passo dello stelvio (stilfserjoch) and on into Switzerland - Shaken, not Stirred? I guess there are other easier ways to get from Italy to Switzerland, and I hadn’t really mentioned these to Jen. She didn’t seem to mind the idea of going over the Stilvio Pass. I would have been keener myself if it wasn’t for the rain….. The Stelvio pass? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stelvio_Pass It is the second highest (just) mountain pass in the alps - over 2700m, made up of 48 hairpin bends. I had quickly looked at some motorcyclist blogs about the pass, and as with Nürb [View Full Entry]

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Lovely Ljubljana and Bled Overall we really enjoyed Slovenia. It is a really striking country, small, incredibly green, and in the north Mountainous. Ljubljana the capital is about half the size of Edinburgh. It has a great feel to it, full of cafes and cheap restaurants, a castle, interesting architecture - much of it seemingly designed by one man - Joe Plečnik, he has a hand in many buildings and bridges in the city. Ljubljana is a perfect place for a long weekend. What is most appealing about the place is again, how laid back it is. Its trendy but understated. [View Full Entry]

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08-09-08 Laid back Hvar and the Journey North We really enjoyed our second day in Hvar. We went to the town of Hvar, which is a very trendy place, filled with large ocean going boats, and lots of Americans and rich folk from everywhere. It has an imposing fortress on the hill above the town and a lovely harbour This is a nice place to visit, but has more of the feel of Dubrovnik, and not so homely but we are glad we stayed near Jelsa - about 15km away. Jelsa has a really nice laid back feel, we had [View Full Entry]

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06-08-08 - Dubrovnik, the Islands and Bobby Mcferrin We have just spent three days in Dubrovnik and the surrounding coast. It is a remarkable place. Again we were very luck with accommodation - we found a small private apartment about 50m from the gate to the old city - the Pile Gate, and parked the bike on the patio. The city is stunning, it is obscene to see images of when the city was shelled and held under siege for 8 months, in a city full of tourists now the idea just seems ridiculous. There are still shrapnel marks evident [View Full Entry]

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02-08-08 So much water and flying fish - Plitvice National Park We have relied on either the Zumo GPS or detailed maps to navigate around. Zumo - where the coverage is available has been excellent - best money I ever spent. However sometimes we get caught without maps or GPS, and while its stressful, it creates a good reason to talk to the locals. We crossed over the border from Hungary into Croatia and toured along small secondary roads on route to Plitvice. We traveled very close to the Serbian border, the villages became few and far between as we went [View Full Entry]

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31-08-08 Pecs - Goldilocks Pizza and Surly Youth We arrived in Pecs at about 4pm after a pretty leisurely 5 hour trip from Timosoara. We were mainly traveling though low river valleys, and excellent farm land. You notice the improved standard of living in the rural areas in comparison to Romania pretty much as soon as you cross the boarder. I had my first experience of getting blocked from getting on a motorway on ramp - guess what - it was a Brittish driver, I decided to give him some pointers on road rules. I think he was too busy staring [View Full Entry]

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30-08-08 Go West… To Timisoara, eventually It probably seems as though traffic gets more than its fair share of commentary in this blog, on days like this it’s no surprise. We had seen large queues of traffic heading the other way when we were coming into Romania, unfortunately now it was our turn to join the queue. It took us 9 hours to drive about 200 miles yesterday on one of Romania’s main highways. There were road works ever mile or two, in all they must have ripped up 100 miles of road, this when school holidays are ending and Romanian [View Full Entry]

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28-08-2008 Who’s house? Bram’s House Well it wasn’t really Bram Stoker’s house but Bran castle was what gave Bram the inspiration to write his famous book. Apparently Vlad never lived here, he just “dropped in for a visit” at some point in the 1500s. Jen, as a vampire enthusiast was thrilled to see the castle, but disappointed by the setting. She expected the castle to be on a ragged hill in the middle of the Transylvanian alps, not in a village with market stalls selling tacky vampire gimmicks and serving bloody vampire steaks with fangs. It&rs [View Full Entry]

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27/08/08 - A day in the life, and Ceausescu’s Mad Road Today we set out to drive along one of the highest roads in Europe - the Transfagarasan which borders on southern Transalvania. “The road was constructed between 1970 and 1974, as a north-south crossing at the historical border between Transylvania and Wallachia. It came as a response to the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union. Ceausescu wanted to insure quick military access across the mountains in the event the Soviets attempted a similar move into Romania. Consequently, the road was built ma [View Full Entry]

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26-08-08 Vlad’s House has chocolate cake We are in Sighisoara at present, we travelled across the north of Romania yesterday to arrive here late last night. It was a 12 hr day on the bike (for only 400 miles!), we saw some incredible winding roads, little villages, lots more horse power on the roads and lots of traffic. Back on to the subject of driving, Romania has another style all together, rules are guidelines, and guidelines only suggestions. They don’t see many motorcycles on the road here - mainly scooters and bicycles, from what I can make out a motorcycle [View Full Entry]

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