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Is this what we cool travellers do then - sit in a foreign hotel-room in the middle of the afternoon hooked up to the wi-fi and telling the world (well, maybe a couple of close friends) what cool adventures we have been having?
This is supposed to be our "out-of-our-comfort-zone" test run for the Big Trip in September. Well, I can't tell you the troubles we've endured so far. Now I know what real travellers have to put up with, I am starting to wonder about the wisdom of this grey gap-year thing. I mean, delayed on the M25 for an hour resulting in a 2-hour delay in getting onto the shuttle, a hotel whose standards of decor are, frankly, hopelessly inadequate (although the rest of it seems tolerable), indifferent service in a restaurant where the waiters made absolutely NO attempt to speak English (although the food was quite nice)......I could go on. Still, I can't imagine that Vietnam can be any worse.
To be serious, we got to Arras about 8 on Friday night having done the pretty route rather than the autoroute, drove round in ever-decreasing circles for 30 minutes through the bewildering roadworks and one-way systems,
dumped the stuff in the tastefully Artexed hotel-room and legged it up to the festival site just in time to see the last 3 numbers by Queens of the Stone Age. Bill - OMG, one of lifes ambitions achieved (I saw them 15-odd years ago in Italy and to be fair, they've come on a bit since then) and they are utterly awesome. Elaine - felt like someone was sticking knives into her brain, couldn't wait for it to end, I want to leave NOW! (Incidentally, if you are wondering about the poncy title of this blog, it's a drunken, and probably hilariously wrong attempt to translate QOTSA into French)
The site of the Main Square Festival is fabulous - imagine staging a rock concert in Horseguards Parade - it's like that only older but not quite so posh. The stage is utterly humungously, monstrously huge, the sound and lights, brain-buggering and the giant video screens are, er, quite big........
So after a 5 quid pint of Heineken, we left as I am not sure that even with my eclectic musical tastes, that I was up to Linkin Park (is that a stop on the Northen Line?) ,
devouring a plate of lovely "steack frites" en route to the hotel and crashing.
SATURDAY 2nd JULY
And whose birthday is it today? ** years old and looking as lovely as ever on it, the mental torture of QOTSA forgotten, Mrs G awoke to a lovely cup of tea and a bacon sandwich (sadly only in her dreams....) And then she woke up properly to the fascinating texture of a white artexed French hotel room.......and a glass of water. However this was offset by cards and pressies which had made that arduous journey all the way from Daventry and set her up nicely for a tour of Arras. We couldnt avoid the obligatory French Saturday morning market and maybe it was the sunshine or maybe just the 'frenchness' somehow all of the market 'tat' looked cool and interesting and different and extra items of jewellery and a splendid cardigan rouge just had to be purchased. We eventually ran out of market stalls and found the Cathedral - a magnificent example of Church architecture - which we duly admired inside and out. Moving on, we came across a canal which was home to a motley selection of seabirds, ducks
& their ducklings, geese, etc and suddenly we caught sight of an horrific looking mammal - sort of cross between a beaver and an overgrown aquatic rat - a picture of which may appear on here sometime soon - if we can master the technology!
And then it was my (Elaine's) favourite time - yes , LUNCHTIME! We found a sunny restaurant and were able to wash our elaborate salad/homemade pasta dishes down with a fine bottle of Muscadet. Ample time to 'people watch' and I noticed one French family partaking of the customary lengthy lunch but rather than interacting with each other, the dad had his nose stuck into Moto Journal, the mum was skimming a newspaper and the teenage son was engaging with his mobile.
We have ascertained that the first band we want to see today - Fleet Foxes - are not on til 6 p.m. so its back to Room 218 at Hotel Moderne for a spot of R & R and to prepare ourselves for a busy evening....
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