We’ve reached the end… of this adventure

Our week at Lake Como seemed to last forever, yet was over too soon. We met some lovely locals including the butcher and the waitresses at the lakeside café. We attended a fundraising lunch organised by the local church with “traditional” menu items including tripe!

The view from our apartment

We spent a couple of days in Milan before our flight out. Our timing coincided with Fashion Week. No celebrity spotting, but plenty of tall skinny girls around! After some sightseeing and last-minute shopping, we had finished our European leg of our trip.

The duomo at Milan

Vancouver was the next stop and a chance to catch up with Jess and Liam in their new home. By a stroke of luck, Nicole was also in town for the first few days of our visit. The five of us went up to Grouse Mountain where we saw Grizzly Bears, watched a lumberjack show and ate beaver tails - yum! Please note, beaver tails are a deep-fried sweet snack, much like a flat donut.

Team Vancouver plus visitors - Nicole, Jess, Liam, Dain & Susan

Grizzly safely behind the fence

During the week we also rode around Stanley park where we spied raccoons, squirrels and some beluga whales - 2 adults and 2 young ones.

This was our last stop before winging our way southwest, across the dateline back to Sydney. We look forward to catching up with everyone - but be warned we have taken over 8000 photos.

Us at the Ice Hockey

Some more Italy

From Turin we headed down to the Cinque Terre, a group of five small towns clinging to the cliffs along the Italian riviera. We based ourselves in a town called Rapallo, just north of the Cinque Terre.

Rapallo

We walked between all five towns over two days. We walked from Riomaggiore, the southern-most town to Corniglia, the middle town on the first day. This was an enjoyable walk with beautiful views of the coastline, particularly amazing with rough seas sending waves crashing into breakwaters.

Manarola

On the second day we walked from Corniglia to Monterosso, the northern-most town. This was a much tougher walk, 7km in total with lots and lots of steps. We were quite happy to reach Monterosso and enjoy a gelato and lots of water.

Vernazza

We headed back to Florence to catch up with our friend Teresa and retrieve the bags of our things that we had left behind. A large part of time was spent trying to get all of our belongings into our bags and within the airlines’ weight limits. It was a challenge, but we managed it… just!

Florence is one of our favourite cities. It has beautiful buildings and great shopping. We had to restrict ourselves due to the above mentioned space and weight issues, but Susan still managed to find some very nice shoes to buy.

While in Florence, we also took a daytrip to Panzano in Chianti to enjoy a fantastic Tuscan lunch with a nice local wine, finished by the usual homemade limoncello!

Us at the top of the cupola of the Duomo

We are currently staying on Lake Como at Menaggio in a little apartment overlooking the lake. We’ve had a couple of days of rain and it’s somewhat cooler here than the weather we’ve been having. However, today turned out beautifully so we caught the ferry across to Bellagio and had a walk around. No sightings of George just yet…

View from the ferry looking towards Menaggio

Trains, bikes and automobiles

We were quite sad to leave Turkey as it was an amazing place and definitely one of the highlights of our trip. However, we were also happy to be in more familiar surroundings arriving in Frankfurt. Mind you, we still couldn’t understand what was on the menu without a bit of help!

Susan serving up some maultaschen (ravioli)

We visited the Porsche museum at Stuttgart. They have recently opened a new, purpose built building, which is stunning. The collection ranges from 100+ year old pieces designed by Dr Porsche through to some current model cars and race cars. Needless to say, Dain was a very happy man taking photos, peering into windows and dreaming….

Just a sample of the cars on display

We had a number of quick stopovers on our journey from Germany down to Italy. These included Geneva - highlight being our tour of the UN compound, quite an impressive facility; Les Gets - mountain biking heaven for Dain, peace & quiet for Susan and more than enough cheese and potatoes for both of us; Grenoble - our last chance for local French wine & cheese; and then Turin - where we were able to enjoy good coffee and pasta yet again.

Geneva - The Human Rights Commission meeting room

Les Gets - Dain returning from a ride

Grenoble - The cable cars up to the Bastille

Turin

We are well and truly nearing the end of our holiday. We have only another 3 weeks here in Italy before flying to Vancouver to spend a week with Jess & Liam and then heading home. Time for another coffee… ciao!!

Turkey

We started our tour of Turkey in Çanakkale, which we used as a base to visit Troy and Gallipoli. Arriving in Turkey meant getting accustomed to yet another currency (our 8^th for the trip). We had a very funny incident with a shopkeeper who we thought was asking 61 Lira (about $50) for our little bundle of goodies. After some negotiations where neither side could understand the other we finally established it was 6 Lira (about $5)!!

Troy was a little underwhelming. Our tour guide showed us through the ruins of the different levels of cities that had been built there over the centuries, however, it was quite hard to imagine the cities as they were.

Susan in the Trojan horse at Troy

Our Gallipoli tour was great. Our guide was a young Turkish guy who was very enthusiastic about his job and Gallipoli. He told stories from both sides and helped us to imagine what occurred. We both had feelings of sadness as we walked through the numerous cemeteries, but we also experienced a sense of pride being Australian and to have some idea of what these soldiers experienced.

Bullets that hit each other across the trenches - this is apparently a very rare occurrence, and is indicative of the volume of bullets exchanged between trenches, that were at times only 8 metres apartDain walking through one of the cemeteriesLone Pine Cemetary

We headed back to Istanbul on another 6 hour bus trip. We stayed in Sultanahmet, the old part of the city, nice and close to some of the big attractions. During our stay we visited the Blue Mosque (a huge mosque tiled with blue mosaics inside), Topkapi Palace (where the Ottoman Sultans lived), Aya Sofya (a church that was converted to a mosque that was converted to a museum) and we went a bit nuts shopping at the Grand Bazaar, a huge covered complex with over 4,000 shops.

Us at the Blue MosqueDain checking out the different spices on offer at the Spice MarketBasilica Cistern - An underground water holding built in the 6^th century

Hot and cold

The colder weather in Edinburgh was a bit of a shock but also quite a relief from the heat of summer. We busied ourselves with exploring the city to keep warm (and rediscovered our hot chocolate and amarula mix too). We visited Edinburgh Castle, the royal yacht Britannia and climbed up to Holyrood Park.

A view of Edinburgh from the castle

We booked ourselves onto a day tour which took us to Glencoe, Fort William and up to Loch Ness. No sightings of Nessie, but an amazing day.

Susan with Hamish the heilan’ coo, not sure which one’s which though.

Dain at Urquhart Castle

It was a huge change in scenery and temperature when we landed on the Greek island of Crete. We were swiftly taken to our hotel in a Mazda6 taxi :)

After a couple of days, we cruised over to Santorini where our time was monopolised by lounging around on the beach and eating. We managed to drag ourselves away from the beach for one day to explore the towns of Thira and Oia and watch an amazing sunset. I’ll let the photos tell the story.

Thira
Sunset at Oia
Susan at Perissa Beach

We now find ourselves in Turkey. It certainly is a fascinating place. We made our way to Çanakkale by bus from Istanbul, a six hour journey! We’re looking forward to our tours of Troy and Gallipoli before heading back to Istanbul.

Great European Cities.... and Barcelona

Sadly, we were a little underwhelmed by Barcelona. Our visit didn’t start well as we didn’t arrive until 11pm after a long day of being sent in the wrong direction on trains. Our first couple of days were spent mostly catching Le Tour in the rain (see previous blog). The other couple of days we did some sightseeing including visiting the Picasso Museum, the Gaudi park and the Sagrada Familia church.

The food was a stand-out of our visit. We had some very delicious paella, several yummy tapas and churros served with thick hot chocolate.

A chameleon on sale at the markets along La Rambla

The lowlight of our visit was witnessing a bag-snatching and the ensuing fight as a guy tried to get the lady’s bag back off the thief. The worst bit was the way the thief casually walked off with the bag once he was free of the other guy.

Needless to say, we were quite happy when we got to Paris. We celebrated Bastille Day with thousands of Parisians on Champs des Mars watching the fireworks on the Eiffel Tower. It was an absolutely amazing sight!

Le Tour Eiffel

During our week, we visited museums including the Louvre and Musee D’Orsay, enjoyed a cruise along the Seine and attended a night at the cabaret (sadly no cameras were allowed). We absolutely loved walking through the gardens throughout the city.

At the Jardins du Luxembourg

Notre Dame

We were delighted to stay with Charlotte and George in London. Their gorgeous flat was the perfect base for us to explore the city. We discovered quite a few interesting museums - the design museum, the fashion museum (they had an underwear exhibition on) and the imperial war museum.

The Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square

We were treated to some typical British weather with some chilly and soggy days, including the day we decided to watch the changing of the guard. It was still great to watch, although a little crowded. Speaking of crowds, we also made it to Portobello Road markets along with what felt like half of London!

Changing of the Guard

Us on the London Eye

We’re now in Edinburgh enjoying the cooler weather. We’re staying in a lovely little apartment right near Edinburgh Castle, which we'll tell you all about next time.

Tour de France - Special Edition

Apologies to those of you not interested in cycling as this blog is dedicated to our time following Le Tour.

We got our first taste of Le Tour in Marseille, the start of stage three. We positioned ourselves in front of the stage where each cyclist comes to sign-on at the start of each day’s riding. We saw all of the big names ride past right in front of us - Armstrong, Evans, Cancellara, and so on and watched as some of the riders stopped to collect some power bars before heading to the starting line.

Us at the start line at Marseille

Cadel in a pre-race interview

It was fascinating to watch the marketing caravan cruise through before the start of the race. The caravan consists of about 100 vehicles of all shapes and sizes brimming with promotional goodies that get handed out along the course to the waiting crowds. We managed to get quite a collection during our time with Le Tour.

We then headed to Montpellier to watch the Team Time Trial. In the morning, we saw a couple of the teams head out for a practice run and watched the Silence-Lotto mechanics get the bikes ready. We didn’t see Cadel, but we saw a couple of his bikes (and managed to knock one of his team mate’s bikes over… oops!).

The mechanics working on one of the bikes

We decided to head out towards the finish line. We were about 250m from the end, opposite where the support cars get diverted off. It was just incredible how quickly they whizzed past. The atmosphere was great, with everybody screaming and banging their hands on the barricades as each team rode through.

Team Saxo Bank head towards the finish line at the Time Trial

Cancellara retains the yellow jersey, presented today by Ben Stiller

Our travels then took us to Barcelona (via a very long and tiresome journey - full story in our next blog). We watched the finish of a very wet stage six and the start of stage seven the following day. For the finish we positioned ourselves on the inside of a roundabout which meant the riders rode within a metre of us at times. The strain of a tough stage was written on their faces, which we could see so clearly (along with all the dirt!). Dain saw Tom Boonen look straight at him!

Up close and personal with the passing bunch

It was a different looking bunch of cyclists the following morning with a good night’s sleep and clean jerseys. Unfortunately our view was obstructed by police motorcyclists who decided to position themselves right in front of us 10 minutes before the riders were due. We still managed to catch sight of Cadel and gave him a few words of encouragement to spur him on.