Time to leave Paris...

I spent the last two days seeing the sights of Paris. Yesterday was pouring rain (perhaps it's not just England?) and I ended up with two pairs of soaking wet socks, jeans that were wet all the way up to my knees nearly, and saturated shoes. (Thankfully most of my stuff dried overnight, and I wasn't too uncomfortable today.) I chickened out on the second storey of the Eiffel Tower (too high for my liking), though I did walk down the stairs, which was scary enough in itself. I also visited the Arc De Triomphe (or however you spell it), Sacre Coeur, and I walked down to the Moulin Rouge again in the evening to take a photo (though I left again very quickly). Today I visited the Musee Du Louvre for a couple of hours (the Egyptian collections were fascinating but I was pretty bored with the paintings), Place de la Concorde to see the obelisk, Notre Dame (though I didn't go inside because there was a really really really long queue), waited in a queue for 20 minutes outside the Catacombes before being told just as I got to the front that it was now closed, and lastly visited the Pantheon and saw Foucault's Pendulum.

The best thing about Paris has to be the food - yesterday I went to the most awesome place for lunch and had a huge baguette sandwich, pepsi, a tartlette for dessert, and hot chocolate, all for €8.70. And it was all delicious. (I actually went back to the shop on my way home today and bought another tartlette for dessert tonight :) ) Today I had an omelette and frites, which I assumed were chips, but were actually some sort of cubist version of chips. While lunching, I discovered why there are New Zealand flags everywhere and not Australian ones - the start of the New Zealand vs Romania World Cup game came on the TV, the bar staff turned the volume up really high and the whole pub went deathly silent to watch the haka, and they all cheered at the end. So it's really just cause they have a funny dance (not that they're any good or anything).

Today I managed to find an English language bookshop too, which was good - I don't really like going out at night on my own, so most nights I've been reading for a couple of hours, and 13 days into my trip I have already gone through 6 books (and I've spent a lot of time playing my DS and planning what I'm doing as well). I even tried to slow myself down with Tolkien - to no avail. If only books weren't so heavy and expensive, life would be a lot easier.

I decided to leave Paris a day earlier than planned - I've done pretty much everything I wanted to do, and I'm really sick of hanging around on my own and going into restaurants on my own (can't you tell from the overly long posts). After actually reading the guide book, it's a pity I didn't leave any time for Belgium - Bruges sounds cool. I am starting to think that I may have overcatered time-wise for a lot of places and would probably have been able to fit it in. These booked flights and booked hostels are actually turning into a pain in the arse. Still.

Tomorrow I am off to Amsterdam :)

Bonjour from France

Well, that French that I learned 13 years ago is coming in handy after all - as it slowly comes back. Getting off the train in Paris was a real shock - it's a little more scary being in a place where you don't speak the language when you're on your own. And also very thankful that I went to London first and Paul showed me how to use the Underground - I would never have worked out the Metro otherwise (and futher kudos to Paul and Shaz for telling me about the Paris Visite card).

Yesterday I arrived in Paris and found out that it is actually an hour ahead of London, counter to what my travel book says for some reason. My hotel is in Montmartre - I couldn't get a hostel, presumably due to the World Cup - and it is the weirdest place that I've ever stayed in. I have a single bed and a basin and a desk in my room. There is a shared toilet for the floor, and a shared shower for the whole building (although I think some of the bigger rooms have their own showers) - it costs €2 per shower, and you have to push the button in every minute to keep the water going. Weirdest place ever. There's no kitchen either, so I'm having to eat out - not great for the budget.

After I arrived last night I went wandering around because it was still daylight but too late to do anything and stumbled on the Moulin Rouge, 2 streets away from my hotel. I also discovered that they eat horse in France (I had to double check the translation of cheval to be sure). I think I'll be avoiding that particular delicacy...

Today I visited Disneyland Paris - I wanted to see the real French sights first, but I also wanted to avoid the kids that I assumed would pack the place on Saturday and Sunday, and potentially Friday. It was pretty cool - I went on the teacups as predicted, but I also went on all of the other rides. Most of them were pretty tame, especially compared to the rides at Dreamworld - with the exception of Space Mountain which was all in the dark and had a loop and a few corkscrews for fun. It seemed like every second building was a shop though, and there were no shortage of little kids running around in Cinderella dresses and Peter Pan outfits... and a number of adults walking around wearing branded stuff too. I very stupidly only wore a t-shirt and light jacket because it wasn't that cold in Montmartre, and promptly froze to death on arrival at Disneyland, so I bought myself a Disney jumper - I avoided the one that said "D O N A L D" across the front in big letters so that I could wear it at work without strange questions, and got a Stitch one instead (from Lilo and Stitch).

Now that Disneyland is out of the way, I can get down to the real touristing. Tomorrow I think I will have to make the first stop the Eiffel Tower. The most amusing thing I have found so far about Paris (and Edinburgh too for that matter) is that there are New Zealand flags everywhere (and no Australian ones!) I presume this has something to do with the World Cup, but that begs the question - what happened to the Wallabies?

Does it ever stop raining in this country?

On Sunday I visited my Aunt and Uncle in West Yorkshire and met my cousin who was born after I moved to Australia. They have a beautiful house in the countryside, and it was raining for most of the day so we had a nice relaxing day in the house. Once I find a computer that allows you to plug in USB, I'll post a photo of the view from their house :)

I left there yesterday morning (in the rain) to catch a train (in the rain) to Scotland. I actually missed my train to Leeds because there was no monitor on the platform, and when the train pulled in, the announcement said something about Manchester Victoria so I didn't get on. I found out 10 minutes later that the announcement had nothing to do with the train on the platform. Go figure. I caught the next train and luckily caught the train to Edinburgh with 30 seconds to spare.

So now I am in Edinburgh - pronouned Edin-borough. If you want to buy a kilt or a tartan rug or scarf, this is the place to go -I walked for a long way from the centre of the city and saw nothing but shops that sold kilts. (Unfortunately I have so far been unsuccessful in finding a haggis keyring for the DVM Trophy, but I am on the quest.)

If you can ignore the tourist-crap Edinburgh is a very cool looking place - it has paved streets and all old buildings (where I am anyway), and of course, the castle is overlooking everything. This morning I went to see Edinburgh Castle, which hosts the Honors of Scotland and the Stone of Destiny. Of course, it started raining again, and it is freezing cold too - according to the weather service it's 13 degrees currently, but I don't believe them.

Maybe it's time to go and buy some tartan gloves.

Addendum

I forgot to mention in my last post that for lunch in Wales I had: lamb and leek shepherd's pie with chips and mushy peas.

How Welsh :P

Visiting my Aunt in Northwest England...

Friday I took 3 trains north to visit my Aunt in northwest England.

In England, they are obsessed with green energy, reducing their carbon footprints, etc etc etc - here is a wind farm off the English west coast.

We visited Liverpool, which is quite a cool city. Among other things, it has some funky green birds, "Liver" birds - there are two of them and they sit on huge towers on a famous building. They are on the city crest - and the Liverpool FC football jersey :)

We drove out to northern Wales, and visited Conwy Castle - one of Edward I's castles, built in the late 1200s. It was pretty damn cool :)

In response to a quest to find the longest place name I could in Wales, we visited Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch. It apparently has the longest place name in Britain at 58 letters, and it is Welsh for "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool and the church of Tysilio of the red cave". Publicity stunt from the 1860s apparently.

In the afternoon we visited Chester, which has Roman walls and cool little streets - I didn't quite get any good photos though :(

Tomorrow, it's off to my other Aunt's house in West Yorkshire.

A few photos from London...

Here are some belated pictures from London...

Squirrel!

The Australian War Memorial - the big words are places where Australians fought, and the whole thing is made up of names of places where they were born (in and out of Australia)

English ambulances are a funny color

London from the top of the Tower Bridge - in the foreground is the Tower of London

Officially bored of London...

... and if anyone tells me that if I'm bored of London, I'm bored of life, I'll shoot them. I think I allowed myself too many days here - I planned a day's downtime upon arrival and didn't use it. I ended up catching a matinee of Les Mis yesterday, which was as good as I remembered, and visiting the British Museum, which was great. I wish I'd have been able to visit that when I was studying Ancient History in high school :(

Today I got up early with the intention of going to Stonehenge - the book said that it was £14 each way on the bus (3 hours) or £25 each way on the train (1.5 hours). $120 seemed a little expensive for 3 hours on the train, so I was going to opt for the bus. Unfortunately, when I got to the bus stop at 8:30am, they said the next bus wasn't until 11am.... so I gave up. Instead, I visited the Cabinet War Rooms, which was quite interesting, and Madame Tussauds, which was definitely not worth it. This afternoon, I was going to visit the Planetarium, but apparently it doesn't exist anymore, so I might take it easy.

Tomorrow I'm leaving London, heading north to visit some relatives - I have two aunts to visit and a cousin to meet for the first time. I'm hoping that other places won't be as expensive as London, which seems put on this earth just to rip off tourists. The currency is worth twice as much as everyone else's, and they still charge double what you'd expect to pay to do anything.

Anyway, I think it's time to use my last £2 to buy an absolutely terrible excuse for coffee somewhere.

Hello from rainy London...

Well here I am, safely arrived in London, which constantly looked like it was going to rain for the first couple of days, and is actually raining now. The flight was horrible - 9 hours to Bangkok, a 3 hour wait, and then 11 and a half hours to London. Surprisingly, there was a larger than normal amount of legroom for all seats (taller people might want to note this - Thai Airlines) and excellent food. There was no personal entertainment system though, which is half the fun of international flights, and the air hostesses kept waking me up to ask if I wanted food, which was really really annoying.

Once I got to Heathrow I spent 2 hours in the immigration queue surrounded by Americans complaining alternately about the fact that they didn't have a special queue for Americans, and about the security restrictions (aren't they their fault anyway?). American tourists are the bane of my existence. People say that the English whinge - the Americans complain about *everything*, and they're so loud that you can't block them out. I was privy (along with everyone else in a 3 mile radius) to one American lady's complaints about how Pounds were so difficult to work out - I'm not really sure how she got to this conclusion considering that they're exactly the same as dollars, just with a different name.

London is very expensive, as I was warned... I enjoyed my $10 Subway sub yesterday. It's also surprisingly difficult to find internet. The cafe I am in now unfortunately doesn't let you access USB ports, so no photos today. I've seen lots of things, including lots of squirrels (but no hedgehogs), the outside of Buckingham Palace (still not sure if it's worth the £15 to get in), 30 seconds of the changing of the guard (from behind around 3000 tourists - I got bored and left), the inside of Kensington Palace (where I was surprised to see that queens have bedrooms not much larger than most "main bedrooms" in Australian houses), Hyde Park, the Tower of London and the Crown Jewels, walked across the top of the Tower Bridge, and visited Leicester and Trafalgar Squares and Harrods (totally non-user friendly - no maps and no directions, unintuitive layout).

I was hoping to see Les Miserables at the theatre tonight, but tickets are £40, so I might see if the matinée is any cheaper. I'm going to head over to the British Museum soon, as I'm keen to see the Rosetta Stone.

Tomorrow I'm considering heading out to Stonehenge, despite numerous warnings about how unimpressive it is. Not sure what I'll do otherwise...

It is time...

All packed, including stupid little bag of no more than a litre in size with any liquids you want to take carry-on in containers of no more than 100mL. Of course, toothpaste is normally sold in 110-130mL containers, and the only ones that come smaller are kids ones - I'm sure the security guards will be laughing at my sparkly dinosaur toothpaste.

I hope I haven't forgotten anything...

Officially Homeless...

Handed the keys in on the unit yesterday - now officially homeless.

Apparently my tickets don't need confirming - this worries me, after rocking up to the airport to fly to Peru and being told "you didn't confirm your ticket, we sold it to someone else" (I'd never heard of confirming tickets before).

I've triple photocopied all of my tickets, my passport and my insurance, and have distributed them around. Vaguely amusing being as I went to Peru without any photocopies of anything (once again, I'd never heard of it).

There is only one thing on my list now, which I should really do tomorrow:

• disconnect electricity

3 days to go...

6 days to go...

After a busy weekend of moving and cleaning, all of my stuff is now in storage or the bin, and the carpet cleaners are coming tomorrow at 1pm. Today I bought a Lonely Planet book for the Czech Republic, as it isn't covered in Western Europe, and picked up £50 and €50 from the bank for first arrival in countries. That leaves me with no Danish Krone, Swedish Krona or Czech Koruna, but I'm sure I can pick some up somewhere.

On the weekend I picked up my plane and train tickets - flight to London via Bangkok, flight from Madrid via Bangkok, Eurostar Waterloo to Nord ticket, Eurail pass and a Prague Excursion pass. I also bought a 2gb USB key, which I will hopefully be periodically transferring photos to, instead of paying to have them stored on a CD.

The list of things to do is now rather short:

• disconnect electricity
• organise mail redirection
  
• pack
• confirm tickets

The last thing to do today is to clean the balcony of my unit, before the carpet cleaners arrive. Then, after handing in the keys, I am officially homeless.

Not long now...

A new destination...

I changed my mind, again :) Cheap flights are wonderful things. I am now skipping Pisa (unless I get bored in Rome), and catching an overnight ferry across the Mediterranean to Greece. On the way back, I'm going to skip the south of France and catch a flight from Athens to Barcelona.

While I'm in Greece, I'm hoping to visit Olympia, Mycanae, Athens, and maybe Delphi if I have time. I was practically obsessed with Greek mythology when I was growing up, plus I studied Ancient History for 2 years - this should be fun :)

I wonder if I'll see any pentacosiomedimni :P