Adam

When I first looked at the public transport scheme in Tokyo, I had the feeling that this was not a map of the city, but a plan for some kind of secret military operation. There are many lines, even more stations, different companies, transfers, exits with numbers, and all this at first glance looks like the Japanese decided to test the tourist's stress tolerance. Therefore, I decided not to pretend that I understood everything the first time, but arranged a small experiment for myself and spent two days specifically testing public transport in different areas of Tokyo. During these two days, I managed to travel by subway, ordinary city trains, make several transfers, get lost inside the station, get off in the completely wrong direction, and once stand for quite a long time with my phone in my hands, pretending that I was not lost, but just studying architecture very carefully. In the end, I realized the main thing: Tokyo's public transport is much easier than it seems, if you don't try to memorize the entire system. There are literally a few things you need to figure out, and then the city starts transporting you almost by itself. Metro and trains are not the same thing. The first thing I would advise you to understand before your first trip is that Tokyo has a subway and there are railway lines that belong to different companies. Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway are especially important for tourists, and besides them there are JR and private railway lines. On the map, they may look like a single transport system, but in fact they are several different systems that are very closely related to each other. And that's where I hung up a little bit at first. I'm used to cities with subways, so I chose a station, boarded a train, and I don't really think who owns the car. In Tokyo, this approach also works, but sometimes you have to look more closely, because the desired route may not take the subway, but the railway line, and the usual transfer suddenly turns into a small quest. The most useful invention of a tourist is a transport card After the first day, I realized that buying a separate ticket for each trip is a way to voluntarily complicate my life. It is much more convenient to use a Suica or PASMO transport card if it is available to you in a suitable format, and simply attach it at the entrance and exit. The mechanics are elementary: I put the card or device to the reader at the turnstile, passed through, and put it back on the exit. The system itself understands how much you need to charge for a trip. I especially liked that I didn't have to stand at the vending machine every time and find out exactly how much it cost to get to the right station, although the first couple of times I still habitually approached the vending machine with the face of the person who was about to take the exam. If you already have a transport card set up on your phone, it makes life a lot easier. The phone becomes both a map, a navigator and a pass to the transport system, and I gradually began to feel like a local, although ten minutes after that I was looking for the right exit again. How to figure out which train to take This is where the rule that helped me the most: don't just look at the name of the terminal station. In Tokyo, it's much more reliable to check the direction, line, and specific route shown by the navigator. I usually opened the route on my phone and looked at which line I needed to get on, which platform the train was leaving from, and exactly where to get off. The navigator shows not only the station, but also the direction of travel, the number of stops, transfers, and travel time. Therefore, I stopped trying to decipher the entire map of Tokyo on my own after about a couple of hours. At the same time, I noticed one interesting thing: a train can arrive at the line you need, but not every train necessarily goes where you need to go. Therefore, before boarding, I always checked the direction on the electronic board and the name of the terminal station. It's better to spend an extra twenty seconds checking than to find yourself after a few stops in a completely different part of Tokyo. Transplants are the most interesting On the first day, I was somewhat suspicious of transfers, because the station could be huge, and the transition between the lines sometimes took a considerable time. Moreover, the word "station" in Tokyo does not always mean a small platform with two exits and a coffee machine. Some stations are so big that you can walk inside quite well. There are shops, cafes, signs, stairs, escalators and so many people that at some point I stopped realizing whether I was still traveling on business or already participating in some kind of Japanese city festival. But here's the good news: the pointers are usually very detailed. You just need to take your time and look at the name of the desired line, the color of the line and the exit number. At first, I tried to follow the crowd, because it seemed logical that so many people couldn't make a mistake. It turned out that they could, especially if this crowd was just heading to the mall. My First Day: Shibuya, Shinjuku and Asakusa I decided to check the transportation in different atmospheric areas, so I started with Shibuya. Everything happens fast here: people walk in all directions, trains arrive one after the other, there are huge screens, shops and intersections around, which I saw in photos about a thousand times before the trip. After Shibuya, I went to Shinjuku, and it was there that I finally realized that in Tokyo it was important to look not only at the station number, but also at the exit. In some cases, the wrong exit can turn a short walk to the right place into a full-fledged tour of the area. One day I went out, looked around and realized that I had no idea where I was at all, although just a minute ago I was absolutely confident in my navigation abilities. Kaminarimon Gate Then I drove towards Asakusa and saw the Kaminarimon Gate leading to one of the oldest Buddhist temples, Senso-ji. After the bustling Shibui and Shinjuku, this area feels completely different, and I liked that the same public transport allows you to move between completely different parts of the city in a fairly short time. At some point, I caught myself thinking that I no longer perceive a subway ride as a separate adventure, although in the morning I was still photographing the signs with the expression of a researcher of an unknown civilization. Day two: Tokyo Railway Station, Ginza and Odaiba Ginza On the second day, I decided to complicate the experiment and went to the Tokyo Station area, then to Ginza and further towards Odaiba. It was on this day that I finally understood why many people advise looking at the route in advance before traveling, rather than relying on intuition. Tokyo Station is huge, and it's easy to feel like a small part of a large mechanism inside it. I checked my phone several times, checked the platform numbers and signs, and then checked my phone again, because I was already beginning to suspect that my brain was deliberately trying to send me the wrong way. But after a few trips, there is a certain confidence. You already understand that first you need to find the right line, then the direction, then the platform, and after the trip, do not rush immediately to the first exit, but see which exit is needed. And that's when Japanese transport stops seeming chaotic and starts looking very logical. What should I do if I don't understand Japanese names? Japanese station names can be intimidating at first, especially when you look at the scoreboard and try to simultaneously read the hieroglyphs, the Latin alphabet, and also understand where the train is heading. But a tourist does not need to know Japanese to use public transport. Stations usually have designations in English, and lines have colors and alphanumeric designations. In addition, modern navigation applications perfectly show the route, so I almost always followed the Latin name of the station and the line number. The most useful thing is to save the name of the place or station where you are going in advance, so that if something happens, you can simply show it to the station employee. In my experience, the Japanese transport staff were very attentive, and even when I looked like a person who did not understand where to go at all, they tried to show me the direction. What about buses I also tried buses, although I traveled most of the routes during these two days by train and metro. The bus system in Tokyo is also well organized, but personally it seemed to me a little less obvious for the first acquaintance with the city. The main difference is that you need to take a closer look at the route, stop, and payment method. If this is your first time in Tokyo and you plan to travel a lot between areas, I would first get used to the subway and railway lines, and leave the buses for those cases when a particular route is really more convenient to travel on the ground. What surprised me the most What struck me most was not even the number of lines or the size of the stations, but how calmly it all works with a huge number of people. In some places, it feels like there's an endless stream of passengers in front of you, but the system continues to function without feeling chaotic. I also quickly got used to the fact that you shouldn't talk loudly on the phone in public transport and generally it is customary to behave quite calmly. After the bustling tourist cities, it's a little unusual at first, but after a while you start to appreciate the opportunity to safely get to the right place without participating in someone else's phone conversation on the entire platform. My main mistakes The main mistake is to underestimate the size of the stations. If the navigator says that the transfer will take five minutes, I now automatically add a reserve to this time, especially if we are talking about a major transport hub. The second mistake is to look only at the name of the station and forget about the exit. In Tokyo, this can be critical, because one exit may be almost next to the right place, and the other will send you walking for several blocks, and you won't realize it right away. And the third mistake is trying to remember everything. After two days, I realized that it was not necessary to keep a map of all of Tokyo in my head. It's enough to know where you need to go now, open the route, check the line, direction, platform and exit, and then just calmly follow the signs. How long does it take to figure it out To be honest, two days were enough for me to stop being afraid of Tokyo transport. I didn't become an expert, and I certainly couldn't tell which line ran with my eyes closed, but I stopped seeing each trip as an intellectual marathon. Now I would calmly get on the train, change trains, get off at the right station, and not even take pictures of every pointer in memory. Although, knowing myself, after five minutes I would probably have taken out my phone again and checked the route again – just for peace of mind. What I recommend to tourists If this is your first trip to Tokyo, don't try to explore the entire transportation system in one evening. Choose several routes for the first day, install a convenient navigation app, understand the transport map, and always check the direction of travel before boarding. And be sure to set time for major stations and transfers. In Tokyo, the distance between two points is sometimes measured not only in kilometers, but also in the number of stairs, escalators, corridors and turns that you have to go through inside the station. After two days of my experiment, the conclusion was pretty simple: Tokyo's public transport looks scarier than it really is. The first trips can make you feel like a person who accidentally got inside a huge mechanism, but then you begin to understand the logic of this system and already calmly move around the city. And the best part is that Tokyo becomes much more accessible when you stop being afraid of its transport. You can walk around Asakusa in the morning, then find yourself among the skyscrapers of Shinjuku, then have coffee in Ginza, and in the evening look at the city from Odaiba, and all this without having to take a taxi every time. For me, this is exactly what turned out to be the main secret of Tokyo transport: at first it scares, then it surprises, and then you're already sitting in the carriage, looking out the window and thinking where else to go today.

I've wanted to go to Italy for a long time, but every time I started counting the cost of the trip, the numbers looked like I wasn't going on vacation, but to buy a small villa in Tuscany. What scared me the most was not even the accommodation or the flight, but how quickly the money disappears on the spot: I drank coffee, had a snack, bought a ticket, drove somewhere, decided to just sit on the square in the evening - and now the wallet has noticeably lost weight. On this trip, I decided to test on my own experience whether it is possible to see Italy, eat a balanced diet, live in a decent place and at the same time not return home with the feeling that, together with the Colosseum, I accidentally financed half of Rome. I started saving before the trip. The first thing I did was stop looking for a trip based on the principle of "where I want to go right now." Usually, I first imagined myself with a glass of wine somewhere in a beautiful square, and only then I opened the prices and began to suffer quietly. This time I did the opposite: first I looked at the dates, the cost of the flight and accommodation, and only then I decided which route would be more convenient for me, because Italy is beautiful in almost any direction, but I absolutely did not want to overpay for the right to be there three hours earlier. I also took my time with the tickets, because sometimes the difference between neighboring dates turns out to be quite noticeable. If it is possible to move the vacation a little, I would definitely check several departure and arrival options, and also look not only at the direct route to the main city of the route, but also at neighboring airports. However, it is important here not to fall into your own savings trap: if a cheap ticket takes you to the airport, from where you then need to get to the city for half the cost of the flight itself, there is no special victory. I didn't choose a place to live in the very center In Italy, I quickly realized one simple thing: the word "center" can sometimes add a completely obscene amount to the cost of living. Of course, it's convenient to live near the main square, especially when you can leave the hotel in the evening and find yourself among the beautiful streets in five minutes, but sometimes you pay for this walk even before you put on your shoes. Therefore, I began to look at areas a little further from the most touristic places, but near the metro, train station or a good bus stop. As a result, sometimes it took ten to fifteen minutes to walk, but the room rate was noticeably more pleasant, and at the same time I saw ordinary Italian streets, small shops, locals, and cafes where no one tried to sell me pasta for the price of a good lunch. It turned out to be a pleasant discovery for me: sometimes a place that is a little further from the tourist center leaves much more impressions. I almost stopped buying breakfast at the cafe. I started my first morning in Italy beautifully: I left the hotel, sat down at a table outside, ordered coffee and something to go with it, looked around and felt like a hero in a movie. The second morning, I did about the same thing, but I was already beginning to wonder why a few minutes of a beautiful life were so confidently reducing my budget. After that, I began to alternate the options. If breakfast was included in the room rate, I used it calmly, and if not, I bought something from a supermarket or a small bakery and made my own breakfast. At the same time, I did not give up Italian coffee and pastries at all, because savings should have reasonable limits, and depriving me of the opportunity to drink a normal espresso in the morning would be some kind of wrong punishment. I had to rethink the relationship with the restaurants a bit The most dangerous phrase in Italy for my wallet sounded like this: "Well, since we're here, let's go to a beautiful place." Usually, a menu appeared after it, followed by several dishes, drinks, dessert, and at the end a bill that made me study the ceiling very carefully and remember all my life decisions. Therefore, I began to pay attention to the places where Italians themselves eat, and did not strive to have dinner next to the main attraction every evening. For a full meal, it was often enough to choose a simple local place a little away from the tourist square, and sometimes I took pizza, panini or other takeaway food and went to the park or square with it. It turned out to be cheaper, but the atmosphere didn't suffer at all, because sitting with a slice of pizza somewhere in Italy is, in my opinion, a completely independent cultural experience. I stopped buying water and snacks on every corner. This is where I realized how imperceptibly money can disappear. When you walk all day, you're constantly thirsty, then suddenly hungry, then more coffee, then ice cream, and every time it feels like a few euros is just a small thing. And in the evening, you put everything together and realize that your little "trifle" has quietly turned into the cost of a decent dinner. That's why I carried a bottle of water with me and bought small snacks in the store in advance. In Italy, drinking fountains or public water sources can be found in many cities, so a bottle becomes quite a useful thing, especially in summer. But I bought ice cream anyway, because I came to Italy, not to attend a financial seminar. I compared the train and the bus between the cities. If the route involves several cities, I would not automatically buy the first ticket I see. There are different transportation options in Italy, and the cost of a trip can greatly depend on the time, type of train, and how much the ticket is purchased in advance. Sometimes a fast train is the most convenient solution, especially when it comes to popular destinations between major cities, but sometimes a slower option or a bus can significantly reduce costs. I was just comparing several options before buying, because an extra couple of hours on the road for me was a perfectly acceptable payment for the opportunity to leave money for a normal dinner, and not for transportation. In museums, I looked at the conditions of my visit in advance Previously, I could come to the attraction and only find out the ticket price on the spot, after which I stood in front of the ticket office with the face of a man who suddenly realized that he had already seen the architecture from the outside today and maybe that was enough. In Italy, this approach is especially dangerous because there are many attractions, and the desire to see absolutely everything can very quickly turn a vacation into an expensive marathon through museums. The Colosseum Therefore, before the trip, I checked the official websites of the places I was interested in and saw if there were free hours, special days, or combined tickets. As part of a government initiative by the Italian Ministry of Culture, admission to some museums is free. There are certain hours when you can view the exhibition or other exhibits for free. Among the participants are the Colosseum in Rome, the Capitoline Museums, the Uffizi Museum in Florence and other objects . However, I would not rely solely on free days, because sometimes so many people gather there that saving turns into queuing training. I stopped trying to see absolutely everything. Probably, this solution turned out to be the most economical. When I first made up the route, I wanted to be everywhere in a few days: Rome, Florence, Venice, somewhere else along the way, preferably to capture the sea and somehow accidentally end up in Tuscany at sunset. Then I looked at the map and realized that I was going to spend a significant part of my vacation on trains and at train stations. Therefore, I chose several places and left a normal amount of time between them, so as not to run around Italy with a suitcase and the expression on the face of a person who is late for his own life. As a result, I not only spent less on moving, but also felt for the first time that I was really resting, and not fulfilling the tourist standard. How much can you save in the end I would not promise any universal amount, because the budget for a trip to Italy depends very much on the city, the season, the duration of the trip, the level of accommodation and how much a person likes restaurants with a view of the main attraction. But even without extreme savings, it is quite possible to reduce costs by doing a few simple things: looking for flights and accommodation in advance, looking at areas a little further from the center, using public transport, comparing options for moving between cities, buying some food in regular stores and checking prices for attractions in advance. At the same time, I realized one important thing: saving money on a trip does not mean constantly denying yourself everything. I quietly drank Italian coffee, ate pasta, bought ice cream, went to museums and sometimes chose a beautiful cafe just because I liked it there. It was just that now I understood how I could avoid paying too much, so that I wouldn't have to stand in front of the last pizza on vacation and not count in my mind whether I still had enough money for the return train. Italy has generally turned out to be a country where reasonable savings do not prevent you from having fun, if you do not try to turn the trip into a competition "who will spend the least". You can live not two steps away from the Colosseum, but go out for a walk around Rome every morning, you can have dinner at a beautiful restaurant once, and take a pizza to take away another evening, you can travel between cities in a way that is not the most expensive way and at the same time not feel like a second-class tourist at all. After all, I went to Italy not to proudly show my friends a photo of my empty wallet, but to return home with photos, memories, and at least a small amount of money for my next trip.

When I was first planning a trip to Santorini, there was a very definite picture in my head: snow-white houses, blue domes, narrow streets, incredible views of the Aegean Sea and, of course, that famous sunset, for which a huge number of people come to the island every year. I imagined myself with a cup of coffee somewhere on the terrace, looking at photos of Santorini and already knew about which photos I would take, although I understand perfectly well that a person who plans photos in advance will still take three times as many shots as he intended. But among all these beautiful plans, there was absolutely no place for an ancient city hidden under a layer of volcanic ash, and it eventually became the most unexpected place on my trip. When I first heard about Akrotiri, it was hard for me to imagine that on such a picturesque island you could find something so different from the usual image of Santorini. I came here for the sea, the white houses and the feeling of eternal summer, but instead one day I went to see an ancient settlement and did not expect at all how much it would impress me. That's probably why I remember Akrotiri especially strongly, because the most striking discoveries in travel often happen where you originally did not intend to go at all. The road took me to a completely different Santorini Before the trip, it seemed to me that Santorini was primarily about beautiful towns on the edge of the caldera, endless staircases, terraces overlooking the sea and photos that look like they were specially processed for a tourist catalog. But the further I got away from the most famous places on the island, the more the impression changed, because behind the usual tourist pictures, a completely different Santorini gradually opened up, more peaceful, ancient and somehow surprisingly real. It was then that I realized that the island is much more interesting than it looks from the photographs, and that behind its white facades there is a story that I had hardly thought about before. I remember driving towards Akrotiri and thinking that I would probably watch everything pretty quickly and then return to my usual walks around the island. I generally have this wonderful habit of underestimating certain places in advance, and then wondering why I didn't set aside half a day for them, because it turns out that's where I want to stay the longest. At that moment, I didn't know yet that in a few hours I would be walking around an ancient settlement and trying to imagine what life looked like here thousands of years ago. The city that was under the volcano Akrotiri turned out to be completely different from the places I used to see when traveling, because here the story literally lies in front of you in the form of streets, buildings and preserved details of an ancient settlement. This is an archaeological monument of the Minoan era, which was buried under volcanic ash after a powerful eruption, and it is thanks to this that many elements of the ancient city have been preserved to this day. When you learn this story, you begin to look at everything around you with completely different eyes, because you realize that this is not just ruins, but a place that was once a real city, where people lived, worked, walked the streets, built houses and completely did not suspect that thousands of years later travelers would come here. and try to imagine their lives. The most amazing thing for me was the feeling of time that almost physically arises here, although it sounds a bit pretentious, and I usually try to avoid such formulations. But when you stand among the ancient walls and look at the preserved elements of the houses, you really begin to feel how huge is the distance between your life and the lives of the people who were once here. I even caught myself thinking that my usual problems like a lost ticket, a dead phone, or another search for the right road look completely ridiculous against the background of the history of this place. I didn't expect to see houses here at all. I was especially surprised by how developed this settlement was, because in my head the ancient city looked very different. I imagined a few stones, a couple of walls, and a plaque with a long historical description, which I would read about halfway through, and then move on, because tourist concentration sometimes lives by its own laws. But Akrotiri turned out to be much more interesting, and gradually I began to notice the layout of the streets, multi-storey buildings, rooms and various details that made it possible to imagine how difficult life was for people here many thousands of years ago. I especially liked that here you can not just look at individual artifacts, but try to mentally reconstruct the whole city, and this completely changes the impression of the tour. You walk along the ancient streets and realize that once upon a time there were people walking here who were in a hurry about their business, talking, cooking, meeting with neighbors and, perhaps, also sometimes getting annoyed because of some completely everyday trifles. And it was this thought that for some reason made ancient Akrotiri much closer to me, because history ceased to be a set of dates and became the history of ordinary people. The most unexpected discovery of my trip It was probably here that I finally realized that travel rarely gives us what we expect from it, and this is one of the main reasons why I love it so much. I came to Santorini for beautiful views, the sea, white houses and photos, and in the end, I was most impressed by a place that I knew much less about before the trip than about the famous streets of Ai. It turns out to be quite funny: I could choose a beautiful postcard from Santorini for a long time, and then the most valuable memory turned out to be the ancient city, which thousands of years ago was hidden under volcanic ash. I came out with a completely different feeling of the island, because now Santorini was no longer just a beautiful setting for photos and romantic walks. Behind the white houses and blue domes, a huge story suddenly appeared, in which there were volcanic eruptions, ancient civilizations, cities and people whose traces have been preserved after thousands of years. And I liked this discovery precisely because it happened completely unexpectedly and made me look at the island I already knew from photographs with completely different eyes. After Akrotiri, I looked at Santorini in a different way. Later, when I found myself among the white houses and narrow streets again, everything around me was perceived a little differently, because now I saw beyond the beautiful landscapes not only a modern tourist island. I looked at the volcanic landscape and thought that it was he who once changed the fate of an ancient settlement, and the sea, which travelers admire today from the terraces of restaurants, was a part of the lives of people who lived here long before the first tourists appeared. Even an ordinary walk now seemed like a small time trip to me, although, of course, I still continued to photograph beautiful doors and stop at each particularly good view or temple. And that's probably where the real value of travel lies for me, because sometimes it imperceptibly changes our perception of familiar things. Before the trip, Santorini was for me a beautiful Greek island that I had seen many times in photographs, and after Akrotiri it became a place with an incredibly deep history, where the beauty of nature coexists with the memory of an ancient civilization. I came for one impression, but I got a completely different one, and that's why this day has remained in my memory much more vividly than many pre-planned points on the route. A place I wasn't expecting at all If you ask me now which place turned out to be the most unexpected in my entire trip to Greece, I will name Akrotiri without much thought. Not because there were the most spectacular photos or the most famous views, but because it was there that I went without any special expectations and it was from there that I left with the feeling that I had accidentally discovered a completely different side of Santorini. Sometimes it seems to me that such places become the main memories of a trip, because we don't have time to think in advance what our impression should be, and therefore we perceive everything much more honestly. Now, when I remember Santorini, I see not only white houses, blue domes and sunset over the Aegean Sea, but also the ancient streets of Akrotiri, the silence of the archaeological complex and the feeling that there is a history that is several thousand years old under my feet. And if they had told me before the trip that the ancient city would be the most unexpected place for my trip, I probably would have just smiled and replied that I was definitely going to Santorini for something completely different. And now I understand that it's these unexpected turns that make traveling really interesting, because you never know which place will suddenly stay with you much longer than everyone else.