Ted's European Tour 2007

On our last day in Hong Kong the rain stopped. So rather than it being 26C 98%RH and raining it was 29C 98% and not raining. We took the opportunity to catch the Peak Tram up the hill to Victoria Peak. .
Even though it was still a bit cloudy the views of the city were spectacular. There's a wax works up there too and I ran into and old friend .
At the end of the day it was off to the airport to catch the overnight flight home. It's great to be home with the Jackyboy so we can start planning our next trip..

After another encounter with the extremely unpleasant CDG Airport after the 2 hour flight from Budapest and a 12hour flight from ther to HK that turned into a 13hour flight due to thunderstorms around Hong Kong we managed to touchdown in the wet SAR of Hong Kong.

We discovered that the Tin Hau Temple is just behind our hotel and I poped in to meet some of the locals.

It stopped raining for a couple of hours while we visited the Temple Street night markets and had a very nice dinner at a HK version of a kerbside cafe.

On Monday we visited Ocean Park an over the top ocean theme super kitch amusement park with continuous bosa-nova music playing around the entire the park that drives you insane after a few hours. There is a spectacular cable car ride there, and a couple of nice aquariums, but it was raining pretty much all the time so the crazy roller coaster and other wild rides were not that inviting.

Tomorrow, rian, hail or shine (not very likely!) we're off to Macau for the day.

Today we went to Murano the heart and sole of Venecian glass production.

As soon as we got there we were rushed to a coffee shop in desperate need of caffine and Gelato. Then off we went to see one of many glass museums in Murano.
In this museum they had displays of roman glass from as early as the first century BC.
To very modern werid and kooky crazy glass objects.
After a day of exploring we dicided togo back to the Lido for a rest before going out to diner.
To get to diner we jumped off the boat once we were out of the tourist spots. on our way to diner I met a new friend.
diner was great but I think i might of had to many drinkies. before after. Wel at least it was easy to get to sleep!
By Ted (formerly known as Peta)

It was fortunate that Sue listened to my advice and added Venice onto our travel agenda, what a great city.

I have found my true purpose in life...to be a Gondola driver in Venice. Not long after we arrived in the Piazza San Marco I had aquired the gondola driver outfit
and started to hang out with the Gondoleers.
Speaking of the Piazza San Marco, the basillica and the whole square is just gob smacking.
Those Venicians certainly had a few bob to throw around, and didn't mess about when it comes to extravagant construction and decoration. From a distance the basillica just looks amazing and as you move closer and closer to it the detail just gets greater and greater, unbelievable.

We did a bit of touring up and down the Canal Grande
on the vaporetto (water busses) that kept Peta happy since she loves mucking about in boats and visited the Peggy Guggenhiem Museum (what a collection of 20th century art!).
Another feature of the Piazza San Marco is the number of pigeons there.

Don't look up with your mouth open is my advice.

Tomorrow we are off to Murano Island to see the glass works and maybe pop over to some of the other smaller islands too.

I tried to convince everyone we should hire some BMW K1200LT tourers from the journey but we ended up in a Opel Astra for a 2 day trip around the north east of Hungary. There is certainly no chance of dying of thirst in Tokaj. Even though we were a couple of months early for the big wine festival we did find a cellar that was open and sampled some of their wares. Being a stuffed bear and therefore having no digestive tract to speak of I had to immerse my whole body into the barrel. There was a nice statue in the town square where I could dry out.
Once I could be carried again without leaving stains on clothing we went to Grandma's home town of Tolcsva and visited her old house.
. There were other travellers from Africa in the area too.
After and overnight stay near the Slovak boarder we went on to Eger and the first stop was the Turkish Minaret.
After a big afternoon being tourists up the castle we stopped for a nice coffee and cake in the most famous cafe in Eger where the backgound music of Aker Bilk, Wayne Newton etc had us all singing along.