Amsterdam

Reims to Amsterdam should have been an easy train trip, but one small mistake over a station name at the beginning of the day escalated into a series of larger problems. It was all sorted eventually, but took the investment of quite a few more Euro, three extra hours travelling, a detour via Brussels and a lot of stress 😩 

Thankfully Amsterdam was worth it. Loved the crazy crooked buildings sinking forwards, backwards and sideways into their footings, and the thousands of bicycles - twice as many as there are people in Amsterdam, apparently. There was the little kid calmly reading a book in the kid carrier as her mum, pedalling hard, flew round the corner and over the canal bridge. Adults squeezed into the carriers too. And dogs and more dogs. Lots of deconstructed IKEA furniture going home (not much else else fits up the staircases). 

We did a great food tour with Hungry Birds; and then met up with Lou and Paul again for a couple more days for the obligatory (and enjoyable) canal tour; a trip out to the windmill museum, where Lou and I had the honour of posing with cheese; and we all outdid ourselves with an Indonesia rijsfastel, or 'rice table'. We jumped on and off trams, picnicked and played in lots of parks (and saw flamingos in one). 

The World Press Photo exhibition was stunning but sobering as well, capturing the heartbreak occurring in so many places round the world.

We finished the week with another sobering visit, to the attic rooms in which Anne Frank and her family hid for two years during WWII before being betrayed - another reminder that Amsterdam, like the rest of Europe, isn't just all about summer blooms and bicycles.

Reims

Reims was a respite after the bustle of Paris, quiet and orderly. And only one steep winding staircase to get to our little apartment! Luxury.

Reims has one of the three main Notre Dame cathedrals in France. Having seen the damage from the 2016 fire in the Paris cathedral and the extensive rebuilding taking place there, it was something special to see the beauty of Reims Notre Dame, risen from rubble after World War I (athough there were still many headless angels from the anti-religious frenzy of the French Revolution two centuries before). Amongst all that beauty, a lead light window by Marc Chagall stood out, positioned so it could be seen the full length of the Cathedral. 

We made the most of 3 days with a rented Fiat 500, and zipped through the vineyards to visit the town of Chalons-en-Champagne, where we went on a small electric boat ride through the town canals with special effects through the long tunnels - dragons, monsters, and some interesting 60s psychedelia 😀

In keeping with the champagne theme, we went to Epernay and promenaded up one side of the Avenue de Champagne and back down the other. The Avenue is supposed to be the most expensive street in France - not just because of the spectacular champagne houses above ground, but also the xxxx million bottles of champagne stored in kilometres of tunnels below the street. We'd visited the house of Mumm in Reims, and had an excellent tour there, so just found ourselves a nice cafe and a glass of bubbles with lunch - which happened to coincide with my lovely book club friends raising a glass over dinner in Brisbane. 

We also took advantage of our little Fiat for a day trip to the medieval town of Bouillon in Belgium, only 90 mins away. We clambered all over the castle, watched a raptor show, heard about the local hero of the Crusades (still not convinced they were a good idea ;<) and ate gelati (had to make up for the broken streak). Lovely day. 

One more thing about Reims - in an old red school house, now the Museum of the Surrender, we visited the room in which World War 2 in Europe officially came to an end. The event was a day before a second signing in Berlin, which Stalin insisted on. The walls of the former classroom were still covered in the original maps - transport routes, weather, troup movements, major battlegrounds; and straight-backed chairs stood around the big wooden table like soldiers themselves. Quite extraordinary to think what happened in this very ordinary classroom. 

The Marc Chagall lead lights in Reims Cathedral

Street scene, Reims

Col's taste test at Mumms

 Bouillon, Belgium

Epernay

Avenue de Champagne

Paris

We left Milan in the pre-sunrise darkness and caught the long distance train, through the mountains to Lyon, and then on through fields and fields to Paris. 

Despite the recent riots across France, the centre of Paris seemed to be its usual self, open for business and bursting with crowds. Maybe a few more gendarmes around? Certainly a lot of sirens, but we didn't see anything out of the ordinary for Paris.

So we made our way to our accommodation. We were expecting quirky. We weren't expecting the 5th level (basically 9 flights of ancient, crooked stairs), or a few fairly basic maintenance and cleaning issues (Col needing to fix an aged free-standing air conditioner, for one). But the location was wonderful, and we just made sure we didn't forget anything when we left for the day ;>

We crammed a lot into the week: cruising the Seine on the tourist Batoboats, Monet's waterlilies at the Orangerie, and a night bike tour and cruise. 

Coincidentally Lou and Paul's plans overlapped with ours for Paris, so we caught up again and spent a couple of lovely days exploring some more. We found the rooftop view of Paris from Galeries Lafayette, the beautiful Samaritaine department store, and chanced upon a haunting performance in Saint-Eustache Church by a choir from a Europe-wide music festival.

Then we topped off the day with dim sum for our 40th wedding anniversary, celebrated with two dear friends and part of our original wedding party. What could be better? 

Col on the Paris Eye

A portion of Monet's waterlilies

Some of the many staircases in our
 accommodation

Our street

Lou topping up on water at a street fountain

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama painting the Louis Vuitton building

Milan, Italy

I'm not sure whether Milan was particularly stylish just because I expected it to be, but I could certainly have gone shopping here. Given our luggage and other constraints 😀, we passed on the security-guarded queues to get into Prada, Armani, Dior and others in the spectacular Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping gallery, and spent €10 on a day pack in Primark for Colin.

Quite apart from that exciting purchase, we had a wonderful and varied time: the climb up to the roof of Milan Cathedral; a visit to the San Bernardino church, with its macabre 13th century ossuary of human bones decorating the walls; and an hour or two exploring the plush red interior of the Milan opera house. We also did a walking tour with the passionate and knowledgeable Marco, who clearly loves his city and has an impressive depth of knowledge about it. (And we tipped more than 30,000 steps in two days doing it all...)

Not your usual shopping mall 

Not as dangerous as it looks! Clever use of a giant mirror, below, by artist Leandro Erlich

The San Bernardino ossuary

Sculpture outside the stock market

Venice, Italy

We had a lovely couple of days in Venice, just wandering down interesting laneways and into doorways that looked inviting. 

So we came across the restored Palazzo Grimani (which had an enviable statue room); and, in a former church, a stunning exhibition of gleaming, flying creatures that made music when they moved. We revisited the Acqua Alta bookshop, which copes with floods by keeping all its books in bathtubs, buckets and a full size gondola. In the courtyard out the back we climbed a steppe of ruined books that missed out on rescue in a previous inundation,  to peek over the wall into the canal.

We just walked and walked and found more parts of Venice we'd never been to before. 

And of course we just hung out the window of our apartment and watched the passing gondolas.

View from our room, here and above

Our room

Two walls of the Grimani's statue room

Exhibition at Ocean Space in the Church of San Lorenzo

Dinner restaurant

Dubrovnik to Venice

We left Lou and Paul to enjoy their Adriatic cruise, and made our way north, travelling a lot more quickly than we came south. 

The scenery was spectacular still, craggy and grey, winding roads and tunnels. 

Our accommodation was an exceptionally bright yellow inside and out, but with a lovely garden and  some free ranging chickens. (The local fauna decorating the restaurant wasn't so lucky.)

The last part of the trip was supposed to be by bus, to avoid the exorbitant rental car drop-off fees when you leave a car in a different country. Turned out we were the only passengers from Rijeka to Venice, so GoOpti sent a car and a driver for us. We effectively had a private transfer all the way to Venice, which was pretty impressive service. Our lovely driver was keen to get back to his usual job though - driving semi trailers non stop from Italy to Spain, with his truck-driving girlfriend sharing the 17 hour trip as co-driver. Much less stressful, he said, than trying to get tourists to their flights on time.