Oz to Europe Travel tip 1:

If you’re Australian (or even if you’re not) here is the first of a series of tips for travelling Europe…

Let’s start with packing…

On my first trip, I carried so much luggage I almost pulled my arm out of its socket lugging it around. Cobblestones don’t agree with the suit case wheels, especially if you have to wheel them for a long way in places like Siena, where there is no alternative but to walk. If you’re like us and get lost looking for your accommodation you’ll be glad not to be walking around with heavy bags. It’s not like Australia where there are smooth paths and ramps to comply with disability regulations!

You will also find that many hotels and even train stations don’t Have escalators or elevators. Having carried our luggage up 4-5 floors on several occasions I learned the hard way!

For my last 4 trips overseas I’ve taken a ‘carry on’ size bag and that is all. You’ll be surprised how much you can fit in such a bag if you choose your clothes carefully. Don’t pack heavy weight things as they are difficult to wash on the run and take up too much room. Go for layers and thermals if you are travelling in winter.

For my next trip I’m getting a sturdy backpack with big wheels on it. That way I have the choice of wheeling or carrying:)

Now here is a link to a video of how to pack to help you on your way… How to pack your bag

From bird poop to glory

Today I had a lovely time turning an old post box into a side table. I bought it off ebay and it said in the description ‘comes with free bird poo and spiders’. I was pleased to see that their description was correct and I wasn’t ripped off! The Post box is from ‘Spring Gully’ area which is near where my daughter in law was raised (Hamilton, Vic).

I started by scrubbing the metal post box doors with boot polish and then rubbing the brass plates back to show the brass. After cleaning out the cobwebs I got the hot air gun onto the paint and then sanded it down. I didn’t want to take all the paint off as it gives it character. After a coat of Danish oil, I painted some legs, purchased at Bunnings and glued them on. I’m sure they should be screwed on but I’m too impatient and the Danish oil was still wet so glue it is. If they fall off at some point, I’ll attach them properly!

I’m keeping the remote control in #1. Shhhh. no-one knows yet. It goes well with my huge mirror which sits across the wall above it and has the same ‘shabby painted look’.

I think turning old things that were meant for something else into furniture is my new hobby;)

Planking in Singapore

Colin is a good sport sometimes. I almost drive him insane with my ‘photo moments’ but when I drag him into it as a prop… it’s even more testing on his patience.

We arrived in Singapore at 6.30am after very little sleep and went straight to our hotel and slept for 7 hours. Then we got up, walked about 15 k around the city for 5 hours and went back to bed and slept another 11 hours!! Nice way to shake off the jet lag.

I’m not a big fan of Dubai, but I have to admit, Singapore mixes their affluence with some nice artistic style and good taste. The shopping is horribly expensive, but it was interesting to look and there are plenty of  cheaper  ‘bling bling’ markets around, although the prices are still pretty high.

The botanical gardens and Orchid gardens were beautiful and we spent most of the afternoon there today. I was excited to have a giant lizard chase me across the lawn, which I filmed for evidence.

The hop-on-hop-off bus and the river cruises have kept us busy for 2 days and will include a trip to Sentosa Island tomorrow for the day.

All this and then back to home on Friday morning… if Sophie wakes up early enough to pick us up (6.20am landing!!).

Flying undies

Yesterday we arrived home from a day at Montserrat to find Colins undies sitting on the bonnet of a car in the street where our appartment is in Barcelona. It seems that they blew off the balcony of our 4th floor room! Did I mention there are 70 steps up to our appartment? Oh yes, I guess I did.

We spent the past few days exploring Barcelona by foot. From our position on Barceloneta beach we have walked up past Placa Calalunya to the Gaudi appartments and to the park where parliament house and the zoo sits. We’ve rambled up la Ramble many many times to watch the Barcelona crowds elbowing through the buskers and market stalls. We scrambled all over Mount Juic and up to the castle where we experienced our first FREE castle entrance. Yes we have over walked 25 K’s a day and then after tea we go for a walk along the beach. Pity we are eating so much or we would be loooking pretty lean!

Do you know you can buy a beer at 8am but not fresh milk? Fresh milk is pretty hard to find in France and Spain but it doesn’t help when the Supermarket doesn’t open until 9am (hours after the bars… or perhaps they just don’t close from the night before!).

Yesterday we sprinted 3 k’s to the spot where we had to meet our tour bus for the day. Our one and only tour for the 7 weeks in Europe, was to Monserrat, where we were taken by bus up into the mountain to see the Cathedral, monastary and village with 1000′s of other tourists. Our tour guide was incredible in giving us a commentary along the journey in 4 languages: Spanish, English, French and Italian, customised for the mix of people on board. He was fluent in all languages. I couldn’t help but wonder how many others he knew.

Monserrat was pretty awesome, although we only had a short time there and would have enjoyed a walk across the mountain tops but we were happy to inspect the famous black mother Mary from a distance and the cathedral, which was pretty spectacular. We arrived back at the respectable hour of 3pm and walked another 3 k back to the appartment and climbed the 70 stairs (collecting Colins  undies off the car bonnet on the way).

The photo below doesn’t show that the buildings are actually WAY up the mountain side, true Europe style. I wasn’t able to photograph it from where we were but you can imagine it or look it up on Google.

While writing this, Colin put nutmeg on his boiled egg instead of pepper. One of the joys of not being able to read Spanish;)

Tomorrow we leave our beach appartment for one near the airport, since our flight changed to 7am from 8.30am!! Strangely, our travel agent didn’t notify us of the change. Grrr!

Party animals

We arrived in Manresa, Spain after driving through the Pyranees mountains and catching our breath at the magnificent views. In typical Europe style, we travelled through several tunnels over 4 km long, one of them costing 12 Euro (I would expect a meal and a beer for that!) and arrived and walked the quiet Saturday afternoon streets for 4 hours.

Our legs were aching as we marvelled at the quietness of such an enormous city. The mix of ancient buildings, bridges and churches with ultra modern structures and higgiltey piggelty housing with washing hanging off the balconies was quite a sight.

Manresa mountains in the background

At 8pm, with weary legs, we decided to look for a place for tea. You would think that was a reasonable time. When we stepped outside, we discovered THOUSANDS of people had emerged from siesta. Kids, dogs, teenagers and mature aged people walking, drinking and DANCING in the streets. Nobody was eating. When we asked for tea we were looked at very strangely. The restaurant opens at 9.30pm, we were told. It was impossible to find one open and we were exhausted, needing to get up early the next morning. We settled on Tapas (eventually) and ate with a room full of small children.

Ha ha Spaniards… you might party hard late at night but when we get up at 7am and drive to Barcelona on a Sunday morning we have the road to ourselves:) We arrived at the car hire place and sheepishly showed them our two crash sites on the car (neither of them our fault) and they shrugged and said ‘no problem, dont worry’. What? All that anticipation and you dont even care? Gee OK… lets get in the taxi and go before they change their mind!

The view from our balcony

Our freind, Paul Williams, suggested we rent out an appartment on Barcelona beach, which he has often used. After lugging out suitcases up 4 flights of stairs (no elevator!!!) and discovering a bed in the kitchen and a shower which is so small it is almost a part of the toilet, we soon forgave him. What a stunning spot!! It’s quite cozy really and compared to the many many hotel rooms we’ve stayed with we will be more than comfortable. Colin is taking his snoring self into the 2nd bedroom to rattle another chamber for a break. Whee! The vibrant bustle of Barcelona restaurants, beach, shops etc is out the window. The Imax, aquarium, museums, skylift etc are 1 minute away. *sigh*. A week here will be easy to take.

Note to self: Remember to take what you need when you leave the appartment, 4 flights of stairs several times a day can be tiring on already weary legs.

Foix is ‘FWA’

We left Figeac for Foix (pron Fwa) via Najec (pron ???). Najec proved to be a very beautiful spot with a breathtaking castle overlooking the village and the mandatory 1000 steps up to the top of the turret. I’ll leave you with a photo as I think it says it all…

After leaving Najec we tackled the motorway to Foix, where we unloaded our growing luggage into our hotel room. Another ‘one nighter’ but hey… it has free wifi and it’s fast!

Foix is a bigger town, not so preserved in medieval ways but has a lovely castle high on a hill in the middle of the town. It was build in the 800′s and has 2 huge turrets to climb. That makes 3 spiral staircases in one day. If it wasn’t for all these French pastries I would be thin as a pin.

Tomorrow we are back in Spain, to Manresa, Spain for another one nighter and then to Barcelona for a week on the beach.

The village people

It’s so nice not to be taking anti-histamines after 4 or 5 days of them. I actually feel alive and awake today! Having been stung by a wasp (or something) and my left hand and arm swelling up from the elbow down, I was given cream and drugs at the pharmacy which worked nicely but they made me so dopey I was off in la la land while Tony and Lorraine were with us.

After saying farewell (sadly) to our good friends, we took off yesterday to explore Carennac, Loubressac, Autoire and the mighty fortress/castle of Castelnau-Bretenoux. Our first stop was Autoire, where we had a formulae lunch’. It was so ridiculously huge we didn’t eat a single thing after it until the next day, which is unheard of for Colin. For 12.50 Euro, we were given a HUGE bowl of soup to share, entree, a delicious plate of pork and mash and then a tart for desert. Colin cleared up what I couldn’t eat and looked 6 months pregnant afterwards. I sure hope he isn’t!

The 3 villages we went to are listed in the top ’150 most beautiful French villages’. We are definitely VILLAGE PEOPLE and don’t take to the big cities or towns too well. These villages usually don’t have traffic (cars don’t fit   down the roads!!) and have that sleepy feel to them. Dogs snooze on the road and people sit around chatting and sipping caffe. On that note…

Colin is trying his hand at French. He now orders ‘Coffee OLAY’… said with a beaut Aussie accent. ‘Caffe au lait’ (coffee with milk) would be better but what the heck? It certainly gave Lorraine and I a giggle. He greeted a French man with his usual ‘Gidday’ yesterday. The bemused guy replied ‘bonjour’. If Colin doesn’t know what to say he tends to say ‘Bonjour’. Often this is in place of ‘merci’ or ‘auvoir’. You have to laugh or you cry. Luckily the French laugh while looking nervously at me for reassurance.

Back to the villages and castles…
Both of us just love the feel of a castle which hasn’t been too renovated. The Castelnau-Bretenoux was definitely one of our favourites and the bonus was that we didn’t need to climb for hours to get to it. A very narrow spiral staircase with 50 people attempting to go up and down it, no lighting and a small child panicking half way up was challenging but it was worth it to see the view from the top over the coutryside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One more day in Figeac, then off to Foix for one night and then back to Spain to report our damaged car to Sixt. Oh dear… we aren’t looking forward to that bit at all!

Tony gets a shower

Today the 4 off us took off to Gourdon, Domme and Sarlat. After the GPS sent us off circling Figeac 4 times for good measure, we ended up in Gourdon where we had a loo and lunch stop. As we pulled up, Lorraine and I used the toilet, which was one of those automatic ones, and Tony went in after us. Colin, Lorraine and I were standing outside the toilet when we heard an almighty roar and a gushing of water. We all had the giggles which erupted into laughter when Tony emerged from the toilet soaked. He hadn’t locked it so he was included in the loo washing cycle. Unfortunately, the toilet retracts into the wall and water erupts from the floor so it was a bit disconcerting for him. I’ll leave the details up to your imagination!

We followed the toilet stunt with a delicious lunch with free wifi and apart  from Lorraine pinching the last lemon meringue tart, enjoyed it so much we decided we wouldn’t need tea. It was finished off with a drenching in a rain shower and another odd trip with the GPS to our next destination.

All in all, it was a very drenching experience, for some more than others. Tony is looking forward to us NOT asking to drive to 12 small villages on goats tracks tomorrow!!

Oh and yes… we DID have tea when we arrived back at 8pm. Piglets!

Figeac, France

I can’t get used to walking into toilets to find a man standing at the urinal. In country towns the toilets are combined!
I  also can’t get used to seeing dogs in hotels, which eat with their owners at breakfast in the dining room.
It amazes me how often you drive on a goat track to the middle of nowhere with no cars in sight, only to reach the ‘quaint little village’ and find a boom gate with a 3 Euro charge for parking and tourists everywhere. Our trip to Figeac, sent us over the Millau Viaduct and via a little fortified village called la Couvertoirade (which was ‘out the middle of nowhere but had a parking charge). We arrived late in the day at our 2 bedroom appartment, about 35 minutes before our friends Tony and Lorraine.

Rocamadour

Our first day together we drove off to Rocamadour to see the breathtaking view and visit the village. Colin decided it was a good idea to visit the caves as well. The only problem was that there was only one cave, we were on a tour and the guide spoke in rapid French, for what seemed like 3 hours. Colin almost ran out of the cave crying as it was too much for him to cope with. We are now calling him ‘cave man’. Luckily, Rocamadour made up for it and far exceeded our expectations.
Today’s adventure was Cahors and, Saint Cirq Lapopie. The later sent us on a goat track but was again a gorgeous place to visit with breathtaking views and beautiful gardens nestled in a cliff side.

Not Bastille day in Montpellier

‘What Bastille day activities do you have on here in Montpellier?’ Colin asked the Office of Tourism employee. ‘It’s not Bastille day, it’s a bank holiday’ he replied. Erm… interesting. We could have sworn July 14th was Bastille day. At least, after our Aussie friend told us via SMS.

'Painted buildings' on the back of blank walls

Montpellier was dead as a door nail anyhow so whatever the case, we almost starved to death because everything was closed (in the morning). Can you starve to death in one morning?

As is usual, we walked over Montpellier aimlessly and then went looking for the Tourist info centre. Every town we’ve been in we have had a wild goose chase trying to find the TIC. The signs are everywhere pointing down streets but we always seem to end up going in circles or nowhere. By the time we find it and get a map, we discover we have seen everything! This was no exception. We discovered the Arc de Triomphe, aqueduct beautiful gardens etc well before we got the map. So the next day, when there was a ‘bank holiday’, we had already covered all grounds and everything was closed in the morning so we were a little stumped. After strolling around for a couple of hours, the shops opened.

Our hotel had a door which opened into the 4 story shopping complex *groan*. After 3 weeks of little villages and small markets it was quite overwhelming to see so many people in one place. I know I’m a sad case, but the shops and the sales were pretty exciting for such a deprived case as myself. Col, of course, wasn’t too thrilled about it so I restricted my frenzy to 2 hours.

We’re off to Figaec now to spend the week in an appartment with friends. Back to the little villages which are more our style. Our luggage has grown considerably so let’s hope we all fit  in! My boasting of ‘carry on luggage only’ is a thing of the past.