Rhonda Bracey: At Random

With strong tailwinds, my first flight (Rome to Hong Kong) landed after 10 and a bit hours, more than an hour early. Instead of 8.5 hours layover, I now have 9.5 hours. Oh joy! At least I’m in a comfy lounge (Cathay’s Pier Business lounge near Gate 65), in a very comfy chair with a footrest, and have now showered. In 8 hours I leave on the final flight, which is another 8 hours.

I found out too late that the lounge I was in has a relaxation area where there are bed-type lounges you can sleep on. Must remember for next time I fly Cathay… if I fly Cathay again. I was in business class, but the seat wasn’t a patch on other business class seats I’ve sat on in other airlines. The seat itself was quite hard, which made it difficult to sit in or lie on for long periods. You had to make up your own bed (I’m sure if you’d asked, someone would’ve done it for you, but it certainly wasn’t offered), and only the cabin manager on the return flight to Perth bothered to use my name. There were very limited entertainment offerings (e.g. movies) on the flights to Zurich, but much better on the return flights home from Rome (different month, so likely the offerings had changed).

Total elapsed time from leaving the accommodation in Rome to getting to my sister’s house in Perth will be about 33 hours. Then hopefully a good night’s sleep before the 2-hour drive home on Saturday. It’s times like these I envy the Poms who think nothing of jetting off to Barcelona, say, for the weekend, ‘cos it’s just a couple of hours. From Perth, anywhere out of the state is a minimum of 3+ hours flight, and just to get to Sydney or Melbourne is close to 5 hours from Perth. Bali is quicker for us to get to than Adelaide is! (and a whole lot cheaper than Adelaide too). Yes, I am well aware that these are #FirstWorldProblems.

After last year’s debacle with my feet while travelling, I saw a podiatrist who recommended getting shoes properly fitted and said I’d need wide ones. I got my walking shoes in February and did a whole lot of walking in them for the next few months. Part of that process was downloading a pedometer app to record number of steps etc. I kept it on the whole time we were in Europe, and as at yesterday, we’d walked some 165 km between 29 May when we landed in Zurich and yesterday when I left Rome, some 250,000 steps, averaging 3.7 km/h, for a total time walking of 40 of 45 hours, and more than 11,000 calories burned. No wonder my feet feel like a rest!

Update: After 4 weeks away eating Swiss, Italian and yummy cruise ship food (and drink) I expected to have gained at least 3 kg. Instead, I lost 1.5 kg!!! Must be the 165 km I walked over that time!!!!

Final thoughts after returning home

My 5 ‘can’t live without’ things for travelling in Europe in summer:

• A hat with a chin strap of some sort, to prevent the hat from blowing away in strong wind! A real hat too, not just a visor—you need to keep the sun off your head. My $10 cheapie sure got a workout! But if you forget your hat or don’t want to pack one, all the places where it’s hot have street vendors selling hats, iced water, umbrellas/parasols.
• Linen and cotton clothes. OMG, I now realise why linen is so popular in places like Italy. It breathes and feels good on your skin on really hot days. And it absorbs and dissipates sweat really quickly. Cotton is good too, but linen is so much better. You can buy linen relatively cheaply in places like Italy and Spain. I felt really sorry for those in jeans and/or synthetic clothing in that heat—they’d have been SOOO hot.
• A retractable luggage lock with an ~30 inch (~75 cm) wire. Ideal for trains where you can lock your luggage to luggage racks you can’t see from your seat, or bike racks, or railings near doors if luggage/bike racks are not available. Prevents both opportunistic theft and stops your wheeled cases from rolling about the carriage. Also to lock two suitcases/duffels together to prevent opportunistic theft if you’re sitting in a crowded place (train station, airport general area) with your luggage.
• Silicon wheel covers for suitcase wheels. Yeah, I thought these were a bit of a gimmick, but they saved my suitcase’s wheels from serious damage. We had to wheel our cases across some pretty dodgy terrain (cobblestones, untold stairs, broken pavement, rough paths and roads, up and down train steps), and these not only prevented damage to the wheels but also softened the noise. I’ve now bought 2 more sets for my other suitcase and carry-on too. The cost of replacing wheels on a suitcase is almost the same as buying a new case, so this small investment to save your wheels from the worst damage is worth it. Just check your wheels after going across rough terrain to make sure all the covers are still intact—a couple of mine partially came off the wheels and needed readjusting to fit snugly.
• Suitcase cover!! I have a bright yellow suitcase and my suitcase ‘condom’ stopped the worst of the marks that come from suitcases being handled by airlines, and it certainly stood out in a crowd! Below is a photo of my suitcase with its wheel covers and ‘condom’ on before I left on my trip. The wheel covers are now mostly black and the suitcase cover got well marked and had a few holes by the time I got back, but my suitcase itself—and its wheels—is still in good condition.

Other observations:

• Uber, if available (and it wasn’t available everywhere), is priced higher than taxis in many places; in some places, Uber is actually local taxis and their drivers.
• We used debit cards through our phone wallet apps for almost everything. We’d put the debit cards into the currency and just pay in local currency, avoiding bank transaction fees associated with credit cards. I found I had the least difficulty with the Wise debit card, and it has the biggest range of currencies too.
• We also took cash, though we found that 90% of places were happy to do the ‘tap and go’ thing with our phones. Be aware that for some places/situations (in Italy mostly) you’ll be offered two prices—typically a cheaper price for cash than using a card. We encountered this a few times with taxis in Rome.