Innsbruck to Lyon After saying goodbye for what seemed 100 times this morning to our fellow travelers on the ship, we caught our train to Innsbruck. As our last train trip was a bit of a disaster, we were very pleased that we could store our large bags close to where we were sitting, and our backpacks were stored on see-through luggage racks above our heads. It was a rainy morning, and it was still wet when we arrived in Innsbruck. Nevertheless, we ventured o...

River Cruise – WEEK 2 Today we woke up in Hassfurt, and after breakfast took a bus for the 45 minute trip to Bamberg. Bamberg is a cultural and architectural site that UNESCO has granted heritage status. In the 10th century it was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, in 1460 it became the second place in the world to print books, and is credited with highest beer consumption per head in Germany (it has 10 micro-breweries). There is new town Bamberg, which ...

River Cruise – WEEK 1 The first port of call on our cruise was Cologne, Köln in German (which means ‘colony’). On our walking tour we found Cologne to have a vibrant city centre, a mixture of old and new with a magnificent Catholic cathedral which is dedicated to the Magi, the three wise kings who paid homage to the baby Jesus. This gothic cathedral was built over a period of 632 years, and there is a gold sarcophagus on the altar which is said to conta...

We said farewell to Lynne on her journey home to Sydney, in business class no less, and we made our way to St Pancras International Station to catch the Eurostar to Brugge.Our train trip was nice and relaxing and we arrived in sunny Brugge where we lost our way looking for our accommodation, but after getting directions and a lot of effort dragging our luggage around on cobblestones, we found our hotel.Our room was tiny, but neat and tidy with a good bathroom, so...

We loved the scenery in England, Scotland and the Irelands, but the countryside in the Snowdonia region of Wales was spectacular. At first the rural landscape was a deep, rich green with lots of paddocks with lots of sheep grazing. I noted that the sheep over here keep their tails, and it looks very strange to us. Then we drove into the stunning mountain areas and along roads lined with magnificent pine, fir, maple, oak and ash trees, beside fast-running brook...