SLOVAKIA

25TH MAY, 2006


Today was spent driving through country Slovakia. The scenery was very pretty...very green, hilly then mountainous with pine forests and beautiful vilages with their church spires set amongst the greenery. We drove beside a little creek most of the way up the mountain..gorgeous

We had lunch here ..Brekky in Hungary, lunch in Slovakia and dinner in Poland!!


Me Margie and Heinz our very Austrian tour guide at lunch....goodness ..someone looks as though they've had far too much Slovakian beer for lunch! This guy (although being a very nice bloke)was a time nazi and used to issue threats about ppl being late for the bus. Two minutes late was a warning, at 3 minutes you were required to sing at the front of the bus, at 5 minutes you sang and danced at the front of the bus!.. Kept us all amazingly punctual!!

Dracula's castle...somewhere in rural Slovakia

Szentendre,Hungary - Churches, Paprika and Books


Szentendre is a little village about 20k's away from Budapest. This church is in the main square.

I'm sure it would be a very picturesque little village,but it was pouring the day we were here, so did a lot of sheltering in coffee shops and souvenir shops. Szentendre is one of those places that attracts busloads and busloads of tourists
and consequently it is chockers with tacky souvenir shops selling mainly lace and paprika. Every 2nd shop is a paprika store where you can buy bags, tins, pots of paprika...think Hungarian goulash..of course, we succumbed(there was nothing else to do in the pouring rain and we had 2 hours to fill in before the bus picked us up) and bought up these little cheesecloth bags with pretty pictures on them full of paprika, thinking we would take them home as souvenirs and cook up a storm. So we lugged this paprika all around Europe in our suitcases not realizing all our clothes were beginning to stink of paprika and we had all probably been walking around Europe with the perfume of eau de paprika wafting around us- until on the last day in a desperate bid to be under qantas' mingy baggage allowance, we jettisonned the bloody stuff in the bin anyway!! However I did find in a quaint villagey little bookshop in Szentendre a copy of The Little Prince in Hungarian, so i brought it home to join it's English cousin on the bookshelf!

BUDAPEST

Money!!!!!!!

Here the fun with money began!! Having been asssured by the world's worst travel agent (ours), that they use euros in all the Eastern European countries, we arrived in Hungary to discover they use the forint!..So my euros being useless , off to the atm I went with only the haziest of ideas as to what the forint would buy me...so, wanting enough to buy a coke and a couple of postcards, I pushed the button for 5000 forints, all the time waiting with my heart in my mouth and my fingers crossed that the foreign machine wouldn't swallow my card! Succcess, my card was returned along with 5000 forints. I fleetingly felt rich and wondered if 5000 would buy me a diamond necklace, until i discovered I had the princely sum of A$35. and importantly, I had successfully negotiated the foreign atm.

BUDAPEST 24thMay,2006

The Fisherman's Bastion, Budapest

A turreted parapet structure - it is part of the St Matthias Church complex on the Buda side of the city.
You can walk along the parapet from turret to turret and there are wonderful views across the Danube to the Pest side. Hungarian Parliament building again)(Danube is still the same muddy colour it was back when Tim and I saw it in Vienna in 96 and when I saw it back in 72. - must have been blue back in Strauss's time (??1700's)!!!



The Chain Bridge,Budapest ( by day and by night), with the Royal Palace in the background by day and St Matthias Church in the background by night. This bridge was right across from our hotel ( the wonderful Sofitel!). I walked across here on my own about 9.30 at night. The views were beautiful - all the historic old buildings were lit and glowing - I think Budapest wins the "beauty by night award!", and there were plenty of tourists and locals around , so it seemed a very safe place to be walking at night. -

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY.
23rd May,2006





I didn't know what to expect from the former Eastern Block countries, but I certainly didn't expect Budapest to be so full of beautiful buildings..the ubiquitous prefabricated apartment buildings in the suburbs and on the outskirts that we were introduced to here and which subsequently popped up everywhere , were probably what I expected, but downtown public Budapest was a joy!

The Hungarian parliament building.

This was the surprise building of the entire trip..the interior is just gorgeous..has to be right up there with Schonbrunn Palace on my list of favourite European buildings.

The grand staircase - Hungarian parliament

St Matthias Church

Stained glass window St Matthais church.

LONDON...Part 4

features a bus ride to Clapham, a walk through Clapham Common - which as well as being beautiful and green, I found interesting as it seems to figure quite prominently in British crime novels, lunch in a pub (notice the condiments which arrived in a bucket!!lol), a visit to Chris's house and finally our early morning exit to Vienna. As we had a 5.00am departure from our hotel, the hotel (Thistle Marble Arch - would reccommend- close to Oxford Street) packed us a a take away brekky in a lttle paper bag!!




Chris's house (his flat is on the middle level)

BA flight London to Vienna featured the absolute worst airline food ever!!

Breakfast consisted of a spongy bread roll containing horrible ham and that plasticy orange cheese . It was sealed in plastic and had been superheated in a microwave, so that it was all wet and spongy!! Yuck.

As it turned out, we had to wait for hours at Vienna airport, so what with our hotel brekky and some viennese coffee (albeit airport coffee), we survived quite well without the BA brekky.

LONDON - Part 3





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Delights of London continued. We: made phone calls (!,) rode buses, took a black cab to the theatre to.. see Les Miserables _(unfortuneately 'twas a miserables performance ) and posted postcards home!.. Mmme Tussauds was inundated with every school child in Great Britain there on a school excursion, so there was a lot of jostling and waiting for pics with our fav celebrities, but as in Sydney it was a good bit of fun!

Did enjoy stepping out with Hugh and giving Tony and George a few public speaking tips. -don't they look interested!!he he.