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Our Roads led to Rome

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We are in Rome now, on our second last day in Italy. We left the villa on New Years Day.  After a longish trip, we arrived in Lucca, where we would stay for three nights.  This is a very old city, with the old walls still intact.  Our hotel was inside the city walls.  This is a city that once boasted 100 churches, and there are signs of them everywhere, although only a handful are still in regular use. Lots of narrow streets and opportunities to get lost! Quite a few squares here too, including one that is the site of the old Roman amphitheater.  Ok, so it’s more round than a square, but you get the idea. They built houses in the spaces where the old walls used to be and there are now only very few signs of the Roman construction. You can see part of the original wall in this photo. One of Lucca’s famous sons was the composer Giacomo Puccini.  This photo shows his statue and birthplace (the red brick house). The next day, we travelled to Pisa.  This was another “pinch me” moment, reali
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Year’s End in Italy

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We have been to quite a few places in the last week.  Now we are in the Villa Contarini Nenzi, close to Trevino and Venice. We left Zermatt on Boxing Day on our way to Luzern. We were sad to leave Zermatt,  not only because we had such a great time and made-to-order weather but also because this was always going to be the highlight of the trip.  The people, the town and the general atmosphere around the place were fantastic. Still, we move on.  Near Montreux is the Chateau Chillon and we stopped there for a visit.  This castle is very old (and cold).  It had a horrible dungeon where some famous prisoners were simply chained to pillars.  The living spaces were much more hospitable, but not as grand as other castles we have seen. We drove through Montreux on the way out.  Clearly lots of ‘beautiful’ people, come here, judging by the shopping and hotels. We got to Luzern late in the day and had our farewell dinner for that tour.   We stayed at the Schweizerhof Hotel, one of the grand old
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White Christmas in Zermatt

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Yes, we got it!  Many years after the snow let us down in Bavaria, it more than made up for it here. Our train journey was interesting and slow.  Because of booking shortages, we had to take two trains before we could get on to the Glacier Express at Andermatt.  This train really lives up to its reputation as the world’s slowest express train.  Much of this is because of the terrain, but also because of the single track and the need to wait for passing trains. It was crowded but comfortable and got us to Zermatt late on Sunday. We did strike snow while we were waiting to change trains and then for much of the journey at higher altitudes. We arrived in Zermatt to light snow and a wet walk underfoot to the hotel.  This was just a taste of what was to come. On Monday, we were taken on a guided tour of the town, showing the main sights.  There are some very old houses here and a church with cemetery where many people who died climbing the Matterhorn are buried.  Unfortunately, the graves a
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Horses and books

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Saturday - two destinations today. The first was Neu St Johann, where a horse-drawn carriage awaited us.  But on the way, we were able to take the mountain road that becomes impassable  when winter really hits.  This takes us around Santis, a mountain of 2500 metres.  We were able to stop and have a look around, and play (for some), in the snow. Neu St Johann is a small place and the tour includes a carriage trip, or sleigh if it’s snowing.  We had 4 carriages, it was cold and rainy at times, but it showed off the Appenzeller countryside and farms well.  We stopped mid-journey for a gluhwein which helped to warm us up some. Then back to town to stretch the limits of the train station toilets. We left for the bigger town of St Gallen.  This town was founded by a monk back in the day who later became a saint and whose monastery, for some centuries, ran the place.  The people took over when Switzerland was all coming together, but the monastery is still there, with its cathedral and herit
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Into Switzerland

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We left Fuschl on Friday for the longish drive into Switzerland. On the way, we stopped for a couple of hours in Innsbruck, the big skiing centre.  There was lots of snow on the mountains but nothing in the town.  This has been a recurring theme so far, ie the seasons are getting later and that the snow and real winter weather won’t get to the lower places until next month. Innsbruck is an attractive town, lots of old buildings in the old town centre, and a big Christmas market.  We were taken first to the Swarovski crystal store (mainly for the free toilets) with some shopping thrown in.  We did the local thing and had a sausage in the market. After this, we were on our way for the drive to Switzerland.  This took us through plenty of tunnels, some snow at higher levels and a couple of border crossings.  Our trip to Innsbruck took us back into Germany and they have an elaborate setup to X-ray all the semis in case they are carrying immigrants.  Our bus had to go through the checkpoint
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Austrian Lakes and Salzburg

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A couple of days to catch up on here, since we left Munich. We crossed into Austria and our first stop was Mondsee in the lakes district.  The main attraction here was the church where Julie Andrews was married in the Sound  of Music.  The movie would have you believe that they were married in Salzburg, but we now know better. This is the altar that was so prominent in the wedding scenes. We spent a couple of hours here, had lunch and were on our way again.  Our journey took us around a couple of the Austrian lakes.  I didn’t realise how many, or how big, these lakes are.  At the end of one Lake is the little town of Hallstatt.  This is often featured on calendars and the like, and is a beautiful place.   It was very crowded but the time there was well spent.  We walked the main (and only) street, I climbed to a church on top of the hill with a fabulous view over the town and the lake. We arrived at our accommodation in Fuschl, which is next to another lake.  The hotel is small and fam
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Munich Day 2 - Dachau

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We had been looking forward to this visit for a while now.  We thought that it was important to help us understand the history of the Nazi rule some more and to put a more human face on the stories we have all heard. Dachau was the first of the Nazi concentration camps (and there were 700 camps in Germany alone at the end of the war).  It opened in 1933 with the main aim of detaining political opponents to the National Socialists.  As time went on, their scope extended to anyone who did not fit the norm that they wanted to achieve, ie of Aryan superiority.  This extended to the Jews, who got the blame for just about anything, communists, homosexuals, handicapped people, drunks, unemployed people, returning emigrants, Jehovahs Witnesses etc. The treatment of these people was, at first, to humiliate them.  Some were even released, under strict conditions, when they had decided to conform.  The prisoners had to work, had endless roll calls, rules and punishments, and lack of food.  The sa
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