I’m finally getting around to answering some more questions from San.
What place have you travelled to that surprised you, and why?
This was a tricky one, but I will say my second trip to Hangzhou. I first visited Hangzhou in 2000, and my second trip took place in April 2013. I was blown away by Qianjiang New City, the new Hangzhou CBD—a completely new city centre near the river that had sprung up in the intervening years. I just googled it, and even more amazingly, construction didn’t start until 2007. We also took the fast train from Hangzhou to Jinhua. In Australia, we can only dream of that kind of infrastructure development, although we also don’t have the air pollution.
What is your favourite active vacation that you have been on and why?
This was tough again, but I will pick our Overland Track Adventure. It was our first multi-day hiking adventure, and so was the trip that kicked off our love of active-type holidays. We went with the Tasmanian Walking Company, so we only had to carry our belongings and no food or camping gear. We ate proper meals with wine and had a fantastic group of fellow travellers keen to enjoy themselves, too. The track was challenging, and the scenery was amazing with a range of ecosystems. We also chose to do two summits—Mt Oakleigh and Mt Ossa, which upped the challenge level. Mt Ossa, in particular, was quite scary for me; navigating the boulder field and then the final bit of climbing challenged my fear of heights, and I’m proud of myself for doing it.
Tell me three places that you want to go to and why.
Tour du Mont Blanc will likely be the next multi-day hike G and I do. This is a 165 km circuit around Mont Blanc through Switzerland, France and Italy. It’s a classic long-distance hike with plenty of accommodation options, good food and amazing scenery, as well as being physically demanding.
The second destination is Sicily. It has amazing Roman ruins and other historic sites, great food, beautiful scenery, and the opportunity to enjoy good hiking.
Finally, We had a pilgrimage trip to Israel with a group from our church booked at Saint George’s College for Easter last year, and I would still like to make that trip at some point. The situation would have to change significantly for this to be feasible.
What was your most difficult moment when travelling?
We haven’t had many disasters, but we booked an Airbnb when we went to Paris with our daughter. The night we arrived, water poured from the ceiling lights onto the kitchen bench. It turned out the lady in the apartment above had a leak from her toilet (the freshwater, thankfully). That got fixed, but it had obviously got into the electrical system, and a day or so later, the electricity in the apartment started playing up. We contacted the owner, and they organised someone to look at it, which they did, but it kept playing up. In the end, we had to move out into a hotel room for our final night with not a very large budget available at short notice. So the three of us were in a tiny hotel room with paper-thin walls. The whole thing was quite disruptive to our trip, although we still did everything we had planned. I guess we have been pretty lucky not to have too many mishaps while we’ve been travelling.
Have you had pretty smooth sailing while travelling? What places would you like to visit? Also, if you have any questions for me, my AMA is here.
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