Route decided...

So I've been spending last night and today planning my route across Europe. It's been giving me a massive headache since it's so hard to plan things out properly when you have no idea what you're doing, where you're going, and how long you're staying. I'm no longer travelling with the Texan because his route is pretty inconvenient. Have looked up hostels in each location, and will hope to be able book each one a city in advance, cos right now, I have no idea where I'll be at any given point. The only thing I do know is that I'll be flying into London on 3rd of November. Quite disappointing really, because I was planning on training it from Madrid to Paris and then going to London. That way, I could explore the French countryside, but due to all the strikes going on, it seemed like too much of a risk to rely on so many French trains. I'll be staying at Nice and Paris in France, which isn't nearly all that I wanted to do. However, maybe I can explore France more fully on my next trip. I was told that driving around was the best way to see France. Guess my next trip, perhaps in a few years, will be a France trip.


So here's the route that I plan to take. I have no idea how long I'll be staying in each location though. I guess it depends on how I feel at the end of the day. Slashes between cities means that they're pretty close so maybe day trips are enough, or they're just stops (a few hours) along the way.

Emmenbrücke, Switzerland
Nice, France
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Marseille, France
Barcelona, Spain
Madrid, Spain
London, UK
Manchester/Liverpool, UK
Dublin, Ireland
Belfast, Northern Ireland
Glasgow/Edinburgh, Scotland
London, UK
Paris, France
Bruges/Brussels, Belgium
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Hamburg, Germany
Berlin, Germany
Prague, Czech Republic
Munich, Germany
Salzburg, Vienna
Vienna, Austria
Budapest, Hungary
Zagreb, Croatia
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Venice, Italy
Florence/Pisa, Italy
Rome, Italy
Milan, Italy/Bern, Switzerland
Emmenbruecke, Switzerland

Hoping to get all that done in 58 days, since I have to be back before Christmas for the snows. I was wanting to go to some of Scandinavia (Sweden in particular) but apparently there's only 6 hours of sunlight during winter, so I'm not sure if it's worth it. Plus it's quite inconvenient in my route. Greece is also another country that I was hoping to go to, but like Sweden, it's quite out of the way. Besides, to me, the Mediterranean countries (Greece, Italy, Spain) are summer countries. But since I'm already here, I might as well see the sights, and hopefully return in the summer sometime to experience the true Mediterranean lifestyle.

So I've now got my route. I've got all my clothes in the dryer right now, almost ready to be packed away in my awesomely huge Ben Sherman bag.  Still wondering what I should do regarding the whole net on the road thing. The laptop that I use at the house is massive and old and heavy. Not sure if I want to carry that with me. However I did notice an Iphone on the table that has not been touched since I got here. Maybe I can take that (if it still works) and use that to access WiFi. It would help immensely with booking my hostels in advance, plus it would prevent me from getting lost, since some of the hostels are a bit of a walk from the stations. Can't believe it's so soon til I start travelling.

As for what I did today, I had cheese fondue again. Awesome. Cheese and bread. So simple yet so tasty. In particular, had this one cheese which has chilli and paprika "infused" into it which was amazing. I have noticed that my relatives don't eat breakfast. They only have two meals a day, from what I've seen (and experienced). It's taken some getting used to for me given that I've been waking up at 7 or 8 commpared to their 11. Coffee seems to be their breakfast. I've also embraced drinking coffee, which I seem to always do when I'm overseas. And by drinking coffee, I mean caffeinated sweet milk. Minimum three teaspoons of sugar. I don't see how people can drink unsweetened coffee. Sat at the window this morning, coffee in hand, and just stared at the mountains again. This really is such a beautiful place.

HBL signing out.