When Things Seem Slow They Are Actually Quite Busy

Posted: 09 May 2011 09:18 PM PDT

St. Mark's Square in Venice taken from my room aboard the Carnival Magic

The last week or so I haven’t posted much. It has been an extreme case of Gary’s Paradox. This has been due to my manic schedule across Europe and the limited Internet access I’ve had on the Carnival Magic as we have been sailing around the Mediterranean.

Just to give you an idea how hectic things have been for me, since I arrived in Europe on April 19 I have been to:

- Prague
- Cesky Krumlov
- Vienna
- Bratislava
- Ljubljana
- Venice
- Dubrovnik
- Sicliy
- Naples
- Rome
- Cinque Terre

And that doesn’t include the day in Monaco we had to cancel due to high winds that prevented the ship from being docked.

Internet along the way has been spotty. I’ve stayed in some places where I had weak signals, slow connections and of course when you are at sea, the only way to get online is to connect via satellite which isn’t great. Europe isn’t very good at free wifi.

Tomorrow I’ll be disembarking in Barcelona and spending 2 days in Spain before flying to Zurich for a week in Switzerland. Then I’m in Budapest on May 20th where I’ll be going overland by train to Istanbul by way of Romania and Bulgaria.

One thing I love about cruise ships is meeting the crew. I’ve met crew members from 45 different countries and I know of at least 5-7 other countries represented by the crew who I haven’t met. I’ve been able to practice my Spanish, say hello in Thai, learn how to say “thank you” in Bulgarian and Croatian, discussed the upcoming Rugby World Cup with Australians and Kiwis as well as the just completed cricket World Cup with Indians.

It is amazing how quickly you can make friends with people from other countries if you can just show a basic level of knowledge about where they are from. One Indonesian guy was shocked that I have been to Yogyakarta and several Filipinos were happy to know that I knew where many of the cities around Manila were.

I’ll be writing more in the coming days once I have regular internet access again.

Originally posted on the Everything Everywhere Travel Blog. Discover great travel photos.

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UNESCO World Heritage Site #127: Holašovice Historical Village Reservation

Posted: 09 May 2011 02:06 PM PDT

UNESCO World Heritage Site #127: Holašovice Historical Village Reservation

From the World Heritage inscription:

Holašovice is an exceptionally complete and well-preserved example of a traditional central European village. It has a large number of outstanding 18th- and 19th-century vernacular buildings in a style known as South Bohemian Folk Baroque, and preserves a ground plan dating from the Middle Ages.

I have no idea why this is a World Heritage site. The site itself is extremely small and I’m not sure why examples of South Bohemian villages are of world importance and I’m not sure why this village is such a great example. This is one of the handful of World Heritage sites which I think should never have been listed and if they ever do a clean up of the list, it should be one of the first ones removed.

If you choose to visit, your entire visit can probably be crammed into 10-15 minutes.

View the complete list of UNESCO World Heritage sites I have visited.

Originally posted on the Everything Everywhere Travel Blog. Discover great travel photos.

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