Jeanette and Pat go to South America

Other than three week-long trips to beach resorts (Fiji in 1990 and 2001, and Club Med Malaysia in 2000), this was our first overseas holiday since we were youngsters back in 1983. It was of course also our first trip away without our children.

23 years is a long time between trips.

We have discovered that we really enjoyed the physically active side of the trips, especially the walks of the Inca trail and in Patagonia. Visiting large cities is certainly interesting, and we think all Aussies should make a trip to Europe at some stage of their lives (preferably when they are young). We DON'T like overly organised tours, and like getting around independently when we can. But having someone carry our full packs when hiking was good!

We were reminded of how lucky we are to be born Aussies, and what a privilege it is to be able to afford to live well, and to be able to travel to see other parts of the world. We are incredibly fortunate.

Gay from Jetaway did a fantastic job of linking together our 23 flights and three different sub-packages. This was obviously more complex than we initially thought. We hope to be able to spend a bit more time researching our next trip, as we realised that we were able to maximise our experiences where we had prepared more. Nevertheless the places where we basically just arrived (like Rome) were still easy to explore!

If anyone wants to know any more about any of our experiences, especially in Peru on the Inca Trail, in Patagonia with World Expeditions, or on the Galapagos with Samba, just send us an email (using the link) or post a comment.

We would love to hear of other's experiences as well, so please contact us.

Meanwhile, its back to the real world, and saving some more money so that we can do this again soon!

Signing off from South America

Jeanette and Pat

We spent our last day of our holiday wandering through St Peter's basilica and then the Vatican museums and the Sistine chapel.
No amount of reading and photographs prepare you for the vastness of St Peter's square and the church - it is just mind-blowing. The artwork in the Vatican is similarly breathtaking, and it was amazing to actually be in the rooms that Michaelangelo and Raphael and all those great religious artists of centuries ago created their masterpieces. Artists were very respected back then!

If you only ever go to one art museum in your life, then the Vatican is probably the one to go to! There are 1400 rooms of artwork, and no way can you take it all in in one day! We lasted about 5 hours.

We then decided we needed to check out the Trevi fountain again and see if the coin-stealers were back at work. FOr the first 15 minutes or so, it seemed they were gone, then the old guy from the day before turned up and cased the joint for 20 minutes or so. We think we have some photos of him, and will post them when we get home. He was an interesting old bloke for sure.

The biggest problem with the Trevi fountain is that you can't sit there peacefully for more than 30 seconds without a hawker trying to sell you a flower, or a plastic toy or what have you. Finally in exasperation, we decided to give them some of their own back, and offered a choice of hotel pens for "only one euro each" to anyone who came near us! They didn't initially either get the point, or see the humour, but after a few minutes, they finally understood, and we even managed a smile from a couple of them.

Walking at last got the better of us, so we headed to an Irish pub and caught the rugby game between Wales and England, which unfortunately was a very one-sided game, with England thrashing the Welsh side, who played atrociously. We were sitting next to a Welsh couple spending a dirty weekend in Rome - he was addicted to the rugby, and was not a happy camper by the end of the game.

A final dinner at a restaurant that must have inspired Fawlty Towers. There was a waiter who was trying to serve us, but spent a lot of time yelling at the cook because nothing arrived, a stuck up waitress, about 17, and almost certainly the bosses' daughter, who refused to wear her uniform, or serve anyone (but was quite decorative, a meal that finally arrived without the requested accompaniments, and was literally a piece of meat on a plate, and a bill that was of course completely incorrect! Still it gave us a laugh, and the red wine was quite quaffable!

Our flights home were.... long! We checked in early to ensure that we got exit row seats, and then just got on with travelling. We are currently at Qantas Club in Sydney waiting for our final flight home.

We still have a day more in Rome. We will probably make that our Vatican day. The story so far......

We ended up at the airport in Barcelona way earlier than we needed to be, but had a bit of a rest in the Iberian lounge - no internet unfortunately. The flight was uneventful, but an hour late.

On arrival at Fumicino Airport, we got our luggage and quickly worked out that a taxi ride was going to cost way too much, so we bought tickets on the train. The train ride was pretty easy, and we got to the city at about 7:30pm. We knew our hotel was close by, but with our bags thought it would be just as easy to get a cab. We ignored the hawkers, and found the taxi rank, and the taxi driver seemed surprisingly happy that we were going to Hotel Universo (we thought as it was a short ride, he would be annoyed). We seemed to go the tourist route, and the cabby was happily pointing out various sites and chatting to us incessantly. I did notice his hand was over the meter but did not think too much of it. After a less than 10 minute (probably should have been about 3, but I thought it was our due for such a short trip) ride we were at our hotel. The meter read 26.7 euros (about $45 Australian)!!! Don,t know which planet he thought we had arrived from, but there was no way we were sucked in to that. After a quick exchange, Pat gave him 10 euros because we just were not into the fight! Not a great start to Rome unfortunately.
Our hotel then assigned us a room that was broken! Absolutely nothing worked, and after a couple of minnutes we made our first call on this holiday to housekeeping. Without too much ado they gave us another room - we relaxed and went out for a classic Italian pizza and red wine dinner.

Today we simply walked around Rome - the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Roman fora, churches, ruins, columns and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. All were very awe-inspiring and we definitely think Europe is a special place for anyone interested in culture and history.
Our favourite stop though was the Trevi fountain. We bought some pizza in a deli (an experience in its own right) and sat and watched the people. Tourists throwing coins, a couple of people stealing the coins! One had a stick with a magnet or something on the end - he just got one coin at a time. Another had a little net which he seemed to trawl the coins with. Then the police came, and they quickly disappeared. A little while later one of them was interviewed by the cops - a long and gesticulated conversation ensued and he got off!
We are about to head off to do some more quality control checking on the beer! Hard to believe we will be home in a couple of days, but we are really looking forward to seeing our kids (who have made us proud over the last few weeks home alone).
BFN!

Had to think about the title for this one. Pat's first suggestions was 4731 Vespas, 4732 Vespas, 4733..... The place is full of them - for very good reason. Much of the city is made up of tiny narrow cobbled streets, and parking is a total nightmare.

We loved Barcelona! We walked all over the city for two full days. One of the places we visited was the port - it is the second largest shipping port in the world, the largest in the Mediterranean, and the largest cruise port. The vies from the Hill of Montjieu was mind-boggling - thousands upon thousands of shipping containers. Pat admired the multimillion dollar private yachts of course.

And then there were all those funny buildings! Gaudi really put his stamp on this place, and we really enjoyed searching out his buildings and admiring their interesting shapes. We were all the more impressed when we went to the Gaudi museum, and learnt how the architecture really made sense from an air, space and light perspective.

We got a bit culchured and went to the National Museum of Art and also the Picasso museum, we enjoyed a paella dinner, and on the second night we went on a bit of a tapas and beer crawl which was also fun. Our hotel was not as centrally located as others, and that just meant that we walked even more. We went to the Olympic site and the football stadium (next visit we will definitely make sure there is a footy game on to go to see).

Basically our two days were extremely packed, and on foot except for one metro journey. It was even a treat to put our feet up for the short flight to.....ROMA!

Our flight to Barcelona was the 18th and 19th flight sectors of our 23 sector expeditions, but befpre we got on that flight we had 36 hours of our 78 hours of scheduled flying time left to fly.
I am still very unused to flying business class, so it was a big thrill to be upgraded, and especially nice as we delayed boarding for an hour then sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half while they fiddled with the electrical system (or something). We got drinks and settled ourselves in to our big comfy chairs while cattle class just got cramps.
The only thing I did wrong was take a half a sleeping pill to try to adjust to the new time zone. It zonked me out totally till several hours after the flight was over - not to be recommended for me in future!
Other than that it was all very straight forward, and we enjoyed a couple of movies and excellent food. Iberia has a very good inflight entertainment system (but pretty ordinary lounges).