The Incomparable James Hannan

Last week, I had to travel to Paris for business. Sounds great in theory, but let me tell you, it was one jam packed trip…

We were flying out on a Friday afternoon from Sydney. We chose to fly Virgin Atlantic in to London - the fare was cheap and the offering looked excellent. We boarded on time and took off on schedule. The first leg was Sydney - Hong Kong. An easy leg to start off with. Virgin Atlantic was excellent - would definately fly them to London again any time. We arrive in Hong Kong about 10pm, and by the time we got back to the hotel, it was almost midnight. We went for a walk around Hong Kong, found a little noodle place and had a nice dinner and a beer. Back to the hotel and in bed by 2am. Woke up the next morning, went and had an Orange Juice at the Penninsula Hotel - which was nice, and then straight to the airport for our Hong Kong - London leg. Plane left Saturday afternoon Hong Kong time, and due to some heavy head winds, got us in later (14.5 hr flight time) than expected to London. In the end, we arrived in London about 8:30pm Saturday night.

I had a dinner planned with some friends in London, so went back to the hotel (a little hung over from the on board bar in plane) and had a shower, then went and met my friends at Wild Honey in London - a great restaurant that I would pass on to anyone… Details are;

12 St George Street, London, W1S 2FB - View on a map
Telephone: 08717032787

Dinner was great, was good to catch up with some friends, but I was jet lagged, it was 1 am, and I needed to sleep before tomorrows commute. 6 hours later, I woke up and raced to catch the Eurostar to Paris - a 9am train that got us into paris around Midday. Train was excellent - beats a plane any day of the week. We arrived more or less on time and grabbed a cab to our hotel.

Dinner with Amber and Katie

The hotel we were staying at, while reasonably priced, was rated #2 on tripadvisor. We arrived and the staff were excellent - free wifi, big rooms, great location - very pleased indeed - details are below.

Hotel Elysees Regencia
41, avenue Marceau
75016 Paris, France
+33 1 47 20 42 65

We had the afternoon to ourselves before we started work the next day - so we went for a walk around Paris. This proved to be the only time we would have to oursleves!

Me in Paris

The next day, we started work near Gard du Nord station - long day but productive. Our schedule over the next 5 days was the same;

Mon-Fri, 8am bus to office, work till 8pm, bus back to hotel. Quick dinner near hotel, then Sydney work over email until early hours of morning. Sleep. Do it all over again.

Friday night came, we went and had a nice dinner (I will write about the restaurant later), and went to sleep. Saturday morning, we woke up to catch the Eurostar back to London, then a train to Heathrow. We made our flight with 40 mins to spare, straight on to Hong Kong. We then had 6 hours in Hong Kong airport, which actually went faster than expected, then a 9 hour flight back to Sydney, landing 7am Sydney time - and I was headed straight to the office.

Wow - it was exhausting just writing about it! As you would imagine, I am now trying to kick the flu - planes always make me feel sick - all those germs circulating in the air con can’t be good!

Anyway, a successful trip and a reminder of how good Paris is in winter and how I will definately be spending several weeks there next time rather than just 1!

Well, people thought that it couldn’t be done. When I told my family and friends that we planned on driving from Melbourne to Adelaide along the Great Ocean Road in one go, and in one day, they thought I was mad. Google told us 14 hours – others who had done it told us 18-20 hours, so, we braced ourselves for the worst, and allocated a solid 18 hours to the feat.

On Thursday night we flew down to Melbourne. After many a delay, we finally arrived at Avalon airport at around 11pm. A 40 minute drive into our hotel on Collins St, and it was almost midnight before we were checked in.

Our plan was to leave at 6am on Friday morning, but with our late arrival into Melbourne we decided against it, and instead agreed to meet at 9am in the lobby. 9am came, and we packed the car. We had a Nissan Patrol, but after the drive from the airport to the hotel the night before, we decided we needed a different car. We swung by an AVIS and traded up to a Tarago. Talk about roomy – this thing was going to do us very well.

Within the first hour of the drive, Mark has asked us to stop 5 times so he could take photos. It wasn’t looking good, but we stayed confident that we could make it in the one go. Soon enough, we were making good ground, stopping at Bell’s Beach, Apollo Bay, The 12 Apostles, London Bridge and some other unbelievable pieces of coast line. At around the 12 Apostles, it started pouring down with rain, so we were now soaked. Before we knew it, we had finished the coastal part of the drive and had about 650kms to go – it was just before 6pm and at our current speed, it meant we would arrive in Adelaide at around midnight, making it a 14 hour trip.

GOR

The rest of the trip saw us drive though some beautiful country side – Coonawarra was unbelievable – Vineyards as far as the eye could see – it really was out of this world.

Night came, and around midnight, we pulled into our hotel in Glenelg, Adelaide. We were tired, but we did it. We saw everything, stopped everywhere and missed nothing, and did the drive all in 14 hours.

This drive is unbelievable, and it was a shame that it rained on us, as we missed out on many good photography opportunities, but even so, the views we saw were out of control – Everyone needs to do this drive at some point.

On our last day in Adelaide on our recent trip to SA, we wanted to try a restaurant that had been widely recommended to us. The Restaurant was ‘The Star of Greece’. We knew nothing about this restaurant, which was good because we went in with no expectations or assumptions.

Let me just say – it is very hard to get a reservation at this restaurant, so book in advance – we were very lucky to be given a table late in the day.

So, we had spent the morning in Glenelg – they had a street parade, so we walked around there for a little while, then we headed into the City – we hadn’t seen much of it and figured that is where the restaurant would be. 30 minutes until our reservation, I put the address in the GPS. They GPS came back and told me we were 50kms away and would need 45 mins to get there. I rang the restaurant to confirm, and they were indeed 50kms away.

The restaurant is located on the Fleuirio Penninsula, on a cliff overlooking this clear blue water and white sand – it is honestly like something you would see in Europe – it was extraordinary. We thought the cuisine was Greek, but when we sat down, we realised it was modern oz, with a heavy seafood focus. We asked why the restaurant had a reference to Greece in it’s name when the food was clearly Australian. The owner went on to tell us that there was ship that sunk just below the restaurant called ‘The Star of Greece’, so that is what she called the restaurant.

Star of Greece

We shared just about every starter on the menu amongst the 4 of us – all were delicious. The Squid was to die for – you have to order it, you won’t be sorry. All in all, the food and wine was great, the location and the view were fantastic, and we were having so much fun that we almost missed our plane!