Since the start of November, we've been on a whirlwind trip around Europe, leaving us really no opportunity to update this thing. Thus, we have a lot of catching up to do, and as we said in our last post, there will probably be more photos than writing. Probably a relief for most of you. That being said, this is us we're talking about...
PARIS
On a sunny 3rd November, we arrived in the city of luuurve. See what we mean?:
Look closely. Ménage à trois, anyone?
We had arranged to stay with a couple who we'd never met before... for those of you a bit worried and/or confused, it's a networking project which allows travellers to meet/stay with people from the place they're visiting, which not only helps with the cost of travelling, but it also enables you to see a place through a local's eyes and meet all sorts of interesting people, and usually you get a much less "touristy" experience. For more on that, see htpp://www.couchsurfing.com
Anyway, our first CS hosts were Julien and Louise, a lovely couple who live just outside inner Paris:
and their adorable, if slightly insane, young cat, Mouche. This is her staying still for one rare moment:
She spent a lot of time pouncing on anything that moved, or even things that didn't...including sensitive parts of Shayne's anatomy when he was sleeping. However, at one point she did curl up underneath the blankets next to Eva. On her back to have her tummy rubbed. Maybe she sensed that Eva's really a dog person.
Julien and Louise took us around Paris on our first night there, and showed us around a couple of famous sites, like Notre Dame:
The outside of the Louvre, the gigantic museum.
It was as close as we got to Leonardo's Mona Lisa, being cheap and not wanting to queue.
After that, we had a delicious meal at a typical French restaurant (well, they assured us that it was!), where, shock horror, they discovered that Eva does not like wine. No, not even French wine. We hope they weren't too insulted...
Later that night (mignight, in fact), we met up and partied with Shayne's friend from online, Maddy, who claims that her impeccable English pretty much comes from watching Buffy. Hmmm...anyway, we kept the Parisian theme up, and danced for a while at...an Irish pub.
Left is Maddy, next to her are her friends from work. The poor thing works at the Disney Store, where they sell all sorts of stuffed and plastic Disney paraphenalia, including a Winnie the Pooh dressed up as the pope. Don't ask us why. Anyway, it nice to finally meet her!
The next few days were spent in a relatively touristy fashion, although we didn't even try to cram in even half the famous sites of Paris. Instead we started with a scenic cruise down the Sienne, which covered a lot of "key" sites, albeit from a distance, complete with commentary and cliched French music. Unfortunately, we have forgotten most of the names of the things we saw. We've been on so many tours and seen so many countries since that it all starts to blur a bit...so we present you with pretty photos and half-arsed descriptions.
Cool bridge with turrets and a lot of heads. With individual features:
Another bridge, with Notre Dame behind it:
We think it's some kind of town-hall-y thing.
And some tower that looks like it's made of Mechano...
Getting back to land, we decided not to climb that tower that everyone else wanted to climb (because of the queues and the price. NOT the steps...). Instead we went back to Notre Dame and ventured inside:
With its disturbing friezes of Herod slaying babies:
And its famous rosette stained-glass windows:
We ended up spending a lot of time in the Latin Quarter. One of its famous sites is the Pantheon:
The Pantheon is a fascinating place, but unfortunately we have no photos of the inside, as, yet again, Shayne stupidly to bring the camera. But, it used to be a church before it became a more secular place of remembrance. Here, influential Frenchman or those who have been seen to have served France well are buried, including Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Marie Curie...and other dead people. There are also heaps of empty crypts. Something to aspire to, hey? Also inside was a replica of Foucault's Pendulum. We're not explaining it. Google it. It was very cool.
The Pantheon is flanked by a university building and this statue, which, for the time we were there, was always adorned with this attractive headwear:
Louise referred to him as "Harry Potter".
The Latin Quarter has everything you could ever want. There was even a red light district for vaccum cleaners:
The puns. ALL the puns.
We spent another day and evening with Maddy, when we went to the Rodin museum (he's her favourite sculptor). Once again, no photos, as GUESS WHO FORGOT THE BLOODY CAMERA AGAIN?!?! That same night, we went to yet another Irish pub, this time in the Latin Quarter. This seems to be a theme with Maddy... the girls played darts instead of dancing. Oh! We forgot! CREPES WITH NUTELLA OR LIQUID CHOCOLATE AND GRAND MARNIER! Which Eva proceeded to spill all over herself. Once again, Shayne regretted not having the camera.
One thing we forgot to mention about Paris: the mad drivers and motorcyclists. They actually speed up when you start to cross a road.
All up, this was a rather short visit to a very beautiful and interesting city, but we met some great people, and were blessed with great weather to enjoy the almost-uninterrupted beautiful old grandeur of its centre.
After a few days in Paris, with the help our trusty old Eurail pass, we headed west into Brittany, where we stopped for a night in the small capital city of Brittany:
Rennes
This was really just a stop on our way to our next destination, but it proved to be more charming than we had expected. Especially its historic centre, which used to be fortified like many old European centres. The actual settlement dates back to BCE.
This kind of narrow cobbled street has become quite a common sight for us during our European jaunt, but this was the first time we'd encountered it on this trip, as the Paris streets we explored tended to be wider and grander.
After wandering around these narow streets, we suddenly came upon this massive square, with an old town hall on one side:
The place was bustling with activity, including a bunch of teenagers sitting there playing music together, not busking, just using the public space in a way we've never seen back home. Ever seen anything like that in Fed Square?
Along with the historic beauty of the place, they have a very modern and slightly disconcerting Metro system with driverless trains behind these sliding automatic doors:
Again, we have since encountered this in other places but it kind of weirded us out at the time.
We found this piece of graffiti an interesting reminder that Brittany was once an independent nation, and perhaps there's still a teensy bit of resentment towards Imperial France here.
One thing we found plenty of in this little city - pharmacies. You are more likely to stumble across a pharmacy (marked by a green neon flashing cross) than a supermarket here. We saw this in Paris too, but it was even more apparent here in such a small city. Another common sight in France in general are dogs - they are everywhere. At the train station, hotels, cafes...they love their dogs here, and they take them just about everywhere.
After a night in Rennes, we boarded a bus to our intended destination:
Mont Saint-Michel
The picture says it all. That isn't going to stop us from crapping on a bit more about it!
We'd been told about this walled city/abbey that straddles the border of Normandy and Brittany by our friend Rin and her family, who travelled there last year and fell in love with the place. It started off back the 8th Century as the site of a modest sanctuary in honour of the archangel Michael, after a bishop called Aubert was apparently ordered by Michael in a dream to do so. It became a major place of pilgrimage, and the sanctuary was added to over the centuries until it became the gargantuan abbey that it is today, which was later encircled by a fortified village. It was very hard to attack, being on a tidal flat surrounded by quicksand, so it became an important strategic position that everyone tried to get a hold of. Enough history now.
We walked through the winding village street, which is crammed with souvenir shops, expensive eateries, and Japanese tour groups. But charming nonetheless:
We made our way up to the ramparts and walked along them:
And of course, towering above all of this, is the abbey itself:
We had a guided tour of the inside, which ended up being just the two of us as we were the only ones who wanted it in English. Our guide (whose name we have forgotten) was an eccentric, bordering on certifiably crazy, woman, who nevetheless was very friendly and helpful to us, once she decided that she liked us. She was particularly fascinated with Shayne and his ethnicity, first asking him if he was Native American, and when he clarified that he was Australian, she then assumed that he was Aboriginal! After further clarification about his Sri Lankan roots, she repeatedly referred to the Indians and how smart they are...She did not, however, extend this same enthusiasm to the large private tour groups and school groups, telling them to "SHHH!" at the top of her voice, then proceeding to do her own spiel about the abbey to the two of us standing right next to her so loudly that her voice reverberated off the walls, drowning out any noise that the other tour groups were making anyway! In one moment of sheer exasperation when we were trapped between two large Japanese tour groups, she exclaimed: "I hate these Japanese tour groups!", well within their hearing. She then decided to "take revenge" on them, by showing us one of the oldest chapels in the abbey (over a thousand years old) which is not usually opened for public viewing:
For all her idiosyncrasies, our guide gave us a very insightful tour. Some of the highlights of this labyrinthine place were:
The Cloister
During the French Revolution, the abbey was used as a prison for political opponents, and in true revolutionary style, religious icons were attacked, like the cruifixes in the cloister:
The Former Monk's Ossiary
Which had this huge wheel instaled in the 19th century to haul up supplies to the prisoners held in the abbey - the power provided by the prisoners themselves, five men trapped inside running like hamsters to keep it going.
This is the track up which supplies had to come:
Among the modest rooms for the monks were larger, more luxuriant cavernous rooms for guests (they even had fireplaces!) when they visited the holy site, before the Revolution:
We lashed out and spent a night here, giving us a chance to get this to capture the abbey in completely different light:
The gold thing at the top of the spire is the statue of the Archangel Michael.
The next day, after a little bit of a mess-up bus timetable-wise, we were our way back to Paris to board a late-night train to...where? Stay tuned to find out! (yeah, ok, everyone knows...)
No comments:
Post a Comment