Today we spent a lovely day in Assisi. The weather was a perfect 24 C We traveled by train from Florence through the beautiful Tuscan and Umbrian regions for 2 1/2 hours. The view of the valley from the top of the hill was one of a very ordered landscape. It was great to get out of the city as we have found it tiring to spend so much time in a city with no relief from the hard surfaces. We have found it interesting that there are few free green spaces in Europe...

Cinque Terre. 5 towns perched on the cliffs of the mediterranean sea at the top west of Italy. Having looked at photos of these town many times it is amazing to see them first hand. We arrived yesterday and having missed the bus to take us to the town we decided to walk. Ugh!!!! It was so steep we were knackered by the time we reached the top. Then we had to find our accommodation. Not as easy as it should have been, after walking in completely the wrong dir...

Venice. What can I say that hasn't been said before. We arrived while the America's cup was on - not such a good idea as it was packed with tourists- in fact there were 300 people from London and New York for a 3 day wedding extravaganza ( I think they were a little well off). Needless to say we didn't let them bother us at all. We carried on regardless! Oh such a beautiful city. We wandered the streets, caught ferries everywhere - mainly cos Geoff likes boats...

Mountains. That has been the theme of the past few days. On our last day in Morocco we decided to do a one day tour to the Middle Atlas mountains and beyond in order to see a Berber village and a Kasbah. It was a long but interesting day. We drove up through the mountains where the vegetation was quite lush ( by comparison) and the surroundings were magnificent. The higher we climbed though the more barren it became - it was evident that it snows heavily there in...

The 8 hour train journey from Fes to Marrakesh took us over a very contrasting land. It has sweeping fertile plains, rugged mountains, coast, barren desert where the Berber peple have built compounds from packed mud and straw. Amazingly the farmers of Morocco have managed to grow crops amongst the rocky outcrops in what looks like our stony outback desert. There are so many eucalyptus trees you would think that they are native to this country. So much rubbish li...