Al Priest’s Blog

Holiday over, the city highlights…

Athens – Having dinner on a roof terrace in the light of the Acropolis.

Sofia – Gatecrashing a British Embassy pub party and drinking free beer. Mmm, free beer. And getting free shots from the cute barmaid…

Belgrade – The taxi being push started by the drivers’ mates into a stream of traffic. And the tram driver who had to stop his tram, jump out, and manually switch the points before continuing.

Zagreb – Deciding that we’d been spending too much recently on our meals. So we cut down by not having wine, and then proceeded to order Langoustines, Sea Bass and Oysters.

Vienna. Climbing to the top of the cathedral and finding the view closed off by scaffolding.

Munich. Getting stuck in the fairground ride after the machine was switched off.

Amsterdam. The pronunciation of an 20th century medical bloke mentioned on the canal tour in Dutch was “Sir Fatty” and in English “Sir Farty”.

There was however one theme constant throughout the holiday – so many of the attractions we tried to see were covered in scaffolding, billboards, constructions crews, or were closed:

• The Acropolis – being refurbished
• Mount Vitosha in Sofia – the lifts are closed during the week
• The parliament buildings and cathedral in Vienna – being cleaned
• The large area behind Marienplatz – closed for building
• Amsterdam train station and sea views – closed for building

To summarise – Europe is closed. Please come back later.