Location - Copenhagen

Well I didn't really write anything about Berlin yet, where we had four days of trying to take in Germany history and have fun. Which I don't think can happen at the same time in Berlin. We found visiting the museums quite draining. At least now I feel like I know a little more about the wars and the wall. All of which I could have learnt about in history if I paid attention I guess, but there is something more powerful about learning in settings like the DDR museum which is a hands on museum that is about life in Eastern Germany.

On our first day in Berlin Ri asked me what I wanted to do and I said that I wanted to leave having a better understanding of Germanys history.

Alright, Ri says, where would you like to go first?

The zoo, I say.

This is the thing about Europe with me at the moment. I want to learn and understand. But I want to have some fun too. So on our first day we went to the zoo and played with the otters and then the next day started systematically going to all those museums (checkpoint charlie, DDR, history) and an aptly named memorial known as the 'memorial to the murdered jews of europe.'

From Germany we have driven up to Denmark, on our first night we stayed in Assens for no other reason than one of our favourite peoples was born there and we wanted to see it. It was a small sea-side town, the high light for us was a toy store called Bambi where Ri bought some lego. Which he had since assembled and now it's taken pride of place next to the TV in our hotel room in Copenhagen. The photos above are from Assens, well the first one is Ri with his lego which the shop owner kindly wrapped for him. He greatly enjoyed unwrapping it the next day. The second shot is from an island near-ish to Assens.

I LOVE COPENHAGEN! We spent today in the shopping area and bought some shoes, 2 headbands, a skirt and a dress, which is the most stuff I have bought in 3 months. It is just so beautiful, and I love the people. And the icecream.

Location - Berlin

Dad, I know you read this and that Addie doesn't, please show this photo to Addie. I took it for him.

Location - Wurzburg, Germany

Take Two: The pic's are of Swiss chocolate, a German castle and a street in Lichtenstein.

We have a hire car for about a month, we picked it up 5-6 days ago from France. It took me a day or so to recover from the terror of Ri driving in Europe. It's scary because it's the wrong side of the road, on small should-be-one-way-street roads with Ri's driving, a style more at home on the correct side of the road. But having our own car has been fun, there is an unbelievable freedom, and an overwhelming potential, so many possible places to see! Since my last blog in Switzerland we've been to 3 more countries! Admittedly we ended up in Austria by accident while looking for teeny tiny Germany - simple mistake can happen to anyone.

We drove from France to Switzerland. Where we spent a couple of nights in Geneva. I've decided that if anyone ever asks me where they should go on their honeymoon my response will be something like "forget Paris, check out Geneva." I really enjoyed our day walking around Geneva! We parked the car and made our way to the first chocolate shop we could find. Run by a pleasant...jolly even, older lady, who clearly enjoyed her own product. Ri would only allow me to buy a handful because it was HOT outside, so we picked out six or so pieces and took them to the nearest area where we could admire the water, bridges and swans.

And what original thing can you say about Swiss chocolate? It is everything that they say it is. That being. Oh.So.Good. The next day I went to a shop in Lausanne and purchased ~$80 worth of chocolate, and it only lasted 2 days because it was. OH.SO.GOOD. We bought 3 thin 'sheets' of chocolate, with nuts and toffee in them and ahhh sitting here remembering them is torturing me because it was. OH.SO.GOOD.

Ri decided that Switzerland looked so small the we could drive across it in 3 hours, leaving us 4 or 5 hours to dropped in a little side locations. Um Wrong. It's smaller than Australia yes, but it still takes time to drive these distances. We arrived at our hotel in Liechtenstein at around 9pm, after a day of driving with really only one stop at Lausanne, for chocolate.

We spent Sunday morning in Liechtenstein for no other reason than we thought it would be very unique and funny to be able to say we spent a Sunday morning in Liechtenstein, and it also gives us a reason to say Liechtenstein. Most of Vaduz was shut, being a Sunday, and the most prevalent accent we heard on the main street... was our own. Lame. Turns out every Aussie seems to think it's unique and funny to go to Liechtenstein. I don't entirely blame them, it is fun to say. We haven't heard so many Aussie's since we were in Western Canada. So we sat in a cafe in Liechtenstein, eating curry-pineapple pizza and saying Liechtenstein and cursing our entirely unoriginal thought of coming to Liechtenstein.

From Liechtenstein we drove to Germany. We simply had to see the castle that Disney based his castle on, it was shut by the time we got there as we confused Austria with Germany and got a little lost in Germany too. We found eventually found the beginning of the Romantic Road, and a town that seemed to be having a festival, so we checked out the markets and entertainment. Oh here is something cute that Ri said. We had just entered Germany and he was reading a road sign and snicks to himself "Ausfahrt! (Giggles) We should go to Ausfahrt!" Now the next few signs said Ausfahrt and I'm sure he was thinking that this Ausfahrt place was pretty big. In Australia this like a German tourist seeing a sign and saying (in German, but I have to write it in English) "Exit, haha, let's go to Exit!"

Oh I adore Ri, he makes me laugh every single day.

One of my favourite moments so far on this trip has been driving on the Autobahn. Ri was doing around 170km/hr, we had the music up loud and he had to keep moving to the slow lane to let all the cars past, watching them woosh by was just magical. I was so envious! Oh let me drive! (I don't have an international licence). I think our top speed was just below 190. FUN.

We spent two nights in Wurzburg, and used it as a base to find small (ish) German towns, which we would drive through and get out of the car if we saw something that needed further exploration. Like a place that sells icecream.

We are currently in Berlin... tomorrow there is no official destination... just North.

Our Pro Wedding Photos

Oh Yippee! This one is from the photographers blog (ST Photography!) and here is the link to the other 415 photos from our big day!

http://stphotography.com.au/darkroom/proof/#name=VictoriaRhys&state=start&index=

In other news we are in Switzerland! And it's 4:30am at home or else I would be on the phone going through the photos with anyone willing to listen!

Expedition Glacier

I am sitting here after a relaxing day trying to write of our adventures but getting distracted by all the Aussie film clips. I thought that the Brits were the only ones crazy enough to like Kylie Minogue but I saw a marathon here this morning as well as Natalie Imbruglia, INXS followed by Nick Cave (featuring Kylie Minogue) Weird.

Anyway back to my train of thought (and if you haven’t figured it out yet because of the poor spelling and gramma and erratic writing style this is the ever elusive / lazy Ri) Yesterday we had an awesome summer day... in the snow. We headed off in the late morning from La Bise at Bend 12 the French alps to bend 0 or "La Plagn" Ski resort on a Beautiful warm summers day. We bought some gondola tickets to take us around 7km across and 1km higher and walk over to the gondola only to find a rather awkward looking gondola jammed between the pulley and the ground. I'm not sure how they managed to do that but the maintenance guys were out to lunch at first to we took there lead and went and got ice creams.

After ice creams we were on our way and were blown away by the views. We thought that the views were amazing half way up the valley from la Bise but from the top they were unbelievable as you can see partly from the photo but even that doesn't do justice to the amazing contrast of colours. So after the incredible gondola ride which included on spot where it looks like you're going down a cliff we stepped out into the snow at around 3000m.

From the top we trekked through the Aussie style snow (a little bit slushy) up to a little rocky outcrop at the base of the glacier where that had created an ice cave. Her mum will probably kill me but Tori walked / Skied along in her bright yellow doc Martiens the whole way. I on the other had stomped a path in font with my ill equipped sand shoes with ankle socks(I just didn't think there would be that much snow when it was 30degrees+ at the bottom of the lift). At the rocky bit we set up a French style picnic (mmmmm cheese) and refuelled.

With the important stuff finished (mmmm cheese) we headed for the ice cave and met up with a very friendly black dog wearing very stylish sunglasses (not sure if this was to protect him from the glare of the glacia or just for the tourists, either way it was cool).

The ice cave was a little bigger then I was expecting and went almost 200m into the glacier and included ice sculpture of animals throughout, it was definitely worth the walk. I left my mark as appeared to be the trend by using my hand to melt a print into the ice walls, and then proceed to but my frost bitten hand on Tori's bare skin hehehe.

We skated back down through the snow and caught the gondola back down through the amazing scenery and even saw a glimpse of two marmots (described by the tourist info along the lines of "a stout fat rodent"). At the bottom we finished of the expedition how all expeditions should be finished. With French pastries. So in summary: Awesome day

Cheers Ri

Tori here. That took Ri ages to write. He was up and down, fact checking and researching every tiny detail. Asking me questions like "How do you spell picnic as one word?" to which I responded "How do you spell it as two?"

He has inspired me to add my bit on tourist brochures, which I love almost as much as a free audio tour.

In a French one about this region (written in English) I turned to the page about local animals and it spoke of a local mountain goat and said something along these lines "It is nothing more than a big goat..." Way to talk up the local wildlife!

In Bath I was reading a brochure on the Roman Baths and they had quotes from tourists and most of them were like "Wow this place is amazing/interesting/you haven't lived until you've seen it..." but down the bottom was a quote from a couple that read like this "It was bigger than we expected." Oh I want to go there! Mr and Mrs Smith say that it'll be bigger than I'm expecting!!!

Next time we post we won't be in France.

Cheers Tori

Happy 14th of July!

Oops it's already the 15th at home. But here it is the 14th and a public holiday! Celebrating the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille (King's Prison) and the uprising of a modern France sans a King. And that means one thing. Fireworks! Which we watched last night. The photo is from the garden here at La Bise, where we'd set up some chairs to watch the fireworks in the village down in the valley. It's not the best pic of fireworks that we got last night, but it gives you an idea that we're a little bit higher!

Lazy Day at La Bise

I spoke to my Dad yesterday and he issued a complaint, saying that he checks my blog every day and that I only put up one once a week on average. So here is an extra blog for my dad.

I fell asleep late last night, the fact that the sun sets unreasonably late (10pm) does not suit my insominiac tendencies. So I crawled out of bed at about 2pm, exhausted and exclaiming that today is a write off.

Ri had spent the morning getting the TV working and all the stations with the promise of English TV. He switched all the audio settings to English and spent today surfing French dubbed American shows begging the TV for some English. 8 hours later he is sitting in front of me victorious. He is watching a John Wayne movie. You know "howdy pilgrims." It's even in black and white.

I've spent the day curled up with a book, the moral of which I think is something along the lines of women never leave your families for a career or your husband will cheat, and he has every right to, so shoo back to the kitchen with you!. But it is in English so I'm happy to see how it ends.

We have a couple more days here in the French Alps before we rent a car and head of to the North of Europe. I'm not exactly sure of the plans, that is Ri's department.

We're waiting for Tour de France to pass by, as they block off roads. We were offered the opportunity to sit by the road for a couple of hours waiting to see them eventually go pass. I'm more inclined to take a picture of a random cyclist and pretend I saw the Tour de France. It's just not interesting sport is it? (Not that I find any sport interesting) But if they were to add a few cars to the roads and it may be interesting.

The photo is of Ri's dads home. I think Ri wishes that his dad was here.

The Real France

From Paris we caught a train to Lyon, where we were greeted by Ri's delightful stepmum (I don't know if he is too old for that term to apply, but I don't want to be saying Ri's dad's wife a trillion times). She drove us to his dad's house, the address of which, as far as I know is Bend Number 12 of The French Alps. Everything here is quite wonderful. Beautiful views. Brown cows with bells. Many kinds of yummy local cheese. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. Brown paper packages tied up with strings.
Sorry any minute now I'm expecting Julie Andrews to swirl past the window, picking the wild flowers.
Ri's stepmum took us up a Gondola today and we went for a mini hike (hike in my vocab, stroll in Ri's) and had a picnic in the mountains. And this is their backyard. I could not help but think that by comparison there is nothing to show someone from this area in Brisbane.
I can see it now, 'oh you come from the alps? nice area! couple of good mountain tunnels but you haven't seen a tunnel until you've seen the one in Brissy'.

Oh and we had dinner with Ri's stepsmum's family, her son, her sister and her mother. And they are delightful. One of Ri's new stepbrothers (of which he has accumulated 3) has the most bizarre accent when he is speaking English, almost American/Canadian, but French. The other two lovely ladies spoke a little bit of English, resulting in conversations running away from Ri and I in French. Everyone here has been very kind and friendly! And when in doubt just say "we" or "merci."

Back to people being friendly even on our walk/hike/stroll today as people went past they said Hello! I almost fell over in shock the first couple of times it happened. Compared to Paris!

Night and day!

Night night!

Happy Birthday Chris! Ri loved his birthday gift!

Paris in the summer time

Oh dear this may be a little appalling to some, but we leave Paris tomorrow and I don't think we actually stepped foot into any sort of tourist venue. No museums. No galleries. Did not even go to the top of the Eiffel tower.
We will be back in October.
It feels like we have had full and fun days. We did go to Versailles (it was closed), so we had free access to the gardens and made a day of that.
We've done a lot of eating. And a bit of shopping.
My poor Ri had one stressful night, when he was asked if he had heard from his work lately and that a friend of a friend of a friend heard his work place had gone bust. Given that Ri likes his job he was understandably distressed and wasn't calmed until the next day when he heard from some work mates that explained that they've actually won more work and also the reason why this rumour may have started.
And on the one hand I guess it is nice to know you have work to return to, but on the other hand I have a right mind to tell this friend their house burnt down/puppy died or something along those lines while they are on their honeymoon.
I digress, back to Paris, I don't hate it, but I can see why other French people do.
Ri was on the phone to his dad's wife ('stepmum?')and she asked him how he was enjoying Paris, he said it was good and she said that most people she ask say that they hate it.
This is a weird concept to me. It's Paris, a no-brainer. Everyone is suppose to love Paris.
On this trip I found Paris OK. I hate that everyone smokes. The views vary from amazingly beautiful to positively gross. The food has been pretty good, I've found being a vegetarian stressful, at one place I ended up with a Pizza covered in ham (ordered from a duel language menu!) because on this dish they only translated the vegetables - an omission on this dish only! The waiter helpfully pointed to the French side of the menu and said "that means ham." As he walked away I said to Ri 'that doesn't look anything like ham' (meaning the word, and most other meat words do look sort of like their English equal Boef-Beef) to which Ri responded 'yeah looked more like bacon.' (refering to the meat)
The weather puts Melbourne to shame. There was an incident where I called a few Parisian people Cretins (they don't appear to have the same level of manners we got used to seeing in the English).

When we return in October we plan to stay closer to the central area of Paris. We stayed pretty far away this time, meaning we needed to navigate the metro, and by staying near smoke stacks, it never felt like we were in Paris and that made it difficult to get motivated to organise anything...

Next time we will see the museums and galleries!

Happy Birthday to My Ri

Well my husband turned 25 years old (Wooo, costs less now to rent a car).
I got him a card from the British museum, a gift from Harrods and a digital camera from Paris.
We spent the day walking the streets of Paris and eating way too much!
We thought that we'd go to the top of the Eiffel Tour, but got there, took one look at the line and decided to wait when we returned in late October, hopefully the people at the end of the cue will have made it to the top by then.
Here are some photos of Ri's 25th Birthday in Paris. :) (Pics to come. Dang internets).

Happy Birthday Ri!

Ri's birthday gift

This is a test run of how a feature of Ri's new camera. It's from our visit to Versaille. I hope it turns out!

Henari in Cardiff

We have officially lost our camera. Thanks to my desire to keep them organised before they get out of control, I upload them every couple of days and put them into folders. So we only lost one day of shots.

This is a photo of Ri, Henari (the white blob) and his new pale Welshie (the red blob).

Henari does London

We have heaps and heaps like over 100 photos of Henari aka Henri and I'm so disorganised that I have only posted a couple, so here is our little buddy again. He goes EVERYWHERE with me, in my bag. I really must make July Henri month!

Mostly about London: Currently in Paris

Oh as always there is too much to tell. We’ve made it to Paris, after having one of those evil travel days – I’ll explain later. It might be a lengthy blog, as Ri is currently trying to learn French from watching Stargate SG1 and NCIS. I cannot watch TV in a foreign language with subtitles for an extended period, let alone without. So I'm sipping Coca-Cola Light, which does taste better than the Aussie stuff - I knew I wasn't crazy.

Our week in London did not disappoint. We had a laid back anniversary, watched Germany boot England out of the world cup. It is so funny how quick English commentators turn on their own team! One minute they are carrying on about how they should be tied and the sport needs video play back the next they are saying the Germans deserve the win as the English team has no heart. Ease up! After the game we went for a walk to the Tower Bridge, to gawk at all the sad English supporters and from there to the London Bridge.

The next day we went shopping, as it’s Ri’s birthday very soon! We ended up at Petticoat Lane Market (we figured out the name when we got home) and I found it funny as I had bought a Petticoat. And a super cute dress, a day late for the anniversary, but just in time for getting dressed up for his birthday! Both are extremely practical for our travelling purposes...

We had an awesome day at the Tower of London – I really enjoyed it but my brain cannot understand it, the age of the towers alone is unimaginable. The same thing happened to me at Oxford. At home UQ is turning 100 this year and I was reading that earlier this year and thinking – oh so old. People were attending teachings at Oxford like 900 years ago. When I was in the Salt Tower of the tower of London and reading carvings made by some Catholic guy in May 1554 (about 300 years after it was built), I looked out the window and tried to image what the view would have been like for him. Even with the help of The Tudors and the two Elizabeth movies, I couldn’t get the cars out of the image. Mmmmmm The Tudors.
It was probably a bad thing that so much of the information was familiar only because of those movies and the TV series. I even pointed to a portrait of Henry the VIII’s son as King at the portrait gallery and whispered to Ri “oh no! Spoiler alert for the next season of Tudors!”
The day after our Tower day we went to Buckingham Palace. Oh and they let us in! We had a look around the Mews and saw some of the Queens horses, carriages and cars. We then wandered up to the Queens Gallery which was showing Victoria and Albert – love and art. Which was awesome and so much better than the movie Young Victoria. I was really touched by the Queens love of her Prince and affectionately started calling Ri My Albert. The exhibit gave an excellent ‘vibe’ of who they were and I could imagine these people as real people. There was one portrait of Victoria’s son Arthur (she had 9 children) and next to it read that Victoria had written that “He is my favourite as he is lovelier than the rest put together.” I cracked myself laughing. What a riot. He wasn't the oldest! Or even the oldest boy! Just her favourite.
From the palace –where we stayed until closing – we made our way to Harrods where I finally bought Ri a birthday gift. No it’s not a souvenir. No it doesn’t say Harrods. It’s exactly what Ri would want – practical and something he missed from home, something he hasn’t used in the past 2 months. He loves it and uses it regularly. (No I didn’t wait for his birthday he was RIGHT THERE when I bought it). If I say what it is it will lose its glamour. Right now – to you - it’s the birthday present from Harrods. Why spoil that?

We spent hours running around Harrods. We went to the Food Hall and grabbed something to snack on later. I couldn’t resist a plush teddy with “My Harrods Bear” on it – his name is Arthur.

On our last day we went to the British museum. Honestly I was exhausted and after three hours I turned to Ri in the Ancient Britian section and said ‘two hours ago I was admiring how awesome and amazing that people 5-6 thousand years ago managed to do all this and I really was amazed, but I can only look at so many old metal rings/bowls/spoons... can we go now?’ Yes I was ashamed.
We still had not been to the Egyptian mummy room, so we went there. When I’m in that room I’m two things, amazed at the beautiful decorations on one hand, but on the other I’m a little angry on behalf of the Mummy’s family. I know I wouldn’t like it if some future people put my dead relative OR even worse MY CAT on display – especially after we paid for such a fancy burial. It’s a little creepy.

As it was our final afternoon in London, we passed, considered, but ultimately rejected the Wax museum. It was like $100 (Aus) and only open for another couple hours with an hour long line. What pushed us away ultimately was that Angelina was on the banner and I really don’t like her (I’m on team Jen). So with our free and final afternoon we walked to Kensington Gardens and saw Alberts understated memorial. And paddled our feet in the freezing waters of the Princess Di fountain. We spent a few hours in the park enjoying free fun.
Uh so that brings us to today and I’ll sum it up in dot points
- We lost our camera
- We missed our flight
- Had a terrible Gypsy Taxi experience in London (thanks to our hotel who called us a “taxi”)
- Had a 90 minute French taxi ride
- We were upgraded on a media-free flight to business class. But without the media who cares which class you’re in. But I shouldn’t complain about that as our original tickets for flight number two were 10 rows apart.
- WE LOST OUR CAMERA