Will a photo do?

I know I should update this but I just can't be bothered. This one way communication thing is kind of annoying at times. So will a picture suffice? What about 2 pictures. That's like 2000 words right? And I probably wouldn't have written that much anyway.

So this is the Neuschwanstein castle in Germany and a view over Füssen from the castle which we went to today.

So I hope that will satisfy you for now because you probably won't get more for a few days.

Merry Christmas!

Just a quick note to wish you all a wonderful Christmas. Especially to everyone in Christchurch. It's weird not being there. But hopefully you can all find a way to have a good holiday despite the rocking and rolling going on under your feet. Fingers crossed next year will be a little less shaky.
Since I just did an update there isn't a lot to say about what I've been up to. Yesterday we went to the zoo. It was very big and full of many impressive animals. The reindeer, however, were conspicuously absent. Today we went ice skating in the square. I haven't been ice skating in about 5 years and it turns out it uses muscles I didn't even know I had. Who knew there were muscles in the ankles?
And tomorrow will probably be full of skype. Email me if you want to book a time to talk because some people have already called dibs on certain times.
So have a wonderful christmas everyone and you will hear more from me next week when I will be in Germany.

Into the Czech Republic

So when I told my sister I was coming to a place called Cesky Krumlov (there's meant to be a little v over the c which makes it a ch) she immediately decided it sounded like a bond villain. But when I got here and saw the castle, the cobbled lanes, the brightly painted houses and the river winding through it I decided it was definitely more fairytale. But that was before I heard about the moat. Like I said, there's a castle here. A pretty impressive castle given the size of the town. And like all good castles it has a moat. But when they were making the moat they decided water was just so over done so instead they filled the moat (dramatic pause) with bears.
Yeah, that's a little bond villain.
I didn't get to actually see the bears since they are of course hibernating at this point and apparently, despite the appearance of bats last week, I don't have a magical ability to wake hibernating animals. Must have been someone else on the cave tour.
So I meandered the streets of Cesky Krumlov. Walked through the castle. The interior is closed in winter but you can walk through the out side parts. It's a good castle too. Not quite like any of the others I've been to so far. But I also got a very mild cold and to avoid letting it get worse I stayed in a bit too. Which seems to have worked.
And then there was Prague. I got here yesterday afternoon and spent much of the day trying to track down Rachael because we were not smart enough to make a plan for finding each other before she left New Zealand and she was not reachable once she left. And Prague is quite big and very very crowded this week.
But I did eventually track her down. Along the way I saw a guy making horse shoes in the middle of the square and several spots where people, candles and flowers were gathered to honour Vaclav Havel as well as several incredibly large and bright christmas trees.
Today we went to the castle. It's not really the kind of place that springs to mind when I hear the word castle. Closer to palace but that doesn't really cover it either. It's more like a collection of palaces with a big cathedral in the middle. And all the buildings here are really brightly painted which was an interesting contrast to the dark gothic cathedral. And there was this lane with little houses that looked like something out of a cartoon. We also passed a massive line of people with flowers who we assumed were waiting to get in to see the casket.
After the castle we meandered the streets of Prague for a while. It is a pretty city. Found a church. Watched the astrological clock. Ate sausage. Decided not to go to the sex machines museum, the wax museum, or the marionette museum (personally I think the first one sounds the least creepy). And wandered the markets with hot drinks.
An afternoon of rest (some of us are quite jet lagged) then back out for dinner and enjoyment of christmas lights and market crowds.
Tomorrow we might just go to the zoo.

Christkindlmarkte

I know it's been about a week since I last posted but I just don't feel like I have that much to tell you about. I went to Zagreb. It's a nice city. But I don't really remember anything particularly spectacular about it. Then I went to Ljubljana. Slovenia wasn't originally on my list of places to go but I heard about these caves that sounded worth seeing.
Ljubljana itself was pretty. It has a castle on a hill and architecture and markets and such. It rained most of the time I was there and I got caught in a hail storm at one point.
On my second day in Ljubljana I did a day trip to the Škocjan caves. I looked everything up and so I knew that it was an hour and a half train ride to Divaca and the caves are 5 km from there with buses only going twice a day at very strange times. The bus is run by the people who manage the caves but for some reason the bus goes at 11 am and 2.30 pm when the tours of the caves go at 10 am and 1 pm. So I planned on taking the 9.40 train so I would have plenty of time to walk. But I missed my train. I'm actually somewhat impressed with the fact that I haven't missed any trains or buses before this. I'm usually somewhat paranoid and arrive early (also because I've had experiences with very full trains that don't have any seats left if you get there just on time). This time I forgot how far the train station was from my hostel. There was another train an hour later but it didn't get into Divaca until 12.15 and 45 minutes to walk 5 km is not really enough time. But I wanted to see the caves so I went anyway. The train arrived late and I power walked the whole (at times slightly muddy) way but I got there just in time. The tour left less than a minute after I got there.
The caves were really amazing. It's got Europe's biggest underground canyon. And all sorts of stalagmites and stalactites. And bats. Apparently we were lucky because we actually saw the bats even though they are meant to be hibernating at this point.
From Ljubljana I caught the train to Vienna. Vienna really knows how to put on a show for Christmas. I complained before about the lack of christmas lights in some places. Turns out they're all in Vienna. The giant chandeliers were particularly impressive. I also got my first snowfall of the trip. I was wondering how far north I would have to go to find the real winter and I guess the answer is Austria. It didn't actually snow for long. Only about a minute. But it happened to be the minute when I was wandering through the christmas market with a mug of gluhwein so it was somewhat magical. I had 2 whole days in vienna to enjoy the christmas markets. Which were completely packed one week before christmas. I also did the tourist thing and saw some of the more permanent sights of Vienna like the spanish horse school and the big Stephansdom cathedral.
And today I am on my way to the czech republic. A place called Cesky Krumlov.

More than a hundred and one

And then I headed to Croatia. Dubrovnik was my first stop. It's actually pretty close to Kotor. Just over 2 hours on the bus and a chunk of that is spent at border control. The coastline between the border and Dubrovnik is littered with tiny towns only about 5 km apart. They're all squeezed between mountains and ocean so don't have anywhere to grow except sideways so you mostly go straight from one town to another. Sometimes the you are leaving sign was on the same post as the you are entering sign. Dubrovnik itself is pretty big though. I got in about 5pm and got picked up at the bus station by the hostel I had booked to stay at including a bit of a tour of that part of the city along the way. Had some nice conversation with the only other person staying in the whole hostel. I only had the one day in Dubrovnik so I started early. Left my bags at the bus station and walked to the old town. It turned out to be a lot further than it looked on my map, especially in new shoes. But I found it eventually and took the cable car up the hill for amazing views of the old town. Though in some ways it was more impressive up close. It looks a lot smaller in the pictures from the cable car than it actually is. The city walls are massive. Definitely some of the most impressive walls I've seen. You can walk all the way around them too which I did later. It's really amazing. I don't seem to have words to describe it. I took a heap of photos but they are all stuck on my camera where you can't see them.
So I did the main sights of Dubrovnik and then walked back to the bus station to catch the 5pm bus to Split. Turns out there isn't a 5 pm bus on Saturdays but there was one at 6 so it wasn't a big deal.
And then I got to Split which was all lit up with christmas lights and full of people. I've been a few places lately that are very touristy but very seasonal and are sort of quiet at this time if year. Not Split though. Granted the hostel I was staying at was still pretty much empty (I've gotten used to having an entire dorm to myself. Not sure how I'll manage when everything is packed for christmas) but the city was still a busy place. I guess it was all Dalmatians (being the coast of Dalmatia). Even the next day, the dreaded Sunday, was packed with people. I even stumbled across a square with a stage where groups of little girls were dancing. The lack of coordination of 5 year olds is awesome.
So I wandered the city and got into the Christmas spirit. Found a statue that must be of a magician. But the map said it was some saint. I also did the less fun hiding in my room trying to figure out where I'm going next. I hadn't decided what I was doing after I left Split and really had to do some proper planning. But I also went out after dark to enjoy the christmas lights some more. Most of the places before Croatia had kind of pathetic christmas lights. That's the best part of a winter christmas is having more hours of dark in which to enjoy lights.
The next day I went on a short day trip to Omiš. A girl I met in Athens said it was amazing. It definitely had potential but seemed to be mostly under construction. I headed back fairly early but don't specifically remember what I did with my afternoon. I think just wandering the market and the palace some more.
This morning I got all of my stuff organised. It spread a surprisingly long way in 3 days. That's the problem with not having to share the space with anyone. So that took a while. But since there wasn't anyone there I didn't have to worry about check out time. Once I was sorted I went to climb the hill and check out the city panorama. Not a bad view. I could have climbed higher but my lungs were not impressed with the damp it-might-rain air so I went back down and bought a train ticket instead. I got funny looks from the people at the train station for buying the ticket 4 hours early but I'm getting low on Croatian kuna and don't want to have to get more money out until I'm back to Euros so I wanted to know how much I had left after getting the ticket. Answer: probably not enough. Depends how much a ticket from Zagreb to Ljubljana costs. It's shorter than this trip which usually means cheaper but it's international which usually means more expensive so we'll see. Then I went to the grocery store (so exciting) because food is a necessity on a 6 hour train ride.
And now I'm 4 hours in and there's nothing to watch out the windows because it's too dark and the guy 2 seats ahead who was making muscles at himself in the window got off at the last stop. So I guess I'll go back to my book.
Coming up next: Zagreb, Slovenia and Vienna.

It's all cyrillic to me

Seriously, what do they need so many letters for?
Well it's been a busy few days for me. I've moved around quite a bit. Last I wrote I was in Greece. Now I'm in Montenegro. And it has been an interesting trip getting here. You can't really plan ahead when travelling in this part of the world because you can't be sure of bus times until you actually get to the bus station. You can google all you want but have to be prepared to figure something else out when you get there.
But before all of that I had a day in Meteora. They have these monasteries perched on top of cliffs. They are impressive. I walked up to about the third one (there are 6 still in use today) but then I got hungry so I walked back. But not before getting completely surrounded by cats at one point. They just appeared out of nowhere.
The next day I began the hope-there-is-a-bus part of the trip. The internet had told me that there was a daily bus from Thessaloniki to Skopje at 5.30pm. So I headed to Thessaloniki and spent about 3 hours trying to find this supposed bus. When I asked people they mostly just told me to go to a different place and ask for information there. I finally found someone who told me I had to go to a particular travel agent and gave me directions. But his directions were not very good and I couldn't find it and when I went back to ask again he had gone for the day and the other person had no clue about anything. I did eventually find the right place and there was in fact a bus that night so I got to Macedonia without too much more trouble. Just a short delay at the border because the spanish immigration were terrible stampers so the greek immigration didn't want to let me out. But they did. And the rest of that particular journey was pretty straight forward.
The next day was Sunday. I've come to resent Sundays somewhat since I've been travelling. Everything is closed. Macedonia turned out to be better than Italy because the mall with the grocery store was open decent hours even though all the independent shops were closed. When I went to the old part of town it was almost completely deserted. But it was pretty. Skopje is practically exploding with sculpture. It's everywhere. The central square has probably about a dozen statues including a giant horseman monument thing surrounded by lions. There were guys in chairs and guys in robes and women shopping and a bull about to charge a restaurant. And those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.

So, climbing a mountain in a thunder storm: not my best idea ever. But it works out well for you because now I feel the need to huddle in my bed for a few hours which means I might actually finish this post. I've been writing it for a while.
Where did I leave off? Skopje= statues. And advertising. Almost every street light had a sign attached to it advertising something. It was an interesting place. They also have their own currency, Macedonian denari, which are useless everywhere else and I have 109 denari left over. Which is less than €2 so it's not a big deal but it's all in 10s (they have 10 denari notes and coins and I have both) so it takes up a bit of space in my wallet.
After Skopje I caught a bus to Priština, capital of Kosovo, where the internet said I could catch a bus to Podgorica, capital of Montenegro. I couldn't find the  times for the buses from Pristina to Podgorica online so I took the earliest bus from Skopje and got to Pristina before noon. But the bus wasn't until 5.45 so I had most of a day to see the city. It's not the prettiest city I've been to. More functional. But I found the university and the statue of Bill Clinton on Bill Clinton Boulevard.
Then the bus to Montenegro. Not the best bus ride ever so I'll skip the actual journey. Got a few more stamps in my passport. Arrived in Podgorica at 3 am. The internet had led me to believe it was about a 5 hour trip. Not a 9 hour trip. So I spent a few hours in the bus station and caught the earliest bus to Kotor. Which is where I am now. And it's magical. Not really sure what I like so much about it. It is very dramatic with the mountains surrounding it and the fortress looming over the old city with the bay in the middle. And the old city is walled and free of cars with twisty streets and little shops. But I've been other places with twisty streets so I don't know why I find Kotor so special but I do. I've already put Montenegro on the list of places to come back to someday. All of the trouble getting here was completely worth it.
The first day I napped a lot to recover from my epic journey, yesterday I wandered the town and bought shoes and today I planned to climb up to the fortress and then continue along the old merchants' road as far as I could get in one day and see if I could make it to this famous village in Lovcen National Park. I prepared for rain and did go a bit past the fortress but after the rain got really heavy I decided I should probably start back before I got uncomfortable. Which was a good call because that meant that when the hail and lightening started I was already on the way back and when I was really drenched and wished I could teleport I was more than half way. But the walk up was mostly dry and the views were amazing. I definitely feel like I'm going to have to come back someday with more time.
I find it interesting that this may be on the short list for favourite places I've been so far but no one had ever told me that Montenegro was worth visiting. I have had a lot of advice about where to go. When you're travelling and talking to other travellers the topic of unmissable places comes up fairly regularly. A few people have said Eastern Europe in general but when asked why always first mentioned how cheap everything is. Not one person mentioned Montenegro to me. So let me be the one to say it. Montenegro should be on your to do list.

Pros and cons of travelling off season

Guess I should write one of these before I have even more to write about. I have done a bit since I last wrote. Other than the one photo I don't think I've written anything since before I got to Crete. And I'm not even in Crete anymore. Actually quite far from Crete. I've done a lot of travelling in the last few days.
But that's getting ahead and if I do that then I might never go back and since I don't seem to really be writing my journal anymore this is sort of the only record of my trip so I should probably at least make mention the earlier parts.
I arrived in Heraklion at about 6.30 am after not the best overnight ferry (on the boats that do that route the cheap seats are really not designed for sleeping) and the youth hostel didn't open until 8 so i found a bench and ate some breakfast and watched the sun rise. Or at least I watched the sky go from dark to light. The sun wasn't really visible. Then I dumped my stuff and decided to head over to Knossos. Some of you may have noticed that I tend to visit a lot of old stuff. I don't think anyone can be that surprised. I do have a degree in classics. But after a while some of the old stuff does start to look kind of the same. Knossos is not one of those. There isn't really any other site in the world quite like Knossos. For those of you who didn't major in classics Knossos was the main palace in the Minoan civilisation. And the Minoans were a big deal up until about the 14th century BC when they went down pretty fast. So Knossos is REALLY old stuff. Except for the parts that are really quite new. See Knossos was excavated back before archaeology was really a thing. Before there were rules and systems for how to do things. The guy who did the excavations (hence forth he shall be referred to as Evans) did some things that are a little controversial today. He reconstructed parts of the palace the way he thought it would have looked. The trouble being that there wasn't always enough evidence to support his theories. So he jumped to a few conclusions which he left permanently on the site in concrete. There are debates about whether his reconstructions were good or bad. Point is: these days no archaeological site would ever be treated that way which makes Knossos unique. Because Evans' reconstructions may not be entirely accurate but they tell a good story. They may not show what the palace was like but they show what it could have been like.  There are whole rooms that he put back together and repainted. When you are standing in those rooms it doesn't matter if it's not right, you get a sense of context that you can't get from the accurate reconstructions of other ruins. Knossos is full of imagination.
I spent the afternoon just wandering the city. It's a nice city. The next day I caught a bus to Chania. Which is also sometimes spelt Hania. If it was up to me I'd probably choose to spell it Khania but it's not. Probably they get more english speakers closer to the correct pronunciation with Hania. But phonetics aside, Chania was very pretty. It's got a venetian harbour and lots of beach and twisty streets in the centre of town. I specifically went to Chania because there are some really good day trips from there. But as it turns out at the end of October they stop almost all of the buses so there was only one bus to each place each day. The latest one left at 6.45 am. I didn't end up doing any day trips. But I was paying €12 a night for a room that in summer would cost €65 so Greece in winter has it's bonuses.
Instead of thrilling day trips I slept in and had a bit of a lazy day. Which I liked but doesn't make for much of a blog post. And the next day I started my way to the next place on my list. Delphi. Which required a bus to Heraklion, a ferry to Piraeus, metro and then bus to the Athens bus station (did they purposefully make it as hard as possible to get out of Athens?), and then the bus to Delphi. I'd thought I might be able to do Delphi in the afternoon and head straight on to Meteora but turns out there was only one bus a day and it left at 10 am. So I had to stay the night. Which turned out to be quite nice. It felt good to get out of the cities and apparently I'm a fan of mountains. Who knew? I headed over to the archaeological site but didn't realise it would close at 3pm. I probably should have been prepared for that because a few other things here close that early at this time of year but I didn't think to check so I showed up at 2.15 and had to convince them to let me in even though I wouldn't have time to see the whole thing. But I saw most of it and took a moment to ask Apollo where he thought I should go next. I guess I don't have what it takes to be an oracle (or hadn't inhaled enough noxious gases) because I got nothing. So today I went with my original plan and headed for Meteora. Which actually means heading to Kalambaka. Turns out it's a good thing I couldn't start the trip yesterday afternoon. It sounded so easy but ended up taking 4 buses and about 7 hours. It wasn't bad though. Saw a lot of little mountain towns (and got that harbour union song severely stuck in my head. I only know the one line) and dramatic vistas. Also saw a lot of the inside of bus stations. But I got here in the end and it seems nice enough. Tomorrow I will check out the monasteries and maybe find out what the deal is for climbing stuff. Just for a change of pace.

Chania, this is everyone

So there has been some demand for photos recently. I don't post many because I only have internet on my smartphone which means I have to remember to take photos with it instead of just my camera and the camera on my phone is not so good because if there is sun involved I usually can't see the screen at all and have to guess what I'm aiming at. But requests have been made to which I reply: Everyone, this is Chania.

Into the unknown

So I'm off to Crete tonight and I don't know what the internet situation will be like so I thought I'd do a short update before I go. Short because there's not a whole lot to report. I've been in Athens for the past few days. Got here in the evening so I just walked a bit to get the lay of the land and groceries. The next day I planned to get up really early to get to the acropolis just after it opened and manage to visit all the main tourist sights in the one day even though many of them close at 3pm at this time of year. But then I got sick so I only did the acropolis and the new acropolis museum before heading back to the hostel and spending the rest of the day resting. The acropolis was pretty spectacular. Everything I thought it would be but with more scaffolding. I don't feel like I have to say anything about the acropolis. Everyone knows enough about it already. The museum however I will mention. It's new (hence the name) so everyone who has been here before and thinks they know everything I'm seeing won't know about this if they came before 2009. It was clearly very carefully planned. 3 floors of displays, mostly sculpture but also some vases and such, with the whole thing leading to the top floor built specifically for displaying the parthenon sculpture. They set up the frieze, pediments and metopes as they would have been on the building except at eye level and with giant windows so that (from one side at least) you can see the actual parthenon while looking at it's sculptures. There were also several not very flattering mentions of lord elgin and the hope that the casts of things that they have at the moment might be temporary.
So that was my first day in Athens. I'd only planned on having 2 but decided to stay an extra night because I didn't want to have to travel sick. Luckily it turned out to be a one day thing and I probably would have been fine to travel yesterday. But I took the extra time anyway. Which meant that yesterday I could visit some of the things I had intended to see the day before including the flea markets, the ancient agora and the temple of Olympian Zeus. I also spent a  bit of time trying to plan the next few weeks and not figuring much out. I just don't like planning. Someone else decide what I should do for the next month and let me know.
Which brings us to today. Today I walked aimlessly around the city. Found the fish market and the town hall (not in the same place). Bought my ticket for the ferry tonight. Ate a pastry. Nothing that would be greatly enthralling to read about.
So now I head south once more to the Greek Islands (though getting to more than one might turn out to be too much bother at this time of year). And the rest of the story you'll have to wait for because I have yet to perfect my precognition.

Sicily and the Peloponnese

The extra bit at the bottom of each country. That's what I've been doing this week. Sicily was lovely. Warm but rainy which I mostly didn't mind. I stayed in Catania for the most part. I get why it doesn't get it's own listing in the lonely planet, there is not a whole lot there for tourists, but I quite liked the chance to be in a place where people actually live. I spent some time wandering the markets and such. But the reason I chose Catania was because it's fairly central and easy to do day trips to Syracuse and Taormina.
Syracuse was really lovely. I wandered the old town of Ortygia with it's windy alleys and ocean views. Visited their archaeological park with the greek theatre where Aeschylus premiered a bunch of his plays and a man made cavern thing that some tyrant built to have perfect acoustics so he could eavesdrop on the prisoners he put inside. I also found what I think was the tomb of Archimedes. It's the only thing in the area of the map that the tomb of archimedes was marked on but you'd think something like that would have a sign. It's Archimedes. He was a genius and you learn about him and his bath in primary school. Surely that would be worth a sign or 2. So maybe it wasn't really the tomb of Archimedes but I'm going to claim that it was until someone proves me wrong. I also paid a visit to the local archaeological museum which was a pretty decent one. So that was my day in Syracuse. And it wasn't even raining so it was perfect.
My last full day in Sicily I intended to go to Taormina (a pretty hilltop town) but it was completely pouring down that day and I wasn't feeling a hundred percent. Not a lot less than a hundred percent, just enough to make the idea of traipsing through the pouring rain really unpleasant. So I didn't. I stayed in and read all day. Only went out in the evening to get some food supplies. Which failed because it turned out it was Sunday and the grocery store was closed. But I found a bakery so I didn't starve.
The next day I began the trip to Greece. I may have mentioned the difficulty of getting from Sicily to Greece. It was somewhat complicated. I ended up spending 4 hours on one train the first day to get to some nowhere place called Lamezia Terme and then 8 hours on 3 trains the next day to get to Bari where I got on a ferry for a 16 hour trip to Patras. After which I was somewhat exhausted but just kept going and took 2 buses from there to get to Olympia.
I booked 2 nights in Olympia even though the only thing there is the historical site because I knew I might not get there until somewhat late and that after the trip from Italy it would be nice to have a day without any public transport. But there is a whole lot of nothing in Olympia. Especially at this time of year. Many of the shops close at random times just because there aren't enough people to bother staying open for. I got there in the evening and after a bit of a look round the town I settled in. Despite the fact that Greece is an hour ahead so I should be staying up later and sleeping in longer after the travelling and the not great night's sleep on the ferry it felt like bed time at about 7pm.
The next morning I got up fairly early to get to the archaeological site just after it opened and beat the tour groups. It was really good. I was almost completely alone for half of it and only a few small groups for most of it. About an hour after I got there all the big tour groups showed up. I spent about half the day at the ruins and the museum which left me half a day of wandering around a town that could be completely encircled on foot in under 20 minutes. So not a lot to report about that afternoon. I found a proper supermarket which was good because the place I'd been directed to the night before had a fruit and vege section consisting of lemons, cabbage and 3 kinds of onion. Not the most inspiring selection when you don't have a kitchen.
I also took the time to ask at the tourist office about the easiest way to get to Nafplio since there's nothing direct and I'd found conflicting things online. They told me to wait at that bus stop for the bus to Tripoli and showed me the list of times. On their list there was nothing between 7.35 and 11.10 but the timetable on the internet had said the first bus was 8.30. And that the last bus from tripoli to Nafplio was at 2 so I really had to take the earliest bus. So I got up and headed to the bus stop early enough for the 7.35 but prepared to wait for the 8.30. But neither ever came. So eventually I got on a bus to Pyrgos where there is an actual bus station with people to ask if something goes wrong. Then I got the bus to Corinth and from there to Nafplio. I still don't know where the Tripoli bus ended up. But I got to Nafplio early enough to have plenty of time to get lost on the way to the hotel. Got a nice tour of the town in my attempts to find a place to sleep.
The next day I headed out to Mycenae. Had a few more problems with the greek bus system and ended up walking the last 4 km to the site but it was a nice day for a walk and it cleared the frustration from the bus. Mycenae was pretty impressive. I've seen a lot of old stuff during this trip but I won't be forgetting Mycenae any time soon.
Then another bus (no dramas this time) back to Nafplio, a bit of window shopping because everything was closed and back to the hotel. The place is run by a lovely old couple who keep offering me tea when I get back but I'm not really a tea person and I'm starting to feel rude turning them down.
And that brings us all the way up to yesterday! That's practically caught up.
Yesterday was for Nafplio itself. I wandered the old town, climbed the way too many steps to the fortress, walked around the little peninsula thing, sat by the water, picked a restaurant in the main square and had ice cream and looked through some of the little shops. Nice and simple.
Today I headed out to Epidavros. Big theatre and the ruins of the sanctuary of Asklepios (greek god of healing). But the bus back only left at 1 pm or 4 pm so I had to either do it all in 2 hours or stick around for 5. So I skimmed through parts of it because there is nothing else out there. And now I'm on the bus back and have no plans for this afternoon beyond lunch. But if I pick a place with wifi you might even get to read this a whole day before I promised.
Is that enough of an update for you?

The peloponnese lacks in internet

So I've had some (read: one) demand for updates. I haven't really had internet in about 4 days now and the place I just checked into here in nafplio for 4 nights doesn't have it either. I'm writing this in a restaurant with free wifi after finishing my rather awesome hamburger (it's totally greek). So I will try to do the old write an update and post it later thing but later will probably be 4 more days. To tide you over I'll summarise a bit. Sicily: worth the hassle of getting there and back but take bug spray. Sicily to Greece: a very long trip. Olympia: the ancient site is great, the town is tiny and much of it is closed at this time of year. Nafplio: pretty so far but I got a little lost. They have good burgers and the people are nice.
That will have to do you for now. I have to do some research while I have internet.

Not bad at all

So apparently my last post ended up with a tone of travel is hard. I blame the night train. I don't function well on little sleep. Yes I had some complications in Naples but I still had a good time.  I enjoyed everything in between the complications. That's the thing about travelling this way, sometimes things don't go your way. But rest assured I am still having fun and am usually pretty happy. Yesterday I had an awesome day in Syracuse. Sicily is a huge bother to get to and I guess I communicated that fairly well but it is absolutely worth it.
So just a quick post to reassure people because the feedback I've gotten in the last few days had been along the lines of "sounds like it hasn't been easy". Well it hasn't always been easy. But it wouldn't be much of an adventure if it was.

Should I be saying Sichily?

Another day another bus. Though I suppose I've mostly been doing trains lately. I am now on my way from Palermo to Catania. In Sicily for those of you not up on your geography. I'm back to short sleeves. Slightly annoying. It's not really hot but I'd still prefer to carry a giant bag in the cold.
So what have I been up to since I last wrote?  Stuff. I have been up to stuff. Some has been good. Some has been not so good. That's travel for you. I spent a few days in Sorrento. Though I didn't end up spending all that much time actually in Sorrento. I'd planned in having two and a half days which seemed like enough time to do Sorrento, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Naples and laundry. But then I lost the half day. To get to Sorrento you get a train to Naples and then take the local circumvesuviana train to Sorrento. Nice and easy. Unless the train line between the two gets damaged somehow. Then you get a third of the way there and wait for 20 minutes and then hear an announcement in Italian and some people get off but others don't and a train full of tourists are looking around trying to figure out what's going on. Took a very long time to figure out that the problem was the track and the train was going back to Naples. Took even longer to find out that we could get a bus from there to past the problem and get back on a train to Sorrento. Then there was the finding of the bus stop and the waiting and then the shoving as a train's worth of people and their luggage tried to fit in one bus. I managed to get a seat (having had the back entrance to the bus pointed out to me) and spent the ride with my massive backpack on my lap. I've had more comfortable rides.
And then we got to Pompeii and everyone got off and I asked 2 people if this was where I could get on the train to Sorrento and they both said yes and so I got off too. But could not find the train station. There were zero signs. So I asked someone and he said there are no more trains today. You have to take a bus (which I just left) or walk to the next train station, 1km on the right. And I thought that's not too bad. Only about 15 min. I can do that. So I did. But after walking for about 15 min and not seeing any signs I asked someone again. And they asked which way I was going. Naples or Sorrento. And then they informed me that the train to Sorrento was back the way I'd come. About 1 km. On the right. The train station I was walking to only went to Naples. Why would the last preson have assumed I wanted Naples? I never said anything of the sort.
So I walked back. Still couldn't find the train station so I asked some different people and they said just up this hill here that looks like it doesn't go anywhere (I'm paraphrasing here). And I walked up the hill and still didn't see any signs so I asked once more and was told it's this building here. Because the only sign is only visible from pretty much right in front of the door.
So I got on a train to Sorrento. An hour trip took me 4 hours. Which also meant I didn't have time to do laundry or see Sorrento that day which made my stay on the Amalfi coast a bit rushed.
Next day I did the laundry thing then went to Pompeii. It was raining quite a bit. I walked around for a few hours. Saw the creepy body casts. Wandered the streets and looked in the empty houses. Then I got back on the train and headed to Herculaneum. I got there at about 3.29. They sell the last ticket at 3.30. But I got in (for free because their computer system was down so they couldn't scan the tourist card I got which gets you free entry to the first 2 places and then half off everything after that. I would have gotten it free anyway because it was only the second but it meant I got a third free too) and I'm really glad I went. Not only is it smaller and less crowded than Pompeii but it's dealt with a bit differently. It seems like most of the really well preserved stuff in Pompeii had been taken away and put in museums. And they only let you into a handful of the buildings. At Herculaneum they only keep you out of a handful of buildings. And most of wall paintings are there still and more second storeys. Some if the original wood is even still there. Apparently to preserve wood for 2 thousand years you have to bury it in hot mud. Some of the houses really made me wonder at how you excavate something like that. My guess is slowly.
The next day my plan was to get up early and go see sorrento for a couple of hours then head to Naples to visit the archaeology museum and eat some pizza (both are meant to be of the best in the continent). Because of the way the timing worked out I only ended up with 40 minutes to see what I could of sorrento. It was pretty. That's about all I got.
Turns out the Naples museum is closed on Tuesdays so I missed out on that one. Went and got an actual sit down meal pizza instead. It was pretty tasty but to be honest I think I like our home made stuff better. Then I went to a castle and the cathedral and wandered around a bit. Got a pastry thing. Looked at shoes. Headed back to the train station to wait for my night train.
The system for the night trains here is that you can get a 1st class ticket and choose what kind of bed you want or you can pay less than half the price and get a 2nd class ticket that doesn't have a reserved seat so if there are more people than seats you might not get one. I decided I'd take the chance. Get there early and hope not too many people wanted to go to Sicily.
Two big groups of army guys wanted to go to Sicily. And apparently the army isn't willing to dish out for the reserved seats. And in the whole long train there is just the one car for those of us with the cheap tickets. I managed to get a seat. But it was not the best night ever. At about 6.30 we got to Messina and there everybody split off. The train we were on was going to Palermo but most of the people  (including the army) were going to some other part of Sicily and had to swap trains. I didn't. The compartment went from full to only 2 people and the rest of the trip was much more comfortable. I got in before 11am. Spent a very long time trying to find my hostel. The instructions they gave didn't really start from the train station  but from 2 blocks over. But I found it. I also found some kind of protest. I don't know what they were protesting because it was of course all in italian but then they started playing the black eyed peas so I have doubts about the seriousness of their cause.
I did the wander the city thing for a few hours. Got some food. Looked at stuff. Then really needed a nap. Which was good timing because that's when the thunder storm started. Basically I ended up sleeping through most of Palermo. I could have taken a later bus today and seen some more of the city but I decided I just want to get to Catania and get settled. I have 4 nights there so should be able to relax a bit.
Then I have to figure out how to get to Greece. Not as easy as you'd think. Ferries only go from Bari or Brindisi, neither of which are easy to get to from sicily. Looks like I might have to have an expensive night in Lamezia Terme to make it work. But I will make it work. I'm kind of tired of Italy. Ready to move on. Maybe it's the traffic. Italy is just not pedestrian friendly. Except Venice which is all about pedestrians. Everywhere else you have to go with the they will stop for me if I walk in front of them technique at cross walks and even traffic lights. The problem being that sometimes they don't. So you have to walk with the confident I'm walking and you will stop gait but be prepared to stop if they don't.
Apparently I don't really have anything more to tell you about. So I won't.

Where's the other one?

I was half way through a blog and it had disappeared from my phone. Last time this happened it reappeared after I had rewritten the whole thing. So now I will try to remember where I left off and hope I can paste them together later.
So the old one did reappear but I can't be bothered cutting and pasting so I am just posting them separately. So if you are reading this one first you might want to find the other one.

I have just gotten on the train to Naples and the person who sat down next to me reeks of cigarettes. So even though it's pretty warm I have gotten out my scarf and wrapped it around my face. My asthma has not been so impressed with europe.
But I'm getting ahead of the story. I think I left you at the vatican. There is so much there. Too much to tell. So here were MY highlights. The Laocoon: it really is pretty amazing. A vase by Exekias that shows Ajax and Achilles playing dice which I studied at uni but photographs just don't do it justice, there is so much detail. One particular picture on the roof of one of the rafael rooms which had a picture of a statute of jesus on the cross up on a pedestal with a statue of Hermes shattered on the ground in front of it, which really sums up the early christian treatment of other religions. Now the vatican collects and protects ancient art of any kind but in Rome the only way old buildings and monuments survived was if they were turned into christian monuments. I suppose after the way they had to hide for the first few hundred years they probably resented other religions quite a bit by the time they were in power but why is religious tolerance such a hard idea to grasp? There were a hundred other amazing things as well of course. The sistine chapel was pretty impressive. I had expected it to be less than it's made out to be but it was rather good.
By the end of all of that my feet were more than a little tired so I took the metro back to my hostel. Found a grocery store to get some supplies and then gave my legs the rest of the night off.
The next day I again started fairly early because everyone else in my room started even earlier. I packed some lunch food and headed out to Tivoli for the day. Except I didn't technically get all the way to Tivoli. I got off the bus at Hadrian's Villa and after 4 hours wandering around there I decided I didn't need to go the rest of the way to Tivoli and just headed back to Rome. Hadrian's Villa was big. I remember learning about parts of it at high school but I'm sure they never conveyed to me the scale of the place. It just keeps going. I didn't see all of it. But I had a lovely day walking around out there. It was nice to get away from the crowds for a bit. That's probably why Hadrian built it in the first place.
I'd had a few pretty epic days by then and decided I would take that evening and the next morning off from being a tourist. Of course I didn't get back to the hostel until after 5 so I'd still had a bit of a day.
Yesterday I didn't head out until about noon. I headed to the ara pacis augustae. Which is in pretty good condition. They were doing another special exhibition in the basement which meant I had to pay an extra €3.50 even though I didn't really care about it. It was all about Audrey Hepburn in Rome which could have been vaguely interesting if it had been about her as a person or something but it was just her as a fashion icon. An entire exhibit on the clothes she wore. I got pretty bored by the time they got half way through the 60s.
I had planned to have another tourist day with a list of the things I hadn't seen yet but I decided that instead I felt like wandering aimlessly and seeing what I found. I found the synagogue and the portico of octavia which I really liked. It was another archaeological site but it was right in a neighbourhood. It literally went houses, shops, restaurants, ancient site, shops, houses, more ancient site. The old and the new together is great to see. People have been living and working and growing in that place for millenia. If you believe the stories the city has been constantly inhabited for 2764 years. And you can see it when you look at the portico of octavia.
So that was my day. I meandered for quite a while. Got gelato, tried to shop for shoes, tried to help other tourists who asked me for directions and just generally enjoyed being in Rome.
And this morning I got on a train to Naples where I am now writing this to you. And now I'm hungry so I'm going to eat some food.
So I made it to sorrento but not without difficulty. Tired now because of said difficulty so I will tell you about it next time.

A halfway decent excuse this time

For not writing anything for a while. The internet at my hostel here in Rome is very unreliable. I am writing this on their computer but I am really unused to this kind of keyboard (the type where you have to press quite hard on each button) so it takes me a really long time to write anything. I am writing a nice big update on my phone and will post it when I have more stable internet. Which hopefully will be in Sorrento but to be honest most of the internet in Italy has been somewhat pathetic.
Also, you have all failed me. It seems everyone thought my question about the David was either rhetorical or someone else would answer it. Or no one knows why it's so special. But I am sure there is a reason. There always is. I thought one of you smart people would be able to tell me. Are you enjoying keeping that information from me? You know I could just google it right? But you were meant to save me the trouble of reading through all the dates and specifications. Oh well, I didn't really see it anyway. Maybe if I found out what was so special I would regret not going. But probably not.

Unreliable internet

It's the bane of my existence. When there's none you just accept it and move on. But when it says that there is internet and it almost works a few times but really doesn't work then you spend hours trying to get it to stay connected so you can just send this one email or check train times. If only you could accept that it is not going to work and stop trying you could move on. Make a new plan for getting train times and go do something else. But then it says connected and you can't help but think maybe this time it means it. It's really irritating. But now I am writing this offline and you may not see it for 2 more days because that's how long I'm at this hostel with it's not very impressive internet.

So I made it to Rome. Very exciting. I got up fairly early on the 2nd and headed to the train station over an hour before the train was leaving because I thought the station would be very busy what with the holiday. Turned out I was wrong. No queue for tickets at all and I had to wait an hour for the train. But I didn't want to risk missing the train and I'd had some long lines before. Got into Rome, found my hostel and went to be a tourist. I visited the trevi fountain and the spanish steps and the mausoleum of augustus and the piazza navona and campo de fiore and trajan's column. I didn't start until about 3pm so by the time I got to trajan's column it was dark out. So I headed back to the hostel for some dinner.

The 2 girls in my dorm were getting up very early the next morning to try to get to the vatican before the crowds. They planned to get up at 6.30. I was planning on doing the vatican that day as well but didn't want to have to rush all the way over there in the morning to try and avoid lining so I decided to put my trust in the lonely planet which said that lunchtime was better than mornings. But I didn't get back to sleep after they left so I ended up getting up before 7.30 anyway.

I headed to the Roman Forum first because one of the girls had given me the very useful tip that since you buy one ticket for both the colosseum and the roman forum you can skip the massive lines at the former by starting at the latter. Good advice because there was no line at all into the Roman forum at 8.30am but the line for the colosseum at 10 was huge. And I walked right past it.

The Roman Forum was really interesting. There is so much long term history there. From back when it was a republic to when Christianity was the official religion that area was used for all sorts of important things. I wandered around in there for at least an hour and a half. There is just so much to see. Then I headed out past the arch of titus and the arch of constantine to the flavian amphitheatre (colosseum to you). It was pretty impressive in terms of scale and there is a lot of history there but I saw a much better preserved amphitheatre in Nimes and didn't really feel like I needed a whole lot of time at this one. So I did the loop and took some photos and headed forward the vatican. I got to st peter's basilica just after 11.30 and had to wait about 15 minutes to get through security. It is a pretty impressive building.  There's something to see everywhere you look. And those guard guys have the silliest uniforms I've seen so far. And I've seen some odd ones. Though mostly just in the hats. There are some very strange uniform hats out there. But these guys are stripey all over. And kind of poofy (I'm referring to the shape of the clothes there. No other meaning intended).

By the time I came out of the basilica at 12.15 the line was a quarter the length it had been when I went in. I went around to the vatican museum, getting there at about 12.30, and there was absolutely no line at all. Thank you lonely planet. I was through security and bought my ticket in under 5 minutes.

My battery is dying

Which is too bad because I am waiting in line to get into the Uffizi and will probably be here a while. I got here before 10 in the hope that I would get in before noon. Not sure how likely that is. So it would be a good time to write a blog but I probably won't get far before my battery will run out.  Now apparently.
So I inadvertently ended up in Florence on a holiday weekend. If possible I would suggest avoiding doing that. I'm sure places like the Uffizi are always busy but the crowds were just insane. Of course avoiding the holidays means being aware of when they are. Which I was not.
So I haven't really told you anything about Italy yet have I? Well I started in Genova. It was raining. Rather a lot. And since my hostel was 2 bus rides out of the city I decided that I could just stay in that evening and listen to the rain. So I did. The next day I spent the morning exploring the city. My verdict would be not worth going out of your way to see it. It's a fine place to stop to avoid spending an entire day on a train but there isn't really anything spectacular. Though it is the home of pesto. But since you can get genovese pesto elsewhere it's probably not necessary to go out of your way to get there. So I didn't stay long. Caught an afternoon train to Venice. Which was everything I thought it would be. Surprising in a place that's been so overly romanticised. I had just under 24 hours in the city so I started early in the morning so that I could get lost nice and early and have plenty of time to get found again. Which was surprisingly effective. I found the big piazza san marco and the guggenheim. Got my self a bit lost again then found the big bridge with the shops (don't remember what it's called).  Mostly I just meandered the streets enjoying the city.
But I had to leave for Bologna in the evening so I headed back to the train station.
Bologna was... a mission. All of the reasonably priced accommodation is a half hour bus ride out of the city. And I'd messed up my booking so I had to swap from one really hard to get to place to the other for my second night. Which resulted in other issues. So not the best time in Bologna even though it is a lovely city. Mostly because I felt like I spent half my time lugging heavy bags and sitting (or more often standing) on buses. But it is a very nice city so don't judge it on my difficulties.
Next stop was Florence. Had an incredibly difficult time (and a minor break down) getting there but the hostel I was staying at was amazing and made my day instantly better. Like I said, it's a holiday weekend so everything was very crowded. And crowds have a tendency to make me impatient so I didn't go into many of the sights but they looked pretty from the outside. The first day I just walked aimlessly. Found the market and bought some sunglasses. Found the duomo and the uffizi but didn't go in. Decided I couldn't be bothered climbing the hill then and that I would do the piazza michelangelo the next morning. But then I didn't. The hostel had free tuscan wine and snacks each night and bunch of us stayed up somewhat late talking and enjoying the free sustenance (if chips can be called sustenance). And then I started very slowly the next day and despite getting up before 9 didn't actually leave until almost 11. With the train to Siena leaving just after noon. So I didn't have time to climb the hill.
Siena was very pretty but also packed. Seemed like the entire region decided to head to Siena on a sunday afternoon. I didn't do anything specific. Just wandered the town. Which is very pretty. But mostly closed because it was Sunday.
The next day I started as early as I could because I had heard that the lines for the Uffizi took about 2 hours. I got in after about 2 hours 20. They seem to have one of the slowest security systems I've every seen and despite having hundreds if not thousands of people through in a day they only have one turnstile. Not the most efficient system. And when I did get in there were so many people I couldn't get near some of the art. So I only stayed for about an hour. After that I headed to the piazza michelangelo which is up a hill and has great views of the city. And a bronze copy of the David. Maybe this is a question I'm not meant to ask, maybe it will make me sound stupid, but what is so special about the David? I realise I only saw copies but is the original really that much better? not that it isn't a nice piece of sculpture but it's made out to be so amazing. Was it groundbreaking techniques? Because I studied greek art and there were sculptures that to my untrained eye looked just as realistic and detailed and amazing being made in the 5th century BC. So could one of you arty people let me know what I was meant to be seeing?
Anyway... Then stuff... Went to a grocery store. Good thing too because everything is closed today since it's the official holiday. And caught a train to Perugia.
It's a pretty place. They have a market going on in the city today. Not sure if it's a one day holiday event or something more long term. But the supermarkets are closed so I had to buy my food at the speciality stalls in and around the market.
I went into the cathedral and managed to catch the end of mass. Suppose it's not surprising since it is after all a religious holiday. Apparently all of Europe thinks all saints day is worth having off. We barely even knew when it was at home.
Now I am sitting on the edge of the fountain in the main square watching the world go by and writing my promised update. Which I will hopefully be able to post when I get back to the hostel. There. All caught up. No more complaints.
I've even (hopefully) added a photo because I know there haven't been a lot of those since Catie left with her laptop. So I took a photo of a view from Perugia just for you.

Oh so busy.

So I finally have decent internet and am too tired to write anything. I am hopping from place to place without much down time at the moment so I am keeping very busy. Since I last wrote I have been to Genova, Venice, Bologna, and Florence. I had less than 24 hours in Venice. Probably in Genoa too. And tomorrow I'm going to Siena for the day. So now, when I have a bit of time I don't really want to spend it writing about how busy I've been. Don't you feel loved? Maybe tomorrow evening I will have the energy. Or the next day when I am hoping to do a day trip to San Gimignano and then catch an evening train to Perugia. Or maybe I will never again have enough time to sit down and write a decent update.

Insert clever title here.

So it's been a few days. Filled with many things. I am now in Italy, on the train to Genova. Trains are very useful for updating things. And for finishing books.
I spent the last 3 days in Nice. And yes, it was nice. Got there somewhat late on Friday. Just hung out in the common area chatting with the other people staying there. Next day I explored the city. The Vieux Nice (old twisty lane part of the city), the site of the old chateau (no castle there now but good views, some ruins and a waterfall), the beach and the modern art museum in the morning and in the afternoon I walked out to the Matisse museum and the ruins of an arena which are quite a way from the centre of town. It's a lovely city. In my wanders I passed a restaurant called Le Maori which was playing the rugby world cup the next morning but it was bit out of my price range. Instead I went to the Irish bar to watch the game. I thought it was more likely to have a more pro New Zealand atmosphere than the sports bar around the corner from my hostel. It was not very pro NZ. And it was packed. I there 40 min before kickoff and had to wait 25 to get in. It was quite a game. And somewhat painful to watch at times surrounded by very loud and exuberant french supporters. But we won, and I was there to see it.
After the game i headed back to the hostel (via ice cream) and took my time over lunch. In the afternoon I grabbed a train to Monaco. I had been warned that it wasn't worth a lot of time but it's super easy and pretty cheap to get there from Nice so I went anyway. I only ended up spending about half an hour there. It is pretty place with the mountains and the water and in between the forest of pines and palms and luxury apartments. But mostly it just makes it abundantly clear that you will never be that rich. I walked past a real estate office at one point and if my french is right you could get a 50 sq.m one room apartment for just 2.85 million euro.
The main sight in Monte Carlo is the casino so I found that. It wasn't really very awe inspiring. So I headed back to the train station instead of lingering. On the way back I stopped at a couple of towns that I'd heard good things about. Eze has some good walks. I climbed half way up the hill but found a sign saying the short walk was 40 min from there and the long one was about 3 hours. So I went back down and sat on the beach for a bit instead. Then I got the train onwards, this time stopping at Villefranche sur mer. It's a colourful little town with streets from about 13th century. Unlike Monaco the harbour was filed with little boats of all different colours and people fishing instead of row upon row of white luxury yachts. I liked that better. Spent about an hour wandering the town, enjoying the views and sitting on the beach before I got back on the train to return to Nice. All in all it was a really lovely laid back sort of day.
Yesterday I took the day off from being a tourist. Mostly. I slept in a bit, lingered over breakfast, talked to mum on skype and didn't leave until after noon. Went to the train station to buy my tickets for today, wandered back past the market. Went back to the hostel for lunch and chatted with Catie on skype. Booked lots of stuff for Italy. In the afternoon I went on a grocery store hunt. And bought some macarons on the way back. They were pretty good. The pistachio one was amazing. Managed to read my book for a bit. Spent the evening staying in with some of the other guests and went to bed fairly early.
And then this morning. Up early, breakfast, trek through the rain to the train station to catch a train to Ventimiglia and from there to Genova. Will post this when I get to internet.

Rain on the Pont du Gard

Aqueducts never fail to amaze me. It's such a feat of engineering. Not so much the arches and such, the romans did a lot of arches and obviously had to know how to build bridges. No, I'm amazed by the parts you don't see. The Pont du Gard is a massive aqueduct spanning a valley with a river in the bottom. Except it's actually just a tiny part of the aqueduct. The Pont du Gard is about 130m long. The Nimes aqueduct was about 50km long. And the whole way it has an average gradient of 25 cm per kilometre. Because if the slope is much more than that the water moves too quickly and will spill over but much less and it won't  move fast enough. So the big bridge part is impressive because that's what they needed to build to keep it going at the right angle, but they kept the angle right the whole way, and the land wasn't always leaning in the right direction. All to get water to Nimes. So that's your lesson in classical engineering for the day. And next time you see pictures of those towering arches of aqueducts remember that that is just the visible part.
Sorry about the mini lecture, I just find it really interesting and had to share. Now that Catie is gone I don't have anyone to vent my amazement on.
As you may have guessed I visited the Pont du Gard aqueduct yesterday. It's about a half an hour away from the city of Nîmes which has a bunch of other really well preserved examples of Roman architecture including the Maison Caree (a temple from Augustus' time) and an amphitheatre from the 2nd century AD which is in such good condition that it has been fitted out with lights and benches so that it can still be used.
So I wandered around Nîmes in the morning and saw the main sights in the city as well as the museum of archaeology and natural history (it was free) which had no signs in English and a lot of not very good taxidermy. I mean a lot (and am also now thinking about an alot of taxidermy and it is scary).
In the afternoon I grabbed a bus to the Pont du Gard. It was pretty awesome. Then as I was heading back from the actual bridge toward the entrance (it's a bit of a walk) it started pouring down. I had been warned that it might rain so I was wearing my jacket but I got pretty drenched anyway. It was wet and cold and lovely. I have missed the rain.
Caught the bus back to Nimes (with a pause in the middle to watch some large vehicle ballet when a truck in front of us failed to get around a tight corner on a skinny village road and then our bus had to get around it on the road which would hardly fit 2 normal cars let alone a truck and a bus). By the time I got back I was mostly dry so I decided to keep going and went to find the gardens of the fountain and climb the hill to the tour magne.
So I had a pretty full day but managed to see pretty much everything there is to see in Nimes. Then this morning I caught a train to Marseille.
So far Marseille is lovely but very windy. I climbed up to the basilica at the top of the hill this afternoon and practically felt like I was going to be blown off the hill it was so windy. Mostly I just wandered the city around the vieux port. Looked for cheap sunglasses because mine did a very impressive vanishing act at the Pont du Gard (I know where I had them and I know where I didn't have them and I only went one place in between but they weren't there). Met a random french guy who thought I was lost but then we had a whole conversation about how France is going to lose on Sunday. Now I think it's time to eat.
Talk to you again soon.

Goodbye Catie

Well I just saw Catie off to the airport. What will I do without her? I will have to post my own pictures.
Right, so I just checked and apparently I have to cover the first day in Lisbon to the second day in San Sebastian. If only I remembered any of it. So... in Lisbon... we did stuff. We only stayed the one night and got a train to Porto at about 5pm. So we spent the morning mostly just wandering. It's a nice place. Embraces it's history but doesn't stop for it. We saw a bunch of things, got waffles. I don't really remember the specifics. Just the overall feel of it.
Then we got to Porto which was also lovely. I really liked Portugal overall. Porto was very different from Lisbon aesthetically. Both nice but very different. In Porto we mostly wandered too. Had a pretty day just because we could. For the first time in a while we didn't have to lug any backpacks so we wore our most impractical skirts. Went down to the river then crossed the high bridge, decided not to pay to take the gondola, walked back down to the river, decided to skip the port tastings because Catie was feeling less than excellent, crossed the lower bridge and made our way slowly back to the hostel. Had naps. 'Twas good. Did an evening wander too. We didn't really strive to see a list of things in Porto but we saw a lot anyway.
The next day we dragged all of our luggage to  Coimbra, left it in a cafe near the train station for the afternoon (what train station has no luggage storage?) and had a look around. It's a pretty place but it was disgustingly hot. It is meant to be autumn. That was not autumn. Turns out it was uncommonly hot. It must have been around o-week for the university because we walked past groups in matching t-shirts singing. Some group of people (i assume law students but don't know for sure) have to wear suits and ties and big black capes. I felt sorry for them in the heat.
We ended up just getting to the university (oldest in Portugal) and saw a couple of churches then took refuge in the shade in the botanical gardens and read or books for a bit.
Back to the train station to catch an overnight train to San Sebastian. It was a long and painful trip. We arrived at 6.30 am to find the directions to our hostel were wrong and then that they didn't open until 9. So we went for breakfast. We were rather exhausted all morning. We went back to the hostel at 9 but weren't allowed in the room until 1pm so we pushed ourselves back out to see the city. It's all a bit of a blur. We found the cathedral and followed signs to tabakalera because we didn't know what it was (it turned out to be something like a culture factory or something similar so we still don't really know what it is). Tracked down the bus station, stopped for a caffeine hit and then went to the old town. Found a couple of churches and a square but somehow lost the museum. Then finally got to go back to the hostel and get into our room. Where we napped for a couple of hours. I finished my book too.
That evening... we cooked... went somewhere... I don't remember. And all of my sources of reminder are far away because the internet doesn't work in the rooms here. I'm sure it wasn't that interesting.
So that should get you caught up to the previous blog. Which I wrote yesterday. So now I just need to catch you up on since then. Where did I stop? Right, summarized the gothic part of the city. Left out the main event though. As we were on our way to the cathedral we heard drums so we went for a closer look and found a whole parade. So we followed it. It was some sort of procession of groups of people who make human pyramids. We followed a long way (and got sprayed with water at one point) and saw a bunch of little towers of people but we got hungry and didn't stay to see if they were going to make one of the giant towers we'd seen pictures of. Instead we went to find the cathedral (which was closed for mass) then walked to one if the gaudi buildings. Wandered a bit more and spotted a nice place for dinner (Catie decided to treat us to a proper meal on our last night together) and wound our way back to the hostel to look some things up on the internet. Fast forward a couple of hours (and a backwards blog) and we headed back out to find the shops we had googled. Turns it everything is closed on Sundays here so it didn't do us much good. So instead we tracked down the restaurant we'd seen earlier and had an amazing meal of tapas and sangria and some pretty awesome desserts which might not have been quite so spanish. It was really lovely (thanks Catie). If you find yourself in Barcelona and want a good tapas place for a reasonable price look for Xaloc in the Medieval Jewish quarter just off la rambla. It was a great place.
Then this morning we got up nice and early to get to la sagrada familia half an hour before it opened. The line was only all the way around one corner at that point. By 9 am it was around 3. It was pretty incredible to see something of that scale that is still being made. And it's very Gaudi, but it is so many other people too because of the nature of the project. I don't know if I could describe it. Some if it was incredibly beautiful and overwhelming. You can really see the forest theme inside. Above the altar is a spectacular crucifixion sculpture which was hanging from the tackiest chandelier I have ever seen. The two faces have very different themes and kinds of sculpture but both convey the emotions really well. It's interesting the way so many different people's ideas have come together within one guy's dream. I wonder if it would have been like that if the original plans hadn't been lost about a decade after Gaudi died. That may have given a little more freedom to his successors which had a really interesting affect on the building. And it's still only 60% finished! Maybe someday I can come back and see how it's progressed.
Then we went to the flea market to hunt for sunglasses because mine are getting pretty bad but instead we got socks and a bag (for me and her respectively). Then we walked back to the big plaza in the middle of the doing district to look at cameras (Catie had a slight mishap and now needs a new one). Lunch, back to the hostel to get organized and then off to the train station to send Catie off to the airport while I stayed and bought a train ticket to France. Tomorrow I head to Nimes. I'm really looking forward to it. I'll get to see the Pont-du-gard which I remember studying back in high school. And for the first time I will be trying couch surfing. Here's to free accommodation. If it goes well I could save a lot on my budget.
Now I have to go make myself some food. Hopefully it will be less than a week before I write again.

Really? A week? When did that happen?

So apparently I haven't posted in about a week. It really doesn't feel that long. And I will have to have a look and see what we've done since then. Or I could try telling it backwards. Just got back from wandering around the gothic part of Barcelona. Saw the outside of the cathedral but the inside was closed for mass. Found the medieval jewish quarter. Lots of pretty streets. This morning we went to an irish pub to watch the rugby (it was an awesome game. We had to fight every minute but we still destroyed them). The atmosphere was fantastic. There were a couple of aussies who were sore losers but the overall feeling was great. I also just realized that I will be in France next weekend. Could be interesting.
Last night Catie and I went out for a drink in the reval area. Though it took us a while to find it. Had mojitos and then crepes. Very tasty. We'd spent the afternoon doing some gaudi. We headed up to park guell (the place he designed to be a sort of gated community but it failed economically and the city turned it into a park) after we saw how long the lines were to get inside the sagrada familia and decided just to admire the outside then and go back early monday morning.
That was our first stop in Barcelona (after dumping stuff at hostel) since we spent all morning on a train from San Sebastian.
San Sebastian was pretty. We found Jesus. It wasn't hard. He was right at the top of the hill where they'd left him. He's a cell phone tower now. Who knew the best way to reach god was by text?
In the morning we had gone to Bilbao to see the Guggenheim (Catie had been to all of the others) but we decided it was a bit pricey when lonely planet told us the best thing was the building itself so we just walked around the outside then headed to the old city. We went to the much cheaper (but not at all in english) basque museum instead. I bet it would have been really interesting if  we could have read the signs. It was still interesting but we didn't learn a whole lot.
And that was our second day in San Sebastian. Now I have to go sort laundry before we head back out so I will try to fill in the gap in the next couple of days.

So far behind

I am falling further and further behind in these things. And we had a pretty epic couple of days. So I guess I'd better get this started. Apparently I haven't updated since we arrived in Seville. Seville was really lovely. We wandered around the streets all day. We saw the cathedral and the alcazar and the fancy big plaza. We stumbled across more than one little market and a festival of nations where there was an australian stand selling kangaroo burgers. We didn't try them but were tempted. Odd to have to go all the way to Spain to get the chance when we are usually much closer to the source. Took a break in the afternoon when everything was closed anyway but in the evening Catie managed to drag me along on some shopping (we didn't end up buying anything). In the evening we got some mojitos and sat up on the roof for a while. But we'd had a pretty full day so we crashed fairly early. The next day we had grand plans to go to Granada and see the amazing Alhambra. Didn't work out.  It's a giant palace. We've been to a few now. Never have I heard of such a place having a limited number of tickets each day. They were sold out before we got there. So we wandered the town for a bit instead before catching our train to Madrid. We got there late and lost the hostel (spent about an hour walking 3 different wrong ways before giving up and getting a cab. We were really close too, just could not find the right street. And the people we asked for directions either had never heard of it or were completely useless. But we got there in the end.
The next day we headed for the palace because it is free on Wednesdays but we got there an hour before the changing of the guard so it wasn't open at all. We went away thinking we would come back in the afternoon. We walked around the city for a bit. Saw some sub par gardens, a whole row of statues of people we'd never heard of, the outside of a cathedral we weren't willing to pay to see the inside of, the outside of a convent we also wouldn't pay for. Generally had a see the city without any pressure to see specific parts in a particular order. In the afternoon we headed back to the palace to find lines practically round the block (there wasn't really a block for it to go around but it zigzagged across a square a long way). We couldn't be bothered waiting. And the sight of the number of people who jump at the chance to go when things are free made us reassess our plan to go to the Prado museum in the last 2 hours when it was free. So we hopped on the metro to that part of the city and went to check out the botanical gardens (we walked around them...literally, who charges for gardens? They didn't look that much better than the Christchurch ones from the entrance and there was a free park really close by so we didn't choose to enter)  and the Prado. Which it turns out students get into for free all the time anyway. I love my ISIC card. It cost Catie €10. But she got more out of it anyway. I can only enjoy art to a certain point. Then my brain becomes saturated and everything I look at just washes over me without leaving an impression. Catie apparently has an infinite capacity for art though. After the Prado we got ice cream and sat in the free park before heading back to the hostel to make some food. Mmmmm... grilled cheese sandwiches. They were pretty epic sandwiches. Salami and olives and emmental cheese on good brown bread (we get free breakfast at most of the places we stay but it is always heavy on the white bread and we miss good bread). And a side of salad because we are good healthy people. So tasty. Anyway, moving on from the subject of food.
The next day we did a day trip to Toledo. We'd heard great things about it and it lived up to expectations. It had a free museum with a bunch of artworks and one small display case of neolithic objects. It had a massive cathedral that just kept going. And marzipan everywhere. We didn't actually eat any because we aren't really marzipan people but we took a picture of a church made out of marzipan. We also got a little lost (in a good way). Then back to Madrid for some free (but not very good) sangria.
The next day I had claimed for a free day. Do anything or nothing. I did a bit of nothing then a bit of anything then a bit of nothing again. Catie went shopping and did buy things this time and I bought a skirt that is completely impractical for traveling in. We went on a dessert hunt that night which proved harder than expected. I guess in Spain they start dinner so late that they don't bother with dessert.
And the next day was the first of two very full days. And I've been writing this for a while so I will abandon you for a bit and come back to that later.
Right, so where was I?
Yesterday. So close to caught up. Except those 2 days were rather busy. Started early yesterday (after a pathetic sleep. Here's a hint if people are sleeping you don't hold a loud conversation about it being 3 am right next to their bed) to get to the train to Segovia. The trains often sell out quite early but for some unknown reason we can't book ahead online because our cards are from overseas banks (after having trouble with the ticket machine I was told that they don't accept foreign cards because if it is lost then anyone can use it but I don't see how that is any different to local credit cards). So we had to go super early. Segovia was lovely. Very different from other things we've seen so far. They have a giant roman aqueduct and a palace that the lonely planet describes as 'fairytale'. It was more or less what you would imagine if you heard fairytale palace. More recent than most of the palaces we'd visited so far. We paid the extra €2 to climb the tower. Just a few steps. Somewhere around 150. But the view was pretty amazing.
We wandered the town without a goal for a bit too. They have a huge number of churches for a town that size. And also a large number of tourists. But we got away from the majority of them (the tourists not the churches) in our wanders.
Then it was back on the train to head back to Madrid. The other art museum, the Reina Sophia, is free on Saturday afternoons so we headed there. It's more modern art. Where the Prado had a lot of Goya and El Greco the Reina Sophia had Picasso and Dali. But mostly Picasso. The guernica has an entire room to itself but there are so many people crowded round it that you still can't see it all that well.
There were a few interesting things and a few not so interesting things. That's just how it goes with modern art I guess. In some ways I preferred the uncertainty of it to the all very comparable works in the Prado. Which might make me uncultured but oh well.
After we finished with the museum we walked around the streets looking for a decent but not too pricey place for dinner. We'd thought paella but it was a bit more expensive in that area than where we had seen earlier and we couldn't agree on one flavour to share so instead we went for the very spanish lasagne. Finally we made our way back to the train station one more time to catch a night train to Lisbon. Which is where we are now.
The night train was better than all of the night buses in Turkey but it doesn't make for the best night sleep and since it was the second night of not enough sleep we were rather weary by the time we got here. But we pushed our exhaustion aside (though not without some complaining) and after dumping luggage at our hostel jumped on yet another train to Sintra. Not a long trip but I almost fell asleep anyway. We applied caffeine before making our way slowly up the very steep town to the castle at the top. There were a lot of hills and stairs in the last 2 days. I have calf muscles. I can feel them. They were never really necessary in Christchurch.
We accidentally took the long way down, grabbed some lunch, checked out some of the cork stuff they had and headed back to Lisbon. Then we took a break and I started this epic account. Then I stopped this epic account and we went for a walk.  Oddly there wasn't a whole lot open at 8pm on a Sunday but we had a decent look around anyway. We'll see how different it is in the morning.
And now you know everything. To a very limited definition of everything anyway.

No update today

Well I wrote a nice big update on my phone but the internet at this hostel is incredibly unreliable. It took about an hour yesterday to succeed in checking just my email and bank account. So I wrote the update assuming that it would only require about a minute of connection to post it once it was written and that should only take about half an hour on this internet. But apparently by the time I started my phone only had 10 minutes of battery left. I will charge it and try again later but you might not get it until we get to Madrid tomorrow night. Also the y and z keys are backwards for some reason on this keyboard. I will try to fix all of the mistakes (I never realised how much I use y) but I might miss some because it is underlining every word in red so that will not help me. Also I cannot find the apostrophe. It is marked on the key but does not show up.

No hablo español.

If only we were from the Dora the Explorer generation we would understand so much more. But no, I watched Sesame Street and got a shorter attention span instead. I know you haven't heard from me in a while. Internet has been unreliable (and still is, I am writing this offline on the hope that I can get the connection to last long enough to post) and when we did have internet I didn't feel like writing. So let me sum up Morocco for you. It had some magic moments but in between was a whole lot of hassle. Marrakech was worth the hassle, Fes was not. By our last night in Fes we were completely exhausted with the entire country and wanted to just get to Spain. But Marrakech (after a few difficulties) was great. We wandered all over the medina, got sufficiently lost, found our way back again, ate ice cream, got attacked with henna, and watched some snake charming. The next day we visited the palaces and the saadian tombs (which were cool, the first one literally) and watched the square fill up with people from a terrace restaurant. It was lovely overall.
Then we headed to Fes on an overnight bus. Our hostel offered a walking tour of the medina and convinced us that a tour was necessary because you would get completely lost on your own. You would, but the tour turned out to be less amazing than it had been made out as. Bits were really interesting but it also included a lot of trying to sell us stuff. Why they thought people paying €10 a night for accommodation would be buying carpets for $3000 I don't know. But they tried very hard to convince us anyway. And it turned out the medina was so labyrinthine that any time we wanted to go somewhere we had to walk out to the main roads and around the outside. Also, there were a lot more creepy people. I'm fairly certain someone called me breakfast. So we abandoned Fes and Morocco. We stayed one night in Tangier (that was quite a bit better anyway but we only stayed about 12 hours). The waiter at our restaurant asked us where we were from and when we said New Zealand he said "Oh, Irish!" And when we tried to explain that it was sort of the other side of the world he told us he liked scottish whiskey.
But then we left Morocco and, after a very bumpy ferry ride with some not so pleasant background noise, arrived in Spain.
It's fantastic already. We are currently staying in Sevilla which is a beautiful little city. No creepy people staring or following us, clean, open, colourful. It is very hot. They still do the siesta here and since it is currently sitting around 35 and it's October you can understand why. But it is more of a dry heat than it was in some of the other places so if we stick to the shade it's fairly manageable. And there is a lot of shade. This is clearly a city that has had hundreds of years of experience of dealing with heat. I wouldn't want to visit in summer though. But other than the weather this is the first place we have seen that I could imagine living in. We have passed some buildings and said imagine living there. It really is a lovely place. And there are so many shoe shops. I don't know how they can all survive they're just everywhere. Catie is hoping to convince me to go shopping this afternoon. I might have been away from it for long enough to consider it.
So now you're somewhat caught up. I think I didn't go into a while lot of detail but oh well. Maybe next time. We are planning to have 4 whole days in Madrid so might have more time then. And hopefully more reliable internet. Now I have to see if I can connect long enough to post this.

Ataturk and lokum

So we caught an early morning bus to Ankara. We'd heard it wasn't worth a whole lot of time so we planned to get there early afternoon and leave on the evening bus. That should have been enough time to see the main sights of Ankara: the mausoleum of  Ataturk being the biggest one and a couple of museums nearby. Ankara is more modern history than the rest of  Turkey. It wasn't much before Ataturk came along but he put a lot if work into it so they have a lot of stuff about him. It would have been enough time if we'd thought to look up how to get there before we left. Instead we stared at the metro map until we spotted something that said museum then assumed we could get directions from there. But the further inland we got in Turkey the fewer people spoke english and when we asked for directions to the museum we didn't understand the answer. So we wandered Ankara. Found a pretty park to eat lunch in, followed some signs to not a museum, found a could be a museum but couldn't find the entrance. Sat in the shade for a bit trying to find some free wifi to figure out where we were and how to get to the mausoleum (which was the thing we were most interested in) and managed on my phone to find out where we were and on Catie's laptop where the Mausoleum was before the internet disappeared. But we couldn't figure out how to match them up and get from here to there. So we spent a few hours wandering around Ankara, seeing the city if not the sights, then headed back to the otogar for our bus to Safranbolu.
We had decided before we left NZ to go to Safranbolu because it is something like number 2 on the lonely planet top places to see in Turkey. But oddly when we were talking to other backpackers about it most of them hadn't even heard of it. But the turkish people we talked to said it was great and told us to skip Ankara and spend more time in Safranbolu. Good advice. Safranbolu was beautiful. It's this town that had been basically preserved from ottoman times. Cobbled streets and shuttered windows and little alleys. And the middle of this old town is sort of like a permanent market with little shops of hand made goods and cafes. Wooden boxes and mirrors and decorations, metal tea sets and vases, ceramics, shoes, clothes. All through these little cobbled alleyways that don't have space for cars. And on every street there is at least one (but probably more) turkish delight shop. Safranbolu is famous for lokum (the turkish name for the delight) and it was pretty fantastic. We only wanted to get a little bit to try the different flavours but their idea of a little bit lasted us all day and onto the bus to Istanbul the next day. It is not really like the stuff they call turkish delight in other places. You can see the resemblance but mostly in the way that you can see how what you get in NZ is an attempt to make something like lokum but they don't really know how. We ate quite a bit of it. I kind of wish we had some left but since we ran out 3 days ago we wouldn't have any left by now even if we'd bought more.
So we spent the entire day just waking around the old city of Safranbolu, enjoying the sights and sounds and especially tastes. Then the next day we took the morning to meander a bit more before catching our last bus back to Istanbul. It took most of the day and we didn't get back to our hostel in Istanbul until after 9pm. The bus was full of children some of which were supremely annoying (if your child is being a brat take away their toy gun, don't just talk to them and then ignore the fact that they are still doing exactly the same thing) but others were completely adorable. Luckily the little girls who were practicing their english on us came after the little boy who was try to shoot us so we ended the trip feeling more endearing and less irritated.
The next day we got up early to hit the post office then went to the archaeology museum. It was pretty impressive. Living in NZ you don't really see a lot of the results of archaeology in person. Canterbury had the logie collection which was one of the best collections of classical artifacts in the whole continent, and fit into one not so large room. The Istanbul archaeology museum is just so close to everything. They have a neolithic section and a paleolithic section and an early orient section and a greek section and a roman section and a ceramics section. They need 3 whole buildings and then the less interesting stuff is left in rows outside because 3 buildings isn't enough. I won't gush too much more but as a classics major it was pretty fantastic.
But we didn't have all day so we didn't linger. We grabbed some traditional ice cream since we hadn't gotten around to trying any yet. It was odd. Almost chewy. But pretty tasty. Then we packed everything up and headed to the airport.
I won't bore you with the details. It was an average flight. Lots of waiting before, lots of waiting after. But we got to Casablanca and they let us into the country. Found our hostel and basically crashed. It was pretty late for us by that point.
This morning we walked down to the 3rd biggest mosque in the world and back through the streets of casablanca. Not the greatest tourist destination. Which is why we are now on the train to Marrakech. Which should be much nicer. I don't know when I will next have internet to post this but hopefully soon.

Goodbye Turkey

I know I haven't finished updating you all on 2nd latest events but it seems I won't be doing it today. Instead just a quick note before we leave free internet to say that we are leaving Turkey for Morocco today. Talk to you all again from there.

Not much of an update

Well I started writing a big update on the bus yesterday but it seems to have disappeared. I didn't get very far anyway. But Catie has put photos on facebook. The public link is https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2337743050292.133853.1451350354&l=364a32f00b&type=1
I will try to write a proper post today or tomorrow. There is getting to be quite a lot to write.

Churches, fairies and brownies, oh my!

Hello again! I am writing this on the bus to Ankara so I don't know when I will be able to actually post it. The hostel we have booked for tonight didn't say that it had internet so I might have to wait until we get back to Istanbul. But probably we will hunt something up in Safranbolu if we have to. So last time I left you with the preview of a grand tour of Cappadocia to come. Well it was pretty awesome. It started at 9.30 and we didn't get back until after 6pm. And it was no where near enough time. The first stop was the Goreme panorama where you can see the entire valley. I think any grand vistas I see in the future will be ruined now. I will look at massive mountain ranges and just shrug and say "but it's not Cappadocia".
I won't even bother trying to describe it. I wouldn't know where to start.
After that we headed to Derinkuyu which is one of several underground cities in the area. Derinkuyu is the most touristy one so it is well lit. Some of them aren't lit at all and it would be pretty awesome to go to one of those but we just didn't have the time. We've been doing a bit of "when we're rich" planning in Goreme. I think we could probably spend a whole 2 weeks just in Cappadocia.
The underground city was pretty impressive. It was started in the 7th century BC by the Phrygians but was added to for a long time. The early christians used it as a hideout around the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It goes down about 85 metres. Some of the tunnels are so short that it might be easier to crawl. My backpack was often scraping on the ceiling, if I hadn't been wearing one I probably would have hit my head a lot more.
It was really good to have a tour guide there because there wasn't a lot of signage but we could have spent much more time there. We didn't get to see everything because we didn't have enough time.
The same was true of the next stop, Ilhara Valley. It's this smallish valley cut into a fairly flat landscape so it isn't all that visible from far away. Which would be why the early christians thought it would be an awesome place to hide from those pesky Romans. There are dozens of old churches cut into the valley walls. We only looked at 2 of them. And we had to stay on one side of the river. If you were doing it without the tour group you could easily spend all day there but it would be a bit of a mission getting there and back. As it was we got really irritated at this supremely slow couple. We walked 3.5 km through the valley (which was nice, green and shady unlike most of the area) at quite a slow pace but those people somehow managed to fall about 10 minutes behind everyone else. And since the restaurant for lunch was at the end of the walk we were pretty hungry and pretty impatient by then.
Lunch was decent, and reviving after quite a stair filled morning. Then we headed to the Selime Monastery. I don't remember any of the details about when it was from but it is basically a giant church complex inside of a hill. There's a chapel part and a school part and a kitchen and lots of great views. You have to be somewhat intrepid to get to parts but it is totally worth it. We went pretty much everywhere. Including the part with almost no light coming in. We were told we only had 10 minutes to explore on our own but after waiting so long for the slow people at other places (they also managed to get lost after coming out of Derinkuyu) and our general experience of turkish time (they tend to say a certain amount and it end up a fair bit more) we decided to take our time. When the guide told us to gather we looked at one more thing and on the way down we detoured to a different part, secure in the knowledge that the slow people would take that much longer coming down.
We were all a little tired by that point after crawling through tunnels (which included a lot of stairs) then marching through a valley (which included a fair number of stairs) and clambering over a monastery (which had some stairs and more footholds that may or may not count as stairs and a few slopes that could have used more stairs). So many of the people slept on the next leg of the drive. But they all woke up for pigeon valley. Which (oddly, considering the name) has a whole lot of pigeon houses where they used to keep pigeons back in the day when they were useful for communication and painting.
But that was just a short stop before heading to the final part of the tour. The part where they try to sell you stuff by taking you to an onyx factory. But (thanks to those incredibly slow people) we were given the choice of heading to the factory or just heading home. We were unanimous and headed back to Goreme.
We were fairly exhausted by then so after a stop for water (and cherry chocolate brownies) we settled in for a quiet evening.
The next day we had a plan. Which failed pretty much straight away. We intended to get up early (set an alarm and everything) and get to the Goreme open air museum by about 8.30. So at about 10 we actually got up meaning that we got to the museum at the same time as a few dozen tour groups. At one point we were found ourselves stuck in a small courtyard with at least 50 people (no I'm not exaggerating) with a small tunnel in and a small tunnel out (both completely blocked by people). But we did see some cool things. Again, lots of old churches cut into the cliffs and fairy chimneys. There were some that had quite detailed frescoes with recognizable bible scenes and others that were just decorated with geometric patterns in red ochre. Outside of the museum is a massive one with amazing frescoes but where they have chipped off you can see ochre patterns underneath. Which makes me wonder how they decide which date to put on the signs. They said 11th century on that one but is that when it started or when it finished?
That afternoon we just wandered around Goreme looking at shops and watching the antics of a possibly mentally challenged cat. We had planned to go on a horse trek but it was threatening to rain and the idea of horse riding in the rain was not appealing to us.
And that was our last day in Cappadocia. The next morning we got up at 6 am to watch the balloons (dawn hot air balloon rides is a thing, an expensive thing) and catch a 7am bus to Ankara. Where I started writing this. But didn't finish writing it. It has taken me about 2 days to write this whole thing which means there's now 2 more days to write about. But you can wait a while longer for that. I'll give you a sneak peak. It involves more cats, more brownies and a whole lot of lokum.