Pa Lee Voo An Glay?

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France in 5 days... Contiki Part I:
What a crazy, whirlwind of an experience Contiki has been. It is worth two blog entries and unfortuantly, as the only spare time on the trip was used for sleeping (and occasionally grappling with a screwed up European keyboard to send two line emails) this all needs to be told sitting in London. But no worries, its almost better now that I can look back on it. For the past two weeks I have woken up and thought, which city am I in?
The group of 50 met at the disgusting hour of 6am on Monday morning two weeks ago. We were blessed with two of what I consider must be Contikis BEST employees, Rich the coach driver, if you said it was a bus he would slam on the brake and tell you that you don't get a toilet on a bus. and Alex, the tour leader, an Aussie with an awesome sense of humour, an amazing knowledge of all things Europe, snakeskin boots and what must be the worlds sturdiest liver.
We headed through London towards Dover, passing an area called Blakeheath in London, when the plague hit London, this area was on the outskirts and they buried all the dead in one place to prevent the spread of infection. However, now this is a big open area in the middle of London and the weird thing is that nothing grows there, as they reckon the soil is all plagued up. Of course, the tree in the middle of the roundabout and the grass on the ground must be the exception. Still, the thought of an area that used to be so far from London now being surrounded by the city is testament to the age of this area and the popularity of this city.
Now, our tour was called European Highlights and we knew what we had signed up for. However, I never expected it would be quite like this. We made really good time getting to Paris and so Alex suggested that we hop out and go to the Louvre, as it is closed on Tuesdays and otherwise we wouldn't be able to see it. For those of you who have been to the Louvre, you will understand that this is a) exciting, and b) a huge place to visit. They say that if you wanted to spend a minute in front of every piece of work in the Lourve it would take you 9 months. At any time they display 250,000 pieces of work, which is only 5% of their collection. Oh My.
Now, what made this possibly the craziest thing, was that we had 1 hour to see the Louvre. One hour. So we ran. We ran the hallways and saw the Mona Lisa (small and really a little unimpressive, until you think that it was the first painting of its kind - as in, wasn't a portrait of a royal person and wasn't a picutre of nude people in some mythalogical scene and you can appreciate it) a horde of people surrounding it though. We continued to run and saw the Venus Di Milo, which to be perfectly honest I only wanted to see because of the Simpsons - mmmmm gummy Venus Di Milo. We managed to find our way upstairs to take a photo and it also made me want to read the Da Vinci Code again and then it was back on the bus.
We were introduced to the world famous Alex and Richs Night Tour of Paris, which is funny as they have never done a tour together. Nonetheless, we saw all the sights, including a great shot of the Eiffel Tower. With the smarts and luck of Contiki we were able to get up the tower at sunset, which was amazing. It is a scarily narrow structure and the lift doesn#t go directly up for some of the way, so I kind of had a few moments when I thought I was about to wet myself, but it was worth it.
We also drove into the roundabout that goes around the Arc De Triomphe which was an experience in itself. Rules for driing in Paris, don't stop and go faster when approaching any type of intersection.
The next day was our full day in Paris, and we were able to explore, I decided to chose a line and stand in it, which lead me to the top of the Notre Dame, an amazing view in a fabulous cathedral. Once we got to Rome, we truly knew what tourist crowds were, but if you're ever in Paris and have two hours to spare, stand in line and climb to the top. Worth it.
That night we went to the Moulin Rouge and I have two words for you. Boobs and Feathers. It was pretty good, i'm not sure I liked the dancing Shetland Ponies, but a truly Paris thing to do.
After what seemed like five minutes in Paris we drove down to a chateau owned by Contiki in the Beaujolais wine region. It was freezing, but as it is in the middle of nowhere you have nothing to do but drink wine. A great great night.
On the next day travelling we stopped in a little place called Avignon, a walled city which is where the monks from Rome went in something silly like the 13th Century, as they didn't like that Italy wasn't pampering to them enough and wanted a city of their own. After 76 years they went back to Rome and established the Vatican, and now there is a walled city in France just on its own doing the tourist thing. But at this stage it was apparent that the history and architecture of this place was more than I had ever believed.
We spent our last two days in the French Riviera in a place called Antibes, near Nice. Now, Nice is nice (tehehe, i've been wanting to pull that one out for ages!) but the only specatular thing is the colour of the ocean, otherwise, when you come from NZ, the thought of paying €10 to sit on a deck chair so you don't get stones up your bum is not really that appealing. The old town is beautiful and I can see why it is such a tourist attraction.
That night we got all dressed up to go to Monaco, the richest country in the world. Overall we were all a little put off by the gaudy, tacky flashiness of Monaco. We were however, lucky to walk into the middle of a Good Friday parade which was very cool, they even had guys dressed up as old soldiers from the Roman times.
But that night for me produced the most classic story on the entire trip. A while ago some pleb asked the Contiki staff if they had to take their passport to get into Monaco, with the new EU you don't have to have your passport to go between countries, so why they thought things were different for Monaco we'll never know. So... the staff picked up on this and there has been a running joke ever since. We were all told that we must bring our passports with us. Alex said that someone once thought that you had to hold the passport up to the window with it open to the photo page and the bus goes through this giant scanner. But that was a myth and all you had to do was hold your passport up to the window and they slow the camera down and check that the number of passports matches the number of people on the bus. As we're getting closer to Monaco he asks who has forgotten their passport, and as it would always happen with that number of people, 3 people didn't have theirs. So he tells them to go and hide in the toilet. Meanwhile, we're all getting excited about the propsect of foiling the authorities. We all perched on the edge of our seats waiting to hold up our passports while Alex talks about the history of the place. Then he goes, right, now we're in Monaco, did you all hold your passports up? And we're like, no! What!! Oh no, they're going to catch us. He looks at us stoney faced for a minute and then goes, nah, its all a joke, you don't need your passports at all. We just wanted to get those girls to hide in the toilet. Apparently they've had up to 6 people in there at one time. That toilet is small. It was hilarious, just the look on our faces must provide them with entertainment for years.
Overall, France is awesome and i'll definately go back. I thought Paris was a little sterile and flashy, but it definately has history and an important place in the world. If you want to know anything about Napolean or King Louis XIV let me know. But for now, Au Revoir France, i'll see you another day.

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Photos

There She Is...
What a view right?

Paris Landscape
If you squint you can make out the Eiffel Tower in the background

Don't Blink Or You'll Miss It
We finally found our way to the top!

Beach Party in Winter?
We had a beach themed party in France...