Alliterative (and late) Lyon and London (and crappy Aix-en-Provence and the worst day ever)

Hmmm, I think we can safely say we dropped the ball on the blog thing there guys (and so obviously it’s been so long I actually have to notify peeps that there’s another post). It will be (mercifully) brief, and primarily picture driven, although, with my tendency to wax lyrical (and lack of an audience, of late) it may be a case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions… just warning.

View... definitely different. These roads are so... un-Rome like. And the drivers, likewise.

The worst day ever on the trip ever, and Nick’s tearful breaking point

OK, so after Nice, we had a day to kill before the John Butler Trio concert in Lyon (or rather, in Villerbaunne Lyon’s ugly non-tourist twin) so to break up the drive we stopped at a little old (supposedly scenic) place called Aix-en-Provence (pronounced “Ex on Provonce”). GPS pulled its usual shenanigans (although it wouldn’t be a travel day if it didn’t) and took us to a residential street on the side of the blinking hill overlooking the town, but meh, that pain was nothing compared to actually pulling up to the “hotel” that was to be our digs for the night. What a crappy weird hell-hole (please see pics of strange blue statues that littered the courtyard). In the middle of nowhere (which becomes an issue later). So anyhow, check in is fine (they spoke rough English) until we asked where the laundry was (us having booked this place SOLELY on the fact that we could launder to our hearts’ content) and the girl laughed and said there was none. Nada. Sheeeeeeeet. As usual ,we’d left it til we were down to our last pairs of undies (or rather, MY last pair, and Nick and turned every pair of his inside out and back to front five times. In the unseasonal heat of Europe… yeah, we had trouble making friends. So, being that we didn’t want John (Butler) to smell us or the bouncers to deny us, we industrious types went to our room (shoved at the back of the mostly empty complex as a warning for all future non-French visitors - please see the pic, that was the path to our room - next to the abandoned mattresses and corrugated iron in the scrubby vacant lot) and googled laundries in Aix and found… one. And google said its hours were until 7pm each night. (this being about 2pm)

Above - check out the sweet digs.
Weird blue, musical statues (the one below is apparently a cow playing a lap guitar).

Sweeeeeet. So, being that the “hotel” was 5km away from centre of town, we piled our dirties into mini backpacks again and hopped in Klaus, GPSing the location of the laundry (sigh, will we never learn?). Back street, back street, back street (Nick’s blood pressure rising - see below),

Down café filled side street onto right hand turn. Laundry, of course, being on left, so back around roundabout in market filled centre of town to park… nowhere. Couldn’t see laundry, so looped around busy street again - the irony was that it was at THIS point that Nick was cursing his mostest and actively saying (for the first time “I want to go home” - and found nearest park. Approx 2km up a hill in the heat. Sweet. Backpacks on (us in our mismatched clothes, having everything else jammed into minibackpacks)and trudge down to the laundry. Which, according the roller door, should have indeed been open. Nick flipped his lid. Or rather withdrew to leave a small fraction of his previous self. I was hungry (when am I not) so ate a hotdog at the markets (trailing a sulking Nick) although I too felt like crying (after I’d eaten, of course, can’t cry on an empty stomach. But I never have an empty stomach).

Back up hill to car. Back in hot car (with the stinky clothes making us feel like we had an extra couple of passengers by this point), and back to hotel - 3pm. Back on google - but no love. Seeing as Nick was going to snap the neck of the next French person he saw (as a representative of lying websites) I volunteered to go in and attempt to explain to the receptionist that we needed a laundry (BADLY) and ask where one was. Apparently a phrase book would have been useful at this point, because my sign language and use of word laundry got me a there’s one at insert really fast French words here. Back to room and google. No love, although there was a really famous French guy from the renaissance who went by the name of my phonetic spelling of her phrase. Back to receptionist, who by this time was one who spoke less English, but was considerably more helpful and looked at what I’d written down, laughed (in a nice way) and wrote down what it actually was. Which we then googled AGAIN, and got address of. Thank the LORD.

5pm - we pull up at a surprisingly Australian looking shopping centre (huh, weird place for a laundry, oh well). Park, walk through whole 1 storey centre. But the only thing we found was a rollerdoored shop saying that a dry cleaning business had been there, but had moved. Sigh. Back to car, input GPS coordinates. Drive to next site. Open, but really is just a dry cleaning business.

6pm back at hotel Google food and drinks places, as the hotel bar/restaurant wasn‘t opening til 7. Nothing within 3 km of hotel. Not even a local store, a bottle-o or a divey café. Order dominos (online - using google translate) - drive and pick up pizza (down the road from the dry cleaners, so at least we knew where we were going!) return, with pizza and many beers (dominos sells beers and students who work at dominos can recognise thirsty desperate people, no matter what language they speak).

7pm? After 5 hours of trying to do washing, we had dirty clothes, but we had pizza and beer. And after we drank those beers, we went to the hotel bar (which was open by then) - and drank more beer. And that was the only good part about the day from hell.

PS I never said I wanted to go home… it was up to months of rejection and joblessness in Liverpool that did that. But LOOK WHERE WE ARE NOWWWWW!!!! (Or you will see, when I post it this week).

Lyon

The way to Lyon...sights you don't see in Australia.

So, the concert was in Villeurbanne. And as we drive down the couple of blocks between the highway and our hotel in town, I spotted… a laundrette. No joke. Maybe 5 blocks from the hotel, but by golly - a sight for sore eyes. And one that was utilised as soon as we arrived. And walked the 5 blocks, and a young girl took pity on us and explained the French directions for everything (where the washing powder comes from, how and when you have to turn various knobs and press various numbers in this automated contraption on the wall) - what a Saint. Without her, well. I don’t think we’d be here today. Personally, I was ready to dummy spit and sit down on the pavement and not move. But being that when we went into the burger joint (with a menu completely in English) and ordered 2 different burgers, and this took 15 minutes of gesticulating, at which point I received 2 of the same burgers (this happened twice, but with different burgers each time, so at least we got to try the other ones) evidently I would have had to starve to death or live a life of eating whatever came out of someone’s hand.

This sounds like I’m whinging, I know. But basically - we were really mad at ourselves that we didn’t get a French phrase book. EVERYTHING would have been OK. NEVER EVER go off the tourist trail without a phrase book. You’ll miss out on a lot. And YOU’LL be the whingey dummy on the blog then.

OK so John Butler (and the remaining 2/3 of the trio) were awesome. Words can’t describe. And we weren’t even drunk. I remember every second of it. Crazy thing? Frenchies don’t yahoo, more quiet appreciation for the most part with some raising their hands in the air in appreciation, so we were by far the odd ones out there. But if anyone has not seen? Do, even better live (even though Nick‘s seen them about 15 times still the same). And if you haven’t listened? You won’t regret it. I was only a moderate fan (GASP, I hear you say, considering the love from the other member of this household) but am now a (lesser,of course) devotee as well J

sitting DOWN at a concert??? (not after the music started, at least).

Given the language barrier in Villeurbanne, and how we were over it (and wanted to recharge batts before the hustle bustle of London town) we holed up in the hotel, with beers, pizza (ordered online) and the same 2 types of burgers from downstairs for around 3 days. Sounds sad, but it was completely awesome. Nick just remembered we had burgers THREE times in one day, one of the days they were there. Epitome of unhealthiest.

Here’s the garbage we left… hard to imagine there was only 2 of us!

London, and a meeting with the lovely J-bird

On to London…

Actually, I’ll just say that at this point I am completely aware of how not-short this blog is. Damnedy damn damn. But I can’t really DELETE it, because then it’s just waste… so SUFFER, ha ha. Nah, will try and keep London short. (Again/still).

So, drove to Frankfurt, said a tearful goodbye and flew to London. What a rocking place! We loved the vibe, the cleanliness and how easy it was to get around. MAN was it weird to be able to go into shops and converse with whoever you wanted/needed to! How refreshing! (something we once again missed when we got to Livvy, MAN those scouser accents can take a bit of getting used to.)

We spent one night in a shitty hostel (sorry Mum, it was really crap, and you know it’d been a while since I cried myself to sleep but the thought of 5 more nights in a mildewed, dirty, noisy hole with a bunch of 18 year old “I’ve just left home, god I’m rebellious” types sitting 24-7 in all available lounging facilities “looking for work” and talking about how cool they were… well. Need I say more, except that the next day we found somewhere within 100m that was only about 15 pounds more expensive a night, where we had our own room, a fridge and jug etc, (clean) double bed, (clean) towels and its own (clean) ensuite. Oh yeah, and our own telly and free wifi. My god. Could that have been anymore of an oasis. Anwar House, people! Look it up if you’re heading to London - you won’t regret it. Kind of a weird guest house thing in Kensington (rich, cool suburb), but lovely quiet street, polite people working it and just… bliss after a hard day’s sight-seeing.

The red river rover crew (minus photographer).
The greenwich mean... line? Yeah. Not really worth the trip, but it's on the only hill in London so the view was pretty sweet.
Teenage swan!
Obligatory baby squirrel pic. (He spoke with a different accent from the ones you‘ve seen on bloggy, bit posh really).

To brieferise the blog, basically we spent a lot of time wandering, a lot of time just chilling at various pubs and soaking up the vibe, and met up with Jacqui for tea one night, then did a red river rover with her and her cuz the next day to check out Greenwich.

We were sad we had to leave London, but we had no feeling as to how long our money would last in Liverpool and how long it would take to get set up there, so though we delayed an extra day in London (and loved it and swore we’d be back soon, and can tell it‘ll be a place we return to in the future as a holiday destination from home).

Anyways MORE than enough, after so long a silence. But doing the blog while I still remember means that we'll have it for years to come, to make us remember, if that makes sense.