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Sydney to Paris via some stuff in betweem

As i sit in this little cool cafe (SKYE COFFEE Co.) in Barcelona starting my blogs, the trip is almost over, so its time to reflect on what’s happened so far.

Where to start, the long trip to Europe began well, it wouldn’t be until the flight from Paris to Spain where the trouble would begin :), I will get to that a little later.

This trip I would be covering WRC France in Strasbourg, then I had 2 weeks traveling the bottom portion of Germany through Switzerland, Italy and Austria, I then flew to Barcelona for WRC Spain in Salou and I am now in Barcelona for the next week to experience the Catalan lifestyle, then next week off to Paris to experience the Parisian lifestyle, then its home and straight to Melbourne for the final round of the ARC, its a long trip but a rewarding one, a huge thanks must go to Olympus Australia for all their help and the loan of some new unreleased gear, ThinkTankPhoto and 3LeggedThing.

25hrs of travel awaited, its not the most enjoyable experience, however I seemed to have worked out the ideal way to overcome or not get any jet lag. 1. I have dehydration satchels, basically its a powdered electrolyte to help with dehydration caused from being in the cabin for numerous hours, I take one satchel with 600ml of water when I get on then another every 6 hours, so for the 24 or so hours of travel time I take about 5 satchels. 2. Try as best as possible to adapt to the timezone I am traveling to, so in this case I left Sydney at 2pm which was 6am in Europe, so realistically I needed to try and stay awake for the next 14-16hrs at least which would make it 2-4am Sydney time, which would mean pretty much 24hrs from the time i got up to leave.

I had a 4hr lay over in Hong Kong so the timing was perfect, as I left Hong Kong I needed to sleep, I won’t lie I do take an over the counter drug to help relax me, nothing illegal, I take 2 Panadeine Forte which relaxes me and I can pretty much crash, I managed to sleep for 8 or 9 of the 13hrs and was right on Paris time, I have done this every trip I go on and to date have had no jet lag, it can be tough , Europe in particular, that 8hrs difference really does throw you, but thats my method.

Anyway, I arrived in Paris early, 9am, and had a 6hr drive to Strasbourg where WRC France was being held, I decided to take a little joy ride drive through Paris, not the smartest of moves, but nonetheless why not, it seems Sundays are quite busy in Paris 🙂 so much so that a delay in my GPS which led to a wrong turn took me 2hrs to get back on track and do a 3km loop, oops 🙂 Sydney has nothing in these HUGE European cities when it comes to traffic, really we all need to get a grip :), I also had time to grab a croissant and an almond one at that. In Sydney Sanoma Bakery is well known for its baked goods and their almond croissants are amazing, I must say though, my first taste of a french croissant and the almond where disappointing, flavourless and nothing special at all, it wouldn’t be until Germany where I would have a great croissant and from of all places, Aldi hahah.

I dont know why but this looked pretty cool in Sydney Airport departure area.

Croissant Fail.

The first of many Eiffel Tower photos I imagine.

One of the many tunnels in Paris.

So that was my uneventful arrival in to Strasbourg, I managed to find a really nice apartment in a little town just outside the centre but by luck 5min from the WRC Service Park, so for the next week I would be sharing my digs with a Red Bull Photographer from Estonia, the crazy man Jaanus, in fact Jaanus stayed with Matt and I in Coffs and we would also be staying in Salou together, Jaanus I would say is a pure artist, a little crazy and funny as hell, not to mention he is new to the WRC scene like me, so it works perfectly.

So for the next week I called Wolfisheim my home and had an amazing experience covering the WRC in France.