European Adventure Part One

Okay, so we have concluded that monuments and galleries aren’t our favourite things to see when travelling (especially when half of Europe and the US are visiting with you). So what were our recommendations I hear you ask?

Tip no 1: If you can’t see the Mona Lisa, be the Mona Lisa.

Tip no 2: Old appliances can be dangerous and may electrocute.

Tip no 3: Be sure of yourself before you put on a ‘trendy chick’ T-Shirt.

(*all sideways pictures will be flipped soon)
Now that I have spent passed on some handy travel hints, here’s a brief rundown of our whole European adventure. The story starts in Paris, where we did actually enjoy running about town seeing typical sites (despite Julian’s body language to suggest otherwise). The Catacombs were particularly impressive to see, and we enjoyed wandering about different areas in the evenings, such as the Latin Quarter. We would have loved to have some local knowledge and a few extra days to do some more wandering. My personal highlight: une nutella et banane crepe sil vous plait.

From there we headed south and had a horrific experience trying to navigate out of a major city with a left-hand drive car. Lets not talk about that. Once out of the city, however, we very much enjoyed having the freedom of a car to roam about the French countryside in. Not to mention, Anne and Fred's fabulous wedding.

With limited time, we managed to navigate our way to the town of Le Puy, a wonderful old mountaintop town with a lot of history. There we discovered a fantastic cathedral that had (in parts) been untouched since it was built in the 1100s. This was far more impressive than the Notre Dame, or any other cathedral we had happened upon. Interestingly, many cathedrals seemed to have fluorescent ‘commemorative coin’ machines in them that looked suspiciously like slot machines. We thought they added a real ‘Godly’ touch to the place.



With intermediate stopovers at somewhat questionable Italian hostels, we made our way to the beautiful Cinque Terre. It is a truly spectacular place, with beautiful cliff-side walks linking each of the five villages, and crisp, crystal clear water. It seemed as though every spare scrap of dirt was made useful with fruit trees and vineyards.


From Cinque Terre, we headed on to Florence, which was not the magical experience people had promised us it would be.
I suppose much of that can be put down to summer tourism. the conversations we eavesdropped on…). It was smelly, dirty, and jam-packed with Americans. (We do love our Americans, really- but you should have heard some of The Ponte Vechio was really great to see, and I do love my ice-cream, so it wasn’t all bad.

For those of you who are getting tired of this long story telling blog, I will give you a break and will be back with part two in no time at all.