International

 We gave ourselves extra time at the airport as this is an international flight even though we are not leaving the country. There is a rigamarol to do, like getting a dispensation to go through customs without a passport. The duty free grog was tempting but we were not allowed to purchase any. Not sure why you would fly across the country as an international passenger but that is the way they scheduled it. It seems more relaxed though as this terminal is huge and there are not many people here. Too bad I did not bring my fancy earbuds with wifi transmission to pickup the audio.

morning blue afternoon black

The Cairns Japanese Society

 We were wondering why there were so many Japanese on our boat to Green Island the other day. It seems during their Summer they flock to Cairns for cooler but sunny conditions and it is school holidays there. We wandered off to the Night Market last night as we had seen the tents being erected over the last few days and wanted some finger food to finish the day. This was no night market. That was somewhere else and we were slap bang in another Japanese invasion. It was the annual Japanese festival with fan dancing, drum banging and five kinds of chicken. We were there for finger food and we did try the fried chicken but the dim sum was better. Sayonara.

A Theory of Hosts

 Years ago hotels were hotels, nobody owned a hotel room. Part of the general digital disruption was AirBNB.  They said let us promote your holiday house online.  Then some monied up types started buying hotel rooms. This hotel is selling off rooms but then taking no responsibility for anyone staying in them. That is the hosts job. Our host is actually a remote hotel manager. She manages at least 30 rooms inside here by phone and is a paid employee of the owner of those rooms. I spoke to him and he lives in Melbourne. I asked why we could not use the gym here and we were told it was only for hotel guests as people in these 30 rooms are not hotel guests but he did negotiate use of the pool. Hooray. We have found this situation before say, at Mantra, they sell off rooms and in some cases all of them but they still manage it as a hotel however you will end up in a room that you can see has personal touches and is owned by someone else. I have not seen this at a high end Hilton or Ritz hotels but I have not been in one of those for a while.

Orientation Day

balcony coconut

 Yes just getting refamiliar with the Cairns layout of this town this morning. For the first time we are staying away from the water's edge, although in this town you are never far away from anything. We walked to the pier where we are leaving on a jaunt tomorrow morning and as it turns out they are driving us there but we did the walk in 15 minutes. We have mountain views out of this room's balcony and the shops are so close being in this part of town. We continued the loop walk back along the river for coffee at Wharf One cafe. Today is a slow day and one nophasement moment we had concerned the main Flying Fish pool, which the council closed TODAY for maintenance but we are assured it will reopen next week.

Travel Day

 At the risk of canceling my fourth straight airplane flight in a row, for some reason I was doing the remote check in for the airline flights. I have not done this before and there is a question there that blatantly wants to know how you feel. I have had a runny nose  for three nights with bad sleep to go with it. My head has been sore but I answered no to being sick. I mean define sick, like throwing up sick, so I answered no. The entire day was spent getting here and I made it in one piece. So now I have get with the program. We have found our room after negotiating the lock boxes. The aircon works but we have no parking space in this building, so no phasements.

Expedia infiltration

 I have always wanted to try the Wotif travel site. I have generally booked and arranged trips months in advance and it seemed like a good time to try this as we are genuinely wanting to selvage something out of the shambles that the appendix left of our last effort.  So I found a place on there that was available and booked it. I think the original idea of advertising cancellations and last minute deals on here has gone out the window.  Microsoft have taken over.  The apartment host sends me messages via VRBO which do not work. I click on those links and get sent to the STAYZ website which I have used in the past. This tells me this trip info is blocked on this website. They suggest using the phone app. The VRBO app will not install and the other two apps have no info, so we are back to old fashioned emails.  Since when have emails been old fashioned.

Dijon

 Tour de Femmes is time trialing into Dijon and we spent a few days at the Chateau de Gilly half way between Dijon and Beaune.  We also took rides in both directions to visit those towns.  In Beaune we toured the historic hospital with its tiled roof  as well as getting there in time for the morning market. In Dijon it was mustard mecca, not that I go in for it but if you are in Dijon then you must muster for mustard. The chateau was the first we had tried in France with precise gardens and the wine menu so thick it had its own table.

The Insurance Well

These guys are going to put us on a list if we keep going to the pot for insurance money. Each time we do this it seems to take a different path. This time we have left it largely to the travel agent (for a fee) to get the paperwork ready for an insurance claim.  It has taken six weeks but we should be able to send it off today. It seems that all the medical out of pocket costs are not claimable because they did not happen in a foreign country. There are always fine print clauses hiding there.  We have two medical reports, a travel agent report and a stack of bills and receipts.  I have scanned everything but I will add a tracking number to the envelope.  Insurance on insurance. 

Source Cachat

The Tour de France had the individual time trial yesterday and I am remembering the time we did our own three day ride around Lake Geneva. It was 14 yar ago and the first of our Swiss lake circumnavigations, the second one being Lake Constance.  They showed the drinking fountain and the Evian source yesterday.  We rode into Evian Les Bains a bit late but spent some time in the morning looking around before riding out.  The cachat gate was closed but at least I saw inside via yesterdays drone this time.  

Castle de Chillon

smoke on the water

a fork in the lake

source cachat

Long Travelled coat returns

 Sometime last century this coat was being worn all over the place. It got a bit ragged. The lining especially was in tatters and completely worn out from the inside.  There was hesitation about throwing it out after such good service but the outside was still ok so it was sent to Thailand for a repair job. The tricky part was finding a tailor.  Now Jill the haggler is an expert at getting the right price. So for a measly 2000 Baht, the coat was brought back to life with a silken lining.  Who says you need to buy three replacements on Temu or Amazon.

Insurance Time

 Yes we are now back on the road of the travel insurance claim.  It is an uphill road and we have been on it many times.  This time we are getting the help of the Travel Agent. They have already been working at it and there has been a refund from airlines and train operators.  I can never understand why some businesses give refunds and others like cruise lines and hotels just keep the money.  One problem is that I booked the insurance under an IT industry membership scheme and not with the travel agent, so they do not get their payment from the insurer. We will have to pay for this and add it to the claim.  There are also numerous doctor receipts that we have to locate.  I was having my apple a day but it did not keep the doctor away. 

Hey Bud

 We seem to be doing something about travel every day at the moment. I booked a Museum day for the middle of London. We got caught out last time when we arrived for our visit to the museum and they said yes you have free entry but we are too busy.  This time we have a time slot.  I got the buds out of the packaging as well as the bluetooth transmitters.  I am running out of places to plug things in. We left a set of buds on a plane once and this time is going to be worse trying to keep track of every little piece of kit. The transmitters are good for 25 hours but they will still need to be charged for the return. I have counted eight items so far that need charging, four of those will be used in the plane's seat with me.

Hello World

 Maybe I should not be giving these guys a plug because we have not been anywhere yet. We did go and pickup some documents including various tickets and vouchers for travel and accommodation. So far so good.  There is a service for the older brigade where the airlines will get someone to meet us and walk us through the Euro entry gauntlet which these guys have arranged at the last minute.  We are also anticipating more use of technology compared to seven yar ago when we were last on the go.  Already we have replaced the old ear muff type of noise cancellation with a paired bluetooth transmitter and ear buds. There seems to be an app for every place on the itinerary.  My phone is going to get heavier.  I used to code in Fortran and you often start out with a Hello World.

Red Eye

 I think I have two red eyes. What leaves just after midnight and arrives just before dawn? The Red Eye. This plane was packed as well and what a shock to land in a fogbank. I think we should ban this type of flight.  We went looking for our car in the fog and the photo of where it was parked was unreachable on the water damaged phone.  It does not need to be said that the greatest nophasement moment was when the phone got watered. This is like having an arm cut off and it was only the second day. We had the carpark exit pass on there as well. There must be 5,000 cars in that lot.  Fortunately the work around was to access the cloud from the tablet device and get the pass on my phone.  It must be phone size not tablet size to fit under the scanner. Always bring backup technology.

last pool session

last photo

The Lords of Bookkeeping

 I think most of the Lords of Bookkeeping are women.  So when we got the invitation to go to the House of Lords for a you beaut bookkeeping celebration for the world's high flyers of bookkeeping, we said yes and viewed it as a culmination of the hard work Debbie has put in over the last 30 yar.  Getting the invitation in February for a trip in June is more like going tomorrow for me. I am rusty at travelling abroad but got things going. Airfares, stopovers, accommodation and a nearby cruise all possible, so we went to a travel agent to set it all up.  We paid the first half last week including airfares flying Emirates to London.  This morning I am scrambling to remove Dubai from the itinerary. Our travel plans over the last few years have mostly gone astray.  Good thing we used a travel agent this time so we have someone working on this for us. I daresay the travel agent has a lot more urgencies than us at the moment.

Airport Parking

 We are back at Tulla tomorrow and one of the changes lately is not to use a credit card for access but you get a code to scan at the gate instead.  We did this for the first time earlier in the year but it was printed in a large format on an A4 sheet. So I was crumpling and folding and shaping this thing to try to get it near the scanner. After five minutes and cars banking up it let us thru. This time I have the code on my phone haha, for easy access to the scanner. I checked it and all images have been taken out of the message. I fiddled with it and got the images restored except the coded image is now the only one that is still missing.  OK back to the paper copy. These are 1st world problems.  I do prefer the credit card swiping and they still do that at Avalon.

Stalling Tactics

 I have been chasing up travel insurance claims for the last few months. I have had more success getting vouchers and reimbursements from suppliers than anything from insurance so far.  I have two insurance possibilities and have not got passed the first one yet.  This is a freebie inclusion to the credit card and I got no updates back from them, so after prompting, they said we are stalled because we could not contact you on several occasions.  (They know my email.)  So I have sent the same information back on company letterheads even though they have already got this stuff.  Oh Boy!

Talking Blarney

 Seemed like an indoor day today so I did another session of document scanning to keep chipping away at the pile. I plucked this one out which is a tourism certificate.  I have to get my traveling hat on again soon, so as to be on the look out for tourist scams and generally trying to pay attention to my surroundings.  I remember a guy getting us to follow him to a shop in Fiji once for a cava ceremony.  They also sell stuff. It took best part of an hour to extricate ourselves from that one. This kissing the Blarney is perfectly designed to part with your money.  It is also a bit tricky as you have to hang upside down.Those Irish.

Airport wait time

 I may as well type something. It is early Sunday morning but this place never sleeps. The scoreboard is saying gate information will be posted in 30 mins, which is fairly close to boarding time. The lady  on the newxt table has lost her phone at the security check. She thought you had to unload your whole bag for the screening. Eventually we got it back from lost & found. She also has an alziemers husband in tow who was oblivious to this stuff.

IconsCairns

We have 90 minutes before boarding and have found a stylish cafe where they are bringing our order to the table, how original.  The checkin was straight forward.  The forecast says 50% chance of rain, not sure what Melbourne will have for us.  Overall we have found new things to do and try and a few more for another trip to the area.  The Mission Beach Reef resort we would not use again.  Also we would try a different hotel in Cairns as we have been doing, as there are plenty of choices.

Icons Cafe