Europe 2019 - Go East Young Man

Day 34 & 35 Tuesday 30 April 2019 & Wednesday 1 May 2019 – Paris to Melbourne

A funny thing happened this morning, I had checked out of the hotel at 5.00am and I was waiting in the little foyer area for my taxi to arrive. The taxi turned up at 5.10 and then the night manager couldn’t find the key to the front door. Here am I inside the hotel behind a locked door, the taxi driver is outside looking in and can see me and the night manager is running around frantically looking for the key to the front door. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only 5 minutes he found the key, probably where he had been having a kip, and let me out to get to my taxi.

As I was sitting in the taxi I was thinking wouldn’t this be fun if I was catching the Eurostar to London and then reality kicked in and after that it was an uneventful trip to CDG and quick check in and I am in the Qatar business lounge chatting to some fellow Australians. The Australians were a middle aged couple from Brisbane (the husband had an uncanny likeness to Rob Sitch and I couldn’t stop staring at him) and a elderly lady and her daughter from Melbourne. These people met on a APT Rhine/Danube river cruise which they said was fantastic.

I am sitting in a Boeing 777-300ER at an altitude of 35,000 feet, travelling at 600mph (979 kmh) on a heading of 109 degrees with an outside temperature of -68F or -56C having just crossed the Black Sea slightly north of Istanbul. I am enjoying my first V & T of the flight.

The food, the drink and the service has been fantastic so far, but this is still the Paris to Dohar leg, the biggun is still to come. The flight has got a bit bumpy so I will have words to the Captain about that who by the way has a very pukka British accent, probably flew Lancasters over Germany at some time. If he didn’t I betcha his dad did (or possibly grandad). The co-pilot is probably Ginger, the wireless operator will be Sparks, the engineer is a Scot, called Scotty, the navigator is a Kiwi called Trevor, the bomb aimer is…………sorry forgot, we don’t have a bomb aimer on this flight, if we had a mid upper gunner he would be an Aussie known to one and all as Digger. Anybody work out that I am bored and I have had a couple of drinks.

1.20pm Melbourne time and about 4 hours out of Melbourne, about to hit the West Australian coast at about North West Cape. Got about 5 hours sleep last night which wasn’t too bad, it has been a smooth flight. The Qatar crew have been fantastic and I would highly recommend Qatar as an airline. The airport at Doha is incredible, they have obviously spent a lot of money on it and it wasn’t terribly busy. I think they have the soccer world cup sometime in the near future so the investment in the airport is probably in preparation for that.

Observations and lessons learnt;

do not linger too long outside French military facilities

do not get lost in Vienna airport ( or probably any airport for that matter)

I still hate cobblestones

As you get older the lighting around hotel bathroom mirrors gets harsher

Do not linger too long near the Polish - Ukraine border

I have managed to get some photos downloaded from my phone so a random selection of those follows. I have also included some photos from my visit to the Przemysl forts that have been sent to me by Marcin, my guide for the day.