On the fringe

We said goodbye to Belgium and headed back to Paris to catch our flight to Edinburgh. Unfortunately, we didn't do a lot of research before booking this flight so ended up with Ryanair tickets because they are "cheap". Firstly this meant a lot of mucking around to get there as the Ryanair Paris airport is actually about one and half hours from Paris. Our next problem was with luggage; we had a carry-on bag to fit in souvenirs that we had bought along the way, however, Ryan air's carry-on bag size is smaller than normal so they made us put it on checked luggage for a fee of €135, which ultimately meant our cheap tickets weren't that cheap after all.

 

To top off our flight we were interrogated by the border control official in Edinburgh, eventually he realized we weren't there to stay in the UK for good and gave us our stamps (and I must say even though he was obviously thought we could be a risk he was much friendlier than border control in a lot of of other countries -USA).

Eventually, after a long day, we made it to our hostel were I proceeded to go straight to bed and sleep. We woke up to a beautiful Scottish day - that is grey with a light drizzle. This was basically the the weather we got for our few days in Edinburgh, after the warm days in Europe it was weird having to wear warm clothes and jackets. We didn't let the weather perturb us though, especially as we were there to see shows at the festival so there was plenty to do inside, we just had to get to the venues.

We really enjoyed our time at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. We saw several very well performed plays, watched some stand up comedy, tasted some whiskey and enjoyed some hearty food and warm beers in cosy pubs. And all of this with the lovely view of the Edinburgh castle looking down on us.

 

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Berlin and Bruges

After our brief stay in Prague we headed north to Berlin, a city with an interesting and somewhat disturbing, history. To see the sites and and learn this history we took a bike tour. We saw the site of Hitlers bunker, the square where they burnt books, Checkpoint Charlie and some sections of what remains of the wall.

On the brighter side of Berlin is good restaurants, funky a bars and bier gardens. If you enjoy beer and a bit of nightlife then you will like Berlin.

 

From Berlin we headed west on the autobahn, after a slow start due to roadworks, we were worried we might not get Amelia to Frankfurt in time for her flight home, but luckily German road rules allowed James to find out the maximum speed of our Citroen and get Amelia on her plane home.

We had a few days to kill before our flight to Scotland from Paris so we went through the Netherlands to Belgium where we decided to stay in Bruges. This was a gorgeous old town, full of picturesque canals, chocolate shops and pubs.

We made sure we tasted the local specialties, including beer, chocolate and waffles. We even did a tour of the local brewery and it didn't diassappoint.

 

 

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Prague

We only spent one night in Prague, spending our time checking out the main sites and enjoying good, cheap food. Our favorite discovery were the doughnuts, they were doughy, sugary and very more-ish. All the food cooked at the stalls in the plaza smelt delicious.

Next to the square was the famous clock, We watched at the turn of the hour as the figurines spun and sang. There was even a moving skeleton.

 

On our second day in Prague we checked out the palace on the hill, a very impressive complex. I particularly liked that the guards wore aviator sunglasses, much cooler than most palace guards.

 

 

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These are a few of my favourite things

From Venice we headed north through the alps to Salzburg in Austria, where they filmed The Sound of Music. The alps where spectacular. We stopped in a small town on the side of the mountain to have what seemed like a mountain of food, they eat a lot in this part of the world. The view was beautiful from this little town and the houses were immaculate.

After lunch we headed into the national park to drive the Famous Grossglockner road through the alps stopping at a few spots to take in the view.

So after our day in the mountains we arrived in the hills of Salzburg. This city, like the other parts of Austria we had seen, was immaculate. We had only intended to stay here one night but decided we needed longer. So on our day in Salzburg we had a nice walk around town, had a beer and checked out the beautiful view from the castle on top of the hill and went to a land locked country's idea of a beach - the lakeside - which was a pretty good substitute.

 

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All roads lead to...

Rome! So not surprisingly, that's where we went to start our whirlwind tour of Italy. It is a contrasting city, there are the great ruins showing the historical grandeur of this famous city, however, a lot of the current day city felt run down. We did have some good food though, there is a good reason why you can find Italian food all over the world.

While we were so close we took a day to go visit the popes home in the Vatican City. We had a look in St. Paul's! But only after Amelia and I bought some scarves as we were showing too much skin. We decided to go on a day the Pope wasn't speaking to avoid crowds, I think it was worth it because the crowd was still large but not on a scale to make us cranky. We also went and saw the Vatican museums for some famous art, this was a relief to the body as the temperature outside was about 37 degrees, so air conditioning was very welcome.

Due to the hot weather we thought that a trip to the sea side on our last day in Rome might be welcome. However, after driving for about an hour past many skimpily dressed working girls sitting on chairs at the highway rest points, the beach town we ended up at was not the beautiful Mediterranean dream that you imagine. We still stopped for a break.

It was time to say goodbye to Rome and head back up north. On the way we decided to stop off at Pisa to take some silly photos.

Next stop in Italy was Florence, the renaissance city. I don't know how it happened but on the first evening James came back to our apartment with a bottle of vodka. Safe to say we didnt see much of Florence that night and we were a bit slow at the sight seeing the next day. However, we made ourselves walk around and even up the hill to get a birds eye view of the city. On the next day we took a walking tour of the city, but we didn't realise it was an art tour. We can now identify a gothic sculpture from a renaissance sculpture.

Watching an orchestra play in Ufizi, Florence

The last city we visited in Italy was Venice. This was probably our favourite stop in this country, it was beautiful. We visited Murano, the glass island, Burano, the island with colourful houses and the main island full of pretty canals and gondolas.

Some of the towers are a bit wonky in Venice

 

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