We arrived into Dresden on the ICE train from Berlin and immediately fell in love with the city - despite it being a Sunday, and (almost) everything being shut. If we had realised how cute Dresden was we would defiantly penciled it in for a few more nights than just one - it defiantly deserves more! Our hostel was about a 20 minute walk from the old town, but was situated in a new funky part of town with bars, cafe’s and restaurants. ...

Today is our last day in Berlin – we are currently in the train station having breakfast and a coffee waiting for our train to Dresden. Berlin has been an experience! It’s not quite what i expected as a city, but everything and more than I expected as an experience. The history here is so immense – and its not all to do with Nazi’s and the Third Reich either – Berlin is so much more. ...

So we are in Germany now – having arrived from Tampere, Finland into Bremen the other day. We have been in Bremen for the last few days, staying with friends (Suzanne & Richard) in their lovely apartment which is just a short ride from the heart of Bremen. We quickly realised that the Euro 2008 Cup (soccer) is in progress – and on the night we arrived Germany were facing off with Austria (the hosts), and it was a must win type of situation for Germany to allow them to progress through. ...

We jetted out of Athens this afternoon with our friends FinAir. The flight started out fine - a nice new plane and decent food - then the announcement came over the loud speaker “… the movie that will be shown today is The Bucket List” (great! we’ve only seen it 3 times already), “and it will be shown without audio, and with Finnish subtitles.” Needless to say it didn’t take too long for the iPod to make an appearance. Then the loud speaker crackled a second blow - “drinks will be served shortly. Beer will be 4 Euros, Spirits 7 Euros…” - thats right, no free grog! We might as well have been flying with RyanAir, at least you expect it. ...

Today is our last full day in Greece, as we fly out tomorrow at lunch time - meaning an early start to make sure we get to the airport on time. Today was another reasonably relaxed and laid back day - we visited the National History Museum, and ate out for lunch in a lovely street side cafe adorned by fans and misting water to keep us cool. Lunch started with a traditional glass of Ozzo (for me at least, Laura wasn’t too keen). We followed this with a seafood plater and a lamb souvlaki to share, both were fantastic. ...

Today we headed out early to catch a cruise around three of the Greek islands closest to Athens. Leaving port this morning at about 8.30am, the sun was up and had a fair sting in it - needless to say we took the opportunity to sit on the outer deck and soak up some of the fine rays. The first thing that stuck us, once we had left the docks and headed out to sea, was the brilliant blue colour of the water - it was absolutely amazing. People have told us about the water over here, but its something you don’t really appreciate until you see it (and later swim in it :) . ...

We got into Athens yesterday afternoon - great weather, we managed to escape the bad weather that has been forecast for the UK! Yesterday basically involved getting from the airport to the hotel and checking in. Today we decided to take an easy day - we have been on the go for so long you just need to recharge the batteries every now and then. So a slow day involved heading into the Acropolis and seeing a number of the other sites that surround it. We then had a bite of lunch at a local cafe before heading back to the hotel for the afternoon - where we hav spent hours attempting to plan how to get from Finland to Germany without it costing a fortune. Unfortunately this is just not possible, so we booked the first flight out (which was the cheapest by far, but still relatively expensive :( ). ...

London - Our initial taste While we were briefly in London before departing to Ireland for a week, we managed to squeeze in some sight seeing - jumping on a ‘Fat Tire’ bike tour. This was a leisurely 4 hour bike ride around central London, and was a great way of getting oriented. While we didn’t go into any of the sights on the tour, we were given a pretty good commentary on each sight and its history. This gave us a pretty good idea of what we should come back and see. ...

Sorry it’s been a while since out last update, but it can be hectic on the road - never knowing when and where you will get a chance to have 5 minutes free to post a message or two (and I have to say touring in Ireland, with its many pubs does create a pretty big distraction :) ). Anyway - to start with, no one will believe us when we say that the weather in Ireland at the moment is bloody great - its actually sunny and hot - none of us expected to get sun burnt on the north coast of Ireland, but most of us did - it must have been at least 25-28c here - its been bloody great. ...

We have now left the Spanish speaking countries behind us after about 7 weeks of traveling. We find it hard to stop saying ‘Gracias’ to people - but I’m sure we will get over it. Our flight out of Barcelona was delayed by about 30min, but we managed to touch down on British soil fine. We were dreading hitting Heathrow a little - you never seem to hear a good story about that place - but we were very surprised when we only queued for about 5min in immigration and waled straight through customs. Literally took us about 10min! We spent longer in the duty free grog shop buying gifts for our hosts here in London. ...