Lazy day in Thessaloniki

I've spent today in Thessaloniki doing very little. I guess that's relative though - I did go for a 5-mile run, but since then I haven't done anything. I considered going to a few of the museums but didn't really feel like it.
I was considering stopping off in Litohoro, which is near Mt. Olympus, but I've decided I'll skip it and just jump on the train straight down to Athens. I figure I should probably spend a bit of time there.

No Idea when I'm going to get some photos up. Might not be until I return. That could be a long time.

What do I want to say? I'm not sure. I'm still alive. Yeah. Haven't had any real problems yet - the hostel I was aiming for here in Thessaloniki has been closed done, but there are plenty of "cheap" hotels around. Walking is fun.

Currently trying to book a hostel in Athens. I don't have the luxury of my normal long-winded selection process, especially given the short notice. I should try and make use of couchsurfing more, but again that kind of requires a bit of planning in advance, which so far I haven't managed to do.

I'll have a wander around tonight; see if I can get into any trouble.

Leaving Egypt Soon

Just a quick note as I've got no time left.
Egypt has been full-on. There has been very little time for rest (and not much for sleep either) since the tour started. Today was in Luxor, seeing a lot of temples. I'm all templed-out now, and we've still got Cairo tomorrow.
The heat was almost unbearable today, which didn't help the mood walking around the temples.

Tuesday morning it's back to Istanbul then probably over to Thessaloniki on Wednesday.

I'll try and be more descriptive next time.

Alan.

Funnily enough, today was much like my last post - went running in the park, lay in the sun for a bit. However, this weekend has been the first weekend since the previous post that was actually sunny. It's been pretty much raining most days since then.

I've decided I've kind of got a new philosophy, not that I had an old philosophy, and I won't hold on to this one either, so perhaps I'll call it my 'thought for the day' instead : Life can't be that bad if one is able to spend an afternoon sitting in the sun in the park doing nothing, and worrying about nothing. As long as one is able to do that, one shouldn't really complain.

Yesterday was the Tour de France Prologue, in London. The Prologue was/is (as the name suggests) the initial racing that isn't really racing. The course was a 7.9 Kms time trial looping Hyde Park and St. James Park. The winning time was something about 9 minutes. Being a time trial, the riders went individually, staggered over 3-4 hours. I don't think time trials are the most exciting 'races' to watch, even though it means you've got riders coming around the same spot every minute, when normally they'd only go past once.
Today was the first proper stage - 200 Kms from London to Canterbury.

Lazy Sunday in the sun.

I went for a run in Regents Park today [It was sunny this weekend, for the first time in a long time] and I discovered that it just so happened there was a "fair" going on today - 'Camden Green Fair' - supposed a fair to promote environmental issues, which I guess there were stalls on that, but a lot of the usual fair/market stuff as well - people selling whatever. Still, it is good that they would put the money into something like that I suppose.
I was saying 'bad things' about London just on Friday, but I guess it's kind of a nice feature of London that there is this fair that happened to be going on today in the park near where I live and I didn't even know about it until I stumbled across it.

May Day - Bank Holiday One

Haven't done a whole lot recently. I did go to Germany again. Stefan had a Volleyball tournament, and they actually won! (Who would have thought it??)
This weekend was actually a long weekend - today (Monday) is/was a bank holiday. A free long weekend (rather than taking time off) and I didn't go anywhere. I sat at home and did bugger all. I was even working for some of the time - one of the other guys at work went away for the weekend (as I'm sure lots of them did) and so I got roped into checking on the server. What fun!
On the plus side, this will be the first time I've had a Monday off and I haven't arrived home from the airport after 2am. Quite strange, really.
I'm working on the pictures. They're up, I just haven't gotten around to organising them in a useful way.

No Hostel moments for me in Bratislava

Shockingly, I managed to make it back from Bratislava alive, and completely in one piece, no missing eyes or added drill holes or anything.

It was a nice place, but a little quiet - due to it being Easter, there was No One around on Friday or Monday during the day. Saturday was quite a contrast.
I'm not sure what I can say about the place. Two days there was kind of enough to see all the 'good' things. On Sunday we took the train to Vienna (only 1 hour away) [oh, and I didn't even tell David M., even though he's living there], and wandered around there a bit. From what I saw, Vienna looks like a really nice place; I'll be going back there some time.

I thought it was interesting the definite difference between the two cities - Even though they are so close geographically, I felt that Vienna was "western" Europe while Bratislava was "eastern" Europe. You can just feel the difference in the culture, as well as the way the places look.

Ah..... I don't really have much else to say on the subject.

Bratislava

I don't actually remember what this building is. It is in the main square, I believe.;

Ah, Bratislava has a big Castle on top of the hill. This was taken at the top of the bridge observation deck over the Danube

The guys didn't like this particular drink much

The next drink was better

Vienna

 

 

 

 

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I'm still getting around to doing 'that thing' I was talking about last time. It'll probably take me a while because I'm not really doing much about it. i.e. So far I have done nothing....

I do have the next trip planned though - Easter: April 6th - 9th I'm going to Bratislava, Slovakia.
When I was planning coming to London and thinking about the countries I would go and visit while here, The Czech Republic and Slovakia were definitely not Number 2 and 3 on the list. In fact, I doubt I would have even listed them at all...
So why am I going to Bratislava? Well, I was with a guy I happened to meet here who I knew from NZ (I think I might have mentioned him before) on St. Patrick's day (Oh yeah, I didn't say anything about that. Later) and him and a bunch of guys are were planning to go to Bratislava. They asked me if I wanted to come too, and I thought 'Screw it, I haven't got any other plans', and now I'm going to Bratislava..

Ah St. Patrick's Day. I was in an Irish Bar, in London, surrounded by mostly New Zealanders and Australians, drinking Beer. Drinking a lot of beer. I arrived there around 4pm; most of them had been there since about 1pm, which was good because it meant they had this whole area to themselves. Unfortunately France won the 6 nations with that final try, which everyone in the bar was against except for this front row of about 6 frenchies (guys and girls) who all started cheering. Quite brave of them, really.... The rest of the night? Well, I'm sure we talked about lots of things, but I couldn't tell you any of it - apart from the talk of the trip.
Oh yeah, and I have a 'St Patrick's Day' hat - a blue one (not green...) with the yellow buckle thing.