The Kick off and the Technology
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, or in this case a thousand mouse clicks. We have spent quite a considerable time in front of our computers, tablets and phones trying to create a memorable trip around the wedding we are attending in Paris. So it seems completely appropriate to ask Google Gemini to generate an image to be the heading image for this post. GG did not really extend its creative capability which is not unusual for AI – leaves us all disappointed.
The itinerary built itself.
We had a fixed time to be in Paris, and available time around that constrained by the commitments in our normal life. The starting point – flying into Frankfurt – was driven by the best value air fares. The continuation to Vienna was driven by a desire to see the Lipizzan Horses following a visit to the Royal Andalusian Riding School of Jerez, after a glass of sherry, in June 2024. The next stage is driven by a need to find our way to Paris which means reaching Annecy, France which is just south of Switzerland in order to catch the TGV via Lyon into Paris. So obviously it is a series of train rides through Switzerland after just one too many viewings of the Great Train Journeys of Switzerland on SBS OnDemand.
Then the plan was to visit Ireland. With a tenuous link to Irish Convicts transported to Australia in 1802, not to mention an Irish name and red hair, I felt I should visit the Emerald Isle. It is just that in forty years of visiting Europe, I have never managed to reach there. So this seemed like an ideal time. A ferry ride from Cherbourg to Dublin sounded better than flying, so it is a few days in the West of France after the Paris wedding and then overnight on the water, almost two weeks of Guiness and flying back to Frankfurt to catch the flight back to Sydney in late July.
If that sounds like a lot, you should try your hand at Webjet, Booking.com, AirBnB and anything else that looked like it might be useful. It has been an exercise!
The Technology
Over the years I have described the technology that has supported our travels and I will again – not because it is special but because I have enjoyed reading the posts years later to see how much has changed.
The first technology jump has been in the preparation. Online booking has come a long way over recent years, but more importantly, information about each destination has exploded. Every town that wants visitors has produced elaborate guides and every blogger who wants followers has set up itineraries, recommendations and photos. Tickets for trains, entries for shows and discount passes for various cities all download to Apple Wallet.
Staying in touch is now much simpler with the Vodafone $5 per day global roaming working just about everywhere and for those places where the service is poor, supplementing with an e-sim from Saily. Wifi is everywhere, especially in hotels, AirBnB, Airports, train stations and just about anywhere else except when you need it. A VPN is a must.
iPhone, iPad and a laptop (at this time an ageing, too heavy and a bit slow Microsoft Surface Book) provide the hardware power, while Dropbox (long term favourite) and Evernote make paper free travel almost achievable. Lightroom and Photoshop manage the images from the Sony a6000 and WordPress brings it all together in one place.
I don’t really want to think about how much that all costs, but it seems like the minimum setup for things to go smoothly!