On Sunday afternoon I arrived in Amsterdam and spent my time walking around the city, I came here last year with a friend so it wasn’t that difficult to find my way around. I didn’t see or do anything that interesting during the afternoon and evening, besides seeing a man walk around with a plant pot on his head.
I opted for an overnight bus from Nice – a good €100 cheaper than the train and the bus was the same price as a night in a hostel. It was soul destroying – just over 13 and a half hours long. In one way, sitting on my arse and doing nothing for that long at one time kind of does sound like something I do on a regular basis, but not confined to a bus seat.
At 10am, once I’d checked into the hostel I decided that I wasn’t messing around and had a big coffee to hopefully make up for the lack of sleep and a pan au choc aux almandes. I’ve had a few crossaints and things that resemble them, and this was one of the best. As I was staying near the Sacre Coeur I headed there, before going to the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre. I didn’t go in any of them as I was shattered but made plans to visit them later on.
I didn’t get up to much in Zurich, mainly because besides an hour or so during the morning the weather was horrendous. I saw the lake, Haus de Kunst and, of course, a Swiss chocolate shop, as well as Making a Murderer on Netflix if that counts as ‘what I saw in Zurich.’ Hopefully, if I return to Switzerland,the weather will be a lot nicer but for now, here’s a few pictures:
I arrived in Munich on Sunday – in total I stayed here for five nights, and for me it was two too many. For the past 7 or so weeks, I’ve managed to travel on Sundays as it seems that nothing is open, and after having spent afew hours in Salzburg I wasn’t too fussed about getting much done.
To get from Graz to Germany I had to go via Salzburg on the bus. I wasn’t that fussed about visiting but I’ve spoken to a lot of people over the past three months who have loved it. The weather was so good that it’d be rude to be stuck on a bus for it.
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.
