Tag Archives: Train Journeys
Kotor – Not A Secret Anymore
Medieval Majesty in Former Yugoslavia The ancient walled town of Kotor is beautifully located between an alluring fjord and brooding mountains – an absolute joy; when I went in 2011 it was not that well known, which has all changed with it now firmly on the cruise ship itineries. Like it’s near neighbour Dubrovnik, it […]
The Bernina Express
We arrived in the Italian border town of Tirano by train from Como in order to enter Switzerland on the famous Bernina Express. The whole town seemed to exist for the railway and the majority of people who frequented the place on that mid-June day were grey-haired German or Japanese tourists in identical tour operator […]
Where For Art Thou?
After two nights in Bologna and the same in Venice, it was time for our next train journey to Verona. We soon concurred that our decision to skip a break in the journey to take in Padua/Padova was a good one as the rain started to fall. Any notion of a relaxing journey however was […]
Memorable Overseas Train Journeys #5 – Georgia to Armenia
To set the scene, Hamish & I were embarking on an overnight train from rain-lashed Batumi on the Black Sea Coast of Georgia to Yerevan, the splendid capital of Armenia. We had booked a berth each on the overnight sleeper and were hoping against hope that we had a private compartment. Makhinjauri (Batumi) – Yerevan […]
Memorable Overseas Train Journeys #3 – Spain
Continuing my review of some of my most memorable overseas train journeys……. Shooting forward twenty odd years from my previous memorable train journey, in 2012 Mrs Wilbur and I undertook a mini train tour of Spain taking in Santiago de Compostela, Córdoba, Cadiz and Seville. We pre-booked an overnight train journey from atmospheric Santiago to […]
Memorable Overseas Train Journeys #2 – The Nordics
Interrail trips two and three took me to Scandinavia, the first in 1989 with Poll again and the second in 1992 with Hamish, who was to become my regular travel buddy over the last three decades. The scenery was absolutely stunning and some of the feats of engineering to cut train lines into the dramatic […]
Memorable Overseas Train Journeys #1 – The Dutch Debut
This is the first in a new series of blog posts that I will be posting based on train journeys overseas. Fittingly I start where it all began with my debut journey of a 1987 inter-rail trip. Europe was our oyster…… We set off in mid-September on an overnight ferry to Hoek of Holland for […]
Overseas Train Journeys
So far I have made 191 journeys from train stations outside of the UK (not including those from airports or short suburban journeys such as Paris to Versailles or Amsterdam to Ajax Football Stadium). I have wracked my brains and noted them all down on my new blog page I have created a new blog […]
A-Z April Challenge – Spielfeldstraße
For my Letter M, I chose Maribor in the then Yugoslavia in the late ’80s, which is now part of Slovenia. I told the story of how we were refused entry and escorted back under armed-guard across the border into Austria. Could can read that account here. Spielfeldstraße was the nondescript border town where we were […]
Just The Ticket
To set the scene, Hamish & I had just undertaken a horrendous overnight bus journey from Odessa to Sevastopol due to all the trains being full. Predictably we had shared the journey with thirty beer-swilling, chain-smoking, salami eating, joke telling construction workers. Sleep had therefore been sporadic at best……. When we arrived at Sevastopol […]
