Train Travel In UK

Africa is an area of outstanding natural beauty. And it is also uniquely different. For first time visitors,the difference can be shocking after leaving your cherished confort zone.
It is important to be prepared for your trip long before you set off. Long trips are hard to plan and it is impossible not to forget something important in your plans however meticulous you are. The only thing you can do is to hope that whatever you forget is not too serious. This human nature should not stop you from making sure everything has been worked out.
Here are some Travel tips and advice for the everyday Safari traveller. Take a look and add this to the often tired holiday-check-list that you might have already. Here are a few truths; Africa is mostly warm, but nights can be very cold. There are few places with seasonal sub-zero degrees especially mountain tops. Public transport is not reliable in terms of time keeping. Many of them run on unscheduled trips. Those that do are premium services, but still ridiculously cheap. Traffic rule enforcement can be lax. Drive as if you are the only sane person on the road.
It is not true that people are savages who don’t value human life-just because you see those violent clashes on TV. The continent has its own share of thugs and zealots. It is not true that those poor women selling handicraft through the windows of the safari vans are vagabonds, that is the propaganda from the van drivers who are paid commission by directing you to more established safari dealers. You will be doing them a great favour to buy from them rather than buy from the rich kiosk owners strategically placed in convenient locations.
Here are a few things to remember. Always keep mobile phones and valuables like jewelry out of sight. They tend to attract the wrong kinds of people. Some street criminals snatch these items for sale. Travel light and keep your luggage close at hand at all times and in sight if possible. Make sure you have contact numbers for the people involved in your safari trip: your family, your safari hotel, your tour agent, the foreign office and the local police. On buses and trains, try sitting near other people in a busy carriage. Don’t walk in alleys alone. Actually keep within the Central Business District of all major cities such as Nairobi and Kenya. Rural villages and towns are very safe because everybody is known to each other. If you lose something, the local leaders will apprehend the culprit.
Telephones are expensive and rare. It might help for you to carry your mobile phone. But I advise you to buy a local Pay As You Go phone the moment you land. It is cheaper to use the local phone than getting charged 10 times more by using your phone abroad. Once you buy, text your friends and family and tell them you have a new phone. Make sure the phone is charged at the hotel before you go and buy an extra top up voucher. In most countries, Pay As You Go are very cheap. You can get one of these cheap models for as little as 40 dollars, line and air time included. Texts from East Africa to UK cost about 20 pence per text. But it is about 80 pence if you use a UK connected phone.
There are other news sources that you can read before you depart for your destination. The starting point is to visit the Government’s Foreign office to see if there is any travel advisories. Sometimes the advisories can be too general and not reflect the true picture on the ground. For example, whereas tour operators might be going about their business even when there is a political issue like the recent political fighting, the Foreign Office hoped to lift the advisory only after the whole scenario has been sorted in the street and in parliament. A shrewd traveller could have easily picked this time to travel because beds were empty at great discounts – almost free in fact.
Understandably so, the Government is slow to approve such situations because they fear backlash if something happened. There are many sites detailing the current news, current events, exchange rate, language, history, customs, types of food, art and festivals of the world’s countries, at least one of which will have something for you. Besides, The Web can help you find the best deals on safari flights, accommodation or complete package safari holidays. Instead of spending time searching for a holiday, users can use the web to get the perfect holiday deal sent to them.
Most banks and travel agents now offer currency services and you can expect to pay around one or two percent of the total amount in commission. When thinking about a destination, think about whether you want hot or cold weather, something relaxed or active. Check that your credit card or travellers checks are accepted by the banks at your destination. Banks are only in major towns. There are accredited Foreign exchange Bureaus in countries such as Kenya and they do give better rates than hotels and Banks. But be careful, conmen and street money changes are many.
If you are web savvy, keep a diary or a safari blog of your holiday travels. Keep the family informed where you are. Keep a copy of the signed and valid passport, and a visa and copies of the itinerary, if required, with a family friend. Give them emergency numbers too.
Lastly, always check your overseas medical insurance coverage and ensure it is adequate. If you have money, there are world-class medical facilities available including the flying doctor. I am not proud of this but I must say that, contrary to myths, these facilities do exist although poor locals can not afford them.

Eure (department number 27) is located in the region of Haute-Normandie and has an estimated population of 541,054.

The department is a largely wooded plateau cut by the valleys of the Seine River and its tributaries.

Why you should visit Eure for your next holiday in France: Ancient ramparts and gothic architecture combine with lush green countryside, orchards and flowing water to make this department something quite special. Visit this delightful area and see for yourself what inspired the impressionists. Plenty of things to see and do for either a long holiday or short break. The department enjoys a similar climate to the UK but its location means it is slightly milder year round. As with England, summers are warm with temperatures in the mid 20C and in the height of the season, temperatures can reach into the 30’s.

What to see in Eure

Hersonissos

Crete

May 2008

 Dear David,

 Yes I know, you didn’t get anything about the video clip of the fireworks, well I was getting a bit ahead of myself and of course Easter being so late, we hadn’t actually had it when I sent your letter! This month as I managed to get a few photographs I’ve put a link on the page so that you can watch them, even if it is a month late. Taking pictures of fireworks is always difficult as just when you think you have the best and stop filming, the next bit is even more spectacular!

 Over the last month there have been a couple of trips to ‘the City’ (as we call it) to help someone else spend their money, which is always the best way of going shopping. Ostensibly the trips were to buy furniture, but naturally we had to go for a coffee or two and so there was a chance to take a few new pictures, particularly around Lion Square.

 Now I like Heraklion, it is a compact city and has many fine buildings in various states of repair and restoration, and it is still possible to walk around the virtually intact city walls, passing over the various gates and, of course, visiting the grave of Nikos Kazantzakis on the way round. Most visitors go there just to visit the Archaeological Museum, missing out the interesting Museum of Crete on the coast road, and the fine churches of St. Minas and St Titos, and a good chance to sit and people watch from a street cafe!

 Platia Eleftheria, or Freedom Square, always seems to be a focal point for tourists, possible because it is near the museum, and there are number of large cafes down one side, personally I avoid them because unless you manage to get in the front row you can’t see anyone passing by, so I head for the network of small pedestrian streets between the museum and Lion Square where there a large number of cafes in varying styles and also some very nice ‘boutique’ shops, along with a couple of ‘naff’ souvenir shops. Even better around this area you will not get ‘komakied’ into a place against your will and the prices are often a slightly better, for instance on a recent visit a frappe, a Greek coffee and a beer served with a bowl of mixed nuts, some crisps and some very nice chocky cookies came out at €6 and that included the essential glass of iced water with the coffees. And what can be more fun than sitting on the street watching the people passing by and wondering where they are all going! While you are around this area a wander around the shops can be quite intriguing as there are still a number of ‘specialist’ shops, for example there are shops that only sell ladies tights and men’s socks, or how about a shop that only sells rope, string, and chains? There are also a couple of good haberdashers where you can buy zips by the centimetre and every conceivable type of button you could ever want.

 If you choose a cafe behind St. Minas church on the edge of the square, you can often get to watch an impromptu 5-a-side football match, and if you are going to have a look at St. Titos church then in one corner of the ‘front yard’ you will find ‘Pagopeiion’ which serves some excellent ‘Mediterranean’ salads and other dishes, they also have regular jazz sessions here late at night. A wander around the small back streets yields some interesting erections, and I am always surprised by the lack of noise considering that one is in the middle of a vibrant living city not yet ruined by over-pedestrianisation!

 A walk around Lion Square is essential and note the plate glass paving slabs, a result of discoveries made during the recent renovations. Thankfully they have taken away the awful wrought iron railings around the fountain, of course, in the UK they would be putting these in to stop anyone falling into it!

 From the square down to the Port is 25th August Street where you will find all the shipping line offices and travel agents, ideal for booking your day trip to Santorini or ferries and flights to lots of other destinations. There is also a fine example of Greek pedestrianisation schemes, as 25th August Street is closed to traffic along its length, but halfway down there is a street which crosses it which carries traffic, often resulting in traffic/pedestrian jams, this is also a favourite street for union demonstrations when they are on strike (or about to be, as they plan these things in advance here).

 Now it is May, tourists are beginning to arrive ‘in bulk’, and at last everywhere seems to be open so as I promised I will try to explain the difference between kafenions, ouzeries, meze houses, and restaurants although the lines can be a bit blurred at times.

 As the names suggest kafenions and ouzeries are where you get served coffee and ouzo, they are often only small places with fluorescent lighting and formica tables where you will find older Greeks, usually men, reading the paper and playing cards or backgammon, or just righting the wrongs of the world. Usually the best Greek coffee is served in these places as they make it properly using a real ‘Briki’, a small brass ‘saucepan’ with a tin plate lining, over a low heat, and do not let it actually boil which is a complete no-no, so that it comes out with a nice froth on the top. Around here they say the thicker the froth the more luck you will have! Many of the modern cafes do not use the ‘Camping Gaz’ stove, but the milk boiler/frother on the espresso machine, which is fine as long they don’t ‘overcook’ it, which they usually do! One of the best places around here for Greek coffee is a shop called ‘Art of Tea’ in Koutouloufari, where they have one of the proper ‘hot sand’ hotplates that brews the coffee gently and slowly. As it happens they also have a wide range of herbal teas and culinary herbs for sale as well as those tall brass pepper mills and other brass items for sale.

 In most of these places you will also often get a small plate of nibbles ranging from a few bits of tomato or cucumber through to pieces of feta cheese and olives, these will be refilled regularly if you stay a while, you can also get some ‘interesting’ wines and raki in these places!

 A meze house is where you get mezes! This is the traditional Greek eating out method where you order a number of small plates and share them between you. I mentioned one of these ‘Ta Filarakia’ in the March letter. The surroundings are quite often intimate, in as much that on busy nights someone on the next table will have their plate on the corner of yours, due to lack of space on their own table (a good sign that they have over-ordered), the tables will be wood or formica, and if there are tables cloths there will be a paper or plastic one over the top so you don’t muck it up. The napkins will be paper (and please do not call them serviettes, those are what ladies use once a month). The menu will usually be a pad where you mark of the number of each dish you want and it’s often in Greek only! The wine will come in anodised aluminium jugs, rather like those water jugs we used to get in the ‘dinner room’ at school, or an earthenware jug, and it may be slightly cloudy. You will also find things like cuttlefish cooked in its own ink and ‘volvi’ on the menu, and the raki should be free at the end and served with whatever fruit is in season.

 Meze houses are one of the cheapest places to eat, but sorry to say that many tourists find them a little daunting even though there will usually be someone to help them with the menu, and so miss out on a great deal of Greek food! Experiment is the word that needs to be used.

 A restaurant or estiatorio is up market, until I get there when it becomes a meze house with linen table cloths. No only joking really, but perhaps not. Restaurants have a proper menu, usually printed (although by law the prices must be changeable so they are usually written in by hand on a shiny bit so they can be changed, or in pencil), and are just that little bit smarter.  One problem you can get with places like this is too much food, as you begin by ordering a variety of mezes as starters but then when you order the meat it comes out plated with side salad, rice, potatoes and so on when all you wanted was 4 lamb chops to share between you! If you know that they serve up the meat as a ‘main course’ then order just a Greek salad as a starter. One slightly annoying thing that can happen here also is the appearance of a basket of bread which you haven’t asked for but which you get charged extra for, this is a bit like a ‘hidden’ cover charge. I don’t know for certain but I have been told that ‘cover charges’ are actually illegal here.

 With the season getting under way, we have the usual number of visitors who are coming to look for houses or businesses to buy. I always find this quite amusing as most of them seem to have done little research and many have never run a business before, I am thinking that maybe I should add some more articles to my blog with some helpful suggestions. What do you think?

 The new Easyjet flights (well not new really as they used to be GB Airways) are proving popular with independent travellers, although some visitors have complained that they are paying a fortune in excess baggage charges, but on the other hand they are arriving with only a ‘purse’ as hand luggage when they could have had a bag weighing 5+ kg on board with them, I gently try to explain this but I am sure that many of them completely miss the point! And of course Aegean Airlines are now running daily scheduled flights from Heathrow Airport to Athens with connecting flights to Crete, which at least saves collecting your bags at Athens as they can be checked straight through!

 As baggage allowances are gradually being reduced on all airlines it is worth considering a rethink on what you actually pack in the suitcase too! For instance I have seen visitors unpack around 3 litres of liquid (which equates to around 3kg weight) from their suitcases, made up of shampoos, conditioners, shower gels, skin creams, sun tan oils, etc. I sometimes think that we don’t have such things here and that we all walk around smelling awful! I don’t really think their hair is going to fall out, or their skin suddenly age by ten years in a week just because they haven’t brought their favourite shampoo or moisturiser! Too much sun while they are here will do that for them.

 What would they have done when soap was pink ‘Lifebuoy’ carbolic or ‘Wrights’ coal tar? But of course when that was all we had then we didn’t have allergies, and even better we were really clean and bacteria free!

 I didn’t see the article you mention about prices throughout Europe and Greece being the most expensive, I did hear about it though. As with all price comparisons you have to compare like for like and quite often this is impossible especially with food products. With an average per capita income of €800 per month in Greece it can’t be that expensive or we wouldn’t be able to afford to eat! I don’t know whether it would have a positive or negative effect if I was to do a price survey on basic items and put it on the website but I will stick my neck out and do a restaurant survey for you and put the results on the website, this only seems reasonable as most visitors end up eating out even if they do start off ‘self catering’!

 That’s your lot for this month…….Except for a link to some pictures http://www.villaralfa.com/easter.html

Yours as ever,

The Seine-Maritime (department number 76) is located in the region of Haute-Normandie and has an estimated population of 1,245,457 (approximate in 2004). The department was originally known as Seine-Inférieure (Lower Seine) until 1955 when it changed to its current name Seine-Maritime (Coastal-Seine) because Inférieure was regarded as derogatory by the inhabitants of the department.

The capital of the department is the city of Rouen, with the coastal towns of Dieppe and Le Hâvre also featuring within the immediate area.

The landscape of the department is typically coastal as you would expect with historic ruins and Norman castles dotting the landscape. Along the coastline is stunning cliff scenery and half-timbered villages.

In addition to the gastronomy offerings you would expect in Normandy, namely the cider, fish, meat and cheeses other delectable delights specific of the department include Bénédictine liqueur and apple sugars from Rouen.

Why you should visit Seine-Maritime for your next holiday in France If you enjoy sightseeing and places with an interesting historic past then you need go no further than Seine-Maritime. Teamed with its magnificent beaches, divine gastronomy and its close proximity to the UK, this department is a perfect destination for a long holiday or short break.

The department enjoys a similar climate to the UK but its location means it is slightly milder year round. As with England, summers are warm with temperatures in the mid 20C and in the height of the season, temperatures can reach into the 30’s.

What to see in the Seine-Maritime:Rouen

Rouen is brimming with monuments, medieval streets and churches. The city is particularly famed for the Place du Vieux Marché, where Joan of Arc was martyred. The town’s gothic cathedral was a favourite of Claude Monet and he famously painted the cathedral’s facade at almost every moment of the day.

One of these priceless pieces of art is on show today at the Musée des Beaux Arts.

The main routes through the city may be less picturesque but they do keep traffic away from the prettier, medieval pedestrianised centre.

Places of particular interest include: