There are many ways to pick the right destination to start your Europe trip/league. First choice of course will be your own preference, like where you like or heard other people liked. But I don't rely only on this. One of my reference was the Unesco World Heritage Site website (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list).
It lists places that are famous, endangered and/or worth while to visit. It is my aim to set my footstep to as many sites as possible. So far, I have managed to cover 13/890 sites (1.5%), namely in Cambodia, France, Italy, Macau, Malaysia, Spain, and Thailand. For my previous Euro trip, I selected France, Spain and Italy.
2) Shortlist the Places
For France, I started by shortlisting my picks; Paris, Nice, Monaco and Mont St Michel. Then I did literature survey to determine if they should stay or go off my list. Another useful reference is Yahoo Travel.
(1a) Paris is a world famous city, ranked no 1 in the Yahoo Travel, Europe list, which is also very high on the most romantic city list. It also has one of the most famous and glamorous icon, Tour Eiffel. With so many "FAMOUS" titles, this should be a good choice.
(1b) Nice and Monaco are located at the Cote d'Azur, south coast of France. They are cities for the rich and glamour. Nice is a bigger city, but Monaco is much more well known. My 2 reasons; Formula 1 (yearly in July) and it is the 2nd smallest country in the world.
(1c) I first read about Mont St Michel many years back from the Guinness Book of World Records. It stated that it is a castle built on a hill outcrop, and it becomes an island during high tide. The next time I saw it was in Astro 707, Travel and Living. It showed a group of people walking from the mainland to Mont SM during low tide, and I was captivated by this mysterious yet wonderful place. I made it my target to go there and walk on the land bridge during low tide.
> Mont St Michel from Google Earth
Judging by the time I wished to spend in France, around 4 days, I decided to only stick to Paris. I wanted to keep Mont SM, but considering taking a train from Paris to Rennes, then bus to St Malo, then another bus to Mont SM, I would need to use 2 days and approximately RM700+ for a return journey per person. This would left me with 2 days in Paris to cover Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, Pompidou, Sacre Coeur, Musee Du Louvre and Arc De Triomphe, which was very risky.
No comments:
Post a Comment