Tag: COVID
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ALONE IN HOTEL QUARANTINE
As Padma, Joseph and I hit the tarmac at the Perth International Airport on Tuesday night we knew our real adventure was only about to begin. The dreaded forced hotel quarantine awaited us. We had read online of so many experiences of Aussies in quarantine; so many folks just couldn’t cope with being locked up for 14 days. We had no idea how we’d manage but we had one overriding rule: keep a positive attitude, no matter what. Our first contact with an Australian was with an attendant who handed us…
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ALL BY OURSELVES.
I finally got that long-awaited gin and tonic. Or rather three gin and tonics. The Qatar Airways flight attendant keep bringing them to me. Maybe he sensed the cloud of stress above me, the mild stench of anxiety surrounding me or the furrows of worry on my face. With each G&T all of those emotions were replaced with just one: relief. We are on our way home to Australia. After three months of living in limbo with the constant fear of not getting home as the Australian Government played with our…
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ON THE TRAIL OF MARTIN LUTHER
Padma and I look at a different kind of map these days when planning our travel destinations. Instead of maps with tourist attractions we look at the map showing the incidence of COVID. And after studying the map we could tell that the former East German states of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt had very low rates of COVID infections. So we packed the car and embarked on a roadtrip. But we did have a mission in mind. We wanted to explore the old stomping grounds of arguably the most famous German –…
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STRANDED!
Padma, Joseph and I have something in common with 19,000 … or 100,000 depending on who is counting … Aussies. We can’t get home. Yet there are plenty of airlines eager to fly us to Australia and no shortage of hotels who will quarantine us and who are desperate to fill empty rooms. In July, the Australian Government capped the number of incoming passengers to 4,000 a week. Out of that pool, Western Australia can receive 575 a week and the airline we booked on, Qatar Airlines, can only take 30…
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NEGATIV
‘Are we being responsible?’ Padma asked me on the first day of our journey through France and Spain. I thought for a long time and tried to spin it so that I could justify our travels during a global pandemic. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Responsible people would stay home.’ But like tens of thousands of other Europeans we were on the road for summer holidays. Non-essential travel. But does a global pandemic really mean we can’t have some vestiges of our former lives? Before leaving we consulted many friends who strongly encouraged…
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ANOTHER CHATEAU
There are about 1000 chateaux in France’s Loire Valley. Padma and I saw one and a half. That’s enough. Been there. Done that. We started our drive through the Loire with a stop at Amboise and really enjoyed walking through the chateau and the gardens and courtyards. Then we travelled south to the River Cher to Château de Chenonceau, which is labelled as ‘if you only visit one chateau, then visit Chenonceau’. We paid our 15 euros to get in but, give our fear of COVID, just couldn’t muster the courage…
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