17 hours to Kiev on a train with a stinking cold wasn't nice, but at least we were both suffering!! Since then neither of us have fully recovered but we have had an amazing week seeing the sights and meeting up with friends old and new. Apologies to anyone if we've been a little too generous with our germs!! Kiev has been an amazing city and we have no doubt we will be back! The question is only when!! Staying with our friend Anthea was lovely and meeting up with Gary and Linda (and Linda's fiance Barry) has made for a [View Full Entry]

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From Yalta it took a little under 2 hours for our bus to twist and turn its way along the coastal road to Sevastopol. We were dropped off at the bus station, conveniently located over the bridge from the train station. On arrival we were greeted by the sight of a stationary train with its cargo of an anti-aircraft gun! No doubt that was a reminder if one was necessary that we had arrived in a military town. There are not a lot of accommodation options in Sevastopol but that wasn’t a problem as there were plenty of pensioners hanging around [View Full Entry]

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It took just over 12 hours on the train to get from Odesa to Simferopol. Despite being very comfortable compared to Azerbaijani trains, we still didn’t sleep well! At the station we found somewhere for a McBreakfast before buying tickets on the World’s longest and slowest trolleybus. From Simferopol to Yalta is just 85km but it took almost 3 hours. It’s a nice route but after the first 90 minutes we just wanted to get there! There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of choice when it comes to hotels anywhere on the Crimean peninsula. We took a taxi from [View Full Entry]

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What a palaver! We left Sulina intending to travel up to Chisinau in Moldova. Tourist Information in Tulcea had said we needed to get a bus to Gelati to do so, but this proved troublesome. So, we took the hydrofoil along the Danube from Sulina to Tulcea from where we took the small local bus to Gelati. This took us through rural Northern Romania where the grape harvest has just begun. The narrow country roads were bristling with horses and carts full of baskets of grapes or winter fodder. Getting to Gelati also involves a 15 minute ferry across the River [View Full Entry]

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Just 90 minutes away from Tulcea lies the small town of Sulina. 90 minutes by fast hydrofoil down one of the Danube’s many arms, , double that if you take a slow boat. The scenery isn’t that much to write home about though so we recommend speed! In Sulina we were met from the boat by a guy offering us a room in a pension just 5 minutes walk from the jetty and, apparently 8 minutes walk from the beach. Something was lost in translation though as it took 15-20 minutes to get there and later we discovered it was a [View Full Entry]

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From Constanta it took us just 2 hours by maxitaxi to reach Tulcea. That was despite the police pulling the bus over and detaining us for 10 minutes or so. We don’t know what the problem was but we suspect it is part of a drive to get unsafe buses off the road. If that’s the case we can’t really complain. The bus station is on the edge of town on the banks of the River Danube (well, one of its many arms on the delta). We couldn’t be bothered looking around for a hotel in the midday sun so we [View Full Entry]

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Getting to Constanta seemed so straight forward. Get the bus to Varna, walk 10 minutes to the bus station, get the bus to Constanta, cross the border from one EU country to another, get off in Constanta, find hostel. Well it wasn't quite that simple! The bus from the village where we were staying arrived in Varna 15 minutes after the Constanta bus left. The solution was to cadge a lift off one of our new-found friends and that even gave us time for a leisurely lunch at the bus station. Then we nearly missed the bus because it didn't leave [View Full Entry]

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Our stay in Varna has essentially been 10 days of down time, a welcome break halfway through this trip. It's just a shame the British weather came to greet us as we were looking forward to lying by the pool and getting a tan. We were met off the bus by Rob who we worked with in Azerbaijan. He kindly invited us to stay at his house in the hills above Varna. Our first full day with him was glorious and we basked in the sunshine making the most of his swimming pool. Sadly that was the last we saw of [View Full Entry]

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2 Pages of photos again! Sorry!!! Getting out to the Gallipoli peninsula turned out to be more troublesome than anticipated. Having bought tickets on a Metro bus, one of the biggest companies in Turkey, we thought it was going to be easy. Their servis transfer at 0910 took us to the bus station, but not the bus station we expected to go to. There we were put onto another bus which eventually took us to the main bus station. When we presented our ticket for our 1030 departure, it turned out that was the departure time from the Harem bus station [View Full Entry]

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There are 2 pages of photos again. Where there is a poem or a quotation, click on the photo. It should open in a new window and hopefully you can read the inscriptions. We came to the Gallipoli peninsula quite ignorant of any detail about the events which took place here in 1915. The night before our visit we watched the film Gallipoli starring a very young Mel Gibson. It was very interesting and I think it put things into context for us. The morning of our visit we watched a documentary called Gallipoli: The Fatal Shor [View Full Entry]

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