I am currently sitting on a ferry on the way to the island of Naxos in Greece. I am reflecting on how tough the kids have become as travellers over this trip. Our ferry departed the Athens port at 7am. This meant we were fully packed, sleeping in our travel clothes, awake at 4.45 to walk the 2km to the metro station with our packs on. Then at the port depart the metro staton to walk and find where our boat was. This was on the back of 8 hours walking around the sites of Athens the day before in 33 degrees. Watching all three kids, particularly Chloe do all this in good spirts and without complaint. I really marvel at their stamina.

It has been nearly 7 weeks since my last post which is not great, however between planning our adventures and preparing (proofing content, compressing images and videos etc) the kids blogs I have found little down time. So what have we been up to since we arrived in Europe – the short version – 11 countries and 6700km! The trip has worked out to be a wonderful taster of a wide variety of what Europe has to offer for the kids, while allowing Shem and I to duplicate very little of our past visits to the continent.

The trip evolved in such wonderful and unexpected ways due to the flexibility of our car – affectionately named Fugly, as we all believe it is quite possibly the ugliest looking car we have ever seen. It was however, a special and rare experience for a Fitzgerald to be driving away in a brand new car! The car was fully equipped with a satellite navigation system that we named Brenda. Brenda was ‘trip enriching’ to say the least, as her ‘shortest route possible approach’ to navigation allowed us to really get to know the ‘real’ streets of each town and city and gave us great opportunities to hone our driving accuracy down some of the narrowest streets imaginable. We did learn to say no to Brenda sometimes – like when she asked us to go down this road in Sarajevo!!! Anyway, over 5 weeks we proudly clocked up 6700km on that baby!

Cities are definitely not our thing, not for long anyway! The kids have inherited our loathing for large crowds. With the exception of Paris, where we spent 3 nights, most of the major centres have been visited in a single day while staying in the outskirts. One thing that surprised Shem and I was how cheep parking was in major centres, where we were able to park right in the centre (e.g out on the island in Venice for 21 Euro for the day and in the heart of Sans Sebastian for 6 Euro.) When you divide that by 5 of us, it just did not make sense to use public transport. Our other strategy for surviving the mass tourism industry was to take advantage of all these years of early mornings for swimming. Cities at 7am are fantastic places to walk around and we would often find ourselves done by lunch time, or going later in the evening – like to the Louvre at 7pm when it closes at 9pm and having it almost to ourselves.

Now I know that cities like Barcelona, Budapest, Venice, Munich, Athens and Vienna have days worth of cultural experiences to offer and I do sometimes wish my children and husband had more interest in museums and art galleries, but the truth is that this is not the case and one needs to choose our battles. I also try to weigh up how much I believe the children can remember and what will be the most meaningful and thus hopefully memorable. For me, it often comes down to providing opportunities for them to see and experience things that will come up again in the books they read, their studies at school and of course on TV. That way they may not fully remember being at these sites, but when the see or study them, they can think – “hey I went there”. This is happening through the children’s books at the moment. Jemima and Chloe are reading 39 Clues by Rick Riodan and so far the main characters have visited the catacombs of Paris, the birth place of Mozart in Salzburg, the canals of Venice etc. Dibs on the other hand in reading the Di Vinci Code and is busy telling me why the Mona Lisa’s face has one side slightly bigger than the other and he cant wait to see the Last Supper painting!

So where have we been over the last 7 weeks in Europe?

Our adventures started in Paris, which is truly a special place and it was wonderful to share such famous sites and artworks with the kids, particularly Chloe who has such an affinity with art and was mesmerised by seeing Monet’s paintings up close and loved the Eiffel Tower – I think her French name has caused a deeper sense of connection.

We hit the pavement with typical Fitzgerald ferocity- covering 13-18km on foot each day of our visit. Highlights were defiantly the Muse D’Orsy which staggeringly neither Shem or I had been to before. Click here to see a 360 degree image

The variety of period defining art work in the museum is simply staggering and the location itself – a converted train station is all class. The Catacombs where a gruesome highlight for the kids who found it out of this worldly to see the bones of 6 million people lining the limestone tunnels under the city in macabrely decorative ways. While it was extremely sad to not be able to see Notre Dame, except from a distance, I did say to the kids that they will be back and when they are they can say they saw it when it was in ruins from the 2019 fire.

We hit the road in Fugly and headed south on a Dib- led quest to surf the waves of southern France. This took us through the beautiful Louir Valley, with its amazing Châteaus, beautiful green farm land and quaint little villages. Air B&B did not disappoint with a great little farm stay that was seriously in the middle of nowhere – like in a ‘if we die here no one will find our bodies’ kind of way! Even though I had travelled through this area previously, it still blew my mind with its stunning beauty. The children were blown away with the age and grandeur of the Palace of Versailles and Château Chenonceau, as well as, the multitude of stunning buildings in Bordeaux.

However, the urgency that surrounded Dibs to get to the coast was driving us forward. We arrived in Biarritz and went straight to the beach, but alas there was very little surf. Even so, it was lovely to be on the coast again and I had no idea how beautiful the Basque coast was.

We walked, we ran and we took advantage of the French markets with enough bread, wine, cheese and cured meats to sink a ship.

We decided to spend a few more days along the coast and chose a little village called Lekeitio because of its proximity to both San Sebastián and Bilbao. It was absolutely magical, the apartment was the nicest we have had our whole trip, with amazing views of the hills and the sea.

We used this spot to decompress for 4 days, with a little day trip to Bilbao and San Juan de Gaztelugatxe (don’t get me to pronounce this!) The latter being something we stumbled across by accident only to find it was a key tourist spot and also the site of Dragon Stone in the 7th Series of Game of Thrones (with a bit of CGI).

We also took advantage of the fact Lekeitio is still a working fishing port and Jemima’s new found interest in cooking. She ended up learning to cook salt and pepper calamari, garlic muscles pasta and salmon.

We were also still close enough to the boarder to allow my cheese binge fest to continue. Sadly, despite 5 days and an extensive search of every key surf spot along the Basque coast, including Zarauitz (home to the Spanish Ripcurl Pro 2 days before we arrived!) and Mundaka (home to the longest left barrel in Europe) there was not even a ripple. The kicker was that it was forecast to be 5” the day after we left to drive across the country to Barcelona.

We stayed on the coast outside Barcelona, where much to Dib’s and our shock, there were waves. We had in no uncertain terms told him to now forget about surf, that it was something for when he got home as there was NO surf in the Mediterranean.

However, as we headed for Barcelona on the train the following morning we saw surfers on break after break! Barcelona was as I remember it except for the crazy volume of tourists – more than any other city we have visited the whole trip. Also, being early May and the fact that we were able to walk right in to the Louvre and Muse D’Orsay, it did not occur to us to pre-book tickets to see the Familiar Sangria Temple and unfortunately it was booked out. I was heart broken with this as there had been so many changes to the façade since Shem and I were last there, I was dying to see inside. Anyway, we had to settle for viewing it from afar and some YouTube clips of the interior on my phone! The rest of the day was taken up falling in love with Gaudi and the kids visit to the Gaudi Hotel (while we had a coffee down La Rambla!) cemented their opinion that he is a seriously cool architect.

On we drove to Nice, with a visit to Fragonaud perfumery in Grass on the way. Staying again outside the city centre up in the hills at a lovely French family’s house. It had magnificent views of the countryside.

We shared our love of the Nice promenade with the kids with a run along it followed by a swim in the still chilly Mediterranean. The pebbles were definitely not to their liking, but the Gelato and beautiful streets and buildings were. Gelato was earnt by indulging me by going on a 5km run along the promonard and up the fortification stairs and the end.

Our next destination was the Lakes District in Italy where again we chose to stop for a few days to relax. On our way there I wanted to do a walk I had read about up to the town of EZE just outside Nice. It was meant to be a 3 hour round trip with great views, but I was not expecting over an hour of scrambling straight up hill to reach the town.

The town of EZE was stunning, with narrow winding cobbled laneways with amazing little artisan shops. Given we were only ½ way up the walks total assent we decided to call it quits and come back down the way we came.

Staying in a little town of Porlezza at the very top of Lake Lugano we were treated to an apartment with a magnificent view of the imposing mountains and lake.

We spend the days hiking and we hired kayaks to explore some of the crazy big homes on Lake Como, including Richard Branson’s and the one used in the Bond movie Casino Royal.

We worked with the children at this point to see what they wanted to do next. It was decided that Salzburg was a must for Sound of Music reasons, and thus we headed up through Switzerland – still the most amazing drive of the trip, given the stunning beauty of the snow covered alps contrasted with the green fields – and into Germany. We stopped by the Neuschwanstein Castle that inspired the Disney Sleeping Beauty castle you see at the start of all Disney movies and stayed outside Munich at an equestrian centre (thanks again Air B&B) that had beautiful accommodation where all the furniture had been made by hand from local timbers by the owner.

swimming

The purpose of our visit to Munich was to take the kids to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. We had been listening to Morris Gliezman’s book series Once in the car and the memorial was a very confronting and powerful addition to the children’s understanding of human nature (particularly after learning about the Kumar Rouge in Cambodia).

Each child took a different approach to engaging with the memorial, Dibs read every single piece of information, Jemima fired a million questions at us in response to the visual imagery on display and Chloe, understandably, took a very cautious approach guided by us to ensure it was not too overwhelming. We then spent the afternoon in Munich, Bratwurst, the Glockenspiel and we also surprised Dibs with Eisbach standing wave (he was suitably impressed!)

Salzburg did not disappoint and the Children were subjected to reliving sound of music for my amusement as we followed the sound of music tour route on hired bicycles!

Then on through Vienna, which we toured in the pouring rain, but managed to have the reportedly best strudel in town!

Click here for a 360 image of the Museums Quartier with multiple appearances from the family!!

Again, recognising our own limitations as a family and the prevailing weather conditions we chopped out early and headed for Budapest. Over 2 days the children led us on a guided tour of the city – Dibs responsible for researching and guiding the Pest side of the river and the girls the Buda side. The city was spectacular, even if the weather did not really help our cause. The buildings were stunning, very like Paris, but much more run down. We walked around taking in the beauty of the city, but perhaps our favourite experience was the Thermal Baths, which were made even more memorable by a massive thunder storm that descended. The skies turned black, the thunder rumbled and the rain poured down. Unfortunately, when the lightening struck we were evacuated from the pool for the duration of the storm. We hung out in the sauna and then enjoyed the stunning beauty of the pool complex.

After I forced Dibs to do an illegal lap of the lap pool (no swimming cap) note life guards in top right of screen in action to stop him and then convinced Chloe I would catch her at the bottom of a super slippery slide – I was definitely in contention for Mother of the Year!!

Even more so when we cracked it over Jemima’s crossing of roads without looking – thus she was penalised with 10 push ups for each intersection she failed to look…..it was a long day!!

After Budapest we made a impromptu decision to head into Bosnia Herzegovina and we are so grateful we did. It is a simply beautiful country that is, despite the fact that 25 years has elapsed, still wears the scars of the Balkan’s war.

I must say that after seeing abandoned destroyed buildings littered throughout the country, buildings with bullet holes peppered across the facades and then visiting the Crimes Against Humanities museum, the children were very depressed about human kind (remembering that they had recently learnt about the Holocaust and the Cambodian Kumar Rouge genocide.)

The Bosnian conflict particularly confronting as it is so recent. The most incredible ruminant of this time that we explored was the abandoned bob sled track from the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. Hidden in the mountains overlooking the city the track was left to ruin and used as a sniper post during the 3 year siege of the city in the early 90s. It is now being reclaimed by the Forrest and used by street artists. The post-apocalyptic feel of the place was intensified by the rain, low hanging mist and complete absence of any other people.

Two of Dib’s best photos from the trackWe explored Sarajevo’s old town which is a surreal meeting of east meets west, feeling like a cross between a Turkish bizarre and central Paris. We indulged in Bosnian culinary fair, enjoying Cevapi, arrays of meet platters, chocolate and pistachio cakes and Bosnian coffee – which we are now addicted to (think dark black molasses like coffee soup!) We enjoyed these treats while watching the world go by in the stunning old town streets.

We also stumbled across this little bakery when walking home one evening. There was a cue of about 15 local lining up at a little window in the wall. Shem thought that if that many people were lining up – it must be good. Because we are good parents we sent Dibs over and he started chatting with the locals who said it was the best bread in Sarajevo- who were we to argue. I could not help but notice the bullet holes in the wall next to the bakery.

Moving on we headed to Mostar (made famous by the RedBull cliff diving competition held there each year.) Dibs was keen to jump of the bridge and have a RedBull for the first time (we chose to concede the second of these rather than the first!)

A stunning town also steeped in history, including its own stories from the recent war, where the famous Stari Most Bridge was blown up in order to separate the Muslim Bosniacs from the Serbs and also because it was seen to be symbolic of Islam. It was rebuilt with the help of UNESCO in 2004. It spans the emerald green Neretva river and forms the centre piece of a truly beautiful old town. The drive to and from Mostar was also quite beautiful following the Neretva river.

Dib’s best Mostar photo

We visited the Blagaj monestary which is in a valley built into a cliff at the point were the river bursts forth from a sheer cliff. Even though it is now surrounded by resteraunts and tourist vendors you can still sense how the tranquility of the place could have been quite sacred to the monks.

From there we hit the road for Croatia and we were pretty keen to get there, as such, when we accidentally drove past the semi abandoned and UNESCO listed town of Pocitelj and we almost decided to just keep on going. However, guilt set in and we did a U-turn. Thank god we did, the town was amazing and the kids were fascinated by the old abandoned towers and the access we had to just climb and explore the town. It was simply stunning. The highlight was the tower in the old town wall that had been used by snipers during the war

Click here to see our cool 360 image from inside the tower

For our costal experience in croatia we chose Omis about 30 minutes out of split. We chose it because it is meant to be the adventure capital of Croatia and we heard how busy Split was. Anyway, by this time the kids were in charge of where we went and where we stayed so I just sat back and relaxed (and drunk!) Chloe totally nailed the accommodation, it was right up at the top of the town, as far up as you could be.

Yes this may mean a fairly tough walk if we wanted to go into town, but sitting up of the deck was simply beautiful – not to mention the spa and sauna, which the kids loved. Especially while eating sugar and watching Netflix!

As a physical family that definitely cements physical memories over cerebral ones I thought an extreme canyoning adventure might be perfect for us. Unfortunately the minimum age was 13, luckily we could pass Chloe off as 13!!! The experience was such fun and is definitely the type of activity that suits our family – Shem and my knees did beg to differ, and I certainly felt my age as we scrambled over the rocks. The canyon was beyond beautiful and because of the time of the year we were fortunate to have it almost to ourselves. I marvel at Chloe’s ability and bravery sometimes as she mixes it up with the older two. After 5 hours we were delivered exhausted back to Omis only to have to hike the challenging rocky steep 20 minute ascent back to our appartment – I can tell you the beers tasted extra good on the balcony that evening. What impressed us greatly during our travels was Dib’s commitment to his photography. He would regularly get up before sunrise and hike to the top of mountains to capture the sunrise, or head off for hours around towns to take photos.

Canyoning montage:

We traveled up the coast to explore Split and unfortunately arrived at the same time as the cruise boats. It was a beautiful city but the crowds were a bit much for us.

We jumped back in the car and drove to the world renowned UNESCO listed Plitvice Lakes National Park (we had never heard of them!) Driving up from the coast into the mountains was enlightening as the terrain was so different, it felt a little like the Canadian Rockies. While the park was swarming with people, the shimmering blue water cascading of over waterfalls surrounded by dramatic greenery was beautiful and unique. The water was clearer than I have every seen and the colour perfect.

Onto Slovenia we went keeping up our punishing pace. I had heard that it was a beautiful, but the travel fatigue had well and truly set in and I was not expecting anything much different to what we had seen in Bosnia and Croatia. We had spent the morning at a beach in Croatia after teaching the kids how to change a flat tyre on a remote small country road with no phone reception and remain married!

So when we arrived mid afternoon at Predjama Castle and Sockjan Caves, with still an hours driving afterwards to get to our accommodation I was feeling less that enthusiastic about looking around.

This feeling was magnified when when discovered that the only way to see the caves was on a 2hour guided tour and that the tour departed at 5pm. If I had my way we would have skipped the Caves altogether- thank goodness we didn’t – they were one of the most magnificent things I have ever seen. The sheer size of the caverns with stalactites and stalagmites over 200,000 years old blew our minds.

Not to mention the river that runs through one of the largest caves – It made its way straight into our top ten! Then on to Ljubljana – learning how to pronounce it on the way. The smallest of Europe’s capital cites, a beautiful and lively city we explored on a Saturday morning.

Lake Beld was said to be a ‘must visit’, however again I was skeptical that it was going to be better that anything we had seen recently. Again how wrong could I be. It is simply the most stunning blue lake – it doesn’t seem real and we enjoyed days swimming in the lake, running around it and even swimming to the island in the middle, much to the entertainment of a group of Japanese tourists.

We were so sad that we had to leave after only two days, but with a flight to Greece beckoning our flexibility to change plans had come to an end. We headed to Milan to drop off our trusty Fugly, via Venice of course!

Click here to see our 360 degree image of Piazza San Marco gloriously empty

It was with mixed feelings we headed to the airport with car safely dispatched. One month of our travels to go, but all of it planned and booked. I was looking forward to the reduction in logistical pressures, but sad that there was now little room to plan as we go.

…… It has taken me so long to write this that I can now add Greece! We smashed Athens in a single 8 hour day on foot planned and researchers by the kids, who were our tour guides for the day and did a brilliant job.

We then hopped a ferry to Naxos – chosen because of its beaches and it did not disappoint. Our accommodation was up on a hill with a beautiful view of the town and across to Paros. A great place to spend 5 days.

Finally we spent two nights on Santorini, the first fulfilling a dream of mine to stay on the coldera in Fira. Last time I visited nearly 20 years ago I was staying in budget accommodation on the other side of the island and was very envious of the view. Thanks to two years worth of saved up birthday presents for Shem and I from Mum and Dad we were treated to night living above our means! We did not move for nearly 24 hours just admiring the view! Except Dibs who thought it was sacrilegious that no one was using their pools to watch the sunset and the next thing you know we see him sitting in a pool belonging to a different apartments!

What have we gotten out of this part of our adventure?

The time we have spent together as a family has been just so powerful, the good bits and the challenges. The children are getting along so well (mostly!) and I am hopeful that at these pivotal ages this will help cement life long connections with each other. Two months 24/7 (and one to go!) is full on, but they have truly done it in style.

The learning has been so intense for them: continents; countries; cites; cultures; currencies and conversions; cuisine; (I’m seriously not trying to make all these C words!); War and Genocide; periods of history (Ancient, gothic, medieval, renaissance). They have helped plan what we do, book our accommodation, research and be our tour guides (#cheapskatesRUs!) around major sights, maintain a earnings and expenditure ledger (complete with currency conversions). Physically they have been extended, walking, running, enduring 30 days above 38. They have hiked ladened with packs in the heat, in the dark, in the rain, through a Thai new year water festival. They have climbed more stairs than some people will in a lifetime. They have demonstrated great resilience when required to get up for a flight at 1am, walk 6km in 40 degrees with packs to get to the airport due to the kings coronation, to go with the flow and maintain a positive outlook when we are lost, hungry, tired. They have been brave, pushing themselves to take on every experience be it physical, cerebral, or culinary. I am so proud of them. I’m proud of Shem and I too – we haven’t killed each other or the kids yet!

Shem and I have been so pleased that it has turned out that approximately 70% of what we have done is new for us too. We went into this thinking that we would be retracing past travels, but it simply has not been the case except for major cities. We are off to meet Shem’s mother, sister and our nephews in Italy for 3 weeks. This again will be a different style of travel for us and the kids. We will be revisiting most things in Italy for a second or third time, but sharing experiences with loved ones connects you on a very different level and we are really looking forward to that.