Caen–> Paris

Finally, a decent sleep! No more tequila shots. Phew! It was only one night – I’m definitely turning soft. Too bad, I prefer to explore in the day and sleep at night. Mostly, except when celebrating.

Rainy rainy rainy this morning with an early morning trip to the bus station to get our return Caen –> Paris bus. It was 15mins late and we met a couple of friendly Polish guys who were more willing to chat than we were, which I still feel bad about. Sometimes explaining the weather in Australia again just is too much.

The bus took a bit longer this time as we went through a few different towns. I got busy finishing my book – called ‘The Help’. It was great. The movie’s out at the moment – it’s also really good. Amazon recommends books to me and I just buy them, without knowing they are God books or books just re-released because there’s a movie on it. Sometimes I get lucky and end up with a great book like ‘The Help’ and then other times I’m not so lucky and end up with the Book of Proverbs.

In to Paris and we made our way to our hotel, where we’re on the 6th floor. It’d be fine if there was a lift. The room is tiny but great – new and clean. We are in the attic bit so we have a cool window and a very limited bathroom. But there’s no lift. I carried a hard cased, 25kg bag up 6 flights of stairs. And before you say that’s why you travel with a backpack – I still disagree. The amount of ease that having a hard cased wheely bag provides totally outweighs the occasional stairs. We just were super unlucky today.

No lunch today, just a late lunch at 4pm. There’s so many places to eat, and most places only serve food at certain times of the day that it gets really confusing – where you can actually eat and where you want to eat. We ended up a pasta joint that was SO cool. What a find. Home made pasta and sauce, where you choose your sauce and your pasta separately. The salad is made with the ingredients you want and it’s cooked in front of you. On top of that, it was bloody delicious.

Because of the 6 flights of stairs, we limited our food intake to one lunch/dinner. Which sucks right now because I could really go some more pasta, but I’m in my pyjamas and once I’m in them there’s no going back.

Interesting note: I always thought of Matilda as a very Australian name. Not so. There’s Matilda towns and shops all over the place. I guess I never questioned its origin because it just feels Australian.

Second interesting note: buses and trains in Europe attract different socioeconomics. The bus is notably more feral than the train. The train is lovely and clean and sophisticated. The bus is feral and dirty and graffiti’d, with no toilets and very scare offices. The train is considerably more expensive at times.

Third interesting note: The French are too cultured to wear ugg boots in public. Every where else we’ve been (including Mongolia), lots of people wear ugg boots not even as a fashion statement, but as practical, comfortable and trendy daily footwear. There was at time in Australia when wearing ugg boots to McDonalds for a late night snack was the equivalent of wearing your pink flannel pyjamas too. Whilst I cringed a lot when I first started seeing all these ugg boots around during the day time, I have come to realise that my opinion is a social construct and I am just actually jealous that I didn’t think that I could have worn my ugg boots all over Europe.

That SD card was found – hooray! Here are the photos I may have lost, but didn’t and am extremely grateful for:

William the Conqueror’s Wall in Caen VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Caen Caen

The bus from Paris to Caen – a 3 hour journey on a practically empty coach. A taxi ride to our hotel and an early night. It was raining and dark, and we were exhausted.

Weather in Caen for the next five days: rainy. It’s true. It hasn’t stopped. Yesterday we wandered around the city, met friends on William the Conqueror’s castle wall, wandered around and started drinking as the sun was going down. I managed to lose an SD card with the photos I took that day, which sucks balls because there were some amazing photos on it. We bought some alcohol and went to drink and watch the sun set over William’s wall. Only it started rainy again so we retreated back to our friends’ hotel. We drank a lot more, laughed a lot more and went out to dinner too late. Nothing was open except a random bar we found, who served us some tapas and sangria.

And that was the beginning. We’d already drunk Smirnoff Ice, rose, red wine, white wine, Jamison and then sangria. And then the tequila shots and cocktails started. Then Ebony got her results – some great results, that we celebrated with more tequila until we had to leave that bar. To another bar. More cocktails and white russian shots. Some game playing with a group of different Asian people studying in France. They were so cool – Indonesians, Japanese, Chinese, a guy from Hong Kong. We had a lot of fun with them so followed them to another bar after that one closed. By then I was just drinking water but it didn’t save me from an epic day of hangover.

All in all, Ebony had a pretty freaking cool celebration night. We had a lot of fun!

Today was very difficult. The rain made it much worse. D-Day beaches/Battle of Normandy is Caen. We had some beaches and history to see. Only it’s rainy and we’re hungover and we did no research. We got out to a small town that we’d catch a bus to the beaches from – and the buses weren’t running enough to make it worthwhile (to get there before sunset, anyway). We checked out a museum, wandered around a bit and headed back in to Caen on the train.

More restaurants for dinner – I ended up accidentally ordering cow bones baked so you could eat the marrow inside…….. Luckily the next course was steak and chips.

Ebony and I managed to successfully navigate the buses home and now we’re resting ready to head back to Paris tomorrow. After very few hours sleep and lots to drink last night, we’re in need of some rest!

The Eiffel Tower

The most famous destination in all of France is Paris’ Eiffel Tower. It is pretty cool but once you learn its history, and how much it was hated for so long, it makes you wonder…. How cool is it?

But it is cool, even for the second time round. Probably cooler this time, because it was a glorious day and we weren’t in a hurry. We ate lunch underneath it and then went to the Christmas markets over the road. There were lots of scammers around trying to get us to sign their bits of paper – I saw everyone going out of their way to avoid them, and every single person saying no no no to the scammer. I wonder how many people they actually rort? These guys are after signatures on what looks like a petition. Once your signature is there, they try to hold you to the fact that you just signed a document stating you’d pay them 200 euros. They must be successful, if only once every two weeks – because they wouldn’t do it otherwise, right?!

The Eiffel Tower VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Our hostel provides breakfast, even if the toilets and showers are gross (as well as everything else gross about this place). Croissant, bread and coffee. Pretty good really. After breakfast we went to make sandwiches we’d got the stuff for the night before. Some bastard stole our meat! Seriously! We had it wrapped in a non-see through plastic bag, carefully with all our other ingredients. They yoinked our freaking meat! We were so looking forward to it as well. It was awesome prosciutto looking stuff.

Today will be henceforth known as the day of pastries. We had three pastries from three different shops, each today. And then for dinner we had ‘traditional’ French food in a Brasserie. I had steak and beans (the biggest plate of baby green beans you’ve ever seen – yum!). Ebony had a burger with cool shaped chips. It was most delicious and the waiter was very friendly. He didn’t like us being in our thongs (we’d walked all day and we have blisters) because it is cold outside (it is quite chilly). We looked like the most feral people in France. But who cares. The food was great and the service was great, until we had to wait 45mins for our bill. Now that was annoying!

Tomorrow we’re off to Caen. A friend of mine arrives (probably feeling much better than we did; bastards scored a business class upgrade!) tomorrow as well so hopefully we’ll catch them when we get to Caen. Yay for France.

Berlin to Paris

Boarding the night train to Paris was exciting. France is always such a heralded place, for good reason. Delicious food and wines, gorgeous cities and scenery, beautiful accents and best of all: the croissant.

I usually sleep well on trains because the vibrations put me to sleep. Not last night. Wholey dooley. What a night. We were in a girls-only compartment. The train was ‘sold out’, and tickets were getting very expensive which is why we had to book so early. In actual fact it’s all total bullshit. In our 6 bed cabin (the size of a shoe box) held two: Ebony and I. The entire wagon had 4 people in it. What the hell? Why have the seats ‘sold out’ or so freaking expensive it’s totally unaffordable – when no one’s actually on it?!

Mind you it was a total blessing. Trains are always squishy at night and if you recall my Lake Baikal – Irkutsk to Ulan Ude experience, it’s not something I really look forward to. There’s no space to move and I don’t like that at all. This was no different. We were up on the top bunks – 2m from the ground. We were told at the next few stops we’d be picking up heaps more people. So we slept in our beds right up the top, having nightmares about falling down. When I say sleep, I mean – we laid down in the beds all night. I got to sleep fairly early on but at our next stop in Hamburg, the dude rudely awoke everyone with details of what was going on. That was it for my sleep – 10-11pm. I just couldn’t get back to sleep.

The train went very fast and there was no clakety-clack like on the Trans-Siberian. We were thrown around a fair bit and the noise from the creaking corners were noisy too. By the time the sun was up, we were ready to go and thankfully not far from Paris.

Oh, Paris.

 

 

 

I remember I did really like Paris, but I loved Rome more. I still believe it – Roman history, Italian food and gelato combine to make Rome Sally’s number one favourite city in the world (thus far). Paris would have to be a closely placed second. Wait. No. Prague second, Paris third. Brisbane fourth. Vancouver fifth. Ulaanbaatar does not make it on my list.

Anyway, we needed breakfast. A joint near the station was advertising a breakfast menu in English which caught out eye. In we went, sat down and ordered two breakfast’s. There was no choice. But who needs choice when you’re being served orange juice, tea, fresh baguette and fresh croissant with jam?

And if that wasn’t the lightest, crispiest, most amazingly flaky croissant I’ve ever had……….

Trying our luck on the metro, we found our station called ‘Felix <something or other>’ and our hostel called the Three Ducks. You’re not allowed in your room from 12-4pm so we left our bags in the luggage room and went out for a free tour of the city. It’s one of those newer tours popping up where the guide isn’t paid by the company – only by the tips they get. It was great. We walked around for 4 hours checking out things and being shown some interesting sites/told some great stuff. Rain set in, we got a bit wet. Whatever. I ordered lunch during a 15min break which turned out to be an unidentifiable piece of meat. It had no fibres but was definitely of animal origin. I would have called it a chicken liver, only it was the size of my hand and had been filleted. It could have been a chicken tasting pork liver (it was white meat). But it was so tender and so full of animal flavour……. I couldn’t eat it, which annoyed me because I’d chosen it from an array of delicious looking things.

Berlin to Paris VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We paid the guide 20 Euros (10 each) and went about getting home in order to do some washing. Oh yes, you heard me. Washing. We did it all. And dried it in a massive dryer and now I have clean everything and it’s wonderful. Food shopping for dinner at the supermarket and then chill time.

Our hostel is the yukkiest I’ve ever been to. The website claims it’s the most popular in town. Gullible Sally. It may have been 20 years ago when the bathrooms were not 100 years old, the beds not disgusting, the foyer not a pub, the showers functional, the courtyard a homeless shelter and the kitchen a useless room with a sink, a little fridge and a two burner portable stovetop.

It’s not unliveable. I don’t think we’ll die of unhygienic conditions (it’s kept quite clean, regardless of how dirty it does look). It’s just not comfortable. For what we’re paying, I guess we deserve it – there were just many other options of hostels in this price range (50 Euros/night) that we could have chosen. Nevermind. There is also a church with a belltower about 20m as the crow flies from our door. It dongs every hour for at least 3 minutes.

I did get to take some cool shots from our hostel though.

That bell definitely dongs every hour. Shitballs. I’m not going to get any sleep at all.

East Side Gallery, Berlin

East Side Gallery, Berlin VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We were going to head out of town again today but decided against it when we spent half the morning at the East Side Gallery. It’s an open air gallery that’s just a whole bunch of really interesting paintings along a 1.3km stretch of remaining Berlin Wall. The photos above are some of the cool paintings. There were so many!

So I still haven’t heard from that Brisbane job that offered me more money and more flexibility. It did take them about 2 months to get the last contract with me, so I imagine this won’t be different. The boss did say I’d get the new contract the day after we talked (which was 2.5weeks ago). Oh well.

From the gallery we walked in to town again and picked up some Christmas stuff. Wandered around, checked out the very busy Christmas markets, tried to have a look in some shops but hightailed it out of there when we realised just how busy it was (think Boxing Day sales). Ebony tried a pork sausage that was supposedly delicious.

Tonight we board a train to Paris overnight. Tomorrow morning we will be in Paris! More croissants for breakfast. Man, I’m going to have so much gym work and salad eating to do when I get home.

Oh, yeah – I bought a pair of pink Birkenstocks too! Mine have been well worn and are on their way out. I’ve been thinking of buying a new pair for a while. Today made my decision really easy. Brand new pairs at the price of 43 Euros, or $56 AUD. In Australia, Birkenstocks cost anywhere up to/more than $200. So I grabbed a pair. A pink pair. They won’t be practical, colour wise – but who cares. Nothing I own matches anything else, so why start now with a boring brown pair of Birkenstocks?

We’ll have dinner and clean our teeth tonight before we head to the train station (we’re hanging at our hostel) at about 6:30pm. Our train leaves at 8pm although I’m paranoid we’ll miss it, because it’s not like a plane where people help you and then call out your name when you’re not on board yet.

I’m sure we’ll be fine. We’ve made it this far.

I keep thinking of cool places that Ebony didn’t get to see, like Rome, Venice, Austria, Switzerland, Amsterdam…. And then of places that I would love to go to, like Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Belarus, Turkey, Morocco, Portugal, Slovakia, Croatia… And then I realise that there’s no way I’d make it to all those places in one go and that I need to calm down because I have a lifetime to visit great places……..