Gay Paree, Magnificent Munchen and Aussies in Austria

Gruss Gott . (that's Bavarian/Austrian for G'day). I'm sitting in a hotel room with at the base of some stunning mountains in the Austrian Alps, a mixture of craggy rock faces, conifer forests and carefully positioned misty clouds to create the most scenic effect imaginable, straight out from the balcony of our hotel. More about that further down

From southern France we drove to Barcelona to drop off the van, but only stayed one night, as we had prebooked a cheap flight to paris. As you can see from the pics the weather was beautiful and we spent a couple of great days wandering around, soaking up the ambience, visiting art galleries and museums, etc and tasting some of the local culinary delights.



Me and Sama feeding the birds (again) at Notre Dame Cathedral
. The official bird feeding guy took the photo. He has been coming every day for the last 13 years.
 He has spoilt them a bit, so they prefer doughnuts to bread.



You've seen this building before, but here it is again.

Surprisingly you were allowed to photograph the Mona Lisa. We also visited the musee d'orsay, which has a great collection of Van Gogh and other impressionists, and all sorts of other interesting things. You couldn't take photos at that one, but it was great just to enjoy the art. But Paris is a work of art in itself and you hardly need to visit the galleries.

Another lady with an enigmatc smile emerging from the metro station. We had to get around on the underground rail system as our bikes were boxed up. We tried the Paris bike hire system, but it wouldn't take our Australian credit cards. Can anyone tell me why trains everywhere drive on the left even when all of the cars go on the right. (except in one strange paris metro station, which totally confused me).

Okay, Sama and I are just going downstairs for a Kaffee mit milch, so I'll finish this when I get back.

(...slurp, slurp, slurp......yak, yak, yak, ...)

Okay, back again.  The view is still just as nice, or possibly even nicer for having spent over 4 hours walking up and down it today.  From Paris we took a fast train to Munchen (Munich). They have some funny rules on trains. For example, on this one you couldn't take bikes, but you could take boxes, so we put our bikes in boxes and there was no problem (except for lugging them between platforms at the Stuttgart changeover).

In Munich we stayed with Tom (my big brother). It was great to see him and Sophie,  but his other 2 girls are in Australia. After a day or 2 in Munich Tom took us to the mountains. We climbed the one below.

Here's me and Tom at the top. Sama is behind the camera.  If you think I look like I'm shivering, you're right, as a cold wind was a blowing. It took us 4 hours to get to the top and another 6 hours going down (we went a different way).  By the time we got back the only food left at the inn was bread and cheese, but it tasted great (as did the Bavarian brew).

Here are some more mountains, they grow wild here in Austria.
Pity they are too big to fit in a backpack.

I actually went swimming in this stream, it's freezing!!!

After going back to Munich, Sama and I decided we needed a bigger dose of the mountains so we took a train to Mittenwald in Germany, then cycled 4 hours to Eng (in Austria). You can see the guest house we're staying in at the base of this mountain.

In a few days time we'll be flying down to Istanbul for a few days and then on to Nepal.

We will be in quite a remote part of the country so we may or may not be able to update the blog.

That's all for now.

Sean :)