tags: travel

Day 2 - Mid-Levels Travelator - Wan Chai Heritage Trail(and many of them has vanishrd)

https://www.ura.org.hk/en/project/heritage-preservation-and-revitalisation/wan%20chai%20heritage%20trail

Recap

Language

I was able to achieve my goals satisfactorily in English in all countries. The restaurant menus are written in the language of each country, so I used Google Lens translation.

Safety

All cities were safe enough. However, I often saw beggars begging for cigarettes in front of big stations.

Cost

  • Airplane class choice is a trade-off between comfort and cost. This time, I prioritized comfort, and chose business on the outbound and premium economy on the return. However, premium economy was not as satisfying as the price paid.
  • All shops in all countries accepted Visa Contactless. I have VISA registered with Google Pay, so I was able to make payments smoothly at most shops and facilities. The only exception was St. Moritz taxis, which were cash only.
  • Food costs are very high when eating at a restaurant or the like. Using the supermarket can be relatively cheap, but it is a trade-off with your own satisfaction.
  • I used Trainline to buy train tickets, but they charged me double the cost on some purchases. This is a problem, but it could have been avoided more by using a Eurail Pass.
  • Accommodation costs in London and Paris are ridiculously high. Using Airbnb in London kept the cost down, but I should have done it in Paris as well.
  • Cigarettes are very expensive. It costs about ¥2,500~¥3,000/box. Box displays limited in information, so there is little room for choice.
  • In summary, the potential cost saving ways were:
    • choosing economy class for the aircraft.
    • using Eurail pass for the train.
    • usinf Airbnb for accomodation.

In general, a trip to Europe costs around ¥30,000 per night, excluding travel and sightseeing expenses. This can be considered to be about 150% to 200% of the cost of staying in urban areas such as Tokyo and Osaka. I felt that the Cost of Living was very high.

Internet

  • Latency between most of Europe and Japan was around 350-500ms. The degradation of UX due to latency is almost unnoticeable when it uses HTTP. 600kbps is enough for HTTP streaming.
  • I was able to use 4G in all countries, but I was often out of range while traveling by train. frequently saw no response for several tens of seconds, and requests often timed out. From the application point of view, I felt that implementation of CDN, read-ahead, and offline caching was essential.
  • The idea that updating a blog requires updating a Git repository may not be a very good idea. Especially when you just want to upload several photos.
  • It seemed that VPN is not useful very much. Moving to zero trust will improve convenience, but I felt that countermeasures against latency were more important.

Day13 - looking around Paris

  • Cathédrale Notre-Dame
  • Palais Garnier
  • Obélisque de Louxor
  • Musée du Louvre
  • Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama
  • Musée d’Orsay
  • Assemblée nationale - Palais Bourbon
  • Grand Palais
  • Champs-Élysées
  • Arc de Triomphe

Fukuoka, Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto, and Kanazawa

Nice famous breakfast and kaiseki lunch.

I’m so lucky that Kiyomizu-dera is not crowded because of COVID. Beautiful late autumn landscape!

Kanazawa is small but elegant city and more modernized than Kyoto, I think. It seems that Kanazawa has already ready for winter season. Nice teppan-yaki cuisine!