Pommies, Parisiens and Belfasters

20.09.2003 15 °C

Hola

Since last writing I've done three trips abroad! The first was a weekend in London at the beginning of August, 3 weeks ago I finally made it to Belfast, and then last weekend I zipped over to Paris!

I'd spent a week in London nearly 6 years ago, and had considered it my LEAST favourite city.....I thought perhaps a few years (on both London and my parts) would maybe change my perceptions of the city. My memories were of a ginormous, filthy, bleak metropolis, where it rained constantly, everything was overpriced, people were boxed into the tube like battery chickens and where service with a smile was a foreign concept.

So maybe it's not that bad.....for starters, I had a weekend of brilliant sunshine. I arrived in London on the tail end of one of the hottest fortnights on record. People were flailing about in the 39 celcius heat, turning into lobsters as they laid out to roast in Hyde, St James' and Regent's Parks (Hyde Park looking a little lunar with all the grass having shrivelled up and died), and the tube was like an underground sauna complex. And aside from the grime, crowds (I almost took up claustrophobia) and frowns.....oh and did I mention exorbitant prices (£12 for a B-grade movie in Leicester Square!!!), I did have a grand time.

As I had spent my time in London back in 1997, racing about to see all the main sights, I didn't have a full agenda of sightseeing to do. So I went and checked out the places I had missed last time) such as Lord's Cricket Ground, Abbey Road recording studios, Covent Garden Markets, Milennium Bridge, London Eye and Tate Modern Gallery.

I started off heading up to Lord's cricket ground (I'm not even going to try and explain cricket to the Yanks, and Europeans on his list!) where I took a 2hr tour of the grounds, under the guidance of a South African, who had the charisma of Mr Bean's forlorn teddy! Anyway, it was quite cool to go into the members stands, wander round the grounds, and check out the museum - got to see the Ashes too!!! They gave Bradman a good rap (well deserved), and provided us with a good overview of the history of cricket in England and across the globe, before taking us off to the Real (Royal) Tennis courts and letting us watch professional Real players strut their stuff on the courts.

In case you ever wondered, the reason they say "Love" when the score is zero, well an egg is about the same shape as a zero, the French word for egg is "l'oeuf", and with an anglicized twang on the word, makes it sound rather like "love". And why on earth do they count up 0-15-30-40??? Well again, in French, you would count "l'oeuf, quinze (15) , trente (30), quarante-cinq (45)". The Poms thought the 45 was too difficult to pronounce so decided to use quarante (40) instead - lazy!! Anyway, it was interesting, but it just wasn't cricket!!

After Lords, I wandered up the road to the nearby Abbey Rd recording studios. I'm not hugely up on my Beatles trivia, but I think this is where they cut their first LP - i could be completely wrong so apologies to Beatophiles......There is a whole big graffiti wall there where people from all over the world pay kudos to the Beatles. Of course i did the Beatles walking across the road thing along with all the other tourists.

From their I made a quick dash to Euston station to catch up with Leighton for a brief lunch before he knicked off to Manchester for the weekend. And then set off again for an afternoon of sightseeing, stopping for a quick look around Covent Garden Market (a stack of high fashion shops, art and craft stalls, restaurants, cafes etc), St Paul's Cathedral (built 1710 by Christopher Wren, wedding place of Charles and Di, I THINK it's the 2nd biggest in the world), and then crossed the Milennium Bridge (recently reopened after reconstruction to stop in shaking about in the wind) over the algae-coated Thames to the Tate Modern gallery. The gallery is housed in what used to be a large power station. It has a grand collection of works by artists such as Gilbert and George (after whom my green tree frogs mascots were named), Dali, Picasso, Warhol, Matisse and Kandinsky. Really teriffic collection and it's free!!!!! A lot of cool stuff in London is free thankfully, which makes up for the ridiculous amounts you have to pay on food, accommodation etc etc.

I then met up with some friends from Oz, Susan and Lynelda, at Victoria, and we grabbed some delicious Italian food.

I spent Saturday morning and afternoon doing a quick whiz around town admiring the sights of Buckingham Palace (didn't see old Lizzy or those wretched corgies this time - last time, by pure chance, we saw her twice on consecutive days!!), strolling along the stinky Thames between the Tower of London/Tower Bridge, and Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, had a picnic lunch in the park with Suz, Zelda and her man (2 thumbs up!), had a look at Kensington Palace and Royal Albert Hall, went for a stroll down Oxford St for some serious WINDOW shopping, and sauntered through the enormous Hyde Park and watched the Poms at play on the paddle-boats on the Serpentine (big snake-like lake). Dinner in Leicester Square - couldn't really fork out the money for the theatre which was a bummer, but nice Italian food (again) never hurts!

Back to London on the Sunday and I moved in with some South Africans I met at the hostel. Really great people, though they have very peculiar accents and reckon their rugby/cricket teams are better than ours....Ya right!

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago I made it up to Belfast. Once I eventually got there (train broke down and they shunted us on to buses which arrived 2 hours later than expected!!! I headed out for a wander around town.

I wandered down to the impressive City Hall at Donegal Square, then checked out St Anne's Pro-cathedral with its impressive Gertrude Stein mosaics, and ginormous British flags hanging from the ceiling. I was amused to learn that St Anne's patron saints and two little teddy bears called Patrick and Anne, and that the church has a tradition of collecting donations using Black Santas. The tradition started in 1926, when the then Dean, got a wooden barrel and sat out on the cathedral steps collecting donations whilst wearing his black clerical cloak (his long fluffy beard scored him the nicname of Santa.

Aside from that and a little shopping (naturally), I spent my time looking around the Catholic and Protestant parts of town. I'd kinda got a taste for how crazy the Catholic/Protestant deal was, when we drove around the North at the beginning of August. Not only are the Catholic and Protestant areas clearly demarcated by a huge wall (about 20ft or so high, made from corrugated-iron and covered in graffiti, but there are also gates that lock the areas off from each other. I think the need for this "peace wall" is taking Frosts' notion of "good fences mak(ing) good neighbours" to the extreme. The Protestant areas are plastered with Pommie flags, red, white and blue striped curbs, murals with images of William of Orange (the dude that lead to the defeat of the Catholic King in the Battle of the Boyne), The Apprentice Boys (the younguns who shut off the gates of Derry to keep out the Catholics in the 1689 siege), the Scottish Flag etc. I went for a walk through the Protestant area on the Saturday afternoon (apparently not always a good idea) and then back on the Black Taxi Tour the next day. The Catholic areas are a little more subdued, far fewer flags, and the murals have orange and green colours, the word "Saiorse" (Gaelic for Freedom)images of the British Bulldog, and pictures of the phoenix, a symbol of a united Ireland. The black taxi tour I did through teh Catholic and Protestant areas on Sunday was pretty cool - a convoy of about 5 cabs zoomed about 20 of us around town, stopping to look at all the murals, the peace line, memorials to various people who had died in the conflict etc....great commentary too, though the whole bollocks that has gone on up there is really beyond comprehension... ...people are still getting shot/assaulted, the hatred and criminality is rife.....really crazy stuff. The Bloody Sunday (Jan 1972) inquiry was reopened last year and is now into its 368th day!!

Back to Dublin....a fortnight ago, I headed over to the Chester Beatty Library - it won European Museum of the year in 2002. The museum is housed in the old clock tower of Dublin castle, and is the ginormous art collection of Beatty, a Canadian mining millionaire. It mostly contains Islamic and Far Eastern manuscripts and includes such exhibits as clay tablets from 2700BC Babylon, Japanese wood-block prints, Chinese books covered in Jade cases, and paintings from the Ottoman and Persian empires. It also has 250 Koranic manuscripts. Quite an interesting collection.

I had a quick trip to Paris last weekend with some Dublin-based Aussie friends. Did the usual sightseeing things like Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur and Monmartre etc, and also visited Les Egouts de Paris (Paris' sewer museum - fascinating little place. A tad stinky though!), Catacombs (more than 6 million people buried here from overflowing Parisian cemetaries), Cimetiere due Pere Lachaise (resting place of Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Chopin etc), the Latin Quarter (where we dined on Escargots, Raclette [essentially melted cheese poured on top of spuds] and Creme Brulee!), Marais quarter (gay and Jewish centres of Paris, also brilliant shops/cafes - ever tried a chili chocolate!?! Not bad!), Centre Pompidou, Jardin des Tuileries, Hotel des Invalides (Napoleon's resting place) etc.....Very quick trip and insanely busy but very enjoyable. Paris is such an unreal city - great sights, people, food and general ambience. Thinking about coming and living here for a while...... improving my French, imbibing the atmosphere long term. Who knows though.....Many places to see, things to do.

I've also managed to meet up with some folks from back home - Aimee and Emily, who were in town for the weekend after doing a tour round Ireland - and Leighton and Sara, who were Ireland for about 5 days the other week.

So for this week it's boring old work for me, and then i'm heading off to Croatia next Saturday for 2 weeks!! Can't wait. My mum is flying over to meet me so it'll be great to catch up with her and spend some time travelling down the Adriatic coast....

Ciao

Belinda

xoxo

Paris to Madrd - again!

27.01.2002 15 °C

Hola.....
Back in beautiful Madrid! (actually I seem to be saying that about a lot of places but there are truly many beautiful places here and we have visited many).

I left Paris on Wed morning after 6 fantastic days........Our last day there was mostly looking for postcards and souvenirs etc.... We also visited the Pere Lechaise Cemetary where you get to see the graves of folks like Jim Morrison (complete with lots of flowers and love poems written to him), Edith Piaf, Balzac, Chopin, Pisarro, and many others. Almost got locked in too as we arrived about 45 mins before closing time and the security guards came chasing us out the gates with stern warnings! In the evening we headed down to the non-existant Bastille, did some meandering around the Marais district (the centre of both Paris´ Jewish community and its gay life - interesting combo!) and went to our favourite little Chinese restaurant just around the corner from the hotel. I tried to persuade Denise to try some escargots but she shuddered at the thought. I can´t say I blame her - for me it was absolutely a once off thing....maybe frog´s legs one day though.

Anyway, Denise had to fly out of Madrid yesterday so she came straight back down from Paris while I headed to San Sebastian (Donostia) in the heart of Basque country. This place is (wait for it...) extremely beautiful.....there is the old town with lots of great shops, bars and cafes, three impeccable beaches with REAL sand, and two mountains up each end of the beach strips which offer fantastic views over the beaches and the Bay of Biscay. I didn´t actually do much in San Seb but sit on the beach and squirm my toes in the sand whilst reading a travel guide, wander about the old town, eat some Tapas at this nice little bar we found opposite the main beach and scale the (smallish) mountain on the side near the hostel. There were a couple of Aussies at the hostel and we contemplated going for a swim out to the little island that is 500m out or so from the beaches, but the water was seriously icy - much colder than in winter back home. One of the girls from the hostel and I (she was actually from Sydney which is cool because no Aussies I have met thus far have been from anywhere but Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth!)..... caught a bus out to Bilbao (a dump) to see the Guggenheim collection. It houses a great collection of modern art and an exhibition of Frank Gehry´s architectural models and furniture. He also designed the museum which is in itself, a fantastic site! Outside the museum is a ginormous puppy dog statue (Jeff Koons designed it) which is covered in flowers and is quite fun.....Julia (Sydney girl) said it actually was in Sydney a couple of years back so maybe some of you saw it then....

Unfortunately no big riots or explosions when we were in San Seb - not that I really wanted one but it does sound a bit more exciting when you talk about your holiday. We did come across some tiny protest of about 60 people outside (presumably) some government official´s workplace.....the cops were there with those riot shields and batons and machine guns (serious!) but nothing eventuated as far as I know. I was a bit disappointed to not even hear a smidgen of Basque being spoken by the locals either.....Spanish everywhere......

Anyway......back in Madrid...I am staying at the hostel which is right up the other end of town from where we stayed before. Not sure what the place is like yet as I dumped my stuff off and headed into town. I was hoping to meet up with some Aussies for Australia day but the only guy I met at the hostel was a Pom! Then again, it was mid afternoon and everyone is out sightseeing etc as they should be. Tomorrow I am going to visit the Prado (last gallery for the trip!) as it is Sunday (free day), go to the bullring and walk around the Parc del Buen Retiro (a gorgeous park with an amazing fountain, some statues and lots of chi-chi mamas with their poodles!
I´m thinking about heading out to Salamanca on Monday but it is a three hour ride one way and I am going to be doing a heck of a lot of sitting between Tuesday and Thursday (on the plane) so that may not yet happen.....Avila is much closer and so maybe I will go there instead.

OK Well this is it for me........I have had a fantasitic 9 and a bit weeks but it will be sooooooooo nice to get home to some normal food, TV in English (although it is fun to try and translate), my family and friends (most of you anyway), and of course my cat! The poor little bugger won´t remember me!

Hasta luego!

Bel x

Paris Take Two

22.01.2002 12 °C

I am back in beautiful Paris _ co,plete with strange keyboard configurations!

We decided on a whim to come here from Madrid on an overnight bus......sure; it got us here, but 16 hours on a bus qlmost completely full of skanky and smelly (or are the two mutually inexclusive?) men is not recommended.

Flicking through my travel guide we found a place on Rue de Rivoli, which is where the Louvre is, and connects onto the Champs Elysées and Arc de Triomphe. It is about as central you can get and is super value. We can see the Hotel de Ville from the window to our room. There is also a gorgeous carousel there and an ice_skating rink. Lots of streetside vendors selling crepes too....banana and nutella heaven. The night we got here we visited Centre Pompidou, a zanily designed building equipped with colourful pipes, a brilliant modern art museum and shops and restaurants.

The next day we visited the catacombs where some 6 million Parisiens were buried after the cemeteries became overcrowded. It is truly bizarre walking through corridor after corridor of bones and skulls! Also visited Saint Chapelle, an incredibly beautiful stained glass window rooved church, wandered up past the Louvre onto the Champs Elysees, back to Notre Dame and the island on which it is situated and visited the Australia shop where they sell Vegemite and Cherry Ripe bars.

Spent Saturday in Brussels - contrary to what i had been told, it is auite a beautiful city but it rained most of the day which was a pain in the butt!
Sunday I was back in Paris....visited Hotel des Invalides which houses the French army museum and is adjoined to the over the top tomb of Napoleon in the Eglise de Dome. We came across the sewer museum but it was closed!

Today we went up to a huge big market place just north of Monmartre. It was full of interesting clothes and a fantastic antiques section but it is in one of the seedier parts of town and was pretty shabby. This afternoon I wandered through the passages of the Right Bank - all the old 19th century shopping arcades with vintage clothes, antique shops, old postcards and Toulouse-Lautrec posters, and lots of sweet little cafes. Also wandered about Royal Palace gardens and saw the room where the revolutionary plans were born.

Tomorrow is more sightseeing, then on Wed I am off to Basque country to have fun with the ETA separatists.

Ciao
Belinda x

Down South - Languedoc-Rousillion/Provence

20.12.2001 -2 °C

20 December 2001

Bonjour

Am now back in France. At present I'm in Languedoc-Rousillion in the city of Nimes. It is quite a nice place but the hostel is a little quiet at the moment... the guy at reception told me a group of schoolies are arriving ce soir so thankfully i am leaving tomorrow. Apart from about 3 people, everyone speaks French and not much English! I think my French is slowly improving though. A lady on the train today informed me that I spoke French very well. Hmmm...very kind she was.

I left Switzerland on Saturday and it was something crazy like -15!! All of Western Europe seems to be suffering from a cold snap at the moment though - it has even been snowing in Provence!One of the girls I am staying with said that on Friday the whole town basically closed down because of the cold and snow. It is getting a little warmer though and i am optimistic that Spain will be HOT - ok well relatively so.

I woke up Saturday with virtually no voice......a combination of aphonia, diplophonia, pitch and phonation breaks (for all you speechies out there)...mum is certain I'm borderline pneumoniac but it's not that bad. Hey but if I do get really sick, I will make sure you all have my address so you can send lots of flowers. Everyone at the hostel has been laughing at me cause i sound like a frog... but I am in France so that suits! I learnt a new word too.... gorge (throat). It's kinda hard to get assistance in the pharmacy when you can a) not speak much French, and b) not actually use your voice at all!

I spent Sunday exploring the city of Nimes...... quite a nice place...one of the girls from the hostel, Josephine showed me around. We visited the Jardins de la Fontaines, Arena (old Roman arena where they used to have bull fights), the archaeological museum, natural history museum (it was bloody cold outside!), and a couple other things.

On Monday, I went toArlés.....visited the archaeological museum on the site of the old Circus Maximus and next to a gypsy camp. Also went to the Roman Arena, amphiteatre and forum, Roman baths, an art gallery with a couple of Picassos, and chased the feral cats around the town!

Yesterday I went to La Pont du Gard. Very impressive......it used to be an aqueduct back when the area was settled nearly 2000 years ago - maybe longer even....it is quite huge and is in the middle of nowhere. I had planned to go to the village of Uzès in the afternoon but ended up hiking around the bush near Pont du Gard in the fresh air.

Today I went to Avignon. I had wanted to go here since I was about 9 when my piano teacher told me about the people dancing on the bridge........it turned out to be quite an ordinary bridge but the city itself was really beautiful. I visited the old Holy See, the Palais du Papes, visited another archaeological museum, natural history museum, the gardens on the top of the hill (great view of the river), and Villeneuve dez Avignon, across the river, which was home to a colony of noisy geese, nice sculptures and fountains that had icicles dripping from them because of the cold. I found a fantastic pizza place for lunch.....mmm....

Tomorrow i am off to Montpellier on the coast. I had hoped to base myself in Narbonne and do a trip to Carcassone from there; but i don't have a list of places to stay in Narbonne and there is no hostel there. I am booked in to stay in a guesthouse in Montpellier which is full of foreign students studying French. You get a room with private bathroom, breakfast and a hugggggggge dinner for FF150 - about $AUD40! good value..... not sure what there is to do there but it is on the coast so maybe it will be warmer

Am meeting Denise in Barcelona on Sunday and will be in Spain and Portugal for 4-5 weeks. Depends on how accessible some places are we are hoping to go. May head back to Suisse and Paris for a couple days if time. I had tried to change my flight to come back earlier but am still going via Thailand and wil be home Jan 30. Just in time for end of cricket ODIs!

The French are obsessed with their animals and take them everywhere....this afternoon on the way back from Avignon; my seatmate was a scruffy looking dog and across the aisle was a gorgeous chinchilla, just like caesar! People take their dogs into restaurants, on public transport. They actually put signs up outside museums to inform people that their petit chiens are not allowed in the building! Its nice having all the cute animals around but unlike the Parisiens, the folks down here don't carry their doggie bags to clean up the mess so you have to watch your step.

A bien tot

Belinda x

J'adore Paris en l'hiver

06.12.2001 14 °C

Since I last wrote I spent a day in The Hague, and spent a few delightful days in rainy Bruges. Bruges is lauded as one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe, and deserves all the superlatives that are laid upon it. It is a sheer delight - the passage ways, canals, Gothic spires...the grandeur of the Grote Markt juxtaposed by its many solemn alley-ways. And the cafes...even if they are a little smoky, well there's little more enjoyable than ducking inside a cosy cafe on a drizzly winter's day to sip hot dark chocolate!!

The main town square, Grote Markt had an ice skating rink set up in it and with the wafting aromas of the Glühwein, waffles and smoke of the Christmas markets blended together, made for a wonderful place to spend the evening - even in the drizzly cold.

From Bruges, I continued on to Paris. I had visited 4 years ago, but it was such a whirlwind visit that it was but a blur. Last time, we had met some Aussies at the Gare du Nord and spent our time travelling around with them - but it was a manic 3 days - enjoyable but a little too hectic to really appreciate the city properly.

After the short journey from Bruges, and checking into my grungy hostel in the Latin Quarter, I headed to the Louvre for the afternoon. Visit the Louvre is as exhilirating as it is exasperating. It has more than 30 000 pieces in its collection spanning from BC times to the 19th century. I decided to focus on the sculpture wing, before heading out for an evening walk along the Seine.

The following day I went to the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris - It has an interesting range of Cubist, Fauvist, Dadaist etc. works in a wonderful exhibition space - and it's free. The views over the Champ de Mars are glorious from there too! I also walked along the Champs Elysees, visited the resting place of Napoleon at Hotel Des Invalides, ducked into Le Saint Eustache Eglise and strolled through the Tuilleries. I had dinner that night with an American guy from the hostel - we went specifically in search of l'escargots, which, I have to say, were not nearly as bad as one might expect. They were heavily soaked in salty garlic and had the texture of ludicrously over-microwaved mushrooms! I am delighted to say that I was able to eat the whole side-plate without shooting any snails out of their shells and across the floor.

I picked up a friend from the airport yesterday - Sam - he was flying in at about 5.30am so the early morning start was a bit of a killer. After a quick kip, we headed to the Arc de Triomphe. I neglected to tell Sam about the subterranean passage to the Arc de Triomphe...mostly for the amusement of getting to run across the road to it...it's a little like running the gauntlet, but it's pretty fun :) It's one thing to look at the insanity of the cars from atop the Arc, but it's rivetting to be amidst it all. From there we visited the Opera Garnier, had a quick look in Galeries Lafayette department store, and wandered through the passages, i.e. the 19th century arcades that run across several streets on the Right Bank. With their exquisite interiors, antique shops and chic cafes, they are a good place to amble on a rainy day. In the late evening we hit the Musee d'Orsay, before heading back to a lovely Greek restaurant in the Latin Quarter, with an overly attendant waiter.

We visited the Pantheon this morning and are just shortly heading to Notre Dame and then to Monmartre to check out the Sacre Couer and Salvador Dali museum and have a general amble about. Tonight we are going to have dinner with some people from the hostel and head to the Champs Elysees for late night shopping. It is a nice sunny day - I don't even have a coat on!! Fingers crossed it stays this lovely for good tower views.

I am in Paris for a few more days and then I head to Switzerland to visit my cousin, Kraig. I haven't seen him for years, so it'll be great to catch up.

A bien tot

Belinda

Inside the Louvre

Notre Dame

Up the Eiffel Tower

Arc de Triomphe

Sacre Couer

Inside the Palais Garnier