After a pretty hectic (and painful) day in Hiroshima yesterday, we had a bit of a lay-in and didn’t get moving too early this morning. When we did finally surface, we discovered a simply glorious day and decided to go downtown to Abeno Harukas 300 – a massive shopping mall with a huge 300m observation deck that is open to the public.
We wandered through the shops and while there is plenty of high-end shopping in this complex (Bvlgari, Louis Vuitton, etc), I particularly love the Kintetsu department stores for their kimono sections. Most upscale department stores will have an area that sells traditional yakuta and kimono and of course all the accessories – obis, ties, geta and zori sandals, Kinchaku Bags, traditional Tsumami Kanzashi hair ornaments, etc. They’re so delicate and have such a very particular design aesthetic. 
I’m not big on wandering shops without a particular agenda, so before too long, we made our way up to the 16th-floor observation garden… 
There’s still a long way up in this tower – it’s 70 something stories high, mostly hotel and office space.
And that there, is some dudes cleaning the windows!
We toyed with the idea of going all the way to the top of the tower to check it out, but of course, Golden Week strikes again and the place is pretty packed. Between the queue and the JP¥1500 per person to use the elevator (?!?) we decided not to.
Instead, we hopped a train down to Namba to take us to the famous Dontonburi district. Dotonbori is a canalside entertainment area – I’m thinking the locals probably consider it much like Brisbane regards its Southbank area. It’s very popular with students and as an after-work meeting place – it is full of small restaurants, bars and izakaya taverns. 
There’s also more than a slight obsession with takoyaki here… stalls of takoyaki everwhere, squid and takoyaki souvenirs all over the place. As a general rule, it is poor etiquette to be eating in public in Japan – seemingly the only ‘proper’ exclusion to that seems to be the standing around takoyaki street vendors eating your little balls of squidly goodness on a toothpick. 
The narrow alleyways of shops and restaurants go off in every direction for miles. 
By this stage, Mr K was getting peckish and it didn’t take much to find a friendly gyoza place – it does rather stand out on the streetscape. So we stopped for a sit and a snack; had some beer, gyoza and caught some Pokemon – as you do. 
I can’t imagine how many thousands of gyoza these ladies made today… the place was filled to the brim and it was about 3pm.
After the gyoza cravings had been quelled, we continued to wander the streets of Dontonburi, checking out the shops, looking in particular for liquor stores (how unlike us?!) and hunting for cool One Piece gifts to take home for #1 Son.
There seems to be no such thing as ‘overkill’ when it comes to creating signage for your shop or restaurant around here… there’s a definite, ‘more and bigger is better’ feel to all the street signage.
After a couple more hours of wandering around, I was keen to find a bar and chill out until the sun went down. Managed to find a cute little izakaya bar tucked away down a small alleyway that had a cheap and cheerful menu and we got ourselves some sake, beer and a sashimi snack. The izakaya bars are similar to tapas bars in Spain – informal, people tend to order small amounts of food and drink, and then just keep ordering bits and pieces for as long as you want to stay there.
When we emerged from the bar, dusk was falling and Dontonburi was coming to life. All lit up, the place looks exactly like the brochures… the pictures, however, definitely don’t capture the music, the noise from the crowds and spruikers, the hustle and bustle and the smells of all the restaurants lining the streets.
The canals look very cool all lit up at night.
And the rabbit warren of little alleyway bars feels like something out of a movie. 
All up we had a pretty chill day which was much needed. We were back at the hotel at a reasonable hour in time for another soak and some more sake in the hot tub… which is starting to feel like a habit at this point!
So we had popped down there yesterday afternoon and bought some tickets using an online ticket machine that wasn’t in English. As we walked away Y5400 lighter, I found myself wondering if they were indeed tickets to see ‘Avengers, End Game’ or could we have found ourselves going to see some other random crap instead! I’m always apprehensive about going to see movies in foreign countries, especially non-English speaking ones – I think it’s some sort of delayed reaction to the Munich Forest Gump Incident of ’95…
But fortunately, when we arrived this morning for our 0845 session *insert eye rolling here over the hour*, we discovered that our tickets were indeed for the correct film – in IMAX 3D… because many of the 2D sessions looked like they were dubbed. 
A couple of curiosities I noted at Japanese cinemas – there’s film merchandise for sale in the foyer…
And your candy bar selections come in a convenient little plastic tray that fits neatly into your seat drinker holder and becomes a little moveable table, like a student desk.
The facility here for visitors is an interesting blend of old and modern – photographs and displays of the history of the brewery within a large modern visitor centre, complete with restaurant, tasting rooms and sales floor.
With so much really good saké on offer, we decided we had better restrict ourselves to small bottles that we could consume during the week only. 🙂 
Rice grains all polished down to about 50%.
Fugu saké cups! Yoink!
So much good saké, and so many locally made delicacies on display… Why? Oh why, have the Luggage Allowance Gods deserted me on this trip?
The museum exhibited items that have been designated as important tangible cultural property by the national government under the name of “Nada-based Sake Brewery’s Equipment,” policy, and as a museum, it demonstrates the history of sake brewing for contemporary audiences. About 50,000 people visit the museum each year.
In January 1995, this brewery museum was also destroyed by the Great Hanshin Earthquake, but thankfully almost every single piece of sake brewery equipment and all the small tools were retrieved carefully by hand and found to be mostly undamaged or restorable-so the objects in the museum are all extant items in their original condition.
There are ‘Culturally Important Objects’ housed upstairs – but gorgeous as these little sake cups are, I couldn’t read any of the descriptions accompanying them, nor could I understand the little video that was nearby. So I feel like I missed something here… 
Downstairs, the tastings continued, as did the shopping!
This is one of my favourite sakes to drink back home, it’s light and crisp, and a little on the dry side. I found a supplier (Fuji-Mart in Buranda), and we keep a bottle in the fridge. I’d like to say ‘for special occasions’, but that only works if Tuesday night sushi counts as a special occasion. 
I don’t even mind that it’s half the price here that it is at home – I’m just glad we can get it. 
Not sure if this is a fat happy otter or what?
The next brewery was about 600m away and we were perambulating somewhat slower now! 😛 The Hakutsuru Saké Brewery Museum is *the* saké museum that visitors will come to if they are only seeing one or are on an organised tour. It is the largest of the brewery museums and has an extensive and well laid out tour.
Founded in1743, the Hakutsuru Saké Brewing Co takes their obligation to continue to contribute to the culture and diets of the Japanese people very seriously. Their toji master brewers continue to carry forward traditional brewing processes while continuing to experiment to meet the needs of a diverse population’s desire for novelty. 
The museum has a very well laid out tour showing traditional brewing processes.
This place is seriously cool – and had many displays that could be seen/heard in English as well. It is obviously set up for the international visitors that tend to come in tour groups…complete with bus parking outside.
An advertising poster for the Hakutsuru Sake from the 1950s…it’s subtle, but the crane motif associated with their product is evident on the maiko’s kimono.
Their famous cellar door Junmai… only available on site.
This little robot will assist you in pairing the right saké to your food preferences.
Then it was back to the hotel for a well-earned soak in the tub and some more saké to round out the day. My poor little feets were very much complaining about the 12kms of pavement we walked today but all that was forgotten as we caught the latest GoT before crashing for the night.
Some cute churches, and everything all sweet and fabulous… 
Until we encountered kilometres and kilometres of trucks all lined up in a dead stand still. For a while we thought it might be some sort of rolling blockade protest – people around here seem to be constantly protesting something. Or perhaps they were all lined up waiting for a weighbridge station, given how politely they were all lined up on the right and letting the cars pass them. We then came across this – the lane we had been travelling also at a dead stop of cars. Bugger, we thought – it was obviously the queue for the Polish/Lithuania border. So we pulled up behind the blue car in the photo below… 
At this point, one of the truck drivers (most of whom were not in their vehicles) came over and told us to drive around. He pointed to the licence plate of the blue car, Belarussian, and he gestured for us to go around (our vehicle obviously had Polish plates on it). So we dutifully went around and ended up at the top of the queue:
Whereupon it became obvious that we were in the middle of the military checkpoint to enter Belarus! Which meant we were miles from where we were supposed to be, and well and truly inside the borders of Belarus! Fark!
Now we knew when we set out that there were two routes to get us to Vilnius, one of which was slightly shorter and chopped through the corner of what is effectively the dictatorial presidential state of Belarus and the other which went only through the border between Poland and Lituania. Now, guess which route yale somehow programmed into Wayz…?
The countryside was simply stunning though – there is a beautiful quality to the light here (once you get out of the cities).
Honestly, I grabbed these shots out the car window as we sped past and they have not been altered or had filters added or anything.
Stopped at a servo for a fortifying something something after our little run in with the Belarus Border Force guys.
WWII memorial in a little town on the way.
Oddly, the Polish/Lithuanian border was far more like what we had been expecting – almost non-existent. Being both part of the Schengen Agreement, there is pretty much borderless exchange between the two countries. We did see some guards in a jeep on the side of the road, but they weren’t doing anything at all.
The delay set up back a little arriving into Vilnius, but we arrived found our B&B and got settled pretty quickly.
The B&B is in an old building with massive oak beams, exposed brick and stuccoed walls and old chunky furniture, right in the middle of the city. 
After our adventure just driving here today, we decided to try and find some local food for dinner. yale scoped out this place on Trip Advisor and it had the two most desireable elements we could have asked for, 1) great reviews and 2) mega close proximity. Because it had been a long day already.
We walked in and there was a wait for a table. The restaurant didn’t appear to be very big so we were a bit disheartened and I was considering looking for other options, when it became apparent that there must be more space off to the side of the entrance and perhaps downstairs as well. We didn’t have to wait too long for a table and were led downstairs through a veritable rabbit warren on cosy dining spaces.
First things first – a drink! This place does paddles of brandy tasting so we thought we’d give that a go.
From the left, very drinkable with cherry flavours, quite sweet with honey overtones, something akin to metho, disgustingly strong liquorice shit, and slightly less strong but equally disgusting liquorice shit! Still, most of it went down just fine.
For entrees, everything looked really good on what is an extensive menu. We ordered a few plates to try – fried cheese with bell peppers (effectively jalapeno poppers – which seemed odd for Lithuanian cuisine, but my knowledge there is quite limited).
Next we tried the ‘thick and creamy wild mushroom soup’… which I tried and exclaimed “I hate this place! Best mushroom soup I have ever had, and it’s in bloody Lithuania!”
yale also ordered a second entree of meat dumplings served with sour cream and some sort of nutty soupy broth stuff. It was very tasty – somehow just the right amount of salty.
We had finished the brandy tasting paddle and the beers etc, so yale ordered a couple of meads and a homemade vodka. On the left honey mead, the vodka (average, but we may have been spoiled of late) and some god awful herbal mead shit that was 75% alcohol! Man that stuff is strong.
Dinner consisted of venison meatballs served with spinach mashed potato, loads of beetroot and a cranberry/blueberry sauce. Delicious.
And yale had some enormous dumpling things filled with mean and drowning in a thick mushroom sauce.
After dinner (and all those strong drinks) we barely managed to find our way out of the hidden tunnels of amazing foody goodness.
We want to get a full day to check out Vilnius tomorrow and both of us have laundry that needed attending to so we head back to the B&B for what was supposed to be an early night but it is already getting close to midnight. Again.
The Wieliczka salt mine reaches a total depth of 327 meters and is over 287 kilometres long. Since the mined ceased commercial operations it has become a major tourist attraction – there are underground chapels and an enormous reception room that is used for private functions, including weddings, loads of statues and some underground brine lakes. The tourist route goes only 135m underground (which is plenty, trust me!) and follows a 3 km guided tour. To initially get down to the first levels of the tours, visitors need to go down 64m via a timber spiral staircase of some 380 steps – which, given the low ceilings and tight space is a bit like walking down a 40 storey building fire escape stairwell. There are many more sets of wooden steps so that visitors end up on the third level down at 135m and a total of approximately 800 steps down to get to that level.
Everywhere we look is salt. Salt walls, salt floors, salt ledges, nooks and crannies. The rock salt naturally occurs in various shades of grey and looks more like unpolished granite.
There are many pully systems and horse treadmills throughout the mine to assist miners in moving large amounts of the heavy product to the surface.
Throughout the mine, there are many statues carved out of salt. Some, more contemporary artworks have been carved by modern sculptors, but many have been carved by amateurs – gifted miners who worked on these sculptures during their own time.
And the scene depicted is a diorama carved of salt.
The St Anthony’s Chapel.
Secondary crystalised salt forms on the walls and ceiling of the mine as water seeps through the rock above.
One of the most dangerous things about mining salt (indeed about mining anything this far underground) is the risk of fire. The salt mines were particularly prone to fires from gas escaping as new veins of salt were mine. Therefore one of the most dangerous jobs down the mine was to crawl down the newly created tunnels with a long flaming torch literally burning out pockets of colourless gas, which could cause explosions if the gas deposits were large enough. It was a very dangerous job but apparetly very well paid work.
The visible patterns and designs have been hand cut into the walls and floors.
There were many workhorses used in the salt mines – once down the mine, they spent their entire lives down there as it was difficult to get them in or out. So naturally, they needed stables, with feed storage and all sorts. Hay stocks would bring mice, which meant they eventually brought down cats and the whole place sounded like a bit of a menagerie. 
An old winch system:
This photo is unfortunately not very clear, but these were 14th century stairs that miners would use to descend the mine, carved into the salt.
Looking down to the second level:
Gnomes start to appear dotted around the place, carved out of very clear white rock salt.
Where we just came from:
A brine creek directed to a bowl. Our guide kept telling us to lick the walls or taste the water – it’s so salty that no bacteria can survive on the surface, and even though the mine has over 1.2 million visitors a year, she assures us that no one ever gets sick from licking the walls. I kinda believe her, but didn’t feel the need to try it. The water however was extremely salty.
A recreated foreman’s office off a mine tunnel:
A vignette of many gnomes doing various mine jobs:
Another small chapel space to the virgin Mary:
Some of the chambers have been reinforced with timber, which miners kept painted white. They had no electric lighting down here and had small tallow lamps or torches only. The white allowed for the light to be reflected around more easily and create better lit conditions.
Another small chapel. Mining is serious business that needs a lot of praying.
So then we enter the King’s Chapel – a chamber which has the world’s largest underground church. 
Lit by five enormous rock salt chandeliers, a huge wooden staircase bring visitors to the salt floor which is 64m underground now.
Lining the walls are carvings of various artistic execution done by miners:
I love the floor!
The salt rock crystal chandeliers are over two meters in drop:
The King’s Chapel.
Salt rock statues, salt rock columns, salt rock candlesticks, salt rock altar, salt rock kneelers, pews, salt rock tabernacle…
Even the bollards to keep the tourists in line are carved out of salt.
Further down the mine there are some enormous salt water lakes. 
Goethe:
Looking down towars the third level of the tourist route:
Apparently tourists used to be moved about using ferry boat rides here through some of the smaller tunnels of the mine until a tragic drowning incident occurred in the Jozef Pilsudski Chamber.
A ferry boat capsized and five people were trapped underneath it. In theory it should be impossible to drown in water this salty as everyone is so bouyant, but the boat was so heavy that the people couldn’t get out from under it, so they suffocated. That is why there is now a statue of St. John Nepomuk, the patron saint of the drowning.
This is the tallest chamber in the tourist route – at 36m high. It is also the location of the World Record Deepest Underground Bungee jump. 
Reception centre for weddings etc.
There are multiple gift shops mostly selling gifts made from – you guessed it – salt. None of which would last very long in a humid tropical environment like Brisbane. 
Another small chapel on the way out of the mine.
All up it was a very slick tourist operation that takes you on a visit through the mine. Our guide was interesting and informative and she only made one joke about us being nice to her because she was the only person in the group who knew the way out. It is a veritable labyrinth of tunnels and chambers and you could see how easily you could get lost.
Amazingly dodgy servo lunch:
High speed landscape photography of the Polish countryside.
Beautiful though 🙂 
We arrived in Warsaw and went to the place that Booking.com said our accommodation was booked at – only to be met in a carpark by a woman who led us to a different location about two blocks away, and to what appeared to be a private apartment. I was seriously unimpressed to discover the apartment (while having all the amenities of what we had booked) was nothing like what we had actually booked… for a start, we could not get our luggage all the way to the apartment without taking a very dodgy old lift up 15 stories and then going up through a maze of not very well kept corridors and two flights of stairs.
I was not actually sure the owner/designer had ever been to Brooklyn or to a bar in Brooklyn in the last decade – but the food was mostly edible, the loud hip-hop was totally dreadful, but the cheap shots of vodka made the whole thing bearable.
Back to the apartment and yale carried everything up the flights of stairs after taking the scary antique lift to the 15ht floor. 
Back in the apartment – bedroom is up a flight of narrow twisty stairs to a low ceilinged loft, that I was going to have to navigate coming down first thing in the morning when my back is at it’s absolute worst and walking is sometimes problematic let alone weird odd height staircases. I mean, it was a nice enough space, but I would not have booked it had these been the pictures on the booking website.
Oh well, we are supposed to be staying here again in a few days time – but have decided to cancel and find something that 1) has no stairs to bed and 2) has a decent chance of a shower that yale can fit it! Another interesting review coming up for these guys too!
It’s not exactly easy to find – but there is an online map telling you roughly which area each name is located – and yes, we found Drakey’s avatar! It’s something to do with spaceships and wars in space or something. I dunno. #computergaming #notmycupoftea
After ferreting out the Eve Online Monument, I convinced yale to swing past the Sun Voyager (again) so I could see it in the morning light. This is still such a stunning piece of art. I love it… so evocative, you can imagine it sailing out across the fjord. 🙂 This time fewer tourists were there hogging prime spots – but there’s always one jerk. This time a Kiwi, who stood around while his wife took his pictures and then he went wandering all around the sculpture – if it had been a car, he would have been kicking the tyres – while about 10 people are standing around shivering in the freezing cold waiting for him to fuck off out of our photographs! Urgh!
We were then heading indoors for a while (thankfully!) to the National History Museum, which is quite an impressive building in its own right.
We did a little poke around the shops here a little – I stooped to buying a t-shirt… which in my defence was only marginally more costly than a tea towel at the end of summer sales. 🙂
So, lunchtime rolls around and we find ourselves hunting for the Bæjarins Bbeztu Pylsur stand, which quite literally means in English: ‘The Best Hot Dog in Town’. We find the little food truck exactly where is supposed to be not far from the Reykjavik harbour and to my surprise, it is surrounded by people standing around in the cold, which is about 3°C but with the wind feels about -1°, eating hot dogs! I’m not so sure about this al fresco dining thing in this weather, but we dutifully line up for a hot dog.
In August 2006, The Guardian newspaper selected Bæjarins Beztu as the Best Hot Dog Stand in Europe – big call. Since then plenty of famous people have come along and tried the now world renown, Bæjarins Beztu hotdogs. Among them are former US President, Bill Clinton, and even cooler, James Hetfield of Metallica fame… and now borys and yale join this illustrious companie of people who have stood around eating hot dogs in sub-zero temperatures.
It was so cold, but the hot dogs were tasty enough, I guess.
The museum also houses many other phallic items and artworks. Longtime poet and environmental activist, Danish Sculptor, Pjarne P Ejass (1945 – ) created this “Viagra Phallus” in the form of a scorn pole. The work displays the artist’s contempt for all things that deviate from the normal course of nature, and the work is intended to convey his statement, “Stop Fiddling with Nature,” The artist donated the work to the Icelandic Phallological Museum in the summer of 2004 and it was erected in May 2005.
A rather painful looking toothpick holder:
Dried sperm whale penis:
Preserved pilot whale penis:
Various penises belonging to different dolphins and porpoises:
And this magnificent specimen – is a Narwhal! Narwhal! Living in the ocean…!
African bull elephant:
An eland, a dromedary and giraffe penises:
Killer whale penis: yale for scale
An artwork based on the penises of the National Icelandic Handball Team that represented Iceland at the Bejing Olympics in 2008. 😮 
Freyr – Viking God of Fertility:
From here we did what was probably the first bit of real touristy shopping we have done since we arrive in Iceland. We wandered down the main shopping street which pretty much leads from the Hallgrímskirkja church down towards the waterfront esplanade. I got to stop in the Tuilipop shop this time, which was closed when I was here last – luckily their plush Freds are not very soft or I would have found myself buying a rather expensive and unnecessary plush toy to take home! 
There is so much shit here with puffins on it – and because I have been here three times now and have yet to see a single goddamn puffin that isn’t stuffed (like the AUD$450 ones in the top left hand picture!), I flatly refuse to buy so much as a sticker with a puffin on it. I think the puffins here are like the trolls – just some sort of myth.
For our last night in Iceland, we thought we’d go out for one final nice, but predictably, overpriced meal. We ended up at the Geysir Bistro near Ingólfur Square. It was a more relaxed environment that the last two restaurants we went to and the menu looked likewise slightly more modest.
But the food – still fancy AF. 
We toasted our last night with some Brennavin and congratulated ourselves on having only had one shit fight in two weeks in close quarters! 😛 It’s bound to happen – travelling with people is one way to really test the friendship/relationship! All your best and all your worst will eventually come out. 🙂 