Europe 2017 – day 00

And so we’re off!

This trip has been over 15 months in the planning…. which is kind of a loose description, as a lot of this holiday is going to be booked on the fly.

With the exception of our first night in Geneva, our couple of nights in Paris, and our couple of nights in London, none of our accommodation is booked yet. We’re winging it!

Today saw us do the long hop (14 hours 55 minutes) from Sydney to Doha (the capital of Qatar, in the UAE).

We landed to find that it was 37 degrees C at 06:00! Oh joy. With a 9 hour wait for our connection to Geneva, we decided to catch a bus into the city and check out the souk (a traditional market). To do this, I had to exchange some currency to Qatari Riyals, which I did at one of the currency converters at the airport.

What we hadn’t prepared for though, was the fact that it was Ramadan, and this is a Muslim country. This meant almost nothing was open, and the consumption of food or drink between sun up and sun down was strictly forbidden. How they survive all day in this heat without fluids is beyond me!

After an exhausting walk around an almost deserted city centre, we hopped on the bus and headed back out to the airport. It was as we were approaching the security check that it occurred to me that I was no longer in possession of my passport. A quick mental recap of my movements for the day reminded me that I had had to produce it at the currency converter, and I was certain I hadn’t received it back at the end of the transaction. I went back to the counter, told me story and was advised that I would have to go and check with the Lost and Found desk. Sure enough, my passport was there! Phew. I could think of nothing worse than being stuck somewhere like Qatar without my passport!

I grabbed a couple of images around the airport, just as proof of our having passed through, and then it was on our connecting flight to Geneva.

When we landed in Geneva at 20:30 though, it occurred to us that we had no internet connection and no phone. A kindly stranger was happy to let me borrow his phone briefly to ring the car lease company representative so that we could arrange a location for a rendezvous.

With the car picked up, we headed off to our hotel and fell into bed at 23:00, exhausted. Tomorrow, the adventure would begin in earnest.

Take me to day 01