Author name: admin

This morning we boarded an open top double decker bus to tour the whole of the city. It is a hop on, hop off service which enables one to see the sights at one’s leisure. Starting from the Parliament Buildings our tour took us past the Panatheniac Stadium. This is on the site of an […]

Day 1 We flew from Manchester as the sun was rising and landed at lunchtime from a clear blue Athens sky and a temperature of 27 degrees C. Our hotel is close to Syntagma Square. So following a rapid unpack we explored the Square, which is the centre of modern Athens. It is surrounded by

Our morning started with an exploration of the Grand Bazaar (Kapali Carsi) which was founded in 1461 by Sultan Mehmet II. The bazaar was designed as the trading heart of an empire and today is still piled with carpets, jewellery and spices. When first built it had travellers accommodation, a bath house, mosques and school

For most of the day we have been on board a ferry that enabled us to journey from the Golden Horn, through the Bosphorus to just short of the Black Sea. Many people think that this is the best way to see Istanbul because you get a different perspective on the city, the skylines and

  Today we explored the Sultanahmet quarter. Our hotel is a stones throw from the Blue Mosque which dominates this part of the quarter. It was commissioned by Sultan Ahmet I and he want to surpass the size and beauty of the nearby Haghia Sophia. The work was completed in 1616 and has become one

Day 1 We left Manchester in the late afternoon with wonderful flying conditions and views of Europe until sunset. The weather changed over the Balkans which led to an ‘interesting’ one under carriage landing in Istanbul. A rapid transfer by taxi took us through the modern suburbs to the old city and the Sultanahmet area

Friday 12th June We explored the area around Varosliget (City Park), where some of the finest buildings and widest boulevards in the city focus upon the massive Millennium Monument. To get there we walked the length of Andrassy Street, the long and wide boulevard from the city centre. This is thought to be Budapest’s most

Thursday 11th June Today we explored the medieval town of Buda which was developed around the 13th century castle. The castle was built on an escarpment that rises to 170 metres above the Danube. Along the foot of this are the spas and bathing houses where the water naturally issued from the cliffs. Today we

Wednesday 10th June Our hotel is near Kalvin ter and upon leaving at 9:30 a.m. it was already 24 degrees. Budapest is thought by many to be the finest of three of the Habsburg Empire’s largest cities: Budapest, Vienna and Prague. It is essentially two cities split by the River Danube. Buda is on the

Tuesday 9th June We flew from Manchester to Budapest in Hungary via Frankfurt. We arrived in a thunderstorm, with amazing lightening and at times heavy rain, which lasted most of the night. This did not stop us experiencing Hungarian cuisine in this well established restaurant at the end of Budapest’s most famous street called the