In Bruges

Recently I was at my mums house, my brother Si was also there and he told us about "mini cruises" whereby you could take a ferry to a chosen northern European city overnight, which would then take you back again the following day, he also mentioned how there was a deal on where 2 people could go on one for the not so princely sum of £75.

As it turned out Si was so well informed on matters of mini cruising because he had been on one before and had been looking to go on another at some point near his birthday, this time probably to Bruges, unfortunately it seemed that no-one else had any available holidays remaining to use to join him on this trip, I asked if that was an invitation, as it turned out it was.

This would be my first trip abroad without Rachael for over 5 years, I had a decision to make, a very important decision, one that would potentially shape things to come, that decision was obviously: What colour pin was I going to use for this trip when I added it to the map? Would I have to start a whole new colour or would an existing one suffice? Green and Blue were out, they are for trips with specific individuals, what about red? Madrid in 2007 remained red when I met up with and stayed with Si, how is this any different? Well it is extremely different, I would be going with him to Bruges, not meeting him on one of the stops during a single trip, to indicate in colour terms that I went alone would be a complete lie, what about purple then? That was used once in 2009 to indicate that I went with my family, Si is family, could I use purple for this trip? Yes. Yes I definitely could.

The title of the post on the other hand was never realistically up for debate.

So, on a Tuesday afternoon, we set off on the road to Hull, or rather we set of to my house to collect my passport as I had seemingly forgotten you needed one to leave the country and that they're not just for plane journeys, who knew?

I had never travelled anywhere by ferry, having usually opted for air or land based modes of transport, but it is quite enjoyable, the boat takes about 15 hours to do a journey a plane could do in about 1 hour, but the ferry is a lot less stressful and you get a tiny bunk-bed cabin in which to sleep at night. It is a lot like booking into a floating hotel what with the resident entertainers and the expensive food (so THAT's how they make the money then).

Except of course you can't walk outside until the morning, most hotels would struggle to drum up business with that sort of policy.

The morning after setting off from Hull, we landed in Zeebrugge, where we were transferred by coach to the non "Zee" Brugge (Or Bruges to us English speaking types). We were dropped on a nondescript road across a bridge from a park at the edge of the city centre.

It's only a small place and is centred  around the square, which was in the process of being turned into a Christmas market with an ice rink, we were a bit too early, so it was just a collection of sheds with a large white rectangle in the middle.

I remember quite enjoying the architecture in Brussels when I was there, not for any sort of artistic merit it might have (though I'm sure it does) but because of how odd it seems, often seeming  as though  the buildings have just been tacked on to each other as neighbouring buildings seem to be so different, it didn't seem as pronounced  in Bruges, but it is still noticeable, like in this photo I took from the top of the clock tower.

The "Manneken Pis" in Brussels  only added to the impression I had of Belgium, but a little pissing boy seems completely normal compared to this fountain. Now I know we have to suspend reality slightly when we're looking at a fountain with a mermaid in it, but the projectile lactation seems a step too far, why did the water need to be coming from there? At least the pissing boy was doing something biologically possible, mermaids are supposed to be women from the waist up and I don't think women can do that (not to self, confirm detail with a woman). Also the water pouring from her mouth seems uncomfortable in itself, someone should help her!

Our day included a museum, a clock tower climb and a canal boat trip (as we had apparently not had enough time on a boat already) before we returned in the late afternoon to the coach taking us back to the ferry.

The journey home was much like the journey there, since it was in the same vessel, doing the same journey in reverse and we were staying in the same cabin room.

Though I did remember to take a photo of my sat-nav on the way back as it turns out that if you're far enough away from a road, rather than getting confused and assuming you are on the nearest road, it just shows where you are in the world, so when on the boat, it shows you floating around in the sea, on setting the view to 2d, I could see exactly where we were and how fast we were travelling. My favourite part has to be the instruction at the bottom: "Go to nearest road" It isn't going to concern itself with how I came to be floating around in the sea or even how I am going to get back out of this predicament, "Just return yourself to a road, then I will help you again, until then you're on your own".

The Red Bag

It lands upon the beach, a sense of accomplishment is felt for it has made it to shore, now it seems is the time to rest.

The rest is quickly interrupted by the very same water that brought it to where it lay, bringing it back out to the mercy of the  waves.

Back and forth it now floats, being granted its temporary freedom, then having it taken away in the same stroke.

Where did it come from? Has it floated across from a neighbouring island or a passing boat? Perhaps it fell from a passing helicopter? Or maybe it was the fallen fruit from a nearby rubbish tree?

Does it even know where it came from? The answer to that one is no. It is just a red plastic carrier bag and is completely incapable of sentient thought.

This year when planning our summer holiday, we more or less realised there was no point pursuing the alternating year pattern we appeared to be following, never mind the troublesome trip to Syria next year and the subsequent biennial trips to various middle eastern countries, Italy it turns out is expensive.

So when planning this trip, we thought back over our recent summer holidays and which one was the favourite. On comparison, the favourite trip was probably Crete in 2011, so we thought, maybe we should return to Greece, but perhaps visit a different Greek Island this year, Corfu perhaps?

So this year our holiday was Biograd in Croatia.

Croatia would have fitted into our pattern, but what with the intermediate countries and the other half of the pattern, we weren't due to visit until 2018, so either we're 4 years early, or this year, we chose to travel to the future. Probably the 1st one.

Biograd is a small marine town on the coast of Croatia so there are plenty of boats and pebble beaches.

During our trip we chartered our own vessel to sail across the sea. Granted it did have pedals. In 2008, I rented a pedal boat with Titch to pedal around a river in Prague (I believe - Its too much effort to check). So what made this pedal boat superior? The answer is of course, a slide.

Not only were we able to pedal around in a boat and play in the sea with somewhere to keep our stuff but... we had a slide!

Weeeee!

Could we top the pedal boat during the same trip? Well we could try, but nothing beats a pedal boat, we visited a national park (called Plitvice or if you are misheard Cliff Richard)

Cliff Richard national park is a Unesco world heritage site full of lakes and waterfalls, it's really quite impressive. Its no pedal boat with slide, but its impressive in other ways.

Almost as impressive as the size of the burger we managed to get from a fast food place when everywhere else seemed to be closed.

Now that we've broken the pattern, its anyone’s guess where we're going next. Or if we assume we just skipped a few years, we can safely assume it's going to be Iran. I'm looking forward to it already.

Internet Enabled Instrument Enhancers

For the first time in almost 6 years, I had the opportunity to update my travel blog in real time, but I blew it, I could have even written it during the holiday, just like old times. We had internet access and a tablet computer, but my priority when given free internet access is to play on my Nintendo 2DS, because apparently I am 12.

Also unlike non pill based computers, this one had no apparent way to connect a digital camera, what is this blog without photographs? Its just a man rambling on about nothing with the occasional vague reference to another country. You're only here for the photos, you wouldn't know if every post was just a single introductory sentence and then place-holder gibberish text like they have  on printer test pages and on those emails that used to sit in my junk e-mail box trying to sell me organ enhancements in pill form (I still don't understand how medicine can even enhance musical instruments, plus I feel as though they're entire target audience should have been churches) Most of it made no sense, but occasionally a few words seemed to materialise close to each other and create a meaningful phrase, much to my occasional delight.

Looking at the above paragraph, I'm not so sure this isn't all just place-holder text after all.

Pigeon!

The holiday was a few weeks ago now, this year we chose Bratislava in Slovakia.

Upon arriving at the hotel, we walked into a tall carpeted lobby, with bell boys in waist-coats, I had to double check our booking confirmation to make sure this was definitely the place we had booked and was still half expecting the receptionist to laugh in my face for about a minute, before telling me that I wanted the other Apollo Hotel, the one with the  barn door entrance, a single sleeping receptionist and a climb up 17 flights of stairs that smell distinctly of urine to get to your 8 foot x 8 foot box room where you are provided with a spade to prop the door shut while you're in.

But she accepted my print-out with a smile and a request for a 100 euro deposit, - I would have got all of that back had we not ordered room service on the first night, this was certainly a holiday of firsts for us - Did you know that in hotels, you can eat without even leaving the room? Amazing!

The biggest giveaway that I did not belong in such posh surroundings was during breakfast the following morning, on my return to the table (probably carrying pancakes) I picked up a transparent plastic cup with a yellowy swirl at the bottom, I was so proud of myself, I was going to try their Slovakian breakfast mousse. I dipped my fork and put it in my mouth to taste, it was strange, greasy and sort of salty, yes, I had grabbed myself a nice cup of butter. Out of embarrassment I had to get myself a piece of bread to go with it, I didn't want the waiting staff to know about my error.

Apparently a few days later, different colours appeared in the plastic cups and they had started to serve breakfast mousse, as though I had been seen and the chef had been ordered to prepare some, like they now assumed we must eat in England. But it was too late, I had already been stung, I could no longer trust the little plastic cups.

Pigeon!

In the lobby of the hotel, was a slight indication of how the city of Bratislava sees itself, On the counter was a list of local taxi prices, you had the usual choices, city centre, shopping mall, train station, then the rest were prices to different countries (namely Austria, Czech Republic and Hungary) - Bratislava is usually just a stopover, somewhere you're supposed to pass through on the way to where you're really going.

But we would not stand for that, Bratislava was our holiday and we were going to enjoy what it had to offer, for starters, 1 90c bus ticket could get you anywhere in the city as long as the journey took under an hour, and it wasn't limited to buses, it included trams and those electric buses connected to  wires hung over the road... Probably have a name... I won't go all public transport anorak... Not again.

It's a very small city, but it looks nice to walk around, in the main city centre there are no cars and it has all the requisite nice buildings for you to look at, take a photograph of, eat a calzone nearby and then leave again. Here is one of them.

I don't think Bratislava has had any proper famous people, there are 2 statues quite close together, one of a very nice local man who used to give flowers to ladies and so on and... this man. I didn't actually take this photo, I just this minute took it off the internet, but I wanted to mention it as we found some information about it in our free tourist guide, this is a "Manual worker who preferred to look up women’s skirts than to do his job" - A local pervert gets a statue, that's what it takes to be immortalised in bronze in place!

Here's Rachael behind a tree.

On the Friday, we decided to visit one of the neighbouring countries, by train, Vienna was only an hour away.

I remember being in Vienna with Titch and going to a nice indoor zoo, I wanted to go back on this day, but had absolutely no idea where it was. Apart from that and a night out with a drinking tour, I remember Vienna being pretty dull, it was this time too, there just wasn't anything to do, though we did find a nice park to while away the afternoon.

Austrian Pigeon!

Automatic Awe Generator

I'm sorry, there isn't a new holiday in the blog today.

 

I had a notification in my Gmail account telling me that one of my photo's had been 'Auto Awesomed'. Apparently, not only do all photos I add to my blog end up in a picasa album, but they're linked to the Google+ account Google makes you have.

I decided that since I put all this stuff publicly on my blog anyway, this wasn't really something to become bothered about, also this picture from Lithuania looks pretty cool with snow effects:

Lets all just enjoy the falling snow.

Being Turkish

For those of you who haven't yet worked out the pattern, 2013's Summer holiday was to Turkey.

The pattern wasn't intentional, but it happened - From 2010  with our Summer holidays we have been moving East one country at a time on alternating years. Starting in Portugal in 2010 we moved East to Spain in 2012, Starting in Greece in 2011 we moved East to Turkey in 2013. I don't mind that we now have to go to Italy later this year, but I'm not really looking forward to Syria next year, things are a bit tense at the moment... Might have some nice wild hamsters though.

Specifically our holiday took us to Alanya near Antalya and significantly...

This was the first time in 5 years that while in a different country I was sporting face furniture.

Apparently the most interesting thing I can ever think to tell the world is how hairy my face is at any particular time. There is at least one post in this blog pretty much dedicated to it - This one - We were on holiday, surely there is something else I could talk about?

Well there is, for example, there was a big long walk up a hill to find a castle. I just couldn't find it here, where the hell is it?
This walk was followed by a meal at the top overlooking the harbour and a similar (but reversed) walk taking us back down to the bottom.

I'm pretty sure hill walks have featured in this blog before as  well, but I'm not going to go find that one - Was moving on to activities really worth it? I bet you wish we were back on beards now don't you? But no, that's it, Beard time is over, you've ruined it now.

After we had already checked out on the last day  we were waiting outside the apartment building for a coach to arrive to take us back to the airport.

This cat walked over and joined us on our little couch, we had seen him (I will continue assuming the cat was male, so I don't have to refer to him/her as an it - I'm sure he/she won't mind) about while we were eating or swimming on previous days, but it was the first time he actually came and sat next to us. He may have been wild, but he could just have easily have belonged to a neighbouring house.

He was wary of me at first, but after I tickled him he decided that I not only wasn't a threat, but that I was a friend that he should curl up on and make himself comfortable.

He stayed there for quite a while, until we actually got up to leave - at which point he seemed quite put out. Hopefully he forgives me.

That's all of the holidays up to date now, future holidays will be added with the normal irregularity that they occur. The next one will be Bratislava, so if anyone can work out the pattern that goes:
Germany
Ireland
Lithuania
Slovakia

That would be very useful to help work out where we'll end up going next year.

There's also now a pins in a map page to go along with this blog which I'll continue to add to.

Back in the (former) USSR

Snow can be nice. If we look past the cold and wet and forget about all the disruption, then I think most people can enjoy a bit of fluffy ice - Even if you don't want to go outside, build snowmen, have snowball fights or slide down a local hill on your favourite bin lid, you can at least look at it and admit that it makes the world look like a postcard... Until it all turns brown or it melts and floods your house - You're allowed to be bored of it then.

I like that really satisfying crunch when you first step into a particularly deep bit of snow, that’s good, unless your foot gets wet.

In Lithuania, during the winter, you have a very good chance of snow, usually between November and February it is a guarantee - 2013 was definitely no exception when our plane tickets took us all the way to Vilnius.

- Infrastructure will be marvelled at in the following paragraph

The first thing you are (ok, I am) likely to
notice is how much everything just keeps on going with all this snow. Back home, I remember a time when it was snowing for a week, no-one could get to work, the roads were unusable and the entire country ground to a halt. Here, it just didn't, nothing stopped, it was just normal, this was just how things were. It probably helps that they have snow for a 3rd of the year, for us its so rare that it just causes the councils to curl up into little council balls and weep their council sized tears... Which does nothing for the subsequent flooding issues.

I wonder if anyone marvels at the way Britain just copes with the near constant rain? Probably not, its not that impressive really... and the fact that we're currently so close to losing Somerset probably doesn't fill the rest of the world with awe.

It was so cold on this holiday, even the trees were wearing jumpers! Temperatures were in the early minuses, but it was pretty manageable as it wasn't windy... Except that one day when there was a street market going on, that one seemed to challenge the stall holders, so I don't think that’s normal weather.

And the crowds gathered to watch the giant man dive into the small pile of snow, secretly hoping that the horse would butt him in first... If I actually looked things up, I wouldn't have to make things up - As good a reason as any to never look anything up.

We could not go to Vilnius without visiting the bust of Frank Zappa, because it is just so odd, he is not from here or has even been here, but they have a statue of him, apparently a group of artists petitioned the government after the fall of communism, presumable just to test how much of a democracy they now had. Apparently enough to get a Frank Zappa bust on a large metal pole.

We were in Lithuania for almost a week, we accidentally stole breakfast, we learnt we liked Lithuanian food and we came home with an ocarina and a set of matryoshka dolls. All in all a successful trip.

Port of Adventure

We go to Alton Towers at least once a year, usually by saving up coupons out of the Sun newspaper - Unfortunately this means we have to buy The Sun for a few weeks a year, but it is worth putting ourselves through that to get our tickets. Plus the rabbits don't really mind what we line their house with. They might seem a bit angrier with us, but that is most likely just in my head.

The point is theme parks are fun, especially the rides - Wait the rides ARE the fun part, I don't think anyone goes to stand in queues and eat overpriced food, I can do that at home, I just need to go to Marks & Spencer close to Christmas.

Ooh penny arcades, they have them too, they're good! That reminds me of something else that happened in Ireland... But we're not on Ireland now, that was the last entry, now we're in the summery part of 2012 and we're building a holiday based around the enjoyment of roller-coasters, we're going to Port Aventura in Salou, Spain.

As it turned out going to a theme park didn't constitute a complete holiday plan, so we decided we would spend a few days in Barcelona before continuing on to Salou, now Barcelona has a really good public transport... wait I think I've covered public transport systems once before.

It rained a bit while we were in Barcelona, which dampened our enjoyment a little bit (no pun intended), but we still managed to get around to see all the important bits, like the Sagrada Família, will they ever finish this thing?
And this giant glass penis, that’s one of Barcelona's main tourist attractions right?

After a few days of drizzle and phallic buildings, we felt we had seen enough of this historic city and it was time to move on to the 2nd part of the holiday, we took the train to Salou, where unfortunately it was also raining, absolutely pouring down, you could barely look outside without getting soaked. On the end of that first day, it seemed like it was never going to dry up, it looked like Port Aventura was going to have to wait.

The light seeping in around the curtains the following morning told a different story though, it was glorious and clear, like the rain had never happened, so after a chance discovery of the children’s cartoon Phineas and Ferb, this would become day 1 at the theme park.

Probably the highlight was the new ride 'Shambala' which is meant to be like the Himalayas, so is an up and down sort of roller-coaster, the most interesting part being the first time we went on, we sat down, this little disk came down over our laps and we wondered where the rest of our harness was, the bit you normally have over the upper part of your body, making you feel safe and secure, what the hell were these?

What was quite nice was they had all the halloween stuff out, so there were giant pumpkins, skeleton horses and costumed characters all around who walked through the park in a halloween parade at the end of the day.

After the 2 days at Port Aventura, we had few more days in Salou, where there was sunshine, a bit of seaside and a load of bats.

We're almost up to date now, the next holidays to write about took place in 2013, maybe I'll be able to properly remember them. Lets find out.