Lilly, James, Miriam and Alice
we are 4 young whippersnappers off on our gap year travels from hong kong to england by train via as many places as we can afford =)thefoursome
Below is our planned route:
And here for anyone who's interested, is the approximate itinerary for what is happening.
TRANS-SIBERIAN
11th Feb: leave HK on the train for Beijing
12th Feb: arrive Beijing
13th - 14th Feb: in Beijing
15th - 18th Feb: in Mongolia
19th Feb: on board the train
20th - 22nd Feb: at Lake Baikal
23rd Feb: on board the train
24th - 27th Feb: in Ekaterinburg
28th Feb - 2nd March: in Moscow
3rd - 5th March: in St. Petersburg
INTERRAILING (much less planned...)
6th - 10th March: St. Petersburg --> Vilnius (Baltic States)
11th - 16th March: Poland (North Coast, Warsaw, Auschwitz)
17th - 18th March: Czech Republic (Prague)
19th - 22nd March: Germany (Stuttgart)
23rd - 26th March: Austria (Innsbruck, Vienna)
27th - 30th March: Hungary (Budapest)
31st March - 12th April: Croatia (Zagreb, Opatija, Plitvice, Zadar, Split, Dubrovnik)
13th - 25th April: Italy (Bari, Naples, Positano, Rome, Perugia, Florence, Pisa, Venice, Trento)
26th - 28th April: Switzerland --> UK (Interlaken, Geneva, Cherbourg, Poole)
29th April - 8th May: UK (Poole, Caterham!!!)
FRANCE
9th May - 19th June: Fruit picking, staying in James's house near Bordeaux
20th June - 4th July: Staying in chateau in Bergerac
5th July: Flying to UK
then home :)
Travel Blog Posts
greetings from Andasibe!
Published: July 5th 2010Africa » Madagascar » Andasibe-Mantadia National Park
July 5th 2010
Hello one and all! We are now in our placement and james is better :) we took 2 taxi-brousses from tana to Andasibe, our little muddy village on the edge of the rainforest, stopping at our nearest big-ish settlement Moramanga on the way (nearest bank:supermarket etc) which is an hour from Andasibe. Two very nice ladies from the Dodwell Trust came with us to Andasibe to settle us in here. We live in a little wooden lean-to beneath our landlady (Madame Booz)'s house, with a little kitchen, 3 bedrooms of which we have one, and a corridor type thing between them all with a table and chairs. outside is the long drop, 'shower' and the only tap, and we don't have any drains inside the house. our room is quite cosy and once you get used ... read more
June 29th 2010
Hello one and all! It's Lilly here writing from an internet cafe in Antananarivo with a funny keyboard that is making me type very slowly and so is costing me a fortune haha. we've had a pretty good time so far, arrived on friday night in the capital and we were met at the airport by 2 nice malagasy men in one of the most run down cars i've ever seen, it didn't have a dashboard or anything. Driven through the streets as everyone ca,e out to celebrate the eve of independence day and were dropped at a hotel for our first night. Woke up the next morning to catch a taxi-brousse, read minibus stuffed to overflowing with people, to Ampefy for a weekends holiday before starting our placement in Andasibe. was quite intimidating as touts ... read more
April 15th 2009
So the Sunday morning train to Sibenik - again the train didn't leave on time, but we made the journey without any problems changing once at a tiny village called Perkovic. We arrived in Sibenik hoping to find a tourist office to find accommodation (Sibenik wasn't even mentioned in the lonely planet) but they were all closed. Instead, we saw a sign to a hotel that was way out of our budget, and asked for information there. The lady directed us a 30min walk uphill to a hostel that she wasn't convinced was even open, but we set off with a photocopy of her map. Luckily, just as we were beginning the trek Alice and Mim were approached by a lady offering an apartment for 10 pounds per person per night, and it was just 5mins ... read more
April 15th 2009
And so began the part of the trip I was most looking forward to: Croatia! As we have spent such a long time here, we've split (ahahahah unintentional pun there) the blogs up into separate bits to make it more digestible for you, fine readers. Alors. The journey to Split was another quite tricky one - we got up ridiculously early in Budapest to get the first bus at 5.15am back down the hill to the town, where we took another bus to the station. Unfortunately, the ticket system on the bus is a bit weird, you have to buy a booklet of tickets from a news stand before you get on, and James had accidentally misplaces those tickets. WIthout a news stand at the top of the hill, we had no option but to fare ... read more
Hungry in Hungary (but not for long!) by Miriam
Published: April 15th 2009Europe » Hungary » Central Hungary » Budapest » Buda
April 15th 2009
We arrived in Budapest in the late afternoon and with the aid of a tourist leaflet from the station we embarked on the challenge of finding our hostel. We'd heard from other travelers that in Budapest the best hostel was at the top of a huge hill inside the walls of the city's former citadel. After much confusion over the bus system and a steep half hour hike we finally arrived at our hostel. The view from the top was amazing and thoroughly justified the long walk. You could see right out over the city and the citadel is situated right next to the Danube so you can see both Buda and Pest depending on which side you are on. On arrival however we found the nearest source of food was at the bottom. So after ... read more
April 15th 2009
And so the journey continued... The train from Stuttgart to Paris only took 4 hours - this was our introduction to the amazing train system in France! All the TGV trains are super speedy, and with our passes super cheap too! Very exciting after the doddery trans-siberian and all Europe's slow trains. Anyway we arrived in Paris with 40mins for the changeover, planning to metro-it quickly from the Gare de l'est to the Gare de Lyon, however without euro coins we had to queue for about 20mins to get to the ticket office, and with 15mins metro journey missed the connection. Even so, with 6 trains a day down to Montpellier we weren't too fussed, until we tried to reserve places and found out that the next trains were fully booked with people taking holidays, and ... read more
April 15th 2009
So! From Prague our route begins to change a little - we decided that as we were getting bored of just doing European city after city and they were all blending together, we would continue on to Stuttgart to stay with Mim's aunt and uncle, and then head down to James' parents house in the south of France, near Montpellier for a week of relaxation. We went to Stuttgart via Munich, where our train never made it to the station due to some accident on the line and Alice's German was tested to the limit (i.e. we found some bilingual americans who translated for us haha), and we arrived at Huttenstrasse at around 8.00pm. We were very warmly welcomed by John and Helen, Mim's cousins, and her aunt Catherine, whilst her uncle Christoph was still at ... read more
April 15th 2009
Hello everyone!! Just a very quick message to apologise for our complete lack of updates in the past month - we have been staying with relatives and in places without internet and in private accommodation without internet too, and we also changed our route somewhat! anyway, this is to say that we are knuckling down now and catching up, so bare with us nd hopefully we'll get back on track! lots of love to you all, Lilly xxx... read more
March 17th 2009
Hello again! It is I, the one with the blonde. Czech Republic... Of course they took advantage of the English language and printed things like 'Czech me out' on their souvenirs so that silly tourists would laugh and be all touristy and buy it. Day 1 We arrived at 7am after only having less that two hours sleep.. Thats less than four hours sleep in 2 nights! however, the reason for not sleeping was very different this time. We marched into a berth with only two people in it. I said 'may we join you?' he said '50 Euros', which was when I realised he was an Aussie and stopped taking him seriously! (im not a racist, I love all people! - EVEN Hannah Smith) He was a really kind guy who suggested we lock our ... read more
March 14th 2009
Hello Krakow! Arriving on the 12/03/09 at approximately 3:00pm we hopped off the train and walked into the station supermarket. There we bought our dinner and some beer :) I had appointed myself leader of Krakow and lead us to the hostel, which was only 30 minutes walk from the station. We arrived just before 4:00pm. The walk took us through the heart of the old town past St. Mary's cathedral. The old town is really stunning and full of activity from youths on bikes, to street performers trying to make a living, and lone travelers busking for the next leg of their travels. We arrived at the reception and casually asked if we could check in under the name of Helvetia (name of the hostel at which the receptionist made our reservation - Warsaw). The ... read more
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