What Katie Did

Part Ten of the Big Train Adventure - Amsterdam

The end is in sight. The writing of this journey is taking as long as the journey itself because real life is happening here at the same time - it's going to be a big catch up post when I finally end this part of the adventure!
We took the sleeper to Amsterdam for those of you who remember and are still with me.
I was tired by this time - I am an old lady and I had been living out of a rucksack for a month. Also - in March - the weather as we headed north was - predictably - colder. And I wasn't really too keen on 'wetter'! Amsterdam was rainy as well as cold.
But it was Amsterdam!

(look at the puddle in the kids seat cover!)
and we were staying here for another couple of days.
I spend these days pottering round the amazing streets and drinking fabulous orange juice and coffee - writing my journal and shopping for gifts.

left - forks in a junk shop in Amsterdam..... right, fish in the market in Split.

Martha and Matt have a friend who lives on a boat and we went to visit her and have tea in the Captains Cabin


We ate well at this amazing place and if the New York Times rates it you know it must be OK!

No photo of the shop I spent most time in - my favourite place Kitsch Kitchen, full of plastic toys, pink things and all that is weird and wonderful


oh so worthy of a visit if you are in Holland - they have many shops.
So we come to the final stages of this journey. John was going to head north to spend a few weeks with a friend in Gronegan and I was off to get the ferry to North Shields.

Here is the lad through the rainy window of the bus I took to the ferry terminal. It was a sad moment after all we had been through together!
Sigh
Off then on my own for the last bit of travelling. The steward on the bus thanked us for travelling with DFDS and warned that the sea was 'very rough' and to expect a stormy crossing. Said with a certain amount of glee I felt. So I used my last ten Euro to upgrade my cabin to one above deck, with a window and used all the duvets and pillows in the four berth cabin to create a nest of cosiness, went to bed as soon as we set sail and slept better than I had in weeks to be woken by the announcement that we were docking soon.

I got the bus to Newcastle, the train to Hexham, a fortunate lift from the lovely Holly to my doorstep and I was drinking tea out of my favourite cup within five minutes of arriving home and greeting the dog who went berserk.
Home - a very good place to be. But what an adventure. The next post - very soon I hope - will be a resume of the planning - or lack of - that went into this trip and some tips and hints. Plus a giveaway for anyone who might be thinking of doing something similar.
Then - back to the shed - the garden - felt making - sewing - Art Tour - and hens - yes - you read it first here - HENS!!

Part eight - Austria - Salzburg

From Hvar back to Split on the ferry and the sleeper back to Zagreb. It had rained in Hvar, but the train travels through Croatia's mountains and the rain was now snow. I slept for some of the journey, but spent most of it with my face pressed to the cold window watching mile after mile of snow covered trees and mountains by the eerie lights of the train. We would pass though a tiny station with more light illuminating the deep fresh snow as far as the light extended. It was really beautiful. When the train slowed to walking speed it was fairly scary too, as the drop from the track looked very close and steep and this was a huge fresh fall of snow. Amazing.
The train ticket we were using gives the freedom to plan a journey in advance if you want or be spontaneous. At Zagreb, John and I stood on a platform with a train heading for Vienna on one side and another to Budapest leaving five minutes later on the other. We had to decide quickly! I was really keen to go east, but we were aware that we were running out of days. To go to Budapest now would mean some continuous days of travel to get to our destination and I was running out of energy a bit. So we boarded the train for Vienna and changed trains to head for Salzburg. I'm still not sure that was the right choice - but hey - Budapest will be there for next time!
The train through Austria was awesome.


We stopped at a ski resort because we were both starving! We ate at a ski lodge surrounded by people from another planet - all togged up and ready to go. The contrast between were we had been and were we were now was quite surreal and we both decided that were were ski-o-phobes - with apologies to anyone out there who likes to ski.

So we beat a hasty retreat, not before John had made a new friend - literally

To Salzburg - land of the Sound of Music, Mozart, strudel and snow. We saw them all...well almost all... I was all set to do the S of M tour on the last morning we were there, but it rained. John was relieved.

If you are asked if you want vanilla cream with your strudel, say 'no' I think it would have been nicer without!
Salzburg is beautiful. We went to the museum to find out more about it - I did this whenever I could and it proved a really useful place to start. Salzburg museum is celebrating its sons and daughters with a series of exhibitions about their artists. I learned all about Nela - a young girl who died in her twenties leaving an amazing legacy. I've been able to find very little about her, she sold none of her work when she was alive and her father has co-operated in putting together the exhibition I saw by loaning every painting she did. An amazing young girl with a style like the Keith Haring art I love so much.
Old Salzburg is full of .....

and

and

and

SNOW - so the Noro had to make another appearance with the same reception as in Verona.
There is lots of opportunity to be a tourist here

Just take a look at this place built into the side of a mountain!

We took the funicular railway up to the castle with a whole tribe of shrieking kids - they shriek like that the world over - it sounds the same in any language - and the coach load of Japanese tourists. John had to put a Euro in the telescope didn't he - and got me to take a couple of pictures through it like this -

and when the money ran out he gave a short lecture to no-one in particular about  his invention - the telescope - and the features on it and why he had designed them as he had - more for his own amusement - but of course very entertaining for me and the benchful of Japanese   students.

He was the best travelling companion.
A bit more of Salzburg for you and then off to the next leg of the journey

a whole shop full of painted eggs - thousands of them - upstairs too

I ventured to ask what would happen to the shop after Easter? 'In Salzburg it is always Easter!' came the reply - Scary.
more on Flickr

BTA part seven - Croatia - Hvar

Oooh - I'm busy at the moment - but I want to finish the Journey before I get onto all of that - so much!
Where were we? Split - ferry to Hvar one of a group of island off the coast (where else would you keep islands?) I don't know about you - but I always think of islands as being small. Well this one isn't. 60 miles long. So no quick walk round the island before breakfast. We were lucky to be invited to stay in our friend Graham's little house on the island and be introduced to all his friends. Without them we would have had a tricky time as they gave us lifts, tours of the scenic bits (all of it) and a lift to the return ferry. We would have been stuck without the lovely Mack for example, who is responsible for the Martini adverts in the 70s! I was singing the tag line in my head for days! 'Any time any place anywhere..... la la la'
Here we got to cook a meal or two and sleep a lot and generally Stop For A While. I read a whole book in one day (Barbara Kingsolver's Bean Tree - very nice) and John explored the coast for birds.
But it rained. For the first time since we set off on our BTA. So there are not many pictures.


Vrboska is the little village where Graham and Sue have their holiday house

Hvar town - view from the old fort - they are my kind of islands

Hvar old town

It was good to have a rest. It was good to have some comfortable sleep. It was good to cook a meal and not have to order from a menu! It was a recharging place for the next part of the journey.
Austria!

BTA part six - Split - Croatia

This place was a complete surprise too! A beautiful port with huge ships docked along the quay, an impressive marble walkway and more of the markets, tiny streets, sunny squares and interesting shops that I love.

We were here for one night and most of a day waiting for a ferry to the island of Hvar. A day spent pottering round in the warm sunshine with the inevitable coffee stop now and then.

blue skies

beautiful coast


we were going to spend two days in a real house with a cooker so I bought vegetables, fruit and salad - all so fresh and wonderful.

John decided it was time to part with the beard

this was very brave as the barber had no English and a cut throat razor - but he was really good - no blood!

and yes - the sky really was that blue

off on this one for the next part of the journey

more on Flickr!

Big Train Adventure - part five - Croatia - Zagreb

So we left Slovenia - reluctantly - another time I might just go straight there and spend much longer, but as I said - we had a Train Ticket with several more journeys to take. Slovenia is part of the EU and Croatia is not, so we had to change our Euros for Kuna.

border guards at the Slovenian/Croatian border
Our destination this time was the island of Hvar where our dear friend Graham has a holiday home and very kindly invited us to stay. This meant taking a train to Zagreb and another to Split and a ferry to the island.
We had a four hour wait in Zagreb. I think it counts as the happiest four hours of the whole holiday!


It was Sunday, the whole place was bathed in sunshine, families were out in the squares and cafes - everywhere was relaxed. The streets and buildings were magnificent, huge trees lined the roads - there was an air of serene contentment. John bought a bottle of bubbles from a pavement seller.

This simple purchase transformed the whole afternoon!

As soon as he began to blow bubbles and I saw the effect, I bought one too and we went to each side of a square with pavement cafes all around. Of course you can guess what happened next.



BUBBLE HEAVEN!
A couple of parents bought bubbles too and for a while it was one chaotic happy mass of kids and bubbles.
Then we sat in the sun with another coffee and a three day old copy of the Guardian, doing the crossword together, waiting for the train. I can't think of any time I have been so contented.

BTA part four - Slovenia - Bled

After three days in Ljubljana and the Hostel Celica, we took a bus to the small town of Bled in the Slovenian Alps. John is a very keen bird watcher. He has many other talents such as singing Christmas Carols out of season and talking in broad Geordie All The Time. I like his bird obsession better than these others. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of birds and their habits. So we had always intended to spend some time in the country so he could discover what was living in the area. Slovenia is 65% trees, great habitat for birds. Lake Bled is a wondrous place. If you stick that into Flickr, this is what you get.
So after Granada, Barcelona, Verona and Ljubljana, we were ready for a bit of country.
John was off at first light - he made his hostel breakfast into sandwiches and was off into the unknown. I had a more sedate time of it.

Second breakfast. Journal, map couple of postcards, inside this time with a view of the lake I then walked round. Its about 6km and gives a view of the tiny island from every side.

I observed the polite notice asking me not to feed the swans

and half way round I met with this chap who was painting the same view of the island over and over again.

He looks quite a character doesn't he? Well he was hilarious. I got into a lively conversation with him about why he always painted the same view with no variation except the colour. Well - he had found the perfect view so why change perfection?

So of course I parted with 4 Euro for one - I thought this was very reasonable with the chat thrown in.

He painted a quick sketch of me on the back of the picture and when I complained that he had painted me too fat he said - 'You are a Big Woman with a Forceful Personality and if you were my wife I would give you a slap and tell you to get back in the kitchen!'
Hilarious!

Next day - John was off in the woods and mountains again and I climbed up to the castle on the side of the mountain (without oxygen) and sat with the sun on my back for hours.

Remember it was February, but the sun was warm and the sky was blue, not quite as blue as this postcard, but you get the idea.

Spring flowers everywhere, I will load them onto Flickr now, and of course the patterns and colours that I love all around if you have the time to see them. So great to be there with that sort of time and no agenda except my own.

isn't this fabulous! And this..


Bled is usually covered in snow at this time of year, but only the mountains were snow covered.
Slovenia was a constant surprise for both of us. While I was drinking coffee and eavesdropping on cafe conversations (and being grateful not to have to have them) John was finding birds he had never seen and having his own adventures. (Thinking that the other side of a river looked more interesting and deciding to wade across only to find it deep and fast in the middle and then to be in a restricted army zone with notices warning about live ammunition and strictly no admission - that sort of thing)
It was our favourite place. I would go again and explore more. But we had a Train Ticket to use and we were on our way to Croatia next.
Thanks for reading along with me. I am loving this so much.

Big Train Adventure - Part Three - Slovenia

Now we're getting into our stride. I'm enjoying the comments of the folk who are coming along with me as I recreate this journey a second time on the blog. Stirred up a few memories of Romeo and Juliet there - and while I agree that Zef really got the whole thing completely right, Baz can do no wrong in my eyes and the Leo and Claire combo worked really well for me.

Anyway...

Part three is all about Slovenia. When we were planning this trip, this was the only place John requested to go. He had heard that it was amazing and that was enough for me. I had no idea what to expect and recorded some misgivings in my journal as we were sitting at the border with the guards boarding the train.
Part three is in two sections - Ljubljana and Bled

I had read about the Hostel Celica in the capital city, Ljubljana, before we left. It was voted the 'Best Hostel in the World' by Lonely Planet and who am I to argue with Lonely Planet? 'Celica' is Slovenian for 'cell' as this was the former prison.

It has undergone the most imaginative makeover

The walls in the 'sitting room' are fabulous - I want to do this in our bathroom now!

such a simple idea and so effective.
We were banged up in cell 106. I didn't take enough pictures of the hostel so I am going to send you over to the Flickr group if you want to see more.
Ljubljana is wonderful. Quite simply amazing.

Dragon Bridge
Small enough to discover all of it on foot, such friendly people, really interesting history that I knew nothing of so I took myself off to the museum for the morning. I could write for the rest of the day about Ljubljana. I'll share with you some random images.

I always ended up in the market!


fabulous buildings

Great cafes warm enough in February to sit outside, but blankets thoughtfully provided if you were chilly!

Writing this now I can still taste that breakfast and remember the atmosphere in the pavement cafe. Sitting there with my journal, a couple of postcards to write and a map of the city to plan my day. The warm sun on my back, (the Noro back at the hostel) ... this was bliss. I could bottle it and sell it for a fortune.
Are you getting this one? I loved Ljubljana!

window in the cathedral

amazing dress in the Museum

niche in the chapel in the castle

This band were playing really amazing music in the hostel one evening. Celica is a place for Young People, that was obvious, and though I was not the only geriatric staying there, it was definitely a Youth Hostel. As the band finished one wonderful number, a young man who was sitting, stood up to offer me his seat and said in perfect English 'Please sit down, because you are a woman and you are old' right on both counts!
I really don't know where to stop with this post. If you go over to my Flickr I have a lot more random images of this amazing city.
John and i had intended to stay one day here, we ended up staying three and returning for another later in the trip!
And the next post will be Slovenia too - the Slovenian Alps. Stunning.
I am enjoying this!

Normal Service Resumed

Thank you for your patience. This latest absence is explained by a combination of

1. me getting ill
2. Owen 'needing' part of my computer to make his work and me being too soft to object
3. Easter visitors occupying the computer room, which is after all, Martha's bedroom, so no complaint there!

So now all of those things have been resolved and we are ready to continue our trip round Europe. If you remember, we left off in Spain with the Alhambra and some fantastic Gaudi architecture.
John and I took the sleeper to Milan and from there we went the same day to Verona and that's what today's post will be about.

Big Train Adventure Part Two - Italy

Imagine sleeping through a whole country! We travelled through Spain, France and a bit of Italy largely horizontal and unconscious!

to Verona, to the House of the Capulets and Juliet's balcony, though how Romeo managed to climb the wall remains a mystery unless he was a bit of a Spidermen. I hung around on the balcony for a bit, but no-one showed up.

Far more tangible were the coffee shops.

the fresh pasta

the markets and the ancient streets and architecture. It was cold in Verona. I managed to catch some sun in the Arena, enough to sit and read for an hour or so. Below me a couple of people tried the acoustics with some bursts of opera. It sounded wonderful!

The city sits in a loop or river, we stayed in the Youth Hostel perched at the top of the loop. We spent three days pottering around this ancient city, eating well and enjoying the relative peace of the place as the tourists were not yet in evidence in large numbers, although a bus load of Japanese people seemed to be following us all through Europe! I'm sure it wasn't the same bus?

But in February it was a bit too cold for the throngs I suspect crowd the narrow streets in the summer.

Here is my impression of those days.

Everywhere we went, I was aware of patterns - in the floors, railings, walls .... and took dozens of photos of them for inspiration for ... not sure what - but I was inspired!

The city walls were very grand and I found myself remembering the 1968 Zeffirelli version of the film with Leonard Whiting who made such an impression on me as a teenager! I studied the play for 'O' level and learned whole screeds of the dialogue by taping it onto an old reel to reel tape recorder - I messed around with the speed so that Juliet was very high and fast and Romeo s-l-o-w and deep!

So I wandered round the walls and narrow streets muttering to myself in this way. Also - let me tell you what I was wearing. I was carrying everything in a back pack so had very few options. I took a huge jumper made from Noro Iro and no coat. I was working on the principle of 'layers' and had a lightweight waterproof (purple) if it rained.

So there I am, wandering round the streets of Verona wearing my multi coloured Noro, my red skirt and green tights, muttering bits of Romeo and Juliet to myself in high and low pitches. Add to this image the fact that all ... and I mean ALL ... the women of Verona - nay - Italy - are so incredibly elegant in black or fur, half of them have tiny dogs on delicate little legs wearing clothes that have more style than me.

This will be my abiding memory of Verona.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode which will not be so long in coming - I promise!

Big Train Adventure Part One - Spain

Thank you to everyone who has welcomed me back! You are a lovely lot. I have been trying to decide how to share this amazing journey with you without boring the pants off you all. I will create a set on Flickr with hundreds of photos from the thousands I took - and post instalments with a few of my favourites from each place we visited.

Part One - The Journey Begins!

John - or should that be Hans Yanson (?) had been working on a farm near Orgiva in the south of Spain since last November. This is about an hour from Granada and the Alhambra. What an amazing place. I was fascinated by the floors walls and ceilings. Every tile pattern made me think of my Mum and how she would want to create a quilt out of every one!

this one is the same shape - black and white - amazing!

one more

I love the way the shapes tessellate (how posh am I?)

Here too are the geckos living under the mirror in John's room! Arrrggghhh!!!

This part of the holiday was lovely as we were staying in one place and Geoff was with us for a few days. When he went home, John and I embarked on the Big Train Adventure - with a Eurorail Ticket. This meant we had 22 days and the whole of Europe ahead of us with the chance to travel on ten of them. This is called the Global Pass. Very Good Value.

We went to Barcelona and spent the day there. Gaudi - that's what I'll remember about Barcelona. Oh and the really good coffee.

No straight lines, so much colour and materials doing things you would never imagine they could do! - wood, glass, tiles, metal - all behaving like fluid things to give the impression of the flow of waves and water.

on the roof

and then his amazing Cathedral still under construction.

Look at those lizards!

Oh - go - and see this all for yourselves if you can! You'll get neck ache though! We were only there for a day. We took the night train to Milan.

And that will be part two of the B.T.A.!