Nicole's European winter '09/'10

Today could count as day 43 of the holiday even though I'm home because I'm certainly not back to reality. I have a brain like mushy peas. It has never taken me so long to work out where I am upon waking as it did yesterday morning. In fairness to my mental faculties, my flat did have a few unusual traits (cleanliness being one of them) but there's no excuses for me firmly believing for quite some time that I had fallen asleep in an English museum.

So I have a week in London to recap. I did the standard tourist stuff and quite enjoyed it. Natural History and British museums were fab as was the Tower of London. And despite a general aversion to churches, Westminster Abbey was a consoling, captivating and inspiring place. I went to the Tower on my last day and the crazy cold weather made it very easy to leave. As did the dirt. And the number of people. While I'm surprised that at no point did I want to throw up due to crowding, it'll be no great loss if I never have to be crammed into a tube train again and go bumpily hurtling along, coming to a ridiculously sudden stop.

Visiting Abbey Road turned out to be an adventure holiday activity. They need to get themselves one of those in Queenstown, NZ. Seriously, if you've chosen to drive down that road, you've got no right to honk people on the world's most famous crosswalk. It's not like London/St John's Wood doesn't have plenty of other roads to drive down!

The 14-hour flight from Doha to Melbourne was one of the most uncomfortable flights I've ever had. I think it's the first time that I've been in the middle seat for a long haul flight. And, of course, one of my neighbours had to be a giant of a man who seat-shakingly snored for the majority of the flight. I wonder if he has jetlag? I also learnt a valuable lesson about not watching a movie about Michael Jackson at the start of 20 hours of plane travel. It's so frustrating not to be abe to boogie to the catchy soundtrack that constantly loops in your head and the aisles simply beg to be (pretend) moonwalked down.

But I survived the turturous flight. The smell of the trees that greeted me when I got off at my local train station was well worth it. And a city sky where you can still see some stars is a blessing. Being warm again is a true delight. I joyously bought groceries yesterday so it's great to be happy to be back. I could have kept travelling but equally, I was content to return. Another blessing given that I had to come back! So now to the challenge of keeping the wonder and interest in every day life.

Big thanks to everyone who kept me cyber company while I was galavanting about. You know who you are and you made such a difference. And thanks to everyone who gave me real hugs and company in the last week of my trip - Div, Mark, Rhys, Rebecca and Meredith, it was lovely to catch up with you all.
Best wishes, always.

Asides from nasty bird related stress, Edinburgh was quite the city to visit. I was expecting someone to pull a wee cord and reveal what I was seeing as a large theatrical set. Caught up in the schmultzy touristy glee of it all, I went on an underground ghost tour late at night. What was I thinking? I wonder when I will be able to sleep easily again. I wonder if the man who let out a huge scream and grabbed onto me big time (I guess that's more manly than grabbing onto your male friend you're on the tour with) when a 'jumper ooter' jumped oot at the end of the tour will ever sleep again? I wonder how many of the stories were true. Bloody scary though. And oc. health and safety wouldn't let anyone get away with that kind of thing in Australia.

Scotland will always equal Scone-land to me. I shall never reveal the specific consumption details. In addition, a lot of the 'hills' (mountains) resemble scones so it's not always solely about food with me.

I couldn't help but put a whole lot of effort into large animal searching on Loch Ness. To no avail. Crushing.

Backtracking ...
I came close to having a hissy fit on my first morning in London. I had no/low expectations and it still thoroughly depressed me! I think my eyes are slowly growing accustomed to finding its charms. It's certainly not a pretty city. But is probably an interesting jumble of old and new. I'm not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that I don't find it overwhelming. Another assumption annihilated. Oh, and another being that the cliffs of Dover are white.

From Dover I battled a train system under the influence of snow to get to a village in Kent. This involved a very breezy journey on a bus after the driver smashed in the top front window of the double decker. His three point turn impressively dodged cars but clearly failed in the extra tricky dodging tree branches aspect.

Huge thanks to my fabulous hosts in West Malling, Erica and Richard. Great company, food, views, cats and chauffeurs! It took my poor jaw quite some time to recover from holding conversation again!

Highlights of England so far have been Greenwich and gravy. For both of which I must thank Sharon for her excellent tour guide services! She even knew where the secret Prime Meridian line was. Very impressive.

The accents in Great Britain are highly entertaining. And it turns out that I have almost as much trouble understanding what the people here are saying as I did in France.

But England is more about people than places. As previously mentioned, it has been great to catch up with Sharon, Erica and Richard again. My 6-week holiday is a sneeze compared to their epic 1-year voyages. I have huge amount of respect for their achievement!

It was such a delight to see Rhys' smiling face coming down a dark London street. He took me on my first red double decker bus ride and bravely faced curry restaurant spruikers for me. A lovely night.

And Div has been another fantabulous host who really should go into the business. He has it all sorted and is very generous and I am very lucky and grateful.

So only about a week left to go for me gadding about strange places and eating astoundingly badly. I hope to reconcile my feelings for London and I plan to have quite a museum binge.

I hope good things have been coming everyone's way.

The crépes have been medicinal. I sometimes get cold-related dizziness (icrecream headache without the icecream is disappointing) which are readily fixed by a crépe. Sweet, savoury, white/wholemeal flour - I'll take 'em any way I can get them. So good.

I've eaten truly appallingly in Paris. I had the best pain aux chocolat while running past the Louvre and across Pont Neuf in a quiet, dark, early morning Paris to catch a bus. The chocolate was still warm and oozing and the pastry was the perfect balance of soft and crunchy and was truly soul liberating as my teeth tore it and it dissolved in my mouth. As I said, the best. (It was from the oldest bakery in Paris which my second, much nicer, Paris hotel was directly above. I put in some effort to make sure that they don't go out of business soon.)

So I've worked out three advantages to travelling in a European winter. 1) No crowds, eg. I'm very glad that I didn't have to deal with my mild fears of both heights and crowds up the Eiffel Tower and I had whole gardens to myself in Versailles. Granted, the term 'garden' is used very broadly when it's all just white really but I got the idea. 2) Christmas lights - starting to be taken down now. 3) You can put a cold drink in your backpack and drink it hours later and have it be colder than when you bought it. Handy.

The bus I was running to in the second paragraph took me to Mont Saint Michel. Standing at the base of the mont was definitely a moment: a place of such refuge. A rare brilliant combined construction of man and nature. And I had a minor epiphany driving back to Paris through a very white Normandy. Again, handy.

I've also discovered/named three other types of snow. 1) When it's snowing and raining at the same time then it's snaining. 2) Snirl is when the snow seems to be coming from all directions and circling and whirling around you. 3) Sn is when the air looks a little odd but you think nothing of it and later look down to discover that you are covered in the white stuff. I hate snain - it's the worst of all worlds. Snirling is hard to deal with. Being out when it's sn-ing is odd. I will not hear a bar of it if anyone wants to tell me the proper meterological names for these events.

I surprised myself by really liking Versailles (I thought I was opulenced-out) and the 'Mona Lisa'. I've had the saltiest cheese of my life and the cheesiest cider. The French are truly cheese crazy if they manage to make alcoholic beverages taste like stinky cheese. That said, I was happy with their work by the end of the bottle.

I've condensed my year of French lessons into 21 x A4 pages. I'm not sure if this explains why I can't understand almost a word that anyone is saying or if it makes me truly stupid for being incompetent. In other educational news, I've memorised the order of Australian prime ministers. Have the list for the U.S. to do next. Ask me when I see you as I definitely need to keep practising it!

Calais requires constant penguin walking. I'm looking forward to crossing the channel by ferry tomorrow. I'm also planning on going all out for my last dinner in France tonight. Does champagne go with snails? (Yes, I'm currently planning to break my eating rules. May back out at the last second though.)

So I left Paris confused about it. There were still museums that I would have liked to have seen but I was really done with the city. I had some childish expectations of it, I suppose. It wasn't really glitzy and sparkling. The people didn't really look that happy and I thought that they would. Though they weren't as outwardly mean to me as I expected. But Paris is the only place so far where people have tried to rip me off and blatantly laughed at my language efforts. I think that it's just too much in general for me. Monotonous in colour, size and design. But it certainly has beautiful elements, yum unhealthy food, and I felt very safe for such a big city. Maybe you just simply can't be there alone. I have one Metro ticket left so I should go back with company one day, use the ticket and test the theory. Sure, extremity-snapping cold doesn't help but surely one of the greatest cities in the world should be great year round?

So, to England where I'm going to come crashing down after my crépe, pastry and torte binging.
Is there anything there I can turn to to fill the hole? I'm quite apprehensive about London. Wish me luck!

Now I can say that I've woken up, encountered a couple of obstacles to my plan, and said 'Frick it - I'm going to go to Paris today'. The basis for that decision has now been obliterated by bad weather and I'm reconciling myself with missing out on some of the touristy highlights of France. Whatever will be will be. I've also had a cold for all of 2010 which has been completely wretchifying the last couple of days but I am soldiering on during the minus degrees day and crashing at night at a hotel in Montemarte run by a man who yells at his wife and is especially nice to me either!

The train trips through southern France were spectacular. I don't have the vocabulary to describe the buildings but they were quite mesmorising to me: beautiful but also maybe a little serious/grim. France has actually given me a 'spooky' vibe in general. There wasn't a 'Welcome to France' sign on my train trip ion but there was a noticeable change in the buildings becoming more drab, haphazard and run down (I'll now always miss those perfect window shutters on perfectly symmetrical Swiss houses) and the landscape also drastically changed. Green! I hadn't seen grass for quite some time. I was also welcomed to France by dusky coloured valleys - colours that I had always thought were 'artistic licence' in common, traditional landscape paintings.

But my first couple of stops in France, put the spooky vibe to rest. Annecy was gaggingly gorgeous. Narrow, winding, paved streets with masses of tiny stores elegantly crammed with well thought out merchandise. Again, white, looping Christmas lights add to the vibe.

Arriving in Bordeaux late NYE meant that there were few people around during my time there. I couldn't even find a croissant on New Year's Day! But I thoroughly enjoyed myself there. It has my favourite monument in Europe to date.

I also struggled to find food on a Sunday in a smallish, Dordogne valley town. Ended up having to have a fancy-pants French meal. I'm sure I broke a zillion rules but a couple of the courses were fab (including dessert, of course).

I've also had to break my own rules. Vegetarian has been quite tricky so I'm occasionally having to contribute to the fish industry.

Speaking of the ocean, you have never seen someone get out of a place so fast as me in La Rochelle in the middle of the French coastline. Debilitatingly cold wind. Imagine it would be lovely in summer: a French Freo. But I had myself a well-earned hot chocolate and go myself the heck out of there (stayed one night instead of a planned three). Even the locals were complaining about the cold.

As they are in Paris. I would have thought that they'd be use to snow here but apparently buses can't run in the snow so my best/badly laid plans have been crushed. And Paris itself hasn't grabbed me. I am sick though. And I did have high expectations. Maybe it will just take a little time. I'm going to give it a little, or maybe a lot, of time. It would be good to be here and not be unwell.

I hope 2010 has been darn good to everyone so far. I hope that you all have the good vibe that I've got about this year: that it's going to be empowering and positive. That all the hard work that so many of us have put in in all different kinds of ways is going to pay off.

Right, I'm off to sniffily, and optimistically, discover more of Paris.

:-)

There are meringues the size of my head.