The Journey Home

After a late night last night, I woke at 5.15am this morning and began loading yesterday's photos to Flickr it is great to be right up to date with the photo record of the holiday, even if I'm quite a bit behind with the blog!

At 6am alarm went off and we did our ablutions and got to breakfast as it opened at 7am. We were the only ones there until 7.30am!!

We went back to the room and packed, preparing for the journey. 

We leave the room at 8.45am, check out takes a minute and we walk from the hotel the 10 minutes to Gare de Nord. I'll remember this hotel, its ease of access to Gare de L'Est where we came in from Germany, along with its short (only one turn) walk to Gard de Nord makes it perfect for anytime we are coming too or through Paris. 

We arrive at the Gard de Nord at 9.00am. 

We are through both passport controls and baggage check by 9.10am. Drew was convinced the British e-gate would reject my bruised right eye, but I went through without any problems. 

We waited in the passenger lounge until 9.30 and then boarded couch 3 on the Eurostar. 

We have, again, upgraded to Standard Premier which means a slightly larger seat on the train, access to power points at each seat and a snack on voyage.

The train has UK sockets on one side and European on the other, seemed strange to take the Euro one off after over three weeks.  

We have our second breakfast 

[Co-pilot's note: He nicked my grapes!] [Pilot's note: In my defence we swapped, he had two chocolate croissants!!]

and the clock goes back an hour and we arrive in St. Pancras at 11.30 UK time. 

We walk to the Hammersmith and City line platform, arriving at 11.40am. The first train is in 2 minutes. We arrive in Paddington at 11.45am. 

Our only potential worry is the fact that there is a train strike in the UK today, meaning our booked train to Cardiff has been cancelled and replaced with one train an hour at a different time. So, we may be standing to Cardiff today like we did from Strasbourg to Paris on Thursday!

Still, the train isn't until 12.40am so we head to Starbucks and have a coffee each.

As the trains to Cardiff are running but not as timetabled, so there are no reserved seats on the one train an hour! Having past experience in Paddington to Cardiff trips (I remember one year when I was doing the journey every Wednesday afternoon-evening to teach an Open University tutorial) helped. Knowing that a train from Bristol had come in and that the last Cardiff train had gone back to Bristol, meant we moved towards the train before it was announced as going to Cardiff. This meant we were in the second row of the queue for the run to the train. 

The last passenger got out from the incoming train, the staff threw open the gates and people literally ran. We got on the first second class carriage, got seats together and were comfortable as we headed on our way at 12.46pm. 

We arrive at Cardiff at 2.55pm, 14 minutes late which isn't at all bad, given the rest of the problems there have been on the trains today.  

The Metro work continues and this means we have replacement buses instead of trains to Taffs Well today. 

There are 15 staff including 3 supervisors standing around while one young lady sorts which buses people get on. I'm not sure why there were so many people, but it would have been helpful if they had spoken to passengers not each other. 

At 3.15pm the bus departs, but instead of heading towards Llandaff, it travels, very slowly through the City Centre in Cardiff to pick people up at Queen Street station - there was only one person there and they didn't get on the bus as it wasn't calling at Treforest! It called at Llandaff but was going so slowly we decided to get off at Radyr and walk the mile and a half home rather than wait for it to get to Taffs Well and walk back the .8 of a mile. 

I don't know what the dog walkers and cyclists on the Taff Trail thought of two people with suitcases walking along, but the weather was fine, the sun was shining, so we didn't mind. The photo at the top of this post is me arriving in Tongwynlais just before the M4 bridge.

We arrived home at 4.20pm.

Overview

This has been an amazing holiday, the fun of planning a holiday as complex as this one is making sure all the parts fit together. So, I'm glad, looking back at the end of the holiday, that everything worked so well. There were some train delays but all the journeys worked out and all the hotel bookings worked perfectly. It is such a relief when it all works out so well. 

Travel

As I conclude this blog there is a lot to look back on. We travelled 3,927 miles between cities, 3,234 by train, 382 by coach and 311 by ferry. 

During the holiday I've walked 152.53 miles (348,123 steps), that's an average of 6.6 miles (15,136 steps) per day with 11.07 miles (26,718 steps) on the busiest day (Warsaw) and 1.64 miles (4,147 steps) on the quietest day when we were on the train from Berlin to Warsaw).

We also travelled 96 miles by subway or bus in the cities we were visiting. 

Yet, though we have been really busy, it was also really relaxing and I've seen so many new places and have some wonderful memories. 

On a positive note, I weighed 12 stone 10lb (80.7kg) when we left for the holiday and I return weighing 13 stone 2lb (83.5kg). Not a bad outcome after all the eating we have done, clearly the balance between exercise and eating wasn't too far out at all.

[Co-pilot's observation: You may have noticed, dear readers, a minor delay in the completion of this blog. One can't help but feel that one of the principal reasons for that is the sheer number of photographs 'someone' insisted on taking during this holiday and the commensurate amount of time it took to upload and catalogue them on Flickr. In total, dear readers, we took 6,035 photos on this holiday, despite someone being told he had a daily budget of 100 photographs. I have started to develop RSI in my right index finger, and we all know who is to blame!!!]

Reflections

There are so many special memories from this holiday that it is hard to pick out highlights. 

Of all the towns we visited Stockholm was the one that had the biggest impact on me, but I loved the time in Brussels, Berlin and Vilnius too - indeed there wasn't a single place that I wouldn't revisit sometime in the future. We made sure there was more to see in Helsinki, Hamburg and Paris, so we have an excuse to go back to any of them. Indeed, the holiday worked out so well that picking one highlight seems futile, the whole thing was a big highlight, filled with lots of individual highlights.

The most unexpected event of the holiday was meeting Bobby and Rosina Metha in a restaurant in Brussels. So unlikely, but so lovely to catch-up with old friends.

Bookings

We decided to take a 'belt and braces' approach to tickets and printed everything that we had on our mobiles - we didn't need to use them even once. I'd be tempted to abandon the paper version on future trips and trust the technology.

Meals

We ate so well that it is also hard to pick out favourite meals. The most memorable was the one we ate in the medieval setting of a dark, underground basement in Riga. The service and quality of food at Rutz and the Palace were exceptional, but for me the favourite meal was the one at Esens'all, less pomp than at the other two 'poncy' dinners, but simple yet exceptional food. 

Thanks

Finally, a big thank you to all those who journeyed with us for all or part of this holiday. It is always a pleasure to share the experience and get input and insight from so many of you. While Facebook has been annoying in blocking access to the blog, many of you endeavoured to use other means to access the material and continue to journey with us.

Thanks especially to those who corrected my misspellings and other errors both on the blog and on Flickr - I know I've kept you very busy, thanks.

So, this trip is over, here's to many more. All being well we'll be headed to Australia in a year's time - I hope you'll join us again then.