Ham House and Gardens, Richmond

I spent most of today walking around Richmond with my friend Gloria. Our initial intention was to visit Ham House, but unfortunately it was closed for the winter. We spent about an hour strolling around the gardens, and had delicious scones and clotted creams at the Orangery Cafe.

Ham House, like most of the other palaces and stately homes that line the river Thames, belongs to a different time in history. It was built in 1610 for Sir Thomas Vavasour who was the Knight Marshal to James 1. When he died the house passed to a succession of owners, ending up with Elizabeth Countess of Dysart and her second husband John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale, in order to reflect their status in Charles II's Restoration court. It housed their apparently amazing collection of fine art, textiles and furniture, much of which remains in the house today. The house itself was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1948, where restoration work has been done on the garden to return it to its 17th century layout.

The garden itself is an outdoorsman's dream - from the large open meadow to the Fountain Garden, the Plats (eight squares of lawn with pathways between them), cherry garden, wilderness (a maze of different flowers) and the Kitchen Garden's. Although empty now in the middle of winter, the garden is generally the main supply for the Orangery's kitchen.

Gloria and I enjoyed the outdoor cafe area, soaking up the gentle rays of sunshine and lavishing clotted cream on delicious scones to replenish our systems from all the walking!

Ham House Gardens would definitely be worth another visit in the summer, when the flowers and trees can portray it in its blooming splendour.

A mile walk along the Thames and back to Richmond Station and so another Saturday was well spent in London!

Cost: £3.30 each entrance to the gardens
£6.90 on hot drinks and scones with jam and cream for two
£2.20 for out of prepaid zone travel.

FOR MORE PICTURES CLICK HERE

Croydon Museum - Frames of Mind

One of our New Years Resolutions this year is to explore London as much as we can and to do it as cheaply as we can.

Most things are fairly accessible in London's myriad of underground and overground trains, comprehensive bus network and further out, the trams. Most Londoners have Oyster cards - a prepaid travel card which either gives the travel unlimited options (paid monthly) or heavily reduced fees (topped up as needed). So, as Martin has a monthly Oyster and I have a prepaid, travel costs don't generally feature too heavily in our spending on days out, but there really is no such thing as a free day out in London. We are working on it though... maybe not free, but we're getting pretty close!

Today we hopped on the 486 bus to West Croydon. We sat right at the front on the top level reading our books for the 50 minute journey with the sun shining through the window. The reason I mention this otherwise mundane fact is that it was a rare moment of warmth in this winter - you know how the car warms up when the sun bakes your skin through the window - it was kind of like that. A warm and vit D enriched bus ride. Lovely. :o) (Southern hemispherians just can't understand!)

We arrived in Croydon and spent part of the afternoon walking around the much maligned Croydon high street looking at deals and doing window shopping. I did see and photograph some unexpectedly beautiful old buildings, fixtures, and chimneys on our hour long stroll from the bus stop to the Clock Tower.

Croydon doesn't have a great reputation, and is definitely not known as the cultural capital of the South, but the aim for our afternoon mission was the Croydon Clocktower. Built as the third Town Hall of the town of Croydon in 1895, today it houses the Croydon Museum and art galleries, a cinema, library, Tourist Information Centre, the Braithwaite Hall and the Clocktower Café.

One of the art galleries are currently exhibiting a show called "Frames of Mind" - a collection of art works from patients at the Bethlem Royal Hospital. BRH is one of the hospitals that fall under the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) umbrella, and I work for SLaM, so when I saw the poster I was very interested. A part of the exhibition was also the history of Bethlem (which has been around in some form or other since 1247, although it only started serving as a hospital for the mentally ill in 1357.)

There were about 50 artworks on display, done by patients of the hospital with a range of illnesses over the past 150 years. There was also an audio recording by a patient who used to live in Cane Hill hospital who now lives in community care, and he was explaining the difference in care. Something I found unsettling and disturbing is that mental health patients have only had 'rights' since about the 50s and it's only since about the 70's that asylum 'guards' have become registered Mental Health Nurses. In fact, it was only in 1984 that the MH hospitals in London became care facilities until then they had been asylums, little more than prisons or workhouses. There were some dreadful stories - a man kept in restraints so that he could only stand or lie down on his back for nine - fourteen years (the records are unclear). He was finally released when MP's visited him and felt that the restraints were unnecessary. He died of tuberculosis soon after. Earlier than that, in the 1800's wealthy ladies used to visit the asylum to be entertained by the 'lunatics'. How horrific!! Thank God the hospital governors put an end to that! There was a book of records where a matron for the hospital kept the records of a 22 year old man who had been born with epilepsy was admitted to the facility. The entries his warden made refer to him in such terms as "idiot.still epileptic. violent." "Two fits this week. Idiot is destructive and epileptic." The young man died 3 years after his admission.

Historian Roy Porter has called the Bethlem Hospital "a symbol for man's inhumanity to man, for callousness and cruelty." Fortunately, as someone who now works with the people who work with these service users (we don't call them idiots anymore!) I can not vouch enough for how things have changed - the care and compassion that some health care assistants and nurses show is phenomenal and whenever I've been on a ward or a residential unit I am amazed at the work these people do.

I guess what's frighting is how many people who were inmates in the asylum are still in the system and as Martin said, how many wardens are now nurses! As long as they've changed with the system, they would really be interesting people to talk to!

One interesting fact and a non important claim to fame is that the word "bedlam" is actually a direct derivative from the various names of Bethlem, including Bethlehem and Bedlam.

Another interesting fact is that before BRH moved to its current location in Beckenham from it's previous location which is today Liverpool Street Station.

It really was a great exhibit, and if you'd like to be moved, touched and inspired I recommend you visit before the end of January 2009.

Museum of Croydon

Cost of this day out: £4.95! (drinks and bus fare!)

Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands at Sadler's Well

One of the best things about living in London is the opportunity to discover a world of plays, musicals, ballets, exhibitions and every other cultural endeavour your heart could desire.

Tonight we went to Sadler's Wells in Finsbury to see Matthew Bourne's production of Edward Scissorhands. Although I had really wanted to see the show based on the previews on the website http://www.edwardscissorhands.co.uk, I wasn't prepared for how...magical....the performance was going to be.

From the use of lights on material to create rain and snow, to the interactive, lit up, stunningly crafted sets of homes, a cemetery, the rising and setting sun, a backyard barbecue, and town Christmas party, to name a few, the costumes were beautifully representative of 1950's America, puffy party dresses, dodgy running gear and pigtailed children who's mothers wave them off to school, to the dancing sculpted shrubs, nothing was half done, or in any way short of fantastic.

The orchestra was in a league of it's own with a score reminiscent of the movie, hitting the right emotional pitches all the way, Cheery suburbanism, passion, excitement, danger and hauntingly beautiful in places, it could stand alone as piece of art on its own.

The most striking performance of the night, in my opinion, was that of Noi Tolmer in the role of Kim Boggs - not only did she perform the role of a teen girl in the exhilarating fashion that leads you to remembering your own first kiss, and with a smile that reached to the back of the room when she realised she was in love with Edward, but she was also the best dancer on the stage. It's with good reason that Matthew Bourne has had her starring in a number of his productions.

The final act ends in splendour with 'snow' falling on the stage and across the audience and the lengthy applause ascertained that I was not the only one to enjoy this fantastic show.

My only question now is whether there are any tickets left for the last week of this production, 'cause I could happily go and see it again!

Day 26 - Sintra to London

For some reason the full circle of life has to also apply to holidays, and good things too, have to come to an end.

After an early morning cab ride to the airport, we boarded a very full plane to London Luton airport and had an uneventful flight. After waiting for what felt like forever for our checked in luggage to arrive we left Luton for London, Marble Arch where we sat for a few hours having another sandwich lunch before making our way for the last time as a foursome to Hyde Park Corner tube station. Edu and Simryn took the westbound train to Heathrow for their onward journey to Dubai, while Martin and I took the northbound train to Cockfosters to our friend Brendan's house where we ended up spending the night.

Exhausted from not only a day's travel, but also a very busy 26 days we had dinner and went to sleep.

I think it will take a few weeks for the past three and a half to really sink in, and I think we'll have many days to come where we'll have flashbacks and thoughts about the whirlwind that was our European holiday.

Of course, the best way to mourn the passing of a great vacation is to plan another, and Martin and I are already beavering away on plans for the next, so keep your RSS feed active or check in from time to time, cause we're not packing those backpacks too far away!

Day 25 - Sintra

Sintra. Well... it is like stepping off a train and in to a fairy tale, really. Like most of Europe there is Sintra, then there is Old Sintra. We, of course, were interested in Old Sintra. A World Heritage Site whose name means "Mountain of the Moon", Sintra was made famous by the English poet Lord Byron who referred to it as a "glorious Eden".

Built on hills and their valleys, there are quite a few castles, palaces and stately homes in Sintra as this used to be the summer home of Portugal's royalty. From the 8th Century Moorish Castle, to the magical and mysterious Quinta Da Regaleira (a manor house built by a very crazy mind, with caves, tunnels and more) and the Disney-like Pena Palace, there is more to explore in Sintra than we had time for, especially with me hobbling up hill and down hill.

Edu and Simryn tried to squeeze as much in to the day as they could, but we decided to take it easy and make it one of the very first destinations for our next holiday, so we walked from the hotel Pensao Residencial (http://www.residencialsintra.blogspot.com/) to the Liberdade park, where we walked around looking for one of the famous fountains, which we only found, in the end, on our way back, but we had a great walk through the gardens. We found our way very indirectly to the National Palace which had at its origin an Arab palace, but today is a museum where concerts and exhibitions are regularly held.

We spent some time walking around the shopping area of the 'Old Town' admiring the ceramics which are produced on site. We looked at and photographed such structures as the Clock Tower, and St Martin's church, and then took the 434 bus to Pena Palace. On arrival we decided that we would walk directly up to the palace and then take the scenic route down. With all the stairs I wasn't really up for going inside with my sore foot. The walk down was fantastic. The palace was started as a monastery in the 1400's but after it was damaged by lightning in 17 something and then almost destroyed in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 it lay in ruins until it was built in to an amazing cake frosting looking castle in 1838. The grounds still have two chapels and a herb garden on it, as well as various other weird and wonderful structures, like a Turkish Bath looking fountain, a Water Wheel which would make an awesome wedding chapel, a 'Valley of Lakes' which literally is a valley down the mountain with landscaped lakes and duck shelters on two of the lakes that look like mini palaces. We took about an hour and a half to walk the intricate network of paths towards the exit.

In the evening the four of us went for dinner at a wonderful restaurant that had a fantastic Portuguese flair where we ate delicious duck, steak, sea bass and cod, and Simryn and I had absolutely phenomenal deserts of Strawberry, Chocolate and Vanilla Ice cream (Simryn) and I had the best chocolate mouse I've ever experienced! Perhaps not the cheapest meal at E95 for the four of us, but certainly in the top three meals of the holiday.

I for one, cannot wait to go back to Sintra to really do it justice.

Day 24 - Spain to Portugal

We woke early this morning, had breakfast and walked outside to see that the beautiful sunshine of yesterday was hidden behind rain clouds. We cancelled our plans for a stroll to Columbus' castle as the rain began, quickly loaded up the car, went to the toilet and began the journey to our final destination, Sintra.

You might have wondered for a second why I felt it necessary to tell you that we went to the toilet, right? Well, about half an hour away from Benalmadena, having out driven the rain and for no particular reason I suddenly realised that I no longer had my camera with me. We searched the car before turning around and driving back in to the rain to hopefully find it again. By the time we got back, now just on an hour after we left, the roads were flooded under about 20 cm of water, water was gushing like fountains out of cracks in the road, storm drains spurted like cartoon fountains with their lids hovering above the road, and rain pounded the earth with the force of hailstones. Martin and I ran back up to the reception desk, and from the desk to the flat where I recovered my camera (gratefully) and then back to return the key. By the time we got back to the car we were both soaked to the point that we could wring out our clothes and probably fill a litre bottle! It is interesting how things sometimes only become valid in retrospect. This is the same rain we had two days ago, but as yesterday was so beautiful it didn't seem to matter, but now we feel exceedingly blessed with the weather yesterday!

Fortunately, even though we stayed wet for some time, we did out drive the rain again, and enjoyed a beautifully scenic drive through some really remote parts of Spain for the next few hours. We drove past some stunning villages, as quintessentially Spain as you could imagine, before the invasion by the tourists and a landscape dotted with ancient castles and ruins.

We eventually arrived in Badajos where we left the car and took a coach across the border to Lisbon in Portugal. From there we took a (very very cheap!) train to Sintra but by the time it arrived it was dark. We checked in to our hotel, which we've all agreed was the most beautiful of the trip. It is an old villa in the hills of Sintra with 20-odd rooms, large landscaped gardens, a swimming pool and lovely breakfast room. The rooms themselves were spacious, gorgeously decorated and extremely luxurious, and room service is a definite added bonus!

Day 23 - Ronda

With yesterday being as much of a non day as it was, partly due to our exhaustion and partly due to the weather (I forget, did I mention the weather yesterday? The mist was so thick we weren't aware of the gardens across the road from our apartment till this morning!) we were very happy to find that today's weather forcast was wrong and not only did it not rain all day but it was in fact rather hot!

After breakfast we drove away from tourist riddled Benalmadena (near Malaga) and the coast line and made our way inland to the town of Ronda. We took the scenic route there and scenic it was. Inland Spain certainly 'feels' a lot more Spanish! Beautiful, dry landscapes, mountains, rundown villas, ruins, rock formations, stunning modern villas, olive groves and terraced fields kept us entertained on the +- 100 km drive.

Ronda is divided in to two parts, Old and New and the two are separated by a huge bridge called Puente Nuevo over an equally huge gorge. We walked across the bridge and along the edge of the cliff stunned at such a fantasic view in the middle of 'town'. We then went in to the Bullfighting ring which was the first to have fighters fight without being on horseback (i.e modern bullfighting) Unfortunately for us, although not for the bulls, fights only happen once a year now, in early September, which we missed. We walked around the grounds, seats and museum within the ring, and the stables etc outside.

A few days ago, I somehow hurt my foot and sprained my big toe, so when Edu, Simryn and Martin decided to climb down the gorge to take pictures of the bridge from the bottom, I went to Ronda's wine museum instead. It was a really exciting experience, actually, with the little bits they translated in to English and the even smaller bits of Spanish I could piece together.

At the end of my walk through the twelve informative rooms, I went in to the courtyard for my tasters. The lady gave me five 100 ml wines: A local red wine produced in their cellars, very dry but good, a local sherry that tasted a little too much like Aquadent ( otherwise known as Portuguese Fire Water, a totally different story!) for my liking, and three delicious desert wines, one sweeter than the other. I chatted to a German couple about South African wines at the time and was really pleased I had stopped in there.

We took the highway back towards Benalmadena, a quick dip in the ocean and a kilogram of calamari for dinner.

As much as we loved Ronda, and I'm sure we'll go back, I have to admit that the Costa Del Sol itself is too packed with holiday flats and tourists for me, and I think we're all agreed, this is one of those places you go once to see what the fuss was about then leave as fast as you can to somewhere beautiful and intruiging, like Ronda.

Day 21 and Day 22 - Obertraun, Munich and Malaga

I suppose that no backpacking holiday would be complete without someone sleeping on the floor of a train station. But that is way ahead in the story.

Let me start at dawn, day 21.

We had an early departure from Obertraun this morning, wanting to get the car back to Salzburg on time for us to catch a train to Munich. Everything went well and there was a spectacular view all the way.

We arrived in Munich with plenty time for some walking around before going to Theriesenwiese for the Oktoberfest. Martin had some left over freelance work to finish so he went to the internet café for what turned in to a bit of a technical saga while Edu and Simryn went for a walk around Marienplatz and surrounds and I did some shopping for closed shoes and long sleeves as it was very cold!

We eventually made it to the festival where we walked around the grounds eating pretzels and looking at the overpriced rides, souvenirs and curios. We had not made any reservations so we walked from tent to tent till we found a seat outside the Lowenbrau tent where we sat down and ordered four steins. It must be mentioned that Simryn and I are not beer drinkers, but we definitely gave it a fair shot!

On route to our second tent Martin and I were tempted by one of the rides. It is a straight pole structure with chairs attached to the bottom. Without warning you're shot in to the air, bounced around at the top for a bit before being plummeted to the ground again. It is exciting and provides great views!

We found another tent and managed to find somewhere to sit, although not much sitting was done! By this time of the night, everyone is dancing and singing with the oompa band and every rendition of 'Ein Prosit' is heartily agreed and cheersed and clinked. The atmosphere is great, everyone is happy and friendly and everyone is everyone's friend. (I wondered to myself what would happen if the UN summit in New York was moved to a table at Oktoberfest)

At 23:00 the music dies and the security guards come around encouraging you to leave immediately, so everyone pours out into the grounds making there way back to wherever they go. We found some stekkelfisch, fish which is skewered and slow roasted over open coals and is totally delicious.

We walked back to the train station with plenty time to spare for the 00:58 train to the airport where we were planning to find a place to snooze while we waited for our 05:30 flight. Unfortunately the scheduled final train to the airport decided not to go there but in fact to stop 3 stations short, so there we sat, 1 something am at a train stop in the middle of nowhere with not a thing to do in the area, freezing cold, all our luggage with us and two hours to wait for a train! We did all try to sleep a bit, especially Martin who I neglected to mention has a stinking cold! Curled up on the station floor covered in towels, scarves and jerseys and using my swimming costume and sarong as a pillow (it's only use so far this holiday!) and the rest of us in similar states of being, those were two very long hours. The train finally arrived and we thawed out en route to the airport.

By now exhausted and desperately thirsty we thought we'd check in and then try for some sleep, but Condor Air had different ideas! We arrived at the check-in counter to find about 300 people waiting to check in! There were 6 open desks, but that airline had three flights leaving for different Spanish destinations within 30 mins of each other, and no indication of which desk t use for which destination! It was not only utter chaos, but incredibly slow too taking us over an hour to check in!

We passed through security, where as it happened both my and Simryn's bags were checked! We finally got on the plane and I don't know about the others but I was asleep before take off. Later today they were discussing the worrying take off, extreme turbulence and shaky landing and I was very surprised! I missed it all!

We seem to be catching the tail end of all of Europe's bad weather at the moment because we landed in Malaga in torrential rain and driving to our hotel saw storm drains overflowing, water bubbling up through manholes and rushing in torrents down the road! We stopped for some groceries and very soon after, Martin and I went to sleep while Edu and Simryn went for a walk!

Waking up remotely refreshed Martin made a delicious chicken and proscuitto with mozzarella salad and now I think we'll finish the dishes and go back to bed!

Day 20 - Grundlesee

We woke up early this morning to another bitterly cold and very overcast day. After a hearty breakfast of bacon, sausages, eggs and toast, and making cold meat, cheese and lettuce king's cross buns for lunch we braved the cold for Grundlesee. The idea was that we would get there and take the three lakes tour which takes you on three different boats around Grundlesee, Toplitz See and Kammer See. Unfortunately, when they said nothing is open on Sunday, they meant nothing is open on Sunday, including boat trips! It was utterly disappointing to me, but there was nothing for it, so we decided to drive to the three lakes instead.

We got to the top of the beautiful Grundlesee, and followed the signs for, only to find that we couldn't actually drive there. The waterfall and lakes are only accessible by boat or foot, so we decided to walk the 2km to the waterfall, at least. We parked and paid for a few hours of parking, stopped by the public toilet and went on our way, when not 100 m down the road it started raining, accompanied by a blistering wind!

We turned back and hopped in the car with the heating right up! We drove around the lake as far as we could, before turning around again and driving back towards Obertraun. It is just such a beautiful country side that we couldn't really get enough of it! We stopped in a little town called Bad Aussie at the one open place, a cafe. Edu and Simryn had Apfel Strudel and Heidelbier Strudel, while Martin and Kirschtorte and I had Biskotten Torte. Four hot chocolates (between us) and our delicious cakes, later, we felt less frozen and drove back to Obertraun.

Unfortunately the weather was not conducive to any of the things one would do on the lake, such as cycling (around it) or canoeing, so Edu and Simryn went for a walk, and Martin and I curled up in bed for a two hour snooze.

When we woke up it was time for dinner, so Simryn and I went through the fridge and created a dinner our home ec, if we'd had them, teachers would have been proud of. Chicken stock turned in to a chicken and potato soup, with the help of the leftover potatoes from last night, flour and left over eggs from breakfast turned in to pancakes and the chicken was shredded for chicken stuffed pancakes. Now at the end of dinner, blog written, tummies full and eyes heavy, we will quickly clean and pack, and then sleep in preparation of a full and fantastic final week.

Day 19 - Verditz to Obertraun

There are some days where words just seem so (and now a list of words are running through my head, futile, pointless, unnecessary, unfulfilling... but none of them fit the bill!)

I woke up very early this morning, looked out the window at the mist surrounding the Blue Mountain Inn and promptly went back to sleep. I woke up a little later, looked out the window at the gray, grim mist, moved my now freezing arm back under the blanket and, yes, went back to sleep.

My alarm went off fifteen minutes later and I woke up to see beautiful sunshine flooding our side of the mountain, filling the room with light and the mountain with refracted reflections.

We went for a walk in the crisp (read very cold) morning air climbing the mountain to the end of the road. Although the altitude is probably not the highest the air is very thin and clean and fresh Not something our city lungs are used to! We walked far enough to give us time to get back to the warm bread our hostess promised us for nine o'clock, and met Edu and Simryn in the breakfast room when they came back from their walk.

After a delicious breakfast of muesli and yoghurt, fruit, cold meats, cheese and lovely fresh kings cross buns. (Apparently some king liked having a cross pattern on his bread rolls, so they were made that way for him, and have been made that way ever since!

Although not winter, the ski lifts works on good weathered Saturdays, so we paid the E8 to get from ski lift 3 to the top of the mountain. It was such a gorgeous experience. Going up we just had the mountain in front of us, and beautiful as it was, it wasn't spectacular except for a few parts where we could see lakes and villages over the tops and between the branches of trees. Once we dismounted, gracefully of course (!), we spent about an hour walking around the top of the mountain, first to the Swartsee, a black lake nestled in a dip right at the top, then in the opposite direction to a plateau near the edge. The plateau had strange and beautiful rocks, shining with silver scale like layers that clumped together made the rocks. It's hard to explain, but yet another thing I'll be looking up when I'm back in the land of freely available internet. The rocks shone stunningly against the sun and we guessed would do the same under a full moon. We admired the vista for a while, looking up at the blue mountains higher up and further away, and dreaming about the kinds of houses we would build for ourselves high up away from the rest of the world.

The journey back down the mountain was nothing short of spectacular. The view was astounding, crisp and clear and beautiful. We could see for miles up and down mountains and valleys, lakes near and far, villages dotted far as we could see, and some closer ones with their church steeples standing out stark and white against an amazing green backdrop. We reached the bottom of ski lift three (gracefully again, of course) and agreed our exceedingly well spent time.

Back in the car, we drove for Grundlesee.

When we were planning the holiday, we each chose destinations that we wanted included in the holiday. These became known as our non-negotiables. For Simryn it was Lake Como and Florence, Edu's was Andalucia, Martin's was the Bernina Express and Oktoberfest and mine were Sintra and Grundlesee, so I was very excited.
The drive through Austria is constantly stunning. There is nothing ugly, nothing dull and any and every conversation can be and was interrupted with jubilant or awestruck cries of 'look there' or "wow"! Waterfalls, snow capped mountains, beautiful houses, castles or other structures, valleys, clouds anything you can think of when you imagine Austria.

We arrived in Obertraun around 15:00 and went immediately to the nearest shopping centre, about half an hour away as we were told that everything closes at 18:00 and doesn't open on Sunday. As we are staying in a self catering place, that would have been a problem! We went to the Spar and ended up spending E55 on 5 meals for 4 people! Not too bad!

We arrived back in Obertraun, the only place close to Grundlesee that we could afford, basically, to a lovely two bedroom apartment with gorgeous mountain views in a quaint and picturesque village. It was raining, the clouds were hanging very low and it was very very cold, so upon discovering a dvd player in our lounge and the owner's dvd collection, we decided that that would be a good way to spend our Saturday evening: a bottle of wine, a dvd and some popcorn. I cooked a goulash type stew with baked potatoes and we spent our evening watching Charlie Bartlett and The Bucket List before another very quiet, peaceful and thankfully warm night's sleep!

Day 18 - Venice to Verditz

We spent this morning in and around Venice. Martin and I went to Burano, the fishing village beyond Murano where women (apparently, we were too early to see it) sew lace all day while the men are out fishing. The houses are all painted different colours: bright pinks, blues and greens, a perfect fishing village. It is absolutely beautiful!

We left quite early as we had to get back to Venice to check out of the hotel, which was quite unfortunate. We spent the rest of the morning around Venice wandering streets we'd not walked before and seeing buildings and churches not listed under the attractions but beautiful in a more unadulterated ways.

Something that really struck me about Venice was how many churches there are in the squares all around the city. It is amazing. They seem to open them every morning and evening so that the people who live in those squares can pop in for morning and evening prayers, which we did this morning too. There is something so beautiful about a church that is ornate and used as a church, not an attraction. It's a beauty that can't be photographed.

Meanwhile, Simryn and Edu went to Murano where they were fortunate enough to be able to see one of the masters create a beautiful glass horse and sign it. They were smarter than us and managed to escape without spending their fortunes!

We took a train from Venice that afternoon to Villach in Austria, where we picked up a rental car and went in search of our accommodation for the evening. The directions were a bit bad from where we were but we eventually found our way there. And "there" was pretty amazing! The Blue Mountain Inn is one of the highest lodges on a beautiful Alp in the Verditz Ski Resort. The apartment had one double room and one four bunk bed room which we were upgraded to from just a normal four bunk room as we were the only guests in the hotel, so Edu and Simryn got the double bed this time round.

The owner, Michelle Lively (who owns it with her husband Tug who was off with a tour group) cooked us a stunning dinner of goulash soup, chicken schnitzel and a delicious fruit compote in the middle of a donut thing with ice cream. Absolutely delicious!

By the time we'd finished eating and chatting to the Australian Michelle with her twin daughters, it was very late and time for a very quiet, peaceful, thin aired night's sleep.

As always, pictures to follow!

Day 17 - Venice

Venice really took me by surprise. Last time Martin and I were here, we had a relatively dismal time, but I am so pleased we decided to give it a second chance!

It was a bit of a strange day too since we were staying in a hotel and went down for breakfast at different times we ended up not even seeing Edu and Simryn all day!

Our first stop was St.Mark's square and the Doge's palace but the square looked like it was covered in ants there were so many people! That didn't suit us so we walked to the other side of the island from where we caught a river boat to the island of Isola S.Giorgio Maggiore where there is pretty much nothing but a really large church. From there we went to the island of Murano

Murano is famous for the glass they produce. There are large factories with their own furnaces, apprentices and masters as well as their own shops which sell their products. We walked in to one showroom and I'm not sure if the guy thought we were rich dressed down or something, but he took a special interest in us. He took us in to the private showroom where they keep their one of a kind or new items where he showed us pieces by one of their Masters (they have to work for 15 - 20 years before they become masters) Valentina, and explained the perks of purchasing from that selection: You get photographs of the signed item in production, a folder with the biography of the artist and a photo of the artist with the item. Also, you can get up to 55% off the price. also told us some of the history of Murano. Back when they started making the glass they did it on the island of Venice until one of the furnaces exploded destroying a large part of the island. The doge at the time decided to move the furnaces to Murano, which is where the name now comes from. Back then, masters and there apprentices were basically held prisoner on the island, unable to leave because the secrets of blowing the glass were too important to risk it being leaked!

The glass is amazing... They use minerals such as selenium, cobalt, gold and silver to melt in with the glass to colour it. They then melt the rods in to the glass for the different colours. It is pretty amazing. The glass is then melted again in to different things, vases (starting from about E300), bowls and plates (starting from about E300 each) and anything else you could imagine (including the E9800 fish I really wanted to buy!) The gold and silver in the glass have to be pure, otherwise the heat in the furnaces burn the impure gold or silver and make them come out black. It was really an interesting afternoon! We did walk out with a very expensive (but cheaper than the average as it was end of range) vase, which we'll be treasuring for many years to come!

Leaving the factory shop we walked the wrong way and ended up called back from the 'wrong way' and were shown in to a furnaced area where we could watch three different groups of people blowing, heating, knocking and shaping glass. It was really amazing to watch, because it is impossible to imagine these big burly men making things so beautiful and so delicate.

We were very fortunate to find a Spar on the way back to the boat where we found the cheapest food, chocolates and wines on all of the Venetian waters! We bought a lovely bottle of Lemoncella, a local lemon flavoured liquer which we absolutely love for about E7 and a bottle of 12 year old Balsamic vinegar which cost us under E3!

At the boating station there was a market stall where the lady was selling a few of the things we really liked for less than they were in the shops, so we also bought a beautiful wine bottle stopper.

By the time we got back from Murano we were so tired that we stopped in at a cafe on the way back to the hotel for a rather dismal calzone with tinned mushrooms and cold sandwich ham before going back to the hotel, and soon after, to bed.