Off to the zoo. Short drive to a ferry and then on to the Arctic Zoo (entry cost not included, about NOK240) as it opened at midday. Feeding tour started at 1pm. It was pretty informative, even if the animals didn’t always cooperate :-).
Two different types of cabins at this campsite. I was with 5 other guys in a self-contained cabin, power, heat, water, toilet, shower, TV, kitchen. Two sets of bunks in one bedroom and one queen like sized bed in the other bedroom. Used sleeping bag. A group of girls had a double storied self-contained cabin and everybody else had basic cabins.
This was where the polar plunge took place. There was about 3 of us that didn’t do it. I played camera man/boy recording the crazy people running in 🙂 (with permission, one of the group asked me to record with their phone). Safest option seemed to be to run into the river from the far bank (over the foot bridge from the camp) and that’s what all but a couple of our group did. No pressure to do the plunge, no issues with not doing it.
Yummy burgers for tea. Assembled your own from lots of different provided filling options.
NOK10 per 4min for the showers (if in a basic cabin). Laundry was NOK20 for a wash, free drying.
Fermented fish (eating) challenge for team points. Only one person was able to eat it and keep it down.
Mostly just a driving day. Back to a basic cabin for everybody, power and heat. Sleeping bag used. Left for Nordkapp at 20:30. Took about 2 hours to get there. Interesting drive. Nordkapp is the northern most point on mainland Europe. Fairly fancy visitors centre. If it isn’t cloudy then you can see the sun bounce off the horizon. They had a (movie) theatre with a surround screen downstairs in the visitors centre that showed a whole year compressed down into 10-15mins. I bought it and another touristy film on DVD from the gift shop at ground level. I tried a time-lapse but it was a bit cloudy and I didn’t start it at quite the right time. Was quite cold, approaching 0 degrees. I bought some warm gloves from the gift shop at the accomodation. My notes say we were due back around 3am, I haven’t checked my GPS tracking to see what time we actually got back. It was still light though of course.
Sleep in day. Brunch (and bubbles) from around 11:30. Lazy day lazing around the campsite. Went for a bit of hike. Not sure if we went the right way but it wasn’t a bad way to spend a few hours of the day. Weather wasn’t too good. A fair amount of alcohol was consumed.
Showers were NOK10. The gift shop/reception could make change. Laundry was available, in the part of the accomodation across the road.
Rather long bus day. Google says it is over 500km.
We arrived fairly late. One of the girls had a painting she wanted to see at an art gallery. It wasn’t open on Day 9 and was closing pretty soon after we arrived so when we arrived she went straight to the gallery.
Tour manager put all the people continuing on from Oslo in one lot of rooms and people finishing in Oslo, plus me as there wasn’t room with the continuing people, together in another lot, more or less.
Bit of time to settle in etc then we walked to a restaurant for tea. Pretty good food and restaurant. Bit of a walking tour to the opera house afterwards to see the sun set from its roof. If you are going to do one of those jumping photos off the roof wall be very careful how you land. You don’t want to stuff your foot and spend the next few weeks limping (no it wasn’t me).
Included breakfast at the hotel next door. Then off in the bus to the Holmenkollbakken Ski Jump and The Vigeland Sculpture Park (competition for the best recreation of the sculptures). Then on to the optional Viking Ship Museum. Then to the, again optionals, Fram Polarship and Kon Tiki Museums. I did the Viking and Fram Polarship museums, skipping the Kon Tiki one.
We had the rest of the day free to explore. Lots of walking around.
For tea one of the group found a restaurant to check out. After the fairly long walk to it (although since we were in a group it didn’t seem that long) they didn’t really like the look of it or something like that. I just went back to the Burger King we’d past and got a burger etc that I ate on the walk back to the hostel.
In Oslo about half of our group was replaced (people finishing in Oslo left and people starting in Oslo joined).
That night we walked to organised hello/goodbye drinks to say goodbye to the people leaving in Oslo and hello to the people joining.
Breakfast in the hotel next door again and then the last lot of goodbyes before heading off to Ã…ndalsnes via Lillehammer township and then its bobsled.
All but two of us did the optional bobsled ride. I did it last time and once was enough for me. Our tour manger couldn’t wait to ride it again and most people got out of the bobsled at the end with huge smiles on their faces.
We had lunch at the bobsled track, hotdogs. Lots of choices of stuff to add in. Yummy.
Then off to our campsite via a stave church.
At the campsite we got a lesson in setting up the cook tent. It was set up on a grassy patch behind a small amenities (toilets etc) block. Earlier we divided up into groups. The tasks of helping with breakfast and tea were rotated through the groups. When it was your group’s turn the group was further divided into helping with the preparation or helping with the clean up. As my preparation skills are basically zero I always helped with the clean up. Clean up was only for the preparation etc stuff. Everybody washed, rinsed and dried their own plates and utensils etc. The air dry method of just flapping everything around with great vigour until it was dry was used.
The cabins had a small living room/kitchen with a bedroom out the back with 2 (I think) bunks (so 4 people per cabin). They had power, heat and water. Bedding (no towels) was provided, I got the impression it wasn’t always. Toilets and showers were in the amenity blocks. There was a small one near reception where we set up the cook tent (just toilets and a kitchen wash room (and a dump station so when cleaning up the cook tent use the kitchen wash room NOT the dump station 🙂 ) I think and the main one was in the other direction. Hot water for the showers was by tokens where each token was 5min which were purchasable with cash or card from reception. Reception wasn’t open 24/7 so if you are going to shower when it isn’t open make sure you get the tokens while it is open.
Big day of scenery. I have the timings noted down as 6:45 for breakfast and 07:30 departure. Via the Trolls Pass to a cruise on Geirangerfjord. 2 small ferries plus the one long one on the fjord.
After the cruise we had a stop for lunch, jacket/baked potato with numerous options to mix/put in with the spud (and some little yummy muffins afterwards).
We had a good long stop at the top of Trolls Pass on the way back. My understanding on the timings for the day depends on which ferries the group gets booked on. The way we got worked quite well.
My notes say we were expected back at camp around 16:30. Not sure what I did between then and tea (at 19:30 apparently). I think some people went for a walk up a nearby hill. Some got a ride in the bus to the start of the walk (I think he was doing a fuel run). One person didn’t and was very, very late back. We were pretty sure he had a working cellphone with him, but nobody knew how to contact him on it. He did turn up eventually, but, yeah useful if you (or at least somebody in the group) can be contacted if you are out and might be late back.
Sunrise at 03:40, sunset 23:15.
Off to the next place. Couple of stops along the way. This was the first stop that didn’t have bedding so we used our sleeping bags. The cabins had power, heating, and water. They were up the top of a hill, toilets and showers where at the bottom of the hill under the reception. I don’t remember what the showers cost, they might have been free. There was a laundry but it was closed while we were there.
Had a small bonfire on the beach.
No cook tent set up at this site as they had an undercover area we could use. Supermarket short walk away. Not really anything else around. Two quite different types of cabins. One fully self contained with toilet, shower and TV. The other had power and heating and that was about it (that we would use anyway). I had one of the basic ones. There was a laundry, machines took local coins if I remember correctly. Showers in the amenities block, if like me you were in one of the basic cabins, also took local coins. And only local coins. One of the guys showers was out of action as one of our group tried to put a different country’s coin in (by accident) and it jammed. Each coin gave you a pretty short time of hot water, 10NOK = 2 minutes. We used a lot of hot water cleaning up after tea, but the showers were pretty stingy on the hot water. I don’t really use cash so didn’t really have much in the way of coins but thankfully other people did and were usually fairly generous about sharing out coins for things like showers etc. I guess it was kinda off season as we seemed to be about the only people there. Even the camp manager only seemed to be there for a short while some time after we arrived and then was gone. Obviously used my sleeping bag again.
Very early departure, 06:30. So we collected our breakfast to eat on the bus later. Off to walk to the Svartisen glacier. Bus to boat. Boat to beginning of walk. Walk to glacier. The walk starts off on fairly formed track but as you get closer to the glacier you start having to just pick your way over rocky terrain. If you don’t do the walk (like one in our group) then you basically just wait at the bus where we caught the boat and there isn’t really anything there. If you didn’t feel comfortable walking over the rocky part you could just stop at that point. The glacier was pretty visible from there.
After the walk we continued on, passing into the Arctic Circle. Had a stop at the Arctic Circle Centre for all your souvenirs (and food if you wanted, they had reindeer burgers) and for a group photo op.
Had a 30min shopping break. Got money out at out an ATM there for the Nordkapp visit. They have to hire a bus for it (due to driving hours) so how much it is is dependant on how many people go. The more people the cheaper it was. I think nearly all our group went and it came out as NOK900 (about NZD150). See day 16. The ATM was just inside upstairs.
Our stop for the night (Tysfjord Turistsenter AS) was self contained cabins, but with a seemly rather limited hot water supply for the whole blocks of them. They had two beds down stairs, or should I say ladder, and two upstairs. Used sleeping bag again. Had really yummy roast chicken for tea. I ate quite a bit of it. There was a free washing machine and drier, but only one of each which were in quite high demand, and neither were very quick. Had to supply your own washing powder.
I originally booked the 37 day Red Star Special trip that spends a week in Russia after Scandanvia but the football/soccer world cup meant Top Deck couldn’t get accommodation in Russia so they came up with an itinerary that spent a week in Poland instead of Russia.
This isn’t as detailed as my previous trip ones as I’m only starting writing it nearly a year later vs a few weeks for the other ones and there’s only so much I can remember and gleam from my notes, photos, and day sheets.
Before the tour we’d made a Facebook group to get to know everyone etc. On the tour the tour manager made an offical Facebook group page where he posted extra updates and information etc. The really important stuff was still on the day/”What’s On?” sheets, the group just provided more detail etc.
All our optionals had to paid for in cash. They were pretty much the only thing I used cash for. I don’t drink so I don’t know how people usually paid for those. ATMs were easy enough to find and all could be switched to english (some did automatically when I inserted my card).
My final flight from Frankfurt to Berlin was cancelled. I was meant to have a few hours in Frankfurt and arrive in Berlin in the early afternoon, in plenty of time for the 5pm tour start time. The flight the airline rebooked me on was over 4 hours later meaning I got to the hostel just after 6pm, just before they left for the included meal. I rang my pre-booked airport transfer and got it changed to the later flight, at no extra charge as the change was out of my hands, and mentioned it on the Topdeck app chat. The tour manager saw my post and replied just to get there when I could and we’ll sort all the normal paper work and stuff that they were doing from 5pm out later.
The included meal was a short walk away. A massive pork knuckle, or a whole heap of veggies for the vegetarians.
Back to the hostel after the meal and we then sorted out the paper work of me and another person who also had transport issues. Learnt only 4 of the people starting in Berlin were doing the whole 37 days and we were only picking up another 2 in Tallin so only 6 of us for the last bit of the tour from Tallin. I guess lots of the original Red Star Special etc people changed to later tours that were still going to Russia and the tours that were mostly just Russia (eg ones starting in Tallin) were cancelled.
Wombats hostel wanted some form of ID (eg drivers licence) they could hold on to until you left or a copy of your passport and a EUR10 deposit. Only place that required that. I did the passport copy and deposit thing as that was the only ID I had on me. I don’t drink so don’t need ID for that and I certainly wasn’t going to drive so why would I bring my drivers licence with me.
After breakfast off on a driving tour, check out some of the remains of the wall etc and then dropped off either for own time or the optional walking tour. I did the walking tour. Pretty good, I thought it was worth the money. Had lunch with a group after the tour then headed off with some of them via the subway (ticket machines on the platform took cash and cards, although some cards didn’t work) to the large sporting/outdoors shop (Decathlon) for them to get sleeping bags etc. Subway ticketing was based one what zones you were going to be passing through I think. We only needed the cheapest ticket anyway. Back to the hostel via a pub. I rested the rest of the day, the others went back out, to the gardens I think.
Breakfast at the hostel and then to the ferry to Denmark. First experience of meals with our onroad chef with lunch before boarding the ferry (the first of many salads, I think I heard something about a Topdeck policy regarding meat when travelling, some sort of restriction due to food safety concerns). All the ferries we went on on this tour were the smoothest I’ve ever been on. Most of the time if I didn’t look out the window I’d barely know we were moving, and I’m pretty sensitive to movement (not in the feel sick way though most of the time now, thankfully). Tour in the bus of Copenhagen upon arrival, including stops at Christiania, little mermaid etc.
Hostel (a Generator) was pretty nice and quite well located. Very slow and small lift though so do the thing where you send one person up with lots of bags and everybody else take the stairs. Another set of stairs (and an even smaller, slower lift) at the other end of the building.
Free day after breakfast. I tagged along with a group that wanted to go for a swim in the sea (I didn’t partake in that part though). Pretty good walk around, went up the Christiansborg Palace tower, followed by a boat/canal cruise in the afternoon. We bought tickets at the hostel but would have been just as easy to buy from where the boat left from. We bought the one group voucher and the hostel was fine with taking a mixture of cash and different cards. Another group bought a seperate voucher that included a boat cruise and access to Tivoli Gardens. Unfortunately the boat cruise part was for a different company so they couldn’t join us. So watch out for that. More walking around including a visit to a lego store. Had quite a number of yummy ice creams from a little shop on a corner.
We tried to have a little picnic in a nearby park but it closed “early”.
45min drive to the ferry, 30min ferry ride. Then 6 hours to Stockholm. Person came on the bus and quickly checked our passports. Stop for included lunch. Stopped at a huge IKEA. Included tea (what I call the evening meal) at the hostel (another Generator), rather yummy Swedish meat balls :-).
Drop off/Pick up for the optional Vasa museum (wreak of a huge old war ship from 1600s). I’d already been the last time I was in Sweden (in 2015) so skipped that (it is quite impressive though so you should go if you haven’t seen it before), slept in, and just met up with the group for the city walking tour (included) afterwards (via McDonalds at the train station for brunch).
The other optional was the a City Hall tour, which I also did last time, but there was some issues with timings or something. It is pretty good so do go if you can fit it in.
After the walking tour I walked with a couple of the girls to the ABBA musuem via a little place on the water front for them to get some lunch. Museum only took card. They were into it a bit more than me but it was quite interesting. Exit via a gift shop of course.
Tea with the ABBA museum girls in the bar on the ground floor of the hostel. A pretty nice pizza. Note: not the cheapest option.
Second free day in Copenhagen. I took the day off, slept in, and did washing. Pretty good place to do washing. You have 2 days and the hostel makes washing pretty easy, for somewhere you did it yourself. From reception you just paid via cash or card and they gave you a wash token, a dry token and quantity (serving?) of washing powder. Took those and your washing to the laundry where they had some fancy washing machines and dryers with screens that supported multiple languages. On the wall they had posters with instructions for changing the language on the machine’s screens and how to do basic washes and drys etc.
Other people visited the artistic subway stations (I’m underselling it, they are pretty impressive, just google stockholm subway station art).
Lots of groups seemed to just converge on a hill to watch the sun set.
Wifi Bee-ESP8266 with ESP-Link.
The module comes with an AT command interface. Use that to connect to your WiFi, eg switch in “BOOT” setting, serial at 115200 8N1 and use the command AT+CWJAP=”<SSID>”,”<PASSWORD>”. Module needs CRLF for line endings. Then disconnect the module. Prepare esptool.py command line eg “esptool.py –port /dev/tty.usbserial-A1017IE0 write_flash -fs 32m -ff 40m -fm qio 0x00000 boot_v1.6.bin 0x1000 user1.bin 0x3FC000 esp_init_data_default.bin 0x3FE000 blank.bin” (replacing serial port for the correct one for you), switch switch to UART, reconnect module and run the esptool.py command. It should flash successfully. Power off the module, switch switch back to BOOT, reconnect power and hopefully the module will boot and connect up to your WiFi running ESP-Link.
I have a couple of 12v LED lights on my bedhead. I think they’re designed for use in caravans or something. They have a switch on their bases so they are pretty easy to install/use. But lights by themselves like that are pretty boring. They are much more interesting/fun if they are computer controlled :-). They are 12v (or 24v) and only draw a couple of hundred mA so are pretty easy to switch with the likes of an Arduino with a relay or a MOSFET (or even a plain old transistor). That just leaves how you tell the Arduino to turn the light on or off. Only via smartphone is rather annoying when all you want to do is reach over and turn the light on. So my first thought was a box with buttons on it (didn’t want to alter the lights themselves). But where do you put it? And it’s a bit messy. Then, recently, I thought why don’t I use one those capacitive touch boards and turn the light itself into the switch. Since I had two lights I bought breakout board with 5 sensors on it. The board works pretty well, the issue being that the wire connecting the board to the light also becomes a touch sensor. To fix this issue I bought two single sensor boards instead. A short wire connects the board to the body of the light.
So for each light I put one of the sensor boards in a small box, mounted it on top of the board the light is mounted on to and ran a wire out of the bottom to the light body. The output of each board runs to an input on an Arduino.
In a box is an Arduino with some shields stacked on it:
The Arduino watches the inputs that the touch sensors are connected to. If the input activates and then deactivates in less than half a second then it toggles the light state and reports the new state over the XBee module. The maximum touch time to toggle is so you can move the light without toggling it. The Arduino also acts on commands received via the XBee module. At the other end of the XBee connection is a Python script that bridges between a number of XBee modules and MQTT. The two lights have been added to openHab as switches via MQTT so their state can be monitored and controlled via any openHab interface.
At work we get a free packet of bacon (or something else they have heaps of to get rid of) per week, and at Christmas a free ham. So people could self-record their taking of their allocation I built the “Bacon/Ham Machine”. The original one is an Arduino, a 20×4 LCD screen, a MiFare reader/writer to read our door access cards/fobs, and a LED button or two in a box connected to a computer via USB. The smarts were originally handled by a python script but it was re-written in C# .NET in the form of a Windows service. It was first used for recording the ham given out at Christmas. The ham that year was distributed from the factory shop. After that first use it moved onto its Bacon recording use (in the factory shop). The next year the ham was distributed outside (from a chiller truck) and the Bacon/Ham machine was moved outside for the job, connected to an ALIX SBC (running Linux) with power and network cables run out from inside. Obviously that was less than ideal as bacon couldn’t be recorded while ham was. After that a different device was used a couple of years, still with cables running out from inside, and one year just a manual system was used.
So for Christmas 2016 I decided to make a battery operated WiFi connected portable ham recording device. It operates similarly to the previous devices in that it is fairly dumb device with the smarts running on a proper computer. It just opens a simple TCP connection to a program running on a “proper” computer that tells it what to display and what buttons to light up, and it tells the program the ID of a fob when one is read and when buttons are pushed. I used:
Powering the LED on the switch was interesting as the M0 CPU used can only sink/source a tiny amount of current so I fell back to my old standby, a ULN2003 darlington transistor array IC. As this switches the negative side and the M0 has internal pull-ups on the GPIO inputs this led to quite a messy switch wiring (common negative for the switches and common positive for the LEDs). In retrospect I should have just used some individual transistors for the switch LEDs so I could have switched the positive side, but I was in a bit of hurry. The box was also a bit small for all the stuff I put in it, hence why one of the switches is different as the ones with the LED just wouldn’t fit.
I had some issues with the WiFi. The examples have a delay(10000) after the WiFi.begin() which adds quite a delay to connecting to the WiFi. I don’t like big delays for no apparently reason so I took it out and replaced it with a loop that exited when the module reported that it was connected. This resulted in much quicker connections to the WiFi but the whole thing would only run for a few minutes at most and then it would just lock up/crash requiring the reset button to be pushed. So I went back to the 10sec delay and then it ran fine. I tried lots of combinations of stuff and only the 10sec delay worked, so I stuck with that. The other issue I had was the module wouldn’t connect to our Meru AP320 access points at work. Thankfully it would connect to the AP1020s as those model APs covered the areas it was going to be used in. I don’t know if it was the AP320 itself it didn’t like or the Virtual Port setup. The AP1020 WLAN ESS profile was set as a Virtual Cell instead. I was going to try setting up a standard ESS profile without virtual port on the AP320 and try that but I never got around to it.
I also had issues with reading the buttons. They worked fine without the OLED initialised, but stopped reading properly when the screen was used. In the end I only needed the one button so got one working and left it at that.
I’m terrible at writing blog posts etc but I was just reading through my email the other day and found a “Trip debrief” that I had sent to my travel agent and I thought, hang on, I could mold this into a blog post fairly easily. So here it is :-).
Warning: this is quite long.
For the past decade or so I’ve gone on a trip somewhere once per year, additional to the done since year dot Christmas trip to Tekapo. The first ones were with my parents to somewhere in New Zealand. In 2011 I did my first Contiki. Since the whole idea of going off on a holiday with a group of strangers all by myself was somewhat terrifying I’d never really looked into their tours before. But I was at a travel expo with my parents and Contiki had a booth and we noticed they were advertising New Zealand trips. With a bit of umming and ahhing I came to the conclusion that I would probably survive doing their Christchurch to Christchurch tour. So I did. I really enjoyed it. So I did another one that year, the rest of their New Zealand tour, the North Island. And even before that tour had started I had booked another one, this time overseas, a Canadian Rockies one for September 2012 (my parents went over with me and went on the Rocky Mountaineer train while I was on the Contiki). Between 2011 and 2015 I ended up doing 10 Contiki tours all up, from every region they serviced, except Asia. But anyway, enough background, on to the topic of this post.
In 2016 work sent me to Frankfurt, Germany for a few days to go to the IFFA trade show. From there it was just a quick hop across the Atlantic to start my holiday, my first Topdeck tour, their USA & Canada Adventure tour, the 10th of May 2016 departure. It kind of fitted in with the work trip. It could have done with starting a day or so later so I could have had more time at the trade show, and a tour in Europe would have been closer, but it worked out OK.
My transfer in Frankfurt was a bit late (I think it ended up being about 15mins), he did call the hotel and the front desk person came and told me. Nice newish merc, got me to the airport in time though (I could see the speedo up to the 120km/h mark but I couldn’t see the needle quite a bit of the time ). Frankfurt airport seemed to be in the middle of some reconstruction so was a bit confusing. Like after passport control coming in we seemed to re-join the people heading to security to go to gates and then exit out into the land side before re-entering an area (with little security) to get to baggage claim which was rather weird for an international flight. At security make sure you say something in English so they know to speak English to you then it’ll go a bit more smoothly .
Getting into the USA there were so many different lines you could take, I eventually settled on the returning ESTA(/I think USA citizen) one where I used one of their machines to read my passport, take my finger prints and photo (use the big bar to move the machine/camera to line your face up in the area on the screen). Won’t be able to use that next time as I’ll probably have a new passport by then so will have a new ESTA.
I forgot about the ground transportation desk bit on getting the transfer in New York, but after I remembered that it was fairly easy to get the pickup sorted. But it took forever. The flight arrived on time (actually early but we had to wait for a gate) but it was about 3pm (having landed around 11am) by the time I was finally dropped off at my hotel and the majority of that was waiting for the shuttle and waiting for everybody else to be dropped off. Private transfer probably would have been the way to go.
The Marrakech was, interesting. The lobby wasn’t at or even close to ground level, it was up some fairly narrow and small stairs. There were people available to carry your suitcase up the stairs if you wished though. Once in the lobby it wasn’t too bad, neither was my room, but the hallways and stairs (no lifts) were in very stark contrast to the hotel I’d just come from in Frankfurt (although that one was a 5 star). The hallway and stair areas were probably the worst of the whole trip. They couldn’t make up their minds whether they wanted a credit card for incidentals or not as I was only staying one night and the room was prepaid. Lots of people stayed at other hotels (and hostels, there’s one (HI) only a block or so away), esp after a the trip. Only 3 of us stayed at the Marrakech after the trip. Our tour manager helped people get taxis to get to their other hotels etc.
The tour, there were 21 of us on the tour. 2 kiwis (including me), 2 girls from the Netherlands and the rest were Aussies. 5 guys (including me). The tour manager was American and the driver was originally from Canada (Ottawa area) but now lives in the US. It was run like a Top Deck tour, but it was run on behalf of Top Deck, the tour manager and driver didn’t work for Top Deck. And the bus only had a small Top Deck logo on each side (on the luggage doors). Just like Contiki none/not all of the emergency contact etc information provided before hand had made it to the tour manager etc. Other than no day song and a few terminology differences the tour was just like a Contiki. A lot less rules and stuff listed at the start though.
The dutch girls were 18/19, the other kiwi was ~20, there were a few around the 30/31 or so mark, there was me at 36, and all the rest were in their 20s, probably mostly in the younger half.
It was all hotels. “Washington, DC” was a bit more with fridge+freezer, sink, cook top, microwave, plates, glasses, cutlery, and dishwasher. Our tour manager did his best to sort out washing options without much success. A couple of the hotels had washer/dryers but there didn’t seem to be any service washes (where you can just drop off a big bag of washing and get it back all washed that night/next morning) available (unlike Cusco, Peru where you had half a dozen within a few minutes walk from the hotel + the hotel itself).
Used the metros/undergrounds/subways in a few different cities.
Boston – To get out to Harvard and back to the hotel on our free day. You could purchase one-way and return throw-away cardboard tickets from vending machines with a credit card (or cash)
Toronto – To get back to the hotel from the included diner the night we arrived and into and out of the city on the full day (Contiki usually provides the transport to/from including activities, Top Deck doesn’t seem to, at least in this instance). Single ride fare was in the form of metal tokens you could purchase from machines with cash only. Easiest was a $10 note that gave you 3 tokens and some (coin) change. Token purchase by card was available at manned booths, when they were manned, in stations that had them. In the trains they had simple but effective maps with LEDs on them, Red LED = station already been to, Green LED = station yet to go to and Flashing Green = next stop.
Washington DC – to get back to the hotel from the city. The bus dropped us off in the morning, specifically for the people doing the bike or segway tour but you could just use it for a lift into the city if you wanted. Didn’t seem to have a cheap single ride option, at least from the huge big vending machines. USD2 for a multi-use rechargeable card (MiFare Plus). The vending machines took credit card and cash. I just paid USD6 for the card with USD4 of credit on it. They charged by distance travelled and had off vs on peak prices, tap on, tap off. My card still had USD2.40 left on it when I got off at our hotel’s stop. We had a tour manager organised room party on that last night on the tour and after that most of the group went out and took the metro so I gave my card to one of the girls as she’d left her card in her room. The stations were nice and big and open, but a bit dark and there were no announcements as to what the station was and no screens in the trains! You had to peer out the windows hoping to catch a glimpse of a station name and then try and keep track on the static map in the train (if you could see one)/on the google maps directions/paper map. In the city there were multiple lines per line, they just diverged when they got way out of the city so there was a train to our hotel every few minutes as there were 2 or 3 different lines we could take running on the same line between the city and our hotel stop.
Google Maps knew about the subways in all these 3 cities and New York. So it could tell you which train to take to/from which station etc.
There were lots of included activities and meals (other than breakfasts) on the tour. If there wasn’t an included or optional evening meal our tour manager organised a group meal out somewhere together. Optional, but most people went to them. I don’t remember having any real difficulty getting food, even at McDonalds in Montreal where they spoke French by default (and called out the order numbers when they were ready in French). The menu at the little bar place we went to for lunch in Quebec City (our tour manager loved the stew there so told us to go there) had an interesting mix of English, French and Frenlish but the people spoke English fine (and split the 2 bowls of chips that we had between 3 of us onto 3 different bills for us). We were supposed to get breakfast both mornings in Montreal but there was some mix up so we only got it on the day we left, but our tour manager sorted it so we got breakfast both mornings (he tried for one and got both) in Toronto (where we weren’t supposed to get breakfast at all) instead. Very good breakfast in Washington/Arlington (eggs and bacon 🙂 ), pretty basic in Toronto. In Quebec the (quite nice) hotel had a bar on the ground floor that did breakfasts, lots of choices, pretty fast, very yummy, not too badly priced (less/around CAD10, took card, just brought the machine out to you like they do everywhere except the US), both English and French menus.
Included evening meals (that I can remember):
There didn’t seem to have that many optionals, but there was quite a bit just included and I didn’t have any trouble filling in the time and it wasn’t that long of a trip. The tour manager gave plenty of suggested activities and knew the areas pretty well. The driver was from the area as well so had useful information. When we were leaving Ottawa the driver pointed out areas and gave stories from his youth there.
I have to remember to check the estimated Uber/taxi price in Google Maps as in Montreal there was an interesting place to go see (and one of the girls would liked to have gone too) but the estimated time via public transport was too long (she had to get back for the jet boat ride) so we didn’t go. Later on I checked the Uber price and it was only CAD15 each way so would have been fine and would have had us there and back in plenty of time. Also our tour manager gave us a code to use if we hadn’t used Uber before so it might have even been free.
After the Topdeck tour I had arranged to fly up to Ottawa for a few days with Mel, a friend I made in Scotland on a Contiki trip in 2013.
Sometime between the time in Canada on the tour and the time in Canada with Mel afterwards KnowRoaming started providing their unlimited daily data deal in Canada. This seemed to result in me not being charged at all for my data usage in Canada while there on the tour. Down on the boat at Niagara Falls my phone roamed back to the US though and as I didn’t have a daily data pack activated it started charging me for data, so I disabled mobile data until we got back up top.
The pick up for the airport when leaving New York was a bit late (I actually rang them after 20mins to find out where it was). I ended up checking in on my phone on the way to the airport just to make sure I didn’t miss it. So yeah, private transfer. If I had taken a picture of my passport they would have emailed me boarding passes, which wouldn’t have helped as I don’t carry a printer around with me so declined that option and just used a machine at the airport, fairly simple. USD25 for the checked bag, which I had to take to a cart to be loaded onto the plane, don’t know if that was because I was so early or the flight or what. I assume the flight as most of the other flights from the gates around mine were to USA destinations.
Ottawa airport was quite nice to arrive at from overseas. Fairly small, rather new and clean, and the staff were friendly. Longest wait was about 5minutes waiting for the bags to start coming out after passport control. I ticked most of the boxes for where had my trip started. The duty free limit for gifts when arriving in Canada is CAD60, I’d calculated Mel’s gift at about CAD70 so ticked the box saying that I had goods in excess of the duty free limit. The passport guy asked what I was bringing in, I said just a gift for the person showing me around, he crossed that bit off and that was that. The only staying 3 days concerned him a bit but he asked when I was last in Canada and I said a few days ago, I did a tour from New York etc etc and then he was fine with the 3 days as it was at the end of my trip, passport stamped, enjoy your stay, done. Collected my suitcase when it eventually appeared, a guy collected the arrival form and out I went to a waiting Mel.
Star Alliance Silver gave me Premier Access on the United flight, which meant, not much really. On the Air Canada flight it meant I could use the premium check-in counter apparently, which I only found out after I checked in with a machine and went to check-in assistance (as told to by the machine), I assume due to all the connecting and international flights and stuff.
Mel was waiting for me land side in Ottawa, went out to her car and she drove me into town and my hotel (the Arc The Hotel Downtown Boutique). She had a parking “building” (all the parking in it seemed to be under ground from what I could tell) she wanted to use as it had free parking on the weekend which took a while to find (basically just a lane on one side of an intersection that disappeared underground). Ottawa also likes their one-way streets which didn’t help. At check-in the lady seemed to think Mel was staying also (got two room keys, hinted at the wine being for both etc), a welcoming wine at the bar was included (for both of us) but we didn’t take up the offer. The hotel was quite nice, well located, within reasonable walking distance of a lot of stuff (including at least two Tim Hortons, there was one at each end of the block that the hotel was on). They had a bowl of free apples at least on my floor .
After check in we dropped my suitcase in my room and I got sorted for a little walk around. I made sure I took my wallet so I could pay for stuff and off we went for a walk. It wasn’t until we were away from the hotel that I remembered that my wallet was full of USD and only USD, I did have my cards with me though. Unlike when we stopped on the way from Montreal to Toronto on the tour when it was in the low teens if that with wind chill, it was in the 20s all 3 days with Mel. So we had a look around, took some pictures, had something to eat at a pub/restaurant place that Mel knew/liked, she walked me back to my hotel, talked for a bit then she went back to her (parent’s) place. Next day was a public holiday, Mel picked me up from my hotel and we went out to some falls and bush (saw a chipmunk), and then to a tulip festival. Afternoon was filled with a tour of a cold war bunker (http://diefenbunker.ca), it was a little way out of Ottawa, but it was awesome. The tour was for an hour but it didn’t seem anywhere near that long. After the tour there was an hour until it closed and it was pretty close to closing time when we left. Went to Mel’s parent’s place for tea, met her parents, one of her sisters, and the sister’s boyfriend. Tuesday we went to the Aviation and Space Museum and a special exhibition Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience. Ended the day with a meal at a mall food court, some shopping for my little nephew, bit more of a look around and more talking. Wednesday I started my flights home, all 4 of them.
I’d read that I would need to collect my bag at LAX and manually transfer it but I asked the check-in guy in Ottawa and he said no, Auckland would be the first place.
Coming back my suitcase had two luggage tags on it as apparently you can only have 3 airports on a tag. I went through USA security and passport stuff in Toronto, in a rather weird setup. “Transit to New Zealand” as the place staying in the US on the arrivals card. So I was sitting at my departure gate in Canada in the US. It took about an hour from landing through to waiting at my departure gate (or as close as I could get at the time as they have combo domestic/international like Christchurch does and my gate was domestic when I was going to it) so that’s where I needed the time, not LAX. My arrival gate and departure gates were actually right next to each other but you had to go to basically the other end of the terminal to go through the security etc stuff.
Is Air Canada like a budget airline (but not in price) or something? The in-flight entertain was a bit of a joke and food was extra (although they did have some nice looking options, but my cards were in the overhead bin and I had a window seat), they did have WiFi though. I used the WiFi on the Toronto -> LA flight, CAD3.50 for the “Messaging” option which basically meant anything that uses just a little bit of data at a time. SQ26 had WiFi and cellular (SMS and 2G data). I enabled cellular on both legs (on my work phone, with mobile data disabled!) but only sent a couple of TXTs on the Singapore to Frankfurt leg, just to check-in with the guys from work I’d be meeting up with in Frankfurt (they were supposed to get in before me, but their flight (Air Canada from Toronto) was delayed so I ended up getting in before them). I used WiFi on the Frankfurt to New York leg, USD12.99 for 50meg or something like that. Very slow, and not that reliable, but I was able to check email, Facebook etc (just make sure you disabled background syncing!).
Arriving at LAX it was just straight off the plane and out. The signage was crap. Wasn’t too bad to get to the baggage claim, you could see the signs making sense by following somebody. I went to and waited at the baggage claim for 15mins or so to make sure the Ottawa guy was correct that I wouldn’t need to collect my suitcase until Auckland. After that it was a good thing I had looked at a map of LAX as there were 0 signs to other terminals at that point. I’d looked at a map on a website or something so I knew I had to turn right out of my arriving terminal to get to the Tom Bradley International terminal. I knew when I got there, but there weren’t any signs at that level saying to go up the outside stairs to get to departures! Once on the right level for departures there were boards listing the checkin counter numbers for the different airlines so I was able to find the AirNZ Premium checkin counter fairly easily (in the mess of people). Only had to wait in line for a couple of minutes. I handed over my passport and said I’m hoping to find that my upgrade request (silver recognition) had been approved, to which the guy said yes and he took my Ottawa printed Premium Economy boarding pass off me and printed a new Business Premier boarding pass for me (and a new one for the flight to Christchurch as well I think). I also mentioned that I hope my bag has been transferred OK and he confirmed it was checked right through to Christchurch and I’d have to get in Auckland etc etc. He then made sure I knew where the lounge was. Going through security didn’t take very long at all. I went through the Business/First class line. Didn’t have to take my shoes off or laptop out of my bag. Signage after security was much better than before. Went and found my gate and then went back and settled into the Star Alliance Lounge. Had some yummy stuff to eat and drink and used the WiFi to make sure all my photos were backed up to Google. Getting close to boarding time I made use of the facilities and then headed to the gate and basically straight onto the plane.
Business Premier is nice. Would you like a drink Mr Gordon, what would you like to eat Mr Gordon (for the evening meal I just had the desert from the quick meal and some pieces of bread, which they arranged for me without issue), would you like your seat turned into a bed etc. Actually slept most of the flight, only watched a couple of TV programs around breakfast and coming in to land.
The domestic transfer baggage drop in Auckland could do with one extra sign that is visible directly in front of you as you are walking along the check in area, or just say that it is in area C on the other signs, as I got to an area with people going in (where the transfer used to be) but there weren’t any more signs for the transfer bag drop visible.
I got CAD200 and USD250 from Travelex at the airport (ordered before hand). The Canadian was all $10 notes which worked out great, the US was 2x $100, 2x $20 and 1x $10. The smaller USD was fine, the $100 notes were a pain, it wasn’t until we were back in the US after Canada (on the tour) that I actually broke them. I also had some CAD and USD from previous trips and from my sister. I came back with a heaps of USD1s, so the 3x $5 + 1x $1 that I got from my sister was repaid with $1 notes. I was going to try and get some $5s at LAX by buying some food but I ate in the lounge instead .
I have an Asterisk at home running on a little PC Engines ALIX board (purchased from NiceGear). Phones used are (in no particular order) Panasonic, Snom, Polycom, Yealink and Grandstream. The main connection to the PSTN is a SIP trunk to 2talk over a Vodafone HFC Cable Internet connection (possibly changing to a UFB fibre connection this year sometime). For redundancy I have 2talk fail over incoming calls to a cell phone number if my PBX is unreachable (i.e. Internet issue). It doesn’t go to a cellphone though, it goes to a cheap GSM SIP CTU which sends the call into the PBX, ringing all the phones just like normal. The CTU and the “PBX” are run off the same UPS as the PoE switch powering the phones so when the phones stop working during a power cut so does the PBX and the CTU. To allow for this I have call forwarding set up on the CTU’s phone account to forward calls through to an actual cellphone. So when there’s a power cut, longer than the UPS can handle, calls are forwarded to the CTU which is unreachable so the cell network forwards the call to one of our cellphones. Normally I would use 2degrees for a SIM for the CTU, in this case it was my only choice. The CTU is a 2G GSM device, Spark doesn’t have a 2G network, only a 3G network so they are out leaving just Vodafone and 2degrees. On prepay Vodafone only allows a call forwarding destination of their voicemail service whereas 2degrees has no such restriction so they were my only choice (as well as my preferred choice). Seems to work fine, I’ve just got to remember to top up the CTU’s SIM $20/year to keep it active.