Discovering Dalmatia...

This was our sailing route while on the Dalmatian Coast. The six of us arrived at Split airport and had to get a bus (which cost us 30 Kunars each - equivalent of £3!) all the way into the town/port of Split. Then it was sailing the next morning off to three islands along the way; Brac, Vis and Hwar... Click on the map to see detail. Photos to come later I'm afraid! But I can tell you there was a lot of pivo drunk every night - and by that I mean Beer!


We arrived in Split and got a local bus to the marina. The mountains surrounding the Dalmatian Coast are beautiful.

Day 2 – Left marina on sailboat Siesta. Passed Bobovisca town. Docked at Milna on Brac island. We hired a scooter here and drove up into the mountains. Very pretty areas! Nice little town, found Tomislav pivo, a type of bock stout beer. Very tasty. After dinner there was a youth rock concert in town – don't want to be rude but they weren't very good!

Day 3 – Anchored at island near Hwar and had to get a boat taxi to Hwar as the port on Hwar was a little too open to the elements. Hwar was quite a touristy town and a large town. Had dinner in a historic little step alley.

Day 4 – Passed Vis island and berthed in Komiza. There was a severe storm on the other side of the island, you can see from the darkness of the clouds here...

Day 5 – Arrived and anchored in Stari-Grad.

We had dinner in a restaurant and you could buy a tube of beer! It could hold 5 litres! There was quite a lot of Bavaria available on the islands we visited which I preferred but the best Croatian beer I found was the Laško Pivo Slovenian beer.

Day 6 – Passed Povlja and berthed in Pučišća. This town's main income is from it's stonemasonry as there is a stone quarry very prominently visible as you enter the port. See here. But there were only two restaurants and a few cafes as it was a very small town. Our beautiful sailing boat the Sietsa outside the town's church...

In the window of a school I found this. It is a model of a kitchen made using small bits of stone from it's quarry. It was so sweet!

Day 7 – Via Brac towns to arrive at Split. The six of us had dinner in town at nice Italian place. Discovered Malibu is nice with apricot nectar!

Day 8 – Left the Siesta and off to our self ciontained apartment in Luciceva, uptown Split. Went to dinner in marina on west side of island and to Tribu for a drink. Realised that all cafe bar drink menus are almost exactly the same for the entire Dalmatian coast where we had travelled! Discovered Orahovac, a walnut liquor which is really nice with Coke. It was very cheap at £1 for a shot and £1 for the coke. It was really hot in Split, 30 - 35 I think and very still.

Day 9 – Sunday... everything closed!! so had to eat, drink and walk in the heat all day. Saw the fantastic 4 with Croatian subtitles in the local town cinema for £4. Sick of eating out so cooked at home!

Day 10 – Walked to forest and a very long walk at south-west of island. Had lunch at the square where we found Hoegaarden! yay!

Day 11 – back home via local bus to the airport where there were no more seats to the airport, it was quite uncomfortable sitting on the floor in a bumpy bus!

Below Zero

I went to the Absolut Icebar in London last night - it was pretty cool! (that wasn't deliberate by the way) and yes it was very cold at -8.8 degrees celcius. We had to wear thermal ponchos and gloves to keep us warm. The vodka cocktails were good and we were served in ice cubes with holes drilled in!

See here.

However it is probably crazily energy inefficient to keep a freezer running all the time for the sake of a bar!

Yes it's a map of the tube!!!

The Twelfth Night

Last weekend I went all the way to Chichester to see Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The main reason for going was that Patrick Stewart was playing the character of Malvolio. Needless to say, he was quite brilliant! So were all the other actors, it was a very rounded cast overall. For more details see here. I recommend it highly, very pleased to have gone!

Muddy Glastonbury...

Yes it was unbelievably muddy! The photos don't do it justice!


175,000 people attended so you can imagine there were quite a few tents.

I had to find mine by going to the fourth red flag on the right and looking for the Fosters shelter!

The Pyramid tent was the big one where Maximo Park, The Killers, the Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian played.

And here is the Jazz World tent and you can see Medieval Punditz on the stage. They were the best act I think and attracted a very large crowd! The other stages were too big.

After all that I was happy to go home, take a bath and watch the Manic Street Preachers on digital tv in my lovely warm house :)

I don't think I'd really want to go again but I'm glad I found out what it was all about after all these years of wanting to go. The whole thing started when Pulp headlined Glastonbury in 1995 when I first started liking Brit music.

England goes smokefree

Finally... about time too!!!
:)

the BBC

I have some fantastic news that nobody told me about in Melbourne in Southbank... there's a second Belgian Beer Cafe... yay!!! Something for me to look forward to!

http://www.belgianbeercafemelbourne.com

Europe Extravaganza

Rimma, my oldest friend visited me in London and we decided to conquer Belgium, Spain and Paris on a trip through Europe.

My favourite way to travel is by the Eurostar (can i have a discount???) and we arrived on my birthday in Brussels Central Station. We stayed in the lovely small town of Hoeilaart which is a 20 min train ride from Brussels.

In Belgium we went to Brussels, Leuven and Brugge and drank lots of beer along the way! In Leuven we found a lovely little bar where Sven (below) helped me out with choosing beers!

Me and Sven

I tried Blond Triple Karmeliet beer which was really quite tasty and different to most blonde beers.

In Brugge we found the main square and drank the evening away until I found a place to eat. There was a live orchestra in the main square!

And then it was off to Spain!! I had no interest in Spain but I'm open to new things so I decided to give it a go. Well as you probably read earlier I had problems with food but other than that it was a nice trip. We began in Barcelona where we managed to arrive at Barcelona (Girona) airport which was actually 92 km away from Barcelona. So we had to get a bus and we were late arriving but all was good! We saw Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Cathedral as well as the town and a walk through the gothic district.

Gaude's cathedral

We found a tiny little bar tucked at the back of a shop and had a nice afternoon siesta there and drank more beer!

Then it was off to Madrid through Zaragoza where we was the Basilica de Nuestra Senora del Pilar. In Madrid we saw the Royal Palace and the Valley of the Fallen (below). This was an amazing site which commemorated those that had died under Franco's reign. The architecture was impressive.

On the way to Cordoba we stopped off at Toledo. Toledo is a very small town that is quite religeous and they make a lot of their money by producing swords! We arrived 30 mins before the beginning of one of the biggest fiestas in Spain; Corpus Cristie. There was a procession for 2 hours and amazing music and costumes.

Seville ... the palace.

In Seville we also had a dinner at a flamenco dancing evening show which was really fantastic, the music and dancing was excellent!

We had a short stop in Gibraltar on the way to Granada so I was in England for about 2 hours! It is part of England and the United Kingdom and had all the same shops too and they use Gibraltar pound stirling as currency. We only had enough time to go on a taxi tour up the mountain and quickly eat some lunch then we were on our way to Granada. Aaah! It was good to be home!!!

Travelling east through the Sierra Nevada mountains to the town of Granada which is steeped in Moorish history.

In Granadawe saw the former residence of the Moorish Kings; the Alhambra Palace. We also saw the historic Albaicin district of this city.



The Alcaza palace with arabian architecture...

Then it was off to Ibiza! We boarded a very big ferry and make our way there.

We went the the club Prestige which I thought was pretty good but others didn't think so!!

Cafe Del Mar sunset....

The onto our final leg to Paris... Place de l'hotel de ville

Marco and I at the Louvre...

Paris was nice, we went up the Eiffel tour but i was ill so I took the lift this time!! We stayed in Peace and Love Hostel which was cramped but friendly, i'll give it that! In all we had a fun time on our Europe Extravaganza!

Food

vegans beware!!! spain is not vegan friendly...
:(

Land of Siestas and Fiestas

Just letting you know that i´ve just safely arrived in madrid. Barcelona was interesting but there was a public holiday there so nothing was really open except for tourist shops which were quite tacky.

Belgium was really good though. And so was the beer... of course! I got by with mostly French and the Flemish was very strange! We traelled to Louvaine, a cool university town where we found a lovely bar and a cute bartender who helped us find good beers! Brugs is the Hoegaarden copy which was pretty good!!

And Brugge was nice too but we only spent the afternoon-evening there. A long train ride back to Groenendaal but we got to accidently use the metro in Brussels!

Tomorrow we are off on a guided tour of the grand palace and also the historic part of the town but anyway i´ll keep it short and say bye!!

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Maybe I'm not the geek I thought I was... or maybe it's not actually geeky... who knows? But it's fun!

1 h4d n0 1d34 7h15 4c7u4y h4d 4 n4m3.

http://www.wikihow.com/Read-and-Write-in-1337
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

A crazy trip to Germany

When booking my flights from Ibiza to Paris I stumbled across some cheap flights I couldn't resist so I decided to book a flight to Frankfurt for a day!!! So I took Marco with me and we flew across the channel to the mainland. After realising it would take too long to get the bus into Frankfurt we decided to hire a car. The cheapest option was an Opel (Holden) - which we didn't want! So the second cheapest was to get a Daihatsu Copen hard top convertible... which was pretty cute really! For specs click here.

Since we had a car we could go wherever we wanted, and luckily Marco knew how to drive on the right side of the road! So we drove to the Rhine and followed the coast up to Koblenz and looked at the beautiful countryside along the way, there were many castles and a really cool bridge that is probably famous!

Lunch was much cheaper than in England which was a nice relief! We looked at a few shops then headed south towards Cocham where we stopped for a nice walk and a beer. The beer in that country was amazing!! I do love German wheat beer. For some reason all the beer went down so easily that day! Lucky I wasn't driving!

Being careful of time we headed back through Traben-Trabach almost getting lost and having to ask a local for directions to the airport!! For a full trip route see here. But it did take ages to get out of the airport when arriving back to Stansted, I realised why people don't generally go to a country for just one day!!! But I did have some good luck though and got my full visa back in my passport for no cost at all... yay!!

I LOVE ENGLAND!!!

The Bluetones

Last Friday I set off for a pleasant evening at Koko, a venue which never ceases to please me! You can see the performers pretty much wherever you are and don’ t feel too far away, and there are three bars. This time I was lucky enough to have two tickets to see indie quartet the Bluetones. After guests Welsh band Hot Puppies and the electro sounds of Eugene Machine we were blessed with the presence of Mark Morriss and co. Adams apparently had fallen off a ladder and opted to spending the evening playing guitar sitting down! He's below on the right.

The was a great mix of new and old songs to keep the die-hard fans pleased as well as lots of pumping songs for dancing and a little bit of that dangerous crowd surfing! But had an chilled night out as I spent the evening drinking in the stalls. We stayed for Club NME for a while and the music was great! Then there was a surprise band that came on and played about an hour into club NME, I still haven't found out who they were. Koko is awesome!

Photos are courtesy of Wayne :P

This is an awesome site... along my lines it's all about brilliant maps!

Adventure to Holland

Okay, what started out to be a lovely short easter break to Holland turned out to be a bit of a disaster in the end!!

Marco and I drove south to the Channel is hideous peak hour traffic stressed we wouldn't make the ferry in time but fortunately we actually caught the previous ferry! However this still meant we had a long way to go to Weert where my first stop was. We drove along the coast on the E40, then the E17 when I genuinly asked "what country are we in now??" it turned out we were in Belgium! We arrived in Weert at 3.30am.

The next beautiful sunny morning I headed north all the way across Holland to Groningen to visit Anja (an old colleague of mine in Melbourne). It was a four hour journey but my music made it very enjoyable indeed! When I arrived the German flower markets were just finishing up in Groningen and we had a bit of a walk around and I had my first Dutch Hoegaarden! And I learnt the most important phrase in Holland - Een Hoegaarden alstublieft!

The label is actually different to UK and Australian labels which I thought was interesting. After a lovely home cooked meal we went out that night and saw some bars and nightlife in Groningen and then to a renowned 'coffee shop' and bought some 'coffee'! I aslo discovered Wieckse Witte which I have labelled as the second best beer in the world so far, very refreshing!

Saturday was a bit more planned, we drove with a friend to Zandvoort to a hens day out as one her friends was getting married (they call it a partnership, there are two options!) and had a lovely day out on the beach drinking tea at Mango's Beach Bar (our receipt came in a gorgeous kids shoe!) and a bit of walking. However this was when disaster struck because on returning to the car we discovered it had been broken into and 3 of our bags had been stolen; worst of which was mine because it had my passport in it...! So it took me a little while to realise how devastating this was because after calling the Australian embassy I found out that I couldn't visit the emabssy until Tuesday when I was supposed to be at work! As the politie station in Zandvoort was closed and they were most unhelpful, we spent the next few hours at the Politie station in Haarlem with a very cute policeman who made remarks about being nervous with four women haha!! After it all ended it was 11.30 by then so we decided to hit the town and the rest of the night was quite fun considering.

Sunday the plan was to head back to Weert because we were flying back together so I visited him anyway and we went for some dinner at a Napoleon themed restaurant that was most interesting! It was an open grill and you helped yourself to food. After that we drive to Belgium illegally (as I had no passport!) and had some Belgium blonde beers that I hadn't tried before; Caney Blonde Grimbergen Blonde and Kovenwolf Witbier. So many blonde beers!!! :) I also had a Bier of Gist - Witte Trappist in Groningen which was nice too! That day Marco also bravely let me drive his car for a while on the right hand side of the road a - I was stoked!! It was a lot easier than I had expected. As a result I now have exciting plans to go driving in Europe in a peugeot before heading back home :)

Monday I headed back west to Wijsrijk to meet Anja and her family and then back to Haarlem for a relaxing day after much previous excitement and stress! And now it is Tuesday and I am sitting in the embassy waiting for my passport which I'm told is coming very soon as they had problems with my name because I changed it. Silly me, who would have thought I'd have problems 18 years later sitting the Dutch Australian embassy!! Anyway I'll book my flight now and hopefully be back in my lovely bed tonight with any luck as my passport still isn't in my hand yet!!

Dag!

* * *

Cool things I found while in Holland... A semi-permanent survey marker -

These streets were parallel next to each other a few streets aways from the Australian embassy on my way to the photo shop... and the Dutch did name Australia New Holland!

While waiting for my passport I went for a walk and in the window of a games shop in Den Haag I found this... Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot... I really want a copy!!!