Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Adek's Week Off: Preamble

I don’t know why I didn’t know of Cinque Terre in Italy until early last year so I told myself I would visit it this year (couldn’t fit it in my trip last September). I also almost kicked myself when I realised I should have visited Alberobello when I was in Bari in September. So I decided that I must cover Alberobello too this year. I searched for tickets during the MATTA Fair and finally bought the last Etihad seat on offer. I had planned on flying to/fro Milan but wanted to visit Luxembourg City properly (my first trip there was too short and very limited) so I spent some time looking for connections. I thought of flying easyJet from Milan to Luxembourg but stopped when I found the airline only allowed one bag on board -  hey even RyanAir allows one cabin bag (max 10 kg with certain dimensions) and one other bag. Then I realised I could just buy a multiple city ticket and did just that: I bought ticket to Frankfurt with return trip from Milan. Then I searched for ground connections. There’s a Flibco coach service from FRA all the way to Luxembourg City stopping at Frankfurt Hahn and some other towns en route – and it would cost me only €5. And I could take a coach to Brussels Charleroi also for €5 (my first time flying out of this airport) and fly to Brindisi from there. I continued my search and found I could fly to Pisa from Bari and decided to make it my base for Cinque Terre (I did consider staying in La Spezia but accommodation there is either more expensive than Pisa or far from the train station). In Pisa, I found a B&B which was within walking distance from both the airport and train station so it was a no brainer to decide on Pisa. From Pisa, I found an intercity train to Milan for only €9.

I had a choice of staying in Brindisi but when I started reading, I found a lot of references to Lecce and surmised that Brindisi is a stopping point for Lecce. There’s even a coach from Brindisi Airport to Lecce but I decided against it as the coach goes to Lecce City Terminal which is 2.3 km away from the train which isn’t ideal if I wanted to leave early in the morning. Sure I could take the city bus but it’d be such a hassle. So I decided to take a bus from Brindisi Airport to the station and take a train to Lecce (only €2.80) and find accommodation near the train station. The next challenge was finding accommodation in Milan: I can’t recall where I stayed on my first visit there but was surprised to find accommodation pretty pricey in Milan. Finally I decided to book a dorm bed in a 5-bed all girls’ dorm at Central Hostel Milano. I was still trying to find a single room near to Milano Centrale and even contemplated AirBnB but in the end, decided to stick to the hostel.


Having bought the Etihad air ticket, RyanAir tickets, Flibco tickets and TrenItalia ticket, and booked accommodation, I then searched for train connections.




To be continued