Days 92-96: Amsterdam, Bruges, Brussels

DAY 92 – AMSTERDAM     20/03/2009

We checked out of our hostel, looking forward to having a proper kitchen (not just a microwave) at our next place to have some real food. We were pretty disheartened to find that our new hostel in fact had no kitchen (just a microwave) and was in a fairly out-of-the-way location. It is a budget hotel though, not just a hostel, so the facilities here are much nicer, particularly the bathroom. Anyway, somewhat disappointed, we walked back into the city to go and see the Waterloopleis market. It was a cool setup, a lot like most of the markets we've seen, but some of the things you could buy were insane. There was more fluoro material there than I've ever seen, a lot of military uniforms, puffy jumpsuits straight out of the '80s, a paramedic uniform, sporting shirts, and the regulation funny t-shirts and marijuana memorabilia. It was interesting to look around, although not really our cup of tea, so we wandered back through the city. We had some brilliant noodle-box-style Asian food (satay chicken with rice), walked back to the hostel, bought some food for dinner and relaxed. Dinner worked out surprisingly well, with jacket potatoes and vegetables – just what we needed after some pretty fatty food recently. I immediately felt better, which is ridiculous, but nonetheless my conscience was at rest. The mini-pancakes we had were also pretty good, and supposedly very Dutch.

 

Tonight we went out to see Amsterdam play Laren in the Dutch National League hockey. The complex is huge – there are at least six synthetic turfs, and as many more grass ones. The main pitch has stadium seating all round, and by game time there was quite a good crowd assembled. The match was fast, and quite physical, but a very close contest. There were a few international players involved, including Taeke Taekema, Luke Doerner, Eddie Ockenden and Rehan Butt. Afterwards we got a hockey ball (that we stole) signed by Doerner, Ockenden and some Dutch national players. The two Aussies were really cool and we had quite a good chat with them. It was really good to go see some hockey again, although we were a little disappointed they didn't play the new rules so we could see them in action.

DAY 93 – AMSTERDAM    21/03/2009

We started today slowly, ate a very good breakfast (it was a hotel after all) and after lunch we went back to hockey to look at the stadium in daylight. We found an amazing hockey shop nearby that had a huge amount of hockey sticks on display, was the official uniform supplier of the local club, and had some curious differences to shops at home; there were no stick bags at all, lots more casual clothing, a number of stick brands we'd never heard of, and almost exclusively 36.5" long sticks. Anyway, we spent some time testing sticks out, watching the hockey and taking in the atmosphere before going back into the city. We went to the House of Bols, which was a short history of the oldest commercial distillery in the world, and we even got to pick our free cocktails to have in the bar. We also got to taste a couple of different liqueurs like blueberry, dry orange, passionfruit and sour apple, and saw some pretty cool barman's sets that you could buy. I also found a brilliant cocktail book, with 2200 recipes. Walking back to the city centre we found Keeley some badges and visited a coffee shop to get some space cakes. By the time we got back to our hostel, we had missed Aldi's closing time by five minutes. We had to search out a small shop where we could get some cheese for tea. We made mini-vegetable bakes in the microwave which turned out pretty well. A cruisey night tonight before we move out tomorrow.

DAY 94 – ROTTERDAM    22/03/2009

Our intentions to get out of the hotel early were dampened somewhat by issues packing our bags, but we did get out in the end. Missing a train in Amsterdam Centraal Station was frustrating, especially as the official-looking conductor man pointed us in the wrong direction. Fortunately we did eventually get to Rotterdam and quite easily found our hostel. It's a pretty decent place, with themed rooms, a really nice bar/common room and best of all, a real kitchen. We're stoked as we could finally have our duck that Marion gave us all the way back in Rouen. More on that momentarily…

 

We spent the afternoon at the European Cup Qualifying for handball, watching the Netherlands play Spain. It was really exciting to be in the stadium with all those people, and the sound was pretty spectacular every time the Netherlands scored. It was a pretty fast game, and very physical, and we were pretty pleased that the more skilful, less bullying Spanish side came out on top. Keeley headed back to the hostel for a nap and I went to the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI). It was a pretty good setup, and I spent most of my time looking at competition entries for a new faculty of architecture at one of the universities here. A lot of the work was very impressive, but more interesting than anything were the comments from the judges. It gave me a few ideas about what people look for when judging competitions and presentations. It was also good to see that most of the presentations looked a lot like the ones we do at uni, so at least we're learning the right things. There was a pretty boring exhibition on the history of Dutch architecture, but it was mainly faded sketches that seemed to have more historical significance because of their age than their content. The bottom floor was all in Dutch so I didn't spend much time there, but I did go and see the nearby house which is an example of 1930s Dutch Modernism, completely preserved and restored to its original state. It was really good to see what was considered avant-garde back then, and I had to wear these funny overshoe-slipper-things to preserve the carpet.

 

We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with some Aussie girls, and made our duck in the kitchen. It was literally bathing in lard. It was among the most disgusting things I've ever had to cook, but it tasted delicious (after we had drained at least a litre of fat from it). It was nice to have it though, especially because it was free. We watched a terrible movie and now getting ready to move on to Belgium tomorrow.

DAY 95 – BRUGES    23/03/2009

Getting to Bruges today was a nightmare. We were very organised, packed our bags in record time, had breakfast and even had time to steal cream cheese from the hostel before making our way down to the train station in Rotterdam. However, the credit card curse of the Netherlands struck again and both the automatic ticket machines and the very helpful lady at the counter simply could not accept Visa. We used our last €40 in cash to pay for the train, and due to this stuffing around ended up missing the train we wanted to be on by mere seconds. We found another that left only twenty minutes later (rather than the hour we thought we had to wait), and boarded after checking with a conductor that we could travel without a reservation. However, it seems some lines were crossed somewhere and we had accidentally got on a privatised train that was super-fast and therefore super-expensive, and required a reservation to travel. Fortunately the conductor on the train was a great bloke and let us just get off at the first stop the train made rather than paying the €90 fare. This turned out well, as the first stop was also our stop – Antwerp. The station there is incredible, as it is dug three or so levels below ground because they had to expand but didn't want to damage the historic station. It's not only a significant engineering feat, but there was a celebration going on because Antwerp had recently been voted the second-most beautiful train station in the whole world behind Moscow. We got free chocolate from one of the shops, and there were all sorts of specials at the other shops like cheap coffee and two-for-one deals, not to mention the many actors in extravagant clothes wandering around educating the public about it. It was quite unusual but an excellent first Belgian experience.

 

Belgium only got better when we arrived in Bruges. It's a beautiful town, with fantastic old brick houses, a great market square and cobblestone streets everywhere. There are also about a million chocolate shops. At one point in our travels today Keeley could see three or four without moving from where we were standing or turning around. Getting into the spirit, we visited "Choco-Story", a museum dedicated to the art of Belgian chocolate making. It was actually really informative, and we learnt a lot about the process and history of chocolate making. I never realised how cocoa beans were processed into cocoa butter and cocoa mass, which is basically just squashing them in a massive press. It was also interesting to see how drinking cocoa was the way chocolate first spread through the world and the confectionary variety didn't take off until much later. The best part was the demonstration at the end of praline making, not so much for the rather lifeless demonstration but for the praline tasting at the end. Belgian chocolate really does taste better. There were also some pretty incredible sculptures made entirely of chocolate that were very impressive. The remainder of the afternoon was just exploring the town before our huge meal of pasta, good cheap bolognaise, duck meat, potatoes, carrots and best of all, fifty-five cent Belgian waffles and chocolate. Tomorrow is our last 'real' stop – Brussels. Looking forward to it.

DAY 96 – BRUSSELS   24/03/2009

Our second and final day in Belgium was nothing like the first. Keeley was excited at breakfast by the presence of Nesquik chocolate milk and cream cheese, and we walked through Brugges for the final time. The train ride to Brussels was very painless and easy, and as soon as we arrived we knew we were in a very different city. Glass skyscrapers towered over us, cars dashed everywhere – it felt like a capital city and centre of business. We had a small hiccup finding our hostel, but it turned out okay because the hostel itself is pretty good (only in business for a couple of months, it's still clean and shiny). We walked into the city and were not particularly impressed – it is a hotchpotch of styles, scales, and sophistication. Some buildings are really nice (both the historic and modern), but others are dirty, run-down or just ugly. We got some pretty good Flemish fries with awesome gravy, saw the main square, which is genuinely beautiful, and spent the rest of the afternoon chocolate and souvenir shopping.

 

Arriving back at our hostel, Keeley decided to cull some of the rubbish from her bag and did a stellar job, meaning her bag now packs brilliantly and giving us a lot of confidence for the big pack tomorrow. We had pasta and chips for tea and donated our well-travelled storage containers, food and other random items to the hostel.

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Day 91 - Amsterdam

A basic breakfast started our day before we wandered to the Amsterdam Dungeons, part of the franchise that runs the London Dungeons. Unfortunately, we miscalculated the opening time so had to kill an hour or so wandering around the streets, but that wasn't such a bad thing as we could do some window-shopping for souvenirs and stuff. The dungeons themselves were a little lame, but the actors were excellent and we heard a lot of gruesome and interesting stuff. One particular story stands out about the soul merchants that would get people drunk or drugged, then trick them into signing up to go away on ships to the colonies for the VOC. A Russian lady brought her two young kids, and they were scared a few times, but not as much as their mother. She was freaking out as she didn't speak much English and the actors quickly realised this and it was very entertaining. The tour ended with a fairly lame indoor rollercoaster, but it was funny.

 

Following the dungeons we did our last New Europe walking tour. We wandered through the Red Light District, saw a conveniently located church surrounded by prostitutes (so all the sailors could repent after their big night out), the biggest house in Amsterdam and the smallest (only 1.8m wide) – this was because there was a tax in Amsterdam for the street width of the buildings – and the old headquarters of the VOC (now Amsterdam University) which was the first real corporation in the business sense. Another highlight was the palace that was a town hall, built with an agreement between the church and the government that they would also build a huge spire on the church, which was never honoured. One interesting point that I had noticed but not understood was that every house here has a hook attached to the top that is used to hoist bulky items up the outside of the buildings to go in through the windows because all the staircases are too narrow and steep to fit them in. In the Dutch History Museum there is a famous painting that had a 10cm slash put in it by a stupid woman with an umbrella, and although repaired (at great expense) it is quite noticeable in the right light. We also heard about how the Jewish quarter of the city was destroyed in WWII not from the war, but to use as firewood to get the population through the longest, coldest winter in Amsterdam's history as the buildings were all empty (the Jews had been moved to concentration camps). Finally, we heard about the popular medieval entertainment double act of public execution followed by open medical examinations of the bodies for all to see. Apparently Rembrandt used this as one of the subjects of his famous paintings.

 

We had surprisingly good microwave pasta for dinner and are heading out on a pub-crawl tonight. Should be good.

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Days 88-90: Herrestrup, Copenhagen and Amsterdam

DAY 88 – HERRESTRUP AND COPENHAGEN      16/03/2009

Breakfast in a family home is much better than eating on the run, and the bread and cheese this morning was streets ahead of the home-brand cornflakes we have survived on for the last few months. Fortunately both Morten and I had survived the "Roskilde Disease" and were feeling much better, so we jumped in the car and drove to Copenhagen to see the sights. The suburbs are downright depressing, with rows upon rows of run-down community housing blocks. Morten had some trouble navigating the city (it'd been some time since he'd driven in Copenhagen) but we did arrive in the port area alive and well. The older part of the city feels completely different to the suburbs, with a very seaside theme to everything. We walked along the main canal, and Morten knocked his kneecap in a hilariously bad attempt at vaulting a small wall. We saw the parliament building, heard about the political issues of the Danes (one small party walk out of the parliament in protest whenever the royals enter, and a peace protest has been constantly active outside since 2001), saw numerous statues of numerous kings Frederick and Christian, climbed the observatory tower (a spiral ramp inside was cool and the view was really good) and heard the royal guards play their band as they marched through the town (every day at noon). The shopping district is nice, and we had some 'traditional' Danish hot dogs that were not bad, but nowhere near as good as German sausages. We also visited the Royal Palace, which has four buildings arranged around a quadrangle so that whatever royal is in residence can address the crowd from their balcony. There was also a cool hotel that was in a converted shipping storehouse. The new opera house commands an excellent view over the harbour and was a gift from a filthy rich shipping tycoon (the owner of Maersk shipping). Copenhagen city is really quite pretty, and I'm glad we saw it. Our tour ended with a longwinded attempt to find the quite underwhelming 'Little Mermaid' sculpture, which contrary to my expectations sits just on a little rock, not a podium.

 

We dropped in to see Klaus, and he gave us a tour of the ultra-impressive veterinary hospital where he works (it's also a university campus) and it was good to catch up with him.

 

Dinner was a really nice open sandwiches on rye bread (Keeley was unimpressed with the amount of mustard) and we spent the night watching movies and chatting with Morten. It was very enjoyable.

DAY 89 – HERRESTRUP      17/03/2009

Our breakfast included something neither of us has had since we were kids – boiled eggs straight out of the shell. It was quite nostalgic, and very enjoyable. From there we were taken on a tour of the area where Morten's family live. We saw Morten's school, a rather dour black and orange building that looked like a factory, a couple of small towns that explode in summer (the population quadruples), and looked out over a beautiful countryside spanning from hills to farms, plains to beaches, and everything in between. We dropped into the oldest castle in Denmark, currently a guesthouse and being renovated, but still pretty impressive. Finally we saw Morten's father's mink food factory, a very eye-opening experience. They use all the left-over bits of fish and chicken that other industries don't want, add in some grains, combine it all in a giant blender then cut it into slabs and freeze it at -22°C. They export thousands of tons a year, and spend three times longer cleaning the factory every day than they do actually producing.

 

A lazy afternoon was punctuated only by a trip to the supermarket where Keeley got another nostalgic moment with the 'kiddies trolleys' and we had a lot of coffee and Danish pastry. Morten and his mother drove us to our overnight train in Copenhagen, we bid them and Denmark goodbye, and headed off to Amsterdam. Our night was made slightly more interesting as we played cards with a Dutch guy called Boris and laughed at the stupid people who couldn't find their beds, only to find that they were sharing a compartment with us.

DAY 90 – AMSTERDAM      18/03/2009

We arrived in Amsterdam very glad for our 'sleeping couchettes' on our overnight train, which ensured we were at least partially rested (unlike our overnight buses). The children sharing our room were loud in the morning, but at least they slept through the night. We procured a map from the tourist office (the man was very good about giving us the €2 map 'under the table') and found our hostel, eventually, nestled in a small street. The extremely steep stairs were a bit of a challenge with bags, but we managed. Along the way we had our first Amsterdam experience – while looking at the beautiful buildings as we walked along we came face-to-face with a real, live prostitute in the window, 'advertising her wares'. Keeley did one of the biggest double takes I've ever seen. After checking in we spent a very long time trying to find a supermarket, much to Keeley's distress, but we did find custard, multivitamin juice and pasta for dinner, so it was worth it. We spent a bit of time wandering the streets, including a visit to a crazy specialist condom shop. This place was something else – there were specially shaped, handpainted ones, ones in lolly wrappers, some attached to sticks like lollypops, every colour and flavour imaginable and even a machine they used to test for leaks… it's okay, I think they used water. From there we walked a bit more, got held up at a police blockade as people tried to get on a bus to go to the soccer match tonight, and visited the Sex Museum. Some of the things on display there were quite… revealing… and there was a whole section on fetishes that was just plain wrong. I never realised how explicit the 1800s were though, and there were a lot of things on display from back then. There was also a 1930s porn film (the girl started naked and gradually put on clothes, no kidding), and some pretty bizarre pneumatic 'statues' that did all sorts of things. Interesting, to say the least.

 

Already we have a pretty good idea about Amsterdam – it's a really pretty city, most of the buildings are really nice, the roads are pleasant to walk down, but you are constantly reminded about its liberal attitudes. There is cannabis and sex everywhere, whether overtly or discreetly, and as much as it is in your face, it's refreshingly different. I think it will get tiresome quickly though.

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Days 85-87: Rouen, Roskilde and Herrestrup

DAY 85 – ROUEN                                                                                                                                13/03/2009

Our last day in Rouen was another typical Marion day, with a half-formed plan of meeting her friends for brunch. Nobody organised anything so we had a late lunch at 2pm instead, but it was very good. We had what was essentially toasted sandwiches from a small café, but they were good, with goats cheese and gourmet ham, etc. the time passed quickly and Marion made us rush to get to the train as she had somewhere to be (and was almost certainly late). In Paris, we bought our last French baguette (straight from the oven, still warm!) and settled down for our overnight bus to Copenhagen.

 

 

DAY 86 – ROSKILDE                                                                                                                          14/03/2009

Our bus ride was relatively uneventful, and sleep was predictably difficult to find. We did go on a ferry to get from Germany to Denmark, and got held up by an idiot who tried to enter the country without the necessary visa, but generally this was probably the best Eurolines experience so far. We met Morten in Roskilde, a town about half an hour west of Copenhagen where he's living at the moment, and spent the afternoon catching up with him. His best friend Niels and Niels' girlfriend Caroline came for dinner, and we had some slightly-too-crispy pork with potatoes and a really good white sauce, played cards and drank long into the night.

 

 

DAY 87 – ROSKILDE AND HERRESTRUP                                                                                           15/03/2009

When I woke up this morning I felt terrible. At first I thought I was simply hungover, but it quickly appeared that there was something very unsettled about my stomach. I was no better when Morten's parents came to pick us up, and embarrassingly I had to have the car stopped so I could recompose myself. It was a pity because his parents were very good, taking us through the countryside near his house and generally showing us the sites. I forced some food down, which temporarily lifted my spirits, and we spent the afternoon chatting. Dinner was another Danish feast, with pork and crackling, gravy, potatoes that had been fried in sugar (YUM!) followed by home-made creamed rice. I'm really glad my appetite came back because I would have been really disappointed to miss this. To finish the night off we chatted until late, and drank some crazy vodka with 'bison grass' in it, which was actually really good. Tomorrow we are being taken to Copenhagen to see the sights, so hopefully I'll feel better then.

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Days 83 & 84 - Rouen

DAY 83 – ROUEN      11/03/2009

Starting late, we wandered down the road to explore Rouen a little bit today. It's a fantastic medieval town, with lots of expressed timber frame houses and a cool undercover market area. The town centre was bustling, and we did a bit of shopping and bought lunch. It was quite humourous trying to buy a pita wrap from this bakery, as the owners didn't speak English and the sign for the wraps had fallen down so we didn't even know what to call them or how much they were. We got there in the end though. In the afternoon Keeley crashed on the couch and watched TV while I went for a more extensive walk around town. I saw the tower where Joan of Arc was imprisoned and tried, and the exhibition inside is very good. It doesn't tell the story so much, but looks at the impact she had in artwork, literature, and to the town of Rouen. There was a cool model of the town in medieval times, which was nice, and lots of cool sculptures. I also saw the gigantic Gothic cathedral, which is incredible. We've seen a lot of churches on this trip, but the Gothic architecture never seems to get old. I just wandered around for the next hour or so after that, saw a chocolate shop selling carnival masks like Keeley's, but made entirely of chocolate, and generally soaked up the atmosphere.

 

Marion prepared us a French specialty tonight for dinner – duck pate stuff followed by the most amazing (and terribly fatty) duck meat that just fell off the bone. It was fantastic. We ate cheese and bread and then went out to a nightclub that Marion said would have a lot of her uni friends there. It was a very enjoyable night.

DAY 84 – ROUEN      12/03/2009

We had a very big night last night, where we went to a club that was pretty empty, but we did get free drinks and meet Marion's friend Julian. It was nice to go out and not have to worry about spending money. We got up slowly and got on a train to Caen, a town a couple of hours west of Rouen. After grabbing some food and checking out the cool town centre, with its crazy tram-buses, cool castle and chocolate bread, we got on a bus to a small town north of Caen in the hope of seeing the D-Day beaches. When we arrived we were a little disheartened to see only a port where the ferry to Portsmouth (UK) departs, and not much else. However, with some closer exploration we discovered a cool museum to the D-Day landings housed in a Nazi bunker. There were some cool vehicles out the front, like tanks, amphibious troop carriers and drop-ships, and the bunker itself had been restored to pretty much as the Nazis had used it. Apart from the dangers of walking through it (the doorways were very low), the number of pieces of memorabilia and things was mind-boggling. There was a fully equipped first aid room, we saw the sleeping quarters, and the lookout room with almost 180° views and a period telescope. There was also a model of the beach defences set up by the Nazis – 14 different layers of defences from the water to the bunker, including a big concrete wall, barbed wire, mines, big steel tetrahedrons to stop the amphibious cars and tanks, spikes, etc. The bunker even had its internal communication system still intact – a series of pipes with mouthpieces linked to each room where they could talk to each other. The best part was being able to walk on the roof, five storeys up with a panoramic view of the town and the beaches. After finishing at the bunker we walked along the beach, past the go-kart track (seriously), saw some wind-karting (karts with sails on them) and a cool memorial to the landings.

 

We got back into Rouen pretty late, and Marion was at a meeting with other people from her student union. We had some pasta, Keeley watched some TV then I went out with Marion and her friends while Keeley stayed home. We went to an Irish pub putting on a rugby theme night, and I met more of Marion's friends (including her secret boyfriend) and generally had a good time. It was really good that everyone made the effort to speak English not only to me but around me, and they were all very friendly. We're meeting some of them for brunch tomorrow, so that should be good.

 

It will be sad to leave Rouen tomorrow, but exciting to see Morten in Copenhagen.

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Days 80-82 - Paris and Rouen

DAY 80 – PARIS      08/03/2009

Our hostel, a pretty painless experience to this point, got quickly more unpleasant this morning. We had to change rooms, not normally a problem, so we headed out at 8:30 (checkout time 9am) to see what the deal was. At that point they had not yet worked out the sleeping arrangements for tonight yet, so we were told to come back in fifteen minutes. When we did, the receptionist (not the sharpest knife in the drawer) had great difficulty working out the situation, tried to book us in under the wrong name, then told us that we could move our bags at 10am after all the people in our room woke up. Apparently this is against policy and the cleaner (perhaps higher in the food chain than the receptionist) was quite unimpressed and let everyone know about it. It all worked out okay in the end, but it was frustrating.

 

We spent most of the morning (after organising our bags) walking to the catacombs in the south of the city. With some difficulty (not helped by the rain) we found them and journeyed up to 20m underground through the old quarries and mines where, in the late 19^th Century, the Parisian government exhumed and moved thousands of bodies from the overflowing city cemeteries under the cover of darkness. They didn't ask anyone's permission or anything, and everyone from the poorest peasant to some very wealthy and famous people were moved and unceremoniously dumped in the disused mines underneath the city. A clever entrepreneur turned it into a tourist attraction, and there we were today. It is mind-blowing, the sheer number of bones there – the walls are literally made of bones and they arranged the skulls into all sorts of interesting patterns in the walls. It was a little morbid, but incredibly interesting and something I can honestly say I've never seen anything like in my life. The tunnels go for about 1.7km, not all with bones but there was a good twenty- to twenty-five minutes where we were literally surrounded by skeletons. There were also a couple of cool areas where the roof was about to cave in and they had reinforced with concrete, so the space (up to 11m) was quite cool. In a rather humourous twist, a woman brought her small children (5-8 yrs old) into the catacombs and was explaining it to them. The girl was adamant that she didn't want to be buried in a coffin, and when asked where her ashes would be sprinkled she replied "I don't know where my favourite place is… maybe Disneyland". It had Keeley and I in tears.

 

Once we finished there, we headed back to the hostel for lunch, visited a very classy French café for some amazing chocolate milkshakes (more chocolate than milk, we thought) and internet, and then headed for the Arc de Triomphe to see the 'lighting' of the eternal flame, intrigued as to how an eternal flame could be lit. The Arc is suitably imposing, on a scale you can't imagine ever being approved for construction today (but hey, when you're Napoleon Bonaparte, anything's possible). The roundabout around it is also pretty hectic, with no road markings people drive wherever they want and it's not surprising that there's an accident on average once every thirty minutes there. The actual ceremony, held every day at 6:30pm, was disappointing, looked amateur and generally insignificant, although I'm sure the people involved were paying a great tribute to lost soldiers or something. The whole thing felt poorly done, and we left feeling disappointed. At least the Arc itself was impressive. We met a couple of nice people over dinner then settled down for bed, one more day left in the French capital.

DAY 81 – PARIS      09/03/2009

Our final full day in Paris was a pretty quiet affair – we got up late and left the hostel with a couple of objectives; we needed to find Keeley another hat (more of an everyday affair than her souvenir beret), get some cornflakes for breakfast tomorrow, get Marion a gift for letting us stay in Rouen with her for the next couple of days, and print off some photos. We managed almost all of these. Convinced that a brand-name hat would be better than a rip-off souvenir one, Keeley sent us down to the Les Halles area to find some brand name shops. We did encounter a cheap crepe stall, and lots of clothing stores, but alas no hat suitable for the purpose. The area down there is quite nice though, and has a cool pedestrian shopping strip feel to it. Walking back up to the hostel for lunch, a little dejected, we were further disheartened to find the photo place where we were planning on printing our photos was closed on Mondays. Things improved after lunch though, where we changed tack and headed to the shops near Sacre Coeur, found Keeley a hat and bought some very cheap corn flakes. With only one mission viable and left to complete, we tried our luck with a packet mix of cake, figuring that the act of making Marion a cake would win some brownie points. The mix was pre-made, instructing us to simply pour and cook. This seemed to be a dream, until we discovered that the top would burn before the middle cooked. A helpful Irishman named Paddy (seriously) suggested that we should put the mix into a bowl, then float the bowl in water on the stove (think melting chocolate). He was so adamant that this would work, Keeley ran with it. All it did was melt the mix a little, and he was the laughing stock of everyone. On the upside, when we baked this semi-melted mix the centre turned a little running like self-saucing pudding and it was very good. We eventually decided to buy a pre-made cake and write "merci" on it with white chocolate, and with a Toblerone and some Aussie regalia we figure she'll love it.

 

Other than that, we didn't do much, eating too much for dinner, walking down to the Moulin Rouge to see it by night, and generally preparing for our trip to Normandy tomorrow.

DAY 82 – ROUEN      10/03/2009

We woke to a drizzly day in Paris, checked out of our hostel and metro-ed around to our train to Rouen, where we would stay at Marion's house, one of the students we hosted at my place a few years ago. The train station didn't put up the departure platform until ten minutes before departure, which had Keeley a little on edge, but other than that the wait was pretty uneventful. We played cards in the station and on the train and before we knew it we were in Rouen. Marion's friend met us at the station and power-walked us to her house, where we dumped our bags and spent the afternoon relaxing on the couch. I listened to music and Keeley watch The O.C. on DVD. When Marion arrived home from uni, she was very excited to see us, and also because she found out today that she's going on exchange to Mexico through her business course at uni.

 

That evening was very enjoyable, with Marion's best friend Marianne (?) and her Australian boyfriend coming over for tea. It was good to have a good meal again, as our food in Paris had been below our usual standards, and share a couple of bottles of wine. We exchanged travel stories and generally just enjoyed the good company. Tomorrow we'll explore Rouen a little and then we try "traditional French food"… whatever that means.

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Days 75-79 - Barcelona, Bilbao, San Sebastian, Paris (it's not that bad, I promise)

DAY 75 – BARCELONA      03/03/2009

Our day started with a pretty painless trip to the bus station to buy tickets to tonight's bus to Bilbao. Strangely, you can't buy tickets for the other bus (San Sebastian to Paris) from here, but if San Sebastian's office is as easy as this then it shouldn't be a problem. We then proceeded to walk back to La Rambla, got distracted in the market again and bought some real, fresh juices. Keeley had a strawberry and banana concoction and I experimented with kiwifruit, coconut and mango. Both were excellent purchases. Our real aim for the morning was to walk up to the top of a hill to the west of the city centre that apparently had some pretty good views of the city. We weren't disappointed, and we did get a really good appreciation for the size of the city from there. It was pretty good, with the only downside being the buildings immediately adjacent to the hill being probably one storey too tall to see the waterfront properly. There are also a number of stadia from Barcelona's Olympics still standing on the hill, so it was interesting to see them as well. The Olympics were important for the city as it was the reason it is so nice now – sand was shipped in from Egypt to make the beaches, palms were hired from Hawaii, paving was done throughout the city and it was generally smartened up to the pretty cool place it is today.

 

Following our walk, we dropped once more into the market to buy food for tea, picking up a lot of steak for only €3, and some vegetables. The staff at our hostel were good enough to let us use the kitchen and everything even after we'd checked out, so that was good. Our final excursion in Barcelona was to the Sagrada Familia church, Casa Mila and Casa Battlo, all by the famous architect, Antonio Gaudi. The man's style is unrivalled, and more than anything you are just amazed at what he had the tenacity to do with stone. Undulating, almost biological facades are somehow even more impressive when you think that no stone in them would be the same and they stand out against the rest of Barcelona's otherwise relatively unimpressive architecture. It was great to see them 'in the flesh', and Sagrada Familia particularly will be absolutely amazing when it is finally finished in around 30 years (it was started in the late 19^th Century).

 

The night ended relatively quietly, watching a movie and relaxing in our hostel before another couple of no doubt uncomfortable bus rides.

DAY 76 – BILBAO/SAN SEBASTIAN      04/03/2009

Our overnight bus was another saga, and another late service from our friends at Alsa; only twenty-five minutes this time though. The thing that annoyed us both was the lack of information available on the boards. The bus was at least comfortable – we stole the back seat and spread out, so that helped. We arrived in Bilbao, a little disorientated (the bus driver's heavy accent meant we were caught off guard and didn't realise where we were until we stopped. In the confusion Keeley lost her prize Italian scarf, this loss being the more painful for the loss of her Scottish hat only a couple of days ago. The weather did little to brighten her spirits – it was raining. We decided the rain wasn't heavy enough to be uncomfortable so we walked through it. This turned out to be a bad idea, as we were so early that finding a supermarket that was open (to buy milk for breakfast) turned out to be a long, arduous walk. On the upside, we did get to explore Bilbao pretty thoroughly and see some of the amazing, modern buildings in the city. The Guggenheim museum, as impressive as it is, is only the start of this city. It's really turning around its industrial heritage with some pretty edgy modern architecture, sculpture and urban space. It's a pity the weather was so miserable, because it would have been good to explore it more. In comparison to Barcelona, where I feel comfortable that I explored it enough, I felt that we barely scratched the surface of Bilbao. I guess you can't control the weather though, and it was still pretty good to visit.

 

Another bus, another city as we arrived in San Sebastian to more rain. Keeley was getting pretty grumpy by this point, and I had no intention of lugging our big backpacks around all day so we dropped into the café of a swanky looking hotel just near the bus station. It was a good move in the end, as not only did we get coffee and a map, but it let Keeley dry off a bit while I walked the 20mins into the city centre to find the tourist information. Fortunately it dried up a fair bit by then, and the sun was even peeking through for fleeting moments. The walk was actually pretty pleasant, and when I gathered my info and found Keeley again we dropped our bags at a local internet café and started exploring. The city is very pretty, even on such a gloomy day, with a lot of nice squares and boulevards. We sampled some tapas, traditional Spanish food where there are lots of small 'tasters' of things and you eat one of everything, before getting on a bus to the science museum. The view over the city is pretty good from the road as you drive up the hill, looking over a couple of big sports stadia and toward the bay. The science museum itself is very impressive, rivalling the London science museum for quality. Literally everything was interactive, covering all the regular bases of mass, electricity, light, communications and environment. It easily occupied two-and-a-half hours of our time, and by the time we left we had missed another torrential downpour. We explored the city a bit more, looking in some shops, making some pita bread and steak sandwiches for tea and generally just checking the place out before everything shut up shop. We are now in McDonald's, planning our next few days in Paris and waiting for our midnight bus. San Sebastian is another gem of Spain, and in some better weather I can imagine being able to spend a few days here.

 

Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable day apart from the rain. Both places are definite must-sees for my eventual return to Europe, that's for sure.

DAY 77 – PARIS      05/03/2009

I really don't like buses. They are uncomfortable to sleep in and you end up too close to other people. For example, on last night's bus two guys had a huge argument in different languages about one of them reclining his seat too close to the other one. Also, Keeley had to contend with a rather oversized bum taking up most of the seat next to her. We did get some sleep, fortunately, probably owing as much to tiredness as anything. When we arrived in Paris (finally, after contending with heaps of traffic at 10:30am!) we found the metro system almost as good as London's. There was a cool board, admittedly a bit of a relic of the 20^th Century, that lit up all the stations you would go through to get to anywhere in Paris from the bus station. For example, Keeley just pressed the button for our station and it showed the quickest route, including changes and everything. It was nothing a touchscreen computer couldn't have done, but it was cute.

 

Our hostel is literally across the road from the metro station. We had heard some pretty terrible stories about it, and braced ourselves for the worst, but it's not too bad. There are some odd things, like each room only has one key for everyone to share and the eating area is outside in the courtyard under a shade sail, but other than that it's actually alright. We do have to fight through a few street cigarette and jewelry salesmen to get anywhere, but they're not scary in any way, just annoying.

 

We tried to get something out of our day here, so we rushed down to the Notre Dame cathedral hoping to catch the 12pm English tour we read about in Lonely Planet. Unfortunately, the tour wasn't until 2pm and we didn't really feel like waiting around, so we checked out the cathedral and moved on, just exploring the streets. We did come across Norman Foster's Pompidou Centre, which is very cool to see in person. The idea behind it is a building being turned inside out, with all the circulation, plumbing, ductwork, etc on the outside and free, open plan space inside. It was pretty impressive. We also walked down to the Moulin Rouge, read a little about the history of it and saw the exorbitant prices – one for the next visit when we're rich we think. We did some supermarket shopping, made a mess of the meat sauce for tonight (a combination of too much chilli and frozen mince) but in the end had some good nachos and spent the night chatting to some guys from the hostel. All in all, it was a surprisingly pleasant day considering how tired we are. Early night tonight to allow us to tackle a walking tour and the Eiffel Tower tomorrow.

DAY 78 – PARIS      06/03/2009

We headed for the New Europe walking tour of Paris today. Our guide was a loud Kiwi with a speech impairment, but he was entertaining enough. From the fountain of St Michel (the leader of God's army and the angel who banished Lucifer to Hell) we heard how the original crown of thorns worn by Christ is held in Notre Dame after being bought by a French king for the equivalent of €300 million, saw the bulletholes in the police building, the only scars of WWII in the whole city, then walked along the Seine and saw the Pont Neuf, which is adorned with over three hundred sculpted heads. The legend goes that King Henri IV held a big party, got everyone drunk and had their drunken likenesses recorded so they could be used to decorate the bridge. We also saw a couple of very nice palaces, including the one and only Palais de Louvre, saw the obelisk outside it (they put a giant condom on it for World AIDS Day one year) and walked up one of the main axes of Paris towards the Arc de Triomphe to end at the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, two famous art museums. The tour was quite good, giving us a pretty good overview of the city.

 

We then went to the Eiffel Tower, climbed the 668 steps to the second floor and caught the lift all the way to the top. The view was incredible – we were lucky to get an almost perfectly clear day. It's strange to look over the city and see the centre being quite low (less than five storeys) then suddenly skyscrapers appear further out. It's almost the opposite of a 'normal' city. You also get an appreciation for the huge boulevards and axes in Paris when you see it from so high up. The park at the base of the tower, Parc du Champs de Mars, is really nice and the tower itself is simply incredible. It really does look like something from another time, with its expressed riveted steel construction and simple brown paint. We also thought it was cool that they still let people climb it, especially since it's much cheaper to climb than catch the lift all the way.

 

To round off our already big day we went to the Louvre (which is free after 6pm on Fridays) and saw a mind-boggling collection of art, sculpture and artefacts. Apparently it would take you approximately sixty-five days to see everything in the Louvre if you spent 30 seconds at each item, and that is very believable. The place is indescribably massive, and we only scratched the surface. There are apparently 100,000 pieces in its collection, with only 35,000 on display. You could even see one of the storerooms at one point, with the pieces covered by various drapes. We did see the Mona Lisa, a small painting covered by a huge glass case, and a lot of very interesting Egyptian artefacts including a real mummy and sarcophagi. By this point we were pretty tired so we headed back to our hostel, satisfied that we had spent the day very successfully.

DAY 79 – PARIS      07/03/2009

We found it pretty difficult to get up this morning, but made it in the end and after much difficulty at the train station (the automatic ticket machines were very uncooperative) we were at the Palace of Versailles. This place redefines 'big'. The palace itself has several wings, extending in all directions. It is imposing from any angle, but the best view is from behind in the gardens, where the façade stretches out and has a really nice symmetry and consistency of decoration. The gardens themselves dwarf the palace, which is obviously no mean feat, including a couple of man-made lakes where you can hire boats to row around on. One particular Asian couple struggled with the rowing concept, attempting to row backwards. It was very funny to watch. They hire out golf buggies for the elderly so they can see the whole thing. Although some of the trees were sans leaves, owing to the winter, the forms of the gardens were clearly evident. Scattered throughout were heaps of little fountains and other places of interest, like a pretty cool stone amphitheatre thing. Perhaps the most impressive thing about them was the realisation of a completely planned garden on such a big scale – you really got a feel for the huge axes running through it and they had their full effect because of the scale. It was really cool to see.

 

Tired, we headed back to Paris and stopped at the supermarket and a small fruit and veg market to get food for tea. More importantly, however, we also went down the street towards Sacre Coeur so that Keeley could find a beret to replace her missing Scottish hat. We did find one in a souvenir shop eventually, but we also diverted to the church for a look. The location is stunning; the highest piece of real estate in Paris, and you can look out over the city. There is an impressive staircase leading up to the church itself where a few groups were busking. One pair were dancing, and were pretty impressive with their athleticism. The church is a place of perpetual prayer, meaning you are supposed to be completely silent inside, a fact lost on the tourist behind us. It is not the biggest, nor the grandest church we've seen, but it is very impressive. There is a large mural of Jesus on the dome over the altar complete with gold leaf. The side alcoves are also quite nice, as are the stained glass windows. There are hundreds of little candles almost completely encircling the congregation, giving the place a cool medieval lighting.

 

I am really pleased that we've managed to see most of the 'big' tourist sites already, leaving us with a couple of days up our sleeves to revisit anything or just explore the city. This is how Berlin should have been. Tomorrow we finish off our list of must-dos with the catacombs and Arc de Triomphe.

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