Home

It is Wednesday night and we are back in Sunny Sydney. We obviously brought the Summer weather with us from the Northern Hemisphere. It is great to be back with family.
In Seoul, we went to a traditional Korean Village which was closed because it was Tuesday. We went to the palace to watch the changing of the guard but it was closed because it was Tuesday. All the tourist places are closed on Tuesdays and we only had one day there. We drove up a mountain and we watches the changing of the guard at another palace. It was noisy and very colourful but about as useful as the one at Buckingham Palace. I had no idea what was going on but they had a giant drum that made lots of noise. After they have done some marching and a few other moves and people yell things, you get to line up and have your photo taken with them.
At the same place there was a political demonstration brewing. There were about 20 nuns holding placards, (really scary looking) and about 1000 police dressed in riot gear. It was a bit of overkill I would suggest.
We also went and had a look at both the posh shopping street that sells all the designer brands where the Japanese go shopping and the market where the local people shop. I wasn't really interested in shopping at either place. I think I am shopped out. It also helped that I didn't have any local currency.
We had lunch in a typical Korean restaurant. With many dishes, all of which are so hot with chili that I could not eat them. I drank lots of water.
Interestingly enough, our guide said that the South Korean people are not vaguely worried about North Korea. They think that within a short time, they will be reunited again, They just have to wait for the current president of North Korea to die.
The other thing I found interesting was that he says he sends his children to coaching clinic after school even though it is very expensive, because everyone does. He doesn't like it but feels as if he has to. Peer pressure gone wrong.
Overall, my view of Seoul is an overcrowded, smoggy city, full of ugly wires and skyscrapers, that is definitely not my favourite.
It is great to be back home with my family. We have had a wonderful time.

Windmills, cheese, dykes and bikes

We arrived this morning in Amsterdam, Holland or the Netherlands. I was surprised to know that they call it Holland. Strange country with a personality so unlike the rest of Europe. 60% of it is below sea level. Who would build a country like this? We went on a canal cruise this morning around Amsterdam. So much water, yet so few mosquitoes. The first thing I noticed was the bikes. They were everywhere! There was a bike parking station that was 6 stories high.
The guide said that they go on the front of the bike from 3months to 1 year, then they go on the back of the bike until they are 6 when they get their own bike. Everyone rides old bikes because if you have a new bike, someone steals it. The houses are gorgeous and everyone is different and lots of them are really crooked. They didn't have house numbers so they had to make their houses look different so they had different facades with statues. All of the time they have their windows open so that you can see what people are doing inside. The guide said that if someone has their curtains closed it shows that you have something to hide. A lot of them have mirrors so they can see what the people are doing next door. They are a bit like the side mirrors on cars only bigger. beautiful skinny houses and lots of lovely house boats, which cost a fortune.
After lunch we went for a drive north to Vollendam. Why does everything end in dam? We went to an Edam cheese factory, which was just an excuse to try and get us to buy some cheese. Then we went to a working windmill that was 350 years old. That I loved. It was beautiful with a thatched roof. Those blades go so fast. They can pump 20 000 gallons a minute, just from the wind. Wow! That was a very cool place. Apparently they are freezing inside in the winter. There are lots of sheep in Holland which surprised me as well as heaps of black and white cows.
We then went to a fishing village which used to be on the sea but is now on a freshwater lake. It was cute but very touristy. You could see nets in the water where they catch eels. I haven't quite got my head around this whole reclaimed land thing. How can they have 60 percent of their country where there used to be sea? It was explained but I still don't get it.
After dinner we went for a walk around downtown Amsterdam, from around 9pm-10.30. It was still light. It was much more beautiful than from the boat. Wow, was that an eye-opener. We didn't even go to the red light district but we went down some streets that maybe we shouldn't have. They had cafes that don't sell anything but coffee, with people doing unusual things in the windows. Dope is sold and smoked very openly. I had heard about it but there is nothing underground about the drug or sex trade in Amsterdam. It was a bit scary. But the city certainly was alive. I guess it is Saturday night.
Anyway, this is one country I will definitely put on my come back to one day list. I love it. And the tour guides are actually really funny.
One thing that I have noticed all the way from Budapest to Amsterdam on each of the rivers is how clean the rivers were. Even though they are all in flood, I did not see one pice of rubbish in 2 weeks. Amsterdam was different. We did see rubbish in the canals and in the streets.
Tonight is our last night on the boat and tomorrow we start our way home. I dont quite get how tonight (Saturday) is our last night in Europe and we have one night in Korea, but we get home on Wednesday. I think we lose 2 nights in flying. It is very sad to end this wonderful chapter in our lives but will be great to see family and friends again. I need to go back to being useful again.

Chocolat

Today we arrived in Cologne. They call it Koln. I dont understand why we call the towns and cities by different names and spellings than the Germans do. I have to say it is the most unimpressive city we have been to on our trip. After the 2nd World War, they had to make a decision as to whether they would rebiuld everything as it was before or build it new. All the other places we have been to, have fixed things up to make them look the way they were hundreds of years ago. Cologne in its wisdon decided to go for new, which is now 1950s style, which now looks 'old' but 'boring old' and unattractive. Bad decision. I dont know why tourists would bother to come here.
There are two good places as far as we can see.. We have been to them both. They a have huge cathedral built in 12 something which is very beautiful but really dirty on the outside(apparently due to acid rain). They have to keep making the statues again ever 10 years or so because they wear out. I never realised they did that. It was magnificent inside, probably the best we have seen with glorious stained glass windows telling stories.
The other place we went to was the Lindt Chocolate Museum. At last a museum about something important. It had all about the history of chocolate making and they actually make it there as well. Of course we had to buy some chocolate as well.
Last night there was a concert put on by the passengers. One guy was brilliant on the harmonica. Adrian and Les did a ventriliquist act. Adrian was the dummy who didnt get the jokes. He reckons Les was the dummy because he told dumb jokes. It was pretty funny and everybody liked it.
It is starting to get real that it is nearly time to end our cruise which is a bit scary, coming back to reality.

Amazing!

We just went along the most magnificent stretch of the Rhine River. It was amazing. The sun was shining on the vineyard covered hills and around almost every bend there was another castle. Some of them were so beautiful, just like a fairytale. There are some horrible stories associated with some of them but they look wonderful and arouse the imagination. We saw the Lorelei statue, which would have to be the most overated landmark in the history of the world. It was supposed to be where a siren attracted men and caused them to have shipwrecks on a difficult part of the river. They just used the woman as an excuse for their poor navigation skill, just like Adam blamed Eve. There is a famous poem written about it, which I have read but it doesnt do much for me.
This afternoon we went to a town called Rudestein. We went to a Museum of Mechanical Music, which is not something I would have thought I would want to go to, but was really fascinating. They had all sorts of instruments, like you used to see on merry-go-rounds or those organ grinders that you turn the handle. There was a machine that actually played 16 instruments, a bit like a pianola, but due to all sorts of belts and pulleys, it played all sorts of other ones all at the same time. Greg would have loved the engineering aspect of them all.
We went up in a cable car to the top of a mountain where there was, on the edge of the forest, 250 m above the Rhine, a huge monument designed to symbolize the re-establishment of the German Empire and Germany's unity was erected between 1877 and 1883. We had an amazing view of the Rhine from the top because it was such a perfect day.

Miltenberg

We had the morning to relax and watch the world go by; beautiful forests, red cliff faces, fields of cows, vineyards, always something new. After lunch we visited Miltenberg. A delightful little town full of half-timbered houses. Grandad said he found the cafe that sold the most wonderful cream cakes in the World - his constant crusade was over, but he had to make sure of it. Everytown and city has lovely cafe's with beautiful pastries and cakes and you sit outside, not with cars going by you, but on cobblestoned pathways. It was another town full of histories out of story books, with the square where they held executions to provide entertainment for the masses before television was invented. I wonder what beautiful little town will be around the next bend?
We had dinner last night with a couple who used to work in Samoa just before we were there. He worked for the Bank of Western Samoa and we shared many funny stories. They are lovely people even though they are from New Zealand.

ABC - Another Beautiful City

Today we visited two towns/cities. In the morning we arrived at Wurzburg on the Main River. It is known for a big fortress on one side of the river but we went to the residence of the Prince Bishop of Wurzburg. I must admit to thinking,'Why would we want to go and look at a bishop's house?' but this was the most palatial residence ever. Wurzburg used to be a country apparently and the prince/bishop was in control for the last 1000 years. They had to be a priest and from a noble family, but they were elected, like the pope. It was decorated more than almost anything we have seen yet, but nothing religious, which is pretty funny since it was a bishop's house. We got some ideas for decorating our entry. His was a little bit different as just his entry staircase covered over 600 sq metres. He wanted everyone to know how important he was. This palace was huge and only one person ever lived there. I guess his many servants lived there too. Apparently they never had a bath becasue they were scared of water, so they just wore lots of perfume and make up to cover the smell and dirt. The only problem was the make up was made out of lead and they didn't live very long.
In the afternoon, we went via the autobahn to Rothenburg, a medieval town which was just magnificent. It has a Christmas store that it about 4 stories high with very expensive ornaments. Heaven for Sue. Hell for Adrian and Granddad. They have a speciality called a snowball which is a pastry which we had to try but it was very ordinary. It tastes like stale cardboard with icing sugar on it. It is surprising because most of their cakes are wonderful. Adrian took his 1000th photo today. I bet you cant wait to see them all! There was a medieval torture museum in Gothenburg. It had some great ideas. They had a cage that they used to put a baker in and dunk him in the river because he didn't have enough dough in his bread. After this treatment, he made his loaves larger, but still got dunked because he was wasting dough. Poor guy. It was a lovely sunny day despite cloudy beginnings.

Bumbag

This morning we were at Bamberg, or 'Bumbag' as we affectionately refer to it. I think we are on the Main river now but I am not really sure. Sometimes the guides are a little difficult to understand. Yesterday one was warning us to watch out for the 'psychopaths' in town, when we get off the bus. She even said they had the right to sue us if we run into one. Later we worked out that she was referring to the 'cycle paths' which are everywhere in Germany. They even have their own traffic lights.
Anyway, Bamberg is just one photo opportunity after another. It is gorgeous. It has like most cities, its industrial sections, but the old section is wonderful and was not destroyed much during the war. We went to the cathedral, which we are beginning to tire of, I must admit, but I was amused by this one as it took 50 years to build. It was built by Heinrich the Quarrelsome (funny name)in 1190 wand was consecrated in 1237. But during its building, the style changed so east side of the Church is built in the Romanesque style with arched top windows and the west side or front of the church was built in Gothic style with taller windows with pointy tops. Imagine changing the Opera house half way through and having half of it in one style and half in another style. It is in a square with buildings built over a 600 year period, so it is a real mix of architecture. But still beautiful. It is such a pretty place.
The shops were lovely too with little marketplaces selling colourful fruits like berries an peaches and prices that we paid back in the 60s. The fruits are so juicy and tasty. They even serve you. In fact prices for pretty much everything are cheaper here than Australia. We cant even blame the Euro or the EEC.

Fascination and Terror

What a day! Today we experienced Nuremberg. In the morning we visited the old city, which is walled with a dry moat. The guide bragged that it was never taken but then said that 90% of it was destroyed during the first World War. It has been restored to its former glory though and is quite beautiful. The wall and the castle are magnificent and surprised us with their splendor. We had the biggest cup of coffee we have ever had after having tiny cups previously. Adrian and I both had a cup the size of a pasta bowl. Maybe I shouldn't have asked for jumbo size. I hope we can sleep this week.
This afternoon we visited the Nazi Parade grounds where Hitler held most of his rallies. Then we went to the Documentation Centre, an exhibition which talked about the rise of Hitler and the extermination of the Jews and Gypsies. It was amazing to see how people could be convinced to follow him, but it was a gradual well thought out process, over 20 or so years. It was horrific and very sobering to think that normal people can get on board and support such a vile and evil regime. But it has happened before and I am sure it will happen again. That is why we have to teach our children to think for themselves and be critical of everything that they see or hear. We also went to the courthouse where the trials were held.
Nuremberg sums up the human condition. It shows that people can create and do beautiful things. It also shows that we have a potentially very dark side to us.
We are still having a wonderful time, and meeting lots of lovely people from parts of Australia and New Zealand.

Yesterday

Yesterday was just a travelleing day for me. I was really tired so I stayed on the boat. Adrian went on a tour of Regensburg and I slept until lunchtime. He said he thought that maybe I would have had a favourite new town but I would have been too tired to enjoy it. In the afternoon I read my book and watched Germany go past. It is lovely going past fishermen with a little fire to cook their fish and people riding their bikes along the banks. In little villages and in cities, every house has flower boxes filled with flowers and lovely gardens. I feel inspired. And there are lots of houses the same colour scheme as ours, yellow whith white windows, which is really unusual. Some Austrians and Germans must have driven down our street sometime and decided to start a trend over here.
A swan and her signets was outside our room yesterday. I suspect that it is used to being fed by passengers becasue it was tapping on the window below us with its beak. We have been through some enormous locks and are on our way down hill.

Sound of Music

Today we left some little tiny village and went on a coach to Saltzburg. 'Berg' means castle and 'burg' means mountain. So today we were in the mountains of Austria, where Sound of Music was filmed. We saw lots of places from the movie including where they were married and where they rode along the river. Apparently, like most Hollywood productions, the accuracy of the story leaves a lot to be desired. The mountain that they climbed to go to Switzerland actually leads to Germany. The real Von Trap family actually caught a train to Italy and neither of them were Austrian. Maria was. But she wasn't a nun. It was interesting though and Saltzburg is a very pretty city. It is also Mozart's birthplace. What I liked most was a graveyard just below the fort/castle. The graves were so pretty with flowers growing all over them. There are no gravestones but fancy wrought iron tombstones. I had some huge cherries. It was interesting that in Austria, the sausages are called frankfurts and in Frankfurt they are called Viennese sausages. Go figure.
We rejoined the boat at Passau in Germany, after driving across the border where we found out, in Hitler's birthplace (in Austria) that Hitler's mother was not married when he was born so he wasn't really a Hitler after all. We are now sailing again and are in a hurry. There is a bridge up ahead that, because of the rain, we will only clear by 10cm. We also have to hurry because a section of the Danube Main Canal will be closed on Sunday because they are having a triathlon.
After dinner, there was a Barvarian concert. A one man band. He pretended that he knew no English but I am sure he did. He was very funny and included people from the audience in his act. He got Adrian's dad out to play the euponium and Sue out to play some other funny instrument. He put a funny hat on them as well. Les is very good at hamming it up anyway so it was pretty funny. The guy was also a pretty good musician and played a variety of instruments. What a big day!

Melk

After travelling along the most beautiful stretch of river in the world, we arrived at Melk, a little town, still in Austria but a bit upstream. It is very hilly and at the top af the hill is an abbey which was originally built in 1089. It was destroyed a few timea and rebuilt on its present site, finishing in 1746. It is in Baroque style which is extremely detailed with lots of gold, lots of paintings, over the top decorations and statues. It was quite interesting and it was a lovely little town. I enjoyed the walk back down through the narrow streets looking at the little shops while Adrian waited patiently outside, which he has got used to. we went into a supermarket to buy shampoo and were trying to work out which was shampoo and which was conditioner becasue the writing was in German. I think I am OK becasue apart from the language on the bottle, it is the same as mine at home. If I come home looking like I have German hair, you will know why.

Is this heaven?

Mark Twain said, "Give every day the chance to be the most beautiful in your life." Well it is not hard at the moment for me. We are sailing through the Wachau Valley and it is just magic. There are fairly steep green hills rising from the river covered in vineyards and apricot trees, with the occasional church or village. I wish I could paste some photos.
We called in at a little village called Durnstein. It has a population of just 450 people but has 1.6 million visitors each year and I can see why. If it was in Australia I would come every weekend.
Richard the Lionheart was crowned King of England in 1189. Did you know he couldn't even speak English, but only French? He left in 1190 on a crusade to the Holy Land. On his way back to England he was captured by King Leopold V of Austria, (who he had quarreled with on the crusades) who imprisoned him in Durnstein in a castle up the top of the hill. This is where we were this morning. This was good for his brother John who took over as King and refused to pay his ransom. But his Mum, who loved him, bailed him out, (as Mums do)and paid 70 000 pounds of silver.
It is such a beautiful town. You can recognise it by a Baroque Church with a blue and white tower called St Augustine Convent. They have a pillar in the middle of the town where they punish the bad girls and nagging wives. They had to wear a silly mask and people would ridicule them. They thought that if they didn't punish them God would so the women were scapegoats.
The hangman's cottage was interesting. It was an inherited trade. He or she only got paid when they did a service which was either hanging or torturing. So they usually ran a bit of a brothel on the side. Children of hangmen were only allowed to marry other children of hangmen so you wouldn't get much choice. A daughter would have to do the job until she married when her husband could take over.
It is still sunny but a touch windy today. Still no rain which is amazing because the river is in flood because it is raining a lot in Germany. It was really flooded a week ago. If it floods too much, we can't fit under the bridges, so we may have to get off the boat and travel by coach. Hopefully that will not happen.

City of Music

Vienna is known as the 'city of music'. I would call it the city of cafes. There would be no hassle trying to find a nice little place for a coffee. They are everywhere. But tonight for us it was the city of music as we went to a 'Sound of Vienna' concert at the Kursalon Wein. It was an orchestra playing music form Mozart and Strauss, both who are Austrian. There was some opera and ballet thrown in. It was a lovely evening under a full moon. Others are having some local soup for supper but it is not my cup of tea, so I am having coffee instead with Adrian sitting beside me.
Soon we set sail at 11pm for our first of 2 stops tomorrow. The second is Melk. The first I forget but it was where Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned a long time ago.

Queen's Holiday house

This afternoon we went to the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna and had another history lesson. This was the summer palace of Empress Maria Theresa, mother of 16. Her youngest daughter was Marie Antionette who was killed in the French Revolution. Her granddaughter married Napolean but he was too busy to attend his wedding and so got someone else to stand in for him. Dont even think about it Pete! It was very opulent and overdecorated. The paintings and tapestries really do tell a lot of what life was like and their values of the times. There is a painting on the wall which was supposed to be of the wedding of Maria Theresa and it contained Mozart, which was strange because he was only three at the time and not living in Vienna. The only explanation was, that Mozart was so popular that by the time the artist finished painting it, he thought he better put him in. The gardens were spectacular with many fountains and statues. After looking inside the palace apartments, we went to the old bakery in the palace and learned how to make apple strudel. Sue, my sister in law shouted us all to the toilet and was rewarded for her generosity by being selected as an assistant to the pastry chef to assist him in his strudel making.

Vienna

It is lunchtime and I have no idea what day it is. It still has not rained on us but it is a little cooler today. We went of a tour of Vienna this morning and to St Stephan's Cathedral. It is very fancy, ornately decorated and very old. It took over 100 years to build. Imagine how angry the public would be if it took 100 years to build a church these days. Still, I don't reckon our ones will still be around in 600 years.I continue to be fascinated by the statues, paintings, tapestries and mosaics. They are very detailed and graphic. I guess it is because people could not read so they had to tell stories through pictures. They are very proud of Mozart and Strauss, both of whom were married in the Church we visited this morning. People are dressed up olden days style and we have a great photo of Mozart talking on his mobile phone outside the palace. He died at 36 after having 6 children, only 2 of which survived. His wife died at 28.
I bought a pair of shoes while waiting for the bus. Adrian thought that 6 pairs of shoes is already enough to have on holidays but you can never have too many shoes.

Bratislava

Today we arrived in Bratislava. I have to say it is not my new favourite city but it does have something that other cities on the Danube don't - free toilets. In Budapest you had to pay sometimes 120Ft (about a dollar) to use a toilet, even in MacDonalds. Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia, which used to be in Czechoslovakia. Like Hungary, it has had a miserable 20th Century from being invaded by Hitler and then to be 'liberated' by the Russians. Terrible things happened to people during Communism. On the other side of the river, is Austria, where there are so many windmills for electricity generation. There is a bridge which they now call the old bridge that has changed its name about 6 times according to who was in charge at the time, whether it was Hitler, or Russia. It was quite funny really. Europe is full of statues and when one regime comes in, they destroy the previous statues, well some of them. You can learn so much from the statues and carvings.
There is a beautiful section with lovely cafes and markets but overall it is not as beautiful as Budapest. They have a big Cathedral which we went into. There is a glass panel in the floor showing the cemetery below where you can see skeletons. Pretty gross really. Then also in the Chapel of St John, within the same Church, is the mummified body of St John the Charitable from Cyprus. Apparently it used to be tradition to give a body as a present at formal occasions. Not my cup of tea. Apparently since they have sent part of his body back to Cyprus. I don't know which bit. Why do they bury people in Churches?
This boat is so smooth it is hard to know we are floating. The river is moving very fast and is high and the water is brown, not blue. The boat is 138metres long and only 11 metres wide. We went through our first lock today. The boat drives through a gate, then they close the gate and fill up a section with water so the boat goes up by 12 metres, then they open the other gate and you drive out the top. We have a really big day in Vienna tomorrow but I am really looking forward to it. I will be too exhausted at the end of it to write so it might just have to wait till the next morning. It is frustrating not being able to post photos as we have some beauties. I can look at them on the computer but cant seem to get at them to put them in here.
Caitlin, if you are reading, I finished the first 'Inkheart' book. The three books in one is so heavy, I don't want to bring it back to Australia. I have also read a couple of other novels, but we don't have much tome for reading.

When zero doesn't mean nothing

I am learning so much. It is like a school excursion, it is the best way to learn anything and spark interest in learning. Hungary is a fascinating place that I knew very little about before coming here. Budapest used to be 2 cities. Buda is up on the hill on one side of the Danube River and Pest on the other. When they built bridges between them they decided to make them one big city. It was originally called Pest Buda but they decided it was too hard to say. It has about 2 million people. Hungary has a population of 10 million. They call it BudaPesht.
Around 1000AD, there was a King called Steven. He got permission from the Pope to become King, in exchange for making Hungary a Christian country. He was also the head of the Church so he carried a double cross, I am not sure whether this is where the term 'double cross' comes from. In St Steven's Basilica (big Church seats 6000 people)there are no statues of Mary, just him. He was made a saint by Rome shortly after his death. There were kings for about another 500 years, then Hungary became part of a bigger land with Romania and a couple of other countries. I don't remember details, just ideas. After becoming a separate country again, they went on the losing side in both world wars. Then they got taken over by Russia. They had a really bad 20th Century, that is why we have so many Hungarians in Australia. Hitler and his henchmen killed 600 000 Jews and Gypsies just in Hungary. The camps were full so they just took them down to the river and shot them and pushed their bodies into the river. There is a memorial of 60 metal boots down by the river. We took a photo.
Budapest looks really beautiful and really old but most of it including all the bridges between Buda and Pest were destroyed in the Second World War. They have rebuilt and restored everything beautifully except for one building riddled with bullet holes, which used to be the Ministry of Defense, which they kept as a memorial.
We went to a beautiful building this afternoon which houses the markets, both food and craft. They do beautiful embroidery and woodwork and folk art. I just wanted to buy a little bit more than I had in local currency which is called the Florint. The exchange rate is approximately 150 Ft = AUS$1. This is really confusing and hard to calculate the cost of things. I went to an automatic teller and it gave me a few options, in Hungarian. I wanted to get 7500 Ft but I accidentally took out 75000Ft. Oops. Maybe I should not be in charge of Maths at BRPS any more. There was no way I was going to spend that much in half a day and the florint is worth nothing once out of the country. It is like Samoan dollars. Nobody wants them. I felt really sick when I looked at how much money I had in my hand. I bought a few things and then we changed the rest at an exchange place for euros, which we will need for the rest of the trip. It was an expensive mistake, but it really only cost us the cost of exchanging twice. I will be more careful from now on. Zeros do have value after all.
We sail off at 6pm for the Slovak republic and should be in Bratslavia (I think) by about 1pm tomorrow.

On board the cruise ship

Today we wandered around Budapest for a while, did some shopping, had lunch at Maccas. We walked along the river to Parliament House, which is a magnificent building, not unlike the British houses of Parliament. I sat down on the edge of the Danube River and put my feet in. It was cold and splashed all over me, but I had to do it. I thought, "Wow, this water has been through a whole lot of other countries before coming to my feet". It is a very busy waterway. A coal barge went past before while we were having dinner and there are lots of cruise boats.
This afternoon we came to our cruise ship. It is magnificent. It is so luxurious, I feel like a queen. It appears really new and everything is provided. We have a room with a balcony and its own bathroom. We get three meals a day; a buffet for breakfast and lunch and for dinner it is 6 courses, the best food I have ever tasted. I am going to come back looking like an elephant. They have violinists serenading you while you are eating your dinner. That was a bit weird. So much better than England and Ireland where they just deepfry everything. It is amazing. There are people to serve you for your every need. I feel a bit overindulged, but I might as well enjoy it while I can. All the guests on board are either Australian or Kiwis and they are all very friendly. We are going to go 1800km along the river to Amsterdam. Actually it is 2 rivers, the Danube we are on at the moment and later we will be on the Rhine. We have to go through 68locks to get us up the river. They are sort of like gates on the river, where they fill up the water between the two gates so you get up higher. I dont really get them. We went in some in China on the Yangtze River.
Adrian's Dad, Les and sister, Sue, arrived from Ireland tonight, just after dinner. We went for a walk along the river. The whole city is lit up and it looks like a fairyland. Its so pretty. Tomorrow we explore Budapest some more before sailing off at 6pm tomorrow to Slovakia.

Budapest

I have found a new favourite city. Budapest is beautiful and so full of atmosphere. We arrived yesterday and found our hotel on the Danube river which is not blue, despite what the musicians say. It is in flood and the water is flowing very fast with lots of debris floating down the river. There are magnificent old buildings and on the bridge are little market stalls selling traditional Hungarian crafts and food. There are clowns and live musicians creating great atmosphere. It was wonderful. It is fairly pricey. I am writing this in Maccas because it is too expensive in hte hotel to use the internet. The keyboard is different so I keep making mistakes. We begin our cruise tonight.

What makes a painting famous?

Today, another perfect sunny day, we went to Trafalgar Square and went to the National Gallery. There are so many famous paintings there and you get right up close to them. You could touch them. There are paintings by Rembrandt, Turner, Michelangelo (his even got in there when they weren't finished yet), Leonardo da Vinci, Monet (His garden is pretty nice), Raphael, Picasso and heaps of others. I saw the 'Sunflowers' painting by Van Gogh and I would have to say it is the most ordinary painting in the gallery. Why all the fuss? Apart from its monetary value, I would pick hundreds of others before I would choose it.
I am interested in the subjects of the paintings, except for the sunflowers. There were a lot of women with wardrobe malfunctions. What was their preopcupation with bare breasts all about? There was one painting where some godess had milk squirting out of her breasts, creating the milky way. I always wondersed where that came from. If you wore some of the outfits they wore in their pictures, you would be arrested. There are naked people all over the place. The kids especially were so fat. In King Henry V111's palace there were paintings that would not just be seen as pornograghic but the artist would have been put in jail as a pedophile. The paintings are so huge some of them and they are so beautiful. The colours and textures are amazing. I wonder why the virgin Mary always seems to wear blue. Probably goes well with her blue eyes and blonde hair which she seems to have in most pictures. Not likely in the Middle East. I guess they wanted to get people to relate to Jesus and Mary so they made them look Anglo Saxon. There is lots of Bible story stuff and mythical Gods like Cupid with the ocassional war scene or family portrait. Some of the paintings you could sit for hours looking at. I must admit that some of the things they say the artist was trying to say are a bit of a stretch. But the artists aren't around to say that, 'No its just a bowl of fruit'. They wouldn't allow us to take any photos, even without a flash and everyone was really well behaved.
On another note, look what we saw on the way to the railway station, hiding in a bush. Could this be the evil squirrel from 'Hoodwinked'? Click on the photo to see. His eyes only show their true colours when photographed.
Anyway, its farwell to London and hello to Budapest tomorrow. How exciting!We have had a wonderful time, thanks to the kindness and hospitality of our friends, John and Lynne Carruthers, who are great cooks. Thank you so much for making this such an unforgetable experience.

I love Scotland

I love Scotland. Edinburgh is great but the rest of the country is great too. We went up to the Highlands yesterday to search for Nessie. It is so beautiful up there. Driving along winding roads between green mountains covered in purple heather, buttercups and foxgloves, lovely streams and waterfalls by the side of the raod. It is just gorgeous.
We went to Loch Ness and traveled up the lock in a boat. It contains more water than the whole of England and Wales put together and is up to 260metres deep in places. It has all sort of fish including really big, strange ones. I am not sure quite what it was I am pointing to in the picture. We started off upstairs but it was too hot and sunny so went went downstairs. I dont know who started this myth about Great Britain being a rainy place. Its been hot and sunny everywhere we have been for the past 2 weeks. The water in the Lock is 17 degrees at the moment, even though it averages 5 degrees. It was pretty but not as pretty as the mountains. They only have 2 places to ski there which aren't very good and you cant get there when it snows because the roads get closed.
The wool industry is not doing well at the moment and they are not bothering to shear the sheep, just the lambs. In the photo, you can see that wool just falls off and lands on the ground. On the bus we heard the driver tell us all the stories about Robert the Bruce and William Wallace. So much violence! He said that Brave Heart is a load of romantic nonsense and is very inacurate. Highlanders have only been wearing kilts like we know them for the last couple of hundred years. They used to wear about 4metres of course woolen fabric which they wrapped around themselves. They used to get branches and grasses and lay them on the material and then pee on them, so that the urine would take the dye out of the plants to amke them more camouflaged. They didn't eat the hairy highland cows called coos but used them as money once a year to buy things such as cloth. They were hunters.
Anyway, I have decided that I really love Scotland. It is magnificent to look at. It is better than England which I still think is beautiful too. And Scottish people have invented so much including the television, the steam engine and pnuematic tyres. We might still be reading the bible in Latin if it wasn't for King James, a Scot. They are really creative and brave and strong, stick up for themselves and are a bit rebellious. They cant cook though. The food is terrible.
This morning we went to the museum. That was really interesting too. I love all this really old history about kings and queens and power plays and rebellion and find it fascinating to see the role of the Church in it all.
We wanted to see Holyrood Palace but the queen is in residence there at the moment so it is closed. Adrian asked the guard to tell Liz that we were in town. She has been having garden parties all week, and she obviously didnt know we were in town or we would have got an invitation.
The train trip back to London was lovely agoin but it took us 3 hours to get home from Kings Cross. Someone had gone under a train so we had to catch 2 buses and a taxi. We had to wait for ages for the bus as there were trainloads of people and only a few crowded buses. The London Undergroun is just the same as Sydney rail. When it works, it is wonderful but when it doesn't it is terrible. Don't know what we will do tomorrow yet. It is our last day in London.