Our flights to Greece departed from Munich airport so it made sense to spend our last night of this leg of our journey somewhere in Germany, not far from the airport. We chose Salzweger Hof in the small town of Salzweg. We enjoyed a lovely scenic drive through the countryside and the small towns on the way from Vienna to Salzweg. Our accommodation at Salweger Hof was serviceable and we would recommend it, including the restaurant where we enjoyed a pleasant meal. The most noticeable thing on the drive to the airport was the juxtaposition of lovely small towns surrounded by lush pastures and the massive BMW factories. We stopped for a quick bite to eat at one of these small towns and it was clear that the town was geared to service the needs of ... read more

We headed for Prague with step-by-step directions downloaded from Google and saved onto the computer. This worked well but it was not as relaxing as following the Garmin’s timely instructions. Also, the consequence of a wrong turn would be more time consuming and stressful! Luckily the Garmin service centre was near a motorway exit and we found our way there. The technician agreed the unit needed to be replaced but he was not able to do this because the business was only an authorised agent. However, he managed to reboot and reload the Garmin and we were soon on our way. We would have been much happier with a replacement because we were left wondering when the next failure would happen! We arrived at our accommodation, the Green Apartment, and found a rather narrow but free ... read more

We left Levoča on an overcast day and headed to the pretty town of Kežmarok, a medieval walled town. Just as it started to rain, we left and headed towards the Tatra Mountains. We had a good view of them from Slovakia but they were shrouded in mist by the time we reached Poland. We stopped at the touristy town of Zakopane. It reminded me of Queenstown but without the view!! It probably had wonderful mountain views but we were not able to see them because of the cloud. After a good look around, Eileen purchased her sister a present then we were soon on our way. I felt relieved when we departed the crowded and touristy town and glad that we had decided not to stay there. We arrived at Apart Hostel in Krakόw at ... read more

We left Ljubljana just on lunch time deciding to get some distance behind us before we stopped for lunch. We stopped at random at the town of Turnišče. We had a bowl of soup each, two mains (I had turkey, while Eileen had bratwurst) a 500ml beer and glass of wine for 11 Euro. Our waiter Davorin with his semi Mohawk haircut was very helpful talking us through the menu. The pumpkin seed oil dressing on the salad was ‘yum’. If you are passing this nice restaurant, Gostilna Varašanec, it is well worth a visit. You can’t miss it, just stop at the sandwich board with chalk writing. We decided to do the “Hop on Hop off” bus in Budapest as it is a big city and the attractions are well spread out. This worked out ... read more

We chugged through the outer suburbs of the industrial end of Verona following the Garmin’s instructions to the motorway. The Italian motorway has a speed limit of 130kph so we were soon whisking our way towards Ljubljana in Slovenia. Motorway driving was fairly boring but efficient so we covered 220kms in quick time. We chose to enter Slovenia via the adventure town of Soča so this meant getting off the motorway. The Garmin led us onto increasingly narrow roads and through little Italian villages. We stopped on the edge of a pretty village by a stream to eat the lunch Eileen had prepared earlier. I was wondering if this was really the road to Slovenia and would we be able to enter or be turned back by a dead end! We continued on the road, virtually ... read more