Panama City to Santa Catalina by Bus

If you plan to travel from Panama City to Santa Catalina by bus, you'll need to start your journey from Albrook's bus station. The easiest and cheapest way to get there is by metro.

Before leaving Panama City for Santa Catalina, make sure you'll have enough cash for your stay. There are no

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Panama Canal Kayaking 🛶 Jungle Land Experience

The Panama Canal is arguably one of most important structural achievements ever built. Apart from cutting a slice through a mountain, construction of the canal also involved flooding a river to form a gigantic lake. When planning our trip to Panama, it had never occurred to us that Panama Canal

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Top 14 Panama City Activities (or maybe not...)

You can see a lot of what Panama City has to offer by simply walking around. The distances between most of the popular attractions are not that great. Here then is the list of our top 14 Panama City activities and attractions, most of which are reachable on foot.
Amador Causeway
If you're taking

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Panama City Hotels - Avoid Slum Areas

When choosing a place from your shortlist of Panama City hotels, you really need to make sure you're locating yourself in the right areas. Away from the centre, with its relatively small and upmarket high-rise district, you can quickly find yourself in rundown slum areas with a heavy police

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Avianca from Bogota to Panama Tocumen Airport

The final leg of our journey from Amsterdam to Panama was an Avianca flight from Bogota, Columbia to Panama Tocumen Airport. This involved another security screening, but thankfully not as inanely intense as in Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

Our arrival at Bogota airport was definately a 'habla e

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Lufthansa Longhaul Inflight Experience

Our flight from Europe to Panama involved a 3-leg flight with Lufthansa, starting from Amsterdam. Naturally, we were curious to discover how our Lufthansa longhaul inflight experience would pan out.
Our Lufthansa Longhaul Inflight Experience
Our Lufthansa flight deal was quite exceptional. Just

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Amsterdam Layover Hotel & Activities

Our incredibly low-priced Lufthansa flights from Europe to Panama departed from Holland. We therefore needed to find budget flights to get us to Schiphol airport, and spend the night close by before taking our flight the following day. For this we decided to include an Amsterdam layover hotel in

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Apparently, Panama is among the top 5 best-rated countries in the world in which to retire. Facts like this, together with the attractions of a tropical climate and the buzz of a Latin American country are hard to ignore. Throw into the mix really cheap flights with Lufthansa from Europe and we're

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The 10 Best-Value Pubs & Restaurants in Edinburgh

The 10 Best-Value Pubs & Restaurants in Edinburgh

http://www.sandspice.com/pubs-restaurants-edinburgh/

#Edinburgh #Pubs #Restaurants

Samsara Guesthouse Karimunjawa

Since we arrived 2 days late on the island, we spent only one night in the first of our selected guesthouses - the Waru Guesthouse. For our next three nights, we were booked into the Samsara Guesthouse Karimunjawa, which was just 10 minutes walk from the main harbour.

Samsara's is an i

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Waru Guesthouse Karimunjawa

The Waru Guesthouse Karimunjawa was the first of the 4 guesthouses we planned to visit on Karimunjawa island. We had originally planned to stay at the Waru for 3 nights, but an unscheduled 2-day delay in Semarang meant we were only able to get there for the last night.

We arrived at Kariman p

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Karimunjawa Fast Boat

We traveled to Jepara from Semarang in order to take the Karimunjawa fast boat north to Karimunjawa island.

Since the fast boat leaves at 9 am, we arrived in Jepara the day before and booked ourselves into the Samudra Hotel, close to the port.

On the morning of our departure, we were advised

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Hotel Samudra Jepara Port

Before leaving the Hotel Quest in Semarang, we used one of their guest computers to book the Hotel Samudra Jepara port for the following night.

The Samudra Hotel was a last minute booking (actually for the same day) following some unavoidable changes to our travel plan (see Jepara ATM

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Hotel Quest Semarang City - Indonesia

After successfully retrieving our credit card from the BTN bank (see Honey, the ATM ate my card), we could finally get our travel plan back on track. The BTN debacle had effectively taken 2 days out of our planned itinerary. We were now looking forward to an unscheduled overnight stay in Semarang.

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Backtracking to Semarang City by Minibus

Following our misfortunes in Jepara, we were heading back to Semarang city to try to rescue our vacation from disaster.

With no credit cards and insufficient cash, we wouldn't be able to continue our journey to Karimunjawa, where cash is the only form of payment accepted by almost all est

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Jepara ATM woes - down & out in the suburbs

This marked the low-point of my trip to Indonesia 🤕.

Events had spiraled relentlessly downhill from our arrival at Semarang airport, on a domestic flight with Lion Air from Jakarta.

Following the loss of a credit card at Semarang airport (see Honey, the ATM ate my card), we continued with o

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Hotel Elim & Minibus to Jepara

There are several options for getting over to Karimunjawa island from the mainland of Central Java. However, the boats run most frequently from Jepara. More importantly, there is always a boat leaving Jepara port early on the Sunday morning (weather permitting). It's for this reason that we chose

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Honey, the ATM ate my card

What was I to do when an Indonesian ATM ate my card?

We had just arrived at Semarang airport on a Lion Air flight from Jakarta. This was the 2nd day of hopefully a 15-day trip to Karimunjawa: An island 88 kms north of Central Java.

Loosing our card at this stage of the journey, with a fairly

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Lion Air Inflight Experience

Lion Air inflight experience - How do budget Asian airlines compare?

http://www.sandspice.com/lion-air-inflight-experience/

Although not scoring high in airline ratings, our #LionAir inflight experience was a positive one. Comfortable & on time, with ample legroom.

#Travel #Indonesia

Jakarta Stopover

Overnight #Jakarta stopover? Choose a hotel with free shuttle-service.

http://www.sandspice.com/jakarta-stopover/

Close to the airport, the Ibis Budget Hotel is clean, comfortable & affordable, with a free #shuttle bus service. Ideal for a Jakarta #stopover.

Doha Airport Layover

Our Qatar Airways flight from Rome to Jakarta included a lengthy 10-hour Doha airport layover. There was really no way of avoiding this when we booked the flight.

If we had arrived early in the day, we could have enjoyed one of Qatar Airways complimentary 3-hour tours of the city. However, we wo

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Qatar Airways Inflight Experience

With their elitist tv commercials and tip-top rating in the World's Best Airlines, we were expecting great things from our Qatar Airways inflight experience.

This is why we snatched up the opportunity to fly with them from Rome to Jakarta for around €500 per person, economy class.

We could ha

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Terravision Turmoil

Our first experiences with Terravision 2 years ago had been positive (see Thumbs Up for Terravision). Fast-forward to the present, and things appear to be deteriorating into Terravision Turmoil.

At least, this is our impression from recent experiences travelling between Rome and Ciampino

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Our Karimunjawa Indonesia Travel Plan

Under €1200 all-inclusive for a 3-week trip to a secluded tropical island? Our Karimunjawa Indonesia travel plan also included a couple of days in Rome and flights with top-rated Qatar Airways.

This seemed like an unbeatable deal to us when we first started to plan this trip. It all started w

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Paradise Inn Sigiriya

We set out in the morning from our guesthouse in Negombo. Our next destination was the Paradise Inn Sigiriya.

We took a tuk-tuk for the 2km ride to Negombo bus station. From there, we asked around for the first bus to Kandy. We would have to change buses in Kandy, then take another to Sigiriya,

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Edinburgh City Break

If you ever need an excuse to enjoy an Edinburgh city break, the availability of some great international flight deals flying from Edinburgh to the Far East has to be high on the list. Combine this with a low-cost Ryanair budget flight to Edinburgh from many British and European cities, and you c

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Where to stay and eat in Galle Fort

From Unawatuna, we moved a few kilometers along the coast to Galle. Here, we planned to stay for 2 nights at a guesthouse located inside the fort walls. In particular, we were looking forward to enjoying  real Indian food at the Galle Fort Indian Hut restaurant.
Inside Galle Fort
Galle is an old

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Jungle Beach Unawatuna

After 6 days lounging around the beaches of Tangalle, we headed west up the coast by bus to the small town of Unawatuna. We had heard about some special beaches in the area, in particular Jungle Beach Unawatuna.

We had booked a 3-night stay at Sam's Guesthouse, located on the inland side of the

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Palm Paradise Cabanas Tangalle

Palm Paradise Cabanas Tangalle is a medium-sized beach and garden resort located a few kms west along the coast from Tangalle. My last visit to Palm Paradise - 19 years previously - was very enjoyable, so I was keen to return.

The highlights I remembered from my first trip were the beautiful ca

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Tangalle Beaches - Tantalizing Tangalle

Following our stay high in the mountains around Haputale, we took a morning bus for the 7-hour journey down to Tangalle, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. For this part of our journey we were winging it, with nothing booked in advance. We were just looking forward to those fantastic Tangalle be

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World’s End Sri Lanka - Hotels & Hikes on Horton Plains

The first stage of our journey through Central Sri Lanka would conclude with a visit to the hill town of Haputale, and the World’s End plateau at Horton Plains.

After spending several days in and around the old capital Kandy, we arranged to travel by train from Kandy to Haputale.


2nd Class

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