HI FROM PAROS

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Hey all

Well I've got a couple of exciting days to tell you all about!!! The first is when we returned to Lucerne. It was our first stop when we collected our car in Zurich and it was a very dull drizzly day. We returned two weeks later last Thursday to find they'd had a dump of snow the previous Monday! When we arrived it was a clear blue sky-ed day with snow on the peaks!! Woo hoo!! We took a trip to Pilatus "Dragon Mountain" (close to my heart) via boat around Lake Lucerne, to hop on a cog wheel railway to the top of the mountain (2000 odd metres) and return was via a chair lift - awesome scenery every step of the way! At the top we were throwing snow balls at each other, novel for Aussies, whilst our men wore shorts and polo shirts!! Coming down on the chair lift we were above very tall pine trees laden with pine cones and you could hear bells ringing - not that tinnitus again but cows below with huge bells around their necks, in fact you could hear the bells before you saw them - a fantastic day!!!

We left Lucerne yesterday to get to Paros via Athens. Arrived here 6ish last night and got a taxi from the airport thru the most desolate countryside with an occasional house. As we booked our accommodation via internet (not on a recommendation) we didn't know what to expect and it didn't look real special from a cab window! Well we literally turned a corner and there was the cutest township, all white boxey buildings with blue shutters as you'd expect (there is one house which has red shutters and while red and white is a personal favourite it looks sooo wrong) and overlooking a harbour with trawlers, with restaurants lining the harbour - just stunning! After organising ourselves in our "digs" (which are cuter than the town) we wandered down to get some dinner, freshly caught fish, then wandered into the "CBD" which is all little lane ways with heaps of shops - right up Leonies and my alley!!! And still open at 10 at night!

Today we caught a boat to the other side of the island to a beach with sand not stones and had a great day - I even swam, well in a fashion, well I got a little wet!!! We hired lounges and umbrellas as is the story over here! As it was our first day in the sun we decided to take it easy and kept defering our return to "the next boat" then the next cos it was so tranquil over there. We got chatting to a couple from Frenchs Forest (about 80 years old) who have been coming to Paros for 2 months for the past 30 years -what a life eh? Lovely man, a Dragons supporter so he gave me an update on the latest injuries, yeah great, thanks for that!! Was having a good day till then!!!

We're lapping it up over here, it's been just 3 weeks now and another 5 to go! Our waists and suitcases are expanding rapidly, but who cares we'l lworrry about it when we get back!!

Hope all are well - we leave here on Monday for Santorini (my favourite place in the world) then we go to Italy and France. we just looove getting emails with news from home and they can be sent to our ppconsulting addresses - thanks everyone!

Lotsa luv, Anne and Trev xxxx :-)

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