9th August 2012

Today is the day we start our return trip to Australia. After being away for 13 weeks it will be good to be home again. We have enjoyed most of the trip tough there were a couple of days that would rather forget, but I guess you get days like that and you just have to cope with them.

Today we drive from Potsdam to Berlin, where we catch a plane to Frankfurt. Late tonight we catch the next plane for . ingapore, then to Brisbane and finally Townsville.

Last week we were at a little town called Teterow where our hosts have their summer house. We swam in the lake, canoed on the lake and managed not to fall in, and went for a game of golf. We were also taken to Rugen Island to swim in the Baltic Sea, which to our surprise is barely salty at all, but still as cold as ice. We also saw a play there at a village named Ralswiek, the play is performed outdoors with the bay as the backdrop to the sets. The location was stunning, the sets superb and the play was good even if it was in German and we didn't understand a word. It was about a pirate from these parts way back when, and we had had the story explained to us before we went in.

This is the beach at the Baltic Sea, lots of people sunbaking but not too many swimming it was so cold in the water.

These are scenes from the play we saw "Stortebeker Tod"

20th July 2012 8.15pm

Today we visited the Basel Zoo. It was a good day, spent among the gardens and seeing the animals. Here are a selection of what we have seen.

Angel fish

miniture goats

storks in their nest

giraffes

yes well, a stripey thing(oh dear!)

cheetah

scarlet ibis

zebra

20th July 2012

Here are some photos of where we went yesterday, which was our youngsest son's birthday. We had a really good day and I hope you did too Ryan. The photo above was the first red squirrel we have seen. It was on the ground when we first saw it, and it collected a nut and went up the tree with it to eat. We were able to get lots of photos of it.

Here is Malcolm at the Basler Papiermuhle, that is the Basel Paper Mill. Here he is seen marbling a sheet of paper. This mill was interesting as it still uses the water wheel to power some of the machinery. It also had captions in English which helped. All the machinery was old, the tubs they soaked the pulp in was chipped out of a block of limestone.

Uta took us to Dornach for tea. The top photo is the view from the restaurant and the second is the restaurant as seen from the road below. I tried a local barley soup, was it good. I have taken note of the name and will try to find a recipe for it. While we were sitting here we could see the planes coming in to land at the airport. Shame we have to move along again on Sunday as it is really nice here.

 

This is Schloss Dorneck, a ruined castle we passed on the way to the restaurant. After tea we walked back down to it and had a look. The views here were just superb, you could see right over Basel and to the Swiss alps.

19th July 2012

Hello,
 Malcolm and I are in Switzerlandand have been here since Friday. It is all you could imagine it to be, it is just so beautiful. On Saturday we took the train to Zurich, it takes an hour to get there. We spent the morning looking through a museum, and the afternoon walking along the river banks which are all gardens and parks.
Sunday a friend took us to Laufen which was a half hour drive away. We spent the day walking in the mountains. There are paths everywhere, and it is obviously a very popular pasttime as there were a lot of people out walking. Some of the mountains are very steep but is so very beautiful.
Here are some of the photos from Sunday:

Monday we spent walking around the old town area of Basel, which is on the Rhine.

Until next time,keep well.

view from the lighthouse of Lake Como

                                                from the walk along Lake Lugano

view from the railway station in Lugano

this is a footbridge in Lucern

We are now in Switzerland, yesterday we travelled on the scenic train from Lugano to Lucern. Today we are doing a boat trip on a paddle steamer on Lake Lucern. More photos to be taken. Here are a few from Como, Lugano and Lucern.

29 June 2012

Here I am in Paris on the Pont AlexandreIII, and it is a lovely day. Not too hot or cold, I certainly did not need the coat I carried. There was a brief shower as we were about to leave our hotel so we took the coats just in case. We walked from our hotel to the Place de la Conorde, crossed the river and then followed it along to the Eiffel Tower. Then crossed over another bridge and walked the other side back to where we started. Then we walked into the gardens in front of the Louvre, but there was such a crowd there waiting to get in we decided to try early tomorrow. We went to lunch instead and had a lovely meal of duck and potatoes.

28th June 2012

Tonight we are in Paris. For a while I wondered if we would be. We were due to fly out of Dublin this morning just before midday, but it was 1pm before we left. We arrived at 2.35 Dublin time, but it was 3.35 in Paris. We were able to find our driver to be taken to our hotel, and what a shock. If we thought the traffic in Ireland was bad, they have nothing on these people! And it was hot too.

Tomorrow we are going to walk from the hotel to the Eiffel Tower, I have googled it and it is 3.7kms so that is not too bad.

The first photo is a squirrel in Hyde Park, I know that was weeks ago but it is cute.

The second photo is taken at the top of the Blarney Castle, and no I didn't kiss the stone. It was bad enough being that high up without going closer to the edge.