Finish Rapunzel's Tower

After a couple of months we have finally finished off Rapunzel's Tower in Lego form. The impressive thing was when we started SV could only do a few steps at a time before loosing interest. She also needed quite a bit of help finding and placing the pieces. Now though, she has made huge steps forward in her abilities and pretty much did the entire last floor of the tower all by herself. It was really impressive to see her progress.

Arriving in Orava

We arrived in Orava in the evening and what became immediately clear was that this was not the tourist season. All but one restaurant was closed. Luckily we found a great pension to spend the night. Our dinner choice was easy although their menu was fairly long. The kids clearly enjoyed the room, playing hide-in-plain-sight-and-seek. They were not bothered by the Dracula legend or the film Nosferatu which was shot at this castle.

Štrbské Pleso

We wanted to do a bit of a hike so we headed to the Vysoké Tatry (high Tatra Mountains) to Štrbské Pleso. While this is quite a popular spot because it held the FIS ski jumping competition for 8 years and still has both a 120 and 90 metre ski jumps. Before our short hike we had a small snack and met the locals. Joking aside someone did see a bear earlier in the day, although higher up the mountain. What we found were a couple of frogs and some fun rocks for jumping.

Coming home and going to the beach

Editor's note: As we did after our previous long trip we will continue bringing you posts from the trip until we finish, but we will also start putting up posts about life back in Sydney. These bonus posts may or may not be daily but we will certainly put them up as we have time.

After coming home the day before from a long time away from Sydney, what better way to celebrate being back than going to the beach. As such we packed a lunch and beach gear, and headed to Clovelly Beach for a few hot hours. We had heaps of fun playing in the sun and (tiny) surf. Although MV was not impressed with seaweed she did like the ocean in general. On a hot day it was good to sit on the beach but towards the end the jet lag started to make some little people a bit grumpy.

Spišský Hrad continued

Spišský Hrad had much more to offer as SV found out the hard way, eech.

We walked through the entire castle, even to the top of the highest tower, although not for long despite the wonderful view. You might rightly why not, well it had to due to the tens of thousands flying ants trying to get into our faces and down our clothes. To be fair there was a warning sign.

We enjoyed our exploration but someone wanted to stay a bit longer and tried to pass herself off as a statue. We eventually lured her down with a promise of a snack and beverage.

Spišský Hrad

Last time KT and TV were in this area they drove by Spišský Hrad, but didn't stop to explore it. This time they made the time to do so. Boy was it worth it. What an impressive castle even though it too is being restored and is partially collapsed. The views are fantastic and the various areas are quite extensive. They even have local groundhogs that reside in the lower forecourt. Although clearly TV's favourite part was impersonating a short and stumpy knight.