Travel

I had booked A Day in Tallinn Cruise on Eckerö Line for just €10,00 about 10 days in advance which was a steal. I was scheduled to depart by the 9:00 AM ferry from Helsinki to Tallin so I got to the West Harbour Helsinki and checked-in. Boarding was interesting and there were a large number of people closely packed together (which you don’t generally see in Finland) and moving quickly. We left Helsinki on time and made our way south across the Gulf of Finland. I went to the upper deck to enjoy the wind and the views. ...

This was part of A day in Copenhagen 🇩🇰. We started at Højbro Plads and walked to the Stork Fountain. × < > We saw the Tomb of the Unknown Concentration Camp Prisoner at the Church of the Holy Spirit. We also learnt about the origins of Lego. ...

This was part of A day in Copenhagen 🇩🇰. We started at Københavns Rådhus, the Copenhagen City Hall and walked to Henrettelsesplads to see the Copenhagen Court House and the Scientology Church Denmark. × < > Next stop was the Christiansborg Palace which had stables and large expanse. The Supreme Court and the State Government Office was also on the grounds. ...

I was flying back home from Helsinki on SAS and Air India. The Air India flight from Copenhagen was at night so I decided to fly to Copenhagen the previous day and spend one night here instead of staying one more night in Helsinki and taking the day time connection. My flight from Helsinki reached Copenhagen at 9:25 PM the previous night and the flight to Delhi was at 8:45 PM giving me about a 23 hours layover. I had stayed at the Park Inn By Radisson Copenhagen Airport last night. I got up early in the morning and walked to Kastrup Søbad to see the sunrise. There was a boardwalk from the beach leading to a circular multi-level wooden structure around a seawater pool. ...

This was part of A day in Brussels 🇧🇪. We started off from the Grand Place and our guide told us about the history of Brussels and Belgium. We saw the Everard ‘T Serclaes and then walked to the famous Manneken Pis. × < > From there we headed towards Place de la Bourse through some of the surrounding neighbourhoods as we learnt more about Brussels. After the Brussels Stock Exchange and walked to Galerie De La Reine where saw Neuhaus, famous for Belgian chocolate. ...

My flight from Washington-Dulles landed on time around 7:15 AM. There were two paths to clear immigration, one for transit passengers with onward connections and the other for people going to Belgium, I stood in line at the latter. When I reached the immigration desk, the officer asked me where I was going and I replied Frankfurt. He told me that I was in the wrong line and I should have cleared immigration at the other section for transit passengers. I told him that I had a long layover in Brussels and wanted to go into the city to look around before by next flight. He stamped me in and I exited the airport and found the local bus stop. I bought the STIB-MIVB 1 day ticket for € 7.50 from the GO machine and boarded the bus from Brussels Airport to Schuman and then took the metro from Schuman to Gare Centrale. ...

This was part of A day in Amsterdam 🇳🇱. Because of the constant rain, I wasn’t even sure if anyone else would turn up and if the tour would operate, but there were a few others like me who showed up and we were off. We walked through the Red Light District of Amsterdam and learnt about its history and the legal prostitution. As we heard about the ground realities there, it all was a little disconcerting. ...

Ever since I transited Schiphol airport when I traveled to the USA for the first time in 2003, I’ve always wanted to visit Amsterdam and the Netherlands. During this trip, I managed to get connecting flights back from Zurich to Amsterdam on Swiss and then Munich to Mumbai on Lufthansa with a 23 hours 45 minutes layover in Amsterdam, which was technically still a connection and not a break journey. My flight from Zurich arrived around 9:10 AM, and I exited the airport and took the shuttle bus to Hampton by Hilton Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. ...

I had stayed over with a friend (from the USA) who was now based in Basel, and had enjoyed the previous day with him and his family. Today I was to meet up with another friend from work; the plan was to drive to Strasbourg and spend the day there. He picked me up around 7:00 AM, and soon we were on our way. After leaving Switzerland, we drove on the German side of the border until Kehl. We had not met in a long time and it was nice to catch up with each other during the drive. We crossed the Pont de l’Europe over the Rhine into France and parked the car close to Tour du Bourreau. ...

The plan for today was to spend a day at Innsbruck in Austria and add that to my travel map. I wanted to be back in Zurich that night, so I decided to make a day trip. I had booked my tickets in advance on the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB or OEBB) on their website at € 19,00 each way (which was a very good price considering that I paid CHF 16.60 each way only to get to Sargans the previous day when I visited Vaduz. As I had seen before when I returned from Milan by train, generally, booking train tickets on SBB was more expensive than booking on Trenitalia / ÖBB / Deutsche Bahn / where possible, even when, the actual train on which you travel is the same. ...