Hutchies Beer Adventures plus Guest 08

Ah the land of amazing food! Italy was everything we thought it would be when it came to delicious pizza, pasta, paninis, gelati and coffee! Its been a packed two weeks, Ill try keep it brief, but this may be a long one....

Venice
Our first stop was beautiful Venice with its 117 islands and plenty of little bridges. It was here where we got to savour our first real italian coffee - about a million times better than eastern european coffee! Venice didn't smell, and St Marco's square really was breathtaking, especially at night when they had live classical acts dotted around the restaurants on the perimeter. We did a day trip by ferry to Murano where they make world famous glass things and saw a demo - amazing that they can create a horse in less than 5 minutes...

A mask shop

Grand canal

Pizza in Venice

Bologna
There wasn't much here except a provocative fountain of a muscular neptune (and women with breasts that could squirt water in 6 directions). But lets be honest, we only stopped here to sample Bolognese from its origins (but they only call it ragu here), and it was even better than nicks and my mums! This place had the hardest to find, dingiest hostel ever... just catch this bus to this stop they say... 20 mins later we find ourselves outside what looked like commission housing in the middle of nowhere with no signs... the directions said just a 10 min walk from the stop... but in which direction?! Fortunately for us, we harrassed a family who called the hostel, and ultimatley the dad abandoned his family and drove us there, even getting lost a couple of times himself. So lucky for us, we would never have found it otherwise!

Florence
We stayed in an awesome hostel in Firenze (Archi rossi hostel). They ran 2 free three hour tours daily which gave us a much better appreciation of the history of the place and the significance of all the buildings. The duomo was amazing, both from the outside and inside, as was the beautiful view from Michaelangelos hill in the evening. We also loved the Ponte Vecchio the only bridge to survive the WW2 bombings, which had only jewelery stores along it after an order from a Medici ruler, because he had a mezzanine passageway above it connecting his palaces, and he didn't like the smell of the old butchers that were once there. Sacreligiously we didn't actually visit the real David, Nick was satisfied by the two replicas around town and we didn't want to spend our valuable time in a three hour queue... We had a wonderful time here, it really is a beautiful town.

The Duomo

David at night in Michaelangelo´s Plaza

Rome
Rome was just as unbelievable as I remembered it from last time. Here we met up with Jane and Kate again and stayed in a camping village out of town which had a pool...luxury!
A lifetime isn't enough in Rome, we ended up staying for 5 days and would have been happy to stay longer, but we managed all the sights - Colosseum and Palatine hill, Pantheon, Sistene Chapel, St Peters Basilica and Square... A perfect time to be reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown... And the girls actually saw Tom Hanks near the pantheon filming it!!

Highlights:
- History and ruins around Palatine Hill and the Forum - the best ruins we have seen.
- Finally seeing the Trevi Fountain (it was completely covered in scaffolding when I was here last time)
- Hanging out in Piazza Navona and Trastevere - great for people watching
- Fashion! No more double denim of Eastern Europe, but making me crave a new wardrobe.
- The Gelati near the pantheon - so many flavours! 12 flavours of chocolate alone! The best is my opinion - meringue... hmmmmm
- the vatican museum - you could easily spend over 4 hours here and not even realise
- climbing the vatican cuppola - the view from the top the best we have seen anywhere
- sending postcards from the smallest country in the world
- Riding bikes along the Appian Antica (an ancient cobbled road) seeing the ruins either side
- toga party
- Not falling for any scams and not having anything stolen!

Napoli
The home of the mafia and the birthplace of pizza. We weren't sure what to expect here, but it was a really cool place - so different to the rest of Italy - heaps of modern art around the place. And despite Nick being cynical that pizza could taste better from here - it really did! The best being the "Vesuvio" a flat calzone - ie it looked like a margerita, but it had fillings inside the crust! Amazing! Our hostel was great, and organised a big screen to watch the Italy v France soccer match, and it was packed full of their Italian mates - the atmosphere was electric! And the next night was "Brazilian night" where they invited there mates to do capoera which is a kind of martial art/dance with singing and drums - very cool!

From Naples we did a day trip to Pompeii (and Ewan McGregor was there) which is so amazingly preserved - I couldn't believe the condition of the frescoes etc. And we saw the plaster casts of the people who got buried in the ash... creepy.

Day trip to Capri - a beautiful island off the coast, with designer shops galore and designer people... And convertable taxis! It's also the home of the blue grotto, which was.... CLOSED!!! Ripped off!!! The water was too rough to go there, but we did a boat tour of the other grottos on the other coast instead which was fun anyway. Then we soaked up the sun on the beach.

Pisa
It really leans! We did the obligatory pics of holding it up, pushing it over etc. It really is the only thing there though.

Our plan was to head to the cinque terre from pisa, but unfortunately there was no affordable accom (being a weekend) so we have powered on up the med and are chilling out in Nice France!

Next blog - France then Spain!

Slovenia is the most awesome country ever!! it is a tough decision to say whether it was better than turkey.

Ljubljana
Ljubljana was a really beautiful city, not a large population so it was really easy to get around, really clean and very friendly people everywhere. We spent a couple of days there with a very nice old man who picked us up from the train station, after the most helpful tourist info girl arranged our accomodation. Unfortunately he had parked in the bus zone and we got waved down by a cop as we left and he got a parking ticket. doh! His place was above the Vegedrom - a delicious vegetarian restaurant with excellent indian food and chai lattes. We walked all around the city, enjoying very picturesque river side cafes and bars, (buy 1 get 2 cocktails,) huge slices of pizza and a great night at a comedy club. The acts were from the UK except for the first guy who was apparently hilarious. The last act was good - made even funnier to us as he had to explain all his jokes, many of which were a play on english words, therefore completely lost in translation...

Bled
We arrived in Bled and found our accomodation above the George Best Bar (for people who dont know, George Best was a alcholic soccer ledgend who died from liver disease) - good name for a pub!? The hostel owner Robi organised everything for us over a few beers, introducing us to Canyoning Bob and the tour organiser for the Emerald tour.

Canyoning was awesome, right up there with paragliding. Fi says its the best thing she's ever done - what could be better than sliding, jumping and abseiling down canyons and waterfalls? There was even a flying fox! Bob was sensational for an old bloke (40) and the next day we were sorry to hear he hurt his back and couldnt take us canyoning again. He probably hurt it when urged him to jump off a 4m waterfall through a narrow gap that we had all slid down... didn't think he'd actually do it the crazy guy! Crazy Bob with the coolest job ever.

Fi on the speed slide

Rapelling down a waterfall

The "Emerald tour" took us all over the national park's Julliane Alps. We hiked through the highest pass of the alps, saw the face of the lady imprisioned in rock, scrambled rocks to the source of the soca river, then went white water rafting on it - the best in Slovenia. The water was a brilliant light blue colour, and the rapids were especially good due to the terrential rain we had had the previous day. The rafting guide was great, making us walk around the edge of the boat (and therefore fall in), and turned the raft over on "penguin rock" so we could bellyslide down it! So fun, except the raft left without a few of us and we had to bob down the rapids to catch it - a little scary... We also hiked to a waterfall in a gorge, but it was too cold to swim in it- apparently only 6° in the water. Kate and I were gutsy enough to jump off a 12m bridge, despite the freezing waters below, Fi was impressed! We rode a train in the car and had beers on the train. It was a fantastic day and the best way to see all of the national park.

The Goldenhorn monument at the base of the alps with our tour group

Rafting the Soca river

Bled has a gorgeous lake, there is a castle sitting up high on one end. There is an island in the middle of it with a byzantine church. It's about 6km around and I ran it one morning with Kate. There was a nearby gorge which we tried to walk to by i misheard the directions and took us down the wrong road on a 2 hour wild goose chase. But we did see some nice towns along the way. Ther other thing Bled is famous for, so we found out, was there cream cake - pretty much the most delicious french vanilla slice we have ever wrapped our lips around....

Next stop Italy - Venice, Bolognese in Bologna, Florence Rome etc...

We finally made it to our long awaited cruise of the Croatian Islands. Over 7 days we voyaged from Split to Dubrovnik and back, making stops along the way at various ports and swimming places. The four of us were super excited, and then we found out that crazy kid Tony would be joining us too. Wow. So our posse, including new friend Peter Johnson, partied our way through Korcula, Hvar, Mljet national park and others.

The highlights:

-The organiser at the port asking Nick if he was Tony Beecroft... busted tobes!
-Playing Twister and limbo on the roof of the boat
-Jumping off the boat, especially at midnight

-Floating on our beloved lilos, especially the HMAS Ladyboy (don't ask how much Tony paid for his...) and traipsing them through the old town of Dubrovnik to our favourite outside the wall bar (where we were met with rough seas unlike our last placid visit..)

-Ice cream in Dubrovnik - especially kates free birthday icecream - 20 scoops!?
-Fresh Bar Dubrovnik and their cocktail towers
-Eating mexican at Chiuauas in Dub for kates bday - excellent sangria! pipe down chachi!
-Jane and I talking our way onto a luxury cruiser in Hvar
-Making enemies with the rival busabout boat - Lab-ra-DOR!
-Hvar in general!

view from Hvar castle

-The long straws at a Mikaska nightclub
-The party shirt
-Scotty's ˝silverback˝ dance
-So much seafood!!
-After breakfast naps, followed by pre lunch naps, then after lunch naps, and pre dinner naps...
-Captains dinner dressed in our (tony's) best shirts and ties, only to be greeted by a captain who wasn't planning to attend, in a dirty polo shirt. Later followed by a round of coin up the kyber and dancing in the dark!
-Norwegians (ask the girls)
-Getting awesome mediterranian tans...

Captains Dinner dressed in our finest, with Nick in the party shirt. Nice krevat Tony.

The Lowlights:

- Black risotto. Completely overrated.
- Eating too much food on the cruise - but it sure was delicious!
- Diesel fumes in our cabins
- Seasickness and even worse, seasickness tablets that make you drowsy
- Unfortunate wet and windy weather for 2 days straight and getting stuck in Dubrovnik

On our return to Split we watched the Eurovision contest (sadly from our beds - so exhausted!). Azerbijian you rock! Wow some acts are amazingly bad aren't they?!

We bussed it north to Zadar with the girls, where we discovered the apparently world famous one and only water organ on the shores (eh).

From Zadar we hired a car and made our way up toward Rijecjka (where we would train it to Slovenia) over a few days, stopping in many cute seaside old towns.

Senj harbour at sunset

The highlight of Northern Croatia was without a doubt their national park - Plitvici Lakes. The water here was an amazing aqua colour, we did a beautiful hike/train ride/boat ride that took us from the top of the lakes down about 7 levels of waterfalls. Highly recommend a visit here!

Our last night in Croatia was spent in Opatija which turned out to be very snazzy, with lots of hotels along the waterfront. Nick claims to have eaten the best pizza of his life here.

Now we are in Slovenia - will write about our time here at a later date - but i have to say, it's competing for the best country in the world title as we speak. Ljubljiana was awesome, Lake Bled is stunning and we went canyoning today, going rafting tomorrow... you get the gist!!