The cafè uses an Indian coffe from Classic Coffee and Spices NZ Ltd which is a little unusual. There is a cool lttle story in the About Us section in their website

Anyway check them out at  18A Fort Street in Aucklands CBD

Happy travels

II Things To pack When Travelling In Europe

13 Bizzare Things to Pack When You Travel

Auckland Café of the Week.

Thanks to twitter this morning I came across this really cool web site with some seriously cool stuff called cool things in random places. Anyway after wasting about 1/2 an hour my favourites were the Door to Hell in Turkmenistan and the Temple of Rats which is just a lttle bit creepy and unnerving seeing that many rats running around.

Photo Credit: roblerner 

Talking about random things and thoughts.  I wonder if The New Zealand Government had taken a look at world’s most bike  friendly cities in the world before they came up with the recession busting National Cycle Way. Hal Amen could give them a clue in what to look for in his post The 15 most bike friendly cities in the world. I still wonder who came up with the idea and if it is really going to happen or it was a big publicity stunt? 

It’s a really cool idea if it does go ahead, But my main question is a really simple one. All that money spent and jobs created, fine. But at the end of the day who is going to use it? So those with a bike. Book your flights and get those lycra clad legs over here right now.

Well I Have been home in New Zealand now for nearly 2 months and finally I have found the perfect coffee. It is one thing that I have really been missing since leaving Italy in March.So thanks to the guys at Café Paris in Howick, Auckland. You have shown me the light. In fact their coffee is so good I snuck out today to have a cappuccino this afternoon. It  is even better than the Italian shop off Ti Rakau Drive, and that serves Lavazza!

Stong Coffee mmmm

Forget all the usual kiwi stuff in cafés, the savoury scones, the panini with 6 different fillings, the ginger slices etc. Simply, what’s wrong with ciabatta with some nice prosciutto crudo, parmesan and rocket? Three simple flavours that are absolutely awesome together. And what’s wrong with a brioche or a custard filled croissant? 

It is though the cafés in New Zealand are trying to copy each other and the original was a throwback to someones overseas trip to Sydney in the early eighties. Come on guys at least have a look overseas to what the Italians and French actually serve in their cafés with their coffee. 

There seems to be an absolute plethora of coffee shops in Auckland and everyone seems to think it is really cool to hangout in them, which is fine until you actually realise that the majority of the coffee is absolutely crap and the price of everything on sale is absolutely ridiculous!

So I am now on a mission to see if anyone can actually beat Café Paris. I’m starting in Auckland and then the rest of New Zealand. Every week from now on I will be reporting on my mission to find the best and worst cafés that our society has.

It’s 9.27 in the morning and I have just been looking through some of my favourite travel blogs. It sort of got me thinking about how many people this very moment are sitting in front of there PCs at work or home surfing the newt and dreaming of being somewhere they currently ain’t?

I Wonder How Many People Are Dreaming of Travel?

Me, I’m one of the lucky ones who gets to look at cool travel websites for research purposes. If I am not careful though I can easily lapse into total dreaming mode at the drop of a hat. The usual stuff  like, how cool would it be to do that, I wonder how hard that life style would be and the usual one I wonder about is, if a person in an image has any idea that a photo of them has been spread around the world via the Internet?

It’s usually pretty weird though because I never dream of travel at night I can quite happily do so during the day. It dosen’t help that I have twitter and I follow such people as Indie Postcasts Craig Martin and the award winning Soul Travelers.

Yesterday I came across another blog that may be of interest to those twitterholics who also travel. Check out Vagabond Traveller Rolph Potts post on Should I Twitter from the Road? It’s quite thought provoking.

If the world is anything like me there will be millions of you sitting there sitting at a screen dreaming and hatching new travel plans. Good on you. Carry On. Just don’t let the boss catch you!

As in Lucy Cornes article Six Guilty Travel Pleasures all of a sudden you become the hardest of all hard core travelers. The booze fuels your brain so much you forget that occasionally you sneak in the odd Mickey D’s simply because it is so easy to do and it can be comfort food for some. Lucy’s article got me thinking quite a lot, as in a blog a few days ago I may of came across as being quite arrogant for suggesting that always eating what the locals were eating could have been the only way to travel and experience local cultures. For this I apologize.

In fact as Lucy suggests everyone has guilty travel pleasures. Indeed one of mine is to read English newspapers without buying them from the news stand. I have even been chased off a few times by angry vendors. I suppose before the advent of the internet newspapers were the best link to home for a lonely traveler.

Loneliness for a traveler is an interesting subject as one of the primary drivers for new travelers is to meet new people and experience the locals. However the most common feeling that travelers experience is one of loneliness and hence new travelers tend to gravitate to likeminded people with similar interests and start to negate the second driver; meeting and experiencing the locals.

I think that this is where the wanting to be seen as hardcore takes place in that the fact hanging out with likeminded people may just be a little bit contradictory to your reasons for traveling in the first place. And the natural reaction is to boast that stuff you have done independently while conveniently forgetting the stuff you have done out of loneliness and comfort.

But don’t worry. It is perfectly ok to hang out with likeminded people, eat comfort foods from home or even travel with your mother. After all travel, like wine, is an individual experience and what is good for you is not necessarily right for the next person and vice versa. Go for it.

Times have changes somewhat in the last few years and there are now concerted campaigns to have the meaning of the word hostel changed from:

hos⋅tel

    [hos-tl]  Show IPA noun, verb -teled, -tel⋅ing or(especially British) -telled, -tel⋅ling.

–noun

–verb (used without object)

 What is a hostel?

To a definition more in line with the modern usage of the word.  I mean to say technically they are inexpensive places for young people, but I definitely would not say that they are a supervised place for young people on bicycle trips etc.

Colm Hanratty from Hostelworld.com has just produced an excellent video 10 Things that you didn’t know about a hostel which shows off some of the new developments in hostels over the past few years.

New hostels are built to a very high standard. Definitely more than place to rest your weary head at night. Hostels these days include, restaurants, bars, swimming pools, privates, wi fi  and Internet as well as travel desks.   The days of cleaning rosters, curfews and lockouts thank god are long gone.

Most new hostels are a result of travelers returning from their travels wanting to open a hostel because they have experienced something quite unique in the world of travel; the fellowship of independent travel. More than likely the hostel has been the catalyst in creating new friendships, experiencing new adventures, discovering new cultures, more than a few hangovers, kids and not to mention lifelong partners.

The standards for hostels have risen hugely. Many hostels including the big chains place huge importance on booking reviews left by customers on booking portals. All though the ratings are subjective due to the customers personal mindset at the time of stay, they are generally a very good reflection of the type of stay a customer might expect. The only thing from the ratings that is missing is the ability to rate the value for money that a hostel offers. A pity.

On a different matter altogether. Over the last few years I have had the chance to listen and participate in a few backpacker discussion groups and a major thing to come out of them is that travelers don’t trust individual hostels websites when making a buying decision. They trust the booking portals themselves not actually realizing that the content that they are reading is actually written by the hostels themselves. I wonder what would happen if they did know this? Would they instead book though a hostels own website instead?  Let me know.

Do not eat Mc Donalds when you’re traveling, local stuff is heaps better.

 Italian Markets- Photo Credit DandelionEmpire

The reason that I ask is that last Thursday Katy and I were in Florence and has one of the best food experiences that I have ever had in Italy. We were i9n a hurry to battle with the Italian government’s immigration service to finalise our paper work before leaving. We had limited time and also needed to feed the angel/devil child.

Now we could have gone to visit the clown’s house which would have been easy, simple and you would guess cheap. Sure the nutritional value wouldn’t have been up to much and just the remembrance of Jamie Oliver showing what is in Chicken Mc Bollocks in Jamie’s School Dinners is enough twist the stomach somewhat.

We could have grabbed a hotdog or Panini from the hotdog stand, but that’s a little extreme price wise and unlike New York Stands I am not sure how long the old frankfurters have been spinning round the grill. 

So we chose the 2nd option to eat where the locals eat.  As the San Lorenzo market was on the way  we decided to drop in for a quick bite.  Now, when you can get 3 rolls of bread with freshly roasted pork with herbs (porchetta) as the filling, one bottle of water and 2 glasses of the local wine all for the price of 1 ½ Big Mac menus (without going large) it gets you wondering why Mc Donalds even bother to show up in Italy.

Local Italians hardly ever visit the clown. In some places The clown has opened up a restaurant and 3 months later has had to shut down. Why? Because Italians know good healthy food and value when they see it.  The only reason that he survives in Italy is that the place is such a tourist mecca there are always those with fanny packs and loud whiney voices who don’t know a carrot from a tomato prepared to stump up their hard earned cash for a fix of home.

Advice:

Always look for where the locals eat, especially when there are queues. It usually means that the food is good, healthy and almost certainly good value for money.

Train travel in Europe does not have to be difficult, in fact with a little patience it is really quite easy. I spent around 3 years travelling by train in Europe as professional backpacker. If your travelling around Europe on vacation trains are definitely the way to go. Not only they are faster than buses, they offer better scenery and are more environmentally friendly per passenger than most buses and aircraft.

11 Things You Should Know About Train Travel in Europe

1/ The scenery is amazing

Traveling by train offers scenery that is simply for the most part unattainable when traveling by bus or commercial airline. (I have to qualify this by saying the alps are pretty spectacular of a fine winters day in a plane ) But generally air travel is often above the cloud base and buses tend to drive down motorways and freeways all day. How can you beat the spectacular scenery offered by train?

2/ Trains are more environmentally friendly than other transport options

With the exception of the bicycle or perhaps a horse Trains beat other options hands down. Independent research shows that Co2 levels reached on a Eurostar reach 11 kilograms of CO2 while taking the same trip on a plane generates a huge 122 kilograms per passenger.

3/ Trains get you right into the centre of cities quicker than buses or planes.

Most trains take you right into the centre of a city meaning that you avoid those horrific summertime traffic jams especially in Italy where you can be stuck for hours in 30°c plus temperatures.

4/Point to Point Rail travel in Southern Europe is significantly cheaper than buying a rail pass

Buying a local ticket especially for short journeys is a lot cheaper than using your Eurail Pass. Save your Eurail pass for some of those longer trips in Northern Europe or Overnight Trains.

5/By taking local trains you get to mix with the locals

One of the advantages of train travel over other forms of transport is that you get to mix with the locals enabling a cultural experience and exchange. Bus travel tends to be cramped and you can not walk round and talk to others than those sitting in your immediately vicinity.

6/ Don’t put your feet on the seats!

Common sense really. But it’s really easy to do especially after a hard night out. I had an experience once when a guy was travelling with did just that before leaving  Budapest. Before you could say God put your shoes back on! We were surrounded by a combination of Train Conductors and armed police. The funny thing was that the police opened the door and reeled backwards in disgust. (his shoes did smell very very bad). A discussion then took place and the conductor began gesticulating wildly for my friend to only only take his shoes off but to take his feet off the seats. About 20minutes after departure the conductor came back and gave him the mother of all telling offs for having his feet on the seat again this time with shoes on. Some people just never learn.

Get Your Feet Off The Seat!!

7/Don’t try and fare dodge between Nice and Monaco

With the lack of ticket barriers throughout Europe it is very easy to take the proverbial p… and try to dodge fares. Warning there is the equivalent of a speed camera on the local train between Nice and Monaco in the form of being ambushed by a team of ticket inspectors from either end of your carriage. They will catch you even if the journey is only 20 minutes long. I got caught here as I was trying to save my group money once and ended up paying  a €90 fine plus the cost of 15 tickets for my group total €135 ouch.

8/ Train Timetables

Train timetables are really easy to workout. Throughout train stations in Europe are posted Departure and Arrival times for Trains. It is fortunately easy to tell them apart despite them being in different languages. The Departure Time tables are always printed on yellow paper while the arrivals are on white paper. Simply look at the time you may want to leave and find the destination that you want by trolling through the stations. The platforms that the trains are leaving from are usually printed as well. However.

9/ Be alert for platform changes.

In Italy,especially as I may say to be so bold Florence Train station has an unofficial game of platform roulette going on. I am sure that somewhere in the train station sits an office where a guy is glued to his train porn channel on the cctv and when a platform is full he pushes a little red button and the train platforms randomly change and when everyone finds their new platform he pushes it again. Bastard!

10/ Taking Overnight Trains are a false economy

“But what about saving on accommodation?” I can hear you say. Well you may save €20 if you are staying in a hostel. A possible saving of €20 that results  in a sleep deprived night you can have it. Honestly the picture of arriving at a destination feeling like a box of fluffy ducks needs to be left in front of the TV along with the airline advertisement you have just watched. Not only that you all in probability feel like crap all day, you won’t be able to check into your accommodation for the next night because there will be no free beds at the time over night trains usually arrive. So if you must do it . Do it for the reason to save time not money: Oh yeah and by the way, the scenery is usually pretty black at night as well.

11/ Changing trains in Paris is a pain in the A…

Changing trains in Paris can be your worse nightmare and then some. The main Eurostar station in Paris is Gare du Nord however is you want to change trains it is a mission to get to other train stations because they are all on different branches of the Paris Metro and you have to work out which one you need, buy the tickets and then take the metro to the actual station. A word of advice don’t try to do it. Have break in Paris instead. The food is wicked

Bonus Tip

Beware of Train strikes!  Train Strikes in France and Italy are completely random and could happen at any time. Although many think the staff are always on strike this is not usually case. Both just appear to like random mental health days off.  Plan your trip so you that you have time left at the end of your journey before flying home. trust me it will save you a lot of stress and anguish.

Train Fact:

High Speed trains are really fast (although not in the UK or Eastern Europe)

OK, here’s my only foray into trainspotting . The world record for a high speed train belongs to the TGV in France where on April 3 2007  a specially modified train reached a speed of 357mph. Mind you it had no passengers on board so the record is a little iffy. The average speed for a high speed train is about 1/2 again at 186mph. There are nearly 7000km of high speed rail tracks in Europe and that length grows around 350km per year. Enough!!