Take a Vacation

[BigFatMeanie]

Sounds great, BFM. Australia is awesome.

how are the prices there these days?

Prices were high in Sydney as it’s one of the more expensive cities on the planet but right now the US dollar is strong so it’s about 1.5 AUD to USD. From that perspective it’s a good time to travel to Australia. In the bad time column is the fact that travel demand is soaring right now post COVID and fuel costs are high so flights are more expensive now.

[BigFatMeanie]

Mods, can we move this thread out of the foyer? I sometimes have have a hard time finding it when I forget it’s in the foyer.

[BigFatMeanie]

Cairns:

hot, humid, tropical - very tropical.

It was fun going to the Cairns branch on Sunday morning. Church is always great on the road. After church we went to the botanical gardens and walked around and had lunch at the little cafe but it was so dang humid it felt like we were in the rainforest. Cairns has a higher rainforest with a canopy-top cable car that is very popular but we didn’t do this because I don’t do good with heights of any kind.

The Great Barrier Reef is awesome. I bought a cheap Chinese underwater camera for something like $60USD before we left but I now know you can rent a GoPro or other underwater cameras for only $45AUD on the day of your reef trip. Next time (like there will ever be a next time I’m on the GBR) I will just rent because the other thing I learned is that underwater photography and filming is hard. It’s hard when the current is flowing and you’re swimming and trying to stay afloat but keep the camera steady. Also, the water filters out pretty much all red light so everything is blue/yellow. When pros do underwater reef photography and filming they put a lot of work into settings up fancy underwater lighting.

So eve though my snorkeling pics aren’t as great as I envisioned, I did get a nice shot of a sea turtle and a barracuda and of course lots of fish and coral and stuff. It was really fun.

You can do Cairns in 2 days or just 1 day if you skip the rainforest but you basically need and additional travel day for flights no matter what. Cairns is really, really far up there in the tropics. I was talking to the guides and they say everyone basically spends a day at the reef, a day at the rainforest, and then they’re out of there.

Tomorrow it’s off to New Zealand - Auckland and the Northland area.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Glad that worked out for you.

We spent two days at the reef and a day in the rain forest. And we stayed in Port Douglas not Cairns. I went back a second time on a work trip.

The reef is magnificent.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Mods, can we move this thread out of the foyer? I sometimes have have a hard time finding it when I forget it’s in the foyer.

Done. Although I will say every time I see a new post here, it tickles me that Sooner's attempt to get people to leave the church turned into one of the most popular threads on the board, for entirely different reasons.

[Pelado]

Just booked nonrefundable tickets to the summit of the Eiffel Tower.

[Moliere]

Just booked nonrefundable tickets to the summit of the Eiffel Tower.

Its a fun elevator trip but the better views are from the second floor

[Pelado]

Its a fun elevator trip but the better views are from the second floor

I just hope the swaying at the top doesn't make my wife sick like when we went to the Space Needle.

[Moliere]

I just hope the swaying at the top doesn't make my wife sick like when we went to the Space Needle.

It sways and the top is very small and crowded, but you can buy champagne up there

You are so high up that it’s tough to pick out much unless you know the city well. The second étage (floor) has unobstructed views and is high enough to get good pictures without being too high. Go to the top but plan to spend more time on the second floor.

The best view of the city used to be from notre dames towers. Maybe in a couple years those will open back up.

[Moliere]

As a follow up, I rented two cars in Italy (one was due to a strike so trains weren’t running much) and was never asked for an international driving permit. I had it just in case but I still think it’s a scam by AAA

[Pelado]

As a follow up, I rented two cars in Italy (one was due to a strike so trains weren’t running much) and was never asked for an international driving permit. I had it just in case but I still think it’s a scam by AAA

Figures.

[Bo Diddley]

Unfortunately, I can't guarantee a session. We get to choose our preferences but there are always more requests for Sunday AM than others. I'll put that as my first choice though.

Looking forward to tomorrow morning. Much thanks, brother!

[Pelado]

I caved. My wife was worried about the daily onslaught of news reports showing the strike, protests, garbage piling up, fires in the streets, and riot control forces. We decided to forego France for now, so I cancelled all of our France accommodations, rental car, etc. I was thinking to either get a refund on our Eurostar (Chunnel train) reservation, or switch it to Amsterdam or Brussels. When I looked into it, though, I found that cancelling it would not provide a refund and that while I could change the date/time of the journey, it wouldn't let me change the destination of Paris Gare du Nord.

Another complicating factor was that the new monarch in the UK decided that he wanted to be coronated right at the time we were planning to be in London, resulting in the closure of Westminster Abby from April 25th until May 8th. Kensington Palace, which my wife really wants to see, is also going to be closed around that time. We're also anticipating larger-than-usual crowds, which we were trying to avoid.

So we thought about just postponing the whole trip a couple of weeks, but instead are going to make it work with our existing time frame. So we're going to be spending a lot more time in the English and Welsh countryside before returning to London after the coronation. We're hoping Paris is less volatile by then so we can use our Eurostar tickets to spend some time in the French capital before flying home. No more Normandy or Loire Valley. Here's the new plan:

Arrive at London Heathrow

• 2 nights in Benson at a B&B that used to be a medieval abbey
• 2 nights at a cabin in Naunton, a small village in the northern Cotswolds (It's near Sudeley Castle, where former Queen Consort Catherine Parr lived briefly after Henry VIII died and she remarried. She died in childbirth shortly thereafter and supposedly now haunts the castle. Catherine is purportedly related to my wife somehow.)
• 3 nights in a B&B in Llysworney, Wales
• 2 nights at a Hyatt in Bath
• 2 nights at a flat near the coast in Portsmouth (mostly so we can go to the Royal Naval Museum and The D-Day Story - fka the D-Day Museum)
• 5 nights at a Hyatt in London
• 4 nights in Paris

The place in Paris (and most other places) has free cancellation until a day or two before check-in, so if things aren't going well, we can just cancel it and either:

• fly home out of London
• take the Eurostar to Paris and immediately board another train out of town - Brussels/Amsterdam/etc.
• use the Excursionist Perk with United to fly (for essentially free) from London to Zurich/Florence/Barcelona/wherever for a few days before flying back home

I'm disappointed that we won't be doing our previously planned French itinerary, but c'est la vie. Instead of breaking up the rural and urban experiences in each country, we're doing all the rural in the UK and then doing all the urban in both London and Paris. Hope we don't get too burned out on either.

This new itinerary does save me quite a bit of driving and time on the road, so I've got that going for me, which is nice. Even though I'll have a rental car a lot longer than originally planned, it will cost me less overall since it's all on one continuous reservation. Plus, I found that booking the rental car through United's website got me - in addition to MileagePlus miles - much more attractive daily rates, which surprised me.

And I might even get in some family history work while in Wales and some other parts of England. I'm actually really looking forward to the St Fagans National Museum of History.

[Bo Diddley]

That B&B in Benson sounds cool. HMS Victory is a must see in Pompey. You could also take a quick trip out to the Isle of Wight. I'm very interested in a report of your trip.

I was in Portsmouth for three or four months. The Victory was getting extensive renovation, so I only saw it from the road.

[PaloAltoCougar]

The new itinerary looks great, esp. if you've planned out a couple of major highlights or activities at each spot. In Portsmouth, within walking distance of the Royal Naval Museum, the HMS Victory and the Mary Rose Museum are also worth seeing. I found the Mary Rose fascinating. It was Henry VIII's favorite ship but it capsized early on. The recovery operation centuries later produced a trove of artifacts, many of which one can see, including most of the ship itself.