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.

On our way

So we are on our way, as I write I'm sitting on the train to Paddington having had an early morning walk to the railway station at the beginning of our journey. But more of that later, before that, an update on our first meal of the holiday, last night at Matsudai Ramen. 

Matsudai Ramen

I first got a taste for Ramen when visiting Hawai'i in 2019 - the rich flavour of the broth and the amazing mix of ingredients in the soup were delicious. [Co-Pilot's note: Lies and deceit and more lies, he first got a taste for Ramen when he went to Bobby Wood's stag doo in Wagamamas in 2008, he's forgotten that!!]. Thanks to the co-pilot for correcting me, but I had indeed forgotten that and in my defense it clearly didn't make a big impact as I didn't taste it again until 2019 in Kauai! So, when Jay Rayner finally found something nice to say about the Cardiff food scene (he had developed a reputation for being negative about it) it was nice to see his focus being a Ramen restaurant - Matsudai Ramen - and we were glad to take his advice and try it while our kitchen was being replaced earlier this year. 

When thinking of somewhere to eat the night before our trip (so that we didn't have any dishes to wash, food to dispose of before leaving for the holiday) Drew suggested we return - it was a good decision.

   

We began with three taster dishes to share. These were Karaage Mushroom - a triple fried marinated oyster and shitake mushrooms with Japanese curry mayo, sunset powder and lemon. 

this wasn't the easiest dish to eat with chopsticks, Drew suggested he'd bring his own spoon next time! But they were light and crispy, the curry mayo was tangy, with a gentle curry flavour, but a perfect foil for the mushrooms. 

We then had Mini Chashi Don - a small, high-grade Japanese white rice with chashu pork belly burnt ends and a soy-mirin dressing

this was the favourite of the starters, the pork belly was soft and infused with the saltiness of soy and the tangy sweetness of mirin, delicious. 

Our final dish was Cucumber Sunomono - a cucumber salad with a sweet-savoury-spicy sesame dressing and chilli threads 

this had so blown us away on our last visit that we were determined to try it again. It was every bit as tasty as we remembered. How you can make cucumber, often used as a filler in salads, reach such flavour hights I don't know, but they certainly manage it here. 

For mains we both had Ramen, well not a difficult choice really as that is the only option!! Though the choice of Ramen is itself something worthy of a connoisseur.

I opted for the Tantanmen

A rich, sesame-packed moderately spicy ramen based on chinese dan dan noodles - The menu description says: chicken and seafood dashi double-soup, soy tare, tantan paste, schmaltz, house rayu chilli oil, thick house-made temomi noodles, chicken and beef soboro, greens, nori with ajitama egg. Though the detail of the ingredients isn't what is important, but the overall effect of them when they are together. It is like a combination of one's favourite childhood comfort soup and special tangy peaks of excellence. I could wax lyrically about it for some time. 

Drew went with the Classic Shoyu, 

a golden, umami-packed, clean, clear and balanced ramen. A modern version of a classic bowl and one which is light enough that you could eat every day. Its description is: chicken and seafood dashi double soup, soy tare, schmaltz, thin house-made noodles, sous vide chicken breast, house mema, nori with ajitama egg. Drew says - it was very yummy, he'd have it again (well he did as this was his second time here and his second time of choosing this!). 

We had some nori as a side some to dip, some to crinkle up on the palette the way crispy seaweed can.    

We caught the bus home from Cardiff and by 10.30pm were in bed with the alarm set for 4.30am tomorrow (and 4.31 for the second alarm, just in case!)

Early Morning

With both alarms set, I naturally woke up at 4am and listened to BBC World Service from 4 until the alarm(s) went off when I got up, followed a few minutes later by Drew. 

Breakfast, well more accurately first breakfast, was an apple, almonds and mixed seeds for me and a cup of tea for us both. 

Breakfast complete we brushed our teeth, packed or electric toothbrushes, the last items to go into the case as we only have one each and having a spare just for holidays seems a litle excessive! 

After shaving and dressing it was time to do our final checks, turn off our five Google home devices (which are normally always on) and other bits of electrical equipment and leave for the station.

Taffs Well Station

At 6am we left the house and walked up to Taffs Well station. As aficionados of previous holiday blogs will know our tradition is to have a photo of me on this part of the journey. You will have seen this at the top of today's blog post and here is me leaving the village:

Here I am 11 years ago when we did our last rail holiday in Europe.

Taffs Well station has been in a state of flux for the last 18 months while the depot for the new South Wales Metro is built. Some of the new Metro trains are already on site

though none are yet in use as the overhead electrical cables are not yet complete on all the routes.

We arrived at the station 6.26am and walked over the bridge, as the normal entrance to the Cardiff direction trains has been blocked by the metro work.

Taken from the bridge - note the new electric gantries in place ready

We caught the 6.33am train to Cardiff Central 

Cardiff Central

We arrived at Cardiff Central at 7am and had second breakfast at the Upper Crust cafe in Cardiff Central. Drew had a Sausage Bap and a Latte, I, as it is a Friday, a day when Catholic's abstain from meat, had a cheese and egg bap and an Americano.

As we sat in the cafe for our breakfast we were joined by two other passengers who asked us for directions to the platforms. They were two people from Southern California who were on their way to Pembroke. We had a great chat about our visits to their state and they told us about their first visit to the UK in 1963 (I managed not to say, when I was 5!). 

Cardiff to London Paddington

We boarded the London train at 7.55am and found our seats straight away. 

The train pulled away on time and had an uneventful journey arriving at Paddington at 9:45am.