Saturday, July 23, 2011

Photos of Norway - without the rain. (except the viking)

Dead Viking - just a lazy 800AD
Typical norway in good weather, ahh so nice.
Jumping into the river/lake near our camp site, (where the picture was taken from)


Friday, July 22, 2011

Denmark and Rainy Norway


We arrived home late (early) in the morning from france after a long long trip. Straight to bed after a two hour wind down. The next day we had a busy day, seeing some of the guys for maybe the last time before we go home, and also met up with Bongo (We are meeting him in Norway) and then we headed to Wouters for dinner (fondue – Swiss style) Dinner was excellent, I don’t know if I want fondue again, but catching up with Wouter again was good. We were pretty tired from the night before, but we learnt a bit about chicken virus mutations, and the possibility of a super bug hitting us at some point… lol – doomsdayers. Anyway, we went home late and straight to sleep, with the excitement of starting our real road trip the next day. We won’t be back in boxmeer for a good 4 months I would presume. So the next morning, a little organising and off to Denmark it was, through Germany, a little bit of traffic through hamburg but mostly good. We arrived at Kim’s house – our next couchsurfer. He was very nice, he made us dinner for our first night, beef and vegies on a very nice dining table, helped us out with what to see etc, and we chatted with him and amhed until about 3am. Nice evening. One thing that I have found is that enthusiasm can be a good thing, but it also can be a bad thing. I’ll leave it at that. The next day we went to a “theme” park in Denmark, after a wrong turn….. we found it, and after our initial reactions of seeing children’s rides (such as deca miniature, and lots of assorted merrygorounds for kids) we found the real rollercoasters – not as big as I wanted it to be, but fast enough – to think “Wow, that was a bit quicker than I expected) but the disappointing thing was that none of the rides felt like the “oh my goodness I am going to die/be sick/etc).See the video on my youtube account...
 

But it was still fun. The best ride we went on was a corkscrew rollercoaster which accelerated from 0-80kmph in 1.9 secs. That is pretty quick… As we came out of the tunnel into the lineup for the queue, we heard this roar – and finding it POURING with rain outside. With nowhere to go but onto the ride, we got soaked, and Andrews normal crying with wind in his eyes was hidden (well for that ride anyway haha).

After a few more rides, we ventured over to the water park area, fun fun fun, back to little kid playtime again but on big kid slides, bumps and slides etc and 3 of us pushing each other down slides, having speed contests over unauthorised slide jumpes and pushing the line of getting hurt and fun – gladly we didn’t reach it.   Good day that ended with a lightning storm on the way home. We arrived back to Kim’s house to find the house empty, watched a movie (from his 400 strong collection), and bed. The next day was Norway day.

We took off to go to a viking museuem in Aalbourg. Not bad. Very historic obviously. The town contained a burial ground of old Vikings, which they had recently dug up.Alot of reading which was fine, but there is only so much history you can read before you start to tune out. So feeling the bumps of the day before, we took off to an art museum. Now, I did say that I liked the Louvre very much, but these paintings were trying to shock you by painting weird things, such as a guy eating a baby… meh. If I want to be shocked I’ll watch a movie and then turn it off… anyway, the main exhibit that we went to see was a room full of mirrors with a swing in the middle. Crazy… I took a video of it, but I don’t think it will tell the full story.  Anyway, we left in a hurry (cause of time restraints really) and headed back home. Kim had to work, but ahmed was there – he cooked us lunch (thankyou!!) and we headed off the ferry. We arrived in the ferry dock town, stocked up with supplies made it onto the ferry after a bit of a wait found our seats and sat down for the ride. The ferry ride from Hertshalls to Kristiansan was quick. No Indonesian ferry rides here thankyou. The ferry hooked big time, huge water spray out the back,
and it visibly moved against the waves, and the land – which is weird seeing we were so far away. A stop in duty free, and through customs – no passport checks, just a curious man asking about what we were doing and on our way to our next destination.   





I got a message from our next couchsurfing person, Suzanne, saying that we couldn't stay there. I wasn't that annoyed, but it put our plans out a fair bit, considering that I had asked to stay with her back in may!!! (lets put this down to first negative experience) but trooping on. - Lucky that we had a massive abundance of sulight to find our camp site. Now we didn't have a camp site ready, we just drove along the side of the road until we found something. We eventually did, and set up camp, got a fire going, and basked in Norway's 'foresty rivered glow' Dinner consisted of pasta with tomato sauce and a few juices to wash it down. The next day we were trying to find out things to do - this consisted of finding a internet cafe in macca's, getting a parking fine for parking in a electric parking spot!!(we even bought a ticket!!!) good luck them getting the money back on that one haha) and going to the tourist office. It is amazing how plans change during a trip, some people do well, some people don't. We had a plan to go on a trip to an island, and go swimming, see the scenery that is there, and then camp somewhere on a nearby island that had access by a bridge. That all got thrown out the window when the heavens opened on our poor tent that night. We awoke to a wet tent, and the car fridge that we had bought the day before to keep things cold(powered by the car) had been left on overnight so our battery was dead flat. Asking around to the many vans did not provide any jumper leads, so we pushed in the rain trying to roll start the car. I was not overly fussed. We weren't going on a rain tour of an island anymore, plus we weren't going to pack up and move a tent in the rain anyway, but grumpy funky was back in force, and hating it. Experiences are experiences, and it what you make of them that determines how good - or bad that your time is. (listening mum?) So we eventually found a guy who had them, and we jump started the car, and took off again. Now things were wet, dirty the car was a mess, we were cold, and didn't have a place to stay really, but is that I reason to abandon everything and ship off somewhere else... I didn't think so, but there was no arguing. That being said, the norway guy said that where we were sleeping was going to flood in 2 days, so we had to go sooner or later. Still attitudes are infectious...   

We are now in a hostel in the town of Froland. It is nice here I guess, more comfy here with the cooking facilities and the no rain on us, and the internet and tv... but.... I would toughed it out in the tent. Not just abandoned ship when it got a bit tough. But tomorrow I will get to watch cadel in the tour. Hopefully get enough time off Andy Schleck and win the yellow jersey. First aussie to do it ever... lets hope so.
What I haven't talked about much is when the weather was good, the scenery was pretty good. Vast amounts of water connected together surrounded by forest looks amazing in the sunlight - not so good through mist and rain though. Sitting around a fire chatting and eating food and drinks was pretty cool, so norway hasn't been a disaster at any stretch. I will pop some photos up later tomorrow.


Takk.



Saturday, July 16, 2011

Hiking hut

So after a welcome sleep in till about 10-11ish I looked out the window to see the welcome sight of clear skies!!!  Yay,. Finally the mist had cleared and we could see the beauty of the Pyrenees. Today we were going to head into the mountains of the Pyrenees for a “day” hike and to camp in a hut in the mountains. We first tried to find out a few ways to miss the tolls for the “freeway” the following day, cleaned and packed, as we wouldn’t be back till early the next morning. Funky again decided that not only did he not want to come on the hike, he didn’t want to camp either. My fears of if he will like Norway are heightened following this decision – maybe he was just tired and needed a day alone.. I hope it is the latter. Anyway, Tarks and I left him behind (to his movies – joking that maybe bad boys 2 the movie is better when you watch it in France) and took off into the mountains – destination – A big dam. It was no hoover damn, but it was pretty impressive. The roads up into the mountains were not so bad but were narrow in some parts – making for some nervous moments when another car came along. We arrived at the Dam, driving past a postcard worthy lake in the process and parked and went for a walk around the very steep and rocky shores of the lake. The most impressive attribute of this lake was how clear the water was… It was swimming pool like, except without the cloudiness of chlorine! In all the water I have seen so far, this was in the top 1 or 2 of the clearest waters I have ever seen. With the mountains on a backdrop it almost had Slovenia’s lake’s measure. If only it had a walking track around it. We walked past some snow that hadn’t melted (we were at 2180 meters) which was amazing considering it is the middle of summer here. While we were walking around Tarks decided to drop his glasses down a rock hole.. It sounded like it hit three rocks and vanished. After a good hour of moving rocks and pushing boulders (serious) we finally got them back (saving $200!). As we were walking around the lake, there were lots of crystal clear waterfalls trickling down the rocks, I assume that it was the snow melting – it was delicious! – Whoever says water doesn’t have a taste is crazy… Best water
ever.


We headed along the lake until we got forced back by some cliffs after a short bout of risky rock climbing where a fall would have seen us reluctantly enter the crystal clear but FREEZING water of the lake - and back to the car a few hours later – completing our day hike haha. We probably rock jumped/climbed/scrambled our way along 2kms of shoreline, it took us much longer as we were trying to look at the scenery while climbing. The next destination was a mountain hut in the Pyrenees. Now there are many huts, but it wasn’t signed, it was shown to us on a map by our CS host Julian (woop). We filled our day packs up with the food we got that morning from the supermarket and headed off on a steep but short 40 min walk to the hut – passing a few curious mountain goats that followed us for a while and freestyling it across a valley when we kinda lost the path.  We arrived at the old style mountain hut, it was not like I had pictured it. Where was the wooden ski lodge style hut? But just because it wasn’t like what I thought doesn’t mean that wasn’t good. We were there for about 10-15 minutes before we were greeted by an old French man… Ok, so if there ever was a situation where French was needed, it was then.  In my defence I guess I spoke more French then he spoke English, but that didn’t help the communications… We had a few laughs – E.g I pointed to the mist that had rolled in to cover the mountains by that time, and he offered the binoculars!!  We spoke about the tour de france kinda – with some handy photos of the tour being on the newspapers to light the fire. We then made a fire in the hut to cook our snags on, proved a little difficult as even the paper in the hut was a little damp. But the fire eventually roared to life, the heat a nice addition to the small concrete and stone hut and we then reached our next difficulty.. How to cook them… We ended up using a steel type toast cooking wire frame to cook the snags which was amusing cause the fat from the sausages was fuelling the fire causing more flames to burn our dinner! Much to the amusement of the Frenchman. We eventually made our way outside to enjoy the twilight of the mountains and went to bed – I propped my window open so I could go to sleep listening to the water of the trickling stream nearby. – How’s the serenity…..
I’m not on a witch-hunt here, but Funky has seemed to have missed out on things that I would put up in the top 5 things that we have done so far – Sailing on the Mediterranean, hiking in a hut, the run around the lake in Slovenia, ballooning in Brugge…. I don’t understand.. We had conditions that were much worse in Indonesia – and we survived. I do understand that camping in a under equipped hut on a mountain might not be for everyone though (he did say that “it not my thing”,) but it is disappointing that one of the persons that you travel with misses out on things that you find amazing – I think due to laziness.
A wakeup call by the sheep herding farmer and his two very well trained border collies ensured an early morning rise, no time for breakfast as we had the road trip of all time in front of us – 18 hours – I think only bettered by my trip home from Brisbane 3 years ago.  We hiked out so much quicker than we did coming up obviously, and drove back to where we were staying. We packed and cleaned the car a little and I took first stint on the road trip – 18 hours it took us(Coming from almost the border of France and spain, to halfway up the Netherlands) Leaving at 8:30am and being much much easier to drive during the day rather than through the night from Holland to Slovenia. Having not done a lot of driving thus far, I thought I might drive a little – and it wasn’t so bad – I finished at 3:30 – and only with 1 bottle of coke haha. Easier when you are supposed to be awake though. Tomorrow – Sunday will be our rest day, we are having tea with Wouter (Fondue I believe) which will be interesting, as we missed out in Switzerland. Monday we head off to Norway, with a stop off in Denmark – to meet the worlds happiest people, and then across to Sweden. I hope to meet up with the Faz and Di in Holland in August, but a decision on whether a trip to Iceland will be made later on this week. (expensive trip though – about 1600-1700 euro for the return boat trip only!!)   

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Tour de France - and a visit to spain

 Today the weather was not kind, and having an open house it was a little weird.  We took a trip down to Spain – just 10-15 minutes the other side of the border. It took us about 1 hour due to road works. We went to  a lake just past a town called L’Ainsa. It was crystal blue and we swam in it, played ball – there was a sunken city in the lake apparently, probably well evidenced by having the top part of a church protruding from the water – now you would think that the weather being kind was a bad thing, but in Spain it was really uncanny, the weather was hot.

Blue lake in the spanish mountains - note the sunken church.
Over 30 degrees. We got a little burnt, but it was a really good time. The next place we went to was the forgotten city – a town called Jenovas. Was interesting walk – about 20 minutes, but we didn’t know much about why it was abandoned but we climbed the church which gave us a good view of the area. (although we were a little dubious about stepping on the rotted old wood that was holding everything together.) We left – at this point it was about 4.00 and went home, shopping in a mountain French town, and a bought the biggest cupcake you have even seen. BAM!!!   An early night, as an early morning awaited.








Well – the day of the tour de france Before I continue I will briefly talk about the Pyrenees, they are a very nice mountain range – less rugged than the swiss alps, and has a lot more grassed areas. Rolling hills of france turned into mountains kinda. Although I must say that the tourmalet wasn’t as beautiful as the La hourquette d’ancizan, that mountain road/pass was much nicer – more forest like, more accessible, could live there, but not on the tourmalet.    – Stage Cugnaux to Luz Ardiden. Planning for the day – if you are trying to get to the tour and see it properly, get a van with satellite TV and drive up the day before. What did we did is that we got up at 6.30 and tried to make our way to Col du tourmalet, and actually was successful. We made it 4 kms from the summit as the road to the summit was closed, and we walked up about 1 km. Now, the most exciting bit of the tour de france is when the riders attack each other on the steep climbs. We tried to find the steepest part of course, but it all didn’t seem that steep – even though it was a 9% gradient. We walked up carrying an esky, bags, chairs etc, and it was too heavy to carry 4kms to the summit. As we walked upto our place, lots of people from all nationalities stride in stride, there was a sense of camaraderie in the air. Spainish, French, Dutch, English, Norwegian etc were all waving and smiling even though the mist has rolled in and obscured the view of the peaks of the Pyrenees. It is very possible to camp on the mountain – there was multiple tents set up on the road up and there was lots of space to camp - albeit on an angle.  After we had secured our position we sat around for a while, played hacky Sack with a few startled people and then set off to the summit – without our gear (We left it on the side of the road.) The road up was pretty steep – but not steeper than some of the roads that we have in Australia – E.g. Buller, just longer.
At the top of the mountain - note Funky's happy expression


When we got to the top, it was like party atmosphere, and I understood what the tour was all about – really similar to carnival, people just need a reason to get together and party. There were people everywhere, lots of bikers, trying their hand at the climb, lots of spectators, people with dogs, people rugged up with blankets and chairs and lots of campers. We stayed up there for about 20 minutes – talking to about 4-5 groups of Australian people that had gathered up there too. We skipped our way down, meeting some English/Welsh/Australian people and talking about random stuff with them. Cool thing about meeting people on the tour is that there is so much time to burn that you want to meet new people and find out their story. We met some New Zealand people that had settled near us – rugby, cricket, etc became a topic of conversation – not the tour that we were “there” to watch. So waiting in anticipation for the tour –firstly the caravans came – throwing all sorts of junk out the window, but interesting because we got a few hats, and other things, and it gave us something to do – but even though I was quite content sitting in a chair looking at the mountains and the occasional chat with the neighbours. Soon enough  the chop chop chop of the rotors told us that the helicopter was near (and the riders with it) and there was a break away – our plan was to run next to the riders, and our test run with the lone rider was very successful – I think I could have chased him 500m up the hill, such was the speed he was going (understandably he had gone 150kms that day though) So I was keen to take a tilt at cadel and co. Well….. when the group came through, they were all together and there was just no room to do a run with the tour, the riders took up the whole road!… disappointing… very.. And very quickly, even before it began, the riders were gone and we were again alone with the mountains – and 10,000 of our friends. We walked down and caught the end of the tour with a welsh couple that had TV – (with SBS commentary!) very cool – they talk about the Australians a lot more)
The main riders - see cadel evans in the red on the left.
Now – a strange thing happened on our walk down – walked past a few guys and I heard “Hey did you play for Essendon?” A little bit of background – I played hockey for Essendon about 4-5 years ago…) I slowly turned to find a few of my old team mates on the hill also visiting the tour – playing hockey in Germany!.. The tune “it’s a small world after all” rang for a few minutes after the chat that I had with them. So cool… We had dinner at a bar where our car was parked and then took the inevitable drive back down the mountain with everyone else.  Bumper to bumper for 40 kms..

A disappointment was funky not liking the tour as much – I guess each to their own, but it wasn’t about the bike race, I would have been happy going up the mountain seeing people, talking, and then walking back down without seeing anything– people do this,(without the talking to someone from Estonia!) it is called hiking! But as soon as a bike race is involved it is boring!! Ridiculous.

Now some people may ask? Was it worth it? (Many people would say – you drove so far to watch people ride bikes? )  I would say yes “but” Do you see much of the action? Are you entertained for a long time? No. Is I difficult to get up there and fight all the crowds and traffic etc yes. BUT despite this, I had a good day, seeing the mountains, talking to people, experiences I had were worth the effort. – Would I go again? Yes – if I hired a Van with a TV. J

Another strange thing was how quiet the La hourquette d’ancizan was less than 6 hours after the race – not a camper or a barrier or a sign to be seen, if you went over it you would never know that the tour was even there. – Not bad..

We don’t know what we are going to do tomorrow, but we think maybe hiking and staying in a mountain hut for a night, here is to hoping that is a fun time. – fire – mountains and quiet.
Trying to cheer funky up!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The Pyrenees


So I will attempt to put some pictures in this time, although I don’t have a lot of pictures to put on – that’s isn’t entirely true, but it is harder to arrange photos and copy them from word and then add them into the web blog software – stupid google  design something better.

Last night we stayed at what we thought was the Torquay equivalent of france(mimizan), camping in a strange dutch tent… the tent part hooked to the fly which you put up first.(We also didn’t have a pump to pump up our mattresses for a while as Andrew drove over my backpack and the pump haha) people everywhere – security on the gates to the beach which closed at 11.30.. so arriving late and wanting to go to the beach at 12.00 wasn’t allowed (at least through the gate) so a jumped fence later and we were sitting on the beach in southern france. One thing we noticed yesterday was the cost of the tolls from paris to Bordeaux. Almost 70 euro – Looking on the net it is much easier to (http://about-france.com/travel.htm) go on the A10 which is toll free.. a rookie mistake..  The other thing they don’t have is ICE!!! Europe, get with the program, ice keeps things cold, is easy to produce, and people will buy it to put in their eskys (or car fridge, or cooler box). Now we have meat, cheese and drinks that will not be cold all day, until we get to our next destiniation, which is high in the Pyrenees – highly anticipated anyway. This morning we went to the beach, crazy waves and currents going on, had to be careful not to drift too far. Rips everywhere. The waves weren’t in a line breaking like in Australia, they had like random waves forming and breaking. You would be often (or offen if you are English) hit by a wave from the side – but fun still as we haven’t seen waves at all really. The dutch don’t believe in waves I think. There also was a large amount of Dutch people down on the coast which further reinforced my theory. I can imagine the drawcard of the beach in Australia to Europeans as there is so many beaches with waves – sure we have rips too, but most beaches that we have are wavy (wrong context I know). We ducked into maccas again to see if I had received an email from Julian (our next CS host)  which we had – so we typed into directions to the next town, and off we went. We decided to take the non-toll roads from Mimizan to Aragnouet – supposed to be a slower drive, but we might get to see more countryside then traveling on the expenseways. We plan to see the tour de france – main attraction and tomorrow I want to do a hike somewhere in the Pyrenees.  After a not so long drive nowdays – about 4.30 hours, we and the GPS got us lost a few times by not knowing about the new roads,  we arrived into the town of Aragnouet and met Julian and Blandine.  A strange situation at their place – they left to go on holidays! So they met us and then left us, Ok, I agree with the couchsurfing philosophy – but they take it to a whole new level, we now have their house to stay in for a week in the mountains, sure we have to leave on Friday or Saturday, but wow… that is some trust. We are currently trying to figure out where we are going to go for the tour de france stage on the mountains… Apparently they close the mountain road the day before the race. Guess we will see what happens.

Monday, July 11, 2011

A little repeat (sorry) and Paris.......

Firstly - sorry for lack of photos and all text, but time is limited and in maccas atm (thankyou for free wifi - needed for couchsurfing)

So after a hectic morning – and a ‘stress filled’ few days as I will explain later. We are on our way to Bordeaux ( A semi large costal town in the south west of france).  Last time I left you we were on our way to meet Xavier and his friends – living in a sort of college house with 4-5 bedrooms (3 stories). The day of the tour was very interesting, we were going do three or four things. I can’t remember if I wrote about the DDday beaches or the tour or not, but I will write it again, maybe there will be a story that I tell you that is different. We left latish to go and see a few WW2 battle sites. The first was brecourt manor. Famous for the textboox assault on a fixed position they destroyed 4 guns that were firing down at Utah beach, the guns were silenced allowing the troops to capture Utah beach reasonably easily (200 men compared with 4000 at Omaha beach) One interesting fact is that the beaches have American names, sword, Utah,Omaha etc, - named after some of the higher ranking soldiers in the US army. It was mentioned about what the names were before the battle.. So venturing along Utah beach, you could understand what happened there, although since primary school and the story of gallipolli, I have always stood on beaches in Australia – with much higher cliff and wondered what it must have been like to storm up the beach saving private ryan style. As I continue to write this, I think that I have written about it… but oh well. I remember now – we were heading back from the tour and we were going to see an Irish band! Check..

Ok, so the Irish band was excellent. Pure Irish music – well not pure, because it was sang by a Frenchman, but it was certainly the Irish style – bagpipes – tin whistle, and a violin. Nice. It was very infectious, almost coerced you into dancing – like the sandman of music, you may not want to dance, but you have to. But it was very fun. We went there with Xavier, David, and 3 of the other people that were living in the house, we got home reasonably early for a night out – about 1-2.00 and slept for a fair bit. IT resulted in the next day being a boring day, although a highlight was finally getting cuth to get skype (kinda) Maybe subliminally this is working.. This resulted in us talking to cuth for the first time in about 4 months. A phone call that would have cost about 200 euro was compeleted for free with an internet connection – and we got to see the big CB in the flesh again. After this mark and I took to the beach – with Andrew enjoying his sleep time again and not coming, we walking along the beach and went in for a freezing dip in the English channel.  – 15 degrees. We then went home and had dinner with Xavier anmd the boys who had cooked for us (capsicum stuffed with like a mince meat type material.. (prob was mince). We chatted for a while, they helped us out with where to go, and then went off to bed. Still struggling with sleep times here, the sun goes down so late – about 10.30 and rises at about 4.30So it is difficult to adjust to. Consequently we have been getting progressively more tired as the week goes on. I haven’t been to sleep before 2am for about 6 days in a row now – with maybe 1 night being before 12.
We took off to go to Mont sint Michel – a castle on top of an island – not bad, we went on a tour, got screwed by a museum that was only in French, unless you have time to burn, I would suggest not going to the museums unless you can speak French. We got into the museum for under 25 price, and that cost us 9 euro each.  So 18 euro to see things and not understand them is a bit rich for even the most enthusiastic traveller. The famous thing about this place was the tides that come in and out, apparently the tide comes in and can cover the car park there, and when it recedes, you get a par aroma of sand flats. (see picture) . On our way out, ( we got up at 7 to avoid the crowds and make it to paris by 5.30) there was people everywhere… If only we knew this was just a taste of things to come in Paris.

We then went to Boredex (spelt wrong) where we wanted to see a museum with a 68m long tapestry showing the story of the norman invasion of England. (I hope I got that right…) It was pretty impressive with the commentary that comes with it – not so busy, no line really. That was a stop off, and the next stop was paris. A 5 hour drive away. Should we drive in paris… well… We arrived to the boys hostel (oh we were meeting my parents there , and the boys stayed in a hostel somewhere else) And I got my usual opening friendly welcome from the French. (I parked in front of a car garage while I waited for the guys to drop off their gear.) Now, in my defence, the guy that told me off could get past with his car – and did, but he decided to give me a spray of some French choosables on his way past, to which a few Dutch ones flew back in his direction from somewhere… J  
So then off to the station to pick up my parents… we picked them up with a little work, it was nice to see them, and nicer to see them in paris, and we headed off to their(mine too) hotel. We then went to the Eiffel tower (we had tickets for 7.30) – we arrived at 8.00ish – but it didn’t matter. Now, the line for the Eiffel tower down the bottom was not so bad, but this was taking into account my experience the last time we went which we arrived at 8.10 for it to open at 9.00. My major mistake was the line going from the 2nd level to the top level. – Around 50 minutes I would say, 50 difficult minutes with all types of tourists bumping and clicking everywhere – I wasn’t phased really, but mum and dad.. hmmmm. So we got to the top – it was still nice.
Hint – don’t go to the Eiffel tower in july.  A quick meal at a street near the Eiffel tower, near the hawkers that need to go to indo to learn how to hassle somebody properly left us satisfied but annoyed as the waiter wanted a tip for bad service. Not a chance. Bed finally, and a plan to see the lourve in the morning at 9.00.
Phhew. Writing this is difficult. I will try and keep it interesting. Well the lourve. I really really enjoyed it. Now, I am no art lover, or art umm… liker even, but with the words of cuth ringing in my ear from the previous day“ You are standing in front of a painting that is 500 years old and it just jumps out at you – BOOM”  and the comments about getting an audio guide from the net. I bought and audio guide for 6 euro. If you go – buy it. (very good decision from SP there) So I made a beeline towards the mona lisa, and my first impression was – wow it’s small – and is that it, but from closer attention to the audio commentary I could see why it was famous. What I did enjoy about the Lourve was seeing paintings that introduced things never before done in art – now I did write down the name of this painting but I lost it, but there was a picture of a indian man and an old man holding a girl with the light engulfing half of the painting highlighting certain parts – apparently the first man to paint like that – it was pretty cool to discover – something that would have been lost within the hordes (cliché, but there was so many tourists) of camera clicking tourists. What was the most disappointing thing was that my parents and the other guys didn’t get commentary and therefore I think didn’t pull as much from it as I did. A short mention to napoleons apartment (amazing) and I really thought I could have stayed there all day.. but alas, we had to go. We didn’t really have a plan to go, dad was tired from walking, and the guys didn’t want to spend 30 euro (ethier did dad) on a bus tour – see previous blog about money. I really wanted to see the catacombs, (but they involved walking up ladders, stooping and sloshing mud I heard – not suitable for my parents) so I sent them to river to get a boat tour and we went off the catacombs. Big mistake on two fronts. Not only did we get the catacombs and find out the line was 3 hours long (no exaggerations) we arrived at notre dame (the meeting place) and mum called me annoyed that they were very bored and stuck on the boat… Oh my.. Bored from the Lourve, and the boat tour.. (the tour they went on had no commentary.. no wonder it was boring) The two things I liked most so far in paris. Oh dear. We went into Notre dame without them on mum’s request, and I bought a commentary about it also – very cool to see – although I almost done with churches now and cathedrals now. (the count would be about 15 by now) when mum and dad returned from the boat they were visibly annoyed – about the boat, notre dame, the exchange rate from the money exchanger, (1 swiss should = 1 euro) I totally agree with that concept – being the accountant that I am …. I took them on a short (long) walk around the city – I bought a souvenir or two and we went to dinner at the same restaurant that we went to in Paris with the school group – and yes I had the duck, but no it was not as good. Boooo. But mum and dad tried some snails – and while not loving them – they did pass the test! We saw the arch de triumph and walked down the famous street ( I can’t spell it) although I wasn’t that impressed. The arch was good though. Go there if you go to paris. We didn’t climb to the top, but we would do that in the morning if time permitted.
We got home early enough, although we were all tired, mum and dad had to catch their train to Amsterdam in the morning at 10.25. So we arranged to meet at 9.30 to drive to the station.

The next morning we packed and went downstairs.. now.. Reason number 400 why not to go to paris in july. It is full to the brim with tourists… Americans mainly we found, and driving was so so busy. We Crammed into the car as the boys arrived at 9.42 and hoped we would have enough time. We were counting down the time on the GSP 10.08 – 10.11 10.15 and you guessed it, it ticked over 10.25 – 10.30 before we got to the station. We walked in – no need to hurry and set about trying to fix the problem. I managed to get a new ticket for mum and dad after a little bit of story telling and they got a train at 12:25 instead. So it all worked out fine. J I did try and show them a good time, but I don’t think I succeeded.  I hope that my parents have a good time on their boat – it did sound fun, but I think I can all but rule out next year’s family holidays to Paris!!  On a very generous note – thankyou to mum and dad who took my bag and some clothes that I didn’t need home for me, that will be a great help when we finally ditch this car and head onto the backpacker trail.

We took to the road and after 4 hours got out of paris (not really 4 hours, but it was really busy.) and headed off towards Bordeaux. Paris is a big country,  it is 500kms not even to the coast – stupid france, why can’t you be more like liberty bell number 1 (I mean Netherlands).

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Belgium - Part 4

So in the morning we took off to go to France – the city of Love, Maybe I’ll get even luckier this time around… Well to my horror, I realised that where we were staying in france (Cherbourg) was much further south than paris, and the museum was about 5 minutes from a town we must pass through… So I roused the guys as soon as I found this out.  
We left late – again and took off towards Ypres, a town very famous in the 1st world war. We arrived there shortly and had a look first at the Canadian monument. It was good, not as big as the American one in Batonge, but good nevertheless. Although we weren’t Canadian – so it didn’t have that sentimental value that comes with it. What was good was the trenches that have been preserved just under the hill – Hill 60 I think. The germans held the high ground and the allies held it for years – they were fighting over about 2kms of gournd for 4 years.. Good work boys… - So pointless. But lets go and do it again… Idiots.. Anyway, we left there with a short stop at a war cemetery, and then onto the Australian war museum. Why the war museum again?  Well I figured that the guys would enjoy it. What was strange was seeing it the second time I didn’t seem to remember any of the information. I knew I had read it all, but even reading it a second time it was almost new. Didn’t have the same impact this time around. We saw the Australian monument, and met some people that were riding their bikes around Europe. Nice to hear some “normal” accents again.  I assume that you know that they were austrailan by now, they came from rosedale – down Gippsland way. We then expressed it down to Cherbourg. Met our next couchsurfing hosts. They were a group of 5 that live together in a house on the coast. Seemed nice – were tired when we got there about 9pm. We talked for a bit and went to bed.
Trying to organise things is a little hard when internet is limited.. but…  did I mention that I hate faebook? Stupid thing. Ok, I thought about not doing a rant on FB, which also has another deserved meaning. But I am going to. I would say I am reasonably uptodate with IT issues, or technology if you may. FB has some uses, mine was to keep in touch with Cuth. Cuth should get skype, then I wouldn’t have much use for FB. But for people to be telling all their “friends” that they are tired, depressed (which it is proven that internet addicts have a higher rate of suicide and depression) or that they are hungry is just ridiculous. I am sure that people just sit on this facing book trying to think of things to say so that their 1000 friends can click “like”. I understand and ‘get the use for social networks and the like and I think that the message function of facebook has it’s uses, but the chat is not in the same ballpark as skype, demonstrated by the fact that they are designing a new app that can perform video calls. Many people use facebook to share photos, but there are clearly better photo organising programs out there, such as flickr. Don’t even get me started on the privacy issues associated with FB. – Fun fact ;) did you know that everything you put on facebook is the property of facebook. So when you become the new face of old spice’ (I’m on a rant) and you don’t get a cent then don’t come crying to me.
I understand that I have a FB account and my pictures are already on a horse somewhere in American office earning money, but doesn’t mean I have to like it. (oh yeah, try deleting your account too – see how long it takes you)

Sorry about that….
So today we went the DD beaches – not that impressed. It is difficult to gauge what has happened at these sites – even though films like saving private ryan and band of brothers has come out.
An interesting and sad story;  We were going into the Omaha beach museum and we roll up to some angry looking French police complete with American attitudes and metal detectors. What world are we preparing for the next generation when we are scanning people when they are going into a war museum/memorial. The French one didn’t have it, the Australian one either, are people really that worried? Or are they working on some sort of credible threat? *sigh*… But there is about 9-10,000 graves at the Normandy American cemetery – all the white crosses are in a row with almost laser accuracy. After that we went down to the beach at Normandy which was just a beach with a statue. We were almost over war things by then. Over saturated I think. Then it was tour de france time. We took to the road, with only a TV guide telling me what time the tour started, the plan was to intercept it – which was about 45 minutes away – A few messages and we realised that we would have to race the tour to the finish to even see it – but that was another 30 minutes on top of the 45… 2 hours away from our home. We had already been 30 minutes, so we kept going.. We just made it, ran to the race and saw the riders for about…. 10 seconds.. my goodness. Not that I expected anything more. We walked to try and get to the finish line and see the presentation, but we couldn’t see it anywhere – we assumed that it had finished. Even my video didn’t come out, and tarks missed the photo shots.. so we got nothing, we didn’t even know who had won – I still don’t! but we saw the tour... (I am thinking that the TV with phill leggit is a much easier and better view). Tonight we are going to a band in the town we are at – The events that we continue to run into…  There has only been 1 country we hadn’t had something random on that we could see.

Carnival in boxmeer
Ice cream run in random town near boxmeer (ran into day festival there)
Germany – Australia Vs Germany football game
Freisland – Festival for something (circus and stalls)
Holland – Queens day
Switzerland – Tour de swiss stage 1
Luxembourg – Dunno, but the roads were closed for something
Belgium – Prince Concert
France – the tour just happened to going past close to where we were staying.

We will see what else comes our way.











Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Belgium - Part 3

So - continuing in Brussels - not long left here. We went back to Bory's house and watched some tour defrance - a little strange as we didn't have that much in common. No sports, no movies, and the major topics of conversation were also null. But that didn't stop me being able to talk to him - just the other guys were lap-topping. - Damn this facebook. I hate it. People spend so much time telling people that they are "Hating the moment when I.... " etc etc. It's ridiculous. And I know the irony of saying that when I am writing a blog that is similar, but this is my journal, and you guys are welcome to read it also. Anyway, we left Brussels and went to meet thomas - our next host, a baker from Ardooie. He took us around the city of Gent. Firstly - what a city, they have it mapped out quite nicely. They have everything from architectural brilliance, to huge cathedrals to canals, to open square with people sitting around - very nice. We had a tour with Thomas ate some frites, and went back to his house in Ardooie. Now I mentioned that he is a baker? well he owns a bakery and well... you know me.. I was happy.. Bam. We got fresh baked goods every morning. A delight. A he also bought us fresh ham and cheese from the local butcher.. mmmmm. The first day we went to Brugge.
They have these overprices horse tours around the city. We skipped it.

Basilica of the Holy Blood.
A very touristy city, but still nice, I liked gent better but... We left earlish to go to and see 3-4 things. A train city - model trains in a pub.(More detail - a trainset for adults with electric triggers to control the trains. )  Horrible. It was half finished (only had 3 trains on the tracks), and nothing like I had hoped for. I tried to talk to the guy but he was unfriendly and fobbed me off with a brochure. Don't go to train city - or walk in the back door, and then leave as you get to see the trains as you walk past. For a supposed train lover, his display was very uninspiring. I've seen much better.  So we left, bought our tickets to the Brewery tour and looked through the shops while waiting. The tour was great. Mainly so by our enthusiastic guide. I am telling you, you can make anything interesting if you are enthusiastic and act like you are crazy. The guy had such a cool accent, and made some good, albeit well rehearsed jokes.  How he stays that enthusiastic for 6 1 hour tours a day we don't know, but we heard him going off for the next tour in the same jovial manner. Bravo Huisbrouwerij De Halve Maan.  We then checked out some cool churches, skipped the canal tour and headed out to our next destination.

I got a call from the place which wanted us to postpone the  tour till the next day. This was a crossroad in what I have been tossing up while I have been traveling so far. Obviously money is a large factor. But how large? I really felt like we hadn't been doing much apart from looking at old building and not doing things that we would normally not do. So I tried to convince tarks and funky to go Ballooning with me. Too expensive was the answer. Now let me get this straight - it was expensive, at 160 euro a pop, (no pun intended) it is an expensive activity, but when will I get the chance to go over Brugge again in a balloon?? So I went, and convinced Tarks to come. He (I think) is glad he went. I really enjoyed it. Quiet, peaceful, nice guide, the people we had with us were nice, and the countryside and the city was amazing to see from there. We also set off every dog in the neighborhood, because we were flying at about 60m, at times we were flying at about 1m, before ascending again.  We tried to land about 3 times, but kept going off course,
 which of course added to the fun. A land in a paddock of a farmer, meeting the farmer, having a laugh with my broken dutch completed an excellent ride. Seeing things from a different angle and doing something I hadn't done before are all parts of traveling I suppose. But a thoroughly enjoyed trip, and a positive experience. Will I go again? probably not. The cost is too prohibitive, but I did learn that to come back with money in the bank and a few regrets of " I should have done that" is something I don't want. 
City of Brugges
Some castle... Nice though..

Setting up the balloon - blowing with cold air to fill it before heating it.



The next day(today) we went to the beach after a late start (again) and saw the belgium beach. The beaches in Europe are wide but not long. (so far anyway) we went swimming and coerced funky into coming when we saw that we were having fun playing classic catches, and then came back to Tom's house for the next part of our trip. - He happened to have a few buildings (of his mum) that he rents out to students. So in the square of Gent, there was a concert - prince. I have only heard one song by prince I think, and it showed tonight, the crowd was going off, and from our balcony window where we were sitting it was pretty cool, but... I think I knew about 20 words for the whole concert. Tomorrow we are going to normandy, beach landings, and co. Then onto Paris to meet my parents.

Bye for now.