Europe
What is the oldest whiskey distillery in the world? What is the oldest whiskey distillery in the world? It seems like such an easy question to answer. Sadly, however, it is not. Doing a quick google search tends to show Bushmills in Northern Ireland, with a year of 1608, as the oldest. As with most things to do with numbers, this year is open to interpretation. This is not the year that the distillery was established, but the year in which a…
This time last year I was in Iceland for work. I arrived on a Monday evening and was working from 2PM on Tuesday until 6AM on Wednesday and then again from midday on Wednesday until 8PM. It was going well clearly! I was supposed to finish work by lunchtime on the Thursday, but didn’t finish until 5PM. I had a flight home on Friday morning so I had to go out and enjoy my one night out in Reykjavik, Iceland….…
Getting to the Carpathians by train Going to the Carpathian Mountains is one of the most popular tourist activities in Ukraine. Getting to the mountains is easy if you have a car but if you are on a budget or have limited time, then it is a little bit harder. In this post, I will show you how visiting the Carpathians from Lviv on a day trip is easy to do. On my visit to Ukraine earlier this year I…
Experiencing a Banya in Ukraine I arrived into Kyiv after a long bus journey from Warsaw which involved multiple toilet and cigarette breaks on the way. Oh and also being kicked awake by Polish or Ukrainian border police. I’m not sure which. It was an absolutely filthy afternoon with the rain just pouring down from all sides. I had no money on me and had to find my way to where I was staying. I eventually made it to an…
Understanding a Ukrainian Train Ticket On my previous post here, I showed how easy it is to buy a Ukrainian train ticket online. Today I will show you how to understand the ticket. When you complete payment for the train ticket, you will receive an email link to your ticket which you can print out. This print out will allow you to get straight onto the train, no need to queue up at ticket booths! So here is…
How to Buy a Train Ticket In Ukraine Buying a train ticket online in Ukraine is, perhaps surprisingly, very simple and easy. Train tickets can be booked up to 100 days in advance and there’s an English version of the site to use for those not fluent in Ukrainian. The site for booking tickets is http://booking.uz.gov.ua/en/. Searching for a Train Ticket The first thing to do is to select where you are going from and your destination. When entering your choices, you…
Kjeragbolten: Scary, Exhausting and Exciting! Over the summer I was in Norway, trying to complete three hikes which are on my bucket list – Kjeragbolten, Preikestolen and Trolltunga. Things did not go to plan as I was only able to do one of them. More on that later… How to hike Kjeragbolten In case you don’t know, Kjeragbolten is a rock / boulder that sits in a crevasse in the Kjerag mountain in the south west of Norway with…
Wieliczka – The Mine With Walls You Can Lick In Krakow, it is impossible to avoid the Wieliczka Salt Mine. EVERY company does tours to the place. I had a limited amount of time in Krakow, so thought why not!? The mine is over 700 years old, 300 metres deep and 170 miles long and yes you can actually lick the walls! The tours of the mine only cover about 2 miles of the tunnels, so you only get to see a…
Walking Tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau Auschwitz. Is there any other word or place in the English language that can cause people to have such an immediate emotional reaction as this one? I have wanted to visit Auschwitz for many years and recently I took a trip to Poland (Krakow and Wroclaw to be specific). So I simply had to visit. Imagine being so close and not going. What would that say about me as a person? My time in…