The last week of my Grand Tour was a bit of a whirlwind.  From Germany to Cornwall and back with one missed train and one missed plane to add excitement to the adventure.  Those of you that know me well know that I am a worrier and a planner.  I worry about everything, often about things I can’t control.  One of my personal goals for this trip was to worry less – to let things happen as they happen and not to stress about them.  Well, I think I was successful, rather, too successful.  I somehow became so complacent about travelling and scheduling that I really believed two hours would be enough time to get from Stansted airport, across the city and onto my train to Cornwall.  When I missed that train I blamed it on the holdups at customs and decided not to worry about rebooking my train back to London, which would arrive at Paddington station two hours before my flight to Munich.  So not only did I miscalculate the first time, I was convinced that I would be successful the second time, doing basically the same thing.  I was wrong and I hope I have learned after not just two but three missed bookings in one week (I missed my train from Paris to Munich the week before) that a bit of worrying is a good thing.  And showing up to the airport or train station well before my departure time is not an uptight thing to do.

Merchant Navy ship at the Falmouth docks.

Day 77 – A quiet day in Falmouth (click here for more photos of Day 77)

Today was a very quiet and relaxing day.  Dan and I headed into town in the morning to have Cornish pasties for breakfast but the pasty shops weren’t open yet!  We did find somewhere not far away to have a full Cornish breakfast though – an egg, toast, (British) bacon, sausage, white pudding, grilled tomatoes, grilled mushrooms, beans and toast.  It was huge, but tasty.  I spent the rest of the day writing.  Though somehow I accidentally skipped lunch, so by the time Dan was finish up at the university and back in town I was starving!  Luckily he was hungry too so we gorged ourselves on nachos and stilton chips (french fries).

A seagull on the shores of Falmouth.

Day 78 – Return to the Eden Project (click here for more photos of Day 78)

One of the biomes at the Eden Project.

I loved my first visit to the Eden Project at the beginning of my trip.  It was peaceful and beautiful.  But we only made it to the rainforest biome so I wanted to return and visit the second biome dedicated to the Mediterranean.  I caught the train from Falmouth to Truro, transferred to another train that took me to St. Austell and from there I planned to either bike or take the bus to the Eden Project.  It was a stormy day with off and on rain so I decided against renting a bike but when I checked the bus times I was shocked to find out it would be nearly 1.5 hours before the next bus departed.  Luckily a couple of others were looking to get out there as well so we split a cab.

Flowers in the Mediterranean biome.

I could tell this would be a different experience from my first visit as soon as the cab pulled up near the entry – it was busy!  There was a crazy long lineup for tickets.  Luckily I had got a year membership (same price as a single visit!) when Dan and I visited the first time so I got to jump the queue.  It wasn’t any quieter inside.  I think maybe all the lineups and craziness of Paris had put me off crowds entirely.  That’s one of the reasons I decided to return to Cornwall, it’s so much quieter than many places.  However the Eden Project is very successful and very busy.  There were kids and parents everywhere!  I beelined for the Mediterranean biome and tried to not go through it at light speed.  I just wasn’t interested in staying long, so after my quick look through the biome I headed up the walking path to the exit.  My favourite part of the whole visit was watching the bees in the lavender.  They were very busy and very happy.

Bees in the lavender.

Back in Falmouth I met up with Dan and we headed to Gyllyngvase Beach for some sea swimming.  This is something Dan does at least once a week, and though I thought it was a bit mad at first I found that I really enjoy being in the ocean.  It’s… brisk and invigorating.  Yes, it’s cold.  The water in Cornwall doesn’t get particularly warm during the summer but it is enjoyable nonetheless.  We paddled around for a bit (I’m not entirely confident at my ability to swim very far from the shore) and then headed in for some barbeque from Gylly’s Cafe on the beach – yum!

Day 79 – Jousting at Pendennis Castle (click here for more photos of Day 79)

So how do you get children (or adults who are kids at heart) to visit a national monument castle during their summer break?  Host a jousting tournament!  Pendennis Castle is on the headland protecting Falmouth from the waters of the English Channel.  Henry VIII built it to defend England from the Spaniards and though it has been manned for most of its history it’s really never seen much action.  That is unless a joust is on!  There was four knights in the tournament riding horses that normally are ridden for polo.  There were squires and fools and falcons.  I think Dan and I may have been the only people there without children but I’m so glad we went, the day was a blast.

Sir Matthew and Sir Francis battling during the melee.

English Heritage has the jousting days well planned out.  They start with a bit of music and foolery and then the knights are introduced and each one runs the skills course.  The announcer lets us know that we should choose our favourite knight and buy flags to cheer them on.  At £2.50 it isn’t a hardship and it really is fun to have a favourite.  Our choices were Sir Matthew of the North in red, Sir Thomas of the South in blue, Sir Timothy of the East (also known as Mr. Blobby to the greens) in yellow, and Sir Francis of the South in green.  Sir Francis however is from Burgundy in France, and is clearly the knight to detest if you’re English.  However, he also had the best squire – a man with an amazing beard and a will to mock the other knights incessantly.  Dan and I chose Sir Francis just because he and his squire were the most fun.

Sir Francis' squire - with a most impressive beard!

After the skills competition (Sir Francis was robbed of points – the judge was biased!) there was a falconry display with two different falcons and a hawk.  The birds were all really amazing to watch.  They’re so fast and accurate.  Next up was the melee, where the knights would try to knock a small statue off of each others helmets using a club.  They did three rounds but yet again Sir Francis was robbed!  He had a victory taken from him and awarded to the second place Sir Matthew in the first round.  In the second the other three knights all ganged up on him to knock him out first, in retribution he threw off his helmet and chased all three of the other knights knocking their statues off – and getting himself disqualified from the final round.  Rats!

A goshawk, part of the falconry display.

One more display of falconry was presented before the joust however Dan and I chose to go get a good viewing spot right beside the centre of the lists (jousting arena), closest to where the knights would meet with their lances.  The competition started with a round robin competition where each knight faced each of the other three knights in a best of three lances joust.  Points were awarded and the two highest scoring knights went on to face each other in a final of three lances.  Knights received one point for hitting their opponent with the lance but not breaking it, two points for breaking their lance in the top third, and three points for breaking it further back than that.  It was really quite amazing to watch.  There was wood shattering and points awarded (and the judge cheating Sir Francis of further points).

Lances splintering during a tilt - photo by Dan.

In the end Sir Francis made it to the final facing Sir Timothy of the East.  This guys clearly all do this for fun during the summers, they know each other and obviously enjoy sparring with one another.  It is a demonstration joust but they do also really wack on each other.  We hadn’t seen much serious during the whole day but on the second to last lance green must have hit yellow just right.  I’m glad to say I think that Sir Timothy was just winded but I thought for a minute that maybe he’d broken ribs the way he was bent over and clutching his chest.  He tilted the final lance though, even without being able to breathe yet, and it was a pretty courageous.  He did lose though to Sir Francis of the West and those of us with green flags cheered loudly!  What a fun day!

Sir Francis after his win.

The evening was pretty quite compared to our day of jousting.  We went for another sea swim then headed into town for fish and chips from HarbourLights which we brought next door to the Front pub where we grabbed a cider to go with our huge servings of fish and chips.  Another perfect day.

Dan with our gigantic fish and chip dinner.

Day 80 – Returning to Munich (errm… that was the plan anyhow) (click here for more photos of Day 80)

I said farewell to Cornwall and hopped on the train back to London with a Cornish pasty in my bag for the road.  I mostly had lovely sunny days while visiting Cornwall but as I left the mist and rain were starting.  I got to London and headed for the underground to transfer to the train to the airport.  Unfortunately for me neither of the two trains that go directly from Paddington to Liverpool Street station were operating from Paddington that day, so I caught one underground, transferred to another and proceeded to stress a lot as the train I was on kept randomly stopping no where near any stations.  I could sense time slipping away and I was starting to be concerned about making my flight.  I finally got to the Liverpool Street station and onto a Stansted Express that was leaving only 3 minutes after I boarded.  I hoped maybe my luck was improving.

The town of Truro.

Unfortunately for me though, I got to the airport about half an hour before my plane was scheduled to depart.  I raced through security (they stopped my to swab my bag for explosives, drat!), and I raced towards my gate, only to find I had to catch a silly train to the next building.  I hopped on and hoped.  I got off and raced.  I got to the gate and there was no one there.  No one at all.  They’d already closed the flight, probably 3 minutes before I got there.  Damn.

I looked for some EasyJet personnel to tell me how to get back to the terminal so I could rebook my ticket.  I found a couple working at a gate boarding for Copenhagen and just closing the boarding.  I waited until it looked like they had a moment and then asked politely how I get back.  I should have gotten the woman’s name.  She was so lovely.  They were obviously swamped with the flights they were trying to board, so she couldn’t take me back but she called the check-in counters to get someone to help – they were reluctant, she said “Okay, I’ll bring her back with me at 9pm”.  I looked at my watch – that was three hours away!!  I looked up as she hung up the phone and she smiled, the check-in counter was sending someone over.  Her words ‘I just used a little emotional blackmail, don’t you worry, there will be someone here soon’.  She rocked.  I went and sat nearby so that I would be easy to find and then I got a bit of a show.

A young man went racing towards the closed gate for the flight to Copenhagen.  He had missed his flight just like I missed mine.  He however wasn’t polite about it – cursing and swearing at the staff, who got loud and confrontational right back.  He really didn’t seem to get it and I really thought they were going to have to call the police on him but he did eventually settle down a bit.  Not long after someone did come to bring us back to the main terminal – where my experiences with EasyJet just got better.  I was on the internet on my phone talking to Dan as he searched for alternative flights for me back to Munich.  It looked like the cheapest option would still be EasyJet but the flight would cost about £90 and leave the next night – I’m such an idiot for not giving myself enough time to cross London.  I got in the line for tickets from EasyJet as it would be easier than booking using my phone.  I got to the counter and explained the situation and he got me on a flight the next morning, from Stansted, for only £40!  He called it a ‘recovery fee’ for missing my flight!  Then he pointed me in the directions of the hotels around the airport.  I am certainly more than pleasantly surprised at how nice all of the EasyJet staff are (as long as you’re nice to them too!).

With my new ticket in hand I checked the hotel right at the airport, the Radisson.  They wanted £99 for the night plus £10 for breakfast.  I instead caught a shuttle to the Holiday Inn Express and paid £85 for my room – breakfast and internet included!  I had an alright dinner, caught up on emails and got a good night’s sleep.

Day 81 – Return to Munich (click for more photos of day 81)

With three missed bookings behind me I was a bit more cautious about timing this morning.  I got up before 6am, grabbed a quick breakfast and caught the 6:30am shuttle back to the terminal.  I checked in, went through security, grabbed a latte, hopped the train to the building with my gate, and nearly had a heart attack when I looked up at the board and it said my flight was in final boarding!  I raced around the corner to the gate and found that they hadn’t even started boarding.  So yes, my timing was much improved!  I had a short, uneventful flight back to Munich.

It was a quiet afternoon in Munich.  I worked on packing a little bit and then went with Tony to his friend Pete’s place for Pete’s birthday barbeque (you host your own birthday parties in Europe, instead of throwing them for each other).  Once the barbeques were going (good work ladies) we had a nice meal and a few beers.  From there we went to a nearby pub for some more drinks, including a 5L caipirinha for the birthday boy which he shared.  It was a fun night, chatting with people from Germany, France, Ireland, the USA and more.

Birthday boy Pete with his zombie caipirinha.

Day 82 – Recovery (no photos)

I wound up staying up very late (early…) on Saturday night and spent the rest of my day having a ‘How I Met Your Mother’ marathon.  Yup, many episodes of the show were watched and I vegged the whole day.

Day 83 – ‘I think it’s time to go home’ (no photos)

I had a few things that I thought about doing in Munich.  Maybe a bike tour… Maybe visit some parks…  Instead, I watched the remaining episodes of ‘How I Met Your Mother’.  Motivation to move was very low, so I didn’t.  I took this as a sign that my flight back to Vancouver on Wednesday was pretty much perfectly timed.

Day 84 – Munich’s Olympiapark! (click here for more photos of Day 84)

I was not feeling particularly inspired to travel and tour this day either, but as it was my last day in Europe I felt a need to make a special effort.  And I am so glad that I did!  Munich’s Olympiapark is the perfect example of the sorts of legacies that the Olympics can leave behind – things that benefit the city and the region for years to come.

Olympiapark from the Olympiaturm, or tower.

Before World War II the area that is now Olympic Park was Munich’s airport.  After the war the airport and 2/3rds of Munich was destroyed.  Rubble from the destroyed buildings of Munich was brought to the former airport lands and piled into hills – creating really the only hills in Munich.  After that the land sat empty.  In 1965 some folks decided to apply for the Olympics as Munich had this large piece of unused land.  They put in a short video to the International Olympic Committee saying just that.  They were up against Detroit, Montreal and Madrid – cities that had facilities to offer that Munich did not.  My guides described it as a surprise win, and with only 6 years to go until the 1972 Summer Olympics Munich had a lot of work to do.  A competition was held to design the stadium for the Games.  The man that won, Günther Behnisch of Stuttgart, had more than just a design for the stadium, he had a design for the whole Games.

Two thirds of this hill is rubble from the buildings destroyed during WWII - now it's a beautiful park.

The 1972 Olympics were to be 1) Green – the Olympiapark and the Games all looked green – green seats, green grass, state of the art technology such as the runoff from rain on the stadium roof is fed into the pond in the lake. 2) Close – the Games were to be held in as small of area as possible with as little travel as possible.  Olympiapark hosted 80% of the events plus the Olympic Village.  3) Democratic – this was partly done to demonstrate how the Germany of 1972 differed from 1936, when Berlin hosted the Olympics under Hitler’s regime.  There were almost no fences.  There was no security.  Unfortunately this part backfired terribly when the Israeli team was taken hostage by the terrorist group Black September during the Games in what is now known as the Munich Massacre.  The whole Israeli team was killed, 11 people, as well as one police officer and five of the eight kidnappers.

Waldi - the first named Olympic Mascot. He's a very cute little dachshund.

Olympiapark has some fascinating features such as the world’s largest tent-roof.  The tent roof stretches over a large part of the stadium (Olympiastadion), a multi-purpose hall (Olympiahalle), and the swimming pool (schwimmhalle).  It has all the pieces that any tent would have – poles, ropes, fabric, and pegs.  And, like most tents, if a peg or a pole fails it will effect the whole structure.  It is constructed of a steel net holding Plexiglass sheets in place, forming the fabric of the roof.  As the roof structure is very complicated, and computers in the 1960′s and 70′s aren’t quite like we have today they did dozens of tests on the materials to make sure they would be strong enough to hold, even in adverse conditions.  Everything flexes – the steel cables, the Plexiglass sheets, and even the pylons which are set on hinges – 2 cm of movement at the bottom gives more than a metre of distance at the top.  Safety was also a concern.  If a fire occurred the tent roof would trap the heat, potentially cooking anyone under it.  The solution was to create ‘memory’ in the Plexiglass.  They started with 2x2m sheets of Plexi, heated them to a specific temperature and then stretched them to 3x3m sheets.  The result is that if the sheets get heated to that temperature again, they will shrink to their original size, allowing the heat to escape through the roof!

Under the tent roof over Olympiastadion.

I toured the stadium in the morning.  I went to the top of the Olympiaturm, a 291m tower overlooking all of Munich.  And the most fun of all was a roof walk on Olympiastadion, right up on the tent roof.  It is a very cool thing to do, they even let you climb up one of the peaks, and the amount of flex and bounce in the roof is quite incredible.  The only thing I’m sad about is that I didn’t ask about tickets for their ‘Flying Fox’ – a zip line across the stadium.  Ah well, I’ll be back to Munich soon I’m sure so I’ll go then and bring my brother along!

On the roof tour.

After a day of Olympic-ing at Olympiapark I headed back towards town where I met up with my friend Sara and she brought me for poutine at M Poutinerie.  The owner, Jochen, was born in Canada, lived all over the world, went to university in Canada and now lives in Munich.  He has opened a poutine shop there where he makes quite possibly the world’s best poutine (and yes, sadly for us Canadians is way over in Munich where it’s hard for us to get any!).  He makes his own gravies.  He makes killer crispy fries.  And he’s got a supplier for the squeakiest of squeaky cheese curds.  I snarfed mine, it was way too good.  I can’t wait until he starts opening shops in Canada (Vancouver first please!!).

Me and Jochen with other customers at M Poutinerie.

After stuffing ourselves on poutine we caught the U-Bahn to the centre of Munich where we strolled around and did a little shopping while waiting for my brother to get back from work.  Eventually we met up with him and went for Indian food for dinner.  The food is always good at Ganesha and it seems like there is always a show.  Last time I was there a group of guerrilla gardeners planted a wee garden in a plot right beside our table.  This time the driver of a car wasn’t paying attention and wound up slamming on his breaks and crunching into a small post just across the road from us.  It seemed like a long drawn out process as the occupants of the vehicle tried to decide what to do about it, they still hadn’t done anything by the time we left to find some gelato.

Day 85 – Back to Vancouver (click here for photos of day 85)

After 85 days of travelling through England, France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland it was time for me to go home.  My brother drove me out to the airport nice and early in the morning so that I wouldn’t miss my flight.  We checked in my bags and went for breakfast.  Tony asserts that the Munich airport is one of the best in the world and as far as I saw he’s right, and I didn’t even go into the fancy, new Lufthansa terminal.  Around 9am it was time to say goodbye, but I know I’ll see him soon.  Thanks Tony, for everything!

The flights home on Air Berlin weren’t too exciting, which is really a good thing.  My first flight was from Munich to Dusseldorf and then I had a direct flight from Dusseldorf to Vancouver.  I met some lovely people from Vernon and White Rock and spent most of the flight awake in anticipation of getting home.  I landed in Vancouver, happy to be home, and tempted to be lazy and take a cab to my parents apartment downtown, but I was good and got on the Canada Line, which really was as easy as I had remembered it being.

Saying goodbye to Germany.

Home – land of ocean and mountains, sushi and crispy bacon, Seawall and salty air, bridges and boats.  I love Vancouver.

And I loved my Grand Tour of Europe.  I’ve been asked a lot of questions already about my trip – What was the best thing you did or saw?  What lessons did you learn?  Where would you go back to?  Where wouldn’t you go back to?  Since it’s taken me this long to get my final travelling post done I’m going to save those answers for another post in the next couple of days, but they won’t be easy questions to answer.  Until then, I’m just going to soak up being in Vancouver and being in Canada.