France & Monaco

Bonjour,

The last few days have been pretty huge, although I think it's nothing in comparison to what awaits.

After departing from London, we headed down to Dover and caught the ferry across to Calais in France. The ferry ride was short, and the novelty had worn off as a result of my previous journeys to and from Ireland. My plan to queue up 'Stayin Alive' several times in a row on the provided jukebox failed miserably.

Once arrived in Dover, we embarked on one of the now common lengthy bus rides and tried to get a little bit of sleep. Several hours later, I had arrived at my accommodation in Paris and settled into my cabin. After the obligatory escargot (snails) and pink champagne before dinner, we left on an evening bus tour throughout Paris, which gave us a bit of insight into what we could look at the following day. But back to the snails – they taste like prawns, although somewhat more rubbery.

I awoke the next day and prepared to spend the day trekking through Paris. Dropped off at the Eiffel tower, we decided to queue up as early as possible in order to avoid the length two hour queue's we had heard of. A cold, chilly French hour later, and we were on our way up to the summit of the tower. The views were as expected, unrivaled by anything I have ever seen previously, and it was an amazing start to the day.






After heading back down the tower, I wandered over to the Arc de Triomphe (Arches of Triumph), via a French eatery where I picked up some of the local cuisine – a croissant and quiche. The Arch de Triomphe, like Paris as a whole, is such a fanciful and attractive piece of architecture. In retrospect my amazement at the beauty of Dublin was nothing in comparison to that of France. It's almost as if every building on every street is worthy of a photograph.





We headed down the Champs Elysees, one of the worlds most famous streets/parades, to the Place De La Concorde and Obelisque, the location of Marie Antoinette's beheading. Napoleon Bonaparte and Hitler had both marched their soldiers down the same parade which houses many high end fashion houses including the unofficial home of Louis Vuitton.



Champs Elysees


Crossing over the River Sien momentarily, we walked past the Musee d'Orsay, before heading back over the river towards the Louvre. With it only just being past lunch time at this stage, we decided to enter the Louvre and try and find the Mona Lisa. Not being any sort of art buff at all – the two exhibits I had really heard of (Mona Lisa & Venus De Milo), were clearly well directed to – or so we thought. After seeing the incredibly underwhelming Mona Lisa we navigated our way through the labyrinth that is the Louvre to the similarly underwhelming Venus De Milo.



The Louvre



Inside the Louvre




People taking photos of...



... some painting


My next point of call was Notre Dame – a huge, gothic looking church, which was the last Parisian landmark I saw before heading back via Rue De Rivo (a huge shopping street) to the Louvre..



Notre Dame


I then headed to dinner up in the hills of Paris which included spectacular views of the city from up near a church called Sacre Coeur. The 3 course meal at the quaint little Parisian restaurant I went to was amazing, and topped off with camembert and cheesecake.

The cabaret performance at La Nouvelle, a local theatre, despite having several humorous and impressive moments, reminded me of a rock eisteddfod for adults. My lack of enthusiasm for wine did not help my cause however, as the tables were full of complimentary champagne.

The next day we headed on a bus to the Beaujolais wine region south of Paris, to stay at a French Chateaus, in a picturesque set of hills and vineyards. Slightly after arrival we were treated to another wine (arghh) tasting, but I was more keen on the complimentary cheese and crackers than the award-winning wine. The night consisted of a bit more socialising amongst the group, with a few drinks and dancing the night away France style. I don't even know what France Style is, but for the sake of this blog, I'll run with it anyway.



Beaujolais Wine Region

The next day in France was Bastille Day, the day that marks the anniversary of the French Revolution... it's basically the French version of Australia Day/Independence Day, so there's a lot of celebration going on around the place. Once we awoke, we headed up into the hills of the region for a relaxing walk which turned out to be more strenuous than one would have hoped, and gave us all memories of Edinburgh and climbing Arthur's seat.

After returning back from the walk and picnic lunch, everyone relaxed at the Chateaus before heading into the nearby village for Bastille Day celebrations, which included a parade of sorts, and then a mini dance festival at the nearby fire-station/sporting grounds. The bar was selling Kronenbourg stubbies for 1.5 Euros (About $2.50 Australian), so needless to say these were pretty popular.

As the night rolled on into the next day, a few of us decided to call it a night, and make our way back, sans street lights, torches, or any form of light other than the moon's, back to the Chateaus in order to get a well earned (haha...) sleep.

After waking up, cleaning up and packing up our gear, as well as treating ourselves to an elaborate continental breakfast, we once again left on a bus, heading further south in France and then eventually leading onto Italy. The weather has also been a bit better, after having been rather cool (if not cold) the previous couple of days.

Once we arrived in the coastal town of Antibes, the move further south had most definitely resulted in warmer temperatures, as everyone switched into more summer gear than they had been wearing for the last few days. Antibes is situated in the French Riviera (Cote D'Azure), between the rich an luxurious cities of Nice and Cannes. Both cities have amazing beaches and villa like houses covering the surrounding hills.

I got a pretty good view of Nice on the way to Monaco and the Monte Carlo Casino. Monaco is only a couple of square kilometres in area, and is essentially a town full of high rollers. Everything is incredibly well built and extravagant, and the streets are littered with Ferrari's and the like. I had a look around the place, and saw the home of the Monaco Royal Family and some spectacular beaches, before heading to the Casino. After playing a bit of Roulette and looking around the casino for a while, I headed back to the cabin and called it a night.







Monaco


I spent today exploring the nearby and aforementioned town of Nice. After arriving in the town centre, I slowly made my way down the main shopping district into 'Old Town', and the local markets. Being the incredibly hot place that Nice is, the markets were littered with fresh fruit and icecream stalls. After sampling some of the local cuisine, we made our way up to Le Chateaus, a huge hill/park/lookout type area that overlooks the beach and city.







Nice, France


After getting a few photos of the local beach and beach-side road strip 'Promenade Des Anglais', I made my down to the beach (which is pebbles, not sand... a weird and uncomfortable experience..), and wandered amongst the tanned and topless sun-baking locals before having a good swim.







Nice, France


Cooled and refreshed, I headed back up into the shopping district and looked through the various shops before picking up a Royal with Cheese from McDonalds. Awesome. I've never been so smug as I was ordering that burger. Complete with Vincent Vega accent.

We all made our way back to the local train station and then back to the cabins before settling in with a few drinks and a couple of games of pool.

Onwards to Italy next...

Au revoir,

Mark.

Onwards through Europe

So I decided to lash out and buy a laptop, and it is from this new toy that I bring you an update on our travels. It's an Asus EEE – a rather small, compact and cheap (therefore basic - 4GB hard-drive, for example) laptop, which when closed is slightly bigger than a DVD case. It 's in a hard case, has wireless, and will fit snuggly into my day bag, so breakage and security wise it's perfectly suited.

On the traveling side of things, we're currently checked into the rather nice (relative to where we've been staying previously, at least) Royal National Hotel. It is from here in which our tour departs tomorrow morning at 6:45am on to France. A nice, early start to kick off proceedings.

We spent all of day in Oxford and Regent Street picking up little things we needed for Contiki – locks and adapters and a few items of clothing and so on. Ben and myself also enjoyed Pizza Hut – all you can eat, something which we hadn't seen in a while. After we had all had a bit of a shop we walked over end checked into the Hotel.

Not much else to say, will keep you all updated... until next time, here are some recent pictures.



Kilkenny Castle









Playing footy at Kilkenny Castle...




Leicester Square

Back in London

So nearly 24 hours after we left Kilkenny, we're back in London, and all very tired, as we did the whole trip without any set accomodation, and picked up the odd hour or so sleep on the journey.

Kilkenny wasn't full of a great deal of sights or things to do, so we decided to see the one tourist attraction, in Kilkenny Castle. It was not what we expected at all - with no medieval suits of armour, tales of violence, or anything of the sort - more like an in real life version of Antique Roadshow, with an elderly lady talking about the restoration of the castle - and how such and such a table was from the 17th Century and the carpet was imported from Spain in the 18th century. Combine 40 minutes of that in with a complete run down of the trials and tribulations of the Irish Royal family and you have a group of four incredibly bored young Australians.

Dishevelled and still not satisfied with our day, we embarked on a short walk across the castle grounds to an incredibly lush field which resembled a golf fairway, and took out my earlier purchased rugby ball. The ensuing 'king of the pack' (haha, at a Castle, get it?!) - was more enjoyable than the preceding tour, and we were just about to wind up our game when we were told not to play on said field anymore. Taking this is as our queue to leave, we headed back to the hostel, and settled in to the hostel we ended up taking quite a liking to, and organising our trip back to the mother country.

What ensued was probably one of the most stressful 12 hours of the tour so far, as we found out the original ferry we had planned on taking was no longer in operation, and we had to find an alternative route back to London, hopefully via Stonehenge. Six hours of internet searching, reviewing, reading and comparing later, we eventually worked out the best route (taking into account the cost, wait times, and so on) - would involve a near on 20 hour trip back to London and bypassing Stonehenge.

We ended up settling on catching a bus from Kilkenny (departing 5:50pm), via Waterford and Wexford to Rosslare Harbour - then catching a ferry to Northern Wales at 9:15pm, and arriving in Fishguard at 12:45am. Once we arrived at Fishguard, we had to wait until 1:50am, to catch a train to Swansea, which arrived at 3:45am.

From Swansea, we caught a train to Cardiff (Wales), at 4:00am - and this arrived at 4:55am. We had the option of going straight through from Cardiff to London at 5am - but this would have cost us approximately £60 each - a price we could get down to £30 each by waiting until 8:55am. Once departing Cardiff at 8:55am, we arrived at London just after 11am - and our tube station at just before 12pm. We arrived at the hostel where I'm typing this at about 12:30pm = about 26 hours since we checked out of our last hostel - and after nearly 20 hours of travel and about £80 lighter in the pocket. Rather expensive and tiresome, but we saved paying for a night of accommodation by travelling through the night - and we have been in three countries in less than a day. Every other route added considerable money to our journey (such as catching the train to London from Cardiff earlier - due to it being 'peak' time). Regardless, we're all glad to finally be in a hostel, and just need to wait for another hour or so until we can check into our room for a long awaited sleep and shower.

We're booked into a hotel tomorrow night - which should be a nice way to relax and get ourselves sorted before the tour starts the following day. The last 2 and a half weeks has gone pretty well - with no major hiccups, and its pretty comforting to know that we won't need to work out where we're staying, how to get to there, where everything is and so on, for the next month at least.

Anyway, I'm out.

Mark

Dublin/Kilkenny

I write this from what could best be described as some sort of loungeroom. The hostel we're staying at for the next two nights is definitely one of the more 'homely' places we haved stayed. I'm pretty sure the guy who runs the place lives here, and we're currently using his old PC. And I'm also pretty sure that half the food in the fridge in the 'communal' kitchen is probably his. The place is also less than half of what we were paying in Dublin, haha. Nevertheless, the beds and room we're in are clean, so I have no qualms with the place, besides a little bit of weirdness.

We rolled into Kilkenny this afternoon after a two hour bus drive, having finally left Dublin this morning. For our final day in Dublin, we decided to walk over to the Guinness Storehouse, to partake in the tour. The walk was a smart move on the way there, financially at least, despite what would be described as a brisk breeze. It was however, not so smart on the way back, as we were subjected to the ever fluctuating Irish weather, and drenched in rain. Claire had the foresight to pack a poncho, although the three of us may very well have not have opted to wear one anyway considering the looks and comments Claire got from us as well as passers by. Once we arrived at the Storehouse, we picked up our tickets we had ordered earlier, and we progressed throughout the self guided tour, maps in hand. The tour itself was pretty much all you can expect from a brewery, going through the history/process/advertising of Guinness, and concluded with a complimentary pint in the 'Gravity Bar' - the highest point of the Storehouse that had 360 degree views of Dublin. Not a bad place to have a drink.





Guinness Brewery




Claire with Emergency Poncho

After making dinner for the night, we got all dressed up (changed from shorts to jeans), and headed throughout the light drizzle back to the Temple Bar district. Our enthusiasm for the area waned when we realised the pub which promised so much was full of middle-aged Irish men and women, and loud, drunken women on hens nights. The mood was worsened amongst the girls when they were charged over 17 Euro (nearly $30 Australian!) for two vodka pineapples. Somewhat disheartened, we headed back via McDonalds to our hostel, to relax and mingle back at the hostel.

Kilkennny, is a smallish town, with a population of around 9000 or so, big enough to have traffic lights and a 'Supermacs' - an Irish competitor to McDonalds and Burger King, but not a great deal of other shops around the place. I think Ben and myself will get a bit of use out of the rugby ball I bought in Dublin (only because they don't sell AFL footballs anywhere..)



Kilkenny

Should be back in the UK by Wednesday, as we're hoping to go through Stonehenge on the way back to London...

Glasgow/Dublin

We left Glasgow yesterday morning, after a couple of days exploring the city. It was nice to have a look around, but there wasn't anything of great 'tourist' value there, although we did look through the 'Glasgow Necropolis' - which was essentially an old and elaborate cemetary and gardens perched on a hill overlooking the city. It was different, but something interesting to have a look at - as well as providing some good views.






Glasgow









Glasgow Necropolis (and views from..)


Upon waking up and checking out, we quickly caught a train to Stranraer, which is right on the coast of Scotland, in order to catch a ferry to Ireland. I had visions of a small ferry, with maybe some sort of open deck, but this thing was huge. Owned & operated by a company called Stena Line that I had previously (and in retrospect arguably ignorantly) never even knew existed - the ferry was part of the worlds biggest/best ferries, and inside was reminiscent of a shopping centre/restaurant/cruise ship. In short, the ferry was nice inside, and a pleasant way for us to spend the two hours between Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Upon arrival at Northern Ireland, we were greeted by an empty carpark - and were informed by a bus driver that there was no such busses between the port and Belfast Central - a fact later confirmed by the administration at the port. The same administration who advised us that the earlier bus driver was driving the bus that was meant to take us to Belfast Central - and had somehow left/failed to tell us that HIS bus would take us there... Slightly annoyed, we caught a taxi to Belfast Central, which only ended up being about £9, so between the four of us it worked out alright. We also got some sort of amusement out of The Corrs being the first song we heard on Irish radio.

Once at Belfast Central, we were quickly onto getting a ticket through to Dublin, as with the delays caused by a lack of bus - we had only 15 minutes to buy tickets and get onto the train. This ended up being no hassle whatsoever, and we disembarked from Belfast and Northern Ireland, and headed south. After seeing the stock-standard (for here, at least) rolling hills, valleys and lucious green fields, we arrived into Dublin at about 8:15pm last night, with a suprising spring in our step, despite the lengthy amount of travel we had endured throughout the day.

We're currently in the extremely attractive and pleasant city of Dublin. Upon arrival here and walking through the major shopping precints, such as Temple Bar and O'Connell Street, all of us agreed that Dublin is one of the better (if not the best) looking cities we've been to. At night time the city is still 'bustling', and the vibe around the place is incredibly pleasant - even as it gets on through the night. Talented buskers are a plenty, as are people engaged in a variety of sociable activities, entering in and out of the cities many charming pubs, sharing a good time with friends and the like.





Dublin

The city itself is divided by the Liffey River, and with everything lit up throughout the night, it really is a sight to behold as it is incredibly 'pretty' and all works together nicely.



Liffey River


The room we have here is incredibly basic, it's essentially bunk beds and... a small bathroom. Nothing else whatsoever, but all we really need is somewhere to shower and sleep, so there's not much to complain about - although everything here is incredibly expensive. I'm not sure if it's just the exchange rate between the Euro and the Australian dollar, or Dublin in general, but everything is at least 25% more expensive here than LONDON, and considerably moreso than Scotland (which was the cheapest of the places we have been to so far).

Anyway, after we checked into our room, we made our way around Dublin, which as I said earlier is an incredibly attractive city - and accidentally, but luckily, walked ourselves right in the middle of the Temple Bar district - which is just an exciting and interesting few streets full of buskers, restaurants and pubs and clubs. There isn't many landmarks here persay, we've just been walking around taking in the atmophere of the city, as well as looking at a few places, such as Trinity College (this really old, fancy college) and Dublin Castle.



Trinity College



Dublin Castle


We have another couple of days here, and then we're planning to head south through Kilkenny and/or Cork, and then back to the UK before our tour.

Also off to the Guiness Brewery tomorrow hopefully... and Im sure you're all wonderfully jealous.

Hope everything is fine back home,

Mark

Glasgow

So we're in Glasgow at the moment, and leave here tomorrow. I can't write much as I'm doing this from my phone and it's a hassle to do so... Glasgow is nothing special, as expected, just a modern industrial city. It's nothing glamorous, but nothing worse than many places in Perth. Edinburgh was considerably nicer, though. We're going to Dublin tomorrow in a bit of a long one day trek, as we opted to save time and money by doing it all in one go, instead of staying a night in Belfast. We have to change mode of transport about four times, including a ferry between Scotland and Ireland so hopefully it all goes smoothly.

Edinburgh

The whole process of getting from London to Edinburgh went pretty smoothly, with our pre-booked tickets and accommodation all being recognised and going through, so we got into a cold Edinburgh Station around 9pm on Saturday night. It’s still light here until 10pm or so, so there were no real troubles in finding the accommodation which ended up only being a five minute walk away anyway.

The accommodation here is a few pounds a night each cheaper than London – (in the low 40’s a night, Australian, as opposed to high 40’s), so it’s helped our finances a bit. The general food prices around here a lot cheaper also, so we’ve done pretty well in Scotland. Glasgow looks to be even cheaper still although, with cheaper prices, there is a bit of a drop in the surrounding area/social demographic and so on.

Edinburgh is a lot smaller than I thought it would be – there’s just under 500,000 people that live here, and the city reminds me a bit of Perth in the way the streets and whatnot are laid out… it’s kind of hard to explain.

Anyway, Claire and myself explored a bit of Edinburgh while Ben and Sarah relaxed in the hostel, which wasn’t as promising as hoped because, unlike London, everything isn’t open to all hours of the night (like Perth), so we settled for a burger/chips type place for dinner and made our way back to the hostel. It’s cool here, not overly cold as such, but definitely jumper worthy – especially if you choose to wear shorts which I made the mistake of doing on our first night out here.

After a bit of minor exploration and a ‘scoping out’ of the sights nearby, we headed back to the hostel and slept as well as we could with hundreds of loud drinking people in the downstairs bars.

We slept in a bit the next day, unawares as to the time, so felt we better get a move on in exploring the city. Heading up what is known as the ‘Royal Mile’ – essentially the main ‘tourist’ drag, we had a bit of a gander at the many street performers (including an amusing American magician Todd Various) and various stalls and whatnot, before ending up at Edinburgh Castle. We also sampled the infamous local dish Haggis – which we all came to the conclusion tastes like chicken stuffing.



Outside Edinburgh Castle










Edinburgh


There's a crazy amount of cool stores in the U.K. & so so many tshirts and sneakers and jeans etc I want to buy. Luckily my suitcase is pretty full and I can't bring myself to throw out any of my clothes, so I've saved a bit of money due to my distinct lack of room to spare. CD's are also incredibly cheap here... the new Sigur Ros album (amongst many other new releases) are all of £7 ($15AUD) - and I'm sure it would be close to double that in Perth. We found a cool store called Avalanche records which had a nice collection of stuff I couldn't find in Australia... but seeing I have no discman or stereo here, there was really no point in me buying CD's that I can't listen to.



Avalanche Records


After seeing the Castle and the local shops, we decided to go on a tour of Real Mary King's Close, a sort of 'underground (but not)' series of streets and buildings. It was okay, and I managed to ruin the group photo for everyone else ahaha. So incredibly smug as I emerged and saw the group photo - even more so when I was told off for taking a photo of the 'preview' photo that they expected us to pay £6 for. Owned.



We were making our way back to the hostel afterwards, when after a bit of thought we decided to keep exploring for the day. In an arguably stupid move, we thought we would attempt to conquer the hill which towers over Edinburgh, which is known as Arthur's Seat. Ben and myself rated our fitness pretty highly, so decided to take a shorter (and considerably more steep) route up the first section of the hill, which was much more of a struggle than originally planned. Despite a bit of an arduous trek up, the views up the top were well worth it, and we were all glad that we braved the freezing wind to get up there.











Arthur's Seat


After walking through Hollyrood Road, past Scottish Parliament and so on, we made our way into the hostel, and decided to head out for dinner to the cafe downstairs which was incredibly disappointing (gross, overpriced). We ended up getting a few drinks and just relaxed for the night in our room.

Having explored an insane amount of the smallish Edinburgh the day before, today we did a lot of stuff that we had put off for a while - namely washing clothes and organising accomodation for Glasgow. We almost booked a flight to Dublin, which was fine (and cheap), if not for the 15kg baggage limit and £12/kilo excess baggage charges. Ben and myself may have juuuust scraped in under that, but the girls would be pushing 20kg's of baggage, so had we booked the tickets they would have been stung nearly £60 each. After looking at various other modes/routes of transport, we established that going to Glasgow would be a better, albeit longer way to make our way further south.

After getting all of this sorted, we experienced another 'Amazing Moment' on tour - by eating at an Edinburgh burger chain known as Wannaburger. So amazingly awesome. Best burger of my life.

We're just chilling before going out to dinner tonight... and then onto Glasgow tomorrow. Yeow.