Homeward Bound

5 June

By Tuesday, 5 June, our holiday had essentially come to an end. We were due to return to London for one last night before getting on a plane to go home. We had a relatively early train, so we checked out at breakfast and went straight to the train station. Brugge train station is very easy to navigate and so we found our train without any problems.

From Brugge we took the train back to Brussels, where we arrived about fifty minutes before our Eurostar train back to London was due to depart. We went straight to border control because we knew it would take time as we were leaving the schengen zone (a group of European countries who allow free travel between borders - border control only applies when you are leaving the zone and entering a country not in the zone. Every country we visited was in the schengen zone, except the UK). We had a pretty long queue to wait in, but the staff were efficient and after asking a few brief questions about our travels (how long have you been in Europe, why are you going to London, where are you going after that) we were through. Then we had to queue to get up the escalators to the train platform, and after a bit of a mix-up about where we were sitting (the train came in the opposite direction to what was expected, so our carriage was down the other end of the platform) we were on the train. The people in our carriage took a long time to be seated, so a lot of us were stuck standing for the first ten to fifteen minutes of the trip while people messed around with luggage and seats.

The train ride was fairly uneventful and we arrived in London at about 12, realising after a text message from a friend in London (Sean, who we had met in Rome) that we were arriving just in time for the final festivities of the Queen's Jubilee weekend. If we'd had nothing else to do we would have been able to make it to somewhere along the procession route to see the royal family, however we had to get to Greenwich and check in to our hotel. By the time we recharged our Oyster cards which we'd kept from the last time we were in London, got the train out to Greenwich and checked into our hotel, we decided it was probably too late to get a good place to see the procession. So we just watched it on our TV in the hotel room!

For our last night we had chosen somewhere a bit flasher to stay - a 4 star hotel in Greenwich (which we still got a decent price on through a third party booking website). It was possibly the most comfortable bed we had the whole trip! Unfortunately I had booked it when we thought our flight the next day was leaving at 1pm, so would have plenty of time to get to the airport. However due to Michelle's scenario, we discovered it had been moved to 9:45am, so we would have to leave early to get to the airport on time. If I'd known it was an earlier flight I would have booked a hotel at the airport!

That night we met up with Sean for dinner. He took us to an english pub near Trafalgar Square which served cheap but yummy meals. Again, we stayed up late chatting for hours, but not as late as we had in Rome as Sean had to work the next day and we had to be up early for a flight and hadn't finished packing yet!

The next morning we were up early to head to the airport. The previous afternoon we'd used an online journey planner to figure out what trains we had to take to be at the airport by 8:45, an hour before our flight was due to leave. Nothing we had told us how early we had to be there, but if we were going to get there much earlier we would have had to wake up at 5! In hindsight we should have allowed more than an hour, but we'd only needed an hour when leaving Australia so I didn't think it would be any different flying out of England.

But of course, did our train get us to the airport by 8:45 as the journey planner said it would? No, it was slow, and only got us there minutes before 9. And then of course we realised that the trains come in to the South Terminal, and Vietnam Airlines operates out of the North Terminal, so we have to catch the light rail to the North Terminal. Fortunately we got to the platform about a minute before the next train came in so we didn't lose too much time doing that. We got to our check-in counter 40 minutes before the flight was due to leave, and of course it was a mad rush - check in had technically closed, so the airline staff rushed our check-in, gave us priority passes and directed us to take our baggage round to the oversized luggage drop-off to be fast-tracked to the gate. Our priority pass got us straight to security where there were only about two other people going through and we arrived at our gate just as they were commencing boarding.

Bacharach & Brugge

31 May & 1 June

Our second day in Bacharach also happened to be our wedding anniversary. As we had been to see castle ruins the day before, we decided to go and see an intact castle. We were tossing up between two near the little town of Trechtingshausen south of Bacharach, Burg Rheinstein and Burg Reichenstein. We decided on Reichenstein as it was a shorter walk from the town.

We actually ended up being a bit disappointed with it. They seem to be more interested in attracting functions, especially weddings, than tourists, although they do put out tourist promotional material, so I'm not really sure what their target audience is. There was absolutely no interpretive signage, printed or audio guides, although they had photos of weddings everywhere on the lower level. It was also poorly lit- although we saw electric lights everywhere, none were turned on. Daylight could still get in but lighting would have made the place look better. To our surprise, we were also the only ones there.

We still enjoyed getting to go inside a castle, especially as there was access to the top of one of the exterior walls with a good view of the valley. It also didn't cost very much so we didn't feel ripped off, although we did wonder if our time would have been better spent at Rheinstein, or even at one of the castles near Koblenz, a 40 minute train trip down river.

We decided then to take the train down to Bingen and get the ferry across the river to Rudesheim. Once we got to Bingen though, it began to rain, and didn't look like it was moving on anytime soon. We decided it probably wouldn't be worth paying for the ferries to and from Rudesheim just to spend only an hour or so there in the rain. So, back on the train we got to Bacharach, after first buying our onwards tickets to Belgium for the next day.

We chose a little cafe overgrown by climber vines for dinner. We chose a cheaper place as we had already had a few more expensive meals in Germany, and decided we would have a fancier anniversary meal in Belgium. However it was very good value, and André had a rabbit dish. We also got very German desserts- apple strudel with ice cream, and a black forest (schwarzwald) ice cream sundae (vanilla and chocolate ice cream with cherries, chocolate sauce and cream).

The next day it was time to move on to Brugge (or Bruges) in Belgium. Our trip required a few change overs - first 40 minutes to Koblenz, then on to Köln (Cologne), then a high speed train to Brussels in Belgium. We had a bit of a break in Brussels before catching a regional train to Brugge.

Our pension ended up being a very short walk from the train station, just inside the old town. We got there at about 3pm so after we checked in we had time to wander into the town square and investigate the shops, including taste-testing the fries that Belgium is famous for. Not terribly impressed, and the whole eating fries with mayonnaise is weird. They still offer you ketchup though (I don't know why Europe has adopted the American term) which André liked, especially as Belgian ketchup seems to have more sugar in it than Australian tomato sauce, and a spice that I first thought was cinnamon but now think might have been nutmeg. For dinner we found a cheap little döner & kebab shop among the more expensive restaurants in our area with a friendly owner who lives upstairs from his shop.

The daylight hours in Brugge were crazy. It was the furthest north we had been in several weeks, and now that it's summer, it didn't get dark until about 10:30. This resulted in some late nights because it just didn't occur to us to get ready for bed while it was still daylight!

From Cesky Krumlov to Munich

25 May

We initially had some problems with arranging transport from Cesky Krumlov to Munich. Two days prior, about the time we would normally book our onwards travel, we heard from Michelle that Vietnam airlines had changed the time of her flight and nobody had told us. We didn't know if they had notified Flight Centre and Flight Centre hadn't told us, or if they just hadn't told Flight Centre. As a result, Michelle had missed her plane out of London back to Australia. For the rest of the day, if we weren't actually doing something in Cesky Krumlov, we were in contact with her or other people about the issue and kind of forgot to plan our transport to Germany.

When we realised this the day before though, we weren't too worried. We contacted Daniel to see if he happened to be free to drive to Munich the next day, or possibly Linz in Austria. Our Plan B was to get one of the regular trains from Linz to Munich. Well, he wasn't going to Munich, but he did have a car going to Linz. At 8am. We decided that was too early for us at this late point of the trip and said no thanks. There were other shuttle companies in town that we would try in the morning, or otherwise get the train out. We knew we would have a few changes, but we'd get there.

Well, none of the other shuttle companies were running cars or buses to Linz or Munich the next morning, although one said they would be able to take us to Munich at 3pm, getting us there close to 8pm. We decided that was a bit too late, and the price wasn't any better than getting a train. (At this point we realised we should have just booked Daniel on the day we arrived in Cesky Krumlov, but because we weren't familiar with the exchange rate at that stage we weren't sure if he was offering us a good price.) So we decided to take the train. We got a taxi up to the train station (would have been a 20 min walk, minimum, uphill, and the taxi was about AU$6) and found a ticket office to buy tickets into Munich. No ticket machines in Cesky Krumlov station, and even if there had been, ticket machines often can't handle more complicated international connections. The lady was able to sell us tickets no worries, and even printed us an itinerary with the stops and changes we needed to make, including listings of the other stops we would pass through. We had good timing, as the train we needed out of Cesky Krumlov came along about ten minutes later.

The Czech regional trains were the oldest trains we travelled on for the whole trip, and the stations were the least technologicised (yes I made that word up). No LED displays on the platforms telling you where the next train was going, no ticket machines, the train carriages were the old-school ones with slide-down windows and had the destination printed on an A4 piece of paper stuck to the inside of the carriage window in a plastic slip. The train took us to Cesky Budojivice (home of Budweiser), where we got off at a deserted, unmanned, closed-looking platform for our connecting train. Double-checked our itinerary, yes, this is the right one. Ten minutes later, along came another train with the familiar Austrian QBB on the side. On we got, and it took us on to Linz, back through Salzburg. At Linz we had an hour to kill before our next train, so we found a cafe to have lunch. Before we knew it, it was time to get our final train which took us in to Munich, arriving about 6pm.

Once we got off our train in Munich, we realised we needed to take a city train to get us closer to our hotel. So we visited the Info Centre to get a rail map and some other info about the town. Munich rail defies the stereotype of German efficiency. There are two rail operators who run the two services, the U-bahn and S-bahn. Their platforms are in different parts of each train station, and directions to the platforms are not clearly marked, especially considering how large many of the main stations have to be to deal with several lines from two different rail services.

Then there's the ticketing process. If you are using a single trip ticket, you need to validate it by date-stamping it in a stamping machine before boarding. No magnetic strip tickets like you get in Paris, London, or even Sydney, and that's not new technology. We didn't notice any NFC passes being used, or the technology for them (like London's Oyster cards or Brisbane's Go card). There is something wrong when Brisbane out-technologies a German city of equal size. Day passes don't need to be validated from what we could tell, because they have the date already printed on then.

Fortunately the guy in the Info Centre told us all about this, so we got to our hotel fine. We were quite impressed with the hotel too. It's the only real 'hotel' we have been to the entire trip, a 3-star establishment with a rather spacious room, nice bathroom, mini-bar (with free beer and mineral water) and even a little stove-top. Remarkably, it was the cheapest place I could find in Munich without going too far out into the suburbs (booked via a hotel booking site, so cheaper than the normal advertised price). It is still the most expensive place place per person that we stayed the whole trip. And it didn't even include breakfast!

Ice Caves

We chose our second day in Salzburg to take a day trip to visit the Eisriesenwelt ice caves. The caves are near Werfen, a little town about 45 minutes' train ride from Salzburg. So we got a bus to the train station in Salzburg and hopped on a train to Werfen. From the train station we walked about ten minutes to the car park where the shuttle bus to the caves picks you up. The bus wasn't too expensive, 6 euros each for the return trip.

But the trip doesn't end at the end of the bus ride. It drops you at the visitor centre where you buy your tickets, and from there, it's a 15 to 20 minute walk, uphill, to the bottom of the cable car. If you're super keen you can skip the cable car and hike up, but it's your choice between a three minute cable car ride or an extra two to three hours of walking. Literally. I know what I'd choose. Because then, at the top of the cable car, you have another 10 to 15 minute walk. Still uphill. We stopped at the top of the cable car for lunch (Austrian Mac and cheese for André and toasted sandwiches with side salads for me and Michelle) before continuing up to the caves.

They warn you that it's zero degrees inside the caves regardless of the outside temperature, so we came prepared. We emptied out my backpack (easy when you have packing cubes!) and André carried it for the day with our jackets, scarves, beanies and gloves in it. At the entrance to the cave we put the extra layers on except for the gloves. Disappointingly we discovered the tours were only in German with a printed English translation on a piece of paper. This can be difficult to read when there is no electrical lighting in the caves, only the gas- yes, gas- lanterns they gave us to carry. What is this, the 1800s? Do they not have head lamps or at least battery operated hand held torches? Nothing on the website suggests you should bring your own torches either.

You are also not allowed to take photos in the caves. According to the website it's so that guides don't get 'blinded by flashes' (which wouldn't be necessary if the place was lit better) and so nobody slows the tour down because tours leave 'every six minutes' - they don't, they leave every half hour. So by ten minutes into the tour, we were not very impressed- no electric lighting so we couldn't even appreciate the ice formations properly (could just see them via our lanterns and the magnesium flares the guide lit), hand-held gas lanterns, no English speaking guide and no photos. However a bit further into the caves the pace slowed a bit and the guide climbed in behind many ice formations to light longer-lasting flares. Permanent electrical lights still would have been more effective, but we were able to see things better. André also managed to get some video on his phone but got told off about half way through the tour! I started reading the translation but was also carrying a lantern so passed the translation to Michelle to read. So I basically went through it without any commentary, but it was still interesting and very different to anything I've seen before. Everything its covered in ice. In many places you can see the rock through the ice- it's so clear it's like looking through water. There are enormous frozen waterfalls, some 'pouring' down through holes in the ceiling to form ice columns, others 'flowing' down through the cave. Some tunnels were so low even I had to duck my head. And because it's ice and re-forms every year, nobody cares much if you touch it either (although there are large long-lasting formations that do break over time). We went about a kilometre into the cave network, which extends a further 41km into the mountain.

If you have the opportunity to see other ice caves that are better set up it probably isn't worth the cost and effort to get to Eisriesenwelt, but as we'll probably never have the opportunity to see something similar again, it still ended up being a good experience.

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!

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.

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.

Travel Resources

Below are some of the resources that have been useful in planning our trip.

Accommodation
HotelClub.com
roomorama.com
eurocamp.co.uk
TripAdvisor.com
HostelWorld.com
Lonely Planet: Europe on a Shoestring
Lonely Planet: Western Europe
Lonely Planet: Central Europe

Equipment
Anaconda
Kathmandu
Bootsnall.com (There are some good posts on there about what to pack)
Lonely Planet's Thorntree Forum
REI.com
eBags

Transport
Kayak.com
seat61.com (THE ultimate web resource for train travel anywhere in the world)
Flight Centre
raileurope.com.au (Be wary of actually booking your tickets on this website, as it can charge a lot more than the country's rail website. It is useful for finding out times though.)
bahn.de (the German rail website, but it has a lot of content for rail trips in other countries too).
eurail.com

Where to go, what to do, what to see
TripAdvisor.com
wikitravel.com
Lonely Planet
visiteurope.com
timeout.com
Backpackeurope.com
Offtoeurope.com
Sandeman's Free Tours
Lonely Planet: Europe on a Shoestring
Lonely Planet: Western Europe
Lonely Planet: Central Europe

Destination Guides
I cannot recommend TripAdvisor and Wikitravel enough!

UK
www.visitbritain.com/
www.daysoutguide.co.uk
www.visitthecity.co.uk
www.timeout.com/london/

France
http://uk.franceguide.com/
http://www.tignes.net/en
http://www.beaune-burgundy.com/
http://www.paris.com/  

Germany
http://www.germany.travel/en/index.html
http://www.welterbe-mittelrheintal.de (Very informative website about the Middle Rhine Valley)
http://www.muenchen.de/int/en/tourism.html

Belgium
http://www.visiteurope.com/Belgium
http://www.in-bruges.co.uk/
http://www.visitgent.be

Switzerland
http://www.myswitzerland.com/en/home.html
http://www.mylauterbrunnen.com/

Italy
http://www.italia.it/en/home.html
http://www.parcoappiaantica.it/en/
http://www.revealedrome.com/

Austria
http://www.austria.info/au
http://www.salzburgerland.com/en/
http://www.salzburg.info/en/

Czech Republic
www.czechtourism.com/eng
http://www.ckrumlov.info/docs/en/kaktualita.xml