Summer holiday 2005, part 2 of 2
As I was saying in part one, we were going a trip down Europe, stopping by Opatija in Croatia and Zalakaros in Hungary. I finally got around to bother writing the second part. Hopefully, I’ll still be able to recall from memory the rest of the storyline. I’m just thankful I already prepared and uploaded all the images a long time ago, those will definitely aid me in the writing. If you missed the first part, here it is:
Article: Summer holiday 2005, part 1 of 2
And so we continue…
Day 13 went on uneventfully, really. We just relaxed, sighing about the rain (when it poured down) and I watched another of the DVDs I had brought. Oh, joy.
Day 14 had the sun coming out again. Unfortunately (and typical for the whole vacation so far), we were going back on the road for our next destination; into the Czech Republic. Hot days seem to be coming along just when we’re going to drive all day, apparently. Figures. We drove past Lake Balaton most of the way, we passed the border into Slovakia around dinner time (for most people, which was around 4pm). Not long after that, we passed through the Slovakian capital, Bratislava. I gotta tell ya, it looked like a construction site the whole time we passed through the city. From what I can tell, the Czech Republic got the better end of the deal when the two nations were split apart (I have to note that this was a mutual agreement between the nations, as they were forced together as one in mid last century; at least so I was told). The trip through Slovakia didn’t take long – about an hour or so – but at least we got to add another country to our vacation record. When crossing the border into the Czech Republic, we had now been in 8 different countries in a single vacation (not counting our home country, of course). When arriving in Brno (for you native English speakers out there, it’s pronounced “Burr-noe”), we decided to call it a day and started looking for a decent enough hotel. Easier said than done. After an hour or so walking around to the different locations we had in our guide for a hotel, we finally settled on Hotel Slavia. I even found a wireless access point nearby, just to get a quick “fix” for my Internet addiction. Yeah, I know, I’m way to dependent on the Internet. So sue me. At least I paid for the Internet access from a large ISP (T-Online, the biggest in Germany), as opposed to wardriving and hacking my way in to a random access point. This night, we had another Italian style pizza. Oh, boy, those are good down here. Much better than the American style pan pizzas we usually get back home. Thin crust, tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese (or other cheese types), ham, bacon, whadhevver fllavour youh lcan geth youhrl handsth onn. *wipes mouth* …and off to my room, surfing the web all night. I think I laid down in my bed one hour before breakfast, though, just to get at least a little bit of sleep before getting back on the road. Thankfully, I had my parents to wake me up for breakfast, or I’d never had gotten up in time for checkout.
Day 15 was another day on the road. At least we were on our way northbound by now, heading in the general direction of home. However, one of our defined destinations on our route was Karlovy Vary. It sounded nice, I had a hard time finding on the map, since my mother insisted it was named “Carlsbad”, in which the nearest hit I could find was on or past the border to Germany. It turned out I wasn’t even close, though. And on our way in to a gas station for fuel refills and trash disposal (including our bladders, I might add), we were stopped by the local police. I assume they were looking for smugglers or robbers or something, cause we weren’t the people they were looking for (and no, I didn’t use any Jedi mind trick). The entry point to the town of Karlovy Vary wasn’t the best I had seen, considering it was literally uphill almost all of the way. We spent a few hours this day as well looking for accommodation for at least the night. Now, remember I did say “defined destination”, and not “planned”, since we had very little planned ahead for the whole vacation (something we regret the whole way through our trip). The only accommodation we had planned for the whole route, was in fact in Skjeberg and in Opatija. We had to scrap the Skjeberg one, as you could tell from my story on day 1 of this trip. Anyway, we finally found a place way up in the hill called “Villa Rosa”, which was more of a small apartment hotel (5 apartments). We didn’t get much done today, really. But at least we had the view of downtown. And since the weather was all sunshine, we decided that we’d stay a few extra days here. We were not going to spend another sunny day in a hot car, that’s for sure – especially when in a car without air conditioning. After installing our gear in the rented apartment, we finally headed downtown again to get some dinner. And since my parents planned on drinking alcohol (and I don’t have a driver’s license), we took a taxi downtown. Language can be a problem, though, especially since we almost gave up on getting a taxi until a couple of local kids passed us and we got them to help us. Oh, joy. But in any case, I had pizza today again – Italian style (again). *drool*
Day 16 was quite relaxing, since we knew we weren’t going to drive a lot today. We did, however, take a trip downtown to stroll through the streets and to find one of the public baths to cool off in. For a publicly available pool, I thought it had one amazing view, though. I mean, just look at it! And I must say, it’s relaxing to chill in a pool after a long stretch of hot days. After our little swim, we headed downtown to stroll around and find some sights. Just a basic tour of the town, really. I even caught some bad snapshots of the sights (frankly, they weren’t any good, which is why I deleted them from my camera shortly after). Now, I wish I kept them. That’s one of the downsides of digital photography. Snap, snap, grin, grin, trash, trash, regret, regret, say no more. Another pizza restaurant, this time I think we picked the one next the to one we went to yesterday.
Day 17 was our last full day in Karlovy Vary. What I like about most of the destinations down here, is that breakfast is included in the overnight price (unlike the hotels in Norway). Today, we took a stroll down on the downtown colonnade, which also included some mineral water (and we’re talking heavy minerals here), which was rumoured to have health-giving effects. I took a quick sip from it, and it tasted like carbonated water laced with iron shavings. Gruesome. If you’ve ever licked an iron object, you know what I’m talking about (ok, I admit I’ve actually done that at a couple of occasions – don’t ask, I’m not sure I want to know why either). We did spend some time searching for a decent lunchtime place, too. Note the “decent” bit. All we wanted, were some sandwiches, or perhaps a toast each; all the places we went looking only had dinner-sized lunches, which is a bit too much for us. We finally ended up at a local McDonald’s restaurant, for a burger menu each. Simple and plain, no extras. After our afternoon stroll, we decided to pop by one of the shopping malls just on the other side of town. A car comes in handy in this town, apparently. We spent just about the rest of the day here (a few hours walking around). I ended up buying a USB cable for my mobile phone (which is about half the price here than what it costs back home), as well as a couple of games for my computer and my GBA-SP. No biggies, really. One of the computer games I bought, I may have to put up for auction, simply because it’s only in German. If you’re reading this and are interested in a German language version of “Age of Mythology”, get in touch. The GBA games were “Mario Party Advance” and “Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2”. Later in the evening, we took at taxi down to the other side of town for some pizza (again – but I like it that way). The restaurant we went had apparently been visited by several celebrities, among others, Morgan Freeman. We found that out when we arrived, when there were several pictures posted in the window. The major part of the restaurant was outside, though, and included live entertainment (music by guitar and keyboard). Dinner was delicious, though.
Photos:
"We're up to here in fucking castles"
The town looks like a wedding cake
The town looks like a wedding cake
The town looks like a wedding cake
The town looks like a wedding cake
My sleeping area in the "living room"
The downtown colonnade - simply stunning
The downtown colonnade - simply stunning
The downtown colonnade - simply stunning
Our accommodation while in Karlovy Vary - Villa Rosa
Day 18 was time to get back on the road. We popped by the supermarket outside town to stock up some more groceries and peppermint tea. We do have a division of Lidl in our area at home that sells peppermint tea as well, but it just doesn’t taste right. The best peppermint tea can be bought in Germany and the surrounding countries, at least that’s my opinion. Today, we decided to go to Dresden, just across the border in Germany. When we got there, we started looking for a hotel right away. After popping into the local tourist office, and a quick soda (and pee break) at an outdoor café, we finally landed on picking the Hotel Ibis Dresden Königstein. There are 3 Ibis hotels in Dresden, and although their names are different, they are located right next to each other and are linked together business-wise (although not physically). We rented a family room, just to get through the night. I found a wireless access point available in the hotel lobby as well as the first 4 floors. And since our family room was located at the 7th floor, I spent a lot of time in the hotel bar (which was just close enough to be able to access the wireless Internet). Finally, I had a chance to catch up on my Internet activities. It’s times like these that lets me know first hand just how dependent I am on having an Internet connection nowadays. I had several cups of tea while there, just to have something good to accompany me while in cyberspace. We also decided on our next destination while I was using the Internet, finding out that Hamburg would probably be suitable as our next stop on the road. At least when it came to an overnight stay. We even found out that there was another Ibis hotel in Hamburg, and we also decided on our next stop after that. After some consideration, we landed on Malmö in Sweden. We then booked hotel rooms for both Hamburg and Malmö, just to be sure. We then had dinner at a local restaurant and had Italian style pizza (big surprise there) and went around looking for places to find breakfast for the next day. Believe it or not, breakfast was not included in the price at this hotel, and we could only assume that it wasn’t included on our next stop (which was in the same chain of hotels). My parents then went to bed, while I stayed in the hotel bar until closing time (at about 2 or 3 am, I don’t remember), surfing the net all the time on my laptop.
Day 19 started off with breakfast in our room, bought at local grocery stores and bakeries. Then it was time to say goodbye to yet another room before we headed off to our next destination. We even decided to stop by Berlin on the way, simply to see Brandenburger Tor (the Brandenburg Gate), a historical landmark in Germany and especially in Berlin, together with Unter den Linden. We took a relaxing lunch toast there, outside Hotel Adlon, which had a direct view of Brandenburger Tor, which we found was actually a quite exclusive hotel with restaurant (at which time it was already too late – we had already ordered and got our toast sandwiches). I must say that this was probably the most expensive meal on the entire trip (including dinners), costing about 80 Euro for 3 toasts and 3 Coca-Colas. Eek! And in the middle of our meal, it started raining, so the waiters were kind enough to allow me to finish my toast in the restaurant itself. It was a rather good toast, though. After finishing up our toasts and buying a cup of hot beverage each (hot chocolate for me, coffee for my parents) on the way back to the car, we went back on route to Hamburg. We probably should’ve caught on the price range earlier on, though, judging by the way the waiter greeted us (extremely more polite than others) and by the general location of the restaurant. At least that was a lunch to remember. It took a while to find Hotel Ibis Hamburg Airport, we apparently drove past it a couple blocks away and ended up on the other side of the airport. Strange thing. We turned back, and found it after a little bit of map digging. We got there, got into our rooms (we apparently each had a double room, but paid a single room price for the one I had) and lagged out, so to speak (to use an Internet term). Okay, fine, “relaxed for a bit”. This was also the time our power converter for our portable mini fridge went “offline”. Shucks. Now we could only keep the contents of it cool while we were driving (since it would only run on a 12V power plug without a power transformer). In any case, after a bit of relaxation, we went to the hotel restaurant to get some grub, when we decided we might want something other than what was on the menu, which made us drive around a bit to find a different restaurant (long story short: there weren’t any), only to return to our hotel and pick an item from the restaurant there after all. Later on, I bought yet another 24 hours of wireless Internet access from T-Online as I did at the previous hotel, and spent some several hours into the night on the interweb. I did, however, sneak in a few hours of sleep, though.
Photos:
Driving on Unter den Linden
Seeing the Reichstag in the distance
Driving behind Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate)
Some sort of stone labyrinth or memorial ground...
Brandenburger Tor (the Brandenburg Gate)
Brandenburger Tor (the Brandenburg Gate)
Brandenburger Tor (the Brandenburg Gate)
Brandenburger Tor (the Brandenburg Gate)
Day 20 started off basically like any other day we were going on the road. Although I think I only got 3 or 4 hours of sleep, it was slightly more than some of the other nights I had been using parts of the night surfing on the net. I was a bit tired, but at least it would allow me to fall asleep more easily while we were driving, something which would help me out of the boredom on the road. We pretty much went straight for the border, with regular stops along the way (for toilet breaks, a quick smoke for my parents and lunch along the way). After crossing the border, we went straight for the Swedish border (which is more or less the Öresund bridge when coming from Denmark), landing for our scheduled overnight stop in Malmö, where we had ordered a room for 3 people. When we finally arrived in Malmö, though (and after some searching for the hotel as well as the hotel entrance, which was on the back instead of where the address was), we discovered that the extra bed in the double room was making the room more cramped up than it already was. My stepdad made a quick decision to get an extra room for me, though, which also turned out to be a double room for a single person. And while examining the desk, I saw a very thin networking cable and a brochure next to it. Reading the brochure, I discovered that this hotel also had Internet access, this time via an Ethernet cable instead of being wireless, as I was used to before on the road (not counting the Internet café in Opatija, see days 5 and 6 from this trip). Since I had already been using the Internet extensively over the last few days, I wasn’t that dependent on going online, but at least I had it readily available now. While getting myself installed in my hotel room, I somehow managed to lock the key inside the room (both of ’em), and I had to get down to the reception to get another (the room keys were of the type encoded into a card) – somewhat blushed and embarrassed. In any case, the days on the road do pass by pretty quickly when I sleep through most of the day.
Day 21 was yet another day on the road. At least we were closer to home now. But we had one obstacle left on our trip, though; the final border crossing. We had lots of alcohol among our baggage which we had bought on the way – several times above the allowed limit set by Norwegian customs. You could say we were pretty nervous and on the edge when we checked the SMS service for customs checkpoints for the day; one of them was the new Svinesund bridge, and we were meant to cross it. We spent a long time in the big shopping center near the border, just to stretch the time and hopefully long engough for the customs to move along to a different checkpoint. But to no avail. After a long hour of being a bunch of nervous wrecks, we eventually decided to go for the old Svinesund bridge, and hope that the customs weren’t present at that location. We went back on the road, paid the road toll at the bridge, and successfully crossed the border, and only managed to relax once we were far into the country (where there was no chance we’d be pulled over for customs checking). We then headed for the hotel we usually stay when we arrive into Norway, Olavsgaard Hotel near Oslo. Once we arrived, we had a good Norwegian traditional dinner (which we had been longing for about a week now), “kjøttkaker” (“meat cakes”, not anywhere like Swedish meatballs, in fact, closer to beef cakes). After dinner, it was time for some more R&R at the hotel room (we shared a family room this time as well). I spent some more time online, having found an access point for a Norwegian invoice-based wireless service I had signed up for when I was online in Copenhagen, and after that, lotsa sleep.
Day 22 wasn’t too much trouble. We had passed the final border crossing, and we knew our way home from here. This was a familiar route, although an eventless one. We stopped by Lillehammer for some grub and basic shopping before continuing, and we got home around 8 or 9 pm. After unpacking, we did a bottle count on the alcohol we’d bought (both wine and booze, I might add), I don’t even remember how much it was. I believe we went to bed pretty early this final day, we were way beyond tired now. Next year, I’m considering taking a flight instead of being on the road, even if that means I’m travelling alone.