22. Here we go again ...

Well it has been nearly a year since my first Interrail trip was unfortunately cut short. In the meantime, my herniated disc has recovered well, thanks to an excellent care and treatment I received from my chiropractor Dr. Anthony Lavin in Co. Donegal. 

I got a refund from Interrail  for my unused travel days .... eventually, so I now have four days of free train travel left to use. 

My plan is to cover largely the same route as I intended to follow in 2023, except this time I will finish up in Tallinn, Estonia as opposed to Riga, Latvia. 

I intend to use the four remaining Interrail travel days at the start of the trip, in Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, as the train service in the Baltic countries is fairly patchy. For Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia I will be travelling mostly by coach, using companies such as Flixbus, LuxExpress and Ecolines, except for maybe the short train journey between Kaunas and Vilnius. 

For accommodation, I have been very lucky to obtain HomeExchange GuestPoints accommodation in seven of my nine cities

In the remaining two cities, Kaunas and Vilnius (both in Lithuania), I will stay in hotels booked through Booking.com, which allows last-minute, fully-refunded cancellations in the event that I am unable to secure home exchanges in these two cities.