Hello

07/06/11 We set off with Cheeky Monkey in the camper again, At 8am we disappeared down the Eurotuunel our initial route took us from France through Belgium to Germany for the first night, There we changed our plan, We decided to head to Prague in the Czech Republic first. Another couple of long days followed, driving the race tracks of the German autobahns, Its no surprise they have so many formula 1 racing champions, they drive at crazy speeds. In old East Germany we spent our next night on a campsite which was an old East German secret police training camp A strange feeling!!!
09/06/11With the sun on our backs we arrived in Prague , A lovely busy tourist city with great architecture, Shame about the groups of blokes on boozy stag (bucks) nights, Sorry to say mainly Brits.
We travelled on up to Poland, the land of ladies with highly tweezered eye brows and badly dyed hair, Making our base camp in the city of Krakow, the campsite was very grey and basic with a real old communist feel, We were made to feel very welcome though, The site was close enough to take the tram into the city centre and out the other side and back in again, couldn’t understandawordski, still a pleasant way to view the suburbs on a mystery tour, When we did find the city centre and its huge square, The largest market square in Europe we latched on to a passing tour group, their guide was very informative (free) and we just smiled on nodded and followed, Auschwitz an hour away is probably one of the most chillingly moving places and in some ways different than what I expected, The Nazi efficiency is understatement , Its still hard to take in how so many people could be exterminated on a whim of a SS officers daily selection, making Auschwitz the biggest grave yard in the world (I’m glad we visited, Even though I knew what occurred there, I feel that it’s a place you have to visit to really understand and come to terms with).
Vienna followed, a nice small city with probably more museums than houses, every other building seems to be either a museum or concert halls, Camping was really busy so we only hung around for a couple of days.
A 3hr drive to Budapest, Hungary with a pit stop in Tesco’s (shame we didn’t have our club card, There are stores everywhere), Budapest was a pleasant surprise, The campsite was an old Tram station, £10 PN including breakfast and the hottest goulash in Christendom. We cheated and took the open top bus tour as there is both sides of the Danube to explore, We even fitted in a Danube cruise,(God knows how Strauss came up with the name the Blue!! it certainly isn’t) under the Elizabeth bridge of which the prototype was Marlow bridge across the Thames in Buckinghamshire, To be honest the cities are so close in this part of Europe they really do look very similar. From Buda we drove south to the Hungarian holiday area of Balaton lake, a sort of sea side place set around a 40 mile long lake, loads of campsites which makes you feel this place could be really busy in high season , Here we had the opportunity to dust off the bicycles, the cycle path around the lake took to some really old small working villages. and a place we would like to come back to.
27/06/11 Croatia
Later’s the Chaffer’s