Well, the backlog of posts didn’t get updated…oops. Partying too hard, what can I say.
In any case, I’ve since done Interlaken, Lyon, Paris, Bordeaux, San Sebastian, Barcelona and La Tomatina. Unfortunately, details will have to wait as I’m heading to Morocco for the next 10 days or so and blogging will be difficult.
Till Portugal, when I should have net again.
After our fairly active time in Interlaken, we decided to head to France. James headed up to Strasbourg to try out some of the wines, so Dave Steve and I headed to Lyon to try some of the culinary delights that France is famous for.
On first impressions, Lyon was…meh. Admittedly, we arrived on a gray, overcast day and were situated in the Turkish part of the city – not the most beautiful part. To add to that, it started to piss down as soon as we got off the train and didn’t let up till the next day. Nevertheless, we were determined to make the most of the 2 days we had there and explored the East side of the city, doing some shopping and looking for places to get some good food. Unfortunately, a) everything was closed, because we arrived in August (when apparently everything is closed…circular logic I know, but I have no idea WHY it was all closed), and b) we headed East, further into the Turkish part.
The next day however, things started looking up. A sunny, hot day, we headed West and crossed over the Rhone into the central part of Lyon, where everything is happening. Cafes and Culture everywhere, couldn’t get away from it. From the Basilica on the mountain to the Basilica in the town, to the Basilica at the other end of town…they really love their Basilicas over here. Still, while exploring the Roman Theater and Basilica St Jean (the one on the hill), we took a slight detour and found some wild blackberries, which made for a nice treat.
Wanting a more substantial feed though, we went hunting for somewhere to indulge. A restaurant called the Arcade, situated on Louis Pradel Place, was our reward. One incredible meal later (some sort of home made sausage larger than both my fists together), we lazed around on the grass nearby and enjoyed the sunshine.
Good thing we did, for as it turned out Louis Pradel Place goes off in the afternoon. Skateboarders and BMXers doing tricks and jumps, couple of breakdancing shows, even some guys doing Parkour. That aroused my interest enough that I joined in, and spent a couple of hours learning how to do backflips from a black French guy with Jamaican heritage called Dmitry…now that was a man with character.
Later that evening I wandered out to the Rhone, ambling along enjoying the view. Spying a game of soccer, I joined in and played for a while. Once the game finished, they invited me to have some beers and shoot the shit – although not phrased that way. Something more along the lines of – you want drink? *beckoning motion*. Gotta love working around the language barrier.
Once the sun finally DID set (9:30 seems absurdly late for there still to be full light) at around 10ish, we parted ways and I headed back down the river. What I found there made me realise how lacking Australia is in public facilities.
There was a fully fledged gymnastics ground set up, with bars of various height and orientations, rings, horses and other unidentifiable apparatus. Using all this equipment was roughly 50-60 people all working out, and these guys were fit – and I’m talking incredibly fit. I joined in with a bunch of guys doing body weight exercises, and for the next hour got myself smashed like I’ve never been. Whilst cooling down I tried to discern why they do all this training, if it was for a sport or any specific purpose. The reason given: to win fights. This raises some interesting questions: how is being able to do a backflip from parallel bar to parallel bar going to be used in a fight, and can I watch?
In any case, we were leaving the next morn, so I headed home and crashed out in preparation for Paris.
No pictures as of yet, will update once pictures are up
We enjoyed Switzerland so much the first time that we decided to go back for some more. This time however, we’d decided to go somewhere more…adventurous. Interlaken to be exact.
Interlaken boasts many attractions, mainly the opportunity to do extreme sports – sky diving, paragliding, hangliding, canyoning and more. We decided to give canyoning a shot, and at 8am on Friday the 7th we dragged ourselves out of bed and made our way to the extreme sports base camp.
For those of you who don’t know what canyoning really is, imagine this. Kit yourself out in a wetsuit of your choice. Strap yourself into a climbing harness. Buckle on a life jacket and get a helmet on your head. Then jump down a waterfall. 5 hours of jumping, sliding, falling, spinning, flipping and swimming. That’s canyoning.
However, that was only one day of our stint in Interlaken. We also hiked Lauterbrunnental, which translates to ‘many springs valley’ – mainly cause there is lots and lots of springs. Went partway into a mountain to see the Trummelbach waterfalls, the only glacial waterfall inside a mountain in Europe. 2 degree water roaring down tunnels and passageways inside an Alp…truly amazing. Top it off with a beer in Murren, a town overlooking the entire valley, and it’s about everything you’d ever need to enjoy a day.
Hooray! Our hotel has free, working wifi – first time in weeks this has been the case! Means I should be able to catch up on the remaining backlog of blogs I have, or at least that’s the plan.
We’d learnt from our last ferry ride, and this time booked a cabin for the trip back to Italy. A sound nights sleep made a huge difference, and our arrival in Ancona at 7am was quite bearable. Full of energy, and well, hungry, I wandered through the markets as they set up, and was able to score some freshly baked bread with condiments for quite cheap.
Once James’ ferry landed and we’d met up, we headed to the train station and headed to Modena, our next port of call.
Modena is a quite little town, the major attraction being the presence of the Ferrari factory and museum nearby. Spending half a day looking at shiny Ferrari’s and the other half exploring Modena, it was a pleasant change from the party atmosphere of the last 2 weeks or more.
Of course, idle hands are the devils playthings, and while Steve slept we maybe, kinda…shaved his chest…just a little bit. And recorded it on video. The only way he found out about it actually was from that video, when we posted it on facebook
Our last evening in Modena, and Italy, we went out at my at my insistence searching for a proper, thin crust Italian pizza. To date all we’d had were westernised versions of pizza, and I was desperate to have a proper Italian pizza before I left. Thankfully, we were in luck. (PICTURE OF PIZZA FROM IPHONE).
Split was…big. Not the town itself, but the events that occurred there.
Firstly we continued the usual theme of pre-drinks on the boat before grabbing a bite to eat in town. At some point in the night we started the souvenir game, a game where you ’souvenir’ things from the places you go. This was probably the tamest part of the evening.
From Sally jumping on the back of a moving moped and trying to convince the driver thereof to let her stay on, to Dave and I having a model off with girls handbags in a club, the night steadily built momentum into being a massive, massive night.
Then Steve got hit by a bus.
A couple of hours and a hospital later, we brought Steve back to the boat and put him to bed with a concussion and several square centimeters of skin missing. I went back to the Police station to deal with some of the paperwork – as Steve was being done for jaywalking… – while I was there, I accidently said the forbidden word, and did 10 pressups in the middle of a police station. The translator had a fun time explaining that to the cops
Once back on the ship, Dave and I stayed up the night keeping an eye on Steve, amusing ourselves by watching Flight of the Conchords. The next day the cruise ended officially, and we moved into our hostel and all crashed out, recovering from the events of last night.
Omis is home to a true Pirate Castle, situated on top of a rather large mountain overlooking the docks and town proper. A rather hefty climb, 550m up, it boasts an impressive view. Steve and I weren’t satisfied however, and decided to clamber up the neighbouring mountain, an extra 300m. Now that was a view.
That night we had a party on the boat, with an interesting twist – a pirate theme. Scrounging through the towns market, combined with much eyeliner stolen from the girls onboard, we’d all managed to assemble some sort of pirate costume to partake in the revelry.
After docking in Makarska and leaving the crew to fill up the ships tanks (well over 1000 litres of petrol…), we headed to the local soccer pitch to play off against the another Busabout ship that was in at the same time.
Next up was one of Makarska’s attractions…cliff jumping. Various heights were available, ranging all the way up to 17m if one was daring enough to take a running jump off the security wall. Beyond that, the 15m jump was a fairly comfortable drop straight down, so cliff jumping we went. Lots of fun, check out the video of yours truly at the bottom of this page. Unfortunately the video from the one and only 17m jump (noone else was stupid enough to do it) wasn’t taken (damn you Steve, damn you), but the video gives a good enough indication.
That evening we had been booked into a quality traditional Croatian restaurant for a solid meal, and although pricey by Croatian standards it was well worth it. One seafood lasagna and 5 complimentary drinks later (for some reason a power outage meant free drinks, but whos complaining?), we headed off to a Makarska’s next famous attractions – a club in a cave.
Not just any cave though, it used to be an ammo dump during the war. Kind of difficult to the explain the evening in words, recommend checking out the pictures on facebook. Nevertheless, 7am the next day I stumbled back to the boat with some of the girls from the boat, passed out briefly on the deck, then woke up at 8 and kept drinking! Big, big night.
The day after our Hvar experience was thankfully a fairly relaxed one, with the major attraction being the Golden Horn on the island of Brac. What is unique about this beach, apart from the fact that is shaped like a giant horn sticking into the ocean, is that it changes shape daily as the tides move the pebbles around. This means that while it might curve to the left at the start of the day, by the end it could curve quite distinctly to the right.
While this is happening, adventurous kite surfers often jump over the very tip of the horn, as the winds allow them to get 7-8 seconds of airtime.
That evening we hit up the town of Bol, still on Brac, and enjoyed an open air cinema with the locals, watching The Boat That Rocked.
After the daily swim stop then a sumptuous lunch provided for us by the crew, we arrived in Hvar, party island of Croatia. We docked just off Carpe Diem, a satellite island consisting of pretty much a large beach bar, a beach and beach volleyball court. After having some drinks and kicking back (even more so than usual), we swam back to the ship and sailed into Hvar proper.
There, after seeing the sights, we went to the club Carpe Diem, a club for the high profile – Hugh Jackman had been seen there earlier that day. Of course, when we went it was still early enough that we could actually get in – much later than 11 and it becomes fairly exclusive.
So, before we were evicted we headed to Kiva Bar, reknowned for its Boom Boom Tequila shots – a shot where you are handed an old army helmet to wear, then are bashed around the head with your drink before shotting it. Minor concussion + alcohol: quite an experience.