Month: July 2018

Travel

Hello Copenhagen

The SAS flight was one of the most relaxed stress free plane boardings I’ve ever had. Probably due to the plane being only half full and one of the last flights out of Heathrow for the night. They called business class then SAS go, and a few of us are waiting around for economy to be called, it wasn’t so we just wandered up anyway, turns out SAS go is economy. Was pretty impressed with SAS. Similar to the BA euro flyer (ie cheap, but not Ryanair type cheap). Seats were reclining, USB power, and inflight wifi. Stuff BA didn’t have. So far better than my flight to Poland.

Didn’t bother with Wifi as it was only an hour and gave me a chance to catchup on all things Copenhagen from the awesome little book Sharon and Emma gave me for my birthday. It’s put me in the direction for a coffee or two over the next few days. I’ve also worked out how to signup for Copenhagen’s bike share. Will be interesting to compare it to Paris.

Was a very clear night flight awesome watching the sunset out the other window. I prefer isle seats, so I wasn’t at the window to take a photo however the kind fellow opposite me took one for me. The flight was only 1.5 hrs and even though it was delayed it seemed to go super quick

After landing found the train and got a ticket

Got on a train and you can see the place is already set up for cycling

The phone network welcomed me to Denmark

Found my hotel. The central station wasn’t as clean and spartan as the one at the airport. The trip took about 25 minutes. Would seem central stations truly are the same the world over

Room seems fine

Denmark is supposed to be the happiest country on earth. Even the power outlets look happy !

They even have a model little mermaid at the airport

Travel

Leaving London

I’m leaving London yet again this holiday, third time in as many weeks I’ve departed this wonderful city once for Poland, once for France and now for Denmark. It’s a very weird feeling as Sharon and Emma are heading back to Sydney whilst I continue on. Emotionally it’s holidays ending, holidays starting and saying goodby to the family for two weeks all rolled into one.

We were in bed pretty early last night from the final day in Paris and transfer to London. Our day technically started again at about 20 past 12 in the AM when the fire alarm in our room went off for a few seconds. In my dazed half slumber I thought it was one of the multitude of electronic gadgets I have going off but then realised it was the alarm. It stopped then 5 minutes later came on again and didn’t stop. Looked in the corridor to see lots of people heading out, but couldn’t see or smell any smoke and looking out the window everything seemed fine. Before exiting into the cool night half naked I called reception who confirmed that another guest got busted smoking in their room. I could tell from his tone he was super pissed about it. For him it turned a quiet nightshift into a nightmare.

Once we were up and out (at a more reasonable 10am) we jumped on the tube to head to the Science Museum. Totally wow wow wow. For me this was complete nerd heaven. Not sure why I never visited it on my last trip, but on my next one I’m spending a full day in there.

Before entering we grabbed a quick bite at a mini Pret store, and the coffee was a surprisingly good one, better than I expected. Maybe it was just I’d gotten used to all the crap coffee in Paris.

Whilst we are on the subject of Paris, as much as I love Paris, as a city to visit London wins hands down. Paris may be the city of light, but as the saying goes when you are tired of London you are tired of life and I’m by no means tired of London. And as it’s only 2hrs by train you can hop over for the weekend.

They have James Watt’s workshop here in the museum.

They have stacks of cool stuff on display. Remember I saw someone riding a chopper bicycle in London about 2 weeks ago?

They even have the first computer I ever owned displayed (VIC20). Now I do feel old. They had all the greats from the 80s here

John will recognise this blast from the past :-

One fantastic thing about London is all the free museums. We spent a few hours here at the Science museum and it cost nothing (I donated the recommended £5, but it’s by no means compulsory). Could could spend a week visiting all the museums here and not spend a cent (or a penny) and London has some fabulous museums.

I couldn’t resist this t-shirt

After the science museum we headed over to the Guildhall to look at the underground Roman amphitheater they discovered, and again entry was completely free. Our day only cost us breakfast, lunch and a few tube rides.

Lunch was a few sandwiches and salads we bought at Tesco and at in the shade on the grounds of the Guildhall.

After checking this out, we tubed it back to the hotel, picked up our luggage and took the Heathrow express out to the airport. Sharon and Emma were departing from terminal 3 and I terminal 2. After helping Sharon and Emma checking in and saying our goodbyes I headed to terminal 2. I was through checkin and security in record time of about 5 minutes to discover my flight is delayed about an hour. C’est la vie…. at least it’s giving me time a plenty to write this blog post.

One positive about Terminal 2 is I found a place that does decent coffee. About a 7/10. Not bad for an airport

I’m now at the gate waiting for my flight to start boarding after a bit of a delay. Next post will be from Denmark. Home of Hygge and LEGO !

Travel

Au Revoir Charlie

Today is a relocation day. We are leaving Paris and heading back to London for a night so Sharon and Emma can get their flight back to Sydney tomorrow night, and I can get my flight to Copenhagen.

We had mostly packed yesterday afternoon so we would be ready early. We had to checkout by 11 and our train wasn’t till 3 so we had a few hours to look around. We used stasher.com to find somewhere near Gare Du Nord to keep our luggage for a few hours whilst we looked around. I’d been super stressed about our ability to get across Paris on Bastille Day, but need not of worried as the traffic was less than normal. Apparently it doesn’t get crazy until sun down. It will also be insanely crazy on Sunday with France in the final for the World Cup. I expected to see tri-colours everywhere but it seemed quite subdued and really just felt like a normal Saturday morning.

Gare Du Nord was its usual eclectic mix of grimy streets, strange smells, throngs of people, back packers, dodgy characters, beggars and shite souvenir peddlers. One dodgy looking bloke was just hanging around the subway entrance looking to push past someone and get through on their subway ticket for free. I’d seen a few people do that over the past week and could spot their MO getting close to people and trying to follow them through. I blocked him from trying this as Emma went through.

As soon as we had dumped the luggage we got a train back to Gare Saint Lazare to check out the Primtemps Haussmann department store. The less time I spend at Gare du Nord the happier I’ll be.

This department store (Primtemps Haussmann) is wonderful. The true Parisian shopping experience and prices to match. They have a roof garden with a great view but unfortunately it’s closed today. We settled on coffee and a cake. Again sigh….. this was a commercial Nespresso machine. Ok and consistent as Nespresso always is, but not worth €5 a pop.

This store also has a pretty spectacular food and grocery area which we wandered and oogled all the nice looking food products for a bit. For lunch we grabbed some packaged sandwiches from the local carrefor supermarket to take on the train and avoid paying Eurostar prices for substandard food, and also to avoid joining the expected far-queue at the restaurant car on the train.

Cookie kit in a glass jar!

Not sure I’d want to explain “happy plants” to the guys at customs in Sydney.

View from the cafe

Inside Gare Du Nord looking down from the Eurostar check in area.

We started the check in process just before 2pm. Took a while to get though but thankfully not as bad as the trip to Paris. For some reason our seats were reassigned and we lost the table seat we had and were across from each other on the train. Eurostar experience overall is down on my expectations given the great trips I had last year and in 2016.

Bastille Day M&M’s for sale today

Just in time for the World Cup….

I picked up my copy of Charlie Hebdo from the station to browse through on the train back to London. I do wish they would do an English version, oh well some entertainment for the next few days over coffee with google translate to fully appreciate it

Train arrived in London on time but they screwed a few people around by not stopping at one of the designated stops (Ashford) and had to organise other transport for them. London has it all over Paris as far as arrivals go, St Pancras is clean and well maintained. We took the tube from St Pancras (Kings Cross technically as that’s the tube station attached to St Pancras international) to Paddington where we have a hotel so we don’t have to relocate across London in the afternoon tomorrow to get to Heathrow. Just jump on the Heathrow express.

Our hotel in London is right on the “CS3” cycle super highway where it’s mostly separated from traffic and crosses London. I wish Sydney could do something like this.

Our room has a mezzanine level

Travel

Café Procope and a Cruise

On Friday night, our last night in Paris, we had dinner at Café Procope which first opened as a coffee house in 1686. It’s billed as the oldest continually running restaurant in Paris. It has lots of historical items on display, including one of Napoleon’s famous hats which he left once as guarantee of future payment for a meal he had there. They are obviously still waiting.

Most walking and cycle tours will go past here as the street is on is equally famous as it’s where the guillotine was first tested on sheep. There used to be steel markers in the road where it stood but they have been removed with recent road work.

Voltaire, Franklin & Jefferson all drank at the Cafe here and some of the first drafts of the US Declaration of Independence were written here. As well as Napoleon’s hat they also have Voltaire’s desk.

I was thus keen to have dinner there to try it out and take in some of the historical ambience. It’s more expensive than the other restaurants around it. The food was nice but not as amazing as some of the other dishes we have had elsewhere and overall I was a little disappointed in the experience, perhaps I’d overhyped how good it would be. Service was certainly on the galacially slow side.

After dinner we grabbed a uber over to the Eiffel Tower to get on a night tour of the Seine. The tour lasts about an hour and to make the most of the night cruise we aimed for the 10.30pm boat to see Paris all light up. This was a fantastic cruise, well worth the €13 tickets. They take the boat under 22 bridges where everyone makes as much noise as possible when passing under. This got annoying very quickly. Once the cruise was over we took the Metro back to the apartment. It was quite a long day, didn’t get back till close to 1am.

Travel

Coffee with Napoleon

A weird experience this morning, in Paris and literally could not find a croissant to buy. We normally grab one from just near the station and both shops there had sold out! Had to wait until we got to our destination to find a cafe that was open to get one. Finally found one and kept moving to our destination which was Invalides (pronounced on-ver-lay).

Following on the theme of coffee with dead military leaders, last year it was Wellington and Nelson, today it was with their arch nemesis Napoleon.

We headed over to the Hôtel national des Invalides which is where he is buried, or rather entombed in a massive marble sarcophagus. The building would roughly be equivalent to our war memorial in terms of how the French treat it. The building is gigantic and his tomb quite imposing. It’s said there are 6 coffins within the sarcophagus, kind of like a Russian doll.

The coffee for today was from a commercial Nespresso machine. Fine for Nespresso but really no better than the ones you get at home. Nespresso is a Swiss product, have the French surrendered their coffee culture to the Swiss?

Here is a portrait of Napoleon, obviously upset and depressed with the state of coffee in the French Republic

The coffee was very small. Apparently Napoleon was rather short too. Is there a theme on this in the cafe maybe ?

After looking at his tomb we went and checked out a special exhibition on Napoleon that traces his military strategies. Very interesting, especially the section on his defeat and the battle of Waterloo. Whilst his downfall and defeat is covered, the battle of Waterloo is only mentioned briefly, certainly no dioramas that were heavily used for his victorious battles.

Here is were he rests

I gave Napoleon €2 and he gave me €0 back

We then went a few metro stations down the line to Cité where the conciergerie, which was used as a prison during the revolution and it where Marie Antionette was held before her head was liberated from her body. Very interesting little art work in the building where they have pumped part of the Seine is pumped through the building to remember how is flooded about 100 years ago. Lots of signs telling you not to touch or drink the water

After some time here, I took Emma down to the Arc de Triomphe, whilst Sharon wandered around Les Halles. The Arc is great and the view is spectacular, but there are a lot of stairs.