Saturday, October 27, 2018

Balkans (2018): Short Trip To Zadar, Croatia

Continue with my previous post on A Day Trip To Sibenik From Split.

After spending two nights in Split which we found it's way more enough to stay there, we moved to the next destination, Zadar. As usual, I always book my bus tickets online prior to the trip in order to secure the seats. All my bus tickets for this trip including the one from Mostar to Dubrovnik bought from Get By Bus - it's secure and reliable website, in case you're wondering. Just remember to print your ticket cause they don't accept mobile notifications. 

2018 Croatia Zadar 01
#1: Croatian countryside is really stunning and breathtaking.

Thursday, October 25, 2018

2018 Autumn in UK & Europe (Sneak Peek)

Oops!... I did it again

I was away for the past few weeks to United Kingdom (again!) and Europe as well (not again!) 

I booked my flight right after I came back from my trip to Tokyo earlier this year when I happened to stumble upon cheap fare offered by Oman Air. Imagine fly-in London and fly-out Milan for RM1,800 which is definitely so hard to resist this temptation. And so happened Malindo Air was having promo where return flight for Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Lumpur for RM225. So in total, the whole fare cost RM2,025. What a great steal!

For this round, I decided to bring along my mom cause she never been to any angmoh (Western) countries before, including Australia due to family commitment. Besides my mom, I also tagged my cousin together. Initially we plan to visit Iceland but I guess Iceland would be slightly boring for my mom, hence I changed my plan to visit Portugal and Spain since I have never been there too. 

Here's the quick sneak peek for our 19 days trip around London, Portugal, Spain and Milan:

2018 London 01
#1: Hello London once again! I lost count how many times I've been to London cause I studied in United Kingdom before

2018 Portugal Porto 00
#2: First time flying with RyanAir and Ola Portugal!

2018 Portugal Porto 07
#3: Porto turns out to be my favourite one among all the cities I visited for this trip

2018 Portugal Lisbon 02
#4: The famous tram 28 in Lisbon. We almost pickpocketed when arrived Lisbon from Porto but luckily I aware of that.

2018 Portugal Sintra 01
#5: A day trip to Sintra from Lisbon merely for this colourful and magnificent Pena Palace

2018 Spain Barcelona Park Guell 01
#6: From Portugal to Spain. A trip to Barcelona is incomplete without visit any of Gaudi's masterpiece.

2018 Spain Barcelona Sagrada Família 02
#7: Sagrada Familia - another of Gaudi's unfinished Roman Catholic church. Glad I bought the ticket online or else, I might need to join the long hours queue.

2018 Spain Madrid 01
#8: Madrid, the capital city of Spain and we stayed here for four nights

2018 Spain Segovia 01
#9: A day trip to Segovia from Madrid which takes about half an hour via high-speed train

2018 Spain Seville 02
#10: Another day trip to Seville which takes approximately 2 and half hour from Madrid but it's really worth it

2018 Italy Milan 01
#11: Ended our trip in Milan. Unfortunately, it's overrated for me - so crowded and once again, we almost being the target for pickpocket on our way from train station to airport.

For some travellers, they would try to cover as many countries as possible in this almost three weeks trip but for me, I try to slow down my travel pace not just for the sake of my mom but also I dislike rushing my trip lately. I don't feel any sense of enjoyment at all by rushing here and there. Probably this is a sign of aging. Oopsss...

All in nutshell, we explored 4 countries (United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain and Italy), wandered around 9 different cities and experienced 3 new airlines (Oman Air, RyanAir and TAP Air Portugal). I asked my mom whether she would love to return to Europe again, she said Yes! but with one condition - reduce the number of walking in future. Hahaha. Sorry mom for making you to walk more than 10,000 steps everyday. Sometimes, we even walked more than 20,000 in a day. I'm kidding not! But I glad that we survived till the end of the trip.

#12: My virgin experience flying with Oman Air - Not bad. I quite enjoy the in-flight entertainment but the food is so-so only. Still prefer Qatar Airways in-flight meal better. 

Monday, October 1, 2018

Balkans (2018): A Day Trip To Sibenik From Split

I know nothing about Sibenik until my friend told me when we're in Split of Croatia. He stumbled upon one of his friends were travelling there through Instagram and that's explain how we ended up there too. 



When we found out Sibenik is approximately an hour away from Split, immediately we bought our bus ticket at the counter of Split Bus Station at the very last minute. Luckily there were few seats available but sooner, all the seats were filled up pretty quickly. Somehow, we found out that the journey from Split to Sibenik is not that very far away, but it turns out to have quite number of stops. Instead of an hour bus ride, at the end the whole journey took almost two hours.