the Grand Tour blog

A Great Exchange Rate?

In recent weeks I've been keeping an eye on the Euro/GBP exchange rate and trying to choose a good time to load my CaxtonFX currency card – undoubtedly the best way to carry the bulk of the Euros – and when to buy some Euro cash. The rate has been on the increase since the beginning of the year, accelerating over the last month or so due to the ongoing Eurozone crisis. 

With the press highlighting the benefits to UK travellers it seems worth looking at the rate's history; this chart is courtesy of xe.com. I've added bars to show the dates of my European trips, starting with the Grand Tour in 2008, and including my visits to Italy and Germany featured earlier in this blog. 

The rate is now 13% higher than when I bought my Euros for Germany last year, which I'm rather pleased about. However it has only just recovered to its value when I bought Euros for Italy in 2010, and is still 1.5% lower than when I set off on the Grand Tour in 2008 (the world economy crashed almost as soon as I'd left the country – I remember seeing the headlines as I walked through the station in Vienna). 

To think that in 2008 I was complaining that the rate had fallen by 15% in the previous 12 months.

€45 Buys Two Hours in Weimar

When I booked the Bonn-Weimar ticket a couple of months ago there were two or three possible special offer tickets at €39.00 – reduced from the regular €83.00 fare – plus a bargain midday train at €29.00. Guess which one I booked. And two hours around the pleasant city of Bonn would be a good start to the trip.

But since then the highlights list for Weimar seems to have grown somewhat and I needed to gain some time. The only satisfactory solution was to skip my morning in Bonn and take an earlier train. Sadly my booked train is now €49.00, the other offers are €59.00, and there's the €15.00 refund fee. 59 - 29 + 15 = 45.

But well worth it, as I'll be able to do something useful the day I arrive in Weimar and have a more relaxed time on my one full day in the city. I console myself that if I'd booked this train in the first place it would have cost €39.00, so my penalty is really only €35.00!

Rail Plan for Germany

I shall, of course, be travelling to and through Germany by train, a Grand Tour habit that's hard to break! There will be 18 rail journeys altogether, including the Eurostars at each end. I'd hoped that the journeys would be somewhat less pre-ordained on this trip, but the reality is that certain places can only be visited on certain days, and the itinerary has become busier and busier during the planning process as I discover new highlights, so that I've ended up with a preferred train for every journey.

The longer journeys (Brussels-Köln, Bonn-Weimar and Berlin-Paris) have been booked in advance, partly because I really need to be on particular trains – and in a seat – and also because it's generally a lot cheaper; Deutsche Bahn (DB) have some very good deals if booked far enough ahead (up to 92 days). I'll be buying individual tickets this time, much cheaper for my typically short journeys than the fairly expensive InterRail Pass, so I will have to pay attention to the different fares for Inter City and Regional trains (sometimes a big difference, sometimes not). I do have a ticket for the shorter Liepzig-Berlin leg as the offer was €19.00 instead of the regular €43.00 – even if I pay the €15.00 fee to transfer to a different train I shall still be winning.

I'm pleased to find that on the Eurostar on the way out I have been booked into the desirable Seat 61, inhabited from time to time by The Man in Seat 61, online source of everything to do with rail travel!

The only bad booking was Brussels-Köln with DB. I had intended to book the high-speed Thalys train direct with Thalys, for €19.00, as I am a Thalys "Ticketless Booker". But well into the booking period their site still wouldn't allow the booking. So I requested Brussels-Bonn (for my first night's stop) on the DB website, which offered €34.00 for the same Thalys train plus a change at Köln. Anxious not to miss the only suitable train I booked with DB, paying an additional €3.50 for them to mail the ticket. But when it arrived I found it only covers as far as Köln anyway, so I still have to pay for the regional train to Bonn. DB's response to my email was to insist that I was "informed about that during the process of booking". Hmm. A couple of weeks later the train became available on the Thalys website anyway. Well, nothing serious, but irritating.

All the trains, with options for where I might change my plans, are carefully noted on the Train List, which I shall carry as a PDF on the iPhone (using the excellent Files Pro app) as well as carrying a printed copy:

Enough planning already!

Updated the Highlights list with the latest bookings, plus details of Roma Pass etc., Rome bus and metro tickets, and Florence free-entry locations. Printed all modified pages, 2-up. Added the bookings and a couple of other times to the Itinerary and printed a final copy. Made sure I have backup copies of the most important stuff to bury in the bottom of the suitcase. Electronic copies of almost everything on the iPhone.

That's it: the end of planning. I've probably done too much and I certainly don't feel like doing any more!

Final bookings

Several highlights on my list must be booked in advance. First, Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper (Cenacolo Vinciano), in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. One of the world's great paintings, the 15 x 29 foot mural was completed in 1498. Despite its popularity and the restricted number of visitors, booking doesn't seem to be possible very far in advance, hence my late attempt to do so. But a week ago the website showed it fully booked to the end of June – 8:15 to 18:45, six days a week – with no further dates. Since then they've released July and August (no use to me), and most of July has already gone. In fact I called the reservation line and they did have a slot available on my day in Milan, but it was too late in the day. I may try for a cancellation or no-show when I get there.

After much thought about whether I could get to an 8:30 booking at the Uffizi gallery in Florence, I find they don't have any availability until midday anyway, on my chosen day. Nor on the next day. So I tried booking for 12:15, but then their bank wouldn't accept my currency card. I gave it a while to release the ticket and tried again with another card, which also failed. Eventually I phoned the booking number and quickly got a booking reference for 12:15; collect the ticket and pay the fee when I get there. Easy!

Booked a 12:30 visit to the Giotto Frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, through their website. The frescoes – considered one of the most important masterpieces of Western art – narrate events in the lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ, and cover all the walls of the Chapel. They were commissioned by Enrico degli Scrovegni and completed by Giotto in 1305. Using the booking reference I must collect my ticket from the nearby Eremitani Museum ticket office before 11:30, which should give time for the journey from Venice without rushing; the Chapel and Eremitani are not far from the station. There are a few other things on my list for Padova, of course, mainly exteriors.

Finally, a booking for Basilica San Marco in Venice, not mandatory but it ought to save some queuing. Quite easy to book on the VenetoInside website (linked from the Basilica website), although there was some confusion over booking fees due to their automated system sending the wrong email. Quickly sorted, and I now have the all-important barcode for entry. The silly thing about Basilica San Marco is that the visit is meant to last only ten minutes, hardly enough time to walk from one end to the other. I'm hoping that by loitering in a quiet place I will be able to escape being chased out. 

Catching up

Unlike in Austria and Germany, all Italian express trains are compulsory reservation. So a couple of weeks ago I booked the Bologna-Firenze, Firenze-Roma and Roma-Pisa trains on the Trenitalia website, with "ticketless booking" – I just have to be sure to take the magic codes with me. Conveniently they could all be added to a shopping cart and paid for together, though there is a 15 minute time-out from the start of the first booking so I managed to lose the lot and had to start again, as I was being very careful to double-check my dates and times. 

A discount of up to 30% was available on all of them – the reservation still changeable up to 24 hours before departure – since I was more than a month from travelling. The discount means that I have the remarkably fast 1-hour 35-minute Firenze-Roma journey for just €31.00. But I took the regular fare for Bologna-Firenze to give me a bit more flexibility in case of delays early in the Tour: this one is changeable up to half an hour after departure.

The site wouldn't allow me to make a ticketless booking for Lucca-Venezia, presumably because the journey starts with a regional train from Lucca to Firenze. Clearly I should just book Firenze-Venezia now and buy the regional ticket at Lucca, but I'm just pausing for a moment to re-think my train times – principally, do I want to take an hour or so later train out of Lucca to give me a chance of morning photos around the city walls before leaving, as I'll only have had one full day there? In the end I booked the 11:30 Firenze-Venezia, based on leaving Lucca on the 09:32 regional train.

Blogging has been non-existent in the last four weeks, partly because this is the calm period before the storm, partly because my shingles attack seems to have been a pretty severe one and I'm still suffering quite badly – hopefully it will be mostly cleared up before departure.

A brief intermission

An unproductive week as far as preparations for the Tour are concerned, as I have a nasty attack of shingles. Amazing how quickly this has arrived and established itself; how would it be if it had started on Tour? Apart from being very painful, it has the effect (on me, anyway) of dulling the brain and taking away any interest in doing anything. I'm glad that the serious work of deciding the itinerary and finding and booking hotels was done some time ago.

The iPhone World Travel Adapter Kit went back to the AppleStore for a refund, and they confirmed that there is no way they can obtain the continental power adapter in the UK. But the good news is that a contact who lives in mainland Europe has kindly offered to buy one for me and post it when he comes to London at the end of the month.

Updated the rail map with the change to the Lucca-Venezia route, and added hotel locations to the relevant city maps.

The exchange rate offered by CaxtonFX struggled up to an amazing 1.10, so I tried to load some euros onto my currency card. But on a couple of tries there was a technical issue, which turned out to be due to a fire in BT's Paddington exchange. Finally managed it the following day, by which time the rate had inched forward slightly to 1.109 – of course it may continue to rise. There currently seems a possibility of a hung Parliament after the Election, with the likelihood that the pound would crash, so I need to get most of my Euros, I think, in the next week or two. On the other hand, the rate might rise sharply if the Tories get in...

A Planning Admin week

A number of fiddly tasks this week to try to make sure I have the background information that will help make the trip run a bit more smoothly.

First, checked the timetables for all the Italian train journeys – including the regionals – and updated the train list with the most likely times for each journey, plus options either side. There are some significant fare increases since I last looked, and one reduction, but the increases are apparently due to significantly faster trains:

• Bologna-Florence: was 1h and €18.10, now 37mins and €24.00
• Florence-Rome: was 1:40 and €39.90, now 1:35 and €44.90 
• Rome-Pisa: was about 3h and €35.60, now 3:11 and €29.00
• Lucca-Venice: was 4:40 and €40.30, now 4:01 and €47.10 

Lucca-Venice is now a regional train to Florence, then an ES Italia AV to Venice. I think it used to be a regional train to Prato, then InterCity to Venice. I need to update the map. The time savings are useful.

Then, checked Orange's voice and data roaming charges, for keeping in touch with folks back home, and hopefully for blogging when I'm not in reach of WiFi:

• Call to UK:	38p/min + 19p setup
• Text message:	11p
• Photo message:	60p
• Data:	£3.00/MB

I can post here by email, but it's nicer to use the TypePad iPhone app. While away from WiFi I did a receive-and-reply email test which didn't shift the iPhone data usage at all (shown in increments of 0.1MB). So I don't think there should be a problem with emailing and blogging on 3G, provided I'm not tempted to use Safari or other data-heavy apps. For times when I do have WiFi, TypePad have i.typepad.com for mobile browers, though management of the blog is easier on a proper screen.

I had to set up a Help ticket with TypePad as there's a bug in both the iPhone app and in i.typepad.com, such that in both cases the text field for the post doesn't scroll properly (or at all in i.typepad.com). Later I got a noncommittal reply from TypePad support to say that they are "always looking for ways to enhance TypePad for users". Like fixing bugs? Also noting that the iPhone app is not in fact a front-end to email posting (which I'd thought it might be) but uses their own API. Which is OK.

Whether to call in to Busseto

In the course of checking my planned trains on the Trenitalia website, I see that trains from Cremona to Fidenza – en route to Bologna – stop halfway at the small town of Busseto, where Verdi came under Antonio Barezzi's patronage and taught (and later married) his daughter Margherita. I'd thought there was no station at Busseto and that I would be unable to visit, but I think I must have misspelt the name when searching before. If I finish early enough in Cremona it might be a worthwhile stop.

I doubt if there is left luggage at the station, so I would have to drag my case. From the air the station looks about 1km from the centre, so a 10 min+ walk each way. Looks attractive, but Casa Barezzi and Verdi's statue in the main square the main places of interest for me. It's not clear on any websites I've found whether visiting Casa Barezzi is by appointment or that appointments are required only for groups. 

The latest practical trains from Busseto to Bologna would be 16:57 (arr. 18:28) or 17:52 (arr. 19:28), although if I could eat in Busseto I could catch the later 18:47 (arr. 20:28). The afternoon trains from Cremona to Busseto are 14:05 (arr. 14:26) or 15:27 (arr. 15:49); the first would give me two and a half hours, the next only a little over an hour, before the 16:57 to Bologna. The 15:27 from Cremona would give me two hours in Busseto before the 17:52, which feels about right. 

I'm anxious not to cut Cremona short. I'm going slightly out of my way to get there, and if the violin museums are good I want to make the best of them – and of course enjoy the duomo, etc. But if I do feel I've seen all I want by early afternoon then calling in to Busseto is a good option.

Booked Cologne to London

Grabbed a Deutsche Bahn €49 London Spezial from Cologne to London. I'm not entirely convinced that Eurostar will recognise the home-printed online ticket, but I have to work on the assumption that DB know what they're doing. I'm now all booked from Verona to London. If everything runs on time I'll have almost two hours around the cathedral in Köln, plus finding some breakfast; then in London a tight 20 minutes to get to my train out of London at King's Cross. And I will have to find time to buy a ticket for the KX train – ouch!