Subconscious

I woke in a panic about 3am this morning, heart racing - it was the end of the world as we know it, as I had to get on the road, on foot, with my 10 year old son. No idea where the husband and 12 year old daughter were, but we had to try to find them.

My most pressing concern was what to pack - what did we need to survive? We had to be able to carry everything ourselves, and while we'd be able to get food from deserted houses and shops, we couldn't rely on electricity or other power sources. We might also have to defend ourselves from who knows what threats.

The dream was very vivid. So much so, that I spent the next hour or so wide awake, working through the packing list (the kids think I've completely lost the plot!). In my mind, I packed clothes, an extra pair of shoes each (there was much walking to be done), first aid supplies, matches, a self-sufficiency handbook, toothbrushes and toothpaste, knives (including two big kitchen knives, wrapped in towels), a can-opener, spoons, plastic cups, water bottles, muesli bars, torches and a supply of batteries, a couple of rolls of toilet paper (!), sleeping bags and winter coats (we might need to get through a cold winter without heating), and a photo of the missing family members. The boy was most pleased that I didn't take shampoo, but not so thrilled that I made him leave his Skylanders toys behind. There were a few other small items, but basically that was it. Interesting how you sort out priorities when the crunch comes.

So what did I take from this? Apart from reading too many apocalyptic books (there may have been zombies, but I'm not sure. There was definitely something threatening), there is very little that I'm so attached to that I couldn't leave it behind (children excepted!). And I need to start packing for the trip to England - although the knives and matches had better stay behind, and I can probably manage without taking my own can-opener and toilet paper!

Planning in progress (two weeks to departure!)

Only two weeks until we fly out of Sydney to London!

So far, we have inked in:

• new members' tour of Hampton Court Palace
• a walk around The Borough with London Trails, using old maps (love maps, especially old ones, love history, love seeing the changes, so I'm really looking forward to this one)
• a meeting with a friend who has been living in England for the past year
• day trip to Carlisle, up near the Scottish border, to coincide with the Festival of British Archaeology
• new members' tour of the Tower of London, after hours
• Garden History tour of Kensington Palace
• a day trip to the Gunnislake Festival in Cornwall
• a tour of the Buckingham Palace State Rooms (only open in summer).

And in pencil (flexible dates):

• Birdoswald Roman Fort, part of Hadrian's Wall (while we're in Carlisle, if there's time)
• the Banqueting House, in London
• an Unseen tour (in London, guided by homeless people)
• Kew Palace & Gardens
• day trip to Dover and Canterbury
• day trip to Bath
• BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall (standing room 'promming' ticket on the day)
• Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House
• British Museum
• V&A
• Tate & Tate Modern
• National Gallery
• Royal Hospital Chelsea (home to the Chelsea Pensioners, who conduct tours) and the nearby Physic Garden
• the Jubilee Walk, in sections, stopping frequently to visit places along the way - will take a week or so if we do it all, but looks like a very flexible way to see lots of London on foot
• and of course we need to explore our 'local' area - South Kensington, with all the institutions on offer close by.

Somehow I don't think three weeks will be enough!

Historic Royal Palaces

As I mentioned in my previous post, we've become members of the Historic Royal Palaces, the organisation that looks after the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, the Banqueting House, Kew Palace and Hampton Court Palace. I also mentioned that we'd been able to book places on the Tower of London new members' tour.

Tower of London [source]

But that's not all - turns out that our timing is perfect to also take advantage of the Hampton Court Palace new members' tour ...

Main gate, Hampton Court Palace [source]

AND the Kensington Palace Garden History Tour (which gets us into the normally closed to the public Sunken Garden.

Kensington Palace Sunken garden [source]

We've also decided on the destination for the second of four day trips on our BritRail passes - Carlisle. It's going to be a looooonnnnngggg day - 3.25 hours min. on the train each way - it's very close to the Scottish border.

Carlisle Castle [source]

There is evidence of people living in this area since at least the Iron Age, and the Romans established a fort here in AD72 (it was on the 'civilised' side of Hadrian's Wall). Of course, once the Roman Army was in residence, a whole town grew up around it, and Carlisle has been occupied ever since.

I'm looking forward to the train trip - I haven't been to Cumbria and the Lake District (or most of the other places on the route), so it will be lovely to see it, even if it is just from a moving train on the way through!

London calling

In just over three weeks I'll be on the train heading up to Sydney, in readiness to fly out to London the following day. We're going with QANTAS via Dubai. My international trips so far have been with Cathay Pacific, so it will  be interesting to see the difference between airlines.

We've bought BritRail 4 day Flexipasses for day trips out of London. I've been discussing destinations with my parents, and it looks like one day will be to Dover and Canterbury. Dover is a little over two hours from London Victoria station on the train, and Canterbury is 16-27 minutes (depending on the train) closer to London. In Dover, we're planning on visiting Dover Castle. We can stand on the top of the white cliffs, but it's a bit hard to really see them from that angle.

Canterbury has many attractions, the most well-known being its cathedral. Also on my list is St Augustine's Abbey, the Canterbury Roman Museum, St Martin's Church (the oldest church in England still in use as a parish church), and the Canterbury Heritage Museum. I'm not sure we'll have enough time for it all, but there are many more places to see if we get through that list!

We've also become members of the Historic Royal Palaces, the organisation that looks after the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, the Banqueting House, Kew Palace and Hampton Court Palace, so we're hoping to get to all of them. By becoming members, we qualify for the HRP new members tour of the Tower of London, held after hours (and being high season, it will be great to see it without the crowds). I rang London one night last week to make sure we have places booked on the tour.

Our other purchase has been the English Heritage Overseas Visitor Passes, giving us free entry to any of hundreds of properties on the English Heritage list for 16 days. Dover Castle is one of those, and once we've decided on where our other day trips will be, I'll check what else is in the area. Eltham Palace, southeast of Greenwich, is looking good, and there are quite a few properties within London itself.

But for now, I need to concentrate on finishing off a list of jobs required by the end of the financial year. Trip planning will have to wait for a week!

Time for another trip!

This time I'm heading back to London, without children, but with my parents. It's all come together very fast - the trip was only suggested early last week, and now the plane tickets are booked, accommodation is sorted out, and we're talking about what we want to see, both in London and on a few day trips further out.

We head off in mid-July, and have 22 nights on the ground in London, staying in a flat in South Kensington.

More details to follow!

Travel blogging

We''ve been in Paris for nearly two weeks, and tomorrow night we'll be on the train to Venice. We're blogging daily on http://travelpod.com/members/silsby and you're welcome to follow along.

Living on the river

Not everyone in Paris lives in an apartment. A few never forget that their city exists because of the river Seine  ...

Two weeks and four hours and, all going to plan, we will be in the air and heading out of Sydney :)

Three weeks

Three weeks until we leave Canberra. 23 days until we arrive in Paris.

This photo was taken in October 2010, from the square in front of the Hotel de Ville (town hall). Very Haussmann.

Travel Books - part 3: Venice

Everyman Mapguide: Venice
Eyewitness Travel: Venice and the Veneto
Venice: Pure City [Peter Ackroyd]
Frommer's 24 Great Walks in Venice
The Venice Experiment [Barry Frangipane]
A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance [Marlena De Blasi]

I've spent a lot of time on websites researching Venice. I suspect I'll spend a lot more time reading novels set in the city once I get to know her a little :)

Travel books - part 2: Paris

I need to do more planning and less talking about it, now we're down to nearly three weeks until departure. So I'm just going to list some of the books I've read in preparation for this trip, and maybe they'll inspire someone else. It's by no means a comprehensive list, but just the books I've bought and referred to most often this time (and I may come back and add more if I think of them):

Frommer's Paris: Free & Dirt Cheap
France: Instructions for Use [Alison Culliford & Nan McElroy]
City Walks Paris: 50 Adventures on Foot [cards]
Paris to the Past: Traveling through French history by train [Ina Caro]
Parisians: An adventure history of Paris [Graham Robb]
The Sun King's Garden [Ian Thompson]
Walks through lost Paris [Leonard Pitt]
Eyewitness Travel: Paris
Everyman Mapguide: Paris

Travel books - part 1

I'm a bit (well, more than a bit) of a sucker for books. And when I'm planning a trip, my focus is on books about the places I'll be visiting, because I like to know stuff before I get there.

I still have my Eyewitness Travel guides to Paris and Rome on hand from the 2010 trip, but I've added the Venice and the Veneto guide from the same series this time.

They're great guides for planning, but pretty heavy to cart around, especially if you're going to more than one city, as I realised last time while dragging my bag up flights of stairs from the London Underground and up to our second storey apartment. So I'm using them a lot for planning, but don't intend to take any of them with me. With that thought in mind, I also bought the Eyewitness Travel Pocket Map and Guide for each city - a very condensed version of the larger guides, with a foldout map in the back of each book. They're only 154 x 74mm in size, and less than 10mm thick, so very portable. The writing is pretty tiny though - not too bad in good light, but I'm not getting any younger, so I kept looking to see if there was anything better.

I also have the laminated StreetSmart Paris map and CityFlash/Hallwag International Rome map from the 2010 trip. They're both good clear maps, although not all the smaller streets are named. You can write on them with an erasable marker - handy for planning routes - and just wipe them clean when you're done. The Paris map includes a metro map - very handy. I'll probably take these with me.

Then I found the Everyman Mapguides. These small (124 x 74mm) books divide the city into sections, with a foldout map and information (what to see, where to eat, etc.) for each area. While not all the small streets are named, the maps are very legible, and the format means you're not trying to deal with large folding maps in the wind. These ones will  be going with me.

Yes, that is a New York edition tacked on the end. Not for me - my parents are going to the US while we're in Europe, and I thought this might be handy for the couple of days they have in NYC.

Gallo-Roman Paris

No, not Notre-Dame - it's what's under the square in front of the cathedral that interests me today.

Just to the left and back a little from where I was standing in 2010 to take this photo is a set of steps heading down into the dark: the entrance to the Crypte Archeologique. Down there we'll find some of the oldest parts of Paris on display, including the remains of the quay of the ancient port of Lutetia, the Gallo-Roman bath house, the early IVth century city wall, and medieval remains.

In five weeks we'll be in Paris

I've started giving a bit more shape to our fortnight in Paris, and plan on exploring the city in chronological order. And to that effect, this is where it all started: a small tribal settlement on what is now the Ile de la Cite (on the right). There has been a bridge here at the narrowest point between the island and the Left Bank since the Romans, although the Petit Pont (in the centre of the image) has been rebuilt numerous times following floods, fires and accidents. The current bridge was opened in 1853.

Mmmm ... coffee!

I was browsing through the website 'A Guide to Rome' a few days ago, and came across a page on Caffè Greco in Rome. The author mentions that there are three 200+ year old coffee shops in the world: Le Procope (Paris, 1686), Florian's (Venice, 1720) and Caffè Greco (Rome, 1760).

Le Procope, which is now a restaurant - we may need to try it (they even have a children's menu if the boychild isn't feeling adventurous).

Caffè Florian in Venice, which over the years has attracted such notables as Goethe, Ugo Foscolo, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Grabriele D'Annunzio and Eleonora Duse, Rousseau, Stravinsky, Modigliani, Antonio Canova, and Casanova.

 Caffè Greco, via Condotti, Rome, has its own list of famous patrons, including Liszt, Strauss, Mark Twain, Hans Christian Andersen, Baudelaire, Mendelssohn, Stendhal and Wagner. 

As we'll be travelling to all three cities on this next trip, I feel a need to check them all out ...

La Madeleine

Lamppost along the Place de la Madeleine, Paris. Photo taken in October 2010.

Today I ordered the boychild a small Pacsafe crossbody bag so he can carry a few things (like his camera) himself on the trip. Also ordered an RFID-shielded wallet, big enough to take the passports and credit cards. These days the pickpockets don't actually need to pick your pocket to get your details - a relatively inexpensive reader held in the vicinity of a passport, credit card or other ID with a radio-frequency identification chip embedded can read your information (credit card number, name, and other details) through your standard wallet/bag/pocket without even touching you. I withdraw cash from an ATM once every few days while we're away, so the rest of the time the cards and passports can be safely tucked away. Funnily enough, Miss Tizz's class at school had a visit from Constable Kenny Koala yesterday, and this was one of the topics mentioned. There is a DIY solution which involves wrapping your cards in aluminium foil - it doesn't completely shield them, but it means the reader has to be a lot closer (within an inch or so - not impossible in crowded areas).

Next I'll book our Paris to Venice train tickets, and then make some decisions about museum passes and other things we might like to book in advance.

Paris 2010

A few more images of Paris from our visit in October 2010 ...

 

Magician in the forecourt of the Pompidou Centre

The glass pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre

Hand-in-hand on the streets of Montmartre - Rue des Martyrs

Notre Dame, from the river

I need a to do list!

In four months we'll have arrived in and left Paris, and be halfway through our time in Venice! It's coming up so quickly now, and there's a lot to do before then.

Paris - the Trocadero Gardens with La Defense in the background,
taken from the Eiffel Tower in October 2010

• The X-man's birthday - next Wednesday
• Miss Tizz's birthday - three weeks later
• The Husband's birthday in July
• Several extended family birthdays in the next few weeks
• At least one high school open night to attend (high school! How did that happen?!)
• High school & Fast Track program applications to complete and submit
• Apply for the X-man's passport, so I can ...
• Purchase our overnight train tickets (Paris to Venice)
• Work on lists for Paris, Venice and Rome - what to see & do, where to eat, what to pack
• Work - the type that pays so we can go on this trip.

There's more, but that's plenty to get started on. And it's perfect weather for making lists and filling in forms - cold, blustery and wet.

Dear Diary, today I went for a walk ...

Just a short walk - 16km from home, down the hill, round the lake, and back up the hill to home. According to my Polar heart rate monitor (which I purchased when I started the 12WBT program, and which provides great motivation to keep going) I burnt 1531 calories. It took 3hr 20min of actual walking, with a break in the middle for a breakfast of poached eggs, spinach and one (just one!) slice of bacon, plus a much-needed espresso after an early start - the sun was still coming up when we started.

Many many thanks to my friend Sam who could easily power away much faster than me, but who walked with and encouraged me the whole way (especially that last painful bit uphill!).

In other news - I have booked two tickets for Europe in September! The X-man and I are jetting off to Paris, Venice and Rome for about 5.5 weeks. Yesterday was the point where I'd had enough of tracking fares, and just decided to book it and stop looking. Now there's just apartments, trains between Paris and Venice, and Venice and Rome, and a little matter of a passport for the boychild to sort out. Lots of fun over the next few months :)

La Taverna degli Amici

As I start planning our 2012 European adventure, I've been looking back through the photos from last year, thinking about what was most memorable, and which things I want to repeat with the X-man. And dinner at La Taverna degli Amici in Piazza Margana is most definitely on the list. The food was great, but the real highlight was the wonderful Simona!

Ostia Antica

I've been reading and watching more about Ostia Antica lately, with a view to revisiting the scavi, possibly next October/November. It was suggested to me in the planning stages of last year's trip as an alternative to Pompeii, and I'm very glad we chose to go there. Of course, I still plan on seeing Pompeii at some stage, but Ostia Antica has some big advantages. It's very close to Rome (I think I'll make Pompeii a part of a trip where we stay in Naples for a week or more, rather than a rushed long day trip from Rome), it's not as well known and therefore not as crowded, there's plenty of shade, it's a place to wander and discover things for yourself.

More on Ostia Antica:
Darius Arya's YouTube videos
Darius Arya Digs (blog)
Ostia website