This is the end - for now

Just in case you haven't noticed... but I've kind of lost interest in this blog now.

I was going to write a little bit more about our time in Barcelona (my favourite city) and also our short stay in Belgium however, after getting back to work and doing lots of useless stuff again, I've lost all inspiration and can't really get back into the mood of thinking about our wonderful trip, partly because I miss it so much and it just hurts too much to think that I am actually back here at work and not trudging around whinging about heavy luggages and stupid airports and smelly Europeans.....*sigh* I miss it so much.

This is the end of the journey for Buttsore & Blistered Feet for now, although that's not to say that I will stop talking about it - hell, I'm still telling people about Malaysia and that was over 2 years ago!

Of course.... there are always our other respective blogs you can go back to, but it just ain't as exciting ya know :)

The adventures of Unlucky Lulu

Now, those who know my sister, Lucia, will know that she is a good person. She is nice, she is funny, she is smart, a genuinely good person. You will have great difficulty finding a better person than my little sister. And if I must admit it to the general public, she is by far a much better person than I am.

So why oh why do unfortunate things happen to her? Here are some of the ones we remember...

1. On the same day, two separate metro tickets in Paris refused to work for her, trapping her on the other side of the gates. One of them decided to work 10 minutes later when we tried it again - AFTER - we had tried to get it fixed at the service desk but the lady just told her it was bad luck, she can't help us and cannot offer a refund - stuffy French people
2. She dropped our room key down the drain on the first night in Rome so had to frantically run to reception in her PJs and thongs to get help, all the while, I was sleepily minding the bathroom making sure nobody used the bathroom while Lu was gone (this one place we had a shared bathroom).
3. Tried for hours to find a post office in Rome, even though the map indicated that there was definitely near our hotel. We circled and circled and circled but could not find one... until the very last day - AFTER - we had sent all our postcards buying stamps from the local tobacconist.
4. Getting miserably sick the day after heavy rain in Rome ruined our Australia Day. The day she got sick was also the day that Rome decided to provide the best weather for us, sunny and warm.
5. Queueing up at the check-in counter, quite pleased that we were 3rd in line, only to find that we were stuck behind the world's slowest check-in lady. The guy next to us must've gone through at least 5-6 passengers for every 1 passenger this lady did. Somehow, we ended up being the last to be checked in... how the hell did that happen?!
6. Train from Lyon to Paris - of all the many carriages of this train, ours had to be the one with the faulty door, that meant we had to drag our heavy luggage to the next carriage, drag it back into the correct carriage, put it into the luggage space and then do it all over again when we got off the train. So much trouble!
7. Somehow, Lulu always managed to get the cold showers, whether or not she went to have a shower first or last. At first she blamed me for using all the hot water... that could happen, I've been known to have long long hot showers, however, that theory doesn't hold when she had the shower first. Strangely though, when she used the bathroom first and got a cold shower, I somehow managed to get the nice warm showers.... don't ask me how or why.
8. She got these filthy mouldy sheets and bedspread in Barcelona - and that was the good hotel that we stayed at!
9. The maid left the hotel information booklet in her bed by mistake....
10. In Bangkok, her bed was missing a castor so was lopsided when she slept in it.
11. In Sukhothai, she had a severe allergic reaction to the sunscreen we used and a really really bad rash developed all over her pretty little face. Add to that, the dust and pollution didn't help with her hayfever, so she had a sore swollen face and sore red raw nose, Lulu wasn't having a good few days in Thailand!
    
12. In Sukhothai, her bed was right under the window so all the light, mozzies and bad karaoke was right above her head, made it difficult to sleep and get up bright and early.
13. In Paris, our double room had really mis-sized beds... mine happened to be a nice big double bed while hers was a teensy little single bed (Seriously, I didn't pick the big bed on purpose, I didn't even notice until day 2 that my bed was loads bigger than hers :)
14. Her suitcase.... that old piece of crap.... it was enormous, it was hard to drag around, it was heavy, it was falling apart piece by piece and it was BRAND NEW (almost). The final hammer in the coffin was when 2 of the wheels decided to fall off when we landed in Brussels. Oh ha ha ha, it was so funny - not. We were not looking forward to dragging that piece of crap around the Brussels metro system.
15. A glass jar in her suitcase had cracked and broken and left dangerous pieces of glass in her luggage.
    
16. When we got to Brussels, all the needles in her bag had fallen out and worked their way into all the pieces of her clothing. Lulu was convinced that somebody is trying to kill her.
17. Losing our very last 10 euros at Amsterdam airport, 1 hour before we flew out of Europe.

Hmm... that's all that I can remember... there probably were a few more minor incidences that we didn't take much notice of, but the saga of Unlucky Lulu will continue...

Thailand….

Elephant riding, bamboo rafting, mini-trekking, waterfall, our living conditions

Various touristy things we did in Thailand.
Unemployed dogs
The two of us riding bikes... or me attempting to ride a bike while Lulu just looks too smart. Why do I look like an idiot while the sister looks like an actual cyclist?

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Thailand - is not a place that I’d like to live in. Too hot, too humid, too many people, too many cars, too polluted, too noisy, too dirty, just too much stuff and not enough space (yeah, I really like my space)

I will never ever get used to squat toilets.

Whilst in Thailand, I missed little luxuries like free public toilets, toilet paper in toilets, flushing toilets, and hot water showers.

I still can’t quite believe that not only do I have to pay to use public toilets here, but the toilets are filthy, often there is no toilet paper, most likely you’d have to use a squat toilet, and occasionally it isn’t even a flushing toilet! What kind of deal is that?!

Crossing the road is an interesting exercise. Our guide, Kai, tells us that one must do so –slowly – cars tend to hit people who try to sprint across the road so we must take our time, dawdle a bit. That proved kind of difficult because not only is it a purely human reaction to run when you see a car driving really fast towards you and it doesn't look like stopping but both Lu and I are fast walkers, it’s near impossible for us to walk at a snail’s pace. How can people with much longer legs than ours walk so much slower than us?!

I’m convinced that Thai trains are the slowest in the world, I could’ve walked faster than the trains we were on, no wonder the trips took so darn long.

Bike ride around Sukhothai (the old capital of Thailand) and some temple ruins, that was interesting. I tried to ride a bike last year, unsuccessfully. You see, I have a problem stopping, I just can’t do it, I can only go forwards and have a lot of trouble trying to stop. I’m so stupid.

I thought it was funny that my bike was called ‘Turbo Fairy’ because I was anything but, Lulu kept yelling at me to go faster cos I was riding like a granny. She doesn’t understand that the faster I go, the harder it is for me to stop….. but I became better at it, it’s just that the moment I started to get the hang of this ‘stopping’ business, we had to give the bike back :(

Thailand is full of unemployed dogs. Many just flop down in the middle of the road and sleep all day, only moving if they absolutely must, usually only for passing vehicles.

The first few days of the tour I was thinking, why do I have to be stuck on a tour with a group of hot chicks?! They have messy hair, sunburnt skin, smelly, dusty clothes just like I do, but why do they look like they just stepped out of a magazine while I look like I just woke up after a hard night’s drinking? How does that happen? Life is so unfair….

After a few more days, I thought, hmm… actually, they’re not that good looking, they do have messy hair, they do have smelly, dusty clothes, and they don’t look like they came right out of a magazine. I think I was too exhausted and overwhelmed by everything, everybody and their dog would’ve looked fantastic and hot to me in my delirious state. In fact, what on earth was I thinking?

I’m not sure how I’ll do this, perhaps I’ll do it backwards, starting with Hong Kong...

The obligatory tourist snaps, all with cheesy grins, and cheesy poses



The photos we like, the food, the eating, and we especially like it when the food that we eat are ones that we don't have to pay for! :)

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What I like about Hong Kong:

- The MTR, very clean, cheap and easy to use and impressively efficient and on time with lots of space for peak hour. Love it.

- Shopping, shopping and more shopping!

- Food, eating, more food and more eating!

- Looking like one of the locals and not standing out like an outsider (until we start speaking, then we really feel like outsiders….)

- The relatives paying for all our meals and transportation costs, it definitely saves us a bundle

- HK Airport, efficient, enormous, huge variety, clean, friendly and great customer service. Europeans can learn much from HK Airport. You can be fast, efficient AND FRIENDLY! You really can.

What I don’t like about Hong Kong:

- the lack of space. I hate feeling cramped, I hate having so little personal space, I hate being so close to so many people on the streets, I hate having such a tiny little bathroom because it is strange to have a shower curtain constantly sticking to my body while I shower.

- Did I once mention that I didn’t like Rome cos there were just too many people and too many cars there… well… you ain’t seen no crowds until you’ve been to an asian country when a sale is on, then we’re talking crowds! There were so many people packed onto the streets and in the shops you just couldn’t walk at your own free will, we were literally carried along by the crowds, I swear that at one stage my feet did not touch the ground yet I was still moving forward! We were just moving wherever the crowd wanted to take us, which funnily enough, was where there were more people and even bigger crowds. It made me feel really claustrophobic and faint and I was becoming very disoriented. I hate crowds.

- Smokers! You can not imagine how much more I hate smoking after this trip. Nearly all my cousins smoke, the house reeks of ciggies, my clothes absorb it, my hair absorbs it, my lungs absorbs it, I hate it.

Things we did:

- When we arrived in HK, nobody came to pick us up at the airport :( All our relatives were busy…. So we had to make our own way to my aunty’s place. Now that was interesting… in Europe, we had a guidebook to help us, there were maps and info on how to take public transport and where to find tourist information offices… in HK, we had nothing. We knew nothing. We (stupidly) relied on relatives to help us, but didn’t expect them to be busy! We had no map, no had no idea how to take public transport, not a lot of money on us, we didn’t know where to find a tourist information office, we were tired, jetlagged and we had a large broken suitcase.

I called one of my cousins, she gave me directions on how to get to my aunt’s place, but keeping in mind that I was jetlagged and tired and naturally absent-minded and forgetful, I had pretty much forgotten the directions 20 seconds after hanging up the phone.

- But we made it, we didn’t get lost, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. Next time I’ll be more prepared, next time I’m not gonna solely rely on relatives or friends

Po Lin Monastery and the Giant Buddha at Lantau Island

It was a cold cold day in HK that day… cold and wet and foggy and windy, a plain miserable day it was. For me, it was miserable in more ways than one for I had come down with the sniffles as well and the cold, wet, windy day didn’t help at all.

We must’ve looked kind of frozen cos the lady the ticket counter offered us her own personal pieces of clothing to keep us warm while we made the long trek up what seemed like millions of steps to see the big Buddha. Now that was a nice lady. We were eternally grateful for her generosity because I’m not sure we would’ve made it all the way to the top without some warm clothes. We were just not prepared for how cold it actually was that day, the weather forecast said 22 degrees... well, let me tell you, 22 degrees it certainly wasn’t!

When we left Lantau Island, just to make ourselves feel better, we went shopping

Avenue of Stars & the HK Light Show

After so many days of fine fine weather, of course we had to choose the one day of miserable weather to go see the light show and the Avenue of Stars. The one day when I felt so bad, so sick and looked so miserable was the one day we chose to do an ‘outdoor’ thing.

I mean, I still had fun, I still enjoyed myself, but I could’ve enjoyed myself a lot more had it been a better night, and had I not been so sick, but that’s the way things happen sometimes…

Chinese New Year Flower Market

I was so excited when one of my cousins said he’d take us to the Flower Market. Not just any old flower market, no sirree, this one only happens during Chinese New Year and we don’t get anything like it here in Melbourne. It’s a strange thing for me to get excited about flowers, but I guess to understand my excitement, you have to grow up with knowing about it and hearing about this flower market but never having the opportunity to actually see it. It’s not anything spectacular, it was just a market with 3 main types of plants: Lillies, Cumquats and Blossums, but imagine hundreds and hundreds of stalls selling exactly the same stuff.

Of course, just to add to the festive atmosphere, there was a whole other market selling novelty balloons, like the ones they sell at Moomba and the Show, the big hammer, the big baseball bat etc, except in HK, they are way more inventive, anything and everything you can possibly name has been made into a big novelty balloon, and of course, this year being the year of the pig, there were no shortage of novelty pig paraphernalia. I must admit, I was laughing and giggling like a silly school girl every time I saw a new balloon… you’d think that after you see one, two, three, perhaps even four different kinds of balloons, I’d get over the whole thing but I didn’t. I was continuously surprised and amazed by everything, absolutely everything. You’d think I’d been living under a rock my entire life.

That's really it, there's not a lot to do and see in HK... you shop, you eat, you shop some more then you eat again.

Back home at last

After countless hours on too many planes, trains, taxis, songteows and shuttle buses, too many hours spent waiting for aforementioned transportation, too many hours spent sitting at airports and train stations, too many hours at dodgy internet cafes, eating too many bad airline meals (as well as a few really bad train meals), too much money spent on good and bad food in general (especially in Europe!), not nearly enough spent drinking – water, that is! Too much money spent on souvenirs, too much time spent looking for postcards, then post offices, too many disgusting, filthy public toilets, too many hours spent under weak, sometimes luke warm, often cold showers... we are now finally back home!

I am sad. I could’ve gone another 4 weeks easy. But alas, all great holidays must come to an end and my dear little Lucia was really severely missing home, which in turn kind of infected me and made me miss home also, even though she’d been absent for nearly 6 months and would understandably be missing home whereas I’d only been away for 4 weeks… so it was like I was only pretending to miss home :)

Of course, we know that is not true. I do miss home, of course I miss home; I miss home heaps when I go overseas. I realise more each time I go anywhere outside of Melbourne of how much I love living here, and how beautiful this city is. No doubt, Lulu will have her own take on this, but generally speaking, we are both very proud to be Melburnians.

I have written down so many things I’ve wanted to post on Buttsore & Blistered Feet but I overestimated how easy it would be to keep up with the whole Buttsore-thing while travelling. I never realised how difficult it would be to find an internet café, let alone a cheap decent-looking one where I’d want to spend hours blogging and responding to emails, I think I’ll settle on an extremely brief run-down of what’s been happening plus a few added pictorials to help with the story-telling.

It's gonna be a little bit all over the place.... get ready!

What an adventure in THAILAND!

We're towards the end of our journey in Thailand and it started off slowly but the two of us are really genuinely enjoying ourselves now. Right now, we are in the last couple of hours of our stay in Chiang Mai, and this city is far far superior to Bangkok. Yesterday had to be the highlight of our trip so far....

Yesterday, we RODE ELEPHANTS!!!
We were on elephants! It was quite nice, they are so majestic and placid, and very very quiet animals, the place was a little on the slightly touristy side.... but I can live with that, considering I am a tourist and all :)

A few days ago, our group stayed at a homestay at an elephant conservation centre, and that place seemed to treat the elephants much nicer than this place where we rode the elephants... but, as tourism goes, we gotsta share the tourism dollar and not spend all our money at the one place.

We, of course, got the greedy big fat elephant that tried to steal everybody else's food.... imagine charging us tourists 20bahts to buy a bunch of mouldy bananas to feed the animals what they would be getting anyway... oh well, I guess we are helping the elephants afterall, it's just the principle of the thing, I don't like being made to buy something when I really don't want to.

After that, Lu and I decided to go bamboo rafting and I haven't had so much fun in a LONG LONG time! I mean, they told us not to bring any cameras or phones cos we're gonna get wet... but I never expected to get absolutely DRENCHED!

No, I didn't fall in the water, and no, Unlucky Lulu didn't either.... but the cheeky raft guide people purposefully (is that a word?) splashed us and made us screech and scream. Me thinks, they enjoy hearing little girlies scream....

So we had our revenge. We splashed them back!

I'd like to show you photos, but for some reason, blogger ain't letting me upload... oh well, we're leaving soon, so arrivederci for now (I'm not sure why I just used Italian, rather than Thai, oh well). I'll post a full blog of our adventures when I get home. I really don't know how many of you are still reading this considering how dull it is. Even I know its boring :)

a bad update

Hi peoples who might be reading this blog and wondering what's been happening to us chicky babes (probably not many of you....)

I know I know, there's not been much of an update lately... but, it's tough when you're travelling, there's not a lot of time, and there's a helluva lot of dodgy internet cafes charging exorbitant prices to use dodgy computers, thus the reason for such little updates in the past week.

Well, the last time I was online it our last day in Rome and boy were we glad to be outta there. Rome made us miserable. It wasn't a bad place, it was just the wrong place at the wrong time for us. I will return one day, but perhaps not for Rome alone, I will return for Italy and maybe, just maybe pass by Rome just to say hi and be polite.

Our next stop was Barcelona and we LOVED Barcelona! Barcelona is pretty and the weather was nice and the people were friendly, the boys were sexy and they smelt nice too, gotta love a boy that smells nice - and the sangria helped. I gots me a little tipsy on sangria... :p Me like sangria very very much :) Lulu reckons I was acting all strange (like that would be a first!) - apparently when I get a little drunk, I start talking to myself... and laugh a lot... but I thought I was just having a lot of fun.... Barcelona was great, we had a yummy paella with sangria one night and we had a fabulous tapas meal with sangria the next night (oh, I also had a massive beer as well, darn you Chris!), we may have "over-indulged" just a little slightly... just a tad, not a lot, just an eensy teensy bit - I mean, you wouldn't call AU$85 for one meal for 2 girls too much, would you? Considering our "budget" for each day was supposed to be around that much, we pretty much blew it on one meal. Was that bad? :p

Yup, Barcelona was great, perhaps a little too expensive, but I loved it.

We have taken tonnes of photos, but it's just not possible to upload any today.

From Barcelona we spent a few days in Brussels with some relatives - and the weather was miserable. It was cloudy, wet and drizzly for most of it. At least we had lots of good food and a nice place to stay and it was mostly free... I mean, accommodation, free, hotel food, free - not much more I could ask for really.

There was this awkward incident at the bar... (lu and I mainly hung out in the bar, we got free drinks and it was a nice quiet smoke free place to sit and chat) I won't go into it now, but when I get more time, this is a reminder to myself to write about it. *Note to self, please write about incident at bar in Brussels**

Lulu... poor Lulu, she's got some stories to tell, I have the unluckiest sister in the world! She is Unlucky Lulu. Some highlights, her suitcase broke off piece by piece, until we reached Brussels and then one of the wheels broke off and we couldn't roll it properly, it's not easy for 2 little girls to lift one very heavy suitcase while dragging another heavy suitcase. So, Lulu's suitcase has gone to suitcase heaven, may it rest in pieces, amen.

While at Amsterdam airport, on our way out of Europe, we had one 10 euro note left, our only money, so thought we'd buy some lunch as we weren't boarding for another hour... Lulu was literally holding onto the tenner as we were ordering the sandwich/ roll thing and from the 2 seconds it took for the lady to put it on the counter, Lulu had somehow 'misplaced' this tenner... we searched every pocket, on me and her, we searched every patch of us and no tenner to be seen... so we had to pay for this sandwich/ roll thing by credit card. Imagine paying for a 3 euro sandwich/ roll thing on credit card, how embarrassment! Where on earth did that 10 euro note disappear to? It's not a very Lulu thing to do, she's very organised and has a terrific memory, it's much more something that I would do, losing money.... she's had some pretty bad luck, my sister.

On the other hand, I have had some pretty good luck, but I won't rub it in.

Right now, we're in Hong Kong, staying with relatives. And it has taken us hours and hours to find an internet cafe where we could check our mail... we've definitely got sore feet today!

For such a touristy city, we could not for the life of us, find any tourist office, or postcards, and we really struggled to find this little internet place. Getting around is not a problem, we both speak decent chinese and they have english signs everywhere... our relatives here have been quite busy so we haven't seen a lot of them, which is actually quite good for us, we have a lot of time to ourselves and today have been exploring the place, quite literally. We have no map, no info, no idea where things are, no idea what places we should be visiting, no idea how much we should be spending, we are completely clueless and have just been wondering aimlessly around... but to be honest, there is really only 2 things to do when in HK - Shop & Eat.

We have breakfast, just a tad over 2 mins later, my aunty is discussing what we might like to eat for lunch... and then just after lunch, they are already planning for dinner. And after we stuff ourselves with dinner, even though the enormous lunch we had only 3 hours prior is still sitting pretty in our full little stomachs, we are force fed even more food at dinner.... and the moment the dishes are washed, we are both asked whether we'd like to join my cousins for supper when they finish work (they work late you see, a couple of them finish around 12-1am).

Yeah right, after waking so early in the mornings, it's hard to keep our eyes open wide enough at midnight to go out let alone go out and eat some more. I don't believe I had even finished digesting lunch! This place is an endless parade of food. That's all they seem to think about.

I went to Europe with a small little pot belly, and I came to HK with a slightly larger, more rotund belly... but I will be leaving HK with a really difficult to hide big belly :( It's been slightly over 2 weeks, and I think I've gained 5kg already, and I still have Thailand to cope with and another 2 weeks of endless eating... I could be returning to Melbourne 10kg heavier, which is exactly what happened when I went on holidays for 4 weeks the last time. The worst part is, everybody here keeps telling Lulu that she's too skinny and lost too much weight.... and then they turn to me and say "oh but you, yeah you've definitely put on a few kilos..."

Gee, thanks... I really needed that to be emphasised and rubbed in. These chinese relatives of mine, they really know how to make a girl feel good about herself. You can call me chubby from now on....

Well, tomorrow we're off to Thailand for about 1 week before returning to HK for a few more days... so not sure when I will be back updating this. (maybe when I get home?! :)

I wish I could write more, but there's so much to tell and I'm not quite sure where to start.... and I'm getting lazy and it's kind of dinner time, so we need to look for a nice restaurant for dinner...

hmmm... food.....

too much text? here are some pictures

1 2

1 - Last day in Rome, walking from St Peter's Basilica towards the hotel - a good 3 hour journey

2 - my artistic shot :) Leo, me, leo :)

3 4

3 - Beer for Chris

4 - me forcing down this vile beer for Chris

5 6

5 - Oz Day in Rome, Lulu after a day in the wet, rainy, cold, miserable weather - didn't feel good that we got ripped off by the Vatican
6 - Gelato made us feel better, gelato made this miserable Australia Day worthwhile. If we were in Lyon, we'd be having free Foster's in an Aussie pub...

7 8

7 - Me at the Pantheon, I look like this because I just had a yummy pizza

8 - our shared toilet in an enormous room at the hotel. I know I said it would be weird to show you a picture of the toilet, but if you didn't know I was weird by now, then there's something wrong with you.

9 10

9 - me eating again
10 - Lulu looking for postcards and souvenirs again. this was at the Hall of Maps at the Vatican Museum, which being the big doofuses that we are, didn't realise that it wasn't the Sistine Chapel :p

11 12

11- me eating the best pizza in the world outside the Pantheon
12- Lu eating the second best pizza in the world outside the Pantheon

13 14

13- The hot one and doofus (you decide which is which, but please don't tell me)on the steps of the umm... forgotten the name Veneticio something?? Oh, guess I'm the doofus :(

14- We found a puddle of Australia!

15 16

15- Lulu and turtle outside the Colosseum

16- Lulu and a slice of Vatican pizza

Roma Roma Roma

First impressions of Rome.....hmm.... it's a little bit dodgy....

Fortunately our hotel is close to the station, unfortunately, Rome is full of cobblestone roads and streets so dragging a heavy suitcase on that is not fun at all - especially late at night when you're really tired.

Our hotel is ok... but our hotels are getting dodgier and worse as time goes on... this is what happens when you spend too much money and can't afford a nice place. The first hotel in Lyon is now seeming more and more swish.... we have to share a bathroom and I really struggled to cope with that... but I'll survive it for 2 days. I should know by now how much of a princess I really can be :p

Our room is small, but the bathroom is HUGE - go figure. I'd show you a pic but that would be strange :)

we managed to walk around Rome in 1 day and saw many of the sights by foot. Gees, for so many different touristy things to see, Rome is quite a small place. I think 3 days in Rome may be too much. Everything can be reached on foot and can all be done in less than 1 day! We were really struggling to find things to do.... as Lu's friend puts it, "Rome is nice, you can walk everywhere and see lots of broken things"

A truer word could not be said... a lot of broken things, a pile of broken rubble - that's pretty much Rome. I must admit, I'm a little let down by Rome (sorry Rosanna), it hasn't impressed me as much as I had hoped it would. I can't wait to get to Barcelona.

Paris - a quick tour

We had an awesome time in Paris. I personally really enjoyed myself. Here's a quick tour:

Our hotel room was ok, location good, staff friendly and helpful. It was supposed to be a 2 min walk from the station, but for some reason I still don't quite understand, a 2 min walk turned into a 40 min trek! So before we left, we made sure we knew how to get to the station and timed ourselves... even with heavy luggage, it only took us less than 10 mins to get there, so how lost were we on that first day?!

As we were both kind of knackered the first night in Paris, we thought we'd take it easy.... never happens the way we want. After dinner with Lu's friend, Ling (who also happened to be in Paris) we walked and walked and walked. Ended up making our way to the Louvre and it was just stunning at night all lit up with lights and better still, not many people around so I could take many many photos all by myself :) I really do hate crowds.

From the Louvre, we made our way past the Jardin des Tuilleries and down the Champs-Elysees and headed towards the Arc de Triomphe. On our way we saw in the distance, the Eiffel Tower go bananas. It was lit up with a billion flashing lights, enough to to cause a severe seizure and it certainly looked like the Tower was having one - very beautiful though.

Had one very expensive dessert at Laduree's on Champs-Elysees, apparently it's famous for its macaroons, but it was quite posh and upmarket, I felt quite out of place with my beanie hair and over-sized rain coat and backpack sitting amongst the well-groomed set. It was only after I started eating my macaroon dessert thing that I remembered that I don't particularly fancy macaroons.... oh well, at least I can tell people that I had something to eat on the Champs-Elysees and it wasn't McDonald's :)

By the time we got back to the hotel, we were absolutely buggered.. Good thing about Paris is that no matter how late we're out, I never feel unsafe because there are just so many people around, even at silly o'clock at night, the metro is still full of people, can't say that happens in Melbourne. Back home, I sometimes feel frightened catching public transport when it gets dark at 7-8pm at night.....

I can't imagine what peak hour would be like if at 11:30pm at night the metro is still packed with people!

People never tell you this, but I will because I'm nice. Paris stinks!

I thought Lyon smelt bad when I got there, it's all the ciggies, BO, dog poo and wine but -pooey- Paris REEKS! It smells of all of the above plus a bit of urine and add a little French arrogance, multiply by 10 and you just about have it. It smells like piss just about everywhere you go, on the streets, in the metro, in decent-looking shopping centres..... nearly everywhere! No wonder the French love their perfume so much.

It's so wrong but this is what happens when you start charging people to use the toilets!

I miss the smell of home.

On the second day in Paris, we went to the Louvre. WOW! What an amazing place. I really really really love it there. I wanted that place to be my home.I know I've written about it before, how we raced through and wished we could spend more time there. What I realised while in Paris, that we Aussies are taking over here. If you were wondering why Oz was so empty, where everybody went, well they are all in Paris!! It was great to hear the familiar Aussie twang everywhere we went, made me miss home a lot. The hotel where we stayed, I think it was about 80% full of Aussies - ok, I may exaggerate a little (it could be only 78%) but I'm telling the story here, so there!

We did many things on the last day in Paris, but I've mentioned most already. Montmartre, Sacre Coeur, la Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame etc.... the Refuge Fondue... ahhh, the fondue place. That was the the second highlight of our stay in Paris. Good food cheap, welcoming and funny hosts, entertaining, weird, good next-table people, it was fun and we had a good time.

That was the tour of Paris.

Observations

Since I do not have much time to blog down all that I want to tell you, there is just so much happening and so much around to see that I can only give you an excerpt of my manuscript of travels. I’m sure that when I get home, I’ll be seeing many of and will be boasting about this trip for many moons to come and you will all get so sick of my rambling on about it…..

So there are some things I’ve noticed:

Dogs! Dogs are everywhere! There are a lot of dogs in Lyon and Paris. They are allowed in shops and restaurants. Sometimes, they are more well kept than their owners. I’ve seen scungy-looking beggars (‘scungy’ is that a word?) with beautiful dogs…. I love dogs, I miss Taxi. The bad side of all these dogs is that rather than concentrating and enjoying the beautiful scenery and architecture, I’ve had to learn to focus one eye up and one eye down, looking out for all the poo :)

There are a lot of security around… in Paris and Lyon it was fine, but here in Rome, it could be a bit overload. There are teams of police, guards, soldiers, security absolutely everywhere we went – I’m not sure whether to feel safe or not safe because surely there must be a reason for all the security? Is it really that dangerous here?

Latin. I’m all Latined out. If only I could read it, perhaps things would make a little more sense when I see them?

Pushy street vendors, hate them, leave me alone, if I didn’t want to buy the crappy souvenirs from the first 398 vendors who approached me 2 seconds before you did why would I buy it from you, the person who is selling the same crappy souvenirs for the same price?

Last day in Paris

Fondue place that gave us wine in a baby's bottle, that was kind of weird, Lu greedily dipping into the fondue, prawns from our paella. I love prawns :)




Some bar in Lyon offering free booze to Aussies on Oz Day, what we eat when we spend much more money than we plan to (and I mean MUCH MUCH more money than planned), Lu taking charge - and still getting us a little bit confused...



CHEERS! (or as Lu would say, 'don't look stupid'). A whole stack of pics of me and Lu eating and drinking - Chris, 2 cities, 2 beers! So far so good, but I don't know how much more I can take, beer tastes really vile :(

Last day in Paris

I have one more hour in Paris before we must leave and make our way to Rome. It's a very miserable day outside today but not nearly as miserable as it was yesterday. Yesterday was c-c-c-cold!! The wind was cold, the wind was strong, we had layers and layers and layers yet our bodies still felt ice cold.

We packed so much into 1 day yesterday, traipsing from one end of Paris to another and ended up in quaint little Montmartre for a lovely fondue dinner and met some cute little Aussie backpackers at this restaurant. The dinner was so yummy, it needs no other word to describe it, the host was very welcoming, and so French and so funny. Even though we were so full we were busting out at the seams, I felt guilty if we didn't finish our meal. Loads of bread, too much cheese, a little too much wine (drunk from out of a baby bottle, that was kind of strange... werido French people!) , dessert was my highlight. I love it when the food I order makes other people envious, and my vanilla ice-cream did just that - sure it doesn't sound too glamourous, but you had to see it and taste it to see how lucky this little girl was last night.

We've also climbed the Eiffel Tower, seen Sacre Coeur, got accosted by nasty looking ghetto people who wanted to tie me up and sell me as a sex slave to some African prince... ok, maybe I'm being a little overly dramatic, maybe they just wanted some money, but still, it frightened me, I needed my lil' sister to come to my rescue. I was with 2 other people, yet they only gave me trouble, why?! I must look like a real big sucker, I must have the french word for sucker plastered on my head because it happened again on our way to the Eiffel Tower! A slimey sleazy strange dude grabbed my arm and started dragging me away, but quick-thinking Lu, who appears quite seasoned to these sort of rorts made yet another brave rescue, slapping the smelly man's hand from me... all the while, all I could think about was, eeewwww, stop touching me you weirdo smelly con artist - and he really was an artist too.

Ummm.... well, Lu finally got to see the Eiffel Tower from the top after 4 visits to Paris, and we spent a good 3 hours in the Louvre, madly rushing through trying to absorb all the history and culture but could really only absorb the smells of all the other whiffy dumbass tourists (me being one of them... reminds me, must do some laundry in Rome...)

Oh, and if you're wondering, yes we did wave and say hi to the lady of the Louvre - Madam Mona Lisa herself. Poor woman, trapped like an animal behind a thick pane glass...

Our verdict of the Louvre, just awesome, we just needed a bit more time - I could suggest perhaps a sleeping room for the tired and weary, it is quite a massive place afterall.

Our verdict of the Mona Lisa - over-rated. Seen a better side of her in books, much clearer and less crowds. The security personnel stood closer than any of the visiters, so go figure.

Lots of photos, I've already maxed out the memory card.... can't wait to get more organised and show them off.

Maybe in Rome, we will get in touch again

Ciao
Buttsore & Blistered Feet

a few Lyon pics...

Some food, some food exchanges, questionable french sign - what on earth do the french do in public??!?! the Roman Theatres, and a grand roue.

Lulu and me, my first meal, some turtles we found swimming in a line, and happy lulu with her turtle obsession.