Christmas and New Years in France with the Fanaticas

If you know me at all, you ill know that I like to use all of my days off work for travel. When I found the Fanatics Skifest and Paris Combo tour, I knew it was perfect for me because it left after work on Friday 23 December and returned on Monday night, 2 January - absolutely maximising the Christmas and New Years break: ten days away for the price of 3 days' annual leave!

It certainly made for a Christmas to remember.

On the way there our bus driver got lost, and although we were driving from London to France, we somehow made it into Italy.  Thanks the extra few hours that added on, it made the bus ride there a whopping 23 hours.

We got there late on Christmas eve, too late for the French Christmas Eve festivities, but not too late to party. When you are in the snow with a group of 150 Aussies and Kiwis in their 20's and early 30's, you know it's going to be wild. Christmas Eve was spent in a rather drunken haze, and for the rest of the week the apres-ski didn't disappoint, as all of the nights seemed to me equally big.

The skiing was good too. There was a big dump of snow before we arrived, and for the rest of the week (bar the final day when it snowed again) we were skiing in glorious sunshine under bright blue skies.

Risoul, photo courtesy of Lucy

The snow did get a bit patchy and icy towards the end but it was manageable. Risoul is a small resort in the south of the French Alps, and our accommodation was true ski-in-ski-out.

I shared a room with an English friend of mine and a brother and sister from Townsville. The Queenslanders helped me get back some of my Aussie accent that had faded in London over the last few years.

Snowing on the last day

After six nights of carnage and one more day of skiing on some finally fresh snow, it was time to head on to Paris. The bus ride from Risoul to Paris was to be eleven hours. Our tour leader joked it might be more like 17. It turned out she had underestimated it.

A few hours into the drive the drivers decided to take the snow chains off the bus. They had some sort of problem with a piece of one of the chains getting lodged in the wheel, so it took them an hour or two, while we waited patiently watching DVDs' on the bus.

Then came the second hiccup. We came to an intersection where a rear-wheel-drive car without chains was stuck on the ice. No problem, a whole bunch of us got off the bus and pushed the car out of the way. By this time it was past midnight and I was getting ready to settle into the bus seat for the overnight bus ride.

But then came the biggest problem of all. In order to get us to Paris quicker, the bus driver decided to take a small detour. A short cut, if you will. It was windy B-road through the mountains, which I think would be treacherous at the best of times, but on this occasion, given the snowfall on our last day of skiing, was covered in ice.

GPS screen capture of where we were, courtesy of Eleanor

We got stuck on one turn, and as the driver tried to get us out of it, we started sliding down the road. The girls on the left side of the bus started screaming in a panic, as they looked out of their window and saw a sheer drop down the cliff next to them.

Most of us decided to get off the bus at that point, and wait for the drivers to get the bus around the turn. As we waited out in the dark, freezing, cold, they put some grit down and managed to get the bus moving again, with us once again on board.   But before you knew it the bus was sliding around on the ice, culminating with the back wheel in a ditch and the front wheels lifted firmly off the road surface.

The bus drivers called for their road-side assistance but a few hours later we were still waiting on the bus and assistance was nowhere to be found.

Eventually we were rescued by the French National Gendarmerie, who shuttled us down the mountain a few people at a time in their cars, and put us up for a few hours until morning in a hall of a local village. The next morning, once they managed to get the bus off the mountain and the bus driver had paid his fine for taking us down a closed road, we continued on to Paris.

Our 11 hours drive to Paris turned into a 24 hour drive and we made it at 10pm on New Years Eve. A quick shower in the hotel and we headed out to the Eiffel Tower, armed with imitation Champagne bought from (probably) illegal street vendors.  Made it for the midnight celebrations - just!

One more night of partying on the evening of new years day, and we headed back to London.

Reflecting on 2011

Happy new year!

2011 has been a good year of travel. Some long haul destinations included Brazil, Argentina, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and of course Australia.

More locally, I visited Estonia, Wales and the Balearic Islands (Ibiza and Majorca on separate trips), Slovakia and Norway for the first time.

I also made return trips to France, Germany, Italy, Northern Ireland and Hungary.

Some of my trips were by train (for example all the way from London to Monaco) and some were by bus (for example the 23 hour journey from London to Risoul in France).  But many of my trips have been flying.

I have been keeping track of how many flights I have flown and the result shocked me this year. 47 flights, covering almost 70,000 miles (112,000 km).  That's more than enough to circumnavigate the world 2 and a half times.  If only I had collected frequent flyer points for all of these!

I wonder what 2012 will bring.

London to Singapore

This year I went to Asia for the first time.

Having lived most of my life in Australia, it was a bit of a shame having never visited South-east Asia at all.But 2011 was the year this would be fixed! (Even though I now live in England.)

Over the next few blog posts I will write about my trip two-and-a-half-week trip which included Singapore, Langkawi, Bangkok and Phuket.

I left for Heathrow airport after work on a Monday night in mid-October. This was great, because that is what, inherently, one day work weeks are.

I boarded my first Airbus A380. I was impressed with the Singapore Airlines A380: I thought it was significantly more spacious than the Boeing 747's I'm used to doing long-haul flights on.

Apart from one of the flight attendants having a little bit of attitude, the service was also great, from the food to the in-flight-entertainment.

Singapore Airlines Economy Class on the Airbus A380

I landed in Singapore and met up with my friend who lives there.  We caught the MRT back to her condo where I freshened up, and then we headed out.

My highlight of my first night in Singapore was definitely going to the New Asia Bar, which is a bar high up on the 71st floor of the Swissotel tower in central Singapore.  Certainly the highest bar I've ever had a drinks at!

View from the New Asia Bar

The next instalment will cover the side-trip from Singapore to Langkawi in Malaysia.

Virgin Atlantic and British Airways are fighting to buy BMI

Who would you prefer to buy BMI from Lufthansa? IAG (British Airways) or Virgin Atlantic? I hope I get to keep my BMI frequent flyer points. Ideally, BA will trade me a silver BA membership for my recently-earned silver BMI membeship. Fingers crossed.

Mallorca

As you will have realised by now, I have been terrible in the last year or two at keeping this blog up-to-date. On the weekend I went with some friends to the island of Mallorca (Majorca) and luckily for me, one of those friends wrote an excellent blog post about the trip which I am going to simply link to. Here it is.

Septuple Dutch

No, I’m not speaking Double Dutch. It’s just a play on the fact I’ve just come back from my seventh time to the Netherlands. My seventh time to Amsterdam. I do love the city, but that’s not why I’ve been seven times. 

I’m not that crazy about it. Each visit has been for its own unique reason.

The first time I went to Amsterdam was back in 2006, when I first came to Europe. It was one of my first European destinations and I was excited to go there. I went with PP Travel – the party professionals! It was for a long weekend and great fun.

The second time was during the summer of 2006, as a stopover on a Paddywagon bus tour from London to Munich for the World Cup soccer game between Australia and Brazil. 

The third time was in January 2009, a weekend for a mate’s 30th.  Amsterdam is a great city for a boys’ weekend!

My fourth time to the Netherlands was in October 2010. I had spent a weekend in Krakow, Poland with some friends, and on the Sunday night needed to be in The Hague, in the Netherlands, for a work conference. So I flew from Krakow to Prague to Amsterdam, and then caught a train from Schipol (Amsterdam’s airport) to Rotterdam, and then another one to “Den Haag”.  After spending a few days in the Hague, one of my colleagues and I headed to Amsterdam for some meetings, staying at the curious Hotel De Filosoof. I was in the ancient Greek room, while my colleague was in the Japan room.

My fifth time to the Netherlands, earlier this year, was with the same friends with which I went to Krakow. They were spending a week in Amsterdam and I went to visit them for a weekend. We even managed a side trip to Groningen, a small city in eastern Netherlands, to visit some friends who we met on the Krakow trip.

My recent sixth trip to Amsterdam was a quick overnighter. It was a last minute work trip: I booked the flight at 4pm and at 7pm I was taking off from London City Airport.  I stayed the night at the very interesting CitizenM hotel at the airport, and at 10am the next morning was on my way back to London.  Luckily I did have time to wander into town in between.

Yesterday was my seventh time to Amsterdam, and just a quick day trip for some work meetings with potential clients, and a visit to my company’s Dutch office.

So, after seven visits to the Amsterdam, what do I like about the city?  Well, I’ll name seven things, in no particular order:

• The Architecture. Amsterdam’s unique narrow but tall, red, slightly crooked buildings lining a vast network of canals gives the city an instantly recognisable scene.
• The coffee shops provide a unique experience.
• The red light district.  Amsterdam is a beautiful and friendly city, not the sleazy and drug infested town that it’s sometimes made out to be. But the red light district is definitely worth a stroll at night. Window shopping for beautiful, young women (as well as some rather disturbing ones!) can provide an interesting cultural experience.
• The bakeries. Sweet and savoury snacks looking fresh and delicious on many a street corner.
• Febo. A fast food chain where you buy the food from vending machines by inserting coins in the slot. It is all fresh though, because on the other side of the wall are chefs putting in fresh burgers and croquettes.
• Dutch girls. They are tall and attractive!
• Dutch people’s amazing use of the English language. Of all the places in Europe to not have to worry about the language barrier, this is the one. Sure, it’s nice trying out a different language here and there but in Amsterdam you don’t have to worry about the stress of not being able to communicate. Everyone seems to be able to speak English, which means you have a better chance of understanding the locals than in some places in the UK like, say, Belfast, Glasgow or Liverpool.  Even at Schipol airport, most of the signs are primarily in English, sometimes with a Dutch translation underneath.

Violence and Looting in London

A rather different travel blog post tonight!

This has certainly been one of the most interesting, and somewhat scary, moments of my time away from Australia.

On Saturday night there was a bit of rioting in the North London area of Tottenham. I didn't pay much attention to it. It is a rough area, and I didn't think much more of it.

On Sunday I had breakfast with friends in Brixton.  The area was just gearing up to have a street festival. It ended that day in looting in the area.

Today is Monday. This evening various looting, rioting and violence has spread all over London. I've just put together a map showing some of the epicentres where this has taken place (in red) compared to where I live (in green).


View London Riots in a larger map

Buildings on fire. Shops ransacked. Buses burned. Police attacked.

I went shopping in Clapham Junction on Sunday. Now I hear the book store is the only shop that hasn't been looted.

Apparently there are not enough police to tackle it all.

And now it is spreading to Camden and Tower Bridge areas.

Interesting times in London. Tomorrow after work I fly to Budapest.