The Adventure Begins

At 6.30am on Thursday 7th April, our alarm woke us up and I’ve never been so glad to get up that early. I felt a rush of excitement and nerves as we triple checked our packing and, after an obligatory cup of tea, set off for Dover. Quite early into our journey, Google Maps kindly let me know that there was a 1hr delay on the M20 so we quickly took another route and made it to the ferry with plenty of time to spare. The crossing was quite choppy which, combined with my half asleep eyes, made me look like a drunken hobo when I tried to walk to the duty free shop; but we made it to Dunkirk safe and sound.

Ghent
Ghent city centre

I drove us off the ferry and, having checked our route to Frankfurt, we decided to stop an hour later in Ghent (Belgium) for some lunch, as we recognised the name from the Champions League. It turns out we had forgotten, you can’t really stop for lunch in Europe from 2pm onwards. The city centre was beautiful with a lovely river but the restaurants were either closed or mega money. We sucked it up and bought some pasta pots from the local Spar, which turned out to be a winner because the cashier gave us free chocolate biscuits! Ads didn’t realise she had given them to us on purpose so when he saw them on top of our shopping at the till, he sneakily covered them with one of the pasta pots. It was only once we were out of the shop that he proudly proclaimed he had snagged us some free biscuits and I had to burst his bubble 🙂 We happily munched our pasta, biscuits and the malt loaf I had packed along the rest of our route.

 

Our apartment in Hochheim. If you look closely enough, you can see me looking very happy with some wine and very thin thanks to the pano effect!
Our apartment in Hochheim. If you look closely enough, you can see me looking very happy with some wine and very think thanks to the pano effect!

We arrived at our apartment in Hochheim am Main (a town just outside of Frankfurt) at around 8pm and were greeted by the owner’s daughter and her partner who helped us with our luggage and checked us in. We were both very tired so I made some chicken for dinner and then we went to sleep.

 

 

Euro Bank HQ
Euro Bank HQ

 

The next day, we drove into Frankfurt and went straight to the nearest Vapiano for lunch…yum! We then found a lovely spot for a video, right next to the headquarters of the Euro bank, so we got set up and recorded the first video of the trip.

We then decided to drive over to the venue where we would be partying that night, to see where it was and where we could park. It turned out to be right next to a shopping mall which had a lovely roof top cafe, so we had a drink up there and wandered around the shops searching for face moisturiser because I somehow forgot to pack mine 🙁

We stopped down the road from our apartment for a latte, spent some time chilling and eating dinner, then we got ready and headed back into the city. The venue for the show was quite small and completely packed. We made our way right into the middle of the crowd and soaked up the atmosphere as Axwell /\ Ingrosso started playing. Unfortunately the atmosphere wasn’t the only thing we soaked up, as the tall sweaty Germans were dancing with their arms in the air (like they just didn’t care), so we decided to escape BO central and head to the back of the room where there was much more space and a better view.

axingaxing2

The show was spectacular and well worth the wait since Christmas! We left the venue around 3am and Ads decided it would be a brilliant idea to shoot a night video, so we drove to one of the pretty bridges over the river and set everything up with the light. It was freezing cold at this point but it was such a cool view, we had to do it. Ads was doing an amazing job of speaking as usual when a homeless man decided to wander over and ask if we had any cigarettes. I don’t remember advertising for extras! Ads handled it like a champ and we kept it in the video for entertainment value.

We then slept for a few hours then packed up all of our things and hit the road again, heading for Lake Hallstatt in Austria.