KenandAlison

Today started yesterday with an early start, and uneventful flight from Barcelona, passing over geography that barely registers in my mental atlas - Georgia and Turmenistan, the Caspian and Black seas etc. Arrived a bit tired as the sleeping pill that we took didn't work until we were 3 or 4 hours out. Since we have been here we have been using the amazingly efficient MRT system - underground and buses. We have spent our time with animals - firstly at Joorong bird park which has some amazing birds - all in natural settings. Masses of pink flamingoes and Pelicans, numbers of parrots and lorakeets. Cranes and storks and toucans and cassowaries. Birds of all sizes and shapes and colours, and birds of prey. Then on to the Night Safari which included a number of nocturnal ... read more

Travel day today. Woke up early - beautiful day so laid all our stuff outside on the ground and packed from there—not a lot of room inside the van. There was a lot more volume so had to expand the blue case! Cleaned out the van and took off with Sandy - our trusty computer navigator leading the way - except the road had been fixed up and was new so she had us the middle of paddocks and couldn’t tell us which of the next two turns was ours - so we guessed and headed off down the motorway in the opposite direction to where we were going. Quick turn around at the next exit and away we went. At our final exit off the motorway, we mistook the roads, had to drive another 5 ... read more

It started raining in the evening and although it looked like the usual thunderstorm it didn’t stop, and it was still raining fairly steadily in the morning. We had done a wash in the evening so hung the line across the inside of the van from the bathroom door to a catch on the ceiling over the bed. The washing dries in the breeze as it flaps back and forward from the movement of the van. The camp is near the Vienna Woods so we took a detour through this lovely forested area - all deciduous trees - not sure what type but looked really nice even in the rain and mist. We worked our way through various bits of Vienna to get to the autobahn - through narrow and busy streets, narrow enough that I ... read more

Vienna at last. We first visited Austria 26 years ago but didn’t get this far east. The camping ground was great - with a washing machine finally!!!! So the first thing we did was wash clothes. Then travelled into the centre by train and underground. Very efficient and clean. The underground trains run at 5 minute intervals and the trains every 20 minutes or so - meaning very little waiting around. First stop was the Museum of Medical History. We had forgotten how much of our medical history was based around Vienna. They had info and instruments etc from a large number of historical figures. Freud, Semmelveis, Bilroth, Wertheim and lots of others. The second half of the exhibitions was an amazing collection of wax anatomical models. These were amazingly detailed - based on various dissections ... read more

Today we had even more trouble finding someone to pay, and ended up being quite late to leave because of this. We stopped along the way at a small town called Levoca. It has a fully intact town wall, and inside there are a number of beautiful Renaissance houses and other buildings, with a central square. There was the Cage of Shame - near the town hall where women who had done something wrong were held to be publicly disgraced. We went into the cathedral there, and a school bus tour came in, kids about 15 and 16. They all went and sat down and prayed for about 10 minutes, some were kneeling, and there was no noise—we were astounded!! We have noted that the kids in Slovakia seem very happy—the little kids are always with ... read more

We stayed overnight near Krakow and then went to the Wielizca Salt Mine. We managed to catch one of the English tours. The trip starts by going down around 400 stairs - Around and around 6 stairs down, a landing, another 6 stairs down, a landing over and over. There are a number of salt statues and they have been able to demonstrate how the mine worked over the ages by using figures of miners etc made out of salt. Most of the rock is gray because of a few impurities, but where it has dissolved in the underground water and recrystallised it is white. If there are some iron impurities it becomes pink. There are a myriad of tunnels, opening into chambers - some of them are huge, and even a number of small chapels ... read more