Not much to say about Paris that hasn’t been said before, so here are some photos.
Jim Morrison’s grave
Wine tasting
Our first and probably last adventure on one of those open top sight-seeing buses
Add comment November 21st, 2008
London street art in disused tunnel
London street art in disused tunnel
Cambridge
Cambridge
Notting Hill Carnival
An Olympic themed party at our place, I was an official representative from the Chinese communist party.
Bath
The Baths, Bath.
Celebrating 1 year
On possibly one of the last sunny warm(ish) days we made the most of it. Fish and Chips with Champagne in Regents Park. A lovely combo that we will surely recreate in Beachport one day.
Making tagliatelle pasta
The end product, taliatelle pomodoro e basilico
October 13th, 2008
A short update with a few pictures. We ducked off a few weeks ago to continental Europe for a weekend break which happened to coincide with my birthday. Our main destination was Basel in Switzerland, which is famous for, among other things, the birthplace of LSD and Roger Federer. Its location is at the intersection of Switzerland, Germany and France. On the Sunday for my actual birthday we had morning coffee and croissants in France, then crossed over to Switzerland for lunch, before wondering over to Germany for some arvo beers. Another little walk and we were back in France and then flying back to London. A rather large day.
A street in Basel, Switzerland
Basel
Basel
Town Hall
Life imitating art or art imitating life?
The Rhine River, and our Adelaidean drinking team Cathy and Cameron who we went with.
Beers in Basel, how do you say three beers in Swiss German?
We brought over some wine to mark the occasion, two all-star Australian reds, a big branded champagne, and an italian straggler
We couldnt find a BYO restaurant so we setup our own at our hotel with takeaway Italian from across the road.
Our drinking team
Introducing Ludwig
A monumental moment in ones life, discovering the joys of a fine Cuban
Walking in Germany, on the hunt for a traditional pub
Found it
We have just moved to a new place and are still settling in, but this place is a lot better/bigger. We have even managed to expand the wine cellar, no longer is it confined to a bread bin under the bed….
September 17th, 2008
While in Florence our accommodation was a little different. We booked a double room with a shared bathroom but we got 3 nights in some blokes apartment! Luckily the apartment had a roof top terrace and was situated in the center of everything. This meant we could sight see while eating breakfast, or drinking Beer, like Luke is doing here!
Florence is of course in Tuscany, the Italian region famous for wine - Why else would Luke insist on going! We broke one of our traveling rules and joined a tour of the Chianti Classico region. All was well though as this was not the usual big bus tour with a mic’d up guide. With just 8 of us it was a pleasant cruise in a very well air conditioned and comfy van. We visited beautiful little wineries and were fed extremely well. I think our day would top the list for our favorite in Italy.
Wine Tour, the vineyard of Villa Cafaggio
Wine tour
In this organic winery, Renzo Marinai, they play classical music to the wine while it ages in these barrels - interesting!
Luke topping up on water while waiting for the food and wine to appear at the same organic winery.
Ponte Vecchio, in Florence.
Hiding my shoulders in the Duomo, Florence.
The Duomo in Florence, has of course some very lovely fresco’s on the roof.
Our apartment again - what a strange experience to be staying somewhere that seems as though the usual occupant has just gone away for the weekend. I am getting friendly with the mannequin that hung out behind the bar!
The building was built hundreds of years ago, I’m not sure but I think everyone was really short back then.
Luke is showing me how to climb the stairs without falling, like I did several times(probably the vino). The apartment was over 2 levels and obviously on the top floor, hence the roof top terrace. We are convinced we lost a few kilos in Florence with the amount of times we climbed the stairs.
The Duomo, built during the renaissance period in the 14th century. It is impressive.
The best sight in Pisa are the masses of tourists all taking part in a Tai CHi lesson! The tower is pretty amazing as well though.
Me checking out the other sights of Pisa.
And that is the end of our Italy pictures. We loved Italy and look forward to going back soon, maybe not in the summer though! The weather has now fined up in London and were making the most of the slightly warm evenings and long hours of sunlight.
July 29th, 2008
Beautiful Italy!!!! Hot Italy!!!! This is the lovely view from inside the Vatican Museum. Unfortunately we are standing in the best piece of Rome’s skyline.
Another tourist photo - this is becoming Luke’s trait.
The other tourists are always just as interesting as the attraction.
St Peters - the most decadent church I have ever seen - and sooo many chairs.
St Peters.
Luke’s hangin’ out with some seriously old ruins in the center of Rome. It is incredible to be somewhere with such an unbelievable amount of history.
More water please! Luckily everywhere you go in Rome there is an ice cold drinking fountain to greet you. I now understand why cold water was important to the Romans.
Trevi Fountain - famous for being in some movie, and for being very beautiful.
The best tour guides in the world. Ex housies Gabrielle and Livia. Now back in Rome (you may remember the awesome farewell we had for them which has also been featured on the blog) They showed us some sights we would never have seen and gave us some fun times.
Montalcino - hill top town famous for Brunello wine - why else would we go there?
And there were plenty of purchases to be made, and even more drinking!
Sampling some lovely Montalcino wine looking out over the vines it came from. Very salubrious…
Not just wine though, the town and it’s surrounding was beautiful.
Sienna. Just passing through, we decided to check out the center of town. It would have been a crime not to considering that day the Palio would be held. A world famous and centuries old bare back horse race that is run amongst old building in a strange shaped course. The event is very popular and each draws mobs of people, and generally makes the world news. That is probably because lot’s of the horses and their jockeys end up being trampled.
Part 2 Coming soon…..
July 24th, 2008
Friday the 13th here marked a farewell to 2 of our flatmates Gabriele and Livia who have returned to their Italian motherland.
I dressed up as a London real estate/recruitment agent.
Kates enjoying the delights of a Margravine Mojito. Sugar, soda water, mint, wine, lemonade. Garnished with lime.
Gabriele and Livia raffled of the stuff they couldn’t take with them. You got ‘tickets’ in the raffle by drinking shots. Trevor is getting himself a ticket. The only prize he ended up with was a St Patrick’s day hat.
Whereas, I won myself a printer and a dustpan.
Jennifer won herself a bike.
It feels a bit like the Big Brother house around here at times.
The aftermath. Some people came around on Saturday morning to look at the vacant room, the first thing they saw was the kitchen…
June 15th, 2008
Sweet Corn Tostada, Filled with sweet corn and black beans casserole, served with jalepeno cream sauce and topped with avocado salad! Luke’s new favourite dish at our new favourite restaurant, “Blah, Blah, Blah!” It’s BYO and Vegetarian - Can’t get much better then that!
The surprisingly salubrious Windsor Castle.
“These audio guides are really very informative!”
We have found most of the English sight’s somewhat dull - except this one!
On rotation from the army, I wonder if it is a shock to go from tourist attraction to terrorist target.
A ridiculous face for a ridiculous photo.
We ended our lovely day in Windsor eating dinner and of course drinking wine at my Aussie colleague, Kathy and her husband, Cameron’s place.
Our day really was nice, we had a long lunch under a tree looking up at the castle and again drinking wine.
Time to get serious about cooking Indian food. Luke has developed his food repertoire even more and now cannot get enough bombay aloo and dahl. Fine by me!!!
Champers on a Sunday arvo - Why? because it was taking up too much space in the 2 shelves we have allocated to us in the fridge. And Trev was round, helping our house mate, Gabrielle reconstruct his website - nice work Trev. Luke was starting to open the bottle when they decided to pose for the next photo, But…..
Bang! - The moment the champers set itself free and went flying at the glass cabinet - much to Luke’s surprise!
The Champagne is a $60 bottle that another house mate scored us for $25 because he works for Pernod - the ridiculously big and rich alcohol empire, which also own’s Jacob’s Creek.
How most of our evening’s begin. Luke has also discovered cheese.
Epping forest in north London.
On our way home from Epping Forest we were compelled to make use of the last hours in which drinking Alcohol was legal on the Tube. A token glass of wine really.
Half our house buddies hit the circle line that night to drum up some trouble and let the newly elected Mayor, Boris, know exactly what they thought of his first act as Mayor. Things got a bit crazy - I am sure some of you heard about the drama under the streets of London.
For anyone who has seen Sweeney Todd, The best pies in London!!!!
Artois Championships. just round the corner from our place. This is the qualifying, which was free to get into to.
Italian BBQ in the English sun - I got really sunburnt that day, underestimated the London sun!!!
June 15th, 2008
One thing we have discovered is that stereotypes are usually correct. France seems to be no exception. We had a holiday here in Britain for May day so it was a long weekend. We found some cheap flights to a city called ‘Tours’ and headed off to a place we had little knowledge of and to a land we spoke none of their language. Our French was and is still limited to ‘Hello’, ‘Goodbye’, ‘Thank-you’ and the pronunciation of about 50 different grape varieties. That made matters of communication interesting because we would rather try to speak French or remain silent than use English and expect everyone else to understand us. Our Spanish knowledge helped us through a few situations as the two languages are first cousins. We landed at the Tours international airport to find it to be not much bigger than the Mount Gambier airport and that we were unable to withdraw Euros from a cash machine like we hoped. So our trip started with us being mute and broke. Unable to speak and with no money to get into town. Luckily we probably weren’t the first and the bus driver understood our plight and let us ride on the proviso that we pay him later. This was the first of a few hurdles we jumped through.
The Loire valley is one of the (not quite so) famous wine regions of France. Its the home of the Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc white grapes and Cabernet Franc reds. To say we samples the local produce would be a bit of an understatement. Our days in the Loire were pretty much lunch with a bottle of wine, a bottle in the arvo and then a bottle with dinner, thats about all we managed to do. It’s a hard life.
The cathedral of Tours, was begun about 1170 to replace the just-started cathedral that was burnt out in 1166, during the quarrel between Louis VII of France and Henry II of England. The lowermost stages of the west towers belong to the 12th century, but the rest of the west end is from the 15th century.
Lovely picture and wallpaper in our room
Palais de Justice
Place Jean Jaurès
A street in the lovely wine town of Chinon. Chinon is one of the more famous wine towns in the region because of its prowess with producing tasty light bodied cabernet franc reds. Chinon is an hour or so away from our base of Tours so we went to the train station, brought some train tickets and then at the appropriate time went back to the train station to catch a train. That was the problem because on the departures board it said that there was a bus outside that was replacing the train, but because of our non existent French we could read it and missed it. It wasn’t much of a problem because we caught the next train(an actual train) 2 hours later and we filled in the time doing what we do best. Polishing of a carafe of rosé.
Vins, the word above Kates head means Wine. This is a wine cave in Chinon, unfortunately the only full day we had to go to there was a sunday. So on the day of rest most of the cellar doors do exactly that. Bummer.
We did manage to make it to one cellar that was open, a cave that had been cut in the rock where you could walk around through the oak barrels and admire the mold that was growing. We tasted a few of their chilled reds which because of the heat went down a treat. I wanted to buy a bucket load but we didn’t have any check in bags (you pay an extra $14 to check a bag in) and you cant take liquid on the plane. Bummer. The lady on the cellar door was a bit of an old hag who laughed at us we we said we didn’t speak French, she didn’t take to kindly to me asking her(in French) if she spoke English or Spanish.
Clos de l’Echo winery as seem from the Chinon castle. We assumed that it would be closed so didn’t try to visit but the cars in the carpark makes me think we should have
Overlooking Chinon
Chinon
9 Years ago, back in my days as a wine pruner for Southcorp the sight of vines made my quiver. It meant I was drawing closer to work and I would soon have to cut the engine of my ‘83 Laser and step away from my comforting heaters and into the cruel world of being a vine pruner on the limestone coast. Now the sight of vines gets me very excited.
Inside an old castle we visited in Chinon.
Sampling some lovely local produce that always seemed to finish way too quick
We needed to have a slight little detox when we got home
May 29th, 2008
So it was snowing a few weeks ago and lately we have been experiencing perfect spring weather. Over 20 degrees, sun shining and setting late in the evening. So we threw a Saturday arvo bbq, it was our first experience with a charcoal bbq so it started out as a smoky one.
No lighter and no matches, the toaster probably wasn’t the best choice but it worked.
Sending out smoke signals
The cheap but drinkable wine always seems to be Australian
The mother of Edouard, our French housemate came to visit for a few days. If anyone else wants to visit the offer is open.
May 6th, 2008
The eventual winer, Martin Lel from Kenya. He finished the 42 km race in 2 hours and 5 minutes. We were at about the 32 km point.
April 18th, 2008
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