Posts from — August 2010

As I mentioned, we found Munich super family friendly.  We settled into our cheap deal hostel for a week and spent some days doing school work and some out and about.  We learned about Hitler and his rise to power; some stories about the resistance of the Munich locals as well as the atrocoties committed at the thousands of concentration camps set up around Europe, when we took a day trip to Dachau. 

Michael finally had his dream of seeing a “real” castle fulfilled when we went to Neuschwanstein; and we sang along to the soundtrack on a day trip to Salzburg for the Sound of Music tour. [Read more →]

After 7 months of travel I believe we have found the winner of  “The Most Family Friendly City”.

Munich.

No doubt the rest of Germany could measure up just as well, which could well make Germany the best family destination in Europe!

So what’s so special about Munich, you ask?  Well for starters, it’s cheap for families. [Read more →]

 So while we made the decision not to go to Florence, we did in fact have to pass through the train station twice – spending at least 5 hours there in total.  Does that qualify as visiting Florence?

We spent the night in Pisa, even though most people make it in a day trip from Florence just to see the Leaning Tower.  The Italian government have spent a fortune reinforcing it to make sure it doesn’t topple.  Not surprising given the number of tourists there.  I don’t think Pisa has much else to offer but the crowds at the Tower were outrageous. 

The most hysterical thing was everyone having their photos taken in various poses of holding the Tower up or knocking it down.  The Tower itself is actually tucked in behind a cathedral and the only way you can get in position for such pictures is to go onto the large expance of grass surrounding the whole complex.  Only problem is standing on the grass is illegal.  Periodically, the police come out and blow whistles and yell at everyone while they shoo hundreds off the grass.  As soon as they’ve gone, everyone goes back again.. [Read more →]

After boiling our bums off in Naples and Rome and living on a steady diet of take-away pizza slices and gelato, you could say it was an understatement that we were looking for a change.

My vote was for Tuscany.  Florence had always been on our list, but after standing in the lines in Rome, the thought of waiting for tickets to the galleries in Florence was the last thing we wanted to do.  So we made a massive call and decided to skip Florence all together and headed for Siena.

Unfortunately, the accommodation was no cheaper and the food, if anything, was more expensive.  Sigh..  More pizza.  At least this time we sat and ate it in the beautiful Piazza di Campo. 

I would love to show you a picture, but unfortunately every single one of my Tuscany photos are on my corrupted hard drive.

The next day, we were faced with finding somewhere cheaper to stay or heading to another city.  In desperation and doubt we asked the local travel bureau for help.  Luckily for us there was a self-contained apartment at a local farmhouse.  Yay!

We jumped on one of the extremely extensive local buses and puttered out into the countryside of rolling hills lined with vineyards and pencil pines.  We had our own sitting room and kitchen, bathroom and 2 bedrooms and we settled in for 4 days.  That handy little local bus had a stop right outside and then dropped us off a mere 6 minutes later at the local supermarket!  Whilst we couldn’t cook (only because there were not pots or pans!) we did have a fridge. 

 It was still hot but now we had the added bonus of an inground pool with views out over the rolling hills.  Aaagh…

After our expensive but visually amazing soujourn in Santorini, we were still looking for the non-touristy Greek experience we’d always wanted.  We jumped a ferry to another island named Naxos.

So I’m here to tell you that unless you go to some little tiny island that nobody’s ever heard of (or you happen to own one!) that there’s no such thing as a non-touristy Greek Island.  There are just different levels of touristy starting with Santorini at the top as the most over-touristed.

Naxos is probably about a 5 on the scale and we found a nice little apartment not far from the beach (once again did the “find accommodation when we get there” – it’s starting to become the norm to do it that way.  It’s a pain but it’s way easier to try and get a better price than over the internet.

Anyway, we spent 3 days playing on the beach and watching The Nanny reruns (ok – it was the first English language TV we’d seen in ages!!).  Our local shop was run by a mother and daughter who didn’t speak a lot of English but insisted on giving us freebies every time we set foot in the place.

We also finally gave away the gyros when we found the traditional Greek restaurant we’d been craving.  We tucked into moussaka, pastitsio and lamb with grilled vegetables like we hadn’t eaten in months.  The owner, also a Michael, was shocked that we had only eaten gyros since we’d been in Greece.  He never eats it – “never know what’s in that stuff!” he said..

Michael and his lovely wife stuffed us with massive servings and free bread, olives and roast potatoes for 3 amazing nights until we decided we had to leave or we would never fit into our clothes!

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