Steph and Joels travels

Well, we are finally home, and have hit the ground running. We have decided that rent is too expensive in Canberra so have settled in to live with Mum until we can find a house to buy. Please all keep your fingers crossed for us - we hope that we have found one and will be putting in an offer during the week :) Now, I need to apologise, as there were two quite special occasions on our traveling adventure that I ommitted to include in the travel blogs... Llandudno, Wales and Antwerp, Belgium. It was just after we had left Ali and Jan in Stratford upon Avon that Joel and I continued on our road trip up to the beach town of Llandudno in north Wales. It was beautiful, the sun had decided to come ... read more

Well, after three relaxing weeks in the alps, we are now back on the trains and exploring longer distances across the continent. And we must admit that we are very happy to be on the move again. But let me start with our three week adventure across the time share resorts of Italy, Austria and Germany. There was a quick introduction to Tscherms in the last blog where we had a beautiful view of the Italian alps and down through the valley covered in vineyards and apple orchards. We made the most of having a kitchen and were even quite excited to be able to go shopping in a supermarket and buy bread and milk and meat and pasta - don't worry, the novelty soon wore off after we realised that we also had to do ... read more

Tip for visiting Poland with a surname like Szakiel... no need to spell it for anyone, you just need to learn how to pronounce it properly. After almost 30 years of always having to spell and pronounce my surname, I finally arrived in Poland where I felt like one of the crowd... until they started speaking Polish - its quite funny having such a local name and not being able to speak the language. But enough about that, we loved our time in Poland so much so that Joel and I have made a deal that should we be able to retire to Poland he will change his name to Szakiel :) We started off in the far north east of Poland, staying in a town called Olsztyn. We were there to see the Wolf's Lair ... read more

To continue our history tour of Europe, we took a tour of the WW1 battle fields of France, just outside of Paris. This was a fairly personal tour for Stephanie, with her great grandfather having fought in the battle of the Somme, and her grandfather (mum's dad) having been named after the battle of Mount St Quentin - one of the infamous battles the Australian's won against all odds. It started with an early morning train from Paris, and unlike the American Normandy tour, we were surrounded by Australians both on the train and the tour. But it definitely made the tour that much closer for us, having everything tailored to the Australian stories of the first world war. We started in the memorial for Villers-Bretonneux, one of the forefronts of the battle, where the Germans ... read more

So it has been a few weeks since our last blog... but just take that as an indiction of how much we are enjoying the travels :) After leaving Liverpool we headed north to Scotland, in an anticlockwise loop of the country. From Gretna Green - where we did not partake of the traditional activities of the city :) - through to Edinburgh and St Andrews. We then drove up the coast road to a little town called Huntly in the north east for a restful three nights. Of course, it was not an accident we had decided to stay for a little longer up there, being in the middle of both the castle trail and the whiskey trail it had the best of both worlds. We were also able to visit the home town and ... read more