Bon Voyage for Europe
2025 came around so quick with quite a few trips done over the years with 70+ travel blogs (my initial passport was obtained in March 2016 (60yrs old … late starter). This year was also a busy project time for family, with the main one for my middle son, Matt at Banora Point. A huge retaining wall project that was convoluted with Cyclone Alfred. While stuck in a cyclone, I had a moment or two wondering what is next for my travels & something for me. Time to be selfish. LOL!!
Out of the blue, I had amazing memories of people I had met over the years, some at my now hometown of Yamba, NSW where I met quite a few at my cousin’s Yamba Backpackers plus, some on my trips overseas. It must have been then, when I had a yearning to see those faces again & contacted my Wyndham Resorts Owner Travel Club help line & my lovely Nili started setting up everything from my 1st attempt location list. Numerous emails, phone calls & lots of computer searches now had me locked in to fly out of Brisbane International Airport on 1st October 2025. I was amazed Nilli had remembered she had set up my Peru, Ecuador & Chile trip in 2019 with my eldest son, Scott. Amazing lady.
Overall, there are 8 countries, 9 plane trips & 7 train trips to undertake plus the accommodation, etc. Of course, I had to book a few things myself in places out of the way & all my activities, etc. My cities of visiting start at Rome with a Doha (3hr stopover), Munich/ Nuremberg, Amsterdam, Paris, Amiens/ Villers Bretonneux, Barcelona, Lisbon, Dublin, Bristol & finishing up at London so that will encompass plenty of more blogs to upload for my readers around the world. Itinerary set at 43days. Yikes!!!!
The Schengen Area is where I’ll be spending much of my time & is made up of 29 European countries with common border rules. It lets travellers move freely between Schengen countries without going through border controls or getting a visa for each country provided your stay is under 90days. Their new digital entry system (EES) comes into effect 12th October 2025, so I’ll be well into my travel so I’m assuming there will be processing delays at some point when crossing a border. The system will hold your data (fingerprints, photos, etc) for 3years so re-entering later will be streamlined again. The UK & Ireland are not Schengen so you must now do an ETA (entry approval – £16) that lasts for 2years (basically a new Labor Tax). I was approved online in about 7minutes so they must just like the money.
My hometown is a regional coastal village of some 8,000 residents but on holidays, Easter & Christmas, 25,000 isn’t uncommon. It’s paradise where major surfing is every day with 6 beaches in walking distance from CBD including the Big River, The Clarence River. Check it out in Google Maps. Therefore, I’ll be extending my Winter months (Dislike the cold). LOL! From Yamba I have to get to Brisbane Airport, some 3.5hrs away. My first duty was to exchange my AUD with Euros by using my fav swap company, Crown Currency. Bummer .. $0.52 cents to 1 Euro dollar. OUCH!!!! I won’t bore you with the details of my awkward trip to Brisbane Airport, but it was a struggle out of my control.
My other clever planning was that I bought my Caribee Global Explorer Rolling Bag 125L (Anaconda) at their online sale $249, nearly $100 off & I tried it on my recent Cairns/ Port Douglas trip in the hope It will be better for my European tour. I am confident it will with its variable compartmentation and well-designed wheels. My still trusty Black Wolf 70L backpack can be adjusted to a duffle bag too, but that involves carrying this entire weight for the 43 days over my shoulder/ neck & have done for several years & now that I’m older I had best start being a little smarter. I’ll still take my small Black Wolf 20L day backpack for the airport journeys but interchange with my adjustable shoulder briefcase for my city touring of sights, blending into the population. I did a few packing trials prior to make sure I had everything & inside the weight & operational limits. I’m sad to not being able to display my Australian Flag/ badges, etc due to the current mass immigration & hatred exposed in a lot of countries. Even tourists are being targeted, so Barcelona may be a problem for me. My other duty was to purchase a good data esim provider for my trip & the best one & least problematic one was Saily, as I wanted to include all of Europe & UK without separately doing each or bundled countries. Using my phone gave me a few options, however, by using my laptop I saw more options available. 25Gb 60days – 8 countries covered for me. VPN Security, Add Blocker. 5Gb/day without speed limit or Hotspot restrictions at $78.51 or $48.99USD. It seemed perfect except you can’t get perfect & a low cost in the one bundle.
1st October 2025, Brisbane Roma St Station (short walk) & catch the Airport Train (wow ..$22.00AUD thanks) to the International Terminal (Domestic Terminal is the next & last stop on that line) for my 15.10pm departure on my first leg (14hrs 50mins .. yikes!!) to Doha (Qatar) for a 3hr stopover, then onto Rome Terminal 3 Fiumicino Airport, another 5hrs, arriving 7.25am local time. Am I getting excited? .. hmm?
While at the airport, my first duty was to send birthday wishes to my niece, Kahli who is now in the Australian Women’s Rugby Union Team + the 7s team. She even played in the last Olympics & has seen a lot of the world now. All morning, I have been getting messages from my friends in Europe & UK, my fb friends & my upcoming activity tickets, so all is good in the universe for this trip but stay tuned.
The 14hr 50min first leg to Doha was quite a struggle. The plane was totally full so there was no spare seating. The Boeing 700-300ER had a 3-4-3 seating arrangement. The two young guys sitting next to me, both had major sniffles & cough issues & was getting worse while the young guy sitting directly in front of me had a worse cough at a frequency of around 10mins & getting more frequent. He was sitting next to a young couple who went to the toilet 8times, yes, I counted as every time it was a challenge of how they could disrupt the passengers more. There’s no way anyone found sleep time & our flight started 3pm Brisbane time, so we were well through our normal body clock scenarios by then.
Doha International airport is HUGE!!! & the number of flights taking off around midnight their time was beyond belief. Our flight was 3.5hrs later & that didn’t even fit onto the oversized departure boards. At least the entire airport is under 1 giant terminal building & is split into 5zones. We arrived near the central zone of A/B & our departure gate was in D5. For that you transfer from your flight to go through security screening again with your carry-on & wander through the duty–free shop & into the endless mind-blowing luxury shops. Once you wander with wide eyes, you can take the escalators/ lifts to Level 1 where there is a looping tram carriage system to take you all the way to Zones C, D & E. I stayed on ground floor & walked the entire route for leg stretch & to see more of the terminal & it is a very long walk & that’s why a higher volume of travellers take the tram system.
I was pleased to see the young guys are not on the flight to Rome however, our Airbus A350-900 was completely full too with a 3-3-3 seating pattern. The trip went fairly well but 5hrs was cutting deep again. A point to note, with both aircraft & having the enormous volumes of bums on seats, they need to re-pad the seat as they were quite compressed & a solid feel. I used the supplied blanket to overcome this. By the time the flight was over I had no idea of time (body clock time), apart from the sign of sleep deprivation, for I had been on the go since leaving Yamba.
Day 1 2/10/25 Upon landing at Rome Terminal 3 Fiumicino Airport, we were ushered to a tram system to take us to the other side of the airport into the main terminal. Going through Immigration was brief & then again in Border Control for passport stamping was a bit tedious but many of us were keen to get to the baggage pickup considering the volume of travellers. Ours was designated #12, yes .. there are 14 carousels! By the time we arrived many bags were already on the carousel & being full, the bag sensors would not let all the bags out onto the carousel. What we found out was we had a very large Chinese group travelling with us (about 40) & they took ages through Border Control & the bags we could see, were theirs. Eventually, they turned up & the bag sensors started to work again. Suffice to say, one elderly couple & myself were the very last of the bags, some 40+minutes later!!! Not happy Jan!!!
OK, with that test completed, the best way to Rome CBD (Historic Quarter for the sights & my hotel) is to take the train (some 32mins). Only 4 train ticket machines were available & each person was struggling with its complexities & the lines kept growing. Finally, after watching the operation over time I got my chance & being under pressure, pressed OK & a ticket popped out after card payment. Yay!! From there you cross the road & take the stairs or the escalators to Level 2 for the train station. There is a scanning process of everyone’s ticket & when I scanned mine, the young lady doing the checking ushered me to hurry & pointed to my terminating train as it was deemed to leave immediately. With two other women we managed to sneak in before the doors closed & we were off. All was well until a young lady train guard asked for tickets. She scanned mine & scolded me for being on the wrong train or something like that. I had boarded the first-class part of the train, or the other train was the economy one. My ticket was for the economy train. Who knows? With much embarrassment, she processed a new ticket, along with a penalty making my trip from 8€ to an additional 14€ (22€). I was totally innocent of this mistake & I caught up to her when departing, for more clarification. My train was the other train on Platform 2 & not #1 as per the lady before pointing out. It felt like a scam to me on tourists, but that’s me being pissed off. Lesson learned.
BH Life Travels 