Tuesday 31 July 2007

Montenegro

Not particularly prompt departure from Dubrovnik, but we're not famed for our early rises. There was quite a queue at the Montenegro border crossing, probably because most people, like us, had to buy car insurance and it wasn't possible to do it before the check point. All that bought and approved (and Ben having had to use the world's worst toilet, think Trainspotting but worse - lucky he's a boy) we were on our way.

First stop, Kotor. An amazing walled town nestled into a fjord ... yes they have them in southern Europe too! The town is overlooked by some impressive walls and fortifications:
Wouldn't like to be the invading force here!

Inside the town the streets are like a labyrinth; it's lucky the place is very small so you're never lost for long. This church, from the 1200s, was in a square at a jaunty angle which maybe doesn't come across in the picture:
Joanna and the jaunty church
After getting lost and finding ourselves reasonably quickly, we got on the road to the day's final destination: Cetinje. The route we took was non-direct to say the least as it snaked up the mountain. But Ben enjoyed the hair-pin turns and it meant we were able to get some fantastic views of the fjord and Kotor:
Slartibartfast left his mark here too ... (hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy)
And for those who have been wondering how the clio is getting on ... here she is in all her dirty glory!
flying the flag - literally
With all the winding and twisting we managed about 40km in a couple of hours! Cetinje is the former royal capital but has seen better days. Looking for somewhere to stay was a little tricky as there didn't seem to be any hotels, hostels or information. Luckily we asked the right people for help who invited to stay with them for the princely sum of 10 Euros. Tight old Ben was very impressed. They had a lovely little granny flat and kept trying to feed and water us; Joanna left with a couple of boxes of tea because they decided she must be missing it!

Not so much to picture here, but this is the monastary which apparently is home to St John the Baptist's mumified hand and a piece of the cross:
cool monks

Got a bit caught up in the town's museums because Ben was keen to practice his reading of the cyrillic alphabet - show off! The museums were fascinating, charting the history and culture of a country we didn't know much about. So we didn't end up leaving Cetinje in the morning so much as after 4pm ...

Although it doesn't look far on a map, getting to the Serbian border took quite a bit of time because of the all the narrow, windy roads carved into the steep mountain sides:
Montenegro does ravines!
The landscapes really are amazing, with the tunnels roughly hewn into the rock, and the steep, steep, cliffs on the box-like mountains.

Got to Serbia around 6, not sure if we needed a green card. Insurance offices still seemed to be open, but after a long time recording all our details and various forms of ID, we didn't turn out to need any. We're pretty sure we didn't anyway, as they certainly didn't make us buy it...

And so we drove on into Serbia, unsure where to spend the night...

Sunday 29 July 2007

Driving Table

Well here it is, my table of our actual driving. Now it's up, I'll try to keep it updated. As it shows we're in Serbia at the moment, aiming to head to Sofia, Bulgaria tomorrow. That obviously means we're still a couple of updates behind, but we'll get to that asap.
Also updating our Flickr album, adding some photos there (including some back in Spain...). The link to our Flickr page is on the side bar. The map stuff all gets a bit hap-hazard east of Italy, so my Montenegro locations are necessarily a bit of guess-work.

Date Trip Country Distance (miles) Total Clio Trip Miles Distance (kms) Total Clio Trip kms Total Clio Miles
June 11 Calais - Rambouillet France 214 214 342 342 131258
June 12 Rambouillet - Bordeaux France 342 556 547 890 131600
June 13 Bordeaux - San Sebastian Spain 183 739 293 1182 131783
June 15 San Sebastian - Bilbao - Llanes Spain 184 923 294 1477 131967
June 16 Llanes - Vila Real Portugal 386 1309 619 2094 132353
June 17 Vila Real - Porto Portugal 108 1417 173 2273 132461
June 19 Porto - Tavira Portugal 372 1789 597 2870 132833
June 22 Tavira - Alcala de Guidaira Spain 142 1931 228 3097 132975
June 23 Alcala de Guidaira - Sevilla Spain 26 1957 42 3139 133001
June 24 Sevilla - Granada Spain 167 2124 267 3407 133168
June 27 Granada - Valencia Spain 363 2487 582 3989 133531
June 30 Valencia - Barcelona Spain 237 2724 380 4369 133768
July 3 Barcelona - San Remo Italy 515 3239 826 5195 134283
July 4 San Remo - Verona Italy 272 3511 436 5632 134555
July 8 Verona - Postojna Slovenia 259 3770 415 6047 134814
July 9 Postojna - Ljubljana Slovenia 35 3805 56 6103 134849
July 11 Ljubljana - Maribor Slovenia 136 3941 218 6321 134985
July 12 Maribor - Ely UK 0 3941 0 6321 134985
July 17 Ely - Maribor Slovenia 0 3941 0 6321 134985
July 18 Maribor - Plitvicke Jezera Croatia 159 4100 255 6576 135144
July 20 Plitvicke Jezera - Trogir Croatia 197 4297 316 6892 135341
July 22 Trogir - Split - Bosnia Border - Gradac Croatia 139 4436 223 7115 135480
July 23 Gradac - Mostar (Bosnia) - Dubrovnik Croatia 166 4602 266 7382 135646
July 26 Dubrovnik - Kotor - Cetinje Montenegro 91 4693 146 7528 135747
July 27 Cetinje - Zlatibor Serbia 177 4870 284 7811 135914
July 29 Zlatibor - Sofia Bulgaria 280 5150 448 8261 136194
July 31 Sofia - Rila Bulgaria 75 5225 120 8381 136269
Aug 1 Rila - Mt Olympus (Plaka) Greece 215 5440 344 8726 136484
Aug 3 Mt Olympus - Delphi Greece 229 5669 366 9093 136713
Aug 4 Delphi - Athens Greece 125 5794 200 9293 136838
Aug 7 Athens - Thessaloniki Greece 316 6110 506 9800 137154
Aug 9 Thessaloniki - Gallıpolı (Eceabat) Turkey 343 6453 549 10349 137497
Aug 11 Biga - Edremit Turkey 140 6593 225 10574 137637
Aug 12 Edremit - Bergama Turkey 68 6661 109 10684 137705
Aug 14 Bergama - Cunda Turkey 48 6709 77 10761 137753
Aug 15 Cunda - Yanova - Istanbul Turkey 269 6978 430 11191 138022
Aug 19 Istanbul - Burgas Bulgaria 228 7206 367 11558 138250
Aug 20 Burgas - Varna Bulgaria 93 7299 149 11707 138343
Aug 22 Varna - Bucharest Romania 258 7557 414 12121 138601
Aug 24 Bucharest - Sinaia - Brasov Romania 109 7666 175 12296 138710
Aug 26 Brasov (Bran roundtrip) - Chernivtsi Ukraine 318 7984 510 12806 139028
Aug 27 Chernivtsi - Lviv Ukraine 193 8177 310 13116 139221
Aug 29 Lviv - Kosice Slovakia 240 8417 385 13501 139461
Aug 30 Kosice - Levoca Slovakia 62 8479 99 13600 139523
Sep 1 Tatras Roundtrip Slovakia 88 8567 141 13741 139611
Sep 2 Levoca - Zakopane Poland 65 8632 104 13845 139676
Sep 3 Zakopane - Krakow Poland 98 8730 157 14003 139774
Auschwitz & other day trips Poland 150 8880 241 14244 139924
Sep 10 Krakow - Warsaw Poland 218 9098 350 14594 140142
Sep 11 Warsaw - Olsztyn Poland 138 9236 221 14815 140280
Sep 12 Olsztyn - Kaliningrad Russia 156 9392 250 15065 140436
Sep 14 Kaliningrad - Siauliai Lithuania 222 9614 356 15421 140658
Sep 15 Siauliai - Riga Latvia 93 9707 149 15570 140751
Sep 18 Riga - Tallinn Estonia 210 9917 337 15907 140961
Sep 21 Tallinn - Turku Finland 115 10032 184 16091 141076
Sep 23 Turku - Helsinki (and the end of the road) Finland 131 10163 210 16301 141207

Saturday 28 July 2007

Dubrovnik, Croatia

First day in Dubrovnik was a beach day. We were staying in Kupari 6km south which we think may have been a swanky resort in its day, but has seen much better days. The "Homeland War" obviously took its toll on the sea front hotels:


Still, it's freed up what was a private beach for the locals and us! So we had a lovely sunbathe and swim in the incredibly clear waters of the Adriatic. Dubrovnik's sea must be seen; it brings new meaning to crystal clear.

Don't think we've forgotten the drink challenge, oh no! In the old town that evening, Ben got his grubby mitts on some Pelinkovac, the official Croatian drink on the list. And bitter only goes some way to describe it!
Mmm, smells like Pimms ...

Day 45 of our travels was spent in Dubrovnik's old town, again in quite sweltering heat. Spent a couple of hours up on the city walls learning about its history and how it too has largely had to be rebuilt after the war. UNESCO coming to the rescue with the cash and new roof tiles. The old walls were so well built, they still managed to protect the inhabitants from modern artillery.


And after being up there in the heat, it was ice cream o'clock:

As an extra note, ice cream o'clock comes from Slovenia where the natives are rarely to be seen without one. How do they stay so slim?!

We also dropped in on Europe's third oldest pharmacy. It's been in continuous operation since the 1300s, unfortunately we didn't need any drugs.

When we returned to our tent it had developed a bad case of dandruff, on later inspection this turned out to be forest fire ash. The clio was also covered, but some seriously strong breezes in the night (all of which were warm) meant everything was clean (by our standards) by the morning ready for Montenegro!

Mostar, Bosnia

As we were trying to leave our hotel in Gradac, we got waylaid by the owners for coffee and stilted chats in English. Turns out a lot of their family are living in New Zealand and have been for about 50 odd years - making wine in Auckland. Which proves Joanna's point that no matter where you go, everyone has a New Zealand connection ... well maybe not everywhere, but a lot of places!

And we were back on the open road (with mole and toad - guess which is which), retracing our steps to the Bosnia border. Much simpler process on Mondays than on Sundays and we were waived through with our new insurance papers. The main road to Mostar wasn't at all bad, despite Lonely Planet warnings.

On the way into the town we started noticing lots of buildings had signs like this:
Bloody Swiss, they got our car parking spot
There are still a lot of abandoned buildings that need mine clearance / demolishing so the signs of war haven't been totally eradicated yet. However, at Mostar Bridge it's all shiny, new and very touristy:
Ben the tourist
It was destroyed in November 1993 during the war and rebuilt in 2005 as a symbol of peace and reconciliation. As we learned in the museum, it was originally built by the Turks in 1566 and UNESCO got them back to rebuild it in 2003/4.

Also rebuilt was this mosque on the east side of the town - the before and after pictures were amazing:
Looks old, but it's new!

Our route out of Bosnia was not quite as well trodden as the way in. We decided to take a back route to Dubrovnik ... which turned out to be a long way for a short cut. Ben enjoyed the windy, single track road with bonkers Bosnian drivers playing chicken coming the other way. We always lost.

On the way we saw a number of forest fires, some of which the aged fire engines were having difficulty getting to:


Our back route meant we had to disturb a lone Croatian border guard who was very disgruntled at having to leave the shade to deal with us! But we made it safely to our campsite outside Dubrovnik.

Tuesday 24 July 2007

Split

We got up early and broke camp. Seriously, we were driving by about 9.15! We had plans to spend the night in Bosnia, and wanted to see Split first.
A short drive down the coast later we headed straight for Diocletian's Palace. For those without an in-depth knowledge of 3rd century history he was a Roman Emperor from the point at which they decided to have 4 emperors. He chose Split as his retirement place, and built a rather large garrisoned palace there, which has to some extent survived. He was one of the last to persecute the Christians so it is with some irony that not only are there lots of christian marks on the building blocks, but his mausoleum was turned into a cathedral in the 7th century.
Mausoleum? Church!
We had a good wander around his basement as well:
Ben of the Basement
Ben tried to make Joanna go to the Archaeological Museum, but it was shut due to being Sunday. So we just had to poke our heads through the bars.

Also shut on Sundays is Bosnia. Well, to those who need to buy special car insurance on the border. Bugger. We were trying to get to Mostar where the men of the town were doing their annual jumping off the famous bridge to impress their lady friends. Ben'll have to wait till next year. So we back tracked a few miles to a lovely seaside resort by the name of Gradac which really wasn't too much of a hardship. We thought there was going to be no room at the inn, but in the end we didn't do too badly with one of the last rooms in town:
Ah, yeah, G'day...
For kiwis reading, yes, Joanna has been listening to a little too much Fred Dagg.

Next day, to Bosnia & beyond...

Trogir

From Plitvisčke we headed on down the coast, stopping for lunch in Zadar. Nice old town, and we were happy to find a park in the shade.
Zadar!
A bit of pizza and sweating later we swapped drivers and Ben drove almost to Split, along some amazing coastlines. Talk about scenic. Joanna didn't sleep through too much of it (and she deserves her afternoon naps). And besides, there's over 1000 islands, the odd one missed won't be noticed... Our campsite coincided with a UNESCO site just north of Split at a place called Trogir. We've since discovered virtually everything here is a UNESCO site...
We set up camp in the mad heat and went for a swim on the beach at the campsite. Lovely. Although the water had a bit much floating vegetation, and Ben had just got paranoid about sea-urchins after reading the Lonely Planet, so sandals got a bit wet.

Next day we made it into Trogir, and started investigating what made it UNESCO worthy. Except it was 40C. Seriously. We were hoping for sea breezes, but there was nothing. We have since spotted a cloud in Croatia today, but it was very small. Apparently it's over 40 days since it last rained here.
So much sweating was done, but we discovered Trogir is an island (we'd walked over the bridge and wandered about a bit before we realised), settled by the Greeks, but made famous by the Romans for its marble & marble artisans. They've kept at it, so there's great buildings from the 9th-19th centuries still in good shape.

Anyway, dead pretty, here's a couple of pics of the marble stuff:
Hot Joanna - literally

Sunday 22 July 2007

Weightloss programme thwarted

Our confession is that we came back to the UK briefly a week or so ago (sorry for not popping in, UK people) ... and also that we've been tardy at updating the blog. It transpires that we're a little bit pregnant and if all goes well, we should have a little whipper-snapper in late January. Our trip to Cambridge was to have a scan and check all is going well. At three and a bit months, it is.

Due to this wee development, the trip schedule needs a little updating... We'll cut off south-east asia, and head out of Hong Kong in early November.

We've been back on the road since Tuesday 17th, and have largely been in Croatia (see below). We're currently in Split, which we'll write about soon, honest.

Plitvicke Lakes, Croatia

Whilst in Maribor, we caught up with Bianca & Brett, who were passing through Slovenia on a wee break. Had a huge dinner, but still couldn't find Ben the Slovenian national drink, despite it being top of the menu. Mission failed.

So we headed out of Slovenia to Croatia, our first non EU country. We're getting used to the Croatian Kuna which is taking some brain power after the simple Euro. After a short walk around Zagreb, we made for the most famous Croatian national park, Plitvicke. On the way there, we stopped so Ben could chat to a nice young lady who was minding some tanks in Karlovac. He got his fill of (recent) war history even though some of the equipment looked like it had been used in the second world war as well. We also started noticing the shrapnel damage to buildings along the road.

We arrived in Plitvicke and set up camp. Ben achieved instant success with a Croatian National Drink:
tasty

The next day we set out to explore the Jezera, as the locals call Lakes. Ben continued to enjoy his game of number plate scrabble ... and in the car park it got really interesting ... there was no Ireland, Turkey, Portugal or Russia but pretty much everything inbetween. Wow.

Joanna managed to drag Ben (while containing her own excitement) off to see the lakes - which rightly deserve their UNESCO status. Here's a few photos from around the park:
Nice boardwalk
the Big Slap
Waterfall, was, well, Big. In Croatian a waterfall is a Slap.
No, Ben isn't brave enough to dive
Unfortunately there was no swimming allowed, despite the Lakes' pleading with us to jump in. It's been quite hot in Croatia. We're yet to see a cloud or experience a day less than 35C.

Tuesday 17 July 2007

Ljubljana

Slovenia's capital is a fantastic place, but not the best for pictures. There's lovely hills in the distance. The castle's quite cool (and the only real tourist attraction), but we couldn't work out a good angle on it (too many trees in the way). The best we could do was the freaky heads on a door of the cathedral:
I think they're meant to be comforting...
There's a better shot on our flickr site, which you can get to from the side bar, but unfortunately I foolishly don't have that photo with me.

Beyond that there's just a good photo of Joanna looking geeky at the castle's 3D history film of the city...

Well, it made Ben laugh.

The city has a lovely cafe/bar culture, even if there's not a lot of touristy things to see. Seriously nice, relaxed place to hang out. Not much to report back.

Beyond that we moved onto Maribor (Slovenia's 2nd city), which we've just arrived back in. We have a small confession to make, but we'll give ourselves a day or 2 to work ourselves up to it...

Sunday 15 July 2007

Lord of the Rings Special

So after our exciting border crossing we journeyed through beautiful green Slovenia. We did however fail to take a picture of any of the many houses adorned amazingly in flowers. We took back roads, as suggested by the border guards, because Byways Are More Exciting Than Highways. Such a spacious country as well, the people just seemed to disappear after Italy.

And so we made it into Postojna, which we were later to realise is Slovenia's main tourist attraction. Bled is the other main place to see, but we didn't make it there. Postojna's great though. Quite quiet and sleepy, even if having a major horse festival the day we turned up. It hadn't taken us very long from Verona (despite stopping in the world's most confusing services for lunch, which took us a while to work out), so we had time to go see a local castle at Predjama.

Helm's Deep
Back door

As you can see, it's built halfway up a cliff, mostly in a massive cave. It is Helm's Deep, from Lord of the Rings' Two Towers. It is a bit confusing whether you're "inside" or "outside" at the back, as walls aren't there, where the cave will do. Quite a good fortress though. The cave goes for miles back, eventually coming out at some cherry-growing village. A famous knight from the days of yore, Erazem, held out here for "a year and a day" (sending down roast bullock and cherries to the frustrated sieging forces), until a servant was bribed to reveal his wearabouts. When Erazem went "where even the Sultan must go alone", the servant turned on a light and the catapult smashed the appropriate outhouse...

Now we said Slovenia was green, but this is possibly taking it a bit far:
Even the animals are green
This was a little Noah's Ark that we found the next day when we visited Postojna Jama (Cave).

Once in (2km train ride in from the cave entrance), we discovered another Lord Of The Rings set: The Mines of Moria. With lots of Joanna's Gimli impressions we went for a 1.5km walk, with vast caverns, and very exciting stalagtite & stalagmite formations. There were amazing curtain things, and ones that looked like spaghetti which were hollow and grew only 1mm every 80 years. There were white ones, red ones, green ones...
Moria
Cave big, Joanna small
Also in the cave were "human fish" - pink (pigment-less) eyeless salamanders, (kind of amphibian lizard things), which spend there entire lives in the dark - hence no need for eyes. They can live 80-100 years, and only need to eat every 8 years. Freaky.

Map

It's what you've all been calling for, a picture of our route... We'll update it each time we get a chance... (click on picture to make bigger)

Wednesday 11 July 2007

Venice

We kept our camping spot in Verona and took a day trip through to Venice on the train. Our slow start, plus just missing a bus and train, meant we didn't get there till 2 - but hey, there's not that much to see is there?

Our main achievement was finding the only free museum in Venice; there wasn't much to see inside but it was cool on a hot day and it had toilets! We moseyed on getting generally lost on purpose and soaking up the atmosphere. Didn't do much else, but of course hit all the famous spots and got all the appropriate tourist pics.





Ben also managed to have the local drink: Sprizz Aperol. Bitter.


Next day we headed to Slovenia, where we are now. We'll post more about that in a bit, but as a summary: it's beautiful & friendly and everyone has nice gardens. Slovenia in Bloom must be a really hard-fought competition.

Verona

So Joanna decided it was her turn to drive, at least halfway. She got the exciting tunnels and bridges over the sea, that descended into dull motorway. Ben got the exciting back-roads. As we approached Verona the storm clouds gathered, and the winds picked up. It all looked very portentous... But we drove in anyway. It's an incredibly pretty city. We did our usual thing of going straight to the tourist office to get the city map and find out where the camping is, and after quickly posting you about San Remo we headed up a small hill to the campsite. There were some young hippy type folk running the joint (we're getting very jealous about how many languages everyone else seems to speak), and they were very helpful. A very cool campsite if one ever goes to Verona. Some what higgledy-piggledy, camp spots above each other, little terraces and wondrous views over the city:
Not bad to wake up to...
We had a quick wander down into the old city and found some good city life for our dinner.
Next day we set off to explore Verona properly. We started at the Arena - the world's third biggest and possibly best preserved Roman Amphitheatre. We bought the "Verona Card" on the way in which means cheap entry into all the main attractions - be sure to investigate this if you are taking a trip here. Stage crews were setting up for the evening's performance of Aida - so we couldn't have a good dig around ... but we felt like proper Roman's sitting on the top seats watching the world go by.
The Arena
Proof Joanna made it to the top!

Next to Juliet's house - it was owned by the Capello family who are thought to have been Shakespeare's Capulet clan. It's well preserved but really it's mainly good for the photo opportunities ...
Romeo, Romeo etc etc ...
Also hit the medieval castle (with 14th century art museum) and the Roman theatre close to our campsite. So we made good use of the Verona Card!

Meanwhile, back at the campsite the nice hippies had secured us tickets to the evening's performance of Aida. However, they neglected to tell us to take our own refreshments for the 4 hour show or pillows to sit on ... stone can be quite tough on the posterior after a while! Anyway, the show was spectacular and well worth the €50.
Opera dudes mid flow
Look at all the people!
Around 22 thousand people squeezed into the arena for the performance ... most of them in the cheap seats with us!

After our late night at the Opera, the next day was spent lazily by Lake Garda, sunbathing and enjoying the views ... it's a tough life.

Monday 9 July 2007

Travel notes

Just little thoughts...

We had our first proper border check going into Slovenia. All the Italians just pretty much got waived through, but we got asked to park over there please. What?! We thought, we're EU too, why are we in trouble? We turned the car off, got out and waited for a battle ... But no, the nice man just wanted to give us some tourist maps and say hello. Slovenia's lovely.

We got through quite a bit of Slovenia without seeing a Dutch car. But we knew when we got to the campsite it'd be alright: it's not camping if there aren't Dutch people. And sure enough, the car coming out as we arrived was Netherlandish.

When on our long drives it's exciting (?) to see which cars are driving about. No eye-spy for us. So far all Ukrainians drive vans. Monaco people drive at million miles an hour, as do Andorrans. We've only just clocked up our first Estonia and Croatia. Turkey was spotted in France, along with some Arabic number plate from who-knows-where?
11/7 update: first Finland spotted - and first Californian! Now that really puts us in the shade.

Other thought: We mentioned all the road bridges in Spain, but that did us no good when we went to eat locally to the campsite in Barcelona. Only able to turn right out of the campsite wanting to go a short way left there were suddenly no cross-over bridges. Had to drive almost to Barcelona proper to turn around, and then do a couple of illegal U-turns to get back to the road we wanted... Ended up about a 20 mile trip to go a mile the other way, and a very late dinner even by Spanish standards. Can't trust any stereotypes we make.

But onto more exciting Posts: Verona about to come...

Barcelona!

Yes, we´re finally putting this post up... mind any typos, this Slovenian keyboard is crazy. About to go into some caves, but first making use of some free library internet! Yay!

Spain seems quite a while ago now. We found a nice campsite on the beach, under the airport take-off point. Didn´t disturb our sleeping or anything, but they were there all the time. The guy running the campsite loved Ben´s Magnum PI shirt (which has been used a number of times now to be recognised - nothing like a loud shirt to stand out in a crowd).
Our first day we just checked out the beach and got settled in. Second day we went into Barca on the bus, and largely just wandered along La Ramblas (main pedestrian street), checked out the statue of Chris Columbus on a very high plinth, and wandered into the cathedral. Nothing like Sevilla´s, but still pretty impressive, and with a lovely cloister. Like most cathedrals it seems it´s in the process of being fixed, which didn´t make for the best pictures. We worked out the metro system with only a little difficulty, and headed up to Park Güell, which Gaudi designed as part of a failed scheme to have a communal Park between about 30 houses.
nice lizard
Most didn´t sell, although Gaudi lived there the rest of the life. Dunno how much he saw of it though, as he appears to have been a bit of a workaholic. Still couldn´t finish a cathedral though...

The next day started with cutting Ben´s hair, much to the amusement of the cleaning staff, who all offered each other as Joanna´s next subject. Hair suitably shorter, we headed off on the bus again to check out more of Barcelona. A somewhat more successful day, as the previous day had been Sunday: shut day. We dodged the Casa Batlló, as the €16.50 entry for a house clashed with our tightness, but the Pedrera was much better as it included the Gaudi museum as well. Amazing buildings he designed, this Gaudi fella. And so much of it makes so much sense. He liked to use nature as a source of inspiration, so came up with curving buildings that are naturally strong and stable, and rain naturally runs off, instead of square things. And then he´d design interiors so that chairs fit bottoms, not vice versa...
Joanna and the Chimney Stack
He also came up with some cool architecture techniques of hanging chains, and inverting the shape. You end up with paraboloids, hyperboloids, helicoids, and lots of other great mathematically strong shapes (yes, Ben is writing this one). He put all this to best use in his masterpiece La Temple de Sagrada Familia:
it´s a long way up
Didn´t manage to finish it (or the other big church he started), and it´s half built after 125 years. Still going strong though. We went there after the Gaudi Museum and were suitably inspired. Dad: you must come and see this, it´ll greatly excite your engineering brain (And Mum will love seing the church aspect, so you´ll both be very happy :). Do go see the Gaudi Museum/Pedrera first though, to get an idea of what he was on about. We did it by accident, but it was a good idea...

Wednesday 4 July 2007

Eastern Spain Smells - but not as much as San Remo!

In Spain's case it's quite literal, from Murcia up. Indeed the day we left Barcelona was the day the campsite was getting a little too fruity. And we made it to San Remo last night, over 500 miles for the wee Clio, which coped admirably. But by that point it was getting late, so we popped into San Remo just in Italy. We found the local campsite, and thought a bungalow might be convenient for a quick overnighter... €89! Okay, camping... €45! well, it's too late to find anywhere else... But then we found it was like this:
Where's the grass?
But too late to change... Admittedly the bathrooms did have gold-plated taps (well, not quite), but still, ouch.

On the plus side I got to continue the drinking challenge with limoncello in a restaurant (which served very nice pizza):
What's wrong with the vest?
PS: Oh no ... the dreaded vest (singlet) has beeen found ;0)

In an update on the drink challenge, pastis & champagne were missed in France due to drink-driving laws, and the fact that service stations don't seem to sell them. Beer & ordinary wine, sure...
And Spain, well we've still got the Cava - it was meant to be popped with a Team NZ win in Valencia, but those dang Swiss got in the way. Sherry... well don't believe all those UK Tapas restaurants saying sherry has come back into fashion in Spain...