Bratislava and Vienna Our journey through some of the old eastern bloc continued with sloppy regard to timekeeping by Hungarian railways. Our packed train made the journey to Slovakia at a rather sedate pace arriving well behind schedule. When we arrived in Bratislava we found a very sleepy looking station compared to some we had encountered. After some time spent locating the tram network we headed into the centre of town to locate our hotel. This proved ver...

Zagreb & Budapest A slightly tedious 6.5 hour train journey from Ljubljana took us to Zagreb, though we had the pleasure of 3 ticket inspections, 2 custom checks and 2 passport checks to help while away the time. It meant that we got our 1st passport stamp - though why it was Croatian when we were leaving the country I'm not too sure. We also had our own compartment for the first time in our trip which, according to David, is what proper train travel is al...

Biel, Zurich & Ljubljana After failing to find suitable accommodation in Interlaken, Lausanne and Lucerne we were forced to settle for the unknown (to us) city of Biel. We knew it was on a lake but other than that we stepped forth into the unknown. What we found was a marvellous town perched majestically on a lake hemmed in by imposing mountains and miles upon miles of vineyards. Biel facts: It is the only town in Switzerland where both French and Germa...

Bordeaux, Lyon & Geneva Its only been a few days since we updated this, but we've been quite busy with fleeting visits to Bordeaux, Lyon and Geneva so if we don't update it now we'll forget about stays that were all too brief! Our visit to Bordeaux was brought about mainly by the vagaries of SNCF - Bordeaux is a hub which would allow us to cross France, though not quite in the way we'd planned. All of this meant that Paris and Dijon were out and Montpelli...

Basque Region A speedy five and a half hour train journey took us from Madrid to Bilbao. The tapas were now called Pinxtos which seemed more or less the same except there was more bread involved. The main reason for going to Bilbao was the Guggenheim museum which we visited that evening after our traditional siesta, brought on to some degree by our hostel being on the third floor up some steep, poorly maintained stairs. The Guggenheim was extremely impressive...