Europe Holiday 2015

August 14, 2015
August 15, 2015
August 16, 2015
August 17, 2015
August 18, 2015
August 19, 2015
August 20, 2015
August 21, 2015
August 22, 2015
August 23, 2015
August 24, 2015
August 25, 2015
August 26, 2015
August 27, 2015
August 28, 2015
August 29, 2015
August 30, 2015
August 31, 2015
September 01, 2015
September 02, 2015
September 03, 2015

August Review

This is a very quick August review, since I spent half of the month on holiday and need to get that report done as well.

I hardly got to do any running before the holiday due to ongoing foot pain. I managed to get through one Lilydale Lake park run without causing any more problems, Dave turned up too and gave it a go. So I'm a bit worried about losing all my running endurance, not to mention general health and fitness deteriorating.

I've stopped watching my shares on a regular basis because they just keep going down, and if the ASX goes down then every company goes down the same amount without exception, this still makes no sense to me...

Amir passed on free tickets to an AFL match between Carlton vs. North Melbourne, otherwise I wouldn't have gone because Carlton are so bad - they even ended up last. The game was as good as could have been I suppose, close until the third quarter then they fell away.

Going on holiday meant a good break from work for three weeks. I did get stuck going on-call right before which wasn't the best, I had false alarms (at least they weren't real incidents) almost every night, but thankfully they were all during normal waking hours!

No time for baking this month because I was busy with the last of the holiday planning and didn't want too bake food that wouldn't get eaten in time.

I thought I had been away on holiday every year recently during my birthday, but turns out I was wrong:

• 2011 - London, England
• 2012 - none
• 2013 - returned from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on August 25
• 2014 - return from Taipei, Taiwan on August 22
• 2015 - Dublin, Ireland

So I was sort of close. The to do list got a couple of important tasks completed:

• Holiday
• Spent so many hours on planning, maybe it was all worth it...
• House Repairs
• Got the bathrooms and garage walls fixed up at last
• Laptop
• Just got the SSD installed before the holiday

Now for the summary:

• Books
• Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
• Good story told from two perspectives
• Final showdown dragged on a bit
• 7 out of 10
• Movies
• Nothing
• Music
• Nothing
• TV
• Room To Escape
• A cool new reality show with escape rooms
• Some challenges are too hard
• Some contestants are just too stupid as well
• Only six episodes, hopefully they make more
• 8 out of 10
• Video Games
• None

Europe Holiday 2015, September 03 (All These Things That I've Done)

Back to London for one more day. I got the to airport at 8:15am, only to find out at the check-in desk that the plane was already delayed by ninety minutes. Instead of leaving at 10:00am we didn't get going to 11:30am, which sort of killed any big afternoon plans I might have had. Like every time I go to Heathrow there was about three people handling the non-European customs line - it's so stupid that Australia gets less preferred treatment than the entire continent of Europe, last time I checked we were the ones who are still part of the Commonwealth. What's also annoying is that in Australia we do allow the UK jerks to use our automatic gates if they have the new e-passports.

The hotel for the night was right near the airport so that saved a bit of time, it was about 3:00pm by the time we took off into the city.

I got out near Hyde Park and walked up to the Marble Arch at Oxford Street, a lot of the park was boarded up, possibly for a weekend music festival or something like that. I got stuck in line at the currency exchange place behind some angry African man who couldn't send his money, he must not have had his sort code.

Wellington Arch.

And Marble Arch.

Oxford Street was about the same as I remembered it from last time:

• Souvenir shops everywhere - they can more expensive near the centre of the street, then progressively cheaper again
• Department stores
• Thousands of people and buses filling up the street
• Big Nike store at Oxford Circus

Oxford Circus.

Oxford Street on a random Thursday afternoon.

I had time for just a bit more exploring before stopping for dinner:

• Regent Street
• Those cool curved buildings
• Even more buses
• Piccadilly Circus
• The buildings were illuminated in pink for some reason

Pink Piccadilly Circus.

And pink Regent Street.

It's a trap!

I ended up in China Town where I found several Asian bakeries. Somehow it didn't occur to me to go searching China Town along the trip to find all the bakeries. One store was even selling taiyaki, but my excitement was short live as they were bite sized (at best) and only four for two pounds.

Asian bakeries in China Town, who would have guessed?

Taiyaki.

After dinner it was the annoying 45 minute train back to hotel again, they really need to make that Piccadilly line faster and remove stop of the stops.

• London Part 3
• Tourist Rating - N/A
• Good
• Asian bakeries
• Hotel was close to the airport
• Bad
• Didn't have much time
• Standing on the train
• Missed Out
• Stamford Bridge
• Various museums

• Europe
• Tourist Rating - 8 out of 10
• Days - 20
• Cities - 9
• Photos - 987
• Words - 17,500 approximately
• Taxis - none!
• Cost - $1500 approximately (plus flights, intercity trains and hotels)
• Good
• Free breakfast buffets
• Google Maps and mobile data
• Just survived with shorts everyday
• No work for three weeks
• Somehow escaped all the rain
• Supermarket bakeries for easy lunches
• Yum Yums
• Bad
• Airport delays
• Eating too much breakfast
• Generally expensive
• Hotels didn't have self service laundry
• Hotels didn't have weight scales
• Needed longer in some cities
• Nike Factory stores
• Not having mobile data in Portugal
• Required a lot of planning
• Running injuries still didn't recovery
• Missed Out
• Birmingham
• Porto

Europe Holiday 2015, September 02 (City Of Sintra)

I had a choice between visiting the town of Cascais or Sintra, and Sintra sounded a bit better. The train took about 45 minutes to get to the end of the line, I was a bit worried that the tourist cards hadn't worked when touching on, but they worked at the other end so I wasn't trapped on the platform (another 4.30 euros saved).

Sintra is quite a small village, geared towards the high number of visitors and tourists they get during the year. We walked through the city centre and past the National Palace before reaching the big road up hill. According to my watch it took 45 minutes to walk 4 kilometres with 300 metres elevation. Not only was there lots of cars heading up the mountain to watch out for, bus lots of tour buses too, and even worse where the crazy cyclists racing down it.

Sintra.

National Palace.

At least we got to the Palacio Pena, 12.60 euros for entry (saving a modest 1.40 each). The line to buy tickets took forever, mostly because there was all kinds of combinations tickets and add-ons that had to be explained to every customer, so that wasted a good twenty minutes.

The palace grounds and gardens could have occupied a half day on their own, but we headed straight up to the palace like just about everyone else. The palace was painted all kinds of fun colors like blue, red and yellow and had some interesting shapes and wall decorations too.

Palacio Pena.

I started with a trip around the outside of the palace, which had some great views of the palace grounds, the Castelo dos Mouros walls constructed on another mountain, and the town of Sintra much further below. Being on top of the mountain it was incredibly windy close to the edge. Next we proceeded inside which quickly came to a halt as there was only a single line to move throughout the rooms in a single direction. There was the usual combination of slow people and those who use flash photography even when it clearly says not to. Along the route there was endless rooms full of old furniture, but strangely a lot of the ceilings were just painted imitations, no longer the original art work.

Outside Palacio Pena.

Still outside Palacio Pena.

Inside Palacio Pena.

Outside in the gardens I tried to climb up to where a warrior statue had been placed on the top of some rock formation, but it seemed a little bit treacherous to try and get up (and back down again) so I gave up on that idea. So the trip to the palace lasted close to two hours, without about a 45 minute walk in each direction as well - you can take a bus if you're feeling lazy too.

After getting the train back to Lisbon we stopped for lunch back at Rossio Square again, I was amazed by the number of tuk tuks and similar unsafe road vehicles doing endless laps around the city looking for passengers.

The famed Tram 28.

I took the underground from Martim Moniz to Oriente on the east coast, a surprisingly massive, open air station next to a similarly designed Vasco de Gama shopping centre. From my limited research much of this are was built for expo 1998, proof that expo's after a complete waste of time (excluding Knoxville). The area included:

• Vasco da Gama shopping centre
• A sports store where I found an FC Porto away shirt, but it was 80 euros
• A lottery store was selling tickets for Portugal vs France for September 4 - just missed out
• MEO Arena - some dome
• Oceanario de Lisboa - some aquarium
• Vasco da Gama bridge - this crazy 17.3 kilometre bridge
• Vasco da Gama tower - they should just called this place Da Gama land
• Telecabine Lisbon cable cars
• I got a one way ticket down to the other end of the coast
• Parque das Nacoes - a small park where the cable cars end
• Pavilhao do Conhecimento - some science museum for kids

Oriente station.

Vasco da Gama centre.

Not sure if I love it or hate it.

Vasco da Gama tower.

The cable cars.

Onboard the cable cars.

There was meant to be lots of street art around too according to the map, but somehow I missed or didn't notice nearly all of them.

This is art.

Back into the city again to end the day, I finally got a chance to stop at Parque Eduardo VII, which overlooks the whole city. To finish the set I also stopped in at Estadio da Luz, Benfica's football stadium.

Parque Eduardo VII.

Estadio da Luz.

• Lisbon
• Tourist Rating - 9 out of 10
• Good
• Different pastries
• No charge for toilets (also stupidly known as WC for water closets)
• Sunshine every day
• Underground metro
• Bad
• More tourists and queues
• No traffic lights at the far side of the intersection
• Pedestrians can't see green/red lights or arrows
• Not many supermarkets
• Tram service not so reliable
• Missed Out
• Cascais
• Electricity museum (and Water museum, thankfully not in the same location)
• Freeport outlets

Europe Holiday 2015, September 01 (Le Tagus)

The breakfast buffet range in the hotel was a little different to the UK, which was a nice change. They still had cereals (and an average tasting muesli), but they also had plates of donuts and small pastries
(and sliced meats).

Donuts.

I started the day at Praca de Comercio, a large open space down by the river. The Ponte 25 de Abril (literally the 25th of April bridge) runs across to the south side, where I think they mostly have some seaside villages and the big Cristo Rei statue - just not as big as the one in Rio De Janeiro.

Praca de Comercio.

I had to wait around a while until the shop selling the Lisboa tourist card opened, then I got the two day option for 31.50 euros. I found out the card includes two days of free travel (normally 6 euros per day) but many places were only crappy discounts instead of being free...

I jumped on a tram headed to Belem and got to the Jeronimos Monastery just as it was opening, free with the card (10 euros saved). The entrance square looked cool with all the stone arches, and the church it lead into was alright too. There wasn't too much else to see or do, a couple of exhibition rooms that required too much reading so we were through in a bit under an hour.

Jeronimo!

Inside Jeronimos.

The church at Jeronimos.

The upper deck at Jeronimos.

The Discoveries Monument was just across the street and down by the river, the engravings along each side were great but being overrun by street vendors wasn't so much - they were all trying to sell the same sunglasses and selfie sticks.

Discoveries Monument.

We walked further along the waterfront to get to Belem Tower, free with the card (6 euros saved). The tower was very small so there was a strict 120 person limit inside. The staircases were only designed wide enough for one person, so they had a traffic light system to specify which direction was allowed to go. That worked week until the very end, when some stupid family ignored the rules and the whole staircase just about got stuck.

Belem.

Just qualifies as a tower.

The view from the top was good, since it was at the far end of Belem you could see everything close by and a bit of Lisbon in the distance. I think my favourite part was when we got out and found the line had tripled since we got there.

On top of the tower.

We waited for a tram back to Lisbon, only none came by in either direction in at least twenty minutes so we had to give up and walk all the way to the train station instead. I got some strange looking horseshoe-shaped chocolate pastries at the other end, ok but a little dry.

The really popular pasteis.

My less popular pastries.

Being ahead of schedule there was time for a quick ferry trip across to Cacilhas. We walked along as far the great sounding Elevador Panoramico but it wasn't open, and it looked like it was still a long way to go to get up to the Cristo Rei statue, so we ran back just in time for the next ferry instead.

Cristo Rei, not Cristiano Ronaldo.

On the way to the Castelo de S. Jorge I made a couple of quick detours:

• Casa dos Bicos - The House Of The Spikes wasn't that spiky...
• Se Cathedral - It was free, so I just looked inside for a minute

The House Of The Spikes.

Se Cathedral, if you don't get run over by a tuk tuk first.

Then we made it to the Castelo de S. Jorge that overlooks the city. They had the discount offer crossed out in the booklet I had to accompany the tourist card, but the guy still gave me 2 euros back each, so I didn't complain. The castle included:

• Good views of the city and the river
• A small archaeological pit
• A very dusty and rocky surface
• The interior was mostly empty or contained some ruins
• The main tower was still intact, able to get a 360 view of the city
• Lots of stairs
• A museum full of pots!

Lisboa.

The castelo.

The whole visit took about an hour and a half.

I was pretty dead after a long day of walking so I got the train across the city to find somewhere to eat dinner. We came up with some Asian rice place, the menu was only in Portuguese but I think I ordered the right thing. The jerks also would only take Portuguese credit cards which was annoying.

I got "bread of god" on the left.

On the way home I stopped in at one of the two major football stadiums in the city, Estadio Alvalade XXI, the home of Sporting Lisbon. The ground was attached to a LIDL supermarket and a cinema which was a shame. Even though I don't support either Lisbon team I thought the prices in euros might be a bit better, but it was about 80 for shirts and 40 for shorts.

Estadio Alvalade XXI.

I got a chance to try out the hotel "gym" in the evening, it consisted of one treadmill, elliptical and exercise bike - which goes to show how much peoples use gyms at the hotel.