Our journey begins on Monday 12th October with a flight from Sydney to Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Mark flies on to Helsinki to spend a week with a friend in Finland, while Rona and I will enjoy a few days in Amsterdam before taking an overnight cruise to London. There we will join up with Mark and begin our time in the United Kingdom. On 8th October, we will take an overnight ferry to Amsterdam to begin a whirlwind trek across Europe. Using rail passes, we will be visiting Amsterdam, Paris, Milan, Florence, Venice, Zurich, Munich, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest.

Every second day we will be adding new pages here which will document our journey. The index below will allow you to go straight to our latest post, or look back through earlier posts about places we have already visited on this trip.

• Week i: Amsterdam, The Netherlands