Month: September 2010

Pretty damn happy with day 1 of the holiday. Spent most of the day in Fremantle in absolute sunshine. We intended to do a lot of walking, just in case the 3hrs sleep from last night wasn’t enough to make us tired for our flight tonight.

We caught a taxi to Fremantle, checked out the Dockers training ground then went hunting for the Little Creatures brewery. After about a 15min walk we found it and what is one of the coolest casual dining venues I’ve been in. it’s massive old boat shed which they’ve emptied and put in a huge kitchen, a bar, dining outside at the front and overlooking the water out the back plus heaps more indoors. A few huge brewing silos complete the authentic feel. The food was great, we sampled what they’re known for (beers and cider) and enjoyed the atmosphere.

From there, we walked around Fremantle doing nothing in particular. We found an information booth and grabbed a brewery tour of Fremantle. So we found a very cool pub, The Munk, which overlooks the trendy coffee/restaurant area of Freo. An hour or so of enjoying the local brew and people watching, we headed off. We eventually made our way to the train station, stopped off in Perth CBF for an hour and then ended up here at the international airport.

We’ve scored emergency row seats on a brand new Boeing 777 with 1200 channels, sms/email in the backrest and until we board, we’re now watching the Grand Prix in the bar on a massive projection screen.

Life’s pretty good about now!

Pretty uneventful start to the trip. hour delay in Adelaide, but a pretty good place to spend some extra time especially with friends and family come to see us off!

We’ve arrived safely in Perth and about to head to Fremantle for some of this beautiful weather and might give Little Creatures brewery a crack for lunch.

One of our “challenges” (it’s hardly a big one) is how we’ll access the internet whilst in our various destinations. At the moment, we’re planning on visiting at least a dozen different countries in the 2 months we’re away. I’m keen to use the internet to:

• update this blog
• share & backup photos
• plan the next part of our trip as we go
• book anything we need to
• research what’s on offer
• plan any meet-ups with people

Being that Deb & I will most likely want to do this at the same time, it’d be great to share an internet connection. There’s a couple of ways I’ve thought we could manage this:

• jailbreak one of our iPhones and buy a SIM with a data allowance and use the MyWi app. This app turns your iPhone into a Wi-Fi hotspot. That way, our 2 phones + iPad can all share the one connection
• take my Airport Express with me and use at hotels where they provide a wired ethernet connection. I found in our last trip to New Zealand and Hawaii that the hotels we stayed at offered an ethernet connection but not Wifi – which is useless to our iPhones + iPad. With the Airport Express, it takes the ethernet connection and then shares it via Wi-Fi which we can then use – very handy. I’ve already bought Apple’s multi-country power adaptor kit, so it makes sense to take advantage of it
• buy a micro-sim for the iPad and use that and that alone for internet use, as that’s by far the most useful for internet “stuff”

I dare say though, there’s a good chance we’ll make use of internet cafes, free wi-fi spots and other establishments that promote Wi-Fi availability with purchase (ala McDonalds here, but hopefully not actually @ McDonalds). The idea being after we’re tired, need a brea or a meal, we’ll try and do both where possible.

I came across this very handy website for finding out SIM with data information for various countries. Prices aren’t too bad – 14euros for 2GB for 30 days in Romania is pretty good!

It’s pre-journey and I’m finalising how I’m going to transfer what I expect to be hundreds of photos off our various cameras (my Pentax dSLR, and then each of our point-and-shoot cameras). Considering we’ll be away for 2 months, I’m keen to make sure we have a backup in case anything goes wrong (lose a bag, memory stick becomes corrupt etc). Click the link below for some thoughts on the matter…

Continue reading “Traveling with an iPad”

Highly, highly looking forward to going to Oktoberfest. Not necessarily for the drinking, more for the likelihood that we can chat with people from all over the world who are there simply to have a good time.

And what better way to do that than via a 1litre Mass! Prost!

Lonely Planet have a cool write-up on it if you’re keen to read more, particularly about how it all started.