The sun was very low on the horizon in Copenhagen as we taxied out at 3.45 pm. The northern autumn is just starting to show the first signs of shortening days. Also, the light is getting weaker. Just after reaching top of climb and setting cruise towards the east we soon went into the night. Funny feeling being served your dinner at 5pm in pitch black night. We somehow managed to jag seats in 1st class in the A340. There was a bit of a mix up with our seating in business and when we boarded we were shown into the special section up front. Huge area with only a few seats widely spaced. You could walk all around without being near anyone else. The service was excellent with full silver service dinner and top class ... read more

Bonjour from Paris, Yippee! have found an i net cafe that allows pic uploads. The one at the little hotel we are staying at in Paris only allows e mail and typing on the blog, but no pics as it doesnt have a USB port or disc reader. This is getting very close to our LAST blog I'm afraid folks. Since posting our last one we were still coming from Venice via Florence, Tuscany and a final couple of days in Rome, so you can see we have covered a fair bit of territory since then. Obviously lots to talk about but sadly have run out of time. Last night in Rome was the standard obligitory send off with the tour group. We had one mother of a party at a typical Italian ristorante where the ... read more

This blog is getting a bit behind, we are about 3 towns to catch up so its probably getting disjointed. We are now in the beautiful little town in central Italy called Montecatini which is our jumpimg off point tomorrow for a day trip into Florence. More on that later. But now back to when we left Capri. We departed the Isle of capri early in the morning - the whole area enveloped in thick sea fog so didnt see anything of our 40 minute crossing back to Napoli (Naples). Naples is a huge busy dirty port with drab waterside old buildings and very poor-looking buildings with laundry hanging out the windows. Some homeless were sleeping out on mattresses in the street as we drove by on our bus. Crime rate here is very high. As ... read more

The plan was to get going early, 'do' a few of the most wellknown landmarks in Rome then take it easy for the first day! Ha,Ha. As we are staying next to the Colesseum, we decided to pass by ( just like that) and come back later when the sun was better for some good photos. Besides, we have it included in this tour thing we are starting tomorrow and having paid once already, we might leave it for then. There are always hundreds of tourists queued up and if you go with a tour you get straight in. The area we are staying in is great, lots of little coffee shops and things out the front door. The lovely garden outside our bedroom window belongs to the local Police Station. Police Stations surround us and ... read more

Buon Giorno from Roma, Ah, the Eternal City, home to Angels and Demons, Gladiators and Gelato. Well, it had to happen. We have had such a dream run in all our travels so far, good weather, great accomodation and trains, all as planned and expected. Spoilt by Austrian efficiency and timetables bordering on precision, we looked foward with much anticipation to our trip down to Rome on the CIS fast train. Having heard so much about these trains and their being so popular and nearly always full, we decided to do the 'right thing' and pre book reserved 1st class seats when in Innsbruck. This is over and above the Eurail Pass we have and you pay a bit more but get allocated seats so you dont have to run to get a good seat. You ... read more

Bonjour Switzerland, Well the show moves on to Switzerland. The journey from Innsbruck to Zurich by train was an experience for us. Named as one of the great train routes in Europe , it certainly lived up to its description. We departed Innsbruck in a sudden weather change, fine and sunny last 3 days, now with low cloud on the deck and some drizzle. Didnt see much scenery for 1st hour thensun broke thru and we were treated with spectacular mountain views and some fantastic feats of engineering. We marveled at the tunnels, viaducts, crossing road systems and bridges all constructed amongst the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. As has been the case so far, we have been very lucky in our train travels to get great seats. We had bought a Eurail Pass which allows ... read more