HUNGARY - Budapest

Budapest wasn't quite what I was expecting it to be. It was a very big city, and as we were camping on the outskirsts of town it meant a lot of public transport, which meant that we perhaps didn't enjoy the night life and city as much as we could have. However, our camping site was pretty cool all on it's own and I'm glad we stayed there. It really reminded us of 'never never land', with lots of tired little spots up a hill for individual tents and with a very 70s style hungarian farmhouse which was a restaurant by night and and common area for campers by day. The owners of the camp site were also very friendly and helpful.

Budapest is broken up into two main parts by the Danube that runs through the centre of town. We were staying on the Buda side of the city which is the older side that has the old walled town on it. The otherside, Pest, is all newer and much more happening.

On the first day we were there we explored the Buda side and the old town. It was again a very cool old medieval looking old town with a beautiful old church - St Matays - being the highlight. The church was amazing inside, absolutely every surface was covered with painted patterns and murals and tiles and stained glass. The church had been used in past times by people of different faiths, when you looked around you could see the Star of David and lots of Turkish symbols painted in the patterns. Today it is used as a Catholic Church and we decided to go back there the next day for a full latin mass, which was a pretty cool experience; such a massive and incredible church with the organ playing and people singing.

After we'd checked out the church we headed to a cute little traditional tea house across the way that Beth had recommended...thanks Beth, it was great. Awesome coffee and delicious hungarian cakes! We then wandered down to the Palace, which has now been coverted into an art gallery, and got some great views of Budapest and looked at some of the hungarian impressionist works in the gallery.

We then walked down the hill to 'Chain Bridge' where we found ourselves in the midst of a summer festival with food stalls and bands playing and lots of markets all the way along the bridge. So we spent the afternoon there just enjoying the atmosphere and walking our way through the markets.

That night we went out to celebrate the birth of my little niece Eloise. We found a great restaurant with amazing champagne cocktails (we had to have Champagne to toast Eloise!!) and fantastic hungarian food and had such a fun night! Thanks for the excuse to spoil ourselves Eloise! :)

After Mass at St Matyas the next morning we went to the Pest side of town to the Old Synagogue (the biggest Synagogue in Europe apparently!) in the Jewish quarter then looked at the Jewish museum there. After that we went to Heroes square which is a massive and amazing tribute to all the past Hungarian heroes, with massive sculptures for each of the most important ones. After that we walked back to the city down the main boulevard which has many of the now heritage listed houses on it. That night we strolled along the banks of the Danube and enjoyed the city scape by night before heading back to our cosy little tent in 'never never land'.

SLOVENIA - Lovely Ljubljana and Beautiful Bled

Slovenia was an amazingly beautiful country to explore. We spent three days in Ljubljana, the capital, and then three days in Bled, a smaller city in the mountains in the north west of the country.

Anna and I really enjoyed our time in Ljubljana. It's a much smaller capital city than many others we have been to, with everything in walking distance which was really pleasant. Unfortunately the first day we spent there was a Sunday, which meant that the whole city was very quiet and almost everything was closed, except of course for the churches which all had services running. We had a quick peek inside the outwardly not so attractive salmon pink church on the main square (beautiful inside though), and happened to be just in time for a bible reading in English which was nice. There were also some cute little antique markets all set up alongside the river that runs through he centre of the city, so we just wandered about them and soaked up the atmosphere. After that we walked up the hill above the city to the castle and were rewarded with a great view of the city from the highest tower.

The castle itself wasn't particularly spectacular, a lot of it looked new and remodelled (I'm not entirely sure of the history here, but I think a lot of it might have been destroyed during the war, however nothing was mentioned about this during the 3D castle and city history film we watched, so I'm not sure! :)) That evening we went back to the castle and had a lovely summer's evening picnic in the castle grounds and then saw an open air movie inside the castle courtyard.

The next day we decided to be a little more adventurous and check the city out by bike. So we hired some bikes in the morning, however this soon turned to disaster...after half an hour of riding it started to rain, shortly after this the chain came off Anna's bike and although we tried we just couldn't get it back on...so as Anna went off to seek out some help, I just stood by the bikes looking helpless and...it paid off very nicely...a very helpful construction worker who spoke no English came over and started speaking Slovenia to me and I just pointed to the chain and smiled nicely. So then he had a go at getting it back on, but couldn't either, then said some more stuff in Slovenian then walked off. hmmm...but...thankfully he came back, with tools! Fantastic! and so very nice of him, the chain was back on in about 10 mins and we were free to ride off in the rain...hurrah! :) I felt terrible though, that I couldn't even thank him properly in his language, but he seemed happy enough just to have been able to help some stranded little foreign girls :) ha ha. And that was pretty much the highlight of our bike riding adventure! Seeing as it was raining so much we decided just to take the bikes back and go back to our hostel and get some dry clothes and walk around the city (and find refuge in a cute little cafe) instead :)

The following day we caught the bus to Bled. Bled is possibly the most picturesque place I have ever been. The town is surrounded by mountains with a beautiful lake right in the middle and a castle up on a hill overlooking the lake. The weather was beautiful when we arrived, the sun was shinning and there were clear blue skies so we decided to camp for the two nights we would spend there. After setting up the tent we went for a lovely stroll around the lake and then walked up to the castle and through the town afterwards.

Anna had previously been told by a friend that area surrounding Bled was a great place to go canyoning and rafting, so we had a look at the options and decided to book in a day of canyoning in the Predeliscza Canyon and rafting on the Soca River for the following day. I am so glad we decided to! The canyoning was absolutely amazing, there were lots of jumps and slides down rocks in the canyon as well as a few parts we had to abseil, including a 40m abseil down a waterfall at the end! It was a little bit scary in parts, but completely exhilarating at the same time! We had a fantastic guide, Jose, (the only licenced guide in Bled as he liked to tell us) who made us feel very safe the whole time. The whole Canyon was stunning; amazing views and beautiful scenery with the most crystal clear (absolutely freezing) water. Such an awesome experience! The rafting was also fun, not nearly as awesome as the canyoning, but it would be hard to beat that. The river was pretty low so the rapids weren't all the exciting, but we still had a lot of fun. Unfortunately the river wasn't it's usual amazing blue colour as the second part of 'Narnia' was being filmed upstream and had disturbed all the minerals so the water was all cloudy :(

The next morning was very exciting...I found out that I was an aunty! My brother Nick and his wife Carla had had a beautiful baby girl named Eloise...so exciting!!! :) Congratulations guys! I can't wait to meet her!

After I calmed down from the excitement of the news, we packed up camp and then used the bikes from the company we went canyoning to ride around the lake. We stopped off at a hiking trail and walked up to the top of the hill (almost a vertical walking trail) for an amazing view of Bled and a little picnic in the forest.

After dropping off the bikes and a famous Bled creme cake we jumped back on the bus to Ljubljana.

CROATIA - Sailing Trip up the Dalmation Coast

Well what can I say?!? What an absolutely fantastic week, couldn't have asked for anything more!! Anna and I had the most amazing time on our sailing trip! We got to see so much of Croatia, small and big city ports, island ports and a national park, as well as sailing along the coast and through the islands every day and jumping off the boat to have a swim stop every few hours. It was such a relaxing and beautiful way to experience Croatia and get a feel for the culture. The weather was perfect and the people on our trip were all so lovely, we got along with them all so well which made the week even better. The boat we were on was pretty small. Our cabin only just fit the two of us and with our packs as well we had no room to move at all...made for some pretty funny moments when the boat was rocking and we were both trying to move about :) it was a tight squeze, but we got used to it and called it home for the next 7 nights. After departuing Dubrovnik we sailed (oh and when I say sailed I really mean used the motor - the boat we were on was a real sailing ship, but the crew only had the sails out about three times) on to Sipan a very small port where we moored for the night. We walked around town, which was very quiet and peacefull...very much off the tourist track. Apparently the normal population of the town is about 70. We then had dinner on board and went out again for a few drinks with the girls.
The next day we sailed from Sipan to Mljet. Another small island town, a little bit more livley then Sipan though. We went to Mljet national park which was quite stunning, there were several salt lakes with monastry on an island in the middle of one of them which we caught the ferry across to and wandered about for a bit. The perfect place for some reflection, the monks certainly got it right! We spent the night in Mljet - sat around drinking a few beers in the evening on the marina with all the people from our boat. From Mljet we headed to Korcula, probably my favorite city of all the stops on our sailing trip. It was a great little city, almost like a mini Dubrovnik, with a lovely old town and great night life. We had dinner at a lovely little restaurant over looking the water and a water polo training session and game (water polo is a massively popular sport in Croatia so it seemed! At most of the beaches there were water polo nets set out and there was always a game going on.) Anna and Bailee finally satisfied their desire for fresh mussels and we tried the local white wine and olives - all very delicious! That night we had a great night out. We found a bar that had litre cocktails (that we shared of course :)) and then after a few of those several of us continued to party the night away at a funny little night club up in the old town. Fun times! :)
From Korcula we sailed to Loviste. Loviste was nothing terribly exciting and was quite similar to the other towns we had been to but was lovely all the same. After the night in Loviste we sailed on to Hvar. It was quite a long sail and we experienced some rough seas along the way. It then took us over an hour and a half just to dock at port. Hvar is a very popular island town there were about 10 other boats that come in at the same time as us, so we we sailed around in circles just outside of the harbour as our captain got angrier and angrier and continued to run off not very nice sounding Croatian sentences.
Hvar itself was a very pretty town. Once we had finally docked we walked up the hill to the old castle where we had a great view of the harbour below. Unfortunately the city was extremely touristy and packed with people, which kind of ruined the laid back feel we had experienced in the other towns. It was also much more expensive then the other places we had been.
From Hvar we sailed to Bol, which was another very touristy summer town, but it also seemed to be a very popular place for Croatians to spend their summer vacation. There were great beaches in Bol, we sat and watched the wind surfers and para sailors/surfers for ages. We had a lovely dinner that night at a cute little restaurant with all of the people from our boat. We had great meals and were given complimentary traditional Croatian pancakes with berry jam for dessert and a shot of Grappa (not so delicious, but we downed it anyway :)).
From Bol we sailed to Split, which was our last stop and was the end of our sailing trip. Split was a much bigger city and was fun to explore. The old town was quite different to that of Dubrovnik and Korcula. It was all much more compact and the streets were much more narrow and dark. There was also an old palace there and a massive statue of a guy who's name I cant remember, but he was a warrior of Nin and saved the city at some point and as tradition demanded, we rubbed his foot for good luck :) We had an awesome night out that night only getting back to the boat at about 6am for a quick nap before having to catch our 7.30am train to Ljubljana - oops only just made it by the skin of our teeth. We had so much fun with everyone that night just partying and celebrating what was a fantastic week of sun and sailing and good times all round. It was so sad to say goodbye to everyone, but we have already made plans to meet up with some of them when we head back to London in November.

ok photos are
very top - sunset at Mljet
Me at Korcula
Anna and Me drinking our favorite Croatian beer - Karlowacko
Bailee and Anna at Mljet national park
The gang at Mljet port - Emma, Ryan (our guide), Anna, Me, Rob, Bailee, Hayley and Chris
Bailee and Anna sunning themselves on deck
Me doing the same
The girls at Hvar Castle - Hayley, Bailee, Me, Anna and Emma
The view of Hvar harbour from Hvar Castle
Hvar port and Castle (view from the boat while waiting to come into port)
Me rubbing the the Warrior of Nin's foot for good luck in Split
Bailee, Rob, Darryn, Emma, Joe and Anna enjoying the litre cocktails in Korcula
Anna on deck with the real sails flying!
Bailee and Me having lunch on board - soup every day in 36 degrees weather - it took a while to get used to, but is traditional Croation lunch so we stuck with it :)
Everyone from our sailing trip infront of our boat
Anna and me out in Hvar
Emma, Bailee, Rob and Me out having a blast in Split
Emma and Anna on our noght out in Split