I wanted to leave Slovenia and go into Germany, but the hostels were fully booked, expensive and/or not great. Instead, I asked Dad for a suggestion for somewhere in the middle and I liked the sound of Graz. The day I arrived I went out without a map to have a look around, it was a really nice day and all the shops were shut, it seemed as though everyone threw a sickie to enjoy the weather, but apparently it was a one day festival.
I arrived in Ljubljana (so glad that I use autocorrect) after a 9 hour bus journey on Sunday, to find that Sunday and Monday were bank holidays and that there would be next to nothing open. I had initially wanted to spend the afternoon in the city, then Monday at Lake Bled and doing whatever I missed in the city during the afternoon, before packing my bags and moving on. Needless to say, that did not happen.
I was looking forward to a couple of nice, sunny weeks in Croatia,but it’s fair to say that it wasn’t my cup of tea. The weather wasn’t great and I was finding it difficult to find stuff to do in the cities. It took me three hours to see most of Zadar for which I had booked three nights, and Split I thought was alright. I’m glad I went though, as Plitvice and Krka National Parks were definitely worth my time.
Afer having spent a while in Budapest, it is time to start travelling again. I’ll probably do it at a slower pace than what I have been doing so far. I arrived in Zagreb, Croatia late on Saturday and I probably would have made it to the coast too, had I been convinced that I’d make the 6am train. Instead, I stayed in Zagreb for a couple of nights to try and work out what I’d be doing over the next couple of weeks and saw that there was a taxi service to Plitvice National Park, which is one of the reasons I wanted to come to the country. I was intending to stay for a couple of nights, but the weather forecast is pretty bad, so a day did me just fine.
During the afternoon on Friday I arrived in Budapest after a 7 hour train ride. It dragged until someone saw me writing in a journal and showed me his. He was doing trip from Riga in Latvia to Budapest before going back home to Australia, he is 80 and seems to be doing trips like that for a very long time, and I hope that I can do the same. We compared travelling like I am doing now and from before I was born and he was interested to hear how easily I can book everything as it has not always been as easy as booking a hostel online and using Google maps to find it.
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.
I wasn’t too sure whether or not to bother with an entry about Bratislava – I have done pretty much nothing for the last couple of days so I can chill out properly for the first time in a couple of months.
Yesterday, I arrived here, went into the old town for half hour then returned and got into bed. Today I slept in, had some really good pancakes for breakfast, then had lunch in a pub and watched the West Ham vs Arsenal match. Currently in the hostel having just booked my train tickets for tomorrow. Slovakia is a bit of a pain in the arse to book train tickets for as you have to do it at least 24 hours in advance so instead I booked the train tickets on another country’s rail line service and that has done the trick. Travelling for a bit has helped definitely helped with my ability to problem solve.
I’ve got my next month sorted out (I hope), and have come up with some ideas for after that. Spain was the country I was most looking forward to, but Budapest, Prague, Poland and Slovenia are the places I’ve been really looking forward to as well which shall be coming up at some point.
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.
I was only in Venice for a day and a half and didn’t do much apart from walk, eat and drink.
