DAY 101: FAREWELL EUROPE

WE knew this day would come. Day 101 of 101 days.

And it came and went without fanfare.

No sightseeing. No expensive dinners, final tourist attractions or glitzy hotels. 

Just a comfortable night's sleep opposite Clapham Common before breakfast and a walk around nearby Colliers Wood - the new stomping ground of our eldest son who has moved to London.

We couldn't think of anywhere else we'd rather be or anything else we would rather be doing.

We only hope our flu won't be our parting gift to him and his beautiful partner.

It's been a wild ride and I hope you've enjoyed living vicariously through our adventures on our first European vacation - our introduction to 16 amazing countries (not counting Dubai and Singapore) that put on their best faces for us - only two rainy days (in Paris while visiting the Palace and Gardens of Versailles, and in Munich while visiting Mad King Ludwig's Castles, ironically in tribute to Versailles) and a couple of showery ones.

Apart from the Paris pickpocketing episode, everything went according to plan but with plenty of pleasant surprises along the way.

Here's how we see the wash-up (but not in any particular order) ...

Favourite rooms/friendliest hotels: Hotel Rebenhof, Baden-Baden, Germany; Hotel Splendid, Lake Maggiore, Italy; AForAthens, Athens, Greece; Elisabetta Rooms, Vernazza, Italy; The Old Mill, Salisbury, England; Base2Stay, Liverpool, England; Park Inn by Radisson, Berlin, Germany; Zurich alten Brucke, Schiltach, Germany; Best Western Hotel Goldener Adler, Innsbruck, Austria; AllYouNeed Hotel, Salzburg, Austria; Hotel Eder, Munich.

Hotels in best locations: Hotel Oceania, Saint-Malo, France; Riviera Marriott La Porte de Monaco, Monaco; All'Angelo, Venice, Italy; Hotel Pickwick, Lucern, Switzerland; Regyn's, Montmartre, France; Hotel Saint-Michel, Brussels, Belgium; Hotel Oberkirch, Freiburg, Germany.

Best attractions/value-for-money excursions and tours: Eagles Nest, Germany (out of Salzburg with Panorama Tours); Original Sound of Music Tour (out of Salzburg with Panorama Tours); Moulin Rouge, Paris; Macbeth at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London; Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre, London; Innsbruck Card for free entry and transport to all attractions); Paris Pass (though we could have made even more use of this!); Anfield (Liverpool FC) Stadium tour; Michael Faherty's Aran Islands Tour, Ireland; Old Storehouse Guinness Factory tour, Dublin; the Louvre, Paris; Arc De Triomphe, Paris; the  Oberbayern Royal Castles Tour (Mad King Ludwig) from Munich; Mozart Dinner Concert, Salzburg; Hop On, Hop Off buses; Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland; Jungfraujoch Highest Railway in Europe and surrounding valley rail/cableway pass to Murren out of Interlaken; Schoenbrunn Palace, Vienna; Atomium, Brussels.

Favourite free activities: picnicking in the park at the Eiffel Tower on sunset; walking around any major city or village to get a feel for the place; wandering around any ancient ruins in Rome or Athens especially; the Best of Lake Lucerne (free with Eurail Global Rail Pass); walking around any city parks and gardens; strolling around St Andrews golf courses.

Cities we enjoyed the most: Dublin; Interlarken; Rome; Prague; Edinburgh; Bruges; Paris; Venice; London; Inbsbruck; Salzburg; Cinque Terre.

We have unfinished business and would have liked to have spent more time in: Biarritz, southern France; Positano, Amalfi Coast, Italy; Dublin, Ireland; the Scottish Highlands; York, England; Bath, the Cotswalds, England; Liverpool, England; Prague, Czech Republic; Bundoran, Northern Ireland; St Andrews, Scotland (birthplace of golf); Cologne, Germany; Munich, Germany; San Gimignano, Italy; Carcasonne, France; Bordeaux, France; Turin, Italy; Siena, Italy; Florence, Italy; Lake Maggiore, Italy; Pompeii, Italy; Burano Island, Italy; Dubrovnik, Croatia; the Greek Islands; London, England.

Best scenic drives: Amalfi Coast; Slea Head Peninsula, Dingle, Ireland; Ring of Kerry, Ireland; Eze, Monaco; the Black Forest, Germany; the Scottish Highlands, Loch Lomond and Loch Ness, Scotland; the Cotswalds, England; Aran Islands and Connemara, Ireland.

What we wished we could fit in: shopping in Harrod's, London; Corfu and Mykonos (also due to bad sailing weather), Greece; Hampton Court Palace (home of Henry VIII); Chester, south of Liverpool; Isle of Skye, Scotland; Orkney Islands, Scotland; Whitby, Lake District and Oxford in England; a cooking class in Tuscany.

I couldn't speak more highly of our Globus La France and Italian Mosaic tours, our Star Clipper 10-night Mediterranean cruise (of which we were a media guest), Eurail and the various national railways, British Airways (Athens to London) and Emirates (Brisbane-London and London-Brisbane). These companies all exceeded our expectations and delivered us safely home or to our next leg of the trip.

*Thanks for reading and being part of my little project, Europe 101. I've learnt a lot and I hope you have, too - whether you are a student of the world like me or a seasoned travel "professor".

If you'd like to see the itinerary in full, please contact me on Facebook or email shirleysinclair62@hotmail.com

DAY 97-100: ATHENS

HUBBIE reckons all he needs are some good draftsmen, a chisel, hammer and cement and he could "fix" Athens.

He's not happy with the state the Romans and other conquerors such as the Heruli left it in, not to mention the following 2000 or so years of wear and tear.

Yep, all it needs is a little tender loving care, a few new building approvals and a good maintenance plan.

Haha.

Seriously, we love you, Athens, just the way you are.

We never would have thought just how much our imaginations could be captivated by a bunch of old ruins.

But we managed to spend hours walking among them, strolling the streets beneath the Acropolis and stumbling upon yet another major excavation site or monument or temple on our Athens map.

From our room in the AForAthens Hotel across from Monastiraki Square, thousands of years of history were laid out before us, and we could stare directly across to the Acropolis bathed in its golden light at night from the popular rooftop garden bar.

Feeling a little less than 100% after contracting the flu, we decided after disembarking from Star Clipper at Athens' Piraeus Port to buy two 12-euro tickets for four days to take our time visiting the major ancient sites.

Because of their close proximity to one another, we managed to snake our way through Hadrian's Library, Roman Agora and the Ancient Agora and Museum, and end on the rocky hill opposite the Acropolis at sunset for some magical shots on the first day.

We devoted day two to the massive Acropolis site (including the Parthenon, Temple of Athena Nike, Propylaea and the Erechtheion), as well as the New Acropolis Museum, where we spent several hours for the price of another five euro each, as well as taking in the neighbouring Odeum of Herodes Atticus and Theatre of Dionysus. Later, we discovered The Olympieion (Temple of Olympian Zeus), walked past Congress Hall and the Panathinaiko stadium and ended up in the Plaka for Sunday afternoon drinks.

Day three led us on a long walk through the markets (reminiscent of Melbourne's Queen Victoria Markets) - full of spruikers seeking your business, every fresh food smell imaginable and a colourful array of all things good and Greek in this world) - to the National Archeological Museum where we managed to find those Santorini frescos and priceless collection of sculptures, funeral monuments, shipwrecked treasures of the ancient world, and everyday objects and jewellery that unbelievably have survived the test of time or have been painstakingly put back together like a jigsaw.

Hours seem to fly by here, much like the centuries to these pieces.

We change hotels to Hotel Adrian in the Plaka. And as the flu really grabs hold, we take things a little easier for our final day - just hanging around the Plaka's great little tavernas and bars and spending our final hours before flying out at the Kerameikos: the ancient cemetery of Athens where important Athenians were buried for 1000 years.

Within the site are the ancient walls of Athens and the Sacred Gate, the Dipylon Gate which was the main entrance to the city where the Panathenaic procession began, and between the two gates is the Pompeion, where the preparations were made for the procession in honor of Athena. 

The Eridanos River which once passed through the Sacred Gate still flows beneath the site.

The onsite museum is also well worth a look for many of the original statues and funeral monuments.

Lesson of the day: I now no longer get out of bed for anything under 2000 years old.

DAY 88-97: SAILING AWAY WITH OUR HEARTS

CLASSIC  whitewashed houses contrasting against a brilliant blue church dome.

We've all seen the tourist brochures with that iconic photo of Santorini in the Greek Islands and daydreamed of taking that photograph for ourselves.

I know I did. 

But until the SPV Star Clipper actually sailed into Fira Harbour this morning, I thought that that was all Santorini was about.

How wrong was I?

The tourist brochures never show from the waterfront looking up. That's because some people consider the volcanic cliffs ugly.

But Santorini's beauty is in her completeness.

"Ah. Santorini. There is no other Greek Island like her. She is unique in the world," the old man serving in the souvenir shop tells us when we express our love for the scenery later in the day.

And he certainly is right.

Santorini is one of the Cyclades group of islands in the southern Aegean Sea, and lies about 200km from mainland Greece.

The island, which the Greeks call Thira officially, was once round. But about 1650BC, a catastrophic volcanic eruption caused the island to sink and break up, leaving the caldera and high cliffs we see today.

Our Flavours of Santorini shore excursion takes us to the archeological site at Akrotiri to the south, where we see fairly well-preserved buildings and up to three-storey homes of the Minoans who settled on the island from Crete and subsequently had their civilisation destroyed (though we hear that the absence of human remains points to the fact they likely escaped in time after the first warning signs).

Excavations began in 1967 at the site likened to Italy's Pompeii, and a bio-climatic roof now protects the ancient area from the elements. Magnificent frescos found in some of the houses are displayed in the National Archeological Museum in Athens.

In exclusive Oia on the northern part of the caldera, we walk through narrow alleyways filled with trendy boutiques to the Old Fort for majestic photo opportunities of the terraced buildings on this perfect northern-autumn day.

Fira, the capital, offers more opportunity to shop, take panoramic photos and relax with a drink overlooking the harbour before getting up close and personal with the long, long lines of donkeys - the symbol of the island that still offer visitors rides up and down the hundreds of steps from the harbour to the top as a quirky alternative to the funicular or sore feet.

Lesson of the day: The Greek Islands are indeed everything the tourist brochures say ... and so much more.

Donkey count: has gone off the charts.