Reflections of Paris

Firstly, it's been almost a week since the day and night from hell and now I'm not quite so sore about it I can think about the good bits: we had the opportunity to see some beautiful Scottish and English countryside. I particularly loved the Yorkshire area, which is remarkably like the Adelaide hills. The romantic in me is tempted to believe that it is my ancestral Yorkshire roots that account for my love of the Adelaide hills, but my dominant realistic side tells me that it is more likely the fact that my first memories are of living there...

Anyway, Paris: it's a beautiful city, full of beautiful people...and everyone is so goddamn skinny. You can tell who the tourists are because they're the fat ones. In fact, the 'fat' French women are about my size, so I've been feeling like a real heifer. Absolutely everyone smokes, including in restaurants, which is totally gross, especially after experiencing the smoking ban in London, which by the way rocks. Most people do speak English, but not all, so George's high school French has certainly come in handy.

We did all the usual touristy stuff: Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower (don't recommend this - it's really not worth the fight with the bunch of animals that are tourists), Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, Champs d'Elysses, etc, as well as some more interesting experiences, such as drinking with a real life Bohemian in Montemartre and getting not only free glasses of wine from a very generous bartender, but a free 1 litre bottle when we left!

Yesterday we went to Epernay and did a tour of Moet et Chandon, which was awesome. We got two glasses of some of the best champagne in the world and toured part of the 38km of underground cellars. This is highly recommended! We then went to the tourist centre for some free tastings, then back to Paris for our last night there.

This morning we got up early and went to see Sacre Coure (big church which looked nice for the 5 seconds I saw it before being kicked out, presumably for wearing shorts - thanks, religion, for spurning me yet again), and the Moulin Rouge, which was a little disappointing, then rushed to get our train to Bordeaux.

Speaking of which, I must go because internet is free at our hotel and there's only one computer and people are waiting!

Bonjour!

Greetings from Paris. Once again we have failed to find time (or venues) for keeping you up to date. So, picking up from the nightmare that was Saturday:

Reading: A tale of thrashed-out dudes and lost shoes

After a bit of a sleep in to recover from the cross-country jaunt that was Saturday we had a leisurely start to the day (apart from getting lost trying to find the laundrette inside the hostel) but then had to rush to make the train to Reading. The trip was smooth and the walk from the station gave us some hint of what were in for - many badly sunburned dudes buying masses of beer and already looking untidy at midday. Amy got us into the VIP tent (a godsend for the relatively clean dunnies) and after getting our first beer (a pint of Grolsch for almost $10) we fought our way out among the plebs. We quickly realised that Reading goers put their Big Day Out equivalents to shame - everywhere dudes were lying sprawled on the filthy ground, sunburned, comatose and generally dreggy. I got a few pics to prove it.

Our first stop was an Irish band called Republic of Loose who rocked out a folksy-style hip hop. Other bands included:

Funeral for a Friend
Operator Please (these Aussie youngsters seemingly have a huge British fan base)
CSS
Cold War Kids (a pleasant surprise for I didn't see them on the bill)
Nine Inch Nails

At the end of the night came the highlight - the reformed Smashing Pumpkins. I was so excited I had a rush of blood to the head and took on the mosh pit. About three songs in and loving it, disaster struck. The crowd surged backwards and I went with it. My shoe however did not and I lost it in the crap and filth of the Reading mosh. With the crowd becoming increasingly animated I decided to make a strategic retreat on my one good shoe, afraid of both injuries from stamping feet and the hepatitis surely breeding on the ground. Upon my escape I listened from relative safety then decided to bail as the shoe situation was not sustainable. One condundrum however was that the day's beer consumption had come home to roost and I had to avail myself of the no longer salubrious facilities. Striking up a single-serve friendship with a Briton named Clive I borrowed a right shoe and got about my business. The next problem then was getting back to London on one shoe. I had found one plastic bag to insulate my foot from the soil sewer but fearing that would be inadequate I paid one of the long-suffering dunny cleaners a pound to wrap my foot in sturdy plastic bags they had handy. Upon leaving I thought I looked a sight but on the walk to the train we ran into two other blokes with the same predicament (although their losses were due to them throwing each others' shoes into the crowd). Of course I had to get a photo. The trip back to London was a bit foul: the train was filthy and packed with louts. And of course it stopped at every station so by the time we got in the tube wasn't running. With some assistance from a kindly soul we got the right bus and passed out in bed about 2am.

OK, I hate to cut this short when we're already behind but this keyboard is back to front and it's taken ages just to do this. In our next instalment:

• French food and culture (smoking, bikes and baguettes)
• The Arc de Triomphe and the Champs D'Elysses
• A massive night out with generous hoteliers and French intellectuals
• A hang over
• Louvre
• Musee d'Orsay
• Notre Dame

Au revoir!

Day (and night) from hell

To bring us up to date, we spent the rest of Friday afternoon wandering around and drinking beer on the street (it is actually legal), ran into Tom by pure coincidence and drank a few Bulmers with him at the finally-discovered Spiegel Gardens, tried to get to a free Fringe show but managed to get lost (my fault) and didn't make it. We then went to a local pub for dinner and both George and his dad were brave enough to try haggis - the verdict was that it was quite tasty but not extraordinary - something like a meat pie with oats.

Previously in the day we had bought half price tickets for this cool folky type band we saw playing on the Royal Mile for 11pm. We managed to drag ourselves out at 10.30 and after walking for 15 minutes and realising we still weren't even halfway there we pulled the pin and decided to forfeit the £6 and go to bed instead.

That brings us up to yesterday - what was supposed to be a leisurely drive from Edinburgh to Leeds then back to London on the train in time for dinner at our hostel turned into a nightmare of constantly getting lost, turning around and going back only to turn around again and go back the other way. First we went to Ladykirk in Scotland (after getting lost about 5 times), had a look around, took some photos then moved onto Hadrian's Wall, which we found after getting lost about 3 times. After this we drove to Leeds, getting lost another several times on the way, where we eventually found the house my dad was born in (yes, after getting lost another few times and then getting directions and a hand drawn map from a very nice lady in a pub).

After this we drove to York where we were supposed to drop off the car and get on the train back to London. We actually managed to get there without getting lost, but once there couldn't find a servo to fill up the car, which wasted another half an hour before we finally got to the station only to discover that we had missed the last train back to London. After more faffing around we finally decided to drive back to London instead at about 9.30pm. What should have been a 3 and a half hour drive turned into a 5 hour marathon because, yes, you guessed it, we got lost. We eventually gave up and got out of the car near where our hostel was and left George's dad to fend for himself. We finally got to bed at 3.15am.

Oh yeah, and I actually had an alcohol free day - a first and probably only for this holiday. George, on the other hand, knocked over four 500ml tins of Stella on the journey from York to London.

Not the best day of the holiday so far, but today we're heading off to the Reading music festival, where we luckily have VIP passes waiting for us thanks to Amy (thanks sis) and will hopefully be able to spend some of the day relaxing in the VIP area when we're not being stomped on by enthusiastic crowds.

Tomorrow morning we get on the Eurostar to Paris - woohoo!

London to Edinburgh

This is a three-day catch up as we've been flat out and internet cafes in Ed are few and far between (and damn expensive).

On Monday just gone we got up extremely early still not having fully adjusted to our new time zone. At Cristy's recommendation we took a huge constitutional around Regent Park only a stroll from our hostel. It is absolutely beautiful. We got ourselves into the centre walk jam-packed with roses, crazy statues, creeks and mini islands. Swans and squirrels also abound. They are classic - they run around like nutbars and reminded us both of our cat Wednesday on a high. Highly recommended.

We then got the tube into the city and took a stupidly big walk around all the city centre sites including the Thames, Westminster Abbey, Waterloo, Tate Modern, Bucking Huge Palace etc. We had an overpriced but extremely tasty sandwich for lunch and ended up, surprise, surprise, at a pub in Soho. We moved to another pub where we foolishly moved onto the 'extra strong' cider - this caused us some pain and disorientation and we were late meeting with my friend Ian from law school at Tower Bridge. We had a quick pizza dinner (salmon calzone was a highlight) and crashed out utterly stuffed.

Tuesday we stalked the tube system organising our various trips to Ed and Paris then tubed out to the Imperial War Museum. This was amazing but we lost three hours or so and also lost a great deal of faith in humanity through the harrowing Holocaust Exhibition. Although it was terrible this also comes highly recommended. We then stumbled down to a place called Elephant and Castle solely because it was a big place on the map and found out it was only a dump. We had the privilege of seeing our first thrashed-out junkies passed out in a tube tunnel there. Welcome to the real London. After stepping over bodies to get to the right station we tubed to Tower Hill again where we took the Tower Bridge walk (if you've done the Sydney Bridge climb simply don't bother; it's a bit poo) then met Amy again and, in place of actually going to the Tower of London, hit the piss at a pub charmingly named the Hung, Drawn and Quartered. The girls got into the cider and I reinforced my love for London Pride, a delectable hand-pumped ale. Bec and I had dinner at Pizza Express (a substantially up market eat in Domino's or Buongiorno) and ended up paying through the nose again due to getting 'large' Peroni e.g. 750ml.

Wednesday we packed in a panic and took the train to Edinburgh. The national rail service is awesome, but only the foolhardy take on the coffee - it was my worst and Bec's second worst coffee experience ever (on Bec's advice leave the Brisbane airport coffee alone too). Upon arrival at Ed we stumbled about getting bearings to kill time before 2pm check in and got overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the Fringe and the number of people (Ed has a population of 400,000 but it swells to 1.5m during Fringe and Festival). We had a tight-arse lunch at a place called Filthy McNasty's (with a name like that I didn't dare try the haggis) then after check in had the wonderful experience of a laundromat (although of course we killed the time at a crappy local pub). Later in the afternoon we met my friend Tom and his friend, Glaswegian and co-worker Lorna at a Fringe venue called Assembly in a massive old university overlooking the 'new' city (more than 200 years old) and in the shadow of Edinburgh castle. Although the venue was marvellous the show was a bit of a let down - a crazy Korean mish-mash of soppy romance, prison break and break dance - weird. The best bit was when I got photographed with the mad man beat boxer from the show after it finished. The photo session went for so long the poor guy had to stop when his throat gave out (or he swallowed his mic, not sure which). We then hunted around for the Spiegeltent which eluded us and instead we ended up at a pub (where it just so happened England v Germany was starting up on the big screen - a 'cultural' experience) and dinner at one of a myriad of curry spots. We got this crazy tricycle thing home which was kind of overpriced but cool.

Wednesday (yesterday) we decided to be cliche tourists and got on a 'sites of Ed' bus, the highlight of which was jumping off at the foot of this dirty great volcanic hill and climbing up the bastard. It was awesome. The view was spectacular and there weren't even THAT many tourists...we got the bus back to the Fringe centre of sorts at the Princes St gardens and met Tom and another friend of his Fiona for a beer on the lawns in baking sun (I am shockingly sun burned) then returned to the hotel to meet my dad who'd just flown in. We ended up running a bit late for what was the pivotal point of the trip to Ed - the military tattoo so we got an average baguette on the way (rather than haggis, neeps and tatters, whatever the hell they are). The tattoo, in my opinion, was worth every cent and the effort to get here. The massed pipes were highlights, as were this Russian brass band who, we were told, were going to play Tsaichowsky (no idea how that's spelleded) but ended up playing all this modern pop-type stuff, and these kids doing crazy stuff very quickly on motor bikes. The girls from Taiwan doing crazy stuff with guns was cool also.

Today we've done the Ed castle and finally bought some Fringe tix (half price) without external recommendation (Pablo's Finest Hour, accoustic band we saw playing on the Royal Mile) and got beers from an awesome whisky shop on the Royal - a seaweed influenced beer and one with gooseberries. We're soon to sit down for our lunch of cheese and biscuits pilfered from the breakfast hall of our hotel.

Thanks to all those posting replies to this blog, we appreciate it even if our lack of response may not so indicate. We're just a bit too busy for much more than this as you can imagine!

It's day three here and we're already feeling like we don't have enough time here. We've already managed to pack a fair bit of activity into the last couple of days and there's still plenty left to do.

On Friday afternoon we stumbled out of here to the pub still barely alive after four hours of sleep in 40 hours and went to the pub where I tried my first warm pint of English beer (not really a fan although it's beginning to grow on me). We were sitting like zombies calculating the earliest we could get away with going to bed when George messaged Cristy to see if she wanted to catch up sometime and she said 'I'll be there in 45 minutes' and the quiet afternoon turned into a big afternoon and night of drinking Magner's cider and beer and talking. At 9.30 pm we realised we had probably missed our free dinner at the hostel, so we drank a bit more, had a kebab (in the doorway of the restaurant to avoid the rain and a 50p surcharge) and then walked back home in the rain - the quinessential English experience.

You'd think after our lack of sleep that we would have had no trouble at all sleeping for 12 hours straight, but not so - I woke up at about 3 am and lay there stressing about if we were ever going to see our bags again. That said, I also had a dream that we got our luggage at 1 the next day, which pretty much came to pass.)

We started the day by walking to the Camden markets (in the rain), which were really cool. We went for a walk along a canal for a while, looked through the markets and drooled over all the food stalls until we eventually succumbed to an enormous serve of West African curries, which absolutely rocked.

After that we walked back to the hostel, tried to sort out what was going on with our luggage, then got the tube to the Spitalfields Markets. These would also have been really cool if we weren't completely marketed out after the morning. So, not knowing what else to do, we went to the pub. We found this pub that proudly proclaimed it was London's first brewery and had been brewing beer since 1669, so being understandably excited about the prospect of trying their beer, we rushed in only to discover that they did not sell any of their beer, and in fact did not brew beer at all and had almost entirely European beers on tap.

Later on we met up with Amy and Alex and my cousin Sarah and her partner Quentin at a bar that had 2 for 1 cocktails. After a few of these we went to Brick Lane (a strip of entirely Indian restaurants where the proprieters stand out the front and try to entice you inside with their great deals, kind of like Lygon Street). The first person who grabbed us offered us a free round of drinks with our dinner, and Sarah said 'We want a free round of beers for all of us, a free bottle of white and a free bottle of red'. The guy didn't seem to know how to argue this so we enjoyed a rowdy dinner of great Indian and crap wine. We were the first to get there and the last to leave and I'm sure they probably thought we weren't worth the sale.

We were completely buggered after this and hopped on the tube for a quick ride home, only to discover that we were going in the wrong direction, so we got off and changed to what we thought was the right one, but was in fact another one going in the same direction, so we got off again and finally managed to get on the right one. (The system here is really not that confusing, we're just idiots)

Today our plans are to go into the centre of London and actually do the tourist thing.

So far we've found that most of the things people have told us about London have not been the case for us. For example:

• Everything is expensive: we've found most things are around the same price (yes, after the conversion). For instance, most pubs have 2 pound pints, which is far cheaper than a good beer of that size in Adelaide.
• The food is crap: everything we've had so far has been really good (although admittedly we haven't had any traditional English food other than a bowl of chips in a pub, which were indeed crap).
• Everyone is rude: other than a strange style of customer service which entails no small talk, hello or goodbye or even telling you how much something is, everyone has been really friendly.

One thing that is true is the weather - it's been cold and raining every day.

So yeah, we like it here.

Made it

Somewhat exhausted we stumbled into Heathrow at 8am local time this morning.

The flight and its associated debacle is a tale in itself, however I shall start with the good points and abbreviate the rest.

First, the good:

• The food on Vietnam airlines was actually quite good, and as per the stock-standard plan for keeping calm at 30,000 feet, there was a lot of it.
• I managed to enjoy a David Boon-type quantity of Carlsberg on the two major legs.
• We got upgraded to 'deluxe economy' for the Hanoi to Paris leg which meant more room and a personal screen.
• What brings me to sunny point number 4: I got to watch Ghost Rider which was really quite cool.

However:

• Thanks to what we can kindly call gross incompetence by ground staff of Vietnam Airlines, we have no luggage whatsoever, making a mockery of our clever attempts at cross packing to avoid a no clothes disaster (I did have a change of clothes in my carry on but due to a misunderstanding, Bec does not). I should add to this point that 'checking luggage through to final destination' means absolutely nothing - in Ho Chi Minh City we carried our luggage 30 metres through customs, for reasons completely unknown. We saw our luggage get loaded at this point so it apparently disappeared after Hanoi. Thewhole 'system' employed by Vietnam Airlines is utterly shambolic. I quickly lost count of confused looks and answers of grunts and 'yes' when the question was clearly not understood. Not happy.
• The other real downer was how bloody long the flight was - 5 legs altogether (Adelaide-Sydney-Ho Chi Minh - Hanoi - Paris - London) - the pain has possibly not been worth the saving or free stop over...

All that said, we arrived in one piece and were very kindly picked up by Bec's sister Amy who not only got us to our hostel via a lengthy tube ride (during which a strange woman not only stared at Bec and Amy but also laughed at appropriate times) but also gave us a series of guides to get us about.

She also took us to this huge and ludicrously cheap place on Oxford to buy clothes. I got jocks, socks, a pair of jeans and a t for 13 quid. That lifted my spirits somewhat, as did finding Magners cider in the first bottleshop I wandered into (that's a treat for a little later). We had quite a walk doing that shopping and have since returned to our hostel (a very nice Indian YMCA hostel). We have intended to rest however our long awaited showers were spoiled by the emergency toiletries kit given to us by the lost baggage people did not have shampoo and conditioner - which of course had Bec on the critical list. Cue not one but two trips to the nearby Boots (another misunderstanding, don't ask).

We'll probably catch up with Amy again tomorrow. This afternoon we're going to sit, relax and sip drinks somewhere near - probably at either the local pub, which is appropriately called The George, or another a bit further away which does its own mash brewing.

A confession

So far, Bec has done pretty much everything while I discipline my liver for the punishment to come. In my defence, however, I have provided an extensive collection of i-tunes to select from, so it's not like I've been entirely idle.

Travel envy is beginning to rear its ugly head - Emely and Ray (Marketing gurus, DTED) are threatening me daily with 'hopefully there's a job for you when you get back' type comments, and our wine collection is under some scrutiny.

All that aside, nerves are quickly giving way to excitement, albeit tinged with a touch of sadness for not seeing pets, friends and family (not NECESSARILY in that order) for in excess of two months.

PS. One thing I DID do was talk us into buying the luggage we now have - time will tell if that choice will be a relationship-limiting move...

11 sleeps to go!

Almost everything is organised and now we're just waiting to go...oh yeah, we have to wait for our mortgage refinance to come through...it's only three weeks later than expected, but it'll happen, it'll happen!

We leave Adelaide at 7.30 am on Friday 17 August. If, after 35 hours of hell we have still not killed each other, we will arrive in London at around 8.30 am on 18 August. My sister Amy will meet us at the airport and take us to our accommodation (thank god) and we'll probably spend the rest of that day wandering the streets of London looking like zombies.

The following day is Amy's birthday and we'll go to her place for a BBQ. She has some other typical tourist type activities planned for us for the next few days, and we have some other friends to catch up with, but nothing is set in stone. After four nights in London we're getting a train to Edinburgh where we'll be doing plenty of Fringe type activities and meeting George's dad there to see the military tattoo.

After three days in Edinburgh we're going to hire a car and drive to Ladykirk, where George's ancestors are from, and then down to Leeds, where my dad was born. We're going to find the house my dad was born in, take the requisite photo, then drop the car off and get a train back to London.

On Sunday 26 August we're going to the Reading Music Festival (for free thanks to Amy!), which will be headlined by the Smashing Pumpkins, George's all time favourite band. To say he's wetting his pants with excitement is an understatement.

After London we'll be heading over to Paris for four days, where we'll do all the usual touristy stuff and try to walk for several hours a day to make up for all the great food we'll be eating! Other possible activities will include a day tour to Champagne and a show at the Moulin Rouge. After this we'll meet up with George's dad again and hop on the train to Bordeaux for three days of wine tasting fun.

After Bordeaux we head down to San Sebastian in Spain for two days, then onto Zaragoza for another two days, followed by three days in Barcelona. From there George's dad goes home and we fly to Rome for four days. We hope to do a day trip to Pompeii or the Amalfi Coast or something similar while we're there. Then we go on to Florence, where we'll do a one day cycling tour through Tuscany, including wine and olive oil tasting and plenty of food. After three days in Florence we head to Venice where we will hopefully be staying in an apartment and cooking our own meals in an effort to save a bit of money for another three days.

From Venice we travel to Salzburg, Sound of Music country, for two days, followed by another two days in Vienna, where we'll see a performance at the Spanish Riding School. Then we go onto Prague for lots of cheap beer and dumplings. And as if three days of drinking beer in Prague wasn't enough, we then go to Munich for three days during the Oktoberfest, where we'll be staying 100 metres from the biggest beer garden in Europe!

We then go onto Berlin for three days, then we head for our final stop in Europe in Amsterdam for three days, where we'll go to see Anne Frank's house. After this we'll probably be quite glad to fly out and spend our last five days relaxing in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam before coming back to Adelaide.

For more detail about the places we're visiting, check out our calendar.

This is going to be the longest week and a half ever...