May 31, 2008

For those of you still following our travels, we have two more days in Europe, then it's back to Canada. Yesterday, Jan found a tree in mom's yard that was starting to bloom, so we took a few pictures. Mom didn't know what type of tree it is, but as you can see, the flowers are two toned, orange and cream, and the whole tree is covered in blooms.



Today we rose early and after a big breakfast at my mom's, we waited for the taxi to arrive. We booked the taxi for 7:30, thinking that we needed to leave enough time for ourselves to get to the train station by about 8:30. When we arrived 10 days ago, it took an hour at least to get home, due to the traffic. Today, we made it in less than 30 min, so we had a long wait.

Our train finally pulled in and we were allowed to board at about 8:30. Then we waited, and waited, and waited. It went past our expected departure time, by 30 minutes, and we were getting a little nervous as we knew that in Vienna, we only had a 1/2 hour wait to get on the connecting train. There were a number of others in the same boat, wanting to get to Vienna in time to board another train. When the conductor came by we all asked if we could make up the delay, but he was unable to give us a definite answer.

Imagine our surprise when we arrived with minutes to spare. We rushed down the platform, since we were in the last car as the train nosed into the station, and I noticed an ICE train on the next track. We saw a conductor about 1/2 way down the platform and asked which track we had to go to, and when he heard or destination, he advised us we were at the right train, but had to go back to the "front" car. We boarded the train and it left in a matter of minutes. We were in the first car which was "1st class" and realized that our car included the driver of the train as well. There was a glass partition to the front of the car and the engineer sat in a big "arm chair" with a console in front of him to drive the train. Cool.

This train wasn't quite as fast as the one we took from Paris to Saar Brucken a month or so ago, but it still clipped along at a fair speed varying between 100 and 200 km/h. We saw some really beautiful country, but I found that the speed of the train combined with the tree-lined gully the tracks are in made picture taking difficult if not impossible. Every time I wanted to take a picture, a tree or tunnel obscured the shot by the time I got ready to shoot. We arrived in Frankfurt just before 8 pm and managed to find the hotel shuttle which took us to our hotel in a matter of minutes.

We have a beautiful suite in a new part of the hotel, so we're going to enjoy our last two nights in Europe. The shuttle will take us to the airport on Monday in time to catch our flight to London and by that night, we'll be back in Canada (after an 8 or 9 hour flight).

May 29, 2008

Our holiday is quickly coming to an end. It's hard to believe that 2 months have passed since we left Kelowna. We have thoroughly enjoyed our time over here, with a few exceptions (see previous comments, Paris) but we are ready to return to the real world. We miss the wide streets, and the English-speaking people.

We have enjoyed our visit with my mom for the past two weeks, and thought it was time to update the blog, as we figured out a way to access the internet rather than having to go to an internet cafe. We thought we'd include a few pictures of Budapest.



The tiles used for the roof on this church came from a factory in the town where my grandmother was born.



This contraption is called a "funicular" railway. It goes straight up the side of the mountain to the Castle, similar to the one we took in Paris. Tomorrow, we are planning to take a tour of the Opera House and hopefully get a peek inside the spa at the Gellert hotel. We'll attempt to add more comments on what we've done tomorrow night, before we head off to Frankfurt on Saturday.

May 24, 2008

We spent the last week at my mom's house in Budapest, relaxing and getting ready to return home after a very enjoyable 2 month vacation.

On Monday morning we returned the rental car early and boarded the train in Munich for Budapest. We had a very enjoyable trip in first class, which our eurail pass entitled us to. The car we were in had power outlets, so we were able to use our computer the whole way, although I wasn't able to locate an internet link. I guess the train was moving too fast to find a stable connection. We had lunch on the train and and passed the time playing games and watching the videos we purchased.



Sometime after we entered Hungary, the rain started and by the time we arrived in Budapest, it was a downpour. My mom met us at the train station, and a taxi driver promptly cornered us to give us a ride. We stopped to reserve our seats on the train to Frankfurt next week, so that was something we wouldn't have to worry about. After a long ride through rush hour traffic, we finally arrived at mom's house. It's amazing that in Budapest as in Vancouver, they are building a subway. Unfortunately, they are also refurbishing one of the major bridges at the same time, supposedly to cut costs, and it's causing huge traffic jams, especially when it rains.





We've had a great visit. I'm picking up the language much faster than 2 years ago when we were here. Today we met my youngest sister, Hanita and her fiancee, Gabor, and had a nice visit with them. They are planning their wedding for August. We found a "tulip tree" in mom's garden for all you flower people. Mom says she took a picture of the flower to a horticulturist and was told that it was a tulip tree, very rare, and that he had never seen the flower of one before. The tree has been in mom's yard for 16 years and last year was the first year that it bloomed.

May 19, 2008

Today was a very quiet day. I finally got through to my mom this morning using my SKYPE connection, and she's happy to see us. We then went and found the car rental location, and finally got a copy of the rental agreement (oh, I think I forgot to mention it before, but somewhere during our journey through France, I realized that I had no paperwork for our car rental, and they only have locations in Germany, so until we got back to here, we couldn't get a copy.) I guess the guy who rented us the car neglected to give me a copy. I happened to be reading something on our roadmap, and there was a note on there about the requirements for driving in Europe, one of them a copy of the car rental agreement, ooooops.

Anyway, we then went to the train station and reserved our seats to Budapest, then found out that we were nowhere near the station where the train was leaving from, it was about 10 minutes away. So off we went to locate it, for tomorrow. There is a car rental outlet across from the station so we figured once we found it, we would find the station. I needed to know where to drop Jan off with the luggage while I dropped the car off in the morning. We found the station, relatively easily, but it took, three trips around the block, and a stop at the police station, where they didn't speak English, to finally find their office. There is a tiny sign, on the wall pointing to a parking lot driveway, where I have to take the car, then walk a block or so to the train station. This is different from the location on both GPS units.





Our train for Budapest leaves at 9:30 in the morning, so we need to be there by shortly after 8:00 am so I have time to leave the car, find Jan and the luggage and get on the train at 9:00 am At the moment, we are the only passengers in the car (that could change by train time) in a compartment. We'll take some pictures to share, of our journey. Mom is going to try meeting us at the train station in Budapest.

After this we returned to the hotel to rest, and repack our luggage, clean the car, and fill the gas tank. Tomorrow we start another, final leg of our holiday. We want to do some travelling in Hungary, which we'll probably do by train as we will have 4 days left on our passes to do so. Our blog might be a little less frequent as we'll have to use an internet cafe to post them, but we plan to do so, every couple of days as and when we can.

May 18, 2008

We had another wet, miserable day. We're not enjoying the trip anymore! (lol). On top of it all, we were driving along the road in Innsbruck, Austria, trying to find an Information bureau that was actually open for the tourists, when out of the clear blue, our Blonde GPS froze! This was a MAJOR hindrance to our plans, as the one in the car only appears to work in Germany.

After trying to coax it back to life, without any success, I decided to call my mom, in Budapest and ask if we could come a few days early if we couldn't get the GPS to work. I couldn't get my cell phone to work. I finally found a phone booth and tried my calling card. Yep, you guessed it, it wouldn't work either. Both were purchased in France, and I suspect need a different code than I've been using. I'll try and find a dealer for my sim card and see if he can tell me the trick to make the phone work.

We had a second straight day of heavy, steady rain, and we're both getting tired of it. After six weeks of traveling around, all the castles and churches seem to blend into each other. It's not much fun standing in line to go into an attraction, usually after walking some distance from the parking lot, in the pouring rain. It's certainly not as accommodating over here as it was in England. There, in most cases our "Handicapped" sticker got us a special spot close to the facility, and often even a ride to or through the attraction. There were at least two castles where Jan got a ride to the top of the hill, and after walking around in the castle, a ride back down. Here we haven't found it so accommodating. And it takes away a lot from the attraction.





We're getting to the point where we want a rest from all the travel, and a chance to sort out what we've seen. We have actually talked about returning the car a few days early and taking the train to Budapest to visit my mom for a few days longer than planned. If I can sort out my phone problems tomorrow, we'll call mom and see if that works for her. Jan's getting tired and sore from all the walking, and as most hotels we've stayed at do not have a bathtub, only a shower, she hasn't been able to soak her sore hip, each night, and it just gets worse the next day.

The next blog might come from Budapest rather than somewhere in Germany. That's it for now.

May 17, 2008

What an ugly day we had today. When we woke up, we could hardly see across the valley, even less than last night, and it was drizzling. We stopped at a grocery store for some fruit and luncheon material. We were hoping to stop and have a picnic somewhere along the way. This next leg was supposed to be a very picturesque one. Instead of slowing down, the rain got progressively worse all day.

We started along the road out of Cortina, which I assumed was towards the north, and after a bit, I asked Jan what our destination was to be. When we first entered the address, the route seemed to be back towards Cortina, then it changed and I was asked to turn left at this road coming up. I did, and we started going along this pot hole covered, but paved road up into the mountains. I thought, if I see snow anytime soon, we're turning around!. Soon we reached a corner where the road seemed to get better... I thought it must be an important corner as there was even a streetlight in the middle of the forest!





Later we crossed under a chairlift, and I'm thinking, where the heck are we? Then we started heading downhill, and I was sure we were going back toward Cortina. We reached another corner, where I had to turn right, uphill again. Jan and I had a small disagreement as to following the GPS route of going by the map, although the places we were going through were so small that they weren't on the map, and the road signs showing villages coming up, didn't match the ones on the map either. We finally came to a restaurant/hotel, and Jan went in to get directions, but couldn't locate anyone. We were told yesterday that places were shut down for the spring. We stopped a guy walking along the sidewalk, and tried to ask if we were on the right road. After looking at our map for a while, he thought we should go back the way we had come, but then he changed his mind and we got the impression that we might actually be heading in the right direction.

We continued on for a bit, and finally saw a sign for a certain mountain pass that was on the map as well, so we carried on. The road was climbing up the mountain, and into the clouds. It was hard to take pictures as we couldn't see much through the mist. We kept seeing cars and bikes coming down, so I felt fairly sure that if they could make it so could I. We finally reached the top, and started down, with numerous switchbacks and a very narrow road. At times blondie tried "recalculating" 'cause I was doubling back on myself so tightly on the road that she thought, I had turned around.

Every so often, we would pop out of the clouds and get a picture or two, then back in again. We drove through numerous little ski villages, which were mostly all closed up. Finally we reached another little village and started climbing up the valley. Within a matter of 2 kms, I must have turned around 20 times, a hairpin turn one way, drive 50 feet, and turn back the other way. I tried to take some pictures looking back down the valley, and in the rain and mist you can see the road curving back and forth too many times to count. I think before I hit the summit, I counted 43 switchbacks going up, and about 27 going down the other side!





We finally figured out that we were going along a different road to our destination than we had wanted to. We stopped and had lunch at this little restaurant, still in Italy, where they mostly spoke German! Then we started up again, over another high pass, The snow on the sides of the road was higher than the car. I braved tha rain to take some shots looking back the way we'd come. It was an unreal road!



We finally arrived at a place where we could get on the freeway. So following the GPS, I entered the toll gates, and took the turnoff for Austria. We went around the corner and were stuck in a monumental traffic jam trying to get on the same freeway! When we got to the toll booth, I had to pay 1.60 Euro for driving 200 feet! The gate I first entered was 30 feet away to my right. Well, no big deal, I thought, at least we're on our way. About 50 km down the road, another toll booth, and now 8.00 Euro! Then I got off the freeway about 6 km past this point as we reached Insbruck, Austria.

The hotel we were hoping to stay at, was full (it's Saturday afternoon) so we tried driving around looking for another hotel, but they don't identify their hotels over here, like we do ours in North America, with BIG GAUDY signs. After driving around for a while, unsuccessfully, we had the GPS locate a place for us. It's a little pricy, but at least it has wireless in the lobby, so I'll be able to post the last two days' blogs and check our emails.

May 16, 2008

We got up this morning and found that God had answered our prayers and given us a nice sunny morning, after last night's thundershowers. We had breakfast and quickly got on our way. While we were in Padova, we figured we may as well see if there's anything interesting in town. We found a cathedral, and Jan took some pictures, while I drove around, 'cause there were no parking spots, AGAIN! I ended up driving all over the place down narrow streets and finally returned to the square where I dropped Jan off. I was trying to figure out how to find her, since I came back from a different direction than before, but fortunately, she was waiting for me right where I came out of the alley.



We now decided to head to our next destination of Venice. On the map the distance from Padova to Venice shows as 25 km, but it took us close to an hour and a half to get there. We found signs pointing to "Parking + Boat = Venice" and eventually came to a parking lot which showed 8.00 Euro for up to 12 hours. I asked Jan to check on the price of tickets, and when she returned, and said go park the car, the ferry leaves in 15 minutes, I told her to start walking while I parked the car. We just managed to get to the boat before it left!

We got some great pictures, saw the canals and boats, and had lunch and some yummy Italian Gelatio. The canals here are utilized just like streets in any normal city. They haul freight, and people, with even a "bus" service, although it is a boat service. We then took the boat back to our car and got on our way to travel north towards the Alps.








And I just had to take a picture of this boat with the guy steering with one hand and talking on a cell phone with the other!

We are up high in the Dolomite Region of the Italian Alps; and I don't know why but these mountains are very different from the Rockies. I have gotten some beautiful shots and Bob stopped to get some great extra's that I couldn't get when we were driving. Cortina, where we will spend the night, is a popular Winter Ski Resort and we are lucky to find a hotel open. Out of 60 Hotels in the town only 5 are opened right now. Our host told us one of the better restaurants to go to as most of the restaurants are closed also.





They say that the Winter and summer seasons are busy but the Spring and Fall are dead. We don't know if we will be able to get this posted tonight or not as there is no Wi-Fi and we are not sure if any place has internet right now. Tomorrow we will travel down the Valley of Cortini and into Austria. We are hoping to get some beautiful pictures as the travel books all tell us of the great vistas you can see between here and Bolgona.

May 15, 2008

Today started out hazy, and we were up early and away from the hotel. As you can see from this view out of our hotel room window, there are a lot of roads over here. I have never seen so many on/off ramps criss-crossing all over the place.



We had to fight the morning rush, and what a rush. There must have been a million scooters and other bikes and motorcycles on the roadways, weaving in and out of the traffic. The most difficult part of driving over here, especially in the larger Italian cities, is having to look out for all the bikes. They pass anywhere, go into the oncoming lanes, anytime they are held up by cars, and at every traffic light, they all congregate at the front so that they get a jump on the cars.








We started off leaving Genoa, by following the lower coast road again. Fortunately, we had blondie to guide us, as without her, we wouldn't have found our way out of a paper bag. We twisted and turned all over the place to get out of town, then it only got worse! The road wound up into the mountains and back down, a number of times, before we finally got fed up and switched off the "no toll roads" exception on the GPS. The first picture shows how narrow the roads are with people parking virtually anywhere, including double parking everywhere, while in the second, we were stopped at a traffic light beside the police car, when a large tanker truck was making a right turn. We expected it to run over the police car, and they wouldn't back up to help.



We found the nearest entrance ramp and got onto the straight, fast, freeway. Although it started out hazy, we expected the sun to come out (and later on we did hit 29 deg.), but at one point as we came out of a tunnel, we were hit by a humongous rain storm that forced the traffic to slow to about 80 from the 110+ speeds we'd been doing. This 125 km trip took us to Pisa, where we wanted to visit the leaning tower, and cost us 10.50 Euro.

There was not much else to see there, and after taking a walk around, and a bunch of pictures, we got on the road again.



We decided to head towards Venice, but after inputting the final destination, and a stop at a MacDonald's where we wanted to go online (we couldn't as they did not have the WiFi connection), we learned that it would be after 5:30 before we would arrive, so we once again went to the freeway and cut off approximately 1-1/2 hours from the trip. (cost 14.60 Euro) We arrived at Padova (Padua - isn't that from Romeo and Juliet???) at 4:00 pm and found a nice hotel, part of a chain that we'd stayed at before, but slightly better qua lity. This one actually has free wireless internet, so we can catch up on all our blogs and emails.

It has been a rough day for me as I have really been having a time with my hip and leg. ( Part of the reason for heading straight to the Venice area.) and wouldn't you know it as we are sitting here writing this blog there is a wild storm outside. My weather barometer is working real well. I am hoping that we can get a good rest tonight and that by tomorrow I will be feeling up to seeing Venice and then we head up to the Dolomite Mtns. and on to Austria. Arrivederci from Padova.