Well naturally, as it’s just gone 11 and we’ve just got home and I’m dog tired after a week or travelling, I’m not going to write a whole lot right now.

It’s been a fantastic week, though. I particularly enjoyed staying in this prison in Ljubljana:

It had the most comfortable beds, and I had two of the best nights sleep for years. The trains, too, were comfortable and clean, and I felt particularly satisfied when we rolled into Budapest exactly 12 hours after we had left Venice. Of course, we’d taken five days to do it, stopping off at Ljubljana and Zagreb on the way, but it was the train EC53 all the way, following the whole of its course across east Europe.

Ljubljana is just so perfect, and the people are lovely. Zagreb… hmmm. The people were rude. Some old woman pushed me over on the tram and there were comments about Engliski, and we got ripped off by a taxi driver, and they wouldn’t serve you food and… well, I’m glad I can say I have been, but I think going straight there after somewhere to pretty and fabulous as Ljubljana it was always going to be difficult.

Budapest was cool, but not a good rival to Prague, in spite of the fact that the Lonely Planet guide to Eastern Europe recommends Budapest instead of Prague. It’s just a bit too disparate, though, and not quite as beautiful as the Czech capital, and again we got very seriously ripped off by a taxi driver who insisted we’d given him 500 forints when actually we’d given him 5000. We ended up having to give him another 5000, so ended up paying a massive price for a fairly short journey. The manager of our hotel says it is a common tactic in Budapest, and that he probably also fiddled his meter to make it that expensive in the first place. He said to steer clear of taxis in the city as they are notoriously scam-ridden.

Four cities in eight days, with four different languages and four different currencies was always going to be hard work, but I’ve seen so much I feel like I’ve been away for a month.

Even so, it’s good to be back.

1. Packed
   I should have spent more of today out in the garden, but apart from two hours sat drinking tea in the sun with mum I...
   
   
2. Prosim
   We booked flights to Venice at the weekend. The plan is to stay there one night at the beginning of May, then travel by train...
   
   
3. Hungarian pictures
   (above) Trevor and Jon sitting on the plinth of the statue of St Stephen in the old town inside the walls of Budapest Castle....