Chocolatey Brugge

Our last full day in Brugge was cold, windy, and rainy. We started the day again with that wonderful chocolate spread on bread & croissants and were generally lazy. We eventually headed out with the mission of buying chocolate. Belgium is, after all, pretty much the chocolate capital of the world, and we hadn't really eaten very much belgian chocolate yet.

The first shop we stopped at was Chocaholic. We bought a few chocolates as presents there, and a box of various pralines to sample ourselves. (It made the flight home a bit more tolerable). They were also advertising cheap hot chocolates, and as it was such a miserably cold and drizzly day outside, we bought some. What they served us surprised me at first; a cup of hot frothed milk, and one of their hot-chocolate sticks that they also sold separately. Basically it's a paddle pop stick with a chunk of chocolate on the end, and you stir it round and round in your cup of hot milk until it has all dissolved.

It was like drinking hot melted chocolate. It was divine. I have resolved to figure out how to replicate it at home!

We then window-shopped at a few more chocolatiers before stopping in at Dumon. They had less variety and were a bit more expensive than Chocaholic, but we bought a little block of their chocolate for comparison's sake before going off to find lunch.

Afterwards we came across a lolly shop filled with far more than just chocolate, and we found actual cuberdon lollies! We had a laugh when we realised our waitress from the night before had probably mistranslated - rather than nose-shaped, they were cone-shaped. Andre reasoned that was still basically nose-shaped. So we had to buy a bag of those as well. Andre also bought three belgian beers to sample at a local shop. Unfortunately they were unrefrigerated, however when we got back to the hotel we just set them outside on the window sill and by the time we returned to our hotel after tea, they were cold enough to have one or two!


We had tea at the same place we had waffles on our first day where Andre had a flemmish beef stew made with belgian beer and I had belgian sausage. And of course, for dessert: waffles! As we'd had the Brussels (thick, very light and crispy) waffles previously, we had the normal 'sugar' waffles this time. I got strawberry sauce and Andre had the same butterscotch sauce I had previously.

I was disappointed with the waffle. Andre said his was good, but mine wasn't cooked properly and was still a bit doughy in the middle. Overall not that impressed by my belgian waffle experience. We headed back to the hotel via the Minnewater again to take more photos of swans and ducks, and packed our bags ready to leave first thing in the morning.

Ypres Salient Tour

3 June

The next morning I had an email from the first tour company saying they didn't have any space in their tours for that day, as I had expected. So I called the second tour company, Quasimodo tours, and fortunately the man I spoke to said yes, they had space! We arranged to be picked up in front of the train station just minutes down the road from our hotel at about 9am. Breakfast was only served at our pension from 8:30, and I wanted to find an ATM to get cash out as I wasn't sure if we could pay for the tour on card, so we skipped the pension breakfast to get to the train station early enough to find an ATM. It was a cold and drizzly day so we had our jackets and scarves on for the first time in weeks. We had no problems locating the ATM to get cash, then went inside the train station to find somewhere to get breakfast. The first thing we saw when we walked in was a little fast-food type bakery, so I got a chocolate pastry & fruit juice and Andre got a muesli, strawberry & yoghurt breakfast cup. We ended up at our meeting spot with heaps of time to spare.

A little after 9 we were picked up by Phillip in the Quasimodo bus. He had already collected a few people, and we picked up about another fifteen from another meeting point nearby. In total there were around 20 people on the tour, not small but not too big either. The tour ended up being very good. It was all located around the Ypres salient, about 30 - 45 minutes' drive south of Brugge, depending on the weather and roadworks. Phillip and his Australian wife have been running these tours for over ten years (I think he might have even said twenty years?) so he knew a lot about the area and World War I. I had read a lot about the three battles of Ypres and the battle of Passchendaele before we went, but didn't really understand how it all fit together. He painted a perfect mental picture of how the war started, how the Belgians were caught up in it, and the part the battles of Ypres played in it all.

He took us to see Hill 60 where the Australian 1st Tunnelling Company dug and maintained the tunnels below the German front at Passchendaele ridge during the Battle of Messines (featured in the movie Beneath Hill 60). We were able to see a british bunker there, and the remains of a German bunker that has now mostly sunk underground into the muddy clay soil. There are still a lot of undetonated munitions in the ground, so he warned us that we might want to stay to the well-worn path, although there are no fences restricting where you walk. Beside Hill 60 there was an Australian war memorial, which ironically, now bears holes from World War 2 bullets. We also saw several Commonwealth war cemeteries, the largest being Tyne Cot near Passchendaele.

We also saw another at Polygon Wood, the site of a significant battle involving Australian troops, where there now stands a memorial dedicated to the 5th Division of the Australian Imperial Forces, which I thought was the division my great-grandfather's cousin served in, but it wasn't. He was in the 3rd Division, which did still fight alongside the 5th Division in, among others, the Battle of Messines and the 3rd Battle of Ypres, which included the Battle for Passchendaele, the 'suicide mission' where the allies decided to launch an assault on the Germans, rather than the other way round as had been the case for the first two Battles of Ypres (which turned out to be an utter catastrophe).

We also saw the Canadian war memorial, 'The Brooding Soldier', possibly one of the best war memorials in Belgium, and the German Langemark War Cemetery. Unlike Commonwealth war gravestones, German gravestones are black rather than white (a condition of the Treaty of Versailles). They also normally lie flat on the ground, not upright, and this particular cemetery is modelled not like a garden (like the Commonwealth ones often are), but is covered in plain grass and tall oak trees, a german symbol for strength.

The trip also included a visit to the Hooge Crater museum (the crater itself has since been filled in) where we had lunch (somewhat disappointingly, just a sandwich, but it was included in the price so can't complain too much) and to Ypres where we saw the Menin Gate, engraved with the names of Commonwealth missing soldiers from WWI bar the New Zealanders (who requested their names be recorded at memorials located at the actual battle sites). We also saw one of the few restored trenches in the area and even that has not been very well restored. Our guide Phillip was very critical of the poor effort the Belgians have put in to conserving their trenches and bunkers, in comparison with countries like France that have done a very good job. Belgium has now realised the opportunities they have missed out on and is now scrambling to recover and restore as much as it can (I think he said they are even digging and building new trenches), spending much more than they would have originally if they had just restored trenches and bunkers as they discovered them. I think he said there are only two restored trenches in the Ypres Salient area.

Phillip also took us to a farm off a side-road to show us some of the 'iron harvest', the various shells that farmers still, reasonably regularly, recover from their fields. Belgians recover, on average, 200,000kg of munitions each year, one third of which is still live. They just leave it by the side of the road for the military to recover, which can take a few weeks! As a result, these shells just sit by the road for anyone to come and look at and take photos of. One lady in our group asked, "so how do you know these won't blow up right now?" Phillip looked at her, at the shells on the ground, then back up at her and shrugged and said "I don't really! But they've been there for 90 years and haven't blown up yet so they're probably ok. I wouldn't go throwing them around though!" I loved it because I thought there was no way in the world that would ever happen in Australia!

Despite getting very wet feet from walking around in sodden fields in perpetual foggy rain all day, we had a very good trip. Not only did we see some of the most important Commonwealth WW1 sites, but Phillip was very knowledgeable and seemed to know pretty much everything there is to know about Belgium and the Commonwealth's involvement in WWI.

That night we decided to have our anniversary celebratory dinner, and 'went out' for dinner at the restaurant right next door to our hotel. Andre had marinated pork ribs with mashed potatoes, and I had sugared ducks leg served with roasted potato and baby carrots. The ribs were a bit dry, but the mashed potatoes were excellent. My duck's leg was very well cooked, the best duck I've ever had - not at all dry, I kept referring to it as chicken by mistake. The veggies were also very tasty. For dessert Andre had cuberdon ice-cream and I went with what belgians know best and had chocolate mousse. At first we didn't know what cuberdon was, so we asked the waitress who took our order.

"It's, uh... hmm, I am not sure how to say in english... it's a lolly, it's very flemmish, it's.... umm, I am not sure how else I can describe it... it is nose-shaped, it's a nose-shaped lolly." Intrigued by this, Andre decided to go ahead and order it anyway.

It was a very, very familiar flavour, but we couldn't pick it for the first ten minutes or so. It was a pinky-purple coloured ice-cream with crushed musk lollies on top. After a while, I picked it - "fairy floss! The good fairy floss, like from The Show, not the free stuff you get at O-week. Raspberry! Pink raspberry fairy floss!" And that's exactly what it tasted like. The mousse was also very good, though perhaps not quite as set as I'm used to.

Overall it turned out to be probably one of our favourite days out of the entire trip!

Brugge

2 June

Our first day in Brugge turned out to have beautiful weather. Breakfast was a little bit odd, they only served various breads with spreads - white & wholemeal bread, raisin bread, toast, bread rolls and croissants. No cereal, fruit, yoghurt etc. But they did have an amazing chocolate spread. It tasted just like my favourite chocolate spread which was the stuff Woolworths' homebrand used to make about fifteen years ago before they added hazelnuts.

We first decided to visit a local brewery which has now been operating for six generations, De Halve Maan (The Half Moon). We took a guided tour of the brewery, with the traditional beer-making methods explained. It was a pretty interesting tour as far as breweries go and they had some good displays with a lot of the old equipment retained. After some beer tasting at the end (I don't like beer at all, so Andre had mine), we had waffles and ice-cream for lunch. We got Brussel waffles, which are much thicker than the ones we typically have in Australia, but very light and crunchy. I had butterscotch sauce on mine and Andre had chocolate on his. They were quite good but I didn't think they were anything especially better than the ones we make ourselves at home.

Afterwards we went to the Choco-Story Museum which was pretty interesting. It's a museum about the history of chocolate, featuring the Aztecs, Mayans and Spanish, its development from being a popular drink for the European upper class into a common sweet, the different equipment used in its production and consumption over the years, how it is made, how it is grown and about fifty years' worth of different chocolate packaging. It also had a chocolate-making demonstration where you got to eat the final product, but it was a hazelnut praline so Andre got the rest of mine. Europeans seem to have this obsession with putting hazelnut in all their chocolate!

After the chocolate we walked across to the northern end of the old town to see some old-school windmills. None of them were open, but it was interesting just to get to see them. Then we walked back into the town to take a boat ride through the canals. Brugge is very pretty from the water, and one bridge we went under was so low we had to duck our heads! There are also lots of swans, ducks and geese around the canals in Brugge, and many of them had ducklings and we even saw a cygnet!

That night at home I checked my emails to check the details of a battlefields tour I had booked for the next day. Or so I thought. Once I read the email, I realised the tour was supposed to have been that day. Whoops. So I raced off a very apologetic email to the tour company, and tried to figure out how I was going to organise a replacement tour within two days. In my email I asked if they happened to have any places on their Sunday tour, but when I went back and read my original emails requesting a booking, I noted that they didn't have any space on the Sunday or Monday. Hmmm. I had a look at the pamphlet for another company I had considered booking with, and they said that we could call anytime between 7:30am and 10:30pm. It was just past 10:30pm by that point, so I decided I'd call them first thing the next morning to see if they had any spaces on their Sunday tour, as they didn't run tours Mondays.

Munich to the Rhine Valley

29 & 30 May
We did not pre-book our tickets from Munich to Bacharach in the Rhine Valley as we had checked on a ticket machine previously and found the necessary trains ran reasonably often. So we decided we would take an afternoon train to give us a bit more time in Munich.

In the morning we first went to the hoptbahnhof, or central station, to put our bags in lockers. We also bought our tickets then so that we could make any necessary seat reservations. From there we went back to Marienplatz to explore the markets that had been closed the previous two days. We bought some cherries and a beer for André but before long it began to rain. We headed back in the direction of the train station, ducking into a few shops along the way to escape the rain and buy a few more presents and souvenirs.

Because the rain seemed to have set in, we went back to the Hoptbahnhof early, where we found a post office to send another parcel back to Australia. Lucky we did go back early, because there was quite a line up in the post office. After that it was pick up the bags, get some lunch and find our train to Bingen am Rhein. We switched trains in Bingen, to a local train that took us the last twenty minutes up the valley to Bacharach.

Bacharach is only a very little town, with one main street a few hundred metres long and half a dozen smaller back roads. It's filled with old half-timbered buildings and has vineyard-covered hills behind it, with a castle on top (which is now a youth hostel). Our pension was located down one of the side streets, and was a half-timbered building built onto the old city wall. The room was very spacious and was actually a triple room just for the two of us, and we got a private bathroom again! The first night we had dinner at a small restaurant just down the road from our pension, and sat by the front window which opened onto the cobble stoned street outside.

For our first full day in Bacharach we walked up the hill behind our pension to see the castle Burg Stahleck. It wasn't a long walk, and along the way we also saw the ruins of a gothic chapel. Once we got to the castle we couldn't go in to see too much, as it's a youth hostel, but they did have a courtyard we went into. It gave a good view of the valley below and part of the castle exterior.

We didn't spend long there before catching a train north to the little town of St Goar. We explored the idea of taking a ferry, but it was so slow, didn't run often from Bacharach and even less often in the direction we wanted, and was a lot more expensive than the train. We went to St Goar primarily for the complex of ruins of the castle Burg Rheinfels which stands on the hill above it. Part of the castle has been restored into a 4-star hotel now, and part into a restaurant and gift shop. Otherwise it stands in ruin, but when you purchase entrance (only 4 euros) you are given a leaflet which outlines two routes around the complex, explaining what each area was. The directions on it weren't always easy to follow, but we did both paths around the castle and ended up with a good understanding of how the castle once was. The ruins are in pretty good condition, with a lot of rooms, tunnels, towers and passageways still intact.

We spent most of the day at Burg Rheinfels and watched ferries go by on the river while we waited for the next train back to Bacharach. Dinner was at a restaurant with an open courtyard surrounded by half-timbered buildings where we were appropriately German and André had pork roast while I had what I think were pork sausages and fried potato. We finished the day with gelato! I had mango and lemon which was very good, but still not quite Giolitti's!

Canoes, Puppets, Trdelnik & Mead

24 May

For our second day in Cesky Krumlov, we decided to start the day with a canoe down the Vltava River that runs through the middle of the town. I read before we left that it was a popular activity and Daniel reinforced that during our drive.

He explained there are a lot of camp sites placed along the river, and people are able to row between campsites, set up camp for the night, then move on the next day. Some companies offer arrangements where they have everything you need at the campsite, so all you need with you as you row is yourself, a wallet, and perhaps some clothes. Alternatively you can be relatively self-sufficient and take your own tents, food etc in your boat. Daniel told us you used to be able to pull up and camp wherever you like, and while you still can, they are trying to discourage it and encourage people to stay in camp grounds.

Obviously we couldn't do a multi-day rowing trip, but we ended up choosing a one-hour trip through the town itself. The companies will either drop you off elsewhere and you row back, or you leave from the town and they will pick you up. Other popular trips are to be taken up river and you row back to the landing (about 1 to 2 hours) or to leave from the landing in town and row to a town downriver (about 3 to 4 hours).

I wasn't keen to take up most of the day with the rowing trip, but André wanted to row through the town itself, something we couldn't really do with the 1 to 2 hour trip because the landing place in town was before you got a chance to go through most of the town or past the castle. So we just went with the short town row. It was very enjoyable though and didn't require much work because the river flows quite smoothly. For people who come from upriver, there are a few little weirs which have little canals built beside them for the boats to traverse the weir. Those are mostly upriver from where we left though, so we didn't go through any of those. There would normally be one for us to go through, but it was being reconstructed so we had to get out, carry the canoe below the weir, then get back in the water. The day before we watched a group try to take their 6-person raft over the weir itself which ended pretty disastrously (getting stuck, people falling out backwards, hitting rocks, filling up with water etc). But we and the two guys nearby who were watching it happen were all laughing (the American blokes thought it was hysterical). What's worse is that they did this straight after they saw a raft of their friends get stuck doing the same thing! André and I bet they were either American or Australian. While we were eating dinner at the hospoda, the same group turned up to the hostel next door, returning from their rafting trip, and it was all we could do to stop ourselves bursting out laughing when we heard their Australian accents. Yup.

So, we went rowing the next morning with nowhere near the same amount of trouble. Afterwards we did a bit of souvenir shopping and visited a puppet museum where we also got to play with a few traditional marionettes. We found some wine called 'André', so obviously we had to buy a bottle of that, and we had lunch at Deli 99, linked with Hospoda 99 and the Hostel 99 next door! While shopping we decided we needed to have another trdelnik, but this time we had one with chocolate. As well as having sugar and cinnamon on the outside, the inside was coated with a nutella-like chocolate spread (but not too hazelnutty so I didn't mind it). André also had some mead, which he quite liked. Before dinner we walked up behind the castle to see the castle gardens which we didn't get to see the day before. It was a combination of manicured flower beds and tall forest trees, ending with a large pond covered in lilies with ducks. André was especially excited when he spotted a squirrel in the gardens, a much darker variety than we saw in London.

All up, we decided we very much liked Cesky Krumlov. It had great food, interesting history, entertaining culture and activities and overall, very cheap!

Cesky Krumlov

Unlike most first-time visitors to the Czech Republic, our czech destination was not Prague, but rather a little town of about 14,000 people in the southern state of Bohemia called Cesky Krumlov. We picked it because I was looking for a smaller destination to break up all the cities we would be visiting, wanted to see somewhere in the Czech Republic, and because I saw pictures of it on Trip Advisor and loved it.

It ended up being possibly one of our favourite places. We spent three nights there, and on our first full day had a lazy start (hooray for sleep ins!) before spending most of the day exploring the castle that towers over the old city. There is actually more to Cesky Krumlov than the old city, but it's a bit further away.

The castle doesn't really look like a castle, possibly because it's passed through a few owners who have added their own touches and because it was never a defensive fortress of any sort, but more of a palace. There are several entry fees, depending which parts of the castle you want to see. We bought the Cesky Krumlov card which ended up being a waste of money for us because we didn't go to enough of the attractions on it to make it worth the price, but we ended up only being 50 crowns down each, or about $2.50. But the card got us into the castle tower and museum free. The museum was interesting, but we didn't spend a lot of time in there because we had to catch another tour. The tower gave a good view over the old town and river so was a good opportunity for photos.

We also took two tours of the castle (neither of which the card covered)- a general tour and a tour of the baroque theatre. The theatre was the most expensive tour but also the shortest and you saw less than in the general tour. However, the theatre is special because it is one of only two baroque theatres in the world which still operate with their original sets and stage machinery. The other is in Sweden. Despite not getting to see a lot, we did get to go beneath the stage and see the timber machinery that moved the sets around, and some of the sound-effect equipment. While most of it is original, it has all been pulled apart, cleaned and repaired as necessary, then reassembled.

The general tour was also quite interesting, and as there was only André and me and two others, it was nearly a private tour. We saw bedrooms, dining rooms, sitting rooms, formal audience rooms where the royalty would have held audiences with people, and an elaborately painted mask ball ballroom. The walls are covered in paintings of people dressed for a masked ball, and the painter has specifically arranged each person to be looking at someone or something else in the room. So there are some interesting little stories between some of the painted characters around the room.

We had a very late small lunch after we came out of the castle- just a small burger to hold off the hunger until dinner! As we walked through the town, we stopped at a bakery to watch something being cooked that smelled amazing. We asked what it was and were told trdelnik. It was only 50 crowns so we decided to try one. The best comparison to something Australian I can think of is donuts. It's a dough that is rolled into a long log, then wrapped around a metal log and baked over heat so it forms a tunnel. So it's breadier than donuts, and baked, not deep fried. They can be served with a few different toppings, but most commonly it's sugar and cinnamon. Very tasty!

For tea we went to a 'hospoda' that I read about before we arrived (basically a cheap restaurant), Hospoda 99. The food was excellent, and cheap. André had chicken in a mustard sauce with potato dumplings (Daniel told us dumplings are a traditional Czech food) while I had a chicken and bacon salad, and we had a side of garlic bread. We both got dessert too- André had pancakes with raspberries and 'warm vanilla cream' (custard) and I had homemade sesame ice cream with chocolate sauce and 'caramel chips' (shards of toffee on top). The sesame flavour was a little odd to associate with ice cream at first, but I got used to it and it ended up being quite good. I also had hot chocolate which was excellent, and nearly as good as the one we got in Florence! André had a Czech beer and locally made liquer which had a very strong cinnamon flavour. And it all totalled less than $30! We returned to our pension very content that night.

Salzburg to the Czech Republic

The day we left Salzburg started early for Michelle and me as we woke early for her to catch an 8:30 flight. The night before, while we waited for the laundry, Michelle booked a taxi for the trip to the airport. So the next morning we got up, she finished packing and had breakfast (which she bought from a supermarket the day before as the hostel breakfast didn't start early enough), woke André up to say goodbye, and we headed out the front to wait for the taxi that was due to arrive at 7.

A few minutes after 7 and the taxi hadn't turned up. But then Michelle got a call from the driver who had clearly gotten confused and, we think, went to the other hotel on the cliff where our hostel was located. A few minutes later he turned up though, and she got to the airport without any other dramas.

I decided to go back to bed then because breakfast wasn't served until 9 anyway. When we did get up, we had time to finish packing and have breakfast and didn't leave until a bit after 10. We had arranged to take a shuttle bus from Salzburg to our next destination, Cesky Krumlov. It was a last-minute arrangement, but the cost was cheaper than a train, especially as we got a discounted last-minute deal, and the trip was simpler. We had arranged to be picked up in front of another hostel in town as vehicles aren't allowed up in the park where our hostel was (unless they have a permit which taxis like Michelle's did).

We were a little surprised to be met by a driver with a spacious car rather than an actual shuttle bus and we were the only passengers. Our driver, Daniel, was very friendly though, and eager to tell us all about his hometown of Cesky Krumlov. For only the second time on our trip, we had the opportunity to see the countryside from the road rather than from a train. As we drove, Daniel told us about how the Czech Republic is still working to recover from communism, and how the community in Cesky Krumlov is excited that tourists have begun to notice them. He was also very critical of the EU's demands that the Czech Republic adopt the euro within six years, especially considering the current condition of the euro.

Even from the car, we could see how communism has left its mark on the country. We passed an unused border checkpoint, and Daniel slowed down for us to take a photo of the relatively new EU Czech Republic entry sign, not the old checkpoint ("that is just ugly grey building!"). Many things also just look run down and haven't been maintained as well as in other countries and the trains are visibly much older.

We got to Cesky Krumlov just before 3pm, and Daniel dropped us right to the hostel where we had to check in for our pension (guest house). Check-in was easy enough, and the lady took us down the road, across the river and up a small hill to the pension we were booked into. There were five rooms on the guesthouse, each with its own bathroom (we hadn't had a bathroom to ourselves since Tignes!) and a shared kitchen and dining room. Our room was spacious and looked out onto rooftops of houses down towards the river, and a large high-set church across the river. Shortly after we dropped our things off, we went for a walk to get some groceries and have lunch. We were reminded just how cheap things are in the Czech republic when we bought a loaf of bread, 4 apples, 2 oranges, 1L juice, 0.5L beer, three yoghurts, butter, chips, and two muesli bars for around $15.

We chose a restaurant right on the town square (The Old Inn) for lunch where André had a salmon pasta dish and beer while I had marinated chicken with a large side salad and huge garlic bread for about the equivalent of $20. The food was excellent as well. Very happy with bellies full of excellent food for a good price we headed back to our pension. It was such a late lunch and such a large meal that we didn't even bother having dinner!

Salzburg

We got into Salzburg late afternoon. After a little bit of trouble figuring out buses we visited an Info Centre where a lady there pointed us towards the right bus and explained how to get to our hostel. We got off our bus at the bottom of a cliff, where we got on an elevator to the top of the cliff where our hostel was!

All did not go smoothly straight away though. The girl who was checking us in realised her boss had double-booked our room. We had booked a double room for André and me, and a dorm bed for Michelle. Somehow, they had double booked the only double room in the whole place. The girl was able to rearrange some bed assignments to at least have the three of us in the same room, and also offered us the first night free. With the offer of a free night-and the fact it had such a great view being at the top of a cliff behind the old town- we decided to stay. We didn't want to sit around looking for somewhere else to stay when we had somewhere cheap and interesting to stay anyway.

On our first night we took a bit of a walk around the park on the cliff where our hostel was situated. We found a small food outlet where we bought wurst hotdogs and André had a beer while Michelle and I shared something called an apple spritz. It turned out to be similar to appletiser, but not as sweet. We had other spritzes while in Austria and figured out they were just juices with mineral water. We had a bottled one that evening but often in restaurants they are offered as the juice alone or with mineral water as a spritz.

As we headed back to the hostel for bed we could hear music coming up from the old town below. Someone joked that it was the nuns rocking out, but we discovered the next morning that we had arrived in the middle of a music festival. It was all woodwind and brass bands playing a mixture of traditional music and covers of popular music like Queen. It was right in the middle of the old town, and meant there were lots of food stands set up. Our first day was also a Saturday, which meant there were the normal Saturday markets running. So we spent the morning looking through the markets and shops of the old town where we got an apfel bezel (apple pretzel) big enough for the three of us to share for morning tea, and then stumbled across the music festival while looking for the information centre. We stopped there and got lunch (wurstl, schnitzel, chips, semmel, beer and coke) from one of the stands and ate at one of the dozens of tables they had laid out in front of the stage. Clearly Europe doesn't have the same attitude to sun protection as Australia does- all the tables were spread out in the sun, which was actually a bit of a nice change after London and Paris had been so cold and drizzly and Florence and Venice's weather had been temperamental too. We also noted a lot of people in town still wear traditional dress. Most don't, but enough do that in a crowded shopping street you'll see several people walking around with lederhosen or drindles on, which we found quite amusing.

In the afternoon we went for a walk up behind the old town to see Nonnberg Abbey where scenes from The Sound of Music were filmed, and where the real Maria started her training. We could only walk around it, and didn't really recognise anything from the movie. We just decided we would have to watch the movie again when we get home! In our walk through the old town we had also seen the fountain where they filmed Maria's 'I have confidence' scene. Afterwards we crossed the river and walked along it to see Schloss Mirabell's gardens which Salzburg is famous for. A few other Sound of Music scenes were filmed there including the children and Maria singing 'Doe, a deer'.

We had a proper Austrian meal for dinner that night. André had Berner wurstl, which is a wurstl wrapped in bacon, while Michelle and I both had tirder gröstl, which is chopped beef and pork (we suspected these were beef and pork sausages) with chopped roasted potatoes served with a fried egg on top. Both meals came with a side salad which was served first (something we have found standard in counties with German influence) and was very tasty. It had cold potato in it too, and while that sounds weird with a green salad and I normally don't even like potato salad, it worked well.

Our first day in Salzburg already made it one of our favourite places.

Venice

Our stay in Venice was quite relaxed compared to some of the other places we stayed. There really isn't a lot to do in Venice and it's all contained in a small area close together. It's mainly gondolas, glass, masks and shopping, shopping usually related to the first three items on that list.

On our first day, the first order of business was to find a laundromat. We found one that wasn't self service and wouldn't have our washing back to us for two days. Fortunately as we were saying no and getting ready to leave, an English backpacker came in and told us about a normal self-service laundromat. We didn't have too much trouble finding it, and the machines were fast. While the washing was on we went for a wander and found a bakery/ confectioner who sold enormous meringues. We had seen large meringues before, but they normally looked like those grocery-store 'fake' ones. These looked like proper home-made meringues and were a bit cheaper, so decided to give them a go. And they were good! About the size of my hand, they were too big to eat all in one go so we had to save the rest for later. Michelle had a chocolate one, André's was plain and I had a strawberry one.

Most of the rest of the day was spent looking through markets and shops. We did the tourist thing andd went to see San Marco's Square, which I was thoroughly underwhelmed by. The buildings were all dirty, although it looked like they were in the process of cleaning them, possibly for the America's Cup which we saw being advertised everywhere. We found a great little place for lunch where André got pizza and decided it was the new best pizza he's had on the trip.

Just before tea we decided to go for a gondola trip. It was 80 euros, which was what we expected, and between the three of us not too expensive. It was late afternoon on a weekday, so while there were other gondolas out on the water, it wasn't too busy. It was very peaceful and relaxing and gave us the chance to see parts of buildings and areas we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

On our second day we spent half the morning first looking for a post office to send souvenirs home, and then when we discovered how poorly stocked they were, a shop that sold bubble wrap. We didn't find any bubble wrap so just used newspaper, but by then the post offices had closed anyway (about lunch time!). After having some lunch we bought ourselves leather gloves from one of the market stalls, as we had found a lot of places in Europe, while they might not be too cold during the day, can get quite cold at night, and neither André nor I brought gloves with us!

Afterwards we bought vaporetti (water bus) passes and headed over to Murano to see a glass making demonstration. I've seen glass blowing before but this guy also sculpted a glass horse for us which was impressive to watch. I was surprised to note many of the buildings in Murano look more modern than in Venice, and the streets are much wider with more space, and cleaner. It also seems very residential which also surprised me. We had a look in a few glass shops, and while I was surprised that a lot of the prices were not exorbitant, I also saw things for considerably more than I had seen them being sold in Venice. I might have actually bought one or two things if it weren't for the problem of carrying or posting them home! That evening we took a vaporetti up and down the grand canal for a bit of sight-seeing before having a late dinner at a restaurant right near our hotel. It seemed a bit touristy and pretty empty, but it was late and a lot of other places were closing! The food was good though.

The next day we moved on to Salzburg. We were having problems figuring out the connections online, so the day before we dropped by the train station to get a staff member to help us book the right trains. We ended up having to get a monorail from the main Venice train station to a larger transport depot, from which point we got on a bus to Villach in Austria.

When we arrived in Villach we spotted a post office, so I went in to send the parcel of presents and souvenirs while Michelle and André went to look for some lunch, agreeing to meet on the train platform. I sent off the parcel no problem, and headed back to the train station. I found the right platform, with our train already there, and waited for André and Michelle. And waited. And watched the hands on the clock tick by. Departure time. Doors began to close. I heard somebody yell, and saw Michelle and André running from the other end of the platform. I ran towards them, we hit the button on the closest door and it opened for us. Jumped on and the train began moving about one minute later as we walked through the train to find our correct carriage and seats!

Pisa to Venice

Back when I was still planning our trip, I thought we might go from Rome to Florence via Pisa, that is, get a train from Rome to Pisa, spend the day there, then get a train on to Florence for the evening. Well, with the booking of trains a few days before we needed to leave Rome, of course I forgot that plan. And we didn't have time to visit Pisa while we were in Florence. So, we reversed the original plan. We decided to visit Pisa before moving on to Venice. Pisa is not far from Florence, about an hour on the train, so even though it is west of Florence while Venice is east, it didn't cause any problems.


We had a bit of a late start to the day because we knew we didn't have a time that we had to be on the train. Trains run regularly from Florence to Pisa so we decided not to book one. We had another breakfast from the minimart in our campsite — croissants, yoghurt, bananas, juice, cereal — and eventually got onto a train to Pisa. We got to Pisa about lunchtime and actually had some difficulty getting to the leaning tower, which we really shouldn't have as it's basically down one road from the train station, but we followed a sign that must have been moved and so took a bit of a detour! We got there eventually though and walked around the tower and its other associated buildings like the church and baptistry. We didn't go into any of them or up the tower, but it was fun just to see them and take photos — of the buildings and of the scores of people lined up with their hands up in the air, having photos taken 'supporting' the leaning tower! We got a late lunch close by — between the three of us we shared a huge pizza, salad and fries and Michelle confused the poor waiter by ordering lemonade, which he wasn't familiar with, explaining it as lemon soda, which he did know, and then changing it to pineapple juice when I ordered one! The prices were very good, as most Italian food is, especially considering we were one street away from the leaning tower, although the drinks were a bit on the exy side, also something we have found is typical in many places where the food is cheap!


After a few hours in Pisa we had to be on the train back to Florence in time to catch a train on to Venice. Fortunately we had no train problems there, although for some bizarre reason the booking system for the Florence to Venice train did not let us choose our seats and assigned us two together and one further down the train. We assumed the other seats must have been all booked, but the carriage was 90% empty, including the seats beside Andre and me. It was nice to be back on a highspeed train though, as the trains to Florence from Rome and between Florence and Pisa were all lower speed regional trains. We pulled into Venice's St Lucia train station at about 8pm as the sun was setting. I was surprised to find Venice was a little cool, something I had not expected for a coastal (island!) town. One of our first impressions after walking out of the train station was how wonderful it was to be in a town where we wouldn't be subjected to sirens as we had in Florence, Rome, Paris and London, because there were no cars! (An impression that was blasted to smithereens on our last day, which I will get to later!) 

In most of the places we stayed, after about a day I began to get a basic feel for the area around where we stayed and had some inner navigational ability. I never achieved that in Venice, other than the street and square immediately at the end of our street! But with a map we found our accommodation easily enough and got checked in. We headed out for a late dinner and found a place close by with pretty cheap food, but true to previous experience, the drinks prices were through the roof. Andre decided to try a beer  —  I think I've only ever known him to drink beer about twice  —  and actually quite liked it, but it cost 7 euros. My main meal cost 8! And they added a 12% service charge on! 12%! Needless to say we didn't go back there during the rest of our stay in Venice, which I will blog about later, as it is now past 11 and I have to go to bed!

Florence

After five nights in Rome we moved up the coast to Florence. This was one of the simplest legs of the trip, just one train the whole way. We were in a compartment with four others (two small children shared a seat). It was a noisier, slower, older train than others we've been on, but the seats were more comfortable than some others.  We were a little worried at first that the train wasn't airconditioned, as Rome was pretty warm and when the train was stopped the airconditioning was off. But once the train started moving the aircon came through and it was all good.

Florence was very warm too when we arrived, probably about 30 degrees. We had some trouble finding our bus, as the bus stops had changed since the instructions we had were written. It was right by the train station though, and we found a news stand nearby that sold tickets. In many Italian cities you can't buy bus tickets on the bus and need to buy them beforehand, normally from tobacconists or newsstands. This can be a pain after hours or on Sundays when such places are closed, so it's good to buy a bunch at once if you know you're going to be taking a few bus trips.

We couldn't tell from the bus map if it stopped outside our caravan park or not, so we got off a stop too early at Piazzale Michelangelo. This wasn't a bad thing though, as the view from the Piazzale is excellent - and nearly matched by the view from the deck at the campsite. We only had to walk about another 200m (if that) to reach the campsite. We were staying in a three-bed permanent tent, about half way down the campsite (which is on a hill to the south of the historical centre of the city). From the tent there wasn't much view, but at the top of the campsite at the bar/restaurant the view was excellent. We spent our first afternoon at the Piazzale taking photos of the view and watching a few dozen kites, including one enormous one that would have been a good 5m squared, with tails. We got burgers from a snack stand for dinner (cheap but pretty lousy food) then spent the evening having drinks on the deck at the campsite.

Our first full day in Florence ended up being cold and drizzly. In the morning I bought some breakfast items from the campsite minimarket - chocolate-filled and jam-filled croissants (which we had discovered in our B&B in Rome), yoghurt, juice poppers, and cereal. This was our sole day to explore the city, so we spent time walking around, seeing the Ponte Vecchio, markets, Duomo, and other impressive buildings, and visited the Accademia (to see Michelangelo's David) and a Leonardo da Vinci museum. We decided to skip the Uffizi due to time contraints - we decided we'd seen enough art museums for now and were more interested in Leonardo da Vinci and specifically wanted to see David. Florence is a very pretty city, prettier than Rome. Rome is big and imposing and impressive, but Florence is pretty.

For dinner we had pizza and salad on our campsite deck - the pizza was reaonable, a good base but the toppings were a bit average, so still not as good as the pizza we discovered on our last night in Rome. The plastic 'walls' had been fastened down around the deck though due to the cold wind that had been around all day, so the view wasn't quite as nice as it had been the night before. We got hot chocolates after dinner, and WOW, they were the best hot chocolates ever! It was like drinking hot chocolate cream! We needed them as the evening was very cold. In fact all three nights in Florence were cold, something the locals told us was very unusual, which was unlucky as we were in a tent! Andre and I squished into one bed one night (we had a bunk bed and one single) to keep warm but it was a bit uncomfortable so the next night we went back to separate beds, though half way through the night I woke up so cold even with two blankets that I considered moving into his bed again!

For our second (and last) full day in Florence, we had booked a bus tour of the Tuscan countryside. We just had croissants for breakfast as the minimart wasn't open yet and I'd bought two packets the day beforehand, so we had spares! For our tour we met outside a cafe at 8:45am and drove out of Florence a little after 9. Our first stop was Siena, a medieval walled city. We were supposed to have an hour of free time before our guided tour, but due to some elderly americans who complained very loudly about going "too fast" and "not being able to see" the guide, we took much longer to get into the town centre (as it's car-free, the buses have to park outside and we walked in). This meant we only ended up with about half an hour of free time, so we didn't go very far. We then had a local take us on a tour of the town, through the cobblestone streets and into the elaborately decorated cathedral (covered in marble, including a parquetry-type marble floor, the only one of its type in the world). After the tour was lunchtime, where we had the option of eating at a place reserved by the guide with others from the tour. It was eleven euros each and basically all you can eat pasta, cold meats & cheese, salad, bread (served with olive oil and balsamic vinegar), wine and water so we decided it was a pretty good deal. It was a good opportunity to meet some of the other travellers on the tour, and we chatted with some Indians, Americans from Oklahoma and Canadians.

After lunch we left Siena and moved on to Monteriggioni, which can't even be classified as a village - it's really just a castle on a hill surrounded by farmland. We only had an hour there, enough time to climb the wall and look at the view over the countryside and look through the shops that now inhabit the castle walls, before we moved on to a winery for some wine and olive oil taste-testing which Andre had been looking forward to all day! We met some other Canadians there, Duy and Anita, and swapped gelateria recommendations with them - they were heading to Rome so we recommended Giolitti's, and they had just left Venice so recommended a gelateria there! I didn't mind the white wine that we tasted but wasn't a fan of either of the reds, but I never like red wine. We didn't buy any of the wine or oil there, but did buy some of the lavender honey that they also produce - I'm hoping we don't have too much trouble getting it back into Australia!

Our last stop was San Gimignano, another medieval walled town on a hill, known for its towers that can be seen from all across the countryside. Again we only had an hour there - not enough to explore it really as it is much larger than Monteriggioni and could be classified as a small town, but we did taste some of the gelato there and bought some postcards.

On our return to Florence we decided to try and find a restaurant that Duy had recommended for dinner. Easier said than done. It took us more than an hour as Andre had recorded the restaurant name on his phone, and his phone battery had gone flat. So we had to find a cafe with a power point where we could plug the phone in to check the restaurant details. That took long enough, but then Google Maps pinned the wrong spot on our map (even with the correct address), and TripAdvisor flatout gave the wrong address. We ended up finding it eventually though and we ended up not being extremely impressed. Andre said his steak was excellent, but Michelle and I got lasagna which, while it tasted good, had next to no meat in it and no tomato sauce at all - not sure if that's traditional or not, but none of the other lasagna we had in Italy was like that. We did have very tasty bruschetta though. The late dinner meant we didn't have a chance to do any laundry as we'd wanted and were up late clearing photos off our SD card onto Andre's phone.

We did enjoy our time in Florence, even though it was cold we liked semi-camping as something different to the B&Bs, hotels and apartments we'd had up to that point.

Rome & the Vatican

15 May

Apologies for the delay in updating! We have just left Florence and our accommodation there (a permanent tent in a caravan park) didn't have wi-fi - it was only accessible in their bar area, plus our days were quite busy!

But back to Rome. On our second full day in Rome (last Wednesday) we had booked tickets for the Vatican museums, having heard how very long the line can be. So off we headed for our 10:30 time slot. As we got closer the area was very busy as we expected, but as we neared St Peter's we began hearing people talk about tickets to see the pope. Sure enough, we had picked a morning when the pope was giving an address in St Peter's Square. This was both good and bad for us. It was on at exactly the time we were due to enter the museum, so this meant the queue for the museum was only about five minutes long. The bad part was, the queue was only five minutes long - so we had wasted an additional 4 euros each by pre-booking our tickets (thankyou catholic church for your ridiculous charges).

The Vatican museum was much bigger than I expected - we spent a good three hours in there. It had some impressive pieces in its collections and I particularly liked the hall of old maps and another hall of tapestries illustrating various bible stories, including some I didn't expect like Herod's massacre of all children under two in his effort to kill Jesus. However I also couldn't help but be a little disgusted by the enormous wealth that the catholic church has obviously put into relatively trivial things like the interior decorations of the building - frescoes, ornamental sculpture, etc.

The museum included a visit to the Sistine chapel, and although we had guards who were strict on their 'no photos' policy, we did manage a few photos. Michelangelo's paintings were quite impressive, although it looked to me like one or two down the far end actually seemed unfinished.

After the museum we went to have a look in St Peter's church itself. The line to get in was ridiculously long, and it was hot, so we decided to get gelato from a place nearby that I'd heard was good. It was a disappointment. My black cherry had that fake medicine cherry flavour and the caramel was more like vanilla with swirls of caramel through it. Note for anyone else: Old Bridge gelateria not worth it.

I was over walking by that point, so after looking round inside St Peter's for a while I went and sat outside while Michelle and André climbed the dome.

The next day we explored via Appia Antica, or the Appian way. It's a road that runs through southern Rome and is lined with roman ruins. Tip: most of it is not pedestrian friendly except for Sundays when it's closed to traffic. This seems absurd to me as one would think it's quite a popular tourist destination, but maybe it's not as there wasn't much in the way of food shops around either. So after much walking and re-routing we eventually made our way there. We should have taken advantage of the archeobus that runs that route, but somehow I hadn't heard of it before we got there.

We got there eventually though, and visited the catacombs of San Sebastian which were apparently the first catacombs used by the christians in ancient Rome. I didn't realise catacombs were also used by pagans and even after christians were no longer persecuted. After visiting the catacombs we walked along a more pedestrian-friendly section of the road (much of which still has the original roman paving) and saw a few other ruins including the mausoleum of Cecilia Metella. We debated whether to go across the park to see some aqueducts, but it would have required changing buses twice and still a bit of a walk, and we were also interested in seeing the Baths of Caracalla which closed shortly and were simpler to get to. So the baths won out.

I was actually a little underwhelmed by the baths complex, I think mainly because my expectations were too high. I had heard about how huge they were, and they weren't that big at all. The building was still impressive and appears to have been multi-storey, but compared to the Forum and Palatine Hill, they are nowhere near as extensive. The information boards did a good job of describing the original structure though, something that I found lacking in many other ancient roman sites.

We did so much waking that day we really were not up to eating out, so decided to eat in our room and buy something from nearby. While André went to put on a load of washing at a nearby laundromat, Michelle and I went looking for food. We found a great little place just down the road which sold the best and possibly cheapest food we had in Rome. We bought two meals for 9 euros each, and each contained a pasta primi (first course), secondi (meat-based second course) and a side of veggies. This means we took home a meal of lasagne, pork kebab with potatoes and peas, and an unidentified pasta dish, meatballs in tomato sauce and carrots. Between the three of us there were still leftovers and it was all very yummy.

For our final day in Rome, after a bit of a sleep-in we headed up to the Villa Borghese, a park to the north. This presented more of a dilemma than it should have. See, while Rome's metro system is not extensive at all, it's cheap (1 euro for a one-way trip) and we had a line running very close by our accommodation which would have taken us straight to the park. However when we turned up to the metro stop, we discovered it was closed for some reason and wouldn't be running again until 5. Wonderful. This meant figuring out buses, and do any of the bus stops have bus maps? No. We tried the bus operator's website from André's phone, and it was terrible. Purely by chance we came across a bus stop for a line that would take us to the park. The next bus was due in three minutes. Hoorah!

It was too full. We seriously could not fit on. Obviously as the metro was closed, everyone was on the buses, and the Italians are not as good at cramming onto public transport as Parisians and Londoners. Fortunately the next bus was only another fifteen minutes away, so we got onto that one, and after a 25-ish minute un-airconditioned ride we got there.

The park was quite pretty and had a wonderful look out. After lunch we hired a golf buggy to drive around and explore, and after getting a little lost initially, ended up spending about half an hour cruising around the park. We walked home via another gelateria which had good reviews. It was quite good though I found my lemon was a little too lemony (not sweet enough), and the caramel was more like butterscotch - yummy, but not quite what I was after. So Giolitti's remained our favourite. In accordance with this, I am fairly certain André intentionally took our route home past Giolitti's so that he could make our last gelato in Rome our favourite. As we had just had a gelato, we shared one between the three of us and each chose our favourite flavour, so our final gelato ended up having caramel, watermelon and pineapple.

Once we got home it was dinner time, so we decided to return to the same place we had bought dinner the previous night and try their pizza. We ate in the restaurant this time, and they sell their pizza by the kilo! It was very cheap and the best pizza we had in Rome, a great end to our stay there.

Food we wish we could bring home

Giolitti's gelato, specifically the mango, caramel, pineapple, watermelon and chocolate; the chocolate-filled croissants we've been having for breakfast in Rome; the banana and chocolate crepes from France (I'm totally going to make those though); cheese fondue from Switzerland (I can always make cheese fondue but I doubt it would be that good); the pizza we had for dinner last night (finally found excellent pizza in Rome!).

When in Rome

After our 'break'  in Lauterbrunnen, we headed south to warmer climates in Rome. While this looked like it would be our longest trip, it went much smoother than our trip to Lauterbrunnen, although we almost had to run for our change in Milan. We pulled in to platform 1  and had to find platform 11 in ten minutes instead of 25. Fortunately Milan's main train station is quite straight forward and we didn't have any problems finding it.

We got into Rome at 2pm, and our b&b was within walking distance of the train station. Fortunately the clouds only thought about raining and we got there dry. The address was easy enough to find but the b&b was not marked (it was an apartment building). Lucky for us another guest was leaving just as we arrived so was able to let us in and show us the way up.

The place is in central Rome on quite a  busy street, but is quiet enough at night time. Italians  are not big breakfast eaters so there is not a  large selection of breakfasts, but we've been having croissants with chocolate in them, juice, and André has coffee.

The first afternoon we decided to join a  free walking tour. It was not the same company we used in Paris, as they don't operate in Rome. While  it wasn't a  bad tour, it wasn't as good as the one in Paris. We saw the Spanish steps, the pantheon, Trevi fountain, and several other churches and monuments. We had dinner at a little restaurant near Trevi fountain -not too expensive but the food was average. Strike one for roman  pizza, although Michelle said her lasagne was reasonable. Afterwards we got gelato from a place recommended by our tour guide. I had  caramel and chocolate, Michelle had pineapple and lemon, while André had coffee, baileys and chocolate. It was amazing. It was like gelatified flavour, not flavoured gelato. I  would never have picked pineapple gelato but I  tasted Michelle's and it was fantastic. It's called Giolitti and is near the Prime  Ministerial house, if anyone wants to know!

That night while finding our way home we ended up going down the road  that leads straight to the Colosseum. We crossed a road, turned down another street and there it was in front of us! The street was scattered with other ruins too, and while stopping to take  photos we met another traveller, Sean, who is a Canadian working in the UK. We got talking for two hours and decided after midnight that we should meet up the next day!

So the next day we met up with Sean and spent most of the day looking through the Colosseum,  roman forum and Palatine Hill. I  didn't realise how extensive the complex on Palatine Hill is and we spent quite a  bit of time there. We spent a good three hours at the Forum and Pallatine Hill alone. I was surprised to learn the original roman senate building is still nearly entirely in tact.

In the afternoon we went to see Trajan's market. Waste of money. It was of average interest level, to me, especially as we'd just spent the  rest of the day at far more interesting complexes, and  it charged 11  euros when it had cost 12  for the Colosseum, Forum and Palatine  hill combined. It might have been OK if it only charged 5 euros perhaps, but at 11, I don't think it's worth  it. We visited another gelateria for afternoon  tea,  near the pantheon. They  were also very good but I  still preferred Giolitti's. I  had chocolate fondente and mango, Michelle had Mars bar and cookies, while André had coffee and chocolate, he thinks, but can't quite remember!

Dinner was at a  restaurant near the pantheon. At the same time was a protest with riot police, though the police only had to intervene for a  short time when a  few individuals got aggressive. From what we could gather the protest was something about cruelty to dogs, but we couldn't figure out exactly what was going on. Dinner  was pizza and cannelloni. The pizza was reasonable but still not amazing. Strike  two for roman pizza. The cannelloni was pretty good though. For dessert we took Sean back to Giolotti's and this time I  had mango and watermelon (the best mango gelato I've ever had, and the watermelon reminded me of the watermelon sorbet mum makes!),  Michelle had caramel and nutella, and André again had coffee with something else. It was another late night but it was an excellent day. I will update again later but for now I have to go  to bed!

Lauterbrunnen

As I  said when I  finished  off my last  post, we are currently in the Lauterbrunnen  Valley in Switzerland. The scenery here is amazing. Lauterbrunnen  is in the bottom of the valley, with huge cliffs hundreds of metres high on either side.  Then beyond those cliffs are mountains more than twice as high again.  From here at about 700m above sea level, we can see peaks over 3000m  high, and there are more over 4000m which we would be able to see if the clouds hovering over them would go away. There are 72  waterfalls in the valley, many of them glacial, and we can see one of the biggest, Staubbach  Falls, from our  window. Staubbach Falls  is nearly 300m  high, about the same height as Wallaman Falls, and is virtually a  single drop, except it falls onto rocks shortly before it hits the bottom.

Just getting here was an adventure in itself. First we missed our bus from Tignes  to Bourg St Maurice to catch our train by one minute. We called a  taxi instead and between the three of us the cost wasn't  bad, and the  driver was very friendly and acted as a  guide to the area for us  during the drive. Got the train from Bourg St  Maurice with no problems, but it got into Lyon ten minutes late, which meant our 18  minute changeover became 8 minutes. We found our next train with about 3  minutes to spare, which took us on to  Geneva in Switzerland. From Geneva we then had to buy another ticket to Lauterbrunnen  as  they were unreservable  trains. This was simple enough and we then headed  off to Bern. Our next train from Bern was  supposed to  be 20 minutes after our last one got in. However,  it got cancelled as someone jumped in front of  it and killed themselves before it got to our station (pretty  much my worst nightmare at train platforms).  This resulted in us having to wait another hour before the next one came along. We got into Interlaken, our  last stop before Lauterbrunnen, about  two minutes before 9. The next train to Lauterbrunnen left at 2  past 9. Did we make it off the train to the next platform in time? Of course not. So then we had  to wait another hour (in which time we walked into Interlaken to get tea). We finally got in to Lauterbrunnen  at about  twenty to 11. Fortunately our hostel was easy to find and the room key had been left out for us. The room is spacious, there is a  shared  kitchen and dining room and  we hardly see anybody else.

Yesterday we walked up the valley to  see the Trummelbach  Falls. It  is a glacial waterfall inside the cliff -  all you can see from the outside is where it comes spilling out at the bottom. However tunnels and caves have been excavated into  the cliff and lights have been installed,  so for a  price you can go in and see the falls making its way down through its own tunnels in the rock. It was pretty impressive and extremely loud. In the late afternoon we took a cablecar up to Murren  on the eastern side of the valley, but the clouds came over  to ruin the view. We did get a  bit of a  view though, and  it gave us great perspective as a little village on the western side that we'd  previously looked up at was now way below us,  yet  the mountains were still easily twice as high as we were. We had a very Swiss dinner at a hotel down the road- rosti with locally made pork sausage, cheese fondue and chocolate fondue. There is a well stocked supermarket nearby (unlike the supermarket at Tignes which was half empty), although small, so we've been able to make our own lunches and breakfasts. It also means we've been able to  buy a  few Swiss chocolates!

Today has been pretty lazy as we've mainly just wandered around the village, done laundry,  uploaded photos, bought postcards and took a little walk up the hill to eat our picnic lunch with a  view. Lauterbrunnen was chosen as a place to have a bit of a holiday from our holiday, so it's been nice and relaxing.