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.

London to Brussels or Bruxelles or Brussel

In Wales we are used to seeing place names in two languages - but come to Brussels and suddenly you see it in three. Some places use the English (Brussels) others the French (Bruxelles) and yet others the Flemish (Brussel) - even the railway station has three names, the two on the sign:

and Brussels-South as it said on our ticket.

As someone who was never able to spell Brussels (always missing the second of the s's), it is a relief to find I could have pretended I was aiming for one of the alternatives!

Paddington to St. Pancras

Before I go any further with the challenges of language, time to go back to where we left off in the last blog post - the point where we had arrived at Paddington.  

From our platform on Paddington, and without any friendly Peruvian bears 😉, we were able to walk over the modern concourse that connects the railway station with the underground. Unlike the old days when you had to come back on yourself for the Hammersmith and City line and walk to the opposite end of the station for the Circle line, for the last five or six years it has been possible to catch both Circle and H&C trains from the same Underground platform, making the journey from Paddington to Kings Cross/St. Pancras easy with trains every few minutes. A circle line train was coming in as we got to the platform, so we jumped on board and were in St. Pancras by 10.10am.  

My years of having a father who was always last minute (or late, as I like to call it!) has led to me being the exact opposite. Yes, we had arrived at 10.10am for a check in that opened at 11.15am, but better that than the opposite!

I can't spend time in St. Pancras, as modern and impressive as it now looks, without being taken back to that great novel by Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - in it Adams suggests that St. Pancras is "an area where terrible things happen to people, to buildings, to cars, to trains… You could have a cheap car radio fitted while you waited, and if you turned your back for a couple of minutes, it would be removed while you waited as well. Other things you could have removed while you waited were your wallet, your stomach lining, your mind and your will to live." Naturally, in Adams' mind, St. Pancras was the home of the uncared for Norse Gods - an idea Neil Gaimen builds on in an American context in his book (and tv series) American Gods.  

It is now much nicer than in Adams' day! We stopped in a Starbucks and had a coffee each 

while I loaded up pictures and Drew read, meaning we were ready to check-in when it opened at 11.15am.

Eurostar

We arrived at the entrance to the Eurostar terminal at 11.16am and went through tickets, case and person scanning (and neither of us set the beepers off this time) and both outbound UK and in bound EU passport control by 11.25am. 

It is very noticeable that the passport area and queues have the effect of reducing the seating space in the terminal - one of the costs of the idiocy that is Brexit!!

Boarding for the 1:01pm train to Brussels begins at 12.30. Our carriage is the second one at the top of the travelator. 

We booked Standard Premier to get the benefit of the light lunch and soft drinks they offer in this class. The seats are really comfortable and they even have a mirror!! I couldn't resist a mirrored shot of myself.

The train pulled away at exactly 1.01pm as scheduled. Let's hope the whole of the journey over the next three weeks is this easy!

At 1.36pm we head into the tunnel. It is of course now 2.36 as the clocks go forward the hour as we travel under the channel. 

At 2.40pm (which was 1.40pm a few minutes ago!) lunch is served. 

Drew opted for the Suffolk chicken, Caesar sauce, mangetout, carrot, cabbage and red onion remoulade with a bread roll and Strawberry yoghurt cake, water and a coke

I went with the Tomato, mozzarella, caramelised onion and pesto tart, pesto pasta salad with sundried tomato and spinach, bread roll and Strawberry yoghurt cake with sparking water - Drew swopped my cake for his bread roll as he is so kind to me. The meal was completed by a coffee. 

We had a slight delay in the channel tunnel, the train had to slow down but the impact was that we took 20 minutes more than usual to transit the tunnel coming out at 3.10pm. 

Coming out of the tunnel we crossed along Northern France stopping at Lille 

and from there into Belgium arriving in Brussels at 4.18pm - 14 minutes later than we were due. 

Brussels 

In many of the cities on this visit we are staying in an IHG (International Hotel Group) hotel. In this case the Holiday Inn Express Brussels - Grand-Place on the Rue Du Cypres.

We left Brussels Midi station and immediately realised that the Tram stop, we knew we needed to travel on to four stops to the hotel, wasn't outside the station as it appeared on the map, but accually underneath the station. Effectively for this part of its journey the Tram had become a subway train!

So we went back into the station and followed the T (for Tram) sign down two levels and caught the Tram to the De Brouckere station and we could see the Holiday Inn Express sign as we came out of the station.

We were welcomed and shown to our room in the eves at the top of the hotel (the room you can see with the arch at the top of the photo above. It was 4.50pm and we were able to settle in and have a brief rest before going out for the evening. It has been 12 hours since we got up, but the journey has gone so remarkably smoothly we can hardly believe it. 

The evening will be the topic of the next blog post.

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.

Preparations to travel

 

Over the last few days, as our departure day is getting closer, I've been reflecting on the differences between booking this holiday compared to doing a similar task when we travelled around Southern Europe 11 years ago. 

Mobile Apps

I was already a frequent computer user back in 2012, so all my bookings then were stored as pdfs on my PC. Back then though, most of the pdfs had to be printed on paper to be able to be used on site. Since then Mobile Apps have become the dominant booking and ticketing mode. They form a hugely more significant part of the process than they did in 2012.

This screenshot from the travel apps on my phone shows only one of the pages of apps which relate to this year's bookings.  

Trainline has my tickets from Taffs Well to London (and back), Eurostar from London to Brussels (and Paris to London), Deutsche Bahn has tickets for all my German train travel - then IHG (International Hotel Group) and Booking.com which between then have all bar two of my hotels. Then there is Omio for the two cross-border bus journeys and Eckero Line and Viking Line for our ferry tickets following this there are another range of apps for local metro and bus tickets, many of whom will be purchased in advance of arrival - on the above screen these include Berlin, Vilnius, Riga, Helsinki, Stockholm and Hamburg, there are more on the second screen! I hope they all work as easily as they were to set up - we shall see (and report on the blog).

Drew also sub-contracted the job of downloading and sorting the passwords on the apps he needs to use train tickets etc.

Imminent preparations

It is also good to have cleared most of my emails ready to travel (not an easy task, but I've been a strong believer in efficient email filing for many years now). 

A quick look at my mailbox, in the photo above, shows the current emails are all about being ready for the holiday.

 

Moving from bottom to top:

1. Matsudai Ramen confirming our booking for dinner this evening - we try not to cook the night before we go, so we don't have dishes/rubbish to sort early tomorrow morning.
2. Holiday Inn Express confirming our accommodation for tomorrow evening in the Holiday Inn Express Brussels - Grand-Place
3. Eurostar - notifying us that the seating plan on our train (tomorrow afternoon) has changed - oh look, the new coach and seat number has appeared on the app and in my Google Wallet, so no need to reprint the boarding ticket, as we would have had to in the past.

It all makes it feel very real, ready for tomorrow's trip.