An amazing gondola ride

On our second day in Venice we went to the Rialto bridge (pictured above) and markets. (You can’t really see the graffiti that unfortunately covered the bridge!)  Here we strolled, looking at the shops and stalls, before going by water bus to the island of Murano, where Murano glass comes from.  Here we saw a…

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A Venice birthday for Julie

The 9th of January was Julie’s birthday, and so we had a morning tea of delicious pastries in Florence before taking the train to our next Italian destination – the beautiful city of Venice.       We stayed in Mestre, outside the city, so our first view of Venice’s canals was coming in that…

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Firenze

On our first full day in Florence (known in Italy as Firenze) we went to the Uffizi gallery.  This famous gallery has hundreds of masterpieces – here we learned that some of our group had a lower tolerance for art than others!  You weren’t allowed to take pictures here…check out here, here and here for…

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The Leaning Tower of Pisa

We took a train from Rome to Florence and then after unpacking jumped onto a local train bound for Pisa. Pisa is an easy hour’s train ride from Florence and a good afternoon trip. I had always thought that the “Leaning Tower of Pisa” was a freestanding tower on its own – imagine my surprise…

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The ruins of Pompeii

On our fourth day in Rome we took an early morning train south to Naples.  From there we took a local train and found ourselves at the ancient destroyed city of Pompeii, in the shadow of Mt Vesuvius. We spent hours walking around here.           One thing I really appreciated was…

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In the Vatican and under Rome

On our third day in Rome we headed to the Vatican City, a tiny independent city inside Rome known for being the Pope’s main hang-out.  We had pre-booked a tour and we knew to expect crowds, but the mob scene through the Vatican museums and the Sistine chapel were still beyond what we had imagined!…

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Reunited in Rome

Arriving at our apartment in Rome we were reunited with our mothers Julie (Karen) and Lynette (Reubs) nearly ten months after leaving New Zealand.  We were very excited to see them (and we think they were excited too, despite being pretty fatigued after nearly 40 hours of travel!)  Lynette had never been to Europe, and…

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Palaces and The Kiss

  We had been planning a brief visit to Vienna en route to meeting our mothers in Italy and were delighted when friends of ours moved from New Zealand to Vienna and invited us to stay. It was lovely to catch up with Halina and Andy and their children Emily, Matthew and Nathan.  We were…

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Nádherné Vánoce v Praze!

In Prague, Christmas Eve is the main celebration day, and nothing is open.  Consequently, we spent the day relaxing and resting before making our way to Old Town Square for an outdoor Christmas mass.  We arrived with lots of time to spare, so went for a walk along the quaint cobblestone alleys around Old Town…

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Prague

  We arrived into Prague and stepped off the bus into light, floating snow – it was so beautiful just to watch the snow fall. It wasn’t heavy enough to stay on the ground but it was a beautiful first sight!  We made Prague a mixture of relaxing and sightseeing – our first adventure was…

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