Slovenia

I went to Slovenia with my friend Łukasz from Wed August 20th to Sun August 24th .

We started off driving at 06.00 from The Hague, still getting into part of the morning rush, so we weren't really making good time until we crossed over into Germany. The GPS told us to use A45 instead of the usual A3, and this seemed like a good choice. Not that much traffic and decent roads. We had a quick stop for lunch and another stop for dinner just before the Austrian border. An hour or so after crossing into Austria we hit the first stau, and it was a proper one. Seems like two trucks had crashed in one of the tunnels blocking traffic in both directions. We were stuck for two hours before traffic started moving again. We made decent time after that, but the traffic jam meant that we used 16 hours rather than 14 to get down there, so we only had a quick beer in the hotel room before going to bed. Łukasz found it very funny that the hotel TV only showed the Olympics, reruns of old news from the 90's and classic Russian movies.




Thursday morning we drove about an hour northwards to get to Lake Bled. This is one of the top tourist attractions in Slovenia and a popular vacation spot. We walked around the lake in just over an hour, snapping some pictures along the way. On our way out, we saw a huge line of cars going into Bled. Seems like we beat the crowds by getting up early. We drove on, skirting the northern edge of the Triglav national park, going up to the Planica Valley. This place is mostly famous for the biggest ski jump in the world. It holds the world record for ski jumping at 239 meters, made by Bjørn Einar Romøren (NOR) in 2005, so naturally we had to walk up there. There were no lifts, so we had to walk the stairs all the way up. The view from the top was very nice.

We drove back into Kranjska Gora, driving on a windy mountain road going up the valley. We stopped at a roadside cafe to try to get lunch, but unfortunately a busload of Spanish tourists stopped at the same cafe and started hassling the owner, so we never got served. After twenty minutes or so without anyone taking our order, we just left. Too bad, I was dying to find out what "Gorenjske Crap" was. According to Łukasz, it was just the Slovene name for pierogis, although they looked black in the picture, so there was definitely something else going on there. We drove on up the mountain, crossing a mountain pass before going down into the Soča valley on the other side. The Soča valley was really beautiful, and we had a very nice drive. The road was very windy, going through all these small villages, there were really nice jagged mountain ridges all around, and there were so many horses on the farms next to the road. Seems like the Slovenes really like their horses. Even for dinner. (More on that later...)




We stopped at a mountain fortress at Kluze, looking at the deep gorge and looking at a museum dedicated to the region. Seems like this area had been a battleground between the Slovenes, the Italians, the French and the Austrians for centuries.

We were sort of unsure about what to do next, since I had not been spending enough time up front researching what to do. We really had no plan, so we were just doing whatever popped into our heads, and at this time I got an idea that we should go to Italy for dinner. Łukasz agreed, so we crossed the border and drove south towards Trieste.



The GPS gave us very specific instructions, so at times we felt like we were extras in "The Italian Job", because we were going down all these very steep, narrow one-way streets, going left and right in a zigzag pattern until we suddenly found ourselves in the center of Trieste. Yay GPS!

We parked the car, walked around for a bit, stopped for ice cream (of course) and had a leisurely dinner watching the sun go down in the Adriatic sea. We walked around the harbor looking at the party people and the boats before driving back to Ljubljana.



Friday was our designated "hiking-day". We drove up to lake Bohinj, got on the gondola going up to the base of the Vogel ski center. From there we walked for a couple of hours up towards a small peak called "Šija"(1880m). Łukasz insisted we walk the whole distance, so I was unable to talk him into cheating by using the chairlift. Always a problem when you bring someone fitter than yourself... ;-). Anyway, the hike was not really strenous or difficult in any way, but it was very hot so we were really sweaty when we reached the top. Upon reaching the top we noticed the kids that beat us up there...and they did not seem tired at all. We relaxed for a bit, eating a hot lunch and drinking tea. I pulled out my hiking GPS, so Łukasz could text home our exact location (and the fact that we were still alive).



The walk down was even hotter than going up, so when we got down to the lake, Łukasz jumped in for a swim. We drove back to Ljubljana, had a quick shower before going down to the party district for some beers. We also tried the "Hot Horse Burger", which is a Slovenian specialty. It was a bit too spicy for us and we were feeling the effects of the horse burger until lunch the next day.

Saturday we drove down to the seaside, to see the romantic fishing village named Piran. Unfortunately, when we got there, the parking guards ejected us, telling us that all parking lots were full. We're kind of used to being ejected, but from a parking lot, that's a first! We had to drive to the neighboring resort town Portoroz to park the car. We spent about 45 minutes walking back to Piran.



We had some trouble seeing what was supposed to be so special about Piran. It looked pretty much like a small Italian village. Obviously, that's different from the eastern European style villages further east, but we didn't really feel that this warranted a spot as one of the top attractions of Slovenia. We had lunch at a restaurant recommended in our guidebook, and Łukasz had a very interesting fish meal. I was stunned to see the waiter separate the meat from the bones with a spoon and serve Ł while he told the story of what type of fish it was. Certainly different from the "shut up and pay"-style of wait service you get in The Netherlands.

On our way back we visited the Skocjan Caves, a famous cave complex in southwestern Slovenia containing a huge underground canyon. The guides were impressive, doing tours in four languages. We spent the evening boozing in the riverside pubs in Ljubljana. We also tasted the "Burek" (a very traditional pastry filled with cheese, meat or apples) and the local döner.

We had to get up at 06.00 for the drive back home. On our way through Austria we did a scenic detour, driving a very interesting road over the Tauern mountains. We were lucky on our way back, not getting into any serious queues and after gently instructing the GPS to use A45, we made very good time. We were back in the Hague at 20.00 in the evening.

Pictures are here

Home Leave August 2008

Between August 2nd to August 18th, I went back home to Lillehammer, Norway.

I had been on a business trip until 20.00 on Friday, so I was very busy packing. I had made a list up front of what to pack, but I had a hard time finding some of the things, so I tore up my apartment trying to find the last items. As I came back late, I hadn't had time to check into my flight early, so when I tried to check in online in the evening, the website told me I was on "Standby" to go to Norway, which meant that I risked being pushed to the next flight, 12 hours later. I wasn't really looking forward to spending the day at Schiphol, so I was pretty pissed off when I went to bed. I was very stressed out when leaving at 06.30 in the morning.

Arriving at Schiphol in the morning, checking in, it turned out they had upgraded me to business instead. My KLM silver card had struck again! Unfortunately, on the flight over, the baggage handlers broke my backpack, so I had to spend some time in Lillehammer buying a new backpack.

For the next couple of days, I was mostly spending time with my brother and sister. I checked out bus schedules to go into the mountains from Lillehammer. Unfortunately they were kind of sucky. For some destinations it was like one bus per day, and sometimes I had to spend the night at some village in the mountains. Luckily I managed to borrow my grandfather's car, so I avoided all the suckiness that would have ensued from using the buses.



On Wed 6th I drove into the mountains, going to one of the most scenic roads in Norway, called "Gamle Sognefjellsveg" which is the traditional route from Eastern Norway to western Norway over Sognefjell. This drive goes next to the national park "Jotunheimen", literally over the roof of Norway, next to the biggest peaks in Norway, Galdhøpiggen, Glittertind and Hurrungane. My plan was initially to go to the Turtagrø hotel in the mountains, and go hiking in the valley next to the Hurrungane mountains, but when I came up there, the weather was rainy and foggy, so I decided to keep going to the end of the road, descending into Sognefjorden. The weather was much nicer to the west of the mountains, and I spent the evening driving next to the fjords, spending the night in Stryn.



The next morning I got up at 06.00, driving north towards a mountain area called "Sunnmørsalpene" which is really spectacular. The mountains aren't that big, but they're really pointy and shapely, and they go straight up from the fjords, so you almost always have a spectacular view. You get to go hiking by the fjords, yet you are still in the mountains. I was fairly lucky with the weather as well, so I was pretty happy hiking up a valley called Habostaddalen, close to Stranda (a bit further down the fjord from Geiranger). I hiked the length of the valley and the first three hours or so I was alone up there,so I had a really good time hiking. On my way back I met lots of people going up Slogen, which is a very popular peak in this area. I spent the rest of the day driving back, going down Trollstigen again, driving back through Romsdalen before going back down Gudbrandsdalen to Lillehammer.

Friday I left by train for Oslo, going down to visit Marcus and Olga, and to go to Øystein and Ingvild's wedding on Saturday.

I spent the next couple of days meeting up with the rest of my family.

Tuesday I had decided to do the Besseggen hike. This is the most popular hike in Norway, and every year around 40.000 people walk this ridge. I had planned to go there last year, but then the weather was too windy.

This year, though, the weather prognosis was OK, so I got up at 05.30, got myself a big cup of coffee and drove the three hours up to the parking lot at Gjendesheim, in the Jotunheimen national park. I almost hit a moose on my way up, but other than that, it's a nice drive up there. I always like driving the Valdresflya road, as you really feel like you're driving in the mountains.




I got on the 9.45 boat to Memurubu, where the hike begins. This is the base camp for the Besseggen hike, but also for people going to the giant Surtningssui-peaks, or simply for people walking cabin-to-cabin (popular vacation variant in Norway). After a couple of kilometers of steep walking I was up on the ridge, having a really spectacular view of Gjende, and the peaks of the other side of the lake. After about two and a half hours of walking I got to the ridge itself. It looked less scary from close up, so I was having some trouble figuring out what the fuzz was all about. I was about to find out, though. About 2/3 up the ridge, it suddenly becomes dramatically steeper, so you have to use your arms as well as your legs to get up there. I'm fairly short, so I also had less options for where to put my legs, so I spent some time figuring out where to climb. I'm afraid of heights, so I was a bit anxious before walking up there, but while I was doing it I was all focused on climbing up in the most efficient manner, so I wasn't all that scared going up there. Slightly elevated pulse, but not really a problem going up there. I suppose that trip to Catinaccio in Italy last year really helped a lot in redefining what feels scary to me.



After I got to the top, the rest of the hike was really boring, except for that you have a nice view of Gjende on your way down, of course. Driving back to Lillehammer, I decided to do what my new Navigon GPS told me, so I got a really strange route going back on dirt roads across the mountain. I suppose the map data for Norway was poor with this model GPS, and that was why it was having trouble distinguishing between paved and unpaved roads.

Wednesday the 13th I drove north towards Trondheim, to go visit my friend Håkon. As I reached the end of the hills going up Ringebufjellet, an alarm bell in my grandfather's car went off, and the temperature gauge was all the way up. Turns out there was no coolant in the tank or the radiator. Luckily I had brought a liter of pure water, so I poured that in. I stopped at a store at the top of the mountain and got a bottle of concentrated coolant to mix with the water, and after bleeding air out of the system, the car was OK again. I learned my lesson about checking for coolant before going on long trips, and the whole incident only cost me an hour or so of driving time.

I spent the evening at Håkon's place, watching movies and some tv series on his 120" projection screen.

The next morning we drove southwards toward a mountain area on the border called Sylan(Sylarna in swedish). Unfortunately, the weather was really bad, foggy and rainy, so we didn't do all that much hiking the first day. We walked for three hours, crossing into Sweden and looking at some grouse and reindeer on the way, before going back to the mountain cabin Nedalshytta for a dinner of mountain trout from the lake below.

Friday morning we started off towards the biggest peak in the area, Storsylen. Unfortunately, the trek up there was very wet and marshy, partly because of all the rain the previous day. After two and a half hours we reached the base of Storsylen, and stopped to stare in disbelief at where the path was going. It seemed to go more or less straight up the mountainside. We also saw other hikers, and confirmed that yes, indeed, the path was straight up there.



We were both fairly out of shape (All the exercises and vacationing this spring/summer screwed up my workout cycle), so we really struggled going up there. We had to take plenty of breaks to catch our breath up the steep slope. The path ascended 700 meters in less than a kilometer, so it was almost 45 degrees inclination in places. To top it off, because of the rain the day before, the rocks were really slippery, so we had to be careful not to slip and hurt ourselves. The top of the mountain and the ridge leading up there was shrouded in mist, but we hoped it would lift by the time we got up there. The weather forecast said "Sunny after 12:00" so we hoped for the best. Unfortunately, it did not lift until we were well on our way down.

The ascent was very strenuous, but our spirits lifted as a gust of wind cleared away the fog for a brief moment so we could see the top ridge. The top ridge was every bit as wet as the ascent, so we were very slow and careful finding a safe route up to the top. The annoying thing was that there was a perfect route to the top, but it would require you to walk within one meter of the edge, and with a drop of several hundred meters we were not very keen on going there. The top had a log book where you could write your name and the date, so we did the obligatory "Klaatu! Verata!" etc. before picking up the book and writing our names.



It started raining more while we were on the top, so the descent was downright scary. We spent probably twice as much time going down the top ridge as we did going up, and still we had a couple of almost-slides. Down at the bottom we were glad to get down without breaking anything. And...of course the freaking fog cleared up as we were halfway down the mountain. We walked the two hours back to the car, looking at reindeer along the way before driving back to Trondheim.


Pictures are here

The Italian Riviera and Cote D'Azur

This year's summer vacation was spent in Italy and France. I went there from July 4th to July 14th. My goal was to make a long trip through Northern Italy and Southern France, finishing off with going with the TGV to Paris. Unfortunately, most airlines are unwilling to sell economy one-way tickets (for some reason), so I had to fly low-cost airlines in order to not pay a fortune just for the air fare. In the end this wasn't a problem, since nothing bad happened except for the usual Easyjet hassle.

I flew Sleazyjet to Malpensa late in the evening Fri 4th. Malpensa was a fairly messy airport with dubious transfer to the city center. There was supposedly a train to central Milan called "Malpensa Express" , but this was not running in the evening. There were no signs to buses to city center, so I spent some time finding the proper bus stop. I saw other tourists running around more confused. The airport also seemed to have a fairly badly planned layout. I could not help myself from chuckling at the policemen frantically trying to stop people from stopping in the bus lane to drop people off. Apparently they forgot to make a pick-up/drop-off zone close to the terminal. It was a long bus ride into the center (50 minutes), so I didn't get to my hotel until very late.



Saturday I took a morning train to Como, and continued by bus to Bellagio. I was glad I wasn't driving myself. The road was so narrow that it was only just room for two cars, so before every blind turn, the bus driver would honk the horn like crazy to warn other drivers that they need to brake. Other than that it was a fairly nice, one-hour bus drive with spectacular views of Lago di Como. This lake looks so much like a fjord, it's almost like being home in Norway (except that it's 15 degrees hotter and way more people, of course). Bellagio is located at the point where all the arms of Lago di Como come together, so it's supposedly the best place to see the lake. It's also a resort village with lots of upscale hotels and restaurants and private villas of the rich and famous. I spent a couple of hours there walking around looking at the great views - my pictures do not give them justice.

On the way back I had some issues with the bus driver not accepting my ticket, and not speaking a word of English. He could not tell me where to buy a different ticket, so I searched around the posted timetables and found something about "tickets sold in news kiosk in Piazza Massari". After locating a city map to find this piazza, I found that it was quite far away, so I had to run over there, get a ticket and run back. I made it just in time. On the way back the bus driver hit another car in the side when going around one of those blind turns, so the roads were very narrow indeed.

I jumped out in the center of Como to look at the huge Duomo. Como is a fairly small town, but for some reason they have a cathedral-size church in the center. I struggled a bit to get back, since there were hardly any signs to the railway station, and some people I asked for directions pointed me the wrong way. After asking some more people, I finally found it, but I think I really need to learn some rudimentary Italian. Unfortunately, I missed my train, since the ticket machines were out of order, so there was a huge line at the ticket counters. The cashiers seemed to have all the time in the world, and lots of Italians around me were really angry with how slow these people were. In the end I jumped on a regional rain to a station in the outskirts of Milano, and made my way to the center using the Metro.



I spent the evening walking around in the center and visiting the party district (Porto Ticino). Around two canals they have lined up an endless row of bars, pizzerias and clubs. They were all full, and the streets were incredibly crowded. At times it felt like being at the Koniginnenacht in The Hague (only that the women were way better looking, of course)

Sunday I took the metro to Castello Sforzesco and walked around the whole castle. I found it pretty uninteresting, except for an exhibition of anatomical drawings made by Leonardo da Vinci. I continued over to the Santa Maria del Graze. Turned out they were closed, even though the sermons were finished (Angry priest shouted "Chiuso! Chiuso!" and pushed tourists out. The outside plaques said they should be open, so I don't know what that was all about). Also, in order to see the famous "Last supper"-picture, you needed to book in advance, and time slots fill up two weeks in advance. I went back to the center instead, and climbed the stairs to the top of the Duomo. It had really nice views from the top, but the interior wasn't that interesting.

Monday I was supposed to continue south to Genova. I share my office with an Italian, so he had warned me about there being a train strike on this day. I had printed special timetables before going, to make sure I would find a train which was not part of the strike. What I didn't know, was that over the weekend the strike had been expanded to also include all buses and all metros, so suddenly I found myself staring at a closed metro station 4 km from the central station half an hour before my train was supposed to run. All the taxi-stands were jam-packed with people, so I was definitely in trouble. Luckily, I managed to grab a taxi waiting on a red light, so I made my train to Genova, but only just.



Tuesday I went by train to La Spezia, visiting the nice naval museum and walking along the harbor. I went by regional train back towards Genova to get to the famous national park called "Cinque Terre" (which is on the UNESCO world heritage list). Essentially this is five isolated villages, hugging the cliffs next to the sea. They have kept their traditional character, so it's a nice pointer to how Liguria used to be. I started walking from the first of the five villages (Riomaggiore) walking the "Lover's Path" (Via dell' Amore) next to the sea over to Manarola. From Manarola the path becomes more primitive, before ending in a series of steps (400 or so) leading up to Corniglia. I spent a couple of hours just walking between these small villages before taking the train to Vernazza, which is the biggest one (so...checkbox-wise I got four out of five villages).



The morning after, I took the ferry to Portofino, which is a very pretty small village on a very picturesque peninsula. Supposedly, it's also a hangout for the rich and famous, so they call it the St. Tropez of the Italian riviera. I walked around the pretty streets and gardens for an hour or so before jumping on the bus to Santa Margherita Ligure, a beach resort village further up the peninsula.
I spent the afternoon seeing the rest of the sights in Genova, like the San Lorenzo church, which had a nice relic museum filled with crusader booty. The relics included stuff like "splinters of wood from the true cross", "the plate which was used to serve John the Baptist's head", "John the baptist's ashes" and of course, the holy grail. A bargain at only four euros... ;-)
I finished Genova by visiting their aquarium, which is supposedly the biggest in Europe. I didn't find it all that interesting, since I found the Barcelona one with the shark tunnel nicer. Their penguin tank was kind of cool, though. I also liked the hummingbird forest, since I've never seen hummingbirds up close.



Thursday morning I went by train along the Riviera di Ponente to Ventimiglia, the border station to get to France. Inside the station the ticket machines were broken AGAIN, so I had to get in the long queue to buy a ticket for my train to Nice. I barely made my train, and I was really pissed at Trenitalia for not servicing their ticket machines. Almost every train station I walked into in Italy had broken ticket machines, and overall I think I spent almost an hour every day waiting in train stations. Not my idea of a nice holiday...

Since I was in the area, I decided to visit Monaco with the city of Monte Carlo. This is a tax paradise on the riviera, having an expat population of a whopping 80%. I stayed overnight in Nice, a fairly uninteresting travel destination. In general there wasn't all that much to see there, except the Promenade des Anglais which is a long street that runs next to beach. Definitely only for the party-crowd. In the evening, I had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, finally being served some good food. For some reason I only found bad restaurants in Genova.



The next morning I jumped on the train to Aix-en-Provence. It was a very nice train journey. The railway hugs the coastline most of the way and you get a really good look at the Cote D'Azur. Also, the French trains were nicer than the Italian ones. Aix-en-Provence itself was a very nice city with a compact city center full of outdoor restaurants. It looked typical Provencal with all houses in the same colors and narrow streets. Lots of quaint little shops selling wine, confit and foie gras added to this very French atmosphere. Definitely a very touristy city, without it being over the top in any way. I really liked Aix.

Saturday I took the TGV-train to Paris. The TGV was very nice, but extremely expensive (The price was the same as my flight ticket Paris-Rotterdam). It was a very fast, comfortable train and a good way to get to Paris. It only spent about two and a half hours to get me from the coast in the south all the way up to Paris in the north, so I found that impressive. The scenery wasn't as interesting as I had hoped for, except for the first part through a very typical Provencal landscape with yellow sunflower fields and deep purple lavender fields.

My hotel in Paris was in the lively Marais district, very close to the Bastille-area.
On this visit to Paris, I wanted to do stuff I didn't have time for the last time I was there. That was mainly Versailles and the Louvre.

I took the metro over to the Louvre without any real plan for what I wanted to see. As luck would have it, I didn't have much choice in what to see anyway, because there were so many people there that you just had to more or less follow the stream of people floating through the museum. It was fun to see the Mona Lisa room where people were pushing and shoving and jumping up and down to get close enough to take pictures of the painting. Almost like watching fish jumping in a fish farm. I just walked past, threw a cursory glance from the side. Been there, done that. Check.

Overall, I didn't find the Louvre all that interesting. Probably I was jaded from looking at Italian church art for a week before. In addition, some of the older stuff, and the Egyptian stuff were way better in the museum in Berlin.

I spent the evening having drinks in different bars in the Marais. Some of the bars were really nice, with good clientele, good music, good themed decor and very nice drinks. Too bad they were really expensive compared to the bars in Milan or the Hague, but you can't have everything.




Sunday I took the RER-train to Versailles. Immediately I got caught up in the Shitloads of tourists streaming towards the palace. That's probably what I get for trying to do this in a weekend in the high season. Good thing I bought my ticket up front from the ticket office at the Louvre. The line for the ticket office in Versailles was amazingly long, so it felt really good to be able to skip the queue and go straight to the palace. Unfortunately, it was really crowded inside. I do not like big crowds, and I like even less to pay to be in one. I've been in my share of palaces by now, so it wasn't that interesting anyway. It wasn't that easy to see anything, with people in the way everywhere, so after an hour or so of being frustrated in the palace, I walked out to the formal gardens. They were nice, in a way, except that they hadn't turned on any of the fountains and they had hidden speakers blaring out loud baroque music everywhere. I found the end effect somewhat cheesy, really theme-park style. "Welcome to Cultureland! We have palaces with nice paintings! We have gardens which play classical music!". I escaped the crowds by taking the train back to Paris, going to visit the industrial park called La Defence. Lots of nice buildings and strange modernistic architecture.
In the afternoon I went by tram to the park called Buttes-Chaumont. This is a very nice park in a fairly central location with lakes, bridges, caves, waterfalls and good views of Paris.




The 14th of July is the French national day, so the night before they have live music performances and dancing in the streets at various locations in Paris. The police had closed off the streets leading to Place de la Bastille, so the whole area was turned into a giant open-air concert with different bands playing various styles of music.

I got up early on the 14th to try to get a good spot for watching the military parade at Champs-Elysees. I was there an hour early, but still I didn't get a very good spot. Lots and lots of people had turned up to see the parade, so it was really crowded. There was also a lot of waiting involved, so overall it wasn't that great an experience, although the overflights were nice. I tried to leave early to try to get a head start out of the crowd, but suddenly everything clogged up and no-one could get anywhere. Then some people started behaving like cattle and started pushing. It was like being at a really crowded rock concert, only with lots of screaming police officers failing to get people to move. It took almost ten minutes for the crowd to move in any direction...

I escaped to the subway and went to Jardin du Luxembourg to get away from the worst crowds. I spent the rest of the day exploring other areas where I had not spent that much time, like Ile de Cite and St. Germain before flying out from Orly to Rotterdam in the evening.

Milan pictures
Genova pictures

Cinque Terre & Portofino pictures

Nice & Aix pictures
Paris pictures

Warszawa and Bydgoszcz

I went to Poland from 27 Jun to 02 Jul.



I flew in Friday night, having an "interesting" taxi ride to my hotel. It felt a bit like being in Turkey, with the taxi drivers driving at two times the speed limit, without seat belts. I got to my hotel in one piece, so no harm done. I suppose that's what you get for riding fixed-price taxis rather than those with meters.

I took the morning train to Bydgoszcz, having no problems buying a ticket even though the cashiers didn't speak English. Luckily, I had memorized the line for buying tickets before going, so no big deal. It took me some more time to figure out their timetables, since they used text rather than numbers a lot. I had memorized the basic Polish numbers before leaving (after having been stuck in Belgium at one point without knowing the French words for weekdays, and the basic numbers, I make sure to get up to speed on this up front...)

I figured out that the word for station seemed to be "Glowna", which helped me to find the right place to get out. Bydgoszcz stretches out over a large area, so it has like five different railway stations, and the one you're at is not announced, so I was peering out through the windows to find out if this was my stop. I got off at the right station, and found my hotel. This was a supposedly four star hotel, which turned out to be rather crappy. I think the star system they use for hotels is flawed, because it only seems to take into account whether there is a mini-bar, or if the have laundry service. If you fill the services check boxes, it seems like the rooms can be as crappy as they like.



I spent the day walking around and had dinner at a decent Italian restaurant. I spent some hours in a "jazz club" before turning in. Overall Bydgoszcz seemed like a nice, but somewhat small city (The Bydgoszcz area is supposed to have like 370.000 inhabitants. Didn't really seem that way). It seemed a bit less developed than Warsawa or Krakow, with lots of derelict houses and run-down streets. It was a very long four hour train ride back to Warszawa.

I spent the next couple of days walking around the old town, which is on the UNESCO world heritage list. In the weekend the touristy area was very crowded, but on weekdays it was more tolerable. There were lots of aggressive gypsy beggars everywhere around the old town, but that's Europe for you.

I've spent a lot of time looking at all the nice palaces in this town, appreciating the fact that all of them were rebuilt, since they were razed during WW2. Some 85 percent of downtown Warszawa was in rubble at the end of WW2, so they had their work cut out for them rebuilding.



I visited the science museum in the palace which was ...unimpressive, except the steel works part, I don't remember ever seeing that in a science museum. I visited the royal castle, which was rebuilt from nothing - it was completely razed in WW2. Some nice rooms, but overall not that interesting.

Churches in Poland are different from the ones I'm used to seeing in Belgium/France/Italy, so I liked seeing how the interiors differed. Poland is a very religious country, though, so often there's people praying while you visit. These things always make me uneasy, as if I am not supposed to be there. The churches obviously mean a lot to these people, and to me it's just some nice buildings, so I suppose that's what makes it feel awkward.

I visited the Polish Army museum, which was very nice. On the ground floor they had a fairly large collection of medieval suits of armor, and paintings portraying important battles in Polish history. The suits of armor worn by the hussars were impressive. One funny thing about this museum was that they had very aggressive museum guards. In every room they would walk up to me and shout a long serious speech of some kind in Polish. I would reply back with "Nie rozumiem. Nie mowie po polsku." (I don't speak polish), they would go "NO FO-TO!", I would show them my entry ticket with the nice stamp saying I paid extra to be able to take photos, and then they would back off wih a muted "Dziekuje bardzo..". I swear this happened in every room in the museum, and it got really old after six or seven repeats. I guess they really wanted those 5 zlotych extra...



In general I felt that Warszawa would be nice for a weekend visit, but there just wasn't enough museums and such to keep me busy for the time I was there. Also, I was staying in an inconvenient location, so I was walking a lot. Some parts were prettier than others, and seeing the central station was an experience. The heat and nauseating smell in combination with lots of people, and the maze of narrow corridors made this a new experience. Railway stations usually smell like urine in combination with mold and steel. In this one there were kebab grills everywhere, bakers pushing pastry and butchers selling meat(!), and there seemed to be no airco, so it was probably like 30 degrees in the hallways. I had to walk through this thing a couple of times every day to get to the metro or the shopping centers or the palace of culture and science, so over time I got desensitized to the thing, not to mention really proficient in navigating the maze to get to exactly the street I wanted. Still, a new experience in the field of nasty public transport infrastructure...

I've eaten lots of traditional Polish food and procured a number of bottles of Polish vodka, so I feel I have been sufficiently "exposed" to the Polish culture. I will have to throw a party soon to taste all the different cherry-, honey- and mint-vodkas I purchased, not to mention the downright scary Sliwowica.

Pictures are here( Bydgoszcz ) and here( Warszawa )

Roadtrip to NV, UT, AZ

Between June 5th and June 15th I went on a road trip from Nevada to Utah, then going into Arizona before returning to Las Vegas at the end.

I landed in Las Vegas on June 5th. My plane between Detroit and Las Vegas had been delayed for an hour on the ground, but they upgraded me to business class, so they kept pouring me drinks all through the four hour flight.

I checked into the Circus Circus casino/hotel waiting for my friend Diana to show up. She was supposed to show up a few hours after me, so I explored the casino and found the horse-around bar (you know...the merry-go-round bar they used in the "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"-movie). I had this master plan of having a bunch of drinks in this thing and then try to get off, but unfortunately it was not open.

I spent a couple of hours waiting in the lobby for Diana. Being jet lagged, and having screaming kids all around (this was a "family casino", whatever the hell that is...) , I was having a fairly unpleasant time. To top it off, I was worried, because she didn't show up when she was supposed to. After an hour or so waiting I returned to my room to find a message on the hotel phone that she'd been delayed for one hour. I waited another hour. Still no-show. When calling her, I could only get answering machine. I started wondering what I would do if she was unable to make it. Just before 11PM she called me, saying she had just landed. Crisis averted.





Friday we started out early, driving from Las Vegas into Utah. After driving for a couple of hours, we arrived at Zion NP. We parked the car, and got on the visitor's shuttle. These were fairly well-organized shuttles, with drivers guiding over the speakers on what was to be found at each shuttle stop. There were shuttles going all the way up the valley, every ten minutes or so. We got off at a couple of the stops, making short walks and snapping pictures. They didn't turn out that great, as it was late in the day (difficult light down in the valley).

We drove onwards through the rest of the park. This was a very interesting drive. Lots of strange formations and interesting patterns in the red sandstone. We stopped at a road junction where the road from the national park hit the highway. We parked the car and went to have dinner at a local diner. This turned out to be a very bad idea, because I ate something that upset my stomach. I spent the whole night in the bathroom, and was sick throughout the next day.





Saturday we drove on to Bryce Canyon. We drove to the major viewpoints, snapping pictures at each one, and walked the Navajo Loop to see the main formations. Afterwards, we had lunch at a lodge in the park, going on towards Grand Staircase/Escalante. We were planning to see an arch close to the main road, so we stopped at the Escalante visitor center for directions.

We followed a small road south until we hit an unpaved road. After a while, the road suddenly crossed a small stream. This looked to deep for our Toyota Corolla, so we decided to turn back. We continued on through Escalante, across the "million dollar road" to Boulder, with the tightrope section being the highlight. Next we crossed a 9000 ft mountain before going into the Capitol Reef National Park. We stopped for the night at a small junction called "Hanksville" at a curiously overpriced motel, where the owner assured us he had "the last two rooms in town".

Sunday we drove north to the Interstate, before turning south again towards Arches NP. There were lots of people at the park, so sometimes we had to fight to get a parking spot. I suppose we deserved that for trying to hit one of the most popular national parks in Utah in a weekend.

We stopped at Balanced Rock, and the Windows section before going to the trail head to get to Delicate Arch. We walked the trail to delicate arch, the last bit being on a narrow ledge. Delicate Arch itself was absolutely worth the trip, but it was quite annoying with all the people "arch-hogging" (that is, to sit and stand directly next the arch for extended periods of time, blocking people from making "pure" shots).






Next we went to Moab and checked into a motel before having lunch at a local Mexican place. Moab was quite colored by being so close to the national parks. It had lots of motels and restaurants to cater to the hordes of tourists straming into the national parks. In the afternoon we drove to Canyonlands NP, stopping at the canyon overlook points.

Monday we started early driving back up to Arches to hike the Double O trail. I was anxious about the trail, since the route description said that the route was very exposed and absolutely unsuited for people with agoraphobia. It turned out the park brochure was crying wolf. Only a very small bit was narrow, and there were still lots of room for two people to pass each other. We looked at lots of arches, doing a big loop to get back to the car. I made the mistake of not bringing enough water so it was very tiring at the end, being hot and dehydrated walking in the sand. We crashed at the motel room after that, exhausted from the hike.

Tuesday was a transport day, taking us from Utah into Arizona. We drove from Moab southwards, stopping for some pictures at Monument Valley, and having lunch at Kayenta before driving onwards to Flagstaff. We got stuck for an hour outside Tuba City because of a nasty traffic accident right before we arrived. We had a nice dinner in an Italian restaurant in Flagstaff, before bedding down in a Travelodge motel.




Wednesday we got up early and drove north to the Grand Canyon (South Rim). We parked the car and took the shuttle down the Hermit Road. We walked the Rim Trail back to Angel lodge and took the shuttle back to the car to go see the Grand Canyon IMAX film. The film was very cheesy and not very informative. It was probably meant for kids. We drove back to the park and took the green shuttle to the east side of the park. From there we walked down the South Kaibab Trail, which was a very nice, if somewhat steep trail. We walked down to Cedar Ridge, about an hour's walk down before turning back to get to the rim in time for sunset. Overall it was a very nice hiking trail, the only problem was that it was also used by mules, so there were mule droppings in places. We stayed in the park until sunset and then drove back to flagstaff. The trip back was scary at times, because of the amount of deer along the roads. I had to keep my eyes peeled and brake hard from time to time to avoid hitting any. We counted 8 deer along the road. Pretty amazing.




Thursday we drove to Sedona. We had lunch downtown and did some shopping. I was pretty annoyed at all the timeshare-salesmen that were trying to pick us up everywhere we went. We drove out of town to a trailhead called "Fay Canyon". This turned out to be the most interesting hike of the whole trip. After a kilometer or so of regular, wide trail, the canyon turned, and the trail became much more primitive, hugging the canyonside. Finding the trail itself became more challenging, and we had to be careful to avoid cacti and loose rocks on the way. It was lots of fun.

Next, we drove to Tuzzugot National monument and looked at some pueblo ruins, before driving to Montezuma's Castle. We stayed overnight in a motel at the interstate junction at Camp Verde.




Friday was another transport day. We drove from Camp Verde in the morning, following the historic highway 89A. We got lost on the way, so we spent half an hour driving around some cattle ranches. We turned onto the historic route 66 and had lunch at the roadkill cafe in Seligman. I couldn't really figure out what was so special about route 66. Probably the length, but we didn't spend more than an hour or so on it. We spent the night in a motel at Kingman.

Saturday we drove back to Las Vegas. On the way we stopped at the Hoover Dam, which was distinctly unimpressive. We drove to Trump Tower to check in, and immediately hit trouble just trying to park the car. After a while, we discovered that Trump did not have parking, only paid valet parking. We managed to ditch the car temporarily, and went in to check in...only to discover that the hotel's booking systems insisted on that our reservation was for the night before. Instead of just giving us our room and clearing this offline, they instructed us to sit down and wait. 20 minutes later, the front desk guy came over and tried to make us pay for two nights. We refused...and five minutes later he came with a booking slip for the correct night.

Next we walked up to the room and discovered the second problem: The room was a suite, with only a single king size bed, rather than the normal two queen size beds. Diana walked down again to the front desk and explained that we were not a couple and would most certainly need two beds. Their response was that they just didn't have two-bed rooms available, and they could perhaps pull out the sofa to make a sofa-bed for one of us. At this point we were getting really frustrated. Two hours had passed since we entered the hotel, and we still weren't ready to go to the strip. I suggested we just cancel our reservation and walk out. On our way out we ran into a manager who seemed to be more clued than the rest of the hotel staff combined. He apologized profusely and walked us down to the lobby.

We were allowed to use their internet computer to look for new accommodation, so we made a quick list of hotels to check out. We drove from hotel to hotel until we found one that had a non-smoking room with two queen beds. The one we finally found was "Excalibur" - the cheesy medieval castle/casino.

We ditched the luggage and started walking the strip, visiting the big casinos like MGM, Bellagio, Caesar's Palace, The Venetian, Paris before walking back to our hotel. We spent the evening in the Luxor and the Excalibur casino, celebrating the successful vacation.

Pictures are here


Diana's pictures are here