nice - ve - nice

Hiiiiiiii everyone!

Welcome is our new blog entry. Get ready to experience an adventurous tale full of both joy and tragedy. But mostly just mildly exciting sight-seeing activities.

Well we left Barcelona on Wednesday for Nice. Basically we spent the whole day on the train, got there, checked into our hostel, had dinner, went to bed, got up and spent the whole day on the train again. I know, mad life, but that's what happens when your lack of organisation skills and geographical knowledge of europe collide with your unwillingness to pay 80 euro for a couchette.

Anyway we got to Venice on Thursday evening, feeling a leeeeeetle bit in need of a shower and rest etc. We had managed to find a wallet belonging to some girl on the train, which seemed to contain every piece of paper/card she had ever received but no phone number, so we headed to the information centre at the station. We were then directed to the police office, which we managed to walk right past. Lucy went up to some guy and said 'excuse me where is the police station?' and he said 'right there' and she said 'what does it say on the sign?' and he said 'Polizia' which I feel was a tad embarrasing for her but oh well. So we went in there, and said we wanted to hand the wallet in, and the woman told us we couldn't, because she couldn't do it without her hat (or something to that effect). We were then told to hand over our passports by some man who appeared to have some form of tourettes, and spent a confusing few minutes being mildly outraged as they told us to go to some random square to find another police station. Eventually we established that we had in fact found, as opposed to lost, this purse, and everything was much easier from then on. Just another of the countless hilarious language barrier incidents we have encountered on our trip.

We found our hostel, which was quite surreal at first, but we soon adjusted. It can fit max 20 people, and there were never more than about 8 while we were there. To put this in perspective, most of the hostels we have stayed in have about 80 beds, and the Generator in Germany had over 900.

So it was quite... intimate. Everyone seemed to be best friends when we arrived, which was a bit intimidating at first, but we were soon welcomed into the fold. It seemed to revolve around the crazy Iranian guy supposedly called Alex who worked there and who is the sort of person who becomes best friends with everyone he meets. We spent the evening sitting by the grand canal on some sort of picnic blanket just chilling.

The next morning was unfortunately a bit of a waste as the flipside of our hostel being small and cosy was that it had no laundry. We were both desperate for clean clothes so we spent a couple hours in a laundromat. Fun times. But in the afternoon we walked to San Marco Basilica, via the Rialto Bridge so that was quite exciting in tourist terms. San Marco was beautiful, although we didn't get to spend long in there because some lucky bitch was getting married there. She appeared to be about six months pregnant, which was slightly incongruous with the fact that I had to wear a shawl because I was wearing a singlet top. Hmmmmmm.

We wandered back to our hostel via Rialto again to figure out what to do for dinner. One of the other girls had told us that if you were really 'nice' to Alex, he would cook you dinner, but as soon as we walked in he offered anyway, which saved a bit of effort on our part. It was a Friday night, so he said he'd take us out to some ragin club. We set out about midnight - Lucy opted out but one of the lovely American girls came in her stead. Anyway, the club was quite empty and although Alex insisted that it would fill up from about 2, it stayed that way for the rest of the night. It was good fun though, and I am not one to stay off a dance floor even if it is empty.

The next morning we walked down to a point in the south of the city called Salute. There we went to see the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which was probably one of the best things we have done in Europe. It is in her old house, and is a truly amazing collection of modern art and installations. There was also a sculpture exhibition called Gluts by Robert Rauschenberg, which was completely made of debris-esque stuff... like old street signs etc. It was really cool.

That afternoon we managed to visit 2 Santa Maria Basilicas, which was pretty cool. Not that that was our aim, it just happened that way. The first was one we had spotted while walking back from San Marco the day before, and the other was built in the 1300s and was massive. We caught the ferry down the Grand Canal between them, which was mildly extortionate but really really cool. The heavens opened and we had a fun half hour running around looking for an ATM without an umbrella or even appropriate clothes, as we had somehow managed to get down to 70 cents between us and the ATMs in Venice seemed to be experiencing a mass breakdown. Eventually we got directions from a waiter, who took the opportunity to ask us if we were sisters and invite us to drink with him that evening. Nice guy. Not creepy at all.

That evening we ate a quick dinner and then headed to that station for our first overnight journey on couchette! Therefore stay tuned, for exciting stuff happens in the next entry!


BYE!

barcelona sandwich

After the train ride from hell (a 2 train, 7 hour journey that became a 3 train, almost-10 hour, impossibly hot journey), we arrived in Barcelona. After checking in to Center Rambles we met up with Clare and Lucy (Burgess, who for the purpose of non-confusion will be referred to as LucyBu) on Las Ramblas, a big central street in Barca. We drank Sangria like it was water to drive away memories of our awful day at their hostel and then went for a wander, swapping stories of our trips so far.

The next day, Clare, LucyBu and Franny went to the Picasso museum and we all met up in the afternoon to go to Park Guell. Park Guell is designed by Gaudi and it is pretty amazing. You can climb right to the top for an amazing view over the city, and we were lucky enough to be serenaded by a busker with ripped jeans and really cool dance moves. He seemed to sing the same song with different lyrics, either "I love you, Peggy Sue" or "Wake up early, Susie" and the song was pretty catchy as we (and even some people we passed further down the hill) were singing it for some time after.

That evening we went to dinner at Origen, which had been recommended to Clare and it was pretty yummy. Some of the translations on the menu were slightly questionable, such as nuts being translated to "you countersink" and a very confusing paragraph about something being stung by milk...

The next morning we went to the markets near our hostel to buy our traditional train picnic. The markets are amazing, there are heaps of stalls with piles of beautiful fruit, or bread or juice for €1 (if you are clever enought to walk past the €2 juice at the front of the market). Our train journey to Madrid, we later decided, was karma/payback/god/whatever you want to call it. After our journey from hell, we were reluctant to even step on a train, but this one was properly airconditioned, comfortable, clean, and even had a TV with headphones like a plane, on which they played Nim's Island in Spanish which was, unsurprisingly, easy to follow despite the language barrier. At the end, a lady came round with sweets, and we decided that Europe's trains had paid us back for our bad day, if not in full, then as a first installment.

After checking into our hostel (hilariously named Mad Hostel), we spent evening wandering around the city.We went in to a little store near Plaza Mayor to buy a pair of earrings and left with the earrings, a little paper flower each, a flower hair clip given to Fran as a gift (seen here in her hair) and an ice-cream each, which we thought was a pretty sweet deal. Without planning it, we managed to inadvertently see heaps of famous sights including the Plaza Mayor, Puerta del Sol and Prado Museum.

The next day, we went to the Royal Palace of Madrid and spent a good 2 hours there, almost justifiying the exhorbitant €9 we payed to get in. We visited the Almudena Cathedral which is right next door which was really beautiful.

We had an early dinner, and went on the Essential Madrid walking tour in the evening.

Our guide was hilarious, pointing to pretty much every building we passed and describing it as "luxury" apartments or offices, saying things like "perhaps in 7 years, you will come back to Madrid and meet me here and it will be a hotel for the Olympics" (apparently Madrid is pretty keen on hosting the Olympics in 2016) and claiming that there are 48000 cafes and restaurants just in Madrid, totalling more than the Netherlands and Germany combined. That evening, we made some friends at the hostel (all Australian or Kiwi) and went to get churros con chocolate.

The next day, we went to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (possibly, that last word is spelt entirely wrong or slightly made up) and saw the Matisse exhibition which was really, really good. We spent 3 hours there in total, looking at art from the15th Century and earlier, up to modernist works.

LucyBu and Clare joined us at Mad Hostel that evening, and we went out for tapas with a group of new friends from the hostel, before LucyBu, Clare and Franny went on the pub crawl (of which details are inappropriate for this medium) and I, being super mad and exciting, went to bed.

On Saturday morning, we went to the Parque de Retiro and lay on the grass eating our very cheap lunch and groaning in pain periodically. After several hours (this is no exaggeration), we headed to Museo de la Reina Sofia which is a modern art museum. It was pretty cool, and we saw a few Dali and Picasso, including a huge one (cant remember the name, famous enough to have a line that you cant cross in front of it...) where we got in trouble for using flash and were threatened by an officious woman who wanted to have us thrown out by security.

That evening, we cooked a fairly unsuccesful dinner trying to utilise limited resources in an impossibly hot kitchen. Basically, what was intended to be fried rice ended up being rice soup... As you can see, there was a hilarious sign on the wall encouraging proper kitchen ettiquette. Don't worry guys, we did our dishes, we really didn't want to look suspicious.

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We ended up eating our dinner with some people who of course turned out to live in Sudbury (which, for those of you who don't know, is where Franny was working and living in the UK), which led to one of those endless conversations where everyone recounts every coincidence that has ever happened to them.

The next morning we headed back to Barca to meet Iona and Vee, who were luckily staying in the same hostel as us. We intended to some sightseeing together, but all we ended up doing was sitting in a sandwich store and catching up for about an hour and a half, before leaving only to sit in another cafe for a similarly stupid length of time. There was just so much to say. That evening we headed out with the intention of finding some shot bar that LucyBu and Clare had told us about, but all we ended up doing was getting delicious pizza and wandering around for a few hours. We did meet some cool babes who invited us to drink with them and promised to take us to the best club in Barcelona before disappearing shortly after.

On Monday we went to Sagrada Familia, which was truly amazing and definitely worth a visit. We had no idea what it was before we arrived, and so were annoyed by the presence of the perpetual scaffolding that seems to be on every monument in Europe this summer. However, we realised shortly after entering that it is in fact still under construction, so we were entirely mollified and impressed by Gaudi's magnificent work. We also visited another Gaudi building called the apple of something or other which was equally cool but cost about €14 to enter so we just admired the facade and the photos of what was inside.

That night we had a picnic by the Catalunya fountains, which was lovely despite the close proximity of many, many mice and the numerous offers from the hawkers, which began with beer and got more and more clandestine as the volume of their voices decreased. Vivienne and Franny headed out while the boring ones went to bed. We met some Irish guys in TravelBar, who, again, promised to take us to the best club in Barcelona (of course, of a different name), which was closed. We went to another which cost €20(!) and from which we were turned away for wearing thongs before finally settling at a slightly seedy and sexual-orientation-ambiguous place on the water. It was a really fun night.

Vee and Iona headed off the next afternoon after a slow morning eating cherries on the steps of a cathedral. I had a much needed nap while Lucy went off on a shopping expedition, and we regrouped that evening for a cooking class (more of a demonstration really, but never mind). There was heaps of tapas, unlimited sangria, delicious paella and a hilarious teacher who talked about Tasmania in wistful tones for unknown reasons. All in all, a winner.

Beatrix and co. arrived that evening, exhausted and hungry, so they ate some tapas at a place on Las Ramblas and we spent the evening hanging at the hostel chatting etc. It was great to see her and meet her friends Amanda and Emily before we headed off to....

Tune in later to find out! Next installment follows in only a matter of days! (hopefully...)

fig yak and mon pool

so i know we didn't exactly keep our promise of being prompt with the updates, but... sorry. it is not that easy to grab more than a few minutes internet at any one place at any one time.

we got to figeac on tues 4th august at about 11.30pm after a delayed but fairly pleasant and uneventful train trip from paris. the next week was spent in blissful relaxation and a major catch up on sleep, novel-reading and ipod-listening, which i have to admit i would not say no to right now.

the first day was mad cool weather so we just hung out at the crib going in the pool and reading in the sun, just generally working on our sunburns. we had a gorgeous dinner with vegies picked from the garden (as every night). i have to say that i have been treated to some seriously good home grown vegetables at various stages over the last couple of months.



the next day was also incredibly hot, we headed into figeac to briefly check out the sights for a while before going to collect henry from isis' place. we spent a while wandering around, checking out the bar that henroy made in the garden for some crazy 4 day long party they had there a couple of months ago. we also had the pleasure of a grand tour of some guy's yurts (yes, that's right, plural, yurts) which was somewhat marred by the language barrier but we managed to get the general drift ('here is the bath' etc). henry and isis came round for dinner and we had a lovely time watching the sun set, moon rise etc.

on friday, it was lucy's birthday and we had a lovely day hanging around the house, making (and eating) brownies and pizza which were both incredibly delicious. we watched marie antoinnette in the evening and had a generally chillish day which was really nice.

on saturday we headed into the figeac markets, always a favourite. spent a little while roasting in town before heading back for, yes you guessed it, another afternoon spent by the pool with our books and ipods. henry and isis came in the evening and took us to a disarmament festival to commemorate hiroshima. it was crazy but really good fun. there were some really hilarious bands, including one whose guitarist was dressed as jesus and bass player and drummer were dressed in a woman's one-piece swimming costume. it was a great night.




the next day was crazy rainy and cold, so we just hung around. went for a walk in the afternoon when the weather cleared for about three seconds. on monday it was stonking again, i walked into town, meeting peggy and lucy to go to the champollion language museum. it was really really interesting. champollion was born in figeac - he's the guy who cracked the rosetta stone, so as well as explaining how he achieved that, it had loads on the history of language and the written word - the first written languages and how they came about and were structured.




we headed to montpellier early tuesday morning. we got the station with heaps of time to spare and spent ages waiting around on the platform. max met us at the station and we headed back to the apartment. it was even hotter in montpell than in figeac, and in general we spent our days sleeping til midday, lying around til the heat of the day had passed and then heading out in the evening. the first day i went to the beach with max and his friends audrey and thomas. we brought the canoes and went out on the water for a couple of hours, which was heaps of fun.




the next day we drove to the river. clever strategising by those in charge meant that we were able to canoe from one town to the next, leaving one car at one place and one at the other. we stopped at a beach along the way for a picnic and generally spent the day moseying (sp?) down the river. had a few swims, jumped off a rock into the water, usual rivery activities really. it was a lot of fun.

the next day we went to lunch with some of ella's friends in town, and hit up the beach again in the evening. max and thomas brought harpoons, with which they attempted to get us some dinner, but they were unsuccessful (unsurprisingly to me, although apparently thomas had managed to catch enough for a meal some weeks before). on friday thomas and audrey headed out and me and lucy decided to explore town by ourselves that afternoon/evening to give max a break. i have to say, max was amazing throughout our stay. he cooked us dinner most nights, took us on all our expeditions, constantly asked us if we were hungry or thirsty or bored or whatever, and generally looked after us like we were helpless children. it was fab.

we walked into town via various gorgeous churches and squares and cobbely streets. montpellier is a really beautiful place. we wandered around the central square where they had heaps of markets despite the late hour due to the face that montpellier's motto seems to be 'vendredi soir, je sors' - 'friday night, i go out'. we did a bit of shopping, ice cream eating, all very enjoyable.

saturday was a lazy day. we spent most of the day lying around and went out to the beach again in the evening. by the way, every time we went to the beach we went somewhere new, and they were all quite different but equally cool. on sunday ella had to go into hospital after finally caving to her week-long suffering. it was obviously not very nice but needless to elaborate here, as everyone may rest assured that she is well on the mend as i type this. ella's friend jerome accompanied us on another foray into town after we had gone to see ell-bell. peggy, tim and hen all turned up that evening, and despite the reasons for their impromptu trip, it was lovely to see them again. we had a very pleasant evening in spite of the circumstances.

please note (ELLA) that despite the fact that ella was mostly unable to join us on our various montpell outings, we spent a lovely week in a beautiful place in good company. the blog entry does not read 'we had a horrible time in montpellier', despite ella's many assertions to the contrary. anyway, i will head back in october sans lucy to spend some more time with my beautiful cousine when she is in better health.

on monday we were getting the train to barca at midday, so i spent a little bit of time with ella before we hoisted our bags back onto our backs and headed off again into unchartered territory, once again without anyone but ourselves to give any thought to where our next meal was coming from!

until next time my friends!

xxxxxx

ps- photos coming soon so check back in a few days!

Paris a go-go

3 trains and 2 hours in Lilles later, we arrived in Paris.

So we were both a bit tired but wanted to do something for our first night in Paree so we decided to go to the Eiffel Tower. We set off a lot later than we intended so that by the time we got there it was almost midnight. And almost, therefore, Franny's anniversaire. We took some cool photogs of the lights etc before deciding to buy a (quite overpriced) crepe. Much to our excitement and delight, as soon as the nice man handed us our choco-banane goodness, the Tour Eiffel light show started up behind us, heralding the fact that it was in fact midnight. The crepes and the pretty lights led us to believe that it was in fact a birthday miracle (from God). Little did we know that there was more to come. We decided to head home so that we didn't get stranded by the metro, and we were just walking along underneath the Eiffel Tower we spotted two familiar faces: Palex and Phil. We didnt even know they were in France (we knew they were leaving Australia for Europe sometime in July and nothing more) so it was a complete coinicdence and surprise to see them under the Eiffel Tower.

Alex and Phil told us that museums were free on the first Sunday of each month, so we met up with them the next day at the George Pompidou Centre. Aside from having some spectacular views of Paris, the GPC houses the National Modern Art Museum and we saw a very interesting, if slightly draining, exhibition of female artists. After crepes salees for lunch, we went to a cafe called Angelica for what had been described to Palex and Phil as the best hot chocolate in the world. It was pretty good although possibly not quite worth €7 each...

That afternoon we went to the Louvre. We were less focused than we might have been had we actually been paying so we didnt cover much ground, but we looked around the sculptures and saw the Venus de Milo.

We went on the New Europe pub crawl in the evening which was fun, if not exactly showing us the real Paris nightlife. The last club, 6-7, was described as 'the best club in Paris' with a capacity of 800. There were probably 20 people aside from us when we arrived, but we had a fun time anyway.

The next morning, we went to the Pantheon which was amazing. The crypts underneath were a bit creepy, but we saw the tombs of Voltaire and of Marie and Pierre Curie. We walked to l'ile de la cite and went to La Conciergerie, which used to be a prison and was where Marie Antoinette was held before her execution. Next, we went to La Sainte Chapelle which was really beautiful. The stories on the stained-glass windows tell the stories of the Bible. We checked out the Notre Dame but didn't go in as we had both already been with school.

In the evening, we went to Montmatre to see La Sacre Coeur. We watched the sunset over Paris and the street performers while sitting on the hillside. A beautiful last night in Paris.

The next morning, we went to Saint Denis to see the Basilica. We walked around the markets and bought 8 nectarines which we consumed over the course our train journey to Figeac that afternoon.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we will leave you. I'm sure that we've bored you sufficiently for now so you'll just have to wait until our next exciting instalment.

Love from Franny and Lucy
xx

Jamsterdam

Hokay well we turned up in Amsterdam totally exhausted from our time in Berlin. We found our hostel with relative ease and found to our relief that almost every person we met spoke fluent English. However, the hostel was a bit groz, and the German girls we were sharing with spent the ENTIRE time hanging out in our room off their faces, which didn't really bother us but didn't really give us much personal space. So the first evening we dumped our bags and headed out to explore.

Our hostel was in a pretty cool area, and we wandered around taking it all in. We had a couple of very overpriced drinks, but we were tired and it was freezing cold so we retired early to our beds. We got up the next morning, much revived and ready for some proper sightseeing.
First, we went to Dam Square to look around.

After this, we went to the Anne Frank Huis which was really interesting. The Nazis took all the furniture away after the Franks were arrested, but apart from that the annex was left just as it was when they were in hiding. It was really moving to see where they had stayed hidden for so long - they had so little room despite the fact that 8 people lived there for 2 years.

That afternoon we walked to the Museumplein and went to the Van Gogh Museum, which was also very cool. As well as lots of Van Gogh stuff they had an exhibition on Bonger's collection, which mainly consisted of Redon and Bernard.

In the evening, we made friends with some people from our hostel and we all went out together to see the red light district. In what appeared to be a pattern forming, it turned out to be Amsterdam's Gay and Lesbian Pride weekend so there were street performances all around. We had a fun night hanging out with our new, mainly Canadian, friends.

The next morning, we headed off to Centraal Station to catch our train to Paris!

Berlin Babez

We realise that we have in fact been travelling for sometime and have been to 3 cities and havent made a post yet, so we'll just make 3 posts in quick succession

We will be better from now on, we promise... maybe.

Ok, anyway:

BERLIN

We met up in LDN on Wed 22nd and spent a couple of days jammin. you know, going to the Red Lion in Twickenham, going to London Dungeons, losing the Eurail passes worth about $1500 each.... just the usual. (We found the passes, by the way.)

Beatrix put up with us with a remarkable lack of impatience and frustration for a couple of days, cooking us delicious meals etc. She took us to HP06 and London Dungeons and attempted to take us to Convent Garden to a Banksy exhibition (but my carelessness with the Eurail passes put a stop to that as we spent the afternoon making phone calls instead). We also ate a lot of Pret, mainly the "very berry breakfast bowl" which was tres delicious.

On Saturday morning, we headed out to Luton Airport to catch our easy jet flight, which was pretty uneventful.

We arrived at Schoenfeld in Berlin and Jess, Claire and Campbell (Claire's friend) were waiting for us. We had a bit of a trek to our hostel which was in Spandau, which is in West Berlin. We had a whole room to ourselves and it was light and airy and clean and all the things you expect a hostel not to be. It was also 4 storeys up with no lift. But it was still remarkably nice.

For dessert, we ate a miraculous creation called Spaghetti Eis which is vanilla ice-cream pushed through a machine to make it look like spaghetti strands (kind of like play-dough i guess?) with fruit sauce and shaved coconut (or as the germanians call it- kokosnuB) on top, creating the illusion of a dish of pasta. Basically, it was the best meal of my life.

We went to a club called Fritzl in East Berlin, which was once a major post office. It was majorly cool and pleased us all by playing boom boom pow, heavy cross (YAY) and then, just before we left, pokerface. Smiles all round.

The next day, we all went to see the East Side Gallery. It is the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin wall, and it is covered in graffiti art and street art and is really really incredible. Our favourite artwork was a piece of toast stuck to the wall and named Kif. We chilled by the River Spree for the rest of the evening and watched the sun set.

On Monday we went on a walking tour called Red Berlin which was quite fascinating and mildly amusing due to the nature of our tour guide. Nikolai, our Bulgarian team leader, began the tour by saying "I should tell you, my doctor says I have to be careful because I have" - I thought he was going to say swine flu... - "sunstroke, so we will be staying in the shadow during the tour". Nikolai's father was a famous mathematician and had moved their family to America seeking political asylum while his grandparents remained in Bulgaria being monitored by the Bulgarian equivalent of Stazi. Because of this, Nikolai was more than a little biased and made comments such as "I find it curious that although this building is no longer used for intelligence purposes, we are still being monitored. There are cameras here (he points), here and here." He also began many sentences with "I find it ironic..." and warned us that "1 in every 177 people was a Stazi informant, so look around you when we walk down the street. We're going to see more than 177 people so chances are we'll see at least one."

That evening, we went to a bar called Circus (via happy hour at our hostel The Generator and €2.90 cocktails at the doner kebab store around the corner) which serves 2 litre boots of beer for €8. The story goes that you drink the boot and then you boot and one member of our party lived up to the legend.

On Tuesday we went to the Brandenberg Gate and the Reichstag which was pretty cool. Sadly, the dome at the top was closed but we still got an amazing view of the city. We saw Bruno in the evening, and Claire, Campbell and Jess dominated The Generator's Berlin Trivia Night, winning by about 7 points.

Wednesday was our last full day in Berlin. In the morning we went with Jess to the Modern Art Museum. Afterwards, we met up with Claire and Campbell for a picnic lunch in the Tiergarten which was beautiful. In the afternoon, Lucy and Claire went to the Berlin Zoo and the rest of the Ausgang rented a boat in the Tiergarten and then went to the memorial church (a semi-destroyed church left in its post-war condition as a monument). We went to Bang Bang Club that night which was entertaining due to Wednesday being Berlin's gay+lesbian night.

Thursday we headed for Amsterdam while C+C headed for Prague. The next chapter of our adventure awaited us.