Street market @ Frankfurt - Saturday

Saturday at Frankfurt Street Market, there's always this crowded street filled with stalls selling sausages and hot dog bread, cheeses and other stuff.

It's pretty much where we usually settle our lunch when we land at Frankfurt most of the time.

If you are lucky, you may see mascots walking around.

You may see birds eating all the left over food along the chair area.

Bicycles parked at various places, usually under the tree.

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7 days Romantic Road Trip - Germany

So much about Paris, here's the update on the latest road trip that we went to lately..

We had about 7 days road trip in Germany, driving along the Romantic Road from Frankfurt to Munich.. 

The actual main romantic road was from Wurzburg to Fussen.

Reference: Image from Google Map Screenshot

The main things to plan for was that you need to have all the way points you need for romantic road especially if you are going to just have a DIY free and easy one where you book everything yourself. From the car rental to the hotel bookings. Here's one of the guide you can read: http://www.romanticroadgermany.com/general/travel.php

Nuremberg is not exactly part of the romantic road but it's a pretty big city with lots of shops but you can walk around it though.. I think you should just stay over for a day if you are actually going there. But because it's city, parking isn't cheap so make sure the hotel you are staying has either fixed full day / overnght parking rate or free parking in order not to burst your wallet.

Reference: Image from Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_parking

Also, you need to have the parking disc for some of the places you wish to visit.. You can either buy a parking disc or get one for free when you pump petrol (if you can get a translation for it to get your message across). I'd say that Munich petrol / diesel pricing was actually pretty good so if you don't really need to pump your petrol, you can pump them all when you reach munich. Otherwise, you would need to keep an eye on the prices as it varies along the road at the middle of it, it's the most expensive though.

The reason why you need a parking disc is because certain places allow you to park 1 or 2 hours for free then after which, you may get a fine. 

Also, do take note that on Sunday or public holiday, there's no shopping area open so it's actually best to plan such that you are visiting sight seeing places on Sunday and not in any actual town / city (e.g.  Nuremberg, Fussen, Munich, Frankfurt, etc).

If your car rental comes with GPS like ours, it would be perfect.

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Paris - Disneyland

Paris' Disneyland is definitely somewhere that you shouldn't miss visiting at least during your first trip there.. It's definitely worth your time.

Depending on when you are visiting, the decos might be slightly different.. like during my time, it was the 20th anniversary, so it had special decos, discount to the theme park's entry pass. We are even lucky enough to see the chingay like event at around 1hr prior to the closing of the theme park..

See more about disneyland at my original post: Paris Day 2 - Disneyland Tour

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Paris Itinerary Planning

I've been slacking on my posting for quite some time and I am going to continue it again..

Just to continue my post from here since I stopped at the transport pass.

When visiting Paris, it's best to plan your itinerary well. Because none of the malls or shopping area are open on public holidays or Sunday. As such, you should go to sight seeing places during such period. However, popular sites such as Disneyland has to be visited on a weekday because it would be so crowded with the locals as well if you do visit on Sunday.

This is definitely a short post as the next one would be able Disneyland :)

Also, should you visit during periods where the day time is long and night time is short, especially on public holidays or Sunday, please ensure that you have your dinner or at least order your dinner take away by 7 or 8pm otherwise.. there's a chance, depending on where you stay that there's actually no real food around the area. We got that before during our first trip there as it was a public holiday.. due to the bright sun.. it feels like 6pm even though it's already 8pm... by the time we reach our hotel near the airport.. there was nothing to eat, even the bar at the hotel was closed.. The only option we had and we were lucky to have some coins to buy snacks at the subway station vending machine for dinner.

So do be aware of that. It might be much better now.. but we always make sure we have food, we will do that for all the cities that we visit now :)

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Paris Weekly Metro Pass - The Key to My Unlimited Train Rides..

My Paris trip is mainly from Wed till Sun and I only need a 1 way ticket to the airport on Monday morning. So I decided to buy the Paris Weekly Metro pass as that's quite a lot cheaper than getting a 5 day pass + 1 way ticket. According to what I had read so far, the latest day of the week that you can get the pass is Wed, so even if it's cheaper, you can buy the ticket / topup after Wed. Also, this weekly pass is just flat pass from Monday till Sun last train.

The pass itself cost about EUR $5 and the weekly pass around EUR $39 if I remember correctly. Which is still way cheaper than the 5 day pass which costed about $57. If you ever buy this pass, keep it for the next trip as the card itself is non refundable anyway. Also, I came to realized that the best way to buy a one way ticket, especially if you stay near the airport is via the ticket machine. As I checked with the machine and found out that if I had bought from the machine it only costs about $8+ for 2 pax but because I bought it from them, it's $9.50 per ticket.

Reference: http://parisbytrain.com/paris-metro/ - here's where I got all the necessary information for price comparison.

This pass worked in the exact same way as our Singapore's EzLink card where we tap to go in and tap to leave the station. But not all station exits requires us to tap the card to exit. As visitors, it's best to abide by the rules, although I do observed that a number of their Paris "foreign talents" seems to by pass all the rules and enter station via all the loop holes possible. So keep your eyes open and look around for "interesting" sights.

As they also have many street and train performers around, if you don't plan to tip them for singing songs that we don't even understand, avoid them and look away, as they'll take some cups and walk around the train / bus or wherever they had performs for "tips".

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From Taipei Airport to Taipei Main Station

For my past 2 trips, we had been taking this same bus Kuo-Kuang (国光客运) 1819 from the Taipei Airport to Taipei Main Station and I find it pretty value for money. After all it's only TWD$125 per person which is < SGD$6. This bus is similar to a tour bus as it has this luggage compartment and they tagged every single luggage which means, we will need to exchange our tags for our luggage to prevent mistakes.

So far, the bus had served us pretty well. After all, you can get to anywhere from the Taipei Main Station. 

However, only when we took the Hi-Speed Railway that we realised that Taipei was on one extreme end and Kaohsiung on the other. Which means, if our first stop after arrival is not Taipei itself, take a different bus to the Taoyuan Hi-Speed Railway Station might had been a better choice. But since, I'm going to buy my contact lens @ Taipei Main Station Area, it is still logical to go there first. :D

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