How  did we all end UP there in the first place?

It all started with a simple question ... "Would you like me to come to Sweden with you?" The question was asked by my dad and it was answered rather sternly with "NO!" by me.

So basically my whole family ended up coming :)  

The following is a synopsis of our trip....

Our European adventure started with us spending two cold days in Stockholm, Sweden, going down to Berlin where we found ourselves in the wrong part of the city. We then proceeded to meet a friend of my dad's in the South of Germany at Stuttgart.

From Stuttgart we continued to the beautiful but RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE Switzerland where we really felt the cold when threatened with the possibility of having to spend the night outside :)

We then proceeded further South to Milan and Rome in Italy where we felt like we were all back in India! From Italy we traveled north to the south of France and spent some 6 hours at a beach with no sand at Nice and then finally got to Paris after the most comfortable train ride in the history of the universe!

Paris was full of surprises - the people were actually nice! From Paris, we don't know why we did it, but we traveled all the way to Vienna, Austria and spent an afternoon in Salzburg (My suggestion to sing "The Hills are Alive" was rudely ignored - CONSTANTLY!). From Vienna we went all the way back to Sunny Stockholm (It was +1 on the day we arrived - extremely warm compared to the -10 in Vienna!)

From Stockholm my family left for Sydney while I left for Uppsala  - I wasn't due to depart for another week yet. During that last week, I moved out of my house, met a few friends to say goodbye, checked into a hotel for a day, cleaned out all my food from my kitchen, packed for my trip back home and in the middle of all this studied for my 6 hour long Microbial Genetics Exam! Forgot to add that I had the worst cold and couldn't stop coughing! Could the week have gotten any worse???

Well I think I will speak about the rest of Europe with pictures :) As a family vacation it had everything! We all had our 'occasional' arguments, excitement, amazement and laughter. We all had mixed feelings for Europe - my dad missed good old Sydney water - Giardia infected or not(!), mum couldn't get over how expensive olive oil was in Switzerland, Srini went crazy buying souvenirs and Rama made sure we had pictures of everything - he did a good job too, we have roughly 1250 odd photos and about 4 video tapes worth of coverage! And me? Its hardest writing about yourself, so I will just say that the trip meant more to me than words will do justice... :)

This page is maintained by Vidya Lakshmi Vasudevan. For comments please email to: vidyav@gmail.com