TRAVEL TIPS

These days you can book most things for a holiday yourself. With the aid of technology you can navigate around almost anywhere in the world.

I mainly use Booking.com to do my Accommodation bookings. Although likes of Airbnb is popular some places are banning it due to too many scams. Some Airbnb owners now also advertise on Booking.com and it is hard to tell at times, some well managed photos can take you to absolute shitholes.

On this most recent trip we did which was 6 weeks away I did all my flight bookings on the Air New Zealand website but opted to use Singapore Airlines. We did Napier, Auckland, Singapore, Manchester on the way to UK then Milan, Singapore, Auckland, Napier on the return, however, we used a partner airline Lufthansa to do both Manchester to Berlin and also Munich to Bilbao, and Singapore Airlines from Barcelona to Milan those three flights booked separately to the Air New Zealand booking. Our Flights even though we flew Air Singapore were ticketed with a code with 086 in the ticket number and showing our Koru card that allowed us to use the lounge in Singapore as we are both Koru members. We did get Koru status points for all of our flights but a small amount than we would have got had we opted for Air New Zealand planes.

We opted to use Avis Rental cars in UK, Germany & Austria, Portugal and Spain, then a train from Seville to Barcelona, and public transport such as metro, trams, buses and so on. Apart from a flat tyre in the UK and loosing about 6 hours as the car had no tax or spare tyre all that went well. I did look into a car rental company SIXT a German company as I had used them before but all the bookings I tried they had a limited kilometer usage and quite expensive for exceeding those Km. Also a few bad reports about them on Facebook and websites I checked. We drove almost 5,000 km total in the three cars.

In Berlin, Barcelona and Singapore we used the Hop On Hop off buses, each time i had prebooked the tickets which turned out to be vouchers which on two occasions needed redeemed for actual tickets. One of those was easy as there was a lady by the bus the other did mean going to a shopping mall in Singapore and locating their office to exchange whereas on every occasion I could have got the tickets on the bus itself. I had used GetYourGuide for these which I will not use next time.

We also used trains. The one I used for Seville to Barcelona was booked well ahead of time and was on RailNinja which I later found out was not good and to use TrainLine or Omio. The bullet rain was very quick and saved me a couple of days on our itinerary.
I did find a ticket machine at one rail station at St Goar was not working and that was a problem as my mobile data was not working at the time to use my train app to get a ticket, but after the data issue was solved I got a ticket on Omio and everything went well. We used trains to and from Milan Airport to central station which worked well as it was a very expensive taxi ride otherwise. So we just needed a taxi from train station to and from the Hotel.

For phone data I had a 30 day Airalo Europe which included UK. I also had Holafly data for the amount of days we needed on another device. It seemed to be a better option than Airalo. I also got Holafly data for our time in Singapore. Try and buy and install while you have good internet and in a country that speaks your language. I got one for Singapore while I was in Italy and that did not go well as all the instructions were in Italian.

City Passes are sometimes worthwhile although we never got any I do regret that. Some passes allow travel on the trams, buses, metro and some even allow entry into some attractions and museums.

Getting into Singapore on the way home we had a 3 dy stopover. Singapore needs you now to apply prior to arrival for a tourist visa which can be done with the MyICA app or online. It needs a lot of info like passport details flight in and out etc much like most visas did in the past.

Coming back to New Zealand is also handy just to use the app for returning. The App called NZTD is easy enough to use or online if you prefer.

We used the WISE card and App for some of our spending while away. We pre-loaded what we thought we may need and it can be loaded in various currencies such as we choose Euro, Singapore dollars and Pounds plus New Zealand dollars which we could convert if needed. However a big thing to remember that if you run out of any of those currencies on the card it takes it at Visa rates from your other currencies so we had a few extra fees added when mine ran out and sucked the other currencies dry. When a currency is loaded on you can pay in the local currency or take money out of ATM’s in that local currency. ATMS’ are NOT all free some have high charges, especially at Airports.

IF Paying by Visa always use the local currency echange and not NZ dollars or you end up with two exchange fees.

Translation app we had was DeepL
Travel spend was another app although I did not make full use of these two.

You can download maps of the areas you are going to be in and use Google maps offline it can save data.

Places that are popular such as Segrada Familia and Park Guell in Barcelona, the Berlin Tower and Revolving restaurant etc prebook a couple of months in advance as they fill up fast. A few places we did not prebook that when we dicided to go were booked out.

Rome2Rio is another worthwhile app for various activities and travel although I had it installed I never used it. It can do flights, trains, bus, ferryies, rideshare, rental cars and accommodation. It can also do comparrisons on any of those options.

Allow plenty of time at Airports. These days our airport experiences varied from long to quick. We had longer lines and departing each place seems to be the main checks as arriving in places seemed quite relaxed. When we went through Singapore enroute to UK we had our bags checked all the way from Napier to Manchester, that went well. However we did stay in the transit area the entire time and never came through customs or out of the airport. So we were quite surprised to have a very severe bag check leaving Singapore about 7 hours after we had just arrived. We later found out the plane was carrying on from Manchester to Houston so with potential Americans on board there was a lot more checking. We ran into that a couple more times on our trip.

Things we took: Plastic zip lock bags various sizes, meds, tea/coffee sachets, travel kettle, travel mugs, power outlet adapters, cables for charging everything, blow up travel cushion for hard long haul flight seats, all our clothing was in compression packing cubes of various sizes, laundry powder sachets (stolen from Quest Hotels we have stayed in over the years), Dish was sachets (same), travel alarm clock, ear plugs, usb charge cables for the plane (one Singapore plane had USB-A and USB-C and also a power outlet, the other Singapore planes had USB-A and a power outlet UK Plug socket adapter needed). Lufthansa had none. Panadol, GPS we took my Garmin Drivesmart 76 with Europe maps and I had put in all our accommodation and some routes I planned to take in the Garmin before I left home. Raincoat or pack-a-mac type thing each, small knife and chopping board, light weight supermarket bags x 2, a portable hard drive to store the 2500 photos I took

Things we wish we had taken: A Power Bank for charging phone on the run (although I got one in Berlin), portable Umbrellas although we ended up buying one each, t-spoons, knife, fork and spoon would have been handy. a generic sink plug as not all places had a plug. My phone was using battery at a hell of a speed, by mid day it was needing charged, as I was using it mainly for photos and Google Maps.