18 May 2010

After a bit a dithering and wandering, we made it from one station to the other in Madrid and settled into the very nice 1st-class lounge, where we gorged ourselves on the free snacks and drinks. Next stop – Barcelona.

We made it to Barcelona and caught the freebie regional train to Figueres, Spain. We found a decent hotel over a little bar/café downtown for 45 Euros.

sleeper train to Madrid steps to upper bunk	Train to Barcelona	Train to Barcelona
	menu on Barcelona train (larger image)	Barcelona station

19 May

We left our packs in the bar after checking out of our room and toured the Salvador Dali museum. Another weird dude, but maybe not quite as messed up as Picasso. We spent a few hours wandering the streets and shopping for food before boarding the train for the French border. After an exhaustive 3-second inspection of our passports, we were admitted into France. We figured out the French train system, rode to Perpignan, and made an immediate connection to the train for Nimes, where we spent the night near the station. During our evening stroll, we found that we happened to hit town at the start of some big 5-day bull fight festival. A lot of the streets were blocked off with food and drink booths everywhere and tons of people milling about. We wondered if we might have to dodge charging bulls in the streets, but fortunately did not. The local arena was started in 14 BC and was pretty much in its current configuration by the 6th century. As we were walking by, the day’s event apparently ended, as a crowd came pouring out of it. We strolled in and took some pictures inside. Joe climbed to the top via a bunch of dark passages and stairs for a bird's eye view – a very impressive place.

Salvador Dali museum

11:27 am

11:34 am

11:36 am

11:49 am

12:02 pm

12:06 pm

Nimes, France arena sign (larger sign)

street fair

street fair

1st century arena

inside arena

20 May

We caught the train out of Nimes and stopped in Arles, France, for several hours. We rode their little sight-seeing trolley around and looked at their coliseum, theater, etc. The train then took us to Nice, where we stayed in a hostel not far from the station. We walked around town for a couple of hours but decided to move on the next day. Nice is a big city and seems geared mostly to fleecing tourists. An example was buying supper. We passed a sidewalk café that had a sign advertising pizza, so we went into the nearly empty seating area and took a table. When the waiter came, I ordered a margherita pizza. He asked what Janene wanted and I said we were going to share the pizza. He insisted that she had to order her own food – no sharing. I said we didn't want that much food. The manager eventually came over and said that they couldn't make money selling just one pizza. So I asked him how much they would make selling no pizzas as we got up and left. We walked down the street to a panini stand where they were happy to cut a sandwich in half for us.

Arles, France Les 2 Lions Ancien Pont

21 May

We left Nice, and stopped in Monaco for about 5 hrs. The lady at the train station tourism booth told us there was no place anywhere to leave our packs while we looked around, so we got directions to the nearest fire station and left our stuff there. We took a tour of the royal palace. They gave us an audio guide player, and the tour had a lot of interesting history, but it's probably not on our list of "don't miss" attractions.... Read More

22 May

We stopped at the local market on the way to the station to re-stock our fruit supply, and then rode from Ventimiglia to Genoa, where we changed trains for Vernazza. Unlike Spain, Italian trains have no numbers or destination cities placarded on them. We got on the wrong train, headed the wrong direction. But we figured it out by the first stop and caught the next train back to Genoa – we had eleven minutes to get there and find the correct train. As we rode along, it occurred to us that this train seemed to be going in the direction we wanted, so when it stopped in Genoa, Joe asked the conductor what train number it was. It turned out to be the one we wanted all along, we just got on a little early by riding out to meet it. Had we missed it, we would have been able to explore Genoa for about four hours. Maybe next time.... Read More

23 May, Sunday

Breakfast came with the room and was nicer than that to which we've become accustomed. Fresh juice, coffee or tea, cereal, and a wide variety of yummy pastries. Guess what we had? And when we started to leave, they handed us two sack lunches with fruit, sandwich, a little block of cheese, a big bottle of water, and a juice box. "Local tradition," the man said. We missed our train by about forty-five seconds, so we did another Italian lesson on the MP3 player while we waited for the next one. We stopped in Pisa to change trains, and hiked into town to see the tower. It was better than we'd anticipated, but very commercialized, as one would expect. We went back to the station and rode to our semi-random town of the day, Cecina. When we got off the train, we found a fairly large town nearly completely shut down for Sunday. Naturally, we went the wrong direction for about ¼ mile before turning around and hiking seemingly forever to the closed-on-Sunday info center. It was hot and muggy and had rained lightly on us several times, so we inquired at the first hotel we found. We were pleasantly surprised to get a very nice large room with a view of the Mediterranean for 60 Euros, but declined breakfast, so no sack lunches for us tomorrow. Shortly after we checked in, a genuine thunderstorm rolled through the area. We showered and napped, then after supper went for a sunset stroll along the beach. This is more like it: no teeming crowds, no beggars, no hustlers.

Pisa tower, cathedral & baptistry

Cecina, Italy
Piazza Domenico Guerrazzi	Janene on beach	sunset	8:43 pm

24 May

We had a good day today. We walked to town under a cloudless sky, and checked with the ticket agent at the train station for the procedure for going to Volterra. This was done mostly via pantomime and drawing trains and buses on a piece of paper. The plan: train to Saline (pronounced sa-leen-ah), bus to Volterra, bus back to Saline, bus to Cecina. We had a couple of hours before the train, so we walked the commercial district. We've been trying to buy a small, cheap compass for over three weeks, and an English/Italian phrase book for several days. We are still trying. Sporting goods stores for wilderness-type activities are about non-existent here, and book stores are also rare.... Read More

25 May

We checked out of the hotel and caught the city bus to the train station. The bus ride was rather thrilling, with much zigging and zagging and slamming on of brakes. If there is ever a national brake failure event in Italy, about 1/3 of the population will perish in moments, as they seem to rely on their brakes with an almost religious zeal. We paid 20 Euros for first-class reservations to Rome on a fairly fast, very nice train.... Read More

26 May

We bought our reserved train seats for Naples first thing this morning, then caught the hop-a-bus to the Roman Forum, Palatino, and Coliseum. We got an audio guide for the Forum and Palatino, but took a guided tour of the Coliseum. After those, we walked to the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. The Pantheon was about covered up with scaffolding, and there were several hundred people around the fountain, so it was hard to see. All in all, it was one of our hardest days. We're both ready to move on to less crowded places. We caught the hop-a-bus back to the hotel and had a nice supper on the sidewalk around the corner, washed out our socks, and turned in for the night. ... See Photos

27 May

Getting out of Rome was a minor adventure. We went to the fancy lounge in the station, but our ticket wouldn't open the door, so we tagged along behind a business-suited man. There was a line at the counter that never seemed to move, so we took off our packs and sat down. We reasoned that they would tell us if we weren't supposed to be there. Sure enough, before long they told us. This was the "members only" lounge. It didn't even have any sort of refreshments, so it was no huge deal, but seats are nearly non-existent in the Rome station. We did manage to swipe an English language newspaper on the way out. That'll show 'em! We finally found the first class waiting room, which was pretty bleak, but at least it had seats and insulated us from the beggars and grifters.... Read More

28 May

We decided to mostly take today off and rest, so we slept in, then went to the train station to plan the next leg of the trip. We were about out of cash and having trouble with the Italian ATMs. Finally went into a bank lobby and succeeded. The banks are super robber-proofed here – or maybe they just want to keep from being bothered by tourists. You have to go through an airlock where one door must lock before the other one opens. Today, I had to go through a little phone booth-like affair with a metal detector in it. I even had to take my watch off to get in the bank! We ate lunch at Burger King so we could use their free internet. The place we're staying wants 5 Euros a day for Wi-Fi, and we're much too cheap for that.

We mostly loitered around town today. We did look at an interesting exhibit about volcanoes and had a spaghetti dinner at a local tourist joint.

RV park bungalow	Piaggio Ape	Shrine of the Virgin	of the Rosary
lotsa limones	Pompeii ruins & Vesuvius

29 May

We took a shuttle bus to Mt Vesuvius today, climbed the mountain, and hiked as far around the rim of the crater as the path goes. It's not as big as expected and there was no smoke or steam. The views would be fantastic on a clear day, but it was pretty hazy today.... Read More

30 May, Sunday

We don't know if it was because today is Sunday, or if everybody was worn out from last night's fervor, but we sat around the train station for three hours waiting for a succession of trains that never arrived. A train for Salerno finally stopped and we hopped aboard. We had a two-hour look at Salerno and ate sandwiches at the waterfront while waiting for the train to Paestum. Paestum is a very small town about 1.5 miles from the train station, which is literally nowhere. The main claims to fame for this place are the ruins and beach, but the whole place looks like it's seen better days. Nevertheless, we really like it here. It's pretty quiet, and we walked along through fields and pastures on the road from the station to the village. We decided to try another RV park for lodging. The first one we looked at was poor, but the second had a nice little cabin with kitchen and bath for 40 Euros. We fixed supper and walked along the beach as the sun set.

leaving Pompei

Paestum RV park

Joe at RV park

8:48 pm

31 May

It's cloudy today and rained lightly for a bit, but not enough to be a problem. We hiked back to the Greek ruins and spent four to five hours touring them and the associated museum. There were so few people about that it was possible to get pictures with no other tourists in them by just waiting a couple of minutes to time the shot. The ruins are just amazing – so much so that we've decided to skip going to Greece. We think that after this place, the crowds and hustlers that flock to such spots would just irritate us and spoil the experience.... Read More

1 June

This is going to be a long narrative, because it was such a strange day. We got up at 0600, packed up, hiked the 1.5 miles to the train station, and caught the 0830 train for Naples to start our journey north and east. It was a perfect morning and we had the whole area pretty much to ourselves, so we didn't mind the walk. One downside of staying in out of the way places is no mass transit, but it's worth it.... Read More

2 June

Janene awoke with itchy feet, so instead of staying in Termoli a second day, we caught the fast train to Rimini. Checking out of the hotel was interesting. It's obviously still the off season and we may have been the only guests in the hotel. When we arrived last night, the adult son of the family that runs the hotel checked us in. He spoke a little English. But he was nowhere to be found this morning – in fact, we had a hard time finding anybody at all. When we came down at 0800, the entire building was shuttered and locked. We finally found a buzzer and tried to tell the Italian-only speaker that we needed to get breakfast, pay the bill, and get to the station. Much rapid talking ensued, but someone showed up in a few minutes. We paid and retrieved our passports, then were directed to an area with some packaged breads, jams, etc.... Read More

3 June

We bought fruit and juice at the local grocers and had breakfast on the train to Venice. Upon arrival, we checked our bags at the station and walked around town for about four hours. The main product of Venice seems to be strange ceramic masks, like people wear to bizarre balls in movies – and maybe in Venice, for all we know. They also sell endless amounts of assorted glass dust-catcher type geegaws and gimcracks. We passed on all of them.... Read More

4 June

After a restless night of gurgling plumbing, street noise, and amazing snoring from the room next door, we decided to get out of Trieste instead of staying our intended 2 nights. I looked up how to say, "Please prepare the bill, we are leaving," in Italian and broke the news to the desk clerk. I also mentioned the sewer problem again, to be sure the night clerk reported it. "We move you another room," she said. "Too late for that," I thought, but just said we were going to Croatia.

We bought our bus tickets from Trieste to Opatija, Croatia, for about 9 Euros each and left Italy. The passport inspection going through a corner of Slovenia and into Croatia was another nail-biter. Janene didn't even open hers, only showing the cover. We're guessing they could sense that we're VIPs and didn't want to risk a sky full of F-16s for hassling us.

Opatija, Croatia, is fantastic! It's a spa / resort town on the Adriatic; their economy depends heavily on tourists, and they really do a great job of making this a vacation destination. Lots of people speak English, many quite well, and the place is un-crowded and spotless. We used the public library computer to check email – thirty minutes for about 84 cents. Food is much cheaper here than in Italy, and we are staying in a room of a private home that is very nice for less than our sleazy hotel in Trieste. We requested an English-speaking host, but got a lady who speaks slightly more English than we do Croatian. We tried Spanish, French, Italian, and German with the same apologetic looks, but we're doing okay with charades and pictionary. After supper, we took a stroll along the coast to the edge of town.

Trieste Transit Station	lucky bus seats	view from room	Adriatic Sea
Opatija Luka marina	Plaža Lipovica beach	Plaža Tomaševac beach	receipt for room

5 June

We awoke to a cloudless sky this morning. This is just about perfect! We found a free Wi-Fi hotspot in a park, checked email, and sent off the trip log through yesterday and pictures through Paestum. After lunch, we found the trail up through the woods to Veprinac, a little medieval village on top of a hill with a church of uncertain age, but that at least dates from the 13th century.... Read More

6 June, Sunday

We walked the other direction on the shore-side promenade today, watched a movie on TV, and had supper at our usual café.

Joe by Slatina beach

shoreside path

seabirds on rocks

close-up of seabirds

Svjetionik Ika jetty

waterskiing dog!

Joe at day's end

7 June

The bus took us to Rijeka, where we checked our bags and had a bit of a wander till the train to Zagreb departed. We were only in Zagreb a few minutes to change trains, but managed to spend our remaining Kunas on a Coke. We also saw possibly the world's largest strawberry market in the numerous stalls set up in the square outside the station. That's all they had for sale – strawberries. We had to change trains again at Koprivnica, then stopped in Gyékényes, Hungary, to clear customs. Because we arrived late, we missed the connection to Nagykanizsa, and there is no lodging in Gyékényes. We walked around town until we'd made every dog in the village bark madly, made a Nutella sandwich at the station, and had a gelato cone for dessert. We arrived in Nagykanizsa around 9 pm, having no clue where to go. The station was not in the heart of the business district like most of the others. Fortunately, we met a German lady who spoke good English. She was lost, too,and she needed to get to the bus station to catch a bus home. She enlisted a local man for advice. His twenty-something daughter has studied in Ireland, and he summoned her by phone. She soon arrived in a car, got the lady safely to her bus, then took us to a local hotel and interpreted for us to help us check in. By the way, Hungary so far looks a lot like Denton County, Texas – except for the town names. The town even looks familiar, with wide open spaces, wide streets, and stores that look like they were plucked right out of a mall back home. Quite a change from the 3-ft-wide cobbled alleys we've been negotiating for the last month.

old fire wagon

leaving the coast

3:07 pm

Karlovac, Croatia	Karlovac train station	Zagreb strawberries	Joe on train
Gyékényes cemetery	house martins	Gyékényes train station

8 June

We went out foraging for food and a Hungarian dictionary this morning. We found the food, but no book store. Because we wanted to catch the first train to Budapest, we were limited on time. We did locate an ATM and got 50,000 Forints, which we hope will last us for two days. The taxi to the train station was 1,000, so who knows? The train to Budapest was a stop-and-go regional affair. The schedule board indicated air conditioning, but that turned out to be the window-down variety, which didn't work about half the time because we were stopped.... Read More

9 June

We took the metro to the international train station, bought food and drink for the train ride, swapped our Forints for Euros, and headed for Vienna. Budapest probably deserved another day, but Janene must keep moving. We met an Aussie girl on the train who gave us some insight into Vienna. She was going to Italy later, so I gave her my Italian phrase book.... Read More

10 June

We rode the hop-a-bus all over town today, getting off in a few places to explore. We were disappointed to find that the Lipizzaner horse museum has closed. We broke our no-museum rule and visited the art museum, which was great. One advantage was that many of the exhibits didn't have English signage, so we could look and stroll, greatly lowering the time required to make our way through, and we had actually heard of many of the artists displayed there.... Read More

11 June

After breakfast at the hostel, we hiked to the Metro station, rode back and forth a few times searching for the correct stop, finally found the international train station, got our tickets, and boarded the train for Prague. While we were waiting for the train, we saw one of our dorm mates from the hostel that was traveling on the same train. We crossed seamlessly into the Czech Republic and arrived in Prague on time. The tourist info person at the station helped us find a very nice hotel – WITH AC! – within about ten minutes' walk of the station. After unpacking, washing out clothes in the bathroom sink, and showering, we walked around downtown for a couple of hours. Prague looks just like somebody raised during the cold war would expect. It's all a bit dreary to me, but very interesting. We'll get down to more serious sight-seeing tomorrow.

Wenceslas Square

Wenceslas Square

Národní Muzeum

Národní Muzeum

Prašná brána -	Powder Gate Tower	tower & concert hall	Obecní Dům (concert hall)

girls high school	New Town Hall	Decadent Capitalists	New Town Hall

12 June

We enjoyed the dry cool air of our room and slept late. This was a bad thing, because we remembered too late that a buffet breakfast comes with the room. Nevertheless, we managed to cover quite a bit of Prague today. We walked through a lot of parks, visited a memorial to victims of the communist era, and strolled around the castle district.... Read More

13 June, Sunday

Boy, we really messed up by missing breakfast yesterday. Eggs, bacon, ham, croissants, rolls of assorted types, pastries, cereal, three kinds of juice. We will not miss it tomorrow.

Our last day in Prague was spent walking around the old Jewish quarter and a variety of parks and botanical gardens. The weather was about 20 degrees F cooler than it has been, so we hardly broke a sweat.... Read More