Birmingham

We have spent the last 3 nights in Birmingham, this is our last night before heading back to Cardiff for the Ale and Cider festival. We have had a good time here and have pretty much relaxed and not done much touristy stuff. Our hostel is ok, the room is quite small, they have a big screen tv and all the gaming consoles. They also have a fish tank – Which really really needs a clean, poor little fish!

The first day we were here we went to the cinemas and saw Iron Man 2 – it was the tinest cinema, the screen wasn’t even a third of the standard size screen. Nonetheless the movie was good and the cinema was fairly quiet.After the movie we went to the supermarket to get some dinner and when we came out it was pouring rain, and it wasn’t letting up, so we walked in it back to the hostel. We discovered that our shoes are no longer waterproof! We both ended up with soaking jeans and socks…So we dried everything off and had a dry and relaxing evening.

Thursday we headed out to a small town called Bourneville. It was in this town that the world famous Cadbury Chocolate was born! Walking from the train station past the factory to the Cadbury World you could smell chocolate in the air. The tour was good. There were lots of movies, interactive displays and even a ride! We got lots of free chocolate which was great. We watched a video on how they make Roses Chocolates and the Cadbury chocolate sticks.. It was really interesting. We got to write our names in chocolate and make a “chocolate creation”, which you just tell them which sweet (eg marshmallow, shortbread, wine gums etc) you wanted and they poured warm runny chocolate over it. It was quite tasty but very sweet after a few mouthfuls. There was an interesting film showing when they were first creating Cadbury and how close they were to giving up on it… I couldn’t imagine a world today with out Cadbury, in my opinion it definitely stands out as one of the best chocolates. Cadbury was one of the first company’s that gave their employees good benefits like sick days and holidays. I think they would be a great company to work for! We did have a few suggestions for their gift shop though, like squishy chocolates, or shot glasses. The shop was quite lacking in creative ideas, which we were quite disappointed about, considering it is meant to be the biggest Cadbury shop in the world! After we were all chocolated out we caught the train back to Birmingham.

We have had a quite day today, we went out for a nice lunch and Kath is playing the wii this afternoon and I am going to read my book (my last one)… I have read 4 books since being back in the UK.. they are so cheap over here.. Kath has  read more then me, but she is much faster at reading then I am.

We hope everyone isn’t freezing too much..

It is getting warm here and we love it, most days!

Chat soon

Cindy and Kath

Krakow

Saturday

We got up early, as we had to change hostels and wanted to go on the free walking tour of Krakow. We checked into the new place but just put our bags in the luggage storage – then off we went into the city centre. We had a bit of time to kill so we walked around and looked at some information for tours that went to the Salt Mine and Auschwitz (we realised that they were quite pricey)… Krakow has so many info points it’s scary… but when you ask them how to get to these places by yourself… they tell you lies about prices and tell you about the tours. So we just kept it to ourselves and went to the starting point of the tour.

This free tour is run by a different company to the ones we have done everywhere else… The tour guide was Polish and seemed pretty good. He waffled on during the tour… The tour was good though we saw the the main market square, the cloth hall, a church,  the town hall tower,  the florianska gate (which is this cool medieval wall and tower that has survived around the centre of krakow. When we were here we saw a parade of Krakow’s army, police and veterans march past us for the 65th anniversary of the end of WW2.

We then walked through a nice park and saw the old pope’s living quarters… where we saw a large angry Catholic protest…we continued to the Wawel Castle which is not really a castle but is on top of a hill surrounded by a wall and towers and stuff… we walked up the hill and saw the church where all the dead kings/presidents are laid to rest.  We saw the old residence and heard stories about the people who used to live here.  We then saw a carnival and the dragon (which is a metal giant statue of a dragon that breaths fire every couple of minutes).

At the end of the tour we were very hungry and walked back into the centre of town and had a late lunch at an Irish Pub. The meals were massive and cheap.

After lunch it was about 4pm so we walked back to the hostel, and checked into our rooms and hung out – resting our leggies.

Sunday

The next day we decided to go be salt miners!! We had asked the tour guide the day before about how to get to the mines. He told us which bus to get and everything. When we got there we bought our student tickets to the tour and waited to go down the mine.

We walked 380 stairs down to be 64m below ground level into level 1 of the mine. Our guide informed us that the mine had 9 levels and 264km of mine and we were only going to cover 2.5km. We walked through various mine shafts and saw and felt the sides of the mines. It was pretty amazing to see some of the equipment they used… They used to keep horses down there to work and only bring them back to the surface after a number of years. The last horse to leave was only 8 years ago…

We made our way deeper and deeper into the mine, and saw many cool chambers and some pretty impressive salt sculptures. They have lots of churches down there and one was massive!! It was pretty cool for a church and they actually have weddings and things down there now.

We saw brine lakes where the salt content is so high… I don’t think anyone could sink or drown in it.  They did a cheesy sound and light show in one section…  We saw the difference of the tunnels dug by hand and by explosive… Miners these days have it much easier… I’d hate to dig those sized tunnels with only hand tools.

We ended up at level 3 which is 135m deep and caught the scary mine elevator up to the surface. This lift is what the miners used everyday. Quite scary.

The tour was great – we had an amazing time. We’re glad we didn’t pay for the tour company though as we paid 114 polish for transport and tour to paying 110 polish each for the tour company to take us. I started to feel sick again… which sucks.

Monday

Today we got up early (and I was sick) and went to the bus station to catch a bus to Auschwitz. On the way we popped into the info point to ask which bus – she didn’t help but wanted to sell us a tour, we politely said no and found the bus ourselves. It took 2 hours to get there… we arrived just after 10.   Apparently Auschwitz is so busy that they actually make you buy a tour guide to take you around… but it was quite cheap and we got in as students so I wasn’t too miffed. The tour guide was very good, we started in the Auschwitz camp – which was a museum – that showed the lives of the prisoners, their personal effects, and the history… the personal effects was quite tough to see… they had a room full of all the shoes, the glasses, the pots and pans, and what was horrifying to see was the human hair and the quantity… it was really disgusting – as you could make out whole pony tails, or plaits.

We saw a room with photos of children – who were brought to Auschwitz and Birkenau. Birkenau is where the mass genocide was done and was one of the largest camps. We went there after the tour and it was MASSIVE. It was so big  and down the middle of the camp were train tracks that stopped at the platform – where the Nazis would pull everyone off and split the men from the women with children. The Nazi doctors would then decide who would live and who would die. Most women and all children were nearly always sent to the gas chambers.

The living conditions here were much worse than the camps in Germany that we saw as they lived in horse stables without floors, or insulation, or anything.

The gas chambers were blown up by the retreating SS just hours before soviets liberated the camp. You could still see parts of the chambers as it built underground. One chamber could fit 1500 people and kill them in less than 30 minutes. They had 2 of these chambers in this camp. They had massive industrial burners to cremate thousands of bodies a day. It was horrendous. Auschwitz -Birkenau killed over 1.3 million people (1.1 were jews).

After we had finished, we caught the bus back to Auschwitz, then waited under a tree in the pouring rain to get the bus back to Krakow.

We ended up saving money again by not doing one of those tours. In your face Information points! haha

We got back to the hostel at 6 and found we had been moved back to primary school as most of the rooms on this floor have been filled with school kids. So that night we spent listening to kids run everywhere slamming doors, yelling, playing with balls and throwing it agaisnt walls… needless to say we complained – the guy said he’d talk to the teachers… but hasn’t improved much… They’re here for 5 nights… thankfully we are only here for 1 more night.

Today we are off to the aquarium (biggest in Poland) and off to the pub… We take a 22 hour bus to Brussels tomorrow… not looking forward to it. We have plenty of new movies to watch… so that should be okay… shame the computer can’t recharge itself…

Well that’s the update for now.

http://www.goldcoastmarathon.com.au/default.asp?PageID=7665

Our day trip to Salzburg, Austria

Yesterday we headed on a long train out to Salzburg. When we arrived we went to the tourist information centre to get a map and some directions to the sights we wanted to see..
We caught the bus out to the Hohensalzburg Fort, which was built in the Medieval times in Salzburg. It had great views of the city.. the only way to get up there was by cable car. So we got into the car.. Standing only! It goes up the hill at quite a speed! It was good fun.. When we reached the top, we wondered around the fortress and admired the views of Salzburg.. And I spotted some of the Sound of Music “sets”…  We went into a few museums.. One was a puppet museum.. it was pretty cool.. There is a good pic of Kath and I as puppets in the pictures. We also saw some armoury and some torture things.

There was a souviner shop which had all of these road signs saying NO KANGAROOS IN AUSTRIA.. We thought it was pretty stupid, but maybe there are stupid tourists who go there expecting them! hahahah

We left the fort via cable car… When we reached the bottom I spotted a cemetry that looked like the one out of the Sound of Music so we walked through there then made our way to the Museum of Natural History and Science.

We got in as students there and they had a cool aquarium section. We spent ages looking at all of the fish.. There were baby clown fish which were so so cute and very tiny… We then went into the Science Centre part of the museum and played some games in there… There were some cool activities like Skiing (like on the wii) and throwing activities.

Once we were exhausted we went for a walk along the river and everyone was sun baking as it was quite hot! We sat by the water and had a rest. We then wandered through some gardens, the flowers were lovely.. Spring is here! We then made our way back to the train station and caught our train back to Munich.
We picked up our bags from the hostel then headed back to the train station, as we were staying at Karens again. She met us at the train station in Ergweg and took us home. We then met her daughters and she made us some dinner. It was really good! We went to bed after the girls were sent to bed.

We both slept really well.. Today we are doing washing and packing our bags, ready for our bus tonight to Vienna!

Apparently it is set to rain all week! Hopefully it changes as we are in a nice campsite for the next week!

Chat soon

Love Cindy and Kath

Prague to Munich

Tuesday

First thing on Tuesday morning we went down for breakfast – It wasn’t great but it was decent and free. We then went up and had showers and slowly got ready. We went off to do the 2pm free walking tour. On the way out we paid for our accommodation and asked about the Kitchen… she didn’t have a problem with it and said she’d unlock it for us during the day.

So we set off to walk about 1.5km to the start point… we stopped at the TESCO – which is a site in itself – It’s massive!! In the fish section – they have LIVE fish – big and small – it was awesome to watch them all swimming around in these tanks… We are not sure if they let you picked which one you want then they killed it in front of you, we didn’t hang around too long to see that.. Things there were very cheap – but we just bought some water and continued on our journey.

We had a nice walk along the water and made our way to the starting point. We noticed everyone standing around staring up at this clock, so we thought we would stand and watch too… It took a very long time, but on the hour the clock started to chime and a skeleton pulled a string to the bell.. There were 4 characters on the clock and each represented a different thing. It was really a major disappointment, given the number of people there we thought it would have been something great! We then decided to have some lunch before the tour, so we didn’t get hungry during it. The cheapest thing was KFC, so we decided to treat ourselves as we have not had it for months! It was really delicious and we got a Longer Menu, which turned out to be 2 6inch BBQ Chicken Rolls, chips and re-fillable soft drink.. We didn’t realise you go so much… Needless to say we were very full after it.. Kath got an extra drink for the road, because it was free and all.. haha.. The tour started in the old town square, it was very old looking… We saw the Jewish Quarter, Prague Castle and the National theater. The guide told us stories about the different things that the Czech people have had to overcome. At the end of the tour we made our way back to the hotel, we had quite sore feet.

When we arrived back we saw that the kitchen in our room was open, so we were very happy with that.. We made some dinner then watched some movies and went to bed.

Wednesday

On Wednesday morning we woke up quite late and went down to breakfast, it was no better then the day before! We explored the town and had a nice long walk along the river. We were going to go on the paddle boats on the river but when we arrived there they were closed, we think for lunch. We found a shop that did a local pastry thing, I can’t remember what it was called(Trdelnik), but it was a roll thing that was really crispy on the outside and soft on the inside and it was covered in cinnamon and nuts. It was quite tasty, though I am glad we shared one as I don’t think I could have eaten one all on my own.. We wandered through the town and along the river. It was quite cold next to the river, and the day looked like it was turning horrible. In the late afternoon we headed back to TESCO and got some things for dinner. When we got back to the hotel we cooked spaghetti bolognase for dinner, it was really tasty, we had heaps of left overs so we kept them for the next nights dinner.

Thursday

Thursday was out last day in Prague, we walked along the river and went back to the paddleboat place. It was open this time! So we hired a paddleboat for 1 hour. It was quite tiring going up stream. There were ducks on the river and they were really friendly (a little too friendly if you ask me!)… One came right up next to our boat and swam along next to Kath and I tried to paddle away really fast… We saw another company that hired paddleboats, they had a swan boat… I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get to ride around in a swan boat, Kath said she was quite glad as she didn’t want to seem to touristy.. haha.. After our hour was up and we were exhausted from paddling so much, we walked along the river some more and headed into the town. After our legs were at the point of falling off we decided it was time to head back to the hotel. We had our left overs from the night before and packed our bags ready to leave the next morning.

Friday

At 4am on Friday morning some lovely chap from Australia called us to try and talk to us about something… I had no idea who he was and what he wanted so in the end I just hung up on him, and he didn’t understand that it was really early and we were overseas… Neither of us got any sleep after that… We were really exhausted when we woke up at 6.30 to get ready to leave. We had showers then headed down to have some of the “lovely” breakfast… When we went to check out the lady on reception had lost our receipt from paying for the hotel. Luckily Kath had the receipt in the top of her bag so we just showed her that and she seemed satisfied. So we headed down the busy streets to the metro and hopped on. We found the bus stop easily enough and we weren’t too early which was good for us. We didn’t have to check in, we just had to show the driver our ticket. When the bus turned up and we went to get on the driver sent us round to the otherside of the bus. So we went around here and we asked the other bus driver if the bus went to Munich and he just said NO! We got pretty stressed out at this point as this was the only bus on the platform and there was no other bus due at the time we were meant to leave, so I ran full speed through the bus station back to the Eurolines counter and asked the lady at the desk, she told me that the bus would be coming shortly, it is probably running late as it has to come from Warsaw (Poland). We weren’t so worried then. Finally our bus turned up 30 mins late, we loaded our stuff and jumped on… Unlucky for me I was sitting behind some lady who wanted her chair back the entire journey. At the first stop that people got off at we quickly moved so we didn’t have to deal with her… We had lunch in some dodgy kebab place in Nurnberg. Kath really enjoyed hers, mine was ok for the first few mouth fulls then was a bit gross. But it was food nonetheless. We arrived in Munich around 4pm and we made our way to the S-Bahn (train). Unfortunately one was at the station when we arrived so we missed it by the time we bought tickets. The train was really full when we got on it so we ended up standing the entire way to Dachau. We had to change trains there and the next train was also really full, so we practically stood all the way to Karen’s stop. Karen is a friend of Jackie’s (from Cologne/Dusseldorf) who offered to have us for a few nights. When we arrived at the station we met Karen and we were obviously the people she was looking for (we had big packs…noone else on the train did haha)… We came back to her place and met Chris her partner. They are both very nice and have a really nice house. We had a BBQ for dinner which was great, as we have not had one since we left home and were really missing them… After dinner we sat around chatting until we were all pretty exhausted. Kath and I then went up to bed and went to sleep. We are staying out a little village on a farm. There are cows and sheep and deer in some field around us. In the backyard there are Tulips growing, it is very peaceful out here. When we went to bed it was so quiet, a shock not to hear the hustle and bustle of city life.

Milan in a nut shell, to Barcelona…

We went out for dinner the first night in Milan to a pizza place that was recommended in our lets go book. We ordered a pepperoni pizza… when the pizza arrived it was actually a capsicum pizza! So we ate that then left, we got charged a fortune. Kath enjoyed the pizza! The next day we thought we would see the one sight Milan has to offer. We caught the metro to the Duomo, a giant church. We walked around the outside, it was very detailed. We then wandered the streets for a while then went back to the hostel and we had a new roommate, he was Mexican. We chatted to him most the arvo/night. We had a horrible salad for dinner. We shouldn’t try and be healthy, it never turns out nicely lol…

The guy had a cold and snored really loudly most the night, so we didn’t get a great deal of sleep. The next morning we hung around the hostel until check out time then went to the train station. We waited around and had some lunch/dinner in a near by family restaurant. When our train arrived we were the first to jump on, we put our bags in the rack and got ready to set off. They gave you a kids find a word on the back of a brochure, It was in Italian so we had no idea what words we were meant to find, so Kath created words then I found them. Then we played boggle with it. We are very creative!

After we left the station a ticket lady came and took our tickets and passports. We watched a movie and then I tried to get some sleep. The seats reclined so they were ok. Kath chatted to some American guys in front of us. They were really nice. They offered her some cake. At our first check point in France it was snowing. The police were in our carriage questioning some guy, after discussion over his passport he was escorted off the train, Phew it wasn’t me! The rest of the journey we both just rested and tried to get sleep.

Kath woke up pretty early and saw the sunrise, then she kindly woke me to see it as well. Nice sunrise over the coast of somewhere (in either France or Spain).

When we arrived in Barcelona we jumped off the train and headed to the Metro to go to the hostel. It was boiling! We had left 4-6degree coldness and arrived in 12degree heat! We found the hostel really easily as they gave you great directions. We checked in, but had to leave our bags in the storage room as we were early. We then headed back to the Metro to try and find the port. We found the port really easily and sat by the water and had some strawberries and juice in the beautiful sun. We saw some really huge fish in the water. People obviously come there all the time to feed the fish bread. After sitting there for a while we decided to go for a walk over the bridge to see what was on the other side. There was a shopping mall, an Imax and the Aquarium. We decided to go for a walk to find the ferry we are going to take to Mallorca. The ferry ticket place was closed, so we went to sit back near the fish feeding area. Apparently there are lots of people who come to get rid of their old bread there. There was one lady that had bags and bags of baguettes she was throwing in the water (whole). The fish were amazing they were really big, Kath wanted to sneak in a line (Look below for a video). We sat and watched them for ages then we decided to go back to the hostel and to the supermarket for dinner food. We were getting quite tired and hungry as we hadn’t really had breakfast or lunch. We cooked pasta for dinner. It was really good, we are so glad to have good facilities in this hostel. There is a big kitchen, big dining/common area, pool table, foosball table, punching bag, 2 exercise bikes, a cinema, and a terrace. We then went to bed and watched a movie.

We were woken up this morning by a rude girl who didn’t even sleep in her bed last night, she came in, turned the light on then left and didn’t turn the light off, so I got up and turned it off. We got up about an hour after that and got ready. We had our breakfast, it was packed in the dining area. Kath spoke to her parents on Skype then we headed out to do a free walking tour. When we arrived in the place we thought the walking tour was meant to start we couldn’t find anyone, so we just wandered around the street. We visited the Martime Museum and then kept walking around and came across a church, it was having massive renovations done to it. We kept walking and found a street parade that was going on. So we went to watch that. There were lots of Spanish dancers.. it was really entertaining. People in the parade were walking along drinking beer! We thought that was hilarious. Then one group came along and set firecrackers off in front of us, it was a bit scary. After the parade finished we walked along to the beach. There were lots of people doing beach sculpting. We walked along for a while, then turned back as the weather was starting to get bad and our feet were getting sore. We walked through some markets then headed back to the metro as it had started raining. The first train we caught was quite busy, 3 guys followed us off the train and through the metro. We were watching our bags and wallets. Then when we were on the escalator one of the guys stepped up onto the step Kath and I were on, so we stepped up a step then he stepped up onto that. As there were people in front of us we couldn’t move anymore. Kath had her hand on her wallet and I turned so my bag was against the escalator wall. Kath thought she felt one of the guys hand trying to get in her camera bag. When we reached the top of the escalator we walked away pretty quickly to the next train line. The guys followed us there as well, but we walked down the other end of the line, Kath checked she had everything. After we got off the next train we realised that the clip on her bag was undone. Nothing was taken, and the guy was pretty stupid to think that we would not realise if her bag was opened (it has a huge velcro strip which is hard to undo at the best of times). We are now back to the hostel and are making an itinerary for tomorrow. We are having pasta again tonight, so I am looking forward to that. Kath had a new beer called Saaz, I thought it tasted ok. I had a magners and now we are sharing a drink called a Damm Lemon (it is 6 parts beer, 4 parts lemon). Tastes pretty good.

Hope everyone is well.
Hope to hear from you all soon (comments are welcome, we are a little sheltered from Aussie life over here).

Love Cindy and Kath

PS: new photos are up in Italy and Spain!