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Venice

September 13th, 2010 1 comment

View from the water bus through Venice, Italy

We made it across the Alps! Moreover, we made it one piece, which is especially surprising as pretty much every Italian that owns a motor vehicle seems out to kill us! Between the crazy overtaking bus and the manic tractor drivers I am pretty sure that my remaining hair is now all grey. Luckily I had the pleasure of driving through Austrian Alpine passes and lanes before hitting the main roads to the South, rather than the Italian leg.

The drive through Austria was simply stunning, even the inclement weather didn’t dampen (excuse the pun, but George has infected us all) the experience. We had one hairy moment when about half way up a 3km climb (1 in 7 or 15% gradient) we got stuck behind a coach. There is something very scary about doing 30mph in 2nd gear at 4000rpm.

Boats instead of cars is the order of the day!

The technical driving didn’t finish there either. I needed to get back down the hill too!

After all the shenanigans en route, it was with a great relief that we crossed the causeway into Venice and parked up for the night. Following a 40min water bus ride along the grand canal we stepped onto Venice at the Piazza di San Marco. We then promptly got lost!

I blame Kieran, but getting lost in Venice is so easy to do. There is no obvious frame of reference for a start, followed by the labrynthine nature of the city, which means that everywhere looks the same.

A quick call to the hotel ended our walkabout, as we managed to find our way following their directions.

Norm in Venice, baby!

At this stage it’s probably worth mentioning that I am blogging from my Blackberry as I had a minor mishap with my hand luggage, i.e. I spilled a drink all over it, or rather my drink burst all over the inside. This has made all my electronic gear, including my laptop, very soggy. It also destroyed most of my postcards and presents too!

I am currently trying to dry most of it out, so hopefully it will all be fine for tomorrow. So sorry about the lack of pics and links.

Venice itself is amazing. My favourite stop so far. The city is just so enchanting it’s unbelievable. We saw quite a lot from the water bus along the grand canal, but I really like the city in the evening. Wandering about the shops and alleyways is pure magic. Definitely made up for the fact that Italians all sleep from 12-3 everyday!!

If my laptop works tomorrow I will add some pics to today’s post and yesterday’s post for your viewing pleasure. Please keep your comments coming as it really is great to know that people are sharing in the trip.

Salzburg

September 12th, 2010 No comments

Taking a break from the glorious architecture of Salzburg, Austria

Today was a stunning day. The drive from Munich to Salzburg via the back roads and country lanes was by far the most glorious so far. We had fantastic weather, amazing sunshine the entire route, as well as some cracking German roads which meant we made fairly good time after a minor delay in Munich.

Following a proper continental breakfast in the hotel, we headed South from Munich towards the Austrian border. The road was flanked by corn fields and houses that would not have looked out of place on the set of The Sound of Music. The roads were nice and twisty, without feeling too dangerous and virtually no ravines for us to fall into.

First, and only, serious injury of the trip. George managed to cut his finger on his razor blade!

The last hour of the drive was dominated by the looming Alps and I have decided that I would really love to spend some time living in the part of the world.

We arrived in Salzburg at around 4pm and pulled up to our Gasthof which is truly fantastic. It is so traditionally Alpine that I half expect to see Heidi walk round the corner at any second.

Salzburg is a beautiful city, the Aldstadt (old town) in particular. Very classical in its architecture, there is a stunning building everywhere you look from the domineering Schloss overlooking the main squares, the prince’s residence that stands in the main square to the many statues that are dotted about the various platzes and passage ways.

Yummy. Pint of Dublin's finest.

I was intially concerned about our visit here as everywhere we encountered seemed very closed. It appears that the Austrians take the sabbath very seriously. Once we made it to the very centre of the old town we found a few nice cafes and bars open for us to wander around.

We stopped at a little cafe for some home made lasagne before hitting the local Irish bar for a well earned pint of Dublin’s finest. For a beer that travelled such a long way, it tasted pretty damned good!

Tomorrow is going to be a fantastic day, we have a drive through the Alps to Venice in Italy. The weather forecast is not great, but I’m hoping it won’t spoil the views.

As always, you can follow my updates on my blog, via Twitter or live on Kieran’s website.

Residenzplatz in Salzburg, Austria

Munich

September 11th, 2010 1 comment

Chris driving along the autobahn in Germany

Today’s post is going to be quite short as we only sourced internet a short while ago and it has been a really long day. We left Luxembourg about 9.30 this morning and headed straight for the motorway. We decided to burn through the best part of 300km on the autobahn to make sure we had plenty of time to meander through the Bayern region of Germany just north of Munich.

Motorway driving, whilst not too difficult physically is pretty tough on the concentration levels, especially given that drivers on the continent seem not to be able to see our car and just pull out in front of it all the time. This meant that we were all pretty tired by the time we stopped for lunch in the town of Gunzenhausen (best place name so far in my opinion). I took the last leg of the journey, driving the 100km or so from Gunzenhausen to Munich.

Me, sat in the back enjoying the views across Germany

We arrived in Munich at about 6pm and headed straight into the city (about a 25 minute walk from our hotel) to the Hofbrauhaus where we enjoyed some traditional Bayern food and drink. I went for Brockwurst (smoked sausage) and German potato salad, George went for Wienerwurst (Viennese sausages), Chris went for Chicken and Kieran had some roast pork. Kieran also washed his down with a stein of lager (a full litre no less).

Tomorrow is Austria and Salzburg, which is only a couple of hours away from Munich, where we plan to chill out and get lost amongst the buildings and people. I am really looking forward to our first short drive and our traditional Gasthof!

Keep following my Twitter feed or our real time progress and keep commenting on my posts as it really does make the late nights worth while!

First batch of postcards should leave tomorrow or Monday, so for those that ordered them you should get them in a week or so.

Luxembourg

September 10th, 2010 4 comments

Rack of ribs I ate in Amsterdam, Holland

Following the relative peace and calm of day one of our trip to Europe, where I had time to blog about my day, have a nap and change my shirt before going out for dinner, today has been rather more busy. After consuming a rather charming full English breakfast for a modest fee, we left the sights and sounds of Amsterdam behind us and hit the road for day two of out trip.

It is probably worth mentioning here that I was the designated driver to kick start today’s proceedings, which meant navigating us through the streets of inner city Amsterdam and getting us safe and sound onto the motorway heading for Eindhoven. I have never driven in Europe in my life, never mind city centre driving, so it was all a bit of an experience. Luckily, Kieran has a VW Golf which is very similar to my old polo so I picked up the driving mechanics pretty quickly. The difficult bit wasn’t the driving on the right, or the fact the car was pretty much dead weight with all the gear we had packed in, but the fact I just couldn’t get my lane positioning right due to the driving position relative to the other road users. It took me the few kilometres of Amsterdam’s arterial routes to really get to grips with and then perhaps the next twenty or so kilometres of the motorway to put that into practice. However, after a little over an hour after setting off, I reckon I have the hang of this whole driving thing again. Although, we won’t mention the few near misses we encountered when negotiating a roundabout in Luxembourg!

Bar Cat, found on a bar on a coffee shop in Amsterdam, Holland

The drive to Eindhoven was pretty unremarkable in all fairness, although we knew that from the outset as we had consciously decided to try and make it pretty much to Belgium on the motorway then head off the beaten track for the rest of the day.

My driving stint ended a few kilometres north of Eindhoven when I swapped with Chris after filling the tank. Chris then took us into Belgium (where we posed for the obligatory photo) and through the Flemish region, again fairly uneventfully, until we hit the French region around Huy. We lunched at a Belgian supermarket before setting off again towards Luxembourg.

Arty picture I took in Luxembourg, Luxembourg

It was my turn again to drive when we set the sat-nav to Bastogne and headed for the national park. We had a few navigational hiccups involving filter lanes, 4-leaf clover junctions and an off piste search for a bathroom, but we made it to the Belgian/Luxembourg border pretty much unscathed. t was here that I decided to not see the car coming from our left when I pulled out onto a mini-roundabout. Luckily nothing happened apart from maybe turning a few of all our hairs grey and we could chalk it down to a experience and a few tweets at my expense.

The last stage of the journey was through mountainous north Luxembourg, which Kieran piloted without incident, where we took one of the most scenic routes I have had the pleasure of driving along. Definitely one of the high points of the trip so far.

We made it into Luxembourg a little after seven and by the time we were all checked in and had quaffed a beer or two the city was starting to be cloaked in darkness. I managed to get aa couple of snaps in of Notre Dame Cathedral and of the road leading up to the cathedral from our hotel, but the light was pretty bad by then and my Blackberry’s camera isn’t that great at night anyway.

The part of the city that overlooks the canal and leads down the rather steep cliff faces towards the canal itself is really rather something. Irt was beautifully eerie and romantic. The atmosphere, architecture and road layouts really made it something to behold. Definitely somewhere I would visit again with a special some one. Very, very romantic indeed! Pity I had to share the moment with Chris, George and Kieran!

Chris, George anf Kieran all trying to take a photo of a dark bridge at night. Luxembourg, Luxembourg

By 9pm we were all starving so started to look for somewhere to eat. it seems that Luxembourg is not a weekend city as almost every restaurant was shut or shutting. We eventually found a nice little Chinese place still serving where we ate heartily before heading back to the hotel.

Driving is tiring work, so we are all pretty shattered right now. It is after midnight local time at the moment and everyone else hit the sack a while ago. I am determined to try and get a post up every night of the trip, so please read and comment as it means I am more motivated to burn the candles at both ends to bring you my thoughts and experiences from the trip.

Tomorrow we are making the 500km trip to Munich via the Black Forest and we are planning to have left Luxembourg by around 9am, so not long for me to sleep now!

As always you can follow my thought and progress via my homepage or Twitter account, or the live tracking of our trip at Kieran’s site.

Amsterdam

September 9th, 2010 No comments

Amsterdam, Holland

I am writing this post from my hotel room in Amsterdam! We made it to the first stop of our European odyssey alive and well. Which is no mean feat seeing as it’s been a while since any of us have driven on the continent and I have never driven on the wrong side of the road intentionally in my life.

We departed Leeds at about 4pm to drop Chris’ car off at his gran’s house and then we hit to road proper. With virtually no traffic on the M62 we made good time and got into Hull well in advance of the last check-in for the ferry (which was at 7.30). A combination of heavy traffic around the sea port and some ‘interesting’ driving from Kieran meant that we were early but not too early for our ship.

George, Kieran and Chris watching us dock at Rotterdam, Holland

Having safely negotiated the ramp maze to board the ferry, we unloaded our overnight stuff and decamped to our cabin. Now it has been a while since I have stayed in a cabin on a ferry (in fact it’s probably about ten years when I went from Portsmouth to Cherbourg) but even still I think they are a lot smaller than they used to be, especially after you have got the beds out of the ceiling and put the ladders etc up.

Once we were settled in we went for a wander around the various decks that were open to the public and set about making some kind of plan for dinner. In the end we plumped for the brasserie as there was no queue, the menu looked decent and not too expensive and eating in good restaurants whilst one of your party is wearing sandals (cough, Kieran, cough) is always fun. The food was good and a nice way to kick off the trip even if it did take forever for anything to arrive.

Once dinner was polished off, we hit the bar and the casino to while away some time, eventually hitting the sack a little aftder midnight.

The night went pretty smoothly for me considering I hate boats and hate being at sea. Apparently, though, there was some kind of medical emergency on board and a helicopter had to come and airlift a passenger to hospital. This, plus another boat being in our channel, meant we were about two and a half hours late docking at Rotterdam port.

Once we disembarked we hit the motorways of Holland (one of the few legs that we will be using the motorway network) and headed the eighty-odd kilometres to Amsterdam.

Crazy 4-story high waterfall attached to side of building in Amsterdam, Holland

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Amsterdam to be honest. I have no time for drugs such as cannabis, nor people that use it, so I did worry that I may not fit in or like the place too much. Luckily, Amsterdam offers far more than the teenage view of the city I had developed over the years. Most of Amsterdam is quaint and pretty with lots of nicw and quiet backstreets that I could happily wander around all day. Of course, a trip to Amsterdam wouldn’t be a trip to Amsterdam if you didn’t visit some of the seedier attractions. We spent some time ambling through the old town and the bohemian parts of Amsterdam before meandering through the red light district and newer parts of the city where I happened to bump into my brother. The pictures on this post are all just general views of he city as we wandered through.

It is about 6.30pm (local time – and all future time references are likely to be in local time) now and I am just bashing out this post before we head to dinner and our nocturnal adventures. Not sure how much of the nocturnal side of the city I really want to immerse myself in, but I have it on good authority that you can’t experience Amsterdam fully until you see it at night.

As always, you can follow my personal story on my website or via my Twitter account, or you can track our travels and keep up to date on the whole group is doing by visiting Kieran’s site.

Tracking us round Europe!

September 3rd, 2010 No comments

For those of you interested in follwoing my progress on the roadtrip round Europe then Kieran has made a nifty little application for his website which will show all the checkpoints, pit stops and overnight stays we make whilst en route. The application also features a copy of the Twitter stream for our official hashtag #ertrip2010. You can check out the application here.

There is also an XML feed for the trip data if you think you can do soemthing exciting with it. If you do use it then please let one of us know so that we can see. You can let Kieran know by leaving soemthing on his forum or you can contact me here. You can also tweet about it as long as you remember to use the hashtag.

You can follow my personal updates on my homepage or via my Twitter feed.

Bank Holiday Weekend

August 31st, 2010 No comments

This is likely to be my last major blog post before I head off on my road trip of Europe as I have loads of prep to do before we leave and I want to cover that prep in my first blog post from Europe (hopefully Amsterdam).

I am writing this post whilst on the train from Carlisle to Leeds on the famous Carlisle to Settle railway route, it is beautifully sunny outside and the scenery is really something to behold. I really do love the English countryside and I am lucky enough to have experiences some stunning scenery in my time.

The reason for me being on this particular train is the fact I have spent the last few days staying with Sarann and her family whilst enjoying Solfest, a music festival based on the Solway coast. For my long memoried readers, here is a post I made about the festival last time I went.

Solfest always manages to deliver when it comes to acts. For a small festival, I always manage to see a dozen or so really good acts, with maybe four of five that are really outstanding. This year was no different – acts like Alabama 3, James, Eat Static, Utah Saints, Magic Numbers, The Jam and The Damned all being pretty big names.

I particularly enjoyed the old school combination of The Jam and The Damned on the Sunday night, followed a really nice chilled set from The Magic Numbers.

The weekend was great as a little mini break from the pressures of clearing my desk ready for the Europe trip, as well as from the stress of planning and paying for the trip itself. Sarann’s dad makes a great host, and Sarann makes a better chef – even if most of the fare was vegan! I did manage to sneak in a couple of pasties and a sausage and hash brown butty.

All in all a great weekend and well worth the £89 ticket price.

A little something from the train…

August 30th, 2010 No comments

Just thought I would upload a picture from my train journey from Carlisle to Leeds on the famous Carlisle-Settle line.

Eurotrip

August 19th, 2010 2 comments

For all those that didn’t know Kieran, Chris, George and I are heading to Europe for a three week road trip in September. In fact three weeks today, we will be doing stuff in Amsterdam that is probably unwise to post about on a public website!

Eurotrip the movie.

We are planning to take in ten countries in ten days before spending a week chilling out in a villa in the Bordeaux region of France. I intend to use the week recovering from some serious European madness.

The plan is to visit the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Monaco and France and to basically relive our student days living out of suitcases, eating rubbish and drinking unsafe quantities of alcohol.

As part of the trip, I am hoping to trial some new post types which will hopefully include some video and audio posts as well as the more traditional text and picture ones you are used to. Of course, any trip would not be a trip without constant updates of Twitter. if you want real time updates then either follow me or just search for the trips official hashtag (#ertrip2010).

Kieran Doesn't Know

Also, as Kieran is the sensible one amongst us, we are employing a “Kieran Doesn’t Know” theme (based on the Scotty Doesn’t Know song in the Eurotrip movie) to avoid his veto on some of our more extreme ideas. I would appreciate any mention of Kieran to be accompanied by some mental (or actual, if you prefer) singing of the Scotty Doesn’t Know song but replace “Scotty” with “Kieran”.

Any recommendations on places to see in or around the following cities (or the countries mentioned above) then feel free to contact me, or leave a comment. Cities we are hoping to visit: Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brugges, Nuremburg, Munich, Luxembourg City, Salzburg, Venice, Verona, Saint Gallen, Zurich, Lausanne and Monte Carlo.

She got treated like the whore she is!

January 1st, 2009 No comments

So, yeah, last night was our New Year’s Eve party in Leeds. A well attended event considering that most people are home with their family and “real” friends that was dominated by a couple of events. Firstly, our living room flooded, a direct result of the second event – our first ever communal shower! Eight of us decided that alcohol and partying had progressed as far as it could and the next logical step was a semi-naked (and mostly naked in Michelle’s case) communal shower. Keep your eyes peeled for the exclusive pay-per-view site containing the pictures and videos!

It was definitely a good night all round and I now definitely feel closer to my house mates than ever before! It was also the first A-Soc event of 2009, seeing as the majority of the guests sit or have sat on the committee. We atheists really do have it larger.

Although, having said all that we all know that parties are just an excuse for recovery steak the morning after and as such we all headed to the Deer Park for our steak. Even the 45 minute wait on food didn’t dampen the excitement and meaty goodness of a well cooked bit of steak. Mmmm, steak, drool.