Photos to come later - have a look at links or wikipedia for pictures. Mileage: ~4300 Our final excursion in Romania was recommended to us, the Berca Mud Volcanoes. Having no idea what to expect (the word "mud" was never used!), we arrived and found the volcanoes to be bubbling mud! While examining the strange natural phenomenon, Lucy managed to fall in the volcano, covering her right leg in mud up to her waist. How we laughed... After a lot of driving, getting the car fixed after its sluggishness, a campsite where and campin [View Full Entry]

---

---

Mileage ~3400 miles We left Budapest for Romania. We didn't make it to our intended destination, Cluj, so stopped on the way at a campsite on the way. The campsite was next to both road and rail, had no facilities and that night the skies opened up on us in the strongest storm I've ever seen! I could hear the rain coming over the hill getting closer and even in the tent with eyes shut the lightning was bright! We travelled into Cluj Napoca the next morning and had a walk around. Sadly the mysterious aquacycles promised on one tourist website [View Full Entry]

---

---

Mileage: ~3000 miles We spent our afternoon in Vilnius wandering around. We traveled to Uzupis, a section of the city which has declared its indipendance from Lithuania (though not taken too seriously). The small town is famed for its relaxed bohemian lifestyle - walking through we saw a harpist and singer performing on a footbridge, an artist with his house-come-gallery freely open to the public and the 'constitution' of 41 rights, including the right to own a cat! The town's peaceful and laid back way of life was fascinating and difficult to part from. We left Vilnius later than planne [View Full Entry]

---

---

Mileage ~2400 miles After leaving Berlin we travelled East and along the Polish North coast to Gdansk, a small city on the coast. We spent a couple of hours trying to find somewhere to stay as it had been pouring with rain and we weren't interested in camping. We eventually happened upon a very nice hotel in the centre of the city where we could put our feet up. We ate that night at a cafe looking out onto an attractive street. The next morning we explored Gdansk which was small enough to enjoy by foot. The buildings were quaint and [View Full Entry]

---

---

Mileage: 1000 miles After Matt had left for his interview in the UK, Lucy and I spent the day in Dortmund. Wandering the streets and browsing the market stalls, I picked up a cheap (no doubt fake) watch. We ate Currywurst (sausage in spiced sauce) before returning to the campsite. The following day, Lucy and I visited a modern art gallery which featured a wide range of mostly German pieces over the past 50 or so years. We visited an eiscafe and shared a really gorgeous chocolate ice cream in the warm sun. We wandered down to a park where we [View Full Entry]

---

---

First entry here in Dortmund, Germany! We've travelled around 1000 miles on the road already and are well into the swing of things. Driving on the right has been pretty easy for us all to adjust to, though navigating on a map with only the largest roads in Europe on has proven tricky! After cramming all our junk in the car, our first stop on day 1 was in Paris via the Dover-Calais ferry connection. Arriving around 7.30pm, we had time only to plan the next day's activities. We were delayed entering Paris due to strikes but spent the morning in [View Full Entry]

---

---

This year I'm off to Europe for several weeks. I'll be travelling with Matt (who I went around Africa with last year) and a friend of his, Lucy. We'll be driving around in my car ('99 Vauxhall Astra). Our route will take us through France, Germany, Poland, Luithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy and back round to France. We're taking a tent, stove, etc with the aim of camping most of the way around and using hostels here and there. While we've got things planned for some of the countries (which can be seen [url=http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF [View Full Entry]

---

---

After traveling back to Dar Es Salaam and staying the night on the beach again, we drove the following morning to Moshi, a town used as the base camp for many travellers going up to Kilimanjaro. We experienced our first rain there in some 35 days - putting down the tents was rather unpleasant in the morning! We left Moshi for Arusha, a large town in the north of Tanzania. We arrived early in the afternoon at a campsite which also featured a Maasai museum (the Maasai are one of the largest tribes in Africa, and many of their people still [View Full Entry]

---

---

We spent the day driving out of Malawi and into Tanzania, stopping in a small town on the way. Some of the scenery on our drive was absolutely breathtaking, looking out over Lake Malawi. We were to have a themed evening whereby we would buy fancy-dress for someone else in the group - names were picked out of a hat. We visited a clothes market where we had 30 minutes to buy our clothes. That evening, an enormous fruit punch was made in a cooler box and our outfits were presented. I contemplated putting a picture of my outfit up here, [View Full Entry]

---

---

We left Livingstone a day earlier than expected to give ourselves more time later on the tour. Our first day after Livingstone involved a fair bit of driving to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. We didn't spend much time in town as it was getting late so we went on to the campsite which seemed to be breeding very small dogs, which followed us around the campsite. Our next day was a full day of driving, arriving at Chipata in the evening. We only made one stop at a few market stalls where we spoke to a man who claimed Peter [View Full Entry]

---

---