timtrina's VirtualTourist Home Page

NEW!!! WE HAVE STARTED CREATING 'BEST OF' ALBUMS, WITH PHOTOS OF HIGHLIGHTS FROM EACH COUNTRY. PLEASE CLICK ON THE ALBUMS LINK TO VIEW & LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK :) THANKS! TRINA.

We have been married for 7 years (although have lived together for 12 years). We have a 6 1/2 year old daughter called Imogen, and in Dec 2002, Jan 2003 & Feb 2003, took off for the journey of a lifetime. We had 3 months off work, and drove through France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic and Italy.
There's not a day that goes by that we don't think about some little cafe, shop or hotel we visited. It certainly is different travelling with a child, but we're sure that she will remember our time together forever!

There are so many little events that happened over those 3 months that we will never forget -

Like the afternoon we flew into Paris, picked up our car, and drove in peak hour traffic to try to find our hotel in Montmartre. What should've been a 20 minute drive, turned into 3 hours, and Tim ended up scaling a wall, when we'd got ourselves locked into a private car park outside a different Hotel Utrillo (on the other side of town), to the Hotel Utrillo in Montmartre - this was not a good start!

Or like the time we were driving Tim's mother from Florence, up to the Cinque Terre to Porto Venere, and a Polizia stood out in the middle of the road to make us stop. He'd seen the French licence plates, and started talking in French to us, asking us for licences, etc. When we said we were Australian, he said " Oh....my cousin.....he...from...Adelaide - do you know him?" Oh my god - that was the most hilarious thing that happened - we're from Brisbane, which is about 30 hours by car to Adelaide. He He!

Or like when we parked the car at Venice, caught the boat to San Marco to find our hotel. We were approached by someone offering to take us to our hotel for 50 Euros (which was almost $ 100 AUD). We declined (not trusting anyone). 3 1/2 hours later, we passed him (we were still dragging our luggage around and by this stage absolutely livid!), and he looked at us and said "No Signore - it's over there!". I don't think we can even laugh about that night yet......

All-in-all though, it certainly was an experience of a lifetime, and I have to say, we got so much information before leaving from other VT'ers. Just hope now that we can help by doing the same.....

We are now planning another trip in a couple of years, as we miss Paris so much, and this time would like to drive down to Spain, Portugal and also visit Morocco.

As we have visited so many different towns/cities, please be patient, as building the travellogues seems like it will take forever!

Please leave us a message / rating about our pages to let us know what you think. We will keep adding more and more information over the coming weeks.

ENJOY :)

This is the little Peugeot 206 Diesel we leased through Peugeot Sodexa (Driveaway Holidays in Australia). It cost us something ridiculously cheap like $ 20 AUD per day, and it gave us total freedom on where we wanted to go each day. If we were driving from one city / country to the next, and something looked interesting enough, we could just pull the car over and lock it up. Definately a flexible way of sightseeing. We were very sad to see our little "Madeleine" go on the day of departure.

Driving in France was just breathtakingly beautiful. The french are not as crazy on the roads as the Italians, but still like to drive fast! The sky was clear (it was the end of February by the time we finally made it back into France), and the photos we took from the car while driving turned out postcard perfect! What a beautiful, clean and picturesque country France is!

We based ourselves in the historical town of San Gimignano, which was an excellent spot to "explore" from. We were only 1 hour away from Pisa, and so close to so many other Tuscan towns such as Ravello, Volterra, San Miniato, Follonica, Sienna, Lucca, Vall D'Elsa and Massa Marritima. If travelling in Winter though, be thoroughly prepared for the high winds that will just blow right through you - especially in towns like Volterra which are situated high upon a cliff!! Brrrrr!

We had only been in San Gimignano for 2 days, and awoke on the third day to be greated with this huge blanket of snow everywhere.

In total, we spent 1 week in Tuscany, which provided enough time to see some of the historical towns which we had on our "wish list".

During our stay in Salzburg, we decided to drive up to Fussen in Germany to visit the world-famous Neuchwanstein. We didn't have to wait that long in the queue for our tour group to start (being winter time), and the whole place was thick with fog. It really was an eerie feeling standing on top of the hill next to this unbelievable almost 'fairy castle' type building. The history of King Ludwig was so intruiging also, which made the tour that much more enjoyable. Next time, we'll visit Germany for more than a couple of days!

We had the chance to spend 10 nights in Campania, where we stayed in a little village on a cliff overlooking the sea, called "Vietri Sul Mare". Unfortunately, most places were either closed for all of the winter, or only open for a couple of hours per day, while we were there. But Vietri is definately a great place to base yourself - probably 1 hour away from Amalfi (would be heaps quicker if not for the horrible winding coastal road - breathtakingly beautiful, but even the people with the hardest stomachs end up car sick! It's also close to Sorrento, Salerno (based in the gulf of Salerno), Capri, etc.

This place was absolutely awesome. We left our little quaint hotel in Pontorson at about 8:30am to arrive at the Mont only 15 minutes later. The sky was clear and blue, and the image of driving up to this place will forever remain within us - what amazing architecture and natural beauty! Definately a Must-See if visiting France!

Switzerland was cold, but very picturesque. We drove to Engelberg, to take the revolving cable lift up to the top of Mount Titlis. Being afraid of heights, this was not a good journey, but being 3000 odd metres above sea level at the top, was an incredible feeling!