NickGrunseit

Wrapping up the Travel Blog has been sitting on ice for six months since we returned... I'm now publishing our last entries. Our flight from Munich to London highlights included an incredibly ill-timed poo by Roman which he requested when the stewardess had her serving trolley blocking the aisle. It was overall a good flight though. Our arrival in Heathrow was quite painless; we pro-actively gave the kids mobile phones with games to play in the long customs lines and got through with no tantrums or little fights which was better than usual…. We stepped out to find no transfer driver! Alicia checked her email and found one timestamped from whilst we were in the air saying our flight reference number was wrong so they aren't on the way to pick us up! The transfer company ... read more

We were up at a leisurely hour in Paris before our TGV journey cross-country to Tours. Nick & Alicia are travelling this leg with Nick's parents Dan & Lorraine so between the six of us it was quite a luggage pile. With the luggage racks onboard overflowing we ended up stacking our giant bags in the train vestibule near the exit doors knowing we were the first stop and then got upstairs to our seats. Seats weren't required for a 3 year old which was a nice money saver and Roman sat quite well on Alicia's lap and the kids largely drew, coloured, and were good for the whole journey; helped along with some snacks and drinks of fresh OJ. We think the train did 250km/hr + to get us to Tours in the time it ... read more

On the first day of our holiday we'd left home by 7:30am and flew out of Sydney Airport around midday after some minor frustrations and delays in the morning. We had a very successful 9 hour flight to Hong Kong. Poor Roman looks pretty banged up with scratches & scabs on his nose and forehead after his spectacular fall the night before we flew out. Nick & Alicia had been hoping for a good easy leg of travel for the kids (Lucy 5.5 and Roman 3.5) and sure enough with lunch, dinner, the odd trips to visit Grandma & Grandpa in the seats in front of us, a good deal of movies, and some gaming on their tablets the kids got through the flight without a hitch. Nick was horrified during the flight when upon ordering ... read more

The final blog entry of this trip, and probably for a long, long time contains 'Bests and Worsts', some stats from our trip, and a postscript story of our time since the holiday ended in Australia. Read on! Bests and Worsts of this Trip Favourite Country- France where the people, places, and food were wonderful, Iceland a close second. Ignore anyone who claims French people aren't pleasant, they're wrong. The French are lovely (outside of Paris which being a huge city is excusable). Funniest Moment- in Dubrovnik an eager small boy of three plunged off the wharf into the sea and his grandmother fished him out making sympathetic noises to him and winking at us and laughing behind her hands as she walked him off to get changed. Favourite Foods (general)- France; despite the breakfast being ... read more

Our train from New York to Washington DC was generally painless, better than Spanish rail anyway. On arrival in Washington DC central we confronted an absurdly complex metro ticket machine (you can't buy them from a person) it involved pressing a button 6 times plus telling the machine how much money you wanted to pay it (!) We then headed onto the metro station platform that was dimly lit and with a platform 2km long. We couldn't understand why on earth the metro station lighting is so weak in Washington DC, it makes the platforms fairly uninviting and feel marginally less safe, the distance of platforms meant our first train went roaring 100m past us when it stopped and we had to run after it. After checking into our decent hotel that was a bit ... read more