The Great Railway Journey

I've finally managed to sort through our 1500 odd photos (yes... rather a lot) and have added only the highlights to facebook at the following link: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150576534940252.678477.816795251&l=6aa156161a

Hope you enjoy!!

So, we've arrived safely back in the UK with all our purchases intact, which is saying something for bringing pottery all the way from Romania.

Our trip was absolutely amazing and I couldn't recommend European train travel enough. The places we visited were exquisite..the route suited us perfectly and had we to do it again, we wouldn't change a thing.

The amazing thing about traveling in this way is the people you meet along the way; from the family celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary with a day trip to Paris, to the Swiss guy we queued up with for 2 hours at the Eiffel tower, to Ian who took us on a bike tour of Munich, Nikoli who drove us around Brasov in Romania, the American family we met up with on a few train journeys, to Howard and Allison, who happened to be in the sleeper cabin next to ours on the way to Istanbul, are from Ely (about 15 min north of Cambridge), and happened to following almost exactly the same route as us from London.. so much so the we were all on the same flight from Istanbul back to the UK and even managed to catch the same train back up to Cambridge... weird hey?!

Back at work and currently sitting on an early train to London (ironically), I'm astounded that we travelled over 2000miles through 7 counties, spent over 60 hours on trains and navigated a few nervous border crossings... what a trip...

We downloaded the photos last night and will have them posted soon, ill add a link on this blog if anyone is interested.

Otherwise, a mention has to be made of 'the man in seat 61' who was our bible for all things train. A fantastic site & book we used to plot and put together all our separate journeys. Any European train trip should use it as a a guide, full of really useful information from journey times, time tables, booking sites etc. Couldn't have done it with you.

So, signing off, I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing.. if you have any questions just drop me a line on annette.blampied@gmail.com.

Onwards to the next adventure....

We've been really lucky with the weather this entire trip... from 35c in Paris the sunshine followed us eastward..always raining or getting overcast the day we left a city. The same has proven true in Istanbul, we're enjoying our last breakfast on the (thankfully covered) terrace of our hotel overlooking the dome of the Aya Sofia, and the downpour begins..mmm...getting to the airport is going to be fun. We could of course catch a taxi there, but what would be the fun in that! Trams and trains all the way

In complete contrast yesterday was filled with sunshine, the Blue Mosque and a trip down the Bosphorous.

We were very surprised (and privileged) to find that tourists are allowed into the Blue Mosque. In our experience only 'believers' are allowed to enter the holy ground and so jumped at the chance to see inside such a grand example. Lining up outside to signs instructing us to take of our shoes, be quiet, and for woman to cover their heads, legs and shoulders (we'd anticipated this and dressed appropriately) we were led inside... wow... every surface of the massive building is covered in ceramic tiles, highly decorated, covered in Arabic calligraphy and (of course) mostly blue.. what a sight.

The rest of the day was spent drinking tea, shopping, hanging out and jumping on a tourist sightseeing ferry from the European side of the city to the Asian side and a further hour up the Bosphorous, absolutely beautiful! It really brings home how enormous this city is... and of course now I can say I've been to Asia

For our last dinner we decided to make like tourists and head to the main drag of restaurants (which we would normally avoid). Here we were hooked in by a, for lack of a better term, 'master seater'. These are the guys than can somehow sense what you're looking for, decide what language they should approach you in (most of them can speak 4-5) and expertly make you feel like the most important people on the planet, sell you the restaurant and put you in the 'best seat in the joint'. Gotta love it. We, in turn, enjoyed watching our master seater for the rest of the evening... he did a brilliant job, hardly getting any of the language guesses wrong.

So, Istanbul over (sad face and bottom lip stuck out) its off to the airport and back to the sunny UK.

The answer, I'm quickly discovering, is "lots"... that, and the copious amounts of baklava, Apple tea and kebap mean that I'm going to have to attend my local weight watchers meeting religiously for a while...

But, we're in Istanbul, and in a place as amazing as this surely I cannot be blamed for having less than zero self control? Oh well.

We arrived yesterday morning, and since then we've marvelled at the gravity defying dome of the Aya Sofia ( truly breathtaking sight), explored the underground caverns of the Basilica Cistern (massive, massive underground water storage facility), Hung out in the gardens in front of the Blue Mosque, and bargained our way through both the Grand and Egyptian Bazaar (having blue eyes seems to be an advantage!).

We're absolutely spell-bound by this city.. the people are wonderful and genuinely friendly, always with a smile and eager to share some almost solid Turkish coffee or hot Apple tea. The sights are breath-taking with a gargantuian ancient 'something' around every corner, and the melodious call to prayer filling the sky 5 times a day, calling the devout to mosque.

Tomorrow we're going for a boat ride on the Bosphorous... I can't wait...

So, quite a bit has happened since my last post; we've travelled from Brasov to Bucharest, a 4 hour train journey at sunset through the exquisitely creepy Carpathian mountains (think Van Helsing and that's exactly what it looks like!); we've decided the guide books were right when saying that Bucharest isn't really worth the bother... in fact it was quite a frightening experience legging it from the station to our hotel only a few hundred meters away; we've travelled on the most excellent sleeper train through the Romanian, Bulgarian and Turkish countryside - making it through the border every time thank goodness and are only a few hours from arriving in Istanbul.

This part of the journey has been fantastic... the train carriage looks and feels like its been picked up straight from the 1920's, full wooden panelling, 'secret' sinks and fabulous brass fittings, easily the best train so far!

We had a bizzare experience on the Brasov to Bucharest train when we started up conversation with a Romania guy who could speak English, after he walked off a couple other Romanian people in very broken English came over to us and told us not to talk to him as he was 'dangerous' and we were 'causing attention'.. those were the bits we could make out anyway. Not completely sure of what they meant and not wanting to get in the middle of a Romanian class war we promptly put on our headphones and listed too music for the rest of the journey.... odd.

So as we're whisked into Istanbul by this beautiful (and rather slow) train, having experienced a 2 hour border crossing into Turkey at 3:30am this morning, we feel oddly refreshed, full of a hearty peanut-ful breakfast and over the top excited about our penultimate destination....

Istanbul, here we come!