Day 26: Today we had the whole day to ourselves for one of the very occasions on this mad trip!! We made the most of it with a good lie-in before heading out in to town around 11am for breakfast. We bumped in to Chris again and the three of us searched in vain for somewhere that was open AND serving food at the same time. We found lots of "cafes" that didn't sell food; and lots of restaurants that didn't open until 12!! Having discounted McDonald's we set...

Day 25: Our inital plans for the first few days of August had involved us going to Sofia, then Istanbul, Athens and Thessaloniki before moving on to Macedonia on the 6th. However, these plans involved taking four night trains in a row!! At the start of the trip this prospect hadn't phased us too much; but after what happened on the night train to Warsaw neither of us particularly fancied this. When you add the fact that no night trains have showers and neither...

Day 24: We had a fairly uncomfortable night in the tent and we were up fairly early cos of bright and hot sunshine. The lovely hostel people made us a great brekkie and then told us that the water was to be switched off for 24 hours from that afternoon. Disaster!!! We decided to try and find a hotel for the night cos showers are a luxury that neither of us an do without especially after a day on the beach... The staff do a daily minibus drop-off to the beach ...

Day 23: As you may have guessed by now, the vast majority of the photos that accompany these entries aren't actually of the places that we are!! We try and find one in the database that looks like it and the one here is very accurate hehe. Our train left Bucharest just after 10am and this time we had made reservations to make sure we got nice window seats for at least the first half of the journey anyways!! We had to change at Russe (which is just over the bo...

Day 22: Just a few notes on Romania in general that we haven't had time to write anywhere else so far firstly!! Romania is desperate to join the EU and is doing all it can to convince the powers that be that it is ready for such an "honour." We're sure all the economic conditions, once satisfied will be fantastic for all the people in Romania who have actually got some money. Unfortunately there are millions of people - mainly the gypsies (who the governme...