Reception Committee

 Just a quick post today showing some pictures of the first day in Christchurch. Internet access is spotty, and my sister has got a very tight schedules full of activities for the first couple of days, so there's no time to put any info on.
The day in Christchurch started at approximately 01:00 in the middle of the night, after passing immigration at the airport. A cab ride brought me to my cabin in North South holiday park (2km away), which was just the cheap bed that I needed. The next day I left my large backpack there and got a cab to city center: first stop the botanical gardens. Coffee with a great view, nice and sunny chill-out area, and full summer with all the flowers in bloom.

Next up was 'city center', or actually what was left of it. A mall has been rebuild with containers, live music present, and nice food, so a nice atmosphere altogether.

The Cathedral still has to be renovated (3 years past the earthquake). Actually the churches are the buildings that were damaged most, so you see lots of them still in disrepair.

A final picture that sums up Christchurch for me: nice, green chill-out areas, buildings in scaffolding, and lots of cranes trying to rebuild the city.

 Near the end of the afternoon, an important item on the agenda turned up: arrival of the rest of the family! First bummer: their flight was delayed with an hour.. so back to the trusted 'waiting at the airport' behaviour for me.

Luckily, they did turn up in the end:

And we got our (BIG!) rental car:

Ofcourse my parents have never heard of 'don't be gentle, it's a rental' so the coming days will be spent in convincing them of the worth of such a motto.

An hour or what of driving and we arrived at our first stay: a cottage on Hackney Road, West Melton, just outside of CHC.

Because we are now all together I will post new articles on my parents blog. Look forward to seeing the pictures of at least two mountain hikes there in the coming days.

32 jaar... wel een beetje raar

This title just had to be in Dutch. It's a line of a Dutch hit and roughly translates as '32 years, truely a little bit strange'. The song goes on to explain what exactly the strange thing was, but for me the '32 years'  was the strange subject.
Yesterday was my 32nd birthday, which was spent in a plane flying from London to Singapore and onwards to Sydney. So it was actually my shortest birthday ever! I don't know how many hours of that day were missing exactly, but it sure did not consist of 24 hours. It didn't really feel like a birthday either, until I got to check my messages when I landed in Singapore: lots of congratulations: thanks everybody!

As my last 48 hours were almost all spent in airports, let's start with a little review: The Singaporean airport 'Changi' has landed #1 on the list of best airports in the world: there's lots of seating space (even in reclining beds), outside areas, lots of (clean and spacious) toilets. The routing is easy, and if you don't want to shop, you can easily find a not so busy space to chill out. Skip ahead if you want, because the rest of this airport review contains a bit of 'frustration offloading'.
Schiphol comes 2nd, as it is very clearly organized, and you can also find nice places to sit, although the airport is quite spread out.
Heathrow was more of an annoying experience. I landed in the new Terminal 5, which is apparently focused on evaluating its performance. There's whole displays dedicated to showing graphs and measurements of wait times, ratings, etc. I even got interviewed by an old lady about how much I spent, where I came from, if I could find all the shops and restaurants I wanted, how I rated them. etc. etc. However, what she didn't ask about, and also what the displays don't show: how easy is it to find your way around? Could you locate the nearest rubbish bin when you had to throw garbage away?
That's the sad part of the new terminal: everything is aimed at commerce, and nobody has thought about the traveller. In the main terminal area (where all the shops are) the actual gate number where your plane is leaving is not displayed until the gate actually opens. I found this very strange so I asked at an information desk: that was quite lucky, because the gate was 20minutes away (by train!). The idea behind the displays is probably to keep the people in the shopping area as long as possible.
As for the displays:  the font size of the list of gates and check in desks on the other display is so small that you can only read them when you are right in front of them (except for the exact same size display that displays the 'ratings and evaluations' graphically, which is visible from miles away).
When I finally arrived at the gate where I was told to be (by the customer service agent) my flight was not on the display there, although flights departing later were: this confused me: did I mishear the gate number he mentioned? Should I take the 20minute train back to find out? There was no service agent in visible range in this new terminal: only a shop assistant. I asked him and he was very helpful: he told me that the Sydney flight normally departs right from where I was, and that it should soon show up, which it eventually did. It later became clear that there was a service desk 50m away, only it was behind the elevator and the desk sign was parallel to the path instead of perpendicular to it: so you can only see it when you are actually in front of the service desk.
Final bitching point about Heathrow was the lack of rubbish bins near the gate: none in sight. Again the shop assistant once the one that helped me and threw my rubbish in his own private rubbish bin behind the cashier... all in all Heathrow has a lot to learn.

Enough bitching for now... I won't get started about Sydney airport, because I actually did something fun today. The 14hr stop turned out not to be so bad after all: I went to the beach. First off: the train from the airport to Circular Quay:

Wow! Seven years later and actually nothing has changed in Sydney's Tourist central. One of my fellow travellers tipped me to go to Manly beach, a 25 minute ferry ride away, through Sydney's beautiful bays. The beaches themselves were also quite nice. I compared swimming short prices, but in the end I just walked around on the beach: I've got too much luggage already and also didn't have a towel.

Great weather, nice breeze, great surf (the largest temptation), and great to be out in the fresh air and sun again after 24hours in a plane. The trip back to Sydney was also nice and offered great views of its skyline.

At the moment I am typing this in the Airport terminal, about 40 minutes before the final flight to New Zealand starts boarding. I am really quite tired and looking forward to sleeping in a normal bed again tonight. Tomorrow I will be the 'receiving committee' for the rest of the family.
They should now be in transit from Hong Kong to Sydney, where they'll sleep tonight. See you tomorrow!

PS: on popular request a 'follow by e-mail' button was added to both blogs. This should make it easier to receive updates.

The crazy plan

Quit your job, quit your house, reserve about half a year, some money, book a ticket and you're set: Adventure guaranteed!

Round the world flight map generated by Great Circle Mapper - Copyright Karl L. Swartz

Besides having 'that restless feeling' since some time, the direct trigger for actually doing this came when my parents invited me and my sister to join them on their trip of a lifetime. Both have recently turned 65+, apparently an invitation to start checking off some overdue bucket list items: a trip to New Zealand. For me, the thought of being on the other side of the planet for a month made me wonder whether it wouldn't be a better idea to stay around a little longer.
Japan was high on the list of must-visit countries, mostly because of its unique culture. South-America was also high on the list, especially the Spanish speaking countries. An internship in 2008 in Madrid taught me a little Spanish, and a serious crush on the Spanish way of living. Being embedded in the language and culture again, actually learning the language correctly, instead of keeping it at my current gesticulating infant level: a great outlook!
Investigation into what this would cost (ticket-wise) introduced the flyertalk forum to me, and with it the concepts of mileage, frequent flyer plans, and round the world tickets. It became clear, that for slightly more money than the separate tickets would cost you can also purchase a ticket allowing 16 stops around the globe, with flexible travel dates! This added a lot of options and destinations, so without further ado, let me put up a rough schedule:

26th of January: AMS-LHR-SIN-SYD-CHC (28th january 23:55)...
I'll arrive as a total zombie in New Zealand
February:

Traveling New Zealand (south and north Islands) by car together with my parents and sister. Accommodation and sites booked in advance. A separate blog will be kept for this trip, so probably not much of the adventures there will make it onto this blog.

25th of february AKL-KUL
A couple of days of exploring a new Asian megacity...

27th of february KUL-NRT
Two weeks in Japan.

15th of march NGO-HNL
A week in Hawaii... well what would one do? I'm thinking: diving, wave surfing, cocktails and beach: chill-out time!

22th of march HNL-LAX
currently I have a month of US Westcoast planned. Looking at all the great stuff you can do there I will probably increase the time of this leg. Things to do/see: Bryce, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Death Valley, Bonneville Salt flats, Yellowstone, Montana (birth state of my grandmother), Giant Redwoods, San Fransisco, Las Vegas... and perhaps even a trip to Texas... enough for a year worth of travelling...

21th of april LAX-MIA
A week in Florida. Chill-time. Beach, nature, NASA, perhaps some diving/snorkeling.

28th of april MIA-EZE
Buenos Aires. Probably homebase for at least a month, although it is an expensive city. After a couple of months travelling it will probably be nice to settle for a little bit: get an appartment, sign up in a language course, meet some people with whom you can actually spend some more time, etc.
The plan after this is pretty much open and flexible. I would really like to do an internship on a scientific research station in Chile. If this happens I'll have a clear target and schedule from Argentina to Chile. If it won't go through I'll be really flexible, I could spend more time in Argentina, or go to Chile earlier. In the end I have to arrive in Lima, Peru though. On the way there's lots to see: desert, the Andes, Macchi Picchu, and probably a million other things that I don't know anything about yet.

27th of july LIM-MAD
A long weekend in Madrid to enjoy the company of some old friends there. Hopefully I'll be able to converse in Spanish now fluently, avoiding the 'lost in translation' challenges that often occured during my first stay in Spain.

1st of august MAD-HEL-AMS
For mileage reasons I originally chose FinnAir to fly me around the globe. This flight is a legacy of that choice. I might change it to actually let me explore Helsinki a bit.


Well, that's it for the first post. At least you now know when to book tickets to where if you're thinking about meeting up somewhere. I hope to be updating this blog regularly, however, time should ofcourse be spent on the road, not behind a computer. Especially when travelling, so no promises yet.