Back in the USA!!

Oh it's so good to be back. We had an OK journey back from Gatwick, via Philadelphia and into Houston. At least this time US Airways served something vaguely edible!! We had a 4 hour stop over in Philly but just as well as we spent some time chatting to the folks at immigration. Of course we're nice people and once they realised this they were more than happy to stamp our passports and see us on our way. But that only left time for our first American junk food meal (in the form of Chick-Fil-A - it could be worse!) before boarding for the second leg of the journey. By this time I was quite frankly cranky. I'd worked out we were fast approaching the 24 hour-with-no-sleep time and I still had to drive from the airport back to the Storage facility where Harvey was parked. Things looked right up when we ended up landing 3/4 hour earlier than we'd expected. We're still not sure whether we'd got the times wrong or the pilot just drove fast!!(Oh - you know how we always moan about England. Can I just point out the America charges $3 for a trolley at the airport (compared to free) AND the bottles of water at the airport were more expensive than England. Now don't say I never say anything nice and complimentary about my place of birth!!) The hire car place was empty so we were through that in a flash. They had no compact cars so we've ended up with a monster of a 7-seater MPV - it's SO embarrassing - someone might think I've got children!! I set to the drive with new and renewed energy and we even zombied our way round Walmart to stock up on some immediate essentials. We were in bed at 12.30am local time - just 25.5 hours after we'd got up in England the previous day.

Harvey had no power or water that night. But everything looked good by torchlight. The lady from the storage facility had come by and opened the windows for freshness but I'm sure it still smelt of the air freshener I'd blitzed 5 months previous! We had a surprisingly good nights sleep and and when we came to move next door into the campground Harvey even started on the 2nd try - no dead vehicle batteries!!! And everything IS GOOD. Harvey is great. A small hiccup with some rain through the roof but nothing we didn't know about. Still confused as to why our plastic sunflowers are in a vase full of water???....(I'm sure there wasn't THAT much rain come through the roof!!!)

Tallinn, Estonia - last days in Europe

OK. So it's been awhile. Once we got back to the UK we had just 6 days to get our gear in order before heading off again to the USA. It's only today that I got to download the photos from our last days in Eastern Europe!..

Our final stop was Tallinn in Estonia. We couch-surfed here for 2 nights with a wonderful host - Marion (thanks!!). Her apartment was just minutes walk from the old town. She took us out to eat at a great restaurant - Kompressor. They did enormous stuffed pancakes and were a bargain price. Apparently EVERYTHING in Estonia gets served with sour cream - and Kompressor didn't let us down - I had a garlic sour cream with my cheese & mushroom stuffed beast! (It was so good we wound up here on our 2nd night too!) She also gave us a private guided tour of the Old town theatre - the Linnatheater. It's in a beautiful old building (or rather several buildings on the same block). The facades are all classicly old and inside it's a wonderful higgildy piggidly maze of rooms, backstage areas, workshops, dressing rooms and stages. There are 3 stages, all only seating a few people (maybe 100-150?) Somehow it's all been fused together inside even when each building looks so 'separate' from the street. Sadly the weather in Tallin was terrible. I guess it was the most north we went on our 3 week trip and it's on the Baltic Sea (now doesn't that just seem to shout COLD/WET at you?!?!?) We still did a walk round the old town cobbled streets and buildings but it was inter-jected with a darn sight more cosy coffee shop stops than usual!! (Check out the spire of that church - you can't even see the top it's so shrouded in mist!!) There was a particularly great coffee shop right on Raekoja plats (the main town square). It had rough, uneven stone floors, low ceilings, cosy soft lighting and comfy old sofas in the corner AND they served a great hot cocoa and mulled wine (not together!) and cheesecake - what more could you ask for?!

So after 3 weeks and 1 day we flew back to the UK. Sad for our short trip to be over but had a brilliant time visiting 7 different countries. We travelled by plane, train, bus, underground, tram, fenicular, foot & cable car!!

Latvia

This was Riga. In Latvia. Great place. We spent 2 nights here staying in a great hostel right in the centre of the old town. A small old town area and very easy to get around by walking alone. Sadly already overpopulated by drunk English who have already made a name for themselves (we were there on a Saturday night so at it's worst). But then, where Easyjet go, the drunk British yob will follow...

This trip we've seen more cobbled streets than you could shake a stick at. Also since getting to the Baltic countries we've seen a LOT more rain. (and there's something quite lovely looking about wet cobble-stones glistening in the neon lights of an evening!)

From Riga we took a bus ride about 50km out of town to Sigulda. It's a town of castles. 3 in fact. Pretty old - around 800 years. 2 are in serious ruins but the 3rd - Turaida castle is in pretty good shape with the help of some restoration! It was a great place for some hiking along the Gauja river and in the woods. We took a cable car across the river valley in one direction then walked (And got lost!) before finally making our way to the castle. At that point the heavens opened (lucky we weren't still walking) so we took refuge in the castle until it eased off!

Happy Anniversary to us!! in Lithuania!

6 Years and counting!! We celebrated our 6th Wedding anniversary today in our 6th different country! Yahay!! A fun tradition that crept up on us a couple of years back and so far so good!! This year we were in Lithuania! We were staying in the city of Vilnius. It was lovely (though didn't quite live up to my expectations of old world euro capital - I must admit I've been somewhat spoiled for choice of late!!) It was a small city and so ideal for us to just stroll around. We had some great food and yet more of the wonderful European beer and visited the Museum of Genocide victims (housed in the former KGB headquarters!). It was a great museum, with excellent displays and plenty of English langage info. In the basement were the old cells and exocution chamber.

From Vilnius we took a 4.5 hour coach journey to Riga in Latvia. Now this is far more my idea of classic, old world quaint European city....

Auschwitz & Birkenau

Today we took a day-trip to the Auschwitz & Birkenau State museum - about 1.25 hours from Krakow.These are such famous names they need no introduction.
The Auschwitz site is much smaller and was the original camp - many of the original buildings remain. Once they outgrew that and needed more gas chambers and crematoria they built the Birkenau site about 3km away. This covers approx 1 square mile, and although the retreating Nazi's tried to cover-up the horrors that had taken place by destroying much of the place some barracks, the railway lines, the unloading dock and perimeter fences remain. It truly is a vast place (there were over 300 barrack blocks here, 4 gas chambers (holding up to 2000 people at one time) and crematoria.

Because so many of the deportees arrving at Auschwitz were gassed on arrival and were never registered (as many as 70%) it has never been agreed exactly how many people perished at these camps. However it is estimated that the figure is in the region of 1.5 million; 90% of which were Jews. It was an insightful day...

High Tatras Mountains

We’ve just spent a couple of nights up in the High Tatras mountains which is a stunning range that just seems to pop up in the middle of hundreds of miles of flat lands; covering the area around north east Slovakia and southern Poland. The Slovakian side is a large national park called Vysoke Tatry. It was the end of the winter season but there was still plenty of snow on the high ground, (around 3,000ft plus) with a few die hard skiers still on the slopes.

We stayed in a ‘chata’ which is an old style mountain chalet up in the snow covered forest and had the most amazing views back down into the valley and up to the 8,000ft peaks higher up.

We took a cable car, (in fact three cable cars) up to the top of Lomniky Stit which is the highest mountain in the region and with the bright sunny day we had, offered amazing views of miles around both of Slovakia and Poland.
To get to Poland we had to take a bus to the border town of Lysa Polana, then get off and walk across the border to catch another bus to Zakopane and beyond to Krakow.

I know the poles have had a rough time of it in the past; first under the Nazi occupation and then under Soviet rule but the country is doing pretty well for itself now. The countryside is beautiful and most of the houses outside the cities are huge five story picture postcard style alpine villas.

Krakow itself is also a very modern and cosmopolitan city that has just the right mix of old and new, and hasn’t as yet been ruined by the stag/hen party crowd; although why I’m not sure as the food and drink is as cheap as anywhere! We’re staying in a fab hostel that is spotlessly clean, includes breakfast and supper in the price, has free internet, laundry etc and is perfectly positioned with a five minute walk to either the train station or the old town; which of course is where the best eateries and drinkeries are!!!

Day off in Kosice!

We've just enjoyed a relaxing day in Kosice. It's Slovakia's second city but is quite small. The main street is cobbled and there's a couple of old churches and a Tesco! There's very little to do (a couple of 'attractions' mentioned in the book seem to be closed for the winter) but it's been nice taking a day off from the rushing around and sight-seeing. We've stayed in a great apartment and indulged in a mini 'LOST-fest' on the laptop - catching up on the last few weeks episodes!! Our first opportunity to get some laundry done and the first time we've had a private bathroom too! (it's not that common compared to America, or is it just the sort of place we stay in?!)

Hungary & Thirsty!!

We have just spent the last 3 days in Hungary. After an interesting 9 hour sleeper train journey from Romania to Budapest on Sunday night we arrived early on Easter Monday morning. Much of Romania is Orthadox so they were not celebrating Easter at that time and so when we left everything there was busy and open. A contrast to Budapest when we arrived - even the McDonalds was closed!! We were able to leave our bags at the station and set off for the day on foot to explore.

Our first stop was the Szechenyi Furdo (thermal baths) in the city park. They were built in 1908 and are wonderful. Huge. Outside were 3 very large swimming pools. The air was cold and the water was warm to get into compared to the air but not so much once we'd sat around for a while! And so inside were more smaller baths & saunas of various temperatures ranging from 32-38 degrees - much more like it! We whiled away our morning here until we were thoroughly wrinkled and warm!

There is much public transport systems in Budapest but we ended up spending the whole day walking around the sights - we must've walked 10km! We had a tour of the 'Magyar Allami Operahaz' (Hungarian State Opera House) which is a beautiful 1884 neo-Renaissance building and wonderfully ornate. We walked along the River Danube and across the Chain Bridge to Buda (the west banks of the River, compared to Pest on the eastern banks). In Buda is 'Varhegy' (Castle Hill) which is high on a hill with fantastic views of the city and the parliamenet buildings on the Pest side of the river (which were apparently modelled after the London Westminster buildings but have many more spires and elaborate features).

During the day we had a couple of helpings of the famous Hungarian Gulash soup to keep us warm!! That evening we had arranged to couch-surf for the very fist time. It is an internet based network of people who offer to host people on their spare 'couch' or bed. You either host or are hosted. We were staying with Zsuzsa + Daniel in Buda. On our arrival at their apartment they had cooked for us traditional Goulash and dessert which was wonderful. We also sampled the Hungarian 'Firewater'brandy 'Palinka' It is strong and fruit flavoured - this one was apricot but it comes in many flavours. It was somewhat 'warming' but very tasty!! We enjoyed 2 great nights at their apartment which was just minutes from the centre of the city. It was a great first experience of couch-surfing and we hope to try it again soon!

Our second day we took the train 20km north of the city to Szentendre (sen-ten-dreh). It is a small quiet town with narrow winding streets and many souvenirs shops, cafes and galleries. It was a great place to spend much of our day just strolling around and shopping! (and today we tried the Hungarian Pancakes (I forget the name of them) They are stuffed with meat and served smothered in a yummy creamy paprika suace!). Back in the city we visited the 'Terror House' museum. The building was formally the headquarters of the secret police. It portrays the life expereinced in Hungary during the times of Nazi occupation during WWII and the Communist occupation between 1945-1990 (they had a hard time in this country!). It was a great museum, though covered a lot more information about the Communist occupation but didn't beat around the bush about how tough life was here (some video and pictures were quite graphic and very sombering).

We had the most incredible meal on our second night. We had been reccommended a restuarnt by an Australian girl, living in Budapest but travelling in Romania when we were staying in Brasov (can you get any more confusing?!). It was a good call! Trofea was near the River Danube and was an all-you-can-eat buffet (including all you can drink wine, beer, champagne, soft drinks etc). It was very good value (though I suspect quite expensive for Hungarian standards) It cost 15GBP each. There was the most incredible salad bar, fresh meats & fishes cooked to order, many Hungarian dishes (a great way to sample lots of the them!), soups, breads, cheeses and plenty of desserts! We must've stayed there for maybe 3 hours!!

Today we are heading for Eastern Slovakia - a 5 hour train journey to Kosice and our 3rd country in 8 days!

Brasov

From Bucharest we took a 3 hour train journey to Brasov - on the edge of the Transylvanian mountains. We are staying in a dorm in a hostel in town (the dorm of 7 people in itself being an interesting 'first' for us! - and possible last - I'm too old for it! - I have nothing to prove anymore!) However the hostel is good and organises cheap tours to the sights of the area. We have just returned from a wonderful day trip around the Transylvanian castles. First stop this morning was Rasnov - a small 13th century citadel on top a hill. After a 10 minute hard walk to the top there are tiny little allies leading up from the central square with some great views out over the town. I tried leaving Chris there, locked in the shackles but alas...!

Next stop was Bran Castle . It's famously called 'Dracula's Castle', but in reality Vlad Tepes only ever 'popped in for a cuppa' sometime in the 15th century. The castle is set up on a rocky outcrop and is quite harsh looking but inside it's surprisly small and currently has lots of displays of photos, not giving much of an impression of what it was actually like 'back in the day'.

The higlight was Peles Castle for sure. (Though not the footballer's, though these days most of them I'm sure would be trying to buy up this kinda joint as a summer home!) Actually it was the summer residence of the 1st King of Romania, King Carol 1 from Germany. Completed in 1914 it's pretty amazing. It had a 15 year long refit between 1975-1990 and is open for tours covering just 30% of what's there. It's simply stunning. Huge grand reception halls, dining halls fashioned in Florentine, French & Moorish styles. More carved walnut and gilding than you could shake a stick at and a particularly lovely spiral stair case 'just for ornament's sake' in the entrance hall. It was pretty advanced for it's time. It had a central vacuuming system, central heating, elevators, electricty, a huge stained glass window skylight covering the whole entrance hall (several metres wide) that can be opened electronically in summer - and all this stuff still functions! It was so cool! And our tour guide spoke English with an accent just like a female version of Count Dracula from Sesame Street!!! - Very sing-song-y!!

Roaming in Romania...

So we're in Romania! It's lovely and warm - unseasonal I think but we're not complaining! We arrived at lunchtime yesterday in Bucharest and sorted ourselves out within a couple of hours with a nice hotel in the historic part of the city. It took some wandering around with the rucksacks on but all good in the end! We had a great receptionsit who chatted for ages about all the things to do and good places to eat - a veritable fountain of knowledge! (Although quick to confess she doesn't really like Bucharest!). We whiled away a couple of hours in the lovely Cismigiu park and lake (though the lake is bone dry - perhaps it's a summer lake; we haven't found out!) We had a GREAT Romanian traditional meal at 'La Mama' on recommendation of both the receptionist and Lonely Planet. Meatballs & Meat stuffed Cabbage rolls with lots of 'peasant style' country potatos and veg - all delicious!

Today we had a good lie-in after yesterdays 4am start! We did a lot of walking around the city (not wanting to miss out on our usual morning 'hikes'!) We stopped at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant which had a host of tradtional costumes, an old wooden church and house (all inside!) and lots of artifacts - good stuff but not as good as...The National Village Museum - another mile out of town, past the Arc de Triumph (yes Bucharest has one too!) and to the gardens of Herastrau. They've collected together dozens of buildings from around the country and carefully restored and recontructed them all here. They've separated them up into the different regions they've come from and made proper little 'villages' with many peasant houses, farm buildings and churches. You're able to walk in amongst them and go inside many. It may be a poor hard life but in almost all cases they were rich with colour and 'love' There are many ornate, besutiful hand carved gates and ornaments inside and most are decorated with cheerful woven rugs and pottery. Really enjoyed that! We walked back into the Historic part of the city and checked out the Palace of Parliament. It's the second largest building in the world (after the Pentagon apparently). It was built in 1984 by Ceausescu and covers 330,000 sq metres and cost an estimated 3.3 Billion Euro! It's pretty sizeable and I'm sure we couldn't see the half of it from the road as it's depth is at least as wide as its width! We did pass the Bank of Transilvania and it was all I could do to stop Chris going inside and asking if it was a blood bank.

Next stop - the Mountains and castles of Dracula's stomping grounds...

One Down...

One Down…

Well it looks like all our hard work paid off; the second person to view the house has put in a decent offer and we’ve accepted!
After spending Christmas and New Year with family and a busy January DIY’ing for said family, we moved back into Helen’s house in Swindon to redecorate. In fact it was more like renovate as the tenants had been asylum seekers put in the house by a housing association so we really did have our work cut out. Thankfully Helen’s folks were on hand as we had neither the tools nor much of the skills needed to put the house back into order; I say ‘on hand’ but that’s if you count 100 miles away and half a dozen trips up to help us as on hand!
So with new carpets upstairs and the downstairs wooden floors sanded and re-varnished, new flooring in the kitchen and bathroom, a top to bottom repaint and more than a few repairs to walls, floors and ceilings we let a bunch of estate agents loose…
Naturally they all promised lists of potential buyers all waiting for a house just like this one but some seemed more realistic than others so we chose the most down to earth person with a realistic valuation and reasonable fees. (Is there such a thing?) we gave the go ahead on the Wednesday, had two viewings that week, a second viewing the following Tuesday and an offer, (for more than we hoped) on the Thursday!
Of course anything could still happen up until completion and I’m not one to count my chickens but there is this new motorcycle that’s been eyeing me up lately; and what with the Dollar being as weak as it is and us flying back to the states next month…

Off to Eastern Europe!

Hoorah! We've finally booked ourselves some adventure! We fly off to Romania on Tuesday and fly back from Estonia in a months time.

We've spent the last month working on the house in Swindon and it went on the market last week - now just gonna get us some buyers (actually just one will do!)

Saw this and loved it. Came through the letterbox whilst working on the house. Loved the sentiment (even though yes I suppose this houses's soul IS up for sale!)

We still live!

New Year is off to a quiet start (just as well after the hectic Christmas!!) Spending time with families. Walking and Geo-caching have been filling our days mostly!! (yes, yes, easy life I know!). I've managed to do some scrapbooking...went to a crop at Paper Arts near Stroud last weekend which was fun!

Here's a one of my latest pages (about the walks we do around my parents home in Taunton);

Christmas in Taunton

After a packed few days in London Chris and I headed down to the West Country to my parents for the 'Mills/Coles family Christmas'. More mayhem ensued...my Mum was hosting 11 of us plus 4 more for 'Christmas Dinner' itslef on the 28th. On the 27th (our 'Xmas Eve') all 11 went up to Bristol to see Mamma Mia at the Hippodrome - absolutely great stuff. We ALL got up and danced away during the encore!

The downside to the 2 Christmases-thing is the FOOD - the overwhelming and un-ending quanitity of it. Thankfully Chris and I have kept up the walking, and at the end of the year I'm pleased to say we managed 530 miles - the aim for 2008 is 1000 miles!!

Trouble - with a capital 'G'!!

The Chefs!

The 'Girl' Cousins!

The Men!

The most riduclous number of presents I've ever seen!! (I'm not complaining - my fair share were buried somewhere in this lot!!)

Boxing Day!

All of us outside the Natural History Museum on Boxing Day. The plan was supposed to be ice-skating but a power cut put paid to that. Instead we indulged in the most indulgent hot chocolate I have ever tasted - you have GOT to try this. Gu - OMG. It's amazing - not just chocolatey but sort of choc-brownie rich - yuuuuuummmmmy!

Christmas in London

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We spent 5 days with Chris's family in London. The whole of the UK puts on an incredibly disappointing show of Xmas decorations and lights (bah-humbugs!) Here are a couple of cheerful, festive displays we saw - Covent Garden (where we spent an evening wandering around, watching the buskers and sipping mulled wine whilst grabbing a few last minute presents!), and also Carnaby Street. Christmas means great food and LOTS of it! I love it! These mini chilli peppers stuffed with cream cheese & mint went down a treat...and chicken satay - and that was just the nibbles whilst we worked up an appetite for the main event! (like there's ever room for Xmas dinner?!) I get the feeling here that Call was guarding the dinner - just gorgeous decorations at Helen's house - I think we counted over 40 cream candles burning each evening - just beautiful!

And these are the crazy Chrismas Day swimmers at the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Each Xmas Day morning at 9am they swim the 100 yard dash in the freezing waters. There were probably about 50 of them. It was pretty fresh - the brave souls - the weather was lousy - the only miserable, wet day we had over the Christmas period but we managed a wee walk around the park for a bit before the inevitable mayhem started!

Christmas Card 2007

Snowdon

Who said the UK doesn’t have mountains?...Oh – that’ll be me then!! Wales' best offering is Snowdon at 3560ft. Not quite in the same league as the 14ers of Colorado or the +10Ks of California that we were hiking earlier this year, but… All things are relative I suppose.

An early Monday morning in December and the carpark was surprisingly busy – but of course you still have to pay and display! – typical UK. Completely unfriendly and unapproachable park wardens too who basically gave us the impression that if we had to ask about conditions and recommendations then we shouldn’t be doing it! A somewhat different outlook to the US where we feel that it’s the irresponsible ones that don’t ask!

Anyway. We hiked up the Miners track to the peak and returned via the Pyg track. A total of 8 miles and an elevation gain of 2500ft. Most of the trail was quite maintained and built up with stones – almost like paving and it was so wet, and in places mini waterfalls had developed, pouring down them. But actually it was so icy so we were skating around a bit and scrambling around the mountain-side trying to avoid the ice which slowed the progress somewhat! At the peak it was amazingly windy – we were clinging hold of the trig point for fear of getting blown off!! All in all we were so lucky with the weather – most of the hike we had views of the peak with some crazy clouds whizzing by every so often. Great views from the top right down to the coast in one direction, and in the other clouds way below us really giving us the feel of being on top of the world! It was very cold, especially when we stopped for more than a moment so retreated to the nearest tea rooms for warm soup and hot chocolate! (The mulled wine came later!!!)