25/11/2025
🧵🧶🪡EUROPE🪡🧶🧵
This was the trip of a life time!
When Kieren finished year 12 we decided that it would be the last chance to go on a big family trip together before he went out in the world and got a job and moved out.
As Lisa lives in Germany that was always the first place we were going to go. We spent Christmas in Australia and flew out of Sydney on 27 December 2017. We landed in Munich to it snowing!!!
We spent 11 fantastic nights with the Betkers and went on many excursions including a couple of nights in Prague. We celebrated the New Year in style with fire crackers in a park. The first time our kids have experienced what cracker night was like.
After Germany we flew to Poland and went to Aucshwitz, which was very sobering, and the Salt Mines which was very interesting.
From Poland to Italy, we spent one full day in Venice and that had to be my favourite day. With no vehicles on the island we were able to just stroll around and see the sites.
From Venice we flew to Paris. I loved Paris but the rest of the family were not fans. We did the normal tourist things, the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Notre-Dame. We also went to Disneyland Paris.
From Paris we caught the Eurostar over to London. We then hired a car and drove north west to Henley-on-Thames, where we stayed for a few nights. We spent a day looking for castles which was quite a funny day. We also went to the Harry Potter exhibition at the sound stages that the filming actually happened. That was 4.5 hours of Harry Potter joy!!!
We then travelled to Norwich, where Dave's favourite English football team, the Canaries, are from. He and Kieren went to watch them play at Carrow Road. I have never seen Dave so happy and so cold!!!
From Norwich we caught the train up to Edinburgh. This train trip was beautiful. There was snow on the beachs, being from Australia, this was so weird to see. We went on a tour up to Stirling where Mary Queen of Scots was born.
We flew home in time to go back to school and work for 2018!
