Oxford, England, Sat 2 Aug 08

Went for a day trip out to Oxford with my friend Arn who used to live there for awhile. It was great to have her show me around. The weather wasn't fantastic, in fact it was bucketing down when we got off the train but we weren't going to let it dampen our spirits and as per usual in England it turned during the day and it was quite nice in the afternoon.

First stop was a little cafe overlooking a cute alleyway for a couple of much needed coffees. We then wondered through Oxford's streets checking out various university colleges and old buildings. We came across the Bodleian library which had a collection of extremely old books, some from the 11-13th centuries! Incredibly beautiful to see books that old. We saw the Bridge of Sighs (called that because it looks similar to the famous bridge in Venice) and the Radcliffe Camera (a beautiful round building) before moving on down to the river to see the punts and where the uni students jump in on May Day (not something I'd be keen for looking at the river!).

We headed up the Carfax Tower which has the most tiny spiral staircase I've ever seen, I got dizzy! Great views of Oxford from the top. We had lunch at a pub in the part of town Arn had worked in. The weather had cleared up a bit by then so we had a nice meal out in the beer garden. A great way to pass the time.

After lunch we headed to Christ Church, the most famous college in Oxford. We saw the staircase and dining hall they used in the Harry Potter movies, marveled at the beautiful architecture and grounds, spotted the stained glass window dedicated to Alice in Wonderland and spotted lots of places from the story. Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland while he was a maths tutor at Christ Church and he wrote it for the Dean's daughter Alice. And we visited Christ Church Cathedral, the smallest in England. We were lucky enough to have the choir practicing at the time we visited which made it so much nicer.

It was incredible walking through the grounds of all the Oxford colleges, I can't believe people actually study there, they're so beautiful. After all our walking we decided a much needed drink at the pub was in order. Arn took me to this tiny secluded tavern that you'd never find if you weren't a local. It was so small you had to duck your head to get in the door and pretty much all the seating was outside in the courtyard that was surrounded by a wall and buildings. I've never seen a pub like it. I enjoyed a tasty Pimms and we chilled till it was time to catch the train back to London.

Surrey, England, Weekend 26-27 July 08

I was invited to spend the weekend in Epsom, Surrey (on the southern outskirts of London) to visit my Great Aunt Margaret.

We spent a nice afternoon on the Saturday catching up and telling stories about various members of my family before heading for a walk through Epsom. A real english countryside type town with cute little parks, cottages & country lanes. We ended up at the Epsom racecourse, a very prestigious course frequented by the queen, for a relaxing drink at the pub that sits in the middle of the beautiful course. That night after dinner we were enjoying a glass of wine and some more stories and Marg pulls out a video full of old imagery and one section of it was my grandparents wedding! Incredible.

On Sunday we headed out into the countryside and went to a local country estate called Clandon House. It has ties with NZ as one of the earls of the house was Governor General of NZ in the early 1900s. Around that time Lord Onslow (that was his name) bought and shipped a maori meeting house called Hinemihi from Lake Tarawera (where it had helped save lives during the eruption) to Clandon House. I must admit it was strange seeing this maori meeting house in the backyard of an english estate! Every year they hold a traditional maori performance and hangi at the meeting house, unfortunately we had just missed this years.

The house had beautiful NZ artifacts including a large rock of greenstone and a blanket made of kiwi fur that was given to Lord Onslow's son Huia. It was so nice to visit somewhere that had such a strong connection to NZ.

Aix en Provence, France, Fri 18 - Sat 19 July 08

The night we got in from Cassis was going to be our last night together in France. Jodi was heading onto Marseille to catch an early train the following day into Italy, while Vania and I were staying an extra night in Aix en Provence (me to catch a train back up to Paris, Vania a bus onto Italy).

So to celebrate our last night together we headed into town for a nice dinner. Quite sad to see the end of our trip and I was very jealous that Jodi & Vania were heading onto Italy, but it had been a fun & adventurous couple of weeks!

We were lucky to get the hostel room to ourselves for our last two nights which was a bonus for some good sleep. We spent our final day together wondering around Aix, checking out the shops and food markets, including an incredible biscuit & sweet shop which was just too hard to resist! Don't get shops like this at home. An afternoon chilling in a park before saying our final goodbye to Jodi. Sad we couldn't spend one more night in France together. Vania and I headed to a coffee shop for some great people watching, seeing big muscley men kissing each other on the cheek (twice each cheek in France!) is a strange sight.

Saturday was my final full day in France and bit of an uneventful one. Checked out an art market in the morning before heading to the train for my long trip back to Paris in the afternoon. Once on my own it all felt very quiet and lonely so I was happy to get back to London to chill out back at my flat.

Not many photos from these couple of days so I've included more of the girls from previous days (notice the champagne bottles). Sadly that comes to the end of my France blogs, I can't believe I managed to write them all up! Sorry it took me so long :)

Cassis, France, Wed 16 - Thurs 17 July 08

After a day of accommodation booking, internet and wondering around in Arles we headed for Cassis late afternoon. Cassis was the only beach town we could find accommodation in however we knew we were in for something a bit different when the guy on the phone told us it was an hour walk from the train station to get to the hostel and they had no showers.. hmm... interesting. His words were it was a very 'traditional' hostel. Sounded like an adventure and our only chance for the beach so we took it.

Cassis is a small coastal town not far from Marseille (second largest city in France) and quite far from French Riviera favourites so was reasonably quiet for this time of year. We stopped in at Marseille to get food for dinner & lunch as the hostel mentioned they have nothing around them, so by the time we got into Cassis it was late afternoon.

Unfortunately arriving in Cassis we realised we had no idea where the hostel was and since it was so late the information centre was closed. Calls to the hostel resulted in no answer which wasn't a good sign but we managed to spot a couple of references to youth hostels on a map in the information centre's window. We picked the one most likely and headed off, note we had no map to take with us so we had to follow our nose a bit - Vania did a pretty great job finding the way. We saw quite a bit of the Cassis town during this walk and I really liked what I saw.

The map had indicated the hostel was along a track that existed at the end of a road in an area called the Calanques. We reached the end of the road to find the start of two trails into the Calanques; a series of limestone cliffs, hills and inlets covered in some areas with shrubs. This could explain the 'remoteness' the guy on the phone had tried to explain, there didn't seem to be anything around. Unfortunately no sign of a hostel and the sun was going down so we were getting worried but we finally spotted the hostelling international logo on a small rock with an arrow - yay!... that was until we saw the track... straight uphill into the rocky calanques. This was going to be a tough end to the day!

It was hard going walking through the calanques with our packs, Vania must have had about 20-25kilos in hers, I really don't know how she did it, she's a machine! The incredible views kept us going though. With the sun going down and the moon coming up there really are no words to describe how beautiful it was. At each turn in the path we would turn around and gasp at how gorgeous it looked back down towards the beach not thinking it could possibly get any more beautiful.. till we got to the next bend and turned around again and somehow it had! It was the most beautiful site of our entire trip.

Two hours after arriving in cassis we finally made it to the hostel as the sun had almost set. It was a building in the middle of nowhere with literally nothing else around. The hostel was very cool with a camp style setup. Big communal kitchen, outdoor seating area with incredible views back down to Cassis. A major highlight of our trip. We cooked up some soup for dinner and ate it on the rock wall as we watched the moon rise and listened to a guy play his guitar. It really doesn't get much better than that. We were completely knackered after the climb so headed to bed in large 10 bed dorms that were wide open to the elements, listening to the guitar and cicadas from bed and we had perfect views to watch the sunrise in the morning!

We could only get one night in the hostel so the next morning we had to pack back up again and carry all our gear back down the hill. We left pretty early because it was already scorching and due to fire risk you're not allowed in the calanques hills between 11am and 5pm. We took the other walking track which we were told would lead us to a beach in the cliffs. Lots of rock clambering later (not easy on slippery rocks with big backpacks) we found a busy little inlet beach and located a flat rock to chill out on.

After noticing no one else was in the water except a couple of brave souls we realised it must be cold.. but we weren't quite prepared for it. It was skin burning, muscle numbing, I can't breathe freezing! I think it could have been the coldest water I've ever swam in. I think I lasted about 3-5 minutes before I couldn't feel many parts of my body and decided I couldn't stay in any longer. Once I jumped out Vania noticed I was bleeding and I found a big cut on my foot, no doubt from standing on a sharp rock in the water but I was so numb from the cold I hadn't felt a thing! Thankfully due to having our backpacks with us Vania had a full first aid kit on hand for me :)

The rangers arrived about midday, we think to tell people they had to go back because of the people ban during the day but we were already on our way back so didn't talk to them. Instead we climbed back over the rocks and walked back into town (well I kind of half limped back). We parked ourselves at the town beach and enjoyed another freezing swim followed by some well deserved sun bathing time.

I was very sad to leave Cassis, we'd had such a great time here but we needed to catch our train to our next town.

Avignon & Arles, France, Tues 15 July 08

Vania's Birthday today so a very special day on our trip. We celebrated early with a champagne breakfast and a candle in a pain au chocolat! hehe. Jodi did a pretty awesome job of making it a special day for her.

The rest of our trip was going to be spent in Provence and along the Cote de Azur however we sadly had a lot of trouble finding any cheap available accommodation at the beach so we booked mostly inland towns in the Provence region. We had booked into Arles for our next stop but somehow communication got mixed up at the train station and we ended up with tickets to Avignon. Figured it was a sign so we spent the day in Avignon :)

Avignon was packed. July is festival time and it becomes a very popular destination. The main streets were full of people, posters and street performers. Avignon is a walled city and has lots of Roman influences which made it a fantastic city for a visit. We visited the Palais De Papes, an incredible building that used to house the Popes in the 1300s when they lived here during Rome turmoil. The palace was huge with a cathedral next door and a garden that overlooked the River Rhone. Gorgeous views but a scorching day! All the concrete seemed to multiply the sun ten fold.

We also checked out a famous broken bridge; Pont St-Bénezet or Pont d'Avignon as it's known in a French nursery rhyme/childs song.

We jumped back on the train to Arles where we had dinner next to a Roman Arena which had bull fights every week, not what you'd expect in France! Arles also had an old amphitheatre and other Roman influences.

Toulouse, France, Sun 13 - Tues 15 July 08

We were originally going to Biarittz but with the weather so terrible a beach town didn't seem quite right so we headed directly to Toulouse. Sadly Sunday in Toulouse is not a good choice, nothing is open and there is nobody around. It's a university town and being term break things were definitely on the quiet side. We saw a couple of churches and lots of terracotta houses which have dubbed Toulouse the Pink city. We had also just missed the Tour de France by about 3 hours! I think everyone had gone back to bed after getting up early to see them off.

This area is famous for a local dish called Toulouse Casseterole. A casserole made up of beans, duck, sausage and pork in a very tasty sauce. Yum!

Monday the 14th was Bastille Day, a French national holiday commemorating the beginning of the French revolution. We spent the day biking along the Canal du Midi. No bike hire shops were open but Toulouse have a city auto bike hire system where you can hire bikes for 1euro a day. Only trouble was trying to work out the instructions which only came in French! About half an hour (and a friendly local) later we were off biking the canal.

The city bikes only have three gears and are extremely heavy so it was slow going but a lot of fun and beautiful scenery. Tree lined paths right next to the canal, pretty little boats dotting the waterway and fields of sunflowers and maze on either side. There were lots of other walkers, cyclists and rollerbladers with the same idea. Great people watching and we found a lovely little spot with picnic tables to enjoy our packed lunch.

That night the festivities began. We watched some local singers & dancers while having dinner in Pl de Capitole and they even performed the Can-can! They were very extravagant with massive cabaret style outfits and the guys looked like they were straight out of a bad boy band. Great to watch!

We headed down to the river front to watch the Bastille Day fireworks. Finding a location was tough, it was packed! I have no idea where everyone came from considering how quiet the city was yesterday. We managed to find a small spot on the other side of the bridge which hid some of the views but at least that meant we found a seat! The bridge (The Pont Neuf) was very picturesque lit up in all different colours. We arrived at the end of a waterski show complete with giant sparklers.

The fireworks were incredible, performed to music and seemed to have a story attached to it too but it was in French so couldn't tell what they were saying.

Bordeaux, France, Fri 11 - Sun 13 July 08

Friday was a terrible grey & miserable day in the Loire, we were so lucky we had done our bike tour already. Arriving in Bordeaux (red wine capital of France!) we stopped into the information centre to find out about wine tours of the region and could you believe it.. they were completely booked out for the whole weekend! Every group tour over the whole weekend! Very disappointing.

Our sad feeling didn't last for long because wow what a town. Bordeaux was beautiful. Big wide boulevards interspersed with pretty cobblestone alleyways. Little pastry shops with the best Pain Au Chocolates around and the best restaurants of our trip. Sitting eating duck and drinking incredible red wine out in a little alleyway with street performers playing in the background was bliss. I also got to try Foie Gras; a duck liver pate that is very popular in France, I didn't like it.

We had booked into visit one vineyard that was on the public transport route since we couldn't do a tour. We headed down early to have a picnic in the park down the road which was fun especially when it started pouring with rain! Luckily we were under a heavy leafed tree so we didn't get wet and it turned out quite atmospheric.

The vineyard was called Pope Clement, it dates back to the 1200s and it was very fancy. We received a short tour giving an introduction into their wine making process and then taken to the wine tasting. The free tastings were from other wineries owned by the same guy because the wines from Pope Clement were around 100 euros a bottle so you had to pay for them. In the tasting room I spotted a wine for 10,000 euros! This was an extravagant country.

Loire Valley, France, Wed 9th - Fri 11th July 2008

Vania and I spent the day wondering through Tours in the Loire Valley while we waited for Jodi to come down from Paris. It's a very beautiful city with wide streets and squares broken up by little cobblestone ways, and we enjoyed some fantastic pastries for breakfast. We were going to be in Tours for a couple of days so we got all the info on bike rentals and the Châteaus (French Castles) in the area. We headed for the botanic gardens in the afternoon to chill while we waited for Jodi and while we were relaxing Vania was reading through the Lonely Planet and spotted our hostel for the next two nights... problem was it was in a different town! Whoops. Luckily it wasn't too far away, about a 20min train ride but it did give us a good laugh.

After being told to "get off the grass" in French by some park wardens (what the French have against sitting on grass in a park I don't know) we headed for the train station to go to Amboise. Getting the hostel in the wrong town turned out to be a great thing. Amoboise was a gorgeous little village with a few quaint streets and shops sitting under a beautiful Château. Our hostel was on a tiny island that sat in the middle of the Loire River running through the town. It was such a cute town, especially as the sun was going down. Food here was fantastic too with a delicious creperie.

We rented some bikes the next morning for our day trip through the Loire Valley, complete with bag straps on the back and bells on the front.. too cute. The rental guy mapped out a couple of paths for us and off we went. Biking through the countryside was incredible, gorgeous little country towns and wide open fields. It doesn't get much better than that. Our first stop was Château de Chenonceau, a beautiful Château over a river with perfectly manicured gardens. We checked out the inside but it was the gardens and outdoor setting that really impressed.

Back on the bikes we did a big loop heading through a few more small towns till we reached the Château de Chaumont. This one we just enjoyed from a distance after a well deserved icecream and wine tasting. Over the other side of the Loire we rode through some more country towns and vineyards on our way back to Amboise. Jodi and Vania are pretty fit and besides Vietnam I hadn't been biking for a while so I was pretty knackered by now. Unfortunately there was no slowing down for us as time was ticking on and we had to get our bikes back by 7pm. 6:58 we made it to the shop just as he was closing up! We were so lucky.

I was exhausted, every part of my body ached. Vania thinks we did about 40km. I have to say I'm pretty proud about that! And we picked the best day for it, the following day it was pouring with rain so we had a nice relaxing morning chilling at the hostel till we caught our train to the next stop, Bordeaux.

Paris, France, Sun 6th - Tues 8th July 2008

If I attempted to write my France entries like previous blog posts I would be here forever and may never finish, so my two weeks in France will be a much more cut down version (I imagine for some this may actually come as a relief and you may be able to get the time to read them all too!). Bit of background first, I was traveling through France with Jodi and Vania who I went to Tga Girls with back in the day, but at the end of the two weeks I was heading back to London and they were continuing onto Italy for a further two weeks (with Vania going even more places after that as she was doing her last travels through Europe before heading back to NZ).

This is how my adventure started; sitting at the train station waiting to jump on the connection to St Pancreas international where Jodi and I would leave London for Paris, and I receive a phone call from Jodi saying she'd only just woken up, hadn't packed and wasn't sure if she'd make it! Um... s***! And she had my train ticket to Paris! Nothing like a small heart attack to start your traveling. Thankfully she arrived in one piece with time to spare thanks to some help from her flatmates and a black cab. Unfortunately, sitting on the train to Paris, Jodi realised she'd left her Interrail ticket on the floor at home, a very expensive pre-paid ticket for all her train journeys in the next four weeks. This was not a good start!

After negotiating the France metro system with no experience with the French language (Vania became our savior later with her school cert french!) we made our way to the Hostel to meet up with Vania. Thanks to three of us traveling a lot of our accommodation was in triple rooms, comfy and quiet. It was a great way to do it.

Over the next couple of days we visited various Paris attractions. We were staying in Montmartre, a popular artsy area, and enjoyed a walk up the hill to the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (Sacred Heart Basilica), a gorgeous church with great views of Paris. We queued up early the next morning to visit the Eiffel Tower when it first opened, and we were very happy we did when we saw the queues on the way back down. Sadly the weather didn't want to play nice, it was windy, raining and freezing cold! None of use had really packed for cold weather so we almost froze at the top. At least the views were pretty amazing.

We walked up to the Arc De Triomphe which sits in the middle of a 12 road roundabout! It's incredible, I've never seen anything like it. How drivers negotiate it, I just don't know. Luckily for us pedestrians they have an underground walkway that pops you up in the middle to see the Arc. From there we walked down Avenue des Champs-Élysées, one of the most famous roads in the world (and one of the most expensive). Here you would find rows of Parisian cafes and patisseries along with shops like Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Versace. Nothing quite like seeing a $100,000+ necklace in a shop window.

On to the Louvre with its beautiful square and gardens. The building itself was pretty breathtaking too. The pyramids look a little out of place but it is cool when you're inside the big one. The Louvre was enormous! I couldn't believe how big it was, you could spend days wondering it's corridors. We stuck to a couple of things we wanted to see; the Venus de Milo (gorgeous up close), The Winged Victory of Samothrace (I hadn't heard of this one before but it was beautiful!) and of course the Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa was very small, which plenty of people had told me before, and the crowds were huge which made it difficult to see it very well but it was a beautiful painting to view and the atmosphere is different to any other museum you'll encounter. I also loved the walls and ceilings of the Louvre which were often themselves painted with incredible images.

The Notre Dame Cathedral sits on an island in the middle of the Seine river and it was simply gorgeous. It had the most intricate carvings and towers and the inside was beautiful with it's columns, stained glass windows and hundreds of candles. I could have spent hours in there it was so pretty.

The next day Jodi and I headed for the Catacombs while Vania had some admin stuff to do. The Catacombs are an underground ossuary containing human bones from as far back as the 1700s that were moved there because of an overflow in Paris cemeteries and the diseases resulting from improper burials at the time. The bones were stacked in sections of an old underground quarry and many are arranged in patterns and have been open to the public since the early 19th century. It was one of the scariest places I've ever been. Thousands of skulls and bones, stacked in neat piles that went on forever! It really was a pretty creepy experience.

We met up with Vania in the afternoon to check out Moulin Rouge (sadly it was too expensive to see a show) and to enjoy some more samples of yummy Paris cafes, including raw mince (that was Vania, not me!).

Jodi was still waiting on her Interrail ticket which she had her flatmate courier to her (and was supposed to arrive in plenty of time.. but they lost it... Jodi was not having much luck on this trip), but Vania and I were keen to get out of Paris and accommodation was scarce so Vania & I went onto Tours (our next stop) while Jodi stayed in Paris. We had booked our train tickets and we were heading to the other side of Paris to the right station when things started to go wrong; our metro train broke down and we had to negotiate a different way, then the RER fast train was chocka and we couldn't get on, time was ticking by and we found ourselves bolting through stations Amazing Race style. We made it, just! I swear we had like 60sec to spare. I didn't know how many more things could possibly go wrong :)