Travel Diaries: Adelaide

After two years of going basically nowhere, I recently took an interstate trip to Adelaide for a friend's wedding - so a few thoughts on the transport and urbanism I encountered on the trip. 

Travel Diaries: Nederlandse Spoorwegen

Map of Dutch Railways services (via NS)

In addition to doing various trips to other countries in the EU, my time in Amsterdam allowed me to do a bit of travelling within the Netherlands, on their equivalent of V/Line, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS - "Dutch Railways"). Again there's a lot we can learn from how they do things, so let's take a whirlwind tour of a country I'm feeling very nostalgic for after ~18 months of COVID restrictions. 

Travel Diaries: Germany and Denmark (Part 2)

Bombardier Twindexx train on a DB Regio Schleswig-Holstein service (via Regionalbahn 77)

After a few days spent checking out Hamburg, I was off to Denmark. I ended up with a First Class ticket on a cheap deal for the first leg of my trip, on a double-decker DB Regio train to Flensburg, right on the Danish border. 

Travel Diaries: Germany and Denmark (Part 1)

The outbound (red) and inbound (blue) paths of my trip

A few days after I got back from London, I was off again - this time heading east, on a bit of a loop through Germany and Denmark. 

Railway Archaeology: London Transport Museum

The London Transport Museum is housed in the former Flower Market building in Covent Garden, and I gave it a visit on my trip to London in October 2019 (yes, I am VERY behind on these writeups). 

Travel Diaries: London

On my first trip to the UK, I really just passed through London on my way to and from the North. So about a month after I got home to Amsterdam, I went back for a long weekender in the great city itself. 

Travel Diaries: United Kingdom (Part 4)

Edinburgh Waverley Station

Railway Archaeology: National Railway Museum, York

In Part 3 of my series on my trip through the UK, we'll take a look at the National Railway Museum in York. The museum is right next to the mainline station, as it's the former site of a large depot and maintenance facility. My first port of call was the Great Hall, which used to be the motive power depot.

Travel Diaries: United Kingdom (Part 2)

In Part 1, we looked at the trip from Amsterdam to London, and I'd just departed from London Euston station.

Travel Diaries: United Kingdom (Part 1)

Travel Diaries: Amsterdam

So - after wending my way up through Spain, France and Belgium, I'd finally arrived in my new home in Amsterdam. It's taken me a while to get around to writing these blogs, so rather than just my first impressions, I can give my observations collected over the last several months.

Travel Diaries: European High Speed Rail

Partly for environmental reasons, and partly because I want to see more of the countries I'm passing through, I try to avoid flying as much as possible, and prefer to take the train instead. So now that I'd arrived in continental Europe, with its fairly comprehensive long-distance rail network, there would be no more flying and no more investigating airport rail - it's overland High Speed Rail all the way to Amsterdam.

Travel Diaries: Barcelona

Having left Singapore, the next stop on my trip was Barcelona. I am normally the kind of person who does an obsessive amount of research on the public transport options before I go somewhere, but for this trip I decided to keep that to a minimum, so that - as much as practical - I could experience it firsthand and see how easy and intuitive it was for the uninformed visitor.

Travel Diaries: Singapore

The first stopover on my trip to Amsterdam was Singapore. I was pretty keen to break up the journey a bit, rather than just having one long direct flight, so that I could see some places along the way. I've wanted to visit Singapore for quite some time now - for one thing, I do love a good dense city, and for another I'm fascinated by the whole city-state thing and how that compares to more conventional city-and-hinterland states. (There's also a bunch of cultural and historical stuff I wanted to see, but let's focus on the urbanism for this blog).

Introducing Travel Diaries