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How to get to Easter Island on a budget with LATAM
Easter Island is known as the most isolated inhabited place on Earth. To the west, you have Tahiti, some 4,200 kilometres away. To the east, the Chilean coast lies 3,800 kilometres off. This isolation was never more true than during the COVID period. All air links to the island were suspended for 27 months! During our first round-the-world trip in 2016-2017, we took advantage of the Tahiti-Santiago flight that stopped over on the island to visit it for 3 days. Since COVID, this route has not been restored. Now, there are only two ways to get to Easter Island: Finding a cheap flight to Easter Island with LATAM In early…
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Prepaid SIM/eSIM in Tunisia: How to Buy a 4G Internet SIM Card?
Roaming Fees Hoping to use your French SIM card in Tunisia? Watch out: depending on your carrier, it could cost you a fortune (really, really expensive)! Except with Free Mobile, you’d have to sell a kidney to use the internet with your French plan. Here’s how much 1 MB of data costs with the four main French mobile carriers (bearing in mind that you can’t do anything with 1 MB). Carrier Rate Free Included in the €20 plan Orange €13.31/MB SFR €15.84/MB Bouygues €16/MB Buy a SIM card before you leave One option is to buy a prepaid SIM card before you leave. Plan ahead a little, as you’ll need…
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[Practical Guide] Bali (Indonesia): Itinerary, Budget, What to See, Where to Stay?
Arrival at Denpasar Airport: Payment: Massage: Food: Other info: Sightseeing: I didn’t visit the whole island, but here are some highlights. Budget Planning a trip to Bali? Our partner Get Your Guide offers entry tickets and guided tours with French-speaking guides at very reasonable rates. Click here to see what they offer and book online.
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Denpasar (Indonesia) – Travel Diary
I told you in my practical guide that you need to leave Denpasar very, very quickly. You can make the most of it at the end of your trip (a night in Denpasar is always recommended to avoid any risk of missing your flight – there’s always a lot of traffic in Bali). We stayed in Denpasar mainly to drop off our stuff, just in time for a day trip to Nusa Penida island (see our travel diary) nearby. Our hotel is right next to the port, but JB still picked a really nice hotel (huge but quiet): Prime Plaza Hotel Sanur – Bali (Booking link, Agoda link, €75). Right…
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Ubud Bali (Indonesia): Travel Diary
If I took a long time to write this article, it’s because I really didn’t like Ubud. It had nothing to do with the town, its landscapes, the locals… it’s just a purely personal feeling, linked to my intuition, my anxiety. Looking back, I realize that on the contrary, Ubud is a highly spiritual place, and if I didn’t feel well, it’s because something there was signaling thatwe were in danger. Every day, I felt like we were in mortal danger. At first, I thought it was related to the narrow roads in Ubud, that we might have a traffic accident. That’s why we left Ubud and Bali earlier. In…
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My Current Favorites [July 2023] In Search of Lost Time: Graphic Novel Adaptation & Pléiade Edition
I never thought I would one day be interested in Proust. Since French is not my native language, I couldn’t imagine starting this novel with its endless sentences, reputed to be difficult even for French teachers who haven’t dared to read it to the end. And yet, during a walk in Amsterdam, we went into a cosmopolitan bookstore with a corner reserved exclusively for French-language books. There was an illustrated version by Stéphane Heuet. I took a photo of the cover to do more research at home. A successful graphic novel adaptation I discovered that this illustrator had started adapting the novel into a graphic novel: In Search of Lost…
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Our train journey from Istanbul (Turkey) to Sofia (Bulgaria)
I explained to you in this article how to buy a train ticket for the Istanbul – Sofia route. It’s actually not possible to book online; you have to go to the station in person. First tip: allow plenty of extra time for getting to the departure station (Halkalı). It’s located 30 kilometers from Istanbul’s center. And since the train departs at 8 PM, that’s when traffic is insane in Istanbul. We had deliberately booked a hotel the night before just 15 minutes by car from the station. But the trip took over 30 minutes due to traffic jams. Worse, we almost couldn’t find a taxi! All our Uber requests…
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Istanbul to Sofia train: how to book / buy a ticket?
Staying in Istanbul and thinking about our next destination, we learn thatthere is a night train connecting Istanbul to Sofia. It’s a journey of 571 km. The train departs every day from Istanbul at 8 PM, arriving in Sofia at 9:20 AM, a journey of 13 hours and 20 minutes. The departure is from Halkalı station , about a 40-minute drive from Istanbul’s center. When we found this out, we were immediately excited about the idea of taking this trip! However, it’s not possible to book a ticket online; you have to either go in person. Either to the departure station (Halkalı) or to Sirkeci , which has the advantage…
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26 Features of reMarkable 2 You Should Know
The reMarkable 2 is a tablet that lets you take notes by hand, using a stylus. What sets it apart from other tablets is the feeling of writing on paper. Since the reMarkable 2 user manual is only available in English, I thought it would be helpful to list the tablet’s features in French before you make your decision. At the end of this article, I’ve included a link to the French user manual (machine translation). This post is not NOT sponsored 26 top features of the reMarkable 2 Those who need special templates can create their own custom PDFs with links to each page of the document. I really…
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Review of Beyoğlu Hamam Banyo & Sauna in Istanbul
If you’re going to Istanbul, it’s hard to resist trying a Turkish bath. I described how it works in this article. You have two options: I like the first option, but since I particularly enjoy Turkish baths, I always look for a local spot so I can go regularly without emptying my bank account. During our stay in Istanbul in July 2023, I found one a 10-minute walk from our accommodation: the “Beyoğlu Hamam Banyo & Sauna” (Google Maps link). This one is reserved for men until 10 PM, after which it becomes mixed. The staff speaks a few words of English, enough to make themselves understood, and seem delighted…
