We are both quite ready to leave Europe, even though it has been a fantastic trip, as we are looking forward to being back in an English speaking country, and really looking forward to catching up with old friends. Watching Meg and Fern at Taurenhof brought back so many memories, and it is fantastic that we have been able to keep up with so many of our friends since those days. I feel that we have had a good look around at quite a few countries, and seen variou...

We only had time to drive through the small country of Luxemburg, but it was well worth the detour. The country is small, but clean, beautiful, and friendly. We drove through snow, sunshine, clouds, forests, babbling brooks, green fields, and clean, bright, well cared for villages, We drove up to Vianden to visit an absolutely fairy tale castle, which has been renovated and set up as a sort of museum, although we didn't go in because we didn't want to pay the $...

By the time we were headed to Austria, I was so excited about seeing Fern again, and to revisit Taurenhof. We made good time, and arrived in Schladming at midday. After baling out on following Sean's instructions as the roads got narrower, we parked the van next to a river in a restaurant car park and walked until we found Taurenhof. The lectures were about to finish so we waited at the end of the path for Fern and Meg. Some students came down the path and said...

We weren't sure how our trip to Venice was going to turn out as we awoke to rain, but we found our way across the Causeway to the camper parking area, and managed to get rid of our persistent spruiker who was trying to persuade us to spend $ 200 for a water taxi for the 2 of us to go on a 15 minute trip to San Marco Square!!! We ended up catching an ordinary water taxi there, sitting inside the cabin looking through the rain and bashing waves as we went around ...

Switzerland is beautiful. It is clean, the people are friendly and the scenery is awesome. We only managed to get to the lake areas in the south on Swiss Italia but had a great time there. Even though they speak Italian in this area, they consider themselves Swiss not Italian, as do the Swiss Germans and Swiss French that we met. We spent 3 days between Locarno, Lugarno and Bellinzona, sleeping in a football stadium car park, (where we were woke up at 6 am by t...