It's all about the coffee

The countdown is finally over and I’m about to embark on the holiday for 2018. Back in 2016 I discovered two things I loved doing, cycle tours of European cities and travelling on the high speed trains. The trip from Italy to Paris was amazing, just siting back and watching Europe go by. A week in Paris had us wanting more as well, still plenty to see there.

So this trip has a full week in Paris again and about 13 individual trains across to France, Copenhagen, Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, Krakow, Austria and Amsterdam (not in that order though). I’d been planning to attend a conference through work, with Sharon and Emma joining me after the first week. That didn’t quite pan out, so I’ve ended up with an extra few days to explore Europe (how terrible…). So my first week will be spent in Eastern Europe after a night in London. If time allowed I’d do everything by train, but I don’t have an unlimited time budget, so I’m flying to Warsaw and Copenhagen at two points in the trip. I’ll be seeing plenty of Heathrow and the Heathrow Express this year…

Sitting here at the airport with my last Australian coffee for a few weeks wondering what I’ll find this time. This particular coffee is probably only a 6/10 at best, but somehow knowing it’s my last one in Sydney for a few weeks makes it seem better than it really is.

As far as coffee goes I’m most excited about the potential of Vienna but you never know what surprises I may find along the way

I’m taking a little longer to get to London this trip. My flight to Europe last year was with Cathay Pacific, a fantastic airline, however I didn’t choose fantastic flights. Left Sydney in the early afternoon, quick stopover in HK and onto London on an overnight flight arriving at 6am in the morning. The trip home was the worst part, 9 hours wait in Hong Kong for a night flight back to Sydney.

For this trip I was only going to do day flights. This first one is a flight leaving Sydney in the mid morning, then leaving Singapore at 9am the following morning for London. Staying at a proper hotel just attached to the airport which should be fantastic as I don’t need to travel into Singapore. On my return trip back to Oz I’ve got two nights in Singapore so will be able to have a look around.

Using the map below you can get an idea of what I’m doing, flights are in red, trains are in blue. My flights to Europe are SQ232 and SQ308. My flights home are SQ305 and SQ211

Given I’m doing lots of trains on this holiday, only fitting that I ended up getting the train from home to the airport. Very quick less than 40 minutes including a quick change. Way less stressful thanthe quagmire that the car run to the airport has become. The extra platform access charge is a total ripoff though.

Stats for the trip so far :

• Day : 1
• Trains : 2
• Planes : 1
• Coffee : 1

My goal of minimalist tech on my next trip is pretty much history, I’m going to have to embrace tech maximalism (something I regularly excel at anyway). I’d recently decided that yes, I would take my GoPro with me since I’ll be doing some riding in Europe

A recent ride at home reminded me that my current GoPro which is 6 years old (Hero 3 white edition) wasn’t really up to the task any longer. Thus, this arrived in the post today…..

Two weeks out from my next trip to Europe and I’m already thinking about what tech I’ll take with me. I’d imagined / decided that I was going “Tech Minimal” for this trip, well thats what I was thinking until I started to lay out everything I “needed” to take.

I’ve failed at my minimalist goal even before I’ve started……

Back in February I purchased a set of AirPods. At the time I thought they were a terrible product and returned them for a refund. Apple did eventually call me and asked me to try them again, which I did. The second pair were not much better than the first, still dropped music constantly and hung up on conference calls. I booked a second appointment with the Genius Bar and they suggested they would replace my phone, as they suspected that was the issue. So I walked out of the Apple store with a brand new iPhone 6s+

Unfortunately this was only slightly better than with the original phone. I noticed they worked well with my iPad so used them on that for a while and gave up on using them with the phone. I’d also read numerous posts at this time that others were having issues with the 6S phones and AirPods and Apple were supposed to be releasing an update to them at some point in the future. I stopped trying them on the phone till about May

In May (or slightly earlier) there was a firmware update sent out, and magically the AirPods started working without skipping a beat. So I’ve now been using them daily for months with no issues. I must say that now that issue is resolved I love them and they are the best in ear earphones I’ve ever used. They don’t fall out like you would think they would. Normal earbuds fall out all the time, however I suspect the cable connecting them to the music player pulls them out.

I’ve not had any issues with battery life, the case the AirPods live in when not being used charges them, and you can charge this case when the AirPods are in there or not.

So in summary, after quite a bad start, I’m very happy with the AirPods and would recommend them.

Looking over the various pictures I took during the three weeks I was in London, I spent a significant amount of that time on the “Tube”, National Rail, EuroStar, Heathrow Express, Virgin Trains, Paris Metro, Paris PER and GWR. London and Paris have a fantastic rail system.