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.
solotravel
Prague
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.
Bratislava
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.
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.