I Laugh in the Face of Bad Weather

We are now back in the US, but we have a few more posts on South Africa before we can wrap up the trip.  I may even badger Magge into contributing one last time.

One of our last stops in South Africa was in the Drakensberg region.  The country's highest mountain range, it has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for both its natural value and its cultural value as home to San rock paintings.  I took in some of both, doing the Sentinel Peak hike and seeing some rock paintings in Lesotho.  Thanks to Marcus from Stuttgart, I have pictures of the hike, so that's what I'm posting today.  If Sarah from Ireland sends me pictures of our Lesotho day trip as promised, a post of those pictures will be forthcoming.

Five Cities across Three Countries in 1,000 Words or Less

We are back after an unplanned lengthy absence.  Since our last post on Barcelona, we have visited Sevilla, Granada, Madrid, London and Johannesburg without a post to show for it.  We do have excuses, though: Spain just did not inspire us to write, and internet access afterwards was expensive or inconsistent.  To catch you up, here's a quick rundown of what we have been doing for the last couple of weeks.

Some Awesome Modernist Architecture, But Not Much Else for Us in Barcelona

After saying "goodbye" to Lee in France, Jeff and I set off for Barcelona, Spain. We had both been excited to go to Barcelona to see the architectural creations of Antoni Gaudi, whom we had learned about from one of the many travel shows we enjoyed watching prior to the trip. Many people gushed over how fantastic Barcelona is when we told them we would be going to Spain, but Jeff and found that aside from the terrific Modernist architecture, there wasn't much else of interest for us in Barcelona. Probably because we're not big into going out and partying until the wee hours and we don't have the money to enjoy meals at nice restaurants.

We spent our first day in Barcelona much as we do in most cities we visit, just wandering around (and getting some laundry done!).

Mont Saint-Michel

Along with the D-Day beaches, Mont Saint-Michel was the reason I wanted to visit Normandy. From pictures, the fortified island village looked more like a The Lord of the Rings set than reality, and I've been looking forward to seeing it in person since this our trip began.  I thought we might have to cancel when Marcia had to cancel her trip out to France, but luckily for us, Lee decided to come and fought through jet lag to drive us.

Versailles: Opulence, Crowds and Japanimation

In the seventeenth century, King Louis XIV turned one of his hunting lodges in the town of Versailles into one of the grandest, if not the grandest, royal residences in the world.  He moved his capital here out of filthy Paris, and it stayed here until angry Parisians forced King Louis XVI and his family back into Paris during the French Revolution.  Following the fall of the French Monarchy, the palace's most notable uses have been related to international relations.  The country of Germany was born in its Hall of Mirrors following the Prussian's crushing of France in 1870-1871, and the Treaty of Versailles that intended to cripple Germany was signed in the same hall in 1919 following World War I.

We generally did a good job in scheduling our time to Paris' major sites around crowds, but we failed with Versailles.  Bad weather at the end of our time in Paris forced us to visit the palace on a Saturday, and it was packed.  I'm pretty sure that it was the busiest attraction we've seen on this whole trip.  We couldn't even walk through the palace at our own pace; we had to walk lockstep with the crowds at the risk of being trampled if we misstepped.  Shoulder-to-shoulder tourism isn't really my thing and it was a big part of my not liking the Palace of Versailles that much.  Also, crowds aside, I just wasn't blown away as much as I thought I would be.  Yes, it was incredibly opulent, but it didn't seem to be heads and shoulders above other palaces and castles I've seen.  In fact, I prefer the Bavarian castles Magge and I saw (Neuschwanstein, Hohenschwangau and Nymphenburg) during our trip to Germany a few years ago.

Pictures from Venice

There isn't much to write about our time in Venice.  We didn't visit any museums, only stepped into one church and ate simply.  What we did do, when we weren't ducking the persistent rain, was a lot of walking.  Venice is a great city for exploring, and it's pretty easy to escape the crowds (and the crowds can be very bad in spots, like the Piazza San Marco) just by taking a random turn onto a narrow alley.  Since we didn't actually do that much, I'll just share some pictures.

Rome II

Our second stint in Rome was packed with tours.  This city gets mixed reviews from travelers, with many giving it poor marks because it's too dirty, too busy, or lacks the charm of many of Italy's smaller cities.  However, it may be my favorite Italian city, and the tours we did gave us a great a varied experience during our time there.  While many guidebooks say you only need to spend three or four days in Rome, Magge and I left feeling like we had just scratched the surface.

A Day in Kiersten's Italy Journal: Pompeii

I've already posted an entry from my youngest brother's Italy journal.  Here is a day from my sister's journal covering our day trip to Pompeii.  The pictures in this post are a mix of those taken by Kiersten and Magge.

The first time I ever read, or even heard about, Pompeii was when I was in second grade off a standard reading test. I just thought it was a made up little story about some small village in Italy.  As I found out more and more, I realized this place is not fictional, it’s real!  Pompeii soon made it on my list of Places I Want to Visit When I’m Older.  When I said “Older”, I was referring to when I was an adult, not a few years later. When I found out that I was actually going to Pompeii when visiting Magge and Jeffrey, I nearly wet myself.  I couldn’t wait to see this famous city.

Day Trips From Florence

As you all know, there is a great deal of logistical planning in our daily traveling lives.  While Jeff does the lion's share of the work (I'm generally busy conquering the world on my iPod - or so Jeff says), I do pitch in from time to time.  When we needed to plan our stay in Italy with the Bells, I decided I would look into the tour options available.  Though the Bells are far from difficult to please, I have to admit that I was quite nervous in trying to pick the right tours to fit everyone's tastes (I just wanted everyone to be happy!).  I struck gold when I found the Walkabout tours while planning our Florence leg of the trip.

One site we knew we wanted to visit during our time together was the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  I was worried, however, that making the two hour journey to Pisa just to see the tower might not be worth the hassle.  So I was pleased when I found the Best of Tuscany Tour, which included a stop in Pisa along with tours of Siena, San Gimignano, and lunch at a wine farm.  After reading all the glowing reviews on Tripadvisor.com, Jeff and I agreed that it would be a good choice.  We were thrilled we had found such a great way to fit in Pisa.  The company had another tour of Cinque Terre that had received rave reviews as well that I really wanted to also book.  Sadly, Jeff vetoed that tour because he had read that Cinque Terre was unpleasantly crowded in August.

Florence with the Family

When I was sixteen, I went on a whirlwind tour through Europe with a group from my high school.  We visited eight cities in five countries over seventeen days.  Of those cities, Florence was the least memorable.  (I think) we were there for two days, but all I remember was fighting through crowds to see Michelangelo's David and hopping the fence with my track team and coach to practice on a private local track.  For whatever reasons, the city just didn't stick in my mind.  Regardless, with my family meeting us in Italy, I was giving Florence a chance to prove my teenage sensibilities wrong.

Croatian Walls

Most of our time in Croatia has been spent in old, walled cities and towns.  While with Marcia and Lee, we visited the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Dubrovnik, Split and Trogir, along with the Walls of Ston.  After they returned to North Carolina, we stayed in Hvar for four days.  No pictures of half naked men here, just alleys, squares, forts and churches.

Finally Got My Mamma

After spending a couple luxurious months in Southeast Asia, where almost anything can be had for a fraction of the price it costs in the States, the past week in Greece and now Croatia has been a very rude awakening. An hour of internet time in S.E.A. cost us less than a dollar (usually nothing at all because it was free wherever we were staying).  Here we are forced to pay over six dollars an hour.  So, at risk of being killed by husband, I must make my entry very short and sweet - not something that is easy for me.

To be honest, I did not have much time to get excited about seeing my mom and Lee, whom I have missed very much, because Croatia seemed so far away just two weeks ago when I was in Thailand and I knew I still had four countries to go before seeing them.  I could not contain my excitement, however, once we finally arrived in Dubrovnik, exhausted from a terrible night of traveling by bus from Macedonia.  Who would have ever thought transport in South America would seem so luxurious?

Petra

I've never had a burning desire to visit the Middle East.  I don't think I can be blamed given the standard treatment the region gets in the mainstream media in the U.S.  However, when we were looking at potential destinations, I was drawn to Petra in Jordan, thanks to Indian Jones and the Last Crusade.  Some research comforted us that Jordan was more than safe for travel, and we slotted one week there between our time in Asia and Europe.  It is one of the best planning decisions we have made.  It can be easy to get jaded after eight months of travel, but no level of road weariness could take away from this ancient city.

Halong Bay

Magge and I have spent the last three days on a boat in Halong Bay, in northeastern Vietnam.  A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the bay is littered with nearly 2,000 limestone karst islets. Tantalized by pictures we've seen on the internet,  we've been looking forward to seeing it since we put Vietnam on the schedule.  Seeing it in person, we were not disappointed.  The scenery borders on the surreal; the bay and its jutting rocky islands look like the whimsical paintings you see in shops in Chinatown, but assumed were based on some mythical land instead of somewhere that could possibly exist naturally.

Amazing Angkor

Like Borneo, Cambodia wasn't on our original itinerary.  However, Magge became enamored with the idea of visiting when a couple we met in Ecuador told us that the country had very cheap spa treatments.  We weren't sure we could work it into the schedule until we had to cancel our time in Thailand due to its domestic issues.  So now we're here in Cambodia, a country I knew very little about a year ago.  After two days exploring Angkor,  we can say that it's the most impressive man-made attraction we have seen so far on this trip.

Last Minute Trip to Borneo

Borneo was not on our itinerary when we set out on our trip over six months ago.  Our interest was piqued when a couple on Easter Island highly recommended a visit to see its wildlife, and we were sold on the idea when a fellow scuba diver in Australia gushed over the diving off of the island of Sipadan.  Thankfully, we built a good bit of flexibility into our trip and were able to book a relatively cheap last-minute flight out of Singapore.  Borneo is a huge island (third largest in the world after Greenland and New Guinea) and divided between Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, but we decided to focus on the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah since we only had a week and a half to spend.  It's a good thing we didn't try to tackle more, because we left Sabah exhausted and ready to relax in an air conditioned room.

Jucing in Australia, Part III: Islands

The plan for our roadtrip was to make it to Cairns and back, but we did not make it that far.  After leaving Wallaman Falls, we called both Cairns and Airlie Beach to get their respective weather forecasts to decide from which city to take a boat trip, and Cairns' weather did not look appealing.  So we turned around, 250 kms short of the planned endpoint, and made our way back south.  Cairns itself is not supposed to be overly exciting or beautiful, but it is the most common jumping point to the Great Barrier Reef, which I was disappointed to miss.  However, the three day/two night boat trip from Airlie Beach visits fringe reefs around the Whitsunday Islands that are part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), so I was somewhat appeased.

Jucing in Australia, Part II: Waterfalls and Wallabies

"I'm sorry about the weather," the travel agent said as soon as we walked into her office.  That wasn't what we wanted to hear.  Following the disappointment of the muddy Capricorn Coast, we pushed all the way up to Airlie Beach to get on a sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands.  We were over halfway to Cairns, and still hadn't seen as much as we had wanted, and now the sailing trip wasn't looking likely either.  Maybe we could go straight up to Cairns, go diving up there and come back to Airlie on the way back to Brisbane?  "The weather's just as bad in Cairns," warned the travel agent.  Dejected, Lorena, Magge and I took some brochures and ate lunch on a windy beach as we strategized.  Different plans were discussed, including a crazy one that would have us backtrack nine hours, and in the end we decided to continue north to Paluma National Park, and decide in a few days whether to go up to Cairns or back to Airlie Beach.  The plan sounded fine, but all three of us were still discouraged and we had to remind ourselves that we were traveling around Australia while everyone else we know is working.

Pining for the Fjords

Throughout our time in New Zealand, we had repeatedly heard and read that the Fiordland (part of the enormous Te Wahipounamu UNESCO World Heritage Site) is the prettiest area of the country.  Given how stunning the rest of New Zealand is, we've been excited about getting to the Fiordland, but we still wanted to temper our expectations to avoid being let down.

Hiking on Fox Glacier

We wanted to go on a guided hike on Grey Glacier in Torres del Paine in Chile, but the logistics of getting to the meeting point at 7am when we were a five hour hike away didn't allow us.  I promised Magge we would would do a glacier hike at some point, and the opportunity quickly presented itself in New Zealand.  Fox and Franz Josef, two of the many glaciers in this country, are among the most accessible in the world, with tours getting on the ice every day.  Only 20km from each other in Westland National Park, part of the Te Wahipounamu UNESCO World Heritage Site*, the glaciers are unique in that they descend into a rain forest only 300m above sea level and that they have actually been advancing for most of the last twenty-five years while most of the world's glaciers have been retreating.  I could go on and on about Fox and Franz Josef facts (the ice at the top of the glacier can move as much as 5m in one day, while the ice in the middle can move as much as 2m, about ten times more than the average glacier's speed), but you probably want to hear about the hike.