For this year's summer holiday, Martin and Marina got all nostalgic and decided to buy inter-rail tickets and head off into Europe. Martin had first been on an inter-rail holiday aged 17, with friends from school. Martin and Marina had been on two inter-rail holidays together, in 1984 and 1987. So this time it was Bekky and Jack's turn to sample the delights of travelling by train, sitting in corridors, grabbing 20 minutes sleep at a station... and eating mountains of bread and cheese!

The inter-rail ticket system has changed since the 1980s and Europe is now split into zones. We bought tickets that allowed 22 days of travel in 2 zones. The zones we chose included France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, Greece and Turkey. We went with a loose plan which included going to Greece, but in the end spent all of our time in Italy and France (and, as Jack will point out, Monaco and Vatican City, which technically means we visited 4 countries, not 2!).

The map on the right shows the route that we took and allows you to navigate this web site. In summary, our route was as follows:

- Dover to Calais by ferry, Calais to Paris by train and then Paris to St Gervais in the Alps for our first overnight stop.
- St Gervais to Chamonix, only 45 minutes further into the Alps. Our first night camping.
- Chamonix to Torino via the Mont Blanc tunnel and an unwelcome coach ride (details within!)
- Torino to Pisa, where we saw the obvious sights, ate our first Italian pizza and camped by the sea.
- Pisa to Rome, where we spent two excellent days
- Rome to Sorrento, an hour south west of Naples. We stayed here for 6 nights, saw some interesting things, had fun and ate more pizza. Jack had his 12th birthday here too.
- Sorrento to Venice. We even had a ride in a gondola!
- From Venice we headed back west, into the South of France, staying in a small resort between Nice and Cannes
- After the South of France, we headed north by overnight train to Paris where we stayed for a few nights
- Finally, we headed back to Calais and caught the ferry back to Dover.

To read about our travels and look at the best of our photos, explore the map with your mouse or select from the list of dates and places below the map.