South Spain - Mountains

We are staying with Jane and Brian in Competa in Spain. They are from Nottingham, UK and moved to Spain nine years ago. It is a beautiful area overlooking the mountains and has been an absolute delight staying here. Jane and Brian have been great hosts - letting us read our books and lounge around their pool. They have three little dogs which fixed our needs to have some doggy cuddles, this was lovely as we miss the doggies. It has also been really refreshing being able to speak in English to people. This area is full of English people - It feels like 50% of people are English! We have met their friends and family and it really felt like we were part of their family. It will be sad to leave and we did threaten to stay until Christmas!

Barcelona

Now we are getting very tired, visiting cities, finding accommodation, looking at churches, hill top villages and other wonderful things.

However we knew we should not miss Barcelona and found accommodation in the Lonely Planet guide book called Residencè Australia. Consequently it was full of lovely Australians and made us feel quite at home. Clever marketing.

Barcelona was wonderful, alive and happening place and full of interesting architecture with many Gaudi places to visit.

The Pyrenees

We stayed in a gite in the Pyrenees. A very cheap but excellent accommodation in France. The Pyrenees was another range of mountains that we fell in love with. Many Castles and old towns located on the tops of hills.

Canoeing along the Averyon River - near Toulouse

We stayed with Jean Pierre, Patricia and their three boys in Toulouse. A very active family, doing sport and playing music. A lovely family they are too. Jean Pierre organised for us to do a canoe trip down the river. For those of you who know me, I´m not one for doing anything physically risky and you might not think canoeing is risky - but I am terrified of being caught under the boat. Therefore I´ve not been canoeing - ever!!!! Anyway for some silly reason I agreed to go. Tony of course was an expert!
The outcome was we had a fantastic day, after I got over the shock of being launched into the river by going down a shoot about 15 metres long and getting soaked - it was great fun. it was 35´c, but we were in the shade of the trees and we had loads of fun going through little rapids.

While we stayed at Jean Pierre´s house was were treated to a concert by two of the boys, one play the Irish flute and the other the tabla drums. It was a real delight to stay with a family and a family of such lovely people.

The highest bridge in the world!

If you were watching the TV program Top Gear about six months ago, you might have seen the episode about THE BRIDGE. Well this bridge was the Millau Bridge in France, near Toulouse.

It had been on our itinerary ever since. The scenery to get to the bridge was spectacular. The bridge was more so - 343 metres high and 2460 metres long.

Aix en Provence

Aix, beautiful place in France and we arrive on Market day. Aix is a town that Cezanne and Van Gough spent time. It is a very interesting town with magnificent buildings, lots of coffee shops, resterants and an amazing market - full of wonderful french food. So we stocked up with the traditional bread, cheese and olives. The market seemed to go on for ever, weaving its way through the narrow streets all over the town.

Berne, Switzerland in the Sunshine

Because we are doing a figure 8 tour of Europe, we are now at the cross over point and decided to visit Berne again and our friend Sabine our first CouchSurfer host. It was great to see her again and she was as hospitable as ever. Berne if you remember the first time was very wet, cold and miserable. This time it was very sunny and looked completely different.

Mushroom Picking - Augsburg, Germany

We arrived at Marianne and Gerhard's home in Burtenbach about 80 kilometres from Munich.
Marianne was a great cook and made many lovely Germans dishes which delighted our taste buds. One was a noodle dish with a mushroom sauce made with hand picked mushrooms from the nearby forest. The next day Marianne took us for a walk into the forest to pick mushrooms. I was rather tentative about picking them because of the deadly ones. She was very confident.
We had a lovely time with them learning more about German culture and visiting beautiful German towns.

Gerhard was the mayor for 12 years for his town, so we had many interesting stories to compare and tell about Local government.
They have visited Australia many times and will again be in Australia early next year and will stay with us in Healesville.