Day 52: The Louvre and Home

Our last day in Paris.  Truly it was all over too soon.  There seemed so much more to see and do; so much on my list that we barely touched.
So we’d best be up early, there was a lot to fit into today before we had to be at the airport this evening to start our long journey back home.
We’d packed last night so we were able to get out of the apartment by 8:30 or so.  It was all too hard to arrange a taxi in Paris.  Everything I’d read said booking a taxi could leave you open to having to pay for the taxi from their departure point, something that could turn out expensive if they taxi was coming in from the suburbs.  The best way to grab a taxi is from one of the taxi ranks, however much searching of the internet the night before was reasonably inconclusive in respect to locating one nearby with any confidence.  There was one somewhere on Blvd de Clichy, so we’d see if we could see it, but basically if we’d walked that far with our luggage, we were already nearly halfway to Gare du Nord anyway.
In fact the hardest trial was not worrying about a taxi or walking to the station, but rather getting the luggage down the apartment stairs without killing myself.  The steps showed every bit of their 400 years of wear and they were steep.
It had rained overnight so the streets were wet as we walked through Montmartre to Gare du Nord station, past the shops just opening up for the day, and the early risers heading about their business.
We walked along Blvd de Clichy with no taxi to be seen, past the metro station, and then continued along Rue de Dunkerque towards Gare du Nord.
At the station we were able to drop off our bags with no problems at all, thank God, and we grabbed a simple breakfast at station café.
A lot of people come and ask for money in Paris.  A lot of them do not look like beggars either, such as the lady that was asking all the clients while we ate our croissant and drank coffee.
We caught the metro to the Louvre, passing a beautiful violinist as we made our way out from the station and up to the Passage Richelieu.

Day 51: Musèe de l'Orangerie, Notre Dame and sad farewells

Shanny, Shazzy and Ken were already waiting for us at Café des Deux Moulins, otherwise known as Amèlie’s Café.

Day 50: Versailles and Offenbach

And today we go to Versailles.
Versailles: Loius XIV, XV and XVI’s monument to excess and decadence.  No wonder the people revolted. Luckily the palace survived the revolution, as I’m sure it is a great money spinner now for the French. Just like Ludwig’s tributes to the Sun King back in Bavaria are huge tourist attractions.
We met Shaz, Shan and Ken at Abbesses and metro’d our way, with a little bit of getting lost between line changes for just that little bit of added excitement, to our RER station at Musèe d’Orsay.

Day 49: Montmartre

I was up early, and decided to go for an exploratory walk around Montmartre while Michelle slept in.
There were still quite a few people in the Place du Tertre, even at this early hour.  I needed to get a map, however the tourist office wouldn’t open till 10:00am so I wandered around the mostly deserted streets, heading in the general direction of Sacré Cœur.

Day 48: Au revoir Rome, ciao Paris. Saving the best till last

Our last day in Rome.
It is always a little sad as I leave one place I have quickly grown to love, and yet of course exciting to think that I’ll soon be somewhere new.
Today we basically had a spare day free of any planned activities since the juggling from the closed Colosseum meant that we had missed going to Naples and Pompeii.  Naples couldn’t have been an option today as there was no chance we would be back in time to make our evening flight to Paris.  So today was an opportunity to sleep in and just take it easy. And today we did just that.
After our 10:00AM checkout, we headed off to Termini station to drop off our luggage. Seven weeks we’d travelled through Europe without any address tags on our luggage, but now I was feeling that my luck had run out, and I had best find some before we left our luggage in the left luggage.
There are a lot of shops at Termini.  Two levels of shops.  The lower level included a McDonalds alongside part of the old Servian wall.  I just love finding these old city walls, and this one is from the 4^th Century BC.  History plus.
But continuing on the search for luggage tags; most shops if they even understood what I was asking for did not have the damn things.  Not even the sure bet bag shop.  There was even a full on supermarket down here where at least I found a combination luggage lock so we could lock up the hand luggage, but alas no tags.
In the end I gave up and checked our bags in tagless and headed back upstairs.  I bought our tickets for the airport train ride this evening, despite those pesky “ticket helpers”, and then headed off down the streets of Rome looking for somewhere to plonk and relax.  The simple prerequisites being drinks and shade.
We sat down at a nearby restaurant but after 10 minutes without service, gave up and moved on. We decided to walk to Trevi Fountain again, especially as I hadn’t yet tossed my obligatory coins in. Half way there, wouldn’t you know it, we came across another fountain.  Rome is the city of fountains.

Day 47: Vatican City

Today is Vatican Day.  You know, because more Roman Catholicism.  Anyway, it’s not realistic to visit Rome and not visit the Vatican. Our tickets were for 9:30, and I’d organised the train tickets the night before so we headed straight down to the metro station about 8:00.  That should be heaps of time.
There are only two train lines in the underground in Rome, so it’s pretty straightforward getting around on the train, except this was peak hour and the platform was crazily crowded.  We had to let the first train go, and managed to just squeeze onto the second.  I’d never seen anything like it, except maybe in those videos of trains in Japan where they have people to push the commuters onto the carriages.  The platform and train were literally packed solid with people.

Day 46: A Roman Holiday

OK, let’s try this Colosseum thing again…

Walking there, I noticed what looked like a key embedded into the road between the cobblestones.  This caused me to pause, which was very lucky, as a bird shit then exploded on the road just in front of me.  So stopping to look at this key prevented me from getting bird shat upon.  This has to be lucky right?  It's luck if a bird does poo on you, so it has to be even luckier if one goes to poo on you and misses, yes?
We got down at the Colosseum just after 8:30 and yes, it was open.  There were queues but they weren’t too bad.  Wait, once inside the queues continue through the first corridor and around out of sight down around the curve; but really they weren’t too long and moved quickly.  As a bonus, Michelle as an EU citizen got in for free!  So that bird pooing incident was indeed lucky!
We grabbed our audio guides and started our tour.  I tried to get onto the underground tour, which would have taken us into the areas beneath the Colosseum, but there were no English tours left available for today.  Something to organise in advance for next time.

Day 45: Dead monks + fountains + ruins + cats = Rome

We got up nice and early and headed down to the Colosseum ready for the 8:30 ticket office opening.  You know, to avoid the queues I’d heard so much about. As we approached, we could see huge crowds.  But they weren’t at the Colosseum.  Instead they were lining the streets waving red, white and green flags.  There was only a small group of people lined up at the Colosseum, and the gates were closed.

Day 44: Florence for one more day. Palazzo Pitti.

Last day in Florence today.  It’s always amazing how after just a few days you feel at home in a place, comfortable walking around without getting lost.  Such a sharp contrast to when you first step out of the train station or airport into a new city and you can’t even work out which way is north.

Markets were setting up in the streets, and the Ponte Vecchio was crowded even at this early hour.

The Palazzo Pitti, however seemed thankfully quiet, and no queues at all at the ticket office.  Tickets in hand; you need two tickets for this one, one for the palace, and another for the garden.  The garden ticket also gets you into the costume gallery, back inside the palace.  Yeah, I don’t get it either apart from it cost 23 euro all up.

Anyway, this is one pretty amazing gallery, and takes quite a while to get through.  We spent about 3 hours and covered all the art gallery, but I was suffering pretty severe gallery fatigue for the last 5 or so rooms.  I re-entered one of the rooms, and even though I’d only been in it 5 minutes beforehand, I couldn’t remember a single painting on the wall.  My head was full of Tuscan and Florentine art and I couldn’t fit any more in, it was coming back out of my ears. Still, it was all amazing and on a longer stay in Florence a couple days between galleries would solve this problem.

So I got my fix full of Botticelli, Lippi, Raphael, Van Dyke, and even some Rubens.  No pics allowed, I found out after taking a picture of the ceiling.  Which didn't turn out....

Day 43: Florence, David, crypts and relics

The Accademia is right across the road from our apartment.  We got up, went out our door, went in theirs and around the corner and... Wow. Michelangelo’s David.  Wow, wow and wow.  You can just stare at him for ages.  The detail.  The stature, imposing, glowing marble. This is real art.  To think that somebody could extract that from a slab of second hand marble.
We spent a good 1.5 to 2 hours here at the Accademia admiring the fantastic paintings, some dating back to the 1400’s. The room of plaster casts which were the precursors to construction of the marble statues also was amazing.  The Bartolini statues are ethereally beautiful. But David is a religious experience.  Watching people watching David is great too. There was also a musical instrument exhibition, which had cellos from the 1600s! And what on earth is a Guitar pianola!?! But no photos were allowed…
Afterwards we walked past the Duomo where I had planned to climb up to the cupola, but the queues were insane, presumably because today is a Saturday.  Looks like I’ll miss out.  Can’t say I’m that disappointed though, but it would have been good to have done it.
The Piazza Duomo was teeming with people, heaps more than any other day.  Even the queue to get into the Duomo was huge.  This thing holds 20,000 people so I’m not sure why the queue was extending right across the piazza. We walked on to the Basillica de Museo di Santa Croce.

Day 42: Florence and the Uffizi

I’m very excited this morning as we are going to the Uffizi. But I’m a bit annoyed too as I had sussed out that I got scammed on the tickets.
To see the Uffizi, you want to grab the tickets beforehand to avoid the long queues. I’d seen the queues for the Accademia so was glad that I had booked them online. But googling brings up www.uffizi.com, which you would think is the official site. It isn’t. The official site is www.polomuseale.firenze.it. This meant that I ended up paying this tricky booking site 10 euro more than if I had gone to the correct site. Not a big deal, but I was annoyed with myself for getting mislead. To make matters worse, now I was also a little concerned if I would be able to get in showing the voucher on my phone, as there was no way to print it. So I decided it was best to head down early in case of any problems.
My worries were for nothing as it all went smoothly; I passed my phone through the counter and received proper tickets (and my phone) back no hassles at all.
The Uffizi Gallery is extremely high on the wow factor. I loved this place. So much art. We were in there for some 4 hours, and it still felt a little rushed. And Birth of Venus! Birth of Venus just sent chills through me. It’s truly a beautiful painting. I just loved the Botticelli’s and the Lippi’s with a passion. The faces they paint are simply beauty captured on canvas. Botticelli’s La Primavera, and Annunciation; Lippi’s Madonna with Child and Two Angels were favourites, as was Gerard van Honthorst’s Adoration of the Child.
The rest of the art in there is also truly amazing. A huge collection of altar pieces and religious art. I rename the museum the Madonna with Child, the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and the House of Penises, as they were the predominate themes running throughout the gallery. The later envisioned through sculpture rather than painting. Ta;ling of the sculptures, they were amazing too; a favourite would be Sleeping Ariadne. The way that the marble was carved in such detail, including the folds of cloth.

Day 41: Italy just gets better and better - Florence!

We met Paolo at our apartment at 7:30AM for checkout.  Our train was at 8:30, and it was about a ten minute walk, but I like to be early and not risk missing a connection.  There were no hassles with checkout, so we were soon lugging our luggage down the three flights of stairs, and dragging it all up to the train station.

They had a really cheap and nice café shop at the station, which was great after having to pay upwards of 5 euro for coffee!  And they had café ginseng!  For 1.50!!

Day 40: Totally Love Venice!

Today was Michelle’s birthday.  What a perfect place to spend a birthday! After getting the train into Venezia Santa Lucia, we saw the Orient Express awaiting departure at the platform.  That train looks like a must do experience, but when I looked it up online afterwards, it only travelled from Venice to Paris.  Not sure why it's still called the Orient Express anymore?

Day 39: By lunchtime we'll be in Venice

A commute day today.  Boring.  Well not too boring.  I mean I could be sitting at home, or working…
Germany is a very scenic country to drive through.  From Salzburg, the countryside slowly changed from the mountains, to verdant green countryside.
Within not much more than 2 hours we’d dropped off the car and were at the airport.  Very early.  I prefer to be early at airports, but this was very early. And airports aren’t the cheapest of places to eat either.  Anyway, they had my favourite weisswurst so I took advantage of my last chance to have this, and also grabbed a nice huge weissbeer, even though it was about 9 in the morning.  I wasn’t the only one either.

Day 38: Rainy Days in Austria

I had been worrying all weekend about the car.  I'd had a bit of a brain fart, and though I had known and even put it in my notes to contact the car lease company 4 business days before the due drop off date, as what was outlined repeatedly in the lease agreement, and that was all meant to happen when we were in Garmish, I’d somehow thought that it instead was when I was in Salzburg and it didn’t click until 6PM last Friday that this was all wrong. Which of course was after business hours and too late to do anything about until 9:00AM Monday morning.  Today.  Now.
So I tried calling, and couldn’t get through. And tried again, and still couldn’t. And again, and again, for about 40 minutes, and now I was getting quite concerned.  What would happen if I couldn’t drop the car off?  I was meant to give 4 days’ notice.  They’d said so over and over on all the instructions supplied. With no luck getting through, I tried ringing the Barcelona office and got through straight away.  I explained my problem, and he said no problems, but you know you are meant to give 4 days’ notice?  Yes, yes sorry :–(  I thanked him all grateful, then Michelle said, I think he thought you wanted to drop the car off in Barcelona?  But I said Munich!?!  Sure enough, ringing back he thought I was dropping off in Barcelona.  Problem not solved.  I tried Munich again.  Tried their head office and tried the supplied mobile number.  I even tried their Skype ID.  No luck.  I called the Australian broker, and they said it shouldn’t be a drama, and they would try on my behalf, and to just assume it would all be good and to drop the car off.  So much worry over a stupid mistake.
So continuing our Sound of Music experience, we drove out to Mondsee to visit the church used in the movie.  Warning.  Don’t look too closely at the altar piece.  There are a number of skeletons from previous bishops just sitting in there.  Lovely.

Day 37: Frauline Maria's Sound of Music Bicycle Tour

What an amazing tour.  We were so lucky that our guide was a trained opera / operetta singer; she had the loveliest voice and was full of energy, singing the songs at every location we visited.  She also had heaps of information about the history and places in Salzburg, as well as the Sound of Music Movie.  This is a very highly recommended way to see Salzburg, as well as to do visit and get the most out of the obligatory Sound of Music sites.

Day 36: We're going to Salzburg!

Not a great deal to really to say of interest today, given it was a commute day.  Well at least for the morning.  We farewelled our lovely host in Garmisch, then spent an uneventful though beuatiful two hours or so driving to Salzburg.  The highlight of the trip was stopping at a roadside stop for breakfast, and they had weisswurst!

Day 35: More Ludwig, More Schloss, More Wagner

Now today we put into practice our well learnt lesson from yesterday; we were at Linderhof Castle not long after opening, joining the very next tour at 9:30. Yay!
Now this castle was a lot smaller, and set in large, extensive grounds and gardens, and so was very different to the Neuschwanstein Castle we'd visited the day before.
Ludwig had Linderhof built to replicate and celebrate the French baroque period and as a tribute to Sun King Louis XIV, who Ludwig totally idolised.

Day 34: It's pronounced Neuschwanstein

Today’s plan of up early didn’t quite eventuate, but at least it was still morning when we left the house.  Neuschwanstein Castle was on the agenda for today.  I figured it would be an easy day, just one castle, not too hard….
After a quick detour into Grainau for a fruitless search for Weisswurtz we had a gute fahrt through the Bavarian countryside, passing more ruined castles atop hill tops.

Day 33: Die Zugspitze

It was absolutely the best weather today, so today would be superb for Zugspitzing.
So we were up nice and early to get the 8:30 train, but still we just missed it.  Probably didn’t help going to the wrong station, but hey.  We grabbed a coffee and caught the next train up through the beautiful scenery of green grass fields, villages of painted houses and kids riding their bikes to school through the town streets and bike paths all framed with a beautiful snow covered mountain backdrop.

Everybody wants a photo of the blue train

Day 32: Lake Como to Garmisch. Five countries in one day

I had planned to head to Garmish via St Moritz, but without any internet, and relying on my phone to look up the road conditions pages which were all in German, I couldn’t confirm 100% that all the roads would be open.  So we had to take the boring safe route and go back out the way we came in, and up the freeways. That meant those narrow roads from Hades back along Lake Como.
To makes things worse, Sygic carked it that morning, and there was no way I was able to get it going again.  So we had to resort to the old fashioned way: paper maps and road signs.  Now this can be a bit tricky when your paper map covers the entire continental Europe, and road signs aren’t in English and don’t always clearly depict the direction you need to go. Getting back to Como was simple enough, if extremely hairy.  But in Como, the signs for the A9 said Milano (southbound), and didn’t say Lugano (northbound).  So rather than risk it I decided to keep going on rather than just heading to the A9 and seeing where we ended up.  This meant we went all around the outskirts of Como.  I decided in the end to just head to the A9.  Worse case was at least we’d be on it, and if heading the wrong direction would just have to turn around when we were able to.  As it turned out, this was the correct course and we were thankfully on the motorway heading north.  The views from up high over the lakes are just spectacular, even today when the weather was overcast and hazy. As the paper maps were proving a little dubious, I turned to back up navigation, Google Maps.  This worked well enough for the most part, even though it chewed through $30 worth of overseas mobile data.  Still that would have been what some decent maps cost would have cost.

Day 31: Lake Como - Lenno, Tremezzo, Bellagio, Menaggio, Varenna

Today we had a good long sleep in after all that walking yesterday.  It was about 11:30 before we left and drove into Lenno. At Lenno, we walked along the promenade to the jetty and went to get the boat ticket, but arrived just as the boat was arriving.  I didn’t have enough cash on me for the tickets, and I thought the ticket man was saying that the EFTPOS was not working.  I asked where the nearest bancomat was and he said "distance."   So I walked back to town, asked in a restaurant where the bancomat was and headed off to get some cash.

Day 30: Ode to Joy, George Clooney, Padme and James Bond.

I got up early today as I wanted to try and catch our church bells playing Ode to Joy, like they did last night.  But I had no luck.  I think somebody in the belfry was watching and spiting me. :-(

We walked along the Green Way from above our apartment into Lenno.  The Green Way is a walking path, which for a good portion of its length follows the Antica Strada Regina, an ancient road along the western shore of Lake Como.  Rebuilt by the Romans and used as their main route between the north and south of the alps, through the ages seeing the passing of traders and armies, and now tourists and dog walkers.

Day 29: Leave the car behind when travelling to Italy.

Breakfast at the hotel again.  Same fare as yesterday.  They should alternate days or something.  Anyway, again not that hungry, so why am I even talking about it?
Grindelwald put on is best weather for our departure.  The skies were so blue and the air so crisp; I could see every little detail up on the mountains and the glacier.

Day 28: Gorgeous Grindelwald

Breakfast was included in our hotel price, so we felt obliged to partake.  Breakfast fare was OK, a large assortment, but since I have been eating so much for lunch and dinner I had generally been skipping breakfast,.  In fact there is a packet of muesli I bought in Uzès I’ve been carrying around with me still unopened.  But that's enough boring breakfast talk....

What every good hotel buffet should include

Day 27: Nudist colonies, pedibuses and erotimechanica. This is Switzerland.

Sorry about the News of the World style headline, I'm trying to attract a larger readership ;-)
Today I got up nice and early to help walk Marianna to school; she's such a cutie.  She talked and talked and talked the whole way there, and she made sure her bat was kept nice and warm tucked away in her top. Pedibus?  yeah I had no idea until Henric explained it.  One volunteer parent is the head of the bus, one volunteer parent is the tail of the bus, and they are both holding a rope which all the kids on the bus have to hold onto.  The bus then makes it rounds, stopping at the pedibus stops to take on new passengers, and bring them all safely to school. Very cool for the first year kiddies.  Very uncool for the 2nd year and older kiddies. We walked back via the lake shore which was lined with a multitude of market gardens.

Day 26: Beautiful Annecy, terrifying Gorges, friends in Lausanne

Yay, a lazy day today before leaving Annecy, boo and driving to catch up with Henric and Cory, yay!
We had arranged with Pascal to checkout at midday, so after sleeping in we walked around town one last time to soak up the last of the beauty that is Annecy.

Day 25: Beautiful Annecy

Today we were treated to, wait, yes you guessed it, another town market!!!! The prices of the goods here seemed a little more expensive than the one in Uzès; perhaps this place is a bit more touristy and gets a lot more touristy French visitors, given that it is only 3 hours away by fast train from Paris.

Day 24: Uzes to Annecy

Today I awoke with a bit of a sore eye, so I jumped onto Google translate and looked up the French for sore eye and headed off to the pharmacy. Sure enough the girl there spoke no English, but when I pointed to my eye and said le conjonctivite maybe, she knew what I needed and handed over a bottle of antibacterial eye drops; the passing on of instructions for application was a little more difficult, but we managed.
Michelle and I finished off our ham and most of the roast chicken and were on the road by 10:30; there were a  few hours of driving ahead of us today.

Day 23: Uzing. Chateau des Baux, Carrieres de Lumieres, Avignon

Another lovely country drive today brought us to limestone country and the Château des Baux, a citadel allegedly passed down through the descendants of one of the three wise men.  This place is medieval heaven.  A lively little old town, similar to Carcassonne Le Citè with shops and cafès, but at the top of the hill are the remains of the old fortified château as well as working trèbuchets, and some of the best views across the countryside we’d seen to date.

Day 22: Uzes Market Day

Today was market day!  But the town seemed strangely quiet. I’d have thought the place would be buzzing with a market that was reported to be the best in France being held!
As we made our way through the cobbled streets, the noises of the market indeed became clearer and louder and sure enough, the entire Place aux Herbes had been transformed over night from a quiet place for meals and relaxing, into a huge bustling market place.  In fact the market had completely filled the square, spilled out into the surrounding streets, and then flowed both ways down the boulevard as well.  Huge!

Day 21: Around Uzes. Brantes and Vaison la Romaine.

Today we drove through many more of those beautiful clichéd Southern France narrow winding country lanes; small villages of stone and fields of vines and olives, interspersed with sprays of blood red poppies.
The countryside  became more mountainous as we continued.  We stopped in Bognals at a Courrefour, and stocked up on some supplies for lunch and the rest of our Uzès stay.  The supermarket was amazing with so much fresh food: a fromagerie in store, piles of fresh fish on ice in the aisles, bread of all imaginable shapes and types.  Puts Woollies and Coles truly to shame.

Day 20: Around Uzes. The Pont du Gard and Nimes. More Roman than Rome

This morning we visited Pont du Gard, a huge Roman aqueduct of three levels spanning the Aude River.  Bloody amazing is all I can say.
I grabbed the last shaded car park and sorted out the tickets in the visitor centre, where I was advised by the helpful lady behind the counter to bypass the audio guide and grab one after visiting the museum and cinema if I felt it was still warranted.  Sage advice, as after watching a film about the aqueduct, then wandering around the museum for the best part of an hour (it was an amazing museum and highly recommended) we knew everything we needed to know and still hadn’t even seen the aqueduct.  All we wanted to do now was walk down and see it as quickly as possible!!

Those Roman babes knew how to rock a bikini!

Day 19: From Carcassone to Uzes

We had a few hours of driving ahead of us today so it was decided to break it up a bit by visiting a couple of small towns along the way, and keeping off the motorways where ever possible.  This meant driving through country lanes narrower than those in the Cotswolds, with the beautiful scenery typical of southern France: streets lined with plane trees, fields of cherry trees, olive trees, vineyards and flame red poppies everywhere we looked.

Day 18: Le Cite, Carcassone

This morning we wandered around the new city, where there was a market on in Place Carnot.  There seems to always be a market on where ever we visit!

Day 17: Adéu Barcelona, bonjour Carcassone

Today we had two sad tasks ahead of us: fare-welling Barcelona, and fare-welling Shaz and Ken.  But no tears, we will meet again soon.  Maybe in Florence, and definitely in Paris!
After breakfast and goodbyes, we made our way to the airport using the Aerobus.  Very easy, cheap and quite comfortable.  At the airport we grabbed a coffee and waited around a bit as the appointment to pick up our car for the next part of our journey was a little way off still.
We were picked up by a minibus and taken to collect our car, a cute brand new Peugeot 208 Auto.  Um, wait, that’s a manual.  The guy asks if that’s OK.  I answer "yes, yes, no problem."
"My car at home is a manual.  But an auto is what I ordered."
Why would it be a problem? I have to drive a car on the wrong side of the road, with road signs I can’t even read, with all the controls being on the wrong side of the car, in a country where I don’t even know which way is north half the time; and now I have to think about changing gears with my right hand. Sure, no problems at all…

Day 16: Pintxos! Xurros! Votives and more Barcelona!!

It was a bit cooler this morning.  Looking out the window across our terrace and seeing a sky full of chattering swallows and the sound of church bells ringing across the city was just beautiful. Today's plan was bus turistic again, this time the blue route.  For the first stop, we hopped off at Gaudi’s Homage to God,  La Sagrada Familia.  An amazing homage, spectacular and grandiose in vision and size, a work in progress since 1882, and not likely to be completed for another decade or so.  God mustn’t have thought too much of it though, because Gaudi ended up getting hit by a tram and dying a few days later, mistaken for a vagabond.  :-(

Day 15: Gaudy Gaudi and Magic Fountains - Barcelona!

I was tasked with being the tour guide during our Barcelona visit.  The bar had been raised pretty high with Ken’s London and Edinburgh itineraries; I quickly knocked a plan up on the last couple of nights in London, and today it would be put to the test.

Michelle and I had a simple breakfast at Bar Castells on the corner down from our apartment: cured ham in a baguette with americano coffee and juice, while we awaited Ken and Shaz’s arrival.

The itinerary didn’t really make it much past breakfast when we decided to catch the Bus Turista to get a good all round overview of the city.

We walked up La Rambla to Plaça de Catalunya and queued up for the bus.  There were a lot of people, and everybody wanted to sit on the top deck.  We let the first few buses go, and it wasn’t too long though before some brand new, and more importantly, empty buses rolled up.  Then we were off.

Day 14: From Gatwick to Barcelona

Today was our last day in London.  Sad face :-( Today we had to say goodbye to Shanny.  Huge sad face :-( :’(
Shaz, Mich and I walked along the Thames to London Bridge Station and had breakfast under the Shard while we waited for Ken to join us.  Sliders for breakfast is OK, yes?  Actually it was 12, so technically it was lunch, and Pimm’s O’Clock!  I got my first Pimm’s and it was really delicious.  Into Dan Murphy’s again when I get home :-)

Day 13: Nipple biting snakes, labyrinthine mazes, glorious gardens - Hampton Court

Today we were very privileged to not only have Shanny all to ourselves, but also to have Shanny as our very own private tour guide for Hampton Court, where she would be sharing her love of all things Tudors with us.

Day 12: Urinal Games, college pranks and dog's seeing ghosts

London’s damn Tube strike was still on. So for our trip to Cambridge we caught a double-decker bus to Waterloo.  As luck would have it, the northern line was still operational so we could tube it quickly to King’s Cross Station.
I grabbed our tickets and within minutes we were on the Cambridge Express, and almost as quickly, getting off the train at Cambridge less than an hour later.  Too easy!

We walked downhill into town and after a quick wander around, grabbed a pretty decent burger at Ta Bouche for lunch.  Now, I wouldn’t normally share any toilet experiences, but the loos downstairs at Ta Bouche were certainly a little novel, at least in my experiences to date.  You see, the urinals all had screens above them, and little sensors in the urinal to allow you to control a game with, well…
Read about it here on Wikipedia

Day 11: London Gardens and Pubs

Today I decided to do a little exploration around London.  Shaz and Ken were back at work, and Michelle wanted to have a quiet day.  I had a rough idea where I wanted to go, including visiting a few of the London parks so off I headed.
Today was a tube strike so I decided to bus it to Waterloo.  Now buses aren’t the quickest way around London at the best of times, and during peak hour when there are no tubes running they pretty much were hardly moving.  So I got off at London Bridge and decided to walk it.
Since I’d walked the south side of the river before, I crossed over and walked along the north bank.  It was an enjoyable if uneventful stroll: passing morning joggers, like-minded tourists and families, and suited workers grabbing their morning coffees.

Europe Day 10: Tower of London

Today we spent the entire day exploring the Tower of London.  All Day.  From about 10 in the morning, all the way through till 5PM.  I think I saw pretty much everything.
Let’s see….
I’d bought the tickets online the night before to avoid queuing, and so I had to pick them up from Tower Hill.  This meant that I ended up walking around the entire periphery of the Tower of London site.  But I didn't have to queue.  So entire wall of Tower of London from outside.  Tick.

Europe Day 9: Edinburgh

Today we were leaving Edinburgh to head back to London, but that did not mean we couldn't still make the most of our remaining time here.
We had lived right across the road from this amazing church, and yet in our time here had not once visited inside, so that was definitely the first thing on today’s agenda.
Not only was this a really beautiful church inside, with some lovely stained glass windows, but as an added bonus, the choir was warming up for the Sunday Mass. What an amazing sound; sends chills and shivers right through me.

Europe Day 8: Edinburgh

The Deacon House Café.   A most fine place for breakfast: close, full of history, and full of scones.  Drambuie scones.  I mean, could there ever be a finer scone, ever?

Europe Day 7: Edinburgh

Today was an early start.  I like the early starts.  I’m getting up around 6 in the morning anyway, and getting out and about early means that so much more can be seen and done in a day.
Today we were off to Edinburgh with Shanny, Shaz and Ken.  Ken was again playing tour guide, a role he takes on with great enthusiasm and passion.
Rather than catching the tube, it was decided to take a black cab to King’s Cross Station, since there would be the 4 of us travelling today.  Shan had to work today, so would be travelling up tonight.

Europe Day 6: Bath to Canterbury

Today we had to get from one side of the country to the other.  Now back home that would be a 4 day journey.  Here it was only about 3 and a bit hours, but it still meant a light breakfast and a good bit of driving.

Europe Day 5: Cotswolds to Bath

Next stop was somewhere starting with ‘B’.
Let’s see, Bourton?
Banbury?
How about Broadway?  Yes.  Broadway was a very large town, however the inner city was a beautiful village in the same style as the other Cotswolds towns we had so far visited.

Europe Day 4: Cotswolds

Today we were off in our Zippy car for a taste of England outside of London.
Opening the boot to load our luggage, we found the previous renter had forgotten theirs.  A bag full of ciggies.  Blugh.  Why couldn't it have been chocolates?
Back to back double-decker buses blocked our view from Waterloo Bridge; peak hour London was very slow going til we eventually got out into the suburbs.
On the motorway we made good time as we passed green hills and paddocks of sheep and drove on the outskirts of Oxford.

Europe Day 3: London

Michelle and I were up early to try and get some internet time in.  The internet at Shaz and Ken’s is pretty much broken, so we thought we’d head down to Starbucks.  Luckily they weren't open and we went to Caffe Paridiso, on Shad Thames for breakfast instead.  Shaz and Ken joined us a bit later, and after we finished coffees and breakfast we caught the tube to Hampstead.

Europe Day 2: London

This morning we walked downriver and mud larked again with the low tide. Though there was much less to find at this point of the river, we still managed to pick up a couple of broken smoking pipes and pieces of old crockery.