Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Needing some down time I headed to Milan after Verona for a bit of R&R. A checked into a rather nice hotel near the centre of Milan (I though it was quite a distance out given it’s distance from the train station, but it turns out the train station is just miles away).

I decided to jump on the big red Sight Seeing buses which they also have in Leeds but I figured because Milan is far more interesting than Leeds the Milan one wouldn’t be shit (I haven’t been in the Leeds one, but it’s a pretty safe guess it is).

It as quite a good deal as they have two routes but you just buy one 24 hour ticket and that gives you access to them both. You also get a pair of headphones which are presumably rubbish (I didn’t try mine) though luckily I had my mini headphones, though unfortunately not my awesome noise canceling ones.

After doing both the tours round the city, I decided to go for a wander down the castle and have a look round. That really reminded me of the internet – full of Africans trying to scam you. Luckily shouting “sorry, ich spreche kein Englisch” seemed to get rid of them.

The cathedral, or Duomo di Milano if you will, was amazing – it was absolutely covered in statues, they were all over the walls and on every spire. Apparently it was quite luckily to see if without any building works on.

Had an interesting conversation on the way out also – trying to speak Italian to a taxi driver when I had never spoken a word of it before was a crazy experience. “Parco Trenno per favore.” “Parco Trenno? You mean Parco Trenno?” I’m 99% certain I pronounced it exactly the same as he did but he insisted it was Parco Trenno, not Parco Trenno. He then didn’t believe me that I wanted to go to Parco Trenno so I then had to try and explain that is where I was meeting my friends.

Still, a taxi was a much faster way of getting out of Milan than driving in – using the back streets, using the bus lane as a regular lane and not really caring if you almost wipe out a few people on mopeds make for much speedier driving.

One thing that I really did pick up on in Europe is how much better their public transport is than ours – most have a bus network, a tram system and an underground system as well as proper cycle lanes that aren’t simply a little painted line running in the main road.

Another short drive away was Verona though perhaps not an easy drive – while most of Europe seems pretty sensible on the road, the Italians are very different. Things like coaches overtaking on bends, randomly pulling out and best of all, not being able to get into the other lane so simply pulling out and driving head on down your lane until someone lets them in were common place.

Luckily we eventually made it to Verona alive and found our hotel which was just off the main square and best of all – had a McDonald’s on the ground floor!

Once settled in to what was a nice hotel albeit it not offering wifi in our rooms and even in the lobby at a reasonably heavy price we decided to go for a wander and explore the city.

It was very nice – the pavements looked new and well maintained and all the shops were beautiful – it was basically an entire city which looked like the Victoria Quarter in Leeds. Of course, we couldn’t afford to shop in any of them.

We ended up on a square where we decided to have dinner paying what I think was a record of €7 for a beer and being served by a crazy waiter who when I asked for a white wine soon reappeared with a glass of red insisting I would prefer this one. Mental.

Still the food was very nice and on the way home we stopped by Juliet’s balcony, which was unfortunately closed. It’s also a bit of a joke, it’s not even made of the same colour stone as the rest of the building, it’s not even like they have pretended it was originally there – not that you really can for a fictional character.

We hit the road early on Monday morning to take the road through the Alps to Venice. It was a long drive and continued the dramatic scenery as the road twisted and turned it’s way through the Alpine hills.

We eventually arrived at Venice late afternoon and parked up in the multistory at the edge of the city which was so big it was almost a small town in itself. We then jumped on the water bus to head down the Grand Canal to the other side of the city where our hotel was.

Venice is a crazy place – I mean who thought it would be a good idea to build a city in the middle of the sea? It’s so strange that you are walking around on all these huge squares and buildings, all of which are just floating on the water (they’re not actually floating, but still).

They did however have an annoying habit of mixing up languages – there were loads of t-shirts saying “I love Venezia” which is just annoying – Venezia is the Italian spelling of Venice, so it should either be “I love Venice” or “Lo amo Venezia”, mixing it up is just silly!

The night life was great in Venice also – the tiny winding streets were packed with people (and I’m sure could have felt packed with hardly anyone in them). It seemed to be the kind of place where you could live for a year and still not really know how the streets connect together.

We had pizza for dinner at a small restaurant then headed onto Piazza St Marco to watch the bands that were playing at the restaurants we couldn’t afford to eat at.

Our hotel was traditional Venesian place, which means authentic but otherwise rubbish, and filled with mosquitoes which decided to try and eat me alive.

The next day we decided to walk back across the city towards the car which was quite a distance with all the stuff but did allow us to see much more of Venice.

It was an odd mix of churches, tourist shops containing weird masquerade ball masks and actual shops to serve the people that actually live there.

Having had some long and tiring days on the road it was nice to have what by then seemed a mere two hours on the road to make it to Salzburg, Austria.

We checked into the guest house and headed to the Old Town which at first seemed somewhat of a ghost town – it was only until we had spent 15 minutes wandering around that we found the corner that actually had something open.

The buildings were incredibly beautiful however and it continued Germany’s tradition of being very clean, something which is really noticeably missing from the UK and indeed The Netherlands and Italy.

The views surrounding Salzburg were equally as spectacular – nestled in the foothills of the Alps there were dramatic mountains surrounding the city and indeed the connection to the old town from the new town was a passageway carved through the mountain in something resembling Lord of the Rings.

Leaving Luxembourg we began the drive over to Munich. We were planning to drive through the Black Forest but being under time constraints we didn’t actually get to see much of it. It actually reminded me of the National Forest just south of Sheffield – not a lot of trees but plenty of farmland.

We arrived in Munich to find that the hotel didn’t actually have twin rooms – only double rooms. This made for a rather intimate night (by intimate night I mean rough animal sex – but what happens in Munich, stays in Munich).

We headed into town to find the Hofbrauhaus, a legendary drinking establishment in the heart of Munich. They served giant beers and had a band plus the food was pretty good and the gift shop was open until late into the night allowing Kieran to buy a stein.

Interestingly, Germany really look down on jaywalking – and there is just something weird about watching drunk people patently wait for the light at a crossing that you just can’t imagine in the UK.

It’s just a shame we were a week too early for Oktoberfest.

Still, that is really just an excuse to come back at some point.

We headed out from Amsterdam and down the motorway as far as Belgium before taking off to smaller roads to drive through one of the national parks. There was of course a quick stop off to buy some Belgian chocolate too!

Heading through southern Beligum and into Luxembourg was a fantastic drive as we headed up into the hills and the rolling countryside opened up.

We eventually made it to Luxembourg city shortly before talk and checked into the Mecure hotel which was of excellent standard – once of the nicest we stayed in despite it only being £50 per night for a twin room! As far as we could tell everyone comes to Luxembourg in business during the week and the weekends are just dead.

We headed for a wander round to take some photos of scary trees once we checked in and eventually found ourselves eating at a rather upmarket Chinese restaurant which produced some reasonably nice food.

Breakfast at the hotel was very nice too – there is just something awesome about eating chicken for breakfast. And with hindsight the €5 we paid for a pint of beer the night before was actually pretty reasonable given what we would later pay.

As some of you know, myself and a few friends recently hit the road for a bit of a trip across Europe. I didn’t want to blog during it because I wanted to actually enjoy it, or at very least spend the time trying to de-stress from all the traveling. But now I’m sat in a villa in France with a recently liberated internet connection, I thought I would write a bit up about our adventures.

We took the ferry over from Hull to Rotterdam which was a nightmare – I didn’t manage to sleep the whole night and there is just something depressing about being sat in a bar, which isn’t open, by yourself at 5am in the morning. Still I managed to come away from the casino £1 up so all is good.

Having arrived we headed up to Amsterdam for our first night. Amsterdam is a fairly boring place in the day – it’s basically London, it’s dirty, there is lots of litter, everyone speaks some degree of English and it’s full of traffic.

However by night Amsterdam really comes alive. The Red Light District was amazing, I don’t have any photos of it as I didn’t fancy taking my camera round there at night for fear of it getting swiped but it looks pretty much like this picture someone called Laura took.

The cafes were great as well. Not only can you just go in there and order a joint but they also have interesting quirks such as the cat sat on the bar that we found – with a notice saying “please don’t give our cat cannabis – it already get’s stoned enough!”

Another real bonus of Amsterdam is that it was the only place in Europe in which we saw a KFC!

They also seem to love Argentinian steak houses of which there seemed to be hundreds. As a consequence we decided to give one of them a try – it was no River Plate but it was very nice none the less. As was the little cafe we found for breakfast the next day.

One thing I will also mention about Warwick was our accommodation. Rather than go with a traditional hotel we rented a serviced apartment for the weekend by Louis Home Group. It worked out rather cheap, around £55 each for the weekend and operates an “express check in system” which is a fancy way of saying you just turn up and don’t actually check in 😀 .

Inside it was really nice, we had a bathroom, two double bedrooms one with an en suite, a fully equiped kitchen with fridge, freezer, oven, microwave and dishwasher, a lounge with a big flat screen TV (though we couldn’t get any decent reception on it) and secure parking. I was really impressed with the quality of it all, the showers were amazing, you could actually have a temperature between freezing and boiling.

They also include a welcome pack which comes with everything you needed for breakfast such as bread, butter, mini cereal boxes and individual bottles of orange juice as well as a big bar of chocolate and a bottle of wine. Highly recommended if you’re looking for somewhere to stay.

Told you, you couldn’t do London on a budget… :p

• Tickets and transport: £73.30
• Eating out: £42.03
• Snacks and drinks: £18.11
• Admission prices: £5.00
• books and presents: £31.47
• Misc costs: £1.40

Total cost for the weekend, £171.31.