Lewis drove us the first half of the way to Florence then I took over and brought us to the "Ostello Europa Villa Camerata". Worst hostel so far. No air conditioning or fans, mosquitos everywhere, hot, stuffy rooms, useless wifi and somehow the showers only ran cold but the taps only ran hot.
Just before sunset we drove to Piazza Michaelangelo, which is a hilltop square with a replice of the statue of David on the south edge of Florence and commands views over the whole city. Watched the sunset over Florence, romantics that we are, which was spectacular then drove down into the city center and found a really nice but not overly priced place called La Spada. You know a place is fancy when it has its own vintage of wine and they give you a free glass on entry while you wait to be seated. Fitting in with the fanciness we had wild boar salami as a starter/experiment, really tasty pasta mains and then were given complementary biscotti and shots of some brandy-esque liquor.
Drove back to hostel about 11 but, even given my previous nights lack of sleep, couldn't sleep due to the heat, mozzies and old snoring American.
Got up, barely rested, at 11 and drove into central Florence to explore. Left Cumu at the free parking at Piazza Michaelangelo then lead the others down and across the bridge to a Piazza which had a huge collection of replicas of cool, famous statues at one end and a big church at the other. From there headed north to Piazza de la Duome, home of the 4th largest church in the world, which was breathtaking in size and the intricacies of its decorations. Line to go in, as all tourist attraction lines are, was massive so we headed on to the Accademia Gallery. The gallery had a really good collection of big religious paintings and a lot of sculptures, primarily by Bartolini, but most famously is the home to Michaelangelo's David, which was surprisingly big (5.17m tall) and astoundingly detailed.
Afternoon was getting on so we wandered our way back through some street markets and then crossed over the river on the "Golden bridge", a really cool bridge which has both sides lined the entire way by nothing but expensive jewelry shops. Had our final Italian dinner at a Pizzeria near the hostel.
This was also the first day Cumu started playing up, slipping when shifting gears, especially when cold and in low gears.
Exhausted, having lost the snoring American, and armed with mosquito repellent we managed to get at least some decent sleep.
Woke up in time to get the complementary but craptastic breakfast, supplemented by a tin of fruit salad from Cumu, then checked out. For all that the hostel was awful, Florence itself is a truly beautiful city, lots of tree lined buildings, very clean, art everywhere. By far my favourite city in Italy although that isn't saying much given that we invented a city rating system just to show how bad we rated both Rome and Napoli.
Drove an hour to Pisa, Cumu occasionally complaining a bit, parked in a "Pam" supermarket, much to our amusement, and walked to the tower. As summed up by Macky: "A monument to Italy's fail, not that we need another after Napoli and Rome". Tower was pretty cool, somewhat brought down by the endless lines of tourists taking photos pretending to be holding up the tower. The church next to the tower is actually, all leaning aside, far more impressive as a structure.
"Pam" supplied our lunch then we got back on the road towards Grenoble, which we had selected as Nice and Marseilles were outrageously expensive, possibly due to our tendency to book at the last minute.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Days 68-73 (August 13-18) - Naples & Rome
Cumu's re-emergence as navigator caused immediate havoc as she took us off the motorway and down a side road where we saw our first Italians... an entire bevy of scantily clad, butter faced, Italian hookers and then a police car watching for anyone with low enough standards to actually pull over.
I stepped back up, slapped Cumu into submission a little and we arrived a few hours later in Pompei where, priorities being what they are, we experienced our first Italian pizza. Italian food and coffee is amazing, it almost makes up for Italian people and Italian cities. Almost. Explored the ruins for 3 hours under the shadow of Vesuvius, their creator. They covered a huge area and were amazingly well preserved, and awe-inspiring given the vast amount of destruction and loss of life that happened so suddenly and without warning and yet the area is repopulated by people who apparently live their life with either a death wish or gigantic balls.
I drove to Napoli (Naples) which was a 45 minute nightmare of Italian drivers, Italian unmarked roads and useless navigation. My first ever case of road rage ensued. Lewis agreed to drive for the rest of Italy.
Checked into our hotel, the "Hotel Casanova" which was a fairly standard small hotel, went out and found ourselves some fantastic pasta then went back to to hotel to chill out and ended up befriending a french girl called Mathilde who was travelling with her mum and seemed desperate for some same-age company.
The next day we intended to use to take care of some boring but much needed tasks, haircuts, laundry, car maintainence, shopping, pharmacy for Macky and catching up on our sleep.
Sleep in until midday: Check.
Every other task: Fail. We should probably have realised that it was a sunday but alas, every single shop, cafe and restaurant was closed. It took us half an hour of walking through an endless succession of shuttered shop fronts and garbage everywhere (I'm not even kidding, EVERYWHERE) just to find pizza. Pizza. In Italy! Then another 15 minutes to find coffee. Unimpressed by Napoli, everything is dirty, garbage and graffiti are all over and the people are, without fail, rude.
Ended up having a lazy day around the hotel, getting dinner from the single restaurant open on the main road fronting the hotel and then another evening of chilling in the lobby and talking with Mathilde.
Woke up early, desiring nothing more than coffee, pastries and to flee Napoli. Did all three in rapid succession and Lewis drove us to Rome where we checked into the "Youth Station Hostel" in the Bologna region of Rome. Hostel was quite nice and seemed completely empty until suddenly it was swarming with 14 year old American Catholic children wearing crosses and bright green shirts. We made a private joke about how all they needed to do was start a prayer circle. 5 minutes later they did. Turns out we showed up in Rome, Catholic center of the world, on World Youth Day. Shit. With almost the entire city closed and an army of 14 year old zealots invading the hostel we fled to go and try find a pharmacy for Macky, who was rapidly dieing. Walk to Termini station, the central transport hub which was also purported to have open shops, was a 20 minute insight into a post-apocalyptic world. A long walk through completely empty, shuttered streets, without another person in sight, the occasional car in the distance or lone dog howling just adding to the eerie feeling.
Got Macky his medicine, had a crazy chicken kebab style thing then made our way back to the hostel which had thankfully been vacated by the legion. Had a fancy backpacker dinner of 2 minute noodles and tinned tuna and befriended 2 girls from Cornwall, Jen and Jenny.
Woke up after the others to find them with milk and having finally opened the cereal we had been carting around since London. This day became attempt #2 of our Napoli day of chores as we gathered our considerable amount of washing and wandered up to the nearby Indian-run laundromat as it was another Italian holiday. The helpful guy at the laundromat told us that our best chance for haircuts would be Piazza Vittorio as it apparently is the Indian/Bangladeshi quarter so we trained over to there, only to discover that a) its actually the Chinese quarter and b) everything was closed too. Again had trouble even finding food. Never had trouble finding simple amenities as we did in Italy.
Finally found a barber that was open at 3pm and got our mullets finally removed, all done while explaining what we wanted through the medium of mime as the barber spoke no English. I, being either the bravest or most foolish, volunteered to be the guinea pig and suffered no major problems.
Headed back after to pick up our washing, had a refreshing coffee/beer then chilled for a couple of hours in the hostel. At 8, with Lewis grumpy and working and Macky sick, I ventured out and got us dinner and another drink each then at 8:45 I left them to their sulking and went with Jen and Jenny to pub crawl.
Arrived at the meeting point outside Termini station to find it deserted aside from 2 chavs from Manchester who were looking for it also. After Jen called the company and harassed them a little we found they were "on holiday" and that the other company was running from the Spanish Steps. Hurriedly made our way through the station, both to get there before it was too late and to lose the chavs. Gave them the slip but by the time we arrived at the Steps at 10:15 it was too late and there was noone around.
Determined to have a night out nonetheless we went searching for an open pub or bar but, it being an Italian holiday, even they were all closed. We ended up crossing the Tiber river to check out the clubs that line its edge but they were, while open, completely deserted so we set upon a market, which oddly enough was open, and made odder by the man trying to demo and sell vacuum cleaners at 11pm and the Elvis impersonator band. Eventually gave up and got the last bus back to the hostel where we arrived at 12:30 stone cold sober.
Woke up to both Macky and now Lewis sick, had breakfast then commenced our long day of guided walking tours of Rome. Started out at the previously found Spanish Steps, then moved on to the mausoleum of Emporer Augustus, which was impressively big and round and old, before crossing the Tiber, checking out a couple of ornate palaces, another mausoleum that was converted with additional fortifications into a fort in medieval times and then ended up at St. Peters Basilica at the entrance to the Vatican. The Vatican itself is enormous and St. Peters square was pretty amazing, 2 huge curved columnades encircling the most of it with a tall spire in the middle and the basilica at the join of the 2 columnades, all of which were lined with statues of saints. Also lots of dodgy people offering to show us "free entry with no lines" or "free tickets", including a particularly persistent English woman who, after accepting we didn't want her ticket, offered to sell me a bag, which I also declined. We decided not to actually enter the Vatican as it was expensive, the line was enormous, time was of the essence and we were also afraid of bursting into flames.
Had a quick lasagne lunch then got back to the Spanish Steps again just in time for our next tour which would take us in the other direction through Rome. Stopped first at a giant, carved column in a piazza, then moved on to a monument to Italy's very brief period as a monarchy, which they cut out half of a hill filled with ancient Roman ruins to build. From here visited te old Roman forum, which was massive and really well preserved aside from the road disecting it built by Mussolini and then finished up at the Coloseum, which was pretty much as advertised by so much popular culture. Would have liked to spend more time exploring it and to see the Pantheon but the others were withering under the heat and sickness so we headed back to the hostel for much appreciated naps and showers.
Ordered pizzas at 7pm so that we would have time to eat them before I left at 8:15 with Jen and Jenny for attempt 2 at pub crawling in Rome. The pizza arrived at 8 but luckily the terrible chef had left all the ingredients on one half so I had the good half, sculled my beer and left with the girls.
Pub crawl attempt 2 was a much greater success. We headed straight to the Spanish Steps were we found a large group of people, a little man selling beers for $1 out of a plastic back and I somehow ran into Robbie Resch again, twice in 2 pub crawls, such a small world at times. Pub crawl theme was Jager, and everyone was given 3 tokens for free jager bombs which we all immediately redeemed on entry to the starter pub. Ben, a friend of Robbie, and I then went on to have another couple as they were $3. At 11, after our numerous jager bombs and an hour and a half of all you can drink beer and wine we moved on to a couple of clubs on the river, which turned out to sell beers for $10 so I only had the one, not that I needed more. The final club also had a giant pool (yup, on the side of a river, makes sense?) but going in would get you kicked out so we didnt. No real memory of leaving the clubs but I am informed I left with Jen and Jenny and we bussed back to the hostel. Based on my drunk facebook activity I believe I got to bed around 5am.
Up at 8am the next morning as the hostel had 9am check out time. Got up, changed, packed my back and checked out. Do not remember any of this. Left the others in the hostel eating cereal while I trained back to the Coloseum to collect my free pub crawl shirt and returned to find Macky looking remarkably unimpressed with a bag of frozen peas. He apparently smashed his head on a granite shelf. Came to the realisation that I am a hangover witch, every time I should have a hangover someone else seems to suffer and I get off scot free. I am ok with this.
I stepped back up, slapped Cumu into submission a little and we arrived a few hours later in Pompei where, priorities being what they are, we experienced our first Italian pizza. Italian food and coffee is amazing, it almost makes up for Italian people and Italian cities. Almost. Explored the ruins for 3 hours under the shadow of Vesuvius, their creator. They covered a huge area and were amazingly well preserved, and awe-inspiring given the vast amount of destruction and loss of life that happened so suddenly and without warning and yet the area is repopulated by people who apparently live their life with either a death wish or gigantic balls.
I drove to Napoli (Naples) which was a 45 minute nightmare of Italian drivers, Italian unmarked roads and useless navigation. My first ever case of road rage ensued. Lewis agreed to drive for the rest of Italy.
Checked into our hotel, the "Hotel Casanova" which was a fairly standard small hotel, went out and found ourselves some fantastic pasta then went back to to hotel to chill out and ended up befriending a french girl called Mathilde who was travelling with her mum and seemed desperate for some same-age company.
The next day we intended to use to take care of some boring but much needed tasks, haircuts, laundry, car maintainence, shopping, pharmacy for Macky and catching up on our sleep.
Sleep in until midday: Check.
Every other task: Fail. We should probably have realised that it was a sunday but alas, every single shop, cafe and restaurant was closed. It took us half an hour of walking through an endless succession of shuttered shop fronts and garbage everywhere (I'm not even kidding, EVERYWHERE) just to find pizza. Pizza. In Italy! Then another 15 minutes to find coffee. Unimpressed by Napoli, everything is dirty, garbage and graffiti are all over and the people are, without fail, rude.
Ended up having a lazy day around the hotel, getting dinner from the single restaurant open on the main road fronting the hotel and then another evening of chilling in the lobby and talking with Mathilde.
Woke up early, desiring nothing more than coffee, pastries and to flee Napoli. Did all three in rapid succession and Lewis drove us to Rome where we checked into the "Youth Station Hostel" in the Bologna region of Rome. Hostel was quite nice and seemed completely empty until suddenly it was swarming with 14 year old American Catholic children wearing crosses and bright green shirts. We made a private joke about how all they needed to do was start a prayer circle. 5 minutes later they did. Turns out we showed up in Rome, Catholic center of the world, on World Youth Day. Shit. With almost the entire city closed and an army of 14 year old zealots invading the hostel we fled to go and try find a pharmacy for Macky, who was rapidly dieing. Walk to Termini station, the central transport hub which was also purported to have open shops, was a 20 minute insight into a post-apocalyptic world. A long walk through completely empty, shuttered streets, without another person in sight, the occasional car in the distance or lone dog howling just adding to the eerie feeling.
Got Macky his medicine, had a crazy chicken kebab style thing then made our way back to the hostel which had thankfully been vacated by the legion. Had a fancy backpacker dinner of 2 minute noodles and tinned tuna and befriended 2 girls from Cornwall, Jen and Jenny.
Woke up after the others to find them with milk and having finally opened the cereal we had been carting around since London. This day became attempt #2 of our Napoli day of chores as we gathered our considerable amount of washing and wandered up to the nearby Indian-run laundromat as it was another Italian holiday. The helpful guy at the laundromat told us that our best chance for haircuts would be Piazza Vittorio as it apparently is the Indian/Bangladeshi quarter so we trained over to there, only to discover that a) its actually the Chinese quarter and b) everything was closed too. Again had trouble even finding food. Never had trouble finding simple amenities as we did in Italy.
Finally found a barber that was open at 3pm and got our mullets finally removed, all done while explaining what we wanted through the medium of mime as the barber spoke no English. I, being either the bravest or most foolish, volunteered to be the guinea pig and suffered no major problems.
Headed back after to pick up our washing, had a refreshing coffee/beer then chilled for a couple of hours in the hostel. At 8, with Lewis grumpy and working and Macky sick, I ventured out and got us dinner and another drink each then at 8:45 I left them to their sulking and went with Jen and Jenny to pub crawl.
Arrived at the meeting point outside Termini station to find it deserted aside from 2 chavs from Manchester who were looking for it also. After Jen called the company and harassed them a little we found they were "on holiday" and that the other company was running from the Spanish Steps. Hurriedly made our way through the station, both to get there before it was too late and to lose the chavs. Gave them the slip but by the time we arrived at the Steps at 10:15 it was too late and there was noone around.
Determined to have a night out nonetheless we went searching for an open pub or bar but, it being an Italian holiday, even they were all closed. We ended up crossing the Tiber river to check out the clubs that line its edge but they were, while open, completely deserted so we set upon a market, which oddly enough was open, and made odder by the man trying to demo and sell vacuum cleaners at 11pm and the Elvis impersonator band. Eventually gave up and got the last bus back to the hostel where we arrived at 12:30 stone cold sober.
Woke up to both Macky and now Lewis sick, had breakfast then commenced our long day of guided walking tours of Rome. Started out at the previously found Spanish Steps, then moved on to the mausoleum of Emporer Augustus, which was impressively big and round and old, before crossing the Tiber, checking out a couple of ornate palaces, another mausoleum that was converted with additional fortifications into a fort in medieval times and then ended up at St. Peters Basilica at the entrance to the Vatican. The Vatican itself is enormous and St. Peters square was pretty amazing, 2 huge curved columnades encircling the most of it with a tall spire in the middle and the basilica at the join of the 2 columnades, all of which were lined with statues of saints. Also lots of dodgy people offering to show us "free entry with no lines" or "free tickets", including a particularly persistent English woman who, after accepting we didn't want her ticket, offered to sell me a bag, which I also declined. We decided not to actually enter the Vatican as it was expensive, the line was enormous, time was of the essence and we were also afraid of bursting into flames.
Had a quick lasagne lunch then got back to the Spanish Steps again just in time for our next tour which would take us in the other direction through Rome. Stopped first at a giant, carved column in a piazza, then moved on to a monument to Italy's very brief period as a monarchy, which they cut out half of a hill filled with ancient Roman ruins to build. From here visited te old Roman forum, which was massive and really well preserved aside from the road disecting it built by Mussolini and then finished up at the Coloseum, which was pretty much as advertised by so much popular culture. Would have liked to spend more time exploring it and to see the Pantheon but the others were withering under the heat and sickness so we headed back to the hostel for much appreciated naps and showers.
Ordered pizzas at 7pm so that we would have time to eat them before I left at 8:15 with Jen and Jenny for attempt 2 at pub crawling in Rome. The pizza arrived at 8 but luckily the terrible chef had left all the ingredients on one half so I had the good half, sculled my beer and left with the girls.
Pub crawl attempt 2 was a much greater success. We headed straight to the Spanish Steps were we found a large group of people, a little man selling beers for $1 out of a plastic back and I somehow ran into Robbie Resch again, twice in 2 pub crawls, such a small world at times. Pub crawl theme was Jager, and everyone was given 3 tokens for free jager bombs which we all immediately redeemed on entry to the starter pub. Ben, a friend of Robbie, and I then went on to have another couple as they were $3. At 11, after our numerous jager bombs and an hour and a half of all you can drink beer and wine we moved on to a couple of clubs on the river, which turned out to sell beers for $10 so I only had the one, not that I needed more. The final club also had a giant pool (yup, on the side of a river, makes sense?) but going in would get you kicked out so we didnt. No real memory of leaving the clubs but I am informed I left with Jen and Jenny and we bussed back to the hostel. Based on my drunk facebook activity I believe I got to bed around 5am.
Up at 8am the next morning as the hostel had 9am check out time. Got up, changed, packed my back and checked out. Do not remember any of this. Left the others in the hostel eating cereal while I trained back to the Coloseum to collect my free pub crawl shirt and returned to find Macky looking remarkably unimpressed with a bag of frozen peas. He apparently smashed his head on a granite shelf. Came to the realisation that I am a hangover witch, every time I should have a hangover someone else seems to suffer and I get off scot free. I am ok with this.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Days 63-68 (August 8-13) - Corfu
Having called our hostel at 4 to let them know we would be arriving at 7 we hopped off the ferry and found the location we were meant to meet their courtesy bus but, at 7:30 without any sign of the bus we called again and were told it had left the hostel 15 minutes ago and would be 10 minutes. At 8:30 when I called again we were met by a "oh, you aren't here yet? what happened?" and an assurance that this time the bus would really be 10 minutes, which thankfully it was.
Got to the hostel, which Kenny from Thessaloniki, at about 9. The "Pink Palace" is a huge complex of bright pink painted buildings stretching from the main road halfway up a hill all the way down to the beach via several long, pink staircases and a couple of rather steep hills, all surrounded by yet more pink monstrosities. However it did only cost us $30 a night which for the Greek isles is super cheap and includes breakfast and a 3 course dinner every night, plus access to its range of "safaris" (tours) and nightly drinking activities. On arrival we dropped off our luggage, got rushed to dinner to just make the cut off then finalised our check in, got given our welcome shots of Ouzo and then went to bed.
Woke up, walked out our room to be almost blinding by the vast amount of pink surrounded us and made our way over to the beachside kitchen for complementary breakfast of bread, eggs, cheese, ham, jam and complementary wasps (om nom nom) then headed back up the giant hill to reception to book ourselves onto the kayak safari.
Kayaking was awesome, a much needed work out after 2 months of drinking and general fitness destroying laziness and super smooth, crystal clear blue-green water. Went to a monastery on a little island, a 2 storey cliff jump and then spent the last hour of the tour chilling on an empty beach.a
Safari's run by the hostel include free lunch and "Pink Palace themed introductions" which gave us our first insight into the debauchery we had stumbled upon. Pink Palace introductions were the following questions: Name, where you come from, availability, most interesting flag of someone you have had sex with, most interesting place you have had sex and who you would turn gay for.
Got back just in time for dinner and were seated with 2 English girls, Jo and Steph, 2 American guys, Ian and Zach, and an American girl, Rebecca, who told us about how she had been in the jacuzzi with 4 guys "the other night" and had been "splashed in the eye" and now had a serious eye infection. Previously, on the kayak safari, we were told that we should avoid the "jizzcuzzi" and told a story about how "the other night" a girl had had sex with 4 guys in it. We have our suspicions.
Steph and Jo had just arrived and were tired to they left after dinner and the rest of us went downstairs to the "Palladium" for drinks and to compete in the flip cup competition. Flip cup is surprisingly fun, and our team, the "multipl e scoregasms" only lost 2 rounds but didn't win so we each (there was 6 on a team) bought the team a round of shots and spent the rest of the night drinking and dancing.
Woke up just in time for Macky and I to make breakfast (Lewis not being the best at waking up, let alone after a big night) then went up to reception to utilise the crappy wifi and see what our daily safari options were, which was limited to quad biking due to the sea being "too rough" (it was pretty standard Aussie ocean to be honest, useless Greeks!). Lewis and Macky weren't up for it so I joined Zach, Ian and Rebecca, along with new friends Haviland, Paige and her sister, and went quad biking.
The quad safari was amazing. Lots of really fun driving, visited a couple of cool little monasterys and look outs that showed all of Corfu and, from one, mainland Greece and Albania, a beach for a refreshing and much needed swim and ended up at a bar, of course, for a round of "happy, horny juice" which was tasty but unidentifiable. It also included a 40 minute off road section that was a huge amount of fun, an Italian going off a small cliff (he was fine, just a mild concussion but, given what I now know about Italian drivers it serves him right), Mark, an American who epitomises the stereotype of the American frat boy, going to fast and trying to drift around a corner and breaking his knee by going straight into a wall and another round of "Pink Palace style" introductions but with different, equally obscene, questions.
Got back and had dinner with Lewis, Macky and my quad biking friends before going down to the Palladium for "Cross Dress Wednesday" where guys and girls are meant to just swap clothes with each other, and happened surprisingly often and in somewhat shocking detail. The three of us ended up playing pool with the English girls from the previous nights dinner, Jo and Steph, and Lewis and I ended up swapping clothes with them (almost exactly 10 minutes after Macky challenged me to finish his drink then told me it was a cocktail with 5 shots of rum in and my response was "well then, in 10 minutes I will probably be in a dress") which made pool somewhat more uncomfortable for everyone else as we had to bend over in our short shorts or short dress to take our shots. We also found Zach looking lovely in a long blue dress and eyeliner and Ian in short shorts so tight he had to keep the fly down which did not leave much left for the imagination.
At about midnight we collectively moved down to the beach for a late night swim, which ended up going somewhat awry as Steph's bag was stolen and Jo ended up skinning her palms and knees going down the hill after going back to check the Palladium in case the bag had been left there. It turned out that a security guard had moved the bag to mess with us and somewhat killed the evening as we retreated to our room where Steph, training as a medic, disinfected Jo's war wounds while she sobbed into my shoulder while my shorts got damp to mid thigh.
Thinking our night essentially over, fools that we are, we then walked back up to the reception to help the girls with their walking with sore knees and avoiding creepy Italian problems and then Lewis and I were almost immediately after confronted by a guy in a bikini lying, crying, on the ground as Zach came over the top of the hill with a friend of his and the guys girlfriend who was crying inconsolably and had been raped on the beach by an Italian. Italians; every time we hear anything about you lot it just makes you worse and worse, please collectively kill yourselves, I am not in any way kidding. We did what we could for the poor couple, found a couple of female staff members and then, definitely less upbeat than when we left the Palladium, headed back to bed.
Woke up just in time for breakfast, somewhat the worse for wear, and stumbled our way across to breakfast where we ran into Steph and Jo, who, poor thing, was still very sore, and after helping them with beach chairs we headed up to reception to try and find a couple of items that had gone missing at the same time as Steph's bag was relocated, my dinner card and Lewis' locker key and thongs. Luckily reception had the locker key, which had Lewis' laptop and passport in, but the thongs and dinner card were gone.
At about 1 we headed to the beach to walk down, again joined by the girls, to go into town to get what Macky and Lewis promised us were the best gyros ever. They did not disappoint, and for $3 it was even more fantastic. We then walked back up the hill towards the hostel but stopped just before to go into another hotel's public pool and escape the Pink Palace for a few hours where we swam, drank and relaxed for a couple of hours.
At 5 we headed back to the hostel to go and watch the "Ouzo Cup" which, at the time of registration, and very fortuitously, we were not up for competing in. The Ouzo Cup was a 10Euro entry fee volleyball contest where in between each couple of points teams competed to do outdo one another in various drinking or debauchery based challenges for bonus points, such as sculling beers, swapping clothes between team mates of different sexes in front of everyone (and all competitors were in boardies or bikinis so that got a big... confronting), body shots and ended up being won when 4 girls on one team, 2 of whom were sisters, nuded up and 69ed whipped cream off each others... secret places...
After seeing this we retreated up to dinner then went downstairs for some quiet games of pool before grabbing the laptop and watching KickAss before bed.
Woke up at 8:30, rush packed and checked out at 9 (what sort of party hostel makes its checkout time 9am, thats just rude!) then grabbed breakfast, again with Jo and Steph, then played a bunch of cards with our newly acquired, free on check out, Ancient Greek Sex Position cards, which made it a continual process of dealing, giggling at the cards then continuing.
Had another round of lunch gyros followed by pool relaxation before at 4 heading back to the hostel reception to organise busses back to the other side of the island, where us 3 would be ferrying back to Igoumenitsa and the girls were moving to a more sedate hostel. Said our farewells at the port bus stop then jumped on the ferry back to Igoumenitsa.
Found Cumu still intact, if somewhat coated in a layer of salt and dust, packed her back up and then checked in to the overnight car ferry to Bari on the Italian east coast. Had cheap, crappy dinner at the duty free place in the international port then drove onto the ferry.
Slept pretty awfully on the ferry as we did not really think about the whole temperature thing and could not re-access Cumu so had to sleep in a cold recliner seat in boardies, a t shirt and thongs, which was something of a rookie mistake. However on getting back to Cumu we discovered that her nav(wo)man part was back in business, which is something of a two-edged sword.
Got to the hostel, which Kenny from Thessaloniki, at about 9. The "Pink Palace" is a huge complex of bright pink painted buildings stretching from the main road halfway up a hill all the way down to the beach via several long, pink staircases and a couple of rather steep hills, all surrounded by yet more pink monstrosities. However it did only cost us $30 a night which for the Greek isles is super cheap and includes breakfast and a 3 course dinner every night, plus access to its range of "safaris" (tours) and nightly drinking activities. On arrival we dropped off our luggage, got rushed to dinner to just make the cut off then finalised our check in, got given our welcome shots of Ouzo and then went to bed.
Woke up, walked out our room to be almost blinding by the vast amount of pink surrounded us and made our way over to the beachside kitchen for complementary breakfast of bread, eggs, cheese, ham, jam and complementary wasps (om nom nom) then headed back up the giant hill to reception to book ourselves onto the kayak safari.
Kayaking was awesome, a much needed work out after 2 months of drinking and general fitness destroying laziness and super smooth, crystal clear blue-green water. Went to a monastery on a little island, a 2 storey cliff jump and then spent the last hour of the tour chilling on an empty beach.a
Safari's run by the hostel include free lunch and "Pink Palace themed introductions" which gave us our first insight into the debauchery we had stumbled upon. Pink Palace introductions were the following questions: Name, where you come from, availability, most interesting flag of someone you have had sex with, most interesting place you have had sex and who you would turn gay for.
Got back just in time for dinner and were seated with 2 English girls, Jo and Steph, 2 American guys, Ian and Zach, and an American girl, Rebecca, who told us about how she had been in the jacuzzi with 4 guys "the other night" and had been "splashed in the eye" and now had a serious eye infection. Previously, on the kayak safari, we were told that we should avoid the "jizzcuzzi" and told a story about how "the other night" a girl had had sex with 4 guys in it. We have our suspicions.
Steph and Jo had just arrived and were tired to they left after dinner and the rest of us went downstairs to the "Palladium" for drinks and to compete in the flip cup competition. Flip cup is surprisingly fun, and our team, the "multipl e scoregasms" only lost 2 rounds but didn't win so we each (there was 6 on a team) bought the team a round of shots and spent the rest of the night drinking and dancing.
Woke up just in time for Macky and I to make breakfast (Lewis not being the best at waking up, let alone after a big night) then went up to reception to utilise the crappy wifi and see what our daily safari options were, which was limited to quad biking due to the sea being "too rough" (it was pretty standard Aussie ocean to be honest, useless Greeks!). Lewis and Macky weren't up for it so I joined Zach, Ian and Rebecca, along with new friends Haviland, Paige and her sister, and went quad biking.
The quad safari was amazing. Lots of really fun driving, visited a couple of cool little monasterys and look outs that showed all of Corfu and, from one, mainland Greece and Albania, a beach for a refreshing and much needed swim and ended up at a bar, of course, for a round of "happy, horny juice" which was tasty but unidentifiable. It also included a 40 minute off road section that was a huge amount of fun, an Italian going off a small cliff (he was fine, just a mild concussion but, given what I now know about Italian drivers it serves him right), Mark, an American who epitomises the stereotype of the American frat boy, going to fast and trying to drift around a corner and breaking his knee by going straight into a wall and another round of "Pink Palace style" introductions but with different, equally obscene, questions.
Got back and had dinner with Lewis, Macky and my quad biking friends before going down to the Palladium for "Cross Dress Wednesday" where guys and girls are meant to just swap clothes with each other, and happened surprisingly often and in somewhat shocking detail. The three of us ended up playing pool with the English girls from the previous nights dinner, Jo and Steph, and Lewis and I ended up swapping clothes with them (almost exactly 10 minutes after Macky challenged me to finish his drink then told me it was a cocktail with 5 shots of rum in and my response was "well then, in 10 minutes I will probably be in a dress") which made pool somewhat more uncomfortable for everyone else as we had to bend over in our short shorts or short dress to take our shots. We also found Zach looking lovely in a long blue dress and eyeliner and Ian in short shorts so tight he had to keep the fly down which did not leave much left for the imagination.
At about midnight we collectively moved down to the beach for a late night swim, which ended up going somewhat awry as Steph's bag was stolen and Jo ended up skinning her palms and knees going down the hill after going back to check the Palladium in case the bag had been left there. It turned out that a security guard had moved the bag to mess with us and somewhat killed the evening as we retreated to our room where Steph, training as a medic, disinfected Jo's war wounds while she sobbed into my shoulder while my shorts got damp to mid thigh.
Thinking our night essentially over, fools that we are, we then walked back up to the reception to help the girls with their walking with sore knees and avoiding creepy Italian problems and then Lewis and I were almost immediately after confronted by a guy in a bikini lying, crying, on the ground as Zach came over the top of the hill with a friend of his and the guys girlfriend who was crying inconsolably and had been raped on the beach by an Italian. Italians; every time we hear anything about you lot it just makes you worse and worse, please collectively kill yourselves, I am not in any way kidding. We did what we could for the poor couple, found a couple of female staff members and then, definitely less upbeat than when we left the Palladium, headed back to bed.
Woke up just in time for breakfast, somewhat the worse for wear, and stumbled our way across to breakfast where we ran into Steph and Jo, who, poor thing, was still very sore, and after helping them with beach chairs we headed up to reception to try and find a couple of items that had gone missing at the same time as Steph's bag was relocated, my dinner card and Lewis' locker key and thongs. Luckily reception had the locker key, which had Lewis' laptop and passport in, but the thongs and dinner card were gone.
At about 1 we headed to the beach to walk down, again joined by the girls, to go into town to get what Macky and Lewis promised us were the best gyros ever. They did not disappoint, and for $3 it was even more fantastic. We then walked back up the hill towards the hostel but stopped just before to go into another hotel's public pool and escape the Pink Palace for a few hours where we swam, drank and relaxed for a couple of hours.
At 5 we headed back to the hostel to go and watch the "Ouzo Cup" which, at the time of registration, and very fortuitously, we were not up for competing in. The Ouzo Cup was a 10Euro entry fee volleyball contest where in between each couple of points teams competed to do outdo one another in various drinking or debauchery based challenges for bonus points, such as sculling beers, swapping clothes between team mates of different sexes in front of everyone (and all competitors were in boardies or bikinis so that got a big... confronting), body shots and ended up being won when 4 girls on one team, 2 of whom were sisters, nuded up and 69ed whipped cream off each others... secret places...
After seeing this we retreated up to dinner then went downstairs for some quiet games of pool before grabbing the laptop and watching KickAss before bed.
Woke up at 8:30, rush packed and checked out at 9 (what sort of party hostel makes its checkout time 9am, thats just rude!) then grabbed breakfast, again with Jo and Steph, then played a bunch of cards with our newly acquired, free on check out, Ancient Greek Sex Position cards, which made it a continual process of dealing, giggling at the cards then continuing.
Had another round of lunch gyros followed by pool relaxation before at 4 heading back to the hostel reception to organise busses back to the other side of the island, where us 3 would be ferrying back to Igoumenitsa and the girls were moving to a more sedate hostel. Said our farewells at the port bus stop then jumped on the ferry back to Igoumenitsa.
Found Cumu still intact, if somewhat coated in a layer of salt and dust, packed her back up and then checked in to the overnight car ferry to Bari on the Italian east coast. Had cheap, crappy dinner at the duty free place in the international port then drove onto the ferry.
Slept pretty awfully on the ferry as we did not really think about the whole temperature thing and could not re-access Cumu so had to sleep in a cold recliner seat in boardies, a t shirt and thongs, which was something of a rookie mistake. However on getting back to Cumu we discovered that her nav(wo)man part was back in business, which is something of a two-edged sword.
Days 59-63 (August 4-8) - Thessaloniki & Athens
Drive from Gallipoli to Thessaloniki was a 6 hour long hot-car-a-thon, including another hour spent in border crossing (hopefully our last as we are now permanently back into the EU), sweltering slightly but we made it all worthwhile by purchasing 2L of scotch and 1L of jager from duty free for $40. Eventually found ourselves winding up through the complex system of tiny one way back streets in Thessaloniki to our next hostel, "Studios Arabas", a very cool little hostel run by a little Greek woman called Dorra, who was lovely and gave us free cold drinks on arrival, showed us where everything was and each night would offer us Greek wine and insisted on being called "Mumma" as she saw herself as everyone's mother while her sons are off travelling themselves.
Settled in and walked down the hill to get ourselves some Euros (finally we are back to a single currency again, no more miscellaneous funbucks) and then try a Gyros, which is essentially kebab meat, tomato, onion, tatziki and fries wrapped in a pita bread... pretty much the best kebab ever.
Spent the evening outside the front of the hostel, drink duty free Jameson and sprite and hanging out with a couple of dutch girls, a couple of dutch guys and an older American with bullet scars and a missing leg.
Woke up feeling great, the hostel gave free coffee and amazing homemade jam for breakfast so we grabbed some bread and had ourselves a feast and then spent the morning relaxing in the shade and redoing our itinerary to fit in a couple of places and avoid a couple of others. We also began our ordeal of being unable to comprehend the Greek ferry system, whose timetables change weekly and aren't available in a unified website.
At about 3 we sucked it up and braved the heat to go for a walk into the city centre and see the sights. Made our way down and stumbled upon a section of the old city wall (as in, over 2000 years old) down the first road we took. Went further in and checked out a more intact and scenic part of the wall in a park, next to Aristoteles University and its huge philosophy building. From there we visited the "Rotunda", a big, old, circular (funnily enough) building and the nearby churches and then headed through the ancient city gate to the "Forum of Thessaloniki". The Forum is an amazing square section of ruins of what used to be the heart of ancient Greek Thessaloniki, and features a bunch of intact columns, big amphitheatre, a set of buildings and a trio of big, angry black guard dogs.
Got back to the hostel about 6, had much needed showers and "borrowed" Lewis' laptop to go outside and update blog while the others faffed around. Finished just as Lewis and Macky joined me, and we were soon after joined by Kenny, a really cool Irishman, Alice, Jenny and Emma from England and the two dutch girls from the previous night, Lilian and Sunna. Had a bunch of drinks with them, got given pasta salad and home grown olives by Dorra along with some strong, clear, non-ouzo Greek liquor because she "loves us all" then at 10 we moved to our dorm for drinking games to keep from offending the neighbours any more and escape the rampant mosquito menace.
Played a couple of rounds of kings, adding a rule from the English girls called Paranoid, which involves the person who starts it whispering the person to their left a question (for example: "who do you think most likely to have an STD?" or "which person do you find most attractive") and that person then does the same to the person who the answer is (the question's answer must be one of the people playing) and repeat the process three times, the final person pointing to their answer and that person drinking. People can also finish their drink to hear what a question was. After kings we just played a bunch of paranoid then headed down to the waterfront at about midnight to try the vaunted, "top 5 cities in the word according to Lonely Planet", nightlife, which ended up being a small number of over-priced clubs.
Unsatisfied by this turn we found a street vendor selling $1.50 beers and acquired several bags worth before heading back towards the hostel. We stopped just at the bottom of the road because we didn't want to annoy the people at the hostel (drunk us apparently disregarding the locals we were then around instead) and ended up playing a rather interesting game of truth or dare, joined by 2 dutch guys from the hostel, which climaxed with Macky dancing the wavey-gravy for 5 minutes on a street corner while someone else tried to run up a wall and myself, Kenny and Emma sat naked in the back of an unfortunately parked (for its owner) ute with a dutch guy and Jenny also half naked outside it.
Woke up feeling surprisingly perky, seemingly because Lewis got both our hangovers combined, and realised that we hadn't actually booked our accomodation for that night so frantically remedied that, had breakfast and checked out just before cut off or Dorra, who was angry as two Canadian girls had left at 5am to avoid paying for the stays, would have probably cracked the shits at us. As it was after checkout we were not allowed to sit in the hostel so sat outside in the street while Lewis dealt with his emails and with feeling up for being in a car.
Drive to Athens took 7 hours, stopping only once for a detour to a "seaside archaeological site" that signed us up a dirt track which ended at a wooden shack halfway up a hill so we backtracked to the side of the Mediteranean where we made manwiches (a third of a tin of spam each with some spicy ketchup) before continueing on.
Checked in to "Aristoteles Hotel", an actual hotel as it was cheap and we hadn't got many options due to lack of pre-planning but was a good change of pace to have a room to ourselves, with air conditioning! The hotel was fairly standard, but had leaflets up saying to ask the staff if we required help with ferry bookings, which we did, so I asked and was told to "go and find a tourist information point".
Had a quiet night watching TV before the long day we planned next.
Woke up and availed ourselves of the complimentary breakfast of a hardboiled egg, single slice of cheese and ham and bread and jam then left the hotel surprisingly efficiently to get our tourist sightseeing underway.
I had planned a rough route through the sites we wished to see and expertly guided us first to an unknown large green patch on the map which turned out to be an awesome set of ruins of one of the main entrances to ancient Athens and included the site of Plato's Academy which was cool. We explored the site for a couple of hours, got yelled and whistle blown at for Macky and I riding a potentially priceless lion statue (put up signs if you don't want your lions ridden!) and then moved on towards the Acropolis.
Faced by the fact that the Acropolis is up a big hill and we were hot we bypassed it temporarily to find a place for lunch and then, with all of us refreshed and Lewis and myself fortified by a half jug of wine each, we braved the hill. The Acropolis site is amazing, a series of impressively preserved and spectacular buildings and artifacts coupled with breathtaking views out over the whole of Athens, which is obscenely big. Macky added the Acropolis to his list of major landmarks he has licked and we also checked out the Theatre of Dionysos, Greek God of wine and joy... best god ever.
After about an hour of Acropolis examination we moved on down to a big government building which looked cool on the map but wasn't really worth the 5 minute detour it cost us aside from the 10 minute lie down in the shade in the park outside it which refreshed us enough (it was really hot, ok?) to check out another big, awesome columned ruin, where we found it interesting that a 2000 year old clay pot was being used as a washing basin for peoples feet (great work Greece, real respectful).
We then headed back to the Acropolis to make the 6pm walking tour, but got there at 5 in order to explore the site around its base, which was a lot more cool ruins and a fully restored, long thin columned building.
Waited until 6:15 at the location for the start of the tour then gave up on the guide actually showing up and went back to the hotel for dinner and a much needed beer and chill out.
Athens is very awesome but can be pretty much fully done in a single solid day.
Next morning got up, breakfasted and checked out by 10 for the drive up the Greek west coast to Igoumenitsa. Arrived at the ticket booth for ferries at 4:02 to find the ferry times were 4 or 5:30 so got tickets for the 5:30 ferry (to Corfu), chilled out in a cafe for an hour, grabbed our backs and left Cumu sitting on the side of the road outside the port then jumped onto the ferry.
Settled in and walked down the hill to get ourselves some Euros (finally we are back to a single currency again, no more miscellaneous funbucks) and then try a Gyros, which is essentially kebab meat, tomato, onion, tatziki and fries wrapped in a pita bread... pretty much the best kebab ever.
Spent the evening outside the front of the hostel, drink duty free Jameson and sprite and hanging out with a couple of dutch girls, a couple of dutch guys and an older American with bullet scars and a missing leg.
Woke up feeling great, the hostel gave free coffee and amazing homemade jam for breakfast so we grabbed some bread and had ourselves a feast and then spent the morning relaxing in the shade and redoing our itinerary to fit in a couple of places and avoid a couple of others. We also began our ordeal of being unable to comprehend the Greek ferry system, whose timetables change weekly and aren't available in a unified website.
At about 3 we sucked it up and braved the heat to go for a walk into the city centre and see the sights. Made our way down and stumbled upon a section of the old city wall (as in, over 2000 years old) down the first road we took. Went further in and checked out a more intact and scenic part of the wall in a park, next to Aristoteles University and its huge philosophy building. From there we visited the "Rotunda", a big, old, circular (funnily enough) building and the nearby churches and then headed through the ancient city gate to the "Forum of Thessaloniki". The Forum is an amazing square section of ruins of what used to be the heart of ancient Greek Thessaloniki, and features a bunch of intact columns, big amphitheatre, a set of buildings and a trio of big, angry black guard dogs.
Got back to the hostel about 6, had much needed showers and "borrowed" Lewis' laptop to go outside and update blog while the others faffed around. Finished just as Lewis and Macky joined me, and we were soon after joined by Kenny, a really cool Irishman, Alice, Jenny and Emma from England and the two dutch girls from the previous night, Lilian and Sunna. Had a bunch of drinks with them, got given pasta salad and home grown olives by Dorra along with some strong, clear, non-ouzo Greek liquor because she "loves us all" then at 10 we moved to our dorm for drinking games to keep from offending the neighbours any more and escape the rampant mosquito menace.
Played a couple of rounds of kings, adding a rule from the English girls called Paranoid, which involves the person who starts it whispering the person to their left a question (for example: "who do you think most likely to have an STD?" or "which person do you find most attractive") and that person then does the same to the person who the answer is (the question's answer must be one of the people playing) and repeat the process three times, the final person pointing to their answer and that person drinking. People can also finish their drink to hear what a question was. After kings we just played a bunch of paranoid then headed down to the waterfront at about midnight to try the vaunted, "top 5 cities in the word according to Lonely Planet", nightlife, which ended up being a small number of over-priced clubs.
Unsatisfied by this turn we found a street vendor selling $1.50 beers and acquired several bags worth before heading back towards the hostel. We stopped just at the bottom of the road because we didn't want to annoy the people at the hostel (drunk us apparently disregarding the locals we were then around instead) and ended up playing a rather interesting game of truth or dare, joined by 2 dutch guys from the hostel, which climaxed with Macky dancing the wavey-gravy for 5 minutes on a street corner while someone else tried to run up a wall and myself, Kenny and Emma sat naked in the back of an unfortunately parked (for its owner) ute with a dutch guy and Jenny also half naked outside it.
Woke up feeling surprisingly perky, seemingly because Lewis got both our hangovers combined, and realised that we hadn't actually booked our accomodation for that night so frantically remedied that, had breakfast and checked out just before cut off or Dorra, who was angry as two Canadian girls had left at 5am to avoid paying for the stays, would have probably cracked the shits at us. As it was after checkout we were not allowed to sit in the hostel so sat outside in the street while Lewis dealt with his emails and with feeling up for being in a car.
Drive to Athens took 7 hours, stopping only once for a detour to a "seaside archaeological site" that signed us up a dirt track which ended at a wooden shack halfway up a hill so we backtracked to the side of the Mediteranean where we made manwiches (a third of a tin of spam each with some spicy ketchup) before continueing on.
Checked in to "Aristoteles Hotel", an actual hotel as it was cheap and we hadn't got many options due to lack of pre-planning but was a good change of pace to have a room to ourselves, with air conditioning! The hotel was fairly standard, but had leaflets up saying to ask the staff if we required help with ferry bookings, which we did, so I asked and was told to "go and find a tourist information point".
Had a quiet night watching TV before the long day we planned next.
Woke up and availed ourselves of the complimentary breakfast of a hardboiled egg, single slice of cheese and ham and bread and jam then left the hotel surprisingly efficiently to get our tourist sightseeing underway.
I had planned a rough route through the sites we wished to see and expertly guided us first to an unknown large green patch on the map which turned out to be an awesome set of ruins of one of the main entrances to ancient Athens and included the site of Plato's Academy which was cool. We explored the site for a couple of hours, got yelled and whistle blown at for Macky and I riding a potentially priceless lion statue (put up signs if you don't want your lions ridden!) and then moved on towards the Acropolis.
Faced by the fact that the Acropolis is up a big hill and we were hot we bypassed it temporarily to find a place for lunch and then, with all of us refreshed and Lewis and myself fortified by a half jug of wine each, we braved the hill. The Acropolis site is amazing, a series of impressively preserved and spectacular buildings and artifacts coupled with breathtaking views out over the whole of Athens, which is obscenely big. Macky added the Acropolis to his list of major landmarks he has licked and we also checked out the Theatre of Dionysos, Greek God of wine and joy... best god ever.
After about an hour of Acropolis examination we moved on down to a big government building which looked cool on the map but wasn't really worth the 5 minute detour it cost us aside from the 10 minute lie down in the shade in the park outside it which refreshed us enough (it was really hot, ok?) to check out another big, awesome columned ruin, where we found it interesting that a 2000 year old clay pot was being used as a washing basin for peoples feet (great work Greece, real respectful).
We then headed back to the Acropolis to make the 6pm walking tour, but got there at 5 in order to explore the site around its base, which was a lot more cool ruins and a fully restored, long thin columned building.
Waited until 6:15 at the location for the start of the tour then gave up on the guide actually showing up and went back to the hotel for dinner and a much needed beer and chill out.
Athens is very awesome but can be pretty much fully done in a single solid day.
Next morning got up, breakfasted and checked out by 10 for the drive up the Greek west coast to Igoumenitsa. Arrived at the ticket booth for ferries at 4:02 to find the ferry times were 4 or 5:30 so got tickets for the 5:30 ferry (to Corfu), chilled out in a cafe for an hour, grabbed our backs and left Cumu sitting on the side of the road outside the port then jumped onto the ferry.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Days 54-59 (July 30 - August 04) - Istanbul & Gallipoli
Border crossing into Turkey was something of a nightmare. We waited over an hour to get to the first of the check stations, had our passports checked at 7 different stations, had to, on two separate occasions and from people who didn't speak any English, purchase visas and a green card which we hadn't realised we needed (rookie error on our behalf) and escaped from the crossing about 4pm, having got there about 1. Stopped at the first place we could after to refill our depleted petrol tanks and bellys with petrol and truck stop food, which I suspect could be interchangable.
Istanbul is unbelievably massive and greets you as you come over a hill with identical apartment blocks in huge blocks and, behind them, a hillside of colourful buildings and magnificent mosques. Guided by my supreme navigation skills, as Cumu was unable to comprehend the Istanbul road system, we made our way to our next stop, the "Bada Bing Hostel" which had a very cool atmosphere and the guests all hung out together, and is situated down a series of tiny roads that we initially mistook for rape alleys. Traffic in Istanbul is brutal, everyone just sort of pushes and pedestrians just step out into any gap left over but it seems to work somehow. There is also regular Islamic music playing from speakers on the mosque's spires and various tall buildings and gives the city a very cool exotic atmosphere.
After checking in and dumping our stuff we went out and grabbed dinner from a nearby kebab place, the first kebabs we had had on the trip (surprising given the number of kebab stands everywhere and our near-constant intoxication). Unlike aussie kebabs we were given kebab meat that was actually tasty on rice, with bread and vegies filling the plate and a starter of a huge cacoon-like hollow bread and variety of salsa-esque dips and cheese. We then went back to the hostel to share a 2L Serbian beer before teaming up with a group of Americans, Canadians and a couple of Aussie girls from our room, Cat and Amelia and going out with the Turkish guys who worked at the hostel, who took us to a bar called "Balanz Volt" and bartered the bouncers into giving us all free entry (instead of the $10 usual) and the bartenders into giving us halfprice drinks all night. It's very handy to have locals to go out with when in a barter economy. The bar was crazy, situated on a rooftop on the top of a hill with views out over the city from the dance floor and raised dance areas on both sides, plus Turkish dance music, which is very similar to ours but in Turkish so all the locals sing along, and Turkish dancing, which is a lot more ridiculous and over the top than Australian dancing. Got back to the hostel about 4am.
The next morning was a recovery day as Lewis was definitely feeling the effects of the previous night. Played a whole bunch of chess, got some traditional meat filled, lasagna style, pastries for lunch and made ourselves a stupid but very tasty multicultural dinner of pasta, tomato, donor kebab meat (which they sell in supermarkets the same as we sell steaks) and sweet n sour sauce. After dinner hung out in our room with Cat and Amelia and watched Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Our one outing of the day was to the Grand Bazaar to buy Lewis a new towel as he had left his in Romania but after fighting our way through the endless maze of street markets we found it closed. We hadn't realised it was Sunday, oops. Got 2 towels from a street vendor for ~$8.
Up the next morning bright and early in order to spend the whole day exploring the many sights of Istanbul. Showered, changed and headed downstairs with map in hand only to find Lewis on his laptop needing to "work for about an hour". Not wanting to make Lewis miss out Macky and I distracted ourselves for the "hour". Left hostel at 1pm.
First stop of our personalised walking tour was the big mosque on the other side over the bridge (We were staying just over the river from central Istanbul). The mosques in Istanbul are huge, immediately noticeable complexes of domes and spires surrounded by walls and all covered in minutely detailed mosaics and carvings. Very different to churches and staggeringly beautiful. The mosque was completely open to the public, requiring just that everyone entering remove their shoes and women cover their knees and shoulders, and allowed photography if you stood at the back. The interior decoration put even the remarkable exterior to shame and, coupled with the hauntingly lovely Islamic prayers and music made for a very serene but striking air. The open nature of the mosques, even during times of prayer and ceremonies, give them a much more accessible feeling to the churches we had previous visited with their restrictions and fees.
Went to the Palace via the Spice Bazaar, an indoor bazaar filled with all sorts of stalls, particularly, funnily enough, stalls with huge piles of various spices but we were dubious about the quality or even legitimacy given that some of the piles were claiming to be sapphron but at no more expense than any other spice. The Palace was closed off for what appeared to be renovations but we didn't go up and enquire due to the presence of a number of unimpressed looking, machine gun armed guards but did have a very nice garden walk which featured ruins from old Constantinople.
From there we went down into the Basilica Cisterns, an enormous underground room of byzantine columns and featuring 2 medusa head statues, all lit from below and with about a foot deep water at the base filled with fish. Very awesome and a nice relief from the blazing heat outside. After leaving we almost immediately stumbled upon a section of the ancient Constantinople city walls and the "million stone", the distance marker at the center of the Byzantine empire used to measure the distances of its various cities and borders.
Checked out the Hageah Sophia mosque and the Blue mosque, the 2 biggest mosques in the city and also stunning, but due to time didn't go in then made our way to the now open Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is a giant building filled with stalls that form a seemingly endless maze of cheap, hugely varied (one can, I am told, find anything they want there and I did indeed see kitchen sinks for sale at one place) goods and a chance for us to do some bartering of our own. My personal success being getting 2 items priced at ~$30aud each for ~$3aud combined.
After this, with evening setting in, we made our way back to the hostel via the ancient city aqueducts and a different bridge over the river, which was also lined by fishermen the whole way across. When we got back the others jumped on their various internet machines while I refilled my water bottle and walked 15 minutes up another hill to Taksim Square to see the monument there for Turkey gaining its independence, which featured 2 statues of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (founder and first president of Turkey and also philosopher and the commander who inspired the Turks to victory at Gallipoli) leading the people to independence, on one side he is leading the soldiers and on the other the scholars.
Made ourself another mashup dinner of rice, kebab meat and tomato pasta sauce then had some drinks with Cat and Amelia before trying to sleep. The room was super hot, several degrees hotter than the corridor or outside, and, coupled with snoring Dutch guys, drunks in the corridors and the fact that I had just discovered that I enjoy coffee now, sleep was somewhat tricky to come by.
Woke up fairly groggy but packed up and checked out surprisingly efficiently and while the others packed up Cumu I went out and got us a box of baklava to experiment with one the drive. Baklava has supplanted Brastilava as the best lava, its super sweet and tasty but still very light, almost dripping in honey and ground pistachio with some unknown but delicious interior goodness. Drive itself to Eceabat, the main town on the Gallipoli peninsula, took about 5 hours but was very cruisey, bolstered by frequent baklava rounds. Arrived about 3:30, checked in at the "Crowded House" hostel, a fairly generic hostel with a cool aussie theme, and booked ourselves into 2 tours for the next day and then, after desperately needed showers, went for a wander around the town, which has only one real main road parallel to the water and is, aside from the location and Gallipoli campaign tourism, a standard small country town. Got dinner from a little kebab place, a bunch of which in a row appeared to be the only real food options open, likely due to it being the 2nd day of Ramadan, and had a quiet one in readiness for the long day ahead of us.
Set our alarm for 7:30 but it didn't apparently go off so we were woken at 8:40 by staff asking if we were still intending to go on the snorkelling tour. 10 minutes later we were all dressed, muddle headed and stuffed into a car taking us to "North Beach", the beach just to the north of Anzac Cove, and by 9 we were waist deep in water, checking our fins and cleaning our goggles before swimming out about 100m to where, 5m below the surface, we got to snorkel around and explore a sunken Anzac landing craft, deliberately sunk to create a breakwater for the rest of the landing. After having our fill of that we went back in and moved around to Anzac Cove itself where we spent another hour snorkelling around the reef, checking out the vast array of fish and searching for ANZAC souvenirs. Macky found 3 bullet casings and a piece of a pottery rum bottle and I got a fired bullet casing. We then went up to pay our respects at the Anzac Cove cemetary and memorial and also found a tortoise friend. Got back to the hostel about 11:30, showered the salt and sand off ourselves and got downstairs just in time for the 12:30 Gallipoli site tour.
First stop of the second tour was across the road for a complementary, much needed, lunch before jumping on the tour bus and driving across the peninsula to "Brighton Beach", the intended, but missed, landing spot for the Anzacs which would have been a much easier site and changed the campaign hugely but they got lost in the dark. It is now a really nice tourist beach with hammocks, beach umbrellas and a few little shops, plus I earned myself a free ice cream by answering a question about the Gallipoli campaign (it was originally meant to be a solely naval operation but they fucked up the mine clearing).
Next we went through the memorials and cemetarys at "Hell's Spit", Anzac Cove, Ari Burnu and North Beach, the ANZAC landing sites. They make up a beautiful series of little headlands and beaches with crystal clear blue-green water but turn around and you are faced, as the ANZACs were, by a very inhospitable looking series of steep ridges and sharp gullys covered in thick, meter high shrubs.
We then moved up onto the top of the ridges to see some of the important battle sites. First up of these was Lone Pine, well known in ANZAC folklore, which is now the main Australian memorial and cemetary and has at its centre a pine tree grown from a seed grown in Australia from the original Lone Pine pine tree (obviously there was only one pine tree, hence the name) that was sent home by a Digger during the campaign. The memorial and cemetary plot covers all the no man's land in between the ANZAC and Turkish trench lines and so it gives a good look at how closely the two sides lived and died over the course of the 9 month campaign.
On the way to our next stop, the memorial for the Turkish 57th Infantry, we stopped on the side of the road, deliberately built through the line of no man's land, at an area where the ANZAC and Turkish trenches were little a thin road's distance apart and were regaled with tales from our Turkish guide about the two sides forces in the area, the ANZAC one commanded by an Aussie called Johnston, exchanging foods and cigarettes over the gap, now called Johnston's Jolly. The Turkish 57th Infantry who's memorial we then reached is famous in Turkish history as they were ordered by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk "I do not expect you to fight, I order you to die" as they were out of ammunition and facing a major ANZAC onslaught, and who held off the ANZACs long enough for the Turkish reinforcements to arrive but were completely wiped out in doing so. Here I was also rewarded with my free ice cream, which tasted like victory. Also like blackberry.
Our second to last stop was The Nek, made famous from the Mel Gibson Gallipoli movie and the enormous casualties suffered here by Australian forces thanks to British incompetence. The front lines here were only about 50m wide and 25m apart so it boggles the mind to think of the amount of casualties suffered in such a small area. We then got to our final stop, Chunuk Bair, the main Allied objective of the campaign as it is the highest point on the peninsula and has amazing views out over the entire area, all the way from Suvla Bay in the north to the tip at the south and across to the Dardanelles channel and the city of Cannakale on its opposite bank. The peak was only held once by the Allies, from August 8 - 10 when it was taken by New Zealanders but were then relieved by English troops, who promptly, of course, lost it. It is here that the main New zealand monument is and also a huge statue to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (king of the hill champion since August 10, 1915... too soon?).
Got back to the hostel about 7 for another kebab dinner and then after our long day of tours, heat and intense history we spent the evening playing cards, zoning out of comfy couches and having a much needed cold beer or 2.
The next morning we woke up in time to make the complementary breakfast that our incompetence had deprived us of the previous morning and ate enough to justify the 2 mornings worth and keep ourselves energised for the long drive from Turkey to Thessaloniki, our first stop in Greece.
Istanbul is unbelievably massive and greets you as you come over a hill with identical apartment blocks in huge blocks and, behind them, a hillside of colourful buildings and magnificent mosques. Guided by my supreme navigation skills, as Cumu was unable to comprehend the Istanbul road system, we made our way to our next stop, the "Bada Bing Hostel" which had a very cool atmosphere and the guests all hung out together, and is situated down a series of tiny roads that we initially mistook for rape alleys. Traffic in Istanbul is brutal, everyone just sort of pushes and pedestrians just step out into any gap left over but it seems to work somehow. There is also regular Islamic music playing from speakers on the mosque's spires and various tall buildings and gives the city a very cool exotic atmosphere.
After checking in and dumping our stuff we went out and grabbed dinner from a nearby kebab place, the first kebabs we had had on the trip (surprising given the number of kebab stands everywhere and our near-constant intoxication). Unlike aussie kebabs we were given kebab meat that was actually tasty on rice, with bread and vegies filling the plate and a starter of a huge cacoon-like hollow bread and variety of salsa-esque dips and cheese. We then went back to the hostel to share a 2L Serbian beer before teaming up with a group of Americans, Canadians and a couple of Aussie girls from our room, Cat and Amelia and going out with the Turkish guys who worked at the hostel, who took us to a bar called "Balanz Volt" and bartered the bouncers into giving us all free entry (instead of the $10 usual) and the bartenders into giving us halfprice drinks all night. It's very handy to have locals to go out with when in a barter economy. The bar was crazy, situated on a rooftop on the top of a hill with views out over the city from the dance floor and raised dance areas on both sides, plus Turkish dance music, which is very similar to ours but in Turkish so all the locals sing along, and Turkish dancing, which is a lot more ridiculous and over the top than Australian dancing. Got back to the hostel about 4am.
The next morning was a recovery day as Lewis was definitely feeling the effects of the previous night. Played a whole bunch of chess, got some traditional meat filled, lasagna style, pastries for lunch and made ourselves a stupid but very tasty multicultural dinner of pasta, tomato, donor kebab meat (which they sell in supermarkets the same as we sell steaks) and sweet n sour sauce. After dinner hung out in our room with Cat and Amelia and watched Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Our one outing of the day was to the Grand Bazaar to buy Lewis a new towel as he had left his in Romania but after fighting our way through the endless maze of street markets we found it closed. We hadn't realised it was Sunday, oops. Got 2 towels from a street vendor for ~$8.
Up the next morning bright and early in order to spend the whole day exploring the many sights of Istanbul. Showered, changed and headed downstairs with map in hand only to find Lewis on his laptop needing to "work for about an hour". Not wanting to make Lewis miss out Macky and I distracted ourselves for the "hour". Left hostel at 1pm.
First stop of our personalised walking tour was the big mosque on the other side over the bridge (We were staying just over the river from central Istanbul). The mosques in Istanbul are huge, immediately noticeable complexes of domes and spires surrounded by walls and all covered in minutely detailed mosaics and carvings. Very different to churches and staggeringly beautiful. The mosque was completely open to the public, requiring just that everyone entering remove their shoes and women cover their knees and shoulders, and allowed photography if you stood at the back. The interior decoration put even the remarkable exterior to shame and, coupled with the hauntingly lovely Islamic prayers and music made for a very serene but striking air. The open nature of the mosques, even during times of prayer and ceremonies, give them a much more accessible feeling to the churches we had previous visited with their restrictions and fees.
Went to the Palace via the Spice Bazaar, an indoor bazaar filled with all sorts of stalls, particularly, funnily enough, stalls with huge piles of various spices but we were dubious about the quality or even legitimacy given that some of the piles were claiming to be sapphron but at no more expense than any other spice. The Palace was closed off for what appeared to be renovations but we didn't go up and enquire due to the presence of a number of unimpressed looking, machine gun armed guards but did have a very nice garden walk which featured ruins from old Constantinople.
From there we went down into the Basilica Cisterns, an enormous underground room of byzantine columns and featuring 2 medusa head statues, all lit from below and with about a foot deep water at the base filled with fish. Very awesome and a nice relief from the blazing heat outside. After leaving we almost immediately stumbled upon a section of the ancient Constantinople city walls and the "million stone", the distance marker at the center of the Byzantine empire used to measure the distances of its various cities and borders.
Checked out the Hageah Sophia mosque and the Blue mosque, the 2 biggest mosques in the city and also stunning, but due to time didn't go in then made our way to the now open Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is a giant building filled with stalls that form a seemingly endless maze of cheap, hugely varied (one can, I am told, find anything they want there and I did indeed see kitchen sinks for sale at one place) goods and a chance for us to do some bartering of our own. My personal success being getting 2 items priced at ~$30aud each for ~$3aud combined.
After this, with evening setting in, we made our way back to the hostel via the ancient city aqueducts and a different bridge over the river, which was also lined by fishermen the whole way across. When we got back the others jumped on their various internet machines while I refilled my water bottle and walked 15 minutes up another hill to Taksim Square to see the monument there for Turkey gaining its independence, which featured 2 statues of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (founder and first president of Turkey and also philosopher and the commander who inspired the Turks to victory at Gallipoli) leading the people to independence, on one side he is leading the soldiers and on the other the scholars.
Made ourself another mashup dinner of rice, kebab meat and tomato pasta sauce then had some drinks with Cat and Amelia before trying to sleep. The room was super hot, several degrees hotter than the corridor or outside, and, coupled with snoring Dutch guys, drunks in the corridors and the fact that I had just discovered that I enjoy coffee now, sleep was somewhat tricky to come by.
Woke up fairly groggy but packed up and checked out surprisingly efficiently and while the others packed up Cumu I went out and got us a box of baklava to experiment with one the drive. Baklava has supplanted Brastilava as the best lava, its super sweet and tasty but still very light, almost dripping in honey and ground pistachio with some unknown but delicious interior goodness. Drive itself to Eceabat, the main town on the Gallipoli peninsula, took about 5 hours but was very cruisey, bolstered by frequent baklava rounds. Arrived about 3:30, checked in at the "Crowded House" hostel, a fairly generic hostel with a cool aussie theme, and booked ourselves into 2 tours for the next day and then, after desperately needed showers, went for a wander around the town, which has only one real main road parallel to the water and is, aside from the location and Gallipoli campaign tourism, a standard small country town. Got dinner from a little kebab place, a bunch of which in a row appeared to be the only real food options open, likely due to it being the 2nd day of Ramadan, and had a quiet one in readiness for the long day ahead of us.
Set our alarm for 7:30 but it didn't apparently go off so we were woken at 8:40 by staff asking if we were still intending to go on the snorkelling tour. 10 minutes later we were all dressed, muddle headed and stuffed into a car taking us to "North Beach", the beach just to the north of Anzac Cove, and by 9 we were waist deep in water, checking our fins and cleaning our goggles before swimming out about 100m to where, 5m below the surface, we got to snorkel around and explore a sunken Anzac landing craft, deliberately sunk to create a breakwater for the rest of the landing. After having our fill of that we went back in and moved around to Anzac Cove itself where we spent another hour snorkelling around the reef, checking out the vast array of fish and searching for ANZAC souvenirs. Macky found 3 bullet casings and a piece of a pottery rum bottle and I got a fired bullet casing. We then went up to pay our respects at the Anzac Cove cemetary and memorial and also found a tortoise friend. Got back to the hostel about 11:30, showered the salt and sand off ourselves and got downstairs just in time for the 12:30 Gallipoli site tour.
First stop of the second tour was across the road for a complementary, much needed, lunch before jumping on the tour bus and driving across the peninsula to "Brighton Beach", the intended, but missed, landing spot for the Anzacs which would have been a much easier site and changed the campaign hugely but they got lost in the dark. It is now a really nice tourist beach with hammocks, beach umbrellas and a few little shops, plus I earned myself a free ice cream by answering a question about the Gallipoli campaign (it was originally meant to be a solely naval operation but they fucked up the mine clearing).
Next we went through the memorials and cemetarys at "Hell's Spit", Anzac Cove, Ari Burnu and North Beach, the ANZAC landing sites. They make up a beautiful series of little headlands and beaches with crystal clear blue-green water but turn around and you are faced, as the ANZACs were, by a very inhospitable looking series of steep ridges and sharp gullys covered in thick, meter high shrubs.
We then moved up onto the top of the ridges to see some of the important battle sites. First up of these was Lone Pine, well known in ANZAC folklore, which is now the main Australian memorial and cemetary and has at its centre a pine tree grown from a seed grown in Australia from the original Lone Pine pine tree (obviously there was only one pine tree, hence the name) that was sent home by a Digger during the campaign. The memorial and cemetary plot covers all the no man's land in between the ANZAC and Turkish trench lines and so it gives a good look at how closely the two sides lived and died over the course of the 9 month campaign.
On the way to our next stop, the memorial for the Turkish 57th Infantry, we stopped on the side of the road, deliberately built through the line of no man's land, at an area where the ANZAC and Turkish trenches were little a thin road's distance apart and were regaled with tales from our Turkish guide about the two sides forces in the area, the ANZAC one commanded by an Aussie called Johnston, exchanging foods and cigarettes over the gap, now called Johnston's Jolly. The Turkish 57th Infantry who's memorial we then reached is famous in Turkish history as they were ordered by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk "I do not expect you to fight, I order you to die" as they were out of ammunition and facing a major ANZAC onslaught, and who held off the ANZACs long enough for the Turkish reinforcements to arrive but were completely wiped out in doing so. Here I was also rewarded with my free ice cream, which tasted like victory. Also like blackberry.
Our second to last stop was The Nek, made famous from the Mel Gibson Gallipoli movie and the enormous casualties suffered here by Australian forces thanks to British incompetence. The front lines here were only about 50m wide and 25m apart so it boggles the mind to think of the amount of casualties suffered in such a small area. We then got to our final stop, Chunuk Bair, the main Allied objective of the campaign as it is the highest point on the peninsula and has amazing views out over the entire area, all the way from Suvla Bay in the north to the tip at the south and across to the Dardanelles channel and the city of Cannakale on its opposite bank. The peak was only held once by the Allies, from August 8 - 10 when it was taken by New Zealanders but were then relieved by English troops, who promptly, of course, lost it. It is here that the main New zealand monument is and also a huge statue to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (king of the hill champion since August 10, 1915... too soon?).
Got back to the hostel about 7 for another kebab dinner and then after our long day of tours, heat and intense history we spent the evening playing cards, zoning out of comfy couches and having a much needed cold beer or 2.
The next morning we woke up in time to make the complementary breakfast that our incompetence had deprived us of the previous morning and ate enough to justify the 2 mornings worth and keep ourselves energised for the long drive from Turkey to Thessaloniki, our first stop in Greece.
Days 52-54 (July 28-30) - Veliko Tarnovo (Bulgaria)
Drive to Veliko Tarnovo was mostly excellent, very easy clear roads and awesome scenery, at least until we reached the Romania-Bulgaria border, where Cumu, now navigated by google maps, tried to make us drive straight through the river and but I took command from her and guided us through a ridiculous maze of construction (because crossing borders should be even more frustrating, clearly) into an hour long wait to get to the passport and customs checkpoints as the single connecting bridge was also having construction done on it and was reduced to a single lane which both directions of traffic had to share. Finally made it over the bridge and after some minor hijinks due to Macky's non-EU passport got through and drove the rest of the way without complications up into the Bulgarian mountains and Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria's ex-capital city. Veliko is a really cool city, built around the curved side of a mountain and with a very nice old feel about it, as Lewis put it "Bulgarian Winchester".
Checked in at "Hostel Mostel", which was another pretty standard little hostel but also with a nice outdoor deck area with swinging chairs and crazy peacock-tailed dove things (the scientific term for them) and also with dinner and a beer included each night in its remarkably cheap rate. After arming ourselves with a beer, as we had to do it in proper Australian fashion, we brought Cumu around the front to help the staff jumpstart their tour car then hung out with Ben, our newfound American mate who had been living in Georgia teaching English which sounds like a pretty cool life for a while. After our free dinner, which was insufficient to our needs, we went for a wander with a Welsh guy to a Bulgarian restaurant with amazing views out over the city from its patio and experimented with traditional Bulgarian "Hotch Poche" which was a clay bowl of meat, potato, cheese, egg and vegies, super hot and all in a tomato sauce and a great success. Spent the rest of the evening with Ben, Welsh Guy and Katie, an unrelated Welsh girl, on the patio aside from a memorable half hour outing just after 9 to see the light show on the fortress on the top of the mountain, which is put on 3-4 nights a week on random nights and is 15 extraordinary minutes of different patterns and colours of light playing over the walls, buildings and trees which cover the entire mountaintop.
Up at the painfully early time of 8:30 for breakfast then, joined by Ben, Katie and her friend Leanne, and a quiet japanese guy, embarked on the 9 hour long "UFO tour" offered by the hostel. The tour was meant to go in a single car but due to too many numbers we took ourselves and Ben in Cumu, which with its working aircon and Gorillaz soundtrack was a far superior option.
First stop of the tour was a nice, old monastery in a tranquil little river valley followed by an exploration of the caves in the mountain above it, where, much to our amusement given the tales of cave bears we scared the girls with during our Budapest caving adventure, they had exhumed the skeleton of a giant cave bear. The caves where not particularly big compared to our previous caving but were very cool and had a nice Bulgarian tradition of putting a coin against cave walls and, if it sticks, getting good luck. We then moved on to Etra Open Air Museum, a very cool village set up of buildings who used a channelled river to run old-style Bulgarian machinery for traditional village crafts, woodcarving, leatherworking, rope making, silver crafting, making traditional Bulgarian foods etc. Was very cool to see how it all used to be done. Lunch was also had there, tasty tasty Trout, the first seafood of the trip (!!!).
After lunch we drove up to the top of the mountains to the tour naming "UFO", a memorial built to a great battle in 1891 but built during the communist era so abandoned due after the regime fell in Bulgaria and gone to ruins, the copper roof stolen and the wooden supports collapsing into it. Unfortunately the day we went there was also the first day in 25 years that tourists weren't allowed to enter because they were starting restorations but it was still very cool to see and had amazing views out over the mountain range and farmlands beyond, plus a fun winding drive up and back down. Because it was closed our guide then took us to another monument, a big stone tower surrounded by old cannons and a funny copper saucer we climbing into to escape the wind (and also just because we could), and then finally to a second monastery which had a very cool little bright blue church on one side filled with beautiful biblical artwork. It must be so much easier to be religious in Europe where religious buildings are so awe inspiring.
Got back to the hostel just in time for the free dinner and beer then, tired from our long day, chilled out with some more beers with the others.
Left the next day at about 11 for the drive to Turkey.
Checked in at "Hostel Mostel", which was another pretty standard little hostel but also with a nice outdoor deck area with swinging chairs and crazy peacock-tailed dove things (the scientific term for them) and also with dinner and a beer included each night in its remarkably cheap rate. After arming ourselves with a beer, as we had to do it in proper Australian fashion, we brought Cumu around the front to help the staff jumpstart their tour car then hung out with Ben, our newfound American mate who had been living in Georgia teaching English which sounds like a pretty cool life for a while. After our free dinner, which was insufficient to our needs, we went for a wander with a Welsh guy to a Bulgarian restaurant with amazing views out over the city from its patio and experimented with traditional Bulgarian "Hotch Poche" which was a clay bowl of meat, potato, cheese, egg and vegies, super hot and all in a tomato sauce and a great success. Spent the rest of the evening with Ben, Welsh Guy and Katie, an unrelated Welsh girl, on the patio aside from a memorable half hour outing just after 9 to see the light show on the fortress on the top of the mountain, which is put on 3-4 nights a week on random nights and is 15 extraordinary minutes of different patterns and colours of light playing over the walls, buildings and trees which cover the entire mountaintop.
Up at the painfully early time of 8:30 for breakfast then, joined by Ben, Katie and her friend Leanne, and a quiet japanese guy, embarked on the 9 hour long "UFO tour" offered by the hostel. The tour was meant to go in a single car but due to too many numbers we took ourselves and Ben in Cumu, which with its working aircon and Gorillaz soundtrack was a far superior option.
First stop of the tour was a nice, old monastery in a tranquil little river valley followed by an exploration of the caves in the mountain above it, where, much to our amusement given the tales of cave bears we scared the girls with during our Budapest caving adventure, they had exhumed the skeleton of a giant cave bear. The caves where not particularly big compared to our previous caving but were very cool and had a nice Bulgarian tradition of putting a coin against cave walls and, if it sticks, getting good luck. We then moved on to Etra Open Air Museum, a very cool village set up of buildings who used a channelled river to run old-style Bulgarian machinery for traditional village crafts, woodcarving, leatherworking, rope making, silver crafting, making traditional Bulgarian foods etc. Was very cool to see how it all used to be done. Lunch was also had there, tasty tasty Trout, the first seafood of the trip (!!!).
After lunch we drove up to the top of the mountains to the tour naming "UFO", a memorial built to a great battle in 1891 but built during the communist era so abandoned due after the regime fell in Bulgaria and gone to ruins, the copper roof stolen and the wooden supports collapsing into it. Unfortunately the day we went there was also the first day in 25 years that tourists weren't allowed to enter because they were starting restorations but it was still very cool to see and had amazing views out over the mountain range and farmlands beyond, plus a fun winding drive up and back down. Because it was closed our guide then took us to another monument, a big stone tower surrounded by old cannons and a funny copper saucer we climbing into to escape the wind (and also just because we could), and then finally to a second monastery which had a very cool little bright blue church on one side filled with beautiful biblical artwork. It must be so much easier to be religious in Europe where religious buildings are so awe inspiring.
Got back to the hostel just in time for the free dinner and beer then, tired from our long day, chilled out with some more beers with the others.
Left the next day at about 11 for the drive to Turkey.
Days 48-52 (July 24-28) - Sibiu & Bucharest
On the advice of the flamboyantly gay Serbian hostel guy we had decided to take the scenic route on our drive to Romania, which we were told would add about 2 hours onto our expected 4 hour journey but ended up getting us to Sibiu at midnight, having left Belgrad at midday. However the scenic route was definitely worth the vast amount of time spent trapped together in Cumu and the slight madness we picked up (or at least gained) as a result. The drive took us along the Danube river and was a constant stream of unbelievably beautiful scenery, mountains, little rivers, the massive Danube, a whole series of little Serbian villages that really brought home that we were in Eastern Europe and, the site of our lunchtime tuna sandwich and warm German beer lunch, a magnificent castle ruin right on the river which had no security or fences so we were free to wander and explore and was right next to this crazy, slowly collapsing, soviet box building built into a cliff-face looking out over the river and straight at a Romanian town on the opposite bank. The road also, as it wound along the edge of the river, went through a very cool series of tunnels in the mountains but was, at times, troublesomely pot holed.
The border crossing was by far the friendliest of the trip, every security guard seemed incredibly happy to see tourists and practice their English, we were told to bypass the queue once they realised we had a British car and avoided the two hours of waiting, were waved through customs after answering the two oddly blunt questions "do you have any weapons?" and "do you have any drugs?" which seem like the very best way to catch people smuggling either of these things over, honesty being the guiding trait of criminals. We were then also stopped by Romanian police immediately after passing through, but not to be checked but rather so that they could help direct us to Sibiu, despite our lack of need for such directions with me as navigator.
The Romanian section of the drive was a lot less scenic, with the same series of small villages but with a much more dirty and run down feel to them than the Serbian ones and with seemingly every house having it's own group of old Romanian women in shawls glaring as we drove past in our car (as opposed to the frequent horse and carts we encountered after the border crossing). There was also a noticeable increase in the number of strays on the Romanian side, especially dogs, as there were a few cats around Serbia but we saw no stray dogs at all. Romania quickly became dubbed "bat country" (as in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" style). We also noticed a sudden transition accompanied by the onset of night where the scenery was no longer visible but was replaced by a constant series of used, sad looking prostitutes and scarily aggressive traffic, which at least kept it an interesting drive. Finally checked in to the "Sibiu Travelers Hostel" at midnight and went straight to bed in our thankfully empty 8 person dorm.
Another fairly unproductive day as Lewis had to spend the day working while Macky and I amused ourselves around the hostel with a series of games of giant chess (chess on one of those huge boards on the ground with the foot high pieces) at which I was undefeated champion, a large amount of reading and a couple of forays into Sibiu old town square. The hostel itself was really nice, very friendly and helpful Dutch staff, good facilities, the afore mentioned giant chess set and, until that evening when it began to fill up, the place to ourselves.
Our first foray into Sibiu was to acquire bakery lunch and a slightly late birthday cake for Lewis. The first thing we saw when we emerged from the tunnel under the railway was 2 stray dogs mugging an old lady, chasing her, trying to get into her bag and barking until she pulled out a loaf of bread and threw it to distract them, which it briefly did but they returned until she also through out the plastic bread bag, which for some odd reason soothed them sufficiently for her to escape. Macky and I were too far off to help in any way and dodged around the dogs who seemed more impressed by the bag than the bread and, after a quick explore of the old town square, headed back with breakfast supplies, apples and an odd, gingery cake loaf for Lewis. Thankfully the dogs had moved on and the countless other strays we saw seemed more placid.
For dinner, and to get Lewis out of the hostel, we headed back into town to the hostel recommended restaurant "Grand Plaza" where we each gained very cheap and tasty multi-course meals then, stopping briefly at the supermarket for more driving snacks and also discovering 2L plastic bottles of beer for $2, which we bought several of.
The evening was spent quietly in preparation for another long day of voyaging through Romania but our relaxation was broken at around 11pm when an entire coachload of Polish tourists arrived and immediately began causing a huge fuss because they, having booked months before but not since contacted the hostel, discovered that half of them would be staying at a hotel instead and the rest were unhappy that a hostel that was meant to hold about 25 people only had 3 bathrooms and showers and that they were meant to book a place for the coach driver. The entire 2 hour long debacle made more amusing by the inability of the group to communicate properly with the hostel owner and his constant joking asides to us, who got along great with him.
Up at 9, made ourselves a surprisingly tasty salami and egg sandwich breakfast (bacon being something we repeatedly struggled to find throughout Eastern Europe and Germany) but, due to internet communication requirements by the others, didn't leave until 11. Drive to Bucharest was awesome, very scenic through the small Romanian towns and stunning, massive, Carpathian mountains. Stopped off halfway at Bram Castle, famous as Dracula's castle. Although it was never visited by Vlad "The Impaler" Dracul it could have been the castle used in Bram Stoker's novel. Either way it was a very cool castle on a small mountain top, looking out over a mountain pass and the town that surrounds it and appeared to be entirely supported by Dracula-based tourism and merchandise.
Arrived about 5pm at the "Doors Hostel" in Bucharest, checked in and befriended our roommate Keelyn, who, small world that it so often seems to be, is from Pennant Hills and is a regular at Penno RSL where Adrian and Lorraine run karaoke. Joined by Keelyn we went to find ourselves some dinner and, pointed to the shopping mall food court as close and cheap Romanian food by the hostel, found ourselves entering going through a mall that seemed more a formalised bazaar and up to the food court of pizza and steak restaurants. Hungry, we decided we couldn't be bothered to look elsewhere (plus it was about 10 minutes plus extra for getting lost just to get out of the huge mall) and grabbed pizzas. After dinner we headed back and met our 2 other roommates, a couple of French-Canadian guys, and grabbed some drinks from Cumu and headed out to the hostel's chillout area, which was a fantasticly cool pavilion of low tables, cushions and carpets all over the floor and coloured drapes forming the roof and accompanied by a bar next to it which also offered about 40 different types of tea in multicoloured tea pots.
At about midnight, sufficiently liquored up and conditioned to the Eastern Europe fashion of starting nights out later, the 6 of us went out into Bucharest to explore the Tuesday night nightlife. Found ourselves a bar up a side street with cheap beers and a little outdoor area that was completely packed inside with thick smoke (thanks to the lack of smoking restrictions), Romanian guys dressed in tight white polo shirts with popped collars and Romanian girls dressed in very little dancing on tables. Probably should add here that this wasn't a seedy strip joint or anything, just Romanian girls seem to like dancing on tables, most likely as it affords them their own slutty little territories and makes it easier for the popped collar douchebags to see them in all their "glory". Had a few drinks outside then Macky and Lewis headed back to the hostel and the rest of us moved inside to try and brace the dance floor. The rest of the night passed in a relatively quiet section of the dance floor and yielded 2 fantastic sights; a Romanian guy, who initially looked a cut above the rest as he slow danced and spun a girl around for a couple of songs who then ruined it and earned himself a nice slap by dipping her backwards, grinning towards his friends then frantically humping at her and a not particularly great looking girl dancing on a table for about 10 minutes, looking around at the empty space around the table, tucking the sides of her dress into her undies then almost immediately acquiring a whole posse of desperate tools dancing around her.
Woke up the next morning at 11 feeling none the worse for wear and, having all missed the complementary breakfast, headed to the hostel recommended lunchplace, "Caru Cu Bere" where we paid $7 each for a 5 course meal. The others settled for the safe main option of schnitzel but I decided to try something proper Romanian and picked a random dish and got grilled pork scruff, which was surprisingly tasty if a little tough. Very similar to steak.
After lunch went to check out the Romanian parliament building, the 3rd largest building in the world, and walked almost a full lap of it which took about 45 minutes as we made our way around to the southern end, which holds the Romanian Museum of Contemporary Art. The parliament building itself is enormous and spectacular but on closer inspection it looks like it will not last another 100 years, the concrete cracking all over and a lot of the decorations stolen or broken. The museum was wonderful, each of the 4 levels has a different curator and different theme, the most impressive being the third floor, an exhibition of paintings by Nikolae Comanescu, my new favourite artist, and the ground floor which was a display of photos about the universal, unifying nature of reading.
After we completed our exploration of the parliament building and museum we moved down to the boulevard (1m wider than the Champs Elise because Romania wanted to stick it to France) and met up with Keelyn for the free 6pm walking tour, which was worth every cent. The guide was a young Romanian guy, who kept the tour fun but was also surprisingly knowledgable and on several occasions shut down an annoyingly obnoxious, know-it-all American woman while showing us all the sites of central Bucharest and providing us with a lot of very interesting history as he did.
Exhausted afterwards we all went back to the hostel for 2 minute noodles and a much needed drink and spent the evening watching a Romanian comedy play put on by the hostel and then hanging out in the chillout area.
Bucharest was a real surprise as I was not expecting very much from it but it was awesome. It has a very Eastern Europe meets the West feel about it, the first place we found in Romania with billboards and fast food (both of which were everywhere). I particularly liked the billboard for a radio station that claimed that it repelled mosquitos and which, in hindsight, I should have listened to to avoid the multitude of mozzies that found us each night. This is all contrasted by the slightly dirty feel of the buildings and their very tanned occupants and overseen by the plethora of giant buildings. Romanians seem to really love building things far bigger than necessary.
Up early enough the next morning to partake in the free breakfast, showered and said our farewells and then, after a quick walk to grab some bakery lunchtime surprises, got back on the road with Cumu, who is a lot more under the thumb now that the Navman has given up due to lack of Eastern European maps and we are navigating ourselves, however she does still get a bit cantankerous and try to strangle Macky with his seatbelt whenever she thinks we are getting less wary of her.
The border crossing was by far the friendliest of the trip, every security guard seemed incredibly happy to see tourists and practice their English, we were told to bypass the queue once they realised we had a British car and avoided the two hours of waiting, were waved through customs after answering the two oddly blunt questions "do you have any weapons?" and "do you have any drugs?" which seem like the very best way to catch people smuggling either of these things over, honesty being the guiding trait of criminals. We were then also stopped by Romanian police immediately after passing through, but not to be checked but rather so that they could help direct us to Sibiu, despite our lack of need for such directions with me as navigator.
The Romanian section of the drive was a lot less scenic, with the same series of small villages but with a much more dirty and run down feel to them than the Serbian ones and with seemingly every house having it's own group of old Romanian women in shawls glaring as we drove past in our car (as opposed to the frequent horse and carts we encountered after the border crossing). There was also a noticeable increase in the number of strays on the Romanian side, especially dogs, as there were a few cats around Serbia but we saw no stray dogs at all. Romania quickly became dubbed "bat country" (as in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" style). We also noticed a sudden transition accompanied by the onset of night where the scenery was no longer visible but was replaced by a constant series of used, sad looking prostitutes and scarily aggressive traffic, which at least kept it an interesting drive. Finally checked in to the "Sibiu Travelers Hostel" at midnight and went straight to bed in our thankfully empty 8 person dorm.
Another fairly unproductive day as Lewis had to spend the day working while Macky and I amused ourselves around the hostel with a series of games of giant chess (chess on one of those huge boards on the ground with the foot high pieces) at which I was undefeated champion, a large amount of reading and a couple of forays into Sibiu old town square. The hostel itself was really nice, very friendly and helpful Dutch staff, good facilities, the afore mentioned giant chess set and, until that evening when it began to fill up, the place to ourselves.
Our first foray into Sibiu was to acquire bakery lunch and a slightly late birthday cake for Lewis. The first thing we saw when we emerged from the tunnel under the railway was 2 stray dogs mugging an old lady, chasing her, trying to get into her bag and barking until she pulled out a loaf of bread and threw it to distract them, which it briefly did but they returned until she also through out the plastic bread bag, which for some odd reason soothed them sufficiently for her to escape. Macky and I were too far off to help in any way and dodged around the dogs who seemed more impressed by the bag than the bread and, after a quick explore of the old town square, headed back with breakfast supplies, apples and an odd, gingery cake loaf for Lewis. Thankfully the dogs had moved on and the countless other strays we saw seemed more placid.
For dinner, and to get Lewis out of the hostel, we headed back into town to the hostel recommended restaurant "Grand Plaza" where we each gained very cheap and tasty multi-course meals then, stopping briefly at the supermarket for more driving snacks and also discovering 2L plastic bottles of beer for $2, which we bought several of.
The evening was spent quietly in preparation for another long day of voyaging through Romania but our relaxation was broken at around 11pm when an entire coachload of Polish tourists arrived and immediately began causing a huge fuss because they, having booked months before but not since contacted the hostel, discovered that half of them would be staying at a hotel instead and the rest were unhappy that a hostel that was meant to hold about 25 people only had 3 bathrooms and showers and that they were meant to book a place for the coach driver. The entire 2 hour long debacle made more amusing by the inability of the group to communicate properly with the hostel owner and his constant joking asides to us, who got along great with him.
Up at 9, made ourselves a surprisingly tasty salami and egg sandwich breakfast (bacon being something we repeatedly struggled to find throughout Eastern Europe and Germany) but, due to internet communication requirements by the others, didn't leave until 11. Drive to Bucharest was awesome, very scenic through the small Romanian towns and stunning, massive, Carpathian mountains. Stopped off halfway at Bram Castle, famous as Dracula's castle. Although it was never visited by Vlad "The Impaler" Dracul it could have been the castle used in Bram Stoker's novel. Either way it was a very cool castle on a small mountain top, looking out over a mountain pass and the town that surrounds it and appeared to be entirely supported by Dracula-based tourism and merchandise.
Arrived about 5pm at the "Doors Hostel" in Bucharest, checked in and befriended our roommate Keelyn, who, small world that it so often seems to be, is from Pennant Hills and is a regular at Penno RSL where Adrian and Lorraine run karaoke. Joined by Keelyn we went to find ourselves some dinner and, pointed to the shopping mall food court as close and cheap Romanian food by the hostel, found ourselves entering going through a mall that seemed more a formalised bazaar and up to the food court of pizza and steak restaurants. Hungry, we decided we couldn't be bothered to look elsewhere (plus it was about 10 minutes plus extra for getting lost just to get out of the huge mall) and grabbed pizzas. After dinner we headed back and met our 2 other roommates, a couple of French-Canadian guys, and grabbed some drinks from Cumu and headed out to the hostel's chillout area, which was a fantasticly cool pavilion of low tables, cushions and carpets all over the floor and coloured drapes forming the roof and accompanied by a bar next to it which also offered about 40 different types of tea in multicoloured tea pots.
At about midnight, sufficiently liquored up and conditioned to the Eastern Europe fashion of starting nights out later, the 6 of us went out into Bucharest to explore the Tuesday night nightlife. Found ourselves a bar up a side street with cheap beers and a little outdoor area that was completely packed inside with thick smoke (thanks to the lack of smoking restrictions), Romanian guys dressed in tight white polo shirts with popped collars and Romanian girls dressed in very little dancing on tables. Probably should add here that this wasn't a seedy strip joint or anything, just Romanian girls seem to like dancing on tables, most likely as it affords them their own slutty little territories and makes it easier for the popped collar douchebags to see them in all their "glory". Had a few drinks outside then Macky and Lewis headed back to the hostel and the rest of us moved inside to try and brace the dance floor. The rest of the night passed in a relatively quiet section of the dance floor and yielded 2 fantastic sights; a Romanian guy, who initially looked a cut above the rest as he slow danced and spun a girl around for a couple of songs who then ruined it and earned himself a nice slap by dipping her backwards, grinning towards his friends then frantically humping at her and a not particularly great looking girl dancing on a table for about 10 minutes, looking around at the empty space around the table, tucking the sides of her dress into her undies then almost immediately acquiring a whole posse of desperate tools dancing around her.
Woke up the next morning at 11 feeling none the worse for wear and, having all missed the complementary breakfast, headed to the hostel recommended lunchplace, "Caru Cu Bere" where we paid $7 each for a 5 course meal. The others settled for the safe main option of schnitzel but I decided to try something proper Romanian and picked a random dish and got grilled pork scruff, which was surprisingly tasty if a little tough. Very similar to steak.
After lunch went to check out the Romanian parliament building, the 3rd largest building in the world, and walked almost a full lap of it which took about 45 minutes as we made our way around to the southern end, which holds the Romanian Museum of Contemporary Art. The parliament building itself is enormous and spectacular but on closer inspection it looks like it will not last another 100 years, the concrete cracking all over and a lot of the decorations stolen or broken. The museum was wonderful, each of the 4 levels has a different curator and different theme, the most impressive being the third floor, an exhibition of paintings by Nikolae Comanescu, my new favourite artist, and the ground floor which was a display of photos about the universal, unifying nature of reading.
After we completed our exploration of the parliament building and museum we moved down to the boulevard (1m wider than the Champs Elise because Romania wanted to stick it to France) and met up with Keelyn for the free 6pm walking tour, which was worth every cent. The guide was a young Romanian guy, who kept the tour fun but was also surprisingly knowledgable and on several occasions shut down an annoyingly obnoxious, know-it-all American woman while showing us all the sites of central Bucharest and providing us with a lot of very interesting history as he did.
Exhausted afterwards we all went back to the hostel for 2 minute noodles and a much needed drink and spent the evening watching a Romanian comedy play put on by the hostel and then hanging out in the chillout area.
Bucharest was a real surprise as I was not expecting very much from it but it was awesome. It has a very Eastern Europe meets the West feel about it, the first place we found in Romania with billboards and fast food (both of which were everywhere). I particularly liked the billboard for a radio station that claimed that it repelled mosquitos and which, in hindsight, I should have listened to to avoid the multitude of mozzies that found us each night. This is all contrasted by the slightly dirty feel of the buildings and their very tanned occupants and overseen by the plethora of giant buildings. Romanians seem to really love building things far bigger than necessary.
Up early enough the next morning to partake in the free breakfast, showered and said our farewells and then, after a quick walk to grab some bakery lunchtime surprises, got back on the road with Cumu, who is a lot more under the thumb now that the Navman has given up due to lack of Eastern European maps and we are navigating ourselves, however she does still get a bit cantankerous and try to strangle Macky with his seatbelt whenever she thinks we are getting less wary of her.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Days 46-48 (July 22-24) - Belgrad
Lewis' birthday. Left the hostel in Budapest around 12 and drove to Belgrad, a mostly uneventful drive aside from the 2 hour queue to get to the Serbian border crossing, where we then had our passports barely checked and customs, thankfully due to the excessive amount of alcohol in the car, waved us straight through. As we were driving through the outskirts of Belgrad we drove past a couple of buildings which looked like they had been bombed, massive gaping holes down the middle, rubble everywhere and notably collapsing walls and what remained of the rooves, a somewhat troubling introduction to the city, not only for the appearance but also the fact that the buildings had clearly just been left there.
Parked and checked in to the "Manga Hostel" which was surprisingly lacking in manga theme but was colourful and with a very friendly vibe, met our aussie roommates then went to dinner at the restaurant recommended by the hostel. The place had a slightly dodgy feel about it, small and dingy but served cheap and decent Serbian food, which appears to be largely barbecue meat. Serbian diets appeal to me. After dinner headed back to the hostel, polished off a couple more tasty beverages, changed and, joined by Simon, one of our Aussie roommates, headed out into the highly spoken of Belgrad nightlife to celebrate Lewis surviving to 26.
In Belgrad, according to the very friendly girl working in the hostel reception, clubs on the land are pretty dead and close at midnight, so the real nightlife is based around the Danube river, where boats and barges converted into loud, extravagantly colourful clubs line the shores, making a fantastic sight after dark. However, as we found out when we enquired with our helpful hostess the next day, the majority of these clubs pick out foreigners, noticable due to our up to date clothing, paler complexion and not speaking Serbian, and tell them they need reservations or make up obscene entry fees where there are infact none, as demonstrated by the streams of Serbs walking straight in and out while we were grilled repeatedly by a series of large, tattooed Serb bouncers.
We eventually found a place which was open to the likes of us and had both cheap beer and a live band playing that was the closest I have ever been to seeing Eurovision live, so we hung around to amuse ourselves for a few drinks before moving on. We found a place recommended to us, called "Olympic" and, with its relatively minor foreigner entry fee, headed on it and found it packed with people and being overseen by 2 unimpressed bartenders and a DJ/MC combo playing drum and bass. Satisfied by our choice of venue and not wanting to continue hunting for anywhere better we settled in with a quick round of beer and jager shots, now our shot of choice, and spent the rest of the night drinking and dancing until around 2:30 when our lack of sleep and long day of driving through crazy heat caught up to us and we left. Aside from a brief run in outside with 2 girls and a guy who were either very high or really dumb prostitutes we made it back to the hostel very easily. I feel I should also mention the apparently popular female fashion in Serbian boat night clubs, which was 3/4 length loose pants and tops that may as well have been boob belts, a very interesting combination (and not in the horribly perverted way most of you are imagining, more in the "in what portion of your tiny slutty brain did you possibly think this was a good idea" way).
The next day was a day of doing very little on our behalf, sleeping in until the afternoon, wandering into the Bohemian quarter, which just seemed like the restaurant quarter to be honest, for lunch, cooking ourselves a Cumu special meal of pasta with tinned tuna and tomato sauce. Other than that spent the day playing chess, watching the others recover, enjoying the amusement I get from their ability to get hangovers and watching the awful Norwegian terrorist attacks unfold.
Woke up the next morning at the ungodly early hour of 8:30 feeling refreshed, took serious advantage of the free hostel breakfast, checked out and made our way to the Nikola Tesla museum. We arrived at 10:15 and they did guided tours for the same price as normal entry every hour on the hour so we meandered down the road to kill half an hour at the market, which was overflowing with fruit of questionable quality and clothing and electronic goods for questionable branding and legality but it was an interesting place to see and be minorly harassed at. Got back to the Tesla museum just in time for the 11'o'clock tour which was definitely worth the $2 it cost and was about half an hour of information about Tesla's life, influences on society and, most importantly, his crazy lightning machines (plus the awestrikingly large amount of other inventions) all of which came with interactive "hold this light stick and we promise not to set you on fire while we surround you with lightning" demonstrations.
Parked and checked in to the "Manga Hostel" which was surprisingly lacking in manga theme but was colourful and with a very friendly vibe, met our aussie roommates then went to dinner at the restaurant recommended by the hostel. The place had a slightly dodgy feel about it, small and dingy but served cheap and decent Serbian food, which appears to be largely barbecue meat. Serbian diets appeal to me. After dinner headed back to the hostel, polished off a couple more tasty beverages, changed and, joined by Simon, one of our Aussie roommates, headed out into the highly spoken of Belgrad nightlife to celebrate Lewis surviving to 26.
In Belgrad, according to the very friendly girl working in the hostel reception, clubs on the land are pretty dead and close at midnight, so the real nightlife is based around the Danube river, where boats and barges converted into loud, extravagantly colourful clubs line the shores, making a fantastic sight after dark. However, as we found out when we enquired with our helpful hostess the next day, the majority of these clubs pick out foreigners, noticable due to our up to date clothing, paler complexion and not speaking Serbian, and tell them they need reservations or make up obscene entry fees where there are infact none, as demonstrated by the streams of Serbs walking straight in and out while we were grilled repeatedly by a series of large, tattooed Serb bouncers.
We eventually found a place which was open to the likes of us and had both cheap beer and a live band playing that was the closest I have ever been to seeing Eurovision live, so we hung around to amuse ourselves for a few drinks before moving on. We found a place recommended to us, called "Olympic" and, with its relatively minor foreigner entry fee, headed on it and found it packed with people and being overseen by 2 unimpressed bartenders and a DJ/MC combo playing drum and bass. Satisfied by our choice of venue and not wanting to continue hunting for anywhere better we settled in with a quick round of beer and jager shots, now our shot of choice, and spent the rest of the night drinking and dancing until around 2:30 when our lack of sleep and long day of driving through crazy heat caught up to us and we left. Aside from a brief run in outside with 2 girls and a guy who were either very high or really dumb prostitutes we made it back to the hostel very easily. I feel I should also mention the apparently popular female fashion in Serbian boat night clubs, which was 3/4 length loose pants and tops that may as well have been boob belts, a very interesting combination (and not in the horribly perverted way most of you are imagining, more in the "in what portion of your tiny slutty brain did you possibly think this was a good idea" way).
The next day was a day of doing very little on our behalf, sleeping in until the afternoon, wandering into the Bohemian quarter, which just seemed like the restaurant quarter to be honest, for lunch, cooking ourselves a Cumu special meal of pasta with tinned tuna and tomato sauce. Other than that spent the day playing chess, watching the others recover, enjoying the amusement I get from their ability to get hangovers and watching the awful Norwegian terrorist attacks unfold.
Woke up the next morning at the ungodly early hour of 8:30 feeling refreshed, took serious advantage of the free hostel breakfast, checked out and made our way to the Nikola Tesla museum. We arrived at 10:15 and they did guided tours for the same price as normal entry every hour on the hour so we meandered down the road to kill half an hour at the market, which was overflowing with fruit of questionable quality and clothing and electronic goods for questionable branding and legality but it was an interesting place to see and be minorly harassed at. Got back to the Tesla museum just in time for the 11'o'clock tour which was definitely worth the $2 it cost and was about half an hour of information about Tesla's life, influences on society and, most importantly, his crazy lightning machines (plus the awestrikingly large amount of other inventions) all of which came with interactive "hold this light stick and we promise not to set you on fire while we surround you with lightning" demonstrations.
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