(My apologies for not putting anything up for a long time now. After a bit of travelling through Europe again I was sent straight up to Birmingham for work. The migration was a bit of a horror so I have been flat out since. Strap yourselves in though, it's a long one!!!! I had to write it in sections it's so massive!)
Gday Everyone,
I’m sitting on a train to
Birmingham where I’ll be working for the next week.
Today was a really crappy cloudy day with (for a while) BELTING rain.
So I guess there could be worse times to be travelling, plus it gives me a chance to work on my blog!
The last three weeks have been pretty manic.
With Miss arriving in London and work delaying a project giving me some time off, I got the chance to see some more of the city (I really haven’t explored yet as I haven’t had the time!!!).
On the first day we went to see
Buckingham Palace and an exhibition of the dresses that the Queen has worn in the last 40 years or something (that bit was for Miss).
The Palace itself is very impressive.
Places like Versai are older and enormous, however Buckingham is in better ‘nick’ and more nicely appointed in my opinion.
The next day I had to work but that night I scored cheap tickets to see
Chicago, so that was good to see.
Quite a different musical that one, lots of rocky/raunchy lyrics!
On Sunday Miss and I went to
Camden markets and spent almost the whole day looking around.
For those of you who know
London, I showed Missy the crazy rave-culture store Cyberdog, so now she’s seen all the freaks too!
That was about it for the
London leg of the trip.
For me the real part of the trip started in
Munich with Oktoberfest, which is a pretty awesome place to start.
Despite having been there before during the World Cup, I still enjoyed the chance to walk around the city and see everything again.
The atmosphere was no where near as good this time though (sorry, I’m not knocking Oktoberfest, just bumping up the World Cup).
Still, that isn’t to say that things are by any means boring.
After arriving in the morning, Miss and I went for a walk around the tourist district while we waited for the others to arrive.
I
broke Miss gently into the German food and drink culture by taking her into a beer hall that I knew of.
I got a beer and pork knuckle, and man that stuff is SO good (right Meyer?).
It’s enough meat to satisfy even a crazy eater like me and covered in crackling with a rich gravy…. Mmm….. !!!
After that we just cruised around a little and checked out some of the sites that I had seen while on the bike tour (the one we did the last time I was in town).
Later on that evening Miss unfortunately died (we were up at 5am or something to get the plane flight out of
London) so I met the other guys at the fairgrounds for my first taste of Oktoberfest.
And yeah, it’s pretty impressive!
A light rain had been falling for a lot of the day, so I think crowds were down a little, but this made people pack into the beer tents all the same.
When I say ‘tent’, I don’t mean anything even resembling a ‘tent’ like at Perth Cup, or camping etc.
These things are basically small aircraft hangers which are a composite of solid wood structures and the occasional bit of canvas.
Inside bands are playing (traditional German music as well as 80’s and 90’s cheesy rock), the tables are packed in and people are knocking back steins.
My kind of place!
There are 20something ‘big’ tents and innumerable smaller tents all over this massive fairground, and of course there are games and rides.
Here’s some pics of the insides:
On this first night, not many people were on the rides or games, but most are similar to the kinds of ones we get at the Royal Show, just lots more of em and in a much bigger space.
After a beer or two in a tent, I headed back to the hotel and crashed as we’d decided tomorrow was going to be our big drinking day.
Up early the next day and straight to the festivities!
We got there around 10am so not many people were there (even though the weather was a little better) and we took our time looking around the whole grounds to see the different rides on offer.
Some of them were truly campy and shitty looking, (like this indoor roller coaster), so of course we went on it!
Yup, it was lame… real lame….
After two minutes of semi-excitement, we headed into a beer tent for lunch and drinks.
After lunch I decided that I wanted to go on the two biggest rollercoasters in the park that I could find.
One had 5 (or six…??) loops in it and was actually pretty good, but the other one was even better because it was one of the ones where you sit with your feet dangling.
It also had sideways corkscrews which were brilliant, you get swung in a circle (sort of sideways like a cartwheel) and get a great view of the sky, then the earth rushing towards you.
The drop off to start it was also nice and steep.
So yeah, totally happy with the rides we looked around a little more and bought some little trinkets like Oktoberfest hats etc and then retired to a beer tent for dinner and drinks.
Lots of drinks
J.
The tent had a great band and nice people (Michelle knew a girl at the table we sat at) and we happily wasted the evening away.
On the way back to the hotel, despite insisting that because I’d been to the city before and therefore I knew where I was going… I got us lost :).
Luckily Miss remembered a shop window with a pink fridge in it which she used as a sufficient landmark to get us back.
The last day in
Munich started a little slowly (as you’d expect) but some dodgy Macca’s fixed me right up.
Michelle decided to go off and do the bike tour so Miss and I headed to the Concentration Camp instead –
Dachau.
I’ve written heaps about it before but going back is still nasty.
In a way I am glad I did though as I looked at things differently this time, I wasn’t as shell shocked by the whole thing so I had time (and the mental capacity) to read up on how the whole Hitler/Jews persecution thing started and developed.
It didn’t just happen overnight, but it still was atrocious.
Miss wasn’t too happy when she left either.
That night we grabbed a nice (and quite cheap) dinner in one of the main squares and enjoyed the evening before getting back to the train station for our night train. Oh yeah, some dudes rocked up in some crazy bike while we were eating, check it out.
I’m not sure if I've written about night trains before but my last trip on one was pretty sucky. Although this one wasn’t great, it wasn’t that bad either.
I did manage to get some sleep and the other two people in our cabin were quite nice and polite (and didn’t snore or anything).
The next day we woke up in
Venice!!!
Last year Kath and I looked around
Venice for 6 hours on day but I don’t think we really did it justice.
I hoped that this time I would get the chance to really see and enjoy it.
On the first day we had a look around early (the train got in around 8am and we found our hotel fairly easily).
I headed straight for Piazza San Marco and we were fortunate to get the before anything was open and the queues had really started.
This meant that we only had to wait in line around 45 minutes before getting into the Basilica San Marco.
It’s still awesome with all of it’s gold mosaics.
This time though I sprung for the entry to the museum portion of the building and it was worth it – the displays and view over the piazza that you get from the second story are magic.
After the Basilica we immediately headed into the Doge’s Palace as there wasn’t a big queue.
This too was really good but not up to par with
Buckingham Palace despite having some VERY large and VERY nicely painted chambers and big council rooms.
Oh, at some point after the Palace I paid the one Euro to get a little packet of feed and have the pigeons climb all over me.
It was really fun actually and they are good at not scratching you to death or anything.
One sat quite nicely on my shoulder for ages. Following all of that we had some rather average pasta in a dodgy little bar before taking time to walk the rest of the city and see the Rialto Bridge etc.
That night we ate a picnic dinner of roast chicken and baguettes with bocconcini and tomato salad in Piazza San Marco.
The next day we headed off on a guided tour of three of the outer islands - Murano, Burano and Torcello.
As most people know Murano is famous for glass blowing and we got a demonstration at a factory.
The guy was just practicing and on the weekends they don’t work (a note for those travelling there later) but he still made a nice little vase, then a kick arse horse rearing up.
The horse was REALLY impressive with him quickly having to form the shape out of a simple ‘blob’ of molten glass, all the time having to turn the glass to stop the newly formed head/legs etc drooping etc while continuing to shape it until the glass cooled sufficiently.
I got a lot of pics of it.
The showroom of the factory was also really impressive.
The
island of Burano is famous for it’s lace making.
An old woman was demonstrating how to do it and it looked SO tedious…!
It’s not exactly my kind of thing.
Still, the island itself was really nice with a big church were the bell tower was slanty like the leaning
tower of Pisa (3 meters out the guide said).
A couple were getting married there as we arrived.
Torcello doesn’t really have much, it’s history was just that it used to be a massive 50,000 person strong city in the old days, but then things went bad and
Venice became a much larger city.
All that is left is a lovely old church or two and a Basilica.
Still very nice though, and a few café type places seem to specialise in wedding receptions as they had elaborately decorated large rear gardens.
Travelling the islands is also good as they are quite close and you can see micro-islands where things like a single monastery stood in the past.
Lots of these have been abandoned but it literally is a tiny bit of land popping out of the water with a big building (ruins) on it.
There’s no where to grow food, no trees etc, so I’ve no idea how they survived out there.
That afternoon we had average pasta and a bad pizza, damn, still not good.
We looked around some more before deciding to try a little café place right next to our hotel for dinner.
We’d seen people in it but often weren’t in the area at night.
Thank goodness we tried it, we got a really good meal at a really good price!
Such a nice change.
After dinner we got a generous gelati dude and had a massive cup each to get through – awesome gelati!
On our third day we needed a bit of a slow one to catch up on some sleep etc.
We basically just walked the islands and looked around again.
Shopped at the markets and checked out local produce etc.
Our train to
Rome left at 3pm that night so we didn’t want to have to stress too much about getting back.
It was pretty full so we were lucky we got to sit where we did.
There was also a nice travelling Australian who we talked to to help pass the time.
Later that night, we were in my favourite place…
ROME!
After our arrival it took a little time to work out the busses again and get tickets, but the directions to the hotel I had proved to be fine and we arrived there without any major hassle.
It’s always a bit freaky though catching public transport in a foreign country, you never quite know if you are going to end up in the right place.
The hotel itself was beautiful and right next to Piazza Navona – perfect!
For dinner I had been looking through the ‘Rome Top 10’ book for a good pizzeria.
The number 1 place looked kind of familiar, so I checked the map and yep, it was the one that was right next to the apartment that we stayed in last year.
Miss and I promptly headed off and managed to get in without too much trouble (only a 20 min wait).
Of course, the pizza was amazing and SO huge, we left absolutely stuffed.
More gelati was consumed on the way back to the hotel.
The next morning we had breakfast delivered to our hotel room at 8am so that we were out in time to get to the
Vatican.
I bypassed Piazza San Pietro and headed straight for the Vatican Museums line.
This time it was 2 hours long so we made it in around midday.
The museum is just as good the second time around because basically I had forgotten a lot of the stuff from the first trip.
I think it was just part of being overwhelmed by all the stuff on the first visit.
The Sistine Chapel doesn’t lose any of it’s appeal either!
St Peter’s is also brilliant still.
I love the place and just walked around and around, each time making myself look at a different ‘level’ of the decoration… the first line of statues, the upper line, the roof, the angels over the arches etc.
Those big statues near the main alter are still fantastic, and Michelangelo’s Pieta is beautiful.
A long day all up!
The next day we were again up early, this time to head to the Coliseum.
I eavesdropped on a lot of tour guides and managed to pick up a bunch of new information that I missed last time.
Apparently people with blood conditions and stuff used to pay to buy the dead gladiators/slaves etc blood which they would drink!!
And the Coliseum did used to be flooded for mock naval battles, but this was before the storerooms etc were built underneath the arena floor (it was just earth). HeHe, a Legionnaire on a mobile, I though it was funny.
After the Coliseum we walked through the Roman Forum, then headed over to see the Pantheon and grab lunch, then head to the Trevi Fountain.
I had read about some catacombs in my guide book which were decored with the bones of Monks, so I thought it was something I had to see! As it was quite close to the Spanish Steps, it was worth the journey. The Spanish Steps are nice, but I've seen em before and really, there isn't that much to them (big steps, wow...!). But the crypt was absolutely awesome! Skulls, bones etc everywhere, some forming candelabras, decorations and stuff, other just piled into arches. I loved it! Photos are strictly prohibited (they watch you like a hawk as it's only one long corridor with chambers on the sides... but I still snuck a couple off. I bought some postacards, so I can send better prints if people want them.
By this time is was quite late in the day and as it was on the way home, we stopped off again at the Trevi Fountain. We sat on the stairs for a good hour and people watched while the sun went down and the lights came on.
A married couple came down for photos which was gorgeous, but also two young-punk-idiots also came down later and started ‘fishing’ in the fountain for all the money people threw in using a massive magnet.
Apparently the money is collected once a week and donated to charity so to see people taking it (they aren’t really stealing…… but it still seems wrong) was pretty nasty.
Our third day in
Rome was devoted to the Campo De Fiori markets and shopping.
We did kind of trudge around and look in churches etc while doing this though so it wasn’t a waste by any means.
Oh, and we also saw the Piazza Del Popolo and the church there which were actually very nice.
The piazza is described as the ‘Couch of Rome’ because it’s massive and people just go there to hang out.
Rather cool.
That night I hung out in my favourite Piazza Navona looking at the fountain.
Unfortunately the peace was broken by two Christians coming up and trying for 40 minutes to get me to come into the church with them to pray (there was some religious festival on).
They were nice, but kinda fanatical about it all so I just talked for a bit and then politely headed back to the hotel (it was getting late).
Oh!, I’d previously arranged for a taxi to come and get us the next morning.
During the day I’d missed a call while in the church which I returned at about 8pm that night.
The lady on the other end could barely speak any English but she said something about needing the address, and for me to ring at 9am tomorrow.
As we were getting picked up at 5am, this was a problem!!! So I freaked out a little and started thinking of how the heck I was going to get someone to speak to her in Italian and explain the situation.
When I booked, I put the address etc all on the form so they should have had that.
Around 9 I tried to call back and was lucky enough to get a guy who could speak English.
He already had the address and everything, so thank goodness.
(Quick Break: I’m now typing this bit from the hotel in
Birmingham after a nasty migration this weekend…. 66 hours in 4 days, that’s crazy!!!)
The next morning the car picked us up just fine and we headed to the airport however a tree had fallen on the road and was completely blocking traffic.
Fortunately some council type workers got on site pretty quickly and chopped it up and cleared it off, but it was still a 30 minute delay.
We still had enough time to get a decent seat on the airplane to head to
Paris.
The hotel in
Paris was about the same standard as the one Kath and I staying in last year.
It was about 2 minute walk from the Louvre or Notre Dame (i.e. it was just north of the river) and in the middle of one of the big shopping districts.
So it was in a good location, but quite small, grubby and tiny bathroom/shower.
Oh, and we were on the sixth floor and the staircase was quite small and windy! Each day it was a trial to climb those damn things…
Paris really is the most beautiful place, even seen for the second time.
The first day we went and saw Notre Dame, walked the river, walked up to the top the gardens attached to the Louvre, checked out our area and shopped a little.
While walking around looking for somewhere to eat, we found an Aussie pub!!! Of course we just HAD to go in and get a beer.
They even had Tooheys New – heaven…..!
As it was Happy Hour, and they loved us being there so we got generous serves, Miss and I hung around for a while and had some drinks.
We even found some Chinese for dinner as we were allowed to bring it back in.
It was good to be somewhere that felt a little like
Australia (where apparently Crocodiles eat surfboards!)
The next morning we were up early for the Louvre.
The Mona Lisa hall was almost empty that early so we had a good look.
Then I wandered around for the next six hours lost amongst all the awesome stuff.
That place is still awesome, and I don’t think I’d ever get to really see everything.
The lunch in the café inside was good too – surprisingly (relatively) cheap and large portions.
We’d seen a shop earlier which had a good range of clothes for pretty low prices.
I actually need new clothes so Miss and I went on a bit of a shopping spree.
We got an absolute PILE of stuff for 300 euros (most of it was mine).
But I still got about eight items of clothing for 100 quid (hooray for the conversion rate when you earn pounds).
After that we were literally heading out to go to see and climb the Eiffel tower and it started absolutely BUCKETING down.
So we just hung around our area looking at the night life then headed back to the hotel to nerd it up with emails and a drink.
The next morning we headed straight for the
Eiffel Tower.
Now that I still love going up again, I think it’s just an amazing structure.
In the queues to the lifts (it was so windy they wouldn’t allow people to climb the stairs) we met a really nice family of Aussies from
Queensland.
It took about 2 hours to get to the top, and the wind was freezing, but we still took plenty of time when we were up there.
There was also a Police Recruitment day at the Trocadero so we had plenty to watch while we hung around and gazed at the tower.
At one stage they did a mock boarding of a boat exercise where a chopper flew down in from of it, then little boats quickly came to the sides and they swarmed on.
Despite saying she didn’t care, I insisted that Miss go and see the Arc De Triumph and then walk the Champs Elysee at some point in our trip.
We were up kind of late so it was easy to just waltz down the street, and enjoy some ‘downtime’ where we weren’t seeing any art or full on stuff, we were just hanging.
I can’t believe the prices of some of the bags and clothes in those windows.. it’s just stupid.
The
Toyota building had an awesome concept hybrid engine sports car on display though.
That night was the highlight of the trip- the Moulin Rouge!
We got nicely dressed up in new clothes and headed to the red light district!
The show was at 11pm, so we had time for dinner beforehand at ‘Le Chat Noir’ just down the road.
The waiter was really nice and spoke English, so we ate well with some traditional food and wine.
The tickets to the Moulin asked us to be there at 10:30 so we went there a few minutes earlier.
As it turns out, if you are in the line early you have more chance to get a good seat.
They don’t reserve tables or anything and just pack you in wherever they can.
We got a table about 10 meters from the stage, almost in the centre so that was really lucky.
And the ticket gave us a free bottle of
Champagne, yay.
Apologies for the poor pics, but flash wasn't working and it was difficult to get a good shot with everyone milling around etc (we were kind of in the way).
I probably can’t write enough to do the whole thing justice, but it is an AMAZING performance.
The costumes are elaborate, flashy, people sing and dance.. it’s all brilliant.
And yep, chicks dancing topless is pretty impressive (ok, I’m a guy so I have to mention it)
but honestly after a while you kind of stop noticing because your eyes are being drawn to the costumes and stuff.
The only thing that wasn’t as amazing as I’d hoped was the girl dancing in a tank of water with 4 pythons – they weren’t very active and just kind of floated around.
But hell, it still looked impressive.
Between the big dance acts they have various other small performers. One act was two strongmen doing feats of strength and balance lifting each other, balancing on hands etc. The second was a juggler who could do amazing juggling and ‘shooting’ of ping pong balls with his mouth! But then the third guy came on… and here things get interesting! (The acts are in one of the pics below, the third guy is in the bottom right).
This guy did a bit of mime type comedy, but then told everyone he needed audience participation. He walked off stage, into the crowd, gave a small balloon to a couple of ladies, an Asian guy and then… ME! We all then had to go onstage…. So yeah.. I was on stage at the Moulin Rouge. The lighting is so intense, you can’t see a damn thing…. What ended up happening was that the four of us helped the performer to make a short film. It played out in short snippets and the performer had a comic oversize prop camera there to film it.
The basic story was that I was dancing with a girl in a nightclub. The Asian dude was at the bar drinking (he was good at acting drunk). The girl and I get close, but then I suddenly had to run to the bathroom. While I’m in there the drunk man spots the girl and goes to talk to her. I come out of the bathroom, see them, and start fighting the guy (I kind of faked a punch and then we just wrestled around on stage). The performer then pretended that he wanted a bigger fight so he gave us swords, and we had to fight. Just as we started fighting with swords, the lights dimmed and the performer takes the girl and makes off. So that was it! Very embarrassing but fun and hell, I’m in Paris so who is ever going to know it was me up there!!! Overall, with dinner and the performance it was one amazing experience.
For our last day in Paris checked out of the hotel and basically sauntered around. We just chilled out and looked around again at some of the amazing things we'd seen over the last few days. The sun was also out, so it was lovely to just sit on a bridge for a while watching people go past, or paint etc, and to hang in the Louvre courtyard and do the same thing. Finally we had to head to the train station to get the Eurostar back to London. As a bit of a treat, we’d bought first class tickets. The food was only ok, but I got the money’s worth in the Aussie wine that they were serving! We met a coupled of decent English people and made small talk while getting drunk. First class is fun!
But that was it!! My second big trip around Europe but I still loved it. Seeing things again is good because I just missed SO many of the smaller and intricate things last time because it was all just so overbearing. I also wasn’t so concerned with photos etc and could just spend time looking around and taking it all in. The Moulin Rouge is expensive, but it really is amazing and should be done. I was hoping that I’d get a free backstage pass or something for being on stage, but no luck… damn! (maybe next time). Some last pics for da boys!
