Europa!

Finally Tony makes it to Deutchland. We got picked up at Frankfurt by Klaus and Lea (Tony´s brother and partner) who flew over from Florida to meet up with us. Sure was great to see a familiar face at the airport after being awake for 22+ hours straight. Next day travelled to Bonn and spent a lovely day and a half on the Rhein river with them and Shana (Klaus´s 19 yr old daughter). Tourist highlight was going to the dragon cliff castle. Also saw Beethoven´s birthplace and caught ferry over the Rhein.



From Bonn we farewelled Klaus and his family for now and took off on the Autobahn on our own. Man those krauts drive fast and crazy!!!! We occasionally crept up to the speed limit of 130km/hr and they still roared past us like there was no tomorrow. It was nerve wracking at first but we got used to it and made it fine to Wurzburg. Thankfully it doesn´t get dark till well after 9pm so we still got to do some sightseeing that night and the this morning early. Below is a picture of Wurzburg along the river.



After Wurzburg we´ve started down what is known as the "romantic road", first stop for us along that is Rothenburg which is a medieval town which is still intact and surrounded by the original rock wall built in the late 1300s. By coincidence we are here the weekend of an annual festival and will be attending historical play in the old theatre tonight (2 hours of German language, good thing the beers are large here!). Here is a picture from the market square, the whole town is filled with street after street after street of these kind of buildings.

Fabulously different

Doesn´t take much to guess we are talking about Japan. We landed late in Narita and still managed to take an evening walk to the buddhist temple. All thanks to Jack we got a genuine Japanese hotel within 5 minutes walk of the temple. The hotel was very traditional, rice paper doors, futons on the floor and slippers everywhere.

Next day we really went through the temple properly. AMAZING fire and drum service was the highlight, about 10 buddist monks with shaved heads and very colourful robes came in tinkling their cymbals and banging their drums. One drum was about 9 feet tall with the drum head as tall as Tony.

Got to eat real japanese food in quaint restaurant, wandered around the narrow streets of Narita soaking up the atmosphere and seeing all the young school kids on their way to school before hopping back on the train to the airport.

Getting ready to go

We go on the 21st of May!!!

We'll be travelling to Japan for a day, then to Germany for one and a half weeks, will catch up with Tony's brother Klaus and Klaus's daughter Shana and partner Lea there and maybe his Dad and also two aunts of his who live in Munich.

Then we are off to Ireland for two weeks, Jessica, Hilary's daughter joins us for the second week, then the three of us are off to England for a week to see where Hilary's Dad grew up and to see parts of London with Jess. Tony will be stopping at the Oracle office in London on the 22nd of June to meet many of the emea team for the first time.

On the way back to Australia, we stop in China for 3 days, will be visiting the great wall of China and various palaces and gardens in Bejing.