27 posts tagged “europe”

We didn't wake up as early as we planned this morning (what a surprise). We didn't have breakfast and spent the rest of the morning packing our bags because, believe it or not, we would leave Europe today.

Thanks to May's tremendous effort on self-controlling over shopping in this trip, we didn't have too much trouble putting everything back into the bags. However, that didn't mean we didn't have to make any sacrifice. I had to leave my old, weathered leather shoes behind. We also could take two packs of tea leaf, which was given to us by our tour driver as a parting gift. It was almost noon when we finished packing and we had to head straight to the Gare du Nord train station to catch our Eurostar train to go back to London, where we would catch our flight to Singapore tonight (yes, we were leaving Europe, but I didn't say our adventure was about to finish).

We arrived the station and collected our pre-booked train tickets from an automated ticket machine (don't you love technologies). The next thing to do was to clear the passport control. The French custom officer was very noisy and asked a lot of unimportant questions. I dutifully answered all his questions to keep him happy and we were through. The funny thing was, 2 meters after we crossed the French custom, there was a black line drawn on the floor and a British custom officer was waiting for me at his desk, just behind the black line. That had to be the shortest travel between customs in the world.

The Eurostar train definitely not Japanese Shinkansen but at least it was clean and comfortable. Consider all the hassles associated with air travel these days, I still think travelling between European cities is the best way to do it.

We arrived London two a half hours later. Now we had about three hours to kill before we had to go to the airport. The girls decided to check out the Harrods department store. The boys, the ever-curious boys, went to visit, not one, but two museums. We first went to the Natural History Museum to check out some awesome life-sized dinosaurs and blue whale models. As much as we liked to stay, we had to go to visit the next museum before time ran out. The second museum we visited was the Science Museum, where you would how learn how everything in this world works. I even saw the real Apollo 10 command module there (if you don't know what an Apollo command module is, you really should read more). I just wish I could spend few more days there.

I think we broke the museum-visiting world record by visiting two museums in less than 45 minutes. Being seasoned travellers, we thought we were doing fine when we arrived Heathrow airport three hours prior to departure. The thing is that reality never fails to disappoint. At the end we still had to run to the gate to catch our plane after queuing for 90 minutes to check in and another 90 minutes to get pass the security check.

The flight wasn't exactly as good as I thought it would be and I am seriously think about taking back all the good things I have said about Emirates. Why? Because this flight didn't have the best in-flight entertainment system that I liked so much. Without it, this flight to Singapore seemed so much longer.

The temperature had dropped significantly since last night and we were all feeling the chill. The bad thing is that I left my outer shell jacket on the coach the night before and now that we had left the tour there was no way for me to get the jacket back. Where is warm clothing when you need it?

The first place we visited this morning is the Notre Dame and we got there by river cruise boat. I braved the cold and stayed on the deck to take few photos of Paris in the earlier morning. Notre Dame is located on the Île de la Cité island, where Paris was originally founded in medieval time. The cathedral is a fine example of French Gothic architecture and didn't let us down even after all the cathedrals and basilicas we have seen through out Europe.

Since some of us needed to grab some more warm clothing for the chilly Paris weather, we had to go back to the hotel after visiting Notre Dame. We had to walk past the Louvre again on the way back to the hotel and May and I just couldn't resist the urge to go into the museum again to look for something we couldn't find yesterday. Of course we are talking about the inverted pyramid inside the Louvre (you would know what I am talking about if you read Da Vinci Code). Sadly we failed our mission again on the second day. We just couldn't find it. Oh well, there is always next time. I am sure we will track it down next time we are in Paris.

The next stop was...another basilica. This time we would visit the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. We have seen many, many cathedrals and basilicas in this trip but what made this one interesting was that the visit would involve some hard work. The basilica is situated on top of a small mountain. We took the subway to a station that is nearest to the basilica and the hard work started from there. We had to walk no less than a hundred steps (at least that was how it felt like) to get to the exit of the station, then we had to walk another 3 flights of long stairs to reach to the top. However, the worst part wasn't the walk, but was finding out there was a cable car that would take us to the stop from the bottom of the hill and we didn't know about it until we got to the top of the mountain.

Tonight's dinner was another highlight of the trip, for we went to the world famous Moulin Rouge for a cabaret show dinner. The Moulin Rouge has been around since 1889 and has entertained millions of visitors from around the world.

The show we watched to night is called Féerie and it has been on since 1999. It uses a troupe of 100 performers, including the 60 Doriss girls (the legendary Moulin Rouge beauties/dancers); 1000 costumes of feathers, sequins, rhinestones, leather and other fabrics; and extensive sets that includes moving staircases, a gigantic aquarium that rises from the ground, lifts that swing women from the ceiling, horses, pythons and other live animals, and colorful backdrops.

Well, the words simply cannot describe this spectacular show. That is why I have included a video to help you out.

As I mentioned yesterday, today we would leave our tour group, people who we travelled with in the last 21 days. We woke up a lot earlier than we had to so that we could say goodbye to the group before they left the hotel to England. It was an emotional farewell and few tears were unavoidably shed.

After bidding our friends goodbye, we moved to our new hotel that was right next to the Louvre. The hotel was very small and the elevator could only hold two people at a time. It took us a while to transport all our suitcases up into our rooms. The highlight of the day was of course the Louvre. Once we got the tickets, our friends and us decided to split up and we would meet again 3 hours later. Once again, it just showed how much we underestimated how fast time flies when you are in a high quality museum like the Louvre. We eventually spent more than 6 hours in the Louvre and we left only because the museum had to close at 6:00pm.

The Louvre is so big, there is absolutely no way to explore the whole building and see everything in one day. It is said that if you spend one minute on each of the exhibit and keep doing it for 8 hours a day, it would take you four months to finish the whole museum. The museum also understands this and it produced a list of "highlight" or "must-see" items on the museum map to assist people to get the most out of their short visit to the museum. At the top of the list is Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. It is a surprisingly small canvas and is constantly surrounded by visitors. Opposite to Mona Lisa is a gigantic canvas that depicts Jesus in some kind of event. Judging from the size of the crowd in front of this canvas, it must be something significant. I thought to myself "we made all the way to the Louvre but now I don't even know what I am looking at.". And that's when we decided to get an audio guide to help us understand and appreciate all these invaluable art and historic collections around us.

That night we meet some family friends of our friends and had dinner in a local brasserie. The dinner taught me a lot about the eating culture of the French and tried few traditional French dishes like goose liver paste and steak tartare. After dinner we went to the Place de la Concorde to take few more photos. For the first time, the whole landmark belonged to us and we didn't have to fight with other tourists for the best photo spot.

As we were having a relaxing walk under the stars in Paris. I suddenly realised that we haven't really had any relaxing walk in Europe until now. We were always in a rush when travelling with the tour but now we can choose our own pace.

The sad thing is we are almost at the end of our European tour.

Finally, we are here! Today is our last day with our tour and tomorrow we will stay behind in Paris while the rest of the group continue the journey back to London. Our tour director Reiner asked us earlier whether we wanted to visit the Palace of Versaille or the Louvre. Most people wanted to see the Versaille because they thought it is much grander than the Louvre. Beside, Louvre is just a museum and it is not that exciting. Well, although we didn't agree with their reasoning, we thought it was a good move to visit the Versaille with the group, because we will be staying in a hotel right next to the Louvre tomorrow night. So why not ask the coach to take us to Versaille (which is located outside the central Paris) today and we can visit the Louvre at our own leisure tomorrow. What a cunning plan!

The construction of the Palace of Versaille was ordered by Louis XIII as hunting lodge. Louis XIV later moved in and expanded it to the world's largest palace in the world over the following decades. Some say Louis moved to Versaille because he thought the 1500-room Louvre wasn't big enough for him but I heard that it was a political move designed to distance himself from the aristocrats in Paris and once again centralise the power back to the king.

The palace is, without question, decorated lavishly with the best materials by the best craftsmen at the time using crystals, marbles, gold ,paintings, sculptures and tapestries. While all these efforts were certainly impressive, it left very little in my mind why the French revolution had to happen. It is not that hard to understand why the French people hate their king and queen so much when the king was spending huge sum of money in his house and at the same time peasants were dying from hunger outside the palace gate.

After leaving the Versaille, all female passengers on our coach were getting visibly excited. This must had something to do with the fact that we were now heading to the central Paris shopping district. The coach dropped us off just outside Galeries Lafayette, where we spent the next couple of hours in to eat and shop.

We later took a cab (it was hard to catch a cab in Paris when there were 20,000 English Rugby fans completing against you) to the world famous Champs-Élysées, where we found a huge Louis Vuitton shop, show rooms of various car manufacturers, the world's largest cosmetic shop and many, many other major brand names. Dinner was served in one of the restaurants on Champs-Élysées and we tried escargots (French snails) for the first time. All I can tell you is that they tasted better than they looked and they definitely went very well with my 1-litre beer.

We left our hotel in Bordeaux at 7:30am this morning began our long way to Paris. The first quick stop we made this morning was on the bank of Loire River. The only thing worthed reporting there is a sculpture of Leonardo da Vinci. Our tour director Reiner said Da Vinci was actually buried inside a chapel, which is inside a castle just across the river. Naturally, we didn't have time to pay him a visit because we had a very tight schedule to meet.

Lunch break was taken just outside the Château de Chambord at Chambord. The Château is famous for its very distinct French Renaissance architecture. Some suggested that it was originally designed by Leonardo da Vinci but the claim was never conclusively proven. Looking at all the tower-like structures extended from the roof of the building reminded me of the sky line of a modern city, and yet the interesting Renaissance design gave away its true origin.

May and I didn't worry too much about food when confronted by such a beautiful building in such a good weather. We went around the building to the other side to get better light for our photos (and that was when we realise how big the Château truly is). We even managed to visit the souvenir shop inside the Château. At the end we only had time to grab a sandwich before having to jump back on the coach and continue our journey to Paris.

We arrived the City of Style, Paris, in the late afternoon. I should mention here that the Rugby World Cup final match will be held in Paris tomorrow and the train driver decided that today is the best day to be on strike. The traffic in Paris is expected to be chaotic and travellers are told to expect long delay. We experienced the traffic chaos first hand: a trip from our hotel to the Eiffel Tower would normally take 15 minutes. Tonight, the same trip saw us trapped on the coach for 2 hours without food and water. The worst bit was that the sky was completely dark when we got to the tower and it made photography without tripod very difficult.

The view from the mid-level of the tower is breathtaking (the top level was closed) but I am sure it would be even better if we weren't slowed down by the traffic and got up there at sunset time.

Just like every other major tourist attractions, long queue to get up to the tower couldn't be avoided. What makes Eiffel Tower stands above the rest is that we also had to queue up to get down. In fact, we waited longer to get down the tower than we did when trying to get up. By the time we had everyone back on the ground, it was already 9:45pm. As much as our tour director wanted to take us to the Sacred Heart Basilica, all we wanted was dinner.

I had a 3-course dinner at McDonald's, completed with a pot of beer (did I mention they sell beer at McDonald's in most European cities?) and couldn't wait to go to bed.

Today is another long drive day. We left Lourdes early in the morning and made a brief stop in a small village called Aire-sur-I'Adour (I didn't make this name up. Go ahead and google it if you don't believe me). It was their lunch time when we got there and all shops, I mean all shops except one cafe, were closed. I guess it was still a good idea to get out of the coach and stretch our legs after sitting for hours. We later had our lunch in one of the best AutoGrills (motorway restaurant) we have been to in this trip. The food and the variety of the good were both very good.

Our hotel in Bordeaux is situated right next to a shopping centre. It wasn't a mega mall (more like The Glen), but it was good enough to excite a bunch of people who haven't been in any real shopping centre for days by now (the last shopping centre we went to was the one in Barcelona). We didn't really need to buy anything and the shopping centre didn't really have anything interesting to offer. But the mere sense of being inside a modern shopping centre was enough to temporarily cure our home sickness. I guess there is no use to deny that we are the typical shopping-centre generation.

The dinner in the hotel was good in quality, but not in quantity (may be we just ate too much). The dessert was also particularly disappointing. We decided to hunt for our own supper in the supermarket inside the shopping centre we went to in the afternoon. Their supermarkets are way bigger than ours and carry a lot more variety of goods. We fixed our eyes on fresh oysters and prawns and managed to buy some with our broken-Frenlish (short for French-English). One new thing we learned today is that French don't open oysters for you. I was charged with the task of opening our oysters with my trusted Leatherman. That leads me to another thing I have learned to day: It is ridiculously hard to open the shell of an oyster. I managed to open 11 out of 12 oysters we bought. It's okay. The hard work just made the oyster tasted even better.

After a few hours of traveling, we were back in the French soil and the scenery had definitely changed for better. The weather had also become much colder. By afternoon, we found ourself in a town called Lourdes.

Lourdes originally was a small market town. Following the claims that there were apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858, Lourdes has developed into a major place of Christian pilgrimage. Today this town is full of devoted Christians, some of them are hoping for miracles cure for their illness. On the day we were there, I saw many, many seriously sick people on wheel chairs (I saw one who had to be moved in a bed on wheels) with oxygen tanks. I must say that I was a little bit uncomfortable with the sight of so many sick people, exhausting their life-time saving to make their way to this town to seek nothing but one last hope of miracle. But then again, I probably wouldn't understand if I wasn't in their shoes.

If you want to see the power of faith, this is the town to be in. A candlelight procession is held every night. Everyone from everywhere of the world is welcome to join in. We are not Christian but we joined in after dinner anyway. I suppose a little bit of positive spiritual experience wouldn't hurt.

The first thing I noticed this morning was my sore throat.

We went to a city tour on our coach in the morning. If the city of Madrid is boring, our local tour guide was even worse. I didn't see anything interesting in the Madrid city, except for a couple of grand fountains. The city tour was so boring, I fell into sleep at one point.

We went to Toledo in the afternoon. Toledo was a former capital of  the Spanish empire. It is a beautiful and well-preserved medieval town that was declared as World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986. The Cathedral of Toledo in the middle of the town is spectacular and I heard that it is still a royal cathedral. The main door of the cathedral still only open for the Spanish King (and therefore is called the Door of the Kings).

During the bus ride back to Madrid city, our tour guide was busy filling us up with the rich history of the Madrid. But May and I were more interested in marking down all the nice shopping areas because we know that we would later make our way back to the city tonight and we'd better know where we are going. We took a cab to downtown and spend few hours shopping. Eventually we had Tapa (Spanish snack) for dinner.

This has to be the most boring day in our trip so far. We had been on the road since 7:30 in the morning. I am sorry to report that there is absolutely nothing to see between Barcelona and Madrid, except the barren, desert-like landscape, which is not too different from Australia's. I mean, we even struggled to find a decent place for lunch along the highway (to put this into perspective, we never had problem finding good, self-served motorway in all other countries we visited in this trip). To make the better worst, my friend and I developed some sudden and severe diarrhea. Having diarrhea is bad enough in normal times. It gets 10x worse when you are on a fast-moving coach. At one point it got so bad, the coach had to make an emergency stop so that we could relieve ourself in a small roadside shop. It turned out my friend and I were not the only one sick. The tour director, driver, and few other passengers were also sick. I think it had something to do with the buffet we had in Barcelona. I knew that the buffet was too good for this super costsaver tour.

The tour director gave each one of us some tablets but it didn't help me. I had to use the on-board toilet on the coach one more time before we arrived Madrid. Our hotel was in the urban area and we spent a couple of hours in the area around the hotel. There was not much to see.

This morning we went up to Montserrat, a mountain where a Benedictine monastery was built on top of it. Montserrat has some unique rock formations near the top of the mountain. Some of them look like fingers, some of them look like animals. However, most people come here not just for the rock formations, but to see the Black Madonna statue inside the monastery. It is not unusual for pilgrims to queue up for three hours to see and touch the Black Madonna statue that, according to legend, was found in a cave nearby under supernatural guidance. The view of the Catalonia region in the morning from the top of the mountain was breathtaking, especially with the morning fog still hanging in the valley.

When you drive around the city of Barcelona, there are several buildings that are so unique in style you just can't miss them. Modern buildings usual give people the feeling of cold, inflexible, repetitive and unimaginative. The buildings I saw in Barcelona are very different. They are organic, full of curves and full of inspirations from the nature. They look so good I had hard time believing they were actually built with concrete and metal. Of course I am taking about buildings designed by the famous architect Antoni Gaudi. One of his most famous project is the Sagrada Familia, a basilica that has been under construction since 1882 and still no where near its completion. When I first saw the Sagrada Familia in a photo, I honestly believed that the basilica was carved out from a giant rock because it doesn't look like any man-made building at all. Gaudi die in 1926 and the project was taken over by another architect. That gave the other side of the basilica a very different look and feel (some called it the "star wars" side of the church because of its futuristic look). I wish they can finish the basilica in my life time and I will have a chance to go back to Barcelona to admire the completed basilica once again.

We had a big Spanish buffet for dinner tonight but the best part of it was the after-dinner Flamenco show in the restaurant. Flamenco is usually performed by Spanish Gypsy dancers and it was a powerful and brilliant performance.