Wednesday, 14 December 2011

That sounds cool.

It was when we were waiting for the bus to Montenegro that we realised that we had the wrong time for the last few days, which led to to wait at the bus station for an extra hour before our bus actually came. The bus ride was incredible, We drove along the coast of Croatia and Montenegro, on the way passing a place we later found out was called Perast, until we finally got to Budva in the afternoon.

That night we went wondering around the fortified old town

We went back to our private room with an ensuite that we were paying $9.95 for, ate some stir fry and chilled. Sadly the ensuite wasn't as cool as we first through because she had to sit on the toilet while showering. This led to our boycott of showering in Budva...

 The next morning we walked along the coast to the beach a little away from town.
And sat of the beach
We went out for Chinese for a late 4 month anniversary dinner which was really just an excuse to buy a three course meal.
The rest of the night was spent attempting to take a photo of a hedgehog. We developed what we thought was a fool proof plan and made friends with a nice Turkish guy who was staying at the hostel. He was sitting outside relaxing and when he saw any sign of the hedgehog he would run to our door knock acouple of times and shout 'hedgehog'. Sadly our photography wasnt as good as our plan.. this is pretty much the best photo we got.
The excitment of the night continued as we discovered to free HP games on Lee's laptop. We are now the proud parents of a young Travel journalist, who we affectionately named Stupid due to him sucking at finding himself a decent wife


The next day we went to Perast. Look it up. Its really beautiful. We drove past it on the bus a few days earlier and made it our mission to go there. This photo barely does it any justice.. 
That night we had a heartfelt reunion with Orr and Amy. There was alot of hugging and random high pitch squeals involved. We headed to Kotor the next day. We wondered around the town and got a traditional Balkan food which involved a cabbage and strange soups that tasted like Jewish.
We got our bridge photo for Montenegro

And started climbing up the fort which was amazing and had an incredible view from the top. It was a bit like the great wall of China minus the 10000 tourist and random Chinese people trying to takes photos of us.
We went back to Perast to make a gourmet Dinner and discovered how fun it is to high five with eggplant
The next day Nell and I split up again. I went on my way to Dubrovnik and Nell headed to Kosovo...

Thursday, 24 November 2011

Celebrity spotting in B&H

We arrived in Sarajavo after a horrible overheated bus trip at 6 in the morning and started to follow the slightly tragic instructions towards the hostel ("go to blue scrapers") We arrived only to be shut down by the next door neighbour who told us to come back in later. When we got there we met the owner of the hostel Jasmina who was the sweetest lady ever...
We then had a bit of a nappsipops and went off to explore sarajavo and by explore we mean shopping.
It was really interesting walking around, you could see both the muslim and christian influence.


After some deep and meaningful analysis on the population of Sarajavo we had some completely sickening dessert of halva (which was about the size of big slice of cake) and Baklava... couldn't eat anything else sweet for a while after that.

That night we decided to go and Nell ended her week of sobriety..

We where then hungry and in our search for food we needed the bathroom which led us to the Colosseum Casino. Because we didnt have our ID's on us this led to a rigorous interegation to get inside. This involved writing our age and our name down on a piece of paper... and then we got 2 euro gambling voucher.
We got food and went to the bathroom and went to use our voucher where I (Lee) won 6 euros! and the owner of the casino told me to stop taking all the casinos money. I dont think most people cash 6 euros..

The next morning we woke up and Jasmina took us out for a traditional Bosnian breakfast and she told us her story of when she was in Sarajavo during the seige. She moved to Sarajavo a year before it started from Dubrovnik and had no way of contacting her family for a year. She said she was always hungry and this led to her hostel's philosophy because she knows how hunger feels like she never wants any of her guests to go hungry.

She then took us to the Tunnel of Hope, a private museum which had a small section of tunnel which was used to get supplies into Sarajavo during the seige.


In the afternoon we went to the Latin bridge where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated... but more importantly got our bridge photo for Bosnia.

It is so interesting walking around the centre of Sarajavo you can still see so much from the war. There are artillery marks on the building and some buildings still remain abandoned. Its just so different to any other city we have been to. You also saw what Bosnians call the "Sarajavo rose" which is indents in concrete caused by mortor fire and they are filled with resin all around the city centre

We then went to have some traditional tea which Jasmina gave us money for ( have i explained enough how much we love her)

I (Lee) then paid 50cents to buy seeds and be mauled by pigeons in pigeon square.

We then attempted to go to the History museum sadly it had stupid opening hours so we walked around in the park.

We went back to our hostel and met the new people who checked in one of whom was a Bosnian television star.. ( he was actually just interviewed on TV about the Sarajavo shooting the day before) So we watched the dubbed footage of the interview on repeat. He was pretty impressed with himself and not going to lie I was a bit jealous of his stardom.
We then went to have some Bosnian coffee with Palo and Jonny's friends from Sarajavo

and went galavanting around to a couple clubs..

The next morning we headed for an earlybus to Mostar with the package of food Jasmina gave us.
Sadly we missed saying goodbye to her because we are not very smart and the whole time we where in Bosnia it was an hour later then we realised. But we did get a text message from her saying " Mu girls thank jou for jnur stej i camin vith bananas for jou bat jou live"

The bus ride was so pretty and we arrived in Mostar and were picked up by the owners of the hostel Tanja and Sadik who were so lovely.
We went around Mostar and the old town which where really cool and saw the famous 'Stari Most'.

We had an early night after barely no sleep the night before and played free rice.
The next day we went to an old abandoned bank in the middle of the city which was a snipers nest during the war. It was so weird and there were still bullet shells on the ground. which we collected. guess what everyones' christmas present this year is..


It had a view of the whole city of the top

After walking around the new town and doing a bit of shopping we went back to the hostel where Tanja invited everyone at the hostel to have tea together. It was so homely and she even let us try her mother's home made rakija.

We then realised that although we where in a place known for its bridge we had not yet got our bridge photo so we wandered around until some nice couple took a photo of us on the bridge.

 
We then decided that Montenegro sounded cool so we got on a bus early in the morning to Budva.

Thursday, 3 November 2011

Czech it ooooooouuuuuut

We arrived in Prague after an uncomfortable overnight train from Rome. After putting our bags down at the hostel we did we did the only obvious to do.. get some Chinese food. It was pretty tasty .
Then we went did the classic sight seeing of Prague like Charles Bridge which was cool as well as the old town.

and then of course what the hostel owner described as "the Eiffel Tower only better"


We also broke our Tesco virginity. It was very exciting and we bought pack-a-soups :)


That night we headed to Old town square and had mulled wine and walked around the river which is possibly even more pretty at night. There was also a light show on the water which was quite cool.

Sadly being Australians, we do not know how to deal with cold so we had an early night in a heated hostel.
The next day we were off to a walking tour of the town pretty much squeezing the whole of Prague into a 3 hour tour so we saw Old Town Square, Astronomical Clock, Old Jewish Quarter and the Old New Synagogue. We also saw the Jewish cemetery which is really small but actually has over 100,000 people buried because people were bried in layers on top of each other.

The jam packed day of sight seeing continued with the Powder Tower, Art Nouveau Municipal House, Church of Our Lady Before Tyn and St James church. There was a really strange story behind the St James church. There is actually a mummified hand that has supposedly been there for 400 years. The story behind it is that a thief came in the night and tried to steal a jewel necklace around Lady Madonna neck but the statue grabbed him and he got stuck. The next morning a monk came in and he cut the thief's arm off, then the Lady Madonna let go of his arm. The arm is now hung on a chain to warn other theives. Yum.

After using our brains a bit to much that day we decided to go to an all you can eat chinese restraunt. Which was WAS ONLY $5! and got new coats so we wouldnt complain the rest of our trip.


That night we went out and checked out some bars and clubs and I tried pilsner which is czechs famous beer.
and Nell ate her vegtables.

We then were off to Kutna Hora which is a small place with alot of churches but the main reason we went there was because of Kostnice which is a church that is decorated with the bones of 40,000 people. It is really creepy but actually quite cool looking.



We were then on a train again to Cesky Krumlov which is one of the prettiest places we've been, with all the cute little houses with orange roofs and church in the centre of town

We woke up the next morning and stared at its prettiness for awhile and got our bridge photo.
We then had the tradition czech pastry which is pretty much dought in a cylinder shape covered in cinnimon and Sugar which I feel is the best way dough should be served

The main attraction of the town is a castle which is pretty much half the size of the town and its guarded by bears which definitely upped the coolness of the castle. The gardens of the castle were amazing it had a maze garden and a pond.

we attempted to steel a boat but sadley it was attached to the dock
We then went out for a vegan lunch and made a new cat friend


Then what better way to finish the afternoon than walk through mirror and glass labyrinths.

and watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch goes to Rome..


We spend the rest of the night relaxing at the hostel with a lot of Australian and talked about Australian things like Pie floaties, spinach bread dip and Australias overcompensating by making large useless objects to attract people.