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Showing posts with the label TRAVEL - Benares

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Florence

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FLORENCE     Florence –  the capital of the Tuscany region and the cradle of Renaissance   We opted for Flix Bus while traveling from Venice to Florence. The road journey takes about three and a half-hour. In Florence, it terminates at the rear end of Santa Maria Novella (SMN) train station. One of Italy’s busiest stations, it got its name from Santa Maria Novella Church just across the plaza from the main entrance. We debarked at the station and refreshed ourselves at McDonald's before hiring a cab for our hotel. Florence, popularly known as ‘Firenze’ by the Italians, is located in central Italy. This dreamy city with a romantic name is the regional capital of the lovely Tuscany region.   Columbus Hotel, where we stayed, is located in Lugarno District. We always prefer to book our hotels through Booking.com as we always land up getting good hotels at good locations. Despite being a little away from the heart of the city and Santa Maria Novella station

Visit to India's oldest living city - Benares

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Born in Benares ---- revisited 2014 Proud and privileged I feel to be born in the holy city of Benares. I have stayed there but it is as good as not staying because I had not come to terms with my senses during that period. So when my wife proposed that we pay a short visit to Benares during the summer of 2014 I was excited. Excited to visit a city which carries a highly inspiringly vivacious introduction in Lonely Planet – “Brace yourself. You are about to enter one of the most blindingly colourful, unrelentingly chaotic and unapologetically indiscreet places on earth. Varanasi takes no prisoners. But if you are ready for it, this may just turn out to be your favourite stops at all" . Benaras is also known as Kashi, ‘the abode of Lord Shiva, the Hindu God’, or Varanasi nowadays. It is about 600 km from Calcutta and involves a comfortable overnight train journey. We stayed in Hotel Surya in the Cantonment area, which is a relatively peaceful retreat and located behind Benares s