Family fun in France

After 11 weeks on the road there is nothing better than coming home to family. We've been lucky enough to have spent the last week hanging with the Peacock family and friends, the Day's and the Atkinson's, in a hired french house in the village of St Maure (2 hours south of Paris) that could almost be described as a chateau!!

It was a trully global affair with Brett travelling from Sydney, Mum and Dad stopping off after their trip to Mauritius, Lysh and Tim dropping in as part of their Italy/France Euro trip and the Atkinson's and Day's coming all the way from north London!

The week was spent sharing lots of fine food, sampling the local wines and St Maure goats cheese, staging our own French Open doubles tennis tournament on the house's "clay" tennis court, visiting the local Chateux and sharing plenty of laughs over our nightly post dinner party game. We are sure Brett's "Charlie the chicken" will be recounted over the dinner table for many years to come!!

A great time was had by all and it's going to be tough getting used to not waking up to a table pilled high with croissants, pain au chocolate and baguettes; the constant laughter and the familiar faces of family and friends. Thanks guys for a great week! And a big thanks to mum for organising it all.

Following the wine trail we are now in the Champagne region having just toured through Burgundy. Sante!! (Cheers!)

Brett and Em sampling the local vin rouge

Shot of the house... ( thanks to those on the April France trip for borrowing your photo idea!)

The kids

The extended Peacock family

Considering the next point during the tennis

Brett keeping us all entertained with his t-shirt. (click on the photo to read the writing)

Outside one of the wine cellars

Enjoying a grand pression beer in one of the local bars

"The team"outside our local Chateau

Young love!

Walking the streets of Tours

Race around Bavaria

Due to some ambitious time planning on our behalf and spending a few too many days in the Czech Republic we were left with just a few days to see Bavaria in Germany before heading off to France for our planned rendez-vous with the Peacock family and friends. As a result the last week has felt a bit like the TV show race around the world, complete witth many a road block and fast forward. (Just for u, ev and nat!).

We spent the first 2 days touring the romantic road as part of a whirlwind coach tour. The tour was hilarious as we were the only non Japanese people on the whole tour bus and as each stop was rarely longer than 15 mins per town it turned into a frantic photo fest! It was made even funnier by the site of Gav towering a metre over everyone else and he soon became a photo attraction all on his own!

We spent a great night in the town of Rottenburg surrounded by vineyards, enjoying the beautiful old buildings and cobblestone streets, bratwurst sausages and the medievil crime museum where we found out a bit more about Em's heritage as her maiden name, Richter, means judge in German!

At the end of the romantic road we went to the Neuschwanstein Castles of Ludwig II. They are famed for apparently inspiring Walt Disneys fairytale castle. We were told that this is Germanys biggest tourist attaction and that 6-8000 people visit the castles every day. As a result we got up in the dark at 6.30am the next morning to beat the so called crowds. After buying our tickets early we were quite proud of ourselves and were optimistic that the thick fog which was blocking all views of the 2 castles and surrounding landscape would soon dissapear. However as the day went on our spirits dampened as we realised the fog was getting worse, the crowds failed to appear and it was about 5 degrees! So we had to settle for postcards and our imagination.

We then embarked on a complicated journey to Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps to check out the infamous Eagles Nest and the area of Hitlers second command post during WW2. Again we were faced with dissapointment as Eagles nest had been closed 2 weeks earlier than normal for renovations... yup! Despite the setbacks we still really enjoyed checking out the amazing history museums about Hitler and Germany leading up to and during WW2 and the stunning mountain scenery surrounding Berchtesgaden.

Last leg of our mission was a 17 hr train trip from Berchtesgaden to Paris to meet the Peacocks. Luckily it has been a very relaxing and fun week so we are already feeling recovered from our race around Bavaria!

A stop on the Romantic Road in Bavaria, Germany

Em enjoying the local bratwurst and beer

Vineyards surrounding Rottenburg, Bavaria

The classic european cafe set

Playing around with shadows on the horse!

Bavarian countryside

The way the Neuschwanstein Castle should look......

How it looked for us with the fog! GP not happy Jan!

Swans in the lake surrounding the castles.

Picture of a standard military rally in Germany before WW2; using 130 spotlights around the stadium with spotlights meeting in the sky as a dome. At Berchtesgaden museum.

River in Berchtesgaden, Germany lake in Berchtesgaden

The carb overload continues in Czech!

Our last minute decision to include the Czech Republic in our travels proved to be a winner! Beautiful views, great architecture, friendly locals and some ridiculously cheap but great meals have made our last week a very memorable experience.

Our first stop was Ceske Krumlov, a beautiful little medieval town 3hrs south of Prague. Highlights included a traditional Bohemian dinner, kicking back in the hostel enjoying beers and hot chockies, roaming the old town, checking out the view from the castle and cruising along the river that goes through the town on a raft for two. The lowlight was getting drenched on the same raft after we went through some rapids! Walking back home in wet jeans in the freezing cold left us both in a pretty damp mood!

We then spent a few days in Prague where we did a walking tour of the city, scoped out the local bars and saw a bizarre Czech black comedy movie with english subtitles. We stayed at a pretty rowdy hostel and realised that we are definitely getting older when we had to tell the crowds yelling and rumbling outside our door to quieten down two nights in a row. It was at 3 and 5am in the morning though which hopefully provides some justification!

The overall highlight of our time in Czech would have to be our last two days in a small town called Loket in West Bohemia near the German border. It's a cool little medieval town right on a bend in the river and the good thing is it isn't in our lonely planet which has meant a lot less tourists... and definitely no rowdy backpackers! Was great to spend a couple of days chilling out, feasting on more Czech beer and food (including a massive roast pork knuckle) and enjoying the amazing Autumn colours.

A couple of final observations from the Czech Republic...
- You know the beer is dirt cheap when you give the barman the equivalent of A2.50 for 2 half litre beers and he gives you back change.
- It's quite normal for people to drink beer before 10am. - They love their carbs here... every meal is laden with bread, potatoes, rice, dumplings and of course beer with just a token pickled onion on the side for salad!
- They also love their whipped cream. We ordered a simple brownie and ice cream and were greeted with a massive plate piled with what looked like a full can of whipped cream. After 5 minutes of digging we found the brownie underneath!

Next stop is the Romantic Road in Germany and probably weight watchers!!

View of Ceske Krumlov through the castle walls

The real Budweiser

Canoeing down the river in Ceske Krumlov... before we hit the rapids!

A picturesque reminder of Jesus' sacrifice in Ceske K

The Bohemian feast for two we shared in Ceske Krumlov

Great view of Prague

Just another amazing in Prague... a sculpture of a guy hanging from a roof over the street in the old town!

The town of Loket

Glass-like river surrounding Loket

The Heathrow injection has begun...

Here are a few shots from our last 4 days in Budapest, Hungary and Vienna, Austria.

One of the biggest highlights has been the food. Great paprika french fries, goulash and dessert wine in Budapest and massive schnitzels, sausages and Gosser beer in Vienna. The Heathrow injection may have begun!

One of the other highlights was visiting the hot thermal spas in Budapest and trying out the 10 different indoor pools / baths, 3 outdoor ones, 5 saunas and whirlpool. All ranging in temperature from 12c to 45c. Nice and toasty!
There was also an even diverser range of body shapes and sizes with plenty of massive hairy hungarian men with rediculously saggy swimmers! Very relaxing nonetheless.

Next stop Czech Republic...


Emma taking on the almighty Don Carlos Schnitzel at Schnitzelwirt restaurant in Vienna! And she almsot finished it too! May look familiar to the 2001 Euro trip girls!


Vienna by night


Gav... blending in in Budapest, Hungary




Matthias Church, Budapest

Gav chatting to the locals in Budapest!

One of the many thermal baths in Budapest

Sky high in Slovenia

To get from Croatia to Slovenia we were faced with a choice of a 12 hour cramped stuffy bus ride or a 1 hr flight for $A150 extra. Not a particularly hard decision.... Air Croatia all the way!

On our journey we met a couple of friendly local girls who took us under their wing and gave us all the tips on where to sleep, eat and drink in town and when we arrived at Ljubljana (capital of Slovenia) at midnight they introduced us to the street snack of Burek (a delicious mince or cheese filled pastry) and even gave us a free taxi ride to our hostel. Not a bad start!

Having said that our first night in Slovenia was spent in a jail cell.....

The hostel we were staying at was an artisticly converted old prison, complete with metal doors and barred doors. Very funky!

In our jail cell in Ljubljana, Slovenia

Next day we hired bikes and toured the many sites of Ljubljana before jumping on a bus to Lake Bohinj.

¨Now things might get a little wierd here.... i want to see two dragons! '
Ljubljana.

Bohinj had been given a pretty good wrap by Caius, Tara and GT and we were very stoked to find that it well and truelly lived up to our expectations. A beautiful lake surrounded by huge towering mountains! Kind of like the NZ of Europe.

Slovenia is also known as the cheap adventure sports capital of Europe so decided to make the most of it and go paragliding - made all the more tempting as it was under $A100. We were all pumped to go but started getting a little worried when we got to the top as our tandem instructors um'd and ah'd for about an 1hr over whether or not the strong winds would be safe enough to fly in. We got especially worried when we realised that it was the end of the season and we were the only paying customers of the day!

Not surprisingly they decided it was safe to go and before we knew it we were off hovering 1000m above the ground with beautiful views of the snow capped mountains, green fields and the lake. It was a truelly awesome exhilerating experience and we'd recommend it to anyone!

Em preparing for takeoff
If you look closely u can see a small dot just above the middle of the horizon which is em in flight! Click on the pic for a better view.

Enjoying the serenity of Lake Bohinj


Em looking sweet, upon the seat, of a bicycle made for two!
Enjoying the local brew, overlooking Lake Bled.

Next stop was Bovec. It is notoriously difficult to get to by public transport, so hard in fact that we decided to give hitchhiking a go in an effort to get there faster! (dont worry mums, its apparently quite normal and even legal in Slovenia). After quite a wait we eventually had some success and finally made it.

Em attempting to put on the hitching charm.

Bovec was another beautiful picturesque mountainside town but the highlight for a pair of travellers like ourselves was our apartment which had MTV, a kitchen, a bath and a separate loft bedroom for just E30. pretty gud!

Unfortunately it rained a bit while we were there but we still decided to hire some mountain bikes to go on a ride. We set off on what was supposed to be an easy short ride and made it back 4hrs later drenched, tired and muddy after some serious mountainbiking. Made the Manly dam ride seem easy! Great views though and Gav managed to get some of the seroius mountainbiking adventure he was after while Em got plenty of walking practice in!



We are catching an overnight train tonight to Hungary. Looking forward to the goulash and hot spa's as recommended by our Hungarian native friends, the Dicko's!