It was the dawn of another beautiful day in Kyoto. We packed our bags for the last time (the usual struggle to close the suitcases with yet more souvenirs enclosed!). After breakfast, we walked to Gion Shijo Station (an easy 15-minute walk from our Ryokan) and caught the train to Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is one of…
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We left our ryokan after an overdue sleep in and walked down to Doutor, a Japanese retail company who are a bit like Starbucks, but had some interesting breakfast food options and good coffee. After fueling up for the morning, we caught two trains to an outer suburb of Kyoto called Arashiyama. We walked a few…
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Due to the debacle in Rome with the stolen passports, we had to re-think our itinerary for Japan. We had planned to sight-see Tokyo the day before and leave for Kyoto early this day, but instead I took Kylie to some of the highlights (well in my view) and agreed we would re-visit Tokyo another…
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Today we had to rock up at the Australian Embassy by 9am to get our emergency passports. We then checked out of the hotel and got on the train to the airport. We were flying Lufthansa again to Japan via Frankfurt and I was hoping that we would have a really good flight like we…
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This morning when we got up we went to breakfast and asked the hotel to call the Vatican and the Catacombs to find out if anyone had handed in our passports. This was a negative so our next stop was the Australian Embassy. We caught a cab there and everyone there was very nice and…
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Today, being Sunday, naturally we headed off to the Vatican (Pope said we should drop in). We caught the train to a station near the Vatican and walked there, only 5-mins walk. Once we got through security we entered the Basilica. I didn’t realise that the Vatican was its own city-state! We were taken back by…
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We got up reasonably early this morning and had a great breakfast! As it was supposed to be a beautiful sunny day we decided to go to as many outdoor attractions as possible. Our hotel is near the main train station, Roma Termini, so we are actually quite central and can walk to most things….
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We spent the day flying from Santorini to Athens, sat in the airport for a couple of hours, then flew to Rome, caught the express train to Rome Termini and checked into our hotel.
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After a leisurely breakfast we headed off in the car to visit the town of Megalochori, which is 800 years old. We wondered through the streets, although there was nothing open. These towns are like another world with their little ‘Hobbit’ houses. There are some which have been abandoned. We then set off to find…
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Finally we didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to be anywhere! We could sleep in! We had a leisurely breakfast which was wonderful, grabbed the car and headed to the town of Oia. This is the town where the beautiful blue domed churches are located. As it’s winter pretty much nothing…
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