Date: 5th December 2008
I left Australia on the 19th November. Stopped off in Reno/Tahoe, USA, to visit the Bennetts after flying to and from San Fransisco and LAX a number of times to rack up the remaining airpoints I needed to move up a loyalty class, (cheaper than paying excess baggage), but failed to think about how tired it would make me. I had a few nice days in Tahoe though, relaxing and hiking with the family, it is always so nice to see them!
Onward to London... (via San Fransisco and LAX of course...) so totalling 9 flights from Australia to London...I arrived and made my way down south to Fareham where my dad's cousin Pauline resides. I stayed here for 3 days with Pauline , Mike and Ashley who were all extremely helpful and accommodating! I was absolutely knacked by the time I had arrived and well jet lagged! I picked up my car...1998 Vauxhall Vectra, what I thought was to be a total gem and bargain! I left early on the 26th to make my way across to near Meribel, France. A good 10 hour drive plus a ferry. Well I put the location in France into the GPW and off I set, finding myself at Portsmouth dock before realising the GPS was taking me across the sea to Spain...obviously a quicker route but not the one I had the ticket for. Brilliant! So by the time I reached Dover, I missed my ferry. No worries, I sat around and got on the next one, and hit the road in France. One wrong turn a few hours later and I found myself lost in Paris...just what you need...Paris peak hour traffic. An hour in and an hour out, it was now getting on to dinner time. I stopped somewhere between Paris and Lyon at an Autogrill and decided to have a quick feed. I still had another 5 hours to drive. When I walked out I realised just how tired I was feeling, and decided to pull up with the trucks outside the autogrill and have a sleep. So into the back I hopped on top of everything I own and crashed for the night. 10 hours later (I really was tired) I woke up with ice on the inside and outside of my car, -4 degrees, the beauty of being at the Autogrill was I nipped in, had a croissant and coffee and straight back onto the highway. Handy!
By the time I reached Lyon, the car started sounding like a tractor. When I stopped to take a ticket at the telepeage (pay point) I thought my car was going to conk out. Anyway I arrived at my apartment and unpacked the car. I started to settle into my apartment and set off the following day, chugged along back to Lyon as I had to go and pick up all my equipment from the Kneissl factory in Kustein, Austria. So I flew to Munich caught the train down, spent a night in Innsbruck with friends then caught the train back to Munich airport via the Kneissl factory. I then drove back to Meribel in my car that sounded like it was about to blow up, arriving around 2am. I will get my car looked at sometime this week. It is nice to have arrived and started settling in for the season! Looking forward to skiing!
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