Category: Europe

As luck would (not) have it, in Prague.

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I know I have promised to write more often when I’m in Europe, but to be frank this is the first time I have had some down time, just sitting down for a few hours and staying awake. Other times I had been simply walking around exploring and getting lost (my laptop lying forgotten in the hotel room) or collapsing either on a train couchettes or on my hotel bed out of exhaustion after the said walking.

So many things have happened over the past few days, and most of them have been really good. Apart from that day in Paris when we were panicking because we thought that we were going to miss the train but we actually ended up really early at the train station; or the time in the train from Paris to Berlin when I did not know I had to activate my Eurail tickets at the train station and almost cost my family a total of EUR 1,000 just to buy another set of tickets (luckily the ticket inspector took pity after a little bit of pleading, tear shedding and some help from a nice German passenger who shared our compartment). But other than those minor glitches, we have seen beautiful buildings and structures, eaten yummy food and ice cream and taken in much history lessons.

The point is travelling had been good so far.

Until Prague.

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The city was very pretty alright, and I loved the rustic and ancient feel of it. But I think everyone has their own kind of luck with a city – some places are just meant to make your lives difficult and you just want to leave. Just like how Pisa was to me five years ago (I will write a post about my disastrous time there one day), by the end of it, I felt my money was cheated dry and I could not wait to leave Prague.

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Europa bound (and Jay Jay the Cat).

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I realised I haven’t been the most clear at conveying messages. I have every now and then for the past few weeks spoken about me going for my “trip of the year”, having to apply for visas, travelling some few thousand miles up north, receiving train ticket passes, etc. But never have I explicitly told you what I’m up to with all those ramblings. I guess if you put two and two together, you would probably have figured it out, but let me just write it down once and for all.

I am now in Europe (Paris, to be exact) and will be in this part of the world for the next five weeks.

I’m really excited since this is the first time I’m going for a long trip ever since I started this blog. I will try to update this space as often as possible with things I observe, the sights I love, the mistakes I make along the way, the things I eat, the places I stay, or simply how I feel about a particular thing.

But first, let me introduce you to my new friend here in Paris. Meet Jay Jay. She is one of the hosts at the apartment where I stay for my first night here.

2014-07-27 05.46.54 2014-07-26 12.53.54

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The walk from Paddington to Baker Street.

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It was a cold and rather gloomy morning on my last day in London back in December 2012. I was flying to Copenhagen that night on the eve of Christmas Eve (if there is such a phrase) before the tubes stopped working, and I did not plan for any itinerary for the day (because it completely slipped my mind). I knew Little Venice was just around the corner to where I was staying at Paddington, so I decided to test my sense of direction and just explored the area by foot. Which was a really brave move considering I practically had no sense of direction and had no idea how to get to Little Venice. So I set off from my hostel shortly after breakfast, turned left instead of right as I had done all the days before this on my way to the tube, and started my little walking adventure. I walked for a distance till I reached the end of Westbourne Terrace, and I decided to look back to the street that I have been treading every single day over the past 7 days to find this.

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Deserted but beautiful.

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Lost and found photos from Europe (and Taylor Swift).

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Yesterday felt like a day of second chances. When my brother announced a few months ago that his laptop got stolen along with his camera SD card which contained pictures from my family’s Europe trip last summer, I was pretty bummed. I spent weeks after that trying to get over it and trying not to think of what pictures in there that I would never see again. Of course, the more I tried, the more I would remember what were in there.

So when my brother told me yesterday that apparently his SD card had not been lost with his computer, I was thrilled beyond words. After an unbelievably long week for so many different reasons, my spirit was considerably lifted up.

I have then decided to take the initiative to back up all these photos into a few different places because really, how often do you get second chances?

Well as it turned out, you may get second chances twice in a day! Just a few hours before this happy discovery, my friend managed to get us tickets to Taylor Swift’s Red Tour in Singapore – a concert that had been sold out the first day the tickets were on sale and because we did not sit and wait in front of our computer to purchase them, we did not get our hands on them. However, since her sold out concert in Bangkok is cancelled due to the political situation there, the organiser had decided to hold another one in Singapore and voila! the tickets were miraculously available again. We snatched them up in no time and I am going to see Taylor Swift live in Singapore on 9th of June!!!

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Anyway, I have digressed. What I really want to show you through this post are some photos from my brother’s camera that I’m glad could see the daylight again.

So let’s start with my photo looking naturally lost at Copenhagen Central Station. I guess this is how I look most of the time, with my close-to-nonexistent sense of direction.

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Bearing in mind that this was probably my 50th time there.

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Header of the Month: Nighttime London.

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I had a hard time deciding what the header of the month should be for May.

So I decided on London, the city I know and love best after Copenhagen. And since my favourite London friend’s birthday is this month, I suppose it is apt to dedicate this feature post to the city where he grew up.

By the Thames, London, United Kingdom.

Header London

We all just have to accept this fact: Samuel Johnson did not exaggerate. His famous quote, “No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford,” was true to the last word. Having visited London on three different occasions now, I still can’t get enough of it. It simply has everything, from old architecture to modern ones; musical plays and football stadiums; a place like Canary Wharf buzzing with serious looking people and hipsters’ den at Camden; expensive shops and shabby ones; dirty toilets and beautiful scenery. A place of contrast – some people may call it messy, but to me, they are all co-existing in a beautiful chaos.

The city is as beautiful during the day as it is during sunset, and at night. During Christmas period, it gets an added sparkle from the festive and twinkling lights. It may seem off-season to post Christmas pictures now, but just in case you plan to visit London in December, here are pictures that I took of some of the most beautiful sights in the city.

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Header of the Month: Nyhavn.

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As much as I love my Nyhavn shot, even the best pictures get old. And what can I do to keep the look fresh without much effort? Why of course to keep changing the header. I have now decided to add a new feature to this blog – Header of the Month, where I will be picking pictures taken by yours truly from some of my travel destinations as headers of the blog and write about them. I think this is one of my stroke of brilliance since if anything, it will at least ensure that I have to fill you guys in once a month even when my travel traffic is low.

So without further ado, the header of this month (December and January and February):

Nyhavn, Copenhagen, Denmark

Nyhavn

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The Underground Love.

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As I was sieving through my London pictures on Facebook to write my last post, I discovered something about myself: I may have a secret love for the London Underground. Not sure whether this is because of my love for trains, or that I keep roaming around the city which forced me to spend a lot of my time in the tunnels or whether I am just plain weird, I seem to be taking pictures incessantly of anything related to the Tube.

Let’s face it: I think the Tube is fascinating.

Now I know some of you will jump in protest. I am perfectly aware that the London railway system is not the most reliable thing in the world. And despite having only been in London three times, I have had my fair share of disrupted railways, Tube not running on important days like Christmas and getting lost in the tunnels (no surprise there). In fact, when Singapore recently introduced TV screens to indicate the service operation for each of its MRT lines, I joked to my friend that we have dropped to London standard since this means that the service will be disrupted often enough to warrant such investment.

Having said that, you’ve got to admit that London Underground is fascinating. Being the oldest metro system in the world, it is still functioning until now since its opening in 1863. It now has 270 stations with 402 kilometres of track. So I suppose we just have to be more forgiving for the slow upgrades because to be frank, most people would not have the foresight of 150 years or so?

Anyway, whatever your views towards the Tube are, some love just can’t be explained. So here it is, in pictures, my love story with the London Underground.

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What I didn’t expect from London.

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You can say that I’m lucky. It has been a childhood dream of mine to visit England, London in particular, thanks to all Enid Blyton’s books, Harry Potter and Daniel Radcliffe. And now in the past four years, I have visited London 3 times and loved it very much there. (I did have to wait for 21 years before my first visit, but hey, it is still a dream come true!)

Being one of the most visited cities in the world, London should hold little surprise for anyone: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, London Bridge, the royal family, Hyde Park, Harrods, you name it. But I guess that’s the beauty of travelling, no matter how much you read about it, the experience you have is your own and no amount of research through travel guides could foretell what you will see there nor the many pleasant surprises that you may encounter.

Like the fact that after all this day-dreaming, the first picture I took in London was actually of the DLR.

Anything that moved was exciting.
Anything that moved was exciting.

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Jeg Elsker Danmark.

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(Translation: I love Denmark.)

If there ever was a statistic collected on how many times a person visits Denmark in their lifetime, I probably would be an outlier, at the FAR high side. Having visited the country four times over the past five years and meeting the PRINCE once while visiting (OKAY, I will stop bragging about it after this post, maybe), I think I can safely declare that Denmark is indeed my favourite country in the world.

Those who know me will know about my love for Denmark and suspect that I have a secret Danish boyfriend. But those who know me well, will know that I can just be weird that way.

Having said that, I don’t think I am THAT weird. There are so many things about the country that do not get the glory it deserves (although that’s partly the reason why I love it so much since it doesn’t get too much attention). Just like how a lot of people did not know that giant corporations such as Lego, Maersk and Carlsberg are from Denmark, here are the list of some cool things that I love from the Land of the Vikings, that you may or may not already know:

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The Prince and I.

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One of the perks of being a part-time badminton journalist is that you get access to all the press conference rooms and speak to all the world-renowned badminton players. In most places, you get to sit at the best seats for free since you will be the one telling the whole world about how awesome the tournament is. For an avid badminton fan (okay, almost maniac) like me, it was more than I could have asked for.

But another less known perk of being a badminton journalist is that you get to meet other non-badminton famous people. Like the minister of sports. Or a prince.

Yes, you read it correctly, a P R I N C E. I still can’t believe it till this moment. I have met and spoken to a real life PRINCE. Even though it was more than a year ago, I’m still hyperventilating as I’m writing about it. It all happened so fast that I did not even have time to faint right there and then.

I was just doing my post badminton match ritual at Copenhagen Masters 2012 in well, Copenhagen. It always pretty much goes by this sequence: you sit and watch a badminton match, when a match finishes you run off to the press conference room to interview the players if they interest you, then you return to the media room to jot down the quotes into your computer and return to the stadium again to catch the next match and repeat the same steps.

But that day I decided to break the cycle. I guess it was because I was rather tired from running around the stadium, but after interviewing one of the players, I did not return immediately to the media room. Instead a few of us decided to just hang around after a press conference and rested our feet. It had been a long day.

Suddenly the door opened and a few important looking men came into the room.

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