![]() Time your journey for the “Lunch Layover”: take the Metro one stop to the village of Barajas and the legendary Restaurante Jumbo for a feast that you certainly won’t find airside.įrom Keflavik airport, the Blue Lagoon is much closer than the city centre.Brazil is a vast country, almost a continent within a continent and any visit will inevitably involve great distances and a number of internal flights. Take bus 102 to the handsome beach resort of Malahide. Doha has the edge right now, thanks to the marvellous new National Museum (which has its own Metro station). I hope the two main Gulf hubs will forgive me lumping them together, but both have fast, frequent Metro links to the city centre. If you have a really long connection coming soon, you could hop on the bus to Keukenhof, tulip capital of the world. The fine city of Leiden is only 15 minutes away, and offers rewarding wandering through the compact centre. Make for the railway station but take a train in the opposite direction to the Dutch capital. ![]() But other world hubs offer plenty of options for DIY transit tours. You must clear passport control, but that is normally very swift your checked baggage, if any, stays in transit.Īs far as I know, Singapore is the only free tour. There is a menu of 2h30m tours, including “Changi Precinct” (exploring the north of the island) at 9am and “City Sights” at 12 noon. Alternatively, just turn up at the well-signposted desk with your inbound and outbound boarding passes. If your layover is at least five-and-a-half hours long (and less than a day), you can register in advance for a free sightseeing tour. I could scarcely believe the deal when I tried it, before Covid. Yet if tangling with the public transport system is not for you, the free Singapore city tour returns this week after three years. Coming back from that Australian trip, I timed the journey to arrive at dawn and leave at midnight – creating a day of adventure to discover the city’s new dimensions. In Singapore, I often build in a day-long stop. Yet there appears to be a clear majority of travellers who prefer several hours between planes.įortunately, for those of genetically unsuited to duty-free shops and airport bars, the options for making the most of the time have never been wider. So I will continue to schedule connections as tight as the system allows. You don’t want to be there, and you want to leave as soon as possible. Even with a security check, the transfer was straightforward.Īn airport is akin to a hospital or a prison. But the pilots made up half-an-hour on the long haul to South East Asia. In October my Singapore Airlines morning flight from Heathrow left an hour late, which was disappointing for those of us with a 60-minute connection in the city-state for the day’s only flight to Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory. That is a lot more feasible than it might look thanks to the rule that once you have cleared security at an American airport, you do not have to do so again when changing planes.Ī regular topic in my in box: “I have a one-hour transfer from arriving in the US to leaving on the onward flight.” Despite having to clear US Customs & Border Protection, these tight connections generally work better than you might imagine. Even so, some connections are still ambitiously short: at the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta, the minimum is 35 minutes for US domestic-to-domestic transfers. Nowadays you are obliged to enter an airport terminal and find the appropriate departure gate. It was a simple matter of wandering across the apron and asking the cabin crew member at the door to secure a seat, strap in and make for Maryland. The plane parked right next to an aircraft heading for Baltimore. I was flying in from Charlottetown, capital of Canada’s Prince Edward Island (with US pre-clearance before the flight). Once you had invested in the unlimited travel pass, staff were happy to help you make the most of the opportunities. In the halcyon days of the Northwest Airlines standby airpass, the minimum connecting time was about two minutes. Sign up to Simon Calder’s free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calder’s Travel email
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