So the French do not like to work that much, therefore we have holidays fairly damned regularly here and instead of returning home again Loren and I decided to join Sam on his tour of the South of France then meet-up with Isy and Kathryn in Geneva.
Day 1: Travelled several hours to get to Marseille- unfortunately you can't just cut across France to get to the South, if you live central then you have to do this stupid thing of travelling all the way to Paris just to travel back down again... Logical? No, but the French never have been. Sam had set-up an account on Couchsurfer- a site where people offer free accom and hope to meet others who will return the favour, that or they're simply lonely and looking for company. We lucked out big time and met Jacques in Marseille, I made a very good first impression by getting exceedingly drunk and puking all over his flat and the dude didn't give a fig- so chilled, so awesome, again, I'm sorry. *Hangs head in shame*.
Day 2: Jacques' flat stank of puke thanks to me, I had also broken 2 mugs the night before whilst doing my re-enactment of the girl in The Exorcist. FOR SHAME! After meeting his family, who lived upstairs and were hopefully unaware of my shenanigans, we quickly left the apartment (all windows open) and escaped into fresh air and beautiful sunny Marseille, it was t-shirt weather!!! Marseille has a bit of a bad press, much like Glasgow I suppose, but quite frankly the city was lively, fun and really quite pretty. We visited the cathedrals, saw a fantastic sweeping view of the entire city and the islands nearby where the Castle of If (Count of Monte Christo) is situated, and went round back alleys with interesting street art and artist galleries on display. It was lovely seeing the sea too after spending months MILES away from it. Sea-breeze and sun were just the medicine I needed. Needless to say, after my mess the night before we decided not to have another hard night, instead I quickly replaced one of Jacques' mugs... Forgot I need to find another at some point. ><
Day 3: Travelled to Nice where the skies were grey and the city was all in carnival mode, streets all covered in confetti, floats hanging lack-lustre around the city-centre waiting to be re-animated at night, people selling Venetian-style masks and music pumped out every hour of the day.We dumped our bags at our hostel, which was packed with fellow English-speaking tourists, then headed out to the beach to see the sea again. After a few hours on the disappointingly pebbly shore (I had honestly expected sand after all the hype about Nice), we went up Chateau Hill which is a nice walk up a gazillion steps for a view of the city. There is an interesting looking castley thing up there which I forget the name of, but unfortunately it was shut when we went, the waterfall around it was very nice to look at though. When we came back down, we explored the old town, had a nice meal in one of the many Italian places there then we met-up with Loren's friends from home for a drink. It was a rather chilled night, in both meanings of the word- I was freezing and not so impressed having been walking around in sunshine the day before.
Day 4: Decided to go through to Monaco for the day- and thank god! I LOVE MONACO!! Rich, polite people with expensive cars and yachts, oranges growing on trees in February, and SUNSHINE! The place is beautiful, extremely hilly so a lot of work for the calf muscles but pretty from absolutely every angle. I now know where I want to retire anyway.. If I could only afford to. After spending so long in France it was shocking to be in a place where people were polite and cars actually stopped at pedestrian crossings. We saw yet another castle, and the casino and decided that although absolutely gorgeous there was nothing more to see and we may as well nip through to Italy for lunch. Oh yeah, it costs less than 10 euros to get to Monaco and Italy from Nice. and takes 20 and 40mins respectively, that is cheaper and takes far less time than it takes to get from Issoudun (a nowhere place) to get to yet another nowhere place in central France. Less than impressed. Anyhow, we landed in Ventimiglia, not particularly pretty, nor warm, but the pizza was nice and it was worth it just to say we'd dipped our toes on Italian soil for a wee while. It was also great to be somewhere where we didn't understand the language at all. Kinda a nice brain switch-off.
Returned to Nice that night and because Loren was still feeling lousy with cold, we went to see Hitchcock which was absolutely bloody brilliant, kudos to the director, it was smartly done with brilliant actors (Anthony Hopkins is a babe!) and was funny as hell.
Day 5: Visited Nice's beach once again, then turned around and went to see the Russian cathedral which was rather impressive and tasteful in its beautiful golds and turquoises. Then we carried on to the tourist office where Sam got shat on by a pigeon, made our way back to the old town, where Sam then got ran over by a skateboarder and was cursing the city, and we stopped at the ice-cream place where you can get almost any flavour- including beer, I had coke flavour which was rather refreshing. We then tried to be somewhat cultural and go to the Natural History Museum, apparently the Chagall Musée is worth a visit but being a Tuesday it was closed (stupid France!) and I have to wonder if the museum we went to was also, we could not get to it at all due to one of the many annoying construction sites around it. instead we sunbathed in the park around the back until it was time for our train to Aix-en-Provence. There we met couchsurfer Coraline who was very nice but unfortunately after putting up with Sam's snoring for several nights I was too tired to be very sociable... That night, he was louder than EVER! ><
Day 6: Aix is a rather nice, relaxed place, and I quite liked the Provence accent, but there just wasn't much to do... We went to the Granier museum which was somewhat interesting, but it's a hell of a lot of fuss to get in- bags handed in, security all around in every room, it was not a place to feel relaxed and quite frankly I was disappointed to find only one Van Gogh and then a fuckload of Renaissance paintings... I cannot emphasise how much I do not care for most art that came before the Impressionists. A bunch of saggy faced, drippy blue-eyed, fat unattractive women and men with curly hair ne m'intéressent pas! Granted towards the Enlightenment they start to slim down again, but it doesn't stop them looking either vacant (women) or scowly (men) and damned ugly (both). After a gullet full of rubbish, we then went to see Cezanne's workshop, which was somewhat a let-down, it takes a lot of effort to get there and less than 5mins to look around, after a quick sweep of the room, we were then swept out the door again. We then made for a nice burger place (I actually got a veggie option- hallelujah!) and a place which sells 1 euro wine, both on Coraline's good recommendation and both brilliant, and the wine necessary after we'd checked into our 'hotel' for the night which was a moldy old room. There was white gunk in the shower and our neighbours were actually called the Lepers...
Day 7: Headed to Avignon where we met couchsurfer Annie, who from now on shall forever be known as Awkward Annie. Very nice American assistant, same boat as us, bar she lives with many other people in a flatshare situation and they all spoke French all the time which was great... If we'd actually understood them all the time given that one was Spanish and spoke French with an incredibly thick Spanish accent. We did very little during the day, Sam explored the Palais des Papes while Loren and I sat outside in the sun, I'd decided 10 euros was rather steep for a castle that is pretty damned empty...
When we returned to Annie's we were faced by a large gathering of people, who didn't really know Annie either, and generally it was just an awkward evening as only one girl tried to engage me in conversation then for the rest of the night proceeded to speak in Portugese with the other girl next to her, and the others just cliqued together in general. I had a cold, I was tired, I was generally miserable and just wanted to cry and go to bed but couldn't as all those people were there though completely ignoring my existence.
Day 8: Went a walk outside the city walls and made friends with many pigeons. Then visited another gallery, which was actually quite nice, it boasted Degas, Van Gogh and Monet though in all actuality only had about one of each, still it was nice having put up with enough Renaissance bullshit. Returned to Annie's with the full intent of going out to watch a film and avoid people, but dinner got later and later as Annie faffed about getting ready for Barcelona, so instead we watched Westside Story and played French Cluedo and Uno with a few wines... All and all it was a pleasant enough night despite our plans going awry.
Avignon's daft half-bridge.
Day 9: Headed to Montpellier where we met couchsurfer Stefan who was more awkward than Annie, I think months of being a bit of a recluse had left him somewhat lacking in social skills. We went out again to tour the city, but being buffeted with a shitload of wind, Loren and I just wanted to go to the cinema instead. We were met with a rather grumpy German who wanted to tour about, but we were ill and not remotely content about the thought of wandering around outside with the wind whistling in our ears. Quite frankly Avignon and all its bloody wind had given me enough earache and I wasn't up for any more. We went to see Lincoln, which was a rather nice film to pass the time with, and my-my what a surprise to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt's little moonface come on the screen. Having spent the last couple of days living on pasta and pizza, we needed vegetables badly so were quite happy to be let loose in Stefan's kitchen where we cooked a veggie curry for all of us- absolutely delightful. We then spent the evening playing cardgames, badly in some cases, then went out for a pint at a nearby beer bar- shitloads of beer! And the oddest crowd I'd ever seen, mostly men, mostly the kinda punk/goth look, but a few in trackies and generally all passing bottles about as tasters. It was nice enough for one drink, but being too ill I was glad we went home early. It was day 1 of the Sudocream 'tache, my nose being so dry after constant blowing.
Day 10: Pretty much saw all the sites in a matter of hours so Sam needn't have complained the day before. Made the mistake of going to the Fabre Musée where after yet more Renaissance paintings I came close to blowing my brains out. I may well puke if I see another oilpainting of Jesus any time soon, the only amusing thing was Saint Agatha with her tits served on a plate, literally- she is the patron Saint of breastcancer I now know. After hundreds of shitty oilpaintings it was a relief to come across Soulages paintings, not particularly impressive on their own but after the clusterfuck of colours and symbolism I'd just witnessed it helped me reach zen again. On our way back we found an artshow taking place in a church- it was blooming fantastic after everything we'd seen that day. My kind of art- so exciting and refreshing, damn right creepy and brilliant. Loren and I then got on the train to Geneva- we were deeelighted!
Until we got to our hostel where someone was hacking up globs of snot in the shower. We went showerless that night.
My favourite piece.
Day 11: We left our hostel pretty damned quick the next morning and decided to go see the old part of town, we felt pretty smug using our free tram cards we received from the hostel- only good reason to stay there really. Well we got off the tram, and looked at the map- none of the street names matched, we were absolutely clueless. We marched off in one direction, then another, then another and decided to stick out our mistake (or more like Loren did as she thought we'd 'come so far' and I wasn't willing to argue) until a delightfully kind man came up to us and told us we were actually walking in completely the opposite direction and sent us back the way. After half a year of living with French rudeness I almost shed a tear for the compassion he showed us... Ok, might be a bit hyperbolic, but seriously! He may as well have walked up to us and declared us the new princesses of Geneva and bent to kiss our toes. Eventually we got to the old town and we must have gone around the back way because we felt there wasn't much to see. I was hungry as hell and my empty belly does not make for good company, in fact I go quite sour quickly. After searching high and low, we found a place called l'Enfer (hell), I have to say Hell was quite nice, fairly expensive for some good toasties but it was a place to get warm again. After wandering down the street some more, we called it a day, made our way back to the hostel then off to the trainstation to meet Isy. Unfortunately the Jewish welcome committee we got her decided to board their train a bit early (honestly, there were curls and chanting galore coming from them). Well, Isy had managed to sort out with one of her friends that we could stay with her family there, and her family were amazing! Think the nicest bunch of people ever, and times that by the fact that they were rich- swimming pool, hot tub, wine cellar... The only problem was their dog kinda wanted to kill Isy. 'Snoopy' should really have been named Cujo, one moment he was your best friend, the next he tried to bite Isy's face off.... So by the end of our stay we were avoiding him. Anyway, that day we went a walk out in the snow, by a wee river that ran down the back of the houses (all typically Swiss and wooden), it was beautiful but short, and we were pleased to see that the neighbours had a Rottweiller and a White Shepherd who seemed rather like Snoopy in nature, I was even more pleased to find that they were kept in by an electric fence. After that, we met our other friend Kathryn who was joining us for our trip- just came a little later. She'd been skiing during the holidays, "the first day I cried infront of my students then looked at holidays to Egypt"- still one of my favourite quotes. We got treated to wine that night in a nice bar by the father, who told us more about his hundreds of pounds worth of wine- they must have had thousands of pounds stocked in that cellar of theirs... I will NEVER be that rich. :( If they weren't so damned nice I would be resentful, but they were pretty much the best people ever.
Day 12: We made for the old town again, deciding to stop by the park for a game of outdoor chess. Well I never got to bloody play, by about 3 moves in I'd acquired a 'helper', by which I mean an annoying unwashed little man that didn't speak a word of English and would bark at me whenever I tried to move a piece he didn't want to, instead hitting the pieces he would (and did) move with his cane. After losing almost every piece in his determination to check the King with very little game plan from what I could see, even trying to cheat and move the other team's pieces when it wasn't their turn, 'we' lost to Isy and Loren... I can honestly say it was the worst game of chess I've ever had the misfortune to NOT play. I can imagine the only thing worse than a backseat driver was this annoying little Yoda. I was quite thankful when we finally left and I could breath again. We then made our way to the United Nations, losing Kathryn on the way there as we made a run between trams. As we waited for her to catch the next tram, we ate at the bus stop- while common enough in Britain, the rest of Europe frown and think you must be homeless if you're not able to go home to eat. There was a protest going on just under The Chair, I still don't know what for , but I somewhat imagine this to be an almost daily occurrence. Well the search for the visitor centre part is a bit confusing, it's miles away from the front and you walk quite some distance whilst feeling that you must have walked past it, we encountered a family and a pair of Germans who joined us- we obviously must have looked like we knew where we were going. Indeed we got there, to find that a bloody school of Italians had made their way there before us and created quite a large queue. Apparently they'd seen us earlier playing chess in the park and taken quite a few photos- me in a delightful strop with an annoying elderly man shall be in some Italian kids' FB albums, how fricking marvellous! After queuing for an hour we discovered that there was actually another line, just nobody told us as they thought we were part of the schooltrip... GAH! Well we'd missed the last tour and would have to wait another hour, we went for a quick hot chocolate in the nearby fancy restaurant where they served us warm milk then gave us the sachet to pour in ourselves, I have to say I thought they were taking the mick as we had to make our own chocolate. Anyway, we eventually commenced our tour of the UN which I would recommend to anyone, it may be somewhat geeky but it was very interesting. At the time they had two displays- one displaying the affects of landmines, and the other full of newspapers showing the 'ups and downs' of history, like there was one dating back to the time the Titanic sank, and another showed the Moon Landing. We also had a moment where we played with the microphones in one of the rooms, much to the dismay of our tourguide who quickly swept us out again 'before we broke' anything. Unfortunately we did not get to see the amazing artwork in the Human Right's Room, if you have no clue what I'm talking about: http://www.foxnews.com/photoessay/0,4644,5715,00.html/#/photoessay/image/1118081403_M_111808_ceiling7-jpg
Would have been amazing to see!
Anyway, after all this. We met up with Isy's friend Alex who's currently staying in Geneva on a work placement. She took us to an amazing wee Indian/Persian restaurant, it was great being somewhere that had so much choice for veggies- I've always loved Indian food, if I had to live on one diet I'd choose it, healthy and tasty! After our meal, we got treated to some shisha (hookahs). Alex and her friend, who joined us, were great for a laugh and it was generally just a lovely evening. We eventually had to make our way back to the family home again, topping our night off with some Psycho (after Hitchcock, Loren and I had had quite the yearning to see it).
Day 13: The mother of the family kindly offered to take us out to the mountains, she took us to Megeve which is a big touristy skiing place, but absolutely gorgeous. Sun was shining down on us, snow was glistening, we were surrounded by beautiful blue mountains. Needless to say Megeve isn't a place for those with little money, it has interior design shops, expensive bakers and chocolatiers, and if you ever wish to buy your own moonboots or antelope skin coat then you are in luck! Even their local Christmas tree is decorated with Swarovski crystals. Pretty sure I saw pet dogs that are so expensive that I've never laid eyes on one in real life before. Well Marianne (the mother) bought us all mountain passes so we could use the skii lifts to get to the top of the mountain where she treated us to a fantastic meal which cost her about 300 euros... The generosity of these people knew no bounds! After a fantastic afternoon of sun and snow, where I spent FAR too much on chocolate (worth it though, I have creme brulée stuffed chocolate eggs, that is the stuff of Willy Wonka right there), we made our return home. We treated the family to a meal cooked by ourselves- pumpkin risotto didn't really seem to be quite a big enough thank you really, but they sang its praises as lovely people do. We were also treated to their live-in guest, Stefan (Greek-Austrian) making salad for us, the Austrians use pumpkin oil for dressings- this is a revelation to me, I could drink the bottle, I need some in my life! Pumpkin everything for everyone! After a few wines, Kathryn finally treated us to some Bulgarian yodelling which was actually rather impressive and interesting. Then Isy sang some Adele, generally a rather musical night, plenty drinks, a few games of pool and more fun. Ending the night tucked up in bed with Cool Runnings. A brilliant end to our trip. The only thing better would have been for the family to have announced that they wished to adopt all of us and we could live in such luxury forever (one can dream).
And then we went home, concluding my holidays and one of the longest blogs I've written, if you're still reading well done. And if you flicked all the way to bottom here without really bothering, you cheat!
