Other Transport of 2008
Thursday, 25 December 2008I’m running through my travel lists for 2008, we started with 10 interesting hotels, moved on to my best music experiences and then the views out the window from my favourite flights. Next it was cars & drives and then museums, galleries & exhibitions followed by photographs and books. During 2008 I flew places and drove places, but also used lots of other forms of transport – walking, cycling and travelling by boat, bus and train. Here are 10 interesting trips:
St Pierre to Miquelon by Zodiac
1. February – The Alishan Forest Train – I did a circuit of Taiwan and my island travels included the Forest Train down from the mountain town of Alishan.
2. March – Haiti by tap-tap – I visited the Caribbean island of Haiti and my travels included some crowded tap-tap rides.
3. May – The Orient Express – Is there a more romantic train trip than the London-Paris-Venice Orient Express?
4. May – Walking in Italy – Maureen and I joined some friends to walk through Tuscany and Umbria, starting in Pitigliano and concluding in Orvieto.
5. September – Zodiac from St Pierre to Miquelon – I visited this tiny French colony off the coast of Newfoundland and bounced across the narrow strait separating the two islands in an inflatable Zodiac.
6. September – Travelling the Solar System – The Planet Wheeler foundation helped to put together a one to one billion scale model of the Solar System along the Melbourne bayside. Start from the Sun in St Kilda and it’s over 6km all the way to Pluto the other side of Port Melbourne.
7. October – Moscow Subway – I spent a few days in Moscow before I went to Kazakhstan to see a ‘space tourist’ go into orbit and made a tour of some of the cities finest subway stations. Many of them are real works of art.
8. October – A scooter trip up a volcano – I scootered up Mt Batur in Bali, with writer Brian Thacker who is exploring South-East Asia using the 1975 edition of South-East Asia on a Shoestring.
9. October-November – Great Barrier Reef – We travelled Cairns-Brisbane on a cruise ship listening to Opera (Maureen’s a big opera fan) and then a few days lazing back on luxurious Bedarra Island. One day we took a kayak and paddled a circuit of the island. Here’s the view:
10. Right Now – Bicycling Melbourne – I’ll be riding a stage of the Tour d’Afrique in 2009 so I’m getting in shape by riding the rivers and creeks of my home town, Melbourne..
