Read about our 2023 European Summer Adventures, one glass at a time.
#23 – “When Wine Calls” – Reflections on “The Summer Vintage” Adventure!
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” as we attempt to reflect over the past three months of “The Summer Vintage” adventure. Throughout the trip and when we returned home the most common question we were asked was “so what was has been the highlight of the trip” and our answer has always been “there were…
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#22 – “France now Calling” – we finish our adventure in the Champagne capital of the World!
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” as we finish our 3-month adventure appropriately in the Champagne capital of the world. Driving up the motorway towards Paris it was with very mixed emotions. We were very excited to be travelling to the Champagne region and catch up with our friends that were also travelling there so…
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#21 – “France now Calling” – to the villages of Burgundy!
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” as we drive through the magnificent French countryside on route to Burgundy. Driving through France the first observation you get is that the scenery is so different from that in Italy. Apart from the Alps the land is so flat with country roads that are so straight and head…
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#20 – “France now Calling” – First Stop Annecy!
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” as we commence the final leg of our adventure travelling through the spectacular countryside of France. When we were planning this trip, we looked at several alternatives to get from Northern Italy to Annecy in France including via train and car but none of the options were viable, in…
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#19 – “Italy Calling us Back” as we travel to the Dolomites
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” as we continue our travels through Northern Italy. When we were initially planning this adventure, we had not factored in a trip to the Dolomites. However, after meeting a couple who were staying in one of our favourite wineries in Tasmania while we were there and had recently travelled…
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#18 – “Italy Calling us Back ” to the Intriguing city of Verona
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” as we tour the intriguing city of Verona. It was only a few hours train trip from Venice to Verona so what could go wrong. It started with us unable to find the carriage or seat numbers on our on-line tickets. They had to be on the paperwork somewhere…
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#17 – “Italy Calling us Back” to Northern Italy and Romantic Venice
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” this time we are back in Northern Italy in the romantic city of Venice. Arriving in Venice proved to be more difficult than we had envisaged. The plan was that we would arrive on the ferry from Rovinj into the main port area and then catch a local Vaporetto…
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#16 – “Croatia Calling” – Our Emotional Last Stop in Croatia, Rovinj
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” as we end our travels through Croatia at the picturesque town of Rovinj. Rovinj was always going to be a highly emotional stop for us on our trip as Pauline’s father Geoff tragically and suddenly passed away here 6 years ago. Pauline and I travelled over from Australia at…
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#15 – “Croatia Calling” – Cruising along the fabulous Croatian Coastline
Dobar dan and welcome back to “When Wine Calls” from on board MV Bellissima. Our first full day on board was busy as we set sail for the Elaphiti Islands with the first item on the itinerary being, what else, but an onboard wine tasting presented by the very knowledgeable, multi talented Head Steward “Mate”…
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#14 – “Croatia Calling” – First stop, the historic City of Dubrovnik!
Dobar dan and welcome back to “When Wine Calls” this time from fabulous Croatia. During the 3-hour car ride down from Split we were not far out of Dubrovnik when we received an E Mail from our hotel advising us that due to “unforeseen circumstances” our booking had been cancelled. We immediately thought that our…
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#12b – “Puglia Road Trip Calling” Part 3 – One last stop before we say goodbye to Puglia!
Buongiorno! and welcome again to “When Wine Calls” as we head into the final days of our road trip through Puglia. In the last blog I mentioned that after leaving Masseria il Frantoio we were heading to our next stop with a high degree of anticipation. But on the way we wanted to call into…
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#12a – “Puglia Road Trip Calling” Part 2 – it Just Keeps Getting Better!
Buongiorno! and welcome back again to “When Wine Calls” as we continue our road trip through Puglia. A few hours drive north from Fillippo de Raho Agri Relais along the usual narrow country roads is a town called Ceglie Messapica perched high on a hill in the Istrian Valley – the valley known as the…
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#12 – “Puglia Road Trip Calling” – What a Welcoming Part of the World!
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” from Puglia. Buongiorno! In our blog on the Scottish Highlands, I outlined the fun we had when we picked up the hire car in Edinburgh and driving on “Single Track Roads”. As you are all aware now, we managed to survive that journey after we worked out how to…
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#11 – “Puglia Calling” – we made it finally!
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” as we continue our travels through Italy. After just over 4 hours on the train from Rome we finally arrived at Bare Centrale, the gateway to the Puglia region of Italy located on the south-east coast and often called the Heel of Italy. We had wanted to travel to…
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#10 – Italy Keeps Calling “Ciao from Rome”
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” as we travel historical, romantic and enchanting Italy. Following out train trip from Bologna (about 2 ½ hours) we arrived at Roma Termini on our next leg of our adventure. As expected, the terminal was chaotic as we made our way to the taxi rank where we stood in…
Keep reading#9 – Italy Calling “Ciao” from Bologna
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” from romantic Italy. Our first stop in Italy was Bologna. It our first visit to this city which is one of the largest university towns in Italy and so full of history. In comparison to where we have been to date on this trip the weather when we exited…
Keep reading#8 “When Wine Calls” Arrives in Europe-Amsterdam Calling
Welcome again to “When Wine Calls”. We have now arrived in Europe with our first stop on this leg of our “When Wine Calls” adventure being Amsterdam. We were last in Amsterdam around 8 years ago when we brought our daughter over to London for a football camp and took the opportunity to fly to…
Keep reading#7 – Our Time in London and Scotland Comes to an End – Europe Calling
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls”. We hope you are enjoying reading about our adventures. Sadly, the time had come for us to leave the Isle of Skye and we made a dash back through the Highlands over to the East Coast passing through Inveraray where they will be holding Highland Games there in mid…
Keep reading#6 – Isle of Skye Calling- we made it back!
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls”. In my last post I mentioned that our next stop on this adventure would be back to the Isle of Skye to rewrite history from our previous sojourn. Well, we successfully made it back and it seems so different to that time on our honeymoon over 34 years ago.…
Keep reading#5 – Scottish Highlands Calling
Welcome again to “When Wine Calls” – I trust you enjoyed reading about our Edinburgh adventure. We were so excited to pick up the hire car and head off on our road trip through the Scottish Highlands. We were upgraded to a VW Golf for the journey but ran into some issues straight away with…
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#3 – London Calling
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls”. Our first flight leg of the trip allowed us to enjoy French champagne, wonderful chardonnay and our favourite dessert wine, all being on the menu as we winged our way over to Doha. The hostesses were tremendous, so friendly and helpful and the food wow!!! and so unexpected that…
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#2 “On our Way”!
Welcome back to “When Wine Calls”. We hope you have enjoyed reading about the lead-up to our adventure. Finally, the day has come as we load up all our luggage to head off to the airport. It is still hard to imagine this day has arrived – I am sure reality will set in when…
Keep readingPrologue – The Why?
Welcome to our blog “When Wine Calls” – A Trip a Lifetime in the Planning. I know many of you reading this blog will be asking why we called the blog “When Wine Calls”? For our friends who know us all too well they will easily know the answer to this question while the rest…
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When Wine Calls 