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Day 41 1st October

LAST DAY - or so we thought It has been a great holiday have seen so much and had some wonderful times.   PS Just at Rome airport waiting for our flight to London. We are now staying in London tonight compliments of Qantas as they have cancelled our flight from London to Singapore/Melbourne. Massive dramas with QANTAS not booking our hotel as promised, we had to do it ourselves and the whole process including taxi's took over 4 hours, we arrived at the hotel at 12:15 am and had to get up to leave by 5:30am, no food or drinks available. We are now leaving a day later but now flying London Singapore then Sydney after which we now have quite a wait and will be flying domestic to Melbourne. More drama with QANTAS when we got to Sydney, no flights available to Melbourne so they booked a hotel with a meal allowance and gave us taxi voucher to get there and the hotel shuttle will get us back for a 10am flight home. AS usual the flight was late leaving but we eventually got to M...
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Day 39 & 40 29th and 30th September Rome

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 We checked out of our accommodation 1 night was more than enough and moved to a hotel resort that Julie had found in the hills outside of Civitavecchia called Tenuta dell’ Argento it was lovely we checked in then headed for Rome to start sightseeing. Pete and Julie walked up and down the Spanish Steps and we found a couple of beautiful parks that had some great statues so had a look at them then ended up the top of one of the hills that had magnificent views of all of Rome Then we went to the Pantheon and were there for hours as you now have to line up and buy a ticket again as I’ve seen it twice I opted for sitting on the wall and people watching glad I did as it took them nearly 2 hours to get in and see after that we had a snack and drink at one of the restaurants in the square. Drove around to get our bearings of where the Vatican and Coleseum where located to make it quicker the next day for us to drop Julie off. Then it was back to the hotel for dinner which was fabulous we ...
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Day 38 28th September Florence to Rome

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 After a quick breakfast we were off to see the sights, first stop Ponte Vecchio (Gold Bridge) it was the only bridge in WW2 that wasn’t bombed and it was built in 1345 we had to park a little bit from it so had a nice walk looking at the sights before getting on the extremely busy bridge, was even a couple there having wedding photos done, after spending some time looking and taking pictures we made our way back to the car and headed for the Duomo that nearly killed me when we were here years ago with our friends Penny and Ash I decided that Pete and Julie could go have a look I wasn’t going near it. After a bit more looking around it was time to head for Rome. We didn’t realize just how busy Rome was going to be due to the Ryder Cup which made getting accommodation impossible, once again we headed out to a very beautiful but old town where Julie had found us some accommodation it turned it to quite an experience. It’s a walled town and no one speaks English our navigation system ...
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Day 37 27th September Venice to Florence

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 Pete and Julie headed back to Venice for a few more hours looking around I had breakfast and stayed at the hotel so that Julie could see a lot more of Venice without me slowing them down. Pete and Julie covered a lot of Venice which was good, they saw all the main places to see St Mark’s Basilica, Piazza San Marco, Bridge of Sighs and more plus loads of little canals and bridges and another trip down the Grand Canal. It was now time to head to Florence, had a lovely drive and decided we would stay at a little town up in the hills called Fiorelle just out of Florence. The drive in was wonderful lots of little villages very steep and narrow roads in places but was so worth it, we had to back track more than once as is typical in Europe not big on signs but that’s part of the fun. Unfortunately when we did eventually get to where we wanted to go the place only had one room left for two people so we tried another place without success so back down the hills we went and into Florence. ...
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Day 36 26th September Zagreb (Croatia) to Venice

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Had a lovely breakfast then time to leave for Venice, we drove through Slovenia on our way to Italy the countryside was very pretty, with lots of hills and villages in the distance. We arrived in Venice and booked into our hotel on the mainland as we had decided this would be easier. We drove to where we could park the car and purchased our tickets for Venice, we did a full lap before we decided to get off and have a look around. It was now dinner time so we found a lovely restaurant, one which we had eaten in before and had dinner it was next to the Rialto Bridge so we had a good view while having dinner and the gondolas were just out the front. After dinner Pete and Julie went for a ride in a gondola I had been before but we told Julie she needed to experience it, and as I’m starting to struggle a little bit more I stayed and had a glass of wine. When they got back we had a bit more of a look around and took some pics then headed to the water taxi and off to the hotel.
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Day 35, 25th September Budpest to Zagreb

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 Arrived in Zagreb and before finding somewhere to stay headed for Lotrscak Tower which means thieves bell it’s from the 13 th century and every day at midday they fire a cannon which all the churches in the city use to synchronize their bells we got there in time and so glad we did but OMG they said it was loud when they shot the cannon and they weren’t joking, then all the bells in the city started peeling which was nice but very noisy. We had a bit of trouble finding somewhere to stay lots of the hotels we wouldn’t have let an animal stay in but eventually we found one and when out for a look around. Zagreb is the capital of Croatia and dates back to the 2 nd century AD, its upper town is beautiful full of cobblestone streets, old churches, palaces and towers. The next morning before leaving we went back to have a look at St Marks Church which has a 13 th century roof comprised of very colourful tiles that make up the cities coat of arms, also took a ride on the funicular rai...
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