Greece - April 2009

Attacking Athens

The Guinness

The James Joyce Bar is in amongst a restaurant area of Athens and was busy with people socialising eating and drinking Guinness.  It was well decorated with Irish paraphernalia and had plenty of  atmosphere.  A fine pint of Guinness was consumed before I explained to the French barman, Nickolas, the purpose of my visit. 

Nickolas pours me my Guinness

 He then poured me another Guinness before choosing a straw out of the box.  It contained the name of Luxembourg. 

Enjoying a Guinness at the James Joyce Bar

Getting There and around

We flew with EasyJet from Luton to Athens.

After striding out of the airport and across to the station and trying on our best Greek to buy tickets for the metro we were told the metro was closed down.  Built for the Olympics and then closed down afterwards – supposedly so that more stations could be built. 

The bus driver wouldn’t accept that my son (14) should go half price on the bus.  Their excuse  – because he’s taller than me.  I guess they have a point. 

Team Makeup

Another family holiday – though this time without eldest son.

Accommodation

Athens Studios hostel in the heart of Athens, in the Makryanni district, at the foot of the Acropolis. Refurbished straight from Ikea with flat screen TV included – hardly the type of hostel we are used to and most welcome.  Breakfast was always delivered to our door in small individual wicker baskets with a napkin over the top to keep the hard boiled eggs warm. 

Food

The Greek coffee is thick, black and sweet with a caffeine kick to it enough to wake up even the most weary tourist. 

Orange trees in the street

The Greek vegetarian dishes were by far the best.  We had salads and beans, dolmades and sausage. Musaca and the other meat dishes were OK but stodgy and lacked inspiration whereas the vegetables were more appetizing altogether. 

Sightseeing highlights

Most of Athens is flat but three hills rise out of the plane and on one of them is built the Acropolis.  It was a mere hundred yards or so to the entrance from our hostel and from then on you escaped to noise of the streets and wandered around the ruins of ancient Greece.  With the guide books to accompany us we took it easy in the sunshine and tried to picture what it all used to look like. 

Dionysus Theatre

The Dionysus Theatre, the larger of the two on the site, held some 15,000 spectators. The actors must have had some voice to be able to be heard.  The only noise today was the lady blowing her whistle telling tourists off for straying off the approved paths. 

It became evident that quite a bit of the treasures had been removed and are now in the British Museum, including the Elgin Marbles.  I used to think they were small round glass objects but apparently not.  Must take a trip to London to see them one day to see the other half of what we missed today.

Be nice when it's finished

The queues to get off the Acropolis were equally long as those to get in, if not worse.  I’d hate to think what would have happened if there was an emergency.  I guess the ancient Greeks didn’t have to think that much about emergency planning procedures.  The sun shining off the stone was strong and made our eyes hurt.  The Parthenon was built to honour Athena in the 5^th century BC.

That night we climbed one of the other nearby hills. The view from the top of the floodlit Acropolis as spectacular and one of the highlights of the holiday

Then the next day it was onto Agora, which together with the Acropolis was a place well worth wandering around if only because of its vastness and tranquillity.  It has lots of paths and pleasant vegetation.

 The place is in ruins

Quirky moments

We headed off to parliament to see the weekly changing of the guard ceremony. We joined the rest of the tourists amassed on the central reservation of a dual carriageway.  Just before 11 o’clock the massed guards marched around the corner.  Although there is strong competition worldwide for which national guards look the most ridiculous, these must sure win with their cream woolly tights, white frilly skirts, pom-poms on their shoes and silly looking red hats.  

The National Guards

South of the gardens, in the heart of the city, is the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the largest temple in Greece.  Only a small section of 15 upright pillars remains today. There were originally 104 pillars.  Construction began in 500 BC and it was completed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 132 AD.  It was my turn to get told off here.  I mistakenly sat down on the grass.  You can stand and walk all you like on the grass but not sit down on it.  I never did find out why. 

Out of the City

We thought we’d go to the seaside.  A tram from Athens went all the way to the coast.  The ride on the tram was quite exciting at first but then dragged on a bit.  Glydfa doesn’t half sound like it should be in Wales to me.  It took us about ten minutes to explore Glydfa and decide there wasn’t much there for us.  It looked to be uninteresting shops and expensive restaurants and cafes to us.  Down at the waterfront wasn’t too much better.  There were loads of marinas, tennis courts, scruffy promenades and not a lot else.  We did find some rocks to sit on for half an hour and take in the air but not a lot else. I found a sea turtle sanctuary was the most interesting place there but no turtles in sight. The cafe was called in did do soft drinks but at £6 a bottle so we gave tat a miss to and jumped on the long tram ride back to town. 

Luxurious lingerie - with new openings?

The next day we headed for the Olympic stadium, the modern one which held the Olympics in 2004.   A brave move this as it wasn’t in any of the guidebooks (we had three – one each to stop the squabbling). I’d seen it marked as a stop on the metro line so thought it would be interesting to visit.  It was however a bit like the beach – interesting if you were passing but not if it’s going to take an hour on the metro to get there.  Unfortunately it’s a desolate place and makes little if any attempt to welcome visitors.  You can wander around between the various stadiums but there was no way to go into them.  The odd statue was looking forlorn and abandoned and the only sign of life was in the open air pool where a team of synchronised swimmers was warming up.

Athens by night

Austria - July 2008

Vistas of Vienna

The Guinness

At the end of a hot afternoon spent wandering around the sights of central Vienna we found Flannigan’s bar. It’s a large pub standing on a corner.  A plaque said it was made from the remains of a pub in Churchtown, Co Cork that had been demolished. 

Taking the air outside Flannigan's

We ordered some drinks and I explained to Alistair, the barman from Exeter, what I was up to.  He kindly drew the next place out of the hat.

Alistair kindly pouring me a Guinness.

I had to admit that the Guinness drinking was actually a low part of the day for once.  We were all tired by now and the venue lacked atmosphere in late afternoon. 

Getting There and around

We flew from Birmingham to Bratislava in neighbouring Slovakia on a much delayed Ryanair flight and from there we got a bus to nearby Vienna.  In Vienna we made good use of the metro system, trains and busses.

The gardens at the Schönbrunn Palace

Team Makeup

A family holiday – maybe the last one now eldest son is growing up.

The rest of the team in one of the city's many green spaces.

Accommodation

For the first two nights we stayed with SERVAS hosts and what great hosts they were too.  We spent the rest of the time at the modern Wallabies Youth Hostel where we had an en-suite room to ourselves on the top floor overlooking the railway sidings.  It was like having a train set out side but I didn’t appreciate it so much in the early hours of the morning.

So that's what woke me last night!

Food

You’d expect me to say that the cakes in street cafes were the highlight and perhaps they should have been but they weren’t quite stodgy enough for me.  Instead I very much liked the homemade strudels, both sweet and savoury, made for us by our SERVAS hosts.  

Sightseeing highlights

The Schönbrunn Palace – the buildings, gardens, fountains, statues and mazes made it a good way to spend the day.

A cheeky view of Schönbrunn Palace

The many well tendered parks including the Volkspark and the Sigmond Freud park with its various sculptures.

Outside the parliament

The city architecture including the Winter Palace, cathedrals and Opera house.

Now that's what I call a roof.

The refurbished Technical Museum with fun and learning for all ages.

Quirky moments

Surprisingly few on this holiday.  The Austrians seem to have got everything working like clockwork so it was very much a straightforward sightseeing holiday.

Out of the City

We didn’t get totally out of the city this time but we did get to the northern outskirts and up onto a nearby hill that gave us good views back down to the flat landscape of Vienna.

Not all of Austria is hilly.

Georgia - April 2008

Taking it Easy in Tbilisi

The Guinness

It was time for a Guinness.  I chose to the Hangar Bar, seemingly so named as it had lots of model aircraft hanging from the ceiling.  However there appeared a bit of a naming dilemma going on as the pub also had a sign up saying it was called O’Brien’s. 

Enjoying a Guinness at the Hangar Bar

The Formula 1 race was being aired inside and out but I distracted the owner to have a chat. She kindly picked the next destination out of the box – Vienna, Austria.  I had a second Guinness and watched Cardiff City in the FA Cup Semi-final at Wembley playing Barnsley and winning to get into the final for the first time since 1927.

Rebecca kindly picking out my next destination for a Guinness

Getting There and around

My first impression of Tbilisi was ‘what a dark place’. Then again it was the middle of the night.  Normally I would bound off the plane full of vigour and head for the bus into town but not in Tbilisi.  Apart from the fact that I was travelling whist under the weather, with the aid of Imodium shall we say, it was also the wee small hours of the morning.  Flights in Georgia tend to arrive and depart between 1am and 5am for some strange reason as if trying not to be found out.  My plan therefore was to try to grab a bit more sleep before the first train into the city was due to depart at 5.30am. 

It had been a long old journey to get to this point – by far the longest on my Guinness travels to date.  I’d chosen to use the trusty Lufthansa service from Birmingham with a stop off in Germany.

The stearn looking statue on the hillside overlooking Tbilisi

Arriving in Georgia is quite welcoming; there is no visa requirements, no payments due, just show your passport and you are in.  This is a sign of how westernised the country is – welcoming visitors with none of the normal restrictions you would expect from an ex-communist country.  The other obvious sign is the name of the main road into the city:  George Bush Freeway.  There’s nothing like nailing your colours to the mast and trying to upset your neighbours to the north. 

 Freedon Square - my first sight in Georgia

Team Makeup

I was on my own for this trip.  Nobody else quite fancied it for some reason.

Tbilisi in the springtime

Accommodation

My hotel was in the old part of town, and here the emphasis was on ‘old’.  It’s hard to differentiate when wandering the narrow streets of Tbilisi whether the damaged buildings and infrastructure result of civil war, revolution, the earthquake of 2002 or general neglect.  My hotel certainly had neglect all around it but inside was well looked after.  My room was cramped and overlooked a small courtyard where the neighbours stored their bread and other groceries on their windowsills.  The bed squeaked every time I breathed in and out and the toilet would only flush properly with the aid of a bucket of water.  Surprisingly I still rated it and didn’t care much about these foibles.

Parts of the city have very much a French feel to them.

Food

I often enjoyed the local snacks, a naan bread filled with melted cheese.

In Bojormi I ordered the soup and kebab and chips – when I say ordered I mean nodded when the waitress said something and that’s what arrived.  The soup was excellent, more like a stew – thick tomato with pieces of meat floating in it and cracked wheat at the bottom, topped off with the inevitable coriander. 

Sightseeing highlights

My first view of the city was one of the most spectacular.  Freedom Square, with its tall stone column topped with the gold Liberty Monument depicting St George slaying the dragon.  This was the venue of the Rose Revolution in 2003 and the place where the Georgian president and George Bush addressed 100,000 people in 2005 commemorating the end of WWII.  Here, as dawn was breaking, I had the place all to myself.

The tiny Sioni Cathedral with its dark ornate ceiling was full of lit candles and busy with worshipers.  The cathedral is famous for being the place where in the early 1800s the Georgian nobility were forced by the Russian military to sign and agree to being annexed by Russia.  Today’s Georgia is a deeply religious country, mainly Christian, where years on Communist oppression failed to quash their beliefs.

Tbilisi is very much a city where you can wander around at leisure.  I kept stumbling upon small parks filled with bird song , overlooked by houses painted in various colours.  The city planners appear to specialise in modern brass statues – they are everywhere, most pleasant but a bit incongruous given the poor state of the roads and pavements around. 

If you like brass sculptures then Tbilisi is the place for you.

I found my way up onto the hill and the brand spanking new Sameba Cathedral built with the donations from a mystery benefactor.  People were thronging around including VIPs in suits and black limousines and TV cameras.  It initially thought that may have opened that very day but has in fact been finished four years.  It had gleaming gold roofs and acres of marble and fountains in front.  It reminded me of what it must have appeared like in prior centuries with huge amounts of money being spent on churches whilst people around lived in poverty.

The brand new Sameba Cathedral - it looked like opening day today.

The highlight of my last afternoon in Tbilisi was having my own hot sulphur bath in the Abanotubani district.  20 Lari bought me an hour with my private bath measuring about 2m by 2m, changing room, shower towels and soap. I was asked if I wanted my personal ‘scrubber’- something I’m sure means different things depending on where you come from.  I declined.  That’s one good way of giving yourself a deep clean after over five hours on a train.   The individual bath had a conical domed stone roofs capped by a chimney to let the hot humid air escape.

  Out of the City

I also spent a few nights at Bojormi, a spa town in the Lesser Caucuses some 100 miles west of the capital. I arrived on a minibus with the newspapers and headed for the brand new tourist office.  I had the impression I was the first western tourist in town judging by the way I was so well treated. 

Bojormi has a brand spanking new train station.........

.......the trains however weren't quite so new!

I caught a narrow gauge railway up into the mountains and the ski resort of Bakuriani.  The train, a strange looking electric locomotive with two small carriages waited at the station and soon filled up. I’m glad I stocked up with food as the journey took well over 2 hours.  We went through forests, pastures, people’s back gardens, past grazing cattle and spring flowers in the sunshine.  Some of the bridges on the route were apparently designed by Eifel (of tower fame).  This was not a service that relied only on tourists, it was being used by all the locals and it stopped regularly in numerous stations and even in the middle of the woods.  People would get off and disappear into the woods with their shopping bags.  I doubt it made any money as the amount of energy needed to haul it up to above 5000 feet must have cost more than our 60p fares.

The lovely two carriage electric train up to Bakuriani

A consortium of oil companies has recently completed an oil pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan across Georgia and to the Turkish coast. I popped into an office that explained it all.  I guess a lot of PR was needed as the pipeline goes through some very picturesque and historical areas.  Indeed, there were a number of archaeological finds on display in the office.  A friendly guy talked me though the project in good English before giving me a cup of tea.  Just before leaving he asked me if I needed anything else such as Internet access on his computer.  I thought that was quite a risky offer to make – with a couple of clicks of the mouse I could probably have stopped millions of barrels of oil flowing from the east to the west. 

Quirky moments

In Bojormi I headed out of town hoping to get to the Romsnov Palace.  I wasn’t too optimistic about this goal either having read that it had recently been taken back into government ownership and used for official functions.  My hopes were dashed as I approached the park gates and the guards with machine guns indeed indicated that there was no way I would be allowed in for a peek at the house.  I continued wandering up the road, around a few bends and occasionally jumping up to see if I could glimpse the house over the wall.  I couldn’t.  I must have somehow attached someone’s attention because a police car drew up and the occupants started talking.  Now they could just have been asking me if I wanted a lift somewhere or knew what the time was but judging by their faces I think they were more interested in knowing why I was doing imitating a man on a pogo stick but without a pogo stick.  The fact that we didn’t seem to share a mutual language meant the conversation was going nowhere and they eventually drove off.

Walking the footpath up the hill out of Borjormi past the spa meant going over this rather dangerous footbridge over a river in torrent!

You thought that one was bad - how about this one!

Time to get cleaned up before heading home and where better than this hot spa

Turkey – Feb 2008

Isobars in Istanbul

The Capital of Turkey is.......

“So why Istanbul?” I hear you ask.  Yes, I concede it’s not the capital of Turkey but it is in Europe whereas Ankara, the actual Turkish capital, is geographically in Asia.  The choice I therefore faced when devising the original list of capitals some years back was whether to include Turkey at all, as all as only 3% of it sits in Europe.  Given the appeal of Istanbul, the history, the culture, the weather, it just had to go into the hat.  The weather....OK, maybe I was wrong on that one.

The Guinness

We had a prearranged plan, the only one of the holiday, to go to the James Joyce Bar and possibly meet the Guinness representative for Istanbul.  I had been in touch with him when I had read that there is no foreign brewed draught beers allowed to be sold in Turkey.  He confirmed my findings but said that there was canned Guinness in the James Joyce Bar.  A bit of map reading and there we were in the James Joyce Bar and yes, they did sell cans of Guinness.  We sat on stools at the bar but I almost fell off mine when I enquired about the price £6 a can!  My round I guess!  It was onto the Efes larger after that!  Bar owner Gulsum, who had lived in Ireland at one stage, kindly drew out Tbilisi, Georgia as my next destination.

Dave and Phil enjoy the Guinness

We all tried to go on the free Internet but it proved very tricky as the keys on the keyboard were slightly different, the letter ‘i’ in particular being in another place.  We gave up and instead watch a traditional Irish band that started up and dance a jig or two.  Dave spotted the breathalyser machine on the way out.  The barman showed him how to use it and it confirmed, in Turkish, that he was not allowed to drive home.  Luckily we didn’t have a car with us.

Gulsum picking out Tibilisi, Georgia as my next destination

Getting There and around

We flew from London Luton to Istanbul with EasyJet. We then took an internal flight to Izmir to visit Ephesus before getting a train to Denizli to visit  Pamukkale.  After that we used night express to return to Istanbul

The Istanbul skyline

Team Makeup

Dave, who’d been to the Faroe Islands with me, and first-timer Phil.

Accommodation

In Istanbul we stayed at the Terrace Guesthouse in the Sultanahmet area of the city with a very friendly owner, extremely steep stairs and lots of carpets.

View from the dining room in the Terrace Guesthouse

Food

On our first night in town we deliberately avoided the posh touristy looking restaurants and instead headed into a smaller one, full of Turkish people.  We ordered everything on the menu, literally, which was not difficult as they only had six things: kebab, salad, yogurt, rice, soup and pickled chilli.  Only five turned up – we never did see the chillies.  It was very good; the rice had a real nice flavour as did the salad, all swilled down by a coke.  Sweet was equally straightforward as only one of the two things on the menu was available, something that looked and indeed tasted a bit like the polyurethane foam you get inside a settee.   Now that’s how to run a restaurant – a simple short menu.  Gordon Ramsey would be pleased.

Freshly squeezed juice - delicious

Sightseeing highlights

The Archaeology Museum was pretty good, stuffed full of Roman statues, sarcophagi and mummies. There was a special exhibition of beads which made you wonder how people drilled holes through beads before electric drills.  

The Basilica Cistern is the underground water storage system built by the Romans.  You would never have thought it was there walking around on the street above, but below ground a vast open space full of pillars and walkways and a couple of feet of water.  A couple of the columns at the far corner have upside down faces of Greek Gods carved into stone.  It was a fascinating gem of a place and lay undiscovered for hundreds of years after the Romans left the city.  Did the city’s residents never for a moment wonder where their water was coming from?

Basilica Cistern

The Sultan Ahmet Mosque, or Blue Mosque as it is commonly known, won the vote given it was next door.  This unusually has six minarets surrounding it.  The designer got heavily criticised for building a six-minaret Mosque, mimicking Mecca, but resisted the pressure to take one down and instead paid for a seventh to be built at Mecca. 

Yes, it was raining and it could have done with being a bit warmer.  It even snowed on our last day and our flight was the last one out for a few days.

The covered Grand Bazaar was a great experience.  Thousands of stalls in covered streets.  We did get hassled in some parts of it to buy things but it was bearable and certainly not too crowded.  A Saturday in the summer things would be very different.  One thing that surprised me however was that although it was very colourful it was not full of the aromatic smells I was expecting.  Again in summer things may be different.  After walking around for quite a time we sat at one of the intersections and had a thick Turkish coffee.

Grand Bazaar

Quirky moments

The man holding up my name on a board as we stepped into the arrivals area at Istanbul’s new Sabiha Gökçen airport had a slightly odd appearance.  Odd from the point of view that he seemed only to have one eye.  Never mind we thought, as long as he doesn’t wink too much we should be OK.  To begin with he appeared to drive at a snail’s pace. Then after five minutes, when he seemed to slouch over on the seat, we really got worried.  It turned out he was just reaching into the glove compartment to give us all a carton of juice and a cake each – I’ve never had that in a taxi before.  From then on his driving got faster and....faster and....faster.

Out of the City

Dave and I would then flew off to Izmir to visit Ephesus. We stayed in Selçuk, a modern town just a mile from Ephesus. The place was certainly in ruins.  You are gradually struck by the size of the place, covering a massive area and could begin to picture yourself inside this ancient city that once housed tens of thousands of people. The spectacular facade of the Celeus ancient library is one of the best preserved sections and looked wonderful in the spring sunshine. 

The Celeus in Ephesus

The next day we got the train to the industrial and textile city of Denizli and then onto hot springs of Pamukkale and the neighbouring ruins of Hierapolis.  After taking your shoes and socks off you are allowed to go paddling in the warm water on the terraces of Pamukkale.  Quite and experience – especially having the hillside to ourselves.  In Hierapolis I took the option of going for a swim whist Dave went to the museum.  It was one of the more expensive options of the holiday, £7, but a highlight for me, paddling in amongst fallen stone columns and then swimming in the deeper sulphurous water.  The boards around the side gave a full chemical analysis and advertised its healing properties.

Dave enjoying the waters of Pamukkale

These theatres must have been quite a sight when full.