Vogelweiderhoff (Imagine it's being said like a teenage boy with voice breaking)

Austria - what a magnificent trip into the mountains as I mentioned previously.  Where else would one go when they only have a short time in the country but to the heart of the Sound of Music - Saltzburg.
Obviously if that's where you're going the Sound of Music tour is a must :) The weather was overcast, which was a slight shame, but better then the day we arrived, which was raining. 

The bridge the children ran over in the curtain clothes

I am 16 going on 17 . . .

The front of the house (they actually used 2 houses, a front half and a back)

The back half :)

Part of the opening scenery

Jono 'biking' through the green tunnel. 

The doe rae me steps

Inside the wedding church (movie)

Jono doing the "I have confidence" fountain splash

The Abby

I was going to insert a video of me running down the street singing "I have confidence" but it wont load (what a shame) so you're going to have to imagine it!

Saltzburg is a lovely city, even in the rain, imagine it when the weather is fine.  On the hour, you hear multiple church bells chiming, it sounds awesome!!

Many Steeples

In a Dad like voice "Look at those magnificent magnolias" :)

We also went past Mozart's house obviously

 We also went up the fortress that overlooks the city.

 The toilet doors on the footress

Are there any words?

Said fortress

View from the fortress

Us plus view from fortress - note mountain in background

From the fortress we spotted the gondola that goes up a mountian in action (note mountian in previous photo), Jono had heard about this, so with very vague directions and poor German we set off on a quest to find it.  That we did -just in time, the last Gondola to the top :)

So many good things - the fortress, the abby and the mountain :)

Yay we found it :)

Jono sporting some 'special' footwear!

Yea that's how high it went . . .

Pretty sweet view

Look closely - a cross in the distance (not the one we went to)

 Of course in Austria Schnitzel, strudel and gateau are a must

Jono thinks this is funny - 'Good fart'

Prayer thanks
- For the enjoyable time we've  been having.
- for safe travel thus far

Prayer requests
- For continued enjoyment and safety on our holiday
- That we'll cont to place God as highest priority and our marriage up there too
- My back continues to niggle, so healing/awesome core muscles
- Jono's foot has been playing up (old ankle injury) so that that would heal
- for the car for Bethesda (haven't heard anything further on that front)

Oddities/observations and the like

There are a few further things I've noticed here (Mainly in Italy, also in Austria).
1) who on earth has a truck like this?

2) in most bathrooms here there Is this additional thing - I think it looks somewhat like a urinal (not that I've seen many to compare it with) Jono think it is a foot bath.  Unfortunately I didn't take a picture here.  I can't imagine using it though, just in case other foreigners mistake it as a urinal.  Gross urine feet.

3) a number of toilets here have the cistern tank thingy up high, and a lever you push up towards it to flush it. Once again I didn't take a photo - sorry. 

4)  There seems to be a lot of heavily processed food here, I still find it odd that you can buy 'toast' in a packet.

5) What ever happened to museli for breakfast?  And what kind of a replacement is ham and cheese - bring back museli!!!!

6) Butter appears to be a novelty, I'm not a big fan of dry bread . . .

7) Where have all the vegetables gone?  In Italy there was carb overload, now in Austria meat.

8) People when it comes to public transport can be rather rude.  There were a number of times when we about to hop on trains and people would rush/push past you to get on first.  Then once your on the train people would incovieniantly take up 4 seats with there luggage/lolloping about and not look to be willing to move unless you directly asked them/sat down.  Common curtersy appears to be absent. 

Now onto the actual places we've visited . . .

Pisa

There were a couple of surprising things about Pisa. 1) I wasn't expecting the other buildings that were in the square with the leaning tower, i think most pictures ive seen have it by itself.

Spot the leaning tower - away in the distance . . .

2) compared to all the grand buildings I've been seeing, the leaning tower appeared quite small.  The tower itself was quite expensive to go up comparatively to the things we did in Roma.  It was kinda interesting though walking up it, and interesting looking at the footstep patterns which have been worn into the marble.  They start over one side and work their way over to the other and then back again.

Oh yea! Who's the strong one?

Trying to correct my damage . . .

Climbing up inside the leaning tower

Jono attempting to reinact the sign, not quite willing to go all the way though

Pizza meet Pisa

Venezia (Venice)

A very expensive place to go if you want to get out on the water, which in Venice feels kinda obligatory!  We'd read that for a gondola ride you would pay €80, we decided to try our luck bartering the price down, which yay for us worked.  We got an extended gondola ride for €60 still expensive, but go us!  The ride it self was rather nice except our gondola man seemed to know everyone and want to have a conversation with all the other gondola guide people.  This decreased the romantic feel.

The gondola guy in the one in front of us seemed to talk on his phone the whole time.

Guy in front multitasking - phone, steering the gondola with his foot and paddle

We then headed over to Murano (an island of Venice) to have a look at the glass museum.  That was completely over rated, and a waste of €.  However the trip over there was worthwhile, because of the free glass shops you can look around.  They have some absolutely amazing and gorgeous stuff there, sorry no photos again!  We happened across a factory that was about to do a talk/demonstration for some school children.  It wasn't in English, but is it was awesome though I didn't understand a word of it!  The guy made what appeared to be a delicate swan, with these big bulky tools.  He also made a vase.  Very cool and the best part, it was free.  Since we'd brought a 12 hour pass for the vaporetto (water taxi) we decided to see Venice by night time, which was ok, but not as magnificent as I thought it'd be. Afterwards I had the most amazing profiteroles for dessert and they were super cheap also.  Yum yum.  I had an Italian hot chocolate there also.  It was kinda odd, like a mousse consistency but hot.

Hot chocolate on Mrs Velda Walters - thanks Velda!!

Onwards to Austria, it was pretty magnificent the bus ride into the mountains.  The temperature dropped about 10 deg in an hour, crazy!! 25deg to 15.  You will have to wait for a further blog re Austria :)

Prayer thanks

- for safe travels thus far
- for the awesome things we've been able to see, do and consume

Prayer requests 

- for continued safety and enjoyment while we travel.  

- my back has been a bit sore with all this lugging around of luggage/poor posture, so that it'll get better quickly (and I develop some amazing core muscles)
- that we'll continue to make God top priority, then our marriage
- for the car for Bethesda

Whoops the late addition - I forgot - how could I?  The famous St Mark's square - silly billy - here it is :)

What is that she is wearing - and how could I have forgotten to add this pic????

Vescovado, Toscana - translation "The whop whops, Tuscany"

So we've departed Roma and found our way to Toscana.  We'd decided that it maybe nice to spend a couple of nights in the Italian country side, so here we are.  The journey to get here was how do I put it 'interesting" aka very unpleasant.  The bus ride from Roma to Siena was fine, no issues there.  The issues arose when my darling husband decided we should walk to collect the rental car (about 30 mins with 25kg of luggage each) and then decided that despite having directions on his phone we should 'wing it'.  2 hours after we set out we reached the car rental place (by walking all that time), with one sore (in more places then one) and irritable Karlyn. 

Seina before the epic ordeal - note the luggage

We then drove to Vescovado.  We were hoping to get that classic Italian feel - I think we got it.  Red brick/stone houses, on hill tops, yellow paddocks in places, what more could you want?  Today we decided it'd be good to get out and see the country side so that's exactly what we did.  Jono has managed to drive on the wrong side of the road fairly well thus far.  You can hear doves cooing all around this area - to me however they just sound like retarded morepork. 

Vescovado - we're staying somewhere in there towards the right

The special hills we drove specially to see - to me it just looks like hills that have some erosion

I thought this paddock was awesome! When we drove past we didn't notice the red tulips, only on closer inspection did they become apparent

Pretty sweet view, from the place we had lunch today - Pienza

Check out the sticker on the car

Lovely view!

Pienza - the most beautiful Toscana village

How could you not love yellow flowers, stunning!

Old fashioned segway??

Italian's and their signs aye!

The first 'proper' castle I've been on (Larnach's castle totally doesn't count)

Do you see this?  It is a truck - I kid you not!! 3 wheels. 

A similar truck to above, but a close up view.

The view from our digs. 

The 'castle' we had dinner in last night

So they have these signs every ~10km or something - guess how many deer or cattle we've seen - a big fat zero!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Prayer thanks
- for safe travel. 
- for the experiences we've had and the general enjoyment of the journey thus far (excluding yesterday's incident)

Prayer requests
- for continued safety while we travel. 
- for us to continue to make God and our marriage a priority. 
- for the car for Bethesda