Surprisingly, the morning found us refreshed and ready to tackle Italy. We'd spent part of the evening with our phrase book and the lap top, practicing our Italian (We had had to use French to check in the night before). It paid off the next morning, when Margaret's broken Italian got us a free breakfast (she asked if breakfast was included and it was - cafe, succo, and brioches which means, coffee, juice and breakfast pastries!) It was a lovely breakfast which w...

A quick train trip through Austria will bring us to Italy and the end of train travel for a while. We decided to rent a car in Italy for three weeks using our Airmile points. However, at this point, we've left our future hostel/hotel arrangements to fate for awhile. Two trains later, we were in Italy and headed for Bolzano to pick up our car. Along the way, we had to have beer in Austria, for my staff (I've promised to drink a beer for them in every country we go...

Up to the Zugspitze we went. It's the highest mountain in Germany. The day had dawned slightly cloudy so we were a little worried about the weather but we set out anyway, wearing warm clothes (always easier to strip than freeze, we always say). We had free bus passes from the hostel, so we took the bus downtown, and switched to a train that eventually turned into a cog train. We got to 2600 metres, after a 75 minute, 19 km trip that included a 25 minute segment t...

Here is our rant about hostel living. We have had so few bad experiences that if you ever hear anyone put down hostel living, just steer them to our blog. As we approached our new hostel, we saw a huge lawn and a bunch of kids playing soccer, badminton etc. When we got in, we were greeted by a great lady who told us everything about the town, what to see, and how to get a break on many of the attractions. Our room was spotless, and we made our own beds with c...

We split up this morning. Tessa and Margaret went back down to Marienplatz to check out the price of Birkenstocks, discovering they were only 29 Euros. Hurray!!! But everything was closed. Boo!!! It was Sunday, so they stopped at the Church on the way home but had missed the beginning of the service (it started at 10:30 - summer hours). Meanwhile, Barry and Connor checked out train tickets to Oberammergau and Garmisch. They found out that we could get a Ba...