The road more (or less) travelled

Well it's about time for another rushed installment of (cue drumroll) "The Unofficial Europe".

I left off last time in Aix-en-Provence... I don't really have much to say about this place as it was not very interesting at all.

Nice

By this time the weather in France had been getting us down, so we booked 5 nights in a nice hotel in Nice, which is a "beach town" in the south of France. To our great surprise, the shit weather that had followed us for the past while, did not make it to Nice, and we managed to enjoy hot weather and sunshine pretty much the entire time there. We did a couple of sightseeing type things like visiting the old fortress on top of the hill (with a spectacular view), and explored the old town with its many markets and restaurants (one really good meal at a place named after Jesus).
Really though, we just spent heaps of time on the beach.
Nice's beaches can be described as a vast expanse of budgie smugglers, boobies, and a surreal walking style that comes from trying to navigate hot stones in bare feet, which has to be seen to be fully appreciated as I can't come up with an adequate description.
So we lay down on our bamboo mats (used to disperse your weight evenly over the rocky terrain) and got very, very burnt.

We happened to be there for Bastille Day (France's national holiday), which started off with a very uninspiring military parade, but ended up with a cool fireworks display over the bay, watched from the beach.

Lyon

We spent a night in Lyon as a stopover on our way back to Paris to catch the Eurostar to London.
It seemed like a nice place but we didn't really have enough time to check it out properly.

London

We arrived at London Waterloo off the Eurostar (which is an awesome ride), and met my cousin Stephen at who's place in West Hampstead we would be staying for the next 5 nights or so, and I can tell you that after Nice we were very glad to not have to pay for accommodation for a while!

I was glad to finally be in a country that takes breakfast seriously, and quickly became acquainted with local culinary delights such as meat and ale pies with Yorkshire pudding, and Cumberland sausage, just to name a couple.

Steve and his wife Kat had just gotten back from a whirlwind 15 day (I think) tour of Europe on which they had been joined by Kat's twin sister Amy and her fiancee Andy. So for the first 3 nights there was 6 of us all staying in the one apartment, and we got to know each other very well! We actually spent a fair amount of our first couple of days exploring London with Amy and Andy (as Steve and Kat were at work), which was great fun. Andy had popped the question about 5 or 6 days earlier while in Switzerland (I think...) and they were still all lovey dovey... congrats!

The list of things we did and saw in London is long, but some highlights include: National Museum, Downing Street (where the PM lives), 221b Baker street (where Sherlock Holmes lives), Westminster Abbey (where lots of dead monarchs live), Regent st, Leicester Square, Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Mayfair, and lots of other Monopoly places. We waived at the policeman outside Margaret Thatchers house and he waived back! I don't know why, but it seemed cool at the time.

Westminster Abbey is definitely one of the coolest churches I've been to, and is highly recommended. It has flying buttresses on its flying buttresses!
We managed to catch the Tower Bridge over the Thames opening and closing while on a short cruise on the river, which apparently only happens a few times a week nowadays.

We happened to find ourselves at one point in the Baker Street Tube station, which is actually the oldest subway station in the world, dating back to 1863! Definitely worth a look if you like old style underground architecture. As a matter of fact I could have spent ages just exploring the tube stations, as some of the larger ones are really cool. e.g. Huge cavernous expanses with mazes of escalators extending deep into the ground... (We could be happy underground...)

We also went on a guided "Horror Tour", which took us around a bunch of Jack the Ripper related spots, which was pretty cool.

On a more soggy note, we got caught in a huge downpour (hear about the floods anyone?) whilst watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (over-rated) and got absolutely saturated. I ended up having to buy a new pair of shoes as it took about 4 days for mine to dry!

Staying with Steve and Kat was really cool, as they took us to heaps of awesome bars, markets, restaurants etc. that we just wouldn't have known were there otherwise, and it was great to just hang out with people we knew for a while... and on a happy note, my liver is expected to make a full recovery!
London is probably my favourite city so far, and if you haven't been there, get off your arse and go!


Stewartby

On the Sunday afternoon we were picked up from Steve's place by Lucy's uncle Mick and his partner Patsy (much appreciated) and headed out to where they live in a little place called Stewartby, about an hour north.

While there we did an afternoon trip out to check out Cambridge, where Lucy promptly decided that she was going to try get transferred there for her masters! It's full of old buildings and lots of students and bicycles (surprise!), and is quite a cool place. Very cool actually.

We also did a day trip out to Bletchley Park, which was a secret installation during the 2nd world war, and was where all the code breaking of intercepted encrypted enemy communications went on. It's now a museum-ish place with lots of WW2 era collections, and military stuff.
The highlight (for me) was a working replica of "Colossus", which was the first ever computer. It was built to help break encrypted messages and is very cool. Unfortunately (and supposedly) the original was dismantled right after the war for security reasons...

Seascale

We are now in a little place called Seascale, which is on the north-ish west coast of England, in Cumbria, near the Lakes District. We are staying with Lucy's dad's cousin and his wife, Tam and Amanda, in an awesome house on top of a hill overlooking the ocean in one direction, the Cumbrian countryside in another (which is spectacular), and the first ever Nuclear power plant in the other!



Today our gracious hosts took us on a driving tour of the Lakes district including such higlights as Beatrix Potter's holiday house. The scenery is so amazing that it just has to be seen.

Off to Glasgow tomorrow!

We'll it's time for dinner so I must go.

I apologise if this post seems at all incoherent as I'm rushing due to hungriness!

Pics soon.

J

Finally!

The previous two posts now have photos!

Teh awesome

It seems once again that it has been too long between blog posts, but when you're only staying somewhere 3 nights and then moving on, it gets hard to find time to eat let alone write.

We've been about half a dozen cities since last post so once again I'm gonna have to keep it short-ish. Photo fascism has spread to southern France too so no photos yet.


Berlin.Was awesome. It's no where near as crowded as any other large European capital, which was a very nice change. A bit like Canberra in that respect, but that's about as far as the similarities go.
We stayed in a big hostel called St Christopher's, which was very conveniently positioned right next to a subway station, and on top of a bar/restaurant that had very cheap beer and food.

We did a free walking tour of the middle of town starting at the Brandenburg Gate. We saw a bunch of cool stuff like Hitler's Bunker... or to the untrained eye, a dirt carpark near some flats.

We walked down the 'East Side Gallery', which is the longest remaining section of the Berlin wall, and is covered in paintings from just after the wall came down.

I also bought a T-shirt. It's cool.


Koln (Cologne).

Our next stop in Germany was Koln. I'd heard wind that a wayward brother of mine(Jo) was passing through town that day, so we went to meet him. Actually he'd just been on planes and in airports for the previous 36 hours or so and had landed in Amsterdam that morning (the cheapest flight to Europe he could find), and had caught a bus straight over to Koln.
We had organised to meet my cousin Gaynor and her family in Koln that night for a picnic, as they live in a village close by. We were going to meets them as soonas we collected Jo, however, when Jo arrived - in the same clothes he left Aus in - he desperately needed a shower. He and I raced back to the hostel to get him cleaned up while Lucy went to meet the rels.
We ended up our night with a lovely picnic in the banks of the (Rhine?) river.

Only one night in Koln, then straight on to Rouen, our first stop in France.

Why Rouen you may ask? I've never heard of such a place! you exclaim. Well, it's close to Bayeux (but not to Mont-Saint-Michel - but that's another story), which has a very long tapestry of note, 70 metres in all. It depicts the events surrounding the battle of Hastings in 1066. Lots of horses and boats etc.

Paris was our next stop. I'll skip the descriptions of all the standard tourist stuff we saw, as you've heard it before, and if you haven't, Lucy will probably write about it anyway ;). Here's the list: Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumph, Champs Elysee's, Notre Dame, Moulin Rouge...etc.


We still had Jo with us at that stage, and he and I had an important pilgrimage to make just out of Paris, so we left Lucy at the George Pompadou museum and headed south.

The place I speak of is called Lisses. It's a small ordinary looking suburb on the outskirts of Paris which also happens to be the origin of Parkour.
Parkour you say? WTF is that? here's a nice definition from Wikipedia.org:

(Le) Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK) or l'art du déplacement[1] (English: the art of displacement) is generally an urban acrobatic activity of French origin, the aim of which is to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body.[2][3] It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls — parkour can be practiced in both rural and urban areas.

Me and Jo and some other mates have been practicing Parkour for a while now, and Lisses is where it all started about 9 years ago with a bunch of bored teens with nothing but their environment to entertain them. One of whom grew up to be the black guy in the chase scene at the beginning of the recent Bond film.

Lisses is the setting for many videos showcasing the skills of the original (and best?) practitioners of Parkour, and I just had to go there to check out some of the famous spots.


We did find some of those spots and I tried my skills out, somewhat rusty after not practising for 2 months, but heaps of fun all the same.
We met 2 dudes at one of these spots, 1 of whom is a local, and has been training there for 8 years, with the pros!
Wish I could have stayed for longer and really explored, but oh well. Next time.


Mont-Saint-Michel

After a bit of screwing around, we finally made it out to the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel. As you may know, it's built (in true monk style) in a very inconvenient place. It's perched on a small island in the middle of a lagoon/marsh, and you used to have to make a dash for it at low tide just to get there. They have since built a land bridge which although very convenient, is screwing with the tides and sand movement etc, so I expect they'll put it on stilts at some stage soon.

Bordeaux

We didn't really do much in Bordeaux, except a truly forgettable wine tour.
We wandered around the city, which is quite nice, and marvelled at their newly built futuristic tram system.

Which brings us to Aix-en-Provence, our current haunt... so I don't really have much to say about it yet! The sun has finally come out though, and I'm looking forward to getting to the beach in a couple of days.

Word out for now.