Blogs from Europe - page 11344

We had a wonderful day exploring the sights, sounds and tastes of this lovely city. We’re still adjusting to the time change so the day started bright and early. We saw the regal buildings of Ring Boulevard, the road (that was once a wall) that surrounds the inner city. The Hofburg Palace, the center of the Hapsburg Empire for 600 years was quite an impressive sight.. Marisa informed us that she wouldn’t mind living in the Palace (and even picked out her room). We enjoyed the Treasury museum which houses crowns, jewels, royal clothing and many other artifacts of the old Hapsburg Monarchy. Later we visited Judenplatz, the old Jewish area. A small museum houses the ruins of the Synagogue originally built in the 12th century, but destroyed in the 15th century (first by a ... read more

This weekend I lost my Eurostar virginity and found the answer to an age old question. In order to do so, I headed back to Reims for more champagne tasting - this time with some of the netball crew. In order to get us in the mood - Andrea hosted a pre champagne tasting champagne tasting at her place. Based on blind tasting, the Tesco champers came out tops ... but don't think we don't know our stuff - last year the experts agreed and gave it the top award. Now to the Reims weekend - let's start with the Eurostar .... I love it. Why do I love it? Let me count the ways: * It's sooo easy. * It goes from Waterloo, which is close to home (although not for much longer - soon ... read more

Just one day after coming back from Croatia, I went to Vienna to visit my dear friend Dani and Tito. We stayed in a city not too far from Vienna called Sooss/Sooß . On the following day we did the usual sightseeing tour across Vienna. We went to Schonbrunn Palace and spent most of the day there. They say that the castle was an imitation of Versailles, but the king run out of money and never managed to make it look as beautiful as the French Palace. We also walked in the town center stopping by the cathedral, which is very impressive. At that night we had some family gathering where I had the chance to try plenty of Viennese dishes, starting with a knoblauch crème supp emit weirsbrot croutons und obershaube, followed by Tafelspitz ... read more

To make our trip to Kilkenny a little more interesting, Iz and I decided to stop off at a couple of sight-seeing points along the way. It wasn’t too long a drive to our final destination, so we could afford to take some time out from our fairly busy schedule. Our first stop was only 30-40 mins from Cork - the Mitchelstown Caves - one of Europe’s major show caves - according to their brochure. We were a little unsure of this when we rocked up - in a tiny car park in front of a dingy country house - and our opinion didn’t improve when we headed up the long drive and into a tiny shack to wait for our guide. First impression were definitely wrong - and as we entered the tiny dwarves door ... read more

We woke up this morning at anchor in the caldera at Santorini, Greece. After going up the wrong set of elevators, we decided to eat breakfast at the Aqua Spa instead of the main restaurant - fewer people, healthier food - all round, a good mistake! Because we were getting ashore via tender boats, we had to get our tender tickets in the theatre - we picked up our tickets and were on tender #3 - and #2 had just left. Our timing was great! The tender boat dropped us at the very small port at the bottom of a very steep cliff. We had the choice of taking the gondola up the cliff, riding a donkey up the switch-back path, or walking (sharing the path with the donkeys.) We chose a 1-way ticket up on ... read more