Leaving Paris and "civilization" behind, we flew to Istanbul where, on disembarking, we were surprised by the modernity, cleanliness and relative lack of chaos in the airport. The surprises continued as we climbed into a clean, recent model taxi and were sped along good roads with traffic that was happy to stay within the marked lanes. After experiencing the noise, dirt, smog and utter chaos of Cairo, I had expected Istanbul to be similar, but it was nothing like it. The city, cut in two by the Bosphoros Strait, is quite modern and orderly in comparison to other middle eastern cities that we have visited. Istanbul has been populated for thousands of years and has been the capital of numerous empires throughout its long history. Originally named Byzantium and later Constantinople, capital of the Holy Roman ... read more

Leaving Vienna, we arrived in the border town of Gmund and approached the ticket office at the small, deserted station. A few minutes later we had managed to communicate the need for three tickets to Cesky Krumlov to the ticket guy (despite his complete lack of English) and he wrote down the platform from which our train would leave twenty minutes later. At the appropriate time, we wandered out to the platform and were surprised to see a dilapidated, single carriage sitting forlornly by itself on the track - after checking the platform we got on certain that an engine would attach itself to the carriage before departure. A few minutes later the "train" pulled off under it's own power and we realized that this one carriage train was our ride into the Czech Republic. A ... read more

Continuing our journey through Eastern Europe, we arrived in Budapest tired and exhausted from the long overnight train journey from Sighisoara. Leaving the station, we found a taxi, agreed that 'meter' was fine (very important in Europe) and left for the hotel. After only a couple of blocks, I noticed that the driver's hand was hovering very close to the meter's buttons as he changed gear so started to watch the meter ticking over like a hawk. A couple of minutes later, I glanced at the map momentarily and on looking back at the meter noticed that the price had almost doubled in the space of a few seconds. I pointed this out to the driver who let loose with a torrent of Hungarian, pulled over, yelled that we should have booked a telephone taxi if ... read more

Leaving Syracuse in the evening, we boarded the train for what would be our longest overland journey so far - the train would take us from the deep south of Sicily back across to the mainland before crossing the "Boot" and arriving at the port city of Bari where we would board a passenger ferry for a long overnight journey to the port of Patras in Greece. Then it was onto a local bus and finally, after almost 48 hours of travel (and having to put up with about 200 French teenagers on the ferry) we arrived in Athens. Continuously occupied for the last 3,000 years, Athens has undoubtably had an impact on Western civilization in a way that few other cities can claim. Arriving in the town where Socrates taught young Athenians to think, we ... read more

Well....it is now the 6th July as I write this entry in front of a roaring fire in a farmhouse built in 1881 in the south west Dordogne province, near the world famous Bordeaux region of France (yes, its early July and its still cold enough for a fire). We have been traveling in Europe for over two months and it is only now that I have some time to sit down and try and get this blog up to date. Our time here has been action packed as we have covered fourteen countries and traversed most of the continent during the last 75 days. We've traveled by planes, trains, automobiles as well as various forms of ferries, including one that could carry two entire trains in it's hold! We had decided from the outset of ... read more