Bruce & Jacquie Hilford
Jac and I are from New Zealand and doing our belated OE. We've decided to take 12 months off and see as much of the world as we can. Europe here we come!Bruce and Jac
Travel Blog Posts
May 17th 2009
The one hour flight to Frankfurt was half empty but the 9 hour flight to Bangkok wasn’t! It was an old 747 and didn’t look like it had been upgraded for years so the flight in cattle-class was not at all comfortable. A big brick bat for Lufthansa! Nevertheless we did eventually arrive in Bangkok complete with all our luggage, and after leaving most of it at airport storage, caught a taxi to our hotel. I had booked our hotel on the internet and it was great, not too flash or expensive but very friendly. (and a third the price of the Shangri La down the road!) We got there at about 3 o’clock, 26 degrees and humid but the aircon worked well so we just relaxed for a few hours before venturing outside for a ... read more
May 8th-13th Austria/England
Published: May 29th 2009Europe » United Kingdom » England » Berkshire » Maidenhead
May 13th 2009
After leaving Ptuj we decided to forego further sightseeing in Slovenia partly due to the Visa situation and partly due to the fact that we wanted to catch up with the Spreitzhofers at St Kathrein before we left. Jac programmed Dorothy once we got back to into Austria, despite the fact that we pretty much knew the way anyway, and off we went. Half and hour or so later we realized that there was actually more than one St Kathrein and we were heading to the wrong one! Luckily we were in no great hurry and arrived a little later to find them all fit and well. We sat down for a bit and enjoyed the lovely weather with a couple of drinks while we said our thanks and bid our farewells. Next stop was the ... read more
May 8th 2009
Next morning D & J popped in to say goodbye as we were having breakfast - they were heading for the coast and we were off to Lake Bled. The drive to the town of Bled and the lake was only about 30km, which highlights one of the great things about Slovenia, it’s so compact. You could drive to just about anywhere from the centre at Ljubljana in couple of hours, unless you wanted to take the backroads of course which is what we often did. Lake Bled was beautiful and the Planet sums it up thus; “With its emerald-green lake, picture-postcard church on an islet, medieval castle clinging to a rocky cliff and some of the country’s highest peaks as backdrops, Bled seems too good to be true.” I’m not sure about the ‘too good ... read more
May 3rd 2009
Driving through Rijeka in the rain during the busy afternoon traffic was slow going, but at least Jac finally managed to load the credit onto her phone and we could communicate with the world again. It was not long after that that we came to the Slovenian border and passport control, and after a couple of quick questions we were into another country. With 20 273 sq.km and 2 million people it was one of the smallest countries we had visited (after Luxembourg) and as soon as we arrived we noticed the trees - apparently 57% of the country is forested. The weather had cleared and we headed for the short stretch of coastline and a place called Ankaran, just across the water from Slovenia’s main port of Koper. Once again the campsite was on the ... read more
April 30th 2009
We left Dubrovnik on another beautiful day and stopped after crossing over their impressive Franjo Tudjman Bridge, one of the largest single pylon, cable stayed bridges in the world, to take some photos. We then carried on up the Dalmatian coast and out to the Pelješac Peninsula which is a big wine growing region. The vines we saw here were quite different from those we saw in Italy, they were all only about a meter high and all gnarly and twisted. I didn’t look like they would produce as many grapes per vine compared to the Italian variety but there looked to be more vines per hectare - we were going to have to sample some. As we climbed up and over the peninsula the rocky lands gave way to forest and as we came over ... read more
April 26th 2009
We awoke on the ferry at 6am and got up for breakfast before arriving in Dubrovnik, Croatia at around 7am. It was a beautiful morning, a few clouds but warm and dry and Dubrovnik looked clean and quiet as we sailed in. Through customs without any hassles and got a new stamp in my passport (Croatia is not part of the EU yet) and on to the local supermarket to get some supplies, except it wasn’t open yet so we waited. It opened at 8, we got our supplies and drove on through the town to our campsite on the wooded Lapad Peninsula, luckily it was well signposted as we didn’t have a map and Doris hadn’t even heard of Croatia. We new roughly where we were going and Dubrovnik only has a population of around ... read more
April 22nd 2009
We had read that the Amalfi Coast had one of Italy’s most wild and rugged landscapes so we decided to go for a drive and take a look. We drove through the rough streets of Pompeii before taking the motorway south to Salerno and turning off to the coast. The Italians definitely drive to a different set of rules to other people, similar to the Chinese in that if there is a gap, they will fill it. They also have a loose interpretation of certain road rules; red lights are not compulsory, the centreline (where it exists) is a guide only as are the lane markers and indicators were avoided as they seemed to like to keep their options open. No one seems to get too aggressive, they just seemed impatient. But I think it’s no ... read more
April 21st 2009
Soon after leaving Rome it started to rain and rained off and on most of the way down the coast, but by the time we reached Naples it had backed right off. We got to Pompeii and encountered some of the roughest and most poorly maintained roads ever and they seemed to suit the neighbourhood. Dorothy was also confused as to the campsite location and had us driving the backroads, so we put in the GPS coordinates from the book but they turned out to be wrong as well. We were just about to flag Pompeii altogether when we spotted the entrance and decided we may as well stay and checked in. We went for a wander to try and find some dinner and found that the entrance to the Pompeii excavations were only 100m down ... read more
April 19th 2009
It’s not true, all roads don’t lead to Rome; we found one that didn’t and had to make a U-turn! It was a pretty easy drive though through some lovely countryside along the scenic route (avoiding the autostrada again). It seemed to take us a little longer than we thought but we were in no hurry and we reached the campsite at about 4.30. It was a great campsite; huge but with not too many people and located a bit north of the city. They provided a regular free shuttle bus to the local train station at Prima Porta (2 min), where you could catch the train into the city (20 min, €1) and then take the tube to anywhere in the city. The €1 ticket gave you 75 minutes of travel by any means so ... read more
April 16th 2009
Easter Monday dawned fine again, it’s been 9 days since we had any rain and the weather has been great. There was a queue to leave the campsite again but that was ok, they even refunded our unused bus tickets - bonus! The drive to Passignano was only another 80km and we had managed to successfully avoid toll roads since Pisa, a decision we had consciously made to try and enable us to see more of the countryside. The drawback is that the roads are nowhere near as well maintained even though a lot of them are still motorways. It was worthwhile trying to dodge the poorly repaired sections as they tended to rattle the bones a bit. We drove out of Tuscany and into Umbria but the landscape didn’t change much, a few more green ... read more
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