The last of the trip photos - for now!

I just realised that I hadn't even posted the overview photos from the last couple of weeks of our trip - and the places we visited were probably the most surprising of all of them.  So here goes:

I had previously described most of the places visited on our second part of the tour, up until Krakow. So here are the photos that go with those cities:

Our day at Wimbledon:

'The Queue'

John eating strawberries and cream

We saw John Isner play (after he'd finished his epic 11 hour match the day before)

In the stands

Next we headed to Berlin:

The Berlin Wall

Checkpoint Charlie (one of the four 'gates' between East Berlin and West Berlin)

The Soccer World Cup fanfest (when Germany beat England)

The Brandenburg Gate (yes we're a little sunburnt)

Next was Prague, in The Czech Republic (not Czechoslovakia, which is used to be called.  Slovakia is a different country.)

Overlooking Prague from the castle

On one of the bridges that crosses the river

John writing his name on the famous 'Freedom Wall' which played a large part in the downfall of the Communists

Then we did actually cross through Slovakia, which was very picturesque.

One afternoon and one morning in Vienna:

John eating a famous 'Sacher Torte' at the Sacher Hotel (where it was invented)

Then onto Budapest, which was one of my favourite places.  I'm not sure why though (well, is was just so pretty)!

Overlooking Buda (on the left) and Pest (on the right)

A Hungarian Bath

The beautiful Hungarian Parliament building

One of the beautiful old bridges that crosses the river

I believe my last descriptive post was on our way into Krakow, in Poland.  We had a day tour of the city, including the Jewish Quarter, the Old Town Square (which was apparently National Geographic's Most Beautiful Place in the World in 2008 I think) and the Salt Mines.  The Jewish Quarter was really sad - I can't remember the exact figures, but Krakow had a Jewish population of over 110,000 before WWII, and there are now less than 100 practising Jews in Krakow. 

The Salt Mines were amazing - over 300 years old, although not actively used any more.  We walked down over 900 stairs to end up about 145m underground.  Luckily we got to catch a lift back up and not walk!  Everything in the pictures below was carved straight out of the salt.

Streets of Krakow

The Krakow Old Town Square

We ate lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe

The salt mines tour - some of the walls are braced with timber for strength.  Because of the salty atmosphere, the timber is almost petrified and as hard as concrete.

Figurines carved out of the salt by the miners hundreds of years ago.

A hallway, where you see the salt very clearly.

The chapel, which is fully made of salt.  The salt is just like rock, and this is the only part in the mine where they used explosives to carve out the 'hole'.  This is over 100m underground.

A carving of 'The Last Supper'.  Although it looks like is has a lot of depth, it is actually less than 10cm into the wall.

The altar part of the church.

When we left Krakow for Warsaw, we stopped at Auschwitz for a few hours for a guided tour.  Very sobering, and I don't think there's really much I can say that would do justice to this place where 1.1 million people lost their lives over the course of 4 years.

The famous entrance gate 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work brings freedom)

Birkenau - the 'sister' camp to Auschwitz.  Birkenau was built as the extermination part of Auschwitz, and was actually responsible for more deaths than Auschwitz, although it is not as well known around the world.  Hectares upon hectares - very confronting.

We then continued onto Warsaw, which was again surprisingly pretty.  I don't know exactly what John and I expected from Poland, but it wasn't what we got anyway!

The day started with a tour of the city (like normal).  Warsaw has such an incredibly tumultuous past, and what the people have been able to achieve since then, particularly when they were still under communist rule, is amazing.  They rebuilt the city centre off their own backs, with no help at all from their government at the time.  They used old photographs of the buildings to know what they looked like, and painstakingly catalogued all the demolished bricks and stones so that they could be reused.

The destruction of the city during World War II was absolute - we saw pictures of it and there was literally nothing left.  Some of the stories about the Warsaw Uprising and the Ghetto Uprising were mind-blowing. Poland was absolutely screwed by both sides in the War - by the Germans (obvisouly) and also by the Allieds (The Red Army) as they stood back and let the Germans destroy them so that they could come in and be the heroes.  What the city has become in only the past 50 years is really wonderful.

Warsaw is the home of Mozart, a fact of which they are very proud.  We stopped at the main gardens in Warsaw (for a very brief time) and saw this really pretty statue of Mozart surrounded by a rose garden.

I really loved those houses on the left - they looked so quaint and doll-house like.

The city is very green and quite clean, with a bit of construction work going on.

Eventually, we left Europe (with all the hassles that came with the delayed flights, etc) and made it into Singapore.  As you know, due to the flight delay, we had very little time in Singapore, and missed out on the tour of the city.  We did get to go to the Zoo and to Chinatown at night, but we don't really have any photos of the city itself. 

Singapore is really quite remarkable - it split from Malaysia in the 1960s - a tiny, tiny country with little to no natural resources and a brand new government.  With very careful planning and expert advice from professionals they engaged to plan their new country/city, they have built Singapore into one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and it was a very pleasant place to visit.  Everyone speaks English - there aren't even any road signs or any other signs in languages other than English.  It is incredibly clean, and very very regulated. There are so many tourist attractions, that have built for that specific purpose.  The harbour and airport are their main source of revenue, closely followed by the banking/commercial sector and then tourism.

Although the country is clean, there is air pollution and smog that is so thick you can barely see. Together with the humidity, which was so high it was like you were wading through the air, it is quite an opressing heat.  You can see this photo where the background just looks cloudy - that was the city, only about a 5 minute drive away.

We visited the bird house on Sentosa Island, which is just like a big tourist/beach/attractions resort.

We had a night-tour of Chinatown, which was really cool. There were the night markets operating, chinese lanterns everywhere and a lot of atmosphere.

The tour included a trishaw ride for everyone, so we each got our own little man to take us around the city. We all felt so bad, because these guys were really little, but they were lovely and friendly, and were quick to assure us that 'it is no problem'.  It was so much fun, and neither of us could wipe the smile off our face.

They got up quite a bit of speed at times.

At one stage, there was out little convoy of about 14 people on our trishaws, riding down a multi-lane inner city road.  My guy decided he wanted to be up the front, so took off on the outside lane to do some overtaking! It was frightening, but fun at the same time.

We also went on a bumboat river cruise throug the city, which was really the only chance we had to see the city itself.  Because it was on the river, it was very calm and enjoyable.

This is one of the newest buildings in Singapore, only open for about a week when we got there. It is supposed to be a large cruise ship on top of three cricket stumps - go figure! It's an expensive casino and hotel, and stands out like anything everywhere you go.

We had our breakfast with the orang-utans the next morning at the zoo.  I was a little disappointed that there were so many people there and we literally got the 30 seconds to get this photo taken and then we had to move on.  From the marketing, I was expecting an 'intimate' experience, not just something where you're one of 200 people trying to eat their breakfast and then line up for a photo.  They are still amazing creatures though.

There were of course other animals, like elephants, lions, white tigers, giraffes etc.

Well, that's about it really - you know the rest of the story.  We eventually made it home safe and sound, and very tired!  Thinking back on it now, we were go go go for 53 days - it was like having 53 days of work with no days off! Of course, it was more enjoyable than going to work, but anyone who knows me knows that I like my sleep-ins and a little bit of 'do nothing' time.

I think that's pretty much the highlights reel in terms of the photos that document our trip.  I've been doing some photo editing and sorting (nowhere near as much as I'd like just yet) and there are some photos with some definite photo club potential.  For the most part though, I just let ourselves take photos of us doing things and seeing things, and didn't concentrate too much on taking any prize-winning masterpieces!

I'm yet to take any 'good' photos of my ring. You may laugh (and I'm pretty sure some of you are) but I just absolutely love it, and still stop to stare at it numerous times every day! I think a scrapbook page may be in order...!

I'll be back soon with a post of the photos that I've edited to enter into the next photo club meeting. There are some I'm quite happy with how they've turned out.