I took a 9-day guided Peru trip with Exoticca. The itinerary starts off and ends in Lima, with a city tour by Exoticca partner, Condor Travel, that includes bus transportation to the city center and a walking tour with an English-speaking guide. Exoticca’s choice of Ibis Miraflores Reducto was reasonable. Miraflores is a walkable nicer area of Lima with access to oceanfront walk and some great restaurants. In Lima’s crazy traffic compounded by constant honking and dirty air it was still not fun to go through four airport transfers, some of which took over 2 hours in bumper-to-bumper standstill traffic. […]
Athens, January 2025
Arriving in Athens airport and getting into a taxi is a pleasant experience – open vistas, bright sun, friendly drivers and modern multi-lane highway. Pretty soon the city starts – mainly concrete buildings, excessive gridlocks and unclear lane-changing rules (blinkers recommended but optional), several cars parked bumper-to-bumper in any tiny area that would allow parking (and if not, pedestrian sidewalks are a popular alternative). In residential areas a weird occurrence would be seeing a recently built luxury building next to something rundown and sometimes abandoned, with windows missing, boarded up or sometimes covered in plastic tarp. I guess the gentrification […]
Trains in Belgium
Belgian trains are a pleasure to use – reasonably reliable, reasonably clean, quiet electric trains connect even the smallest towns. The schedule displays and ticket buying machines support most of the common languages, English included, but your best bet is to download and setup the SCNB app while still at home. This way you can create and confirm an account as well as plug in a travel credit card (or Paypal account) for ticket purchases. The ticket itself is then just a QR code you display to the official when asked. Beyond just buying tickets from point A to point […]
Brussels to Brugge
Getting around Brugge is pretty easy. Just pick a train from any of the Brussels train stations (Central, Midi, Nord) and about an hour or so later (depending on whether you’re on express version) you’re in the center of this medieval town somewhat disliked by Colin Farrell’s character. Beautiful medieval town, walkable from its train station to the historic center.