Krakow, Poland.

Beautiful old hotel and lovely big room overlooking a park. When we look out the window, there's a fluttering of snow. We wander off looking to find a beautiful restaurant that the daughter has googled. She's so much more organised than I am, she checks it's rating and we're there. Food is excellent - potato pancakes, mushroomy sauce with spinach on the side. Waiters friendly, service great.

And then we're ready to check out the city. The main square is full of Xmas dwellings where beautiful arts, crafts and food await us. There are big barrels where you can order hot wine and hot alcoholic tea! The cheese shops are amazing, the smoked sheep cheese is patterned and served with bacon and cranberry sauce. The pottery is stunning.

The trees are dripping Xmas lights, there are incredible peacock eye lights strung in between the beautiful houses which surprisingly were not destroyed during WW2, so everything you see is the real deal, a well preserved medieval UNESCO city.

We dine at a traditional Polish restaurant on trout with almonds and potatoes and dried plum and walnut pierogi (like ravioli) and cheap wine. All is good in the world as the staff are friendly! They're dressed traditionally and Polish music is playing. It's warm and cosy and I'm already in love with Poland.

While we're here in the dead of winter, Australia is burning. I check on family and friends and the daughter writes an article on bushfires that gets published in two online magazines, so she spends most of the night up doing interviews in Australia.

The next day, after checking that everyone is safe bushfire wise, we explore again. The old cafes and shopfronts are beautiful. We have coffee at a wonderfully cozy place and then head into the Jewish Quarter where there's the Singer Klub bar, of sewing machines, vodka and honey vodka tea. Slightly inebriated earlyish in the morning, we then lunch at Pierogi Mr Vincent, all very Van Gogh-esque. The pierogi are good but fairly heavy fare but we walk it off through the afternoon. We find another great cafe in an old half ruined building where we consume a special sweet called Cream biscuit, with whipped cream and cherries.

We wandered far and wide, through the old city, stopping to admire the Wawel Dragon Statue that can breathe fire on demand but today is taking a break and then past the Royal castle, checking out the worn, shabby doors and nuns still in traditional garb.

Then we double back into the old city where carriages are awaiting tourists, with the most elegantly dressed horses ready to take you on a ride around the square.

I go to one of the cherry liquer bars, Pijana Wisnia, for a hot cherry drink served in a lovely glass with preserved cherries at the bottom and then find an amazing chocolate shop, Goralskie Praliny where I buy a box of the unusual shaped pralines, bilberry, cranberry , blackcurrant and coconut and back home via the markets where they have grilled pierogies filled with sweet cheese and berries. Then there are the donut shops everywhere! They're traditional Polish donuts without a hole, rose cream filled with icing. Such interesting food and drinks!

We return to our first restaurant for a fantastic meal, chicken stuffed with spinach and wrapped in pancetta with a cheese sauce and soft dumplings, perched on a bed of caramelised onions, with salad for 9 euro or approximately $13 Australian.

The next morning, well fed and breakfasted in the beautiful Xmasy decorated breakfast room of the hotel, we are ready to move on to Wroklaw but Krakow has stolen our hearts.

Auronzo.

Waiting for a white Xmas.

I'm getting ready for a European Xmas. Have bought a tree and filled it with the small decorations I've been buying at each place I've visited. I decide to make Panforte as gifts and it turns out perfectly and then I look out the window and it's snowing! Tiny flecks of white are drifting down throughout the town. I'm so excited, I race from window to window. This is how Xmas should be. Even though I am Australian born and have sweated through boiling hot Xmas's, my genes are cold climate still and I feel that this is the real deal (or I've watched too many European movies).

The sunsets have been stupendous, iced and coloured like granita, peach, strawberry and nectarine colours soften over the white covered peaks. P.S. In the first photo, right in the middle is our house with the blue roof and shutters.

I shop for Xmas foods and buy a bottle of Bombardino and wait for the kids to arrive, the daughter from Hamburg and her friend from Berlin. They arrive, the Bombardinos are made as we wait excitedly for more snow but it's already dispersing. The sister-in-law says it is too cold for more. We are hopeful and don't believe her. Over the next few days, as we look at the weather, there are little snowflakes showing but it never happens. She was right.

For Xmas eve, I make polenta (which is the national dish here) and a chicken cacciatore lustrous with tomatoes and plump olives and for dessert, pears with chocolate sauce flavoured with orange rind and topped with mascarpone flavoured with crushed amaretti.

This apartment, although ours, was decorated by the sister-in-law in her own inimitable way and there are few things that are obviously great memories for her but which creep us out (or she didn't want them in her apartment). There's a few scary Balinese masks and a collection of Aboriginal artefacts that don't sit well in a northern Italian mountain village home. I usually take them down when I arrive because the sister-in-law rarely visits but she's having Xmas with us so I put everything back up, including the 70's shag pile rug that is in varying degrees of yellows which I usually roll up and put behind the lounge.

Xmas day arrives but not accompanied by snow. We spend quite a bit of the day looking out the windows hopefully. I have cooked some sort of bird that the sister-in-law has bought, she calls it a peasant. I suggest it may be a pheasant but she is adamant that it's a peasant and she is not a woman to argue with! It's too big for a chicken and too small for a turkey, so I feel it could possible be a pheasant Anyway, I make a stuffing with fennel bread, pancetta, lemon rind and clementines; brussel sprouts with sage, walnuts and pancetta and we have a pear and chocolate strudel. And...another Cassata has been sent from Oscars in Palermo. Our first Italian Xmas done right! That night we peer out the windows in between taking Xmas selfies and drinking Hugo Spritz's made with Prosecco and Elderflower liquor.

The next few days we continue to hope for a proper white Xmas but are sorely disappointed We drown our sorrows in Panettone warmed and served with pistachio cream paste (which is addictive) for breakfast, warmed Bombardino's, Spritz's and walks around the lake. The lake at this time of the year is beyond beautiful. It's almost iced over and is surrounded by the russet and green colours of the forests and tinted turquoise and mint where the ice hasn't quite glazed over. We wander in the hushed silence of the chilled air and are amazed at the way the ice forms, it's intricacy and patterns.

It's the last day of an extraordinary adventure of a year. Another of the daughter's friends arrives and we're told that the bar by the lake will be open for a New Years Eve party so we walk down at 9.30 but all is quiet. We return to the one bar in town that is still open and have a drink there but they're about to close so it's down to the river again but all lights are off so it's home again. At midnight, the neighbours let off illegal fireworks and the night is done.

Evidently, New Year's day is the day to feast in Italy and so for lunch I have made the Turkeys wife. We still can't work out what this translation is but the wife cooks up nicely and we feast on more Cassata and then go down to the lake to skim stones across the water. The sound they make as they bounce across the ice is eerily satisfying.

Karlovy Vary and Loket.

Taking the waters.

The scenery on the bus to Karlovy Vary is dramatic, wintry stark black trees, misty greys, soft mulberry shades interspersed with the soft dusty sage green of the pine forests. I arrive at Villa Brasilia, a beautiful old villa built by a Princess in the 19th century. Lovely room overlooking the river and a hill of russet undergrowth and bare trees.

It's such a beautiful town, the architecture is Grand Budapest Hotel style, in fact the Hotel Putt that I pass by was the inspiration for the movie. Found a lovely old retro restaurant but again the staff are so grumpy. The one thing you need when traveling solo, is friendly staff.

This town became famous for it's mineral waters in the 18th century and people flocked here for cures. There's beautiful colonnades in different styles and 15 different mineral springs. Along the way, there's little stalls selling beautiful little cups with spouts that you collect the waters in as you go about the town. Oh, I love this place! I feel like I'm back in the thirties. The waters are warm and a bit salty. After a few tries, I go for the hot spiced wine at the small Xmas market along the river.

I walk up into the hillside, past all the coloured gingerbread houses and look out over the view. That night I have had enough of the heavy Czech food and go for Italian. Lovely waiters! A win.

The next day I do a short trip to Loket castle. It's on the outskirts of a tiny village that seems to have shut down for the winter. The castle is interesting and the views beautiful but there's not much going on so I head back to Karlovy Vary.

I find a great cafe with good coffee and settle in for a while and later wander back through the town to where the springs shoot up in a main square, seasoning the cold air with a strange mineral smell.

I try the famous Spa wafers, layers of wafer thin biscuits flavoured with spices and the slightly salty spa water and then walk home through the Xmas light displays.

Then I'm back to Prague for a day, staying at the beautiful Bohemia Plaza hotel, still on the edge of the Red light district but a bit more wholesome. I find the Museum of Alchemy, which has been making elixirs since the 16th century. It has underground caverns and the most exquisite bottles full of interesting herbs and concoctions but beyond my price range. After that I find a cute French cafe, Le Gourmand and have the best pistachio eclair and, friendly service! And tomorrow, I'm on my way back to Italy for Xmas.