Do you folks travel often?
It is great to explore the world around us to the maximum when we are young...Travel helps to shape up our perception on many many unspecified important things in life and the impressions stay with us as long as we can remember!
While living in Swiss, we used to travel as much as possible till the birth of our second kid (then we slowed down a bit).
We, me and my wife, had annual travel passes known as yearly GAs - General Abonnements that allowed us unlimited usage of Trains, Trams, Buses and Ships in Swiss and steep discounts in journey fares whenever we travelled to a neighbouring country.
Typically we would start our journey by one mode and come back by another mode without having to purchase any additional tickets. The most popular ones are travelling to a distant city by train and coming back by ship or vice versa. Though GAs are available right from a single day to multiple years, we went for annual ones usually. It was very very convenient and cheaper to travel around using these.
Whenever we had a visitor for a day or two, we would buy a day card (Tages GA) for him/her in advance from the local govt. administrative office (Tip: each village was entitled for 2 to 4 cards on the average per day for the folks to travel and priced much cheaper than the ones available at the railway stations! Only limitation is that these tickets are 'dated' as against the undated ones available at the stations - one could travel only on the designated date if bought from the local admin. office. Tourists visiting Switzerland could opt for a 4 day pass or a monthly pass or a Junior pass (people below 25 travel pay less to travel by using this card) or...there are so many flavours available it is worth checking Swiss Railway Network website in advance!. This way, one could save some serious dough during a trip of any duration :-)
The best part of the GA system is that kids up-to 6 years of age travel free and kids of 6-16 age travel with an annual pass that costs only 20 CHF for the whole year, if accompanied by either of the parents. These folks love to travel I tell you!
We lived very close to a busy railway station (had there been a track nr. 13, it would have ran right through our flat! that close!!) which is at the heart of the Swiss railway network, and loved travelling to such extent that we would hop into the next arriving train at the station and travel for 100 miles for a cup of cafe latte and delicious pastries anytime we wished!.
The longest distance we travelled for a cup of coffee and chocolates was 114 miles :-)
Our motto was simple; if it is a sunny day, staying indoors is a crime. Soon, our friends caught up with this motto and started travelling with us whenever they could, mostly during weekends and occasionally on working day evenings too!
Many cities offer bi-cycles for free for a day at the city centres on deposit of your id document...
It is great to explore the world around us to the maximum when we are young...Travel helps to shape up our perception on many many unspecified important things in life and the impressions stay with us as long as we can remember!
While living in Swiss, we used to travel as much as possible till the birth of our second kid (then we slowed down a bit).
We, me and my wife, had annual travel passes known as yearly GAs - General Abonnements that allowed us unlimited usage of Trains, Trams, Buses and Ships in Swiss and steep discounts in journey fares whenever we travelled to a neighbouring country.
Typically we would start our journey by one mode and come back by another mode without having to purchase any additional tickets. The most popular ones are travelling to a distant city by train and coming back by ship or vice versa. Though GAs are available right from a single day to multiple years, we went for annual ones usually. It was very very convenient and cheaper to travel around using these.
Whenever we had a visitor for a day or two, we would buy a day card (Tages GA) for him/her in advance from the local govt. administrative office (Tip: each village was entitled for 2 to 4 cards on the average per day for the folks to travel and priced much cheaper than the ones available at the railway stations! Only limitation is that these tickets are 'dated' as against the undated ones available at the stations - one could travel only on the designated date if bought from the local admin. office. Tourists visiting Switzerland could opt for a 4 day pass or a monthly pass or a Junior pass (people below 25 travel pay less to travel by using this card) or...there are so many flavours available it is worth checking Swiss Railway Network website in advance!. This way, one could save some serious dough during a trip of any duration :-)
The best part of the GA system is that kids up-to 6 years of age travel free and kids of 6-16 age travel with an annual pass that costs only 20 CHF for the whole year, if accompanied by either of the parents. These folks love to travel I tell you!
We lived very close to a busy railway station (had there been a track nr. 13, it would have ran right through our flat! that close!!) which is at the heart of the Swiss railway network, and loved travelling to such extent that we would hop into the next arriving train at the station and travel for 100 miles for a cup of cafe latte and delicious pastries anytime we wished!.
The longest distance we travelled for a cup of coffee and chocolates was 114 miles :-)
Our motto was simple; if it is a sunny day, staying indoors is a crime. Soon, our friends caught up with this motto and started travelling with us whenever they could, mostly during weekends and occasionally on working day evenings too!
Many cities offer bi-cycles for free for a day at the city centres on deposit of your id document...
Hang onto my coattails for more travel stories and tips!
Revelations, at last, and a good one for those who have not thought along this line so far!
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