Rossco's Grande Tour 2011

[heliman]

Hello friends,

Following the fun and frivolity of last years Grande Tour of Italy plus boat cruise, this years is set to be bigger an better and will of course include pizza "research" along the way.

The itinerary for 2011 is as follows:

Leave Perth and head for South Africa where I will spend some time with family. It will be mostly a "pizza free" visit (unless Dolph invites me to his bushveld oven).

From there I head off to meet up with my wife in Venice and will revisit some of those tasty pizzerias that we discivered last year that are tucked away in the back streets of this exciting city.

Then we board a cruise ship and head off to Croatia, Montenegro and then start a 16 day cruise of the Greek Islands. Hopefully I will be able to sample some Greek pizzas along the way as we are on a port intensive cruise - travel at night and every morning in a new port/island.

The cruise ends in Turkey ... any pizzas in Turkey?? I will have to check and report back!!

I will have comms on the ship so hope to be able to post pics and info along the way as I did last time.

Quite looking forward to the break - almost 6 weeks away from work.. and it may just feel like retirement!!

[david s]

Hi Roscoe,
My wife and I did 10 weeks in Europe last year and can't wait to go again. When I checked my long service leave entitlement on return I found I could easily take another 10 this year and still have some up my sleeve. We are so lucky in Australia to have long service leave. Other countries don't have it. People were amazed when I told them every worker in Australia is entitled to 10 weeks paid leave after 10 years service. ahh the lucky country.
We had four nights on Paros and two on Santorini. Very different but both wonderful. Enjoy
Dave

[heliman]

Hi Dave- thanks for the comments...

I don't actually have the leave available but I currently have a full time day job, teach and research at one university and lecture at another (about 80 students all up) in the evening. On top of that I have a private aerial imaging business... so I am a bit tired of working in general so reckoned that I would just take the leave regardless before I burn myself out ;-).

Long service leave is about 7 years away for me - but on the distant horizon nonetheless. It is definitely a great benefit!

Those islands sound good. Santorini we go to twice actually. We booked 2 x back to back cruises with the same company and Santorini featured on both itineraries. Heard it's really good so don't mind 2 visits.