After an offensively early departure from Melbourne this morning we landed in Dubai after a flight of about 12 hours.
We seem to have adjusted pretty well to the time zone change from Melbourne so we had a good night's sleep last night.
We had quite a busy day today. We were up pretty early and down to breakfast by about 8:00am.
We had a good sleep last night and got down to breakfast around 9:30am. We had a lovely breakfast while gazing out at the local London streets and watching the people making their way to work. By the time we finished breakfast and were ready to get going it was about 11:00am.
We had a relaxed start to the day today, getting down to breakfast around 9:00am. We over-indulged again, which was very easy to do at The Connaught because the breakfast is fantastic. After breakfast we made a quick trip to Selfridges and then departed the hotel around 11:15am to head to St.
We got off to a bit of a slow start today. We got downstairs around 9:00 am and enjoyed a lovely breakfast. After breakfast we headed out along Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and on to Place Vendôme, where we did a bit of shopping. We then wandered through the Jardin des Tuileries, which is always beautiful, even in winter. Next, we decided to head down to Notre-Dame.
We got up pretty early this morning so we could be organised on our last day in Paris. We had a lovely breakfast and then spent some time rearranging our suitcases to fit in a few items that we bought yesterday. We had planned to leave the hotel around 12:30pm so we had a bit of time to go for a walk.
We had a bit of a sleep-in this morning and it was about 9:30am by the time we got down to breakfast.
It would seem that we are becoming quite used to a sleep-in because this morning, once again, we were pretty tardy getting down to breakfast. Having left ourselves only about 45 minutes to have breakfast (before the very efficient German staff start packing up right on the dot of 10:30am) we had to be a bit more tactical about what we were going to eat.
Today we managed to better yesterday's performance in respect of getting downstairs to breakfast.
This morning were up at 5:30am to get ourselves organised for an early departure from the hotel.
This morning our alarm went off at the somewhat unsavoury time of 3:50am so we could get organised for our departure this morning from Saint Petersburg on the 5:30am Sapsan (bullet train) to Moscow. We left the hotel at 4:45am and our driver got us to the St.Petersburg-Glavny railway station at around 5:00am.
We got off to a bit of a slow start today, not unexpectedly so given our big day yesterday in Moscow.
We had nothing planned for this morning other than a bit of a sleep in, so it was about 10:15am before we made it downstairs to breakfast.
Today we had a leisurely start to our last day in Saint Petersburg. We relaxed over a nice breakfast before heading back to our room to re-pack our suitcases. We checked out of the lovely Astoria hotel and hopped in the car for the half-hour drive to the airport.
We had a relatively early night last night and were still asleep this morning at about 8:30am when an announcement came over the hotel PA system to inform us that there was a technical issue that the hotel staff were looking into. We decided we'd better jump up and get organised, just in case we had to leave our room quickly.
We had to set an alarm to get up this morning and we weren't impressed when it went off! But, we were off to Estonia this morning to explore the walled medieval city of Tallinn, so up we got.
We were awoken again by the sound of the alarm this morning, which we had set for 7:00am to ensure that we had plenty of time to have breakfast, get our suitcases packed, and depart the hotel by 9:00am for the airport. We got to the airport in plenty of time for our 11:25am departure to Kittilä in Finnish Lapland.
It felt like a pretty short night when the alarm went off at 6:15am this morning. We got ourselves organised and down to breakfast by 7:15am. The hotel put on a very nice breakfast and we ate while chatting with others from Melbourne who are here with us for the Porsche Ice Experience. At 8:15am we headed into a small lecture room to meet our instructor for the next three days and receive the mandatory safety briefing.
Today we had a slightly later start to the day because we had no pre-drive briefing this morning.
Another early start today. We had breakfast at about 7:30am and were on the bus by 8:15am to head out to the ice driving complex for the last day of our three-day program. We started today in the Cayman GTS on one of the (many!) handling courses.
We had a little bit of a sleep-in today and didn't get downstairs to breakfast until about 8:45am.
We didn't have to set an alarm today and we were in no real hurry to get going. We got down to breakfast at around 10:00 am. Breakfast at Claridge's notionally ends at 10:30 am but, being Claridge's, you can have breakfast at any time that suits! This is just one of the many reasons we love this hotel.
We were up early this morning to meet Mike, one of our ex-business partners, for breakfast. Unfortunately, Mike was feeling poorly this morning and couldn't make it in to meet us at the hotel for breakfast.
We took off from London last night and were both pretty quickly asleep. The flight down to Dubai was very quick (under six hours) so that offset our late departure.