And then there were seven.......

We dragged ourselves away from Switzerland while we still had a few dollars left in our pockets and headed to Provence in southern France. Our long-time friend, Barry, has a house here and very kindly offered to put us all up.

We arrived in the evening and found a group of people had all been invited over for dinner. We were delighted to catch up with Jane again, who we had met on our last trip, plus some others that we had heard of. To our astonishment, one of the ladies, who now lives in England, was born and raised in Ballarat! Leonie from Ballarat is in the centre and Barry's on the left of this photo. We had a wonderful dinner with great people.

The next day was wet and cool so we had a quiet day which didn't hurt at all. We checked out the local flea market and went for a bit of a walk around the village. We found this great Trompe L'oeil painting on a wall.

Speaking of Trompe L'oeil paintings, Barry showed us around his huge cellar. The house used to be owned by a Baron centuries ago and there was an escape tunnel from the cellar. The tunnel started collapsing so Barry had it filled in then had this wonderful painting put over it.

If the Saturday was quiet then the Sunday was huge! Jane kindly invited us over for lunch. I'm not sure she knew quite what she was getting herself into! Barry showed us around her town first. We loved the old Roman Bridge although it has such a sad history. A flash flood drowned many people here about 25 years ago.

The setting was perfect - the sun was out and we sat on the deck at Jane's house. Jane's English friend, Hilary, was also there, so there were seven of us. We brought plenty of wine and we had a really wonderful, fun-filled afternoon.

Mark found a guitar and the music started. After a few drinks we were all such brilliant singers!

The tempo picked up as the boozy afternoon progressed. What's wrong with a little dance in the sunshine?

Things started to deteriorate when I picked up the drumsticks. 'My Sharona' will never be the same again!

We decided to explore Jane's village a bit more and had a ball. We climbed a hill, explored old lane-ways and checked out views. The seven stooges were in good form.

It was a tad windy on top of the hill!

Fads and I found some beautiful artwork in one of the small shops.

Thank you to Barry, Jane and all their friends for showing us such great hospitality!

We said our goodbyes and sadly left beautiful Provence. We drove to Nice where we dropped off Dusty, the hire car, and flew to Venice. We had a huge apartment right on one of the main squares. The weather was cool but it was OK.

Two happy Aussies in the city of romance.....

It happened to be my birthday the day we arrived so we planned a cicchetti evening. Cicchettis are small snacks that you have with drinks.

First stop. The cicchettis were good and we had to have Prosecco with them of course!

The second stop was the best by far. The meatballs were simply amazing! I've never been excited by meatballs before! We met up with an English couple and spent the rest of the night with them. Fun times!

The third stop had terrible food - fried things re-heated in a microwave. Check out Mark's face. He hated them. It's lucky the Prosecco was good!

Last stop was a gelato place. We found a sensational gelato place the next day but this was fine at the time!

Venice seemed more crowded and less special this time around for us and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it was because the other times we've been there we've come straight from home, and waking up at 5am and walking the streets seeing the city wake up is a pretty amazing thing to do.

Having said that, we seemed to have more of a party time this time around. John had booked a wine tasting and lunch for us all at the Venissa winery on a nearby island. We caught a ferry out to the island and passed one of a number of leaning towers on the way. These towers were all built hundreds of years ago on very low islands and many are leaning to one side as the earth under them is unstable.

During the lunch it started to rain. Then it poured and poured! Good thing we were snug and dry inside. And good thing that the red wine made by their winemaker in not-too-distant Tuscany was amazing.....................................

We started talking to an American couple, Joan and Bob, at the next table and, as the rain kept falling, we all settled in for the afternoon. This can be a dangerous thing to do at a winery! John reckons Joan is a dead ringer for Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane. Anyone else agree?

The rain finally eased and it turned out that we were all planning to go to the next island, Burano, to check out the coloured houses in the fishing villages. Burano was only a short walk away via a bridge. As we walked along, a young girl, Katie, asked where we were from. It turned out that she was American but lived in Sydney. Of course, she joined us. So now we were seven again!

Tadah! An excited Aussie in Italy.

Burano was stunning.

Two crazy girls having a blast.

We ferried back to Venice and the seven of us stayed in a bar for a while just chatting and having a good time. Katie, Joan and Bob eventually left and the remaining four of us had a really wonderful dinner in a very cool restaurant.

We took things a bit easier the next day. We checked out the Rialto Market and saw amazing fish and things like gorgeous bunches of chillies.

We had fun just exploring the city. This was very cool!

Classic Venice.

St Mark's Basilica detail.

Fads, Mark and I went inside St Mark's Basilica. There was a huge queue but Fads and Mark worked out a jump-the-queue system and we got in really quickly which was amazing considering the queue snaked for hundreds of metres! The interior was incredible and we got to overlook St Mark's Square from a balcony. There were surprisingly few people in the square - they were all in the queue!

Four Aussies on the Rialto Bridge.

The next day, Fads and Mark left to go to Florence. John and I had one more day so we joined a walking tour. It was fun and informative. One place we knew nothing about was the Jewish Ghetto. For many years, Jews were segregated from the general community in Venice but at least they were allowed to live there, unlike many other places in Europe. There were memorials to the Jews who were taken to concentration camps and never returned. This is just a small part of a list of their names and ages. It's sobering stuff.

Venice is lovely at night.

We saw the sun rise as we waited for our ferry to the airport the next morning. Arrivederci Venezia!

Heather and John

Vineyard to Vineyard

Hello again! 

Before I go on, I need to explain some background. My best friend and her husband planned a trip to Europe so we arranged to meet them in Paris. Fads (that’s her nickname) and Mark arrived in Paris a few days before us and had lots of fun exploring the city.

We had had some challenging driving in Europe but John driving and me navigating through Paris was a whole new ball game! Anyway, we did make it safely to the apartment and Fads and Mark met us outside. It was very exciting to see them after five months away!

We took a selfie for prosperity. Courtney, Dad thought you’d like the literature they had in the apartment!

We caught up with each other’s news over dinner. I had forgotten how wonderful real French onion soup is!

We then did the touristy thing and headed out to see the Eiffel Tower lights.

The next day we left Paris and began what turned out to be our vineyard tour. We made it safely out of the city (phew!) then drove through beautiful country to the Champagne region. We randomly picked a small village for lunch and found that the season’s picking had begun. Everyone was flat out but we managed to fit in a small champagne tasting. Sadly, John was driving so Fads and I had to drink most of his champagne! The champers was lovely and we ate lunch at a roadside van. I also loved the champagne cork stools they had at the winery!

We then headed to the Alsace region near the German border. The village we stayed in was called Saint-Hippolyte and it was absolutely gorgeous. The old buildings were very German in style and were colourfully painted. 

Our B & B was wonderful. It was in a winery and to get to our rooms we had to walk through the wine making area. The windows of our rooms were decorated with flower boxes.

We had a gorgeous view from our rooms.

In an effort to burn off some of the calories we were consuming, we drove part-way to a nearby castle then walked up the hill the rest of the way. The forest we walked through was beautiful.

We explored the Haut-Koenigsbourg castle which was first recorded in the 12th century. It still amazes us how old everything is here. The castle had been restored a number of times over the centuries.

I loved these cute guys decorating one room.

Cheeky!

And now, just for a bit of tacky fun that is completely out of keeping with the seriousness and age of the castle..... I think John's goatee co-ordinates perfectly with his suit of armour!

We ate at a restaurant that night and experienced the incredibly heavy local food. One of the dishes consisted of potatoes with bacon and slabs of cheese on top. I like my cheese but I discovered there's a limit to how much I can actually eat in one sitting!

The next day we drove and walked around the area. The vineyards looked stunning.

You don't often see three castles as close as these to each other.

We found other villages along the Alsace Wine Route that were just as gorgeous as ours, however they were much more touristy.

Even though they were touristy, these were still working villages. We loved seeing tractors make their way through the tourists as they brought in the freshly picked grapes.

As we walked past a house, someone ahead of us looked up and laughed. We all looked up to find this cat scowling grumpily at everyone that walked past the balcony it was sitting on. What a classic!

We began our last night here with a tasting of about eight wines from the place we were staying at. They were all fantastic!

And we finished the evening with a wonderful meal at a very classy but inexpensive restaurant. Gosh, this is a tough life!

The next day we dragged ourselves away from this beautiful place and headed into Switzerland. We had a laugh at some of the Swiss road signs.

Switzerland is very expensive so it had taken us ages to find a good place to stay. We settled on a hotel overlooking Lake Geneva. We were blown away by the views from our balconies!

We bought food at the local supermarket for lunches cos everything was so expensive. Who needs fancy cafes when there's a comfortable bit of concrete to sit on and yummy salads to eat?

Lake Geneva is surrounded by vineyards. We didn't stay here for this reason, it just happened to be that way. Seriously! We went for a walk through the vineyards and along the lake. It was truly beautiful.

Those of you who have been following this blog since the start of our trip will have seen many photos of John's back as we walk. I thought I'd give you a change of scenery and put in photo's of other backs!

The grapes looked almost ready for picking.

As soon as saw the views from our balconies, we decided to get takeaway pizzas for tea and eat them on the balconies. We were a bit early to order the pizzas so we had some drinks in this fantastic bar while we waited. John and Mark ordered beers - they were massive!

We could also have bought beer with 5% cannabis extract! The drug part had been removed though so it was a weird concept!

We had pizzas, wine and cheese and biscuits on our balconies while we watched the sun set. Can life get more perfect?

Mark seems a by excited by the super-smelly cheese!

We had to check out by 10am the next day but John's mighty football team was playing at about 11.30.  He charmed the hotel receptionist into letting us use a meeting room to watch the game on his computer. Much to our delight, his team won. It's the first finals game they've won in 16 years and they're now down to the last two games. Go Tiges!!!!

Hooroo from the four amigos.