Italy - Florence, Venice & Verona

After Rome we jumped on the train and headed to Florence, Florence was a beautiful city. We spent our day there walking around and admiring the architecture, we also went and had a look at David of course and climbed to the top of the hill to see Florence by night.

From 2009-11 - Florence

From 2009-11 - Florence

I found this shop while wondering around thought it was too funny not to take a photo of!!

From 2009-11 - Florence

Next stop was Venice, it was pretty cool with all the little canals and shops but it did smell! :-) We met a few aussies in Venice at an Irish pub who were able to give us a few travelling tips along the way. The Food in Venice was awesome so we stuffed ourselves every day and we found these awesome cocktails that we could wonder around with whilst site seeing.

From 2009-11 - Venice

From 2009-11 - Venice

From 2009-11 - Venice

We were in Verona for only a day so we checked out Juliet and touched her boob.

From 2009-11 - Verona

From 2009-11 - Verona

Rome - The Second Time

There was not meant to be a "Rome the second time" but due to some unfortunate circumstances we were stuck in Rome for a quite a few days.

It did give us a chance to go check out Vatican city and also catch up with Mez!!! Which definitely brightened our stop over in Rome. :-)

From 2009-11 - Rome (the second time)

From 2009-11 - Rome (the second time)

From 2009-11 - Rome (the second time)

Athens and The Greek Islands

We flew into Athens after Berlin to start our 8 day cruise with a tour of Athens, good old Jody had booked the cheapest cruise she could find on the internet so we were expecting real quality :-).

Josche was joking around with me the day before saying that he thinks that we will be on a tour with a lot of retired americans I just laughed it off. When we got to the bus for our tour Josche's joke wasn't so funny hehehe.....

The tour of Athens was quite an experience, we couldn't help but laugh when the tour guide said that we weren't going to go up the stairs to the Acopolis we would take the path and there would only be a few stairs at the end, the oldies started to winge that they had to go up stairs at the end to see the Acropolis :-) .... lets just say it was a very slow paced tour.

After Athens we boarded the cruise ship to see the Greek Islands - Mykonos, Kusadasi, Rhodes, Crete & Santorini, lets just say the Greek Islands are absolutely stunning! The cruise ship was a blast and it was so good to walk around in Tshirt boardies and thongs!

Our favourite Island was Santorini, the town is built up the top of the hills, so you either walk up, catch the cable car or go via donkey. So we chose to go via Donkey it was heaps of fun, the donkey's would just wander on up at the own pace stopping to eat, and go to the toilet every so ofter. I beat Josche up on his donkey though :-) The sunset from Santorini is stunning also an very romantic ;-)

Rome - The First Time and Berlin

We left Innsbruck and jumped on another sleeper to Rome (we aren't real big fans of the sleeper), once we got to Rome the first thing we realised was that it wasn't easy to navigate and battling with the traffic was like playing frogger.

Once we had finally found the hotel we took off to check out the colosseum before it started to rain, by the time we had finished the tour it was well and truely raining and every Indian in Rome was out selling umbrellas.

The next day it was still pouring down rain. That morning We watched a car literally bump the car in front and behind to fit into the car park. We learnt this was ok in Rome and that leaving your hand break off was common practice so this could occur. We decided to catch a tour bus to have a look around so we were warm and dry, so we got see or the Rome sights, Trevi, Pantheon etc... By the afternoon it had cleared up and turned out to be a really nice day.

From 2009-11 - Rome

From 2009-11 - Rome

From 2009-11 - Rome

From 2009-11 - Rome

That night we caught another sleeper to Berlin we arrived mid afternoon and it was snowing!!! And might I add bloody cold!!! Josche ran outside so he could stand in the snow while it was snowing and after that we found our way to our hostel.
We were roomed with 2 other aussies which was quite funny one was very talkative and snored but we survived. :-)

We checked out the history museum, Checkpoint Charlie and whats left of the Berlin wall. It was an interesting time to be in Berlin as it was approaching 20 years since the wall came down so the city was ramping up for celebrations.

Innsbruck, Austria - the engagement story

Innsbruck by far has been the best part of our trip, for the obvious reasons which I will explain but also because it was just absolutely beautiful. Outside of our window we could see the Austrian Alps, the weather was beautiful, blue sky's and snow capped mountains.

On the day we arrived Josche found out that he had graduated from his Masters, so we went out to celebrate it in true Jody and Josche style.... at the pub. We had several beers and glasses of wine which ended up slightly messy, more so for me :-) A photo below.

From 2009-10 - Innsbruck

The next day I woke up with a mighty hangover and a craving for pizza and my lovely now fiance went out into the cold to get me some. I was determined not to let my hangover ruin the day so we went exploring up into the Austrian Alps via Cable Car. The Zoo was the first stop to have a look at the bears :-). I was feeling much better after the Zoo so we continued on our way up higher to have a look at the view.

We got to the next level and had a look at the tickets to go right up to the top, we hummed and haaaaed for a while and decided it would be worth it so we jumped on the next cable car and ended up at a beautiful little restaurant and a whole heap of snow. We occupied ourselves for ages running around throwing snow balls at each other (Josche won that game, I was a little bit uncoordinated to stay standing and through a snowball).

After this we got back in the cable car and made it all the way to the top, it was spectacular the weather was so perfect blue sky's against snow capped mountains it was stunning. We hung around up here for a couple of hours because it was so relaxing and perfect. It also meant that we had stayed long enough that everyone else had left Josche started to ask strange questions like "Do you think this would be a good place to propose?", but me being me still had no idea what was about to happen. The sun started setting and I said we probably should head back so we don't miss the last cable car and got up to go. Josche took his time and came over to me and handed me a small box, I looked at it still confused and still unaware of what was about to happen. He took a photo of me holding the box with this confused look on my face. He then got down on one knee and said that he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and ask me to marry him. I then of course burst into tears and said Yes. :-)

It could not have been a more perfect proposal and it something that neither of us will ever forget.