eurasia 2017 travels

aussiefitzy.com

TRIP SUMMARY

TOWNSVILLE ~ Fitzy's Poverty Palace (Queensland, AUS)

My Final Thoughts

TODAYS MILEAGE – 0 miles or 0 kilometres

TRIP MILEAGE – 42,538 miles or 68,458 kilometres

Greetings & Salutations,

The EurAsia 2017 Trip was a wonderful experience made all the more better for the history and architecture of most of the places that we visited and travelling with some of the people on the G Adventures tours.

Flying all the way over to Portugal’s didn’t seem to take that long, especially with the modern marvels of technology. Aside from the airport transfer company trying to drop me off at the wrong hotel, spending a day or two on your own before heading out on a group tour helps in getting your bearings and shaking off the effects of jetlag. I prefer to partake in a local food tour, in this case it was WithLocals Food Tour in Lisbon, which not only gives you an oversight of where you are and what’s to see and eat, but more importantly gets you up on your feet and active, which is a big factor in combatting jetlag.

For me some of the highlights of the Ultimate Spain & Portugal trip was checking out all these wonderful places full of history and architecture with for the most part, a great group of people. Our "CEO" (Chief Experience Officer) Fredy was simply brilliant and at times I really felt for him, as it seemed to be like herding feral cats with sign language in dealing with some people in the group.

One of the ironies of modern day travel was not lost on me when Emirates Airlines would not fly me direct from Madrid to Beijing, instead of having the fly all the way back to Brisbane, spent 28 hours and then fly to Beijing because the free ticket they supplied me "doesn’t meet our flight routing criteria". As with most things, I try make a positive out of it. I actually went and grabbed my new Harley Davidson FLHXSE CVO Street Glide, that I’d purchased on the trip and went for a ride down to Byron Bay. I spent the day thoroughly enjoying riding my bike through the backroads and hinterland of northern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland.

I should however say that I managed to scare the living shit out of myself a couple of times, after returning my bike back to the dealer and driving to my mate’s place for the night. Through the sheer exhaustion & fatigue of being up for the best part of 48 hours, I ended up taking a couple of micro naps on the freeway and quickly came to the realization that it’s not an ideal way to pass time in traffic.

With the China portion of the trip I really didn’t have much expectations, but having heard about all these world-renowned sites like Tiananmen Square, the Terracotta Warriors, The Forbidden City and The Great Wall, I was eagerly anticipating getting to see them all. Unfortunately, as with some things in life, the reality was way different from what you think is going to be.

Out of the aforementioned sites, it was only The Great Wall in which I went “WOW, what a brilliant site”. The other places were simply overrun with too many people, call it combat tourism if you will. Maybe it’s a western thing that you like to have a little personal space, but being jostled in swarming crowds really doesn’t do anything for me, in fact nothing gives me the irit’s quicker.

Speaking of getting the irit’s, as outlined in my Spain Trip review, rooming with a full-grown adult who leaves their soiled adult nappies around the room, was certainly not a highlight of the Portugal/Spain tour. Similarly with my China Trip review which lays out how the first 4 days of the Essential China trip was somewhat overtaken by medical issues of a guy who shouldn’t have even been on the trip and the two self-centred female Germans trying to run the show.

I will have to say that G adventures not only read the trip reports I emailed in, but also acknowledged the fact that certain aspects both the trips unacceptable. I was not too worried about receiving travel vouchers that I received from them, the thing that impressed me most was that they actually engaged with me in trying to resolve the issues raised - kudos to G Adventures.

So, after nine weeks on the road, I’d head back to Portugal and Spain in a heartbeat, especially to hang out with Fredy as he is just a brilliant guy. The trip also reinforced my beliefs in the way in which I like to travel, in that I love to arrive at a location and spend a few days just exploring and having a good look around. The China portion seemed to be that we were just spending a whole heap of time travelling to get anywhere to spend a couple of hours walking around. Maybe it’s just me, but that way of travelling is no fun for me at all.

In the end, I had a heap of fun, met some great people and expanded my travel knowledge and experiences - which is always a great thing.

Here's a couple of statistics on the trip:

Farqing Fräuleins

PS: I ended up with a couple of free tour vouchers at the end of this trip, so the planning for Central America has started.