2012: A year of travel in review

I have not been posting to my travel blog much this year so seeing as it is now December, I thought I'd write a summary for 2012.

• My year started well with waking up on New Years Day in Paris. I had got there just for new years eve (with only about 2 hours to spare) after getting spending the night on a bus stuck on a closed, icy mountain road in the French Alps and having to be rescued by the rescue services (see separate blog post). I would visit Paris two more times in 2012, both in November, with a business trip and a trip to Disneyland Paris in the same week. 

• My business travel year also started well. I travelled to Pennsylvania for business meetings, and combined the trip with a weekend in Atlantic City. I managed to lose both my passports on this trip and only realised on my way to the airport to fly back to London. Luckily I managed to get them back!

• The Spring was packed full of travel! A boys' trip to Las Vegas for a mate's 30th, a long weekend in Tenerife, a business trip and weekend in Ireland, a surprisingly rainy weekend in Gibraltar, and Easter in Australia, where I went just for a week. I surprised my parents as I didn't tell them I was coming home. On my way back from Melbourne I stopped over in Doha to look around. 

• During the summer, my parents were over from Australia. With them, I travelled to Prague and Venice, and also did various sightseeing around the south of England. 

• However, my main trip this summer was to the Benicassim Festival, on the coast of Spain between Barcelona and Valencia  We stayed at a spa resort instead of roughing it camping, spending the nights at the festival and the afternoons recovering on the beach.

• Autumn was spent chasing the last of the summer sun. I saw my parents off to Dubai on their way back to Australia, and had a weekend in Ibiza with my girlfriend.

• Other business trip destinations this year included Brussels, Madrid, Munich, Oslo, Prague, Vienna and Zurich.

• My travel year will finish off with flying to Miami on Christmas Day to get some winter Florida sun!

Overall less flights this year than 2011 but about the same distance flown:

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!

Summer in England, Switzerland, France and Liechtenstein

LIFE IN LONDON

Went to Ascot Racecourse for another race meeting, and saw Belinda Carlisle and Bananarama perform while it poured with rain.

M and I Went to see the Waifs play a gig here in London. As you can imagine, the crowd (mainly consisting of Aussies) was pretty excited when they played London Still.

Also went to a Regurgitator gig. They are one of my favourite Aussie bands, so I was very excited when I found out they were playing London. It was a really small gig, at a university bar, so we got to get right close up to the band. They only had a basic set up, so not much in terms of sound or visual effects like they often have, but the set was great. They played many songs from their best album, Unit (including I like your old stuff better than your new stuff,Modern Life, Black Bugs, Everyday Formula, !, I will lick your asshole and Polyester Girl).

Celebrated my first birthday in London by having a night of cocktails in a bar in Balham. Of course you don’t really need an excuse for this sort of activity in London. There have been many nights out with various people. London: it’s always very social.

TRAVEL

On one of the hottest days of the year, M and I went on a daytrip to Brighton. The amount of people going from London to Brighton that Sunday was ridiculous. Standing room only on the long distance train. Then from the train station in Brighton down the main street to the beach was all a big crowd walking in one direction. The beach was so crowded it was almost tricky to find a space to lay down 2 towels. But the worst of it was that the beach didn’t have sand, but big round pebbles. They weren’t bad to lie on, but the moment you tried walking on them,agony! Nevertheless, it was nice to get down to the beach.

The same weekend, M and I also went, along with a couple of friends, to Chessington World of Adventure in Surrey. It is a theme park, and, although not as good as the big ones on the Gold Coast, was still good fun and had some pretty wicked rides.

TRIP TO SWITZERLAND AND AREA

My first bit of major travel in Europe this time around, apart from the weekend trip to Berlin, happened in late August. I planned the trip with my favourite travel partner, Jen. She is a Canadian girl who I met when I was last living in London, and had travelled with her to Belgium, Germany and France. She is quite a jetsetter, and at the moment is living in a little town in the French countryside, right near the Swiss border, near the city of Geneva. She was nannying for a British/Kiwi family and invited me over to her part of Europe to do some travelling.

I made an early morning trip to Gatwick airport to fly into Geneva, Switzerland. I spent the day looking around the city, which is built on the banks of a bay within a massive lake. It was a warm day so when I was tired from walking around looking at all the old buildings, I went on a boat cruise around the lake, taking in the amazing scenery around the banks, of chalets, green forests, mountains and amazing blue water. Watching the lakeside inspired me to go to one of the beaches afterwards and laze around the beach for the rest of the afternoon. Though I wasn’t brave enough to get right in the water, it was too cold!

Jen’s friend Charlotte came to meet me in the evening and show me a little bit of the city at night. We picked up Jen who had just returned to Geneva from yet another trip, and then headed over the French border to Jen’s little village.

She lived in an old massive house with her family, with a huge garden and even a swimming pool. I hadn’t seen this sort of luxury in a long time, certainly not in London! We all sat around and drank some €2 French wine, a perfect end to a European evening.

The next day Jen and I set off on our Swiss journey. We walked to Switzerland (about a 20 min walk to the border) and caught a train into Geneva.

From there, we weren’t really sure where we wanted to go, so we just boarded a train that headed into the middle of Switzerland and got off in the city of Bern.

We spent 3 hours sightseeing in Bern, a really nice old city set on a sharp bend of a bright blue glacial river. It was seriously picturesque! So much so that I filled a whole Facebook album with just Bern (see album Swiss Adventures Pt 2: Three Hours in Bern)

Bern’s city symbol is a bear, and there are bear flags and logos everywhere, and the city even has its own bear enclosure, where you can throw fruit to the bears. Though my favourite part of the town was probably the rose garden at the top of a cliff overlooking the winding valley with the city in the middle.

Once we were exhausted from sightseeing, we bought a Swiss lunch from a supermarket (Swiss cheeses; warm, fresh-from-the-oven baguette and of course Swiss chocolate) to take onto the train and headed further into the centre of the country towards Interlaken.

Interlaken seemed to be Switzerland’s tourist capital. Rightly so, though. In Winter there would be a lot of skiing done on the many mountains surrounding the town. We were there in summer and it had plenty of summer activities to offer, from swimming/boating/kayaking in the lakes (Interlaken, meaning between the lakes, is, as you can imagine between two massive glacial lakes), cycling, Nordic walking in the hills, or going up to the mountain tops to check out the glacier.

We stayed in a small hostel room with some more Canadians, our window overlooking a torrent of bright blue water down the heavily flowing river running past the hostel, with a cliff leading up the mountain on the other bank.

We spent a few days in Interlaken and had a great time. We got around mainly on hired bikes. It was perfect riding around the green countryside during the warm summer days. We went swimming in the lake (water was almost unbearably cold, I thought), and also had a go at kayaking. Being in the middle of a huge bright blue lake surrounded by snowy mountain tops had a real relaxed, tranquil feel about it.

We also ventured up into the mountains, where we walked through the mist of clouds, caught trains and cable cars up and down steep cliffs and ate warm snacks in Chalets to keep warm.

Once we were ready to depart Interlaken, we decided to do so by boat. We went to the port on the Lake facing away from Geneva and caught a ferry to the other side. We ended up in a small country town and jumped on a train, changing a couple of times before we ended up in the city of Luzern.

By this time the night had fallen. We found a hostel, ventured out for food (I had a kebab-in-a-box) and crashed. The next day we explored Luzern, yet another beautiful old riverside city. We spent the day exploring before getting on a train again and heading for the Western border of Switzerland, bound for Liechtenstein – Jen and I wanted to tick another country off the list! No trains went to the small kingdom, so we had to catch a few different trains and a bus to get there, but eventually ended up in Vaduz, the capital. We had a look around bit didn’t find it particularly interesting, and when Jen decided to start destroying the Prince’s property (she broke the fence leading up to the castle trying to jump over it), we decided it was time to leave the country!!

We wanted to stay that night at a Swiss farm, sleeping on the hay in the barn. We called a few farms which Jen found in the listings for this type of accommodation, but when we tried to ring them to get in touch, our German didn’t get us much past “Gutten tag.” So we gave up and caught the train through the mountains in the South of the Country, as we looked in guide books for a hostel that sounded like it could put us up.

At night fall we ended up in a tiny country town in the middle of nowhere called Ilanz. The hostel was in fact some sort of hostel / guesthouse / hotel hybrid, and our room, which was otherwise lovely (with comfy fat feather doonas), was shared with an old man that smelled like an Anticol lozenge and wore nothing but his Y-fronts.

So instead we spent our evening in the restaurant and bar, which was all very nice, and much to Jen’s satisfaction, a unit of uniformed Swiss soldiers.

The next day we headed on, on the train again, through lots and lots of mountain scenery, until we ended up in the mountain resort of Zermatt, near the Italian border.

By winter, Zermatt is clearly a busy ski resort, but even though it was summer, it was still quite full of tourists. We went out on the town and the next day took a train up to the famous Matterhorn mountain. Unfortunately it was surrounded by clouds, so even though we were right next to the snowy peak, we could only see it through glimpses between the thick white fog. Nevertheless, we really felt on top of Europe up so high in the Alps.

After Zermatt, Jen and I headed back through the mountains toward lake Geneva, and back into French speaking territory (most of our trip was spent in German-speaking Switzerland). We ended up going to the small city of Nyon where we went out with Charlotte and her and Jen’s various nanny friends. The next day it was back in the Jen’s town French of Chalex in the back yard around the pool (and a random swim in a flooded quarry) before the imminent return to cloudy London.