On all of our trips it is Mrs MA who is in charge of cultural excursions. She does the checking and lets me know the places that she really wants to see. On the whole I go along with her suggestions as they are very rarely wrong, although I tend to draw the line at Art Galleries as they invariably do nothing for me, and […]
The first target for today was what would be my first ever visit to a mosque, Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Şerifi, better known as Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque. The area outside when we arrived was predictably chaotic with guides offering their services to anybody that looked like a tourist. We were just going to buy a ticket and queue, but were warned that it may take […]
The journey from the border check to the main station was a slow trundle and we arrived later than expected. The first task was to sort out a travel card each and we were prepared for the process thanks to The Man in Seat 61 only to find that, like the border crossing, things had changed. Instead of a cash only process the new machines […]
Today would see our last rail journey of the trip, the sleeper from Sofia to Istanbul. As departure, obviously, wasn’t until the evening we had pretty much a full day to wander some more and visit the remaining bars on my hit list. It was a twenty minute stroll to the first bar of the day, 100 Beers. A bottle shop that also offered 4 […]
As with Bucharest we opted to add an additional night in Sofia as it was a first visit to Bulgaria and it was a good choice. Sofia is a wonderful city with architecture ranging from Roman ruins right through to brutalist Soviet buildings.We set off after breakfast hoping to beat some of the heat. We didn’t. But we still managed a fantastic amble around taking […]
Today we were heading to our second new country of the trip, Bulgaria, and it was going to be a long day on the train. We arrived at Bucharest Gara de Nord in plenty of time to stock up with food for the journey, and then we waited for our train to appear on the board, and we waited, and then we waited some more, […]
Day 6 of the trip and the first day that we wouldn’t spend any of it on a train. The original itinerary suggested by Tailor Made Rail had listed a single night in both Bucharest and Sofia, but we decided that as these were our first visits to both cities we would add an extra night in each. So we had a rail free day, […]
We arrived pretty much on time in to a hot, very hot Bucharest after an uneventful journey. Sleep was sporadic as the beds weren’t the most comfortable but thankfully Romania’s entry in to Schengen at the start of the journey had removed the need for middle of the night border formalities. We jumped in to a taxi to the hotel where, as we expected, we […]
Today would see us taking the first of our 2 sleeper trains which meant another day to enjoy Budapest. Given Mrs MA’s mobility problems we decided to take a very, very leisurely stroll along the river before crossing over to the Pest side. It was slow progress, especially with the wind, but eventually we made it to the first of potentially two bars in this […]
It was an early start for our second three country day of the trip as we took the Railjet service through southeast Germany, across Austria and in to the northwest of Hungary before arriving in Budapest. This was the first service of the trip that didn’t seem to require compulsory seat reservations and as a consequence was very busy with the vestibules packed full. We […]