A train journey from Cologne to Heidelberg starting at daybreak, the scenery along was nothing exceptional though. Anyway, nothing could go wrong by visiting a city with a world famous medieval castle, a rather old university, an old bridge(Alte Brücke) with Baroque towers over the River Neckar, the old town(Altstadt) and more.

We got off the train and noticed that the tourist information centre was just right in front of the station. From there we got a tourist map for Heidelberg and booked a room for a night in an inexpensive hotel.

We didn’t know much about what to see in Cologne but one thing we had in mind - let’s go and check out the place where Cologne Water (Eau de Cologne) originated. We boarded the high speed train from Brussels Midi and arrived in Cologne HBF(main train station) in two hours and twenty minutes.

After checking in to the hotel, we made a visit to the tourist information centre across the road from the train station and right in front of the landmark of Cologne - the Cathedral (Der Kölner Dom).

It was raining when we arrived at the train station in Lucerne from Basel in a Summer morning. Lucerne is a picturesque town in Switzerland with the settings of Swiss Alps, Lake Lucerne and its medieval old town.

As stated in my copy of Thomas Cook European Timetable that we had just over three hours before our next train to Interlaken was due. So, we had time to do some sightseeing around the town. Before we started, we needed to first buy our first Swiss souvenir of the trip, an umbralla for that(it was raining, remember?).

Nikko is a town located 128km north of Tokyo, Japan. My wife and I together with two friends who live in Tokyo joined a day tour to Nikko from Tokyo. The price of the tour was 10,000 Yen per person.

Our tour bus started really early and we arrived in Nikko at about 9:00am. We visited what Nikko is well known for - the extravagantly decorated shrines and temples namely the Toshogu shrine complex(built in the 17th century),

I was born and brought up in this town. Taiping is a town located in the northern state of Perak, Malaysia, it’s about a three-hour drive from Kuala Lumpur or an hour drive from Penang.

Taiping started as a tin mining town in the middle of the 19th century. It quickly flourished through the first half of the 20th century as the British colonial administration centre for the state of Perak and tin mining hub. The name “Tai Ping” means eternal peace in Chinese.