So once again there are many sites to book hostels on. I had been frequenting Hostel World http://www.hostelworld.com for quite some time but then I noticed I had bookmarked http://www.hostels.com a few months back... Naturally I compared the prices and Hostels.com were about 10 cents cheaper a night! Haha I know not much, but I would like to give my business to the better price no matter the difference. I decided to check the hostels actual website and the prices were even higher. Then I came across http://www.hostelbookers.com/ and I found the same bookings but this time I got the entire bill down by 12$! On these websites you can see how many beds are left for the days that you've chosen and I noticed that the room I was booking had only one bed left for a few of the days so I made my booking! I am very excited and to share my excitement I would like for David Bowie to sing a song:
Tuesday 31 January 2012
London Hosteling
My first stop on my journey is London, England. What a fantastic place to start my European adventure! Since I am now a mere 3 weeks away from take off I felt it necessary to narrow down my hostel searches and finally chose one to stay at for a whopping 5 days! Once again I over-researched and had way too many hostels on my list to chose from. I ended up picking a hostel that is pretty central but still in the cute artsy neighbourhood of Camden called St. Christopher's Camden. Camden is where you would have found Amy Winehouse sipping on beers at the local bar. It is also where you will find the infamous Abbey Road. It is also closer to the train station in which I have an early morning Monday departure to Paris, so that saves me the trouble of trying to get around London to find King's Cross at like 5am on a Monday morning! There are also two tube stations close by so I can see the rest of London quite easily.
So once again there are many sites to book hostels on. I had been frequenting Hostel World http://www.hostelworld.com for quite some time but then I noticed I had bookmarked http://www.hostels.com a few months back... Naturally I compared the prices and Hostels.com were about 10 cents cheaper a night! Haha I know not much, but I would like to give my business to the better price no matter the difference. I decided to check the hostels actual website and the prices were even higher. Then I came across http://www.hostelbookers.com/ and I found the same bookings but this time I got the entire bill down by 12$! On these websites you can see how many beds are left for the days that you've chosen and I noticed that the room I was booking had only one bed left for a few of the days so I made my booking! I am very excited and to share my excitement I would like for David Bowie to sing a song:
So once again there are many sites to book hostels on. I had been frequenting Hostel World http://www.hostelworld.com for quite some time but then I noticed I had bookmarked http://www.hostels.com a few months back... Naturally I compared the prices and Hostels.com were about 10 cents cheaper a night! Haha I know not much, but I would like to give my business to the better price no matter the difference. I decided to check the hostels actual website and the prices were even higher. Then I came across http://www.hostelbookers.com/ and I found the same bookings but this time I got the entire bill down by 12$! On these websites you can see how many beds are left for the days that you've chosen and I noticed that the room I was booking had only one bed left for a few of the days so I made my booking! I am very excited and to share my excitement I would like for David Bowie to sing a song:
Thursday 26 January 2012
Train Passes Vs. Point to Point Tickets
I have been spending countless hours researching European rail passes. I started getting nervous when I learned that the Eurail pass must pe purchased online before leaving Canada therefore if I was going to purchase a Eurail pass that I would have to make that decision this week. The thing that bugs me the most about the Eurail pass is that you must pay a considerable amount more if one desires flexibility. So I started worrying about buying single country passes or combining neighboring countries (aka a regional pass); I got out my trusty calculator & the math began.
First of all I would like to state that there are a few websites that one can purchase Eurail passes on, the obvious http://www.eurail.com/home and also http://www.raileurope.ca (there are a few versions of raileurope so make sure to be in the Canadian version instead of the U.S. version as prices vary). Both sites are perfectly adequate however I would search both sites because the prices do differ but usually only slightly. For example the Italy 10 day country pass goes for $425 on eurail's website; the exact same pass on raileurope goes for $417. Not a big difference but I still would take the time to search both sites.
My next question became trying to decide if i should add Greece onto an Italy pass. Ten days of travel can be more easily split within two countries. So the Italy ten day pass worked out to about 43$ per each train ticket. If I added Greece it would work out to 50$ per every train ticket (I must also mention that these prices are before taxes so they are not an accurate sum of what the total cost would actually be). But then i started reading all the warnings about the Greek economy and how they have shut down some of their trains! So the idea of cancelling Greece out of my trip surfaced. I wouldn't want to waste my money buying a regional pass if I don't end up going over to the joining country. However 10 days seems like an awful lot of journeys in one country. So after much thought and deliberation and continued research this is what I concluded: the Italy rail pass is only worth the money if one takes really long train trips everytime; taking 10 long train trips seems highly unlikely and also I would miss jumping from smaller towns because it would not be worth it to use my pass on a 10$ shorter trip. Oh I must also state that Italy has additional costs for every single train you get on even with a rail pass! So the original calculation of 43$ a day is so out of the ball park. What I did to come to my conclusion was visit Italy's train website which is http://www.trenitalia.com and I started typing in point to point fares seeing how much it would cost me for each separate train ticket. Obviously the shorter the distance the cheaper the ride; oh boy is it much cheaper! I found train tickets as cheap as 7 euros a ride! That blows the eurail pass out of the water. I read on a travel blog that in order to get the best fare one must book months in advance, so i did the test...
I checked how much a ticket would be during my estimated time of travel and then I compared it to buying a ticket if i were travelling this week. There was either no difference, a slight variation and, in some cases, I actually found cheaper tickets if I were booking for a ride tomorrow. So that put my mind to ease and I decided that I will wait and buy tickets point to point and continue my original plan of being free as a bird!
Back to the Greece dilemna. The trains that have been cancelled are the ones in the northern part of Greece; if one wanted to enter Greece via train only it would be near to impossible as Greece has pretty much shut themselves off from the rest of europe. Except for getting into greece by ferry from Italy! Yipee! I know that if I don't see Greece while travelling through Europe I will regret it immensely; I cannot even believe I considered chopping it out, even if it was only for a brief moment.
There is one decent point about the eurail, you can get discounts on museums if one bears one. However most of the hostels that I've researched offer discounts anyway and I will be bringing my old college id card as well as my alumni card just in case I can smile my way into a museum on a student discount ;)
My last bit of information before I end this long winded post has to do with my journey from Paris to Italy. I first looked up how much it would cost to get from Paris to Venice on the raileurope website and i discovered it would only cost $90! I thought that was great until I looked up the same route in trentalia and it came up as 55 euros (about 70$). I also checked the french train site http://www.tgv-europe.com/en/ and found a train from Paris to Nice for 40 euros. Not too shabby. So I will decide on my own dear sweet time which route I chose to take. I must admit that I am disappointed that the train from Paris to Venice is a night excursion; it goes through Switzerland so I was hoping to be able to stare out the window the entire time taking in the glorious scenery. I may decide to go from Paris to Verona instead as well because Verona is on lake Gard which has the most magnificent views of the mountains. Verona to Venice is a quick little 10$ ride over so it may be worth it too see more scenery. After Venice I will travel along the eastern coastline stopping at various towns until i reach Bari. From Bari a ferry leaves every day (except Sunday) at 8pm and arrives in Patras at 12:30 pm the next day. I am hoping that the weather is nice because I have no problem with sleeping on the deck of the ferry to save from buying a bed inside the ship. We shall see how that trip goes.... Also it may change my route if my friend Pamela wants to join me to Greece, in which case i may do Sicilia before Greece. As Patrick Swayze would sing, "she's like the wind!" Toodles!
First of all I would like to state that there are a few websites that one can purchase Eurail passes on, the obvious http://www.eurail.com/home and also http://www.raileurope.ca (there are a few versions of raileurope so make sure to be in the Canadian version instead of the U.S. version as prices vary). Both sites are perfectly adequate however I would search both sites because the prices do differ but usually only slightly. For example the Italy 10 day country pass goes for $425 on eurail's website; the exact same pass on raileurope goes for $417. Not a big difference but I still would take the time to search both sites.
My next question became trying to decide if i should add Greece onto an Italy pass. Ten days of travel can be more easily split within two countries. So the Italy ten day pass worked out to about 43$ per each train ticket. If I added Greece it would work out to 50$ per every train ticket (I must also mention that these prices are before taxes so they are not an accurate sum of what the total cost would actually be). But then i started reading all the warnings about the Greek economy and how they have shut down some of their trains! So the idea of cancelling Greece out of my trip surfaced. I wouldn't want to waste my money buying a regional pass if I don't end up going over to the joining country. However 10 days seems like an awful lot of journeys in one country. So after much thought and deliberation and continued research this is what I concluded: the Italy rail pass is only worth the money if one takes really long train trips everytime; taking 10 long train trips seems highly unlikely and also I would miss jumping from smaller towns because it would not be worth it to use my pass on a 10$ shorter trip. Oh I must also state that Italy has additional costs for every single train you get on even with a rail pass! So the original calculation of 43$ a day is so out of the ball park. What I did to come to my conclusion was visit Italy's train website which is http://www.trenitalia.com and I started typing in point to point fares seeing how much it would cost me for each separate train ticket. Obviously the shorter the distance the cheaper the ride; oh boy is it much cheaper! I found train tickets as cheap as 7 euros a ride! That blows the eurail pass out of the water. I read on a travel blog that in order to get the best fare one must book months in advance, so i did the test...
I checked how much a ticket would be during my estimated time of travel and then I compared it to buying a ticket if i were travelling this week. There was either no difference, a slight variation and, in some cases, I actually found cheaper tickets if I were booking for a ride tomorrow. So that put my mind to ease and I decided that I will wait and buy tickets point to point and continue my original plan of being free as a bird!
Back to the Greece dilemna. The trains that have been cancelled are the ones in the northern part of Greece; if one wanted to enter Greece via train only it would be near to impossible as Greece has pretty much shut themselves off from the rest of europe. Except for getting into greece by ferry from Italy! Yipee! I know that if I don't see Greece while travelling through Europe I will regret it immensely; I cannot even believe I considered chopping it out, even if it was only for a brief moment.
There is one decent point about the eurail, you can get discounts on museums if one bears one. However most of the hostels that I've researched offer discounts anyway and I will be bringing my old college id card as well as my alumni card just in case I can smile my way into a museum on a student discount ;)
My last bit of information before I end this long winded post has to do with my journey from Paris to Italy. I first looked up how much it would cost to get from Paris to Venice on the raileurope website and i discovered it would only cost $90! I thought that was great until I looked up the same route in trentalia and it came up as 55 euros (about 70$). I also checked the french train site http://www.tgv-europe.com/en/ and found a train from Paris to Nice for 40 euros. Not too shabby. So I will decide on my own dear sweet time which route I chose to take. I must admit that I am disappointed that the train from Paris to Venice is a night excursion; it goes through Switzerland so I was hoping to be able to stare out the window the entire time taking in the glorious scenery. I may decide to go from Paris to Verona instead as well because Verona is on lake Gard which has the most magnificent views of the mountains. Verona to Venice is a quick little 10$ ride over so it may be worth it too see more scenery. After Venice I will travel along the eastern coastline stopping at various towns until i reach Bari. From Bari a ferry leaves every day (except Sunday) at 8pm and arrives in Patras at 12:30 pm the next day. I am hoping that the weather is nice because I have no problem with sleeping on the deck of the ferry to save from buying a bed inside the ship. We shall see how that trip goes.... Also it may change my route if my friend Pamela wants to join me to Greece, in which case i may do Sicilia before Greece. As Patrick Swayze would sing, "she's like the wind!" Toodles!
Wednesday 11 January 2012
I drew the duck blue because...
"I drew the duck blue because I've never seen a blue duck before aaaaand to be honest with you, I wanted to see a blue duck." I can always find a reason to quote Billy Madison, in this case it is to explain, "Why the name?" In my opinion, "I drew the duck blue" should suffice as an explanation; to me it means "who really cares, a rose by any other name blah blah blah..."
A usual response of mine. But today I will give a little explanation. Just for fun because I now have a blog. An open journal. I am scared of this I must admit.
I believe that it is possible for something special to happen everyday. Of course it truly is a matter of perception; what one believes "special" to be. One of the reasons I don't always explain things is because people have so many perceptions of what reality is and at times it can feel like you're bashing your head against a wall if you are speaking to someone with a closed mind. I love talking things out with reasonable, somewhat-intellectual, interesting people but I won't get into a discussion with walls (a metaphor for unreasonable people). Not to be mistaken with actual walls because I do enjoy talking to those. I like dissecting everything, thoroughly thinking things through, coming to a true and definite conclusion. It takes me days at times, weeks, even years.
I saw this man ^ Aloe Blacc perform, with his band, November 2010 at Wrong Bar in Toronto. It was by far the best live performance I saw that year. Hell, I'd go as far as to say that his album, Good Things, was The best album of 2010. Live music is inspiring. If anyone says otherwise than they are going to the wrong shows. While I was enjoying the soul, the energy, the intimate crowd, the excitement, the fun, the "show", I had a wee bit of an epiphany. The venue is a quaint bar and I was standing quite close to the stage on top of some stairs, it was a great spot to say the least. So as I'm watching Mr. Blacc pour his everything into this performance I start thinking to myself, "I bet he struggled so much to get here." He has not reached super stardom success, but he is able to travel and support himself on a music career. I bet he loves what he does every single day. I bet he has had to work hard his whole life and had to take up many random jobs to pay the bills at times. Clearly, he persevered with his passion and is now spreading good vibes all over the world. At that time in my life I was seriously considering applying to work at a bank. I shudder at the thought today, "Damn you system you almost got me!" I think it is safe to say that the work I do will never provide me a secure income and I will probably never have benefits. I thought for a brief time that maybe it would be a good idea to get a job at a bank for 1 year. I figured that job would earn me up to $30,000 in one year and because I don't cost much to function on this earth I would be able to save more money than I'd ever seen in my life. Then I would just up and quit to travel the world with my pot-o-gold. That evening, Aloe Blacc inspired me to not only persevere with my craft but to find work that I believe in and that I can get behind. I have found inspiring work in the last year and it has made me very happy. I haven't made as much money as I would have if I was able to obtain a job at the bank but my end result is exactly what I would have been working for. I got what my idea of success is on my own terms in the way that has enriched my life and furthermore it is taking me on a path that is unconventional and I wouldn't want it to be any other way.
Or as Ayn Rand would say:
"It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.”
Tuesday 10 January 2012
I bought my first train ticket!
I get by with a little help from http://www.seat61.com/London-to-Paris-by-train.htm#Choosing your seat on Eurostar. Great advice given on this dudes website. I had originally planned to wait until I got to Europe to start figuring out which planes, trains, and automobiles would be best to take while getting from city to city, country to country; I heard that booking at the actual stations, instead of online, could save me $ by picking up seats that weren't filled yet. After reading the advice of Mr. Seat61, I learned that it would be best to buy my Eurostar ticket in advance. The prices really fluctuate and to get the cheapest fare it is best to book early; I did manage to get the cheapest possible fare, WOOP! So I now have one distinct detail planned on my itinerary! I will be leaving London on Feb.27th and arriving in Paris about 2 hours later. I was able to chose my own seat with a lovely window view and a table to rest my elbows on...I reverted back to "oldskool ways" and I picked a seat at the back of the train! Perhaps that's where the other cool kids will be sitting too?
Monday 9 January 2012
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