Brasov is the perfect place for day trips around transylvania so a few us headed out for the day to Sinaia to visit the Peles castle that was there. I was with Pete who is an english guy spending 2 weeks in Brasov to write some research thing for uni on tourism in Brasov and Dracula […]

Awhile ago I watched this truly awful movie called ‘Vlad” set in Transylvania about vampire hunting and weird things about Vlad…it was probably the worst movie ever, luckily in reality Transylvania is great! And not really at all dark and grim. And also really Dracula never existed, he was just based on some impaler from the […]

Arriving into Romania, myself, Sam and Jess all split off towards our different hostels. Already the train station was a lot more developed than  Bulgaria, it was big and busy and lots going on. safety first… I grabbed a bus towards the hostel and meet 3 english girls heading there as well. The hostel was above a […]

Bulgaria was turning out to be a cheap country so I ended up staying 3 nights at Veliko’s Hostel Mostel -which also happens to be the best hostel this end of Europe, it has an almost cult status among backpackers in Eastern Europe. Given that its only 7 euros a night with free breakfast dinner and beer, it […]

By the time I arrived in Sofia I as pretty shattered from my crazy day, I was still kind if laughing to myself that I had actually made it and I was still alive! The hostel I was in was nice and small with a lovely old man who spoke no english, it was kind of […]

It seems that I cannot cross a border without everything being strange. Crossing into Bulgaria was no different, although just one part of my very weird and possibly life threatening day. It began with my 3am bus, after trying to get an hour or so sleep before. The bus arrived in the border town around 7.30am and […]

Our hostel in Istanbul wasn’t exactly the nicest place to be spending 4 nights so we chopped it after one night and up graded to a nice place with our own room and bathroom. The hotel and backpackers area in Istanbul isn’t actually that well set up for backpackers, no internet cafes close and zero cheap […]

Getting to the town of Kaş was a bıt dıffıcult because all the buses were full, we had to change a couple of tımes and I was feel very average at this stage. Luckıly I was wıth mum  otherwise I probably wouldn’t have had the energy to move or actually been capable of getting myself anywhere. […]

Our mega long day to Turkey began at 5am. Ever trustıng the lonely planet which said that buses across the border left between 5-8am we arrıved at the bus statıon at about 5.30am to fınd that actually all the buses leave at 5. So ıt was the doubly expensıve service taxıs, which we manged to bargain […]

Once recovered from our mega walk to the hotel we thought we better check out a lıttle bıt of the cıty, once the sun goes down and ıts not so hot walkıng around ıt not so tough. So we walked over to the souqs-the gıant covered markets that Aleppo ıs famous for, after getting dragged ınto […]

We found ourselves in a nice hotel in Hama, welcomed by more free tea which flows freely everywhere. Its strong and sweet and asking for milk is a huge no-no, I am actually starting to like it though and even managing to enjoy the strong black Turkish coffee. We got the last room which was really […]

Well it seems the Romans really did get around, from Egypt we have seen the remains of Roman occupation everywhere and same in Syria. In the morning after recovering from our Beirut ordeal we jumped on a cheap bus to Palmyra which was a 3 hour journey east from Damascus. It is one of Syria’s most […]

Wıth Lebanon just 3 hours away and a morbıd facınatıon of conflıct rıdden countrıes we decided to pop across to Beırut for a nıght to check out the cıty, whıch by the way ıs safe at the moment. We had checked ın wıth the confusıng and unhelpful ımmıgratıon servıces ın Damascus who assured us we could […]

Well my blog ıs getting behind a wee bıt, as antıcıpated. Internet has been slow and now ın Turkey where they keyboards are strange. Having serious problems with my camera and my photos seem to be non-exıstant when I plug ın my camera to a computer, although they work fıne on my camera, so no photos […]

Finally after confusion about actually getting there, we were heading north to Syria. One of the ‘axis of evil countries’ according to Bush and with strong travel warnings against going there on lots of countries state websites. However, from what we had heard it sounded amazing and really there has been very little conflict there […]

And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the LORD showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, And all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, […]

Petra, for those of you who don’t know is Jordan’s most famous landmark, one of the new 7 wonders of the world and features in the 3rd Indiana Jones movie -possibly the greatest film of all time. So it was definitely on my must see list when coming to this part of the world. The famous […]

Going back to Dahab I wasn’t keen on another 9 hour bus and because we were short on time we decided to fly to Sharm which is only an hour from Dahab. We got a taxi in the morning and almost missed the flight because flights to Sharm for some reason leave from a separate terminal […]

I had another night in Dahab before heading back to Cairo to meet Mum, it was also Brian’s last night so we meet up and watched a bit of fightclub at one of the bars then both headed to bed as we were shattered from the climb the night before. I said goodbye in the morning […]

Exodus 19:20 The LORD descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain . Mt Sinai is pretty important in terms of christian (and Jewish and Muslim) history, its where Moses received the 10 commandments so why not go check it out if you happen to be in the area. […]