Thursday, July 07, 2005
Lavenham
Captions have now been added to our pictures. They can be viewed by clicking on Photo Album of our Trip in the Links.
We have reached the end of our wanderings and have taken a cottage for six months in Lavenham, Suffolk. Angel Cottage can be viewed at www.angelgallerylavenham.co.uk and hitting the "cottage for hire" button.
Our address is
Angel Cottage
16 Market Place
Lavenham
Suffolk CO10 9QZ
Phone: 01787 248152
E-mail: william.g.siesser@vanderbilt.edu
We have reached the end of our wanderings and have taken a cottage for six months in Lavenham, Suffolk. Angel Cottage can be viewed at www.angelgallerylavenham.co.uk and hitting the "cottage for hire" button.
Our address is
Angel Cottage
16 Market Place
Lavenham
Suffolk CO10 9QZ
Phone: 01787 248152
E-mail: william.g.siesser@vanderbilt.edu
# posted by Bill and Lynne @ 2:32 AM 
Hungary
Danube in Budapest
We came back to Budapest on our coach tour and spent a couple of days in this lovely city. The architecture is impressive and beautifully laid out as it was all rebuilt to celebrate their 1,000 year anniversary. We took a cruise on the Danube at sunset and watched the lights of the city come on. It was quite magical. The empress of the Austro-Hungarian empire built an enormous palace on one of the hills on the Buda side and we spent a happy couple of hours wandering around and enjoying the views from every corner. The local guide took us on a bus tour of all the major sights and gave us a thumb-nail sketch of the incredible history. We enjoyed Heroes' Square with its huge statues of legendary kings through the ages. Many were dressed as Asterisk and Obelisk, which gave us a kick.
Heroe's Square
The Leger Holidays coach tour was fun but it takes many days to drive from England across Europe to reach Hungary and Romania so we were pretty tired of sitting by the end of the fourteen days. Fortunately we had time on the way back through Germany to take a Rhine cruise at the lunch-break and it made a nice change to wander the deck watching the fairy-tale castles as we floated by. On the outward journey we stopped in Vienna and walked around the sights Bill and I had seen in our youth. Most of our fellow travelers had done many coach tours before, for one reason or another, and I am glad we did it but I think flying to a country and spending more time there rather than days looking at the trees on the autobahn is preferable.
Rhine Castle
LS
# posted by Bill and Lynne @ 2:19 AM
Romania
Our Leger Holidays coach with us and 26 British subjects crossed the border into Romania and were met by our Romanian guide who directed us into the middle of a town where we were stuck as the roads were too narrow and cars were parked so haphazardly the coach could not go forward or reverse. Our Welsh courier, who has bright pink streaks in her hair and does not mind what comes out of her mouth was undaunted, leapt out and within a few minutes had waiters from nearby cafes and unsuspecting passers-by, manhandling cars out of the way and onto the sidewalk. Our coach then carried on its merry way hoping there would be no more detours unfamiliar to our guide. Time on the coach was spent spotting storks' nests. They appeared on roofs, blocking chimneys and on telephone poles. Because it was late spring, the young were sitting upright, waiting for mom or dad to bring the food. Some villages had a nest on every second roof. We were told the fertility rate of those villagers was particularly high.
Stork Nest
A big deal was made of Dracula coming from Transylvania and the build-up to Bran Castle was tremendous. It is a very picturesque summer residence of a former Queen but we were relieved to hear the guide at the castle tell us that Bram Stoker had chosen Transylvania and the legendary Dracul for the setting of his book as they fitted his fiction so well. Vlad, the Impaler was a very cruel leader and did awful things to the criminals in his district but did not have vampire tendencies. This fitted with what we had learnt years ago in Highgate Cemetary in London, where the grave that inspired Stoker to write Dracula was pointed out to us. I disgraced myself by getting an attack of claustrophobia before attempting the secret passage and took myself off on another route to meet up with the castle tour farther down the route.
Peles Palace
The most impressive palace in Romania was Peles Castle which was built by the first king invited from Germany to rule the new country during the 19th Century. It was splendid inside and looked like the typical picture book castle. Ceausescu "Peoples' Palace" is the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon - some 10,000 rooms. Our Romanian guide is sure that after 9/11, it is now the largest, which I thought was a little tactless. Ceausescu paid for the palace by exporting food and starving his people and was thrown out of office and executed before it was complete. The horror stories of his time in office were legion. He wanted to improve the view along the road between his residence and the airport so had all the old houses along the way demolished and four/five storey blocks of flats built to relocate the residents. But to save money, there were no elevators, running water or toilets put in the flats as he maintained the citizens were not used to them in their old homes anyway.
People's palace
We visited the quaint medieval town of Sighisoara where Vlad, the Impaler was born and had a fine time wandering around the citadel on the hill. One evening we were taken to dinner in a farmhouse and had authentic Romanian food, homemade wine and plum brandy. Another evening, we had appetisers in a wine cellar, after navigating rows and rows of enormous wine barrels and glasses and glasses of different wines.to taste. The floor show of Romanian folk dancing and singing in the restaurant upstairs afterwards was, consequently, a great hit. Romania is working hard to be ready for EU membership and is encouraging tourism and we wish them luck. Safety regulations are hit and miss - one hotel had the firedoor on the eighth floor unlocked to the outside but had removed the stairs as they were concerned about villains walking in to rob the rooms.
LS
Stork Nest
A big deal was made of Dracula coming from Transylvania and the build-up to Bran Castle was tremendous. It is a very picturesque summer residence of a former Queen but we were relieved to hear the guide at the castle tell us that Bram Stoker had chosen Transylvania and the legendary Dracul for the setting of his book as they fitted his fiction so well. Vlad, the Impaler was a very cruel leader and did awful things to the criminals in his district but did not have vampire tendencies. This fitted with what we had learnt years ago in Highgate Cemetary in London, where the grave that inspired Stoker to write Dracula was pointed out to us. I disgraced myself by getting an attack of claustrophobia before attempting the secret passage and took myself off on another route to meet up with the castle tour farther down the route.
Peles Palace
The most impressive palace in Romania was Peles Castle which was built by the first king invited from Germany to rule the new country during the 19th Century. It was splendid inside and looked like the typical picture book castle. Ceausescu "Peoples' Palace" is the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon - some 10,000 rooms. Our Romanian guide is sure that after 9/11, it is now the largest, which I thought was a little tactless. Ceausescu paid for the palace by exporting food and starving his people and was thrown out of office and executed before it was complete. The horror stories of his time in office were legion. He wanted to improve the view along the road between his residence and the airport so had all the old houses along the way demolished and four/five storey blocks of flats built to relocate the residents. But to save money, there were no elevators, running water or toilets put in the flats as he maintained the citizens were not used to them in their old homes anyway.
People's palace
We visited the quaint medieval town of Sighisoara where Vlad, the Impaler was born and had a fine time wandering around the citadel on the hill. One evening we were taken to dinner in a farmhouse and had authentic Romanian food, homemade wine and plum brandy. Another evening, we had appetisers in a wine cellar, after navigating rows and rows of enormous wine barrels and glasses and glasses of different wines.to taste. The floor show of Romanian folk dancing and singing in the restaurant upstairs afterwards was, consequently, a great hit. Romania is working hard to be ready for EU membership and is encouraging tourism and we wish them luck. Safety regulations are hit and miss - one hotel had the firedoor on the eighth floor unlocked to the outside but had removed the stairs as they were concerned about villains walking in to rob the rooms.
LS
# posted by Bill and Lynne @ 1:48 AM
