The 2015/16 European adventure - our itinerary (part 3!)

Here it is, the final installment covering the itinerary for the last 2 weeks of our December/January trip.  Parts 1 and 2 cover the first 5 weeks, if anyone missed them.

As I mentioned in my last post, all of the first half of January is spent in Germany and Austria. Our last stop in Austria is Innsbruck. After our time there in the snow, we are heading on a very scenic train trip through to Switzerland (where there will be, you guessed it, more snow!).  The just under 4 hours trip from Innsbruck from Zurich travels through the Arlberg Pass and is supposed to be another one of the best rail trips in Europe.  The train also briefly passes through the tiny country of Liechtenstein, although we are not planning on stopping there.

Zurich (Switzerland)
On our 2012 trip we had just over a day (and 1 night) in Zurich.  Our trip was in late October and we happened to experience the first snow of the season. The snow was exciting, but the 5 hours of torrential rain and sleet that preceded it was not.  As a result our wanderings around the Old Town and trip to the zoo were cut a little short, due to be soaking wet and frozen!  Despite the appalling weather we really enjoyed Zurich and have wanted to go back ever since.

On this trip we have 2 days and 2 nights in Zurich, and are hoping for less rain.  The old town (alstadt) and niederdorf area are really fun to walk around, lots of cobblestone streets, cute buildings, quirky shops and great cafes.

Last trip some of the best cake and coffee we had was hiding in quaint Zurich cafes trying to warm up and dry out!

The very famous Bahnhofstrasse, which runs from the railway station to Lake Zurich is lovely to walk down.  The high-end designer shops don't interest us much, but their is an awesome old school toy store called Franz Carl Weber, which we will have to pay a visit again. It was full of amazing wooden toys, railways and miniature cable cars.  A significant portion of our luggage last time was purchased from that store.

Last trip we didn't get to visits Zurich's Uetilberg mountain, but we are hoping to get up there this time, both for the views and the scenic walks in the snow.  Weather cooperating we are also going to try and take a cruise along the Limmat River and see some of Lake Zurich by boat.

If we run out of things to do and it's not too cold and snowy there is also the outdoor ice skating rink and the zoo.  We loved Zurich zoo last time and only saw a fraction of it.  It was the only zoo visit we've had with it snowing, and the animals in their heated enclosures seemed much less fussed than we were!

Lauterbrunnen (Bernese Alps, Switzerland)
From Zurich we are heading back up into yet more alpine areas for some snow fun.  In 2012 we stayed in Interlaken for a couple of days so we could do the trip up to Jungfrau Joch, the highest railway station in Europe.  On our trip up to Jungfrau we went through lots of the cute Alpine villages like Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen and wished we had of been staying there, rather than Interlaken (which is basically the equivalent to Jindabyne).

So for this trip we have booked three nights in a chalet apartment in Lauterbrunnen.  The trip up to Jungfrau takes the better part of a day and we only had a short time to explore a couple of the villages last time, and no time to do any of the scenic walks in the Jungfrau region.  This time our Alps activities will be entirely weather dependent. It's highly likely to be minus 16 and snowing, but if we get some clear days we have plenty to keep us busy.  There is the trip up to Jungfrau (which we aren't likely to do again, but the other members of our travelling group are keen to try) or a trip up to Schilthorn, which also has spectacular views.

Aside from exploring the villages of Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, Murren and Wengen (some of which are car free and can only be accessed by cable car) there countless walks between all the villages and mountain peaks. Many are prepared as Winter hiking trails and there are quite a few family friendly (read short and easy) ones that we are hoping to try if the weather allows.  Last trip we spied so many people walking the beautiful valleys and mountain faces as we were ascending on the train and figured that one day we'd have to come back and try some of the walks!

If we haven't had enough tobogganing by the time we get to Switzerland then there are plenty of huge runs not far from where we are staying. Including a 15km run between multiple villages. Unfortunately it involves a 2.5 hour hike carrying sleds so we probably won't be doing that with the kids, but some of the shorter ones we can get to with cable cars are on the cards.

If the weather goes pear shaped, we will be drinking a lot of Swiss hot chocolate and watching the snow fall....... probably not the worst thing in the world either!

Bern (Switzerland)
From the Bernese Alps we are heading into France, our final country on our trip.  The train trip from the Alps through to Lyon is quite long and all the trains go through either Bern and/or Geneva.  In 2012 we spent a day in Geneva, but didn't get to Bern.  Wanting to break up the trip and having Bern on my 'want to go there' list meant it was an easy decision to spend a day and night there.

The old town in Bern is yet another UNESCO world heritage listed site, and given it's going to be covered in snow it should make for pretty viewing and keep my camera busy. There are plenty of buildings to explore and some nice walks along the River Aare and an open air ice skating rink.

We are also going to visit the Barenpark (Bear Park) right in the middle of the old town. The Bear is the mascot of Bern so they have 4 bears in the free bear park you can go and visit.  The kids thought this sounded like fun, and should keep us occupied for upwards of 20 minutes!

We are also going to try and squeeze in a visit to Gurten which is Bern's local mountain. In Winter it has tobogganing, as well as the year round activities like the miniature railway, observation tower and children's play area.

Lyon (France)
From Bern we are heading to France for our final week of the trip.  In 2012 we spent most of our time in and around Paris, but made a few trips out of the Paris region - to the Loire Valley and West to see Mont St Michel. We didn't get as far South as Lyon, though so it was on the agenda for this trip.

We have planned 3 nights in Lyon and have plenty to keep us busy.  We are planning on exploring Vieux Lyon (the old quarter) with it's cobblestone streets, shops and cafes.  Lyon is also famous for it's Traboules - secret covered passageways that lead to hidden courtyards shops and apartments, so we are going to try and locate a few.

We will also take the funicular to Fourviere Hill to see Basilica Notre Dame and walk down through the Roman theatre ruins.

We are most definitely looking forward to experiencing some of the gastronomic delights of Lyon.  After eating our way through Paris a few years ago, we have missed many of our French treats.  Lyon is known as the gastronomic capital of France so we are sure to find plenty of tasty treats.  We will also be stopping past Les Halles des Lyon Paul Bucose, which is a famous food market in the heart of Lyon.  We visited several food markets during our Paris trip, but our favourite was the huge market in the town of Versaille. The offerings of cheeses, fruits, vegies, patisserie and freshly churned butter were to die for.  Just looking at the pictures of the Lyon markets was making our mouths water!

Avignon (France)
Thanks to the high-speed TVG, the city of Avignon, in the South of France, is only an hour away from Lyon.  Keen to see a bit more of France and see another walled city, we are using one of our days in Lyon to take a day-trip to Avignon.

We are hoping to start the day with a walking gourmet tour of the Avignon old town.  which includes a visit to Avingon Les Halles and plenty of other fine food purveyors. It will also provide us with an opportunity to stuff our faces with more French food. Our kids being fans of both smelly cheeses and anything containing pastry chocolate, will have a ball!

With (hopefully) full bellies, we will explore the city ramparts and head to the Palais des Papes (Pope's Palace) and the nearby Recher des Doms, a huge park with great views of the city and St Benezet Bridge (Pont D'Avignon).

There is also a free ferry service to Barthelasse Island, for views across the city, and of the Pope's Palace.  If we get hungry there are meant to be no shortage of places to find more tasty treats!

Paris (France)
From Lyon we will head North to Paris for our final leg of the trip.  Even though we spent the better part of 2 months in Paris in 2012, we didn't even come close to seeing all that Paris has to offer.  After 6.5 weeks of travel and with only 3 night and 4 days in Paris this time, we are leaving our itinerary fairly open.

Every member of our group (except Soren) has been to Paris before, so there isn't any real need to tick off all the major sight-seeing items.  I think we'll head to the Eiffel Tower, just so Soren gets his obligatory photo.  The rest of the time though will be spent wandering and eating, our favourite things to do in Paris!

We will try and pay Jardin du Luxembourg a visit, as Astrid always loved it on our last trip.  A wander by the Seine and a stop in to Berthillon for some salted caramel icecream is on the cards, as are street crepes near Notre Dame, and macarons and hot chocolate at Laduree after a walk along the Champs-Elysees.  I think the views from the Arc de Triomphe are better than those from the Eiffel Tower so if we want one more sight-seeing experience we might take the kids up.

We are also hoping to get in some shopping. Astrid's Paris clothes are now all definitely too small and Soren needs his share.  After Paris it's only 1 more hauling of bags through to Charles de Gaulle airport, so we can probably add a little extra weight!

Speaking of extra weight.  Providing my pants still fit after eating my way through Europe, we will be using our last few days to eat ALL the food.  I've missed crunchy hot baguettes with cultured French butter, and perfect Parisian patisserie.  I'm not sure how much food we can eat in 4 days, but we know all the best places to visit  so can probably round them off pretty quickly. We didn't come close to trying the array of delicious cakes on offer in our many weeks in Paris last time - and that was with having to eat two or three a day some days (oh the horror!).  So, some difficult decisions are going to have to be made about which patisserie to consume but we've got a few months to plan (and salivate).

Heading home......
On the evening on Australia Day we will be packing our bags and heading to the airport for the long trip home (via Dubai and Melbourne).  We will be back in Australia for the last few days of January and hopefully a good month of stinking hot weather to defrost and experience sunlight.

That rounds out our plans for the big trip. We are still madly booking accommodation, trains and tours but I'll do a few update posts in the next couple of months before we head off.

I'm looking forward to blogging about our adventures and sharing at least some of the 10 thousand photos I'm likely to take!

The 2015/16 European adventure - our itinerary (part 2!)

In Part 1 of our trip planning update, I outlined our plans for the first three weeks of our Christmas/New Year adventure.  There were a lot of palaces, a lot of castles, lots of cities to explore, and most likely a lot of cold!! The average maximum temperature is unlikely to exceed 2 degrees, and the minimums are likely to be well, well, below zero.  The chance of snow somewhere in the first few weeks is high. The chance of snow in our second part of the trip...... guaranteed!  I know a couple of kids who are very excited about that.  The adults are excited in theory but well aware that snow is actually cold and wet.........

I left our adventures in Prague.  After our 4 nights in a (hopefully snowy) and beautiful Prague, to round out 2015, we are heading on New Years Eve to Austria. The next two weeks of our trip will take us through Germany and Austria and will no doubt involve snow, sausages and schnitzel!

Vienna (Austria)
We are planning and early departure from Prague so we can be in Vienna by late morning.  Vienna holds New Year's celebrations in the city square from 2pm. With our kids not being fond of staying up late (or more accurately, us not being fans of them being up late), we weren't planning on being up until midnight, so an afternoon of fair rides, ice skating and fireworks are right up our alley.

Once it's officially 2016 we will have plenty to keep us busy in Vienna.  Plenty of wandering the old town where there are yet more pretty museum, churches, opera houses and palaces and free ice skating rinks to keep us amused.  We are hoping to get to Schoennbrunn Palace and gardens, and if not 'palaced out' Hofburg and Belvedere Palace and Gardens.  Schoennbrunn is definitely a must do, and there is even a zoo in the grounds of Palace, so that might placate the kids!

Vienna also has an Imperial Butterfly House (probably the only place above zero degrees) and plenty of good parks to check out if they aren't entirely covered in snow.  We are also planning on spending plenty of time warming up with coffee in the many coffee houses. I'm sure there will be cake too!

Bratislava (Slovakia)
We have 4 days in Vienna, but we will be using one of these for a day trip to Bratislava in Slovakia.  I love the fact that in Europe you can just pop over to another country for a day!  When it's not snowy and Wintery you can take the hydrofoil from Vienna to Bratislava. Unfortunately, that isn't an option over Winter so we will have to make do with the regular train. It's an hour each way on the train, so an easy day trip.

Bratislava has yet another pretty old town to walk around, with more palaces, churches and fountains. There is also a blue church I might have to go find and take a photo of.  Aside from walking around the old town and wandering down by the Danube, we will be checking out the Slovakian food. Bratislava has the UFO building that not only looks cool but has an observation deck that offers great views of the city, I'm sure a photo or two might happen there!

Salzburg (Austria)
If we aren't already sick of cold and snow, there should be plenty in our next destination!  Salzburg in Winter has been on my list for awhile, so I'm hoping it doesn't disappoint.  Lovely old buildings, surrounded by huge mountains and lots of snow should keep us all happy.

We have 4 days in Salzburg but a lot on the schedule.  Salzburg is the start of our cable car and funicular festival. There will be quite a few options for ascending to great heights over the next few weeks of travel. Just around Salzburg you can catch the lift up to Monchsberg (where there is a fortress) and have views back over the city.  You can also catch a funicular up to the fortress or a cable car up to Untersberg, which should also be good for views over Salzburg.

Around the old town there are the usual collection of must-see churches, cathedrals, fountains and palaces (Mirabell palace and gardens is meant to be worth a look).  For something totally different to the activities of the previous few weeks we are also planning to check out the Red Bull Hangar-7, which has a very impressive collection of cars, helicopters and other fast things.  It will make a nice change from palaces :)

We are also hoping to keep the kids happy with a horse drawn carriage ride around Salzburg.  When we were in Bruges, Belgium Astrid went crazy with the excitement of horse-drawn carriages clip-clopping through the streets.  We didn't quite get around to getting her a ride, but Salzburg in the snow might just make up for that!

The area around Salzburg also has some amazing things to do.  Plenty of winter sports like skiing, snowboarding and tobogganing and lots of beautiful scenery and towns to explore. There are also several salt mines in the area, so a visit is on the cards.

Weather and kids enthusiasm dependent, we are hoping to do an excursion to the near-by town of St Gilgen, which is a very pretty alpine town and has the impressive Wolferhorn mountain cable car. We are also planning a trip over the border to Berchtesgaden in Germany, another pretty town, and the home to the Eagle's Nest (which is sadly closed over Winter due to snow making it inaccessible).  Instead of the Eagle's Nest we will check out the town of Berchtesgaden and take a boat trip on the Konigssee, a clear and deep lake surrounded by mountains.  The lake is only accessible by boat in Winter but there are some short and scenic walks you can do around the lake between boat drop-off and pick-up points.

Munich (Germany)
After our 4 nights in Salzburg we will head back into Germany to nearby Munich. We will definitely not be in Munich in time for it's most famous attraction, Oktoberfest, but we will be sure to check out at least one or two of the well regarded biergartens.

We have 2 days in Munich and will mostly use our time to wander the old town and Marienplatz and check out the notable palaces and gardens of ; Shloss Nymphenburg, the Residenz, Hofgarten Park and the Englischer Garten.

There are also supposed to be some very good open-air markets should we be needing more cheeses and sausages!

Our original itinerary had us heading from Munich to other towns in Bavaria, like Nuremberg, Rothenburg and Bamberg.  As much as I love walking around beautiful old towns and finding interesting places to eat and taking countless photos, we decided that 4 weeks into our trip we might be totally over walking around old buildings, palaces and castles in the snow.  So we shelved plans to visit the Nuremberg area on this trip and decided to use the time later in the trip for more time in the Austrian and Swiss Alps.

Fussen and Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany)
So you know how I just said we might be a bit over castles?  Well, there was one castle we couldn't miss.  Neuwachstein Castle, in the village of Hohenschwangau.  Neuwachstein is the castle the Disneyland castle in modelled on.  If we are going to look at castles (in the snow) then this one is it.

We are heading South back towards Austria and the town of Fussen. Fussen is the end point for the train, but also a pretty town with lots of painted buildings for us to explore. It's then a short bus to the village of Hohenschwangau where Neuwachstein Castle is located.  Hohenschwangau also has another smaller castle that is worth checking out if we have the time.

The big deal though is Neuwachstein. It's quite a walk up to castle from the village and in Summer they run buses. In Winter though you either walk or take a horse-drawn carriage.  We are planning a castle tour and a walk around the nearby Lake Alpsee and a walk over Marienbruecke for more great views of the castle.

Astrid (who is a little obsessed with the movie Frozen) has been helping with our trip planning and when I showed her pictures of Neuwachstein, and asked if she would like to go to visit there, she replied with 'it doesn't have quite enough ice on the roof to be just like the castles in Frozen, but it will do'! Given the predicted temperature for the region at that time of year is minus 7 degrees we suspect there will be more ice and snow than needed......

After we've had our castle fix and explored the village and Fussen, we are heading through the Alps towards the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where we will stay the night.  It's a former host of the Winter Olympics and a ski base, a pretty town, and also a good stopping off point before a very scenic alpine train trip the following day.

The next morning before departing Garmisch-Partenkirchen we are hoping to take a walk through Partnach Gorge, which contains many waterfalls that freeze over Winter leaving amazing ice sculptures.  When shown pictures of Partnach Gorge in Winter, Miss Astrid declared that it was suitably 'enough like Frozen and she definitely needs to go there'.

The train trip from Garmisch-Partenkirchen through to Innsbruck in Austria is one of the most scenic in Europe as it winds through the Alps on the German/Austrian border.  Weather and energy level dependant we are hoping to stop off in Mittenwald (Germany) and/or Seefeld (Austria) which are both cute little alpine villages and offer a range of Winter activities and more sightseeing via funicular.

Innsbruck (Austria)
After our hopefully scenic trip up to Innsbruck, we have 3 nights and almost 3 days to explore the area and keep ourselves busy with lots of snow based activities. Innsbruck has hosted the Winter Olympics twice and is a great base for all Winter sports. It's also a very nice town, surrounded by huge mountains.

The old town of Innsbruck has a suitable array of pretty buildings set beside a river to keep my camera busy.  It's famous for the Goldenes Daschl (gold roofed building) but also has an amazing Swarovski crystal shop that is worth checking out for the impressive crystal sculptures.

Being surrounded by mountains there is no shortage of high things for us to explore. Mostly by funicular and cable car.  We are going to take the Nordkettenbahnen from Innsbruck at 560m up through Hungerburg - where there an alpine zoo which the kids will no doubt love, through Seegrube to Hafelaker at 2256m.  That is a lot of altitude! It should make for a scenic ride and there are some family friendly walks to do once we get to the top.

Being a Winter sports haven, there is the Olympic ski jump stadium, Bergisel, in Innsbruck. We've always wanted to see a ski jump up close so we are going to pay it a visit.  Hopefully we can time it with some jumpers using the facility to see it in action.

Despite being a ski base, we aren't planning any skiing. We are hoping though to get some time for tobogganing/sledding.  There are a heap of runs in and around Innsbruck and we think we know some kids (and adults) who are looking forward to some fun in the snow.

That takes us up to mid-January and covers off the German and Austrian portion of our trip.  The final two weeks will be spent in Switzerland and France - more snow, more fun and more food! I'll write about the plans for the final portion of our trip in my next post, but for now will leave you to ponder our upcoming Austrian and German adventures......

The 2015/16 European adventure - our itinerary (part 1!)

You may have noticed it's been very quiet around these parts of late. I posted a few weeks back about the constant stream of sickness...... well not much has improved in that regard. At least for poor Miss Astrid.  Sick kids has been partly to blame for my blogging and absence.  We've also been neck deep in travel planning, leaving very little non-kid-wrangling time for blogging and photo taking.  My poor camera is feeling very unloved!

I posted awhile back about our plans to head to Europe over Christmas and New Year.  We had a few good suggestions on how to best use our time.  Over the past few weeks I've had a lot of people asking how the plans are coming along, and we are finally at the stage where the itinerary is set. Yay!!! Of course, there is still a lot of behind the scenes booking of accommodation, trains and flights but we are a fair chunk of the way there now.

About 6 or 7 weeks ago we booked our flights to and from Europe (into Copenhagen and out of Paris, 7 weeks later).  It's taken a lot of work to figure out the middle bit!  So many options, so many places we'd like to see, and limited time and money.  We of course can't do everything, but there will hopefully be many more big trips in future years.  Our last Europe trip we based ourselves in Paris in an apartment and did short trips to other countries.  This time we are going to be constantly on the move, with only a few days in each location.  Again we are heavily relying on the excellent European rail systems to get us around.  It will be a totally different style of trip (we will also have 2 kids with us rather than just an Astrid, like last time).

As we were going to be away for Christmas and New Year we thought we'd see if any family wanted to join our adventure.  Anto's brother (otherwise known as 'fun Uncle Mikl') and my Dad (aka Gramps) have decided to tag along.  Bravely (or stupidly when 2 small children are involved) for the entire 7 weeks.  This gives us a huge advantage of 4 adults to 2 children - the odds are back in our favour, right?  It does mean coordinating plans and accommodation for extra people, but so far it's all good and we've come up with an itinerary that has everyone happy.

When travelling with small children, something always goes wrong. At some point our plans will be thrown into disarray by sick kids, tired kids, grumpy kids, and tantruming kids.  Being Winter in Europe the weather is also likely to cause havoc.  We've had more than the odd day or two ruined by inclement weather when travellling (Zurich and Luxembourg take the titles for worst weather on the last trip).

Weather and children contingencies have been built into our plans, and we know things will be missed and altered as we go along.  Type A personality planning has taken over though, and we have a 20 page google doc spreadsheet itinerary, with sunrise and sunset times , historical weather conditions, linked train and flight details and all activities with cost and time information cross tabulated.  I won't bore you with all the (in my opinion necessary, but probably not very interesting) details and give a quick rundown of where we are going and what we hope to do and see in each city.

Bye-bye Australia
On the 10th of December we are hopping on a small jet-plane and departing Canberra for Copenhagen (via Melbourne and Dubai and on much bigger jet-planes). Twenty-eight hours after flying out we will be in sunny (?) downtown Copenhagen for the start of our big adventure.

Copenhagen (Denmark)
We have 6 nights in Copenhagen, our longest stay in any location. Primarily because we know we are going to lose a couple of days to jet-lag, shopping for our additional cold weather gear/snow boots, and we are also very limited by the amount of daylight we will have available. Being pitch-dark at 3.30pm makes it hard to fit in all your sight-seeing! Nevertheless, we are planning on visits to the Frederiksberg Castle and gardens; Amalienborg Palace; Christiansborg Palace; the Royal Stables; Rosenberg Castle; Botanical Gardens; the Rundetaarn; Kastellet and a few other notable fountains, statues and churches.

We are also planning a bike tour of the city, a canal tour, possibly a visit to the zoo and an aquarium, and to see the Vikings exhibits at the National Museum.  Being so close to Sweden we are also hoping to 'pop over' and visit the nearby Swedish cities of Malmo or Lund and see the Oresund bridge that connects Denmark to Sweden.

One of the most anticipated activities in Copenhagen is our visit(s) to Tivoli Gardens, an amazing amusement park that is apparently a 'must-see' during the Christmas season, with it's beautiful light displays and Christmas markets.  There might be some rides the kids (and adults) enjoy too!

Stockholm (Sweden)
We are then off on the train (our longest train trip of the whole trip) up North to Stockholm. We will here meet up with our friends 'The Bjorn Man' and his family. Bjorn is an old school friend of Anto's and we met up with them on our last European adventure, when we stayed with them in their former home in Northern Sweden.  This time it's a pre-Christmas catch - up for a couple of days in Stockholm, and then off to their new home in Gotland.

We visited Stockholm on our last trip, but only had 2 half days there, so were more than happy to go back.  This time we have 2 (very long) nights and 2.5 (very short) days there. The light (and cold) situation is even more dire in Stockholm so we have a few 'after-dark' activities planned. It will completely dark at 2.40pm, so pretty much after Soren's nap!  On our last trip we went to the excellent Vasa museum, and are planning a return.  The Vasa is a Viking ship that has been restored and has been made into a museum. It's awesome, you all have to go!

We are also going to try and visit the Skansen, an open-air zoo and historical museum, and explore the Djurgarden, the Old Town and visit the excellent Christmas markets and see the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace (again, last time the annoying tourists kept blocking our view!).

Visby (Gotland, Sweden)
Bjorn and family have recently relocated to the town of Visby, in Gotland. Gotland is an island off Sweden, much like Tasmania (but colder and darker in Winter).  We are going to fly from Stockholm to Visby to spend a few days with them and check out down-town Visby.

Visby is a walled city, so there are the old city walls and ruins to check out and some reportedly good caves, cliffs and gardens.  There is also more Viking exhibits to be found at the museum and yet more Christmas markets. I'm sure will also have some other activities planned for us, or at least provide us with more excellent Swedish gloog (mulled wine).

Berlin (Germany)
Bjorn & Co will be heading off to spend Christmas with family and we have decided to have a German Christmas.  Even though snow is not guaranteed (roughly a 30% chance) the lure of awesome Christmas markets, festivities and concerts and a convenient location made us select Berlin as our Christmas destination.

We are flying to Malmo Sweden, and then catching the (very short) train to Copenhagen to fly to Berlin.  Annoyingly this is the most time-efficient and cost-effective way of making it to Berlin from Visby.  We have 5 nights and 4 full days in Berlin.  Berlin has an advantage that aside from the afternoon of the 24th, very little is closed over the Christmas period (and even then plenty of free activities will be available) so we aren't limited with what we can do with our time.

We are planning another bike tour of the city, this will hopefully cover off a lot of must-see sightseeing like the Brandenburg Gate, Check-point Charlie, the Wall memorial, Museum Island, Tiergarten, the Berliner Dom and a host of other city sights.  We are also scheduling a visit to the Budestag (Reichstag) building and hoping to visit the Holocaust memorial, the Palace of Tears and Topography of Terror museums. A few of these are not kid-friendly. Well at least not little kid friendly due to the nature of the exhibits, but luckily there are plenty of kid friendly activities we can entertain them with while we alternate at museums.

Berlin has around 60 Christmas markets, so there will be no shortage of market fun (and food). The market at Potsdamer place reportedly has an ice skating rink and toboggan rides. The market at Shloss Charlottenburg (another palace worth visiting) has a specific kids market, a petting zoo and a ferris wheel. I think the kids will have a ball!

Part of one of our days in Berlin will be used to visit the nearby city of Potsdam.  Potsdam has an excellent old town and the Dutch quarter is known for it's coffee shops.  Potsdam is also known for Shloss Sansoucci, the former Summer Palace of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. The Gardens of Sansoucci are also meant to be amazing.  If we aren't palaced and gardened out there is also Shloss Cecilienhof and the surrounding Neuer Garten Park.  Weather permitting we may even see some of these palaces and gardens on bike.

Dresden (Germany)
After departing Berlin we are heading to Prague, but conveniently the beautiful city of Dresden is both on the train line and roughly 2 hours from each city.  Dresden was famously bombed (and mostly destroyed) in World War II, but is known for it's beautifully restored buildings and churches and it's lovely and interesting Old town.  Sitting on the river Elbe, there are plenty of bridges, churches and palaces to walk around and take a photo or two of.

Prague (Czech Republic)
After our day in Dresden, we will trundle down the train line (at high speed) for a further 2 hours until we are in Prague.  We have planned 4 nights and 3 full days in Prague. No one in our travelling group has been to Prague before so we have plenty of exploring to do.

The Old Town and Town Square have plenty of city buildings, churches  and an astronomical clock for us to admire. The city is also known for the Charles Bridge, so there will be plenty of photo opportunities around the Bridge, along the Vltava River and walking the Old Town and Lesser Quarter.

Prague Castle (yes, we will be over Castles by now!) is seemingly a must-do, by day and night. You can supposedly see it from pretty much anywhere in Prague. We'd better go check it out....

If we run out of food or shopping options there are yet more Christmas markets (that conveniently run until New Year's).  Our schedule in Prague is deliberately light to allow for plenty of eating and wandering time and catching up on some rest before we ring in the New Year!

That takes us up to the end of December and is more than enough prattling on from me for one post, so in the next post I'll cover off our planned January wanderings.  The first 3 weeks are very full of Castles, Palaces, Christmas Markets and Old Towns.  The second half of the trip will feature lots of cold (yes we are going to get even colder) and lots of snow......