Hungary and Croatia

Spent a couple of very weird days in Budapest - found the language utterly impenetrable, and unfortunately for us most people's second language is German rather than English. But it's a beautiful city, empty of tourists at this time of year so we wandered around Buda castle practically by ourselves. Really interesting historical museum which completely blanked out any part of the Soviet years apart from one room showing photos of the 1956 uprising, despite having gone into plenty of detail about every other era from prehistory onwards.

Not to be put off, we went to the Statue Park, outside the city, where they have resurrected a lot of the Communist statues which were originally in the city itself. From our point of view it seemed incredibly kitsch, and they seemed to know it as all the souvenirs were "amusing" in some way or other, but I saw some elderly people obviously very upset by the memories it brought back. Very odd indeed. Would recommend a visit in the future, as they are in the process of building a museum there which would put them in context.

On the way to Croatia we stopped off at the southern tip of Lake Balaton and swam outside in a thermal lake - really weird feeling, as the air temperature was 8C but the water was 27C. Also there were waterlilies growing in it and an all-pervading whiff of egg. Getting out into the cold was an ordeal though, as you can imagine!

Blasted through Croatia to Split without stopping in Zagreb as we had originally planned, as running out of time (only 2 weeks left!) and also it was freezing up in the mountains. Went through a couple of 5km plus tunnels and emerged into the sunshine finally. Diocletian's Palace is amazing, didn't realise the scale of it before we got here! Thought about going to the islands for a day but the weather has turned bad again, but did manage to meet up with another of Will's cousins and his girlfriend for dinner, which was cool. Finally got to have some seafood after a month of little other than pork and dumplings! Driving up towards Slovenia then Venice, Verona and Florence in Italy, then Avignon and the Camargue, then home. I am still touching wood about the van making it back, obviously! As long as there's no rain or mountains to cross... Photos will eventually follow, as per usual.