Category: 2018

Our weekend away to the romantic Italian lake-side town started off with a fair bit more vehicular-adventure screaming than either of us had bargained for. First not understanding the mysticism that is the Italian highway toll system, to then following the ever-trusty directions of Google Maps down a cobbled sidewalk barely the width of the tiny two-seater car we’d rented.

As George tried to find how the tiny car reversed, we were converged on by a line of very animated, wildly-gesticulating locals screaming Italian profanities as our clearly-tourist-driven car sat unmoving wedged firmly between two stone walls.

I think it was at this point I mentally ejected from the awkward situation, instead choosing to cover my eyes and slide down in my seat as though the residents might forget I was ever part of the whole ordeal. Never will quite remember how George got us out of that back alley, although I do know it involved whipping the wrong way around a roundabout once out in the throws of adrenaline.

Let’s just say the streets of Lake Garda are a lot less stressful on two feet.

Mount Baldo

The next morning we decided to make the most of the beautiful weather by catching the cable car up Mount Baldo.

After buying said cable car tickets, gigantic clouds decided to amass around the peak of the mountain, so we got the unique experience of standing in a very wet, grey mist with the knowledge that the beautiful panoramic view of the lake lay just below the cloud cover.

But it’s okay, we drowned our sorrows that night in some delicious dark beer. And it hit the spot, as you can tell.

The Scaliger Castle of Malcesine

Our last day in Lake Garda had already arrived – and it was all clear and sunny skies! While most of the town headed up the mountain to enjoy the clear views (real tourists go on the rainy days), we decided to head to Scaliger Castle.

• The fortress of Malcesine sits on the only hill directly on the banks of Lake Garda, and dates back to the last centuries of the first millennium B.C.

Regardless of age, the castle offers some of the best views of the lake and surrounding town.

• Lake Garda was formed during the last Ice Age by a glacier that cut the path of the lake and later melted to leave the freshwater seen there today. It’s the largest lake in Italy!

Where do you go when you want a nice weekend away in the UK countryside and you’ve left it too last minute to book in New Forest or the Cotswolds?

That’s right, Seend!

But, as it turns out, it’s a cute country town out nearby Bath, Salisbury and the Cotswolds, but not so near that it’s ridiculously expensive to book.

And perfect for what we wanted it for – a quiet weekend away with copious amounts of cheese and wine.

Seend Locks

On George’s must-see list was the Seend Locks – a series of locks that allow canal boats to move easily up- and downhill.

The reason he was so interested was because of a trip we had planned when his parents visit in May 2019 – traversing the canals of Wales for a week.

I was less excited when I realised opening and closing the locks meant jumping in and out of the boat and making sure you don’t lose any fingers while you turn the gate. (Stay tuned for our trip in Wales to see how that turned out)

Avebury Henge

We also discovered the Avebury Henge or Stone Circles, which is essentially a much larger and less touristy version of Stonehenge.

• The Avebury Stone Circle dates back to the Neolithic age, roughly between 2850 BC and 2200 BC.

• The Stones measure from 12 to 18 feet tall, with some weighing more than 40 tonnes – making it hard to understand how they were built without modern age tools!

Although some are a little smaller…

Absolutely worth a visit, even if just for the beer at the classic pub by the roadside.

And that’s about it for our weekend in Seend! Would recommend for a quiet English countryside getaway, and especially to make a trip to Avebury for the stone circles.

Our last stop of our trip and in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe for New Years Eve – not a bad way to finish it!

Turns out Prague has a thing for medieval taverns, beer and meat.

• Prague locals drink the most beer per capita in the world, drinking an average of 155 litres of beer every year. Our kind of people!

Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral

These incredible buildings are set atop a hill overlooking the whole of Prague.

The castle gates are flanked by some pretty horrific looking statues, depicting Titans wrestling and fighting.

Once you sidle past the scary statues, you reach St. Vitrus Cathedral within the castle walls. It’s gorgeous, gothic… and the line to get in is enough to make you want to leap from one of its steeples.

• Coronations of Czech Kings and Queens used to take place in this cathedral.

While the rest of the fam took their chances lining up for 400 years, George and I visited the nearby Christmas markets in search of some Christmassy mulled cider to pass the time.

The Astronomical Clock

Down the hill, across the bridge and into the centre of Prague you’ll find the Astronomical Clock –

• The Astronomical Clock is the world’s oldest functional clock and tells the time, as well as the days, seasons, moon phases and equinoxes. The statues surrounding the clock represent vanity, greed, death and lust.

And, of course, like in every European town square in Winter there was an awesome Christmas market. You just had to fight through the crowds of a few thousand people congregated around the Clock to see it.

Although the crowds can be reasonably explained by the main reason we were in town to begin with…

New Years Eve!

This is something I would recommend everyone experience in their lifetimes – if you’re not afraid of thousands of people lighting off fireworks right beside you in the middle of the street.

The atmosphere and energy was incredible, and made for one of the most unforgettable New Years Eves of my life.

And we thought that was the end of our significant time in Prague, and the end of our European Christmas, with us all set to fly back to London the next day. But the next morning we woke up to find another first and unforgettable experience…

Seeing snow fall for the first time!

What a great way to top off an incredible trip with my family – all the way from Australia to spend my first Christmas away from home together.

Love you, fam bam!

Innsbruck is a small ski city in western Austria, and even hosted the Olympic Winter Games twice.

We went there to drink… and I guess try our hand at skiing.

We didn’t do a lot of exploring around Innsbruck, except for bar- and restaurant-hopping at night (but that’s to come later). Instead, we spent our days on the mountains learning how to ski.

For everyone except George and Mickey, the first day was spent in a ski lesson.

I apparently missed the lesson on braking, and went face-first over the barrier next to the magic carpet. Luckily there was that kid to soften my landing.

On our second day, we decided to venture off on our own in search of the beginner green runs. The only catch was to get to the green runs, we had to go down a very short stretch of a red run…

Couldn’t be that difficult, right?

It was about two hours into struggling down the side of a 30 degree angle slope, with kids and adults alike zooming past, when the realisation came to us that Austrians are essentially born on skis..

After finally making it to the bottom of the slope, we sought refuge in nearby hotel, had lunch and begged our way onto a shuttle that took us back to the baby slopes.

What a day.

Despite our struggles, we did have a blast on those baby slopes

While skiing was the main purpose and highlight of our Innsbruck trip, we also had an awesome Christmas dinner at a place called Hotel Goldener Adler.

Which had some interesting choices of decoration…

We also went to an incredible underground craft beer joint called Tribaun.

And that’s pretty much it for our trip to Innsbruck! Last but not least on our tour is Prague. Check out below for the rest of our photos from Innsbruck.

First stop on our whirlwind Christmas tour was Salzburg in Austria! A town full of tiny bars (I’m talking 6-10 seaters), gorgeous scenery, beer halls and Christmas markets made it a perfect place to start.

• Salzburg literally translates to “salt castle”, referring to the salt mining around the city. We visited in the off season, as the paths up to the mines freeze over in the Winter – but a good reason to go back!

Mirabell Palace

Built in 1606 by an Archbishop who wanted to avoid the narrow streets of Salzburg (bit of overkill, if you ask me), the Palace’s name is derived from an Italian phrase meaning amazing or wonderful. Nowadays, the gorgeous halls and gardens are used primarily for concerts and weddings.

• The Sound of Music was filmed in this town. You can go on various tours to see where the scenes were shot – I personally prefer the sound of drunks singing as they exit the various pubs and beer halls around town.

Augustiner Brau

Speaking of beer halls, this is the one we decided to spend our first night in. Luckily with roughly 7 devices capable of taking pictures between the 4 of us, we managed to capture every moment of the hours spent drinking in this incredible hall…

Okay, we got one photo. Which was actually an Instagram boomerang of our first beer.

So, to describe the place, imagine wall-to-wall packed with hundreds of people sitting at these long tables. Think the Great Hall in Harry Potter, sans magic floating candles and rivalries between tween wizards.

To get a beer, you walk up, grab a mug, wash it off in a fountain and join the line where they’ll fill your mug straight from these huge barrels of beer – all the same beer, same price; awesome.

Fortress Hohensalzburg 

Probably the first thing you notice when visiting Salzburg is the giant castle sitting atop the hill overlooking the town.

• This fortress is the largest fully-preserved fortress in central Europe. Construction began in 1077.

With its vantage point, the views from the top are as spectacular as you’d expect.

Of course, the views can’t please everyone. Like my friend, the valuator.

That was largely our experience in our few days in Salzburg! Check out our trip to Innsbruck, where we try our hand at skiing. And see below for more photos of our time kicking around Salzburg.

One of the main islands in Greece, Santorini is known for its gorgeous sunsets…

…and also known for its blue-domed churches which are all over any post card you’ve ever seen of Greece.

We visited at the end of high season – which meant many of the restaurants and bars were closing for the year, and it rained on our first day, so much that our apartment flooded.. guess they’re not used to the weather phenomenon that is water falling from the sky.

Regardless, we had a great time during our week on the island – although the locals thought we were insane taking the quad bikes out in mid 20 degree weather.. but somehow we managed.

We were out all day driving around the island, from the village of Oia where we had the freshest seafood lunch I’ve ever had…

… all the way to the lighthouse at the very bottom of the island to watch the sunset…

…and everywhere in between.

• The island was actually created by a series of volcanic eruption and collapses, forming the caldera we see now.

Despite it’s dry and harsh climate, Santorini actually has a pretty top wine industry… which we took great advantage of.

Santorini also has very photogenic scenery, which we also took advantage of… unfortunately, after the wine. Which resulted in these gems.

That pretty much sums up our week in Santorini! More (slightly more sober) photos below.

On the way to Dinant, we couldn’t help but stop at a local Brewery – Brasserie Valduc.

This is a tiny little brewery in the middle of the Belgian countryside run by some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. We dropped in unannounced and they didn’t hesitate to give us a tour of their brewery – telling us all about the history of the beer and even the artwork on the bottles, not letting us leave without a few bottles of our own, on the house.

Dinant

My favourite town in Europe so far, Dinant is simply breathtaking. A town huddled on the side of the River Meuse and overlooked by an incredible castle. It’s a road less traveled and close to the border, so it’s a good idea to brush up on your French before visiting.

• The inventor of saxophone, Adolphe Sax, was from Dinant. Which explains the giant, decorated saxophone statues littered throughout the town.

1. One of Belgian’s best known beers, Leffe, is a local beer named after the Abbey of Leffe in Dinant. We didn’t actually know this at the time we visited Dinant, but still managed to drink a lot of Leffe.. what a coincidence.

Dinant Citadel

To get up to the citadel, you have to ride a cable car almost directly vertical up the cliff. Which was… absolutely fine and not at all terrifying. I had to hold George’s hand a little, but he made it through, poor little tyke.

• The citadel was built in 1820 and played an important role in defending Dinant from invading German troops in 1914, during WW1.

• Some genuinely horrible history – Dinant was the site of the invasion termed “The Rape of Belgium”. During the confusion of the German invasion in WWI, some of the Germans may have fired on each other – instead of taking a good hard look at themselves and their battle tactics, they blamed the Dinant residents, resulting in a massacre of 674 unarmed Belgian civilians.

Castle of Crevecoeur

On our last day in Dinant, we visited the Castle of Crevecoeur – an absolutely stunning castle ruin overlooking the River Meuse, on the opposite bank and down river from Dinant and its Citadel.

• During medieval times, there was a lot of hostility and competition between the townspeople of Bouvignes (of this castle) and Dinant – lucky Castle of Crevecoeur has a direct eye-line to the much larger and grander Citadel of the much richer town, Dinant.

• The name of the castle has some bloody history behind it. In 1554, the castle was invaded by the French King Henry II. Three wives of officers killed in the siege took over the command of the remaining knights. When it became obvious the defenders would lose, the three wives threw themselves off the castle walls rather than be captured. Hence the name Crève Cœur – translation: ‘breaking heart’

Dinant remains one of my favourite cities in Belgium – a beautiful, sleepy town on the bank of the River Meuse, with a surprising amount of history to it once you look behind the curtain. Just make sure you can speak enough French to get by if you visit! 

And that’s it for our Belgium trip! One of our favourite trips through Europe – much to everyone’s surprise, including the locals. But I’d highly recommend putting it on your list.

Ghent is mini-Bruges – only an hour drive away and a road less travelled, but one worth doing!

We were only in Ghent for one night, so here’s the quick highlight reel –

Gravensteen Castle

Gravensteen was built as a show of power for the Count of Flanders before they realised a much more fun pastime – torture!

• ‘Anxiety pears’ were wooden balls put in mouths and tied to the heads of the mentally ill to stop them screaming. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the torture.

• The castle was almost demolished in the 19th century due to it being a symbol of the abuses of nobility and inhumane torture carried out within. But why tear down a grim reminder of the past when you can make money off tourists instead? That’s capitalism, folks.

My favourite review about the castle:

Only the newest medieval castle pleases our mate Andreas.

The Weird + Wonderful Pubs

After our obligatory tourist hour, we returned to what we’d really come to Belgium for – beer! And Ghent really turned this up with some truly fantastically wacky beer cafes, our favourite being ‘t Velootje Bar Peculiar.

The inside looks like the home of an eccentric hoarder, with bicycles hanging from the ceiling and an eclectic collection of antiques making sitting indoors impossible.

Luckily, it was a stunning day so we sat outside with the owner and his friends, who didn’t speak a lick of English – but did communicate in beer!

This is the kind of pub where he gives you a bottle wrapped in paper, no mention of price until the end. You don’t ask questions – you just take the Belgian man’s drink and enjoy.

A really memorable experience I’d recommend to anyone passing through Ghent… or, lack there of – this did turn into probably the biggest night of our trip as we met two other Aussies and a French couple that we decided to do a pub crawl with around Ghent. I don’t have any strong recollection of where we went, so I’ll have to leave you with the photos I found on my phone from our journey instead!

Then, last but not least on our Belgium road-trip: Dinant!

Antwerp is truly a city under construction.

George put it pretty well when we were first arriving: “Wow, this place will be banging in 5 years.”

Luckily for us, that didn’t stop us enjoying the beer!

Paters Vaetje

Our first pub of Antwerp and absolutely would recommend if you ever find yourself in town. Amazing selection of trappist beers and awesome vibe. Also right next to the cathedral, so pretty views!

Red Light District

Mum, don’t be too disappointed in me – When in Rome, right?

Besides, we got more than we bargained for when we went. I’m talking open air urinals in the middle of the streets and sweaty men walking around in packs of 3 or 4, one occasionally breaking off to leer at the extremely disinterested women on their phones behind glass panels like a perverted shopping centre.

Ahh, the serenity.

[Gallery omitted because, believe me, you don’t want to see photos of this place]

MAS Museum

Entertainment at the MAS Museum started before we were even in the building, with a Medieval festival complete with crossbow shooting and sword fights right outside.

When we finally made it inside (and after George tried to get inside with a tram ticket, making for a very confused employee and an even more confused George), the museum was full of amazing exhibitions – each level dedicated to a different theme. But even if you don’t want to pay the entry fee, you can enjoy the view while walking up to the top for the amazing panorama of the city.

Then again, maybe there’s no point going at all according to good ol’ Sergio.

What a wast.

The City Itself

Apart from the construction, the city was gorgeous. And visiting in the summertime meant we got to experience one of the many pop-up summer bars all over the harbour.

See the gallery below for more miscellaneous photos of our time wandering Antwerp. Up next, Bruges!