Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
The Shabbat is a time concept unknown to non-Jews. Travelling to Israel gives you the need to coordinate your travel plans in or around this time slot. It starts at sundown on Friday (often with a dinner of the family) and ends on Saturday at sundown. During this time shops are often closed, you might not check in to hotels (though I never experienced this problem) and most major sights are shut down. Just like on Sundays in Germany, only from dusk till dusk.
Official currency of Israel is the New Israeli Shekel (NIS), divided into 100 agorod. The sign used to display shekel values is ₪. Banknotes of 20, 50, 100 and 200 shekels are circulating; you get coins of 10, 5, 2, 1 and 1/2 shekel value. You could exchange money in your home country, but it is most often recommended to bring EUR or USD – you can easily exchange these currencies against NIS at post offices (even as there might be some waiting lines).
The Hotel Melody in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel is a wonderful boutique hotel close to the Mediterranean Sea and the old harbour of Tel Aviv. It is in second row to the sea, half behind the Hilton Hotel and the Independence Park. A walk to the waterline lasts only five minutes, also a walk to Ben Gurion street for shopping or having a coffee is the same distance away.
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The Ben Gurion airport close to Tel Aviv-Yafo is a very modern and good airport of medium size. It is connected by train to the city but most travellers might prefer rental cars instead. Arriving at TLV starts with a passport control that can last some minutes and includes some trivial questions about the planned stay.
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I went to Paris, France several times when I was a child. My parents were guiding tourist groups to the city and were a bit lost, not speaking French or even English. That’s why I had to use my uprising language skills at the capital city of France.
I returned to Paris once in 2010 to rediscover the city on my own. And now I had the feeling that another trip would by necessary, mainly because of two reasons: (a) I never used the train à grande vitesse (TGV) and (b) I never arrived at the Musée d’Orsay while it was open. It was like a curse and for me being a fan of French Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism this situation wasn’t acceptable.
Continue reading “36 hours at the living museum”
The TGV is a two-floor highspeed train of the French railway company SNCF running on the grande lignes in France. It also goes to Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Köln and München. It is on duty since 1981 and can go as fast as 320 km/h. The train à grande vitesse is comparable by quality with the German ICE. It has some special features like a nifty salon where four persons are sitting in a compartment faceing each other at a table. A classy kind of travelling!
Going to the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris, France is always fun! It is a futuristic building in the heart of Paris, close to the Hôtel de Ville. If you get inside you’ll find free WiFi, a bar, a nice art shop, a children’s art playground – but this museum is a playground for humans of all age.
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At the end of the over-crowded, commercialized and steadily inclining Champs-Élysées you’ll find the Arc de Triomphe at Place Charles de Gaulle. It has been built by order of Napoleon to commemorate the victory of the battle of Austerlitz in 1806. You can walk trough a subterranean passage to the Arc and get on top – seeing 14 main streets crossing.
Continue reading “The Étoilé”
Not as vast as Père Lachaise but also bigger than big. The Cimetière de Montmartre is a more quite graveyard close to the center of the neighborhood of Montmartre. You can stroll around and look out for history.
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Strolling throughout Montmartre in the morning is always a great idea. But there comes the point where you definitely need a café au lait and a croissant. In that case the boulangerie of Gontran Cherrier is a great stop: while you sit there you can have Montmartre behind the windows and a magnifique pain au chocolat at your fingertips.
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