Day 19 - 29 (late update part I)

The Long Way Home.

Right. First of all sorry for the long awaited update. We are currently in Sechult, Vancouver, canada, and I am very kindly using Aunty Lois's computer, so we can do a nice little (or possibly long) update.
:)

Lets start back at...
Days 19 - 20. Salzburg.
After deciding that trying to stay in Munich was going to be right royally silly during the oktober fest, we stopped off in Salzburg. Nice wee place with lots of churches. And lots of churches means lots of bells. One memory that stands out was our first walk along the riverside that just happened to be at about midday when all the church bells started ringing, and it being a valley in some very impressive mountains, it sounded amazing!!!
We spent one day wandering about Salzburg finding all the Sound of Music sights that we could. No need to say that Paula had fun, and Alex (I am sure) was just laughing in his head...
On the Saturday (the 27th September) we went up the way a bit into Germany again and visited Berchtesgarten. What a cute little town. When we got off our bus and were waiting for another bus, there were some cow herder's bringing all their cows through the town, and the cows were all dressed up. Very interesting.
Anyways, further up the mountain, and then even further some more and we got to the elevator up to the infamous Eagles Nest. Which was built for Hitler, I think by Himler???
Very cool. But also very much up in the clouds :( Never mind. Kafe and Kuchen in the cafe and back on down through the mountains. I am sure they service the brakes on those buses VERY often!
Back in the town we had fun wandering about, and we even found the only war memorial that we came across for the german soldiers from Berchtesgarten.

Day 20 - Munich and on to Milan.
Since we had to catch a train from Munich to Milan, we decided that we really should go and check out what the Oktober fest is all about. So, onto a train to Munich, Backpacks into a luggage locker and a short stroll to the beer gardens. And, well. It was a right old carnival going on. Not really what we had expected at all. There were lots of families there, and many all dressed up in traditional Bavarian garb. Very cool.
We found a beer tent (after eating some wurst) and even got to sit at one of the reserved tables (one of the beer serving woman took pity on us :) and we had ourselves just a small (1L) beer. But the BEST thing was, :) seeing the oom pah pah band march right past us and onto the stage and play. Paula was a very happy gal!!!
Back onto the train though, and onto Milan, where we were meeting Mel and Tim after they had been to their Queen concert.

Day 21 - Milan.
Now, we were supposed to be looking after Mel and Tim's campervan for the next week, however, they had had a few issues and the campervan was undergoing some repairs in a mechanics in France, so we were going to be doing a Road trip about Italy with Mel and Tim instead (they had hired a French car for us all to use). So, we spent most of this day planning out what we were going to do. :) Then we had a short wander about the shops in Milan and back to base to dinner and sleep.

Day 22 - Big drive to Biassa (sp?)
Next day we were all up and about early and off we headed south towards Rome. We drove some very narrow windy and interesting roads, and eventually ended up in a very one horse town of Biassa. Although, there was a hostel there :) (for those interested it is near La Spezia and Cinque Terre).
I had booked us into a dorm room for the night and while Tim went off for a run (having driven the car all day) Mel, Alex and Paula went for a walk to the only restaurant/cafe that was in the town and had a nice coffee. We decided to head back there fro dinner and had one of the best meals we had on the whole trip. Really good pizza and calzone, really good company, and pretty good wine, and really nice little place. It was even funnier when, here we all were, in this little town, in a little restaurant with about 5 tables, and in walks two kiwi girls from Tauranga... small world!

Day 23 - Cinque Terre, Montecatini
The next day we drove on towards the Cinque Terre where we looked at the first of the five little towns. Great weather, sunny and warm and waaayyy to hot to be walking up and down big hills. ops. That is what we ended up doing. Really felt like a nice cold beer after that one!!!!
We drove on and found ourselves in a hotel in Montecatini that evening. This place seemed odd. Like all it really had was hotels. Mind you, I did find a place early the next morning that was were people went for 'mineral water drinking therapy' whatever that is.

Day 24 - 27 - Roma, the eternal city
Day 24 saw us getting to Rome. Where Paula had booked an apartment for 4 nights. Little did we all know that the apartment ended up being about 50 m down some steps from the Vatican! Very cool!!! Was great to have a little apartment and a KITCHEN that we coudl use. And we asll made good use of the fresh pasta and pizza we could cook. mmm.....
Anyways, I diverge.
On the Friday (the 3rd) Mel, Alex and Paula went for a trip to the Vatican city. The line outside was HUGE, but we were really only in it for a short time, as it moved very quickly!!!
Inside and looking about all the most amazing things. Too many to mention here. And not enough time to do justice to the art... sigh... could easily have spent longer in there, but I can understand the warnings people had given about getting museum tired!!! sigh.
After seeing the ceiling... you know the one... (hmm, bad memories of annoying american tourists saying 'is that it? it looks so small! are you sure that is the famous one?'... very bad memories...) we went to St Peters Basillica next door. Well, yes, very big and impressive and all that, and I really have not seen that many different nuns in one place, nor seen priests, nuns and monks all in the same place yakking to each other, but it really is a bit over the top. Very ornate. Very gilted. Very scary.
Nuf said.
Again, good dinner and good wine.
Unfortunately, Alex recieved the bad news that his Grandma had passed away back in NZ. Not so good. (lots of hugs)

The next day, Paula and Alex postponed their trip to Cassino, and instead spent a quiet day reflecting and wandering about the ruins of ancient rome, although, we were probably in the backround of several wedding videos that were beign filmed outside the colleseum. odd.

On the sunday, Paula and Alex headed off to Cassino, south of Rome. Nice short train ride and off we hopped. Heaps of shops seemed to be open, which was great. However, the information centre was not. Nor could we figure out how to get buses up the (very steep) 8km hill to teh Abbey. We did walk up about 1 km, but it was hot and sunny, and we decided that we could not do it. We did, however, find that there was a museum open that we coudl go to. So we did. It was VERY pricey, and was also personally guided, which was a bit different. We also ran into more kiwis (can't get away from them!), a mum and daughter (becca and Bev?), where the daughter had been living in London for teh past 2 years. Very nice people! Very odd tour. However, the nice kiwi ladies offered us a ride up and down the hill to the Abbey in thier hire car, which was loverly!!!! When in trouble, who will help you but some really nice kiwis!!!
After that, they even dropped us off at the commonwealth war graves were we had a good look abotu at sunset. Very moving.
Back to Roma and beddy byes.

Day 28 - Drive to Arona.
Looooooong drive all the way back up to Milan. Unfortunately, Mel was a little bit sick with a cold, but still in good spirits. We had a great last night dinner out at a restaurant on the lake front which was fantastic.

Day 29 - flying to Crete.