Thu, 31 Jul 2003

author Liz	location Fauske, Salten, Nordland, Norge
posted 10:36 CEST 01/08/03	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

Into the Arctic Circle ( 11 photos )
On Thursday, most of the day was spent driving North along the E6.
We noticed a number of police doing speed checks along the road. The number of deaths on the road in Norway is high, and the national speed limit on nearly all roads is just 80km/h, so it was good to see the police enforcing this. It was a little alarming, however, when about 20 minutes later we were pulled over by a bunch of police, but it turned out they were pulling everyone over for breath-testing. Tim was quite excited as he was driving and it was his first ever breath-test. He was under the 0.02 limit (it was after all only 11am!), and after the Norweigan Policeman squinted at Tim's Aussie licence for a few minutes and discovered the expiry date, he gave us a smile and a wave and sent us on our way.
So the rest of the day ticked by as we roared by forests of fir trees, rivers and cascades, mountains and valleys, and patches of snow.
The most exciting point of the day was driving into the Arctic Circle. We were about 80km north of Mo-i-Rana when a sign appeared saying "Arctic Circle in 2km". So we pulled in at the big tourist shop, took some photos of the marker stone with Tim in shorts and T-shirt eating ice cream, and looked around the fairly barren rocky landscape.
Here it was raining heavily, so we got back on the road still heading north. After a while the sun came out again, and we had a nice evening sitting in the sun in a little caravan park just outside of Fauske, and enjoying the view of Saltfjorden and the mountains.

author Liz	location Fauske, Salten, Nordland, Norge
posted 10:30 CEST 01/08/03	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

Trondheim ( 8 photos )
Wednesday was nice and hot, and we ended up spending quite a lot of the day in Trondheim.
Although we were still quite a distance from Trondheim, we had already paid a toll to get in about 45km out of the city. Then on Wednesday, as we drove into Trondheim, we were hit with another two tolls! Now three toll charges just to get into one little city is a bit much, but it was either that or a few extra hundered kilometres going around the city on roads marked with toll charges anyway.
We parked in Trondheim and wandered up to the town square where a produce market was being held. From there we went down to the fish market where we bought some fresh fish for our dinner. Then we spent an hour or so just wandering through the streets. The city is quite small and the main streets are all contained within a few blocks.
After a nice long chat to Tim's parents, we found an outdoor café where we sat chatting and drinking coffee and not moving much.
Earlier in the morning Tim had spotted an Internet Café, so went in to ask about connecting up the laptop and then did so.
By now it was getting late in the afternoon, so we had a walk around the town cathedral before driving out of Trondheim.
Now, after all those tolls in the morning, they expected us to pay a hefty one to get out of the city, but our Trondhiem guide told us how to get around that, enjoy the scenic coast and the join back up with the main road just outside the city.
We spent a few hours driving north, stopping at a picnic spot to have dinner and then stopping about a hundered kilometres north of Steinkjer. Here we spent the night at another picnic spot, where a caravan had also stopped for the night. We were close to the road and it was a bit of a noisy night, but free of charge.

author Liz	location Fauske, Salten, Nordland, Norge
posted 22:25 CEST 31/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

Geirangerfjorden, Trollstigen Road ( 51 photos )
On Tuesday morning, we set the alarm nice and early, both had a quick shower, and then drove back down the road to the ferry port in Hellesylt.
We caught the 8am ferry and were one of the few people on board at that time of the morning.
The ferry took us up one of the most scenic fjords in Norway - Geirangerfjord, and we had chosen a fantastic day weather-wise to take the 1hr trip up to Geiranger.
We sat at the front of the boat, and although the sun was on us for a lot of the journey, it was still very chilly.
The on-board commentary, in five different languages, told us all sorts of interesting things... this fjord was over 200m deep (not much considering the deepest fjord in Norway is 1.5km deep), and stories about people who had tried farming on the steep desolate mountainsides and long-ago deserted their farms.
The views from the boat were great, but I think the best view we had that day was once we drove off the ferry (view from Geiranger), and up, twisting and turning and climbing steeply, until we stopped a viewpoint overlooking the fjord. Wow. The view was spectacular - gorgeous green-blue fjord water, green fur trees standing tall, rocky mountainside and clear blue sky. Another place I could have stood and enjoyed the view for a whole day.
But there were was lots more to see, so off we went again heading North.
We didn't have far to drive (and only one stubborn cow in the middle of the road to dodge) before we boarded our next ferry. This was a much shorter trip, from Eidsdal to Linge, and then we continued driving North.
Our next exciting drive was Road 63, up to and over Trollstig Pass, which is the next part of the Golden Route. This one had warnings all over our brochures and books to not take campervans and caravans along it, but Rosie is such a tough old bird we thought she would manage it. We needn't have worried, the road ended up being full of tourist busses crawling their way along the road.
The first part of the drive climbed gradually and we noticed quite a few large snowdrifts even though the sun was hot.
We were stuck behind a bus, so stopped in a great little spot next to a small lake with a waterfall cascading nearby and mountains all around us. We enjoyed the view and a cup of tea here and could have happily sat there for a week or two.
As we drove on, around the corner was the big tourist centre - filled with bus-loads of people - we thought we had definately enjoyed the best spot in the area.
The next part of driving along the pass took the longest - simply because we were behind a tourist bus that wasn't really built for hairpin bends, and had to do three-point turns all the way down the mountain! It took ages, but we got to enjoy the spectacular view of the waterfalls and the valley stretching out in front of us.
Down in the valley and past the bus, the road was all ours for a bit. We stopped in Åndalsnes for a quick toilet break (take note: use a flushing toilet whenever possible - most toilets out of service stations and big towns are pit toilets and not nice ones a lot of the time).
The afternoon was spent driving along a winding route gradually heading north to Trondheim. We passed lots of scening waterways, lots of tiny towns and a lot of farms. Everywhere we go there are farms, but it just shows how big Norway really is - only 3% of Norway is arable land.
At Rökkum, we caught our third and final ferry for the day across to Kvanne and kept going.
We started looking for somewhere suitable to camp for the night, but in the end we stopped about 40km out of Trondheim at a caravan park (Tråsåvika Camping og Hytter) overlooking the water and the sunset. It was very hot, so after dinner we walked down to the beach for a dip. Our "dip" involved us going in up to our knees, wading around for a bit, marvelling at the number of red starfish all around us, and then wandering out again! The water was so icy - it took twenty minutes for my toes to get their circulation back!

author Liz	location Fauske, Salten, Nordland, Norge
posted 21:49 CEST 31/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

Mountain Passes ( 30 photos )
Monday was quite a big driving day. The rain had stopped and the sun soon came out, so we had very pretty views over the rest of Sognefjell (named after the Sognefjorden, Norway's longest, widest and deepest fjord).
We stopped at one spot to admire the view (still cold outside the van!), and as we prepared to drive off, a girl came up to the window and started speaking. Once again, she was Dutch, saw our numberplates and had started speaking Dutch to us! Again, we explained we were Aussies and had bought Rosie in the Netherlands. We weren't going where she and her friends were headed, so we waved goodbye and drove off.
In the bustling town Lom, we stopped to buy food and sit and enjoy our breakfast, then it was my turn in the driver's seat but not for long. We soon came to our next Scenic Road, marked for experienced drivers only, and no way was I going to do that so we swapped over.
This road, the 258, was another pretty route (so many of them), and like the Sognefjell Pass, and many others, it is closed for six or months of the year in snowy and icy weather.
The first part of the drive was quite scenic, with mountains towering high above us, and although our road was windy, it was not steep.
Then we did come to the steep bit, only we were already up high and just had to wind our way slowly backwards and forwards all the way to the bottom of the valley.
The view looking out over the valley, with snow capped mountains in the distance was again very beautiful, and I snapped away with Tim's camera while enjoying the view.
There were also some big waterfalls cascading down by the road with the spray misting over us as we puttered by.
At the bottom, we drove along the valley floor, and then through a few more tunnels.
We stopped by a pretty patch of water to stretch our legs, before driving in to Stryn for fuel.
While we were there, it started raining heavily again and the next bit of windy road down to Olden was a bit difficult in the wet. However, the view over the very tip of Nordfjord was worth it, even in the rain, and we parked close to the water and enjoyed our lunch.
Back into Stryn, and then on a new bit of road heading west and then north through lots of forest and past signs warning of Moose in the area (still waiting to see one!).
The rain had stopped for quite a while when we drove into Hellesylt. This was where we were getting our next and most scenic ferry from, but as the weather was still very cloudy and not so good for sightseeing, we headed a short way up the road to a very nice and very cheap camping spot.
The afternoon was spent washing clothes (me), re-wiring part of the van (Tim), and enjoying our dinner. The sun even came out, giving us a nice sunset over the surrounding mountains.

author Tim	location Hellesylt, Møre og Romsdal, Norge
posted 21:28 CEST 28/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

No Trains Today, but a big long Tunnel ( 28 photos )
We had set an alarm to run around, have quick showers and try to get down to the train for one of the morning runs. We even got their 45 minutes early to get a ticket.
However, after standing in the queue for a good long while, we found out that the trains were booked up until mid-afternoon. The tour buses, cars and motorhomes full of people all wanting to do the Sunday trips were just not going to let us get on. We thought for a while, but would have been writing off an entire day, not getting back until late afternoon. And what to do with the morning?
So, we turned tail on the train, going back to do a few things we hadn't quite squeezed into the morning, like Liz's shower and breakfast. Being a Sunday the shops were closed, a fact we had forgotten yet again, meaning breakfast was a great thrown-together affair.
That all done, we found another challenge - the Aurlandsvangen-Lærdalsøyri Road Tunnel. Not just any tunnel, this one is the Longest in the World! Good fun, we thought, heading into the 24.5km of darkness.
Strangely, the distance was split into three by wide sections where they had all lighting set up, mostly blue and yellow. Is this a strange animal caught before dawn or just Rosie in the middle of the world's longest tunnel? You decide.
Perhaps it is an indication of the way the roads are valued and kept well in this country (and Scandinavia in general), but we expected a toll at the end but this was not to be. I'm sure if that was opened in Australia we would all be paying $20 per run for the next forty years until the private contractors were paid off and had made a tidy sum besides. Here, you just pay $20 for a coffee instead. OK, not quite.
We took a quick sojurn east along the E16 looking for a waterfall marked on one of our maps, but couldn't find it. Perhaps this is one of the ones they only turn on for a while, using them at other times for hydroelectricity. Or, more likely, our map was just wrong.
I say this because the very same map just a bit further west along the same road clearly shows a bridge, but the road just ends. Suprised, we looked around for a little while, before asking the kindly man running the ferry service, clearly used to silly tourists, whether the ferry went to Sogndal, one of the towns we knew to exist on the other side. Yes, came the answer. No sign of a bridge anywhere.
No real matter, we enjoyed the break from driving to arrive at the other side, and wound our way North before turning off onto the 604, a non-through road heading up to glacier country. We found the most amazing roadside stop purely by luck. Pulling in to have a closer look at what by now has become very common - strong blue-coloured water. Dipping our hands in, we knew straight away what it was all about - that thare's glacier water.
But this roadside stop had more in store - as I was turning to leave my perch from the middle of the rapids, I noticed a little further up a rope bridge across the fast-moving freezing waters running over rocks. Excellent!
We had to walk a little way through a very overgrown path to get to the end, but it was all worth it. The bridge was complete with rotting timbers and missing planks, all of which added to the Indiana Jones-ness of it all. Liz bravely showed she could do it to, crossing in style while making sure of every step.
Besides stopping in the middle to take movies and pictures, we basically got back to the van and drove onwards, searching for the source of the icy waters.
We had to stop to pay a toll to actually get right into the most accessible glacier - Nigardsbreen. As we did so, we were approached by a couple who said to me "asdfjkh34w5kjhsdf asdfj4ewh5 akhjweiu?" Well, it might as well have been, and I asked if he spoke English. A little confused, he said that he and his female friend had booked a boat trip across to walk around the glacier itself, but didn't know it was 3km walk away, and it left in ten minutes. We happily let them clamber into the back of Rosie, pushing some junk out of the way and trundling on down the road. As we chatted, the full picture was revealed - they were Dutch, and due to our numberplates, thought we were too! This wasn't the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last. We need to learn how to say a few choice phrases in Dutch to explain our confusing situation.
Anyway, they made their boat and we were stunned almost to wordlessness (quite an achievement for Liz!) by the view before us. As is so often the case, photos don't really do justice to the scale of the glacier, the blue colours of the ice and the way it looks like it is just one big river frozen as it attempts to wander down the valley. Look closely at that photo and you might just be able to make out people walking on it.
Deciding that an expensive guided tour and wander around the glacier itself was beyond both our budgets and equipment we had brought with us, we took a quick look in the visitor's centre before heading off.
Next we headed south to re-join the 55 east, another of the National Scenic Routes fabled for being amazing drives. It did not disappoint, taking us to another record - the Highest Mountain Pass in Northern Europe. Not suprisingly, it is both closed in winter and marked as not for in-experienced drivers. Both of us are becoming more and more experienced piloting Rosie, let me tell you.
Our path up to Sognefjell Pass was long and winding, lots of hairpins to keep us going. The heat of the driving was getting a bit much for Rosie, and we stopped a few times to make the most of the view for photos while she cooled down. However, she didn't disappoint, getting us to the top in style.
In the space of a few short days we have changed climates totally. Here at the top, 1440 metres above sea level, we were surrounded by glaciers, snow, rain and wind, and had to be well rugged up in our winter warms we haven't worn in quite some time and almost didn't bring with us.
A little way down the other side, we found a place to stay called Krossbu which offered not much other than toilets, but we were at least with other people in a designated safe place in the horrible weather. We found a spot to park which was beside a not far from freezing lake.
The heavy rain which pounded us and the van we thought might fill up the lake and sink us but this didn't appear to be happening so we braved the night.

author Tim	location Hellesylt, Møre og Romsdal, Norge
posted 20:25 CEST 28/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

North-East from Bergen, Flåm ( 18 photos )
After packing up at the caravan park, we headed back East (this was as far west in Norge that we intend to go), stopping in Kvamskogen to try to locate a youth hostel that my parents stayed in many years ago. The story goes that nobody there spoke English, and they were presented with an over-large breakfast that never seemed to end. To this day they are not sure whether they were supposed to pay or indeed whether someone had accidentally dropped a wedding banquet off for them to finish between them.
A helpful local pointed us at what is now the Kvamskogen Inn, and matches the description. I'm not sure if the Youth Hostel Association dropped this particular one after it found out about the over-spending on breakfasts. (Update quite some time later: May parents believe this was not the place. Have to look again next time.)
Pushing further on, we rounded the head of the relatively tiny Eidfjorden, before taking a detour into the town of Ulvik. Tucked away in the middle of several mountains miles from anywhere, we had a lunch at this pleasant location, only interrupted by a local fisherman who we suspect wanted the spot we had parked the van in. Not wanting to face the wrath of his granny-mobile, we had finished anyway and followed our path back up the steep winding road and out of there.
Pushing on North, we passed through the town of Voss, which we didn't really feel in the mood to explore.
We are challenging poor Rosie with the trickiest roads we can find here, and as such Stalheimskleiva, the road up to the Stalheim hotel was a must. Billed as one of the steepest roads in Northern Europe, we actually ended up going down it, which was a nice enough change. Don't worry, we found plenty more.
We got out for a brief wander around Gudvangen, the port at the head of Næroøfjorden. As you might expect, there were some touristy shops there where we grabbed a couple of bits and pieces (holding back quite well overall, though), before driving through some long tunnels to Flåm.
I had wanted to come here to check out the highly-recommended Flåm-Myrdal Flåmsbana Railway, which heads up and up through the mountains, giving you a great view in the process. However, it was late at this stage, so we elected to go just up the road to the caravan park for the night, planning to do the train the next morning.
The caravan park was something else. After paying at the front gate, the lady told us that her husband would show us to our spot. Strange, we thought, usually we get a map or some simple directions. Following him on his bike like Alice chasing the White Rabbit, we rapidly found out why. We had been given the highest spot in the place, with amazing views out across to the trains, ferries and of course the fjord and surrounding mountains. Best spot so far. A word of advice - do without electricity for your van if/when you can - we have consistently found that we get better spots when we don't have to be near power connections.
Dinner was washed down with a strange invention we haven't seen anywhere else and just had to try - Hansa Pilsener (a beer), sold in 1.25 litre plastic bottles like coke. Didn't even taste too bad, and given how hard the government try to make drinking not worth the expense due to the hefty taxes they put on all alcohol, it was even reasonably priced.

author Tim	location Bergen, Norge
posted 22:56 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

Bergen ( 24 photos )
We have just spent a great day exploring Bergen - a quaint little city which it is hard to be believe is the largest for a big distance.
We spent a slow morning doing the washing up, some washing and lazing around a bit, before paying for another night staying at the same caravan park, and getting a Bergen Card each. This covered all our sightseeing expenses, bus trips into the city and quite a few other things. We were a little peeved to find out that many of the museums are only open short hours, so unless you plan your day very well, you aren't going to get the best value out of your card. Nonetheless, we had enjoyed ourselves.
The bus dropped us off at the central bus station, from where we stumbled our way around a bit before finding the stretched octagonal lake Lille Lungegårdsvann which forms the focal piece of the city. We located the old city gate, then wandered past the first and possibly strangest museum that our card covered, the Leprosy Museum. With a nurse in tow, we had to wander in to take in Norway's contribution to the eradication of the disease. Interesting, but in hindsight we spent too much time there as the other museums were all closing!
From there we wandered up to a great internet café, where I plugged the laptop in and performed a long-overdue journal upload, email check, and learning of exchange rates (important!), while Liz got oriented around the city. Sorry it has been so long, but Internet connectivity up here is patchy at best.
We wandered down to the Fishmarket which Liz had located, looking at the large number of stalls all competing for business. We settled on a couple of bread rolls with various seafoods on them, a nice hearty lunch which filled us up for quite a while, sitting by the docks with their famous view across to the old part of town.
We were very close there to the Fløibanen Funicular Railway. For those not familiar with the term funicular (I wasn't), it seems to mean "climbing really steeply up the side of a mountain". Similar to the Scenic Railway at Katoomba if you know that. Flashing our Bergen Card, we jumped in a queue before being rapidly transported to the top of the mountain. The view from there was totally amazing, as the clouds which blighted the latter part of the day hadn't quite made it in, so we could see for miles around.
We wandered around a little, again resisting the tourist shops there before grabbing the train back down, savouring the views along the way.
We did quite a bit more wandering around the streets of town with nothing particular in mind for a few hours, stopping for a while for a coffee on one of the pedestrianised streets. We also saw the Bryggen area (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) where the old historic buildings had been converted in to, you guessed it, touristy shops selling all manner of things that would probably get confiscated by Kingsford Smith customs - knives, antlers, deer hooves, and lots of different animal skins.
We asked at the main tourist office if there was any live jazz going on in town, but they couldn't locate any, before settling in for a good relaxation session just outside in the expansive area filled with people chatting, eating and drinking. Not to be the odd ones out, we ordered a pizza and couple of rather expensive beers, sipped them very slowly and enjoyed the view.
We typed replies to a few emails before dropping back into the internet café to send them - don't know when we will find a connection again. Dad was online at home so we had a chat to him for a while which was good - always nice to "hear" friendly voices when we are over here.
By now it was time for home, so we navigated back to the labyrinth of a central bus station and stumbled across the correct bus back to the caravan park.
Since then we have done little other than chase a hedgehog around trying to get it to stand still for a photo with little luck. It's our first piece of non-bird wildlife over here, we have expected to see more actually.

author Tim	location Bergen, Norge
posted 23:36 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

Hardanger Fjorden ( 27 photos )
After spending a night "roughing it", we set off early from our camping place so as to not disturb the locals, finding ourselves a great little spot nestled amongst some rocks by a lake for breakfast with the sheep and the four other cars which drove past in the half an hour we were there.
On our way back down the mountain to complete the loop, we stopped for the five-minute-ly photo stop (don't worry, we take more as we drive along as well) on a flat section of a long hair-pin wind down the hill. There were some sheep there, and one amazingly tame and inquisitive one came over to see what the big red bus was all about. Liz dug around and found some bread which the sheep and her two lambs snapped up. We have never seen a sheep that didn't run away from humans, this one almost jumped in the van with us!
After passing some goats which we had to carefully drive through (they were sleeping just a bit more than a car's width apart on the road, oblivious to the dak-dak going by), we re-joined the RV13 for a while.
This brought us past a waterfall we had seen the day before, but not stopped at due to there being no parking (there are so many people travelling around these parts - we see the same people over and over). Called Låtefoss, there were two falls which passed under a road bridge, making plenty of splash and noise in the process. Someone had cleverly built a tourist shop right there, so we had a quick wander around before managing to keep most of our money.
Back to Odda which we had passed through yesterday, we tried to operate a cheap petrol pump with no humans around which just takes cards, but none that we had, before taking a different road through the newly-built (so new it's not even on our 2003 Europe Road Atlas - we found out it existed in Lonely Planet) 11km tunnel under the Folgefonni mountains. That's the longest we have found so far, and we stopped half way to take some pictures of the seemingly never-ending low-lit blackness either way.
Emerging the other side, we found that we had to pay a toll which we didn't know about either (we are pretty much used to handing over money here, it's either that or go home). A little further on, our road passed over another huge powerfall waterfall which warranted a stop - all this water spray is making Rosie just that little bit cleaner - ok, not really - she has a pretty amazing collection of bugs on the white high-top at the front.
We drove down to the village of Rosendal, where we stopped for a wander around some shops, tried to get fish and chips but had to settle for just the chips, learnt that the exchange rate for Norweigan Krone against the pound means that things aren't quite as expensive as we were fearing, and learnt that there was a ferry not marked on our Road Atlas which would make our lives much easier, from just back up the road at Løfallstrand.
Heading there, we drove luckily drove straight onto a nearly-full ferry, which took us across the fjord to Gjermundshamn (no, we can't pronounce these names, but typing them is easy) via Varaldsøy, a village on an island in the middle of the fjord. Enough people seemed to live there, and a very nice place to live it would have been too.
One wrong turn later, we were off the ferry and heading North again along the RV49 on the West side of Hardanger fjorden, through the district of Kvam. All along here there were the most beautiful little settlements, there's no real words to describe them, so try a picture instead.
After joining back with the main 7 road at Norheimsund, we quickly stumbled on Steindalsfossen, yet another huge, powerful waterfall, but with a difference - this one you could walk behind. Awe-inspiring stuff, just watching vast quantities of water in free-fall in the foreground with nice mountain scenery behind.
Having seen pretty much enough for a little while, we drove on through plenty more tunnels towards Bergen, choosing a random caravan park which turned out to be very nice. We are overlooking a lake which people were swimming in earlier, and there are canoes around for hire too.
Tomorrow we aim to get the bus into Bergen for a look around for the day.

author Tim	location Bergen, Norge
posted 22:42 CEST 24/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

Exploring South a Bit ( 38 photos )
Setting off to have a look around in a southerly direction, we didn't make a huge deal of progress on this day, but saw so much.
First on the list was the better-than-it-sounds Hardangervidda Natursenter at Øvre Eidfjord. This started off with an amazing sickness-inducing panoramic video presentation all about the amazing scenery around the area. Think IMAX, only of places we have just been to from different angles, and places we might get to soon. As Liz said when we left "well, we can go home now".
The remainder of the place was also quite interesting, with displays on fishing, wildlife, camping, and various recreations you can partake in in the area.
At the exit, there was an excellent scale model of the area showing roads and the like - we were down in the valley pointed to by the red flag. This is some seriously steep country-side.
We managed to find our way from there to the road leading to Kjeaason (Great photo I wish I had thought to go and take), a farm which someone had the interesting plan to stick 600m up the side of a fjord. To get to the place itself, we had to wait for a few minutes before we could drive up the 5km tunnel to get there, as it is all one-way and every half an hour it changes from up to down! Liz piloted well, and we emerged at the top, wandered around and were stunned to realise that from the top it just looks like any other piece of farm land. Only it's 600m up in the air, on much more of a slope, and until twenty years ago, only reachable by rope ladder.
Driving south along the RV13 beside Sørfjorden, we stopped for a snack at one of the villages where Liz only just managed to stop me from jumping in for a swim. The water was not as cold as we expected, though I suspect I would have thought differently once I was in.
There were a couple of particular roads that were recommended from various places, and we plotted this day's travels around them. The first was the 13 which we were already on, taking us along Suldalsvatn (another fantastic water-course) towards the town of Sand. Here, we queued for a ferry across to Ropeid which put us on an even more spectacular road (and noted as "only for experienced drivers" when driving anything bigger than a car), the 520. It was along here where we stopped beside the road, a few hundered metres up and cooked dinner. We had views from our "dinner table" all along the Ryfylke of mountains, clouds and of course plenty of forest.
Not too much further along, we found other people camping in a small area up high in the mountains, and decided to join them and save some money for the night.
This meant that we had almost completed our loop for the day, and boy was it worth it. At least one of those roads is pending "National Tourist Route" status, and I'd vote for either of them any day. The rocks, hairpin bends, tunnels, single-lane roads, closed-in-winter mountain passes, sheep and almost total lack of other traffic made it a great day's drive.
So many pictures of waterfalls lakes and amazing back-drops have been taken that it's all we can do to try and sort through them for the best ones.

author Tim	location Måbødalen Camping og Hyttesenter, Hordaland, Norge
posted 08:46 CEST 23/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

Forest, Frost and Fjords ( 32 photos )
A very diverse day yesterday, as we drove East towards the coast along the RV7 road, which interestingly is the same road my parents drove along the otherway back in 1976. We were in forest to start with, as we wound our way along through Gol and stopped at Ål to watch the Bergen-Oslo train go through and have some lunch.
Not much futher along, we were winding up through the mountains to the closed-for-seven-months-of-the-year Hardangervidda Pass. About here we started to wonder what those little specs of white were far away on the hill tops.
Our suspicions were confirmed when we stopped to go and play with the stuff. Snow. In Summer. Getting out to walk over to it for the obligatory snowball fight and photos, we were immediately hit with a cold wind, the reason the snow still exists from the winter falls. But we were swimming only a couple of days ago!
Back in the van to warm up, we kept east until the road started to fall back to sea-level in the most fascinating way. It was as if someone had taken a giant cork-screw and attacked the mountain with it, the resulting tunnels were then turned into roads where you drove in the top and out the bottom.
Upon reaching the bottom of a series of four or five such tunnels, about four kilometres in total, we stopped at a little "museum" in the middle of nowhere (well, actually right next to some very high steep fjord cliffs) to work out what these things were and where we were (none of this was on our maps).
It turns out we had missed the one thing in the area which we have circled and under-lined on our maps as Do Not Miss, and to get back to it we had to go back up the cork-screw thingamies again! This we did, and eventually noted the poorly-signposted turn-off to Vøringfossen just at the top of the corkscrews.
Perhaps the tourist buses, cars and campervans should have given it away, but we were too busy admiring the scenery the first time. This is a huge noisy waterfall with a hundered and fifty metre or so vertical drop, the highest in Norway. We wandered off through the forest in the direction of the noise, taking care to stay away from the cliffs (no child and adult proof fences in this country - they expect people to look after themselves, which I think is good since you see everything in its natural state).
It was quite a spectacular sight, as we trudged through a bit more forest then back to the start for a drop into our first Norge tourist shop, cloaked in the local fashion with grass and plants on the roof, presumably for insulation. Strange that we have seen so few such touristy shops, but I guess that's because we have stopped in so few big touristy places. I purchased the obligatory Moose soft-toy, which is now named Chocolate and sits to guard the van when we leave it for a while.
We then walked the other way to the "official" viewing platform where you got a good big-picture view of the falls, but not as close.
From there, we needed to attack the cork-screw one final time to head onwards, and we found a caravan park not far from the bottom. Both tired, we stopped in and got a site here in the quiet only interrupted by the noise of the river. From our van door, we can see the clouds around the high cliff-faces all around us - a nice area to spend a while.
I cooked dinner last night, but it had to be done again properly by Liz after I managed to drop the first load of pasta onto the ground as I was draining it. So it was more of a combined effort :)
We did some planning last night and will spend a day or two driving south from here along some highly-recommended scenic roads, maybe take in a bit of the coast, before heading back north through Bergen and continuing our journey mostly that way.

author Tim	location Elvenga Camping, Veme, Hønefoss, Norge
posted 21:10 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

Oslo and Surrounds ( 35 photos )
(Continued from Sverige 1)
Now into yet another country, this one is Norge, which English-speaking people refer to as Norway.
We stopped just over the little-marked border with Sverige for a look around the private landscape that comprises Berby. The forests, lakes and waterfalls of this particular area are all technically privately owned, but practically the area is no different to anywhere else nearby.
And by that I mean absolutely beautiful. We had a quick wander around for some photos before jumping back in the van and working on fixing our first problem for the day - our rumbling stomachs.
This was done by pulling into a supermarket at Halden, and working out another problem - that we didn't have any Norwegian Krone. Yet another currency to find a pile for. It turns out we could pay with Visa, which we did with a happy checkout girl who was over-excited to be able to say "Thank You!" to us in English - we think that not many tourists make it to this particular town.
Driving up the road looking for somewhere to eat, it became fairly rapidly apparent that there are not nearly as many rest places on the roads here as there are elsewhere we have been. Or perhaps that was because we were on a smaller road. No matter, as we solved this problem by parking in someone's very long driveway for a while. They didn't mind, as their house must have been about 3km away over a hill.
Relaxing in the sun and not doing much except reading about yet another new country, we resolved to head North to Oslo. Our path there took us through more great country side, before getting lost and finding ourselves again on the jumble that is the entrance to Oslo.
Another thing about Norway as distinct from other countries up here is that there are lots of toll roads. Needing to pay a toll to get into Oslo itself, not having any of the local currency at all, and noting that Norge is not in the EU, let alone the Euro, we needed some cash fast.
Someone had helpfully put a service station right at the toll gate, so I went inside and joined a cue of lots of other people doing the same thing to withdraw some cash. Once again, not really knowing the exchange rate is either a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it, so I pressed a button and was presented with some more strange papery notes. One of these I exchanged for a Coke and a pile of other notes and coins with the service station attendant, and one of the resulting coins was close enough to the toll required to enter the city. Great!
So, enter the city we did, following our noses to find some parking in the centre near an information place, run there to grab some maps, run back to the van and then drive to some more permanent parking on Tordenskiolds gate, right in the heart of the city. This required paying for, of course, which I was able to do with a credit card, thereby not loosing any more cash. Very handy, but we can only guess at how much it really cost us.
Lonely Planet Scandinavian Europe in hand, we took in a suggested city walk which started not far from where we were and took in plenty of the city sights. We had managed to catch the city on an exceptionally rainy day, where we had to wait in alleyways for quite some time for rain to clear, and carry our bags on our fronts to protect the contents while huddling under an umbrella.
Along the way we wanted to plug the laptop in to update the journal, but one cafe wouldn't do it and the other one was flooded. What we did manage to see included the Domkirke (cathedral), which we entered more to get out of the rain, but was impressive in its own right, Eidsvolls plass (a square filled with fountains and statues), the Nationaltheatret, University of Oslo and the royal palace Det Kongelige Slott.
From there we wandered down to the dock area, home to the Rådhus (Town Hall), which is decorated with scenes from Norse mythology, plenty of statues and fountains, and of course lots of boats in the docks.
There was a fishing boat selling prawns to the unwitting tourist, so of course we had to have some to eat for dinner. Curiously, they were sold by the litre...
Sufficiently drenched by now, we wandered not far at all back to Rosie, where we changed clothes, before Liz took the pilot seat for a drive "somewhere North" to a caravan park. However, not far out of the city, we actually did some thinking, changed tact, and headed North-West instead, eventual destination the Western Fjords and Bergen.
Locating a caravan park which looked cheap enough (no sleeping rough tonight, I haven't had a shower since... (censored for when Mum reads this!) ), we picked some more back roads, taking us through Roa and Hønefoss to Elvenga Camping, on the 7 road. Plenty of pretty scenery was to be seen, including our first fjord (all though not one of the crazy ones) Randsfjorden.
We ate our prawns, the rest of the lunch cheese and salami we grabbed earlier today and some bread, before taking me to the shower for decontamination and removal of my ape-like layer of face-fuzz. I am now much more presentable.

author Tim	location Elvenga Camping, Verne, Buskerud, Norge
posted 20:43 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Sverige/Sverige 1 ( all photos )

North Into Norway ( No photos )
Awaking reasonably early due to our twenty metre or so proximity to the motorway, we noted that the carpark we had chosen was almost totally full of people doing the same. It seems the whole area was full, hope that doesn't happen too often.
At least we managed to be on the road for the earliest time in recent memory, and as such we decided to head inland to see what the scenery of this place was all about. Wow, were we blown away.
Turning off at Skee to take the back way across the border, we were suprised at how quickly the trees and lakes surrounded us. This was quite a change from the flat farmed landscapes which dominated the sides of the motorway thus far. The great views means that whoever is driving has the bad job - the other can look around and take photos at their leisure.
In this similar fashion, we drove across the small back-road border into Norge (Norway). Yes, that's another different country. We're going to stick to this one for a little while now, promise.

author Tim	location The E6 North of Tanumshede, Götaland, Sverige
posted 22:02 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Sverige/Sverige 1 ( all photos )

Lund, Driving North ( 16 photos )
Not much to report from today - we awoke reasonably early and went for a swim down at the beach. We didn't want to get in due to the chilly nature of the place, but eventually I splashed Liz a lot and we had to get in from there.
Our aim was simple - drive a long way North. First stop was for a look around the town of Lund. We grabbed some supplies and brunch before wandering over to the main attraction - the cathederal with its very interesting astronomical clock, which did its animated thing at 1pm. Plenty of people were there to see this happen, basically consisting of a few animated figures of the three kings start their journey to the child Jesus.
By now, the urge to hit the road proper was with us, and so we headed futher north, stopping for a journey down to Mölle on Kullen Head to look at the rocks at the end. They turned out to be quite a hike from the road, so we let our telephoto lenses do the work, before munching on an ice cream (weather is still very hot, about twenty-four degrees each day and no clouds, non-stop sun all day), deciding not to swim on the beach that wasn't a beach, and driving back to the motorway.
We covered a lot of distance (that's going to become common with the huge spaces between everything here - kind of like Australia, actually), stopping again for fuel outside Göteborg (Gothenburg).
By late afternoon, it was time for a caravan park, so we attempted to find one around the Grebbestad area. However, of the four we tried, all were full - must be the good weather, and of course the school holidays.
As such, we are spending the night in a road-side stop off the E6, where there are lots of others doing the same (there exists a concepts of Right of Free Access here, meaning you can stay wherever you want within reason), so we feel fairly safe. Saving some money helps as well.
As a bonus, it seems that so far Scandinavia is proving to be not nearly as expensive as we had braced ourselves for. Sweden especially is fine, at least as far as we can tell as we haven't seen any current exchange rates. Will have to find some when we arrive in Oslo, Norway tomorrow morning to look for an Internet cafe.

author Tim	location Malmö, Skåne, Sverige
posted 22:30 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Sverige/Sverige 1 ( all photos )

Around Malmö ( 4 photos )
(Continued from Danmark 1)
And so, we were heading for our third country in two days, Sverige, which most of us know as Sweden. Home to Volvos (seen plenty already), Ericsson, and of course the famous Swedish Chef, this one is going to be fun. This site is supposed to have lots of interesting information on the country, if you have time to read a bit more.
Continuing over the bridge, the signs suddenly changed colour, we needed to learn a new set of speed limits, and oh look, another currency. I really do appreciate just how much the Euro helps tourists out - it must have been a complete pain to change money at every border. Of all of Scandinavia, only Finland uses the Euro, the other countries use their own versions of the Krone - hence we now have Danish Krone and Sverige Krone, with more to come.
So, you can imagine our relief when arriving at the toll gate at the other side, we were able to pay in Euro, which we still have some of. Mind you, at once again the equivalent of about AUD $60, we aren't going to be making too many of these crossings.
We stopped just along the road at SkŒnegŒrden, a tourist office designed for people entering from Danmark, which is exactly what we were doing. A quick look around and a coffee later, we had a destination in mind for the night's stop and to get our bearings in a foreign land - Sibbarps Camping, on the beach looking back at the bridge and København.
A much faster than yesterday check-in process completed, we were directed to a field and told to pick a spot. We did so against a tree, with views of the sunset behind the bridge in one direction and open green space on the other. Very nice indeed.
We wandered along the beach for the afternoon, and I was even brave enough to go in for a couple of swims up and down the beach. The water was chilly, but warmer than the last few times we have thought about jumping in. It turned out to be one of the most refreshing experiences in ages, and we are hoping to do it again tomorrow morning.
Dinner and a few photos of the bridge/tunnel and sunset later, bed is calling.

author Tim	location Malmö, Skåne, Sverige
posted 21:59 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Danmark/Danmark 1 ( all photos )

Across Denmark, Into Sweden ( 1 photo )
This morning we got updated with journals and photos for a while, before checking out of the caravan park. The place was quite well catered for, with large jumping hemispheres (for want of a better word) for kiddies, and a crazy-looking game called Snooker-Golf.
We got on the road, and headed East towards Sweden. Since we don't want to spend too much time (and hence money) in Scandinavia, we are heading up through the more distant countries first, then spending time in places like Danmark on the way back as we see fit.
It is only relatively recently that bridges have been built joining parts of southern Scandinavia together - we drove across several of these today.
The first joins Danmark's islands of Jutland and Funen, arriving at the amusingly-named town of Middelfart where we stopped for a quick break and a photo of the sign. From there, we basically followed the motorway further East, crossing the bridge joining Funen and Zealand. This one was the first where we got hit with the amazingly steep toll of about AUD $75! I guess that's not too bad compared to a ferry, but still...
We were pushing it on fuel just outside København (Copenhagen), so pulled in for a very quick look around the outskirts looking to fill up. We did so, and intend to get back and spend at least a couple of there on our way back through.
From there, we drove onto the newest of the bridges (opened 2000), the Øresund Fixed Link. This is a bizarre combination bridge-tunnel where you go underground for the first third or so, only to appear in the middle of the sea, drive up onto a bridge and continue the remainder of your water crossing above water! This amused us no end, and is actually a very picturesque feat of engineering.
Half way across this bridge, we were officially in Sverige (Sweden).

author Tim	location Billund, Jutland, Danmark
posted 09:45 19/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Danmark/Danmark 1 ( all photos )

Legoland ( 57 photos )
(Continued from Deutschland 1)
Liz powered Rosie along what had suddenly turned into horrible rainy motorway - was this a sign of things to come in Scandy? The new country we had found as Danmark (or Denmark).
We rounded the city of Kolding, and headed off through the back roads, winding our way towards Mecca for so many children - proper Danish Legoland, just outside of Billund.
We found a place to park but were not quite sure how to get out again. Trusting the gods of Lego, we wandered over to the park entrance where we noticed they had thoughtfully placed a cash machine. I say thoughtful because Denmark does not use the Euro, preferring to dictate its own monetary policy for fear of being swept under the carpet by the stronger nations (only 5.5 million people here versus about 85 million on Deutschland alone). As such, we withdrew some Danish Krone and joined the first of many queues to buy a ticket to get in.
The rather steep price was offset by the fact that all the rides and things were included, but to be honest we would have preferred a cheaper ticket and to pay for the rides, most of which we avoided like the plague due to their huge queues.
Here's a fun game - can you spot the tourist?
The place is divided into lots of zones - Pirates, Castles, etc. Most of the place was a complete waste of time and space. Of mild interest was the Power Builder - a ride where you can program how you want it to twist you around yourself, then you get in and it behaves accordingly. Opting not to join the immense queue, we instead headed towards the exit, thinking by now that we should have taken everyone's advice and avoided the place.
But, the fat lady had not yet sung - we still had to exit past Miniland. This is where it all started, before they built the rest of the garbage to suck the kiddies in. This part of the park was absolutely fantastic. Think entire villages, towns, famous landmarks, all re-created with thousands of man-hours and millions of Lego bricks. Trains which ran on tracks, only to stop while a bridge opened and boats went under, before resuming on their journey between three or four of the different displays underfoot. Airports with moving planes and baggage being loaded. Cars which drove around the place on their own (not quite sure how yet - magnets?). Interactive exhibits where you could fire water cannons, take movies in Hollywood, race drag racing cars and lots of other stuff. I say give us a cheaper ticket where we can wander around this part for the day and forget the rides.
By now the crowds had thinned, so I whinged like a little kiddy until Liz came with me on the Lego Train, Lego Monorail and Lego Mining Train. We then found where the crowds had gone in the overly-packed shop, where we resisted spending up big on bricks, instead grabbing a few little token things to remember the place, before fighting stroller-weilding families for the exit.
We had been given a ticket to get out of the carpark, and from there it was a short drive to Billund Camping, where, after fourty-five minutes wait in the slowest queue I could have possibly picked, we were booked in. Dinner was cooked and bed was constructed.

author Tim	location Billund, Jutland, Danmark
posted 09:43 19/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Kiel and Flensburg ( 5 photos )
We set out north, destination Danmark. This took us through Kiel where we stopped for our last naughtly McDonalds stop while we could still afford it.
Onwards North, we found cheap-ish fuel in Flensburg, before passing through the rather intimidating border into Danmark.

author Tim	location Billund, Jutland, Danmark
posted 08:52 19/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Lübeck and Timmendorfer Strand ( 9 photos )
Sebastian was getting up early for a lecture, so we had breakfast before getting our things organised and updating the website. We left with Jessi at about 10:30, dumping our things in Rosie before going to what would have to class as the world's cheapest supermarket, Aldi.
Actually, I'm sure the ones in Australia are cheaper, it's just that Aldi is so much cheaper than where we have been shopping recently that it was quite a shock. Needless to say, we stocked up fairly heavily for not much money with enough pasta, sauce, rice and anything that won't go off to last us through expensive Scandinavia.
We needed to get our spare tyre fixed since the episode on the ferry, and finally located a convenient place in the suburbs of Hamburg. Communicating with the staff was quite interesting at best, as only one of them spoke a little bit of English, but in the end we organised two replacement tyres (the old ones were very worn), and a spare from the old ones. We should get the other two changed at some stage in the future, but they are quite pricey.
Onwards from there, we headed up the A7 motorway to take the scenic route across to the city of Lübeck. We located the Park and Ride on the outskirts, fired up the GPS and got the bus to the Hauptbahnhof (central train station). From there, it was a quick walk across the river which surrounds the city, past the impressive huge, inwards leaning gate tower to the city itself.
Besides a nice walk around the town square where we ate some fresh raspberries and a strange street with British flags everywhere, by far the highlight of the town was a trip to the Lubecker Marionettentheater Fritz Fey, a puppet theatre. Everyone else there was either a child under four or looking after one, so we felt a little out of place. However, combining our almost total lack of understanding of the language with a great display of puppetry, a plot we have no idea about, and fifty or so three year olds constantly screaming out the Deutsch equivalent of "behind you!" (we think) whenever the goodie was looking for the baddie was a sure-fire winner. Just laugh when everyone else does and you will be fine.
With the combination of the American military's satellites and Liz's excellent memory for streets, we decided to walk the three kilometres or so back to Rosie at the Park and Ride and save some money. Being quite a hot day, we grabbed some water first, and were tempted to stock up at The Bierspezialist we found along the way, but made it in the end.

It wasn't far from there at all to the village of Timmendorfer Strand. This was on our destination list due to it being where Liz's father Ingo was born. However, we suspect the town he remembers is not very similar to what exists today. Plenty of high-rise tourist accommodation, expensive beach huts, shops selling lots of things nobody really needs and map-dispensing machines which eat your money. Should have learned my lesson after Chester, but I'm a sucker for information. As it turned out, the actual Information Centre was right behind it, but was only given away by the tinyest of plaques. We dropped in and were directed to Vogelpark - which was essentially a carpark nearby to camp in.
Driving there, we relaxed for a while before going off for a wander down to the little harbour. If you look around hard enough, this is still a great little place. As we walked around the beach, past plenty of boats and trying to ignore those trampoline-with-bungie cord tourist traps, we found what is almost a different town.
Back to relax at the van until the morning.

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 10:05 17/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Around Hamburg ( 26 photos )
After late wake up, we took a train into the city, now experts in buying tickets, at least for this city. Sebastian showed us around a few of the city's sights, including the impressive St Michels church, the city's old dock area (now home to residential areas and the Hamburg Dungeon), the bombed and not rebuilt St Nicolai church (quite a moving experience), then a drink by the city's central lakes.
From there, Sebastian had to go to work for an hour or so, so Liz and I amused ourselves wandering into shops, around the Rathaus with its quaint fountain in the central courtyard, and generally not doing too much due to the heat.
We met up again and saw what appeared to be the Indonesian Navy band wandering through town, watched that for a while before escaping down to the underground once again. Sebastian took us down to the docks for a ferry ride along the river to the Fischmarkt, a good cheap way to see the river Elbe. From the market, we wandered down to watch the Elbtunnel in amazement. It is an old tunnel under the river, which now has lifts at each end for cars to be hoisted twelve metres up to road level. It's amazing that it still survives in this day and age, but plenty of cars were being hoisted around.
Sufficently entertained by that, we wandered back to the flat. Dinner was rung-in Pizza, since Jessi is studying for exams, and we didn't want to spend too much.
A much more tame night was spent at a local pub where one of Sebastian's friends was DJing for the first time, and learning just how fanatical the Deutsch people are about table football, as Liz and I were reduced to complete humiliation at the hands of Sebastian and a random local keen to show off his goalkeeper high-kicks to score.

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 09:21 17/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Bremen, into Hamburg ( 21 photos )
We awoke wanting to have a look around the city of Bremen, so that's pretty much what we did. Liz drove Rosie out of the park and up the road to a parking lot, which appeared to have people wandering to a nearby beach. More on that later.
A walk back up the road past the park and a little further brought us to a tram stop. The driver waited while we ran and jumped in, and we expected to be asked to pay. No such luck. In fact, try as we might, we couldn't work out how to pay for the ride. Many cities appear to have chosen their own way of accepting fast payments with a special card, thus increasing the speed of payment for the locals who use it a lot. Unfortunately, by doing this it means that the tourists, such as us, have absolutely no idea how it works.
Perhaps a conductor would come and fire some Deutsch at us we thought, but no such luck. We alighted near the centre of town for a look around. With Liz around, it's hardly suprising that we found a chocolate shop fairly quickly and made a purchase which was quickly opened and "tested".
Attempting to see some things around the place, we wandered around the pretty central pedestrianised section of town, taking in quite a few of the sights, such as the Rathaus (town hall), obligatory over-bearing St Petri-Dom cathederal and plenty of street cafes. Also, we wandered down the Bötterstrasse, a re-created medieval alley with lots of little shops attempting to snare the tourists in. We managed to avoid spending more money, heading instead to the Schnoorviertel. This was a similar place, instead focusing on the history of fishing in the area. There were some great little shops and alleys however, and we wandered in and had a look around a music shop, where Liz bought a notebook.
Lunch was next, and we attempted to decypher the menu of the cheapest looking place in the central square, eventually settling on zwei rostbratwurst, meaning two large sausage things in two tiny bread rolls. Oh, and zwei Coca-Cola to wash that down. We're getting better and better at spending as little as possible in these places, including dodging the expensive tomato sauce in favour of the free mustard.
We needed to post some things at the post office, so we of course needed to find it. Liz cheated and asked for directions in English, which at least meant that we found the place alright. Letters sent, it was time to head back to the van. Again we attempted to find a way to pay for the tram, but no luck. We promise to spend more in the next city to make up for free-loading on Bremen's public transport.
Re-tracing our steps, we got back to the van and decided to find out what the fuss wass all about with the beach nearby. By now the carpark was overflowing with people, so there had to be something interesting going on. We wandered down the forest path for a while, and eventually it opened up to the beach with lots and lots of people. With a difference. We had wandered into a nudist beach. Trying to look unfazed, we walked a little while down to the beach itself, past people ordering ice creams, wandering down paths and playing games all stark naked. Deciding this was not for us, we turned and wandered back. Sorry, no photos from there are available.
Next on the itinerary was a drive into Hamburg, to meet and stay with friend Sebastian (and his girlfriend Jessi), who was an exchange student at Sydney Technical High School when I was there, and we got to know each other well due to his musical interests. We met them a little while ago when we were in Amsterdam the first time.
A hot drive later, we found our way into the middle of town via his directions, parked, and called him up to come find us for the last tricky part of our journey. We opened up all of the doors for some cool air while parked in a little back street awaiting him to wander down, which he did after not too long.
He guided us to a good parking spot just down the road from his place in Paul-Rossen Straße, St Pauli, where we climbed the stairs to arrive at the great little flat they live in.
After a while of cooling down, he took us out for a wander around the western area of the city to get familiar with the layout of the place. This included a wander down the nearby Große Freiheit, Hamburg's famous Red-Light district (quite an eye-opener, even after Amsterdam), then down to the Fischmarkt, which still operates on Sundays. Wandering along the Elbe River, we cut back through the city along the Reeperbahn, then grabbed a few European plugs and adaptors at a cheap electrical place on Talstraße.
After a genuine Deutsch dinner (or so we are told!) prepared by Sebastian, he had a band rehersal for his band Mindcuffed. Not having any other plans, we tagged along. This involved a ride through the city on the underground train to a place in an industrial area (with a few brave souls living nearby) where rooms were rented out for bands to use as practice space. Luckily we had Sebastian with us, as he had enough trouble figuring out how to buy a ticket, so I hate to think how we would have done.
Liz played Wonderboy on the laptop as I bravely attempted to insert some saxophone lines on Sebastian's Alto we had brought along into the band's heavy guitar riffs. It was good playing again, as I don't have my sax with us and am missing playing it after almost a year(!).
After the rehersal, we came back to the flat before heading out for a night at one of the local bars. This involved riding there on bikes - quite an experience with four of us on only two bikes. Liz manged to balance well on the back of our bike, better than I can say for myself riding it as we swerved and nearly topped while dodging traffic. I didn't care what gear I was in or give more than a passing thought to the road rules, but it was a huge amount of fun.
The night was passed chatting to various friends of people, who, on discovering that we were from Sydney were suprised and interested, but mostly a little worried that they would have to speak English to us. This didn't stop some whose English was very good (as in far better than our Deutsch), and we had a great chat to lots of people, not even noticing that the clock ticked over to something like 3am before we decided that pushing the bike back was a better idea than trying to ride it.

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 19:20 16/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Driving into Bremen ( 1 photo )
(Continued from Netherlands 2)
Coming across the border, as always, is new and exciting thing. We have both been quite interested in Deutschland since learning (or at least trying to) the language at school. Also, Liz's father Ingo came out to Australia from the country at age six, so she has wanted to see what the place is all about.
As a side note, you may note that we are calling it Deutschland, not Germany. From speaking to Sebastian (our friend in Hamburg), the word Germany is only ever used when communicating with people speaking English. So, we are going to try, where possible, to use the local names of places and things as we launch further and further into the non-English speaking world.
So, back to the border crossing - besides small signage style changes, and the obligatory speed-limit changes (you mean we can attempt to push Rosie to 130kph now? No thanks!), not much is noticable thanks to EU semi-standardisation of most things.
We pulled in to get some fuel and cool down at a road-side services, where I was rapidly required to test out my Deutsch on the attendant to pay for fuel. Back on the road, it wasn't far before we noticed the first occurance of the word Autobahn, accompanied with a sign showing the number 130 with a line through it. If you haven't worked out by now, that means there are no speed limits. We kept Rosie to a sensible 100kph, as chosen by her lack of fifth gear, lack of overtaking power, tendincy to swerve all over the road at the slightest breeze (let alone taking over a truck), and massive fuel consumption at anything faster.
As such, little dots in the rear-view mirror rapidly turned into screaming Audis and BMWs as they overtook, leaving a space-shuttle like slip-stream in their wake to rock us around.
And so it went as we drove ourselves into the city of Bremen. We had directions to a caravan park of which at least the first half were correct, but they rapidly turned into a work of fiction. We were able to follow the signs and arrive at Campingplatz Bremen, staffed by an extremely helpful woman keen to see that we had a great time wandering around the city by providing good advice and helpful directions.
Picking a space in the half-empty park was fairly easy, where we sat in the sun for a while before walking around to check out the BBQ (we would have to locate fuel for it), doing some washing, then cooking a Chicken Tonight with rice. The remainder of the night was spent watching the second half of the Lord of the Rings DVD, resulting us having watched the movie over two countries.

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Germany
posted 18:53 16/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Netherlands/Netherlands 2 ( all photos )

Groeningen and Surrounds ( 2 photos )
Since the weather is so fantastic at the moment (25-30 degrees each day), we decided this morning would be a great one for sunning on the beach. This we did before breakfast, taking the short walk down to the river beach and reading books for a while.
We considered a swim but the water was quite murky (ok, and too cold), so we just relaxed for a while instead.
Finally getting ourselves organised, we cooked breakfast then headed on the road to find a supermarket which would now be open. This search brought us to the city of Groningen, where a few driving manouevers of questionable legality and waiting a long long time for lock gates to open brought us to a supermarket. It had taken Liz's sharp eyes to find it, as we have no idea what the names of the supermarkets are, and this one only gave away its presence by the posters offering cheap deals on Pringles on the outside.
Wandering around the place was great fun - some things are easy to pick while others remain a total mystery. Also strange is that this place took no credit cards, or our EFTPOS-style switch card! We had to delve into the secret cash stah we have to pay for our goods at the checkout, making it by one euro cent. Phew!
After a lunch in the carpark, a drive to the bank was high on the priority list, so we stumbled across one of those which conveniently allowed us to execute a U-turn and get back on track.
There was not much more for us to do now except drive East into Deutschland (Germany).

author Tim	location Bremen, Germany
posted 09:39 15/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Netherlands/Netherlands 2 ( all photos )

Northern Netherlands ( 8 photos )
A bit of a driving day this one, we headed first for an interesting feature on our map - a fourty kilometre or so long causeway joining the provinces of Noord-Holland and Friesland. Called Afsluitdijk, it was quite interesting to drive along. About a third of the way across there was an information centre where we found out that it was actually a dam, created to increase farming land. The scale of the thing was quite impressive, and driving along it the road in the distance shimmered as if not there. As in many other places here, there are bridges that open up while yachts sail through, leaving the motorists to get out of the cars and wander around for a while, which is a pleasant change from the monotony of diriving around.
With no fixed plan and only knowing that we needed a supermarkt to take on supplies, we headed into the town of Leeuwarden for a bit of a wander. Finding a supermarket when you have no idea what they are called can be a bit tricky. Eventually taking the easy option and pulling into a service station, we were directed to one but told to expect it closed as it was a Sunday. This turned out to be true, so we headed onwards.
Heading up to the coast, we pulled into the town of Holwerd for a look around. Seemingly completely devoid of life, it was still nice to look at the way the gardens are all immaculate and the streets perfectly clean.
From there, we headed out to the ferry port for the little island of Ameland. There was a huge car park, almost completely full for day-trippers to the island. Being reasonably late in the day by now, we had no real desire to head over. Instead, we marvelled at the children playing in the mud, while their respective adults sat on the wharf as if were a beach, getting a tan.
We headed a little further along the coast to the holiday town of Lauwersoog. Like almost every town along the coast here, it had a caravan park which looked good enough for us. For no real reason over any other, we pulled into Camping Lauwersoog. While Liz negotiated to get a site in the reception, I negotiated the children on ride-on toys and adults with much bigger toys in the form of massive caravans to hold a place in the entry queue.
This done, we pulled into a cosy spot where someone else had taken our power connection. The standard "do you speak English?" asked, we had actually found someone who didn't very well for the first time. We managed to gesticulate and use nouns and verbs enough for me to discover that his connection wasn't working. After he plugged back into it though, it seemed fine this time.
While Liz had a walk around the site, I managed to fall asleep in the afternoon for the first time in ages, soaking up the sun and narrowly avoiding getting burnt.
Dinner cooked from what little supplies we had remaining, we watched half of Lord of the Rings on DVD before night-time beckoned us to sleep.

author Tim	location Bremen, Germany
posted 09:11 15/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Netherlands/Netherlands 2 ( all photos )

Amsterdam ( 16 photos )
Getting ourselves organised, we were on the road again for the reasonably short drive to Amsterdam. Of course, we had been here before, but that was mostly a social visit, where we had decided not to see any of the touristy sites. That's why we were back this time.
As always, we needed a place to stay, so we drove to Camping Vliegenbos, the only camp site in Amsterdam. As you might expect, this meant that the prices were high and conditions not ideal. Infact, we were camped in no better than a parking lot, surrounded by other people in tents and a few in motorhomes. That's what you can get away with if you are the only camp site in a big city, I guess.
Still, it was a convenient ten minute bus ride from Centraal Station, which we took to start our wandering around. Without going into "we walked left, then turned right" detail, our day was a lot of wandering, sitting in cafes, enjoying the amazing hot weather in a beautiful city.
We took in some of Amsterdams more interesting museums, the Schuttersgalerij (Civic Guard Gallery withh huge paintings), ate some hot chips (they seem to love them over here), tried to get into Anne Frankhaus (the house of Anne Frank of "The Diary of Anne Frank" fame) but thought the hour-long queue was a bit excessive, especially since the place looked more like a modern art museum from the outside than a well-preserved historical building.
Lunch was at a nice back-street cafe-bar on Spuistraat.
There was a strange guy in a little boat on one of the canals who played the organ and trumpet at the same time, serenading a wedding party in a most unusual way. Great entertainment.
We found a modern bar which also doubled as an Internet cafe where I did some uploading and email sending while Liz wandered the streets taking it all in. She located a part of the city where there was some good foot to be had, so we headed there and found great Tapas for dinner overlooking the busy Nieuwendikj and sipping sangria at Joselito Tapas cafe.
For our return home, we tried the free method - a ferry across the picturesque harbour with the locals, then a GPS-aided walk back to the campsite. Worked a treat, gave us some exercise and proved a good way to see the city.

author Tim	location Lauwersoog, Netherlands
posted 11:01 14/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Netherlands/Netherlands 2 ( all photos )

Den Haag ( 19 photos )
Getting ourselves out of bed and organised, we checked out of the camp ground and parked about 100m up the road. We did this due to the fact that there was a bus from the campsite right into the centre of Den Haag, which we spent the day looking around.
The city is amazingly beautiful, there are tree-lined cobble-stone streets, sculpture exhibitions all around, and plenty of on-street cafes to while away the hours.
Our bus dropped us off conveniently not too far from our first museum of the day - one of the three royal palaces (Het Paleis Lange Voorhout) which houses exhibitions. The walk there was along one of these nice streets with lots of interesting sculptures to look at.
The one we were looking at was Escher in het Paleis. This exhibition was of original prints, drawings and sketches of Escher, famed for his perspective drawings and metamporphisms. Great stuff, and by the end a couple of prints. There were some clever interactive displays around.
The accordian player right outside the door encouraged us to sit and have a light lunch at the cafe there, complete with its own funky sculpture. Interestingly, after being in the UK for so long everything here seems reasonably priced.
From there we basically wandered around the city for a while, up to the tourist information centre, or VVV as they are called in The Netherlands. We were trying to find an Internet cafe but decided to wait another day.
Eventually, we found our way back to the bus stop (via the very pretty houses of parliament - Den Haag is the political capital of The Netherlands - set right on a lake-with-fountain in the middle of town). Three more strips on the Stripkaart each later (that's how you do most public transport here), and we were back at Rosie.
We had a quick wander along the beach there, but it appeared to be closed, so our swimming had to wait until another day. Plus the water was cold too, which may have helped our decision just a little.
We had found another caravan park on the other side of town, which was more of a "just the site, thanks" park than the all-singing, all-dancing, all-charging one we had stayed at the previous night. On the way, however, we stopped off to take in a couple more of the museums that Den Haag is so famous for - Fotomuseum Den Haag and the contemporary art museum GEM. These easy to find but hard to park at museums, which we accessed by dodging across the ever-present tram lines, were interesting, but not amazingly so. The exhibitions in both were fairly startling to say the least, but proved a pleasant way to kill a few hours before heading to our new campsite.
Camping Duinhorst was tucked away in a wood on the outskirts of the city, but the signs once again guided us in with no problems. Another busy site, we spent the evening trying to play table football (it didn't work properly though), reading, doing lots of what holidays are about - nothing.
As an aside, the North Sea Jazz Festival started in Den Haag this evening and ran through the weekend, but the prices were way out of our budget. Quite a shame, but it would have cost us something like 75 euros each to see some of the big names. Next time maybe.

author Tim	location Amsterdam, Netherlands
posted 23:02 12/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Netherlands/Netherlands 2 ( all photos )

Another Ferry ( 3 photos )
(Continued from Across England)
This ferry was different to the one that took is to Ireland and back in several respects, not the least that all our meals were included in the price. We had actually organised quite a good deal with the Caravan Club, and this was a nice suprise.
We ate a hearty breakfast in the sun, watching the world go by, before having a look around the ferry itself, which proved to be rather boring.
Due to the lack of trade restrictions in the EU, there is no such thing as Duty Free, so shopping is a waste of time too.
This left writing emails and sleep. I chose the former, Liz the latter. There was a place to plug the laptop in, so for the trip I caught up with some emails which have been waiting for replies since March (sorry Kim!).
The sailing was almost dead flat, far less rough than the Ireland trips were, to the point that most of the time you wouldn't have even known that we were moving. Move we certainly did, however, and six hours later we saw "proper joined on Europe" once again, sailing into the port of Hoek van Holland (Hook of Holland).
The call came to return to the vehicles, which meant wandering back down into the rather spacious bowels of the ship, where upon returing to Rosie a kind soul pointed out that we had a flat tire! Uh oh, not good news.
A quick consultation with the staff later, we got out the gear to organise a tyre change. The jack on this is unlike any we had ever seen, but we soon had it sorted out. Next task was to get the wheel nuts off. Much harder. The problem was that the spanner device we were using is one size too big, and also the nuts were of course put on with a pneumatic tool which is far stronger than I. We got three of the five off by standing and jumping on the tool, but the other two kept slipping (since the thingy was too big).
No problem, as by now we were the only vehicle left on the boat, so we were attracting plenty of attention from the staff. Their replies to our worried querying of "when does the ship sail again???" were along the lines of "no worries, we'll sort it out". A few minutes later, someone appeared with a socket set with the correct size bit, and before we could blink, a new tyre was on and we were quite literally ready to roll.
Since this was the first time we had used that tyre, we were cautious, especially with all the bumpy driving off the ferry, but no problems with it so far.
Our next problem was where to go. We needed to get to a service station to put air in the "new" tyre, so we headed off randomly looking for one, once again on the right-hand side of the road. It actually feels correct again, even though we keep looking the wrong way at intersections. The simple rule is "follow everyone else", which has worked just fine thus far.
We eventually found a service station, where we filled up the tyre and were free to wander. It's strange driving here, because we have Dutch plates, so people actually don't look twice at you. Not used to that at all.
So, where to go? That question was answered by the road we ended up on, which showed that the closest big town was Den Haag (The Hague). So, that's where we aimed. There was also a campsite listed there, so all the better. The sign posts here are eons better than in England (don't even get me started on Ireland), so finding the place was a doddle, even through the rather complex intersections that seem to dominate the landscape.
The place in question was Kijkduinpark, best described as a holiday town. It has a swimming pool, bar, kiddy play centre, supermarket and pretty much everything you would ever want should your idea of a holiday be "go somewhere and do as little as possible". As such, the price tag matches well. Not having any other information and not wanting to drive much further (our body clocks were further thrown out by loosing an hour). Half an hour's check-in process later, we were ready to roll.
The place was absolutely packed, so finding our spot was a little challenging. This first problem solved, we were ready for the pool. If we are going to pay for this stuff, we are sure going to use it. The pool turned out to be very difficult to get in to (they're good at this here), meaning that we actually had to walk through what looked like toilet cubicles and out the other side to gain access. We were quite confused for a while, but just tried to look like we knew what we were doing. The swim was nice, but too warm, and there were too many kids, so we were soon back at Rosie, doing some journal updates, getting changed, then back to try the strange Dutch beers in the sunshine.
This was enough for the day, bed called out loudly.

author Tim	location Wassenaar, Netherlands
posted 22:48 CEST 11/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/Across England ( all photos )

Drive to Harwich ( No photos )
Awaking feeling much better than the night before at the ungodly hour of 4:15 am (body clock going very strange), we tried as best we could to be quiet as we packed our things.
After all their help I hope we didn't wake them up, but the throaty gutsy roar of Rosie in the morning probably didn't help matters much.
On to the totally empty roads, we again tackled the problem of getting in/out of Romford, failed, tried again, got fuel, and were on the way to Harwich.
This rather pleasant drive took about an hour and a half, leaving us plenty of time to enjoy a cup of tea and a thrown together breakfast in the car park of the ferry terminal.
As the gate eventually opened we drove through only to be pulled aside by an elderly lady. On reflection this wasn't too suprising since we were by far the cheapest looking vehicle beside all the monolithic motorhomes with screaming kids. Worried at first, we ended up having a great old chat with the woman who was quite impressed that we had thrown all our jobs away and were seeing the world. Not sure what she was intending to do (full search of the van? of us?), but as we drove away she said to her friend "Not even going to bother with that one". Strange. Maybe we're just nice people. And nice people don't smuggle drugs or weapons of mass destruction.
We drove onto the ferry, which was rather huge, locked up the van, and wandered upstairs to enjoy the eight-hour journey to Hoek van Holland, The Netherlands.

author Tim	location Wassenaar, Netherlands
posted 22:36 CEST 11/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/Across England ( all photos )

Tidying Up in London ( 2 photos )
We hadn't planned on getting back into London, but that is just what we did on this day.
After a hearty breakfast, we got packed some more things into our suitcases we have left at Les and Pearl's, noting that we pretty much have a full suitcase ready to send home to Oz. Deciding to leave it for the moment, we walked down to get a bus to Romford mainline station.
From there, we got straight onto a train to Liverpool Street. Odd, as I'd spent a reflective fifteen minutes just staring around the place last time I was there, thinking it would be my last for quite some time.
Finding the well-hidden post office there, we put a few things into the post to various parts of the world, before Liz wandered over to NatWest, her bank, to attempt to close her account. By the time that the first queue had put us into a different queue only to have her name taken for an interview (remember we just wanted to close a bank account), I decided that I would head off to complete one of our other tasks.
The main one was a trip to Russell Square to visit Carlo, who lives in our old place at Cricklewood to collect our mail. This task completed, I said a goodbye to Carlo, hoping to meet up with him somewhere around Europe when the get into travels sometime around September.
Back on the train, it was a last stop at The Gun, the local hangout for the Capita (my London work) people, to say a farewell final to Trevor and Danny.
Several hours later, we found our way back to Romford, located the correct bus and were completely suprised to find another fantastic meal awaiting us. Our original plan was to drive there and then up to Harwich for the next morning's ferry, but I had a sudden migrane and a need to be confined to bed.
As I did this, Liz went online and chatted to Sebastian in Germany, trying to work out plans for the weekend. Partly due to what he and Jessi wanted to do, we chose not to go to the Berlin Love Parade as origninally intended, and instead spend a few days looking around The Netherlands.

author Tim	location Wassenaar, Netherlands
posted 21:13 CEST 11/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/Across England ( all photos )

Kindly Les and Pearl ( No photos )
(Continued from Ireland 2)
Back into the strangely sunny England, Liz had a sleep in the van and I was considering the same, but remembered not to as I was driving. The strange hours have wreaked havoc with our body clock. It's these late night ferries we get to save money. All part of the fun.
After a coffee stop somewhere along the M4, we got stuck in really heavy traffic around the M25, then getting lost with the hopeless signposting that exists around Romford and Hornchurch making us a few hours later than intially guessed to arrive at Les and Pearl's place in Essex.
How fantastic these people are. There's not much we wanted more than a huge baked dinner, and there it was. Wonderful stuff, followed with a great dessert as well. Thanks in public for a job well done!
A bit of chat then bed for us, tired once again.

author Tim	location Wassenaar, Netherlands
posted 20:53 CEST 11/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/Wales/South Wales ( all photos )

It's still foggy and empty ( No photos )
On our previous journeys through Wales, you may remember that we were not too kind to the place, owing to the horrible weather and seeming lack of anything vaguely interesting to do.
This time we were not disappointed - Wales put on a great show, more than enough to convince us that our initial impressions were correct.
To be fair, it started back at the ferry port in Ireland - there was heavy fog all over the place, but this was just an omen - Wales was only a three hour ferry ride away after all. When we arrived, more and more fog had been assembled to greet us.
We drove on through the pea soup, headlights on during the day to see where we were going and warn oncoming traffic on the far-better-than-Irish roads that a large red box-like object was coming their way.
Deciding against stopping in many places on our way back to Les and Pearl's in England, we had morning tea for two in St Clears, and Liz failed to find anything resembling a bakery anywhere in the town for something to eat. Very strange, so we pushed on, stomachs rumbling.
This was eventually rectified at a motorway services near Swansea, where a Little Chef provided us with a couple of hours reading the paper, eating pizza and cheap desserts before we were back on the road again.
Crossing the M4 toll bridge without paying this time, we waved Wales goodbye until such time as we can return to give it justice, and we drove drove out of the fog (no seriously) into England.

author Tim	location Onboard Stena Line ferry bound for Fishguard, Wales
posted 21:24 BST	section Europe2002/Europe/Ireland/Ireland 2 ( all photos )

Leaving Dublin, and Ireland ( 6 photos )
Wow - so much to catch up on - it's been a few busy days in Dublin recently, so much so that we haven't even thought of the journal until now, as we sit on the ferry, in the docks at Rosslare. Let's try to get this all down.

[ entries separated ]
Which brings us to today - Monday. The morning wasn't too bad, we said our goodbyes to Gail (she is planning to come out to Oz in March so it's not all bad), before cleaning up after ourselves and heading back into town to find the bus out to the caravan park. Finding the bus stop proved not too much of a problem, but getting a bus was another matter. An hour and a half of waiting later (during which Liz had a wander as I stayed with the bags), we were on bus 69, trying to get back to our beloved Rosie.
We came towards the caravan park in quite a different way to that which we left it, so where to get off became a guesswork exercise (I suppose we should have asked the driver but that seemed a bit to easy). This left us not quite where we expected, jumping off the bus, wandering one way until we found a service station to ask for directions, then wandering back the other way for a mile or so to the park.
Along the road there was what I guess is called a commune - a bunch of old beat up caravans parked on the side of a four-lane highway with quite a lot of people living there, in reasonable squalor. We have seen several of these here, not sure how they get away with it, but nobody seems to mind.
So, we extracted Rosie from the lockup, threw the bags in and hit the road. Choosing to avoid the cursed semi-ring-road, we headed west out of town before Liz carved us a great way through the back roads, taking in the beautiful Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin. We stopped for lunch hidden away totally in a picnic spot beside the road, where the silence (except for the ringing in our ears from the nights in Dublin) was total. We ate from what food we still had in the van, making some sandwiches once again which hit the spot nicely.
Choosing not to stop after that, we headed straight for Rosslare, through the increasing fog. We arrived very early for our 21:50 ferry back to Fishguard, and so cooked some dinner in Rosslare town carpark, before enjoying one final pint of Guinness (well, ok, Liz had some cider) then driving on to the ferry.

So here we sit, feeling a little queasy on the ferry, and having totally enjoyed Ireland. Like everywhere I guesss, we feel as if we could have spent more time here, but there's always next time.
This is one place we feel there definitely will be a next time for.
We now head back Across England.

author Tim	location Wassenaar, Netherlands
posted 20:47 CEST 11/07/03	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/Wales/South Wales ( all photos )

Crashing back in Wales ( 6 photos )
The remainder of the ferry ride went quite well - nothing much to report as I went to sleep fairly rapidly.
Upon waking, I somehow managed to convince Rosie to shuttle forward from her precariously parked position (on an angle right at the back of the boat - we were well and truly last off), back to the same carpark where we spent the night before we came over. Plenty of other people had the same idea, we all slept rather rapidly.

author Tim	location Onboard Stena Line ferry bound for Fishguard, Wales
posted 21:24 BST 07/07/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ireland/Ireland 2 ( all photos )

Dublina, Temple Bar ( 11 photos )
Sunday morning, our decision to have a light night payed off as we let ourselves out to explore a bit more of the city while the late-stayers slept for hours more. Breakfast was at a cheap but not to amazing cafe, a far cry from our favourite morning-after food at Nulla Nulla cafe, in Cronulla.
We decided that a visit to Dublina was worth a visit, and it proved a pleasant way to kill a few hours and learn something in the process. Set in Christ Church Cathedral, there is a wander through where you learn plenty about Medieval Dublin - the best I thought was the scale model of the city as of 1500 with commentary where they talk you through each part in turn. Correlating this with what we already knew about the city was a great geography lesson.
We just had to drop next into The Old Jameson Distillery, but this time no tour, just a quick stop in the gift shop which had nothing in store for us, we headed on to partake in the final part of our Dublin experience - the musical pub wandering.
There are a few official such things around the place, but ours was from the guide books. This was basically a wander through the more famous pubs in Dublin, with a view to finding some traditional Irish music to our liking. The basic outline was something like this: the Patrick Conway, nasty but filling chicken burgers somewhere, John Mulligan's (where Liz chatted to members of the Wexford hurling team who were drowing their defeat), a fantastic dinner at an American-style Diner, some great music at a pub under a hotel (where Liz had a chat to the old Norwegian flautist after the show, getting his recommendation on where to get an Irish wood flute from), then the Temple Bar. This was enough for us, having had our fill of music and other things, and needing to get home for Gail to let us in.

author Tim	location Onboard Stena Line ferry bound for Fishguard, Wales
posted 21:24 BST 07/07/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ireland/Ireland 2 ( all photos )

Sugar Club ( 1 photo )
Early Saturday afternoon when we awoke, the day looked like a good one to do not much in from the start.
First thing was first, we needed to do some shopping. Gail had organised our combined birthday celebration (hers is on same day as mine) for that night, at a trendy place where you had to wear any shoes except Trainers (that's sneakers for Aussies). Guess what the only pair of shoes I had bought in with me were. So, with the advice of Gail and her sister Emma (who spent the afternoon at Gail's house where they all fussed over her eleven month-old girl Eimier), we headed for a cheap place to pick up clothes and did so. First day in living history where I came home with new clothes and Liz didn't!
Lunch was at O'brien's Irish Sandwich Bar, which I had been to the London branch of and was quite impressed, before we headed home with our spoils (including a cheap Gameboy for the long nights when we have run out of books to read in the van).
Gail's invited friends arrived late to eat small portions of the huge quantities of assembled snacky foods, have a few drinks and then embark on the fifteen minute walk to the venue for the night's entertainment, the Sugar Club. Not being clubbing people ourselves, Liz and I weren't holding out for much and at first we weren't impressed. The hefty entry charge, and the fact that we were taking it easy after the excesses of the previous days meant that the hot smoky environment had us asking for the keys for the walk home at about midnight.
But, little did we know, there was something special waiting in the wings to save the day/night - The Camenbert Quartet. This was easily one of the best bands I have ever seen play live, having a go at anything and everything, multi-media presentation looping away in the background with "Buy Now" flashing across the stage as they mentioned their own album, and above all playing good funny music, having a good go at themselves in the process.
Two hours later, we retired our battered ears to the relative silence outside the club, walking back to Gails place to once again inflate our air mattress, build a room and flake out. Just like the van!

author Tim	location Onboard Stena Line ferry bound for Fishguard, Wales
posted 21:24 BST 07/07/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ireland/Ireland 2 ( all photos )

Into Dublin ( 23 photos )
We'd hoped that Friday would be a bit more successful, and we were right. First thing was to work out what to do with the van while we were going into Dublin for a few days - no parking in there, and we were to stay with Gail, a friend of mine from working at RTA in Sydney. Chatting with the manager of the park, we managed to put the van into secure storage for the extended weekend for fifteen euros, way cheaper than we thought we could organise.
A bus helpfully pulled up right at the park and took us straight into the middle of the town - no fuss at all.
Now in the middle of yet another strange city, we needed to work out a plan of attack - first stop was the nearest cafe. Consulting city maps, we found the tourist office where we asked about places that could store our heavy pack for the day, and found one nice and central at one of the internet cafes. Of course, we popped our head into a few touristy shops to see if Dublin was any better in this regard.
By now we had a bit of a feel of the city, and it has a great vibe to it. It's been said that it's not a pretty city, it doesn't have fantastic museums, but it has plenty of life. The people we had chatted to thus far seemed genuinely happy and wanted to chat. That is strange in a commercialised big city - how Dublin does it I'm not sure, but it works well.
For lunch we found our way to the Dublin Castle, where we sat in the courtyard and ate sandwiches we had brought with us. On from there to wander the city semi-randomly, taking in the awesome Saint Patrick's Cathedral and accompanying Park, a few more tourist info places where we gathered intelligence to refine our attack on the city.
We had to get one thing out of the way - the Guinness Storehouse, home of the dark brew which you just have to drink when in Dublin. Despite the high price, the tour was suprisingly self-guided, although after a while we didn't really mind. It's not where it's actually brewed anymore - that's done down the road. Think of an all-singing, purpose-built Guinness World and you'd pretty much have it.
The history, brewing, transport, cooperage (very interesting) and other aspects of the world that is Guinness were explained in just enough detail. The highlight of the tour is the included pint in the Gravity Bar, easily giving the best views over Dublin you can get (the city has no high-rise buildings), and, the best pint of Guinness you can get anywhere. Supposedly. Even Liz drank hers, and described it as slightly less awful than usual, so that's saying something.
On the way down from there, we were suckered into the "Perfect Pint Machine". This is where they train you how to pull a pint of Guinness properly - it's not a simple task to get correct. We both had a go, and, oh whoops, had to drink the result. Great fun and we have the certificates to prove we are experts in it now.
Our ongoing text-message communication with Gail resulted in a call to meet up the road for the first time in two years or so, and we all seemed happy to see each other. After a quick wander back to get our bag from storage, we went to her place - a very new one-bedroom in central Dublin (walk everywhere!) which she had generously lent us the lounge-room of with an air mattress.
The night was supposed to be a gentle welcome of Thai dinner and then maybe a few drinks (several other friends were with us), but it somehow developed into a 3:30am arrival home, having visited a great Thai restaurant (going well so far), the trendy and truly massive "French cafe bar" Cafe en Seine (looking a little shaky) and then making it to "the biggest pick-up joint around" Break For The Border (oh deary me). It was such a great night, a good introduction into Dublin night-life.

author Tim	location Onboard Stena Line ferry bound for Fishguard, Wales
posted 21:24 BST 07/07/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ireland/Ireland 2 ( all photos )

Newgrange, around Dublin ( 14 photos )
Thursday we started off the morning at the farm hostel, and headed to the one main attraction in the area - Bru na Boinne, the best known part of which is Newgrange. This (along with its lesser known cousins Knowth and Dowth and a few hundered others in the area) is a five thousand year old passage tomb. The most striking feature is the outer quartz wall, which is a reconstruction, but the rest of it is pretty much original. There's one long passage you enter which, during a Winter Solstice, the sun shines down all the way as it rises in the morning. There are three little chambers at the end of this passage, forming a cross shape.
We reached the monument after a brief wander through the visitor centre (very good, as they go), then clambering on a bus to the site itself. From there, we were given an hour or so worth of guided tour, chat and wandering around the impressive construction itself.
After the tour, we watched an audio-visual thing, the most annoying aspect of which was that there was lots of speculation presented as fact. Pseudo-science is a dangerous thing.
From there, we were to tackle our biggest city in a while - Dublin, so we allowed plenty of time to bugger it up. Good move.
There is a ring-road around it, which we headed to first (from the North, of course), and drove around to the south-side heading to a caravan park recommended all over the place to check in for the night. There had been one more junction added since our map was printed - no suprise really, but I was suprised that the ring hadn't actually been completed. It's more of a half-ring road, which then dumps you un-ceremoniously in the suburbs to fight your own way to where you want to go. We later heard on the radio that there is a conservation fight going on as the proposed path of the motorway goes through an old castle. They seem to have come to some compromise - not a moment to soon for the drivers and tourists around the place.
That was all fine, we had dealt with worse, so we drove on to the target town of Shankill, south of Dublin itself but on the train line. Only the caravan park wasn't there anymore. It had closed down, despite a friend having stayed there recently and the February edition of Lonely Planet Ireland recommending it too! Oh well, back on the road, back through the city, trying to find the semi-ring-road to the only remaining caravan park in Dublin, Camac Valley, on the N7 near Rathcoole.
Quite a nice place, we cooked dinner, Liz went for a walk around the local park before we collapsed into bed, worn out from our tricky city driving.

author Tim	location Slane, Meath, Ireland
posted 19:52 BST	section Europe2002/Europe/Ireland/Ireland 2 ( all photos )

Louth and Meath ( 1 photo )
(Continued from the Northern Ireland section)
We only had one go at it this time, but we still managed to miss the border itself. No signs at all that we saw, only the switch back to Republic-style signs, markings, and the steady degredation in road quality.
We bumped our way south through Dundalk the joined a motorway (our first in Ireland, somehow not up to the British standards, but since everyone drives at 60mph instead of 90mph it doesn't matter too much anyway) heading towards Drogheda.
Here, we attempted to enter the town Information Centre, only to note that there was not any parking areas we would fit in. Cars would fit in one part (well, very short ones), and the rest was taken up by the bus station, which was attached to the Information Centre.
Unphased, we parked in a bus stop and Liz ran in to ask for the nearest caravan park (our guides didn't really show any in this area), while I awaited military action. Then I remebered that, since we had crossed the border, everybody was too busy having a good time somewhere else to worry about it, and I relaxed.
After a while of explaining what she wanted to the phased staff, Liz and I were directed to where I currently write from - fifteen kilometres down the road at the Slane Farm Hostel. This pleasant little place is just what it says on the box - a working farm which also contains a hostel, and allows camping in the basic but nice back field.
There is a big world map at reception where you can put a sticky-star on your place of origin - there were already plenty from Sydney so we didn't bother. Interesting to note how far and wide people are from.
We are parked in some form of holidaying pecking-order here. We arrived first, parked wherever it suited us and unpacked to relax for the afternoon. A little while later, a massive motorhome of the needs-its-own-postcode variety pulled up to one side of us (this perplexes us - we have more than we need in this little one, not sure what more two people could need), followed soon after by two cyclists on the other side who have pitched their tent. There's plenty of ways to see the world, we're happy being somewhere in the middle. Some of the weather this country has pitched at us certainly isn't cycling weather.

author Tim	location Slane, Meath, Ireland
posted 18:14 BST	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/Northern Ireland ( all photos )

Towards the South ( 1 photo )
This morning was an un-surprisingly slow affair, with some reading, a bit of breakfast organised, and much apathy. We kicked the soccer ball around for a while, tiring ourselves out before loading up Rosie for another day.
There was not too much pointed out to us of interest in the area between Belfast and the border with the Republic, and we were running low on fuel, so we drove on south through Newry, before seeking out much cheaper fuel back in the Republic of Ireland.

author Tim	location Slane, Meath, Ireland
posted 18:14 BST 02/07/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/Northern Ireland ( all photos )

Belfast and Castlewellan ( 27 photos )
Eventually we got on the road, heading more-or-less straight south to see what Belfast had to offer. In a nutshell, not a lot.
Cleaner and more lively that the few other big cities we have been into recently, there were certainly places of interest. We managed to park somewhat in the city centre almost by accident, and unloaded to take a wander around. This took in the dominant City Hall, the leaning Albert Memorial Clocktower, un-impressive St Anne's Cathedral (not being religious people, we look at the architecture of them and this was rather bland), and famous Crown Liquor Saloon, where we lunched in the extravagant surroundings, enjoying a birthday pint, great food and very rude service. Can't have everything, I guess.
The first we noticed of the city's scarred past was reading about the Grand Opera House, across the road from our lunch location. In 1991 an IRA bomb caused massive damage to it, millions were spent doing it up again before "another well loaded ruck was parked outside in May 1993". You wouldn't know now, but this was just one sign of the way the Troubles have affected the city.
It does become a lot more obvious when you drive a little out into suburbia, as we did next, to where there is the massive ugly "peace fence", separating the Catholic areas from the Protestant. Towering at least ten metres high, there are security camera monitored gates which only open during daylight hours (which, as an aside, we are still having until at least 10pm here). We got some stares as we tried to look closer, mothers clutching their children and the like, so we decided not to push our luck, taking a few snaps from afar with zoom lenses.
Next stop was whowhatwherewhenwhy, a similar place to Questacon in Canberra for those who have been there. In the "we're too cool to have decent signage" way of many places, however, we couldn't even find the way in! This hurdle easily overcome by walking in the exit, we were almost instantly transfixed by the strange and amazing sights - massive marble balls on water you could spin around, musical stairs with a different note on each step (Liz's favourite), a fire tornado, and lots of interesting hands-on experiments. Worst criticism of the place was that a lot of the stuff was geared a little too much for the younger ones. No problem, as we had a great time in the "adults must be accompanied by a child under eight" section playing shop, firing balls around the place and playing with water toys.
We could have spent a lot more time there, but the place hadn't quite removed our bad taste of the city in general, so we wandered out (when we could work out what floor that was on - the organisation of the place was rediculous).
Having had enough of the city and its very strange, tense feeling, we headed out in a southerly direction. It wasn't long until we hit a massive traffic jam. Not sure for what the problem was as we crawled in the direction of our next caravan park, we soon found out - at least fifty army jeeps, police, etc., all weilding automatic weapons were surrounding a park, directing traffic in a different direction. We have no idea what the problem was, as there were still children playing in the park as best we could see, but when we asked later that night if anyone knew about it, suggestions ranged from pipe-bombs to bomb hoaxes. Like water off a duck's back, nobody seemed phased - it was just a normal occurrence in the city.
Very glad to be out of the city, we headed south looking for somewhere to go. This lead us more or less directly to Castlewellan, where there was a local Forest Park complete with camping facilities. Plenty of other people, a good atmosphere and proximity to the town made it a sure-fire winner for us, as we unpacked, relaxed, and headed straight into town to unwind and celebrate my birthday as best as we could.
The basic plan was sound - wander around the village's eight or so pubs, sample the delights of each, find some food somewhere and then stagger back home. First pub there was only two really old guys in there and the bartender, who turned down the volume of Wimbledon on the TV as we entered, as if to listen to our conversation.
We had decided that we would proceed around the town in a circular manner, not allowed to jump pubs to get to the food, and as luck would have it, the food place next door was closed, so we had to get to another pub instead. This one was in a B&B place, where we watched the next set of tennis and then some cooking show, chatting with two old biddies about such and such. Despite claims on the signs outside to the contrary, this place wasn't serving food.
No matter, as we only had a couple of pubs between us and the food, the first being a tiny, old, horrible little place run by a crazy paranoid old woman named Mary (the one on the left, smartypants) who was nevertheless quite accomodating (she practically had to open up to serve us, as nobody else was in there or appeared to have been for half a century). She said that Ireland was a nice place to travel around (we agree), but everywhere bigger than this eight-pub, one-horse, two-food-outlet town was evil, and you would get stabbed, everything stolen, and generally have a really bad time there. She'd never travel to London since it was to big and dangerous. We pretended to heed her advice, but still intend to see places a little more adventureous than Castlewellan on our travels. Oh, and her Guiness was terrible.
Taking the by now obligatory photo outside the pub, we wandered past one pub that was closed (what's with that!), the next one was the last on one side of the street - half way there! We had a chat with the very friendly owner, who's son had recently returned from Australia, he astounded us by shouting us a round of drinks! I suppose the old adage is true - "the first one's free", and combined with free Jukebox and cheap pool table, our Castlewellan pub crawl had run off the rails. We played for a while, had another round of drinks (had to pay for something there - we felt bad).
By this time the rest of the pubs were closed, but luckily one of the town's "food" outlets was still open. Not at all fussy what we ate, it seemed ok at the time and has caused no ill effects, so it must have been alright.
Somehow managing to navigate back through the Forest Park to the caravan park (we had cleverly parked near both the entrance and the toilet block), we set up the bed then crashed heavily.

author Tim	location Cushendall, Antrim, Northern Ireland
posted 10:54 BST	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/Northern Ireland ( all photos )

Happy Birthday to Me! ( 27 photos )
Yes, that time again - one year older. We are spending it doing very little at a caravan park where we are parked about a metre from the ocean. We have been listening all night to the waves breaking right near us. It is of course very relaxing, and we are taking our time getting on the road today.
Liz has been harbouring some presents from far away, thanks to Mum and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, and all those who sent birthday wishes - it's good to hear from everyone.

And now I'm off to ring the folks back home, who have been trying to get through to me this morning without much luck thanks to the international phone systems.

(customised)