Well, hiya everyone & what a week we've had!

Am not gonna bore you with details, but more a brief description of our amazing & wondorous happenings!!.

Minor details... we opted for the scenic routes & the roads have been easy - well, except for when we kinda got lost in Versailles & Lausanne - but as they're major cities, we're not counting them!! Also, customs does not exist outside Portsmouth, as this is the last place we were asked for our passports - we have been nodded at & waved thru' everywhere else!! Oh yeah - & Karl's love of snow lasted all of 30 seconds til he found out how cold & wet it was when i pelted him with a snowball! ;-)

FRANCE - lovely quaint, rustic villages or huge chateaus & castles & we saw the Palace of Versaille 3 times (see above!!) Favourite place was Pontarlier - not far from Swiss border - real French ambience feel to it, snowcapped & real pretty!

SWITZERLAND - loved the places we went thru, entered at Le Craux had coffee in pretty village - half expected to see goats being herded up the mountain! Very picturesque place - journey away from Lausanne around the lake into the Alps was awesome - very green and shrouded by vineyards around the lake, then the ascent into mountains was stunning & then wow.... we hit the Alps.......

THE ALPS - If i didn't despise the 'cold' sooo much, i think i'd love to live here - absolutely breathtakingly beautiful - even Karl fell back in love with the snow from looking at the scenery - the villages either side of the alps are picture perfect, with such welcoming folk as well.

ITALY - The Alpine village of Aoste is shadowed by Mont Blanc, the morning that we left, we watched the skiers/snowboarders on the piste. Our journey to Pisa thru the Tuscany region was pretty, but as for the leaning tower.... what a let down!, however, the 3 religous buildings around it were pretty cool. Rome was next - Colosseum worth every penny & also we walked miles around the surrounding roman ruins, excavations & buildings. Next, we spent day in Vatican City - again fantastic VFM - soo much priceless artwork, religous & roman artefacts all under one roof, there really was sooo much to see & the Sisstine Chapel is awesome - good ole Michealangelo! Next heading was towards Naples thru the Campania region - much more my style, surrounded by mountains.... & then we dawned on Vesuvius, which is long overdue an eruption after 60 years! A strikingly awesome sight none the less! Final Italian destination was Bari - which was the perfect ending to Italy - has an 'old town' which is steeped in Italian tradition, a maze of tiny residential lanes with churches on every other corner - the men straight out of church, drinking coffee, smoking, chatting or playing cards on every corner - or at the fish market drinking Peroni - perfect! ;-)

GREECE - So this morning we arrived at Igoumentisa, Northern Greece - again picturesque, warmer climate, hilly, green & slightly rocky. Headed for lake Iounina & the 'old town' - beautiful, shrouded in mountains but a huge temperature drop!! Next, was what we thought would be a casual ascent over the mountains, heading to our current destination of Meteora - well, it started off casual enough, but soon turned very hairy, as the nice green hilly rocks turned into bloody great snowed up mountains with a fog that made driving pretty treacherous - but heyho, 30km later we emerged unscathed the other side!! Then we came upon this place - which you have to see to believe! Meteora is a group of 24 mountain pinnacles with monasteries built on the tops of them - now, having been up & surveyed this, we've decided that those monks, (all those moons ago) performed nothing short of miracles, coz you can only just about get up to them, let alone build on them!!

Anyway, enough of our tales - til the next installment - be safe & smiling allof you's.

Lotsa luv Mandy & Karl xx