Galway is a smallish city on the west coast of Ireland, close to the Cliffs of Mohare. Back when we were in Budapest we met a couple of Americans students in Budapest who study there. So it was a logical place to visit.

Since Matt and Wes were still in Dublin, I booked into a local hostel for the Sunday night and figured I’d make some new friends. The hostel was nice and clean but it was too sterile and nobody seemed to interested in meeting/socialising with other guests. So I went out to dinner solo and started chatting with a couple of guys who were at the table next to me. We ended up moving onto another club with some live music so it turned out to be a great night (read: more “craic”).

I rejoined forces with Matt and Wes the next afternoon and the three of us made the most of the pubs and scenery in downtown Galway. There’s a few interesting little winding, pedestrian only streets that you can cruise around. Plus an extremely fast flowing river.

The following day we took a bus tour out to the Cliffs of Mohare. There were quite a few interesting stops along the tour; beautiful coastlines and rolling countryside. The highlight was obviously the cliffs and I’d definitely put the trip down as a ‘must do’ in Ireland.

After the tour, I figured that I’d seen just about everything that Galway has to offer and decided to leave. So I started plotting a course for Belfast at around 10pm and was in a Belfast bus terminal by 7:00 next morning.

It’s unfortunate but my plans for the trans-Siberian trip didn’t eventuate. To be honest, after traveling for so long I’m not sure how I would handle a week inside a train. Perhaps it’s for the best.

Hopefully at some point in the future I can plan a trip that will let me spend more time in Mongolia, visit towns around lake Baikal, and enjoy some of the cities like Novosibirsk along the way.

The upshot is that I get an extra few days to explore Moscow which has proved to be quite interesting so far.

On Sunday I’ll be flying to Helsinki for a night. Then on Monday night I’ll board a flight to Beijing and arrive Tuesday morning. I will pick up the plan for Asia from there.

My first stop in Ireland was Cork. I had no idea when I booked the flights that I would be flying straight into the middle of the Cork Jazz Festival. It’s held on the November bank holiday long weekend each year so of course the city was packed.

Not knowing about the festival or the long weekend, I went to book accommodation a couple days before my arrival and found that there was next to nothing available. In despair, I decided to sign up with Couch Surfing and see if I could find somebody willing to put me up for a night or two. I sent a few notes out to some interesting people but everybody said they were already full.

On the morning of the flight, I posted a plea for some floorspace on the CS forums. I also started to put together a backup plan that would involve taking a late bus to somewhere closeby like Killarney.

At the airport I checked my bags for the flight to Cork and went in search of free wi-fi or an internet kiosk. Once online, I went straight to try and book a room in Killarney. I was just about to complete the transaction when something twigged in my brain and I realised I should check CS one last time. Luckily, a bloke named Jim had thrown me a lifeline and said to give him a call when I arrive in town. I have to say I was pretty relieved and also excited about trying couch surfing for the first time.

I met up with Jim down at one of his local pubs called ‘Sin E’. He was a nice, down to earth type who’s also do his share of traveling. As it turned out he had another couch surfing guest staying as well. Sandor was a cool Hungarian who was traveling through Ireland on a break from work. We had a quick pint of Beamish and made our way back to Jim’s place for a traditional Irish stew. It was tops!  To make things even better, the “couch” was actually a blow up mattress on the floor which was nice and comfortable.

Next day, I walked into town at around 10am. It was pretty wet and miserable so I decided to see some shops, suck on a few coffees and then ease myself into an afternoon of jazz. It wasn’t the best day of the trip but looking back I can’t complain.

In the evening, I went to meet up with some of Jim’s mates down at another quite pub. After the group split, we moved on to Sin E where it was quite lively. I met a bunch of really interesting locals who were out making the most of the long weekend. We shared quite a few good stories and plenty of laughs which apparently constitutes “good craic” (although there’s debate on the spelling).

The next morning I packed it up fairly early as I didn’t want to over-extend my welcome at Jim’s place. I lugged the bags down to the bus terminal and made my way north to Galway.

I was intending to take the trans-Siberian to Beijing this Tuesday. As it currently stands, one of the travel agents I’ve been speaking with is saying it’s completely booked. I’ve yet to hear back from the other.

So I’ve been thinking about contingency plans and what might transpire in the next few days. Here’s two that I like::

1. One of the two travel agents miraculously produces a ticket for me. The ticket is a reasonable, albeit inflated, price. This occurs sometime over the weekend or on Monday. I have Tuesday to prepare and purchase some things before boarding the train in the evening.
2. I arrive at the station Tuesday evening with my bags and purchase a ticket on the spot. I will bring along somebody who speaks Russian (I’ve met a few through Couch Surfing) to assist.

If I have no luck with the #4 train on Tuesday then I won’t be taking a train eastwards. Although there are plenty of ways the trip can be made, I’m fairly limited because my Russian tourist visa expires on the 30th November and I only have a ‘transit’ visa for Mongolia which expires on the 3rd December. It might be possible but I’m sure I’ve exhausted all the combinations of well documented trains. So here’s three other possibilities:

1. I hand over a large sum of money to Aeroflot (the Russian national airline) or Air China. They will fly me directly to Beijing.
2. I hand over a smaller sum of money to Air Baltic and they fly me Helsinki, Finland. I cash in a large sum of frequent flyer points and Qantas give me a ticket on a Finnair flight direct to Beijing.
3. I arrange a train to take me from Moscow to Helsinki. Then I do the frequent flyer – Finnair thing.

The up-shot of the alternatives is that I’ll have time to see more of Moscow and perhaps a little of Finland and Scandinavia. The downside is that I’ll inevitably spend more money and I won’t get to take the really long train ride that I’ve been looking forward to.

It should be an interesting couple of days.

I flew through London mainly to link up some cheap flights between Europe and the Ireland. It also gave me the chance to catch up with a handful of friends who I haven’t seen for far too long.

I had no real tourist agenda except for the Tower of London which I had skipped on my only previous visit in 2006. The Yeoman Warder (”Beefeater”) tour was informative and worth waiting around for. The armory exhibition in the White Tower was interesting to start with but after about 15 minutes I was looking for a quick way out.

To be honest I spent more time than I would have like stressed out about where I would be staying in Cork. But I’ll explain all that in another post.

After spending a week in Hungary, I took a train back up to Krakow see about a girl (further explanation in a later post; perhaps). It was also a chance to try pierogi and see the Wawel castle which I missed on the first pass.

Another neat spot that we came across was an old, disused limestone quarry that has transformed itself into a lake. It’s not far from residential areas and main roads but you feel like you’re out in the country side. Apparently you can swim in it in the warmer months.

See the full set on Flickr.

Pécs is another smaller town in Hungary. While Eger is in the north-east, Pécs sits in the south-west and is a little further away.

I managed to see it in a day, although I’d probably recommend staying a night and using it as a stopover along your way out of Hungary and into Slovenia, Serbia or Romania.

The drawcards for Pécs is the awkwardly named Mosque Church and the museums. The museums house artifacts that illustrate the Turkish occupation and influence within the town (e.g. said Church with many features that are typically found in a mosque).

I really liked Pécs for the marble, sandstone, and brighter coloured buildings which give it a real mediteranian feel.

More photos from Pecs are here.

Eger is an easy and worthwhile day trip from Budapest; about two and half hours by train.

I made the trip to see what Hungarian life is like outside of the capital. It was nice to see similarities in the peoples hospitality and the architecture around the place. The cleaner air and less crowded public spaces were also appreciated.

The highlight of the day was probably relaxing in Dobo Istvan Ter (the main square) and watching the world go by.

I also found and quite liked a monument to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. It features an Uprising Flag which is essentially the Hungarian flag of today, with a hole torn from the center. The reason being that at the time the Hungarian flag featured a communist coat of arms. One of the revolutionaries ripped it out in protest and this action quickly spread. The site isn’t listed in the Lonely Planet so for anybody interested, it’s on the left hand side as you walk into town from the train station (on Hatvani Kapu tér, I think).

As always, I’ve uploaded a few photos which I hope everybody enjoys.

Apologies to all those who have been anxiously waiting for this next installment. I was flying under the radar for a few days and then got caught without accommodation in Cork on a bank holiday long weekend. So not a lot of time to write.

All the way through planning this trip I was excited to get back to Budapest as I think it’s one of the most interesting and beautiful cities in Europe. The people are always warm, the architecture and sites are quite unique, and the nightlife is always on.

We stayed in the Green Bridge hostel which is in a fairly central location, just two blocks back from the river on the eastern Pest side of town. Similar to the hostel in Krakow, there was a really good vibe around the place and we met some great people from Canada, the United States and a few other Aussies.

The first trip was to Széchenyi Fürdő, the public baths. Since it was a warm and sunny day we spent a couple hours in the outdoor pools before heading inside to an 80°C sauna.

Later in the afternoon we set off on a caving expedition which saw us spend about 4 hours in overalls crawling around underground. Watching Matt try to wriggle his huge frame through some relatively tight places (like the back of a volkswagon) proved quite amusing for the rest of the group.

The next two days saw quite a bit of walking with trips over the Chain Bridge to the Buda castle, along the river to Parlament, through the Jewish quarter, and up the long and leafy Andrassy Utca to Hero’s Square.

I’ve uploaded more photos of Budapest here.

Where?

Zdair. It’s a small village on the Slovakian side of the Tatra Mountains, not far south from the border with Poland. It was great to get away from the bigger cities and do some hiking and mountain biking in the fresh air.

This beautiful spot wasn’t on the original itinerary so I’m really thankful we got some good advice and so glad we made the effort to get down there.

I liked the idea of the Tatras and was reading up on towns further south like Stary Smokovec and Tatranska Lomnica in the Lonely Planet. It was just lucky that another Aussie bloke I met in Krakow had just come from Zdair and recommended we stay at The Ginger Monkey. I now recommend it to you.