Oslo to Bergen

We raced back down the hill at 05:00 the next morning, heading for the train station - very excited! We were heading for the Oslo-Bergen train. Said to be the most scenic train journey in Scandinavia. We boarded the train, passing by lakes and forests, snow capped mountains and some of the strangest landscapes we have ever seen! We got off the train an hour early, changing our plans and deciding to catch a different train down into the Fjord town of Flam. The train was complete with commentary and monster waterfalls cascading down the steep cliffs. There was creepy mountain music and even mountain gypsies luring men into the mountains....all in all an amazing few hours on a train!!

Oslo - Norway

We passed through Sweden on the nightbus, visiting Malmo & Goteburg. We arrived in Oslo at 5:30 in the morning. We walked through the main street in the quiet, before the workers and the tourists had arrived. When everything opened, we got directions to the campground, and decided to walk there instead of catching the bus. We walked up the steepest hill we have seen for about an hour and a half. We had to stop every couple of hundred metres to catch our breath. Luckily, it was the only day it hadn't rained!! We reached the campground in the early afternoon, after a few encouraging words from a local at the bus stop....The view was amazing at the top of the hill overlooking the city, and we watched as the sun set.....at 10:30 PM!!!

Copenhagen

We left Munich late at night on an overnight train to Berlin. At Berlin at 7am in the morning, we made our way to the bus station to board a coach to Copenhagen. The bus went through the north of Germany, and we caught a ferry across to the bottom of Denmark. We jumped on another bus to Copenhagen arriving around 15.00. We hadn't been off the bus for more than five minutes when Dee slipped on a gutter and landed on her head on the pavement. After a bit of nausea and dizzyness, we ended up in the Emergency department of Frederiksburg Hospital. Welcome to Denmark they said....the nurses and doctors were very nice, and all spoke English as well as most of us..... They got Dee's ankle fixed up, and cleared her of any serious concussion or damage to the head....After resting a little, we got some directions to a bus and made our way to the campground.

The campground was in Charlottenlund Fort - a real fort complete with cannons and underground bunkers (where the kitchen and showers were...).

Copenhagen was beautiful, even though we were rained on for most of the time! We saw Mary's house and visited the Little Mermaid, shopped in the beautiful boutiques and bought the entire Harry Potter series to read.....

We spent the last day (pouring rain) in the kitchen bunker, and boarded a night bus to Oslo, Norway at 21:30.

CHANGE OF PLANS!

We had some bad luck with booking a boat to Iceland so it was scrapped from our trip about a week ago. BUT... we managed to find a cheap flight to Reykjavik so we are going to Iceland now. The plan now from Munich is:
Over night train to Berlin,
Bus to Copenhagen - Denmark,
Bus/Ferry to Oslo - Norway,
Train to Bergen and back to Oslo
Flight to Reykjavik and hire a car to explore Iceland
Flight back to Oslo
Flight to Tromso (about the arctic circle) - north Norway
Bus to Rovaniemi (Santas home) - Finland
Train to Helsinki - Finland
Ferry to Estonia (5 weeks living in Estonia)
Flight from Tallinn to Berlin
Train to Munich
Then get to frankfurt and off to Vancouver!
It took us about 2 days on the internet to book this.
See the map if you got confussed (it shows also what we have done so far).
Red for trains.
Blue for flights.
Green for buses.

Back in Munich

We had a fantastic time in Italy, but boarding the flight from Naples to Munich (only half an hour late...) was one of the biggest reliefs of the trip so far. We landed safely in Munich and were picked up from the airport in a BMW (just our 5th ride in a 4th differnt BMW since arriving in Germany :) ...) Now we have time to clean our tent, clean our clothes, clean ourselves and eat some good food before we set off for Scandinavia & Estonia, our final (and longest!) European leg.

Vesuvio

We followed the signs to a company running buses to Mt Vesuvius from the Herculaneum train station. When we arrived there were spruikers herding people into a dodgy little office run by dodgy little men. We hesitated before walking inside, thinking it was all a little slimy and we were being duped......being the only option to the visit the volcano though, we handed over our money and jumped in the minivan with a bunch of other tourists. We screamed uphill through winding super-narrow streets, honking around every corner, our driver with long curly greased hair, aviator sunglasses and mobile phones not even blinking along the way.

We reached the volcano, and found out that there was a long hike on loose gravel to the crater top....we were given a hiking stick and sent on our way. We hiked and hiked and eventually reached the top after 20 minutes. Peering over, and expecting bubbling lava, we were greeted with some grey dirt and even trees. We saw real volcano steam leaking out of some rocks, and walked around the crater to get a great view of the coastline.




During the night, our little campsite buzzes with lizards, hopping birds, and who knows what else in the bushes!! We captured this little guy sunbaking near our tent....

'Beach'

We followed the signs to the "Beach" and headed down a windy jungle path through vines and rope bridges to arrive at a rocky platform falling straight into the Mediterranean. It was very "Pirates of the Caribbean" and quite a novelty!

We jumped off the lifeguard platform into the ocean, and bobbed in the waves as they crashed in straight from the ocean...boats cruising by and Sorrento in the background.

Sorrento Camping

We headed to Sorrento after visiting Pompei, ready for some ocean rejuvenation and hopes for a nicer campsite....

We found an enormous caravan park on the outskirts of Sorrento, only a 10 minute bus ride from town (€1.00 each way!) It had a great pool, a restaurant, market and a "private beach". The catch was, tents had to camp basically along a windy dirt and rock path down the side of a cliff. The view was magnificent, and we found a private little corner to set up camp - halfway down the hill. The toilets were back in the opposite direction...about 20 stairs and 150m uphill.

Pompei

Pompei is an enormous, eerie ancient town. We visited first thing in the morning, and beat the heat and the tourists...just. We had a couple of villas and streets to ourselves, and made a valiant effort to see as much as we could - we ended up seeing about two thirds of the whole ruins.

The ruins are filled with stray dogs lurking in the shade, and creepy plaster casts of the victims of Mt Vesuvius' eruption in AD79. There were people lying, crouching, and even children preserved. They had ancient 'takeaway' shops and bakeries, a stadium and theatre, public baths & beautiful villas & homes with ancient murals and gardens.

Pompei Camping

We arrived in Naples around 6pm and discovered that the tourist information was not very informative and the train information even less. We found a helpful lady and headed for a campsite at Pompei, just outside Naples, for one night.

We arrived at the train station and found the campground right next door to the gates of the Pompei ruins. We were stoked not to have a long walk. We set up and immediately started to doubt our choice of accommodation. A mad (friendly) dog was sniffing around and the toilets and showers were atrocious. It was only one night...we would cope..


The pizzeria on site was closed....so we ended up walking to another campsite and eating at their pizzeria. We spent most of the night pretending to be campers of the other site so we could charge the laptop and not be surrounded by crazy dogs and dirty children. Just one night.....

The mad dog started barking at the dust in the middle of the night, which lasted over an hour, and we were woken up at 4:30 by a screaming american girl who was yelling at her father for waking her up for no reeeeaasssooonnn...(This lasted much longer than the dog.)

Vatican

Today Ivar was improved enough to visit the Vatican before leaving Rome. We left early in the morning to beat the crowd (ha!) and arrived after a slow walk (Ivar was fragile) to long lines for the Sistine Chapel. We visited St Peter's hoping the line would go down once they opend.

St Peter's was enormous, and even at 9 am on a weekday it was already crowded.




We left St Peter's and discovered the line for the Chapel had doubled and was over a kilometre long....We made a hard decision to cut the Chapel in order to arrive in Naples before dark - and to avoid a long hard wait in the Roman heat. We said goodbye to Rome around lunchtime and headed for coastal Naples.

Minestrone

On our third day in Rome, Ivar woke up with a massive dose of food poisoning and spent the first three hours of the day in the bathroom. The rest of the day was in bed with a cold towel and a pot. (No photos on this day....wasn't pretty.)

The next day he was not much better, so it was another day of rest and recovery......he made it out of the tent today. Big improvement.

Camping in Style,other sites & the Pantheon

We spent a bit of time swimming and sunbaking, knowing our stop in Italy was the closest we may be to hot weather for a while. The pool bar was convenient, and made great fruit cocktails.....


We ventured back into the city and checked out heaps of other sites in Rome - including the Spanish Steps, Fontana di Trevi & the Piazza Navona.


We visited the Pantheon, which is a fantastic ancient church with a circular dome roof. We saw Raphael's tomb and stared at the ceiling. No one knows how the Romans built the massive concrete dome roof.

ROME

We stepped off the train and walked into a 3000 year old gift from an Egyptian Pharaoh. That pretty much sums up the awe of Rome. Every street has an Ancient relic, some more than one....they just erupt from the ground and people walk by without even turning their heads.....??


The Colosseum really is a wonder, and all of the exposure in TV and books, and the thousands of tourists, don't take away from it's grandeur.


We visited the Palatine Hill, where they are still excavating villages from as early as the 5th Century BC.....the age of the ruins and the amount of structures still standing is overwhelming......

Rome Camping

We arrived in Rome and headed straight out of the city to get a campsite. We found a place pretty close to the main city, with a pool (and a good bar at the pool....). We found a good supermarket nearby and rested before tackling Rome the next day...

Florence

We went to Florence city today, and were looking for an Amex office when we came across a friendly looking lady offering free sangria outside a restaurant on the side of the road. The sangria was good, so we decided to have lunch there.......after some food, and way too much sangria, we decided to explore the city sights. We set off from the restaurant - drunk.......we managed to find our way around most of the sights, and remember most of them.......

Swimming at our caravan park

We decided to take a day to enjoy the sun and fun in the pool. The sun wasn't much fun. It was cloudy most of the day, but still warm enough to enjoy the pool (by ourselves) and the lying around.

To Florence

After a spurt of spontaneity, we decided to leave Venice a day early and visit Florence on our way to Rome.... not in our original plans.....We jumped on a train and turned up in Florence a few hours later...it was a stinking hot day, and we were glad to have our towels still wet from our morning showers!!


Florence turned out to be one of the best campspots...we had the most massive block for our little tent, and camped next to a lovely Dutch couple who lent us their mallet, electricity and bus tickets..... We were close to the toilets (a rarity for tenters...normally we are out in the sticks and the long trip to the toilet in the dead of night is like going to the dentist.) We had a resort pool, mostly to ourselves, a small market and even a football pitch.

Venice and more Art and Boats

After being inspired the previous day by our art finding, we trekked all the way around Venice it felt like, to the Jardine where there are countless countries represented in individual buildings designed by someone from the country. They are all in a large garden and took all day to visit each one.....


Our campsite on the water is on one of the main waterways from Venice, where there are countless speedboats, tankers, tug boats and cruise boats sailing by so close...we spent ages taking photos of Italian boaters and laughing at their antics....

Venice and art

Our second day in Venice, we did washing and adorned our tent with our underwear in the morning before heading back to the city....We stumbled upon an Australian art exhibition, part of the Venice Biennale, and spent a couple of hours trudging the streets to uncover one of the most incredible installation we have seen....Callum Morton's 'Valhalla' -a massive recreation of the artist's house in Australia, in which he built an office foyer with lift doors that were accompanied by audio of people crashing to the floor in the lifts. We found the most amazing gelateria, and had 3 massive scoops each for €2.00....we found the most beautiful, quiet dead end street to enjoy it, sitting on a step right on the water. The tourists going by in the gondolas filmed us as they cruised by in an endless line.

After the gelato, we found an awesome jazz bar where they had 2 for 1 drinks - Heineken just for Ivar and Malibu and Pineapple just for Dee!! Only €3.00 for 2 each!! The bar roof was covered with Bra's and Underwear and was very unique in Venice.

The city of water

We boarded a ferry from the campground to Venice city, it took about 20 minutes to cross the waterway, a nice (and cheap!) way to get to the city....

We decided that while we would enjoy wandering the sideways streets on our own, we should take the main roads first off and get a head for the city......The first side alley street we came across, Dee says "lets just try this one, I'm sure I can see a better way through there...."

This is what was at the end of the alley:


Venice is a beautiful city, canals flowing through the city, lovely bridges, sinking abandoned buildings & lovely hideaway bars and restaurants. The downside is, the main streets are like tourist funnels, and it can spoil the magic & uniqueness of the experience.