We arrived in Turkey ready for a new experience.  Not the experience of visiting a country that spans two continents and two cultures, n…

Finally we had 4 days in Athens were we could just stay put for more than a couple of nights.  We didn’t have much time to spare for Gr…

OK, so the background to Naples is that prior to Italy becoming a unified country they were a powerful, rich and prosperous independent state…

Rome – centre of the ancient world.  Capital of Italy.  City of culture, history and ice cream.  This was one of the places I�…

Florence is well known for its Renaissance art and when we left we certainly felt a little saturated by it.  Now October isn’t pea…

Although it seems that the city of Venice is jam packed full of tourists and the rest are those that are working in the tourist industry, it ac…

Well, we finally got to Barcelona (aside from our previous short stint hanging around the train station!).  The first job was the slightly …

Leaving Tarragona we headed north again, skirting around Barcelona on the way to Montserrat.  This is a really impressive, spiky mountain th…

We spent the last few days we had the car driving around Catalonia.  It’s a diverse and spectacular region and I’d love to…

Leaving France for the last time we headed into Spain.  We still had the car which was great in terms of getting around, but limited us a li…

Because of the expensive tolls on the motorways in Italy we decided to allow the GPS to plot our course avoiding them and taking us over some mou…

So enough of Switzerland and we were heading for the South of France.  Of course there are some big mountains in the way so we headed around…

Switzerland is another country which has certain perceptions to foreigners that it finds hard to shake, for example the perception that they love…

If you had said to me before I left Australia that sometime in the next six months I would drive 300km through pouring rain to drink beer while…

Perhaps it’s the mountain air, beautiful scenery and clear rivers but Austria has really made an impression on me.  From the clean…

We headed next to Vienna.  Getting here involved driving straight from Poland, south through the Czech Republic and into Austria.  I…

We hadn’t initially planned on going to Poland but decided to make the effort.  We only had a few days up our sleeves and our next sto…

Returning to Berlin we took a few days of down time after moving non-stop for about a month.  It also gave me the opportunity to finally …

We took a weekend out from our time in Berlin to take Tash’s brother Devakar to Prague for a few days.  We’d heard a lot about how…

“It was very nice, oh honey it was paradise.” Lou Reed sang,  and he’s half right at least �" depending on what you call nice.…

From Denmark we headed back south to Bielefeld (500 odd kilometres away), another slightly nondescript city.  We went this way to catch u…

Leaving Germany (again) we drove north to Denmark.  I should point out that we had originally planned to spend more time in Scandinavia, but…

Actually this is technically Germany part 2, having previously entered the country when driving along the Moselle valley and the lower Rhinelan…

Well, time waits for no man or cartoon rabbit and our time in Holland was running out.  It’s not a big country but there’s a lot t…

Amsterdam is one of the cities that everyone says you must go to.  They’re right, but to be honest, it’s really not my kind of town from…

After leaving Bruges we headed north to Holland, planning to spend most of our time in Amsterdam.  However we wanted to check a few o…

After Brussels we moved on to Bruges.   I should mention here that we saw a unique way of warning motorists that roadwork was up ahe…

We had 4 days in Belgium, the first two of which were in Brussels.  If you don’t know, Brussels is the capital of Belgium and also the cap…

Our first experience of Belgium was on the way to Luxembourg.  Tash insisted on having a Belgium and tomato sauce sandwich, as this …

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is an odd place, sandwiched in between France, Germany and Belgium, it is tiny in size but big in influence, la…

The region of Champagne is famous for obvious reasons.  It also happened to be in a convenient place on our way to Luxembourg.  Howeve…

Ok, so it’s taken us a while a to put up the Loire Valley blog and yes we are currently up in the mountains in Austria at the moment but …

Our first stop once we left Paris (given that we are in the most cultured country in the world) was to go to a theme park.  But not …

Everyone always comments on how great French food is and our trip to ‘gay Paris’ has been no exception. With multiple creperies along the way …

Now when we were trying to find a supermarket in Paris using our GPS unit, the nearest thing it comes up with under the grocery  search is…

We had a couple of days to kill in London before leaving the UK so we decided to go to Legoland Windsor.  This was not as fun as it sounds -…

We hadn't initially planned on going to Cambridge, but as we wanted to go somewhere on the way back from Edinburgh before returning to London we th…

After leaving Glasgow we went the scenic route to Edinburgh, travelling north via Loch Lomond to Crainlarach then across through the Trusso…

Much of my knowledge of Scotland comes from a combination of Trainspotting, Braveheart and watching the rugby.  Tash on the other hand is l…

The next day we crossed into Northern Ireland (back to Pounds and Miles) and drove along the Antrum coast road.  Once again the weather was…

Dublin to Cork This was a scenery day (who am I kidding, all the days in Ireland are scenery days…).  It’s impossible to see ev…

Dublin (by Tash) Best to follow the advice of a local so we took the suggestions of Spud (Suzanne Murphy – Soon to be a Clauson) and did…

We drove from Liverpool to Holyhead to catch the ferry to Dublin.  That's pretty much it.  

Our first night in Liverpool was notable mainly because we finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Now granted, this is not a…

Oxford is well known as a centre of culture, education and tradition.  In keeping with this, we went to see The Simpsons movie...  It i…

We briefly stopped in Manchester for a day, mostly to catch up with Tash’s friend Lis who lives nearby.  We were pleasantly surprised b…

The next stop was Cardiff, where again the weather was less than pleasant although the welsh were.  It’s a bit surreal (as I think most…

Anyway, we left this part of the country and ended up in Bath, which is a beautiful town that I could quite easily spend a lot more time …

The next day was a whirlwind tour of the South West.  It was basically raining all day, but this seemed fitting given that we were in little…

The next stop was Southampton, a nice little seaside town that is a pretty good base to explore this part of England, as long as you have a car.&…

London, home of the Queen (sometimes), Danger Mouse and 7.5 million other people, half of whom seem to be tourists.  Including us.&nbs…

I’ve made a separate entry for this, purely because it was such an unnecessary saga that I feel the need to describe it.  …

A cab driver here on our first day put it best �" “Before the mouse came, there weren’t nuthin’ here but a swamp and no one wanted …

Okay, our next stop was Washington DC.  First day we were picked up by Tash’s cousin Sunil who let us stay with his family for the w…

The last 10 days have been spent in NYC.  10 days in one place is the longest we'll be in any one place on this trip, so this will be …

OK, so from the craziness of Hollywood to a different kind of crazy.  San Francisco is less smoggy (I said less, so you're not off the hook …

Our first stop was LA, Hollywood to be precise.  Completely by accident we ended up staying opposite the Guitar Centre, which was cool.&…

Last day in Hobart for a while.  Packed up the house :( and moved everything to various storage places.  Hobart is awesome but need to ge…