offpeakfang

Valletta Harbour as viewed from the Upper Barrakka bastion, May 2024 Norwich is an airfield that I have personally piloted a light aircraft into*, so when I noticed that there were £13 tickets available from Norwich Airport to Malta International Airport - one of the few countries that I hadn't yet visited on my medium-term project to visit every European country - I was delighted to take the opportunity.  Ryanair is well known for using its loss-leader ticket prices as bait to then gouge the customer elsewhere. The real marginal cost of filling a seat on an already-scheduled flight instead of leaving it empty is the sum of £13 Air Passenger Duty, ~£3 extra fuel to lift another passenger's mass into the air, ~£5 per passenger to use airport terminals, and another ~£10 in the cost of the risk of rebooking/accommodation/compensation if flights are delayed or cancelled. Each airline's marginal break-even ticket price is commercially sensitive, but if a flight ticket is less th...

Japan Rail Pass My week in Japan was the part of my trip that I most looked forward to. Having arrived at Shimonoseki station off the ferry from Busan, South Korea, my first task was to collect my Japan Rail Pass. The rail pass could easily have been delivered digitally, like how InterRail passes in Europe can now be instantly delivered as a QR code on an app, but instead the purchase process was: Buy the pass online through an online travel agent (charging its own commission) A few days later, receive a physical paper voucher with a reference code on it through (compulsory extra-paid) international post Bring the voucher with me to Japan Go to one of a small subset (!) of Japanese rail ticket offices to have my passport photocopied (onto paper, with other paper forms that the ticket office bloke had to spend a while filling in and stapling) to then exchange the voucher for a physical ticket.  Even if it needed a foreign ID, I don't see any good reason why there can't ...

Naengmyeon , Hamhung style: a classic north Korean noodle dish of iced buckwheat noodles Having spent a few days in South Korea, mostly looking at historic architecture and eating a lot of food and particularly containing gochujang and all the sides of pickles traditional to Korean meals, I had several observations.  Heungnyemun Gate, Gyeoungbokgung Palace, Seoul Gyeoungbokgung Palace , the old Korean royal palace, is one of the main tourist attractions of South Korea. I visited on the 3rd October 2023, which happened to be National Foundation Day , marking the legendary formation of the first Korean state of Gojoseon in 2333 BC. Hence my disappointment when the internet claimed that the palace closes on national holidays. Well, even if the inside were closed, I could still have a look at the outside. But instead, closed turned out to mean free entry for the day . Fantastic.  The entire complex took a few hours to finish visiting, with its many pavilions and gardens and mini...

Prince's Palace, Monaco, March 2020 Monaco is the second-smallest country in the world, after the Vatican City. I visited on the last day of my truncated microstates itinerary around Europe.  Having arrived in Nice on a surprisingly pleasant and memorable overnight coach journey from Lyon, I made the short walk through the deserted Niçard streets to a train station. Conveniently, the coach station is right next to the Nice Riquier commuter rail station, which even happens to be one stop closer along the line to Monaco than the main Nice Ville station. I'd even arrived in Nice an hour early, so had some extra time to play with in the microstate as well.  TER from Nice Riquier The journey from Nice Riquier to Monaco Monte Carlo was only 21 minutes. The train was somewhat busy as it was very much the morning peak, but that didn't really matter for such a short journey.  Monaco Monte Carlo station. It even has direct trains to Moscow on the Nice-Moscow route, t...