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Published: October 29th 2006
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Its hard to believe we are back in Copenhagen (albeit only the SAS lounge at the airport) where we started our holiday about 5 weeks ago.
Just taking this opportunity to do a quick blog (who said blogging was addictive!) while waiting for our connection to Tokyo in about 2 hours.
We left our little hotel in Paris early this morning after carefully checking our watches were set back 1 hour, ( daylight saving ended today) and caught a taxi to the Arc de Triomphe where we got on the Air France cheap coach to Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle airport. What an amazing place is this - would have to be the most extensive airport complex we've ever been to. The coach took nearly half an hour to travel thru the terminals dropping off at 4 different places, would hate to try to drive there with multiple levels of buildings, roads and runways going in all directions. even passed a Concorde - now mounted on a stand as a memorial - sad.
Flight was quick and fairly bump-free, had a clear view of Cologne and the Rhine as we passed right over the top. Nice food
of course - came from France and the French sure know how to prepare a good meal. Copenhagen was clear and sunny as we landed - could clearly see the line of wind turbines in the sea close to the runway. There are huge wind turbines all over Europe, must generate a significant proportion of their power.
Shops in the airport are full of Christmas items (and Halloween) but the clothes are all designed for a very cold winter. It will have to change dramatically from what we've seen so far - global warming had our thick coats and woolly undies jammed firmly in the bottom of our cases, rarely even put on a light jacket. A lot of our photos show us in jackets, but that was mainly to hold things like wallets and cameras.
Hoping to get some sleep on a "Flatbed" tonight, we were up late packing (again) and of course woke well before the alarm. The streets of Paris were absolutely deserted at 0830 on Sunday morning, looked lovely and fresh in light rain on the autumn-coloured trees along the Champs Elysees. Good thing we didnt have time to go there yesterday when the
le Pyramid Inversee
in basement at the Louvre. Made famous in "THAT" book! shops were open, they look seriously expensive.
One thing we really should have brought on this trip was the pedometer - reckon we must have walked literally hundreds of kilometers and up thousands of steps. Some of the less agile tour group members on Trafalgar had quite a struggle - I'm sure they weren't warned how much of Europe is only accessible on foot (usually over cobblestones) and up steps - lifts don't mix that well with a lot of medieval architecture.
Adrian here:
Just taken over from Mary, she has gone off to look at the duty free shops (same as Perth only the tax/VAT/GST is higher here therefore, supposedly you get more off!) but we are back in Danish prices so perhaps not a good idea. We have a few "excess" Euros which we need to offload before changing to Yen tomorrow!
Re reading Marys entry about walking, I bought a brand new good quality pair of sneakers for this trip before leaving Perth and was embarassed yesterday in the metro train in Paris to see a girl looking down at them and nudging her partner with a smile. Looking down I could see
that a hole had worn thru the toe and they looked pretty sad!
Still, they served me well and were/are still very comfortable.
We have travelled by several makes and types of aircraft, boats, ferrys,coaches, horse carriages, trams, trolley busses, trains, funiculars, chair lifts, snow lifts, escalators up hills, gondalas and probably some we have forgotten. The only thing we have not done is drive ourselves....perhaps next time!!
Must go now, time to board again. This flight tonight will be a bit tiring. This is the one where you leave Copenhagen at 3.40 local time and after 11 odd hours flying arrive in Tokyo at 10.40 am tomorrow. It is a bugger of a time thing as you have a short night running into the sun west to east. Having done it as crew I can tell you it is very much the "red eye".
Might get a chance to add a bit more in Tokyo as we have designed our trip to make this our 'rest stopover' for a day.
See ya,
A & m
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