That's a wrap! - photography

Welcome to my personally favourite part of "that's a wrap!", where I'll review my photography from the whole trip.

In January my original DLSR's battery failed. It seemed like a good excuse to upgrade from a 10-year-old model to a new model, so amid much squawking from my parents, I went out and bought a Canon EOS 7D body - about $1,200.

Worth. Every. Cent. I was absolutely rapt with the photos I took on the whole trip away, from the start right through to the end. My photography skills became ingrained towards the end of the trip, and I was able to spend much less time evaluating a scene before snapping away.

The lads at work were also impressed with them - so I may yet get some published photos out there in the big bad world of the internet!

Everyone's asking me "what was your favourite part of the trip"? Put me on the spot, why don't you! I've answered every time more or less the same - the three-week period after arriving in Andorra, driving along the French Azure Coast, down to Liguria and Cinque Terre, and back up through the Alps to Grenoble. I'd happily do that again many, many times.

"Pick your favourite photos" is another common question. To that end, I've ranked my top ten favourite photos, now that I've had the chance to evaluate all the photos I've taken. Which, by the way, comes in at just under 33,000. That equates to 370 photos every single day!

If you want to reminisce some more, check out my Flickr galleries from my Europe trip at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/collections/72157647345994947/

1) London. Right at the end of the trip, I grabbed this one very late in the afternoon at Piccadilly Circus. You can see the ubiquitous neon signs, but also a London double-decker bus, and an Underground symbol. I also increased the exposure, capturing the movement and bustling nature of the city:

2) Paris. On the very first day, I happened to be at the Jardin du Trocadero when the massive fountains went off, allowing me to capture a unique perspective of some famous Parisian landmarks, with the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Élysées as the backdrop:

3) Calanques. Even though we didn't make get to do the five-hour-long hike through the rest of the Calanques, I managed to snap this one on the shorter, 90-minute walk around a small headland. What immediately struck me about the whole area was the colour of the water. Yes, it really is that colour, no photoshopping here:

4) Cinque Terre. This time we did get to do the all-day hike from one end of the park to the other, from the first to the fifth town. This one is Manarola, the fourth town we visited, late in the afternoon, looking down from the trail above:

5) Vienna. This is a grab of Schönbrunn Palace, looking back from all the way up the hill at the Gloriette. It truly is a spectacular park, with manicured gardens and flowers galore:

6) Brighton. Looking back from the amusement park of Brighton Pier, you can see 'The Eye', and the beaches, which made for a really nice contrast when the sun came out and made the pebbles of the beach shine a bright orange:

7) Cambridge. On the second last day, we went to Cambridge, the place I really wanted to go in England, having never been before. Here you can see Pembroke College, one of the smaller, less-known colleges in Cambridge. The colour of the building, in contrast to the grass and the sky, was mind-blowing:

8) Potsdam. Patience reaps its own rewards. I was getting cranky at the miserable weather in Berlin, and on my last day there, I caught this photo, across the lake from the Neuer Garten:

9) Grenoble. This Alpine city is famous for its hill, called the Bastille, which rises up over the city, really quite close to it, in comparison to the far-away mountains. This photo includes a view of downtown Grenoble, with the Bastille's famous cable car in the foreground:

10) Venice. And what top-ten would be complete without 'the' view of the Grand Canal in Venice? In the afternoon I tried my hand at a long exposure shot here. I had to fight for a spot, and fight to keep it, but my tripod proved to be a good deterrent to anyone wanting to bowl me over. It's really a stunning part of the city:

So there you have my top ten photos. That also concludes the "that's a wrap!" series! And this blog. Join me at the end of September, when I'll be taking a short trip to Adelaide - a part sightseeing, part AFL umpiring trip!

That's a wrap! - accommodation

Welcome again to "That's a wrap!". Today I'll be covering the highs and lows of the accommodation options we chose for the trip. They can be segregated into three distinct categories of stays:

AIRBNB SHARES

The view from my Airbnb in Venice

I utilised Airbnb for the first time on this trip. For those that don't know it, it's basically a more evolved version of couch-surfing, leasing out shared rooms, private rooms and even whole apartments and houses.

On my part, private rooms seemed a great way to sleep on the cheap and meet some new people who were locals and knew the area well. It worked really well for basically the whole three weeks, where I stayed in private rooms in Paris, Berlin, Vienna (with two separate apartments), Venice and Rome.

PLUS - I averaged AU$40, including $250 for 3 nights in Venice. So I'd say that's a win regardless. Three of six had breakfast included, so I could stretch my single bag of muesli for 3 whole weeks! The locals I stayed with knew what to see and what not to see.

MINUS - I had a few panics when I couldn't (a) get into or lock the apartment in Paris, (b) find the apartment in Venice, (c) unlock the apartment door in Rome at 11:30 at night. Fortunately they were all circumvented by either myself or someone else before I reached panic attack stage.


ENTIRE AIRBNB APARTMENTS

The experience of a Swiss ski chalet

Our (mostly) weapon of choice when the two or three of us were together. We stayed in places all over the place, from the coast of Italy to the middle of nowhere in France. We averaged about $45-50 per person per night, be it only dad and I or all three of us.

PLUS - We got to use the facilities of entire apartments, and cook our own meals - we didn't have to eat out every night. We came across some fantastically furnished apartments. THE SWISS ALPS! My gosh that chalet was incredible. If we ever go to Switzerland again, we will likely be back. $30 per person per night, in a place like that, is an experience in itself.

MINUS - There were again some hair-raising moments when we couldn't get into apartments or lobbies. Some were a bit on the expensive side for my taste too, but they were certainly cheaper than anything we could find in terms of hotels.


HOTELS

We mostly used hotels when mum was with us, and sparingly during my time with dad - Airbnb apartments were often very cheap for two single beds. Usually the hotels we used were on overnight stops from A to B, where mum wanted to use hotels more frequently.

PLUS - Management is usually there, so there are no dramas trying to get into places. Most of the places we stayed at were flexible with check-in and check-out times, so we could sit in the lobby after if we needed more internet access, or if it was only a short day we could check in early.

MINUS - It was very much a chore coming up with meal ideas that didn't require any cooking - the quality of our meals definitely went downhill, with the notable exception of Strasbourg, where we had an Appart-Hotel, which had full cooking facilities. Quite expensive for three people too - the Hilton in Croydon, near London, was a major disappointment for the price we paid. Often internet was also either not included, outrageously expensive, or very, VERY slow.


THE UPSHOT?

Next time (if I actually want to travel with the folks again) I think we will continue to use AirBNB. At the end of the day the convenience of being able to cook your own meals was really useful for us. When I was on my own, I loved being able to talk to the locals and get their opinion of places to see.

I used Trivago to compare hotel prices, and it proved useful more than once, where we were able to get a price $10-$15 cheaper than on Booking.com for instance.

I've learned that I'm prepared to pay about $15-$20 more per night to stay in an apartment in the city centre. Paris was OK because I was still fresh, but I really didn't like having to commute into the city from an hour away. It saps the motivation.

Join me for my next "that's a wrap"!

That's a wrap! - transport

So now that I've been home for a few days, I've decided to do a "that's a wrap!" series, covering all the major cogs and parts of my three-month-long trip. First out of the gate is transport.

By my calculations, between the I-don't-think-it-really-counts long-haul flying (33,085 kilometres), short-haul flights (1,397 km), trains (2,362 km), busses (210 km), driving (10,500 km), running (14 km), cycling (20 km), and walking (747 km), I have traversed a total of 48,335 kilometres on this trip (15,250 if you take out the flight there and back).

FLYING

Starting with the long-haul flights, and the Qantas flight from Brisbane to Hong Kong was exceptional, mainly because it was so empty. And that hot chocolate - worth the price of admission! Plus I met a German steward, that was cool. The two Air France flights, one in economy, one in premium, were dour. I don't think I'll fly with them again. The Asian and Middle Eastern airlines are much better IMO. But I got to fly on an A380, so that's a bucket list item ticked. Cathay's Premium Economy was good too. Plus I got to see an A330 and A380 cockpit! Truly amazing where a little courtesy and politeness gets you!

The two low-cost intra-Europe flights were uneventful for me, and each had its own unique flavour, where an Airberlin peak hour packed business flight had a completely different feel to the lunchtime Vueling flight, which felt a bit like a Spanish siesta.

THE SCORECARD
Qantas. The flight was empty, otherwise it would rank lower. A-
Air France. Left a bit to be desired. C-
Airberlin. Fun, but a bit cramped. B+
Vueling. Siesta atmosphere, bit of a ragshot organisation. B-
Cathay. Great! A

ON THE RAILS

I had (counts to self) four train trips overall, all with different companies. First up was the TGV. It was typical French, very efficient and organised, and felt like a really well-oiled machine. Germany's Deutsche Bahn had massive luggage storage space, but felt a bit sloppier with its multiple 15-minute delays. The Trenitalia was packed to the rafters, and there was next to no luggage storage space for those that got on late.

The overnight train was amazing. You have 15-25 people per carriage, with a dedicated service attendant. They are FANTASTIC value for money, at 120 Euros for a three-person sleeper. They are perfect for backpackers - you get to meet some interesting new people, and you get breakfast and a night's sleep basically for free!

THE SCORECARD
TGV. A well-oiled machine. A+!
Deutsche Bahn. NOT a well-oiled machine. B
Overnight OBB. A fantastic experience. A+!
Trenitalia. Packed, felt poorly managed. D

ON THE ROAD

Well, dad drove 13,960 kilometres. That was an absolute marathon. I did about 10,500 of those kilometres with him. The GPS/audio/Bluetooth system kicked butt, and the recline on the seats was really good. In future we should probably have allowed more rest days in between driving long distances, so that's a learning experience.

HUMAN POWER

Well, I walked 747 kilometres in total. And that's just the above ground parts, not including airports, metros or trains. That's further than the (as the crow flies) distance from Brisbane to Yeppoon or the Gold Coast to Sydney. So yeah, maybe I walked a bit far. But the interesting stuff was often in that bit you would just miss if you wimped out and got the metro.

Umpiring the Dutch AFL practice match was amazing, and was one of only two runs I got on the entire trip, the other was more than two months earlier on my first day of the whole trip in Paris. So my fitness will be below par when I get back.

We had a couple of goes at cycling, it's much more civil there than in Brisbane. Amsterdam especially is OK if you treat the traffic with just a little respect, rather than being a hooligan. I think it will be hard to adjust to the nutcases that are all over the roads back in Australia.

Tune in for the next "That's a wrap!"

Trip Report - CX103

Back home! Woohoo! Now a review of the second segment of our flight back home - Cathay Pacific from Brisbane to Hong Kong, via Cairns.

I pick up where I left off in Hong Kong Airport, where we made the transfer from the arrivals to the departures area and waited for boarding. During that time, I took some plane geek photos. There were quite a few A380s, as well as an area where you could see the planes right as they touched down:

Plane geek photos in Hong Kong

We were introduced to the new liquids rule for flights into Australia - now it's identical to the US, you can't even refill water bottles after security, as there is a second check at the airbridge. I have no idea why, that's the whole purpose of security screening is it not?

We got access to a small priority queue as premium economy passengers, although we were basically lumped together with everyone at the liquids checking area halfway along the airbridge. The Cathay flight was on an A330, so a bit smaller and a few less people to deal with. The flight left late, but we managed to 'make up time' by the time we arrived in Cairns and then Brisbane. They are on time 80% of the time for a reason...

Our ride back to Oz

They served dinner - the only meal offered on the flight, despite the fact that we would arrive a few hours after breakfast. The food was a vast improvement on Air France's offering:

Dinner on Cathay

I know that people don't always like Asian food when they have just spent two weeks on Asian food, but it was quite nice having come from European foods. Bok choy and chicken with rice and Haagen Dazs was just the ticket! Cathay was much better and came around much more frequently with drinks and the like.

We arrived in Cairns a bit before 4:30. The airport was completely dead, but the security staff were surprisingly perky, and were up for a good chat while we waited for all the people in front of me to empty their bags of their stuff like amateurs. Dad made the observation on the way over that all the Asian tourists seemed to go to Tropical North Queensland, and indeed the flight was decidedly more empty after the Cairns stop.

Just after departure in Cairns, I managed a really nice photo of the sunrise with my phone. It never ceases to impress me:

Sunrise over the Pacific Ocean

Our entertainment system from Cairns to Brisbane consisted of watching the entertainment system being reset, and watching the Linux OS start up. Not so amusing for several other people, but surely you don't need entertainment on a less-than-2-hour flight?

Entertainment

In fact, I lie. We got a small breakfast pasty. Quite delicious too. They even came back with a hot chocolate after they said they couldn't source me one. They shouldn't have bothered - it was hot but it wasn't chocolate - it must have had a quarter-shot of chocolate in it.

Arrival in Brisbane, and fast forward to, well, fast-forwarding through the ePassport section and bag pick-up. Again, our 4 bags were literally in the first dozen to come out. My luggage has shown up early for the entire trip!

Trip Report - AF188

Greetings from Honkers, the midway point of our journey back Down Under.

This is my first time flying somewhere other than the back of the bus (economy class), with my upgraded return sector to premium economy so I could fly with dad. With Air France's premium economy comes several priority accesses to queues, including check-in and passport control.

Our experience began interestingly at the first of these priority queues, at check-in. As you know, check-in typically opens 3 hours before. We asked the 'greeter' at the priority queue if we could check in before then, and she said "yes, yes, the economy check-in queue is over that way". Ah, you don't even want to ask if we have a priority ticket? I may never travel premium class again, but really?

A quick check-in process would have combined with an even quicker passport control, had the priority passport control access not been seemingly blocked off. I said to dad, "let's see if it's open". We were allowed through, by ducking under the temporary barrier. So Air France gets a very low mark so far.

The priority access was very quick though, once we figured it out. We had a couple of hours to kill, but decided against 25 Euros each to access the premium lounge, which is a compromise - you can buy access, which economy passengers can't do.

Eventually boarding time rolled around. It took near enough to 40 minutes to cram the 500 people on to the A380. We made our way to our seats, once again at the back of the upper deck:

Premium economy

They say first impressions are lasting impressions, and it was about what I expected. It was a decent amount of extra space, but not amazing. Food and drink service was reasonably plentiful throughout the flight, although it wasn't that much more frequent than what I experienced in economy on the way over:

Dinner and brekky

Here you see Air France's two meal offerings. The dinner was quite reasonable, with a pineapple upside down cake and a bit of stale bread (stale bread seems to be a thing on Air France, judging by internet reviews). Breakfast was worse. A sausage with some beans and eggs that didn't even look like eggs. More stale bread. Even the hot chocolate wasn't that great. And to think this was on the A380, which Air France spruiks as the 'best of the best'. I don't think I'll be back.

The flight was on time though, so I guess that was something. A quick look around at Hong Kong Airport, before we board our Cathay flight back to Oz!

Au revoir, Europe!

Well, we made it to the airport safely! Now all we need to do is make it home.

You can see some photos of today on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645709737341/

After getting mum to the train station well before 8, we headed to the Port of Dover, where we drove onto our ferry to Calais. This particular route is one of the busiest large ferry routes in the world - there are many, many crossings each day. The 90-minute crossing was fairly uneventful, although I did capture a couple of wicked photos of the white cliffs as we left:

The White Cliffs of Dover

See you later, England!:

See you later, England!

There was a complete absence of border control of Calais - you literally just drive off the ferry straight onto the motorway. We decided to go along the road nearer the coast, rather than just using the motorway. Our planned route took us past some spectacular scenery and over the city of Boulogne-sur-Mer. We wound up in Abbeville, where we had a brief look around:

Abbeville

After we found out the nearby Chateau was shut, we soldiered on towards Paris. By complete accident we went past Chateau de Chantilly around sunset, which was just magnificent:

Chantilly

After another hour or so, driving through some dense forests and sparse farmland, we made it to Charles de Gaulle Airport - the Renault lease car drop-off point, to be precise. It’s some distance to CDG, transport to which is provided free of charge with a transfer van.

I’ll upload a couple more blogs detailing our whole airport-airline experience until Brisbane. Au revoir until then!

The white cliffs... more of a dark grey

Our last day of travelling in Britain today, where we drove south all the way to the coast and Dover. Given that it was our last day and all, we decided to go straight to the White Cliffs of Dover, rather than going to our hotel first.

Dover on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157647343129007/

After abandoning mum because she didn’t want to walk the length of the trail, we headed off on our merry way. The weather was decent, on the walk over, and I was really impressed, not by the cliffs themselves, but by the ruggedness of the coastline. It’s hard to describe, it just “had that feel about it”, with just the right amount of flowering bushes mixed in with barbed-wire and wood fences and green grass:

Rugged White Cliffs

Of course there are the white cliffs, which are pretty spectacular, although you can’t actually go down to sea level any more - there was a landslide several years ago that they still haven’t deemed safe to traverse. I’m having flashbacks to Cinque Terre here:

The White Cliffs

The sunshine lasted until we reached the lighthouse, when we realised it was going to rain. We had a tour of said lighthouse, which was actually quite interesting. All the old machinery was still there, and we got to turn the old handle and watch one of the original mechanisms rotate the light. The lighthouse has long since shut down after the dangerous reefs shifted to the west by several miles:

The lighthouse of the White Cliffs

We power-walked the way back, not wanting to get too wet. As it turned out it didn’t rain too heavily, but the white cliffs had turned a fabulously mediocre grey in colour. Booo-ring!

Back to our hotel, where we walked around to a local pub and had another traditional British pub meal - our very last! Tomorrow we’ll throw mum out at the train station in Dover, where she’ll embark on the rest of her trip. We’ll get the ferry across the Channel and cruise on down to Paris. Until tomorrow!