Saturday, 16 June – Berchtesgaden One of the things I love about the northern hemisphere is the yummy yoghurts. I saw a pineapple flavour in the supermarket so I bought it home for breakfast. Upon opening it this morning, I realised it was 250g of pineapples and cream. It was delicious for sure, but I couldn’t help but feel a little defiled by all the cream after I’d finished it. After leaving our apartment, we headed southeast towards the Bavarian Alps. We sat in bumper-to-bumper, “Sydney Harbour Bridge at peak hour” type traffic for 30km of road works, but once that had passed we zoomed towards Salzburg and the encroaching mountains. We had a cloudless day so the mountain peaks could be seen all day. It was easily the prettiest drive we’ve done on this trip, ... read more

Sunday, 10 June – Prague to Nuremburg It was raining when we got up and checked out, but by the time we reached the Vysehrad Castle (Prague’s second castle), it stopped within 2 minutes of us getting out. Vysehrad Castle is enchanting. It’s also covers a massive area but where Prague Castle was about ornate detail and screaming “filthy rich palace”, Vysehrad is more secluded, quiet and reflective. It almost felt like a monastery if it weren’t for the fortifications and bastions of a military operation. It has a cemetery that still gets used, so perhaps that attributes to its peaceful mood. There were also significantly fewer people, so that was a welcome change after being suffocated by the masses yesterday. The bastions were imposingly thick and again it was an impressive display of architecture given ... read more

Thursday, 7 June We left the motorways this morning and drove the country roads between Berlin and Dresden, stopping off in the middle of nowhere to eat a cheap supermarket-bought lunch. The drive was pretty, running through a couple of great little towns and showing off much more of the typical German architecture that we’ve been expecting. Arrived in Dresden and were immediately amazed at the cityscape. This town was decimated in WWII by allied bombing and the town has rebuilt most of the downtown area to its pre-war state - it’s all grand and elaborate. Dozens of buildings - several churches, the Theatre, the Royal Palace, the Zwinger Museum, Art School, quaint squares - you name it, they’ve been reconstructed and are all as intricate as they were before the bombs. They all look hundreds ... read more

Thursday, 31 May - Lubeck, Germany It was time to say goodbye to Brugge and let it rip on the German Autobahns. As great as it was to visit, in hindsight we should have left Belgium off the itinerary, as Brugge was a major detour and we’ll still need to return to see the rest of the country. We should have added an extra night to Amsterdam and Berlin, but oh well – you don’t know these things. However, it was a sorry day for driving and so I’m going to call it “The Great Disappointment”. Here are the stats as to why: 700km of road (200km in Belgium, 100km in Netherlands, 400km in Germany) 700km of continual trucks – thousands of them! 400km of road works (approximately 6 of each 8km, with only 2km of ... read more

Sunday, 27 May We awoke at the reasonable time of 8.30am and settled on doing a self-guided walk after breakfast. The sky was blue and every man and his dog were out in force. Actually, we’ve been quite surprised at how large the crowds are. Given is this only the beginning of the tourist season, I’m glad we’re not here much later. It was a hectic pace as we spent the day wandering through little lanes and squares, touring the Amsterdam Museum and Anne Frank’s house. Some of the areas are more picturesque than others but overall it’s more of a large town than a big city. I especially love that there are no buildings higher than 8 storeys. It doesn’t have the grandeur or Paris or Vienna, but it does have that infectious feel like ... read more