MILANO

Originally, we were planning spend 3 nights in Florence and 3 nights in Milan, but after having several people wrinkle their noses when we said we were visiting the great fashion capital, and hearing glowing reports of Florence from all sides (except from a couple of guys who told us that they hated the city but had a fabulous time there and insisted that this made total sense), we changed our plans. I know, I know, how amazingly spontaneous of us.

So we only spent 2 nights in Milan, ie one full day. Our hostel was a bit out in the sticks (stix?) as choice is quite limited and relatively expensive in Milan. We emerged from the Metro station on Sunday evening and were just looking around for some street signs when a guy came up to us and said "are you looking for the hostel?" I guess that's what happens when you stand by a station wearing 20kg backpacks, desperately peering around and generally looking exhausted. The guy turned out to be also staying at our hostel, and had apparently spent hours trying to find the hostel that morning, so we were fairly grateful for his guidance.

We spent that evening at the hostel watching Titanic in Italian and eating surprisingly good supermarket microwaveables and salad out of the bag, until one of the reception guys came up to us and said 'you can't eat salad like that' and although I answered fairly childishly 'um, pretty sure I already am', he went off and came back with plates, cutlery, olive oil, salt and pepper. We were initially quite grateful if a little creeped out (no one else seemed to be getting the same treatment). However, when we asked him what we should do with them, he told us to wash them and give them back to him. After some confusion as to where we were supposed to do this (there was no kitchen accessible to us), we discovered that he meant us to do this in the bathroom, using hand soap and paper towels. I found this quite hilarious but Lucy was distressed, and at various points over the next couple of days kept bursting out "I can't believe we ate off handwash plates!!"

The next day we headed into town for some touristy times. First we tried to enter the cathedral, but were told that our skirts were too short. Then we went to the tourist information centre, where an extremely unhelpful woman told gave us a map, told us that there were no English movies on til October, and also that the Last Supper was held in a museum that is closed on Mondays and you have to book an appointment to see it 2-3 months in advance. How were we supposed to know that? However, as well as managing to make us feel like complete morons she did tell us where to go to use the internet, so we went and looked up some stuff included cinemas that show movies in VO.

We had a look at the map that she gave us had lots of information, including all the museums and their opening hours. This is when we found out that just about every museum in Milan is closed on Mondays. It was quite hilarious. Well done us. Eventually we found some castle, and had a look round there, and sat in the gardens eating our lunch pilfered from the free hostel breakfast (take that, handwash weirdo). Then we went and checked out the shops (obviously a must-do in Milan). We wandered round in a department store pretending we could afford Jimmy Choos and Dior key chains. At one point we accidently witnessed a shop assistant flagrantly checking himself out in the mirror - he got really embarrassed, offered us some perfume and sprayed it all over my hand.

We bought some tights so we could go to the cathedral. It was so worth it; it is gorgeous. Afterwards we climbed up to the Duomo, which was very different from Florence and Rome, and involved wandering around the beautiful rooftop taking endless pictures of the architechture and Jesus, obvs.

We had been craving going to the movies for a while, and had decided that it would be a good activity for our last night together (we didn't think the Milan nightlife would have many Monday offerings). After striking out a couple of times, we found a cinema that was showing Pelham 123 in VO - not our first choice, but it would do. We came back at 8, but after sitting through the ads, the film was, of course, in Italian. The woman had given us the wrong time. It was LAME LAME LAME and very disappointing for our last evening. We got our money back and just headed back to the hostel.

The next morning we got up early and headed back to the train station where I boarded the train for Montpellier take 2 and Lucy headed for Zurich. It was the first time in 66 days that we had been apart for more than a few hours. I don't know about Lu, but I had a long and boring train day accompanied by much nervous stuttering when anyone spoke to me in French or Italian. The grief is starting to wear off, and I will see her in Edinburgh in a couple of weeks, so await the blog entry with bated breath!

Thanks for reading guys, sorry for the inconsistency of our posting and for boring you with endless details of our travels!

Firennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnze

So we headed to Florence on Wednesday 23rd, with Silvia still in tow as she just happened to have booked the same hostel as us for the same day. We checked in to find that our one roommate had taken all four lockers, spreading his stuff out on the lower shelves, which we decided was quite weird and selfish. Our hostel had 2 bars, a pool, a sauna and a turkish bath, so me and Silvia spent the afternoon moving from pool to sauna and back again. We went a little crazy that night when Lucy went to a family friend's for dinner. We were quite tipsy when our roommate came home and immediately asked 'am I in the right room?'. He was, unfortunately, a quadraplegic, which explained his strange locker use. He was a little surprised to find two hysterical girls in his room but took it in his stride and spent the best part of the next hour and a half trying to convert us. He really couldn't have picked two more hopeless cases than us, and I have to say that he didn't make any headway, but it didn't seem to bother him.

The next day we all woke up a little ill (as is the way with share rooms) so had a quiet one. Lucy and I went to Santa Croce, which is gorgeous and holds the tombs of Dante, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Donatello and Galileo. I know, pretty crazy. We saw some boys in the garden who were sketching and painting watercolours, which we thought was cute until one of them started beat boxing and we had to leave.

The next morning, due to the fact that wine was unfortunately only €5 a bottle in the bar upstairs, we woke up feeling even worse. Our sight-seeing cause seemed hopeless, but we did eventually make it to Pisa in the afternoon, which was good because it involved us sitting on a train, then lying on the grass in front of the Leaning Tower, taking a few pictures and then sitting on a train again.

That night we decided on an early one, but unfortunately our roommate decided otherwise. He actually watched YouTube videos til like 4 in the morning. I was so mad. I know he's in a wheelchair, but seriously, when you're desperate for sleep and the guy in the bunk below you is watching an old performance of Smells Like Teen Spirit at 3am, you don't care if he's disabled or not.

The next day we put on our bravest sight-seeing faces and promised ourselves we would be productive. And productive we were. Dad had insisted that I go to see the cells of Fra Angelico, which he said were in Piazza San Marco, so we went there, found a random museum and asked the lady. Yes, she said, the cells are just upstairs, and entry is free today. It was a nice moment. The cells were really cool, despite the fact that there were about 15 frescoes showing the cruxifiction, and if there is one thing to be said about Fra Angelico, it's that he likes his blood spurty.

Next we went to the Duomo and climbed the several hundred stairs to the top to see the amazing view, and then visited the cathedral below.

Then we went to the Gallerie Accademia to see David. My god, people, he is amazing. Surpassed my wildest dreams. It is absolutely unbelieveable that Michelangelo managed to carve him out of a random 5m high abandoned piece of marble he found in a church yard in 1501. Crazy crazy stuff.

That evening, we went to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which offers another amazing view over the city and river. We spent a lovely evening listening to a group buskers, who managed to sound strangely like Muzac - how did they accomplish this? Nobody knows.

So the next morning we were off again to Milano, and Slutvia was off to Venice.

Just before I leave off this entry, we'd like to include a few quotes from Silvia, aka Slutvia. We had to edit them quite a bit, as some were not entirely appropriate:

F: just watch out for the guy who runs the hostel in Venice. he can get a bit creepy.
slutvia: oh. is he cute?
F: ummmmm
slutvia: is he white?
F: no. he's from iran.
slutvia: uh-oh. i have a soft spot for... people with nuclear weapons.

slutvia: what is anti-pasta?

L: what are you doing in here?
S: i can't find my keys.
L: ok we'll find them.
pause
S: my keys!
L: silvia those are my keys.
S: oh.
pause
S: my keys!!!!!!!!
L: silvia those are my keys.
S: oh yeah. sorry.
pause
S: MY KEYS!
L: silvia. my keys. again.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading, and I'm sorry for quite probably boring you.

xxx

bella roma

So we arrived in Bari after an endless journey, to find that, unlike in Patras, the port was in the middle of nowhere. So, accompanied by various other backpackers, we wandered around looking for buses, and found a shuttle, that apparently went from Bari to the port, but not the other way round. Obviously, this made a lot of sense. Eventually a taxi driver offered to take us into town for €2 each. There were seven of us, and although it was an eight seater, getting everyone in including our bags was quite the mission. Let's just say that by the end of that short journey we were all fast friends. We spent the rest of the morning together waiting for our train, camped out on a patch of grass near the station, and by the time we hopped on the train that afternoon, we had adopted Silvia, an 18 year old from San Fran travelling alone. For those who don't know, travelling at that age for Americans is a massive deal, as none of them travel between school and college. So we were quite impressed. She followed us to our hostel in Rome, and we didn't manage to shake her til we left Florence this morning. Actually she was a great third wheel to have around, not freaked out by our sense of humour and a lot of fun.

We took a walk around Rome that evening, taking in the Trevi Fountain, Pantheon and Colosseum. It was gorgeous at night. We saw a massive drunken crew parading along outside the Colosseum which we took to be the pub crawl, and all agreed that none of us wanted to do that. Too touristy, too anonymous, too loutish. Needless to say, 24 hours later, we were on the pub crawl.

The next morning we checked out the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica, which was quite beautiful, before heading back to the Colosseum.

We joined some guided tour, paying the extra cash to skip the queue and to absorb a bit of extra info. It was actually really good value, as the tour guide was knowledgeable and kept the information coming thick and fast. Also, we got some hilarious pics with a centurion, which are of course priceless. We got a free tour of the Roman Forum thrown in, which we went on later that afternoon. It was equally interesting, and given by a guy who we later found out was an ex-school teacher, which explained why he kept saying 'now who knows what this is?' even though everybody was obviously clueless. He told us that he'd been head-hunted for the job. I didn't know teachers were head-hunted. No offence.

Anyway that night we decided to sacrifice a whole €20 to the god of alcohol. We spent an hour drinking for 'free' and the rest of the night, as they say, is history.

There were two guys dressed as Wally for some reason (as in Where's Wally) and I will say that Silvia's status on fb the next morning was 'Silvia wandered around Rome last night barefoot and with no panties, and I'm SURE the wind was blowing'. She is quite a character.

The next day we were feeling a little less up to charging around the city, but we did head back to the Pantheon to take a look inside, which was lovely, even though the weather left a little to be desired.

We then sat down to lunch at a nearby restaurant, where our table was attended by, I have to say, the worst waiter in the world. For him, setting our places consisted of dumping the cutlery and napkins in a pile in front of us. He couldn't understand what we were saying, my meal arrived 15 minutes later than Silvia and Lucy's, and an umbrella fell down onto the woman at the table next to us, who somewhat mysteriously (and, I have to say, quite humourously), started to cry. At the end of the meal, when we asked for the bill, the waiter spent waaaaaaaay too long constantly hilariously jerking it out of Silvia's reach so she literally put her hand out for it like 20 times. We then realised that he had given us the wrong bill, and unfortunately when we pointed this out, his boss heard, and looked furious. All through this, our waiter smiled and laughed like he was having the time of his life, and I must admit that we laughed with him, admittedly a little hysterically. His name, it turned out, was Silvio. Silvia later asked 'what was that guy's name again? Silvano?'. I know, I know, she can't even remember her own name.

The next day we headed to the Vatican. Apparently Monday is the busiest day, so good choice us. We paid a lot of money for a guided tour, which, although the organisation was atrocious, turned out to be quite informative. We went through all the important pieces in the Museo and the Old Papal Apartments, and ended up in the Sistine Chapel. Then we went to the Basilica and climbed the Cupola, which was well worth the €5 and 500-odd steps, as the view was amazing and the sloping staircases were extremely entertaining.

The next day I unfortunately spent most of the day inside an internet cafe doing a scholarship application, which was less than fun but necessary. Lucy tells me she spent the day wandering, seeing various sites without really meaning to.

athenaxosantorini

Hokay so we flew to Athens from Slov and arrived on Monday 6th October... I think. We eventually got to our hostel where the guy who checked us in advised us to go to the Rooftop bar for Happy Hour, because there were €1 beers and it was going to be "F-U-N". So we headed up to the bar to find that it looked out over the Acropolis, which was all crazy lit up and stuff. Truly amazing view.

I know it's been said before but I will say it again - I hate French keyboards they are stupid and illogical and it takes me at least twice as long to type ANYTHING.

Anyway, back to Athens... we quickly acquired a krew at the bar and furiously drank through Happy Hour only to discover that beers outside of Happy Hour were only 50 cents dearer. Our hostel ran a free pub crawl every night so we of course joined that, having paid €12 for the same thing in other places. It was a crazy fun night dominated by a hilarious (in an at not with way) pair of brothers from the UK who did pull-ups on a tree Melty style.

The next day we went to the Acropolis which was beautiful and wonderous in every way. We had great photo taking weather too, even if it was a bit hot to be wandering around in the full sun for hours. That night we went on the pub crawl again and were treated to the very bizarre story-telling techniques of a Canadian guy, who told us his very own 'Romeo and Juliet' story IN THIRD PERSON. It took him about an hour to tell us because he paused to stare at each of us in turn about once every three words while we tried not to laugh:

"Two people....... they meet....... they play a season of soccer together....... two years later...... they meet again......they go to a movie together......"
Needless to say, it was quite funny and ended with a surprise tragedy that had us not quite feeling kathartic but instead stifling inappropriate laughter.

The next day we went on a walking tour for a couple of hours. We got to experience the dancey thing that the guards outside the parliament do every hour on the half-hour. Easily the best thing I saw in Greece, except perhaps the Acropolis. Will try to upload the video. Later we checked out the flea markets and went to both the Roman and Greek ancient agoras; which were suitably ruin-y and interesting, and then on to the Acropolis Museum. The museum is really new, so as a publicity thing it only costs €1 to get in. It had all the frescoes and statues and stuff that's been taken down from the Acropolis in order to better preserve and display them, and it was all really light and spatious, not crowded and overwhelming like some of the older museums are. Unfortunately, the 'virtual museum' was closed. Needless to say this greatly disappointed us, as we are always on the lookout for novelty.

We went to HH again at the roof bar that night with our new Finnish friend Janita, where we quickly made friends with some hilarious Swedish boys and I had an incredibly uncomfortable conversation with a socially inept Nepalese man, but unfortunately we had to sit out the pub crawl, as we were getting up at 5.30 the next morning for our 7 hour (!) ferry to Naxos.

We arrived in Naxos that afternoon and after following Jen's extremely detailed instructions, made it up the hill to the apartment. The apartment is on the edge of a cliff and the view is amazing. If you look one way, you see the town centre and the Temple of Apollo (which you can just see in this photo), and if you look the other way you see up the coast towards the mountains.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and wondering whether Claire and Campbell would make it from their flight which arrived at 3.45pm to the ferry, which left less than 2 hours later. We were pretty sure they wouldn't, so were pleased when we called Claire who told us they had (just) made it. So at quarter to midnight, we went back down the hill to pick them up from the port and catch up on the many weeks we had been apart.

The next day passed in a pretty similar way, with most of our time spent lying around the house variously reading, talking, sleeping and eating (we went through a LOT of bread in our 5 days in Naxos...). In the evening, we played middle cup and Claire and Campbell's newfound 'international rules', which included the no-name rule, resulted in numerous new nicknames for Campbell including Pambly-Wambly and Las Camblas.

On Friday, the weather was a bit clearer so we decided to go to the nearest beach, despite the fact that we didn't know where it was. We walked down the hill towards town, along the somewhat appropriately named Grotta beach which was covered in garbage, to the little closed of bay near the port, where Fran and Cambles were brave enough to go in.

That evening, we went down to Naxos to check out the nightlife and experience happy hour (technically, happy half-day as it ran from 2pm til 2am) at one of the local bars.

The next morning, we went and hired quads and drove to Agios Prokopios, a beach Jen recommended. The weather was finally properly sunny and not too windy, and the beach was gorgeous. After several delightful hours passed lying on the beach and occassionally going for a swim, Fran and Pambles decided to go explore on the quads.

They went past the mountains, almost the whole way to the other side of the island.

Claire and I decided to head home, but managed to get lost and end up first at the base of the mountains, then on some neverending road that went through farms and smelt awful, then on a main road that we realised after several minutes led us back towards the mountains. Let's just say, we were relieved when we got back to the apartment.

We had a movie night with pizza and brownies and we watched a truly delightful Nicholas Cage film called ConAir which was Pambles' favourite movie when he was younger and I completely understand why. It was hilarious.

The next day we headed back to Prokopios, but the weather was slightly less delightful so we didn't stay for as long and we split up to explore the island again.

Franny and Pambly-wambles made it to the center of the island and along the coast.

Claire and I tried to find a way to the mountains in the centre, but we got lost (again) and decided to go to one of the beaches instead and then we got lost (again again) and somehow ended up on a private road where we kept on getitng confused looks from locals who were (reasonably) completely confused as to why we were there. Then we found two gorgeous beaches which we hadn't known about, and somehow found ourselves somewhere we recognised so we headed up the coast where we were able to look back towards the port and our apartment which was lovely.

The next morning, after removing all traces that we had ever been there, we left the apartment to catch a ferry to Santorini. The view coming into Santorini was beautiful and we checked in to our hostel and lay around the pool and loved life. Fran and Pambly went to the beach across the road which apparently consists of sand when you first walk into the water and then the sand suddenly becomes a vast, slippery rock which means you wobble slightly whenever you move.

We went out to explore the nightlife near our hostel and it wasn't too exciting, but we did get a few cheap cocktails and take many amusing photos

The next day, we caught a bus to Fira and in just a few hours, we had a look in the church, walked around the stores there, got some photos of the amazing view and complained about how none of the buildings had blue roofs (we did see a few, don't worry).

After our whirlwind 24 hours in Santorini, we got back on the ferry to Athens and the next morning we left the next morning to catch a train (and an unexpected bus) to Patras to catch our ferry to Bari. 30-something hours of almost-non-stop travel: YUM.

we're in sLOVEnia

HI GUYS!

We're back to tell you about Slovenia! Basically, we sat on various trains all day to get from Prague to Ljubljana. We finally hopped off the last train and followed the other travellers. Frances had directed us to wait under the clock outside the entrance, so when we saw a clock hanging down, we plonked ourselves on the ground to wait. This waiting went on for longer than we had initially expected, as we had unwittingly gone out the wrong entrance and sat down under the wrong clock. Who knew that life could be so difficult? Well, now we do, and now so do you. That can be your thought for the day. Anyway, after a while Lucy called John and he seemed surprised that Frances hadn't arrived yet. "She'll be there any minute," he said. "She's with a friend." Little did he know how much impact that simple statement would have. After another little while, I said to Lucy, 'wouldn't it be funny if they paged you over the loudspeakers?'. She agreed that this would, in fact, be quite humourous, but was unlikely.

After another small while, Lucy woke me from my reverie to say 'they're saying my name!!!!!!' and surely enough, when I listened closely, I could hear a voice saying 'Looooooooooishee Bowers. Mrs Loooooooooooishee Bowers. You must come...' Unfortunately the message at this point became interminable, so we ran towards the source of the sound. As we hurried, a man lurched out of the shadows, clutching a cigarette and slurring various Slovenian words at me. When I ignored him, he grabbed my arm, and, being no ordinary street assailant, his grip was more firm than I expected, and it took quite an effort to shake him off, which I did at a run. We realised that the disembodied voice was directing us towards platform 4, so we ran up there, but it was quite deserted. However, when we started back towards the stairs, a woman appeared at the bottom of them, and Lucy said 'That's Frances.' She was soon joined by a station guard, and moments later, by the same man who had grabbed me. The three all cried their relief and threw their arms in the air in a gesture that clearly said 'there you are. Thank god you are safe'. A series of thoughts now went through my mind. I realised that the man must have, in fact, been Frances' friend that John had mentioned on the phone, and that he had been grabbing me to get my attention, as he spoke no English. You can imagine my embarrassment. I had literally thrown Frances' friend off me and run away, in the assumption that he was like all the other creepy men we had thus far encountered in Europe. So while Lucy greeted Frances and they and the station guard chattered hysterically about how ridiculous the whole misunderstanding had been, I clutched at the man's forearm and earnestly offered my deepest apologies. Until, a moment later, Frances touched my arm and gently led me away from the hobo, with a look on her face that clearly showed that she was of the opinion that Lucy's friend was perhaps, not quite all there. Again, realisation dawned. This time, the correct realisation.

"Oh." I said. "that's not your friend. So he IS a creepy old man."

We literally (or littely) laughed the whole way home in the car. Admittedly Frances and Mija (the real Frances' friend) did not seem to find it as funny as we did, but we thoroughly enjoyed recreating the hobo's hand gestures and apparent relief as he had appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Lucy also told me of her confusion as to why I had started touching his arm and apologising, as she had seen him pulling up his trousers as he approached the bottom of the stairs, something which I, unfortunately, had missed. It could have saved me a lot of embarrassment, but also deprived us of much hilarity.

Now that I have told that story, over to Lucy. I felt it was mine to tell.

So we arrived at John and Frances', ready for bed to be asked what we wanted to eat for supper. Thus began Frances' 5 day long mission of feeding all day every day, cooking any dish we mentioned liking in passing and generally stuffing us with enough food to feed an army. Basically, it was bliss.

In the morning, Franny slept in, causing John to ask every now and then whether I thought she was still alive. When she woke up we explored the garden together, eating fresh raspberries and strawberries and admiring the vegetable patch, grapes and the 80 year old plum tree. In the afternoon, we went for a drive with Frances and her friend, Mija. Menges, where John and Frances live, is surrounded by mountains and, as you can see, the scenery is pretty amazing. Afterwards, we went to the Frances and Mija's favourite ice-cream parlour where our incredible language skills (we said 'thank you' in Slovenian) earnt us both a marriage proposal from one of the employees. We thought it was hilarious, but Frances was more wary. When I wanted to go to the bathroom, she told me I should wait because he 'might want to go in with you'.

The next morning, we caught the Kam Bus into Ljubljana. We walked around town, past the Franciscan Church and St Nicholas' Basilica (both of which were mysteriously closed), over the Three Bridges and Dragon Bridge and through a little market in the Old Town Center. We caught a little train up to Ljubljana castle which beautiful. There was a cute little church and towers with amazing views over the city, but the highlight for me was the 'Virtual Museum'. We were enthusiastic from the offset, exclaiming 'this is already hilarious!' when the man handed us our 3D glasses. He seemed less excited, asking us if we were joking and ensuring us that it wasn't that great.

The 'Virtual Museum' is basically a summary of Ljubljana's history, moving quickly through the years due to a tendancy to leave large gaps (skipping from 318 to 1200, for example). The reason it was called a 'Virtual Museum' was never really made clear as although we had to wear 3D glasses, the quality of the technology could best be described as... lacklustre. The film concluded with a hilarious montage of candid, Ljubljana-based moments involving a young man with hilarious reflective sunglasses.



On Saturday morning, after we were lucky enough to have Luke's favourite treat breakfast- a donut, we drove to Bled, which is about an hour away from Menges near the Austrian border. The town is situated on a lake and it is absolutely beautiful. As we drove around looking for a park, we discovered that (by huge and hilarious coincidence) we had come to Bled on the very day of some triathlon. Although this meant that we had to take a slightly longer route to find a park, the amusment we got while walking around the lake was well worth it. At first, we assumed the triathlon was a small, local one. After a several older runners passed us while we walked around the lake, we decided it must be a Master's race, but eventually when a pack of teenage boys ran past us we realised it was some kind of international event (we saw runners from Germany, Slovenia, Austria...). Seeing the looks on their faces made me glad I am not an aspiring triathlete, especially when the Ukrainian coach started running alongside his athlete yelling at him (we thought he was yelling at us, and quickly moved off the road onto the grass). The course doubled back on itself, so we got to see the runners passing us having just started the leg and then again at the end of the race. The road was blocked by the finish line, so we went around the side behind some marquees and suddenly found ourself surrounded by half naked boys who had finished the race and were stuffing themselves with food (one delightfully weedy one literally bit off more watermelon than he could chew and had a huge coughing fit).

After we made it the whole way around, we met John and Frances at a restaraunt that sells the best of Bled's famous cream cakes. Apparently, they sell 40 000 a day and I can certainly see why, because it was pretty delicious.

We wanted to go for THE walk with John on Sunday morning, but the rain the night before meant that it was to muddy so instead, John drove us to Trzin to see a castle and we went for a little walk in the forest nearby. In the afternoon, Mija drove us over the mountains we saw on the first day. We saw an old-fashioned, water powered flour mill, and visited Agatha, an old lady who lives on her own in an old house up on the mountain and Mija's daughter, both of whom fed us (it seems you cannot enter a house without eating in Slovenia. Not that that is a bad thing...).

All in all, we had a lovely time in Slovenia. We ate enough delicious food and got enough sleep to make up for at least some of the hostel beds and breakfasts we'd experienced so far.

Na svidnje!

Lucy and Franny xx

Pra-hahahahaha

Hi rabid readers!

We seem to be a little bit behind once again so I guess it's catch up time! When we left you we were boarding the couchette. Exciting times for all involved. Basically, us. And other people, who quite probably found it substantially less exciting than we did. The staff, for instance. We had a lovely encounter with one man who came into our room when we were fast asleep and shouted "COFFEE TEA COFFEE TEA COFFEE TEA" in quite an aggressive fashion at Lucy. I was out of harm's way on the top bunk, so got away unscathed. I could hear Lucy's whimpers from below as she answered "both" with some confusion. It was great. After eating our DELICIOUS breakfast (and a confusing moment when Lucy tried to ask the man for more jam despite not knowing the word for jam...) and deciding that travelling by couchette was kind of like being at a sleep-over, we arrived in Wien. It was really really cool, possibly our favourite city so far. The tram from West Station to South Station was a highlight, as was our 10 minute wait on the train platform. We are, as you can see, a veritable mine of information about Wien tourist sites.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, we got on our train to Praha and arrived that evening. We were somewhat exhausted (as we seemed to be for our entire time in Prague) and wandered around aimlessly, ending up in a somewhat surreal and slightly awful mall. We then attempted to find the Petrin Mirror Maze, the most hilarious-sounding of the sites listed in our Prague Card guide book. Basically, what we ended up doing instead was walking directly past the entrance and then striding through the pitch-black gardens at quite a pace, clutching onto each other and constantly glancing around for predators. We happened upon Prague Castle, which was surprising (but in a good way, obviously). It was really gorgeous lit up.

The next morning, we started early at the Nash Muse which is full of stuffed animals including an enormous mammoth and a series of rooms filled with minerals, some of which had to be kept in the dark so their cases had flaps to be carefully replaced after viewing. My personal fave part was the archaelogical section where they had evidence of earliest human civilisation. It seemed that they had various items of identical looking earthenware labelled things like "children's toys" and "evidence of cult". However, the best part of the morning was when Lucy pointed to a series of giant shells and said "are those elephant legs?". (Hi. This is Lucy. In my (not very strong) defence, they looked vaguely like they might have been kind of elephanty leg looking... a bit)

Then we headed back to Prague Castle. We wandered around there for a while, seeing the numerous attractions WITHIN the castle (Golden Lane, Cathedral, Old Prague Castle, ....) We witnessed the site of The Great Defenestration of 1617 (the window was closed, presumably to avoid a reoccurance), went to Golden Lane (where you have to pay to get in, despite the fact that it is made up purely of gift shops) and visited the cathedral, convent and basilica.



We walked over Charles' Bridge (see photo of me sympathising with the tortured souls), viewing the various towers and climbing St Nicholas' Bell Tower for a panoramic view of the city. We went back up to the Petrin Mirror Maze, successfully finding it this time due to the fact that it was still light. Although the actual maze left something to be desired (it was more of just a twisting corridor lined with mirrors, the room with crazy mirrors gave us 30 of the most hilarious minutes of our lives. Oh my god those mirrors were so ridiculously funny. I can honestly now die happy.

The next day we headed out to some random modern art museum we found in our Prague book called Veletrzni Palace. It turned out to be extremely extensive and fascinating. We had a great time on the top floor, which was modern Czech sculpture, and mostly consisted of things like a toaster placed on a chair. I have to say this experience fuelled my hatred of artworks called 'untitled'. I mean, why? Why is it untitled? I need some sort of explanation as to why this toaster is art, please.

Next we headed to, in Lucy's words, 'the only attraction in the Prague Book which seemed to compete with the PMMs for the LOLs' - the chocolate museum. The description called to us: 'we heartily invite you to the good-temper factory' - whatever the hell that means. I suppose our expectations of the place could only lead to disappointment. Unfortunately, I think anyone, with any sort of expectation, even no expectation at all, would have been disappointed with this place. If you even expected just one measly square of chocolate, you would have been disappointed. The only taste we got was licked off the end of paintbrushes. I kid you not. OK, Lucy didn't lick the paintbrush, but I did. Basically there was a room where you got to paint with chocolate, which I have to say was pretty cool and pretty fun, even if the 'paint' was a little congealed. However, the remainder of the museum consisted of a single room filled with the 'artworks' of the genius who came up with the idea of painting with chocolate (in my opinion, it's a bit of a waste of chocolate, but never mind). There was also a 'history of chocolate', which told us merely how chocolate was made and included, for some mysterious reason, a display case which contained two rabbits and a single cabbage. At the end we asked for our free chocolate sample, and the lady gave us a cocoa bean. Guys, trust me, these are not nice. It left a taste in my mouth more bitter than the disappointment. Unfortunately, me being the brave sampler, I told Lucy that it was 'not too bad' just before it turned disgusting and I wanted to die. Never mind.


Anyway, for this and various other reasons we left Prague the next morning with fond memories, a permanent source of LOLs and a (slightly skewed) view that the Czech people are a bit wacky. Sorry Maria.


Signing out, Franny and Lucy