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Page 2 of LucyandTom Travel Blog Posts
August 2nd 2012
After Frankfurt we headed across Germany to Munich where we continued our sampling of the local beer and food and also ticked off the main tourist sites, the highlight of which was watching the river surfing that took place in the English garden. We then set off on our journey south passing through Austria and Switzerland and stopping in Milan for a night to catch up with Tom's cousins, Anthony and Sarah. Next stop was Parma which was one of the highlights of our Europe trip. A lovely little town bursting with parmesan, parma ham and balsamic vinegar, yum, safe to say we overindulged for a few days at a couple of local restaurants. Our favourite restaurant was a little family run place where you got to choose your own wine from their 1000 year old ... read more
July 22nd 2012
The last week or so we have spent meandering our way through France, Switzerland and into Germany in order to reach Frankfurt and see our German buddy Sabrina. On the way we have whizzed through a lot of places… Lyon for a night, Mt Blanc/Chamonix, a night on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the Alsace wine region and Strasbourg on the French-German border. A few highlights: Chamonix / Mt Blanc was fantastic, perfect surroundings and weather to enjoy the outdoors, lots of great walking / running trails (plenty of hills for Tom to run up). We hiked up to the foot of a glacier not far from town with our picnic of local salami and bread. There is something nice about a ski resort in summer time, plus the Canadian style microbrewery and chalet accommodation that we ... read more
July 16th 2012
A day and a half in Rome provided us with enough time to zoom through the main sights – the colosseum, Spanish steps, Trevi fountain, and the Vatican from the outside. At no time did we go hungry or thirsty having plenty of opportunity to sample the local delicacies – coffee, wine, pasta, pizza and gelato. We picked up our hire car in Rome and headed to our next destination, Florence. Arriving in Florence we checked in to a local campsite, given our lack of tent, we opted for the ‘glamping’ option and stayed in one of the ready made tents, it even had a wooden floor and required no pegs – our kind of camping. We spent the night exploring Florence, which really took us aback. It is a beautiful romantic city with stunning architecture, ... read more
July 7th 2012
Our 2.5 week stint in Turkey was fantastic. We managed to cover some good ground visiting Istanbul, Olympos, Fethiye, Pammukale, Ephesus, Ayvalik and Gallipoli. We overindulged on food (again), enjoyed the crystal clear Med sea, got cleaned up at a Turkish bath and endured the heat and crowds at the roman ruins. Top 3 highlights of the trip: 3 day med cruise to recharge the batteries. The coastline was beautiful, we spent our days swimming, reading and exploring little villages on the way. Istanbul - Definetly one of our top 5 cities. Really fun place, buzzing (maybe something to do with the 12 odd million people who live there), lots of history and more bars and restaurants crammed into backstreets than you could ever possibly imagine. Gallopoli for the ANZAC tour. Our tour guide Bill was ... read more
June 6th 2012
We flew into Beirut looking forward to eating kebabs, felafel, hummus and enjoying a few drinks, and it hasn’t disappointed. It seems kebab eating is acceptable at all times of the day, they also eat a sort of cheese pizza thing for breakfast so we have taken full advantage of both and no doubt put back on the few kilos that we lost in India. But its not all been unhealthy, in the bars they like to serve carrot sticks with beer so we’ve managed to have one of our five a day while enjoying a beer or two. There is apparently a lively bar scene here but unfortunately our budget has us in bed before 9pm when the happy hour ends… Beirut is a really easy city to walk around as its pretty small, didn't ... read more
June 4th 2012
I’m writing this entry on the 7 hour bus journey from Rishikesh to Delhi. It’s our last full day in India before we catch our flight to Dubai. I’m looking out the window at the passing villages and countryside, people, food stalls, cars, cows everywhere and I’m thinking maybe this place isn’t that bad after all but that’s easy to say when you’re on an air con bus where you can’t hear all the car horns, shouting and general chaos. Maybe India would be ok if it was on mute. I think it’s safe to say we’re glad we’ve been but won’t be in a rush to come back. It was my idea to come to India so I might leave the rest of the trip planning up to Tom! Our week in Rishikesh was pretty ... read more
May 21st 2012
We'd heard good things about Rajasthan so were looking forward to spending some days there; it didn't disappoint. We had about 7 days visiting Jaipur, Pushkar and Jodhpur. Despite the unbearable 40+ heat, we survived a few days of sight seeing. Rajasthan means the land of kings so of course lots of palaces and forts everywhere. I think our favourite forts were Amber Fort near Jaipur and the Mehrangarh fort in Jodhpur, the views over the town were stunning. The pictures don't really do the forts/palaces justice! In Jaipur we also checked out the City Palace and Jantar Mantar which is an outdoor site full of lots of weird structures formed in 1700's that were used to calculate time, distance of stars and lots of other things that we didn't understand but still took photos of! ... read more
May 18th 2012
From Darjeeling we caught a flight to Delhi which was all a bit of a frustrating experience. There is so much bureaucracy here that it seems to take forever to go through the simplest processes like checking in baggage, going through security, queuing to get on the plane, it was all a bit much! Once in Delhi we checked out a few of the sights, Red Fort, National Museum, Khan Market (Tom was very excited at being able to buy vegemite). Nothing too impressive about Delhi, just a big, dirty city. At this stage we're feeling a bit mixed about India... the constant noise of horns, rubbish, filth, people spitting everywhere and the relentless hassle from touts / tuk tuk drivers from the minute you step out on to the street is pretty wearing. In Delhi ... read more
May 17th 2012
We've been in India two weeks and already had our fair share of ups and downs. It started on a big high when we arrived in Kolkata late in the afternoon and headed directly to the famous Eden Gardens to attempt to buy tickets for the soldout IPL game that evening. It appears scalping tickets is definately illegal, so it took us about an hour to do our first dodgy transaction in India. Tickets secured we got into Eden Gardens to see the game between Kolkata and Pune. Pune's captain was local Kolkata hero Sourav Ganguly, so the crowd was deeply divided. How anyone can like the extremely arrogant Ganguly is beyond me (Tom clearly talking here), so we were certainly cheering for the home team, who got home in a tight finish. Our second day ... read more
May 2nd 2012
Overnight stay at Halong Bay, Vietnam. It was nice, relaxing, just like the brochure really. We did some kayaking, swimming and visited a huge limestone cave. A nice peaceful side trip from Hanoi.... read more
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