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.

Nice. It was OK. :)

Nice Nice. Ah yes, I do amuse myself!

Anyhoo, thankfully, intrepid readers, we did just find Nice nice. It might be a super-happening rich people haven in summer, but we found it quite quiet, relaxing, definitely a rich-people place with all those fancy yachts and big apartments, but generally… not overly exciting. We both agreed that 3 nights would have been too much if it hadn’t rained on one day, effectively making it a bit of a shorter explore.

The Cote d’Azur is beautiful. And lives up to its reputation in that way. I wasn’t too much of a fan of the cliff-hanging drive there (nothing on Croatia, and we’re talking 6 lanes of safe goodness, but I think the Croatian experience combined with Rome’s mental drivers got me all jumpy and whatnot for a while) and it was a long drive from Verona so it was a relief to arrive. And, we hoped, find some food other than pizza and pasta. I know it sounds snooty, but in other countries we’d been to, you could at least find food that’s not national food - the locals even get into a bit of variety. Italy…. Not so much. It was yummy as in Verona, but it was still time for some choice.

But don’t go to Nice for choice either - they have beautiful bouillabaisse and seafood dishes, such as paella, but in the ’cheap meal’ category you’ve got… pizza and pasta. Although we did find a kebab shop (that we attempted to eat two days in a row) and I was asked (after ordering hideously, without a phrase book and without even a basic knowledge of French) by the only fellow customer why I was eating kebabs as it was food for muslims like him. The French-speaking owners had no idea what we were talking about… After I recovered from my initial shock (wondering if I’d inadvertently boobooed) it turned out the guy genuinely thought that non-muslims had no knowledge of kebabs, and so I (and Nick, when he returned from the bottlo) was a complete curiosity to him. Us three had the best chat while we waited for the kebabs, and it was such a novel experience to be talking to someone in English, who is actually an emigrant from a French colony in Africa, dressed up in a suit (because it was a strike day - one of many - in France but that’s just what you wear) in a French kebab shop, explaining about the Australian tradition of the late night kebab shop. Ha!

So, unlike Croatia, where we found an Enlgish-Croatian phrasebook quite easily, the same was not the case in France. I would definitely advise getting one before you travel somewhere, because it sucks being so restricted that you can’t even speak general niceties (something we had tried to do all along our trip) and ask where things are and just generally work out what someone is saying to you! So we lived in a bubble really, just us and anyone who spoke passable English - which thankfully covers most people who work in restaurants. We did indeed eat some yummy food there, and once again (after Italy) we embraced the meal deal phenomena of 2 meals and a bottle of wine, or food and matched wine for one. It was a pretty place, and we explored the market-filled streets of the old town (way more expensive than Croatian markets, so I kicked myself for not going to town while in Split), climbed the hill at the entrance to the marina with the old monastery and castle on top, and just… relaxed.

Oh, and there was one funny moment when driving along the winding coast road, still in Italy, when Klaus’ oil light came on, indicating that he would like a litre of oil when we next filled up. No problems right? Ummm yeah. Try having a diesel car, for which the log book’s completely in german but has a table indicating something about different oils for different freezing/ambient temperatures, and being in Italy - with little Italian - where the Italian for diesel is “gasolio”. Sweet. After about 15 minutes of standing at the rack, gaping with an open german manual, a german translation book and an Italian translation book - an attendant came over and helped, with much better English than my…well, my anything… but still very basic English. Ahhh. I was so happy to hand over the oil choosing, and his little mate even put the oil in for us, thereby relieving us of all responsibility, or so we felt. But Klaus was fine, and that was the main thing. Phew! I have no idea if he understood that I couldn’t read the manual cos it was in Deutsche, or just thought I couldn’t read, but all was well in the end.

Oh - noteworthy re Italy but I forgot to say - toll roads are really expensive, but it’s way better than winding through mountains on crappy roads. And we got into a traffic jam on one of those roads that goes on stilts for about 30 km through the mountains, this being the only major road that goes North-South up the leg of the boot from Roma - and there was barely half a lane altogether extra (I.e. maybe a metre on either side) before the barriers and a 50m drop. And this being also the only trucking route… there was an intense number of trucks (we literally would have seen thousands that day) and yet still those crazy drivers were ducking up the 1 m area where the ambulance and traffic control were miraculously supposed to go, and zigzagging where they could through crawling traffic. Horrid. Annoying. And we did consider that maybe we might die there, starving and irritated with the local driving habits. But we didn’t. The trucks involved would have been backed up over 30 km from the accident (our max was 10km but the driving rules there mean trucks in a particular lane for certain stretches of road) and so those trucks would have been 3 or 4 hours off schedule. At least. Ahhh, Italy.

Here’s the pics from Nice anyways!

Two views of the Castle Hill, fair and foul weather. Still pretty either way.

MY (capitalisation deliberate by the way) awesome artsy pic along the main beach in opposite direction from castle, marina on the other side, and where we were staying.
View up to the castle hill with the excavations of the ruins of a 13th century monastery. Definitely worth the walk up the hill.
10s/100s of millions of boat dollars, and then expensive real estate. Ah, the place was just all money!!!
Fountain. Still pretty cool, but by Nice we'd seen better. Ooooh, I AM such a travel snob now! :)
The only tram/train line I've ever seen that "does" grass. Yes, noteworthy. Riveting? Perhaps not. But I already told you Nice was only “nice” my friend, not intriguing or riveting. So there.
Hmmm. Art in a park surrounded by rich people hotels.
You really notice that the streets are different everywhere. I think it was one of the coolest things I found about travelling, that you'd always know you were somewhere different just by looking at the streets.
More "art". Still - interesting to look at, although I don't particularly find it thought provoking! Outside museum of modern art (or its French translation, no doubt. Not that I'd know!)
Below... view from castle.
Below you've got bouillabaisse and paella, that’s one for me and one for Nick by the way. No wonder we had a few kegs each to lose when we got to Liverpool!

Fair Verona...

Now, it actually went Dubrovnik -->Bari (Italy) --> Rome --> Verona, but Rome is in Nick's ballcourt and that guy actually WORKS these days, so fair's fair - so "Verona and beyond" it is.

Now, some bloggers have been quite slack for… oh, 6 weeks or so (shock horror!) MANY apologies. But at least you can have the consolation of more abridged blog entries, as our memories have faded and as it’s now sooooo long ago, you are unlikely to be hanging on every (any?) word, so it’s in everyone’s interest to keep it brief, yeah?

OK, so Nick’s got Rome (his favourite place) and I’ll agree with him totally on everything there. Especially fearing for our lives when driving on the roads. I must admit, in my case,it was refreshing to be being scared of fellow drivers rather than dangling off terrible heights - although realistically, Nick’s driving on the side of a mountain was way safer than those crazy Romans.

We went to Verona based on the advice of Candyce - our friend from Auschwitz. She was cool as a button, and so when she said it was a lovely place to walk around, and really relaxed (something we were needing after Rome) we thought - it’s close to Venice, so we’ll do that on a day trip (we didn’t end up, actually) and stay in Verona. And it was beautiful.

It smacked of all the pride in its history that Rome lacked. The Roman arena there is the 3rd largest around, and unlike the Coliseum has been maintained, restored and now even has concerts and plays performed in it. So that was pretty darned cool.

Some other sights included the beautiful river that circles through town. It’s shallow, runs very fast, and is this amazing clear crystal green colour. Because it winds through town there’s 4 or 5 bridges, of differing ages (but equal beauty), one of which was joined to the Castelvecchio (Castle Bridge is what it means and it is what it sounds J ) bits of which date back to 1355. And…. Beautifully restored and kept.

There’s also a Roman amphitheatre also restored to a degree, after excavations. An amazing feat of architecture again, like though they used the natural slope of the hill and reinforced that to form the basis for the different tiers of seating, they dug a deep trench into the rock (way deeper than the base of the furthest tier from the stage) so that water running down the hill didn’t erode the foundations of the tiers. COOL! And it was really cool to see some of the arches of the third (highest) tier still standing around the place. They also had a pretty half hearted archaeological museum there, in a converted convent above the amphitheatre, or rather - lots of cool old stuff, but with less or un-certain history to the pieces, although lots had been excavated from the centre of Verona itself so again - pretty interesting feeling.

Hmmmm, what else. Oh yeah - it’s the city of Romeo and Juliette. And they embrace that with a passion, as do the millions of walking tourists (I mean this in the sense of doing a ’walking tour’). So the Veronese thing is that Romeo and Juliet really existed (hmmmm),but I think the bard just used the most beautiful and romantic place ever as the site of his tragic love story. There’s Casa di Giulietta and Casa di Romeo and Juliette’s house has a court yard with THE balcony above it, and a statue of Juliette. People rub her boob for luck in love (didn’t work out for R & J, but whatever) and obviously someone somewhere grabbed the wrong end of the stick because they’re rubbing the non-heart side (right). You can’t even get a second in there during the day, and into the early evening, but it was still cool to see. And to have Nick get into my only chance to have a pic of the balcony without some nonce standing on it, and 400 people below, milling and boob-rubbing. Although… I snuck one in after.

Being the city of love that it is (doomed love, but clearly that’s another ‘whatever’) it’s also covered in graffiti of lovers. Everything from Juliette’s courtyard, to the more romantic of the bridges. It seemed a shame to me, but it’s all part of the magic of the place. There’s also spots where different couples have locked a padlock and written their names on it, symbolising their connectedness and undying love. Sigh. I mean “or something”.

We also found a certain palace’s (palace as in rich family’s house, I think) garden and wandered about that on a Sunday morning. It’s been there for 400+ years, in various incarnations and had an amazing view at the top over Verona. It was really special, and having an odd turn for the lame-o (romantic) side I genuinely had a tear in my eye looking over the city in the fresh morning haze after exploring the cool winding paths though the mossy cool garden. Sigh again.

Food-wise we had some delicious food there, and it’s worth going to the restaurants as they aren’t too expensive if you get a deal with a bottle of wine and just lovely soaking up the atmosphere. Didn’t try horsemeat (I’m sure Jenny, Cleo and Sunny at home will be most happy with that) but we did have some delicious squid ink pasta (very black on the teeth and lips, though a quick drink and a wipe takes it away - not first date material though!!!), mushroom ravioli in truffle sauce the proper Italian way (I.e. amazing taste, fresh pasta and just a few of them… sadly!) and a local specialty from the markets of risotto with uncooked sausage meat added (and obviously cooked at that point).

The Veronese were soooo stylish. The most classic-cut clothes, shiny hair, poise and class. They also have the interesting habit of coming into the centre of town in the evening but particularly on Sundays, from wherever they live, and strolling the streets in families. Quite a parade of stylish people, and it gets crazy busy through some of the narrow old town streets (completely refurbed with stylish shops, of course). On the topic of the streets, they were even lovely - mostly in beautiful condition, with colourful buildings, wrought iron balconies, flower pots, and often coming off at all angles - making it a wonderful place to explore. Have I sold it to you yet? DEFINITELY worth a stop in - 3-4 days is a good time, very relaxed… though one day I want to go back.

All in all, we loved it. I definitely loved it more than Nick, but I think he’d agree that it was still a special place.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! For all the promises of brevity, sadly, I lack the ability to follow through. Anyway - hopefully the break will have whetted the appetite for some overseas piccies… HUGS!

Pretty streets...
Nick and the pretty streets and sky. Still haven't broken that habit. At least we know he was there!The locks. Eternal love. I guess.
The courtyard,the balcony and the abused statue.
The graffiti, all of about 2m from the courtyard - in the only entrance.
Pretty coloured buildings, all in a row.
The arena. Made in the typical Veronese style - white stone, then a particular pink stone found locally. See? I learned stuff.
Guess who. And the arena. Pick which of the last 2 pics were taken first...
Bits of the castle and bridge were made in 14th century. Been rebuilt and restored, but that's what makes this place. Ruins can be neglected too (even after they've been deemed important enough to keep. Hey Rome? Yeah? I thought so... no rebuttal).
View from bridge of Castle-Bridge.
View back to Castel-Vecchio. See? It really is a castle and a bridge. No misnomer there...
One of the beautiful bridges..

Us… immediately before I cut that ghastly fringe. Into another, crooked, and yet slightly-less-ghastly fringe...

The beautttttttiful garden.
Horsing around. I think.
That's me, AMAZEd in the garden. Wacca wacca. Sigh. I need to get out more...
You can get a picture of how ornate the garden is.Not overly large, only and hour or so wandering, but really worth it.

Awwww. That's the view from a stone gazebo at the top of the garden. With two hopeless types in front.

Above: The restored (not to original condition as you can see from the seats at the front) and now utilised amphitheatre.

View from the top of the amphitheatre, back across that amazing river to the centre of town... Loved that view (hence there's a few piccies of it).

For the less mature... Tee hee!