Europe 2018

Some photos of the Schwebebahn…

More fun in Wuppertal today. The sculpture park, botanic garden and Von der Heydt museum. Photos below. The sculpture park was good; a lot of works by Tony Cragg (unsurprising really, as he founded it and lives in Wuppertal). Not as good as the Yorkshire Sculpture park, but OK. The VdH museum was good; no…

An afternoon in Hannover, en route to Hamburg.The Sprengel Museum of Modern art was OK; lots of works by Picasso. A lot of the collection is Sprengel’s private collection. It did start to feel a bit samey after a while, but was a nice enough few hours.After that it was the Altes Rathaus, which has…

  Several friends had enthusiastically recommended Minatur Wonderland as soon as I’d said I was going to Hamburg. It didn’t disappoint. I seem to have taken several hundred photos, so just a handful are here. I was very glad I’d booked the “behind the scenes” tour in advance (there are only a couple of tours…

After Minitur Wonderland I headed to the Rathaus. You can only see this with a tour. Sadly all the English tours were booked out. After a bit of indecision I decided to see how much I could follow on the German tour; it turned out about maybe 1/2 to 3/4, which was pleasantly surprising. I…

I’m sure the first couple of parts of this post will be of *zero* interest to almost all my friends 🙂 A very pleasant trip down from Hamburg on the train. Had a nice (albeit rather slowly served) meal in the dining car: The 6.5 hours flew by, with some lovely views at points; The…

Had a full day in Slovakia, having arrived on (one of) this morning’s sleeper services from Prague: (which also carried cars!), and was met by Ferenc and Ferenc. We headed off to a treetop walk in Bachledka, which seemed to be extremely popular. Good views from the top. The top of the viewing tower had…

Off to the High Tatras today. We drove to Tatranska Lomnica, and got a couple of cable cars half way up the mountain. From there we were going to get another (somewhat scary looking – there were no supports between the top and the bottom of it) cable car to the top of Lomnicky Stit,…

Forgot to post this before. I finished off my water at the top of the mountain (2634m). This is the bottle back at the flat (it’s warmer in the flat than the top of the mountain too). Apparently water boils at (if I remember correctly) 87 degrees up there, so no chance of a decent…

Another trip to the High Tatras today; this time towards the western end of the range, at Strebsk\'{e} Pleso. Had a lovely walk up to lake Popradske Pleso, and back round the lake in Strebske Pleso itself (there’s supposed to be an upside down ^ on the S, like in Skoda, but I can’t work…

We kicked off our day with a trip to Dobšinská ice cave in the Slovak Paradise national park. The cave is filled with ice (some of it up to 2000 years old). Essentially it seems to work like an insulated frost pocket. Interesting ice stalactites and things in there.

The final stop today was Tesco, to get some supplies for tomorrow’s journey to Budapest and then Zagreb. Rather expensive English specialities Bizarre chocolate display Some rather, erm, interesting cheese. The local liqueur is “Tatratea”, which is a tea based spirit. It comes in a bewildering away of flavours and strengths, of somewhat varying niceness.…

The (almost) final stop on our trip today was the town of Levoča, which had a beautiful (Unesco listed) town centre. (the town hall) (the cage of shame – for women who stayed out unaccompanied after dark. It was locked) (view from the city walls)

After the ice cave we headed to the Slovensky Raj (Slovak Paradise) national park. This is full of deep limestone gorges, some of which you can walk up with the aid of fixed ladders and other gear. We did a short and simple route (suitable for children according to the person in tourist information), which…

Getting a bit behind here… spent all of Thursday travelling from Slovakia to Zagreb. Ferenc drove us all to Budapest, through beautiful (and hilly) countryside. From there I caught the direct train to Zagreb, which took 5.5 hours. No buffet car, or even a trolley, so just like the UK really. Except it cost 9…

After a good night’s sleep I decided I would spend the whole day in Zagreb and get the sleeper as planned. Annoyingly you can’t book beds online, so this involved a trip to the station. Fortunately there was space (as seat61.com promised). A bargain at 44Euro (for a twin bunk, not a triple – though…

After the train museum I went for a wander round Zagreb. I was slightly worried about filling the whole day, as my sleeper wasn’t until 23:00. It turned out there was plenty to do. I really liked Zagreb; it didn’t feel wild, but felt very pleasant. There was lots going on. TBH I’m not that…

I arrived in Split quite early off the sleeper. I hadn’t had a very good night’s sleep; there was something squeaking on the train all night, and the track was rather bumpy in places. Split itself was very pretty; the old town especially. There’s a small hill at the western end of the town, which…

A successful day’s swimming. We headed to Zlarin Island (just to the north of where we’re staying), and did two costal swims, each of ~2km each. Feeling rather sore and achy now. Weather was excellent, though it looks set to turn a bit tomorrow The photos are of the boat journey – wasn’t chance to…

Headed south down the coast today. Did two swims; the first of 2km, the second of 3.5km. The weather has taken a turn for the worse; was heavy rain and a little thunder at lunchtime. Much windier this afternoon – a rather interesting boat trip back to the hotel. Had a little wander round most…

Headed north today. The weather was better than yesterday afternoon, but it’s still rather windy, which meant some fairly lively boat journeys, with quite a lot of getting splashed. In the morning we swam ~1.5km on the SW side of Privc, and had lunch in the bay. The swim was noticeably colder than yesterday, but…

Still rather windy this morning, so we went to the lake to the east of the hotel, on the mainland (the arrow on the map below is the hotel). Did a 2km swim there; the conditions were good, but the water was much murkier than in the sea proper. We had lunch back at the…

We had an evening outing to Sibenik yesterday, for a brief look around the town and a meal. It has a very attractive old town (better than Split’s IMHO), and a large fort on top of the hill. This hosts music concerts; the orchestra was rehearsing for a gig of songs from the movies this…

Our last full day of swimming. The weather has improved; the temperature is back up to mid 20s and the lighter wind feels much warmer. We did three swims today. The first was between two islands near the hotel. We did about 1km along the coast of the first, and then swam ~400m to the…

Today’s swim was a circumnavigation of the island. Before breakfast. We set off early, at 07:30, which was a bit of a slog. The light was beautiful at that time (though my phone was in my room – sorry). Anyway, we headed anti-clockwise round the island. The swim was about 3.5km in total (you have…

We had a full day in Zadar today (I’m currently waiting at the airport for my flight back to sunny(??) Manchester. I’m still feeling a bit ill – sore throat and cold, so didn’t do that much sight seeing. To be honest, there doesn’t seem to be all that much in Zadar (a day is…