Duncs 82

We ended our transit tour by being unceremoniously dumped at the Budapest International train station at 11pm at night. It was deserted, there wasn’t a taxi in sight. What’s more, we had no local money. Thankfully we did manage to find a taxi reasonably quickly which whisked us of to our hotel for a long awaited stretch out and sleep. Budapest is an interesting town, in that it’s actually the amalgamation of three separate cities. The two major ones, being Buda on the one side of the Danube, and Pest on the other (we forget the name of the third town, but it didn’t make it into the city’s name either). We spent our first day getting our bearings in the city of Pest, and stumbling across one of the most magnificent Christmas markets ever. And ... read more

We arrived in Turkey from Paris in the evening, and settled in for a short night’s sleep before we were collected early for our two day tour to the Gallipoli battlefields and Troy. The first day of our tour we had a comprehensive visit to the old battlefields where many Anzacs fought against the Turks in WW1. We were blessed with wonderful weather, as our guide constantly reminded us, it should be windy and cold. It was a wonderful experience, wandering and exploring Anzac Cove and the many memorials in honour of the fallen soldiers of the Gallipoli battle. It was actually quite an eerie feeling, to be standing in such a beautiful part of the world, knowing that only 90-odd years ago, an intense and defining battle was fought here. That evening we crossed the ... read more

Barcelona was the setting for part two of our trip to Spain. Unfortunately Rach caught quite a bad cold (potentially from Duncs who had the sniffles for two days in Lisboa) and was feeling under the weather. We decided that a day or two taking it easy to allow Rach to overcome the worst of the cold was a better idea than pro-longing it. This still didn’t stop us getting out and about and catching all the sights of one of the most vibrant cities in Europe. We started our tour of Barcelona with a walk in search of some Gaudi architectural master pieces. These are truly amazing buildings that have been dreamt up by the architect (dreamt is the best word for them as you need wonder what substances may have been abused at the ... read more

Welcome back blog fans! Well, our plans changed slightly, due to some exorbitant plane fares... Subsequently, we decided to wrap our tour of Portugal in a Spanish sandwich. We have split our blog of Spain into two - first will be Madrid, a short break of 6 days in Portugal (see following blog), then our 3 days in Barcelona. So here we go with Madrid… We finally arrived in the early evening after a full day of travel from Dublin where we last left you. We were pleasantly surprised at the warmer weather, yet Rach was shocked (and fascinated) by the human flesh trade that took place out front of the restaurant that we managed to find in our first night in Spain - apparently men like all sorts, and quite frequently, especially considering it was ... read more

This blog was meant to be posted 6 days ago, however, due to a difficuly with the internet (primarily caused by Duncs), and a lack of access since has meant we are now posting our blog of Scotland in Madrid. We arrived in Scotland 4 days after our arrival in London and took control of the “Silver Rocket”, which would be our chariot for the next 5 days - a.k.a the Silver Passat with it’s unorthodox method of car ignition. Spent the night at Stirling after checking out the birthplace of Queen Mary of Scots, followed by our first taste of the Scottish favourite, black pudding. Day 2 saw us hit the road to the land of the MacNab clan, Killin. Duncs felt his spiritural homeland, while Rach decided that his new name was “Snapples”, due ... read more