Last year I wanted to squeeze in a trip to Prague but didn’t fit it in so it was a no brainer that I’d end up here. From Bratislava it took just over four hours on the train, I arrived early evening then went for a quick walk over Charles Bridge and to see the John Lennon wall, and back into the hostel.
Backpacking
Vienna
Having spent a couple of nights attempting to sleep on a train already, I was less than optimistic about getting a decent nights sleep on my overnight journey to Vienna. It turned out that either the staff on the train gave me an exceptionally good coffee or that I did sleep pretty well. Or both. The compartment was about a third of the size of my studio flat in London which I shared with four others.
Venice: in pictures
I was only in Venice for a day and a half and didn’t do much apart from walk, eat and drink.
Florence
I had a quick stay in Florence, and I think a day and a half was the right amount of time for the city for me as I’m not overly interested in museums and galleries. When I got here, I went straight to the market to get some lunch and ended up with pasta… again. This was probably the best meal I’ve eaten off a paper plate.
Rome
I arrived in Rome on Easter Sunday and I knew it was going to be busy, but didn’t expect it to be as busy as it was. I did the usual drop by bags off and walk around the city thing and made it to quite a few of the tourist attractions. I ended up finding a corner shop open and bought some gnocchi for dinner.
Pompeii, Vesuvius, Sorrento & Naples
I’ve spent a good few days doing day trips as opposed to staying a city. Pompeii was my base mainly because the hostel was €15/night rather than €30+ in Naples. It took six hours to get down to Pompeii.
I realised that the hostel has quite particular opening times when I spent half hour pressing the doorbell. Whilst I was at the hostel I had to bugger off at 10am and a not allowed to be back until 2, the problem being that I’m barely out of bed by 10.
Milan
Yes… I’ve finally made it out of Spain.
I booked a flight to the wrong destination, so at the moment I should be in Venice. When booking, I hadn’t actually noticed until a good day after when I checked my emails. At first I was a bit annoyed as I was going to try to change it, but I thought two words – the second being ‘it’ and booked up a hostel and a train to somewhere I actually intend to go this time. It’s proved to be not much of an inconvenience as I’ve had a pretty nice day. And a really bloody good pizza.
Spain and Portugal: a round-up
Six weeks ago I boarded a flight to Málaga and have since have travelled throughout more of Spain than I have England. I’m pretty sure that my feet have finally stopped hurting now which I’ve been waiting to happen for a while now.
It’s been probably nine months since I thought about going on a small Europe trip, and over the space of time I expanded the’small’ to ‘ridiculously long.’ I’ve worked ridiculous hours so that I can travel for as long as I can/want to and have even worked with at least 20 stitches on/in my hand. All of that has been worth it, just for this leg of the trip alone and I can’t see what is left to unfold over the next few months.
There’s quite a few highlights from the past six weeks. Seeing the Barcelona match at Camp Nou was one, eating until I can manage no more in San Sebastian (which is an impressive amount of food for me to do), the Seville tapas tour and visiting the Taylor’s port factory in Porto.
Over the next three weeks or so I have a fair bit planned but not yet booked. Hopefully, I’ll manage to take part in a cooking class and I’m seriously hoping for weather that is a lot better. I’m not too sure whether or not I’ll be able to top Spain, but I’ll certainly give it a shot.
Valencia/Las Fallas festival
On Monday, I arrived in Valencia for Las Fallas festival. I didn’t really get up to much apart from having a quick look around the city and had some lunch/dinner. Once again, I had a bit of a death trap of a top bunk. Tuesday, I went on a tour around the city based on the festival, and it seems like it is based on the concept of burning the problems from the past year and starting on a clean slate. The tour also went into detail about the costs of the Styrofoam sculptures, some around the €200,000 mark, the outfits worn and the events over the week. After, I went into the main square to watch the daytime fireworks, then spent the rest of the day walking around the city, finding a lot of the fallas.
Barcelona
I definitely had one of those ‘less than one hour to get out of bed, packed and on the train to Barcelona God-help-me’ mornings. Somehow, I managed with 20 minutes to spare and six hours later I arrived in Barcelona.
