On being an absent blogger

And I’m back. I know, I’m sorry, I haven’t written near enough in the past few weeks, and you all must be very upset about this! But I’m home now, and I hope you can all forgive me for my lack of communication while I was travelling around Europe.

I will detail my trip a bit more in the weeks to come, but here is a snap-shop of some of the things I did on my trip:
– Visited 5 countries, took 5 planes, seven planes, and walked a lot;
– Ate about a hundred different type of sausages, and a decent amount of potatoes and sauerkraut;
– Wandered 9 different Christmas markets (some cities have more than one…)
– Discovered 5 castles, 3 Opera Houses (for future reference, the one in Budapest is spectacular – I highly recommend it).
– Visited 10 bookstores, and peered in the windows of many others (Alexandra Bookshop in Vienna was the most beautiful looking – it is in an old department store, and the ‘bookcafe’ is in the most amazing, golden, embellished room. However, their English book range wasn’t amazing – mostly ‘pick me up at the airport’ type books. My favourite would have to be the American Book Centre in Amsterdam, which is three storeys high and crammed full of books… I’ll talk more about bookshops later);
– Discovered that I really enjoy Terry Pratchett, and that his books are excellent companions on a train or plane;
– Soaked in the old Baths of Budapest, undertook a gouda cheese tasting afternoon in Amsterdam, hiked through the Black Forest in Germany (and ate Black Forest Cake) … and many more amazing things.

What I didn’t do:
– Read any books on the 1001 Children’s Books I Must Read Before I Grow Up List.

I honestly couldn’t find any! I was hoping that English speaking bookstores would have a few books in their children’s section that were ‘classic children’s books from X country’, but most bookstore’s children’s sections were pretty poor (I suppose that people don’t buy a lot of children’s books while travelling?) and were basically new releases, or obviously popular books like Harry Potter. I feel like I have a bit of catching up to do!

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Tags: black forest cake, books, bookshops, Budapest, germany, gouda cheese, Prague, sausages, Terry Pratchett, travel, Vienna