PAUL Today (July 9) was our last whole day in Europe. On the recommendations of a few people we've met in Munich, we decided to catch a train to Salzburg, adding European country number nine to our list - Austria. The trip took around 2 hours and then we headed down to the old town area taking in the fantastic views along the river as we did so. Overlooking Salzburg is the Festung Hohensalzburg (the castle). We made the climb up the hill to the castle entrance a...

PAUL We arrived in Munich on July 5 without accommodation. We had arranged another couchsurfing set up, but we hadn't been given the address or contact details of our hosts and so we ended up doing a quick run around to find a hostel with a couple of free beds. As luck would have it we ended up with what were probably the last two hostel beds near the train station that night, and we ended up staying in the same hostel for the rest of the week. The next day was...

LISA Heidelberg was our second couchsurfing experience and it was wonderful. We surfed with Leah, a young American girl who has been working and living there for 7 months after years of on and off travel. We got on really well and had some great chats about the city, travel, surfing, life, church and embarrassing Americans. Arriving in the late afternoon we went for a wander along the main street which may be the longest pedestrian street in the world and climbe...

LISA We spent a fantastic 3 days in Schaffhausen with Heidi and Otto who made it their mission to fatten us up in record time (how good is Swiss food! - like Swiss tennis players - we were cheering for you Roger!). Among the great experiences were morning horse-rides with Heidi (Paul had to run along beside taking photos). Their cute, crazy little dog Farher (joy) was true to her name and kept us entertained for hours. We also went on a 2hr cruise up the beaut...

LISA We arrived in Verona to our most expensive accommodation yet - a lovely B&B which could only host 4 people at a time. Funnily enough, we ended up paying as much for our first night in Munich about 2 weeks later because of couchsurfing mix-ups, ah well. We decided to make the most of the European twilight and went for a walk into the city. It was a beautiful little place with tonnes of character-filled old buildings. The best find though was the Roman A...