We're in Prague!

Hey guys!

Alright, well let me think for a bit, what's been happening? Well, we spend one more ngith in Znojmo. Predictably, after giving us one night of shovelling beer down our gullets, Peppa decided that the second night was just the night to take us to a beer restaurant, then an Irish Pub, then back to the beer restaurant on the way home. He also ordered John and myself (and himself, of course) a half-litre of every beer they had on tap to begin with at the first stop. Intertestingly, the beer at this restaurant was pumped with air, not carbon-dioxide. The end effect was the head didn't last as long (shame, I enjoy long-lasting head), but you didn't get bloated from the stuff! No enourmous burps! Needless to say, mum was impressed.

Ok, after Znojmo we headed off to more family as Streznice (not sure if I spelt that correct), but firstly, Vranof Castle. We couldn't take any pictures inside, but here's a pretty one from the outside.
In case the castle looks a little familiar to the movie buffs, it's the castle that was used for the filming of XXX, starring Vin Diesel. The interior was also used for the movie, it's a pretty damn spiffy place!

Now, Streznice was nice and relaxing, if you call being stuffed with food and alcohol like a turkey the night before christmas relaxing! What else happened there? Oh that's right, I got sick :(

Yeah, and not the cute sick either, the "stay away, and clear the way to the toilet!" sick. Anyways, I got over that in a day or so, and we were off!

Next place of accomodation, Ceske Krumlov. Of course, Ceske Krulmov is at the other end of the country, so we had some distance to cover. On the way we stopped at Telc. Telc is a thouroughly unremarkable town, except it's got this awesome, UNESCO world heritage listed, central square. All the buldings are so cute! Here's a pic to prove it!



Anyways, after Telc, we found ourselves come accomodation in Ceske Krumliv for a couple of nights, and wandered about the town. It's really hard to capture this town in photos, so I'm going to try with words. It's like you locked a medieval, eastern european, country town, in a time capsule for a few hundred years, opened the time capsule, and invited tourists in the see the result. The result is awesome! Of course, this means that all the residents have been kicked out of the town, in favour of hotels, restaurants, and "authentic" shops, but I'm not one to nitpick.
Here's a shot from the castle, looking back down at the town.


By the way, yes, it is exactle as picturesque at street level as it looks from above.










Ok, we spent a couple of nights there, and then head up towards Prague. On the way, we stopped at a couple of castles (0f course) the most impressive visually, was the castle of Hudlovice. It's not exactly a castle, as a massive hunting ranch, designed to look like a castle.

Either way, the effect is pretty presuasive. I hope you agree.



Ok, the other castle we didn't take any photos of, for the simple reason that the outside is pretty boring, and the inside we're not allowed to take photos of. It was in the day, however, one of the private residences of Franz Ferdinand, before he got shot, of course. Inside it is quite a large selection of his hunting trophies (apparently his career count was approaching 300,000 animals, he liked to hunt) and a massive selection of his weapons and armour collection. Quite literally, every hallway, and more than a few of the private rooms, were decorated with armour and arms, and that was before we got to the armoury. One notable were duelling pistols owned by Napoleon. Anyways, it was cool.

And that gets us here, to Prague. Hmm, I wrote a lot tonight. I'm sure you guys will cope.


Have fun people,
Bob (John's elsewhere)

Some Islands, Vienna, Wine, and a cameo by some piles of rock.

Hello people!
We're in the Czech Republic now, speaking to you from Znojmo.
Ok, on our last couple of days in Athens we did nothing, then we went on a three island cruise. We visited the islands of Poros, Hydra and Aegina.
All our photos here are from Hydra, since that was the prettiest. There were no petrol vehicles there that we could see, and everything was transported by donkey. We saw a washing machine being transported this way.

Here's the entrance to the port of Hydra, complete with parapets and cannons!


For all it's prettiness, there wasn't a great deal to actually do on Hydra. Here's my solution.



And another shot of Hydra. You can see the donkeys in the background, with these big wooden saddles.














After a quick 2 hour flight, we landed in Vienna, where we stayed for two nights at the Wombat Hostel. First day was spend at Schonbrun, the summer residence of the Hapsburg family during the days of the Austrian Empire. To say the least, they were nice digs. Here's the front door.




The Schonbrun also has it's own personal zoo (the Hapsburgs lived well). It claims to be the oldest zoo in Europe. It's a pretty cool zoo actually, complete with it's own panda.









Here's a shot of the backyard, the structure in the background is called the Gloriette, and is on the grounds of the Schonbrun. As far as we can tell, it serves not purpose other than to give the Hapsburgs an awesome place to eat lunch at and look at their house from.

The Palm House of Schonbrun, for the princess that just wants here own rainforest in Vienna.


And the Privy Garden, looking at the main building from the side.

We also went to the Hofburg, the winter residence, and also the seat of government. We don't have any pictures here though. The hofburg was bigger, much bigger, but not really as impressive.

Here's what the Viennese call their town hall btw.

Off to the Czech Republic, or the CZ, as us cool people call it. We caught a bus (btw, the ticket lady, useless) and mum came and picked us up from this little place called Pohorelice (as far as we could determine, it only had one traffic light, purely for the purpose of getting the school kids across the road safely).

Our first night was at Znojmo, and, of course, we went and sampled wine. We're staying with Pepa, mum's cousin, who is a wine maker by trade, and by hobbie. He took us to his hobby cellar, which is 300 years old and carved into sandstone, and fed us our body weight in fine wine and cheese. You can't actually see any barrels in that photo, but trust me, there were enough.

And our first ever guest appearance on this blog. Here we have mum, there's sand around her, and some large piles of rock in the background. We hope you enjoy.

Bye everyone! We'll keep you up to date with our going ons.

Bob and John

Athens and Dephi!

Good evening all people!

We are living it up in Athens right now. After the hideously expensive world that is Italy, Athens in a shoppers paradise by comparison. This means that things DON'T cost three times as much as you'd normally expect, but are actually pretty close to expected, if not slightly cheaper.

Lets see, the highlight of our first day was that we did our laundry. I know, we were pretty excited too! On the plus side, doing our laundry ran us into a market, which closed off a main road for several hundred meters. About half of this length sold fresh food. Vegetables, fruit, olives, fish were the main features. Oddly enough, we didn't see a single meat vendor.

Anyways, give us a day or two to relax in Athens, and we started to go see some stuff. Here's what we came up with.
We found this pretty neat hill, that had some pretty awesome veiws. Yes, that's the acropolis and the parthenon in the background there.











A day or two later we actually decided to walk to the acropolis, and saw the parthenon up close and personal. Unfortunately there's currently scaffolding all over it, but you get the idea.














There was also a pretty theatre. This is the older, smaller one. The other one is possibly more impressive, but I liked this one, since it was old and had dogs sleeping all over it.
(btw, semi-feral dogs and cats seems a way of life for the greeks, they are bloody everywhere! Not visible, but lieing on the bench about 1m to johns left, is a stray dog sleeping. Evidently they don't need to pay for tickets)









Here's the temple of Zues, I couldn't find a picture I liked with us in it on my camera, so I just went with my artistic efforts.














And here we ran into a nice American lady who was handy with a camera. Here you can see the ancient Roman city of Agora in the front, working back up to the acropolis further back.



















Today we took a day trip to Delphi, the navel of the world, according to the greeks. All we know is it took 3.5 hours by bus, and 13 euro to get there, but it was worth it.
The town, both new and ancient, is situated right on the side of a mountain, and the scenery is pretty spectacular.
The ancient city itself is a lovely collection of ruins strewn up and down the mountain, thankfully around the corner from the new township.

Here's a nice collection of pillars!














And the ancient stadium.













Keep in mind that it really is up and down the
slope, so we needed to stop for a drink.
Here's the place we chose.











Anyways, things are going well. We're planning a day cruise to some of the islands, so we'll let you know how that goes.

Anyways, hope you guys are behaving yourselves. It's not long before we're off to Austria and the Czech Republic.

Byes!
Bob

Venice and Rome

Hello people!

Ok, We have arrived in glorious downtown Athens, and since we have unlimited internet here, we though we'd get you guys up to speed on our whereabouts, and post some pretty pictures whilst we're at it.

But before I do that, I would like to give a beer a special mention. It's name is Salvatori, and I LOVE IT! We came across it in a Pizzaria in Venice, where it was merely labelled as a "Red Beer". Anyways, it is delicious!

After Milan, we sat in our bus for another few hours, before arriving in our hotel outside of Venice, the next day, and a half hour train trip, and we arrive in Venice itself.
We saw pretty glassmaking, pretty lacemaking, and pretty expensive prices.

We saw lots of pretty buildings, but I'd say the highlight was the Gondola ride.



This is me trying to be artistic with my shot angles, it kind of worked, I think you'll agree.


And finally, the first shot of Team Duamo! These are the hooligans we've been hanging out with throughout Italy, and I have to warn you, they are each and every one of them dangerous.
Team Duamo is (from left to right)
Me (Duh)
Sammy (it's a pink Bo-at!)
Danielle
John
Angie
Vanessa

After Venice we headed off to Rome, where it was raining, a lot. This is my brilliant effort of attempting a selfie, whist holding the camera under an umbrella someone else was cowering under.









Fortunately, the next day turned out to be much nicer and sunnier, and due to culture week, entry into all Italian Museums (including the Colloseum) is free. Yay for culture!














Here we Have a picture of the Roman Forum, which is pretty much ruins, but I thought they were pretty cool.

And the Spanish Steps, nice and sunny (yay!)

We headed over to the Vatican City, and checked out St Peters square. Unfortunately the queue to go into the Basilica stretched like 3/4 of the way around the square (not exagerating), and the queue into the museum was longer still. So we decided to skip that.














Fortunately on the way back we decided to look into the Castel St Antonio (?), for which entry was free (go culture!). It was pretty cool, and offered some awesome veiws from the top.















But eventually our time in Rome ended, and we headed off to glorious Bari!

It turns out it's got a lovely old section of town, full of expensive cafe's and winding little streets like this. We got ourselves lost in Bari for a good couple of hours whilst we waited for the ferry.















And now we have our novelty photo for the post. In case you can't read what it says, you are looking at a petrol station, with the labels Diesel (black), Miscela (red writing on white) and Super Senza Piombo (green). Now Diesel's easy, and Super sounds like something I'd want to put in my car, but I'm a little bit hesitant to use any petrol who's name, to me, reads "Miscellaneous". Is it just the little bits left over from all the other tanks that they mixed together? Or is it more like a lucky dip, sometimes it's unleaded, sometimes you get biodiesel... We think we'll let you discuss.









At the end of our day In Bari, we boared the Ferry, the Superfast XII, left Itally at 8:00pm local time, and headed off for Greece!














And that's where we are now, one 15 hour ferry ride, and 3 hour bus trip later. Fortunately Athens, for all the greek letters that are giving me frightening flashbacks to my lab, has almost everything also in English, so getting around is pretty easy.

We'll let you know how we progress. Have fun guys!

Bob and John

Capri, Florence, and Milan (among others)

Hello All!
Ok, we're now posting from Milan! What have we been up to since then? Well, from Sorrento we did a day trip to Capri, we caught a chairlift (scary) to the top of the island, and here's a sample of the pretty veiw. Capri was just beautiful, though a bit blowy and cold!

We also have a photo of our tour group for you, also from Capri

John took a boat tour around Capri (I sipped coffee in a cafe) and took a shot of these pretty rocks, the signature of Capri, but John has forgotten their names. But they are famous, trust us.

After our two nights in Sorrento, we headed off to Florence! But on the way, we dropped off in the Chianti region for some wine tasting. Here you can see me sampling the local drop (jolly good stuff, if you ask my opinion!)

We spent two nights in Florence, and saw lots; the Baptisery, David (who, btw, was awesome!) the Gallery de Fuzi ( totally not spelt correctly), which had some pretty pictures, and this very cute bridge, which is lined completely by jewellery shops. We did some kareoke (I got up, John didn't), went out to a night club (pretty ordinary, and flooded by 15 year olds :S), and did lots of walking down pretty streets.

But soon enough Florence was over, and it was time to head to La Spezia. Along the way we dropped off at Piza, but the Piza photos are on the other camera, so you'll have to wait :P

We also dropped off at one of the 'five lands', little villages along the coast. They were pretty spectacular, here's a sample of one shot.

La Spezia was actually pretty boring, and so I won't talk about it. Today we drove to Milan, and spent the entire afternoon perusing the shops.

And there were lots of shops, all with the nice pretty names above them that imply you will be charged €300 for a tea towel. We did lots of looking, but suprisingly, no buying.

The Duamo (church) in the middle of town was pretty impressive, so we thought we'd show you that as well.

Thanks guys for all the posts we've been getting, we know we haven't been replying to them, but we certainly do read them, and appreciate them. I will responed to a few of the questions from comments. The food is adequate, but a little boring. Yes I am wearing a beret, my beret from home though, so it's not exciting. The french keyboards are aweful, but the Italian ones are a litte bit more usable. GO THE KNIGHTS!

Everything is going well over here. Tomorrow is off to Venice for two nights. Currently there is a party going on in the Holiday Inn bar, so we'd best go and attend.

Cya all later

Bob and John

PHOTOS!

Ok, finally we are in Italy, and we have some photos for the faithful!
Our trip to Rome was an interesting one. We booked ourselfves an airport transfer to Geneva airport for our flight to Rome. Upon getting in the van out the front of our hotel the driver asks us "so how are you getting to Geneva", we were sort of hoping hed be able to tell us that!
He told us that he was only meant to take us to Bourg Saint Maurice (sort of the Jindabyne of France) and didnt know how we were getting to Geneva, about 160km away.
Turns our nobody knew how we were meant to get there, there was no bus waiting for us. Our transfer company then told us to catch a taxi, which turned out to be a hire car, and theyd get us back. €300 later we were on the plane to Rome, after the driver took EVERY back road to avoid traffic.

Anyways, we are now in Sorrento, and here are some photos.
Does this need an explanation?













Our tiny bathroom in Paris



















Notre Dame is pretty




















Some random street in Paris I thought was nice



















Foucalts Pendulum in the Partheon in Paris (we havent been to the rome one yet)














The veiw from our room in Paris














WINTER WONDERLAND!




























The village just below us, unfortunately not ours














Pompei!














And heres Sorrento, our hotel is the white building down on the level of the breakwall. No Im not joking.















Everythings going fine.

Bob and John