So I get so many questions surrounding the topics of interailing! If you didn't know I went interailing for 31 days round 13 countries in Europe! Yes you heard that right 13 countries in 31 days! I have had so many questions about it so I thought I would tell you a little about my trip and how much it cost and where I went.
So months and months before we left on May 22nd my 6 friends and I went round each others houses and planned a route (that was constantly changed), spoke on the phone trying to grasp the language to hostels and train companies and book our flight after we eventually figured we would take the risk and go all the way to Greece. But we probably had a good six or seven team meetings before packing our bags (we even created a packing list or two) and heading off. I was earning all the money for the trip myself and only through a part time job as I was in full time education, so at times it looked risky to whether I would actually be able to make it and there was a time that I thought it would only be possible to do half the trip but eventually I took the risk and I managed to get all round Europe for 15 pounds a day.
Our budget - Each of us brought between 1000 - 1500 although some of us were on about 5 pounds in our bank account by the end of the trip and had to resort either to savings or tell our parents that we would pay them back. The 1.5 grand would cover every thing, our train ticket which was about 360 pounds (we got it on discount) for a continuous pass which meant that we could get on pretty much any train we wanted to. However with this there is a catch and in Europe you have to pay for seats on the trains even though you have a ticket, so on the fast trains these seats would cost around 90 euros which means that you would just get the slow trains and sit on a seat if you were lucky as it was about a fifth of the price. (i.e between Arhus in Denmark and Amsterdam). However, overall I think the max we paid for one of our trains was 18 euros for a seat. We budgeted overall for around 15 pounds on accommodation a night and we used air bnb or the company hostel world to book our night stays. However the prices varied, such as in Rome it was 22 pounds a night and then in Serbia it was about 3 pounds. But overall I think 15 pounds was a bit over what we needed as we spent a lot of the time in eastern European and it was rather cheap over there however if we were going to places like Spain and Paris we would have needed probably 25 pounds a night for accommodation as our budget. For food the price was around 5 pounds a meal however obviously some days it would be more as if you are going out for every meal of course it would be more however if you are cooking yourself (what we often did) it could be around 2 pounds per meal if you split the shopping between you.
Our route - We spent a lot of time sorting out our route and discussing which would be the best train to catch (as some needed to be reserved) and sorting out whether we could get certain members of the group up at 6am to catch the train to Rome (which we almost missed because of a hash brown at mcdonalds). Contrary to others we decided that we were going to train everywhere we possibly could do, so on the first day we got a 5.40 am train from Ebbsfleet to Milan which would arrive in the evening with a smell of curry stenching out the train. But this train took a long time and it was via France and Switzerland and my french skills defiantly did not help me when the first thing I said to my friends were "I got this" and then followed with "Donde esta." We got to Milan and stayed in the Koala hostel for 2 nights, on the first night we were so incredibly tired and we just went and got a pizza near the hostel and then went to sleep in our first hostel experience where we had 7/8 of the dorm beds and shared with one other. The next day we went exploring and went to the cathedral and tasted Milan's different icrecreams several times and we were told we had to try Italian coffee at least once. We walked down Milans shopping road and of course had to stop in the disney store! Then Rachel started getting ripped off by a guy placing bracelets on people saying they were free and then started demanding money so I quickly grabbed Rachel and pulled her away and we found out we should never stop and accept anything from a vendor for the rest of our trip. Although otherwise we had a lovely time in Milan although Milan being the fashion capital and us in our interailing kit probably didn't in too well with the big backpacks walking past Gucci.
Rome - We got a 7.15 train from Milan to Rome which stopped in Fidenza and Pisa. We realised in Fidenza we hadn't eaten any vegetables for the last 3 days so Riana and her Italian skills managed to help us at a vegetable market the night before and we got peppers and other bits and bobs saved the day. So at Fidenza train station we were all eating peppers like apples trying to boost our vitamin content as we had just eaten pizza and pasta the last few days. We got to Rome and Riana was head sat navver so we walked along the side of the road with our big bags (often getting beeped at to move out of the way but out sat nav wanted us to go this way. Then after a very short distance we found our air bnb, we couldnt find our host anywhere though so after a lot of calling on the phone amongst colourful buildings and olive trees our host came. We got in then quickly callie and nads and I went all the way back to the train station where the super market was because we saw cheap vodka in there and decided that was where we needed to buy the "essentials". We also bought the ingredients for a vegan dinner as we felt very broke after Milan as staying in a hostel meant that we needed to buy food out all the time so we bought ingredients to make jacket potato with baked beans only to realise when we got back that we didnt have an oven so it was mash with "homemade baked beans" aka tomato passata and butter beans with some mushrooms for abby. Rachel decided to tell us she didnt like tomatoes even though our dish was basically tomato and potato so she had her first cup of soup of the trip. First of many.
The first night in Rome we were really excited to go see the sights as we were so close to the centre so we quickly got ready and went to the colosseum. We were warned that there was high security all around Rome as Donald Trump was in Rome the exact time as us and the high security alert wasn't taken lightly as everywhere there were people in the army or police force holding massive guns making you feel guilty even though we had done nothing wrong. The next morning we went also back to the colosseum and basically ended up doing a walking tour of the whole of Rome, I think I remembered we walked around 20 kilometres up to churches and the Trevi fountain. On our way we were scouting places to go on our first proper night out as a group, one where we can find cheap cocktails and a lot of entertainment. We stumbled across a gay bar and decided that was the place we were going to head in the evening. We once again cooked potatoes and tomatoes and then went and got ready and discovered in the bathroom there was a window you open from the outside balcony which provided a lot laughs over the time in Rome. Then we headed out, we pre drank quite a bit and got to this gay bar where the cocktails were 5 euros each which we thought was a massive bargain compared with London prices so we decided to get a mix of everything and share them round between us. As it was our first night out we didnt really know the proportions and the more vulnerable of the group got quite badly affected and we ended up heading home at 9.30pm whilst we were still basically pre drinking. It was a very classy evening. The next morning we packed up our bags and sat in a park playing cards and having a water fight (Nads I think I won) and then got ready for our long day travelling to Greece.
Greece - Our plane to Greece got in at half midnight to Athens airport and our first thought of Athens was how strange the airport was as they had no border security or passport checks once we landed we simply just picked up our bags and headed to the bus stop where we missed our bus by 1 minute (typical). Lucky our "natural" Greek speaker Abby got us our tickets for the next one which was only half an hour later. We got into the long bus route to our hostel which was split into several buses and then a long up hill walk to the building with the Green or Grey door which we couldn't quite remember and at 3am this proved rather difficult. However we got there, we got to our room and found we would all be sharing one room and a man slept on the sofa just outside the room which was quite off putting especially with the "morning exercises" outside our door. We often forgot he was sleeping there as in the middle of the night in our t-shirts and pants heading to the loos was often an interesting rush back into our room and put more clothes on moment. We had debated going to Greece for a long time as our groups as it was so far away however we made it and were ready to enjoy the wonderful Greek sunny temperatures. However when we got there we were met with rain rain and more rain but we weren't going to let this bring a "dampening" on our trip and we put on our rain coat which included a flowery poncho and a not waterproof pac a mac and we headed out to see the ruins. We walked around 17 kilometres in the pouring rain until giving up and deciding to order dominos/chips for lunch/dinner and then after we received how much it cost we decided we shall never order dominos again. 30 Euros for some of the meals!! so i was very chuffed with my 2.50 chips (perks of veganism in greece.)
I hope you enjoyed this blog post I shall write more about my adventures on the rest of the 3 weeks soon!!!
