The 2010 Adventure - France

France is one of my favorites places in the world. It is probably second only to my home. And that really isn't a fair fight because home has my bed in it and I really love my bed.

In France we stayed in Grenoble, Carpentras and Carcassone. They were all great bases for travel in the surrounding areas. My favorite is Provence.

The markets in Provence are renowned for their fresh local produce and beautiful hand crafts. The weekday morning market at Bedion was the highlight of my overseas holiday. I really can not describe how much I enjoyed it or exactly what it was like. Suffice to stay that I spent all the cash I had on me, all the cash Tom had on him, then all the cash my brother (who was traveling with us) had on him, including the euros he had hidden in his shoes and I only agreed to leave after I realised I could literally buy not more as there was no atm available. Below is a photo of the town of Bedoin.

Provence was alive with flowers. The sunflowers were spectacular but as I didn't get a photo that I was happy with of them, below is the photo Tom took of lavender while we were wandering around Gigondas in the heat of the middle of the day.

Another highlight in Provence was Orange. I persuaded Tom and my bro to drive to Orange one night for dinner, it was only a 30 minute drive and a 1.10 Euro toll away from where we were staying. I had read in my guidebook that there was a Roman Amphitheater and an Arc de Triumph, as well a quite a few nice restaurants.

Now going at night meant that the Amphitheater would be closed but my guidebook gave directions for how to reach the hill above it which allowed you to see down into the Amphitheater. Taking advantage of the looonnnnng daylight hours we went to see it after a lovely dinner at a local restaurant. When we arrived it became obvious that there was a concert on in the theatre and when we tried to follow the guidebook instructions to reach the hill it was all blocked off. Disappointed we started walking back down but on the way one of the roadies from the concert tried to show us the way around to the entrance, when Tom explained that this was not where we were going because we did not have tickets for the concert the roadie asked if we would like some. Three tickets and much cudos for the success of such a complex conversation in french later we were inside the theater climbing the stairs to our seats. The concert was the Opera Tosca. And below was the view...


After Provence we went further South to Carcassonne. As my guidebook says "Medieval Carcassonne is a 13th-century world of towers, turrets, and cobblestone alleys". It was amazing, especially around twilight when all the other tourists had gone home.

Another great thing that happened while we were in France was that while we were visiting some castle ruins in the Pyrenees we stumbled apon a birds of prey show. I am terrified of birds and these one were HUGE, but they were graceful and amazingly tame. Below is the trainer with a bald eagle.

Would I go to France again? Hell yeah!
Why? I love it. It is beautiful.

The 2010 Adventure - Switzerland

From Germany we drove into Switzerland. We made a day trip of Zurich and then drove to Luzern, on Lake Luzern. The bridge over the river in Luzern was especially beautiful. I love the way everyone in Europe makes an effort to have flowers in public places. Just beautiful.














And the food! Oh the food!










From there we went to Lauterbrunnen which is near Interlaken. Below are the pictures we took from the balcony of our room. The view was stunning.














From Launterbrunnen we took the cog-train to Jungfraujock. These were the views we enjoyed for the two hours there and back.












And this was the view from the top. The middle of summer and it was freezing. The day was glorious and we had a great time playing in the snow.











Would I go back to Switzerland? Yes.
Switzerland was beautiful and while I was not as taken with it as Germany I would certainly be happy to return to see move of this country.

The 2010 Adventure - Germany

The European leg of the 2010 Adventure started in Germany. We flew into Frankfurt and stayed one night before picking up our hire car and driving to Bacharach, a small town on the Rhine in Western Germany.

Germany in summer is beautiful. The people are friendly. Flowers are abundant. Everything is well organised, well maintained and easy to understand (even though it is all written in German). We stayed at Pension Im Malerwinkel, which was a lovely half-wooded old house set literally into the village wall. This was our base for three days while we recovered from the hectic few weeks leading up to our trip and explored the surrounding area by car and bike. This stretch of the Rhine is covered with castles (about 65 within a 30 minute drive from where we were staying).

These pictures are of the pension, the gardens near the river in Bacharach, a nearby castle and the local bakery.



















From here we drove to Baden-Baden in South-West of Germany. This was a pretty flash town known for its Roman baths (which are still in operation), casino and horse racing.

We skipped the gambling and headed straight for a relaxing day at the baths. We went to the more modern baths as the "proper" Roman ones were closed for renovations. This was probably just as well because we found the Roman (nude) part of the modern baths quite confronting and hurriedly returned to the modern (clothed) parts. We soaked in 36 degree water, then 38 degree water, then spashed into the 17 degree pool followed by a trip to the 100% humidity room and the brine room. We stood under waterfalls, pulled buckets of "arctic" water on our heads and participated briefly in aqua aerobics. We also both had a massage which was great, if not painful. After all this we were relaxed and exhausted so returned to our hotel for an afternoon rest before going out for a wonderful meal at a hidden local restaurant. Above is a photo of our hotel and below is the view from our hotel window and a picture of the wonderfully moody restaurant we ate in one night.










From Bacharach we took a lovely scenic drive through the absolutely unbelievably beautiful Black Forest down to the bicycle-filled university town of Freiburg. The Black Forest was amazingly dense with trees and the scenery was just divine. If I were an artist this is the place in the world I would chose to paint. Below are two photos of the Black Forest, the second was taken by the car of Tom and me.















Would I go back to Germany? Yes.
Why? The landscape is beautiful, the people are welcoming and the prices are very reasonable compared with other countries in Europe. Germany was amazing and I would return there in an instant.

The 2010 Adventure - Japan

The 2010 Adventure started in Tokyo. Like all big cities Tokyo is busy, noisy and has poor air quality, but if you can get past that it is ok.

The streets are busy with short (to me) people weaving their way between each other to reach their destinations. The buildings are covered with advertisements in ever increasing multitudes of colors which have a garish and childlike look to them.

The pavements are tidy and litter free, save for the businessmen in black or gray suits chain smoking their way through their lunch breaks.


We visited Ueno Park and enjoyed walking around for an hour looking at the trees, monuments, lake, shrines, fountains, views and locals.

There were few homeless people visible during the day but many locals out for a stroll or mediation....


We stayed in Narita, a small town outside Tokyo, which is about an hour and a half closer to the airport than Tokyo. It has two train stations about 300m apart which made travel into Tokyo very convenient and lots of restaurants, including Macdonalds.

On the night we arrived we were too exhausted to look for food so stopped in at McDees for dinner. The polite young girl behind the counter seemed surprised at the amount of cheeseburgers we were buying. Her numerous confirmations about our order made more sense when we opened the burgers to discover that we had accidentally ordered double cheeseburgers.

Would I go back to Tokyo? No.
Why? It just didn't really appeal to me. Smoking is permitted everywhere and that made most places smell bad and made me sneeze. And it had a really busy feel to it and I found that stressful.

Arles and Pets

I am not really very good with animals. I think a part of that is being allergic to some of them. But equally another part is not having very much exposure to animals. So while I appreciate them, I am often awkward around them.

In the photo above I am reaching down to pet a cat in Arles. Arles is a country town with a population of about 50,000 in the South of France.

My husband took this photo of me and - apart from it being mostly a photo of my backside - I think it is a great photo. The composition and structure is excellent.

But you should know that in this photo where I am reaching down to pet a cat - that is purely a pose. I did not actually touch the cat.

Biscuits in the swamp land

In June Tom and I visited France. We stayed in Arles and drove to a near by walled city called Aigues-Mortes which is in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. The walled city was amazing but what really caught my attention was the biscuit shop.



It is better if we don't discuss how many euros I spent on biscuits and better still that I didn't work out how many Australian dollars those euros equated to. Sometimes it is best not to do the currency conversion - it is just too upsetting.

The biscuit shop was probably the most impressive in the world. It had HUGE quantities of biscuits piled up for purchase. They all melted in your mouth - and probably, once melted, oozed straight to my thighs.



It also had all manner of sweets, lollies, fudges and other diabetic coma inducing goodness.




I have never seen anything like this in Australia and, to be fair, that is probably just as well.

The Paris Incident

Part 2 of the funny things that happened to me while traveling in Europe and the UK

Tom and I stayed in Paris for a few nights earlier this year. We stayed in a self contained apartment in the Opera district.

It was great. Finding it was not.

Traveling can be stressful. It is difficult to find your way around in a new place when none of the signs are in your language. It is even more difficult when you don't have the correct address.

I had booked our accommodation on the internet before we left home and had the details with me. Unfortunately I didn't really pay much attention to them before we left. I knew we needed to go to a street called Bergere which was near the Grand Boulevards metro station.

Tom and I arrived by plane from Edinburgh. We had been up very early in the morning to travel to Edinburgh to catch our plane to Paris, so even before we started our travel we were tired. We had a good flight from Edinburgh to Paris and after getting our luggage from the carosel we headed to the train station to find a train.

On the way to the train station I spotted a bus service that went to the Opera district, so we hoped on hoping it would take us close to where we wanted to go. It dropped us off about 1 kilometre from the station we were after and we walked from there, daypacks on and suitcases in tow.

Once we got to the station we were after I took out our maps. I located Rue de Bergere and happily we were just nearby. So I set off to look for the apartment. By this time we were exhausted. It was late in the afternoon and we had been up since before the sun was. I had been wearing my daypack which weighed about 12 kilos and pulling my suitcase which weighed about 20.

We had some trouble locating the apartment. When we reached here


Tom and I disagreed on what number we were looking for on Rue de Bergere which lead to this conversation

Me: (with tone) We are after number 6 Tom. There is no number six here.
Tom: No. We want number 5.
Me: (loudly) No. 6. I am sure it is 6.
Tom: No it is definitely 5.
Me: (yelling) I don't f*&king care what it is! There is no number 5 or number 6 on this street and we are completely f*&king lost!

Yes. That right. I had a tantrum on Rue de Bergere in Paris. I swore (and I very very rarely swear) at my poor husband who was completely correct. We were after number 5.

The problem was that we were not after Rue de Bergere. We were after Cite de Bergere. Which we discovered after looking at the travel docs again.

This was not good. I had no idea where Cite de Bergere was. None of my maps were detailed enough to include it. I began to think that maybe we were in completely the wrong district. Would I have to drag my suitcase and my tired self across to the other side of town?

After the exchange of a few more curt words, Tom bravely asked direction from a lady in a hotel and she said

"Oui, Oui, Oui, a gauche, a gauche, a droite"


which meant - Yes you stupid Australian Tourist can't you see you are right near that street. You just need to go left, left and then right.

So when I had had my explosion at Tom we were approximately 50 meters from where we wanted to be. As you can see on the below picture. The little man is where we were arguing and Cite de Bergere is the lane nearby




..que the James Bond music...

So we found the apartment building. The next hurdle (apart from not killing each other before we had a shower and a rest) was to get into the building.

Now when I had booked our accommodation I had been given a code into the building. We had the code. We entered the code. The code got us into the first door of the building. Then we entered a second code to get us through the second door of the building.

The number was not 007 - but it should have been.

Once inside the second "chamber" we turned left and on the wall was a safe. We entered a third code into the safe and it opened to reveal an envelope with our name on it. In the envelope was our room key.

So we had the key and the note attached told us that we were in room 3. We located room 3, used the key successfully to get into the apartment and collapsed on the bed.

Ah Paris in the springtime....so romantic

Saint Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

Part 1 of the funny things that happened to me while traveling in Europe and the UK

Tom and I stayed in Vienna for two wonderful nights at the beginning of June this year. Austria is my favorite country outside Australia. There is a certain irony that the two countries have such similar names.

On the day that Tom and I arrived in Vienna, Tom was exhausted from the flight from Paris and decided to have a sleep. I on the other hand was raring to explore so left the hotel with my travel book and my purse. I was fairly well dressed, in a skirt and top, and (with the exception of the guide book) didn't really look like a tourist.

I walked down the Graben (Vienna's classy equivalent of the Queen Street Mall) to the massive Saint Stephen's Cathedral.

I had read in my trusty guide book that there was a tour in English each day at 3:30 pm. All the other tours were conducted in German. As I walked into the massive church my watch read 3:35. I found the tour was only just starting. They were a group of about 20 people listening to a charming young Viennese man explain the history of the back stained glass window in English. I surreptitious joined the tour.

The tour was great. It was lovely to hear about the working of this huge church and the history behind the works of art within it.

The tour even included a look at the front alter and pulpit which was cordoned off to the public. The guide led us through the barrier to the front portion of the church and then replaced it so that no one else would follow us in. He showed us the three alters including one which they claim has the shroud of Jesus below it. There were a few churches that I visited that made this claim. Perhaps they shared it out?

Anyway as we were approaching the end of the tour one of the young girls in the group spoke up. She let the guide know that "we" (the tour group) were a choir from the US and asked if it would be ok for the group to sing a hymn.

It was at this point that I realised that I had not found the English tour. I had accidentally joined a private tour of the Cathedral.

I didn't know what to do. I briefly considered singing with them, but they had a choir master with them who, I thought, would probably dislike a random Australian girl with (at best) an ordinary voice ruining their harmonies.

I would have run immediately except I was locked in. The barrier had been closed when we came down to the front of the church and I had not paid any attention to how it was closed or how it could be re-opened.

So I thought I would just play it cool and sit down on one of the front pews and listen. It seemed like a couple of the other ladies were going to do that too. But I had no such luck. The entire group moved into lines and began singing.

So I had not other choice. I fled. I walked quickly away from the group. I hurdled the barrier (in my skirt) and I was free.

The real shame was that they sounded so beautiful. The choirs voices carried around the cathedral and everyone who was there stopped what they were doing to listen to them.

Except me. I just kept walking.