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A four-day bus pass costs £21 - you can hop on and off buses over a wide area, walk from one valley and come down in another and generally avoid driving and finding parking spaces! The open top bus along Borrowdale is great fun!
This is a blue multi-strip ticket which can be used on trams, metros and buses in Amsterdam and all over Holland. Works out about half the price of buying a ticket on board.
See www.gvb.nl (Amsterdam Transport organisation, mainly in Dutch)
Good English explanation of the Strippenkaart at
www.amsterdamtips.com/getting-around-amsterdam-the-strippenkaart.php
Coming from Prague, the fastest way to get to Liberec is by bus from Cerny Most (at the end of the yellow underground line).
Leave the station by the exit at the front of the train, go down the steps immediately to the right, and the Liberec buses leave from stand 6. The journey takes just over an hour; the bus station is a five minute walk from the town centre.
Tofino is on the Pacific coast of Vancouver Island. The area is formed of temperate rainforest and white sandy beaches which stretch for miles. Beyond its unbelievable natural beauty, it offers a rare thing in North America: harmony. The indigenous First Nations people, aided by eco-warriors, made a stand against the loggers in the 1980s and since then it has been given UN status as a natural wilderness.
The high-priced resorts dotted along the beaches are best avoided, especially in summer. To see the real Tofino go there in May (shoulder season) and stay in the town. The Tofino Motel offers great views at around $85 (£40) a night per room. If you like seafood Shelter and Schooner restaurants are a must, but for something more funky try Raincoast.
There are three impressive beaches nearby. Tonquin is but a short walk from the town and is good for a post-prandial stroll. Chesterman beach is a short drive away and is full of spirits and driftwood and as the site of First Nations resistance has great historical resonance. Long Beach is, well, just long. The caveats to all this are that because this is the raincoast it rains a lot. However, much natural beauty comes from this rain.
The First Nations people run several businesses in town offering whale watching, bear watching (you park near a beach and watch the bears forage for food) as well as trips to hot springs. The botanical garden are like nothing else, blending sculpture and nature. Getting to Tofino is easy. You can fly from downtown Vancouver from around $250 (£120) return by sea-plane, but the best way to travel is to take the Harbour Lynx from downtown Vancouver and then the Tofino bus across the island. Even though this journey takes around six hours, don't fall asleep. Remember you're going to paradise.
For wheelchair users, simply riding on a double decker bus is an excellent and cheap alternative to a special disabled tour. If you learn the routes and get a day pass, you can ride anywhere.
Additionally, in many taxis, you can just wheel in and go. The underground has many wheelchair-friendly stations and links to airports and the Chunnel, if you want a new and exciting way to explore the continent!
Contact any tourist info booth in London for details, or ask at the stations.
www.bluechairbook.com
North America's Disabled Adventurer
Carris (main transport operator in Lisbon) offers city tours on open-top buses. €14 each hop on/hop off (every 40 min) tour valid for 24 hours so you can start any time of day/evening and valid for other forms of transport too on day of purchase. They do a circuit of a route marked by set stops and give a commentary of points of interest via headsets.
Other tours including trams are not on/off but 1-2 hours in duration. €17
Most city bus/tram tours including Aerobus (airport to city) for 48 hours costs 30€.
Save a lot of time and money and buy at the aairport (at the post office) as many passes are not on buses and only at metro stations.
Starts at Praca do Comercio at the bottom of town near Information centre.
www.carristur.pt
Budget airlines fly into Pisa - don't bother with the bus, the road is usually very busy into Florence. Get the train, there's a station at Pisa airport with regular trains to Florence; or go to Pisa Central where there are even more trains to Florence and it's cheaper.
You've had fun on the buses, trams, metro etc. on you day of arrival using the ticket you bought for three euros (Feb 08) on the air shuttle bus, but what about day two?
Get a card Viva for three euros fifty and have more fun, but don't throw the card away, as you can top it up for more days/journeys the following day.
I don't know if you can have two or more days added when you buy it, as I didn't know you could top it up at the time of original purchase!
Word of warning: when we went in to the shop selling Carris travel cards on Praca da Figueira on Day two of our stay in Lisbon they wanted to sell us each a plastic card (four euros apiece, not returnable, unlike the London Oyster card) and then top those up with a day pass each for three euros fifty.
Being mean (and green) and not planning to be back in Lisbon in the foreseeable future, I decided to walk to the Cais do Sodre metro station where we were sold the paper Viva card for three euros fifty each.
We found out about the top up when we showed the cards the next morning at the metro cashier to explain what we wanted (my Portuguese is limited to ordering drinks!) and the cashier took them and topped them up.
Enjoy this fab city and use your card to max on the ascensores, elevadore and the ferries as well as the trams, buses and metro.
Metro stations and (possibly) Carris ticket booths - not open in Feb.
In Sydney, get a Sydney Pass. We had unlimited travel on buses, including the two explorers (Sydney and Bondi), trains and ferries for A$110 each, allowing us to see what we wanted at our own pace.
Hopping on and off the bus round the sights of Paris is cheaper and better than taking either the metro (you see more) or taxi (feel safer!).
You can get a ticket for 48 hours, see Trocadero - walk through to the Eiffel Tower and catch it again, get off at Louvre, catch it again, get off at Musee d'Orsay etc.
Or, on your first day, just stay on for the whole round trip to see where you will want to visit later.
Stops all around centre of Paris, pay on the bus.
The best things about Avignon are not in Avignon! Take the hourly 205 bus to the unbelievable Pont du Gard aqueduct, and watch the daredevil French kids diving headlong off the upstream cliffs, as they have done for 2000 years.
Catch the next bus on to Uzès, a magical little town on the edge of the Provençal wilderness. I had a college friend who stayed in a hillside hamlet beyond Uzès and cycled, when he could be bothered, to University in Avignon. One night we found him asleep on a park bench nursing an empty wine bottle. Only in Provence!
It seems tricky to get to Urbino so take the Bologna - Venice bus from the main station. Be careful as they do not wait. Twelve euros each way and the tourist office will help you with the schedule.
To reach Baguio from Manila, one can take the Victory Liner bus company. Choose the Deluxe service for only PhP550 (pesos) one way.
Their terminal is pretty safe, although I suggest always travel with somebody and be cautious and attentive as anywhere in the world.
The deluxe service has an attendant and they serve snacks. Once in Baguio, taxis should not cost you more than PhP50 from Point A to Point B.
Victory Liner bus terminals:
Baguio - Governor Pack Road
Manila - EDSA in Pasay City
Don't bother with the noisy trams, take the bus instead. It's cheaper, a LOT quicker and more comfortable.
Bus stops all along Gran Via Marques del Turia (2 mins from railway station/5 mins Plaza el Ayuntamiento).
From Palermo airport to the centre of town, the airport bus leaves every half hour and costs 5 euros. We arrived at the airport at 9pm, and were in our hotel (near the top of Via Roma) by 9:40.
The airport is now also known as Falcone-Borsellino Airport in honor of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two anti-Mafia magistrates killed in separate bomb attacks.
Palermo airport website: www.gesap.it
Get to Bogota, take a bus to Tunja (Boyaca) then switch (last bus to Villa de Leyva leaves at 19:00 so be careful otherwise you will get stuck there) take a small bus from there. There's also a direct bus so you don't have to switch but there are only 2 or 3 a day so you must get informed first. Fo any other info or pictures of my trips there please email me at danielbernate@gmail.com. I will gladly help you in anyway, guide you or get you there.
Delphi is usually the second point of interest on every traveller’s list when planning their itinerary for Greece. Second only to the Acropolis. 180 kms from Athens it is quite easily a day trip. The famous oracle of Delphi has a fascinating history. But how does one get there?
You could go on one of the tours. Or you could do what we did. You would need two things. A map of Athens and a metro map. Armed with that you head to the nearest metro station and head towards Kato Patissia on the Green line. You exit the metro station and head towards Terminal B on Liossion Street. It’s a ten minute walk at most. Ask for directions or follow the map. I find the metro a lot faster than the bus, but you could take a bus from Syntagma (the centre of Athens) to Terminal B. The bus terminal itself is more or less like an inter state bus terminus in one of our metros. If you are looking for great service and smiling personnel, take the tour from the city centre. At the terminal, go to the office and look for a kiosk marked for Delphi. There is a bus going every couple of hours or so. We managed to take the one that left at 10.30 am. The ticket was approx 10 Euros. Buy the return. Actually, decide if you would like to stay in Delphi or Arahova. If not, get the return ticket.
www.theglobaldesi.com
City bus tours can be expensive but routes 100 and 200 in Berlin are regular (double-decker) services which pass most of the main sights in the city centre. Buy a pack of tickets (which can also be used on the S-bahn and U-bahn) and get on and off where you want.
A day (or more) ticket (Tageskarte) is the most economical option and can be bought from most BVG ticket offices, such as the one at Zoologischer Garten (Zoo).
The best way to get to Pamukkale from Istanbul is by train. The Pamukkale Expresi, which has pullman seats, couchette and a sleeping car - depending on the level of luxury you need for the 15 hour journey - starts from HaydarPasa station in the Anatolian side of Istanbul and takes you to Denizli.
You can either book your seats online on the Turkish railways website (a bit of a maze) or book it from a TCDD authorised travel agent (it doesn’t cost any more). You could also combine it with a trip to Izmir and Ephesus.
You could get to Pamukkale by bus as well, in which case you go to the Otogar in istanbul and it is an 11 hour journey.
Córdoba lies 150km to the east of Seville on the NIV motorway to Madrid. 8 buses depart daily from Granada (journey time 2hr 30 min) and 10 buses leave daily from Seville (same journey time). If you can afford it, the AVE express service between Seville and Madrid gets you from Seville to Córdoba in 45 mins, otherwise it's a 1-2 hr journey if you take the 6 daily regional trains. The bus from Granada to Córdoba takes the more scenic route up through the mountains between the two cities.
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