Let's see how many stars are smashed in the pool.

Getting to Lake Bled (in northwest Slovenia) from Venice was a bit *arduous* - we ended up making an hour-long bus journey from Ljubljana and weaselling a lift from the bus station from Rob, the kindly owner of our hostel, Bled Backpacker’s Rooms (http://www.bled-backpackersrooms.com/en/). Of course, it later turned out that he could have picked us up from Lesce Bled train station, which we passed on the train to Ljubljana… but no harm done really! The hostel is right over the George Best Bar (yes, really! - where I learned that, judging by his cast, I have the same size hands as Muhammed Ali…), and close to a decent supermarket (mmm - hazelnut Milke) and, of course, a PLAYGROUND!:-

It’s also just a few minutes’ walk from Castle Gard (1); the incredible views over the lake were more impressive than the crummy inside - no secret passages, just faux-medievally-decorated chambers trying to hawk you merchandise - although I did like the herb gallery. St Martin’s Church (2) felt like the most beautiful, untouched corner of the place; and of course there was the lake itself! We rented out a little rowboat (3) and sculled to the enchanted island, which turned out to be harder work than we had supposed - fortunately, they didn’t charge us for the extra 40 minutes we slogged over our allotted hour, and I got to ring the magical bells (4) in the ancient, enchanted little church (http://www.galenfrysinger.com/slovenia_bled_island.htm) and make a wish as they chimed… Summer tobogganing is also fantabulous (5); you take a chairlift up a pretty much vertical hillside then go-kart down the breakneck track on rails - brilliant! According to the camerado, I gave vent to a colossal scream when they shoved me off at the start which made everyone snigger… why do they never laugh with me…?

Anyhow, perhaps our greatest Sparkles and Crumbs-style moment was booking ourselves in for a treatment each at the Ziva Wellness Centre (6). Such incongruous backpackers we make! But it was well worth the expense, swanning around in the delicious heated pools and having my 75-minute Hawaiian massage. Slap in the lap of luxury! (I’d originally booked myself in for a chocolate one, but this had apparently been downgraded to a cellulite treatment for thighs… what is the world coming to? Heavens, I’m not complaining, though!)

Once again, fortune favoured the brave and we were in town for the last night of the musical Festival Bled, and got student tickets to see the Wjladigeroff Brothers do their jazz thing (7) - Tears of the Night is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard, and there was even free champagne at the end! Also, listen out for random accordions playing out over the lake from the waterside restaurants - we danced in the rain all the way back to the hostel.

Food-wise, we learned on the first day that no one eats until 11am (drinking was a different matter), the breakfast buffet was meagre (the camerado: “They don’t even have bread!”) and, being a very tourist-y area, most of the food was too pricey for our Ziva-pampered pockets - although we did get a delicious breaded plaice with spaghetti quite reasonably in a lovely waterfront *dive*. Without a doubt, however, the Pizzeria Rustica (8) was one of the best - if not the best - places I have ever dined at (there are clear signs for it near St Martin’s Church)! It was so fabulous we ate there every day of our stay; the scrumptious ‘Pizza Your Way’ (I picked tuna, turkey, chicken and Parmesan cheese) for about 6E, plus real freshly squeezed strawberry juice… oh, how our farewell dinner saddened my heart!

Speaking of our farewell, we wisely spent our last day trekking across the Sound-Of-Music-esque, wildflower-filled countryside (1) (The poor camerado, I did keep bursting into song: “The hills are aliiive…”) to the Triglav National Park to see the Vintgar Gorge. The incredible filtered light, the colours of the rapids, the way the walls of the ravine dripped with stalactites and glittering dragonflies… it was amazing! Even better, we found a secret pathway to the bottom of the waterfall and clambered around on the rocks at its base (2). Our journey back was slightly unnerving, however - we followed a ‘shortcut’ back to Bled through utterly silent, sinister pine woods, the route indicated by ominous red circles on the occasional tree (3). My observation that Shyamalan could have used it as a set for The Village had us clutching at each other in terror, but onwards we went - and soon came out into the sunshine of a beautiful Alpine field, where we stopped for a bite of marble cake…

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.
-Rumi

And on the subject of *wrongdoing*, the camerado (unintentionally, I suppose) tricked me into going *full-moon rafting* on our final night - “Oh, come on, it’ll be fun! No, of course you won’t need a swimsuit, of course we won’t get wet! We won’t be going on proper rapids at night!” Her assurances proved amiss when we stepped out of the van at dusk in the middle of nowhere and were ordered to strip down to our bathing suits and put on the wetsuits and safety-helmets. You can imagine my reaction, especially when our ‘steersman’ helpfully informed us that we were the first tourist group they have ever taken out and that 13 people, including the town mayor, recently died on the same stretch of river. Admittedly, floating along under the Plough with an abundance of cheap beers wouldn’t have been distressing at all, if it hadn’t been for the tree branches smacking you in the face out of the darkness, rocks sending you pitching onto the floor of the raft and the other dinghies splashing you in the face with cold river water. Traumatic, indeed - still, Rob was very generous with the ‘blueberry Schnapps’ and we befriended some laughable New Zealanders and the Irish couple we were rooming with. In fact, the Kiwis recruited them for their plan of hiring a car the next morning and driving the Emerald River route themselves, instead of paying the extra for the tour bus. This meant they burst into our room at 7:30am squawking, “Wake up, Dublin! How about you, London - ya coming?” Alas, it did look like fun… but there is world enough and time, and we were taking the 10:56 train to Munich for our last ever night train - to… Paris!

I shall go the way of the open sea...

To the lands I knew before you came,
And the cool ocean breezes shall blow from me
The memory of your name.
-Laurence Hope

Until midnight, the ferry was awesome - we joined forces with a lovely English art student, Tess, and set up a *base-camp* (1 - taken later in the evening, evidently) on the sundeck. I had a moment of pure solitary contentment, munching on marzipan in the blazing Mediterranean sunshine and sea breezes in my swimsuit - I felt like a golden almond-paste sunbeam! - and we soon regrouped after our exploring to stay up chatting long after sunset with some funny American guys. As the darkness deepened, we decided to stick with our *bright idea* of sleeping out under the stars on the deck. Oh, anguish - among the worst 6 hours of my life! I ended up in my jeans, the Vatican trousers, three T-shirts, two hoodies, a shawl and a towel but my blood had frozen on the cold, hard, wind-battered deck… I had never been so glad to see the sun rise, and the camerado and I crawled over to the eastern deck to dethaw and watch the peaks of the Ionian islands rise out of the blue. Thank goodness for my fabulous new Venetian sunglasses, obscuring my bloodshot eyes with their bug-like lenses (2) - oh, what a wonderful story they tell that still warms my heart! I spotted them outside a little shop near the Fish for 10E and had to have them, but woefully the frames snapped whilst on the booze cruise in Corfu (more later); anyway, when we returned for our few hours’ stopover I took them back to the shop to see if they had any more in stock. The lovely guy looked so upset, especially when he showed me they only had black ones left. I love the style so much I decided to get them as a replacement anyway, but when I tried to pay him, he waved the money away! Small acts of kindness make my day, and never go unremembered…

Anyhow, we reached the crystal-clear shores of Corfu in one piece (3) and were helpfully picked up by the Pink Palace shuttle-bus…

…Once at the (indeed very pink) hostel, we were greeted with a shot of uozo and shown up to our twin room with an incredible view over the ocean (1). Omelette breakfast on the beach, 3-course dinners (including a delicious spicy roast one night, mmm), and sun loungers on the astonishingly unspoilt stretch of beach included - all for 25E a night, with the 5th night free. Not bad at all! (http://www.thepinkpalace.com/)

Finally I could wear my fabulous Famous Five-esque Mela Mela vintage swimsuits for bobbing around in the sea until 8 in the evening drinking strawberry juice, exploring the indescribably gorgeous coastline and booze cruising - a day out on the high seas for cliff diving, swimming into bat caves (2) and lounging on a secret beach only accessibly by sea.

But beware! The Palace was, despite its myriad charms, pure patriarchal frat party sleaze, personified by the aforementioned booze cruise. *Captain George* opened proceedings by offering the girls free beers if they took off their bikini tops (fortunately, as the only girl in a bathing suit, I was virtually tamper-proof - not that *the Captain* didn’t try), evil barmen shoved ice cubes down the bikini bottoms of any girls in the vicinity (or, in one instance, just pulled said bottoms down), and there was a grand finale involving whipped cream and Pink’s ‘U and Ur Hand’; I think only I could appreciate the irony of topless girls slurping vodka from a big tube the squalid barman wagged in their face from between his legs to the feminist lyrics, “I’m not here for your entertainment… quit spilling your drinks on me.” As the camerado put it, “Just not Greg Peck.”

But what can you do? We were still able to have a magnificent, exploitation-free time, playing volleyball on the hidden beach and gazing out at the flying fish skimming the ridiculously perfect turquoise waves. The nightlife was little better, but the completely mad weekly toga party on Saturday nights puts on a great Greek dancing show (4), gets you a free shot of uozo (5) shoved down your throat (literally) and a place smashed on your head, and spins decent music into the early hours - none of this beat-less techno crap they played the rest of the week! The staff are also far more rife with *characters* than the inmates, from the scary Brooklyn bouncer who is apparently a registered priest to the chef who had to leave the USA due to his involvement in the Mafia (true!) and decided to lay low at the Palace cooking instead of returning to his homeland of Sicily…

Sun, sea and dancing till dawn was the holiday from our holiday we needed before our 5:15 am shuttle bus back to the port - getting into the *spirit* of things, when we saw that there was a magic show on at 11pm we had a ‘what the hell’ last hooray and decided to just stay up all night, with an adorable fellow pair of backpacking girls from Canada, who were attempting to kiss guys from as many different countries as possible, and some Australians, who were attempting to spend as much money as possible in 6 weeks on military leave - sadly, free suspect pink vodkas and donuts do not a nutritious breakfast make…

At least I got to spend the afternoon at sea dozing in the observation deck with - joy of joys! - what must have been the Greatest Hits of Frank Sinatra playing over the speakers, so in the opulent surroundings I could close my eyes and imagine myself back in the glory days of 1940s Hollywood, cruising with the Rat Pack and Marilyn Monroe. The camerado even found a sofa for us to sleep on in the bar area, which was not technically *legal* - apparently an evil waiter woke her up at 6am in a spiteful attempt to force us to move - but we just refused to repeat the outdoor *experience* of our outward journey, and I was so tired I miraculously slept right through the hustle and bustle until Steph woke me at our stopover destination: buongiorno again to Venezia!

Still, something to remember Corfu by… on the first night, we were sitting out on our balcony eating some marble cake (mmm) whilst waiting for the nightclub to get started when the American guy next door popped his head over the partition: “Hey there… *Gasps and points at me* Dude, I KNOW YOU! I’ve seen you before! Man, come up here, where have we seen this girl before?” I really didn’t remember him, and as I told him this his head was joined by another guy’s as he continued: “Barcelona! Man, that’s it, you were in Barcelona! See, you always meet someone from your trip! The Travel Bar, right? The summer solstice!” I still didn’t remember him. “No, I saw you! And you didn’t see me, but I saw you!” The camerado: “That’s just creepy…” His friend persuaded him to get down and stop “freaking us out.” We next ran into him on the booze cruise, where he turned out to be producing a documentary on Europe’s greatest party beaches. So, if you’re in the US, look out for us on ‘European Beach Parties’ for ProDirect TV! I’ll Youtube it on here once (if!) it runs…

As you set out for Ithaca,
Hope your road is a long one,
Full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
Angry Poseidon - don’t be afraid of them:
You’ll never find things like that on your way
As long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
As long as a rare excitement
Stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
Wild Poseidon - you won’t encounter them
Unless you bring them along inside your soul,
Unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
With what pleasure, what joy,
You enter harbours you’re seeing for the first time;
May you stop at Phoenician trading stations
To buy fine things,
Mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
Sensual perfume of every kind-
As many sensual perfumes as you can;
And may you visit many Egyptian cities,
To learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
So you’re old by the time you reach the island,
Wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
Not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.
Ithaca gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become,
So full of experience,
You’ll have understood by then what these Ithacas means.
-Cavafy

The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings...

Can one be homesick for travelling? I miss being afoot and light-hearted on the open road (as Whitman would have it) so much! After A Level results (I'm going to Cambridge!! So, so exciting!!), I went on a bit of a celebratory *spree* and was so astonished to find a Tezeni's right next to Oxford Circus that I got a lump in my throat - oh, how it reminds me of VENEZIA! It saved my life! I got this gorgeous Grecian dress there for 6E, which came in very useful in Corfu:-

Anyhow, this time I felt I had to buy some winter pyjamas in homage.

By the by... Other Fabulous Things!:-

• http://www.annalouoflondon.com/- found a fabulous long white necklace with a plastic model of Marilyn Monroe in her white dress as the pendant!
• http://www.pixibeauty.com/ I love getting free makeovers from beauty counters, especially since I never usually wear any make-up at all... but Benefit just went too far. They gave me *smoky eyes*, a pancake complexion and sticky coral lips, and the cleansing wipe I managed to swipe before hurrying away just smeared the crumb instead of removing it... thankfully I ducked into Pixi opposite. The lovely shop assistant took pity on me and carefully took it all off with some jojoba cleanser - "what have they done? They've given you grandmother lips! Not everyone wants to look like an Amy Winehouse crack whore!" She was so much fun I stayed to chat with her, about backpacking and pugs, until the rain lessened. Nice people bring me blue skies!
• Urban Outfitters is a bit crummy, but just as I was thinking, "Hmm, I need a new purse... my coins keep getting lost in the holes in the lining...", I found this -http://www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk/invt/5771412297190&bklist=icat,5,shop,womens,womensaccessories,wbags!
• Heart-shaped sunglasses! I impulse-bought a fabulous red pair on a market stall for a fiver... and then saw some tacky-looking glittery variations in Topshop - for £15!
• www.beyondretro.com/ - there are tutus on the stairs! And I love my new coat for Michaelmas term - royal blue velvet with gold trim!
• Tara Starlet makes gorgeous, fifties-style clothes, so you can pretend you are in an old Technicolour musical (who wouldn't want to live in one?!) - I found one of her fabulous dresses in Topshop, but at the moment you can only get her sunsuits online at http://www.dollydagger.co.uk/products.asp?cat=27

But I digress! Our 4th stop: the Golden City of VENEZIA!

Venice really is a city that you can only imagine as existing in a story, not in real life... the perfect fairy-tale city for us. Of course, there are the beautiful masks lining every street (1), but more importantly, I discovered a pasticceria selling the most heavenly marzipan fruits I have ever tasted (2) – food of the gods! The price was extortionate but worth every mouthful; the Boscolo Maria, Anconeta, 1818. And the camerado found an even larger drain on her resources in Murano, the glass-blowing island (3), returning laden down with bags and bags full of fabulous jewellery… the vaporetto ride is brilliant, but sit outside at the back for the best view of Venice and the breeze in your hair – and beware of sudden storms (4)! Even more fabulous was catching the smell of Lush on the air as we turned a corner from our hostel – and there it was (5)! And, of course, the awesome gondoliers (6). I was so inspired I determined to seek out my own ‘gondoliera costume’, right down to the full stripy T-shirts and jumper and the hat, which the camerado spotted for 5E (7)! Perfect for punting down the Cam! And after all, Audrey Hepburn showed up for her first meeting with Givenchy “sporting capri pants, a little white T-shirt, ballet slippers, and a gondolier hat she had picked up in Italy shooting Roman Holiday.”

Sadly, a gondolier ride can set you back around 60E, so we took the vaporetto down the Grand Canal instead – like the buses in Rome, they seem to be a lot more lax on ticket inspection than the mean streets of London… And of course St Mark’s is *worth a visit* - and although we paid the 3E for entrance to the treasury, filled with shrunken heads and saints’ bones, we were more intrigued by the various hidden doorways (8)… what sinister secrets do they hide?? The Doge’s Palace in the same Square truly does call Byron to mind:

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand;
I saw from out the wave of her structure's rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Look'd to the winged Lion's marble pines,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.

You can almost feel the suffering down in the prison cells and on the Bridge of Sighs (9), where the prisoners used to catch their last glimpse of freedom…

I long to return for the Academia and the Lido, and I would definitely stay at the Venice Fish again - (http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/AVeniceFish-Venice-22108?source=googleadwordshostelsbyname&gclid=CMWm6LyLtpUCFRqH1QodXxapPQ). It’s in a tiny courtyard - the Campo de Maddalena - about 20 minutes’ walk from the Rialto, surrounded by the canal with a little green bridge to the front door; I loved perching on the windowsill of our room and people-watching over the square:

The entrance hall is a little disconcerting at first, seeing as it’s a derelict basement piled high with old mattresses and wooden slats…

…but ascend the staircase of the fabulously crumbling old palazzo and you’re in the reception-cum-dining hall, where the brilliantly outrageous host, Mimo, serves up breakfast every morning and pasta every night - which saves a lot of *dough* on dining in the Golden City, believe me. Not only that, but our first evening, Mimo burst out from the kitchen bearing a huge tub of sangria, a roulette wheel and enough shot glasses to involve everyone in constantly evolving drinking games into the early hours. Definitely the best hostel for befriending fellow travellers! And the location cannae be beat; we found a quiet bar with a beautiful little roof terrace, complete with a fairy-light-bedecked swingseat to gaze out over the canals with a mimosa, just around the corner - and down the road was a gorgeous outdoor piano bar for sparkling wine! The most romantic thing: a young guy quietly asked the pianist if he could play a song for his girlfriend and just launched into this incredible original composition. Only in Italy was this not corny, but sincere and heart-breakingly sweet… but, alas, we were gone with the morning… on the 23-hour ferry to… Corfu!