Busy Busy Busy

OK, so I'm a bad blogger - but in my defence I have a mountain of work to do and a fifteen year old brother on his work experience to pick up after, so I have been a busy girl. I am only able to devote these precious minutes to writing my blog as I am currently full of cold, under a blanket on the sofa waiting for a phonecall which is preventing me from finishing my dreaded essays. The essays are due in on Thursday and then I have two exams on the 12th and 13th May. By the evening of the 13th May I will be a free(ish) woman for the summer and I was pleased to discover that the-sister-I-never-had, Claire, is coming to London to stay with me, help me to celebrate my freedom and tell me all about her trip to Iceland. The last couple of weeks have been crazy to say the least and I have been frequenting the BAA website more than Facebook and Twitter combined to get the latest updates on whether flights would be leaving the UK in time for Ollie's trip to Berlin. Luckily, he made it there without a hitch and enjoyed a great stag weekend with seven of his friends. The highlight of the weekend apparently was a sightseeing tour of the city on a vehicle which was strange hybrid between a bike and a bar. Sounds like typical stag high-jinks to me but if you, like these guys, like to see your historical states through an alcohol-induced haze, you can check it out here.

Another great incentive to get through the next couple of study-crazy weeks is the knowledge that with freedom comes travel. It has been far too long for me and I am incredibly excited about my next trip. This will be my first attempt at proper travel writing and my intention is to fly myself out to a European city for a couple of days and see if I can create something from it. At the moment, I am still in the stage of loosely checking destinations so will update on which I have chosen. At the moment the main contenders are Budapest and Bratislava.

Sadly, I now have to return to my dissertations, so expect no posts from me until after 29th.

Ashes to Ashes

Well, that was Thursday and it's now Sunday and still no planes have taken off from or landed in the UK. Thousands of people are either stranded or awaiting news about whether they will indeed be able to take their impending trip. London is a very odd place to be at the moment - eerily quiet with no planes in the sky and a fine covering of volcanic ash on car windscreens. Even the air feels dusty and after a short walk through central London today my skin felt as though I had been to the beach. With nobody coming in from overseas, it is strangely quiet except for the enormous queues still lingering outside of St Pancras Station and the Eurolines desk at Victoria, despite passengers being told that the services are fully booked.

I never thought that anything other than my financial woes would prevent me from travelling and now even if I had the money to go anywhere I would not have the means to.

Just to update: It seems that all flights to and from the UK are suspended until at least 7am tomorrow morning. Some say that the disruptions will continue for another couple of weeks. I sincerely hope not as Ollie needs to get to Berlin and Claire needs to get to Reykjavik - both on Friday. I guess we're just all going to have to sit tight and wait for the dust to settle.

One Hot Piece of Ash

Iceland has been hit by the second eruption in less than a month in the Eyjafjallajoekull region. This has caused a cloud of volcanic ash which has succeeded in cutting off most of the UK's airports. This is a safety precaution as it is believed tiny particles of rock in the cloud have the potential to shut down aircraft engines. All flights to and from Scotland have been suspended with flights from London airports following suit at around lunchtime.

BAA issued the following statement:

Following advice from the Met Office, the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) has introduced restrictions to UK air space this morning as a result of volcanic ash drifting to the UK from Iceland. These measures currently affect Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow airports which are closed but may also affect other parts of the UK later today. Passengers intending to fly today are asked to contact their airline for further information and should expect disruption in the coming hours. Updates will be issued throughout the morning.

Read the full BBC report here.

Going Crazy at Home

Like many other students, my life in April and May consists of little more than writing essays and revising for exams. Except for last year when I took off to Sorrento for a week with Ollie's family and shamefully neglected my work in favour of walking around roman ruins and drinking prosecco at The Foreigners' Club. This year I am not so lucky and my wanderlust is at an all-time high. It takes all of my self control not to spend my precious study time researching trips online and in back-issues of travel magazines. The essays and exams are also largely responsible for the recent neglect of this blog, and today I received an email from the marketing department at Goldsmiths to inform me that it has been chosen as one of the featured blogs on their website, so I need to buck my ideas up a little...

The blogs are chosen to give new students a cross-section of 'student life' and I started thinking about how travel fits into this. Of course, most of the new students will have done some travelling already - with parents, friends or on the increasingly popular gap year - but there are more and more opportunities for travel during the three years of study. Of course, I'm not claiming that the meagre student loan and grant will stretch to a three-week, fully-guided safari in Botswana, but with a little imagination and a lot of research, affordable trips can be taken during the breaks from study. In my first summer vacation I visited Japan with two friends, in my second I backpacked through South East Asia and am currently planning a trip to Canada for my third, as well as going on short breaks to the USA, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and France.

This is the time of year when students begin to start making plans for their summer and there are lots of wonderful trips out there which can fit in to the summer vacation and be done on a budget. I am off to research these now and will be posting them in the next few days. I just have to resist the urge to book any of them. Especially since I am dreaming of Beirut and the furthest I have ventured in the last few days is Brixton.

Travel Addicts

To celebrate the bank holiday weekend, last night Ollie and I invited over some friends for fish pie, loud music and drunkenness. As nobody had to get up for work the following day, it seemed like a perfect opportunity - especially considering I was now able to drink following my abstinence during lent. As with many nights at our place, the conversation inevitably turns to travelling - past and future, and I realised that everybody was about to take some amazing trips. John and Heather had just booked a two-week tour of Italy including Venice, Florence, Rome and Pompeii; Dan and Lucy were off to Paris; Matt was on his way to Toronto for some wedding planning; Kate was taking a sabbatical from work to do the Trans-Siberian Railway and Ollie will be soon flying out to Berlin for a stag party. Perhaps it's just that I have travel-mad friends, but it seems that everybody is jetting off somewhere at the moment.

Every day I receive an inbox full of travel newsletters advertising wonderful trips and I find it incredibly hard to resist them. London has been grey and dismal for about six months (excepting the one sunny week we had) and booking a trip an exotic destination seems to be the best tonic for overcoming the inevitable seasonal affective disorder which accompanies the bad weather. When walking down a very soggy Lordship Lane yesterday, the thought of soon being in a spa in Budapest somehow made me feel so much better. With so much temptation in front of you to get away from it all, is it entirely surprising that people so easily succumb? Are we all becoming travel addicts, or are we simply using travel as an excuse to escape the bad weather, the recession and the limited job options of the city we once all so determinedly aspired to live in? Of course, the two week trip out to the sun has been de rigueur since the airline boom of the mid-twentieth century, but it now seems that package holidays are no longer enough to satisfy our travel needs and that the world of travel is evolving beyond this trend and looking further afield.

I'm a huge fan of travelling independently and, despite the time needed to study guidebooks, timetables and hostel reviews, would recommend it to anybody as it is much cheaper and much more flexible. However, I am currently much too short of time to give you suggested itineraries now, so if you are feeling inspired by any of the destinations my friends are travelling to, here are some organised trips that may be of interest to you. Enjoy.

Italy

Explore run a trip called Best of Italy, which is an 11 day tour encompassing the sights of Venice and Florence; a full day tour of Pisa to see the famous leaning tower then on to see the beautiful scenery and medieval architecture of Siena and Gimignano in the Tuscan region; time to explore Rome, the Eternal City, before finally heading south to the Amalfi Coast to take in Sorrento, Pompeii and the stunning island of Capri.

This tour costs £1,676 (£1,870 including flights) and has various departures throughout April and September. Travellers use local transport including buses and trains and accommodation is in hotels, with two nights in a traditional Tuscan farmhouse.

More information about this trip can be found here.

Paris

Eurostar are currently offering City Break deals to Paris from £109 per person. This includes return travel from London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord and one night in a selection of Paris hotels (based on two sharing). Whilst in Paris you can also take advantage of the Eurostar Culture Connect, which allows Eurostar travellers 2-for-1 entry at various Paris attractions, just by showing their Eurostar ticket. Attractions participating in the scheme include Le Musee de Quai Branly, le Jeu de Paume, le Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, la Cite de la Musique and les Galleries Nationale de Grand Palais.

More information about this trip can be found here.

Toronto

Trek America's Northeastern BLT tour is a nine-day trip through the best of North-Eastern USA and Canada. The tour begins in New York before heading to Toronto for a tour of the city and a trip out to Niagara Falls; heading to Montreal and then to Stowe for some hiking and a trip to the Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory; before travelling back into the USA and exploring historic Boston before returning to New York for a final blow out.

This tour costs from £769 (excluding flights) and has various departures throughout the year. All transportation is via a private vehicle and accommodation is largely on a hostel/multi-share basis. Private departures are available.

More information about this trip can be found here.

Trans-Siberian Railway

There are many tour operators offering trips on this iconic route, however the best way to undertake this trip is to plan your own through with the help of The Man in Seat 61, an amazing website with a wealth of information on international train travel. This website includes all of the information you will need about everything from departure times, ticket prices and stop-off destinations as well as pictures of the cabins and even a guide to life on board the train. An excellent resource for anybody considering this epic journey.

If you would prefer to avoid the research involved with travelling independently, you will be able to undertake organised tours with Responsible Travel, Intrepid Travel and On The Go Tours to name but a few.

Berlin

Many tour operators are now offering guided city tours of Berlin by bike. Fat Tire Bike Tours offer four different tours including the All-in-One City Bike Tour, the Third Reich Nazi Bike Tour, the Berlin Wall and Cold War Bike Tour, and the Potsdam Bike Tour. Prices start from EUR20 for adults and EUR18 for Students including bicycle hire. The city is large and very flat, so on two-wheels is a great perspective from which to see it.

More information about the bicycle tours are available here.

Fly to Berlin low-cost with Air Berlin, departing from London Stanstead and Manchester airports. Flights from £29 one way. Good value hostel accommodation can also be found at St Christopher's Berlin, a clean, fun, centrally-located hostel with free breakfast and a cheap on-site bar. Dorm beds from EUR12 per night.