Ex-USSR

Kremlin in marble
Moscow Kremlin marble in Moskovskaya metro station, Minsk, Belarus 🇧🇾


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Welcome

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Elektrichka to Mir and Nesvizh, Belarus This blog is dedicated to the joy of travelling through unusual, historical places.  Many destinations have become so tourist-focused that they no longer have any sense of real adventure. Instead, let us rediscover the excitement of exploring places less travelled.  These foundational principles underpin all that we do: Travel gives us much-needed context for the world around us.  Disneyland is nice and all, but it's not real.  There's no point in going to Benidorm and spending your evenings in the English pub, watching Premier League football.  A view from a train window gives a much more authentic view of what a place is really like:  rural and urban, rich and poor.  Using public transport like a local is a much better experience than a hire car.  There's little point in getting London/Paris/Rome souvenir mugs or keyrings that have all been mass-produced in some Chinese fac...
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An Olympic day trip: Paris 2024

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Crossing the Seine by métro, August 2024 Paris is a very extravagant day trip from London, and I'd certainly recommend much more time there for a first-time visitor, but for those who've already been plenty of times then it can be a day trip. About a week before the start of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, I noticed that there were still quite a lot of reasonably-priced tickets still available - including in table tennis, a sport that I do occasionally enjoy and am alright at. So, for €44.50, I bought a ticket to a Table Tennis Team Quarter-Final.  There are plenty of ways of travelling between London and Paris - over the years, I've done all of them. The Eurostar is by far the best, but is expensive at short notice. Flights are usually relatively cheap, but price-inflated at Olympic time and an exceptionally poor environmental choice especially when the overall city-centre to city-centre price is the same as the train and the journey time is in practice slower by air. I'...
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Fortress Malta

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