Milton and Donna wet day France
Our plan is for all 6 friends to meet in Alba, Italy on June 9th.
Milton has spent the past year on and off getting maps and working out both our cycling route in Piedmont and their own cycling trip across France. He and Donna arrived May 19th in Paris mid train strikes, before flying to Lyon and on to Beaune (Burgundy Valley near Dijon) to pick up their left-behind bikes from a previous cycling trip. They've spent 2 weeks cycling through rainy strike-ridden France to arrive in Turin June 8th then catch the train on to Alba. Milton's expert weather plans went astray on this leg with torrential rain and floods in France but it will be great for our cycling trip in Italy, he says.
Graham and Jenny in Japan
Ready to go Business Class
Thanks to Salvos and Vinnies
Jenny and Graham arrived in Bali May 26th and spent a few days hashing there before heading to Japan to meet more Hash House Harrier friends from the Gold Coast for a cycling trip. They then flew to Milan to meet another hash friend before catching the train to Alba. In case you don't know, Hash House Harriers are drinkers with a serious running problem.
I've spent the year ploughing through my hundreds of French maps planning our 25 day hiking trip through the French Alps picking the best route that hopefully gives us an average of between 13 and 15k per day using several GR established walking tracks. The GR or Grand Randonne's, French for long distance hiking trails, are clearly marked on the IGN maps and well sign posted along the walks, so a 1:100,000 scale map is sufficient for our needs. To put it in perspective, if you are making up a route as you go along, you'd need a 1:25,000 scale for more detail.
Our daughter Bonnie who works for Virgin International, has arranged standby flights us with Virgins partner airlines Etihad and Alitalia, from Brisbane to Abu Dhabi business class and Abu Dhabi to Milan economy. We've had to do several modelling sessions and buy a few businessy outfits to look the part of the well dressed Virgin staff traveller. A few trips to the Salvos and St Vinnies, gets Ian a $10 Flair Industries pure wool jacket for $10, Fletcher Jones pure wool trousers for $18, never used shoes for $4 (half price shoe day at the Salvos), a $4 Christian Dior shirt and a $2 silk tie. Mine was a $10 ebay scarf from Romania, a $5 black Aldi shirt, and a $10 black jacket from Vinnies. The shoes and trousers were 20 year old stuff in a set aside throw out basket, that have now come back into fashion! And voila!
To give ourselves plenty of time to be in Italy for June 9th, we booked a standby ticket from Brisbane on June 5th and when it seemed 99% sure there were seats available on both sectors, we booked an apartment in Turin for 3 nights.
All went to plan and after a family Sunday lunch, Tom dropped as at the airport where we secured business class seats on the 9.50pm Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi. We've been on this flight several times before and its our favoured airline and favoured time to leave as its a 14hr overnight flight which gets us to Abu Dhabi at 6am, ready for a short 7 hr day flight into Europe, this time Milan.