A Day out in Munich

Under the direction of our Tour Guide - comes highly recommended, we headed into Munich for the day by train. First stop was the Rathus or town hall in the main square, then we wandered down one of the main streets of Munich which gave us a good view of some of the buildings. Simon and I went into one of the churches which evidently the current pope had been the bishop of. Charlie and I lit a candle, I think that was one of the highlight of the day for him - being able to light a candle, by himself. Of course once he told Mia and Amy what he had done they had to light one at the next church! We went to the Science Museum and spent a few hours exploring there, found a yummy bakery in the railways station and had to sample a few of their wares, wandered through the markets, visited another church, saw some more lion statues, they had them everywhere!

We used our umbrellas a number of times today and our warm jackets. Up to now it had been tshirt weather but a cold jet stream came through and temperatures are down to 6 degrees so are now wearing some of the clothes we didn't think we were going to use, it was like someone flicked a switch!

Off to Germany

Had a transit day, drove from Zermatt, drove our car on a train ferry that took us through the mountain for about 20 minutes, up and over another pass and ended up in Singen, Germany where we spent the night. The next day we drove to Friedrichstien where we went through the Zepplin Museum then onto Fussen where Amy and I went through Neuschwanstein Castle. This was one of the palaces of King Ludwig, who was a bit of a funny king. He built quite a few castles, died at 40 in mysterious circumstances, after being told that he was no longer considered suitable to rule Austria but he certainly knew how to spend money on castles. This was not completed but the rooms that were were incredible. We had to wait about 2 hours for our tour, but it was certainly worth it. We filled in time buying souvineers, eating pretzles,cream cheese puff balls, hungarian goulash and reading up about the castle. The Disneyland Fantasyland castle was modelled on this one.

After that Amy navigated us to the Holiday Inn in Munich, we managed to get our little Fiat Panda up to 155kph on the Autobahn, even then some cars where whizzing past us and Simon informed us he got his car up to 220kph!

Zermatt and the Matterhorn

We woke to a clear sunny morning after rain the night before, so up we headed to the Matterhorn. It was three cable cars to get to the top, took about 40 minutes to get to the top. By the time we got up there the cloud had started to roll in but we did get some glimpses of the Matterhorn behind the cloud.

We also got stunning views of the mountains around us, saw glaciers, wandered through a glacier tunnel, just ennjoyed the scenery and it wasn't too cold!

Interlaken to Zermatt

We left Interlaken around 8:30am and experienced our first rain in our whole trip. The Swiss country side was just as you expected it to be, green grassy mountains, cows with bells, little swiss villages dotted along the mountain roads, houses with colorful window boxes of flowers.

We stopped at the Nestles Chocolate factory first - Amy was in heaven, lots of free samples! Then we headed to the cheese factory for a tour and tasting.

Next we stopped at Chillion Castle, a medieval castle on the shores of Lake Geneva- you need to keep reminding yourself you are wandering through a castle from the 15th century - just like in the school books you read about.

Then it was driving through some more beautiful scenery to Tasch, where we caught the train to Zematt, a carless town, where we stayed for two nights as we are planning to go up and see the Materhorn.

Interlaken

We left Como around 9am but discovered the GPS wasn’t working for some reason, so managed to navigate by notes I had fortunately prepared earlier! We drove into Switzerland, around the lakes and through the mountains, very scenic but the skies still a bit hazy. We drove through a 17km tunnel and when we came out the otherside there were beautiful blue skies. We drove over the mountains to Interlaken getting up to about 3000 metres, it was a beautiful drive, our little Fiat Panda chugged along, not much power but did the job. We passed a few cyclists riding up, not all of them had helmets, and most of them seemed old with pot bellies so nothing too much to get excited about!
Once we found our hotel, we went for a wander, loved the colour of the lakes and rivers, a lovely cool icy blue. I took a funicular up the Harder Kulm and enjoyed a spectacular view of Interlaken and the mountains.

Tackling the Italian Tollways

Breakfast room at our B&B

Amy outside our B&B

We left Venice Tuesday morning, it was rather foggy, then hazy as we drove across Italy. We were on a toll road, lots of trucks, fairly industrial so a rather boring but quick drive, broken up by the odd crazy Italian driver that decided to exit at the last moment and just dive across 4 lanes of traffic! Amy again successfully navigated us around the outskirts of Milan to Montano Lucino just south of Lake Como where we stayed the night in a lovely bed and breakfast on the outskirts of town. It was a peaceful stop, and we had a lovely breakfast of homemade bread and jam, yoghurt, grapes and the nicest hot chocolate I have had in Europe!

Venice

A view of Venice

One of the churches we wandered past after wandering through the narrow steets

Amy and I on our gondola ride!

Amy and her friend Katie from Alfred Deakin who was also in Venice on the school trip

We arrived in Venice after driving through the Dolomites, which was stunning scenery! We managed to negotiate our way to the car park, and then walked into Venice which was about 15 minutes (however I did have to return to the car as I thought I had left the lights on, and as we were staying 2 nights I had to check! I had left them on but they turned of automatically when I turned of the car). We found our hotel and also the Alfred Deakin students from Amy’s school who were also staying at the same hotel, so Amy enjoyed catching up with her friends.

We got our Vaperetto Passes and raced down to San Marco square for our gondolier ride that we had prebooked over the internet- we didn’t want to pay 80 euro which was the going rate! We were late but still managed to get our gondolier ride which gave us a lovely tour of Venice.

On the second day in Venice we caught the ferry out to the island of Murano and went to the glass museum, it was amazing to look at pieces of glass that were 2000 years old. Did a bit of shopping in the glass shops then headed back to the main island of Venice.

Wandered around the streets of Venice in different locations, over the Rialto bridge, looked in a church and just enjoyed the streets and bridges and canals of Venice.