21 to 24 August 2009 Our tour is quickly coming to an end, and for the final four days we have set the insurmountable task of seeing London with a few side visits to some of the nearby counties. First thing to note, the people, not the variety - the sheer volume of them. While it seems the rest of Europe was on a laid back summer vacation everyone is here and moving all at once. After a few deep breaths we got amongst it - after a nice sleep in at our fabulous accomodation Hotel Rubens at Buckingham Palace. You [View Full Entry]

---

---

18, 19 August 2009 We have made our return to the city of lights with our tour group and have been looking forward to the chance to catch a few other sights we didn't make during our previous visit. Without hesitation we set off again for St Michel for more gelati and then made our way to the Trocedaro to watch the Eiffel Tower light up and give the sparkle show. The next morning our intrepid tour group made another well timed visit getting to the Eiffel tower first thing in the morning for the trip to the second level for [View Full Entry]

---

---

17 August 2009 The days are still warm, sunny and dry. Even in Lucerne it is 31 degrees and the local pass time seems to revolve around the water with scores of people at ‘beaches’ along the lake swimming and sunbaking and some sensational motor boats and small sail boats. Our day started early however getting out to catch the first gondolas to Mt Pilatus. These were gondolas of the air, not the water. To get to the top we first took a series of the small 4 person gondolas to rejoin in the 40 person version complete with the hatchway [View Full Entry]

---

---

16 August 2009 Our last day in Italia, everything will change again as we head into Switzerland. The first stop will be Pisa, to see the Leaning Tower, and that’s about it really. The trip from Florence west to Pisa on the coast is 85 km according to my Michelin tour guide but 80 km according to Fabio the most stylish bus driver in the whole world (must be a short cut known only to Italian bus drivers, handed down from father to son). Today will be long, the Michelin tour guide tells us the trip to Lucerne via Pisa is [View Full Entry]

---

---

15 August 2009 We’ve gone as far south as this journey will take us and have now set course north again. Roman streets are quiet, nigh deserted, and the trip to Florence is very quick. Florence was the hotbed of the Italian renaissance at various stages the home of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo and it also became the resting place for many of these great minds. The one person that Florence lost, and always regretted was Dante. Dante was accredited as being the father of the Italian language, being the first to write down the spoken language of the time. [View Full Entry]

---

---

I have to apologise for the slow rate of these stories, we've been having too much fun and with the limited internet access there isn't a lot of time to upload the stories. I'll try to catch up - Al 13 August Travelling now from Venice to Rome, it’s a long day of over 500km. The country side is getting drier and hotter, there’s even eucalypts in the fields, no koalas and it seems the locals here haven’t heard of drop bears. Al tends to write these stories in the morning on the bus while things are quiet. The story tends [View Full Entry]

---

---

12 August 2009 Another fantastic day in the north Italian paradise of Lido, Venice with warm dry weather, good food and a good night’s sleep. We woke to a very busy day starting at 7.40am to catch our private ferry to cross the Venetian Lagoon to land near St Marks Cathedral and make our way through the narrow streets to watch the glass blowing in the Murano Glass shopping outlet. Tess had a ball and bought pendants for Kelly & Lozy (and herself too). Then we had free time to shop and explore the city so first up we went looking [View Full Entry]

---

---

10 August 2009 We have continued to bring the good weather with us even to Vienna, another 28 to 29 degree day, calm and dry. We have met up with another Insight Tour group with some Aussies and they have been dragging the rain around with them. Vienna, Wien to the locals, is the home of classical music, the Vienna Waltz, Strauss, and at various times Mozart and Bach, the Vienna Boy’s Choir, the setting for the story of the von Trapps and the Sound of Music (admittedly that was in Salzburg) and the Vienna Schnitzel. The organised tour of the [View Full Entry]

---

---

9 August 2009 We have left Prague and are heading for Cesky Krumlov a quaint little medieval Czech village to the south in the region of Bohemia. We were amazed by the Krumlov Castle which looks as though it has been work in progress since the beginning of the 14th century on top of the hill overlooking the village. The village is in the crook of the river Vltava, the same river that flows through Prague and presents a series of rapids which seem to be a favourite during summer. The first stop for us was to climb up the 126 [View Full Entry]

---

---

7 August 2009 Another beautiful day in Saxony, clear blue skies, an expected top of 25 degrees Celsius and very calm. A good day for touring again. The Hotel Berlin Berlin has been a great hotel and we have topped up with another great breakfast ahead of today’s trip south to Dresden and then onto Prague for another two day stop. We are travelling through what was the former “East Germany”, the road systems are fantastic here as well but the area is scarcely populated, apparently since the re-unification the former East Germans have moved out because the regions are [View Full Entry]

---

---