After another quick and almost painful lesson in European geography we discovered our next stop, Budapest, Hungary, is a lot further away from Venice than we first realised (read: 18 hour train trip with 4 changes) so we decided to be brave and try the overnight train thing (13 hours, no changes). Unfortunately our plans turned a little sour when we both got the flu but being cheapo backpackers we high fived all the way to Budapest because we’d bought the cheapest tickets we could, opting for 2 beds in a 6 bed compartment to discover that we were the [View Full Entry]

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Bonjourno from Venezia! Well we made it! After a relaxing restful night at Leeds Bradford Airport - not, we boarded our plane to Bergamo (town just outside of Milan) at 7am. Our 10 quid flights took off and landed very smoothly, we both slept the whole way as the plane chairs, while vinyl and from the 80’s were still a whole lot more comfy than those at the airport! We made our way successfully from Bergamo to Venice using the only Italian words we knew frequently - Ciao and Grazie (at least they’re relevant). Venice is such a beautiful city, we [View Full Entry]

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Since we last blogged, we made a last weekend dash to the traditional seaside town of Whitby with the Botterell's (Daniel's boss and extended family to friends we're staying with). We left it to the last weekend in the hope we’d get some good weather. We set off from Sutton on a beautiful mild, sunny Sunday and it stayed that way until we got just over the Moors when we discovered fog, and it was there to stay. So unfortunately we didn’t get any lovely sunny seaside scenes but seeing as Whitby is also the setting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the [View Full Entry]

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We haven’t fallen of the face of the Earth; we’ve just been waiting for the rain to stop before we write! We’ve now had a few days reprieve (although temperatures have plummeted) so thought we best get posting! Well we last wrote after leaving Paris for the second time and arriving in Sutton on the Forest - our new home for winter. We enjoyed the final 2 weeks of September with lovely weather and then got stuck into working and saving hard and learning the benefits of layering and always carrying an umbrella with you! Seeing a few months have passed [View Full Entry]

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From Geneve we made the long (ish) train ride to Nice on the French Riviera. We spent 2 thrilling hours at the Marseille train station before arriving in beautiful sunny Nice our first glimpse at mediterranean Europe. It could have been a few degrees warmer but the sun was lovely. Unfortunately the beaches have no sand just pebbles so it kind of looked as though everyone was sun bathing in a carpark but they love it. We decided to have a little holiday at the end of all our tiring travelling so splurged on a backpacker pricey hotel near the beach [View Full Entry]

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From a helicopter 16 000 feet above sea level. Extreme sports are big in Switzerland and also very expensive so we decided to the big one and jumped out of a helicopter at 16 000 feet. It was, needless to say, awesome. Free falling is THE most incredible feeling ever. Nerves on the ground weren't that bad considering but still once we were up in the helicopter - with no door!!! - and turning sideways it got a wee bit scary. In fact, we were kind of glad to be able to get out. It is sooo cold up there. For [View Full Entry]

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Here we are in the middle of Bohemian Europe. After realising in Krakow that the tram we needed to get from hostel to train station didn't run on Sundays (we have no jobs and no real purpose so who knows what day it is!!), we had to make an "Amazing Race" run across town to the train station. We were the last to arrive but fortunately have not been eliminated from the game. We arrived on the platform with 5 minutes to spare. The closest we've come to missing a train. Guess that is what it is all about. We said [View Full Entry]

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Yes, we had that conversation upon boarding the train to Warsaw from Berlin. "Do you know any Polish words?", "No, do you?", "No. Oh well our handy and well used (not) Lonely Planet Phrase Book will have some tips for us." Ummmmm, no again. Doesn't even include Polish. "Okay, but everywhere else people have spoken English so we should have a problem right?", "Yeah, we'll be fine. Let's play cards for the next 6 hours", "Okay". Ummm well, English is not spoken by many people at all in Poland and what is more Polish is one of the hardest languages to [View Full Entry]

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Well we've almost caught up, we were only in Berlin last week! Upon arriving in Berlin our expectations were shot as we walked from train station to hostel in a seemingly dodgy area. Once we reached the hostel things still didn't look better - crappiest place we've stayed at so far. We had a cry about it, ate a fantastic falafel from down the street and woke up to a beautiful Berlin summer's day. We decided to start our stay in the capital with a bike tour. Trish faced her fear of riding a bike on a road with real cars [View Full Entry]

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After a 12 hour train trip, on which we met a lovely Swedish couple, the female half who talked non-stop but was a fantastic source of information on Scandinavia and Copenhagen. Everybody speaks such good English it is embarassing!! We arrived at our B&B (without breakfast....????) almost 2 hours after we expected to. The Danish public transport system was a bit hard to navigate and they have ridiculously long words it isn't funny. Because all the words are so long they can't fit a lot of then on the signs so abbreviate which makes sense except if we have the full [View Full Entry]

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