Europe continued

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The last week or so we have spent meandering our way through France, Switzerland and into Germany in order to reach Frankfurt and see our German buddy Sabrina. On the way we have whizzed through a lot of places… Lyon for a night, Mt Blanc/Chamonix, a night on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the Alsace wine region and Strasbourg on the French-German border. A few highlights:

Chamonix / Mt Blanc was fantastic, perfect surroundings and weather to enjoy the outdoors, lots of great walking / running trails (plenty of hills for Tom to run up). We hiked up to the foot of a glacier not far from town with our picnic of local salami and bread. There is something nice about a ski resort in summer time, plus the Canadian style microbrewery and chalet accommodation that we splashed out on made the stay there even nicer.

We enjoyed the countryside in the Alsace wine region. Although it’s in France, the region has switched between Germany and France as a result of WWI and WWII. It definitely felt like we were in Germany; German named villages, German looking houses and lots of Germans on holiday. During our stay we popped into a vineyard to sample the white wine and visited a couple of dairy farms to try some cheese.

We also spent a night in Strasbourg, on the French – German border. It was a cute city, nice architecture, and the old city hovering over Venice like canals with the main attraction being the gothic Cathedral Notre-Dame.

Of course (one of) our biggest highlights of Europe so far has been catching up with the lovely Sabrina. With her local knowledge and lingo we enjoyed a couple of days hanging out in Frankfurt. Apparently we are the perfect guests as we wake up late, require little entertaining and are ready to go to bed by 11pm. We enjoyed wandering around Frankfurt, along the river Main, seeing the city from its tallest building, sampling the local beer, apple wine, schnitzels and sausages. Tom also munched his way through pork knuckle, which didn’t look particularly attractive to me (or Sabrina), just a giant fried looking piggy hoof. Even a couple of Germans at another table looked on in horror as he tucked in. Anyways, Frankfurt has been fun and lovely to see Sabrina again.

Tom has enjoyed driving on the autobahns in Germany, where in parts there is no speed limit, luckily for me our little hire car can’t go too fast. After managing to reach our top speed, we had to quickly pull over to the inside lane to let an old Volvo go past at over 200kph, so we still have a long way to go in order to keep up with the German drivers!

Off to Munich and then making our way slowly back to Rome.

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Comments

[ann ashby]

wow
Enjoyed reading your travel bits and photos great .Sounds as though you are having a wonderful time .Weather freezing here coldest winter for years.We are off to ayers rock and alice springs on friday ,should be very interesting.Enjoy your trip ,love Ann