Cheers for following along from home. This is the tenth edition of the blogs that we put together to catalog our travel! We hope to share some of the trip with all of you, and in turn have writing we can go back and read when we’re eventually back home.

We last left off detailing our trip through Spain and Portugal, admittedly it was a fairly delayed blog since we ended up having a pretty busy trip through Greece and Italy afterwards. Leaving Portugal we headed over to Greece where we met up with some new travel buddies - Baylee’s parents and sister, John, Karen and Hannah.

The next few weeks we’re pretty busy and saw us travel to some amazing places. Following this we headed back to the UK and have more adventures to add to this update - so strap in, this blog is another biggie!

Athens

Our trip to Greece started in the capital city, Athens, where we arrived to a pretty hot afternoon and a bustling city. We didn’t get up to much as we’d had a pretty early start and had a lot planned for the coming days. The next morning we set off at sunrise and headed up to the Acropolis hill to try and beat the crowds and see some of the historic buildings just after opening. Athens history was pretty epic and the temples on the Acropolis hill have been through the wars, but are still amazingly well preserved, owing to the continuous restoration over the last 50 odd years.

After waiting briefly for the gates to open, we were treated with being one of the first people of the day to see the Parthenon - a former Athenian temple, and even managed to meet some of the stray cats that live on the hill and that were also just waking up. The sun had also just risen over the city, so the lighting was pretty magical. Within an hour of being there, hundreds of people had arrived and it was now packed, so it was well worth the early morning start. From there we headed back down the hill and also visited the ruins of the Ancient and Roman Agoras (ancient market areas).

Later that day we met up with Baylee’s fam - John, Karen and Hannah who had just arrived in Athens after a quick stopover in Dubai. It was so great to see familiar faces after so many months away from home. Over the next two days we finished off sight seeing in Athens and caught up with each other, excited to be spending the next few weeks travelling together.

Santorini

Our next part of the trip would see us head out to the Greek Islands. We first headed out to Santorini, taking a five hour high speed catamaran ferry that was surprisingly smooth. Arriving in Santorini we were all blown away with amazing view - the island is volcanic and as such, a lot of the villas have been built on the side of the cliff face and have an incredible view of the sea, where the craters centre once stood. Most buildings are also painted exclusively white, which makes for a pretty spectacular scene.

During our time in Santorini we headed out on a catamaran cruise around the island, which highlighted the red sand and black sand beaches and took us to to some lovely swimming spots. We also celebrated Karen’s birthday and indulged in a winery tour and lunch at one of the oldest vineyards on the island. Interestingly, since the soil is so porous and Santorini doesn’t get much rain, the grape vines have adapted to living off hardly any water and also grow in a bit of a nest shape so that they don’t get battered by the wind. It was very different to any vineyard we’ve seen before, but still seems to make good wine! For the birthday dinner we had a picturesque view of the sunset which was a great end to the day.

On our last day, us kids decided to attempt the hike between Fira (the village we were staying) to Oia (the big village, very popular for shopping). This took about 2.5 hours and saw us walk down lots of steps and up some steep scree before meandering down to Oia. We later met up with Karen and John and spent our last day checking out the array of crafty shops in Oia.

Mykonos

Departing Santorini, we hopped back on the ferry and zipped over to another Greek island a couple of hours away called Mykonos. We were here for two nights and spent our full day walking through the town centre of Mykonos. Something kind of unexpected were the flour windmills that line the shore near the main town centre, built by Venetians in the 16th century during the Venetian reign. There is also a stretch of villas on the waters edge that have balconies hanging over the water and basements with direct access to the sea for fishermen, and this area is aptly named Little Venice.

Rome

From Mykonos, we were wrapping up our time in Greece and heading over to Italy, with our first stop in Rome. This was new for the two of us as we hadn’t ventured to the south of Italy yet and we were looking forward to exploring the history of Rome. We only had two nights in Rome so were all booked in to do a full day tour of Ancient Rome and get a taste of the highlights. This was pretty interesting and allowed us to see the vastness that was the Vatican, as well as the ruins of the Roman Forum and of course the Coliseum. Although this was a very comprehensive tour of the ancient city, we were all pretty tired after a massive day of walking. We happily finished off the day with some bruschetta, pasta, Chianti red wine and a round of limoncello.

Amalfi Coast

Next up we headed further south to the Amalfi coast, catching the high speed train from Rome to Naples. We had a quick stop here as we were doing a tour through Pompeii. We were all quite blown away with how big the city of Pompeii was, we walked through many different parts but still only scratched the surface. It’s also amazing just how much has been excavated, and how well the remains have been preserved. There were remains of the tracks left by carts driven across the roads and terracotta food safes still embedded in situ. From Pompeii we carried on over the hills and ended up on the Amalfi coastline, headed to the bay were staying called Praiano.

Our place for the next few days in Praiano was a villa quite far up the cliff side, with Praiano being one of the quieter villages along the Amalfi coast. The view of the sea was very cool, but being up so high did have some challenges. Public transport was pretty scarce here so we had to walk down into the village to get some groceries. Going down the hundreds of steps was not too bad, but coming back up was a different story. We definitely deserved a beer after doing that climb with our backpacks full of groceries!

We had a mixed bag of weather when we first arrived, but luckily our accomodation had an undercover outdoor kitchen! We fired up the barbecue a few times, and even wood-fired a pizza oven.

One day we ventured along to another village called Amalfi, probably the biggest/busiest village along the coast. Amalfi is very much known for producing lemons and subsequently lots of lemon products. We definitely had to buy some limoncello and other lemony tourist knick knacks.

Something we were looking forward to was an outdoor cooking class were you harvest and prepare an Italian lunch in an outdoor kitchen while overlooking the spectacular view of the ocean. Although we got off to a stressful start when our pre booked taxi didn’t show up, we eventually made it and in typical Italian fashion we were welcomed in as latecomers with open arms. The two guys that run the cooking class were great value, and we cooked some yum food and had a pretty fun time. Since we were in Amalfi, lunch was finished off with their homemade limoncello - probably the best we had tried so far.

Pistoia

The next day was a travel day back up to Rome on the train. Sadly it was time for Hannah to go back home, however Karen and John were still travelling for another two weeks. After saying goodbye, we headed back into Rome for a night while John and Karen were heading up to Cinque Terre and Santa Margherita for a couple of days. We had already been there, so we spent another day in Rome and further explored the city and saw some of the new town which we had previously missed.

We needed to head north so made a stop in a little Tuscan town called Pistoia for two days. Pistoia was a fairly sleepy place and probably not popular with tourists, we tried to get out and see some of the historic town but it rained most of the time there. We also had our umbrella stolen from the holder at the supermarket so it was a bit of an average place to visit in the end!

Lucca

From Pistoia we only had a half hour train to our next place, another Tuscan town called Lucca where we were meeting back up with John and Karen. Lucca was once a very busy place when Italy used to be divided into separate places and wasn’t a country, and the old town of Lucca was completely surrounded by a huge wall. Turns out this was common for many of the old cities, as there was a lot of fighting between provinces. Within the walls of Lucca, there was a maze of streets with lots of shops and many buildings with look out towers. We did walk up the tallest one and see the view, although Baylee was a bit freaked out by the very old brickwork that we were standing on at the top - but we managed to get out unscathed.

As it was close by and we had a rental car, we took a day trip over to Pisa so that John and Karen could visit it. After seeing the tower during the peak of summer tourist season, it was nice visiting when it was a bit quieter. After getting back to Lucca, we had an early dinner and got ready to watch the Rugby World Cup final. Not surprisingly there weren’t any pubs in Lucca playing the game, so we had to watch it on Jamie’s laptop at our hotel. We all know how that ended so… we will leave it there.

Florence

Our next destination was Florence, however we stopped on the way in a very quaint village called Saint Gimignano. Here we explored the medieval town centre and had a look at the cute markets. After arriving in Florence we set off to have a look at the Accademia gallery, famous for the large marble statue David sculpted by Michelangelo. Following the art gallery, we had dinner at ZaZa’s, an amazing restaurant that we had discovered when we visited earlier this year. Since there were four of us now, we decided to try the famous Florentine steak to share. It definitely lived up to its name, and we all agreed it was one of the best meals so far this trip.

The next day we spent the morning looking around the shops and walked through another of the many galleries/museums in Florence. In the afternoon we had booked a walking food tour, which explored various Tuscan specialties. This was pretty yum and included sampling authentic Parmigiana Reggiano cheese, Parma ham, Tuscan wines and fresh baked biscotti.

Venice

From here we hopped on the train and headed further north for a few days up in Venice. It was definitely a lot colder than when we visited earlier this year but was still pretty busy. We had a wander through some of the alleyways and found a cool bar right by the the Rialto Bridge. The next day we took a canal boat cruise around the canals, and given it starts getting dark early this time of year, we were treated with seeing Venice as the sun went down and the lights started turning on.

Bologna

Our final destination of the trip was heading south again to Bologna, where John and Karen would be flying out to New Zealand. We had two nights here and decided to go see the Ducati motorcycle museum and the Bologna archaeological museum. Since we were in Bologna, we of course had to try some authentic bolognese pasta for our last dinner together.

The next afternoon we all headed to the airport where John and Karen were starting the long journey home and we were catching a flight over to London. It was a very bittersweet goodbye after such a great month of travelling together, and we were pretty sad to see them go.

UK

Arriving back in London we spent a couple of days in Kensington, catching up with a friend for a Sunday roast at the pub as well as some shopping for winter clothes.

We have travelled to heaps of places so far, but still have many more on our wish list, so we have decided to make the call to settle down in London for the next 8ish months and recoup the travel funds before setting off for a few more months of solid travelling on the way home. Since we have been back in the UK, we have been moving around a little bit staying temporarily in various cities, including Bournemouth, Reading, and a little town called Calne while we figured out our life admin and what we wanted to do.

Brussels and Amsterdam

At the start of December Jamie had his birthday, and wanted to celebrate in style, so we planned a long weekend to Brussels in Belgium. We were also joined by a few friends from New Zealand, one of which lives in London while the others live near Amsterdam. Brussels was a cool city and as it was December, there were lots of Christmas lights and markets. Alongside trying Belgium beers, waffles and chocolate, we also got to experience the Christmas traditions of mulled wine and wurst sausages in the idyllic Christmas markets. It even snowed on the last day!

From Brussels we headed across to neighbouring Netherlands and visited Amsterdam for a few days. We stayed the first night with our friends from NZ that now live there, and had a lovely warming meal while it snowed outside - cheese fondue. We also had another catch up with family, this time from Jamie’s side, with Lesley (Jamie’s grandma) and Noel who were in Amsterdam before they headed off on a cruise down the River Rhine. We visited the Rijksmuseum together and also were treated to a canal cruise in the evening and a birthday dinner, it was such a cool way to spend the day.

Christmas and beyond

Jamie has received an early Xmas prezzie and is two weeks in to a job as a software engineer for Marks and Spencers, which has been pretty exciting, and Baylee is looking for a flat for us to live in and part time work. Jamie will be working in the office once a week in Paddington, so we hope to live somewhere on the NW to SW side of London.

In the meantime we are now house sitting/pet sitting for some kiwis over the Christmas period in their flat in Putney - which is in the SW and is so far a place we quite like the vibe of. We are looking after a cute old ginger cat called Maxi who follows us around like a shadow. We are missing everyone at home so much and wish we were all together for Christmas. But we will be making the most of a cold Christmas in London and have some yum food on the menu and plans to see some Christmas lights and markets.

We plan to make the most of being so close to Europe and have some trips penciled in to various countries over the next few months and also plan to explore more of the UK when we can. Since we wont be travelling all the time, we wont be writing these blogs as regularly anymore. But we will still send out an update every few months to share what we’ve been up to and any new places we’ve managed to travel too.

We hope everyone has a great Christmas back home, and enjoy the summer break (we are jealous of the sun!). Also well done and thanks heaps if you got to the end of this - there was a lot to catch up on this time!

Cheers and Merry Christmas!
Baylee & Jamie