Author: travurple

Monday (15 May) we checked out of the AirBnB in Brasov and headed to the station for a train back to Bucharest, for one night only in the NF Palace hotel, housed in “le dome” building on the edge of the old town. Impressive large rooms and chandeliers (a bit of faded grandeur).

Had a last traditional Romanian meal at the “Caru Cu Bere” restaurant, or at least what they serve tourists and tell them it’s local. The sweet dumplings were amazing. The restaurant building is stunning lots of wood panelling and stained glass.

Tuesday, we got our 1hr delayed train to Ruse, in Bulgaria. An interesting border crossing, thankfully an Intrepid group tour and tour leader were also on the train, so the tour leader kept telling her group what the border crossing process was. In short when exiting Romania you stay on the train and the Border officers come on the train and collect everyone’s passports, then disappear back to their office for 15 mins, then bring your stamped passports back!

However when entering Bulgaria, you give your passport to the border officer as you get off the train (with your luggage as we changed trains). They also disappear to the office for 15 mins before coming back to the platform with your stamped passport, with the added difficulty of trying to match up passports with the rightful owner!

The Intrepid leader also told everybody that their next train, also the one we were on, had waited at Ruse! Result.

So we made our connecting train to Gorna Oryahovitsa, a stopping off station on a scenic rail journey. Bulgaria doesn’t do Bolt/Uber, however they do have an app called TaxiMe, but Gorna is a bit local for that, so we had to chat up a nice local taxi driver and explain to him where we needed to go, the Hotel Terra, which was all slightly complicated by the fact that Bulgaria use the Cyrillic alphabet. The second complication was that we did not have any Bulgarian cash and he didn’t accept credit cards. Anyway we managed to get to the right hotel via an ATM.

The Hotel Terra was a very nice hotel, made mainly by the staff, the receptionist/bar women didn’t speak English (and we don’t speak Bulgarian) so via lots of Google Translate we managed to get Beers, a restaurant recommendation and ordered a taxi to the restaurant. She and Rog bonded over a shared birthday!

Wednesday, back to the train station for a train to Stara Zagora, another random town we had never heard of before. Unfortunately, when we arrived it was raining, a lot! The hotel was just close enough to the station for the taxis to not want to take us, but far enough for us to get very wet!

The hotel Merian Palace hotel is a slightly strange hotel, we were upgraded to a VIP two bedroom suite, but the restaurant was not open. So, at the recommendation of the hotel staff, we headed over the road to a restaurant which turned out to be fully booked. Back to the hotel bar we went, and Nic managed to order food delivery via the Glovo app. Another first for us!

Thursday, a train ride to Sofia along a scenic route, according to the European Rail map, it was spectacular journey through the mountains.

Checked into our AirBnB in Sofia

Friday, we wandered around the centre of Sofia, visiting the St Joseph Church, the Banya Bashi Mosque, the Roman ruins, the National Assembly building, St George’s Church (the oldest church in Sofia, now surrounded by offices), finally the Sveta Nedelya Church.

Saturday, more wanderings, via the church of St Nicholas the miracle maker, St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the National Palace of Culture, and a bit of the Berlin Wall.

We finished the day at a local traditional Bulgarian restaurant called The Hadjidragana Tavern. Local food, wine and spirits! Even some live folk music!

Sunday, a slow start!

We walked via the Synagogue to the “women’s” market, which had been established for over 130 years. We then sat in a cafe and watched, what appeared to be most of Sofia, promenade up and down the pedestrian streets.

We managed to forget to put trains and kilometres on last weeks blog, so there is a catch up at the bottom of this one.

Monday, we spend wandering around Oradea again, visiting the Black Eagle arcade, the St Nicholas cathedral, St Laszlo church and a walk along the river.

We have enjoyed our time in Oradea, a nice town, lovely buildings and architecture. You can tell money has been invested in the area, and there is still work ongoing.

Tuesday, we checked out of our AirBnB, had brunch in Victoria’s cafe on the other side of the street, then heading back to the train station. A 2 1/2 hr train journey to Cluj-Napoca, then a short walk to an AirBnB. At check in we actually met a real person, all our previous AirBnB’s have had self check in, with keys in lock boxes or codes provided for electronic locks.

Once checked in we walked into town, about 20mins for dinner and drinks.

Wednesday morning we got a Bolt to the Botanical Gardens, a large area with lots of different sections of garden and green houses. Quite busy with school groups of lots of different age groups wandering round. We strolled back through town via the National Opera House, a couple more churches, Cluj appears to have a church for all denominations.

Thursday, was a day spent mainly on the train to Brasov, in the heart of Transylvania, nearly a 7 hr journey, slowly through lovely countryside.

Friday, we went to Bran Castle, the home of “Vlad the impaler” and his father nicknamed “Dracula”, and it is said to be the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel. The castle is not that big, but the route through the castle is well organised and worth the £10(ish) entrance fee.

We got a Bolt to and from the Castle, not the cheapest option, but with three of us it was not bad. However Bolt obviously has “dynamic” pricing as, initially, it tried to charge us twice the amount for the return journey, but that was because of supply and demand, there was only one car in Bran. As it was a chilly day we went to find some warming soup for lunch, Rog watched the app and waited for other cars to arrive in the area and the return price halved, back to the original price! Quickly Rog pressed the buttons to book our ride, we paid our lunch bill and dashed outside!

Saturday, unbeknownst to us prior to our arrival in Brasov, there are mountain races over the weekend. Today was the Mountain Ultra Marathon (70 Kms), the Marathon (42 Kms) and the half marathon (21 Kms). The course for all of them started up the mountain straight out of the main city square. A tough course, the winner of the marathon finished in 3hrs 51mins.

We walked around the old town via the Black Church and St Catherine’s gate.

For dinner Nic booked a table at “Soul” a very nice restaurant, the food and wine were excellent! Back to the flat in time to watch a few of the Eurovision songs before falling into bed (we are 2 hours ahead!)

Sunday, we walked up the mountain, a zigzagging path, winding its way up and crossing under the cable car. Worth the climb for the view over the city.

Week ended – 7 May

4 Trains

711 Kms

Week ended – 14 May

2 Trains

480 Kms

Total so far

39 Trains

7,826 Kms

Monday (1 May) also a bank holiday in Romania, we walked via Bucharest old town to the Palace of Parliament, the second largest government building in the world, it is huge, and second only to the US Pentagon, a legacy of the Ceausescu years.

The Palace of Parliament looks down a long wide boulevard with fountains down the middle of the road, ending in a large fountain in the middle of a roundabout.

Tuesday, we got a Bolt to the National Village Museum, a collection of houses and buildings, moved from all over the country to be preserved, the museum started in the 1930’s. It shows very different styles of houses, from half buried houses to large wooden thatched cottages. A really interesting museum, we spend a couple of hours wandering around.

We then moved on to Herastra Park, we have no idea why but there is a monument to Micheal Jackson. There is also an Arch de Triomphe, gifted to Romania by France for their support in World War I.

We then returned to the old town to visit the Stravropoleas Monastery.

Wednesday, we walked to the Romanian Athenaeum, which looked like the Pantheon in Rome. We then went to the National Art Gallery, expecting to pay for entry, but were handed free tickets when we entered, as far as we could work out they do one free day a month and today happened to be that day, Result!

A national art gallery with no cafe! So we had to leave to find one, the “Artichoke Social House”, nice coffee. We decided not to return the Gallery and walked back towards the old town again, via the park.

After a little more wandering we stopped for a drink, Rog found honey crust beer, the glass was topped with honey and sugar!!

Thursday, we checked out of the AirBnB and headed to the station, we knew which train we wanted and the fact that we needed to reserve seats, So Rog join a queue in the ticket hall and managed to get seat reservations for all the Romanian trains we needed over the next few weeks. A seat reservation cost £0.90 for each each one, happy days!

We took a 3 hour train to Craiovo, we had never heard of the place, but it was on the train line in the general direction we wanted to travel.

We stayed in the Hotel Meliss, a very strange hotel, at first we thought we were the only guests, as we sat in a large function room, at a table for 8, for dinner with nobody else around. There were a couple more people at breakfast, but that was it.

Friday, a morning train to Caransebes, and a short walk to the Vila Palace hotel, a nice little hotel which is obviously used by the locals as a party/wedding venue, in fact we were informed of a party that night, so a disco until midnight, they put us in the rooms furthest anyway so it was not a problem.

We walked into Caransebes, a non touristy town, had a couple of drinks and dinner, which was £32 for the three of us! Not sure if they missed something off the bill, and we didn’t get one to check we were just told the amount, so we paid what we’re were asked for and got a taxi back to the hotel.

Saturday morning, after breakfast Rog was going to have a shower, but we had no water in the room, So Nic headed down to reception, who were mortified that the workmen had turned the water off and ran to get it put back on!!

Walked back towards the station, stopped for coffee in a local cafe, Nic also ordered Beef soup, which turned out to be one course of a three course lunch which then arrived!! Rog had to eat the dessert of pancakes to help out.

Our train was to Timisoara Nord, with only 14 minutes to transfer on to a second train to Oradea. Given our experience so far is that Romanian train timetables appear to be more of a suggestion rather than a schedule, anything could have happened, however we made the connection, with Rog asking the train driver if we were about to get on the correct train. There were no train or platform numbers to be seen at the station.

We arrived in Oradea, a Bolt into town and checked into another lovely AirBnB.

Had a couple of drinks in a wine bar, close to the AirBnB.

Sunday, we visited the synagogue, walked through a park towards the Fortress, however they were lots of road works, but we persevered, finally got to the fortress and there was a street food festival, so we had lunch!

Walked along the river back into town, and the same wine bar as last night and had more wine! Plus sharing boards and focaccia sandwiches. All local Romanian wines and all good!

Monday (24 April) we checked out of our Ljubljana AirBnB and were able to leave our bags, so we could have another wander around Ljubljana, including a look around the Cathedral. It was a rainy day, so there were brunch, and coffee stops regularly until the time of the train departure. It was due to depart at 14.45hrs, in the end we left 25 minutes later.

We arrived in Zagreb, a short walk to our AirBnB, slightly rough and ready looking on the outside, it was in the middle of a large city block, three locked doors to deal with, however inside it was a lovely apartment.

Tuesday, we walked towards the old town, as you may remember we have been to Zagreb before (the Ryanair refund week!), it was nice to be back in a familiar city and lovely to walk around, slightly less aimlessly, and show our friend some of the sights we remembered.

We headed for the funicular to go up to the old town, but it was not working, and will “start again next week” according to the worker in high vis.

We noticed this time that there is lots of building work going on in Zagreb, tricky to find an outdoor cafe without the sounds of drilling or hammering…. We know…. first world problems! Nice to see them working on improvements though.

We took it easy up the steps toward St Mark’s church, which was, predictably, surrounded by scaffolding, luckily the roof, which is the impressive sight was not covered.

Headed back down the hill towards the Cathedral, more scaffolding, which was being put in place by a huge crane, and a gang of workers with a head for heights.

Wednesday, we headed to the Botanical Gardens, which are very close to the apartment, we are a month later in the year than our last visit, and the gardens are a lot further along, more flowers out, especially the Irises which Nic last time had requested to visit a month later to see them all in bloom! Still lots more to come out on this visit, so maybe another trip in May will happen at some point ?!

Thursday, check out day again! There was no luggage storage at the train station as all the lockers were out of action, they are in the process of changing them over to accept Euros (Croatia joined the Euro zone on 1 January). Instead, via the “Stasher” app, we found a local hostel that will store luggage, for a fee.

More wandering around Zagreb until our train at 16:45, including a super lunch spot for some local cevapici for Nic, and burgers for the other. Cevapici is a Bosnian specialty, (the chef was Bosnian!) it was very tasty and much too big to finish!

At the station our train was their early, so we managed to get another 6 seater compartment to ourselves for most of the journey to Budapest.

The Budapest AirBnB was a little disappointing, it was very reasonably priced and ok for a couple of nights, but it is the first negative AirBnB review we have had to leave.

Friday, we had not realised before but the Pope is in Budapest, so we got a “Bolt”, another app like Uber for taxis, over to Buda Castle, we managed to get most of the way there before the roads were closed. We waited for the Papal convoy to pass, after lots of different security conveys there was the Pope in a white Fiat 500.

We were then able to walk up to Buda Castle, but parts of it were closed for the visit, still a beautiful view over the Danube river and the rest of the city.

We planned to walk over the chain bridge back to the Pest side of the river, but more building work meant it was closed to pedestrians, but still open to cars so we got another Bolt to the parliament building. A huge building. The square in front of it was being prepared for the Papal mass on Sunday, Nic spoke to one of the security Guard to ask how many seats there were? He didn’t answer that question, but did say they were expecting 1 million to be in the city for the Mass!! But not us as we are on a night train to Bucherest on Saturday night.

Saturday, we had a lovely breakfast at a cafe on the ground floor of the AirBnB building, then checked out, we took our bags to a luggage storage spot near the train station. Then walked across the city, everywhere we turned it looked like we had just missed the Pope again! We walked through the Jewish quarter to the Synagogue, the largest in Europe, being Saturday it was closed to visitors. We then walked to the covered market, another impressive building, where we bought ham and cheese for tomorrow’s lunch.

As we were again near the river, with time to kill before our night train, we did a river cruise to see all the sights from the water. Whilst cruising the boat was stopped from going under one of the bridges, until the Pope’s convoy had crossed over.

Dinner in a Hungarian restaurant, a bit touristy, but the food was surprisingly good. Excellent Goulash soup, Beef Stew and Chicken with Mushroom sauce, and they had very professional live music.

Then back to pick up the bags and do a bit of shopping for supplies for the train journey, our longest (time) yet, 15 1/2 hours. The train was a little delayed but no problem really. The main problem, thankfully not for us, was that one of the sleeper carriages was out of service, and they had attached a normal carriage instead, luckily our compartment was in the carriage behind.

Sunday, we arrived in Bucherest (Bucuresti) at 3pm after another time zone change, and a Bolt to our AirBnB, the Bolt was definitely a different experience compared with the new bright yellow Bolt taxis in Budapest. This one arrived and it was a battered old thing, but the 15 mins journey across the city cost 16 lei (£2.89) we might try the “comfort Bolt” next time, for £4!

The AirBnB is nicer than the last one, but was a little tricky to get into with automatic key entry, which is a little bit temperamental, but at least they warned us, so if you don’t succeed try and try again!

The neighbourhood looks a little colourful again, the building at the end of the road is falling down, but we’ll explore that tomorrow.

This week

Only 3 trains

1,181 Kms

In total

33 trains

6,635kms

Monday, we spent walking around Palermo, visiting the port, the cathedral and walking past two opera houses and various churches, every town and city in Italy appears to have loads of churches.

Had a traditional Italian lunch, in what felt like a very Italian restaurant “Trepani” the food was really good.

We then got a train back along the north coast of Sicily, to Messina to catch the sleeper train to Rome. The sleeper train was delayed, we grabbed a KFC for dinner. As we were hanging around the station the police approached us to see our passports, we must have looked shifty.

Tuesday, we awoke on the sleeper train, we did get some sleep, but not that much. We arrived in Rome late, but luckily our next train was not for a couple of hours, so we still made that connection via Bologna and on to Rimini. Finally we caught a bus to San Marino, and then walked with our bags up through the steep historic streets to our hotel.

San Marino is Stunningly picturesque, the old town is a hill top castle with 3 towers, and views over rolling hills down to the sea in the distance. The photos do not do the place any justice. In the summer we are sure it will be mobbed by tourists, but apart from us, and what seems like the obligatory multiple school trips, the place was quite quiet.

Wednesday, we checked out of our San Marino hotel, a bus back to Rimini to catch a train to Ravenna, only a 58 minute train journey today!

Our accommodation was another AirBnB, a room in a lovely flat, walking distance from the train station, and right in the centre of town. Neither of us had heard of Ravenna, but a friend had said, “if you are going to Italy you must go the Ravenna to the mosaics”. So as we were passing we took up the challenge, and the mosaics were well worth the visit.

Friday, back to the train station for a trains to Venice, with a change in Ferrara. Our hotel was on main land Venice, so we dropped our bags, then headed back to the station for a train to Venice (lagoon). On the “causeway” there was the skeleton of a bus still on fire. Both sides of the road were closed, but the rail line was still open.

We have been to Venice before, but it was lovely to see it again, so we walked to the Rialto bridge, St Mark’s Square, and the Bridge of Sighs.

We had wine and chiccetti (Italian tapas) in a square and watched the world go by.

Headed back for a return train, the road was still closed 3 hours later!

The main reason for being in Venice, is that a friend is joining our interrail adventure for a month, not sure if this means they are only 1/3 as mad as us only doing month rather than 3 months, or twice as mad for choosing to travel with us!

Despite Italian airport strikes, they arrived.

Saturday, a train to Trieste, passing a huge marble quarry, Trieste is our final stop in Italy, only time for a quick walk around the block, before catching a train to Ljubljana, Slovenia. A very civilised train, we got a 6 birth compartment to ourselves, the guard when checking our tickets was very stony faced, while Rog was hindered in the process of showing our online passes on his phone as we kept going in and out of tunnels, and the lights were not working. Later on the guard returned to the compartment and handed out chocolates, now that’s service. As we travelled the scenery changed again back to more alpine views.

Checked into another AirBnB, and headed out for a stroll, a beer and dinner, ended up with pizza in a local pub, sitting outside near the river.

Sunday, up to the castle, 1 walking, 2 via the funicular, enjoyed super views over the city. Strolled along the banks of the river, through the flea market, stopped for a coffee, which somehow turned into a beer!! Then we split up, 1 walking to Tivoli park, 1 walking back to the flat for a nap and 1 going on a boat trip up the river.

We had dinner at Vander’s restaurant serving local Slovenian food and wine. Very nice food, which still has a heavy Italian influence.

Trains and Kms

This week:

12 trains

1,961 Kms

So far:

30 trains

5,454 Kms

So another busy week, as we chase around Italy seeing as much as we can with our limited Schengen visa days!

Easter Monday, we left Florence, obviously by train, for Pisa. A really busy train, it looked like everyone was going to Pisa. We read horror stories about the queues at Pisa station’s left luggage department, so we pre booked luggage lockers a couple of minutes outside the station, which worked out really well. Thankfully we booked the larger locker, so everything fitted in easily.

A 20 minute walk to see the Leaning Tower. It had to be done, lots of tourists trying to take the photos of their friend/family either attempting to “hold up” the tower or “lean against” the tower. As you’ll have noticed from the photos we post, Rog doesn’t appear to like people……. in photos.

A quick lunch at a pizzeria, slightly off the tourist trail, then back to the train station via a supermarket and a street market, where you could buy everything from leaning towers to food, plants and there was even a hoover demonstration.

We then had a 5hr train to Naples, and for the first time had to pay for a seat reservation in addition to our interrail passes, but we can’t really complain as it was only €3.50 each. Due to people on the tracks somewhere ahead of us, the train arrived in Naples an hour and a half later than planned. Thanks to mobile phones we were able to inform our AirBnB host of the delay, which he dealt with by organising a new key box instead of a meeting in person!

We were staying in an apartment near the train station, a comment in the guest book accurately described the area as “Colourful”. Having said that the rest of Naples is not that dissimilar. The city is covered in blue and white bunting celebrating that fact that Napoli football team is on course to win the league for the first time in 33yrs. It is going to be crazy on the 4 June when the league actually finishes and Napoli do win!!

Tuesday we had a lazy morning, booking some more accommodation for further on in our trip, doing some washing and going to the supermarket, another eye opener.

In the afternoon we wandered around the historic centre, there is lots of graffiti and buildings that look run down. We also found the “Gay Odin” chocolate shop, which sells some of the best chocolate we have ever tasted! Friends brought some back to the Isle of Man years ago, it was good then and is still good now. They also make ice cream, which it would have seemed churlish not to try! Rog had chocolate, no surprise there, Nic managed to inadvertently order marzipan, so a bit of a surprise there.

Wednesday we got the train to Pompeii, first had fun with the queuing, there was nobody queuing at the ticket booth, because first you had to go through security, which appeared to be very haphazard and arbitrary, however there was a metal detector they were ramming bags through. Our bag got rammed in the same tray as a family behind us, and were stopped, apparently they had packed knives as part of their picnic, thankfully we hadn’t.

Pompeii was really interesting, it is a huge site of 170 acres, a town excavated from under the ash of the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79AD. The weather was kind to us, it was a lovely sunny day, the site was busy but still easy to move around whilst avoiding the large tour groups. The surviving wall paintings and mosaics were amazing. Whilst sitting in the amphitheater we were treated to a rendition of the Canadian National anthem by a brave tourist.

Thursday, we walked towards Naples port, and working our way via the Naples Royal Palace, the Duomo, the Galleria Umberto and the historic centre again. Pizzeria De Michele was recommended for the best traditional Napoli pizza, however we walked past on two separate occasions and it was mobbed, at least 50 people outside each time, so that didn’t happen, so we found Pizzeria Bella Napoli, which was really good, friendly/funny staff and good pizzas.

Friday, there was a “Trenitalia” strike, thankfully we were moving on to Sorrento, and the service is not run by Trenitalia. We stayed in a cheap and cheerful hotel/hostel near the train station and they let us check in early, so we could get rid of our bags before walking around Sorrento.

We walked down to the port, then through the old town, you can buy absolutely anything either made from lemons and/or with lemons printed on it!

Had to sample the local Aperol spritz, a couple of times just to check! Had dinner in a buffalo restaurant, good mozzarella, Lasagne and Ragu.

Saturday, we had been indecisive about whether to get the ferry or the bus to Amalfi and on to Salerno, however the weather decided for us, the ferry was cancelled! So we got the bus, a very busy bus. We sat next to a fellow British traveler and chatted about all things travel. Once in Amalfi, we had a short wander around in the rain with our backpacks, then back to the bus depot for a bus to Salerno. We thought the Sorrento to Amalfi bus was busy, this one was worse, Rog gave up his seat to a woman with baby in arms. At one point Nic ended up holding the baby so that the mum could swap with Grandma who looked about to keel over. It was so crowded there was no room to manoeuvre so Nic could let them both sit together, not to mention that the journey is constant dizzyingly windy roads around the coast! We were glad to get to Salerno!

It continued to rain all afternoon, again we managed to check in early, then headed out to the sister restaurant of the really busy one in Naples, this time we were the one ones in there!

Sunday, a long day on the tracks 9hrs, Salerno to Palermo (Sicily), another €3.50 seat reservation and a nice quiet train. The whole train goes on the ferry!! Another first and something we (when we say we, we mean Rog) wanted to do since seeing it on the telly.

After promising to include numbers for trains and kms travelled, we forgot last week so here are the numbers

Week ended – 9 April

7 trains

622 Kms

Week ended -16 April

6 Trains

1,344Kms

Totals so far:

18 Trains

3,493Kms

Monday started with the Bernina Express train from Chur, Switzerland to Tirano, Italy. Our interrail passes cover the standard 2nd class travel, there was an option to pay for a seat in a Panoramic carriage, but we decided that 2nd class would be OK, and as we boarded the train we were glad we made that choice as the panoramic carriages were really busy. We had hardly anyone else in our carriage, and it had massive windows.

The journey goes through the Mountains, beautiful scenery, lots of tunnels and bridges. The train line is an amazing piece of engineering. Winding it’s way up, through and over the Alps.

From Tirano, we joined the “normal” railway service heading to Milan. As we had previously been to Milan (Some 20 yrs ago ??!) we decided to head straight to Parma, as in the ham. Boy what ham they had!

We spend 2 nights in an AirBnB in Parma, a tiny basement flat, which had everything we needed. Unfortunately the house next door was being renovated, so there was a bit of building noise, but as we were out all day, it was no problem.

On Tuesday after a morning of wandering, we had lunch at Ombré Rosse, walked in to a completely empty bar, not even staff to be seen, Nic stuck her head into the kitchen and said “hello”, the owner came out, apologised that they only had half the restaurant open at lunch time, so walked us out of the building via the back of the bar, outside around the corner and back in another door, a lovely meal, great friendly staff!

Wednesday, we walked to Parma cathedral, amazing frescoes, back to the apartment to collect our bags, and headed back to the train station for a train to Modena. We had been “arguing” about the pronunciation of “Modena” was it Mo’dena” or “”Mod’enna” it turns out the locals call it “Mod’ena”.

Our accommodation was another AirBnB close to the city centre, no cooking facilities this time, but they did provide a breakfast voucher for the local cafe, which was a nice touch. The AirBnB host recommended a couple of restaurants, so we tried both of them, and they were very good.

We did lots of walking around Modena, it was not a big historic centre, but was interesting.

Friday, we left Modena on a train to Bologna, we had 3 hrs in Bologna before our next train, so we dumped the bags at the station left luggage office, at a cost of 12 euros, and headed in to the historic centre of Bologna, a beautiful city, with lots of covered walkways, and the usual smattering of churches. A really interesting 3hrs, not long enough really, but we had to move on, so a train to Florence, via Parto.

We spend the rest of the Easter weekend in Florence, again walking lots, but we started on Saturday morning at the Galileo museum, which was really well done, showing Galileo’s work but also other scientific and astronomic devices, including an Arabic astrolabe (which predicts the movement of stars and planets) from the 10th century – 1,000 years ago, amazing!!

Many exhibits had been collected by the Medici family. Including celestial and terrestrial globes dating back to the 16 century.

We then had a walk over the Ponte Vecchio (bridge), via lots of churches and cathedrals, up to a viewing point over the city. There were wedding photos being taken and a proposal of marriage. The cafe did a surprisingly good and reasonably priced sandwich. The afternoon included the first gelato in Italy so far, it was well worth waiting for.

The weekend continued with more lovely food, this is Italy after all, including an Italian Chinese fusion restaurant, one of the best “Chinese” meals we have ever eaten. Sunday lunch was in a restaurant recommended by an American couple we sat next to in Modena, they had eaten there the night before, and on a previous occasion. It turned out to be a very good recommendation!

Sunday morning we attended the “explosion of the cart” outside the cathedral, an Easter tradition since the 15 Century, where they explode a large cart with fireworks, but it has its origins in the first crusade, when a Florence noblemen was the first man over the walls of Jerusalem, and was rewarded with three flints from the walls of the church of the holy Sepulchre, which are now used to start the fire. The fire is then sent by the bishop from inside the cathedral, in a fake dove on a wire, to set off the fireworks. Yes really! A sight to be seen. Lots of pomp and ceremony, and lots of people, many of whom were watching on their mobile phones, held above their heads!

Monday, we, joined by more family, visited Stourhead, another National Trust property. Obviously had coffee first, then a walk around the lake and gardens, full of follies, a pantheon, a grotto. The house was less interesting, it was full of paintings, but had the lights low to preserve them, it was so dark you couldn’t really see the paintings.

Tuesday we had the long drive back up north to Pocklington, the weather was not good,but overall a reasonable drive, and home in time for dinner.

We spend Wednesday and Thursday packing, repacking and then, just to be sure, unpacking and repacking our bags again for our next adventure!Interrailing from Saturday.

Friday we went to Beverley Minster to see the Driffield Male Voice Choir. A member of Rog’s extended family is a member but he was not there on this occasion.

Saturday morning, we set off interrailing, thankfully the UK rail strikes had been called off, so it was a busy 8:58 from York to London Kings Cross, then a really busy 12:31 Eurostar to Paris , just remembered it’s the first day of school holidays!, followed by the 16:42 to Mulhouse. Still in France, just, but near the Swiss Border. A long but enjoyable first day of our next trip. The storm clouds over France made for an amazing sky. As the train got closer to Mulhouse, more people got off, and the train got cooler. A night in an Budget Ibis, not bad for €53.

Sunday, we decided to delay our original early train and went for a walk around Mulhouse, it was larger the we expected, with a nice church in the town square.

We did a bit of shopping for journey pic nic provisions, then caught a train to Chur in Switzerland via Basel, we had never heard of Chur before booking this trip, but weirdly Chur was on the BBC website, something about an old wartime monument, that no one now remembers was Nazi Propaganda back in 1938 when it was erected.

The night’s accommodation: a Booking.com little flat, so little it had adult bunk beds!

Our long time followers will remember the mileage and lock counts from the narrow boat, we’ll try to replicate it here with kilometres (sorry The Continent doesn’t do miles) and trains.

1,527 kms on 5 Trains

A blog issued back on the Sunday rota!

Since the last blog, we have been sitting around in the gardens of the Marrakesh all inclusive hotel, eating and drinking a lot. The main restaurant is a buffet style, which has everything from local tagines to freshly cooked pasta, lovely salads and deserts. There is also a pool café, which is table service with a limited menu, so we had to try that. Which also turned into the Cullinarium Restaurant (the posh one) in the evening, the length of our stay included 1 evening in this restaurant, it was nice to have table service, and the wines were very good!

As we were there for nearly 2 weeks, we saw lots of other guests come and go. The organisation of the hotel gardens and restaurants made it a gift for people watchers!

We would recommend the hotel, in large part because the staff were so chatty and  friendly, with each other, as well as the guests, which was really nice to see.

We didn’t do any of the trips from the hotel, however we did go to Casablanca by train, it is a 2 ½ hr journey through a diverse landscape. The 2^nd class carriages were fully booked for the journey there, so we had to make do with 1^stclass, still a reasonable price. The first class carriages seated 6 in nice comfortable seats with a door to the corridor, it was full, but we had a peaceful journey. The return journey in 2^nd class was much busier, with some confusion for other passengers over booked seats, and more noise from phone calls etc, altogether a different experience.

Casablanca itself is a large port city, without the history of Marrakesh, we spent a few hours wandering around, yes…. we did see “Rick’s Cafe”of the film fame, but we have to disappoint you with the knowledge that the cafe was only built after film fans started to turn up looking for the ‘Hollywood’ bar. The original was only ever a film set. We didn’t go in as the drinks were twice the price of everywhere else.

We flew back to Manchester on Saturday 18^th March, a late evening flight which didn’t land until 12:30am on Sunday, so we were back in the Ibis Budget hotel for a few hours before getting the tram and train back to York, an easy journey. Back in Pocklington by 1pm.

 On Monday 20^th, Rog drove south to Worcester, with family on the way to a week in Somerset.

 On Tuesday 21^st, Nic  drove south, all the way to Somerset, again with family but as they had more drivers, they decided to do the drive in one day.

Wednesday, we all went to Shaftesbury, the town not the avenue, to see Gold Hill, better known as Hovis Hill after the Hovis adverts, sorry to any younger followers, you will not have a clue what we are talking about. For the rest of you there was actually two versions of the advert, one filmed in 1973 and directed by Ridley Scott and a second version filmed later (date unknown), the same music was used by the later version had the music speeded up!

Thursday, we went to Somerton (the county town of Somerset), found a nice local café and a fabulous chocolate shop. Then we went to Lytes Cary Manor, dating back to 14^th century, a National Trust property. This week the National Trust are giving free entry on the production of a National Lottery ticket! Saving the family some cash. We have Manx National Heritage membership, which gets us free entry.

Friday, another National Trust property, this time Montacute House, built in 1598 by Edward Phelips (knighted in 1603, Speaker of the House, and Master of Rolls and Chancellor).

Saturday, headed to Bradford on Avon, us and the same family members were there on a narrowboat on the canal 5 years ago, we had to look up the photos to check how many years ago it was, as none of us could remember. We had morning coffee in the Bridge Tea rooms, an “olde worlde” tea room, which has won lots of awards. Good scones and Cakes.

On Sunday, we all headed to the local garden centre for morning coffee, more eating and drinking!

So, for this blog we are going to break with tradition, which, in case you haven’t noticed, was to publish blogs covering Monday to Sunday, this blog covers the period from Monday 27 February until today Wednesday 8 March. 

Monday 27 February was our last full day in Morillon, in the French Alps, so it was a day of cleaning the flat and packing. We have never flown with so much luggage, we have three check-in bags, but in our defence, we had to bring our own bedding and towels, together with ski boots, snow blades, and the rest of the paraphernalia around skiing. Rog did throw out his ski boots as they had started to split due to plastic fatigue, and at £12.50 didn’t owe us anything!

After a couple of slightly eclectic meals as we finished everything in the fridge and cupboards, we went out to local Restaurant “Yeti” for dinner, Rog had pizza, with goats cheese and honey, Nic had venison, another lovely meal sitting at the same table we sat at last time!

Tuesday, a travel day, to start a bus from Morillon to Cluses, there was also a bus to Annemasse, which would have been a quickest route back to Geneva, but the one we wanted at around 10amwas a request bus, you had to ring the day before and request it …. In French presumably?!? We decided to stick to the Cluses bus, timetabled for 9.30am at the local stop, and so we did the journey we did on 1 January in reverse. From Cluses a train to Geneva, then change train for the airport, all worked well, Swiss trains are reliable. 

At the Airport we needed to queue to check the bags in with EasyJet, a less satisfactory process, as the queue grew it appeared that EasyJet decided that less, rather than more staff, to check people in was the answer. We expected to see people checking in skis and snow boards, what we didn’t expect was a large number of surf boards being checked in.  (going to Agadir apparently). The other chap who confused us was drinking 2 cans of beer whilst stood in the queue to check bags in, however the beer was not causing the confusion, it was the fact that he didn’t appear to have any bags to check in, he was not even carrying hand luggage.

The flight back to Manchester left a few minutes late, nothing to worry about, it landed on time, the passport queue was ok, and the bags were delivered in good time. We already had a train booking that gave us loads of time after landing, as everything was on time we were resigned to wasting a couple of hours in the airport, however on checking our Trans-Pennine Express train was cancelled, we think the ticketing rules say you can get the next available train, but there was one in 30mins, so we boarded that, saving us 1hr 30m in Manchester. Rog was expecting a ‘discussion’ with a ticket inspector; however, the train was so busy we never saw a ticket inspector. Rog’s brother picked us up at York station. 

First job in Pocklington was that Rog had to set up his new (reconditioned) phone, after dropping his again whilst we were skiing and cracking the screen (yes, the new screen which was installed in Thailand). 

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were days of unpacking the bags from France, but also everything stored in lofts/garages, washing, then repacking bags for our various future trips (watch this space!).

Thursday, we did manage a trip out to Beverley, as Rog ‘needed’(wanted) a new bag, and Nic (really) needed a new fleece. We also spend time catching up with family, which was lovely.

Saturday, we took our niece and nephew out for brunch, as we had not managed to see both of them together, given sports training working, school etc. 

Then it was back to York station for a train (or three) back to Manchester, yes you guessed it our train was cancelled, Northern rail this time, so we had to buy a replacement ticket for Trans Pennine express. Got to Manchester airport in good time, we stayed in a hotel overnight, then flew out to Marrakesh (Morocco) on Sunday, to stay at the Medina Gardens Hotel (Adult only) on an all-inclusive basis for 13 nights! A little bit of luxury!

By the time we got the transfer from the Airport, we got to the hotel at 9:25pm, the first thing reception did was to chase us in to the restaurant, which stopped serving at 9:30pm.  So, after dinner we completed the check in process. 

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we haven’t done a lot, apart from eat and drink, to tell the truth we have not left the hotel yet! Nic is still resting her knee, so the sights and sounds of Marrakesh can wait until next week. Rog has been to the Gym, a little bit of cycling and running on the treadmill, something to replace the skiing. Nic has been doing her own version of hydrotherapy in the heated pool.

Rog has also spent a lot of time, planning our interrail trip from 1 April, booking trains, hotels, Airbnbs etc. working out when we need to leave “Schengen visa area’ and the EU, if visas are required etc. Good job he enjoys it really!