What the????

There's always a few photos taken on tour which tickle you fancy, and over the next few Blogs I'll be sending them. Simon: Is it a Bird?

Gwen: Is it a plane?

Jax: No it's Supertower.

Hard to pick the best angle to photograph the Eiffel Tower.

Now, you people going to the Orsay Art Gallery, you step out of line and I''ll Shoot you!

See you kids, maybe one day you too can be ready to gun down the people in artgallery queues.

What a clever idea!

A lovely wooden coffin with a hinged bottom so that after the service they can remove the body and reuse the coffin. A lovely recycling idea from 3 centuries ago as seen in Melk.

More fun Ideas tomorrow

Fabulous Food

A holiday post is not complete without a review of the food which astounded us along the way. We were searching for a lunch place in a small village outside Colmar when Duncan spotted these absolutely huge loaves of bread - at least a metre long! A cold wind was blowing in this hillside town, so Duncan put his hoodie on - not a fashion trend very common in France.

Suprisingly Duncan's photos contain no photos of food - just boring old churches. Gaz took this one of us when we had champagne in the park to mark the end of the marathon trip.

Here's Kerre and Gaz handing out the good champagne and croissants in the park under the Eiffel Tower - so we can cross that off our Bucket list.

First night on the boat and the desert was a symphony of flavours!

Cheese at the Colmar Market. Munster was the big regional favourite, but a huge range available.

Easter Cakes and Chocolate confectionary were fantastic - too good to eat!

These croissants and custard filled pastries were HUGE. Sometimes I managed to knock one back at breakfast.

This sort of rum baba was as close as we got to any sort of Hot cross bun. This was served on the boat on Easter Sunday.

We had dinner at L'Apostrophe in Reims and I ordered the profiteroles! Nah even I couldn't do this.

Our first night in Budapest we went to a small cafe with a very helpful waiter. I had the Hungarian Goulash - you may be able to discern the unusual little bucket that this soup came in. Spent about 20minutes picking my teeth after this "soup"

Next day Duncan decided to give the goulash a go at another restaurant.

I really enjoyed this meal - a crepe filled with a chicken mixture and smothed in a sweet, mild paprika sauce

Barbara and Frank at the Weltenburg Abbey where the Benedictine monks specialise in making a rich dark beer. This was accompanied by a huge bread salted pretzel. We wished we walked or cycled up the pretty Danube Gorge to burn off the calories!

In Vienna we went to Schonbrunn Imperial Palace and had an apple strudel making lesson. The crust is made very thin like the Italian pizza bases (see below) and the apple was not prebaked. It was an enjoyable session with a good big chunk to try.

Yes the white sheet he is holding up is the crust - and you can see a written page through it!

It's certainly amazing what we ate over there. Very few green veges, just hydrophonically
grown salads. Meat - often duck or rabbit - and bread was the order of the day. Luckily we were so busy that we had only put on one kilo a piece when we got home.

European Easter

One of our great pleasures on this trip was to be in Europe over Easter time. Bear with me as these photos are a little out of order. The first photos are from Mondsee which is a small village in Austria which is where we were on Easter Sunday. All the ladies were in their dirndl skirts and the men in their leiderhosen and many of the women were carrying baskets. I wondered out loud what was in the basket and was fortunate enough to be heard by one of the locals who showed me in their basket - cheese, eggs, bread and cake.

All the goodies were being taken to church to be blessed and then taken home and eaten! I thought they might share them around, but no.

The dirndl and leiderhosen are apparently quite expensive, but come with large side seams so that as you age and widen you can still keep wearing them. They are often used at important occasions - weddings, family gatherings etc.

They are all quite individual in colour, but the design is traditional. We arrived in Mondsee before the church service for the day so that we could see inside the beautifully decorated church where they filmed the marriage of Maria and Col. von Trapp for The Sound of Music

Just before Easter we went to a series of villages just behind Colmar in France. I have just included a few of the fantastic Easter decorations of the quaint houses there.

Easter Eggs, chickens and Bunnies were the order of the day.

Some of these were shops, but most were just homes.

They were all enchanting and I took so many photos!

Even the boat we were travelling on got into the act. We ate the chocolate ones but I think the brightly coloured boiled eggs were part of an egg salad the next day!

These adorable bunnies were on sale in a market in Salzburg. They apparently were made out of some sort of flower cone, maybe a dried banksia.

Before we left France (preEaster) we were in Strasbourg and as we went into town on the very user friendly bus/tram system people were getting on with small bunches of hedge. I thought maybe it was like laurel leaves on Anzac day. Then it dawned on me. It was Palm Sunday, and this is what they were taking to church as Palms!!

So Easter in Europe. Not a single hot cross bun was offered to me, seen for sale nor passed my lips. I'll just have to wait until next February when they start selling them in NZ.

Musical Moments

We enjoyed many musical moments on our trip. This one is in Vienna, with a light program of Mozart and Strauss. Some were orchestral, and there were two fine opera singers. Duncan leaned over to me and commented "She's got a lovely pair of lungs". Even though we couldn't understand the words they drew us in to the songs just beautifully!

Some of the Strauss waltzes were performed in a demi-ballet fashion by these ballet dancers. I guess it made up for the room. Being a chamber music concert it was in a chamber but some of the Americans in our party were disappointed it wasn't in an opera house. Still, it had beautiful chandeliers.

We went to a huge wine cellar for a Hungarian Night in Budapest. A talented quartet, including a man on a clavier (like taking the felt hammers out of a piano) played a wide range of music including some soleful Hungarian tunes. Well they really have had a dreadful history. The soup and salad was nice but the main was very large - I couldn't finish my chocolate pancake for dessert.

As with a lot of these tourist performances there is the "get audience participation" sector. You'd really think that since Duncan volunteered me he would have had the camera ready. I'm moving so fast (and skilfully) that I'm just a blur!!

Another day, another country. Here we are in an Austrian Coach house, and a small orchestra and two dances with more Strauss. The audience participation was not me, but one of our cruise members who we called Elvis. Elvis is not dead. He is taking Avalon cruises and is always mucking the timetable about!

But the best musical adventures were in Prague. One night we went to a short Chamber Music Concert which featured some popular works - Mozart's Serenade in G major and Divertimento in D major, and then Dvorak Songs my Mother taught me, Humoreska, Largo from the new world and some Slavonic dances. They gave an encore of a Strauss waltz in pizzicato - is that the Chitchat? It was held in a Art Nouveau Chamber which was just lovely.

The real triumph was a night at the opera. Prague's Opera House was the only one not bombed in the war. They perform Operas or ballets there 5 nights a week. We saw Turandot. Our seats were in the front row middle. We leant over the balustrade to watch the orchestra of at least 70 come in - 5 double basses, 8 cellists, a harpist..... and right in front of us the viola players. The lead viola player had very bad BO, fortunately we couldn't smell it when we weren't leaning over the edge. Then the conductor arrived - he was obviously used to playing with the viola player, and enveloped us in a beautiful cologne. All this before the opera began!! The cast was at least 100, and it ran like clockwork - 40min act and twenty mins intermission. No clapping until the end of the act. Splendid sets and costumes. Fine singing - the chorus was a little ragged in the first song - maybe tired from doing the Barber of Seville the night before. Sur Titles in English and Czech. I dont know how I will cope with seeing non-professional opera again, knowing how good it could be.

Yes, Music is certainly alive and well in Europe. And I was grateful that I had the understanding of it to get the most out of this experience.

High Tea

Simon and Jackie picked us up from the airport and we took a shuttle to the car rental place. Then we set off with Jackie doing a skillful job of navigating - obviously I could learn a thing or two here! We maneorved around M4 and the 404 ...something.... and eventually arrived at a very grand manor where it was announced that we were to have high tea.

There was some consternation (on Simon's part) as to whether Duncans Track pants would stand up to scrutiny, but at least he had a good shirt on!

The scones were truly incredible, with light fluffy insides but a firm very thin crunch of a crust. We ate them all - and we ate all the sandwiches as well. We all had different tea - Simon's had a bunch of dried roses in his. The cakes were not so memorable, but we chopped the odd corner off them just to try. "Well" I said, "This better be my shout" when Simon replied, "Actually, Mum, this is your Mother's Day treat" and produced a card!

Danesfield House specialises in high teas, dinners, weddings etc and also does accommodation and has a health spa there as well. Very grand.

We went for a walk around the garden to compensate for all the food we'd eaten. It backs onto the Thames River and we could look across to the walkway that Simon and Jackie has walked in parts. Then we went off to Henley and after catching up with the wedding we had a small dinner of yummy mediterranean food, tapas style.

Running the Paris

I see that Simon has given an excellent report on the marathon, so that all that remains is for me to tell you how much we enjoyed our Get running trip with Kerre Woodham and Gaz Brown, Kerre is a real entertainment, but very interested in all our experiences, and you could have a quiet word with her - and she really is quite sensible! Gaz was still recovering from a horrorific car accident earlier in the year, but did stirling service taking photos of us all.

This is Duncan doing his Fred Dagg impersonation. Just why is a little obscure!

In this picture you can see Duncan, The Eiffel tower and the lovely spring days we were treated to for the best part of our trip. Our hotel was ideally situated to make the most of this event.