This is just a quick post with some thoughts of things that went wrong through our trip, it might be useful for people planning future trips:
1. Staying longer than 3 days in any one place. We ended up cutting short our time in Amsterdam because we'd already seen all the sights we wanted to see and felt ready to go home.
2. Getting stuck late at night at the Ramblas in Barcelona because we stayed out past when the Tube service closed. Be sure to check when the Tube closes in your destinations, and make sure you know the address to your hostel in case you need a taxi like we did (We didn't, but managed to get there by saying 'Bone House' multiple times in Spanish and English until he understood us).
3. Getting off at the wrong train station in Florence. Make sure you pay attention to the station names on your journey, some cities have more than one train station and we managed to get off a stop early in Florence.
4. Queueing for hours at the Uffizi. It was worth it once we were inside, but if you can avoid the busiest time for the gallery do so. Also make sure you bring snacks, a drink and something to do or read - Meg and I ended up alternating between one of us sitting on a bench reading and one of us standing in the queue reading.
5. Not being able to find the statue park in Budapest. We found the right bus stop and got on the right bus, but we went round the route 2 or 3 times with our eyes peeled for a sign pointing out the park, but we couldn't see any. In the end we gave up and never got to see the park.
6. Failing to pack any warm clothing. I assumed that since it was July that everywhere we went would be hot and sunny. Very stupid. I didn't take any trousers at all, so I was freezing in Vienna and on the overnight trains. Always take clothes for all weathers just in case! A waterproof jacket would have been great too. Also, a small bag for going out at night. Try not to forget anything!
If anyone reads this blog and wants to ask a question, feel free to comment. Meg and I are both happy to help even though we were too lazy to finish the blog!
- Mojo
7 comments:
Hi.
I'm inter-railing for the first time this summer, and I'm super excited!
I have a really important question: what's the best to travel with - a backpack or a suitcase? You see, I'd prefer a suitcase, cause I think that would be safest - since you can lock it properly and so on. But is it easier to walk around with a backpack (like everyone says), I mean, you can lock your luggage into lockers anyway, and a suitcase often has wheels, so it isn't THAT hard to carry around, if necessary? What did you guys travel with, and what do you think?
Johanna
Hi Johanna,
I totally understand your concerns as I had the same debate in my mind before we went on our trip. Meg and I both bought the same suitcase and though it was great to be able to roll it along between the train station and our hostels, it was really hard to get it up stairs sometimes. They get so unbelievably heavy, especially as the rolling mechanism weighs a lot.
However, I think I have found the perfect solution. I am travelling for a month in the USA this summer and just bought an ingenious invention - a suitcase with backpack straps! It has the best features of a suitcase - it rolls, and you can unzip it all the way round for easy access to the contents. It also has the great features of a backpack - the straps, of course, which can also be zipped away in a special pocket, as well as pouches inside for sorting your stuff into. There are 3 main pockets and the biggest two sections can be locked through the zips.
I definitely recommend that you look for something like this. Go to a luggage store or department and ask a staff member for a backpack with wheels and I am sure you can find one. I got mine from Boswells department store in Oxford. The maker of my back-case/suit-pack is Unicorn Luggage.
This website shows some examples of 'backpack luggage', some of them look a lot like mine but I can't attest to the quality of any of those products or the reliability of their vendors. http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/cl/338/Luggage?search=buttons&q=buttons&sort=4&attr_30298691=30298693
Hope this helps and good luck with your trip!
Mojo
Hey again
Thank you, this was truly helpful.. I'll definitely go look for a backpack with wheels. I hope I'll find one in Oslo, before leaving in July. Thanks and good look with your trip as well. Johanna
Hi.
Great blog. I'm thinking about going travelling soon myself and was just wondering how you wrote while you were away? Did you just find internet cafes or take your own laptop or something else? Thanks
Anna
sorry messed up my previous reply.
Hi, Meg here. Thanks for the compliments, still astounds me we still get comments on this blog!
The difficulty of finding time and facilities to write and update the blog abroad was something we didn't anticipate but had to come to terms with during the trip, and was the reason that ultimately this blog failed to cover the whole trip and was left unfinished. This was something we were pretty sad about but there came a point when we were just finding it too tough to find the time to sit down and write about all the stuff we'd done each day, and we also had to battle to get computer time in the hostels as they were always so busy. It was always a trade-off between enjoying the place we were in and sitting and writing about it rather than getting out there and DOING it.
However I've been on trips since that I've blogged about - I found in Japan that having a smartphone and blogging from that was much more convienient. I wrote every night right before I went to sleep and connected to wifi wherever I could to post it. Jo and I also went to Croatia last year and I blogged about that from my ipad which was great. Of course you've got to keep expensive stuff like that hidden but once again wrote at night. I actually didn't end up completing that blog, but I think the key to holiday blog writing is:
1) don't expect too much of your blog - don't overwrite it or try to capture EVERY single thing, and 2) don't spend so much time sat writing that you actually miss loads of your holiday! Good luck and would love to read your blog, why not post us a link here? M x
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