High-Speed Rail is Awesome!
As I write this, we are somewhere under the English Channel, a body of water heavily trafficked by International freight, and a channel that I once sailed by ferry as a kid. My recollection of the journey was sea sickness and an hours long crossing until we finally docked at nearby Jersey Island. This time however, the train flew down the Chunnel, as the Windows darkened and our ears popped. We are looking at the French countryside fly by, minutes earlier it was the rolling dales of England.
The train stations are well organized in Europe, even the security lines were staffed by competent people aware of the deadlines. In my case, the Drone we are traveling with drew scrutiny, but caused only a minor delay. The seats on Eurostar trains are comfortable and there is plenty of room for overhead storage. Stephani sits beside me taking photos of the French countryside as we speed along at +100 MPH.
Thus far, our only casualty on this trip was my poor laptop, which was in my rucksack as it toppled from my suitcase and landed hard enough to total the screen. We are now without a primary video editing workstation, which is a big disappointment because on this trip I really wanted to capture, edit and publish a daily VLOG of the journey, but most of that will have to wait until we are back. Now, I did discover that the app for my DJI OSMO camera that I am doing most of our video with, stores a copy of files in the app in addition to the SD card, and there is some basic editing capabilities on the iPhone, so although we will not be publishing videos with background music and all of the bells and whistles you should expect under normal service levels, we should be posting a daily recap of sorts via iPhone. Thinking about how much equipment I've brought on the trip, lugging it around is a bit tiresome, but not capturing some drone clips of Brugge would have been a huge miss, so we are going for it. I also think Amsterdam will be very pretty and a great opportunity for good video and photography.
We feel very lucky to be able to travel like this, but you need to be fit. The budget hotel we stayed in last night is a bunch of converted row houses, all joined together into a honeycomb of tiny rooms. Our room was on the third floor, and the staircase was the only way up. Carrying 50LB suitcases up three flights of stairs is not for the road weary traveler, or folks with knee issues. The shower was the scene of much hilarity as I once again tried to literally SQUEEZE my body into and out of it. The toilet was in close proximity. Imagine a shower located in a hallway closet and include a toilet and you will be close. When going to the toilet there was no way of avoiding bashing your head against the shower door when standing up if shower door was left closed. I kick myself for not taking a camera in there to document it for mankind.
UPDATE: Brussels
One frightening event took place when we arrived in Brussels train station. We were coming down an escelator, there was an old man in front of us who was confused and off balance, and about 400 passengers behind us. When he got on the escelator he wobbled slightly, but got himself to stand straight, but when he reached the bottom of the escelator he went down right at the very bottom and we all started to pile on top of him. We were trying to hit the emergency stop button, there was a red light that looked like a "stomp" button with a big minus sign, but the actual button was under the very front of the escelator, and a tiny red button it was. People were yelling he hit the stop button, to no avail. So I did the only thing that made sense and dragged my bag out of there, set it to one side and grabbed the old man's arm and dragged him away. I think a few seconds later, we could have had a very tragic crushing event on our hands. We got the old man settled in a chair. He was very shaken and had urinated his trousers. I think he was terrified.
After this we went to find our connecting train to Brugge. And here we are enjoying a nice photo before the heavens opened and started raining on us.
More from our travels tomorrow friends.
The train stations are well organized in Europe, even the security lines were staffed by competent people aware of the deadlines. In my case, the Drone we are traveling with drew scrutiny, but caused only a minor delay. The seats on Eurostar trains are comfortable and there is plenty of room for overhead storage. Stephani sits beside me taking photos of the French countryside as we speed along at +100 MPH.
Thus far, our only casualty on this trip was my poor laptop, which was in my rucksack as it toppled from my suitcase and landed hard enough to total the screen. We are now without a primary video editing workstation, which is a big disappointment because on this trip I really wanted to capture, edit and publish a daily VLOG of the journey, but most of that will have to wait until we are back. Now, I did discover that the app for my DJI OSMO camera that I am doing most of our video with, stores a copy of files in the app in addition to the SD card, and there is some basic editing capabilities on the iPhone, so although we will not be publishing videos with background music and all of the bells and whistles you should expect under normal service levels, we should be posting a daily recap of sorts via iPhone. Thinking about how much equipment I've brought on the trip, lugging it around is a bit tiresome, but not capturing some drone clips of Brugge would have been a huge miss, so we are going for it. I also think Amsterdam will be very pretty and a great opportunity for good video and photography.
We feel very lucky to be able to travel like this, but you need to be fit. The budget hotel we stayed in last night is a bunch of converted row houses, all joined together into a honeycomb of tiny rooms. Our room was on the third floor, and the staircase was the only way up. Carrying 50LB suitcases up three flights of stairs is not for the road weary traveler, or folks with knee issues. The shower was the scene of much hilarity as I once again tried to literally SQUEEZE my body into and out of it. The toilet was in close proximity. Imagine a shower located in a hallway closet and include a toilet and you will be close. When going to the toilet there was no way of avoiding bashing your head against the shower door when standing up if shower door was left closed. I kick myself for not taking a camera in there to document it for mankind.
UPDATE: Brussels
One frightening event took place when we arrived in Brussels train station. We were coming down an escelator, there was an old man in front of us who was confused and off balance, and about 400 passengers behind us. When he got on the escelator he wobbled slightly, but got himself to stand straight, but when he reached the bottom of the escelator he went down right at the very bottom and we all started to pile on top of him. We were trying to hit the emergency stop button, there was a red light that looked like a "stomp" button with a big minus sign, but the actual button was under the very front of the escelator, and a tiny red button it was. People were yelling he hit the stop button, to no avail. So I did the only thing that made sense and dragged my bag out of there, set it to one side and grabbed the old man's arm and dragged him away. I think a few seconds later, we could have had a very tragic crushing event on our hands. We got the old man settled in a chair. He was very shaken and had urinated his trousers. I think he was terrified.
After this we went to find our connecting train to Brugge. And here we are enjoying a nice photo before the heavens opened and started raining on us.
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