Helen and I are loving our travels round Europe, we’re having such a good time together.

After Salzburg we travelled over to Vienna. We had three nights there so we could pop over to Slovakia for the day!

I liked Vienna, lots of beautiful buildings and a nice vibe. We went to the Austrian national library, absolutely stunning, double height bookshelves full of antique books and an amazing ceiling. The trompe d’oeil was amazing, we were there over an hour mainly looking at the ceiling.

Helen likes horses so we wandered through the Spanish riding school which is part of the Hoffburg palace buildings. We didn’t go to a show but we got up early one morning as they exercise a few of them early in the morning in the local park. The lipizzaner horses are beautiful.

Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is only about 30 minutes from Vienna. It’s a delightful old city, we walked through the cobbled streets and climbed up the steps of the medieval Michael’s gate. The city has some quirky statues, we saw Cumil, a man peeping out of a manhole cover!

We had our longest travel day so far when we travelled from Vienna to Lake Bled in Slovenia. We were staying in the quiet end of Lake Bled. It was lovely, we had three nights there. I tried when planning our route to have a restful place every so often and this was one such place. The lake is a lot smaller than I thought, it’s only 6km to walk round. We hired a rowing boat and rowed to the island, we sat in our apartment watching a thunderstorm whilst sewing or scrapbooking. We got up early to listen to the dawn chorus, we just chilled 🙂

After our rest by lake Bled we travelled to Italy, our tenth country of our trip!

First stop was Venice. I have mixed feelings about Venice, it’s lovely with all the canals and bridges, but to me it looks uncared for, shabby even in places. It’s also very busy. By contrast we got the ferry over to Murano as I wanted some Murano glass earrings, it was lovely, much quieter and it felt cared for…and I got some earrings 🙂 We managed to get tickets to go in St Marks Basilica, that was another Wow! the ceilings and walls are covered with mosaics, the gold on them just glows, it’s beautiful. We did our usual routine of getting up at 6am and going straight out so we could take photos of the main sites before the crowds descended.

From Venice we travelled across to Florence. I liked Florence, it has some beautiful buildings and we had a good wander round the streets. My main issue was the unevenness of the pavements, I think they are the worst I’ve seen in Europe, as I have no balance I had to constantly look down to watch my step, so I couldn’t be looking up at the buildings. I did manage to climb the 400+ steps up the top of the dome and the views across the city were worth it. We also walked up to a viewpoint for views of the cathedral. I had my first grumpy day in Florence, we had a bad night’s sleep as we were woken up at 5am by workmen in the unit below, I was eaten alive by mozzies, I was hot and bothered…. hopefully the last grumpy day 🙂

Yesterday we travelled to Bergamo. This was chosen to save us from a very long travel day so we just had one night here. It’s has a lovely old town which is reached by a funicular train, the city walls are huge, like cliffs. It was quite a busy little city but that may also be because it was graduation day for the students!

Today we are on our way to Tirano, the start of the Bernina Express.