Euro Trip: Part Four – Munich and Bavaria

The final portion of my travels in Germany was visiting friends in Munich.

By pure coincidence I arrived in Munich for the start of Oktoberfest. The biggest fair in the world begins with a massive street parade where each brewery brings its beer into the city. This was a rather interesting parade to watch, where marching bands that I would normally expect to see at a Santa Parade played between each brewery’s float.

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Euro Trip: Part Three – Koblenz and Cologne

After a great weekend in Heidelberg, I caught the train to Koblenz. The first part of the journey involved in a “simple” trip from Heidelberg to Mannheim on the S-Bahn where I would have ten minutes to wait for the connecting EC train to Koblenz. However, despite the S-Bahn train arriving in Heidelberg on time, it then sat on the platform for 8 minutes waiting for another train to pass. Once we finally got moving, it was obvious the train running on a parallel track to us was my connecting train! After arriving on the wrong platform in Mannheim, I had to do a mad dash to get across to the connecting train with only seconds to spare.

Once I arrived into Koblenz, I checked into my hotel and then went for a walk around the city. This city was very different to the cities I had been in over the past few days and felt like what my poor knowledge of European history would have suggested that Eastern Germany/Europe would have looked like – lots of bland concrete buildings. After having a sausage from a market stall, I found a street concert, and finished the day off by watching the America’s Cup on an Austrian TV channel.

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Euro Trip: Part Two – Heidelberg and Mannheim

I spent my first weekend in Germany in the area around Heidelberg and Mannheim.

After spending the day walking around Frankfurt with random friends, I caught the train from Frankfurt to Heidelberg. After checking into my hotel, I went for a walk around the city while waiting for my friends to arrive from Munich.

The town of Heidelberg is incredibly pedestrian friendly. The core area is one long narrow street that runs from the centre of town through to the base of the ruins of the Heidelberg Castle. Once my friends arrived, we had dinner at a local pub.

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Rangitoto

I spent today climbing up Rangitoto Island in the Hauraki Gulf.

This is the first time I have been on Rangitoto in almost 15 years – I last went up as kid.

The island is a great day out and depite our slow walking pace we explored the summit, lava caves, and ferns and still had an hour left to wait for the return ferry.

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North American Adventure: Part Four – Baltimore and Washington D.C.

Baltimore Inner Harbour

After spending three days in New York with two other colleagues we parted ways and I caught the Amtrak from Penn Station to Baltimore. The train ride down was a highlight of the trip. On the three hour journey we passed through five states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. I was a little disappointed to not get off the train in Philadelphia as in early planning for the trip I was going to spend a few days there but as it turned out I saw more than enough other places in my adventures.

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North America Adventure: Part Three – New York City

Times Square

After AAAI finished two friends and I travelled from Toronto for a few days visiting New York City.

We flew into La Guardia at midday on Saturday and caught the bus from the airport to Manhattan. Our first bit of fun came when, in a little bit of traveller confusion, we failed to get off the bus at the right spot to change to the subway. So before we know it we are a little bit lost in the middle of Harlem.

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North America Adventure: Part Two – Niagara Falls

I spent the last day in Toronto visiting Niagara Falls which is about two hours south-west of the city.

After some debate about how to get there we settled on catching the train – which is what I wanted as I love trains.

The train from Toronto was very impressive. Double deck, nice seats, and power outlets for every seat. After about an hour we had to change to a bus to complete the journey – which again was double deck and very impressive for public transport.

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North America Adventure: Part One – AAAI-12 in Toronto

Welcome to Canada

Last week I was in Toronto, Canada attending the 26th Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Conference. Toronto was a great experience and is a rather interesting city.

I flew out of Sydney on Air Canada direct to Toronto with a very small layover in Vancouver. This is my first trip outside of Australia/New Zealand and I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect. It turns out a 13.5 hour flight, 1 hour layover, 4.5 hour flight is a very long time.

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