London Calling!

I'm writing this from my cousins' flat in London, where I've been for the last 2 days, following a visit with Hanna in the Hastings area.  It's nice to be in an English speaking country again, with people I know and love.

Herstmonceux Castle, aka Hogwarts

I arrived in London on Wednesday morning after a very delayed flight from Budapest, and headed out to Herstmonceux Castle, where Hanna is doing a summer archaeology program.  I was amazed when I got there... Hanna is literally going to school at Hogwarts.  It is an incredibly beautiful castle, surrounded by a moat and very extensive grounds, where sheep, cows, and horses wander about grazing.  We spent the evening looking around the castle grounds and gardens and catching up.  On Thursday, I accompanied Hanna and her friends in the archaeology program to the dig site, where I was allowed to join the students in scraping away some dirt with a trowel.  I can now cross 'Be Part Of An Archaeological Dig' off my bucket list!  I left the dig and headed to the nearby town of Battle, where the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066.  Seeing where William the Conqueror took over the nation from the previous Anglo-Saxon rulers was incredible.  It looks like a regular, sloping field, but when I consider the importance of the events that took place there, it is enough to give me goosebumps.  It is unreal to walk through the Abbey, which is close to 1000 years old, and which William had to build as penance for the bloodshed during the Norman Conquest.  I did an audio tour of the battle site and Abbey, which was phenomenal, and taught me a lot about the sneaky tactics used by the Normans to beat the English, who had the higher ground and were well defended behind their shield wall.  After the tour, I had a cuppa tea and a scone in a cute cafe, and felt very British.  On Thursday evening, Hanna and I walked into the town of Herstmonceux, along delightful, tree-lined lanes through the rolling English countryside.  It was incredible for the two of us to be in the UK together, and really lovely to catch up.

The sloping field where William did his conquering.

Battle Abbey

Very British countryside near Herstmonceux

One of my favourite buildings in the world: The Globe.

Yesterday I returned to London and headed straight for the Globe Theater, where I was privileged enough to watch Henry V, a play about the Battle of Agincourt.  I have been dreaming of seeing one of the Bard's plays in the Globe Theater since grade 3, and it finally happened.  It was one of the best things I've ever experienced. I was so very excited waiting for the play to start that I had tears in my eyes.  The actors brought it totally to life, I felt like I was on the battlefield.  I always forget how funny Shakespeare is until I see a play in person... the combination of the physical comedy and the written comedy had me shaking with laughter.  I arrived at the theater early enough to get a prime spot in the Groundlings area, with my elbows up on the stage.  Actors spat on me, dripped fake blood on me, and died in front of me, and it was AMAZING.  The joy of that experience was indescribable.

St. Paul's Cathedral

Millennium Bridge with St. Paul's Cathedral in the background

Today I left early for the Tower of London, which I have been hoping to visit since first reading about Henry VIII's ill-fated Queens.  I rented an audio guide to take it in at my own pace, and I really enjoyed it.  Parts of the fortress are almost 1000 years old, built by William the Conqueror, and has been much used throughout that century.  I wandered around, learning about the Tower through the ages, and kept reflecting how much I love being surrounded by history!  I took in the Crown Jewels, which I quite enjoyed, especially having studied rocks and gems (indeed, many of the gems present in the Crown Jewels!).  Also, they're shiny and pretty.  I saw torture instruments and graffiti left behind by former prisoners, and walked the same ground that prisoners like Anne Boleyn walked before going to the chopping block.  The arms and armor display was also interesting.  Leaving the Tower, I walked along the Thames to the Monument: a giant pinnacle dating from the 1660s which commemorates the loses sustained during the Great Fire.  I climbed the 311 steps up it to catch a view back towards Tower Bridge.  Afterwards I took the tube (and minded the gap!) to Trafalgar Square, which was really neat and super busy.  I went into the National Portrait Gallery, which contains paintings, busts, etchings and drawings of the people who have shaped the history of the UK.  Each piece has an explanation that starts with the person and their historical significance, then talks about the painting itself.  This made it a neat historical, as well as artistic, museum, and I really enjoyed it.  So engrossed in the exhibit was I, that I ran out of time after only seeing the Tudors through to the 1800s.  This evening, Julie and Steve took me, Elizabeth and Michael out for dinner at the original Hard Rock Cafe.  I'd never been to a HR Cafe before, and it was great to find myself enjoying every song they played.  The memorabilia on the walls is unreal: signed records, drum kits from Zeppelin and the Ramones, costumes worn by Stevie Nicks, and many, many guitars.  What a day!

Henry VIII's armour.  Do you think he's compensating for something?
Or do you buy his argument that he needs the room?

A memorial to the victims of Tower Green

The Royal Guards outside of the Crown Jewels exhibit.

The Monument

Tower Bridge, getting set for the 2012 Olympics!

Trafalgar Square gearing up for Canada Day

I'm heading to Hampton Court Palace tomorrow, then I have Monday at the British Museum, then I'm on to Paris!  Stay tuned for blog updates en Francais!  Lots of love!

Our Last Night Together!

Hey there Budapest!  You thought you'd seen the last of us, but you were wrong!  We are back!  You may think that I'm crazy, talking to a city, but after a 12-hour train ride, this is perfectly normal behavior.  We had a very brief but amazing time in Bosnia and Hercegovina.  After our crazy day in Mostar, we trained to Sarajevo for 2 nights.  We spent our first day there exploring and getting our bearings, as well as hanging out with the really awesome people in our hostel.  There was a group of 3 Vancouverites who we got on with especially well, along with some really kind Scottish guys who (rather stereotypically) took us out to find the best Sarajevsko (the local beer) while we watched the Euro.  Yesterday we headed out to the National History Museum, which is right across the road from the Holiday Inn which sheltered foreign journalists during the siege of Sarajevo.  The museum was really well put together, with a combination of exhibits, some of which focused on the 1990s war, and another which focused on BiH through the centuries and conquests.  After a rest at the hostel, we wandered around the Turkish Quarter of the city, enjoying the sounds of the calls to prayer, along with the hustle and bustle of tourists and locals alike.  In the afternoon we did a neat free walking tour with our friends from the hostel, learning some of the history of the city, and gaining a new appreciation of the multicultural and multiethnic nature of Sarajevo... we walked passed many Mosques, a Synagogue, Orthodox Churches and a Cathedral.  According to our guide, each of these houses of worship was built with the support (generally financial) of the other religious groups in the city.  Our guide was a funny fellow, very proud of his nation and his people, and vehement in his insistence that we spread the news of how tolerant of a city Sarajevo is.  So I'm here fulfilling that request, though not without a grain of salt: women and homosexual people are definitely not as much a part of life in Sarajevo (or, I suspect, BiH) as they should be, and the psychological and physical scars left by the conflict are going to take longer to heal.

At the corner of Bosnia and Hercegovina street, there is, in sight, a bullet riddled building,
a Muslim tomb, a Christian Church and a Jewish Temple.

The corner where WWI began.

This house has a fun story: the man who lived there loved his home, and despite offers from the government to buy his land in order to build a new Town Hall, he refused.  Eventually, in a fit of contrariness, he promised to sell them his land on the river if they moved his house, stone by stone, across the river.  The government really wanted his land, so they agreed, and thus, his rebuilt house now sits across the river from its original home, and is now a cafe.

Trinkets in the market.

Sarajevo is a very interesting city.  The war, which is so recent, has left its mark on the capital.  The signs of the siege are everywhere, if a bit more subtle than in Mostar.  Local graffiti says things like "Remember Srebrenica", and people go about their daily lives minus a limb, evidently lost to a landmine or war injury.  Everyone our age or older lived through the war, and you can see in peoples eyes how they suffered.  The Sarajevo Roses are much different from the roses we saw in Austria... they are craters left by falling Serb shells, which landed in the streets and killed civilians.  The craters have been filled in with red painted cement, which we were told means that you can forgive, but never forget.

Sarajevo Roses

A statue about rebuilding peace.

Today we trained back to Budapest, a 12-hour epic crossing many borders (so many stamps in the passport!!) and we're here reflecting back on our amazing journey together!  We are parting ways tomorrow, Kel for Manchester and London to visit family, and me to Herstmonceux to see Hanna, then London and Paris to do some sightseeing.  It's been really great to travel together, and I'm sure we'll do it again!

These ads only materialized when we were eating treats.
Never when we were eating carrot sticks or anything healthy.
Thanks for the confidence boost, Budapest.

Mostar

Trying to paste on smiles despite rivers of sweat running down our faces.  Welcome to sunny Mostar!

Whew, what a full on day!  We were up at the crack of sometime-after-six to catch the bus to Mostar from Dubrovnik.  At 8am, when the bus left the station, we were informed that it was 30 degrees outside.  We arrived in Mostar shortly after 11, and were surprised to find that the city is in a desert.  It's an extremely arid landscape, similar to the Mediterranean, and Mostar spans a river in the middle of a valley.  We dropped our stuff at the hostel, after being met at the bus station by a hostel employee.  A quick turnaround left us in the Old Town of Mostar right in the heat of the day (about 38-40 degrees!!).  The city is really interesting, and has obvious and distinct architectural styles, since it has been a key holding for various Empires, from Roman to Ottoman to Austro-Hungarian.  The city is built around the Old Town Bridge, the heart of Mostar.  It is a beautiful stone bridge which arches 21m over the Neretva river.  During the conflict in the 1990s, it was destroyed, but it was rebuilt, to the delight of the people (and tourists) in the early 2000s.  We walked along the oddly round-cobbled streets, through Turkish bazaars and passed many wares.  We looked at Stari Most (the bridge) from many angles, and then went to the Museum of Hercegovina, a somewhat underdeveloped museum whose highlight was a video showing the bridge in its pre-war glory, the demolition of the bridge, and also its rebuilding.  There were a lot of artifacts from all the eras of Mostar, which was neat, but it wasn't presented in a very engaging way.  In any case, it was cool, and we reentered the heat reluctantly.  After doing a bit of haggling for souvenirs on the streets, we went for a walk along the former front line of the 1990s conflict.  It is absolutely surreal to walk past buildings that could be in Vancouver, and then to look at the bombed out, bullet-ridden shell that is its next door neighbor.  The bullet holes around the windows were numerous, attributing to the fact that snipers lived in the buildings and attempted to kill anyone crossing streets.  It was hard walking past places where so many people died at the hands of people they'd lived alongside for their whole lives.  This evening we grabbed dinner on a patio with a nice view of the Old Bridge, and joined in with those people clapping for the macho dudes who hurl themselves off the bridge (for a generous offering, of course).  We watched Germany crush Greece in the Euro, and now we're headed to bed, because it's another early morning tomorrow on the way to Sarajevo!  Quick turn around, but it's going to be good.  We need to make the most of our last few days!

The beloved Stari Most: Mostar's Bridge, and the heart of the city.
Destroyed during the conflict in 1993, it was rebuilt using the same methods used in its original construction.

Bridge jumping is an important tradition in Mostar.
It's also a way to con gullible tourists out of a lot of money.

On a side note, blogger tells me that my little 'mass update' project has had over 1,500 views.  Thanks to our Moms!  Seriously though, I really appreciate everyone taking the time to read (and even occasionally comment) on this blog.  It's nice to know you're listening!

The Pearl Of The Adriatic

Let me just say without preamble... Dubrovnik is an amazing city.  We are staying in a nice guest house with a very friendly proprietor on the hill above the town, and we get pretty spectacular views of the ocean and the sunsets.  We trekked into the Old Town on our first day here, which is surrounded by a huge wall, constructed between the 13th and 16th centuries, and which is closed to cars.  The effect is to plunge back into history (albeit with modern day tourists), with narrow cobbled streets, old monasteries and churches, and vendors selling their wares.  The wall protects the harbor, which was historically very important.  It was all too easy to imagine commanding the defense of the city from atop the wall.  After doing a tour of the walls, we decided to escape the direct sun (it's cooking hot here, and less breezy than Hvar, resulting in a lot more tiredness!) and explored the little streets of the old town.  We made our way to a museum called War History Limited, which displays the work of photo journalists.  The exhibits there currently all centered on the conflict that arose upon the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, and the photos were intense.  It was relevant to where we are, and especially where we're going next, and it was helpful to get more of a context for the cultural difficulties facing the people of Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina. From what we understand, the upcoming stops in Mostar and Sarajevo are going to show the conflict much more obviously than Croatia and Slovenia have.  After the museum, we both needed some time to process, so we grabbed an ice cream (chocolate solves everything, ok?), and hid in the shade of a giant drinking/bathing fountain that emits deliciously cold water... a blessing in this heat!

Today we started off the day at the Museum of Modern Art, which was doing an exhibition on Steve McCall, the photographer for National Geographic (among other influential magazines) who took the photo of the young Afghan Girl.  All his work was amazing, and we really enjoyed ourselves trying to guess people's life stories from their piercing eyes.  He is a really amazing photographer... I aspire to capture half of what he does in portraits.  Then we walked to the beach, with the idea of getting some sun.  In the end, we spent most of the time in the water, because it is so darned hot!!  The water here is warm, it's hardly refreshing.  We had a really lovely view back over the water to the Old City and harbor.

Tomorrow we're taking off really early for Mostar, since we only have one day there.  We have a list of things to see, and we're psyched.  Loads of love to everyone at home!

Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

Today was our last day on the Island of Hvar, voted one of the most beautiful islands in the world.  We've spent our time here primarily at the beach, swimming, reading and basking in the glorious sun.  A little too much basking, in Kel's case... she's got herself a bit of lobster skin, which she blames on the colonialism skin.  Otherwise though, there have been no mishaps here, and we've really loved it.  It's beautiful and picturesque and peaceful.  Despite thousands of visitors, everyone seems to fit into this tiny place, and I haven't felt claustrophobic at all.  The clear blue water is really clean and great to swim in, and it's so salty that floating is effortless.  Paradise, I say!

Today we rented electronic bicycles, and went for a 25km ride.  It was very steadily uphill for the first half, and with the 35° sun beating down on us, it was a bit intense.  The terrain is beautiful though, we biked through lavender fields and mostly abandoned villages, and the altitude gain gave us a really cool view over the island.  There are the remains of rock walls everywhere, whose purpose we have yet to assertain, and also an old road dating from when Napoleon held this part of the Adriatic.

This afternoon, like yesterday, was spent at 'our' spot on the beach.  It's really rocky here, so we're always looking for natural formations that will support and cradle us, and places to get into the water that won't cut our feet, but it's worth it to escape the rest of the people who crowd onto the pebble beaches.  We've been watching the Euro in Hvar town each night, and enjoying daquiris and other delicious drinks, it's been hilarious watching Kelly try to ask for a Sex on the Beach with a straight face.

We're leaving our paradise tomorrow for Dubrovnik, which is going to be really amazing.  We've only got 9 days left together before going our separate ways, which is really crazy.  We feel as though we've been traveling together for years, and simultaneously as though we've only just met up.  Traveler's time warp!  In any case, things are going really well, and we're looking forward to the next city and the next adventure!