In planning for this trip many people warned us that we were quite mad to consider a winter trip to Europe. Everyone knows that it is cold in the Northern Hemisphere in January so the only sane...
A sunny Sunday walk in Paris is very hard to beat, but a moonlit Monday night stroll along the Seine is every bit as good. We spent the day with Tim and Hannah, our son and daughter-in-law, who caugh...
Winter in Europe never looked better than perfect blue sky, bright sunshine and 11 degrees on a Sunday afternoon in Paris. Not surprisingly we walked and walked and walked and walked, about 24kms in ...
As we arrive at our last venue for this trip we enter our little apartment with a certain amount of trepidation wondering if it will work out okay. We are often asked about accommodation. How do we o...
On our last day in Holland we venture out of Amsterdam to the satellite city of Haarlem to visit a museum in the home of Corrie Ten Boom , author of the famous book The Hiding Place. We c...
A visit to the Van Gogh Museum is a highlight of any visit to Amsterdam. As museums go, this is a great museum, even if you a not an art expert or even an art student. Of course the highlights of the...
Crossing roads in any city has its complications and today in Amsterdam we experienced three unique complications, trams, pushbikes and rain. The roads here are complicated by the fact that tra...
We have discovered a golden rule of travel, the longer the trip and the more accurately you try to predict the estimated time of arrival, the more likely it is that something will go wrong. Our trip ...
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the rather eccentric King Ludwig II of Bavaria had the bright idea of building a very unusual castle. Although Ludwig had grown up living in a perfectly accep...
We awoke to another sunny and warm day in Munich and began the day with a visit to the Olympic site for the 1972 Olympic Games. For the Olympic movement Munich was a defining place where sadly a terr...
Since arriving in Europe we have been incredibly fortunate with the weather. Today for the first time we needed our raincoats but the drizzle only lasted a short while and a sunny day eventuated. The...
From Trento on route north to Munich we once again pass through an amazing mountain range. We travel up through glacial valleys and every time the valley runs out we simply dive into a tunnel and eve...
Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas, is a public holiday in Italy and several times during the day the bell tower of Trento’s Duomo reminded us, with bells that rang for about 10 minutes, that thi...
From our current base in Trento we venture north for a day into the Dolomite Mountains in search of a typical Italian winter family holiday destination. For a €1 bus fare our journey takes about an h...
In Italy you don’t have to eat at a ristorante to enjoy good food. After leaving Bologna we enjoyed an uneventful train ride to Trento in the Italian Alps. Our local hotel is on the Piazza Duomo with...
From Bologna, armed with our Eurail pass our plan is to have a day trip to Ferrara and maybe if time permits a trip to across to the coast at Rivenna. The station is crazily crowded when we arr...
When most people think of Spaghetti they tend to think of Bolognaise. So you might expect that on a visit to Bologna in Italy we might experience authentic Spaghetti Bolognaise. There are two problem...
Today marked the start of our two week Euro rail pass that means we can travel First Class anywhere across 18 countries for $AUS 600 . We start our journey at 9.18am and head south. First change afte...
Leaving Basel on the 8.04am train we were off to explore more of Switzerland. We arrived in Lucerne at 9.04am. A change of plan has brought us this way and we are very glad we made the effort. Lucern...
Staying with friends in Basel is fun, especially when they suggest their favourite restaurant for lunch. ‘Have you got your passports?’ they ask and then it is off to Germany to the Black Fores...
Basel is a city of about 300,000 people on the Swiss side of the borders of France and Germany. It is an old trading city located on the majestic Rhine River. Like many European cities it has a...
Taking the Christmas decorations off our pine Christmas tree on Boxing Day seemed like a very harsh thing to do.Traditionally our tree stays up at least until the New Year or at best until the ...
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