Travel Tips and Tricks!

Travel tips

Our trip was 7 weeks long - much longer than any trip we’d done as a family before.  Here are a few thoughts of mine about this trip specifically and travel in general!

I started research about 6 months prior to leaving and it was a good plan. We had no idea which order we would visit certain countries and which direction to go around the world or how long to stay in each place so it took some talking, some juggling of dates in a calendar and some consulting with a travel agent over flights. We had seven countries to visit in 7 weeks and that seemed a bit much at one point, but we made it happen with juggling and virtually giving up on Paris. Strangely enough we ended up having a fantastic 48 hours in Paris and saw heaps!  You just never know how it will go…

If you are staying somewhere more than three nights, consider an apartment hotel or a holiday house.  There are a bunch of companies that I look at for private rentals and I cross reference all of them. They are:

• ·         Vacation Rental by Owner (VRBO)
• ·         AirBnB
• ·         Homeaway
• ·         Flipkey
• ·         Holiday Houses
• ·         Book a Bach

Some of these are New Zealand or Australia/NZ only and some are only international. Our Kyoto machiya was a private rental and if gave us a unique insight into what life must have been like for Japanese merchants over 100 years ago.  It was authentic but comfortable – perfect! We booked our Iceland house on VRBO and it was spectacular.  5 of us stayed there for about NZ$58 per night each.  You need to read all of the small print carefully and be aware that you are not dealing with a hotel so financially you may be taking a risk, but if Paypal is used it should be legit.  Do not use Western Union.  Try and email and or phone your host and look them up on Facebook to get background.  Read all reviews carefully.  Our Iceland house was true to its description, but it was missing house instructions and spare linen/towels, and had no laundry which we told the host about so they can improve their service. 

We used a combination of public transport and private car rental. It gave the trip variety and it meant it wasn’t too tiring.  Having your own car gives you independence which is a good thing!

I looked really hard to find triple accommodation so that we could share a room for at least half the trip.  That took a bit of searching but it was worth it, it would have been too expensive to book separate rooms. I use Tripadvisor for all my research and then cross check accommodation on other sites like Booking.com.

About half of our trip we had two bedroom accommodation or apartments.  We would have gone mad being in the same room for 7 weeks. It was good to mix it up.

Work out where you are going to wash laundry in advance and try and make it when you are staying in apartments or houses.  If not, then find out where you will be staying and Google laundromats so that you know where one is and how much it costs.  We got caught in Naples with a place recommended nearby that charged 2 euro per load – we thought.  We then discovered it was 2 Euro per item of clothing!  So we had to rethink and renegotiate.  Without speaking any Italian!  Be prepared to wash undies and socks on the way.  Take a stretchy clothes line and laundry detergent in a small bottle.  Wash them and then roll in a towel to dry out before you hang.

I also researched activities and destinations on TA.  Look at Forum discussions for more insight into unusual places.  Try and challenge yourself to do something off the beaten track or exciting – you don’t get many chances in this life to push yourself and you may end up having an unforgettable experience!  

Generally speaking:

Stick to ONE bag per person and as small as you can manage. Wheelie bags are mostly good but can be overrated.  My bag for some reason struggled in bus/train/airport/stations across paving stones and drove me a wee bit mad, but that was short lived.  We went with hard cases and didn’t regret it.  What tiny things we bought were safe inside hard cases until I mailed 7kg back to NZ five weeks into the trip.

Your trip will involve travel days. These are days that you spend entirely getting from one place to another.  Hopefully you won’t have too many of these.  They can be exhausting and confusing. You are bound to get lost in some station or another but hang in there.  If you prepare yourself for the worst, you may be delightfully surprised.  All of our flights were fine and some of the ‘Easy Jet’ type of cheap flights were much better than expected.   Some of our bags went missing in Barcelona but only overnight.  We had no trouble with late or cancelled flights, but be sure to allow yourself enough time.  Always carry some snack food, a drink and something to read.

Toilets of the world.  Well, there’s a topic!  We saw so many of them that I had to give them a mention!  They ranged from fantastic, high tech and free in Japan, to hideous, dirty and expensive in Europe.  With the best view-from-a-loo being in Iceland!  In Frankfurt airport we got off a plane, walked past a loo and then 15 minutes’ walk later needed one desperately and could not find one. Anywhere.  So we had to walk back to the gate to use the one we had walked past!  They never seem to be around when you want one and when there IS one, you don’t want to go.  And what is it with those bloody bidets? I suppose Europeans would think we are grubby but I just don’t fancy one…and they take up too much room in the bathroom! 

Tips:

Keep a child’s stomach full at all times.   And a drink handy.  Hunger and/or tiredness/jet lag was responsible for any bad moods on the trip. And that went for adults too!  

Buy croissants/bagels or pastries and fruit at a nearby grocery when you arrive at a hotel and then eat them in your room for breakfast to make a relaxing start to the day.  Having to rush downstairs to an early and expensive breakfast just ruins the fun! Many hotel rooms have a kettle or hot pot that you can make a cup of tea of hot chocolate with. And you can lounge in your jammies!

Rent bikes.  Anytime we have done it we’ve loved it.  Cycling tours in Tokyo and Barcelona; and just renting the bike and cycling around ourselves in Kyoto was great too.  You get some exercise and you see things at nice pace.

Go on walks or walking tours. We did a brilliant walking/eating tour of Gracia, a neighbourhood in Barcelona.  Wow! And walking tours we’ve done in Melbourne, and Spain and Pompeii were all very informative and good exercise.  Some tours are free but you pay by tip.

Use Tripadvisor.  I researched accommodation, activities and destinations as well as restaurant reviews. That saved our bacon in Venice which was full of restaurants but some rated very badly.  The ones we chose were great and true to their reviews.

Be brave and go somewhere challenging!  Iceland was the highlight of our trip. It was so far away from New Zealand and in the mid-winter it was dark and freezing (-12 some days!) but it was an incredible experience.   We saw some amazing sights including frozen giant waterfalls, geysers, tectonic plates meeting, hot pools and of course the Northern Lights, a natural occurrence like no other.  I think about it often and want to do it again as soon as possible!  

New York - The Snowy Big Apple

New York - The Snowy Big Apple

Our last stop was New York City. We got a chance to see many of the much anticipated sights.
We stayed at Bubba and Bean initially, on Lexington and 102nd Street.  Not a posh part of town, but well located for subway rides and walks to Central Park.  Later, after the blizzard hit, we moved to the Times Square area and the Radio City Apartments, which were nicer than expected and close to Q's work.  My friend Katrina Ferguson, a stage actor and photographer, joined us for several days.  We visited the UN where our mutual friend Sarah Bradley works and we went to see the terrific musical 'Something Rotten' on Broadway.
The first three days were full on with Q and the helm as we walked all over Manhattan seeing the sights.  Central Park, Staten Island Ferry, the Statue of Liberty and the Intrepid; Battery City Park and the new Star Wars movie; museums and art galleries, Lego shops and Star Wars Costume exhibitions.  Never  a dull moment!
As always New York was a mix of the familiar and the exciting.  Times Square was exhaustingly busy. and it was nice to chill out in our apartments.  Catching up with old friends and colleagues was a real highlight.
Along with Iceland, Declan decided that New York was his favourite holiday experience.


Squirrels in Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
From Declan:
Central Park is really big. It has at least five playgrounds, all of which are unique. I played in three of them, including the "Ancient Playground" which was outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was set out to be like ruins, but actually it was sturdy and in summer there were fountains which would squirt water really high in the air to cool you off but in winter the snow would gather and slide down the slide.

The Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry:

The Intrepid Air and Space Museum:

Declan had researched some great playgrounds. The best were these ones with bronze play sculptures by Tom Otterness such as this reclining giant on the Westside:

We paid a visit to 435 W 119th St - where B and Q lived for five years (25 years ago but it looks just the same!)

We had the second largest snowstorm in New York City History. But that didn't stop us getting out an and about!

Declan and I (Bea) took New Jersey transit to Montclair to catch up with Robert Whitehill, his wife Mary and their lovely 6 year old son Beau. I had worked with Robert at L'Artisan Parfumeur 25 years ago.  He's now a writer of terrific thrillers; The Ben Blackshaw series, that begins with Deadrise.   The boys played in the heavy snow, smuggling a sausage from our diner brunch to use as a snowman's nose!  Katrina joined us from her home in Morristown which is 20 minutes away.

Declan discovered that he liked Black and White cookies, the Lego Store and the Ice rink in the Rockerfeller Center.

Barcelona!

In Barcelona we stayed in a modern apartment building in the Eixample district, the early 20th century "extension" to the original old walled city. With two bedrooms and two bathrooms there was plenty of room to spread out. The view was of a central courtyard backed onto by other hotels and apartments so we could get some sense of how people in that area live.




One of our first activities was a walking/tasting tour of the "village" of Gracia, once a separate village one the outskirts of Barcelona but now part of the city albeit with it's own strong identity. Beautiful orange trees, in full fruit, lined many streets of Gracia. There were nine stops on the tour which lasted for four hours - four hours of almost constant eating with walking in between. We visited markets with meat, olive and cheese sellers; an elegant olive oil store; a local "homemade" food kitchen; a typical neighborhood bar for vermouth and snacks and a pastry store for a unique take on Creme Caramel. We also stopped in at the town hall to see some parade characters two of which were giant figures that were carried on the backs of local people during their annual parade. We were also surprised to see Gerry Brownlee included among the caricatures.

Sagrada Familia - by Bea
It's difficult to describe this incredible structure.  The most popular of Gaudi's works in Barcelona, it was very popular and crowded and that was in the off season!
These days it's a well organised money maker, with online ticket bookings and QR code scanning at the gate.  The place is a hive of activity with tours and construction going on together.
Most of you will know something about it or will have visited yourself. In a nutshell, the local community decided to build a cathedral and commissioned architect Del Villar to design it. He commenced work but left the project a year later.  Antonio Gaudi took over in 1884 with quite a different vision! It is still under construction, but Gaudi would not have been surprised.  After all his famous quote was: 'My client is not in a hurry'!!
Things have sped up massively since Pope Benedict consecrated the place in 2010.  There is an estimate that it will be completed in 20 years, in time for the commemoration of Gaudi death.
We met tourists who had last visited 16 years ago. They said they hardly recognized the place.  All those years ago the roof was open to the weather and they only saw two workmen on site.
It's terrific to see the cathedral itself of course, but it was very interesting to also see the models that Gaudi made - he tended to do 3D models instead of drawings - and an onsite workshop with many staff working with new technology, which is something that Gaudi would have totally supported as he was into new ideas.
We took a guided tour, which was the best decision as the place is massive and the ideas behind it are even bigger.
There are several ideas and inspirations that were unique to Gaudi and are seen in almost all his work: religion, humanism, nature and technology/geometric shapes.  The cathedral is packed full of figures and animals in every nook and cranny.  And the catenary curve (a natural curve formed by a weighted string loop) as well as hyperboloid structures (look them up!) were used everywhere.  The enormous columns inside are intended to look like a massive forest and the stained glass windows have been coloured to indicate sunrise/birth and sunset/death, with the different sides of the cathedral also indicating the cycle of life and the bible stories that illustrate them.
The Passion Facade was controversially completed by Josep Subirachs and his team in the 1980's and seems to differ quite radically from Gaudi's style, although it succeeds in creating the stark almost scary effect that Gaudi wanted. Subirachs included a statue based on the last known photo of Gaudi himself.
Declan thought:  'Massively structured and if you looked closely there was lots of detail, like statues and carvings.  Especially of nature'
Afterwards, in the park across the road we had lunch and then spotted a group of local seniors playing what we thought was bowls. On closer inspection it turned out to be 'bitles' where a wooden pin is tossed into the air with the aim of knocking down all the other pins, bar ONE!  They were incredibly good at it.

A Bicycle Tour

The weather was generally mild and with the traffic fairly manageable Barcelona is in the process of becoming more friendly for cyclists. We did a private tour with a guide who took us on a loop tour of some areas of Barcelona we had not yet seen and filled us in on some history we would have not otherwise realised. It was a beautiful day, although a little cold by the end of the tour.



On the tour we saw a magnificent fountain which had actually been one of Gaudi's university projects.





Park Guell

This park, which is on a hill overlooking Barcelona, has many examples of Gaudi's work created for the wealthy industrialist Guell. We pre-booked to avoid the crowds - you are given an appointed time as they only let in 400 people each 30 minute period. Even so on a sunny Sunday afternoon it was very busy.




FC Barcelona and Camp Nou!
By Declan

The highlight of the trip was probably the chance to see Barcelona FC play AC Bilbao at the famous Camp Nou stadium. We saw Messi, Suarez and Neymar Jr play. Each one of them scored one or more goals which ended up a final score of 6-0. The fans were completely crazy and there was a big group of people chanting behind Barcelona FC's goal. Near the start a big banner was pulled down on of the top stands to congratulate Messi for his "Balloon D'Or" award. It was easy to get there since we were early but near the end it was chaos because all of the people were trying to get out at once and the subway train was completely full if you were in there you couldn't move a muscle.




We liked it so much the next day we went back for an exclusive Camp Nou museum and stadium tour. We got to see lots of trophies and the changing rooms, press rooms and manager's boxes of the stadium.