The black forest

The black forest

Since Lotte is German, she seems to know lots of German people, one of them owned a cottage in the black forest, in a tiny little village called Rheintal Rheintal, nestled at the end of a very pretty valley, consisted of about 6 houses. The house we were staying in was originally built in the 1600s as the bake house for a monastery which has long since gone, but luckily the house remains.

From Rheintal, we set about exploring the surrounding countryside. We went and explored Freiburg, had a look around at Schloss Burgeln, a palace situated on a mountain nearby and explored it's grounds for a bit.

We went to the tops of a few mountains in the area and ate lots of wild blue berries on the way down from one of them.

We also went to France for a couple of day trips and checked out Colmar and Strasbourg, both of which were very pretty.

5 countries in 1 day

We decided that we were going to travel to 5 countries in one day and have a meal in each of them. So we did.

We had planned to hire a 3 series BMW or a C-class merc. Sixt in Heidelberg, the car rental place we were planning to use had even rung us the night before to tell us that if we went to Mannheim there would be one there for sure so we thought this was great. On arriving at Mannheim in the morning we discovered this was not the case and we had been 'upgraded' to a big 4wd, and we were also going to be charged extra for going to Mannheim to hire it and to drop it back to Heidelberg. After much discussion with the guy there we ended up with a B-class merc and we were off.

After having a light breakfast of pastries in Germany, we headed to France, where we found a patisserie and had some baked goods in some random small town that we have no idea what the name of was.

After France we headed to Luxembourg. We stopped at Luxembourg city, where we found a cafe and had lunch. Then headed to Belgium. We stopped at Malmody where we had crapes, ice cream and chips.

After belgium we headed into the Netherlands where we stopped for dinner at Maastricht.

We finished up by heading back to Germany to spend the night in Bonn.

Stuttgart

We decided that we would go on a day trip to Stuttgart to check put the Porsche and Mercedes Benz museums.

As you would guess, the Porsche museum was full of Porsches.



And the Mercedes Benz museum was full of mercs.

Heidelberg

On arrival in Germany and finding Lotte, the first thing we had to do once arriving in Germany was buy bread and have a big German breakfast.



Then once breakfast was over we headed out to find Jace, on finding him, we promptly went and had some beer.



Then we went sightseeing, over the next few days checked out the castle, old city, various churches among other things. During our sightseeing we discovered that blackberries grow on the side of the path and you can eat them!

And were off!

So long Australia, hello Germany (well in a day or so)

All ready to go

Were packed and all ready to go!

Monkey Business

It must be hot if the locals are complaining about the heat. And they were today and we almost melted. Despite the heat we have had a relaxing few days in Kuala Lumpur and also managed to fit in some sightseeing between nanna naps and dips in the pool.

We even managed to climb the 272 steps up to the Batu Caves that house an ancient Hindu temple. We were blessed by a holy man and entertained by monkeys. We checked out China Town and sheltered from the heat in the shopping mall below the Petri Twin Towers.

We are currently in KL Airport waiting for our flight home.

Not All Gaudi

Barcelona, it’s not all Gaudi but we did see a lot of his work. We visited the Gaudi museum in Park Guell, the magnificent Sagrada Familia church and saw some of his architectural works on a ‘moderniste’ walking tour of Barcelona.

We also took a walking tour of the Gothic areas of old Barcelona and rumbled down La Rumbla (Barcelona’s Burke Street Mall) several times. Joy was fascinated by the pet shops selling chinchillas, squirrels and geckos.

During our five days in we also managed to visit the Picasso Museum, went to a Flamenco dancing show and drank too much sangria to remember all the other things we did.

We arrived in gay Paris yesterday (Sunday) andvisited the Bastille monument, the Eifel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. We attempted to visit the Paris Picasso Museum but it is closed for renovations until 2012.

Pilgrimage to Lourdes

On Saturday we commenced a pilgrimage to Lourdes flying from Nice via Paris. We arrived safely mid afternoon. Unfortunately our bags did not join on us on the Lourdes leg. This was doubly unfortunate as the heavens opened while we explored the Lourdes sanctuary and we experienced the first rain of trip. Luckily we stayed relatively dry by strategically hoping between the basilicas on the site.

On Sunday we attended the international church service which is conducted in the six official languages of Lourdes: French, Italian, English, Spanish, German and one other. We felt confident we would find a seat in the underground Basilica as it seats 25000 people and there didn’t seem to be many people around on Saturday. As it turned out there were a few spots left for us in the last pew.

The rains continued on Sunday and we bought plastic ponchos in attempt to stay dry. We visited the grotto and joined the parade of the sick in the afternoon along with about 15000 others. Just as the parade was about to start the rain started pouring down and soaked the bits of us that the ponchos missed. We got back to the hotel hoping to be able to change into dry clothes, but alas the bags had still not joined us. They did eventually arrive, much to our relief. To celebrate, we joined the candlelight procession that is held every evening. It is supposed to be a spectacular sight but we cannot confirm this as the heavens opened again dousing most attempts at candle lighting.

Today (Monday) we travelled to somewhere near the Spanish border. Tomorrow we travel to Barcelona.