KenandMel

It was now a while ago that we were actually in Slovenia and to be honest I am battling to remember what we got up to!! That is shocking! I loved Slovenia! It is a tiny country, below Austria and bordering on Croatia (I am updating the South Africans reading this....who I am certain are all wondering!) So much to do there and a definite must for those who want an active holiday or even a long weekend get away. From canyoning to cycling to skiing and rafting..........it is all there and so easy to access. We started the trip arriving from Austria on a train to Bled. Bled is a really pictureque town built around a lovely fresh water lake. The hostel we stayed in (Traveller's Haven) was brand new and very nice, bar the ... read more

Sorry been a bit lazy on the Travelblog, you would have thought we were on holiday. We hopped on a night train to Budapest we thought it would be a good idea a cute cabin for too, romantic train journey through the night, not quite... We did not know that from Poland to Hungary we would pass through Slovakia which meant being woken up at 2 different border crossings to have our passports checked, obviously at some ridiculous hour. But we made it to Budapest, and our hostel with not much hassle.We booked our hostel on line which Mel would say was quaint, and I say was crap, we were the only ones there which you would think was good. The hostel just smelt funny. So we set out to find different accommodation for the next ... read more

Poland is such a huge country compared to the rest of Eastern Europe. We did not really want to visit Warsaw but had to stop there for a night after a 8 hour night bus from Lithuania. It was not bad, I expected a huge dodgy concrete city with only old people and a sign saying everybody else has gone to London please switch the light off when you leave....... but I was pleasantly surprised. We had sunshine which was a bonus and the city was quite modern and leafy. The next morning we were off again to Krakow, about 3 hour south of Warsaw by train. Bow chica wow wow............... Now this is the place to be. I guess nobody in London would think of visiting Poland as it does not seem to have the ... read more

Well, let us see.....Riga is very different from Tallin. Not quite as Disneyland pretty, plenty of beautiful art nouveau buildings (lots of them by the famous Russian Mikhail Eisenstein) and its fair share of cobbled windy streets....streets you have to watch where you walk.. They are so pot-holed that you are highly likely to twist your ankle or just plain fall over while you have your eyes and neck stretched to the skies looking at the beautiful buildings!! Although nice things to look at...we did see some seriously dodgy looking people and far more than a few hobos and drunkards.... ..........seriously scarey rough looking Latvians/Russians! At one point we saw a good four or five of the starting to fight, we assumed swearing and cursing (our Latvian and Russian obviously is zero , but they were ... read more

We needed to take a train from Copenhagen-via Malmo, overnight to Stockholm. We had grand ideas of our couchette being rather luxurious (it had cost us £80 for the 5 hours trip)....sadly it was a 6 sleeper cabin with zero extras and in fact was exactly like to roudy ski train we took 2 years ago (minus the hectic night of boozing!) Malmo we thought was still in Denmark and only when we bought a juice and offered our Danish kroners, were we kindly updated by the chap that we were in fact in Sweden now and were paying with the wrong money! We can be excused by the fact that the train from Copenhagen to Malmo had taken a whopping 30min! We arrived bright and breezy in Stockholm at 6am and unfortunately could not check ... read more