München

On Tuesday, I arrived in München. This is a city of lovely beers, and lots of people there to drink them. So the hostel was naturally full of people from all over the world wanting to go drinking. So Tuesday night was fun and involved lots of Hofbräu and Augustinerbräu.

On Wednesday, I did Mike's Bike Tour of the city. This was a lot of fun...

We saw all the historical stuff in the city...








...and some mores modern places...






..and then on to the Englischergarten!



This park was cool to cycle through at high speed.



And at the end was the huge Chinese Tower beer garden... with lots of amazing food to go with the litre glasses of beer.






This time in München, I actually made it to the Hofbräuhaus too!

Next, on to Berlin...

Vienna.... And Bratislava!

On Sunday, I left Ljubljana for Vienna...

Vienna's very different from Ljubljana. The centre is extremely busy, and full of lots of fancy high end shops. There's lots to see though...















Unfortunately, I was in Vienna on a Monday, and very few tours and tourist things run on Mondays. So I did a sort of of guided tour... And after that, I went to the very nearby city of Bratislava for the afternoon.

This is the end of Austria, just before crossing into Slovakia...


...where first impressions around the train station are pretty grim.







But towards the city centre, this place gets much nicer..












I went back to Vienna for the evening for some nice local beer....

And today, I'm going to Munich. Let's hope the floods don't stop me. I haven't encountered any flood problems myself yet, but I've heard a few horror stories from other travellers.

Ljubljana

Ljubljana is an amazing little city. It's the capital of Slovenia, but its really small and not overly touristy. Unlike all the italian cities there are no scammers trying to sell junk and scam tourists on the streets. This city feels like the safest city in the world.

The pink church is on the main square of the city. Yes, it's a tiny main square.


There's a castle overlooking the whole city.


You can go up to the castle...






There are pretty views at the top...









This is the staircase taking you to the top...






I had some traditional Slovenian food in the restaurant in the castle. That was nice...

The way down was cool too...






Dragons are everywhere. They're the symbol of the city.






And there's a massive outdoor market everyday...

Location:Prečna ulica,Ljubljana,Slovenia

Getting to Ljubljana

There are no trains at all between Slovenia and Italy. So to get from Venice to Ljubljana requires the following epic trek:



I left Venice at about 10:00 on a train to the border town of Gorizia.



Gorizia is on the italian side of the border.



A 4 kilometre walk away is the Slovenian side of the town, Nova Gorica.

The train station is very different to the italian ones. There are no signs to tell you what trains are coming and what platform they're going to be on. In fact, it was mostly deserted...



The station did have a cafe with some nice beer though. The station's right on the border, so those buildings behind the beer are in Italy.






I had to get three different trains to get to Ljubljana. No more walking was needed at least. Luckily, I was able to make alone very tight connections.

It was a pretty journey...





The last train even had cabins, and windows you could lean out of.

Location:Prečna ulica,Ljubljana,Slovenia

Venice

On thursday night I stayed in Venice.

Venice is a very pretty labyrinth of crazy tiny streets, most of which are dead ends with canals at the end of them. Lovely place though...








Like everywhere in Italy, there's lovely food everywhere. The pizza and pasta is wonderful, and even the train station sandwiches are lovely with their fancy italian ham and salami. Stuff's expensive in Venice though, and there are tourists everywhere!



...and even cats!!!

Location:Prečna ulica,Ljubljana,Slovenia

Vatican and Florence

On Tuesday, I visited the Vatican museums and the Sistine chapel. This was pretty amazing. I have way too many pictures to put up here, but the amount of historical stuff inside the Vatican is huge.









We couldn't take pictures inside the Sistine chapel, which is a shame as every inch of the walls were covered in really impressive paintings.

Also in Rome, I found the Spanish steps...



...and the Pantheon...





...and this amazing thing.


The next day: Florence!

Florence had some pretty cool architecture to see.






Trees also offered free hugs. You know, as they do.



There were also some cool bars in Florence. I found a great rock bar with loads of BrewDog on tap called One Eyed Jack. There was also a cool little cocktail bar I went to with some people from the hostel. They *really* know how to make cocktails in Florence!

I'm writing this on the train to Venice!