Form of Travel Blog

[/b][/b]Happy Easter everyone!! (well, Mum, Dad and the select few who can be bothered). It has been ages,and heaps has happened. We have been attempting to get the most out of France with our limited budget, extremely limited French, and relatively limited time, and I have to say that we have done, so far, pretty well. Most of the typical french things I thought we could of and would of seen and done we have, in one way or another. To prove this to myself (and you), I made a bit of a list of "french-ness", clichèd french things i was hoping to experience and have arranged the tales of our trip as such...

Wine
Wine is the first thing listed in our guide book under 'things not to miss in france'. So we thought we would get that one out of the way early. From Spain we headed pormptly to Bourdeaux, so famous for it's wine i don't want to talk about it. The city itself was lovely and old and very french, with a huge bridge (with 17 arches, one for each of napoleans victories), convienient indoor botanic garden (for the traveller who can't afford a restaurant but doesn't want to eat in the rain) and heaps of churches. The town is surrounded by different wine regions, and after realising to our bitter disappointement that we were to young and poor to hire a car (it was here I experienced the french [u snootiness[/u], but to be honest this was about the only place) we settled for a day trip to the beautiful old region of St Emillion. A DAY trip it certainly was, getting us up at 5am (never to early for wine) to catch the train, we saw the sun rise over the vineyards. The town was beautiful and all the one colour, as it was made by stone that was quarried from the hill on which it stood. hmm. instability aside, this was good because all the tunnels left behind by the quarrying (totally secret underground passages under the whole city, awesome) housed all the delicious wine
the area was famous for, as well as and underground church,and a chair that if i sat in, i would apparently get pregnant (a miracle seat apparently, don't worry mum I didn't sit). And as for the wine, well, we tried as much as we could. We explored some of the wine caves, and pretended to be interested to taste some wines in different stores. We also had a great tour of a vineyard by the owner who gave us a generous tasting of his 2002 wine. That, as well as a dozen macarroons (the first of many time I will mention food in this blog) from the store that originally created them, and it was a wonderful day. In the end we bought a bottle of Grand Cru wine (the 4th of 5th classes,
but still pretty damn nice thank you very much), for a budget breaking 8 euro.

Bourdeaux also gave us our first taste of real amazing french food. Sure, we broke the budget a little, but we were rewarded with delicious mussels and prawns, steak and chicken, and mousse and creme brulee. Oh delicious. check out hutchi's blog, he took photos. that's how good it was.

From here, I think we had had a taste of the good stuff, so we headed to where france holidays-the Cote d'Azur.

Riches
So France is rich. Richer than me anyway. A perfectly valid heading, and something I thought I would definately see on our travels. To experience how the posh live, we headed to Nice on the coast and treated ourselves by staying in a HOTEL with a KITCHEN, which in actuality was a dingy room near the train station with a tiny stove top and some dirty dishes. but we did get plastic cups, which we used to drink our delicious wine while we enjoyed our home cooked
food. While we were in Nice we also took a quick trip to Monaco, the country as big as Hyde Park, but a billion times richer. We saw the aquarium (it was cool, although secretly I thought the Island was better), checked out the gourmet cars, and lost our 5 euro at the casino, then pretty much went home. Maybe richness is not
for us.

We also took in our first gulp of French Art while we were there, partially, but not totally because all the museums and galleries were free to people under 26 in March. While Hutch got inspired at the Musuem of Modern Art, I completed a quest I started last year in Nice, and finally saw the Musee Matisse, a privelege which eluded us last year as we hiked up the hill to it only to find that it was closed. We also saw Marc Chagall's famous religious
paintings (you know that love painting with the goat in Notting Hill? that guy), which were beautiful and wonderfully free.

After all this art and snobbery and staying near the train station we decided to delve further into Frenchness and see a bit of it's amazing...

History
The rough guide history section is over 30 pages long, so we figured there must be a bit to see. Lured but the huge palace of the popes, we rocked up in Avignon in the dying light of a beatiful spring day. This was the only sunlight we were to see in our adventures into France's past the weather got colder and shittier as the monuments
we saw got older and older. We decided to check out Avignon, where the Popes once used to live, and Arles, where the Romans once used to live. Avignon is beautiful, even when cold, and we took our time wandering around the big old palace where the popes ran to in the 13th century so they could live decedantly in the name of god. Or something
like that, I'm not sure. The audio guide was really long. Avignon is also walled, and has a great big famous bridge (which is more like half a bridge now but you still have to pay to walk on it). Plenty o' history there, and we had a great time. We also found an AMAZINGLY CHEAP chinese place to eat food, and we ate there twice in our
three night stay.

Arles is loaded with frenchness, being home to heaps of Roman ruins, and the place where Van Gogh lost his ear AND painted his most famous works. We also managed to create some art there-we stumbled into a random exhibition where we were invited to put a piece of wood on a pile of pieces of wood, and then we got our photo taken in a wooden chair. Art huh? it's crazy. So we saw where Van Gogh got his inspiration, and we saw were the romans used to play and live and bath and stuff and we ate some truly delicious cake (and some truly terrible pastry thing that resembled a raw sausage roll, but that isn't really fitting with the french food theme) and then we went
home! Through all of these the Rhone river flowed nearby, reminding us just how dry Australia really is.

After all this art and history, hutchi started to get itchy for a bit of adventure. Excellent, I thought, here is another subheading for my blog, and off we headed to the

Snow!!
We managed to get from Avignon to a chalet in the mountains in one big successful day, due mainly to the superiority of the French train system than our skills. Our chalet was run by a lovely couple who couldn't understand A WORD we said, but that was ok cause we couldn't understand them either. Part of the deal of the chalet was breakfast and dinner, which was lovingly prepared by our couple hosts and was AMAZING FOOD. We ate traditional Alps fare, which seemed to be Cheese. I swear they had a conversation with the other guests at the chalet (who left the day after we arrived, leaving us with the place to ourselves) which jsut consistes of them saying 'fromage?'
'fromage!' (it's french for cheese!) France is great. we did eat a lot of cheese though. I also ate a lot of snow in the two days we were there. I forgot that I actually can't snow board and only remembered when we had caught the
cable car up to over 3000m and were expected to make it down. Many a tear followed as I fell and swore my way down the mountainm eventually giving up and chairing down. I did keep trying, although I have to admit I didn't improve very much, and had to content myself with the thoughts that I was in the french alps and that was still pretty cool, and everyone needs a good cry once in a while. Hutch on the other hand went from strength to strength, and I can see myself drinking many a hot chocolate in the winter to come while he boards around the australian slopes. An expensive couple of days (especially when hutch tore the pants we had borrowed from our hosts and we had to reimburse them-i don't think a thank you note in french and koala toys were quite enough), but still, it was the french alps!!

All our money spent on the snow, we skimped on accomodation that night in Grenoble, settling for towel baths using the sink instead of a shower. Apart from that, Grenoble was a great town, possibly our favourite in Europe. I say europe not France, becausefrom there we adventured across the border, to harrass some of France's many

Neighbours
Geneva, to be easily generalised to Switzerland, is expensive and good at speaking english. As great as the Englishness was, a girl can't live on chocolate and knives (try as she might), so after a lovely day walking around Lake Geneva, seeing all the flags of the world at the UN, climbing one more church tower (spiral staircases make me feel unfit and dizzy but gosh darn it i love em) and feeling quite nuetral about it all, we returned to France. We spent one night in Annecy, another town in amongst the french Alps (check my map) which was absolutely gorgeous even when wet-possibly our favourite town in Europe!

Next, we had a little nibble at Germany. A big train day from the Alps to Strasbourg (many a card game was played: i generally lost) for the night where we successfully wrangled cheap easter accomodation and then into the Black Forest for us! We spent St Patrick's Day drinking cheap beer and eating potatoes in style, and a day meandering through the forest on buses and train from our base in Freiburg (climbed a big tower there too, my calves rock). Black Forest cake was eaten, although Hutch assures me that his is better than the one we had. We also ate a lot of food, mainly sausages; hutch has been in withdrawl ever since. One day was spent in Baden Baden, a posh spa town where we splurged on a 3 hour, completely nude spa experience. Many old wrinkly bodies were seen, but it was totally worth it- a 17 step process involving everything from sauna to steam room to spa to the best shower i've ever had and a special nap room at the end-we werre walking on air and felt toasty warm, despite the fact that it was snowing. We actually saw quite a bit of snow in the forest, particularly on our last day when we adventured, with our packs, to Triberg, home of the cuckoo clock, and evidently, lots of snow. Cuckoo clocks seen, snow fight had (i lost), we hightailed it back to the land of the croissant for Easter.

Easter was quiet and lovely-our apartment on the outskirts of Strasbourg, right near the Kronenburg factory, was on the bottom floor of grandfather time himself's place (not really, but he was very old), and after the bitter bitter disappointment of realising that we could not hire dvd's we bought Stargate on DVD and watched that while the weather got colder and colder outside. On Easter Saturday we joined the crowds and spent our alotted 12 euro each on easter eggs, and on Sunday we woke to snow and spent the morning hiding and hunting for easter eggs (or in my lucky case, chocolate covered strawberries!). We spent a lot of time in our doonas, playing cards and listening to german radio (they love their bon jovi) and finally cooking using the delicious french ingredients. All in all we spent 5 days there and did not a whole lot-it was bliss!

Still we are under the subheading neighbours though, i see you have realised. That's right, because after our Easter holiday from holidaying, we made a headlong assault at Belgium!via Luxembourg. Luxembourg city was a beautiful place, possibly our favourite in Europe, and the number of photos we took (a million) is inversely proportional to the length of time we spent there (one night). We had a good old walk around with our constant companion the cold, and had a sneaky look into the old casements used to protect the tiny capital of the tiny country during all the wars. From there it was onto Brussels, our belgiun base, where we immediately went to eat a waffle and get drunk on delicious beer. Both of these were accomplished quite successfully(we went to a bar with 2004 beers, and another with over 200 types of Absinthe!) and Brussels found a nice spot in our hearts, despite the crappy weather. A day was spent wandering around in the rain there (Belgium is the home of the Smurfs AND Tintin and they have walls all over the city with comics on them-how cool is that?!), and another (still in the rain) in Antwerp, where we visited a truly crap art gallery and did a lot of window shopping, mainly at an amazing comic shop. Our last day in Belgium was spent in Ypres, on the west side of the country, where a huge number of soldiers died in the first world war and where hutchi visited as a scout back in the day. We finally had some sunshine which betrayed all the horrible history of the place, but we ate in the sun and blew our budget on beers and chocolate. Meningate, a memorial to the 50000+ soldiers who died in Ypres (which was actually flattened in the war and has been rebuilt) but do not have proper graves, was amazing. Seeing all those names, lost of which were australian, was truly moving. How lucky we are.

And then, finally, we returned to France. That's where you find me now, in Lille ( beautiful town, maybe our favourite), hiding from yet more rain and preparing for Paris. I'm sorry this blog is so long, and so long in coming. Hutchi's is much shorter (cause he lost his first attempt and had to redo it all) AND he had pictures-see hutchwood.travellerspoint.com.

Lots and lots of love
Au revior,
Linden and Hutch

Still, it was nice to be back in old Spain-land, where we sort of knew the language and knew, well, hutch knew, where were going! Barcelona was beautiful as I said, as grand as I remember it and it was a nice medium between the cold i had first time round and the hot Hutch had when he was there in july. Still plenty of people though, particularly oldies. We stayed just off the main strip, the famous La Rambla (the rapids) in this tiny and dark, but cheap little place and did lots of sleeping and eating delicious market brunches late in one of the many squares. We did manage one day trip out to sagrada familia-the huge modern gaudi church that dominates the city landscape and ism even though it is unfinished, amazing. We paid to went inside it this time, which was pretty cool. a lot of scaffolding around (2020 they think it will be complete) but it was great to have a look around and get up close. such an amazing building.

That night we caught our first overnight train of the trip, with bunks and everything (oh the pangs of indian train trips!) to the beachside town of San Sebastian. This place is horribly popular in the summer, but in the first two days of spring it was just right, again with fairly high populations of oldies and little kids, but not enough to ruin the beauty and style of the lovely old town. We did, I think, what an average Spanish couple would do, and spent the weekend there, hanging around the old district and strolling around the three beaches (one with some great, although freezing, surf). On Saturday night we partied with the rest of the town and fed ourselves with delicious seafood tapas (called pintxos) that you eat first and pay for later and drinking yummy wine and this local drink called tzakoli which is essentially apple cider that is poured from a great height. We had a really grreat night and tried heaps of bars, but Sunday we were broke and horribly horribly hungover, and could do nothing but wander around feeling sorry for ourselves and wishing for KFC. Eventually we did perk up a bit though, cause it was a BEAUTIFUL day, and took a funicular (read: FUN-uncular, i think it translates to 'tram for really steep hill') up to the top of another nearby hill to check out the view and the really old amusement park up there. We went on the rollercoaster, it was lame. There was nothing for it but takeaway pizza for dinner and a night in with our books and spanish dubbed Hitch on TV. Hangover bliss!

Now we face the final frontier, or more correctly, France. Knowing none of the language apart from what I learnt from Foux De Faa Faa and having only advice from our parents to go by, I think we will be fine. Stay tuned for more tales of interest!!

P.S. Lots of love to you all

OK, so here´s where i´ve been...

I will type this next bit fast, because, well, London is fast, and although we were there a week, as fast as we could go, there was still not enough time to see and do everything! From Mendoza we caught a first class back to BA (finally splurged the extra $10) which was grand, then spent a night with Hutch´s friend Sean who, with his parents, were staying in a very lush apartment in the city. An evening of steak and drinking ensued, and again I was left at the airport the next day, alone (hutch flew the following day) apart from a horrid hang over. It appears I am physically incapable of flying without one. Oh well, I got on the plane, and survived till Sao Paulo, and even survived that airport, despite the fact that there was nothing to do there and my plane was delayed 5 hours due to bad weather and so my 6 hour stop over turned into 11 hours. I did get to London eventually though, and was greeted (after an hour wait in the London tube, hilarious waiting day, although i did nearly finish my book) by my dear friend Jessie who I met at guides (and am not ashamed to admit it) and hadn´t seen for two years.

I stayed with Jess for a couple of nights, Hutch joining for the second, before we thought we´d better look after ourselves and find somewhere to stay. The cheapest place on the net we booked, and it turned out to be some random dodgy guy´s room in very far aways-ville which took us ages to find and was ridiculous. That night we went and saw the Lion King on the West End (complete with biscuits we´d bought from Tesco) and the next morning got out of that place as quickly as we could!

A plus side was that we were (sort of) near greenwich so we checked that out-being the birthplace of time and all. pretty cool, and a good view of the city, although we did have to lug our bags around because if we put them down they would have, obviously, exploded. The rest of our time in London we stayed with Hutch´s friend James and his friends, on a mattress on their floor which was rad considering it was free. We wandered around London a fair bit, saw a lot of sights from the outside because THAT was free, and Hutchi showed me around his old haunt in Shepard´s Bush. We saw Notting Hill (no blue door but i did see those gardens with the high fences, so cool), the very trendy brick lane market, all along the Thames, the Tower and the Palace and Hyde Park and St Pauls Cathedral and got lost among the many old winding streets named after the Monopoly streets. We also did a day trip to Oxford and caught up with Ex-Feddishers Cat and James which was awesome. I definately got my Harry Potter Fix after seeing where they filmed The Great Hall for the movies AND visiting platform 9 and 3/4 at Kings Cross. London may be cold,busy and expensive, but it is undeniably a wonderful place.

Finally though, it was time to leave to warmer, cheaper european cities, so off we went, driving an hour and a half out of london to catch our very cheap flight which actually got us an hour and a half out of barcelona! I guess it was cheap for a reason That brings me up to here, our first day in Barcelona, which has comprised mainly of sleep, delicious market food, and being on this computer! Having both been here before, I think we both feel a bit like it´s home and we can relax, before taking on la french in a week or so. Sangria and Paella last night for dinner certainly made a change from cheap London take away, and i remember why i love this country so much. Hopefully will write again soon, well done if you made this far,

love to you all,
Linden
xx

Ok so, 30 hour trip of regular coach in the two front seats with a blanket in front of us so we couldn't even see out the front and with no food or mention of putting on any form of entertainment using the completely useable televisions onboard was so ridiculous and horrible that it is hilarious and i vow never to speak of it again. At the end of this 'trip that must not be named' we were dropped off at 6am in El Bolson, a lovely hippy town in northern patagonia famous for its fresh fruits, jams and market. We saw sunrise again that day as we walked for ages along the main road to this lovely little hotel where we woke up the sweet old woman who ran the place and after her and her other old woman pal made us breaky we collapsed into bed.

Our lovely Hosteria

By the afternoon we were ready to attack the reason we went to El Bolson in the first place-the food market! We were not dissappointed either, and gorged ourselves on delicious chicken shnitzel sandwiches (for $1.50), empanadas, locally brewed beer and oh, amazing waffles with fresh berries and cream. so worth it. I also bought my Argentina momento at this market, a handmade chopping/serving board which i love, even though it cost me 3 times as much to send it home as it did to buy. It should be landing on our shores, not too filled with termites, any day now.

The next day we pottered along by bus to Bariloche, the gateway to skiing in the winter and the beautiful Lake District, and home to Argentina´s best chocolate. After testing every chocolate shop mentioned in the LP, and a few others besides, I had to agree with the Lonely and say that Mamuschkas was indeed the most beautiful and the best.

The best chocolate in Bariloche

I had a wonderful stroll around the busy touristy chocolatey streets and Hutchi patiently followed He was rewarded that night though at the best steak place in town Albertos-so much the best place in town that the guy actually has 5!! Still, it was awesome and with a $4 bottle of wine to accompany the steak (the steaks were so big we had one between us) it was a pretty good day.

The next morning we managed to squeeze in a quick trip to the top of a hill (via chair lift, the only way to go) and saw some amazing views of the lakes and surrounding mountains. Not even the gallons of old people could put us off and we had a lovelty morning tea with chocolate and a cuppa thanks to our wonderful thermos, the flying eagle. Then we were off, another 20 something hour bus trip, this time to Mendoza, home to over 75% of Argentina´s wine. We had a heap of fun here actually, and Mendoza is a really nice place, despite being in the middle of a desert. Our first full day was spent in Maipu, a big wine growing area, where we hired these beautiful old bikes and rode around to different wineries. It was damn hot, there´s no denying it, and we were pretty poor, despite only spending 20 pesos ($6) each on getting there and back and hiring the bikes (a tour, which would have done exactly the same thing, cost 70) and so we didn´t drink ourselves silly, but we tasted some lovely wine and saw some wineries that were over 100 years old!

Hutch on his bike, cruising the wine district

The photo´s a bit blurry, but, well, i´d been drinking wine all day.

Our last day in Mendoza we made a random choice and went rafting. I want to say white water rafting, but the fact is the water was chocolate brown, and we got soaked in it!! Neither of us had been rafting before, and i was, admittedly, a bit scared, but it was wicked fun and not that scary at all! We paddled into walls of water and bobbed up and down these huge rapids on a river that is clear and quiet in the winter time. We were in the water for an hour and it felt like 15 minutes, but afterwards we were so pooped there was nothing for it but to lie around in the sun reading our books and sipping on a cold beer in the midst of the Andes till home time. Hutch has a photo of us in the boat (and a different version of all these events, although he´s pretty much said what i said-actually, i think he´s been looking over at my bit of paper...) on his blog:

http://hutchwood.travellerspoint.com/

He´s also got links to his much radder photos and other stuff so if ouy have nothing better to do-stalk our lives!!

Hi Hi,
Wow-so much has happened since I last wrote and it's heaps more to write so I am going to break it up into sections to make it easier for us all. When I left you last I was going to catch a bus for a big long boring bus trip which certainly lived up to expectations and dropped hutch and i down in Rio Gallegos on the south east coast of Argentina. We got there at 10am (the first of many bus trips 16 hours or longer) and just caught another bus, only 5 hours this time, to El Calafate. EL Calafate is on the edge of this huge amazing glacial lake, and also on the edge of the Andes. Cause the weather comes from the west you see, the Chilean side of the Andes gets all the rain, leaving Patagonia as a windy, dusty, fairly desolate expanse of not much but llamas and the occasional amazing glacier (I know i'm glad i studied weather for 5 years to understand that!) El Calafate is the gateway to such a glacier-the most active glacier in the world i think, the Perito Merino Glacier (named after an explorer who i don't think actually explored it..., but then again i don't think he saw many of the millions of streets and parks and other things over the country named after him either (Argentina doesn't have a whole heap of heros or ideas for street names i think, as there is at least one Perito Merino, San Martin and Mitre street in every town)), and since it was an hour out of town, the cheapest way to see it was by bus, and since we don't know much about glaciers or patagonia apart from that awesome weather tid bit before, we took a tour bus and were told in spanish and english all about the place and the mass amount of ice along the way. My god, what a mass of ice it was too!

We spent a day there, watched the sheets crumble and crash into the freezing water below, and also took a boat out to get closer to the beast, and you think that would have been enough but I was really dissappointed when we lost the tour vote against the rest of the bus (all aged over 60) to go home early. It was amazing, just so majestic, and when the ice fell into the water, wow, what a sound! A rumble that we were to hear a bit of actually, as from El Calafate we rambled along Route 40 (the road parallel to the Andes) to El Chalten-gateway to more glaciers and some of the most amazing walking i have ever done.

New paragraph required though (am looking after your eyes mum ). El Chalten, which i think is spanish for 'home of crazy hikers with their ridiculous practical pants' was only built in 85 (younger than me as hutch is quick to point out-i think he likes dating an older woman) and was quite small and also windy and dusty as hell. We hired camping stuff and after waiting around for siesta to end (hehehe, cranky hutchi is fun hutchi) so we could buy some of the crappest camping food ever and then we were off, ill prepared and out of practise. We hiked for three days-one day to a camp on the edge of another glacial lake at the base of Cerro Torre, one day over some hills and past amazing lakes to the base of Cerro Fitz Roy, a huge chunk of rock that is 3.5km high (thats higher than a run around princes park is long, mental), and one last ridiculous day home again, where we were both limping and all we had to eat was hot chicken flavoured water, mashed up biscuits (followed by a squirt of vegemite, delicious), and some cream powder that we mixed with water (as we were lacking the egg and milk required to make it actually into cream) and ate for a sugar hit. hilarous, and not at all ridiculous. All in all we had one day in thongs each (blisters for hutch and weird swollen foot thing for me), two delicious dinners cooked on our little stove and two amazing sunrises on huge towers of rock, although i have to admit here that we missed the first rays on Cerro Fitz Roy cause we got ridiculously lost on the way as it was in the dark and, well, lets face it, we had a torch/clock radio and a pen light to help us. we got there though,and it was freezing, but incredible. The whole park was incredible actually-rivers of the clearest glacial melt (hmm, glacial milk) running through beautiful forests with gorgeous board walks and even woodpeckers! Mum and Dad, you would have loved it.

Cerro Torre

Cerro Fitz Roy

Finally back in El Chalten exhausted and dangerously hungry we ate and ate and sat a bit, before trying to figure out a way to continue our journey. All of that looking after ourselves proved to be a bad idea cause by the time we tried to get a bus ticket to our next destination they were all gone! And being in at the end of the earth we had to wait till the next day, giving us a day to rest our battered feet and soak up the local culture (not much actually, unless you count dust as culture, which i don't) and food (awesome chicken parma and delicious local beer with free peanuts and popcorn! awesome). We finally did get away though, on a 30 hour bus trip all the way up Route 40 to El Bolson,where our adventure continued......