JeffandBex

Well folks this is our last update by the time most of you read this we will be getting ready to board our plane home. Santorini Our first stop in the Greek Islands was Santorini. After a bit of mad search for a ferry (probably don't leave booking ferries till the night before in peak season...) we had a four hour cruise from Athens. Arriving in Santorini is pretty impressive as you sail into the Caldera and look up the cliffs to all the blue and white buildings. Also the sky is clear blue and it's freakin' hot! We only had two nights/one full day there, so we decided the best way to do it all in a day was to rent a 4 wheel motorbike (ATV). Blatting round on that was oodles of fun! We ... read more

Hamburg After Amsterdam it was off to Germany and our first stop Hamburg. Hamburg is in the north and is a bit off the usual tourist track, but was recommended to us by a friend who knew someone who lived there. Our first impressions (which changed the next day) were that it was just another big city, though with good food and beer. We weren't staying in a very nice part of town either (the drug related red light district!). The waterfront area is quite nice and we walked along there to the infamous Reeperbahn which according to the Lonely Planet has the best redlight district in Europe. It turned out that the weekend we were there was also the Harley Days, so there were Harleys and bikers everywhere, especially the Reeperbahn - mongrel mayhem! Reeperbahn ... read more

Valencia After a very fast (love the high speed trains) trip from Barcelona we arrived in Valencia. Apparently at this time of year it is normally crawling with Brits, but the recession has meant there are a lot less coming now. Because of this we scored a nice cheap but mint apartment to stay in, it even had a sofa! You miss the little things... After doing a bit of research we found that Valencia has the usual share of churches etc but we were after something a bit different so thought we would take on the Biopark and Oceanographic. The Biopark is a African wildlife park and is unlike any zoo we have seen. No bars, concrete floors or cages. In some places you can even walk in the enclosures (obviously not with the lions ... read more

Sorrento and Amalfi We left you in Rome in the last blog, and from there we moved on to Sorrento. We caught an early train from Rome to Naples, until then we had found the trains to be pretty good but this one lowered the standards dramatically. It was late, dirty, smelly and all round pretty nasty. There was no air conditioning and no lights (as we discovered when we went into a long tunnel and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face!). From Naples we caught the Circumvesuviana train to Sorrento it was almost as bad but way more crowded. Everything you hear about Naples is true, its dirty, full of graffiti and doesn’t feel safe. About halfway between Naples and Sorrento is the stop for Pompeii which is where we got ... read more