Once we left Switzerland we travelled through some of Austria before entering Germany and on to Munich (or Munchen on a European map). On the way to Munich the busabout girl rang from the bus to book accommodation but found there were not enough caravans for all. She decided the fairest thing would be to hold a raffle for the beds, those that missed out could bunk down in a communal tent. fortunately as a couple we were in the draw twice and were very pleased to ...

We headed off from Nice, passing through the French Alps, and we mean through, certainly the longest tunnel we have ever been in, and probably the longest in the world. The trip was long, but a long way from boring. The scenery is spectacular (not too flash in the tunnel though) and travelling with the backpackers was fun. The bus driver allowed passengers to put their own music on the bus system, and we spent much of the trip listening to 'a little bit of Er...

Morning finally arrived and we were on the bus at 8am and on our way to Lyon. When we arrived we set off for the hotel with our backpacks on, but when it turned out to be a km or more Heather had to succumb and wheel hers for just the last bit. As we were checking in, Heather noticed the girls in front could speak French and were negotiating a private room, so she asked them to try for a double bed for us, success, fantastic, it was a tiny little room with a toil...

Now the start of a completely different adventure. We will be travelling on buses about Europe with our backpacks and staying in totally budget accommodation, it will be the opposite of our past week in Paris. We were up at 6am and arranged for the hotel to get us a taxi, however when it arrived we had a total language problem with the driver and no better with the hotel doorman. Even pointing to the address did not help as the bus was leaving from an outer Paris...

Finally at about 8pm we arrived in Amsterdam. We were taken as close as possible to our hostel but had to walk a km or so, we opted to wheel our backpacks and they were quite noisy bouncing over the cobble stones. Our hostel was the Hans Brinker and talk about a baptism of fire, our first night out and we were allocated a four bed dorm. We rocked up to our room to find the four beds were in fact two double bunks crammed into a tiny room, to make matters worse tw...