2010 - a year of travel in review

It has been a bit of a slack year, blogwise!  I have to be honest, I have not done a good job at all of keeping this blog up-to-date this year. So as the year draws to an end, I thought I could get away with it all by summarising my year of travel in one single post! So here we go...

Let's start with a scary stat. 

I took 36 flights totalling to about 44,900 miles (about 72,250 km) in 2010. Some of this was for personal holiday travel, and some was for business (not business class though - I wish!)

IT ALL BEGAN IN...

Australia. I visited Australia for Christmas and New Years last year, to get away from the London cold and catch up with those at home. It was great! A trip down to Sorrento with one group of mates and another trip to Warrnambool with another group, ensured that I spent as much time as possible on the beach.

A CHILLY RETURN

Brr! The very next morning after landing, I found myself walking to work in the snow!

But really, you can't let winter stop you! So some friends and I ventured right into the cold. Up north. To Yorkshire. The highlight was staying in the seaside town of Whitby, and you can read all about the trip here.

THE WINTER WAY

Making the most of England despite the winter, my girlfriend and I went down South too, and visited New Forest and Portsmouth. But let's not get carried away with English travel. Europe is at our doorstep! A friend and I headed of to Austria for a few days. We had a good time wandering around Vienna, eating ketchup flavoured chocolate and generally being silly, as well as meeting up with some Austrian friends, and visiting them in the mountains where I lived when I was young. My friend headed back to London, and I stayed on to go skiing at Bad Gastein, near Salzburg.  Austria's a great place to spend a winter week!

Reichenau, Austria

SPRING INTO LIFE


It was a spring full of travel.

• A day road-trip to Belgium on a freezing day with some friends, visiting Antwerp and Gent.
• A visit to Zurich in Switzerland for work
• A trip to Portugal at Easter
• A business trip to America, which took me to Minnesota, Chicago and unexpectedly, New York
• A long weekend in the Peak District
• A break from the winter in tropical Barbados, which was definitely a highlight of the year
• A trip to Brussels just to have lunch with some clients

SUMMER IN EUROPE

This summer I spent a lot of time in England.  I attempted a beach trip to Blackpool, stopping off at Liverpool on the way, but being Northern England, it was cold!  I had a few other trips around the UK for work, including Durham, Newcastle and Birmingham.

The highlight of my summer, however, was my trip to Greece.  I went with a bunch of great friends to explore Athens and sail the Cyclades islands!

SPAIN

I finished summer off with a trip to Spain for the August bank holiday weekend, taking in Alicante, Valencia and Zaragoza.

Alicante

The idea came up by looking at what cheap RyanAir flights were available to warm places. I found one into Alicante, which is half way down the Spanish East coast, and one out of Zaragoza, in the North of Spain. This would be a great excuse to traverse the country by train!

But it didn't all go according to plan. When I landed in Alicante and came through passport control, the first thing I did was get changed into shorts. Which is when I realised I didn't have my wallet!  Surely I couldn't have lost my wallet again? (I had lost my wallet half way through the Greek sailing trip just months earlier!)

I asked at the RyanAir desk and they asked someone to check the plane.  No sign of it. Maybe I dropped it in the airport?  I went to the airport Police station, which was in charge of lost property. They asked me to hang around for a few hours in case it showed up. So the first few hours of my holiday were sitting on the airport floor. And then on the phone to the banks, cancelling all my cards! 

But what would I do for money? When I lost my wallet in Greece, I simply borrowed some money from my friends. But I was in Spain alone! HSBC agreed to send me some emergency money through a Western Union Money Transfer. All I had to do is find a Western Union office and show them my reference number passport (which luckily I still had).

I had €3 in my pocket, and luckily the bus from the airport to the city was €2.40. Although I seriously considered walking, had it not been 35 degrees.  I made it to the city and found the Western Union office. The problem was it was now the early afternoon.... and therefore siesta! I had a few hours to kill before the shop re-opened so I went to the beach. Unfortunately I couldn't find any water taps, and €0.60 wasn't enough to buy a drinks, so after a few hours on the beach in the blistering sun, I was parched.  When I finally picked up the emergency cash, the drinks and ice cream I bought were the most delicious I'd ever tasted!

I explored Alicante a bit, which diddn't take long. It is a small city, surrounded by cliffs and a very touristy beach. It wasn't full of English tourists though, which was nice. That night I caught a train up to Valencia, which is Spain's third largest city. Amazing architecture kept me entertained, and the next day I went to a beach too.  The Valencia beach had a lot more locals than Alicante. On the second night I made my way to Zaragoza, which is a quiet city in North of Spain, inland. After some sightseeing there, I headed back to London, with a few Euros to spare.

Valencia by night

OKTOBERFEST

I decided to celebrate the end of my 20's and beginning of my 30's by going to Oktoberfest in Munich with a few friends.  Just like two years ago, we did a package with Alpenrider, staying in a chalet in beautiful Kirchberg in Tirol, Austria.  For two days in a row, they took us into the centre of Munich for the festivities, and then drove us safely back over the border to Austria to recover. I had a great time and it was a perfect start to the next decade of my life!

Drinking Bavarian style, in Lederhosen

SWEDEN

Soon after coming back to London, I had a business trip for a few days in Sweden.  My colleague and I flew into Copenhagen in Denmark, and the next day caught the train across the Oresund bridge-tunnel to Malmo in Sweden. A small city with a beautiful town centre. We had some business meetings and ate some hamburgers, and caught the train up to Stockholm. For more business meetings. And more hamburgers. And hot dogs.

A Swedish hot dog with mashed potato, in a wrap of course

 Luckily on the Friday night some other colleagues of ours came over from London to join us for the weekend, and saved us from the junk food eating. Unfortunately this was replaced by copious amounts of drinking, which in Stockholm, isn't cheap.  It was a great weekend though, exploring various areas of Stockholm night-life.

KRAKOW AND THE HAGUE

Two of my friends from Australia are in Europe and they spent some of their time visiting family in Poland. What a perfect excuse to make my first visit to that country!  We decided to meet up for a weekend in Krakow.

So I consulted good old Ryanair and booked a cheap flight to Krakow on a Saturday morning. The problem was that the flight was at about 6am, out of Stansted airport - London's equivalent of Melbourne's Avalon. I had to get there by about 4:30, which meant that I had to catch the easyBus from Baker Street at 3:30, which in turn meant that I had to catch the night bus from my house to Baker Street at 2am.  So I had to get up at 1am - probably the earliest I have ever gotten up.  I did think of just pulling an all-nighter, but knew I would only have 1 night with my friends, so I wanted to have the energy and awakedness for that.

And that I did. I managed to do a lot of sightseeing with my first day in Krakow, and then had quite the night out that night, with my friends and some people from the hostel. I thought a 3am finish was a good effort for a 1am start the morning before!

Day 2 in Krakow was cut short by the fact that I needed to be at a conference that Sunday night, in the Hague, the Netherlands. So, after only about 30 hours in Krakow, I left my friends on a walking tour in the early afternoon, and started my marathon journey to the Hague: taxi to Krakow Airport, flight to Prague, another flight to Amsterdam, train to Rotterdam, another train to the Hague, taxi to the hotel! Phew! 

After a few days of fun at the conference I was happy to come back home to London!

WINTER

And that was pretty much it for the Autumn, because soon after that, winter hit!

I had a few more domestic trips around the UK for work, going to Edinburgh, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Bristol and Birmingham, but no more holidays, unfortunately. It was time to save my leave for the the trips coming up in the new year.

I welcomed the new year by the first of those, a ski trip over Christmas and New Years Eve to Chamonix in France - which was great fun.

Happy new year! What have you got planned for travel in 2011? I am off to Australia, Brazil, and Argentina.Can't wait!

Easter in and around Lisbon

Last year I went to Scotland for Easter. Whilst it was a surprisingly sunny Easter break, this year I was hoping for somewhere warmer.

My girlfriend and I decided we would spend Easter long weekend this year in Portugal. A few months ago we booked some British Airways flights to Lisbon, while they were still reasonably priced and booked a hotel.

I like to stay in hostels when I travel alone, but for trips with a lady friend, I like to stay somewhere which will provide a little bit more luxury. It was also my girlfriend’s birthday on Easter Monday so I thought a nice hotel was definitely the way to go.

We landed in the Portuguese capital late on Thursday night and jumped straight into a cab. €10 and a few minutes later (thanks to speedway driving of the taxi driver) we were at our hotel, where we settled in for the night, ready for some sunshine the next morning.

We were disappointed when we woke up to cloudy, rainy and somewhat chilly weather. That should not stop us, we thought, and we headed out exploring Lisbon. The rain held off and we enjoyed a few sunny hours while exploring the city. We didn’t have a plan, and generally wondered around. We hit a dodgy neighbourhood which we couldn’t wait to get out of, but then found a beautiful sunny park with a pond-side garden café to have a coffee in. And when you are paying 80 cents for a good coffee at in a scenic spot, you really can’t complain!  Dinner later was at Bairro Alto, the district of the city way up on the hill, with lots of narrow laneways full of bars, restaurants and bohemian fashion shops.

Bairro Alto

For day two, we decided to head out of the city. We caught a train out to the town of Sintra. We passed many blocks of flats which looked dirty and cramped. Most windows had clothes hanging from the windows and it gave quite a depressing impression of the part of the city where real people live. Eventually the apartment towers stopped, and Iberian villas replaced them… we were now in Sintra. A very picturesque town,  but its main attraction wasn’t in the town, but in the hills above it. We waited over an hour for a bus that’s meant to come every 15 minutes, and sat on the bus for another hour as it wound its way up the steep hills above Sintra, battling the Easter traffic. Apparently this wasn’t a good time for the journey.  On the bright seed, by crowding onto a bus we avoided the rain and by the time we got to the top, we were able to explore the Disney-esque castle in partial sunshine.

The castle, or more appropriately palace. Pena Palace, above Sintra.

And then the sunshine kept coming. By the time we finished walking around the multi-coloured castle, we were being drenched in glorious rays, cheering us up even more than the fairy tale castle did. 

Palace views

We made our way down the hills back to town on foot, enjoying the lush spring-green forests around us, with scattered and breathtaking vistas.

Forest on below the Palace

Day three would be another city day. This time we headed to the other side of the city, rode the trams up and down the steep alleyways and enjoyed the now cloudless blue sky by having drinks at terrace bars overlooking the city and the river.  Then we caught a train to the suburb of Belém. This is the Greenwich of Lisbon. Where explorers who charted the new world commenced their journeys.  People like Vasco de Gama, who I remember learning about in year nine history. Belém is a maritime town on the banks of the river, near where it flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Historical fortresses and monuments line the river, among flash hotels and green parks. The main attraction, however, is the bakery that serves the original version of the national snack – a variety of custard tarts, served with icing sugar and cinnamon. We bought one each and they were delicious!

Belém

Day four was departure day, but we had long enough after checking out of our hotel, to take another day trip out of the city. This time we headed further along the coast, past Belém, to the seaside town of Cascais. Here, we enjoyed sandy beaches and seaside dining. My meal was grilled sardines, a Portuguese staple, washed down with fruity white sangria.

One of the beaches in Cascais

Then, we headed straight from the beach to the airport. It was hard to leave the beach in the middle of on a 26 degree day, but it was a great way to finish an Easter long weekend on a high!

Interesting Times Ahead

I have been booking flights like crazy over the last few days!

This is a copy of an email I wrote to my friends this afternoon:


From: DK
Sent: 01 February 2010 13:43
To: (friends)
Subject: Exciting times

Interesting times ahead!

BA bookings in the next few months:

 easyJet bookings in the next few months:

(end of email)

What this means, I think, is that my work to accomplish my Travel Goals for 2010 is well in progress.