bread bread bread

ça va me manquer, le pain!

Bath and London: ENGLAND

I payed a visit to the motherland. Went over to see Cam and Jodi and just to visit... made the most of being here so close! Flew from Geneva (with Easyjet, cheap as) to Bristol on a Wednesday afternoon. I spent the Thusday and Friday in Bath (an hour and a half west of London) which is where they live, then we spent the weekend in London. I loved it! Cool to have such a similar culture to NZ's over here on the other side of the world... Well compared to the French culture, I felt quite at home in England. It was everything I imagined - all the clichés are true. London IS full of double decker red buses and black taxis!


The luuuvlaah town of Bath. They say it's quite posh. It's all Georgian architec-ture constructed around the same time, so it goes together very nicely.





There ARE pubs on every corner! Seriously you pass about 5 in the space of 100m. Of course one night we went out to see what pints tasted like in England


It'd be fair to say Bath's attraction is the Roman Baths, so I checked them out. It's built on thermal springs, these baths were constructed in Roman times. Pretty fascinating, such incredible engineering for the era... actually after seeing a few examples of Roman construction I'm astounded at what they managed to come up with. This bath which is pictured had a roof over it back in the day, a huge arc roof without supports. Luckily it disintergrated, so now we have this great view of the Abbey in the background.

The hot water appearing from the earth was seen as something very spiritual to the Romans. People would come from all over to visit this site, so they had all these objects on display, things that had been found in the spring. Thousands of Roman coins were thrown in as gifts to the goddess so they have used these to research where the people came from. The photo is of notes which were found in the sacred spring, notes to the goddess people scrated in Latin onto sheets of lead. Some of them were quite entertaining, writted by pissed off Romans who had had things stolen from the changing rooms while they were bathing... like "Dear goddess, I ask that the person who stole my two gloves loses his mind and his eyes." So interesting to read these and imagine that they were written thousands of years ago.

Pulteney Bridge is a rarity, one of only two in the world which is lined with shops. Constructed in Bath stone like everything here

Saturday: train to LONDON! This is the huge advertising in Picadilly Circus at night.



Regent St with all of it's Xmas decor-ations. This trip brought back plenty of childhood souvenirs - I recognised so many things from Monopoly!! Oxford St, Kings Cross Station, Pall Mall, Trafalgar square etc! Also you know that song The London Bridge is falling down, falling down...." we had that explained to us, it came about after a huge fire in London, when the London Bridge actually did fall down. Travelling is educational.

Big Ben! and look at all of those double decker buses in front of it, they are every-where!




St Paul's Cathedral, where Diana was married. Went past lots of sights like this on the open-top bus tour we did. This is a great way to get a quick summary of a place.


Buckingham Palace... Cam and I came here at 11:30am on Sunday (like any good royal watcher would) for the changing of the guards ceremony. We didn't see much due to the hundreds of other royal watchers 10 times kenner than us, who took all the good places earlier. Still cool to see the palace tho, no sign of the Queen unfortunately - I was watching for a curtain to move.



Some of the guards leaving the ceremony. It's pretty cool how some of the police get around on horses!





Friendly reminders for us Frenchies who don't know which way to look for cars



I did the London Eye, this huge ferris wheel which takes you up in these capsules with about 10 others. Got some great views out over the city, this one looking down on the river Thames. Expensive though, in fact everything in this country was expensive, France is bad enough but this was even worse! Looking forward to spending the $NZ again

That'd be Big Ben slightly to the right, with Parliament to the left of it.



This is a Memorial for all of the New Zealand soldiers who died in WWII, as well as that it is a bit of a celebration of England's relationship with New Zealand, it was great to see that over here! Each stand was engraved and inscribed with quotes, images etc. In 'Hyde Park Corner' the street intersection in front of the enourmous Hyde Park.

This is Harrods, London's exclusive department store! MASSIVE, this place has everything. A cool atmosphere for christmas too. It's not the cheapest place to shop so the wallet pretty much stayed in the pocket.

BIG BEN AGEEN, very christmassy with the tree in front. And in the background on the left is the London Eye, that ferris wheel i went up.

All in all it was yet another great trip! I loved England, it was great to see this country which we in NZ hear so much about.
Not long now till I'm back in the Land of the Long White Cloud!

MUSE concert

I went to see Muse in Lyon! I had an awesome time, didn't really know Muse that well beforehand but love them now.


It was an amazing show as well, at one stage they dropped these huge balloons onto the crowd... the guy said they won't play again until they are all popped (in english...don't know how many people understood?) Actually gotta say, he was making an effort with the French, "Merci beaucoup" etc. Pretty hard american accent but still.
Awesome stage. We weren't too far back, considering we arrived at 8pm and it started at 8pm. (would have arrived earlier but the train drivers were striking so the first train was cancelled, got to get used to that in France!)


Wicked Muse songs: (click to play!)
Feeling Good,
Starlight,
Supermassive Black Hole.




Went out to an Aussie bar in Lyon afterwards, was pretty good for a Monday night! AND look what I found there, Speights! (beer from Southern New Zealand if you're wondering). 5.50€ ($11) was a bit steep but I had to grab the opportunity.

French and Foreign mates

An afternoon with the foreigners... Hector (mexico), Lauren (usa), Rafael (brazil), Lily (mexico), me, Chris (england) and Kana (japan)
I won't try and name them all! this is us in a street of Chambery!
These kids are French. Matthias, Mehdi, Florent, me and Sylvain at a "Repas de Classe", we all went out with the class for a meal then to a bar.
Coralie and Marine

Strasbourg Trip

Spent 5 days in Strasbourg, with my second host family the Degeorges. Strasbourg is a city in the North East of France. I went with Alain, Dominique and a kiwi mate, Monica, from Lyon. We left Chambéry early on Wednesday morning, making our way up through Switzerland.

With the first stop being Bern.... This is Albert Einstein's old place! He came from Bern apparently, and if you look closely between the two bits of red writing you can see "Einstein haus". Bern was nice although the weather was a bit grey unfortunately.

Further into Switzer-land, just before crossing the border back into France, we stopped at a town called Basel. This place has gained a reputation for having extraordinary modern architecture, heres an example, by the famous Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron.

The reason for the trip was to see the "Marché de Noël" (Christmas market) in Strasbourg, we saw others in other towns too, this photo taken at the one in Basel. There was a real Christmas atmosphere.... a Christmas atmosphere in WINTER! It was so cool walking around in the Freezing european cold, with all the streets and shops decorated for xmas. Felt like I was in a movie.










We climbed up Strasbourg's mighty Cathedral! Heres a view from the top.
So HUGE it doesn't even fit in the photo. Seriously this Cathedral is so impressive!


Spent one day in Germany, as Strasbourg is right on the border. Were in the 'Black Forest' region. Really nice little German villages. It's still crazy for me, just driving 20 minuntes everything being sooo different, hearing a different language for example!



This is Alain and Dominique (my host parents) with me. Back in France now. We visited that castle on the top of the hill in the background.









Here's that castle, the Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg






The typical architecture style in Alsace, the region of Strasbourg... with wooden framing. So different to the rest of France. Actually that's something I've loved about France, how it's so varied. It's so different in all of the regions (well the ones that I've seen)... from here in the Alps, to Paris, to the south mediterannian coast... and now to Alsace! C'est beau la France

Le Marché de Noël de Strasbourg! Really good, but obviosly 10's of thousands of others thought the same thing - look at all of the people! A bit of Pushing and Shoving involved to get through there. Worth it though, I have seen the famous Marché de Noël de Strasbourg.

A shame this photo isn't really good quality... We were in the car and this train FULL of minis went past! Hundreds of them! All different colours, it looked really cool. Creative photo ay

On our way back to Chambéry on Sunday, we stopped at Zug in Switzerland to visit Kristina an exchange student who we had at home. We had a bit of a look through her nice town and then carried on.

PARIS

For the week between the two footy games, Cam, Jodi and myself visited PARIS! Our hotel was near la Place de la Republique. It was a pretty full on week there... didn't really stop! Ticked a lot of essentials off the list.

First up was the famous Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. Here there are a number of celebreties buried... notably Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors and poet Oscar Wilde. I probably would have recognised more names if I was a bit more into French poetry.

Notre Dame... with Cam the hunchback in front of it ha ha ha - ha
We went to the Moulin Rouge show! A really good experience. Haha heres a story: We reserved the seats earlier in the day because we were already out at Montmartre. Here they said to us that we couldn't attend in the clothes we were wearing (i.e. jeans). It was quite a long way back to the hotel to change, so we looked around for a cheap clothes shop. Found "Sympa" (translation: "Nice") haha where we got all dressed up... My grey suit pants cost about 7€!
The worst part of the story is that when we arrived at 11pm for the show, there were bus loads of Japanese tourists walking in, wearing jeans!! How annoying is that. But I'm sure we had a better time because we were all dressed up anyway.

Sacré Coeur lit up at night, it is in the same area as the Moulin Rouge, in Montmartre

The three of us dressed up for our night out at Moulin Rouge

For two of the days we got around on l'Open Bus tour, it's a good way to see the city it stops at all the major points.

One being the Eiffel Tower.... a week in Paris wouldn't be a week in Paris without seeing the Tour Eiffel! We climbed it at night. (on foot of course, to the second level at which point you HAD to take the lift to get to the top, otherwise we would have taken the stairs all the way up)

This photo gives you a good impression of the IMMENSITY (word or not? i'm losing my english over here!) that is the Eiffel Tower. Honestly it's so impressive. One of those things you walk past in a staring daze, just so taken by it!
The view from the top. Photos not very good quality, but here you see the Seine river, with it's bridges.... all of the big avenues ...

On every hour, these lights flicker on the tower for about 10 minutes, just magic!

Eiffel Tower shot during the day, right thats enough of the tower

We did a boat trip on the Seine... This photo is the Ile de la Cité, and the Pont Neuf which crosses it. Paris was looking great, in autumn colours. We had pretty good weather too, it made for some awesome views

Next we walked up the Boulavard de Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triumph (pictured)

AAAAAND we climbed that too, heres a view from the top. The big black skyscraper is the Tour de Montparnasse and of course eiffel to the right
The crazy Paris traffic... around the Arc de Triumph is a round about - and this is how it's organised! Theres an accident every 3 minutesd apparently, it doesn't surprise me!

A similar amazing view in another direction. The hill in the distance is Montmartre, we can see Sacre Coeur

Of course, we visited Le Louvre museum... This is The Winged Victory of Samothracethe, a famous sculpture. Le Louvre was good, I'm pleased I can now say I've been there. We wandered around a lot of very early paintings, lots of religious works, sculptures etc. The Louvre may be the largest, oldest, most important and famous art gallery and museum in the world but actually I preferred the two other museums we visited - the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d'Orsay. The two most interesting things I saw at Le Louvre were Mona Lisa and Graham Henry - He was doing a bit of sightseeing before the second match.

This is Beaubourg, or the Pompidou Centre. It's the museum of modern art, for me it was a lot more interesting. Checked out a few crazy expositions (it was modern art!). The building itself is quite interesting... quite contrasting like it's just dropped right amongst all the typical Parisian architecture.

And the Musée d'Orsay. In an old train station. Here we saw a lot of impressionism paintings, a lot more recent than the stuff in Le Louvre but not modern art like at Beaubourg. Van Gogh for example!

One of Paris' metro stations

And one of Paris' huge department stores... Galeries Lafayette.

We visited the Chateau de Versailles which was nice... wasn't as exceptional as I thought it was going to be, I think it's be better in summer with all the gardens looking good. Also, there was a lot of work being done on it so scaffolding all over the place. Still good to see, walked through Napoleon's bedroom etc. The Kings of France used to live here. Saw Tana Umuga here too!

A couple of other really good things we did - visited the Catacombes, which is 1.6km of tunneling under Paris where there are thousands of stacks of human bones... They used to be old mines, and were used as a place to take human remains to, as the Cemetaries all became full.

Also saw a little Jazz concert in a bar in a lively little street between St Michel and the Latin Quarter.

BARRIO LATINO - We ate here on Friday night, a really cool bar/ restaurant. I'd recommend it for next time you are in Paris!

What an incredible week in this exraordinary city. Paris is.... Paris! Can't even find a word. La plus belle ville du monde OK I havn't seen many others but i'd believe this saying, that Paris is the most beautiful city in the world! Theres a lot to like about Paris, it has got everything! So much to do and see.