Last Carriage

Love This City, is a travel blog from a girl named Dani, from Sydney, who plans to visit 26 countries in five months. If it's May, it must be ... Ireland!

The Independent lists its top five pod hotels.

What's a pod hotel? Here's a couple of examples: The Pod Hotel, Stay Orange.

The past two years has brought enormous change to Russia's capital city. The New York Times takes a look at some of the changes.

The Independent has an article about the UK Youth Hostelling Association closing down a number of hostels in order to fund improvements to others.

Apparently more and more travellers, these days, want private en-suite facilities, It would be a shame, however, if the large bunk rooms and communal eating areas disappeared forever...

Ed Gillespie is attempting to travel around the world, without taking a flight. The latest installment of his story, printed in The Observer, has him entering Mongolia from Russia by train.

He also has a longer article in his weblog.

Budget Travel Online has a guide to finding unique hotels and alternative lodging.

The New York Times has a wonderful article on the historic city of Krakow, in Poland.

Thanks Julie!

The Irish Independent takes a look at Bremen, in Germany, and finds that there is more to the former Hanseatic city-state than just depressing weather.

Bremen can be reached by direct trains from Hamburg, Hannover, Zurich, Vienna, Munich, Paris and Brussels. For a less direct route, consider taking a train to Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands and then regional trains to Bremen, via Leer.

A brief guide to Milan, from The Age. So brief, in fact, that they do twenty-four hours in just eight and a half.

The Amsterdam/London Express was, for several years, the most hassle-free method of getting between the two cities. One ticket would get you from London Liverpool Street Station via train to Harwich, then on a fast hydrofoil to Hoek van Holland, and then finally on another train to Rotterdam, The Hague or Amsterdam, in around six hours.

Sadly, the hydrofoil was removed at the beginning of 2007, but the service remains, now using ferries, and renamed as the DutchFlyer; possibly in jest, as the service takes twice as long as it did previously.

However, it still remains one of the least problematic methods for getting to the Netherlands, since there's no annoying airports to deal with. And, as The Guardian explains, you can travel with a clear conscience, too.

Cameron Marlow has an interesting guide on planning a trip to europe, with some good links for evaluating accomodation.

I'm a little skeptical of the need to search out restaurants in advance, however...

The Guardian presents some amazing photos of Antwerp, Belgium.

Europe's biggest rock festival, the Roskilde Festival is on again this July, this year featuring The Who, Björk, Queens of the Stone Age and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It's held in, not surprisingly, Roskilde, Denmark, a small city about twenty minutes west of Copenhagen.

Camping and caravan sites are available, but if you want hostel or hotel accomodation, you're probably going to have to book well in advance, and more likely, at this point, look further afield for suitable options. Copenhagen will have the widest variety of options, but those who don't want to stay in a large city might prefer to try Køge.

Possible accomodation options:

• Roskilde Hostel


• Køge Hostel


• Copenhagen Amager hostel


• Copenhagen Bellahøj hostel


• Copenhagen City hostel

The Toronto Star has a feature on the castles and ruins of northern England.

"Thanks to 400 years of bitter border skirmishes, wars and invasions, the counties that dot the north of England can today proudly boast more than 800 fortresses ranging from the ruinous to the downright sumptuous."

The people at shortwalk.blog.co.uk have put together a great map of London's tube showing the walking times between stations.

Rodcorp also has a tube map with walklines.