From Interlaken we had a big travel day to Nice transiting through Italy- that made it 3 countries in one day! We had a crash course in how to order food in Italy prior to our lunch at an Italian 'Services' stop (think food stop on the highway) which led Bill to comment that he had never been scared to order food before (but we got there in the end). We finally arrived in Nice and had a pleasant casual dinner prior to sitting by the seafront Esplanade and watchi...

A big day and then some. We did not sleep well on the overnight train from Edinburgh to London, but it was on time and we had an easy walk from Euston station to St Pancras International to join up with the Kumuka tour which covers the next 10 days from London to Rome. Our first experience on a very fast train, the Eurostar was enjoyable - very fast and smooth. Popping out of the Chunnel we arrived about an hour later in Paris for a bus tour around the centre of ...

We set off early by train from Ieper to Lille, a trip of an hour and 10 minutes with one station change (we've now developed a strategy for loading/unloading our bags from the ridiculously high trains - or is it the ridiculously low platforms). There are two train stations at Lille, France - one the local station called Lille Flandres and the other is the Lille Eurostar Terminal. We traversed from one to the other with no problems and found our Back Roads tour at...