From Serbia to Bulgaria

11/6 – 24/6

The drive to Serbia was uneventful. We stopped off to look at an Orthodox church in a small town. The border crossing was a bit more intense than the previous ones we have experienced. We had to actually get out of the van and show the boarder guard inside it – he was kind of thorough – pulling out the container of pepper to see what the label read, but then not actually looking inside it. Once we confirmed that everything in the van were personal items we were free to move on.

The main source of excitement on the drive was the enormously fat man clad only in tiny black shiny underwear who was at the end of his driveway using his weed whacker. There were also a number of people using horses and carriages for transporting hay or themselves, we've definitely gone down the economic ladder a bit now. Or maybe they're just really into sustainability.

We arrived at our campsite about 30km out of Belgrade. The road was fairly narrow, really just wide enough for one car and hemmed in by hedges and we were quite rural and starting to wonder if we had headed in the right direction. Then we got to a carpark in a paddock that had about 20 cars in it. What were they all doing parked in the middle of nowhere? The restaurant located at the same site as the camp was the answer. It was this beautiful wide grassy tree filled area with lots of tables under the trees, a great playground for kids and a petting zoo. It was packed. We headed there for dinner to get a taste of Serbian food and were not disappointed. Beautifully tender lamb and veal slow cooked in a clay pot over a wood fire, together with vegetables.

The following day we headed into Belgrade itself. Overlooking the city is the walled fortress - where it has stood for many hundreds of years - yes older than New Zealand [M- older than Maori, even -M]. At the top of the fortress was a terraced restaurant that looked out on the river Danube. It was a great lunch spot. We were well under dressed for the white table cloth formal service that was offered but the food was yum. When we returned to the fortress the following day to go to the military museum we went back to the restaurant again. For some reason we must have been memorable diners as the head waiter came over to ask whether we preferred our meals today or yesterday.

The fortress has been sacked and rebuilt more than 40 times in it's life, so it's quite an architectural melange.

There was more lunch.

Belgrade was yet another city that made me think why can’t Auckland get its shit together? A large portion of the central area was pedestrian only and filled with tables under umbrellas spilling out onto the street with hundreds of people enjoying the early evening sun. It was so nice just wandering around and watching the world go by.

We continued to head east towards Bulgaria and spent the night in a small campsite at Jagodina where we met a retired French couple who were spending a year travelling around the continent. The following morning we went to the Manasija monastery, which was built in the 15th century. The monastery itself had amazing frescoes painted on the walls and roof. Over time a lot of these have been damaged but the ones that remained were impressive. Serbia has applied for the monastery to be on the UNESCO World Heritage list and they were doing some preservation works on the fortress walls in one corner. 

Manasija monastery - sorry no photos inside

Unfortunately the van developed a bit of a rattling clunking noise which has been slowly getting worse and the tricks we had used to get rid of it - pulse the accelerator pedal and turn the air conditioning off stopped working - so we visited the Toyota service centre in Nis. The manager was very interested in our trip and loved the van’s paint job. They changed the tired and cracked old fan belts, but the noise remained! They thought that a bearing needed changing but it was the end of the day so we were just sent away with the advice – don’t turn the air conditioning on and drive at night when it is cooler. We sweltered our way about half an hour further east after leaving the workshop. The campsite we stayed the night at was full of peacocks, about ten or so. Did you know that peacocks squawk through the night, and their calls are easily loud enough to be heard through the walls of the average van?

After an early morning wakeup call from the peacocks we crossed the border into Bulgaria and made the last of the drive to Sofia. We had booked three nights in the same hotel as Hayley and Ryan, right in the centre of the city. We still needed to get the van fixed so Mark found a mechanic with good Google reviews and we dropped the van off there. Initially we got the bearings on the compressor or idler pulley or something changed but after a few hours of work they discovered that, yep, the noise was still undiminished. Turned out the bushings on the couplings on the supplemental auxiliary driveshaft had all perished over the last 20 years of the van's life. It was going to take the mechanic a few days to source a replacement so we left the van in his hands and he very kindly drove us the 30 minutes into our hotel, giving us a bit of a Bulgarian history lesson on the way.

Uh oh.

Frank happily appreciating our scenic tour of Sophia's outskirts as we wait for the first attempted fix. Not pictured: the shortcuts through the construction site or homeless encampment.

In the morning we arrived at the extensive buffet breakfast at the hotel and had a lovely time catching up with Hayley and Ryan. Mark was very grateful to have someone other than me to talk to for a few days. So grateful and busy talking that we took barely any photos while we were in Sofia with them.

We got onto a free walking tour which showed us around the main attractions in Sofia. We could then come back to those that particularly interested us for a look around inside after the tour. We spent the day alternating between wandering the sights and stopping to eat and drink.

Hooray a new person! Please don't leave Hayley.

 We also visited the museum of Socialist art, which had many statues of Lenin and other communist worthies, including the statute which had previously stood in the centre of town looking at the country’s communist headquarters and keeping an eye on them. [M - When Bulgaria de-Communisted they tore down most of the symbology of the fairly unpopular regime, but some historically-minded folk decided to stick them all in a field rather than the more-usual smashing to rubble, so we get a look at what all the city parks would have looked like pre-1990 -M].  It was a fairly unique attraction.

A cheerful bunch with the Red Star that stood on the top of the communist headquarters

Solidarity Forever.

The guide from the free walking tour helped us arrange a trip to the Rila Monastery the following day. After a bit of a drive out of the city we arrived at the monastery. We had about an hour wandering around looking at the church itself. Mark was able to decipher some of the paintings for me with his more extensive knowledge of the bible. [M- They liked illustrating the good bits from Revelations -M]. From the monastery we then stopped off at a local restaurant for lunch. Then it was off to the airport to get Hayley and Ryan back to the UK, but with plans that we will meet up again in about six weeks time in Amsterdam.

We jumped on a cycle tour of the city. This was a great change from walking and we covered a heap of ground. There was a bit of duplication with the walking tour when we went past some of the same sights but the highlight was the next couple of hours when we went through two of the cities big parks. The Bulgarian King was a botanist and he wanted Bulgaria to have many different types of plants so he established one of the parks effectively as a giant nursery.

Hooray no more walking!

It seemed that Sofia was overrun with walking tours so we went on a food walking tour around the city. The tour got off to a bit of a rocky start. The volunteer organisation has a system of walk-ups to the meeting place or you can pre-register. However, if you pre-register and you are not at the meeting point 10 minutes in advance then you lose your place to one of the walk ups. Unfortunately there were two groups of two people that had registered and arrived about 9 minutes and 7 minutes prior to the start time. They were not able to go on the tour as their spaces had been given to four walk ups (us being two of them). They were outraged that they had booked and were not able to go on the tour. The two volunteer tour leaders were explaining that their email registration clearly explained the cut off time and subsequent loss of place in those circumstances. This was getting nowhere and they were just yelling at the tour guides that they had booked so they should be on the tour.

By the way – the tour is free...

After about ten minutes Mark approached the four yelling people and backed the tour guides up – the rules are the rules, you were late, you are holding the 30 other people up. Another group member backed Mark and the tour guides up reiterating the same message. This seemed to be making some traction but they still hadn’t finished their ranting. Eventually Mark yelled at the tour guides in an over-the-top parody of the yelling of the four. They seemed to finally accept how ridiculous they were yelling at two volunteers about being refused entry to a free tour. They finally left with promises that they would leave very very bad reviews on trip advisor.

The two tour leaders, younger than us, were a bit shaken by it all but proceeded to take us on a really great tour of the city. They split us into two smaller groups and we were taken to five different restaurants around the city, receiving generous samples at each. Our guide Elena would explain a bit about the history of the food or provide other quirky food related tales as we wandered between the restaurants. We all left the tour with promises to leave very very good reviews on trip advisor to balance the poor ones that we knew were coming.

As the van was not likely to be ready for a couple of days we jumped on a bus to Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second largest city, about a two hour drive from Sofia. As we pulled away from the bus station we received a message from the mechanic, the van will be ready later today… We arranged to pick it up in a few days time after our return from Plovdiv.

Our accommodation in Plovdiv was really great. Stanislav, the owner, gave a very comprehensive introduction to the house and some maps and suggestions of what to do while we were in town. Because we had enjoyed the Sofia free walking tour so much we wanted to also do the Plovdiv equivalent, run by the same group. Once again the tour really helped us with getting our bearings. The guide Kathy told us far more about the history of the various buildings in the two hours then we could have found in many hours of research ourselves. Plovdiv was on the road between Rome and Constantinople and has been continuously inhabited for the last 6000 years so there was lots to look at.

Like the singing fountain that was lit up at night and played music - it looked cool in the daytime too

 During our wandering in the afternoon we saw there was going to be a concert at the Roman ancient theatre that evening. The concert was awesome. It was a famous piano player (we didn’t know who but the crowd certainly did…) accompanied by an orchestra. The theatre was all lit up beautifully and as the concert continued and it got darker the lighting only looked better and better. The music was great, they basically played a best of classical music with many songs we were able to recognise. It was definitely one of those - wow we really are doing this travel around the world thing - sitting in an ancient Roman theatre watching a concert! 

Markie plus Roman ancient theatre

The orchestra in all its glory

The pianist was amazing!

We headed back to Sofia and were reunited with the van – minus the weird clunking noise and able to use the air conditioning again. The mechanic had recommended the Seven Rila lakes as a beautiful part of Bulgaria to visit so we went to Sapareva Banya, the small town near the lakes as a base for the hike the following day.

The next morning we headed to the Seven Rila lakes. We were joined by half the population of Bulgaria, who apparently also wanted to go hiking on their Saturday. From the carpark you catch a chair lift which takes you up 500m of elevation to the start of the hike. There is then a well worn track that you follow through the fantastic scenery. It’s pretty cool – you walk along for a bit and then around the corner comes the first lake, after another half hour of walking you see the second lake, while still being able to look back on the first one, and then you come to the third lake and so on. 

Two lakes up

I think this was lakes four, five and six

There was a little bit of snow around when we got to some of the higher parts and one of the lakes  was half frozen and had quite a bit of snow around it. Mark got half his legs in before they went painfully numb and he changed his mind about wading out to clamber onto the iceberg.

Hmmm, is this really worth it?

On the way down we went an “avoid the crowds this is marked on Maps-Me route”. We did avoid the crowds and there was a path of sorts to follow. The scenery was fabulous, quite similar to New Zealand and the Queens Drive walk in the Remarkables. 

There's a path here somewhere...

All good hiking should end with junk food so we went and had delicious pizza for dinner at a great small restaurant in town before heading back to the campsite for a well-deserved early night. Tomorrow we were hitting the road to head back towards Croatia. Our first stop on the way is Macedonia. 

Beautiful Croatia - we'll be back soon!

Croatia 2/6 – 10/6

We had another driving day ahead of us with our aim being to get to Croatia today. My navigation is terrible which makes me the driver and Mark the navigator. But with 7 ½ hours of driving ahead of us we knew it was going to be a big day - we had a lot of pod casts downloaded to listen to. I managed to get the van hooning along the motorways in Italy. Luckily my motorbiking in Vietnam had prepared me fairly well for Italian driving – a lot of merging and lane changing with very little indicating. [M- it's amazing how close the extremes of rule following and order in Munich are to the relative chaos of Italy -M]

Our four star camp site was always going to be a welcome stop but after such a long drive it was amazing. The camp site was immaculate and the toilets smelt beautiful. There was a pool, a restaurant, a beach bar and shady grounds. Although it doesn’t make for very exciting blogging we then spent a couple of days in full on relaxation mode. We would wander ten minutes through the campsite to the beach for a swim in the beautiful water and then nap in the heat of the day. Once it was a bit cooler – although still bloody hot - we would head back to the beach again for another swim. The water is just amazing and the clearest I have seen in my life. Apparently we were so relaxed there are zero photos of these few days and the beautiful camp site we stayed in.

[M- actually some of the nicest toilets I've seen in my life at this place, Polidor. We also had a young German family set up next to us, with their two young boys intrigued by our van, and unable to comprehend that we couldn't understand German, even when they repeated themselves! -M]

Having had two full days to rest it was time to move on. We headed into Porec, just down the road from the camp site and wandered the old town before going for a coffee in a castle, which had a view back over the port. We then drove about an hour south to Pula, towards the bottom of Istria. Although this camp site wasn’t as fancy as the previous one we did have a sea view that was awesome for the sunsets. 

Sea view camping in Pula

We caught the bus into Pula and explored the old town. The amphitheatre in Pula claims to be one of the six largest surviving amphitheatres in the world. We wandered around and tried to work out the mechanics of building such a massive building. We decided against renting a gladiator costume for photos (as great as that would have been for the blog). We also visited a castle fortress and the temple of Augustus. 

Gladiator in the amphitheatre

 

More old ruins

On our way home from wandering around Pula Mark came across some large tunnels in the hill. He went for a little explore but needed a torch to be able to explore more fully. After a bit of research he discovered they were air raid shelters from world war two. A large network of tunnels had been built under the city. The following day we returned to the tunnels, Mark with a number of torches so he was well prepared for the best possible exploring. I declined to join him. 

[M - on my first foray, I went 100 m or so down these 70 year old tunnels in surprisingly good shape, past various turn-offs and being careful not to knock tiny stalactites, and various crevices where the tunnels intersected a pre-existing ancient natural cave system. My cellphone torch with it's fast-fading battery was barely illuminating a few metres ahead of me, and I was trying to remember which series of turns I'd have to take to get out. Coming up to a four way intersection,I could hear a lot of water dripping off to the side leading further into the hillside, and under the pitter-patter of droplets, the long gusty noise of some enormous creature slowly breathing deeper inside the tunnels. After a few minutes trying unsuccessfully to convince myself that this sound had an innocent origin, I remembered I had something really important to do outside, and beat a hasty retreat.

Back in the sunshine, thoughts of dragons seemed ridiculous once more, so I decided to go and find out what the noise was the next day. Not having packed any magic swords, I contented myself with stuffing my pockets with every vaguely light-producing thing I could find, and went out to more fully explore the tunnels system. I found a well-preserved ancient air-raid shelter with remains of all the comforts necessary to house thousands of people, but someone wouldn't come with me so the true identity of the dragon will have to remain a mystery known only to myself. -M]

After the tunnel explorations we jumped in the van and headed towards Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. We are meeting Hayley and Ryan in Sophia, Bulgaria in a week so have decided to head east fairly swiftly to meet them and we will then circle back a bit more slowly and see more of Croatia after that.

Zagreb was a really cool city. There were heaps of parks, with fountains in the middle of town. One of the parks had music playing and a whole lot of deck chairs set up with heaps of people just relaxing and enjoying the sunshine. There were pedestrian only streets everywhere and the spaces were filled with tables from all the restaurants and cafes.

Flower, fountains and Frank - Zagreb is perfect.

We stopped for lunch at a local place in town. Mark was happy. A big meaty casserole type dish with not many vegetables and plenty of bread to mop up all the delicious sauces. After lunch we went to the museum of broken relationships. It’s a collection of random items donated by people from all over the world, with the joining thread being they are to do with a broken relationship – generally romantic relationships, but some parent–child relationships too. Each item has a description penned by the person who has donated the item to the museum. There were poems, angry diatribes, and bitter-sweet recollections of love celebrated and then lost. There were plenty of moist eyes among the other punters. This was a great foil for the people who went for the short and pithy descriptions and made you laugh out loud – a basketball singlet – “He was a player”, or a router – “We weren’t compatible”. It was an interesting concept and a second branch of the museum has just opened in Los Angeles. 

Some dudes in suits did something and this media scrum was super excited and filmed them when they walked across the town square into the government buildings - We just wanted to be part of it!

After leaving Zagreb we headed to Suza, a small town near Osijek, a Croatian city near border with Serbia. The camp ground was a small family run site with room for about two camping cars and five tents. There were lots of fruit trees all around the property and one morning, in a fit of enthusiasm, I collected a whole lot of mulberries and made a delicious berry sauce to have on French Toast for breakfast. The family running the camp site were lovely. They had a family vineyard so with the assistance of sign language, German (he spoke German but not really English) and some photos (thanks Mum and Dad) I think I gave them the message that I too had connections with a family vineyard. Although it was 10.30 in the morning the father insisted on a complimentary glass of the spirit that the family also made. Whoa. It was like firewater.

We went into Osijek for a bit of a walk. There was a fortress that contained the old town. While we were having our sandwiches we watched a wedding procession. Initially there was one family in the venue which contained the sounds of some truly terrible singing - we thought it was bad karaoke at first but then the same guy kept singing [M- And it was to Polka music! -M]. Then there was a whole lot of tooting and a number of cars pull up, full of people yelling and waving Croatian flags. As that second group entered the venue the other family welcomes them to the venue, plying them with drinks. Thankfully some much better singing started! Other than the wedding Osijek was actually pretty grim. It was a Saturday afternoon and the towns seem to close at lunchtime on a Saturday and not reopen again until Monday. It was like being back in Hawera when I was a child.

On our way back to the camp at Suza we went for a walk in the Kopački Rit nature park. There was a fairly extensive board walk with lots of information about the birds we were meant to see. Including the Great White Stork – we didn’t actually see any of these in the park but we had seen plenty of them as we drove around Croatia. At first we saw giant platforms at the top of the power poles as we drove through towns. Then we saw humongous bird nests at the top of the platforms. Finally, we saw the storks and stork babies in the giant nests.

After our walk around the nature park we attempted to find some castle ruins but after driving around for a bit we had no success. We headed back to the camp site – tomorrow we were off to Serbia.

The expanse of France

20/05 – 1/6

Vive La France! Today we got on the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe, along with a large collection of English holidaymakers who promptly started on their champagne (or lager) breakfasts, or, in—the case of a stag do—continued. 4 raucous hours later, as we pulled into town, Frank was subjected to my explanation of the Dieppe raid and excited attempts to locate these stories on the ground in front of us. This was to be theme over the next few days of WW2 history touring, and yet she keeps letting me choose the route we take… 

Off the ferry, we pushed west to Bayeux, where the municipal campground had good reviews. These places cost 10-15 Euro a night to camp in the van and use our own kitchen supplies, but have hot showers and dishwashing sinks. Freedom camping is prohibited throughout the country, and “Europe on a shoestring” thinks that 80 Euro a night counts as cheap accommodation, so we’re pretty happy with this. Shopping for dinners in French supermarkets is basically the same as NZ, and getting lunch ingredients is clearly superior. The only downside is Frank doesn’t appreciate the fromage so I have to try and get through an entire camembert a day by myself until we work out how to buy dry ice (hell, or even regular ice) in France.

Our civilised little van camping setup.

The Cactus Hotel comes with a fully equipped kitchen & chef.

The next day we were up bright and early to go and have a look at the town. Despite being at the epicentre of the D-day landings, the old town survived the war almost unscathed, so it was a joy to wander through the ancient buildings lining the narrow lanes and rivers. We visited the eponymous tapestry and were brought up to speed on what had gone on in 1066, then strolled down the road to the Musée Mémorial Bataille de Normandie to give Frank some context on what happened in 1944 and let me look at old tanks.

The next day, having established that the Germans were the bad guys, we drove ourselves along a whirlwind tour of the beaches. We started with a surprisingly intact remains of a mulberry harbour and a pristine German gun battery Longues - sur - Mer because they were kind of on the way and I realistically was never going to stick to my initial plan of only visiting two sites. 

Then we carried on to Omaha beach and the vast American cemetery with astonishingly well-kept grounds, excellent interpretative walls built into the memorial monuments, and an extensive German defensive strongpoint nearby that made you wonder how anyone got off the beach. Finally, we visited Point Du Hoc, where the entire headland still has more gigantic bomb craters than level ground in between the many bunkers that are somehow still standing. Time to belatedly subject Frank to Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, I really need to plan ahead with the relevant media next time.

pew pew.

Having nearly exhausted Frank’s capacity for rusty militaria, we took a rain check on the countless remaining sites I’d previously read about and left the dozens of remaining museums to their own devices and trundled south to a campground in the middle of the enormous forest surrounding Alençon.

We went for a walk in the woods around Alençon that morning since we’d been getting bugger all exercise, had a friendly chien follow us around for a while, puzzled over overgrown ancient ditches and earthworks we couldn’t discern the purpose of, interrupted French kids doing some sort of scavenger hunt orienteering thing, and of course took a few exciting off-road shortcuts that both of us thought were totally great ideas and didn’t regret at all.

What the hell is Lyme Disease?

That afternoon we drove down to the Loire Valley, famous for its wine and chateaux. We stayed at a pleasant little campsite “Camping l'île du Château,” on an island in the Loire just south of Angers.

The next day we decided to keep on the exercise theme and rented bikes to sample some of the 800km of cycle trails that criss-cross the region. Dodging retired folk on full cycle-touring setups, we set out to see some castles and scenery and so on, and had a very pleasant day rolling around the place, although we also discovered that we’re not quite as fit as we should be for that sort of carry-on. Then a lovely afternoon drive east along the valley to the outskirts of Tours, where we dossed down at Camping les Terrasses de Riverennes.

The next day we realised we were going to be overstaying our allowable time in the Schengen area at this rate, and had a big driving day to Lyon. We took the bus into Lyon from our campsite the next two days, and sampled the delights of France’s second largest city. 

Frank blending in with the monstrous faces carved into the seating of a church along the way

Lyon Cathedral

Lyn's riverfront puts Queens Wharf & the viaduct to shame. It's like this for kilometres, packed in with picnickers and open-air eating and drinking establishments.

We’d also heard that Lyon was a culinary centre of the country, so we took a break from our standard fare (baguette sandwich for lunch, single-burner-back-of-the-van home cooking for dinner) to see how the Lyonnaise eat. This was a pleasant change, It’s a wonder the French aren’t all fat. Once we were full of pâté foie gras and tartine and so on, we trundled an hour south and dossed down in a campsite on the banks of the Rhône.

Sunday morning, we pushed south to the outskirts of Remoulins. We realised this was the first time we’d gotten to a campsite and not been worried that it was too late and the office would be closed, so took a much needed afternoon nap before hiking off to see the reason we’d come to the area:

Pont Du Gard. The river below was also great for swimming in the heat.

The next day we popped in to Avignon. This city was the seat of the papacy for seven popes and two anti-popes during the 1300s (so five net popes, I think?) and was still controlled by the Vatican until the French revolution. Apparently they spent all their time building churches and palaces and fortifications around the old city, because it was hard to believe we were in the 21st century as we cycled around the old city. We then carried on to a little campsite south of Marseille. Mostly we’ve been able to take ring roads around the city centres, but this time we bashed straight through the middle, and had a few wrong turns and poor suggestions from Google maps that led us down tiny twisting alleyways in our full-sized minivan and left poor Frank’s nerves quite frazzled and both of us ready for a shower.

Now, you need a brief primer on European camping to appreciate this story. Most of the places we’ve been staying have been in lovely scenic locations, with well-maintained toilet blocks (sometimes with music playing!), dishwashing areas, and wifi. They also generally had basins for handwashing clothes, little shops, often a café or restaurant at the larger places, and often a privacy hedge between sites. 

The place we ended up in Marseille had zero showers, a single toilet and a single sink between the 20-odd people who were foolish enough to stay (We weren’t up to any more driving that night after our Marseille experience, and it was getting late) and almost nothing else by way of facilities. At least we had plenty of entertainment the next morning in the form of shouted French arguments from other patrons furiously protesting the fact that this hole of a place was the same price as any other campsite.

At least the location was good: we had only a short drive to Cassis the next morning, where we started our day’s hiking through Les Calanques. This big national park is to Marseille as the West Coast beaches are to Auckland, the place a short drive away where you go to get out of the city and into some rugged nature.

We had a beautiful hike along the rocky Mediterranean coast and through the scrub pine forests before taking a much-needed swim at Calanque d'En-Vau. 

Bloody beautiful swimming and rock jumping here, perfectly clear water too. 

Suitably refreshed, we jumped back in the Cactus Hotel and headed up to Moustiers-Sainte-Marie: “1981’s most beautiful village in France.” We had a walk around the old village, which was indeed lovely, but we were mainly just here as a base to tackle the Gorges Du Verdon, “the Grand Canyon of Europe.” I was sold on the Sentier l’Imbut, which I had found on google described as “the most beautiful hike in the Verdon Canyon” and kind of downplayed to Frank that this writer went to add that “but it is rated as one of the most difficult and the hike with most technical challenges.”

 Err, and he went on too...

"It is not advisable to do the walk alone and do not use walking sticks. You will need both your hands free for support and avoid rainy days or days just after rain because the stone paths get very slippery when wet. But in any case use good footwear. Persons who suffers from vertigo are advised to stay away. The hike should be taken in the direction shown on the map because the Vidal path will be a lot more difficult going downhill. You will also see many signs along the path, warning you against doing this walk because of the dangers involved […] So you walk on your own risk […] Things get a bit difficult here. It helps a lot if you help each other in places along these giant rocks. (Make sure you don’t fall down in between rocks and get stuck down there). […]The Vidal trail is apparently made for workers as an emergency exit from the Canyon some time back. It certainly is spectacular going almost vertically uphill like a winding stairways cut out into the rock face […]"

To make matters worse, I was trying to navigate from a screenshot of a topo map, and a slight miscommunication about just which road sign Frank had just seen meant we ended up going down the Vidal trail, which was supposed to be very tough going even in the easier direction of going up it, and most sources on the hike have suggested alternatives so people can avoid doing it even in the easier direction. This part of the hike was not Frank’s favourite. I found it more challenging and vertiginous than Queen’s Drive (Remarkables, Queenstown), so Frank was an absolute trooper to conquer this hike. We also didn’t get out of the canyon until 7:30pm. 

This was within like the first 5 minutes. My attempted panorama went down another 2 frames or so showing how much verticalish drop there was, but it didn't stitch together properly. Happy hiking!

Not pictured: The 20-30 foot drop to the actual ground through all the gaps between the rocks we're balancing on.

The trail was mostly pretty well taken care of, (despite all the signs warning us otherwise) they just assumed you had a good head for heights.

And it was pretty bloody beautiful. (Bigger version)

The next day was a driving day. We meandered through the Parc naturel régional des Préalpes d'Azur Nice, and the quaint little village of Eze. We whipped through Monaco, which seemed to consist mainly of enormous tunnels and traffic police, and crossed the border into Italy via being searched by some soldiers with really spiffy feathered Robin Hood hats. Maybe Great Britain plates arouse suspicion in the continent in these Brexity times. I was once again surprised when my cellphone internet stopped working after we crossed the border (Driving around NZ has not prepared me for this) and we ended up in a dusty Italian campsite crammed into a shoebox of a site as half the country came to join us to celebrate their Republic Day the next day. Oops, we fail at planning.

A new continent!

4/5 – 19/5  Munich & London

After the long journey around the globe, including a great stopover in Sydney where we managed to get into the Etihad first class lounge (wow!) we arrived in Europe. Our first destination was Munich. It was great to see a familiar face when we arrived, with Rachael very kindly meeting us at a central train station, Marienplatz, to help us, change trains and find our way to her and Joe’s apartment.

When we arrived at Marienplatz, my first thoughts were yep we are definitely in Europe. A wide open central square, with tall old buildings and a clock tower. After making ourselves at home at Joe and Rachael’s we headed out to Nymphenburg Palace, where we had a big walk around the palace grounds. We also stopped to look at the water wheel that did something exciting – or so Mark says.

Minor jet lag - still smiling

That evening Joe and Rachael took us for our first taste of Bavarian food at a local restaurant. It was spargal – white asparagus – season. Apparently the locals go crazy for this vegetable so I ordered dinner from the special spargal menu. Mark was very excited at the meatfest that is Bavarian food after two months of noodle soup in Vietnam.

The following day we headed to the Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest science museum. There was plenty to keep us entertained for the best part of the day as we wandered the massive museum.

Once we reached the weekend, we got to experience Munich local style. Joe and Rachael took us to a couple of beer gardens around the city. We were completely sold on the beer gardens as a concept, great big open spaces, full of tables, where you sit in the sun socialising with a few drinks. You can bring your own food or get food there - giant pretzels, fries and pork knuckles were the order of the day. Mark fit in just like a local. [M- also you dip the pretzels in a sauce made of cheese, butter, and cream mixed up with onion & flavour. What a country! -M]

Mark's favourite things - giant pretzel, giant beer, and leather pants.

We had read good things about walking tours of the city so downloaded a route and we were ready to go. Not to be deterred by the moderate rain we continued with the plan. One of the first churches we went into was the most impressive. From a small door in the wall, such that you can barely tell it’s a church, you open the doors and you are in amongst the most beautiful carvings. We also saw many other big old buildings with grand architecture. Most of the time Mark played the – is this building older than NZ? – game. Generally the answer was yes. [M- and occasionally older than even Maori occupation of NZ -M]

Moderate rain - still smiling

On our final day in Munich we went to the NS Dokumentationszentrum museum. This was a history of the rise of the national socialist party (Nazi party) predominantly in Munich. It was a pretty unflinching look at the history and contained lots of information to digest. [I'm a bit of a WWII geek, so thought I had a pretty good handle on all this already. But there was still tons that was new to me here, and the museum did a great job of making the rise of the Nazis seem like a really natural and logical, almost inevitable, thing that happened to regular people in some slightly unusual but still recognisable circumstances. It really made it a real thing that you could imagine happening again. -M]  We spent the best part of the morning there before heading to the airport. We were on the move to London!

On our first day in London we headed out to cram as much sightseeing as we could in one day. It was pretty awesome, we saw so many famous sights that you hear about as a kid and it was so cool to see them in “real life”. We walked through Hyde Park and saw Kensington Palace. We picked up “Boris bikes” the bikes which are located all over the city and are easily rentable. We cycled from Hyde Park to Buckingham Palace and had a photo with the Queen. Then we crossed the Thames and walked around the waterfront before finding Big Ben. Phew!

Oh and this too...

The NZ memorial.

She's in the third window from the left. Probably.

Tower of London.

Having explored as many landmarks as can be fitted into one day the following day we went to the British Museum. It is massive and there are so many things to look at. When we got to the Egyptian mummies section I let out an involuntary “whoa”. The history is just amazing in that place. We spent the next day at the Science Museum, once again there was so much to look at and we barely scratched the surface. Mark spent a long time looking at a something which was really interesting, or so I’m told.

He worked it out eventually. [M - it was a triple expansion steam engine feeding top to bottom with all the pistons on a single rod, and same with all the valves, it was hard to visualise how it worked since I couldn't actually make it move. -M]

As we were staying with locals (thanks Sarah and Andy!) on Saturday evening we got shown around the sights. We went to Ten Bells, a bar which was in the area that Jack the Ripper frequented before being taken to experience the local cuisine – buffalo wings and salted beef bagels. Delicious. And on Sunday a traditional roast lunch at “The Narrow Boat” overlooking one of the canals. A highlight for Mark (and Andy) was getting to see how locks work – the boat kind not the key kind.

I have not persuaded Frank that we should live on a narrowboat.

We went to the West End and saw “The Book of Mormon” a show which came highly recommended and which we can now highly recommend. Another day and some more wandering, we wandered around the exterior of the Tower of London and crossed over the Tower Bridge – yet more of those wow am I really seeing these things moments. We also visited the Natural History museum, there was an amazing collection of dinosaurs along with many many stuffed animals. 

Mark and his dinosaur friend

After enjoying the hospitality of Sarah and Andy it was time to move on. We have been lucky enough to borrow “The Cactus Hotel” from friends of Sarah and Andy. This has opened up a whole lot of Western Europe that we thought we were not going to visit on this trip. (Thanks Rob and Kat!) We slowly made our way out of London. Tonight our destination was Newhaven. It’s not a very noteworthy place but it was where our ferry to Normandy was leaving from in the morning. We spent the night in the campervan parked down a quiet street. Tomorrow we were on our way to France!

Our first taste of #vanlife.