Category Archives: Travel-Frugal

Life Amongst The Bikes in Amsterdam

Look left, look right, and be aware! There are more bicycles in Amsterdam, used on a daily basis for every purpose imaginable, than any other city in Europe. According to GreenAnswers.com, 40% of the total traffic is made up of bicyclists.

Many other cities around the planet now aspire to be equally bike-powered and green, but ask yourself these questions while you peruse the photos.

Could you ‘car pool’ your children to school without a car — or shop for a week’s worth of groceries and get them home via pedal-power?

Bike riding parent with children

What if you purchased a piece of furniture, didn’t want to pay a delivery fee, and decided to just have a go at bringing it home on your bike?

Walking the table home

Can you hitch a sidesaddle ride on a bike for a breezy afternoon outing?

Hitching a ride on the back of a bike

And as to parking them? Bikes are chained up simply everywhere including along the railings of bridges and fences, to window grilles along building fronts, and to lamp posts.

Bike on a bridge

Even though bikes in this city are chained/latched/attached to anything that seems remotely stable and firm — as you can see by the sign below, that is not always appreciated by the owners of various buildings!

No parking sign for bikes

Another option is to park in someplace safe and secure like this 3 story garage for cycles which is looked after by security guards and is situated quite close to the front of Central Station. BELOW: 3 level bike parking lot. Photo by Mark Harmes

3 level bike parking lot. Photo by Mark Harmes

During our recent 8 day visit, I was especially impressed with the Bakfiets that I saw simply everywhere carrying children of all ages and sizes in the front section as the parents steered from the back. And whether used with or without the hooded ‘convertible top’ to keep the child passengers or shopping dry, the families that we saw using these sensible vehicles all looked relaxed and happy in spite of the winter temperatures.

Bikes with attached cart-style child carriers

This is one of the most charming cities in Europe and any visit to Amsterdam is made all the more delightful by being able to navigate through this beautiful city and enjoy scenic streets which are not clogged with noisy or air-polluting cars.

Unless otherwise indicated, all photography is by Deborah Harmes.
Copyright
©Deborah Harmes and ©A Wanderful Life
Please respect the copyright of all text and photos on this website. All rights reserved.

6 Simple Steps To Save On Your Trip To Amsterdam

The misty mornings, the postcard-perfect views over almost every canal, the ease of getting around, the sensible and eco-friendly bicycle culture, the friendliness of every single person we met — these are just a few of the joys of travelling to one of my favourite European cities, Amsterdam!

Brouwersgracht Canalside

Here are 6 simple steps that helped us save money by ‘living like a local’ while we were there for 8 days recently.

1. Rent an apartment instead of staying in a hotel. I did a web search on “short term apartments in Amsterdam” and the links that caught my eye were not the very expensive commercial ones. Instead, I was drawn to two very similar sites — Roomorama and AirBnB. After searching through the options on both sites for an arrival on a prime travel-booking date of New Year’s Eve, I chose Roomorama based on the variety of apartments still available and was very pleased with the apartment that we rented in the Jordaan area. Both sites contain a range of prices and neighbourhoods.

2. Cook your own meals in that apartment — and that means shopping for groceries!

Cracker aisle in Amsterdam grocery

Grocery shopping in Amsterdam

Just by getting out and walking around the neighbourhood on our first day, we quickly discovered that Albert Heijn grocery stores were scattered all over Amsterdam in every district.

The word “winkel” means shop, so the click-on link above takes you to a map of their shops both within Amsterdam and in other parts of the country.

Even when you are moving past the obvious and easy choices of fruit and vegetables, food looks pretty much the same all over Europe, North America, and Australia or New Zealand in spite of the name on the package being quite different.

Besides, it’s fun to pick up your winkelwagon (shopping cart) and put some items in there like unknown cheese varieties, milk or butter in many shades and sizes, or these crackers to the left with mystery names.

Home cooked dinner in Amsterdam

Here’s an example above of one of the delicious meals that we cooked in the apartment with locally sourced groceries.

3. Use public transport such as trams, trains, and buses.

Tram at Museumplein

OV-Chipkaart for Amsterdam

One of the nicest things about Amsterdam is the ease with which you can traverse the city by using a combination of trams and buses along with trains for the suburban trips. A sensible way to save money is to refrain from buying individual tickets for each journey and to instead purchase a multi-trip pass sold by GVB — the public transportation company.

After doing some online research, we decided to purchase an OV-Chipkaart which would allow us several days of travel on any of the trams or buses in Amsterdam. These durable plastic cards are the size of a credit card, are valid for 5 years, and are rechargeable with a credit card at ATM style machines scattered all over the city. These ‘hole in the wall’ recharge machines are usually located right next to a bank ATM.

There is a wonderful series of network maps and tourism site maps on the GVB website. Just click on the link to find them.

We purchased our cards at the GVB Ticket Office in the Tourist Information building at Stationsplein, directly opposite the huge Central Station. But they are also available from dispensing machines in places such as Schiphol Airport.

4. Buy a Museum Pass and save, save, save!
Most visitors to Amsterdam will be planning on a visit to one or more of the stunning museums here such as the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum, the Anne Frank House, the Stedelijk Museum, the Amsterdam Historisch Museum, and many more.

For the avid museum-goer, you can purchase the Museumkaart which is sold at the entry of most of the major museums for €39 plus a one-time €4.95 administration charge for issuing the card. We used our card at all 5 of the museums that I have just named and once you get past 3 admissions at an average of €15 each, the card has paid for itself. Our next two museum visits after that were essentially free.

You will receive another plastic card that is the size of a credit card and this one is valid for a full year. It certainly encourages you to come back for another visit during that 12 month period because the card covers over 400 museums, castles, and sites of significance all over the Netherlands, not just within Amsterdam.

5. Shop and eat where the locals do and avoid the streets where the tourists are.

Taking a break in a local cafe

Expresso at a Turkish cafe

Whether you are buying a croissant at a bakery, taking a break for lunch and a coffee, or stopping for a cocktail and some snacks, save yourself a lot of money and get off of the main tourist thoroughfares. Run away from cafes or restaurants where you see tourists with guidebooks on the table! Instead, seek out the neighbourhood cafes where the locals are reading their newspapers in the local language.

A perfect example of the shopping locally concept was the pastry run that my husband made one morning for croissants. He was up quite early on one of our first mornings in Amsterdam and he walked down to one of the main tourist streets and purchased four of them for €7. The following morning, after we had done a thorough perusal of our neighbourhood, he purchased four much nicer and much fresher croissants in our local bakery for €3.20 — a more than 50% savings.

You can apply that same principal to just about everything including the ubiquitous cup of coffee. Instead of paying €3.50 for an expresso or €3.90 for a far-too-milky latte, why not head down to the local Turkish cafe for a rich, fragrant, and strong cup of java at the budget friendly cost of €2.25 or less. Yum!

6. Sort out how to access money before you leave home.
Two of the fastest ways to burn up extra cash are by making too many visits to the ATM machine for cash whilst travelling and by using your credit card too liberally. A far better set of strategies are to
(a) have a few hundred euros with you upon arrival. We ordered this currency from our local bank in Australia and it was free of any transaction fees. Your own bank will almost always give you a much better exchange rate than those airport stands or street-side foreign exchange shops.
(b) keep your withdrawals to a minimum and take out more than you normally would back home. Your linked bank back home will most likely charge you a foreign ATM fee in addition to the foreign currency exchange fee. If you are withdrawing €100 at a time instead of €300-500, you will be paying an average of $8.50 in US or Australian dollars/£5.50 in British funds for each of those €100 withdrawals. So it is far more sensible to take a larger amount out each time.
(c) use a linked banking network. You will probably always be charged the currency exchange fee by your bank since they are simply passing on the cost of conversion to you. But what if you could find a way to bypass the on-average $5-or-more fee for using an overseas ATM machine that does not belong to your own bank? I made a point of opening an account in Australia with a bank that was a member of the Global Alliance. By using a bank that is associated with this international group of banks, I can access my money for FREE (not including the mandatory currency exchange fee) at banks throughout the world. Check with your own bank prior to departure to determine if they participate in such a network. Then you can use the same method to save you some money that you can happily spend on food or fun instead of fees!
(d) find out what it will cost you to use a credit card overseas for purchases. You certainly get the most accurate foreign exchange rate when you use credit cards, but they also attract rather a lot of fees with every purchase. On average, most banks charge a whopping 5% of the cost of the purchase for the ‘convenience factor’ of using your credit card abroad. And on top of that, you will also be charged a currency conversion fee. Save yourself the resultant shock when you check your online bank statement and be informed about your options and the costs involved before you depart on your trip.

Hundreds of euros can be saved by following the strategies that I have outlined above. By doing a bit of advanced planning, you can relax and spend your travel money where you want to spend it, not where you are forced to spend it.

NOTE: All prices were current at the time of writing in 2011.

Lounging Through A Layover in Kuala Lumpur

Starbucks is my friend — at least in Kuala Lumpur! I haven’t really paid much attention to this particular chain of coffeehouses since I moved away from Washington State over a decade and a half ago. But here I am, paying two visits in one day because they have free wifi and we are spending almost a full day in layover mode. We leave for Amsterdam in several hours and I’m trying to catch up on some work without paying $7.50 an hour at our hotel. Those are NOT budget friendly ‘extras’ when you are trying to travel in a frugal manner — and those extras add up.

Starbucks Kuala Lumpur International Airport

I have a perfectly serviceable area to use as an office on the road in our hotel room, but I was astonished at how fast I burned through that one hour purchase. So back I trekked to Starbucks. And we are sitting here sipping tea in the lounge behind the facade that you can see in this shot above and both of us are happily working online.

Office On The Road

Big blue plane outside the hotel window in Kuala Lumpur

We took a nap this afternoon and when I opened the curtains afterward, the first words out of my mouth were, “Whoa! Big blue plane!” And that’s exactly what was right beneath my window. Our hotel is actually inside the terminal and we never had to exit through customs or passport control, so we are right next to all of the airline traffic outside. Interestingly, we can’t hear any of that though and the windows are at least double-glazed, possibly triple-glazed. It is completely silent inside while you eat or shop or, most importantly, sleep.

Luxury shopping in KL International Airport

There is a full sized mall area inside the Kuala Lumpur International Airport — but trust me, this isn’t budget shopping! This is definitely aimed at the upmarket traveller with lots of disposable dollars, euros, pounds, or whatever other currency. And interestingly, the shops and restaurants allow you to make your purchases in whatever foreign currency you have with you. But you do need to be aware that the change you receive back will be in Malaysian currency. We learned that lesson at breakfast and have made sure to use a credit card or debit card for everything ever since.

Need to go repack my carry-on bag. My next post will be from Amsterdam!

Living Like A Local at Coogee Beach in Sydney Australia

Intense glare, stunning heat, sunburnt bodies sprawled on every inch of sand, men in swimming trunks wearing Santa hats, and the unmistakable fragrance of coconut-scented suntan lotion — it all conspired to give me a serious flashback moment to childhood Christmas holidays spent on Florida beaches. But then the smell of beer and sizzling sausages combined with the overlapping Aussie or British or Irish or Scottish or German or French or whatever other accents and it jolted me back to the 21st century. I looked around and knew that I was in Australia for Christmas at the beach.

I didn’t try to take an expensive professional camera with me on Christmas Day because we would have gotten jostled in the thick crowds. The picture below was taken on Boxing Day — the very next day after Christmas — and the crowds were back to a manageable size. But this gives you a glimpse of this little piece of heaven.

Boxing Day at Coogee Beach in Sydney, Australia

Even the ‘Mums and Bubs Pool’ (aka Mothers and Babies Paddle Pool to you non-OZ folks) was thinned out compared to the previous day. But as you can see by the clock on the Surf Life Saving Club building, it was late in the day and rather a lot of people had already packed up and gone home.

Beachside Mums and Bubs Pool at Coogee Beach in Sydney Australia

We are currently enjoying our final week in Australia and the beachside Christmas which is quintessentially Aussie. We were able to have this final holiday in Australia because we were quite generously given the keys to a friend’s apartment which sits just up the hill from these scenes — a less than ten minute walk away. She lives in such an idyllic spot and we feel very blessed to be living in her gorgeous apartment while she is out of town.

Sometimes it’s the little things that allow you to relax into your holiday a bit more thoroughly — and having a full sized kitchen, a big deep bath tub, a spacious living room, and a view of a beautiful beachside neighbourhood has certainly contributed to our sense of well-being. I’m not a loving-the-sand kind of person but Mark certainly is. There are days when he goes down for a swim three times in one day. And watching the stress of our former lives just melt off of his face is quite joyous.

I do enjoy the beach scene as a spectator and observer. And as you can see, there is always something worth taking pictures of!

Gateway to the Baths — a natural pool set in the rocks.

Coogee Beach is around the bend from the well known surfing spot, Bondi Beach, but Coogee is definitely more laid back and family oriented.

Back down the hill from the apartment where we are “living like a local” is a very convenient street that contains well over a dozen cafes and restaurants along with pharmacies, gift shops, numerous banks, doctors and dentists, and a full-sized grocery store. Just like our previous stay in North Sydney, the proximity of all of these stores allowed us to shop for food and supplies every few days and cut our daily expense budget in half or less.

I’ll be sorry to see this end tomorrow, but we are off on an evening flight to Kuala Lumpur, a one day layover, and then it’s on to cold and wintery Amsterdam for a week before we travel to England. What a shock to the body that change of temperature is going to be!

We will be arriving in Amsterdam on the morning of New Year’s Eve. After a bit of sleep to recover from the jet lag, we will be ushering in a New Year AND a new life in the Northern hemisphere. And yes, we will be “living like a local” there, too.

Stay tuned for more travel adventures and a wrap-up of our temporary life in Sydney!

COPYRIGHT
© Deborah Harmes and ©A Wanderful Life
Please respect the copyright of all text and photos on this website.
All rights reserved.

Living Like A Local in North Sydney

Travel writers and savvy individuals have known for years that the best way to fully appreciate a place was to settle in for awhile. Instead of paying a ‘flying visit’ or staying in a hotel, more and more people now choose to live in a short-term apartment or house rental so that they can shop in the local stores, cook in their temporary kitchen, and get a feel for the neighbourhood in a way that they never would have if they had been cossetted behind the walls of a hotel with room service and daily housekeeping services.

When you remove the bag carrying, room cleaning, food cooking, concierge, and front desk services of a hotel, you will frequently discover that apartment or house rentals can save you a substantial amount of money over the cost of a very average hotel. And if you value your privacy the way we do or you enjoy the opportunity to sleep late occasionally, you’ll appreciate the fact that no one will knock on the door in the morning to ask if you want your room cleaned.

We had an extraordinary opportunity recently when, instead of renting them out, two dear friends lovingly offered their two apartments to us at no cost for our 16 day stay in Sydney. We had just sold our house in Australia and had a 16 day period to fill prior to flying on to Amsterdam at the end of December. We would be staying in Sydney during the weeks before and after Christmas and any available rental apartments would have already been scooped up. The offer of these two apartments was both a wonderful surprise and a huge blessing!

Sydney is a very accessible metropolis with a comprehensive train and bus system, City Rail and Sydney Buses, linking the various neighbourhoods. The Sydney CBD (Central Business District) is a short distance from the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, but we were headed for the opposite side of that same bridge and the neighbourhood of North Sydney which is served by two different train stops at Milson’s Point and the North Sydney station.

A ten minute walk from either of the railway stations took us to the apartment, but I hadn’t expected it to be eight stories up in the air with views over the rooftops in that incredibly hilly neighbourhood. If you click on the photo and then look about 3/4 of the way over on the right, you will see a flag flying. That is atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge and we had the most wonderful view of the pre-Christmas fireworks over the bridge by simply standing on the balcony.

View of North Sydney rooftops from 8th floor balcony

I have to admit, I certainly got more of a work-out than I had expected every time we went out to shop or sightsee and I was huffing and puffing quite dramatically on the first few days there! But we found everything that we needed within a fifteen to twenty-five minute walk and the variety of shops and restaurant choices made our stay in North Sydney quite enjoyable. And I began to get fitter in the process of taking those daily walks!

One afternoon whilst on a trip to the bank, our curiosity got the best of us and we followed a stream of people who were descending on an escalator that dropped down beneath the pavement that we had been walking on. It became obvious as soon as we reached the bottom that we had arrived in the middle of a mall.

Greenwood Plaza in North Sydney-full sized underground shopping centre

The initial narrow hallway led into a bright and open two-level full-sized mall that was operating beneath the office buildings, cafes, shops, and streets above. Greenwood Plaza was a pleasant surprise, especially when we found a rather nice organic butcher, a lovely fruit market around the corner from a full-sized grocery store, a health food shop, and dozens of other beautiful shops. This well-stocked shopping centre was the perfect discovery to help us stay on track with our budget travel and healthy lifestyle concept of cooking our meals from fresh ingredients.

Narrow lane in North Sydney

North Sydney was certainly a delightful place to “live like a local” for a week. Old stone cottages on narrow and hilly lanes co-exist with looming high-rise commercial buildings on busy hilly streets and then give way to glorious hilly parkland that sweeps down to the water’s edge beneath the bridge at the Sydney Harbour. You may have noted the “hilly” theme of North Sydney, but it is gloriously green and leafy and relatively quiet compared to many other parts of this hustle-bustle city.

North Sydney park at base of Harbour Bridge--taken by Mark Harmes

Unless indicated, all photography by Deborah Harmes.

Catching Up and Moving On

Whew! It has been a race to the finish-line for the last few months — but we made it!

Any of you who read my other blog, Multiversal Musing, will know that we have been in prep mode for leaving Australia. We listed the beautiful little house that we had built the year before in June and then it took at least 4-6 weeks longer to sell than we had anticipated. So we ended up with our settlement and moving day being 2 weeks before Christmas. NOT exactly a good time of year to launch off from this country and still be able to find reasonable airfare!

Finding any ticket to Europe was getting to be quite a challenge and the costs were more than double what we would normally expect to pay for flights from Melbourne or Sydney to London. So I completely gave up, kept packing and organizing, and calmed the heck down about it all. Somehow I could feel in my bones that things were going to work out beautifully, even if we had to stay in Australia until mid-January to accomplish that.

Besides, there was SO MUCH to do. We decided to sell off all of our furniture and both cars as well as the lawn tractor and lots of miscellaneous ‘stuff’ so that we could get down to a teeny-tiny storage room that was smaller than our bedroom. And did we do it? Yes!!! We were still selling things a mere few days before departure, but we accomplished our goal and the sum total of our possessions is now approximately 12-13 cubic metres of boxes and bikes. And that is less than half of a shipping container.

I was sound asleep one night, dreaming of snowdrifts while actually trying to stay cool on a hot and sticky Australian night, when I had a physical sensation like someone knocking on a door in my head. My feet hit the floor, I opened my laptop, and I went back online for an airline search on Kayak and the solution presented itself. I had been reading the European newspapers and there were rumblings of rail strikes in France, Belgium, and England. And the weather was predicted to be as harsh and snowy as the winter of 2009-2010.

I changed my search field to flights to Amsterdam and there, on the ONE less expensive day between early December and early January, was our flight to Amsterdam on the Wednesday between Christmas and New Year. BOOKED — and I didn’t hesitate. But ooops! I had no place for us to stay — and we would be arriving on New Year’s Eve!

I quickly discovered that the hotels were fully booked except for the (yowsa!) €300 and up rooms and that is definitely not a part of our frugal travel mentality and weren’t really keen on staying at a noisy hostel.

Our favourite type of accommodation is a short term apartment or house rental because we enjoy cooking for ourselves and not eating in restaurants. We also appreciate having the option of sleeping late and not being awakened by a housekeeper trying to clean the hotel room. So off I went in search of a short term apartment and even those were almost fully booked. Persistence paid off when I heard back from one host at Roomarama who had a very reasonably priced apartment available for the full week. Again — BOOKED!

For our transportation from the Netherlands to England at the end of our one week Amsterdam visit, I chose to stay away from the airlines in case there was a repeat of the massive snowfalls that Europe had last winter. If you’ve watched the blizzard-conditions weather news for the last week, you’ll understand why I was overjoyed with that decision after-the-fact. The final elements clicked into place easily when I booked an overnight sailing on a Steena Sealink ship from Hook of Holland to the English coast in a darling little cabin.

There will be a stream of articles from this point forward covering everything from living-like-a-local ideas to transportation tips, reviews of hotels, restaurants, and suggestions for must-see places around the world.

And remember — frugal travel ideas will be our primary emphasis!

Frugal Travel in Expensive Melbourne – Part 3

What to do — what to see. You have arrived in one of the most vibrant cities in the world, so how can you make the best decisions about where to spend your energy and your dollars?

First, wrap your head around the idea that you are going to nibble at the edges of a very LARGE cake full of delights. That will give you some perspective as you begin to realize that you will be coming back to Melbourne again and again before you can begin to say that you ‘know’ the place.

Consider planning your to-do list by going to either of these websites for information prior to your arrival. The first one is the That’s Melbourne site where you can click on the various categories in the left-side column to find out what art, music, festival, sports, or other events in your own particular areas of interest are available during your visit. The second site to check is the What’s On Melbourne Guide which lets you search by DATE or by TOPIC.

You can learn a lot about a city and its ‘vibe’ by people-watching and often this proves to be a highly amusing free activity.

Lunch hour tap dancer on Bourke Street, Melbourne, Australia

Lunch hour tap dancer, Bourke Street Mall, Melbourne, Australia

A few days ago as I walked down Bourke Street, I saw a young red-haired man with a backpack and a bright yellow milk crate suddenly stop and plonk a portable tape player down on the pavement. Next a flowerpot appeared. Finally, he carefully placed a square of timber halfway between the tram stop and the steps in front of the GPO building. Without saying a word, he began to tap dance vigorously (and well!) for the lunchtime crowd that was milling around, his flowerpot began to fill with coins, and the silent tap dancer smiled sweetly at everyone. It was a tiny bit of magic on a cold and gloomy day.

Having walked a mere few metres further down the street, I began to chuckle quietly when I saw a faux-concrete mime who had removed his hat, thus revealing part of his un-made-up face and hair beneath. As he stood next to his upturned hat, his hand resting on his cart full of props, he dropped all pretense being in character as he made a phone call. As surreptitiously as I could, I raised my camera and began to take pictures of this unguarded and funny moment.

Mime Making Phone Call

If fine arts and culture are as much ‘your thing’ as they are mine, you will be happy to read that Melbourne is quite blessed to have three art museums that charge absolutely NO admission price. The only exception to that statement is for those blockbuster travelling exhibits from overseas that arrive once a year or so.

The permanent collection at the beautifully proportioned bluestone building housing the NGV International – National Gallery of Victoria on St. Kilda Road is quite comprehensive and covers several floors of exhibits that range from the ancient through to the contemporary. You can easily allow yourself a half of a day or more to see it all. And as an added bonus, there are wonderful cafes on both the ground floor and the first floor that serve quite good food. Seating areas are tucked around on every level and are much appreciated by those who wish to enjoy the various galleries at a more leisurely pace. The large gift shop on the ground floor, just before you exit next to the wall of water, is a joy for art lovers, book lovers, or anyone who appreciates finely crafted jewelry, stationary, art objects, and educational toys.

Another entirely free (except for those previously mentioned special exhibitions) museum is the Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square (corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Street). This smaller museum is dedicated to Australian art. Although it is part of the National Gallery of Victoria, it is housed up the street from the main NGV in a light, airy, and very contemporary glass and steel building set amidst the ultra-modern Federation Square complex.

Finally, there is the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art — ACCA (111 Sturt Street in the Southbank area) and it too is completely free of entry charges. The stated goal of this particular institution is as follows. “It is the only major public art gallery in Australia focused on commissioning rather than collecting.” For that reason, there is a non-stop stream of cutting edge exhibitions to entice those interested in contemporary art.

This three-part article on frugal travel in Melbourne has barely scratched the surface of your options for places to stay, places to eat, sights to see, or walks to enjoy. My intention was to allow the reader to fine-tune their trip according to their interests and needs. I also hoped to let you understand that absorbing the media’s ongoing statement that Melbourne is one of the world’s most expensive cities comes at a cost. It closes people’s minds to the alternatives to big-price-ticket travel — alternatives called frugal travel, budget travel, manageable travel that keep those dollars in your pocket to spend as you choose, not as you must if you are booked into 5 star hotels and are only eating at 5 star restaurants. Frugal travel makes the world a better place for all of us because it gives us freedom and choice.