Your Hatters Hostel

We love this time of year. Apart from the Father Christmas‘ visit getting closer and closer, we revel in the fact we now have an excuse to crawl through the streets in the day, or in the evening if we want to feel even more festive and fill our bellies with Mulled Wine and German sausages (oh and buy our loved ones gorgeous gifts of course!!)

Year after year we have dashed down, opened our lungs to the fragrance of roasting sausages, warming spices and snuggled down in our fluffy scarves, gloves and hats to enjoy the whole thing for a while. The problem is that now they have decided to open 5 different venues in Manchester.

Now we have Albert Square, St Ann’s Square, Exchange Square, Brazennose Street and New Cathedral Street. PHEW!

Sounds like a good excuse for a Christmas market-crawl if you ask me!

They’re open from NOW until 21st December so there’s plenty of chance to get there.

Click here for some basic details

Day 6 and 7

Day 6 is a bit of a blur buuuuuttt day 7 has a bit more clarity (and the train sound does not bounce around my head as much today) Hint of the day:- Bring plenty of drinking water. There is actually unlimited hot water on the train so if you have chilled out enough you wont mind waiting for it to cool down too.

There is a few things to do on the train, Talk with people and look at the great scenery whilst we pass by, drink Russian vodka and learn about old Russian customs. One such custom is child wrestling….hmmm… Mostly done by old women but we did not let that stop us. We won!

Around 1am we got off the train, stretched our legs for 2 mins and hopped into a van for 6 hours to arrive at the beautiful island of Olchon. I couldn’t resist practicing my catalogue poses just to help you appreciate the view…

We stayed in a great hostel called “Sunny Hostel” (but not as great as our own Hatters hostel of course!!!)

Come and join us for some live music on the 28^th of November when Lorelei Loveridge, world traveller and singer/songwriter stops by to offer us a taster of her new album “Bakhoor”!

Lorelei, originally from Canada, has spent the past 11 years living in Saudi Arabia. She has also been travelling and performing her music all over the world; from concerts in the Arabian dessert to opening for folk rocker Andy White in Dublin’s Da Club.

Her travelling experiences can be traced in her music; traditional North American singer/songwriting accompanied by sounds from around the world: Indian Tablas, Greek Bouzoukis and more…

“Our lives

come into sharper focus in direct proportion to our distance from our origins. That is, the farther we travel, the closer we are to home.”

Taken from her MySpace, check it out!

http://www.myspace.com/loreleiloveridge

Days 4 and 5

Wow! Two days have passed already! All the days are blending into each other and we are losing the track of time…Life has its own dimension on the train.

You wake up, eat and socialize…

Yep, that’s what we do all the time. The train stops every couple of hours for a few minutes and that’s the time for shopping:  food shopping.

Then we come back on board, eat (fish, no chips!) and have drinks til late, and so on! This is awesome!