We arrived in Venice this morning from Rome. Rome was quite hectic, so we took a day extra than we’d initially planned for.

Venice seems a lot easier to navigate and we’re trying to stay away from the hundreds of tourists flocking each corner. It hard though. It’s almost like the entire city was designed for tourists and tourists only.

We haven’t uploaded pictures in a week now and plan on going so in a day or two.

Just read that Abhinav Bindra from Chandigarh the first individual Gold Medal for India at the Olympics. Awesome!! History made and hopefully a generation given hope and inspiration. Noting beats listening to the national anthem on the world’s biggest stage.

We don’t think we’re going to Greece next, it’s just too hard to get there by ferry (20 hrs each way), plus the costs seem crazy given the peak season. We’ll think about how to best make use of the 5 extra days that freed up. Suggestions welcome. Cheers.

We left Florence this evening and just landed in Rome a few hours back. The jouney was quite comfortable, thanks to the express train between the two cities. Finding our B&B was quite something, took us a while meandering through the streets, but we’re so glad to be finally here, showered and ready to crash for tonight.

Lots of pictures need to be uploaded, but we haven’t been able to connect our laptop to the net in the last few days. Hope to do that in a day or two in Rome.

Rome is hot, full of tourists this time of the year, but we’re looking forward to the tours of the Vatican and the ancient Roman sites. More soon.

Short note, no pics. We left the Cinque Terre villages this morning and are now in Florence, Italy for a few days. All well. A little tired, but looking forward to the rest of the trip.

We stayed in Provence, France for a total of three days. Provence is a region of southeastern France on the Mediterranean Sea adjacent to Italy. We maintained Arles as our base. Arles is a really quaint town, dating back to the Roman era starting around 2nd century B.C.

The first day in Arles was us walking around the old city, the second day we went to a neighbouring town called Avignon, also known for its Roman influence and the palace of popes and returned to Arles to see a bull fighting game in the old Roman Arena.

The last day in Provence was our favorite. We rented a car to drive through the beautiful villages of Luberon and visit the famous Les Baux-de-Provence.

Driving was quite a change from walking everywhere in the last 10 days. We started off by getting into a harmless minor accident, when an old man backed into our parked car. No was was hurt, we got the French police to come and help with insurance paperwork and then continued to drive through the villages.

Some of the villages of Luberon, like Gordes, Menerbes, Lacoste and Roussillon are said to be the most beautiful villages in France. We haven’t been to others, so its hard to say, but these were quite amazing.

Take a look at the pics. We move next to Nice, France and travel to Monaco and neighbouring areas.

Pictures from our Paris trip are here. Direct link to the slideshow.

We’ll post the Paris trip details later tonight, heading to get something to eat now and walk around town.

Just sat down in a cyber cafe, since finding Wifi access to connect our laptop has been quite an impossible task.

We arrived in Paris yesterday, after a 7 hour long train ride from Interlaken, Switzerland, with a quick stopover in Bern. Bern was awesome. Even though we have only a couple of hours there, the train station is in the city center and we took a walking tour through this amazing city, catching their Saturday farmers market on the way.

Paris has been great so far, we’re dead tired of walking though. We’ll post pictures and the summary of our Paris experiences as soon as we can get online with our notebook.

au revoir.

Firstly, I’ve uploaded pictures from yesterday and today, so you can see them now here.

Ruchi and I started the day early today with a 4 hour hike in the lower alps. The hike wasn’t that strenuous, was around a 900 ft climb, but surely told us how out of shape we’ve become with our sedentary lives. It ended in a glacier bowl, with waterfalls and a glacier fed river starting a the edge. Great stuff.

Gimmelwald is a very laid back village, which is nice, and quite authentic swiss with cows and real farmers! Reminds me of Sangla Valley in India.

We were dead tired after coming back, took a short nap and headed up to Murren, the village above Gimmelwald, our base for these two days. We took the cable car up, for 16 francs, it wasn’t that bad, considering we’d have to walk another few hours back and forth.

Murren was neat, we bought groceries for dinner and tried a local desert. yum.

Back to the hostel, we met up with some really interesting folks, a few couples are doing one year long world trips, so it was great to hear their stories and get some travel tips.

It’s late, around 3:00 am here, but that’s the only time I could get access to the computer here, hook my laptop and upload pics and finish the blog post.

We’re off to Paris tomorrow via Bern. Quite excited. More later.

Day 3 was mostly travel. We started by train in Munich, validating our Eurorail passes, heading towards Interlaken, Switzerland. The train ride was awesome- German trains truly rock! We broke the journey and decided to complete it via a two hour ferry to Interlaken.

The ferry ride was great, the views of Swiss towns and the alps along the way and the hordes of people on small river beaches made the two hours fly away. Arriving in Interlaken, we decided to walk across town to the train station on the east side to catch our next train.

The backpacks we’re carrying are heavier than they should be. Broke my back. Ruchi says it’s all those gadgets I am lugging around.

Interlaken was pretty, but too touristy for our taste. Lots of adventure sports make it a popular destination and it’s also considered an ideal base for hikers to start their trips into the Alps.

We then took another train and a bus to finally reach Stechelberg, the base from where we took a gondola to Gimmelwald. Our hostel was right around the corner and quite welcoming indeed.

Ruchi cooked dinner in the commom kitchen, I did the dishes and we crashed in a few hours. Sorry no pictures today, since we’re writing this from the shared computer available here. Will post more pics when we get to the next destination. We spend another day here, possibly hiking in the Alps and taking it easy in the beautiful surroundings.

Later.