Sunday, March 29, 2009
Greensted Church - Essex
Day out in London
Paris - Day 3
Lazy morning again today though were very conscious that we made it down for breakfast before 10! Today we had a ‘culture day’ first stop Notre Dame… The spires and the stain glass were really impressive… It was Sunday, so there was a service on which was really nice as well…
Outside there was this guy walkin round with an ‘ugly’ mask on. He just kinda sidled up to people and took their hand or put his arm on their shoulder – was quite funny watching the reactions – specially when they screamed… I was wondering how often he got punched though!
From there we wandered through the Latin Quarter and had a light lunch in a Patisserie. There was a bike stand on the corner, so from there we rode along the bank of the Seine to the Musee de D’Orsey. Not being huge art fans, we knew we didn’t want to go in both the Louvre and the D’Orsey, so we took the advice of the majority of people we asked and went to D’Orsey. The collection is really nicely laid out, and the huge ceilings in the centre let in lots of light. The building itself used to be a railway station. Lots of Renoir and Monet… an also a room of Vincent Van Gogh which I like. Matt’s favourite was “Whistler”… cause of Mr Bean.
It was quite tiring walking around… plus the legs were a little sore from all the riding… Least I felt I was working off a little of the good food we’d been having! Didn’t have a lot of time left before we had to be back at the hotel for the bus to the train station. Plus we had to get our train supplies… ie cake from the Patisserie.. YUM! and some beers… for some reason Matt bought some Amsterdam… horrible! Took about an hour to finish a can… good thing I spose… and had to give away the 2nd one… that’s how bad it was!
Train ride back was quite fun… few of the group were getting quite drunk… luckily I think our tour was taking up most of the carriage so I don’t think we annoyed anyone too much.
Paris Day 2
Spent most of today just wandering around… took the Metro over to Galleries Laffeyette… planned to do some shopping but with the Euro : Pound exchange rate… it was really too expensive… above the shopping centre was Tour Montparnasse – a 200m tall tower with a viewing platform on the roof. We went up, but unfortunately the cloud was quite low so it was quite difficult to make a lot of things out… but Matt managed to make out a bike stand just round the corner…
Can’t remember the last time I rode a bike… cept in the gym… but they just stay still… but after an extremely wobbly first 50m I was alright… First thing we had to do was cross 4 lanes of traffic! The bike system in Paris is excellent. You pay 1 Euro for a 24hr pass and you can pick up a bike from one stand (there are stands everywhere) and drop it off wherever you end up. Don’t have to worry about locking it up or anything. It just automatically locks itself on the stand… Really handy and a great way to see the city.
From Montparnasse, we rode up near the Champs Elysees and had a coffee (should have had a hot chocolate) and a yummy choc brownie from a Chocalatier.. spensive but had to be done! Had a wander up to the Arc de Triomphe and went to the top…. Great view from up there… don’t know if it was cause the weather had lifted, but it was a much better view from there than Montparnasse.. It was right on 6 o’clock too so we were up there for the sunset. They also stopped the traffic for a procession to walk up to the Arc de Triomphe…. It was quite funny to watch the traffic once they let everyone go… the policemen had to run for their lives! Everyone was going everywhere….
But still no accidents… we were up there for quite a while and didn’t see one – but apparently there’s an accident every 15 mins on average…
We were heading down to the Seine for our River cruise… but stopped off for dinner at one of the bistros… food was quite yummy.. and the service surprisingly good! Matt had some escargot (I don’t get the fuss really!). So with full stomachs we went on the cruise – the view was great, pity it was FREEZING!!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
My Chrissy Present - a Long Weekend In Paris - Feb 20
Sometimes I really don’t know why we do it… I mean obviously to make the most of time off… but yet again… we set off super early to get to Kings Cross Station for our Eurostar trip to Paris. So, so, so much easier than flying. For one thing, no carry on limit and you can take drinks from outside the terminal on-board and the whole check-in and immigration thing is just so much quicker. 1 min exiting the UK… walk 5 m and you officially enter France. The passport stamp is kinda cool too.. has a little train in the corner. This is one good thing about having a non-EU passport, getting all the stamps!!- Small downside was that the train (a designated train) to Eurodisney was also leaving at about the same time… so eaps and eaps of kids around… but I spose it wasn’t that bad, plus they had a little 4-piece band playing some Disney songs in the waiting area which was alright. Both trains were leaving off the same platform and I’m sure some people must have gotten on the wrong one…
Matt had arranged our trip through Andersen Tours, which made everything really easy – got our boarding pass and a map handed to us on checking in with the tour leader (who happened to be the same as the tour leader we had on our Top Deck tour through Europe in ’03... though Matt already knew this was going to be the case …) and then straight onto a Bus for a quick driving tour of the city.
The train trip itself was pretty uneventful… which is a good thing surely…
Having been to Paris once before, the driving tour we had as soon as we arrived didn’t really show us anything new, but it was a good way to get our bearings again, plus getting a recap on the history of the city is always helpful. After a couple of stops at the usual places for photos we headed to our hotel…
There was a great little Patisserie on the corner which we managed to avoid until our last day, groceries and a few little shops were all really handy. Best of all we were about 20m from the entrance to the Metro station, Marcel Sembat. It was only a couple of stops from the end of the line… but only about 15/20 mins to all the attractions. As soon as we arrived we got a bite to eat and got some beer, wine and nibblies from the supermarket (plus I threw in some bananas for good measure) We bought a 15 pack of Heineken – I thought that’d be plenty to last us the whole weekend and the train trip home… how wrong was I!. Buying the fruit there was a little different… Kinda like a deli counter, had to select the fruit I wanted then go to a counter to get it weighed and a sticker with the price put on it. Obviously I didn’t realise this until I got to the front of the queue, so had to go back – and all just for the fruit I thought I ‘should’ get!.
Back at the hotel we decided to have a couple of drinks before heading out for a Cabaret show… Matt and Jude (who was looking after our tour) managed to polish off all the beers rather quickly! For once I was the sedate one!. Given all the beers they’d had and the couple of roadies they took with them… it made for a fairly interesting metro ride out for the show! Plus when we got out of the Metro we couldn’t quite work out what direction we needed to head! Still, we made it just in time for the start of the show. To be honest I wasn’t overly impressed with the show, apart from the trapeze artist/flying acrobat… that was quite cool cause the rope and swing went right across the crowd. I’m sure Matt got more enjoyment out of the rest of the show than I did!
The Metro ride back was a lot quieter, with both Matt an Jude sleeping… luckily by this stage I kinda knew where I as going! Only thing open for dinner though was Kebabs – was a really nice kebab, but it still felt a little wrong to be eating kebab in Paris!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Leeds Castle Feb 15th
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Snow Snow Snow! Mon Feb 2nd
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Malta - Australia Day Long Weekend
We spent our Australia Day weekend in Malta, which was short but sweet. Flying from Luton was very different to other ‘London’ airports. We drove to one of the cheaper airport carparks and got a shuttle bus to the airport… which was pretty straightforward… but the airport itself is synonymous with the low cost airlines that depart from there (no major carriers do). While at Stansted you can get away with a carry on and a handbag… not at Luton! – they will turn you away as you try to go through security… strictly one piece of hand luggage only… luckily that’s all we had anyway but some people in front of us were caught out with a baby bottle bag...
The airport itself had a real dim, hospital type feel about it, but apparently it has been an airport since it was opened in 1938… dunno… just felt a bit strange… but then I spose you get what you pay for.
We arrived in Malta around 7:30pm – about ½ hr early even though we left late. Ryanair states it has the best on time record – though I think they must put a fair bit of buffer in their flight times… ½ hr early on a 3 hr flight is quite an achievement.
My tone here probably reflects my current view on Ryanair – but that’s probably because in the news recently they stated they were looking at charging you to use the toilet in flight… £1 a go?!! Bit rich… Once you add on all the extra charges for baggage, paying by credit card etc… sometimes it doesn’t work out all that much cheaper than the major airlines… and there’s no customer service to top it all off…
Anywayz… even though our flight was early, it took us about 1 ½ hrs to get out of the airport as we were waiting for our rental car rep to arrive… he said he had a flat tyre on the way but Matt was a bit sceptical – his clothes/hands etc weren’t dirty!...
The car itself… (Matt’s idea!)… was a Suzuki Maruti (or Sierra)… Not the comfiest ride but Matt said it was fun to drive….
Things picked up considerably from when we left the airport! [Even though I was starving hungry… I was just happy to be somewhere I didn’t have to be wearing 10 layers of clothing]… Malta is only a small island so since we had hired a car we were able to see most of it on our long weekend. We were staying at St Paul’s Bay – crashing on the sofa bed of a friends’ holiday let. By the time we got there and had a bite to eat, it was well and truly time to sleep!
Malta Day 2 - Sunday 25 January