Gone baby gone

Sad faces everyone, my European adventure is almost over. 

My last stop was Paris.  The last time I came to Paris I was sure I wouldn't think much of it, but I had the best time ever so this time my expectations were high. 

Paris is a great walking city.  Most of the major tourist spots are walking distance from each other; Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumphe,  Sacre Coeur, Montemartre, Moulin Rouge, Notre-Dame, etc and there are lots of parks and trees and lovely old buildings.  The river is wide and bright and a lovely colour (not like our dirty old brown Yarra).  Even decrepit old buildings in Paris have a certain charm.  

 

So Emily who I just been hanging out with in Belgium was heading to Paris to meet Jenni, our friend who is studying in the Netherlands.  Our friend Katy, Jenni's sister was over for a visit & Jenni's friend Mark came to Paris with them too. 

They had a nice little apartment they had found on AirBnB which was decorated with about a thousand Eiffel Towers; you know, just in case you forgot you were in Paris.

So we did a lot of wandering about in the daytime, punctuating our walks with regular stops for lunch or beer.  And back in the apartment there was a lot of wine drinking and snacking.  Snacking French with lots of baguettes and cheeses.  And snacking Aussie with mint slices and twisties which Katy had brought over for the girls.

One afternoon we went to the Eiffel Tower and did as many locals and tourists do and sat in the park below the tower for some drinks on the grass.  It was a beautiful warm Spring day and we lazed around in the sunshine soaking up the atmosphere and the wine.

 

 

 

On my last day I went to see Notre-Dame which is pretty impressive.  Afterwards I went for a stroll and found a nice little park by the river.  The sky was blue, the grass was green and the cherry blossoms were drifting from the trees like pretty pink snowflakes.  Paris springtime a great inspiration for artistic pursuits so I planted myself on the grass, took a few photos and got out my laptop to do some writing.

Later I got up to leave and was like 'hmmm, something is missing.'  It was my camera.  It was gone!  I had taken some photos and sat it down right next to me so I could take some more later and it was gone!  I don't know how it got pinched, but I was not happy.  I loved that camera. 

So off I went to the police station to report it and get a statement.  Obviously this happens a lot, they barely asked a question.  Just got me to fill out the 'I'm a tourist and I got shit pinched' form which they then typed up and that was it.

Oh well, good excuse for an upgrade I guess :)

I heart Tintin

So I’m just going to put it out there, say it straight off.  Brussels is a bit of a hole.  Ok so maybe I wasn’t in the best area of town – Brussels Nord station smells like piss everywhere except in the toilets and on the 5 minute walk from the station to the hostel you would pass at least a couple of hookers.  Although in saying that, it was only a couple which is no worse than wandering down Grey St in St Kilda.  I also went to the touristy areas and while there were some impressive old buildings, everything still looked dirty and decrepit, and there was a lot of rubbish in the streets, that kind of thing.   In comparison to other European cities it’s a bit shit.  It's funny, even in the tourist brochures they’re like we know our city is a bit crap, but we like it and if you don't - leave, we don't care. 

Brussels

mmm chocolate

My friend Emily is studying in Leuven which is about a half hour train ride out of Brussels.  We had a bit of a walk around the town there, it's way prettier and cleaner than Brussels and has a nice big square where all the bars and restaurants are.  We had dinner at a pizza place with a couple of her friends and somehow ended up telling ghost stories.  Someone was like ‘oh we’ll all be too scared to sleep tonight’ and I said ‘well at least I’ll have the comforting sounds of seven other people snoring in my room so I won’t be scared.’ and Meenal replied, ‘Yeah until you turn on the light and realise you’re alone!’  I got goosebumps; she totally creeped me out!  

I also took a day trip to Gent.  It's a lovely town for walking around, like Leuven cleaner and better maintained than Brussels and it had a great castle.  The kind of castle that you could totally imagine living in.  It had a fireplace so huge you could stand in it!  I stopped for a nice lunch of beer and waffles as any good tourist does.  I had 3 different beers in my stay in Belgium, which means there's at least 1997 that I haven't tried!

 

On the first Sunday of the month the Thai Buddist Temple in Waterloo has a Thai food market.  I went out there with Emily and a few of her friends who were all really nice, especially Alex & Niells who not only gave me a ride out there, but stopped off at a few tourist spots on the way home for me!  The food was absolutely yummo and we spent ages there eating and talking crap and then eating some more. 

So one of the best things about Belgium besides the colossal beer menu is Tintin!!  Those of you who knew me in high school may remember I was a bit of a Tintin fan.  I almost became a journalist because I liked the cartoon so much; instead I became a programmer because I wanted to be like Penny from Inspector Gadget and have a computer book.  Anyway, it was good to get out to the Herge museum.  Perhaps it would have been a little better if I read a bit of French though as although the audio guide was in English there were a lot of original cartoons and they were all in French.  Still a cool museum though.    

 

 

Cloud 9

From Ellmau I moved on to Innsbruck, one of Austria’s bigger towns.  With about 100,000 people it’s a bit bigger and busier than Ellmau, but still a nice little place surrounded by mountains in all directions.  This whole mountains in all directions deal is a pain in the bum.  At one stage I walked out a laundromat (yay for clean clothes!) keen to head back to the hostel.  I saw the mountains and was like, oh yeah, if they just stay on my left I’ll be back to the hostel in no time.  Der, wrong mountains and I ended up half way across the wrong end of town before I realised!

Innsbruck has a really lovely little tourist strip of old buildings, winding alleys and a place called the Golden Roof.  The roof is made of over 1000 gold tiles and was built in the 1500’s.  One thing I noticed in Innsbruck is that there are a lot of beggars.  Clean, well-dressed beggars.  And a lot of women too.  I really don't understand begging in first world places, especially when it's not drunks and drug-fucked dicks who have done it to themselves.

Not sure what these shifty buggars are up to, but one is holding a beer so it must be a super plan they're scheming

      

 

One of the touristy things you can do in Innsbruck is go to the mountain-top via cable cars.  It actually takes 3 separate cable cars to get you to the very top, but it's well worth it, the view is spectacular.  At the top of the second cable car is a ski, a bar and some deck chairs.  There wasn't much snow, but enough for some tricky-dicky's to be doing some jumps and stuff which was cool.

 

Another thing I did was go out to Krystalweltten.  For some reason, I think maybe because a lonely planet guide said take a jumper, I thought the place was like an ice sculpture place.  It wasn't, it's the Swarkovski crystal museum, still pretty cool if not a little bizarre and had the most expensive gift shop ever.  12,000 euro crystal dragon anyone?

 

How now Ellmau

I went to Austria with the intention of getting a couple of snowboarding lessons and becoming the next Torah Bright.  There seemed to be a few flaws in this plan:

1.       No lessons; as it was the last week of the ski season in Ellmau all the ski schools were shut.

2.       I lack any form of natural agility or co-ordination; therefore it takes me a long long time to get less bad at anything that involves physical activity.

As there were no lessons I figured I would stick to what I know and just ski for a few days.  That plan seemed to be flawed too by the fact that I had forgotten I am the worst skier ever.  On the first day I could remember how to stop.  That was handy.  So I snow-ploughed my way down a few runs.  For some reason I was having trouble turning, but in true Zoolander style was only having trouble turning in one direction. 

But glad to say I did get better.  By the last day I was getting down the mountains without losing my shit and skidding down the run on my arse.  I was also starting to get some speed up and turning - In Both Directions.  Champion!

 
Ellmau, the town I was staying in, is a really cute, little, postcard-perfect, ski town.  I bet it’s pumping during the ski season, but when I was there it was pretty quiet.  Literally, I had the entire hostel to myself the last couple of nights.  So of course I entertained myself with nudie runs up and down the stairs.  The town has this little church right in the middle and surrounding the church is a cemetery.  And it’s just so lovely.  It’s like a garden.  All the plots have flowers planted and it’s all very pretty.

On my last day in Ellmau I went for a bit of a hike up into the mountains.  The mountains are spectacular.  When skiing you could see out over the valley and the mountains.  The valley was all wide open fields of green grasses.  The town, like tiny toy buildings wound their way down the centre of the valley.  The fields fade off into a darker green of the forests which lead up to immense steely peaks, jutting out against the bright blue skies.  The air was so crisp and clear you could see every crack and crevice in the mountains. 

However on the day I had my camera it was overcast and grey so the contrast between the mountains and the sky wasn’t quite the same.  It didn’t have that look as though the mountains are so close you can almost touch them.  Still impressive though. 

Hiking up into the mountains is great.  The forests are like fairy tale woods.  Tall trees with little undergrowth.  And quiet.  So so quiet.  At one spot I saw a fallen tree trunk, and upon the trunk someone had laid out small piles of stones.  Suddenly the lovely Hansel and Gretel forest became a creepy Blair witch forest.  The tranquil silence became an eerie silence and the pretty dappled sunlight on the forest floor changed to wavering shadows at every step.  I was like, uggh don’t get me witch!

Big fat bumbly bee

Hansel and Gretel forest

Sure, I totally know where I am

 

Apple strudel and a mountain view

 

 

PS. The nudie runs was a lie.  Just checking if you’re paying attention ;)

PPS. If you haven't voted for my blog in the blog comp, voting closes 5th May. So Click here to vote and you'll need to click through the survey until you get to last page T-Z where you will find my blog 'Where in the world is Kelly?'

Old stuff and daffodils

Going from Iceland to Ireland is like going from Winter to Spring.  From bleak but beautiful landscapes of muted colours , alien-like lava fields and icy glaciers to green hills, cultivated fields and small windy roads enclosed by hedges and rocky fences.

 

I like Ireland.  It has a real ‘homey’ feel to it.  I’m not saying that it feels like home, but more a comfortable feeling, like hot soup on a cold day or a warm fire when a heavy rain is battering at your window.

On my first night I checked into a hostel, but it was pretty quiet and I found a brochure for a Musical Pub Crawl so decided to head along.  It was really good.  It was run by two guys, one had a guitar and sang the other had a set of Irish pipes.  They would play and sing and then stop to chat, giving us a bit of a history on the instruments and the musical culture in Ireland and then we’d go to another pub and do a bit more of the same. 

At the end of the night a few people were keen to kick on so the guys suggested McNeills.  A pub that had a session going on including someone who is great on the flute.  The people who I went with were an American couple who were lovely and four American women who were annoying as shit.  On the way there the girl from the couple was saying how she was looking forward to seeing the flutist.  And this other woman corrected her ‘It’s a flautist’ and the first woman was like whatever and continued to say ‘flutist’ and every time she did the other woman would correct her but was getting shitty because the other one wouldn’t say it right.  So I was like, ‘I just call them flute dudes.’  The ‘flautist’ woman was not amused.  Turns out I was wrong anyway - it wasn’t a dude.

So the session was really good.  There was the woman on the flute, a couple of old fellas, a couple of younger guys and the music was great.  There was another young guy who sat at the bar for about an hour sucking on his beer before he just suddenly burst out with a number – gee he was good too. 

I was perched at the bar when the barman comes up and says ‘Your friends left without you’ and sure enough the American women had left; got huffy about something and just walked out without so much as a goodbye.  I said to the barman ‘They’re not my friends.’ and he said ‘Thank fuck for that.  I didn’t think so.’ and then the whole bar was like ‘Thank god they’re gone!’ Then the bar man went and locked the door.  So for my first night in Dublin I ended up having lock-in with the bar man, a few locals including one old fella who was singing up a storm and a Puerto Rican web developer called Ricardo.  Good times.

On Paddy’s day I headed into Dublin to check out the parade.  So the parade started at 12.  I rock up about 11.30 and was like ‘bugger didn’t think that one through’.  The crowds were seven people deep everywhere.  People were perched on bins, statues and climbing street lights to get a view.  There were men setting up ladders for their kids and every second person in the seven people deep crowd was wearing a foot long green hat.

So needless to say, I didn’t get the best view.  I could see the floats which were pretty cool even if I couldn’t figure out what the hell they were about and some of the brass bands were quite amazing.  One did the tequila song and Gangnam style which had everyone laughing.

After the parade I went and met up with Greg, a guy I used to work with who was in Dublin for work, for a beer.  We had a beer or two, a pizza and ended up at McNeills again.  FYI - First and last time I drink Guinness. 

A big surprise waking up after Paddy’s day was the fact that I wasn't too hungover which was great because I got up and jumped on a bus to Ennis to meet Aoife.

Ennis is in county Clare and is about a 3 hour bus ride.  Aoife and I stayed with her parents who were lovely and Aoife took me to the Cliffs of Moher and as she put it 'to look at old stuff'.  Getting out into the country is so much nicer than in Dublin, it's all rolling green hills and daffodils.  And the old stuff; it's everywhere.  You're just driving along and there in the paddock with the sheep is half an old castle or some random wall just sitting on a hill.

The cliffs were pretty cool.  A bleak and imposing view.  And the wind, god almighty, it was strong.  At one stage we were coming down some stairs on a trail and my legs were literally blown out from under me and I landed on my arse.  Then a bit further down the track it flattened out and ran along side the drain.  Poor Aoife got blown over and almost ended up in the drain!

After Clare I caught another bus down to Cork to meet Mags (Down is that the right direction Mags? My geography of where I went is pretty shocking, I really should look at a map occasionally.)

 

I stayed a couple of nights with Mags in her home town of Cork.  With Mera as well we checked out the Cork nightlife, ate a lot of late night pizza and visited some little beach towns.  The weather was a bit crazy and unpredictable, but we did see some sunshine and blue skies when we got to the beach which was nice.

 

We also stopped off for a lunch in a lovely pub and I had a really tasty scallop risotto.  So yummy.  Aoife took me too a good lunch pub too.  The food has been tasty here but I think we all know the best Irish food is found in Melbourne anyway ;)

 

Big giant thanks to Aoife and Mags for having me and showing me around.  I had a great time and had fun catching up with you guys as well as with Mera and with Annette and Barry in Dublin.



 

Fare thee well Iceland

Look, I'm a viking!

So that’s it.  Iceland done. Three and a half weeks here and all I can think is I can't wait to come back in the Summer!  I definitely had to do this trip in the Winter as I really wanted to see the Northern Lights (and did x 3 #winning), but there is heaps to do that you can't do in the Winter, like a lot of the hiking and the Lofthellier Caves looked like they'd be awesome and horse riding I'm sure would be much more fun if you weren't riding through a snowstorm!  But I did get to do some cool stuff like diving in Silfra fissure and a glacier walk.

 

 

 

 

I booked in to do ice climbing as well, but that got cancelled because of shitty weather.  That was doubly shitty because I met an American guy, EJ, who was hiring a camper with a few people and travelling around for a few days which sounded great fun. So I could have gone, but said no because of the ice climbing and then didn't get to do the ice climbing!

On the bright side though, it meant I was in Reykjavik for the folk festival held at the hostel.  It was great, all this local music from people with fantastic names like Bubbi Morthens, Snorri Helgason and Bjartmar Gudlaugsson.  And the music was fantastic too.

The best though was Bjartmar Gudlaugsson.  It was gold.  He was this older fellow and he was singing in Icelandic.  Everyone in the room except us knew all the words and were singing along. Then for one song everyone in the room were pissing themselves and I was like 'damn, he's singing a dirty song and I don't know what he's saying!'  And he totally was, I know it.  But then at the end of his set this woman ran up onto the stage and gave him a kiss. Then all these women were trying to touch him as he left and were trying to get photos. Hillary, a kiwi girl I met diving, was like 'Wow, he must be like the Rock God of Reykjavik.' 

Hold on to your panties ladies, it's the Rock God of Reykjavik

I quite liked the Café/Bars in Reykjavik, for such a small place there seems to be an awful lot of them.  We went out one night for happy hour but the place was so empty that the bar guy poured himself a drink and sat down with us.  But then this crazy dude showed up.  I asked him about his red nails and he told us the woman in the psych unit did them for him.  He was telling us all kinds of mad things then holding my hand, looking into my eyes and telling me ‘You are the most beautiful woman I have seen… today.’  Gee, thanks bloke.  And funnily enough the other girls were not at all offended by this statement.  So we decided to move on, but our new friend wanted to come, poor EJ got lumped with the job of telling him he couldn’t.  But the crazies are the exceptions, Reykjavik is pretty cool.

So I thought I'd leave you with some random Icelandic facts.

Whatever your budget is – double it!  Everyday things are a bit more expensive.  Touristy things are ridiculous - like $400 for an overnight tour that didn't even include dinner!  But you should just hire a car instead of doing all the tours anyway.  Much more fun.

Majority of homes use thermal hot water.  Great for the environment, you just have to get used to the hot water smelling like egg farts due to all the sulphur.

Icelanders leave their prams outside the shops and cafes – with the babies in them! – when it’s -1!  It's true I checked a couple to make sure.

 

Don't bring me down whingers!

 

On my last day I finally got to the famous blue lagoon.  And yes it really is that blue in real life.  In the morning I went down to wait for the bus.  I waited a little while and then just as I was wondering whether it was late or I was early it turned up.  We stopped to pick up some more people and they got on all huffy pointing at their watches and complaining.  Then a woman already on the bus started complaining about how many stops we were making, yelling at the driver and carrying on.  I kind of looked at her like 'WTF are you carrying on about?', she caught my look so switched her whinging to loud whispering in German to her husband.  Then we got to the last stop and more whingers got on.  They were all complaining about the bus being late and abusing the driver and then when he ignored them someone said 'oh god, he doesn't even speak English!'  Three points for you lady:

• If you knew anything about Iceland you would know that practically all Icelanders are bi-lingual
• You're in Iceland why should he speak English anyway
• You're on holidays, just settle the fuck down or if your schedule is so important get a bloody taxi!

But these people kept on and on, the girl sitting in front of me put her headphones on and I was like damn why didn't I bring mine.  After 15 min they were still going and I finally lost it and was like 'OH MY GOD! Enough of the whinging!'  Which was good because it stopped them yelling at the driver, but bad because then I copped it.  Some pompous English dick told me that they had 'every right to whinge' and I told him they were all carrying on about nothing so then one of the women said 'Oh great, we've even got the backpackers on board.  Just shut up.'  So I was about to lose my shit and absolutely rip into her, but then I figured they'd already ruined my day enough so I just ignored them and they finally shut up.

But then, when I got off the bus the girl sitting in front of me was standing there waiting for me.  When I saw her I was like 'Gee, glad that rides over.'  And she started laughing and said, 'They were horrible.  I was so happy when you said something to them.'  Me too, because now I had a Blue Lagoon buddy!  The end.

 

Whales and puffins and sharks oh my!

So this post is for the foodies out there.  For some reason I was expecting the food in Iceland to be pretty average.  Probably all the talk of Icelandic specialities like whale, puffin and fermented shark.

But happy to report I was misinformed.  From the hotdog stand, to drunken waffles, to the top restaurants in Reykjavik it was all great.  (Just to clarify, yes it was me that was drunk – not the waffles.)

So did I eat the whale and the fermented shark you ask.  Whale – yes.  Shark – no.  I think the worst thing about eating whale was the guilt because it actually was quite tasty.  Icelanders say that eating whale is not an issue here as there are so many of them - Minke's aren't endangered or anything.  But when you say that part of the issue is that they are too big to kill humanely they kind of just stare at you blankly.  But when in Rome... so I gave it a go and it was good.  It's a red meat and not fatty at all like imagined.  I also tried some horse, again really good and the puffin - not a big fan, it was kind of like duck I guess.  It's a bird but it's not a white meat.

Nasr found us some nice restaurants and although a bit more expensive than at home they were really nice were lovely - good atmosphere, lovely decor and fantastic food.  They all served yummy homemade breads with Icelandic butter which is so light it’s almost still cream and lava salt.

 

So Nasr, Ali & I went out to one of these restaurants after an afternoon in the pools.  Ali and I went for a swim and hung out in the hot tubs.  Nasr went for a massage relaxing massage but all that restfulness and post-massage calm disappeared after about 10 minutes in a restaurant with Ali.  I'm guessing Ali doesn't eat out much.  After asking Nasr a hundred questions about the menu and being overly-concerned about the lack of shrimp on the menu, he then asked the waitress a hundred questions about the lack of shrimp and finally order a bowl of chips.  The waitress took our order, turned to another table, then Ali was tapping her on the shoulder - when were his chips coming?  Nasr lost his shit at him - gee I laughed.

 

Another thing the Icelanders are a fan of is dried fish.  If you ask me it smells and tastes like cat food - but I liked it and went through a few bags. 

And the hotdogs.  They love the hotdog stand.  They are cheap and they have mustard and tomato sauce and fried onions. Yummo.  Think I went back about four times!  And the last time I went back I was a bit peckish so got two!

Horsies and huskies

So I decided to get out of Reykjavik and see a bit more of Iceland.  Akureyri (ak-u-reh-ree) is a small city in the north of Iceland.  It's about a 40 minute flight up there.  Internal flights in Iceland are done in quite small planes - kind of the size of a big bus with propellers that sound like they've got lawnmower engines.

It's a really pretty little town and when I got there it began snowing; big, fat, fluffy, flurries of cotton wool snowflakes like from English Christmas stories or rom-coms.  

I went horse-riding where you got to wear a nice big orange sumo-suit so you don't freeze your bits off.



Giddy up

I also went down to the local ice-hockey rink to see my first ice hockey match.  Still not sure of the rules of ice-hockey - that's if there are any rules.  But even in local leagues it's pretty rough and good fun to watch, but kind of like soccer in the fact that one team can seem to have control of the game for 90% of the time and still not win.  Dumb.

I also did a tour out to Lake Myvatn (mee-va).  I got on the bus and was like aww crap - I was the youngest person on the bus by about 30 years!  But the people on the tour were lovely.  There was an English couple - he sounded like Ringo Starr and she sounded like Mrs Bucket.  And they were all well travelled interesting people with lots of stories and places seen and adventures had, it was great.  I even had dinner the next night with a couple of them the next night.

Our guide who was a tourguide/hairdresser/bodybuilder took us to see the lake and there was a dog-sledding competition.  But when I went for a closer look I realised that all the people on the sleds were kids!  It was pretty cute.

I'm calling these guys Kujo and David Bowie

 
One of the places we went to on the tour was a place the guide called the Dark City.  It was like these amazing lava columns about 20 metres tall.  They spread out as far as the eye could see and with all the fresh snow looked amazing.  We stopped at a lookout to view them, but along the bottom there were walking trails and apparently it's a great area for hiking in the Summer.  So another reason to come back to Iceland in the Summer!!