Ohhh Vienna (Ultra vox)

Normal transmission resumed! John has bought a USB cord for the phone so we can transfer the phone photos to the blog now. Not too sure what the problem with the camera is (something to do with the zoom according to the Italian camera shop man). Right now we are in Vienna - very architecturally pretty city and a bit more 'civilised' than Italy. Plus we were getting a bit sick of pizza and pasta - into the Wiener schnitzel and apfel strudel now! Some of the photos below have come through out of sequence so hopefully you can make sense of them as we can't figure out how to correct them!

Oops forgot to rotate this one - it's MC (somewhere) in front of the Spanish Steps.

Below is our last day in Rome and the view of the city from a park (Borghese Villa).

One of the five towns in Cinque Terre. We hiked between the little towns - cool day but unfortunately the weather wasn't good to us - between the first few towns it was bucketing down. Ever the optimist John thought this made it even better though...
After the sun started coming out. The Cinque Terre was very picturesque.

And Florence. Much prettier than Rome, this is the view from Piazza Michelangelo (just down the road from the camping ground we stayed at).
We stopped in Pisa on the way to Florence and took the obligatory humourous photos.
Outside our hostel in Cinque Terre. We stayed in a wee village called Piano di Follo just outside of La Spezia. It was great to get away from the neverending tooting cars in the city. Very peaceful! Unfortunately, none of the pubs open at 9am were showing the All Blacks game (we only spent two hours traipsing round La Spezia trying to find one... MC didn't whinge... much).
Another little Cinque Terre town. They're all perched on the edge of the cliffs like this.
The views along the walk were beautiful.

Back to Florence and the majestic Duomo. See if you can spot John waving.
Another perspective of the Duomo.
Um not sure why I was rubbing the hog... but surely it was for something good?
Florence and the Ponte Vecchio in the background. Unfortunately John couldn't afford any of the jewellery in the tiny goldsmiths lining the bridge for MC's birthday. Unfortunately he couldn't afford anything!! (awwwww....)
Hee hee. We had to laugh every time we saw these cars, they were very popular in Florence.

Onto Venice in St Marks Square with the cathedral in the background.
And back to Florence. We hired another scooter (! Brenda - called Tickly) to explore the Tuscan countryside with. Unfortunately I think it was too early for fields of sunflowers and it also started raining not long into our adventure.
John and Tickly getting acquainted. We cheered ourselves up in the rain by singing our Italian theme song (the teenage mutant ninja turtle song... it's really catchy...). We have now seen artworks by and sculptures of all 4 of the turtles.
We really didn't know you weren't allowed to take photos of David, honest! But seriously, it would have been rude not to after queueing for 3.5 hours.
MC scoffing pizza (what else?) on her birthday.

Back to Venice. We really liked it here, not half as many tourists as expected. But just as many pigeons.
John with some of those pigeons (and palaces) in St Marks Square.
We forked out for a gondola ride. It really would have been rude not to.
The gondola ride was fun and very relaxing too.
John on the gondola. Another reason for liking Venice was that on the second day there, John discovered that the bar at the Camping Ground had Sky and managed to see the All Black's second test - whoop whoop.

And finally we get out of Italy and into Austria. This is the summer palace of the Hapsburgs. Has over 1000 rooms and beautiful gardens.
At the Naschmarkt in Vienna - we found dragonfruit (and reminisced about Malaysia).
Found some shade (very hot here today) in the gardens outside one of the many museums in Vienna.
The Hapsburgs' city palace. Very regal.
Inside the walls of the palace.

Back to the summer palace - a cool fountain that is meant to look like it's in ruins.
A view of the palace (and surrounding Vienna) from the hill in front of it.
Another hee hee moment. This friendly little squirrelly/chipmunky critter jumped onto our park bench and started nibbling at John's biscuit. Seconds later he scratched John's hand, snatched the biscuit and ran away up a tree with it!
Another fountain at the summer palace.

One more day in Vienna before we move onto Prague.