Today, I’ll start with the actual cost of flying around the globe three times, of renting cars and taking trains, ferries and busses. I have already written about the actual ticket hunting and booking processes of my three circumventions of the globe, but here’s the final tally: Besides spending 360.000 miles on my two Round-the-world […]Read More
And this is what my journey looks like if you break it down into figures and statistics: In figures, I was… travelling a total of 185.608 km flying 105.991 miles (or 170.576 km) by plane taking 55.000 pictures driving 9.195 km by car or bus riding 5.280 km by train sailing 557 km by ferry and […]Read More
It’s a cool, cool Melbourne summer. Unlike last year when the temperatures hit 44 degrees for a couple of days in a row, this summer is markedly cooler. The first few days here were hot and I was at the pool every day. But we also had a day of rain, and temperatures that warrant […]Read More
The Temple of Dawn, or, by its full Thai name Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan is a Buddhist temple – a wat – on the Thonburi bank of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. It’s probably Bangkok’s most photographed sight, and I had to go there, too. I first wanted to see all major temples and the […]Read More
The past days have been spent in Cafés with wifi, in order to (re-)plan the next weeks. Luckily, my credit card is up and running again, so I can actually make all these bookings. I urgently needed to find a place to stay in Hong Kong after the China visit fell through. Extending my Airbnb […]Read More
It was finally time to visit the other part of town: Kowloon, on the mainland. I took the ferry from downtown that brings you over the Victoria Harbour in less than 10 minutes. The views on Hong Kong are fantastic. If it weren’t for the smog over the harbor and all around. It was hard […]Read More
I wanted to take a bike ride over to West Seattle and Alki beach for the whole month, but it was one of these places that got postponed and postponed… until the moment you realize it’s today or never. The weather though was rainy and grey, so it would not be a big bike ride. […]Read More
On the last day in Istanbul I decided to make it over to Kadiköy on the Asian shore. It’s supposed to have a great market on Tuesdays, although I did not make it there in the end. They have moved the market further from the ferry, so I just strolled through the Balik Pazari, the […]Read More
Istanbul’s public transport system is developing faster than they can print the maps. My books are useless when it comes to the metro/tram system. The otherwise greatly informative and amusing Gebrauchsanweisung Istanbul (Istanbul Manual) published in 2010 lists one (!) metro line in operation…. The maps in several apps for my phone are helplessly out of […]Read More
It was sunny, and so I took the ferry from Kabatas to Üsküdar on the Asian side of Istanbul, following the last mail from my sister with stuff we didn’t do. The ferry system is great to cross over, you can use your Istanbulkart that works on Metro’s, Trams and buses, to hop on pretty much […]Read More
Every guide book we had told us not to do the trip to Princes Islands on a weekend. But we had our own mind an planning, and thought it can’t be that bad, as we’re still off season. Well. Ok, the boat was full, but not as crowded as the other ferry next to us. […]Read More
We slept in today getting up at 10, and leaving the house at 12. That’s more my rhythm. I’d rather start the day late and go out late… Sabine’s a bit earlier… We caught the ferry along the golden Horn today – a full half hour ride for 1.75 TL… a bargain! It is a […]Read More