Incheon

Well we are currently sitting in Incheon International Airport in South Korea taking advantage of the free wifi before our flight to Frankfurt in 2 hours. We arrived here at 6:30pm local time (7:30pm Sydney time) last night after a 9 and a half hour flight from Sydney which was scheduled to fly at 7:55am but was frustratingly delayed by an hour. An extra hour's sleep would have been much appreciated.

Needless to say we were quite exhausted when we arrived after the early start and so grateful that we had a night to rest before our next flight. Korean Air put us up at the Harbor Park Hotel which was a 30 minute shuttle bus ride away. Everything worked pretty seamlessly and we more or less followed the crowd of people all doing the same thing. Much to our surprise we were given vouchers for dinner and breakfast at the hotel and a meal voucher for the airport for lunch today so didn't even need to spend any Won where AU$1 is 1031 Won.

The trip to the Hotel was quite amazing. The airport is on an island and to get to the mainland we traveled on a 21.38 km long bridge across Incheon Harbour which took a whopping 7 minutes 15 seconds to cross (yes Matt did of course time it). The bridge was opened in 2009 and built by Samsung (thanks wiki).

Bye Newcastle

OUR VERY HANDY PURCHASES

Travelling in a motorhome isn't as simple as pulling up anywhere and we need to occasionally find places to top up water, empty waste (fun fun!) and recharge the batteries. These are called Aires or Stellplatzes depending on where you are in Europe. I found an awesome UK website, Vicarious Books, that is devoted to selling motorhome books. Apparently there is a big enough market for that. We bought:

• All the Aires Mountains: a unique motorhome ski and mountain stopover guide covering the Spanish and French Pyrenees, including Andorra, the Alps including Austria, France, Italy, and Switzerland, sections of Bavaria in Germany, Sicily, Tenerife, the Sierra Nevada in Spain, and LPG stations in all countries.
• All the Aires France: a detailed list of 2100 French Aires inspected in the second half of 2010. 
• Reise Mobil Bord Atlas 2011: contains details of 3353 German Stellplatze and 1647 Aires in Europe. Unfortunately this guide is written in German and, while I did study it for the HSC in 2005, the words for waste disposal, campervan and electricity weren't part of our vocabulary list. Luckily there is an app that can do the job for me. 
• France Passion 2011: Motorhome owners who display the France Passion sticker can stay overnight or for 24 hours at one of the 1600 participating farms and vineyards free of charge. Although we can't refill water or dump waste, France Passion is one of those schemes that really lets you get into the local culture. Plus you can try or purchase the wine, champagne, olives, honey, meat, snails, milk and cheese that is made on the property. 

As we didn't want to be lugging too many books around we turned to the lovely advances of technology for other guides. We bought the Lonely Planet Guides to Germany, France and the UK for the Ipad and they are so awesome to read and use.

Hopefully all these purchases prove useful as they didn't come cheap. We'll keep you posted.  

Moving out of home

Castles & Cathedrals

I've been told that we need to limit the amount of castles and cathedrals we visit on our trip or we'll quickly get sick of them. So far, I've marked a few, but I'd love any suggestions for the must-visit castles and cathedrals of Europe.

Castles:
Conwy, Wales
Edinburgh, Scotland
Chateau de Bonaguil, France
Neuschwanstein, Bavaria, Germany
Cheimsee, Austria/Germany border

Cathedrals:
St Pauls, London
Westminster Abbey, London
Salisbury, England
York Minster, England
Canterbury, England
Rouen, France
Pisa, Italy
St Peter's, Vatican
Pantheon, Rome
Siena, Italy
Notre Dame, Paris
Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain (suggested by my hairdresser)
Chatres, France (suggested by @philhenley)

If I've missed something ridiculously good, comment below.

Preparing to leave

Due to the fact that we're going away for 4 months and then moving to Sydney soon after, we're currently in the process of moving out of our house as well as preparing for 4 months in Europe.

Essentially, for 4 months, our primary address will be our campervan, which adds serious confusion when it comes to documentation.

As far as the bank, phone company, RTA, tax office and government know, we're living with my parents. I can only imagine what they're saying.

"Gee, these two were optimistic! Married in May, back with the parents by July! Fools! I wonder why they just converted all their money to Pounds and Euros? A desperate attempt to save the rotting husk of their marriage by taking a shot at currency trading! Hapless fools. Oh why did I take a job at the tax office? WHY?."

No offence if you work at the tax office. I'm sure it's very fulfilling.

Money, Money, Money!

It's really quite complicated, planning for 4 months away. 

We leave on Friday, and before then we have to make sure all our equipment is working, that we will be able to get Internet once we get there and that we put enough pounds and euros in our account for 4 months of diesel fuel, food and tourist attractions.

I tried to work out how much we'd need based on the Big Mac Index (google it) but apparently The Economist hasn't published it's report yet, besides it doesn't isolate individual EU countries. I somehow doubt that a Big Mac costs the same in Greece or Ireland as it does in Germany at the moment, but cest la vie (it's probably different in France too).

After leaving Australia we need to change currencies 10 times (Australia> South Korea> EU> Britain> EU> Britain> EU> Poland> Czech Republic> EU> Australia). It's going to be complicated.

Also, on a nerdier note, I'm trying to work out how to streamline the checking in process on my iPhone. At the moment, I can check in on Foursquare, Facebook and now Google+. It's going to take a while to do all three. I'd say it's likely that I'll end up doing none of them and just leaving it to the location marker on twitter to let the more paranoid of my family members and stalkier of my friends know where we are. Still, it seems like a problem that could be solved by a canny app developer.

We're off to the bank now to convert AUD to EUR and GBP. The bank is going to take a substantial amount of money out of that transaction for themselves, but it turns out (after a bit of research) that nothing can be done about that.

Oh. I'm really excited and all that as well.

OUR HOME AWAY FROM HOME

The motorhome itself is wonderful. It is a 2 berth Compact Standard Globescout. It comes equipped with double bed, 4 seats, dinette, “kitchen” including 2 gas burners and all accessories, a toilet, a shower, adequate storage, an awning, outdoor table and 4 chairs, and a bike rack (perhaps we’ll pick up cheap bikes along our travels). What more could you want?

It does of course come with its challenges. Firstly we’ll be driving a large left-hand vehicle on the wrong side of the road, and potentially tiny roads at that. And it's a manual which means changing gears with the right hand. Then when we head to the UK we'll be driving on the correct side of the road but still with a left hand drive. It will definitely take some getting used to. The van isn’t giant however and will fit in most normal parking spots. Secondly we will have to pop into places to top up on water, recharge our power and empty the toilet. I have told Matt that they are all the man’s jobs. Thirdly is the lovely factor of fuel costs. We have factored this into our budget and accepted that it comes with the territory.

Our big dotty map.

Here's a map of some of the locations we're hoping to get to during our holiday. We're keen on your suggestions on where else we should head. Just comment below.

View European Holiday in a larger map