After an hour on the Estonian Border we arrived at the Russian side. Turns out you have to carry your own luggae across the border before they forensically analyse your paperwork. However the guy with the rubber glove was surprisngly gentle...... We got into St Petersburg at 7am local time. We were all excited because we were supposed to have a guy collect us and bring us to our "Hotel". He didn't appear and one emergency phonecall and two hours waiting we were there. After more passport paperwork we got some sleep. Went for a pizza just off the main street [View Full Entry]

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It was! Took it easy the first day. Day two got up early to see the city. Turns out (We weren't paying attention when we arrived) we were situated right in the middle of the old town. The polish weather followed us and it poured rain the whole day. This drove us to a tour of the "Oldest City Hall in Northern Europe" and vast improvement in our knowledge of limestone. Who knew there was so much to know about limestone...... In fairness the interior was beautiful and quite interesting. We found an english bar as the craving for burgers was [View Full Entry]

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In our eternal wisdom we decided to make our way to Estonia via Krakow and Warsaw starting in Budapest. We got the overnight train to Krakow on the cheap i.e without beds. Once again our ability to attract people in the mood for talking about themselves led us into a conversation. This time a Slovakian girl called Kelke. She had all of twenty words of English and proceeded to tell us the same thing over and over for two hours. Once she left we curled up on the wooden planks that pass for chairs in Hungary. Arrived in Krakow in the [View Full Entry]

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Well we decided to pay a second visit to our spiritual home enroute to Estonia. However seemed like Zagreb really didn't want us to leave. It lashed rain the whole day we were leaving and Ronan managed to get lost trying to find a supermarket. He managed to find the train station five minutes after our train official departure time(Thankfully the train was late). So after 8 hours we made it back to Budapest. The next day we had grand plans to visit Buda and see some sights. However this party city got in the way again when we discovered there [View Full Entry]

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We left Budapest at 3pm on the train. We met a lovely Canadian couple who were on their honeymoon and interrailing of all things! Unsurprisingly, for the third time in the third different country we bumped into our favorite french people Charlotte and Stephanie on the train. Arrived in Zagreb at 10pm decided to follow an English couple who seemed to know where they were going, soon discovered they were lying bastards and had no clue where the hostel was. After much deliberation and consultation we located the Ravnice Youth Hostel. First hostel that we have stayed in that was actually [View Full Entry]

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Had a bit of a disaster on route on to Budapest. Having spent 4 hours on the train, we spotted a glimpse of the word Budapest and rushed off. Turns out we were rural Hungary and still some way from the city centre. We had to get on another train which brough us into Buda, we then planned to get the metro, which was still being built and opening the following day. So we had to get a bus across the city and then a different metro for one stop. We spent another 2 hours wandering around on a very hot [View Full Entry]

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On Wednesday afternoon we got the train to Bratislava. Although we had reserved seats, we couldnt figure out where they were exactly so we ended up being shifted half way through the journey by some angry French people. We eventually made it to our least favourite Hostel so far - The Orange Hostel. Which appeared to be run by 12 year olds who were unhelpful. Certainly not as glamorous as our last hostel. Started the sightseeing, one hour later finished the sightseeing having seen everything touristy. In fairness the castle was interesting and the views incredible. We also got to visit [View Full Entry]

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We had our first interrailing experience after spending 5 nights in Krakow. There were 3 bunks in our carriage, and we were delighted when we discovered ours were the lower two and not the one 7ft from the floor. We shared the cabin with a Spanish guy from Barcelona called Chaume. It wasnt the best night sleep we got especially when we were awoken by the angry border patrol at 2am, our amateurish backpacking showed up as we realised our passports were at the bottom of our bags. We made it to the hostel by 8am, however it was 10hrs later [View Full Entry]

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Well We've started. Fairly bumpy start to be honest. Ciaran overslept by an hour. As it turned out our flight was delayed by four hours anyway. However we did get to spend some quality time with the Irish rugby team and singing sensation George Murphy in the airport. We eventually made it to Krakow airport. Ronan who is no longer allowed to talk to bus drivers ensured that we had to take the more expensive train into Krakow. The weather was beautiful and sunny.However the hardened backpackers that we are not soon began to whinge and bitch about the weight of [View Full Entry]

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