Up, Up and Away

December 28, 2019

Canberra to Taipei

It took about 14 hours and three flights to move my son Joe, me, and 60kg of our cycle touring gear from Canberra to Taipei today.

I dread to think what our daily carbon footprint was today. I purchased carbon offsets with the air tickets. I don’t know whether or not these credits fully offset the flights. Flying purely for optional reasons such as cycle touring does concern me more and more nowadays as climate change is really starting to bit Australia hard with unprecedented fires, extreme drought and record heatwaves.

That aside, thankfully the whole travel process went smoothly and easily. We flew on Qantas from Canberra to Sydney, Sydney to Hong Kong then China Airlines in Taipei. All flights were on time, all were very comfortable. I watched in-flight movies “Woodstock” and “The Titanic”. Both were great movies, especially “Woodstock”. What an extraordinary one-off event that was.

The day in pics looked something like this:

Canberra Airport with fog-like smoke haze. Massive bushfires have been burning throughout NSW for weeks.

And that’s smoke not cloud. Kilometres thick, and blanketing thousands of square kilometres of the state. An area greater than the size of Wales has burned to produce this massive quantity of smoke.

Image not found :( — Above Royal National Park just south of Sydney

Eastern Sydney is relatively clear of smoke this morning

Another view of Sydney with fires to the far west.

Joe looks far fresher than I feel at Taipei Airport.

A last minute online hotel booking led us to The Grand Hotel at a reasonable price. An amazing 1952 structure. We aren’t staying in this part, but we are nearby in the annexe at the back.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	4
Comment on this entry	Comment	2

Scott AndersonThe Grand Hotel! I don’t know what your schedule is like, but if you have time you might take a walk up into the hills just behind you in Jiantan Park; or walk a short ways east to see the changing of the guard at the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine.
Reply to this comment
4 years ago

Graham SmithTo Scott AndersonThanks for yet another good tip Scott. We are also considering staying in Taipei for an extra day to see the New Year celebrations at One Zero One. We saw it being set up yesterday. Looks like it is going to be impressive.
Reply to this comment
4 years ago