travellingturts

Our visit to Belgium and Brussels in particular ended up being quite a whirlwind visit. This was our last destination for visiting and quite frankly - we were OVER IT! So we decided to park our van in the city, jump on a 'jump on jump off tour bus' that we didnt plan to jump off, and we toured the whole city and its sites with commentary. This was a great way to see a lot in a short time. We then stopped at a belgium chocolate shop and bought some genuine praline goodies (sorry but we cannot take these home with us so we will have to finish them off!) and then headed to PIZZA HUT for a genuine Belgium lunch (sorry, not very european but boy was it delicious - we are pretty ... read more

I think the pictures will show you all just how amazing Queens Day is in Amsterdam. But for a bit of a run down, here is the description of what we saw. We started the day getting a feel for what Queens Day is traditionally about - The Queen of Holland and her extensive Royal family go to two different small towns within Holland on this day each year, and join in local festivities. Watching this live broadcast on their TV as fascintating as due to being Australian, we didnt even know who they were, and yet they are massive celebraties in Europe. Sylvia gave us a bit of a run down on who all the family members were. Then, we got down to business - seeing Amsterdam in all her glory in the Celebrations ... read more

Leaving Innsbruck, the action plan was to drive the romantic road and see the castles before heading to Augsburg where craig would play golf and we would stay the night. We drove to the two famous castles on the romantic road, the Schloss Newschwanstein (will refer to as News), and the Schloss Hoenschwangau (will refer to as Hoen). This place was a tourist mecca. The Hoen was originally built in around 1200 but has been destroyed many times, and I doubt any of the original is there still. Basically, the King of Bavaria, ill call him Max for short, (now part of germany but once its own kingdom) found this sight and thought he was rebuild it. This was in the 1800s, so not really that long ago, but its built in the romantic style ... read more

After our flight on the balloon it was jumping straight back into the van and off to Venice. Arriving in Venice we got a campsite with a view of the water - well we thought that would be 'serene' but with MASSIVE MASSIVE BARGES AND SHIPS going past making noise every 10 mins it didnt turn out that way - Dad you would have loved it! We took the afternoon just to chill out and play a Yatzee tournament (Craig won), as we were still a bit over the whole siteseeing tourism rush from Rome. The next day we took the ferry across to Venice, and when we arrived, we said to eachother, "this is not going to be as good as we think it will be", and surely enough, it was a let down, ... read more

Arriving in Rome we were feeling the pretty tired so we took the afternoon off to relax, leaving us two full days to come of siteseeing. Day 1 was siteseeing Vatican City, and this was fantastic. St Peters Basillica was amazing - and it was one of few things to see that were FREE! We went to the Vatican Museum where the line was all the way around the block, so Craig pulled a swifty and casually joined the not so orderly line about two metres before the entrance. So we didnt have to wait two hours, and nobody even said anything. The vatican museum was quite good however I have never seen so many people be squeezed through so many small hallways. You have to walk through many many rooms and hallways on your ... read more