Heading off - AGAIN!!!

Oslo to Bergen via Flam

vacation_practitioners — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 09:43:00 GMT

Oslo to Flåm via Myrdal and one of the most AMAZING train trips ANYWHERE!

Having survived two false starts with early morning phone calls, we trundled our bags to the train station where our Bergen-bound train was awaiting us. We were booked onto 1^st Class (of course I hear you cry) but there was a bit of a problem. The seats on one side of each carriage face in one direction & those on the other side face the opposite way. And they are fixed in that configuration. Our seats were among those facing backwards. Merran used to become quite travel sick if she travelled backwards. We now know that she has overcome this condition (she didn’t even turn green). As we headed for Myrdal, we climbed steadily – and the temperature dropped! We saw folk with skis joining the train and there were groomed slopes available for them to use at a number of stops. There was light sleet falling while we were at Myrdal, waiting for the train to Flåm which runs on the steepest tracks without cogs anywhere in the world. From Myrdal to Flåm is some 20Km but the trip takes almost one hour! There are 20 tunnels (one even has a spiral within it to reduce the gradient) and those 20 tunnels cover almost 6Km of the trip. Where the train is in the open the scenery is SPECTACULAR!!! The route is down a glacial gorge – the beginning of what becomes the fjord further down. And what waterfalls! – on both sides of the valley/gorge. There were three Norwegians (young folk with a sense of humour) who were saying “You’ve seen one castle – you’ve seen them all / you’ve seen one waterfall you’ve seen them all”. The train stopped for a photo opportunity at the biggest of the falls – everyone got out & availed themselves of this Kodak moment. Finally we reached Flåm only to be amazed by the fjord where cruise ships tie up right in the village. The village itself has remained small and retained the (touristy) Olde Worlde architecture. We found where the workers live when we went for a walk the next day. Our walk took us to the ‘old village’ and its 1660 vintage church. There are two separate housing developments along this road and thus the good burghers of Flåm shield themselves from the madding hordes. None of the tourist trap tours were operating – no cruise ships in port ergo not enough suckers to justify hitching up the horse & cart or whatever. But it is a beautiful little village and our hotel room looked straight out onto the fjord. We’re starting to really notice the shortness of the darkness periods at night. I took photos at 2230 (10.30PM) and it was quite bright enough for ‘normal’ settings.

Flåm to Bergen via Voss

From Flåm we travelled by boat/ferry to Gudvangen which is at the head of another (and the narrowest in Norway) fjord. It’s such a small fjord that at one point it is just 12 metres deep as opposed to the one (Geirangerfjorden) between Geiranger and Ålesund which reaches 750metres deep (with 800 metre high walls rising straight up from the water on both sides) which we sailed through later in a different adventure. We met two delightful ladies at the opposite ends of the chronological scale on the boat. Ronni (Veronica) from Long Beach New York has ‘been there – done that’ all over the globe! She doesn’t count Australia as one of the countries she’s been to as she landed at Cairns, boarded a dive boat & headed out to the reef then did the whole thing in reverse! (What a waste). She has volunteered in all sorts of roles for an organization called ‘Mindspring’ in all sorts of third world places. She’s an interesting lady. She uses a ‘Zimmer’ style walking frame as she has a compressed spine and also she fell last year and broke BOTH knees! Malika, on the other hand is a third year university student from Ottawa, studying International Relations at Toronto but on an exchange semester in Lund (southern Sweden). Malika had been staying with her aunt in Oslo and said aunt had given her some sandwiches – enough for Merran and me but they were soon wolfed down and Marika complained that she was still hungry. I’d rather feed her for a day than a week! Our boat trip was really enjoyable, even though it was raining quite heavily at times. From Gudvangen we travelled by bus/coach to Voss where we were to catch a train to Bergen. What a bus ride! Because it was fine and no snow had fallen recently, we took the ‘high road’ – and what a road! In 1.5 Km there were THIRTEEN – count them 13!!!! hair-pin /dogleg bends - one immediately upon the next. It is like that famous street in San Francisco – but compressed and with waterfalls and AMAZING scenery. It is/was FANTASTIC! The train ride into Bergen paled a little after such an assault upon the senses. It’s as well the drivers didn’t suffer from vertigo!

Bergen – Gateway to the Fjords!

Everywhere we looked there was a postcard picture just waiting to have its photo taken. The old town (Bryggen) is a former Hanseatic town – boy did those traders of yore know how to pick a harbour and how to plant a town on the shoreline! It’s the sort of place they make miniatures of for model railways. It’s yet another World Heritage town so we’ve ticked off a few in recent times. Our hotel was one street back from the waterfront with (all too) close access to the local nightclubs but oh! so convenient for funicular (cable car) for a panorama of the harbour, the peninsular and the islands which make up this the second largest city in Norway. It doesn’t seem all that big in area until the ship sails through suburb after suburb on the way up the coast. There were three cruise ships in port on the Monday and most of the stalls in the fish market were swamped by (mostly German speaking) crowds from two “Aida” line and one “Holland-America” line ships. On one day, in perfect sunshine (but freezing wind) Merran and I had the hop-on/hop-off to ourselves. The next, with all the tourists from the ships in town, it was almost impossible to join the bus let alone get a seat; so we elected to leave the bus at the zoo stop. Pat Rogers, zoos bring on the rain we’ve decided. The zoo was on both a ferry route our intention being that we would catch the ferry back to the fish market at the main harbour. It rained, it poured, it teemed while we were at the zoo. Shades of Vancouver - déjà vu all over again. I know: nostalgia isn’t what it used to be either. The rain stopped and we poked our way on foot through little pockets of residential plots snuggled in amongst the wharves and warehouses.

They serve THE BEST fish soup at the fish markets with mussels, prawns and fish pieces placed into the bowl and then a rich creamy soup is poured over all of that. But don’t look for a Norwegian behind the counters – Italians and Spaniards seem to predominate. One Italian had come straight from Dubai where he sells real estate and one Spanish girl had come fresh from being a dive instructor in Thailand. They both have friends who got them the jobs so that they could save up from a four month stint. I don’t know how anyone could save in Norway. There are about six Krone (NOK) to the Aussie Dollar but I don’t think anything costs less than NOK25. One chap we spoke to, recalled a loaf of bread costing NOK3 not all that long ago. It now costs NOK30! A cup of coffee is NOK 25 – 30 unless in a restaurant when it will be about NOK50! ‘Blame the North Sea Oil’ he said.

Bergen is a pretty city but I would not like to live in their climate. On Monday evening, we strolled through the pleasant evening (weak) sunlight to the indoor fish market for a dinner of fish soup. The temperature was about 17C with no wind. While we ate, there was a rain squall on one side of the building with the sun still shining 20metres away on the other side. The rain stopped, there was a period of quiet and then the polar wind started again. And people complain about Melbourne’s weather! We were fortunate that the Bryggen Museum didn’t open until 11.00 on Tuesday because if it had opened at 1000 as it would from Wednesday until September, we would not have seen the military band practising in a car park and then performing in a quadrangle. I’m not sure if they participate in the contest but there is a contest (on National Day) between the local bands where they try to drown out and put off their beat the other bands. We heard a number of the bands performing through the streets and when we asked we were informed that a number of the locals are not entirely enamoured of their efforts. Bryggen Museum is an archaeological dig site with finds dating back to the town in 1100AD. A soil profile shows where the fires had ravaged the town at least three times. Because of the fear of fire, the main buildings by the waterfront which housed the work place and dormitory for the entire staff were not heated. A separate building where food preparation and recreation took place was kept far removed from the source of finance. Once the Norwegian traders superseded the Hanseatic traders, they allowed cod liver oil lamps but no open fires within the main premises. All employees had to be unmarried and took a vow of celibacy for the term of their indenture. A tough smelly job - freeze drying herring and cod and squeezing oil out of cods’ livers for an absentee boss in far off Germany.

Around Stockholm to Oslo

vacation_practitioners — Sat, 13 Jul 2013 22:39:00 GMT

Stockholm on Foot (and a tram ride)

We walked!!!!!!!!

The Vasa was the largest wooden ship of its day (1628) and was built for the King and to his (ever changing) design. It had two gun decks and the rear of the stern castle stood some 45 feet (14 metres) above the waterline. It was ornately decorated and had beautifully carved designs including Roman Emperors and Nordic Gods and serpents as well as the coat of arms about 3 metres high on the stern.

The decorations are described as follows:

155 herm pilasters (a pillar with a head on top) of different sizes and types.

87 warriors and knight figures

74 masks.(on the gun ports)

71 grotesque figures - human and animal

35 animal figures

10 Putti (representations of a naked child, esp. a cherub or a cupid in Renaissance art).

8 heraldic sculptures (this includes the VERY large coat of arms on the stern)

13 "odd sculptures"

It was loaded to overflowing (many had brought their families on board for the launching and the salute) and totally under ballasted so when they fired the salute (from both gun decks on one side) the ship listed and rolled back the other way. No problem except that the gun ports were still open and the water RUSHED in! No-one knows exactly how many perished but the ship foundered just1500 metres from its launch site. The shortest voyage ever by any ship, I wonder? It lay under silt and mud in exceedingly cold waters for the next 333 years until it was found and recovered in 1961. It is now housed in a specially built, climate-controlled museum which has become the most visited in Stockholm.

Skansen which is the first ever open air museum is spread over some 70 or so hectares of parkland with the buildings dotted into appropriate settings for their type and vintage (they have all been relocated from throughout Sweden and are indicative of the style and fashion of the locale and era). It also contains a zoo. The mother brown bear has three of the cutest cubs! A keeper was spraying water from a hose and the cubs attempted to “defeat” the water by hitting it - then running away. The camera went into meltdown! After an ice cream (and LOTS more walking), Merran relented and allowed me a tram ride back to our metro station. I think it was so she could get to the Ikea store near our hotel. It is the biggest Ikea store in the world and free buses run from the main Central Railway Station downtown many times a day to ensure that the supply of customers is maintained.

Our hotel (Hotel Dialog) was not the most glamorous and nor did it even run to a double bed but it was convenient to a large shopping centre and we dined in the food hall there on both nights. Merran had fun deciphering the menus and checking with the locals for verification. I just looked at the pictures like a 2^nd grader.

Train to Oslo

To allow for Merran’s half hour “stuff-up” factor, we were up bright??? and early for a breakfast as soon as they opened the dining area at 0600, catch a bus by 0650 (or so – this was part of her 30 minute emergency time allocation) and onto the metro to Central Station where we caught our train to Oslo. The platform was bedlam! Nearly everyone passed the sliding doors to the platform and stopped: effectively blocking the way for those following. It seemed that none wanted to be the first to give way. Luckily a swarm of them departed on a train to Malmo which was the one before ours and I saw where we needed to be so we went out onto the platform and headed straight to the front where our carriage would stop. The intercity train is very civilized with power points to allow the use of computers etc without flattening the batteries. Our hotel was right at the station – we did have to negotiate the taxi waiting area but that’s all. It looks right out (across a construction zone for a new road) to the Oslo Opera House. The Opera House is designed to resemble a glacier right on the shore of one bay of the harbour. Some cruise ships park directly opposite and ergo have a splendid view of it. One can walk right up the sides and onto the roof. There are a number of trip points where there are steps in the marble-like concrete. These and groove gutters are needed to control rainwater runoff. Vigeland Sculpture Park was our only touristy bit on arrival. It started to rain (surprise, surprise) as soon as we headed out from the hotel. We went back and donned raincoats and collected umbrellas in case it rained more heavily which is just as well because it did get heavier. We caught a tram (heavily disguised as a bus running along under the trams wires) and the rain had actually got into the double glazing. So much so there was about 100mm or 4” of water sloshing in the bottom of the windows – all that was missing was the koi carp. The signs at the tram stops indicated that there is a 10 minute space between trams yet we waited almost an hour. It’s just as well the sculptures at Vigeland are worth it but I didn’t have sufficient warm clothes under my raincoat so we had to get back & put me into a HOT shower to warm me up. It was decided that a hot coffee would also help so we put on the electric jug (the first we’d had in any Nordic hotel) and as I went to close the curtains I knocked it and poured the boiling water all over my laptop! Merran saved the day by clever use of the hair dryer! (on the computer – not on me). Merelyn, the curtains need to be closed because of the amount of light: still light after 10PM and light again by 4.30AM - which is WAY too early for us!

Day two in Oslo and Museum Central,

Our Oslo Pass gave us free transport and free entry to nearly all museums so Merran walked my little legs off me! First to the Viking Ships in their special home then to the Polar ship Fram which was used by both Nansen and Amundsen for their polar explorations in both the Arctic and Antarctic waters It was the ship which carried Amundsen on his historic trip to the South Pole. Almost next door is the Kon Tiki Museum which houses Thor Heyerdahl’s vessels Kon Tiki and Ra 11. His theories about sea currents were proven correct but what a risk to set sail in such craft! The Castle fortress with its 9million plus step was next followed by the magnificent City Hall. The building design is FUGLY (F’ing ugly) but the interior and the wood-carvings around the forecourt are just magnificent. It is here that the Nobel Peace Prize is presented – all other Nobel Prizes are presented in Stockholm. Lastly she dragged me to the top of Karl Johan’s Gate to the very grand Royal Palace. We had seen members of the palace guard performing at the Edinburg Tattoo (only on TV) and it was interesting to see them in their bowler hats with tassels in the sentry boxes outside the Palace. Our train to Bergen was to leave at 0815 so I set the alarm on my mobile phone to ensure that we had ample time. Two someone elses saw to it that we did – the first call came at 0354 and the next at 0408 hrs!!! I’ve now found that one can set the alarm on the pone & then turn it off. The alarm will operate and you’ll be asked if you want to turn on the phone or not – no nasty surprises either.

Nordic Countries en-route to Hurtigruten Cruise in Norway

vacation_practitioners — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:41:00 GMT

Helsinki on May Day.
By counting backwards from the date we start our “Bike & Barge” trip down the Danube and fitting in the other things we wanted to achieve; we ended up having May Day as our first day in Helsinki. What luck that was! It’s a public holiday (as it is in most European countries) but more than that, it’s the one day of the year when those who have graduated from high school wear their caps (which resemble a Greek fishing cap - but with a much smaller peak)]. We followed the crowd to a park with a dominant hill - complete with a brass band which had set itself up with two large vans to establish a boundary for the crowds and to supply a stage for the drummers on the roof of one and other percussion on top of the other. This was the site of multitudinous picnics, food stalls and balloon vendors. One group had even brought a three-seater lounge; yet another a sauna and hot tub spa bath about 2 metres square, both on trailers. On this hill, it’s party town with a sea of graduation caps ranging in colour from the brand new pristine white through various shades of yellow and fawn to almost brown with age (they all start out as white). Not all Finns complete high school as a number attend vocation schools and therefore do not get a cap. We were advised that those who graduate to Engineering get a black silk tassel which hangs down the right side of the head. Because of the rise in the technical and ‘bio’ subjects, these are now included among the tasselled-capped persons. There were some slight variations but basically they all look the same from a distance.
To add even more colour to the spectacle. No to add colour and even more variety to the spectacle, the various faculties, groups and groups within universities and polytechnic institutions have distinctive coverall / overall costumes covered in the logos of local firms and sponsors as well as patches from wherever! It doesn’t seem to matter where one gets the patches provided that they add colour and variety to the basic overalls. I saw an Aussie Aboriginal flag on one chap and a patch for an all-male voice choir on a young lady. As well, the kids (and some adults) get to dress in fancy dress with amazing wigs. Balloon vendors are ubiquitous and quite a few helium filled animals escape and drift off to balloon heaven.
Because we had bratwurst and hot chips and white bait and pancakes and coffees during the day we opted for a panini each at the bar in our quirky hotel for dinner. The place was packed with folk wearing their caps. Because a large proportion of those present were wearing white jackets, I asked one chap if the jacket was exclusively for the band personnel only to find that he was the conductor and yes the jacket is just for the band but it is the traditional jacket for the fire brigade and except for May Day they would also wear the fire brigade helmets (even though they are not fire fighters). This young man filled us in on the variation from straight ‘engineering’ students and on the overalls and the colours pertaining to each faculty. It was only after I asked which instrument he played that we found that he is the conductor and that he is actually studying conducting at uni. He plays clarinet, trombone, viola and side (snare) drum when not required as the conductor. He also gave us a rundown on why the caps are worn – Finland was a peasant society and as the children began to gain a full education, the parents in particular (and the students) were especially proud of this step towards a better life and the caps became a symbol of the movement from serfdom and labour to a new beginning.
Our afternoon was spent taking a scenic cruise of the harbour (and a canal) which was spectacular and informative. In the 1500s when Finland was still part of Sweden, the king decided that this area needed to be populated and the fine natural harbour needed to be exploited so a series of fortifications were established and the occupants of nearby fishing villages were forcibly relocated to make up the residents of the port town. Nobody needs to be forced to live here now as it is a delightful, compact small city, but, like Sydney its streets have ‘just growed’. They probably wound around large rocks or boggy places or large trees or whatever, and had buildings placed along them. As the city developed, these streets were paved with cobble stones and remain now as narrow and twisted as they were when they were first trodden all those
years ago. There are trams as well as buses and a metro for public transport which is just as well as the cars seem to be in constant gridlock to make way for pedestrians and bicycles as well as the buses & trams. Taxis are just as caught up as private cars so walking suited us well (except for our circuit route on the #3 tram).
Day 2 in Helsinki and as cold as a fridge – but with wind.
2 May dawned bright and clear with a beautiful blue sky! It also dawned with a bitter polar wind which was too lazy to go around so it just blew straight through us as we made our way through the fortress Suomenlinna which was the erstwhile guardian of the entrance to Helsinki Harbour. There is a tiny passage through which the massive ‘Roll-on/Roll-off” (RORO) ferries and all other shipping must make their way. It was once controlled by a massive chain which was strung across the space between the two islands and could be lowered to all access. That chain and a number of the cannons now make the fence /decoration around the church. There was a shipbuilding facility in the fortress which built a special design of ships for the archipelago with shallow draft to negotiate the channels between the islands. The old dry dock is still in use – mainly for repairs to historic and traditional wooden ships and boats and as a storage area for wooden boats for the winter. Because of the high volume of shipping now using the harbour, the harbour board has banned the making of and the using of a road across the frozen harbour to the fort – spoilsports!
Many of the former barracks which housed the garrison now have very different uses such as B&B accommodation, cafes & restaurants as well as museums but they remain utilitarian in construction and design. After this we visited ‘Kiasma’ which is an avant-garde art gallery where “You had to be there” seems the main rule for the “artists”. One asks oneself over & over “This is ART??????” At least the architecture was not utilitarian.
Our Helsinki hotel was called “Hotel Glo Art” and it spans two buildings with a lane between which is the entrance to the parking. When the lane is being used, the sliding doors on each side will not open which is a good safety feature but once they do open, they surely let in the outside temperature – and the wind!!!!!!!!. We had to cross the lane to access the breakfast room in the basement of the other building from our room and to get a coffee (which was from a dispenser machine on the third floor of the other building) as well. To get a coffee took two lifts and over 350 paces in each direction!!!! Even Ian cut down on coffee consumption. None of our Nordic hotels has had any form of tea or coffee making facilities in the room which we miss.
The Ferry to Tallinn.
Although it was only about 1.7 Km from the hotel to the port, we took a taxi as we didn’t fancy trundling our bags over that many cobblestones. Once the gates opened for entry to the ship we found why some folk crowded on the outside of the waiting area: there is a 900m – 1 Km walk along various elevated walkways and gangways to get to the one entrance to the ship for those not in vehicles. And it’s “first in/first served” for seating. This became VERY obvious as the many junior ice hockey teams and their support staff took over vast sections. We were exceedingly lucky to find a chap sitting at a table for three but he was solo so we got the other seats. We had only to contend with overly energetic 10 – 12 year old boys chasing each other around through the seating and burning off excess fervour and enthusiasm. It took a staff member to quell them as their coaches etc. ignored their antics. The ferry port is quite near to the old town of Tallinn and as our hotel was right at one of the entrances to the old town we were soon ensconced and out exploring. Tallinn was a medieval fortified Hanseatic port town of great import. It was the gateway to the Baltic for great tracts of land and the produce therefrom. The town wall and the defensive towers all form part of the town which has a distinctive profile with many towers and fine spires reaching skywards to proclaim their might and importance to all. Again, narrow twisting lanes and streets meander the contours of this ‘city’ which reminded me of Provence towns – not least because of the ‘tourist trap’ souvenir shops and stalls.
There are some beautiful woollen goods for sale here and seeing the average December temperature is -7C with the average July being just 20C, one can see why. Amber is also one of the staple souvenir materials. We resisted admirably. As well as the twisting, narrow thoroughfares, there is a set of steps joining the upper and lower sections of the old town (which were two separate entities in days of yore). There were some artists displaying their works along the cliff and this town offers many truly beautiful vistas for them. We found a chocolateria and they make wonderful hot chocolate drinks (even if not as hot as Leonie would prefer). We just had to go back for a second opinion (as well as some of their cakes). We did the touristy train & open top bus rides as well as seeing the oldest seaplane hangar (made of concrete) in the world. It was built in 1916 and houses a maritime museum (incl. a submarine and I am NOT going to be a submariner when I grow up). We also spent a morning in their open air museum. We’re suckers for open air museums after we became addicted in Arnhem in 1976. Tallinn has no real skyscrapers as there is a law banning any building higher than St Peter’s Church spire which is one of those which gives the old town its wonderful skyline.
Stockholm & the World’s First Ever Open Air Museum
Our flight from Tallinn to Stockholm got in before we left! Well with the time zone change that’s what happened. We had a 50 minute flight and arrived five minutes before we left. Our cheap(ish) hotel is some 16Km out of town and the taxi fare from Central was more expensive than the 40Km bus ride from the airport. BUT, it is very close to the World’s largest IKEA store! And, there is an excellent public transport connection which we used. London has the ”Oyster” Card; Melbourne has the “Myki” and Stockholm has its SL Card which one buys (for 20SEK – about $3) and then adds funds to enable one to to travel on trains, buses, trams and public ferries. We got a 72 hour package which suited perfectly for us to do our thing for two days & then get public transport to connect with our train to Oslo. Winner!
Stockholm is built on a series of islands. Some are in a lake and some in the Baltic Sea. These are now joined and connected by locks to enable shipping to get further inland. There are ferries which are part of the public transport system and there are cruise ferries all criss-crossing the waterways along with cruise liners and RORO ferries and cargo ships. It’s a busy scene and the harbour is fronted by beautiful old buildings some of which are being affected by being built on piles driven into the mud & silt. This was done to try to avoid the Granite outcrops further back from the shore. Some of them are starting to list as the mud etc. shifts beneath them. The Stockholm ‘Old Town’ or Gamla Stan has some of the narrowest lanes we’ve ever seen. Halfway up the steps of one, Merran’s elbows could touch the walls on each side. We had to bide our time to get up the steps though as the tour group ahead of us was from the “Young at Heart but Waiting for God” brigade some of whom don’t move as quickly as they did not all that long ago. But we waited. There are a couple of statues of St George slaying the dragon – one in the church beside the 600+ room royal palace and one in a small ‘place ‘ among the narrow gangs as lanes are known in Swedish. We stumbled upon the ‘Changing of the Guard’ in a courtyard outside the Palace. The Swedish dress uniform looks like something out of the musical “Chocolate Soldier”. The band for the ceremony was horse mounted with the drum horse being of draught horse (almost ‘Shire’ or Clydesdale in size) proportions. We then followed the band down the hill to the waterfront – preceded by two mounted police.
The commentary on the hop-on/hop-off bus gives a good rundown on the history and geography as we progressed around the city. It is a city of museums and we only visited two; the Vasa Museum and Skansen, the first ever outdoor museum (which also just happens to contain a small zoo). Our cruise “Under the Bridges of Stockholm” gave a wonderful view of the way that the city celebrates its watery setting. There is a new suburb on reclaimed industrial land (where Electrolux used to manufacture their products actually) and they have tried to maximize the water views and public space along the water’s edge.
I now understand why Nobel invented Dynamite! Stockholm is built upon and surrounded by granite!

Photos: En-route to Norway for Hurtigruten Cruise

vacation_practitioners — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:19:00 GMT

Gallery: Connemara and Galway

vacation_practitioners — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:36:00 GMT

Gallery: Ireland Here We Come

vacation_practitioners — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:22:00 GMT

Ireland Here We Come

Gallery: Heading through Wales

vacation_practitioners — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:23:00 GMT

Travelling through Wales

Gallery: Cornwall

vacation_practitioners — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:17:00 GMT

Cornwall

Gallery: York to Cornwall

vacation_practitioners — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:39:00 GMT

Gallery: Bled to UK

vacation_practitioners — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 08:12:00 GMT

Bled (Slovenia) to UK

Through Nova Scotia to Duluth

vacation_practitioners — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:51:00 GMT

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Nova Scotia to Duluth in Minnesota.

I have described our travels from the Timeshare at White Point Beach Resort around the long leg of the seven and back to Truro for the tidal bore and our first day in the Cape Breton area. We had expressed our dismay at the amenities provided for those not in C.O.W.s (Condos On Wheels) – the 40 – 50 foot behemoths towing their cars behind in US campgrounds well the Canadians don’t come out of it smelling of roses either. Our site just outside Sydney was right beside the amenities. The building was unlined with the electrical cables on full view with a bare concrete floor one toilet and one shower (no place for the soap or shampoo or whatever) and just the one hook behind the door. The water stank of sulphur but was hot and soft to enable a good lather. It was basic with a capital B. I’m quite sure it would not have been shown in the various publications detailing van sites in Oz. It was however not expensive all things considered ($20) all inclusive. After our visit to Louisbourg, we found the other site in this part of the country which was still open (at the town of Big Bras d’Or). The laundry was not stacked to the rafters with mowers, deck chairs etc for winter here but the building itself was not all that much better. What really stuck in the craw was the 25¢ “for five minutes” shower on top of $25.99 for the site. Merran didn’t get her full five minutes and was cross which isn’t good.

Baddeck and all of the Alexander Graham Bell museum stuff, plus some shopping (for groceries in Baddeck itself and gifty things at a store outside it) kept us late into the day before we headed around the “World Famous” Cabot Trail. Because it was there, we added in parts of the Ceilidh Trail too and it was here we really ran into the Gaelic place names. Like the south of Nova Scotia, there is a great deal of lobster fishing on Cape Breton (but they seem to have retained the old style pots). They also set traps for crabs and do net fishing for ‘normal’ ‘fish’ fish. The towns and villages are all outside the National Park which occupies almost the entire North-Eastern quarter of the island. All of the warnings about the migratory habits and grumpy nature of the myriad of moose within the confines of the park came to nought – we even camped in a National Park Campground too! A canal joins the Bras d’Or lakes to the Atlantic and the roads alongside them (both the lakes and the ocean) are dotted with marinas and boats pulled up onto the shore so that the hull is not crushed by the ice when the seas and lakes freeze – brrr. Most of the boats were also shrink-wrapped in plastic to keep them water-tight.

Prince Edward Island can be reached by ferry or by bridge. Getting there is not important – how you leave is!

One only pays to leave the island so you need to decide whether you want to pay $45 to cross the bridge (and have a lovely chat to the chap collecting the toll because he just loves Australian accents) or $63 plus $15 per person to catch the ferry. We didn’t chat to people collecting the toll for the ferry. PEI as it is known is famous for lighthouses and Ann of Green Gables and (it seems to me) one day is probably sufficient to get a real taste of both, but we took all of one day and a part of the next so that we could explore Charlottetown. What a funny experience that was! We went to the Tourist Information Office in Confederation Hall but it was guess what – Closed for the Season!!! There were some diagrams showing the self-guided walks so we headed off following the yellow (no not the yellow brick road but the yellow) line painted on the footpath, boardwalk etc. There was not a soul to be seen – it was as if the world had come to an end and we were the last two people on the face of the Earth and this was at 1000 hrs on a workaday Monday. What wasn’t closed for the season was closed Monday and Tuesday (incl. the Art Gallery and the Museum) so we strolled around this very pretty, very small Capital City which still has families living in detached homes right in the heart of the city. It has preserved its old buildings well and placed a big store on the look of the place. It is well worth a visit.

From PEI it was off for points west to get to Quebec and then pick up the four states we haven’t visited in the USA. They are Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota an Kentucky so we weren’t fussed about pretty byways to get to Quebec City but just the most direct main road. We made excellent time in New Brunswick … and then we reached Quebec Province. We weren’t impressed when we visited this province in 1999 and it did nothing to improve our opinion this time. On reaching the border, (from New York State in 99 and from New Brunswick this time) it is as if someone has switched off the light and transported you back at least twenty years with the road condition going from top rate best practice four lane divided highway to 1950s two lane patched and repatched on top of patches goat track. If you decide to come in from Ontario the experience is the same – it was a blessed relief to hit civilized road construction again once we hit the Ontario side of the Province. As we left PEI by the 13 Km long bridge, we swung under the bridge and into the New Brunswick Visitor Centre which was; you guessed it – Closed for the Season. They had however left copies of their tourism brochures and maps available as well as leaving the toilets available. Not so in Quebec! The Visitor centre in Quebec City is open right through the year but not any of those along the main highway into town. We saw a sign for one which didn’t have fermé across it so we ventured off the well beaten path and found ourselves at a ferry terminal. With a visitor centre which was not only open but staffed by a delightfully helpful young lady assisted by three ladies waiting for the ferry and a young man who came in for his own enquiry. She could not give us a map of the Province but she could sell us one for $5.19. Her recommendations were spot on! The route along the St Lawrence she highlighted on our new map is a virtual history lesson of the French settlement along the valley and is full of historic and scenic towns. It would have been delightful if we could have seen any of it because the fog had rolled in with the sleet and snow which greeted us. Our first motel of the trip since collecting the van – and for two nights! It had everything we needed: a hot shower, a comfy bed, wifi internet and a laundry just along the corridor and at just $1 per load in both the washer and the dryer. Bliss on such a bitterly cold and miser able day.

Day two in Levis on the bank opposite Quebec City dawned bright, blue and clear so we remade the bed in the van with the newly laundered linen (it requires the back doors of the van to be open and this is better done when it’s not raining) and hied ourselves off to the ferry terminal at the bottom of a veritable cliff face. One of the Princess liners was moored alongside on the opposite bank (right at the old port which was / is one of the spots our tour guide(s) recommended for our compulsory viewing to be able to say that we’d “done” inside the walls) so that just added to the photos as we crossed the harbour / river. There were about six or seven of the Canadian Coast Guard / Fisheries vessels also moored just below the Citadel which was one of a series of forts (Louisbourg was another) designed to defend “New France”. Simon Champlain selected the site for Quebec City because of its position atop cliffs over fifty metres high and at the confluence of two rivers affording protection on three sides (or so it was considered until Wolfe’s men scaled the ‘unclimbable’ cliffs and his men went on to defeat Montcalm’s forces on the ‘Plains of Abraham’ and thereby take the city. It has some delightful buildings and some which are imposing and then there is -the Fairmont Chateau Frontignac with its turrets and towers and copper roof and etc etc of complete over-the-top decadence and opulence. There is an electric (ecolobus) which plies the streets of the old city (within the walls) and which is free for one to just get on and off as the whim takes you. It helps to keep private vehicles out of the city. We walked part of the ramparts of the old walls and around the citadel onto a boardwalk hung off the cliffs below the citadel and built to commemorate the city’s 350^th anniversary in 1958. This year marks its 400^th anniversary! It blew our minds somewhat to be in buildings in the ‘New World’ which were 100 years plus old (nearer 200 actually) when Cook set sail from Whitby and ended up in New South Wales. We met a Kiwi family while in the boardwalk (and twice more during the day) who had sold their farm in Morrinsville and put all their money into US $ when they got a really good price and have bought a fifth wheeler and ute (SUV for North Americans) and are tripping around North America for a year. The boys are 9½, 8 and 3. The parents were worried that the boys wouldn’t remember things but we assured them that nine year olds can remember things from their travels as we well know because we took the boys out of school for a term when they were 11 and 9. Because there are five of them the fifth wheeler is 38 feet long so they don’t try to do any three point turns when the GPS says “When possible do a U turn”. The weather turned a bit colder and windier after lunch so we didn’t linger on Rue St Jean as we had on St Louis which we saw with bright sunshine and almost no wind.

Montreal was a nightmare to traverse! Apparently there is a tunnel which would (possibly) have shortened the two and a half hours of sitting in bumper to bumper traffic in a concrete spaghetti jungle of flyovers, crossovers and bridges BUT there was no warning coming to the entrance until one had to decide (with 18 wheeler semis biting bits out of the rear bumper) NOW!!!! whether that’s our road or not. The info about it is on the back of the map we bought but only in French of course because it’s in Quebec Province and they don’t use English. A pox on all their houses! I loved Quebec City but Hated is not a harsh enough word for what I think of the Province and the attitude of its citizens to the rest of Canada and all other visitors who are not French speakers. The experience here could have spoiled my whole enjoyment of the Eastern side of Canada if I let it.

Ontario was a blur out the side windows as we crossed it quickly in our efforts to get through the three northerly states before the mild weather turns to winter. The campgrounds shut either on or before 15 Oct so we had to find places to park the van for the night and two memorable ones have been behind a ‘dead’ service station just off the highway and much more spectacularly a “substance abuse treatment centre” at Blind River just before crossing two of the marque bridges in Michigan. The first at Sault Ste Marie is over the falls and locks between Lake Huron and Lake Superior and because of roadworks and detours we were flung up onto it before we had visited the locks. Ah well we can have a look on the US side. Weren’t we lucky!!! the computer selected us at random for the full vehicle inspection and immigration third degree. Random my arse!!! Isn’t this an Oregon registered vehicle? How can you as an Australian own a vehicle registered in Oregon? What is your occupation in Australia? When did you enter USA this time? Where did you enter USA? Where have you been since then? How are you paying for all of this travel? All of this before the computer selected us at random. I don’t think so! Then exactly the same questions from a different agent while yet another inspected the van inside and out. Welcome to the USA – assume the position. Why do these people insist on multi – entry visa and then get surprised when we use it? They don’t present a welcoming face to visitors – and the never smile. The Michigan Visitor Centre was open and cheerful and a good remedy for the previous treatment. The lass was cheerful, helpful and informative so we felt well armed to visit the Upper Peninsular which is sandwiched between Lakes Superior and Michigan. It was one of the places the young man in the Chinatown Hotel in Chicago had told us to be sure to visit. Before we did any other exploring we headed down to the Soo locks and the railway bridge which lowers a span when a train needs that bit of track and raises it again so the ships can pass through. These locks are phenomenally large! They can take ore carriers 1000 feet or 300 metres long and 110 feet across. The ones on the Canadian side can only accept 105 foot width. The other bridge is the Mackinaw Bridge which joins the Upper Peninsular to the rest of Michigan. It’s the longest suspension bridge in North America – the span is about 300 metres longer than the Golden Gate. The entire bridge with its approaches is five miles long! We dove over it then turned around and came back just so we could say we’d been on it.

Only three states to tick off now that we’ve reached Michigan. The Upper Peninsular has extended white sandy dunes along the Southern, Lake Michigan side and gravely brown sandy areas on the Lake Superior side with extensive forests and farmlands between the lakes. It is a pretty area with lots of camps and cabins for summer recreation. Lake Superior is so big and so deep that if it were emptied onto the (flattened) area of the continents of BOTH North and South America the water would be 300mm (1 foot) deep over the entire land mass!!! As we began our drive along the entire length of the peninsular, we became aware of a plethora of signs advertising pasties. So … always ready to try something else, we stopped at a wayside store and got one each for our evening meal – and a hearty meal they were too. Packed full of all sorts of healthy vegetables and crusty pastry. They even rivalled those from Cornwall. Once more we had to find somewhere to park for the night and we were glad there wasn’t snow that night as the forest road where we found a flat section of a track off deeper into the trees had a very distinctive and very definite sign stating that this road is Not ploughed to clear any snow which may accumulate thereon. It didn’t snow.

Now just two more states as we flitted across the northern edge of Wisconsin right along that shore of Lake Superior and then just one once we entered Duluth in Minnesota. Duluth has an extensive waterfront area where sea-going ships up to “100 feet long and 110 feet wide” moor alongside and take on iron ore pellets for transhipment to the steelworks in Detroit and other destinations. There is a lift bridge which rises and falls 138 feet in less than a minute to along these gargantuan megaliths through the canal from the lake to the harbour. The entire setup is run by the Corps of Engineers as is the one at Chicago joining the Chicago River to Lake Michigan and is FREE. Above Duluth there is a scenic ‘Skyline Drive’ road which then joins another of the scenic byways – ‘The North Shore Drive’ which hugs the end of Lake Superior and is yet another truly beautiful part of this vast nation. We called at a closed campground and the owner let us park free. When he found we were Australian he even gave us some power because he’d visited Oz while in the Navy and loved the place.

Some thoughts and musings thus far

vacation_practitioners — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:14:00 GMT

Thoughts / Observations and Musing on our Travels Thus Far.

* Besides accents, there are regional / cultural differences even though many of the places we’ve been share the same base language. In Nova Scotia and PEI we saw advert and roadside signs for “Housekeeping Cottages or Housekeeping Cabins”. On investigation, we found that these are (basically) self-contained accommodation facilities where all of the necessities are provided for the renter to be able to prepare meals, entertain etc etc while on hols and not have to bring the pots, pans bedding etc. In other words, fully self-contained units.

* One of the sets of road signs (painted on the road) we saw in Ireland tickled our fancy and that was the warning “SLOW” followed some distance further on by “SLOWER” and if there was really sharp turn the final warning read “DEAD SLOW”.

* Throughout North America there are traffic lights strung above intersections. Nothing remarkable about that I hear you cry – but wait: in Nova Scotia where this happens the lights are hung horizontally NOT VERTICALLY as elsewhere. Now we come to the real difference. Because the lights are arranged differently, and to allow for those with colour blindnesses, the shape of the lights are all different! Red remains circular, amber is a diamond and green a square. None of this would have been possible until the light emitting diode (L.E.D.) lights were put into widespread use. I found it a good feature.

* Because of the requirement for both French and English to be displayed on all signs, packages, schedules, timetables etc in Canada, the very clever folks at the equivalent of our Roads and Traffic Authority (M.O.T. for the Brits) have devised a series of graphic signs which require neither language. In parts of USA there are warnings that bridges freeze before roads (indicating that the bridge may well be slipperier than the roadway either side). The Canucks have put the standard sign for a slippery road (car with skid marks changing sides etc) and added a picture of a thermometer showing 0ºC. Others show a school bus (complete with RED blinker) and a couple of kids alighting or a truck / fire engine / snowmobile / bicycle / pedestrian at right angles to a marked road indicating that there could be others crossing nearby. Although the red octagonal sign with the word STOP on it is accepted elsewhere throughout the world, it isn’t in parts of Canada – there the French word Arrêt is also shown. Once we hit Ontario, however, the Arrêt had disappeared entirely and the sign stated simply STOP. Hmm.

* The Province of Quebec is a foreign country within a sovereign nation. Once one hits the Provincial boundary a couple of things happen. The price of petrol (gas for those who use that term) rises by (about) six cents per litre; the standard of the road surface deteriorates to abysmal (at best) and the English language disappears entirely unless it is a sign erected by the Federal Government or one of its agencies – even McDonalds have their signs in French. Quebec City is an architecturally wonderful city and a joy to walk around and view. Its position overlooking the St Lawrence River (with ocean going ships passing or moored along the wharf areas) is nothing short of spectacular and some of its streets are colourfully lined by pastel painted buildings or stone ones with bright trim. It’s a small city which encourages one to walk or catch the free electric (ecolobus) buses which run throughout the city. The name is so that people will treat them as they did the free school bus they caught to school and ride them everywhere. Because the ‘Museum of the Fort’ which details the attempts to defend “New France” by the use of strategically placed forts, is owned and run by Quebequois it has an interesting slant on the Battle of Quebec or the Battle of the Fields of Abraham as we learnt it in year five social studies. The British didn’t play fair at all and they tricked the sentries is the way the whole thing is portrayed and the fact that they scaled what had been factored into General Montcalm’s defences as unclimbable cliffs is ignored. 2008 is the 400^th anniversary of the founding of the city. Makes Sydney (and therefore the rest of Oz) pale into insignificance. I felt that the Quebequois were rude to ignore the rest of the population of Canada which bends over backwards to accommodate their requirements for their language to be used, by ignoring English entirely. Everyone was friendly and hospitable (except one chap in the post office) – particularly once they found that we were Aussies. And they went out of their way to use whatever English they had to help us to understand.

* It’s real fun trying to read instructions, ingredients lists etc on Canadian packaging. The packet is the same size as elsewhere but because two lots of words have to fit into the same space the writing is tiny.

* In Ireland I expected to find road signs in Irish Gaelic (with or without the English equivalent) and in Wales I expected the Welsh form of Gaelic with the English being shown as well and I also expected the French an English signs in Canada. What I hadn’t expected and what really blew my mind was to see the Scottish form of Gaelic and English on road signs in Canada!!! (no French, however). In Cape Breton there is a strong Scottish community spirit. One of the picturesque routes around and through the cape is called the Ceilidh Trail (pronounced Kaylee). A Ceilidh is a Scottish gathering for singing, dancing and fiddle music as well as the usual suspects of bagpipes and haggis. There is even a Celtic College (the only one in North America) where one can learn weaving to produce such designs as tartans, Gaelic classes, and even a kilt maker who offered to measure me for a kilt. We are now aware that there is a ‘Walters’ tartan and I am also entitled to wear the ‘Tara’ which is the tartan for the Merediths. Frederick Meredith is a forebear who came to Oz on the first fleet (as a steward on the Scarborough – no not as a convict so there). He did however share his favours with three separate convict lasses and I am descended from one of those unions. Hence the entitlement to that tartan. I declined to pay the $CAN750 to be as she said “A man in a kilt is a man and a half”.

* The overseas terminal for cruise liners at Sydney (Nova Scotia – not New South Wales) has a seven metre high fiddle beside it. Inside the tourist information centre is an eight foot tall fiddler carved from wood (started as a chainsaw carving and completed with chisels etc). The carver’s brother sells CDs and DVDs of Cape Breton (mainly fiddle) music at his general store at Cheticamp. Both brothers carve but one makes a living from it. Cape Breton fiddling is a music form all of its own. It started out as Scottish music but the Arcadians and the First nation musos added their interpretation and integrated all of the various forms into what now has a distinctive sound of its own.

* The Unicorn is the mythical beast of England. As far as we’re concerned, the moose is the mythical beast of Canada. We’ve seen all sorts of signs warning us of the increased danger of collisions with moose; of the necessity to “Brake for Moose – it could save your life” and have seen signs with a silhouette of a moose and the word ‘Attention’ on a red background. We have been warned by people in Tourist Bureaux, by Charlie when we bought a fiddle CD that they (the persons doing the warning) had encountered moose -but we haven’t seen a moose. We know they exist ‘cause we’ve seen them in Montana and Utah but not in Canada and not in Michigan where one town claimed to be the moose capital.

* One thing I did not expect to have offered over 1000 (probably closer to 2000) miles from any ocean was a tour on a glass-bottomed boat to view shipwrecks! The boats which take the punters out are up on the hard and shrink-wrapped for winter now but ‘In the Season’ one can take such a trip. There is even a museum of shipwrecks (closed for the season – of course) and we can imagine just how rough these Great Lakes could become. At Blind River, we awoke beside Lake Huron (which is not the biggest of the lakes) to a gentle zephyr of a wind but even that was causing whitecaps about 600mm tall so just what sized waves would some gusts of Arctic storm winds cause I hear you cry.

* Probably the funniest political sign we saw was actually on the US Election Day and it had been in storage for some time (or maybe it gets wheeled out for every election) but it read “Goldwater for President”.

* We’ve also done some research into what trees make up the ‘Colour’. They include the maple, the sugar maple (which gives the best variation through to the scarlet), the birch, the aspen and the hemlock. Add to this the wild blueberries and the willows and … now you has not jazz, jazz, jazz but gold yellow, red scarlet, black and all of the colours which go to make up why people go to New England and Canada in the Autumn.

* We found out from one of Jeanne’s friends who lives there that there are four seasons in Maine viz Winter, Winter, Winter, NOT Winter. There are two seasons in Chicago: Winter and road works but there are SIX seasons in Vermont (and I guess the rest of the New England) and they are: Summer, Autumn (when the colour is actually on the trees), Fall (when the colour does just that), Winter, Mud (that must be fun) and Spring.

* Merran’s cousin is doing a couple of house exchanges in France and has ignored the instructions from the female voice in the GPS/Sat Nav device (to his chagrin and delay). They claimed they needed a name for said female so I offered James and Anne’s title of Tina (There Is No Alternative) which they did not use, We now have the Sat Nav device my brother Lach bought when he used the van as he was on his own without any other navigator. I have dubbed her Tiaaa. There Is Always An Alternative. I have Merran whom I consider the best navigator in the World, so this is true.

* One thing I forgot when writing about Nova Scotia was the UFO site. http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/Nova_Scotia/shag_harbour_ufo.htm tells the story much better than I can. As all of this happened while we were almost totally out of communication in New Guinea it was a total surprise for us.

* When Merran told Sean that Jackie and Annmarie (two of his exes)were both pregnant, he said well if you want it to be three then you and dad had better get busy!

Gallery: Croatia Plus

vacation_practitioners — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:28:00 GMT

France, Croatia and Slovenia

Gallery: France August 08

vacation_practitioners — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:32:00 GMT

Chicago to Halifax and into PEI

vacation_practitioners — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:32:00 GMT

Chicago to Halifax to Meet Up with Our Van (and Clare and Eric who’ve had it for the past five months).

Because of Merran’s hip being so very painful, we booked a wheelchair to get her from the check-in to the plane at Heathrow. The airline also arranged for one to meet her in Chicago. But we had a MAJOR hiccough before we arrived at the terminal. Thrifty don’t have their car depot on the inner ring road of Heathrow as do the other main rental companies – theirs is well outside on the A4. After about 1¾ hours of circling the airport, I went into Avis and asked if they knew where to find the Thrifty Depot. No but the courtesy bus drivers might – and the one I asked did. We handed the car back at about the time we wanted to be at the terminal but because of the wheelchair attendant knowing exactly where to go we got through all of the formalities quickly and on time. It was as well that I was ahead of Merran because of the (oh my how illegal can you get) bottle of water in her hand luggage. Once they’d got to me (the bag they were inspecting when Merran’s was plucked from the system had full toilet gear, medicines, dumbbell weights, bungee cords and exercise elastics and it took quite a while to expose them all) all I had to do was drink the water & then they gave me back the empty bottle & told me where to refill it. At that time Merran and her push -wallah arrived via the lift (elevator) instead of the escalator which I’d used. This chap was a humourless Indian but he knew his way about the place and we were soon on board. And soon in Chicago – much to Merran’s relief … until we reached the one chap in Immigration who handles those in wheelchairs. He wanted to know why we were back in the US so soon after leaving and where had we been this time. Where was Merran’s ticket – and mine. How will we support ourselves while we’re here? What is Michael doing in DC and how was he still residing there after eleven years. How are our grandchildren in Hawaii and how can their mother be there even though her husband is an American. On top of al of this, I don’t think he’d ever heard of the word superannuation which Merran used when explaining our financial stability so I added the fact that we have a good retirement fund. I’m still not convinced that he was entirely happy that we aren’t about to become a burden on the long suffering US taxpayer. But he stamped our passports and turned us loose to find a shuttle into town.

The “Chinatown Hotel” is in Chinatown. Surprise, surprise!! As soon as we were ensconced Merran sought refuge in sleep (and a goodly dose of painkillers) which helped for a while but we certainly couldn’t do any sightseeing that day. Hopefully the prediction by the doc she saw in England will be right and the hip will heal itself. I went for a bit of a walk in the local precinct and we dined all the way across the street (Chinese by coincidence) and we both crashed for the night. Having collected edibles from a local bakery, we dined at the hotel. The other chap in the room was using a computer and typing and muttering in an agitated manner. It transpired that he is a taxi driver who had driven all night and was now trying to “quench the demented ramblings” of a group who had just put in a claim for a 16% fare increase – the day after one of the biggest falls on Wall Street ever! He gave us excellent advice about using the elevated rail system (The El to locals) and where to catch the trolley / double-decker tours of the city. He stressed that we should do a boat tour which includes the architecture of the city. We did and thoroughly enjoyed it. Chicago is a beautiful city and it uses the shores of the Lake to show off its beauty. Because she could sit at different angles and stretch and move, Merran was not as distressed as she had been from the flight and she was (relatively) comfortable to catch the Amtrak to Washington. Wow! - don’t the autumn colours make this a pretty trip. We took Amtrak from San Fran to Portland last time we were here and had a wardrobe which they laughingly referred to as a sleeper compartment. This time we had the deluxe sleeper compartment to get to what we expected. It was fine and the food good. Being able to move around helped Merran’s comfort level, which was good. At breakfast, we were seated with a US couple and he’d worked for a railway firm all of his working life so they were well aware of just what one gets in a standard sleeper compartment so when they did a trip from Adelaide to Sydney on the Indian-Pacific train in Oz, they booked the deluxe. It was one of the bridal suites complete with bubbly and flowers etal. They now know what to book in Australia – and most other places that we’ve used sleepers on trains like Turkey to Romania, Kenya and India!

Michael was at home when we rang the door-bell which was good as well. He was back briefly from Indonesia and Mongolia but would only be in the US for about two weeks before heading back on “Mission” to Indonesia which has the more pressing report for the World Bank’s consideration. He is really busy. Unfortunately, Yunie his partner was in Vietnam so we only got to talk to her by phone (Skype on speaker from the computer actually). She could see us via a webcam but we weren’t able to see her. Because they’ll pass like ships in the night with her Mission in Vietnam ending and his in Indonesia starting, it’s been decided they’ll meet in Tokyo for a weekend. It’s one place Michael hasn’t been before. Our sightseeing was a trip to see Mt Vernon. No not that one – not the former home of George Washington some 14 or 15 miles downstream from Washington town but one in Maryland. While I went back into the unit for a sweater, Merran looked up the road atlas and found a Mt Vernon so off over the Bay Bridge we hied. We never did reach Mt Vernon but we had a beaut look along the Eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay and had a tour of a touristy shrimp-boat sort of town called St Michael with lots and lots of Halloween decorations. Well actually there were Halloween decorations everywhere. I’m sure Mike was convinced that we’d been abducted by aliens we were so late getting back, and he’d prepared an absolutely wonderful meal – he’s a really good cook.

Our friend Jeanne had invited us to call on her (and family of course) in Frederick Maryland on our way North and East to meet up with Clare and Eric and our van. Wow! Liam has really grown. He’s had a really tough start to his life but he’s growing into a really tall young fellow of three who was excited to see us. Just maybe our arrival had been built up a bit by his parents. Jeanne took us for a quick tour to show us a couple of covered bridges, a wonderful display of pumpkins and other “stuff” for Halloween (and Harvest Festival for some) and the most over-the-top lot of Halloween decorations on one home. It was outstanding – in a macabre sort of way! Once we got home to her place we found out that not all of the excesses in decorations occur outside the home. Her home was like a haunted train ride at the show in Spades!!! There were witches, ghosts, spiders, dismembered arms, pumpkins candles in every size you can think of. Eye-opening!!! – but tons of FUN. We had a lovely visit and wish we could spend longer with her as she’s such good fun – and she loves her two tame “Red Rats” from down-under.

Our route took us back through Lancaster County (Amish territory). And I didn’t buy another letter-box now I wonder how I could have been restrained. It’s one of Merran’s favourite places. That must be because of the ‘Shoo Fly Pie” or perhaps the farm made ice cream or the scenery and the horse-drawn carriages etc. Whatever. Stockbridge in Massachusetts was the home town of Norman Rockwell who found real fame as an artist doing covers for the Saturday Evening Post. He had the cartoonist’s ability to sum up a moment in time and place and his covers were truly memorable. But his home town, which appeared in a great many of his covers, is also a delight – especially when daubed with gay abandon in the golds and reds of Autumn. We adored it. Then it was off to the real colour centres of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Even in pain Merran’s camera finger didn’t falter. It may suffer from RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) from so much use but she soldiers on gamely with her 300 – 400 shots per day quota {Merran says: Ian has been known to exaggerate}. Bennington Vermont was an overnight stop and it proved to be extremely interesting. Not least because of the Battle Monument on the edge of town (the 2^nd tallest in USA, after one in where else but good ole Texas) but also because of Halloween decorations (scarecrows, hay bales and corn stalks at nearly every post of whatever purpose) but also because of an exhibition of human characters throughout the town. These figures are life-sized and totally realistic. They range from a man in overalls with squeegee in hand adjacent to a window (as if he were the actual window cleaner) to another chap with crutches and a cast on a bus-stop seat or a husband pointing slightly to one side as his wife looks through binoculars. One fellow was mopping his brow and averring “Hell it’s time to go fishing” as he resting in his mowing of the lawn etc etc. We saw ten or eleven of the 16.

The God who looks after Vacation Practitioners was back in her Heaven because our route through the Green and White Mountains took us along yet another of the Scenic Byways – the Kancamagus Highway and oh my goodness what a burst of colour even though it wasn’t always sunny. The trees are pretty and colourful in the overcast but flare and glow when the sunlight hits them. Eric opined that there really wasn’t a burning bush in the Bible – it was sunlight hitting a maple tree. One thing which struck us was the way that homes were nestled into the forest so that they were scarcely visible through the foliage. We were charmed until we thought about it. The only time that sunlight can get through to the building is in winter when it has no real heat. This may have been intended but not to our liking as we likes our sunshine we does. Fast flowing streams bedecked with leaves like the plumage of some exotic bird, white steeples mirrored in a still lake and set off by a stunning array of colours. The whole trip was a sensory overload. And it didn’t stop once we reached Canada as we thought it might. In 1999 the colour had all fallen by the time we arrived in Niagara via Montreal at about the same time of year but this time another blast – especially the reds of the maples and the wild blueberries. Stunning!!!!!!!!

Eric and Clare met us as arranged and were effusive about their time in the van – they’d had five and a half months and in that time they’d been from Vancouver Island down to Northern California, across to the red rock National Parks of Utah and Arizona, up to Calgary for the Stampede, then South again through the badlands of the Dakotas, via our friends Pat & Charlie in Kansas City to Memphis, Nashville, Savannah, Charleston etc up to Winnipeg, Toronto, Quebec and PEI (Prince Edward Island for the non-locals) as well as New Brunswick and finally into Nova Scotia. They zigged and they zagged across about 23,400 miles and stayed in a variety of campsites from WalMart car parks to the grounds of a horse stud in Kentucky. I think that they were well and truly ready to hop into a proper bed at the timeshare resort we shared until we dropped them off at the airport for their trip back to the balmy spring weather of Newcastle (Oz). Before they left, we had a couple of days to explore the ‘Southern Shore’ of Nova Scotia. Peggy’s Cove is a must see for anyone in the area. It’s a fishing village with a most distinctive lighthouse (there are 365 lighthouses along this shore of Nova Scotia so it’s not surprising that there is a “Lighthouse Route” which meanders through picture book village after picture book town and along windy, twisting roads lined with the most beautiful autumnal colours). I’m sure that you, dear reader, can imagine the babble of voices over the dinner table as we all exchanged experiences. This is what travel and friends are about.

Once we’d put the others onto their plane we set about finding some medical attention for Merran and some preventive medicine for the computer. But since we so close, we headed to a sign on the highway which proclaimed it to be “Halfway between the equator and the North Pole” – and Merran took a photo of it. The first available exit brought us face to face with a Mammoth – well a fibreglass representation of what the one whose bones had been found nearby would have looked like. It was at the Visitor Information Centre that we learned of the monster explosion which had flattened a very large chunk of Halifax during the First World War. Two ships collided with one carrying a vast amount of munitions. The result was “The largest explosion ever up to Hiroshima” so it’s no wonder that so much of the city was destroyed.

On the way to find the hospital, we fell across a computer store with a service department and they agreed to treat us expeditiously because of the small amount of time we’d be in Nova Scotia. What they found was that I’d been infected by a real nasty. It’s called “Antivirus 2009” and from what they said it gets in everywhere – like sand after you’ve been dumped while surfing. Merran was quite some time at the QE2 hospital but was poked, prodded, mauled and x-rayed. The young man who reckoned he was old enough to be a doctor and that he wasn’t just a boy scout playing at doctors told her to get some physiotherapy or some sort of manipulation and if nothing was better by Saturday to come back, ask for him by name and he’d jab her with a Cortisone needle. It was well and truly dark by the time we left Halifax for the timeshare (but at least I’d retrieved the folder I’d left in the rental car when we’d handed it back. The folder is our “bible” because it has all of our e-tickets, ferry bookings, timeshare bookings, copies of our travel insurance etc etc. It would have been disastrous to have lost it).

The computer fellows told us to come and collect it so, after Merran’s first appointment with a chiropractor in Liverpool, off we went back up to the outskirts of Halifax – but we called at various other small communities en-route trying to find replacements for some of the things which hadn’t made it back into the van at some stage. From Halifax we headed into Mahone Bay which has a classic boat festival each year as well as a scarecrow festival which was in full swing at this time (even if their visitor centre closed today instead of the advertised tomorrow). We’d seen a few of the scarecrows when we called into here on our way to the airport to fill with fuel. I had checked the gauge but Eric advised me that it’s out by about ¼ so when it shows ¼ full it’s actually empty. Oops at least we got to the bowsers and it took over 90 litres!!! Merran and I roamed the village taking in the atmosphere and lots of photos. Around the next headland is another wonderful harbour with yet another picturesque town. This time Lunenburg with its famous college building dominating the scenery as one enters the town. But it’s the old waterfront where the history is among the warehouses, pubs, shipyards and other nautical buildings. They even have a four masted schooner (the Bluenose) which takes landlubbers out of their comfort zone and allows them to pull on this and hang onto that and feel as though they’re actually sailing the thing – or helping to anyway. Unfortunately we were running out of light by now so there aren’t nearly as many photos as one might expect from such a setting. Both Lunenburg and Liverpool were ‘Privateering Ports’ during the time of the wars which the Americans fought with the British (1776, 1812 etc) and a bit of that history can be found at http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~jacktar/privateering.html

One of the other effects of the Americans’ wars with the British was the defection from America of people loyal to the crown of the United Kingdom. Shelburne is one of the centres of Loyalist settlement which clings to those roots. The Union flag of 1707 (which was the flag of Britain at the time and which includes only the St George and St Andrew Crosses) is flown throughout the town and along roads leading thereto. There are other centres where the loyalists settled and some sites were occupied by predominately white settlers whereas others were where the ‘Black Loyalists’ found themselves. The English / British in an attempt to have civil unrest within America, offered slaves freedom and land if they fled from their masters and joined with the British forces. Those slaves who did this and who escaped the fighting, were sent either to the West Indies or to Nova Scotia were the land was issued thus:

Officers and gentry got first (and best obviously) allocation;

Free settlers from the colonies after them;

Non-commissioned officers next allotments;

Rank and file servicemen;

Free men; and finally

Runaway slaves.

The amount of land also varied and what was allotted to the last two groups was not sufficient to sustain life so they found themselves working for others mainly as artisans particularly in the shipbuilding trades. Wooden craft were built for customers all over the world at the slipways and yards of Shelburne until the end of WW2, and the town’s architecture and museums etc all reflect this. On one corner of the town there are four wooden homes – one on each corner and each was built before 1785!!!! And still standing. What’s your 1970’s brick veneer, triple fronted, red tiled bungalows prospects for that sort of longevity he said asking.

Religion has a great deal to answer for. The Amish and the Mennonites as well as the Quakers all fled to the New World to escape religious persecution. As did a group from France and Switzerland and they set up settlements in what they called Acadie Because of the wars between the French and the British, these poor souls were exiled from their lands by the conquerors. Our first knowledge of them was when we read of their being relocated from Nova Scotia to Louisiana (then a French colony) and we wondered if this was a part of the Canadian (more specifically Nova Scotian) history which had been forgotten and / or swept under the carpet so to speak. Not a bit of it! Nova Scotia looks like a figure seven and at the end of the log stick is the port of Yarmouth, which is where the Catamaran roll-on / roll-off vehicular ferry from Bar Harbour brings its cargo. It is also adjacent to Les Pubnicos which is a series of thriving Arcadian towns, villages and fishing ports. Our campground was at Middle West Pubnico, and the wind farm at the end of the point was at Lower West Pubnico and on the other side of the bay all of the towns / villages were Upper, Middle or Lower East Pubnico. In our driving around, we saw a sign advertising an Arcadian Historical Village so we headed of to see what was there. Since it was now after 15 Oct the sign read Closed For The Season. We poked around the sides of the main admin building at the entrance and two ladies arrived up from the actual buildings which had been relocated to the site to represent the types of structures built by these hardy folk. They told the village was closed but there are some cancellations for the Halloween Ghost tour tonight if we’d like to do that. Of course we would so all we had to do was dress warmly and be back there by 1930 for a 1935 tour. It was a HOOT!!! There was even a story behind the whole thing …. Reuben is missing and you/we are the search party. Every year at Halloween people go missing and there seem to be more and more wolves and werewolves so stick together and we’ll search his normal haunts and talk to his usual friends and associates and maybe just maybe we’ll get some clue of where he’s gone. It was extremely well coordinated, well done and loads of fun and, when it was all over everyone got a nice bowl of hot soup and tea or coffee – all for just $10 each. They have bookings for about 380 – 400 on both the Friday and Saturday nights with all proceeds going to assist the running of the museum. There are other pockets of Arcadian population across the Province and they display their Tricolour with a Gold Star proudly and quite often ahead of the Nova Scotian flag (which is the Scottish flag in reverse – a white St Andrews Cross on a Blue Field with the Red Scottish lion on its yellow background in the centre).

The week at the timeshare taught us the difference between Autumn and Fall. When we drove in we took photos from a bridge of the most beautifully coloured leaves alongside a small lake. One week later there were just bare trees. The little ‘Goldilocks’ cottage we had was surrounded by dense colours of gold, yellow, orange and reds and there was no way of seeing any neighbours or other details. We could have been 100 miles away from anyone else (except for the paper boy who delivered the paper each morning an the firewood man who made a delivery each morning and another each evening – complete with paper and kindling to restart the open fire if it had been allowed to go out). At the end of the week we could see the shape of the hill, the rocks strewn about and the other houses within fifty metres of where we were. It was amazing to see what a difference that week made. While in Intercourse, which is the actual name of the town which Harrison Ford visits in the movie set in Amish territory - “Witness” we bought a whirligig. Heading out after our fantastic week it was missed in the packing. It had fallen down off the spare bed in our room (this timeshare had TWO count them 2 double beds in each bedroom for whatever reason) and neither of us looked there. About half to ¾ of an hour after leaving we saw an ad for a whirligig festival and the penny dropped so back we went – just in time to catch the cleaners as they were about to leave the cottage having completed their tasks. They had found it and it was returned safely. This was the same day that we met the ladies who told us of the Haunted Village Tour so the God of Vacation Practitioners was in her Heaven (again).

In the Science Fiction / Fantasy novel “Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy” there is a character called Slartybartfast and he claims that he is responsible for all of the wriggly bits around the coastlines. (He was particularly proud of his efforts in Norway). He had a field day around the Southern Shore in particular and the coast of Nova Scotia in general. There are inlets and coves and bays and points jutting out and islands and peninsulars galore. It is stunningly beautiful – particularly when the autumn colours are out so we were wonderfully blessed by being here when they were still good. One inlet, river estuary, whatever which leaps to mind for this is the town of Bear River. It is on the shores of the Bay of Fundy which is renowned for the amazingly high tides which happen twice per day there. The highest tide ever recorded was on the New Brunswick side of the Bay and it reached 57feet! But each and every tide is a giant in its own right. Because of this, some of the buildings in Bear River are on stilts. The shape of the Bay (like a big funnel with the big end at the sea) is what causes every tide to be big. The only tidal power generation plant is along the Northern Shore of Nova Scotia. Somewhere I read that something like 14 million tonnes of water pass the plant every six hours. There is a phenomenon called a tidal surge which is a wall of water which is caused by the amount in the wide part of the funnel being forced into the narrower part. When this wall of water meets the out-flowing waters of a river or creek, the direction of the flow of the river changes and this is called a tidal bore. The heights of both the surge and the bore depend upon the phase of the moon. The bore we saw was about 450 – 600mm high (18 inches to two feet in old speak).

The whole of Nova Scotia seems tied to the lobster industry. There are lobster fleets all around the coast. So much so that there are even harbours built entirely of breakwalls on otherwise unprotected coastlines. The season starts on 1 Nov and so the preparations are well under way. Regardless of the winds they will go out every day from the beginning of November to Christmas because “Everyone wants their Lobsters for their Christmas parties”. The pots have undergone a change in shape. The traditional ones were semicircular prisms of wooden slats with weights to keep them on the bottom, but now they’re all rectangular prisms of plastic coated steel. Last season’s ones had green coating this season it’s yellow. The stacks along the roadsides are attractive (and photogenic). If only I had waited – I could have had a lobsterpot letterbox! What a shame we don’t need two.

Cape Breton Island is at the point of the seven where the short stick turns sharply and heads downwards. It is home to the Cabot Trail which is colour, colour, colour at this time of the year. We’ve missed the reds but the golds and oranges are a joy. Two of the folks who feature in the history of the Island are Alexander Graham Bell and Marconi. Bell because he spent the last years of his life at the town of Baddeck and was partly responsible for the first manned flight in Canada as well as other inventions – like the hydrofoil boat. Marconi made his first trans-Atlantic transmission from near Sydney to just near the Lizard in Cornwall later messages were sent to Ireland to a facility in the town of Letterfrack which is where the Sea Breeze B&B we stayed at is. When we went walking in Cornwall with Arnold (Annmarie’s dad) we saw the spots where Marconi had built towers and aerials while working there. It was interesting to see the other end of the message so to speak.

The Fortress of Louisbourg is the largest historic reconstruction in North America. Up to 18 Oct they have costumed staff who re-enact life within the fort in 1744. After that date there are only some buildings open and no costumed staff. We had a cold wind-blown but fascinating visit.

After the end of September, Canada should have a sign right across it – like nearly every attraction, museum campground and specialty store. It would read:

CLOSED FOR THE SEASON,

fortunately, they can’t close the scenery, even if they can close the facilities near it.

Trish Bulbeck has shamed me into it so there will be some photos posted – eventually.

... And so to Britain

vacation_practitioners — Mon, 6 Oct 2008 14:20:00 GMT

…And so to Britain

In 2001 we had the pleasure of meeting Ann and James Turtle through out house exchanging – they stayed in our place while we went skiing and then we caught up with them in Coffs Harbour where they did the remainder of their five weeks in Oz. They live in the Cotswolds and it was to their place that we headed once we’d landed in UK. I’d booked a rental car to pick up from Heathrow but we flew into Gatwick airport. Not a problem really – for about the cost of our fares to get from Gatwick to Heathrow, we arranged for a replacement car from there and a one way drop off payment so we were on the road to one of the prettiest parts of England quite smartly and had a smooth trip there with a delightful pub lunch at the “Swan” in Three Mile Cross. There are three dogs in a fenced kennel / run area off the car park. One of these is the “Official Mascot of London Irish Rugby Football Club – Retired”.

James and Ann live in a really delightful circa 1910 farmer’s grand house surrounded by about a half acre of grounds bounded by a massive hedge – which must take a very great deal of trimming at the relevant times. There were apple trees dropping their bounty faster that these two empty-nesters can consume them along with other fruits and veggies as well as a delightful floral display I don’t know how they find time to do exchanging. Their son Matthew has just signed up with the South Australian Police so he and his wife Libby will have their delayed honeymoon en-route to some town in SA. We therefore can expect Ann and James to visit Oz – hopefully finding their way to us in Yamba but if not I guess we’ll just have to meet them somewhere else mutually convenient to both parties. They drove us to a couple of the Cotswold towns we’d not been to before – Chipping Campden being the most significant of these. Ann and James are trying to sell and move from a village where one must have a car to do the weekly shopping, go to the doctor or visit the library etc to a town where one is able to walk to all of these so they’ve been “Bunburying” as is done in the play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ where the hero invents a friend called Bunbury whom he is required to meet but instead he (the hero) just goes exploring around the countryside. Their ‘Bunbury” searching (if they’re the right words) has led them to Ludlow in Shropshire which is where some of my (Ian’s) forebears lie in state behind the altar of St Lawrence Parish Church.

Towns like Ludlow and Chipping Campden were ‘Wool Towns’ and their churches are known as Wool Churches meaning that the rich farmers and weavers endowed the church handsomely in good seasons. St Lawrence Parish Church in Ludlow is about the size of a Cathedral with marble and stained glass and crypts and side chapels and all of the trimmings (as is the church in Chipping Campden and many other Cotswold towns – it’s just that we visited these two particular ones on this trip). The introduction of cotton caused the Cotswold town to fall from prominence and it wasn’t until the tourist boom of viewing quaint villages and towns with golden sandstone buildings that they have boomed again. They are a mecca for the tour coaches and all scream for photos from a million different angles (thank goodness for digital cameras these days – even if I do prefer film).

I had been wonderfully surprised and incredibly impressed by the control exercised on the European motorways with the drivers passing (often at great speed and then moving back out of the fast lane(s). It wasn’t until we headed North that we struck our first “revhead” pass-on-the-wrong-side, cut through from the outside lane right across three or four lanes of traffic to exit at a slip road without any indication of intent – not even after the event drivers. We had witnessed a German registered vehicle use the median strip to overtake the queued traffic heading from Chamonix towards the Mont Blanc tunnel but he was obviously important. Overtaking on the inside is a phenomenon we see regularly in Sydney and Utah but not it seems on the Continent. Young English drivers have the ability to scare! And like in Oz both sexes are at fault with liberal use of the middle digit to indicate their contempt for other drivers. We witnessed as one driver had the temerity to turn into his own driveway!!! The blasts on the horn by the hoon who was momentarily delayed should have woken the dead!

Merran’s brother-in-law, Alan has a mother and a sister near Newcastle-on-Tyne so we hied ourselves up to see them and to inspect the retirement home which Lily (his mum) has moved to since we were there last. It is always wonderful to catch up with them both – as well as with Gordon who is Alan’s B-i-L. We’d stayed overnight in York on the way up to see them and had done some exploring by ourselves before joining a “Ghost Detective” tour – great fun and really informative. Two of those also taking the tour were dressed as dead Vikings (for whatever reason) so they added somewhat to the ragtag look we offered as we perambulated through the dark streets and narrow lanes near the famous York Minster. Before the final dash to Tyneside, we took in the Jorvik Museum which takes on back about 1000 years to the Viking village which stood right in the centre of today’s thriving city. The remains of medieval and 17^th century buildings (as well as 20^th century concrete) can be seen on the side of the excavation. The animation, actors dressed in true to time costumes as well as the smells and sounds of the tour are wonderfully well done. We were the first folks in line as the doors opened and we had a quiet time of it until a Danish School Excursion (field trip) descended on the place – rather noisily. We also visited probably the most unusual address outside of Harry Potter. It’s a real estate office at 1½ Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate.

Cornwall beckoned as we’d booked a week of timeshare in that part of the world. Besides catching up with Annmarie and her parents we did some sightseeing but the real jewel in the crown of this week was the totally unforgettable trip to the Minnack Theatre to see the Cambridge University Players production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Yeoman of the Guard”. This theatre is cut into the Cornish cliffs not all that far from Penzance and/or Lands End. One very determined lady was responsible for the creation of the theatre and plays and operas as well as operettas are performed here every night of the summer concluding with a ‘Last Night of the Proms’ production on the third Saturday in September. We only got to know about this venue (and therefore to attend the production) because a tour company called ‘Pixie Tours’ run by a former teacher and International Rugby Referee Lawrie Prideaux services the timeshare resort and has a permanent 14 seat booking for every Tuesday night. This particular resort (Clowance Estate) is an old manor house with attendant stables and coach houses etc and now only 180 acres surrounding the main house – as opposed to the original holding of over 5,000 acres which were forced to be sold to pay the St Aubon family’s death duties bill. The St Aubon family is still in residence on St Michael’s Mount even though they deeded the site to the National Trust (with a 1000 year lease for the Lord to reside there). The resort has a nine hole – 18 tee golf course, a couple of lakes one of which has hire boats and a very fancy boathouse and a wonderful tree house which can be hired to hold kids birthday parties etc. There are extensive walking tracks and even a fairy grove. Our actual accommodation was in an A frame cabin which was pokey and the choice was twin beds upstairs or make up the divan each night – we chose the former. One other couple we spoke to had opted for the divan “In case they fell out of bed and broke a hip or something – then how would we get down the stairs”. I remarked that it would be the paramedics who would have the problem if there was a person upstairs with a broken hip and were they in the habit of falling out of bed???

Arnold (Annmarie’s dad) took us on a couple of wonderful walks along the cliff tops near Cadgwith and Coverack where we came across installations of sculptures in open fields. There are walkways mown to enable one to get up close and personal with these fantastic creatures of different media. Have a look at www.terencecoventry.com to see samples of his work.

Annmarie and Dave have done an amazing job of renovating a home about three miles from Newquay but she is finding it a real drag to get there to run her shop and take care of their one year old – Ross. All of which will be just that much harder as she was three months pregnant when we were there. We had a wonderful visit to her/their place on one day and to her parents for the wonderful walks the next and then had all of them over to the timeshare on the Thursday. I think that Eileen enjoyed getting out of the house and she certainly enjoyed seeing Ross in a different setting. Friday was our last full day in Cornwall so we went adventuring along the narrow, hedgerow-enclosed green lanes to find standing stones, stone circles and the Minnack Theatre in daylight. All of which we achieved as well as St Michael’s Mount and the delightfully named town/village of Mousehole. Finally enjoying a cream tea (we’d call it a Devonshire Tea back home but seeing the two Counties are chic by jowl we’d hate to start WW111 by misnaming this delightful afternoon delicacy) at Lands End.

Merran had the great idea that we spend a few days in Ireland (our first visit) to see just what everyone had been talking about so we left Clowance Estate reasonably early and headed cross country to Tintagel the legendary home of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table for a nostalgic visit – we forsook StMerryn on the way there however. There is a real ruined castle on the cliff tops and the weather was wonderfully warm and clear so we got another zillion photos – each! Our destination for the first night en-route to Ireland was the aforementioned Ludlow and we had the Devil’s own trouble finding the B&B we had booked online – but we did with the help of about five different Police Officers on the other end of a built-in phone system at the local (unmanned after certain hours) Police Station. The call cuts out after two minutes and one needs to call back again – getting yet a different officer, all of whom were in Worcester -about an hour’s drive away. Like York which we visited on the way North to Tyneside, Ludlow has streets which are lined with B&B establishments. The Ludlow ones were MUCH cheaper.

After a stroll around Ludlow (including the markets in the Castle Square) we headed on up to Holyhead where we were to catch the ferry to Ireland the next day. I’d booked a B&B online again as we wanted to be sure that we had a roof over our heads and that we were convenient for boarding. What a surprise – there was a note on the window of the “All Day Breakfast” café which told us to go next door to the pub for the keys to the front door and our room as the proprietor had been called away. When we got into the shoe box which was our room (complete with matchbox sized bit taken out of one corner to accommodate the ensuite) there was a note saying here’s ₤12 which will cover your breakfasts as I may or may not be back. There was nowhere to hang clothes, nor to hang towels – it was a room with ensuite shower & loo. The wireless internet was right there – but secured and he didn’t leave the password on our note. Not my best online venture but at least he used Paypal which allowed for a secure method of payment. The other downside to the place was that Merran’s left hip decided to pinch a nerve or pull a couple of muscles or whatever and she has not been comfortable since. Not even with my tender ministrations.

While we’d been in Cornwall, we received an email from our B&B in Dublin to say that there was no electricity and no hot water so we’d been booked into a different establishment at the same cost. As the street on which the first B&B was located turned off the one where the new one was located and as I’d printed out a Google map set of directions we knew that we’d have no trouble getting to this new locale. HAH!!! I went straight ahead instead of veering left and we were in a tunnel heading for Belfast. €6 for about 1½ Km !!! Even more expensive than the Mont Blanc Tunnel – and we didn’t want to be in it anyway. It’s even more expensive during peak hour traffic times (as Merran’s sister and brother in law found) when it cost exactly double! Off at the first exit and head back into the city to follow the map and the directions. Which I all very well & good except for the way in which the street signs are (inconsistently) located around the corner where they can’t be seen until one has passed the street or has turned into it. The signs are in Gaelic with English subtitles or else the two different languages are side by side which made for some speed reading to decipher which is which. Anyway, we finally located Carrick Hall where the staff all seem to be from somewhere other than Ireland – the desk clerk / dining room attendant from Nepal, the manager from China and the lady behind the bar / dining room attendant from Madagascar. It transpires that the hotel / B&B is owned by a man from Sri Lanka who runs a college in downtown Dublin which teaches hotel management and English. He has campuses in Dublin, Colombo and Budapest with yet another scheduled for somewhere in Spain. Apparently, the serving in the restaurant, the bar and at the front desk are al part of the work experience / assessment and they are paid at proper wages rates during these assessment times. I have no idea if the chef(s) in the Thai restaurant which forms part of the hotel are also students or not but the food was EXCELLENT.

On our next day we caught a bus right into Grafton St where we caught the hop-on, hop-off bus tour. Money well spent to get a good overview of the city and its history. After that it was off to Galway and the wilds of the West Coast of Connemara to a delightful B&B which Merran’s sister Pixie & her hubby Alan had used during their trip to Ireland earlier in the year. The views from the “Sea Breeze” on the Renvyle Peninsular were stunning – and we had beautiful weather which really set off the nearby Kylemore Abbey with its wonderful lakeside setting and fantastic gardens. During our five night stay to get a taste of Ireland, we had NOT ONE JOT of ‘Soft Weather’. The skies weren’t always blue but it simply DID NOT RAIN!!! The God of Vacation Practitioners was smiling upon us. Again. As we drove back through the countryside towards Galway, I spotted a fellow collecting peat so we stopped to speak to him and got a potted version of how to cut, gather and stack peat. Because this summer had been so wet, he was late getting his peat in – and it was too wet to stack properly and was continuing to take up water (because it had not had a chance to establish the dry outer shell so necessary for the drying process). It was an interesting short time having an insight into a totally different way of working. From Clifden we followed the coast road all of the way to and through the outskirts of Galway. Here there is a wild beauty and what I would suggest would be a harsh terrain for the farmers with peat bogs between the limestone outcrops. All of the “fences” are stone walls which are necessary to clear the stones from the areas of pasture. Apparently, a great deal of the soil has been built up by the farmers hauling vast amounts of sand and seaweed to amalgamate with whatever soil was already there. All of the paddocks are small which means that the stone walls give some protection from the Atlantic winds and storms. As I said, we skirted Galway (which our hostess that night said we should not have done as there are wonderful buskers in the streets). Our luck held when it came to finding a suitable B&B at Kinvarra and after settling in we headed of to “Watch the Sun Go Down on Galway Bay”. There is a deserted Martello Tower right on one part of the shore and this was our venue to see the sunset.

Mary our B&B hostess had suggested that we take a boat ride to view the Cliffs of Moher which we did. They are only about ⅔ the height of the Bunda Cliffs which run along the Great Australian Bight (which we have not seen from sea level) so they are still impressive. The souvenir and sweater shop had Aran knit jumpers on special so I now have a very nice blue sweater which should add a certain ‘je ne sais pas’ to our photos instead of Merran splash of red. We found that asking the landlords or other locals about what to see and where to eat worked well and it did with Mary as she told us which pubs had good evening meals and which one had the live music that night. The mussels in white wine with garlic were like ambrosia and the music was fun – five fiddlers (one of whom switched to the mandolin for some tunes) and a chap on the tin whistle. They were joined by a young(ish) chap from Wisconsin on the banjo. We had a foot-tapping good time. It would have been good if there’d been a vocalist or two but hey it was a great bit of craik (my one Irish word – it means fun).

An Aussie lady at the music pub told us about a ferry which cuts off about 70 miles (and the fuss of getting through Limerick) so we headed off around the wild West coast of County Clare. There were county flags flying all over the place as finals of something (I think it was the football) was to be played on the following weekend and (nearly) everyone was wearing his or her heart on their sleeve to show support. So there were banners of blue and gold squares in Clare and green and gold ones once we hit Kerry. They were everywhere – even on a small cairn on a tiny rocky inhospitable island out from Doolin harbour where our “Cliffs of Moher” cruise had its base. The Dingle Peninsular, the Ring of Kerry and the ring of Beara all invited us to explore but Merran’s hip was such that no walking was possible and we were booked on the ferry back to England on the 27^th so a decision had to be made as to just what we could fit in and the Dingle Peninsular will have to wait until our next visit to Ireland – as will the Aran Islands and all of those bits we missed this time. But we did get a photo of the town sign in Castlemaine complete with a notation that it was the birthplace of the “Wild Colonial Boy” (a folk song about an Aussie bushranger and his shootout with the police).

Eamon, an ex-shopkeeper was our host that night and he told us of a seafood restaurant at Valencia harbour where the ferry took folks to Valencia island just offshore which provided protection for the small harbour and its fishing / lobster fleet as well as home to what appeared by the number of lights to be a fairly large town with outlying farms. This restaurant was called The Point and as we drove towards it I asked Merran if she tought it was spelt point or pint (because of Eamon’s Irish pronunciation). She admitted that point had not entered her mind as an option. She had heard pint and was sure they would serve pints and therein lay the name. The wife of a fisherman called O’Neill had started the restaurant to cater for those folks waiting for the tide to be right for the (original) ferryman to shuttle them to the island. (Nowadays there is a motor driven ferry which is not affected by tidal movements. Progress? I’m not all that sure). The restaurant is still owned by the same family and their little fishing boat has now grown to a complete warehouse/factory to handle the entire catch for the fleet as well. The meal lived up to the setting with yet another glorious sunset.

Kenmare is touted as the ‘Jewel in the Ring’ of the ring of Kerry and it is certainly a colourful town with brightly painted building rivalling each other for attention as they line the streets. While it is obvious that tourists put a big percentage into the gross receipts, I think that this would be a prosperous town anyway as it is at a crossroads on one of the major accesses to the Kerry peninsular which seems to be a productive farming area. Having driven around the ring, we headed to the Beara peninsular and the Ring of Beara. This area seemed wetter and wilder than the ring of Kerry and oyster beds added a different set of patterns to the harbours and inlets to counterpoint the designs of the stonewalled fields. There are at least forty different greens to the patterns of grasses, crops, freshly cut hay, baled hay, rolled hay all seemingly dotted by black-faced sheep and pastel or white farmhouses. All very bucolic and rural but oh, the rocks. There are rocks everywhere!

We stopped at the tiny town of Roundstone which gets its name from the fact that rocks surround the harbour and the Irish word for this comes out as something like “Roundstone” ergo … As it was about lunchtime we looked for a take-away (take-out for some) of fish & chips to eat on the harbour wall. On entering a pub which touted meals on a blackboard outside, we met a lady who was adjusting a TV to “Get some real sport”. Once she found a telecast of a cricket match she stopped and said “Ah now that’s real sport”. Merran asked if she was really interested in cricket only to be told that she was an international umpire who’d umpired test matches between the Dutch and South African women’s teams and County matches between the men’s teams. To my shame I did not get her name but she talked long and knowledgably about the various BIG names of international cricket. She has a real soft spot for Shoab Aktar whom she regards as a cheeky, naughty boy. Not a lot of time it seems for the serial texter Shane Warne however. Not the sort of person one would expect to find behind the bar in a tiny pub in a tiny town in IRELAND where cricket is not a high profile game. The fish was okay and the chips Bloody awful.

Because we’d had such a problem getting from the ferry to our accommodation, and because we knew where the Carrick Hall hotel / B&B was we headed there and had another delicious Thai meal and got the last available room. There was a group booking. They’d played golf that day – a sort of grudge match against some other group and had a combined dinner (late) and a few quiet drinks. Hah! I have no idea how they got the horses up the stairs. Well it sounded as though they were conducting a full eight race program with at least twenty runners in each race with the full stands of spectators also crowded into the corridors. They were NOISY and at 0415 it wasn’t really appreciated. The faces at the table for breakfast and the moaning were some sort of comfort to us. Onto the ferry without a single trip through the tunnel and back to good old blighty. We made it back to Ann & James’ having picked up a ready to heat meal and some fruit salad. Sunday saw us tootling around villages like Bibury, Boughton-on-the-Water, Stowe-in –the-Wold, Upper and Lower Slaughter for yet another nostalgia trip. Lower Slaughter had an art exhibition in the village hall hosted by two of the artists who offered a glass of wine and delighted in a chat. We intended to have a day in London on Mon 29 Sep but Merran’s hip / thigh / leg was so sore she had to get to a doctor who assured her it was not sciatica, arthritis, rheumatism etc etc and advised her to up the dosages of painkillers. 30 Sep, Heathrow and USA.

Yamba to Croatia & Slovenia

vacation_practitioners — Mon, 8 Sep 2008 05:42:00 GMT

Yamba to Geneva & on to Avonnex… And further still

We have a brand new very best friend – Barbara; and she drove us to the airport at Ballina at the beginning of this trip. She is house–sitting our place for a while as she has bought a home in Oyster Cove but it is being used as a display home until the end of October and therefore she can’t occupy it. We flew down to Sydney on Saturday 16 Aug saving $100 each by travelling then instead of on Sunday 17^th. This was fortuitous as the “Wharf Review” was on and we got tickets – probably the last two together from what the booking agent said, and we had a Ball. Some bitingly satirical stuff but all hilarious!!! Brother-in-law Brian dropped us at the International Terminal a bit after Noon on Monday 18^th so the whole build up to our departure was relaxed and easy – except for Grant Hackett being bumped out of a history making Gold in the same event in three successive Olympics. Quel domage!

Qantas “Frequent Flyer Points” provided us with our flights - but boy they don’t make things easy for their users! I tried to find the dates we wanted and do the entire booking on-line. That didn’t work because I couldn’t get into the list of available flights on the rest of the ‘One World’ hook- up of airlines so I did the lot by phone (and paid an administration fee – in points, of course). The flight over ended up being bout 30 hours because it took us to Hong Kong (change planes and carrier), London (another change of plane and carrier) and finally to Geneva where out brand new Citroen C3 motor vehicle awaited us – after we got out of the airport on the French side. The distributor collected us in a shuttle bus and finalised the paperwork - a highly efficient operation. He said that the Aussies, the Kiwis and Brazilians in that order buy the majority of his new car sales and he appears to be doing rather nicely thank you – as we were carrying out all of the bumf necessary, there were two – count them, 2, car carriers parked in the street outside – one delivering new cars and the other taking away the ones which had been handed back at the end of the lease period. They were heading off to an auction yard after a very short amount of use. I think that the “buy a new car on a guaranteed buy back basis and have it charged as a lease with full registration and insurance” deal will suit us. We did the whole deal on line and then sent the paperwork to an agent in Frankston – but they have agents all over the World. All one needs is to be a non European citizen. Their web site is www.drivetravel.com One of our French acquaintances said that her brother who now lives in LA always uses them as it guarantees him a brand new vehicle and no hassles with alleged damage to a rental company’s car – and she doesn’t have to get him to and from the airport.

The car comes with 10 litres of fuel and the operator points out the closest refuelling point on the way to his holding yard – about 500 metres and right beside a large supermarket where we could do a mini stock up and also get some Euros out of a ‘hole in the wall’ so all of that is good too.

Catherine’s unit in Avonnex (near Taninges which is close to Cluses) has a fantastic ‘Sound of Music’ scenery view and is small enough to be cleaned easily on the last day and large enough to be really comfortable. We are blessed to have such a wonderfully generous friend who is prepared to lend us her apartment. Her neighbours have been in to ensure that we’ve found everything and to offer assistance – a good test for our fifty year old French lessons and our memory of those lessons as they speak no English! I’d really like to come to this area in Winter – there are approx 1600Km!!!!!!!! of groomed runs within 45 mins drive of Catherine’s apartment.

Day one started disastrously! This confounded computer would not boot up – now how much worse could things be???! It was (understandably) a late start – 9ish when we finally got out of bed so off into Tanignes to buy a few groceries and contact Catherine’s friend Bernadette at the pharmacy as she speaks excellent English and could advise us about finding someone to fix the computer. Well, there was a market in town – not just the usual Thursday fruit & veg etc market in Taninges but one for collectors and for bric-a-brac and old books etc. How beaut! We browsed up and down the ‘quai’ where the stalls were laid out and were intrigued by some of the items for sale like the wooden pitchforks one sees in drawings of the peasants rising up in days of yore and cowbells the size of small filing cabinets and ancient skis and old horse ornaments and hand made steerable wooden toboggans as well as vinyl records, old post cards and antiquarian maps on top of just plain bric-a-brac junk. While they have excellent stalls and carrying vehicles, none of these vendors is as well set up as those who travel the towns for the weekly markets selling fresh produce etc. These folks have specially built trucks with refrigerated cabinets and the fishmonger displays his wares, as does the butcher and the cheese seller or else the truck has built in rotisseries to roast chickens etc. They are a tribute to the weekly markets in all of the villages and towns around the area..

In the true French tradition, the pharmacy was shut (open 9 – 12 then 2 to 7pm) so we strolled to the far end of town to the supermarket and had a fine time practising our written French while searching for our kinds of cereals, fruit juice etc. We both enjoyed stirring up the old grey cells again. On the way back to the car we called in to the pharmacy and spoke to Bernadette who directed us to a computer store which had recently opened in the town. The lady there has about as much English as we have French but we were able to establish that Windows XP repair disc needed to be run and yes she has one – but it’s in French and it may overwrite all of the Windows instructions from English to French. Hmmmm well I can read basic French and I know the main Windows instructions I need so let’s go ahead.

We headed off to explore through a part of the Alps back to Lake Geneva and on through a medieval village of Yvoire – we MUST come back here and spend at least a half a day exploring. The lady rang to say the computer was ready but road works. a series of detours and heavier than usual traffic through the tiny roads of the various villages meant we weren’t back by her closing time of 7pm! Ah well, mañana.

One of the spots we travelled through was the ski resort of Les Gets. Perisher plus Thredbo and probably the Victorian ski fields too would be dwarfed by the extent of this resort – even though it’s touristy it doesn’t appear to be a big, brash in your face rip your money off place. It’s a series of village homes, farm houses, ski lift terminals, parking areas and all of the other necessaries of life delightfully mingled with hotels, restaurants, fast food outlets and souvenir shops etc. Some of the lifts were running and people were taking their mountain bikes up for the thrill of the ride down. As well, there were carnival type rides and bungy-trapeze trampoline thingos for other thrill seekers as well as deck chairs lined up outside the bars for the sun-lovers to soak up the rays while enjoying a beer or whatever. Most picturesque and laid back – yet still busy because some kids are still on vacation.

Our second day in Avonnex was a gem of a day so we picked up the computer (no it doesn’t speak French – it just repaired itself in English), did a swag of shopping at the weekly markets and then hied ourselves off to Chamonix and from there we took the cable car to Aiguille de Midi which is a needle-like pinnacle of rock with a needle-like building atop it. Simply the most wonderful spot from which to view Mont Blanc. There are a number of buildings up on top of this piece of rock apart from the ‘needle’ which is at 3842metres above sea level! We had a perfect day! (and took just a whole raft of photos). The weather was perfectly clear and blue so the scenery was stunning. The thing which struck us most (apart from the scenery) was the number of rock and ice climbers clambering all over the scenery – all weighed down with ice axes, crampons, ropes, backpacks and assorted other paraphernalia. There were dozens of them and on a Thursday; I just wonder how many would smother the place on a weekend. The excess gear they have really puts a strain on the space available in the cable car. They count the number of persons allowed per car and that number causes the car to resemble a can of sardines then add to this a plethora of BIG packs – many with sharp pointy bits and it can be very squeezy!

We had made a reservation at an auberge in the South for the nights of 23 and 24 Aug so on 22^nd we headed off down through Combloux (which looks absolutely beautiful at this time of the year and is yet another pretty ski village), Megeve (a large ski centre with lots of three and four storey ‘high rise’ – lots in concrete but a total tourist town) and Albertville (home of a Winter Olympics a lifetime ago) to Aix les Bains on the shores of Lake Bourget (near Chambery) to drive down the Rhône Valley. The flower baskets and displays in roundabouts are fantastic and it seems that in some towns the entire population is involved in the floral beautification of private homes and businesses as well as the public spaces. Quite a sight really.

Leni owns the auberge and she is a wonderful cook! So much so that she’s actually published books of menus for jams and chutneys. Aurelie told us about both Leni and her auberge as she and Michael visited there as well. It was very close to the “Bambooserie” which has a display of probably every strain of bamboo from around the world as well as an amazing garden which is the home of a strain of bamboo which grows in France without special husbandry. It was developed by the founder of the venture. From the gardens we caught a little ‘Puffing Billy’ style steam train on a round trip to St Jean de Gard, back past the Bambooserie to Anduze and finally back to the Bambooserie. Anduze had a craft market in the town square or place so we drove back and were amazed at the amount of pottery on display – it turns out that this area is renowned for its pottery. Merran spotted a hand spun, hand knitted / hand everything angora wool jacket which looked light and useful – until she heard the price. It was probably worth every cent but much more than she was prepared to pay.

On our way to the Camargue area south of Leni’s auberge, we dropped in on the Roman aquaduct and viaduct – the Pont du Gard which we had seen on our first trip to France in 1976. The bridge itself has not changed but BOY!!! Everything else has! There is now a compulsory car park, a grand complex with eateries, galleries, toilets and a theatre as well as concrete paths and “Thou shalt not” signs everywhere. One of the big ‘thou shalt nots’ is walking across the top of the aquaduct – one can pay and walk through inside the actual duct but not on top any more. Mike and I did that in 76. The other big difference was the number of people enjoying the water beneath the bridge – even hire canoes and pedal boats. All very colourful but lacking that sense of discovery we had back when we just parked and climbed and did our own thing.

In the Camargue we had to do the total tourist thing and take in a swamp tour by boat – that way one sees the birdlife – especially the local flamingoes and (perhaps) the famous Camargue horses and cattle. The French bullfights use the Camargue bulls which have horns which grow vertically and don’t point forwards. The “bullfighters” are really fantastic athletes who wear simple white shirts and trousers which give them the freedom to run around the ring with the bull and try to remove a cockade of ribbons which have been placed between the bull’s horns. The bull is never killed in these ‘fights’. The Camargue horses are white. But, when born they are usually black! – sometimes brown and change to grey around two years and to total white about eight. The person who tends the cattle rides a white horse and is called a “Guardian”. While on our tour a guardian just happened to bring her horses and cattle to an area adjacent to the bank where the boat could pull along side. What a marvellous coincidence!!! A similar “coincidence” occurred as we passed an area where some folks had set their special fish traps. These traps are a large square of steel with a net slung beneath which is lowered into the water. When the owner thinks that there may be some fish in the trap he uses his spring loaded recovery arm to pluck the entire device from the water with much speed. One of the owners just happened to check his net just as we passed – he’d caught nothing. Neville & Lyn were fortunate to have similar coincidental happenings when they did their tour of the Camargue. Weren’t we all VERY lucky.

The area of Provence in the hinterland behind the Riviera has some of the “Most Beautiful Villages in France”. We’d been to a number of them in 1976 when we toured with the boys and held very fond memories of narrow cobbled laneways with window boxes of petunias and / or geraniums cascading to make every nook and hidden cranny a spot screaming “take me!” Well nothing has changed except for the large ‘paid’ parking areas and the far larger crowds. At one spot called “Les Baux” (in 1976) we’d found a disused chalk quarry where some folks had tried their hand at sculpture but which was deserted but wonderfully cool in the height of Summer. The boys climbed and explored while we parked the van in a vast cavernous ‘gallery’ left by the miners. Boy what a change to this area!!! The gallery is now just that and displays of works by French masters are projected onto the white chalk walls. A different artist is featured each year. Classical music is ‘piped’ through the entire area to give the right ambience. Both experiences have something to commend them. There were many others such as Gordes, Roussillon and Opede le Vieux which we would not have found without the wonderfully laid out book about France which Catherine and Alice gave me for my birthday. Thank you again to them both.

There are some rugged gorges in the South of France and we visited the Gorges of the Ardech and the Verdon. The scenery is steep, rugged and beautiful with the rushing waters of the rivers spotted with rafts and / or kayaks. I prefer the gorges of the Lot and the Tarn because of their delightful villages (mostly absent in the Ardech and the Verdon) as well as the limestone ‘Causse’ regions there. In these gorges (which seem wider from memory) people throw themselves off the cliff tops with a parachute attached and ‘paravent’ along the cliff walls using the updrafts – all very scenic with dozens of brightly coloured parasails dotting the skies above villages clinging to flattish land on the sides of the river.

On our trip of discovery in the Verdon Gorges, we drove on a side road which roughly translates to the road of the cretins! And one needs to be a cretin to clamber all over the cliffs which plunge I have no idea how many hundreds of feet to the boiling rapids below. They like their outdoor activities these French. All it did for me was make my palms clammy.

The “Icing-on-the Cake” as far a pretty villages are concerned has to be St Paul de Vence! We visited it in 1976 because of a travel booklet which sang its praises and fell in love with its quaintness. It still holds that charm and the ability to enchant. A wonderful thing happened to us here. We’d decided that we’d find ‘B&B’ type accommodation rather than hotels etc but did no bookings. We think we now know the difference between an ‘auberge’ (a restaurant with a couple of rooms available for rent), a ‘gite’ (a room or apartment available for rent on a weekly self-help basis) and a ‘chambre d’hote’ (a room – usually in a private home available for nightly rental – usually with breakfast). We found this because we couldn’t locate any chamres d’hote and saw signs to a gite which we followed, and followed, and followed – it was after all a gite rurale. When we finally arrived at the gate the lady of the house was delighted to find that we are Australian as she has been host to three families of Aussies and enjoyed their company but explained the difference of a gite from a chamber d’hote. She took us into the house and rang a friend who owns a place with rooms and secured us a booking. She and her husband then led us in their car to our newly acquired accommodation. The restaurant across the street is owned by a lady who fled Persia at the time of the revolution (and her husband). It was a wonderful night.

The God of travel has been extremely kind to us and has shone Her light upon us like that on at least three occasions to give us wonderful experiences. What She hasn’t provided is internet access!!! The one place which advertised that it was available had such poor connectivity that I was able to read my emails between about 23.30 to 00.15 and then only by waiting “forever” for each message. I ‘Cherrypicked’ those to read and answer first!

From the South of France, we ‘zapped’ across Italy and through Slovenia to the Istrian Peninsula of Croatia. As we don’t like the large cities and towns for accommodation, we headed down to the very tip of the peninsula to a Medulin where we found a place offering “Zimmer, Camere, appartmenta, Rooms”. So I rang the bell to be greeted in perfect English by a chap who was getting ready to go for a swim & so had on two shoes but only one sock. His response when asked where we could find email contact was that his daughter understood all of that – “I’m just a retired professor of Literature and I don’t need to understand any of that – I can use it as a typewriter and she can print it if I want it so we’ll ask her. If I can find her as well”. While we brought our bags from the car he found his daughter who set up her computer for us to be able to read any urgent emails but not to be able to spend much time on the thing. All of which was wonderful of them. While I was picking away on the keys, Merran was talking to Boris and his friend Vesna (I’m happily divorced two times and I live here with my daughter and my friend comes from Zagreb to visit. I have a good life) about where we should go in Croatia to get a taste of the country. Split and Dubrovnik were both too far South to fit into this trip so they sent us first to the provincial capital – Pula which has a rich Roman history as well as touches of the Austro-Hungarian heritage. It was an important Naval base for Empress Maria Therese and has a roman amphitheatre as well as a theatre and forum with a citadel on the top of its main hill. It is a fascinating town. From there we drove along the coast of the Adriatic, through Rietja to a small village south of there. The zimmer owner spoke no English nor French. Just Croatian and German but we got by and she was able to tell us that her aunt lives in Kingsgrove and visited in 2003 just after our host’s husband had died. She also sent us to a restaurant called “Feral”. No there were no domestic animals which had reverted to their wild state just a delightfully located eatery right by a jetty with a yawl moored alongside. Its name was ‘Nirvana’.

Now just another wonderful traveller experience. The lass who came to wait upon our table had very very little English and said ‘My colleague will come’. A young man arrived and he was a delight. He spoke with an American accent and had recommendations for what meals were different and traditional and what was just the run of the mill fare one could get anywhere. We both decided on different traditional Croatian dishes. Merran commented on his accent and (after having told us previously that his house was literally the one next to the restaurant) he said that he lives in Chicago. His parents were both born I Croatia, met and married in USA but have bought a place in Jodranova right on the waterfront where they all come to spend the Summer. Ivo was attentive throughout – even though there was an attractive lass on a motor scooter who came to visit the bar and talk to him and his friend. The friend rode off with her on the scooter.

There are some unspoilt towns and villages all along the Adriatic but one needs a reliable means of transport to reach them. We had our picnic lunch at one such place, tucked into a turquoise bay with a breakwall protecting a tiny fleet of (mainly) pleasure craft and a quai about 120 – 150 metres long, a handful of homes and one restaurant. The road down (and back up the same way) has a slope of 15%!!! I had been going to comment on one road we drove on in Provence which led to the source of a local river and it had a slope of 14% - cyclists were riding up and down!!! As Crocodile Dundee would say “That’s not a slope – THIS is a slope”. One town is definitely on the tourist trail. It’s Opatje and it’s wall to wall grand hotels – each of which has taken over part of the street, placed lockable traffic blocks and numbered each space to correspond with the hotel room number. If you want to park in this town - “Get a room!” Despite all of this, it has a wonderful feel of sheer opulence and “Old Money”. Most of the hotels were built before WW1 and those which weren’t are ‘brand new’ and glitzy not our style but certainly worth a look.

Boris and Vesna both insisted that we HAD to visit the National Park at Plitvicka Jezera. We’ve since found that Jezera means lake and that the Plitvicka lakes (all 19 of them cascading from one to the next) are listed on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites. We could see why. It is amazingly beautiful with the most stunning blue to the water and then there are the waterfalls. A truly amazing experience – especially since we’d stayed overnight in the area and were ahead of the tour buses and their hordes.

Well, what have been the highlights of our first three weeks, I hear you cry. As well as the above, sitting on the ridge capping of a church roof in Stes Marie de la Mer, climbing stone steps by the thousand to see “les beaux villages de France” we certainly didn’t need our “vacation vorkout” list of exercises during this section of the trip. Watching a balloon land in the vineyard outside our chamber d’hote. Exquisite floral displays in the most charming villages with shutters, pastel tones and cobbled streets (well more like lanes really). A street mime clown doing his tricks with balloons in a square in the old town inside Ljubljana. Glorious panoramas from mountain peaks with the bucolic pastoral scenery spread before us. The massive mountains with their tunnels and bridges – 500metres of bridge 1500 metres of tunnel for mile upon mile. In Oz we get excited about 5Km of tunnel here some run for three and four times that length and are the followed by another of about the same length. We’re just playing on the edges when it comes to road building. After looking at all of the tunnels here it’s no wonder we got so many migrants when the Snowy Mountain Hydro System was being built Travelling from Italy to France in the Mont Blanc Tunnel (@ over €3 per Km) But most of all the generously friendly manner in which we’ve been treated by the locals. Australia rings a bell with Europeans and they seem happy to see us. The owner/manager of the ristorante we stayed above in Mori just outside Trento in Italy looked at our passports and came back to ask were we really all the way from Oz. When we answered that we were he sort of unbelievingly asked: “But why are you here?” Mori is not a tourist town and we found the café culture and the people watching a wonderful way to pass the time.

Heading back to USA - Via Europe & UK

vacation_practitioners — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:45:00 GMT

G'day from beautiful downtown Yamba on the sunny far North Coast of NSW.

Merran and I are about to head back overseas and I will use this site as well as another to update folks on our doings and my thoughts and impressions about where we've been & what we've done etc.

This will replace the overly long emails I have sent previously. Isn't that an improvement now.

Having survived our week of skiing, we're now into the "Prepare the place for it to be vacant for an extended time and start getting everything ready to pack" stage.

This is your teaser of what's to come so that's all for this posting.

Ian ;+}