Schengen. A word that conjours uncertainty and confusion amongst many a traveller these days. I'd never heard of it but recently when Clare came to Europe several months before i did it became prominent in our minds when trying to plan where to go and what to see. The reason i'm telling you about this is because it justifies the seemingly absurd decision to do a road trip around the UK in Winter. Never did we expect to be doing this. Clare hates the cold and we b...

I've been waiting years to put two years of one a week spanish classes into practice. I don't expect much but it is exciting when our bus to Barcelona arrives at midnight in Nice and i can communicate roughly with the bus driver. Success, satisfaction, excitement, confusion. Why is it that when i listen to other spanish sounding conversations going on around me i can barely understand a word? Are they speaking too quickly? Are they speaking too quietly as you mig...

Nice 5th to 8th October Surfing the Cote D'Azur Nice (it's pronounced niece i swear) is on the southern coast of france on the Mediterranean in the area known as the Cote D'Azur. Most people would tell you that there's nothing remarkable about Nice. There's a lot of shopping, some very expensive restaurants and really really rocky beaches. We arrived on the night of the 4th, went to our hostel then went out for an impressively large meal but apart from that it ...

Budapest has just become one of my favourite cities in Europe. It is beautiful. The two most recent occupations by foreign powers have obviously had the most profound effect on the physical cityscape as it exists today. The people on the other hand have done their utmost to retain their own sense of identity. For me, the best thing we could have done (this includes a massive party in the turkish baths) and did do for that matter, was to visit the museum known as ...

Clare and I always knew we wanted to visit Prague so a small detour to see an old mate seemed like a great little side trip. Ostrava is not exactly a tourist town. It is always refreshing though to get off the tourist trail for a little while which can be a bit hard to do when travelling around Europe. For those of you that know Mappy, he now lives in the Czech Republic's third largest city with his Czech wife Eva and their two little girls. It was great to see t...