Paris - City of Stairs

So many experiences to remember in Paris. Loved it, loved it, loved it. But I have to say there are a lot of stairs in Paris.

Hotel St Andres des Arts - our beautiful hotel. Our room is located troiseme etage (3rd floor). Two flights was fine it was the third one that killed us every time. No lift. Which given the experience in Budapest may be a good thing. The lift there dropped 6 inches every time you stepped into it and it was built during the cold war sometime when Hungary was very eastern bloc.
Catacombs - buried deep below the city. A single spiral staircase down and the same back up albeit a few blocks away.
Le Louvre - an exceptionally large building with three wings of four floors each. These have escalators - great. However not one of these floors is a single level. They all go up and down with many staircases just to break things up - I think?
Tour Eiffel - congestion in the lifts? No wonder who would use the stairs? Even though the queue is much shorter.

Every French Cafe - apparently a design feature is to locate the restrooms below the ground floor. Always to be found down a narrow spiral staircase in the floor somewhere.
Metropolitan - the infamous Paris Metro. Great way of getting around but the number of stairs will vary greatly depending on the age of the line you wish to take.

Anyway, we all got some exercise! I can feel it doing me good.

Ah Vienna!

Wien

Our RailJet train trip from Budapest took about 4 hours and we arrived in Vienna (Wien) around 5 pm at Westbahnhof station; and after walking the full length of the very long platform with our backpacks, grabbed a taxi to our hotel (The Carlton Opera on Schikanedergasse), south of the main city centre. Our apartments were located at the rear of the hotel through many a winding passage and stairway, on the 2nd floor. The rooms were spacious (very spacious indeed) with lots of natural light and consisted of two bedrooms, kitchen, dining and a bathroom as well as an entry foyeur. However, not nearly as well-equipped or comfortable as our Budapest apartment (well, perhaps we had been a little spoiled by that); and with very poor WI-FI services. But ... the hotel was well-located to the metro and (we soon found) next to the famous Wiener Nascht markt which sold all manner of exotic produce and had small, smoked filled pubs serving warm goulash and schnitzal and cold beer.


The weather had decided to rain for the 2 of the 3 days we were in Wien, but that didn't dampen our enthusiasm to get out an sight-see. A highlight for me was finding the Gymnasium school where the young Erwin Schrodinger was taught. 


In keeping with our usual modus operandi, we set ourselves a couple of tasks. For Geoff, it was to find a zoom lens for the camera that would do justice to the photo opportunities for wildlife in Africa. For Deb it was to find a pair of 8x50 binoculars that would do the same - both tasks successfully completed (two ticks!). We found the binoculars at an interesting little optical store, just around the corner from our hotel, which also sold microscopes and astronomical telescopes and mounts (the good ones, of course).


Of course, we had already completed our first task as soon as we arrived, which was to buy tickets on Friday's RailJet to Munich.

Amongst the Magyars

View of Budapest

We spent 5 days in Budapest and although much colder than Greece, we enjoyed our time there.

After settling into our chic apartment, we set off to explore our surrounds and find the transport and shops. Dorka (from Hip Homes) had told us about the market place a couple of blocks away and we found it with no trouble at all. I have to say the vegetables and produce for sale was fresh and wholesome, with many tempting items - savoury and sweet (see sample). It took some time to get used to spending Hungarian Forints, but we soon returned with groceries and supplies to stock our pantry and fridge.

The second challenge was to buy our train tickets to Vienna. But before this we had to learn how to use the trams. These ran quite close to our place on Ulazlo Utca, but we weren't sure about how to actually buy a ticket. Although there were ticket machines at the tram stops, I am fairly certain they hadn't issued a ticket since 1982. So we brazenly jumped the tram and changed trams in a clever strategy to avoid the ticket inspectors. Once we made it across the Danube to the "Pest" side of town, we were able to buy a combined rail/tram/bus ticket that gave us 3 days unlimited travel. Which was lucky because, as we found later, ticket inspectors do ride the trams undercover in the tourist areas.

The metro trains were efficient, fast, comfortable and easy to use. However, the yellow and green carriages showed every bit their Eastern bloc vintage. After making it to Keleti central train station, we found the international ticket office, and were served by a friendly lady who sold us return tickets because they are actually cheaper than one way (we took this to mean they wanted to encourage us to return); and also reserved seats to ensure we had a place to sit.

Budapest is a grand city, although small in population (less than 2m), the architecture, buildings and parks have a regal bearing and aesthetic appeal, which made it a wonderful place to visit. Check out the pictures here.

Another challenge we set ourselves was to find replacement mandolin strings. Yes, these had been loosened and re-tuned once too often and the high E-string couldn't take the pressure anymore and snapped! After some internet research, we found a place that advertised mandolin strings (SEGOVIA Gitárszaküzlet on Eötvös) and found some strings - although of a lighter gauge  - that solved the problem.


After 5 days in Budapest, I have to say we were really settling in, but had to remind ourselves that other locations awaited and we already had the tickets!

On to Budapest!

Our ferry to Athens left at 11:00pm and we had booked a four-berth cabin for the overnight trip. As usual, Geoff slept all the way and did not notice the big swell on the open sea (as reported to him by Deb the next morning). Alex, as per form, loved the ferry trip and enjoyed the exciting and new experience of the cabin. On arrival in Piraeus at 6:30 the next morning, we caught the x96 to the airport (E. Venizelos) where we spent the day wandering about waiting for our Malev flight to Budapest that afternoon.

Malev airlines were very pleasant, with most of the passengers seeming to be students making their way home after a trip to Greece, with many tearful farewells at Ferihegy airport. After retrieving our bags, we got in line for the very organised (so it seemed) taxi booking process where lined up at a kiosk an got a ticket which we would then use to get the correct cab for the correct fare to the correct destination. Well, at the least the destination and fare was correct. Our taxi driver described this process as "a misery", but he proved far from it and proved quite entertaining as we looked up the directions for how to get to our apartment on Ulazlo utca. On arrival, we weren't sure of the building since it looked quite drab and run down from the outside (chez eastern bloc), but our host, Dorka was waiting and we made our way up the shaky lift to the 7th floor to our "Design Apartment". We were pleasantly surprised at the modern and fully renovated top floor flat, roomy and completely renovated with a terrace! And with high speed wi-fi, just doesn't get any better than that.

Budapest was the antithesis of Greece - cold, rainy and well, not Greece. But frankly, we welcomed the new look and feel, and felt quite at home in our new digs.

Crete

We have been in Crete now for 10 days and tomorrow we head to Athens to catch a plane to Hungary for the next leg of our "Grand Tour".

I think we have used this time for lazy days by the pool and to contemplate the last 2 months and our time in Greece. We have had some interesting food experiences and near misses whilst here. While at Sfakaki, we headed up to the mountains for sight seeing and bit of lunch. The environment in the mountains was in stark contrast to the warmer coast, with cool air and breath-taking mountain views. We pulled into a little Taverna which had advertised itself shamelessly along the roads near Amari, where it seemed the dish of the day was something our host referred to as "lambs stomach stew" (through means of much sign language, since our Greek did not extend much beyond "Yassus"). After a tour of the kitchen and seeing the afore-mentioned stew with our own eyes, we decided to decline and went for the zuchinni keftedes which we noticed were being prepared in the plastic wash bowl next to the stew. These turned out to be wonderful and we left with fond memories of that place. Although I'm not so sure the brave souls who had already ordered the lambs stomach felt the same way.

Our final leg in Crete was spent in Chania at Lefka apartments. I would recommend these, very comfortable, modern with a nice pool and bar area, and welcoming and friendly hosts to match - Andreas and Anna. On Andreas' recommendation, we took a drive up into the mountains, through a lovely gorge until we reach Theriso where we would find a Taverna that would serve us smoked pork, lamb chops and staka (a goat's milk concoction).

Where are we going to stay now we are in Crete?

Alkionis

Our accommodation plans for Crete had not been entirely successful. We were booked into Lefka apartments from the 23rd, but had nowhere to stay until then. So the plan became: set out from Iraklio and see what we could find. The first place that looked appealing was Bali Beach (not that one, the other one), set in a picturesque bay with beautiful water and peaceful outlook. We stopped for lunch and were pleasantly surprised at the high quality of the greek menu (food that is, not the menu itself). Given the prices, this made it arguably the best value we had had in Greece.

There were a couple of hotels with rooms all with a balcony view of the bay, but sadly no vacancies. So we headed onward to Sfekaki where we looked for Alkionis apartments, which we had researched on the net. Finding places in Greece is not so easy (see earlier blog), but we always seem to follow our nose and stumble upon the very place we are looking for. This was the case with Alkionis which we spotted from the highway as we flew by. At 55 euros a night, they were pretty good value, although not as clean as most places, it was roomy and had a great view of the ocean.

On the down side, the beach was not clean either, with the sand and water having lots of sticks and other debri; and the beds (OMG); the beds were small and had bedboards which squeaked so much we were afraid to move, and so getting a good night's sleep was a challenge.

Upgrade me

Early start this morning to catch the ferry Preveli (ANEK Lines) to Crete leaving at 5:00 am. We are now more experienced at packing our bags and carrying them on and off ferries and quickly found seats in the economy lounge at the rear of the boat on deck 6. You can get coffees and snacks in the lounge and we settled in with a coffee, coke and toasted ham sandwiches. But not satisfied with the seats we had, we went looking to upgrade so moved to a window seat and then again to a smaller lounge near the dining room to take advantage of the power plug we found there - which meant we could use the computer, surf the net and recharge iPhones and iPods (very important).

It was a particularly long trip from Rhodes to Iraklio in Crete, stopping at Karpathos, Kassos and Sitia port in Crete, with each stop taking about 45 minutes to unload and load passengers, trucks and cars. All up, the trip took about 11 hours and we arrived in Iraklio around 6:00pm. We were pumped and ready to walk to the hotel we had booked and had backpacks on and were ready to roll. Once on dry land however, we took the first available taxi for the 400 metre trip to the hotel.

Iraklio Port

The Lato Boutique hotel in Iraklio looked pretty nice and we found we had been upgraded to their suite with a sea view (whoo hoo!) overlooking the port. Very nice, with Alex having his own room with surround windows and and balcony access. The bed was kingsize, and a real one at that - not two singles pushed together. Oh happy day. We were pretty tired and so after freshening up, went up to the terrace and enjoyed some of the better greek food we had experienced, along with a local rose.

Next morning, picked up our rental car for use while on Crete and found we had been upgraded once again. Instead of the Peugeot 207, we were given a 308, so more room, more power and better A/C.