The undecided traveller

Last year I went to Paris with my niece, my mum and her friend. Surprisingly, we had a wonderful time. Parisians have started thawing and are now more friendly than they were a few years ago (with the notable exception of the guy who sells rubbish, sorry, knick knacks, by the Opera). The credit crunch must have been biting them too, with the aid of not so socialist Sarkozi.





It rained a bit, but on the whole we had decent weather and managed to see most of the sights we had on our wish list, especially the Père Lachaise Cemetery.









None of us speaks French but Parisians seem to finally have got the message that French isn't god's own tongue, and now make an effort to understand tourists, even smiling while they do it. This lead to several miming and pointing exchanges between one or more of us and the poor shop keeper of the moment, that usually resolved themselves with the latter grabbing a piece of paper and drawing things!
Most embarrassing moment: one evening, on a taxi taking us back to our apartment, we drove past the floodlit Eiffel Tower. I'd been puzzling about why it got floodlit every night since we had arrived, and why it had those stars at the front, as I was pretty sure neither was the case on my previous visits to the city.
After a lengthy miming contest about various aspects of our trip so far (which the driver was winning as keeping his hands on the wheel didn't seem to be a priority), I enquired about the light/stars puzzle. As it turned out, my question was so dumb that try as he might he just kept missing it as it was unconceivable I didn't know. When it finally dawned on him what I was asking, he gave up all attempts at speaking a common language, threw his hands in the air and huffed: "Mais c'est la présidence de l'Union européenne!"
Awright, awright, just testing you!





Mum rang earlier this evening and mentioned we could go somewhere this summer too. She'd thought of the Italian lakes as my sister had been there last year and told her she'd like it, before adding: "Well, you know, this might be the last year it's possible...".
I pointed out to her that there's plenty of severely disable people who whizz around on wheelchairs, but I took her point: she's getting older, she has bad arthritis and finds it more and more difficult to walk as time goes by. So I suggested, that being the case, that while she's mobile we might as well traipse around Europe a bit more, as Italy would be more accessible even if it really came down to being on a wheelchair (if only 'cos she could get away with being driven around, rather than having to catch planes or trains). I also mentioned Vienna, where none of us have ever been. She seemed to like the idea, so I had a quick look around the internet for advice.
However, as I was looking, it struck me that there might be other places she also might enjoy. How about the Basque Countries, for example? Or Prague, Budapest, Warsaw... This needs some thought!