Roma

Next stop Roma. We only had a few days and there was a lot to do so we just tried to do most of the major stuff like the Colloseum, Spanish Steps, Trevvi Fountain, Pantheon, Roman Forum and of course, the Vatican. The only thing is when we got to Vatican City and lined up for a while i got rejected at the entrance because of my visible and obviously offensive knees!! I wasn't wearing a mini skirt or anything. I was so annoyed!! Especially because I didn't read about that in the guidebook and I could see a billion people coming out looking much more scantily clad than myself.

But we did successfully visit the Colosseum which was pretty cool. Except the maps which made absolutely no sense and made it very difficult to follow the audio tour. Anyone else agree? Sarah? You were just there.

Anyway, here's Nate outside...

And here's me inside...


And here is said fountain...


And those steps...


And here's a picture of Nate before I got denied entry to the dumb church...

Anyway, I'll leave it at that and move on to Venice.

Sorrento and Some Day Trips

We arrived in Naples quite late at night and we stayed at a small guesthouse in the city. The place looked fairly dirty and run down as we were on the bus from the airport but it was dark and everything was closed. Anyway when we got up in the morning it looked exactly the same. haha. I hear it has its charm though but we weren't sticking around to find out so we jumped on the train to Sorrento where we were staying at a hostel/cooking school called Mami Camilla.

It was a pretty cool place where some people stayed for months to do like a certificate or something. A few of them were already chefs and I think it was part of their apprenticeship. Anyway, all that matters is that we paid to get a 4 course dinner the first night and it was tasty. Oh and they put out all the left over desserts on the breakfast buffet so Nate got to eat dessert for breakfast, which he was fairly happy about.

Also they had the biggest dog in the world and the smallest. The small one is Lola and the big one is Spike. They were pretty cool although Spike didn't really move much, but yes he is alive (I checked).

We decided to head out to Pompeii but we didn't realise how massive it was! It is absolutely huge which maybe I should have known, but I am just a stupid tourist after all. We spent a few hours there but you really could have spent a whole day if that's your thing. Here's a pic of Nate on one of the streets.

And here's a picture of a plaster cast they made of one of the people that was killed. There was also a few animals and a couple of other people too. Basically they found cavities with bones at the bottom so they poured in some plaster and got these. Fairly spooky!

Anyway, it was hot and we were tired so we went to one of the tourist trap kinda places selling fresh juice. I had orange and Nate had a Lemonade which was fairly tasty. And here's me with a mutant lemon.

We went back to the hostel and stopped at a shop on the way to check what Italian treats were available to us. Well, we found this. It's a nutella snack with a drink! And it's a lemon drink too. yuk. But yes, we did buy it and consume it.

Anyway, my boss at a previous job (hi Gillian!) had told me how much she loved the Amalfi coast so we just had to check it out. We jumped on a bus from town and I'd read that it was an amazing bus ride along some really steep cliffs with jaw-dropping views. Well it was, but it was also absolutely vomit-inducing hell as far as my motion sickness goes. haha. We made it to Positano but there was no way I could have gone another 18kms to Amalfi!

Anyway, as much as it sucks that we couldn't see more (a helicopter would have helped) we had lunch and some gelato in Positano. Here's a couple of pics that we took. What a stunning place. I have no idea how people live on these cliffs though. It's hard work getting up all those hills.

So here's one from higher up...

And here's one taken from the beach...

On our last night we met up with some new mates from our Croatia cruise. They were also in Sorrento so we had dinner down by the waterfront. I had the most delicious ravioli ever. It had crab meat inside and was in a tomato/cream/prawn sauce. It was amazing.

Here's a shot of the waterfront at sunset.

Here's one of me and Jenny.

And here's one of James and Nate enjoying some limoncello which is sold in just about every shop in and around Sorrento.

Dubrovnik

Our last stop was Dubrovnik which is a gorgeous town. There is a city wall around the old town so that is the first stop for most tourists. There was 3 massive cruise ships in at the time so Nathanael and I along with several thousand other people decided to head to the old town and do the walk around the wall. Here's a pic from the wall.

After all that hard work we caught up with some of our new mates from the boat and decided to get a 3 litre beer that Nate had seen a sign for earlier. So here's Nate and Greg with the beer thingo. Pretty cool.

After that we went to meet up with the rest of the crew at Buza which is this bar on the side of the cliff. You can have a drink or go for a swim down the bottom. It's pretty awesome and would totally never happen in Australia. Booze and swimming would just mean trouble. Anyway the place is hard to explain and also hard to take photos of so hope you can tell from this picture below. This was as one of the cruise ships passed by.

And here's one i took from the bottom of the cliff as some guys were jumping from the top. I couldn't watch the first guy do it but after he didn't die I figured it was probably ok to take a photo of the next one.

That night we had dinner and went and drank at some bar in town. I'd tell you more but i can't remember! All I know is I ate a hot dog so I must have been drunk. Anyway, apparently it was a good night. On the way back to the boat though we stopped for one last drink near the harbour and got trapped in a lock in. We had no idea what was going on but they basically turned off the lights and locked the door! We weren't keen to stay and they were not impressed that we wanted to leave. She didn't even care that we didn't pay. It was very weird.

So they next day we said goodbye to everyone from the boat and went to find our accommodation which proved fairly impossible. We eventually made it after I asked some Croatian dude in a shop to call them for me. It's difficult because it was a room at someone's house (which is very common in Croatia and a few other places) and it was down some street that wasn't actually a street it was just some stairs that ran between two streets. Crazy!

Anyway, when we got there it had this shower so we were happy again. I think Nate had 3 showers in 24 hours. haha

Caption Competition!!!!

We came across this sign in (surprise, surprise) Dubrovnik. I thought it'd be a nice pic for a caption competition. My first thought: 'Get outta my parking-space!'

Over to you in the comments ;-)

Some Islands in Croatia

Ok, this is going to be a long one, so don't say you weren't warned....I'll do all the islands here and I'll do a separate post for Dubrovnik.

So, we spent 7 days on a boat in Southern Croatia which was lovely and relaxing and probably the longest we have ever not needed to pack our bags and move on. Here's a pic of our boat which did actually have sails but they only got put up once to show off.

And here's a pic that Nate took of the water because he thought it looked like oil and it kinda did.

So the first stop was the island of Korcula which was a cool little place. The highlight though was definitely Massimo's Bar which is pictured below. You got to the top via a ladder and the cocktails were hoisted up on the outside via a kind of dumb waiter on a pulley.

Here's us enjoying our cocktails at the top.

They also had ridiculous amounts of cats. We walked around one corner and I counted 14! Here's Nate with several of them after he shook his plastic bag and they all came running to see what he had.

And here's a little kitten we found. Too cute!

The next day we went to Hvar which is another one of the islands. They had a castle up the top of the hill so we went up there first. Here's a pic from the top. What a view!

We also found some gigantic dandelions on the way there. Here's a pic of Nate with a regular one and with the mutant one. Crazy!

The next day we went to Trstenik which was a tiny place but it had two wineries. The first one is quite well known and it was terrible. Two wines to taste and an awful woman working there. The next was fantastic. A really great guy and his son. The son was bottling and sealing the bottles while we were there. Here's a pic...

The wine was tasty and we decided on a bottle of red. The guy insisted we taste it again before we bought it. No complaints! We bought the red, borrowed some glasses and went and drank it on the beach. When we took back the bottle and the glasses the guy offered us more! I asked Nathanael to take a picture of me pretending to pour wine out of the vat thing and he insisted that I didn't pretend. Again I agreed. This one was the prosek which is like a dessert wine. Delicious.

And here's me and my new best friend.

Here's a pic of the beach at Trstenik. Out of shot to the left is a fair bit of rubbish which I've found is fairly common. Also, you can't see the sea urchins! They are evil and plentiful. Nate just brushed one with his hand and got some spine things stuck in his fingers. Apparently they can be pretty nasty if you step on them. Ouch. You just have to let the spines grow out eventually. Kinda like splinters.

We went to a few other places but they were fairly quiet. There were heaps of cats everywhere though. Here's some watching us eat dinner.

And one place was so boring some of the other guys resorted to skimming stones. And we also visited both supermarkets about 3 times each. haha.

Overall it was really good. We got breakfast and a three course lunch (oh yeah) on the boat everyday. The room had a double bed, cupboard and a surprisingly large bathroom (bigger than one we'd had in a London hotel only a week or so prior). And it was nice to relax and do nothing which probably sounds a bit rich from someone that has been unemployed for ages. haha

Montenegro

After the cab ride to the border we stopped to get our passports stamped and then continued over on foot. Here is Nate somewhere between Albania and Montenegro. Another crazy cab drive followed.

We stayed overnight in Ulcinj which is fairly close to the Albanian border. The next day we jumped on a 7am bus to Kotor. The roads were pretty windy and a little girl on the bus was throwing up most of the way there. We managed to get stuck in yet another traffic jam but thankfully the stunning coastline made up for it all.

When we got in to Kotor we went straight to our hotel in the old town. The light in our bathroom wasn't working so we got upgraded to a much bigger room with the biggest TV ever! We did do some sight seeing but we managed to catch several interesting shows on German/Austrian MTV. The highlights included "Double Shot of Love" which is a show about two bisexual twins looking for love ('nuff said) and "Rock of Love" which is the one with Bret Michaels from Poison, also trying to find love.

Anyway, enough about TV (we don't see one often - not in English anyway). Here's a pic of a church in the old town with the mountain in the background.

Outside of the old town though it was pretty run down with lots of derelict houses etc which was a huge contrast to the old town where we saw some seriously rich looking people that must have just jumped off the cruise ship or one of the many yachts in the port.

Kotor is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site (there must be a few coz I reckon we've been to at least 15!). It has a city wall that is pretty impressive and the views are just amazing.

Here's a picture of Nate as we were climbing the wall.

They also had quite a few cats, but that was nothing on Croatia but I'll get to that in the next post. I think I'm going to do a special set on Flickr which is just "Cats Around the Globe". Here's one of the Montenegrin variety.

Albania

So. Tirana, Albania. What can we say about it? Well, for a start, communism fell in 1991. Albanian communism was so hardcore, they told China it had sold out on its ideals. Prior to 1991, there were no roads into or out of Albania, and there were only about 600 cars in the country, all of them for party officials. Having only been able to have cars for the last 18 years there's still sights like the ones below to be seen in the more rural areas.


They have however very quickly grasped onto commerce and entrepreneurism. Here's a picture from a market we stumbled across. Mmmm tasty, tasty rabbits. Just out of the frame were some turkeys too.

Oh and it's definitely a waste-not-want-not society. Here's a streetside banana stall with the oldest, ripest (blackest) bananas selling for 10 Lek, and graded upards to about 35 Lek, I'm fuzzy on the exchange rate, but 35 Lek is around 50 Australian cents.

You may be wondering about the sights in Tirana, well one of them is in the picture below: Mt. Dajti, complete with Austrian and Swiss designed/built cable car.. There's a few other day trips to historic towns etc. but y'all've seen castles before.

Of course, why go all the way out of the city, when right in the centre of town you can take a toy electric car, a mini-quadbike or a mini-motorbike for a spin around an unfenced, public square?? Oh the thrill of seeing the adolescent employees hurtling around on the two right wheels (who needs the let ones anyway?) of a mini-quadbike, inches from pedestrians.


Oh, and on the way to Montenegro in a taxi, who did we see? Mr. Ed!!! So of course we pulled over for an autograph. It'll be up on e-Bay soon, keep an eye out for it.

There's no way to put up enough photos here to really capture the wonderfulness of Albania. It's a crazy place, but only because it's as far as we could see, it's a country that is so rapidly moving forward. There's a wonderful sense of optimism about all the little enterprising street-vendors. We constantly compare it to Mongolia. There's plenty of poverty, but it's balanced with hope. I'd love to know what it's going to be like in ten years.