Katies do Euro Summer

[Katie]

Catching up on Mr Katie

So, back to Mr Katie's adventures.
Sat 2 August - they stayed at the Novotel in Ypres. Walking distance from the Menin Gate, only street parking available.
Sun 3 August - off to Oudenaarde; they stayed at the Leopold Hotel for 1 night and started working on completing the Flandrien Challenge - 59 iconic Berg and Cobble segments in 72hrs. They had done some segments in the Easter holidays of 2024, and were looking forward to a warmer, less rainy completion of the segments this year. Well, it certainly wasn't wet and muddy!

Mon 4 August - next hotel stop was Hotel de Pupiter in Kluisbergen for two nights.
Can you tell I'm compiling this from his TripIt itinerary? Because he sure as heck wasn't communicating with me!
On Tues or Weds, they finished the Flandrien Challenge and had their names engraved into miniature cobblestones, which are now on display at the Tour of Flanders centre. They also opted to buy another engraved cobble to bring home.
There was only one stage of the challenge that they had to repeat, as they took a wrong turn. Unfortunately, it was later in the day that they realised and had to back track a bit. Not sure if that was Mon or Tues.

At least one of their hotels had only a few rooms available - because there seemed to be basically just the owner/manager doing everything, because it was peak holiday season. The lads said quite a lot of places were closed in Flanders due to people taking their summer holidays.

Then, Weds was driving down to the French Alps, because when you're in Belgium, why not drive ~8hrs so you can climb much higher mountains.
Thurs, Fri, Sat were riding in the French Alps. One of the hotels in the French Alps was rather basic, no AC, one bed was a fold out couch/futon scenario. Good thing they used to be scouts! On the Sat, they got maybe food poisoning/reacted to something that upset their tummies and other parts, resulting in less-than-fun riding and a concern about being stuck in the car for the drive back to Brussels. The only item they both had was coffee, so they're blaming the milk in the coffee.

Returning the hire car to Zurich rather than Brussels was going to be ridiculously expensive, so they drove it back to Brussels on Sunday.
Sunday 10 August - Mr Katie had another night at the Brussels airport Sheraton. I think his mate stayed in the city centre somewhere.
Monday 10 August - Mr Katie caught LX 787 from BRU to ZRH to meet with me. He had some delays with his flight, had to pay EUR80 or something to take his bike with him as excess luggage (if only they were skis, Swiss wouldn't charge for them!). He stored all his luggage in the airport left luggage area, and grabbed a train into the city to meet me.

Cobbles of challengers at the CRVV:

 

[Katie]

Monday 11 August
I arrive in Zurich by about 10:30 or so and eventually manage to store my luggage in 3 different lockers. All the XL and XXL lockers (for my big red suitcase) were taken, well, all of those at the bottom. There was one in the middle height section, which meant lifting the suitcase over 1m to get it into the locker.
At various stages, I was going to just give up and wait for Mr Katie (as I was still full of head cold), but decided to just get my bags in where I could, there was not going to be a magical opening of perfect lockers anytime soon. A woman saw my struggling to get the big suitcase in the locker, and kindly helped me. I think I spent around CHF 20-35 on the 3 lockers I needed for all my gear. :/

After dealing with the luggage, I tried to decide what I wanted to see. I wasn't expecting Mr Katie to get into the city much before midday. Museums and sights seemed to much, and it was another hot, 30-32 degree day. I wandered through the old town-ish area near the Hauptbahnhof, popped into my favourite shoe store (Mephisto/Mobils), and grabbed a coffee and sat for a while at Starbucks. I wandered down near the river and through a very interesting tourist souvenir store that was very expensive. No last minute gifts from there!






I enjoyed sitting in the shade of these trees near the river for a while. A number of local office workers were also there eating their lunches, as well as other tourists.

Eventually Mr Katie arrived on the S-Bahn from the airport, and while he arrived at a platform right at ground level, where you could walk along the platform and virtually exit onto the street, he took stairs or an escalator down. Zurich is a large train station, with all kinds of different trains and platforms, but not quite as large as Berlin Hbf. I was patiently waiting, expecting to see Mr Katie walk along the platform and give him a big hug and smooch. I was rather confused when all passengers had disembarked and were off the platform and I couldn't see him. We then spent 5 or 10 mins trying to find each other by sharing location in WhatsApp. I actually stayed put.

We walked up the main street, trying to find somewhere for lunch. We wanted something a bit local for our last European meal. We managed to sneak in at the Restaurant Shutzengasse before the kitchen closed. We were seated in a lovely garden area, and enjoyed conversing with the staff in a mixture of German and English.




I was keen on the Wienerschnitzel for lunch, but at CHF50 (~AUD100) that was a bit rich for my blood, so we settled on the CHF25 lunch special. I had the salad entree, Mr Katie had the soup and we both Penne alla Vodka.

We wandered the city area some more after lunch, but it was so hot, and I was really flagging. Even stopping by some of the gorgeous chocolate stores didn't revive me.



A bit after 2:30, we were back at the station to grab my luggage and go to the airport.

I was amused by the Bahnhofkirche - literally Station church, not station chapel.


I think our AY checkin was with Swissport, we were flying AY ZRH-HEL-HKG. Once again, we had an issue where we couldn't check in due to the bicycle. The checkin agents needed proof that we'd paid for it. All I could show them was that I'd added the bike in the Qantas MMB app. The ticket was an AY ticket, not QF.

The checkin agent was confused, as they were being prompted on their screen to take a payment from us, but the system wasn't showing them an amount. In the end, we paid EUR60 to get checked in and there were no further payments required for the bike. Mr Katie was happy enough with that as on the Swiss flight BRU-ZRH, it cost him more.
I get the bicycle is oversize, but we were on paid J fares, both OWE/QF WP and he was only checking in one suitcase.

Finally that was done, off to the security and the underwhelming Aspire lounge. We were on AY1514 ZRH-HEL, which ended up being about an hour late.

Un-aspiring lounge food. I was mainlining OJ like I had scurvy.



Wifi was OK, but there was an absolute dearth of plugs and outlets for charging.

Bye Switzerland


Dinner was nice. I continued with OJ rather than even trying a cheeky champers.


There were only 5 passengers in J for the flight, us and a family of 3, Mum, Dad, and a toddler. Dad was assigned a seat across the aisle from Mum and toddler, but he decided to sit next to them instead.

The warm apple or vanilla roll for dessert was lovely, but I couldn't finish it.




Instead of having a 1h50m layover in HEL, we had more like 50-60 mins. We got through immigration quickly enough, there was a bit of a queue with so many late night Asia departures. We then made our way quickly to the AY lounge and Platinum wing. There were three shower rooms, all were occupied. We didn't bother eating.
I realised in the ladies' loos, there were also showers for after your sauna. So I suggested to Mr Katie that he check out the mens' and we could both at least get showers.
Oh my! A rainforest shower! It ended up being private, as no-one else came in ... I think ... but I felt a bit like showering in the locker room of an American high school, well, like you used to see on movies, just without bullying teenagers pulling pranks. I ended up getting water all over the place, but succeeded in showering and getting into fresh clothes before our 14hr overnight flight.

On our way to the gate, we noticed a couple of blokes in all black, dressed for much colder weather than Europe was experiencing. They were also super keen to get on board, going through the door as soon as it opened. We wondered if we were about to get hijacked, but it seems our dazed minds were a bit too excitable.

We boarded, I had completely mucked up our seats. I'd thought after our flight over, I'd changed us to be sitting next to each other in the middle seats, even if would be a stretch to hold hands. Nope, we were in middle seats and behind each other. SMH.
I actually had little cares and just wanted to sleep.

Raymond was our CSM on this leg and our main flight attendant for meal service. He was one of those delightful CSMs/FAs who are just there to help you, look after you, and are happy to be there (got to say, the cheeriness is a little bit surprising on AY, but Raymond seemed to be of Chinese descent, I think he had UK, China and Taiwan flags on his badge, though now I think about it more, maybe one was the Hong Kong flag. Raymond also had a personal flair to his style - his hair was in a beehive and he had a Dali-esque moustache!


Blueberry juice for PDB


For dinner, I had a glass of wine.



Raymond tried to clear up my area - I often keep the plastic bag from the blanket to use as my rubbish bag in-flight. At the best of times, the dry air makes my nose run; with my cold, my nose was running like a marathon runner.

 

[Katie]

Tues 12 August
I slept pretty well through the flight and felt up to some brekky before our 5pm arrival! It's not just Qantas who do it!

The pancakes were good, not sure I ate much else.


After landing in HKG, I was amused to see we were still 46km away. It felt like we taxied for 46km to our gate ...

It's been

It's been almost 7 years since we were last through HKG, so we checked out the maps for lounges. We had a 7 or 8hr layover, plenty of time. We wandered through some shops first, Mr Katie needed some AAA batteries for his noise-cancelling headphones. We were in one of the tech shops, he couldn't find any on the shelves and decided they didn't stock them. I suggested asking at the counter, but that was clearly a foolish idea and he would not do it.




We made the mistake of going to the Deck FLounge. It was lovely, we had showers, had dumplingd and champers, had space and outlets for charging our devices, but missed out on the massages, etc, at the Pier.

We took turns having a wander - I went looking for more tissues as I'd worked through half a box on the flights so far. I could only find Tempo tissues and bought a big pack of them; I promptly gave them to my German houseguests when we got home as I feel they're like blowing your nose on a piece of A4 paper.

The Deck menu







Now to see if the champers will help my cold




After a late lunch or early dinner, time to freshen up

Sweets
Sweets after the shower


As well as finding tissues on my wander, I went back to the original tech shop we went to, asked at the counter, and bought Mr Katie AAA batteries.

After a few hours, we went up to the Pier Flounge, also because it was open later than the Deck. Of course, we finally got our boarding gate for HKG-BNE and it was gate 8 or so, right near the Deck.




HKG starting to look a little quiet at 12:48 am

 

[Katie]

Weds 13 August

We board CX165 also about an hour late. We were unable to change our seats at all on this leg, and we had middle seats at the front of the J cabin.
Very efficient services from the FAs with OWE greetings and trying to take our orders for dinner and brekky on their iPad. Mr Katie thought he was getting a pre-dinner drink, not a drink with dinner, and ordered a G&T, which he then had to drink before starting his dinner (his personal rules, doesn't drink an aperitif with a meal)





We set up our TVs for each other, though it seemed we could have our TVs open.





I had the pork patties

And ice cream


Brekky


We landed no more than 30 mins late. We were the only flight arriving, so it was quick through immigration and our bags, even the bike, were out really quickly. Our driver was ready for us, but had sent me clear instructions to text him at certain times and where to meet him.
I texted him after landing, and then when we'd cleared customs. He arrived at the pickup point a few minutes after we got there. He said it was the fastest he'd ever had someone arrive.

We were home maybe 20 mins later. Quite expensive to get a driver, but a nicer experience than a Maxi Taxi with the bike.

The Teen was out at my Dad's (it was the Ekka holiday) and our house guests were also out all day. The dog was happy to see us and I got stuck into the washing.


My complete set of Euro yarn purchases and freebies from the cruise:



One of our gifts was this Lanolin hand balm (I've always been told shearers have the softest hands!). The left is the one from the cruise, the right is one I'd bought from Ash & Eve at Maleny Knitfest in May!!


After 3 weeks of eating out, we had a lovely homemade meal of spag bog, thanks to all the freezer meals Mr Katie had made up for the Teen and our houseguest.


My chocolates from our Brussels workshop didn't travel well, but still tasted mostly OK.


And that's the end of our trip!

 

[OZDUCK]

Thanks for an entertaining TR with lots of great photos. You certainly seemed to have packed a lot in on your trip.