Arrived in Amsterdam at around 6:00pm on Thursday night, raining again but truth be told, we've been lucky with the weather as it hasn't affected anything we've wanted to do yet and it's been raining all through Europe during most of our time here, we just seem to miss the bad weather.
Went for a walk to have a look around the city and to find the Van Gogh museum and check opening and closing times etc, we were already booked on another cycle tour around the outskirts of Amsterdam that started at 11:00am, so we wanted to make sure that we could fit the museum in around that tomorrow. Turns out that we shouldn't have been worried, the Van Gogh museum is open until 10:00pm on Fridays, so we had plenty of time to visit after the bike tour. We had some dinner, decided to get Mexican and it was pretty good.
Once we'd managed to get completely lost not far from the Van Gogh museum (I was actually taking us in completely the wrong direction when we asked for directions), we headed back towards the hotel, it was around 10:00pm so we decided to take a walk through the red light district which was not far from where we were staying, on the way there we found an Irish pub, run by a Dutch girl of course, so we sat down for a Heiniken or three. Now that we were suitably liquered up, we wandered into the red light district, found lots of drunk pommy guys, about a 10-1 ratio of guys to girls (no surprises there!!) and everything else you hear about Amsterdams red light district, it was interesting to go for a walk, the whlole concept of the girls standing in the windows like manequins is a bit weird, but we did manage to see one young gent make his choice for the evening and go on inside, much to Carols disgust.
We wandered back to the hotel and went to bed, only to be woken at about 6:30am to the sounds of the workers banging around on the scaffolding that was surrounding our hotel, nice Friday morning alarm clock that one ;-) We still managed to stay in bed until around 7:30 and by the time we got up and moving we didn't leave the hotel until about 10:00. We headed off towards the cycle tour, arrived there at 10:25(too early again!!) but it worked in our favour this time, as one of the girls in the shop did tell us that if we wanted to eat something on the 4 hour cycle tour we should go and grab something, as there wasn't really a lunch stop on the tour. I think they should put this in the write up of the tour, as our Berlin cycle tour took us to the beer garden where you could a least purchase lunch.
Anyway we went off to find the bakery that the girl pointed us at, sat down for a coffee along the way and then bought a couple of baked goods for the cycle tour.
At the begining of the tour I was selected as the "ass man", which makes me the person who has to stay at the back of the group to make sure that no one falls behind, I'm pretty sure that I was selected because I was taller than most and wearing a blue t-shirt that was easily recognisable, making it easy for the tour guide to pick where the back of the group was, anyway I was given a free beer at the cheese "factory/farm" for my troubles and I didn't mind riding along at the back.
The tour was really good, just like the Berlin tour the guide was extremely knowledgeable about the Netherlands and Amsterdam, so we got a really good history lesson on how the Netherlands came to be and why Amsterdam was built where it was, which wasn't really a great place to build a city by the sound of it, given that it was pretty much a smelly swamp! Anyway the building of the city and the infrastructure that they use to keep the place dry is really interesting and well worth hearing about. We also discovered that it was gay pride week in Amsterdam while we were here, and that the main paradce was happening on Saturday afternoon, it was a pity that we were booked on the train from Calais to London on Sat afternoon, as the parade would have been worth hanging around for.
After about 2 hours of riding through the Dutch country side we had our stop at the cheese farm, which was a small family run farm that makes cheese(yeah I know you already got that) and clogs (or wooden shoes as the Dutch call them) it was a short but interesting tour and they had beer for sale (see earlier comment about me getting one for free) and Carol and I were able to eat our baked goods, while about 40 other hungry cyclists drooled. Our guide had actually brought along some raisin buns "just in case anyone was hungry", not surprisingly these dissapeared quite quickly, and no Carol and I didn't take any even though they looked really nice ;-), from the cheese farm (sounds wrong but so does cheese factory) we headed back through the country side and heard a little more about the Netherlands and Amsterdam.
After the tour we headed off for the Van Gogh museum, but along the way we stopped at the "last minute ticket" shop to see iof there were any bargains for shows that night, we picked up tickets for a comedy show, more on that later. The Van Gogh museum was amazing, even for a hethen such as myself, you still have to admire the art work in there and the people who were painting it, quite an amazing collection of art and a really good way to get an understanding of not only Van Gogh but also the way art was changing during the era he lived in, like I say, fascinating, even for me!
We spent a good two and a half hours in the museum and then headed off for the comedy show. It was a cabaret style show so we were able to get there early and have dinner at our seats(table) and as seats weren't allocated getting there early for dinner meant that you got to pick where you sat which was good. We had a reasonable meal, not the best meal we've had while on holidays, but not the worst either and waited for the show to start.
It turned out to be an American comedy act called "Boom Chicago", which was a little dissapointing when we first heard that as we we're attempting to see a local show. We needn't have been dissapointed as the show was actually local, although the entire cast was American, they've been hosting shows in Amsterdam for a number of years and are part of the scenery there, so local I guess is what you make of it. The show was excellent, it was a mix of pre-rehearsed skits, which were very good, and improv which in general was even better, we really enjoyed the show and I'd recommend a visit to it if you're ever in Amsterdam with an evening to spare.
So that was our Amsterdam experience, we had a good time and may go back to spend more time in some of the other museums if the opportunity arises.
Pictures from our time in Amsterdam
Sunday 7 August 2011
Berlin - Day 2
Up a bit late this morning, but didn't need to rise too early as we'd booked in for a city cycle tour which kicked off at 11:00am and as the museums didn't open until 10:00 we couldn't visit a museum beforehand. We left the Hotel around 10:00 and walked to the meetingplace for the tour, got there at 10:25 which was too early so we walked around the corner and sat down for a coffee.
The cycle tour was an excellent way to get a potted summary of Berlin, WWI WWII and the cold war and how it impacted Germany and particularly Berlin, we visited Checkpoint Charlie, bits of the Berlin wall, Hitlers bunker the holocost monument the Brandenburg Gate and quite a few other lesser known attractions around Berlin.
First up were some of the older Berlin buildings (or where they used to be standing anyway) because of Germany's multiple changes from moinarchies to capitalism and socialism, quite a few of the important buildings were torn down as different groups came to power as they weren't particularly fond of keeping reminders of the previous rulers. The original Berlin Palace was one such building, and all that remains of it today are the stables and one Balcony where the Russian who conquered berlin pronounced Germany to be a socialist state.
Next up was a pair of churches built opposite one another, one was a protestant church and the other was a christian church, both look exactly the same and stand on opposite sides of a square that's about 100m wide, they were built by the ruler at the time who had to build both so as not to upset either group. The Humbolt university was next, it's situated in a group of buildings that have been used for a large number of things pver the years, but are also on the site of the "book burning" carried out by the Nazis, there's a monument built under the main square, which is a set of pure white empty bookshelves underground, which can be seen through a perspex window which is in the middle of the square (on the ground) so you look down into the empty bookshelves, there's enough shelves in the monument to hold all of the books that were burnt.
We left Humbolt museum and headed for checkpoint charlie, unfortunately we didn't have time to go into the museum here, which I think I would have enjoyed as it's full of successful and unsucessful escape attempts which would have been interesting. The checkpoint itself was a little dissapointing as it doesn't look anything like it used to, I guess it's a bit hard to have a functioning city and leave some of this stuff too much intact, it was of course designed to stop anyone passing through and is now in a busy part of the city as it's quite near the city centre. From there our guide took us to show us part of the Berlin wall that's still standing, first impressions are that's it's not quite big enough to keep people in. But that's before you understand the fact that there was also an inner wall on the Eastern side, along with quite a number of additional "deterents" to ensure that the East Germans stayed put, we then went to an area where you could get a better sense of how much blank space the East germans had on their side of the wall to make sure they had a clear shot at anyone trying to escape, it's pretty daunting really. From there we headed off to see Hitlers bunker, which now of course is a car park with no real indication of it's existence except for one small sign. The German government has made the decision not to make this any kind of tourist attraction as they're a little worried that the extreme right might turn it into a shrine or mecca of sorts, quite understandable really, the rumour is that they've only erected the sign to stop the local residents from getting visitor at their doors asking where exactly the bunker is. Funnily enough the area around the Bunker now houses a Mosque, a gay sauna/spa and some Jewish run shops, all of which I'm sure would please Mr Hitler no end.
From there we went to the Holocaust memorial, which is quite a sobering place, just to know that you're standing in/around a memorial that's dedicated to such misery and pain is quite an experience, worth a visit and I'd probably like to go back there and spend some more time walking around as we weren't there for very long. From here we headed to a much happier place, not only did we cross into West Berlin, but we headed for a Beer Garden for some good ol German fair, and of course a liter of beer. From there we headed to the victory monument, which the Germans erected after beating the French (yeah I know not really all that hard one would argue now!), interestingly, Hitler had the monument moved just before WWII as part of his planned remodelling of the city "Germania" which was going to be the captial city for the whole world once he was finished (history shows that he wasn't that far off getting there either). From here we went to the Brandunberg gate, which is an impressive structure and is now surrounded by a number of foreign embassies, although I didn't spot the Aussie embassy. This was pretty much the end of the cycle tour, I'd recommend it for numpties like me who knew very little, it would probably be good for those of you who know a little history as well, the cycling is actually minimal, it just means that you get to see more things as you get there a little faster, the guides are really knowledgeable and quite good fun as well.
Once the cycle tour was over we decided to walk back to checkpoint charlie to have a look at a holocaust museum that was nearby, this was very interesting as it showed a more in depth view of exactly how Hitler came to power and the stages that we went through during his quest for world domination, we didn't have enough time to view this properly either, and by the time we called it a day we were absolutely buggered! We walked back towards the Hotel and stopped for a bite to eat along the way.
We found Berlin to be a great city, I'll definitely be back to have a better look around and the general "vibe" of the city is also really good, it's a really friendly city and you seem to always feel safe walking around, it's also quite spread out, quite a bit of that is due to the east west split and the berlin wall as quite large areas of Land were left barren after WWII so the East Germans had a good view to protect their side of the wall.
Some pictures from our travels around Berlin
The cycle tour was an excellent way to get a potted summary of Berlin, WWI WWII and the cold war and how it impacted Germany and particularly Berlin, we visited Checkpoint Charlie, bits of the Berlin wall, Hitlers bunker the holocost monument the Brandenburg Gate and quite a few other lesser known attractions around Berlin.
First up were some of the older Berlin buildings (or where they used to be standing anyway) because of Germany's multiple changes from moinarchies to capitalism and socialism, quite a few of the important buildings were torn down as different groups came to power as they weren't particularly fond of keeping reminders of the previous rulers. The original Berlin Palace was one such building, and all that remains of it today are the stables and one Balcony where the Russian who conquered berlin pronounced Germany to be a socialist state.
Next up was a pair of churches built opposite one another, one was a protestant church and the other was a christian church, both look exactly the same and stand on opposite sides of a square that's about 100m wide, they were built by the ruler at the time who had to build both so as not to upset either group. The Humbolt university was next, it's situated in a group of buildings that have been used for a large number of things pver the years, but are also on the site of the "book burning" carried out by the Nazis, there's a monument built under the main square, which is a set of pure white empty bookshelves underground, which can be seen through a perspex window which is in the middle of the square (on the ground) so you look down into the empty bookshelves, there's enough shelves in the monument to hold all of the books that were burnt.
We left Humbolt museum and headed for checkpoint charlie, unfortunately we didn't have time to go into the museum here, which I think I would have enjoyed as it's full of successful and unsucessful escape attempts which would have been interesting. The checkpoint itself was a little dissapointing as it doesn't look anything like it used to, I guess it's a bit hard to have a functioning city and leave some of this stuff too much intact, it was of course designed to stop anyone passing through and is now in a busy part of the city as it's quite near the city centre. From there our guide took us to show us part of the Berlin wall that's still standing, first impressions are that's it's not quite big enough to keep people in. But that's before you understand the fact that there was also an inner wall on the Eastern side, along with quite a number of additional "deterents" to ensure that the East Germans stayed put, we then went to an area where you could get a better sense of how much blank space the East germans had on their side of the wall to make sure they had a clear shot at anyone trying to escape, it's pretty daunting really. From there we headed off to see Hitlers bunker, which now of course is a car park with no real indication of it's existence except for one small sign. The German government has made the decision not to make this any kind of tourist attraction as they're a little worried that the extreme right might turn it into a shrine or mecca of sorts, quite understandable really, the rumour is that they've only erected the sign to stop the local residents from getting visitor at their doors asking where exactly the bunker is. Funnily enough the area around the Bunker now houses a Mosque, a gay sauna/spa and some Jewish run shops, all of which I'm sure would please Mr Hitler no end.
From there we went to the Holocaust memorial, which is quite a sobering place, just to know that you're standing in/around a memorial that's dedicated to such misery and pain is quite an experience, worth a visit and I'd probably like to go back there and spend some more time walking around as we weren't there for very long. From here we headed to a much happier place, not only did we cross into West Berlin, but we headed for a Beer Garden for some good ol German fair, and of course a liter of beer. From there we headed to the victory monument, which the Germans erected after beating the French (yeah I know not really all that hard one would argue now!), interestingly, Hitler had the monument moved just before WWII as part of his planned remodelling of the city "Germania" which was going to be the captial city for the whole world once he was finished (history shows that he wasn't that far off getting there either). From here we went to the Brandunberg gate, which is an impressive structure and is now surrounded by a number of foreign embassies, although I didn't spot the Aussie embassy. This was pretty much the end of the cycle tour, I'd recommend it for numpties like me who knew very little, it would probably be good for those of you who know a little history as well, the cycling is actually minimal, it just means that you get to see more things as you get there a little faster, the guides are really knowledgeable and quite good fun as well.
Once the cycle tour was over we decided to walk back to checkpoint charlie to have a look at a holocaust museum that was nearby, this was very interesting as it showed a more in depth view of exactly how Hitler came to power and the stages that we went through during his quest for world domination, we didn't have enough time to view this properly either, and by the time we called it a day we were absolutely buggered! We walked back towards the Hotel and stopped for a bite to eat along the way.
We found Berlin to be a great city, I'll definitely be back to have a better look around and the general "vibe" of the city is also really good, it's a really friendly city and you seem to always feel safe walking around, it's also quite spread out, quite a bit of that is due to the east west split and the berlin wall as quite large areas of Land were left barren after WWII so the East Germans had a good view to protect their side of the wall.
Some pictures from our travels around Berlin
Tuesday 2 August 2011
Prague
After arriving in Prague around 5:30pm we checked in and went for a wander around, we were immeadiately drawn towards the Prague castle as we'd been told that it was a spectacular landmark, after getting a little bit lost in the streets of Prague, and stumbling across the usual array of churches and historical land marks we found the river. We had emerged from the city at the wrong bridge, but no matter, we could see the Charles bridge from where we were and we could also see the castle. We were in fact closer to the entrance to the Castle than we would have been if we had crossed the Charles bridge as originally planned, so we climbed up to the castle to have a good look around.
The Church in the middle of the Castle(or maybe it's the original city?) is amazing, it's scale is hard to fathom and the ornate features that adorne it aren't really captured by the photo's we took. We spent a good hour walking around the church (or maybe it's a cathedral given it's size), we also tried to take some photos of the gargoyles that were placed along the back of the church, but by this time the light was fading so they really didn't work out well.
On the way back to the hotel we managed to get lost in the streets of Prague again, so Prague has turned out to be the hardest city to navigate, for us at least. Once we'd worked out where we were and found our way back to the hotel, we called it a night.
Out of bed a bit late on day 2, all of this holiday stuff is tiring, I'll be going back to work for a break! We wandered off to find the Astrological clock in the old town square, which we'd walked past on our way home last night without realising. Found the clock and arrived when an Irish tour guide was giving a very theatrical description of the clock and some of it's history (which may or may not be true).
After the astrological clock, we headed towards one of the many national museums located around Prague, only to find that it' was closed on Mondays, so we headed for the Charles bridge, the bridge is pedestrian traffic only and as such it's littered with various buskers, artists etc, which gives it quite a nice atmosphere, from there we headed along the edge of the river in the general direction of the technological and agriculture museums. On our way we discovered the "weeing" fountain that you'll see some photos of, as well as the Frank(or Franz) Kafka museum, we spent a good hour and a half in the Frank Kafka museum, it was really quite well done and interesting.
We sat down for lunch after the Kafka museum, consumed the "small" 500ml of beer and continued on our way to the technilogical museum, unfortunately when we got there we discovered that Mondays is obviously the day that all of the government run museums are closed.
We headed back into town and as we'd walked quite a few miles today, we parked ourselves in a cafe and watched the world go by, quite a nice way to finish the day of in Prague really ;-)
For dinner we headed for a nice looking restaurant, only to find out afterwards that the restaurant is on the Michelin guide as one of the best restaurants in Prague and that the Chef is a celebrity Chef with his own television show. The food was very nice and the service was exceptional, although I must say that the apple strudel that I had at the beer garden in Salzburg was better than his (in my opinion anyway).
Off to Berlin tomorrow, looking forward to some of the sights there.
Prague - Day 1 Pics - The Prague Castle
Prague - Day 2 Pics
The Church in the middle of the Castle(or maybe it's the original city?) is amazing, it's scale is hard to fathom and the ornate features that adorne it aren't really captured by the photo's we took. We spent a good hour walking around the church (or maybe it's a cathedral given it's size), we also tried to take some photos of the gargoyles that were placed along the back of the church, but by this time the light was fading so they really didn't work out well.
On the way back to the hotel we managed to get lost in the streets of Prague again, so Prague has turned out to be the hardest city to navigate, for us at least. Once we'd worked out where we were and found our way back to the hotel, we called it a night.
Out of bed a bit late on day 2, all of this holiday stuff is tiring, I'll be going back to work for a break! We wandered off to find the Astrological clock in the old town square, which we'd walked past on our way home last night without realising. Found the clock and arrived when an Irish tour guide was giving a very theatrical description of the clock and some of it's history (which may or may not be true).
After the astrological clock, we headed towards one of the many national museums located around Prague, only to find that it' was closed on Mondays, so we headed for the Charles bridge, the bridge is pedestrian traffic only and as such it's littered with various buskers, artists etc, which gives it quite a nice atmosphere, from there we headed along the edge of the river in the general direction of the technological and agriculture museums. On our way we discovered the "weeing" fountain that you'll see some photos of, as well as the Frank(or Franz) Kafka museum, we spent a good hour and a half in the Frank Kafka museum, it was really quite well done and interesting.
We sat down for lunch after the Kafka museum, consumed the "small" 500ml of beer and continued on our way to the technilogical museum, unfortunately when we got there we discovered that Mondays is obviously the day that all of the government run museums are closed.
We headed back into town and as we'd walked quite a few miles today, we parked ourselves in a cafe and watched the world go by, quite a nice way to finish the day of in Prague really ;-)
For dinner we headed for a nice looking restaurant, only to find out afterwards that the restaurant is on the Michelin guide as one of the best restaurants in Prague and that the Chef is a celebrity Chef with his own television show. The food was very nice and the service was exceptional, although I must say that the apple strudel that I had at the beer garden in Salzburg was better than his (in my opinion anyway).
Off to Berlin tomorrow, looking forward to some of the sights there.
Prague - Day 1 Pics - The Prague Castle
Prague - Day 2 Pics
Monday 1 August 2011
Austria - Salzburg
We left Venice pretty early and headed for Salzburg, we decided not to take the toll roads for the entire drive from Venice to Salzburg so we spent the first couple of hours travelling through the Italian countryside which was nice.
One of the first things you notice as you head out of Italy towards Austria is of course the huge mountains that are appearing in front of you, which reminds me of something that we've notice all throug this trip, they're very good at building bridges and tunnels in this part of the world, the roads are just as amazing as many of the other things you see, just because of the engineering that's required to build roads through the terrain here.
We had lunch on the road not far from the Austrian border, we've eaten at the roadside "fast food" places on quite a few of the days that we've been travelling, it's been a real eye opener to go from McDonalds or KFC to roadside diners that have panini's, stroganoff, pizza, pasta etc these seem to be all through Europe and are a much nicer way to break you're trip, you can even sit down and have wine or beer with your meal, which most of the locals seem to do.
After crossing the border we stopped for an afternoon coffee break, and the first thing we notice is that everything in Austria is spotless, this theme carries on for our entire stay in Austria, it's very clean and you always feel safe here.
We arrived in Salzburg during the afternoon and walked into town for a quick look around, we stumbled onto Mozarts house and some very nice architecture, once we'd been wandering around fo a couple of hours we found a reasonable looking Restaurant and sat down for some dinner. Carol had a pork leg and I had goulash, both were very nice, and went well with the local beer, we then shared an apple strudel for desert which was excellent(OK, so I ate most of it).
On our second day in Salzburg we headed for Hellbrunn palace, which is a palace built by an Arch bishop who liked the idea of playing practical jokes on his guests, so he setup a number of "trick" fountains designed to get his guests wet, either while eating at the table or while visiting various attractions that he had scattered around his garden. The tour was really good, and we only got a little bit wet (the tour guide seems to enjoy his job and likes to get everyone at least a little bit wet).
We then toured the Palace itself and the museum which is also on the grounds, it has a good historical view of Austrian cullture which was also good to see.
Once we finished up at Hellbrun (by now it was raining quite heavily so if you were on the fountain tour now you were getting wet and it had nothing to do with the fountains!) we headed back into the centre of Salzburg and hiked up to Hohensalzburg, which was the original city of Salzburg and the main fortress which was used when the city was under seige. We spent the rest of the day in here as there was an aweful lot to see, by the time we left here we were pretty much done for the day, so we headed back down into Salzburg (the castle is on the hill above the city), had a quiet beer and headed back to the hotel.
We needed to do some washing to keep us in clean clothes so we headed off to the laundromat and ran into a nice couple (Aussie lad and Kiwi lass) who had just arrived in Salzburg. Dane was a pilot from Hamilton Island and was keen on heading out to "Hangar 7" tomorrow morning, which I hadn't heard of as yet, it's a hangar with a collection of Dietrich Mateschitz's(the Red Bull guy) toys, such as panes F1 cars, motor bikes etc. This sounded like something I'd like to have a look at so we offered to pick them up in the morning and give them a lift out there (it's about 3k's out of Salzburg and they were travelling by train).
We enjoyed a couple of hours at the hangar(I'm sure this is as close as I'll ever get to an F1 car), dropped Dane and Bridgit back in town and headed for Prague.
We really liked Austria, very friendly people, very beautiful place.
Some pictures from around Salzburg
One of the first things you notice as you head out of Italy towards Austria is of course the huge mountains that are appearing in front of you, which reminds me of something that we've notice all throug this trip, they're very good at building bridges and tunnels in this part of the world, the roads are just as amazing as many of the other things you see, just because of the engineering that's required to build roads through the terrain here.
We had lunch on the road not far from the Austrian border, we've eaten at the roadside "fast food" places on quite a few of the days that we've been travelling, it's been a real eye opener to go from McDonalds or KFC to roadside diners that have panini's, stroganoff, pizza, pasta etc these seem to be all through Europe and are a much nicer way to break you're trip, you can even sit down and have wine or beer with your meal, which most of the locals seem to do.
After crossing the border we stopped for an afternoon coffee break, and the first thing we notice is that everything in Austria is spotless, this theme carries on for our entire stay in Austria, it's very clean and you always feel safe here.
We arrived in Salzburg during the afternoon and walked into town for a quick look around, we stumbled onto Mozarts house and some very nice architecture, once we'd been wandering around fo a couple of hours we found a reasonable looking Restaurant and sat down for some dinner. Carol had a pork leg and I had goulash, both were very nice, and went well with the local beer, we then shared an apple strudel for desert which was excellent(OK, so I ate most of it).
On our second day in Salzburg we headed for Hellbrunn palace, which is a palace built by an Arch bishop who liked the idea of playing practical jokes on his guests, so he setup a number of "trick" fountains designed to get his guests wet, either while eating at the table or while visiting various attractions that he had scattered around his garden. The tour was really good, and we only got a little bit wet (the tour guide seems to enjoy his job and likes to get everyone at least a little bit wet).
We then toured the Palace itself and the museum which is also on the grounds, it has a good historical view of Austrian cullture which was also good to see.
Once we finished up at Hellbrun (by now it was raining quite heavily so if you were on the fountain tour now you were getting wet and it had nothing to do with the fountains!) we headed back into the centre of Salzburg and hiked up to Hohensalzburg, which was the original city of Salzburg and the main fortress which was used when the city was under seige. We spent the rest of the day in here as there was an aweful lot to see, by the time we left here we were pretty much done for the day, so we headed back down into Salzburg (the castle is on the hill above the city), had a quiet beer and headed back to the hotel.
We needed to do some washing to keep us in clean clothes so we headed off to the laundromat and ran into a nice couple (Aussie lad and Kiwi lass) who had just arrived in Salzburg. Dane was a pilot from Hamilton Island and was keen on heading out to "Hangar 7" tomorrow morning, which I hadn't heard of as yet, it's a hangar with a collection of Dietrich Mateschitz's(the Red Bull guy) toys, such as panes F1 cars, motor bikes etc. This sounded like something I'd like to have a look at so we offered to pick them up in the morning and give them a lift out there (it's about 3k's out of Salzburg and they were travelling by train).
We enjoyed a couple of hours at the hangar(I'm sure this is as close as I'll ever get to an F1 car), dropped Dane and Bridgit back in town and headed for Prague.
We really liked Austria, very friendly people, very beautiful place.
Some pictures from around Salzburg
Thursday 28 July 2011
Venice Day 1
Well after a poor night sleep due to the large amount of noise just outside our hotel room, we set off to explore Venice. We had a good day and basically made our way towards the Piazza St Marco which is one of the major Vanice attractions, on the way we visited the Guggenheim museum, being the complete twat that I am, I didn't realise that there were multiple Guggenheim museums around the world, I had a vague understanding that one existed in America, and I believed that it was in New York, but apart from that I knew nothing. I now know that Peggy Guggenheim collected a very large amount of modern art and began exhibiting the art quite a long time ago, she also had a daughter who was an artist, who typically for an artist died young from depression related problems (overdose of her medication).
I have to admit that for a large part of my tour around the Guggenheim, I was wondering what ot was all about, and in general I have decided that modern art is from artists who like myself suffer from a short attention span, meaning that they either can't finish what they start (much like me) or get distracted(much like me) by other things during the creation of a piece, and include the distractions into the piece that they are working on.
Either way, to me art that has to be described to you to be appreciated is missing the mark, but as usual on this trip, I know very little and much more important people than myself have already decided otherwise, so I'll leave you to make up your own mind.....
Once out of the Guggenheim we continued on to the Piazza St Marco, and discovered that the square (or plaza) had been overtaken by a fashion show and some major construction works, so we took some photo's and had a good look around, but we moved on quite quickly due to the large crowds and lack of photo opportunities.
On the way back from the Guggenheim, we discovered a little art gallery that had a very strong opinion on American culture, see photo's of Mr R McDonald and Ms Wonder Woman and Batman for an idea of what I mean. Funny thing was that as we walked into the courtyard with the scuplture of Sir Ronald's head in someone else's hand, a large group of USA citizens followed us in, "oh that's not nice" and "what's that all about" were the phrases being uttered, so I felt compelled to mention that it was the venetians opinion on American culture, meanwhile Carol was telling me to shutup and 2 british tourists thought it was very funny. The citizens of the USA still didn't seem to understand, or didn't hear me as I didn't have an American accent, either way I thought I should at least try and clear up their confusion.....
After "the incident", we moved on to have some lunch and discovered a cafe that was serving 1L beers, so I had one of those (of course) and we eventually moved on to have a look at the Rialto bridge, this once again was covered with banners advertising various things, so we didn't take any photo's, but the Bridge itself was impressive and worth a look in itself.
Overall Venice is a lovely city for a visit, tomorrow morning we're planning on rising early to head across town to photograph the Sigh bridge and we might take some piccies of some of the other sights as we come back, once we're done with that we'll head off to Salzburg.
I hope you're all enjoying the blog, talk to you soon, Richard and Carol
Pics from our day in Venice
I have to admit that for a large part of my tour around the Guggenheim, I was wondering what ot was all about, and in general I have decided that modern art is from artists who like myself suffer from a short attention span, meaning that they either can't finish what they start (much like me) or get distracted(much like me) by other things during the creation of a piece, and include the distractions into the piece that they are working on.
Either way, to me art that has to be described to you to be appreciated is missing the mark, but as usual on this trip, I know very little and much more important people than myself have already decided otherwise, so I'll leave you to make up your own mind.....
Once out of the Guggenheim we continued on to the Piazza St Marco, and discovered that the square (or plaza) had been overtaken by a fashion show and some major construction works, so we took some photo's and had a good look around, but we moved on quite quickly due to the large crowds and lack of photo opportunities.
On the way back from the Guggenheim, we discovered a little art gallery that had a very strong opinion on American culture, see photo's of Mr R McDonald and Ms Wonder Woman and Batman for an idea of what I mean. Funny thing was that as we walked into the courtyard with the scuplture of Sir Ronald's head in someone else's hand, a large group of USA citizens followed us in, "oh that's not nice" and "what's that all about" were the phrases being uttered, so I felt compelled to mention that it was the venetians opinion on American culture, meanwhile Carol was telling me to shutup and 2 british tourists thought it was very funny. The citizens of the USA still didn't seem to understand, or didn't hear me as I didn't have an American accent, either way I thought I should at least try and clear up their confusion.....
After "the incident", we moved on to have some lunch and discovered a cafe that was serving 1L beers, so I had one of those (of course) and we eventually moved on to have a look at the Rialto bridge, this once again was covered with banners advertising various things, so we didn't take any photo's, but the Bridge itself was impressive and worth a look in itself.
Overall Venice is a lovely city for a visit, tomorrow morning we're planning on rising early to head across town to photograph the Sigh bridge and we might take some piccies of some of the other sights as we come back, once we're done with that we'll head off to Salzburg.
I hope you're all enjoying the blog, talk to you soon, Richard and Carol
Pics from our day in Venice
Back to Florence to see David
Hi All,
Fairly short blog today as most of the day was spent travelling from Rome to Florence or from Florence to Venice.
Anyway, we had a relatively late start again today, can't seem to put my finger on why, but it may have had something to do with the beer and wine consumption, we did manage to rise at around 8:30am anyway and after breakfast, checkout and walking back to where the car was parked we were on our way by about 10:00am, back on the highways, watching the locals refuse to drive within the lanes, we had a short stop for lunch bewteen Rome and Florence and arrived on the outskirts of florance around 1:00pm. We parked the car paid for parking and walked to the bus stop. We managed to have a conversation with a local to figure out which bus to catch and jumped on. The driver wasn't intereested in taking any money and neither was the ticketing machine, it would seem that you should purchase a ticket before you get on the bus, andvalidate the ticket once on the bus, only about 10% of the people who got on the bust did anything about validating a ticket, and the driver didn't seem to care whether you had a ticket or not, so I'm assuming that it's a random check that happens once in a while and it didn't happen on our way into Florence so it was all good.
we got off the bus about a block from the accademia (where David is standing) and wandered down there. Once there we found 2 CLEARLY marked lines (it will become clear why that's important later), one for the people who had booked a time, and one for the people like us who had just shown up. We could tell from the length of the line that we were in for a long wait, but we wanted to see David so we went to the end of the line and waited. I was estimating about 1.5 hours worth of waiting, but after about an hour we were at the front of the line, it was at this point that the Americans started to appear, each one(or group) and there were multiple, showeed up at the front of the line and asked the Italian guard where the line was and how long they'd have to wait, the couple in front of us spoke a little english so they tried to help out, but in between Americans we managed to expose ourselves so it bacame our job! much to my disgust we had to explain the whole thing to each of the STUPID Americans that showed up, as I mentioned earlier the two lines were clearly marked in english, so much so that Carol and I, who aren't particularly seasoned travellers managed to read the signs and walk to the back of the line without having to push in between the people standing in line and ask dumb questions.
Before being identified as english speakers who understood what was going on because we could read, we even watched one american put on disgusted look when the Italian guard managed to convey to them that he didn't speak english, I could only stand back in awe and imagine the same person if an Italian dared to approach them in their home town and speak to them in Italian, asking for directions, I can only imagine how they'd react if the roles were reversed!!!
Anyway, after surviving the onslaught of people who couldn't read, we entered the Acadamia, the art was amazing(sorry no photo's allowed, so the photo I took from outside 2 days ago is the best we've got), but rest assured that it's worth standing in line and even worth dealing with the stupid people!! David is a massive figure, and funnily enough, even though apparently his proportions are very accurate, I would think his hands and feet are a bit too big for the rest of him, but what would I know!!!
Once we'd wandered around the museum for a couple of hours we headed back to the car, and as we still didn't know how to get a bus ticket we walked, only took about 40 minutes and was pleasant enough even though it was sprinkling rain.
Back in the car and a roughly 3 hour trip to Venice, pretty much without incident apart from the usual can't possibly drive in my lane and my own issues with understanding the speed limits......
Got to Venice and parked the car, was asked the leave the keys in it by a young man in a white shirt who looked official anyway, hopefully we'll still have a car when we leave Venice!!
Hotel was easy enough to find, I'll give you the run down on Florence after dinner, it's been a good day and we've enjoyed ourselves again.
Hope this finds everyone well, talk to you all soon, Richard and Carol
A Couple of Photo's from Florence - sorry none from inside the Academia
Fairly short blog today as most of the day was spent travelling from Rome to Florence or from Florence to Venice.
Anyway, we had a relatively late start again today, can't seem to put my finger on why, but it may have had something to do with the beer and wine consumption, we did manage to rise at around 8:30am anyway and after breakfast, checkout and walking back to where the car was parked we were on our way by about 10:00am, back on the highways, watching the locals refuse to drive within the lanes, we had a short stop for lunch bewteen Rome and Florence and arrived on the outskirts of florance around 1:00pm. We parked the car paid for parking and walked to the bus stop. We managed to have a conversation with a local to figure out which bus to catch and jumped on. The driver wasn't intereested in taking any money and neither was the ticketing machine, it would seem that you should purchase a ticket before you get on the bus, andvalidate the ticket once on the bus, only about 10% of the people who got on the bust did anything about validating a ticket, and the driver didn't seem to care whether you had a ticket or not, so I'm assuming that it's a random check that happens once in a while and it didn't happen on our way into Florence so it was all good.
we got off the bus about a block from the accademia (where David is standing) and wandered down there. Once there we found 2 CLEARLY marked lines (it will become clear why that's important later), one for the people who had booked a time, and one for the people like us who had just shown up. We could tell from the length of the line that we were in for a long wait, but we wanted to see David so we went to the end of the line and waited. I was estimating about 1.5 hours worth of waiting, but after about an hour we were at the front of the line, it was at this point that the Americans started to appear, each one(or group) and there were multiple, showeed up at the front of the line and asked the Italian guard where the line was and how long they'd have to wait, the couple in front of us spoke a little english so they tried to help out, but in between Americans we managed to expose ourselves so it bacame our job! much to my disgust we had to explain the whole thing to each of the STUPID Americans that showed up, as I mentioned earlier the two lines were clearly marked in english, so much so that Carol and I, who aren't particularly seasoned travellers managed to read the signs and walk to the back of the line without having to push in between the people standing in line and ask dumb questions.
Before being identified as english speakers who understood what was going on because we could read, we even watched one american put on disgusted look when the Italian guard managed to convey to them that he didn't speak english, I could only stand back in awe and imagine the same person if an Italian dared to approach them in their home town and speak to them in Italian, asking for directions, I can only imagine how they'd react if the roles were reversed!!!
Anyway, after surviving the onslaught of people who couldn't read, we entered the Acadamia, the art was amazing(sorry no photo's allowed, so the photo I took from outside 2 days ago is the best we've got), but rest assured that it's worth standing in line and even worth dealing with the stupid people!! David is a massive figure, and funnily enough, even though apparently his proportions are very accurate, I would think his hands and feet are a bit too big for the rest of him, but what would I know!!!
Once we'd wandered around the museum for a couple of hours we headed back to the car, and as we still didn't know how to get a bus ticket we walked, only took about 40 minutes and was pleasant enough even though it was sprinkling rain.
Back in the car and a roughly 3 hour trip to Venice, pretty much without incident apart from the usual can't possibly drive in my lane and my own issues with understanding the speed limits......
Got to Venice and parked the car, was asked the leave the keys in it by a young man in a white shirt who looked official anyway, hopefully we'll still have a car when we leave Venice!!
Hotel was easy enough to find, I'll give you the run down on Florence after dinner, it's been a good day and we've enjoyed ourselves again.
Hope this finds everyone well, talk to you all soon, Richard and Carol
A Couple of Photo's from Florence - sorry none from inside the Academia
Wednesday 27 July 2011
Rome Day 2 - Vatican City - bah humbug!
Sorry if the title of blog offends, but having the Catholic Church ask for $106 Euro or approximately $160AUD for the two of us to enter is a little offensive in itself.
Before we'd arrived at the vatican we'd already looked up the ticket purchase and decided that although we'd both like to see the sistine chapel, that was more than we we're prepared to pay.
I must say that the main square at the front of the Vatican city is very impressive, including the main road leading up to the square which is very wide for a street in Rome and very weel kept in comparison to many others. Unfortunately there were some works underway around the front of the Vatican so some of the buildings were shrouded by scaffolding and hessian, and there was one "naf" as Carol put it, 60 foot high picture of Pope John Paul the 2nd hanging on one side of the square. So although it was all very impressive, it was also a little discomforting to see the absolute extravagance of the place.
Before we made it to the Vatican, we had started the day quite late, mainly due to some over indulgence of our own on the previous evening, but once up and going we walked the city from one end to the other again, and I swear by the end of this "holiday" we'll both have massive calves due to the sheer number of kilometers we're covering on foot. Anyway as usual I digress, on our travels during the morning we "found shit" which is the phrase we've coined when we stumble upon things we weren't really looking for, and because we took a less than direct route to the Vatican, we managed to find some very interesting things, we stumbled upon the Italian parliament, and even took photo's of the building without being arrested or shot at, you'll also see a picture of the tall skinny thing that's in the square (or Piazza as they're called in Italy, see I am learning something) I attempted to take an "artsy" photo of it where the sun is just peaking around the edge of it, nice eh?
Once we'd finished being nervous while taking photo's with about 15 Italian police standing around doing what they do best (smoke and talk on their mobile phones) we kept on heading in the general direction of the Vatican, the next thing we "found" was the Castel Sant' Angelo, which was originally someones tomb (Hadrian was the blokes name), he was a Roman Emperor at some stage and was keen enough to build this massive structure to house his corpse. Pretty nice digs to, with a great view of the Vatican (which of course wasn't there when he built the thing!!) As the Catholic church moved in there and used it as a fortress for quite a while after Hadrian died, there was an amazing amount of lavish decoration done (anyone else noticing a theme here?), pretty amazing to look at anyway, and they even had a recreation of one of the popes bedrooms.
Once we'd spent a few hours wandering around someones tomb and then headed off to the Vatican for a while, Carol wanted to check out the Trevi fountain again, to hopefully get a bit closer to it and maybe get a better photo, so we walked all the way back across Rome to find the same massive crowd that was there yesterday (not surprising really!) so we decided to visit our favourite cafe and drink 660ml bottles of beer again (nope we didn't learn). It was really nice watching all of the different people head to and from the Trevi fountain, as well as watching the various Statues attempt to extract money from the tourists. We even struck up a conversation with a belgium couple, where between their English and Carol's German we managed to have quite a good conversation.
Eventually we decided that we should stop drinking beer and get something to eat (after 3 bottles each!) so we went back to the hotel, changed and went looking for a nice restaurant, we found one not far from the Hotel. I had a steak, which I think will be the last one in Europe, as although it was really well cooked, it was expensive and wasn't a great cut of meat, I'm assuming that we're just spoilt in Australia and meat is soo expensive over here that this is more the norm unless you head to a REALLY expensive restaurant. Carol had a really nice spaghetti dish and we also found a nice bottle of Shiraz.
Anyway that was day 2 in Rome, tomorrow we head back to Florence to have a quick look at David's bits and then we're off to Venice....
Rome Day 2 - Vatican City and Castel Sant Angelo
Before we'd arrived at the vatican we'd already looked up the ticket purchase and decided that although we'd both like to see the sistine chapel, that was more than we we're prepared to pay.
I must say that the main square at the front of the Vatican city is very impressive, including the main road leading up to the square which is very wide for a street in Rome and very weel kept in comparison to many others. Unfortunately there were some works underway around the front of the Vatican so some of the buildings were shrouded by scaffolding and hessian, and there was one "naf" as Carol put it, 60 foot high picture of Pope John Paul the 2nd hanging on one side of the square. So although it was all very impressive, it was also a little discomforting to see the absolute extravagance of the place.
Before we made it to the Vatican, we had started the day quite late, mainly due to some over indulgence of our own on the previous evening, but once up and going we walked the city from one end to the other again, and I swear by the end of this "holiday" we'll both have massive calves due to the sheer number of kilometers we're covering on foot. Anyway as usual I digress, on our travels during the morning we "found shit" which is the phrase we've coined when we stumble upon things we weren't really looking for, and because we took a less than direct route to the Vatican, we managed to find some very interesting things, we stumbled upon the Italian parliament, and even took photo's of the building without being arrested or shot at, you'll also see a picture of the tall skinny thing that's in the square (or Piazza as they're called in Italy, see I am learning something) I attempted to take an "artsy" photo of it where the sun is just peaking around the edge of it, nice eh?
Once we'd finished being nervous while taking photo's with about 15 Italian police standing around doing what they do best (smoke and talk on their mobile phones) we kept on heading in the general direction of the Vatican, the next thing we "found" was the Castel Sant' Angelo, which was originally someones tomb (Hadrian was the blokes name), he was a Roman Emperor at some stage and was keen enough to build this massive structure to house his corpse. Pretty nice digs to, with a great view of the Vatican (which of course wasn't there when he built the thing!!) As the Catholic church moved in there and used it as a fortress for quite a while after Hadrian died, there was an amazing amount of lavish decoration done (anyone else noticing a theme here?), pretty amazing to look at anyway, and they even had a recreation of one of the popes bedrooms.
Once we'd spent a few hours wandering around someones tomb and then headed off to the Vatican for a while, Carol wanted to check out the Trevi fountain again, to hopefully get a bit closer to it and maybe get a better photo, so we walked all the way back across Rome to find the same massive crowd that was there yesterday (not surprising really!) so we decided to visit our favourite cafe and drink 660ml bottles of beer again (nope we didn't learn). It was really nice watching all of the different people head to and from the Trevi fountain, as well as watching the various Statues attempt to extract money from the tourists. We even struck up a conversation with a belgium couple, where between their English and Carol's German we managed to have quite a good conversation.
Eventually we decided that we should stop drinking beer and get something to eat (after 3 bottles each!) so we went back to the hotel, changed and went looking for a nice restaurant, we found one not far from the Hotel. I had a steak, which I think will be the last one in Europe, as although it was really well cooked, it was expensive and wasn't a great cut of meat, I'm assuming that we're just spoilt in Australia and meat is soo expensive over here that this is more the norm unless you head to a REALLY expensive restaurant. Carol had a really nice spaghetti dish and we also found a nice bottle of Shiraz.
Anyway that was day 2 in Rome, tomorrow we head back to Florence to have a quick look at David's bits and then we're off to Venice....
Rome Day 2 - Vatican City and Castel Sant Angelo
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