Our Adventure

Postscript

2008-11-27T08:44:00.002Z

There is a postscript to this story of our year away with all its tears and excitement and stress and wonder.

Early in November Toby whisked me away to the Snowy Mountains to celebrate my 27th birthday. Keen readers may remember I was whisked away to Paris last year, for my 26th. I wasn't sure we'd be able to top that, but it turns out we did...

Yes, check out the bling on my left hand. (Ignoring Toby's windswept hair and the fact my head looks like a condom, of course. What can I say - it was bloody cold up on Mt Kosciusko.)Travelling can be horrendously trying on a relationship, I think we know this as well as anyone by now. It can also be the most magnificent way to grow together, to learn about being a team, and to create a shared story. It's us against the world now, officially. I know everyone likes a happy ending and I'm so glad I'm able to share this one.

Thanks for reading.

Motorcycling in Europe

2008-11-20T08:44:00.002Z

For people like me with very little time on their hands for trip research but who google 'motorcycling in Europe' in the hopes something will pop up, here's some tips from us. Not complete but, with the benefit of hindsight, tips which may have made life a bit easier had we figured it out sooner. This is a really girly list. Toby probably wouldn't agree with half of it.

1. Practise packing. And don't just stick 'most' of what you'll need on the bike and then ride around the car park in your clothes like we did. Put ALL of what you'll need on the bike, get dressed in ALL the gear you'll be wearing, and go for a proper ride. Up the highway, let the bike get nice and hot for a while. This is how you'll discover things like a) you need to readjust your jacket, b) your pannier drops into your exhaust and is going to get a hole burnt in it, and c) you have planned to take too much stuff.

2. Take electrical tape. The thick black stuff. Two rolls if possible. This is to fix the bike, fix the tent, fix your clothes, secure bags of pasta you didn't finish the night before, and so on.

3. Buy those little packets of tissues in bulk, then split them up and stick the individual packets through all your luggage. They won't take up much room but they will be invaluable. Not all toilets come with toilet paper you know.

4. Take hand sanitiser. Combined with the tissues they will come in very handy. Camping is dirty work. Not all toilets come with soap you know.

5. Take nail clippers, the kind with a wee file tucked inside. Again, camping is dirty work and if you can stop your nails flaking to shreds you will feel more human. Plus, clippers can cut more than just nails (see point 2).

6. Take some drugs. Some panadol and some belly stuff. Not a whole pharmacy, just enough that you'll still be able to function if something goes wrong.

7. Take sunscreen. Yes, you can burn through your helmet's visor. And some bug spray.

8. Take the motorway if you're bored. They're expensive but they'll get you where you want to go, and then you can get off and mosey through some more interesting countryside.

9. Have a go on the autobahn in Germany. A real go.

10. Take a GPS if you can, especially if you plan to go somewhere like Rome. Don't use it all the time, save it for a special occasion when you're about to kill each other.

11. For God's sake, do some proper research. 'Google' does not count.

Before we left I printed off this article: http://www.motorcycle.co.uk/Motorcycle-Touring-Europe/ and it was our bible before we left. I would agree with all his pointers, particularly the 'just go' mentality.

It was a terrifically stressful time for us, but in just a few short months we've managed to forget the difficult days and look upon it as what will probably be one of our life's great adventures. I hope everyone gets the chance to do something that makes them feel that anxious and cranky but overwhelmed by the loveliness of the world, all at once.

South East Asia Final Leg: Langkawi

2008-11-13T08:03:00.003Z

There's really no words that could describe six days of lazing around the Sheraton in a way that's interesting, so have some holiday pics instead.

Our beautiful room, with its little deck where we could watch the monkeys play in the garden.

We ate our meals looking at this view.

We took the cable car up the mountain, which I obviously did not enjoy...

...although Toby thought it was awesome...

...luckily the views made up for the minor panic attack...

...but the lack of food and air conditioning down the bottom did not make us happy.

We worked out in the gym...those windows overlooked the beach. And yes, that's me not doing a very good job of hiding in the weights machines.

We played some outdoor pool, overlooking the ocean. And fell in love with the outdoor settings you can see in the background.

We had some tropical storms including a small earthquake which was promptly followed by two rings on the phone in our room. A new tsunami warning system? We will never know.

And we showed a disgusting amount of affection in public, as per usual. It was a magical week and we were not ready to leave. Ever.

But all too soon we were flying back into Sydney, driving back to Canberra, setting up our house, getting to know our dog again, seeing all our loved ones, and going back to work. I don't have to say how strange that process was, with its reverse culture shock and overwhelming sense of normality after the past three months. I will make two more posts, a motorcycling around Europe must do list, in case anyone is inspired by our awesomeness, and a rather sweet postscript, and after that...well who knows.

South East Asia leg 2: Kuala Lumpur & Penang

2008-11-13T07:35:00.004Z

In the end, we didn’t get into KL until midnight and it was almost 1am by the time we got to our hotel. We’d booked a big western-style one at the end of Bukit Bintang, since the one we stayed in last time was outside the budget, as fantastic as it was. We went to our room and the first thing we noticed was that the TV remote was missing (travesty). The second thing that happened was I went to the toilet and broke the flush button. But then when Toby looked at it closely he told me it looked like it had been already broken (thank goodness). He did some of his usual DIY to make it less obvious that we’d done something wrong. So we went back to reception and said we wanted to change rooms; we have never done that before but we were just not up to dealing with anything other than just right. We got given the room next door so a porter came and took our bags for us. The TV remote was there and the flush button looked dodgy but at least we knew to handle with care from now on. We sank into our bed and didn’t wake up until midday when a maid came knocking and I had to tell her we didn’t need any housekeeping.
This was when I realised I’d taken off my watch and evil eye bracelet from Turkey in the first room, and left it there. Neither was worth very much, but the watch belonged to Toby’s grandma and I’d worn the bracelet non-stop around Europe and was therefore much convinced that it was working to ward off the evil spirits and bad luck. Once we were dressed we went back down to reception and asked them to see if they had been returned; since we’d checked in at 1am and it was now not even 1pm we figured it would have to still be there. Unfortunately we were wrong; they even let me into the room to check myself. I was pretty upset because KL is so full of cheap junky jewellery and I hated that someone saw fit to take mine, when it had so much more value to me than them. Writing about it now, months later, I am still cranky. It wasn’t a very good start to our time at that hotel, which was otherwise very nice.

Much like Singapore, our time in KL was spent relaxing. We’d already done several of the touristy things the year before on our way to the UK, and we just wanted to take it easy. We went to the computer mall near our hotel several times – eight floors just of electronic items so needless to say Toby was in his element – where I bought the shiny awesome laptop I am now typing on. We ate some yummy food and walked through the Chinatown markets several times, even spending one afternoon successfully haggling to buy presents for people back home. Neither of us are particularly comfortable with the practice – partly because we figure those people probably need our money more than we do – but by the time we were finished we felt very pleased with ourselves for the bargains we’d managed to get. We ended up spending another 3 nights at the same hotel because we were enjoying it so much, so we had 5 nights in KL all up. It had a gym of course so we used that a few times. There was also a business lounge where we could go with our laptops and plug in to the net and make free cups of tea and generally be a very nerdy couple. We made a visit to Little India although perhaps we didn’t really get to the interesting parts because I wasn’t particularly impressed. On our last night we went back to the Starhill Gallery, the fancy schmancy mall we’d been to the year before, and visited to the same yummy trendy Indian place for a good meal. It was a lovely few days.

On the final day we went to the train station and bought tickets to Penang, in the north. It was another long train ride but this one wasn’t delayed by quite so long. We got to see some more interesting jungle and mountain scenery, and were better prepared with food and drinks. The train terminated at Butterworth, on the mainland, and then we had to walk a bit of a way to the ferry that would take us to Penang. While we were waiting for the ferry we started chatting to an Aussie guy who had just come from the Cameron Highlands. When we told him we’d just spent five days in KL he was amazed. ‘How did you find enough to do?’ he said. ‘I had one day there and I was bored.’ We didn’t really understand. I think I said we didn’t need ‘enough’ to do – the weather was good, the food was good, and we were just relaxing. Maybe he was expecting constant entertainment? It was obvious we were on different kinds of holidays so we didn’t really talk much after that. The ferry didn’t take very long and we were soon in Penang where the four taxi drivers on duty were locked in the office playing cards and refusing to talk to anyone. There were no buses to be seen and two taxi drivers not playing cards. Unfortunately I was still on a high from our bargain hunting in KL and when one of the drivers offered to take us to our hotel for 10 ringgit I said ‘How about 7?’ He waved me away and got other customers. At the time it didn’t really bother me but when we were still waiting for a taxi 15 minutes later I was feeling pretty stupid. There were several groups of us waiting for taxis but Toby and I managed to get one eventually – which cost us 15 ringgits. Live and learn.

Since we still wanted wi-fi and a gym, our hotel in Penang was another big western-style one near the water. When we arrived there was a band playing in the lobby, one of those cover bands with girls in sparkly lycra suits singing a pop song too loudly. It was an odd experience to be checking in with that amount of noise as we had to yell across the desk at the receptionist, and she had to yell back at us. The room was nice and absolutely huge, with enough room for two double beds and more. The view across the ocean was spectacular. It was pretty late by this point so we just went to sleep. We had 3 nights in Penang and I’m really glad we made the effort to go there. I’d wanted to see something a bit more traditional Malaysian than KL; it is also one of the few places in Malaysia to have a Chinese majority population so I was interested to see some of the temples and try the food, of course. We visited Fort Cornwallis, a relic left over from the British occupation, and the temple considered a ‘must see’ by the guide book. I think Toby was still sick of temples from our trip to Japan several years ago so we didn’t see any more than that. While we were there we were asked by a newspaper journalist to stand with one of the temple men and discuss the temple with him while they took photos. He told us about the Chinese population of Penang and when the temple was built. He asked us what we thought of it – I thought it was absolutely stunning but Toby said, ‘Well we’ve been to Japan so we’ve seen some pretty amazing temples...this one’s pretty good though.’ We never got a chance to see if we made it into the paper. We went to the movies on their cheap Tuesday and paid the equivalent of $2 each to watch ‘Wanted’ and also went to Pizza Hut for a meal, just because we could. They had signs in the window looking for staff, with an hourly rate of about 4 ringgits – less than the price of a pizza. Pretty depressing. A couple of other times we ate from the hawker stalls set up outside our hotel - fantastic food and very convenient to just run outside and grab some food.

On our last night in Penang we decided to try the food court near our hotel, which was a great experience. You ordered your food from a stall and they would bring it to your table; there were also waiters to take drink orders, although I’m fairly sure a few of them were also drug dealers. It was hot (of course) so we both ordered iced tea. The guy asked if we wanted sugar or milk, which we thought was strange, so we said no but when it came we realised why he thought we were the strange ones. It really was just cold tea. It was really horrible so we ended up getting beer instead. There was a guy playing muzak on his electric keyboard and families having dinner and all in all it was a great atmosphere. After dinner we walked up to a street with lots of clubs and went to one that had a band from the Phillipines playing. I remembered the cover band at our hotel was also from the Phillipines. I don’t know what that’s about. Anyway we got some drinks and sat in the corner and listened to them play old school music like UB40 and Ace of Base, and tried to be supportive because the rest of the audience was doing that ignoring thing.

We had decided to take advantage of the fact that our hotel had a concierge and asked him to book us ferry tickets to Langkawi. When we’d come back later in the day he had been very apologetic and had said that because it was school holidays the ferry for the day we wanted to go was completely booked up. We could go three days later instead. We told him not to worry about it and decided to check the website ourselves. Which is how we discovered the ferry wasn’t booked out at all. So we booked online instead. A few minutes after we’d done that we got a phone call saying he had a few other hotel guests wanting to go to Langkawi the same day so he might be able to charter us a private boat. Toby said thanks but we’ve already got our tickets online. He didn’t believe us, but anyway. The other issue we had with Langkawi was that while in KL we’d booked a hotel online through their own website, and had put a credit card number in as security. We’d been told we would get a confirmation email within 24 hours, but it never arrived. Several emails and days later, we were still without confirmation. We were getting a bit worried about it so I rang the hotel the day before and was told they had no record of our booking. So we sent another email to the website – which was a third party agent – and copied the hotel in, saying that as we had no booking confirmation and the hotel had no record we were cancelling our non-existent stay, and please don’t charge our credit card. We decided to treat ourselves to the Sheraton resort, partly because it was the cheapest option with wi-fi and a gym. As a post script to this, the money did come off the credit card but after a couple of emails threatening to involve Visa's fraud department it was put back on, with no apology or explanation. The joys of internet booking.

The ferry to Langkawi left early in the morning and I was very frustrated when we got there to discover that our computer print-out wasn’t enough – we had to pick up actual tickets from the office. I was certain the office was too far away and we were never going to make it, but I was being a total early morning drama queen and we had plenty of time. I don’t know why the website didn’t make it clear that you had to get physical tickets – we could have done it the day before and saved some time. In any case we gave our big backpacks to the blokes putting them into the ferry and went in to a very small area that I was sure was a total OH & S issue and we were on the Malaysian version of the Titanic. It was getting very crowded and in the end the guy next to us said he would go downstairs and see what was down there; he came back a few minutes later to tell us there were another 100 seats with no one in them. Great. So we went downstairs and got window seats and then had to wait ages while the ferry continued to fill up with Muslim families on holidays. I only mention the fact they were Muslim because I was fascinated by the idea that a resort island famous for its beaches and tax-free booze was so popular with Muslim people, who don’t drink alcohol and have half their population wearing non-beach-friendly clothes. The ferry trip wasn’t very exciting – mostly just water – but I did get excited when we started passing all the lush islands. I’d never been anywhere so postcard-worthy and I couldn’t wait for our beach time.

South East Asia Leg 1: Singapore

2008-10-27T08:24:00.003Z

Neither of us particularly wanted to go to Singapore, but when we’d re-booked our flights back home Singapore Airlines ended up being the best choice. We had two weeks between flights; the plan was to spend a bit of time in Singapore but mostly to explore Malaysia a bit further than we had before. In particular, one of the criteria for this little hiatus was to spend Toby’s birthday on a beach somewhere hot. We were going to be arriving back to a Canberra winter and we really wanted to get some quality summer time in before we did. The criteria for hotels included wireless internet so Toby could survive, and gyms so that we could start getting back in shape. Toby had an oz tag game the week we got back and he didn’t want to humiliate himself. So before we left Oxford we booked hotels in Singapore and KL that met those criteria. We weren’t 100% sure what we would do after that, but reasoned we would figure it out as we went along.

The hotel in Singapore was disappointing at first glance; it was part of a big building that included a very ordinary shopping mall and the large lobby hadn’t been redecorated since brass fittings and smoked glass were all the rage. Luckily the rooms had been refurbished since then and it was much nicer than initial impressions would have had us believe. My main memory of Singapore is of resting. We enjoyed the hotel room, and the gym even though it wasn’t very good. We didn’t do any of the touristy things the guidebook told us to, although we did go for a nice (and sweaty) wander through Chinatown and some of the markets. We went to the train station to book tickets to go to KL and ate some really tasty food. We also had a good giggle at all the posters in the subway for the moral police, and the video in the trains that was basically an instruction video on how to bomb the subway system. Of course we had a walk down Orchard Road to ogle at all the amazing shops and wish we had more money. And I think that’s about it.

Our train was at 7.40 am, an early start for us but we didn’t want to arrive in KL at night time. Unfortunately we woke up at 7.20 am. There wasn’t much point worrying about it by then although we have never done anything like that before. I remember thinking my sister Ali would be proud of me. So we ended up on the 2.30pm train instead, which made for a more relaxing morning and anyway we were due to arrive in KL around 8pm I think so not too late. I was really tired when we got on the train in Singapore and I promptly fell asleep, only to be woken up half an hour or so later when we were crossing the border and had to get off the train for a passport check. Wow, I wish I’d read that website more closely so I knew that was going to happen. It was a little disconcerting to leave all our belongings on the train while we got off and went into the office to show them our passports; you could hear the guards taking the sniffer dogs through all the carriages and I must admit to being a little nervous that as two of the only westerners on the train we would become unsuspecting drug mules. (We didn’t.) I was also trying to watch what they did with our passports; I’d read stories of people not getting stamps on the border and then running into problems when they tried to leave again. It seemed ok and then we all had to wait some more while they finished with the train. I went to the loo while we waited and the reason I mention that is there was a poster in there that explained to people how to use the new-fangled Western toilets and keep them clean. In particular, don’t squat on them. I looked in amazement at the cartoon drawing of a lady squatting on the toilet but when I mentioned it to Toby he said, “Oh that explains why so many toilet seats are cracked here.” Can’t say I had noticed that myself but I suppose it makes sense. Most places we went to had both kinds, which we’d gotten used to in Japan and again in Turkey. I don’t mind squat toilets as they do feel quite hygienic; the only thing I don’t like is that the floor tends to get muddy and I have a hard time trying to stop the cuffs of my pants getting wet.

Anyway. We were back on the train after that and I slept some more. The train was pretty boring although we did go through some more interesting scenery a few times. There wasn’t really anything to eat either; lukewarm noodles already packed into takeaway containers, a few packets of Twisties and some chocolate bars. An Indian man struck up conversation with us for a while; he had a business running pilgrimages around a lake or mountain (I can’t remember) somewhere (maybe China?) and had obviously taken this trip a lot. At some point when it seemed like we were running behind schedule, he informed the whole carriage that we would be in KL around 11pm. Maybe.

The Epic Ride Part VIII: England (again)

2008-10-12T06:27:00.004+01:00

We rode from Newhaven across the coast a little way to Brighton where we decided to just head into town and hope we saw a sign leading us somewhere useful. We began following signs to the tourist office but when we got to a roundabout right near the water there was a camping sign so we followed that instead. The road up to the campsite was right along the water; ocean on one side, beautiful terrace homes and hotels along the other. Then we headed inland through some suburban streets and through a large parkland to the campsite. It was a massive campsite and a bit expensive but we paid our money to a lady at the front desk who looked like she had some major sunburn and then headed up towards the back where the tent sites were. First we went to the top terrace, but once we got up there all we could do was laugh; the lovely green grass unfortunately covered a slope so steep we were certain we’d wake up in the morning at the bottom of the hill. It was empty, not surprisingly. The next terrace had quite a few tents already and not much shade, but it looked better than the bottom terrace which didn’t even have any views. So we set up the tent as far away from others as we could and then decided we would walk into town since it was too warm to wear our riding gear.

The walk was probably longer than we anticipated but once we were onto the esplanade along the water it was very pretty. We walked along the beach a little but those English pebbles make for rather awkward walking so we used the footpath most of the time. We walked all the way to the famous Brighton pier, which was essentially a collection of fast food outlets and souvenir shops although there was also a couple of pubs and what I think was called the Fun Palace – basically somewhere that sucks your money up. We had a go on some pokies and try-to-catch-the-teddy-bear-with-the-claw but didn’t win anything. I was determined to have some proper English fish and chips but a lot of the places were already shut so we shared some Chinese noodles instead and then went back along the pier and ate some awful cheap fish and chips by the water. Not quite the experience I had imagined, even though the pier was a lot of fun. On the way back to the campsite we stopped at a Lidl to buy some supplies and then got back to our tent to find that we had been even more blocked in by three girls in a massive tent who stayed up half the night playing their iPod loudly and sharing philosophies like ‘once you go black you never go back’ with the rest of the site. Lovely. Brighton is party central so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. In fact I’d love to go back one day, not camping, with a proper outfit, and visit some of its famous clubs and do some Fatboy Slim spotting. It looked like there were some nice bars to explore.

In the morning we headed for Oxford, arriving in time for lunch and then Toby spent the afternoon cleaning the bike which was looking a little the worse for wear after so many weeks on the road. The plan was to spend the next few days recuperating at Margaret’s house, and also to sell the bike. We hadn’t managed to advertise it privately while we were away so it was up to the dealerships. Luckily there was a motorbike show room just down the road from Margaret’s, where Toby headed first thing the next morning. Unfortunately he was back within five minutes as the owner only wanted to stock Italian and Japanese bikes. We were on a BMW. I didn’t really understand the mentality behind that, but we put it past us and started hunting down other dealerships in the area. To make a long, frustrating and rather sad story short, we failed to sell the bike. No one wanted it (too big, too German) or if they did want it, they weren’t willing to pay what it was worth. In the end Toby decided to just sell it at a massive loss and then we discovered that we didn't have the correct paperwork. Of course we'd never realised this since we didn't know what paperwork we needed. A couple of phone calls later and there was no way we could get the forms in time, so we couldn't sell it at all. It was a very disappointing turn of events as the money for the bike was supposed to pay for the next leg of our trip. In the end, Margaret very generously agreed to loan out part of her garage and there the bike sits, awaiting the next adventure.

We had to organise another load for DHL to ship back to Australia, with the bike and camping gear we weren’t willing to throw out, and stock up on items for our trip to Singapore and Malaysia. And most of all, we had to rest. The bike dramas meant our stay in Oxford wasn’t as relaxing as it should have been, but there wasn’t much we could do about it so in the end we were on the bus to London, backpacks in tow. Toby decided to treat us to the same fancy hotel he’d stayed in in January, on his solo weekend away, so it was a surprise to me to see just how fancy it was. It really was lovely and in a nice spot near the university and library. We probably should have done some sightseeing, but we were still recovering from our camping adventure and so spent most of the next two days enjoying our nice hotel room. Toby’s friends Rob and Kim made the trip down to Edinburgh to say goodbye so they spent Saturday night out and about while I caught up with my friend Elle (who I’d gone to high school with and later met up with in Edinburgh) and some friends of hers, involving some yummy Thai food and drinks at a pub afterwards. They all carried on to a club but I was conscious of wanting to get the last tube back to the hotel so I left around midnight and managed to get a cab from the tube station since the one near our hotel was shut that weekend – a very frustrating thing as one of the reasons Toby liked the hotel was how close it was to the tube. The next morning we met up with Rob and Kim again to have brunch before they got the train back up north, and we did some shopping since I was determined to get the Lonely Planet for Singapore and Malaysia, as well as some other books to read. It was a pleasant few days and it was especially nice that we were able to spend some time with people who had made our time in Edinburgh that much better.

On the Monday, our tube station was open again – yay – especially as it was on the line that went right out to Heathrow. It was a long trip but when you are carrying those big backpacks the main thing is that you don’t have to carry them too far. Checking in was fairly uneventful and I don’t recall that we had to wait a very long time to get on the plane. And then we were on our way home, but with another fantastic 2 weeks to go.

The Epic Ride Part VII: France (again)

2008-10-07T08:38:00.003+01:00

The next morning we left Freiburg and headed for Colmar, across the border in France. We decided to take the advice of the brochure from the tourist office, and instead of going the quick, obvious way we used a lot of nice windy secondary roads with fantastic views. The result of course was that it took us forever to get to France, even though we hadn’t covered much distance; it was worth it though to really appreciate the beautiful corner of the world in which we’d found ourselves. I remember very heavy traffic again and spending a fair bit of time stuck on a road outside an outdoor furniture shop; we started looking at all the nice tables and chairs and marquees and thinking soon we would be home with our house and able to have outdoor furniture again. Quite an odd thought after spending so much time standing up for all our meals. We spent the night in a lovely village called Ribeauville in the Alsace wine region, which of course we hadn’t known existed thanks to our awesome map. It was a large campsite where we managed to find a decent spot, even if we were overlooked by a building site. The most unusual thing about the site was the storks wandering around, I guess hoping for food from the exceedingly organised Dutch and German campervanners. The owners were lovely people who spoke perfect English; they had two kids who would run into the office at random intervals for hugs and little whispers in French. After we were set up, we walked into town in search of dinner, but unfortunately being a small town the supermarket and other shops were shut. We couldn’t really afford a restaurant; luckily there was a van in a carpark selling pizza! It looked like they were in a different town every night of the week – fantastic business idea in this part of the world. So we joined the queue and had pizzas for dinner sitting by our tent. Just lovely. The town was lovely too, with all the old French buildings and courtyards, but strangely enough it did have a rather unfriendly vibe. Strange characters hanging out in the public parks, hoons screaming around the little streets in their cars, and so on. Such a shame.

We were now on the home stretch towards our ferry in Dieppe, so the next day we left Ribeauville and headed towards the north coast, via some really lovely countryside through Alsace, only slightly wishing we had time for a winery tour. Neither of us can really remember where we got to; only that it was a long ride and the campsite at the end was remarkably lovely. We were almost the only ones there (except for an older German couple who played a sweet game of badminton outside their campervan before heading off for dinner) and enjoyed having the space to ourselves. It wasn’t as manicured as other sites; we actually had to move the tent to get it away from the bush and all the bugs. There was a big open space up the hill where we could chuck a Frisbee around (the same Frisbee we’d found on the Isle of Skye) and generally enjoy ourselves. There was an Aldi not far away so we could buy some dinner and other things; we ate sitting on the wall by the bush. It was a really nice place to spend the night (except for all the bugs).

The next day was the longest ride we’d had as we tried to get as close to Dieppe as we could. We got to Amiens and tried to find a non-existent tourist office; after that we tried to follow signs to a camping site which seemed to be taking us round and round in circles. We drove to nearby villages in search of camping sites that might be easier to find, to no avail. It was all getting very stressful and frustrating, well past 7pm at this point and we were certain we’d end up in an overpriced hotel. Somehow though we managed to find the campsite which was on the complete opposite side of town to where we’d started; I can’t remember if we ended up using the GPS or what. The campsite was very crowded (I think there was a big car race on at the time, as well as a ‘caravan club’ that had taken up lots of room) but there was an on-site takeaway AND a washing machine, so all was well. The office was closed and the manager was running the takeaway and the bar, so he was a little rushed and cranky with us for wanting to check in AND order dinner at such a late hour but we managed okay and even got some clean clothes. So the not-very-fun day ended on a reasonable note.

The next morning it was time to head for the coast, where we were hoping to spend our final few days in France enjoying some warm weather and relaxing rather than riding too far. We made it to St Valery which was a very picturesque seaside village overtaken by other riders and what looked to be a massive number of English tourists. The tourist office was closed for lunch so we spent some time walking along the waterfront and through the cobbled streets before joining the throngs in the office. Unfortunately there was no accommodation information to be had, but there was a tiny internet port where we sent off a couple of quick emails and lots of brochures about the area we were in, which is how we’d discovered we had spent the past few days travelling through the battlefields of the Somme without realising it. There was even a special brochure about Australians in the Somme and all the memorials and villages you could visit that had special significance for Australians. We were kicking ourselves at that point, having spent the past couple of days just roaring through the flat countryside when we could have taken our time and done some interesting exploring. This is why it pays to do your research beforehand. For future reference, if we were to do this ride again I believe we would have headed east from the ferry to St Valery, spent the night on the coast, picked up some information on the Somme, and then headed south. I think this would be a better use of time. But that is the joy of hindsight.
Since it didn’t look like there was much camping around St Valery we got back on the road and headed along the coast to le Treport, a larger town where we found a campsite almost immediately. Unfortunately it wasn’t a very nice campsite; our tent overlooked a carpark and apartment building. A far cry from the night we’d spent in the bush with only bugs and the Danish badminton players for company. The bathrooms were also strange; there was a door for men and a door for women but they both seemed to end up in the same area, with showers for women and none for men, and shared toilets. There was another door for men which led into a games room. We decided to only stay one night, and push further along the coast towards Dieppe the next day so we would be closer to the ferry.

Once we had the tent set up we wandered into town where there appeared to be a Sunday market set up along the esplanade. This was a great way to kill a few hours, eat some crepes, and generally enjoy the sea air. The beach wasn’t very pleasant; stereotypically Normandie with the rough white pebbles and grey-green water. The best thing we saw was a really cute family of ducks; on our way up to the market we saw them swimming in the harbour, with a small group of onlookers oohing and aahing at them. On the way home we saw them again, with the fluffy ducklings nestled into the reeds on the shore and the mum and dad ducks keeping an eye out for them. There were lots of places we could have had some dinner outside looking at the water, and there was a band starting up too but in the end we bought some groceries at a little supermarket on the way back up and ate our picnic dinner back at the tent.

The next day we drove along the coast to Dieppe and this time we went right into the town centre and parked in the shadow of a gigantic church. It was a prettier town than we had realised, coming into it as we did from the ferry port four weeks earlier. We went to the tourist office where we managed to catch them five minutes before their lunch break; the lady at the desk gave me a brochure of local accommodation and circled the nearby campsites for me. Hmmm, what a useful service. Perhaps they could offer this on the ferry on the way over, for those of us who haven’t managed to do any research? In any case we decided to head towards a campsite called Vitamin, because it sounded funny, and was pretty close to Dieppe without being too much in town. It was a quick drive from the town centre into the next village and was just off the highway. It was a nice campsite, with a friendly lady in the office, a pool, a playground, and an Aldi just down the road.

We got the tent set up and some groceries from Aldi, and then spent the afternoon lazing around the campsite. We had one full day left before we needed to get the ferry, so we did the same thing the next day as well. We swam in the pool, threw the Frisbee, and generally enjoyed the sunny weather while we could. And then it was time to leave, so we left our final French campsite and headed to the boat about lunchtime on the second day. This time we were more prepared and took food and ginger tablets for sea sickness; I also remembered to buy a paper in the shop before we boarded. We were old hands by this point. It was mid afternoon when we rode off the boat into Newhaven, only slightly worried about having to go back to riding on the left. We stopped at passport control where I had to remove my helmet even though Toby didn’t, and the lady annoyed me by asking lots of questions about my plans. I guess I was just tired and cranky. But our next stop was Brighton, home of Fatboy Slim and the famous pier, so the crankiness didn’t last much longer.

The Epic Ride Part VI: Germany

2008-09-20T09:25:00.003+01:00

We entered Germany halfway through a tunnel that cut through a mountain; all of a sudden there was a sign on the wall with the EU symbol and a D underneath, and we were there. The Romantische Strasse begins not far from the border, just outside a town called Fussen, at the Neuschwanstein Castle. The Castle is better known as the Disney castle because it’s what Disney based their castle on. It was incredibly busy, being a beautiful Saturday afternoon but we managed to follow the signs and then get a park in a gigantic carpark. Toby changed his boots so he’d be more comfortable walking around and then we sat at an overpriced restaurant and ordered some lunch which we ate in the sun. At the table next to us was a young Australian woman with a baby and some Muslim women who I think were her sisters in law and perhaps a mother in law; she said hello to us later as she had recognised our accents. I noticed her particularly because her husband was on the outing but did not join the females at the table; he did however manage to get into some kind of altercation with an American man outside the restaurant later. A strange set of events.

After lunch we went to figure out how we could get up the hill to visit the castle; once we found the visitor’s centre we realised we were up for a fairly hefty entrance fee so instead we decided to just take the shuttle bus up the hill to get a closer look. We got a very crowded bus up the very steep, windy hill with me reminding myself that the driver did this all day and I was perfectly safe. I was really glad we went up though; the castles were very impressive and the views from the bridge were really magnificent. There was a rather strange story about how the castle was built by a Bavarian prince who decided he wanted a castle based on those from the Middle Ages, so he demolished the existing castle which was from the Middle Ages and built a prettier one. Such a modern outlook from the prince. It was a pretty cool excursion.

We got the bus down the hill and stopped for some ice cream which we ate in the rain (for a change). Then back to the bike and we tried to figure out how to get onto the Romantische Strasse. I had seen a sign just before the carpark that implied we were already on it so we decided to keep following the road and luckily we spotted another such sign. We took a wrong turn at one point and ended up in a random carpark but we were soon back on the Strasse which wound its way through fairly flat countryside, with the occasional mosey into a more interesting area. All in all, the Romantische Strasse was a major disappointment for us. We could have stopped at the tourist information area at the castle and picked up a guide, but instead we decided to just follow the signs, which was our mistake. The idea of the Strasse is that it links interesting historical sights, not that it actually contains the sights. This was our mistake. We did go through some pretty towns but in general we were not impressed. We spent the first night camping in a reasonable enough site with a pretty lake, where I had a cold shower and therefore was quite miserable.

The next day was wet of course, and in the afternoon we were having problems finding anywhere to camp so decided to choose the next zimmer frei we came across. It happened to be a little pub in a tiny village; it didn’t look particularly welcoming or even open, but we were wet and tired and not sure how much further we had to go before we'd find something better. So we stopped and went past a group of people drinking on the verandah and asked a man inside for a zimmer frei. He took us past the pub and up a set of stairs where we immediately felt as though we were in someone’s home. Someone’s home that hadn’t been cleaned in a long, long time. There was general stuff everywhere, like buckets and brooms and jackets. It looked like they were moving house. He showed us to a big room at the front that had a shower and sink in the corner (note I didn’t say ensuite) and one of those big old black leather beds from the 1980s with a digital clock radio actually built in. There was a second smaller room at the end with twin beds. We looked at each other, trying not to laugh or grimace, and asked how much. I believe it was 40 euros including breakfast, so we said ok and went downstairs to get our stuff. I don’t know who the man who showed us the room was; the rest of the time we ended up dealing with the owner, an older man who had no English at all. They were kind enough to open up their garage so we could keep the bike out of the rain. Once we had all our things upstairs I decided to use the toilet before we went out again; I went outside the room and asked an old lady sweeping in the hallway where the WC was and she pointed at a door in the corner. Well if the rest of the place felt like someone’s home, the toilet was no different. It seemed to be toilet and laundry in one and I have no idea how long it had been since someone cleaned it. I was slightly nervous about catching a disease; none of the campsites we’d visited had been anywhere near so filthy.

We went for a walk around the village, which consisted of a few houses and a church on the hill where I think we interrupted the ending of a fete of some kind. There was nowhere to buy food so we decided to eat at the zimmer frei, where we had gigantic schnitzels and beers for 16 euros or so. It was all cooked by an old lady (different to the sweeper) who I assumed was the owner’s wife; the owner liked to serve us our meals and make sure everything was ok. The group of people stayed outside drinking but I don’t think they ever ate. I sent mum a message saying we were staying in a really filthy pub but otherwise were okay; I think I was almost afraid we’d go missing and was thinking it would be good if someone knew roughly where we were. On the other hand, we’d been so lucky with our accommodation and figured we should push our comfort levels a bit so it was an adventure in that sense. And really, from what we could tell with our rudimentary German and their English, the owners really were nice people, missing teeth notwithstanding. In the morning as we were riding out of the carpark the man came running out of the front door, camera in hand, and got us to wave for his photo. ‘Bye bye,’ he kept calling to us, waving. It was kind of sweet. I’d love to go back one day and see if we made it onto the wall of the pub, where I’d assumed the photos of guests were some kind of celebrities.

We got as far north as Wurzburg the next day and went straight to the tourist information office at the train station to find accommodation. I say ‘straight’ when in actual fact it involved the GPS and going round and round in circles, complete with yelling at each other through helmets to discuss directions. Yes, things were still stressful. The tourist office was really just a window with all the accommodation listed but it did the job and we put the addresses into the GPS to try and find one of the campsites. There was a bunch of kids who looked old enough to know better drinking and carrying on just outside the train station so we weren’t that keen on staying around much longer. We managed to find our first choice of campsite easily enough; it was quite a pretty spot next to the river and far enough from the city that there wasn’t too much traffic. Inside the office was a bunch of pamphlets including several for the Romantische Strasse, showing the route and where to get off and where to stay. Wow, that would have been helpful three days ago. Wurzburg was actually the last stop; we’d managed to do the entire Romantische Strasse without seeing anything.

We got set up for the night and Toby went for a walk along the river while I put some music on and tried to read my book while we calmed down from our stressful afternoon. For dinner we went to the on-site restaurant and ordered pizza and beer. We were soon overrun by everyone else at the site who were there to watch the Germany vs Austria game in the Euro Cup. That was a fun night with emotions running high throughout the restaurant. We were trying to do our laundry at the same time so at one point I went outside to check on it; someone had pulled all our clothes out and left them on top of the dryer while they used it. I was so cranky especially as they were still so damp. We got it back eventually and once we’d had enough of the soccer we decided to play some table tennis in the shed with the laundry so we could make sure no one else interrupted our very important washing.

In the morning we decided to re-think our route. We’d exhausted the Romantische Strasse and weren’t sure we wanted to continue much further north since Toby was quite keen to have some more time in the south of France. On the other hand, we needed to get north eventually. We eventually decided we wanted some more mountain riding and decided to head south for Switzerland; Toby was quite keen for a ride on an autobahn so we were going to use the motorways instead of the secondary routes we’d been on so far.

The autobahn was fantastic, terrifying fun; I got off the bike feeling as though my skin had rearranged itself over my face. The incredible thing was how fast people were going; we were going fast enough but there were still quite a few people in their Porsches who were easily overtaking us. It wasn’t the easiest way to travel as it was never really clear when it changed from speed limit to no speed limit; it was a bit nerve-racking but we were both glad we’d made the effort to find one. I think Toby was keen to leave me by the side of the road for a while so he could really let loose, but that was never really a practical option. And I would have been really mad.

We stopped for petrol and it turned out we’d both been thinking how silly it was that we were heading for Switzerland when really we needed to be moving north. What a waste of time and petrol, we said to each other. Never mind. We got back on the road and stayed in the same direction; when we stopped next for lunch we decided it really was a stupid thing to be doing, so after we’d eaten we turned back and decided to head for Freiburg since it was near the border of Germany and France and looked big enough.

And all of a sudden, Germany started looking more interesting. The ride into Freiburg was stunning, through forested mountains and along lots of nice windy roads. We had a small drama when we first arrived by somehow ending up in a pay parking lot; I forget why but this was absolutely not what we wanted and we ended up leaving very quickly without paying by riding through the space between the barrier and the wall. I should say we tried to pay, but because we’d been there for such a short period of time, the machine wouldn’t accept our ticket and nor would the barrier machine. And hoping their security cameras were busy looking at other things as we did so. Finally we managed to park near the tourist information office, which was in the pretty town centre, and this is when we discovered that Freiburg was in the middle of the Black Forest. No wonder it was so magnificent. We decided we wanted a hotel for the night and managed to book a place through the office; when they found out we were on a bike they even gave us a special tour map showing suggested routes for motorbikes.

The hotel was a short ride out of the town centre, just off a fairly major road. It was actually an old pub/restaurant that had been done up, with rooms upstairs. We’d specifically wanted wi-fi and this hotel was the only one that offered it and wasn’t charging a fortune. Unfortunately you get what you pay for, so we didn’t manage to get wi-fi the whole time we were there. (Toby of course knew how to fix it but the guy at the desk was entirely uninterested in the fact that an advertised service was unavailable, so we didn’t offer.) The room was quite nice and overlooked the ‘beer garden’ and a church. There was a TV and a big bed and as Toby wasn’t feeling well, we decided we would stay two nights. Freiburg looked like a nice place to explore and we were ready for a bike-free day.

I left Toby to rest and went for a walk up the road to find some food; luckily I found an Aldi and could stock up on items for a picnic dinner in our room. I remember making cheese and ham sandwiches on greasy bread and passing them across the bed for Toby to eat. German TV had a lot more English available so I think we watched a movie that night as well, and generally took it easy. In the morning we arranged to stay an extra night and then walked into town for an explore. Freiburg was a lovely place, with lots of tanned Germans riding around on their bikes, pretty buildings and public spaces. It’s a university town and did have that young, buzzy vibe about it. We did a bit of shopping and ate yummy sandwiches sitting on the window sill of a public square, people watching.

After lunch we decided to visit the Augustiner museum; unfortunately it was going through some renovations and we didn’t get to see much; we also annoyed the security guard by not understand where to go. But they had some really interesting and beautiful religious paintings and other items so it was a worthwhile detour. We made our way back to the hotel for a rest and then for dinner we ate in the beer garden of the hotel; it was a lovely warm evening and lots of people had the same idea as us, to eat and drink in the sunshine. We tried our best to translate and order from the all-German menu but the waitress had to step in using English at a point when I tried to order some pasta and what I thought was a salad. It wasn’t a salad; I’ve no idea what it was but I got the impression I was ordering two main meals. My pasta was a traditional German noodles in white sauce with cheese on top and grilled; absolutely delicious and very, very decadent. It was the only vegetarian item I could figure out on the menu but it was definite comfort food. We ended up getting a salad with the meal anyway so no wonder the waitress thought I was a bit greedy. Most of the people around us looked like workmates at after work drinks but there were a few people nearby who didn’t fit into that stereotype. When they were leaving, one of them decided to put on a show and started yelling at everybody as he left; it was like being in civic again. We asked the waitress what he was yelling about and she said she couldn’t understand him. I don’t know if that’s true but it was kind of nice to see that crazy is a universal.

The Epic Ride Part V: Austria

2008-09-06T06:25:00.002+01:00

On our way from Verona we had one last stop at an Italian motorway restaurant – complete with fantastic mountain views – and then it started cooling down, quite a bit. We decided to follow the signs to Innsbruck (thanks to the brochure) and by the time we got there it was absolutely pouring with rain. Luckily we found a tourist information office before we hit town – this had also happened in Inverness, Scotland, and it’s the best design ever. More towns should put their tourist office on the outskirts. There was a very helpful guy in the office who cheerfully told us the European Cup was on, it was in Vienna but there were games in Innsbruck so ‘everything’ was full. We could go to campsite X, he said, but we probably didn’t want to as he’d just sent all the Swiss supporters there and it would be full of hooligans. We could go to campsite Y but it’s quite small and yes, it’s still pouring rain. He made a call to a small hotel in town that had had a vacancy in the morning, and luckily it was still available so we booked it on the spot. Then he started showing us the map of the town and talking about all the things we could do. He was obviously very proud of Innsbruck and was certainly one of the most helpful people we came across. Of course, by the time we finally left the office the sun was out. Never mind we thought, a campsite full of hooligans doesn’t sound like our cup of tea anyway.

We did have some false starts but we found the hotel eventually, tucked into a tiny side street not far from the town centre. Innsbruck was a really lovely place, with mountains all over and some very pretty buildings. Once we were settled in our huge room with the two beds and 1970s bathroom full of smoked glass we went for a walk into town where things were quite busy. Austria was playing Germany that night so everyone was out and all the restaurants had TVs set up in the squares; there were also big TV screens at different points where we would have been happy to sit with a good Bavarian sausage and beer, but that didn’t really look possible. Once we’d had a good walk around we chose a very touristy place for dinner where we had an excellent spot for people-watching; I had the ‘dumpling’ plate which was exactly that – a collection of dumplings and sauces – and Toby had a decent enough schnitzel. Oh, and giant beers of course. It was a good night with the party atmosphere in town and all.

In the morning we had breakfast included so we ate a giant meal in a nice room full of footy fans. I do love those German style breakfasts, what with all that bread and cheese. We decided that instead of looking around Innsbruck much more we would visit Crystal Worlds which the guy in the office had told us about; essentially Swarovski’s gallery. Apparently it was the second most visited place in Austria. So off we went; of course it wasn’t as easy to find as we thought but once we got the GPS working it was fine. Crystal Worlds was out in a little village near Innsbruck, next to the Swarovski headquarters and surrounded by great mountain views. Great place to work. We didn’t really know what to expect and the entry fee was quite high but once we were in, we didn’t regret going at all. It was absolutely incredible, especially the first two galleries. Swarovski had basically commissioned a whole bunch of different artists to do things with crystals. The second gallery was like standing in a giant kaleidoscope; it was a really strange feeling. We had to keep moving quite quickly as the Austrian army was having an excursion and there were lots of young bald men in heavy boots tramping around. (I am still not sure why the army has excursions but I guess if anyone needs to learn to appreciate beauty and other abstract concepts, it’s probably defence personnel.) Toby overheard some silly American girls talking about how boring it all was and how they couldn’t believe they paid for it; I couldn’t believe someone would find something like that boring. They were probably not looking hard enough. After the galleries you got to look through the shop (of course) where I was tempted by many items but managed to resist. We ate in the restaurant too but like most gallery food it was too little for a lot of money.

After Crystal Worlds we had a choice between heading for Salzburg or the Alps; although I fully intend to visit Salzburg primarily to do the Sound of Music tour one day, it was in the opposite direction to where we wanted to end up and I didn’t feel like this was the trip to do it. So off to the Alps we went. We found a campsite in a cute little village nestled beneath an absolutely huge snow-capped mountain. We set up the tent next to a little creek and then on my way to the bathroom I ran into a man who started talking to me in what I think was German. I acted all confused and asked if he spoke English, which he did, and he asked me if we were the ones on the bike. I said we were and we chatted a bit about the Alps and what we were doing on our trip; he and his wife were there for three weeks from Belgium on a walking holiday. He had a very cute little dog with him too.

The man hung around us a fair bit over the next little while; he was very helpful in pointing out where we could find a supermarket (even though it still took us a long time to walk to the next little village) and chatting about where to explore next. We couldn’t quite figure out why he was spending so much time with us; he was a fair bit older and although he seemed to enjoy practising his English it was still a bit odd. Finally he asked Toby if he could see the bike, and it suddenly all made sense. He was a biker too! Toby took the cover off the bike and they went over it together and made various grunting noises at each other. It was nice to see that language is no barrier to secret men’s business.

We had a rather chilly night in our tent since we were not really prepared for camping in the Alps; we needed at least as much clothes as we had on Skye and a little more. Thank goodness for hot showers and cuddles. In the morning we said goodbye to our new friend and his dog, wished him luck for the rest of his walks, and headed off in search of the Romantische Strasse which was one of our main goals for the trip. We had been looking forward to the Fern Pass as it was meant to be a good ride (so the Belgian had told us) and although the scenery was magnificent, the traffic was very heavy so Toby couldn’t really get into the corners the way he likes to. But looking down into lush green valleys with perfectly blue lakes nestled in the floor was absolutely fantastic.

The Epic Ride Part IV: Italy

2008-08-25T12:02:00.007+01:00

We were feeling very disgruntled as we passed beneath the tin roof that served as a border point between France and Italy. The traffic was incredibly slow and there were still no campsites to be found. We were cursing ourselves for not having stopped at the 4-star campsite near Nice, but being in France we hadn’t anticipated such a long wait between sites. Finally we saw a sign for camping and turned off, not much caring what the site ended up like. And luckily we didn’t care. A very friendly young Italian bloke took us on a tour; the site was basically just the slope down from the main road, divided into terraces. There was no grass, and only a couple of metres between fences where you were supposed to set up a tent, so anyone walking by would be passing very close. The bathrooms were just stalls out in the open, and you had to pay for a hot shower. We got to choose between one strip of dirt where two tents were already set up, or a slightly larger patch of dirt where a whole family had a little tent city going on. We chose the smaller strip and asked how much for the night; imagine our shock after French prices when he said it would be 20 euros! We decided we didn’t have much choice at that point and agreed. So we set up our tent in the dirt (lucky it was still muddy from our night in Apt) and then headed out in search of food, and the beach. Despite our difficult afternoon, I was still hoping for a nice relaxing beer and maybe some food, overlooking the Mediterranean. That would make up for the heat and frustration. Unfortunately, at the top of the campsite driveway we turned right instead of left, and ended up walking for half an hour to...nowhere. Along the street, basically. We passed a couple of dodgy-looking coffee bars and that was all. No food, no beach, nothing. Very disheartened, we went back to the campsite and to the supermarket/coffee shop across the road where we bought a road map and some lemonade and got yelled at by the blokes in the shop for some reason, and sat outside feeling a bit sorry for ourselves. Italy was my favourite country on our last trip to Europe and I had been so looking forward to visiting again, but it just wasn’t going as well as one might have hoped. Once we’d fortified ourselves with some lemonade, we bought some dinner items at the supermarket, unfortunately restricted by our lack of Italian skills. There was some lovely looking fresh pasta and sauces behind the deli counter but I didn’t know how to say ‘200 grams’ and didn’t fancy being yelled at again, so we stuck with the packaged stuff. Once we’d dropped our groceries back at the campsite we decided to try one more time to find a beach of some kind.

Luckily we were more successful by turning left at the main road; it was still more difficult than it would be in Australia with those helpful ‘beach’ signs on the street, or France’s ‘les plages’ but we walked down a footpath with brick walls on both sides, past fancy-looking gates to hotels and apartment complexes. Finally we passed through a gateway onto the ‘beach’. It was rocky and pebbly and being fairly late in the evening, grey and windy. But we’d found the water, and something about the sea air was very refreshing so we reluctantly returned to our feral campsite for dinner. Like Apt, they had an area under cover where you could cook and eat but unlike Apt, it was just a shed. Literally, a tin roof shed with a concrete floor, mostly open sides, a couple of dusty tables and broken wooden chairs like you have in primary school. So we cooked our gnocchi in pesto on one of the tables, trying to ignore all the unfriendly Italian campers around and just wanting to get to bed. We discovered you needed to pay for the hot showers, and I discovered I felt very unsafe in the open stall design. (Thank goodness for unisex cubicles so I could take my bodyguard with me, celeb-style.) After we’d finally gone to bed, the family in the terrace down below us decided it was time to have a party, and cranked up the music. They had babies and small children so I didn’t think it would take too long before they retired, but I guess Italian babies are ragers because it felt like the party went forever. Needless to say we were not impressed with Italian camping style. Compared to the quiet, introverted French experience, it was not very pleasant at all. Who builds a campsite next to the Mediterranean with no beach access? Craziness.

The next day we had our breakfast in the shed and then it started to rain. So it took a while for us to get our tent and everything packed up, although we did watch in awe as one girl managed to pull her entire tent into the shed and pack it all up herself in about five minutes. Finally we were ready to hit the road; given our awful experience the day before we decided to just get on the motorway and get to Pisa. We took a wrong turn initially and ended up winding our way up a tiny road to a hilltop village; it was very picturesque with the amazing views across the ocean but also rather nerve-racking with the tight corners and blind spots. Finally we found our way and got onto the motorway with no close calls. But unfortunately the motorway didn’t really prove much faster than the secondary roads; the traffic was still appalling but made easier by the fact that we decided to do as all the other bikers were doing and use the centre line as an extra lane. Due to our bigger size we couldn’t do that all the time but sitting in the sun in full gear breathing in all those car fumes was just unbearable. We passed what seemed like a neverending sprawl of beige housing spread over green hillsides and I was wondering why anyone would ever choose to live near the Mediterranean. It looked horribly crowded and dull, even with that gorgeous blue ocean in the distance. The best thing about the Italian motorway was how removed it was from the rest of the roads, being so high and giving such great views.

The traffic got a little easier in the afternoon and we managed to get all the way to Pisa. We had a disappointing stop in Lucca first, where we failed to find a campsite or a tourist office or even somewhere to park, so in the end we decided to push on to Pisa. We were very lucky and saw a sign to camping very quickly; the campsite was huge and very well-kept. You could probably call it a holiday resort. There were more rules than we were used to, including having to get them our passport, and it was super expensive, but there was also a pool and a pizza restaurant on-site. Once we got the tent set up we went for a little walk into town to try and find the leaning tower. It was less than a kilometre away so it wasn’t difficult to find. Although the walk was slightly marred by so many people trying to sell us stuff, once we got to the square with the tower we were absolutely blown away. Here was the reminder we needed as to why we loved Italy last time, and why we’d taken the effort to get there this time. The tower was breathtaking; it really was leaning. The photos do not do it justice. And even without the tower, the square had other buildings, beautiful, austere, impressive buildings that were enough to see on their own. It really was the perfect antidote to our difficult couple of days in Italy; we were so glad we’d made the time to get off the motorway and see something beautiful.

We tried to go to the supermarket to buy dinner items; we stood in front of the glass doors with a very obvious sign saying it closed at 8pm. It was 7:40pm, and very clearly closed. This was not an isolated experience in Italy but at the time it was very frustrating. So we went back to the campsite and went to the on-site restaurant for pizza and beer. The receptionist had given us a brochure for a campsite company that owned the one we were in; we agreed that due to our unpleasant experience the night before we would stick to this company from now on as much as we could. They were expensive but it certainly beat the concentration camp we’d been in the night before. So over dinner we used the brochure to plan out the rest of our time in Italy, including two nights in Rome and some time on the Adriatic coast. It was an odd feeling to be more in control of our destinations and have an idea of where we wanted to camp, but Italy was proving to be so challenging we decided it was the way to go.

The plan for the next day was a quick trip through Tuscany, finishing up in Rome in time to meet with Toby’s boss Bob and his family for dinner. The weather was terrible, something we’d gotten used to, so although some parts of Tuscany were quite pretty, for the most part we were looking at low grey clouds. The traffic remained fairly heavy, with lots of campervans trundling about, and we also had our closest call when a little while Fiat hooned onto the motorway and immediately tried to overtake without realising we were in the other lane. Luckily being on a bike we had more room to get out of their way than if we’d been in a car; but I still managed a little squeal that reverberated inside my helmet and I did give the guy a rude gesture as we sped away from them. We got to Rome okay but as we started circling the city, we ran into some issues. The camping brochure had instructions for how to find the campsite but the instructions assumed you were coming down the A1 from Florence, which is what we’d intended but failed to do.

So somehow we ended up riding in circles around the centre of Rome. Yes, that was as scary as it sounds. No, I wouldn’t recommend it. Yes, sometimes I thought I was going to die. Yes, it was hot and frustrating and we had no idea where we were going. Then we thought we’d finally cracked it; we’d found the ring road and would soon be on our way. But no; instead we ended up in a sterile factory outlet retail park. Starving. And hot. We’d been ‘in Rome’ for two hours, and were no closer to finding anything. At this point we decided it was time to get out the GPS, so we did that and put the campsite address in; thank goodness we had an idea of where we wanted to camp at least. Otherwise I am sure we would have ended up in a dodgy, expensive Roman hotel.
Finally, thanks to the GPS we found our campsite on the outskirts of Rome by the Tiber river. It was much like the one in Pisa; huge and with lots of facilities. It had a real hostel feel about it with lots of young American college students running around. They also had rock and pop music playing in the bathrooms, and a beer garden and a pool. Oh, and a laundry. When you are touring on a bike, a laundry is a godsend. We decided that as we were spending two nights there and needed a good rest and somewhere safe for our bike gear, we would hire a cabin for the time. It wasn’t a full cabin with a kitchen but it had two proper beds and a little ensuite bathroom which was certainly more comfortable than a tent. Once we were settled we got in touch with Bob and got directions to find where he was staying and then off we set on our journey into Rome. This involved taking a bus from the campsite to the train station, then getting on the train into Rome. Then it was the metro, and then we had to find a bus from the metro. We couldn’t figure out how to buy a bus ticket so Toby rang Bob; he said just get on and he would pay the fine if necessary. Luckily that wasn’t necessary, and we managed to get off the bus at the right stop and only took one wrong turn before Bob found us wandering the streets.
It was a strange thing to see a familiar face in such an unfamiliar place; we had a warm greeting from Bob and then he took us up to his daughter’s apartment where his family had gathered for dinner. They were all very lovely and welcomed us to their night, which started with bubbly and some delicious Italian-style nibbles at the apartment and then moved to a neighbourhood trattoria down the street. Bob’s daughter works for DFAT and she and her husband had been living in Rome several months, although they were being sent home a few weeks later. It was great to have some Italian speakers in the group as they could talk to the waiters for us. We had some lovely wine and perfect, simple pasta. For dessert I shared a tiramisu with Bob’s sister-in-law; it was one of the yummiest things I have ever had. It was such a great night and really refreshing to spend time in a nice restaurant with pleasant people we could actually converse with. Conscious of the fact we had a long drive back to the campsite we left fairly early to get a cab and snuggled into our nice cabin, full and sleepy and looking forward to our day off.

The next day dawned bright and sunny and – shockingly – stayed that way. Our first day without rain. We had breakfast at the little outdoor table setting on the concrete outside our cabin and then got the bus to the train station. Then the train into Rome. This time we decided to walk from the station since it was a part of Rome we hadn’t seen before, although we intended to re-visit a few of our favourite places from the last time. The first exciting thing that happened was we came across a movie set in a piazza; we looked around hoping to see a famous face but unfortunately it was an Italian movie and we didn’t know anyone. We had to wait a bit while they shot a scene of people crossing the street and then we could cross through and find THE MOST AMAZING SHOE SHOP I HAVE EVER SEEN. Words do not do that shop justice. They had lots of signs saying no photos so I have no proof of it, but I did spend a fair bit of time looking in the windows, mouth open. They had a sales rack of shoes for the bargain price of 99 euros and I almost certainly would have bought a pair and shipped them home if I had found some that I liked, and that fit my wide white girl feet. Unfortunately none of them fit the bill so we had to leave it at that.

The rest of the day we spent doing some more window-shopping; visiting the Trevi fountain and Piazza Navona; looking at the Forum from the walkway above and the Colosseum from the outside; eating gelato and listening to street performers. It was a glorious day of sunshine and nice food and we definitely tried to enjoy every minute we were spending not on a bike. We bought some dinner things at the supermarket to take back with us; when we got back to the campsite we put our swimmers on and went to the pool but it was cooling off by then so we just relaxed with our book/DS Lite before cooking. We also took the opportunity to do some laundry even though it was a total rip-off that cost 9 euro. It was worth it to get all of our clothes clean which they hadn’t been since we left Oxford.

In the morning we packed up the bike again and decided to try and find our way without the GPS, since we were so close to the ring road we couldn’t possibly get lost. Ha ha. We were proved wrong but this time, instead of riding in circles for two hours we pulled into a petrol station and got the GPS out to help us get to the highway. Our aim for the day was to reach Pescara on the Adriatic coast, and then move a little further north to find a campsite listed in the brochure. Once we were out of Rome and heading along the highway through Abruzzo, we started falling in love with Italy again. The mountain scenery was spectacular and the traffic was non-existent; we started wondering why anyone would spend weeks campervanning in Tuscany with hundreds of other people when there was this corner of the world just waiting to be explored. I believe this was also the day we discovered the amazing Italian motorway restaurants which were so much better than anything we’d seen before it defied belief. The variety of food was brilliant; it was all so fresh and simple. Bowls of salads and fruit, desserts, steaks they’d cook you on the spot, hot pasta and gnocchi dishes, fresh bread – it was fantastic although we found it strange that also on offer was beer and wine. At this point I was avoiding meat and I never had trouble finding anything to eat at those places. The other interesting thing was watching these burly Italian men tucking into their salads, and their fruit; you would never see that at a rest stop in Australia and it made me realise just how seriously they take their food there.

Our reason for going to Pescara was that back when we were planning our overseas adventure, we had initially thought we might go to Italy for a year. We weren’t sure we could handle Rome but after some research on real estate and jobs we ended up looking more at Pescara. So we wanted to visit and see what we would have been doing, had I not gotten cold feet and declared we needed to go to an English-speaking country instead. Pescara was quite nice; it had a very different feel to other Italian cities we’d been to. It was very flat, and had a chilled, coasty vibe about it. We went for a walk through an outdoor mall to the beach and then strolled along the esplanade, stopping for some gelato (of course) before going back to the bike. We weren’t far away from our campsite but it was late-ish on a Friday afternoon and the traffic on the main road up the coast was horrendous. It took us a long time to get up to Guilianova, but we found our site eventually. At least I think we did; there were three big holiday resorts all in a row and it was difficult figuring out which one we wanted. In the end it probably didn’t matter as they all looked very similar. We pulled in next to the front office (which was really a big house on a hill) and were promptly tucked into a golf buggy and whisked around the corner by a chatty old Italian man. He showed us two different spots and then delivered us back to the front office to book in for the night. It was rather an odd ritual especially as the spots he showed us were so close to where we’d been and we could have easily walked. Anyway we got settled in for the night and then went for a walk to find some food and the beach. The beach was ‘private’ for that resort and covered with sun lounges and umbrellas, which we’d come to expect. The water was nice and warm but we weren’t quite up to swimming at that point so instead we got some dinner things from the on-site supermarket and went back to our tent. I have memories of it beginning to rain at that point, and needing to wait until it eased off before we could venture out and cook our dinner in the dark.

The next morning we were eating our breakfast – standing up by the tent as usual – when a man came over from his campervan nearby and gave us two little folding chairs, and a table. We were quite overwhelmed by his generosity; he said we could ask for them anytime. They were a Dutch couple on an extended holiday complete with bicycles strapped to the back of the van (a very Dutch thing to do) and were heading off on a trip through the mountains that day. It was a much more comfortable breakfast than what we were used to.

We decided not to go very far that day; we were enjoying the Adriatic coast and considering the traffic we’d had the previous day we weren’t sure how far we’d get anyway. So we just went a couple of hundred kilometres up the coast towards Ancona and turned off just beforehand to try and find our campsite (listed in the brochure of course). Being us we got hungry before we got to that point so we stopped at a beachside restaurant for some food. It was a bit more upmarket than what we’d been aiming for, plus we were almost the only ones there (except for a few people who seemed to be related to the waitress), but we persevered and got a table out on the verandah right on the beach. This sounds very peaceful and it should have been, except for the gigantic crane right in front of us that was moving sand from its tray into the water. No idea what that was about. We got charged for the basket of bread they put on the table and our food (gnocchi for me, calamari for Toby) was very salty and didn’t come with any vegetables which would have been nice. Anyway. We were fed.

We ventured further down the esplanade, past more restaurants and ‘private’ beaches, thinking how different it was to the Australian way where the restaurants are on one side of the road and the beach is on the other, open to everyone and none of this ‘exclusively for members’ business. Considering how much beach they have, it seemed so silly to make it so difficult to access. We found our campsite at the end of a road and the girl at the front office gave us a map to show us their two available spaces for tents. This was the craziest campsite I have ever seen. It seemed to be full of long termers, who would park their van in a site and take up a neighbouring site with tarpaulin roofs and entire outdoor settings. It looked like a refugee camp with the number of temporary structures they had set up. It was unbelievably crowded. Of the two sites we were directed to, one was just a corner of grass where the bike would barely fit and the other was in the middle of lots of other vans. There were no people around so it was difficult to tell what we were getting ourselves in for. Considering we were hoping to spend more than one night here, we weren’t awfully impressed but decided we could probably live with it considering what we’d got last time we’d tried to be picky.

So we went back to the office and told the girl which spot we’d take; then we said we noticed the front gate was shut (we’d parked outside and walked through a hedge) and how would we get the bike in? It was then she told us we couldn’t actually check in for another hour or so. Just one of those things which makes sense in a hotel but less so at a campsite with three staff currently on duty. It didn’t take us long to decide we didn’t love the idea of hanging around in our full bike gear, so we thanked her and went on our way. As we left the road they were on, we noticed their ‘private beach’ and assumed we could have waited there until check in time. I don’t know why the girl didn’t tell us that; she could have saved the sale. Anyway. We found another campsite that was more expensive but far less crowded, and lovely and shady too. Its beach access was direct (underpass beneath the main road) and there was a shop and restaurant on site. So there we stayed. We set the tent up under some trees and headed down to the beach which was awfully rocky. The water was cooler than it had been further south but we still managed a swim. The annoying thing was that we were very thirsty and the camp shop was shut so Toby had to go off in search of a drink. In such a popular spot in Australia you wouldn’t have to go far to find a takeaway of some kind, but he really struggled and ended up with a bottle of sprite from one of the fancy restaurants. The strange thing about it was the number of men trying to sell random stuff on the beach, like jewellery or sunglasses or melons. If one of them sold bottles of water I think they might find they do better business. Anyway. For dinner we had pizza in the restaurant on site and the waiter made me try some kind of Italian aperitif at the end which was kind of gross. We went to bed looking forward to our peaceful campsite only to be kept awake for hours by what I assume was a rave happening in the next paddock over. It was amazing how loud it was and how long it went on for. Not happy Jan.

Our sleep was further disrupted the next morning by a guy deciding to edge the grass at 8am. Not sure why it couldn’t wait. Not sure why he was edging perfectly short grass especially when it meant we got little rocks being ricocheted onto our tent. Not fun. It was during this frustrating time when Toby realised he felt ill. Really, really ill. I got him back into the tent and we tried to figure out what to do. Eventually I went to the office and asked about the bungalows they had; she took me to see one and it was a very simple cube, with half taken up by a wee kitchen and sofa, and the other half split into a double bedroom and a bathroom. It also had a verandah, with table and chairs. There was nothing luxurious about it at all but it looked perfect to give Toby a proper rest away from the edge clippers, and me the space to do other things. So I booked it for that night (even though her boss didn’t want a single night booking on a weekend – she was nice and lied to him for me, they were hardly at capacity and we’d already stayed one night so it seemed a bit mean to me) and set out moving Toby into the bed and then packing up the tent. On my own. Which I did just fine. And it was here we spent the next two days, Toby drifting in and out of sleep and me making use of the laptop and enjoying having a kitchen to cook proper meals for a change. We booked a second night in the end as Toby still wasn’t up to riding and it seemed silly to push ourselves when we had such a good spot set up. I was very worried about Toby especially being so far away from a hospital, unable to speak the language and unable to use our own transport, but luckily he got better through rest and panadol. We kept saying if he could just hold on until we got to Austria, where we had greater faith in the medical system. Once he was feeling better, we could enjoy where we were a bit more and went for some walks along the beach and a swim in the pool. If we had to get stuck anywhere, I’m glad it was there with the little bungalow and the English-speaking staff. Unfortunately they didn’t have a clothes dryer (only a washing machine) but that was their only fault. I think I may also have made friends with the family who ran the little shop; at least they were always very nice to me even the woman when I inadvertently got her to pick up a gigantic block of cheese to cut me a slice. None of them really spoke English so it was always interesting trying to order things from the deli or ask for bread. It was fun though.

Finally on the fourth day we decided we were ready to leave so we packed up the bike and headed towards Bologna (brochure again). It took a few hours, including a stop at another fantastic motorway restaurant, and we managed to find the campsite without any problems. It was more like the Rome or Pisa campsites, well set out with lots of facilities (including a laundry, yay). Once we got set up there we got the local bus which stopped in the carpark into town. Bologna took us by surprise I think; it was a very trendy place, full of expensive shops and people dressed in beautiful clothes (I even saw one lady sailing down the street on her bicycle, hot pink pashmina blowing in the wind behind her). The buildings and public squares were lovely too. We bought some dinner items at a supermarket and then got the bus back to the campsite where we went to the bar for a beer. The European Cup was on (which we hadn’t realised) so there were lots of people at the bar watching the game which was France vs Croatia I think. I expect it was the nearest bar for miles for the people living in that part of Bologna, as we were surrounded by fields.

In the morning we decided to go back into Bologna; Toby had done some internet research and decided his illness was due to worms, and I needed a new book to read. We tried one pharmacy where the resident English speaker had no idea what he was saying, even when he tried saying it in the Italian he’d gotten off the internet. I kept telling him to draw a picture. In the end she figured out ‘tapeworm’ but said she couldn’t help us as you needed a prescription for it. Slightly disheartened we left that shop and went in search of books. We found another pharmacy on the way and went in; the resident English speaker there did know what we were talking about so we were given some drugs (even though Toby thought those were the drugs he’d read about on the net as being outdated) and were very much relieved. I also managed to find some English books in the second bookshop we tried; it was called ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy and the reason I mention it is that it’s one of the best books I have ever read and I highly recommend it.

After that early morning adventure we went back to the campsite and packed up. It was turning into a really hot day at this point so we tried to hurry and then got onto the motorway, headed for Verona. Our handy brochure didn’t have anything listed as being in Verona, but I googled ‘camping in Verona’ and came up with an address so we knew we wouldn’t be stuck. The ride to Verona was very quick until just before we hit the city limits, and then we were forced to cut between the traffic again. A police car had passed us earlier and we were wondering if they cared about bikes snaking through traffic; the answer is no. We got into Verona and the GPS helped us find the campsite but only to a point. We had to climb up a very steep hill overlooking the city, and we did see a sign for camping but no obvious driveway so we kept going and ended up at Castel San Pietro, a massive building on top of the hill. The views over Verona were absolutely incredible, but we did need somewhere to stay so we ventured back down the road again and finally found the entrance to the campsite, which was tiny and just an opening in a fence really. Compared to the big holiday resorts we’d been in so far, the Verona campsite was very different. It was started around 100 years ago by a botanist, so it was full of interesting plants with little signs on them. It had very old city walls running through the campsite too, which was more a series of terraces set into the hillside than anything else. The first terrace, which you drove straight into from the road, was rather crowded but included a huge paved area with lounge chairs and the most wonderful views over the city. From there you walked down a very steep cobbled driveway to the next level, which had the reception building (also the shop, toilets and showers), a covered area with the sinks, and another paved area where the views weren’t so good but there was lots of tables and chairs set amongst potted plants. The girl in reception spoke very good English and explained all the rules to us and then showed us where we could camp. Unfortunately because they were a bit crowded and they were ‘saving’ the spots on the first terrace, our only option was a small patch of grass beneath the sinks area, and only a couple of metres away from the reception. We weren’t thrilled with the position but we loved the site and wanted to explore Verona so we were sold. Toby had been wanting to deal with some bank issues and the girl in the office was kind enough to allow him to print some documents and then the next day we were also able to use their fax machine. Small actions like those really made a difference for us on the trip.

We spent some time that afternoon exploring the nearest parts of Verona to us; the walk into town meant going back up the main road to San Pietro then following a set of stairs through some lovely, typical Italian houses, across the river and beneath an archway into a square where we found the best gelato we have ever had. It was a tiny shop with really interesting flavours like cinnamon, so we lined up along with all the locals and got ourselves some cones to eat on the bridge overlooking the water. One of those magical moments that made the more stressful times on the bike feel worthwhile. For dinner we picked up some things at a little supermarket and then headed back to the campsite where it promptly began to rain. And rain. And rain. And then hail. We were stuck inside our tent waiting for it to stop so we could cook our dinner, and hoping we weren’t going to wash away during the night. It wasn’t fun; when it stopped it was dark so we cooked our dinner in the sink area under the lights and ate quickly. The fun continued when someone forgot to turn off the big light outside reception when they left, so our tent was almost as bright as day all night. The noise coming from the reception area made our less than perfect position even more so.

In the morning after doing some banking and washing we decided to head back into town and find Juliet’s balcony, and visit the Arena. Of course it’s not really Juliet’s balcony, and of course we never managed to find it (realised later it was closed) but the walking around was fun and you could certainly imagine Romeo & Juliet running around those streets getting themselves into all kinds of mischief. It is a really romantic place.

We got swept up with all the tourists walking through the centre of town towards the Arena but managed to escape them for some lunch on a little side street where I ate my first spinach and ricotta pizza and we got charged for some bread sticks we didn’t order. Love those scams. After lunch we went to the Arena and decided to pay some money for an attraction since we’d come all that way and hadn’t visited the Colosseum in Rome. We ended up being glad we went in, even though we’d seen more impressive theatres in Turkey; part of what was so interesting was they were getting ready for opera season and we could watch them deal with a gigantic head and two matching hands on the stage.

For dinner we visited some nice deli places on our way back to the campsite, buying olive tapenade and bread and some cheese and other things. Well we had intended to just go to the supermarket but we had another typical Italian experience of being there at a time that said open on their sign, but they weren’t at all. Unfortunately the cheese ended up being out of date but we enjoyed the other parts of our dinner, sitting on the terrace. And we enjoyed our second visit to the amazing gelato shop as well. We couldn’t leave without going there again. I remember having a quieter night without the lights left on, and it didn’t rain at all that day which was lucky as we really needed our tent to dry out before we went anywhere.

The next morning as we were packing up we had a good chat to another Aussie guy who was there with his missus on a motorbike tour. They had much grander plans than us, including getting up to Sweden and Norway, and weren’t sure when they’d be going home. He had a German passport I think so was thinking of finding work; we were sure to recommend Edinburgh as a good option. They had brought their bike over with them; I’m not sure Toby approved of doing that given it was a Harley but it was good to share some common experiences (including the gelato) and know that we weren’t the only insane people out there on a bike. And then we were on our way out of Verona, heading north for Austria.

The Epic Ride Part III: France

2008-08-16T02:01:00.005+01:00

We didn’t really have a plan for France; one of the problems with being on a bike is lack of space, particularly for guide books. So our first port of call was to find a petrol station and a map. I’m sure Toby was nervous about driving on the wrong side of the road; I know I was. Getting off the boat was quite nerve-racking especially as we had no idea where we wanted to go, just that we didn’t want to go into the town centre of Dieppe. So off we went, nice and slowly, in the opposite direction. The first weird thing we passed was a big pile of car tyres that were being burned in the middle of a roundabout. No idea why; it was a bit strange and the smoke was pretty awful. We found a petrol station and bought a map and decided we would aim to head east along the coast and find somewhere for the night.

Of course that was much easier said than done; we had a few false starts and started getting hungry so stopped at a patisserie in hopes of a tasty French snack. All they had left was sweet tarts so we had fruit flans for lunch in a little park and then headed back the way we came, still trying to get east. We passed through some cute litle seaside villages without seeing anywhere; finally we pulled off the highway to follow a camping sign up a country road; through a little village and into a group of fields run by a woman who couldn’t speak any English. That’s okay, because the words ‘camping’ and ‘tent’ are the same in French so it was easy enough to let her know what we wanted to do. We were the only campers there and it felt quite isolated but we put that out of our minds since we had a challenge ahead of us – driving into a big town and finding an ATM. We drove to Fecamp, about 10 minutes away, and attempted to find a bank which was rather stressful. We found one eventually and then bought some sandwich things for dinner as well. Luckily we found the campsite again; it rained that night so we ate sandwiches in the tent but they were delicious sandwiches, with good French bread and cheese and fresh tomatoes and other nice things. Very tasty. Being the only campers, it was a quiet night so we didn’t have to worry about being kept awake by noisy kayakers or anyone else. The showers were hot but the toilets had no seats or toilet paper; something that was to prove more common than you might think. You need to be prepared for all eventualities.

We paid 16 euros for that first night; it sounds reasonable until I tell you that is actually the most we paid for camping in France. The next morning we ate our muesli and tea and then headed south. Riding on the wrong side of the road started feeling a bit easier the second day although still not natural. The scenery was unfortunately rather uninspiring; very flat farmland, and not much else. We didn’t see many campsites during the day so after looking at the map decided to head towards a green state park area, thinking we might have more chance of finding camping there. And we did. We arrived at a really lovely little village called Senonches, where we camped for 4 euros in a lovely spot by a lake, all tucked in between hedges so you had a bit of privacy. The lady told us where we could get a kebab for 5 euros, so we did that, even though we’d had them for lunch as well, and ate them under the eaves of the toilet block since it was raining (again).

In the morning I walked into town to buy some milk and other things; I started to realise why people dream of moving to rural France. The morning ritual of visiting the patisserie is really quite a lovely, satisfying one. We packed up the bike and continued heading south, since we’d decided to try and make it to Italy in a few days’ time to catch up with Toby’s boss from Australia. We were driving through the Loire region, so it started looking a bit more interesting but still not quite the amazing France we’d been hoping for. We made the effort to get off the highway at one point to go and check out a castle, since the map looked full of them. We didn't go in but at least we saw something.

The next night we stayed near the village of Nanacay, another cute little place although the campsite wasn’t nearly as nice. It was huge but very overgrown and full of bugs. Given the recent rain it was also very muddy and it took us a while to find a suitable place for a tent. Luckily it was cheap; we also chatted a bit to some English people who were caravanning around and gave us some ideas for where to go. More specifically, where Provence was since we had a pretty useless map. The answer, for future reference, is ‘anywhere between Avignon and Digne.’

Although it had rained every day since we left Margaret’s, it didn’t really get serious until the next day when we found ourselves navigating mountain roads in hail. (At the time we didn't realise that huge swathes of Europe were actually experiencing very heavy rainfall and floods - we did pass some amazing river scenes with the tops of trees just visible, but luckily we seemed to always be passing through a day or two after the worst had passed. I only got an idea of the seriousness of it when I got a worried message from Mum to make sure we were managing to avoid the floods.) After the excitement of hail, we decided we deserved a hotel room so when we stopped at a petrol station with a hotel over the road, it was easy to go and get a room for the night. It was a nice hotel and gave us a chance to dry out all our gear and get a decent feed at the pizza restaurant next door, even though they used emmental cheese which was a bit strange. I watched some of the French version of ‘Come Dine With Me’, a show I’d gotten addicted to in Edinburgh thanks to my friend Carole, and enjoyed it even in another language.

The weather had cleared the next morning so we ate our muesli (minus the tea, since they don’t believe in tea & coffee facilities in Europe and I am too much of a nervous nellie to use a gas burner in a hotel room) and headed south towards St Etienne. It was around this time we decided to stop messing around on slow secondary roads and hit the motorway. It was expensive, but the amount of ground we covered was fantastic. We got to Avignon that day, a nice drive along the Rhein made more exciting by passing signs for Vienna and other exotic-sounding places. Since Avignon was meant to be nice we decided to stop and have a wee look around. This is not as easy as it might be in a car, since you are carrying a lot of stuff and wearing heavy, non-walking-friendly boots. You are also a bit worried about mean people unhooking your occy straps and making off with all your camping stuff, which would obviously be a disaster. We gave it a go anyway, walking through some lovely old walled streets and sat down for some gelato since it was getting pretty hot. We went up to a town square where a local radio station was having a dance-off although the only person game was a boy who looked about eight. He had some moves though.

After Avignon we started veering west towards Apt, following the English lady’s instructions to just go somewhere between Avignon and Digne. The countryside was getting more and more interesting, especially compared to the flat farmlands we’d seen at first. It started to rain just as we got into Apt – of course – but we found a campsite pretty quickly and it stopped raining just long enough for us to get the tent up. It wasn’t a particularly nice campsite – quite crowded and directly below a major road with scooters going past constantly. After we were settled and the rain stopped properly, we wandered into town and realised it was much prettier than it had looked from the ride in. It was full of lovely cobbled streets lined with shops selling pretty clothes, candles and yummy-looking food. It was all very Provence. We splurged a bit on items for dinner, buying proper sausages and quiche from a charcuterie and some nice olive tapenade and bread and other bits and pieces. The nice thing about the campsite was it had an indoor kitchen area so we could eat dinner at a proper table out of the rain. And then go to sleep, hoping our tent wasn’t going to be flooded as we slept.

The next day we packed up our slightly muddy tent and hit the road, aiming for Digne. It was an absolutely fantastic ride, warm and sunny and through tiny villages full of houses with bright blue shutters, and rolling farmlands and orchards. We finally felt as though we’d arrived in France, and cursed the days we’d spent moseying through the boring north. I perfectly understood the pull we all feel towards a villa in Provence; I think Jung called it the collective consciousness. I even felt like maybe I’d been there before just because it looked exactly as how you would imagine. We stopped for lunch in Digne, a nice little town nestled beside some mountains, and ate our picnic on some grass in the sunshine. Of course we admired the mountains without actually realising that was our next route. Yes, we’d arrived at the Alps without knowing it, because that happens when you are without guide book or decent map.
If we thought the morning provided a great bike ride, we were in for a treat in the afternoon. The Alps provided everything you want from a ride. Scary heights, lots of corners, gorgeous views. There were lots of bikers around and it was easy to see why. We passed lots of pubs in lovely places, doing excellent business, but Toby’s main focus was enjoying the road so we mostly rode through. It is very difficult to describe in words just how fantastic that ride was...we cannot recommend it highly enough. It certainly made us think we had made the right decision in bringing a motorbike over to Europe; nothing else would have been comparable. After the Alps, the highway twists its way downhill towards the Mediterranean. Another gorgeous ride as we went towards Grasse; you actually could smell the wildflowers on the side of the road. (Sometimes you are glad a bike helmet has a gap in the bottom for smells to come through; sometimes it’s a curse.) Rather than heading towards Grasse or Cannes like we had originally planned we decided to go towards Nice and try to find somewhere to stay the night. We only rode through Nice but it did look like a nice enough place to spend time; like a smaller, coasty Paris with glimpses of the perfect blue ocean visible between those lovely French buildings. After Nice we decided it was time to look out for a campsite so we continued along the coast towards Italy...and looked...and looked...and looked.

The traffic started getting heavy as we entered Monaco, which absolutely reeked of money. We stopped on the main road and took a few minutes to stretch and take some photos before joining the rat race again. The coast road from then on was not nearly as enjoyable; extremely crowded, poorly organised, and the views of the Mediterranean didn’t really make up for it. I started wondering why anyone would ever visit the Cote d’Azur for a holiday; it was looking a lot like hell on earth. Like the Gold Coast, if Schoolies and the grand prix were on at the same time, at New Year’s Eve. And full of sunburnt English people. And still no sign of any campsites; just lots and lots of big fancy hotels. Feeling more and more hot and frustrated, we continued on our way and all of a sudden we were in Italy.

The Epic Ride Part II: England

2008-08-12T09:28:00.005+01:00

We’d always known England was going to be a bigger trial than Scotland. For nine months we’d avoided crossing the border, memories of the drive to and from Oxford when we first arrived still fresh in our minds. Even looking at the map was stressful; from Scotland’s acres of green with simple, clean lines going from A to B to C, none of which were very big, you were looking at a mass of lines going from A to C to B and back to A again, some thick and yellow, others thin and red, still others thinner and green. The thick and yellow was what we wanted to avoid; Toby’s shoulder was playing up and the idea of constant throttle for hours on end as we hurtled down the motorway was not tempting. On the other hand, get behind the wrong truck or pensioner on a secondary road and you’d be looking at hours and hours of flat English scenery with no end in sight.

In the end, we did stick mostly to the motorway. As soon as we crossed the border, the traffic seemed to quadruple; it was like every driver in England was out to slow us down. The secondary roads were far too slow, and given we were driving through Yorkshire, it wasn’t the most interesting scenery. We drove to York first but it didn’t take, so we decided to head further afield in hunt of a campsite. This seemed an easy enough proposition, but unfortunately we got all the way to Doncaster without seeing a single camping sign. Okay then, we decided. We’ll stay in Doncaster, find a B & B or hotel since it’s getting late. We got from one end of Doncaster to the other – in peak traffic – without seeing a single place to stay. Finally we came across a Premier Inn nestled into one of those awful retail parks, so we decided that would do. There was a Pizza Hut next door and an evening spent gorging ourselves on pizza and enjoying a nice soft bed was starting to look good. But there was no room at the Inn. The girl gave us some other ideas and we went up the road a bit to one of those Formula 1 hotels, which normally look a bit dodgy, but this one went beyond dodgy. It was all flat grey concrete with tiny windows. One of the windows had a half naked man hanging out of it, smoking. The carpark was full of white commercial vans. It looked like the kind of place where people got killed. We tried one more hotel but it was full too, so we got back on the motorway and headed towards Sheffield, where we magically found another Premier Inn. This time I went in alone, after removing my helmet and big jacket; we had started getting a bit paranoid that receptionists just didn’t like the look of us. Apparently there was a concert on nearby so the room rate was ridiculously high, but I was so grateful to be given a room we didn’t really care. For dinner we went next door to TGI Friday’s and had gigantic plates of fatty American food. Our waitress was planning a round the world trip including Australia so had lots of questions for us about poisonous snakes and fruit picking, topics on which we are clearly experts.

Considering the amount of ground we’d covered the day before, and our difficulty in finding campsites in England, we decided we didn’t want to dilly-dally anymore so rang Margaret to ask if we could arrive in Oxford a day early. Luckily she didn't, so we had a quick ride down the motorway and arrived just after lunch the next day

Traffic island where we ate our lunch on the way to Oxford.

We spent a few nights in Oxford, recuperating from our busy week and doing laundry and stocking up on supplies and things we decided would be handy (like a windshield for the gas tank). The biggest drama we had in Oxford was related to Margaret’s cats, which are lovely creatures but we are quite allergic to them. Both of us started feeling wheezy and asthmatic, and this is when we realised that somewhere on our travels, we had lost our Ventolin. In Australia, this wouldn’t be a big deal as you would go straight down to the local chemist and buy some more. Unfortunately it turned out this doesn’t happen in the UK; the lady in Boots told me there was no way to get it without a doctor’s prescription. Great. We made some calls to Margaret’s doctor’s office where the receptionists didn’t even know what Ventolin was, and were rather confused about the fact that I was an Australian who was registered in Edinburgh but staying in Oxford and not going back to Scotland. Eventually the receptionists spoke to an actual doctor who obviously said yes of course I’ll do a prescription, so after a couple of hours I just walked down to the office and picked it up without ever having to speak to a doctor. A rather strange set of events that made me appreciate the Australian health system all the more. On the Saturday, Toby had a nerd date with a mate in Edinburgh and holed himself and his laptop up in Margaret’s spare room so I took myself into town to do as many free museums as I could, since I’d never seen any of Oxford’s. It was a great way to spend the day; I particularly enjoyed the Pitt Rivers Museum which is still in the same design as when it was first built; the idea being it is not only an anthropological museum, but a museum museum so you can see what they used to be like. The answer is dark, and crowded. So dark they give you little torches to look into the cabinets. Afterwards Toby met me in town so we could go and see a silly romantic comedy followed by dinner at one of those new-fangled gourmet burger places. It was a great day.

We had planned to ride down to Brighton the day before our ferry to France, to walk along the pier and have fish and chips and so on. Unfortunately when we woke up it was pouring with rain, and there was no sign of it stopping. So we didn’t bother rushing to pack up the bike, but eventually it was clear we were just going to have to ride in the rain. And this was not the usual English drizzle, but actual rain. So on went all the waterproofs and we said goodbye to Margaret around midday. It rained the whole way to London, and then the whole way around the M25, all through lunch at the Marks & Spencer road stop, and all the way down the highway where we saw the sign for Brighton and decided it just wasn’t the right weather for an afternoon at the seaside. So we turned to Newhaven instead, where the ferry terminal is and where we’d booked a night at the Premier Inn given our early start the next day.

I think I expected Newhaven to be a bit more interesting, and picturesque, just like the English seaside towns you see on TV. But it was a pretty uninspiring place. Luckily it was still raining so we had a good excuse to not walk too far and instead just holed up in our room watching telly and eating the dinner we’d bought from the giant Sainsbury’s next door. The next morning we were up before 5 to get to the ferry on time, even though as usual I made sure we got there too early. We weren’t the only motorbike there; there was a couple of other blokes on a blokey week away so there was a bit of standing around grunting at each other’s bikes before we got ushered into the belly of the ship. The bikes got to go first, so we rode all the way through to the other end and then the bike was strapped down so it wouldn’t go anywhere.

Inside the ferry.

I had been looking forward to travelling to another country without having to deal with an airport or flying, but in the end our ferry trip was pretty uncomfortable anyway. Apart from being tired due to the early start, and the general queasiness that comes from being on the ocean, half the boat was filled with diesel fumes which added to the discomfort. There is only so much that a can of Sprite and fresh air can do to make that kind of trip a good one. Added to that, they didn't sell newspapers on board so my plan to pass the time reading something I didn't need to pack in my luggage was shot. Note to travellers on the Dieppe ferry: buy your paper from the kiosk in the carpark. Luckily it was only a few hours long and before it was lunchtime, we were looking over the railing at the white cliffs of the Normandy coast.

Arriving in France.

The Epic Ride Part I: Scotland

2008-08-03T08:41:00.006+01:00

Yes, I know we're at home now, and it's all over, but we need to have the story written down if only for our own memories. Lots of people have told us they enjoy the blog (even though we remain surprisingly comment-free...) so in the interests of public service, I will endeavour to get the full ride uploaded over the next few weeks...

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15 May 2008

It was a Thursday afternoon, and we were suddenly homeless. Homeless, and unemployed. We did not have a set of house keys. We did not have a job to go to the next day. In an age of global communications it was going to be difficult to disappear for very long, from many people, but we were going to try. It was going to be us, and a big BMW motorbike with yellow sides and a blue sports bag strapped to the back. Us, the bike, and the road.

Edinburgh was cold, as it almost always is, and it took an age to get down Corstorphine Road to the Forth Bridge. The traffic was heavy and we quickly realised that our test pack, and test ride, two weeks earlier had been hopelessly inadequate. Everything felt squashed. We were not going to make it, we and all our stuff did not fit on the bike. But then we were going over the water, feeling the wind whip around helmets and armoured sleeves, and the sky was grey and the fields on the other side were bright, bright yellow – and suddenly it felt like we were really on our way.
We stopped at the gigantic Tesco on the outskirts of Perth; we needed petrol, and something to eat. Toby walked around the bike, checking his straps and buckles and then – ‘the pannier’s burning,’ he says, and I look to where he’s pointing. So it is. The pannier had had a little incident involving a concrete block several weeks beforehand, and it was a little broken. Just a little, enough that when we put a bit of stuff in it and rode around the carpark at home, it was fine. And just enough that when we filled it with a weeks’ worth of clothing and shoes and then rode on the highway, the wind pushed it lower so it was right where the exhaust was releasing all its hot fumes. We had a hole in our pannier, a small hole with melted edges and a strong smell of burning plastic.

So we bought a Tesco sandwich and got some petrol and then set about trying to rearrange the pannier so it would be more flame-proof. To go back to Edinburgh and buy a new pannier? But where would we sleep? We have already said goodbye to our friends, and it always feels awkward to see someone again and have to go through the ritual for a second time. Accommodation is expensive. We are on our adventure, dammit. So we didn’t go back to Edinburgh, we left Perth and continued north through the magical Scottish countryside with its lakes and mountains and bright yellow fields of rapeseed until we reached Pitlochry, where we finally saw a camping sign on the highway and turned in. From the road it did not look like anything special; sterile caravans in shades of cream and beige sitting on flat concrete blocks, and not much else. But we perservered down the dirt track and were eventually rewarded by a girl from Western Australia in the office, who gave us a campsite for 9 pounds and sold us some sausages and a salad from their shop for dinner. There weren’t many people at the campsite; a couple of lone walkers, with their tiny triangular tents and pots of baked beans or soup for one, and a group of young people (I can say that, because they were younger than us), with hair dyed funny colours and not much clothes on, as though it was Australia in summer and not Scotland in spring. We cooked the sausages in our tiny frypan over our tiny gas stove, and drank a tiny bottle of Moet we’d saved from when we weren’t homeless or unemployed. We went to sleep feeling very pleased with ourselves, and only slightly worried about our pannier.

The next day dawned bright and sunny, and the young people continued to laze about on the grass with not much clothes on. We bought fresh milk from the shop once it opened, and ate our muesli and tea on the grass, and went for a walk along the riverbank. Still feeling very pleased with ourselves – we are awake, and being healthy and exercising, and today we will ride to Inverness, or further. And we really need to do something about that pannier. The day got hotter as it went on, and by the time we had the tent pulled down and the bike packed, we were both feeling rather hot and bothered. This wasn’t helped by packing the sports bag differently, just to experiment, and getting on to ride away only to realise that we were completely unbalanced and wouldn’t get very far like that. So we had to stop by the office again, strip off all our riding gear as it was so hot, and repack the bike. Of course being Scotland, by the time we were repacked and ready to go, the weather closed in again and we were suddenly chilly and wishing we’d worn warmer clothes. This is part of the magic of Scotland, the way it is part of the fun of Melbourne or a person with a split personality. You just never know. So we rode to Inverness, feeling the chill as we entered the highlands, and got rained on, because that’s what happens in Scotland, and got hungry enough to just stop by the side of the highway to eat our tuna and bread rolls standing up in the light drizzle.

Just before we got into Inverness we saw a tourist information office, where we asked for campsite suggestions and to use their phone book to find a bike shop. The woman gave us two addresses, although the man thought one had shut down ‘a while ago’, and off we went. The man was right, the shop was long gone. So we continued through town, which looked quite nice really, and then along the shore of the lake, and I was just starting to think we must have somehow missed it when there is was. A bike dealership on the edge of the lake; surely the best location in the world. They sold us some soft panniers and let us throw the melted one into their skip; I also had to throw out my thongs as one of them was now half the size. This is what happens when rubber thongs get too hot, apparently. We sat in their carpark, repacking our panniers and feeling rather relieved – if a little poorer – now that we didn’t have to worry so much about melting plastic anymore.

Feeling quite pleased with ourselves again, we decided to head to the Black Isle to find somewhere to camp for the night. We found one campsite, a narrow strip of land between road and water with nothing really to set it apart – no trees, no hedges, no walls. Just the grass. There was also no people evident, although there was a small mobile home that could have been an office. The door opened and an old lady told us it would cost 12 pounds for the night. I am not sure why, even now, but the whole place gave me a funny feeling like we might wake up minus a kidney, and I just didn’t want a funny feeling on my big adventure, so we said we might be back.
We weren’t back, because we couldn’t find anywhere else to camp and then we couldn’t find a petrol station and then we were feeling a bit tired and fragile so we decided to treat ourselves to a B & B. At the old-fashioned petrol station, so old-fashioned the petrol was put in the bike by an old man wearing grey overalls, we were given directions to a nearby hotel that sounded easy enough, but weren’t.

There was a B & B on the main road that went from village to village along the Isle, one of those double storied houses where the steps to the front door lead down from the footpath and there is no space between road and house. The guy who ran it was outside when we pulled up; he was very apologetic and told us he couldn’t really take any guests as he was selling the property and had an inspection in a few minutes. I was annoyed that he didn’t have a ‘no vacancy’ sign up somewhere, and annoyed that I’d been so adamant about not staying in the creepy campsite, but we decided we would try to find something else closer in to town. While standing by the bike making this decision, the guy came back from the house to say he’d spoken with ‘the boss’ (we later realised he meant his wife), who had said that as long as we weren’t around when the inspection was on, we could stay the night. A bargain at 25 pounds. Each. He acted like he was doing us a favour, tired and frustrated as we were, although thinking about it later (when we weren’t so tired), we realised we were actually doing him a favour by agreeing to leave the house for a period of time, and surely they could have done us a discount for that inconvenience. But it was too late by then. He told us the other guy staying was a student; he was a driving instructor who had people stay with him for ‘intensive’ week long courses to get their licenses. Privately we agreed this was a ridiculous notion, and Toby with his own driving instructor’s hat on was particularly amused by this business, but we didn’t say anything to the man about the appropriateness of his courses. We put our bags in a downstairs room that felt a lot like a room you find at grandparents’ houses, full of odd bits of furniture like old high chairs and record players that have nowhere else to go. But the bed was big and soft, covered in a surprisingly modern patterned white doona, and the bathroom was clean, so we were happy enough. We got changed and went to one of the two options in town for dinner, a pub up the road where everyone looked up when you went in, just like in the movies, although I was used to it since I’d gone in earlier to ask for directions to the petrol station.

We ate gigantic steak and ale pies and piles of chips while listening to the Eagles’ Greatest Hits and feeling like slight failures after our tedious, frustrating afternoon of driving up and down the Black Isle looking for campsites and petrol. We returned to the B & B just as the potential buyers were leaving, so we could finally get into our room and watch the TV which was one of those old bulky ones on its own little stand. That room was like a time warp, although we were to see worse on our travels.

Breakfast was served up a small staircase in a room on street-level, which looked like it had been a pub at one point, albeit with a nautical theme; the glass panel in the door was advertising some kind of brew and there were various ships in bottles and other paraphernalia around as well. In one corner was a disco ball and a gigantic stereo set up; I asked the guy who told me his wife was a karaoke fiend and were we big karaoke fans? We told him we’d dabbled once in Japan, and were sorry to have missed what looked like a great party, because you should never insult the wife of the man who is about to cook your breakfast. It was a decent breakfast, although the ‘tomatoes’ that came with my scrambled eggs were actually little red balls from a can that had been heated up. I suppose it wasn’t really tomato season, nor would it ever be tomato season on the Black Isle, but still it was a little odd. We felt very civilised though, what with sitting at a table drinking tea out of proper cups and eating warm buttered toast – a far cry from eating your muesli standing up in the outdoors, out of a blue plastic bowl.

After breakfast we packed up the room and then asked the guy if it would be okay for us to continue using his carpark while we sorted out our bike. Luckily he said it was, so we set about organising our soft panniers and doing some bike maintenance as well. We weren’t sure what to do about our hard pannier, the one that hadn’t burnt; it was worth a lot of money and still perfectly use-able. In the end I went to the post office down from the B & B, and the guy there helped me put stickers straight on the plastic to send the pannier down south to Margaret’s. It only cost 9 pounds so it seemed a better option than putting it in the bin. I also went to the hardware shop (for such a small village we were lucky the B & B was in a stretch of buildings that included these shops, open on Saturday) to buy a hacksaw to fix the rack on the bike. I returned it a few minutes later, once we were done with it; hopefully the guy will be honest with the next person who needs a hacksaw for ten minutes, and let them use it rather than buy a new one (even though it only cost 3 pounds, which was a bargain).

After all that drama, we were ready to hit the road again so off we went in hunt of Nessie. The monster, that is. We had lived in Scotland for eight months by this point and still had not seen Loch Ness, so it was high on our list of priorities. The countryside around there was fantastic so it was a great ride back through the Black Isle and down to the loch, and we stood on the banks looking for a hint of tail, but alas there was no Nessie to be seen. We were very glad to have seen it in the end, although we agreed that Loch Lomond was a far more spectacular setting. Toby’s theory is that the monster is an invention by the local tourist office to lure people away from the majesty of Loch Lomond and up to the relative ordinariness of Loch Ness. He is a cynical man sometimes.

After Loch Ness we headed westwards to the Isle of Skye, and if we thought we’d had good riding up to that point, we had a surprise in store. Approaching the bridge to Skye the scenery became dark, and tall, and menacing; it was very easy to imagine armies of Celts and Vikings spilling down the rocky hillsides and splashing through the streams, yelling and brandishing their weapons. We found a campsite by a lake near the village of Dunvegan, which was almost deserted. The guy in the office, once he found out we were Australian, asked if we were in the area to do family research. I said no, although ‘my mother is a McKinnon,’ I said, and his eyes widened. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Skye’s just crawling with McKinnons, I’m sure you’d meet a relative or two.’ Then he said he shouldn’t make assumptions about Australians and their connections to Skye because he’d once asked an Aussie guy the same question only to be told, ‘Well that would be a bit silly since all my relatives are in Croatia.’

The memorable thing about Skye is the amount of light they get up there. We would eat dinner in clear daylight, and at bed time would put eye masks on since otherwise it would be impossible to sleep in the light tent. The first night I needed earplugs as well since there was a group of middle-aged men on a kayaking trip who set up later in the afternoon, and they sat around all night drinking and talking. In truth, they weren’t that loud and it probably wasn’t all night; it’s just when you’re in a tent, everything is loud. And when you’re trying to sleep, it feels like it’s all night. The other thing about Skye was it was cold at night. I slept in my thermals (pants and shirt), plus a jumper, plus my explorer socks and my fuzzy neck thing I wear on the bike, and to snowboard. I don’t think I needed a beanie, but it was still the most dressed I have been for bed since an Outdoor Ed trip to Wee Jasper in Year 10, when I did need a beanie. The days were warmer though; sometimes warm enough to get down to a T shirt, although you would need a jumper on hand for the cool change which was likely to come any minute.

Another thing we enjoyed about Skye (and riding through Scotland in general) was the fact it was springtime and all the baby animals were just finding their feet. Skye in particular was full of baby lambs and we spent a lot of time watching them playing and figuring out how to be sheep. They had a lot of personality and this was around the time I started thinking about being a vegetarian; all of a sudden lamb just didn't seem that appetising anymore.

We decided to take a day off in Skye and just stay put, so we asked a different guy in the office about walks in the local area and although Toby was tempted by the four-hour ‘mountain’ walk he suggested, due to lack of equipment (and food) we decided to stick to the easy ‘two churches’ walk instead. On the way we stopped by the small general store where we’d bought our dinner the night before, but being Sunday and almost the end of the earth, it was closed. We managed to get some water and muesli bars from the petrol station and headed off on our walk of the two churches, the idea being to start at the ruins of the old village church and walk through some fields and what-not to the new village church. The best part of this walk was the beginning, with the ruins of the old church sitting in an overgrown cemetery. Even though it was the old church they had continued to put stones and plaques up for different families and clan chiefs; I didn’t even know they still had clan chiefs, but apparently they do. I found one McKinnon grave which was actually one of the sadder ones, put up by a male McKinnon in memory of his wife, who had died in October of 1925, and his daughter, who had died in December of the same year, aged six months. After the church ruins you walked through some fields and down a country path and then along a headland, looking out to sea, which is where we stopped and ate our snacks. The scenery changed again for the next part of the walk, when it turned into dark woods with dried pine needles on the floor and a distinct Narnia feel about it. We kept our eyes out for deer, the way tourists in Australia look for koalas, but unfortunately there was none to be seen. We came out again into sunlight by the new church, which was built sometime in the 1800s. It looked very new though, with its straight white walls and clean stained-glass windows. We didn’t go in; as it was Sunday there were people milling about in their nice clothes so it didn’t seem right for us to go blundering through in our shorts and sneakers. We saw a sign for Dunvegan Castle up the road so decided to follow that; unfortunately when we finally got to the gate we realised you had to pay to see the castle AND its grounds, and we just weren’t willing to do that, so back to town. There weren’t many options for a cheap lunch so we bought baked beans and some ‘long life’ bread rolls from the petrol station and took them back to the campsite. I think it’s safe to say that was the worst meal we had on the whole trip; after reading the ingredients list on the bread rolls and finding that it contained ethanol and some kind of acid, Toby refused to eat any and I threw mine out when it was half finished. Oh, and we were trying to conserve gas (it was very windy on Skye and we didn’t have a windshield yet, so just boiling the water for tea was using up a lot) so we had the baked beans cold, straight from the can. Yes, that was the worst meal.

We left Skye the next morning and headed south, via Glen Coe which was very, very chilly but incredibly gorgeous. The exciting thing that happened on that ride was we saw the new Knight Rider car being driven incredibly slowly on the highway. Well, I didn’t realise it was KITT of course, I just noticed a black car with American plates that looked like it should have been going faster than it was. But Toby was most excited. We stopped in Fort William for lunch and ordered burgers from a takeaway in the main shopping strip. The lady serving me asked if I wanted salad, and I thought well there’s salad on the burgers so I don’t think we need more, so no thankyou. Of course once we’d taken them back to the park and opened them, I realised she was asking if we wanted any salad at all. So we had slabs of meat and cheese between two bits of bread.

From Fort William we headed into the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park to find somewhere to stay the night. We decided on Tyndrum, which was just inside the park border, and asked at the tourist office for accommodation. We saw an ad for a campsite nearby that had wigwams for rent so thought that looked like fun, and a bit easier than putting up the tent again. The campsite was actually a farm a bit out of town, where we could camp in a paddock for 12 pounds or get a wigwam for 25. We decided on the wigwam, which was essentially just a tiny cabin with two gym mats on the floor, but there was a heater and a little window so it was quite cosy and a bit more comfortable than a tent. The meal we had that night was one of the best; they had a kitchen you could use, as well as a farm shop, so we ate pork and venison sausages with some vegetables off proper plates, sitting at a table. We sat up late that night doing laundry and chatting to a man from Glasgow who was walking to Fort William with some mates to raise money for a hospice. It never mattered how brave we felt for camping on a motorbike, we would always meet someone who made us feel like we had taken a pretty easy route. We paid for his laundry as a donation to the cause.

The next day we had a lovely ride through the national park and past Loch Lomond, even though it was quite slow at times as we got stuck behind lorries and the UK doesn’t believe in double carriageways. We arrived in Dunfermline that afternoon and got some directions for camping from a friendly old man in the tourist information office. Unfortunately, they weren’t very good directions, or else he hadn’t actually been to the campsite he suggested, because we ended up at a narrow bit of grass next to a lake, mostly taken up by caravans. The owner wasn’t there but some other guy who I’m sure was a guest but seemed quite knowledgeable pointed up the hill so a bit of grass next to the road and said that was where the tents went. Being introverts, we like our privacy and this just wasn’t what we wanted. Toby called in a favour from when he let me veto the campsite on the Black Isle, and said he didn’t want to stay there. So around we rode, looking for other options and wishing we weren’t so picky. It all turned out okay in the end though, when we followed a random sign up a long road and ended up camping in the grounds of a castle. We were the only campers there; our little orange dome looking very lonely in the middle of the flat green field. But they had a wee shop where we could buy noodles for dinner, and a book exchange, and another group of Australians who looked like they were about to invite us to dinner, as though we’d have something to talk about. It was a good place to end our little tour through Scotland.

Hello from Italy

2008-06-07T11:24:00.013+01:00

If you are in the mood to test your commitment to your partner, your motorbike or camping, an extended trip through Europe is probably a good way to do it. We are currently in a rather pleasant camping ground in Italy on the Adriatic coast about 20km south of Ancona. We had been planning to head to Florence today but Toby is not well so instead we have decided to stay put and have rented a bungalow for the night so he can have a proper rest. I am using the tiniest keyboard in the world so instead of writing much more will make do with some photos. Our trip so far has been full of rain (only 2 days without), some incredible views (Provence, the Alps), some good food (thanks Bob), some horrendous traffic (Monte Carlo, pretty much all of the Mediterranean coast in Italy), a near death experience (yes driver of white Fiat I am talking to you), and lots of ice cream.

In France, enjoying our staple lunch of tinned tuna and a bread roll by the side of the road. Note the brilliant scenery...it took a few days for France to get interesting.

Chateau in the Loire Valley.

Provence hillside.

The French Alps. If you are after peg scraping, hair raising, vertigo inducing riding, this is the place for you (yes mum, you).

At the Trevi fountain in Rome. Our first day without rain, so lucky it was also our first rest day and we spent it sight seeing. Still a great city.

Thats all for now, we haven't taken that many photos and really this keyboard is ridiculously small. Much love to everyone.

Some photos from the bike trip so far

2008-05-25T20:26:00.013+01:00

Yes I know, it's like 10 posts in one day but I am making use of the internet connection (and comfortable chair) while I've got it. I won't write about our bike trip yet since I've provided a week's worth of reading already; suffice to say it's been just over a week so far and mostly wonderful. We had a busy 1.5 days in Edinburgh after returning from Turkey, with lots of cleaning and packing and a couple of farewells of course, which was sad. It's even sadder than leaving Oz, because we are not sure when we will see these friends again. We have done a big loop so far, which looks a bit like this:

The red part is what we've done; we have spent the past few days resting, recovering and buying more supplies at Margaret's lovely house in Oxford. The blue is what we will start tomorrow. By Tuesday night we will hopefully be safely ensconced in a picturesque French camping ground. That's the plan, anyway. Camping in France is by all accounts a great experience so we are hopeful. It can't be any worse than England (Scotland on the other hand was a dream). Here are some photos, to prove we are actually on a bike and camping, in case anyone doubted us.

Washing day in Pitlochry (our first stop and a lovely campsite with a shop being run by a girl from Western Australia)

Let it be said that using a bike as transport is much harder work than a car, on all sorts of levels. This is Toby in a little village on the Black Isle, using a hack saw to take some knobs off the back tray on the bike so our big bag sits better. I bought the hack saw from a hardware shop over the road and returned it 10 minutes later in case someone else ever needed one. We bikers are a considerate lot. Did you know they even acknowledge each other on the roads? I finally feel like I am part of a gang. Sort of.

We finally saw Loch Ness.

We spent a night in a wig wam near Loch Lomond.

Had a lovely couple of days on Skye, enjoying views like this.

Our final night in Scotland was spent in the grounds of a castle. Very cool.

And for dad's benefit, a picture of the bike (and me) loaded up. Clothes, shoes, toiletries and some cooking gear goes in the panniers. Tent, mats, sleeping bags, pillows and whatever else is left goes in the sports bag. Wallets, phones etc go in jacket pockets. We both have camel backs on our backs for water and other bits and pieces. We have a tank bag too, that holds valuables like the tiny laptop and GPS, and snacks. The key is being organised, and knowing what you have put where (yes Toby, I'm talking to you).

Days 15-17: Istanbul take 2

2008-05-25T20:25:00.001+01:00

We had a very hurried breakfast the next morning in the smoky dining car (the 4 men sitting next to us were smoking and drinking beer as though it was 8.30pm, not am), where Jen was getting cranky at the poor service from the train staff. One of the attendants had also fallen asleep in front of the Western toilet overnight so no one could use it. It was a relief to get off the train in Istanbul finally, although the fun wasn’t over. We still had a very crowded ferry ride over the water before piling into taxis. One went off to Chora Church and the rest of us to our hotel, with our driver under strict instructions to follow Jen’s taxi, which he didn’t. Cue a 3 point turn over tram tracks at the worst intersection just outside Aya Sofya on the main road and Jen losing her temper, complete with striding over the road and shaking her fist at our driver through the window. And old man even ran away from her. I saw my life flash before me several times on that drive; sometimes I just had to shut by eyes. The frustrating thing was being so close to the hotel, but being responsible for 5 extra lots of luggage so we couldn’t just get out and walk. Finally we were safely inside our nice room.

Toby and I ate kebabs in the park (mine had chicken and chips, very traditional I’m sure) and then decided to tackle the Grand Bazaar, but due to my non-existent haggling skills it was not a pleasant experience. Luckily we found a shop just outside run by a nice non-yelling man who actually put his prices on his stuff and didn’t bother us at all. It was much nicer so it put us in the mood to have ice creams outside the Blue Mosque, enjoyed the sunshine and then back to the hotel to pretty up for our final group dinner. Jen took us on the tram over the bridge and then up the fernicular to Taksim, an area that felt very different to the part of Istanbul we’d been in until then. It felt European, trendy and local. We had drinks in an alleyway full of restaurants and fish shops and then moved into a restaurant for meze, which is when our American member realised she’d been pickpocketed and had lost her wallet. So she and Jen spent most of the meal on the phone to the police and credit card companies, which put a bit of a dampener on the whole night which otherwise would have been lovely. The food was great and a few of us shared a bottle of raki, which I liked more than I expected. It definitely went well with the food. After dinner a few of us walked down the main drag and got some ice cream. The football had just finished and I guess Istanbul had won because the atmosphere on the streets was electric, like New Year’s Eve. The fernicular was shut so we followed the crowds down the hill to the tram stop to go home.
The next morning we had a lazy start. Most of the group was leaving so we said our goodbyes and then those of us staying were taken by Jen to our next hotel, which was lovely. We sat in their nice rooftop restaurant having tea and getting some ideas for excursions from Jen, who seemed unwilling to leave. She was starting a new group that afternoon as their leader wasn’t available yet, and then the next day was heading off on an active trip full of twenty somethings. Definitely not the job for me; I would need more than just a night off between groups. We had lunch next door to the hotel, even though we realised it wasn’t the same pide place in the Lonely Planet, and then headed off to find the Istanbul Modern, which involved a longer tram ride than we’d had before. It was a good museum, especially as we’d seen so much old stuff in the past 2 weeks. They had a cool Design Cities exhibit and a small one of Russian photography from the 1920s and 30s that I loved. We walked back to the tram via Taksim to look at some of the shops and get some traditional sticky Turkish ice cream that tasted like chocolate paddle pop. In the evening we took Di out for Mother’s Day dinner to a local place with 4 things on the menu, and then some baklava for dessert which wasn’t as good as Mr Delicious.

The next morning after breakfast (which included a strange but tasty fillo and cheese pie) we met another lady from the group and got the tram to the Bosphorus ferry to try out one of Jen’s suggested excursions. We were super early so got good seats and then had an hour looking at boats and fancy hours and pointing to the no smoking sign next to us when people tried to smoke in our section. Yes, we are the smoking police. We managed to get off at the right stop and find a bus back along the coast through some nice areas of Istanbul. I saw one man at a bus stop put his arm through the doors and put a half-used packet of tobacco on the ticket officer’s counter; he got five lira for it. An interesting transaction. We got off at Ortakoy as instructed by Jen and couldn’t find the promised markets, although we did get some gigantic baked potatoes and then waffles for after, which were delicious. It was a long and not very interesting walk back to the tram stop to go home, but we probably needed it after that lunch.

That afternoon Di and I went off to experience our first hamam (Turkish bath). Other ladies on the trip had been doing it at different places, but we decided to save it for the last night. It was quite expensive and a bit odd, but I was glad we did it. We decided to go to one of the older, touristy ones which was near our hotel. I’d read the Lonely Planet explanation, and some online ones, about hamam etiquette, but in the end they weren’t very helpful as it was just different enough to be a bit confusing. We were given towels and showed to our cubicles, which were more like little rooms with a bed and space to change and where you left all your stuff. I had my swimming bottoms on, as that’s what Jen said she did, and Di left her knickers on too, but we were the only ladies there to do so. We walked into the main room which was a big circular space made of marble, with little sinks around the outside walls and a raised platform in the centre, beneath a domed ceiling, where half- or fully naked women were being rubbed by old obese ladies wearing swimsuits. Bizarre. We really had no idea what to do and no one came to tell us, so Di and I just sat by a couple of sinks and started to wash ourselves with the soap we brought. Finally one of the ladies noticed us and came over to get cranky. ‘No wash, no wash,’ she said, and moved Di from her sink to mine, so we sat there on a little platform using small metal bowls to scoop water from the sink and pour it over ourselves. The women being rubbed on the platform all looked very relaxed; they also all looked like they were from the same Scandinavian volleyball team. Not intimidating at all. Di and I sat pouring water for what seemed like ages, and finally realised that until we went and lay in the middle of the platform, the ladies would assume we weren’t ready for our bath. Finally it was our turn; I got laid down on the hot marble and the lady introduced herself as Frances. I got loofahed (but not as much as I expected, or would have liked) and then soaped up, and taken back to another sink to be rinsed, then back to the hot marble to be rubbed with oil, then back to the sink to get rinsed again and have my hair washed, which felt a bit strange. It was like being a child again, and being bathed by my grandmother. Then it was all over so Di and I ran back to our rooms to get changed. Other ladies were sitting around in their towels drinking tea but I kind of just wanted to leave. It was a strange experience but I’m sure you could find places that were a bit friendlier, or where you got a better loofah. I was glad to have finally done it. That afternoon some friends of Di’s flew into Istanbul as part of their holiday, so we met up with them and took them for dinner at the pide place from the Lonely Planet we’d missed the day before. I don’t think any of us got pide but it was a good meal anyway.

The next day we decided to do an early morning visit to the Archaeology Museum, which people in our tour group had been raving about. It was an amazing place as they had amassed a lot of stuff; it was also nice to be in a museum where the stuff was from the same place and didn’t feel like it had been stolen from foreign countries. They had some brilliant tombs and statues but what I remember the most was a cabinet full of ancient tablets with writing on them; one was labelled ‘The Oldest Love Poem In The World.’ Unfortunately there was no translation but I intend to look it up. The others looked very boring; regarding house sales and crops and so on. We got back to the hotel in time to have lunch and then Di got picked up to be taken to the airport. We had another hour which we used to buy some cheap drugs from the chemist and then it was our turn to be taken to the airport. We had to go through several lots of security but fortunately the long lines Di had experienced earlier seemed to have disappeared and it wasn’t too difficult to get through. An uneventful flight to Amsterdam again and then back home to Edinburgh, where we arrived about 10.30pm. All in all, a fantastic trip which comes highly recommended and a big, huge thankyou to Di who made it all possible.

Day 14: Pamukkale

2008-05-25T20:24:00.003+01:00

The next morning we had another early bus ride to Pamukkale, about 3 hours away. Our first stop was a local hotel, very unique as it was set over two separate buildings with gardens, a pool and tree houses separating them. We had a chance to change and hear the lunch menu from the lady described by Jen as one of the best cooks in Turkey, and then had a short ride into town up the hill to Hierapolis and the Travertines. The highlight of the ruins was the theatre, with its amazing view and lovely smooth flowing lines. The rest of the ruins were scattered over a large area so we didn’t look at much, even though it was a lovely day and setting. Having spent the previous morning at Ephesus it was more than enough ruins. We looked at the thermal pools but 18 lira seemed a steep price to pay for what is essentially a warm bath shared with strangers. The final part was our walk down the Travertines, a long slope of hard white calcium rock and milky pools. The postcards show bikini-clad ladies frolicking, but you’re not actually allowed to swim and I only saw one girl in a bikini and she looked cold (and a bit silly considering everyone else was clothed). You aren’t allowed to wear shoes (only bare feet or socks), but it wasn’t too rough, a lot like rock pools at the beach. The best bit was sitting on the edge of a trough and resting your feet in the warm flowing water. Bliss. When we finally made it down the hill we were taken back to the hotel and sat on a verandah in the garden where a man from Queensland gave us our cutlery and said he’d been there for 3 weeks and didn’t plan on leaving anytime soon; I could see why. We had a great lunch of stuffed vegies and kebabs and meatballs and then had the chance to use one of the hotel rooms for a shower and a change, which Toby and I did, or just relax and digest until it was time to go to the train.

We got on the train at Denizli and unfortunately it wasn’t nearly as nice as the previous one; it was much older and had signs of wear and tear, and was very very smoky. Although there’d been talk of a party on the train, Toby and I locked ourselves in our cabin all night, trying to avoid the smoke and high-pitched whine of the corridor lights. Not much fun. It was a long 16 hours on that train.

Days 12-13: Selcuk

2008-05-25T20:24:00.001+01:00

Lucky the day before had been so good, because the next was awfully boring. We got a bus from Kayakoy to the Fetiye bus station, and then sat on a public bus for 4.5 hours. It wasn’t too bad a trip since they provided drinks and sweets. Jen informed us before the trip that Toby and I were to be considered married from now on, as unrelated men and women aren’t allowed to sit together. Cheapest wedding ever. Mobile phones are also banned on the bus since apparently they interfere with the braking system. That made all of us laugh; I have no idea why they can’t just say it’s for the comfort of our passengers, but anyway. The bus dropped us off at a crazy bus station full of people yelling, and then we got onto a local minibus called a ‘dolmish’ which means stuffed, because they just keep picking people up as long as they’ll fit. That wasn’t much fun either. Finally we got to Selcuk, and our dust-free hotel that made me very happy. The owner’s name was Diamond, but there was no tea and cake on offer unfortunately. Jen took us into town but there wasn’t much to see. There was the ancient Artimus column in a field (what’s left of one of the 7 ancient wonders), the Isa Bey mosque which was very different to others we’d seen, being high and square, and lots of storks in nests. After the walk we all split up for dinner; Toby and I ended up having pide in a little place. It was delicious and cheap (9 lira for both of us). We ate ice cream by the pool back at the hotel and had another early night.

The next morning started early (and cold) with breakfast on the open terrace and a 7.45am bus ride out to Ephesus. Our guide’s name was Nile and he was quite the eccentric character; he was very short and probably in his 70s, and he was always pointing to something saying, ‘Good photo, take a photo,’ and then running off to the next spot to wait for us. The highlights of Ephesus for me was the magnificent library which has been 97% restored (or something) and which we got to see without anybody else around as we were there so early, and the terrace houses which are under a massive glass roof being paid for by the Austrians (who else) and are in the process of being restored. We were lucky to be there so early; by the time we left around 11am the place was overrun by about 100 cruise ship groups. We had a 20 minute walk along the road to the cave of 7 sleepers and the best gozleme ever. We got to see the women making it which was great; they had a whole production line (or circle rather) of rolling out the pastry, then folding it over the filling like a package and cooking it over a hot plate on the fire. Cheese and spinach was the winner again. The cave itself wasn’t particularly inspiring, especially since you couldn’t really tell which cave The Cave was.

We were taken back to the hotel by minibus and then had a free afternoon, so Toby and I rested (as usual) and then went to the Ephesus museum, via the ‘gym’ on a footpath by the Artimus field which was very funny and a lawsuit waiting to happen. The museum was great and only cost 2 lira. One of the first things we saw was a rock in a glass case next to a letter from a Dutch man saying he’d taken it from Ephesus in the 1970s but now being older and wiser he felt very guilty about it, so please accept it back along with his apologies. It was very sweet. The museum’s current exhibition was based on gladiators since they’d excavated a gladiator cemetery nearby. There were some nice graphic diagrams showing cause of death and some depressing statistics about life expectancy. The stuff about crowd pardons was good; current reality TV contestants don’t know how easy they have it with today’s audiences. There was also some interesting philosophical musings on the nature of sport and its relationship to society and individuals, including a statement from someone who thought the only other situation in a person’s life that was similar to the glory of sport was sex. I guess that was written by someone who didn’t dread PE in high school.

After the museum we headed to a shop in town run by a friend of Jen’s called Julia, thinking to buy some little presents for people. We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon (and a stupid amount of money) in the shop, having tea and trying on scarves and chatting with Julia. When she heard we’d been together 5 years and still weren’t married, she told me it was silly women tried to be so equal and yet waited for a man to propose to them, and hey wouldn’t it be great if I just proposed to Toby right now, in her shop? I guess that would have made a good story for her to tell people but instead we just bought lots of stuff. We’d planned to visit St John’s Basilica after the shop but we were exhausted so instead we went back to the hotel to rest before meeting the rest of the group at 5 for our excursion to Sirince, a little village reached after a rather hair-raising mountain drive in a minibus. The main purpose was to taste the fruit wines the region is famous for, so we did that first with mulberry and pomegranate being the favourites although they were all basically crowd-pleasers. Then we went through the markets to a jewellery shop run by the silversmith who made some of the jewellery for the movie Troy. There was a framed picture of Brad wearing one of his amulets. It was a nice little shop with lots of interesting things and he did well out of our group who bought quite a bit; even Toby got himself a Brad-like evil eye pendant. After stocking up on fruit wine we were taken back to town and had a birthday dinner for one of the men on the tour at a restaurant near the hotel. The house speciality was a rather odd concoction of shredded fried potato, yoghurt and a spicy meat stew on top. It was delicious, even if it was strange. Jen bought a cake which no one thought they’d be able to fit in, but it was quite a light chocolate cream sponge and a banana filling that went down a treat.

Days 10-11: Kayakoy

2008-05-25T20:23:00.000+01:00

The next morning we were collected from our hotel by two jeeps, with most of the group sitting sideways in the back of one. It was a very new jeep and mostly closed in, and even had seatbelts which is a rarity in Turkey. We drove out of Kas and stopped at a tiny, ‘sandy’ beach off the highway, which had very coarse sand and freezing water. Our next stop was Xanthos, the old Lycian capital and the most interesting thing about that was the school children cleaning the theatre, with girls putting rubbish in bags and boys sweeping. We couldn’t figure out if it was detention or just locals looking after an historical monument. From Xanthos we drove to Saklikent Gorge, where we ate BBQ trout on cushions sitting by a river. After lunch our guide walked us up to the start of the gorge where we hired rubber shoes and then waded into the water. The first part was quite deep and fast, and the guide helped us across, but after that it was much smoother and very shallow. The gorge is made out of limestone and the water was a funny milky blue colour. It was a spectacular walk, I have never been anywhere like it. We couldn’t go very far in so we eventually returned to the jeeps to move onto Kayakoy, our next stop.

Unfortunately the drive took about an hour longer than necessary because the drivers didn’t know how to get to Kayakoy, so we ended up on this narrow winding road up from Fetiye. Coming into the Kayakoy valley was brilliant as you could see the ‘ghost town’ of grey brick buildings on the opposite hillside. Our hotel (Villa Rhapsody, great name) was a white building on the edge of the village, down a dirt road. It had a lovely garden with colourful flowers and winding paths, and a covered bar area by a perfectly blue pool. Unfortunately the rooms didn’t quite live up to the same standard, being very basic and quite dusty. Once we had our rooms we were invited by Attila the owner back to the pool area for tea and homemade orange and poppy seed cake, which was a perfect welcome after a long ride in a bumpy jeep. They had a resident dog and some cats which probably explained a bit of the dustiness, even though other hotels with cats didn’t feel so unclean.

In the evening we walked into the village, which was tiny and full of fields of poppies. And lots of dogs. Jen took us to Poseiden’s bar/restaurant, again a mostly outdoor area under vines and trees nestled below the ghost town. After drinks most of us went across the road to a gozleme place, where we waited ages for a plate of hot chips and our pancakes, even though we were the only people there. The meat and potatoes gozleme some of us got was disappointingly bland and actually improved by tomato sauce, which no good food should be. The cheese and spinach one was much more popular. It was a restless sleep after that with the dusty room, a cough, and a waffled ‘sheet’ on the bed that felt more like a starched tablecloth. Ouch.

There was breakfast by the pool the next day and then we headed off on our ‘mini trek’ to Oludeniz, via the ghost town. It was really creepy and very sad to think of so many people being forced to leave their homes. We stopped by the high church and then Jen explained the walk to us, and sent Toby on ahead to look for markings on the hill. The first part was the hardest as it was a steep and rocky climb through the ruins and the markings were infrequent. But the view from the top was more than worth it. The rest of the walk took about 2.5 hours and was quite easy. The views of the Mediterranean were brilliant and it was really invigorating to be outside and getting some exercise. Communing with nature and what-not. When we finally got to the lagoon, Jen got us a mini bus to drive us around to the beach area since we were running out of time for the paragliders to eat before their flight. The beach area was very touristy, a flat road with the beach on one side and shops, bars etc on the other. Oludeniz is a popular resort for English tourists so there were lots of sunburnt people around. We got sandwiches for lunch and then the paragliders (Toby and two others from the group) went to jump off a mountain. The rest of us got a table at the bar next door where we could watch the beach and the paragliders landing on the grass. The rest of the group went for a boat trip after lunch but I decided I quite liked where I was so I stayed and had a beer and read my book and just enjoyed the feeling of being on holidays. I got to see Toby and the others land (much to my relief) and then we spent the rest of the afternoon at the same table, eating and drinking and enjoying the view and cheesy pop music. We had a chat to one of the paragliding instructors who was quite a character and entertained us with the story of how he met his English wife and so on. We went for a dip in the water, but it was very cold and the pebbles were annoying so we didn’t stay in very long. It was especially sore on your feet once they’d been all softened in the water. No wonder Europeans and the Brits like Aussie beaches so much. Around 5pm Jen put the four of us into a taxi and we got him to drop us off at Poseiden’s where we had an early dinner of meze that included ‘sensitive’ meatballs (covered in burghal and fried), stuffed vine leaves, borek, humus, broad beans in tomato sauce and a bean and dill thing that had the consistency of butter and was really tasty. Once we’d filled up on meze and beer we went back over the road to the gozleme place for dessert, although there was no fire and so considering our long wait the night before, we offered to come back later. But the man was very insistent so we stayed, and it didn’t take long at all; the boys had chocolate and the girls had lemon and sugar which turned out to be a sugar syrup, with lemon wedges on the side. We were so full after that. When we got back to the hotel, the rest of the group was still waiting for their dinner. I think I was asleep by 9pm that night, full and sleepy after our big day.

Days 8-9: Kas

2008-05-25T20:22:00.002+01:00

There was another delayed start in Antalya as the front license plate of our mini bus had been stolen overnight; after waiting a while for the police to come we eventually just piled in and drove to the station ourselves. Our driver told Jen that in ten years of driving for Intrepid he had never had so many things go wrong on one trip. He had been great, helping our injured people in and out of the bus and keeping a friendly smile on his face all the time. Once the police were sorted out, we had a magnificent drive snaking along the coast and through lush valleys. There was an early lunch stop for gozleme (Turkish pancakes) by a lake and then we stopped again an hour or so later at Mira, home of St Nicholas and also some brilliant Lycian ruins. We paid 5 lira to look at the tombs carved into the rock face and also an amazing outdoor theatre. I remember thinking how incredible it was that the basic design for theatres hasn’t changed at all, and even back in ancient time there was an effort made to create a grand and beautiful space. Theatres have always had such a sense of occasion about them.

We got into Kas about 3pm that afternoon, to a hotel not quite as nice as Antalya but the room had a little balcony with a lovely view of the ocean. Jen took us for one of her orientation walks through the town, which was quite small and concentrated around the harbour with cobblestoned streets and lots of shops. We had a late lunch by the water and then Toby and I went down a little path trying to find a beach. It turned out Kas’s coastline was just rocks. We were accosted by a ‘friendly’ man who invited us to his free beach and when we said no, started to open his satchel and said, ‘Well then I have some presents for you.’ We just ran away. Toby didn’t really mind as the man acted so nice, but I found it far more intimidating and manipulative than the shopkeepers who are obviously aggressive; I just didn’t trust it. Toby rested in the afternoon as he still wasn’t feeling well, and I went in search of a beach for some journal time. But the one over the road from the hotel was a beach/restaurant, very popular in Kas where there is a café overlooking the water and you can lie on a beach chair. But I assume the pressure to buy something is enormous, so I ended up on the terrace of our hotel, all closed in to the elements but entirely glass so the view was wonderful.

Jen took us to one of her favourite restaurants for dinner; the girl who’d broken her ankle had decided to fly home so it was her final meal with us. The place was called Mama’s, even though the girl who seemed to be in charge was probably thirty years old. The speciality of the house was called Mama’s Pastry; either meat or mushrooms mixed with cheese and then wrapped in thin pastry, coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried. At least I think that’s how they did it; apparently she refuses to share the recipe. It was delicious. The other memorable part of the meal was a dip made of grated carrot, yoghurt and cooked zucchini flesh (no seeds). It was a meal that made me realise that after a week, I still wasn’t sick of Turkish food and had no hankering for spaghetti bolognaise or anything else, like some other people in the group. I found the food varied and seasonal and fresh, and almost always with perfect spices. Yum.

Toby and I got up early the next morning to farewell the girl going home; Toby had to help her down the stairs so I went to say goodbye. We were sad to see her go but she seemed happy with her decision, especially as her insurance company had arranged for her to fly business class with Emirates (a later email from her said she’d been upgraded to first class and would never be able to fly cattle class again). We went back to bed for a while and later ate breakfast in the terrace of the hotel (I remember their hard boiled eggs had been halved and sprinkled with paprika and dill, a nice change from the usual plain eggs, and the tomato wedges were mixed with perfect fresh basil, and as well as plain bread there were triangles of puff pastry you could pull open and fill with cheese or honey or whatever). After breakfast, we walked into town to get on our private boat for the day. This day ended up being one of our favourites of the entire trip as it was so relaxing and beautiful. You are forced to relax and enjoy the view; I suppose you could take a book or your MP3 or even a laptop but I really think it would ruin the experience. We stopped in a little cove mid-morning and Toby and I and another couple swam, even though it was freezing. The water was the most amazing colour of blue. We got back on the boat to another cove where you could swim to land and a few people did, but by then I was dry and warm and happy to stay on board. While we were anchored there they served us lunch – big salads and bread and kebabs and meatballs they barbequed on a gas burner set up on the gang plank. Another boat had the same idea as us to stop in the same cove, and after a little while a man in a small motorboat came by selling ice creams. What a great job. They were expensive but the experience was worth it.

After lunch we went to another island where the village of Simena is, which was full of shops and restaurants spilling down a steep hillside. It was a maze of dusty pathways bordered by weeds and haunted by women and children selling bracelets. Toby and I decided to forgo the 5 lira fortress and tomb walk in the heat, and instead followed Jen to a café she claimed made some of the best ice cream in Turkey. But we were a week too early; Jen was lifting all the metal lids on the ice cream counter staring into the empty pots, wailing ‘No ice cream? No ice cream?’ The boy just shrugged. So we bought a really expensive Diet Coke and just enjoyed the view. The rest of the group ended up there as well, all in search of the famous ice cream, so I’m sure they are making a fortune selling drinks to people who come for ice cream and can’t be bothered leaving. Simena was also the place I bought some evil eye bracelets for myself and Di; after our two broken limbs Jen had instructed the group to all go and buy ourselves evil eye amulets, which are supposed to protect you from bad luck. The whole group ended up wearing at least one, if not more. It’s a silly superstition but after 2 broken bones in nearly as many days, we weren’t taking any chances.

On the way back to Kas the weather changed and we had a choppy, grey ride. We made it back in one piece. Toby and I spent the night with another couple on the trip, having dinner at a place near the water and then big desserts in a cute café called the Hideaway, which was down a little pathway beside a house and really just a garden full of trees and tables and chairs. It was lovely, even though I was so full after dessert I could barely move.

Day 7: Antalya

2008-05-25T20:22:00.001+01:00

We set our alarm for 7 and joined some of the rest of the group for an early morning walk along the water. We figured we’d missed enough of the optional activities and it was time to take advantage of the fact we had someone showing us around such lovely places. We walked out to the island where we’d eaten dinner, and got to go inside an old Greek Orthodox church that had been gutted. It was sad to see lots of graffiti, but there were some signs it was being restored. Toby and I started to dream of buying a house there (or even a church). It would be a great place to write one’s novel.

We got back to the hotel around 9 and sat down for breakfast with one of the Australian girls who told us she’d tripped on the stairs coming down from her room and hurt her ankle. She said it seemed okay and I told her not to tell Jen, who was now a bit paranoid about our group when it came to stairs. I wanted to go rose product shopping since the area was famous for its roses, so I left her and Toby to finish their packing and went out. The shop I wanted to visit was shut so I went to the bazaar, which was really just a tiny courtyard with some shops in it. I went to a shop recommended by another couple in the group and bought some hand cream, although the two kids minding the shop absolutely stared at me the whole time and really invaded my personal space. I wasn’t sure if I was meant to be chatty or nervous or turned off shoplifting.

Back at the hotel I ran into Di, who said the girl’s ankle was swollen up and looked like her friend’s when she had broken hers in Mexico. Great. Jen decided to err on the side of caution and took her off to the hospital, which she had jokingly pointed out when we drove into town the previous afternoon. They were back in just less than an hour, with a partially broken ankle, a plaster cast and crutches that had all cost her around 70 lira which seemed a bargain. She was very wobbly on the crutches so Toby helped carry her to the bathroom and then into the van. She was a very small woman so if it had to happen to anyone I suppose it was good it was her. No one could believe we had two broken bones in less than a week. Jen was incredulous, having never had an injury like that during her time in Turkey, but she coped well and never lost her sense of humour (in front of us, anyway).

After the morning’s drama, we had a three hour drive through some spectacular mountain scenery and arrived in Antalya in the afternoon. I got my first glimpse of the Mediterranean but driving into the city, it felt like any other affluent, concrete-clad place at first. Luckily our hotel was in Kaleici, the old town by the Roman harbour. We had an interesting time navigating the tiny cobbled streets in the mini bus but eventually made it to the hotel where we fell in love with it immediately, perched as it was with views of the harbour and ocean. There was a pool in a gorgeous courtyard and then to get to our room we walked through another terrace full of shady trees and fountains. The room was lovely too, with a really clean bathroom and a window seat looking out onto the terrace and across the town.

Di and the Scottish lady went off to play an expensive round of golf and our injured one went off to rest, so Jen took the rest of us down to the harbour where we saw them making sticky Turkish ice cream and said no to all the men who wanted us to take cruises on their boats, and then up the cliff to find food. After lunch everyone else went off to the museum but Toby and I decided we would rather spend our money and a beautiful afternoon just exploring the town, which felt very Surfers Paradise in places. I bought a sun dress (didn’t haggle) and we went to a chemist as Toby had a sore throat and bought some cheap Strepsils and gargle. We had time before dinner to make use of the quaint gym in the hotel where half the equipment didn’t work and the other half was broken in some way. For dinner we walked down the hill (with Toby carrying our injured friend) to a restaurant on the water where the food was okay and the view more than made up for it. The water really was the most amazing shade of blue, especially close to the water where it is definitely turquoise.

This was the day we started really feeling like we were on holidays, with such a nice hotel and fantastic weather and a relaxed, coasty vibe about the place. We were sorry to only be staying one night, although Jen promised us we wouldn’t mind so much once we got to Kas, our next stop.

Day 6: Egirdir

2008-05-25T20:21:00.002+01:00

We had a lazy start the next day; there was a pottery tour at 9.30 am which Toby and I decided to skip in favour of a sleep-in. It was the first full night’s sleep I’d had in days and I felt like a new woman when I woke up. We had been planning to explore some of the caves by ourselves but we ran out of time so we just met the rest of the group at 11 and left by bus to pick up Jen at the hospital, where she had been visiting our fallen comrade who ended up needing to be flown back to Istanbul for surgery. We were very sad to have lost one of our group in such awful circumstances, but I’m sure not as sad as she was. At times like this I think travelling on a tour is such a good idea; Jen was able to help deal with the insurance company and arrange for someone to fly with her, and also for some Istanbul friends to visit her occasionally so she wouldn’t go crazy. From Goreme we drove through rolling farmland until about lunchtime when we hit the Anatolian plateau, and then the landscape was full of flat nothingness. We hate at a roadside restaurant that was super expensive – my own spoonful of rice and salad cost 6 lira, while Toby’s plate of meatballs that half filled him up cost 8. Ouch. There was a little playground outside the restaurant so Toby and I played on the swings and monkey bars; it was nice to be outside in a T shirt and not cold, as up until that point the Turkish weather had not been much better than what we’d left behind in Scotland.

The rest of the drive was boring, although a couple of things caught my eye. One was that occasionally you would see families living in tents by the side of the road; I asked Jen about them who said they are semi-nomadic farm workers. It looked like a tough way to raise kids. The other was a man I saw in a field, kneeling under a tree in a seemingly random direction I assumed was towards Mecca. I loved the simple elegance of his position, and the ritual of it; the idea that in any day, no matter what you are doing, there is time to just stop and think about something bigger than you. But mostly I slept in the bus, until we hit what Jen called the lake district, which was much more interesting. Lake Egirdir, where we stayed, was incredibly beautiful and rather alpine-esque being ringed by mountains, some with snow, although parts of the shore looked very Mediterranean. After we got to our (not very nice) hotel we went straight out for a walk along the water, which looked clean and clear and wasn’t as cold as I expected. Toby skimmed rocks but I just couldn’t get it so I threw them instead. For dinner we were driven out to an ‘island’ on the lake that was mostly inhabited by Greek people until the population exchange in the 1920s. We had drinks on a terrace looking over the water but it got too cold so we moved inside to eat. Most of us got trout (a bargain at 6 lira); we also had dolmades, borek, bread and chips although we had to ask for the latter which didn’t arrive until we’d finished everything else. My stomach handled all the food which I was grateful for; the magic of Di’s pills.

Days 4-5: Goreme

2008-05-25T20:21:00.001+01:00

We woke up on the train to farms and got off at Ankara, Turkey’s capital city (who knew?). It was not the most exciting of places; it probably has the same inferiority complex as Canberra. We were picked up at the station and drove until after 9.30, by which time we were well out of Ankara and it seemed the breakfast Jen had promised us might never come. There must have been a miscommunication between Jen and the driver, but we stopped eventually at a roadhouse restaurant that was strangely formal with stained satin tablecloths and waiters in striped satin waistcoats and bow ties. It was a bit much for 10 am really. Jen ordered us all the Turkish version of scrambled eggs, which were mostly tomatoes and peppers, with chilli and a bit of egg. It was delicious. That plus proper Turkish bread and two cups of black tea = perfect breakfast. Then we were back in the bus for another three hours, through rolling farmlands and tiny little villages off the highway. I slept a lot of the way although it didn’t do much to make up for my restless night.

Coming into Cappadocia was more interesting, as we started to spot the white rocks the region is famous for. I had no idea what to expect from this area, although I’d read descriptions and seen photos, but it absolutely did not disappoint. Goreme was amazing, a small village practically carved into the white rocks. There was a lot of building going on, I guess lots of people like the idea of living or staying in a cave. Our hotel was amazing; Toby and I were in a really cave-like room without windows. The terraces on the hotel had brilliant views down the hill. Once we were settled in the hotel we went to have lunch in a house that had been converted into a restaurant. Jen had ordered our food from the road so it had been cooking for hours in little terracotta pots. We sat around a low table on cushioned benches and ‘donkeys’ (small stools you straddle) and we ate bread, red cabbage, mini chillies and shepherd salad (the tomato and cucumber mixed with mint and other things). The waiters broke the tops off the terracotta pots, the way you do with a hard-boiled egg, and then tipped the contents onto a place with rice and cabbage. So good.

By the end of lunch I was ready to collapse from exhaustion (it had been a busy week) but people were ordering dessert and talking about visiting a carpet shop. I managed to escape from the group and went back to the hotel to sleep for two hours. I had a long hot shower and did some washing and was feeling much more human by the time everyone got back from their trip to the carpet shop.

For dinner we went to a nearby village to eat in a local family’s house, which was more a series of terraces, stairs and rooms carved into rock. Not the sort of family friendly house you would expect in Australia, considering they had a two-year-old. I am not sure how they stop him falling down stairs. They had a table set up for us outside with the most amazing view, but it was deemed too cold so we ended up inside in another cave room, sitting on cushions around a low table. The father of the family, Nazeem, took great pride in showing us the work he had done to his house and the things he has collected to decorate it. Dinner was (I assume cooked by his wife and then) served by Nazeem and his two older children. It started with salad and then burghal soup with lots of bread, and then rice and a chick pea and lamb stew. Dessert was a bowl of grape compote, although the grapes were nearly sultanas. It was light and syrupy and a good end to the meal. We also partook of Nazeem’s very boozy home brew red wine and felt very full and sleepy as we headed back to the hotel.

The next day started early; we heard the call to prayer a bit after 4 am and then got a wake up call we weren’t expecting at 4.30 am. We managed to doze a little longer and were ready for the bus at 5.15 am, although it was raining and our chances of getting up in a hot air balloon were looking slim. While we were waiting in reception Di heard a noise and we went outside to where one of the ladies from the group was sprawled at the bottom of one of the staircases. She was obviously in a lot of pain and seemed to pass out for a moment. Luckily Jen was awake (the night before we had joked that the day she didn’t get up early to meet the bus would be the day something went wrong) and she called an ambulance, as well as a local friend of hers to go to the hospital with them. They got her foot up on a cushion (they’re good for so many things) and covered her with a blanket and an umbrella. She’d slipped on the steps in the dark as the hotel didn’t have any lights on; I’d been surprised by that as well when we’d left our room. At this point we were cold and a bit worried and ready to go back to bed, but the bus turned up so off we went, minus one. We were taken to an office in town that looked a lot like those rescue centres you see on TV during fires or floods, full of people in outdoor gear looking apprehensive and tired. We were given tea and biscuits and told we were waiting for the wind and rain to die down; apparently it had been fine at 4.30 am when we got our wake up call. Jen had told us that by booking on our first morning we’d be able to go the next day if the weather was bad, but the woman running the company told us they were heavily booked and we shouldn’t get our hopes up. After an hour of waiting (which included being spontaneously serenaded by what I assume was a choir, which seemed very rude at such an early hour) we were herded onto a bus and assumed we were finally going back to bed, but no. The wind had calmed a bit, so we were flying. They took us to one spot that wasn’t quite right, so we ended up in another where they inflated the balloon while we all stood around taking photos. Everywhere you look in Cappadocia there is a great view, so you just keep taking more and more. Finally we climbed into the balloon (4 to a box, 4 boxes) and were shown the landing position in case it got rough (I got to lean back against Toby, which I liked) and then we were off. It was a very strange sensation as you really are just floating, and that’s exactly what it feels like. I was okay while we were close to the ground and the view really was incredible. I could see a balloon so high up they got lost in the clouds and I knew I’d hate that; Toby said he doubted we would go that high, so I tried to relax. I started feeling nervous as we got higher, but I concentrated on the horizon rather than looking straight down, which helped. But then we got higher still, and the clouds closed in beneath us and when I lost my focal point of the horizon, I panicked. It was snowing as well so on top of being tired and well out of my comfort zone, I was freezing. I concentrated on staying calm since there were so many people around who wouldn’t appreciate a screaming girl, but I have never been so glad to see the ground before. The pilot was great and in constant contact with other pilots as well as the trucks on the ground, so once we were further down I relaxed a bit for our final few minutes, although I couldn’t help thinking it was the most expensive panic attack ever. I was relieved when we finally landed (on the trailer of a truck, which I thought was impressive) and happy to guzzle the cherry juice and champagne we were given once we were down. We sang happy birthday to a girl who looked Chinese, spoke with an American accent and was translating for a group of Ukrainians, and had some cake and were given certificates with a picture of a balloon in perfect weather. I’m sure I would have enjoyed the experience more if we hadn’t ended up in snow clouds.

It was the best hot shower ever when we got back. The hotel manager told us the lady who had tripped had broken her leg, which seemed extraordinary given the distance she’d fallen. Jen was still at the hospital with her, but our local guide (a very cute Turkish man called Ali) showed up after breakfast to take us to the Underground City. By this time the weather had cleared up perfectly (of course), so back in the bus for a 40 minute trip to Derinkuyu. The Underground City is where they have excavated cities under Cappadocia dating back to the 6th century BC. They were mainly used to hide from invaders and provided a safe place for early Christians to practise their religion. There were 150 cities housing around 10 000 people, and we saw a tiny part of one. It had a kitchen, stable, storage areas, bedrooms, a church, a meeting hall and of course a winery (of sorts). There were tunnels running through the rooms for ventilation and communication, and rolling stone doors like what you see on old cartoons. In the walls were carved little niches used for lighting with linseed oil, and also for finding your way in the dark when enemies came. Sometimes the tunnels we walked through were large, but they got very low and tight at other times. We ended up about 45 feet underground. The worst part of it was that they don’t control how many people go down at a time, so it got very crowded with guides trying to negotiate their group’s turn up and down the stairs. Just an accident waiting to happen really, as all it would take would be one moron to create a panic, and it would be mayhem.

Luckily we got out alive and back in the bus and about this time I started feeling ill, as though something I ate wasn’t agreeing with me. I tried to ignore it and we drove to Panorama, a spot high on a hill with brilliant views (again). It was quite the tourist trap with lots of little stalls selling all sorts of rubbish, but I bought a coke to try and settle my tummy and Toby got some biscuits since he was starving. Our next stop was the Open Air Museum, an optional activity on the itinerary but everyone wanted to go so Ali agreed to take us along. I was glad we went, even though I was mostly concentrating on not losing the contents of my stomach. The museum is in a place where the early Christians built churches and other rooms right into the rock. Some are decorated with the most beautiful and detailed frescoes, although not all are well preserved since UNESCO and the Turkish government didn’t start caring until the 1980s. It was an incredible piece of Christian history in the heart of an Islamic country.

After the museum, we decided to walk back to town via Love Valley, which Ali said was about 2 kilometres and even though I was feeling pretty rotten at this point, I thought that would be about 30 minutes and I could probably manage. In hindsight I should have not been so keen to avoid a fuss and just asked Ali to get me a taxi then and there. It was kind of pleasant to be out walking in the countryside and to see the rocks we’d seen from the balloons at ground level. We went into Love Valley and I thought we must be nearly back to town, but then Ali said we had to follow the track back to the main road and keep walking. Grrrr. I started to walk back myself as the situation was getting dire. I walked very, very slowly and it was just getting ridiculous with Di having to hold my hand as I went through awful spasms and tried not to think about how humiliating this was about to get, so Ali ran back to the main road and called the driver of the bus for me. He wasn’t answering his phone and Ali asked if I wanted to go to the hospital; I said I’d be happy with a bathroom and he smiled knowingly. Joy of joys, the driver turned up very quickly and we were back at the hotel in no time, where I wanted to give Ali a big hug but I was in a rush so instead I left Toby to give him a good tip. I took some drugs Di had and went to bed for two hours, both of which worked a treat and I was ready to meet the group for dinner, although still a bit wobbly and fragile. It was weird being around 12 people who knew all about my digestive problems, but being experience travellers (not to mention grown ups) everyone was very understanding and really when I thought about the lady in hospital, it seemed very minor. Di and Jen bought me some mint tea and fresh mint on their visit to the lady in hospital, so I had that as well and then we went to a terrace bar for a drink where we toasted the broken leg’s owner and enjoyed sunset over the white hills. After a drink Toby and I went to a restaurant in the village with the other couples from the group (not on purpose, it just worked out that way). It was quite touristy but I loved it for the cushions, the artwork and the old guy playing a Turkish sitar (had a different name which I forget now) right beside us. I just had water and bites of everyone else’s food, but it was still a great evening especially when another guy with a drum joined the sitar player, and then the waiter sat down with some spoons and the three of them just went off. It was great; a good end to an otherwise emotional day.

Days 1-3: Istanbul

2008-05-25T20:18:00.002+01:00

I must first apologise for the length of the following posts for our trip from Turkey...I kept a detailed journal for most of the trip, wanting to be able to remember everything. And now, everyone can remember everything. It also means I have no time to include photos but in any case, we have over 500 with which to bore everyone to tears when we are back in Oz.

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We had an early start (4.15am taxi to the airport) and an uneventful flight to Amsterdam, and then another one to Istanbul. There were some lovely views over the Alps as we passed Salzberg, no singing nuns to be seen unfortunately. We had a long wait at customs; there were lots of people who had walked straight past the office with VISA written out the front, and a list of nationalities that needed one, and then had to back-track which added to our time. But our luggage arrived safely and we easily met our driver. Ever since I’ve been flying, I have wanted to come out into the arrivals hall and see my name on a little sign, and this time it happened, except it wasn’t my name exactly. We were being driven to our hotel with another lady on our tour, who was from Glasgow. The driver took our bags and hurried us out of the airport to a van, well two vans parked next to each other. One was plain white and the other was orange with NAKED TOUR painted on the side. Luckily we got into the plain white van and were hurtled into the city. The first things I noticed were all the trees and public spaces, especially children’s playgrounds, and lots of Turkish flags flying from windows and balconies on apartment buildings that looked rather poor and run-down. There were groups of men working in parks and flower beds; the whole city I found has a sense of urgency about it, everyone is doing something. The streets around our hotel, which was located just behind the Blue Mosque in Sultanahmet, were crazy, very narrow cobbled stones streets with steep hills, and lots of tourists and honking of horns. There were shops selling hats and rugs and jewellery, with men standing outside smoking and yelling at each other. Around our hotel, there were a lot of crumbling stone walls and wooden buildings that had seen better days; the one on the corner up the hill was missing a top floor. It looked like a fire had destroyed it. Across the street was a building that looked derelict and abandoned, but later we noticed washing hanging from the line so I suppose someone must have lived there. It was a strange place; the whole street felt like one big flammable accident waiting to happen.

The hotel was lovely except they had lost Di’s booking; she ended up being put in what we assumed was the spare room, in the basement by the breakfast area. Better than nothing I suppose. After we settled in we went out in hunt of an ATM and some food, once we realised the driver had hurried us so much in the airport we hadn’t had a chance to stock up on lira. It was a long walk to find an ATM and when we finally did we were so hungry we went to the first café we found, which had a bain marie in the front window full of decent looking food. The man ushered us in and told us to tell the other man what we wanted piled on our plate; we had a bad feeling this would come back to haunt us and it did. The food was very edible although nothing special, but when the bill came we were horrified to discover we had just spent 60 lira on 3 plates of food and some water. Ouch. We walked around a bit more; the area around the Blue Mosque was incredibly crowded and I couldn’t understand where so many people had come from. There were a lot of Aussies who I assume had come up from Gallipoli as it was the day after Anzac Day; I am sad to say they weren’t exactly doing us proud, although there was nothing particularly wrong with their behaviour. After our wonder we went back to the hotel for a rest and then went for another walk down along the waterfront, although it started to rain and I had a general sense of uneasiness, probably to do with the crumbling shells of buildings and piles of rubbish being picked over by feral cats. On our way back to the streets near the hotel we stumbled onto a small bazaar where there were still some shops open, so we had a look at rugs and jewellery and pretty things before sitting down for dinner at a café where the waiter had earlier tried to point us in the direction of the ATMs (not his fault we got lost). Toby had a mixed kebab (Turkish version of a mixed grill) and Di and I both had a delicious lentil and mint soup since we were still full from our late lunch. We got some bread (you always get bread in Turkey) and also some free hummus, which ended up being the only hummus we ate the whole time, but it was chunky and garlicky and very tasty. The whole meal cost us half as much as our lunch had, and I ended the day feeling clean and well-fed and less overwhelmed than before.

I had a restless sleep that night; there was a lot of street noise and the hotel only provided one small, thin blanket between the two of us. And of course there was our introduction to the early morning prayer call from the Blue Mosque about 50 metres away, which you never quite got used to. We had breakfast at the hotel, which had a small selection of Western items (cereal, boiled eggs, bread to toast) as well as Turkish (sliced tomato, cucumber, olives and cheese) and then went for a walk through the Blue Mosque courtyard and then up the main road to the Grand Bazaar (which was closed, being Sunday) and then down the hill again to the water. On our way down to the water we passed a baklava and Turkish delight shop and stopped to look from the outside. As usual, a man from inside came out to tempt us with all his salesman flair; he tried to convince Toby that the two of us were having an affair and Toby had now caught us out. He asked us our names and Di said, ‘Well what’s your name?’ to which he replied, ‘I am Mr Delicious.’ We did buy some of his baklava (just two pieces, not a kilo which is how they are priced) and it was delicious, very flaky and fresh, and every time we passed his shop we would say there’s Mr Delicious. He was one of the less intimidating shop owners we came across; I never quite got used to being yelled at by strangers in the street who wanted me to look at their rugs/jewellery/baklava/spices/scarves. They always ask where you are from, and when Di said ‘Australia’ to one, he then asked if we were from Wagga Wagga. We burst out laughing; he tried to tell us why Wagga is famous in Turkey but none of us were paying any attention as we were just trying to run away. For lunch we went to a restaurant behind the hotel which was mentioned in the Lonely Planet; I ordered a bean soup which ended up being just a runny version of baked beans, which I guess is where the idea for baked beans came from. The bread in that place was like the Turkish bread we are used to in Australia, but without the doughy middle; just the crisp seed-covered outside. Yummy.

At 1pm that afternoon we met our tour group for the first time, in the breakfast room at our hotel. Our leader’s name was Jen, a young woman from Australia, Condobolin to be exact. There were 12 of us, 3 couples and 6 single women. All the couples were Australian and 3 of the single women were too; the other 3 were English, Scottish and American. I was almost certainly the youngest of the group. We had to fill in lots of forms with our insurance and next of kin details and medical information and then Jen sat down and talked to us for a while about her experience working in Turkey and things to know about the country, practical things like drinking water, squat toilets, avoiding shopkeepers, and the price of beer. After the meeting Jen walked us to Aya Sofya, the big mosque across the road from the Blue Mosque although it no longer operates as such and has been a museum since the 1930s. From the outside Aya Sofya is not as beautiful as the Blue Mosque; it is somewhat lopsided and the colours aren’t as nice. But inside it was an immense and impressive space, despite the (permanent) scaffolding holding up the ceiling and the huge crowds. It took my breath away. The number of people and the fact it hasn’t been a place of worship for so long meant it didn’t really have the peaceful feeling I normally feel in those places, but still it was a fantastic place to wander, especially upstairs where they had found frescoes beneath the wall paint (the Muslims had just painted over the earlier Christian paintings). They were really incredible.

We met up with the group outside the main gate, and bought some of the doughy pretzel-type things called simits (although we didn’t know that at the time). Jen took us on a walk through some narrow back streets to show us some other parts of Istanbul tourists normally miss, to visit Kocuk Aya Sofya (I think that means ‘small’ as it was based on the original) which she said was her favourite mosque in Istanbul. Once inside I could definitely see why; it was an incredibly clean, serene space. Toby put it well when he said it felt holy. It was all done in blue and white, and full of natural light. Having a scarf over my hair and no shoes on added to that hushed, awed feeling I felt there. It was lovely and I felt rejuvenated from the crowds and grot we’d been around in other parts of Istanbul. After the mosque we went to a local café which was just how would picture a Turkish café, as it was all dark and full of wooden tables with nargile and backgammon on them, and carpets hanging on the walls. It was rather cavernous but opened out in the back to a wonderful 180-degree view of the Sea of Marmara. The whole back of the café was open, which made the sweet-smelling nargile smoke easier to bear. We sat in a little private area and had hot drinks, and then Jen put us all on a tram to visit another mosque, Rustem Pasa. This one was entered via a stone staircase in a courtyard, which would have made it easy to miss if we weren’t with someone who knew the way. The Rustem is famous for its mosaic tiles, which were beautifully intricate, but it still didn’t have the same serenity as Kocuk Aya Sofya. Like in Japan with their temples, I can see that you would easily overdoes on mosques so it was good we only had one more to do.

After the Rustem Jen took us for dinner at a local kebab place where we ate cheap kebabs and bread (again) and then we walked back to our hotel via Mr Delicious, who waved at us through his shop window. Not sure if he actually remembered us, but it’s his job to be friendly.

Our final day in Istanbul started with a visit to the Blue Mosque, where my experience was ruined by the number of women without scarves and the number of people wearing shorts. It seemed so thoughtless and disrespectful. It was not hard to follow the mosque’s requests for appropriate clothing; they even had head scarves for women to borrow. I was particularly annoyed by three young guys wearing boardies (I assume they were Australian, shame on them) and an entire tour group of Japanese ladies without head scarves, which bothered me because of the rules they have in Japan for entering temples. It made me understand why so many mosques don’t open to tourists. The building itself was beautiful though. There was a women’s section at the back; during her morning talk about Islam Jen had told us that was because men couldn’t be trusted to not get distracted by women bending over during prayers, but why they felt the need for an actual wooden partition so women can’t see, I’m not sure.

After the Blue Mosque we went to the Grand Bazaar, via a cemetery full of relatively important people where Jen talked a bit about Muslim funeral customs. Some of us agreed that the lack of autopsies was probably a positive thing; you accept that the death was God’s will, and move on. No dwelling on the why or the how, which often seems such a devastating aspect to grief. The Grand Bazaar was mercifully uncrowded. We only did one corridor; Jen set us loose at one end and said she would see us at the other end in 10 minutes. There are apparently over 4000 shops spread across the maze so we planned to go back another time. There were lots of men standing outside their shops, yelling at customers and each other. I saw one well-dressed guy filing his nails as he leaned against his shop window. The men in Istanbul were quite fashionable and there is a lot of guy love (kissing of cheeks, linking of arms), although at first I kept thinking I was seeing a lot of open gay couples. Interesting.

From the Bazaar we walked down to Topkapi Palace, where it took ages to get in through security. Our first stop was the harem (which means ‘private’ or ‘forbidden’ and only refers to the area where the family lived away from prying eyes; it has less to do with multitudes of naked women peeling grapes), which blew me away. I think partly I was amazed because it was gorgeous, and partly because you got a sense of what it would be like to live there. After the harem we needed some lunch; there was only one place to eat at the Palace and although the view over the water was lovely the food was exceedingly ordinary and outrageously overpriced. There was also a 15 minute wait for the ladies’ toilet. We saw a couple more rooms of the Palace (which was really a group of buildings scattered through several courtyards and gardens), including a ‘treasures’ section full of stuff supposedly belonging to prophets (like Abraham’s turban, David’s sword, Moses’ stick, Mohammed’s tooth) but it was so unbearably crowded I had to skip most of it. I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of stuff and number of people. There are only so many intricate mosaics and beautiful rooms you can look at before it all starts feeling repetitive. The three of us agreed we’d had enough of the Palace, so Di went to spend the afternoon with a couple of other ladies from the tour group while Toby and I visited the Basilica Cistern.

The Cistern was amazing, and I imagine it’s one of the most unique things I will ever see. It is essentially an ancient water storage facility, and I’m sure the 6th century bureaucrats and engineers and workmen who put it together would be flummoxed by the idea of tourists paying to go and see it, but it really is brilliant. Horror movie material. They have coloured lights playing in the water and music on, so they have worked hard to make it as interesting as possible. After the Cistern we headed back to the hotel via a mini market that was the miniest market ever: no bread, no fruit, nothing. Not sure what the point of the market was, although they did sell flour to make bread. We bought water and half a dozen muesli bars to stock up for the train trip, and then went to Starbucks so Toby could have internet time and I could have journal time in a smoke-free environment. (Yes, we go to Starbucks when we are in foreign countries; but sometimes all you want is a cup of tea, minus the cigarette smoke. So shoot us.) We went to the spice bazaar once we were feeling refreshed, although the rain and number of people just got on my nerves so it wasn’t the best experience. I did love the neat pyramids of powdered spices, and the hanging herbs and blocks of Turkish delight with pistachios embedded in them. We didn’t try anything as we didn’t want the pressure to buy, but it was an interesting thing to see.

We had an early dinner at the same kebab place Jen had taken us to the night before, since we were in the area and knew it was cheap and edible. Back at the hotel, the group re-joined and we were loaded into a mini van and driven across the bridge to the ferry terminal. It took about 20 minutes for the ferry to get to the train station, which I spent not thinking about all the ferry disasters in Turkey you hear on the news. It was a nice way to see the lights of Istanbul though. We had a long wait at the train station, but I guess when you are transporting 12 people you need to make allowances in case something comes up. We had a good local beer in the restaurant at the station while we were waiting, and learnt how to say ‘cheers’. All our luggage was piled along a wall and at one point a homeless lady came over and started pulling out the bags that were in a particular corner so she could set up her bed for the night. She had a careful routine for getting ready, including putting her scarf on. Although Istanbul clearly had plenty of poor people, it was the first sign I’d seen of actual homelessness; everyone else on the street was always busy and working, trying to sell something even if it was only to stand on their scales and pay for the privilege.

The train was quite nice and new; our cabin had 2 bunk beds and a wash basin, plus a fridge with free chocolate. Mmmm. We spent the first hour of the trip in the dining car, drinking beer and playing magnetic Scrabble with a couple of our fellow Aussies (I won), before retiring to our cabin. I didn’t sleep well and wished I brought ear also didn’t sleep well but he put it down to the cigarette smoke coming through the vents in the ceiling onto his face. Yuck. We ended up sharing a single bunk, and amazingly we both slept better after that.

Spring has sprung (sort of)

2008-04-23T19:32:00.005+01:00

We are now facing our final few days of living in Edinburgh. It seems incredible that we are nearly at the end; time has gone so fast and of course we are filled with thoughts of what we need to do before we leave. Toby has finished up at Scottish Gas; he is enjoying two weeks of currency trading, going to the gym, planning our next adventure, and being a house husband. I have two more days of work to go at the NHS. The job has not gotten any more interesting or challenging, but I do feel that I have made a couple of good friends and had the opportunity to see how the public sector works here. Well, part of the public sector.

The last few weeks have been quite busy. We had a lovely, quiet Easter weekend with lots of hot cross buns and time at home. On Easter Sunday we went to the zoo with a couple of Toby’s workmates. It was cold and windy but otherwise a great day. The zoo is set up high on a hill not far from our place. They have a great penguin enclosure (which is what they’re famous for) and also a daily ‘penguin parade’ which turned out to be nothing more than a few penguins walking on the footpath while people took photos. I kept expecting them to burst into song and dance, like on ‘Happy Feet’, but it didn’t happen. The brochure said it was ‘voluntary’. I am not sure how they go about getting agreement from penguins but perhaps they have developed some kind of flipper signal language. Compared to the penguins, we were disappointed with the space given to their big cats which seemed sadly lacking, with the panther being given the same amount of room as a badger. They also have the only koalas in the UK so Toby and I got to sniff some eucalyptus leaves which made us a little homesick.

The non Happy Feet penguin parade.

This lioness was roaring her heart out at us. Poor thing.

On Easter Monday we got the bus out to the airport to meet mum and dad, who arrived from London in the afternoon. It was great to see them and we took them home for a roast lamb dinner which promptly put them to sleep.

Toby went back to work the next day but I had two days off so I took mum and dad up to the Royal Mile and we did a walking tour by the same company we’d gone with in Berlin. It was the first tour I’d done in Edinburgh so it was good to hear some new stories and learn about the significance of all these buildings I’d seen so many times. We stopped in the Grassmarket for lunch and decided to go with the tour’s lunch ‘deal’ at a pub which was too small (the food that is, not the pub). Dad had to buy a bowl of chips to fill up, and then because we ran out of time had to load them all into a napkin to re-join the tour. When the tour finished I took them to Waterstone’s on Princes St, a lovely old bookstore with a Starbucks, so we replenished ourselves with coffee and cake and then browsed a little. Dad hadn’t had enough walking at this point, so he headed off to climb Arthur’s Seat while Mum and I went home to watch Neighbours with a cup of tea.

On Wednesday Mum and Dad went off to see the castle and I had some time at home and then met them in the carpark for lunch. Dad had made sandwiches so we sat under a statue and ate them in the cold, then went and found somewhere warm for a cup of tea and yes, more cake. Afterwards we visited the Writer’s Museum, which I’d been saving to visit with Dad, and then Gladstone’s Land, one of the oldest buildings on the Royal Mile which has been furnished to resemble different periods in Edinburgh’s history. My favourite room was the kitchen, which seemed very cosy and practical except for the servant’s bed in the corner. The museum was staffed by old ladies who loved telling stories and were always trying to explain things to you. On the way home we visited some second hand book shops as Dad was keen to find a copy of Scott’s ‘Waverley’. We visited four different shops and had no luck, so Dad finally bought another of Scott’s novels only to then discover ‘Waverley’ on the shelves. Never mind. That night I went to a salsa lesson with my friend Carole and then we came home to eat a dinner cooked by mum; I think my parents were pleased to meet the person who has helped make my stay in Edinburgh so much more enjoyable (not to mention social).

I went back to work on Thursday and Friday, so mum and dad took the opportunity to do some more sightseeing and also take a coach tour up to the Highlands which they raved about. On Saturday morning we took them to the farmer’s market which has become our weekly tradition since it’s the best fresh fish we have found (and the pies are good too). We all ate hog rolls for lunch (they actually had the head of the hog in the stall but I don’t think that’s what we were eating) and bought some things for dinner. Afterwards we split up and I took mum to visit Armstrong’s, the brilliant second-hand shop, so she could point to dresses and things and say ‘I used to have one like that.’ We also tried to find some tartan pants but had no luck; Mum did buy a lovely cashmere turtle neck that was on sale though. We met Dad at the museum a little later to have coffee and cake in the atrium restaurant and then spent a couple of hours wandering through. It was my third visit to the museum and I still don’t think I have seen all of it. On Saturday night they took us out to dinner and we went to Howie's, a (small) chain of Scottish restaurants where we had a delicious meal of what they call 'modern Scottish' food. It was one of the best meals we've had in Edinburgh so it was a good choice.

Me, Toby & Mum under the castle.

Sunday was their last day with us, so we went to Camera Obscura which is a kind of lens that gives you a view of Edinburgh from very high. It was a cloudy, rainy day but we were reassured that there is no perfect day to visit. In the same building was a collection of visual sciency type things, a lot like what you can find in Questacon. We finished our outing with burgers and then headed home, the rainy weather having convinced us a visit to Queensferry was not ideal. Later on, Toby and I took dad to the gym and then Toby cooked up some fresh salmon we’d bought at the markets.

Looking down the Royal Mile from the top of Camera Obscura.

Mum and Dad left on the Monday morning to pick up a car and start making their way down to Wales to get the ferry to Ireland. It was sad to see them go; the week had gone very quickly although there was never going to be enough time. We had another couple of quiet weeks at home, with farewell parties and some last minute sight seeing. My friend Carole and I spent a Friday night on the literary pub tour, where we were taken around to some local historical pubs by two actors who were keen for us to understand the dichotomous nature of Edinburgh and its literature. It was a good night and we met a lovely couple from LA and ended up having some drinks with them once the tour ended. They lived around the corner from Kevin Federline and had become mates with the paparazzi who are always on the lookout for Britney Spears, so they had some funny stories and asked us lots about Edinburgh as they had only been living here a week.

Now we are playing hosts to Toby’s mum Di who is here for a week before we head off to Turkey on Saturday. Although the weather has been rather unpredictable (sometimes it feels nice and summery, others it is just as windy and cold as we have come to expect), the flowers are out and there are daffodils everywhere, which is lovely. The Princes St Gardens are looking particularly gorgeous, and with the evenings getting longer it is feeling much more bearable to be outside. Over the past weekend we even managed to climb Arthur’s Seat, a difficult but short walk. At the top you could barely hear what the other was saying, it was so windy but the views were fantastic and we felt very local and adventurous. Afterwards we rewarded ourselves with hog rolls and ostrich burgers from the farmers’ market for the last time.

The castle, from the top of Arthur's Seat.

We are going to be on the road a lot for the next couple of months so I am not sure how many more updates I will manage. But for those who are interested, the basic timeline is thus:

2 weeks: Turkey
2 days: Edinburgh
10 days: Camping around Scotland & England
1 month: Camping around Western Europe
2 weeks: Singapore/Malaysia/Thailand
And then home.

I feel exhausted just looking at it. But excited too. We have a tent, and air mattresses, and a cooking set, so once we are dosed up on anti-malaria drugs we’ll be ready to go.

Tent practise run.

Fun in Prague

2008-03-17T20:14:00.016Z

For those of you short on time/attention, here is the concise version, by Toby:

Got in earlish Friday and could not sit next to each other on the plane. Got to the hotel and a nice room with a big pole in the middle and no view due to the kitchen. Then found the super market and ate opposite the church. Went back to the hotel and snoozed. Went out that night and walked along the river, found the market square and ate in the restaurant having nice beer, food and I had boar. Saturday lots of walking we went to the amazing church, saw the strange statues, ate our yucky sandwich at the river, went to the Communist museum. Went to the pizza place opposite our hotel got smoked out in the clubs. Sunday back to the markets bought some presents, ate that big fried dough thing, saw the pigs on a spit, chess boards and had a nice walk around. Felt a bit done and went home :)

And for others who like long-winded descriptions and aimless musings, here is the extended version, by Dot:

I have wanted to go to Prague for a long time, ever since my friend Lara sent me an email during her gap year (a good 8 years ago now) saying what a wonderful city it was. So when we were planning a year in the UK, Prague was always at the top of the list of places to visit. I’m glad we finally did, even though in some respects it was a slightly disappointing trip.

We took the day off from work and were looking forward to a sleep-in before our flight, because sometime between booking the trip and checking the flight confirmation on Thursday, I had convinced myself we had a lunchtime flight. In actual fact we’d booked ourselves on a 9.30 am flight. No matter. Check-in at the airport went well although as we were a bit late, we were put on seats across the aisle from each other. Luckily it was a very smooth flight and I didn’t need to hold Toby’s hand once. However, it was a boisterous flight – Prague is firmly on the stag weekend circuit in the UK and we had lots of upbeat people on the plane (some of whom were already drinking at the airport, yuck). I was lucky enough to be seated next to a couple who seemed to be on their first dirty weekend together – first they giggled for about an hour, then they snogged for a good ten minutes before falling asleep. Toby got a chronic cougher/sniffler next to him. I think we were glad to get off the plane.

At the airport we got some money out (Toby had been told by ‘everyone’ that the Czech Republic only uses euros, just for the record, this is totally not true) and then found the desk to buy tickets for the bus. The man was very helpful and told us how to validate them. Sometimes public transport tickets can be tricky to work out, hence why we sometimes just don’t bother. I’d done a bit of research on how to get to the city from the airport so it was easy enough for us to get a bus into the city to connect to the metro for our hotel. The suburbs of Prague reminded me a lot of Berlin, I guess it’s that Communist love of grey square buildings coming through. Luckily when we got off at the metro stop for our hotel we came out (after going up an escalator I thought was unusually long – Toby thought I was being dramatic – but I read later that it’s one of the longest in Europe – more than 2 minutes from top to bottom) into a beautiful square (Namesti Miru), with a massive church in the middle and gorgeous buildings all around us. It was a lovely way to start our trip. I should mention here also that the sun was shining and although it wasn’t exactly warm (we needed our jackets) it was much more pleasant than Edinburgh's neverending wind.

The loooooong escalator. Hello vertigo.

Our hotel was less than 5 minutes walk from the metro (even though it took us a bit longer to find it of course), in a nice residential district called Vinohrady. There were lovely buildings and we could see plenty of restaurants and bars, which pleased us. We were able to check in and then because we were starving, we decided to go to the small shopping complex over the road to find food. There was a swanky looking wine bar/café in the middle of the complex but the menus looked complicated (there was a lot less English in Prague than we expected) so instead we went downstairs and luckily found a supermarket. We stocked up on bread rolls, cheese, ham, fruit and water and took it all back to the park at Namesti Miru. We had a very leisurely, relaxed lunch sitting in the sun watching the people and the pigeons and generally enjoying being outside eating good food, something we hadn’t done for ages. We tried to remember the last time we’d eaten a meal outside. I think it may have been breakfast in Amsterdam, back in September. Gotta love the Scottish weather.

After lunch we went back to the hotel for what was supposed to be a short rest/freshening up but turned into a three hour nap. I guess we were tired. Seemed a waste of a fine afternoon in such a lovely city, but the big bed was just too good to pass up. Around 7 pm we ventured out and took the tram to a stop closer to the river. I’d read that the Charles Bridge was worth a visit at night – less crowded and great views of Prague Castle. So we walked up the river quite a way, but it really wasn’t necessary to go all the way to the particular bridge – you could see the castle from the whole bank anyway. We did go about halfway over the bridge, which is one of the oldest in Europe and has been decorated with some fantastic sculptures over the years. And the castle did look amazing all lit up like that. After admiring the view we headed into the Old Town, in search of dinner. Old Town Square looked great at night as well, if a little ghost town-esque with all the Easter market stalls closed up in the middle. We wandered some of the streets, doing some window shopping and thinking about where to eat and finally found a little place in a courtyard just off the main square. It served Czech food, it had some words in English (but not a menu in eight different languages like some of the giant hotel restaurants we’d passed), it had a couple of empty tables and best of all – a no smoking sign in the window. Brilliant. When we went in, the first thing we noticed was all the dead animal heads on the walls, and the gun above the bar. ‘This is a lovely room of death,’ as Ace Ventura would say. Never mind. Food is food, and nobody in there looked like the sort to actually use a gun on tourists. (Unlike the pathological villains in Hostel 2, which we had (stupidly) watched the weekend before.)

We ordered goulash with dumplings (for me) and a boar kebab with fries (for Toby) and two ‘large’ Czech beers. By ‘large’, they meant ‘bucket’, but the (cute) waiter conveniently forgot to mention this to us. He probably thought it was hilarious that two pale, not-giant people were ordering that size. It’s all part of the fun of travelling, and luckily it was pretty good beer. They also brought us a basket with enough bread for four people, which seemed odd at first but since the food took quite a while to arrive, it went down pretty well. Toby’s boar kebab was actually only one (not two like the menu showed), but he told me it was good (not really enough to share). I loved my goulash which had a nice peppery kick even though the ‘dumplings’ appeared to be more like circular slices of warm, moist bread (I have since discovered that these are what the Czech call dumplings - so I wasn't cheated). It sounds gross, and they weren’t what I was expecting, but they soaked up the goulash well and it was all tasty. I didn’t manage to finish my beer – the waiter pointed to what I had left and told me that was a ‘small’. Oh well. I tried. After that we got the metro back to the hotel and collapsed.

Toby and his bucket of beer.

In the morning we ate breakfast in the hotel, which was a nice change from the usual stale bread and yoghurt we eat while travelling. There wasn’t a huge selection but that’s okay – I kept thinking of the massive buffet room in our hotel in Kuala Lumpur but really, who needs to be faced with that much food in the morning? They had a room set up in the courtyard of the hotel, no windows (luckily, otherwise our room window would look straight into the dining room) but the whole roof was a skylight which made it lovely. I decided I want all my breakfasts in a skylight room from now on. The funny thing that happened was when an American guy came in and obviously knew the two girls sitting behind us. At first I assumed they were friends, later on I realised they had probably just met in the hotel breakfast room previously. The girls were sitting at a table for two – no room for anyone else, clearly. The guy asked if he could sit with them, and they said yes, and then the three of them sort of just stared at the tiny table, the lack of a third chair, and finally the guy said, ‘Actually I will just sit here,’ and took a seat behind them. He continued to talk to them even though they weren’t really that interested and finally they said ‘Okay well we’re finished, bye,’ and left. Funny Americans, trying to be friends with the whole world. At least he owns a passport I suppose.

After breakfast, we picked up some pre-made sandwiches and water from the supermarket and then headed off for the day. First on the list was St Nicholas’s Cathedral, which I’d seen voted as Prague’s number 1 attraction on a random website. On our way we came across a crazy tourist street full of things tourists love (like McDonald’s, and jewellery shops) and also the Kafka museum, which we really only noticed because of the sculpture out the front of two men peeing into a pond. It really was eye-catching and if we’d had more time and/or money we probably would have gone to the museum as well.

I suspect only naked Eastern European women would have done a better job of convincing people to go into this courtyard.

St Nicholas’s certainly didn’t disappoint; you bought your ticket in a little alcove and there was a swinging door so you couldn’t see inside, no knowing what you were actually paying for. But once through the door, it really did take your breath away. The first overwhelming sense I had was of gold and pink. There was a lot of pink marble and a LOT of gold. It really was an incredible church. We spent some time sitting in the (very wooden, very uncomfortable) pews just looking up. Even Toby, who is not keen on intruding upon others’ places of worship, thought this was a brilliant way to start our time in Prague.

The alter in St Nicholas's.

After the church we decided to take advantage of the fine weather and find somewhere to eat our sandwiches. We ended up in a park by the river eating the most disgusting sandwiches ever. I have a love-hate relationship with sandwiches; when I was small I made my parents’ life difficult by complaining about what they were putting in my lunch box every day, and that is how I came to be making my own lunch when I was seven (or so). I have never been keen on sandwiches which have been made by someone else, several hours earlier, without my presence, with ingredients I can’t identify. I am getting better now – I can make reasonably edible sandwiches myself, even hours in advance, and I can eat most pre-packaged ones which is lucky as they are everywhere here. However, these Prague ones were an insult to the humble sandwich. The word ‘Waldorf’ in the title should have clued me in, but how was I to be prepared for a filling that comprised stringy chicken, sour cream, and DICED APPLE? Many of you will know my (recently relaxed but still in place) policy against meat and fruit together. This sandwich confirmed the reasoning behind the policy. It’s just not on.

Toby struggles through his Waldorf sandwich.

With stomachs churning we crossed the Charles Bridge and walked across with all the other tourists; it was very different, full of people and stalls selling caricatures, photos and jewellery. We were glad we’d seen it the night before, empty and kind of creepy, since it takes on a real tackiness during the day. We ended up in Wenceslas Square where we bought ourselves some delicious sweet things. Very hard to describe but basically they make a dough, wrap it around a pole, cook it over a fire, pull it off the pole, then roll it in a cinnamon sugar mixture. What you end up with is like a thin donut that’s crunchy on the outside. Mmm, delicious. How the Czechs aren’t gigantic balls of lard rolling around those quaint cobbled streets I will never know.

Enjoying our nutritious snack. You can actually see a picture of it on the stall behind me.

From the square we found the Communist Museum. It had also been voted as a top attraction, and being that neither of us can claim to know much about Czech or Communist history we figured it would be a decent place to spend some time. The museum was on a floor in a casino building and was rather brief, but the funny posters alone were worth the effort. The interrogation room was also rather scary. I’m not sure I learnt much more about Communism (except how much the museum curators abhor it) but it was an interesting hour or so.

One of the posters tempting you into the museum.

After the museum, we decided to be lazy and get the train back to our hotel, which apparently was within walking distance. We rested up and then got dressed and went out again to try and find a restaurant mentioned in our guide, Bumerang. We have never been to an Australian themed bar anywhere on our travels and (for some reason) Toby decided we should. Unfortunately something went amiss in the address vs map war and we couldn’t find it. By this time we were hungry and it seemed silly to try and find somewhere to have a drink when it was really time for dinner, so we went back to the street where our hotel was and got a table at a pizza restaurant over the road which had been mentioned in the guide. It didn’t have a no smoking sign but luckily no one in there was smoking anyway. We ordered drinks – smaller ones this time – and pizza for Toby and gnocchi for me, both of which were plentiful and tasty. And cheap! Less than £10 for the both of us. Bargain.

After dinner we wanted a night cap and decided to try a few places in the immediate vicinity; one turned us off by making it sound more like a brothel, so we went to a tiny little one further down the street. We got Bailey’s and I’m pretty sure we were laughed at due to our odd habit of paying for drinks at the bar, but who cares? Unfortunately it was very smoky so we just drank and left, then we tried another place but the same thing happened. So it was an earlier night than we were prepared for, but a good end to our day.

The next day we had our nice hotel breakfast again and then back to the room to pack up before checking out. We weren’t sure what time we had to leave but figured if breakfast was until 10am then check out would be later. Yes? No. At four minutes past ten the phone rang and it was the snarly receptionist girl saying ‘Yes we ask you to check out now please.’ Um, okay. When we got to the front desk and apologised for our tardiness she acted like it was fine and she didn’t know what we were talking about. Strange. We decided to go and see Prague Castle in the morning, so we got the train to the tram stop and then tried to buy a new ticket. Which didn’t work, because the ticket machines didn’t take notes (even though their currency is all gigantic and you only really used notes) and the people didn’t sell the tickets we wanted. A rather strange system, so we decided to just risk it with the old tickets we had. We got on the tram with about 100000 other people and I wanted to get off at the stop mentioned in the guide book, where you started at the Strahov Monastery and then walked down to the castle complex through a beautiful residential district. I was watching all the signs but then everyone else on the tram got off too early, and I was a sheep and followed them. We got into the castle area but I was annoyed that we’d missed the monastery and nice walk, so we decided to get back on the tram and go further up the hill. It was the first time we’d been on a tram going uphill and it wasn’t pleasant. I don’t think trams like hills. The monastery was lovely, all white walls and beautiful courtyards. And the views were spectacular.

Inside the Strahov Monastery (complete with priest!) I couldn't help thinking that maybe I would be holier if I had somewhere like this to stride through on my way to things...

...and a view like this to wake up to.

We walked down the hill towards the castle but unfortunately missed the entrance and so we had to walk up these steps instead.

Yeah, ouch. The castle complex had a lot of buildings in it but by this point we’d had enough of paying for entrance fees and decided to just appreciate everything from the outside instead.

For lunch we went across the river (yes, the Charles Bridge again) to the markets in Old Town Square, determined to get some fattening fast food. We decided to forgo sausages in a roll (had lots of that in Berlin) and went for the pizza type things we’d seen other people eat. Essentially it’s fried dough, and you can have it with cheese and/or garlic and/or ketchup. I had cheese and garlic, Toby decided to go the whole hog. It was an interesting, greasy experience. I only ate the outside of mine, the middle was kind of cold due to the cold cheese. We also got another one of those donut things, because they were that good.

Toby enjoys his fried dough.

And here is when things start feeling…done. Toby had been fighting a cold all day (he blames the sudden flaring up on the cigarette smoke ingested the night before), so energy levels were not at their best. After time at the castle and surrounding streets, Charles Bridge and Old Town Square, Prague was starting to feel…crowded. Really, really crowded. We sat down on a wall by the clock tower and were soon approached by a lady with missing teeth asking for money. We said no and continued our conversation but she took a while to leave us alone. Things started looking dirty, and poor, and generally icky. We were tired, and out of money, and wanted to be far away from all those people. So we did what you would never think was possible, before you have travelled and you are still in that naïve phase where you think it’s impossible to actually get bored when you are somewhere like Prague: we went to the airport. Way too early.

The flight home was also full of chatty, loud buck’s night groups and it was delayed (which made our early arrival seem even sillier) but we got home in the end, slightly disappointed by our final hours. So for people who want to go to Prague: go during the week, and NOT when the Easter markets/any other festival is on. And make the effort to get away from the crowds. The best times we had were when we were in places that hadn’t been overrun by other people.

Since then things have been fairly quiet on the Edinburgh front. I went out for a Mexican dinner for my friend Carole’s birthday, and on Saturday we went to a fondue party for one of Toby’s workmates. I managed to catch the cold Toby had in Prague so have spent the last week nursing a sore head and wishing they sold butter menthols here. We have discovered the farmer’s markets and enjoyed our first fresh fish in months (yay). We are starting to think more about our Europe ride and also looking forward to visits from parents, starting with mine who arrive on Easter Monday. We won’t be doing much for Easter, but there is a possible trip to the zoo planned and of course I plan to indulge my chocoholism with relish. Toby doesn’t eat chocolate anymore, so I might boil him an egg for the occasion.

An Update of Sorts

2008-02-24T18:08:00.012Z

It has been a fairly quiet few weeks since our Berlin adventure, hence the complete lack of blog updates. I am still working for the NES, it looks like I could be kept on until April which would suit my timetable perfectly. The work has been a bit hit and miss, but the people are mostly pleasant to be around and it's certainly much more preferable to unemployment. Toby is still at Scottish Gas, he has made some good mates there and continues to win almost every single event of physical ability they have, from arm wrestling at morning tea to laser tag on Saturday afternoons. He is getting slightly anxious that people will stop inviting him to participate but pride dictates that he won't lessen his efforts to let anyone else win. Perhaps this is an Australian male thing, the men here are not quite what we're used to at home. For example, they all drive Barinas and aren't even ashamed of it.

We’ve had a couple of long bike rides, one out to North Berwick and the other to Perth, both about an hour away. After spending the weekdays looking at computer screens and grey buildings, it is always refreshing to get out of the city and see some open space. It's like when you have spent the weekend drinking and eating hangover food, and then by Monday your body is craving a big green salad and lots of water. I think your eyes crave greenery and big sky in the same way, it is so invigorating to get out on the bike and drink it all in.

A wild day on the Scottish coastline.

North Berwick from the headland (which was also a golf course, naturally).

Looking down the Tyne from the railway bridge in Perth.

Looking over the river to the centre of Perth. It's a very lovely town from far away. Up close it is full of Scottish versions of Kath & Kim.

Scone Palace from the carpark...it cost 4 quid just to go through the gate so we took a sneaky photo and left. Fab building though.

I went to two ceilidh (pronounced ‘kayley’) dances with my friend Carole earlier in the year. The first was at a big venue in the city on Burns Night, following a traditional Burns Night supper at a nearby pub. There were lots of people there, most around our age and most with no idea of what they were doing. It was a fun, exhausting night. Although I’d never even seen ceilidh dancing, it turned out to be a lot of the same dances we do in Australia at bush dances. Same idea. The next weekend there was a smaller event on in a school hall, raising money for an environmental group. Carole’s friend Nadia had some work colleagues involved in organising it so we ordered some tickets and after eating dinner with another friend and Nadia’s family at their home (first time I had spoken to any kind of parents in months), off we went. The music at the second dance was much better – they had a drum kit so it sounded more like the Corrs, and the beat made it easier to dance to. It was full of skinny, hairy vegan types – even the wine was organic. There was a really nice atmosphere and it was an all-round more enjoyable night. I’m quite the expert now and looking forward to more.

My Burns Night supper...haggis, neeps and tatties. Chewing unnecessary.

Toby has finally bought himself an Aibo, which he fell in love with when we were in Japan a few years ago. He has always regretted not buying one so when a guy at his work was disappointed with the one he just purchased, it was Toby’s chance. So now we have a robotic dog that sometimes acts very intelligent and dog-like, and sometimes doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s the perfect gadget for Toby, combining his love of dogs, computers, artificial intelligence and robots. It’s certainly not the same as having an actual dog (dear Tiffa we miss you) but it is providing some interesting times in the house.

Aibo playing with his bone.

We have had some dinners out for our 5 year (!) anniversary in January and Valentine’s Day last week, and have also finally gotten to the point of having friends over for dinner. It takes a while to build up to that point, but now we own a Monopoly board we are definitely the place to be. I tried warning Carole that Toby was ruthless and we were helpless against his strategic real estate know-how, but she refused to believe me. The three of us went bankrupt and I’m not sure if they will ever want to play with us again. The next exciting thing is our weekend in Prague in March which will be followed by a visit from my parents after Easter and then finishing up work in late April, after which we will head to Turkey with Toby’s mum for a couple of weeks. As for the weather (something everyone asks about), the days are getting longer which is a relief. The week before last was very mild and the sun was out a lot of the time; very Canberra winter. Moods were a lot lighter that week. This week has been rubbish, the temperature's not too bad but it's been raining on and off and grey and gloomy most the time (I know, what do we expect). Oh, and apparently this is the "windy" time of year. Funny, as Edinburgh is windy almost all the time so we have more of that to look forward to. We sit in our house at night listening to the wind whistling around the building and hoping that the motorbike is still upright in the morning. For a night or two I tried to imagine the sound of the wind was actually the beach, and we were on holiday down the coast and tomorrow we'd go for a swim. But I can't pretend it's anything other than gale-force winds anymore. We are both looking forward to some real sun and warmth on our travels.

The biggest party in Europe - Days 2 and 3

2008-01-14T19:37:00.000Z

Our second day in Berlin started slowly. I was still feeling under the weather, although there was a definite improvement on the night before. We decided to go for a bit of a walk, first to see the Sony Centre (which we have to do in every city, of course), the Gallery of Contemporary Art and to have a better look at some of the things Maria had pointed out to us the day before. We got the train to save on energy and although it took us a little while to find the Sony Centre, we did eventually, much to our disappointment. It was less a Sony Centre and more a collection of buildings (owned by Sony, I assume) with a courtyard in the middle. There was a Sony shop but it wasn’t really a showroom to display all their technology (like we’d been to in Japan), it really was just a shop. The coolest thing about the Sony Centre ended up being Legoland. Not that we visited it, but there were some interesting sculptures around made entirely out of Lego. There was also an ‘Australian’ café there which had items on the menu like ‘Gold Coast Salad’. We were almost tempted to visit, but not really. The crepes and German sausages were far more irresistible.

Outside Legoland. The people standing next to it give you an idea of how big and impressive this plastic giraffe is.

We went back to the Jewish Memorial to visit the information centre, but it was shut. Then we half-tried to find the Topography of Terror, but failed. Then we really tried to find the Gallery, and completely failed. We went round and round in circles and eventually gave up. I was still not 100% so we admitted defeat and returned to our hotel room, via the supermarket again to pick up some lunch things. I remember a short, restless nap in the hotel and then Jude and Dave arrived to start off our New Year’s Eve. They seemed to think it was hilarious that we were in bed at 3.30 in the afternoon. Although we’d planned to have pink champagne and nibbles, due to illness it turned into some nibbles while Toby and I got ourselves out of bed and ready to hit the town. Jude and Dave had had a more productive day than us, including a visit to the Pergamon Museum and a trip back to the chocolate shop we’d seen the day before – they had been kind enough to buy us a box of chocolates as a thankyou for hosting them over Christmas, and I can say very confidently that the royals chose their chocolatiers very well. They were exquisite. It was extra fun trying them because the box was all in German (of course) and so you couldn’t really figure out what the flavourings were.

A random Berlin bear. These things were everywhere, all done up differently. The strangest one was one we passed on our first day. We referred to it as the Slutty Bear.

When Toby and I were finally ready, we got the train into Potsdamer Platz and headed towards the Brandenburg Gate, via the Sony Centre so we could show Jude and Dave the Lego sculptures and people flying down a ‘snow’ slope in rubber rings (it was hilarious). We had to pass a few guys who were letting off fireworks in the street just near the entrance to the Brandenburg Gate area, but there were lots of signs saying you couldn’t take fireworks into the party so we weren’t too worried. It felt a lot like your average show back home, with lots of food and drink stalls and a big stage in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

The big stage. One of the most annoying things about the night was that it was a 'live broadcast', so we had to listen to (and watch) commercials in between all the songs. Grrr.

Because we spent 6 hours there and the same sort of thing kept happening, I will use dot points to describe our New Year’s Eve.

We saw the same bands performing over and over again.
Those bands were not very good.
We had never heard of any of them, although we’d seen Lemon Ice on MTV that afternoon.
We didn’t know any of the songs. You would like for a big event like New Year’s Eve, you would want to play party anthems everybody knows. But no.
We ate half metre bratwursts (well, Dave and I did anyway). Unfortunately they actually folded it in half to fit it into the roll, so it didn’t look as impressive as it should have.
It was really, really cold.
There was nowhere to sit.
Jude and I went to get a cup of tea and they gave us chamomile. Weird.
Toby bought a big gingerbread shaped like a heart.
After a while, we were sick of standing around in the cold listening to the same bands and thought we could go elsewhere and return later. But by that time there was a long line to get into the area, so we stayed.
I had my first experience with a portaloo (I have always been too scared before).
Unfortunately there was no Kenny to be seen (and it cost me 20 cents).
It was really, really cold.
There was nowhere to sit.
The crowd was very well behaved with very few obnoxious drunks or punk ass pre-pubescents.

At midnight we listened to everyone else count down in German and then got to see the most amazing fireworks I have ever seen. So all that standing around in the cold wishing I could drink alcohol was worth it in the end, even if they chose some odd songs to play with the fireworks (like Timbaland’s ‘Apologise’) which did not improve the party atmosphere.

Toby and his manly gingerbread.

Jude & Dave being all cute and keeping warm.

Once the fireworks were over we joined the hordes of people swarming out of the party down towards Potsdamer Platz, and that was where things got really interesting. It may have been well behaved at the Gate, but the streets were full of drunken yobs letting off fireworks. And not just the little baby fireworks we have at home on the Queen’s birthday, but full-on, should-never-be-let-off-by-a-drunken-amateur fireworks. The streets were full of smoke and broken glass and people trying to get home and other people trying to stop them by exploding things. It felt like a warzone, what with the sirens and smoke and what-not. We couldn’t believe it, coming from such a civilised celebration to what felt like something you would see on TV as an example of poorly considered cultural traditions. We had been planning on avoiding the trains and walking back to our hotels instead but with the streets in that condition we decided we’d be safer on the trains. We skipped the first train and the one we got on a few minutes later was very calm and not at all crowded, so that was a good decision. I think we were all a bit shaken by what we’d just walked through, as we hadn’t been at all prepared for that. The train was where we said goodbye to Jude and Dave, as the next day they were heading off to Frankfurt to fly back to Oz.

When we got off the train near our hotel there were still some groups of punks around letting off more fireworks but we got back to our room without losing any eyes or limbs and got to sleep easily. Needless to say it was a strange way to end New Year’s Eve and I think Garema Place will be looking very tame from now on.

The next morning we slept late and while we were getting ready to leave it started snowing. Properly snowing. We tried not to think about what it would mean if our flight was delayed or cancelled, and instead headed off to see the biggest shopping mall in continental Europe, famous for its 6-floor food court. The plan was to walk around, buy something German, have a nice lunch, and get the train to the airport. Unfortunately our plan was foiled because the mall was closed. We wandered up the road with the rest of the confused tourists and ended up seeing a church, which was partially destroyed in the war and had been left that way as a reminder, similar to the Peace Dome in Hiroshima. Underneath the church were some Christmas markets so we browsed through there for a while and then stopped for another bratwurst for lunch. Even though German sausage has to be one of the best things about visiting Germany, we both agreed that we wouldn’t be eating sausages for a while after this trip.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, partially destroyed.

It was still snowing but we got the train to the airport anyway and amazingly enough our flight wasn’t even delayed. We got into Glasgow around 5pm, and that was when the real fun started.

I knew there was a bus that went from Glasgow to Edinburgh but given the lack of information at the airport about it, we decided an easier and quicker way for us to get home would be to get the bus into Glasgow’s train station, then the train home. All up it should take two hours, we reasoned. We managed to get the bus into Glasgow and were dropped off at Central Station. Which was shut, completely. So we walked the ten minutes to the other train station, on Queen St., in case the trains were only running from there as well. This one was also shut. Things were not looking up. There was a security guard there who helpfully told us there were no trains running, but ‘maybe’ there would be a bus. For some reason, instead of asking where the bus station was, we thanked him and walked away and spent the next half hour or more trying to find the bus station. Our alternatives were not tempting: a taxi ride, which would cost 100 pounds or more, if we managed to find someone to take us, or a hotel room for the night which would probably cost the same, and come morning we’d still be in the same predicament. The bus station, when we eventually found it, was almost deserted and we were not hopeful. By this time it was 7pm and we were hungry and annoyed at the Scots who take their public holidays so very seriously. Luckily there was one more bus leaving for Edinburgh that night, at 8pm, so we bought expensive tickets and then went to a bar next door. Even though we were both still fighting our flu, we couldn’t resist and got a wine and a Guinness, and shared a pizza as well. It was one of those nights.

Toby on the train to Berlin airport. Note the filthy jeans of the man passed out on the seat behind us. I have no idea what he could have done to get so dirty, but it's nice to know that treasured sights like unconscious people riding public transport on New Year's Day can be found anywhere in the world.

I got lucky on the bus and found a seat where someone had left a trashy magazine, so the 90 minute trip flew by for me. Toby was not so lucky. We got into Edinburgh around 9:30pm, and unlike Glasgow, it was hardly a ghost town at all. There was plenty going on, and even better, the local buses were running and we only had to wait a few minutes before one came along to take us home. The fun wasn’t quite over though, and when the bus stopped and no one got off, the driver obviously decided to ignore all other requests to stop and finally dropped us off 4 stops later than we needed. So, finally, about five hours after arriving at an airport 45 minutes away, we were home.

After that beginning, 2008 has proceeded fairly quietly. Toby returned to work on 3 January (the 2nd is also a public holiday here) and I had 3 interviews lined up. The first was for a job I was really keen on, and luckily I got it so I started on 7 January and didn't have to go through any more interviews. I am working in the NHS Education for Scotland, in the psychology assessment team, which is clearly up my alley. I’m an administration assistant for a project they’re working on to look at how psych trainees are assessed during their placements. The people are nice, I finally have internet and email access, and best of all it’s less than 10 minutes’ walk from home. The position is meant to last for a month but the team is hoping they will be able to continue it for a few more months, which would suit me. Our current projects include planning trips to Prague and Turkey, looking forward to visits from parents, and making arrangements for our final holiday before heading home. Until then it’s a matter of coping with the dark, cold weather through lots of movies, trips to the pub, and Wii games. (And yes it is dark - very - and cold - we even had snow last week. Proper snow.)

The biggest party in Europe - Day 1

2008-01-08T20:46:00.000Z

After our week of Christmas fun it was off to Berlin for the biggest New Year's Eve party in Europe (apparently). The adventure began at 5:30 am, and we drove (well Toby drove, the rest of us slept) our little hire car in the dark to Glasgow airport, which was surprisingly busy for such an ungodly hour. It was our first time at Glasgow airport, the security there is quite tight but also very professional, I suppose after their little "incident" last year. Our flight left a bit after 9am and we got into Berlin around lunchtime. Of course, flying EasyJet meant we didn't actually arrive in Berlin but rather Schonefeld airport, a good 40 minutes away by train. Apparently there exists some "airport express" train, but we never figured out where it was and in the end nearly managed to miss the local train anyway. The first thing we noticed about Berlin on the way into the city was the graffiti; it was everywhere, to the point where sometimes it was downright impressive. "How on earth did they get all the way up there?" we'd say. I hope there were no punks around to hear us and think we were condoning their activities.

We got out at a station in the city which was roughly a 30 minute walk to our hotel; Jude and Dave's hostel was a bit further down the road so after stopping at a sandwich shop in the train station for lunch we said our goodbyes. After a week with such a full house, nocturnal guests and Toby having the flu, we were both ready for a good sleep in a decent bed. We found the hotel without too many problems; it was a Novotel on the edge of the Mitte district ("Mitte" means "middle", so you can guess where we were). To get there we walked down Under den Linten and some other major shopping strips, full of beautiful things. The hotel itself wasn't in a particulalrly inspiring area; mainly office buildings and apartments, although it was near the water and had a few shops in the building. Our room was huge, and the bed was massive although the bathroom had us a little confused. Were we in prison?

Our prison-esque shower.

We rested up in our room and then ventured all the way downstairs to the supermarket in the same building, to stock up on dinner and breakfast supplies. Then we rushed back to our room and spent the rest of the night there. Yes, we are lame. But it was so good, and exactly what we needed.

The view from our hotel window.

The next morning after breakfast we headed towards the Brandenburg Gate, where we were meeting Jude and Dave and about 100 other people for a walking tour. The tour had been recommended to us by two different people as a 'must do' in Berlin, and since we don't normally do things like that and didn't really know what we wanted to do in Berlin, and it was free, we figured it was a good idea. When we arrived at the meeting place - 'in front of the Starbucks' - it was so packed of people we started wondering if we'd made a mistake. But it turned out there were lots of tours running from that spot, organised by the same company. There were tours in other languages and also a couple that were going out to the concentration camp. If we'd had more time in Berlin I would have liked to do one of those, but maybe next time. So once all the tours had been split up, we ended up in a group of around 15, led by Maria, a Swedish-Japanese former model who'd ended up in Berlin after falling in love with a German rock star (so she said). She wasn't with the rock star anymore but she really loved Berlin and was very enthusiastic about it. We'd been warned by Ali's friend Kat over Christmas to try and not get the American guy on the tour, so we considered ourselves lucky to have Maria.

The Brandenburg Gate, with all the tourists.

The tour started in the square we were already standing in, Parisier Platz, and then moved out onto the road for a 'History of Berlin in 10 minutes' talk.

The Hotel Adlon, famous not for its $20,000/night Presidential Suite but for the fact that this is where Michael Jackon dangled his baby out the window.

We continued down the road to the new Jewish Memorial, which is basically a collection of concrete blocks in a big square. Maria pointed out that, unlike the rest of Berlin's concrete, the memorial blocks were remarkably graffiti-free: they have been treated with some anti-graffiti chemical to keep them clean. Apparently the company that makes this chemical was also involved in supplying gas to the Nazis during the Holocaust; I guess this is a way for them to make some small amends. Berlin is full of contradictions like that, it is a city that is simultaneously trying to show atonement for past sins while also moving on and creating a wonderful place to live and visit. I think it's a difficult balance to find.

The double brick line showing where the Berlin Wall stood.

Inside the Jewish Memorial

Looking across the Memorial.

After walking through the memorial we walked a little further until we were on a normal residential street surrounded by the Communist apartments. It was then Maria told us we were currently standing on what remained of Hitler's bunker. It has been all filled in and for years there was nothing to mark the spot, but apparently during the 2006 World Cup the locals got so sick of tourists asking them where the bunker was that a sign has been put up over the road. I didn't see anyone in the group taking photos of the corner; it was surprisingly easy to agree that there was no reason to pay attention to that one corner and its stories.

The apartments near Hitler's bunker. Apparently they were built by the Communists to prove to West Berlin how good the Eastern Berliners had it.

We walked past the old air force building (surprisingly left intact during the war; apparently Britain's was also left intact, curiously) and the memorial out the front which was dedicated to the hundreds of East Germans who had been shot or injured (never to be seen again) in that spot one day in the early 1950s, when they were protesting for their human rights. For some reason Berlin has now decided to put the tax office in that building; strange sense of humour, the Germans.

Memorial to the East Berlin protestors.

East Berlin's answer to VW. Sort of.

We walked past some other buildings where you could still see the bullet holes in the wall and then we got to a corner where part of the Berlin Wall was still standing. It is not as huge or menacing as you might imagine but Maria told us how it would have been covered with barbed wire, and in the 'death strip' between the walls (I'd never realised there was actually two walls) there would be booby traps and guard dogs and a watch tour every 100 metres or so. Really, really frightening stuff to think that this was happening just 20 years ago. Near the Wall was the bunker where the Gestapo had undertaken interrogations and executions; it is now a museum called the 'Topography of Terror' which is probably apt.

The Berlin Wall.

The Topography of Terror.

From there we walked down to Checkpoint Charlie, which is not named after some guy called Charlie, but rather was the 3rd checkpoint in Berlin ('charlie' is the 3rd letter of the US army's alphabet). Maria called it Disneyland, and I can see what she meant; it was so packed full of people and souvenir shops and guys dressed in mock guard uniforms that it was hard to pay attention to what was there. One of the funniest things I heard from Maria was that in this intersection, the KGB had their offices in the building on one corner, and the CIA had their offices in the building diagonally opposite. There was a cafe on the ground floor of the CIA building that was a famous place for spies to do their business; the guy who wrote James Bbond got the idea from this cafe. I don't know if the KGB or the CIA realised how funny it was to have their headquarters within tin-can-connected-by-string range, but that's war for you. I'm sure Joseph Heller would have appreciated the irony. Maria had some other great stories about people who managed to get through the checkpoints, before it became impossible to do so. Checkpoint Charlie was our lunch break; we took Maria's advice and got doner kebabs which we ate on the street, trying not to get bowled over by all the other tourists following Maria's advice.

Me & Jude on our lunch break.

Checkpoint Charlie.

Toby, Dave & Jude on the lunch break.

After lunch Maria took us down the big shopping street again, talking about Berlin's Golden 20s age when that one street had hundreds of cabarets, nightclubs and brothels, and the kind of energy that would have been in the city at the time. When the Nazis came to power they got rid of everything except the prostitutes. Go figure. We also went past the famous chocolate shop, who used to make chocolate for the royal family. They had amazing models of Berlin landmarks in the window, and one of the Titanic as well.

Mmmm...100 kilograms of chocolate.

We walked to Gendarmenmarkt, where the French and German cathedrals stand and where there was a big Christmas market set up, then to the famous square where the Nazis burned the books. There is a memorial there too, an underground room with enough bookshelves to hold 20 thousand books - that's how many were burned in that square. Both lecturers and students of Humboldt university which borders the square had helped the soldiers empty the libraries (although they didn't really have much choice about it); the university now has a second hand book sale outside the main building, with all proceeds going to charity. Another small, symbolic gesture.

The square where the book burning took place.

The underground library.

After the square we went to Museum island and visited the war memorial. It's just a single room, with a sculpture in the middle. The ashes of a Holocaust victim and a soldier rest beneath the sculpture; apparently it's quite controversial to have them both there. The sculptor was a local Berlin artist whose name I have forgotten; her son was 16 when World War I broke out and begged her to let him join the army. She eventually gave in and he died fighting for Germany. After that, she and her other son moved elsewhere (Belgium I think); he died in World War II, fighting against Germany.

The War Memorial.

After the War Memorial we walked further up the island to see the Berlin Cathedral, and Maria sat us on the steps of the Alte Museum, overlooking the big park, for the grand finale of her tour - the story of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a very entertaining story, and I saw other tourists stopping to catch a glimpse of Maria pretending to be an incompetent East German bureaucrat, an elated East Berliner, and the other characters in her story. After her grand finale we gave her lots of money, because she'd certainly earned it, and then tried to decide what to do next.

Dave, Jude and the Berlin Dom.

Maria had made the Pergamon Museum, an archeological museum behind the Altes, sound amazing so we decided to line up, even though it was freezing and nearly 4pm. Jude got sick of waiting after a while, since the line wasn't moving, so she and Dave went off to the Jewish Museum while Toby and I stuck it out. Unfortunately we were not rewarded for our patience; about 10 minutes later something started happening at the top of the line and people started leaving. We heard someone say it was closing for 'technical reasons'. That's strange, we thought. We kept our eye on a guy in a red hat, who'd been at the head of the line for a good 20 minutes by that point. We figured that if he wasn't moving, neither were we. But then he did move, so we decided to go to the new German History Museum around the corner instead.

By this time, the fluey feeling I'd had since lunchtime had really kicked in and I was definitely coming down with something. The museum was huge, and really interesting, but I struggled to stay motivated and after an hour or so we had to leave. We decided to go to the cafe and get a lemonade to fortify us for the walk home, but the cafe had really odd rules about what you could order at the bar, and what you had to order from your table. By the time we figured it out the staff were ignoring us, so we left. Toby went off with the map to figure out how to get home while I sat down on the footpath, leaning against the wall of the museum. Lots of people looked at me and I wondered if anyone would give me any money, but alas they didn't. Luckily I'd found 20 euros on the footpath earlier that day during our walk to the Brandenburg Gate, so I wasn't too hard done by.

Less luckily, I had the flu combined with bad stomach pains by the time we got back to the hotel. It was a shame, because we'd walked back a different way and discovered some cute streets full of Christmas lights and restaurants, but I couldn't think of anything except lying down. The stomach pains got worse, to the point where I was in tears and Toby was about to call an ambulance. Thinking back now I think the tears were mostly because I was panicking - I didn't know why I felt so sick, and I didn't know what was going to happen. It didn't feel like food poisoning, or anything remotely resembling anything I've felt before. Luckily they subsided, and I was left with only the flu. Needless to say, I didn't really feel like going out for dinner after that episode, so I ate pringles left over from the night before. Toby went out in search of some takeaway, but being unsuccessful came back and ordered room service, which ended up being a massive meal and probably the best schnitzel we've ever tasted. A slightly dramatic end to an otherwise enjoyable, informative day where we learnt more than I think we ever have in a foreign city.

Next entry: a giraffe made of Lego, half-metre bratwursts, fireworks and a warzone.

Merry Christmas

2008-01-05T14:16:00.000Z

Over the festive period our little apartment played host to 7 people. Yes it was squashy but everyone behaved themselves and had a good time. I think. The fun started the Thursday before Christmas, when my sister Ali arrived accompanied by her friend Michelle from back home, and Michelle's friend Kat who has been living in London this year. On Friday the girls slept in (like, really slept in) and then I took them for a wander down to Grassmarket to see the awesome 2nd hand shop and the Royal Mile, then I left them to drink while I did some Christmas shopping. We had been planning to go to the Christmas fair in the Princes St Gardens that night, but Toby got a last-minute invite to dinner at a workmate's place, so we did that instead. And rather than being a relaxed Friday night meal with some people, it turned out that we'd been invited to Rob's house's actual Christmas dinner, because they'd had a couple of cancellations and had an entire turkey to consume. We were happy to help out and got to try a traditional Scottish Christmas meal, which I basically copied for our own, a few days later. The girls Rob lived with had been planning on putting on a naked nativity interpretive dance, but unfortunately they'd napped instead of rehearsing that afternoon, so we watched King Kong instead.

We had a quiet weekend and on Sunday afternoon we took the girls to our local bingo hall, which we'd discovered a few weeks earlier with my friend Carole. Taking the extra 3 people was a big mistake on our part, as it decreased our chances of winning - the girls actually ended up winning a lot more money than we did. Grrrr. After bingo we went down to Haymarket train station to meet the third sister, Jude, and her fella Dave, soon to be our brother-in-law. We brought them back home and that was a good chance to admire the ring, hear the engagement story, and cut the Christmas cake I'd made back in November. That night we all got the bus up to Princes St to go to the Christmas fair. We ate German sausage and crepes and had a ride on the massive ferris wheel. Poor Toby and Dave had to put up with a couple of nervous Gibson girls who wouldn't let them rock the cabin or spin it around.

Toby had to work on Christmas Eve, but the rest of us took the opportunity to do nothing much. Jude and Dave made their soup for Christmas dinner, and Ali and co slept. I started finding little Cherry Ripes all over the house - Jude had promised she would bring me some from home (they don't sell them here) but instead of just giving them to me they were hidden in cupboards, under books, on shelves, etc. I think I've found them all now. For Christmas Eve supper we had cheese and ham and other nibble things, and egg nog made by Ali, Michelle and Kat.

Michelle whipping egg whites using a fork, because we do not have very good utensils.

Kat and Ali mixing the egg nog.

Jude & Dave enjoying the egg nog.

After all that food and alcohol...

...the young ones hit the town...

...and the old people went to bed.

On Christmas morning I got up bright and early to prepare my turkey for lunch, only to find that the stupid bird was still full of ice. It did not bode well for my timetable. No time to mourn though, because after breakfast we all sat down in the lounge room and opened our pressies.

Boys & their toys.

Jude thought these 'David' bookmarks she gave me & Ali were hilarious.

Me & Jude, with our new earrings.

Both the boys were sick on Christmas Day, Toby with a fluey tonsillitis type thing and Dave with a tummy bug. This was very sad for them as they headed back to bed, having opened their loot. Us girls spent the rest of the day watching girly things like old episodes of Dawson's Creek, drinking pink champagne and eating chocolates. Since the turkey was still frozen, for lunch we had the soup that Jude and Dave had made - it was one they'd tried in Italy and it was very delicious and peasant-y. (No photos as it was not the most aesthetically pleasing of foods.)

Around 4pm we decided we wouldn't die from eating the turkey as it was, so I stuck it in the oven and spent the next 4 hours regularly basting it, plus making a bunch of sauces and getting the vegies ready.

Basting the turkey.

Finally, around 8pm we were ready to roll. Michelle had kindly done an amazing gravy using the turkey fat and with all the other bits and pieces I'd done (thanks to my Asda magazine and the good dinner at Rob's house), we had quite the feast.

For those interested in what a Scottish Christmas dinner consists of in this photo, we have a turkey, served with roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips and onion; cranberry sauce (yes I made it from scratch); bread sauce (kind of like a white sauce, don't really know the point but I wanted the proper dinner); broccoli with pancetta and pine nuts (traditionally this is meant to be Brussels sprouts, but really, who likes those); bacon-wrapped sausages and stuffing balls (and they wonder why they have an obesity problem); and the gravy. The turkey was overdone (the next day I realised it was because my oven had been 20 degrees too hot) and it was a good 7 hours late, but everyone was very nice about both those points so I still consider it a successful first attempt.

After all that food we still had dessert to go, which was put on by Ali and friends - a chocolatey Christmas pudding served with brandy. I mean brandy custard.

Christmas Dinner.

Boxing Day was spent recovering from Christmas Day, as is tradition, and eating turkey and gravy sandwiches. Mmmmm. On Thursday night we decided to take Jude out for a mini first hen's night, and Toby and Dave headed off to the local pub before coming home to play Wii games. The girls started off at the Villager for cocktails before heading up the road to Medina, where I've been before and had a good dance. Unfortunately it was shut, so we went back up to the Royal Mile and finally found somewhere open, but empty. We had some drinks anyway and then the barmaid told us a DJ would be starting at 11. After a while we headed downstairs - the club was split over 4 levels so you went pretty far underground and the dancefloor was in a cellar type space. We were almost the only girls there so sometimes we felt rather on display, especially as there were a lot of men on their own. (We all agreed there is something a bit off about a man who patronises nightclubs on his own. Ick.) Around 1am, Jude was getting sleepy and the music wasn't really improving so we decided to call it a night.

The Gibson girls, ready for their first hen's night.

On Friday, Dave, Jude, Ali and I went to visit the Real Mary King's Close which had been recommended to me as one of Edinburgh's better 'ghost' tours. It turned out to be less a 'ghost' tour and more a tour of underneath the Royal Mile. We had a great tour guide and heard some amazing stories, and this was the day we found out where the word 'quack' came for doctors, why Princes St Gardens are so green, and other bits of Edinburgh trivia. Friday night was our last night all together so we went to the brewery near the bingo hall for dinner to celebrate (and so no one would have to cook, or do the dishes).

We got an early night, because Jude, Dave, Toby and I were off to Glasgow bright and early the next morning to get our flight to Berlin for New Year's Eve. Which is a whole other blog entry altogether.

In Dublin fair city

2007-12-08T23:16:00.000Z

Last weekend I had my first experience of travelling overseas all by myself. True, it was only an hour's flight and when I got there they still spoke the same language (almost) and ate the same food and watched the same TV, but the currency changed and I would have been pulled up quick smart if I'd dared mention it was the same country, so it still counts. I went to visit my lovely littlest sister Ali, who arrived there a few weeks ago following months of adventures in Peru and Ecuador. It started on Friday night, with Ali meeting me at the airport to make sure I got the 1.90 euro local bus into town rather than the 8 euro rip off tourist bus. She took me to her hostel which had a great location right on the river near Temple Bar, and then we went in search of food. We ate burgers and chips and fizzy drink in some place called Eddie Rocket's which is trying to be like an American diner from the 1950s. The weirdest thing about it was the toilets which were so far above the floor that my feet didn't reach the tiles. I know what you're thinking, but Ali's much taller than me and even she found them high.

Ali admitted that she always feels lame for ordering Fanta, but I admire her for being herself in the face of public ridicule.

After that we went to a pub in Temple Bar and had a Bailey's each and listened to some guy playing U2 and other songs, and because I'm a nana, we then headed back to the hostel. Ali's dorm mates were all dressed up and ready to go out but we'd decided to save our energy for Saturday night, so we put our PJs on and went to bed. It was my first experience sleeping in a dorm as well, and although I handled it fine for two nights in an all-girl space, I'm not sure how I'd go (a) for weeks or months at a time, or (b) sharing with rude smelly boys. I need a good nights' sleep to function properly. The first night we were woken up at some ungodly hour by one of our fellow (slightly drunk) girls ringing her mum back in Australia to tell her she'd lost her camera at the pub. The conversation did not go well. After she ended that call she went through her bag and realised her wallet was also missing, which warranted another tearful phone call home. I felt sorry for her; it's bad enough to lose those things but her mum obviously did not feel sorry for her at all, which made her more upset.

Ali doing her night time stretches on the dorm floor. Because I grew up with the same father, I do not find this strange at all.

The view from Ali's bed, across the Liffey to the Fourcourts area.

In the morning we joined the throngs of people taking advantage of the free breakfast; we both ate as much as dad does, in order to fill up for the day. It was really busy, being a weekend and late-ish in the morning; so busy in fact that when I came back to our seats after getting some toast, the French bloke at the same table had stolen my chair AND the map we'd had spread out. He apologised but it was still weird. Very French though. We decided on a vague walking plan, and headed off into the freezing cold, Ali without a jacket (but I didn't say anything, not wanting to be the bossy big sister).

Corpus Christie was first on the list...it cost 5 euro to go in, so we didn't, but we admired from the outside.

Then we found St Nicholas's, which was tucked away behind big brick walls in the middle of a very ordinary suburb. I loved it because it felt exactly how it must have 100 years ago.

After visiting multiple churches (in memory of our darling nana) we headed to St Stephen's Green, which is very pretty and relaxing even when it's freaking cold.

From St Stephen's Green we went to the National Museum of Archaelogy and looked at things like bowls, crosses, Viking jewellery and the most memorable, peat bog bodies. They really threw me, especially the one where the facial expression was still clearly visible. The man was very obviously thinking 'help, I'm in a peat bog.' Some of the bodies were headless or armless but it was quite amazing what they were able to figure out from what was left, like how old the person was, what they last ate and therefore what season it was, what they were wearing and therefore where they stood on the social hierarchy, and so on. Really it leaves CSI looking pretty ordinary.

After the Museum we went to Temple Bar to find the food market. Ali had mentioned it the night before as somewhere good to eat, and that morning one of the Aussie girls in the dorm had been saying it was one of the highlights of her week. So it seemed a must-do. Because there were 2 of us we decided we could buy lots of food and share it, so we had a very expensive and very delicious duck pie, some deep fried spring rolls and an Italian version, and then the very best brownie in the world. The brownie was a meal in itself...it was quite a challenge to finish it, even between 2 of us we had to give each other little pep talks to get through it. After that brownie we needed a rest so we headed back to the hostel for a cup of tea and relaxing game of Connect 4.

Ali trying to warm up with a cup of hot apple juice, served with a shot of apple brandy. Mmm.

We headed out again around 4pm, thinking we would go and see the Oscar Wilde and Molly Malone memorials and pick up some dinner to cook at the hostel. By this time it was dark (of course) and raining pretty heavily, so we only made it to Molly and then decided we would just go back to where it was warm and dry.

Ali and Molly Malone. Mum and Dad used to sing us the song when we were little so she has a special place in our hearts.

After dinner we got all dressed up in our finery and headed out to Temple Bar. We went to The Temple Bar (I know, how long did they take to come up with that) which was all decked out in Christmas decorations. It was really crowded but we found a corner, had some drinks and what-not, and then decided to find somewhere else. On the way it transpired that Ali's feet were killing her in her new Peruvian high heeled boots and my tummy was not agreeing with me, so back to the hostel it was for pyjamas and an episode of Charmed in the TV lounge.

All prettied up. Ali's head is not that big in reality.

I had an early flight so we got to eat breakfast without having our chairs stolen by any French people and then Ali walked me to the bus stop, where we realised the timetable in the hostel had been wrong and we had a good 20 minute wait ahead of us. It was freezing and dark (of course) but some nice taxi driver drove past and rescued me and another guy there who was going to the airport, so we got there a lot earlier than we would have otherwise. He was heading home to Minnesota, where it was going to be even colder. I was not jealous in the slightest.

Ali by the river, waiting to see me off. It's 8.30 in the morning here. I love this climate.

Other than that very brief trip across the water, things are fairly quiet on the Edinburgh front. I've lost my boring job at Scottish Widows so I'm now on the look out for something else; I don't hold much hope at this time of year but at least I have Christmas to look forward to, and I'm determined to be at least as good a housewife as Toby was when he was at home. I already have plans to wash the kitchen curtains. I think that's the kind of thing housewives do.

Other News

2007-11-18T17:10:00.000Z

A few weeks ago we both started new jobs. This was a bigger deal for Toby, who hadn’t worked for 4 months and so hadn’t gotten out of bed before 8am for about the same amount of time. His official title is Management Information Analyst, some geeky IT-related thing at Scottish Gas. The office is down at Leith which means a bit of a commute (30 minutes in the morning, up to 60 at night). I’m sure if anyone is interested Toby will tell them more. I started as a temp with Scottish Widows, not a punk rock band but a pensions/investments sort of company. I know what you’re thinking, that sounds like it’s right up my alley. The pros and cons of this job are as follows.

Pros

It’s really close to home and the gym (20 and 10 minute walk respectively).
It actually has its own gym, which costs ¼ what I pay at Virgin Active, so I’m switching over at the end of this month.
I am working with actual people, in an actual team, which means I’m getting the chance to know people and (hopefully) making some friends in the process.
I’m getting paid more money.
I only have to work 7 hours a day (this actually negates the point above – I end up with the same amount in pocket as I did when I was working 7.5 hours a day).
There’s a shop just down the road that sells yummy soup.
If it’s raining or I don’t feel like leaving the building, we have our own cafeteria and coffee shop in-house (this is also a con, when the mid-afternoon sugar slump hits).
It’s a 6 month gig so it will basically keep me going until we leave Edinburgh, if I want it to.

Cons

It is an incredibly boring job. You know those financial advisors who come to your house and tell you where to invest your money? Well after they come to your house, they print up a little report and it gets sent to you with a bunch of application forms and shiny brochures. Well, I’m the person who looks at the report and puts the page numbers on it and so forth. It feeds my editing beast, kind of. Some of these advisors write like they haven’t even gone to high school, but there’s a limit to what I can change especially when I don’t understand a lot of what’s in there.
There isn’t a whole lot to do right now. In fact I’ve written this entry, the Paris entry, and more than half of my novel during working hours. Last week 3 of us got sent home at 12 (unpaid of course) because there wasn’t enough work. I don’t know if it’s going to pick up before Christmas or not, but as they haven’t fired any of us I’m assuming they think it will.
We don’t have access to the internet or email, or even Solitaire. This makes the not-having-enough-to-do thing even worse. There is an internet point in the lobby, like you have in malls or airports, but apparently it’s really slow and there’s some lady who always sits there for her entire lunch break, spilling crumbs into the keyboard.
I am totally not interested in finance. Not even a little bit. Being my parents’ daughter, I had to find a way to feel comfortable with the fact that I’m working for a company whose sole reason for existence is to make people more money. I decided that it was nice that these advisors were helping people like widows to sort out their finances so that they would have less to worry about at least. That worked until my parents sent me a book of Australian poetry for my birthday, which included a verse about financial advisors who eat widows for breakfast (or something like that). So now I’m trying to not think about the fact that not only am I not interested in the business, but I don’t even think it’s that important, in the grand scheme of things. It is making me appreciate my previous jobs even more.

There is no fridge, no microwave, and no kettle. I assume this is their way of making us eat the cheap mass-produced food in the cafeteria, but I don't like it. At all. There is a drinks machine - hot and cold water free, everything else costs 20p. I have had to buy myself one of those insulated lunch bags so I can take my lunch to work and it won't go warm and slimy (mum I think that's why I never liked school lunches, as long as I can refrigerate it, it's ok).

The most exciting thing that’s happened recently would be the purchase of Toby’s motorbike. Because the commute out to Leith every day was resulting in such long days (up at 6 to go to the gym, home after 6) Toby decided he needed some transport and what else would Toby want but a motorbike. The day we went to Paris, he went to Glasgow to look at bikes. Of course I was very supportive and completely understood why he would go to Glasgow to look at motorbikes when he needed to be on a 3pm bus to the airport (ha). But still it was very exciting when I got a phone call later in the day and he told me he’d put a deposit on a BMW bike. Last Saturday we were up bright and early to go and pick it up. It wasn’t even in Glasgow but was in Paisley, so that required two trains and a bit of walking, in the rain of course, because it’s always raining in Glasgow. They’d nicely put the bike inside out of the rain, so while they sorted out the paperwork we walked up to the post office to pay for the tax (rego) which of course can only be done at a post office, not all of which do tax, not all of which are open on Saturdays. Toby had done a lot of research and made a lot of phone calls to find nearby post offices, but in the end the guys in the shop directed us to one in the Paisley plaza. Even though Paisley itself hadn’t been very inspiring (exactly how you’d imagine a fairly industrial suburb of Glasgow), the plaza itself was quite pleasant and there was even a farmer’s market going on. I found this very exciting as we have yet to find anything similar in Edinburgh. We sorted out the tax and ate weird Scottish meat pies (the filling was kind of like a rissole – delicious but odd) and then went back to the bike shop to get kitted out in our new bike gear. I am now the proud owner of my very own motorbike helmet and jacket. We had very cleverly worn thermals under our clothes which I think was absolutely vital. The rain had stopped but it was still windy (it’s always windy here) and generally very Scottish, weather-wise. The trip home was brilliant, if a little chilly and longer than it had to be due to getting lost. It feels great to finally have our own transport. We are planning lots of little trips out of Edinburgh to see more of the coast and countryside, which we haven’t really done so far. The rest of the weekend was taken up with other bike-related things, like riding out to Toby’s work to test different routes, and buying a sat nav system so we’re not relying on Google Map print outs sticky-taped to the tank (which is how we’d gotten home from Glasgow). Edinburgh is certainly a fun city on a motorbike, what with all the hill starts and cobbled streets. We have seen parts of it that we would never have seen before and looking forward to a lot more exploring now we’re more mobile.
So now that the birthday in Paris is over and we are working hard it’s time to look forward to Christmas, which we’re spending in Edinburgh with my sisters. We’ve booked three nights in Berlin over New Year’s and are starting to think about a jaunt to Prague in January or February, as it is a city high on our list of must sees. Probably not the most pleasant time of year to visit Eastern Europe, but that’s ok. I’m also going to go and visit Ali in Dublin in a few weeks’ time – I am really excited about the thought of seeing an actual family member, even if the weather in Dublin doesn’t sound like it’s any better than what we have here right now. Edinburgh is really cold at the moment; I’ve been told it’s due to the lack of cloud. It’s slightly warmer today which I’m assuming is due to the arrival of rain. Luckily Toby has figured out how to put our heating on a timer, so it turns on in the morning and at night before we get home. It really is very cold, like what you’d get on a snowfield back home. Trying not to be too miserable about it though; it’s far too early in the season to be moaning about the weather. Now that there’s a motorbike in the picture we are also going to think about exploring some of Europe on it next year when the weather warms up, before heading home. What a strange thought.

Toby in his new motorbike gear. Can't decide if he looks like a ninja or an executioner. Either way, he's warm.

On the bike, on the way to Loch Lomond. Neither of us were crazy about the idea of a yellow motorbike, but the big plus is that it's highly visible...people look in their rear view mirrors and get out of our way. Which is what you want them to do on the highway.

This is Loch Lomond, the biggest loch in Britain. This photo does not do it justice, in any way. Trust me when I say I have never seen anything quite like this.

Today we got our first glimpse of Highland Cows, which basically look like shetland ponies, only...more cow-y.

A birthday weekend in Paris

2007-11-13T21:26:00.000Z

Soon after we decided to come and live in the UK for a year, I announced to Toby that he could take me to Paris for my birthday. We’ve been to Paris before, on our whirlwind backpacking trip a few years ago. Because I’d gotten all cocky with our ability to find hotels of our own accord, I’d cancelled our hostel reservation so the first thing we had to do was find a hotel. Which we did. It was horrible, very small, very crampy, and smelt strongly of smoke. The next morning we’d checked out and headed to an Internet café to find something better. Due to a very inaccurate map (this was in the days before Google Maps, our new best friend) we spent the next 5 hours or so trying to find another hotel. Did I mention it was raining and I was wearing my new beige suede shoes? You can imagine how they looked after that adventure. So that was 1.5 days spent in Paris, gone. We went up the Eiffel Tower, visited the red light district (ostensibly to view the Moulin Rouge), and saw the Mona Lisa so we didn’t completely waste the trip. But I have always felt we missed out on an opportunity to really experience Paris, which is why I wanted to go again. And a birthday is an excellent excuse.

We headed off around 5.30 on Thursday 1 November, arriving in Paris an hour and a half later. National Novel Writing Month had started that day so I spent most of the trip trying to get my word count up, correctly guessing I wouldn’t have many more chances over the weekend. We got the train from the airport into the city and then changed to the metro to take us to our hotel. How I love the metro. Toby couldn’t stop talking about how it was the perfect public transport system, and listing all the reasons why. The only thing I don’t like about it is the buskers because they never play decent music and I think that’s just rude, because there’s nowhere you can go if you don’t like what they’re playing.

The hotel was a 5 minute walk from the Arc De Triomphe, but the best thing about it was the (partial) view of the Eiffel Tower from our window. At night especially it looked amazing all lit up. It was a very cute, very French room. The weirdest thing was the bath which came with a hand-held shower head, but the wall next to the bath came out at such an odd angle that you couldn’t stand up straight. I ended up just sitting in the bath but Toby, not being that good at sitting, struggled. We needed a little stool, like you get in the Japanese baths. It was very strange but felt like an authentic European experience.

Our hotel (on the left) with the Eiffel Tower. I'm not sure how people knew they were in Paris before they built it. It took my breath away the first time I saw it from the train, coming in at night.

Once we were settled we went downstairs to ask the man at reception where we could get some food. By this time it was after 10pm and we knew there wasn’t much around the hotel that was open. The man told us something about it being Halloween and therefore a lot of things were shut. Weird, especially considering it wasn’t actually Halloween. We finally found this teeny tiny little supermarket and bought some crackers, ham and cheese to have a carpet picnic back at the hotel. Seriously, it is difficult to describe how small this supermarket was. Anyway. That was the first night.

The next day was my birthday, which started with a card from Toby that made fun of my shoe fetish. (I know, how dare he.) It also started with some chocolate left over from the night before, because if you can’t have chocolate for breakfast on your birthday then it’s just not a birthday. We found a bistro not far from the hotel that served breakfast so we found a table. The old man working there didn’t really seem to know English, but that was ok. We’ve gotten a lot more confident with just muddling our way through; French is pretty easy because you can normally figure out roughly what something is. Not like Japan. I asked for an omelette and Toby got a crepe, and some coffee. Easy things to order. The man put a placemat and cutlery down in front of me, plus a little basket of bread, and we both got coffee (which isn’t what we normally drink, but I didn’t want mispronounce ‘tea’). Then I got my omelette. It was the best omelette I’ve ever had; it was just cheese and ham but it was brilliant. Toby’s crepe still hadn’t arrived, and the lack of a placemat and cutlery did not bode well. He was eating all the bread but then we got given the bill and yep – there was no crepe there. I still don’t know how we missed that one, but since the omelette was huge I very nicely let him have the second half. That’s just what I do.

One thing I love about Paris is the flower shops. They're everywhere, and they're massive, taking up so much room. I love what this says about the importance placed on beautiful, natural things.

After breakfast we went to the metro station and waited behind an English woman who was trying to buy some tickets from the machine. She was getting very frustrated; she had some rowdy kids jumping around and her husband was several metres away, looking at a wall map and pretending he didn’t know them. Finally they figured it out and then the guy in front of us got halfway through his purchase and walked away, leaving the instructions all in French. We still got our tickets fine, so I don’t know what the English lady was doing wrong. We took the metro to the Catacombs, which I’d decided was what I wanted to do. Might seem an odd choice for a birthday outing, but really it’s just one step up from when mum and dad used to take us for picnics in cemeteries on family holidays.

The line to the Catacombs was really long by the time we got there. I held our place while Toby went in search of a public toilet which was apparently disgusting and scary (I forget the details). We waited around an hour, which was made more bearable by some tasty crepes we got from over the road. Yum. When we finally got to the ticket window I was amazed because people aged 14-26 got in for half price!!! So I flashed my drivers license and only paid 3.50. It’s been ages since I was considered young enough to get a discount, and even though I’d been feeling a bit down about turning 26, this made it seem ok. The Catacombs themselves were brilliant and we were both so glad we’d made the trip, and waited in line. I found it odd that they’d been open since the 1800s to the public; one reason I think I found it almost normal is because there is no way I would have known any of skeletons down there, or been related to them or anything. But to visit so soon after they’d been exhumed, surely that chance would have been real for some visitors? At first you were really struck by the fact that you were walking through corridors created by piles of human bones, but after a few minutes it felt more normal and you could appreciate the effort and care it must have taken to make it look like that. I wished I had better French; there were lots of quotations and things marked onto the walls which I didn’t understand. It was great though.

Here are some spooky photos of bones and stuff:

After the Catacombs we walked up to the Luxembourg Gardens, had a look at the Palace (only from the outside) and watched little kids play with their sail boats on the pond. It all felt very French. Then we got the metro back to the hotel and went for a quick walk up to see the Arc De Triomphe and Champs Elysees before heading back to our room to rest and make ourselves beautiful for my birthday dinner.

This is my new house, up on the top floor with the views over Luxembourg Gardens.

Two random ladies in front of Luxembourg Palace. Note the green chairs where you can sit and people watch. I can't imagine how crowded this place gets in summer.

More of the gardens. This is the pond where the little kids stick their sail boats. Some smart ass had brought along his remote control speed boat. Talk about ruining the ambience.

The Pantheon, where lots of important French men are buried. I'm not sure where they've buried all the important French women...

I wish I could order a country to build a monument in my honour. Toby was quite taken with the logistics of such a massive roundabout.

Toby getting dressed up for my birthday dinner. What a man.

I’d booked http://www.lecoupechou.com/ which I'd seen recommended for special occasions on the Lonely Planet forums; I don’t normally bother making reservations in foreign countries but I didn’t want us to wander around, get lost and tired and hungry, and end up somewhere sub-standard. The restaurant was tucked away in a back street of the Latin Quarter and you would never find it if you weren’t looking for it. It was in an old building and we were seated up on the third floor. It was a gorgeous restaurant full of little nooks and crannies, complete with open fireplaces. The room we were in was empty except for us when we first arrived, which was a little strange but luckily it started filling up after a while. We had a glass of champagne to start with chose the set menu, with 3 courses. Toby ordered the duck starter and then steak tartare for his main; when he said that the waiter automatically said, ‘It’s raw.’ He is obviously used to tourists ordering steak tartare and then being surprised when it’s not what they expect. Toby had a flashback to severe food poisoning in Japan following raw beef (even though it was because of the water that he was sick) and changed his mind. I got a salad for the starter and then duck confit for my main. The food was great, lots of it, very buttery (even my salad) and French. We shared a bottle of rose wine and dessert was a very rich chocolate mousse and crème brulee. I think I ate most of it, for some reason Toby found the mousse too rich. Crazy. All in all it was a perfect way to end a very delicious birthday.

On Saturday morning we had bread and cheese in our hotel room for breakfast, but unfortunately there was no tea or coffee provided so we had to drink water. I’m not sure if that’s a particularly European thing; I can’t imagine ever getting accommodation in Australia without tea and coffee in the room, no matter how dodgy the place. The first thing on the list for Saturday was Notre Dame. We got the metro (of course) into the city and then walked over the Seine to the Notre Dame courtyard. It is a very impressive building. The line to get in was really long, and it was starting to rain, so we just enjoyed the view from the outside and then walked across to the Saint Chapelle church as well. Again, another really long line so we kept walking and had an explore of the Saint Germaine district. Which is pretty much the quintessential Paris – exactly what you imagine, with the bistros and cake shops, gorgeous boutiques and cobbled laneways. After lunch we got the metro again to go and see the Sacre Couer. The guide book suggested 2 different metro lines to get there, but I could see there was another line that went close by and would mean we didn’t have to switch trains. So we got that one and when we came up onto the street we realised we were the only white people we could see. I’m not sure if it’s officially the ‘African’ quarter of Paris that we saw, but it was like a Chinatown, only African, full of African supermarkets and beauty shops selling hair extensions and skin whitener. It was strange, like we’d come out into a whole different city. A white French man saw us with the guidebook out and told us where to go to find the Sacre Couer – I guess in that area any white person with a guidebook is looking for it.

Looking down the Seine to Notre Dame.

Notre Dame, close up.

Cool Parisian street, with my head in the way.

We had a hilly walk up to the church, complete with many steps, but once we got there it was definitely worth it. The views alone were brilliant, even on a not-so-clear day like that one. There was no line to get into the church so we had a wander inside and then made our way down into Montmartre, being accosted by African men selling souvenirs and wanting to braid bracelets onto our arms the whole way down. I had wanted to have a walk around Amelie-land but somehow we ended up in the red light district. I know, what a surprise. We had a coffee at some random little bar and then headed back to the hotel because Toby needed a nap.

Steps up to the Sacre Coeur.

It is a pretty amazing church.

The views are amazing too. And the best thing is - they're free!!! Although you do have to walk up all those steps...

the Moulin Rouge. Not as impressive in the day time.

That afternoon I went out to the Champs Elysees to meet my friend Amy and her mate Deb, whom many of you will remember from a previous blog entry including a visit to the castle and cocktails made from Moet. Somehow it turned out that they were on their final stop in Paris on the same weekend as we were there. We went into lots of different shops including a massive fancy cosmetics place which I’d read about in the guide book but didn’t want to drag Toby into. It was so cool, but unfortunately very expensive so n

On Saturday night Toby and I went to where Amy and Deb were staying, in Deb’s dad’s apartment. It was quite an adventure just getting there, as the metro line was closed and we had to get a bus which meant we were about an hour late. The apartment was gorgeous, exactly how you’d imagine a rich person’s apartment in Paris, and in an area full of lovely old buildings. Amy and Deb had put on a great dinner so we ended up having a dinner party in Paris, definitely a must-do, complete with amazing little cakes they’d bought at a nearby patisserie. After dinner we wanted to go out for a drink but the nearest place we knew of was an ‘Irish’ pub Toby and I had passed on our way in, so that’s where we went. It was actually more full of Australian paraphernalia (like big flags with Fosters written on them) than Irish, but we had some drinks anyway and then headed home.

Deb, Toby and me at the Irish pub.

Me & Amy

The first Sunday of every month is free museum day in Paris, so we’d saved our gallery trip for that day. Amy decided to join us so we met at the Arc in the morning and then got the metro to the Centre Pompidou, Paris’s gallery of modern art. From the metro we just had to walk up the block and the building was right there, so we joined the queue and sent Toby up to see how long it would be. He was gone so long we started hoping he’d gone off to get a crepe (as you do in Paris), but he said he’d just walked up the line and back again. At least 4 times longer than the one we’d been in for the Catacombs was his assessment. At some point in the line we passed a glass sign that had ENTRÉE written on it, with an arrow pointing around the corner. Then it said ENTRÉE BIBLIOTECH, with an arrow pointing in the direction we were heading. That’s weird, I thought. I pointed it out to Toby, who said that since the ENTRÉE was written in red, that meant it was closed. An interesting theory. After some more time, we decided a crepe would help, so Amy and I headed around the corner to a big courtyard lined with shops and restaurants to find a crepe stand. There was another line snaking its way into the same building, and we briefly wondered if that was where we should have been, but ended up going back to join Toby in the line instead. Finally we passed another sign with ENTRÉE on it, and this time it was definitely pointing in another direction, and that was just three too many signs that we were in the wrong place. It was then we started to realise that there were no loud Americans in the line. In fact, we were surrounded by young French people, many of them reading text books and highlighting paragraphs and writing things in the margin. It was too suspicious. By this time we’d been waiting an hour, but we left the line and headed around to the other side of the building, hoping that none of the people near us had known enough English to realise how stupid we’d been, and how long it had taken us to realise we were in the wrong place.

Sculpture things outside the Pompidou.

More sculpture things.

The front of the Pompidou. Yeah, don't know how we missed that one.

We walked straight in the doors and into the exhibitions, and tried not to think about how much time we’d just wasted standing outside. It was a great gallery and we really only got to see half of it, and not all that much of the half either. Something else for us to do next time we are in Paris. After that, we went to one of the bistros in the courtyard and had croque monsieurs for lunch, because that’s what tourists do. And then it was sadly time for Toby and I to get the train out to the airport, although not before we’d had some yummy gelato.

Saying goodbye to Amy.

So that was the weekend of falling in love with Paris, and if anyone offers either of us a job there, we will not be turning it down. What a brilliant city.

Amy & Deb's Visit

2007-10-21T17:02:00.000+01:00

Last weekend we had the pleasure of hosting Amy, a friend of mine from back home, and her friend Deb, for a few days. We took the opportunity to do some touristy things, show off our knowledge of walking routes, and go back to the delicious Chinese restaurant we discovered a few weeks ago.

Amy arrived on Friday evening, having left Deb to spend some quality time with her family back in Wales. We did our usual Friday night tradition of heading to the local pub and then home for Toby's homemade pizza in front of a movie. I always apologise to guests that they have to follow our Friday night routine (pretty much unchanged for the past 4-5 years) but funnily enough no one has ever complained.

The next morning Amy and I headed into the city for some proper shopping. Unfortunately Amy had left all her T shirts in London which sadly meant she needed to re-stock. I had to buy a new Edinburgh friendly coat and we absolutely had to buy the sparkly red shoes with bows on them that were only 5 pounds. We decided it was ok to buy the same shoes, because we live in different countries. (And did I mention they were 5 pounds.) We met up with Toby for lunch at Chocolate Soup where we had to try the Chocolate Dunk - essentially a little tub of thick chocolate served with a wedge of shortbread which you dipped into it. You could feel your teeth rotting on the spot. Although it had rained all morning it began to clear up after lunch, which was lucky as our next stop was Edinburgh Castle (via the Royal Mile and the fudge shop of course).

Me and Amy in some box outside the castle. Note the new coats. The castle proved to be less a castle and more a village of very impressive buildings dating from the 1400s onwards.

The thing that really hits you about the castle is the incredible views, all 360 degrees of them. It's all very strategic (although as Toby says, considering there's a Union Jack flying on the roof, it didn't work very well).

This is the cemetery for officers' dogs, on a terrace above one of the big squares.

We also got to see the Scottish Crown Jewels (which Amy assured us were much less impressive than those she'd seen at the Tower of London a few days earlier), the Royal Hall, the room where King James was born, and the cellars where hundreds of soldiers hid during a months-long siege (a lot of them died, unsurprisingly).

After the castle we headed home to rest our feet and sample some of the fudge before making ourselves beautiful for our night out, which I had planned with the help of one of the party girls at my office. First stop for the night was Chop Chop, for the dumplings and other delicious things. Then we walked into the city to Tonic, a bar which had been recommended to me for its amazing cocktails. And it absolutely delivered.

Amy drinking a Bellini, one of our favourite cocktails which we had to have in honour of our mates back home. The thing about this Bellini that was so special was it was made with MOET. Amy decided this was definitely a highlight of her trip. It was really delicious. The next one we tried was a Silver Mercedes, a vodka cocktail made with orange sorbet that was brilliant. It was around this point that Amy fell in love with the cute, flirty barman who I thought was Irish but apparently he's Glaswegian.

Toby was less impressed by his cocktails (and the bar staff).

After Tonic we headed to Lulu, where Toby decided it was time to go home. It was a fantastic club full of beautiful people, with enough seats for everyone and a very funky dancefloor where the ceiling was only about 6 foot high and covered with tiny lights, and the floor was very Saturday Night Fever. The music wasn't daggy enough for us (no singing possible) but we had a good boogie anyway.

Note Amy's fab new shoes. I bought the same, as well as another pair in grey. After we'd had enough at Lulu we decided to head back to Tonic for a nightcap and so the barman could fall in love with Amy. Unfortunately it was shut so we headed home for hot chocolate and toast, because we are nanas at heart.

The next morning we slept in, spoke to parents on the phone, ate pancakes cooked by Toby, and went for a wander through the Meadows, Greyfriar's Kirk churchyard, and the Grassmarket which are some of my favourite spots in Edinburgh. After a coffee we headed home to rest and await Deb's arrival. Sunday night we ate Mexican food and watched plenty of TV, because we were all tired from our big night before. On Monday I had to get up and go to work, while the rest of the house took the train to Glasgow and then visited the Botanic Gardens. After work we met up for yet another drink at Tonic, where the barman was on duty but perhaps didn't recognise Amy without all her finery. Since Tuesday was Deb's birthday we celebrated with greasy Chinese from the local takeaway, Irn Bru (Scotland's national drink) and chocolate mudcakes. Poor Deb had a cold and probably didn't feel like eating any of it, but she was a very gracious guest.

Very quickly, the following exciting things are happening for us in the next 2 weeks:

Toby starts his new job tomorrow, doing IT for Scottish Gas. After 4 months away from work I think he is somewhat daunted by the idea of having to get out of bed, get dressed, and properly interact with society.
I start a new job myself on Tuesday. After weeks of feeling unchallenged, unappreciated and lonely in my job I decided I couldn't take any more and started looking elsewhere. I have been offered a long-term position at Scottish Widows, which sounds like a punk goth band but is actually a financial investment company. It's not a reception position, it's a bit more money, and it's close to home and the gym so I'm feeling quite positive about it. Also I'm starting with 2 other temps which I figure gives me an immediate support group. It's meant to be quite a social area. I'm looking forward to the change.
We are going to Paris for 3 days, for my birthday. I feel like the Beckhams (sans the private plane and suite at the Hilton of course).
I am going folk dancing, and to some other meeting for something, thanks to Elle who I went to high school with and have since discovered (thanks to Facebook) is also living in Edinburgh. We had a coffee yesterday and she confirmed that Edinburgh is a place where it is difficult to get to know people, and it is expensive to live here. So it's not just me. It was nice to see a friendly face and chat with someone who really understood. She had some great ideas for things to do and has also inspired me to look into an evening class I could do, rather than relying on work to meet people which is never a good idea.
We are going to plan a Highlands trip soon.
We are starting to plan Christmas, and our trip to Berlin for New Years.

Well that's about it from us. It's been a really quiet weekend, to recover both physically and financially from the excitement of last weekend. It's time to clean the bathroom, iron clothes, and do other things to get ready for the week. Lots of love to those at home who are sweltering in Canberra's unseasonable hot, dry weather. I promise we would send you some of this rain if we could.

A Day At The Seaside

2007-10-21T16:45:00.000+01:00

2 weeks ago we got the bus out to Portobello, Edinburgh's seaside village. We got the bus from just outside our house and it took about 40 minutes to get there. It's a beach in the same way Glenelg or St Kilda are beaches - rather flat, unexciting surf, but proper sand and definitely a nice spot for a weekend walk. Here's Toby looking rather chilly.

Along the promenade. There's far less pubs than you would expect (and hope for).

There are some cool old buildings though, I assume left over from the days when Portobello was the playground for Edinburgh's wealthier residents (until post World War II when they realised they could go to Europe cheaply).

The funny thing that happened at Portobello was when we decided we were hungry and that only fish and chips would do. Surprisingly enough we could only find one place on the promenade, staffed by a Chinese family. They also sold plastic beach equipment, like kites and buckets and spades. It was all very British. Considering their shop was about 10 metres away from the water, they had a rather limited choice of seafood (haddock, deep fried - and that's all) but we ordered it anyway. When it was ready we were asked if we wanted brown sauce. This is a very British thing, it's basically brown and runny and salty. I'm not sure what the point is. I said no sauce but I'd take some lemon. The man serving me told me that you only got lemon in the restaurant next door. I couldn't help it but I burst out laughing. I didn't know what to say, this British fish and chip shop run by Chinese people on the beach with only one kind of fish and no lemon? They were either insulted by our laughter or realised how ridiculous that rule was, but they made a special exception for us and we were both blessed with a single lemon wedge each. Oh, bliss.

A Day In Photos

2007-10-21T16:14:00.001+01:00

Before I do an entry to update everyone on all the Edinburgh excitement we've been having lately I'm going to put some pictures up that I promised my father recently - an idea of the views and buildings that I've been seeing every day, as I go about the usual business of working, lunching, gymming, etc. Just something a bit different to the usual tourist snapshots.

This a shot of the roofs of the New Town all the way down to the Firth of Forth, as seen from the top of Hanover Street near my work. The photo absolutely doesn't do this amazing view justice...I really love it and always take a moment in the mornings to appreciate it.

Thistle Street, where my office (with the dark grey doorway) is (complete with a couple of colleagues taking their early morning smoko). If I'd taken this photo 6 weeks ago it would have been free of scaffolding and industrial waste bins. Oh well. Considering we live in a fairly new development I love that I work on such an old cobbly laneway. In the other direction Thistle Street is full of pubs, restaurants and some very fancy boutiques. A nice spot for window shopping.

One thing I truly love about Edinburgh is how you can walk past the same building or spot day after day and then suddenly you see it from a different angle and it takes your breath away. This building here is one I walked past at least twice a day for weeks, always thinking it was a fancy kitchenware shop (which it is). Then one day I happened to look up as I was coming out of a deli on the opposite corner and realised that it's actually the old Society of Edinburgh building, and quite magnificent even without the fancy silicon muffin tins. Cool.

The two places where I normally buy my lunch. Henderson's is an Edinburgh institution, a vegetarian place that's been around since the 1970s. I'm pretty sure it's still the same menu - there are some very daggy things like spinach burgers and felafel in there. Next door you can get brilliant soup for the bargain price of 1.60 a cup.

Once I've bought my daggy lunch I normally walk back down Hanover Street to the Princes Street Gardens. The day I took my camera I had this little thing for company which was just too cute for words.

This is my usual spot for lunch, if it's a fine day, where I can eat and read the paper and (hopefully) finish the sudoku as well. When there are no benches left I usually sit on the concrete steps under the statue. I have featured in several tourists' snapshots of the statue, trying to keep myself nice by not flashing too much leg or having a big mouthful of sandwich.

After work I generally get the bus to the gym. This is the view from the bus stop on Princes Street, down into the gardens. Beats Civic bus interchange, that's for sure. You can also see the castle from this spot (well, from almost anywhere in Edinburgh really).

We might have shown this one before...on the way back from the gym we pass Dalry Cemetary, a lovely old overgrown place which I still love the look of. I don't know who lives in the house, it could be caretakers but from the look of the graves they don't take a whole lot of care.

Next installment will be a bit more newsworthy, I promise.

Amsterdam photos

2007-10-07T18:49:00.000+01:00

Patience is not my strongest virtue, and because it takes a really long time to put together nice, good-looking entry complete with photos, I've done it separately. And chronologically backwards.

De Waag, originally built as a city gate in the 1400s. It was later used as an execution site and holding cell for criminals. Now it's - what else - a restaurant.

People probably thought we were odd, taking a picture of a kebab shop. But hey.

Amsterdam is full of crooked houses, apparently so that stuff could be dragged up from the canals on ropes without knocking into walls. But this house was crooked in a different way - the left side almost looks folded.

Canal house boats. Cool.

Our hotel room opened into a little courtyard. Then you could take the stairs up to a big wall that overlooked the junction of canals by the hotel - this is one of the views.

Me being a stupid tourist, getting ready to buy some clog slippers.

A good idea of what the red light district is like - bright, garish and unapologetic, but surrounded by cute typical Amsterdam ideas, like red shutters over attic windows.

Another canal shot. Amsterdam is a really colourful city, especially compared to Edinburgh which is basically a city comprised of different shades of grey.

Amsterdam was full of tempting bakeries, something we took full advantage of. This was the most impressive one we saw.

The concert hall, just across the road from the Museumplein. I was particularly taken by the gold harp on the roof.

Toby outside the Van Gogh museum, embarrassed because I made him stand in front of the murals like some kind of tourist.

A giant chess set that's actually being used.

Amsterdam, Day Two

2007-10-07T18:48:00.000+01:00

After the excitement of our Saturday night we slept in on Sunday morning, then checked out of the hotel and went breakfast hunting. We went to the bakery from the day before, but it was shut. Everything was shut, even the Aldi. Things were getting hungry, and cranky, and we finally found a corner bar/café a bit like Tilley’s which had a single breakfast dish on the menu (cruesli with fruit and yoghurt). And Twinings tea. So we sat in the sun and ate cruesli and tea, and apple cake with whipped cream which for some reason Toby felt the need to order. Sitting in the sun was an important part of this, because the day before it had rained non-stop for 12 hours. It was nice to be dry and not avoiding umbrellas all the time.

After breakfast we hopped on another tram until we started getting paranoid about ticket inspectors, because we hadn’t figured out how to buy tickets. The plan was to drop our luggage off at central station so we didn’t have to lug it around all day. We found the station ok, and we found the lockers ok. They were all full. Hundreds of them. Full. We wandered around for a little while until we realized we looked as stupid as all the other tourists with their luggage, wandering all around. What were we waiting for? The five Contiki tours to come back and empty their lockers? Luckily we’d taken small backpacks so it wasn’t difficult to carry them around.

The next stop after the station was Anne Frank’s house, our 2nd museum choice and my number one priority for Amsterdam (Toby’s number one priority had obviously been fulfilled the night before). The walk from the station was through more lovely streets, across more lovely canals, to a fairly swish residential area in the west of the city. There was a long line to get in, as expected, and a few moments of frustration when we noticed a sign saying that there was no cloak room in the museum and large backpacks were not allowed. The sign very helpfully suggested leaving your luggage at central station. Not being particularly keen on seeing the museum (and not really even knowing who Anne Frank was), Toby thoughtfully offered to wait outside with our backpacks while I did the tour without him. Luckily that wasn’t necessary – we put our massive backpacks on our fronts and were let in with no troubles. After negotiating the tiny stairways and rooms of the museum I could see another reason to leave a backpack behind. Considering the museum had room for a large gift shop and restaurant I think they could spare some space for a cloak room. Anyway.

We got some brochures and read through them first; Toby figured out who Anne Frank was and got a bit of the story before we went in. The museum had been really well put together and it was an incredibly moving experience to be in that space with such an extraordinary story. Well, it seems an extraordinary story; in reality it’s just one story out of millions. Amsterdam’s Jewish community did not do well in the war; something like only 1 in 16 actually survived. I read a quote in the museum from someone asking if it was a shame that people felt so connected to Anne Frank’s story when so many other stories were unknown or forgotten; their answer was no, because so many stories would be too overwhelming.

The museum started at the doorway that had been covered up by a bookshelf to keep them all hidden, up the tiny staircase to the tiny rooms. It was incredible to think of those families sharing such a small space, not making any noise or breathing fresh air. They had some videos, including of interviews with people involved with the Frank family. One was one of the women who worked with Mr Frank. When she told the story of how he had called her into his office early in the war and told her his family was thinking of going into hiding in the office building, and would she help him, I was so struck by what a huge ask that was of your employees, and by her complete, unquestioning generosity when she said ‘yes, of course.’ She can’t have been older than I am now.

On the walls and the glass cases showcasing items connected to the story there were quotes from Anne’s diary, which wasn’t on display although they had a facsimile of it. The room Anne had shared with one of the others was still decorated how she had it; covered with movie posters and pictures of the royal family. It was a stark reminder that you were in a teenager’s room. In Peter’s room, which was also a corridor, they had the board game he’d been given for his 16th birthday while they were in hiding. There was one of the yellow stars that Jewish people had been forced to wear. It was big. They hadn’t been allowed to ride their bicycles either; anywhere else that might not have seemed such a big deal but Amsterdam is bikes. There was no real furniture apart from the items on display – it had all been removed when the family left, and anyway the space was so small you wouldn’t want there to be furniture anyway.

Moving out of their hiding space the museum showed the photos of all the people who had been there – only Anne’s father survived. They had other photos of ‘round-ups’ of Jews in the streets of Amsterdam, and a book of over 100 000 names of people who died, opened to the page where Anne was listed.

Coming out into the lovely sunshine, the street was as normal as ever. I was so glad we’d bothered to find the house and line up, and I think Toby ended up glad we were allowed in with our backpacks as well. It was a whole other side to Amsterdam.

Then it was time for lunch, which we had in a pub nearby. It was all well and good until the entire family who worked in the pub took a smoko at the same time, sitting at a big table in the middle of the room. Grrrr. Toby had another pancake and I had a burger, and a half pint of Amster beer which I assumed to be a local brew. After lunch we decided to look into getting a canal tour; we’re not normally ones for organized tours but it seemed a good way to see the city from a different view point and rest our feet at the same time. Unfortunately the ticket options for the canal bus didn’t suit us. The options were a day pass for 18 euros each – a bit much considering we only wanted a couple of hours – or an hour pass for 11 euros each which seemed cruel when all the trips lasted at least 90 minutes. In the end we decided to do some shopping since I wanted a pair of clog-slippers I’d seen around the place. A terribly tacky thing to buy, I know, so unashamedly touristy, but I needed a pair of slippers anyway, because I’m a nana, and these seemed a good option. I found it extraordinary how many tourists were milling around the shops; all those lovely canal streets had been practically empty, except for the locals walking their dogs and kids and having Sunday lunch, and yet here were all these British and Americans buying exactly the same stuff they buy at home. And we were right there with them. We also went to visit De Waag, which we had seen in the dark the night before without realizing what it was. We had an early, very ordinary dinner at a Chinese restaurant (that didn’t even serve spring rolls) in the red light district (yes, Toby had to have just one more look) before getting on the train back to the airport.

We were on a bigger plane this time and managed to walk almost straight from the arrivals hall onto the bus, which dropped us a few minutes’ walk from our house. We were home 45 minutes after landing. The whole trip felt very easy and manageable; I barely struggled at all to get out of bed the next morning and head to work. It was an excellent reminder as to why we uprooted our Canberra lives and took up residence in this chilly, dreary place where you can’t even buy Milo or a decent can-opener.

Amsterdam: Day One

2007-10-01T20:47:00.000+01:00

Our Amsterdam adventure started on Friday afternoon. I left work at 4:45 and walked a whole 5 minutes down to the bus stop for the airport bus, which goes past our house on its way. The idea was for Toby to jump on it later, bags in tow. Of course such a simple plan was bound to go astray as it did when Toby went to the wrong bus stop (on my advice). We arrived at the airport only 5 minutes apart so it was a small error. We were 2 hours early - I had envisaged a Friday night crush at the airport, full of Scots trying to escape for the weekend. I was pleasantly wrong, we hardly lined up at all and had time for a usual Friday night drink at the bar before the flight, which was delayed as they always are when you're early. The plane was tiny, like what you get on a Sydney to Canberra flight, and it wasn't a very nice trip. I only like flying as long as I can forget that I'm in a plane, and I was constantly reminded on that flight. We were glad when we finally arrived in Amsterdam, where the air was around 5 degrees warmer than what we'd left at home.

Surprisingly enough, although English is widely spoken and understood in Amsterdam, there was very little English signage at the airport. We had some trouble figuring out the train into the city but finally decided we were too tired and hungry to waste any more time, so we got on the next best one. We got off at a random stop which was meant to be near our hotel, and then wandered aimlessly a little wondering whether to walk or not. In the end, the idea of walking through a park at night time in a city known for its crime was not tempting and we opted for a taxi. A Scottish bloke checked us in, asked Toby about the rugby and the weather and told us there was a reduced room service menu this late at night (11pm). Our room was a smoking one but Toby, being the bloodhound he is, went around sniffing everything and declared it to be tolerable. We had to request a room service menu and a fourth pillow (3 pillows for 2 people?) and by the time they didn't arrive I was too tired to think about food, and cranky about the strange Dutch method of putting sheets on a bed (two overlapping sheets which you're supposed to lie on). So it wasn't a great start to the holiday but the bed was comfy and we'd made it in one piece.

Having missed a proper dinner the night before, on Saturday we woke up hungry and ready to explore. Our first mission was to get a map, and then some breakfast. A girl behind the counter gave us a map and some directions which were to later prove very unhelpful. She told us to get the tram into the city which is where we'd find all the breakfast we needed. But we didn't have the patience or the energy to tackle public transport before food and thought we were certain to find something edible within walking distance. It took some time and some wrong turns and a fair bit of oohing and aahing at the canals surrounding the hotel, but we found a good-looking bakery not far away and feasted on ham and cheese croissants and cinnamon donuts. A nutritious start to a long day.

Our first stop was the Van Gogh museum, one of two we'd agreed on beforehand. The walk there was lovely, along canals and peering down the gorgeous tree-lined streets, always having to keep an eye out for the locals on their bikes. They were everywhere. There was a line outside the Museum, but it was moving quickly and we got inside which was lucky as it was starting to drizzle. (It didn't stop until the next morning, so from now on, assume we are always damp.)

Inside the museum was really crowded, but it was still a really good way to start our trip. Since reading the chapter in 'The Art of Travel' about Van Gogh I have been intrigued, so this fit the bill perfectly. I don't know if Van Gogh's art appears sad because you know he himself was sad, or because it really does have that quality about it. My favourite painting was probably the Potato Eaters, which he worked really hard on and no one liked. But something about the ugly peasants sitting around their ugly starchy food just hit me. I really liked the idea too that someone could just wake up one day, as Van Gogh did, and decided he could be an artist from now on, with no training and no natural ability that he was aware of. He just wanted to help people through art. The other thing that was surprising about the museum was its claim that it didn't often get to add to its collection because Van Gogh articles are so expensive. And yet the museum was full of proof that its staff are spending thousands of hours figuring out things that in the grand scheme of things don't seem so important (like was this painting completed in 1882 or 1883? Was this done using that kind of ink, or this?). I couldn't help but think that maybe if the museum got rid of some of those academics they could afford to add more art to the collection which seemed to me something Van Gogh would have approved of.

After the museum we spent ages in the gift shop because I couldn't decide what souvenir I wanted to buy, and then headed into the city. The area the hotel girl had directed us to was a big square full of pubs and restaurants and nothing much of any interest so we went further afield and starting exploring the shopping district towards the Dam. For lunch we found a cafe in an alleyway and had pancakes. Considering Dutch meals are based around at least one of cheese, pancakes, bread or potatoes it was surprising that Amsterdammers did not seem the least bit tubby. We put that down to all the cycling. The pancakes were huge - the size of a dinner plate - and thicker than a crepe. They are served with a sweet or savoury topping - the ones we got, which had cheese, were grilled and ended up looking like a pizza. Delicious, artery-clogging lunch. Other odd things about Dutch meals were that everywhere served alcohol and they are still allowing smoking in restaurants. This was definitely our least favourite thing about Amsterdam.

After lunch we explored some more, ending up quite taken with the colours and canals of Amsterdam, and had a quick stroll through the red light district. It's a surprisingly pretty area in the daytime; it was full of tourists and even with all the sex shops and what-not the buildings, alleyways and canals are still lovely. Toby got his first glimpse of some ladies through the windows; it was a little strange to see near-naked women displaying their bodies like that. On the other hand, this was Amsterdam and so entirely expected. We headed back to the hotel to rest up for a night out, via a bakery of course because we were surrounded by them and needed something to have with a cup of tea to replenish.

After tea, baked goodies and a nap (on my part) it was time to doll ourselves up and head out for a night on the town, Amsterdam style. This consisted of getting super confused about Amsterdam's tram system and taking too long to find a restaurant for dinner, by which time Toby was dizzy with hunger. We ate a meal like something you'd get at the Labor club (chicken schnitzel, chips and salad) to fortify ourselves for what lay ahead. We left quickly because there was an Indian bucks night on right next to us, complete with lots of smokers and flirting with the waitresses.

After dinner we went back to the red light district and did some night-time exploring. It was absolutely packed, mostly with men but with enough women that I didn't feel out of place. Unlike the afternoon where most of the windows had been empty, now they all displayed lots of women, most young and attractive with the occasional older lady thrown in for some variety. There were also lots of drug dealers who for some reason took a shine to Toby. Of course we had to see a live show, so we chose a club and paid an exorbitant amount of money for a ticket. Inside it was a tiny room, very smoky and full of people. As this is a family blog I will say no more. Suffice to say, like other first-time experiences, it was oddly unerotic, disappointing, and came to an abrupt and unexpected finish. This was because of some audience members to whom one performer took a dislike; they were American and very loudly complaining when the lights went on and we all had to leave. After that I wasn't much in the mood for any more red light district fun, so we went to McDonald's for a McFlurry and then got a taxi home. Toby was very understanding.

And so our first day in Amsterdam came to a close. Tomorrow I'll post our second day, and some photos.

How Life Is

2007-09-23T17:34:00.000+01:00

Life is pretty grand really. Especially today, after a successful trip to Roslin to see the Chapel, some cheese and oatcakes and World Cup rugby on the TV. A quick re-cap of things we've done in the last few weeks...

We went to the Royal Botanic Gardens, about an hour away by foot via our favourite Water of Leith walk. Halfway there we reached the old mill area, a part of the valley where all the old mills used to be; there are still some wells and buildings left over from that time. Including the mineral spring (below) which isn't normally open but for some reason was the day we went past. Inside was a revelation; it had been designed to look like a Roman temple, all blue and gold tiles and an elaborate fountain for the healing waters. Just incredible. The old lady who invited us in told us the history of it and invited Toby to try pumping for some water. Luckily he failed, otherwise we might have had to drink it.

Then onto the gardens, where surprisingly there was a large section dedicated to plants of a particular region in China...

...and some really big leaves...

...and great views across Edinburgh.

The next weekend we went to the National Gallery which is actually several galleries connected by tunnels. We skipped the Warhol exhibition due to its cost and instead wandered around some of the most amazing rooms I've ever been in. It was like being in a rich person's mansion. No new-fangled marble floors, white walls and proper lighting in this gallery. The paintings were displayed one on top of each other in rooms that felt like ballrooms. It all felt very opulent and luxurious. They had an exhibition on of William Blake's work, which was a revelation for me as I thought he'd only ever written poems.

We had a visitor in the form of Toby's mate Chris, who we'd discovered had actually been in Edinburgh for the last 2 months, living and working at a hostel near the Castle. We used it as an excuse to visit our local pubs, and that was how we discovered that our local pubs shut at 12. Not the most successful excursion but it was nice to have a friendly face around for a few days. He's now moved up to the highlands to work some more, so we may visit him sometime.

We had some really delicious Chinese food at a restaurant I would never have considered, partly because it was so bright red and yellow and partly because its name is Chop Chop. However the food was incredibly good, with the house speciality being dumplings, and very reasonably priced. We shall return (and also take any lucky visitors who come this way).

We had a weekend spent at home because the weather wasn't very good and we'd just booked an expensive trip to Amsterdam and wanted to save our money.

We went to a World Cup match because the stadium is less than 5 minutes' walk from our house. We saw Scotland annihilate Romania; Toby predicted a 60-0 final score, but in the end it was 42-0. You had to feel sorry for Romania - first the war, then this. It was a very Scottish experience, what with all the men in kilts (standard clothing for sporting events) and the Proclaimers being played every time Scotland scored a try. (We are now watching New Zealand annihilate Scotland in a similar manner on TV; the cheapest tickets for this game were 38 pounds as opposed to 9 pounds for the Romanian game, which explains our choice. While walking up to the bus stop earlier today we passed a massive number of All Blacks fans, but I think we still might have struggled to choose which side to cheer for, had we gone to the game.)

Random shot of the stadium from Toby's phone. Note the teeny tiny screen and the almost invisible scores. Not a place for blind bats.

Yesterday myself and another girl from work bussed out to the Gyle Centre (which is a small shopping mall out in an industrial area near the airport) in order to do some surveys. We were to be paid 7 pounds an hour for 3.5 hours, and get 150 responses between us. I must say I would never have volunteered for this job if I'd known what it would involve, but by the time I found out what 'doing surveys' meant, it was really too late to back out. Yvonne stood in the annexe between the carpark and the entrance, and I stood outside Marks & Spencers catching people coming from the other direction. Within 15 minutes we'd been asked to leave by security, who very nicely told us that our agency hadn't received permission for us to be there. We rang the girl from work who'd arranged the whole thing, and she didn't answer her phone. While we waited for her to call us back we had a coffee and browsed through Boots. 45 minutes later, we still hadn't heard anything and decided to call it a day. It goes without saying that we were both pretty relieved and not at all upset that our 3.5 hours had been cut down to 15 minutes. I'd been home for a while when the girl from the agency finally rang me; I couldn't tell who she was angry at, but I figured we'd done what we could and none of it was our fault. I didn't ask if we would still get paid but I will certainly be putting up a fight for us tomorrow. Never mind. Yvonne was a pleasant, interesting person to spend some time with. She went to university in Paris, her mother lives in Spain and her boyfriend in Venice so she has that jet-setting lifestyle I imagine all British having.

Today we decided it was time for an excursion, so after a brief bus mishap due to the fact that I can't read, we got on a bus out to Roslin. It's only 6-7 miles from the Edinburgh city centre but it felt a million miles away by the time we got out there. The chapel is going through major conservation work so from the outside it looked a little disappointing. Inside was a whole other story; it was extraordinary. I have never seen anything like it. The stories and the history add so much interest to what would already be an incredible space. I was glad to see a complete lack of Da Vinci-related paraphernalia, which is fitting considering the chapel has a much richer history than just Tom Hanks and Dan Brown. For people (like my lovely oblivious parents) who have totally missed the whole Da Vinci Code thing, the Rosslyn Chapel appears right at the end of the book. It was built in the 1440s, desecrated during the Reformation in the 1500s and wasn't used again until the 1800s. They have now embarked on a massive conservation project which won't finish for another 5 years. What's so special about the Chapel, apart from its elaborate and gorgeous carvings and architecture combining so many styles, are the mysteries in it; like the carved cubes in the ceiling, each with a unique symbol no one can figure out. Or the fact that one of the windows has carvings of corn along the top - even though America wasn't officially discovered until 50 years after the carvings were done.

The disappointing exterior

One of the amazing windows...check out all the carvings, especially the flowers around the top.

The good thing about the scaffolding is that you can climb up and get a close look at the outside of the Chapel, just as amazing as the inside, and also check out the views across the valley. Very cool.

Inside the crypt, which was freezing and creepy, as you'd expect.

The Mason's pillar

The Apprentice's pillar. According to the story, the Mason finished his pillar and headed off overseas to get inspiration for his second pillar. While he was gone the Apprentice knocked this up and when the Mason got back he was so jealous with rage he murdered the Apprentice (and was hanged for it). They are both immortalised in carvings inside the Chapel.

View of Rosslyn Castle from the top of the Chapel. The Castle is just a ruin now, a few walls and bridges left. But enough of it to make you appreciate heights, and what building a fortress was all about.

The outside of the Chapel, built in the 1880s. Still with all the carvings and what-not.

Outside of weekends, I continue to work the 9-5.30 grind at my office job in the city and Toby continues to play with his trading, build up his warcraft character and is now looking at volunteering for the Scottish SPCA. My job is going ok; at least, it pays the bills and the people are pleasant enough. There are a few things that continue to surprise me, including that no one uses an electronic diary, at least 50% of British people don't know their own phone number, and I have been asked by at least 5 people which option 'normal' is under 'sexuality' on the Equal Opportunity form they fill in. The first time it happened I put it down to an oddity of that particular young man. The second time I forgave her because she had a Nigerian passport. But now that it's happened several more times, I'm not sure where it's coming from. Maybe they don't cover that in sex ed here. In any case, it's weird. Other things falling into that category which have us constantly asking what is up with this country include tuna, can openers and mail that gets delivered on Saturdays. This week marked our 2 month anniversary of leaving home so hopefully we will start getting the hang of things soon.

Job Description, and let's all go to Amsterdam

2007-09-01T11:41:00.000+01:00

My dad suggested I copy this section of my email to him into our blog so everyone knows what my job is. So:

I am the receptionist for a big UK company's recruitment arm at their Edinburgh branch. They do permanent and temporary jobs, public and private. The previous receptionist left at 2pm today so I'm on my own now. She'd only been there 2 weeks herself so I think I learnt as much from her as I could - now I need to pin someone else down and make them explain all the stuff I don't know. It's a very busy office, the phone barely stops ringing and they have lots of people coming in the doors. I had an odd experience today, an older man than normal came in - I thought he was in his 50s but his passport said 40s (maybe a hard drinker). I got him to fill in the form and because of his age double-checked with the consultant that he was supposed to do the assessments. When I went to interview last week I had to do an assessment as well - it's almost insulting, there's data entry and then literacy/numeracy which swung between being easy enough for monkeys, and difficult enough that it wasn't testing anything (like your ability to do long sums - hello we use computers now). So I sat the bloke down at a PC and was talking him through it and tried to make sure he knew it was just a standard test and not a reflection on him per se. He didn't believe me and told me what qualification he had and said he didn't want to do a literacy test. I offered to call the consultant and let her know so she could come down and chat anyway, but he was so offended by the idea someone wanted to assess him that he just left. I think that will happen occasionally, one of the consultants told me they get people who think temp work is beneath them so they behave poorly and of course get bad references and then it ends up back-firing on them. I felt like telling that guy I knew how insulting it was because I was in that seat last week, but I decided not to. So that was interesting. Otherwise I will just be setting up the office how I like it and trying to convince people that a filing cabinet and using an email calendar would be beneficial. I can't believe they don't use a calendar!!! Six years ago at Centacare, an organisation seeminly stuck in the dark ages, we were still using a calendar. Every morning I have to email the team to get their appointments for the day, and then I make up an excel spreadsheet so I can keep track of it (it was in word but I've moved it to excel - who uses word??) There are only 2 meeting rooms so if the consultants have double booked, we run out of rooms. An electronic diary seems an obvious solution and I find it hard to believe they don't have one. In some ways the UK does seem rather advanced, but in others it is so far behind it's laughable.

That was from Wednesday. Thursday and Friday went fine. The mornings tend to be manic; the phone doesn't stop ringing and the consultants all seem to book their interviews and assessments before lunch. With a small waiting room and only 2 assessment computers and 2 meeting rooms, there can occasionally be people standing around for something to free up; amazingly it doesn't happen too often, and most people can see why there's a wait. The older gentleman from my email has been the most awkward moment so far; most people who come through the doors are fairly young and know the ropes. What's really nice is to see the people who have been offered jobs; they are always so happy about it and often seem to not believe it was as easy as it was. I still can't believe I'm in a job where my duties include sorting mail, opening and closing the blinds, and tidying newspapers. I know there's a lot more I could be doing but I still haven't had someone to sit down with and go through it all. Friday was pay day for 500 temps so the phone did not stop at all; we only have one girl doing the payroll and she'd just got back from 2 days off so she was absolutely swamped. I told her she would have to show me some basic payroll stuff so I could answer the more basic questions; she laughed and said I didn't want to know. I wanted to tell her about my job at United and that I actually do want to know because it would save me, her and the people calling a lot of time, but she was too busy. There's also several folders on my desk of things I'm pretty sure I'm meant to do, if only I knew how. I'm still getting used to phone numbers and the names of companies (the woman who deals with the utilities contracts had to tell me that when I wrote 'SG' on my emails she didn't know if I meant Scotia Gas or Scottish Gas - who knew they were two different companies?) as well as accents - people everywhere say their names really fast and it's even worse with the accent. On Friday I got invited to after-work drinks and dancing afterwards. Because I knew Toby was going to make pizza for dinner I said yes to drinks and made them promise to invite me out dancing the next time they go. I figured I'd stay for one or two, and not be the first to leave. But at ten past 7 and after two drinks, even the staff I would have called the old ones were hanging on and the girl who said she'd come for 1 was halfway through her third. So I was the first one to leave. I was absolutely shattered from 4 whole days of work after 5 weeks off, and really wanted to get home.

Toby has taken to being a house husband with great gusto. Well not really but it's been nice to be cooked for, and have a clean house when I get home from work. I can see why housewives were so popular, with men anyway. We have had to agree that I will leave my 'hand wash only' garments in a different laundry basket from now on, to avoid any further confusion, but that's been the only misunderstanding so far. He's doing study for his Microsoft course and lots of investment kind of stuff which he would be better at explaining. I do know he's making fake money while we sleep, and that the beeping from the computer means something's happened on the world currency market.

Plans for the weekend include a trip to the Botanic Gardens, a movie and a drink tonight, and booking a trip to Amsterdam. We're both keen to get out a bit more which is the whole reason we're here after all. Love to all back home and happy Father's Day to all you dads (and dads-to-be).