Only one week so far?

Well we're certainly packing a lot into our travels so far as we rush to get to my Valencia conference; already we've clocked up over 1000km on the ground. Meanwhile, through a mix of bad locations and late arrivals, we have experienced a bit of an internet drought over the past few days - bad for you guys waiting to hear our latest missives and frustrating for me trying to do work and for everyone else trying to connect to the rest of the world. Thank God at least on a few occasions for my Nokia phone to be able to access data via the local phone company but, given the international rates I wouldn't want to make a habit of that (still trying to find someone who will sell me a pan-European sim card!)

We've mainly been very lucky with the weather so far when checking out the various cities (despite some dire forecasts); generally the crappy stuff has been while we're driving. As we head into Spain in a day or so, it looks even better for a while, with lots of sunshine and 30 deg temps! But right now it's bucketing down on our little mobile home...

Coping with a world of German and French hasn't been too bad. It helps that most Europeans speak English far better than I speak their language but, even when that hasn't been the case, my schoolboy French/German and the context of the situation has generally been enough to work out what's going on.

From a transport perspective, I'm seeing and experiencing a lot of interesting things across a range of modes and making lots of notes and taking lots of pictures (or when driving, asking my trusty navigator to snap a pic as we whiz past...). From a NZ context there's an interesting mix of good things we could learn from and bizarre ideas we should steer clear of! And navigationally speaking we've had relatively few hiccups in finding our way around (lesson 1: don't believe Google maps every time; lesson 2: avoid most historic CBDs...).

We still need to upload some pics to the web, now that internet has returned. But for now, here are a few more picture highlights:

Travelling in style in our motorhome...

Flying a plane at Deutsches Museum, Munich

 The boys at Strasbourg's Notre Dame cathedral

Arc de Triomphe

Reflection time at the Louvre