WATMM travel thread

this thread is for posting about your latest travel adventures. globetrotting, discovering new cities, meeting other WATMMers, pickin' fights over the quality of your 24bit flacs, the works. also request travel advice from the knowledgeable here.

so I have a friend who is getting married on a beach in Italy in early October. I will be taking two weeks off and flying to Rome in late Sep. I have an uncle who lives in a small town about 70km from Rome, I'll be staying with him. he may or may not be there, so I might have the place to myself, which would be nice, although it'd also be nice to catch up with him.

I will be renting a bike in Rome to get around (I just got my full rider's licence today!), probably the Monster 1200 from these guys. anyone used them before?

the daily rental rate itself is quite tolerable. however 0.3 Euros per km in addition, wtf? that kills my wallet, considering all the exploring and riding I want to do. is this a standard additional cost? I checked another site and they had 0.2 Euros per km (but no Monster available).

what I'd really like to do is rent the bike for a full two weeks and ride up to London, stopping for a day in France. revisit Paris, meet y'all English watmmz. anyone got a bit of floor I could crash on? also how does crossing the chunnel work? do you absolutely have to use the Euro Shuttle? 49 pounds to cross, ugh.

basically I'm looking to be as stingy a bastard as possible while maximising the amount of time and distance I can spend on the bike. any suggestions and must-see/must-do ideas welcome.

You can get a ferry from Calais to Dover for cheaper, much more drinking to be done on a ferry, which puts you in fine steed to be arrested as you disembark.

yeah but then no bike when I arrive in the UK = crippled.

You take the bike on the ferry! It's a car ferry, with additional spaces for motorbikes, road bikes AND foot passengers.

That's why you'll be arrested for driving off it, after 4 beers on the sea with the waves sending your legs wabby.

oh, right. 35 pounds, cheaper.

it'd probably be cheaper to fly to Rome, rent a bike there, do everything I wanna do there, then return it, take a cheap bus or something through to France, take the train through to London, and then rent another bike there. and then fly home from London instead of Rome.

it'd save all the per km costs. but then I wouldn't have the fun of riding through a bit of Europe. bah.

It's a long way! Only done it in 4 wheeled devices, there will be some parts of it which are not all fun.

Tolls on a lot of the roads, too, If you plan it out nicely and avoid tolls and only stay in rural guesthouses it won't necessarily be too pricey. Fuel isn't cheap in west Europe.

  On 8/12/2014 at 9:42 AM, usagi said:

oh, right. 35 pounds, cheaper.

 

it'd probably be cheaper to fly to Rome, rent a bike there, do everything I wanna do there, then return it, take a cheap bus or something through to France, take the train through to London, and then rent another bike there. and then fly home from London instead of Rome.

 

it'd save all the per km costs. but then I wouldn't have the fun of riding through a bit of Europe. bah.

bus travel in europe is extremely expensive. taking a flight is usually the cheapest way to travel, because usually airports are like not even near the city you're flying to. like london luton or frankfurt hahn, what a joke, i mean the name itself is a joke. "london luton", why not "london milton keynes" or "london manchester"?

oh yeah, and lots of toll roads, yeah.

how are tolls dealt with when you're riding long distance across international lines? please don't tell me you don't have to stop and pay at a tollbooth for each one :|

  On 8/12/2014 at 10:28 AM, poblequadrat said:

 

  On 8/12/2014 at 9:42 AM, usagi said:

 

bus travel in europe is extremely expensive...

You've obviously never cought a bus in Australia

  On 8/12/2014 at 11:01 AM, verticalhold said:

 

  On 8/12/2014 at 10:28 AM, poblequadrat said:

 

  On 8/12/2014 at 9:42 AM, usagi said:

 

bus travel in europe is extremely expensive...

You've obviously never cought a bus in Australia

 

True! :P

I mean Rome-Paris by bus might be probably like 130€ or something like that. Flights are usually cheaper, or the same price but more convenient...

http://www.megabus.com/ is usually 20 euros or less per journey, especially if booked in advance.

And toll roads don't cross boundaries, you'll have to pay at a junction before the border. Only some sections of some roads are tolled, but these are usually the direct fast routes across large sections of a country.

I went from London to Cologne recently for 20 Euros or something ridiculously cheap seeing as it was a 17 hour journey including the ferry from Dover - Calais.

  On 8/12/2014 at 11:11 AM, fenton said:

I went from London to Cologne recently for 20 Euros or something ridiculously cheap seeing as it was a 17 hour journey including the ferry from Dover - Calais.

Good to know. I didn't know the right channels it seems! But I must still say that's definitely not the usual price at all, it's usually many times that, even if you're not leaving the country (actually taking a bus to a town just 100 km from where I am is 30 euros I believe and there's no way to make it cheaper)

That sounds a pain. If done right, long distance travel across Europe can be done cheaply, shorter journeys can be difficult, small train journeys in the UK are unbelievable - like the coaches, only cheap if booked weeks or months in advance.

Ryanair.com is the cheap flight mecca, although I believe there are others, and they will, like you say, drop you off miles out of the city [which presents another travel problem of its own]

http://www.eurolines.com/

Is a very cheap euro coach service.

I took an Eurolines bus from Kaunas, Lithuania to Berlin over Poland just last July and it was something like 40 euros.

Anyway, I've done a bit of traveling lately. Within the last year I've been to France (Mainland and Réunion), Madagascar, the Netherlands, Czech, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Slovenia and Croatia. Roughly in that order. Mostly backpacking, except for the Netherlands which was work related.

  On 8/12/2014 at 3:47 PM, mokz said:

I took an Eurolines bus from Kaunas, Lithuania to Berlin over Poland just last July and it was something like 40 euros.

bloody hell i swear we southerners get fucking swindled on everything. sevilla-barcelona is like 80-100 euros.

looks like I'll just be sticking to exploring the north of Italy and the south coast of France. costs/logistics of going anywhere else by bike are prohibitive. sorry English watimms, I will have to make sexy time with you la prochaine fois.

  On 8/12/2014 at 4:04 PM, mokz said:

Anyway, I've done a bit of traveling lately. Within the last year I've been to France (Mainland and Réunion), Madagascar, the Netherlands, Czech, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Slovenia and Croatia. Roughly in that order. Mostly backpacking, except for the Netherlands which was work related.

nice.

Spent a nice month in Peru this year, it was beautiful. Highly recommend it. Only other places I've been are Thailand and the US (aside from Canada I suppose).

We were going to do a month in Turkey next year, but with unrest in that area of the world I think we're going to switch our focus to Indonesia...

Anyone here been to Indo or the Philippines?

Yes, I've been to Indonesia.

My thoughts on it are mixed, Bali and surroundings were not the tropical idyllic that they were when I went 20 years ago, it is now a poisoned, dirty place.

So I went further to Lombok and the Gili islands and felt that they, too, were poisoned [not just by shit in the sea but by methamphetamine and other sordid things].

I had a top night out in Jakarta dancing to techno on pills which was pretty awesome. Was a dirty stinky city too.

But if you like Bangkok or those touristy areas of Thailand you should get on fine with it, loads of drugs, filth, white people drinking and shouting.

Lovely.

Probably want to explore deeper into Indonesia if you're looking for nature and tranquility I kept on going more remote and more remote and nothing hardly changed except I was further away from catching my plane.

I'm living in Phnom Pehn atm and it's the same, really nice if you put some fucking effort in and mission cross country and/or pay up for a resort.

Thanks I'll keep that in mind... I like a nice mix of things when I travel, not just straight city/ppl/partying...

Yeh it's a fucking long old country with various islands so I'm sure if you check travel forums you can find out where to go, it seems that places that we're idyllic two years ago are now taken over by loads of businesses vying for backpacker or richer clientele. Obviously nothing wrong with that but can mean that somewhere you were expecting to be quiet and relaxing is now blasting out rnb 24/7 everywhere you look.

Obviously some nights out partying with the backpacker crew and long toothed ex pats is totally fun, just not when everyone is 20 and on their first trip away from home falling for every scam in the book.

It's better to dress casual and like you've seen it all before and then you are not treated like new blood at every place you rock up to.

I've found if I go on a trip with an itinerary it can be more stressful than just jumping on random buses to places and finding out what happens when you get there.

On my way to Burma (Myanmar) for three months. Will be there for work, but hope to travel a bit in SE Asia as well. Leaving in slightly less than 11 hours, have not yet started packing!!

  On 8/12/2014 at 4:04 PM, mokz said:

Anyway, I've done a bit of traveling lately. Within the last year I've been to France (Mainland and Réunion), Madagascar, the Netherlands, Czech, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Slovenia and Croatia. Roughly in that order. Mostly backpacking, except for the Netherlands which was work related.

Nice. What kinds of transportation were you using?

Has anyone tried using Interrail to travel between the cities? Is it a good way to do it?