Brisvegas Adventurers

Heading out on a train between the Swiss and Italians Alps we all head towards Milan to pickup a new car in which we will be residing in for the next week.

After finding some toilets and loading up the car we are on our way right out of Milan and straight to Venice! The drive itself was fairly uneventful except for the fact that everyone but us was driving on the right side of the road.... and that there was a traffic jam going into Milan for around 300k´s!! Arriving in Venice was a bit of a mission, but with my trusty stick and camera everything went quite well.

Ahhh, Venezia (that is Italian for Venice!).... It was much better than I had imagined, we were lucky to go on a slightly cooler day and there was no smell of sewage at all, ( at this point I would like to point out that Erika and I have only had 2 bad days of weather and one of the mildest winters experienced in a long time while being here). We spent a good 6 hours or so walking around and managed to find our way around quite well. The shops were in their hundreds and the streets were so narrow that it took some serious shoving to get the girls moving for pretty much the whole walk - but it was fun the entire way. Avoiding the gondola´s in favour for a water taxi and for about a third of the price we saw a massive amount of the city which was terriffic. Thinking about staying another night we opted out of it and headed towards France again the following morning.

Picking a few little towns to visit along the way we came across Lucca, a walled town which had them built not to protect them from assaulting armies but the water level. It was a really nice place and had some amazing little suprises nestled away within its narrow streets and was refreshingly devoid of tourists. Jumping back into the Opel station wagon we continued onto Monaco.

Monte-Expensive-Carlo is the most famous region of Monaco and we only popped in to do a tour of the race track and have a slice of pizza before continuing onto Cannes, home of the International Film Festival and roadside roast chicken stands. From Cannes we went inland and discovered some really amazing places: Antibes, Biot, Grasse, Gourdon, Saint Paul and Nice. The photos will have to wait but I will let them do all the explaining once they are posted.

Leaving Cannes and my parents in Marseilles was quite sobering and made us feel like abandoning the backpackers life style after having a life of comfort for the past 3 weeks while being in their company. But despite the feelings we pressed on to Spain and more specifically Barcelona!

The 9 hour bus ride was quite pleasant actually with background noise being minimal until some children became friends, but that was half interesting too. Once we arrived in Barcelona we were really taken back by the beauty of the city and the really nice hostel! With our spirits restored and our appetite for sights once again whetted we walked. The most amazing sight we saw was the Sagrada Familia Info Here but the most amazing experience was the Magic Fountain, unfortunatley I cannot really describe it well enough to do it justice without some pictures. Google will display some for you in the mean time though. We also met two other Aussie couples just starting their world trip and the excitement from them was hard to contain and spread quite quickly back onto us and the remainder of our journey.

I am being assaulted by black hovering things so I must depart, farewell and see you all in a few weeks!

Getting back to where I left off...

Leaving Budapest we all drove in a pretty straight line straight to Salzburg. Salzburg is the home of the Sound of Music movie and it is a terriffic little place filled with history and some pretty incredible sights. dominating the skyline is a massive castle that started construction in 1077! There were a few other interesting things about the city, the primary one being that it was the birth place of Mozart. We spent two nights here and then went for a drive through Germany on our way to Innsbruck.

The drive! Wow what a difference having a car makes to your opinion of a country. You get to see sights out of the main cities and really get a feel for what the country is and what used to be like.

You also stumble on things that really blow you away, for me that was the Durnback War Cemetery, it was something we flew passed and with that glimpse I knew I had to go back and check it out. So with my dad testing the suspension and tyres on the rental car we plowed back to have a proper look. It really had a dramatic effect on me and despite the below zero temperature I could not pull myself away from it without walking a majority of the cemetery. It was very well cared for and the Germans go to a lot of work with other sites like this all over the country. You can get some further information about it here.

Powering on to our next destination, Neuschwanstein Castle we were greeted with a postcard view. Fresh snow covering the trees and mountain the castle is perched on really made the castle look like it was floating in the clouds. The walk up was pretty fun and there was a compulsary guided tour that we all get herded along with, the castle was never totally finished with only 70% or so of the work being completed. The reason for that was the King died and the new ruler had no interest in seeing the castle or playing for its completion. With the tour down and the hill decent completed we drove on to Innsbruck.

Innsbruck the city of Swarovski, and that is about it... So with that being the only attraction we tackled it head first with a belly full of beer and schnitzel. HOLY SHINEY BALLS OF CRYSTAL BATMAN!! The place was amazing and was really not what I was expecting, the place was decked out in so much crystal that it almost burnt the eyes! The girls loved it and the boys were impressed but less inclined to oogle at all the shiney things. Having eaten all the Schnitzel there was to eat we decided to leave promptly to Switzerland.

Swit-z-land
Having found ourselves back in the land of watches, cheese and chocolate we were made at home in a little flat from a friend of a friend. When we were there last we left out a few of the big sights for when we returned so we tackled them with the zeal of a mountain goat! Aletsch glacier, Matterhorn and the surrounding country side was all conquered by the mighty aussie backpackers, with of course the help of my trusty trike! THE TRIKE was something of a worry for me as I dont have a motor bike license or a manual car license... But it all worked out in the end as everyone jumped on a bike and hurtled down the freeway at 160kph for the days adventure. With the beard and a growl I think I pulled the ride off quite well and with a dash of style to boot. There was plenty of other things that happened here, the revisiting of the igloo and some more bob sleding but those details will have to go untold until we return.

Time is a harsh mistress and Erika is hungry so I must go!

So we left Dublin quite a time a go and since then have visited the following places while with my parents:

Paris - France
Vienna - Austria
Prague - Czech Republic
Bratislava - Slovakia
Budapest - Hungary
Salzburg - Austria
Drove through Germany for a day
Innsbruck - Austria
Brig - Switzerland
Lucerne - Switzerland
Montreux - Switzerland
Venice - Italy
Lucca - Italy
Monte Carlo - Monaco
Cannes - France
Several towns of the Provence area in France: Antibes, Biot, Grasse, Gourdon, Tourettes and Saint Paul de Vence
Avignon - France

So lets go over that whole trip a little more!

Spending another few days in Paris was great, we got to see the Eiffel tower at night with its spectacular light show every hour and went to the top again but this time we used the lift the whole way up....

Eiffel Tower by night

The next day we powered over to Versailles and saw the palace that King Luis and Marie Antoinette used to inhabit until they were dragged out of by an angry mob and beheaded in the center of Paris for their poor leadership and whimsical manner towards the people. The size of the palace is outstanding and took us a good 2 hours to only do a small portion of the rooms and another 3 hours to get a paddle boat in the giant canal within the gardens and visit Marie's private estate and village.

All of us standing in the gardens over looking the grand canal

Versailles Villiage

4am the next morning we got up to fly to Vienna for some breakfast and a hot cup of coffee! With breakfast done we set out too see what Vienna had to offer. After brisk walk around the 8km scenic route we head back to the hotel to get changed for a classical music concert. The second day saw us finishing off some off the other sights including a street designed and built by a group of artists, known as the Kunsthaus. Leaving Vienna by car we head off to the Czech Republic and Prague.

Vienna Palace

Mum and Erika having something to eat from a small market stall.

Art house designed and built by a community of artists.

Prague for the second time was much better, the weather was more favourable and we were doing it in more style with a car and in nicer accommodation. Our first visit was very restrained as we knew we were coming back and I am glad we left things to do! We went with a guided day tour which was great, the whole idea behind doing a tour rather than taking yourself is you get a history lesson as you go and get a few glimpses of the city that you would have missed by yourself. We were staying near the Prague castle and Dad even managed to get directions from one of the guards!

City of 1000 Steeples

Astronomical clock, if you can find someone who can read it correctly it should display the time to the exact minute and has been running since the 14th century.

Charles bridge and the Castle

Dad asking for directions, the guy cracked a smile at that one!

Bratislava was very odd place and you could see that is was trying very hard to get itself up-to-date with modern infrastructure and some new building projects but it was still very much a small town, despite it being the capital of an entire country. We only stayed for a few hours and had a giant schnitzel but that was all we could really find to do there....

Budapest! Now this place was amazing, the Danube river flows through the city splitting it into two sides, Buda and Pest. I would have to say that this is one of the most beautiful places I have been to and it is a city - but only at night! The massive floodlights lighting up the cities monuments and buildings reflect off onto the river and the result is spectacular. The stay here was much too short and I did not even get to climb up any stairs!

Budapest by night

Here is some more of Budapest

And more!

Shanty village planted next to the highway just out of Budapest

Now this post is taking a real long time to put together so I am going to have break it up and finish the rest of the details once we reach Spain. To leave you here are a few more photos...

Innsbruck

Venice

Neuschwanstein Castle

Durnbach War Cemetery in Germany from WWII

The trike I rode around Switzerland