Week to the Isles: Introduction

Naturally no exchange to Europe is complete without roaming around the continent, just like no exchange to US is complete without a visit to the Caribbeans or Central America. 

Originally I thought I could fall back on the convenient and punctual European rail, which is second probably only to the Japanese, for most of my travel.

Only when I realised how expensive rail transport is in Europe, and how cheap airfare can be, by comparison.

For instance, while looking up a trip to Paris, we realised an oneway TGV ticket from Zurich to Paris would have set us back SGD139 to SGD179, while a return flight would have only costed SGD202. This is without considering some of the great deals on budget airlines like Ryanair and easyJet.

We booked our flight from Basel to London for CHF26, Manchester to Dublin and Dublin to Basel. In comparison, the train connection we took from St Gallen to Basel SBB costed CHF28.50.