Paris to Bordeaux

So today we drove from Paris to Bordeaux via Tours (this is an ALL DAY drive) so snoozing and drooling may have occurred between comfort stops. I think today can be described as the day of desserts-3 in total. 

Tours is a beautiful old town with a gorgeous cathedral and a large square. The square is surrounded by restaurants. Tours is the town where Joan of Arc was born. She was only 14 when she first lead the French army and 19 when she was burnt at the stack by the English.  After a walk around in Tours Brandon and I had crepes for lunch - how can you not! Brandon's encryption skills proved adequate today-( may be able to join MI5). After requesting an English menu we were provided with a double page listing words in French and the English, Italian and German words for the food item. So to know what was on each of the crepes, we needed to refer to the translation page. As you would expect Brandon took on this challenge with great gusto! 

The food and wine was incredible - I must admit I was expecting artichokes instead of scallops but Miam Miam (yum yum).  So how can you leave a crepe place without dessert, we had a Normande crepe, drenched in Calvados - we may have come back to the bus (with great pace as we were running late) a little merry. 

We were last to arrive on the bus for the following reason:

 This was a necessity. We had a bit of a laugh after looking at the above picture, Brandon realised that the little card says "happy Mother's Day" - it was delicious.

Then onward to Bordeaux. A few drinks at the bar with the group, 3 course dinner (yes dessert #3 - creme brûlée), we then trotted around Bordeaux. It only gets dark at around 10pm so photo opportunities were fabulous. Unfortunately all the photos are on our cameras so none of those have made it into this post.

So Bordeaux is know for its wine region but also Eleanor of Aquitaine married King Louis VII (French) here only to later marry king Henry II (English king). 

So as identified by Brandon we have a minor shower curse: 3 out of 3 showers have been challenging-the Mercure in London-the cold water tap came off as I tried to turn it on- no cold water for the 3 days we were there even though we did mention this (many times) to reception. The shower in Paris was Iluminous  orange  (the doors with bright pink with lime green walls-quite the look) and required a crane to host you into the bath to get to the shower as the side of the bath was so high. Shower 3 in Bordeaux had an adjustable shower head - we couldn't get it to stay at the top, so great if you were dwarf size.

We're now en route to Pamplona, Spain via Biarritz.

A tout a l'hure,

Nicolette.

C'est si Bon!

So a bit has happened since our last post of the Trafalgar Reception Centre in London. We drove a couple of hours south to the ferry at Dover to cross to Calais. Here's a  quick pic of the famous white cliffs:

Once we crossed over we drove from the port at Calais, passing many refugees trying to make their way into the UK. It was a sad and confronting moment.

After about 2 hours we exited the highway for a comfort stop in a place we never bothered to find out the name of, but it was essentially just a roadhouse with a few different food options for trucks and tourist coaches.

Nicky and I didn't waste any time and I took great delight in ordering us a couple of baguettes and bottles of water from Pommes De Pain in French. It was a nice introduction to France that within minutes of our feet hitting French soil, we were eating a baguette.

After another couple of hours and crawling our way through some apparently typical Parisian traffic, we had our first glimpse of Paris' beautiful Champs Ellysee:

We had a cruise on one of the Bauton Mouches ferries and saw some of the beautiful sights of Paris from the river Seine that evening, most of those photos are on Nicky's camera but I'll put a couple of photos up on here when I have an opportunity to transfer them.

Today was an absolute whirlwind, we had a local tour guide bombard us with information on many attractions in Paris, saw the Notre Dame Cathedral (Not amazing photo below, most are on the other camera):

We also went up the Eiffel Tower, though only to the 2nd level. We took some cool photos of the Tower from the Seine and also on the previous night:

While some of the group opted to see the Louvre in the space of 1.5 hours, we went to find a cafe to have some relaxation, knowing that we were coming back to Paris and would likely want to spend a full day in the Louvre.

This little place just off the Rue De Rivoli was really cool and I got to practise more french ordering for the 2 of us. It was a load of fun and we actually got what we ordered!

Apparently everyone had a crap experience trying to see the Louvre because it took them an hour to get inside so they ended up having about 15 minutes in there....not for us.

And tonight we saw the amazing Caberet at Moulin Rouge!

All in all we're having a great time. If I can say one thing about Paris it's this; the Trafalgar tour is really only an orientation of the city, if your dream is to see Paris, I think you would be sorely disappointed if the Trafalgar tour was your only experience.

Thank god we're returning for another 5 nights to this place where we can spend some time to soak in the city, really spend time at some of the key monuments, and sit in some cafés and interact with the locals.

That's really what it's all about, the photos should commemorate your experiences, not be the totality of your experience.

On that note, it's bed time. Off to Bordeaux tomorrow!

Cheers,

Brandon.

Here we go!

Just a quick post, we're about to embark on the grand adventure, here's the Trafalgar Reception Centre:

We will be off to see the white cliffs of Dover before we cross to Calais and onward to Paris!

For some reason they had a massive picture of a kangaroo and Ulluru here that dominated the waiting area..just to make us Aussies feel at home I guess..

It Begins..

Hi All,

Sorry it took a couple of days to get the first post out, but with getting over jet lag, trying to cram London into 3 days and passing out from exhaustion, we really didn't have the time or inclination to sit down and do this until now.

Ok so we kicked off the trip in style, champagne at Sydney airport while waiting to board the plane:

After what was an extremely excruciating length of time in the hollow flying tube, we popped out the other side in the land of fish fingers and warm beer.

We grabbed a cab straight to the Mercure Kensington and the staff there kindly made us a much needed coffee (and threw in some croissants for the hell of it - my kind of people) while we waited for someone else to check out before they could arrange a shower for us to freshen up with until our room was ready. Yep it was a bloody long morning, but they made it as good as it could be.

We had to wait quite a while for a room to be ready so we decided to go find some breakfast. I think this May have been the 3rd breakfast we ate, but our bodies had no idea what was going on at that point so we just went with what we felt like.

We now have our favourite little breakfast joint in Kensington off Earl's Court Road called Gusto. It doesn't look like much, but they bake everything on premise, the coffee was drinkable, the food was great and the staff were very friendly. Also it was pretty affordable.

We felt like experienced locals about 5 mins after arriving in Kensington, shortly after we discovered where the Earls Court underground station was. As we were walking along about a block down from the underground, a lost french girl asked where the train was in very broken English. I happily gave her directions in equally broken French feeling very chuffed that I already knew something someone else didn't about where we were, and that I was able to deliver it somewhat coherently in French. Yay.

We returned back to our hotel and fortunately someone had checked out so we could now go and freshen up.

Once properly showered and according to the guy at the desk "looking completely different" (by that I interpreted that I no longer looked like hell, Nicky of course looked amazing already), we set off to explore the city. The locals may have interpreted this as the start of a zombie uprising from the look of us shuffling along with the vacant expressions and dead eyes of the travel-weary, strangely coupled with excitement and wonder.

We took the hop on/off bus operated by Golden Tours on the "blue route" which was a great way to see all the sites of the city to decide where you want to explore. We had zero energy so we were content to let the bus take us all over so we could work out where we wanted to go the next day.

We ticked off a couple of boxes though, we made sure to have fish and chips in a proper English pub (the Kings Arms) and I grabbed a very nice red ale too. It was all delicious.

We also went for a nice long walk through Hyde Park where we both were excited to see our first squirrel! We stalked that poor little bastard for about 25 mins before leaving him along only to discover that the whole park is crawling with them and we couldn't have looked more like tourists unless I was wearing a Union Jack cap. It was really awesome though and I want a pet squirrel now.

We decided on visiting the Tower of London on day 2 which took far longer than either of us anticipated but was well worth spending the extra time.

We learned a lot about the history of the Tower which neither of us knew about and were regaled with loads of humorous stories by the Yeoman Warder "Billy BeefEater" as he called himself, referring to the nickname for the Yeoman in the Tower.

This may have been when he was telling the children to look under their beds for the man trying to kill them..

We filled in the rest of the late afternoon by getting on the London Eye which I have to admit was not as interesting as I expected, you didn't get as great a view of the more iconic buildings as I would have liked. It was still good, but not great.

Pretty much the best thing to look at from the Eye.

After that we went and watched 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' at the Royal Theatre in the West End. That was very cool, here's us having another champagne before the show:

If the show comes to Sydney or Melbourne, it's really worth seeing, we both thought it was awesome.

I know this post is really long so I'll speed up to the last couple of things we've done today. Firstly, we went to the Natural History Museum, here's some not amazing shots of the building which was so huge I had to snap it in pieces:

Among many things they had a great dinosaur exhibit there which we spent a lot of time looking at. The whole thing was completely free unless you wanted to opt for an audio guide which cost 9 pound for the both of us.

After that it was back to the hotel for a quick change, and then off to the Ritz for High Tea. That place was amazing and I've told Nicky I ant all my lunches to now involve small sandwiches with the crusts cut off and a small bottle of champagne. I received a suitable response to that.

Here's us having cocktails in the Rivoli bar:

And of course more champagne once we got to the Palm Room..

Here's what the room looks like..

All in all it was a very swanky afternoon. And that's it so far, we're now getting ready for a very early start to meet up with the trafalgar group tomorrow morning so we can kick off our tour.

We will be sleeping in Paris tomorrow night, woohoo!

Catch you all soon.

Brandon.

The Final Countdown....

To properly set the mood, you really need to click this link before you continue reading this post.

Yes ladies and gents - It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN!!! (do do DO do)

We have 1 week to go before we're crammed into tiny seats in a flying tube for the best part of a day, eating crappy food and trying not to get too grumpy with each other - and we can't wait!

As everyone does, we have been ticking off items on a list to make sure we haven't forgotten anything critical in our preparation to abandon our lives for an extended period to gallivant around Europe.

Imagine our delight when we realised that we still hadn't actually sorted out our train tickets which will get us from Belgium to France and from France to Germany....slightly critical considering we have our accommodation all booked and there was no allowance for NOT being on those trains on the right day.

We had actually tried to book these tickets much earlier, but at that time we were too early and we couldn't book tickets that far in advance - now we're at the opposite end of the spectrum because APPARENTLY - you have to have a paper ticket mailed to your address rather than printing out your own.

Our faces after we worked out how many days we had  before we fly out..

So naturally our undaunted hero (c'est moi) hopped straight on to the Rail Europe website on Monday this week and ordered tickets from Bruges (Belgium) to Lille (Flandres, France), paid through PayPal and sat back with only mild trepidation that the tickets would be mailed within 5 business days and we had essentially 10 business days before flying out.

2 days later an email arrives from PayPal....

Looks like our hero selected the wrong account and PayPal has gone into negative balance - by all appearances the payment hasn't gone through. But Not to Worry! PayPal will automatically try to process the payment again within 5 business days!

Houston we have a mother f%$#ing problem!

Updating the PayPal balance manually does nothing, that transaction will be processed sometime in the next 5 business days too. So apparently all you can do is twiddle your thumbs and try not to freak out.

Choosing to ignore that problem for a while, we focussed on getting from Paris to Munich and Munich to Frankfurt. We went for the Eurail pass option after visiting several frustrating train-booking websites and recalling some helpful advice from Nicky's Aunt Hazel. It actually worked out about $200 cheaper.

The Eurail.com site is one of those sites that looks really helpful, but actually makes it very hard to track down some critical information like "Once I have a Eurail Pass, how the hell do I book my reservations on the trains I want". This is the website http://www.eurail.com/ I challenge you to find that information in under 10 minutes.

In the end we worked it out, but of course, the passes have to be mailed to you - so we have chosen the "Super Fast, I'll Pay Anything" option to have the passes express delivered to my work, guaranteed within 3 business days. Nothing like pressure.

By happen-stance while seeing Nicky off to her course this morning I noticed a yellow express mail envelope lying in the grass, soaked in dew, just behind our mailbox - HUZZAH! Our rail tickets for the Bruges to Lille trip had arrived! (Thanks for the care and diligence Aussie Post!)

So PayPal had apparently honoured our payment even though there was a balance stuff-up. We're breathing slightly easier now!

By sheer coincidence I think, Nicky had sent an email to Rail Europe blasting them for abhorrent customer service after she tried several unsuccessful attempts to even get someone on the phone and the fact that we had no confirmation that payment had been received and that tickets were on their way. They were probably already lying in the grass at the front of our house at that point - oh well.

So we're feeling relatively back in control now and I'm busy downloading TomTom maps for Europe, using litres of ink printing out copies of documents and making sure everything is available on DropBox as well in case of emergency.

Not long now...

Tick tock tick tock....

Cheers,

Brandon.

Anticipation..

Hello! Bonjour! Buongiorno! Hola! Guten Tag!

Welcome to Nicolette & Brandon's travelling blog. We have started this blog as a means of keeping friends and family up to date on how things are going on our trip, as well as a great way to record memories day to day so that in a couple of years we won't have forgotten the funny, weird and frustrating things that have happened along the way.

We fly out in 17 days (who's counting?) and in the meantime are frantically trying to wrap things up at work, sort out pet accommodation and wind things to a close at home before we go.

I've taken to learning some french in the car on the way to/from work so that I hopefully won't completely embarrass myself while in France, Switzerland and Belgium - I speak enough high school German to order a sandwich and get myself arrested so that will come in handy in Austria, Germany and Switzerland too.

I can pretty much just say "Hi", "Bye", "Please", "Thank You" and "Do you speak English?" in Spanish and Italian...god help us if they say no..at that point we resort to Charades..

"I'm looking for the Theatre of Interpretive Dance.."

As you have gathered, we're seeing a few countries on our trip. In order of appearance:

On Tour:

England (London/Dover)

France (Paris/Bordeaux/Biarritz)

Spain (Pamplona, Barcelona, Madrid)

France (Nice, Riviera, Monaco)

Italy (Pisa, Montecatini, Florence, Rome, Naples (and Pompeii), Venice)

Austria (Innsbruck)

Switzerland (Lucerne)

Germany (Schaffhausen, Heidelberg, Rhine Cruise)

Holland (Amsterdam)

We're skipping Greece and Ancona to spend a week in Venice

Wandering around completely lost by Ourselves:

Belgium (Bruges)

France (Les Andelys, Mont St Michel, Paris)

Germany (Munich, Schloss Neuschwannstein, Schloss Linderhof, Frankfurt)

England (London)

As you can see, it's quite a trip and we're extremely excited!

Stay tuned for more updates..

Brandon.