5 posts tagged “dad's trip”

Another weekend, another All Blacks demolition of a supposedly good European rugby team!

The ABs looked in a different class to the Welsh - and never looked like losing. I guess we were particularly disappointed with the Welsh forwards, which just got monstered by Hayman, Collins and the other hardmen in the New Zealand team.

 

It was pretty disappointing that the All Blacks didn't do the haka on the field (preferring the confines of the training room). The game started with a responding round of boos, from everyone in the crowd - New Zealand and Welsh fans alike. Since the game there has been a variety of finger pointing between the two teams, but it is something that needs to be sorted out, and quickly with the world cup around the corner. I know that the ABs stance is that the haka is performed for the players themselves - but I consider that it is part of the team, both of which (the team and the haka) belong to the entire NZ public.

 

After the game we happened upon a couple of wee Welsh kids throwing around a rugby ball. Initially they were a bit scared of me until their mother pointed out that I was a New Zealander. From this point forward they were very keen to throw the ball around with me - although I was a little surprised to get caught in a flying tackle by a 6 year old! A wee bit sketchy after a few beers as I almost stepped on him! The skill level of those two kids was pretty amazing - they were able to drop kick a rugby ball against a wall in a controlled enough way so that the ball returned to them.

 

We then headed into town - it actually felt a lot more like New Zealand than most places in England as the entire place was pumping. The Welsh people were very hospitable (more so than NZers would be if we'd just been handed out a hiding!) - and they all wanted to dive into a deep analysis of the game - such as "Daniel Carter's 6th kick - if he'd passed it then and then run a switch through the centres, surely this would have been a better option?"...

We ended up in the RSA which was great because all the old Welsh guys started singing old songs in their booming voices. Sounded excellent but I have no idea what they were on about. It was also interesting as the England versus South Africa game was on the big screen - all the Welsh guys cheered when South Africa scored and boo'ed when England did anything positive. I realised there was a bit of animosity, but I didn't think it would be to this level!

After the demolition of England and France in previous weeks, it bode well for our trip to the Stade de France to see the second test. Our trip started late on Friday night with the Eurostar over to Paris. It was pretty funny hearing all the klwi accents on the train, but after some heavy drinking, some of the girls accents went from amusing to quite grating.

However, we entertained ourself with a bottle of Cava (Spanish Champagne). We got in late, meaning that we were not really in much of a state to get up to much. After some minor difficulties finding the hotel, we crashed for the night.

Saturday morning started with the tourist track - which we had already done - taking Dad and Richard to the Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triumph.

We were pretty tired after this, so Richard and Dad disappeared for a while - I suspect for a nap! Korina and I adjourned to the pub, meeting up with Lydia and Sophie, and watching the English squeak past the Springboks.

We camped up in the Irish bar until near the start of the game - which, given that this was at 9pm, meant we had plenty of time to get some ales down in preparation!

As it happened, we went to the game a bit early, to soak in the atmosphere and perhaps engage in a bit of banter with the Frenchies...

 

We got off the train near the game and grabbed another beer or two before making our way up the street to the ground. Korina enjoyed the giant bagettes filled with sausages and chips!

 

 

We then got adopted by a group of french fellas, who had clearly been on the diesel for quite some time. We had a couple of drinks with them and gave them a bit of banter in broken French and received some in their equally broken English. But then it was time to head into the game. We struggled somewhat to find our seats - at one point ending up in the middle of a brass band - all of whom insisted on being in our photos.

 

 

 

Eventually we found our seats - the game was perhaps a bit of an anti climax - but the French never looked in the game, and certainly looked as if they were lacking in ideas, kicking continuously to the All Black back three.

 

It was a haul back from the game - with 100,000 people leaving the ground at the same time making getting on a train very difficult indeed. By the time we got home it was around 1am, so we had a night cap at headed off to bed.

Sunday we went back to the Arc de Triumph as it had been to crowded to go up the day before - I think Dad enjoyed the view and the craziness associated with this giant roundabout. We finished the day walking down to the Louvre before jumping back on the Eurostar back to London.

SPLIT

We again arrived late, and after warding off the numerous touts that met the bus we slowly found our way to the hotel we had booked. Split was an interesting town, and would have even been beautiful if the esplanade had not been ripped up for some very smelly repairs when we were there.

The part of the town we stayed in was built over the top of some old roman ruins, which we didn't really know - so it was quite strange wandering around late at night, up and down various alleyways and steps. The town generally seemed to be built in three dimensions, with streets that went both left and right and well as up and down!

Eventually we found a great jazz bar which we hung out at for a while before heading in for the night.

The next day was spent lazing about in the sun prior to our ferry to the islands. The ferries were amongst the cheapest things we encountered - only £1-2 for a one hour crossing. When we arrived at the terminal, we were also surprised to see a bus surrounded by armed defenders with automatic weapons. It looked pretty aggressive, so we stood around and gawked for a while before we worked out that it was just an exercise.

We then boarded our ferry to Hvar Island.

HVAR ISLAND

Hvar turned out to be a pretty town on a very dry looking island of the same name.

 

My holiday also started looking up at this point - co-inciding with my decision to cease sleeping in the same room as Bruce. Gaining more than 2 hours of unbroken sleep a night did wonders for the level of harmony on the trip!

We stayed for 2-3 nights, and over the time it was apparent that we were going to have a very different experience than do the throngs of tourists that obviously go during the season. For a start it was really only us and the locals - which was a good thing - however, many of the tourist operators had closed down until next summer - which was a bad thing.

However, we did manage to hire scooters and go over to Starigrad and Jelsa on the other side of the island - some of the smaller villages in the hinterlands were ghost towns at this time of the year, although the smell of the ubiqitous lavender farms was everywhere. Managed to get my scooter up to 78 KMH, and although Bruce reckons he managed to go faster, I doubt the authenticity of his claim...

 

We also hired a car one day and went to the far eastern edge of the island. It was very isolated out there and even less was open than in Hvar. We did manage to find a tunnel that looked like it had been carved by hand out of the rock, which was only just bigger than the car!

Unfortunately, we couldn't do one of the most famous things - hiring a boat or yacht and island hopping - as all of the operators had shut up shop for the season.

TO DUBROVNIK

From Hvar, the plan was to island hop down to Dubrovnik. Now this was always going to be a challenging affair in the off-season, but it started promisingly enough, with the ferry turning up as expected and depositing us at Vela Luka, next to the bus to Korcula town on the island of the same name.

This is where the difficulties started. Firstly, the ferry terminal was a couple of km out of town. This slight problem was overcome by convincing the bus driver to run us out there, just in time for the ferry to Orebic.

At Orebic, things got progressively worse. The bus to Dubrovnik did not actually exist (until the next morning anyway). Faced with an unplanned stop in Orebic, we thought we would just grab a hotel and a bite to eat and head on down to Dubrovnik in the morning. However, the entire town was shut, including every restaurant, hotel and apartment.

We asked if they could help us at the information centre, where they quite accurately told us "no" they could not.

Wondering if a cold night on the beach was the next step, we ended up in a pub drinking with the locals. Several rounds later it turned out that a lady at the bar worked for the ferry company and knew someone in Korcula town that would "look after us".

The fella was true to her word, and soon after catching the ferry back to the island we had negotiated to rent his mate's apartment and for him to give us a lift to Dubrovnik in the morning - for less than a hotel and bus would have been. The major benefit of this arrangement was being able to travel when we wanted to, rather than needing to be at the bus station before 7am the following morning!

So after a somewhat interesting trip, we arrived in Dubrovnik around 11am the following day. Our new mate had arranged another apartment for us - the good news being that it had an excellent view of the old town, the bad news being that it was up the top of a giant hill.

After some general touristing (including walking around the walls of Dubrovnik - which was excellent), we spent our last night drinking beer and looking at the sunset, before setting out to find a place to eat. We ended up finding a jazz bar, which was backed and had a great vibe. The food was less good, leaving me feeling somewhat queasy afterwards, and facing a giant walk up the hill.

I'm still unsure as to whether this was due to something I ate, or if I was made to feel a bit strange by a week of passive smoking several thousand cigarettes. Croatian seem to be the heaviest smokers in europe, including at the teller in duty free...

I managed to walk off the queayness a bit, and it struck me how much better Dubrovnik was after hours once the tour boat Americans had gone back to their floating mansion. Dubrovnik was then filled with locals - mainly quite young - and it had a really fun atmosphere. Unfortunately, I still did not feel 100% so we then slugged back up the hill.

The next day was spent much the day before - the most interesting thing being a museum with pictures of the around 200 defenders that were killed in the siege of Dubrovnik in 1991. I guess I am too young to really remember it in any great detail - but it was clear that after being hit by 2000 shells, an extensive rebuild was required. Given this situation, they had done a really good job, with it being very difficult to tell which parts were not original.

Our education of the 1991 was completed on the way out to the airport, when the owner of our apartment educated us on his experience of the war - including where he was stationed, the hotels the Serbs took and where their roadblocks were. He also pointed out the road that that cut over the hills once they had pushed the Serbs back into Bosnia.

Looking back on it now, given that 1991 was only 15 years ago - it is amazing how much Croatia had rebuilt itself. It felt much more prosperous than I expected, and certainly more european than I guess I thought it would be.

The train trip to Zagreb took around 6-7 hours, initially traversing through the snowy and very beautiful mountains in Austria, before moving on through Slovenia and finally arriving in Zagreb.

We booked it more or less as the most easy way of getting from A to B, but I guess it turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip - beyond the stunning scenery, making friends with a Serbian train guard / maitre de was pretty amusing. He spoke not a word of English, and we were hopeless in his languages - Serbian, Italian and German. So communication broke down to sign language, numbers and pointing at pictures in magazines.

However, we did manage to establish that he was 5 years older than Dad, lived in Belgrade and had two children - a girl and a boy - a year younger and a year older respectively.

It was not long before he was bringing the refreshments around. We made the mistake of assuming that the pretty rubbishy instant coffee was free, and pretty soon he had bought around a round of rocket-fuel tasting schnappes. Dad purchased one for the guard, which he duly knocked back before diappearing for 20 minutes or so, where we suspect he was drinking with other passengers in the next carriage. He then reappeared with another round of the local fire water, this time "gratis" - again, he downed his pretty quickly and was on his way again. Given that he still had another 5-6 hours after we got off the train in Zagreb, made me think that he was probably going to be in quite a state by the time he got home to his wife!

The other item of note on the train was the number of times we had to show tickets and passports - I guess mainly because we were going through three countries, but also because we were leaving "Europe" - for the first time in over a year for me.

Zagreb was an interesting town, we got there pretty late and again had a look around. The next day we used the very frequent trams to get up to the local ski field and took a ride to the top using the funicular railway.

 

Given its proximity to a city of 1.2 million, I suspect a field of the size of this one would be very busy in the season - but as it was to early for this, we were amongst the only people having a look around.

Our train to Split was then cancelled, meaning that we had to endure a long and relatively dull bus trip out to the coast.

With Dad having recently arrived in the UK (for the first time in 55 years!), we decided that the time would be good to leave immediately and explore somewhere new. I decided to take a week off an travel with Dad down through Austria, Slovenia and Croatia - finishing in Dubrovnik.

We flew into Salzburg, the plan being to look around Hitler's Eagle's Nest - however, this plan was not to be as it closed for the winter 3 days prior to our arrival. Although this was somewhat ominious, and did not bode well for the rest of the trip (as it was the shoulder season), we enjoyed spending a day in Salzburg, looking at the castle (and its somewhat freaky puppets).

Salzburg also involved finding a damn good Austrian pub in the bowels of an old brewery and sampling a number of the local beverages, as well as generally exploring the town.

However, most of our trip was not about Austria, and so the following day we hopped onto our train to Zagreb through Slovenia.