And then...

I´m sitting in the net cafe section of our hostel in Berlin in which we recently arrived... and it seems that the internet/computer fascism has reached here also so no photos right now.

It has been a while since I posted last, but I assure you it´s not through laziness, but absolute lack of time. Since then we have spent time in Croatia, Budapest, Prague and now Berlin and we have just been flat out.

I´m not gonna write in detail about any of these places or I´ll be forever behind on my posting so I´ll give an overview of each destination.

Dubrovnik, Croatia.

A great little city on the very southern point of Croatia, the old town is built around a port and ocean life is what it´s all about. The old town is an immaculately preserved - execpt a few destroyed sections left that way since the troubles in the late 80´s early 90´s - Venetian walled city, and everything is built of these white shiny (marble?) bricks, which gets way too bright in the summer sun, but quite stunning none the less.

We took a walk around the top of the city walls (1.7 km´s) and took in some extraordinary views, and got to see some of the city that is off the beaten track.

We also took an afternoon boat ride out to Lokrum Island which is about a 15 minute ride from the old port in Dubrovnik. Lokrum is quite a small island which used to house a Monastery and a couple of other old buildings, which have all since been abandoned.


Now a bar/restaurant occupies part of the monastary, but the rest of the grounds are free to explore...awesome.
The rest of the island has a couple of beaches, an ocean-fed natural pool with a sweet rope swing (we forgot our swimmers that day... NOOOOOES!), and a bunch of areas set up for picnic-ing, sports, and walking to check out the other ruins and stuff of the island. We ended the day sitting under some nice trees on leather armchairs looking out over the gardens of the monastery to the ocean, with a cold beer. All in all, a good day out.

After out time in Dubrovnik, we set out by bus for Split, catching some unbelievable views of huge rocky mountains along the way. It´s only about a 205km trip but takes about 5 hours due to the terrain.

Split.

We had a great room in a hostel right in the heart of the old town in Split, which was a nice change from Dubrovnik where we had to catch a bus for 10 minutes to get to the good stuff.

The old town is situated in what used to be the "Dioclesian´s Palace" (800 years ago?), and as you can maybe imagine, is quite a cool place. It too is built from the same white bricks as our last location, and in my opinion was much better looking when the sun went down.
We managed to meet up with my cousin Steve and his wife Kat for breakfast/brunch one morning as they have been living in London for a while and were doing an organised sailing tour around the Croatian islands. It was great to catch up, but it won´t be too long till we´re crashing at there place in London anyway!
We took a ride out to Hvar island off Split (one of the most famous Croatian islands), but due to lack of organisation and public transport, it wasn´t quite as it could have been... but we had a swim which made it OK.

Zagreb.

We traveled up and stayed one night in Zagreb to break up the journey to Budapest. Due to a bum steer from a travel agent in Split we didn´t end up seeing the Plitvice Lakes which are about 2 hours from Zagreb as previously planned... but oh well... next time.

Due to the lack of accomodation in Zagreb we stayed in our first hostel dormitory, with about 6 other people. It wasn´t too bad, but the bathrooms were seriously grotty...you win some and you lose some I spose.

Budapest, Hungary.

We spent four nights in Budapest. We had booked a private room in a hostel, but when we got there, we were taken to a little apartment instead which we were assured was better, paid our money up front, and went to bed...
Unfortunately the apartment resembled none of the nice looking photos on the website, and didn´t even seem to have been cleaned since the last guests. Long story short, we moved apartments after two nights in the dump, and will be giving the hostel a very bad review on hostelworld.com.


A highlight from Budapest was getting to the impressive Parliament building, but finding out it was closed to visitors that day. There was however a dress rehearsal for a concert that night by an entire orchestra plus opera singers out the front of the building, which we sat and watched for abour half an hour, and was well worth not seeing the enterior of the building.

We also trekked out to a place called statue park which is in the middle of nowhere (just outside the city) where they have a collection of statues from the communist era. Very cool.
'OWZAT!

Prague.

Prague was awesome also! We did a walking tour around some main historical sites with a small group, which was meant to take 3.5 hours, but went on for about 5! It was great to be taken around by someone who really knew the city, and also meant that we didn´t have to figure it out by ourselves!

On our last night in Prague we went and saw Pirates of the Carribean. A nice break.

I also bought a pocket watch... it´s way cool.

Photos to come...

Edit: Photos up now!

laters

J