After a great week in New York City I was off to Vegas, the next destination in the States. I guess everyone just needs to be in Las Vegas once in your life. It was a pretty long flight, flying from the east coast to the west. This time around, actually most of the cities that I am hitting are all on the west coast with the sole exception of NYC. Since it is my very first domestic stateside flight and my very first time on board an American carrier, I figured that it will be nice to do a flight review on it. I am also perched by the fact that I am flying Delta for the very first time. Known as the trio in the States, Delta, American and United. Delta is known as the best among them, so I am really hyped to experience it! Delta flies out of Terminal 2 from John F Kennedy, I decided to head to the airport much earlier since I was travelling on the Thanksgiving Sunday which is said to be a flying disaster!

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Welcome to another series of my flying! This time around I am continuing my journey around the world and flying to the United States of America on Singapore Airlines in the Suites. The Frankfurt to New York City 5th Freedom route is definitely one of the best way to cross the atlantic. The 8 hours flight was definitely too fast! Especially when you are in the Suites. I am fortunate to be able to do this way. A slight disclaimer, I may have fall asleep for 3 to 4 hours or so on the flight as well. I was actually doing this leg of the journey as part of a single ticket that I first flew on back two months ago, where the first leg took me from Singapore to Frankfurt. All in all, I paid 120,000 Miles and about 400 SGD in tax, this is definitely the way to fly!

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While I guess for most of the tourists, taking a plane is one of the most exciting part of the travelling. I still remember my younger times where I will frequently get so excited the night before and couldn’t fall asleep, simply because I am flying to Bangkok for a family trip. In the past, my family did not have much spending power and we will just take a trip to Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur. Travelling wasn’t that much of an easy thing way back. This plane ride surely doesn’t fall in that category. Boarding my flight to Paris, and then Frankfurt signify that my time in Europe have comes to an end! What lies in wait is Trip de Americae which is coming right up after I finished this series of Trip Reports. Continuing on where I left in the last post, I was flying out of Bologna airport which have planes just part on the tarmac, meters away from the gates. It is surely a delight to witness the beauty A320 right in front of me with the gigantic engines and the gorgeous Air France livery on it.

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With my previous post sharing on the last city that I have visited in Chapter Wanderlust! It pretty sums up my travel in Europe this time around. 18609KM that I have travelled at the minimum, 6 countries and 22 cities over a period of 44 days. I had fun and chronicles most of my adventures here at Seeing The World In Steps. It made it kind of special that a little guy from Singapore is able to see much more over the horizon while staying in a little red dot. It is time to share some of my personal thoughts and make a little summary of this trip, Chapter Wanderlust. Hopefully it will be helpful if you are planning something similar. I shall start by sharing on the trains product in Europe. Travelling by train is one of the easiest and the advantages in travelling in Europe. I had tried products from Italy, Germany, Austria which are some of the most common ones that you will probably undertake if you are travelling around the region. So this is pretty much a summary of each of them.

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In comparison to train travels which we have know how effective and easy that are, bus travels serves up as a comparable option but at a better price. Bus travels have been getting more and more common these days and sometimes, they are not much longer than taking a train. Bus do also, gets you right in the heart of the city, usually the bus stops are just next to the trains stations. With the upcoming of huge bus companies with vast networks in the recent years. I would like to share how great and how good bus routes are in fact! Taking the bus around Europe have definitely gotten more easy with the prevalence of companies such as Flixbus, Regiojet and Leo Express. In fact, the set up of Regiojet, aka Student Agency is a Czech company that was started out by university students to have the ability to access cheap transportation. In fact it is now one of the largest travel companies linking up routes around Czech Republic. It even have plans to operate train routes. I used the bus for some of my travels, especially Flixbus and Regiojet and would like to do a little sharing on the offering.

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Italy trains system are one of the more unique ones in the region! There are technically 2 rails companies in the country for the high speed trains industry. One of them is Trenitalia which is the national rail company and the other is Italo, a private rail company set up in 2006. With only a short history it had turned up to be one of the leading companies in Europe. In fact it is also the first private operator of high speed trains in the region! I strongly encourage this in all countries since it prevents the monopoly of the industry! Not only does it let to lower priced tickets since it also kind of cut out the arrogance of national rail companies with all their stupid strikes and over powerful unions! Italo trains are a direct competitor to the Frecciarossa!

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Second part of my trip takes me to Italy. While I have ever been in Italy, I felt like I have to take an even deeper an even greater insight dive into Italy. Italy is full of treasures and in fact it is also the country with the most UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the world. Even after this turn around Italy where I spend more than 20 days in all, I have yet still to complete the north and south part of Italy. Since I was coming from Germany, Frankfurt seems to be the best choice given the amount of flights that they have to Italy. Rome was the natural choice given that it is the largest entrance to mainland Italy. Although I have been to Rome, I have decided to check it out even further and it will also be a good base to have a day trip to Pompeii and Naples which I will share on later. While I usually find that there is nothing much to share on an economy flight, furthermore an intra Europe flight, I am going to share with you how I managed to score an even better seat than flying Business!

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