Well folks this is our last update by the time most of you read this we will be getting ready to board our plane home. Santorini Our first stop in the Greek Islands was Santorini. After a bit of mad search for a ferry (probably don't leave booking ferries till the night before in peak season...) we had a four hour cruise from Athens. Arriving in Santorini is pretty impressive as you sail into the Caldera and look up the cliffs to all the blue and white buildings. Also the sky is clear blue and it's freakin' hot! We only had [View Full Entry]

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Vienna Well Vienna must have heard we were coming! The Spanish Riding School and the Vienna Boys Choir were both on holiday for the summer. We were lucky though as we still got to see a show at the Riding School, but just a small show with some young stallions, mothers and foals and different horse carriages. Well worth it, if only to see some of the horses and learn about the school. Vienna is a beautiful city with lots of old buildings, and a lot of greenery too. We only spent one and a half days here and it seems [View Full Entry]

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Hamburg After Amsterdam it was off to Germany and our first stop Hamburg. Hamburg is in the north and is a bit off the usual tourist track, but was recommended to us by a friend who knew someone who lived there. Our first impressions (which changed the next day) were that it was just another big city, though with good food and beer. We weren't staying in a very nice part of town either (the drug related red light district!). The waterfront area is quite nice and we walked along there to the infamous Reeperbahn which according to the Lonely Planet [View Full Entry]

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Well it's been a while since our last blog, so we'll keep this one brief... ish. Not long to go now, only three weeks left! Bordeaux After leaving San Sebastian we headed to the border in hope of catching another train on to Bordeaux. Turns out we were in luck and got mint first class seats. We did the usual afternoon wander around Bordeaux to get our bearings, and it didn’t take us long to see all the sights. Bordeaux centre is rather small, but is so full of charm with its pedestrian malls lined with shops and eateries. In Bordeaux [View Full Entry]

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Valencia After a very fast (love the high speed trains) trip from Barcelona we arrived in Valencia. Apparently at this time of year it is normally crawling with Brits, but the recession has meant there are a lot less coming now. Because of this we scored a nice cheap but mint apartment to stay in, it even had a sofa! You miss the little things... After doing a bit of research we found that Valencia has the usual share of churches etc but we were after something a bit different so thought we would take on the Biopark and Oceanographic. The [View Full Entry]

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Nice and Monaco Disclaimer - we are writing this after a few drinks. No offence intended. Or maybe a little. But mostly to the french. After our adventure in Italy we headed by train to Nice. We arrived just as a thunderstorm was brewing but it was short lived and the weather proceeded to be fine for the rest of our stay. Nice is a great place for wandering around, especially along the foreshore at night which we did both nights we were there. The first day we were there we went through to Monaco. We made it up to the [View Full Entry]

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Sorrento and Amalfi We left you in Rome in the last blog, and from there we moved on to Sorrento. We caught an early train from Rome to Naples, until then we had found the trains to be pretty good but this one lowered the standards dramatically. It was late, dirty, smelly and all round pretty nasty. There was no air conditioning and no lights (as we discovered when we went into a long tunnel and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face!). From Naples we caught the Circumvesuviana train to Sorrento it was almost as bad but [View Full Entry]

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Milan - Verona - Venice - Bologna - Rome Milan We arrived in Milan after a very long but non eventful flight (Bex only got nervous twice, once when the in flight entertainment system said we were heading right over the top of Baghdad and the other when the young middle eastern man sitting behind us started pacing the isles, all pale and sweaty). We survived it though, and got a bit of jetlag but found it pretty easy to get into the Italian routine. We had a good sleep then set off on our adventure, straight into town. The Duomo [View Full Entry]

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