lloyd1018

I anticipated a very taxing few days ahead of me on the road. The light rail connection to Porto airport was good as was the airport itself. The flight to Pisa was also trouble free. Can’t stand that horribly cheesy Ryan air ‘music’ blaring through the speakers before take off accompanied by the cheap spruking but what can you do? Nerdy guy sitting next to me kept extending his elbow while he was reading a tabloid sports paper. Apart from that it was a faultless flight. Located the railway platform in Pisa which was at one end of the small terminal. The ticket was only six Euro although the marked price was five-sixty. Was the ticket seller scooping a bit off the top for herself? Well it is Italy. Double checked that I was on the ... read more

16th July. Bye bye Lisbon, hello Coimbra. As I did my final packing just after 09:00 I was conflicted in my feelings. On the one hand I was relieved to be leaving Lisbon where I’d had an extended forced stay due to illness. On the other there was some trepidation at facing the unknown. Will the bus station at Coimbra be near where the pensions are located and secondly will there be reasonably priced accommodation on offer? I can tell you I wasn’t looking forward to lugging my large back pack through unknown streets in the midday sun. Settling into a new place sucks. It’s the hard yards of travel in my opinion. I could only hope it went by quickly with a minimum of hassles. I got to the Jarmin Zoologico Metro station without much ... read more

Caught a taxi to the swish, new bus station in outer Agadir. It’s a big place, bigger than I imagined. Taxi driver was a nice guy trying to learn English and already had a good basic grasp. Tipped him as he did the right thing by me and used the meter. They’re not all scum bags over here. Some are just trying to scrape a meager living. There was a huge ticket hall at the new bus station and none of the seediness that the other one reeked of. There were a number of cats hanging around as they do in nearly all public places over here. There was huge number of empty bus bays outside. I wondered if they would ever get to use them all. Worked which was my bus. Always a hassle I ... read more

I didn’t sleep all that well the night before my trek to Morocco. Was worried that I wouldn’t wake up in time to catch the bus. Got to the San Sebastian bus station with plenty of time to spare. The woman selling tickets spoke perfectly good English and was there to serve customers. No future for her me thinks. She said I needed to remember twenty but when it came down to it that number had no real significance to me. The bus took slightly over three and a half hours to wend its way down towards the ferry terminal. The driver took a lunch break of twenty or so minutes which didn’t help. Once I got to the terminal it was a matter of deciding which company had the best deal. There really wasn’t that ... read more

The voyage across the channel was uneventful. I chatted with John, a sixty something retired fisherman who lives near London. As we drew closer to the white cliffs of Dover the weather turned nasty. John thought that was typical. We got off the boat and headed for the information desk. Jack had pre booked two National Express bus tickets online to London for one pound and five pounds respectively. Unfortunately the ferry trip took so long that he missed out on both of these discounted trips. He headed off with the others to pay twelve pound full fare. I headed off with John who said he would give me a lift to London in his car. Trouble is his car was parked in Ramsgate and we had to get a local bus to there. The local ... read more