The day started with a quite lovely 5:30am wake up, and a taxi to the airport for our 8:55am flight to Bangkok. There’s a lot to do in Hong Kong airport, so we busied ourselves looking around the shops. I was very, very distressed to have to leave behind a bracelet in Tiffany because we were just 200 HK$ short, though soon perked up when John promised he’d get me something from Tiffany in Tokyo at the end of the trip. Oh, and some pancakes from Burger King also helped (I’m a simple girl, really!) ;) The flight (which was with Cathay Pacific) was only a couple of hours long with no dramas, though I did have an extremely irritating man next to me in the window seat, who kept pushing the call button every five ... read more

Disney Day!! We started off with breakfast in the hotel (a pretty standard buffet), during which it absolutely chucked it down outside...the first rain of the holiday. It turned out to be a very quick downpour though, and by the time we left the hotel to walk to the MTR, everything was dry as if nothing had happened. Got to love the humidity and heat at times like this ;) To get to Disney, we took the Tung Chung line to Sunny Bay and then transferred to the short Disneyland Resort line. The Disneyland line has possibly the greatest trains of ALL time, with Mickey shaped windows and handles, and even Mickey statues throughout the carriages. Commuting would be a so much less painful experience if other train companies made this sort of effort with their ... read more

After a very long flight from Heathrow (13 hours in total), during which I managed a lovely two hours of sleep (John did a little better with five!), we finally arrived in Hong Kong at 1pm local time (which was something stupid like 4am UK time!). For once though, I didn’t care! :) I was married and in Hong Kong!!! Nothing was going to stop me smiling right then! On arrival at the airport, we had to go through various security health checks, which worried us slightly because of John’s chest infection, but we managed to get through with no problems, before picking up our cases. When we stepped out of the airport to the taxi ranks, the heat hit us immediately. After leaving autumnal weather in Newcastle, it was a slight culture shock to suddenly ... read more

Another very 'trainy' day, as we moved onto our last city of the holiday, Krakow. We had to be up painfully early at 5am to check out at half five and get to the station in time for our 6:30am train to Warsaw. Walking to the S-Bahn, we passed a fair few drunken stragglers returning from an obviously good night out (Newcastle might have its own reputation for being a party city, but it's rare you'll find that on a Thursday night/Friday morning so I think Berlin beats us!) but other than that, the streets were deserted. As I said in a previous blog, one very good thing about Berlin (and Germany in general) is that the trains are very regular and almost always dead on time, so even at that time in the morning we ... read more

Not actually a whole lot to report today actually, unless anyone is interested in the details of a very long and unexciting train ride between Prague and Berlin! We had breakfast early on and left the hotel at half past nine to get the subway to Holesovice...which I have to say is the worst major train station I have ever been to. I know it isn't Prague's main train station, but for a city that is used by interrailers as much as this is, they really need to think about sorting it out. It's basically an underground cave, and about as organised as Newcastle United during the transfer window. Platform announcements aren't made until roughly thirty seconds before the train is due, and with nowhere to sit, there is nothing to do but crowd together under ... read more