Day 8 Monday 19/08 Bruges > Heidelberg - 27deg Sunny 600km Today began with an early start for our 1.5hr train journey from Bruges Belgium to Lille France to pick up our hire car and commence the automobile section of our trip. Our first challenge was to find the hand brake in the car, which turned out to be a button we had pressed many times, however as we couldn't read the instructions in French we didn't know there was a next step, once sorted we were on ...

Day 7 Sunday 18/08 Bruges - 20deg Sunny/cloudy John here...spending a full day in Bruges, lazy start. Wandered around town and went into several shops and were amazed at the choices, one pub had 300 beers, cookies of all sorts, nougat and of course chocolates of which there is no shortage. We decided on a boat trip of the canals, so queued for tickets and did the tour. Just before lunch overlooking the Markt we had a fruit beer at the...

Day 1&2 Monday 12/08 - 13/08 - London 21deg Sunny..... We left Amy and Maddie at the airport on a cold windy Melbourne afternoon and after a 23.5 hour flight on the Qantas A380 where we had great seats in the upper deck and with a short stopover in Dubai arrived on time at 5.30am to a sunny London to be met by Jen and Jon. We were so quick through customs etc, so different from our last landing. It was lovely to see them and both looking very well and happy ...

Day 6 Saturday 17/08 Brussels > Bruges - 20deg Sunny John here...today we caught the metro to Central station, and took the Hop-On/Hop-Off bus tour. Our impression of Brussels as a city is that it reminded us of Prague and Buenos Aries, in terms of its architecture, planning and style. We did the full circuit and then went into the main town centre to find the sculpture of Manneken Pis...or Little Boy Peeing. What a letdown, this kid...

Day 21 27/2/13 Auckland to Christchurch to Sydney Our last day in NZ and we travelled from Auckland to Christchurch for our flight back to Sydney. It has been a fantastic trip and we have seen some remarkable places, with such genuine friendliness from all we have met and great service and food..and oh did we mention how good the coffee is and not to forget to mention how good the wines are as well! We have had wonderful sunny weather with an average tem...