Last true day of the epic train journey; one of approximately 15,000km. Yes, I don’t leave for about a week, but London is pretty much where it stops. It’s certainly been enjoyable. From the first beer on the grassed balcony at the Harbour Plaza Metropolis watching the fireworks over Hong Kong harbour, to Kung Pao chicken, the only ingredient you need is green capsicum, swimming in Baikal, Russian vodka being good, and giving someone the ‘Yeltsin’. From ...

Waking up in Paris and walking down the road to a cafe to be confronted with freshly made croissants and coffee is something that I can certainly deal with. The local one near the hotel has a set menu for breakfast including the above with freshly squeezed orange juice and baguettes. Hard life. We got to the Eiffel Tower about 8:30 and lined up; yes there was a line already. We went through the obligatory security check and then met our guide by the south leg of...

We had to get up quite early as our tour started at 6:30am at the tourist centre on the other side of the Seine. We caught a taxi and walked into a cafe looking for a take away coffee. When the waiter found out we had to be ready by 15 minutes he had our coffee and croissants on the table in less than 3 minutes. We had a very pleasant drive out of Paris and up to Normandy, with our first stop being a War Museum in Caen. This was a fascinating museum with a prima...

Today was supposed to be a simple train ride to Paris, but .... We made it to the train station in Berlin in time, and adjourned for a coffee before joining the train. The ride itself down to Frankfurt wasn’t bad, with some nice scenery going past our window. Unfortunately, there was an accident on the track and we found out, through Fran checking online, that we were running about 50 minutes late and we only originally had 14 minutes to catch our connection. ...

Today John headed off for a technology museum and Fan, Ben and myself decided to get a Berlin tour bus to visit the ‘Staastlche’ Museum, one that Joy and Garry had visited and recommended. We checked that this museum would be on the Yellow Berlin Bus route and she gave us a kind of cryptic yes. As the first bus didn’t arrive until after 10am we went for a short walk around the area and found a very nice, quiet church. We boarded our city bus and then tried ...