Rest of 6/11/2010 - home

We went for dinner early because we wanted an early night but unfortunately like the rest of Europe they don’t start to serve dinner till 7.30, so found a bar.

When we did eventually find a restaurant only 200 metres around the corner from our rooms, we had the best meal we had in Rome – stuffed grilled yellow capsicum, an unusual red salad leaf thing grilled with herbs, salad with squid & calamari, grilled zucchini & eggplant, bread & of course a litre of vino. This we had to follow up with tiramisu.

We were planning an early night as we had a very early start in the morning but Basil had other ideas. He was there when we got back to our room & stayed & talked with us for a couple of hours. He really was a lovely guy & we really enjoyed his B&B, except for the breakfast.  We promised to send him some vegemite as he said peanut butter was horrible, so we thought we would send him something we were sure he would find even worse.

7/11/2010

We had a shocking nights sleep, probably because we were concerned about getting up in time for the pre booked cab to the airport. But we left the rooms at 6.15am and made it to the airport with ample time, as the flight didn’t leave till 9.30am. We just checked in, went through customs & then found our boarding gate & sat for an hour or so waiting for our flight. We slept a little on the short 2-½ hr trip and found ourselves once again in London but this time Heathrow airport. We caught the Heathrow express to Paddington; our old haunt, checked our luggage in to the luggage hold and found a pub to park in for lunch. While there we met a couple from Canada & Marty chatted to them, I got on the net & checked the train travel options etc for Liverpool & Stansted. There were quite a bit of disruptions on the lines due to either engineering work or the fact that somewhere a cement truck had fallen onto a train and the line was completely blocked. Once I had found alternative travel arrangements I ordered lunch of British Beef & Ale pie with mash for me & chips for Marty. After 2 weeks of either Italian food or croissants with ham & cheese, it was lovely to have something resembling Aussie food.

We settled into the pub for a while but were getting too comfortable so headed off  to Liverpool St. Collected our luggage & jumped on a bus to the station, this was so much better than the underground as we got a whole tour all over again of the sights we had seen when first here. When we arrived at Liverpool St, we found another pub & went in for a drink and it was full of locals watching their favourite team (Liverpool) play Chelsea, it felt so good to be part of an English tradition. Marty went outside for a smoke & stuck up a conversation with a gentleman outside, and when he come back in I asked ‘was that the guy with the Bentley’ and sure enough it was.

We got on the bus to Stansted & with 5 hours till our flight we settled in for another long, long haul to KL. We are so looking forward to the flight as it is a night-time flight & we were so tired, and also the time we will have in KL.

We had a great flight to KL. Slept most of the way and really didn’t notice it was a 12 ½ hour flight. This was the first time we had flown into KL at night so it was great to see the Twin Towers all lit up. We of course returned to the Dorsett & this time had a deluxe room, it was pretty late when we arrived but were keen to get out again. This time we went to Jalan Alor on Pete Toohey’s recommendation, but we must have picked the wrong restaurant because although cheap the food wasn’t very good. We returned to our room & finally made it to sleep at about 1am.

8/11/2010

We had breakfast then made our way to China Town to do some last minute shopping, including a bag to carry our luggage that wouldn’t fit in our back packs. We didn’t realise it but we were pretty jet lagged, so didn’t last long and went back to our room after only a couple of hours shopping. One highlight however was the fact that we ran into our toothless mate at the markets and had a chat with him, it was great to see him as we thought we would never see him again.

We spent the afternoon watching a movie, then headed off to the airport. The flight home was once again excellent, and Gambo was waiting for us when we arrived. We made it out of the airport within about 20 minutes of landing, thank god for premium seating. 

When we arrived home we realised that on Sunday we had breakfast in Rome, lunch in London & dinner in Kuala Lumpur, and we had virtually lost a whole day on the Monday by flying against the sun. But pretty awesome. 

Rest of 5/11/2010 + ½ 6/11/2010

While waiting for our washing we drank some of the vino & had lunch on our veranda, then returned to collect our washing. We then headed off to St Peter’s Basilica, and after no queues (we are lucky like that) once again were in awe of the grandeur & opulence. We even saw the window where le Pope comes out & talks to everyone, but couldn’t see the famous chimney. We were feeling sore & tired by this stage so made our way back to our rooms & had a chat to the family from Switzerland who were leaving to return home that afternoon. He was a paediatrician and so we talked about the different health systems throughout the world. We said goodbye to them the then back in our room we inadvertently fell asleep.

We woke to Ruggero (alias Basil, as he is just like Basil from Faulty Towers) bashing on our door again, of course we woke with a huge fright but glad we did as it was quite late & I wanted to ask him about where to go the next day for a trip to the country. He gave me all the info on where & how to get there, once again very loudly & very fast.

So off to dinner again, and we found a place that served chilli, for those that expect garlic & chilli in Italy, we must be in the wrong part as they just don’t have either in Rome.

6/11/2010

Once again we were up very early & gone by 7am. We found a café open & had a coffee (standing up of course as they charge more if you sit) then made our way to the Metro, We caught the A line to Termini, then the B line to Tiburtini, then got tickets to Tivoli, which was in the country & about an hours train ride away, easy as. We had quite a slow trip to Tivoli as it stopped at every station & unlike the other trains we have caught so far this one was an old rattler & smelled. Not to worry, we got to Tivoli, off the train & then no idea how to get to where we wanted to go, that is Villa d’Este.  So we just started walking, and walking & walking, but eventually found the place.

When we arrived it looked very ordinary & we wondered what we had got ourselves into, but once inside – OMG, this place was amazing. A huge Villa built into the side of the mountain in about 1500 with the most amazing gardens & waterfalls everywhere.  In fact the fountains were more impressive than the Trevi fountain. After a couple of hours wandering around the Villa, we left to find somewhere to have lunch but couldn’t find anywhere decent so headed to the train station, this time a much quicker route, over a bridge.

Once again we jagged it as we managed to catch the express train that went straight to Tiburtini with no stops. We hadn’t ticked all the boxes in Rome yet, so after catching the trains in reverse we got off at Spagna & found the Spanish Steps, most unimpressive as they were just a set of stairs and what we had seen earlier in the day was much more impressive. So we found somewhere here for lunch & met a waiter that spoke English really well so had a lovely chat to him.

Back to our rooms

The rest of 3/11 - half 5/11

3/11/2010

We were sad to say goodbye to Florence and to Elena, she was a very special host and helped us so much. She ordered our taxi for us & then gave us a bottle of wine as  a thank you. We will definitely come back to Florence one day & hope Elena is still running the B&B.

We had an unadventurous (by my standards) train ride to Rome, then followed our new host, Ruggero’s directions to get to our new B&B (AGV2001). I had checked tripadvisor before leaving Florence & this one was ranked 23 out of 1250, so was looking forward to something special.

We found the Metro (underground) in the Termini & found our way to the correct line, along with a million other people & crowded ourselves & our luggage onto the public train. Off at Cipro, then walked a few hundred metres till we found it.

Well it wasn’t quite what we expected, 3 rooms on the ground floor, but it was however on the first floor, with a small kitchen where breakfast was help yourself. It was the same size as an average motel room, with ensuite, but the other rooms that were occupied were very close. We met Barbara, Ruggero’s wife who gave us some tips, and then we did the usual, dropped bags & went looking for supplies. 

On our trek we stopped for a drink at a café & ended up having a light snack for lunch/afternoon tea – a plate of grilled vegetables & bruschetta. We then got back to our room to work out the TV & get a bit of rest. Marty fell asleep and then I heard the neighbours come home and my god what a racket, then suddenly there was a bash on our door, and we were greeted by Ruggero, very loud, very in your face & very very. He came into our room & talked non-stop loudly for the next 40 minutes about where to go & what to do & how to work the TV. He actually went into a lot of detail about how to work the TV & its hundreds of channels but when we asked how many were in English he smiled & said one, BBC news.

Because Marty had been woken so suddenly & loudly he was ready to kill him initially but after about 20 mins he settled & tried to look interested in Ruggero’s constant chatter.

Anyway after we he had left us with recommendations for restaurants etc we were ready to eat again, by now it was about 8.30pm. We found one of the restaurants recommended but found it too expensive so found our own & enjoyed some more pasta. We cant work out how these people eat the way they do & not get fat, there are hardly any over weight people here like in Australia, yet they live on pizza, pasta & olive oil & bread, heaps of bread.

4/11/2010

I woke at 6am (how unusual for me) & tried out the coffee machine, and it made a warm cup of mud, so gave up on that & tried the other treats which were just as inedible, so settled for yoghurt & juice. Showered & dressed & off by 8.30a.m.

We had tickets already booked for the Vatican, which was about 200 metres away & walked straight in, no waiting. We hired audio commentary for it, but words & pictures cannot describe it.  We also took in the Sistine Chapel, then after 2 ½ hrs we left feeling quite awestruck.

Where to next, I decided we needed to make our way to Trastevere, so we jumped on a number 23 bus, and guessed where to get off, fortunately at exactly the right place. We walked around the area for a while then found a ristorantte with a set menu. A lovely meal later & couple of glasses of vino & we were off again. Over the river, then decided if we went a little further we would find Trevi Fountain, but first we ran into the Pantheon, which amazingly is intact or has been restored.

A couple for Roman Soldiers hijacked us & took photos, and gave us a wonderful laugh talking about Australia & for some reason Tasmania & Perth. We then headed off again to find the Trevi Fountain but first ran into another massive huge building, the Vittorio Emanuele at Piazza Venezia with the Italian version of the Unknown Soldier.

We eventually found the Trevi Fountain, which was a little disappointing, as it is set among a number of huge buildings with thousands of people, and just doesn’t have the appeal that the photos give it because of that. 

We then had to make our way home, so found a bus stop for bus 492 and once again guessed where to get off. Made it home by about 5.30pm, so it really had been a long day for us, walking most places & using public transport to get around. It was a bit daunting when we first got to Europe but we didn’t take long to work out that the public transport system in all cities is far superior to anything we have in Aus & therefore there is no need to worry if you get lost or get on the wrong bus/tram/train, because everywhere you go has a return route & we have a couple of times just got off & got on the right one.

Once back at our room, we met the other family here, a lovely family from Switzerland and we had a very disjointed conversation with them, they were really lovely people. That wasn’t the end of our day though, we decided to see the Trevi Fountain at night to see if it was more attractive at night, so back on jumped on the Metro to Barberini Fontana di Trevi & walked down Via del Tritone. Marty was busting at this stage and thought that if he got to the fountain before a toilet he wouldn’t make it so we stopped and had another pasta dish for dinner. Then onto the Trevi fountain, which still didn’t have the attraction I expected. But hey, you have to see it.

On our way back we stopped for an ice cream, the second of the day, the ice cream here is delectable, then stopped at a shop & Marty got a little bottle of Lemincello, we once again had to try it. Then back on the train and home. By this stage (10pm) I was exhausted after a 14 hour day and fell straight into bed, Marty however decided to go for a smoke & ran into Rugello again. We had tried to avoid him cause he was so loud, and that hadn’t changed even at 10pm at night. We really felt sorry for the other family who were already asleep, but he did give Marty some good advice for the next day.

5/11/2010

We were up, dressed, breakfasted (we bought our own the night before) and out the door by 7.30am as we had 8.30am tickets for the Coliseum, and fought the early morning train ride to the station. Try & imaging hundreds of people all trying to get on a train that only accommodates less than 50 per carriage, well that was us, pushed, cramped, jostled onto the train, after walking several hundred metres to get to the right line. Then off that line (the A line) and onto the B line that took us to the Coliseum.

No queue once again & we spent some time wandering around the massive structure and enjoying it with very few other people. It seems the majority of people don’t get up here till much later in the day than we are used to in Aus. We could see the Forum from the coliseum so felt no need to see another bunch of old stones (we had really done a lifetime of that in Ankar Wat), so bought ourselves a coffee, and headed back to our room. We were in that situation again where we really needed to do some washing.

We walked around the block & found the Laundromat, and noticed that across the road was what appeared to be a market, of course we had to have a look. Well, wanna buy anything, you can get it here. So we did. A couple of Italian bread rolls, a slice of roast pork you couldn’t jump over, a tomatoe & onion – a cheap lunch. But the best was the shop with vats of vino, so we tried some and opted for the litre of bianco for 1.50 euro. Lunch made for a king.

We then returned to our rooms to collect our washing and dropped it at the Laundromat for them to wash for us at a significantly cheaper price of 7 euro than the 50 sfr we paid in Switzerland.

Just a little on the people here, there are millions of them, but they are polite, helpful, and surprisingly considerate. We notice that on the train the young men give up their seats for women, today we saw a middle age man go off at a young man that pushed his way onto the train before letting others off; it really is nothing like we expected, but as crowded if not more so than Asia.

1 - 3 Nov 2010

1/11/2010

I woke early again, but once we were showered & dressed we went up for breakfast, which was served in a beautiful little kitchen and we had cereal, yoghurt, cake???, bread, juice, coffee, ham & cheese, a most fitting start for the day. Elena sat with us with her little 5 year old son and we chatted to her while eating, her younger son was quite sick, so I talked to her about the antibiotics she was using & gave her some advice on whether it was the right one  & how long to wait till they took effect. It was fantastic to be able to help her.

For our first full day in we were unsure of what to do, as we knew it was a public holiday & also most Palaces/Churches/Museums are shut on Mondays anyway, so we just decided to head into the centre and see what we would find. So back on the Number 11 bus and off we went. Elena told us that we needed to but tickets for the bus at a bar up the road from our rooms, but it was shut, so when we got on the bus we asked to pay & got the reply “finish”, so rode the bus for free.

Now let me describe the bus rides here, the streets are very narrow, about the width of 1 ½ buses, but along one side of the street is parked cars & motorbikes, so that reduces the size of the street again, then there is the footpath about ½ metre wide, which is full of people. None of this however slows the bus down; they travel at anything up to about 80km hour along these streets.

We got off and dragged out the map & between that & following our noses we wandered around the gorgeous streets, with shops & shops & more shops. One in particular caught our attention as it had beautiful leather boots & bags for 20% off, probably because it was a public holiday, and to cut a long story short I bought myself a pair of boots & a handbag.

We made our way further in to the centre & ended up at the Duomo at the Cathedral of Santa Maria, after going through huge squares with glorious churches & huge, huge buildings. Once in the middle of the square we found many artists setting up to draw/paint/sculpt etc, so got a caricature of ourselves done to go in the bar. I think we ended up getting the guy a heap of business because lots of people stopped to watch us being drawn and were impressed so lined up to have theirs done too.

In this short period of time (about ½ hr) the place filled up with thousands of people, so we just kept wandering around and then found a heap of stalls set up selling everything imaginable, as we were walking along I pointed out a leather jacket to Marty as it looked just like him, and once again to cut a long story short, Marty now has a gorgeous deer skin jacket. Forgot to mention that it was raining the whole time, so we were concerned about getting everything wet, carrying our backpacks & umbrellas and trying to keep our purchases under the umbrellas as well, was getting difficult so we found a little bar & sat down for an Italian wine. I would never have thought that Italian wine was any good, but we had the local stuff and it was just as good as Aussie wine. After a while the owner then brought out pizza for us, for free, well there was lunch.

It was about 2 by this stage and still raining and there were even more people, so finding it all a bit too much with our unexpected purchases, we decided to head back to the room. We eventually found our stop & had yet another free, hair raising trip back.

The afternoon was pretty uneventful & we had dinner at the same restaurant that night. This time I chose the special, it was titled Spaghetti, but I had no idea what was in it when I ordered it cause it was in Italian, but I am always up for a surprise. It turned out to be Marinara, and really scrummy, with mussels, scampi & pipis. Along with the litre of wine & Marty’s pizza we had another delightful cheap dinner.

2/11/2010

Another beautiful breakfast with Elena, and some plans of what we wanted to do today, we headed off on another free bus ride into town. We found the Uffizi and queued for about an hour to see the oldest & most famous museum in Europe, (I thought they said that about the Louvre too). We saw some of the most famous drawings in the world, but unfortunately we were not overly impressed. We just can’t get interested in art.

We decided that as we had queued for so long to see the Uffizi that we weren’t that keen on doing it again to see David so opted to find the copy, which we did fairly easily. He sits in the place of the original sculpture but has a lot of company with many other statues in the square.

I then wanted to go to the Market Centrale, so with map in hand walked in the approximate direction, and where should we find ourselves but at the same little bar as yesterday. Fate had brought us here so we stopped in again for a wine. And once again we were given pizza but this one was twice as big and had anchovies & capers. We are not normally anchovy lovers, but these were beautiful. We also tried Chianti, which was also very good.

We found the market, which is a huge undercover produce market that had some of the best produce I have ever seen and none of it we could buy to bring home, except for a collection of olive oils including one with truffles.

Then back to the train station to buy our tickets for Rome the next day. We queued for quite a while & then got one of the rudest bitches we have encountered so far, she spent the whole time ignoring us while selling us tickets. I wanted to travel about 11 am but she said or more like grunted at us that there were no earlier trains than 4 pm. I then went to the toilet & was thinking that it was odd that we couldn’t get an earlier train as they run very frequently, so I checked the ticket & the dumb bitch had booked us on the train for that day. So I stormed back to the ticket office, ignored the queues and the fact that she had a closed sign up and very gruffly told her that she had booked the wrong day, she was rude back but changed the ticket to the next day for 11 am. I felt like I had had a win.

It was getting late so we decided to head back, found what we thought was the right number 11 bus but only to find after about 15 mins that we were headed in the wrong direction. We had a lovely tour of another part of Florence and then got off and changed to the right bus and another free ride home.

Back to the same restaurant that night, we figured if we were onto something brilliant why change. This time I ordered the 2^nd special, and once again had no idea what it was, and was pleasantly surprised again. Ricotta with spinach balls, covered in a mushroom & vegetable sauce. God I can pick em.

3/11/2010

We were sad to say goodbye to Florence and to Elena, she was a very special host and helped us so much. She ordered our taxi for us & then gave us a bottle of wine as  a thank you. We will definitely come back to Florence one day & hope Elena is still running the B&B.

29 - 31/10/2010

29/10/2010 ....

The train took us to Visp where we changed to the last leg up the Alps, it took bout an hour and had some of the most beautiful scenery I had ever seen but what was really amazing was that as we got higher there was snow. The higher we got the more snow there was, we certainly weren’t expecting this, as the travel guide had said there would be snow on the top of the Alps.

We arrived in Zermatt with the worst map for directions to get to our hotel ever, so seeing the tourist office was closed for another ½ hour we went & bought supplies to await there opening. Once open, we got directions & a short walk found us at the hotel – Le Mazot. There wasn’t anyone there, but a phone directed us to dial 4, which I did & a lovely gentleman told us we were in room 4 & he would see us for breakfast in the morning, strange. Room 4 was great, full bathroom, TV, but best of all we had the biggest balcony of the hotel & it had snow on it, so we were set, an esky on our verandah. We also had the perfect view of the Matterhorn unfortunately with a crane disturbing the view, but still impressive.

We were told by Pete in Paris that it always snows or rains in Switzerland but it is never fine, how wrong could he be, we sat on our balcony admiring the full height of the Matterhorn, with sunnies & hats on and only a t shirt, it was so lovely to enjoy some heat after 2 weeks of cold.

As we sat on the balcony the bell tower went off & we had to laugh, as it chimed the first 3 bars of ‘Three Blind Mice”  -  so European. After enjoying a couple of drinks we had to find somewhere to wash our clothes, we hadn’t washed since London. So we went for a walk, and heard a guy that was obviously a shop owner talking in English, so we went across and he directed us to the appropriate place. She washed ALL our clothes in 3 hours, and we were out of pocket $50, but the best $50 we spent the whole trip, it as great to finally have clean clothes.

We then went for a walk around the small village & realised very quickly that this was yet another tourist mecca, or in our terms a tourist rip off, but to sit on enjoy such an amazing view we weren’t the slightest bit concerned. We found a reasonably priced, if not still expensive restaurant & had Chicken Snitzel & Apple strudel for dinner.

Being primarily a skiing village there really wasn’t a lot to do, so we made our way back for the night.

30/10/2010

The morning was nice & slow, with breaky provided, the typical European breakfast of rolls, bread, cereal, ham, cheese, coffee & juice. We then headed out & booked our train tickets for the following day to Florence. That organised we headed to the other station for the ride up the Matterhorn on the Goltengatz train. Yep, right, $70 each return, that made me laugh, as if we would want a one way ticket to the top. Considering the weather had turned really foul and it was unlikely that we would have had much of a view anyway along with the exorbitant price, we opted not to do this attraction, so headed for the Matterhorn museum, which didn’t open till 2 pm, well that is Zermatt, if you don’t ride the Goltengatz, and don’t see the museum there isn’t anything else to do, except sit & look at the Matterhorn.

We wandered around a bit more and came upon a DVD rental store, so hired some DVDs & spent the day basically watching movies. It was great, very relaxing and as I said to Marty if we were down the coast we would spend days like this doing nothing.

We had dinner that night at an Italian restaurant – 2 glasses of wine each, small pasta for me & normal size for Marty, & I had Tiramisu, for the grand total of $75. But hey it was fantastic – probably the best meal we have had so far, bar the Beef & Ale pie in London.

On our return to the hotel, I rang reception to tell them we needed to pay as we were checking out early in the morning, she just took my credit card details & kindly informed us that daylight saving stopped that night, so we had to wind our clocks back an hour. So I did, and set the alarm for 6am and that is where the fun started.

31/10/2010

I was awake at 2.30 am, so read for a while & then eventually managed to get back to sleep, confident that we had the right time & the right alarm time set.

Then Marty wakes me & says that his clock says 8, which makes it 7, but my clock says 6, so who knows what time it was, but we knew we had to get going quickly, so we packed, dressed & walked very quickly to the train station, with about 15 minutes to spare, not bad seeing we only had 39 minutes to get from the hotel to the station, fortunately it was only a short walk.

The first leg took us to Brig, where we changed for the SBB train to Milan, and had the best coffee, it is obviously Italian, an espresso & much nicer drunk black, I think I am going to be converted to a proper coffee drinker after this trip.

Next leg was from Milan to Florence, once again very comfortable train, and only a short 1 ½ hour journey. The weather however was not looking good. I had written down detailed instructions on how to get from the station to our B&B by bus, but when we walked out of the station and were encountered by hundreds of people & cars & buses, and its was raining, we opted for a cab.

This B&B is family run by a young couple. Their parents live ground floor, our room is on the 1^st and they live in the rest of the place. It is actually a huge property by European standards.  The room is gorgeous with a long entry with single bed, lovely room and ensuite. Elena our host is especially nice, gave us all the info on how to get around and where to go etc. So we once again dropped off our stuff & headed out for supplies. It was much easier to start with, to walk as that way we get our bearings, and eventually after memorising land marks, found a little shopping area with ATM’s. Now you would think it easy but we went to 3 different ATM’s & tried both our cards but they kept refusing us money.

So we went to a shop to see if they took cards – no – but he advised us to go to the Post Office ATM, which we did & it worked.  So back to the shop & made our purchases, then back to the bus stop, oops forgot cigarettes, so Marty went back to the shop, to find that no tobacconists were open today or tomorrow, but we could get smokes from the automatic dispensers, if we had an Italian over 18 card. Now this is getting challenging, so we hijacked a guy at the machine & he was happy to use his card for us.

We then caught the bus back to our rooms, had a couple of drinks etc, then headed out for dinner. We walked once again, in the rain, back to the same area, and found a lovely looking Italian restaurant, but they didn’t start serving till 7.30, so we kept walking and came upon & bar, had a drink in there while listening to Pavarotti on his TV, then back to the restaurant.

We knew we were onto something good, because as soon as it opened the locals piled in. And was it good, the best pizza I have ever eaten, and 1 litre of nice wine for only 20 euro. We then tried to catch a bus home but being Sunday night it seemed they weren’t going to run too frequently so we hiked it back on foot. No mean feet as it was up hill all the way. 


Unfortunately tomorrow is a public holiday but regardless, most of the attractions are closed on Mondays anyway.

25 -29/10/2010

25/10/2010

We arrived in Paris at Gare de Noord, one of the major stations in Paris & found our way very easily to the B&B, it was only a few hundred metres away. However, we had to punch in a code to open a massive great big door that led us into the courtyard, and then we couldn’t find how to get up, but eventually found the buzzer that opened the door into the building, and then were met by Pete, our host. We had a beautiful room but unfortunately no balcony & no ensuite, I think we were spoilt in Amsterdam.

After dropping our bags off, we headed back to Gard de Noord & booked our next leg onto Montreux. On the way back we stopped at a café for a drink. Now you have realise this was our first minute/hour/day in Paris & we knew it was going to be expensive, everywhere you look there are little cafes with chairs & tables lined up outside, so we sat & Marty asked for a large beer – what he got was a 1 litre mug of beer (and we had forgotten the camera) & I had a scotch. Because I had asked for a scotch, then ice & then coke, when we went to pay the bill we found out that you pay for everything, the glass, the ice, the scotch & the coke so the total came to 32 euro = $40. The one & only large beer Marty I am sure will ask for.

We returned to our room to have a rest as we were both a bit exhausted from the early start & travelling, I had a snooze & Marty slept in the chair.

When we woke it was time for dinner & Pete had a small book that listed cheap eats in Paris, so we managed to find one near by that looked good. We walked there and here again was another café. Paris has very limited space but millions of people, so to accommodate everyone they crowd as many people into restaurants as possible. We were seated, then given the menu, of which we couldn’t understand anything. The young waitress sort of helped us out by trying to explain in bad English, but we winged it and ordered something. Marty ended up with beef patty with an egg on top & I got Comfit of Duck & chips. They are not big on salad or vegies in Europe.

By this time it was really late, so headed home to get ready for the next day.

26/10/2010

We were up early & headed off to find Paris’s version of The Big Red Bus – Cars le Rouge, it was a long walk to the end of our street Rue La Fayette & we sort of had an idea of where to go but got lost, then stumbled on the bus stop by luck.

We were off – my god, every single corner you turn in Paris is another massive building, and with each look I would gasp in awe. The Palaces, The Louvre, The Arch de Triomphe, Museums, Squares, Bridges, and not to forget the Eiffel Tower, which although is the symbol of Paris, the city has so much that without the tower it would still be a memorable place.

We stopped off at the Arch & would have walked up it but unfortunately it was closed that day, so back on the bus & I had forgotten to charge the camera so ran out of camera for the day.

Next we got off at the Trocadero, this has 2 large museums that border a square that look over the gardens that lead to the Eiffel tower. Strangely I always thought the tower was silver, but its actually bronze. An amazing site.

We got back on the bus & went down to the base of the tower & then walked through the Champ de Mars to the Military Palace.

Next stop was Notre Dame, we had a walk through this massive massive structure and saw huge leadlighting. It was actually free to enter Notre Dame – must be the only free thing in Paris.

We stopped at a café and had French Onion soup – yummy, the French version comes with toasted bread & parmesan on top.

The complete tour also took us past the Musee de Louvre, the largest museum in the world, so that was a must to see.

We went back to our room, after a long walk and some shopping, and got ready to go out for the show. 

Pete then told us that he had put us in the wrong room, so we moved to a room with a balcony, this was much better to be able to just open the verandah doors to have a smoke, but especially to be able to see the city and how busy it is. The street we were on Rue La Fayette was mostly a carpark because of the road works, and they love their horns & sirens. Not that any emergency vehicle could get anywhere in a hurry as there wasn’t anywhere for the cars to move out of there way.

Marty is always more comfortable leaving early for appointments or transport bookings & I have learnt that this is a good move, so we headed off early to get to the place to meet the bus tour. Pete had advised us to walk up Magdelan Boulevard & catch bus 42 to the Rue De Rivoli, so off we walked & walked, and didn’t find bus 42, so got a cab, and I am sure we circumnavigated Pairs, but got there eventually. We were very early so found a Chinese restaurant (only because it was cheap) and had dinner.

Then onto the bus for the Illuminations Tour, basically a closed in bus tour of Paris at night & I must admit it was especially good to see Avenue des Champs-Elysees & the Eiffel Tower sprinkling with lights. Marty almost missed it as he had fallen asleep beside me.

We were then driven to Moulin Rouge, where we were ushered in along with 1000 other people to our table & free glass of champagne. We had shocking seats, & couldn’t really see much well at all, but fortunately a couple that were on a really good seat behind us left & we asked if we could sit at the now empty table. This gave us a perfect view of the show. We asked to buy & drink & was provided with a poor bottle of Chablis, and then given the bill – 60 euro!!!!!! Nearly $75, and to top it off the show wasn’t all that good. The juggler & the ventriloquist were excellent but the dance show was more like the happy lucky wish show we saw in Thailand. Oh well that was an expensive night. We eventually got back to our room & to bed at 2am. For me because I woke at 4.30 am it was nearly 22 hours awake.

27/10/2010

But not to be slowed, we were up again the next morning at 8.30 breakfast & off again. I had managed to book our tickets the night before for the Eiffel Tower, but stuffed up and ended up booking 4 tickets instead of 2 (this place was getting beyond a joke money wise), so thought I would offer the other 2 tickets to someone else staying at the B&B but unfortunately they had all been.

We headed off to catch the Cars le Rouge again, stopped at the Arc de Triomphe & bought tickets to climb it, then back on the bus to meet our booked time at the tower, this was stressful on its own, because for some reason the traffic was horrendous, but we made it to the Trocadero again & walked down to the tower. We walked along the massive queue to offer people the extra 2 tickets, but understandably everyone thought we must have been running some sort of scam because no one took up our offer of 2 free tickets.

The other bit of interesting info was that I booked the tickets on line & they sent the ticket to my iPhone and at the tower they just scan the bar code off the iPhone – love my phone.

We met an American couple and chatted with them for a while and he had travelled the world as the CEO of the USA gymnastic team, nice guy & I felt like I had met a celebrity as the American gymnastic team is quite famous & I have always loved watching them at the Olympics.

So we did the full ride up to the top of the tower & took lots of photos, then back down, back on to the bus & off to the Louvre, a bit hungry by this time so found a café & had French Onion soup again, then bought tickets for the Louvre. We probably did the fastest tour of the Louvre in its history because we went straight to the Mona Lisa, fought the crowds to get some pictures & then found our way out again. Once again we weren’t impressed with the hundreds of pictures of Christ &/or Mary, or the sculptures that we saw on the way to the Mona Lisa so were happy with our decision to just see her.

We then got back on the bus & made our way back to the Arc, and got straight in to climb to the top, it was wonderful to be able to see The Arc from the Tower & then visa versa. When we got down from the Arc, they were performing the re igniting of the flame of the Unknown Soldier so watched that for a while.

While up the top of the Arc I located a Metro station, so instead of getting back on the bus and having a 2-hour trip back to our rooms we decided to brave the underground. It ended up being a lot easier than we thought, but took us to a station that was near Gare de Noord, & poor Marty was totally disorientated. Its amazing that we always manage to have one of us that knows where to go when the other one is totally lost.

Once again another huge day, it doesn’t sound like much but it takes quite a while to get around in Paris & to see each attraction takes a coupek of hours, so by the time we got back to our room it was 8 pm. We were too tired for a meal out so managed to find a takeaway salad & roll for dinner, and a chocolate éclair!

We packed as we had an early start in the morning.

28/10/2010

Marty wanted to be Gare de Noord by 6.30 am & we made it, & lucky he planned it all to be early. We managed to operate the ticket machines (no people serving at the ticket counters this early) & find our way to the right station to be met with thousands of people waiting and no idea which direction to go in, so when in doubt – ask. I went along the train till we found someone that understood us & told us this was the correct train, but alas all good plans go astray. Paris had been hit with strikes all over the place because of the raising of he retirement age, and there we were standing on our train to get to Gare de Lyon to catch our train to Montreaux, when nope sorry, this train not going anywhere.

Fortunately the guy that had told us it was the correct train was also going to Gare de Lyon, so he offered for us to follow him. 30 minutes later after a slow jog, up & down stairs, through corridors & gates & down & few more stairs & a couple of train changes we made it to Gare de Lyon. We couldn’t thank the very kind man enough for his help.

Marty likes to do things the safe way, he wanted to catch a taxi to Gare de Lyon, but for me that is too easy, no challenge & too expensive. So after that little adventure, he said that from now on he is catching a cab, if I want to catch the train/bus/camel/air balloon I can go by myself.  J

So I am now on the train to Montreux, via Lausanne, and I have agreed to catch a taxi to the Hotel on arrival, only because I haven’t been able to work out public transport from the train station.

We arrived at Lausanne and changed trains with out any drama, but one thing we noticed at all these stations is that smoking (otherwise known as defume) is allowed on the station and they have a special room for the non smokers to sit in. Ha Ha, had to laugh at that and how all the anti smoking campaigners would be up in arms in Aus.

When we got to Montreux, we bought our tickets for the next day to Zermatt, and then caught a cab to the hotel.  This gave Marty an idea of why I don’t like to use cabs to get to & from places and would much rather use public transport. The hotel was approx 1 km from the train station and the taxis charged us over $10 to take us that short distance. Maybe it was so expensive because it was a Mercedes.

Anyway we couldn’t check in at the Hotel, we had to traipse across the road to the much more glamorous Royal Paradise & check in, then make our way back to the hotel. Not a bad room, at least it had an ensuite. But once again, no balcony, it did however have a large window that opened onto a ledge. So when we wanted a smoke we perched ourselves out on the ledge & laughed ourselves silly at how odd we must have looked.

We went for a walk to suss out the place & discovered that it was horrendously expensive & there was no way we were going to eat at any café’s or restaurants, so we found the local grocers & bought ourselves a French bread stick, ham & cheese, and croissants & OJ for breakfast. We decided at this point that we would use Montreux for some well-needed R&R. We had been on the go non stop since leaving Australia and thought at about the half way mark we deserved a rest.

So back to our room & we watched a couple of movies on my laptop.

29/10/2010

We had a really good nights sleep, then I had the luxury of washing AND blow-drying my hair. I had been able to wash it in other places but not blow-dry it and for about 3 days I didn’t even brush it as I had lost my brush, so just went a la naturale.

The other problem we have had is laundry. We managed to find a Laundromat in London but haven’t seen one since, so have been hand washing the smalls and just rotating the other clothes. We are hoping to find a Laundromat in Zermat.

We had our breaky of croissants with ham & cheese & OJ, then made our way over to the Royal Paradise, used their free internet, then checked out and made our way to the station – by foot this time. 

Amsterdam to Paris

Last night we went for a stroll through the Red Light District, this required us to catch a bus not a tram, but it was a good practice run for us as this was the bus we had to catch to get to Central Station in the morning.

The district is a maze of lots of little streets, with heaps of restaurants and shops intermingled with tall windows surrounded by red lights, and guess what, there are scantily clad women in the windows. Behind them is their workroom with workbench and in one I saw stains all over the sheets. Marty commented that it couldn’t be what I thought it was because they would have to use condoms, but I reminded him that we weren’t in Australia anymore and that may not be the law over here.

We stopped in for a drink at a local and Marty didn’t notice the bar tender wash his used glass in a trough of water before filling it with beer. Of course once he had finished the beer & I told him, we quickly left that one.

We stopped for a piece of pizza, yuk, worst pizza I have ever tasted, couldn’t eat it. Then we wandered past a massage shop, and it looked like a massage place not the other kind. So I stopped in for a shoulder massage while Marty found a cleaner establishment to have a hopefully untainted beer. The massage was very good done by an Asian woman, but unlike Asia where you pay about $5, this cost 20 Euro (about $25), but what the heck, we are on holidays.

This morning we were up really early, packed & cleaned up and made our way in the dark, to the Train Station. I had booked & paid for this leg of our trip a few months ago so was feeling very pleased with myself that I was so organised. Well that got shot out of the water. When I went to the counter to obtain our etickets, it turned out that we could only get those tickets from Brussels. Well there was $166 down the drain. Oh well, we had to get to Paris, so paid 263 euro (about $328) to get another 2 seats. We had to change trains in Brussels, so would have liked to have had the time to go and abuse someone for the stuff up, but only had 15 minutes between trains.

Its always stressful having to find platforms & trains in a country where everything is in another language, but we rush around like mad things till we find what we need, then take a big breath and relax when we have made it safely onto our next leg. I will say though, that even though they speak another language, most people speak English & everything is announced in Dutch and English & even sometimes in French. They are not the friendliest people but they are all willing to help when asked.

So here I am on the train from Brussels to Paris, updating my diary.  Looking forward to meeting the 2 gay blokes that run our next B&B called fittingly ‘A Room In Paris”. This train is certainly a new experience, more like a plane ride. Big seats, drop down table, power point to use my laptop, and a bar! What more could one ask for when travelling between countries. Supposed to have free WiFi too but as yet I haven’t been able to access it.

Amsterdam

We had a lot of fun on arrival watching the bird life in the canal in our back yard. So we filmed a segment of these unusual birds walking on water, and the huge seagulls while we fed them. The little black ones don’t quack, they toot. So funny.

This morning we were a bit late getting up, but headed out about 9.30.  We had planned the Van Gogh Museum, the Rembrandt House & the House of Bols. We caught a couple of trams to the Van Gogh Museum and joined the queue. This was 3 stories of paintings by Van Gogh, Monet, Israel and various other famous artists. Unfortunately we weren’t impressed with the Van Gogh’s but found a painting by Izreal that we just adored. Not bad, that we found one painting in the whole gallery that we liked.  Below is the link if you are interested.

http://www.thuisinbrabant.nl/beeld/verhalen/_800/93433_israelsb.jpg

After we left the museum, we walked across the road to the ‘House of Bols’.  Bols makes liqueurs, and has done for over 400 years in Amsterdam, we had a tour and tried a cocktail and a couple of shots, I tried the weirdest one of course, the Natural Yoghurt, and it is just so wrong, alcohol flavoured yoghurt – bizarre.

We decided not to go to the Rembrandt House as one cultural event in one day is enough, so made our way back to our rooms and I caught up on my diary & Marty watched some tele.

Crossing the road in this place is even more bizarre than Asia, because they have so many bikes, they have bike ways, so to cross the road you have to cross over the bike path, then the car track, then the tram track, another tram track, a car track & another bike track to get to the other side. AND they are on the wrong side of the road, so it is challenging to say the least.

On our way home this arvy we noticed pink flamingos. We weren’t sure if they were real or not so hopped off the tram & sure enough they were real Pink Flamingos.

We were up early again to get to the sights as we have heard that the crowds really roll in around lunchtime.  The tram stop was right outside the B&B so we rugged up and waited for No 14 tram. Tina had said that if we get on this one, the tram driver will tell us when we arrive at the Anne Frank Museum, so we sat patiently on the tram while we went for a 30 minute trip to the end of the line, only to find out that that is one attraction they don’t mention on their announcements. We had a laugh and got back on to retrace our steps to find the museum, this time we had the conductor clued up and she told us where to get off.

The queue was relatively short so we were in after only a 20-minute wait. I had read this story as a youngen and always remembered how touching the story was, Marty however had never read it, but said at the end of the tour he was almost in tears.  When we left, it was raining so bought a couple of umbrellas & a new beanie for me; mine just wasn’t covering the ears well enough. We made our way to the Heineken Brewery and this time there was no queue.  We had a great tour, it is very comprehensive but I would say that the XXXX brewery tour at home is just as good.

We came out of that tour & were right in front of the Canal Cruise office, so bought tickets & jumped straight onto a ferry & spent the next 1 ½ hours touring round the canals. Amazing, amazing place, there are buildings still standing from the 17^th Century and some that are on an incredible lean. Cars are parked all along the canal edges, they have to be really good at parking otherwise they end up in the canal, which apparently happens quite a lot. At one stretch there is an iron railing along the edge, apparently this was put up by an insurance company that got sick of paying to fish cars out of the canal. They dump everything in the canals, including washing machines, cars, shopping trolleys & the city spends quite a bit of money cleaning the canals of all this stuff.

After we finished our cruise, we caught a tram back to the room for a quick relax then out again to find a restaurant that Tina had suggested. We were getting good at working out the trams by now, get a 10 or 14 to Dam square, then get on a 24 to the restaurant district. We had a bit of trouble finding it but it was worth the effort, this was an Indonesian Restaurant and Tina had suggested we try the ‘rijsttafel”, otherwise known as Rice Taffal. It was absolutely delicious, a first for both of us.

On the way to the restaurant we had seen a ‘Smokey Café’ and it wasn’t hard to work out what it was, so we stopped in and participated in the local joint smoking. Marty got a ‘White Widow” and it was mild enough for me to not make me too stoned, but strong enough for him to get a real buzz, and for only 15 euro.