Melissa Madsen’s Posthaven

1. Fly with Singapore Airlines.  Their planes are new, service was good, and best of all, they offered direct flights from Adelaide and direct flights to/from our starting and ending cities in Europe.  In particular, on our homeward bound flights, Singapore Airlines blocked off the remaining seats immediately next to us so that we had three and four seats to ourselves respectively on our flights home.  We had lengthy waits between connecting flights in Singapore, but this actually worked to our advantage, as it minimised concerns about not making connecting flights, allowing time to have a good rest between flights.  The breaks between flights, and especially the massage on the way home, really helped us arrive less wrung out than normally occurs after long-haul flights.

2. Book into the Ambassador Transit Hotel in terminal 3 of Singapore's Changi airport.  This hotel is basic, but the rooms are large and clean, with a good bathroom and a comfy bed.  You book and pay for rooms in blocks of 6 hours, so it is perfect for freshening up and/or catching up on some sleep between flights.  

3. Travel by train and ferry in Europe.  Land travel is slower than flying, but the check-in times are far shorter; security checks are minimal or non-existent (no taking shoes and belts off before boarding, or unpacking bags); train stations and ferry terminals are more likely to be centrally located, allowing you to use public transport or even just walk to your final destination; the scenery is more interesting, sometimes spectacular; and you can get up and move about freely whilst travelling, and importantly, I can easily go to the loo during the journey.  I particularly like the German trains, even though they were crowded at times.  Pre-booked assistance to board and disembark from trains was very efficient.  We also enjoyed our two overnight ferry journeys very much, and had great meals on both trips.  The atmosphere on each ferry was different - the Kiel-Oslo ferry was more akin to a cruise ship, the Oslo-Frederikshavn was a more basic ferry - but both were relaxed and friendly, had good facilities and great food.  Did I mention the food?  The buffet dinner on the MS Color Fantasy (Kiel-Oslo ferry) was perhaps the best meal of our entire trip.  And there is something very romantic about travelling by ship overnight and waking up to a new country or landscape in the morning.  It feels like real travel, more so than air travel ever does.

4. Travel with one suitcase.  We travelled with one large suitcase and one overnight bag between us, so that we could walk between train stations and ferry terminals and hotels or use public transport where possible.  This worked mostly well, although the unwieldiness of the suitcase on cobblestones lead to Tova nick-naming the suitcase "Nemesis" at one point.  

5. Take an iPad for communication and entertainment.  I took an 16Gb first generation iPad with us, and it was invaluable. Together with wireless internet access in hotels (mostly free and noticeably faster than my super-dooper wired internet connection at home too), it allowed us to keep in touch via email, Facebook and blog.  I had also loaded up some episodes of our favourite TV shows via iTunes for times when we needed familiar TV to help take our mind off jetlag.  I tend to read a lot during travel, and the iPad was a great way to carry multiple books with me, and purchase more from Amazon when I ran out of reading material, without needing to fill suitcases with books.  I had setup my Mobile Me (http://www.apple.com/mobileme) iDisk with backup copies of all travel and accommodation booking documents.  Although iDisk normally requires an internet connection to access files, the iPad can be set to cache up to 500Mb of iDisk files, so the most critical files could be accessed without an internet connection.  I had also setup Mobile Me picture galleries prior to departure to allow me to publish photos and videos to family and friends, after loading these onto the iPad. (It did not appear possible to create/modify Mobile Me picture galleries via the iPad.)  I was even able to do my first video editing with ReelDirector (http://www.nexvio.com/product/ReelDirector.aspx) on the iPad. The second generation iPad is compatible with Apple's movie editing software, iMovie, but the first generation iPad is not.  ReelDirector does everything I needed it too though - chop the crappy bits out of my video and join separate video clips together - plus more.  There were a couple of things that I could not do with the iPad, but these could have been worked around had I not accidentally deleted my Citrix configuration to a work desktop.  But neither item was important enough to warrant trying to set up Citrix again.

1. Stay in more self-contained accommodation. There were no real disappointments in our accommodation - all our hotels were good, with the possible exception of the InterCity Hotel in Kiel.  The Circus Hotel in Berlin was excellent. However we really enjoyed having our own kitchen in Skagen, and being able to cook for ourselves if we wanted.  In particular, Paris seemed to have lots of possibilities for easy self-catering, with beautiful roast chickens and spuds available from rotisseries, vegetables, fruit and cheese available from local street markets, and crispy baguettes available everywhere.  We didn't stay in hotels that a lot of facilities over and above accommodation and breakfast, and even where those facilities existed, we didn't use them.  So we would not lose a great deal by going to self-contained accommodation, and would gain the ability to cater for ourselves.  Besides I love an excuse to go into foreign supermarkets!

2. Pack more lightly.  We did really well to pare down our packed clothes to one main suitcase plus an overnight bag that we took as carry-on luggage, but even so, I sent home clothes from Oslo that were really superfluous, and could easily have been left at home.  I'm conscious that Tova needs to tote bags for both of us, so light packing is critical.  The one-bag strategy leads to one very big bag though, and these are not easily stored overhead on trains.  An alternative approach in future might be two medium-sized bags.

3. See more of Norway and its fjords.  We had thought about taking a trip on the Hurtigruten ferries (http://www.hurtigruten.com.au/norway2) that cruise the west coast of Norway, but decided not to, as I could not make our itinerary work with this.  The beauty of Bergen and the train between this city and Oslo convinced us that we need to see more of Norway and its fjords next time.

4. Cross the Øresund Bridge to Sweden.  The journey to Malmö in Sweden from Copenhagen takes a mere 35 minutes, trains run every 20 minutes, with some Swedes commuting to Copenhagen daily for work, and Danes taking advantage of cheaper housing in Malmö.  (One of the staff on the front desk at our hotel in Copenhagen is, in fact, a Swede, who commutes daily to Copenhagen for work.)  Some suggest that that Copenhagen and Malmö now effectively form a single metropolitan area, despite having different languages and currencies.  This makes Denmark's recent reintroduction of border controls (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13366047) mostly cosmetic - once the genie of free movement across borders is let out of the bottle, and people arrange their lives accordingly, it cannot be put back into the bottle.  The bridge itself is a huge feat of engineering, but the idea of a single metropolitan area that crosses a national border is too intriguing to miss next time.

5. See more of France and get more practice at speaking French.  I really enjoyed refreshing my high school French before leaving, but did not get enough practice during our stay in Paris, as many people spoke English and it takes a while to get enough confidence to try speaking in another language.

1. Paris was surprisingly friendly and accessible.  What can I say that hasn't been said before about Paris?  We both loved Paris.  Food was great, weather was sunny and warm, art was fantastic, buses were cheap, accessible and frequent, and the bus drivers were the friendliest we encountered in the whole trip.

2. The train trip to Bergen from Oslo was incredibly scenic - not a surprise, but a definite highlight.

3. Food and drink in Denmark was surprisingly addictive - beer, frikadeller, rullepølse and bakery goods - we are missing these already.

I knew that I loved Denmark, and would more than likely love France.  I think Tova was less certain about going to Europe and not being able to speak the local languages.  However, even she is now a convert and we are already thinking about our next trip.  Time to start saving up!