Blog blog blog

Ok I know I am more than a month behind on my blogs, so I'm just going to post a super blog on everything that happened after the wedding and if you want pictures you can go browse through them on the links. If I find a particularly good one, I might put it up. So here goes

May 12: Newcastle upon Tyne Day 2

The day dawned cold and dismal. Cloudy and very much sub 20 degrees. As is my habit when travelling alone I went out on a long wander. I went down to Castle Keep, the fort that gave Newcastle its name. To put it simply, it was total and utter crap. It was £1.50 to get in and it was totally wasted mainly because there was nothing special about it. It had been attacked a few times in its history by the Scots but that was to be expected since it was built in the north and what castle hadn’t been attacked in its history. This place was just plain boring not to mention it spooked me too. It was all shadowy tunnels and such. I’m not terrified of the dark or anything, I mean, it might have been a little bit of claustrophobia or maybe it was some sort of innate danger sense, but seeing as there was no other visitors in the place and the gate keeper was criminally inattentive, if I were to slip or fall down or some such, it could be a while before help arrived. So I left after a very brief visit. So thus I decided it was high time for my aimless walk through the streets of this distinctly unattractive little city.
The one redeeming feature of this city was that it had a Chinatown. Although it was small, it did give me a very necessary sense of the familiar. I was very surprised by the number of mainlanders and hongkies that lived in this city, particularly the hongkies. I would have thought that the climate would have been super disagreeable to them. I had a bowl of soy chicken noodles, ordered in Cantonese of course, at a small eatery. For some reason it was very comforting to be able to speak in Cantonese again. I ended up crisscrossing Chinatown back to front, front to back and even side to side a couple of times. It reminded me how much I missed Hong Kong, perhaps. After some more hours of walking in which I went past the home of famous Newcastle FC and the old town walls I returned to the hostel for some warming up.
This day will always be marked down as quite special for me. I finally met my friend, Carina Nilsen. I’ve known this girl for a number of years but had never had the opportunity to meet. Rina, as I call her, is a Norwegian girl who moved to Newcastle to live with her boyfriend, to work and, soon, to study. And so I finally got to see her. As with meeting anyone for the first time, there’s always a first impression that hits you pretty hard. The first thing that slapped me in the face was that she had completely lost her Norwegian way of speaking English, which I found kind of sad. She sounded completely like a local. It was impossible to distinguish her speech from anyone else. The other thing was that she was even paler than I had previously seen. However the most noticeable thing was that it seemed like a lot of her old vitality and vivacity had been sucked out of her as if the lifestyle and working had leeched it out of her. (Sorry Rina!) Ah *sighs*
Anyway, we went and had dinner and chatted for hours. Even though we had known each other for years, it was like a first meeting kind of chat which I suppose it was. I walked her to the station and got her onto a train and then gripped by the melancholy at how the years, and life, change people, it was back to the hostel to do more laundry.

May 13: Newcastle upon Tyne Day 3

Having realized there wasn’t a whole lot to do in Newcastle I stayed in for the afternoon to decide whether I still wanted to go to Nottingham. Ultimately, I decided that I would forego the trip to Nottingham as 2 nights really wouldn’t do Robin Hood’s old territory much justice.
Then it was dinner again with Rina. This time we walked down to the Quayside and had a look around down there. For a small city it had a ridiculous number of bridges, 9 in all and a tunnel, to cross the river. Sydney with a population of over 4 million only has 4 major bridges for crossing the river plus a tunnel. How odd. It also has a footbridge which when viewed from above looks an eye, which incidentally was also its name. Quayside also boasts one of the oddest pubs I have ever seen. The building is sort of in the Tudor style, white with brown framing, but the oddest thing was that the walls of this pub actually bulge. They’re not straight! It’s very, very odd to see.

Newcastle also boasts a copy of our own Harbour Bridge, but unfortunately it's smaller. Even more unfortunately, it's not in Sydney.

Dinner was at a small pub with a deep back room, which we nicknamed the Brick Pit. Dinner was accompanied by a very long chat and a very strange person. The Brick Pit is a rectangular room with alcoves at each end and cubicle style seating. This rather odd fellow came in and walked into the alcove near where we were sitting. Naturally we thought he was getting a seat but instead he stopped and faced the wall and held out his hands, palms down as if he was blindly feeling about. As if that wasn’t strange enough, he went to the opposite alcove of the Brick Pit and did the same thing! WTH?! Then he went out in to the main bar. A pair of chaps sitting over there looked at us with puzzled expressions and we all broke into a good old chuckle. I peeked around the corner into the main bar and there he was! Facing a wall and holding his hands out! Wacko alert! Well, after that bit of amusement we resumed our chat and in time I walked her to the nearest station and farewelled her until the next time we met, whenever that would be.

May 14-15" Interlude

Nothing much happened here save that I stayed at Yan's for a couple of days and sorted out my accommodation for France.

May 16: Leaving for Paris

This day did not start very well. In order to get cheap travel in France, I had bought a Rail pass for France. This got me cheap travel on all the TGV and local trains for around 200 euros. I also got a cheap fare for the Eurostar, the express train that links London with Belgium and France. A full e ticket is a very expensive 150 pounds, my pass entitled me to a reduced fare of 50 pounds, but unfortunately that was the 7:30 train leaving from London's St Pancras (or as Ingrid calls it, St Pancreas *chuckle chuckle*) International station. So to get there, my day started at 4:15am as I had to get the first train out from Teddington, where Yan's place was. The train arrived duly at 4:59am and got me to London Waterloo at 5:45 at which point I jumped onto the underground that took me to St Pancras and thus I arrived, largely zombified at 6am to check in to the terminal. The Eurostar was fast, very fast, but not as fast as the Shinkansen of Japan, nor as comfortable. Anyway, the Eurostar arrived, a little late, in Paris at 10:30.

The hostels of Paris are almost as pricey as booking a hotel room, without the comforts. So to avoid all that I booked an studio apartment for the 4 days I was going to be there. I felt a certain amount of sentimentality about staying in this apartment. It felt like those french films I saw once or twice, weird. The street I stayed on, Rue St Charles has a rather nice view looking down the street, that of la Tour Eiffel, the Eiffel Tower, which really isn't all that spectacular.

I met up with Bink and Ingrid (what a coincidence!) at the Notre Dame. Paris is one of those old cities which have certain uniformity in its buildings. Many people find it nostalgic, but because so much of the city is covered in the same sort of buildings it’s actually kind of boring. The little alleyways are delightful with their cobbled stones tucking around the back of the boring buildings. To be honest, the main drags that are always packed full of people are never as interesting as nipping around the back streets.

I have now got the hang of how my GPS works! It’s brilliant. As long as there is a reasonable amount of clear sky the phone will pick up the signal from the satellites and stick a cross hair on where you are, brilliant wot.

We saw most of the “amazing” sights on this first day, the Notre Dame, St Chappel’s, the Louvre. To be honest, both Bink and I found Paris a little on the cloying side. It had a major sense of the overdone. The cathedrals, Notre Dame and St Chappel’s, were both lovely buildings, intricate in design and decoration but they were both heavily decorated as if someone had decided that having a simple stone interior was not enough. Compare to Westminster abbey where there is no painting. The windows are stained glass of course but the walls are unadorned stone and the wood simply stained. The stonework is no less impressive than the two French ones we went to but the lack of overwhelming colour lent it a matronly dignity while Notre Dame and St Chappel were like a pair of giddy sisters who’d broken into a paint shop. The other thing that got to me was the total lack of decorum by the visitors in Notre Dame. People clattered about talking loudly and snapping off flash photographs all over the place. It had all the hallmarks of a tourist attraction rather than a cathedral. This was the same at St Chappel. The stain glass window work in that place was even more incredibly beautiful. In Westminster Abbey, photographs were forbidden, so I absolutely had to have a few hehehe until I got busted. *ahem*

It was quite a difference. The Brits treated their cultural monuments with near-religious reverence while the French viewed them as another place to hang out or take a partner. No one seemed to view its historical significance.

This is the inside of St Chappel's Cathedral. The stained glass window work is simply one of the most brilliant I have ever seen.

The absolute highlight of the day had to be lunch. One of the nice things about Paris are all those little back streets where if you wander through and randomly pick a place to eat you might come across a little gem. Such was the case at this café just off the Rue de Rivoli called La Toque Saint German. It was a thoroughly cozy little café restaurant and the food there was sensational and so was the coffee. I had a warm camembert salad, Bink a veal escallop, she’d ordered an escargot but the guy got it wrong, Ingrid had a duck breast salad, and Kathy had nothing. Food was so good the ladies had to have dessert too. And thus, Bink and Kathy had a feuillantine and Ingrid a chocolate fondant. I made do with an espresso. Damn me, the desserts were impressive. The fondant was one of the richest I had ever eaten. The espresso, had to have been one of the best I have ever had, a smoothness that was like warm chocolate without a hint of bitterness. The coffee was served with a little biscuit which when dipped in the coffee was simply, for want of a better word, divine. We ending up sitting there till closing time and whiled away an hour or two.

Next Stop La Conciergerie, a one time prison for political and petty criminals generally on their way to their execution. A much nicer building since it wasn’t covered in paint and artwork, just bare stone. Marie Antoinette was imprisoned here prior to her execution.

Our next destination was the famous La Musee de Louvre and as it was starting to rain we decided to jump on the Metro. If Ingrid ever reads this she'll probably want to kill me, but hell, we all need a few good laughs. Anyway, Paris's metro system uses a system like Sydney's where you slide in a ticket and the gates open. but sometimes the tickets don't work and the gates don't open. So, as Ingrid approached the gate she put her ticket in almost as soon as the ticket from the lady in front of her popped out so the gate reacted badly and she had gotten past the first set of gates, but for some strange reason, there is a second set of gates and these didn't open. Of course the first set of gates locked and lo and behold, Ingrid was stuck between the gates... Here is the result.

As everyone knows, the Louvre is one of the greatest repositories of old art. The place is literally chockers with it all arranged by region, although the European art is further broken down by period because there’s so much of it. The place was also packed with visitors. The biggest draw card is of course the painting La Jaconde or more familiarly the Mona Lisa. It’s always been a mystery to me as to why this particular work of art has drawn such attention. The area around it was roped off and the painting itself hidden behind a Perspex shield. There was such a crowd of people around it; it looked like a gathering at a country fair to see the circus freak. The other thing that I didn’t understand and I said as much to Bink, was that why do people want to take a picture with a painting. It’s like they’re trying to prove that they actually were there. *shakes head*; we also had a look at the painting of Mary Magdelene, lots of conspiracy theories abound about modifications that were supposedly done by da Vinci to this painting. The other one he allegedly changed was the Last Supper but that’s housed in Milan, which is a bit of a hike to go see.

There were some redeeming features of this place. Some of the rooms had very impressive ceiling work, very intricate sculpture work and artwork, but more often than not there was a religious theme particularly in the Italian art section. Obviously to an agnostic, the religious significance was lost but the beauty of the work was nonetheless impressive. The final stop had to be the Pyramid Inversee, that famous inverted glass pyramid. I got Bink to do a pic of her hefting it and quite promptly there were imitators, pfft.

Having walked around so much we’d worked up quite an appetite so off we were to search for a feed and we found it in another little alley at a restaurant called La Sourdiere. Here we had a choice of ordering a la carte or getting a 3 dish meal. For entrée, I had a plate of Provencale style prawns; Bink had escargot, Ingrid a salad of some description and Ingrid’s friend Kathy, a French onion soup. The prawns weren’t too bad and the escargots were a bit on the soft side. The main was most impressive, I had a fusili with a four cheese sauce with Roquefort, Emmenthal and two others that I forget and it was simply the best four cheese sauce I have ever had. The smell alone nearly made me swoon. One of the things I’ve found with cream sauces is that initially they can be intense and delectable but after a bit once your palate caught up to it, the sauce loses a lot of its lustre. Well this one was a whole new kettle of fish. The sauce managed to keep tasting new and intense the whole way through. Vive la Roquefort!

Ingrid ordered a pair of quail, why I don’t know since she didn’t end up eating much of it… Bink’s salmon looked alright but not particularly inviting. Kathy’s veal looked pretty boring too. Then to dessert where I had MORE cheese; this time a block of goat’s cheese, which was deliciously smooth and melt-in-the-mouth, in a walnut salad. Bink had a crème Brule, a necessity since we were in the home of this dish, this one had coconut shaved over the top of it and a pineapple slice thrown over it. That too was delicious. The crème Brule was exceptionally smooth.

Ingrid’s one was some sort of strawberry ice cream pan cake, which was also very nice. The strawberry ice cream had super strong strawberry taste and Kathy had an apple tarte. The chap there was even nice enough to separate my meal out into its component dishes as it worked out cheaper than if I’d paid for the 3 dish meal.

Having wound down for the night we walked to La Place de la Concorde and took some happy snaps of the Eiffel Tower then called it a night.

It was pretty good to get so much touristy stuff out of the way on the first day. Although it was only my first day here, I’d come to see an interesting difference between the French and British cultures. The French lean heavily towards the arts, intangible delights of the mind and senses. The Brits are more into actions. Their history is a long one of large numbers of conflicts with the European neighbours, during the middle ages, and overseas, in more modern times, and a significant number of people distinguished themselves through the ages of warfare. The most famous square in England, Trafalgar Square is named after their most famous victory. The French have La Place de la Concorde which is best known for the 3000 year old Egyptian obelisk that sits in the middle of it. The other thing that caught my attention was the way the French moved through the streets. They frequently overtake each other going up stairs and escalators or even just on the foot path. They rushed to get onto the train, which is in significant contrast to the Brits, hongkies and Japanese who will politely wait until everyone had gotten off before getting on. Their behaviour on the roads was also quite chaotic. People crossed the roads whenever there was a gap and the cars slowed down, even if it was a green light and few people honked the pedestrians! Another thing is their police or ambulance siren. It is literally pitched at the most annoying sound possible for a siren. The Australian, Hong Kong and American police use a very high pitched one that you almost have to plug your ears to block, but the French one rings through your head painfully. This could potentially be a painful stay if I encounter too many police vehicles. The other thing I had to gripe about was the shower in the apartment, it didn’t drain fast enough and the shower base was very shallow so it filled up in a real hurry. I set a new record for myself for the fastest showers. It’s interesting having a water clock to time your showers.

May 17: Paris Day 2

This day was to be a bit of a sad one. I was sending Bink off, again, but for the last time. Quite possibly it could be a great deal of time before I saw her again. I didn’t get to send Bev off and that was kind of sad too. It’s pretty hard to describe it. There couldn’t have been more than a month or so that any one of us has been away from the other two, but now we were all apart. I make light of it a lot. I am for the most part a fairly solitary person, but that solitude is spent also knowing that those two are nearby. It’s quite difficult parting with people who you have watched all their lives. I think I’d rather have lost my right arm or left leg.

Anyway, having deposited Bink at the station, I went and booked my ticket to Lyon. That merely cost me a reservation fee of 3 euros. I was getting the feeling that this France Railpass was going to pay for itself over and over. The city centre and a lot of the surrounding are very old and after a while it all looks pretty much the same.

A few decades ago, the government decided it needed a new district, for the higher tech industries. They built a whole new area called La Defense. It’s all glass and steel there and is dominated by La Grande Arche de la Defense. In the right sort of light the place looks like something out of Star Trek.

As I travel more and more by myself, I find I am more interested in just absorbing the feel of a place, hence the large numbers of kilometres I clock up just wandering around. This place wasn’t anything particularly special. Ultimately it’s a technology park; there are about 1500 companies here and a big shopping mall underground. After a couple of hours wandering around went back to the apartment for a couple hours rest before I got hungry. I popped down to the local grocers for some cheese (more Roquefort! And Goats cheese), a baguette and meat and made a meal of that.All in all I find I was getting a bit bored of Paris. It didn’t appeal to me as much as London did.


May 18: Paris Day 3

The plan today was to meet up with Ingrid and Kathy for brunch.; they crossed town to get to my end. We originally planned on getting a pile of cheese from a fromagerie, a cheesemonger, and some bread and munching away. Unfortunately, the French being the way they are, often do not open their stores on Mondays. So brunch ended up being a light meal at a restaurant near my apartment. Brunch was decided ordinary, nothing particular to speak of. I decided that today I’d have a bit of something else apart from more art. So while Ingrid and Kathy went off to Saint Germain de Pres and wherever else, I went off to the Musee Nationale d’Histoire Naturelle, or the National Museum of Natural History, which is in actuality just a giant park with 3 museums and a garden. I wandered the garden which was fairly beautiful but there was something missing here.

Personally I feel that a garden or a park should fill you with a sense of serenity and peace a place where you can relax. That just didn’t happen here. There were just too many people, this being a Saturday and all. After a bit of thinking I hit upon the problem. Paris’s buildings, unlike London’s, were largely 5 to 6 stories high.

That puts them about a storey higher than most of the trees in the city; that seemed to press in on the parks and made them feel more claustrophobic. It felt like something was just hanging over you. London’s buildings on the other hand are largely about 3-4 stories putting them on par in height with most of the trees. This gave London a much airier and expansive feel. Hong Kong didn’t feel that way because the buildings absolutely towered over you so you didn’t take much notice of them. Paris’ were just low enough to see but not tall enough to tower over you, a very strange effect.
After a while I gave up on the museum of natural history and went off for a long, long walk. I walked past the Pantheon but declined the ridiculous price of 6 euros to go in and view a tomb. I wandered past into la Jardin de Luxembourg, or the Garden of Luxembourg. There I happened on a bit of a treat, a big band playing music in a stand. That was a bit of a surprise. The kids were certainly enjoying it. After they finished I resumed my stroll through the garden. This particular garden featured a menagerie, I which I found emus and wallabies! Oh how I missed those furry and feathery critters of home!

My final random stop of the day was for the old church at St Germain de Pres. This is France’s oldest church, dated to about the 10^th century. I didn’t linger long as it didn’t quite fascinate me enough, at least not as much as the nutella crepe that I ended up buying, now that was really good. At this point I decided that I would walk back to the apartment, a fair hike of about 4-5 km, but after about halfway I got bored and jumped on the metro. That’s the thing about walking. I’d willingly walk three times as far, and I did on the Great Wall and in San Francisco where I walked for about 8 hours, if there’s something interesting to see but if it’s boring I couldn’t be stuffed. Dinner ended up being the remainders of the cheese, meat and baguette from the night before. Not really all that satisfying but eh I didn’t want to spend too much money this early on in the trip.

May 19: Paris Day 4

My final full day in Paris, this day I paid back the favour to Ingrid who came all the way to meet me for lunch, although it had been originally for cheese but the place was closed. We had a quick bite at a crepe store near her place then went up Butte Montmartre to see Notre Dame de la Sacre Coeur or the Sacred Heart. There’s quite a legend attached to this place. A saint, Denis, was executed for some religious reason or other and his headless ghost, bearing his head was seen plodding up the hill not long after and thereafter it was called Montmartre, coming from the combination of Mont, meaning “mountain”, and Martyr.
It was quite a view of Paris from the hill, but you can only stare at the scenery for so long before you get bored. On the way down the hill I noticed a few black fellows holding handfuls of coloured threads and it hit me pretty quickly that these were the dodgy bastards that Des had mentioned to me. What these guys do is offer to braid you a bracelet but they’ll say they need to do it on your wrist so that they can ge the length right. If you’re stupid enough to let them do it, they end up with what is effectively a rather thick wrist restraint with which they basically hold you until you pay their usually overpriced fee for making the bracelet. Seeing them, I herded the ladies down the other side and away from these shifty characters The original plan was for us to have cheese at a local fromagerie, so after a fairly decent walk we ended up finding out that this place was closed too… damned French opening hours, lazy bastards. So instead I went looking for Asians and that meant Chinatown. Unfortunately, Chinatown was on the opposite side of the city, so that meant another long metro trip. Reaching there was a bit of a relief. I don’t mean to be racist or anything, but I do find myself feeling a hell of a lot more comfortable around my own kind. It’s my comfort zone I suppose. I chowed down on a special beef noodle. Damn it was good to eat asian good again. Nothing against French food, but really it’s hard to compare with asian food.

And so my Paris visit came to an end. All in all I found it less than satisfying. It just wasn’t a place that appealed to me, but I guess I’m happy to have been able to come over here and experience it and be able to say from seeing it first hand whether I liked it or not.

May 20: Lyon Day 1

Ah and the long trip begins. The first step in my whirlwind tour around France, first stop Lyon. Compared to Paris, Lyon is small. The city itself has only about half a million people but the entire metro area has about 2 million, the second largest conurbation in France. The TGV is so fast that it’s only a 2 hour ride out of Paris. I gotta say I am very impressed by the train system in France. It’s fast, efficient and fairly comfortable. I managed to misread the map getting on the metro so I went a station in the wrong direction… *ahem*

So…

Lyon is the considered food central in France, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. The city centre is bounded by two rivers the Rhone and the Saone and bridges crisscross the rivers. The river side is a very pleasant walk along tree lined boulevards, although the roads are called Quai. The city has instituted a local bike hire scheme. There are bike stations with ticket booths and you can hire one for whatever length of time you want and park the bike at another station and walk off, very slick, but I chose to walk. Compared to Paris, I found Lyon more comfortable. The people didn’t seem as uptight. I didn’t really do much on this first day. I did found out however that I had walked more than I had to and changed metro lines even though I didn’t have to. There are 4 metro lines in Lyon, originally named Metro Line A through Metro Line D, no confusions there. I had changed from B to D thinking that the station was the closest. I ended up walking 7 blocks to get to the hotel but upon picking up a map from the hotel I found I could have stayed on line B and made it to a station just 2 streets away. Lyon 2, Benny 0.

So having made a bungle of the metro a bit of walking was definitely necessary so off it was. I walked around for a couple of hours looking for food, not that I didn’t find it, I just couldn’t decide on what to eat. Finally decided on having a steak, which was ok but really no chop on the ones back home (no pun intended). The one thing I dislike about the two cities I’ve visited so far is that they both have big variations in the opening and closing times. Most places tend not to be open on Sundays and some places aren't open Monday either. Also, the French have a tradition of having 2 hour lunches, makes you wonder how they get anything done at all. So by the time I finished dinner pretty much everything had closed, how dull. I walked another couple of blocks then went back to the hotel. I should really call it an apartment. This place was huge. It was closer to being a studio apartment than a hotel room. The main room was as big as my bedroom back home, not to mention there were a stove and a fridge!! My window bears special mention. It had a security roller shutter and a curtain rail so I could hang up my washing and having a fairly good chance that it would be dry the next morning. It also opened out onto a small rock garden, which was pleasant.

May 21: Lyon Day 2

Today I decided I’d go visit Vieux Lyon, or Old Lyon. Lyon is very old; it started out as a Roman settlement a couple of thousand years ago so some of the old buildings still stand and Old Lyon dates back at least several centuries. To get up to the old town you have to take the metro to Vieux Lyon station and then a cable car, la funiculaire up the slope. Naturally I misread the map again; I took an extra stop on the cable car and ended up further up the hill that overlooks Lyon and where Old Lyon is situated, but on the northern side of the hill. I was on the southern side and I ended up in the district of St Just, rather than St Jean, which is pretty much only a residential area. It looked a bit like the eastern suburbs without the nice houses. Of course I didn’t know this at the time so I wandered around for several hours until I got bored then jumped on a bus to Croix Rousse. Lyon 3, Benny 0

Just for fun I fired up the GPS and being another one of those lovely days, it picked up the satellite quick smart. I then watched my weaving journey through the hills over Lyon until I reached my destination, the old silk weavers’ quarter of Croix Rousse. Unlike central Lyon, Croix Rousse is a jam packed sort of place. All the streets are bloody narrow and the buildings are at least 6 stories high, it’s a very characterful sort of place, but not one where you want to be caught alone late at night. There is one bonus of this part of town. There is a open plaza-cum-lookout which opens into a stunning view of the city and from there you can follow a cobbled street down the hill to the first district of Lyon. The view really was breathtaking. The stroll down to the first district followed a pedestrianised street that flowed down the hill. The street’s lined with lots of quirky shops but as it reached the city it became a little dodgy looking.

One of the features of Lyon is opposite their l'Hotel de La Ville. It's a fountain with a giant sculpture on it. It's of 4 horses drawing a carriage. The four horses are meant to represent rivers or something. The whole thing is made of 120 tonnes of lead.

It’s quite depressing travelling alone sometimes, especially when you’re alone in a city where the best thing is to eat. Eating out alone is boring and you look like a total twat. Drinking alone is even moredepressing, you look like an alcoholic. Dinner ended up being a ham quiche and a croque monsieur, lots of cheese over ham on thick toast. I heated them back up over a slow heat on the stove. The quiche was damned good but the croque was a bit of a crock.

Random shot. Seems even Leonidas had a soft side, or should that be soft centre?

One of the lovely things about a city on the river is that it becomes quite a sight after dark. In this case, it didn’t go dark till after 9pm so a slow stroll out to river side at 8:30 yielded an amazing vista of the river and the city. I wasn’t the only one with such sentiments, a pair of Korean (I think) girls were wandering the riverside taking shots as well. All in all I felt it was a lovely way to end the night.

Oh and Celine Dion got the French Legion of Honour for her contribution to music or some such

May 22: Lyon Day 3

No matter how stupid you look eating alone, in some places it’s not too bad. Since I was in the gastronomic heart of France I had to have at least something. Leafing through the food section of the Lonely Planet guide I came across a place called Giraudet, a small boutique eatery/deli that serves up a local delicacy called a quenelle. They’re little dumpling like things, the most basic form which are made of flour, cheese and eggs. So after some dicking about in the city centre I managed to find it.That’s another thing, French streets will be named along one stretch of it then suddenly there’s a tiny stretch no more than half a block long which will be a completely different name, such as it was with the Giraudet.

The place is really quite cute. There are a small collection of high tables and stools where you can eat. Then behind it there is a counter where you can get the raw quenelles so you don’t have to make them yourself. There over a dozen different fillings. I went for a quenelle volaile in a simple salad. I’m going to have to look up what volaile is. These things were delicious! At first I thought that they were a little bland, but as I ate I figured that if they were fairly strong flavoured, it’d get pretty hard to eat towards the end. They tasted of light fluffy egg with a hint of cheese, it was excellently balanced, although admittedly mixing balsamic vinegar and cream probably wasn’t the best idea. By the end of the dish I was thoroughly satisfied with it. It was an excellently light dish suitable for a light lunch, but filling enough that it’d be a while before I got hungry again.

Now I decided it was definitely time to explore Old Lyon, without getting lost and what a delightful old place it was. Lots of cobbled streets and open squares filled with bouchons, Lyonnais eateries where you can get theire local specialties. The streets were lined with small quirky art stores or occasionally offices. It was a bit like the Rocks, a blend of the commercial and the old, but not quite as cramped and quite a bit more relaxing.

I had to get a picture of this dog. Reminded me of Lulu, so cute. There was a doberman pup that was running up and the down the street. He was really cute.

This is the city from a ways up the hill behind Old Lyon. Quite a lovely sight. Lyon has a really airy and far more sentimental feel than Paris, I found. Yes it didn't have all the museums and art and what not, but there was a certain stateliness about it.

The other thing I had decided to have a look at was the confluence, the point where the two rivers met, so back onto the metro it was and off to the nearest metro. After 20 min walk I found a point where I could see the confluence and it’s not really much because that part of the city is a cross between a redevelopment project and a port. It used to be an industrial wasteland, but it’s being rehabilitated into what I don’t know. Still, it was something I’d never seen before and the area near it is very much a light industrial/technology park. Large numbers of steel and glass buildings housing small companies and their bigger cousins housing larger companies, a really boring kind of place. At that point, I called it a day. I’d seen pretty much all of central Lyon, I’d crossed it north to south and east to west in the three days, which wasn’t a bad effort.

May 23: Marseille Day 2

I’d often found the travelling to a place more exciting than getting a place, as the saying goes, the journey is more important than the destination and my next destination was gritty Marseille, an hour and a half south from Lyon. Marseille is the second biggest city in France with over 800,000 people. It’s famed for being the home of bouillabaisse, a sort of seafood soup/hotpot, which used to be poor man’s food but is now what the city is most celebrated for. My hotel turned out to be only a couple minutes walk from the station, Reformees Canebieres, which in turn was only one stop from the TGV station, bonus! The hotel itself was in one of those old style buildings, terracotta roof tiles, stucco coloured walls and wooden shutters and of course there were no lifts. My room was on the top floor, affording a beautiful view of the…street, which was a lovely tree line affair, but very busy. The shutters looked like they hadn’t been fixed since they were first installed. The locks and all other metal fittings had been completely rusted away. Very RUSTic haw, haw.

Having dumped my stuff, I took a jaunt down to the Vieux Port, or Old Port of Marseille. This is the part of the city where it all happens. This old port has been in use for 2600 years according to the history and it was absolutely packed with boats. It’s not quite as big as say Blackwattle Bay back home but it had history.

Along the sides of the port, it’s all restaurants and hotels. It is super commercial. At the innermost side of the port there are shops, cafes and stores of all sorts. It’s busy as all buggery. Marseille also has a reputation for being pretty rough and it actually feels fairly rough.

The most imposing features of the old port are the pair of forts that guard the entrance to the port, Fort St Jean and Bas Fort Nicolas, both built by the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem in the 13th Century. Very imposing features for any harbour. The view of the city from St Jean was most impressive. From the top of Fort St Jean, there is a very imposing panorama of the port and the surround city. About the only word for it is bustling. I have never seen so many boats in one place before.

This is Rue De la Republique, Republic Road. Every city I've visited has one. This one is a bit of a shopping drag. Mixed shops not all that impressive.

This rather imposing view belongs to La Cathdrale Notre Dame de la Garde. It overlooks the entire city, making for a very impressive viewing lookout.

After a couple more hours of walking exploring the back streets of this grimy city, I picked up dinner, more cheese (blue auvergne thus time), meat (parma ham or prosciutto) and a baguette. I gotta say that that can actually be a fairly satisfying meal and moderately healthy.

My first impressions of Marseille was of a distinctly "in you face" sort of place. I wouldn't say I was comfortable in it, but then again I'd only been there for several hours. I definitely liked it more than Paris, I'd put it a little below Lyon though.



May 24: Marseille Day 2
The other thing that Marseille is famous for is the Ile d’If, home of the Chateau d’If, which is the setting for Alexander Dumas’ famous novel, The Count of Monte Christo. The island is a 20min ferry ride from the old port and voila! I was cruising on the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s quite a lovely sight looking back at Marseille from open water. Unfortunately, the further out we went the heavier the winds got. It was coming into gale force when the ferry reached the island.

The island itself is basically a big pile of rock and the Chateau covers pretty much the entire pile. It was originally a fort to guard the approaches to Marseille, which it had to do a few times during its long history. From the water, it's a very forbidding looking place.The fort it self is one of those 15th century style forts. Lots of rounded towers and reinforcings. This is mainly because of the increasing use of firearms, especially cannon in that period. Round towers make it easier to have guns facing and firing in all directions. I'd imagine that any large ships attempting to force its way into the harbour would find itself under a blizzard of cannon balls from the fort. Even if it made it past the fort, it would still have to deal with the two old forts guarding the port itself. A most defensible position. The interior isn't quite as elaborate or as imposing. It is a prison after all. Here are there I saw "graffiti" left behind by the prisoners of the time. Seeing these sorts of things is like having the past talk to you.












The view from the battlements of southern France is spectacular. The day was absolutely beautiful and the visibility was kilometres all the way around. Although to the south of the fort there's nothing to see but more of the Mediterranean.


Another thing of note was the size of the seagulls. They were the size of small hawks. Compared to them, the ones back home looked like pigeons. In fact there were warnings strung all over the place about aggressive seagulls, which might attack. Fortunately, the wind was so great that most of them spent their time gliding around on the updraughts or sitting around taking cover. The flipside of that was the wind was making it increasingly difficult to take pictures since the buffeting from the wind made it damned hard to hold the camera still. Walk in a straight line getting difficult, even for someone of my mass. There were other visitors that were having it really tough.

. So it was back down to the wharf to await the ferry which got there in short order. The ferry took a side trip to Ile de Frioul, which is actually 2 islands that were linked by a dyke. This island was used as a quarantine station during a cholera epidemic centuries ago. The ride back was damned nasty. The wind howled and the ferry started smashing its way through the waves. Eventually, or should I say inevitably, all of us brave souls who sat on the upper deck were thoroughly drenched and I was probably going to get a cold. A quick detour back to the hotel, a hot shower and a short rest I decided that I absolutely had to try the specialty of the city. I scooted back to the old port so I could treat myself to a big plate of the stuff. Naturally, there had to be dinner hours, after 7-7:30 and I’d gotten out there at 6:30, so I spent an hour or so wandering le Panier Quartier. This old quarter, meaning Pantry, dated back to Roman time but during WW2 when Marseille was liberated by allied and French resistance, the quarter was blown up and later rebuilt. It’s a pretty boring area.

Now, I love strong flavoured foods and the more intense the better, hence my love of blue cheese. However, I gotta say that bouillabaisse completely bowled me over. The soup base was incredibly intense. It was also an unwholesome off green colour. The mix of flavours was awesome. I’d asked for the bouillabaisse royale which include a half lobster. Our lobster back home is so much better, I must say. The fish was scorpionfish, I think. The flesh was delectably firm with a nice amount of "bounce. There’s another addition to the meal, a basket of hard toasted bread, a sort of aioli and a dish of shredded cheese. The trick was to spread some of the aioli on the bread then sprinkle cheese onto the sauce and then drop the bread into the soup to soak it up and of course go soggy. That turned out to be an unexpected collision of delightful flavours. I didn’t think I’d be full after that but damn me I was full and it was so delicious.

Dinner had been great so I topped it off by enjoying a sunset over the open water. The day had nearly been a disaster but in the end good food and a beautiful evening made it pretty darned good.

Just for fun here are some night shots of the Old port.

May 25: Marseille Day 3

Unfortunately, this day turned out to be a Sunday when virtually EVERYTHING is closed. At least there were no people out. Of course it started raining after I’d left the hotel so that wasn’t too pleasant. To add to the unpleasantness I visited the rather rundown poor sectin of the city called the Belsunce quarter. Of course it felt like a ghetto so after half an hour or so I promptly went back to the port. The whole place feels like the housing commission of Redfern Waterloo. There's meant to be a rehabilitation project going on. This place doesn't need rehabilitation, it needs
to be bulldozed and rebuilt. Dynamite or TNT would be good.
One of the crowning features of Marseille is the cathedral, la Cathedrale Notre Dame de la Gard. This old, old cathedral sits on a hill overlooking Marseille although with the pounding rain it was a bit on the dreary side. This is a view of the Ile d'If and Ile de Frioul from the hilltop. Notice how dreary it is. The whole time it was raining and being the bright spark, I had neglected to bring my jacket so I was getting damper by the second. I thought I was going to get a cold from all this. First the drenching from the Mediterranean, now this...


This is the view of the old port and part of the western side of the coastline of Marseille. Towards the upper part of the coast is the newer ports where the real cargo is delivered.








This is the Notre Dame herself. It's a fairly grand old building. No pictures were allowed inside which is fair, as there were a large number of people praying.

In the end, I’d pretty much decided that I’d more or less exhausted what I could. I’d gotten quite damp anyway so I gave up and went to the net café for a couple of hours instead.