rohan and ainslie: tales of surburbia: beer and pizza

dear all,

we are now in ljubljana, slovenia - such a cool town, with a really hip vibe - i think mostly due to all the students out drinking along the river at the impossible number of trendy bars in the warmish weather. i'll try and keep this brief so i can get out with them, although brief isnt really my strong point.

but i will start where i left off the first time.

since our jaunt across germany, our trip went a little 'contiki', only in the sense that we relentlessly hit european hot spot after hot spot...although our last campsite in italy was also a contiki stopover so we got a lil too close to the real thing.

so we had some good weather in prague during the day

then one of the thunderstorms that plagued us during the first month of our trip moved in. luckily this one didnt hit the campsite which already resembled a pond from the weather the night before.

next stop was the popular cesky krumlov

we camped beside a lake (not creepy this time, beautiful in fact) just south of cesky where rohan went for a dip

from czech we drove back to germany, taking a slighty morbid detour to nurnberg - it is chilling driving past the ruins of the collosal structures hitler planned for his third reich. they have an excellent museum (which is in this building - part of the mostly finished enormous main hall) explaining the rise of hitler, what the building were designed for and what the hell they're going to do with them now.nurnberg itself was a lively town which we really enjoyed - not least because we used up one of our hotel nights there. in fact it was the start of a week out of the tent because we went on to munich were friends of my grandparents very kindly put us up in their central penthouse apartment and acted as tour guides - taking us to the quirky standing wave in central munich (had to drag rohan away from here)

and not one, but two beer halls in one day - hence the glow.

not only that, we got to spend a very relaxing day out on their yacht - not a breath of wind but it didnt matter.

helmut on rathmus (i think - god of wind or somthing)

monika and i taking control of things

we had dinner at a lovely restaurant by the lake watching the sun set.

but then it got cold in munich so we decided to head straight to

ITALY!!

first stop was Lake Garda where we camped amongst the olive, cypress and oleander trees - our campsite was out on that headland somewhere

we make a side trip to verona to get a bit loved up (modern day juliet? - thats THE balcony in the background)

some of the millions of love messages on the way into the courtyard

before we headed to the glorious, the stunning cinque terra

we did the walk. it was hotter than the last time i did it and seemingly more tourists (thousands as we got off the train) so i thought it would be unbearable. luckily most (normal, sensible) people stopped at the beach and it was us and about two couples that started the walk. it was only mad dogs, wannabe englishmen, and americans out in the cinque terra mid day sun. still, it meant we deserved some gelati and a dip in the blue, blue med on the way.

me making like an italian at the campsite (yes i do have other clothes, i must like photos of me in this dress). this camp was also surrounded by olives, oleanders and a few fig trees and grapevines for good measure. it was absolutely packed though and at first i couldnt stand it, but since then the campsites have seemed a bit lonely.

we were sad to leave the coast and head east to tuscany (sad to head to tuscany!) as i mentioned in the previous email, we stuffed up initially, camping atop a hill in what seemed quite an urban/industrial area. but we were close to pisa and did the obligatory poses before letting ourselves smirk at everyone else doing them.