Yes, we're still travelling!!! Now a word of warning. If you are going to read the Full Monty get yourself a cuppa & a snack - say no more.

It's been a while since we last posted a blog, but, well, we've been having too much fun & thought we needed to give you a break from all my ramblings.

The Shane Summary:

Spent October travelling to Malta, Poland back to England & then November we stayed in the south of France doing stuff including a day in the Principality of Andorra. End of November travelled to Frankfurt where the journey continued to New York for a week (for some. I returned home for a week for work) & then on to Canada where we are now.

The Full Monty:

When we last posted on 2nd October we were nearing the end of our 1st of 2 stints in the south of France. On 4th Oct. we trained up to Paris where Christine, Claire & I farewelled Dot and the Mitchells as we were heading of to Malta & they were heading home via Euro Disney & Dubai!! It was strange to farewell Dot after having spent some many fun times with her. Mum had really got into the swing of travelling and had become a real happy traveller.


After we parted company with Dot & the Mitchells at we spent a couple of nights in Paris in Montmartre the flew to Malta.

Malta:

Spent a week in Malta staying with Christine's cousin Thomas, partner Anika & son Adam. Her aunt Sophie was also visiting. We also met up with Lauren again after she had spent a few days in Switzerland addressing her fondue cravings. Malta consist of 3 islands but we stayed on the main island which called Malta. Apart from visiting the rel's the tourist highlights were:

Buses: The Malta buses are a hoot & have models dating back to the 40s to the present. They all go to Valetta (Capital) where the main stop is.
€1 pints of Cisc lager!: (Pronounced chisk) After paying €5 a pint (happy hour €7.50 normal) in Paris & about £3 in England (for ales) this was meaningful economic relief, and not a bad drop at all!
The history: Plenty of it, including the buildings & arts.

After Malta we flew to Poland via....

Barcelona:

Stayed overnight in Barcelona which is a fantastic city. It's a pretty big place with nice wide streets & clean. The highlight of Barcelona was visiting the church of la Sagrada Familia (church of the Holy Family) with its very interesting architecture by Gaudi & a walk down La Rambla. La Rambla is a very busy street/mall in Barcelona with its of eateries on & just off it including La Boqueria Mercat (large public market).

Would loved to have spent more time there but couldn't due to booked to fly to.....

Poland:

Visited Wroclaw (pronounced Vrotslarv); Krakow & Warsaw. Had rel's of Christine meet us, Irene & her husband Stanislaw. They had caught the bus to the airport & then showed us around the city. Our Polish was non existent & their English was fractionally better. Thank god for Lauren who did the translating. Poor Lauren collapsed into bed that night thoroughly drained from the experience of translating so much conversation & many, many questions being asked.

Caught the train to Krakow where we stayed with Christine's cousin Michael, his wife Monica & daughter Mia. 1st time Chris had met any of the Polish rel's in Wroclaw & Krakow which was a real highlight. They couldn't do enough for us. Toured around Krakow but the biggest tourist highlights:
Auschwitz & Auschwitz/Birkenau: (2 separate sites in the same town Oswiencin). A must but grim reminder of our recent past.
Wieliczka Salt Mines: Amazing place. Salt mines deep underground that have amazing sculptures & history. Not the image one had of a salt mine & once a very prestigious place to work.

After Krakow we trained to Warsaw where we stayed with the Wrobel family. Lauren lived with the Wrobels when she did her Gap program in Poland in about 2003. It was great to finally meet the family we had heard so much about & who made us very welcome. Plenty of great stuff in Warsaw & the rest of Poland but need to move on. After a 9 nights in Poland we went to......

England:

Went to England again for a few days and had a family reunion with Tim. First time we had all been together for some months. Stayed in Exeter and did a tour of the Exeter Cathedral & then went to the library of the Cathedral & saw the Exeter Book, which had Lauren quite excited. It is a collection of writings in Olde English & something Lauren studied during her uni days so to get to see the genuine article was great. Also did a ghost tour of Exeter one night which was interesting. Didn't see too many ghosts but did learn a lot about the history of Exeter. Also took a day trip to Port Isaac (where they film the TV show Doc Martin) in Cornwall. After 3 nights in England we returned to....

France:

The south of France was again blessed with our presence (Claire & Lauren stayed on in the Old dart for a few days) where we stayed in the village of La Redorte in a gite (self accommodation house) from 26th October to 30th November. At varying stages we were joined by Claire, Lauren & Tim as well as Tim's mate Dain.

We caught up friends & just bummed about doing odd & ends here & there. It was vid grenier season so we visited the odd vid grenier. What's a bloody vid grenier you ask? Literally it means empty attic, but, is actually a junk sale. We have garage sales, England has car boots & the French have vid geniers. Each village will shut off certain streets, usually on a Sunday, and people will set up a stall & sell their second hand goods. You can anything from a nail to a firearm, to furniture, skis anything really. Of course there are a few "professionals" who frequent them selling their wares but you still get plenty of locals & plenty of bargains.

Lauren left us a couple of weeks before we left & flew home via a week in Japan. Claire & Tim left a few days before us. Claire flew to London & then to New York where she met back up with Christine. Tim & Dain continued their European exploration. We left La Redorte for Frankfurt on the 29th November. Christine flew to New York & I flew home for a week for work reasons on 30th November.

Andorra:

Did a day trip to the Principality of Andorra whilst in France, which was interesting. Andorra is on the border between France & Spain. I thought it would be all older type buildings but the four main villages are all quite modern. They had great snow when we visited but, unfortunately it was the week prior to the ski season starting. The other attraction of Andorra is that it is a duty free zone. whilst diesel was about €1.25 in France, in Andorra it was 92 cents.

Pretty easy entering Andorra, but, took us about hour & a half to get out the 3 ks from the village through French Customs. They had a number of cars stopped and a couple they were doing very thorough searches of like removing seats etc. After we had driven an hour we went through a small village where we hit another traffic snarl and, yep, French Customs again, pulling people over for checks. Apparently people travel to Andorra to stock up on lots of goodies which the French Customs say is a no no. After leaving France Christine & Claire spent the week in.....

New York:

They had the most amazing week in the Big Apple. Apparently couldn't afford to eat because of the cost but otherwise did loads of touristy type stuff, including:

Statue of Liberty; Ellis Island; Central Park; walking tour of Jewish quarter; Wall St; Times Square; Guggenheim Museum; Museum of Modern Art; Natural History Museum to name just a few!!! (I didn't care. Wasn't interested in New York anyway!!). After New York Christine & Claire flew to...

Canada:

Claire flew to Victoria, British Columbia on the west coast, to stay with uncle Mike (Rosalie's brother)& aunt Daphne whilst Christine flew to Grande Prairie in Northern Alberta. After flying 3/4 of they way around the world I joined Chris there. That's where this fine literary piece is published from albeit that I have sourced as coming from France!!! We are staying with Christine's cousin Peter, his wife Carol & their 2 children Sharley, who is 14 & Josh, 11.

Grande Prairie:

We came here for a white Christmas - and guess what- WE GOT IT. -22 degrees C today. The coldest we've struck so far is - 31 deg!!!!! It really is different & amazing & anything below -5 is indistinguishable to us. -20 plus degrees is bloody cold but the locals just keep functioning like everyday people. The scenery is amazing with all the snow covered ground & we're driving from Grand Prairie to Calgary via Edmonton on Friday to pick up Claire (about 7 hour trip one way in summer) for Christmas so we will see a lot more of the countryside. I will save Grande Prairie for the next blog.

Some observations of France

Now as I promised previously (and if you're still with me you're bloody madder than I thought) here's a bit about certain aspects of the French part of the trip. As we spent most of the time in the south of France I will keep my observations to our experiences there and on that I offer the following:

French People:

Couldn't have met any nicer people than the local French villagers. They are very warm, friendly & inviting. Once they know you are from Australia they seem to warm to you even more. They are not great for travelling themselves & seem genuinely amazed that we had travelled so far to visit France. If you make an attempt to speak French they are even more accommodating. It seems the French are very set in their ways & worry about themselves & as long as you respect their ways & customs (particularly the bureaucracy) then they're fine.

Markets:

They're a great feature of France. A lot of the villages & some larger cities around us have a market once a week. The streets of the village a closed & the stall holders set up and sell all sorts of stuff; food, local produce, clothing, jewellery etc & you can get some great bargains.

Each market has at least one butchers shop, which are trucks the size of a large motor home fitted out as a butchers shops including horse butchers. The horse butchers are quite popular with the locals and the meat looked quite lean and similar in appearance to beef. Didn't get a chance to eat it but I did try some paella from one stall which looked fantastic, but, unfortunately had an adverse reaction on me about 2 am the following morning. The local cheeses, breads, olives etc are great. Markets are a must go to if you ever travel to this part of the world.

Local Food:

Boulangeries (bakery) & Patisseries (Pastries) found in every village. Bread & cheese figure prominently in the local diet as do sausages and in the region we stayed, cassoulet, which is a heavy & very tasty casserole of different pork, goose, duck and haricot beans. Plenty of locally grown apples which are very tasty.

Of course shit loads of wine. Very nice wine too. The interesting thing about the wine is that they are mainly blended varieties with it being more important to get the consistency of the wine the same as previous vintages, unlike Australia where we market mainly by the variety and the year. In France it seems to be the region &the cellar that are the main marketing points. You still get the odd label sold by the variety, particularly merlot, but generally they are blended wines, particularly more so the reds. Every village has at least one pizza shop & the local pizzas are very tasty

Driving:

Apart from the obvious (they drive on the opposite side of the car & road to us) once you get off the motor ways (which aren't cheap & should be avoided unless necessary) you notice how narrow the roads are. The motor car doesn't dominate the village in it appears that the streets haven't been widened since the advent of the motor car. Motorists on the whole are very polite & tolerant when compared to Australia. In most villages there is barely enough room for 2 cars to pass in the main street & once cars start parking manners are a must to get through. Bridges are often narrow & have a priority system for one direction in most cases. Motor ways have a max speed of 130 k's (110 in the wet) but the locals seem to drive much faster.

Villages:

Little villages dot the country side with some only a coupe of K's from each other. The locals seem to be content to remain in their local village for most part unless venturing to the larger cities for shopping. Each village generally has a Mairie (council) building, primary school, a Boulodrome (pétanque rink), Boulangerie et Patisserie. pizza shop. Pétanque is basically the same as bocce & a very popular summer game played in teams of about 4 with village playing against village. The pétanque rink is known as the boulodrome!!

Trains:

Modern, fast & expensive if you don't have a Eurail Pass so don't leave home without one. That is of course if you are catching the TGV. You can get cheap rail travel if you book ahead & travel on the regional expresses which are also quite good but involve more stops and often many hours extra travel.

Spain:

We did 1 day trip to Cadaques & an overnight stay in Barcelona. Both were great experiences & difficult to compare the 2 as Cadaques is a picturesque seaside town & Barcelona a very popular Spanish Catalan city. Need to get back to Spain for a lot longer.

Accommodation:

Not too many (in fact didn't see any) motels in France. Small hotels, French version of B&Bs, motor homes & self accommodation seem to be the main types. European B&Bs differ from English. In England you actually stay in a person's home and get a bed & breakfast (usually full English). In Europe a B&B is usually apartment type accommodation & breakfast at a nearby cafe or none at all!

Accommodation in England is far more varied with hostels, B&Bs, hotels, motels & guest houses everywhere. A B&B will cost about £30 per person, hostel £20 per person, guest house £30 all per night. Guest houses seem to be smaller types of hotels but with fewer rooms & not quite so luxurious, but more than adequate. We did stay in a hotel in Kings Cross, London, the first night in England (back in July) & that cost £120, 4 people, 1 room (in fact more like a closet).

Okay - you should be nearly brain dead by now. Until the next blog. Hoo roo!

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