The wrap up

Well, finally back home again. Back to (what seems to us) a freezing cold Wellington winter and the prospect of normal life and, hopefully, work. 

Was it a good trip? Yes! 

Is it good to be home again? Yes! 

Would we go again? Yes, definitely - but we might need some income first...

Some final thoughts:

Best bits - there were lots

• Walking along the coastal track between the Cinque Terre villages - spectacular views, exercise, being ‘off-highway’.
• Chamonix and Mt Blanc - awesome mountain scenery on a perfect weather day, and some challenging engineering.
• The Camargue with its pink flamingos and bulls.
• Wacky villages perched on hill tops or stuck on cliffs, or sometimes just ‘different’ - Rocamadour, Eze, Collonges la rouge, San Gimignano.
• Tuscany – it’s just like in the pictures, let’s all move there.
• Venice - a ridiculously located city, but fascinating. Also loved the nearby island of Burano with it's colourful houses.
• Paris - always a hit with me, and specially good to spend some time there with A & S.
• Amalfi coast – wonderful scenery.
• History, churches, castles – fantastic, but be careful, everything in moderation.

 Not so good bits

• Various illnesses and injuries, especially asthma, that slowed us down and made walking hard. (There's no way to avoid lots of walking in Europe.)
• Really not much else!

What about the food?

Food was always high on our agenda and was generally pretty good. Some impressions:

·         France

o   The French food we came across seemed a bit overhyped. It was good, but we ate at a lot of places and there didn’t seem to be much variety, just similar stuff with lots of heavy duty sauces.

o   Snails, cheeses, and foie gras were memorable.

o   On the whole it seemed pricy – you would get a top notch restaurant meal for the same cost in NZ.

o   Overall impression was conservative and traditional.

·         Italy

o   Italian food was great. The focus was very much on the key ingredient and its flavour, without too many complications.

o   Pasta is good stuff – we now know what al dente should feel like.

o   Spaghetti pomodora is a great, simple dish – I couldn’t get enough of it.

o   Did I mention risotto? Eat it more often!

o   Sea food – fantastic range of fresh fish, crustaceans and shell fish.

o   Cost – same as for France – seemed pricier than NZ but at least it was excellent eating.

Typically we spent 60+ euros on a restaurant meal, sometimes up to 100. So food made up a pretty large portion of expenses.

What’s the best way to travel?

We tried 3 ways:

• Very small group guided tour (6 of us)
• Standard big group guided bus tour (38 of us)
• Self drive, self guide (2 of us!)

Each has its pluses and minuses. They trade off things like – cost, effective use of time, stress, need for prior research, personal effort required, tolerance of having to fit in with a group plan, tolerance of other people, having local expert knowledge on tap.

For example, on the small group tour we visited the Vatican City. It went something like this:

• Taxi from hotel to VC.
• Bypass the queues and straight in the door.
• Meet local guide and get personalised tour.
• Exit and taxi back to hotel.

Time taken was about 3 hours for a very interesting and satisfying visit with very little pain or waiting around.

Doing this on your own would involve lots of queuing in the hot sun and at best some sort of large group guided tour or an audio guide. It would likely take most of the day and be quite tiring and frustrating – but certainly cheaper! On a big coach trip it would also take longer just trying to get 40 people through the security, crowds and toilets.

In any option there is quite a lot of variable cost. We spent a lot on high quality hotels and food. We could have saved a huge amount by lowering expectations in these areas.

To close

To any readers still with us – well done, I admire your persistence! 

It was fun writing the blog and I think it will help keep alive some of the good memories that would otherwise fade away in years to come.

Give it a try – I promise to be a faithful follower if you send me your link!