Thursday - Made it into Frankfurt with about an hour to spare before Sam arrived. Frankfurt airport seems to be one of the better organised airports - signs for parking and terminal entry are everywhere. Flight seems to be on time even a bit early, so we didn't have long to wait. Picked up Sam, off we go to our apartment for the next couple of days. A bit of a disappointment when we arrived. The apartment is slap bang in the middle of a construction site - refer ...

Leaving Passau we had a number of choices for a destination, the aim being to get us within a 2 hour drive to Frankfurt to pick up Sam. Nuremberg, Wurzburg, Heidelberg, Augsberg, the choices are many. After considering distance, direction and choices for accommodation we decided on Bamberg, about 2 1/2 hours west of Passau. Nothing too unique to justify the choice, except maybe the UNESCO listing of Bamberg for its architectural heritage. and it really is a beau...

Left Udine on Sunday to travel up into Germany (via Austria). We are going to a town in Germany called Passau. No reason for picking it other than its in Bavaria and it is the confluence of 3 rivers, one of which is the Danube. What should have been a fairly leisurely 3 - 4 hour drive turned into a drive of epic proportions. Left Udine Ok. Found the Autostrada OK. The fog even started to lift as we neared the mountains, pretty soon we were bathed in sunshine. Th...

Left Bologna this morning and made our way further north to a small northern Italian town Udine. Only staying here one night as we are on a bit of a schedule to be in Frankfurt by the 10th to pick up Sam. The drive up was fairly uninteresting, fairly industrial/urban landscape as we wound our way north of Venice. A double check of google maps made sure we were not going anywhere near the Slovenian border (a reference to a previous trip). Arrived in Udine about l...

After our less than memorable experience in Genoa, we headed east to go across to Bologna . Weather is a bit weird. Temp has dropped down to about 4C. Pea soup fog all the way across northern Italy, no rain or wind though. Perfect weather for hurtling along the freeway at 130+. Not too sure what we expected in Bologna. Were we swapping one big city madness for another? Both cities ware of a similar size - roughly half a million people crammed into an area smaller...