Part 1 - Australia to the old world

Actually we need to go back a few days prior to departure and enter the wonderful world of travel agents. There are only two things you have to get right in the travel game. Names and dates. Get the right client to the right destination on the right day and travel agent superstardom is guaranteed.

Sunrise after 18 hourse of travel

Seems that the folk at Flight Centre haven't quite grasped these fundamentals. They managed to book our flight to Europe and back unaided, they got our flight from Newcastle to Paris right with a little hand holding from us, but when it comes to rail.... Turns out they're called 'flight' centre for a good reason.

Flight Centre use an outfit called Infinity Travel, from our experience the name relates to the number of mistakes they make, who are supposed to be the 'go to' people for rail travel. Flight Centre's job was to tell Infinity what trains we needed and when we needed to catch them. Then all they needed to do was wait for the tickets to arrive, check that the details were right and then pass the tickets on to us.

Infinity Travel had to book the rail legs, produce the tickets and send them to Flight Centre. See, we're not talking rocket science here. It's actually harder to make a Christmas cake. Amateurs get this sort of thing right every day using the Internet

So how did the professionals do? Infinity Travel initially misspelt Michelle's name and said she was a man. Flight Centre didn't notice so we pointed out these 'minor' errors politely. They had another go and the folk at Flight Centre assured us they had checked the tickets and every thing was right this time.

They hadn't. Infinity had not only put us on a train a day early but had also got the itinerary wrong. We pointed these minor errors out slightly less politely.

The day before we leave, minus the rail ticket that gets us across a fair chunk of France, this delightful conversation occurs.

“Hi Phil this is (let's call him Mr Helpful) from Flight Centre, how are you going?”

“You tell me Mr Helpful how am I going?

“You're going great, your rail ticket will be at the Etihad check in counter when you get to Sydney”

“That's good”

“Phil I'm sorry about the problem with the tickets”

“That's all right I'm sure we are the exception to the rule”

“Yeah, normally people have problems when they're actually overseas!”

Hmmm, so we are not the only ones who have problems. It's just that other people, who don't check everything their Flight Centre consultant does, find out about them in more inconvenient locations or situations.

But the fun wasn't over. The rail ticket wasn't at the counter. The courier doesn't do this anymore apparently. Now any ticket has to be delivered in person. Mr Helpful's advice was that we wait at the check in counter until the courier rings to organise a time. Flight Centre knew when we were flying for at least a month but apparently getting a courier there at that time was too hard.

Well, Mr Helpful, we waited until the plane was boarding. No call, no courier. We waited a little longer. No call, no courier. We raced through Customs and made it to the plane just before the flight closed. Once on board we checked the phone again. No call Mr Helpful, no freakin' call!

Etihad actually had good food!

So I'm typing this in the plane somewhere between the Kimberley and Jakarta. Can't sleep and missing a rail ticket. You see, the courier won't send the ticket overseas. We don't know why, maybe it's secret courier business. However Mr Helpful had the answer. If we buy another ticket when we get to France the folk at Flight Centre will reimburse us when we get back. Strange, up until now they had been telling us how they can always be relied on if we need help. This apparently only applies to 'flights'

So the 'service' provided by Flight Centre means we have to organise and buy our own ticket in a country whose language we don't speak. Explain it to me again, why do I need a travel agent?

In England

If this next bit seems a bit ratty it's because we've been travelling for 28 hours, counting airplane time and airport time. Probably one to two hours sleep. Parents with young children should have their own sound proof section. The same goes for those who have a baboon laugh. When we finally got to London we had to circle Heathrow for 30 min. But eventually we're down. A Winepunter bow of approval to Etihad. They have a camera attached to the front of the plane so we were able to watch our approach and landing at Heathrow. Very, very cool.

Tower Bridge at night

England is a very popular place. We know this because the queue for customs was at least 750m long (we had plenty of time in the queue to calculate this). This was almost as long as the queues at Disneyland, with no fun ride at the end. One question. After all the Diggers have done for the poms in two world wars why do Australians not have their own 'thank you Aussies we couldn't have done it without you' passport line? Even the Germans get to go in the fast lane! The only bright spot was that there was a 'students' line and it was moving so slowly that some of those kids will  be eligible for a pensioner card by the time they get through.

London Calling ....

London isn't a nice place. It's exciting, energetic and awesome but not nice. Actually take away the wonderful old buildings and you could be in Sydney on a river. What did impress us was how close all the major sites were to each other. To cure the jetlag we spent four hours walking along the Thames looking at all the usual tourist stuff. Tower Bridge, Tower of London, The Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey can all be reached easily on foot.

The Tower of Londond at night

London doesn't match Bangkok for noise, traffic in parts of the Thai capital is so bad that you can't talk to the person next to you, but it does have it's moments. It is also 'under construction'. Britain will host the 2012 Olympics and since visitors are coming everything has to be tarted up. We've never seen so much scaffolding. 

Shock and Awe Church
of England style

Spending only 2 days in London is just plain wrong. We basically rushed every where but still there were some highlights. The weather was very good. We found some nice French and Italian food and wine (we're leaving the English cuisine until we head into the countryside). We had a gander at Harrods. Fellas, go to the perfume section to see all the undiscovered super models and aspiring soccer players wives working behind the counters. Girls, be prepared to be intimidated by those same ladies who somehow convey the 'you don't really belong here do you?' message while smiling and asking you if they can be of assistance.

Next time in the punters adventures. We head into deepest darkest Worcestershire to experience country cooking, English wine, weird accents and distance running.

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