Thursday, May 28, 2009

Mick and Liv in London!

A short break in Europe images now and here's a few from our catchup with our good friends Mick and Liv during their time in London.











We found some huge chairs:





Mick and Big Ben:









Great to see you guys after so long, looking forward to the big catchup in Brixam!

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Europe Trip Images

17 days through The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and France. Far too much to see properly in that time, but it was still a great trip. Weather was outstanding but for some drizzle in Amsterdam and at the Rhine Falls. Food up and down, Italy and France are certainly higher priced than elsewhere. We stayed in a Fawlty Towers, we saw amazing views atop a mountain in Lucerne and practiced a little local languages along the way. Many memories to recall for many years to come, can't wait to get back.

So I'm now getting stuck into the photos from our recent trip through western Europe. Starting with the ferry ride over to Calais from Dover:





Our first stay was in Amsterdam, first stop the pub where we had a beer with some muppets and a cat:







Wondering around Amsterdam, we came across this character:







And Bethie took some video of him that you can see here.



Bethie can't decide!:



Bikes aplenty as expected:






Check out my flickr pages for more Amsterdam images, there's too many to put all on the blog so I'll be including a link to flickr with each blog entry.

Stay tuned for Cologne and Rhineland, coming soon.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Ahh, Parree....

Yup, in one of ,y favourite cities again. Didnt take long to suss the metro, had an expensive and not-quite-great meal, but it was in Paris so eh, shouldnt complain.

Up the tower and through the Louvre tomorrow then a nice dinner and good rouge (hopefully) then onto London. Shall write up more with each set of photos in the coming weeks. Were both really looking forward to catching up with Mick and Liv then Mark and Kate. :)

Monday, May 18, 2009

Bonjour!

Greetings from Nice, France. We've not found cheap internet till now.

Briefly, Rome was packed, Colleseum great, Sistine Chapel a let down due to low light and idiots taking photos with flash and talking loudly, Venice was magical, must go back to just be there. Burano is wonderful and a seafood lunch had there, Capri busy but great views. Pompeii was surreal; didnt get to the ampitheatre but still good walk around the preserved ancient city with the Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii soundtrack on the iPod - thanks again G. Amazing place, a trip highlight for me.

Nice is pretty magical too - got our feet wet in the Mediterranean today, also met Jo and Jason who were here for the weekend. The village of St Paul is another trip highlight, the Rothschilds 1977 was only 490€...

Perfect weather most of the time, hotels up and down, food up and down but usually exxy. All too brief a trip but a good taster of what to do again when we come back, eventually. Italians can be very nice but can also scam with best of them. More on that later.

More detail when we get back to London along with the stupid number of photos ive taken.

Lyon tomorrow night then Paris for 2, then back to Ealing. Such is life.

Au revoir.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Greetings from Luzern, Switzerland.

Amazing scenery here, much image processing to do upon returning to London. The rail and cable car ride to the top of the second highest mountain here was spectacular indeed. An hour was simply not enough time to soak it all in. Hopefully I can stitch together a a few good panoramas. We have indulged in some Swiss chocolate (the Jack Daniels block has real JD in it, superb! Quilly, yours in on the way :) Our chalet has a great view of the alps, a church bell rings nearby and almost as loud are the cow bells. All a bit surreal.

Amsterdam was fun again, would love to spend more time there. Again missed out on the Van Gogh Museum and Heinekin tour, such is life when traveling on limited time. Hotels have been comfortable, food good too. Enjoyed the hospitality of a German at our hotel bar after Köln. Many an Australian story swapped. Köln was just a short stop, the cathedral was impressive, but it's a pretty modern and shopping oriented town it seems. Might have needed to see other parts. Our Rhine River cruise was fabulous. We had our own little Shanghai/Tokyo on board, so lots of ignorant pushing in and general rudeness. A surprise was the level of flatulance from our Japanese friends, quite astonishing. Their demeanour suggests we imagined it, but I assure you we didn't. (Just on that, the number of Ausfahrt signs around these parts is no end of amusement to Beth, so expect a few photos of those later on...)

Stopped for lunch yesterday at a cuckoo clock shop in the Black Forest. Another amazing area to drive through, trickling brooks and obviously, forest. Called black because of the lack of light when walking through, thanks to the canopy of trees. Though I did notice many of the trees were dark in colour, so i'll leave it up to you.

Have taken out a mortgage to do many of the not-included excursions in Roma, Sorrento and Paris. Our tour guide wisely said, "Time lets you make money, but money doesn't let you make time." Many more amaying sights to see, will hopefully blog again soon.

I'm having a wonderful time seeing this part of the world with my girl by my side, I'm a lucky man :)

Auf Wiedersehen! (I know that's German, but 70% of Swiss speak Swiss-German, so there)