Feed on
Posts
Comments

I

October 31st, 2006 by Barbara

Hi again,

You might remember, I finally was getting ready to leave Sydney. But first I had to have a plan.

You might recall that I always start my trips with creating a big picture, e.g. booking flights and the first couple of nights at my first destination.

Having been a travel agent for more than 20 years, one could assume that I’m able to get travel itineraries together very easily. And yes I can, but for others and not necessarily for myself.

You see, I’m a so called “options person” which means that I look at all the options open to me. Which you can imagine a country/continent like Australia has a few to offer.

So I first had to break the options into geographical areas e.g. south/east etc. I then, and this was still back in Switzerland, decided to mainly travel over land, which suited me, since I’ve already done it in India a couple of years prior. I’ll talk about my Indian experience in another blog later this year or maybe early 2007.

So the rough plan looked something like. Book an airline ticket around the world, starting in the US, since I’ve got some people I haven’t seen for a while and I have places to stay and people to talk to. Both aspects were important for me.

I knew all along that Sydney was a city I wanted to visit, as I’ve heard so much about it and I could only remember one person I’ve spoken to over the 20 years in travel who didn’t like it. So this could be considered a good starting point from my point of view.

There were a couple of other spots in Oz I wanted to spend some time visiting which was Alice Springs, Uluru (for some better known as Ayers Rock) and maybe Perth.

I also hatched a “worse case” scenario plan. Which was, just in case I hate Australia, I’ll fly to Thailand, which I had travelled regularly over the past years and I loved dearly. But again, this is another story or maybe even more, let’s get back to that at a later stage.

So there I sat, happily and comfortably at Christina’s House in the Blue Mountains, being tempted to spend all of my remaining time with her and her family.

One morning, it was raining, and everybody was happy about that, except for me, at the time I had no appreciation for how important rain is to Australia. I sat down and worked out a more detailed plan of my time in Oz.

I decided that I would want to do the following; buy myself a Greyhound Pioneer Ticket (hop on hop off system) and travel from Sydney to Cairns. Then fly across to Alice Springs, it didn’t make sense to me to travel this bit by bus, as it would mean another 5 days or so on the bus, just to stay the night somewhere in the “sticks”, and I’m not really interested in mining towns like Mt Isa etc. or at least not this time around.

From Alice Springs I would book myself on a tour, 3 days or preferably longer, to visit and experience the outback.

I deliberately chose a guided tour, because of the dangers that exist out there such as heat, car breakdown, I’m a lousy car mechanic, dangerous animals e.g. snakes of which I’m scared of anyway.

There are many really good travel agencies in and around Sydney, whom are very willing to help and sell their products and services.

Generally speaking you can trust them, and they do know their business pretty well.

Just look them up on the net or walk into their shops and see how you connect with them.

As a travel agent by trade myself, I suggest you go with your gut feeling, and you’ll be fine. Just one word of warning, the cheapest is not always the most economical way of travelling.

Till next time!

Cheers

Barbara

Other News

  • Each NBA Team's Best and Worst Case Scenario for the 2010-11 SeasonThe 2010-11 NBA season promises to be quite predictable—if you believe the sports book in Vegas, that is. Miami is listed as the odds on favorite to win the title at +175 and the Lakers aren't far behind at +300. Other than those two, no other team has better 10-to-1 odds to walk home with the Larry O'Brien trophy. So can't we just pretty much pencil in Miami and Los Angeles in the Finals and ...
  • Say amp;quot;Bonjouramp;quot; to Black ParisDiscover Paris, a travel planning service that provides self-guided itineraries and private, guided tours in the City of Light, has expanded its Discover African-American History in Paris itineraries and activities to incorporate contemporary Black Paris in its heritage travel services. Additionally, the company is extending outreach for the program to mainstream English-speaking travelers...

Trackback URI | Comments RSS

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.