Parasailing!

Years ago (like 15!) I observed some one parasailing in Sydney, and have wanted to do it since. Well, I got my chance !

We're in Nice, on the French Riviera, and apart from the gorgeous water and pebbly beaches, they have lots of water sports, so we agreed I could do my parasailing :)



And then coming in to land:




It's not like an adrenaline sort of thing at all - you kind of float around above the water, just looking at everything. It's really quite slow and relaxing, except for the final part coming in to land. Definitely worth the opportunity !

what did surprise me was no need to sign a disclaimer or anything, just "here you go"

Giggle at the dog

We observed the following scene in Lyon.

TGV < ICE.

Dear France,

Your train system is atrocious and disgusting. You market your trains as being the best in Europe, and are the only network that absolutely requires additional fares for railpass holders. Your additional fares are not justified. I would rather travel on Regional trains.

- Every other western country uses numerical identifiers for their platforms. Why must you use letters. It's as if you're being different for the point of being different.

- Every other western country has the same train, on the same platform, at the same time, for it's regular run. ICE1001 will always be on platform 4, at 8:30am for instance. Always. Guests can look at multiple small departures boards, or quickly glance at a big one. Having trains often departing on different platforms, and only updating your big screen at the last moment causes two major problems. 1) Every passenger for the entire train station stands in front of it, staring it at, causing problems passing through the station, or seeing the screen. 2) Every rushes at the last minute to the platform.

- Your "First Class" is backwards, and worse than 2nd class Romanian or 'RE' style trains. They are more cramped, more uncomfortable, and cause much more sore ass than any other train we've been on. The cabin is over heated, and what the hell is the deal with no powerpoints? We've been on second class RE trains that have powerpoints, yet you can't put them in first class ? Get Real. Do ANY business travelers regularly use the trains ?

- Please remember that non-French speaking people, as well as tourists, use your trains. If it's good enough for every other country to announce things in as many as 4 different languages, it wouldn't kill you. It is pure and simple ARROGANCE to not cater to German, Italian or even Dutch speaking travellers. And that's without even mentioning the language that's widely known and identified as being the international language.

- Two trains, two separate route numbers, one platform, one destination. What the fuck is this ? If your engines can't cope with longer trains, run more trains, more frequently, like everyone else. This bullshit of having TWO separate trains, going from Lyon to Nice, leaving the same platform, at the same time is stupid and utterly nonsensical.

- Reservation essential? This is just a hollow ploy for money. The carriage is not even half full (probably because your train system is so fucking useless it's not worth paying for first class.)

If I NEVER had to catch another TGV, I'd be a very, very happy little man. I don't care that the RE (sorry, TER, you have to be different again don't you) trains are slower, and stop more often. I'd prefer to be on them. At least they have power.

First day in Nice

Day to explore Nice.

Amazed by the colours of the water.

Walked up to citadel/ rocks/lookout/waterfall/ruins of old church/parts of old town, incl Place Garibaldi.

Nice Night

Arrived to Nice late. Was dark. Decided to have dinner in the hotel. Good food, especially the bread. Went out for a walk after this. Could see fireworks down near the beach, but didn't manage to get there before they finished unfortunately. There was a big promenade party! Awesome. Stages with bands singing different styles of music. We were lucky we didn't miss this. Very humid, hot night. I loved it. Wandered up and down the beach and promenade. Then somehow ran in to an old friend. What are the chances?!

Bern, Switzerland

Bern is a much much nicer city than Zurich. It’s quaint and feels small, which it’s not if you consider the regions we came in through. This time we changed things up a bit, and followed the suggested walking path on the map we got at the hotel.

Lyon

Caught the train to Lyon. Worked out how to store luggage for a 2-3 hours. Once we'd worked that out we went outside and then became confused as to how to get a tram in the city, so instead we walked. Not that far. Saw as much of Lyon as we could. Most of the main things. Saw the pretty Rhone river, which flows down from Geneva and the not so pretty other river.

Didn't go up the massive hill obviously, as not enough time. Walked through the shopping strip to a big square at the end. Grabbed some subway for lunch, as it was quick and we could eat on the go. Yum. Saw opera house and sculptures around this. Walked back to station (well, most of way... jumped a tram for the last bit), grabbed our stuff, a flan chocolat for Andy and then proceeded to wait around for them to decide where to put our train. Finally they chose a platform.

Then even more chaos, as they actually had 2 trains going to the same place. One didn't show up straight away (ours, of course) and one nervous looking conductor was standing there trying to answer everyone's questions about where they were meant to get on their part of the train, as it wasn't clear (and also cause half the train still hadn't arrived. When it did it was cramped and uncomfortable with no information. So much for TGV's being great. Speed is all they an do... and others do this just as well, if not better (railjet's)

The Golden Pass

The Golden Pass is a section of Swiss railway, that takes in some of the most beautiful countryside. It's pretty spectacular in summer, and I'd love to do it in winter. We initially did only the section from Luzerne to Interlaken, which is where all the following (partial stream-of-conciousness) came from. I'd highly recommend this train route to anyone.

To start with, a short 30 second glimpse along side Lake Brienz

Switzerland

I have to be honest. Your mountains, plains and valleys are stunningly gorgeous and an excellent reason to see the country, and travel on trains. It's a shame the cities and urban areas, for the most part, let you down.

Our first born....

Is what Switzerland requires to buy a serving of chips from a street stall. That, or 8 Swiss francs. For real ?

Switzerland is possibly also the only country in the western world, where you can see single military guys catching trams, with the public, with their weapons just slung across their back.

Anywhere else, it'd get stolen...

"Feeling Buildings"

We noticed a few of these while we were in Austria, and think they are a fantastic idea. It's basically a scale model of a building (this one is the Art museum in Graz), which a vision impaired person could run their hands and fingers over, thus "seeing" the building. It has brail all around the sides, which possibly describes the building ?

I think they should be used in lots of places.

Dachau, a trip through misery

While we were staying in Munich, one of our side trips was a day trip to the site of the former concentration camp, Dachau. It really is a day trip, and worth taking your time to explore and listen. It's not as brutal as some articles have suggested Auschwitz is, but still sobering. It's about the only day we've not had a camera with us, and I strongly recommend this. Concentration camps don't seem like the sort of place to take a camera. Especially not to take happy snaps of the gas chamber, like one idiot with a big grin was doing.

Train to Salzburg

On our way into Graz, we’d already noticed the huge mountains, found ourselves looking down at verdant, green valleys with little villages, surrounded by the towering mountains, lots of low lying cloud, which the ever-present rain kept breaking through.

Graz - Surfin the River...

Despite having a pretty shitty transit system, Graz has been much better to us than Vienna. Not in terms of weather, where it was pretty much the same, but it’s a nicer feeling city. Still seems very shopping focussed, but there’s lots of funky architecture to look at also.

More photos, location-tagging

As we've got stable, free internet access while in Graz, we've uploaded some more photos.

I've also started adding them to the Flickr Map, which you can see here.

Romanian Lightning Storm !

It is 3:10am, or 2:10am, take your pick dependant on the time zone. We’ve just passed through another station, and neither of us are really sleeping. But it’s ok we’re awake because over to the south it’s relatively flat and there is an absolutely astounding lightning storm. We’ve never seen anything like it.

Berlin Bubbles

While wandering Berlin's streets and parks, we noticed the following fellow creating gigantic big bubble balloons. Enjoy.

You can check out our other videos here

Brasov, Romania

Once we eventually got to Brasov (only an hour late), and found our way to our hotel, we were very surprised to realise the actual size of the place. We were expecting a relatively small village, nothing particular big, but Brasov has turned out to be a city that was definitely bigger than Wagga, and maybe even Canberra size. This is really hammered home once you get up on top of the hill, to the “Hollywood” sign and look down at everything.

Border crossing, with Stamps !

Ok, so it’s Romania not Transylvania, but still. We’ve been on plenty of trains, and crossed multiple borders already, however not only is this our first very long trip (11 hours) but it’s also our first border crossing.

Washing in Budapest

Budapest was supposed to be a washing day, after Vienna failed to really have any reachable Laundromats. We found recent updates about two particular places in Pest, and on our first day, went for the 8 minute walk to find the first one, which seems to have only very very recently closed, in fact even the Telegraph was reporting, on a page last updated “8th August, 2010” that Irisz Szalon was still open. Guess they are idiots, although to be fair, I don’t expect much better from them. Either way, our washing had to then be put off till Monday, when the Liliom TextilSalon was open again.

Buda(Pest)

Budapest... a city divided into two by the Danube. Comprising of Buda on one side and Pest on the other, the two halves of the city are different in their feel and lifestyle. Pest, where we stayed, has more nightlife, shopping and restaurants, while Buda has the old castle area and the citadel, both high up above the city with fantastic views. Our feet are very sore.

Vienna - Town of Amusement park !

As you head into Vienna, one of the first things we noticed is that it seemed like a very, very large city. I haven’t looked at the figures and sizes, but it felt larger than Berlin, which is already larger than Paris. Still, for all that, I wasn’t a big fan of Vienna.

From Prague to Vienna

So the other day, we were catching a train from Frankfurt to Dresden. Now it turns out this is the same train that goes from Frankfurt via Dresden and Prague, to Vienna. So this is the 3rd time we’ve been on this train. Not necessarily the exact same train, but the same route – EC173. And when we got on a Frankfurt way back when, a Canadian backpacker got on at the last second, asking if this was going to Prague, and hoping to be on the right train, so we had a good chat for a while. Imagine my surprise when I went for a little walk just now, to find the same guy sitting further down in one of the other first class carriages. What are the chances?

Damn rain, but good food

For 99% of our trip, including both Ireland and the Isle of Man, we've had pretty stunning weather almost all of the time.

Unfortunately, it has turned on us today and is raining fairly heavily. Kinda puts a dampener on our explorations. We're expecting tomorrow to be clear, but who can tell...
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Whiling away the hours...

This afternoon, we arrived in Prague. This followed a roughly 2 hour journey from Dresden, through some of what was possible the most stunning scenery I've seen yet. More about that later.
The hotel (Kafka's place of employment!) had previously emailed us an offer for a dinner cruise for EUR47 per person, and despite breaking our budget somewhat, we figured what the hell, we may as well do this.

More Photos!

Having permanent, free, internet access in our room (Thank you Century Old City, Prague) means we can do some housekeeping, such as uploading a number of photos.

We'll have some more to come, but for now, check here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47930781@N03/sets/72157624511540723/

Dresden - Town of Fountains

in Deutschland ist alles am Sonntag geschlossen. (In English - everything is closed in Germany on Sundays.) Well, not everything, but most things. And so we found ourselves in Dresden, with pretty much everything closed. Our hotel looked over Prager Straser, which seems to be a shopping strip. Our floor to ceiling windows gave us a wonderful view. Not content, we went for a walk.