Around the World in 43 Days! 2007-2008

A bus ride from Austria to Munich, with views of Germany along the way, and we were ready to fly to Dubai - via Heathrow unfortunately. We were very glad not to have been around Heathrow when the BA flight crash landed the next morning!

Upon landing in Dubai we discovered that President Bush was also visiting Dubai that same day, and that the city centre was in lock down for security. (Remember the Chasers and Sydney??) We set off in our taxi from the airport and, three hours later, basically returned to our starting point. Oh well. That's international travel. So we implemented Plan B, and managed to still get our "desert tour" to happen. There was a bit of this..

and some sillyness in picture taking..

and some of these..


and some riding of these..

and holding some of these..

and some interesting getting off of these..

and some strange locals..

and even stranger snow boarding.. or is that sand boarding..
.

The rest of our Dubai visit was flooded and wet and cool. Yes, you read correctly. The desert capital was flooded with the worst rain in over 17 years!! We got caught in traffic jams because they didn't know how to drive in the rain..

we saw lots of flooding and low cloud, but that was OK, because (Sue talking here) we were still able to go to the Gold Markets and see lots and lots of shiny shiny gold and precious stones. Yeah!!

We also saw where they ski inside a shopping mall,

and the tallest building in the world,

and the wave building and lots of other amazing buildings and islands being made..

amongst lots of other things like A/C bus stops.
That ends the Dubai tale of flooding and George Bush and buying things at the Gold market and playing in the desert.. Next it was off to Hong Kong.

As I started typing this latest blog entry in Austria, the snow was finally falling on our last full day in Austria. Sue's dream had finally come true and we had real snow falling, in a beautiful Austrian village to boot! She is one happy camper..

When we travelled by rail from Venice to Innsbruck (4.5hrs) we were greeted by this awesome sight..

and then we had a tram ride (50min) to the small Austrian village of Telfes. It was dark when we finally arrived at Haus Larcher, the beautiful home of our friends Bryan and Annabel Taylor..

What we diddn't realise, because of the dark, was that outside our bedroom window was one heck of a fantastic Austrian view, which we woke up to..

And then, on the last day, the whole place changed into a winter wonderland!!

There are so many stories to tell and so many photos to show. In summary, just imagine everything you have seen, like Alps, gorgeous villages, quaint churches, massive rocky slopes, fantastic snow, endless ski runs, the bluest skies, and then the blessing of snow that covered everything and made the most mundane tree a work of art.

Bryan and Annabel have teenage children that were so generous with our kids - they played load music together, went swimming in the heated pool, shot each other with "BB" guns (plastic pellets), and Andy Rachael and Sam taught them all snow boarding and the local ski runs - and all with patience and grace. We really do owe the whole Taylor family a huge debt of gratitude; they blessed us with food, great chats, accomodation, beaut wine, Godly devotions, but most importantly staying at their place was like a cool drink of a hot day - totally refreshing!

Here are skiing pictures. Benj and Bethy both tried their hand at snowboarding. Everyone survived without major injury .. Bethy took a major tumble after attempting a large jump on skiis on day 1 (!), Benj a fairly hard crash on his snow board, and Sue did a massiv estar jump off a jump and came down minus skiis and plus bruises.

Here are some of the views around the ski centre, called Schlick 2000 (2000m above sea level)..


Snow boarding experts now..


More sights around the Schlick..

And now that winter wonderland. It was SO, SO beautiful - and fun for snow fights!!


And, of course, the obligatory handstand ..

**** NB
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Another train ride, another city .. not this time! I’m not sure that anything prepares you for the beauty and uniqueness of Venice.

Our stay in Venice was short, so we booked no tours and instead walked around the city, over bridges and over bridges, caught ferries and just soaked in the city that is Venice.

In the main square there were heaps of pigeons and you can't keep us away from playing with pigeons..

In the evening, we decided to take a long trip on one of the ferries, and we got our wish! We weren't sure if we were going to end up in another country, as we headed out into what seemed like the open sea. Eventually, we did arrive back at the main square of Venice, having seen a lot more of Venise than we expected.

Venice is famous for the Murano glass that is made into a huge variety of glass products,

and also for the masks that can be found in every second shop...

Here a a few other pics of that magical city Venice ..

Next we are off to Austria for some skiing and hopefully some snow falling.....

The next few places we visited were via train. Some would say we made the train from Rome to Florence with only minutes to spare, but I would say that it was just “perfectly-timed”!?! Training was a great way to trip through the Italian countryside; we saw lots of scenery - these guys can build a vineyard anywhere!

We could walk to our motel in Florence, which was really handy, where we dumped our bags and found out about how small the bathrooms can be in European hotels.

We ducked off quickly to Pisa. Apparently (we’d heard rumours) there was some old leaning building there.

After viewing the leaning tower and the other leaning buildings at Pisa, and eating Pizza in Pisa, we returned to Florence and all had a ball shopping in the markets/shops there. The boys were interested in local Italian items such as Jamaican hats with braided hair (!?),

whilst the rest of us tried on all sorts of leather apparel – Florence is famous for its leather as well as its art.

Of course we went and visited the works of Michelangelo, including his magnificent statue of David. This one is the copy in the Piazza della Signoria..

There were also a number of other statues in the Piazza della Signoria. This one is Neptune, god of water.

We really enjoyed the tour through the Academia museum, where the guide really explained all about Michelangelo's works of art. Shopping and bartering in the local market was also a bit of fun, as was walking through the local food market and seeing rabbit and quail and very mouldy looking cheese as well as ravioli being made.

We also found many strange vehicles -

New Year’s Day was a holiday (meaning all attractions were shut) and, while the kids slept in, we decided to take in some sights via the economical walking method. Popped up to the Popolov Piazza where on the way we ducked into a few doorways … and these led to enormous churches. I mean, enormous. This was after our first introduction to real coffee – cappuccinos drunk whilst standing up and consuming pastries, of course.

After collecting the children, we saw the Pantheon, which had the largest concrete domed roof in the world until 1962, even though it was built in xxxx. Then it was off to the Colosseum,

where we all went ooh and ahh. On the way to the Colosseum, Rich sat up on a carved marble statue at the xxxx for a photo - and copped a full dressing down from the Italian policeman standing nearby!! The remains of ancient Rome we passed along the way to the Colosseum just had us all amazed.

At this stage I need to let you know that EVERYBODY loved Rome!
The parents loved the morning cafe crawl, sometimes consuming a Cappuccino and a Macchiato plus pastries from separate cafes before the kids had even woken up.
The children loved the gelato and pizza from their favourite Roman snack bar in our street.
The females loved all of the fashions and high end shopping in our local area.
The boys enjoyed the challenge of taking photos with unusual characters on the streets.

Of course we did do all of the major sightseeing events. We did the Colosseum tour, which was a “pinch yourself that you are really in the Colosseum” moment.

We also toured the Roman Emperor’s palace (Palatine Hill) and got a glimpse of the grandeur in which they lived. He had a chariot race track (Circus Maximus) that could seat 300,000 people!!

Sue had Zita had booked us into a “Crypts and Catacombs” tour. The first part turned out to be quite a surprise as we walked through the crypts of the Cappucian monks (can you see a theme building here??) who chose to decorate their crypts with the bones of earlier monks whose bodies were exhumed after a period. (See link…)
The Catacombs part of the tour took us outside the Roman wall and deep down into the earth. We saw hundreds of empty “graves” – holes dug in the sides of tunnels where bodies previously lay. It was a truly amazing experience as we descended deeper and deeper through a labyrinth of tunnels, finally ending at two first century mausoleums that have been brilliantly preserved. Our tour ended back in Rome at a church that sat on a church that sat on apartments that were very, very old. (I can’t remember, but take it from me that they were ancient!) It was then that we finally understood how layered a city Rome really is, and the value of archaeological digs.

As if we hadn’t had enough history, our next tour was through the Vatican Museum. Talk about art overload!!! Benj felt like he had completed all two years of his school art subject in one 3hr visit. It is not possible to summarise our visit to the museum, and to St Peter’s Basilica (the largest in the world) and then to St Peter’s Square. You will just have to look through the 100s and 100s of statue photos yourself..


What better way to end your Roman holiday than to have a - Toga Party! The ladies organised Roman tucker, everyone chased up towels and sheets and whatever they could find for costumes, and the kids prepared Roman entertainment. It was a definite hoot, and ended with the kids going down for Gelato in their togas at 10.30pm, causing plenty of strange looks, with one old lady even exclaiming, “Mama Mia”!

Next we head to Florence and Venice.