Day 40 3x3 things

London to Narita/ Narita to Sydney

Well I have to face the facts – this holiday is coming to an end. I was so sad to hug Rob goodbye this morning. Not only because he’s a good friend who I’ve known most of my life and he lives on the other side of the world but because I had to say goodbye to this part of the world with all it’s history and cold weather, culture and good coffee.

But don’t misunderstand me I love Australia and not just because my cherubs are there. It’s not until I travelled a bit that I recognised the things I valued about home. I’m sitting in the Qantas lounge at Narita right now and I can hear Aussie tellie in the background, I love hearing our accent. I love our sense of humour and our laid-back-ness. I love that there are things we expect as a given like free and fair elections, turmoil like Egypt is seeing right now makes me very happy to live on our isolated little island, everything is so close here, so inter-related.

This will be my last post to AllansAbroad, we have a long layover in Narita (11 hours) and then we’re on our last flight (makes 16 for this holiday!) to Sydney arriving on day 41 (or possibly day 42) – Saturday. This is what I’ll look like for the next couple of days, gotta love those business class seats!

Thanks for coming along with with me for the ride. I’ve enjoyed writing these posts at the end of each day, it’s helped me feel connected to you all and also connected to the holiday. I know that sounds weird but when you pack as much as we have into 41 days it does all start o blur a bit. anyway here’s some last favourite things…

travelling
1. Being with MGM 24/7
2. collecting stamps in my passport.
3. never having to cook

coffee
1. Monica’s breakfast coffee
2. Standing up in Venice
3. with gishy cake in Bad Aussee

top 3 for this trip
1. MGM
2. Snow
3. Sights & tastes

 

 

Day 39 3 things

Budapest to London

We bid fare-thee-well to the quietly dignified Budapest this morning and begin our long journey home. Today we fly to London for one last pub meal and visit to Ryan² b&b, Wokingham. We were up and packed and ready to go in about 20 minutes MGM reckons we’re getting pretty good at the suitcase-thing.

With flight # 14 for this holiday under our belts we were met at Heathrow by Ryan² airport taxi service. We had a lovely evening with our friends, first to the pub for some drinkies and then to a wonderful restaurant in the Wokingham town hall building.

Then back to Meadow Walk (isn’t that an adorable name for a street) to the hospitality of Ryan² B & B (read more drinkies and lots of chatting). MGM had to spend quite a bit of time on the phone with Qantas trying to negotiate our way around the cyclone hovering off the Queensland coast. We were booked on a flight from Heathrow to Narita tomorrow and then from Narita to Cairns/ Cairns to Sydney, which wasn’t ideal anyway. After a bit of wrangling we’ve changed the second leg of the journey home to be direct to Sydney from Narita and we’re very happy about that.

So for today’s 3 things here’s my favourite 3 MGM moments of this trip…

snow ploughing in Segletorp

tom foolery in Oberstaufen

Can’t help himself – Bath

Editors Note (Mike): Wendy was the one who put on the fox hat when Rob said

“Grundlsee, wear the fox hat” So I am not the only silly one in this pair.

Day 38

Budapest

The view from the window this morning

When we don’t have a lot of time and a lot of ground to cover we are inclined towards public transport, particularly in the big cities as they usually have a bus or tram that does the city circuit. If you get on one of these buses, ride around the circuit you get a feel for the city and choose what you want to see. Yesterday we didn’t need to do that as we had our freindly tour guide and a small enough area (the castle is only 1 mile long and 1/4 mile wide at its widest) to cover on foot.

Today we wanted to venture down into Pest. Budapest is a town divided by the Danube Buda (largely residential and Castle district) on one side and Pest (pronounce Pesht) on the other. Pest has the city centre, business, shops, monuments, museums etc. and it covers a huge area so we made use of this handy little bus

As a  hop on hop off bus it’s not exactly the public transport which would have done the same thing for cheaper but it was reasonably priced, I could get a 24 hour ticket at the information centre nearby our hotel, you get a audio guide so you know what you’re seeing and, as you can see, is easily identifiable. When you hop off at one spot it’s good to be able to see the next one coming, today was not the day to miss the bus.

It was only –5˚, we’ve had colder this trip, but today was the only day I’ve suffered from the cold because at one stop we had to wait. The hostess underestimated our waiting time, her ‘couple of minutes’ before the next bus was actually 45 minutes. Standing still in the cold is a killer. I got cold, painfully cold. We stayed on the bus through quite few stops while I thawed.

this is what we saw

the Palace we walked around yesterday – good to see it in perspective from the Pest side.

 

The Danube has 8 bridges that are either new or reconstructed since WWII, the retreating Germans destroyed all the bridges. This one is the Chain Bridge that was designed and built by two Englishmen (baby brother to London Bridge).

 

Parliament House, that fills our hotel window view & is lit up so spectacularly at night. modelled again on London’s houses of Parliament (I think I said Westminster Abbey yesterday). The architect admired the British building on the river etc.

 

Don’t know who this guy is but of course MGM could not resist making a new friend…

Doesn’t look too thrilled about his new Aussie mate does he!

Of course we HAD to do gishy cake today

This is an Hungarian treat Rákóczi túrós. Pastry base, cottage cheese, meringue y-u-m + the Hungarians do coffee well. This is a Dopio (double espresso)  which seems to be available routinely and is very very good (I had two over the course of the day).

St Stephen’s Basilica – huge and beautiful, and very nicely we didn’t have to pay to pray. Most of the churches in Venice we had to pay to view. I understand that these big buildings have huge running costs but usually I just want a quiet spot to pray. It’s nice when that spot is stunning but I often used to just go outside and pray for free.

Hero Square

 

and some more pics from today VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Day 37

Budapest

the view from the window this morning

Well Hungary has our seal of approval (all Hungarians say yay) as does the Hilton, because it’s luxurious inside, despite the extremely unsympathetic nature of the architecture. The Hilton is a Sydney toaster-esque building built on top of a medieval monastery. These walls from the middle ages remain and I think there’s some excavations preserved but they’re closed right now.

    

Hilton’s u-g-l-y design was approved because the communist government needed a place for foreign businessman that was up to Western standards but couldn’t afford to build one themselves.

Everywhere we went today the various stages of Hungarian history were writ plain. Walking around here you get a feeling of a country trying to encapsulate its history and make sense of it. We had a guided tour of the castle district today with a wonderfully knowledgeable history/language teacher. What a lot of info we got for our money, and he was our personal tour guide thanks to a cold winter and the chaos created by the airport closures, which a local businessman tells me, has hit them hard here , tourism-wise.

Thanks to wars and communist-rule these are the only two medieval buildings remaining intact in this area. The white one on the right is the place where we had dinner last night – aren’t we clever little tourists.

Our tour started around noon after the changing of the guard outside the President’s Residence. The President is figure-head (& doesn’t live there anymore).

Power lies with the Prime Minister and Parliament. The houses of Parliament below are beautiful and look a bit like Westminster Abbey (on which they were modelled). As you can see some weather came in overnight and the day was pretty foggy all day.

Across the square from the President's residence is the Royal Palace. No aristocracy in Hungary thanks to the Russians so it now houses a gallery, museum and library entered through these gates (18th or 19th century) that symbolise the ancient division between royal and common. In the Middle Ages 1/3 of the district inside the castle walls was for royalty and the other 2/3 (beyond the gates) were commoners, merchants, artisans, fisherman etc.

They are slowly uncovering their history (or what history survived the many and various wars) but there’s not a lot of money around of archaeology so their ancient remains look like this

When the Ottoman Empire took power they simply (bit like the practical Romans in that regard), WWI & WWII had an impact not only on the buildings that were utterly destroyed but on some that survived. Much has been repaired some, like the shrapnel marks below is left ‘as a reminder’ of a world gone mad.

Consequently much of what we saw today represents a mammoth rebuilding effort, all done with an aim to replicate what has been lost. this chapel is a composite of ages. The medieval footings were unearthed as part of building works, the walls are from a later it’s sealed but still has no roof.

In the days when royals lived in their part of the castle they had the Royal guard to defend themselves but the poor old commoners were left to defend themselves. Each group had responsibility for a bastion. Here is the Fisherman’s Bastion, the defensive bit is the round bit poking out of the edge of the castle wall.

The fish were caught down in the Danube and hauled up the hill to the castle.

This was once the fisherman’s market

The yurt-shape is a throw-back to Mongol part of Hungarian history. Our tour guide wore us out! 90 mins of non-stop talking meant 90 mins of non-stop info so, with heads ready to explode out through our eyeballs we escaped to our lovely room for some downtime and a late lunch.

After lunch I visited Mathias Church (the bloke in the baseball cap is our guide).

and explored the other end of the castle to the gate

and into the park outside the castle wall

 

 

Day 36

Venice to Budapest

Not a lot of lovely little pics for you to see today. We have had a day of tRaVeLLing today! Up early for brekkie,to bid farewell to the intoxicating Venice; then off to the airport in Venice via boat (seeing a lot of new stuff YAY), flying to Munich, transferring to another plan, flying to Budapest, (where we were welcomed to Hungry by the most glorious tangerine sun setting over snowy fields – good omen I thought), catching the hotel mini-bus (nice not to have to do the public transport thing tonight) and arriving here…

for our last hurrah and what a hurrah it will be!

We are staying at the Hilton which is actually built into the Castle walls, can you believe that! Expect some spectacular views from the window over the next couple of days. Here’s one to whet your appetite.

We have a spectacular room, with a bed that is bigger than the whole room we had in Venice, and overlooks the Danube – everything you’ve heard about the Danube…true.

The exchange rate seems to be good for us (no Euros here) $1AuD = 200 HUF. We got caught with the Euro thing so we exchanged our Euro at the concierge and came away with 29,000 hungarian $, maths..my brain hurts already!

THIS is right next door! We saw it as we went out in search of dinner. Rob would be proud of MGM because he had a traditional Hungarian meal which turned out to be a plate of meat.

So far everyone speaks English and I’ve never seen such instantly friendly & hospitable people. Hungary so far has me excited and thrilled to be here.

We were dining early and as such were the only customers in this little restaurant, and yet our meal was accompanied by a three-piece band of the happiest musicians you could desire.

and look at this for dessert, two different kinds of strudel (apple and cherry).

On the way back I tried to capture the view of the river from the Castle walls but it is flood-lit and it was beyond my photographic capabilities, which is such a pity because it is so so so beautiful.

Our window looks down on this

There I had more show & tell than I thought! We’ll be home soon but in the mean time we’ll be very skippy happy in Hungary!

Day 35

Venice

We have it on good authority (MYS’s gorgeous girlfriend) that it was important to feed the pigeons while in Venice so here is MGM, looking very suave, with the pigeons in San Marco.

and here is the magnificent san Marco,

well it is magnificent when you take the scaffolding away. The price we pay for traveling out of season is that winter is when they face-lift all significant buildings to be really spiffy for all the ‘real’ tourists in summer. Fortunately we have seen it in all its glory on a previous visit. I went in, although I just looked at the bits I could see for free, well worth it because of the unique gold mosaic that covers the vast interior. Last time we paid and saw it all, even the bonze horses at the top which don’t appear to be there now so perhaps they’re getting a facelift too. This square is so majestic even with the big screen up ready for some festivities to come I think.

Even the shops that surround San Marco are beautiful, I love the masks they sell, the photo doesn’t do them justice. they come in every colour imaginable and somehow, like the human face each one seems to be different. Truly amazing when you consider just how many shops there are selling the same thing.

Someone is thinking outside the square and creating something for the younger generation, so I took this pic for my trekkies, some were more Borg-like than others… so wished I could by one of these for each of you!

We succumbed to the tourist cliché today …

Yes we did, we went for a ride in a gondola and it was ridiculously exciting.

MGM’s doing the suave-thing again but that Cheshire-cat grin of mine reveals the excitement quite aptly I think. It was a lovely, gentle, perfectly peaceful ride, seeing Venice from a different perspective.

 

             

MGM actually got to experience the canal close up and personal with a small miss-step when alighting. Instead of alighting onto the dock he ‘slighted’ right into the drink up to his knee. The head gondola guy unceremoniously pushed me aside in his attempts to get to MGM before he went in any further. he got there so fast I’m surprised they didn’t all go in completely. Typical of the glass half full optimist, MGM wasn’t at all phased by the bucket of water he carried in his shoe back to the hotel…“it’s all part of the experience” he said with a laugh.

After a change of shoes and clothes we launched off again for our final wander around mesmerizing Venice. We did find a glass artist hard at work in his studio who was gracious enough to let me watch a piece from beginning to end complete with glass-blowing. He was a the first friendly artist we’ve come across and it was a real honour to be able to watch his creative process, in his studio below.

We are becoming quite the Venice experts, well at least we must look confident because fellow tourists keep asking for help. MGM ventured out to the vending machines for water late last night and got accosted by two different groups asking how the public transport worked (I suppose when he helped the first group in clear, easy to understand English the other thought hallelujah!). Today while we were working out what to see next we could feel a couple getting closer and closer. Eventually I asked if they’d like to look at our map, you could actually see the worry slide off their faces. They were lost you see, just as we were, but we had a map. They’d just arrived, dumped their bags and set off into the alluring but deadly similar streets of Venice (no map). We assured them that they certainly would not be the first or last to be lost in Venice but it was a bit alarming when they didn’t know where they wanted to go except ‘back to the hotel’.

Eventually we identified a landmark near their hotel (San Marco), gave them our map and a few navigational clues and wished them good luck.

We grabbed a slice of pizza and my new favourite drink la limonata (best lemon soda ever) and headed back to the room for a bit of packing I’m afraid. Hate the idea of leaving tomorrow but we are lashing out on a fast boat all the way to the airport. We usually public transport it in and out – so easy and cheap – but tomorrow we’re travelling Venice to Marco Polo, flying Venice to Munich, changing planes flying Munich to Budapest. There isn’t a huge margin for error so we’re splurging on the first leg. It’s not like we’re going on the ultra expensive water taxi, it’s actually not too much dearer than the Vaperreto/bus combo but it will certainly be another experience to add to the  many memories we have stored up so far.

		Venice Album VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL