United Arab Emirates - rebooking!

Just after booking my bus to Antwerp for the Dubaitrip I found out my booked flight has been cancelled and I have been rescheduled to another one. So instead of leaving Antwerp somewhere at the end of the afternoon and landing in Dubai in the morning, it's leaving Antwerp in the morning and landing in Dubai in the evening.


Some calling and emailing with KLM about the inconvience (both moneywise (as I have to book another night) and timewise) the rescheduling causes gave me a good solution, so my holiday will start a day earlier! A ten day trip it is. I'll go to Antwerp on friday, do some sightseeing (if the sun shines: probably sitting with a beer on the 'Groenplaats'), stay in a hotel for the night, leave for Schiphol in the morning and go to Dubai where I'll be in my hotel at 1/2 local time!

Budget needed for a (city)trip

In general, making a budget you need for a trip can be done quite easy: Flight to get there + (avg cost/day * number of days) = budget needed. In this section, I will give an overview of the average cost a day, based on personal experiences.

In the average cost a day, I included the following things:

• Accomodation in a decent (budget) hotel, located in the city center.
• Cost for transport to/from the airport.
• Cost for local transport.
• All food, including going out for food at least once a day.
• Drinks both from supermarkets as in bars.
• Entrance fees for musea, leisure and so on.

London - How to get there?

I recently got a question about how to get to from the Netherlands to London, since six airports (City, Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick, Luton, Southend) being advertised as 'London' doesn't make the choice really easy and everyone has his or her own preference. So I decided to do some research, as I couldn't give a clear answer right away. Living in the center of the Netherlands, there are three options to go to London, from the biggest airport Schiphol, or the regional ones of Eindhoven and Rotterdam.

Here you can find information about how to go from the Dutch airports to the airports in London and from the London airports to the city center. At the end I'll give an overview combining both routes and the time and money they will cost you.

Financial breakdown

To make a budget for trips, it's kinda essential to know what things actually cost. So I dug into my old emails and checked my bankaccount.

First of all, I'll give an overview about how much money I needed some of the roadtrips I did. This includes the costs I had to make in order to get from city to city.

Second, I try to give an average amount needed for a day, for the type of traveller I am (see the 'Me' section). This average is what I calculate for accomodation, food, drinks, local public transport (also to and from the airport), entrance fees and so on. This gives me a pretty good insight in questions like "if I book a flight to a Spanish city for 60€, what would a total 3 nights trip cost me in total?"

Japan

My Dubai-trip really opened my eyes for trips outside Europe and more and more I am gathering information about flights to Asia, and the cost of living (hotels, daily expenses etc.) over there, and honestly I think for the next few years, i'll make a trip to Asia every year, it's reasonably doable! I really enjoy checking travelsites, some of my travelling/booking related Iphone-apps and everything that comes with it.

The first country on my list for a big holiday however is probably one of the most expensive ones to visit: Japan. It's been the absolute top one country on my girls wishlist for a while, but saving some money and being budget-conscious, will make it possible to visit Japan next year!

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! Here you can find all that is there to be found about me and my travelling. Some flashbacks to my travelhistory, my upcoming trips and my wishlist. With my wishlist still being empty, my upcoming trips ever changing and my travelhistory only described quite briefly, there is still a lot of content I can and will put online in the next few weeks/months.

Furtherhome i've created some sort of a 'can you help me?' section, something like me being undercover as a travel agency employee, please check it out! Ways to contact me are also on that particular page, as I disabled all comments on other pages for now. And i know, my English isn't 100% accurate, tbut i'm sure there are some other blogs where grammarnazi's can eat their hearts out ;)

United Arab Emirates - May '12

For an early 'summer' holiday I was looking for a 7/8 day-trip, to places i've never been before. At first I checked to combine 2/3 European cities, but the fares to cities I had on my list (like Athens, Rome, Lisbon) weren't that lowcost and the flights would cost well over 200€, especially with the check-in luggage needed for a trip like this. Soon after that I stumbled upon an option for relatively cheap intercontinental flights, with either a change-over somewhere in Europe or leaving from Belgium or Germany.

I was checking out flights to Dubai, and the cost of living over there. With the cost of hotels being lower than Rome for example, food like shoarma or Indian cuisine (one of my favorite cuisine) for a couple of euro's and public transport capped at 14 AED (2.8€) a day, which is insanely cheap given the fact Dubai's metro covers the distance of places located about 50 km away, the city I thought to be a get-away place for the rich and famous, could well be an option!

Brno / Prague - early march '12

I try to get away once every two or three months, and looking for a trip in march I stumbled upon a cheap flight to Brno in the Czech Republic. One of the disadvantages of cheap airlines however are the facts you have to deal with a timetable where sometimes there are only two or three flights in a week and flights leaving at times like 6:10 in the morning. In this case it would mean landing in Brno on Friday, and leaving on Monday morning, forcing us to take two days off of work ánd spending three full days in a relatively small city.

The type of tourist that rushes through a city like me can see a city like Brno in less than a day, so the search for another city to combine Brno with started, and pretty soon it was clear Prague is the city where my flight home leaves. One of my favorite cities in Europe, always good to come back there and with a flight leaving Sunday afternoon, a perfect match.

Flight stats

Since I'm a little bit of a stats freak, here are some funstats about my flight history,

Total number of flights: 95

Total kilometers (according to Great Circle Mapper, where I also made the map): 109852

Musical Trips

With my band i've played shows throughout Western Europe and I think I can call myself an expert of sitting in the back of a van on the German Autobahn. And that's mainly it, being on the road, being in venues, hanging out with friends, on stage, backstage or sleeping on someones floor. But luckily, from a traveller's perspective, i've had some time off too. Having a barbeque behind the Berlin Wall, visiting the Eiffel tower or crossing the Charles Bridge. As a visitor , i've had more time to visit the cities or villages the festivals or concerts were in. London speaks for itself, Hull is the top one city I never go back to and my first encounter with Budapest during the Sziget festival in '03 was a nice one.

Ajax in Europe

I've visited about 30 matches of Ajax in another country, ranging from a small cartrip just over the border to the most crazy roadtrip I think i've ever done. In chronological order, the trips led me to: Glasgow, Glasgow, London, Milan, Bruges, Munich, Turin, Auxerre, Bielefeld, Copenhagen, Bern, London, Milan, Ghent, Bremen, Prague, Birmingham, Hamburg, Florence, Marseille, Bristol, Bratislava, Brussels, Zagreb, Timisoara, Turin, Auxerre, Milan, Brussels and Madrid.

Citytrips and weekend breaks

Unfortunately, the days of 0,01€ flights are over, but still, getting out there for a couple of days doesn't have to be expensive, here's what i did in the last years:

The roadtrip style holidays i did

Visiting multiple cities in one trip. Roadtripping with airplanes, trains, busses, boats. This is what this section is about. You can find more details about most of the roadtrip style trips I did here.