19:42 For some reason – maybe comfort, maybe laziness – we didn’t travel a lot, at least outside our beautiful homeland Estonia (which has a lot to discover, even after you think you’ve seen everything ).
2015 was eye opening – we travelled through most of the Europe (I may be exaggerating a bit). The more you see, the more you want – something changed inside and we couldn’t whistand a thought of
just traveling for few weeks and then resuming to our routine life for next too many months. More about this maybe sometimes later… – at the moment I want to sum up 2015 adventures.
I started this year with a sky trip (well, snowboard for me) to Austria alps, Mayrhofen. There is something about mountains, that personally intrigues me a lot. They are hostile for any kind of life (especially the taller ones), but still I would like to climb on every top possible. This trip was full of snowboarding awesomeness – 6 days on mountain (1 weird sick day, nope not hangover) – and lots of kilometers ridden. Also no bones were broken this time – success. Peak of the trip was certainly day number 3 on Hintertux glacier (I recommend going there – it’s about a hour ride from Mayrhofen). 3000m sky high slopes and breathtaking views – and all that on my birthday – what else could you want from life.
Thank you Marko, Mart and Aigi for this superb trip.
In July we took on Eurotrip, four of us (Tom, Veronica, Anti, Anna-Liisa) in one small car (very small). From Tallinn to Germany, to Venice, to Croatia, to Budapest and back to Tallinn (it was awfully cold weather back here, again). This was great trip that just ended too soon.
First excitement arrived, again, in alps – We entered alps from Germany, Autria and drove through small mountain roads around Italian alps. Again I had respect for the mountains – all the beautiful views that cannot be captured by camera. We even saw snow on top of 2000m mountain – that we traveled by ski lift.
On the way up (and down) we noticed a small house on steep hill side. It was really small and had small sunpanel and small vegetable field – all on this slope. I think we all felt a little bit envious – Beautiful house on beautiful slope with all you need for living.
The same day we arrived to Italy – Immediately temperatures hit above 30+C – as we came from pretty cold and rainy belove 20C Baltics and Germany the day before was also not much over 20C, this was very much in your face. We had different kind of night in local camping site, but it looked like the hotter the weather, the better I slept. Next day we visited Venice, which was nice but kind of a bummer. Like most of the big tourist attractions you might visit. Lots of people and nothing really special – Maybe our hopes were too high (because it’s nothing like in the movies). But the pasta, it was the best pasta we ever got anywhere – I guess they just know how to do it.
For the next week we settled in Croatia, Makarska. For my great suprize, our condo was located on pretty high mountain side. Behind our house was tall mountain, on other side was 180 degrees view on sea and over the sea to Hvar island.
We took a lot of time just hanging around and relaxing, having some beers, swimming and more swimming, to tolerate the awesome (for me) heat. And again, the peak for me was our 5-6 hour hiking on top of the mountain behind our house.
Within 5-6 hours we climbed (and descended) from 300m to 1200m – and of course as foolish as we were, we did it at the noon on the hottest day of the week.
Temps were over 35C on the bottom and sun was shining right on top of our heads. We were warned about snakes on the trail – fortunately we didn’t had any contact. Some of the trail was alsmost too crazy for our non-existant gear – 45 degree climbs on loose and sharp rock rubble. The views were incredible again and we felt great accomplishment.
At the end we visited Hvar Island and Krka National Park but again, none of us were exited a lot – tourist attractions, that were beautiful but in someway ruined by people. Nature is most beautiful at its natural, untouched state.
I think I would have stayed there for some more time but we wanted to visit Hungaroring – As we happened to be there for the time of this years F1 competition.
I’m not the greatest fan of F1 (and even less these small funny sounding engines) but the experience was probably once in a lifetime and somewhat memorable.
The best thing about beautiful Budapest was night out in random restaurant, that came out the be one of the nicest restaurant experiences of all time (Google Fioka). Cozy atmosphere, friendly staff and tasty food kept us there for some time – until we had to get back to our camping site at the suburban of Budapest. We met some cool Finns – Greetings (if for some reason you should happen to read this).
We packed our staff and took looong way back to home (through pretty boring eastern Europe roads). That’s it’s, over and out, we resumed to our lives.
In september we packed our small backpacks and headed to Turkey. It’s a blessing to travel light and not to wait for your packs in airport (and in worst case scenario, your staff got misplaced and didn’t arrive at all).
I had 20l backpack, pair of shorts and shirt plus some underwear, laptop and camera – and that’s all you need. I looked people that came with several large suitcases (for one week trip) and thought – do you really need new shirt or dress everyday?
I found this travel offer a week before departure (Estonian site www.reisidiilid.ee) and being very cheap I couldn’t resist – even though it was kind of boring package deal. I could spend few days beside pool and relax but it gets boring real quick.
So we had great week in very hot Alanya (up to 35C in day) – we didn’t do much. We walked through to whole town, relaxed in beach, saw Alanya castle (yes, again overrated for me – although great views), swam in Kleopatra beach (best possible beach in that area) and so on. It was great to get away from 10-15C Tallinn and boost up our vitamin D levels. And ofcourse swimming in 30C sea water is something. It was cheap but reasonable hotel, not too far from city center and beach. All and all, it was great trip with just two of us, but I usually don’t like these “packaes tours” – they’re not for my taste.
Our final trip this year was few days in rainy London (luckily it wasn’t raining too much).
For some of us, it was crazy shopping spree (to got more stuff you don’t actually need).
For us, it was more a brief introduction to one of world metropolitan.
London has its own character – all the familiar places from books or films and gazy complex underground (yes, that how they call subway – they don’t understand the word subway). Also penthouse hotel room, that had view to specific roof tops, toilet to fit only the smallest persons, now and then dripping plumbing. Supposedly on lower floors you can also hear the underground “breathing”. I don’t enjoy big cities a lot, but being one in millions is somewhat overwhelming and enjoyable.
