Well here we are, mid way through December! We cannot believe how quickly time has gone by. I (Rachel) am actually writing this entry as I have finished up at work - yay! Lets just say supply teaching in London has not been the most joyous experience of my life but that said, it has certainly toughened me up a bit, so all in all has been an experience that I have learnt lots from. Simon finishes work on Friday and has enjoyed his experience at the BBC. He has made some great contacts and friends for his return, and has [View Full Entry]

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We cannot believe we have already been living in London for about 6 weeks now and the time has certainly flown by. Whilst we are no longer on 'holidays' so to speak, it still feels like we are on an adventure - just with a day job! After the Yorkshire trip we started our search for somewhere to live in London so that we could be settled in by the start of school term at the beginning of September. Before we left Australia Rachel had searched the net to look at places we could live, and we hoped to get a [View Full Entry]

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We were back in the UK for a few days and then it was time to head off for a planned visit to our friends Penny & Greg and their two lovely kids Louis and Amalie. Amanda, Rachel and I drove up together (thanks Amanda) as it's about 5 hours up towards the north of England. Penny, Amanda and Rachel all went to school together and have remained great friends ever since, seeing each other both here and in Australia on a reasonably regular basis. Penny and Greg live in a small village just outside Bradford, in a beautiful stone cottage [View Full Entry]

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Yes, unfortunately for us, our 6 week trip around Europe is over, and we are back in the UK at Rachel's mums (obviously I am not writing this in real time). Although 6 weeks in the normal world seems to fly past, by the time we got back we had felt like we had been away for much longer, and of course it seems like an eternity since we left Australia, although that was only really 2 weeks before the start of the trip. This is a good sign that we enjoyed ourselves and really did get to experience many, many [View Full Entry]

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We left Berlin for Hannover, on our homeward journey where we spent a couple of days with my family who were heading off on their own holiday, before we headed back to the UK. We met up with my Dad, Helen, Emily and Jonathan in a site on another lake in a quiet area outside Hannover. As it turned out the site was actually very busy, but not with tourists, more with locals heading to the lakes for a break. We had a great time catching up with them, and had a laugh playing around in a blow up boat in [View Full Entry]

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After Prague we headed to back into Germany and its reborn capital Berlin, but not before driving through very 'interesting' and 'amusing' sites near the Czech / German border - back were the garden gnomes and brothels. We were really looking forward to Berlin, and I was especially curious as my last visit was in 1989 about 5 months before the Berlin Wall came down. I was expecting it to have changed, but not sure to what extent. There were no campsites near the city centre so we stayed out near Potsdam on a very large lake surrounded by a very [View Full Entry]

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When you turn on a TV travel show, or open a travel book on Europe, Prague is always one of those cities that is singled out as one of the most beautiful and must see cities in Europe. Well it is and it isn't. I (Simon) have been to Prague before, about 17 years ago when it was still a full on Communist country and definately not your average tourist destination. I was fortunate to know some Czech's from Australia who were going to be visiting their families at the same time as I was going to be in Europe, so [View Full Entry]

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Vienna approached and we had already booked into a hotel before we left Munich as the campsights were out of town and we wanted to be close to the city as there was lots to see and we had little time. The trip from Salzburg to within about 1km of the hotel in Vienna was easy although the last few streets took us well over an hour. It was just one way streets after another and everytime we thought OK, this must get us there, you hit another dead end, which sometimes we even ignored and sped through no entry signs [View Full Entry]

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Well it was time to leave the luxury and fun times we had with Vicki in Munich and hit the road and campsites again. Whilst part of us was looking forward to our onward journey, we also loved being stationary for a while. We had already decided that maybe we were getting too old for the camping lark, and that next time we decided to do a big trip like this that maybe we would just get a nice big campervan and do camping in style. We left Munich and headed down to Berchtesgaden, which was a major Nazi seat of [View Full Entry]

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Before we left Munich for good and headed off in the direction of Vienna and Prague we wanted to get a trip into Innsbruck and the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, which was effectively in the other direction (well due south from Munich as opposed to East) so we decided to take a day trip. As you might recall from our recent blog, Vicki (aka The Navman Saleswoman) had been trying to persuade us to buy our very own male or female voice from the box that would effortlessly guide us along the remainder of our trip without any need for poor old [View Full Entry]

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