BenkyonoBen

Fire!

2012-08-06T14:33:00.002+09:00

3/17 - 3/20

Fallas is probably the pyromaniac's dream festival. Hundreds of huge paper, wax, wood and polystyrene constructions are built up around the city. Every day a ridiculous number of fireworks and firecrackers are let off and on the last night everything gets exploded and burned. A 5-storey polystyrene sculpture going up in a tower of fire is something everyone should be able to see at least once.

Finding accommodation in Valencia for Fallas proved to be even more difficult than in Venice for the Carnevale. The best we could do in the end was a hotel in the nearby beach town, Cullera. To get there from Terrassa we travelled by light rail, metro, bus, metro, train and foot to finally arrive late on Saturday, then headed straight back into Valencia by bus and rail to sample the sights.

Fallas is both the name of the festival and of the constructions themselves. There are two kinds: the small fallas infantil and the huge fallas usually built with satirical political or topical themes in mind. Most of the satire went above our heads but a few that didn't require any local knowledge or language stood out: the 'orient' invading the market, old pervs both pretending to be young on line, the fallas themselves becoming outrageously fancy and increasingly expensive structures from their humble beginnings.
They were all so impressive that I have no choice but to post (almost) every single picture I took of them right here.

The fallas ridiculing fallas.

Don't know what's going on here.

John Lennon sitting on the king.

'The Orient' invading the marketplace.

The rallying cry for the original, liberal constitution of 1812.

Something political.

While proclaiming 'Liberte' and 'Fraternite', on the back of the donkey is...

...a monk(?) wielding a noose.

Tetris. Incongruous.

Some clowns. Surely political.

A nice play with perspective.

The screen shows a cute boy she's messaging. The other side of the display features a really ugly old guy and on his screen is a cute girl.

Arabian nights theme.

Er?

Great expression on the queen's face.

Some sort of commentary on romance.

Probably our favourite fallas, in part because we had fun trying to recognise all the fables and fairytales it features. How many can you spot?

There was also something going on with parades and flowers to pile up on a wooden 'Maria', but we didn't pay much attention with all the fireworks and burning going on.

Everyone brings a bouquet.

And they all get added to this frame over two days.

One of the biggest draws of the festival is the daily 'mascleta'. This is what you get when you detonate hundreds of kilograms of fireworks all at once in order to deafen everyone in a wide radius. It stays above 100 decibels for a full five minutes, peaking at around 120 decibels for the finale. That's four times as loud as 100db and just below the threshold of pain and bleeding ears, like standing a metre away from an amp tower at a rock concert. It takes place every day in the town square but we couldn't get any closer than three blocks away because of the crush, but it was still pretty damn loud.

The 'crema' is, of course, the climax and the raison d'etre for the fallas. I probably shouldn't use three languages in a sentence like that but if the English language can't provide better alternatives what can I do? Anyway. Fire!

At first we thought it was pretty crazy setting off such big fireworks in narrow streets, but that was before they started burning stuff.

When this fallas infantil started burning we were only two metres away. When all the fireworks in it exploded we were suddenly four metres away as the crowd lurched backward.

The first of the two fallas we saw burn.

Moments later.

By this point the whole crowd had backed off at least two meters from the barricades and hot sparks and embers were flying all over the place.

Our favourite fallas was next to burn. The firefighters seemed a bit nervous about this one.

Seconds later, before the fireworks had even finished, this towering column of fire consumed everything.

Almost before we knew it, it was all over...

...we were covered in soot and heading home.

Couchsurfing Montserrat

2012-08-04T13:02:00.000+09:00

3/14 - 3/17

Didac replied to our last-minute couch request and gave us a place to stay before the start of the Valencia Fallas. Didac's a really nice guy, a teacher who loves his work. We realised how lucky he is to have work at all when we heard that unemployment in Spain had topped 50% for people aged 16-24. Terrassa is just 20 kilometres from Barcelona but we didn't really spend much time in the town itself; Montserrat and climbing were our goals. Thanks to the Oatmeal for helping me check that that semicolon wasn't misplaced.

After Didac went to work we tried to figure out how to get to Montserrat. To our surprise it looked considerably more difficult to get there from Terrassa than from Barcelona, but we picked the most likely named stop on a local train line and started walking. The rather misleadingly-named 'Castellbell i el Vilar Monistrol de Montserrat' stop turned out to be a 2-hour hike away from the 'Monistrol de Montserrat' rack railway station we needed to get up the mountain. The look on the tourist information desk's staff's face when we told her how we got to Montserrat was priceless. Thankfully there was an easier way back, the two train lines converging further down the track.

We got here pretty late so the sun was already behind those mountains. Montserrat reminded us of Meteora, but much higher up and not as cool.


The 'Black Maria' in the basilica is apparently a big draw for the religious crowd.

Very windy out there!

The next day Didac took me climbing while Hozumi did her sloth impression at his house. We hiked to the rock face along crumbling stone walls stacked by hand in some previous century. A couple of other climbers and a big friendly dog were there before us. Didac hadn't been climbing in ages and I'm just not very good so it was a challenge for both of us.

Just one lead climb for me.

Nice views.

Gaudi Barcelona and The Ring

2012-07-23T00:23:00.000+09:00

3/7 - 3/13 + 3/29 - 4/3

Got drunk on 1 Euro wine and had fun chatting with fellow travellers a few times in Barcelona, which was great. Don't drink much these days, believe it or not, especially when unemployed (Montenegro being the only other occasion that comes to mind).
The street performers are fun and the overall ambience of La Rambla is great. Nice place for a stroll. We spent quite a lot of time in Barcelona, almost two weeks in all, hanging out and sometimes just killing time. Good place for it.

Nice work with the flags, lads.

We spent so long in Barcelona mainly because we'd finally run out of Europe to look for rings in. After scouring the city for goldsmiths we decided to use the general shape suggested to us by the designer in Naples, combined with the aesthetic of an insanely expensive British designer we'd found on line. We found an obscure little shop in the suburbs run by a really friendly couple who didn't speak much English but had a range of funky designs and - we guessed - the skill to produce something unusual. They took our sketches, produced a few 3D renderings for us to refine the design, then told us to come back in a couple of weeks for the finished product. We spent the time visiting the amazing Fallas festival in Valencia and a few towns around Madrid - more on those places later.

Getting the ring sketched, modelled and made isn't the whole story though, as at one point we were in Zaragosa, planning to head back to Barcelona as it was well past the ring's due date and we were getting a bit twitchy wondering why the jeweller hadn't contacted us. When we did finally get them on the phone it turned out my mobile wasn't taking calls, but more to the point they told us we couldn't travel to Barcelona on the 29th. We couldn't figure out why in Catalan and Spanish, but a bit of Googling turned up news of the nationwide general strike. With our hostel in Barcelona already booked and accommodation getting harder to find in late March we decided to hop on a midnight bus to get into Barcelona before the strike, then use the morning's 1/3 skeleton service to get to the hostel with the morning work crowd. We got to Barcelona around 6am without problems, although when we arrived the bus terminal was full of stranded travellers standing, sitting and sprawled all over the place. We got to the Ferrocarril light rail around 6:30am, only to see women running out of the tunnels waving their hands as explosions, whistles and alarms rocked the station behind them. We soon realised that the explosions were giant firecrackers and the whistles and 'alarms' were being made by people picketing the station and preventing people from going to work, but the first impression was pretty scary and there was clearly no way of getting to the platforms so we left the underground. A scrawny, lanky guy with that heroin-chic look, except without the chic, sprinted toward us from across the street and hid in the stairwell, doubled over and wheezing. After a minute he looked at us, peeked back across the street and then staggered off around another corner. We never saw the people chasing him. We figured out an alternative route from a station further down the line, using the metro to get there. When we arrived the station was deserted, but soon enough a thousand people with the same idea flooded into the station. We brute forced our way on to the next train with the rest, and got to our suburban hostel without any further incident.

The hostel itself turned out to be a non-profit organisation employing... er, what's the correct term for mentally handicapped people these days? I Googled it but the English internet doesn't seem to be too sure of itself on this one. I'll use 精神疾患のある人 for now. Anyway, the one non-精神疾患のある member of staff hadn't got our reservation, but found us two beds after a few hours. She had slept there instead of trying to travel to work during the strike.

The next day we went into town without any trouble, met the cheerful goldsmith who said he'd never seen anything like the ring he'd just made and collected our prize!

Finally the ring, complete! Suspended in a funky transparent case.

We met Mandy at the hostel, who was awesome. Hozumi and Mandy went clubbing together, which was the first time Hozumi had ever hung out with another non-Japanese person without me around. Good times were had.

Of course, we did a fair bit of sightseeing in Barcelona too, so, to the Gaudi pictures:

The Sagrada Familia is actually really ugly, especially the 'Nativity façade'. The rest of Gaudi's stuff is much better (as well as being 100% Gaudi, unlike this chimera)

The angular 'Passion façade' is a little better.

Love these houses. Wish the entry tickets for all these places were more reasonably priced, but I figure the exteriors are where 90% of the awesomeness is concentrated.

Gaudi's Parc Guell was deliberately built well away from all the main transport networks and was intended to be a retreat for a few wealthy residents. No one except Gaudi and Count Guell ever bought houses there though, which is fortunate for us as it's a nice park. But back to that transport thing. We planned our route there from what appeared to be the nearest metro station. We exited from the wrong end of that deserted metro and stood around looking lost until we asked someone where the park was. They looked quite distressed and said we'd best walk back through the metro station (buying another ticket) to the other side of the hill and ask someone there... We did so, went up an outdoor elevator and found the only road going in the right direction ended in private property. An old guy nearby suggested we go 'up the stairs'. The only stairs we found soon petered out and became gravel, then dirt as we climbed the hill. Soon enough we reached a burnt out car, wire mesh fencing, spray-painted anarchist slogans and HUGE ANGRY DOGS, that were fortunately the other side of the fencing along with a couple of brightly-coloured mohican types. We circled around all of that, climbed more shrub and were finally rewarded with this view of sprawling Barcelona. Nice. From there it was a downhill scramble to the park, which was also very fancy.

Naples, or 'Margherita heaven'

2012-07-21T23:01:00.000+09:00

3/4 - 3/7

Naples was surprisingly filthy. Rubbish everywhere and tons of people just hanging out on a Sunday afternoon, discarding their wrappers, cups and plastic wherever they were standing. Nice atmosphere though. Lively. Naples is famous for its food so we made sure to hunt out one place that appears in all the travel guides. 'Da Michele' is renowned for taking the 'no nonsense' approach to pizzas to its extreme. Margherita and Marinara pizza are the only two items on the menu, and the ingredients listed for both are the bare minimum required. You take a scrap of paper from the guy on the door and wait outside on the pavement with everyone else until enough seats are free.

We ate our pizzas sitting under a big signed photo of Julia Roberts doing the same. Perfect pizza. The soft dough surprised me, the delicate flavours really impressed me, but Hozumi not so much, having different expectations when it comes to pizza.

We also went ring hunting again, but despite there being 'gold bought and sold' signs everywhere nearly all the jewellery shops we saw were closed down or nearly empty. We did seek out one very helpful designer of 'experimental' contemporary jewellery who mostly worked in titanium and aluminium and she gave me the idea that later led to Hozumi's ring design.

I don't think we saw a single train that wasn't covered in graffiti.

Naples' night view is said to be one of the 'top 3 in the world' (along with Hakodate's) according to many Japanese rankings. Maybe we stood in the wrong place.

We saw more beautiful Roman ruins in Turkey and Greece but Pompeii was just as big as I remembered, and the sheer scale of the place still impresses. This time the weather was much better for wandering around ruins, so no fear of dehydration, and no worries about packs of wild dogs either. On the flip side there were about a thousand times as many people and lots of new barriers and gates preventing access to interesting areas.

Hozumi was a little too shy to get into a gladiatorial pose.

Er. What happened to your leg miss?

Piano di Sorrento, Amalfi and Capri

2012-07-21T20:43:00.000+09:00

3/1 - 3/4

We took the train to Naples and the Circumvesuviana line to Piano di Sorrento. Met a Neapolitan (not the ice cream) on the first train who was both really friendly and helpful and rather upset we weren't planning to spend any time in Naples. So we promised to return later.

Anyway, the place we'd booked on the strength of ridiculously good reviews on TripAdvisor was a slightly too expensive B&B run by the super enthusiastic and excitable Rachelle. She was so happy to be hosting someone Japanese, apparently because of the love her father had for the place when he was the captain of a ship. She got steadily less enthusiastic and excitable each day we stayed, which we can only hope was due to something other than our presence. She was very helpful though, and loaded us up with more sightseeing information than we could process.

Piano di Sorrento is a lovely place, perhaps partly because they don't see as much tourism as all the nearby hotspots. Good food, nice people, peaceful. We only ate and slept there though, making day trips to all the local sights, the first of which was the Amalfi coast. My only memory of this place from my trip as a student is of sleeping on the beach and being woken up by water sprinklers in the morning.

The views on the road to Amalfi are nicer than the town itself

The church is Amalfi's main highlight, along with the narrow, windy whitewashed alleyways.

Hozumi liked these little models.

Above Amalfi is the picturesque Villa Cimbrone in Ravello

Breathtaking views from the 'Terrace of Eternity' in the villa.

We have no idea what these are.

The next day we took a bus to Sorrento and a ferry to Capri island. First impressions were disappointing, but once we'd got on a sightseeing boat the views got steadily better as we circled the island. More beautiful than the coast of Shiretoko or the Bosphorus river, the only other boat tours I can recall going on. The main reason people join this tour is to enter the 'Grotto Azzura', and it's well worth the visit. The photo at the top of this post shows the unearthly vibrant blue of the water, apparently from a separate underwater entrance and visible even on cloudy mornings like the one we ended up with.

The cave entrance is a hive of activity, collecting money to the left and lining up boats to the right. Access only twice a day, when the tides are right.

While wandering around Capri we found some off-the-beaten-track alleyways and a fruit vendor selling really tasty produce at local prices. We only realised how lucky we'd been after seeing all the designer brand shops and tourist stalls everywhere else on the island. We were also very fortunate to stumble across a deserted monastery(?) garden with perfect views of the Faraglioni rocks and the coastline on the nice side of Capri.

Our stay in Piano di Sorrento was rounded off by an excellent cannelloni prepared especially for us from a restaurant that usually doesn't do take-away food.

Rome and pope country.

2012-07-21T18:30:00.000+09:00

2/28 - 3/1

All the Colosseum shots with us in them were blurry or otherwise screwed up. I like this one though. Rome is a great place, and I think both of us wanted to spend some extra time there, but we got kicked out of our hotel and went to Piano di Sorrento in a huff.
We'd booked two nights in a nice hotel in a cheap district full of Chinese-run businesses. As soon as we arrived we decided to stay an extra night and arranged that with the hotel manager. The morning of the third day we're told we have to leave by 10am! Not a word of apology, some mumbled excuse about an internet booking and we were out on the street.

Still, in the two days we had there we saw quite a lot of impressive sights, some of which are pictured below:

A 'big white monument with horses', is the informative entry in my diary.

The forum. I'm sure you get the best view from here, without paying to enter.

This thing apparently featured in an Audrey Hepburn film and is required viewing for Japanese tourists in Rome. You're supposed to stick your hand in its mouth?

No visit to Rome would be complete without a trip to pope country. This is a nice angle I found in the basilica.

More awesome costumes. Italy is great for 16th century guard fashion.

As we were walking back into Italy from pope country some guys with signs saying they were 'ex-addicts' asked me if I wanted to 'sign against drugs?'. No, no, I quite like drugs and they have a hard enough time without anti-drug petitions thankyouverymuch.

The Pantheon ceiling, with a little bit directly below cordoned off, perhaps to prevent people taking pictures like this.

These guys did fairly good paintings in under 5 minutes as you watch.

The Trevi fountains, as busy as you'd expect. Apparently the coin-throwing tradition results in ~3,000 Euros piling up in the fountain every day.

This looked so much better on our retinas.

1 Euro ice cream from 'the oldest gelato factory in Rome'

So aside from our hotel we had a great time. Certainly somewhere Hozumi wants to return to when we can.

Burnt Siena

2012-07-21T00:31:00.002+09:00

2/26 - 2/28

I have fond memories of dozing in the sun at the sloping piazza in Siena, and the place is still much as it was then, if a little larger than I remembered. The signs saying 'no sleeping' and 'no eating' might be new though, but no-one was paying them any attention.

There was a football match on the day we arrived, and it seemed the whole town was out to cheer on the local team. We joined the ticket-less spectators trying to peer over the trees and netting for a short while on our way to the castle. The castle itself turned out to be a military site and not somewhere we wander around.

The impressively tall clock-tower is rather expensive to climb, but well worth it. Walls metres thick at the base narrow to a hand span near the top. The narrow stairwell and old clockwork add to the charm and the views from the top are the payoff.

Can you spot Hozumi?

Florence: Gold, conspiracy theories and ice cream

2012-07-20T19:30:00.001+09:00

2/23 - 2/26

Very slow train to Florence. Florence is alright, I suppose. I'm sure it's a fascinating place if you're interested in religious renaissance art, but I'm no more enamored of the place than I was 10 years ago. Having said that, by skipping all the boring art galleries we were able to see more of the city itself, which is quite nice in places. The Ponte Vecchio is now famous for its goldsmiths after all the butchers were cleared off it for the visit of some lord or pope. We spent a while looking for rings there, but found that one manufacturer had pretty much bought up all the shop fronts still open so they all sold the same stuff at inflated prices. Although we didn't find anything we liked we did get a few helpful pointers about comfortable fits from one of the few remaining independent goldsmiths.
The duomo is impressive, but near impossible to photograph up close without a decent lens due to the tight space between it and surrounding buildings. We walked up to the Michel Angelo Piazzale on a beautiful sunny day and were rewarded with a lovely view of the city, including the Ponte Vecchio and duomo.

The hostel 'Maison' that we stayed at was OK. I remember having a conversation with a guy who seemed like your average concerned anti-capitalist until it emerged that he genuinely believed that contrails are part of an international plot to tranquilize us all, among other such bizarre conspiracy theories. How do you talk to people like that? I opted for a lot of 'uh-huh's along with a few questions to tease out the weirder theories I'd never heard of. Hostel rule #1: Hostel guests should never open the door for anyone at night. On our last night there around 2-3am someone leaned on the doorbell for about half an hour before a guest eventually let him in. During the shouting match that followed I realized that the drunk making all the noise was the hostel staff.

Hozumi was very excited at the prospect of going shopping at some high fashion outlet mall near Florence, but I think was a bit disappointed when she found everything to be way too expensive even with whatever discounts they were offering. I think the real highlight for Hozumi was our first taste of 'Grom' brand ice cream, intended to be a one-off treat but we actually ended up eating it at nearly every Grom store we found in Italy! Between Grom and a great shop we found in Rome I think we both had the best ice cream of our lives in Italy, and at very reasonable prices too. We miss gelato!

Not-a-wedding party!

2012-07-12T08:11:00.003+09:00

Still 6 countries and several months to catch up on, but we've been getting everything ready at the last minute for our grand not-a-wedding party in the UK. This world tour is done, but the party is just getting started.

The Carnevale

2012-06-22T10:35:00.000+09:00

2/17 - 2/23

From Amsterdam to Milan by plane. So excited by the funghi porcini pizza, but we got sick of eating pizza all the time soon enough! The duomo is the biggest gothic cathedral in the world, 600 years in the building, and the surroundings also featured guards dressed like M. Bison (aka Vega), which was a definite plus.

We met a Korean guy in our hostel who mostly complained about how hard dating is in Korea - the women are all expected to undergo expensive plastic surgery, and the guys are all expected to have money coming out their arses. He basically confirmed that all the stereotypes Hozumi asked about were true, in his experience at least. We then spent all day searching for accommodation in Venice, which proved to be quite stressful since it just happened to be the Carnevale.

Venice is a maze at the best of times, but doubly so when rammed full of Carnevale goers. To get to the supermarket 100 metres away across a canal and back took us several hours! It didn´t help that a police barrier we passed on the way there was one-way only, so we got lost on the return detour. The most congested place was definitely the Rialto bridge:

The Saturday night party was huge. So huge that a mobile party that passed our hostel at 6:30am felt more like an earthquake than a party.

The best costume contest(s) at San Marco square featured ridiculously ornate costumes that looked heavy enough to cause a careless wearer to topple over. The hand-made Simpsons costumes were pretty cool too, ~~but half the pictures I thought I took I apparently didn't~~ as you can see from the mobile phone pictures that I just found. This blog shows some of the costumes I missed.

Homer's catchphrases in Italian.

These guys had to move very slowly.

These guys were about 7 feet tall so I guess they didn't need hats as big as everyone else's.

Of course we had to acquire 'masks' of our own!

A festival so steeped in tradition wouldn't be complete without at least a few incomprehensible arty recitals and lectures and on the 'culture night' we were lucky enough to attend one that was surpassingly arty. It took place in a room of an old cloister. It opened with a spooky song by an Asian woman carrying a skull, followed by a boring recital in Italian, then an excellent 'learning to walk' dance by a gazelle-like ballet dancer. Back to a boring recital, then a 'hunting' dance by the same graceful dancer, another boring recital and finally an operatic, booming song by a chubby guy. Good stuff, I thought it was all about evolution. Apparently it was mythology and female divinities and the dancer is Marzia Falcon. I was quite taken with the dances, as not only was she very good, but she danced in virtual silence only a few metres from us and her eyes could pin you to your seat.

This is the only image I could find of Marzia Falcon, and this is a 4 minute recording of the first dance taken from the podium. You had to be there, really.

The wine fountain was a nice touch.

The Catholics do like their gold.

This dude was pretty good...

...but this artist was excellent.

I like this.

We had to switch to a more expensive hotel after two nights. The view from the window was an endless parade of gondolas.

The Carnevale finale was a bit of a damp squib. Even this fire wasn't allowed to burn out as half a dozen hoses were trained on it shortly after this picture.

I love the architecture of Venice, the dead ends, bridges to nowhere and silent corners not 50 metres from crowded thoroughfares. I think no matter how splendid the festival, Venice itself is the main attraction for me. We really enjoyed a quiet day wandering around after the Carnevale wound up, so here's a few shots of the city to round things off.

Overhaul

2012-06-21T13:08:00.001+09:00

The problem with keeping a blog going for almost 8 years is that there's a lot of old html code and clunky formatting left lying around. Today I did my best to update things and make navigating around the archives easier and I think things are better now.

One weird bug that's come up a lot is the text of old posts getting whited out. The text becomes visible if you highlight it and I've corrected a dozen or so instances where I noticed it happening, but please let me know if you come across any blocks of text still obscured.

Yes, I know there are lots of other reasons to visit The Netherlands...

2012-06-21T12:47:00.000+09:00

2/12 - 2/17

...but one of the main reasons we're travelling the world is expose ourselves to different cultures and broaden our horizons. When it comes to drug culture most Japanese are so blinkered that really, it would have been wrong not to experience as much as possible in our short time there, right? Responsibly, of course.

Anyway, our bus from Prague was first heavily delayed, then broke down halfway so after a long wait we had to transfer to another bus at stupid o'clock in the morning. We finally arrived around 5pm the next day and were too tired to do much other than find the riverboat hostel we'd booked, get connected in the wonderful central library and sleep.

We couldn't figure out why the Jordaan area is popular, but later heard it's due to the hidden courtyards and gardens that we didn't find. More ring hunting turned up some nice options but nothing we could settle on.

The Anne Frank house is somewhere I'd never bothered to visit in all my previous trips to Amsterdam so we figured it was about time to rectify that. Eight people hid in a few attic rooms behind a fake bookcase for 2 years with the assistance of a few trusted friends. They were eventually exposed and seven died in or between various camps with Otto, Anne's father, the only survivor. Anne died a mere month before liberation, just after her sister and with no news of the rest of her family. One thing that really stuck with me was Otto's comment on how her diary revealed a character he had never really known despite their close relationship. How well can parents know their children?

Still very cold!

At 'The Spirit' coffee shop we got incredibly stoned on one shared spliff. I held it together just enough to get us back to the boat. Good stuff.

The next day we ate a handful of mushrooms and headed for the modern art museum. Coming up on the mushrooms we found it closed, so opted for the Van Gogh museum next door. One stand-out painting was Monet's very blue Japanese bridge, in which I saw energy surging left and right, almost like a dragon with vivid red highlights and a floatiness to the whole thing. On 2nd, 3rd and 4th viewings the picture became steadily less impressive. Odilon Redon's 'The Buddha' and 'Figure under cherry blossoms' fared better with repeated viewings and remained fascinating for hours. Multi-layered, fractal, glass, woven or painted? A digital data flow from Buddha's head, the head itself part of the tree background while the body and flowers floated to the fore. Van Gogh's work we mostly ignored, although as we were coming down one painting of a cherry blossom tree stood out with vibrant colours. Hozumi trips much harder than I do and has the usual worries of 'standing out' and walking funny. At one point she was drawn by a young guy's perfume and followed him around. She later talked of how it was the first time in her entire life that she'd ever appreciated art, despite having two artist brothers! For a time she even felt like creating some of her own, but that feeling only lasted a day.

More ring hunting turned up a few potentials that we didn't settle on.

The free tour of Amsterdam was entertaining. Why is the oldest church right in the red light district? So sailors could whore all night and confess their sins in the morning before leaving port. The 'rabbit' king, brother of Napoleon. The 84 year-old prostitute with a two-week waiting list. Narrow buildings compete for waterfront space, and lean forward to ease the winching up of goods that require dry storage. Steep stairs and listing foundations. Surgery on public display, see Rembrandt's painting. A quiet courtyard for single women over 30, but with a 10 year waiting list. Catholicism banned for 200 years, but 200 people singing in the 'hidden' church every Sunday. The first-ever show of Jewish solidarity in history as 15,000 people strike to protest Nazi arrests.

Our very entertaining guide in front of the site of the public surgery exhibitions.

Fast food, FEBO-style.

The hidden square for unmarried women only. No photography or tours allowed!

Good foundations.

More impressive leanings.

The whole atmosphere in Amsterdam soured for one night as the city geared up for an invasion of drunken football louts. Water cannon tanks and police were out in force, and shouts, violence and tension permeated the air. We retreated to a nice dark bar and mellowed on the remainder of our mushrooms. I didn't trip much beyond picking out colours and patterns where none existed, but Hozumi was laughing and crying at the same time, the cola was too far to reach, then scary to drink when it fizzed. The stairs were wonky, the toilet an adventure, the people on the ledge above us looked like they'd slide off, then the ledge was 'like Disneyland'. At one point Hozumi was sucked in by her own reflected pupils. On the walk back Hozumi was still really high. A drunk guy tried to buy a kebab in a falafel shop and stormed out when he couldn't get 'is meat "I ain't payin' fer tha'!". Hozumi was still giggling to herself when we slept.

All in all, a very fine trip in Amsterdam.

No puns in the Czech Republic please

2012-06-21T07:08:00.000+09:00

2/8 - 2/12

Prague was a little warmer than Budapest, albeit still covered in snow. We initially checked into the popular Chili Hostel, which turned out to be a horrible dump. We weren't expecting great things from a 20-bed dorm room, but one combined shower/toilet room between 30+ people? Please. We moved to a hotel masquerading as a hostel shortly after.

The astrological clock and all the usual sights were present and correct. Nothing different from when I last visited ~10 years previously.

Well, maybe these particular puppets weren't here 10 years ago.

We went on an extended wedding ring hunt, but ended up chasing down red herrings all day and had nothing to show for our efforts. We did get to see the shockingly ugly TV tower and a weird modern church though.

The 'little quarter' and Prague Castle were really impressive. For some reason I couldn't recall having visited the castle before, so it felt fresh and interesting.

I like photographing photographers.

Art Nouveau stained glass.

Rather aggressive gate guardians.

We went to see an opera but decided to skip the classics and saw a modern production aimed at families called 'Enchantia' instead. We arrived shortly before it was scheduled to begin, but apparently that's late in operatic terms so we confusedly and hurriedly sought out our seats while glowy-headed 'fairies' floated up and down the aisles. I nearly showed one my ticket before I realised she was a performer! Other people, perhaps with VIP tickets, were walking through gauzy tunnels on stage before heading to their seats. The story was quite entertaining, with 'Mythologia' being threatened by cockatrices who steal a book in which the land's properties are recorded. The book being represented by a huge mobile frame with 3 metre high pages, constantly turned by the hand of a woman in white at the top of the contraption. One cockatrice steals a bow from a violinist in the orchestra pit, and when she chases after him the quest begins. An operatic parrot, comedic toad, slinking werewolves, mermaids with lively tails, breakdancing weasels and dozens of other animals and sprites rounded out the cast. Fun.

It turns out that the thing I really wanted to see in Prague isn't in Prague. Kutna Hora features the infamous ossuary and the bones of about 30,000 people on display. A legend of soil from Golgotha and total decomposition in three days made the area an insanely popular place to be buried. Why the 40,000 bodies' worth of bones were originally exhumed I'm not sure, but after spending a while stacked up outside the church someone decided to whitewash the bones and stack them in six giant pyramids. Later on another guy broke down two of the pyramids and just went to town with the decoration. A crest, a chandelier featuring all the bones in a human body, cups, crosses and frescoes. Bloody cold.

Spooky.

Note the raven pecking out an eye (socket)

Signed.

Apparently the chandelier features 'every bone in the human body'.

That evening we visited the bus terminal unsure of where to go next. That very night there were half-price seats available to Amsterdam, so we bought them and wrote off the pre-paid night in the hotel as an acceptable loss.

Buda and Pest

2012-06-20T06:59:00.001+09:00

2/3 - 2/8

We arrived in Budapest without a plan, but since we'd heard we could book hostel rooms at the tourist information office we weren't too worried. We found the tourist information office just before they closed, only to be told they 'don't do hotel bookings', contrary to the business card I had in hand. After a quick bit of internet searching they did give us a list of potential hostels to try out, but after an hour or so traipsing around in the snow and dark we realised that the first two places they'd recommended didn't even exist!
While standing outside the address of one such non-existent hostel a Brazilian guy on his way into the building asked if he could help us with anything and proceeded to take us to three hostels he knew nearby. All the hostels in Budapest are in listed buildings, and have only teeny-tiny plaques or door-bell name tags to denote their presence. The first two we tried were full, but the third - Suite hostel - had a room available that really did feel like a suite! Four beds, en-suite bathroom and kitchen. Excellent start to a new country.

Everything was still covered in snow, so we visited the Rudas baths over in Buda. Real ancient baths with real thermal spring water. 42C under a stone dome with atmospheric lighting. It was like the perfect realisation of what I had thought a hammam would be like, and to date the only good hot spring bath we've seen outside of Japan.

Had a fight with Hozumi the next day over some trivial stuff, so I ended up going on a free walking tour of the city alone. Fairly interesting, but bloody freezing. The tour guides were wrapped up in layers of snowboarding gear while I just had the old fleece Simon gave me. The only things I really remember were the church of Saint Stephen featuring 'his mummified hand', the 400kg paper(?) communist-era car and ice floes floating down the Danube. Fortunately we had time to see the sights again together the next day.

The 400kg car.

Caving! Suited up and helmeted. She looks crazy and I look drunk!

Real squeezing and crawling, tight gaps and climbs. They always provided an easier route for people who needed it, but being the masochist I am I even squeezed through one passage that everyone else except the guides gave up on. It was terrifying, and the only way to get through was to breath out completely, wriggle a few centimetres, breath in, out, wriggle a bit more and repeat. Breathing normally you literally couldn't move.

Gollum gollum.

Going down.

Coming out.

Lots of this.

It was so cold we didn't see nearly as much of Hungary as we should have, but we were left with three main impressions - thermal bath, caving and some really good food. Glad we went!

A big helping of Croatia

2012-06-17T02:55:00.000+09:00

1/24 -2/3

Leaving Montenegro we soon arrived in Dubrovnik. The same guy that greeted us in Kotor was waiting (for us?) in the bus station and not having any better options we accepted the lift to his home near the city wall. Dubrovnik is all about the wall and what a wall it is. In all our travels through Europe we saw a lot of impressive walls, but we've yet to see one that tops Dubrovnik's. It's not just the wall itself, it's the seaside cliffs, the moat/canyon that's now a road, the red roofs and the chunky architecture that all combine to make the wall special.

The first night and day we were there the city was being buffeted by 95km/h winds so we stayed low and explored the old town. The most surprising discoveries were some hidden gardens, some explicit statues and no less than three basketball courts - two tucked away and one right by the city wall with a view. The town felt deserted and sterile, but the lack of people was probably both a blessing and a curse. It took us two days to find even a very small corner shop that sold fruit, and decent cheap food wasn't very forthcoming either. On the other hand it felt like we had the place to ourselves, and the next day we didn't have to participate in queues or the slow shuffle around the walls that we've heard some travellers complain of. In fact the weather was perfect with clear skies, warm sunshine and beautiful views over the city.

A map of shelling damage

Interesting location for a court.

Er.

Another photo to add to my 'cannibal food' collection.

The moat/canyon/road.

The 26th of January on the Dubrovnik city wall is also the 'official' date when I popped the question to Hozumi. The half-arsed 'let's get married before your UK tourist visa runs out!' proposal apparently doesn't count, and nor does the missed opportunity at Pamukkale when Hozumi asked me first. Of course, even the 'official' proposal lacked a ring, not for want of looking, but hey, proposing while travelling the world isn't as easy as it sounds.

On the way to Split we crossed in and out of Bosnia and Herzegovina, were met at the bus station by a very old lady who the guy in Kotor had referred us to, then had the really awkward experience of turning down the room she showed us as it lacked WiFi. She kept lowering the price and got quite convincingly upset while exclaiming how little old her had walked us all that way from the bus station.

Split's old town grew up inside the walls of the massive abandoned Roman palace that refugees from nearby Salona decided to inhabit and fortify around 640 CE. It is multi-layered, functional and thriving in a way that neither Kotor nor Dubrovnik can compare to, and much more fun to visit if not as beautiful.

Some filming underway.

While walking through the park on Marjan hill we met a bunch of rock climbers and managed to get contact details for a company called Hvar Adventures and a person named Vese who we hoped would be able to help us get climbing even during the off-season. We made contact that night, and the very next morning caught an early ferry to Hvar island to go climbing.

Vese was learning the ropes with her instructor friend Goran during a brief window of off-season free time, but they kindly allowed us to join them climbing for the day. Vese and I both achieved our first ever outdoor 5c lead climbs, though I had a scary moment perched on a narrow ledge with a fist-full of slack, trying to reach for a bolt that I had over-shot. The encouragement and advice from below was replaced by a tense, nervous silence for what seemed like an eternity until I finally got the rope through the quickdraw. The next day Goran took us out for another day of training with various belay devices. Thanks to him we can now climb independently.

Hvar is a beautiful place even if you aren't climbing.

The first day's wall. We climbed 2, 3, 4 and 13.

Gearing up with Vese and Goran.

Goran shows us the ropes. The other stuff too =P

Hozumi, you so high!

Hozumi learns to belay a lead climb.

We had planned to visit Plitvice national park, but we missed the bus and went to Zadar instead. Shortly afterwards temperatures across Europe plummeted, snow started falling in places it really shouldn't, like Hvar where we'd just been climbing in the sun, and with temperatures at Plitvice as low as -20C we decided to skip the park!

Zadar's sea organ wasn't much to look at but the bass notes produced by the waves were pretty spooky.

Heading North and inland, Zagreb was freezing cold and covered in snow. The first hostel we tried was full, the second we didn't visit because a guy at the first said they never change the sheets and the third was empty aside from a very cheerful, eccentric and English-accented girl hiding out the back.

For some macabre reason I do enjoy seeing how different cultures deal with their dead, and Zagreb's cemetery was quite impressive. Huge dramatic walls are the first thing you see. Behind them are endless graves, but far fancier than I expected, with larger-than-life stone angels, real trees, heaps of flowers, grass beds and even a mini-pyramid.

Heavy-drinking in Montenegro

2012-05-20T04:14:00.001+09:00

1/21 - 1/24

First impressions of Montenegro were not so good. From Shkodra to Ulcinj, then to Budva, which I can only describe as an empty off-season party town. The old town was alright, but even that had been rebuilt after an earthquake and was rammed with tourist shops. The only real highlight was the heavy-drinking red-nosed fisherman Adrovic whose home we stayed in.

Thankfully Kotor surpassed all expectations with a dramatic view, beautiful old town and crazy wall snaking all the way up the mountain. Walking around on subsequent days it seemed like accommodation should have been really difficult to find, with no visible hostels and only one or two expensive hotels to be found. On the day we arrived though, we were met almost as soon as we walked through the gates by a Croat from Dubrovnik who introduced us to a home owner whose rooms were a little pricey. She in turn introduced us to another home owner whose place was much nicer and cheaper. There were no signs or any external indications that these places were anything other than ancient stone houses.

2.2 litres of lager for 1.6 euro!

Partly because we weren't sure where the city wall walk was supposed to start, and partly in an attempt to avoid paying to walk up it we ended up taking a dangerous, crumbling and overgrown route up the city wall to the castle. Stunning views and precarious drops aplenty.

The route we took...

...and the route we should have taken!

That afternoon I took a bus back to Budva to pick up the glasses Hozumi had left at Adrovic's place. He greeted me with more booze and an old pair of brown reading glasses. Took me a good few seconds to realise he was pulling my leg!

We would have liked to see more of the interior of Montenegro, but keeping up the pace we moved on to Croatia the next day.

Albania

2012-05-13T03:28:00.000+09:00

1/15 - 1/21

First impressions of Albania were pretty good: Very casual border control, an offer of directions in Gjirokaster and even a 3,000 leke loan from our chosen B&B since the old town money changers were closed. In fact most of the old town was closed, and a fair few of the listed buildings' roofs were caved in, but the stone-roofed building, cobbled streets and huge castle made the hilltop town quite attractive in a cold way.

Met a very talkative and more than a bit pompous old Brit at the B&B, as well as a reserved Japanese woman who couldn't get a word in edgeways. We met her again when climbing up to the castle in Berat and it turns out she's a photographer named Mika Sudo who specialises in taking pictures of taiyaki around the world. She was again staying in the same hotel as us, and was already on first name terms with the rather large turkey in the garden. Funny old character. This photo of Meteora is from her website:

Berat castle had a living, breathing community housed within its walls. Lots of work crews were digging up paths and working on the water supply as we walked around and the place just felt so functional and alive (not that my photos reflect this). Fascinating.

Teeny-tiny taiyaki in the foreground

Bar!

A very dangerous-looking old cistern that I was happy to see wasn't blocked off.

Our hotel is in there somewhere

very narrow streets.

Tirana was alright, not much stood out other than the ridiculous 1,000 leke tax per person that all hotels had to pay and the broken-down graffiti-covered communist-era pyramid with kids running up and down it. Built by the daughter of an unpopular tyrant I get the impression no-one wanted to take responsibility for the ugly old thing.

Our final stop in Albania was Shkodra, notable only for being the first place where we paid 'local' room rates - a mere 1,000 leke for a room in a huge, drafty, communist-era hotel. While the room was freezing and spartan the ground floor was spacious and opulent, and the restaurant (where we didn't eat) even had an almost operatic singer belting out songs all evening.

Skipping the Oracle at Delphi

2012-05-13T02:16:00.001+09:00

1/12 - 1/15

I left my laptop - oops, sorry 'netbook', on the bus to Delphi. Resigned to never seeing it again I was very surprised when it came back on the same bus six hours later!

The temple of Athena was cool and free, the Oracle already closed and quite expensive. The beautiful scenery was much more impressive than the ruins anyway.

With no water working in the village we left the next day for the attractive harbour town of Itea, then Ioannina. Chrysoula guesthouse turned out to be in the neighbouring village but fortunately we had their phone number and her rapper 'Americanophile' (why isn't there a real word for that?) son came to pick us up. In town were the best gyros we've had so far, but only cake for breakfast at the guesthouse.

The Perama cave is one of the biggest and most interesting we've ever seen, but our camera's battery died so we didn't get much in the way of pictures. It was formed when the lake receded, and not from underground rivers as most of those we've been to. The compulsory guide had to be called from her home to show us around and turned out to be a Russian(?) history professor with a big furry hat who really warmed to us after we praised the cave.

Bye bye Greece, hello Albania!

Encounters in Athens

2012-05-13T01:30:00.002+09:00

1/9 - 1/12

Athens was an interesting experience for us. Having tried and failed to Couchsurf in Athens and a few other towns in Greece we were surprised when an Athenian host used a new Couchsurfing feature and contacted us to offer a couch, even though we hadn't sent him a request. In other words he had logged on to Couchsurfing, saw a list of people looking for couches in Athens (a list we had opted into) and decided to invite us to stay.

Now I think that is fantastic, no two ways about it, but in hindsight I can't imagine there are many people who'd take the time to do that just to meet people passing through. Personally I'm more than happy to host anyone, any time, but I'd never seek out people to invite... I get more than enough requests as it is, and I'm not even on a typical tourist trail or capitol city.

So anyway, the guy had Asperger's syndrome. Really nice guy, but unable to process that we might not want to hear about him all the time. It was a bit uncomfortable watching him smear food around his beard too, but that's probably unfair of us. He was hand-flappingly excited most of the time though, and really eager to show us the sights. His guided tour of the Acropolis and Parthenon, herding along Hozumi, Phillipe (another CSer) and I would have been a lot more entertaining if it hadn't taken place in freezing wind, drizzle and sleet to which he seemed immune. We left him looking for Phillipe to escape somewhere warmer and drier. When we got back to his place that evening he was comically sulky, with scowling face, deep sighs and grudging responses to small-talk. Hozumi couldn't bear the awkwardness, but rescued the situation by introducing him to a romantic comedy anime. He loved it, immediately perked up and became really friendly and helpful again. Exhausting to live with, I'm sure. Three nights were enough for us.

Highlights of the archaeological museum:

This sarcophagus used to contain a couple. It was reused by some stingy bastard at a later date, when the male figure was replaced by scrolls and the female figure's head cut off and replaced with a man's!

Aphrodite fending off Pan with a sandal.

The old procedure for casting bronze statues. First you make a clay statue, then cover it with wax and add a bunch of wax tubes to it to allow gases and molten metal to escape while stabilising the core clay statue. You then cover everything with clay to make a mold and melt and burn out the layer of wax inside. The molten bronze can then be poured into the gap between the inner and outer clay sections. When that is cooled you crack open the clay and finish off the bronze. A lot of work for one statue and you don't get to re-use anything!

When we left the archaeological museum the building opposite was burning down.

The Parthenon itself was a bit of a let-down to be honest. Sure it's big, but it's undergoing a lot of repairs and is fairly nondescript as far as ancient temples go. Fortunately there's no shortage of ruins and temples around Athena and they're all accessible with the same multi-part ticket.

When Poseidon and Athena faced off to determine who would be the patron of Athens he shattered the flagstone of the temple and brought forth salt water, while she gave the city the first olive tree (represented by the rather young specimen here).

The coolest thing about Athena though? How she was 'born'. The story goes that Zeus swallowed his pregnant mistress after hearing a prophecy that her son would depose him, as you do. Afterwards he suffered from splitting headaches ('scuse the pun) so he asked his mate Hephaestus to split his head open with an axe, as you do. Out popped a fully grown, armed and armoured Athena to join the pantheon in her ever-expanding role as goddess of wisdom, war, Athens etc. This story and others we read at the airy and light Acropolis museum. I like the idea of pimping out your patron deity as your city-states' power and influence grows.

The 80 million tonne Olympic stadium.

As we were leaving Athena we saw this comical display of martial silliness. I like the way the guy in fatigues is like 'I'm too cool to stand to attention, but you better swing those bobbles up higher!'

Multi-pitch Meteora

2012-03-13T02:55:00.001+09:00

1/5 - 1/8

So we checked our maps, checked the times, bought a ticket to Larissa from Istanbul leaving at 16:30. We figured that if the bus arrived in Athens around midday we'd get to Larissa in the morning, find onward transport to Meteora and everything would be shiny. Didn't quite work as planned.

The border crossing took place around midnight and seemed to take forever, but apparently not long enough as we got off the bus around 5:30 to be greeted by a pitch black road in the middle of nowhere. Nearly everyone else had disembarked earlier in Thessaloniki, which in hindsight we really should have done. Some friendly fellow passengers pointed us in the direction of Larissa and we set off walking until we found a cafe that was open. After the sun came up we started looking for a bus stop. 3 hours and half a dozen requests for directions later we'd walked all the way through town to the other side and were waiting for a bus that might not exist on a day that is apparently holy. No-one was able to explain this in English, of course, we found that out much later.

Luckily a chatty Swedish truck driver picked us up and took us as far as Trikala's ring road, where Theseus and Konstantina took pity on us huddled under our umbrella and took us all the way to Kalambaka where we found food and shelter from the rain that quickly turned torrential.

The next day we were able to see the peaks of Meteora looming above us for the first time and it was properly awe-inspiring. We hiked up to the first monastery perched on a pinnacle and thought it deserted. A black-clad monk appeared just after we finished eating our lunch so we nonchalantly strolled out trying to look inconspicuous. The second monastery had a load of weird religious art with flesh-stripping, head-chopping and other painful acts being performed on the bodies of sad-faced saints. Decapitated heads apparently retain their haloes, though I'd guess not for long. The nun selling tickets at the third monastery spent a long time peering at Hozumi suspiciously, trying to work out if she was wearing a skirt over her trousers or not. She wasn't, but her coat was long enough to fool the nun. The fourth monastery was huge, and by that time we were all monasteried out.

The first monastery is on the left pinnacle, with Kalambaka in the centre.

All the monasteries had winching mechanisms to haul up food and people(!) before the modern stairways were built. The original monks must have been expert climbers.

The tower on the right has the winch.

The sun finally came out at the end of our hike, giving everything a fairytale glow.

The next day, climbing! A chance conversation with a hotel owner led to me hiring a guy to take me on a 150m 3-pitch climb. He wouldn't take me on anything too hard or let me lead, but it was an interesting experience. Lots of rope shenanigans that I didn't have time to understand.

That's wot we climbed.

Istanbuuul!

2012-03-13T00:32:00.000+09:00

12/30 - 1/5

In Istanbul we stayed with Metin and Yasemin, another wonderful Couchsurfing experience. They treated us like family, and assured us we'd always have a home in Istanbul if we were to return. Really, it's hospitality like that that made our stay in Turkey so special. For New Year's Eve a few of their friends came round, we all got very drunk, a few us a little stoned and a good time was had by all. Chilled.

Blue Mosque is blue.

Old cisterns are one of those places I really love to visit when I can. Ancient man-made caverns are very cool, even more so when artfully lit and featuring obscure carvings that presumably weren't intended to be viewable by anyone. The one in Istanbul checks all these boxes, with giant gorgon heads of unknown origin and function hidden away in the furthest corner.

Istanbul is said to 'span two continents', so every day we'd go sightseeing in Europe, then return to Metin and Yasemin's place in Asia. The Bosphorus river splits the two continents, and ferry trips up the river to the Black Sea are very popular. Tasty fish and sardines that aren't salted were the main highlights

Can you see that electricity cable? I wonder what happens to that in high winds?

What lies in the forbidden zones?

The Hagia Sophia is more big than beautiful, but it's plenty of both.

Galata tower is one of Istanbul's most iconic landmarks, but it's better viewed from outside than in.

The wall is 4 metres thick at the base, narrowing to 20cm at the top.

The fearless seagulls were pretty cool.

The entire bridge is lined with fishing rods all day.

Next stop, Greece!

No Turkey in Turkey at Christmas

2012-03-12T23:20:00.000+09:00

12/24 - 12/29

So apparently Turks only eat turkey at New Year, and despite being all excited at the pun I didn't plan ahead and couldn't find any turkey for Christmas, oh well.

Evan and Gamze's party was awesome, as was chatting to a couple of other culture-crossed couples. There seemed to be a surprising number of similarities between Turk/American and Japanese/Brit culture clashes, as both Japan and Turkey are quite traditional and conservative when it comes to marriage.
I've done quite a few 'Secret Santa' gift exchanges, but the 'White Elephant' version introduced by Evan was a lot more entertaining.

Ephesus was a beautiful ancient Greco Roman city, and well worth the visit.

A chance remark about bouldering to Evan led to Hozumi and I visiting the beautiful Bafa lake and trying our best to climb without any equipment. Very dangerous, but good fun! I suppose this is as good a time as any to record our climbing exploits in the UK. Since Kieran and Paul are both avid climbers we visited an indoor climbing site in Bristol, got hooked and spent the best part of two months doing little else but bouldering.

Climbing can be rough on the hands

Of course, without crash mats or climbing shoes there wasn't much we could attempt at Bafa without risking broken bones, but there were an amazing variety of boulders around, and it was great fun finding my own routes instead of following mapped and bolted ones. This is one route I was really happy with, complete with sitting start, a nice long traverse and a big ledge for our crappy shoes!

Bafa wasn't just about bouldering though. The landscape was breathtaking, and reminded us of Hampi, but swathed in green and dotted with olive trees. A lovely German couple recommended that we walk to a ruined monastery, so we set off, picking up a stray dog along the way that we inappropriately christened 'Bob'. He stuck with us the whole day.

To get back to Evan's we were relying on a lift from the hotel owner, but when the time came he was cooking dinner and wouldn't provide one. Fortunately the only other couple there were on a day trip and offered us a lift to Bafa town, then called various bus companies until they found one going our way that we could flag down. To top it all off they even introduced us to the mayor, in whose company we waited for the bus, drinking tea and chatting with another guy who could speak English.

Lots more rakı with Evan, catching up, reminiscing on old times and good times, then a day of rest and off to Istanbul.

Pamukkale is amazing.

2012-03-12T08:17:00.000+09:00

12/23 - 12/24

Inspired by Jami's remarks about Pamukkale we decided to visit it and we're very glad we did. A truly amazing place, one of the most beautiful, bizarre natural wonders we've ever seen. Walking up toward the big white fluffy mass on the horizon we had no idea what to expect. Passing through the ticket barrier we were confused by the order to remove our shoes 100m further down the path. The ground was freezing cold, with a thin layer of icy rainwater running across it, but as we progressed along the travertine the water warmed up to the point where we our feet weren't painfully numb any more and we could appreciate the vistas that opened up.

The site of an ancient Roman city at the top, Hierapolis, was fun to imagine but not much to look at. We were far too busy with the natural views to worry about the ruins anyway.

Nearby is the 'red spring' that we thought promised a Japanese-style open-air hot bath, but we were disappointed by the mud packs and spa treatments on offer behind closed doors. With little time until Evan's Christmas Eve party we hurried on to Izmir.

Kalkan, Kas tries and Fethiye isn't given a chance.

2012-03-12T04:02:00.001+09:00

12/15 - 12/22

Having never travelled with a mobile phone before I was all excited at the prospect of the extra connectivity that the phone given to me by Simon in the UK would provide. After three messages sent over the course of a day failed to arrive at Altan's phone until an hour after we were meant to meet I was less excited, but resolved to buy local SIM cards everywhere we went. That's worked out OK for us so far, as some countries give them away and local numbers are much cheaper to use. In Turkey however, we got royally ripped off for the card, and two weeks later got disconnected for not registering our phone.
Still, without a phone Couchsurfing just wouldn't have been possible, so it was worth it.

Altan and Beyza were excellent hosts, taking us out for fine food, beach-combing and ruin-viewing, and treating us in to fine food, company, coffee, tea, desserts and Rakı. We stayed in Kalkan for a week (too long) and Fethiye two days (not long enough).

Best kebaps evar.

Patara. We have now seen more Romanesque theatres than anyone else alive, but this was the first.

A hidden swimming spot in better weather with Jami, a Taiwanese traveller.

Cliff-side tombs.

Altan's family runs a growing business, so their customers are mostly farmers. One day a farmer wanted to thank him for something so we drove up into the mountains to pick up a huge crate of the tastiest apples we've ever had. It wasn't just a matter of picking up the crate and leaving though, as everything in Turkey takes at least three glasses of tea to complete. In this case three glasses of tea, a plate of pastries and a plate of fruit for each of us. On the way back we picked up some fresh fish, rice vinegar and a few other bits and bobs, as apparently Altan was really excited about the prospect of trying sushi for the first time ever.

Now, neither of us have ever made sushi before, let alone filleted fishes of dubious origin and served them up raw to someone else. Altan was suitably nervous, but excited enough to film his first bites to upload to Facebook. Unfortunately he didn't take to the taste of soy sauce or rice vinegar, and immediately started to speculate on how to improve sushi with Turkish flavours. Oh well, at least the fish didn't kill us!

Nearby Kas was much nicer than Kalkan, but equally quiet off-season.

Bye bye, sleepy Kalkan! Hope the hordes of Brits don't cause too much trouble this summer.

Turkish coffee isn't complete without a centimetre of sludge at the bottom. The word for breakfast means 'before coffee' and brown is 'coffee colour'.

Xanthos was our last stop before Fethiye. Quite nice in the dawn light and free since the ticket vendors hadn't turned up yet!

Tasty fruit juice in Fethiye.

To our surprise, the Taiwanese girl we met at Patara was staying in the hostel next door to ours. She invited us to try out a Turkish hammam her hostel had recommended, so we piled into a car and drove out of town to get ourselves steamed and scrubbed. Half an hour sweat in the sauna, then a few hard-to-bear minutes in the steam room then the three of us lay down on the huge stone slab in the main room. Scrub, soap and massage. The guy scrubbing me showed me how much skin he was taking off my back and laughed, saying 'what is this, my teacher?' Apparently Hozumi and Jami got very mediocre massages, but my guy really went for it and cracked my spine so hard I yelped out loud. Twice.

When I had recovered and changed I went to pay for the water we'd drunk and got told it was free. When Jami and Hozumi emerged 15 minutes later Jami went to pay for her cola and water and got charged for both. When I looked at the staff who had told me it was free she shrugged, nodded at the guy ripping Jami off and said 'my boss'.

The other highlight of Fethiye was neighbouring Kayakoy, a village that had housed about 3,000, mostly dating back to the 18th century and totally abandoned in the 1923 population swap after the Greco-Turkish war. We gave up on walking to Oludeniz because it was pissing down, but the ghost town was all the more ghostly devoid of other tourists and cloaked in mist. We got totally drenched that evening in Fethiye, and cut our stay short in hope of finding drier climes.

Turkish delight #1: Ayran is good for the gut.

2012-03-12T02:04:00.000+09:00

12/12 - 12/14

Turkey was full of unexpected delights, though we didn't much care for the lokum. Before we even got there we had plenty of adventure, looking for a midnight tram that didn't exist in central Manchester, dozing until 4am in a quite corner of the airport until woken by some astoundingly noisy staff skiving off work and finally taking off in a broken plane that had to circle Manchester for 5 hours to burn off enough fuel to land, get fixed, refueled and take off again. During that last escapade the passenger next to us was utterly terrified and even cried "How can you sleep?" at us at one point, but we were both too shattered to worry.

All in all it took us about 24 hours to get from Bristol to Antalya, so when we were greeted with beers at Soner's place it was a great relief. We Couchsurfed through most of Turkey and had a fantastic time doing it. Ostensibly because of some ancient history the Turks love the Japanese and almost everyone we met made sure we knew it! Soner the customs officer was no exception, and the first night we went out for lamb intestines and salted yoghurt. Both were pretty good, though after becoming used to sugared lassi the ayran was a bit of a shock to the palate. After forcing it down a few times I got used to it, and I think I'll take my lassis salted from now on!

Pictured here with the ubiquitous Turkish tea and a big glass of ayran.

We talked quite a bit about politics and religion, since Soner, Ali Umut and Ahmed are all non-religious communist Muslims. Their views were CENSORED , but since all political dissent in Turkey is both criminalised and punitively policed, they felt pretty powerless about it. Turkey seems very split between the 'European' coast and the conservative inland, as well as along Turkish and Kurdish lines and current pressures are likely only going to make that worse. With incidents like the 30 Turkish citizens being blown to pieces by their own government to provide sparks for the fire, you have to wonder how things will go.

Anyway, Duden waterfall had a number of exquisite autumnal scenes, which felt all the stranger with it being mid-winter! We also had the best orange juice I have ever tasted in a ramshackle road-side stall for taxi drivers.

Antalya's old town and harbour were very presentable.