Blogs from Europe - page 14501

We had virtual non-stop rain all the way from Platamon to the Greece-Bulgaria border, which we reached at around 1.30pm. We had no real hassles on either side of the border except that changing money into Bulgarian leva took more than an hour. There was no time change, and nothing special to report at our first Communist border, except the pure excitement of my first ever visit behind the ‘Iron Curtain’, something I’d been looking forward to for years. The weather cleared for a while, and we got a good view of the Bulgarian countryside. It was very geared towards collective farming, with up to 100 people working in some fields. There was great variety in the size and shape of the trees, flowers and blossoms, with quaint houses made of stone with tiled rooves hidden ... read more

After a year in Bangkok and a third of year in Chiang Mai we were ready for a long vacation. My parents and sister Carol were due for furlough, so we thought it would be great to spend some time with them in Europe on their way to the States. We flew separately from them, as Aeroflot gave us the best airfare. What follows is from my notes in my Frommer’s “Europe on $5 and $10 A Day, The 1973-74 Edition” guidebook (note the inflation since my 1968 trip which was recounted in ), and the memories the notes triggered. 1 May 1974 Wednesday. We flew out of Bangkok in the evening on an Aeroflot overnight flight via New Delhi, India (the airport crowded with indigent people confirmed my vow never to visit India again) and ... read more

The LAGEOS group arrived at Heathrow Airport from Los Angeles. (Valene and Ed came in on a direct BOAC flight from Anchorage. They had been making a film in Alaska.) We transferred to a flight to Shannon Airport on the west coast of Ireland. The tour through Ireland would take us from Shannon to the Cliffs of Moher, then to Limerick, Blarney, Waterford, and Dublin. On our first evening in Ireland, we went to a Medieval Banquet at Knappogue Castle in Quinn, County Clare. Knappogue is an Irish tower house dating to 1467. It was indeed very Medieval looking inside the banquet hall, fashioned in stonework, and heavy wooden tables and bench seats. A hearty dinner was followed by Irish entertainment: a harpist and singers and dancers. Our motorcoach took the group around the west of ... read more

Day 27 - Thursday 9th March We decided to change Youth Hostels and move to Athens No 3 which was considerably cleaner - unfortuantely it did mean that we had less time for sightseeing. After the mandatory trip to Poste Restante, the first tourist area was the flea market, which was full of cheap junk shops with nothing worth buying - moved on quickly. Theseum - the Temple of Hephaestus the God of Fire and Blacksmiths. However there were more attractive ruins on the site Agora including where St Paul had preached a famous sermon about the Unknown God. A lot of the excavations had commenced post war. Next stop was the Acropolis which was free to enter. The temples, the pillars and other monuments were just amazing with their beauty further enhanced by the bright ... read more

Day 25 - Tuesday 7th March It was an early start as the bus was due to leave Titograd at 6am. It was still dark as Heather, Michael, Tomio and myself climbed out of the bedroom window (luckily the Canadians had been allocated a room on the ground floor), crept through the hotel gardens and headed for the bus station. Our group of westerners for this bus trip increased as five more people had travelled on the late bus from Dubrovnik. Although there were crowds of people at the bus station, we all managed to get a seat. Tomio immediately fell asleep and so I concentrated instead on the scenery. It was certainly beautiful - snow-capped mountains as the road followed a stream. Some areas were very green but there was not much land, which looked ... read more