If you are hiring and driving cars on your travel in Barcelona, first take a look at this photo below before you hit the road in the city. This photo shows a special scene found and captured on the street in Barcelona. Cars are parked touching each other! It is normal to the local people I guess, but looks ridiculous to me. You can see them everywhere in Barcelona, and in fact, many cities in Europe.

A DHL express delivery van is unloading some parcels off the van, its rear doos were open and a sliding platform was virtually resting on the bonnet of the car parked behind it. Wow! I won’t park my car there! How could they drive away their cars with cars touching his both front and back? Will you Ferrari or Porsche owners park your car this way? Please share with me…

I saw this type of parking scene in Paris, Florence, Brussel and Barcelona. I’m not sure about other cities in Europe. I’ve never seen this in Asian countries. Not in Malaysia. Perhaps cars in Malaysia are more valuable than in Europe? Emm… not quite. European cars are much cheaper in Singapore, but you won’t find cars being parked this way, not even a car being left dirty without sending in for a car wash! Adversely, I saw too many cars in Europe were left dirty without being washed for too many days. And scratches found on cars paint works are normal in Europe.

I think this is an European culture more than anything else. Don’t you think so?

When we have the desire to travel for holidays, relaxation is always what we are longing to. Unless we have unlimited time and budget, we need to plan well ahead for almost everything from flights, hotels, trains and visit itineraries before traveling, in order to have a peaceful mind to really relax on travel. This is one reason why I love to plan my own travel. Don’t rely on packaged tour if you have limited budget. Those cheap all-inclusive packaged tour with real tight itineraries can only ruin your holiday mood. Ask yourself: How to relax on holidays if tour guide makes you into a labour to follow only his instructions to do everything, from when to wake up, what to buy, where to eat, to when to sleep.

Being one of the advantages of self planned travel, I could even plan for a total relaxing Cheap spa breaks on any of my holidays in Europe. Even though it is sometimes stressful to plan for so many things of our trip by ourselves, all these hard works will always be paid off once you first hit the ground of your travel destination.

Having said that, self planned travel to Europe trip can be exhausted somehow if we were to visit various travel sites on foot for a whole day, albeit it is always best to explore old European cities on foot. So sufficient leisure time are always allocated in each city that I travel to, in order to rest, relax and to release my muscle stress. The best way of course is if I could get any Last minute spa deals in the hotel that I stay. There are many mid-range hotels offering valuable but luxurious spa services. If we stay in Bed and Breakfast for a certain period of time, we can also plan for a break to discover various Spa days offered in spa centres around the city.

Of course there are many other ways to experience a relaxing holiday on self planned travel. Relaxing in the garden and do nothing, or sitting in one of the cafes and do people watching are also great and cheap option for stress relaxation on travel to Europe. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel guide to Europe

I saw an advertisement being displayed on a London black cab when I was in London recently. It reads as “London’s Calling”. A huge UK national flag was painted (or pasted) over the body of the black cab to make it a colourful cab instead. It looked so attractive and I was hooked. The UK national flag looks appealing to me always, no mater how it is being displayed.

I first fell for it when I did my post graduate studies in UK and London has since been in my travel wish list for many years. Until more than 10 years later, I had a chance to visit London again last year during my Europe travel. Last month, I deliberately stepped onto this UK ground once again on my Europe Travel MkII.

What made me so mad about London? It is not about the various tourist spots, its Fish and Chips or scones, and its Carling lager beers. It is all about the environment, weather, people and their culture. Anyone could feel this when first stepping out of London’s airport or King’s Cross train station. I felt it more this year where London was my last stop in Europe after Brussels, Copenhagen, Berlin, Switzerland and Barcelona.

London hasn’t got the glamorous historical architecture or magnificent marble statues of Florence and Rome, albeit Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul Cathedral are worth a visit. London hasn’t got the world’s best cuisine too, unless Fish and Chips is your favourite. Not to mention its brewery popularity in the world. However, the attractiveness of London is found in its environment, weather, people and culture.

I love London for its relatively safe environment for tourists, especially after Jean and I experiencing harassment from local Turks in Brussels who followed us to our hotel twice in two evening! (Sorry Belgians!) Though normal safety issues such as pick-pocket or harassment from drunk people do happen somehow in this metropolitan city, I felt much safer in exploring London city centre at night.

London’s mild climate with lesser rain or snow is also favorable to me as I would have plenty of great sunlight for travel photography. While it’s hot and humid in Summer, and cold and dry in Winter, travelers could expect generally pleasant weather for the rest of time, albeit its rapid changing weather in a day might need getting used to for some travelers.

I know many of other Europeans do not like British for being too charming and diplomatic during the day but too rude and aggressive after drinking at night but I still found more comfortable talking to Brits than other Europeans, perhaps it was because we spoke in the same language, English. I don’t know. Or perhaps is only me who doesn’t speak French, Dutch or Deutsch.

Some of the local culture are also attractive to me, such as standing on the right side and walking on the left side of an elevator (though it is arguable in terms of safety), distributing free newspaper in the morning, lining up at the entrance of London Underground, football craze, awareness in cleanliness, holding a swing door for those who follow, just to mention a few.

Again, this is only the feeling of a London university alumni who visited London again after more than 10 years for traveling. Though many things have changed over these years, most of those important elements of a lovely city have not. Don’t take my words. Plan for a UK Holidays now to experience it yourself! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel blog

Can I have the same fun this time traveling to Europe? I bet I will. I was in Europe around this time of May last year traveling to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, Florence and Rome. I had a really great time there shooting more than 4000 photos which made me crazy that I’m still haven’t finished processing my photos and uploading them to Flickr until now! Time passes us so fast and it was already a year ago. And I’m flying to Europe again next week!

You can see how excited I was from the above photo when I posed in front of River Arno in Florence. The weather was nearly perfect if there was no intermittent shower. You can see those dark clouds over part of the Florence city at my back even though I had perfect sunshine on top of Piazza Michelangelo hill.

The fun of travel doesn’t come naturally. I always had great fun on my travels because I let my mind opened up. I don’t restrict my mind to only what I have planned and thought. I kept everything open, either good or bad. I understand nothing is perfect and ad hoc circumstances do come by anytime without warning. Flight delays, sudden rain pour, bad weather, missed our trains, dropped my camera equipment, hostel broke down or many other unexpected incidences are bad experiences, but there are inevitably part of my precious travel experiences. They just made me stronger as a human, and more experienced as a photo travel blogger. So they are not bad memories but fun parts of my travel.

Opening up your mind on travel is the next most important thing to do after my Top 5 Things To Do On Travel, if you wish to enjoy your travel as much as I do. While planning for a budget travel is not easy, realizing it without hindrances is even more difficult. Don’t worry, challenges are part of our lives. We have been facing endless challenges since we were born. Just take it easy and take up the challenges! It doesn’t matter if the results are not to our liking, but we have quietly gained some experience out of it!

So there won’t be any bad vacation travel but only narrow-minded travelers. Let’s travel and have some fun! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel blog

What could we do when people in this world now are so emotional and sceptical to words such as wars, earthquake, Tsunami or travel? After all those disasters around the world, be it natural or human created, one after another, from devastating flash flood in Queensland, fatal earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, another earthquake in Yunan, China, and now the worst ever magnitude 8.9 earthquake with destructive tsunami in Fukushima near Tokyo, traveling overseas is the next worst idea to suggest now. While we still worry about radioactive particles erupted from the nuclear plants, allied forces had just declared war to Libya Gaddafi’s forces!

What could we do here in Malaysia?

Some EXIF info: Photo taken with my Nikon D7000 and Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens. Shutter speed 1/30 sec and Aperture F5.3. Focus distance was set to 80mm. Auto ISO 140. Auto White Balance. No flash fired and No exposure being compensated with auto Matrix metering. Image processed to increase contrast and colour vibrancy.

We went to Chinese temple in Penang and practice our prayer to our Gods up there. Joss sticks and stck candles were being lit for prayers and joss papers were burnt to wish that our world would become peaceful and healthy again. Only then the world’s economy could recover, our day job could stay, and we would have real peace of mind to start planning our next holiday vacations again!

Let’s start praying! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel blog