Well after a poor night sleep due to the large amount of noise just outside our hotel room, we set off to explore Venice. We had a good day and basically made our way towards the Piazza St Marco which is one of the major Vanice attractions, on the way we visited the Guggenheim museum, being the complete twat that I am, I didn't realise that there were multiple Guggenheim museums around the world, I had a vague understanding that one existed in America, and I believed that it was in New York, but apart from that I knew nothing. I now know that Peggy Guggenheim collected a very large amount of modern art and began exhibiting the art quite a long time ago, she also had a daughter who was an artist, who typically for an artist died young from depression related problems (overdose of her medication).
I have to admit that for a large part of my tour around the Guggenheim, I was wondering what ot was all about, and in general I have decided that modern art is from artists who like myself suffer from a short attention span, meaning that they either can't finish what they start (much like me) or get distracted(much like me) by other things during the creation of a piece, and include the distractions into the piece that they are working on.
Either way, to me art that has to be described to you to be appreciated is missing the mark, but as usual on this trip, I know very little and much more important people than myself have already decided otherwise, so I'll leave you to make up your own mind.....
Once out of the Guggenheim we continued on to the Piazza St Marco, and discovered that the square (or plaza) had been overtaken by a fashion show and some major construction works, so we took some photo's and had a good look around, but we moved on quite quickly due to the large crowds and lack of photo opportunities.
On the way back from the Guggenheim, we discovered a little art gallery that had a very strong opinion on American culture, see photo's of Mr R McDonald and Ms Wonder Woman and Batman for an idea of what I mean. Funny thing was that as we walked into the courtyard with the scuplture of Sir Ronald's head in someone else's hand, a large group of USA citizens followed us in, "oh that's not nice" and "what's that all about" were the phrases being uttered, so I felt compelled to mention that it was the venetians opinion on American culture, meanwhile Carol was telling me to shutup and 2 british tourists thought it was very funny. The citizens of the USA still didn't seem to understand, or didn't hear me as I didn't have an American accent, either way I thought I should at least try and clear up their confusion.....
After "the incident", we moved on to have some lunch and discovered a cafe that was serving 1L beers, so I had one of those (of course) and we eventually moved on to have a look at the Rialto bridge, this once again was covered with banners advertising various things, so we didn't take any photo's, but the Bridge itself was impressive and worth a look in itself.
Overall Venice is a lovely city for a visit, tomorrow morning we're planning on rising early to head across town to photograph the Sigh bridge and we might take some piccies of some of the other sights as we come back, once we're done with that we'll head off to Salzburg.
I hope you're all enjoying the blog, talk to you soon, Richard and Carol
Pics from our day in Venice
Thursday 28 July 2011
Back to Florence to see David
Hi All,
Fairly short blog today as most of the day was spent travelling from Rome to Florence or from Florence to Venice.
Anyway, we had a relatively late start again today, can't seem to put my finger on why, but it may have had something to do with the beer and wine consumption, we did manage to rise at around 8:30am anyway and after breakfast, checkout and walking back to where the car was parked we were on our way by about 10:00am, back on the highways, watching the locals refuse to drive within the lanes, we had a short stop for lunch bewteen Rome and Florence and arrived on the outskirts of florance around 1:00pm. We parked the car paid for parking and walked to the bus stop. We managed to have a conversation with a local to figure out which bus to catch and jumped on. The driver wasn't intereested in taking any money and neither was the ticketing machine, it would seem that you should purchase a ticket before you get on the bus, andvalidate the ticket once on the bus, only about 10% of the people who got on the bust did anything about validating a ticket, and the driver didn't seem to care whether you had a ticket or not, so I'm assuming that it's a random check that happens once in a while and it didn't happen on our way into Florence so it was all good.
we got off the bus about a block from the accademia (where David is standing) and wandered down there. Once there we found 2 CLEARLY marked lines (it will become clear why that's important later), one for the people who had booked a time, and one for the people like us who had just shown up. We could tell from the length of the line that we were in for a long wait, but we wanted to see David so we went to the end of the line and waited. I was estimating about 1.5 hours worth of waiting, but after about an hour we were at the front of the line, it was at this point that the Americans started to appear, each one(or group) and there were multiple, showeed up at the front of the line and asked the Italian guard where the line was and how long they'd have to wait, the couple in front of us spoke a little english so they tried to help out, but in between Americans we managed to expose ourselves so it bacame our job! much to my disgust we had to explain the whole thing to each of the STUPID Americans that showed up, as I mentioned earlier the two lines were clearly marked in english, so much so that Carol and I, who aren't particularly seasoned travellers managed to read the signs and walk to the back of the line without having to push in between the people standing in line and ask dumb questions.
Before being identified as english speakers who understood what was going on because we could read, we even watched one american put on disgusted look when the Italian guard managed to convey to them that he didn't speak english, I could only stand back in awe and imagine the same person if an Italian dared to approach them in their home town and speak to them in Italian, asking for directions, I can only imagine how they'd react if the roles were reversed!!!
Anyway, after surviving the onslaught of people who couldn't read, we entered the Acadamia, the art was amazing(sorry no photo's allowed, so the photo I took from outside 2 days ago is the best we've got), but rest assured that it's worth standing in line and even worth dealing with the stupid people!! David is a massive figure, and funnily enough, even though apparently his proportions are very accurate, I would think his hands and feet are a bit too big for the rest of him, but what would I know!!!
Once we'd wandered around the museum for a couple of hours we headed back to the car, and as we still didn't know how to get a bus ticket we walked, only took about 40 minutes and was pleasant enough even though it was sprinkling rain.
Back in the car and a roughly 3 hour trip to Venice, pretty much without incident apart from the usual can't possibly drive in my lane and my own issues with understanding the speed limits......
Got to Venice and parked the car, was asked the leave the keys in it by a young man in a white shirt who looked official anyway, hopefully we'll still have a car when we leave Venice!!
Hotel was easy enough to find, I'll give you the run down on Florence after dinner, it's been a good day and we've enjoyed ourselves again.
Hope this finds everyone well, talk to you all soon, Richard and Carol
A Couple of Photo's from Florence - sorry none from inside the Academia
Fairly short blog today as most of the day was spent travelling from Rome to Florence or from Florence to Venice.
Anyway, we had a relatively late start again today, can't seem to put my finger on why, but it may have had something to do with the beer and wine consumption, we did manage to rise at around 8:30am anyway and after breakfast, checkout and walking back to where the car was parked we were on our way by about 10:00am, back on the highways, watching the locals refuse to drive within the lanes, we had a short stop for lunch bewteen Rome and Florence and arrived on the outskirts of florance around 1:00pm. We parked the car paid for parking and walked to the bus stop. We managed to have a conversation with a local to figure out which bus to catch and jumped on. The driver wasn't intereested in taking any money and neither was the ticketing machine, it would seem that you should purchase a ticket before you get on the bus, andvalidate the ticket once on the bus, only about 10% of the people who got on the bust did anything about validating a ticket, and the driver didn't seem to care whether you had a ticket or not, so I'm assuming that it's a random check that happens once in a while and it didn't happen on our way into Florence so it was all good.
we got off the bus about a block from the accademia (where David is standing) and wandered down there. Once there we found 2 CLEARLY marked lines (it will become clear why that's important later), one for the people who had booked a time, and one for the people like us who had just shown up. We could tell from the length of the line that we were in for a long wait, but we wanted to see David so we went to the end of the line and waited. I was estimating about 1.5 hours worth of waiting, but after about an hour we were at the front of the line, it was at this point that the Americans started to appear, each one(or group) and there were multiple, showeed up at the front of the line and asked the Italian guard where the line was and how long they'd have to wait, the couple in front of us spoke a little english so they tried to help out, but in between Americans we managed to expose ourselves so it bacame our job! much to my disgust we had to explain the whole thing to each of the STUPID Americans that showed up, as I mentioned earlier the two lines were clearly marked in english, so much so that Carol and I, who aren't particularly seasoned travellers managed to read the signs and walk to the back of the line without having to push in between the people standing in line and ask dumb questions.
Before being identified as english speakers who understood what was going on because we could read, we even watched one american put on disgusted look when the Italian guard managed to convey to them that he didn't speak english, I could only stand back in awe and imagine the same person if an Italian dared to approach them in their home town and speak to them in Italian, asking for directions, I can only imagine how they'd react if the roles were reversed!!!
Anyway, after surviving the onslaught of people who couldn't read, we entered the Acadamia, the art was amazing(sorry no photo's allowed, so the photo I took from outside 2 days ago is the best we've got), but rest assured that it's worth standing in line and even worth dealing with the stupid people!! David is a massive figure, and funnily enough, even though apparently his proportions are very accurate, I would think his hands and feet are a bit too big for the rest of him, but what would I know!!!
Once we'd wandered around the museum for a couple of hours we headed back to the car, and as we still didn't know how to get a bus ticket we walked, only took about 40 minutes and was pleasant enough even though it was sprinkling rain.
Back in the car and a roughly 3 hour trip to Venice, pretty much without incident apart from the usual can't possibly drive in my lane and my own issues with understanding the speed limits......
Got to Venice and parked the car, was asked the leave the keys in it by a young man in a white shirt who looked official anyway, hopefully we'll still have a car when we leave Venice!!
Hotel was easy enough to find, I'll give you the run down on Florence after dinner, it's been a good day and we've enjoyed ourselves again.
Hope this finds everyone well, talk to you all soon, Richard and Carol
A Couple of Photo's from Florence - sorry none from inside the Academia
Wednesday 27 July 2011
Rome Day 2 - Vatican City - bah humbug!
Sorry if the title of blog offends, but having the Catholic Church ask for $106 Euro or approximately $160AUD for the two of us to enter is a little offensive in itself.
Before we'd arrived at the vatican we'd already looked up the ticket purchase and decided that although we'd both like to see the sistine chapel, that was more than we we're prepared to pay.
I must say that the main square at the front of the Vatican city is very impressive, including the main road leading up to the square which is very wide for a street in Rome and very weel kept in comparison to many others. Unfortunately there were some works underway around the front of the Vatican so some of the buildings were shrouded by scaffolding and hessian, and there was one "naf" as Carol put it, 60 foot high picture of Pope John Paul the 2nd hanging on one side of the square. So although it was all very impressive, it was also a little discomforting to see the absolute extravagance of the place.
Before we made it to the Vatican, we had started the day quite late, mainly due to some over indulgence of our own on the previous evening, but once up and going we walked the city from one end to the other again, and I swear by the end of this "holiday" we'll both have massive calves due to the sheer number of kilometers we're covering on foot. Anyway as usual I digress, on our travels during the morning we "found shit" which is the phrase we've coined when we stumble upon things we weren't really looking for, and because we took a less than direct route to the Vatican, we managed to find some very interesting things, we stumbled upon the Italian parliament, and even took photo's of the building without being arrested or shot at, you'll also see a picture of the tall skinny thing that's in the square (or Piazza as they're called in Italy, see I am learning something) I attempted to take an "artsy" photo of it where the sun is just peaking around the edge of it, nice eh?
Once we'd finished being nervous while taking photo's with about 15 Italian police standing around doing what they do best (smoke and talk on their mobile phones) we kept on heading in the general direction of the Vatican, the next thing we "found" was the Castel Sant' Angelo, which was originally someones tomb (Hadrian was the blokes name), he was a Roman Emperor at some stage and was keen enough to build this massive structure to house his corpse. Pretty nice digs to, with a great view of the Vatican (which of course wasn't there when he built the thing!!) As the Catholic church moved in there and used it as a fortress for quite a while after Hadrian died, there was an amazing amount of lavish decoration done (anyone else noticing a theme here?), pretty amazing to look at anyway, and they even had a recreation of one of the popes bedrooms.
Once we'd spent a few hours wandering around someones tomb and then headed off to the Vatican for a while, Carol wanted to check out the Trevi fountain again, to hopefully get a bit closer to it and maybe get a better photo, so we walked all the way back across Rome to find the same massive crowd that was there yesterday (not surprising really!) so we decided to visit our favourite cafe and drink 660ml bottles of beer again (nope we didn't learn). It was really nice watching all of the different people head to and from the Trevi fountain, as well as watching the various Statues attempt to extract money from the tourists. We even struck up a conversation with a belgium couple, where between their English and Carol's German we managed to have quite a good conversation.
Eventually we decided that we should stop drinking beer and get something to eat (after 3 bottles each!) so we went back to the hotel, changed and went looking for a nice restaurant, we found one not far from the Hotel. I had a steak, which I think will be the last one in Europe, as although it was really well cooked, it was expensive and wasn't a great cut of meat, I'm assuming that we're just spoilt in Australia and meat is soo expensive over here that this is more the norm unless you head to a REALLY expensive restaurant. Carol had a really nice spaghetti dish and we also found a nice bottle of Shiraz.
Anyway that was day 2 in Rome, tomorrow we head back to Florence to have a quick look at David's bits and then we're off to Venice....
Rome Day 2 - Vatican City and Castel Sant Angelo
Before we'd arrived at the vatican we'd already looked up the ticket purchase and decided that although we'd both like to see the sistine chapel, that was more than we we're prepared to pay.
I must say that the main square at the front of the Vatican city is very impressive, including the main road leading up to the square which is very wide for a street in Rome and very weel kept in comparison to many others. Unfortunately there were some works underway around the front of the Vatican so some of the buildings were shrouded by scaffolding and hessian, and there was one "naf" as Carol put it, 60 foot high picture of Pope John Paul the 2nd hanging on one side of the square. So although it was all very impressive, it was also a little discomforting to see the absolute extravagance of the place.
Before we made it to the Vatican, we had started the day quite late, mainly due to some over indulgence of our own on the previous evening, but once up and going we walked the city from one end to the other again, and I swear by the end of this "holiday" we'll both have massive calves due to the sheer number of kilometers we're covering on foot. Anyway as usual I digress, on our travels during the morning we "found shit" which is the phrase we've coined when we stumble upon things we weren't really looking for, and because we took a less than direct route to the Vatican, we managed to find some very interesting things, we stumbled upon the Italian parliament, and even took photo's of the building without being arrested or shot at, you'll also see a picture of the tall skinny thing that's in the square (or Piazza as they're called in Italy, see I am learning something) I attempted to take an "artsy" photo of it where the sun is just peaking around the edge of it, nice eh?
Once we'd finished being nervous while taking photo's with about 15 Italian police standing around doing what they do best (smoke and talk on their mobile phones) we kept on heading in the general direction of the Vatican, the next thing we "found" was the Castel Sant' Angelo, which was originally someones tomb (Hadrian was the blokes name), he was a Roman Emperor at some stage and was keen enough to build this massive structure to house his corpse. Pretty nice digs to, with a great view of the Vatican (which of course wasn't there when he built the thing!!) As the Catholic church moved in there and used it as a fortress for quite a while after Hadrian died, there was an amazing amount of lavish decoration done (anyone else noticing a theme here?), pretty amazing to look at anyway, and they even had a recreation of one of the popes bedrooms.
Once we'd spent a few hours wandering around someones tomb and then headed off to the Vatican for a while, Carol wanted to check out the Trevi fountain again, to hopefully get a bit closer to it and maybe get a better photo, so we walked all the way back across Rome to find the same massive crowd that was there yesterday (not surprising really!) so we decided to visit our favourite cafe and drink 660ml bottles of beer again (nope we didn't learn). It was really nice watching all of the different people head to and from the Trevi fountain, as well as watching the various Statues attempt to extract money from the tourists. We even struck up a conversation with a belgium couple, where between their English and Carol's German we managed to have quite a good conversation.
Eventually we decided that we should stop drinking beer and get something to eat (after 3 bottles each!) so we went back to the hotel, changed and went looking for a nice restaurant, we found one not far from the Hotel. I had a steak, which I think will be the last one in Europe, as although it was really well cooked, it was expensive and wasn't a great cut of meat, I'm assuming that we're just spoilt in Australia and meat is soo expensive over here that this is more the norm unless you head to a REALLY expensive restaurant. Carol had a really nice spaghetti dish and we also found a nice bottle of Shiraz.
Anyway that was day 2 in Rome, tomorrow we head back to Florence to have a quick look at David's bits and then we're off to Venice....
Rome Day 2 - Vatican City and Castel Sant Angelo
Tuesday 26 July 2011
Florence - Rome - Colosseum
As the Accademia (where David is standing) and at least one other museum who's name escapes me were closed today, we decided to modify our travel plans and head off to Rome this morning, as we have to travel back past Florence on our way to Venice, we'll leave Rome early on Wednesday morning and spend the afternoon in Florence.
Major bummer for today was that I managed to scratch the car trying to follow the GPS instructions to turn down a really (no really really) small street. A quick check of the website revealed that the insurance has $0 excess, so now I'm a bit less worried, I did of course have visions of having to pay a $1500 excess for the rest of the trip to Rome though, so we were both very relieved once we had checked the insurance.
While travelling to Rome it became apparent that the Italians, even more so than the French, have decided that the lines on the roads are only for decoration, it seems to be a national past time to drive along the lines rather than between them, this was on a 3 lane highway at speeds of 130km/h. French and Italian car makers should also remove the indicators from all of the cars they sell over here as it's a WOFTAM (waste of .... time and money) attaching them to the car, they're seldom used and on more than one occaision the wrong one is flashing when the car changes lanes (or moves from following one white line to a different white line).
We've now also discoverd that we shouldn't have driven the car into the centre ot Rome or Florence as they have LTZ's or low traffic zones, the hotels have sorted this out for us though, as you can bring the car in if you're staying overnight, but you're supposed to give prior warning....whoops! Kn owing this now we'll have to leave the car on the outskirts of Florence when we go back there, so we'll be packing the backpacks with the laptop and iPad so that we're only leaving clothes behind for the theives that will target our red numberplate. (yes the red number plate means we're tourists! something to do with us owning the car when we're not residents of Europe, clearly identifies us as having no idea which is probably why no-one has hit me yet)
Once we arrived in Rome and found the hotel, I took the car to the "special" car park and handed the key over to someone i've never met and walked away! hopefully it really is a carpark.
We then set off to find the Colosseum and found quite a few land marks along the way, the Military museum is really impressive. I've posted a photo taken from our hotel balcony that shows how close we are to the military museum.
The colosseum is awesome!!!!! it's absolutely amazing to see what the Romans built a very very long time ago, I apologise for the photo's as they really don't do it justice, for anyone who planning on visiting Rome, I have some advice "bring a wide angle lense!!" most of the sites you visit are very big and you don't have the room to stand far enough back to take a decent photo, the Camera we bought in Singapore is coming in very handy as the digital SLR has a lense on it that generally doesn't give a wide enough shot. All of the monuments and historical places are crammed in amongst the rest og the city, meaning that you don't get to stand back to take a photo!
Once we'd trekked in and around the colosseum we headed off towards the Trevi Fountain, which was soething that I knew nothing of but Carol was keen to see, once we got there I understood, it's and amazing piece of sculpture, and was definitely worth the walk. Once we'd finished taking some photo's ofthe fountain we walked about 20m and decided that it was time for some beer, so we sat down at a Cafe and ordered some "large beers", which resulted in 660ml bottles of Astro Nazzura showing up ;-), all good.
Once we had managed to drink 2 of these each we wandered (not in a straight line though) off to find some dinner, quite close to our hotel we found a restaurant that looked OK, so we went inand sat down for dinner. Carol tried her second Rissotto in Italy and to be honest I liked this one better as the Rice didn't leave an after taste in your mouth like the first one did, I tried a Spaghetti Bolognese which was really good. We decided that it would be a good idea to have a bottle of wine with dinner, which we paid for this morning, but at the time we enjoyed it.
Overall we had a good first day in Rome, the city is beautiful although not quite as clean as Paris and we're still having a blast, although all of this culture is really quite tiring and our legs are going to be massive after all oft his walking!!
Photos of the Colosseum and Trevi fountain and other Rome places
Major bummer for today was that I managed to scratch the car trying to follow the GPS instructions to turn down a really (no really really) small street. A quick check of the website revealed that the insurance has $0 excess, so now I'm a bit less worried, I did of course have visions of having to pay a $1500 excess for the rest of the trip to Rome though, so we were both very relieved once we had checked the insurance.
While travelling to Rome it became apparent that the Italians, even more so than the French, have decided that the lines on the roads are only for decoration, it seems to be a national past time to drive along the lines rather than between them, this was on a 3 lane highway at speeds of 130km/h. French and Italian car makers should also remove the indicators from all of the cars they sell over here as it's a WOFTAM (waste of .... time and money) attaching them to the car, they're seldom used and on more than one occaision the wrong one is flashing when the car changes lanes (or moves from following one white line to a different white line).
We've now also discoverd that we shouldn't have driven the car into the centre ot Rome or Florence as they have LTZ's or low traffic zones, the hotels have sorted this out for us though, as you can bring the car in if you're staying overnight, but you're supposed to give prior warning....whoops! Kn owing this now we'll have to leave the car on the outskirts of Florence when we go back there, so we'll be packing the backpacks with the laptop and iPad so that we're only leaving clothes behind for the theives that will target our red numberplate. (yes the red number plate means we're tourists! something to do with us owning the car when we're not residents of Europe, clearly identifies us as having no idea which is probably why no-one has hit me yet)
Once we arrived in Rome and found the hotel, I took the car to the "special" car park and handed the key over to someone i've never met and walked away! hopefully it really is a carpark.
We then set off to find the Colosseum and found quite a few land marks along the way, the Military museum is really impressive. I've posted a photo taken from our hotel balcony that shows how close we are to the military museum.
The colosseum is awesome!!!!! it's absolutely amazing to see what the Romans built a very very long time ago, I apologise for the photo's as they really don't do it justice, for anyone who planning on visiting Rome, I have some advice "bring a wide angle lense!!" most of the sites you visit are very big and you don't have the room to stand far enough back to take a decent photo, the Camera we bought in Singapore is coming in very handy as the digital SLR has a lense on it that generally doesn't give a wide enough shot. All of the monuments and historical places are crammed in amongst the rest og the city, meaning that you don't get to stand back to take a photo!
Once we'd trekked in and around the colosseum we headed off towards the Trevi Fountain, which was soething that I knew nothing of but Carol was keen to see, once we got there I understood, it's and amazing piece of sculpture, and was definitely worth the walk. Once we'd finished taking some photo's ofthe fountain we walked about 20m and decided that it was time for some beer, so we sat down at a Cafe and ordered some "large beers", which resulted in 660ml bottles of Astro Nazzura showing up ;-), all good.
Once we had managed to drink 2 of these each we wandered (not in a straight line though) off to find some dinner, quite close to our hotel we found a restaurant that looked OK, so we went inand sat down for dinner. Carol tried her second Rissotto in Italy and to be honest I liked this one better as the Rice didn't leave an after taste in your mouth like the first one did, I tried a Spaghetti Bolognese which was really good. We decided that it would be a good idea to have a bottle of wine with dinner, which we paid for this morning, but at the time we enjoyed it.
Overall we had a good first day in Rome, the city is beautiful although not quite as clean as Paris and we're still having a blast, although all of this culture is really quite tiring and our legs are going to be massive after all oft his walking!!
Photos of the Colosseum and Trevi fountain and other Rome places
Sunday 24 July 2011
Monaco - Florence - what road rules
After securing the Monaco lap record we set the GPS for our Florence hotel and set off, about 1.5k's into our trip to Florence(yes very much still n Monaco) the GPS decided to play silly buggers and sent us into some of the very back roads of Monaco, when the GPS said "turn right" we looked up the street we were turning into and Carol and I said "WTF" in unison, the streets of Monaco are all narrow, but this was ridiculous and about 1k later we weren't able to turn the direction the GPS asked us to as someone had parked a car on that street and there simply wasn't enough room to drive up that street.
After a few more hairpins and sharp turns we arrived back on the same road that the GPS had taken us from about 5mins beforehand, and I swear it woiuld have been a 30sec trip up the main road!! As we were nearing edge of Monaco the GPS had one last trick for us, asking me to keep right we then drove straight past the required left hand turn, and had to drive about 1K before being able to turn around and go back, no real damage done but a bit frustrating all the same.
Once on the freeways we were off and running, and apart from the very confusing speed signs and changes in speed limits it was all good, I'm fairly sure that I was either 20kph below or 20kph above the speed limit most of the time, but no one else seemed to care either, with people in the right lane travelling at about 70kph and people in the left lane travelling at about 140kph. While I'm at it, lane markings are purley a guideline in Europe that shouldn't be followed in most instances, the number of people that drive along the dotted white lines like they're following the black line on the bottom of the pool while swimming needs to be seen to be believed, the Italians are also much less patient that the French, if you're in the fast lane when they come up behind you, you should pull over immediately, whether there is a car beside you or not, so the bird came out of it's cage a few times, much to Carols disgust.
Believe it or not we did make it to Florence unscathed(physically at least) in time to see Cadel win the Tour de France, which I thoroughly enjoyed, excellent to see that once they stop everyone taking the gear(yes I mean drugs), the race is a much closer affair, with anyone of 5 or 6 riders having a chance to win this year depending on their form on any given day.
Once we watched Cadel we headed off to explore Florence, I have to say that this is the first time that I've really felt that we might get robbed so far on the trip, we walked through the train station and I really believed that several groups of people were looking for people to rip off. Once surviving the train station we walked to several Florence land marks, the buildings here are stunning, but the city is generally grubbier than Paris.
At one point we walked past the turn off to the "Accademia" where the statue of David is, but found another square with some amazing buildings which we'll work out the origins on the "net" when we have a minute. We also found the amazing church that you'll see a number of photo's of before heading back to "Accademia" only to find that it was closed. While I was taking a photo of the front door, it opened to let the staff out and I noticing that I could see "Davids" bollocks through the door, I snapped a photo, what I didn't know at the time was that this was as close as we'd get to "David" as when we enquired as to tomorrows opening time, the staff member said "no" and pointed to the sign on the wall which clearly stated that Monday was his day off!!! So we'll have to see if we can "drop in" on David on our way to Venice after our visit to Rome.
We've now had some dinner, about 2 bottles of wine and a small glass of Lemon spirit which was "on the house" by the Trattoria where we ate. So please excuse the even worse than usual spelling and grammar, but I'm blaming the alchahol, and if it's better than usual then maybe I should drink more ;-)
Photos of Florence
After a few more hairpins and sharp turns we arrived back on the same road that the GPS had taken us from about 5mins beforehand, and I swear it woiuld have been a 30sec trip up the main road!! As we were nearing edge of Monaco the GPS had one last trick for us, asking me to keep right we then drove straight past the required left hand turn, and had to drive about 1K before being able to turn around and go back, no real damage done but a bit frustrating all the same.
Once on the freeways we were off and running, and apart from the very confusing speed signs and changes in speed limits it was all good, I'm fairly sure that I was either 20kph below or 20kph above the speed limit most of the time, but no one else seemed to care either, with people in the right lane travelling at about 70kph and people in the left lane travelling at about 140kph. While I'm at it, lane markings are purley a guideline in Europe that shouldn't be followed in most instances, the number of people that drive along the dotted white lines like they're following the black line on the bottom of the pool while swimming needs to be seen to be believed, the Italians are also much less patient that the French, if you're in the fast lane when they come up behind you, you should pull over immediately, whether there is a car beside you or not, so the bird came out of it's cage a few times, much to Carols disgust.
Believe it or not we did make it to Florence unscathed(physically at least) in time to see Cadel win the Tour de France, which I thoroughly enjoyed, excellent to see that once they stop everyone taking the gear(yes I mean drugs), the race is a much closer affair, with anyone of 5 or 6 riders having a chance to win this year depending on their form on any given day.
Once we watched Cadel we headed off to explore Florence, I have to say that this is the first time that I've really felt that we might get robbed so far on the trip, we walked through the train station and I really believed that several groups of people were looking for people to rip off. Once surviving the train station we walked to several Florence land marks, the buildings here are stunning, but the city is generally grubbier than Paris.
At one point we walked past the turn off to the "Accademia" where the statue of David is, but found another square with some amazing buildings which we'll work out the origins on the "net" when we have a minute. We also found the amazing church that you'll see a number of photo's of before heading back to "Accademia" only to find that it was closed. While I was taking a photo of the front door, it opened to let the staff out and I noticing that I could see "Davids" bollocks through the door, I snapped a photo, what I didn't know at the time was that this was as close as we'd get to "David" as when we enquired as to tomorrows opening time, the staff member said "no" and pointed to the sign on the wall which clearly stated that Monday was his day off!!! So we'll have to see if we can "drop in" on David on our way to Venice after our visit to Rome.
We've now had some dinner, about 2 bottles of wine and a small glass of Lemon spirit which was "on the house" by the Trattoria where we ate. So please excuse the even worse than usual spelling and grammar, but I'm blaming the alchahol, and if it's better than usual then maybe I should drink more ;-)
Photos of Florence
Monaco - you just have to ask why
Monaco is a very strange place, it has some amazing architecture and landscapes, mainly due to it's location, where the vertical distance almost matches the horizontal when travelling north south(or towards or away from the marina). This landscape necessitates external elevators, and some amazing bridges and tunnels. But in general the whole place feels a bit bizzare, where you're either disgustingly rich (about 1% of the people here) or you're trying to rub shoulders with the disgustingly rich in the hope that it will somehow rub off.
The boats (or yacths or ships, don't ask me what to call them!!) are absolutely ridiculous, it's probably worth a visit just to see the extravagance that exists, but there isn't much else to bring you here in my opinion.
Carol and I drove the Formula one track(only because Carol said I had to, and there's a photo just to prove it), I'm sure I now hold the lap record for a Renault Megane 1.5 Diesel, as I was really flying around there, I only took out 2 small children and 1 granny, a small price to pay for the lap record in my opinion ;-)
We did visit the royal palace and went on the tour, it was very good and really gave you a good understanding of how the principality of Monaco came to exist, unfortunately photo's weren't allowed, as there was some amazing artefacts in there as well as some really nice architecture and Decore, so you'll have to come over and look for yourself!
We did have a nice meal, and Monaco feels really safe and is quite clean, 1 day was plenty though, so after rising late on the second day and the afore mentioned laps(yes there was actually 2) of the F1 track we headed off to Florence.
Monaco pics
The boats (or yacths or ships, don't ask me what to call them!!) are absolutely ridiculous, it's probably worth a visit just to see the extravagance that exists, but there isn't much else to bring you here in my opinion.
Carol and I drove the Formula one track(only because Carol said I had to, and there's a photo just to prove it), I'm sure I now hold the lap record for a Renault Megane 1.5 Diesel, as I was really flying around there, I only took out 2 small children and 1 granny, a small price to pay for the lap record in my opinion ;-)
We did visit the royal palace and went on the tour, it was very good and really gave you a good understanding of how the principality of Monaco came to exist, unfortunately photo's weren't allowed, as there was some amazing artefacts in there as well as some really nice architecture and Decore, so you'll have to come over and look for yourself!
We did have a nice meal, and Monaco feels really safe and is quite clean, 1 day was plenty though, so after rising late on the second day and the afore mentioned laps(yes there was actually 2) of the F1 track we headed off to Florence.
Monaco pics
Saturday 23 July 2011
Vive Le Tour
Today is Tour de France day, we're off to Alpe d Huez to watch the guys suffer up the last climb of the Tour, today is the day that the Tour will be won or lost as it's the last chance for the Schleck brothers to put enough time on Cadel to be safe in tomorrows time trial.
After a basic breakfast at the very basic hotel we headed into Grenoble to find some supplies to take up the hill with us. We found a bakery, purchased some Pizza slices, a baguette and some croissants, we then found a deli "fromagery?" and bought some brie to go with it, finally we also found a fresh fruit shop and bought some bananas and apples.
Off we went, initial plan was to head into Modane to try and catch up with the "tour caravan" before the start of the race, and then head back to Alpe d Huez to watch them come up the hill. It became apparent fairly early in our travels that we weren't going to be able to manage that in the alotted time, so we cut our losses and headed straight for the mountain.
We arrived in the small village at the bottom of the mountain (sorry not sure what it was called) by about 10:30 and there were people everywhere, but we managed to find a park with some local help (after we drove into his backyard by mistake). Since we had about 6 hours to kill, we sat down at a Cafe/Bar and had some coffee and then a beer each, at this point we decided that we should head on up the hill as we were'n sure exactly how long it was going to walk up there.
At the bottom of the hill we spotted a food van selling beer, so we bought 4 to take with us, stopped the man from opening them so we could carry them only to realise 2 mins later that they were'nt screw caps and we didn't have a bottle opener!!
We walked for about an hour or so and arrived at the town of Huez (less than half way up the hill), we sat down on some steps beside ahouse and had the baguette and brie and of course a beer each (managed to use some aussie ingenuity and open the bottles with the edge of the concrete wall nearby).
Once morning tea was over we continued walking(more like climbing) until we reached the 9th hairpin (counted from the top down) and found a shady spot to setup camp. Not exactly sure how far there was left to get to the top, I suspect around 5-7k's but I could be wrong.
It was only about 1:30pm when we reached that point, so we settled in for a 3.5 - 4 hour wait. I thought that this was going to be really boring and drag on, but although there are "only" 198 riders that start the Tour, there are at least 600 cars that go with them. The steady stream of people and cars kept us amused while we waited, and about 1 hour before the riders arrive the "caravan" comes through, which consists of the sponsors vans and trucks throwing stuff at you, such as caps, bandanas, key rings, food, and other assorted bits and pieces, we managed to score some schwag which was good, but the kids running around picked up the majority of stuff that was thrown.
Then the riders arrived, Contador (booo) was in the lead, followed by Sanchez and Rolland, and behind them the group containing Cadel and the Schlecks, AWESOME, before this stage Cadel had a 3 min lead over Contador and was within 1minute of both Andy and Frank Schleck, if he stays with them to the top he's pretty much won the Tour.
We find out through some multi lingual Dutch or Norwegen guys (or maybe they were German) that Cadel had finished with the Schlecks and had only lost around 30 Seconds to Contador, one good time tiral and the tour was his..excited doesn't come close to describing me once I found this out.
So we watched and cheered on the remainder of the riders, even scored a bottle from one of the Saxobank riders, and then headed on back down the hill. On the way back down we realised just how far we had walked up the hill and I'm here to tell you that it was a loooong way.
Reached the bottom of the hill around 7:30pm to find the worlds biggest carpark, holly traffic jams batman, because of the traffic, we sat in a cafe Carol had a coffee and I had a softie and I'm not exagerating when I say that the traffic didn't move, in fact the traffic didn't move for the next 3 hours, some people sat in their cars, some lay on the road beside their cars, others sat on their cars, but no-one moved!!
After going on a bit of an excursion with the GPS to try and find a backroad out of town, Carol and I determined that there were only 3 ways out of town and they were all at a standstill, so we parked the car again (9:00pm at this stage) and walked back into the centre of town to find something to eat, neither of us were particularly hungry, so we had Ice Cream for dinner walked to the outskirts of townb to survey the situation and went back to the car at 10:30pm. When we got back to the car we had decided that we would have a nap and start the trip later, but just as we were deciding that the traffic moved and as we were leaving via the quiet side of town that headed east we managed to get out of town in about 30mins, I pity the people heading west they must have been stuck in the traffic for hours.
When we left Alpe d Huez we had 2 options, head west with the traffic towards the tollways to head for Monaco, or head east on a more direct but more intersting route through the french alps and pyranese. Much more interesting as we discovered, the GPS was showing 320k's but 5:50 travel time, bollocks I thought, couldn't possibly take that long. Well an australian who hasn't driven around the french alps before has no idea just how f'n big these "hills" are and of course how many your going to have to cross to get where your going.
You see when picking the route I hadn't really thought it out, and hadn't realised that we'd have to traverse the French alps and the Pyranese to get to monaco this way, which is why the GPS said go the other way and use the tollways, even though it was about 200l's longer, it would have been faster (barring the traffic that was there anyway)
About the time we were traversing our 3rd or 4th mountain (I don't really remember when one stopped and another started except that you go up and then down and then up and then down) we really found a big mutha, we took a photo of a sign that said we were 2.5k's up but we actually passed a couple more before we finished climbing and we finished so close to 3k's up that it's splitting hairs to say it was less than that. Not only were the mountains really big, but the roads were very narrow and not well marked, and at 1:30am when you're a bit tired from walking up and down one of these mountains, it would be better to go the other way. I suspect that I would have enjoyed the drive if it was daylight, but it wasn't much fun at this time of the night.
We did make it to Monaco safe and sound, at about 3:45am!!! went to bed and that was the end of an excellent and eventful day, I'll map the route so I can see exactly where we went but a brief view of the map shows that traversed many, many mountains.
Tomorrow (today of course as I didn't sit up and write this) has been declared a rest day!
A couple of Photos from Alpe d Huez - enjoy I know I did
After a basic breakfast at the very basic hotel we headed into Grenoble to find some supplies to take up the hill with us. We found a bakery, purchased some Pizza slices, a baguette and some croissants, we then found a deli "fromagery?" and bought some brie to go with it, finally we also found a fresh fruit shop and bought some bananas and apples.
Off we went, initial plan was to head into Modane to try and catch up with the "tour caravan" before the start of the race, and then head back to Alpe d Huez to watch them come up the hill. It became apparent fairly early in our travels that we weren't going to be able to manage that in the alotted time, so we cut our losses and headed straight for the mountain.
We arrived in the small village at the bottom of the mountain (sorry not sure what it was called) by about 10:30 and there were people everywhere, but we managed to find a park with some local help (after we drove into his backyard by mistake). Since we had about 6 hours to kill, we sat down at a Cafe/Bar and had some coffee and then a beer each, at this point we decided that we should head on up the hill as we were'n sure exactly how long it was going to walk up there.
At the bottom of the hill we spotted a food van selling beer, so we bought 4 to take with us, stopped the man from opening them so we could carry them only to realise 2 mins later that they were'nt screw caps and we didn't have a bottle opener!!
We walked for about an hour or so and arrived at the town of Huez (less than half way up the hill), we sat down on some steps beside ahouse and had the baguette and brie and of course a beer each (managed to use some aussie ingenuity and open the bottles with the edge of the concrete wall nearby).
Once morning tea was over we continued walking(more like climbing) until we reached the 9th hairpin (counted from the top down) and found a shady spot to setup camp. Not exactly sure how far there was left to get to the top, I suspect around 5-7k's but I could be wrong.
It was only about 1:30pm when we reached that point, so we settled in for a 3.5 - 4 hour wait. I thought that this was going to be really boring and drag on, but although there are "only" 198 riders that start the Tour, there are at least 600 cars that go with them. The steady stream of people and cars kept us amused while we waited, and about 1 hour before the riders arrive the "caravan" comes through, which consists of the sponsors vans and trucks throwing stuff at you, such as caps, bandanas, key rings, food, and other assorted bits and pieces, we managed to score some schwag which was good, but the kids running around picked up the majority of stuff that was thrown.
Then the riders arrived, Contador (booo) was in the lead, followed by Sanchez and Rolland, and behind them the group containing Cadel and the Schlecks, AWESOME, before this stage Cadel had a 3 min lead over Contador and was within 1minute of both Andy and Frank Schleck, if he stays with them to the top he's pretty much won the Tour.
We find out through some multi lingual Dutch or Norwegen guys (or maybe they were German) that Cadel had finished with the Schlecks and had only lost around 30 Seconds to Contador, one good time tiral and the tour was his..excited doesn't come close to describing me once I found this out.
So we watched and cheered on the remainder of the riders, even scored a bottle from one of the Saxobank riders, and then headed on back down the hill. On the way back down we realised just how far we had walked up the hill and I'm here to tell you that it was a loooong way.
Reached the bottom of the hill around 7:30pm to find the worlds biggest carpark, holly traffic jams batman, because of the traffic, we sat in a cafe Carol had a coffee and I had a softie and I'm not exagerating when I say that the traffic didn't move, in fact the traffic didn't move for the next 3 hours, some people sat in their cars, some lay on the road beside their cars, others sat on their cars, but no-one moved!!
After going on a bit of an excursion with the GPS to try and find a backroad out of town, Carol and I determined that there were only 3 ways out of town and they were all at a standstill, so we parked the car again (9:00pm at this stage) and walked back into the centre of town to find something to eat, neither of us were particularly hungry, so we had Ice Cream for dinner walked to the outskirts of townb to survey the situation and went back to the car at 10:30pm. When we got back to the car we had decided that we would have a nap and start the trip later, but just as we were deciding that the traffic moved and as we were leaving via the quiet side of town that headed east we managed to get out of town in about 30mins, I pity the people heading west they must have been stuck in the traffic for hours.
When we left Alpe d Huez we had 2 options, head west with the traffic towards the tollways to head for Monaco, or head east on a more direct but more intersting route through the french alps and pyranese. Much more interesting as we discovered, the GPS was showing 320k's but 5:50 travel time, bollocks I thought, couldn't possibly take that long. Well an australian who hasn't driven around the french alps before has no idea just how f'n big these "hills" are and of course how many your going to have to cross to get where your going.
You see when picking the route I hadn't really thought it out, and hadn't realised that we'd have to traverse the French alps and the Pyranese to get to monaco this way, which is why the GPS said go the other way and use the tollways, even though it was about 200l's longer, it would have been faster (barring the traffic that was there anyway)
About the time we were traversing our 3rd or 4th mountain (I don't really remember when one stopped and another started except that you go up and then down and then up and then down) we really found a big mutha, we took a photo of a sign that said we were 2.5k's up but we actually passed a couple more before we finished climbing and we finished so close to 3k's up that it's splitting hairs to say it was less than that. Not only were the mountains really big, but the roads were very narrow and not well marked, and at 1:30am when you're a bit tired from walking up and down one of these mountains, it would be better to go the other way. I suspect that I would have enjoyed the drive if it was daylight, but it wasn't much fun at this time of the night.
We did make it to Monaco safe and sound, at about 3:45am!!! went to bed and that was the end of an excellent and eventful day, I'll map the route so I can see exactly where we went but a brief view of the map shows that traversed many, many mountains.
Tomorrow (today of course as I didn't sit up and write this) has been declared a rest day!
A couple of Photos from Alpe d Huez - enjoy I know I did
Thursday 21 July 2011
Paris - Grenoble
Today was basically a travel day, we had to travel about 650k's from Paris to Grenoble so we could head off to Alpe d Huez tomorrow to watch the Tour. Left the hotel around 9:00 after having some brekky, the car was where we had left it and surprisingly didn't have a parking ticket. When we'd arrived 2 days ago, the advice from the Hotel manager was that the parking ticket "paper" was onyl 11 Euro's and to buy parking card was 10 Euros plus we had to top up the parking every 2 hours. So she said park it there and you'll be unlucky to get a ticket, if you do you only get one per day and it's 11 Euros, so that worked out rather nicely.
Managed to get out of Paris without causing or being involved in an accident, the GPS had said that the proposed route involves tolls, we went with it anyway figuring that there would be a way to pay, just after going through the first toll gate, which only dispensed a ticket and didn't ask for any money, we found a place that seemed to be connected to the toll road, so we pulled up and I went inside to ask what the options were.
"Paarlerview anglaze" I said in my finely honed french accent, "no" came the reply, hmmm this was going to be fun. After much pointing, gesticulating and general confusion, we(Carol had come in and joined the fray after about 15minutes, hard to say whether an additional english speaking person helped or added to the confusion though) left the office with a "thing" to stick to our windscreen that will take lots of money off my credit card whenever I go anywhere near a toll road in France. We did manage to gather that we would need to use the Ticket at the next toll gate and use the thing afterwards. 31 Euros was the cost at the next toll gate "holy f'n what the f was that" or similar may have been spoken by Carol, I of course was much more accepting and calm.
Interestingly for a country where people seem to have no understanding that road rules even exist, let alone follow them, the freeways have speed limits of 130km/h, French people become very polite on freeways, nobody sits in the left lane (that's the fast lane) and in general they don't tail gate. I was happy with the higher speed limit as it shortened the trip somewhat.
Once we arrived in Grenoble and checked in (yes the hotel was booked for the correct day) we watched the last hour or so of the Tour for the day, not a great day for Cadel but he still looks the goods as long as he can keep the status quo tomorrow, he did put in an amazing ride to peg back over 2 minutes of Andy Schlecks 4:24 lead over the last 15k's though, with no help from anyone else.
After watching that we decided that we should find something to do before dinner, so we found some information on a place called Lac Monteynard which sounded like a good spot to see some good scenery. That turned out to be the understatement of the century, Lac Monteynard is in the middle of some pretty big hills (we are in the French Alpes for those not paying attention) and the Scenery from all angles of this place were stunning, the Drive was amazing in itself, and not only because I managed to be on the wrong side of the road on more than one occaision!! There's some attempts at photo's of the scenery here, but I'm pretty sure that we're not doing it justice.
Oh and a footnote, I'm not sure that I've managed to mention that the food is amazing in France, we've been eating in restaraunts mainly and it doesn't seem to matter what you order or how much it costs, it's always really well done.
Paris - Grenoble
Managed to get out of Paris without causing or being involved in an accident, the GPS had said that the proposed route involves tolls, we went with it anyway figuring that there would be a way to pay, just after going through the first toll gate, which only dispensed a ticket and didn't ask for any money, we found a place that seemed to be connected to the toll road, so we pulled up and I went inside to ask what the options were.
"Paarlerview anglaze" I said in my finely honed french accent, "no" came the reply, hmmm this was going to be fun. After much pointing, gesticulating and general confusion, we(Carol had come in and joined the fray after about 15minutes, hard to say whether an additional english speaking person helped or added to the confusion though) left the office with a "thing" to stick to our windscreen that will take lots of money off my credit card whenever I go anywhere near a toll road in France. We did manage to gather that we would need to use the Ticket at the next toll gate and use the thing afterwards. 31 Euros was the cost at the next toll gate "holy f'n what the f was that" or similar may have been spoken by Carol, I of course was much more accepting and calm.
Interestingly for a country where people seem to have no understanding that road rules even exist, let alone follow them, the freeways have speed limits of 130km/h, French people become very polite on freeways, nobody sits in the left lane (that's the fast lane) and in general they don't tail gate. I was happy with the higher speed limit as it shortened the trip somewhat.
Once we arrived in Grenoble and checked in (yes the hotel was booked for the correct day) we watched the last hour or so of the Tour for the day, not a great day for Cadel but he still looks the goods as long as he can keep the status quo tomorrow, he did put in an amazing ride to peg back over 2 minutes of Andy Schlecks 4:24 lead over the last 15k's though, with no help from anyone else.
After watching that we decided that we should find something to do before dinner, so we found some information on a place called Lac Monteynard which sounded like a good spot to see some good scenery. That turned out to be the understatement of the century, Lac Monteynard is in the middle of some pretty big hills (we are in the French Alpes for those not paying attention) and the Scenery from all angles of this place were stunning, the Drive was amazing in itself, and not only because I managed to be on the wrong side of the road on more than one occaision!! There's some attempts at photo's of the scenery here, but I'm pretty sure that we're not doing it justice.
Oh and a footnote, I'm not sure that I've managed to mention that the food is amazing in France, we've been eating in restaraunts mainly and it doesn't seem to matter what you order or how much it costs, it's always really well done.
Paris - Grenoble
Paris Day 2 - The Lourve
Day 2 in Paris started a little later than originally planned, I guess the long hours on the previous day got to us a bit, so we didn't get going properly until around 9:30. After looking through the Photos from the previous day I decided that we weren't taking anywhere near enough photos, so we set out to rectify that quick smart. We headed off in the general direction of the Lourve, stopping at pretty much anything to take photos, we also stopped in a Cafe to have a coffee (sorry cafe creme ;-)) and watch the parisians make a mokery of the road rules for a while.
The architecture in Paris is simply amazing, it doesn't matter wher you go or what you're looking at, it always seems to be worth looking at, we have also noticed that the Parisians in general, get up late, go to work late, always make time to sit down and have a coffee, always make time for lunch, and eat dinner late before retiring late, seems like quite a good lifestyle to me, I'm not really sure how or when they keep the country running, but it seems to be doing just fine from the outside looking in.
Anyway, all of our coffee drinking and photo taking meant that we didn't arrive at the Lourve until around 11:30am, at which point we discovered the longest line I have ever seen, or didn't see as it turned out, because the end of the line was completely out of sight from where we were standing, so we trundled off to the end of the line and got ripped off to the tune of 10 Euros by "Jumbo Jumbo" along the way, so yes it was a long walk.
The line actually moved very quickly so about 30mins after joining the line we were in the Lourve, and considering my estimate when spotting the line was 3 hours, we were pretty happyabout that.
We grabbed the map of the Museum and picked a direction. If like Carol and myself, you have never been to the lourve, there are two things to remember, 1 - it's very, very big and 2 - you'll need more than 1 day to have a good look around, and did I mention that it's BIG!!
Put simply the place is amazing, the collection of historical artefacts is never ending, and although some is more intersting to brain dead sloths like myself, there is plenty that is interesting even if you're not a history buff, and if all else fails you can watch the Americans compare everything to something in America and of course it's better in America.
We did the tourist thing and had a look at the Mona Lisa, from about 20 feet away and behind about 100 people, it is a bit of a pity that there isn't a better organised line to see the old girl, as you have to be keen enough to tread on some small children and poke the odd granny in the eye if you want to get closer, well that or get out of bed before the Parisians, which shouldn't be difficult really.....but I digress.
We also had a look at more Egyptian, Greek and early european artifacts than I would have imagined possible, and of course the building itself is stunning, not to mention that they've been using the building (or parts of it anyway) as a museum since the 1800's (I'm pretty sure that's what I read somewhere anyway).
When we got tired of the Lourve (it's physically exhausting, did I mention it's BIG), we headed off to find Notre Dame, it was quite a bit further away from the Lourve than we expected, since we we're already buggered from the Lourve it would have been nice if it was closer, but we made it anyway, predictably there was another line, and it was moving quite slowly so we didn't go in, but amused ourselves watching people pretend to be Quasimodo.
So we took some piccies and headed towards our hotel, stopped at a pub and drank 2 pints each while we watched the final 40k's of the Tour d France for the day, this resulted in getting lost on the way back to the hotel as our sense of direction may have been impared, bit we eventually found our way home.
I've posted quite a few photos from the day as there were heaps, you'll notice a few where Carol is playing with the new Camera, making panorama's andeven one where she told it to make up a water colour.
Paris Day 2 - The Lourve and Paris pictures
The architecture in Paris is simply amazing, it doesn't matter wher you go or what you're looking at, it always seems to be worth looking at, we have also noticed that the Parisians in general, get up late, go to work late, always make time to sit down and have a coffee, always make time for lunch, and eat dinner late before retiring late, seems like quite a good lifestyle to me, I'm not really sure how or when they keep the country running, but it seems to be doing just fine from the outside looking in.
Anyway, all of our coffee drinking and photo taking meant that we didn't arrive at the Lourve until around 11:30am, at which point we discovered the longest line I have ever seen, or didn't see as it turned out, because the end of the line was completely out of sight from where we were standing, so we trundled off to the end of the line and got ripped off to the tune of 10 Euros by "Jumbo Jumbo" along the way, so yes it was a long walk.
The line actually moved very quickly so about 30mins after joining the line we were in the Lourve, and considering my estimate when spotting the line was 3 hours, we were pretty happyabout that.
We grabbed the map of the Museum and picked a direction. If like Carol and myself, you have never been to the lourve, there are two things to remember, 1 - it's very, very big and 2 - you'll need more than 1 day to have a good look around, and did I mention that it's BIG!!
Put simply the place is amazing, the collection of historical artefacts is never ending, and although some is more intersting to brain dead sloths like myself, there is plenty that is interesting even if you're not a history buff, and if all else fails you can watch the Americans compare everything to something in America and of course it's better in America.
We did the tourist thing and had a look at the Mona Lisa, from about 20 feet away and behind about 100 people, it is a bit of a pity that there isn't a better organised line to see the old girl, as you have to be keen enough to tread on some small children and poke the odd granny in the eye if you want to get closer, well that or get out of bed before the Parisians, which shouldn't be difficult really.....but I digress.
We also had a look at more Egyptian, Greek and early european artifacts than I would have imagined possible, and of course the building itself is stunning, not to mention that they've been using the building (or parts of it anyway) as a museum since the 1800's (I'm pretty sure that's what I read somewhere anyway).
When we got tired of the Lourve (it's physically exhausting, did I mention it's BIG), we headed off to find Notre Dame, it was quite a bit further away from the Lourve than we expected, since we we're already buggered from the Lourve it would have been nice if it was closer, but we made it anyway, predictably there was another line, and it was moving quite slowly so we didn't go in, but amused ourselves watching people pretend to be Quasimodo.
So we took some piccies and headed towards our hotel, stopped at a pub and drank 2 pints each while we watched the final 40k's of the Tour d France for the day, this resulted in getting lost on the way back to the hotel as our sense of direction may have been impared, bit we eventually found our way home.
I've posted quite a few photos from the day as there were heaps, you'll notice a few where Carol is playing with the new Camera, making panorama's andeven one where she told it to make up a water colour.
Paris Day 2 - The Lourve and Paris pictures
Tuesday 19 July 2011
Plane flights and Paris
An accumulated 14 Hours on a plane wasn't lots of fun, but we made it and even managed to get our passports stamped as we went through Finland! bummer was that we didn't need to get them stamped when we came into France as we didn't pass through customs in France, once you're in Europe, you're in Europe it would seem.
Flights were good, Finnair seems to have more legroom than Qantas, probably because every Finnish male we saw was around 6'4"
Landed in Paris after a 2.5 hour flight back from Helsinki, welcomed by pouring rain, managed to get lost in the airport no less than 3 times looking for where we needed to be to pickup the car, but eventually got there after a couple of mildly confusing(for everyone concerned) phone calls.
Picked up the brand new Renault Megane, stalled it trying to leave car park and then proceeded to head for the wrong side of the road while exiting the carpark, I swear that the office staff at Renault Drive are not expecting to get the car back in one piece after that display of awesomeness.
The car lease company had given us instructions on how to get to the nearest petrol station as the car only has a smallamount of fuel in it at pickup. So we punch the hotel address into the GPS and off we go, handily the GPS was guiding us right past the petrol station anyway, so that was easy or so we thought, pull up at the petrol pump, jump out and start filling the car, nope nothing happening, as this pump had a credit card slot I tried putting a card in there, nope still no luck, looking around I realised that the other pumps didn't have card readers so I assumed that this pump was for a special card and moved to another pump, not easy as the petrol station was crowded. Pull up at pump #2 try again, still no luck, then a womans voice comes over the loud speaker, speaking french of course, I look up and the woman behindthe counter is waving her arms in the air, this isn't going to be as easy as I thought, so I head into the building and there are lots of people standing around looking confused, it's at this point that I realise that no-one is putting any fuel in any cars, Carol starts asking questions and it turns out that the computer system is broken, so no fuel.
So we use the GPS again, and ask it to find us a petrol station nearby, it takes us off the main road which is nice, but remember it's still raining heavily, and I'm still getting used to the combination of being on the wrong side of the road, having the gearstick on the wrong side(yes it's manual) and having the blinkers and the wipers reversed, I indicated more than once trying to get the wipers going. So the GPS takes us on a bit of a journey, and with only about 1k to go, tells us to turn the wrong way down a one way road, so after doing 2 laps of a long block to check that we really couldn't go where it was telling us we pick the next petrol station and head off, finally we find a petrol station that works and fill the car, there was much rejoicing.
Once that was done we reset the GPS to the hotel, and after another 2 or 3 wrong turns we were on our way. Next up was a traffic jam on the main highway into Paris, GPS pops up and tells us there's a traffic jam and it's got a faster way to the hotel, we select "go for it" and we're off through the back streets of the outskirts of Paris, it's at this point that I realise that everyone who said "parisians just park anywhere" is telling the truth, there was a double or triple parked car to negotiate at least every 200m, and most of the time it was more like every 100m, but we were making good progress and the parisians are very used to you driving at them on the wrong side of the road, due to all of the double parked cars, so I fit right in ;-)
With about 2k's to go to the hotel, I open my big mouth and say to Carol, if this GPS takes me anywhere near the Arc de Triumphe, I'm bailing out, I've read that you're not insured on that piece of road and I'm not planning on having an accident on my first day, although we'vealready had several near misses, not all of them my fault either. About 5 seconds after I open my mouth, we look up and we're driving straight down Charles de Gaul ave, straight for that bloody roundabout. So I pike, make a right turn, go about 2 blocks and make a left, and for the next kilometer or so, every time the GPS says turn left, I swear at it.
We do manage to avoid the Arc de Triumphe and have a relatively uneventful trip to the hotel, we park the car and head on in only to find out I've booked the hotel for the wrong dates!! Nice one Rich, lucky for us the hotel has spare rooms and we're fine, yes I have checked the other bookings and they're fine so I don't know what brain fade caused that one.
So after our eventful trip into Paris we head off to find some food, haven't eaten for about 8 Hours so we were getting a bit peckish, once that was sorted we headed off for the Eiffel Tower, it really is impressive in real life, and we managed to walk up to the second level, about 600 steps I think, took plenty of Photos of course and from there we wandered along the North bank of the Seine, finding a couple of closed Muesums along the way.
That'll do for now, I'm off for brekky and then we're off to the Louvre.
Pictures from Day 1 in Paris
Flights were good, Finnair seems to have more legroom than Qantas, probably because every Finnish male we saw was around 6'4"
Landed in Paris after a 2.5 hour flight back from Helsinki, welcomed by pouring rain, managed to get lost in the airport no less than 3 times looking for where we needed to be to pickup the car, but eventually got there after a couple of mildly confusing(for everyone concerned) phone calls.
Picked up the brand new Renault Megane, stalled it trying to leave car park and then proceeded to head for the wrong side of the road while exiting the carpark, I swear that the office staff at Renault Drive are not expecting to get the car back in one piece after that display of awesomeness.
The car lease company had given us instructions on how to get to the nearest petrol station as the car only has a smallamount of fuel in it at pickup. So we punch the hotel address into the GPS and off we go, handily the GPS was guiding us right past the petrol station anyway, so that was easy or so we thought, pull up at the petrol pump, jump out and start filling the car, nope nothing happening, as this pump had a credit card slot I tried putting a card in there, nope still no luck, looking around I realised that the other pumps didn't have card readers so I assumed that this pump was for a special card and moved to another pump, not easy as the petrol station was crowded. Pull up at pump #2 try again, still no luck, then a womans voice comes over the loud speaker, speaking french of course, I look up and the woman behindthe counter is waving her arms in the air, this isn't going to be as easy as I thought, so I head into the building and there are lots of people standing around looking confused, it's at this point that I realise that no-one is putting any fuel in any cars, Carol starts asking questions and it turns out that the computer system is broken, so no fuel.
So we use the GPS again, and ask it to find us a petrol station nearby, it takes us off the main road which is nice, but remember it's still raining heavily, and I'm still getting used to the combination of being on the wrong side of the road, having the gearstick on the wrong side(yes it's manual) and having the blinkers and the wipers reversed, I indicated more than once trying to get the wipers going. So the GPS takes us on a bit of a journey, and with only about 1k to go, tells us to turn the wrong way down a one way road, so after doing 2 laps of a long block to check that we really couldn't go where it was telling us we pick the next petrol station and head off, finally we find a petrol station that works and fill the car, there was much rejoicing.
Once that was done we reset the GPS to the hotel, and after another 2 or 3 wrong turns we were on our way. Next up was a traffic jam on the main highway into Paris, GPS pops up and tells us there's a traffic jam and it's got a faster way to the hotel, we select "go for it" and we're off through the back streets of the outskirts of Paris, it's at this point that I realise that everyone who said "parisians just park anywhere" is telling the truth, there was a double or triple parked car to negotiate at least every 200m, and most of the time it was more like every 100m, but we were making good progress and the parisians are very used to you driving at them on the wrong side of the road, due to all of the double parked cars, so I fit right in ;-)
With about 2k's to go to the hotel, I open my big mouth and say to Carol, if this GPS takes me anywhere near the Arc de Triumphe, I'm bailing out, I've read that you're not insured on that piece of road and I'm not planning on having an accident on my first day, although we'vealready had several near misses, not all of them my fault either. About 5 seconds after I open my mouth, we look up and we're driving straight down Charles de Gaul ave, straight for that bloody roundabout. So I pike, make a right turn, go about 2 blocks and make a left, and for the next kilometer or so, every time the GPS says turn left, I swear at it.
We do manage to avoid the Arc de Triumphe and have a relatively uneventful trip to the hotel, we park the car and head on in only to find out I've booked the hotel for the wrong dates!! Nice one Rich, lucky for us the hotel has spare rooms and we're fine, yes I have checked the other bookings and they're fine so I don't know what brain fade caused that one.
So after our eventful trip into Paris we head off to find some food, haven't eaten for about 8 Hours so we were getting a bit peckish, once that was sorted we headed off for the Eiffel Tower, it really is impressive in real life, and we managed to walk up to the second level, about 600 steps I think, took plenty of Photos of course and from there we wandered along the North bank of the Seine, finding a couple of closed Muesums along the way.
That'll do for now, I'm off for brekky and then we're off to the Louvre.
Pictures from Day 1 in Paris
SIngapore Day 3
Well we went out on our own today and had a look aroundSingapore, funnily enough that mainly involved shopping. Bought a new camera to take around the rest of the trip, managed to get it about $100 cheaper than it was in Aus as well as getting an extra battery, so that was good. For those who care it's an Olympus SZ-30MR, there was also some clothes shopping involved, which Carol found more interesting than I did, but I did buy some new shorts as well ;-)
After the shopping we decided it was time for a sit down, so we headed down to Raffles Hotel for a couple of drinks and to throw some peanuts around, for those who don't know Raffles in Singapore has unshelled peanuts on each table, as you eat them you simply throw the shells on the floor, kind of weird walking around in there crunching around on Peanut shells.
Once we'd spent a small fortune on a couple of singapore slings and a beer we headed off to the singapore flyer to get a birds eye view of Singapore.
Before we headed home our hosts took us out for dinner at a renowned seafood restaraunt for some signature Chilli Crab, very nice but very very messy. Then it was off to Paris!!
Singapore photos and Carol's play with the new toy where it "draws"
After the shopping we decided it was time for a sit down, so we headed down to Raffles Hotel for a couple of drinks and to throw some peanuts around, for those who don't know Raffles in Singapore has unshelled peanuts on each table, as you eat them you simply throw the shells on the floor, kind of weird walking around in there crunching around on Peanut shells.
Once we'd spent a small fortune on a couple of singapore slings and a beer we headed off to the singapore flyer to get a birds eye view of Singapore.
Before we headed home our hosts took us out for dinner at a renowned seafood restaraunt for some signature Chilli Crab, very nice but very very messy. Then it was off to Paris!!
Singapore photos and Carol's play with the new toy where it "draws"
Sunday 17 July 2011
Eating our way through Singapore!
What a place... sooo much food and OMG these Singaporean people can sh op!
Having a great time being shown the sights of Singapore , Pannida is an excellent tour guide. We went to the top of the Marina Bay Sands Resort , this place has 2600 rooms. Breath taking from the top, with a 360* view over Singapore.
We have been non stop eating, which seems to be a national past time of the Singaporean people , that along with shopping. I don't think I could have ever imagined just how many shopping centres there are here. You could visit one a day for a year and not cover them all!
We are going it alone tomorrow and going to explore Singapore on our own as our wonderful hosts have to return to work. Dinner tomorrow night at the East Coast... chilli crab before we fly out for Helsinki tomorrow night at 11.30pm , perhaps not a good choice before an 11hr flight but apparently a must have whilst we are here.
Some pictures of the Marina bay sands hotel and the Singapore flyer
Having a great time being shown the sights of Singapore , Pannida is an excellent tour guide. We went to the top of the Marina Bay Sands Resort , this place has 2600 rooms. Breath taking from the top, with a 360* view over Singapore.
We have been non stop eating, which seems to be a national past time of the Singaporean people , that along with shopping. I don't think I could have ever imagined just how many shopping centres there are here. You could visit one a day for a year and not cover them all!
We are going it alone tomorrow and going to explore Singapore on our own as our wonderful hosts have to return to work. Dinner tomorrow night at the East Coast... chilli crab before we fly out for Helsinki tomorrow night at 11.30pm , perhaps not a good choice before an 11hr flight but apparently a must have whilst we are here.
Some pictures of the Marina bay sands hotel and the Singapore flyer
Saturday 16 July 2011
Made it to Singapore
Off to a good start as our flight out of Canberra was delayed. Not really an issue as we had 7 hours to kill in Sydney anyway. Once we landed in Sydney we went into town and decided to watch the final Harry Potter movie, enjoyed the movie, not sure about the 3D thing, didn't really add much to it in my opinion.
Headed back to the airport about 2:30 to catch our 3:50 flight, got a bit of a shock when we walked into the airport at 2:55 to see that our flight was due to board at 3:05, was really happy to see that there was no line at customs so we made it in plenty of time.
Had a good flight, sat next to two Canberra boys who were off to ride 4 of the TDF stages, they're also going to be on Alpe-d Huez to watch Cadel climbing to victory ;-)
Landed in Singapore at 10:30pm local time, took a while to clear customs, Steve and Pannida were there waiting for us, made it nice and easy for our first trip into another country.
Steve's place is really nice and has a great view over Singapore. Spent yesterday morning at the botanical gardens, had a nice breakfast there, sat down with a local lady, 80yrs young but looked about 60, walks down to the gardens every morning for a cup of coffee, she had spent 50years in England working, now retired in Singapore.
After the gardens we spent the rest of the day in the centre of Singapore at the shops, that is until Steve and I got sick of shopping and headed to the Marriot bar to have a couple of beers and watch the world go by, very civilised.
Headed down to Marina Bay sands in the afternoon, watched the "practice" session for Singapores national day, complete with Jet flyovers, other military displays and fireworks.
A couple of pics from Singapore
Headed back to the airport about 2:30 to catch our 3:50 flight, got a bit of a shock when we walked into the airport at 2:55 to see that our flight was due to board at 3:05, was really happy to see that there was no line at customs so we made it in plenty of time.
Had a good flight, sat next to two Canberra boys who were off to ride 4 of the TDF stages, they're also going to be on Alpe-d Huez to watch Cadel climbing to victory ;-)
Landed in Singapore at 10:30pm local time, took a while to clear customs, Steve and Pannida were there waiting for us, made it nice and easy for our first trip into another country.
Steve's place is really nice and has a great view over Singapore. Spent yesterday morning at the botanical gardens, had a nice breakfast there, sat down with a local lady, 80yrs young but looked about 60, walks down to the gardens every morning for a cup of coffee, she had spent 50years in England working, now retired in Singapore.
After the gardens we spent the rest of the day in the centre of Singapore at the shops, that is until Steve and I got sick of shopping and headed to the Marriot bar to have a couple of beers and watch the world go by, very civilised.
Headed down to Marina Bay sands in the afternoon, watched the "practice" session for Singapores national day, complete with Jet flyovers, other military displays and fireworks.
A couple of pics from Singapore
Thursday 14 July 2011
Only one sleep to go!!!!
Well here we are sports fans, one more sleep and Rich and Carol are off to Europe, well Singapore for a few days first and then Europe.
I left work about 3 hours ago to come home and pack, and to date I've done no such thing. I've managed to ring the car lease company to tell them that we're still coming and spend some time on the Qantas and Finnair websites trying to see if I could book some seats.
Found a trap for newbies as the Qantas website wanted to charge $20 to book any seat at all, while the Finnair website was happy to "reserve" my Qantas seats for free, we'll see how that goes when we check in tomorrow morning.
The Finnair website did want $79 to "reserve" exit row seats, so we've given that a miss at least for the trip over, may change our minds and book the exit row seats for the return trip as soon as we land in Singapore, we'll see how we cope with the cramped seats.
Well I'm off to find something to do other than packing, procrastination is the name of the game, pretty sure that's what a holiday is supposed to be all about anyway.....
Just to try out the picture thing, I've posted a picture of the pre-packing carnage
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I left work about 3 hours ago to come home and pack, and to date I've done no such thing. I've managed to ring the car lease company to tell them that we're still coming and spend some time on the Qantas and Finnair websites trying to see if I could book some seats.
Found a trap for newbies as the Qantas website wanted to charge $20 to book any seat at all, while the Finnair website was happy to "reserve" my Qantas seats for free, we'll see how that goes when we check in tomorrow morning.
The Finnair website did want $79 to "reserve" exit row seats, so we've given that a miss at least for the trip over, may change our minds and book the exit row seats for the return trip as soon as we land in Singapore, we'll see how we cope with the cramped seats.
Well I'm off to find something to do other than packing, procrastination is the name of the game, pretty sure that's what a holiday is supposed to be all about anyway.....
Just to try out the picture thing, I've posted a picture of the pre-packing carnage
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