flashman181

Going to be a busy year Travel wise. As they all should be.

Europe 2013 “A Second Crack” is at the well advanced stage. Flights booked – including some BC natch – hotels mostly booked, a train here a donkey ride there and before you know it all you have to do is find the money. Now a central point to all this is the CLP 55th Birthday. Yes I surprised too, had her pegged for 64 at least. Adequate planning has assured it will take place in the City of Love – Chernobyl. Oops wrong Itinerary. Paris of course. It is a city you can return to often and we have been lucky enough to do this. Pity it is full of French folk. If I can be persuaded I only need one kidney in my dotage then there may even be a fancy meal at Le Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower to ice the deal so to speak. From there we will also venture onto Barcelona, Berlin and Copenhagen along with some driving through the French countryside and a casual few days in northern Italy. Will be a blast and much anticipated. Be good to have someone else to carry the luggage around for me.

Which of course brings up the allure of solo travelling again. The Chicago/San Fran experiment worked a treat and even sated the wanderlust for about two months but it always returns. The question then becomes where to this time? And of course what time of year? The lure of cool weather is hard to resist when sitting in Maryhole @ 36 degrees day after day.

Most “Great Cities of the World” quizzes would regularly include 2 cities in any top 5 – Paris and New York. Have been lucky enough to have spent two weeks with CLP in NYC a few years ago but as anyone who has been there knows that barely scratches the surface. So the seed was planted for NYC 2015 – My Balls Drop. Most of you would be aware of the famous Times Square Ball Drop that occurs every New Year and while a white Xmas has a certain appeal there are also a lot of travel related issues around that time in NYC. And the place is full of bloody tourists! So have pushed back to February which will still be chilly enough to warrant the humorous theme and get to celebrate my birthday next year in NYC. Surrounded by all my friends. Zero degrees, Zero Friends – win win. CLP thinks its a bad time to travel there. When quizzed further as to why her reply was couldnt you go this year instead already! Of course she believes the prime attraction of solo travel for me is to write more blogs – and she just may be onto something there 🙂

So an apartment has been chosen and deposit put down – so I cant change my mind when I come to my senses. Or the Aussie $ plummets. 10 days in NYC but if you are going to spend 40 hrs in the air you need a second city as well for a few days and hopefully something new to enrich the experience. Have seen Washington, Chicago, Boston, LA and San Francisco.

Current contenders are

Dallas – can fly home from there, shoot JR again.
Philadelphia – an easy train ride from NYC, punch Rocky out
Las Vegas – something different, probably get discovered and get a one man show on The Strip and never return

Luckily there is plenty of time to decide that second city. Feel free to throw in any suggestions peoples.

People do read these blogs right??