Wow, what a trip! I’m currently writing this two months into our Australia trip (Editor’s note – and posted much later!) but we’re still reeling from the experience and the number of countries we accomplished. This post will be a bit of a summary of stats, graphs and thoughts that don’t really fit anywhere else.
First up, where did we go? Here’s a map from our Eurail pass that shows all the different trains we caught, with some added doodles.
And some thoughts on where we went now that we’ve completed the whole trip. We have some questions!
What was your favourite place?
Amanda: My favourite city was Zurich. It was less touristy and there was prettyness everywhere. Clear water and the airBnb was excellent after being in hostels. It was a new country so I didn’t have expectations going in. However my favourite time was Santorini because we had a super fancy house and the picture perfect alleyways. Getting breakfast delivered and feeling like we were on a holiday rather than just a traveller.
Declan: I loved catching trains through the UK and Scotland. The flexibility and just being able to jump on a train and be somewhere different in an hour or two. Plus you were free to watch the scenery or do any activities!
Where would you spend more time if you could?
Both: Spend more time in less travelled Netherlands. Amsterdam was a … unique experience but we feel like we could experience a more authentic Dutch culture if we took a trip out to some of the smaller cities or towns.
Steps
Next up we have what we did in each place! And the main answer is walk, lots of walking. You can see a graph of how many steps we did each day.
That’s a lot of steps, you can see that even while we were doing lots of driving in the van in Scotland we were still doing around 12 000 steps :O.
The award for most steps goes to the first day in London with 35 000! This could possibly be a bit skewed as we were changing timezones that day and the app doesn’t really like that. But we still did a huge amount of steps, starting before 6:00am and going until 8:00-9pm.
Awards???
Now we have some awards. The two we have are best coffee and best Hostel.
Best Coffee: We all know that Australian coffee is amazing and most other places is subpar. Europe definitely lived up to that expectation! We had burnt coffee, burnt coffee from really cute coffee shops, mediocre pod coffee but fortunately a few standouts here and there.
The best coffee goes to: The Broch Cafe in Scotland! This was a recommendation and we went in with low expectations but it actually tasted like coffee. It was the first time we had wanted more.
Honourable mention to: Columbian Coffee Roasters in London. An acceptable level to Australian coffee standards.
Here is a cute collage of all the coffees we (mainly Amanda) had. They cups were better than the coffee most of the time.
Next up we have best hostel. Again a wide range of Hostel experiences from boring but functional rooms with multiple beds, college-like party houses, stylish but overcrowded money grabs , charming independent hostels to grandma houses.
The winner is: Igloo Hybrid in Nottingham! Maybe it was just because we had a bed in a (tiny) private room. But we thought the three tiny rooms with beds with a shared ensuite and ‘living’ area was a great balance between privacy, space efficiency and ability to socialise. It was also relatively comparable to room sharing. In addition it had a functional and well stocked kitchen, comfortable book nook and pretty artwork on the walls.
Honourable mention to: Athens Quinta. Basically a Nonna’s house that was pretty much what you’d expect from living with a Greek Nonna. Decor that was old fashioned yet comfortable. Breakfast provided each morning that was more than just cereal and milk, hand written notes directing you where to go when you came in late and a lush outdoor sitting garden.
Money…
If you don’t like reading about money stop here, but otherwise the part you’ve all been waiting for (or ready to skip), the finances! We had allocated 20 000 AU dollars for this trip in total. And the tally is:
| Description | Cost (AUD) |
| Australia <-> Europe Flights | $4 361 |
| Intra-europe travel (Eurail passes, train reservations, taxis, 1 flight between cities) | $3595 |
| Accommodation | $5706 |
| Food | $3103 |
| Other (Activities & Souvenirs) | $1514 |
| Total | $18280 |
We came in under budget with $1719 remaining! (Which immediately went into our Australia budget). Not bad in my opinion considering we had some flights and our nice stay in Santorini.
Conclusion to the conclusion
And that sums our experiences up. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading whether you’ve been following along or have just come for the summary. We had and amazing time (and still are on the road). As always we have so many ideas for where we would go in Europe next (Scandenavia!) but there are so many other places we would like to see in the world as well. It’s also great to feel a sense of accomplishment that we followed through with the blog and made it to the completion! Even if it is quite late 🙂
Love, the Harps.
Tune in to the Harps 