Mon, 03 Nov 2003

author Liz	location Sydney, Australia
posted 08:39 AEDT 14/02/2004	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

Back to Paris one last time ( 8 photos )
On Monday morning, the weather wasn't looking much better, which was disappointing as we had wanted to stay another day and do some walking in the surrounding countryside. Instead, we packed our bags, checked out of the hotel and went in search of a French patisserie breakfast to quieten our growling stomachs. But we had no luck here either - both of the nice-looking patisseries were still shut at 10am, so we gave up waiting and trudged off to the train station, where we bought train tickets to Paris, and sat down to drink coffee while we waited for the train.
Back in Paris, we walked to a different but very close-by train station (Gare du Nord???) and bought tickets that would take us from Paris to Brussles, Belgium later that day.
By now we were both starving, so we walked a short distance from the train station until we found a nice pub. We stuffed ourselves with fresh bread and beer, and then I had a huge cheese omlette and Tim had a steak. Finally we had some proper food in our bellies, and we sat chatting and feeling full for a while.
We walked back to the train station, and boarded the Thalys train that would take us to Belgium. Thalys is basically the same as the TGV, so it goes really fast! Using the GPS, we saw that we reached a whopping 306km/h!!! Even the train conductor was interested to see what speed we were getting up to.
Somewhere we left France far behind and zipped into Belgium.

author Liz	location Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 09:43 CET 13/11/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

Épernay ( 27 photos )
The weather looked pretty awful outside, but we rugged up and went to make our way outside to explore Épernay and maybe even a champagne house.
On our way out of the hotel, the nice owner lady came up to us. We did our best to understand her French, and in the end we worked out that we had ordered breakfast by accident when we had arrived the evening before. It was a bit annoying as the breakfast added more to the room price, and it wasn't exactly the biggest breakfast to pay for. But it was nice to sit in the dining room and enjoy our croissant, baguette and hot drinks.
After breakfast we went outside and found a junk market on a nearby street. We spent a while looking at various bits and pieces, but didn't find anything of real interest.
We walked through the town and made our way to ave de Champagne, the long street lined with impressive old mansions and a number of champagne houses.
The first one we spotted was the famous Moët & Chandon, so we chose to go on a tour there. It was actually very interesting, and quite different from wine making. We learnt a lot about the history of the buildings and the champagne making, had a walk through the cellars which were suprisingly large, discovered the whole champagne production process and of course had a glass of the stuff to drink at the end of the tour. We learnt heaps and now we can appreciated what champagne is and know a lot more about the different types and what the names mean. For example, brut champagne has more reserve wine added so it has a stronger flavour which is more appealing to men than to women.
After the tour the weather was bad, so we went back to our hotel.
In the afternoon we went for a walk, first to the train station to try and work out where we would go to next and how much it would cost us. Then we walked a long way along ave de Champagne. We checked out the prices of tours in a couple of other champagne houses, but decided that the one we had done in the morning was enough, so we made our way back to the town and had a walk around the town centre. We found a place to go for dinner after looking at some different menus, but as it was still quite early, we went back to the hotel to be lazy again.
Later on, we went to the little pub we had chosen to have dinner in, only to be told that they didn't serve food on a Sunday night. We had a beer each and then wandered through drizzling rain to find somewhere else to eat.
To cut a long and slightly miserable story short, quite a lot of places didn't serve food on a Sunday evening. Quite a few more were way out of our budget and the remaining ones were unappetising fast-food. So, feeling defeated, we bought a baguette from the bakery (we are sick of eating baguette!) and a couple of small things from the expensive supermarket. Dinner was an un-enthusiastic picnic in our hotel room, but at least we were out of the rain and cold. We finished off the evening watching a DVD.

author Liz	location Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 09:27 CET 13/11/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

Eiffel Tower, into Épernay ( 38 photos )
Saturday was our last day in Paris, and unfortunately it was overcast once again. We had breakfast at the hostel and then checked out, leaving our bags in the storage room.
From our hostel, we walked down to the Seine and along the river bank for quite a while. It was really pretty with all the colourful autumn leaves being reflected in the river.
We had been planning to go to the Eiffel Tower one afternoon so that we could see the sun setting over Paris, but the weather had been so awful that we missed our chance. But, we decided that we at least wanted to see the Eiffel Tower up close once more, so we kept walking all the way along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. It was actually quite a long walk, and as we walked along the clouds parted and the sun came out! We decided if the sun was out then we would go up the tower and see Paris from the grandest viewpoint.
It took us a while longer to walk all the way to the Eiffel Tower and the clouds kept covering the sun and then parting. The last part of our walk took us through part of the park that the tower sits in, and the autumn leaf colours in the sunlight were beautiful.
At the tower, we had to join a large queue to get tickets, but it moved along quicker than we had expected it to. Once we had our tickets to go up the tower, we joined another queue for the lift. It was a double-level lift and it was quite large, which meant that lots of people fitted into it in one go.
The lift took us to the first level, and then the second level where we had to change lifts, so we had a bit of a look around. Already we seemed very high up and the views were pretty spectacular. We took a few photos and then joined the next queue for the lift to take us to the very top.
This queue seemed to take the longest, but the ride up in the lift and the views from the very top were well worth it all.
We could see a long way into the distance. We picked out the Arc d'Triomphe, the (now very tiny looking) hill with Sacre Coeur on top, and tried to pick out various other places that we had wandered through in Paris. The views of the Seine river stretching away to our left and right were also very pretty.
We stayed up the top for quite a while, walking around and doing our best to ignore the cold wind before queueing twice more to catch the lifts all the way back to the ground. It had been great to go up the Eiffel Tower, even if we didn't get to see a sunset, and it was a nice way to finish off our last day in Paris.
We caught a train from a station nearby back to the Notre Dame area. Once we got there we spent a while finding a pub to watch the World Cup Rugby, only to find out we had missed the game due to the time differences!
Instead we walked to the small park that is behind Notre Dame and sat and ate some food.
Before we left Paris, we decided to go back to the internet place we had bene to earlier in the week and quickly do a few more things. Everything was going well - we finished up, packed up the laptop, paid the guy (a different man to the other day we had been there) and were about to walk out when he asked for another ten euro for plugging the laptop in. He spoke very little English and we had already paid the fee for using the connection, so we were quite confused at first. Then we figured out what he was on about and we told him "No" and that we hadn't had to pay that much the other day when we had come here, and that nowhere on the price list did it say anything about a ten euro fee. But he kept babbling to us in French and saying we had to pay ten euro. So we walked out! We think that he knew we were tourists, so he was just trying to dupe us out of some more money.
Anyway, after all that excitement, we quickly walked back to our hostel to pick up our bags. Along the way we stopped for a kebab as we hadn't eaten much all day and were hungry. The kebab guy was so friendly, and as we were about to leave he gave us some of his home-made mint tea free of charge. So within about thirty minutes, we experienced a not-so-nice Parisian and a lovely friendly Parisian!
We got our bags from the hostel and used our last Metro tickets to get us to the train station we were going to be leaving Paris from.

Our train left about ten minutes after we got on it, and took just over an hour to get us to Épernay in the Champagne region. Our hotel was about ten minutes walk from the train station, but we had no map so it was a bit of guesswork finding the place. It turned out to be a really lovely little hotel, and our double room had a shower which was a nice treat after hostels.
We lazed around for a bit and went out to a town pub for a few beers. For dinner we just bought some yoghurt and biscuits as we weren't feeling too hungry after our kebab.
It started raining outside - not the best looking weather for the coming day.

author Tim	location Paris, France
posted 23:55 CET	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

A Big Wander ( 12 photos )
No particular plans for the day - the weather was ugly but dry, so we were hoping it would blow over for an afternoon Eiffel Tower ascent.
We started the day just heading up towards Sacre Coeur in Montmarte, about 10km walk from where we are staying. This pleasant stroll was spent chatting, and taking in more of the city's interesting little back streets, watching the locals go about their lives, and noting with interest how we could tell whether we were in an area frequented by tourists just by the prices of coffee.
One of the more interesting diversions on the walk was a stop to watch the lock lift a canal boat up on Canal Saint Martin. It's quite a pretty scene right in the middle of such a large city, and always a worthy diversion and rest for our feet.
But you can't rest too long or you freeze from the inside, so it was soon time to walk further along. Into the Montmarte district itself, which is interesting because the lower-down areas are almost completely populated by immigrants in dense housing, with kebab shops galore and rubbish everywhere. But then you walk up the stairs towards the towering church and it could be a different country - perhaps the wealthy are moving more and more up towards the church as time goes on.
We had been inside the main church the last time we were here, but a fact that our ageing tour guide at Notre-Dame had slipped in is that Paris' oldest church is right next door, missed by almost everyone. Èglise Saint Pierre is a little place reached by walking around off the beaten track, a fact which has no doubt saved it from it's neighbour's tacky fate.
After stopping for a little while to ring my parents who are just back from holidaying, we went into the church for a look around. Very spartan, yet nice and extremely quiet for reflection, it is such a pleasant change from the huge famous places that we didn't really know what to do. So, we sat and planned what to do from there, admiring the few old paintings and ancient walls with leaning-out columns. The stained-glass windows were some of the most interesting I've seen also.
By now the weather had turned to drizzle, putting an end to our Eiffel Tour plans, so we had a bit more of a look around up top of the hill at the heavily-touristed place du Tertre where artists displayed their paintings, some wanting up to 1900 euro! That's almost as bad as the Italian mechanics, and the fact that they had visa machines there meant that this was really going beyond what one-man stalls are supposed to be all about.
Liz declined to take up one man's offer of "I can make you beautiful", talking about a drawing but perhaps missing what is implied by that statement when translated into English, and we worked our way back down the hill.
In this whole trip, our feet have held out suprisingly well considering the walking we have been doing, but today mine finally sprouted the beginnings of a blister, so we cheated and jumped on a Metro back to our hostel. The timing worked out quite well to get back into our room at 3pm, which we did to relax for a while after our big walk.
Not much later, I found a bed and crashed asleep with little effort, leaving Liz to write some emails and update some journal - thanks!
We have been content just to spend the evening in, and the weather looks to be getting a bit better, so perhaps tomorrow, our last day in Paris, will be an Eiffel Tower day after all.

author Tim	location Paris, France
posted 23:16 CET 31/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

Suprise Meet-up ( 14 photos )
First task for the morning was to move hostels - I came downstairs to find Liz had been up for ages already, thanks to the large noisy single-sex dorms.
We ate, exchanging our breakfast tickets for nasty coffee from the I-hate-my-job-and-I'm-going-to-take-it-out-on-you kitchen helpers, seemingly quite common at hostels in this part of the world.
The move proved little hassle, and we dumped our bags in the far-cheaper Auberge Internationale des Jeunes where we had a room of our own, but couldn't get into it until 3pm (the joys of hostel living).
It was another great day weather-wise, so we picked out Jardin des Plantes just across pont d'Austerlitz (from where we could see the next bridge, pont Charles de Gaulle bears quite a resemblance to a bridge of our own) on the Left Bank for a wander. It was a nice little place, the gardens full of roses being tended at the tax-payer's expense. At the end there was an interesting-looking museum which we couldn't see the price for. We decided to wait the twenty minutes in the sun until opening time (the weather was better, but still no more than six degrees or so), when we learnt that it was quite expensive. Besides, we wanted to make the 12pm tour of Notre-Dame.
It was around then that we got a phone call from Jono and Penny - since we had seen them they had flown to London for a few days and then back to Paris, since that was cheaper than flying direct or train! Or, notably, our fifteen hour bus ride. It pays to be organised in advance, which Liz and I definitely aren't.
We arranged to meet them for the 12pm tour as they weren't staying far from there, and set about our business. In the back streets, we stumbled across a likely-looking internet café where we were able to plug the laptop in for the first time in ages and update the website!
Just before the tour, we wandered back up to Notre-Dame and found the guys out the front. We managed to get on a tour run by a retired history professor who really knew his stuff - this was obviously his life and he kept us totally entrhalled for an hour and a half, talking about the facades, history and various parts of the interior. Far better than some of the tours we have paid lots of money for, and hence well worth doing.
But being interesting didn't change the fact that by the end we were freezing cold, so the four of us set off in search of coffee somewhere warm. Our wanderings took us past the bizzare Centre Georges Pompidou where the architect has been given just a little bit too much freedom. It is built mostly out of plastic, and all the pipes, lifts, stairways, etc. are on the outside. Apparently it is the city's most visited attraction (yes, even more than Eiffel Tower and Louvre), and the queue out the front certainly seemed to match that. We had no desire to queue in the cold, so we wandered on.
No cafés were found in this area of town in our budget, so we ended up in a supermarket grabbing picnic supplies, which we ate at a bus-stop area, much to the entertainment of the locals. One asked us kindly not to feed the pigeons, and a couple of others wished us "Bon Appetite", while everyone else just looked at us kind of weirdly.
They had train tickets to organise, and we had to move into our room (since if we left bags in luggage storage at the hostel past 8pm we couldn't get them, which was better than if we had left them longer than twelve hours total when they would have been taken away and destroyed. Serious.), so we split for a while, Liz and I wandering back to our hostel past Bastille.
This non-existant monumental prison was destroyed in 1789 after being stormed, and the place is now marked by Colonne de Juillet in the centre of yet another crazy traffic intersection.
We met up again just after 5pm at their hostel, wandered to a local pub for some more-expensive-than-expected beers with free tapas thrown on the table to make up for it. Next we decided to do another supermarket run and take the spoils back to Liz and my room. However, this plan was foiled when the rather rude guys on the door wouldn't let them in, even to sit and eat for a while.
So, instead we went back to Penny and Jono's hostel, where we were looked at a little strangely but otherwise left to eat our bread, cheese, ice creams and bits and pieces in peace. After which, they needed to organise train tickets for the next day over west to visit their friends. We walked down to Gare de Lyon, where tickets were purchased, Jono excited that they had tickets on a nice fast TGV in the same way that I was.
We had purchased a six-pack of beer from the supermarket, chosen from its price tag purely on price per litre (a fantastic law that exists in many countries over here is that this has to be displayed, making bargain shopping much easier). However, what we had actually ended up with was a peach-flavoured lemonade and beer drink. Yuk. Liz managed one sip, me three, Penny about half a can and Jono crazily most of the rest of it all, before we decided enough was enough.
So, we needed to get that really nasty taste out of our mouths, wandering to a random back-street café for an intensive coffee and 500 (cards) session, before bidding them a farewell. It turns out we may actually cross paths in Utrecht sometime in the next couple of weeks.

author Tim	location Paris, France
posted 20:14 CET	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

Waste then Walk, Musee d'Orsay ( 18 photos )
After our standard breakfast, yet again missing out on the nice table by the window and being placed with the same French family, we went back up to the room, did some washing, etc.
Coming back down to pay for our remaining two nights with a new receptionist, we were a little taken aback to find out that there was no booking for us for the night. The other day, we had been told that there would be four nights, just pay for two at the time, which we did. So, there appeared to be nothing else for it but to pack up and find somewhere else to stay.
After doing that, we headed down into the cold (weather far worse than yesterday with constant drizzle and cold cold cold), along to a phone box, where I waited with the bags while Liz ran off to get us another phone card, since the first one was used up. Quite a waste just to make one call, but none of the phones take coins, so there wasn't much other choice. There was a room available at another cheap pension further out for too much money, so we rang one of the cheaper hostels which said that there were rooms left but they don't take bookings!
So, fast as we could, we went to a tube, found it was the wrong one, picked another, walked half way across Paris under ground to get to the right platform, went three stops, changed to another line by walking almost as far then went one stop. It would have been quicker in retrospect to just walk it, but with all our gear we had decided not to. We would have covered less ground though.
Upon arriving at the hostel, we heard the people in front being told that there wasn't any rooms left for the night! No matter, the helpful guy was happy to tell us of another hostel just down the road, which was quite a bit more expensive, but this guy could offer us a double room for the following two nights, which we took. That gives us three more nights in Paris.
So, lugging gear again down the road to the larger hostel, which is pretty damn horrible. Not in terms of cleanliness or anything, but the receptionists are rude, we are consigned to single-sex dorms (I thought that finished in the 70s?), security is non-existant, we are a lot further out of town and we are paying through the nose for it! Don't waste any time at the MIJ in Rue Titon, 11e if you can avoid it.
So, dumping our bags, we set about exploring the town. The only good thing about this area is that it is way cheaper than the middle. For example, whereas we would pay about 7 euro for a beer in the middle of town (yes, that's actually worse than London), out here it is more like 2.60. We celebrated finally having moved around with a couple of one euro coffees (about a third the price of the middle!) just down the road. The little guy running the bar was quite amused to see tourist-types around, methinks.

First item on the agenda for the day was to book our way out of here, now that we have paid for our last three nights in Paris and leave on the 1st. We headed down Boulevard Diderot to Gare de Lyon, one of Paris' six main intercity and international train stations.
We first tryed to coerce a computer ticket machine into selling us a ticket, and four goes later, we finally had it organised, but it decided that even though it had a sticker on the front saying "Visa", it no longer wanted to accept Visa cards. Or, it goes without saying, cash.
So, we walked over and waited in a line for ten minutes before a helpful girl sold us two tickets on Saturday's 16:15 train to Épernay, the heart of the French wine region. Should be good fun, but for now we had more of Paris to see.
The day's drizzle didn't deter us from stopping along the south bank of the Seine to munch on yet another baguette-and-fruit lunch. We weren't too far from one of the tourist-boat stops, and when one pulled in, a guy wandered if we wanted to jump on board. He didn't appear to be doing much business on such a day.
But no, we pushed along to the river, noticing out of one eye Australian Dream, best described as an Australian stuff shop. We of course had to go in and have a look around, but it was quite disappointing - not even a chance to stock up on our Vegemite supplies, although we could have paid large sums of cash for Violet Crumbles, VB or of course didjeridoos, boomerangs and kangaroo signs galore. The signs were even in French!
Not much further along was famous Shakespeare & Co. bookshop, positioned just back from the water right in the middle of town. This English-language book shop has been running for fifty years or so, and is the brain-child of one guy who just collected a random assortment of obsolete books. In the end, after an hour or so I had to drag Liz out of the shop - we could have bought half the books in there - every second one one or both of us said "Hey, I've always wanted to read that". For now, books are dead weight that we can best avoid.
More pleasant strolling finally found us at the object of the afternoon's wanderings - Musee d'Orsay. We didn't really know what it housed, but the fact that it was set in an 1900s train station was enough to get our tourist dollars and be our token musem for the city. The queue proceeded much faster than expected, and after the lady actually looked in our backpack (she gave up looking for bombs when she saw our beanies and baguettes!), we checked it into the cloakroom and went wandering.
Having pretty much no idea what to expect turned out to be a good thing. There was plenty of same-ish art, sculpture and the like, but then we found some really interesting things. First was a small collection of Gaudi pieces, fresh in our mind after seeing so much in Barcelona. Next was an amusingly-named artist whom neither of us had ever heard of called Camille Pissarro. We both profess to not really appreciate art much at all, nor know much about it, but his impressionist works had both of us, independently, captivated.
The building itself was suitably impressive, and there were lots of other rooms, too much to take in even if we had have had more than an hour and a half before closing time to look around.
Hunger had come yet again, and we decided to walk back to the dingy part of town we found last night, up on Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis in 10e. The long walk felt almost normal after so much, yet our bodies don't really stop complaining - my knees and Liz's back. We consoled ourself with some cheap Chinese at the far end of the street, but it was no match on the stuff we get at home, had in Singapore or indeed Jono and Penny had in China.
We had originally intended to have a stop in a cheap pub or two, but we were exhausted. Just enough energy (and will to save money and keep fit) remained to propel us on the walk back down to the crappy expensive hostel, where we are spending the evening doing some long-overdue journal catchup.

author Tim	location Paris, France
posted 21:34 CET 29/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

Fantastic Parisian Weather! ( 49 photos )
Breakfast went by almost as a replay of the previous day - same seats, same family nearby and same strange woman running the show.
But outside, it was a different matter. Gone were the clouds of the day before - the weather was absolutely fantastic! Not a cloud in the sky, so we put everything else by the wayside and went out to explore.
After an attempted visit to Shakespeare and Co. bookshop (it was closed), and looking for one of the nearby internet cafés (they and the ones around wanted twelve euro just to connect the laptop to their network!!!), we consulted Lonely Planet for some outdoor things to do around town.
First on the list, and reasonably nearby, was a visit to Jardin du Luxembourg. Everywhere around town, the autumn colours in the trees are gorgeous, leaving amber everywhere (although the street-sweepers are amazingly efficient at cleaning the leaves all away), and the city's gardens are no exception. We wandered through trees, spending time in the sun where possible (still very cold, especially with no clouds about), swapping cameras with some English tourists for a photo shoot, then settling down across the pond from Palais du Luxembourg for some serious relaxing. Here we ate our standard fare (at least it has changed from the standard fare of pasta and sauce a while back, I suppose) and did not much.
Another park was beckoning next, and after a quick trip back to the hotel for some cutlery and supplies, we went to soak up the rays (albeit warmly clothed) in Jardin des Tuileries, next to the Louvre. The hotel strangely provided free copies of The Guardian (English paper similar to The Sydney Morning Herald), or at least we thought they were free, and took one anyway. We read this in parts each for quite some time, enjoying the water, parklands and glorious weather all around us.
After so much lethargy, it was time to get the walking shoes on - this time in a new direction, north. We went through Place de L'Opera, a traffic-choked plaza in front of Paris' impressive Opera House. I've heard it described it as ugly, and perhaps compared to Sydney's it isn't fantastic, but still it is far more attractive than the last piece of property we owned, Rosie the big red bus, so I don't think people can really whinge.
While I remember, Parisian drivers are crazy. They break for pretty much nobody who doesn't have a siren blaring, and few people that do. There are lots of places where there are pedestrian crossings on the road but you'd be pretty foolish to assume that you, as a pedestrian, will actually get braked for. Also, getting from A to B on a map is a slow process here, since there are so many pedestrian crossing lights to navigate - we even have special "Green Man" songs to sing, urging him to appear so we can get somewhere.
Right, back on track, further next we followed the expensive restaurants north along Rue Blanche to arrive at one of the most let-down sights in the city - Moulin Rouge. Sure, we've seen the movie a few times, and obviously didn't expect it to be much like the movie, but we were still dissapointed. Just an ugly building, with an ugly red windmill (hence, of course, Moulin Rouge), and price tags that nobody earning legitimate income could afford. That of course excludes us completely, since we have earnt no income since June.
So, we settled for a few touristy photos, before pushing north in search of a few other interesting-looking things on our tourist map. Up the hill a bit further, there are a couple of other windmills. These at least could actually have been used, since they are not blocked all around by other buildings like Moulin Rouge's one is. Also, I guess, there isn't much need for grinding wheat in that place.
The area from here started to get much more attractive, easily a part of Paris that the tourist buses avoid (actually, they couldn't navigate the windy cobbled streets even if they wanted too), and we spent quite a while looking in pokey little places, walking down the other side of the hill to Paris' last remaining vineard (nothing but vines and signs in French only though), taking a photo or two looking north into the suburbs of Paris, before stumbling back into tourist-land. It was like being woken out of a great dream only to find that actually you are in a really crappy hostel and everyone is snoring and it's only 4am and now you won't get back to sleep. But I digress - it really was sad to get back to the part of town where tourists walked (from the other direction, more on that soon), only to buy truck-loads of Chinese-made garbage and get back on the buses.
Walking past the expensive bars and cafés, it wasn't hard to see why they were all here - the huge church Sacre Coeur and it's views over the city to the south. On such a day they were really out in droves, so it was amazing to see that when we walked into the church for a look around (on our church-scale, it gets about a 4 out of 10 - we are really fussy now), most people actually followed the instructions, being quiet and not taking photos! That is so rare these days - one of the problems of mass tourism is that people forget that Disneyland and a religeous site are not the same thing, and as such different behavior is expected.
Next we enjoyed the view down over the city, taking it all in, spotting the sights, but noticing that a haze sat over the view, like so many other places. There was a funicular back down but we elected to walk, following pleasant meandering paths down to the bottom, where yet more tourist touts tried to sell us things to put in our hair, barking dogs that run around the ground and of course the ever-present Eiffel Tower keyring.
We walked south-east along the ugly dirty Boulevard de Magenta, turning right randomly into what turned out to be exactly what we had been looking for since we arrived - the cheap part of town! The city is so expensive in the core area (the standard measures are coffee 3 euro, half-litre beer 7 euro and Cornetto Soft 3 euro), that we had pretty much assumed that was the same most places. Instead, it turns out that is just anywhere within say 2km of an open-top tourist bus stop.
Here, we had found where the 'locals' live - dirty, but as multi-cultural as you could imagine, with the food to match. Standard measures dropped to 1 euro coffee, 3 euro beer and 1.50 cornetto! Tempted to drop in and enjoy it all, we restrained ourselves to a cheaper-still baguette to take back with us. On the way we passed a McDonalds which, strangely had been closed - not something you see every day. However, this one had copies of newspaper stories plastered all over it, the gist of which I got was that people had protested about dodgy labour practices and perhaps dodgy food, forcing the place to be closed! If only the rest of the world would follow suit...
Crossing the last few bridges to our hotel, we were presented with one of the most beautiful sunsets we have seen for a long time. Wow. Picture says a thousand words and all that, I'll just shut up on this one.

author Tim	location Paris, France
posted 22:28 CET 29/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

First Paris Wanderings ( 53 photos )
After a great night's sleep after the bus the night before, we packed up our things as we needed to move to a cheaper room. But first breakfast came, and we missed our chance to get the nice window seat. There wasn't really enough places for breakfast for the amount of people staying there, but I guess you can't really complain too much for a zero-star hotel!
The breakfast was good enough, plenty of hot drinks and of course the French baguette, to become our staple diet of the next few days. After moving to the smaller, no-view but still clean enough for our needs room, we dumped our things again and went out to explore the city.
About two minutes walk away is one of the city's most famous sites - Cathédral Notre-Dame. It too is on Île de la Cité, the other end to our hotel. It wasn't hard to work out what it was when we spotted it thanks to the cameras and bus-loads of tourists around, but I have to admit I expected something more impressive. It is one of those buildings who's front face hides a lot of interesting things inside.
And what an inside it has, as we found out with a great wander around the place. It's huge of course, with plenty of stained glass like most other similar churches, but this has also lots of great frescoes.
To me the interest of places like this is from an architectural point of view, and that is just as well. I think if I were more of a religeous person, I would have been sorely disappointed. They allow free entry (good, it's built for the people after all), photography (wonderful, it doesn't damage anything), flashes (bad, bad, bad - very distracting and also potentially damaging), but worst of all loud talking and mobile phones.
It's all well and good to hope that people will be nice and give the place the respect it deserves, but it will take more than the stares of Liz and I to make people like one Japanese buiseness man doing a loud deal on his phone as we wandered around change their ways. Others didn't really even notice, since they were talking so loudly themselves. A sad state of affairs, really.
After that, we walked outside for a breather, escaping about 98% of the tourists by simply walking around the other side of the building into a rather pleasant park there. Liz pointed out and explained the flying butresses on the building - something I had never heard of but which she told me were hold the higher walls of the building in. Learn something new every day!
At the far-east tip of the island we wandered into Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation - the city's holocaust memorial. It was different from others in other places we have seen, with strange haunting architecture designed to evoke understanding of the conditions people lived and died in. Reading the names on the walls of the concentration camps we visited in Germany was spooky enough for us, it's almost beyond imagination what the actual experience must have been like.
Even though the weather was so terrible that we could no longer pick out the Eiffel Tower from where we were, we decided that a walk over to that part of town would be worth while, with a few detours.
First through Jardin des Tuileries next to the Louvre, where we admired all the grounds as we wandered along westward - plenty of proper outdoor chairs which no doubt were packed full on better days than this with people all around the fountains and ponds, enjoying living and working in such a beautiful city. At the end of the Jardin, we entered Place de la Concorde. Or I should say cautiously waited for the crossing, as this is one of those amazing French intersections with lots of roads all coming together, governed by very few rules. There is an Ejyptian obelisk in the middle, pilfered like so many others we have seen on our travels - when we ever make it there there will be nothing left of the place. By this stage we could make out the Eiffel Tower, except for the top. Very misty though.
It was still plenty cold as we made our way along Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the famous wide street leading up towards the Arc de Triomphe. We just kept on walking, waiting for lights to cross, snapping the occasional photo when less than ten million cars were in the frame, and dodging scam-artists who curiously wanted us to buy bags and wallets for them, with cash, since their duty-free allowance had been used up. Steer well clear of that one.
Eventually we were at place Charles de Gaulle. This place is totally crazy - the world's largest roundabout. As earlier, there are no lanes marked out, just thriteen different roads from which drivers attempt to fight their way to another road somewhere on the other side a long way away.
I say a long way because in the middle is the dominating Arc de Triomphe, built by Napoleon to celebrate just how good he was. How modest. It is a very French thing though, with a massive French flag flying underneath leaving you in no doubt where you are.
We would have been stupid to attempt to get to the arch with any other method than the underground passage - a bit sad, but offset by the fact that there were some great panorama photographs underneath. We said no thanks to the lift operators about a ride to the top, instead appearing just next to the arch to have a look around. There is a flame burning in rememberance of unknown soldiers, and of course that truly massive flag. Plenty of nice sculpture too.
Having come this far into tourist-land, there wasn't much left for it but to power on to the Eiffel Tower and get it all over and done with in one go. The weather meant that we didn't want to go up it today, but we still wanted a look.
We wiggled our way through streets, over bridges, then more little streets, taking the shortest path on our weary legs. For most of the last part we couldn't see it due to the high (but not skyscraper) buildings all around, and there it was! Right up there with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Colosseum and Big Ben, the most touristy sight in Europe trip was finally in sight.
Clearly we had arrived by a strange path to the place, from the north on the other side of the river - a path yet to be discovered by enterprising tourist-junk sellers, as we didn't see one until we were right near Pont d'Iéna, the bridge leading to the tower. Curiously, it was actually quite cheap, and Liz grabbed a scarf since the weather was so chilly and ours are back in, you guessed it, the van.
Just on the other side of the bridge, the real pestering began, but so did the fantastic views - the tower truly is huge, way bigger than we had imagined. Hard to believe it was almost pulled down in 1909, spared only because it was a great place to hang antennae for radio transmissions. With the mind-boggling array of souviners available displaying it and the shere quantity of people queueing for lifts up even in the terrible weather, I'm sure the French are glad it was saved after all. Plus, even given all that, it's still kind of nice to look at.
Walking out the other side, we took more photos of course, but none really that good due to the weather. We set across the city, via a post office where the helpful guy told me that he could either sell me a package for eighteen euros to post my CDs home or I could go to the newsagent ('Library') across the street, buy a package for one euro then he could sell me the stamps. Then, as the French say, Whalla! (Not sure of the spelling, though).
Next came the best news in ages - we finally got through to Donna from the Netherlands to find out when Rosie was being picked up for towing back there, only to hear that all systems are go and she should arrive in the next few days! Didn't expect that, things look to be working well for a change.... (touching plenty of wood on this table here).
We weaved our way back to our hotel via Place Vendôme with its interesting bronze central column and 'fashionable' shops, an Irish pub (hey, we miss the place!) which was hideously expensive and the saving some money by getting dinner from one of the big Monoprix supermarkets, near Pyramides Metro. These places are kind of strange, because they have a K-Mart type shop on the street level, then a supermarket (and maybe restaurant, ...) underneath. This makes getting a large quantity of shopping out difficult, but we managed our small haul just fine.
The trip also passed us through the Louvre - it's very strange having such a famous place as just something we pass through in our travels around town. Opening the doors to the hotel a wave of warmth came over us - it is getting truly chilly outside now, and we are looking forward in earnest to meeting up with our warm gear in the coming weeks.

author Tim	location Paris, France
posted 21:53 CET 31/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

Into Paris - Louvre ( 30 photos )
(Continued from España 1)
It's a little confusing due to the fact that daylight savings stopped but the bus clock didn't follow suit, but I think it was around the second 3am that I got sick of the annoying bus seats, rolled over and noted that people on the other side were lying back in considerably more comfort than us.
We had searched in vain when first getting into our seats for the button to make the backs lean back, but now my search started again in earnest. This was so uncomfortable that I just had to find that button! In the end it was in the one place we hadn't looked, and upon pressing it in my sleepy state, a kind of nirvana was entered as the back rest slowly glided back!
I hastily woke Liz, but hers proved even harder to find as she had the window seat. Still, it was managed and we slept much better after that. Our backs never really forgave us for that journey, but that's the price to pay for cheap travel I guess. The guy behind us was a bit disappointed that we finally worked it out also, as he had been enjoying the extra space. Tough luck!
Around 6am we stopped again at a no-name truck stop where people (including myself) heaped in coffees to enable them to face the day - it would be far worse than our situation to have to go to work after a night like that.
A little while back now, when Rosie blew her last puff of smoke, Liz and I sat down and made a list of the things that we would miss most if we flew home directly from Padova, calling it quits. Most of those we have done - Rome, Spainish Food, etc., but first and foremost on the list was Paris.
Some of the places we go to are pretty obscure (although less so now that we don't have the van), but Paris is one that doesn't really need much explaining. Even if you ignore the tourist sites such as the Eiffel Tour and the Louvre, it is still a pretty compelling city. And, as we were to discover, an amazingly beautiful one.
The bus finally trundled into Gare Routière Internationale, on the eastern edge of the city. The 15 hours had passed amazingly quickly, even though the first half had been done without the aid of the seat's magic button. We were more than glad to get off at the end, however, and try to learn another city's Metro system to get us into the middle of town.
I really love Metro systems - it's most probably an extension of my childhood fascination with trains. The Paris one is really old, on par with London's, and just as big and confusing, if not more so. We found a really cool old board where you pressed a button next to the name of any of the three-hundered or so stations, and it lit up the path through the Metro system, showing you where to change and so on, helping you to navigate between the 16 Metro lines, 5 RER lines and two tram lines.
We walked to a ticket counter and purchased a carnet of ten tickets, and the girl even voluntarily gave us a map of the system! I think the stories of the nasty-tempered unhelpful French are slowly receeding into myth.
We journeyed from Gallieni smack-bang into the middle of town, emerging top-side once again at pont Neuf. Since pont means bridge, we had found ourselves right on the Seine, the river running through Paris. It divides the city into the Left Bank (south) and the Right Bank (north). However, we had chosen a hotel right on an island in the middle of the city, Île de la Cité. This place stood out as amazingly cheap and amazingly well placed.
We walked over pont Neuf onto the island, then into place Dauphine, a quiet goregous little square at the western end of the island. Hôtel Henry IV shows its 250-year age well, being very run-down, creaky, smelly, yet with the two features we needed - cheap and central. Time Out magazine describes it as a "deluxe dive", and that's pretty apt really.
We hadn't booked, which was pretty brave, but it turned out that we could get ourselves a more expensive (and much better) room for one day, then a cheaper one for two more. Taken.
One of the virtues of being so amazingly central in a city such as Paris is that you have all this cool stuff about five minutes walk away. Just back across pont Neuf and a little west, we found our way into The Louvre.
We had heard so much about how long the queues were that we really hadn't intended to bother, but by some strange miracle the queue was really short and also, being a Sunday, it was cheap day also. We didn't need to be told twice, and quickly passed security, going down under the big glass pyramid into the reception area to grab a couple of tickets.
My plan was to go towards the Mona Lisa as fast as possible, get it out of the way and then go on from there. But this proved a little more challenging than first planned, so we went via quite a few other places, enjoying pretty much everything we saw.
The Mona Lisa itself was surrounded by six security guards and of course behind bullet-proof glass. We were urged to keep moving, giving us about thirty seconds to look at it before being moved on along the one-way traffic system. A bit sad, but I guess now we can say we saw it.
As we have mentioned before, we're no art buffs, so any art gallery inevitably becomes just a wander and work it out affair, going wherever takes our fancy. We saw plenty of Objets d'art, Antiquities, of course Paintings and some sculpture for good measure. The latter was best represented in Cour Marly, a large room which has been made to look like the park where all the sculpture in it used to reside. The natural lighting and space work well. Infact, the whole museum is suprisingly spaced out, nothing ever feels like they have tried to fit everything they possibly can out on display. Which is good, because we still didn't take most of it in.
I particularly liked a couple of pieces from around the place - the Eagle of Abbot Suger which is a shiny relic vase thing no doubt worth more than I'll ever earn and an amazingly ornate chess board, complete with little people under glass all around it in varying poses.
We had a break for lunch in nearby Jardin des Tuileries, where we found it amazingly cold - a theme to be repeated for most of our time in Paris. Sitting under a tree, we watched people go about their business in such a beautiful city, walking under the Arc de Triomphe de Carrousel and through the park grounds. We would get back here more than once, being so handy.
By the end of it all, we were pretty tired from lack of sleep and really needed to go and sleep. It's a shame that the tickets aren't valid for two days or something, because we felt that we could have seen so much more, but that's the common problem with museums. Leaves something for next time anyway.
Back to the hotel for an afternoon nap (funny how we did that after we leave Spain and its famous Siestas!), after which we spent the night in, noting the beautiful place Dauphine out the window.

author Tim	location Barcelona, Catalunya, España
posted 10:20 CEST 17/10/03	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 1 ( all photos )

Waiting for Trains II ( 30 photos )
Getting up the earliest we had for a long time, we easily beat the sun out into the world, heading straight for the station and the 8:07 train.
Only it didn't exist. That's not a huge problem, except that there were two other options to get us to Port-Bou. Firstly, we could pay up 44 euros extra on top of the ticket price we had already paid and get on some ultra super-dooper fast train at 8:46. No thanks, these tickets cost us enough already.
That left us with option number two - the 13:29 slow cheap train. Pausing briefly to wonder just how useless and out of date the timetable at the hostel which mentioned the 8:07 train must have been, we trudged out of the station to get some breakfast and begin a long wait in the town Perpignan with seemingly nothing whatsoever to do.
We sat for a couple of hours at the first café we found, having a hearty breakfast of croissants, juice and coffee as we generally sat and planned all the things we want to do should we ever get anywhere via train.
Upon leaving, we asked for an Internet café and were directed further down the main road of town (there's only one of note) to Hotel Meditteranian. There we fought with silly French keyboards for a while, tapping away and reading mails. Not much chance of plugging the laptop there, we thought.
But we were wrong - as we were leaving, a guy was sitting at the bar with a laptop, wireless card hanging conspicuously out the side! How silly, one of the few places we didn't bother to check, and there was free wireless net access in this crappy little town! A few clicks and we were away, updating the website and doing other things we haven't done for ages. The girl didn't even charge us for the wireless bit because she didn't know she had the system there! No arguments from us.
It was finally time to go back towards the train station, where we sat for another eternity before the train appeared on the boards and went to wait for it on the platform.
The poor old run-down thing rattled into the station, and clattered us towards Port-Bou. Remember we still haven't made it to Spain yet, which has been our goal for two days or so now.
Just before Port-Bou station, we crossed the border into España.

author Tim	location Barcelona, Catalunya, España
posted 10:06 CEST 17/10/03	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 1 ( all photos )

Waiting for Trains ( 30 photos )
This was a day where not a huge amount was achieved, mostly due to the poor connections between trains across the south of France.
First we waited in Nice for a train which would take us to Marseille, then we waited outside the station there. I did a run down to the cheap food shops, returning with a couple of huge kebabs and some pasta sauce.
We plotted a route towards the famous yet hard-to-reach border station with Spain, Port-Bou. But by the time we had managed the changes in trains, we decided that a good place to rest for the evening was a few stops short in Perpignan. The main reason for this was there was a HI hostel only 400m from the station.
Arriving there, we found the town really didn't amount to much. A helpful woman at the station pointed us towards the hostel, where we trudged along for a while (notably further than 400m, though). In the dark this ugly town looked even worse, so we weren't expecting much. It turned out to be alright though, in a nice old Catalan-style house where everything was clean and functional, if far from new.
After waiting while the rather rude guy talked to his mates for twenty minutes as we just sat there with the bags waiting to check in, we did so. He seemed a bit apologetic and gave us a cheaper deal.
The kitchen was outside, where we had to elbow in for some space on the two burner stove (Campingaz, no less!), to cook guess what. Liz attended to that while I went for a walk with a Canadian guy called Mark, returning with some refreshments for the night.
We took note of the trains for the next morning, setting alarms to get up early for the 8:07 train to Port-Bou.

author Tim	location Girona, Catalunya, España
posted 08:03 CEST 16/10/03	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 1 ( all photos )

Beaches - Monaco, Nice ( 30 photos )
The weather was excellent as we awoke, so I dragged my shorts out from the bottom of our pack, we ate the great included breakfast and then it was time to head off to soak up some sun.
Getting from Nice to Monaco on the train again was less hassle this time, rolling into the station and out the far exit, we found ourselves at a little fruit market in place d'Armes. That such a thing could exist in a place of such oppulence was at first suprising, but the more we looked around, the more it was apparent that not just the ultra-rich lived here, but more 'average' people called this place home also.
It took a while to work out how to pay for the apple we selected for consumption, but that done, it was off in search of touristy shops. We were running low on cash, which turned out to be a very good thing - not much could be afforded at all! Even our fridge magnet for the collection had to wait until we could find an ATM - something which was far harder than we expected in such a place. Perhaps if you are rich you just have accounts everywhere and don't need cash.
We walked down the quay on the south side of Port de Monaco, past billions of dollars worth of yachts, hyper-expensive restaurants, and generally feeling quite out of place. That's a feeling that didn't really leave us - nobody was actively rude to us, but there is an atmosphere of exclusiveness, something backpackers aren't really all about.
Next around the Port to the northern side, where we had the general aim of exploring Monte Carlo and finding an ATM for some cash. There are lots of streets going the same way here, but each is terraced higher than the next, so as to provide a way of getting around on such a steep landscape. We chose one of the lower ones, which still wound fairly high through the side of the mountain, with great views of the water out of the one open side.
There was a lift up into the famous casino here, which I guess explains the presence of a tourist shop. They have the standard stuff available, with an emphasis on Formula 1, due of course to the fact that one of the races is run here in late May. We had tried to pick pieces of the course out during our walks (it's all run on the streets), but settled for the fact that driving anywhere around this place at 300km/h is going to be pretty nuts. With fantastic views, however.
Out the other side of the mountain, and past an amazing piece of architecture in the Jardin Japonais towards our holy grail - Monte Carlo Beach.
It has been so long since we saw a piece of coastline, let alone in fantastic weather, with huge fish swimming right up to the water's edge and in a place as famous as this. The stones were even much smaller than in Nice (perhaps the rich employ people to break them in to smaller pieces?) In no time at all, we were lazing around, soaking up the rays and cursing the fact that our swimming costumes are back in Rosie. Who would have thought that mid-October in Europe would be swimming weather. Plenty of people, I guess, since there were others around too. Most of these, however, were so over-tanned that their skin was sagging middle-aged women, obviously living here while hubby was away earning millions, with nothing better to do than laze on the beach all day.
It wasn't such a bad plan, and it was quite a task to tear us away from the place, but there was more to see, and a beach, although not as pretty, was awaiting us in Nice also. We looked pretty silly there anyway, being the youngest there by about thirty years, and the whitest since we tan incedentally to our travels only, not as an occupation.
We found our way up a couple of tiers, and walked back past the famous Casino de Monte Carlo where so much rich people's money has been moved to other rich people that we felt it deserved a photo, but not our patronage. Besides, I don't think we quite fit the desired clientele profile.
Almost back to the train station to hitch a ride out of there, we remembered that we didn't have a magnet yet. The fastest way back due to the fact we were now a long way up from the water and hence the cheapy tourist shop was to go back in the station, down a huge long lift into the mountain where the station is, then walk down some more steps and ramps, arriving at place Ste-Dévote. The return journey to the touristy place was eased by the fact that we also grabbed a couple of ice creams, our first in weeks and quite justified in the heat of the day.
The last of our little coastal trains was waiting for us, which pulled out eventually and chugged back to Nice, stopping again at all of these tiny little stations, which I imagine only a month or so ago were totally clogged with rich tourists staying places where the poor dare not to tread.

The beach in Monte Carlo had given us a taste, and now there was only one thing for it - get a picnic and spent the afternoon and evening doing pretty close to nothing on Nice beach. We spent five hours there in total, doing nothing but chatting, munching, drinking, and looking forward in no small terms to doing exactly the same back on Cronulla beach in a month or two. And there, there is actually sand, which our bums would have loved after five hours of sitting on large stones.
The sun went down early, which coupled with the fact that it doesn't get light until about 8am now (very strange after our travels to North Cape) means that daylight savings must be on the way, which we look forward to.

author Tim	location the 13:29 Perpignan to Port-Bou train, France
posted 14:09 CEST 15/10/03	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 1 ( all photos )

Marseille, across Côte d'Azur to Nice ( 30 photos )
Shunning the not-included-at-HI-hostels breakfast, we shouldered packs early, having learnt that the bus we had taken to get there the day before didn't run on Sundays, and hence we would have to take another one.
We walked around the local soccer field where plenty of morning action was going on, interestingly with the spectators outside the fences. This bus-stop proved a little tricky to locate, but we did so on a side-street. Reading and understanding the maps and timetables proved to be almost impossible, so we just sat back and waited for a bus to arrive with the correct destination on the board.
Two more tickets got us back into the centre of town, and then it was back to the train station. After dumping our bags at the station for a ridiculous sum of money, we were quite naughty and fell for a Sunday morning McDonalds breakfast, tasting pretty much the same as it does back home.
Being France's second largest city doesn't really do much to change the fact that it is grotty and doesn't do much to hide that. We set off in search of the soul of the city, buried under kebab wrappers and all the rest of the rubbish. We headed first west along la Canebière, down directly towards the water. Strangely, as we did so, the city cleaned up its act just a little. I guess it is similar to leaving some parts of Redfern in Sydney.
Along quai des Belges at the end of Vieux Port, there was a fish market which paled in comparison to others we have spent time in such as Bergen. The fish were all fresh enough though, most being in buckets out the back, and prodded on the stands to show that they were still kicking. Not quite what we wanted to see to entice us into a purchase.
So, instead, we headed north to see a few interesting places with little time to do so before our annoyingly 'booked' train. We walked west along the north of Vieux Port, along quai du Port. Randomly choosing a side street, we turned north in search of adventure. I'm not sure we really found that, but this whole area, the Panier Quarter, was certainly quite different. Steep narrow streets were the order of the day, and although not quite immaculate, the area was much cleaner than we expected it to be.
Prices were high at most of the little shops, but at least they were open. We didn't grab anything to cook with there, instead just pushing through towards the station. We eventually hit boulevard des Dames, and followed this back east towards the station Gare St. Charles.
Massive roadworks made our progress slow and frequently we had to dodge into the middle of the road to get around. At least the French drivers try not to hit you, unlike the Italians did!
It was almost time for our train, so we trudged back up the huge staircase to the train station, where I went back to get our bags out of the lockers. In the second incident in recent times, there were four Australians giving us bad names in the locker room. If you insist in swearing your head off in foreign countries, at least do it without an Australian flag on your pack.

The much-slower-than-the-TGV train took us along the pretty coastline, weaving our way towards Monaco, the main famous part of which is Monte Carlo. First we had to change in Nice though, and we had an hour or two with nothing to do. We were hungry again, so split a pizza at a place near the station, one of the cheapest reliable eats we can find around the place.
We boarded the local train towards Monaco, which sits on a blurry line between a country and state of France. Technically its a Principality, but it's only 1.95km square so for most practical reasons it's part of France.
Whatever the case was, we got off the train there in the spiffy new train station, picked a random exit and set off in search of our hostel. The change from Marseille was absolute. Since the residents of Monaco pay no taxes, you can imagine that the rich all feature quite prominently. Ferraris and BMWs were all in evidence parked under/around the huge high-rise buildings with views over the sea.
Our exit from the station had been through a lift which took us high up the hill, so at least our search for the hostel was all downhill from there. After a few wrong turns, we found ourselves outside the right building. Only the demolition company's sign, the huge crane overhead and the rubble all around did not bode well. Checking the sign above the building confirmed that we had infact found Centre de la Jeunesse Princesse Stèphanie, but it appeared that the Princess had long since deserted the place.
We threw our bags down to have a think about this. Here we were, in one of the world's most expensive cities, with the only cheap place to stay boarded up. We checked a couple of times, but it seems that the entry in our February 2003 Lonely Planet is somewhat out of date. Infact, for the city, they show the train station in the right place, but the hostel description is relative to the old train station, now nothing but a shell!
So, we did what any budget travellers not prepared to pay 85 euros for the next cheapest option would do - we trudged back to the train to get back to Nice. We could have asked the Tourist Information if there were any other places, but they were all closed - both offices.

All this finding accommodation stuff was getting to us, so we rang ahead and booked a room in Nice in what was actually a hotel, although which strangely had a double bed in a dorm room, Hôtel Belle Meunière. We laughed away the hour or so we had to wait for a train back thinking that the place we were about to travel through might sound like a pile of manure, but at least they answered the phone.
It turned out to be right near the station, and a great little place too. France and Spain seem to have a number of hotels where they do dorm rooms, or even proper double rooms for very cheap prices. Just not so in Monaco.
One thing the place didn't have was a kitchen, so it was off to our third take-away meal for the day, not very good at all really. At least we push for cheap stuff, which in some cases is less than the cost of cooking. We located a kebab shop (a bit harder task than it was in Marseille, but not much) and grabbed some food, which we wanted to eat on the beach washed down with a beer. Three of the local lads thought it would be amusing to throw their pistachio nut shells at us as we waited for our food - we glared and said 'Pardon' but only got laughs in return.
When I went into a shop to grab a beer to take with us, it turned out that one of the shell-throwers was running the store. I made it quite clear that he wasn't going to get any money off me, put the beer back and off we went. Stupid idiot.
We found a drink somewhere else (cheaper!), and capped off our dinner with a nice long walk along the beach front. The beach was only about 1km from our hotel, and was covered in 1-3 inch stones, not quite the sand we have back home! Still, they were rounded and quite easy to walk along. Our walk back went via some of the centre of town, blundering our way along but generally having a ball exploring the city.
Arriving not too late, we didn't wake up our room-mate in the single bed (we had a double, remember), Hayley from the US.

author Tim	location the 13:29 Perpignan to Port-Bou train, France
posted 13:46 CEST 15/10/03	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 1 ( all photos )

Into Marseille ( 30 photos )
Being in separate dorms which we aren't quite prepared for, we only have one alarm clock. We had chosen quite an early time to meet downstairs, breakfast and get on the rails, but Liz didn't show! She wandered in quite a while later, having had not the best night's sleep. Happens now and again, unfortunately.
After our breakfast, we decided to leave Lyon, and hence headed back to the main train station. Discussions the night before had meant that we wanted to spend little time in the middle of France, instead heading for the famous "South of France", on the French Riviera, or Côte d'Azur, to spend quite a bit of time there.
Our journey was through the scenic Rhône Valley, to change trains at a previously-unheard of place called Nimes, where we intended to buy an extra return ticket to Monaco. Most of this went fairly well, although we had to get another train through to Marseille before we could head further east. The annoying thing about having tickets on the French train system is that you have to specify specific times you wish to travel, and in many cases pay suppliments.
We had happily paid the suppliment to travel from Lyon down to Nimes, on one of the trains I had wanted to get on ever since I was a little kid and learnt all about trains of the world. The pride of the French train fleet is the TGV, an ultra-fast way to get across the country. The GPS proved to us that we were infact screaming along at 295km/h, easily the fastest we have ever travelled while still having something joining us to the earth.
By the time the connecting train got us late into Marseille, we only just made it to the next train, where we found other people sitting in our reserved seats and a train number that didn't quite match up. Confused, we chose to break our journey there and changed our reservations to the next morning.
Looking into the great little French Youth Hostel Association guide book, we found that we could get to a HI hostel there with just a simple bus ride. Lonely Planet describes the city as "not in the least bit beautified for the sake of tourists". What an apt description. There was rubbish everywhere, beggars, and generally not much to bring a traveller there at all, except maybe as a stop if you were passing through. It did manage to have such a concentration of kebab shops that at one stage we saw three right next to each other - a feat not achieved even in Istanbul.
After waiting for a while on the busy arterial la Canebière, the bus arrived, and we somehow managed to get a ticket from the driver, and it wound its way towards Auberge de Jeunesse Château de Bois Luzy, in a neighbourhood about 5km out of town. The place itself is rather interesting, being in an old castle, rather run down, but that is part of its character. We had to lug our bags there quite a way from the bus stop, but it was all worked out in the end.
We couldn't quite check in yet, so I went for a wander back down to the shops to gather some foodstuffs for dinner, communicating with the shop-staff how I do not know, and coming away with a couple of cake things, some pasta sauce and a two euro bottle of wine. Not a bad haul really.
Paying up the tiny suppliment for a double room (far better than being split apart, although when they say double room here, they mean twin), we dumped our bags and set about dinner.
Saying that the place had a kitchen was a little over-kind. Infact it had gas burners that wouldn't have passed safety standards in 1950 (which at least boiled the water in about two minutes flat), and a set of cutlery, crockery and pots and pans that were extremely close to useless. We salvaged one glass to drink out of, pulled a handle off one of the pots (which actually made it better), and enjoyed a good meal.
We weren't sure where to sit at first because there was a huge conference of people all getting together and speaking rapid French (not suprising, I guess). We have no idea what it was all about, but after a while we did notice that there was not one male among them, a fact I found a little dis-concerting as I ate my dinner, the only male in the room of a hundered or so.
That all done, we continued our habit of retiring early to wake and get on the move as soon as possible.

author Tim	location the 11:14 Nice to Marseille train, France
posted 11:22 CEST 14/10/03	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 1 ( all photos )

Into Lyon ( 30 photos )
(Continued from Schweiz)
No dramatic changes as we crossed the border. Infact, we had technically been in France some months back, when we drove Rosie (R.I.P.) back to London from the Netherlands. The changes you see on the road as you drive around the place are far more pronounced than those on the trains.
On maps Lyon doesn't look all that far from the Swiss border, but it took quite a while to get there, proving the fact that France is the largest country in Europe. We hadn't chosen Lyon for any particular reason, other than it sounded interesting, was about the right distance for a day's travel, and Meaghan and Dave had been there a week or so earlier.
Alighting at the Gare de Perrache train station, we headed off in search of the HI hostel. This proved quite a hike away, across River Saône and up some amazingly steep streets to the hostel on the hill. The hike with the packs was quite strenuous, and we stopped a few times just to admire the cobbled old streets down below us and catch our breath.
Finally making it to the top, we followed the road down towards the hostel - as luck would have it, we had chosen the steepest path up (not knowing otherwise), and we had a bit of a run back down hill a way to where the hostel actually was. The bulding was huge, and admittedly had great views across the city, which has two separate World Heritage listed areas in its old towns. It seemed to take as long as the walk from the station for the girl to check us in, people jumping infront of us in the 'queue' all seemed to not have Youth Hostel cards and hence took ages to check in.
We were put in separate dorms which is most annoying with only one set of gear, so we stashed our stuff, waited twenty minutes or so to give our keys back to the receptionist, grabbed a town map and set off for a look around.
Our busy day hadn't left much time to eat, so we set off to the recommended Café 203, taking a walk through town to get there along the pedestrianised rue de la République. We ate the set menu, which was quite interesting to say the least, the 'highlight' being my dessert which was like a tart with carrot in it - very strange but edible. Sitting there was marred a little bit by the group of eight or so Australians sitting near us who decided that burping and farting would be a great way to pass the time. I think they were several under each, but that doesn't really excuse the bad wrap they are giving us to everyone else.
Looking for nothing in particular, we wandered back through the town, taking in the central square place Bellecour and then crossing back over one of the footbridges to take the shorter path back to the hostel.
We spent the evening getting our journals up to date in the communal area of the hostel, which, being a Friday night, was unfortunately doubling as a disco. The effect of the lighting was annoying enough, but the noise was just getting silly. We gave up after a while and went our separate ways to our rooms, where I had a great view out over the town from my window. All things considered, we slept quite well.

(customised)