2,218 miles later...

Another excellent road-trip across Europe is now complete. Whilst I didn't do as much talking as last time, I didn't have to listen to so much whinging either - swings and roundabouts I suppose. ;-)

I'll get some photos posted to http://picasaweb.google.com/idxxphotos.

Until next time...

Returning to England

The journey through Germany's secret hinterland, filled with towns you've never heard of with the biggest factories you're ever likely to see, whizzed past as you might expect on an empty speed limit free Autobahn. I made it to Luxembourg before midnight and crashed at a thankfully warm motel for only €20.

This morning's fog made the busier traffic at Brussels more interesting but I still made good time to Calais. Catching an earlier ferry takes away the time pressure for the final leg of the journey.

Appropriately enough, as the Pride of Dover carried me to France on Tuesday, the Pride of Calais is bringing me home. The captain promises we're leaving the weather behind us on the Continent and England should be clear.

Please don't misunderstand me

The Brenner Pass was spectacular as expected and I got there just in time before it got dark. The trip from Innsbruck has been exciting too with the Fernpass being the highlight - true to its name it's tree-lined and very pretty under its deep blanket of snow.

Anyway, to the purpose of this post. I'm currently resting after Wank (here near Nesselwang in Bavaria) and have just spent my wad on a sandwich and a coffee. Ho, ho, ho, juvenile humour at its best I'm sure you will agree. :-P

Heading for the hills

The 13th is lucky for me. Got a full tank of fuel and I've even managed to figure out how to switch my dashboard into kilometers. Not getting shot or killed by the locals was a real bonus(!).

Now I'm heading on to Verona where I'll be turning north for the run up to the mountains and Brennero.

Waiting in Brescia

With only 80km of fuel left and having driven past countless service stations that have all run out of fuel I have now found one near Brescia that is expecting a delivery. There's a very happy chap called (something like) Tinsoni who with his four words of English once visited Leeds and now feels like he is "my brother". He's brought me coffee and bread and moved my car up to the front of the queue - no one seemed to complain, I suspect he's the "big man" around here. I'm quite scared! :-)

In the meantime, an update from Yesterday. Venice was beautiful with a quite surreal atmosphere. At times it felt like we were in a huge themepark. And it was cold, especially on the water. We resisted the urge to take a Gondola trip as that would have been even colder. There's so much to see that in the end six hours was just not enough.

The trains and metro all worked well and we made it back to San Donato for 20:30, then to dinner with Dany. She took us to a truly fantastic Sicilian restaurant with some great fish dishes. The meal was great value too but for the €74 parking fine that Dany picked up.

A leisurely start this morning, a little bit of shopping and lunch. Then it was time for me to say farewell. Dany and Nobuko are hitting the fashion shops this afternoon and I'm hoping to make it over the Brenner Pass to Innsbruck before it gets dark.

Italian fuel strike!

I've just been reminded of a little problem that Dany failed to mention to me before I arrived in Italy. Every petrol station we've seen has been beseiged with customers trying to fit just a few more drops into their tanks and apparently now 8 out of 10 stations have no fuel at all. The queues are just crazy and do little to help a city already paralysed by too many cars. All very reminiscent of the UK protests a couple of years ago that were rumoured to be repeated this week.

I think I have 145 miles of diesel left which will hopefully get me far enough into Austria to find supplies. Otherwise it's going to be a long walk home. (Perhaps the BBC will send Ewan and Charlie's crew so we can make the third episode in the "Long Way" series.)

Trenitalia to Venice

Having escaped the morning mist and morning traffic(!) of Milano, we're now on the fastest train we could find to take us to Venice for the day. Out of the window we've got the fantastic vista of Lake Garda and the mountains on a clear day - picture postcard stuff.

My drive down yesterday went well in the end, despite the A1 being closed overnight and a late ferry crossing due to heavy seas. I decided to try the German Autobahns and this time they lived up to expectations. However, speed was tempered a fair bit by the rain from Koblenz to the Switzerland. As soon as I got to Basle everything got much colder and the driving snow as I headed up to the Gotthard tunnel was very exciting. Once on the other side everything was much drier. Tomtom had a laugh guiding me through the city centre to Dany's home in San Donato to meet with Frank and Nobuko. We then ate and drank the local fare before collapsing in preparation of an early start today.

A brief update on Nobuko's visits so far. After arriving on Saturday she's done: Lake Como with Dany on Sunday, Florence on her own (!) on Monday, Verona with Frank yesterday and Venice today with me. Tomorrow she's off to Madrid (flying via Roma) to see Javier before flying home again the following Monday.

The Nobuko reprise

As we all know Nobuko failed to make it to the party in Tuscany. But it would seem rather than not coming at all she is just running a little bit late(!). She arrived in Milan on Sunday and Frank's going to join her probably around about now.

I'm just about to set off and will hopefully meet up with the party in Verona sometime tomorrow lunchtime to early afternoon. We're then going to take in some of the sights of Northern Italy before Nobuko heads off to Spain to see Javier on her way back to her frozen home.

Updates for families and friends along with some photos will be posted as we go along.

Route post-mortem

I've been having a play with the routing you can do on Google Maps. If you click on the links below you should be able to see the route we followed, where we stopped and some of the places where significant "events" took place.

All works well apart from Day 3 where Google Maps simply won't navigate only the roads we travelled, hence this day appears in three parts.

The tally for the Google Maps route is 4520km. You can see from the picture that the actual distance driven was 4562km. No doubt some of the delta is by a couple of undocumented excursions to use the phone and the like. Even so, it's amazing how Google Maps manages to be 99.1% accurate over such a long trip.

Day 1 - Helmshore to Doncaster, Ashford, Dover, Calais, Bruges
673km, about 8 hours 42 mins

Day 2 - Bruges to Maastricht, Frankfurt, Davos
1,051km, about 10 hours 5 mins

Day 3 (Part 1, part 2, part 3) - Davos to Stelvio, Trento, Bar, Ristorante, Odina
611km, about 7 hours 13 mins

Day 4 - Odina to Castello d'Albola, Castello di Metelo, Odina
94km, about 1 hour 55 mins

Day 5 - Odina to Florence
72km, about 1 hour 22 mins

Day 6 - Florence to Helmshore
2,019km, about 20 hours 51 mins

Been there, done that!

Lisa kindly recorded (you can download it from Usenet if you haven't got a Lisa) episode 1 of the new series of the BBC's Top Gear programme that was broadcast while we were away. In it James, Richard and Jeremy set out to find the best driving road in the World.

Starting with a bit of fannying around near Monaco they head up to Switzerland and, after being booked overnight into a rather poor hotel, end up in Davos. From there they take the roads over the hills to Italy and ultimately Stelvio and realise they've found just what they were looking for.

This story sounds remarkably similar to our own experience. A similar route and a truly great road (although there was nothing wrong with our hotel). Anyway, the programme is well worth the watch if you get chance to see it.

Jeremy Clarkson, Oct 2007: "Davos to Stelvio, the greatest driving road in the World!" :-)

Around Europe in six days

I finally got home at 2:30 GMT after setting off at about 5:30 CET, a whole 22 hours later and its fair to say that I am some what short of energy! In that time we managed to pass through 10 countries (thanks TomTom and Dicky) and cover over 4500 Kilometers (that's 2800 miles for all the imperialists).

Today I managed to clock up my 11th country as I passed over the border between England and Scotland, adding a further 230 miles to the total journey.

Anyway, thank you all for a great weekend.

Home, at last

Well, I'm back. Had a fairly uneventful flight, two movies & lots of sleep. Just waiting for my bags (scooted past all the queues with my APEC card so I'm the only one through). Now all I've got to do is clear customs, find my taxi, and head home for a shower before going to work.

Can't wait to look through all the other photos. I'm sure there'll be some funny shots in there.

So that's all from me. This fantastic weekend has come to an end, and now it's back to reality. Thanks to everyone involved for making it so much fun. Cheers!

Photos anyone?

I've started to upload the 1600+ photos that were taken over our weekend break. As there are so many I'm just going to post them all, rather than worrying about adding the "out of focus" stickers.

You can find them at http://picasaweb.google.com/idxxphotos. If you would like any of them in their original full size resolution then just ask.

And if you would like any removing, make your request and we can all take a vote! ;-)

Just one more flight

And I'm off! The "Queenstown" aka tail number:ZK-SUI is my ship tonight, setting sail for the sunny shores of Auckland, New Zealand. I'm looking forward to a good sleep on the way. My seat is about a million times better than the last one. Not looking forward to work in the morning ;-)

See you in about 12 hours for what should be the final post (of my end) of the trip!

Back in LA

Well I've arrived safely, to the very busy and very hot LAX. Slightly stiff, tired (from only brief bursts of sleep) but feeling very happy for myself that I've been upgraded to Business for the flight home :-) Could have hugged the flight attendant in the Air New Zealand Lounge. I've now got two and 1/2 hours to kill before boarding. Almost three and 1/2 hours before takeoff. What to do...

I might have to go and buy another NZ->US plug adaptor for my laptop so I can use that instead of this public terminal in the lounge. Then I can play with some of the photos that I still have yet to get off the camera.

Very glad to hear that all the lads have arrived home safely, having made the ferry. Hopefully Phil gets to share a nice breakfast with Karen before he has to head out to work in the morning! Dicky has no such worries, of course, being unemployed :-P

Home, sweet home...

...for me at least. Phil's just left my house for the very last bit of our roadtrip - the 80 mile drive back to Lancashire on his lonesome.

The journey from Dover, with me driving, took the best part of 4 hours due to fuelling, numerous overnight lane closures and a ten minute stop at Watford Gap for more Red Bull. I hope there are no more roadworks to be found over the M62/M66 to slow Phil's journey.

Sailing into the night

Phil and I are just settling down in the Club Lounge ready for a smooth crossing to Dover on the Pride of Kent. Yet again the Priorité tickets were worth there weight in gold as we barely stopped from the border control to being on board at the front of the ship.

We also managed to catch the earlier ferry making the final leg a little bit easier. In the end it was a 14.5 hour drive from Florence to Calais.

An extra turn of speed through Belgium (the best way to head South from Calais I think) meant that our 20 litres of fuel added with 509km to go was only just enough to reach the port. For the last 30km I had to drop the speed to save fuel. We now have about 3 miles of petrol left to make it to a filling station in Dover.

You'll be glad to know Phil's got his car booked in for Friday morning to get the aircon sorted. In the end it wasn't too much of a problem for us, the windows still worked after all.

We'll now switch back to BST, mph and the right side of the road. We're not expecting any problems for the last leg of our journey, again, all fingers crossed.

Beating North through France

I have just vacated the driver's seat after driving the last 400+ km, leaving Dicky to drive the final leg of our continental relay into Calais.

Just as we thought we had escaped the lunatic Italian drivers another one appears to scare the pants off every road user in the vicinity.

We have also come to the conclusion that the French traffic police are easily confused, as we went through a laser speed trap (just like the one in Austria (spit)) slightly exceeding the speed limit, but fortunately the 8 police men waiting at the péage toll pulled the driver of a black BMW. As you can guess we didn't hang around just in case they discovered their mistake.

Dicky has also been very popular with open air photo booths that the French have in the middle of their motorways. He has also managed to get the satnav to take us though Luxembourg, making it 10 countries in 6 days!

Flying again

Defeated by technology again. Tried to no avail to get a Wifi connection in the Lufthansa lounge, but the T-Mobile system isn't accepting Credit Cards today! Painful. Gave up on the Internet, and had a Champagne lunch instead :-)

It's lucky my Nokia E61 works so well, otherwise i'd have died from 'net withdrawls on this trip!

The transfer went very well though, even though I've passed through something like 5 security checkpoints. Frankfurt is a huge airport, and it seems like 80% of the planes are Lufthansa.

It's good to see that Russ finally got an entry on the blog. Sounds like he had a fine old time in Bologna ;-) Should have flown from Florence! Then you'd have had company.

So I'm off now to flight no.2 for today. Tail number:D-ABTK, 747-400. Wish me luck that I don't perish mid-air from Deep Vein Thrombosis! :-D My seat doesn't even recline, and I'm parked next to two LA Nanas! Gotta love last class. Auf Wiedersein!

Nous sommes en France

We've just crossed the border into France at Basel. Now to Strasbourg, Reims and the eventually Calais.

Our prayers for better driving standards we're answered in Switzerland. It was a good job as our route took us through the 17km Gotthard tunnel, not a good place to chance having an accident. Quite an amazing construction with mad temperatures - 15C at the entrance, 35.5C at about 7km in and 9.5C when we saw daylight again.

Then we stopped about one hour ago in deepest, darkest Switzerland at the services at Rothenburg. With sandwiches, chocolate, Red Bull(!), water and fuel we both felt much better. Phil resumed as pilot and I had a snooze.

While I was sleeping the car's SatNav tricked Phil into coming off the motorway for a "shortcut". This combined with having to wait 30 minutes before entering one of the Swiss tunnels has seen our Calais ETA move out to 19:35. We're trying to fix that right now.

Bologna, Italian for boredom?

I see that everyone else is making progress North across Europe, it's comforting! Meanwhile, I am soaking up the atmosphere of Bologna airport and to be honest - I fully expect everyone reading this to indulge in my excitement. If you only visit one place in Italy this year, make sure it's here!

Anyhow, all good things must come to and end and after just 3.5 short hours here I am over half way though my visit. In just 2 hours I expect to be on my way, I will make sure to send my regards to Austria for you Phil!

Ciao Firenze!

Slightly delayed, but ready to head for Frankfurt on D-AVRI a little Avro RJ85. It's only a nice short flight, so I might be able to have a little nap on the way (didn't get back to sleep after the guys left @5:30). Got the Airport photos for Dicky so wil try to post them later (Update:Posted!).

But for now it's time to say 'Ciao' to Italy, and I'm homeward bound. See you again soon.

And then there were two

Got on the road for 05:45 and danced with death on the A1 up to Bologna to drop off Russell at 06:40 (for his 12:30 flight!). It took 50 minutes to get round Milano but progress has been good from there.

We've just stopped inside Switerland near Como. And I'm now the proud owner of a €30 permit that lets me use the Swiss motorways for the rest of the year.

Phil's getting some more tablets to try to shake his head and neck ache and perhaps make my driving a little more bearable. Tomtom is guessing at a 18:40 arrival in Calais - I admire its optmism.

And so the journey home begins

I'm sitting in the hotel lobby, waiting for the bus to Florence Airport. I can't say I'm looking forward to around 26hours of economy class flights home, but there can't be any regrets, as we've had a great weekend.

The boys got away slightly late this morning, and it was really sad to say yet another goodbye. But hopefully it won't be too long before we meet up again. I'm sure they're making rapid progress North right at this moment.

Dicky has put in an order for Airport photos and three tail numbers, so I'll do my best to send those through before each flight. So now it's on to the bus...let the travelling begin!

The last supper (for this time)

Here we are in the Florence Unaway Hotel right next to Florence airport and the A1 which will be taking us towards Bologna and then home tomorrow morning.

Your prayers for clear roads for us are greatly appreciated!

Photos and this blog

As and when we have fast Internet connections we're going back to our text-only posts and adding some pictures. You might like to take a look through some of the older posts so you can see what we were talking about.

We did try our best as we travelled around but most of the European mobile networks seem not to be up to the job of mobile data.

Hangovers and many fond farewells

Back online again after a day without service 8-) Thanks for the birthday present, Vodafone!

We had a wonderful night last night, including a HUGE meal cooked for us in the Villa by the Chef Claudio, and birthday cake and Ferrari Spumante thanks to Paolo. Definitely felt rough this morning, but it was a beautiful morning in Tuscany, and had such a good time last night, it was well worth it. Dany did a great job organising the party, it was excellent.








After leaving Odina we headed into Florence for lunch (next to the Duomo!) a walk around town, Gelato by the Pitti Palace, and a beer in the Piazza. A tiring but fantastic afternoon.

Unfortunately the farewells have been many and frequent, and its been sad to see everyone go. Its been great to catch up with everyone again, so planning for next year has already started! (maybe IDXX will have launched by then ;-)

It's back to the four of us now, and we've got a hotel near the Airport. The boys are all heading off @5:30 tomorrow morning. I get a sleep in and go to the airport @8:30. Now we're off downstairs to get on the Wifi!

Lunch in Florence

We said our farewells to Paolo, Valentina and Debora this morning and made our way up the motorway to Florence. We've stopped in a ristorante for real Italian pizza one last time right next to the spectacular Duomo in the middle of the city.

Javier will soon take the train to Roma with Michela following a little later, Frank and Sytse will fly back to Amsterdam (via Milan) and last of the departues Dany, Laura, Fabrizio and Heidy will make the drive back to Milan.

As we've not yet got round to booking a hotel for this evening, we're going to have to rely on our Italian speaking friends to find us somewhere nice. Fingers crossed.

The Tuscany Team

From left to right: Fabrizio, Frank, Sytse, Phil, Heidy, Dany, Dicky, Russell, Clint, Javier, Paolo, Debora, Michela and Laura.

Happy birthday Clint!

Paolo and Valentina ever so very kindly provided their company, wonderful cakes and Ferrari "spoon monkey" (Heidy's version of Spumanti) to celebrate Clint's birthday at the stroke of midnight. Sytse made a most eloquent reply to Clint's acceptance and I'm very sure a great time was had by all (despite the untimely World Cup demise of the All Blacks).

We were all treated to Dany's photos-with-music tribute to our time abroad, a fantastic effort of which everyone has requested a copy. Perhaps we will see something similar from this weekend?

Best wishes for a speedy recovery from the inevitable hangover go to Russ and Javier who disappeared (separately!) at some point mid-sentence during the evening. Bless.

Apologies to those who retired before Heidy's roaring log fire. And thanks to all for making the whole of Saturday a truly memorable one. I'm happy to have spent my weekend with such a nice bunch of good friends.

One last thought goes to those who couldn't make it to Tuscany. You were sorely missed and mercilessly talked about. ;-) Hopefully we will see some of you next time.

Party Photos

Spoon Monkey

Laura & Heidy

Javier & Frank

Michela & Fabrizio

Chuff me, I'm stuffed!

Claudio made a valiant attempt to kill off most of us with death by overeating this evening. Wave after wave of irresistable freshly cooked food arrived to the table accompanied by his pleading encouragement to eat more than any human should. The steak was particularly fantastic.

And just when we thought it had finished, now for the biscuits and pudding wine before we get into dessert, coffees etc. :-)

Argh! No wireless!!

Elated from England's victory and content from some measured wine tasting as demonstrated by Russell(!), we headed back up to Odina to prepare for dinner. We did think of finding somewhere to watch NZ versus France but we had the kick-off times all wrong. That means it'll be more extortionate roaming data rates for us to keep up with progress.

Gloria was there when we got back and she broke the news that the wireless router had been destroyed by a lightning surge. We've come done to the office (the old church) to plug directly into the ISDN router. This too is slow so most of the photos are going to have to wait a little longer.

This evening we're having dinner cooked for us in our villa by our own personal chef, Claudio. The preparations look fantastic and everyone is really looking forward to the spread. We got a few beers and bottles of wine to get through as well, a chore everyone seems to be happy to do. At €25 per person and including wine we think we may have a bit of a bargain on our hands.

Although the forecast said rain for today we've had nothing but a few spots. The temperature has been perfect for most and we all have our fingers crossed that tomorrow will be the same.

Anyway, back to business, go the All Blacks!!

They're wining again

So here we are at our second winery of the afternoon, Castello Di Meleto. Although the tour of Castello D'Albola was very interesting the guys are now just wanting to cut straight to the tasting and then down to catch the end of the rugby.

Come on England!

Welcome to Paradise

Odina. What a beautiful place! We're sitting out in the garden, enjoying the view (with laptops, of course) preparing photos for the blog.

As soon as the others get out of the shower we should be heading for the village for coffee & breakfast. Hopefully that's very soon, otherwise there'll be a mutiny :-) Todays schedule: wine tour #1, England vs Australia rugby world cup, wine tour #2 then All Blacks vs France, followed by dinner. Sounds hectic!

We've made it!

Having survived the Italian A1 from Verona and after an hour crawling around Florence in horrendous traffic we finally made it down to Montevarchi and met Dany and Paolo at the railway station.

We had a fantastic welcome. It was great to see some old faces and to put some new faces to new names. After very pleasant outdoor drinks and nibbles we set off in convoy to meet Javier and Michela, again at the railway station. Then it was off to a lovely restaurant for our evening meal.

The drive up to Odina was a great surprise. The huge property is on top of a 650m hill with commanding views over all around. The road was spectacular in the dark, I'm really looking forward to seeing the views in their full glory.

No wireless this evening means a further delay in posting some photos. We'll get this sorted in the morning.

Traffico Maximo!

Well it's dark, and well past our scheduled arrival time. Hit shocking traffic about 30kms outside Florence. Stationary. We even got out of the car and sat on the motorway railings. Went a little further then stopped in a tunnel - terrible fumes so opted for the humid heat of winding up the windows.

We're still probably an hour or more away from Odina still, so Dany & the others are heading out for dinner. Hopefully there's still a bar or restaurant open when we get there!

The number one pasttime at the moment is abusing other drivers for pushing in front of us, or blinding us with fog or Xenon lights.

Autostrade Traffic Jams

Currently crawling through traffic between Trento and Verona. The cold beer in Trento was very nice, and it was good to get out for a walk in the fresh air. Lots of very pretty young Italian girls in town too. Thats what Paparazzi lenses were really intended for :-) Of course, only Russ & I (the single ones) paid any notice.
The only good thing about this traffic jam is Phil's letting us keep the windows down! Current ETA to Odina is 19:40, so we've got 3 more hours driving ahead of us yet.

It's a good thing the A/C's not broken :-!

Currently driving down through Northern Italy on the Motorway towards Trento. It's 25 degress and getting warmer the further South we head (and Dad (Phil) won't let me wind the window down!). The drive through Stelvio Pass was awesome. Will have to Blog with some of the (100s of) photos we took. I'm looking forward to sitting by the pool with a beer.

Defeated by technology

We've spent the morning driving through easily one of the most beautiful and spectacular roads in Europe, namely the SS38 that includes the Stelvio pass. Lots of photos to post when we get to a fast connection.

Clint's spent most of the journey fighting with various 3G networks from his laptop to try to post our progress. It's a good job there are no ladies with us as the language from the back seat has been shocking.

We're now on a toll road heading down to Trento. We should be there around 14:30.

Breakfast in Davos

We're on the road again after a quick coffee & pastry in Davos. While
there wasn't much to be said for the accomodations, the constant
tap-tap-tap noise did make for a wonderful way to wake up this
morning. We're heading up into the mountains now - very picturesque.
But it is a little hard to type with Phil drifting round the hairpin
corners. The Bus overtaking manoeuvre was particularly special though
:-)

Stelvio Pass

Snowball fights on the way to Stelvio

Getting back to basics

Continuing my John Major theme, I thought the chaps would be delighted with my find of £16.60 pppn for a "superior double room" in the Apartment Village Solaria in Davos, Switzerland. The accomodation is warm, dry and tidy. I admit the concrete floors and lack of bedding are not quite the luxury to which the chaps have become accustomed but I wasn't prepared for such an onslaught from the whinging divas. Someone else can book the hotel for Sunday night! ;-)

We made it here for around 21:15 this evening and then went for a nice meal at the Scala (Italian!) restaurant. I'm sure there's some spectacular scenery around us but the darkness of the night is keeping her secrets very well - we can't see a thing.

Planning to be off at 08:30 tomorrow to head another mile upwards to the Stelvio pass and its infamous hairpins. Then down to Trento for lunch and then on to meet the rest of the party goers. Dany, I will call you tomorrow with an ETA when we know what it is.

Snapped by Checkpoint Charlie

We made it through Germany without any problems, but the Austrian border control fined Phil for speeding (approaching the checkpoint) :-}

Quite amusing really that one minute you can be travelling @ 180kph, and then get snapped for doing 69!

So we're into Switzerland now, heading for Davos and looking for somewhere to have dinner.

Speeding South

After a little bit of Autobahn we managed to get to Clint at 15:20 CET. Against the odds we've got all the bags in the car and we're now trying to get some kilometers under the wheels.

Frankfurt to Switerland is going to be a bit of a trek. Making use of the toll roads should reduce the travel time to Davos to around 5 hours. We going to travel as far as we can before we hit real traffic and then stop to get something to eat. Hopefully we'll be in Bavaria by then.

Arrived in Frankfurt...but no Chariot

Just arrived, but the lads are 1h 20 away apparently. Standing waiting for my bags now, so still plenty of time to find a Starbucks and relax with a coffee. Phil's found the speed limitless road so they're flying towards the Airport @170km/h :-)

With any luck the Chariot will survive the Autobahn!

Lunch in Maastricht

The drive this morning went well but for a little congestion near Brussels, though nothing like we might expect back in Blighty. We've left the car under a town square in what must be the cleanest carpark in the whole of a very big place indeed.

Russ enjoyed reliving his youth listening to the very popiest of Europop on the radio with the Venga Boys and whoever sang "Love and devotion". But the poor thing over did it a bit and had to take a short snooze to recover. ;-)

Once we're done here it's just 2.5 hours over to Frankfurt to collect Clint and complete the fellowship.

Misty Belgium

As it's very misty this morning in Bruges, the majority of us (we haven't floated this with Russ yet) have decided to make our way tout de suite inland to Maastricht in Holland to find some brunch and even some "treats" that John Major may have left for us.

Leave Los Angeles

On LH451, tail number D-ABVD. Another 747-400. Very different seats.
Loads of leg room, but not quite lay-flat beds. See you boys in the
morning!

Enough exercise

Unfortunately for me its quite a hike from the Star Alliance Lounge to Gate 102 - and when I got there the plane hadn't arrived yet - so no tail number or photos yet. My Laptop battery is out of juice (dumbass forgot to pack a US converter!) so I'm sucking back a Corona using one of the Lounge PCs. The annoying thing is it means I cant post any of my photos...oh well.

So I've got another hour to kill before boarding (the boards read: scheduled time: 6:35PM, actual time: 6:40PM, status: on time - something wrong there).

My next flight is 10h 40mins, arriving Terminal 1. Looks like the bigger of the two terminals, so hopefully the guys should be able to park temporarily outside and I can walk out to meet them. Unless it's like LAX (sounds like Flying High, or Airplane) "The white zone is for the immediate loading and unloading of passengers, there is no stopping in the white zone. The red zone..."

It looks like we were lucky

When we set off from Doncaster we (mentally at least) flipped a coin to choose between the A1/M11 route and the more traditional M1 route. It looks like had we taken the latter we'd have been late to pick up Russell and would have missed the ferry. See the BBC News story here.

Let's hope we are similarly lucky for the rest of the trip.

Day one photos

Ready to leave Doncaster

So near, yet so Spar...

Champagne...

...and more Champagne

A "busy" Club Lounge

The Bruges Crowne Plaza hotel at night

Phil with Russ' new iPod Touch

It's hot in LA!

Very sunny, so I'm glad my walk between the Airport Terminals wasn't too much longer. I'm not dressed for this kind of weather. I made it through LAX arrival security - but only just. I got 'red flagged' for a 'random' inspection. It wasn't too bad though, only took a couple of minutes to search through my tiny (impressed, Phil?) bag - could have been worse.

Watched a couple of movies on the way over. Eagle vs Shark - a quirky NZ comedy with Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords - was very funny. 2nd was No Reservations, which was pretty average. I'd seen just about everything else on the list, and felt like a sleep in between.

Can't wait until they get web access going on planes - will make things much more interesting.

I've got 2 more hours to kill before boarding. I might go for a walk and take some photos of the plane (if it's here).

Very romantic

We've made it to the hotel in Bruges and all is good. The hotel is right in the centre of the city, down lots of cobbled roads and opposite some big church thingy. The rooms have original beams and there's chocolates in the rooms. A great place to take your girlfriend it would seem.

Now time to find a bar.

The Pride of Canterbury

You'll be very glad to know that the three desperados are now relaxing in the club lounge on the Pride of Canterbury, champagne flutes in hand with pinkies firmly hoisted(!) and expecting a smooth on-time crossing.

The "priorité" tickets saw us drive past everyone but for two like-minded cars that were here just before us. And as we constitute 60% of the business class passengers we've got plenty of space to read the papers (see "Day one photos").

We now move one hour ahead of BST and expect to be driving the 75 minutes up to Bruges after arriving in Calais at 22:00 CET.

Disaster number one

The good news: Russ arrived as expected and we're now heading for Dover and the last UK fuel. Should be good for the 19:30 ferry.

More good news: we managed to get a new Griffin iTrip Auto so we can now listen to and charge our iPods en route. And to show off, Russ has brought his new iPod Touch with him - very flash at first glance.

But the bad news: unfortunately we now realise what the steam was from. The air conditioning is completely goosed and the air coming into the cabin feels very moist. At least that should help my weight loss programme. ;-)

Waiting for Russell

Just had word from Russell that he missed the first train and now expects to be at Ashford for 18:06. We'll find a coffee and figure out which ferry we might catch. TomTom tells me Dover is 26 miles and 35 minutes from here - I'm sure Phil will make better time than that.

We got a bit of a fright as we came off the Queen Elizabeth II bridge at the Dartford toll. Steam was rising from under the bonnet. All the indicators showed OK and, as there was nowhere to stop, we continued on carefully to Ashford. When we did stop and take a look under the bonnet all seemed fine. We're guessing that some of the rain we met around Cambridge had collected somewhere and had then poured onto the exhaust manifold when we were braking downhill. Let's hope so anyway!

Clint's plane AKL to LAX

Clint's plane, call sign NZ2, departed Auckland International at 10:58 BST (13 minutes late) bound for Los Angeles. Click on this picture of his actual aircraft to see where he's sitting!

For those of you who are interested, all of you I'm sure, tail number ZK-SUJ is a Boeing 747-400 (4F6 variant) that was registered on lease to Air New Zealand as a new aircraft on 07/10/1998. I'm happy to report it has yet to be involved in any reportable incident as per the Aviation Safety Network.

You can see more details and photos of this aircraft here and here.

Phil has also left home and, apart from having to call at a Post Office, is heading over to pick me up. I suppose I ought to finish packing.

On the plane

Well I'm on the plane, right up in the nose of a 747-400. I asked the
flight attendant what the tail number was. She replied "excuse me?"
:-) I said, the plane, what is the tail number? She came back 1
minutes later and said "SUJ". That doesn't sound right to me...but
maybe i'll get to ask again later. Time to drink Champagne and watch
movies for 12 hours! 'night!

...and the trip just got better

Upgraded. Wahey! :-) Business Class, Seat #1A, no less. The flight should show up here after takeoff, for live tracking in US airspace (very cool) http://flightaware.com/live/flight/ANZ2

Havent seen the plane yet (still concentrating on the wine glass) so no idea of a tail number to investigate potential crash history (for Dicky). Watch this space. Dicky had a good plane/flight info site, cant find the URL though...

At the airport

...but no upgrade so far :-( Looks like I'll be flying in the back this time round. There's still one more chance they'll bump me before takeoff, but I won't hold my breath. For now it's time to settle in with a glass of wine and relax.

There's no 'iPod Touch's at the airport either, so I don't feel bad about not receiving the one I ordered before the trip. Should have really asked Phil if he's got an iPod FM transmitter so we can have some decent tunes while driving the 12 hour leg from Frankfurt to Florence (or continue to listen to my Audio Book from Audible...its just starting to get interesting).

I just got paged by reception...hopefully that's my upgrade! Got to go...

...got a brand new bag

After Phil put me under pressure last night, announcing that my suitcase couldnt come - I had to pack light - I decided to get a smaller bag :-) If this one can fit in the cabin baggage, it can fit in Phil's boot. Sound OK Phil?

Our Actual Chariot

Just to avoid any confusion, as there may be lots of Signum Designs (2.8i V6 etc) containing 4 blokes heading south for the winter. This is our actual chariot.

With the remnants of its last journey to France removed and the exterior cleaned, it's all ready for tomorrows start.

Remember Clint, plan your packing as although you may have as much leg room as your business seat from New Zealand, the hold is not as big!

Blogging by email

Before I set off I thought it would be a good idea to test the blog-by-email thing Clint mentioned. Here I am plugging away on my Nokia E61 (yes, even with my fat fingers) to see how and whether things work.

Here goes, I'm hitting the SEND button.

Planning not quite complete

With time fast running out, Clint thought it would be nice for those left behind to be taunted with details of our progress across the Continent. And in his case, his progress across the globe. Well, here it is.

Tomorrow we set off and there's still lots for me to do. I've been puzzling over the route and whether we're likely to be able to keep to any of the timings. Needless to say, my planning is flawless and it will be the others who will be blamed for the inevitable disasters.

Weather for the trip is starting to look a little more promising. At least Friday in the Alps looks like it will be fairly clear, I only hope our chariot will make it up to the top. The weekend is not looking too bad either.

The final guest list has now been confirmed. Apart from the tourers - me, Phil, Russ and Clint - we'll be meeting Dany, Fabrizio, Laura, Frank, Sytse, Michela, Javier and the latest addition, Heidy. No doubt that will be all twelve signs of the Zodiac so we can be sure of some top notch arguments.

Oh yes chaps, we still don't have a hotel booked for Sunday night...