BeltramiBunch

London tried it's best, today, to keep the bad weather away - and it did a pretty good job. The sun was mostly shining and the rain held off. The wind was slight and overall we enjoyed a good day on our bus tour which meant we could spend most of time enjoying the view on the open top deck of the bus. Damian's friend from his IBM days, John, and his two daughters travelled in from Richmond to meet and join on us the bus tour. John left Australia about over 2 years ago, so it was good for them to catch up. Emily also found a new friend in John's eldest daughter, Nina. They hit it off from the start of the day. It was a typical London Bus tour. We took the Big ... read more

C'est une belle journée à Paris. The weather forecast suggested thunderstorms, but we woke to a beautiful sunny day and, importantly, no wind!! It was remarkably more comfortable to be in Paris today than yesterday? After breakfast, les enfants and ma femme went for a tour of the streets hunting for souvenirs. They were successful, which is a good thing. Jake took a predictably methodical approach to acquiring his souvenirs - sampling every stall before making a considered decision and returning to the best value option. Damian had the afternoon to himself and took a stroll along the Seine to the Musee d'Orsay. It is an interesting place. Built in a very large hall it is smaller and quite different from Le Lourve. Van Gogh is prominant. Signac and other neo-impressionists are also exhibited. The sculptures ... read more

Damian was up at 7am to get to the laundromat to wash a heap of clothes. Our apartment in Paris has a beautiful looking washer/dryer - that does not work. The Apartment managers have not returned our calls or emails and clearly don't care too much about their customers. Such a pity as it does nothing to help change Damian's mind about the attitudes of the French... From then on, the day got worse. But then got better!! They say that Paris is a northern city that thinks it is in the south (in actual fact, it has three times more annual rainfall than London). The temperature got to a balmy 7C. Apparently, with the wind chill, it was more like 5C. As far we were concerned, with the rain and the wind it felt like ... read more

Another hearty breakfast at the Hotel Stern included two coffees for Damian who wanted to claw back some value out of the stay in Schweiz (three coffees might have been overdoing it and probably not good for his bladder on the long train trip ahead). Emily also stole some bread as she was desperate to find a way to feed the swans. The day was even cloudier than yesterday with a light drizzle and we made our short walk to the train station, via "Swan Lake". A Japanese tourist was so enamored by Emily feeding the bird life that he wanted to take a photo of her. She'll probably end up on some billboard in Japan. With a bit of time before our train was due to depart, we did some shopping at the station supermarket ... read more

After breakfast at the Trenitalia station in Milano Centrale, we boarded our train to Switzerland. We were headed for Luzern via Arth Goldau, where we had to alight from the very fast train and board another train to Luzern Bahnhof in the German-speaking north-central Switzerland. Train travel is wonderful - it's fast, quiet, clean and when travelling through Schweiz, is a wonderful scenic experience. What we saw through our train windows looked like Costiera Amalfitana, Lago di Garda and Venice put together!! There were maginficent snow capped mountains and cliffs - with buildings built throughout and beautiful alpine lakes. On arriving in Luzern, we rolled past Lake Luzern - "Vierwaldstättersee" - the fourth largest lake in Switzerland. Our first stop was for some traditional Swiss refreshments - Starbucks. Wifi and a coffee was required. AUD$38 later ... read more