Month: July 2012

A dip in the Med !

Day 196, Wednesday 17 July 2012 – Barcelona/Mataro

Another reallylousy night sleep, no alarms this morning, thank goodness, but I was still not properly asleep even in the morning, dozed till 8.00. Up late, the same breakfast at the same spot, safety in consistency !

I faffed around again for a while as I tried to engage my foggy brain and completed the blog post from yesterday. While faffing I received a Facebook message from Jess, a Spanish friend of my daughter Meliesha, who I met in Bristol. Jess is from Mataro, a beach town about 30 minutes by train from central Barcelona and is working near home over summer. Another of Mel’s Bristol friends Michelle is staying there too and they have invited me to come down for the afternoon and see a less touristed area – very cool! I had no real plans for the day so said yes immediately.

I left the hotel around mid-day and walked down through the main shopping district (well a shopping district, no idea if it was the main one !) near Catalunya square, It was very hot so I took the opportunity to dive into a department store to make the use of their air conditioning, plus I had some time to kill before catching my train. I made my way to the mens wear and thought I would pick up a pair of board shorts as I left my (bizarrely blood stained) old pair in Malaysia. I found a pair I liked and pulled them off the rack to find they were 245 euros !! that is close to 400NZD – they were Dolce + Gabana. I put them back and fled the department store for the safety of a cafe.

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The queue for the open topped tour buses was insane, why do people put themselves though it !!!

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After a revitalising espresso I went wandering and found Saint Anna chapel, which was very nice, cool and quiet and worth a visit.

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I thought I had left myself a ton of time to get the train, but little did I know of the confusion that awaited me at Catalyuna station. I obviously went into the wrong station first, damn hard to figure out as the signs are not overly helpful. I did eventually find the line I wanted, not that it was on the map, just read and obscure reference to a line. I followed the direction of the single arrow that pointed to my line and then got lost. Apparently I was in the wrong station, of the half dozen stations around the square I finally found the one I wanted – via random selection. The station I wanted was on the ticket machine so that was easy, finding the right train less so. Unlike the Metro or Underground there was no line map for the train system. Luckily the station I wanted was a final destination for one of the trains so I just waited for that one. Hooray ! the train left at the time I was due to meet Jess and Michelle, oh well !

The ride to my stop at Cabrera de Mar, where Jess worked, was on stop back from Mataro. The ride took about forty minutes and about thirty of those were alongside white sandy beaches on the Mediterranean Sea. I was writing some blog notes in my notebook when I glanced out the window and saw a bunch of naked girls on the beach – after five months in conservative SE Asia it was quite a shock. The beach was secluded apart from the train line about twenty metres away ! Topless sunbathing is extremely common on all the beaches here so I found out.

Jess and Michelle met me at the station and we walked down to the beach and sat and chatted for a while before I had my first swim in the Med – or at least my first swim in 25 years, I cannot recall if I swam I swam when I was in Turkey all that time ago. The sea was warm and clear and smelt/tasted clean and fresh – fantastic. This is where Jess works…

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I was a wee bit concerned about getting burnt so we didn’t spend too long in there before getting changed and catching the train up to Mataro.

We stopped for a drink or two at a beachside bar in Mataro before heading in to town so the girls could show me some of the local street art.

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There is a walled of block that has been really nicely painted with some great work and I have posted these in a separate blog post. I am loving the street art in Europe, there are some talented people around. We then wandered up to a cafe that is owned by Jess’s parents and I had a great, very sweet chocolate shake and some carrot cake. Jess was not feeling very at this stage, very bad stomach pain, as it was early evening by now Michelle walked back down through town to the station and I caught a very crowded train back to central Barcelona. Mataro is a nice town, the central plaza was closed to traffic as there was something on, so there were loads of pedestrians about, providing a r – nice feel. The beach was awesome as was the bar and the iced coffee with Baileys 🙂

Thanks to Jess and Michelle for inviting me around for the afternoon, I had fun !

 

 

 

Viva Barcelona

Day 195, Tuesday 17 July 2012, Barcelona

Well  – I was warned in the reviews on various hotel web sites that the noise at the Barcelona Center Inn can be quite bad, and the reviews were correct, lots of noise from the hallways as people arrived from their nights out and then an alarm went off at 5.00 AM, and 5.30 and 6.00 etc etc. I didn’t really get much sleep until an hour or so from 6.30. I didn’t use the air con either so found myself in a pool of sweat when I did wake, it has been a while since that has happened!

I was up late and faffed a bit, had my old standby breakfast of egg on toast from the cafe downstairs and then caught up with some blog posts until I left the hotel about 11:00 with no real plan, apart from wander the streets in the general direction of some of the key sights and hit the gothic quarter.

The day was sunny and already hot by the time I left, it is really nice to be wearing t-shirt and shorts again – and not with leggings underneath like I was in Cornwall. I picked myself up a Spanish SIM card as it is possible I will be staying in Spain for a while – plus I like having mobile access to the internet – I am a net junkie…

My first stop was the Palau de la Musica Catalana, though I did not pay to go inside and my photos from the outside sucked a bit due to some really savage light… though it had some interesting bits.

I soon discovered the Barcelona Cathedral, the bulk of which was constructed in the mid 1400’s. It was a pretty amazing building and it was great to be able to take photos inside, though it was a heaving mass of tourists.

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I particularly liked the paintings in the small chapels that contained some lovely 15the century paintings, this was my favourite from an unknown painter and completed in 1475.

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I also really liked the small carvings I found while waiting for the rickety lift to the roof, they remind me of LOTR !

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There seems to be a mass of renovation projects going on in Barcelona, perhaps it is work created by various government bodies during these recessionary times, but a huge number of buildings are under cover. The roof of the cathedral was one, though the view was good.

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And the gargoyles were awesome.

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From the cathedral I just wandered the streets for a couple of hours, mainly in the old gothic quarter, the streets are so narrow there are very few cars, and the area is full of bars and galleries that do not open until much later in the day. It was relatively peaceful and cool compared the bustle of the big squares. I took a lot of photos ! Most of the doorways have been graffitied in some fashion, some good stuff, but a lot of aimless tagging as well. I did take a number of photos of the stencil and sticker art which I really like and will post those separately one day.

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The small touches were fantastic, this old well in one of the squares was a favourite.

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It was the alleys and the 5 or 6 story buildings looming overhead that I liked the best.

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I did accidently wander into Plaza George Orwell.

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Now I knew where I was I went and visited Palau Guell (Guell Palace). This is one of the big attractions in Barcelona and since renovation is now a UNESCO protected building. It is not particularly old but was designed by Antoni Gaudi and completed in 1890. Gaudi (possibly where gaudy comes from ?) was a Catalonian and designed a number of the key buildings in Barcelona. The Guell Palace, was semi-interesting, I am not hugely into furniture and floorings etc, but it did have some nice touches, I liked these doors

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And the roof was very cool, with all the decorated chimneys.

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Plus I liked the roof top photo opportunities.

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I wandered off for lunch and a beer and was heading towards the Picasso museum when I realised I had the wrong debit card in my wallet and could not get any cash out ! so I meandered back to the hotel.

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I had a wee rest before heading out again in the early evening, got some cash (whew) and walked up to the Temple de la Sagrada Familia – another Gaudi designed building, sadly the skyline was broken by a number of large cranes and the ground was broken by about 1 billion tourists, maybe a million, a lot anyway. The building is stunning though and I may go back one morning for a quick lool before the hoardes arrive.

The queue to get in was not worth effort so I wandered back down to the hotel.

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On the way back I passed Salesians church, built in the 1870’s and designed by Joan Montells, who was a teacher of Gaudi’s. It is unsual in that the bell tower is in the front of the church.

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I spent the rest of the evening ripping my hair out trying to do two things online. Firstly i wanted to transfer some cash from my NZ bank to my English one. I had already jumped through the various hoops to get overseas transfer set up, but this was frustrating as I had to fill in so many boxes – and find the information for those boxes – that by the time I had finished the session with the bank had timed out and I had to log in again and start all over, grrrrrr. And I am not even sure it worked yet…

Secondly I wanted to book myself to Malaga, I started with bus and trains, found the best options for dates, length of travel and cost, and decided on train. The train web site would not accept either of my two NZ credit cards, so bus – yeah 16 hours is a long time but I have done it before – same result on bus web site, grrrr… Next resort – fly. Ryan Air, looks good, price is cheap(ish), convenient time departing and arriving (so my cousin can pick me up). Booked it , YES, payment accepted. Go to add a second bag as booking only allows one bag – 48 frigging euros !!!!!! the fare was only 62… WTF Ryan Air! So my cheapish flight cost way too much..

But anyway… I am staying here in Barcelona for one more day, I leave Friday morning for Alcaucin, a small village about 40 minutes from Malaga where my cousin Ian lives. Looking forward to it.

sin cena

Day 194, Monday 16 July 2012, Paris to Barcelona

Lousy sleep again, medicated myself a bit but still only managed a few short hours and all too sudden the alarm was going off and it was time to get up, pack up and eat a final tedious of bad coffee, croissant and baguette – I never thought I would get sick of fresh bread, but that was all that was on offer for the included breakie.

The airport transfer shuttle picked Emily and I up on time and proceeded to take us on a morning tour of Paris to collect other travellers heading to Charles De Gaul airport, luckily both our flights were in the same terminal building, let alone the same airport. We arrived with plenty of time and Emily’s British Airways flight to London took about 3 minutes to check in while my Easy Jet took about 40. We said our fair wells while I queued. It was most excellent to see her again and spend a week such a cool city.

With Easy jet you do not get an allocated seat, something I have not experienced since catching a flight from LA to San Francisco with my parents way back in the 70’s, a flying bus service. I got on early enough to make sure I got an aisle seat though.

The flight to Barcelona was excellent, I sort of dozed a bit, but no turbulence at all, clear skies all the way. It was 27 degrees and sunny in Barcelona – my first real touch of European summer, and the first non-running related sweat for over a month !

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I took the train from the airport to the centre of town and then joined a mass of confused tourists standing at an intersection after we left the underground train exit in a street with road works and no signs ! after a while someone noticed a Metro sign and arrow painted on the side walk, so we all followed that till we found the Metro station so onward journeys could be completed. The walk to my line (purple) was the longest I have ever experienced, it just went on and on and on. Once I got to the correct station I had a wee moment of wandering around in three wrong directions before I managed to locate myself on the map and found my lodgings for the next few days. The Barcelona Centre Inn in Eixample, about ten minutes walk from the good bits. The room is about the size of a large bed – thank goodness it was only a small one, but it does have a balcony – with no view.

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I found myself a convenience store and got some wine , water, potato chips and Oreos and then went for a walk to the nearby Arc de Triomf, built for the Barcelona Expo in 1888.

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I went in search of beer and dinner and only managed to find the first, the restaurants around here only seem to serve breakfast and lunch, no dinner. Bum ! glad I bought the chips and oreos then. I retired to my room and finally managed to get some reasonable wifi, had a few wines a bag of chips and went to bed.

Another day, a new country.

 

 

 

Being nothing

Day 193, Sunday 15 July 2012, Paris

Today is the last full day in Paris, so I made the best use of the time and did sod all for the entire morning. After a huge amount of procrastination I did book myself some accommodation in Barcelona for three nights from tomorrow, hopefully it is not too bad. Everything is so damn expensive – Ok I will try and not go on about that any more, must be getting boring.

The rest of the morning was spent running between showers to the laundrette, editing photos and reading an Economist magazine I found in said laundrette, nice to read some decent current affairs, I am so out of touch with what is going on in the real world, outside of brief checks of NZ news on line.

In the middle of the afternoon we set off for Montparnasse and the cemetery there. It was an easy ride on the train, now I am getting used to working out the signs and lines it is almost time to go! After a showery start to the day the sun finally came out and was beating down on Cimetiere de Montparnesse when we arrived. We had kinda not done any proper research and assumed that this was where Jim Morrison (of The Doors) was buried, but that was an incorrect assumption ! However there are numerous other well known personages here, some with remarkably unadorned grave stones. The poet Samuel Beckett was one of these, and the sun was at such an angle a photo was not worth the pixels it would have used. My favourite was the incredibly phallic looking piece dedicated to James Dumont d’Urville who was (one of ?) the first to map the south island of New Zealand in the 1820’s in this ship Astrolabe.

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We also saw Serge Gainsbourg – adorned in fag ends.

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And Jean Paul Sarte and Simone De Beauvour

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There were a couple of headstones that I really liked, my favourite being this large fish!

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I was also quite taken by the variety of crosses on the doors of the sepulchres and posted a selection prior to this post.

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We left the cemetery when it closed at 6:00 and went and found a cafe to sit and drink beer in until we met for dinner with Jean and Ettiene, the sons of Emily’s French friends. Both spoke perfect English (of course) and have been to and love New Zealand it was a good evening.

Two days in Paris and two links to old favourite New Zealand record label Flying Nun bands.

John Paul Sartre Experience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMDH__herJA&feature=relmfu

 

 

 

Death and the Maiden

Day 192, Saturday 14 July 2012 – Paris – Bastille Day

The morning was all about planning, made difficult through lack of a good guide book, hopeless internet, a lack of knowledge about where I can go for a few days and the fact it is peak season in Europe and everything is really expensive !

Add to this the fact I am feeling rather vague at the moment and I have no idea where I want to go or what I want to do next. I think going to my cousins place in Spain for some down time is a good thing. Recharge the holidaying batteries, read up on Europe and get a good list of things to see and places to go. I know I want to see everything, but I am not sure what everything is – and I have no idea how much “everything” will cost.

After hours of internet faffing and indecision I have decided to fly to Barcelona and spend a few days there before heading south. Flying was not my first choice, but given intermittent internet (which stopped completely soon after I booked the flight – and I have no accommodation!) trying to find a land option was getting complex, the train to Marseilles was more expensive than the basic flight – adding bags pushed the flight cost up of course.

Once the internet was dead we headed our separate ways for the day, Emily to return to Gallarie Lafayette and the shopping district, hoping things were going to be open on a public holiday weekend, and I was going to enjoy a brief splash of sunshine and walk around the Latin Quarter. We went our separate ways at the St Michel station and I wandered off down the left bank of the Seine, overlooking Notre Dame.

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All along the bank there are these long green lock ups across the tops of the walls, they contain little pop-up stalls, mainly selling old books and magazines, prints of paintings and some tourist knick knacks. They are quite cool.

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At some random point I headed away from the river towards St Nicholas du Chardonnet where I popped in for a brief look. This church is not marked on the (rather vague) tourist map I am using, so is obviously not overly important to the history of France or Paris. But I enjoyed my visit all the same, each chamber had a small statue and a large painting on an opposing wall. The paintings varied in age from the 1500 to the 1800’s and were by artists completely unknown to me, what I found quite remarkable was the wonderful condition of these ancient works. Great pipe organ as well.

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I also really like the wicker chairs, high side for sitting and low side for kneeling to pray. These are very common in the churches in Paris, so much better than those horrible wooden pews.

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I wandered on up some reasonably deserted side streets, till I came across the centre of the Latin Quarter, which was fairly busy with tourists, most of which seemed to be French, the area is a small next of cobble stone streets packed with cafes, bistros, tabacs and restaurants.

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I was getting peckish and had my stomach set on some pizza until I wandered by this maison – in the house were the poet Paul Verlaine passed away in 1896 – and Ernest Hemingway lived from 1921 – 1925. If you are of a certain age and musical taste, you of course have THAT chorus in your head right now ! I had to stop for a small vin rouge and a bowl of onion soup, both of which were average. but I did avoid a passing rain shower.

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After lunch and with the sun out again I headed over to the Pantheon for a look around.

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The Pantheon was designed by Soufflot under the instructions of King Louis XV and completed in 1791, In the crypt it now holds the remains of some of France’s more famous name’s Hugo, Curie, Moulin, Zola

Voltaire

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and Rousseau.

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The building is massive and the main hall way is very impressive.

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As it is Bastille Day (France’s national day) there was a military band out the front of the Pantheon playing some modern pop tunes to the appreciation of the crowd. I snapped this shot as I walked away and then found the guys and girl removing their helmets, moved to the front of the band and some synchronised dancing for a couple of seconds, a mix of line dance/disco. One of them was glowing red, it was hilarious. Join the army !

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After the light relief of disco dancing soldiers I meandered back to the hotel round the corner and dozed and blogged for a few hours – while waiting for the internet to come back to life and Emily to return from shopping. The internet did not come back to life until the next day, but Emily did return from shopping.

We took a walk down to the Seine at St Michel, pass the Sorbonne, which was glowing in the early evening sunlight. We stopped for dinner at Tabac De Le Sorbonne again but the experience was a real let down compared to last time, the waiter was obviously trying to set the example for how rude a Parisian waiter could be.

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The sunset over the Seine was very cool – not up to Karekare beach standards of course, but then Karekare does not have Notre Dame either !

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We watched some young guys tumbling in the square at St Michel.

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Wandering the back streets of St Michel we stopped at this cafe for a coffee and drink.

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This is now my most favourite of coffees, cafe noisette, espresso with a dash of milk, lovely.

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The Verlaines – Death and the maiden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeuy8PD0bFM

Mona madness !

Day 191, Friday 13 July 2012 – Paris

Again it was another big day planned, there is so much to see and do in central Paris, even in a week I will only barely touch I want I want to see and some of those visits will only be short as well. Today we had three things to cover, Arc de Triomphe, Avenue des Champs-Elysees and the Louvre, an iconic (and big) list.

After a bit confusion in the Gare D’ Nord (again) we did find the right train to take us to the Arc de Triomphe (AdT). It was a wee bit wet when we left, which was great as it seemed to have put off the worst of the seething masses and we had a relatively pain free hike to the top of the Arc. The views over the city were just awesome.

Over the Avenue des Champs-Elysees

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The Eiffel Tower (obviously)

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Sacre Cour

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We also had a good view down on to that most famous of Parisian roundabouts. I have no idea how cars get out, or why they would choose to go in, there were not many cars when we were there, but you can see the chaos – can you spot the cyclist in the middle ?

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After AdT we took a walk down the Avenue des Champs-Elysees (ACE), which has to be one of the worlds more famous streets. It is a couple of kilometres long and seems to have all the major brand name stores, including a few low-brow ones as well !
The whole of ACE is covered in pedestrian barriers, assuming in preparation for the formalities and parties happening during Bastille Day tomorrow. Sadly most of Place de la Concorde is closed off to the public and seating and army vehicles have surrounded it.

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We stopped for lunch in a cafe in Jardin des Tuileries, just outside of the Louvre. It was an entertaining meal, the waiters were constantly arguing, I think over tips as one of them pulled out a wad of cash and thrust into the hand of one of the others – ah the French !

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The queue for the massive art gallery that is the Louvre was surprisingly small, under thirty minutes, which was fabbo as we missed the rain entirely during the wait. We entered the museum through the glass pyramid and the ticket counters and entrance point for the three main wings are all underground.

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We started off with the ancient Egyptian collection and then worked our way around through the various painting and sculpture collections.

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I loved this beautiful little wood carving, gorgeous.

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The biggest tourist attraction at the Louvre has to be the Mona Lisa, as everyone who has seen it has said, it is surprisingly small. I could not be bothered fighting my way through the hoards to see it.

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I am not big on painting, especially the classical, romantic and renaissance periods. My tastes tend to be from the impressionists onward, so the art collections at the Louvre, amazing as they are, were not studied at length. Though there were of course, many pieces I did like, especially this one by Luis de Morales from 1565.

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One of the things that did impress me about the museum was the ornateness, detail and beauty just contained in the room construction, of course most of the rooms were bare gallery, but some were stunning to look at.

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And of course there are the Napoleon III apartments, he must really have suffered !

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I also quite liked this piece from Henri Bellechose from 1415 (man that is a long time ago!)

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And I really liked these too, but forgot to write the atist details down, they are some of the very few paintings behind glass.

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And minute compared to these bad boys.

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It was drizzling again when we left the Louvre and started a slow walk back to the hotel, my feet were knackered after another few hours of tromping around and I was looking forward to shoes off and a lie down…

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Looking over the Pont des Arts to the Institute de France.

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We crossed the Pont Des Arts over the Seine, with its thousands of padlocks that young (and I guess not so young) lovers leave on the wire.

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Walked along the side of the Seine, looking at the house boats, I liked these letter boxes on the river bank for the houseboats.

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Pont Neuf

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Dinner was trusty old bread, cheese and wine in the hotel room, it was raining again and my feet went out on strike !

I would loved to have spent more time in the Louvre, but it is a huge day…

“Cheeseburger”

Day 190, Thursday 12 July 2012 – Paris

I have been having a minor financial crisis for the past few day, well less of a crisis – more of a financial niggle in the back of mind.
I am stuck in that weird place where my money is in one country and I am in another and I have limited access to cash. I have not replaced the NZ ATM card I lost in Laos – not through lack of desire to replace, but through lack of desire to jump through hoops to get it, so do not have direct access to my bank account.

I have been relying on foreign currency travel cards to get by, but my UK pound card ran out of funds while I was on the Coast Path Run which came as a real surprise, I transferred some money over (thank God for Internet banking), but have forgotten the travel card web site log in so cannot check as to why I ran out of funds so soon. I have also set up an English bank account but have not been able to transfer funds into it as I need to ring the bank in NZ to set up an overseas transfer account as it cannot be done on line. So very soon I am going to run out of easily accessible cash, it is time to ring the bank in NZ. Pity I cannot find my NZ sim card…

In the end I borrowed my friend Emily’s recently acquired French pre-pay mobile to call the bank in NZ. I started with the travel card company and got as far as being asked my secure code before the phone ran out of credit – Merde ! But it did poke some brain cells into life and I remembered my login for the travel card site. I did discover that I have been screwed on bank fees which I will take u with the bank, but I had bought less pounds than I thought so, whew, nothing untoward had happened to my cash.

The plan for the day was an ambitious one that involved one heck of a lot of walking and some rides on the Metro, Paris’ version of the London Underground. The Metro is way more complex than London, with a lot more lines to choose from. We chose to take the Metro to the furthest point for the day and meander some of the way on foot, as this really is the best way to see a city.

Well, we ended up just taking the Metro to Gare de Nord and walking to Sacre Coure (SC) from there as it was not too far and Gare de Nord is the most confusing station in the whole world (that I have been too anyway!) SC is one of the older churches in Paris and sits on a hill above the River Seine, I am not clear on the history of it as I frustratingly do not seem to have internet access at the moment. SC is split into three viewing areas, the main chapel, which is free – but no photography and the dome and crypt, both of which are charged for but you can take photos. We visited all three, awesome !

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Peace out !

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If I was thinking of buying a hand bag, an old church would definitely be my first stop…

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The chapel was very cool, some great statuary and frescoes a wonderfully lit space, but the highlight was definitely the dome. There are three hundred steps to the top, which obviously keeps the worst of the tourist hoards out, the steps are up a winding narrow spiral staircase, and the wear marks in the stone show how many people have been this way.

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The views from the top are magnafique !

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The crypt was pretty cool as well, but quite dim (of course), it wasn’t as crypty as I expected, and a lot of the memorials were to soldiers fallen in the wars of the last century. I did love this statue though.

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From SC it is a short hop to Montmartre, I wasn’t quite so thrilled with the place, it is very cute, lovely cobble stone streets, but packed with tourists and very much catered to the tour bus crowd.

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We did visit the Abbey St Pierre de Montmarte a Benedictine abbey started in 1147. There was also quite an interesting photo exhibition next door from a Japanese photographer whose name alludes me now, but they did have a Panasonic GX1 which I drooled on for a bit…

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We scarpered from Montmarte fairly smartish and headed down hill towards the Montmarte Cemetry, one of the two ‘big name’ cemeteries in Paris. I loved this bit of art on the way down the hill.

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The streets here are just lovely and if I had to live in Paris (and had loads of money) this is where I would live.

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We had a wander around looking for Edgar Dega’s grave but couldn’t find it. It is incredibly complex mass of tombs and crypts, some immensely complex and detailed and others plain. It was very interesting to say the least and I am really looking forward to visiting the Montparnasse Cemetery in a few days time.

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Yo !

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After the cemetery we walked on down past the Moulin Rouge and caught the Metro to the shopping district and Gallerie Lafayette.

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Metro station.

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After some faffing we stopped for a hot chocolate at Angeline’s in the Gallerie Lafayette, the cafe has been around for over a hundred years and the hot chocolate is a must have item, it was delicious, unlike my photo of it which was out of focus…

We dropped in to see one of Emily’s Parisian friends at his office on Avenue De Opera – with an awesome view !

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And then took a slow walk down some more back streets, I just love how deserted Paris is when you got away from where the tour guides suggest, these streets are one back from the hell of the main roads. The buildings are fantastic, and of course I just love the bicycles !

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to Place Vendome where we drooled over the (beyond) big name shops, drooled some more on the two Lambos parked outside the Paris Ritz – where Princess Di spent her last evening.

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We visited the Madelleine which did allow some photography inside, again, like SC earlier in the day, stunning examples of statuary and frescoes.

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And then wandered back up to the Printemps department store in the shopping district to admire the fantastic domed roof of the restaurant.

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and from there caught the Metro back to St Michel. It had been drizzling all afternoon and was raining quite hard when we got out of the station so we stopped for a vin at a cafe and then dinner at Tabac de la Sorbonne. Emily ordered her meal, a bottle of wine and a bottle of water in rapid fire French, when the waiter looked at me all I could manage was “Cheeseburger”, not even please- complete brain freeze. Fortunately this was seen as quite amusing by all, at least the waiter had a sense of humour!

The cheeseburger was very nice, the service excellent and the wine great – a rare tip was left.

I tried ringing the bank in New Zealand again tonight, this time to activate transfering moneey overseas – ie to where I am. The recorded message said a wait of four to five minutes, at three Euro a minute for the call – I hung up…