Shek and Sam at Oxford

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Venice

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France Cycling holiday Photos

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non qwerty

Bonjour!

back in france qnd contending zith a crazy french keyboard and hourly bursts of rain! still enjoying being on q tqndem. Sqm tqkes cqre of all controls and i can rub his bqck and wqtch side scenery: it,s fun!!!

the blogspot qs we intended will have to be abqndoned to an extent as we are 10k from nearest internt spot and the computer won,t upload our photos; will update it on return. sorry guys seems you qre better off in tibet thqn deepest dqrkest brittqny when it comes to computer technology!

love
aarti ans Sam

Reading Cats

Hello again from Venice. We got up at 6am today to take photos in St Marco's Square and beat the pigeons, we caught a few still napping. There are a few ladys who sell pigeon food and the tourists like feeding them. Apparently pigeons are not indigenous to Venice but some smart romantacist thought they would go well with the decor. Now all they do is shit on all the lovely old buildings, they are a bit cute though.

These are literate cats, we found them at "the most beautiful bookstore in the world" or so it claimed. I think it is reading a book on erotica!

Write more tomorrow, hopefully we can get a connection that will allow us to upload more photos without crashing.

On the way to a fragola gelato

Ciao amici!

Well after 13 hours on the tiny bottom couchettes of our train we are here in Venezia! Unsuprisingly 1 hour into being here and we are lost, but we found an internet cafe, one where you have to give your passport to them to protect the public from Terrorism!!

Sam is rueing his height (very squashed bunny on train) and looking forward to a siesta when our appartment is ready soon. They took our passports on the train last night and only gave them back this morning. What is this with prooving your identity! Lucky we got ours back, or I may not have been home for Christmas.

We spent a whole morning looking for Jim Morrison's grave in the biggest cemetary ever.....did not find it but we did find Oscar Wilde's (covered in kisses). It was the size of a town and instead of headstones they had little houses with rusted doors and broken stained galss inside them. makes you wonder why people have the need to be commemorated in concrete when they die. We'd like our ashes put in a river.

Paris is grand but there is only so much of the metro system and traffic you can take. So yesterday we decided to go and sit in the park to escape the madness. Dreams of feet on grass, however they had employed 6 people full time to stop you sitting on the grass! At least they had some chairs to put your feet up on.

Look forward to sending some more pics when we remember to bring the camera cord.

love and gelatos.

Ps. Our guide book told us that the Pantheon in Paris was built to celebrate Louis the something's recovery from a bout of gout. Now that calls for celebration!

yellow mushrooms are tre expensive

Day 3

A day of sightseeing, food and fashion, of high and not so high quality. We dined in an awesome restaurant with a grand stained glass domed roof at a department store of all places called Au Printemps (thbaks Judy). Even better than the dome were the cool idea lightbulbs which lit up when Sam's cogs started turning. To compensate for this opulence at lunch time we spent 7 euros on yellow mushrooms for dinner at our 'appartment!' We touched the hallowed grass below the Sacre Coer in the evening where Sam meditated on the greatness of Amelie. A good spot to people watch. The French think they are chic, do you? (photo of yellow hat lady)

Can anyone translate for us the blurb next to Zidane's latest advertising venture. Our best guess was, "We insure against the most unpredictable of stuff ups in the whole world". Loz? Any other guesses can be put in the comments box.



Day 4

Culture vulture day. Musee Musee Musee. We can now tell the diference between Monet and Manet - a vowel. The Musee D'Orsay was our favourite and the setting spectacular in a converted old railway station.

Also wanted to let you know about this cool book we've been reading called "A Life Stripped Bare" by Leo Hickman. It's about his experiments with trying to live more ethically for a year. Extermely honestly and humourously written, about all the things we all wonder about but never get around to doing. Highly recommended.

Au secours!

Day 1

The night before we leave for Paris we are sitting around Judy's flat in London and Aarti is bragging about how she has found a great appartment in central Paris on the banks of the Seine for 30 pound a night! "It must be infested with rats" exclaimed Judy. Not quite but it was a good 1 hour away by fast train, when we got there.....bloody internet lies!

When we arrived in Paris this is the scene that greeted us. "Eurostar, no security" they chanted with drums and clapping. Claiming illegal immigrants and weapons where being smuggled via London. Having said that, we managed to get through with a pair of garden pruners. Long story (belonging to Aarti's mum and mistaken for sandwiches on a previous trip to London, now on the way back to her!) This could become like the garden gnome from Amelie.


So 5 hours after arriving to Paris and managing to find our way by saying "oo e" (ou et) we got back from the suburbs on the seine to the Eiffel tower. A quick snack of waffle cream and chocolate prompted a Parisien passing comment "bon appetite monsieur." We spent most of the rest of the night gazing at this iconic structure from various vantage points. The street performers here seem to be at this stage of a high standard. Some break dancers entertained us while the Eiffel Tower sparkled for 10 min on the hour and today we saw two rollerbladers doing mad slalom between plastic cups. I could not help but give them some Euros. When we lay down on the gardens below the Eiffel tower on our first balmy night we were accosted by vendors of Indian origin shouting "champagne, champagne, champagne" instead of "chai, chai chai!"


Day 2

Today we fall sick on a breakfast of stale bread and coffee, which we now expect from our 'hotel' where we found our bed hiding in the sofa and had to beg for sheets.

The rest of the day we take in the usual magnificient sights of Paris from Arch de Triomphe to Louvre (free entry thanks to second hand tickets). The photo on the right is the behind of Venus de Milo as you guessed. It is proof that the Aussie builders bum has roots in the classics.

At Notre-Dame we found the hunchback gazing forlornly, but he gave us a smile, looks remarkably like Sam!

Now off to spend our free ticket money on coffee and 7 euro beers! Au revoir!

Embarking

This Blog will be our holiday diary from the 20th of September to the 7th of October.
Come and check out our photos and entries as we wander around Paris, Venice, and Brittany.

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Feel free to add your comments in the "say g'day" box.

Love
Sam and Aarti