We decided to take a bit of a trip today into the Bavarian Alps. After about an hour on the train, we arrived in the lovely little town of Berchtesgaden, which was absolutely covered in snow and oh-so-picturesque. It was about a 20 minute walk around to where the salt mine tours are run from. Having not really hear much about them, i wasnt sure what to expect. First you put on a stunningly attractive set of overalls. They take you down into the first level of the mines (they go down about 4 levels, and end up hundreds of metres [View Full Entry]

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We finished our museums in the town in the morning, with a visit to the Salzburg Museum (which has a very decent collection of local art dating back hundreds of years, all housed in a very flash redecorated museum). We also learned all about the origin of the carol Silent Night, which was written not far from here, apparently when mice destroyed the organ and they had to come up with something for the christmas eve service that could be performed on the guitar at very short notice. We then had a stroll through the Prince Arch-Bishops (the guys who ruled [View Full Entry]

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Since we had purchased our card, today was a day to visit every museum we could pack into the day (however some of them are lazy and dont open on Mondays, so we couldnt go to them all). We started off bz taking a funicular (cable car sort of thingee) up to the fortress on top of the hill. The view from the top was a-ma-zing, we ended up taking about a million and five photos (which i am sure we will bore you all with when we get back). We had another beautifully sunny day, so we could see for [View Full Entry]

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Our first full day in Salzburg. After Mum raving on about Salzburg and how wonderful it was for years, it was good to see that it lived up to all expectations. The town is absolutely beautiful, with a medieval fortress on a hill and churches built hundreds of years ago and all sorts of lovely squares and monuments and houses etc etc. We decided to have a bit of a walk around the old town, most of which is pedestrianised (although cars can drive in there to drop people off, however that is only when the pedestrians actually choose to get [View Full Entry]

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Trains, trains, trains. Thats about all we did today. We jumped on the train early for 8-9 hours travelling to get to Salzberg. Lucky the countryside is so lovely that it gave us plenty to look at (we passed quickly through Strasbourg, where we are booked to stay for Xmas, and are very happy with our choice, it looks lovely). We saw a bit of snow on the way, mum got very excited. :) We had to change trains in Stuttgart, and had a couple of hours wait, so we lockered our bags and went to have a look at their [View Full Entry]

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We were a little sick of France by this time (hehe) and decided to take a quick trip up to Brussels. We even managed to negotiate their metro by ourselves, which is very different to Paris. Once again, of course, we did the Christmas market, which was lovely, and took millions of photos, and were overwhelmed by the amount of chocolate shops and pawn shops (Mum has been taking notes for when she gets home). We bought some cute little chocolate figurines from a chocolate shop, which we needed then to help us with our depression at seeing all the amazing [View Full Entry]

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We read about a Cathedral that topped Notre Dame and is the biggest in France, we decided to head off for a day in Amiens (even though neither of us had ever heard of it and still cant pronounce it). Our Europass train ticket has been fantastic for just jumping on trains and heading off wherever we want to go, whenever we want. It took a little getting to, about an hour on a train and then another half an hour on a bus (a flash TGV bus though, so it wasnt exactly a hardship). Our first stop was to check [View Full Entry]

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We visited the magnificence of Versailles today (after taking a couple of hours to get from one side of Paris right over to the other side). Mum kept saying its no wonder that they had a revolution, and i tend to agree. The extravagance and decadence were ridiculous, but impressive nonetheless. It had snowed that morning, so the gardens were lovely with the snow still on the hedges and everything. Then after coming back into town we had a look at Notre Dame, which was spectacular. Unreal shadows as it was early evening, and the large Xmas tree outside was lovely. [View Full Entry]

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Lille was the first place that we went to visit outside of Paris, since we thought we had better start to get some more use of our train tickets. The resort has a free bus that takes you to the local train station, so that was handy. After wandering around for a while in the wrong direction, we finally located the town to have a look at. After that we stumbled across all sorts of interesting churches and buildings on our way around. And the Christmas market was well worth all the effort, they really went all out with decorating the [View Full Entry]

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Today we met Tesni and Yohanne (aplogies, not sure of the spelling) and spend the day at Disneyland. I'm not sure about it being the happiest place in the world, but we had a good time anyway. We met the two of them at the train station and went and queued straight away to get into the Park (the train station is right on the doorstep of the park), and waited in line for about 45 minutes before they let us in to the park at 9.45am. However, none of the 'lands' opened til 10am, so all you could do until [View Full Entry]

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