travel

109 posts

A lazy day

Found the sun loungers today! Lazily reading a book and lying in the soft evening sun, next to the pool. If we were any more relaxed we might start going backwards! We made a picnic salad and went for a drive up into the mountains today near Bolognola. We found a beautifully picturesque spot to eat our grub - complete with picnic tables. We are all set for the final week of our European Grand Tour now. Washing is all but done and dry. Bodies are recharged. Sleep has been gotten in generous qu

Our Italian Residence

Our Italian residence for the next few days. How wonderful does it look? It’s better than that! I couldn’t resist parking the car in a picturesque spot in the sunshine earlier. A Fiat 500 in Italy - it just feels right! We’ve spent today reading (yes, me too on my Kindle), going to the supermarket and baking. Tonight’s dinner is a to be a pizza made completely from scratch. The dough has been rising for the last 2 hours and is now ready to formed into a nice little pizza! After dinner we plan

Relaxing in the Rain

So as you know we successfully made it to our accommodation last night. A few people have emailed me suggesting that all the problems we’ve had might be taking the shine off. Quite the contrary actually! The longer we spend in Italy the less we come to expect from it in reliability terms. So we just plan more contingencies than should be necessary. Just think “what’s the worst case?” and plan for it. Now we understand that, it’s really no sweat. We are currently sat outside with a wonderful

11 hours later...

We are two tired kids tonight. Been travelling near enough non stop since 10am this morning. But! We are pleased to report that we have made it to our friends (thank you Apricot, Suzy and Alistair!) beautiful house in Tuscany. As ever Italy had one more surprise to throw at us when we were trying to hire the car. I’d made a booking with Sixt to rent a fiat 500 for the next 3 days. After standing in a queue of one person for 30 minutes! We finally reached the front. The guy had our reservation

Come rain or shine!

Wow whee!! What a morning!!! We’ve endured a thunderstorm, rough seas, cancelled boats and finally we have made it back from Capri to Naples for our Rome connection. Let me explain.. We were rudely awoken at 6am by a belter of a thunderstorm which lasted for the next 4 hours. As we were overlooking the sea we could see the storm drifting towards us. I took a video which is quite cool – and if I can will upload later. We got bored of stormwatching and went back to sleep rising at 9am for breakf

The Halfway Point

Hi chaps, Tonight will be the last proper entry until we hit Innsbruck on Thursday night (all being well) as we are entering radio blackout zone for the next 3 days! Today is the middle of the holiday! What a honeymoon it’s been so far. Today only added to our list as we ticked off Pompeii’s sister site Herculaneum. It was again very hot and we got round the whole site (slowly) in about 2 hours. After this we jumped on a Ferry from Napoli to Capri, found our charming little hotel that overloo

Catherine at Herculaneum

Catherine at Herculaneum “I like being the same height as a gladiator would have been!!”

Train Strike

It appears that we need not worry about the strike (hope I’m not speaking too soon). We booked our ticket 5 days ago to guarantee seats – and now there is only standing room so a good thing we did!! The strike appears to only be affecting Regional trains and not the Eurostar we are catching. Our train is at 11am Italian time. 27 nervous mins to go….

The Vatican

Good evening England, this is Rome calling! I’d like to give a quick shout out to a couple of readers in Middlesbrough if I might!? They are my Grandma and her friend Mavis. They are both in their golden (or is it silver?!) years - and both put many people I have met half their age to shame with their technical prowess! It’s so cool to think that my Granny is reading this on her iPad 1,400 miles away. So, HELLO YOU TWO! Glad you’re enjoying the blog… Now to today… We did The Vatican today. Wel

Roman Rome

I’ve been looking forward to today for years. We went to see Roman Rome. The Forum, The Colosseum and the Pantheon. Once again the temperatures soared to 34C! It’s quite draining to run around Rome at those temperatures let us tell you!! We caught the Metro to San Giovanni, the Pope’s Cathedral and worked our backwards through the City - almost heading home all day (by a very indirect route) ending up at the Spanish Steps (Spagna Station). The Pope’s Cathedral was pretty well decorated with hu

Tuscany

81 hits a day! Wow - that’s a lot more than I was expecting. Thank you all for reading!!! Today was a lazy day. All we did was catch the train from Florence to Rome. We are staying in a lovely two floor apartment in Rome - just around the corner from the Vatican. I’ll write a bit more about yesterdays tour tonight as we have wifi again. We departed Florence at 8am headed for Siena - where every year they hold a horse race called the ‘Palio’ around the town square to decide something important

It’s off to Rome we go!

We are sat in the Firenze Santa Maria station awaiting our train. One observation we’ve noticed is that Dogs go everywhere with people here - why can’t we do that in England? I’d love to take Robbie to Sainsburys! Well maybe not sainsburys, but out and about with the looks of disgust if you step out of the local dog park “zone”. Today is hot - again. Forecast for 33C. I’m going to whinge, but it’s too hot! I’d give anything for a day back in sub 25c temperatures just to let my body “chill out”

The Best of Tuscany Tour

No wifi again - more pics from today when we get to Rome tomorrow. As for today - well, we had our first experience of a guided tour. I’d say we kind of enjoyed the hassle free nature of the day, but hated just being part of the next bus full of tourists. Ok, ok! We know we are tourists, but we quite enjoy not being part of a pack of them! The tour itself took in several interesting sights. Siena, San Gimignano, the Wine Farm I mentioned earlier in the day and the best to till - the leaning to

Lunch with a view in Tuscany

We are being treated to a wine tasting at Fattoria Poggio Alloro along with a delicious lunch! 4 different wines to try. 1 down, 3 to go!

The Village of Sheffield, UK

Barbara (Italian Tour Guide): I studied tourism at Uni, and did 1 semester in the UK at Sheffield Uni – a small village in England!

Poschiavo - Firenze

A-ha! Free wifi! Stumbled upon by a mischievous Alex. Nothing illegal, don’t worry - just some people don’t protect their networks (idiotas!!). So here we are then! Florence! And what a beautiful place this truly is. They must have some of the strictest planning laws anywhere here, not a single place (even the shopping areas) can you find a building less than 100 years old. The day began in Switzerland as we headed further up the valley from our overnight stop to the highest station in Europe

The Duomo

Arrived safely in Firenze (Florence)! Found our room and WHAT A VIEW!!!! Yes, this picture is the view from our bed! There is no wifi in this place so blog post will be short and sweet later tonight after dinner. Maybe I’ll find some free wifi somewhere and you’ll get your fixes! Ciao!

Milano Centrale

Our second visit here. The first was the fateful night of the dishonourable hotel in Arona! I’m pleased to report that our second visit is MUCH less stressful. We arrived on time. Bought our seat reservations for €10 each (compulsory, even with our global pass InterRail ticket). And boarded our “FrecciaRossa” (Red Arrow) Italian Eurostar train bound for Florence. Which even left on time!!! A much swankier train this. Really nice inside – it even has air conditioning! We are travelling 307km

Good morning from Poschiavo

The view from bed this morning. Not bad really… Poschiavo will be swapped for Florence this evening.

Lake Como - Poschiavo

Good evening folks! Today was a lazy day to recover from our exertions after yesterdays Grand Prix! We covered only 150km and took 6 hours (yes, that is now my definition of a lazy day). We started with a walk from our hotel in Como to the Ferry terminal and waited in the sunshine, with some tasty Gelato! for our Hyrdofoil boat to arrive. Once it did, we were treated to a 2 hour boat ride along the entire length of the Lake. The views were stunning in all directions at all times - no part bett

Hot F1 at Monza

The noise. Oh wow! The noise! It was just simply incredible. I mean, we must have only been 5-10m from the cars as they booted it driving down towards the Parabolica. Full throttle sounds goooooooood!

Ready for the F1 at Monza

Not a bad afternoons entertainment. We have the father keeping us informed via whatsapp. Great spot and right at the front just on the exit of Ascari. F1 is amazing. That is all. That noise. And now ham is catching alonso! Come on Lewis!!!

Well, shit.

We sprinted across the station and got to our train just as the doors *clicked* and locked shut.

You gotta respect dat altitude man

Lunch in Arth-Goldau, Switzerland as we await our 15:50 ICE to Milan in preparation for Sundays Grand Prix!! A late lunch as we’ve been awake since 5:30 this morning to get the first train up Jungfraujoch. Awesome until we got to the top where it was cloudy! The altitude didn’t agree with Alex, he went as white as a sheet and almost collapsed due to the 11,700ft worth of air thinness. We headed back down the mountain on the next train and at about 8,000ft colour was restored to his cheeks and

The Glacier Express

If you ever get chance to take the Glacier Express or anything along that route with the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn, do it. A sensationally beautiful route from start to finish.