Tag: city

Stone Town, the heart of Zanzibar

On By Carmen BIn Africa, Tanzania2 Comments

From Arusha, where our Kenya-Tanzania safari ended, we caught a flight to Zanzibar. We had booked with Coastal Aviation and didn’t realize the tiny plane would stop 5 times before getting to the island… it was like being on a public bus hehe. Stone Town, the old downtown of the capital Zanzibar, was a nice surprise. Our expectations of African towns were low after Nairobi and Arusha (later also confirmed by Dar es Salaam), but Stone Town proved to be a charming, lively city, with an exciting history. As the center of the Zanzibar Sultanate during the 19th century, it flourished driven by trade of spices and slaves, before suffering a revolution.

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Getting ready for safari in Nairobi

On By Carmen BIn Africa, Kenya1 Comment

Since I was a kid, I always had wanted to go on an African safari. Last summer, I finally convinced myself and Elena to do it, now that the prices had become affordable. Last minute, my mom (my true traveling hero) decided to join us, after her plans to go to Ethiopia fell apart.

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What to do during a layover in Dubai

On By Carmen BIn Asia, Dubai5 Comments

Dubai is a perfect short stop on a trip to Africa. You can usually get the cheapest flights with Emirates and do a 1 day layover in the city. This is enough to see the highlights. We had a 15 hour layover on our way from LA to Nairobi, and although it was mainly at night, we decided to make the most out of it. The airport is very close to the city and the border controls are very efficient, so just 1 hour after landing, we were checking in into the Sheraton on Sheikh Ziyeed Road, the artery of the business downtown (free with SPG points!).

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How to visit Singapore in one day

On By Carmen BIn Asia, Singapore5 Comments

Thanks to a business trip, I recently had a chance to visit Singapore. I scheduled my meetings and flights so that I’d have a full day off, and planned an intense itinerary.

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My hotel was located in the south, so I started from the end of Chinatown, and walked my way north. My first stops were the Thian Hock Keng Temple and the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum. They were pretty, but what really impressed me was how well taken care of the streets were, and how skyscrapers had popped up all around. The emergence of this city-state is unbelievable, though it hasn’t come without controversy.

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Top 10 places to visit – Cities

On By Carmen BIn Top 103 Comments

– This post is work in progress –

My ten favorite cities in the world, those which every traveler should visit at least once, are (potentially in a biased order):

  1. Sydney
  2. Madrid
  3. Venice
  4. Rio de Janeiro
  5. Havana
  6. Istanbul
  7. Paris
  8. Chicago
  9. Cuzco
  10. Amsterdam

Uff, I had to make hard sacrifices… leaving out London, New York, Buenos Aires, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rome, Florence, Hong Kong, Barcelona, Bangkok, San Francisco, Dubai, Athens, Mexico City, Singapore, Marrakesh, Lhasa and many others. And there are also great places I haven’t been to yet, like Prague, Cape Town, Dubrovnik,… Many awesome experiences awaiting us!

2 days soaking in Yogyakarta culture

On By Carmen BIn Asia, Indonesia2 Comments

For our 2 week trip to Indonesia, Elena and I decided to focus on 5 areas: Yogyakarta for temples, Flores for landscapes, Komodo for diving and dragons, Bali for spirituality and Gili for beach. Indonesia is one of the largest and most populated countries in the world, and being comprised of 17,000 islands, you can imagine that there are a lot of spots worth visiting, but it’s hard to get to all of them at once.

We met at Yogyakarta airport, since I had decided to do a 1 day layover in Spain to visit my friends and family 🙂 It was pretty late, so we quickly hoped on a taxi and got to the hostel we had booked online. It was rather crappy but well located near the main street Jalan Malioboro.

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Party in Cienfuegos

On By Carmen BIn America, Cuba1 Comment

On the bus back from Trinidad to Havana, I met two Argentinian guys, and we decided to make a stop in Cienfuegos. The city was founded by the French and is supposed to have very interesting urban planning, particularly in the downtown area of Pueblo Nuevo… But I don’t remember any of this, just a lot of cheap good food at a state-run restaurant, even more delicious rum and non-stop son, rumba and trova 😉

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Trinidad, the Cuban jewel

On By Carmen BIn America, Cuba1 Comment

Travelling around Cuba wasn’t as easy as I expected. Most tourists are on some sort of organized tour, managed by a joint venture between the government and a foreign company, while local buses are all sold out (it’s Christmas holidays after all!). After a couple of days in Havana and a lot of asking around, I got a seat in a bus to Trinidad, ~4 hours west. On the road, we passed Bahia de Cochinos, infamous for the CIA-sponsored attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro in 1961.

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Living simple life in La Habana

On By Carmen BIn America, Cuba2 Comments

When the taxi from the airport dropped me off, I was a bit in shock. La Habana Centro, the heart of the Cuban capital, was much more ramshackle than I expected, and so was the “casa particular” (authorized private homestay) were I was planning on staying. It was also my first full solo trip, and apart from booking these few nights, I had done zero preparation. But for the next 10 days, I would discover and fall in love with Cuba and its people.

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