The London Vacation

London turned out wonderful, I spent about a week of my time in London and I have fallen in love with the city, which I only realized some time later after leaving the city. I so want to go there again.

From UK Trip October 2009

From UK Trip October 2009

From UK Trip October 2009

The starbucks shops at almost ever 2 blocks - As I walked I would typically take a starbucks Chai tea latte to sip on (When in London, drink Tea) ; the Underground metro train system; the pretty efficient bus system, a spectacular night life which is live till 3 AM and also afterwards on the streets. The splendid British accent spoken English and a great mix of modern and historic architecture, London has just about everything you can want from a city. I explored the city by Tube/Underground and Bus using the oyster pay as u go card. I was arguing with my host, Ankur about San Francisco being equally multicultaral and lively but in retrospect London beats SF in those regards.

From UK Trip October 2009

The first two days were spent relaxing and coming in to the holiday mood. The only significant I and Ankur was going to Trafalgar square to see the "Diwali in London" festival which promised much more than what actually happened and was slightly disappointing and we decided to rather skip it and walk around river Thames all the way to Big Ben.

From UK Trip October 2009

At the middle of day2 I decided to head off to Edinburgh, which is mentioned in a future post.

Day 3: The old city of London Tour

Went around the main tourist attraction taking the http://www.newlondon-tours.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=27 New Sandman's Old city tour. Interesting pieces of info from the tour: London bridge isn't as fancy as it seems like, Most of the building however old they look are pretty much just 100-300 years old reconstruction of the original once which seems to have gone down 3-4 times each. Heard stories about Knights templar, specially their banking system. Evening was spent was a Couch surfing meeting at the Irish pub O'neil followed by watching movie "Sin Nombre" in Prince Charles cinema (I totally loved the movie, almost everyone did although it had a slightly tragic ending, well it was not Bollywood movie after all :D)

From UK Trip October 2009

From UK Trip October 2009

From UK Trip October 2009

Day 4: Buckingham palace, Westminster Catheral and abbey, Big Ben and Ceilidh dancing
Went around Westminster city, Buckingham palace, Google London office - which to my surprise didn't look very remarkable from outside, however the interior decoration was pretty good and most ideas were based on London theme, Westminster cathedral (Free!), St Paul's, Westminster's abbey, Big Ben. Then took random train journeys to Notting Hill Gate, Ealing Broadway before coming to Camden Town to attend the Ceilidh dancing event at the Cecil's Sharp House on the Friday evening.

From UK Trip October 2009

From UK Trip October 2009

Ceilidh dancing was among the best things I did on the trip. If you are in UK you must try searching for Ceilidh dancing events, quite a few of them happen on the weekends in Scotland as well as London.

Day 5: St. Paul's Cathedral, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Millennium bridge and Tate modern.
Another day of sight seeing, I decided to start by visiting St. Paul's cathedral which besides being famous for its splendidness and history also provides one of the best Panoramic views of the city from the top.
I dedicate the rest of the day to the bridges and walking around them and river Thames. Much as I remember I walked across about 5 bridges including, Tower bridge, London Bridge, Millennium bridge and two others. Also went to see the Tate modern which didn't make much sense to me with all the modern art exhibits but its free entry so you can always give it a shot. In the evening I joined the New Sandman group's Pub crawl during which I met quite a few interesting people many of which became Friends.

From UK Trip October 2009

From UK Trip October 2009

This night I heard one of the funniest thing ever that was at Leicester square, the police caught a guy and while hand cuffing he said "You are arresting me because you are pu**ies", I so wished someone had a camera phone recording it and uploaded it to you tube. People do get crazy after drinking :P

Then my struggle of finding a Bus to home began and I cursed the Underground system for closing down and not being available. Night buses and transport didn't really feel as easy as did day transport and felt quite a challenge to accomplish in some cases because of multiple bus stands at every place offering different bus services and hardly any routing mechanism.

Day 6: The Temple Church, Greenwich and East Ham
This was effectively the last day in London as I had to catch flight next morning. There was quite a lot to see still. I started with a visit to the Temple's church (which is typically close on Sunday but was open this time). The stories and photos within the temple are pretty fascinating as is the architecture of the Church. then I decided to head to Greenwich. I thought it was probably some small place from where the Longitude goes across but it was almost a different suburb of London. It is more like a small town in fact. So I spent about 3-4 hours walking and watching the sights around which included a long round trip walk through the Greenwich tunnel, a walk around river side watching Greenwich university and other buildings from across the river (Thames).

From UK Trip October 2009

Now I wanted to go to see the Meridian and I figured that was in side the Greenwich Public Park, quite a long walk and I just about made it to the observatory but it was closed. Still the longitude is marked outside the observatory for about 100 meters and you can easily get some good photos on the road within the park.

From UK Trip October 2009

My plans to go to Wimbledon didn't work out, as it was already pretty late and the folks I met at the park were going to get some South Indian meal and I decided to tag along. The whole evening from about 6 PM to about 12:30 AM was then spent just for the dinner at Chennai Dosas in East Ham. Reaching East ham on a Sunday evening turned out to be quite tough, as we spent about 2 hours 30 minutes to reach our destinations talking trains and buses and walking quite a lot. It came to me as a surprise that few Underground stations were closed as early as 7 PM on weekends. Anyhow with a combination of few buses, we figured our way out.

What other Consulates should learn from U.K's

This post is about my experience of getting visa from various consulates when I was planning to take a stopover on my trip to US. [1]

I started with a plan to travel to Greece, Spain, Portugal and then couple of cities on the East Europe covering them in about 1 month. So I figured out by specified rules that I should apply to Greece or Spain consulate, as I should apply to country of entry or that of main stay.

I started with Greece, read their rules for application what they demanded:
0) Passport with 6+ months of validity from date of application.
1) confirmed return tickets
2) show of enough funds in your account, bank account statement, credit card statement
3) payslips, Income tax return receipts for last three years
4) letter from your employer showing they believe that you will come back to work with them after this vacation
5) Hotel reservations for the whole of the trip.
6) Medical insurance for the cost of the say

So you need to get your return tickets to get the visa, how the hell can u book tickets when you don't know you are going to travel. The cheapest tickets are the non-refundable ones so you can't buy them or you have to buy ones with the least cancellation charges.

I got mine from Emirates and then applied, turned out that Swine flu scare was on the go and I decided to wait/change my travel plans. So guess what I had to get my passport back so that they don't get me a visa with restricted dates.

Once I had my travel plans getting more finalized with reduced number of vacations days, I figured out I would probably get Spanish visa as that was still the main destination though Greece fell out of the plan and the new plan was Hyd-Zurich-Spain-Portugal-Budepest etc-Franfurt-SFO. So I applied to Spanish Embassy.

Their list of documents included all of above plus:
7) A statement from bank with "Stamp and signature on each page"
8) A letter from ban describing your relation with the bank
9) Show of enough means of stay (~ 120 USD) per day (apart from everything else you already showed)
10) Complete itinerary for the whole duration of the trip.

I was able to get the 6 with some effort by visiting Citibank office in Hyderabad but 7) looked like something that would take about 4 days to arrive and as I was running out of time to get the visa I asked them to see if they can process the visa with already enough proof of my "eligibility to spend time in Spain".
The VFS for Spain came back saying they would need about 21 working days to process my application. This just ruined all my changes of traveling, All I could do was to get my passport back from them and just head straight to US without any stopover. All this despite I had about 21 days of vacations to use and about 10 days buffer to get a visa.

All this exercise I had to trouble my company HR a lot get letter to the embassies, book tickets with 5000 INR cancellation fees, book hotels/hostels and additionally for step 9 I got my Eurorail pass with cancellation fees of 15%.

Luckily, some friends of mine who have applied to British Highcommision for visa told me how quick and friendly their process was. I figure out the British Consulate needed just these documents
1) Travel itinerary (no confirmed tickets, just rough plan)
2) Payslips with company stamps and sign
3) Coverring letter from HR and from self.
4) Bank Statement, proof of accomodation etc. was all optional

And the process was more staightforward, just fill a form(quite big and detailed one though), go to the local office in Hyderabad with your application and then in some time you get your Passport back by post.

More interesting they had an estimate of how much time applications take to resolve on their website, it showed all the applications would resolve in 10 working days with 70-80% getting resolved in 5 working days. This definitely is a great thing. And it turns out that my application was processed and returned in 5 working days with a visa valid for 6 months and no strict entry /exit dates. More so when the application is being process you get regular SMS notifications about the status of your application.

I simply loved the whole process and I would definitely recommend ppl trying for transits without pain to try U.K embassy.

[1] To give some details for reader who read this post randomly, I am an Indian Citizen, who had already traveled to Europe (Schengen visa) once, traveled 3-4 times to US already with a long duration business visa (seemingly U.K visa get processed fast if you had USA stamps already).

As another peice of advise I came to know, applying to Spanish embassy is a very bad idea, applying to Dutch, French or Germany consulate is better in that order (My experience with French consulate was also pretty positive)

The Edinburgh trip.

Once I figured out I was in UK for 11 days, I was sure to visit Edinburgh, for no reasons but the movie "Breavheart" and another documentary about Scotland's castles on Discovery channel. I did realize though that I have heard of this city for some big political/games event, but that was unimportant :)

From UK Trip October 2009

People whom I have talked to about visiting Edinburgh suggested spending about 1 or 1.5 days as the "city doesn't have much to see". Based on my previous experience of visiting Italy's city without plan and spending all the time there, I decided to keep this one unplanned too. I was happy with the decision. Thought tickets cost may rise because of the last minute booking, you wouldn't want to rush your journey through such a city.

After spending the weekend in London and figuring out that most activities would be on weekend, I decided to head to Edinburgh sooner and return back to London before the next weekend. For the lack of planning/researching about how to travel my host Ankur's presence really helped. I was in the wrong impression that the trains are the cheapest way to travel but it soon turned out that the National Express buses (and others like MegaBus) have very competitive pricing compared to the train and the difference specially goes high for last minute/last day tickets.

My train ticket to Edinburgh would be costing be about 100-120 Pounds for same day/next day travel while the bus ticket for National Express came for 20-30 pounds for next day/same day travel.

So I took a bus for Scotland from Victoria Coach station. The coach worked out fine, it has WC and it doesn't keep running continuously for 8 hrs, it had stop overs may be 3-4 of them.
As experienced travelers suggest, you can use the lockers at the bus stations for day trips and avoid hotels cost if you don't realy need to stay overnight. The public toilets are the bus stations are pretty well maintained and could be used to freshen-up etc.

Since I had already booked the Caledonian hostel for the day I went ahead and checked in and made it to the free city tour in the morning. Like all of new Sandman's free tour this one was totally worth the time and very informative, I came to know abt things like: Church, hanging, Lake of poo, Edinburgh's castles, various nice stories about ppl including that about locksmith guy. The story about the quite a few murders for selling dead bodies for examination. (I am yet to read about these stories in details from somewhere). Then there were interesting stories about the Stone of Destiny as well as that about the spitting spot of Edinburgh and the statue of the King Henry 2.

In the evening I took the New Sandman's Ghost tour of Edinburgh (not free but worth it).
We visited cementaries and went up the carlton hill, heard stories about ferries, half man and red hat about suicides on the North Bridge and vampires, hannibals and witches.
Along the tour some of us traveling alone grouped together and then we had fun at the bar which the tour ends at with a complementary drink. The bar called the Bank Hotel had a lively scottish band playing some nice music. The pub was to be closed at 12 but the group was having so much fun that we decided to head to a club down the road. This place had awesome music and drinks they served vodka, whishkey, Rum for 1£ a peg. Now thats why hostelers(budget travelers) love Edinburgh more than London :)


The next day I went to Edinburgh castle. The castle is pretty big and its better to take their guided tours which are included in the entry ticket. The castle provides amazing views of the city and surrounding and the galleries are very interesting too. I specially like the one dedicated to the war heroes(National War Meuseum and Royal Scotts Regimental Meuseum). The Prisoners of War Exhibition is also a must see. On the other hand after hearing all the talk about the 3 symbols of Scottish Nationhood The sword, the crown and the Stone their gallery didn't really look that great.

It was already pretty late by the time I came out of the meuseum leaving little time to do anything else. I decided to take a walk on the Royal Mile and discovering whatever came on the way. At one of the food shops I tried the "deep friend Mars" which was yummy.
On the very end of the Royal Mile I reached the Scottish Parliament, which is open to public. The Parliaments intererior design looks like a complicated mess but that just me, somewhere I read "its a mix of modern and old architecture", what do I know about that ?

By this time I had decided to stay over for one more day. The next day I went to Leith which is an ancient port city next to Edinburgh (or part of it). I went all the way to Ocean terminal thinking it was a place with a beach or something, turned out it was a mall. Nevertheless the mall had amazing view of the sea. I enjoyed sipping tea and enjoying that scenic view from the Ocien View restaurant.



Later I walked around in Leith using the "Discover Leith Map" which pointed out points of interest. The Pilrig church is a very interesting one amongst others as in this Church you won't notice any statue of Jesus or Mary or angels, but just prayer seats much like Bahai temple in Delhi. The other points of interest include the Victoria bridge and Rennei's Isle. As the photos suggest this is one of most beautiful places I have been to.



With the remaining time I decided to visit the Cramond beach. (Yeah, I am obsessed with beaches). It was very cold and there fore almost no-one was on the beach. Also the beach isn't that famous and active. The tides are pretty low but interestingly there is an island connected to the beach by a walk through which I was not lucky enought to cross. The island path is open for few hours a day and you can walk to it rather than going though water. A strange thing I noticed was that the moon looked extra huge (only prettier) from here.


Just before leaving I decided to give my shot to meet the local CSers at their mid week meeting at Victoria's pub. I realized quickly that it was the first time I was talking to the locals in Scotland.






I have great memories of this place and still quite a bit left to discover in Edinburgh itself leave aside the whole of Scotland. It turns out that going further north in to the highlands gives you some of the most amazing views of nature. A definite must do next time.

Backpacking around Europe Part 2 (Getting around)

As usual I was lazy to do a proper study of how to prepare for the trip, but I did check out some c stuff browsing the internet for around 4-5 hrs in total to figure out the basics of traveling in Europe. If you want a quick conclusion after the real experience, jump to the travel by planes section below.

Travel by Trains

Based on previous discussion with various people, I had concluded that I needed Eurorail pass to have efficient travel, I did some research on eurorail and decided to go for a 15 days Euro Global youth pass. The plus points I saw were
1) Unlimited travel to around 15 countries for 15 consecutive days, alowing me to postpone my planning of travel to a further later time (laziness has no limits)
2) The cost difference to the 3 or 5 countries select pass 15 consecutive days pass was pretty small and then Open Source conference participation was going to re-imburse some part of my travel
3) The other pass was for 2 months period with 10/12/15 etc days of travel, I found it no too effective for my case (which as I talk below might now be always true).

The website and the terms and conditions book that you get with the pass leaves some doubts in you mind which I tried figuring out over the net but couldn't for e.g The book says having euro pass doesn't confirm you a seat, you need to reserve your seats by going to the ticket window or through the conductor before boarding the train.
As I traveled around I figure out most of these things. Much as I as I understand here is how you use the pass:

1) For most short distance trains, like 1-2 hrs of travel mostly intercity trains, you don't need reservation (this is pretty much mentioned in train timetable if you get one from raileurope)
2) For most trains more than 3 hrs reservation is needed. Most trains have two Seats and berths for a night journey you might rather take a berth than a seat. Now in both seats and berths there is class 1 and class 2. Like business and economy, I usual the price difference is similar up to 3 times, I always traveled by economy (so do most tourists).
Reservations is similar to buying a ticket, so you may end up in long queue which should be avoided because you bought the pass but no such luck. Believe me each customer ends up taking 5-6 minutes on an average for buying a ticket. One alternative however is that you to do the train conductor and ask him for reservation. This turns out to be slightly costlier than buying it on the ticket window but saves loads of your time. My train from Paris to Nice ville for e.g I had to go through this option and I got a berth reservation for 20 Euros, while the Seat was free or 5 Euros (I don't recall)
3) Many students in Italy traveled by just hopping on the train and then sitting on the side seats instead of compartment seats. These seats aren't numbered so if you have them, you can sit without any problems, but every time someone pass by the corridor you are required to stand up. Nevertheless these seats are sometimes the best way to watch the scenery outside and you don't need a reservation for them.
4) Now about reservation costs for most long journeys you pay around 15 Euros with the pass for a seat, the cost for a berth various between 20-3o Euros. As per my conclusion journeys across countries are usually costly. When I inquired ticket cost from Rome to Barcelona I was given the number 85 Euros (only option) with pass. The cost for a night train from Rome to Munich however was 9 Euros for seat and 27 for berth. I am not very sure if my tickets included the 18-25 age advantage or not, I somehow feel they didn't because someone told me later that berths were cheaper for them.

Travel by Planes (the more economic option)
Sometime during the middle of trip I was told that I wasn't traveling the most efficient way. I didn't really change it during the trip but It should be important for next one.
Train aren't really the cheapest transport mechanism planes are. Now if you go look at any flight cost on the travel websites they are pretty harsh like 600$ from Paris to Genoa or Milan, but turns out that there are indeed low-cost airlines which operate at unimaginably cheap rates like 30 Euros between most cities e.g Rome to Barcelona was 30 Euros. One of the most popular once is ryanair.com. I forgot the name of the other one.

Traveling by Ferries:
Some countries (Italy, Spain and Greece) are well connected by Ferries. I initially planned to use my Free Italy to Greece ferry offer with my eurorail pass but some friends told about their horrible experience with the same and I quickly decided to avoid it. Seemingly unless you take a cabin you are gonna hate this experience. Reserving a cabin is like 60 Euros. So you should figure out the cost clearly before planning. As per my friends "traveling for 14-22 hours amid high winds and cold breeze sitting on an not so comfortable seat isn't the best experience of your life".

Traveling within Cities
Most cities are very well connected by public transport like buses or Metros. Paris metro is probably pretty famous through the movies already. Venice is pretty well known to be connected by Ferries and buses where ever both of them run. Rome and Florence has great bus service, though I found it rather easier to walk around the whole city on foot. In fact, I went from Rome train station to Vatican city and came back walking involving around 2-3 hrs of real walking time. Most youth hostels are pretty close to the train stations. In fact except for Aloha hostel in Paris I don't remember taking public transport to any other youth hostel. Amsterdam's trams are pretty nice and useful for going across the city from train station if you don't like walking for 30-40 minutes oneway. In Paris, Munich and Amsterdam I took Sandeman's new Europe free city tours which are always by walking and which are a great way to explore the city with other travelers. In short:

Paris: Take a metro train pass for 7 Euros a day or walk around, renting a bike is option too.
Munich, Rome, Florence, Pisa: Walking around the city is easy.
Amsterdam: 1 Euro ticket goes active for 1 hour in any public transport, walking is easy too, many ppl rather rent bikes, as per my guide, be sure to look them carefully :)
Venice: The ferry pass was 12 Euros for 24 hours (IIRC) a good deal. You definitely need to take ferry for going around.

Backpacking around Europe Part 1 (Tourist Visa process)

At last here is the series of post of my first Europe Trip during the September and November this year.
As I had thought about earlier, if you go on a business trip through your company to US from India it makes a sensible choice to think about taking a stopover at Europe. I had thought about this during my second trip that I will definitely do it during the next one. As its well known travelling as youth ( below 26 years of age) has its own advantages.

I had little time to apply for Visa as the trip came up as urgency but various sources of information told that 5-7 days should be enough for a visa. Here are some (hard learned) realities (All info is about Schengen Visa applied at French Embassy in Mumbai) :

0) The main thing, almost all countries Visa office now issue Schengen visa for Tourists. This means once you get a visa you can travel freely between 22 nations. Usually you need to apply for Visa of the country where you gonna spent maximum number of days (This point is slightly elaborated in 5)

1) A Tourist Visa isn't as simple a deal, the big list of documents that I had to submitted included:
Hotel reservation proofs, No object letter and covering letter from Employer, Payslips for past 6 months, Income tax returns for past 3 years (I submitted 2 that I had worked for), return tickets printout, Medical Insurance proof, Two photograph white background 35 x 45 80% face, Visa Form, Credit card copy and of course a valid Passport.

2) The French Embassy in India didn't give me Visa based on these documents alone, they schedule an appointment date 6 days after submission of my application (due to high number of pending applications)

3) The interview process is pretty much similar to a B1 visa for US. The consulate tries to ensure that your documents are your intents are real and not harmful. You have to appear in Person for this interview, I had to visit the Nariman Point Visa office.

4) They issued the Visa the same day in a matter of 30-40 minutes after the interview.

5) On entry to France, they put the date of entry on my passport. The Visa was a 15 days, multiple entry, I guess based on the documents I provided (my plan showed I wished staying for 11 days and had insurance for 21 days and had slightly flexible requirements of date as my US return trip dates weren't fixed yet).
As much as I understand you would need to exit from the same Airport as they will have to put the exit stamp.

Against the general impression and opinions I heard from others, the Embassy isn't sitting there to solely reject the visa requests, they were pretty cooperative and in no sense non-welcoming. I was not really questioned about why I requested Multiple Entry (which I still don't know :D)

Oh, btw the Tourist visa was valid for a duration of 2 months, but 15 days in one trip, as against the usual notion that they will give very restrictive visa according to your itinerary, I guess explaining them that my US travel was flexible helped.