 |
| The planning must be done meticulously base on your budget |
This posting is about our independent travels around Europe during
last Easter holidays (April 5 – 14 2014). The write-up is only a basic guide,
written and expressed through my personal experience when we (my family and I)
were traveling in our car (driving) to 6 different European countries
recently.
Before completing the journey, my references were basically collected
from recent experience traveling by air and cruise to European cities like Paris,
Amsterdam and Istanbul in Turkey. Other main references included the internet
and word-of-mouth from other friends who have been through the same experience
previously. It may not be a comprehensive guide, but would suffice if you are a
novice traveler.
Included are some important guides for Muslim travelers in
finding halal food or suitable hotel locations where you can get access to halal
stores, restaurants and eateries or hotels with cooking facilities (or at least
ones that offer boiling water facilities, i.e. kettles, coffee/tea/self service).
 |
| It's not difficult to find halal food if you know how |
By saying independent travels it means you get to plan and
set where you wanna go or which country you’d like to visit and the best thing about it is that it can be adjusted within your budget constraint. In a way independent travels help you save cost as much as possible
as you are not paying for any tour guide or agency. But if you are really not
familiar with the countries in Europe, this independent guide will also try to help
you figure out where to go in Europe (which may or may not be the best place of
your choice), how to get there including
tips to find the safest and cheapest way to get around.
So, basically this guide is about planning, coordinating and
time managing your travels and journeys. By planning and time managing your
travels it also means planning it well and early so that you can save time on
all your journeys and start to enjoy sightseeing the places you plan to visit and
so that you get great bargains with cheap but good hotel rates.
By planning early, it must also be real early - as far as a
year ahead so that by 6 months into your real journey you are ready to decide
which country, which city and which part of the country or city you want to go
visit or stay. After which you can already shorlisted the hotels you want to stay
at and start to make online bookings.
 |
| The hotel bookings made, printed and compiled |
So, within the three months before the journey starts you must
have finished making all the necessary hotel bookings and are completely ready
to anticipate or prepare other things that you might have missed out like
bringing extra amenities that can help ease your travels such as other European
currencies, travels adapters, electric blankets if you are traveling in the
cold seasons/up north or even electric kettles and small rice cookers.
Remember, not every European countries accept the Euro. The
Euro € is the official currency of the euro zone, which consists of only 18 of
the 28 member states of the European Union (EU). But if you plan to go
to Switzerland, many parts of the Swiss only accept Swiss Franc (CHF) and some
parts of Turkey only deals with Turkish Lira (TRY).
Nevertheless, the use of debit or credit cards affiliated to internationally
recognized and established names like Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America and
such are well accepted. But be prepare to pay the extra charges.
And the most important thing about planning, coordinating and time managing is that it can help you avoid making mistakes that can result in unnecessary stress and significant additional expenses if anything goes wrong.
1.
 |
| Bring along your electric kettle and small rice cookers. They can help keep your food budget low |
Planning – You have to have a storyboard or
itinerary of your travels. Plan well where you wanna go, what to do there,
where to stay and to make sure the place/s you are staying are near to amenities,
convenience stores and places to eat, especially if you have constraints
on food choices such as consuming only halal food or a vegetarian. Bringing along canned food, noodles, rice and cooking utensils like kettle and small rice cookers can help keep your food budget low especially if you are traveling in a family or a large group. But be sure the place you are staying has cooking facilities.
Coordinating – by coordination it means having
another person(s) to travel with and share ideas and responsibilities on the
planning of the journey. You as the main planner should get him/her to help in to
synchronize ideas and integrate responsibilities of activity.
For example if you are driving on your travels, you need a navigator or map
reader and that he/she will be the added pair of eyes for details such as speed
limit warnings, finding gas stations, toilets locations or places you have
missed on your earlier planning. In this case the coordinator/navigator should
also make him/herself available as a second driver in case the main driver
falls sick, tired or sleepy.
 |
| Stopping for breakfast at rest areas along a highway in Luxembourg |
Time management – this is very important as you
have to plan how many hours of the day you would be driving to reach your
destination, and anticipate the time needed for stops and rest or visit the
places on your itinerary. Since you already made hotel bookings at the places
of your visit, you must reach there on a timely manner so that you can have some rest or you
would likely miss your next itinerary. For example, if you start to drive at 9.00am
in the morning to reach a city in your itinerary, you need to only drive for 5 hours the most excluding
breaks (ETA 2.30 pm), and then rest 1-2 hrs so that by 3.00 or 4.00pm you can start
to explore the city or complete the itinerary/tour of the day. If you
lag, you’d probably reach there by nightfall and there’s not much
to see unless you are really there for the nightlife.
 |
| The DFDS seacruise from Newcastle to Amsterdam is a 16hr journey |
In this Europe
tour, we traveled by sea (cruise) and land (driving) from Newcastle-upon Tyne,
England to 6 (six) EU countries starting with the Netherlands, Belgium, France,
Luxembourg, Germany and ending in Switzerland and back to England through Calais,
France. The whole traveling time took us 10 days and in each city we stopped,
we only stayed for one night. This is really a budget trip as there were 6 of us traveling together and at some of the cities we stayed we have to book for 2 rooms and share 3 people in one room. But for the most of our stays there were not much problem because we were in a way prepared for the worse.
 |
| The sea cruise is smooth sailing all the way to Amsterdam |
More details of the journey in my next posting, InsyaAllah.
