Hi All, Well, the tourist part of this blog is I'm afraid pretty much over as we settle down to the domestic tasks of finding a house to rent and car to buy. However, here's the final instalment in our journey round the North Island by campervan. The last blog left us in Rotorua, which though lovely was a bit stinky.. The luge is great fun though hehe.... And we did spend one night out of the stink nr Lake Tarawera - beautiful volcanic lake scenery. We also visited the buried village (http://www.buriedvillage.co.nz/) which gives the history of a devastating eruption [View Full Entry]

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Hello and welcome to New Zealand! First of all, an apology. This was meant to be one succinct page covering our time touring. Unfortunately, we took so many photos that we've had to split it into two. Yes, as you may have guessed, New Zealand is stunningly beautiful. After nearly 24 hours travelling from Bali, we landed in Auckland in the early evening, and promptly realised that it was winter. It looked warm, with bright sunshine and tropical plants, but I can assure you, jumpers are required in winter. You probably knew that already, but it still felt like a shock [View Full Entry]

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Hello all! This is our last day in Bali (though you may not read this until a bit later as we have another technical issue with the blog - a fault of the blog and not me I hasten to add, despite the various insinuations to the contrary in previous blogs....) and so before nipping off to the airport we've decided to complete our text and photos for the blog. We've had a lovely stay here - we also had an unscheduled overnight stay in Singapore courtesy of British air traffic control systems delaying us out of Heathrow, but we got [View Full Entry]

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Finally, we've made it to Rome! Perhaps the highlight of the tour, the cultural pinnacle. It's hard to describe Rome, because there's just so much there. With a history from at least 753BC, and an incredible amount of remains from Roman times still intact, it's hard to know where to start. Or at least, it should have been. We arrived on Sunday evening, and discovered that on Monday, Rome is closed. We got ourselves a tourist brochure listing all the sights, then hunted through for something that would let us in. Did the Roman's take Monday off when invading Britain? I [View Full Entry]

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I was really looking forward to reaching Italy as having visited Florence before I knew that the food should be fantastic - it's nice to be able to look at a menu and instantly recognise all of the contents, and know that it's likely to be even better than in the UK. I was also particularly looking forward to Venice as it was a place which I'd always wanted to go to. Even after yet another overnight train (this was a bit of a noisy one... ) I was not dissappointed. Luckily we managed to find a fantastic hotel through laterooms.com [View Full Entry]

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Our visit to Prague (or Praha if you're local, but I don't know how to pronounce that) started off less than promisingly. Arriving at the station, we were treated to an underground concrete monstrosity with water dripping from the ceiling, hardly any lighting, and the worlds least helpful tourist information. However, it wouldn't be fair to judge a city by its station, and I've recently discovered that Prague is twinned with Birmingham, so perhaps it's only fair that they have equally bad stations. In the city itself the sights are incredible. Prague survived two world wars with relative [View Full Entry]

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Hello! I've joined together Germany and Switzerland for this blog as we're running out of time to write them! We left Amsterdam on a day train so that we could see the view and because it wasn't quite as far to our next destination, Koblenz in Germany. We were trying to get to the black forest and there isn't an easy route across so we decided that a stop off in Koblenz by the River Rhine would be nice. Koblenz In Koblenz we had a little look round with our bags trying to find the youth hostel (which is on a [View Full Entry]

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I don't think that I realised it when we left Copenhagen, but I really didn't want to like Amsterdam. I don't know why, perhaps underneath this liberal exterior I'm a closet conservative, constantly disapproving of the left of centre attitude that undoubtably is asscoicated with this city. Unfortunately, I was to be thouroughly disappointed. Amsterdam is lovely. Even though we failed to partake in the seamier side of the city (honestly!), we really enjoyed ourselves. Before I go any further, I shoud clarify that, yes, Amsterdam does have some seedier parts. And lots of stag and hen par [View Full Entry]

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Hi All! My turn to write this blog (we're alternating - it's me you're speaking to at the moment. Hehe. Ok it's Heather) and I'm going to try to be brief as it's very hot in this cafe in Zurich (the blog is getting up to date slowly, the photos take ages to upload). We arrived in Copenhagan after an overnight trip in a couchette (6 berth sleeper carriage), it was a little hot and noisy overnight and so we arrived a little tired. On first glance the city seemed ok, we managed to book ourselves into a hotel right in [View Full Entry]

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By the end of our fjord trip I think we'd already fallen for Norway, so expectations were high for the next leg of our tour - and we weren't disappointed. Our trip started at sea level in the small town of Flam. Once a small port, and now Norway distilled in a disneyland style, Flam is not a place to stop long, and we were glad we hadn't stayed there for the night. There can't have been a soul there who wasn't a tourist or a waitress. Having seen enough, we quickly jumped on the train, and enjoyed what must be [View Full Entry]

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