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Driving into Mainz

Day 3IconRae

 

We all realise that resilience is the key to survive long haul flights, but it was quite a surprise for us to discover that it can also be required on much shorter jaunts.

We had just arrived in Frankfurt after a 13 hour flight from Singapore, feeling shattered and grumpy. When Gray suggested we ‘hop on a train’ to get to Mainz, I thought he had completely lost his marbles. I refused to trundle our luggage to the railway platform so headed out to the taxi rank and joined the queue.

After a few moments we were approached by a guy asking where we were wanting to go. His eyes lit up when we said Mainz. “Come with me – the taxi is over there.”

We hesitated for a moment then, looked at the long queue waiting for taxis, we decided to follow him. He didn’t head for the taxi rank so alarm bells started ringing in fuzzy, jet-lagged brains. He had our bags and, rather than taking us to a taxi he was heading to his car, which was parked in a public area. As he put our bags in his boot, we both spotted that his car had no signage. Oh no! Should we panic?

“This doesn’t look like a taxi to me,” Gray announced. Are you an Uber? “No, no” he assured us – loading the bags.

“But there is no taxi sign!”

“I had to remove my signs because I don’t have a permit to collect passengers from this airport stand. I had a passenger to drop off and was hoping to find someone who wanted to go back to my town. I live near Mainz” he explained.

We looked at each other. It sounded plausible enough and we were exhausted.

We headed out of the car park to the security barrier where the car was stopped. I guess he didn’t have a taxi permit to let him out. After some hectic ‘chat’ with the security guy and some coins changing hands, we headed out of the carpark. The driver asked the name of our hotel. I read it off the printout I had, but obviously my kiwi accent hindered his understanding. “Let me see,” he said and put his hand back to gather the paper.

The next several seconds were unbelievable. We were hurtling down the motorway on ramp into the evening traffic, heaven knows at what speed, as the driver is typing the address into his GPS!!!

We were wide awake now! Maybe the train hadn’t been such a silly option.

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The journey did calm down once he knew exactly where we were heading and he chatted to us quite easily. He was friendly and offered hints for sights to see while we were in Mainz. He took us right into the hotel car park and up to the entrance. The hotel was a welcome sight after far too many hours to count, since we left Singapore.

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Planning 3

Day 0 minus 1

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And Good to Go!

Our sea voyage home is booked. We are now planning the trip to Europe. Roughly calculating how much time we want to visit the various places on our list we settle for September 18th to fly to Singapore. “That’s odd” I announce one morning when I was checking out flights and hotels for Singapore, “everything is booked for 18th, 19th and 20th and it is six months away.” Our travel dates clash with the Formula 1.

So we book our flight to Singapore for September 14th and begin booking for hotels or Airbnb that I have already checked out and noted in the holiday notebook.

Just when we are sure that everything is set, we hear from Gray’s brother that he and his wife have moved to Umbria, Italy. We really cannot spend time in Europe without visiting them, can we? Italy hadn’t been on our itinerary this time.

Once more back to the drawing board, or more accurately the little notebook. We really have to think long and hard about how we are going to fit everything in. We cannot lengthen our stay as we have a ship to board and we cannot leave home any earlier, either. It is tricky, but eventually we manage to slot everything in.

Notebook

Planning the packing is another challenge. There will be seasonal changes. We anticipate that Italy and the south of France will still be quite warm, but Edinburgh in October is bound to be cold. But these seasonal changes are only part of the ‘what to pack’ dilemma. Mostly we will need casual clothes for hopping on and off trains, but on the ship coming home there’ll be formal nights requiring suits , jackets and evening dresses. And we really don’t want to be lugging huge suitcases around Europe. Problem solved. We’ll buy new clothes in London and store our 2 large suitcases in London whilst we train up to Scotland to visit friends.

 

There are no luggage restrictions on a ship, so we’ll collect our cases on the way back from Scotland and head for Tilbury.

Cases

It’s all in the planning!!

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Budgets

MoneyBox

Our travel budgets are intrinsically linked to our planning. As we are planning a trip through Europe, with most time in France, we know we’ll want to have quite a food and wine focus. Local food markets, wineries, and good local restaurants will be planned into the itinerary. If we have heard about a particular restaurant and really would love to try their food, we’ll decide that it is worth eating simple, cheap fare for a night or two so that we can indulge in their sumptuous food. Many fabulous memories are based on wonderful meals.

The cruise home will take us through parts of the world that are new to us, so we will probably choose to do some of the planned onshore excursions even though they may seem expensive. They can help you decide whether you want to return to a place and explore it further. Where we are returning to a place we tend to do our own exploring of the harbour or town.

 

Gray has been known to say, “you can only spend each dollar, once”, so therefore it is important that we make sure we know how much money is required to enjoy the experience. Getting the balance right is important to us. We don’t want to be so constrained by our budget that we cannot enjoy ourselves but on the other hand at our age we realise that the holiday fund is not an infinite pot of gold. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were? We have travelled with folk who noted down their spending each day, often whilst we were out and about. We felt very uncomfortable by this and are sure that they were not having much fun either. Once the spending has been planned and agreed, we believe it’s time to enjoy ourselves.

Calculator

So this ‘philosophical statement’ as Gray defines the budget, is a good guide to ensure we make the most of our experiences away. I interpret the budget as ‘an enabler’, stretching it as far as possible to enable us to have a good time. Together we manage to make successful budget decisions and keep on enjoying traveling.