Climb every mountain …

Final days

Our final days have been spent relaxing and enjoying all that Santorini has to offer. We have swum, we have sailed and we have explored just a little more. The weather has been postcard perfect – everything I imagined a Greek island to be.

Nailed it!

Pete takes a lot of photos but he loves to try to capture everything he sees in the best way possible. Most times photos do not really do justice to what is seen by the human eye but photos provide a wonderful resource for looking back over past experiences.

Dreaming of lazy days

Come with me, if you will, into the land of my dreams. Imagine being gently woken on a warm, sunny morning and staring out your window to see the bluest of oceans and skies. Your senses are awoken by the sound of a quietly sizzling pan and the smell of bacon and eggs wafting in the air all…

Riding like the locals

Since we began planning this trip, Pete was keen to hire a scooter somewhere and hit the open road. His dream ride would have been along the Amalfi Coast but the reputation of Italian drivers along this route, and the need for extreme concentration thus making viewing the scenery…

Athens – a city of challenges

What’s a holiday without a transport strike? Welcome to Athens, the so-called birthplace of Western civilisation – and this week, the home to strikes by all and sundry, including air traffic controllers, public transport drivers, teachers and garbologists. Fortunately, Alexis…

The Colours of Croatia

Travelling to Croatia began at 3:00 am on Sunday morning. Many months ago, I discovered cheap flights from Venice to Croatia – $40 each – the one catch was that we needed to be at the airport by 4:00 am. So we moved to a BnB 10 minutes walk away from the airport. It was a good opportunity…

Arrivederci Italia

After nearly two weeks in Italy, we spent our last three days in the unique city of Venice. The days were spent walking and getting lost along the stone pathways, crossing canal bridges and riding the vaporettas, the public water-buses. While it is a beautiful city, it is certainly a popular…

Contrasting landscapes

The last 48 hours has seen us travel from fresh powder snow-capped peaks to an old village by a lake to a city where its heartbeat is on the waterways that meander through old stone buildings. We have made it to Venice, the last stop on our Italian tour.

Little pops of colour

Spring in the Italian Alps is only just beginning to blossom. As there is still plenty of snow and cool weather around, only those flowers that cannot wait any longer can be seen in the fields and by the roadside. As we walked up a canyon, we were surprised how many different tiny flowers…

Wow – look at that! (Aka The Dolomites)

What a contrast the last few days have been to our first week in Italy. On Sunday, we farewelled Florence and trained it to Venice. We then caught a bus to the airport and hired a car so we could drive north to the Dolomite Mountains. When I say we, I mean…

Doors and knockers

Pete has developed a fascination for doors and door knockers while we have been in Italy meaning that often our street wanderings are punctuated with regular pauses as we stop to capture yet another one. Here’s a snapshot of some of his discoveries.

Five villages by the sea

It has been a couple of days since I have had a chance to write as we have had long days. Over the last 6 days we have walked over 101 km and my feet have certainly felt it!

Thursday saw us farewell southern Italy and jump aboard another high speed train to…

Beautiful Amalfi

After a whistle stop tour of Rome, we were ready for our two day stay on the beautiful Amalfi Coast in Southern Italy. We decided to jump on a local bus to travel to the train and so after our host told us the bus stop location, we headed out. However, our understanding of the directions did not…

36 hours in Rome

Arriving in Rome 24 hours later than originally planned meant we had to try to pack as much as we could into just a few hours. There was no way we could have ever done this city justice in the 2 1/2 days we had planned but to do it in 1 1/2 days was just impossible. But we gave it a good go.

The best laid plans …

Today’s adventure comes to you courtesy of Etihad Airlines. I said in my very first post, life often doesn’t go to plan – well this week has been full of such moments culminating in a last minute change to our itinerary on the very first day of our trip.

Challenge accepted

Having decided to plan our own trip, there were so many decisions to make. Where and when to go, how to get there, where to…