Category: Uncategorized

These posts are getting quite retrospective as I’m shortly about to head to Croatia but I’ll fill in more in due course.

Since leaving Lloret De Mar I caught the bus back to Barcelona for a night before taking another bus all the way across France to Nice where I took another bus and two trains to get to San Remo in Italy after a visit to Ceriana up in the Ligurian mountains to Alessandra (Ale) I took the train to Milan for a couple of days before heading on by bus to Trieste.

I’ve nothing particularly exciting to say about the journey or visits in Italy so will mostly convey this part in pictures.

San Remo

Somewhere I’ve been a number of times now to see friends Leo and Jim over the years. I stayed in a room of Khalid’s, a Moroccan truck driver. I was his first ever guest and he was pretty cool as he picked me up from the train station and even took me for a coffee the next morning. The room was a bit basic but fine to lay my head down for the night (on my own pillow because the one provided stank of something horrible).

I love San Remo train station as it reminds me of some sort of Lair belonging to a Bond villain. You have to walk what seem like about a kilometre into the hillside to reach the platforms. Seems a bit extravagant to build a train station inside a hill. Italians, eh!

Ceriana

One of my favourite places and again somewhere I’ve visited quite a bit. No Leo or Jim this time but I went to see Ale (mum) and her partner Jim up at their villa in the mountains. She very kindly let me stay in one of their holiday apartments in the village as well as feed me and mother me.

I actually took these photos whilst going out for a run which seemed a good idea but with the complete lack of anywhere flat it was more of an enormous hill climb which was a little too demanding in the heat.

In the photos you can see some of the old Roman parts of the town including the old church which I think is 12th century

Views from the Villa

Grapes doing well

It was a fleeting visit to San Remo and Ceriana before heading for Milan

Milan

Really enjoyed Milan as a city. Unsurprisingly stylish and spent quite a while wandering the city checking out some of the architecture as well as hanging out by the canal in Navigli. Only down side was I got absolutely nailed by mosquitos on the second night whilst out for dinner. Must have taken about 20-30 bites. I literally ran back to the hostel to take refuge.

Duomo – the main Cathedral in Milan

Navigli – scene of the mosquito devastation

Colonne di San Lorenzo

Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie

The creepy yet fascinating ‘Church if Bones’, actually an ossuary in the San Bernardino alle Ossa. Supposedly constructed from the old remains taken from a cemetery as it was running out of space.

Trieste

I hadn’t really heard of Trieste before visiting and it was a last minute addition to the plan to include it as my gateway into Eastern Europe. I took what should have been about a 6 hour bus to get there but it took closer to 8. It was a replacement bus with no toilet but the driver generously stopped once for ten minutes in the entire journey. It also wasn’t ideal that as a result of the previous mosquito attack and the long bus ride my ankles managed to swell up like balloons which made walking tricky and painful for my whole stay.

In Trieste I stayed with a nice Austrian chap called Michael for a couple of nights (Airbnb). He actually took me out around the city and taught me quite a bit about the history. For some reason I didn’t take many photos but the lasting memory was an enormous storm on the second day there.

The main square in Trieste is supposedly the largest in the world open to the sea

There’s a faction in Trieste wanting a return to Trieste being an independent state and in fact claiming that it was never legally part of Italy.

I’m a bit behind as I’ve been doing a fair bit of travelling about but I spent last week in Lloret de Mar in Catalonia with my pal Lisa aka LVT. The first thing I have to say about Lloret is don’t ever visit or stay there! It’s a soulless, somewhat tacky beach resort with little to no character or culture. In fact it reminded me in parts of the Koh San road in Bangkok.

The beach, made up of pebbly sand, cigarette butts and miscellaneous litter isn’t terrible if you don’t mind cramming in amongst the hordes of people.We found that it was best to visit in the evening once the crowds had subsided.

The Airbnb wasn’t entirely a success either. It was stiflingly hot, like a Sauna, no A/C and smelled strongly of mould. We knew it would be a bit basic but it certainly fell short of expectations. To top things off we had some delightful neighbours in the apartments upstairs, a group of Italian ‘youths’, who made more noise then I even knew possible. They would generally shout and sing literally at the top of their voices most of the evening until 12-1am when they would go out and then return in the early hours where they seemed to take things to the next level, having clearly kept a few decibels in reserve. Lloret seemed to be teaming with similar groups of youths. Lisa eventually coined the term ‘Douchebag Central’ which seems fitting.

In truth, it could have been worse I guess and we pretty much just used the apartment as a base.

We did find one nice thing to do in Lloret. If you go for a 30-40 minute walk to the next beach you can find the Jardines de Santa Clotilde, a lovely ornate gardens set up on the cliffs. A very peasant place to spend the afternoon with plenty of shade to take a break from the sun and great views out to the sea. It also seems to be a hotspot for instagramming and it was quite amusing/baffling to watch several groups of young ladies endlessly pouting, tucking in, and sticking out whilst they spent what seemed forever setting up the ‘perfect shot’.

Thankfully, there was much to do nearby:

Tossa de Mar

Just along the coast and a short bus ride away we visited Tossa which is a more typical Catalonian sea side town. It had a quieter, more civilised feel to the place with nice eateries and little shops selling all manner of clothes and trinkets. More interesting was the Old Quarter where there were some Roman ruins dating back to the 12th Century, old city walls to walk along and explore and some quaint little houses. We climbed up the cliff through the old part of town and above the walls to be rewarded with some spectacular views out to sea, along the coast and back down to the beaches. We spent the afternoon on a smaller beach in a little cove behind the walls which was lovely.

Girona

My favourite part of this bit of the trip. The city of Girona. I hadn’t really heard of it before but it was just a 40 minute bus ride from Lloret and is a really beautiful city steeped in History, again going back to the Romans. You have to head for the old part of the city. I feel like I’m developing a bit of thing for city walls but these were incredible, especially as they date back to the 14th century (although I believe they’ve recently been restored). I don’t think Lisa was in entirely keen on the climb up to the top in the sweltering midday heat but I thought it was worth it. They’re bloody high and when we started to walk along them we had no idea how extensive they were. Once up you get some fantastic views out over the city and the wall just keeps going on and on. It must have been over a kilometre. Following it all the way we were eventually led down to the gardens of Girona Cathedral. The Cathedral itself was spectacular and truly awesome. We spent some time wondering around the old Jewish quarter which has some interesting architecture and there were some pretty views to be had from several of the bridges that span the river, one of which was by Gustave Eiffel. Imagine braking a bit off the Eiffel Tower and plonking it across a river. All-in-all, a really enjoyable visit.

---

This was intended to be the relaxing start to the trip before I headed off in search of the East and it certainly was. It was nice to have some company and some slow time before setting off on my own.

After pretty much two years in the planning, I’m off. The journey is under way. When I say planning, it’s more of thought coming to fruition really as I’ve really not done a huge amount of organisation beyond dreaming up things that I’d like to do and places I’d like to see. I made some lists but all I booked were the two busses which will get me down to Barcelona where a few days of sunshine and relaxing on the beach await.

The idea is to travel overland, no flights, to the Far East, and if there’s time and I still have the energy I will push on to Australasia.

Roald Amundsen, Antarctic pioneer and a hero of mine said “Adventure is just bad planning”, and I’ve already tried to I’ve already tried to stay true to this. I’ve honed the fine art of leaving things to the last minute which made for a rather stressful final week before departure. The most painful piece of poor planning came from not organising any vaccinations until the end of last week and then having to not only spend an eye watering sum of money on them but then receive the mother-load of injections all in one sitting. Furthermore, as most are multi-injection ones I’ve now got the fun task of trying to source the rest of them as I travel across Europe.

The other rather unfortunate set back is not getting my visa for China. If I’m being honest this is largely due to my own incompetence but in part also due to the ridiculous visa application process and nature of my trip meaning that I don’t have any specifics about when and how I’m entering which makes it very tricky. This might jeopardise my overland travel through China but I am going to try my best to sort something out on the road which should just add to the adventure..

---

I’m currently sat on a bus travelling from Paris to Barcelona, having just travelled overnight from London to Paris. I don’t mind admitting that I smell like the combined stench of a year 10 class of boys on a summer’s afternoon following a lunchtime football session. As I hopped aboard the first bus I remembered that I hadn’t done this kind of travelling in a long while, and I very quickly realised that it is a young man’s game. Squashed in and sat bolt upright isn’t a comfortable way to sleep (especially when you accidentally put your pillow in the hold). I feel like I slept with a sack of potatoes on my head. I did find a comfy sofa in the bar on the Ferry at least and squeezed a decent nap then. I’m just treating this as preparation for the tougher parts of the trip that may lay ahead.

I also forgot how awful bus stations are. Victoria was fairly grim. I saw a man ask for his 30p to be refunded for using the toilet as not one of the cubicles was in a usable state. Paris Bercy, was worse. Everyone seems to be in a mild state of panic, not knowing if they’re getting the right bus. There’s no one on hand to help and there’s never anywhere to sit.

Not too much to say about my first port of call, Paris. I only had five or six hours to kill so went for a very long walk along the Seine and saw some sights including the Notre Dame, The Eiffel Tower (form afar) and the Arc de Triomphe. Exhausted and worn out from the intense heat of the sun and my bus journey I found a lovely little park and had a snooze under the shade of a tree until it was time to head for next bus.

Barcelona and the beach next…