“When Wine Calls” – The Winter Grape”, A Christmas Adventure of a Lifetime with the Whole Family!

Prologue 

Welcome back to “When Wine Calls”.

In our recent “Reflections” post summing up the amazing “The Summer Vintage” Adventure I mentioned that we would be on a new adventure shortly called “The Winter Grape”.

Many of you who read that post will no doubt be wondering what this trip is all about and why it is occurring so quickly from returning from “The Summer Vintage’ Adventure. I will cover these questions off in this prologue and more.

Pauline and I had always wanted to have a white Christmas in Europe as a family but with everybody’s lives at differing points over the years as well as the disruption of Covid we had almost given up on the dream and continued to plan instead for “The Summer Vintage” Adventure. However, in talking with our dear friends Jane & Dougal who indicated they were still interested in travelling to Europe for Christmas in 2023 the seed reignited, and we discussed the idea with our adult children who all then rearranged their lives and agreed to make it a reality complete with our two wonderful grandchildren.

The next item we needed to address was given we were planning to come home from Europe in September after “The Summer Vintage” Adventure could we firstly fit the trip in and secondly or better still stay over in Europe for the duration and meet the family over there. The answer to the first question was “it is a once in a lifetime opportunity that we cannot let slip so the answer was obvious” and in the case of the second question “we reluctantly had to come home in between the trips for family and personal reasons so no we couldn’t stay over”.

Having worked through those issues, the next was how we would do it, where would we go and what did the rest of the family as well as Jane & Dougal with their daughter Miranda want to do while they were over there. In the end we came to the agreement that we would all meet up in an amazing town in the Austrian Alps, Seefeld in Tyrol, to enjoy 6 wonderful days together over Christmas, including Christmas Day (hopefully with snow falling) and either side of that time each family member would encompass their own individual travel plans for them to get the most out of their trip. So that is the plan although with eleven persons making up the overall party the individual travel plans are a nightmare to absorb and so Pauline and I are just working on our own plan and hoping the others all make it to Austria on time.

Our other obstacle for our adventure was the Schengen short stay visa restriction (many of you will be asking what that is about and so rather than go through a lengthy explanation here I will let you all research it independently if you are planning to travel to Europe for an extended period). For us it simply meant that due to our travels in Europe in the summer we could not go straight back and stay in Europe throughout December without travelling elsewhere for a period of days beforehand. 

In meeting that requirement, prior to going on “The Summer Vintage” Adventure, we had booked a trip to Morocco ahead of heading to Europe for Christmas but because of the recent devastating earthquake we decided not to travel there this trip and so we rerouted our itinerary to travel instead through the Border region of the UK, encompassing places such as York, the Yorkshire Dales and the Lakes District to experience our first winter in this beautiful part of the UK. From there we will travel back through London to see the pre-Christmas activities then into Europe with stops in Germany for the various famous Christmas Markets and onto Austria to meet up with everyone. 

Not done there the return leg will encompass wonderful Vienna, Budapest for New Year (with two of our adult children), unbelievable Paris in winter and our final destination in Europe, Brussels. To cap off this remarkable “The Winter Grape” Adventure we will have a final stopover in Dubai to spend time with our dear friends Tom and Lisa and their two amazing children Zoe and Nikos before heading home and meeting up again with all the family to swap stories on their own amazing adventures in Europe and our wonderful Christmas memories of a lifetime – we absolutely cannot wait for this trip to commence and given how cold we are expecting it to be we will no doubt enjoy copious amounts of Red Wine and Mulled Wine along the way compared to the “Aperols”, Champagne and White Wine we consumed on “The Summer Vintage” Adventure.

So, with that background, welcome to our “When Wine Calls” – “The Winter Grape, a Christmas Adventure of a Lifetime with the Whole Family”. We look forward to sharing upcoming episodes of our blog with you in the coming weeks. 

Bruce & Pauline