Well, we’ve been slackers, OK, we’ve just done so much we haven’t had time to update the site. So I’ll see what I can do to get you up to speed.
Once upon a time we were in Milan. Then we travelled to Aix en Provence in Francem quite south in France. It was a very pretty train trip travelling through the mountains between France and Italy, would make a nice quiet getaway around there, with waterfalls coming off the mountains and green green pastures. After getting up at 5.45 to get the train out, we stopped a couple of stations, some which we were to travel back through on our way up to Paris later. We arrived at about 3.30 and had to find a hotel. We did alright, nice place close to everything, but had 2 double rooms and I had to share a bed with Pat, something that became a little tooo regular if you know what I mean.
We had our first French dining experience with some amazing foodm except my main. Ordered lamb somethingm which ended up being a very small portion of lamb shish, tres petit. For the price of the meal, that lamb was worth its weight in gold! But the friendly, cute French waitresses made up for everything. As did the desserts, we quickly learnt that the French seriously know how to do dessert. From here on in it’s wine and dessert with everything! We also learnt that there are soooo many cute young lasses in France, I’m definately moving here!
Then we caught the end of the game, which Pat storified already so I’ll skip on. As became a habit in France, we wandered the city by night, soaking up the atmosphere, checking out cathedrals and such by night. We went to a tea house at some point, and had tea, cake and the French hookah … I’m afraid Turkey does hookah better.
Next day, we started late, not doing much and decided to forgo eating out for I think only the 2nd time since leaving Australia. We had a picnic in the park with you guessed it, 2 bottles of wine, several cheeses and a couple of baguettes. So we sat listening to some French rock band warm up for some kind of show later that night, sounded good warming up, but looked like it was going to turn into some death metal event once we noticed guys turning up early.
Rest of the day was just more town wandering, and drinking beers in one of the many “squares”, France seems to have a lot of sqaures, while watching street performers, and attempting to speak French to waitresses. Later on we tried hard core street foodm which is nothing like hardcore Turkish street food. We had an awesome pizza, and possible one of the cheapest meals so far.
Then we had some really bad cocktails on the main drag and gave up and found beer near the hotel. Then home for cards and Raki (yeah, still got left overs from Turkey), and falling asleep while doing so.
Next day was train to Avignon, can’t remember when we found accommodation, but possibly booked it the day before, that’s about as organised as we ever got. Ended up with a really cool hotelm the Hotel Medieval, was kinda old (as everything is) and down a side street, ol’ skool big staircase leading up to the rooms. And just a really nice room, with comfy beds, except one which we gave Pat.
After that we wandered for food, I think we spent 1/3 of our trip wandering for either food or beer/winem just the way it should be. Found a German restaurant, I had sausage, I like sausage. While eating dinner we decided to look for a show to see, as Avignon was in festival mode, all sorts of things going on, streets all very lively. I decided on a juggling show that sounded very cool from the guide in the very limited French that I pretend I know.
So we found out where this show was, and managed to get there with minutes to spare (OK, about 15 of them) but still not bad for a last minute decision. The show ended up being fantastic, the other guys struggled to keep themselves awake, I had trouble in the last few minutes, due to exhaustion, not boredom. Was called Convergence 1.0 and was basically a kind of weirdo futuristic, modern interpretive movement juggling act, with a transparent screen in front of the juggler that had images projected onto it, so he was juggling light balls. The audience was very quiet the entire show, until one point a pong game was projceted onto the screen, with our juggler interacting with the pong balls. That got a laugh out of them.
It was soon to be dark, so you guessed it … we wandered the city, saw some live music outside the palace, cathedral, pope’s hangout thing in the town. People everywherem still very festive. Then wandered to a broken bridge, basically went half way otu to an island and stopped. Can’t remember why it was broken, but it was cool. Then we got lost on our way back to the hotel, I was too tired to use my spidey senses that have gotten us home so many times before. But eventually they came back to me and we made it back.
Next day Maia and I had to find our way to Loriol, small town, middle of nowhere for Maia’s friends wedding. We got our trains and tickets OK, but when we got the the Loriol stop, it didn’t look like a stop, train appeared to have stopped in the middle of the line, and we didn’t know that we had to push a button to open the doors. So next stop, we realised we did and got off there. Luckily it was only 5 minutes down the track, as opposed to the others that were about 20-30 minutes apart.
Then we met some girls who didn’t speak a word of English, yet were probably the most helpful people we have come across, who got us the number for a taxi. Maia tried ordering one, but sucked at it 😛 so one of the girls ordered it for us. The taxi finally arrived, and took us to Loriol, and for some reason there was mother and assumed daughter as driver and direction giver. Both had no idea where the church we wanted to go was, so that made for an interesting ride! But we got there eventually, with backpacks in tow, and only about 30 minutes late.
After the church, met some Aussie year 11 exchange student who was only at the wedding because his French homestay family knew one of the relatives, these guys then drove us to the reception, which was at a purdy country house. Wedding was interesting, mostly in French. Reception was full of food and wine, started with appertisers at about 5.00 and food just kept coming til after midnight, dessert started at midnight. Lots of meats, cheeses and wines and dessertsm so many desserts.
Maia and I crashed a bit earlier cos we had to get up for train to Dijon the next day, and another of those cute little French girls helped us out with a timetable – which she didn’t really seem to understand at the time, and as we found out the next day, also didn’t realise that there’s only 1 train out of Loriol on Sundays at 7.30am! Ah well, we found this out at the station, and it was my turn to attempt taxi ordering in French. At the end of the conversation, girl on phone speaking French, me speaking English, and only understanding key words, I thought I had it right, and I figured we might have one in 20 minutes. Taxi turned up 20 minutes later, so I must have, phew!
We were told Montellimar was only 15 mins away – half an hour later, and 70 euros poorer, no way! 2 minutes left, gotta hurry! Also, couple Aussies got up and sang Rolf Harris at the French wedding, so wrong.
Then it was train to Dijon. Done for now. Aurevoir!