other things - they were sensational.
We entered the circuit, found our seats and got ready for the action to begin. Once again, we had all the support races in the morning, which were all great, but really we were only there for the main event.
As it turned out, the race was excellent, and the atmosphere in Monaco during a race weekend is very difficult to describe apart from that it is electric. The backdrop is amazing and they yachts incredible. Not to mention that Monaco itself is a very pretty place.
Alonso ended up winning, with Hamilton coming 2nd and rounding out the podium was Massa in the Ferrari.
After the race we decided to go for a bit of an explore around Monaco and decided a walk up to Prince Rainier's castle in Monacoville was on the cards. It was a lovely sunny afternoon, and this part of Monaco was very pretty - a lot older - we wandered around up here for quite a while after the race, and then found somewhere to have a glass of wine and a bite to eat - the food in Monaco/Nice/Cannes (Cote d'Azur) was all very Italian influenced, and pizza was fairly high up the list of things to eat. Damo was unhappy with this.... ;-)
Monacoville is set very high up in the cliffs overlooking Monaco, and the view from there over the track and harbour was spectacular. We spent a good couple of hours checking out this area and admiring the view of the track and the harbour. It was good to see a different perspective of the whole area.
After we'd finished up here, it was about 6.30pm, so we decided to make our way back down to the track to the La Rascasse corner where there was a massive dance party happening with Hed Kandi playing. It was awesome, and they had the music absolutely cranked up, and the party was happening with the DJ on the decks up on a balcony outside with absolutely gigantic speakers thumping music out across all of Monaco - it was THAT loud! We were enjoying some of the wicked music, and just chilling out for a bit when we start seeing all of the team transporters pulling up near the pit lane entrance (which is right next to La Rascasse). Of note was the Vodafone Mclaren Mercedes transporter - and all of a sudden we see a Mclaren F1 car getting wheeled out the pit lane entrance right in our general direction - if we didn't move we would have gotten hit. Damo grabbed out his camera and started clicking - he'd never been so close to a real F1 race car in his life, and this was Fernando Alonso's car - The race winner! AMAZING!!!! We watched as they hoisted it up into the transporters, and we thought that would be that, when all of a sudden Lewis Hamilton's car comes next. What an amazing end to our time at the Monaco GP. Here we were standing at the pit lane entrance at Monaco, listening to the sublime beats of Hed Kandi, looking at the race winning car and 2nd place car and they were no more than 30 centimetres away from us! It really couldn't have gotten any better than that.
(The rest of our Nice trip to follow....)
Friday, June 15, 2007
Damo Gets Monaco Pole Position (Part 1)
The closest Damo will probably ever get to Pole Position!!! :-)
Publishing this in multiple parts as it is going to be huge....
We both have fairly returned recently from the Monaco F1. What a sensational weekend. We departed London on Thursday afternoon, and it was bliss to actually be on a REAL airline again instead of all the low cost ones. Allocated seating really is excellent. The biggest drama was the fact that we had a 2 hr delay when we were ready for departure from Heathrow, and unfortunately we were already on the plane when this happened, so we remained on the tarmac at Heathrow for the whole time - thankfully the seat pitch on BA is a lot better than the cheapy airlines, so it wasn't that bad - and they started serving the free grog too, so we were all happy!!!
As we landed in Nice, France and we were waiting to clear immigration, there was some bloke behind us on his mobile phone talking about how he was trying to get special permission for a helicopter to take off from Nice to fly to Monaco after 7pm as he wanted to get to the yacht before Beyonce got there.... heh heh. We noticed he was wearing a Kingfisher Airlines polo shirt, and since getting back we've found out that Kingfisher Airlines is the biggest low-cost carrier in India, and there is also a beer called Kingfisher Beer, and they are a major sponsor of Toyota F1.
We got out of the airport and jumped on the local bus as apparently there was a bus stop fairly close to our hotel near the Promenade des Anglais. We were absolutely gob-smacked by how beautiful the Mediterranean Sea was - neither of us had ever seen anything like it.
We made our way to the hotel (Hotel Dante), and checked in, and boy were we in for a shock - the place was an ABSOLUTE dump! We were sure that backpackers would have been much better than this place. Not only was it dirty (filthy actually), but the worst part about the place was the traffic noise. Which wouldn't have been so bad if it were air-conditioned - which it wasn't. So we had the choice while sleeping of a) Having the window opened so we didn't melt but not being able to sleep because of the noise or b) Closing the window so the noise wasn't that bad, but not being able to sleep because of the heat.... Great choice. And we were paying €150 a night for this...??? Damo decided that he was definitely going to review this on Tripadvisor when he got back....
Anyway, obviously considering that the F1 was on (and also the Cannes film festival - little did we realise...), we had no hope in hell of finding anything else, so we didn't even bother - just tried to make the best of a terrible situation.
Even though our hotel was very iffy, Nice itself was awesome - we both want to go back - it was so beautiful. We went out to try and find somewhere to eat dinner, but by this time it was pretty late. We ended up finding an Italian place (in France...) and had dinner there. It was really nice just to be strolling around Nice in the dusk (at about 10pm - LOVE European Summers...) and just soaking up the atmosphere. After this we went back to the hotel and endured the annoyance of our first night in the hotel from hell.
On the Friday we woke up and went and had a leisurely breakfast and then went and had a stroll along the Promenade des Anglais and sat in the sun for a while. It was amazing, and the coastline of Nice was absolutely stunning. We just sat on a bench on the Promenade and looked at the beach and ocean and just soaked up the sun's rays. It was brilliant. We did this for about a couple of hours, then we decided that we'd go for a walk through Nice itself to check out some of the shops, then head to Monaco at about lunchtime to check out the track on the open day.
WOW! Monaco is a cool place during the Grand Prix weekend - If the race wasn't on, it would still be cool, but nothing like this.
At least Damo made the most of his new camera in Monaco - over 3000 photos!!!!! Here are just some of them from the Friday....
It was fairly unanimous even with the crowd that this was one of the most impressive street cars in Monaco during the GP weekend.
Some Ferrari Pit Crew we saw wandering around....
3 time F1 World Champion, Sir Jackie Stewart on his mobile phone....
Ayrton Senna's Helmet on display in a shop in Monaco...
E-type Jag on track...
Pitlane
More Ferrari Crew (Apparently some bloke was telling us they were famous, but Damo didn't know them....)
Scuderia Toro Rosso Tyre Warmers
Red Bull Tyre Engineer checking tyre pressures
Red Bull Front Wing assembly, and side pods!!!! :-)
Raikkonnen's tyres!
Ferrari's Hospitality Suite
An idea of how big some of these yachts are - that's a full size F1 car parked on the back of the Steinmetz Diamond yacht.... And this yacht looked like a dinghy compared to this one:
The Indian Empress - owned by Dr Vijay Mallya, owner of Kingfisher Airlines and Kingfisher Beer (Kingfisher Airlines is the largest low-cost airline in India). This yacht is 95m long...
One of the hottest cars in the place.... Porsche Carrera GT!!! Note the Bentley Continental behind it - it has 24" rims apparently!!!!!!
An F430 being parked by the Concierge at Casino Square on Friday open day... These have the same engine as an Enzo!
Old Skool! Ferrari F40!
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Welsh Sheep Shaggers....
So we packed up our gear, rented a little Nissan Micra for about £75 for the weekend, got ourselves a SatNav (which we nick-named Ursula Ursula as it's real name was Tom Tom only it had a female voice so we thought we'd better rechristen it...), and headed off for Wales on the first Bank Holiday weekend during May.
The same as our Micra - we didn't get any pics of it....
We made it!!!!!
The view from about a quarter of the way up Pen-y-fan (Tallest mountain in Southern UK)
The lambs Nikki tried to pat.....
The Mumbles coastline....
This bloke was standing here like this for about half an hour...
The same as our Micra - we didn't get any pics of it....
We picked up Mel at about 5:30am on Saturday and proceeded to make our way out of London in our hot little car.
We had a heap of CD's, a full tank of gas, nibblies, and we were Road-trippin'. We were all in fairly high spirits, only Mel was feeling a little crook. Never mind, we made our way out of England, and had to cross a bloody huge bridge to get into Wales. A £5 toll paid, and we were on our way. We had made it!!!!
The Huge Bridge
We made it!!!!!
We arrived at Cardiff at around 8am and tried to find somewhere to have breakfast. Nothing appeared to be opened, which was a shame. We asked Ursula to find us a shopping centre nearby, and we went to the city centre and found a BHS (sort of like a Target store, except with an eatery) and got ourselves a massive Full English for £2.69 each - absolute BARGAIN!!!!! (It had Damo thinking of The Streets 'Don't Mug Yourself') :-)
We checked out Cardiff quickly, but it didn't really seem like there was much to look at around there, so we decided we'd head off for the Brecon Beacons, a mountain range about 3/4 hr drive from Cardiff. On our trip there, Mel had been getting a bit worse, illness-wise, so by the time we got there we saw a nice hiking track up the side of one of the larger mountains. Nikki was tired and Mel wasn't feeling up for it either, so they decided that they'd just go and lay in one of the fields on a blanket, while Damo decided he wanted to climb the mountain and take some pics.
*Damo* The view from the top was amazing, but I wanted to keep walking up a bit further as there was a really cool looking tableland, but I was a bit conscious of how long the girls were waiting down the bottom. Awesome hike, and I'd love to get back to Wales a bit more regularly to do a bit of hiking. *end Damo*
The view from about a quarter of the way up Pen-y-fan (Tallest mountain in Southern UK)
Where Damo wanted to walk up to.....
After we'd finished here we decided that we'd make our way to Swansea from Brecon Beacons to check in to our accommodation and have a bit of a look around Swansea. On the way we saw some lambs crossing the road in front of us, so we pulled over as Nikki had never patted one and wanted to, so we chased after them in a field, but couldn't catch them - it was quite hilarious, though you did have to be there.
The lambs Nikki tried to pat.....
We continued driving to our accommodation in Swansea which turned out to be perfect for what we were after, and it only cost us £44 total split between the 3 of us for the night - it was quite nice, though it was a little bit out of the centre of Swansea, but it was only about a £3 taxi fare. Checked in, and decided that we'd go and find somewhere for lunch. We drove down the coast a bit further and found a place that had a sensational view over the water, quite near a suburb called Mumbles.
After this, Mel decided that she was feeling a bit iffy, so we decided that we'd drop her back at the hotel, and we'd both go for a drive and have a look around the area near Swansea. The coast wasn't too bad, but we were surprised to see people waterskiing as it was still fairly cold, but suppose, they see a sunny day and that probably equals warm to them....
The Mumbles coastline....
We had a little bit of a tool around Mumbles and we went and got an icecream at an awesome 60's inspired icecreamery called 'Joes'. It was great. We then went for a walk along the waterfront, and just sat and admired the view and chilled out for a while. Before we knew it, it was time for us to go back to the hotel to pick up Mel to go out to dinner. We were going to head into the middle of Swansea and see what we could find. We got back to the room to find Mel half shot!!!! Hilarious.... We all got ready, went down to the foyer, ordered a drink from the lobby bar and had the concierge dial a taxi for us. Headed into central Swansea and decided to go to La Tasca which is a Spanish Tapas Bar chain.
We had dinner there, and were going to head out afterwards, but Mel was feeling crook again after dinner, so she got a taxi home. We both decided to stay out and we went for a bit of a look around Swansea, and it was really starting to happen - there were people everywhere. We noticed something strange though. People were in fancy dress. We considered that perhaps there were a lot of Hen's and Buck's parties going on or something, so we asked some people.
"Nope!", came the response. "They just do this for something to do...."
Ooooookkkkaaaayyyy then.... We saw a Snow White, several Fred Flintstones, a Wilma, and absolutely countless other people dressed up in crazy attire.
For example:
This bloke was standing here like this for about half an hour...
We went into a club called Lava Lounge which was a strange place. We met a couple of fellas from a small town about 12 miles (yes, yes, what's a mile?) from Swansea who were telling us how their town was the murder capital of the UK for 3 years running. Only the week previous, they had one bloke who was a regular at their pub arrested for murder after he strangled his wife, drove his car up a mountain road, crashed it into a tree and then put her behind the wheel. Apparently he didn't think that they might see the bruise marks around her throat... Also, one of the blokes that was there was telling us how his neice who was 16 was arrested for murder about 2 weeks ago - apparently she'd stabbed some bloke in the back with a 5-bladed knife. Sounds like a cool town...
It was an interesting night anyway. We ended up getting a cab back to the hotel at about 1am. We woke up the next morning at about 7.30 and got ready and checked out of the hotel and set off again. This day we were intending to drive around the Gower Peninsula which we were told was extremely beautiful, and as it turned out to be. The only problem that we had here was that Mel was very crook again. We continued to check out the coast a bit further, and it was positively stunning. However, Mel was really crook, so we decided that the best course of action would be to take Mel back to London to see a doctor.
So that was our trip cut short and done.
So we've both decided that we're going to have to go back to Wales soon!!!!!! It was a pretty country, but at least we know a little more what to expect next time, so we're going to be taking our hiking boots and our canoe paddles and look for more outdoor adventure.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Cinque Terra
A while ago we once again packed up our backpacks and headed off to Cinque Terra with a huge group of people (some mates, and a lot of people we'd never met.)
Cinque Terra is a group of five small fishing villages on the coast of Italy. We headed off from our flat at about 5am and headed to Mel's place to meet with half of the group and jump into the cabs to head to the airport (this also was an interesting experience as they had booked an 8 seater cab, but a 6 seater turned up and we had to fit in 8 people into a 6 seater cab....).
We got to Stanstead at about 6am and checked in, got some Euro from the currency exchange and then headed off through the usual security rigmarole.
After a while we boarded our flight for Pisa. It was strange as about 3 of the people that we were travelling with had a serious fear of flying, so that was interesting to see. We're very lucky we're not like that - it would be terrible to have that fear.
We arrived in Pisa and caught a local bus to the Leaning Tower. It was excellent to see it.
Cinque Terra is a group of five small fishing villages on the coast of Italy. We headed off from our flat at about 5am and headed to Mel's place to meet with half of the group and jump into the cabs to head to the airport (this also was an interesting experience as they had booked an 8 seater cab, but a 6 seater turned up and we had to fit in 8 people into a 6 seater cab....).
We got to Stanstead at about 6am and checked in, got some Euro from the currency exchange and then headed off through the usual security rigmarole.
After a while we boarded our flight for Pisa. It was strange as about 3 of the people that we were travelling with had a serious fear of flying, so that was interesting to see. We're very lucky we're not like that - it would be terrible to have that fear.
We arrived in Pisa and caught a local bus to the Leaning Tower. It was excellent to see it.
After we'd checked it out, we decided to go for a horse and carriage ride around Pisa. It turned out that Pisa is quite a lovely city, contrary to what we'd heard before - we had heard from quite a number of people that Pisa was crap, but we all thought it was excellent.
After we'd finished our horse and carriage ride, we decided it was time to try and find somewhere for lunch. We wandered around for a while and we found an excellent little pasta place where we stopped and grabbed a bite to eat.
After we'd finished our horse and carriage ride, we decided it was time to try and find somewhere for lunch. We wandered around for a while and we found an excellent little pasta place where we stopped and grabbed a bite to eat.
We had to head off for the train station after this, so Mel, Ian and both of us started walking in the direction that we thought it was. On the way, Damo spotted this cool bit of graffiti on a wall.
Of course we found the shopping street on the way, so Nik and Mel were kept occupied, while Ian and Damo were sitting in the street having a couple of very large Italian beers.
Finished shopping, and we all headed in the direction that we thought the train station was - unfortunately we didn't really have a clue. After walking around lost in Pisa for a while, we ended up working out where it was - we were only a block away from it!
We boarded the train to Riomaggiore (the first village of the Cinque Terra, and also where we were staying) and settled in with a couple of beers, some great company and some incredible scenery.
We boarded the train to Riomaggiore (the first village of the Cinque Terra, and also where we were staying) and settled in with a couple of beers, some great company and some incredible scenery.
After we arrived at the first village, we went to our hotel room (which was actually owned by some of Bec's family - one of the girls whose birthday we were there for...) and settled into our room and went and bought some provisions for that night's party.
Our room
Initially we were led to believe that the Italian family of Bec were going to cook Pasta and Pesto (Pesto was actually invented in this area of Italy), but unfortunately they didn't turn up to the party until late. So as it turned out, Ian and Damo ended up on cooking duty cooking up a storm for about 25 people. All went swimmingly until Bec decided to help us out by adding salt to the water, and poured half the packet in and then just said to us 'Don't worry about it - it'll be fine....'.... mmhmm! That batch of pasta turned out interesting to say the least... The rest of it wasn't too bad though.
[Damo cooking pasta...]
Damo cooking pasta with Ian
The party was a lot of fun, but it had been a looooong day so it might have been a little more fun if we hadn't been so tired, but regardless we had a great time.
The next day we woke up relatively bright and early considering, and headed down for some breakfast at a little cafe that looked out over the water. The view was amazing.
The Cafe
The View...
More of the view....
The food wasn't anything special, but the view definitely made up for it. Next we headed to the train station to purchase our tickets for the national park for the trek between the five villages. Mel's foot was still in deep trouble, so she caught the train, but most of the other people were up for it. We started in Riomaggiore and headed our way along the coastline.
Just outside Riomaggiore on the way to Manarola
The walk from Riomaggiore to Manarola was very, very busy and packed with people, so many that we were thinking if the whole hike was like this it would be very painful. Thankfully, once we'd got past Manarola, the crowds thinned out quite a bit.
Looking back at Riomaggiore from Manarola
Main street of Manarola
After Manarola, the walk remained very scenic and a lot less crowded. The weather was amazing, and we basically just had a brilliant day. Corniglia was the next village that we came to.
As we came into Corniglia, there was an absolutely massive set of stairs called Lardarina that we were going to have to walk up. 33 flights and 377 stairs. No problem....
Lardarina
Corniglia is the only one of the five villages that isn't located right on the water - it's on a promontory about 100 metres high. It had a very different vibe about it to the other villages.
After Corniglia, we headed off for Vernazza where we were going to meet up with everyone for lunch. During the trek, we both ended up walking with Cam and Laurie, a couple of Kiwi's that are flatmates of Mel's. They're both really lovely people, and the walk was excellent.
The path between Corniglia and Vernazza was a fair bit more 'off the beaten track' than the rest of the trek.
Looking back at Corniglia on our way to Vernazza...
We walked along the path to Vernazza which by this point in time was fairly exhausting, and we were all looking forward to sitting down and having a big feed at the restaurant in Vernazza (not to mention a couple of frosty beverages....). During this part of the trek, we were getting very frustrated at the amount of old people on the pathway that had ski-poles in each hand as walking sticks, would walk slowly, and not get out of the way causing a virtual traffic jam on the pathway. However, the trek from Corniglia to Vernazza was stunning, so it mattered not. It was a lot greener than the other pathways as it meandered through Olive groves. It was so cool!
Coming into Vernazza
Once we reached Vernazza, just on our side of it, was the restaurant where we were going to put our feet up and have a cold drink - boy had we earned it!
The restaurant in Vernazza
We were pretty tired due to the big night the night before, so we decided that we'd have a look around Vernazza and call it a day, catch the ferry back to Riomaggiore and then catch the train to Monterosso on the Sunday.
Vernazza was probably the prettiest village of them all, however we had a small soft spot for Riomaggiore as it was where we were staying.
The harbour at Vernazza
The clock tower with some of the village in the background...
On the boat on the way back to Riomaggiore
Riomaggiore from the water
Once we got back to Riomaggiore, we had a quick look around the harbour, and then headed back to our room to get ready for dinner. On the way back up the main street, we saw most of our group sitting outside a pub having a few drinks, so we decided that we would join them.
The view around the harbour...
Looking the other way....
On the way back to our flat to get ready for dinner.... Everyone was still pretty thirsty from the walk... ;-)
Everyone ended up getting ready very late for dinner, and by this time we had missed our booking at the restaurant that was owned by one of Bec's relatives (and they weren't real happy about it...), so we had to go to another restaurant. There wasn't anyone that actually enjoyed their meal much, but Damo's wasn't too bad. We did have the best wine we've ever drank while we were here though...
After we finished here, we went back to Bec's family's place for dessert. They were very friendly, and the dessert was magnificent - we really should have gone here for dinner....
Immediately after dessert, most people started heading back to their rooms as we were all thoroughly annihilated.
We woke up the next morning and headed for the train station once more so that we could catch the train to Monterosso - the 5th village. We were in a pretty chilled mood on the Monday, so we didn't really go knocking ourselves out in Monterosso. We only had about two hours to spend here before we boarded the train to Torino (Turin) to catch our flight home that night. We wandered around, and it was quite a lovely village with an old town and a newer part. We didn't realise until there was about half an hour to go that there was an old town, so we spent most of our time here in the newer part, and only just before we left did we realise, so we ran to the other part of the town, had a quick look around, and then ran back to the train station, just in time for our train.
We got on the train, and settled in for a long trip - it was something like 4 hrs on the train or something to get to Torino, but it was an excellent atmosphere - we'd had a great time, and we had plenty of excellent wine and beer to drink on the train ride. :-)
Fortunately the train ride passed quickly and once we got to Torino we had a fair amount of time to look around. Now Torino was a beautiful city, and if we ever get the chance to go back there again, we wouldn't hesitate. There's not a huge amount to see there, but it is quite nice nevertheless. And big-ish. Only problem was that it was about 4pm and we were all starving, and we absolutely couldn't find anywhere to eat. After walking around for about an hour or so we ended up finding somewhere to eat and rest our travel-weary bones.
One of the many cool squares in Torino
Typical architecture of Torino
After we had finished eating here, we headed back to the train station to meet up with the rest of the group. Once there we had found that we'd missed our bus to the airport, so rather than stuff around, we all just decided to get taxis. Got to the airport, checked in, waited patiently for our 10:30pm flight and ended up arriving back into Stansted at about 1am. By the time we had got our taxis home, it was about 2:30am and we had to get up to go to work in about 5 hours. We were absolutely shattered, but had a sensational time.
Sorry it's been so long since an update - we promise to try and be better...... Miss everyone heaps.
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