Mont St Michel - October 31, 2006

After a train and bus trip, via an exceptionally brief stop in Rennes, we headed to Mont St Michel.

Mont St Michel is essentially, a massive rock, with a classic monastery and church built on the rock, surrounded by sand/quicksand and the ocean.

It’s a truly stunning sight to see for the first time and as always, we took loads and loads of photos.

We stayed overnight there, but there was not heaps to do, so we set off early the next day to take a really good look around the monastery and whilst we didn’t expect heaps, we were very pleasantly surprised by the magnificent architecture, which was surprisingly detailed and ornate.

Take away the crowds who milled around the masses of crappy tourist shops, and Mont St Michel was pretty cool.

It did take a while for us to get back to Rennes because the bus timetables were absolutely crap, but we got to Rennes in the end, so all was good!

Tours - October 28,29,30 2006

Tours was a place we had highlighted to stay in and do some day trips to various chateaux in the area.

To start with, Tours is a mid sized town, and we did walk around a fair bit when we got back.

Basically we ate and slept in Tours as there isn't heaps in Tours to be completely honest…but overall, it's not a bad place either.

It is close to a town called Amboise (am-bwahs). This town has two great chateaux to see…The first chateaux we visited was the home of the genius, Leonardo da Vinci. He lived here for the final three years of his life, as a guest of the King of France, of the day.

For some unknown reason, on the day we visited, it was free, so hey, that’s good. In we went and a lovely small chateaux it was, with some brilliant gardens. Scattered throughout the gardens are various paintings on all weather canvas and life size models of da Vinci’s invention’s, this was very impressive.

Overall, it was great to see where one of the most brilliant people ever to have graced the planet, lived…plus, we saw a da Vinci exhibition earlier, in Firenze, so to see where he invented loads of things, was also very good.

The other chateaux in Amboise was the royal palace. Leonardo da Vinci is also buried here. This was also cool and we had a good look around there. The palace is situated on a hill, overlooking rooftops on one side and a river on the other. Very impressive too, I have to say.

















After Amboise, we headed back to Tours and the next day we visited a stunning chateaux called Clemenceaux (clem-on-coe). This was a really beautiful chateaux with stunning gardens and wonderful rooms, hallways and a generally stylish feel. As you can see, Samantha is sitting in front of the chateuax at Clemencaux.


We really enjoyed this area of France….close to Paris, but in the countryside, with loads of beautiful countryside and wonderful chateaux to see. Brilliant.

Bordeaux - October 25,26,27 2006

Were we happy to get back to France? You better believe it. We cheered silently to ourselves when the train crossed from the Basque country into France. The relief flooded through us as France is sane, friendly and exciting, although it does sound as though we didn't enjoy the Basque country, which, to be fair, is not true as we really only took the train through there......it is just that we really enjoy France, so were glad to be back.

Bordeaux itself is a beautiful place, filled with great buildings, interesting shops, wonderful restaurants and a revamped city centre that proved stylish and easy to walk around.

There was also a carnival in town, which was interesting enough, from a visual point of view and we took a few pics of the ferris wheel.

What wasn’t good about Bordeaux?

Nothing. Well, a restaurant we had seen on Rick Stein was rude to us when we rocked up for lunch, but, hey, whatever, they can stick their restaurant…plenty more great restaurants to spend our cash in!

Bordeax is a brilliant place.

Brilliant food, brilliant architecture, etc etc etc.

We walked around, did some shopping, took loads of photos and generally speaking, had a brilliant time.

We suggest a visit to Bordeax would be well worth it, especially to see Australia play in the 2007 Rugby World Cup!

Burgos - October 24 2006

Burgos is a small Spanish town about an hour or two north of Madrid.

Not heaps here to be absolutely honest.

When we arrived, it was about midday and there was literally one shop open, being the small café at the train station. That was it. The town was deserted! Siesta time. Odd.

We checked into our hotel after a bit of a walk without a map…who needs a map…just head in the general direction…it’ll be fine!

After a freshen up we headed back out and fortunately the bulk of the shops had reopened.

We headed for the Cathedral in town and it too, like the town, was odd. Loads of freaky looking statue heads looking down on you. Well, it is a Catholic Church, so to be expected perhaps!

(Scariest church I have ever been in, I couldn’t wait to get out…Samantha)

Anyways, I wasn’t too well that night, massive headache, so we tried to get some food to eat in our room…could we? No!

No take away food places of ANY description. Really odd. (not even a McDonalds which is odd as they seem to be everywhere these days)

Anyway, we were ok and we left Burgos as planned, after one night, at least the better for having visited a new town.

So, all good.

Madrid - October 21,22,23 2006

So, we rocked in to Madrid, not expecting heaps, but prepared to look around. Over here in sunny England, pretty much everyone craves the sun, or a tan really. Why? Who the hell knows. They’re weird here. Therefore, Spain is a very exciting place for the English…mainly Southern coastal areas, but anyways, Spain is popular.

Why bring this up?

Well, you’d have thought that Spain was hot and sunny. No Sirree Bob, cold and wet. Well, it was in Madrid anyway when we visited. But it was no bother. We still walked around ok.

Madrid to be honest, isn’t THE most interesting city in the world but it has a few things of note.

Tapas was good, again! And we had a great paella, as you can see in the photo above.

Plus, there were a couple of excellent art galleries. For some reason it was a free Sunday for art galleries, so we went along early to one of them which was great. This gallery had stacks of Pablo Picasso paintings, including the famous Guernica. It’s massive and quite impressive. I had wanted to see Guernica by Picasso since I had completed a school project on the painting when I was younger. I hadn't even realised it was in Madrid until I got there, to be completely honest, so a nice surprise and it was good, as I mentioned, so a double bonus.

There were also quite a few Salvador Dali paintings, which we liked. Dali is my favourite artist, so, again, well pleased by this.

The other gallery, the main gallery of Madrid I take it, was chock full of religious art which is obviously good, but we’d seen loads of religious art in Rome, so we didn’t stay too long there....instead, choosing to wander the streets in the rain.

The other major place of interest was the excellent Royal Palace.

Madrid was formerly part of the Austrian Empire and the palace is designed like the buildings in Austria. It was very impressive with loads of beautiful art, and rooms, on display.

Apart from that, we basically walked around Madrid and had a good time.

Granada - October 19,20 2006

Granada is a small town in South-East Spain, with a fascinating tourist attraction known as the Alhambra. Essentially, this is a Moorish (Muslim) Royal Palace similar to the Alcazar in Seville.

The Alhambra also contains elaborately detailed arches and designs, ornate gardens, high lookout towers (again it is on a hill) and beautiful ponds and water features. Normally it isn’t easy to get a ticket, however, after being let down by a tour company, we consulted the extremely helpful Granada Tourist Information Centre and a lady advised us to get to the Alhambra early doors and we would be fine with tickets. This was true and we arrived early to gain access with no fuss.

We decided to complete the Alhambra audioguide tour and it was really good. The palace is very old, with, as mentioned, ornate designs and great water features, plus a major feature being the views of the town and nearby Sierra Nevada mountains.

Granada itself was a cool town, and we enjoyed (again) the sangria and tapas.

Overall, definitely worth a short stay in Grenada.

Most enjoyable.

Seville - October 16,17,18 2006

The thing about our train tickets was that we had to organise one or more journeys prior to travelling, meaning a wait in line to book a seat for the next journey. This worked fine except in Spain….another reason why we were miffed with the place!

After arriving in Barcelona we went to organise our tickets for the journey to Seville, three days following. Unfortunately, we had to wait for about two hours in a numbered queue and then when we tried to get the train to Seville via Madrid, about 6 hours, all trains were booked. Instead, we had to get a train via Valencia, and this took about 13 hours or so.

A pain, but not the worst thing in the world, so we got to Seville in the end, so that was ok.

Upon arrival at our hotel, we were greeted by a very rude person on the front desk, who, despite our booking, made us feel very unwelcome and it seemed like it was a massive chore for him to book us in. That was bad enough, but we then had the noisiest room I have ever stayed in, clean but noisy. It was basically a room off the main foyer. It was a complete joke and we hardly slept at all.

This contributed greatly to our lack of enjoyment of Seville.

Seville was also undergoing pavement renovations whereby a tram system was being implemented, thus, the pavements were extremely narrow, dirt was everywhere and people in Spain are quite rude in general and walk straight at you, not giving any room or concession that you are even there at all. Combine this with LOADS of HEAVY rain and we had the worst combination of conditions to make Seville a place we won’t be rushing back to.

That said, Seville did feature one of the best attractions we visited on our whole trip.

It was the Royal Palace, called the Alcazar.

It was brilliant!

The architecture was Moroccan in style and the gardens were magnificent. The highlight of the Alcazar was turning a corner to reveal an open courtyard with Moorish detailed arches and a rectangular strip pond that ran from one length of the courtyard to the other. Brilliant, truly!!!

Overall, a wonderful place to visit.


Seville also had some good bars that served tapas and sangria, which we enjoyed, but in the end, we were happy enough to move onwards and forward to Granada.

Barcelona - October 13,14,15 2006

Barcelona is on the Mediterranean coast and is by far, our favourite city in Spain. It’s also the capital of Catalonia….a part of Spain, and the people tend to consider themselves to be Catalonian first and Spanish second. After travelling through the rest of Spain and seeing how disorganised the rest of Spain is, I can’t blame them for wanting to be a separate nation!

The rest of Spain has an absolutely ridiculous siesta where the whole place literally closes down. Next to nothing remains open. In lieu of this, the restaurants open late with the norm being to eat at around 10pm, which seems weird to us but good luck to 'em I guess. When do they sleep? No wonder so many people have bags under their eyes. That said, whole families, it seems, go out for an evening meal from the grandparents to the grandchildren and this clearly creates a good atmosphere.

Barcelona didn’t seem too concerned with the siesta situation and it didn’t really close down in the middle of the day…or at least, not that we noticed. It did stay open late, which was good as the city felt quite safe to walk around, despite reports to the contrary prior to travelling there.

There is a massive avenue called Las Ramblas, where there are loads of shops, people (LOADS) and various street performers, including a young bloke who was making an absolute mint by posing with people for photos, dressed as world footballer of the year, Ronaldinho, who plays for Barcelona. Normally, this wouldn’t be funny, but Ronaldinho has massive teeth so just before the photo is taken, the bloke smiles and you can see these massively oversized false teeth. Was very good and as I say, he was making a fortune!

We tended to steer away from Las Ramblas as there were just so many people and most of the shops were stocked with tourist tat….Instead, we focused on simply enjoying the city by walking around, (heaps) and we also were absolutely fascinated by the architecture of a man called Antoni Gaudi.

Let me tell you, this architecture has to be seen to be believed….absolutely phenomenal. Mightn’t be everyone’s cuppa tea but impressive it is.

He designed loads of buildings in Barcelona, where he lived, including a famous (unfinished) church called Sagrada Familia (we stayed nearby) and various other buildings the names of which I cannot recall.

His designs are not traditional in any way. Instead, he took inspiration from nature and designed many aspects of his buildings and interiors in shapes such as waves, curves like leaves, trees, skeletons and snail shells. It truly is incredible and was a major highlight of our visit.

We also visited a wonderful concert hall, alas, only a tourist visit rather than to see a show. This building also had amazing architecture with superb tiled columns.

Barcelona has a real buzz and is many people’s favourite city in the world.

We enjoyed it and would definitely revisit but it still can’t compete with Paris, New York, London and maybe even Sydney for mine. But a great city nonetheless and well worth a visit!

Carcassonne - October 11,12 2006

Carcassonne is a medieval styled walled city, situated in the South of France, towards the border of Spain, getting close-ish to Barcelona….thus, one of the reasons why we stayed there, due to its proximity to Barcelona.

Carcassonne was also featured on a television series we saw in Australia, where TV Chef Rick Stein, travelled from Brittany in North-West France, to the Mediterranean on river cruisers. Whilst on the tour, Rick Stein went past Carcassonne and whilst looking impressive, he also ate a stewed meal of meat/duck confit and beans called Cassoulet.

We were impressed, so we decided to visit Carcassonne.

As we discovered, Carcassonne is a very small city with two distinct parts – a) the retail and market section where we stayed in an Ibis Hotel and b) the tourist based medieval walled city section.

We didn’t encounter loads of rain on our journey, and as always, you cannot pick the weather so you just need to go with the flow, however, it did rain in Carcassonne whilst we were there and we did get seriously wet!!! And when we say it rained, it bucketed down.

Predictably, the walled cities were built on hills as this offered the best option for defence in years gone by, and Carcassonne’s walled city was no exception. Therefore, when it rains on hills, the water runs downwards and again, this was no exception with water everywhere!!! Was no major drama but it did pose a few small problems in drying our clothes, plus we couldn’t really walk around as much as possible, but that was also ok as it gave us the chance to have a drink and rest our legs in some bars and cafe's.

The walled city was interesting but due to the heavy rain, we decided not to go on a tour of the interior of the city. We did eat cassoulet but to be honest, it was rather over-rated. It contains sausages (fatty), plus duck confit (duck soaked in fat to preserve it) as well as white beans. It was ok, but I found it rather greasy. Nonetheless, worth trying the once, which we have now done, so all good.

We had read a review that Carcassonne was someone’s favourite city, but to be completely honest, it was ok, not bad, not great....just another place to visit but we wouldn’t necessarily rush back again.

Arles - October 9,10 2006

Provence was always a place that Samantha in particular, had wanted to visit, so we cruised down to Arles by TGV (high speed train) and stayed in a town called Arles.

Arles is popular-ish with tourists as it boasts yet another Roman styled arena, similar to the colosseum, plus it was also the home to the famous dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh.

Van Gogh lived very close to the Roman arena in a small house, towards the end of his life. As I recall, this was the place where he suffered greatly from the ringing in his ear and then proceeded to cut his ear off….meaning that he ended up in an infirmary for the insane.

Nevertheless, he painted some classic paintings in Arles, including the bedroom painting we have a print of, plus his café at night painting….we saw the actual café in a local square, which was interesting and largely the same as in his painting.

We also took a day trip, using our month long train ticket, to a town called Avignon.

Avignon is also situated in Provence and is famous for pretty much one thing….the home of the Popes of the Catholic Church in the 12th (I think) Century. At least, it was for around 100 or so years that the Popes lived in Avignon as Rome was considered unsafe for them....plus, there was some sort of hoo-hah developing between the Roman and French branches of the Catholic Church.

We went through the Papal Palace and whilst not as large as the Vatican, it was still quite impressive and we enjoyed going to both the Vatican and Avignon. We stayed for only the day in Avignon, but it was a pleasant place to visit and interesting nonetheless.

One other major highlight of Arles, was the food. We ate a fish based casserole, a specialty of the region, called Bouillabaisse, plus we made a major discovery (for us anyway!) - North African food.

We ate at a North African restaurant on our final night in Arles and the meal of couscous, meat, vegetables, etc was brilliant!

Basically, it’s a casserole with meat, vegetables and couscous. It was so good, we ate North African meals a further 8 times in a month in places ranging from Spain to various towns in France! Each is slightly different in its preparation and taste, with essentially the same ingredients and style....but all were very, very good, it has to be said.

Unfortunately, we haven’t found any similar places in England, but no surprise there, especially here in the food wasteland of the North-East!

We enjoyed Arles and Provence and we’d definitely like to get back there at some stage.

Lyon - October 6,7,8 2006

Lyon is the second largest city in France with distinct older and newer areas. The town is also divided by a very wide river with excellent food markets situated in various places along the river. On the older side of the river, medieval streets cut through the old styled buildings and above the buildings is a large hill, with a wonderful church and ancient Roman ruins.

Surprise, Surprise!

We were in Lyon for three days…perhaps with a view to resting up a bit and generally just relaxing.

There isn’t heaps in Lyon, as there is in other cities, eg, Paris, Rome, etc. However, Lyon is still a city with a good atmosphere and is a worthwhile place to visit, away from the normal tourist traps.

As mentioned, there are old styled buildings and churches to visit and streets to wander, which was quite interesting, plus a wide river with several bridges, allowing me to take yet more photos. (we took about 9000 photos in two months, although we did have two cameras and one camera is a bit dicey so we duplicate some shots on that camera.)

One of the highlights of Lyon was the ancient Roman ruins and Catholic church on the large hill above the old town and river. The views were stunning from these vantage points, with the church itself being extremely photogenic. The Roman ruins were also interesting and the amphitheatre is still used today for various concerts.

We also visited a museum devoted to the French resistance movement. This was very interesting and showed the French in a slightly different light to that perceived of them (in England especially) as being non-fighters in the war. Indeed, many French people were involved in the resistance movement.

We had planned to make a day trip from Lyon, but instead we searched high and low for a pair of boots for Samantha. Fortunately we found some and put an end to the ridiculous and time consuming search for these brown boots! (This is a complete fabrication and the ramblings of a non shopper….Samantha)

Overall, Lyon was a pleasant city, with some interesting places to visit and experience and by the way, in France, there are loads of different people for crossing the road. The impatient man is our favourite!

Strasbourg - October 4,5 2006

We’d been looking forward to getting to France but we were also wondering if France was going to let us down, as we had had such a great time in Paris in 2005.

Fortunately, Strasbourg is a cool little town and as we found, the French people continued to be very friendly and France was reaffirmed as Samantha and Dave’s number one tourist destination of choice!

Congratulations France!

Strasbourg is a mixture of French and German as the town had continually changed hands for many centuries before finally staying in French hands in 1861 or thereabouts.

Street names, restaurant menus and much of the architecture, is German, which made it quite a cosmopolitan town. It also houses the European Union Parliament, so there is a decent mix of people there.

There is a massive Cathedral there, plus loads of typically French styled buildings and churches.

There is also a river, as always, featuring fine European bridges to take loads of photos of.

Nothing major stands out in Strasbourg, but it is a very nice place to spend a few days....as is the case for pretty much anywhere in France!

Berchtesgaden - October 2,3 2006

Berchtesgaden is a small alps town situated in Southern Bavaria, on the Austrian border, near Salzburg. It’s also the former Summer retreat for Adolf Hitler and his band cronies as they owned resort styled houses and built a conference room atop the mountain, now known as Eagle’s Nest.

Eagles Nest wasn’t visited frequently by Adolf Hitler as he apparently was afraid of heights, but let me tell you, I don’t like heights and it was absolutely no problem at all, so Hitler must have been a serious Jessie.

Eagles Nest was built, including the road, 143 metre long tunnel, 143 metre high elevator and the actual building, atop the mountain, in 13 months. An absolutely phenomenal achievement by any measure today, let alone in 1936 or thereabouts.

The views are stunning, from Lake Konigsee on one side to Salzburg and Austria on the other. Very impressive.

Samantha wasn’t too keen to endure the elevator so she visited the bunker that Hitler had built and this was also very interesting.

Berchtesgaden itself isn’t a particularly interesting town but interestingly, it is a base for walkers and freaks who wear, seriously, Lederhosen…the leather trousers made famous by oompah band members and dancers. In fact, so prevalent were these lederhosen wearing freaks that whole families were wearing them….well, we thought it was strange anyway.

Must be a Bavarian thing I think.

Vienna - September 30 and October 1 2006

We didn’t expect much from Vienna as we hadn’t done much research into the city, but we were quite surprised by the Austrian capital.

Vienna is certainly a town with some very ornate and beautiful architecture. Indeed, some of the buildings were extremely grand and impressive.

After arriving by train from Krakow, which took a wee while, we caught the very efficient tram and found our apartment. We then needed to do some laundry….we had waited for quite some time in fact previously, before doing our laundry. Fortunately there was a laundry very close by, so off we trotted to get ripped off at a laundrette….nothing particularly surprising about the laundry except for one of the customers who sported a brilliant red clown’s nose, so that kept most folk amused for a short time.

Anyways, after we had finished our laundry, we trundled downtown to get our bearings and as mentioned, some of the buildings in Vienna are simply superb. The parliament buildings were phenomenal but then, just a short distance up the road, was an absolutely brilliant building…think it was a town hall or similar….in the forecourt was a food market and a circus.

Naturally, this was a great place to sit, relax, have a bite to eat and a beer. Opposite was the Vienna Opera House, also a grand and stately building, as shown just above.

The following day we visited the Hapsburg Royal Palace and viewed dinner set after dinner set, cutlery set after cutlery set. Actually, was a tad too much in truth, far too many dinner sets…what did these people do with them all? Nuts. Samantha visited the Gustav Klimt Art Gallery while I took a tram around the city and had a bit of a look around.

Vienna is a very clean city, with the aforementioned classy architecture and an easy layout to get around.

Overall, a very nice place indeed.