Simon and Deb's European Summer

One thing I was looking forward to experiencing on the holiday was travelling through Europe by train. I never travelled in my 20's, but I always heard my friends stories of their journeys doing whole Europe backpacking thing - and I always wondered if I missed out. I had this really romantic idea of trekking through Europe backpack in tow, going from country to country and meeting all these really cool people from all over the world. Although I wasn't 20, I felt like this was a good opportunity to have the experience I thought missed.

Hmmm..... It wasn't the romantic idea I had imagined, but it was definitely interesting..

Most of the train stations in Europe are filled with gypsies, homeless and desperate people who hang around, because tourists the are the best hope to get some money and of course if the tourists are not on the ball, they are easy targets for scams.

Gare du Lyon

Our first station was the Gare du Lyon in Paris. My first impressions was that it was a lot less hectic than the Gare du Nord. When we arrived, we were a little early so we sussed out some brekky and much needed coffee. So far so good. I started to relax a little. It wasn't until we were standing together looking for a toilet for Kaz, that I realised that we were being watched by the dodgiest looking guy. He was standing behind a pillar and his head kept popping out to check us out. He looked a little bit more conniving than just a beggar or a scammer. I alerted Simon who had already seen him and we made sure that we stood together and had our belongings close to us, bags zipped up and nothing in our pockets of value.. Kaz had to go to the loo so I went with her and made sure it was safe where she was waiting in the queue for the toilet. She was cool so I made it back to the boys. While we were standing there, the same dodgy guy that was checking us out came right up to Matt and was talking in a low voice in French. I don't know whether he was asking for money or food, but he was right up in his personal space. I was worried that he got close in case he tried to pick our pockets. Matt had to say no a couple of times before he eventually left. He was creepy. The guy walked outside where I noticed he had a few mates who would have been trying to get some money out of people also. It wasn't cool.

Although nothing terrible happened, it is not a nice feeling knowing that you are a target with a massive bullseye on your forehead saying, 'pick me!', 'I don't speak the language!', 'I don't know what I am doing or where I am!!'

Waiting for the train at Gare du Lyon

Gare du Lyon Part Dieu

This was the train station in Lyon where we arrived. It was quite dirty looking and quite busy. Alot of people that are travelling through the south of France come through this station. When we arrived, we just headed out of it as quickly as possible after purchasing our tickets to Nice and made our way to the seediest taxi drivers all standing around having an in house conversation, which Kaz was sure included talk about me and her. These guys looked filthy, but when you are in another country, these are the people you have to rely on to help you out.. I always close my eyes and say a quick prayer each time and smile alot. The guy ended up being ok eg: not a serial killer, but he did manage to charge us 9 euro to drive us about 50 meters down the road. Our fault, should have done the research, but we were alive and safe with all our stuff..YAY!

When we were leaving Lyon we had to exit out the same station. We were early and decided to start the day with a coffee. Kaz and I sat outside at a cafe and waited while the boys got the coffee. So I was sitting there, on edge like I usually am at a train station, watching the world go by. I noticed that there was a lady on the ground with a crowd around her. She was crying and whaling. Kaz and I were like what the hell is going on?! Not being able to understand the language really gets in the way of finding out all the goss. We had kind of worked out that the lady was a gypsy who had been attacked by someone who then did a runner. We missed the attack, but there were a lot of people around this lady, some trying to explain to the police what had happened. She seemed to be in a lot of pain, and there was one lady in particular who had seen the attack and was really vocal towards the police, but it also seemed that the police weren't really doing much about it. We figured it was probably because she was a gypsy.It was so sad. The ambulance pulled up and took her away, and slowly the crowd dispersed. We will never really know what was going on, but it goes to show the kind of people that were hanging around the station. People you have to stay on your game.. you really do!

Nice

The train to Nice was fairly straight forward - we had to do another change over in Marseille before we got there. Marseille actually seemed like quite a nice place but we were only there for about half an hour. I had to go the bathroom and the toilets were so clean you could smell the bleach. (That's toilet heaven for me.) We had a little moment of panic when we thought we couldn't find our carriage/seats when boarding the train for Nice, but it turned out really well as we ended up being in the last carriage with plenty of room and seats.
When we arrived at Nice station we were so excited, because we had seen the BEST views of the coast..It looked amazing and we couldn't wait to see more. As we were leaving the train station which was fairly crowded, Kaz was bumped into by a stranger who she thought may have tried to pick pocket her. Not too much of an issue that time but we did have some issues when we were leaving Nice. On our way back to the train station in Nice after having a great time there, we noticed two men walking ahead having a massive argument. I thought they were friends having a disagreement about something. It went on for what seemed forever and was fairly heated. I was thinking OMG here we go - nothing like some crazy people drama at the train station. They finished arguing and ended up going separate ways, one of them continued to the train station and the other walked into a ticket office. I thought it was all over when the guy that walked into the ticket office, walked straight back out and straight towards Simon who was walking a bit ahead of us. This guy was just shouting at him in french, it seemed like he wanted to pick a fight. Simon kept walking trying to ignore him and the guy touched Simon to get his attention, that is when Matt, Kaz and I ran to his side. Kaz was in this guys face yelling 'What has he done?!!' 'What's your problem?' At that stage, I then got worried for Kaz as she was pregnant and she put herself between this guy and Simon. I mean really sweet of her, but really, Kaz if you're reading this, 'DO NOT do that again! ok?' With all of us in this guys face he backed down and left, it was a scary moment and we were in shock. What the hell was that about?!! Was it a scam or just a crazy man?

I was really excited to be on our way to Nice, I had heard so much about it, but I had no idea what to expect. I had been told that the French Riviera was spectacular, but it didn't register until it was right in front of me. Even then, with my limited reserve of spectacular images stored in my memory banks, I never would have been able to pull anything out to compare to this.

Kaz and I were oohing and ahhing most of the way down the coast, (look at this, look at that, OMG!!) I tried to take some pics of what we were seeing, but the train was too fast, I was too slow and if you are taking pictures you are missing everything so I gave up and just admired the views! After many hours of train travel we finally arrived and were eager to get settled and discover the town.

Nice was picture perfect.. you knew you were in France because the bulidings were typically French, the attention to detail was present but the coast added another dimension. It was a less uptight version of Paris, which I like to call 'Holiday Paris'. It had such a relaxed feel to it, it seemed friendlier, and had a lot of character.

Kaz was enjoying the overly tanned crowds. Having a tan in Europe is BIG! Not just a tan, you must be black or a really leathery looking dark brown..We couldn't work out why people are have the need to do this to themselves? It looks awful!! It was obvious slip slop slap had not made its way to Europe... but then neither had the basics of car saftey, like wearing seatbelts. The europeans are crazy, and I kinda like it!

I was loving the the amount of small dogs being walked by larger than life European women wearing bright colours and of course re-worked faces!! Straight out of something like Dr 90210. People holidaying around this area have a lot of money.. I was trying to imagine who these people were, what were they like and what they did for a living? Joan Rivers really needs to come down here and do an episode of 'How did you get so rich?' so I can get the lowdown.

Owning a small dog over here is also really common and people can take their dogs with them everywhere! Like public transport, hotels, taxis, restaurants. We saw so many people wheeling their luggage and walking their dogs. It was really cute to see.

Simon was all about the luxury cars, lamborghinis, mazzerati's, - you know the cars where the doors open up and down (like batmans!) It was crazy.
The boys were talking about their need for some kind of business idea that would make them a lot of money, so they could have these cars and walk the streets in white linen suits and Kaz and I could just fanny about all day long...

The centre square in Nice was a hive of activity - I loved all the street entertainment, break dancing, opera singing... there always seemed to be something going on.. I love places where all you have to do is walk the streets, be entertained and can enjoy just being out and about.

We kept walking through the streets and made our way down to the coast... WOW! Now I know what people are talking about when they are talking about the French Riviera. If you ever have the opportunity, you must go. We felt like movie stars, so glamorous!

I really enjoyed the food in Nice. Maybe because of its proximity to Italy or even the fact that Nice was ruled by Italy for a long time.. but there was lots of Italian food and really good Italian too! That along with the french pastries made for some good eating, because I have to say I still am not the biggest fan of French cuisine overall.. The wine is cheap too, and they serve it to you in carafes, which I really love. Actually, alcohol in general is quite cheap in Europe and you can get it everywhere - it breaks my heart knowing this is not going to happen in Perth for a very long time if ever? Surely if it was made more available back home people would care less about it?

If you are Nice, I recommend doing one of those bus tours.. I have always not been too keen on them but they really a great way to see the place your visiting - especially if you are on limited time like we were. We saw that Nice was quite a big place, beyond what we could see by just walking around. There were more spectacular views, architecture and art. I love particularly the giant head sculpture in the picture below done by an artist named by Sosno.

On our last night in Nice we were so lucky because there was a big festival where they close down the streets and have all sorts of entertainment. The atmosphere was electric. Our favourite of the night was these two guys riding these large bikes with giant fish attached playing crazy assed music. Hilarious!! It was such a great way to end our time there. I am looking forward to the time when we return!

Lyon ended up being only a short one night stopover, arriving in the afternoon and leaving early next day. Even though technically we were only on day 3 of our holiday, financially we were on day 10 due to our extravagant spending in Paris, eating and drinking up a storm!
Are you surprised?! Luckily for us though, our digs for the night had a kitchenette too, so we decided to eat in and cook something up for ourselves.

What can I say about Lyon? Well like I said we were only there for 1 night so I can't say much.. I do know that it is the gastronomical capital of the world. That is it. We didn't see much of Lyon during our taxi ride either since the cab took us 500 metres down the road! Shortest cab ride ever = 9 euros. The language barrier just couldn't make it possible for the cab driver to communicate that either, so he took us anyway..

You will notice from my pics I didn't take any photos of Lyon itself - that is because I didn't really see anything worth sharing. We did however go to the biggest shopping centre in Europe - apparently the biggest shopping centre in Europe is in Lyon (?) We spent a little bit of time trying to navigate the shopping centre to find a super market, we ended up finding a G Star store (Yay for Simon!) and they helped us find the supermarket called Monoprix. I love supermarkets in Europe, it makes me feel sad when I think about IGA Mount Hawthorn. So many cheeses, breads, wine. The wine is so cheap and so good here. It was in Lyon when we first realised this!

I'm dissapointed that I didn't get to sample the food here in Lyon. That will have to be next time, but we did have a lot of fun staying in and cooking. Just the bread, cheese and wine we ate was yummy enough. Cooking here was fun - Simon and Matt enjoyed cooking up whilst enjoying the red, Kaz and I were on cheese and bread duties. We also got a chance to make a start on the blog and get up some pictures.. which reminds me, I have to finish this one up as I am off to Venice today and I still must get up Nice, Leirici and Florence!!

For our first day in Paris, we woke early - we did not have any jet lag and just didn't want to waste a minute of our time here.

We started off with some breakfast we picked up from a local boulangerie on Rue Cler - Simon had a chocolate and cheese croissant and I had my first crepe for the holiday. We saw the most creative baking with loaves of turtle bread ready for sale.. Just beautiful!

We slowly made our way down to the Eiffel Tower whilst eating our breakfast and catching up on all the news, mainly having a laugh and we were still in disbelief that we were all here together in Paris - How lucky are we?

We stopped in front of the Eiffel Tower for some photos, we were lucky we were up pretty early and managed to miss a lot of the crowds.
Our photos were silly, Simon posed as the (secret) father of Kaz's baby and Simon and I did some romantic shots (after all we are in Paris) and Matt was quite contented to eat his yummy croissant!

As we walked towards the Eifffel tower we started to remember the things that annoyed us about Paris. Gypsy hawkers trying to scam you whichever way they can. Pretending to be collecting donations was a BIG one (I almost believed them too!) and just general harrassment. You always have to stay aware of where everyone is and hold your bags tight!! We got out of there pretty quickly after taking a few shots around the Tower and made our way down to the river.. at this stage we didn't really have a plan of what we wanted to do.

We made our way to the river and saw a sign for a boat cruise tour down the Seine - this was something Simon and I didn't get a chance to do last time we were here and Kaz and Matt hadn't been on one either, so we thought that was a great start to the day!

What a good choice, for about 20 euros we had an hour cruise and you could have some champagne or soft drink and a croissant, Simon and I had the champagne and took in the sights of Paris minus the hawkers and bag watching. We could just kick back and relax and did I mention how great the weather was?!!

The most memorable parts of the cruise was seeing all the little house boats lined up along the river, even they had little flower gardens. There was topless sunbaking, the little beach along the Seine with beach umbrellas and murals, little homes under the bridges that the homeless made their own, and all the beautiful architecture that Paris is famous for..

Whilst touring we were thinking of where we should go next and I tossed up the idea of the Pompidou Centre as Simon and I were disappointed that we missed a Kandinsky exhibition when we were here last and just the building itself is a piece of art.. We were a little sketchy on how we should get to The Pompidou Centre as we had the option of taking the underground, we toyed with taking a taxi and also a hop on hop off boat. We needed to get to St Michel which is where Notre Dame is and we could walk from there.
After walking for a bit in the full sun we thought cab would be the best option especially with Kaz being pregnant but in the end we decided to tackle the underground after not finding a taxi rank.

When we finally worked out how and where we needed to hop on the train the train line actually terminated one stop later and we were ushered off the train only to have to catch a bus. Hilarious! By this time it was getting really hot and we were getting really tired. We finally made it to St Michel, but decided to take a quick walk and stop somewhere for lunch. Kaz had seen a little arcade on the way to St Michele and we made our way there after we got off the bus.

Kaz has a keen eye, because when we found the arcade it was a little off the track but typically french. The perfect place to relax.

After our long relaxing lunch we opted for a taxi back to the hotel and gave the Pompidou centre a miss preferring the cuisine/relaxing over sightseeing and got some rest before we went out for the evening. Again that night we were undecided on what we should do. To start off we thought we would go to Matt and Kaz's restaurant for dinner where they got engaged but for some reason it was closed. We got a couple of pics of the place for Kaz and Matt and ended up walking through the streets.

By this time we realised that we were pretty indecisive and for the evening just went bar hopping. At each new place we just soaked up the atmosphere - like we said before..Paris you can just be anywhere and it is amazing. Our favourite of the night was a place called Bar du Central - it was just a cool little bar, one we wished we had back home.

After drinks at Bar du Central we continued down Rue St Dominique, past our hotel and ate dinner at a bistro nearby called Tabac. It started to rain and as it came down we marvelled at the Eiffel Tower and the reflections it gave along the street.

By the time we had finished dinner it was getting pretty late so we decided to call it a wonderful day and night in Paris as we had to check out early the next day and head off to Lyon. We had no idea what to expect as this was unknown territory for all of us!

We finally arrived in Paris at about 8.30 in the evening. We were so happy to see that it was still bright outside, so on the journey to our hotel we got to take in all the sights of Paris. We were so excited to be here!!

We checked into our first hotel (Hotel St Dominique) and were delighted to see that it was quite a cute little hotel for Paris standards. We managed to check in with our limited French... I don't think we remembered any at this stage! Our room was not too small and clean, the most important thing for me however is the bathroom - its got to be decent, and yes it was great!!

We were in a happening little part of Paris not to far from the Eiffel Tower, in fact we had a view of it on our street.

After we freshened up, we found Kaz and Matt who were having some food in a little brasserie a few streets away.

While we were walking through the streets (still light outside) we quickly remembered that the great thing about Paris is that everywhere in Paris is beautiful, especially in the non touristy areas - it is just a great place to be. Simon and I were just looking at every little detail and marvelling at how on earth such a place came to be..

We joined Kaz and Matt at the bar where we enjoyed our first bit of french cuisine. Finally we were sitting down, having some food and drink and relaxing after a long days travel and a horror second flight for me!
It was so good to see Kaz and Matt - it has been over six months since we saw them last, and I couldn't believe that we were together in Europe! It has always been a little dream for me and Kaz to do this, especially since this was her last hurrah before the birth of her baby..

After dinner and many laughs we had a quick stroll through the streets and got ourselves accustomed to our first location and then turned in for an early night.