Tag Archives: Western Europe 2002
Censier-Daubenton Metro station
Posted on 09. Dec, 2002
This is one of my favourite pictures from Paris, it's nothing remarkable, I just like the colours and the contour of the tiles.
http://anthonyjhicks.com/...
St. Peters Basilica
Posted on 24. Oct, 2002
Got an email from someone this morning wanting to possibly use one my Rome photos for a cover of a book they're publishing. Non-profit organisation, so no royalty though.
Riat Regrets
Posted on 18. Sep, 2002
Just continuing the holiday theme, it took several weeks of negotiation and waiting, but I finally got my money back on my missed British Airways charter to the RIAT air show. Kudos to the person assigned to my case at BA, who actually had to resort to speaking to the captain of the flight to get the details behind the charter, as the internal systems had no information on it at all! Anyway, no sooner had I finished with BA, a new stuff up happens with Qantas, where what I thought was a credit in their system to be used for a flight booking by the 5th Sept, was actually held as a real booking on return flights to Brisbane at the end of August, which certainly was a shock when I rang Qantas up the following week and they advised me there were two empty seats on with our names on that we didn't even know we were booked on. Now they owe me $$$, we'll see how this one pans out.
Also in relation to the air show in the UK, looks like the organisers have been copping a massive amount of criticism for the traffic management chaos that led to huge traffic backlogs on the M40 and M4. Most people had no choice but to watch the air show out their car windows as they sat for hours in a non-moving miles long traffic jam. They've posted a statement on their web site apologising, and saying they are fully investigating the matter. The cause will of course be incompetence and bureaucracy of the organisers and police.
We only made it in reasonable time as we started chatting to some local bikies who told us a back way around the traffic through some little villages, which worked out very well, getting us well ahead of the jams, but still missing the first couple of hours of the show. Combine that with the air show display being delayed for hours on the Saturday due to the Italians crashing their plane and RIAT can be summed up, as the Brits put it - "a complete cock-up mate".
Anyway, I've finished editing the video from air show that has some spectacular flying in it, including the full displays by the Italian and British aerobatic teams, the B2 and the F117 stealth aircraft and an amazing two Harrier jump jet display. It's about 1 hour 20 mins in length, and I'm just experimenting with different codecs to get it to a decent size for download. I'm currently experimenting with MPEG4 or DivX 5.02.
Before I took the bigger videos offline a couple of months ago, I was getting a combined total of around 2,800 downloads per month for all my air show videos (all thanks to Google). Quite amazing stats, when you think they've been available for download for almost two years now. I don't even want to guess at the total number of download over that two year period.
http://www.airtattoo.com/...
Holiday pics are up.. sort of
Posted on 18. Sep, 2002
I've started posting the holiday pics. Most of them are online however none of them are titled, so it's a bit pointless looking at them. I'll slowly update the titles and descriptions as procrastination from uni work allows, although most of the pics are pretty boring anyway.
http://www.anthonyjhicks.com/...
Ugh.. credit card bills
Posted on 05. Aug, 2002
Well, we're home, but still very stuck on European time. Four days in Singapore didn't help to get our body clocks close to GMT+10. Just looking through the pics from the Minolta, most of them came out well. You guys are in for a treat when I post all those (heh kidding). NB: Looks like Neale was in Singapore the same time as us, we could have caught up.. ah well.
Update #8
Posted on 24. Jul, 2002
Last week was spent in the south of France in the Riviera. We stayed at a nice little hotel in Nice. From there we hired a car and drove about two hours along a spectacular mountain range following the Verdon river. We made a few photo stops on the way, and then headed up to a little village called Moustiers-St. Marie which has mountain stream flowing through it and features this amazing old church near the top of one the cliffs that dominates the town. Actually saw a glider pilot catching thermals off the top of the cliffs too, wow (had to get flying into this story somehow).
We drove back through massive purple fields of lavender crops. Quite a sight. Back in Nice we caught the train to Monaco-Monte Carlo and looked at the private yachts, the palace, casio and the Oceanographic Museum.
We also caught the train to Cannes, the location of the famous Cannes Film Festival. Cannes was average, not worth the train fare in my opinion, I preferred Nice.
We then flew to London for the weekend, stayed with some friends on Queensway above Bayswater tube station. We're now back in France, in Paris staying in very nice boutique hotel with our own private courtyard off the room! The hotel is just a few steps away from Rue Mouffetard, where the marketplace scene was filmed for Amelie (heh, more film referrences, totally coincidental).
British Airways frustrations
Posted on 21. Jul, 2002
You know how I said how great British Airways was last week, well they're on my permanent shit list now after today:
I arrived at Heathrow Terminal 1 at 7:30am as instructed for my 8:40am flight to RAF Fairford for the airshow. Finding the boards no help in indicating where I was suppossed to be, I finally found a BA staff member who actually knew where to check-in and I was directed to Zone N. After collecting my boarding pass I was instructed to go to the International Departures and catch a bus to Terminal 4. I still didn't have a gate number (none was printed on my boarding pass), so I asked two more staff who were finally able to tell me it was Gate 5D. It took me sometime to find my way through the airport as I am not at all familiar with Heathrow, wasting precious time until I found the Terminal 4 bus. The 15 minute ride took me right up to the gate closing time of 8:30am upon arriving at Gate 5 at Terminal 4, I found no plane or staff. I went across to another check-in counter and after 10 minutes with BA staff making phone calls and looking at screens that had no information whatsoever on this flight I was advised that I was supposed to be back in Terminal 1 and that the plane had left without me. You cannot know how bitterly disappointed I was at that point.
I have spent so much time and money to come to the airshow from Australia and I get messed around by useless British Airways staff advising that my flight was leaving from Terminal 4 when it was actually leaving from Terminal 1. To add to this complete mess, I then went to three separate BA ticket counters and BA enquiry counters who advised I was not able to change to the Sunday charter flight or get a refund as they did not deal with 'charters'.
I am so fucked off with British Airways. But all is not lost, I am still driving down to the airshow with Mark on Sunday. I guess one day is better than none, but British Airways can burn in hell for all I care.
Update #7
Posted on 15. Jul, 2002
Tonight is our last night in Italy, we've seen so much in past almost three weeks. We're currently in the unremarkable town of La Spezia, which was a good base to see the five towns of Cinque Terre today. Tomorrow we get the train to Nice, France for four nights having a good look around that area including Cannes and Monaco. Lake Como was pretty amazing, not sure if we spotted the Star Wars villa or not, I have a few pictures to compare when I get back. Heh, geek. Ciao Italy. Bonjour France.
Update #5
Posted on 12. Jul, 2002
Revised plans for remaining 3 weeks: 2 nights in Milan with a day trip to Lake Como, 2 nights in Cinque Terre area, 3 to 4 nights in Nice (Monaco, Cannes, Provance region), then flying Nice to London Luton for the weekend of the RIAT airshow. Fly to Paris for 5 nights with trips to surrounding areas including Loire Valley area, then back to London for another 3 or so nights to catch up with friends, see some sites, do some shopping and maybe go to Farborough airshow if the final display program starts looking in any way descent. Then fly Heathrow to Singapore for 3 nights for a wedding and gadget shopping. Then back to Sydney on the 5th August.
Really really disappointed about the Farnborough airshow flying display schedule, talk about overated, so glad I found out about the RIAT airshow which should be excellent.
A good sign that security in Bangkok is surprisingly effective: as we were boarding our plane after the stop over on the way to Heathrow, some idiot pom and his girlfriend were arguing with security as they wouldn't let them take the swiss army knife they'd found in their carry on luggage on board the plane. The other thing that shits me is when people get up before the plane has actually finished parking at the gate, if I were the pilot, I'd deliberately slam the brakes on so they'd all fall on their asses. Sorry this train ride to Milan is really long and boring, thank god for 1st class and my iPAQ for mobile blog posts.
Also a massive plug for British Airways. Friendly staff, good leg room and personal video screens in economy. Unlike my last international trips on United Airlines, cranky rude staff and crap aircraft on most of the half-dozen or so flights I've taken with them international and domestic (US), I will never ever fly United again.
Update #4
Posted on 11. Jul, 2002
we've done quite a bit so far in Venice including visiting the Piazzo di San Marco, Palazzo Ducale, the Venetian islands of Murano and Burano. We've taken a dusk gondola ride and watched a master glass blower at work. The hotel we're staying in is excellent. The best so far and in a great location. We've spent hours wandering the narrow streets, alleys, bridges and tunnels of Venice trying to get lost but we always find our way back to S. Marcos or our hotel. Venice is made up of 118 small islands connected by 411(?) bridges. I will definitely come back to Venice some day, despite all us tourists, it's great. Actually that's probably why it is so good, as there are less cranky rude Italians around.
Back home my landlord has been trying to get in touch to organise a revaluation inspection which probably means the place is about to go on the market. It'll be a real pain if I'm evicted while I'm away or soon after I get back, trying to find a new place
and moving all my stuff will really wreck my post holiday buzz. Damn it.
Some spammer is using my domain as the return address too thousands of messages . I'm coping lots of random abuse and dozens of delivery failure messages, this is probably a revenge attack as I automatically report all spam using SpamCop to upstream ISP's so the spammers have their access cancelled or servers blacklisted. Damn it, you can't win!
Update #3
Posted on 09. Jul, 2002
We took the train to Verona, had a good look around and then watched the opera Aida in the Arena del Verona, a very old open air ampetheartre. Only the 3rd night for Aida, so it was a full house.
Now in Venice for the next 3 days, its so much better than I was expecting, okay, so it is 90% tourists but the place definitely has a certain charm about it. I really like it so far.
Update #2
Posted on 07. Jul, 2002
Just a quick update before I potentially lose access to this excellent Internet cafe in Florence. We've been to quite a few interesting places in the Tuscany area including the Uffizi and Pitti Palace, featuring works by many famous artists including Leonardo de Vinci, Rembrandt and Michaelangelo. Actually saw the crypt/grave of Michaelangelo. Also visited Siena and San Gimignano today.
Plans for the next couple of weeks or so include a day in Verona (tacky reference: where the modern Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo and Claire was filmed), three days in Venice, two days in Milan and Lake Como (tacky reference: used in Star Wars Episode 2 as the Anakin/Padmie holiday retreat). Then across to the South of France to spend a couple of days in Nice, Monaco and Cannes. From there we head up to Paris with a few stops on the way up at yet to be decided places, this should take us through to around mid July where we zip across to the UK for the airshow then possibly head back to France again for further touring.
Side notes:
There's a few interesting things happening over here while we're in Europe including the Tour de France and Commonwealth Games, wonder if we can squeeze these in. Perhaps a leg of the Tour de France if we time our stops right.
Italians seems to be crazy about Australian Holly Valance and her Kiss Kiss song. Damn if I hear that song once more I'm gonna lose it.
Hundreds of American students on summer camps in Italy at the moment and a lot of them speak quite decent Italian. Interesting.
Hotels in Florence suck unless you're spending more than 200 euro per night.
Finally getting used to things like drinking my Caffe at the bar like a local, ordering and shopping mostly in Italian, and the fact that lots of places close at 1:50PM for siesta.
Eating far too much Pizza, Pasta and Gelati. There goes all my plans to get really fit while I was away. Still got over four weeks in Europe left, I guess there is time.
Update #1
Posted on 05. Jul, 2002
Buongiorno from Florence, Italy. Just a quick list of the significant things we've seen in Italy over the past two weeks:
Rome: St Peter's Basillica, Vatican City, Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, Roman Forum, Palatine, Capital, Appia Antica - Catacombs of San Callista, Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Piazza San Pietro, Piazza Navona, Borghese Park, Circo Massimo, Spanish Steps and numerous other piazzas, fountains, ruins, statues, shops, streets, ristorantes and historic buildings. Rome was incredible and chaotic!
Naples - actually just south of Naples by the Gulf di Napoli in Sorento. Sorento and the nearby Positano were absolutely beautiful, so we spent three days there. Full of holidaying Italians, Spanish and Americans. We could see mount Vesuvius from our hotel. We spent most of the first day walking around the ruins of Pompei. The following day was spent lying on the beach at Positano. The last day was spent on the island of Capri.
Florence - possibly my favourite Italian city so far. Not as chaotic or as big as Rome. It feels more modern and friendly, with less psycho vesper riders. First time I've seen road side charging stations for electric vespers and cars. Cool.
Plenty more to say but I'll save it for a proper write up when I get back, complete with pictures and movies of course.
I bought the Minolta Dimage 7i in London on the way through, but that's a whole other story (what a bloody stress). Already done 450MB of pictures. About 1.8GB of mobile storage left, with 256MB worth being uploaded home via the USB connection on this Internet cafe PC as I type.
B2 Stealth Bomber now confirmed for the RIAT airshow on the 20th July in the UK, so I'm bloody happy now. It'll be impressive to see the US$2B dollar aircraft flying so close. Can't wait.
Arriverderci.
Europe here we come!
Posted on 24. Jun, 2002
Expect posts while I'm gone? Hmm probably not. We'll see, back 5th August. Ciao.
Wilderness Equipment Frontier
Posted on 16. Jun, 2002
Finally picked up a travel pack, I went with the Perth designed Wilderness Equipment Frontier. It's nothing amazing, definitely not sexy, but incredibly comfortable. I compared this pack with other well known brands including Macpac and Mountain Designs priced at up to $500 and this one the only one that didn't make me bend over awkwardly to compensate for hard shoulder straps and lack of adequate padding in the harness when loaded with 16kg of weights.
http://www.wildequipment.com.au/...
Royal International Air Tattoo
Posted on 07. Jun, 2002
Holy shit!! Might have to make some major changes to the holiday plans! If we can get to the UK a little earlier we can also attend the Royal International Air Tattoo on the 20th and 21st of July. They have just confirmed the attendance of not one, but two F-117A Stealth Night Hawks on flying display!!!! I am more than a little excited, can you tell? :)
The organisers even have special flights direct to the airshow from Heathrow on a new BA Boeing 777 available. Cool.
http://www.airtattoo.com/...
Hotel Galleria
Posted on 07. Jun, 2002
This is where we plan to stay while in Venice battling thousands of other summer tourists.
http://www.hotelgalleria.it/...
Farnborough air show early display list
Posted on 04. Jun, 2002
An early list of aircraft on flying display at Farnborough has been posted on Janes. It's pretty dismal, actually very dismal for what's supposed to be one of the best airshows in the world. Avalon 2001 in Australia was much better than this, let hope this list grows: AN-74TK-300, Beech King Air 200, F-16, Gripen, F/A-18/F, EMB-170, Nimrod MR2, C-17, Apache AH-64, Harrier GR7, L159B, Hawk 100, C-27J and Slingsby Firefly T67M. With the exception of the civil passenger jets in this list, I've seen every one the military aircraft listed except the Gripen and the L159B. Gripen is interesting, but not worth the trip on it's own. Bloody hell, not even the Eurofighter is listed! Red Arrows? Hello? Disappointed.
Tickets booked
Posted on 26. May, 2002
With an amazing degree of hassle we managed to get all the flights we wanted at the dates we wanted after trying several airlines. Of course, I don't need to tell you booking 4 weeks before you leave is not the best way to get a bargain airfare.
We've both been so bloody busy lately that I decided I had to blow off Saturday plans where I was supposed to be working on a report for work, having a flying lesson and sitting a flying exam, and actually get the holiday booked before it ended up costing us even more! The remainder of Saturday was spent trying to find a backpack, also a task that I thought would only take a couple of hours, but ended up taking all afternoon, and no I still don't have a backpack.
Still haven't managed to squeeze in ANY birthday dinners or drinks with family or friends due to losing the remainder of the weekend to work and study which I didn't get very far on either. Too much to do, damn it.
