There were two things I really wanted to see this year while in France; one being the Toulouse Lautrec museum in Albi, the other being the castle at Montségur where many Cathars spent their last days. I was so eager to see both places that I was prepared to go and find them on my own, but luckily for me JB offered to take me on a road trip across France to see them. As it happens, both Albi and Montségur reside in France’s Midi-Pyrénées region so it made seeing both of them a lot easier than I’d first imagined. Imagine [View Full Entry]

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When in Rome, do as the Romans do? Kristian and I pondered about this saying the whole time we spent in Rome, looking around us wondering what exactly it was that the Romans do to inspire such a saying. It turns out, thanks to Kristian’s post-travel research, that it was just some discussion among priests about proper fasting behaviour in Italy’s different cities that inspired our modern adage. Not as interesting a story as I was hoping! So we left Venice and boarded the plane for Rome. In all honesty, it was a half-hearted move for the both of us. Before [View Full Entry]

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What can I say? I fell in love with Venice the second I saw it from the aeroplane window. I couldn’t even see the canals at that stage, just beautiful fields. And unlike flying over other rural areas, Venice’s fields looked like a multi-coloured patchwork quilt with fields of grapevines punctuating the flatter fields giving it amazing texture. Really, I don’t even know if the fields are the reason why I fell so instantly in love, or if it were something else, something unexplainable. I think that Venice has its own kind of magic that’s instantly bewitching because for t [View Full Entry]

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Oh, I know it’s a big cliché, but it’s true! I really do love Paris. I love everything about it. And I know that not everyone feels the same way about France’s capital, but for me, walking around that magnificent city is like being in some sort of dream, some sort of parallel universe. And I know I’m probably biased. Paris is the first city I ever fell in love with all those years ago when I first travelled overseas to live for a month with my Parisian host family. I don’t just see a beautiful city with amazing architecture when [View Full Entry]

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After London, and on our way to Paris, the family made a two night stopover at Euro Disney. Something I wasn’t overly looking forward to because I was just anxious to get to Paris, but we’d booked in to an expensive hotel with a pool, so I’d pictured myself by the pool for two days, sipping cocktails, enjoying the luxurious rooms, and waiting for the kiddyland part of the holiday to finish. It didn’t really work out like that. I never even made it to the pool. I didn’t really want to because once I arrived I realised how many children [View Full Entry]

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Ever since I left sunny, warm Strasbourg, I’ve wondered how Europe has the nerve to call this season we’re in ‘summer’. For the majority of the time I was in Hamburg the rain was absolutely bucketing down and it was freezing cold. I then left Hamburg to meet my family in London and for seven days London was cold and rainy. The problem with London though is that there seemed to be some kind of tug of war going on up in the sky; the sun wanted to come out and it managed to do so for about ten minutes, and [View Full Entry]

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Oh my god I forgot to learn German! I’ve become so accustomed to understanding at least some of what’s going on around me and being able to communicate my wants and needs in French that I totally forgot what it would feel like to all of a sudden be in a country that speaks a language of which I am completely unfamiliar. And even though I don’t speak a word of Dutch, travelling to Holland never posed that kind of problem to me because everyone there seems to speak English. Germany however, is a different story. After Janna came to visit [View Full Entry]

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Last weekend Laura, Kristian, Lizette and I went on an excursion to Colmar. It's JB's hometown so he offered to show us around and then take us out to see the wine district so we made a whole day of it. I thought that after having seen the beautiful cobblestone streets and old German architecture of Petite France in Strasbourg that I couldn’t ever see anything as pretty again. Turns out I was wrong! Colmar is by far the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. The entire city is like one giant candy town. Every street is breathtaking and the buildings [View Full Entry]

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Once upon a time (in July 2002), two young girls met in Paris at Alliançe Française. Karolina and Susin, two international students; one from the Czech Republic, one from Australia, became friends. This is the story of the reunion five years later…. Yes, it finally happened. My first reunion with one of my friends that I met while overseas oh so many lifetimes ago. Karolina and I have kept email contact with each other ever since our month together studying in Paris, and just this week I got to see her again in the flesh for the first time in almost [View Full Entry]

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To put it bluntly, Rotterdam kicks Amsterdam’s butt. It’s a beautiful, clean city with some really amazing, modern architecture. After having visited there I really can’t understand why everyone raves about Amsterdam so much and hardly anyone talks about Rotterdam. I was invited to go there on a roadtrip just last weekend with four French guys; JB, Greg, Olivier and Mathieu. It was a last minute decision - they invited me on Wednesday night and we were in the car and leaving Strasbourg by Friday afternoon. It was so exciting to leave Strasbourg by car. In fact, it was [View Full Entry]

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