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Published: October 18th 2009
Venice
one of many canals viewed from one of many bridgesAfter I met up with my Mum in Rome, post Contiki tour, we travelled together for a little over two weeks. These are the places we went and the things we saw...
by the way for some reason all of my apostrophes are being removed, along with the letters after them, leaving a random gap in my text. So youll have to add apostrophes where they should be, and I hope its readable.
Venice After only just making it on to our train in Rome (dont ask), Mum and I were on our way to Venice. For some reason this is somewhere I have always wanted to go; maybe just because it is such a DIFFERENT place, a city where all the cars are boats and all the roads are death traps for drunk people stumbling home. Or they are canals, whatever you want to call them. We arrived sometime in the afternoon, found our accomodation - which was a demountable type cabin in a camping ground - and had a bit of a rest. The place where we were staying was out of the main city of Venice, on the mainland: where cars were cars and the roads
gondola
Mum and the SA couple in the gondola. And look, there is our Gondolier were deat... yeah ok. They were just roads.
I have a feeling that the first night we just relaxed at the campsite because it was pretty late already and we were stuffed from travel (why is it that doing nothing all day on a bus or train makes you so tired?!) but to be honest I cant really remember the order of events very well. I had pretty one much aim in Venice - to be horribly touristy and go for a gondola ride. This was a solid aim until we found out it was (according to the gondola man) €100 for the short ride!! We decided to go to the tourist information centre to find out how much it should cost, and found out the fair/proper price was €80 for up to 5 people (so you paid for the boat, rather than per person). Once we knew this, we figured our next objective was to find some other tourists who could be persuaded that they wanted to go on a gondola ride. This didnt take very long - we asked a South African couple who were behind us in the tourist info queue and they were easily convinced :P
They also had some inside information about where a nice place would be, for the gondola-ing. So all in all it was a WIN situation! We caught the ferry boat with them (I can remember their names, how terrible of me...) to the other side of town. Instead of going through the big main canal through the town the ferry bus route went the outside way - out into the main lagoon. Now, I dont know if any of you know the relationship I have with boats, but its not a fantastic one. If the sea is rough on the way to Rottnest I would prefer to be sedated for the trip... I dont get sea-sick, I just get convinced that the boat is going to tip over and we are all going to die. Simple fear, really.
So anyway - imagine the boat equivalent of an old Transperth bus, crammed with people. Thats what this ferry boat was like, so to be honest I didnt feel 100% safe to begin with. When we got out onto the open lagoon a couple of things happened. Firstly we nearly got taken out by some nutcase speedboat skipper who was going fast
around the corner. Then the swell began. It wasnt even really that bad, but it pushed our little boat around quite a bit. And now you know that I am paranoid so youll understand that my mind began, of its own accord, to plan how I would try to survive if the boat suddenly defied physics and tipped over. So, all in all it was a little bit... unpleasant. But well move along. We wandered over to the gondolas and found ourselves a good deal. And then, what do you know!; we
were heading distressingly close to the main lagoon again... this time in a tiny gondola! But never fear, we just had to go out a bit to get around all the other boats, and soon we were in the quiet, peaceful lagoons. Well, what can I say... a boat of some sort is definitely the way to see Venice, and a gondola was certainly a very relaxing way to do it since someone else is doing all the work ;-) All in all it was a very nice experience and even though its a bit pricey Id recommend it to anyone who doesnt mind acting like a tourist
when they are in fact, a tourist.
One last note about Venice... public transport is FREAKING expensive. It was something like €6 for one trip. And its pretty difficult to get anywhere without using the canals and therefore needing some sort of seafaring vessel. Its not so bad if you are staying for a few days because you can get passes for 12h, 24h, 48h and 72h (i think) and it is better value the more hours you buy. But its something to be aware of if you are planning to go there, so youre not as shocked as I was when I read the ticket board :P
Sofia We arrived in Sofia to the sound of 75%!o(MISSING)f the aeroplane occupants applauding the pilots apparently decent landing in bad conditions, or something. Mum and I were not really sure what all the fuss was about but we assume everyone else on the plane knew something that we didnt - we were just glad they kept it a secret until we were safely on the ground. (editors note... I have since learned that this is quite common on flights to/from Eastern Europe. I still dont know why it
happens, but I guess it means Mum and I werent ignorant to danger, just ignorant to custom). Anyway, we had booked a pickup service from the airport to the hostel, so for the first time ever we got to be those people that have to look for a guy holding a sign!! Unfortunately it wasnt a sign with our names on, just a Mostel Hostel sign, but it was fun nonetheless. We found our guy with the sign and wandered apprehensively out into the Sofia sun. Turns out our shuttle was a slightly worse for wear old red car, that rattled quite a lot on the cobbled streets but did get us to the hostel safely (probably the driver had something to do with that). I remember thinking, as we drove through Sofia, that it was much bigger and much more of a commercial/industrial Eastern European city than I expected. Once we arrived outside the hostel I was even more apprehensive. We were standing in a busy-ish city street, surrounded by slightly rundown buildings and shops, with not a hostel in sight. I was beginning to wonder how this could be the best hostel in Sofia, and have so many
Its Carnival time!!
actually it wasn't, but we visited a shop full of amazing masks good reviews, when it was clearly in a rundown area of town in a crappy old building... But then our driver pointed us towards a little door next to a closed garage door, and he rang the bell for us. As we walked through the door, into a driveway, I was still a little worried. This didnt feel good, I thought we were in for a dodgy hostel stay. But I was COMPETELY wrong. On one side of a courtyard full of cars and cats was our hostel, an attractive looking wooden building, covered in flowers and contrasting nicely with the decrepit apartment buildings around it. Relieved? Yes. It got better too, with super friendly staff and a great atmosphere in the main dining/hanging out area (gosh, this sounds a bit like a sales pitch...). Our rooms were fine too, in case you were wondering. Hostel Mostel - look it up if you are ever in Sofia and need a place to stay. They give you free pasta (and BEER) at night and free breakfast in the morning! :-)
Besides just general wandering around in Sofia looking at monuments and architecture, there are a couple of things of note that
we did whilst in Sofia. We took a day trip to Rila Monastery, which is up in the mountains and very peaceful. On the way there we stopped and took a little hike up through the forest to a little church, next to this strange small cave. Our Bulgarian guide (the caretaker of the church) did not know how to explain the cave to us, but said it was something Bulgarians do (climbing through it). It sounded a bit like a rite of passage, and we were not quite sure if we should or shouldnt do it, but in the end we gave it a go. Firstly we climbed up into this low ceilinged small area, where there was a picture of Saint someone (really sorry, cant remember the name) and some candles. This was all fairly normal and cavelike, albeit small. The next bit was weird - like a near vertical climb through a tiny gap in the rocks. If i hadnt been able to see daylight at the other side I dont think I could have managed it (yeah, for some reason I get a bit claustrophobic being in a tiny space between rocks in the dark, go
figure). But anyway, 5 of 7 of us made it through (me and mum included), and two people passed on the experience. Later someone read an english guide book, and it turns out the story about that place is that you can only make it through the cave if you have not SINNED! So, make what you will of THAT. We continued up to the monastery where we were set loose for a few hours, to explore and have lunch. The backdrop for the monastery was beautiful - tree covered mountains hiding amongst the clouds - and the monastery itself was very interesting. Ill show you some pictures and not say too much about it. In the centre was a church, where photos were not allowed. It was small, but in some ways felt a lot more real than some of the massive churches that I had visited in other cities. It had more soul, or something... I dont know. Before going back to meet our taxis mum and I went and grabbed some lunch - shopska salat!! Ive been told they eat a lot of this in Bulgaria - its a salad made from tomato, cucumber, capsicum, onion and
white cheese and I freaking love it. It was especially welcome after the slight vegetable/salad drought of Contiki.
So, what then. Another day, another day trip - we went up the Vitosha mountain in a ski-lift-cabin-thing. Unfortunately the weather was pretty shocking and it rained quite a lot that day. On the way up the mountain it was ok, fairly clear and fine but overcast, so we thought we were going to be alright. We got off the chairlift and started wandering up the path towards the forest. Pretty soon we stopped because Mum spotted a SQUIRREL! It was dark grey or black, and was eating mushrooms (?!). I took a few pictures of it, and on the last photo my camera flashed, which quite upset the little guy. He looked at me in disgust, and ran up the tree probably yelling at all his friends to stay away from the tourists. He was pretty angry... (says me, the squirrel behaviouralist...) We stopped at this little clearing for some lunch (peanut butter and crackers. PEANUT BUTTER!! i hope this gets the applause it deserves, it took us some time and a lot of luck to find it...) and it started
me in venice
its getting a bit dark though. to rain. Quite heavily. Mum and I decided rather quickly to go “over there” to the conveniently placed shelter and were under cover before the big downpour started. We soon found ourselves in the company of five rather wet others, and we waited out the worst of it in relative safety. That is, unfortunately, pretty much the end of the Vitosha mountain story, because the weather was too bad to do much exploring.
Istanbul We caught the night bus from Sofia to Istanbul. Hooray, we didnt spend extra money on a nights accomodation! But unfortunately we also didnt spend any time sleeping. We left Sofia at 20.30 and arrived in Istanbul at 05.30, after what were told would be a 12 hour trip. Huh? Yeah thats what I thought... So, here we are in Istanbul, its still dark and we dont know where the tram stop is, or if they are even running yet. GREAT. We latched onto a couple of guys who were on our bus and caught a taxi with them because we all thought we were going to a similar place. It wasnt quite that simple though, and when we asked our taxi driver there
Hostel Mostel
its not so bad after all the tram stop was (that we sort of thought we were getting taken to) all he would tell us is that it was too far to walk and that we needed to take a taxi. "Yes, a taxi, how about this one, right here? Oh, its mine, what a coincidence, yes, you DEFINITELY need to take a taxi and pay me more money" etc etc. So we told him no thanks and the four of us wandered off to find the guys hotel and hopefully a tram stop or some signage to help us out. Turns out we were luckier than the guys. They kept being told their hotel didnt exist and they had the wrong name - but they couldnt check the details because they only had them on their mobile phone and the battery was flat! Mum and I ended up being pointed towards the tram stop by a more helpful taxi driver and told how to get to the stop we needed (from which I had instructions to the hostel written down in reliable no-battery-required pen and paper). We hopped on the tram and the guys went off to find an internet cafe to look up details
of their hotel. Poor things, I hope they found it quickly - we were stuffed from the overnight bus and lack of sleep, and Im sure they were too. We got off at the correct tram stop as the sun was rising and had a pretty special welcome to Istanbul - we had a lovely view of the blue mosque (Sultanahmet) softly illuminated by the dawn light. I took a picture, so you can see it too, but it doesnt really do the real thing justice! We also saw a lot of cats here... I like to think they were welcoming us too, but you never can tell with cats, can you?
We had a grand total of two days in Istanbul and the first day we got there was the beginning of Eid (the holiday after Ramadan). Unfortunately this meant a bunch of stuff was closed, like the Grand Bazaar, for example. But there were plenty of other shops and markets open, and we definitely filled our shopping quota here...
There are a couple of things that stood out to me, about Istanbul. Firstly, its true what everyone says about the people being very friendly. And most of the
inside hostel mostel
there is some sort of holy guitar... unfortunately the steel strings hurt my fingers too much and didn't sound so great on a classical guitar. oh well time it honestly doesnt feel as though they want anything back from you, they are just genuinely friendly, welcoming people. It also really helped that so many people spoke English to us, and seemed HAPPY to speak English. After so many weeks of language barriers, I have to admit it was a relief for the barrier to be lifted for a couple of days (as bad as that sounds...)
Anyway, for the first day Mum and I wandered around the city, shopping and sightseeing. We went to the Blue Mosque, which was very beautifully decorated inside (have a look at the picture). We decided to spend our second day on a day trip to the Gallipoli Peninsula. Early that morning we joined a bus pretty much full of only other Australians and New Zealanders and set off. Its hard to know how to talk about the experience of going to Gallipoli (although this is a bit of a misnomer since the actual city of Gallipoli is ages away from the places we went...). To be honest I didnt know all that much about the history and the events that lead up to the fighting on the Gallipoli Peninsula, so it
Forest views
on the hike on the way to the little cave before Rila Monastery was certainly interesting to learn about it. But I guess in essence it was a fairly sobering experience - to me it was an affirmation of the pointlessness of war, although in no way does that mean that I think those who died, on both sides, died for no reason. Like I said, its hard to know how to talk about it. I think I will stop trying and just say it was a sad, yet somehow peaceful experience...
Next blog- Germany! Hope youre enjoying the photos! I am going to add some to the Spain blog, so check them out too.
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