After around seven hours of travelling through Java from Yogyakarta heading towards Jakarta we left the rice fields and started to enter urbanisation. Jakarta is a big place and has a population of around 10 million people and looking at some of the housing adjacent to the railway it certainly makes you appreciate just how well off we are in the UK. Arriving bang on time at Jakarta Gambir station in the capital we ordered a Grab taxi (for IDR 14,000 or 76p) to t...

Our journey to Yogyakarta in Indonesia involved flying overnight (Thursday into Friday) from London Heathrow at 22.05 on SQ321 with Singapore Airlines. With an arrival into Singapore Changi at 18.00 on Friday we quickly completed immigration requirements after the 13 hour flight and checked into the Crowne Plaza Hotel for the night as our onward flight was at 08.20 on Saturday morning. This short break would give us a chance for some food, a shower and some sleep...

Hot on the heels of the Madrid trip the previous weekend it was time for a 'Cheeky Boys' trip to Italy after just four days at work. The outline plan would see us flying from East Midlands Airport into Bergamo on the Thursday, where we would spend one night, and we would then head to Florence (or Firenze, in Italian) by train for a couple of nights before flying back from Pisa to the UK on the Sunday afternoon. According to Roy (from Tamworth, not from Reading ....

Madrid was our destination of choice with our European Escapades group, and with what seems to have become a regular feature of these trips we all had slightly different travel plans. Heather and I were flying out from Gatwick on the Thursday evening where we would join Chris, Gail, Simon and Linda who had flown to Madrid earlier than us. John and Rita would join us on the Friday afternoon flying in from Birmingham, but they would be staying for some extra time i...

Our flight across the North Sea to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport from Luton was just a 50 minute hop with easyjet departing at 20.10. We were not planning to visit the city itself on this weekend break, so instead caught a train to Leiden from Schiphol Airport. The journey by train to Leiden was a short 15 minute affair and we were on the way less than half an hour after touching down at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. It was all very efficient and as our hotel in...