Mdme Sparkle was in her element in Beaulieu sur Mer, on the French Riviera. "Home, at last!" she sighed.

We thought of Glistening Dave as we scoped this pitcher.

We were warned off swimming in the sea at Beaulieu for fear of these jellyfish. Indeed, the British press carried stories whilst we were there claiming that beaches from Sicily to Spain had been closed by them. We saw two. They deliver an annoying sting, apparently, but we can't compare them with blueys since they didn't get us.

Across the bay to Villa Kerylos in Beaulieu sur Mer.

Pom on hols in the sarth of Frarnce.

The bougainevillea put on a deep and rich display on the external walls of David Niven's former home in Beaulieu sur Mer. Outside, the street is named Place David Niven.

Get a load of that hand.

" ... that brilliant, extraordinary man ..." Yes, yes, we know. That's the line from the movie, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, our favourite movie of all time, which accompanies this scene re-enactment. When Michael Caine stood on this very spot, it was night, he was dressed in a "tux" -- "... such a bourgeois expression!" said the butler at Milton Armitage III's house when Dobie Gillis attempted to attend a party there, underdressed. Caine was gazing romantically into the moon. He then, after a brief chat with "Lady Fanny of Omaha", jumped the fence and took off through the bushes. "It's late ... I must go," he teased her. This, Caine couldn't have done, however. Not from this spot. Apart from it being quite a drop over this fence, the "bushes" are barbed and thick and nasty, as we found to our chagrin when we tried to jump through them ourselves. Our finger, the third of our right hand, is just recovering now, a week later.

The Rothschild villa atop the hill overlooking Beaulieu sur Mer and St Jean Cap Ferrat. Stunning, stunning, stunning, particularly for its gardens, which featured in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Seeing the largesse expended on places like this using inherited money and for such little product -- it took five years to build from 1907 to 1912 -- one starts to appreciate the resentment that the hard up classes might feel at what they would perceive to be a misallocation of resources.

Until his death in 1983, Britsh actor David Niven lived here. After his death, the house lay derelict until 2000, according to our informant, when it was acquired and renovated by a well-to-do French family. Mdme Sparkle wanted us to put in a bid, but the family wasn't home at the time. Appositely, Niven starred in the Michael Caine role in the original version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Bedtime Story, opposite Marlon Brando to Caine's Steve Martin. Indeed, oceanswims.com has dreamt of visiting Beaulieu sur Mer ever since we first saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in the late '80s or early '90s.

Villa Kerylos was built c. 1909 by a French aesthete taken with ancient Greek history, faithful to the style of a well to do family villa c. 300 BC. It is stunning for its detail, particularly the floor mosaics. The character who built it -- names escapes us, since we can't quite place our hands on the brochure -- used to dress as an ancient Greek, an' all, and get his visitors to do so, too. Next door is Villa Eiffel, formerly owned by Gustan Eiffel, who built the Eiffel Tower.

According to Greek mythology, the Mediterranean was awash with monsters. Some survive. You, too, can look like an ancient Greek monster in Darth Vader goggles by View. Simply click here ...

On Riviera beaches, they have vacuum cleaner boats that hoover up the scum from the water. They try valiantly, but it's a losing battle on this scale.

A boat under some legal wrangle at the moment as to ownership, parked off Beaulieu sur Mer. Formerly "belonged" to Saddam Hussein, according to our informant.

Our swim course off Beaulieu sur Mer ... we did this three times during our stay. It's about 1.75km.

Dining at St Jean Cap Ferrat, reputedly one of the most expensive places in the world... And dining at St Jean Cap Ferrat on the waterfront should be even more expensive. But it's possible to dine relatively cheaply. Indeed, dinner on the waterfront here was the cheapest of all the reasonably inexpensive dinners we had on the ritzy Riviera. Just look over all the restaurants on offer, check out their menus des jours, which are fixed price, and don't be shy about it. Of course, you can spend a fortune still if you wish to, if you wish to be a wanker. And the food was very, very good.

Sra Sparkle wanted to fit in to Italy, to Venice, so she swam on the Lido just like the locals.

Codgers are the same the world over.

	"Does my bum look big in this bikini?" ... "No sweetheart, you'll do just fine!" (above).
	Builder smiling at you on the Lido (left).
	Below: You have to concentrate very hard to look this silly.

The worst kind of gasper in Yrp are the cigar smokers, who absolutely don't give a stuff whose meal they ruin by lighting up at all the nicest restaurants and cafes. Another name for them is Pigs.

Patches of beauty.

Master and Commander. We did a double take here, wondering how Sra Sparkle's Fairy Oddmother, Rosie Lang-Langley's dog, Wufty Pufty, managed to get herself to Venice, and to take over a pleasure craft on the canals. Yes, you read that right: the bloody mutt's name is Wufty Pufty. Good grief. What are some people thinking?

Gondoliers vie to cart the most beautiful and glamorous of visitors around Venice's canals.

An Italian fillum beauty on the Rialto. And sporting Maui Jims, no less!

	Gondola peak hour (above).
	Left: It costs anywhere from 80 euros a head for a 50-minute gondola ride, which is about $A133, so you can some idea of a) how much work this gondolier is doing, b) how much he's raking in for it, and c) why these tourists are all having so much fun. The bloke in the orange shirt is, anyway. Not all would pay 80, but the scale starts from there. And this crowd has the accordianist and the tenor included, too. This explains why Sra Sparkle's one and only gondola ride was a 3-minute job in a ferry across the Grand Canal. Which was free. But you can se why all the gondoliers are such fit young bucks.
	Cindy and Randy (below), on vacation from the US of A, filmed their visit and were overheard, in a conversational snippet, discussing how much "smiting (by) the Lord" must be going on in Venice. They may have been joking, of course, but then, do people who dress like this look like they'd make jokes? Sra Sparkle said Randy was just that, and more, from the front. "Those shorts were riding up his crutch," she said. "His crutch was eating his shorts ... " We tend not to notice these things ourselves, but she does.

Atop St Mark's Basilica.

In Switzerland, as Frau Sparkle disovered, one can ski even in summer in places like Engelberg, or rather in Titlis, the snowfields above it. At Trübsee, at 6,000 ft, a little less than half way up the mountain, she is confronted by her first big time snow.

Turning around, this is the view she gets gazing in awe, and with jelly legs, back down the mountain (Frau Sparkle finds that heights turn her delicate belly). Engelberg lies below.

One of the nice things about Yrpene cities is that you can do guided tours for free. All you need do is to tip the guide at the end of the tour according to how well you felt he or she went. Marcos, from Austin, Texas, was in his first few weeks as a guide in Munich. He still was getting up to speed. As it happened, our free tour coincided with Munich's 850th anniversary celebrations, when 700,000 punters, according to the Munich meeja, crowded into the city's old quarter to slap their thighs. We're not sure Marcos knew about it. But he did a creditable job and tried hard, done good. He was especially good in the Hofbrau Haus and at Munich's surf spot.

Munich's 850th anniversay celebrations brought local Bavarian communities from far and wide into Munich, all donned in traditional costume, much of it involving leather, for a parade. It was an extraordinary, colourful event. And it was an absolute fluke that our visit coincided.

Frau Sparkle couldn't get enough of this kind of stuff: lasses in frilly frocks and lads in lederhosen, dancing and cheerng and slapping their thighs.

Yes, they really do it -- slap their thighs. Some two years ago, Frau Sparkle, then known as Mrs, had a dream involving oceanswims.com taking part in a Sydney eisteddfod doing a thigh-slapping routine dressed in lederhosen. When she ran across this lot in Munich's main thoroughfare, the pressure was applied. We got out of it by pointing out to her that a decent lederhosen outfit, as sold in one of Munich's prime department stores, would set you back close to $1,000! Unfortunately, none of the change places would taken a cheque from us for that amount.

"Great thigh-slapping, Otto!"

Everywhere, Germany was excited by Spargel. We know mainly the harmless green variety (top). The white variety, more popular in Germany, looks a real menace. And below, the common name for local peaches is "wild peaches". According to our authority, Frau Sparkle, the technical name is "squashed bum peaches".

In Munich's Viktuelmarkt (above), where one buys one's viddles, as Granny Clampett used to say. The Nazi era art gallery in Munich (left) reflects all the stern, humourless authority of the Third Reich. It's an art gallery still, but with more human offerings. Below, Yes, they do surf in Munich. Trundling through Dresden on a tram, Frau Sparkle and oceanswims.com chuckled knowlingly to each other, as only smarty-pantses can, at the sight of a surf shop in that land-locked northern city. As we did in Münich, even more landlocked. But, here, Müncheners proved us wrong, yet again: they really do surf, on a permanent wave in the city's main park, the Englischer Garten, where a fast flowing stream emerges from beneath a main road.

One of the quaint rituals ... er, performances in the Münich 850th anniversary celebrations was the whip-a-crackin', in which four Bavarians stand at star points amongst a packed crowd and crack whips at each other over the punters' heads. The whip lashes were too thin to capture on film, or on solid state memory, for that matter, so you'll have to take our word for it. It was a bizarre, frightening, hair raising and very, very clever performance. Mind you, any performance that also involves wearing lederhosen near the height of summer is very, very clever indeed.

Travelling brings one all kinds of unexpected experiences and colourful personalities, and Drago is right up there at the head of them. Drago is the Slovenian Guv'na of the Gasthaus Sonne on the southern shore of Lake Zürich. At half past eight one night, ever more desperate for a room that we could afford, Drago took us in, renting us his "French room", which meant it was only just wide enough to fit the bed in which we slept. The night at Drago's -- Drago is seen here with bride, Jana -- was an experience. Rough and ready, Gasthaus Sonne bounced with activity and bonhomie, Drago leading the way. He oozed personality, his pizzas were superb, and -- perhaps alone in Yrp, Drago didn't smoke. But his guests did. Every single bloody one of them. Except us, of course. But to us, Drago is one of the pearls of Yrp.

On her tour of Yrp's chocolatiers, Frau Sparkle discovers (above) Teuscher's, in Main Strasse, Zürich. "Wonderland" is one word that comes to mind. Closely followed by "pig in mud".       Left, on our way down to Zürich and our night at Drago's Frau Sparkle and oceanswims.com dined in Füssen, the town adjacent to the Bavarian castles of the mad King Ludwig II. We had spent so much time in Germany by this stage, Frau Sparkle was starting to fit right in with the locals. She had a pasta dish, whilst oceanswims.com had a 'roasted pig's leg".               In Zürich (below), a gnome.

In Zürich, summer in the city...

... in the summer, in the city ...

In the Yrpean Union, the communal pastime is gasping. Really, it is. They do it everwhere, and pretty everyone does it. Even in the outdoors areas of restaurants, and indoors at Drago's. It's as if none of these buggers have heard of the health related issues. Bans in pubs and restaurants are new in Yrp and still are resented. It's regarded as a civil rights issue, not one of public health. Gaspers hold sway. It's a paradox in an otherwise so civilised society. We're glad none of our cobbers are gaspers. Or they weren't when we left Stray'a.

Taking a breather after walking away from NSW Rugby, former Waratahs assistant coach Scott Johnson chilled with his "rugby mates" on Zürichsee. (He didn't really, or not that we know, anyway, but this bloke, juxtaposed with a drunk with a black eye, looked just like him.)

Trübsee, half way up Titlis from Engelberg.

We have a better pic than this back home, of our mate, Gra-Gra, throwing a snowball at us in Perisher Valley in 1974, dressed in collar and tie. Gra-Gra always dresses in collar and tie. He was close to the heart of the Howard gummint. Frau Sparkle seemed to be enjoying herself rather more than Gra-Gra.

Even in a summer ski resort, they had a 50 metre outdoor pool. We made enquiries but they wouldn't let us swim in it. It was 13.5 degrees, they said. We told them how we'd done last year's winter pier to pub at lorne in 12 degrees (note the lower case lettering, indicating that this swim is an informal gathering of like minds and has nothing whatsoever to do with Lorne Surf club and their very famous Pier to Pub swim in January). But the lady on the front desk in Engelberg couldn't have cared less. She was very nice about it, though. "Bemused" is probably a better word to use.

Not long for this world. A piggery above Engelberg.

Mad King Ludwig II's castle at Schwangau, said to be the inspiration for the Fantasyland castle at Disneyland. Sent off course by an errant GPS, we arrived just on closing time, so had to be content with taking pics from the outside only.