Doing it NOW

The end of the "Big Trip"....

chris_and_yogi — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:58:00 GMT

Well here we are at the end of the "Big Trip" it has all gone too fast and we are sad to be returning home but really looking forward to seeing our family again. Ten weeks away has been a long time and we have many wonderful memories as well as 1300 photos to bore you all with.....don't come to visit us for a few weeks....stay clear or be bombarded with photo's and bragging stories.....ha ha.

After returning from Greece we spent the last few days in England with family, we had a wonderful visit to another Auntie, Margaret on my mum's side of the family and we met up with my cousins Tommy and Ian and Ian's family whom we had never met before. It was a good few hours of chatting and swapping family updates, makes me really miss not having any extended family in Australia.

We had a great evening out celebrating Tony & Lesley's friends Graham & Yvonne's 30th wedding anniversary (we went to Stratford on Avon with them). We had a great meal at an Indian restaurant and the laughs never stopped, what a great bunch. We would really like to thank them for inviting us, we feel like we have known them forever. Chris has never laughed so much in such a long time and it's moments like these we will miss.

It was great to see David (Lesley's son) & Holly one more time, they made a special drive to Runcorn to see us; we hope to see them visit us in Australia one day soon, they make a lovely couple and we wish them all the best for the future.

Chris made one last major shopping day in England, she spent a lovely day out with Lesley and Jennifer at a massive retail outlet shopping centre, I gave her a pocketful of pounds to spend but she still managed to spend extra, all on necessary things of course. We have upgraded our baggage limit twice for the return flights and sent 10KG of posted items home already!!! It was all good, she had a great day "girls" day out with really great company.

While Chris and the girls were out shopping I managed to spend the day in Chester, I really like this city it is full of history, ruins from the Roman times, a fantastic cathedral from the 1100's and a wall surrounding the entire old town built from 900AD onwards. They are still to this day carrying out archeological diggings at sites in the old town.

Our final leg of the journey saw us travel by train down to London then coach out to Stansted airport and our flight to Kuala Lumpur. I am in the hotel in Kuala Lumpur writing this last update. We have shopped, yet again! for more bargains, you know the usual "knock off" bags and wallets I even got a "genuine" Omega Seamaster watch, best price of the day, best bargain shop in KL, and special price for Aussie man because we are nice people!!!! come in spinner.....anyway it's good fun bargaining and everybody wins. We made it back to the hotel just before the tropical downpour, right on 4:00pm the clouds go black and then torrential rain for the next hour, at least it cools things off. Chris is busy repacking the suitcases, good job we bought some mini scales to weigh them, we are bursting at the seams.

The highlight of today in KL was a "Fish Spa Massage" what the heck is that I hear you say? Well you sit with your feet in a pond filled with tiny fish that suck all the dead skin and bits from your feet and legs. Apparently it's very cleansing!!! it tickles a lot and your feet do feel very clean afterwards.

We have had our last fix of Asian spicy food for lunch, unbelievably good Malaysian curry and all the condiments with icy cold beer all for a super cheap price, back to low carbs and slimming shakes when we get home!!!

Well that's just about it for now, we would like to thank all the family and friends that have looked after us with accommodation, tours and meals and of course good memories. Some family members we haven't seen in long time and some we met for the first time and it felt good to know you are all out there and doing well. We will try to keep in touch more often.

From Chris and Yogi......farewell for now. Love to you all.

The Island of Zakynthos....Greece

chris_and_yogi — Sun, 4 Jul 2010 22:36:00 GMT

Well we were determined to get to the Mediterranean one way or another!! We had a quick search of the internet and were absolutely overwhelmed with the choices of destinations, Greece, Turkey, Croatia, Morocco, Tunisia and of course all the standard European countries.... were do we start? In the end we just selected the Greek Islands and it just so happened that the first picture of a resort we liked was on the Island of Zakynthos or Zante as it is sometimes called. So we booked a seven night package in the Alykanas Village Resort. Decision made on Sat morning holiday departs Mon morning, we don't mess around!

We flew on 28th June from Manchester airport direct to the Island, this was great, 3 hours later from the north of England and we were deposited on an Island in the middle of the Mediterranean, we can't do that from Perth! We transferred to the village in a coach with a maniac driver, these roads were every-bit as bad as in France, winding and narrow and we were either in a race or being chased by the police we weren't sure!

The resort was pretty much as we anticipated, very organised and full of British tourists, probably due to the package holiday being sold by a British airline/holiday company. There are activities for kids and adults alike, we can use one of the 3 pools or lay on the beach, not as nice as Perth beaches but who cares this was glorious with postcard views and temperature in the low 30's.

We had a late lunch in a little family run cafe, food we loved and missed, sardines, olives and fetta cheese and icy cold beer; everybody is so friendly and always smiling. The pool was calling for us so we spent the rest of the day swimming and lounging, as you do when the weather is hot and the water cool. Dinner was at a real Greek taverna, great fresh salads, grilled seafood and cheap wine; we have now fallen in love with another country, it's getting harder and harder to think about ever coming home again!

Tuesday was a tough day, bit of a sleep-in then comfortable lounges by the pool and reading a book, when we got too warm we just flopped into the pool or had another icy cold beer. We had a walk up and down the beach and on into the adjoining village of Alykas only 500m down the road. We stopped for a couple of cocktails and got mistaken for being Irish by the bar tender until I explained we were Australian, he was amazed that we were so far from home, he had lots of questions about Oz he had seen bits and pieces on TV and wanted to make sure it was real and not like a hollywood version! he was a nice guy, typically Greek, tanned and super hairy. We checked out the different island tours and made some loose plans for the rest of the week.

Wednesday was a boat trip around the island, it is a large island and the trip was an all day event with stops at some fantastic sights. We swam in a cove called smugglers cove named after a boat that was wrecked on the beach when caught smuggling whiskey and cigarettes back in 1979, the beach was very different, not sandy but made up of very coarse grains of limestone a bit like giant grains of sand! it was like walking on sandpaper. The sea is a deep blue unlike any other colour you've seen, our sea in Perth is an aquamarine blue, you know, more green than blue, but here it is a cobalt blue; absolutely amazing and crystal clear. We saw lots of large caves set into the cliffs that surround the island; the boat even went into one really big one. We had a great day swimming, the boat had a water-slide on the back that made it fun getting into the water. Grilled souvlaki straight off the BBQ on the back of the boat topped of a nice day out.

Thursday was another relaxing day around the pool and on the beach, we managed to squeeze in a little bit of shopping in the village, just browsing the tourist shops and looking at the restaurant menu boards, eating out here is good fun all the tavernas and restaurants have touts out the front all spruiking that their place is best, number one in town, free
glass of wine etc...so to read the boards without being talked at was interesting. We picked out the ones that hopefully had the most original sounding Greek food.
The highlight of today was riding the jet skis, this was the first time Chris had ever done this, it was great fun zooming around the bay.

Friday was an adventurous day we hired a quad bike for 2 days and set off exploring, we couldn't read the map and most of the road signs are in Greek so it was fun getting lost. We headed for a really high hilltop we could see from our resort about 10km away, we barely made it up the tightly twisting hairpin bends on the quad bike. When we reached the top we walked even higher to a church, the views were magnificent. We had a well earned lunch in a hilltop cafe, really nice homemade food with bread from the stone oven, it was really special as we were the only ones there we had the place to ourselves high on a hill. We covered quite a few kilometers that day, each little village had it's own sights to see and some of the bays and little stone beaches were postcard perfect.

Day 2 on the quad-bike saw us travel to the other end of the island about 40km away, cruising through acres of old olive groves and vineyards, getting lost and going up impossibly steep mountain roads made for a great day out. We found time to stop in the main town, Zakynthos Town, unfortunately most of the shops were closed it's a bit like France they have a siesta here between 2:30 and 6:00, but everything stays open till midnight!! Considering we have the same climate back in Perth maybe this would be a good idea having a break from the hottest part of the day and staying open later at night. It was pretty warm today around 37 degrees, the poor English are finding it a bit hot, we haven't used our air conditioning yet!

The resort had a cabaret show advertised for tonight, we were a bit skeptical we remember that cheesy British TV show Hi-De-Hi, set in a holiday resort and all the cheesy entertainment that went with it. Well tonight was no exception, we weren't disappointed. It was a one man show with all the really bad jokes, audience participation gimmicks, mimed songs and the audience loved it!! loads of participation, we lasted 40mins and had to escape. I guess you have to have grown up with this stuff to enjoy it, each to their own.

By now we are well known in town, mainly because the locals picked out we were not English or European, we made a point of telling everybody we were Aussies, the locals all wave and shout out to us now when we walk through the streets, it makes it all great fun. We have been having a cold drink each night in a great bar, they give out free shots every 30mins
so the party gets started really quickly! The Greeks are very welcoming and always happy to see you.

We have eaten some great Greek food, really great salads made with super fresh tomatoes that actually taste of tomato (take notice coles & woolworths), creamy fetta cheese, moussaka, lamb kleftiko, beef stifado etc.. but unfortunately some restaurants cater to the main tourists and everything comes with chips, tonight's dinner was a prime example; Chris had a really nice garlic prawn entree, creamy garlic sauce & prawns on a bed of rice with some vegetable garnish and half a plate full of chips, her main course was mixed souvlaki, grilled meat on skewers, a nice salad and even more chips!!! my calamari entree came with chips as well as my main course grilled snapper, I'm not just talking about a few chips on the side of the plate I'm talking half a plate full of chips, this makes the meals absolutely huge and not necessary.

Sunday today and our last day in paradise, we rode the quad bike to the next town and had a nice breakfast with real Greek coffee, you know that thick sludge type coffee that you spoon would stand up in. Back to the pool and beach to soak up the last bit of summer we will have, we are not looking forward to the chilly Perth winter awaiting us at home.

Back to England tomorrow for the final few days of our holiday, we are trying not to be too sad.......

more family times.....

chris_and_yogi — Fri, 2 Jul 2010 00:33:00 GMT

Today we had to catch up on the usual washing etc.. so we had an easy few days planned, some jobs and a family visit or two. We visited my Auntie Margaret, on my dads side of the family, and spent a few hours with her and her daughter one of my cousins Denise, it seemed very strange when we first got there as the pictures you have in your head of family that you haven't seen for a long time are so different when you see them in real life. It was nice just listening to everyone talk, even though everyone is family it feels like strangers, the years of separation and distance make it even more so.

Following the visit we had a very, very nice surprise lunch at my cousin Lesley's house and just as we were finishing her eldest son David and his girlfriend Holly came home for the weekend, they are both in the British Army, David is a PT Instructor and Holly a Lieutenant, I'm not too sure exactly what Holly does I think its Admin and Finance etc..It was great to finally meet them as we had heard so much from Davids proud parents about both of them.

Saturday the 26th June was going to be a great day; we went shopping for some more food for tonight's party, we are having a family get together, unfortunately not as big as first planned due to several people being either double booked, away or sick, some of them are getting on in years now so I guess that happens. Anyway grocery shopping is a novel experience at my Auntie Jennifers due to the fact that she doesn't own a car, she doesn't drive, and she lives halfway up a hill! so you have to plan exactly what you are going to buy otherwise it's hard work bringing it home. Between some home delivers and Tony & Lesley helping with their car and Chris, Jennifer and I being pack horses we had gathered enough food to see us through the winter let alone a family get together!

With shopping all done we set off to the village of Kingsley, just down the road from Frodsham, with my cousin Tracey and Jennifer to see the village fair. What a lovely afternoon this was, we watched the street parade of vintage cars and all the school kids on floats all decorated in a circus theme, kids and parents were all dressed up as animals or circus characters. My favourite was the strong man, a dad who had a fake chest with muscles and had also shaved his very white English legs, he looked strange and even stranger I liked the bearded ladies??? anyone reading this would think I have a hair fetish!!!!

The fair continued on the school sports grounds and was great, dog agility, stalls selling the usual school fete stuff. My Auntie Jennifer spoiled me with a new BBQ apron, embroidered with the slogan "Chillin with some Grillin" this is so me. We looked over the vintage cars and found a nicely restored Austin Healey sports car, my Uncle Roy, Jennifer's husband had keenly restored one of these before he passed away, what a beautiful car. We enjoyed "Hog roast" as the locals call it; we know it as spit roast, pork on a roll, very nice and of course due to the very warm weather we had a pint of beer.

Saturday night was now here and the family get together was in full swing, it was lovely to spend time and chat, we had a big spread and loads of drinks I think everyone had a good time, I know we did. We got too see some family we hadn't seen for 26yrs, and really enjoyed just being there with them.

Sunday was a quite day, not due to over indulgence, just chillin. We had a nice walk to see where Tracey lived then came home through the fields surrounding the village, we saw the usual horses, sheep etc..we even saw lamas!! Early to bed because tomorrow we are off to Greece!!!!!

The Lake District and Wales

chris_and_yogi — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 23:56:00 GMT

We traveled north of Runcorn to a beautiful area called the Lake Districts, best described as an area of national park with large lakes and beautiful towns. One of the larger lakes was the spot that they used to time the water speed record back in the 1960's I think it was Donald Campbell in a boat called the Bluebird. We went to Lake Windemere the largest of the lakes and stayed in the town of Bowness.

My cousin Lesley and her husband Tony droves us there in their motor-home but we stayed in a typical English bed & breakfast, very nice and comfortable with a monster breakfast the next day. We had a good walk around the town and visited the Beatrix Potter museum, she was a famous resident of the Lakes District where she owned many small farms and wrote her stories back in the early 1900's. Chris especially liked the Beatrix Potter museum and don't tell her this but I actually enjoyed it as well.

We enjoyed the nice weather and had a boat tour on the lake which was perfect for seeing the grand houses and gardens that are dotted along the shore line. This area is frequented by loads of tourists because it is so beautiful, so green and very English. The surrounding countryside is dotted with many farms that all use stones for their walls, no timber fencing all dry stone walls, no mortor to hold the stones in place.

We celebrated my birthday (22nd June) before we left for the Lake District, my auntie Jennifer had surprised me with a cake that was from Top Gear and had an icing Stig on top of it! what a surprise, she got the idea from the Top Gear Stig tee shirt I had been wearing. This was totally unexpected and really nice, she also gave me a really nice bottle of red to enjoy, yeah more wine! Later that day whilst in Bowness we had a really nice meal at a Thai restaurant and few wines of course to celebrate my birthday with Tony and Lesley.

On the return trip to Runcorn we detoured via Blackpool, this is the seaside town that everyone in the north of England goes to for their holidays, unfortunately it is a bit tacky nowadays and full of cheap hotels and tourist traps.

Blackpool is famous for it's tall tower on the sea front that resembles the Eiffel tower, it is all lit up at night. The people still come here in droves. I remember going to Blackpool as a child and seeing the "illuminations", all the promenade along the sea front is light up like Christmas lights, all the shop fronts, buildings and even the trams that run up and down the promenade. The entertainment scene used to consist of dance halls where people came to do ballroom dancing as well as theaters for singers and comedians, it's still all the same when you look around. The tide goes out a long way so the beach looks not very enticing however in the best British traditions people still swim and paddle in the shallow water.

We went south to Wales on our next outing, in Wales all the signs are in English and Welsh, which is pretty amusing, we have no idea how to say the words or pronounce the place names, this is worse than being back in France. Runcorn and Frodsham, where we are staying, is in the county of Cheshire which is right on the north Wales border.

I remember lots of outings to Wales, Chris and I came here 26yrs ago, the scenery is magnificent, very hilly and barren compared to southern England. Tony & Lesley took us to the town of Llandudno, a beautiful seaside town with a wide promenade. Just next to the town is a massive hill called the Great Orme. We went up the Great Orme on a cable tram that ascends from the town up through the houses to the top of this big bare hill. You can see for miles up here. The cable tram was originally built in the late 1800's and has a stop half way up the hill where you change cars.

The town has a typical pier that all these seaside places have, on the pier are souvenir shops, entertainment places like rides and sideshow stalls and of course ice cream. You have to watch out for the seagulls, they seem to be bigger than ours, must be all the chips they eat!! We finished a lovely day in Llandudno with a walk along the promenade, we must have walked nearly 3km, very nice.

Runcorn and family......

chris_and_yogi — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:13:00 GMT

Well we finally arrived on the 16th June in Runcorn, my old home in England, we were met at the train station by Lesley my cousin and Tony her husband, we haven't seen them since they came out to OZ for a holiday a few years ago. They took us to my Auntie Jennifer's home where we would be staying. It was really great seeing family again after so many years, we last stayed with Jennifer 26 yrs ago!!! and she hasn't changed a bit, and the house is as lovely as ever, very English country style, Chris and I just love it.

I got up early the next day and went for a long walk through the nearby forest and up the big hill in the village where she lives, you can see for miles over all the countryside where I once lived, this bought back a few memories. The path through the village passes an old church with gravestones dated in the 1600's and an old pub, the Ring o' Bells, that started life as an inn in the 1500's all so very quaint and just unbelievable.

We spent time later in the day at the local markets and then set off for a English pub dinner at the Bulls Head and a pre-dinner drink at the Ring o' Bells, this is great it's all just up the road. When we were at the Ring o' Bells we were chatting with the couple on the next table, it turns out that he knew my dad and used to work with him over 40yrs ago!!!! absolutely amazing.

Friday 18th June and off to Stratford upon Avon, birthplace of Shakespeare, in Tony and Lesley's new motor-home with their best friends Graham and Yvonne tagging along in their motor-home. We had a great couple of days sightseeing. Tony and Lesley stayed with their friends in their motor-homes at a fantastic camp site but they arranged for us to stay in a hotel in the town, very very nice; we were very spoiled. We took a water taxi along the river from the camp site to the town, the river was full of swans and hundreds of ducks. The town has a canal system that joins the river so there are lots of narrow boats that people live in and cruise the rivers and canals. Some of these boats are brightly painted and all the brass bits are polished, absolutely lovely to see.

We visited Shakespeare's house, Anne Hathaway's cottage and all the surrounding tourist spots, we enjoyed nice food, all the girls loved the shopping and all the boys the good beers. England is really great for touring, places are really close and can be reached after a few hours drive on a freeway.

We spent the second night in Stratford having a ripper of a BBQ at their camp site, a big table, 2 BBQ's, loads of fresh food bought at the markets earlier that day and of course too many drinks. Absolutely great company; it was one of the best times so far on our holiday, Chris has not laughed so much for a long time, big thanks to Lesley, Tony, Graham and Yvonne.

We spent a day in the city of Chester with my Auntie Jennifer, Chester is a lovely place and I love coming here, we caught the train from Frodsham to Chester and wandered around the shops, we decided on a picnic lunch so we bought really nice food from Marks and Spencers, an English shop renowned for its quality, we had lunch down on the banks of the river Dee which runs through the city.
Chester is a very old place and was settled by the Romans 2000yrs ago, there are many ruins including an amphitheater from those times. The medieval times have left Chester with a wall that surrounds the old part of the city, I will explore this another time, today was shopping for Jennifer and Chris who have the same good taste in shops. Later that evening we had a visit from Jennifer's daughter, my cousin Tracey; it was lovely to see her at last, we have been on face-book before but it's not the same as a visit. Tracy bought along some old photo's she took of us when were here 26yrs ago and she was only 11, what a laugh.

Tomorrow we are heading North to the lake district with Tony & Lesley.

London....

chris_and_yogi — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:29:00 GMT

Everywhere we go you hear a lot of foreign accents, London is really a cross roads for lots of different nationalities. Well we are back in an English speaking county again, or are we? we are not hearing much English spoken, lots of German and eastern European, not quite what we expected to hear.

We catch a cab to the hotel and get stuck in traffic for 30mins, turns out to be a 35 pound (70 dollar) cab ride!!!! The hotel is in Earls Court; this place is full of hotels and was popular with Aussies back in the 70's.
Our hotel was chosen off the internet and was a typical 3 story London terrace house. When we booked I made sure it had an elevator because when we stayed in London 26 yrs ago we stayed in a 3 story place with no elevator and were put on the top floor, guess what we were once again put on the top floor, ha ha I thought this time we have an elevator. The elevator was the smallest lift I have ever seen, it was about 1m wide. Only 1 person and 1 suitcase at a time, or 2 skinny people at a time!!!!! it was still better than the stairs.

We did the the tour around London on an open top double decker bus and hopped on and off for most of the day, this is a great way to see the sights. We had a short river cruise included so we really got to experience a lot on the first day. The weather was pretty grey and overcast, not as nice as sunny France, but at least it wasn't raining and not as cold as when we did the same thing in Paris.

Dinner was exciting, there are a lot of restaurants in Earls Court with many different choices, France had many really nice restaurants but not much variety, here we had Asian, Indian, Mexican etc....Indian won out in the end (the aroma of curry is hard to ignore) we had a selection of curries, and beer, and of course ate way too much. Good curry was something we had been craving. We rolled out of the curry house with a full bellies and smiling faces.

The next few days were spent visiting museums or shopping and just generally soaking in the big city atmosphere, after rural France it was a big change, we decided we prefer France than London. London is too busy and too expensive. After one rainy afternoon we decided to go and see Robin Hood at the movies. 2 standard seat tickets, 1 popcorn and 2 drinks, total cost 30 pounds ($60 Australian), not including the bus fares there and back. The movie was great and we really enjoyed the night out.

We had to do the tourist thing and see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. It was really quite spectacular even for an Army musician; the colour, uniforms and pageantry are just captivating. There were 2 bands, the Scots Guards and I think the other was the Household Cavalry. This ceremony is very popular and the crowd was huge. Sadly we found out that the day we arrived in London was the Queens birthday and also the Trooping of the Colours, now that would have been spectacular to see.

We had a miss-hap on the tube train, the tube system is fantastic for getting around a big city, once you understand the map it's great. We were traveling home at peak time and after going down 2 or 3 levels in a station we saw the train waiting on the platform so quickly jumped on then we heard an announcement that sounded like this train was being diverted so we quickly jumped off again. Then the announcement was repeated and it turned out to be the right train so we jumped back on, however only Chris made it on before the doors closed and left me stranded on the platform. All this happened in about 20secs, and there was Chris wide eyed and startled looking back at me through the train window. I could only hope she got off at the right stop, I had the tickets!!!! I waited about 15mins and 3 trains later for the correct one to come along, I nearly missed out on boarding due to the peak hour crush of people; it all ended well and I caught up at the right station with Chris, we headed straight for the pub and a beer after that little journey. We enjoyed the few days in London it was a total change from rural France, but not somewhere we could stay for too long.

Off now on the fast train north to Runcorn to visit family, boy am I excited, it's been 26yrs since I last saw some of them.

Leaving the Cottage...

chris_and_yogi — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:15:00 GMT

The time to leave France was getting closer by the day, we were getting sadder by the day however we had a visit from Marilyn, the nice lady that owned the cottage, she was over from Melbourne and visited to make a few minor improvements, new carpet in the bedroom and new plants in the garden. It was really nice to meet her in person and hear her story of how she bought the cottage nad then renovated it by herself through winter in -10 degrees!!!

We decided to leave the cottage a few days early and travel to the Somme region to visit the WW1 battlefields and the Australian memorials. The Somme region was a 350km drive which was no problem when you can travel at 130km/hr on the motorways, we headed for the city of Amiens where we would base ourselves for the next few days, in the spirit of adventure we didn't book any accommodation there would be lots of hotels in a city this size.

We arrived at Amiens around 4:00pm and found a street with several hotels after going into 3 of them we drew a blank, no rooms available due to a big regional trade fare taking place in the city this week. We tried another 6 hotels around town with no luck. Bugger we should have booked in advance and not gone with the "spirit of adventure". Our next option
was to drive on to another town, we headed for Albert, which was the centre of the Somme battlefield region and our ultimate destination anyway.

After a comfortable but expensive night in a best Western hotel we visited the office de tourism and loaded up with local history maps and a map that took us on a tour of the Somme battlefields. The country side around here is totally different to the Normandy region partly due to the country side being totally devastated by WW1, it is very flat and apart from a few pockets treeless. The stories of the battles and the sights we visited were very sad there are a few areas that have been preserved and you can see the trenches and hilltops that featured in most battles. We visited the sights that Australian soldiers fought and died at, all the commonwealth countries of the time had many memorials and graveyards.

We made the pilgrimage to Villers - Bretonneux the site of the massive Australian memorial as well as the Victoria school, which is a school in the village of Villers Bretonneux that is sponsored by Australia and contains a small museum in the building, the school plays the Australian National Anthem and the town has an Anzac day service every year.

It was now 10th June and we had booked on the Eurostar train to London for the 12th we had seen all that we planned to see so decided on a visit to Disneyland Paris, why not we had a spare day. We set off on the drive to Paris, only 1.5 hrs away and booked into a hotel. Disneyland was going to be great, the weather was good.

Chris really enjoyed Disneyland but was a little spun out by the rides, her balance is not as good as it used to be so when we got off the really exciting rides she was getting a double dose of the spins. Chris's favourite ride was ascending in a large Balloon, the balloon was just like an old one from the 1700's and went straight up about 100mtrs, not for me!!!! World Cup Soccer was starting and everywhere had parties and big TV's, all very colourful.

Time to leave France, we left the hotel near Disneyland on the morning of the 12th and headed for central Paris to the train station, just as we hit the centre of town the GPS spat the dummy and would not read the map properly just when we needed it the most. Trying to pull over in the centre of Paris is like trying to stop the Melbourne Cup mid race !!! absolutely impossible, we went through a 4 lane roundabout!!!! they don't have lanes marked with white lines and i'm sure they all go by the motto "who dares wins"!!!! you just have to go for it and be brave!!!. After a very stressful 30mins of swearing and trying to find out where we where on the Paris map the GPS miraculously restarted and all was good again. I had enough extra grey hairs from driving in France let alone having the GPS play up.

We didn't miss our train and we are now off to London for a few days exploring.

Mortain....& the DDay festival

chris_and_yogi — Tue, 8 Jun 2010 20:03:00 GMT

Nice sunny day today so we opted for a bit of exploring on foot. Mortain is a small town only 8km from the cottage, we can see it high on a hilly ridge from the window by the dining table, until now we had only driven through it on the way to somewhere else, today we went exploring. The town is the highest point around for over 50km so was an important place during the middle ages as well as during WW2. It was the place of a major counterattack by the Germans in July 1944, the US troops had reached the town and liberated it but the Army units in the lead of the advance had pushed too far ahead of the flanking units so were they were left exposed. They were caught on a hill top, surrounded for 6 days whilst fighting the German counterattack, Of 950 soldiers in the US battalion only 365 were left after the 6 days. Sadly many locals died and the town was mostly destroyed. On the top of this hill you can still see the pocked marked ground that was bombarded.

Mortain is a beautiful spot and has a large cascade flowing through the gorge right next to the town centre, we walked around the nature trail through beautiful ravines and followed the watercourse over the cascades through to a park area. We stumbled on a large bird on a grassy bank caught up in the long grass, it looked like a falcon or some sort of hunting bird, it reared up and was about one metre wide across the wings, we thought it was injured but when I got closer I could see a snake wrapped around it's body. A snake you say! we didn't know they had snakes in France!!! this put a whole different slant on our nature walk!!! Chris bolted, see doesn't do snakes, I was trying to work out how the snake had caught the bird!! We stayed nearby and watched to see what was going to happen, then suddenly the bird up and flew away with the now dead snake in its beak. The snake was about 60cm long and as thick as 2 fingers. We continued the walk with a bit more caution now.

D Day festival...

Saturday 5th June was the start of the D Day festival; many towns in the Normandy beach invasion area were celebrating with different activities. We decided to go to Saint Mare Eglise which was the site of a massive parachute drop by the American 82nd Airborne Division. To celebrate this occasion they re-eneact the parachute drop at the exact same site just out of town. It was very busy with loads of American and British tourists. There were a number of veterans who were still able to make the journey there as well.

Ten military planes (C130 Hercules) flew over the drop zone 5 times and unloaded 500 paratroopers from America, Britain, France and Germany. This was an amazing sight, nothing like the skydiving parachutists you see at footy matches, the planes fly quite low and slow and the jumpers come out in groups, called sticks, of 10-12. They jump out really fast one after the other. In the crowd there were many soldiers from USA and Germany as well as a German Airforce Band who played for the rememberance service.

As part of the festival some locals and many visitors get dressed up in WW2 uniforms and get around in fully restored jeeps and troop carriers it is a sight to behold, some of them are very authentic and go to great detail with their uniforms and weapons. We thought they reminded us of dads army, that popular english tv show.

After the parachute drop it was back into town for the service it was wonderful to see the French honouring all the nations involved in the conflict. Later that evening it was like a big street party in the town square with BBQ and beer stalls and a live band, it went on till after midnight, all the paratroopers had come into town to mix with the locals. It was good too see there were no problems, no yobbos and no aggro, not like we get back home sometimes, the French have a different attitude to drinking.

The next day we went to Caen for a nice lunch to celebrate Chris's birthday. Caen has a city centre that is beautifully laid out and had a massive sunday market being held on the quayside along the banks of a very wide canal. We found next to the quayside a beautiful cobbled street full of cafes and restaurants, this made the choice for lunch even harder.

Chris decided on a really nice restaurant, we sat outside in the sun and had a great 3 course lunch with wine. After lunch we walked of the food by touring around the big castle, William the Conquerers castle, and around the massive cathederal that is currently being restored. They used a lot of local stone in building the many churches and cathederals, the local stone from Caen is like sandstone so overtime it goes black and very dirty looking, when it's been cleaned and restored it looks stunning.

We still had'nt fully walked off the big lunch so we lay on a grass bank in the sun outside a church and slept it off!! Chris really enjoyed her birthday.

Walking the greenway....

chris_and_yogi — Tue, 8 Jun 2010 19:56:00 GMT

Time for some exercise after weeks of bread, wine and cheese (pain, vin and fromage) I needed to stretch my legs, around the district where we are staying they have turned a disused light railway system into walking and biking tracks that reach out between all the small towns. This is fantastic, it's a wide level pathway that goes for miles, you can branch off to different villages or just hike between towns.

Today was wet and cold with a blustering wind, the perfect day to get a jacket on and go for a brisk walk. I really enjoy this type of day, we tend to stay inside on cold days but I like the freshness of them. I left Chris in town nursing a hot chocolate and hit the trail, just me the wind and the cows, there's nothing like the smell of fresh cow manure to clear the head!!! I wish I had a bike with me these pathways are perfect for travelling on, much safer than riding the narrow country roads.

The weather was much nicer the next day so we drove a loop around several towns and visited Fler, Argentan and Falaise. We have done similar days to this, we just map out a circular route and head off to explore, coffee in one town, lunch in the next and beer in the last one before returning home for dinner. It's a great way to see lots of the smaller towns off the beaten track.
The memorable thing today was the French lunchbreak. In France every business and shop, except for cafes, cake and breadshops all close for lunch between 12 and 2 PM, yes a 2 hr lunchbreak. Don't ask me what they do for 2 hours, all the shops are closed!! Anyway we were in a large homewares/gift shop and Madame Christine was shopping, I was just hanging around waiting, trying to look interested and commenting appropiately when asked whether this colour was nicer than that colour etc, as you do when you've been married for nearly 30 yrs!!!! anyway suddenly the lights all went off, the piped music went silent and we were left wondering what was happening, we thought they'll fix it in a minute and continued on shopping. Oh no this was the lunchbreak, a shop assistant came and hunted us down and we understood she wanted us to leave now. we were herded towards the door which was promptly locked behind us. Come back in 2 hrs........

Chateau's....
We have seen lots of medieval buildings, castles churches and abbays but we have not yet visited a real 18th century French Chateau, so off to the Bellaroy Chateaux, we choose the Bellaroy chateau because it had a unique story attached to it. The Chateau was built in 1631 and stayed in the original family until 1970. Unfortunately after the French revolution it declined and by the 1900's was not in great condition. It was used by both the Germans and the Americans during WW2 until the family, who by now were broke, sold it to Malcolm Forbes the famous American journalist.
Malcolm Forbes was the editor and publisher of Forbes magazine, a big thing in the 60's and 70's, he was also a war correspondent in WW2 and fell in love with France. He bought the property in 1970 and over the years has restored most of the building. Some rooms are original from the 1700's and others have been redecorated in the same period with various artworks and furnishings from the period. The Chateau was designed and built by the same Frenchman who built the Palace of Versallies in Paris which is the most magnificent of all buildings from this era.

The other part to the unique story was Malcolm Forbes's love of ballooning, he was famous for it in his day and achieved a few world records. He has created a ballooning museum in the grounds of the Chateau with some great displays showing the history of ballooning from the Montgolfier brothers to the present day.

Normandy Beaches

chris_and_yogi — Wed, 2 Jun 2010 00:04:00 GMT

The last few days have been spent taking it easy, short trips to local towns and enjoying the peace and quiet of our little cottage. I must share one story with you, last Wednesday we made our first, how do you say "menu" faux pas (stuff up). The Wednesday prior (last week) we went to the local markets, one stall was a butchers stall that had beautiful looking very lean red meat. We looked at the meat, watched people buying it and discussed what it might be, at the time I thought it might be either horse meat, which is quite acceptable to eat here in France, or venison.

A butchers shop is called a boucherie and I had read in the guide book that some butchers sell horse meat, if they do they have a picture of a horses head on the shop sign, well our market stall had the words "Boucherie Chevaline" and no horse head picture. Anyway we decided to give it a miss knowing that it would be there again next week.

Next week is now here and we decide to go to the Wednesday market for fresh veggies and something nice for dinner. Our boucherie is back again, I had, during the week, quickly looked in the phrase book to see what "Boucherie Chevaline" meant. I was sure it read Butcher of Venison. We promptly bought 2 beautiful fillets of "Venison" meat.

We had a wonderful dinner, oven roasted market veggies, creamy mash potato and medium rare fillet of "venison" steaks. we expected the venison to be a bit stronger tasting but it was really mild. Once dinner had settled we were talking about the butcher shop sign having no horses head, I casually picked up the phrase book again and showed Chris were it mentioned the sign etc... It was then we stumbled across a different page that described restaurant menus and listed all the different cuts of meat to eat in a restaurant......guess what Venison = Chevreuil and Horse = Cheval, In my defence the words are pretty similar!!!! Anyway we enjoyed the best fillet of horse we had ever tasted.

A day later we visited a beautiful town on a river, the town of Maryanne, we enjoyed a nice lunch in the sun, a quiet day today, we relaxed and bought some books from a bookstore, it was a large shop but the English language section only contained about 50 books!! I guess it would be the same back home looking for books in french.

30th May saw us go North to see the Normandy battlefields, we decided to spend 2 days in the area so we could take our time, it was about a 2 hour drive from the cottage. The first town on our list was Bayeux home of the famous Bayeux Tapestry. This 70 meter long embroidered tapestry tells the story of William the Conqueror who came from Normandy and invaded England, he defeated Harold in the battle of Hastings in 1066. Something I learnt about in Primary school. The story was a great piece of history told on this 1000yr old cloth.

We spent time at several museums in the Battle for Normandy (D Day) area, Omaha Beach (remember the movie Saving Private Ryan?), Utah Beach, St Mare Eglise, where American paratroopers landed on D Day. It was fascinating to see all this for real, the towns in this area have a great bond with the USA. We are considering going back on the 6th June (D Day) to see the celebrations. It is a mixed day with veterans holding remembrance services but the townsfolk celebrating being liberated from the Germans.
Most of the towns have been rebuilt but you can still see remnants of the battle. A lot of roads have markers every 50 meters or so with the name of a soldier who died, as you can imagine there are literally thousands of markers along the roads.

Visiting the war cemeteries is the most sobering part of being in this area, it is very hard to describe the sight of 1000,s of headstones so meticulously maintained, each one etched with the name of a young man who died for a common cause far a way from home in a foreign country. We can only be thankful that we were not born in these times.

We stayed overnight in Cherburg a nice port town with a great aquarium and museum which houses a large de-commissioned nuclear submarine, very interesting to tour and see what life was like onboard. The Queen Mary 2 cruise liner was also in port at the time.

Brittany and back....

chris_and_yogi — Tue, 25 May 2010 20:27:00 GMT

Well we set off on Friday 21st May to Brittany to see my cousin Janette and family. Our first stop was the port city of St Malo, what a beautiful place, this was the largest city outside of Paris we had been to so far. The original old part of St Malo is a walled city out in the harbour and today's weather was 24 degrees, just perfect, blue sky and an aquamarine ocean.

We strolled the quaint streets and walked around the city walls and ramparts, great views in every direction. Lots of people on the beaches soaking up the sun. Many boats in the harbour from old 4 masted sailing ships to modern catermeran ferries, lots of fishing boats and a massive container terminal.

Lunch was the highlight of the day, with more than 50 food places to choose from it was just a challenge deciding where to eat, fresh seafood won out in the end, why not with all this ocean surrounding us it promised to be good. We were not disappointed, the platter we had was great, crabs, langostines (like a large prawn but tastes like crayfish), prawns, bulots (conch shellfish), pippies and more, we were in heaven, of course it comes stacked on 2 large platters on a vertical stand so everyone in the restaurant and all the people passing by can see what you've ordered. It's hard to eat something like this and be inconspicuous. Sitting out in the sun with a bottle of cold rose, it was perfect, we dedicated this lunch to our 29th wedding anniversary which if you remember was actually spent with Yogi very sick in hospital.

We set out from St Malo to visit nearby Dinard, which is only across the harbour but 20 mins by road, a nice town surrounding nice beaches it reminds us of parts of Sydney, Bondi beach, Clovelly beach except the sand is not as clean.

Time to hit the motorway again and head deeper into Brittany. We picked a spot on the map, a large town on the coast St Bruieac, with hopefully some nice beach side hotels and set off with the GPS giving directions. As we got closer to this town we realised that it might not actually be on the coast, disappointment number one, disappointment number two came shortly after when we hit peak hour traffic, trying to navigate in a foreign city at peak hour with the GPS programmed to take us to the town centre is scary stuff. We eventually made it out of the centre but had no idea what direction we were heading.

Getting late now so we had to find a hotel soon. We remembered seeing on the motorway a whole strip of hotels and decided to try locate them, we used the GPS again and thought we were saved but found that within minutes we had ventured into a small outer suburb town centre that was being prepared for a bike race, roads were being barricaded, roundabouts being blocked, so here we are with the GPS saying turn right here only to be blocked at each turn, we soon realised that we were the only car on the road, we were caught up in the actual bike race! We had groups of cyclists in front and behind and angry men at the road blocks shouting at us in French, all we could do was respond with the usual Bonjour Monsieur!!! They eventually opened a barricade and set us free.

Disappointment number three was spending the night in a Motorway motel and not on the beach as planned.

Day two of the Brittany trip was to head for the town of Carhaix and meet up with Janette, the drive through the countryside was beautiful, very green and rolling hills with great streams and rivers, we saw many people with canoes and kayaks on the roads and passed quite a few cyclists.

We arrived in Carhaix just before lunch and was met by Janette and taken to their beautiful house, they live in a country setting but are only 2 minutes out of town, very private and with great views. The kitchen overlooks a large pond fed by a stream, the pond is stocked with fish. We sat on the patio had a great lunch with a few drinks and got to know each other. Brian, Janettes husband, is a builder/renovator and has his own business he was telling us lots of good things about buying and renovating in France, you could see Chris thinking very deeply about this.

Well the rest of the day was great, we all went out for dinner to a Pizza restaurant and back to stay the night, even though we were family we started off almost total strangers but left good friends. Chris and I were very quiet in the car when we left and would have turned back in an instant to stay longer, they will just have to come to Perth and see our world.

The plan after Carhaix was to head for the southern coast of Brittany and just explore, with no place in mind we picked a town, Le Pouldi, on the coast and hit the road. The scenery was great with more rolling hills and valleys, the coast when we got there was beautiful, we drove from one little village to the next. We ended in a large town called Lorient, very picturesque and reminded us a lot like Fremantle. Sun, sand, boats and cafes, the temperature for the last few days had been in the high 20's but today was 30 degrees, the beaches were busy as well as the bars on the promenade.

We visited the town of Port Louis on the other side of the harbour and toured around a large citadel built in the 1400's, it was an absolutely stunning piece of history. We spent the night in Lorient.

On the return trip to our cottage we felt a bit peckish for lunch and detoured off the motorway at a town called Forgues, this was a totally random decision that turned out to be a great decision. The town was one of the medieval castle towns with a castle and ramparts built from 950AD - 1600AD, we love these old towns, you have to see them to believe them.

This town was part of a defensive line of towns built in the 900's to keep the vikings out, over time they were developed into full castles with walled cities to keep the English out! So much history, we keep referring to our part of Australia, I think the Roundhouse building in Fremantle is our oldest existing building and that was built around 1820, makes us look pretty young in the eyes of the world.

This lunch stop topped of a perfect three days exploring Britanny, we could have spent weeks but there is so much to see where ever we go. Back home to our little cottage, safe and sound.

Mont St Michel....

chris_and_yogi — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:14:00 GMT

What a great day, (18th May) we headed of early to visit the Abbey of Mont St Michel, a very imposing place built on a rocky island that is totally surrounded by water at high tide. The building was thought to have started around 708AD and became a Benedictine Abbey in the 10th century and was added to over the next 500 yrs. It was the only place in France to resist all the assaults by the English over 100 year war, so it is regarded as a symbol of national identity. Built by people of the middle ages it is incredible how they achieved such a grand undertaking.
We spent the day winding up and down stairs and around narrow cobbled streets. We had rest with a beer now and again, there are several restaurants on the Abbey and a few really bad taste tourist shops, we couldn't work out why one shop was selling Japanese swords, why here in this part of France? until the tour buses arrived, we reckon every second bus was full of Japanese tourists.

We traveled home via the town of Avaranches, a nice town and quite large, perched high on the escarpment, you can tell all the important towns from the middle ages because they are built with a commanding view over the surrounding countryside. Avaranches was the headquarters for General Patton who commanded the American breakout (when they were surrounded by the Germans) during July 1944. The town has a big connection with America and Canada.

St Hiliare markets were the go for Wed (19th May), they are the largest around the district and are full of local produce, this was a real farmers market along with some interesting food stalls and clothing etc, not trash and treasure like the last markets. Stalls were selling veggies, meat including venison, rabbits, ducks either live or freshly prepared. You could buy live day old chicks and ducks, geese and laying hens, tractors and farm implements. Some of the more interesting food was Moroccan couscous with lamb and veggies, Spanish paella that came as a take away in a big container full of rice, chicken, prawns and mussels and of course crepes by the cart full.

Crepes are a way of life over here, they are the ultimate french fast food. You can buy them everywhere, anytime. The favourite is with what they describe as chocolate but is actually Nutella, you know the chocolate hazelnut spread, they eat tons of this stuff, in the supermarkets you see a whole section just for Nutella it comes in 2KG size buckets! Anyway crepes come with sugar, Nutella or different fruit jams.
If a sweet crepe is not your thing then you can always opt for a Gallette, a savoury crepe but the batter is made with buckwheat flour so it looks a light tan colour instead of the vanilla colour of a crepe. Gallettes come with ham, cheese, eggs, mushrooms, sausage and mustard. My favourite goes something like this, "Bonjour madame, un gallette with saussion and moutarde, siv vous plais". Yum I end up with a 10inch pork sausage covered in dijon mustard all wrapped up in a savoury crepe, all I need now is a beer, no problem there is a bar on just about every corner! Bon Apetite.

The next day was spent further afield, we traveled about 100KM to a big town called Alencon in the eastern part of southern Normandy. Alencon is famous for its lace making over the last few centuries. I should point out at this point that the national highway system in France is pretty good all roads are numbered and if you plan you trip using road numbers you can't go wrong, the only problem is that the highways go right through the middle of each and every hamlet, village and town so even though you can travel at 90km/hr every 3 to 5 km you have to slow down to 50km/hr to pass through all these towns! this makes you average speed around 50-60km/hr, so the 100KM trip to Alencon took us 1hr and 50mins. Alencon was OK but not as nice as other towns we have visited if it wasn't for a stop the medieval town of Domfront then the day would have been disappointing.
Domfront still has remains of a 1000yr old castle and most of the surrounding old town survived the bombing during WW2. It was pretty interesting and was a nice way to break the journey to Alencon.

Our next plans are to meet up with my cousin Janette and her family who lives in Brittany, a region of France that is about 2-3hrs drive from us. We haven't seen each other for probably 40 yrs!!!. So that's it for now, be back in a few days.

Normandy and the cottage.

chris_and_yogi — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:01:00 GMT

Well we are finally here in Normandy at the little cottage (14th May), or as the locals call it, La Chateau or Petite Maison. It is everything we thought it would be, peaceful and quiet, surrounded by fields and a few farm houses.
The village of Fontenay has what looks to be about 20 houses and 1 shop that sells everything and doubles as a restaurant and bar, but is only open at odd times. No one speaks English around here, so we are surviving on a combination of the odd french word and pen and paper and if that fails just point and grunt.

We arrived late in the day so quickly raced into the nearest town, St Hiliare du Harcourt, about 7km away, this is a reasonable size town and has everything we need. We found a supermarket and loaded up on food and of course wine, red wine for $1.25 Aussie a bottle and it tastes great, cans of beer for 32 cents Aussie!!!!
We bought great bread, pate and of course more cheese. Duck confeit, veggies, fruit and beautiful tasting yoghurt, so much variety in the shops, they obviously don't have to deal with a monopoly like we do with coles or woolworths dictating what brands we can buy.

The French enjoy an aperitif before meals and the standard drink is called Kir, it is a dash of blackberry liqueur with white wine, so we bought some and make our own, very civilised these French. We also bought some red martini just for a change. And of course if you have an aperitif before dinner then you must have a digestive after dinner so we bought some Calvados brandy which is one of the many gourmet items the region of Normandy is famous for.
The cottage was a little cold so we fired up the gas heater and enjoyed a pizza we also bought on the way home. With the aperitifs, pizza and digestives we were well on the way!!!!

The next day was spent exploring St Hiliare du Harcourt and a few small villages along the way, every 2km or so there is a small village, maybe a church and 10 or so houses. St Hiliare was a Norman town established in 911 yes that is 911AD not 1911!!! it has some battlements and a large church/monastery, it was also partly destroyed in 1944 when the Americans and Germans were fighting in the area. The Germans tried to counter attack the Americans who had been holed up for a few weeks but the attack was beaten and the Americans broke out and beat the Germans and as they say the rest is history.
I find a lot of the local WW2 history fascinating and plan to visit a lot of the museums in the area that tell the story of June 1944.
We drove to Mortain another small town 10km away which is built on the side of a very high hill with cliffs, I don't think there was a flat road in the place.
On to Vire, a big town and the attraction was a large artisan market, it turns out the artisan market was more like what we call a trash and treasure, it was huge most of the towns main streets were blocked of for the 200 stalls.
Vire is at the top of a large valley and is very picturesque. The train to Paris stops here (2.5 hours to Paris).

Yogi's driving is getting more confident each day and we have very little trouble negotiating the country towns and roads, the urge to go the wrong way around a roundabout is still hard to overcome.
Today (17th May) is make and mend, into town to do the laundry, buy some groceries and home to clean the cottage, today was beautiful weather; to quote a favourite album title of mine "no jackets required", can anyone guess who? when we got back to the cottage it was too nice to be inside cleaning so we sat in the sun and had a beer or two, what a pleasant way to end the day.
Plan for tomorrow is to go to Mont St Michel, an abbey fortress set on the bay of Mont St Michel, apparently it is the most visited site after the Eiffel tower, and it's only 30mins drive away.....tell you all about it next time.

Paris at last...

chris_and_yogi — Sun, 16 May 2010 21:16:00 GMT

The flight from Malaysia was very comfortable, we traveled in the premium economy seats which are the equivalent of 1st class, the seats lay back like a bed and are very wide, like 1st class but without the extras. Well worth paying the extra dollars.

We arrived to a very cold London, 1 degree Celsius and the wind cut through us like a knife. A bus trip into the city saw us deposited at Liverpool St station which was great except we needed to be at St Pancras station, no problems we said it's only a few tube stops away.
Ha ha ha little did we realise that there are no elevators and no escalators on the tube system only 100's of steps to negotiate to get to the tube platform, we had 4 suitcases !!!! at least they had wheels, not much help with this many steps.

We finally made it to the big cold barn that is St Pancras Station for our 5 hr wait to board the Eurostar Train. We bunkered down in a cafe and had soup and hot chocolate to keep the cold at bay.
Eurostar was great, very comfortable and quick, it was nice to see the fields flashing by at what felt like 200km an hour. Arrival at Paris Nord station was cold and wet but fortunately we didn't have to wait long for a taxi.

The hotel is walking distance to the Eiffel Tower in a nice part of Paris 100m from the river Seine.
The hotel had prepared the room well, the temperature of the room was set to 10 degrees on the thermostat, I wonder if they knew we had come from 33 degrees in Malayasia and needed to aclimatise!!!!
By now it was around 7pm local time but for us was more like 2 am, too tired to get dressed for dinner so Yogi visited the small supermarket around the corner and returned loaded with red wine from bordeaux and a couple of different cheeses including a wonderfully creamy camembert from Normandy, some duck pate and fresh fruit just to be a little healthy.
What a feast, the wine and cheese variety in the supermarket was fantastic.

Our first full day in Paris started with a great breakfast at the hotel then walking to the Trocadero to view the Eiffel Tower, we then jumped on a "hop on hop off" tour bus, you know a double decker the type with no roof, not sure given that the temperature was now only 5 degrees that this was the best idea we had! anyway we didn't care because this was Paris.
We spent the next few hours soaking up the sights and sounds of a place we had only dreamt about, I think people were staring at us due to the mile wide grins on both our faces.
Lunch in a little bistro, more soup and red wine, just to warm us up again followed by a walk through the district surrounding the Notre Dame cathederal.

The tower was still beckoning so we decided to head there and see what the lines were like, not too bad, so we queued for 30mins and boarded the elevator, I must point out at this time that Yogi is not too good with heights so this was going to be a challenge for him. The top of the tower was closed for renovations, this made the decision to go all the way a little easier!! however the 2nd level which is half way up was open.
Chris was like a kid in a candy store, she had been waiting for this experience for a very long time, Yogi was just trying to breathe!!! Chris really enjoyed the tower, she said the views were fantastic, unfortunately there are no photos from up the tower as Yogi didn't make it out of the elevator! as I said earlier he is no good with heights, all he did was go up and straight back down!!!

Time for dinner, we really wanted to experience one of the little french bistros that are everywhere, it seems as though every street corner has 2 or 3 bistros all offering their own small menus.
We choose one around the corner from the hotel, small was the best way to describe it, 16 seats and we reckon the room was smaller than our bedroom! time to order....Yogi did his best as the owner had very little english.
It went something like this (apologies to those that can actually speak French) Yogi says "Bonsuar Monsuir (good evening sir) "en table for 2" oui, "merci" (thankyou), "un menu sive u plai" (a menu if you please), oui, the owner says "and to drink monsuir?" "un vin rouge ordinaire" (red house wine), 120ml, 500ml? the owner says "500ml carafe zive u plai" Yogi says, oui, and to eat?, "entree soup de jour" (soup of the day), and "plate fish, zive u plai" oui, "merci". What a blast this was and we even got a small cheer from the other diners in the bistro!!
Food was good, atmosphere was fantastic, wine was even better.

The next day saw us back into the city and a visit to the Hotel des Invalides, hospital and church for the war veterans, and the Army museum, built sometime around 1800. The exhibits for the Napolionic era as well as the stories about the French resistance during WWII were great, the most impressive part was Napoleons mausaleaum.
The rest of the day was spent shopping and enjoying an apertif in a cafe on the Champs Elysees.

Tomorrow we pick up the hire care and head off to the cottage in Normandy, driving a left hand drive car on the wrong side of the road......you'll just have to wait for the update in a few more days!!!!

KL Part 2

chris_and_yogi — Sun, 9 May 2010 18:49:00 GMT

Well after a few more days in KL we have been having fun, the shopping is fantastic; everything from the markets where you can haggle for a good price or if this is not your scene there are many shopping malls, large multi-story places where the prices are fixed but still very cheap by Australian standards.
We went to one of the main shopping precincts that had all the designer label stuff, no knockoffs here, all legitimate items and all mega prices of course!. But 100 meters down the road are all the knockoff items, Armani clothes, Rolex watches, Jimmy Choo bags you name it they have it. We haven't bought much yet this is just a recce as we will be stopping in KL again on the way home from Europe so we will shop then rather than carry it around with us now.
We spent time in the city central area but unfortunately we missed out on the Petronas Tower sky-walk because they only allocate so many tickets per day and you have to queue for them at 6:30 in the morning or miss out. When we mentioned this to our tour guide he laughed and said that the locals make money from this by queuing early for the tickets, which are free, and then selling them to the tour-guides who can then sell them to tourists like us!!! see "Malaysia is good" he said "everyone can make money."

We had a great tour out to the town of Kuala Selangor which is famous for seafood and fireflies. We booked online with a great guy named Michael who runs his own adventure tours business, he picked us up at the hotel in a mercedes then drove like a lunatic through peak hour traffic 65Km to the coastal town of Kuala Selangor. When we arrived, our knuckles still white from hanging on for our lives, thank goodness it was a mercedes and bigger than most other cars on the road, we drove to the top of a large hill from where we could look out over the Malacca Straights, some time ago the Dutch built a fort and lighthouse there, nowadays this spot is more famous for the silverhaired monkeys that inhabit the hill, you can feed them, the tourguides provide green beans, the monkeys love them and will take them from your hand, this was great fun and two adult monkeys had babies with them. Chris really enjoyed this part of the tour.

After feeding the monkeys it was time to feed the humans, it seems like all we do is eat on this holiday, but the servings are small and we like to enjoy plenty of variety so we have been trying as much as we can. The tour included a seafood dinner at a local restaurant, the word restaurant is a much misssed used word in Malaysia, a restaurant can be a kiosk with 2 or 3 tables and chairs or it can be as we know; a full blown tastefully decorated fine dining establishment. The seafood restaurant in this case was a large tin roofed covered area with about 50 tables with plastic chairs on the riverbank. By now it was dark and we couldn't see anything anyway. The food more than made up for the ambiance. It was full of local families enjoying a Saturday night dinner, this is always a good sign. Michael choose well we had chilli crab, butter prawns, a fish dish, green veggies and the ususal fried rice, the chilli crab was to die for!. The crabs were fresh from the large holding tanks that were all around the restaurant.

On to the main part of the tour; a visit to see the fireflies, this was spectacular, a trip down the river in complete darkness in a silent electric powered dingy. The fireflies inhabit trees on the riverbank and the scene looks like a christmas tree with hundreds of blinking lights. As you cruise slowly down the river the trees are alive with small brightly blinking lights, something we will remember for a long time.

Only a couple more days of KL then on to Europe, we are just planning to relax and enjoy the pool a few cold beverages and generally just chill out before the next leg.P.S The temp in KL is 33 degrees C and in Paris will be 15 degrees C.......what are we in for?

First stop Kuala Lumpur

chris_and_yogi — Fri, 7 May 2010 11:37:00 GMT

We we finally hit the road or in our case the airways. We left Perth for Kuala Lumpur or as everyone calls it KL. The flight on Air Asia was enjoyable although there were a few too many kids on the plane to really relax, the noise level was pretty loud! We had a spare seat between us could comfortably stretch out.

We landed around lunch time in a very warm and humid airport, it was very busy almost chaotic but I guess this is what Asia is all about, we are a long way from sleepy Perth. We hopped on the coach to take us to the City as the airport is about an hour out of town, this was a good trip as you get to see some of the lush tropical country side and see the suburbs as you approach the city.

We were deposited in the city central station (KL Sentral) and immediately set upon by touts offering cheap taxis to our hotel. 50 Ringgit (17 AUD) was the going rate this sounded a bit high, we knew taxis were cheap in Malaysia as we used them a lot when we were in Kuching last year. We headed for the official taxi counter and only got charged 13 Ringgit (4 AUD) for the trip, this was more like it. Off to the hotel, what a busy city the taxi driver did really well.

The Fraser Place hotel is really nice, very new and modern and located in the "Golden Triangle" the best part of the city centre close to all the restaurants, bars and clubs as well as tourist hot spots. We are a stones throw from the Petronas Towers the famous KL landmark. We went for a stroll around the nearby area and had a late lunch at a cafe, yeah... real Malaysian food at last. Nasi lemak (coconut rice, chicken curry and anchovies, nuts boiled egg and spicy sambal gravy) Char Koay Teow (rice noodles stir fried with chili, prawns, chicken beansprouts and egg. This was all washed down with icy cold Carlsberg beer; total cost 15AUD what a bargain.

Day 2 was spent on a "hop on hop off" bus ride, this was great; you buy a ticket for this double decker bus and tour the city all day. The bus takes you past all the tourist spots, shopping areas and national building and monuments, you can get a real look at all that KL has to offer from the comfort of an air conditioned bus. It take 2 hrs to do the circuit, we hopped on and off a few times and really enjoyed a full day out.

The highlight of today was dinner at a nearby Japanese restaurant, waitresses complete in Kimonos. Beautiful Negari Sushi, Temporah seafood, miso soup and yellow watermelon, all enjoyed with a big bottle of icy cold, yes icy cold, Saki. Boy this stuff sneaks up on you, beware. After a big day out and a great meal we were all done in.

Day 3 will see us shopping, the markets and China town, looking forward to all the bargaining.

Photos: Big Trip

chris_and_yogi — Fri, 7 May 2010 10:06:00 GMT

False Start

chris_and_yogi — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 08:48:00 GMT

Well what happened, we departed Australia as planned albeit under a cloud of ill health. Just weeks prior to departing Yogi had developed a complication from his successful Lapband operation (he has lost 40 kilos to date). We thought all would be well to start the trip with Yogi recovering slowly over the coming weeks, this unfortunately did not happen.

We took off for the USA and had an uneventful 36 hours travel, Qantas to Tokyo, what a fantastic airport at Tokyo, very flash compared with little old Perth. Tokyo to Dallas on American Airlines, the flight was good, a little cramped due to the plane being fully booked. Dallas airport was absolutely HUGE !!! we had to move between terminals on the sky train, it was also quite busy, our first taste of the USA on this trip.

By now Yogi was suffering and not traveling too well, couldn't eat properly and was slightly dehydrated. We changed planes and departed for Orlando, Florida.

Orlando was nice, the temperature was pretty much as we had left behind in Perth although with a little more humidity, again another massive airport to navigate. We were met by our limo driver holding the little sign with our name on it, just like n the movies. A thirty minute drive had us arriving at our hotel, the Seralago Suites.

Comfortable, clean and very welcoming, the rooms are little dated but all was good we had arrived and weren't in too bad a shape after the long trip.

First on the agenda was a little nap our time zone was a full 12 hours out, 4:00pm local time was for us 4:00am! After a nap we headed of to find food, not that Yogi was up for much. We had a million choices, it was over the top, I counted at last 10 signs offing all you can eat buffet's for $10 or less ($3.99 for breakfast) many fast food joints and a few chain type restaurants. Our hotel was located on a section of the Interstate highway, a huge 8 lane road system. We located a small supermarket in the next block and bought some yoghurt and a few snacks. With such overwhelming choices Chris settled on KFC, at least we new what we would be getting. The menu was similar to what we were used to but with the obvious local influences like corn bread and scones as side dishes, I should note that the promo for the month was a "sandwich" made from 2 slabs of KFC with bacon and cheese in the center the strange thing was there was no bread! the slabs of chicken were the bread!!! When we ordered the 3 piece dinner we got offered a choice of dark or white meat, nice touch, and the coleslaw and mash potato were to die for not the re hydrated powdered slop we get here in Australia. Of course the portion size was enormous. I reckon in Australia KFC only use size 6 chickens, the drumsticks are as small as wing bits, in the US they use real size chickens!!

Unfortunately Yogi could only manage a little yoghurt and some potato and gravy. Chris made up for though and washed it all down with a couple of beers.

The next morning saw us attempt to get up, heavily jet lagged and feeling like we where drunk we attempted breakfast in the cafe at the hotel. What a disgusting offering, everything was deep fried and yellow coloured, doughnuts, hash browns, even the bacon was deep fried and looked like a a crisp brown wafer of rind. Nothing fresh at all even the cereal on offer was highly sugared and multi coloured. Don't mention the coffee!!!!!Chris was not happy!!

We decided to find a supermarket and stock up on some healthy choices, the 1km walk to the store nearly killed Yogi so it was back to bed for the day. No food and drink was staying down and he had massive abdominal pains.

The next day saw us off to Disneyworld, we headed for the Epcot park on the shuttle and monorail, it was very exciting, Chris was first in line to buy her Mickey Mouse ears, she had a set from the last trip to Disneyland and this was high on her agenda. We manged to have a few rides before Yogi was in no shape to continue, back to the hotel and bed rest. Our Disney world adventure lasted three and a half hours.

It was obvious we could not continue on the holiday something was very wrong with Yogi's health and the expected slow recovery was not going to happen we decided to try one more day then head for home and medical treatment. Unknown at the time was the lap band had moved and was chocking off his esophagus causing massive abdominal pain and not allowing him to swallow food, drinks would stay down for a short while then everything would vomit up leaving him dehydrated.

We booked return flights via New York and Dubai on Emirates, they were great and very comfortable to fly with. We had to detour over Europe due to the Volcanic dust which added an extra 2 hours to the already 25hrs flight. The trip for Yogi was spent doubled over in pain doped up on paracetamol. Around the world in 5 days. We joked that at least we got to fly over the Mediterranean instead of cruising though it.

We landed in Perth and were met by Chelsee and Rikki, today was our 29th wedding anniversary, one that Yogi will never forget. Yogi was taken straight to the hospital Emergency department and was given morphine for the pain, fortunately a good doctor assessed him and the problem with the lap band was diagnosed immediately.

Yogi spent the next 4 days in hospital undergoing surgery to reattach his lap band. We are now recovering at home and plan to start the trip again in a few weeks.

Almost time to depart

chris_and_yogi — Fri, 9 Apr 2010 11:09:00 GMT

Well we are finally getting very excited, the days have not gone quick enough. What started out as a bold decision several months ago is finally here we don't know whether to be scared or elated!

The decision, at the end of the day, to go away for three months was quite easy, the plan of where to go though was a different story. We may not be able to do this later in life so we came up with a short list of what we wanted to experience and things just fell into place, surprisingly easy really, a few sections of the trip have been well planned with lots of detail and other parts have been left unplanned so we can be a little adventurous.

Where are they going you ask? well let me make you absolutely jealous......

USA - DisneyWorld Florida, 7 days exploring our childhood dreams.
Transatlantic Cruise - 16 nights on the Ruby Princess crossing the Atlantic and cruising through the Mediterranean.
Spain - 8 days touring in our car visiting small villages off the beaten track in Northern Spain.
France - 4 weeks in a little stone cottage in Normandy, living like the locals in a small village of 6 houses, lots of exploring, markets, and beautiful countryside.
England - 4 weeks traveling to Yogi's birthplace to see family, we will be going the long way via Cornwall and Wales with a possible side trip to Ireland as well.

Well there you have it, we want you to come along and enjoy our journey with us, stay in touch along the way, we will endeavour to update this blog frequently. Now back to the final packing........