France Photos of our final day..... London We were here for only a short time but we seem too have been busy all the time! Between sightseeing during the day, we met Maura and Tony's daughter, Fiona and fiance Matt's friends at night for dinner or drinks, so our 3 days there were action packed!! The wedding on Saturday was absolutely fabulous. St Paul's Chapel at St Paul's Cathedral was magical and the journey through London on the double decker bus was great fun! We were dropped off at the Reception Centre - Le Gothique Restaurant ( an old lunatic asylum [View Full Entry]

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Germany Our final day in Berlin was uneventful - full of museums - we visited 3 museums in one day - a record for us - the Pergamon, the Antiquities museum (the Altes) and the National Gallery. I was devastated to learn that the collection of Egyptian stuff was being transferred to the New Museum and was closed until the 16th October. The weather was just gorgeous - everywhere we have been at least one day has been considered as an ”Indian Summer” and this was one of them. We enjoyed our day. This was made more special as it was [View Full Entry]

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Germany Jana, looking the same except a little older, and her dad took us from Hannover airport to Bad FallingBostel via the country roads as the Autobahn was already clagged with some problem and had been for quite some time - apparently a common occurrence. As we were travelling down a small country road, a large British tank passed us - there is a large group from the British Army nearby - a remnant of the war I think. Good for the local economy. Everything here is green neat and clean, unlike what we have seen in the previous several countries. [View Full Entry]

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Ukraine In Kiev, many people spoke mostly Russian, and Roman found only a few people who speak pure Ukrainian. Most of the signage is in Ukrainian. When we left Kiev, we travelled overnight to Ivan Frankivesk, which is a large town in Western Ukraine that has a large industrial centre. We didn’t stay, but got a taxi-bus to Kolomyia. We stayed overnight in a guest house run by a nice family. We had very spacious rooms and were very close to town. Anna, our local guide took us on a tour of the town, and Roman was very interested to see [View Full Entry]

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Russia: Final Impressions Moscow women are a mixture of Slavic and Mongolian some more Slavic - blonder shorter, the others are tall and quite dark with high cheekbones - long legs - very model like. Some of the young girls wear heels that look like they’re on sky scrapers and some dress in very very short short skirts - to the point that their pants are about to show…. With boobs hanging out - mmmmm not a great look. The Mullet look is still big here not only for the young boys but for older men as well. Quite prosperous in [View Full Entry]

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Russia cont’d The Hermitage is a very impressive building - it just goes on and on… and inside is the largest collection of all sorts of art - Picasso by the rooms, Matisse, Gauguin, Rembrandt, etc. The rooms are gargantuan in height and length and the paintings seem to fill all available corners and more. And then there are Roman, Greek, Siberian and Egyptian antiquities to name a few…. The Winter palace was built by Katherine the Great to house her multitude of boyfriends… They were housed on the second level and the food was lifted up to their level without [View Full Entry]

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Finland - the rest!! The days have passed too quickly! We’ve found out the history of Finland visiting various museums - it’s interesting to note that this might have been one of the Communist bloc if it hadn’t been for the “Whites” beating the “Reds” in 1918. We travelled 160 km north of Tampere to see the various animals that inhabit this land, such as elk, wolves and deer. We would like to say that we saw them in the wild, but we didn’t! A very large open zoo was an ideal location in the middle of nowhere. We experienced more [View Full Entry]

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A summary: We had a good flight arriving on time in Helsinki. Unfortunately, our bags didn’t. One found almost immediately whilst the other took 2 days to get to Tampere, Max, his wife Paivi and daughter Taika have looked after us like royalty. Saturday 29th August. Perth to Hong Kong - 10 hours and delayed! Only 1 hr 20 mins for changeover shortened to about 40 minutes! Bounding across HK Airport to catch the flight from Hong Kong to Helsinki, somehow our luggage went astray. We arrived at Helsinki airport looking for our luggage and sorry, maybe you’ll get it tomorrow. [View Full Entry]

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In May, I went to the Northern Territory with my friend Pam for 2 weeks of nature style activities. We started off by going on a private tour of Arnhem land with VentureNorth. A nice bloke called Simon was our guide, cook, driver and general dog's body. He was great! We went from Darwin to Fogg Dam, which was alive with egrets, pied storks, brolgas, and mosquitos! I'm sure that the creatures were out there in their battalions ready with armour piercing weapons at the ready to attack us in convoy and in vast numbers! There are suppossed to be 30 [View Full Entry]

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Last week we went to Rottnes island where I work as a volunteer, and of course we have a wonderful time snorkelling, swimming, bike riding. Roman fishes and makes sure we have enough food to eat each day. Rottnest is only traversable by bike, bus or walking so we tend to get quite a bit of exercise just getting from our cottages to our destinations. [View Full Entry]

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