Muscat Started with a visit to the magnificent Grand Mosque. It’s quite new and has a stunning main prayer hall with massive chandelier, beautiful tiles and the world’s second largest Persian carpet that was also beautiful. The outside is vast, many shady courtyards and big lawns, a peaceful place. Mutrahis the heart of the traditional area with its corniche that goes between the souq and Old Muscat. Had lunch at an old watchtower on the corniche, (later to discover that these are absolutely everywhere in Oman). Walked along the waterfront into Old Muscat, not at all lively, government buildings and a big palace. On the rocks that create the harbor for the palace there’s writing dating back centuries from ships visiting the harbour, clearly some British HMS … Apparently this is called the “Sultan’s Visitor’s Book”. ... read more

Magnificent is the word that comes to mind after walking around Vienna. So many beautiful buildings, palaces, churches, other big buildings. Spent a lot of time walking around but also done more visiting places than we have in other places. Trying to decide which museums/ palaces to visit was challenging, especially given that we decided to manage without a guide book. Spent a good part of one day at the Schönbrunn Palace and gardens on the outskirts of the city (once in the countryside). It’s not as beautiful as the Hofburg Palace here in the city but it was interesting going round the 40 or so rooms they have opened to the public, free audio guide helped). Lots of history of the Hapsburgs that we have kept coming across in Central Europe. The gardens were very ... read more

Just a few hours south of Budapest by train is the huge Lake Balaton. We took the local bus round to the village of Tihany (as recommended by the English lady who had lived in Auckland and ran a shop in Szentendre). It’s a popular destination for local tourists in the summer, all around the lake are resorts. Tihany is a small peninsular that sticks into the lake, has its own small volcanic Interior Lake and is popular for walks. With thatched cottages and red-roofed village houses and the big abbey on the hill it is a pretty place, a bit over-run with cutesy souvenir things and large numbers of day trippers from the bigger resorts, but it’s still a nice place with plenty of quiet spots. We enjoyed being out of the city and the ... read more

It was a long journey across Slovakia to the first of the Danube Bend towns in Hungary. Two buses followed by two trains. Felt like we were on some completely off the tourist route journey. At one of the stops we had an hour to spare and had a coffee in the platform café, very pleasant but the views were of a run-down old station with trains sitting around for the few journeys that happened each day. Felt like I’d disturbed the café owner from socializing with her beer drinking friends. Across the border in Hungary the basilica on a hill in Esztergom is stunning. It’s a huge building on a small escarpment above the Danube with the small town below. The town had some lovely old buildings but we had the feeling it was hoping ... read more

A short 40 min bus ride from Krakow is the town of Wielczka which is built around a huge salt mine, operating for 700 years, closed for extracting salt after a big flood in 1990. This was an excellent place to visit, good to buy the tickets before hand and we were glad when we came out that we’d gone for the 9am tour. All visitors have to go on a guided tour; it was a little rushed but informative. The mine is amazing, you have the sense of being in a big cave system, but all of it is hewn out of the rocks by man. Salt was the “white gold” of ancient times, being so valuable as a preservative, the men who worked the mines were wealthy, they were paid in salt. There was ... read more