The Final Countdown

Things have been pretty quiet here after our last last trip away to Croatia.

We haven't really done much except count down the days till we leave, which is made all the more easier by the turning weather.

Things are already starting to pick up though with the amount of time available to do things decreasing. We have made a list of must-dos before we leave and have to schedule things in, while also organising banks, phones, bills, and money.

It's not too bad at the moment, but the coming weeks will be quite stressful for us, which means coming home will be another holiday that we need.

But with the weak pound at the moment I can't afford to take too much time off work.

Croatia

We recently went to Croatia for a week long boat trip through some of the many islands on the Dalmatian Coast.
These tours are very popular so we had book well in advance, and we decided to go for the "older persons" option.

Saturday
Gatwick -> Dubrovnik Airport -> Dubrovnik
Checked into our guesthouse then went and got a pizza from a nearby pizzeria that was pretty cheap and tasty. After a short afternoon nap we walked into the Old Town for dinner. We had intended on going to a 'popular' vegetarian restaurant called Nishta for dinner. Unfortunately they were closed all weekend because "the Chef had injured himself", so we had to settle for a nearby restaurant that offered us free wine and Prosek. I managed to have a platter of olives, ham, cheese and octopus for a starter then a whole fish for mains. Average.

After dinner we attempted to walk off some of dinner before heading back to the guesthouse for bed.

Sunday
Dubrovnik
Went back into the Old Town and had a swim at the "city beach" (a concrete pier next to the port) and then got some lunch.
After lunch we decided to go and check-in to our cabin on the boat (the Meridijan), we were very surprised by how nice it was and how big our room was. Once we had unloaded our bags we went up on deck and met a few of the other passengers and sat in the sun for a while.
Later in the afternoon we were treated to a brief introduction to our crew and some rules by the tour company rep and then we sat down to a sumptuous meal of... limp soggy fried fish. This was to be a recurring theme of our trip: good times, shit - boat - food, especially for the vegetarians (Amanda, Lisa, and Lee were all vegetarians of some description). Deep fried battered cheese anyone?
After dinner we hung out with some new friends - Jason & Lisa from American and Sweden, and Grant & Lee from SA - and talked shit for several hours.
There was a broad mix of people on the boat - oldies from Canada and USA, young Australian lasses, several British lads, and then a bunch of us couples in the middle.
That night/early morning, the British lads got very drunk and caused a ruckus on deck, culminating with one of them telling one of the older passengers to "Fuck off" when he got up at 2am to ask them to be quiet and then the same guy falling down some stairs and busting his chin open. Suck to be him.

Monday
Dubrovnik -> Korcula
Boy, were the old people pissed...
Breakfasts were at 8am every day, so we were forced to get up early if we wanted to eat, and this was also when the boat would be motoring to our next destination each day.
After a few hours travel we stopped in a quiet cove for a swim and I was the first to jump from the top of the boat, which was 2 levels above the main deck. The water was very warm and flat.
We stayed in the cove for lunch, then set sail afterwards for Korcula.
Korcula is apparently the birthplace of Marco Polo, it has a lot of stray cats and a cool cocktail bar on top of an old medieval tower. We then had pizza for dinner again.

Tuesday
Korcula -> Hvar
Hvar was the biggest island and city on the trip (excluding Dubrovnik), it is also the "Celebrity Island" or "Party Island".
We walked up the hill behind the town and got some great views and photos from the fortress on top, we then went and purchased a mask and snorkel so I could look at things in the water and some snacks for the boat trips.
We had pizza again again for dinner on Hvar, and this was the most expensive ("Party Island"!!) and worst.
After dinner we made our way back to our boat, which was sharing a single berth at the port with 8 other boats. We had a few beers on board and got to laugh at a bunch of moronic - Australian - kids in the boat next to ours before calling it a night.

Wednesday
Hvar -> Trstenik
We were forewarned by the captain, that this was a very small village that did not contain many restaurants or things to see and do. As soon as we got there, we walked up to the Grgic winery which sells vinegar disguised as wine. From there we walked back to the village and went for a swim at the local pebble beach.
At dinner time (we didn't have pizza), a group of us went to one of the restaurants, it was quite an experience - the food took about an hour and a half to come out, with Jason getting his starter (olives) after his main. Luckily the food was excellent (especially the Sea bass) and the waiter came out after the meal and insisted we join him in a (free) brandy.

Thursday
Trstenik -> Mljet
Got to the village and walked around it a bit before going for a swim then having lunch. After lunch we walked into the national park and hiring bikes to ride around the salt lakes and also swimming in them.
We had pizza for dinner.

Friday
Mljet -> Sipan
Sipan was another small village like Trstenik, except this time the restaurants were more expensive. Just after we landed several passengers attempted a mutiny to get the captain to takes us straight back to Dubrovnik (instead of waiting till the next day). The captain denied their request, so they organised a Toga party on the boat instead.
Amanda and I walked around the village and we found a nice little sandy beach that I could swim in before we had dinner at one of the cheaper places (no pizza sadly).
The toga party was great fun, with most of the passengers wearing their week old dirty sheets and enjoying themselves.

Saturday
Sipan -> Dubrovnik
I would say over half the passengers had hangovers and we also had about half a metre of swell on our journey back which caused the boat to rock a lot. Pretty funny seeing (or not seeing) the people who didn't actually make it out on deck until we had docked.
Once docked we made our way into the Old Town for a swim and a walk before going to Nishta for dinner with the other vegetarian couples only to find that it was closed all weekend for a wedding. We were cursed with eating mediocre food. As luck would have it we found an excellent restaurant nearby that had the best range of vege dishes so far, and we all enjoyed ourselves.
After dinner, we decided we should probably learn something while on holiday so we went on a walking tour around the Old Town focusing on the Croatian War of Independence and the Siege of Dubrovnik. The guide was very good and we learned a lot (that I have now forgotten).

Sunday
Dubrovnik -> Gatwick
We had to be off the boat by 9am, so we had to be up even earlier to make breakfast, say some goodbyes, then leave.
Surprise surprise we went back into the Old Town and walked around the city walls. While up on the walls we spotted nice looking beach about 10 minutes walk away, so once we descended, and grabbed an ice cream we made our to it. Had a swim at the beach and lay in the sun for a while before walking back into the Old Town and having pizza for lunch (sick of fucking pizza).
After the last pizza we will eat for a long time (hopefully) we grabbed our bags and went to the airport and then fly back to the UK.

We had an absolute blast in Croatia, we met a whole load of great people that are now our friends (on Facebook) and had a nice relaxing time. After talking with other people who have also done the Croatia-on-a-boat-thing, it seems as if its the luck of the draw with getting a good chef and hence decent food. I can thoroughly recommend Croatia to anyone thinking of going, unless you are a vegetarian then I would only recommend it.

Most of the local people we encountered could speak some English and all of people we talked to in Dubrovnik had a decent grasp of it, which made things easier for us ignorant tourists. They even had a Peruvian pan flute band playing in the Old Town when we first turned up (there must have been a giant guinea pig outbreak), and there were ice cream shops everywhere.

More photos.

The rain in spain falls mainly on the plains

We flew into Barcelona on Friday evening after a shortened day at work and pretty much just went to our hotel (via bus and metro) and watched some Barca TV (well I did anway, Amanda read her book). Lance, Karen, Ana, and Chris turned up about half an hour after us.

Apparently there was this guy called Gaudí, who was some fancy architect. It turns out he designed a lot of the prettier Barcelona buildings, and we checked a few of them out through the weekend.

We got up early (story of my life) and after walking to and then through La Rambla, we caught the metro to Casa Battlo. This was the first Gaudi building we saw and it was definitely different to most others. He chose to use as few straight lines as possible giving the exterior and interior lots of wavy curved surfaces. I would have hated to be one of the builders.

After paying a stupid amount of money to look through the interior we then went and checked out Sagrada Familia, which is a Guadi designed church. It has been under construction since 1882 and won't be finished before 2026. The front has the appearance of melted wax. I guess its art.

To complete the trifecta of Gaudi works for the day, we headed to La Pedrera, but this time only took some photos from outside.

It was getting pretty hot by the time we left La Pedrera that we decided to hit the beach. We went and changed at our hotel then caught the bus down to the city beach. We spent over 4 hours there and I realised that it was my first swim at a sandy beach in over 18 months. Time flies. We spent most of the afternoon either swimming, lying in the sun, drinking beer or sangria, eating, people watching, or a combination of them. People watching was fun as a lot of women had no issues with being topless, so sunglasses and awkward staring were definitely required.

After the siesta, we headed back to the hotel to wash up before heading out for dinner. We found a place that sold all the requirements (paella, tapas, and sangria) and settled down. We could tell it was a quality place, because it had pictures on the menus. After 8 jugs of sangria between the 6 of us, the waiter strangely cut us off, so we left and went to bed.

Lance, Chris, Karen, and myself got up early the next morning and went to FC Barcelona's stadium - Camp Nou for a tour. The stadium is huge, and we got to walk through several parts of it, although the home teams changing rooms and the grass were off limits. It was still cool to be in such an enormous stadium.

After we got bored of the tour we left to meet Ana and Amanda at Park Guell, which is another Gaudi designed installation. Sadly it started raining which made walking through the park a pain. After we had had enough Ana and Chris left to catch their flight, and the rest of us found another "quality" restaurant for more tapas.

After the meal, Lance and Karen left to catch their flight and Amanda and I had a jacuzzi on the hotels roof, then bought some food from a supermarket and chilled out in our hotel for the night.

We got up the next morning and sorted all our bags out, packed a lunch (with food from supermarket) and check out of our hotel. From the hotel we walked down to La Rambla and then the beach via Port Vell. Monday was a little colder than the previous days with a strong wind blowing some menacing clouds that I chose to ignore.

We sat on the beach and ate lunch and I had a quick swim. The clouds got worse.

It started raining. Not pissy english rain, but proper "God is smiting me" thunderstorm action. We got soaked running 100 metres to the bus stop.

After about an hour we got back to our hotel where we could change into dry clothes and hoping to wait out the worst of the storm before we had to go to the airport.

We got the airport in a quiet patch of dryish weather but then the flight was delayed a little due to more storms affecting planes visibility. Luckily Amanda was nicely doped up so she didn't care too much.

Barcelona is a cool city, but like Rome you get the feeling that most locals can't stand foreigners. I could go back, but maybe with a spanish speaker with me so they can catch what the locals are saying about us "english pigs".

The beach and its topless women were my highlight, but the Gaudi architecture would have been number one if it hadn't have been so expensive.

Photos here.

New York, New York

Took an 8 hour flight from Heathrow to New Yorks JFK airport, and one we had gotten through the ridiculous customs checks (retina, face, and fingerprints), we met up with Ben who was coincidently in NYC at the same time as us. From the airport we grabbed a taxi into Manhattan in order to check-in to our hotel and finding a bar.

We had a quick look through Times Square then went on a hunt for a bar, we found one not too far away which looked OK and saddled up at the bar to order our drinks. Unfortunately not too far away from Times Square means expensive drinks and our simple domestic beers were no exception. But the bar staff were friendly especially when they start talking about Fallout 3 in front of me, well, then, it was all on. Poor Amanda and Ben had to sit there and listen to us talk geek until the bar closed.

We got up reasonably early the next day and headed to the Stardust Diner, where the wait staff sing. All well and good for a late lunch or dinner, but at 9.30 in the morning it worked better than coffee to wake us up.

From the diner we caught the subway down to near Ben's hostel in Chelsea. From there we subwayed down to Ground Zero.

Ground Zero is pretty boring, especially in the rain. Its basically one huge construction zone at the moment and there is nothing to see other than cranes and containers. I couldn't even get a feel for the events that took place there.

From Ground Zero we walked towards the Financial District which houses (among others) Wall Street, New York Stock Exchange, and the Federal Reserve (which got robbed in Die Hard 3). Nothing much to see there except the feet of some tall buildings. Got photos though.

After walking around there for a while we stopped in at a food hall thing quickly for a drink then walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and down into DUMBO for a beer before heading back to Manhattan.

After leaving the bridge we subwayed to Union Square. Its not a very big square and we weren't there to look at it at all, we were there for Dogmatic, a gourmet hot dog shop. Awesome food, the best we had while we were in NYC (although it didn't have much competition).

After the hotdogs (plus chips and handmade soda) we walked North up Manhattan island and checked out some famous buildings:

• FlatIron building
  
• Empire State building
• Grand Central Station
• Chrysler building
• Rockefeller plaza

By this time we were all pretty worn out so I decided we should go to White Castle for dinner. Unfortunately I got us pretty lost as I had the (wrong) directions in my head. So we ended up eating at some average Mexican franchise and then Amanda and I went back to our hotel and Ben caught up with some other friends. I found a couple of NFL games on TV at our hotel, so I was happy.

Sunday turned out be a scorcher of a day and we got up early and went out to Liberty and Ellis islands. It was great to be out in the sun and on the sea (albeit on a ferry) and the two islands are very cool. Liberty island of course holds the Stature of Liberty which is a dam impressive sight seen up close (I didn't know Eiffel worked on it) and we took a lot of pictures both for ourselves and for other tourists. Ellis island was the original initial destination for all immigrants attempting to enter USA, it holds a lot of stories and history and is definitely a worthwhile destination.

After getting off the ferry back in Manhattan we subwayed to a not-so-famous restaurant called White Castle. One word - Scheiße!. I did try two different burgers - the normal hamburger, and the (NEW!) pulled pork slyder. Both crap. I will not go again.

Anyway, we left WC and subwayed up to the Rockefeller plaza in order to up to the Top of the Rock, which is a publicly accessible (after payment) observation deck 70 stories up in the air. This is my highlight of the trip, we could see across to Brooklyn, New Jersey, and all of Manhattan. Central park looked very cool from up on top of the tower. Check out the photos (link at bottom) for some of the multitudes we took.

We ended up having a brief rest stop at our hotel before venturing out to Dangerfields, a comedy nightclub on the Upper East side once owned by the legendary Rodney Dangerfield.

Ben's friends has been offered a "deal" while walking through Times Square - buy 5 tickets for the price of 2($30). Sounds a pretty good deal until you to the club and notice that there is a 2 drink minimum per person and the cheapest beer is Heineken at $8 a bottle. Still, we had a great time with the comedians who performed. Most of them talked to and made fun of the audience and they had it so easy - other than us ( a group of 5 kiwis), there were two German nanny's sitting near a Polish guy who was sitting next to a Russian girl. Behind us was a group of 3 mothers with their 3 adult sons from Jersey who were on a "Mother Son day out". You could not pick a better audience than that.

After Dangerfield's we all headed for our respective hotels due to exhaustion.

We didn't have too much planned for Monday as we knew we would be exhausted (and we were) so we had a slight sleep in then checked out of our hotel before walking towards Central Park by way of some cheesey souvenir shops.

Central Park is awesome, especially on a sunny day like it was that day. Its easily the coolest city park I have been into and its huge and totally surrounded by large buildings. We caught up with Ben for a short while as we strolled through it, and tryed to play with the tame squirrels. After a while we had to say goodbye to Ben and walk back to our hotel to pick up our bags before we flew out.

Manhattan is huge, and thats only one of New York City's boroughs. You could spend two weeks there and not see everything you want. I would very much like to go back,even if its just to eat another gourmet hotdog.

Photos here

The week that was

Just had an insanely busy week:

• Friday - Went to Dublin
• Saturday - Dublin
• Sunday - Home from Dublin
• Monday - Taking first load of things to new house
• Tuesday - Went to see Wicked the musical
• Wednesday - Farewell boys night for a friend
• Thursday - Leaving drinks for the same friend and his fiancée
• Friday - Packing up and sorting out room ready for the move the next day
• Saturday - Watching All Blacks win and then moving house
• Sunday - Cleaning up old place then getting drunk at our new local (German bier!)

As you can tell, not very much time for myself and my xbox at all.

Dublin

A week ago, Amanda and I went to Dublin to get a taste of the city and visit a friend who recently got married. In a helicopter. Over Las Vegas. You can't make that shit up.

Anyway.

We flew into Dublin on Friday night and Sam (friend) picked us up and we drove back to her place about 10 minutes from the airport.

We then proceeded to get drunk, very drunk. We met her her flatmate, his weird friend, and her new husband Richie over the night before going to bed close to 6am. Some of the Irish accents are incredibly tricky to understand, especially when inebriated, most of the time I was just smile-and-nodding.

We awoke late on Saturday and had some late brunch then Sam and Richie drove us to Kilmainham Gaol which has a history through the Irish Republics history. The tour of the gaol was far more interesting than I expected, as it covered the different uprisings that helped form the republic from being under British rule.

After the gaol tour the Sam, Amanda and I walked to the Guinness Storehouse, where we completed another tour. This time the tour was not so good, its basically a prettied up popularised brewery tour. We did get a free pint of Guinness at the end of the tour though.

We drank our pints at the top of the building while enjoying the views of the surrounding city then went for a whistle-stop tour through some of Dublin to see the sites, such as:
Christ Church Cathedral
Trinity College
Temple Bar
and the Quays

By this stage we were tired and hungry so we stopped at an average burger joint for dinner. Richie meet us after dinner and we drove back to Sam's place via the best off-license I have ever been too. They had the largest range of beers I have ever seen outside an actual beer importer. I picked up some Samuel Adams, just because I could.

We then spent another night sitting around a table drinking and talking, except this time we went to bed before 2am. Just.

Sunday:
Sam and Richie had to go to a Christening in the morning and they were kind enough to drop us off at the Hill of Tara on the way. The HoT was apparently the seat of power for the King of Ireland back in old-times, and has some cool history and a few strange shaped earth mounds.

We spent just over an hour there before Sam and Richie picked us up and took us for a drive to Howth for a walk along a sandy beach and some lunch.

It was great to see sand for the first time in over a year and actually walk along it, pity it was a windy day otherwise I would have had a splash in the water. Instead we sat down in a pub for fish and chips and a cheeky pint.

After lunch we had to get to the airport for our flight home so Sam and Richie kindly chauffeured us there as well, and away we went on a jet plane.

Photos.

Paris in the Summer

Saturday July 11th
Got up at 3am(!) to taxi to Kings Cross in order to catch the 5.25am Eurostar train to Paris. Not fun being up that early. We caught the early train because it was only £59 each to get there, which is generally quite good compared to peak times.

Once we got into Paris we braved the urine infested Metro system and made our way to our hotel in the Latin quarter. Unfortunately we were too early to check in, so we left our bags there and then rushed to start a 3 hour walking tour of Paris.

The tour was cake (bad), mainly because all of the sights (Eiffel tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, etc) are all spread out, so a single tour past those places would take all day. Instead we saw things from a distance, several kilometres away. Luckily it was free and we had no qualms walking away at the end and not tipping the guide.

After the tour, we made our way back to the hotel where we could finally check in, shower and have a small afternoon nap that stretched into the evening. When I looked at my watch and noticed the time we panicked a little and had to quickly form a plan for the night.

The hotel room had a few tourist pamphlets of things to do and eat in Paris, and it had an advertisement for Harry's New York Bar. This is quite a famous bar and was where the Bloody Mary was first made.

We walked across Paris to get to the bar, but it was worth it. It was a little on the expensive side for a cocktail but when you factor in that a Bloody Mary consisted of a glass of vodka with a splash of tomato juice, it wasn't so bad. They also had a piano player pumping out some jazz hits while we had a drink or two. We stayed a bit too late at the bar and had to walk back to the hotel because the metro had closed for the night.

Sunday 12th July
Got up early and metroed to the Arc de Triomphe which is in the middle of a rather large roundabout. The monument is pretty impressive but the scores of gypsy women begging are not.

After the AdT we walked to the Eiffel Tower which is truly a marvel of engineering and rivets (a lot of rivets). We didn't go up the tower because the lines were too long but we walked around it and took some photos and got hassled by the people selling cheap junk to stupider tourists than us then made our way back to the hotel for another rest stop before heading to another walking tour - this time to Montmartre and Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.

The walking tour was operated by the same people as the previous one, but this time we had to pay 10 Euros each before leaving. This tour was a little better than the free tour, but it was still mostly crap. We started off outside the Moulin Rouge which is in the red light district of Paris. We then made our way up and around MontMatre stopping at places featured in the move Amelie and looking at a number of space invader 'street art' before getting to the top of MontMatre and looking through Sacre Coeur.

After leaving Sacre Coeur we walked back down the hill past some more time-filling things before the tour disbanded at the bottom of the steps up to Sacre Coeur where we were once again surrounded by guys selling cheap crap to stupid tourists, this time: friendship bracelets. Those guys were too big and scary to be my friend.

We then metroed back to the Latin Quarter and had a meal at a tourist trap restaurant that sold beers for almost 10 Euros each. On the plus side I did get to sample Escargot (like black garlicky shrimp), frogs legs (like skinny fishy chicken wings), and Foie Gras (delicious). This meal was more expensive than I would normally pay, but it had 3 of the 5 things I wanted to try whilst in Paris.

Monday 13th July
We got up early again (getting sick of this) and made a beeline straight for the Eiffel tower, we got there about 15 minutes after it opened and already the lines were huge, so we joined the shortest one. After waiting about 45 minutes and finally getting close to the ticket office did we then realise we were in the line for the stairs, all ~700 of them.

We walked up every single one of them took a lot of photos and enjoyed the view on a great sunny day and then walked back down them all. We only went up to the second level and considered going up to the top, but the line for that elevator was about as long as the lines down the bottom and we had other things to do. So no champagne for us.

We left the Eiffel tower and walked to the Louvre. This was probably my favourite part of the trip (behind eating), there were a lot of awesome artworks and sculptures to see. We spent about 3 hours in the museum and saw less than a quarter of the total contents and what we did see was at pace.

We saw the popular exhibits like the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and some others suggested by our free audio guide. There are some great pieces of art in the Louvre and I highly recommend it to anyone that visits Paris. Although be prepared to push through people at the more famous pieces to get a photo.

We left the Louvre and made our back to our hotel then to a nearby cheap resturant so I could try Steak Tartare. Its not so good, on the plus side it was another thing I had wanted to sample. Amanda had a nice salad.

Tuesday 14th July
We finally got a sleep in, and enjoyed it. We stayed in bed and watched the Bastille day parade and the accompanying fly-over by 20 odd French Air Force jets and planes from through the ages.

After checking out of the hotel we went to the Père Lachaise cemetery where Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and Frédéric Chopin (among others) are buried.

We spent about an hour walking around the cemetery (which is huge by the way) and then went and did some souvenir shopping before heading back to the hotel to collect our bags and hop on the train back to London.

Paris was pretty fun, but we did a boatload of walking that I would not want to repeat any time soon. So far, its second behind Rome of the best places to see, but unfortunately with popularity comes beggars, junk-vendors, and tourist traps.

You got to take the good with the bad sometimes.

Photos:
Mine @ Picassa (55)
Amandas on Facebook(192)