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Roman Holiday

Nov 092012

So better late than never I thought I just post something about my weekend in Rome back in September. My girlfriend Jordan and I spent two and a half days wandering around the city looking at old things, eating nice food and resisting the temptation to stroke the many stray cats.

Our flight out ended up being delayed by two hours (yay Easyjet!). We had already arrived at the airport nerdishly early so we ended up with a four hour wait. We then missed the train into Rome by a minute due to a weird ticket machine so the journey ended up feeling a lot longer than it should have been.

The morning of the first day was spent looking around the Colosseum, Forum and Palentine Hill. We were given a great tip for buying tickets to the Colosseum. If you walk 200 metres up the road and you can buy a combined ticket for all three sights at the entrance to Palentine Hill. You can then straight into the Colosseum skipping the massive queue.

I won’t list everything we saw that day otherwise we would be here all day. That evening we found a small family run restaurant for dinner called La. Vecchia. Conca . It ended up being some of the best Italian food I’ve ever had. Even the simple bruschetta starter was amazing.

The next day was mainly spent trudging around the Vatican Museums. I’m sure they would have been very beautiful and quite interesting if we were able to actually stand and look at anything. We were swept along in a huge group of tourists until we got to the Sistine Chapel where everyone stood around taking photos and talking loudly (two things explicitly forbidden).

We ended the day by finding a small pizzeria in town and having some decent (although not fantastic) pizza. We walked back to the hotel past the Forum and Colosseum all lit up as the sun had gone down which was a rather breath taking sight.

Our flight home wasn’t until the afternoon of the next day but we didn’t really do anything productive.

Rome is a stunning city and I would definitely recommend that everyone visit. You can’t quite believe the amount of Ancient Roman stuff they still have lying around everywhere.

Anniversary in Paris

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Oct 192010

I spent last weekend in Paris with my girlfriend celebrating our six year anniversary. We left early on Saturday morning and got home around 9:30 Monday night so we had a good few days to see the main sights. Jordan had never been and I only have very vague memories of being there as a young child so it was fun wondering around seeing the famous landmarks.

I ended up getting a bit annoyed at the Louvre. I don’t particularly like crowds of tourists (hypocritical I know) and the Louvre seemed to encompass every tourist in Paris standing in front of me in a queue. We decided against actually going in due to the crowds. We then took a long stroll down the Champs-Élysées taking in the scenery and heading towards the Arc de Triomphe.

Sunday was by far the best day. We started with baguettes for breakfast before heading over to the Paris catacombs. The queue was pretty horrific but the experience was definitely worth it. You can’t quite comprehend the number of dead people decorating the walls with their skulls and other bones. It’s not quite as spooky as you might think – just very daunting when you think about the time and effort that’s gone into the arrangement.

After the catacombs we headed over to the Eiffel Tower. I have a bit of a thing for tall buildings so we paid our 13€ and got the rickety lift to the top. The view is obviously impressive and the queues were actually much better than I expected. Jordan was impressed that they had a toilet on the top floor.

In the evening we ate at Le Porteger du Marais – a vegetarian restaurant located close to the rather striking Pompidou Centre. The meal was really tasty and was finishes nicely with a lovely chocolate fondant… mmmm.

The next day we wondered around Montmartre. We found the Moulin Rouge and ate at a brasserie that turned out to be a bit touristy and not actually very good.

Overall it was a pleasant getaway. I’m not sure I’d go back again in a hurray though. Prices for hotels, food and drink are extortionate which can get a bit annoying. We also couldn’t work out why people find the city so romantic when everywhere smells of piss and you’re constantly dodging dog crap on the paths!

Slovenia

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Sep 022010

Last night I got back from a very enjoyable long weekend in Slovenia. We were there for four nights – we spent one and a half days in the capital Ljubljana then a day each in Bled and Postojna.

Ljubljana has a very pretty old town area with a castle overlooking from the hill top. The architecture is fairly similar to Prague where we visited last year. We found some good places to eat including a pretty swanky Asian place called Shambala. When we arrived on the first night the weather was still good so we grabbed some food and a drink by the riverside. The atmosphere by the river was amazing. Street musicians were everywhere including a full orchestra and there was just a feeling of Friday night relaxation.

As pretty as the centre of Ljubljana was I couldn’t imagine spending the full four days there. It’s a very small city and we felt like we had exhausted most of the things we had planned fairly quickly. Luckily, we had planned on venturing out of the capital to visit a coule of other towns.

On the Saturday we got the bus to Bled. The town is situated next to a large lake on which sits a small island with a church and overlooking everything is Bled castle.

As cool as the castle looks from the outside, it was a little disappointing once you got inside. The Slovenians seem to have a thing out modernising the inside of their castles. I don’t know if it’s a safety thing (although there weren’t any safety rails stopping you falling over the low walls) or if they just don’t like the original stonework and stone flooring. Jordan, who considers herself a connoisseur of castles wasn’t impressed.

After visiting the castle and grabbing some lunch we decided to rent a row boat and go out onto the lake. Now neither of us are particularly fit or adept at rowing but we thought it would be fun. We managed to row all the way out to the island but mooring was another matter. I struggled to attach the chain to the dock and after much struggling I gave up as I was sure I’d fall in otherwise. It’s a shame we didn’t get to walk around the island but it was an amusing experience anyway.

The next day we ventured off to Postojna and the caves. To get into the caves (which are the second biggest in Slovenia apparently) you have to take a train underground for 2km. It was all very fun but this was also the most touristy activity we did and it was incredibly crowded with your average bargey, selfish tourist. Other than that the caves were very impressive. Some of the caverns were enormous. They even hold concerts in one of them.

After visiting the caves we took a bus in the pouring rain to Predjama castle. The weather had taken a turn for the worst and we were seriously considering not going to the castle as the bus was late and we had to wait outside in the cold and rain. I’m very happy we managed to stick it out as the castle was probably the most impressive sight of the holiday. Built into a cavern the castle looks like something out of Lord of the Rings.

The inside of castle was a lot more original than the ones at Bled and Ljubljana. As the castle used the natural cave walls as internal walls I suppose it made things a little harder smooth out. There were a few hidden staircases and walkways that went into the caves which made it very fun to explore. Due to the bad weather we couldn’t go into the caves underneath the castle which was a shame.

The next day we ended up just hanging around Ljubljana. We tried to go to the zoo but it turned out to be miles away. The guide book just said it was on the south side of a park but as the park was only just on the map we thought it would be close. After walking for ages I decided to take the hit with roaming charges and check Google Maps. I’m glad I did as it was another few miles and we had to catch a plane that afternoon.

We finally got home Tuesday evening. Our Easyjet flight was delayed so we didn’t get in until late. Overall it was a very fun holiday.We saw some cool things and ate some nice food. Our next holiday is a weekend in Paris for our anniversary in just over a month, hurrah!

In Communist Slovenia Holiday Books You

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May 162010

Jordan and I had pretty much ruled out going on holiday this year. I’m not quite sure why as we are doing better for money at the moment then ever before but we also have a huge amount of outgoings this year including student fees and buying Jordan a new laptop for when she starts her Masters.

After deciding we could probably get away with a short weekend in Europe we started looking at Amsterdam, Berlin or maybe somewhere in Italy. Whilst these are all places we would really like to go, they tend to get fairly expensive once you choose a decent hotel or a time that is not freezing cold.

This evening we sat half watching a ‘moving abroad’ type programme on Sky and came across a couple wanting to buy a place in Slovenia.We’ve never really considered Slovenia but only the other day I was saying that I’d like to see more of Eastern(ish) Europe as it tends to contain some really striking architecture. So we had a quick look at WikiTravel (one of the best websites around if you’re interested in travel) and really liked what we saw.

After some pretty quick decisions (which is how we usually we do this kind of thing) we ended up booking 4 nights over the August bank holiday in a 4* hotel for a really reasonable price.

Now to start planning what to do. We both like the look of Bled – a town an hour outside of the capital Ljubljana. There also seem to be quite a few very picturesque castles around.

So it’s hardly your average holiday but we both agree that it’s best to get these places out of the way before they are discovered by more people and become commercialised. Needless to say I’m looking forward to it.

Typhoon!

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Aug 072008

Our last few days have been spent holed up in our room as Hong Kong has just been narrowly missed by a typhoon. Typhoon signal 8 was in force which tends to close down most businesses for the day such as the stock market and urges people to stay indoors.

Of course we had not prepared for this and had no food. So we psyched ourselves up to get out into the pouring and went out… it was actually fairly pleasent. The rain wasn’t too bad and the wind was a huge relief after two weeks of above 30 degrees temperatures. It turned out that this was the tail end of the storm and we weren’t quite as brave as we thought. Later we saw on TV that the worst part was in the night and there had actually been quite a lot of damage caused.

The storm has left us with lots of rain which will certainly mean that our last few days in Hong Kong will be spent in the pub next to our guesthouse watching the Olympics on the big screen… oh well, sounds fun.

Big Buddha

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Aug 042008

Greetings all. Our holiday is nearing an end, we have less than one week until we fly back to the UK.

After my last post we had a break from sightseeing for a few days as Jordan felt really ill. After a couple of days we decided it might be a good idea to go to the hospital to get her checked out. This turned out to be a much easier than we expected. A lady from the guesthouse escorted us by taxi to the hospital. We registered quickly and were seen in less than 10 minutes. The doctor diagnosed the problem as an infection of the stomach or intestines and prescribed a cocktail of drugs. The total cost of this great service… 269HK$ (about 20 quid). She’s fine now.

As Jordan was feeling better we headed off to a couple of the outlying islands over the last few days. The island of Lamma is about 2km south of Hong Kong island and has no roads or cars (although I did spot a couple of cars so I reakon this is all a scam). The island has a huge coal fired power station that overlooks one of the beaches. It’s a very odd sight to behold as it is surrounded by lush green scenery and a small fishing villiage teeming with expats.

Today we visited Lantau island and caught a cable car up to the Buddhist Monastary close to the peak (around 900m up). This was a fairly… unnerving experience. In the words of Edward Hitler ‘On a scale of one to ten I think it’s bicycle clip time.’ You’ll have to look at the pictures and video on Flickr to see what I mean. At the monastary there is a rather large statue of Buddha and a very dissapointing vegetarian restaurant. You can tell these monks tend not to visit nearby Hong Kong island as their idea of vegetarian food is fairly pretty basic. We caught the cable car back down the mountain (even scarier than the way up) and headed back to the bright lights of Hong Kong.

Smog

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Jul 302008

Originally uploaded by Louisblack

I haven’t posted for a while so I decided I should probably say hello so that people don’t think that we have been sold into prostitution by triads.

We arrived in Hong Kong on Friday and had to rush to our guesthouse because if we didn’t get there by 10pm, they would let out our room. So we jumped onto the airport express and grabbed a taxi to our guesthouse in Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island.

Oh yeah… I completely forgot that I haven’t mentioned the situation with our accommodation in Hong Kong. We were originally meant to stay in the notorious Chungking Mansions. ‘It’ll be an experience’ we naively said as we placed our booking through Hostels.com. We have learnt a few things over the last 2 months. One of which is that we are pretty terrible backpackers. We dislike ‘slumming it’. So when we checked out some recent reviews about the Hong Kong hostel we quickly decided it might not be the best idea to stay there. We managed to get into a guesthouse on Hong Kong Island for around the same price and we are much happier staying here than the more ‘colourful’ Kowloon.

As you can see from the picture, the smog here is awful. We have only had one day of blue skies and the rest have been like the picture. On a plus note we have found ourselves a nice local pub and a local restaurant where we can get two huge bowls on noodle soup with two milkshakes for 68HK$.

Stopover

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Jul 252008

I’m currently sitting in Taiwan airport waiting for our flight to Hong Kong. It’s nice to know that we will only be sitting on the plane for an hour and a half. Before we went away Gill (Jordan’s mum) said ‘I wonder when it is that people stop being excited by air travel?’ I think the answer to that could be ‘after having to do three fairly long flights in 24 hours.’

Anyway, we had a pleasent, albeit breif, stay in Taiwan. We got in late and were met at the airport by Tom ( a friend of Jordan’s mum). We decided to go for a quick drink in a bar before heading home with a rather large can of beer each. Today we just hung around Nan Kan which is a small town outside of Taipei. Sadly, we didn’t have the time to get into Taipei to see the 101 (the current tallest building in the world). After a rather hair raising taxi ride, we managed to get to the airport with time to spare.

I will hopefully post something after we have been in Hong Kong for a few days but I have no idea what the situation will be at the guesthouse – we will have to venture out and find an internet cafe.

Only two weeks until we get home and in a way I am looking forward to being back and seeing everyone again. I’m sure you’ll all scoff at me saying that all this travelling and sightseeing can be fairly tiring… although in my defense it is around 30-35 degrees round these parts.

More photos

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Jul 212008

I’m just posting quickly to say that I’ve uploaded a few more pictures from Japan to the set of Flickr.

Broken phone

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Jul 192008

I thought I should probably post again regarding what I wrote yesterday. I was mainly talking about in our price range… we have since found a few English or French restaurants but they are on the more expensive end of the spectrum.

I also thought I better post and say my phone has died. I’m not sure what finally did it but it has been on it’s way out for a while. The little joy stick didn’t go up and pictures kept coming up as scrambled. Oh well, it just means that as soon as I get a job I will have to invest in a 3G iPhone… it just wouldn’t be proper not to.

Oh… and Jordan’s phone doesn’t work in Japan so at the moment we are uncontactable by phone.

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