French Finale

My final train ride in France went without error. After leaving Alpe d’Huez at 7:30am, I arrived in Paris at around 1pm.

I was again CouchSurfing, but as it was a Friday my hosts had to work so we had arranged to meet at the Hoche metro station at 6:30. This gave me five and a half hours to kill and after wandering lost around the complex Gare du Lyon for about half an hour, I finally found the luggage check which turned out to be incredibly expensive. Welcome to Paris.

I checked my bags, checked the tourist information centre, then checked my new map. After ripping the map in half by mistake, I grabbed another which showed the routes which the tour busses take. I figured that I’d leave the main sites ’till the next day and so set off to find the French National Library. This, I gathered, is supposed to be a modern architectural centrepiece, and it was very cool. Four seperate buildings in L shapes donned the corners of the structure (in the middle was great public space and a large cluster of treess), the passage between them underground.

French National Library

After the library, I ventured back over the river via a bridge which I guess was specifically added when the library was built. On the otherside, opposite the library, was some kind of sports centre – a crazy geometric building covered in grass, skylights, and bright blue metal framing.

Sports Centre

This also appeared to be a popular youth hangout as it was crawling with teenagers who I thought should have been in school. I passed these kids and began to walk back towards the train station. I was walking along thhe river, under a bridge, when I spotted a very nice homeless set-up complete with tents, tables, chars, appliances (I’m not sure how they got power for them) and even a christmas tree!

Homeless setup

When I got back to the station I still had a lot of time until I had to head west on the metro so I began to walk towards Bastille, a very large and famous round-about.

Bastille

Now I had to make the decision. What to see. I decided on making a brief appearance at Notre Dame but trying not see too much of it. And after walking down a street which I thought was the right one for a while, getting lost, and then getting reorientated, I spotted the small island on which the cathedral was located.

Notre Dame

I then crossed on to the island, but kinda tried not to see too much of Notre Dame itself – I wanted to keep it until I had more time – so just passed by and went on my way. About an hour later I was back at the train station and ready to take the metro to Hoche.

This was crazy, it was rush hour and here I was trying to take the busiest metro in the world with two bags full of junk! I even had to change lines. But it was OK, I made it to Hoche faster than I thought (with enough time to take a little walk around) and soon met my CouchSurfing hosts, Clair and Francis (who was actually from a French owned island off the south-east coast of Madagascar called Reunion). We walked back to their place, had dinner, talked about all sorts of things and had a pretty good evening. Both Clair and Francis were amazingly hospitable and were offering me things left, right, and centre. It turned out that I was the first person that they had hosted!

From this point of my time in Paris, I must be honest, I was a bit lazy! I think I was just tired from all the partying I did in the alps. But I made sure I saw all the big sites. the next morning I got my self out of bed and headed back to Notre Dame to get a proper look. And after all the cathedrals that I had seen in this trip, I have to say I was a little disappointed. This one gets talked up by everyone, but in some ways it dosen’t even compare to many of the others I’ve seen, especially the Italian ones. Here is a picture of it anway:

Notre Dame

From here I headed towards the famous gallery, the Louvre. Again I was lazy, I decided not to go inside. Partly because of time (two days to see the whole thing!) and partly because of money. It’s becoming rather skint and I can’t afford 9 Euros to go to an art gallery, as much as I would have liked to. The buildings and the glass pyramid were especially impressive though! I hadn’t realised that it was so big.

The Louvre

From the Louvre I headed through the massive gardens which extend in front of it. At the other end of them was a small christmas fair with a pretty large ferris wheel. It was here that I caught my first glimpse of the famous Eiffel Tower, and it was then that I though “yeah, I’m really in Paris”.

It was beginning to get dark so I decided to head back. I was supposed to text Clair when I returned to the apartment block so that she could let me in. I was late and my phone had decided to run out of money and not let me top up the credit. So I headed to the apartment and snuck inside with another resident. I got up to level 7 and realised that it was the wrong building! So back down I went and over to the other building. There was no one to let me in so I just skulked around the entrance until a group of people opened it, not thinking twice about who I could be or what I was doing there. I then headed up to the right level 7 and Francis let me in. That night we were going to go out but in the end decided against it as Francis was sick, Clair was getting sick, none of their friends could make it and I was tired.

The following day Clair and Francis had said they would take me out to Versailles so around lunchtime (after a good sleep in) we got in the car and drove out there. The main attraction in Versailles is the palace which has been home to many a French king and queen.

Palace at Versailles

Inside the palace’s grounds and also inside the palace itself were a number of sculptural works from American artist Jeff Koons. The first one which I saw made for a pretty cool photo with the palace refelected in it.

Royal Reflection

The inside of the palace was pretty cool, but to be honest, for the price that you pay it was definitely not as good as the palace in Brussels which was free. There were many dark rooms with large numbers of paintings of past residents, historical beds and furniture, and a terrible audio guide which really didn’t tell you anything you couldn’t read on the signs. The highlight of this palace was the gardens which I hear are very popular and much more beautiful in the summer.

Gardens at Versailles

That evening was another quiet one. Apart from a trip to a street which houses a huge amount of electronics stores to get some things for Clair, we spent most of the night trying to get the French television system to allow us to watch a French film with English subtitles. This  did not end up working, so we began to watch 300 but soon all of us were pretty sleepy and we ended up turning it off and headed off to bed.

The next day was a Monday and Francis and Clair had to go off to work. It was time again for me to see some sights, so mid-morning I set off to make sure I didn’t miss the sights that Paris is known for. My first stop was the Arch de Triomphe, set in the middle of a huge round-about and extremely expensive to visit the inside of. I took a few photos  and then started to make my way towards the Eiffel Tower.

Arch de Triomphe

The Eiffel Tower is big. It was even bigger than I thought it was and it was very cool to finally see it in all it’s glory.

Eiffel Tower

I then headed down towards it. The metal framework is amazing and it made for some pretty cool silhouette photos.

Eiffel silhouette

After a little bit of decision making (time was running short), I decided to ascend the tower. The line took about 25 mintues which was a pretty good amount of time considering people queue for hours in the summer. I chose on of the legs which only offers the stairs and just under 400 stairs later I had made it to the first level. Over 200 stair more I was at the second level. The view was pretty cool from here although the day was rather overcast. This low cloud prevented me from spending further money and taking the lift all the way to the top (which was in fact in the clouds).

View from the Eiffel Tower

By the time I got back down it had started to rain so I got on the metro and began to head back to Hoche. That evening was an interesting dinner. I had told Francis that I had neve eated escargot before, so in no time he had whipped up an appertiser and I was eating some sort of pesto roasted snails – not bad at all really but I found it a bit hard to stomach them, something most probably psychological. After this we had hotdogs with salad and “French” dijon mustard which actaully almost killed me. I put way too much on thinking it was like American mustard and it felt like I was drinking vodka infused with chili peppers – I was crying and sniffing annd Francis thought it was funny!

The next morning I was off again. An early train to the airport and a flight for just over an hour saw me land in London. It was Christmas time!

Bring on the Cheese!

I hadn’t really planned what I was going to do after travelling through Italy, and at the last minute I decided to go to Switzerland in search of snow, and to begin my treck towards Paris, where I will be just before Christmas. So the morning after the Cinque Terre adventure, Carmen and I parted ways at the train station, her to Rome and I was heading to Zurich.

Eight train-filled hours later I was there. My first mission was to get to a town about twenty-five minutes out of Zurich called Winterthur where I would meet my host, Lia. Finding the train was the easy part, finding an ATM to withdraw Swiss franks was not so easy. Finally I figured this out and soon I was travelling north to Winterthur where I found Lia waiting for me.

That first night we did not do a lot, we were both tired and had decided to have an earlyish night so she could show me around Zurich thee following day. In the morning we ate and then headed into Zurich, there was much to do! Unfortunately it was raining, but this was not to stop us. First of all we headed out of the train station and down the main street, appropriately named Bahnofstrasse. This was a street filled with expensive clothing and watch stores, intermingled with douzens of different banks promoting private bank accounts. On the way down this street we stopped to check out various churches.

Church clock tower

We ate roasted chestnuts, talked and took numerous photos of Zurich dressed in it’s best Christmas attire.

Christmas pinecones

We then passed the Zurich lake and headed towards a secondhand bookshop which we both wanted to check out. The English section was not so large, but I managed to find Catcher In The Rye and Dracula for 3 franks which is a damned good deal. Lia bought a collection of 13 huge photography books that she would have to collect later as they were much too heavy to carry around.

But before we hit the bookstore, we stopped by:

Google office Zurich

This was pretty cool to see. Apparantly the inside of the building is amazingly well equipped with meditation rooms, aquariums, a gym, and much more. Outside the office was parked this Google bike! I hear that the staff are given them to use.

Google bike

After we left the bookshop, we headed back towards the centre of town, where we crossed the river and checked out another church.

Zurich's riverside

Twin church towers

And now was the exciting part! We decided to head up the local tall mountain of which I forget the name and climb the view tower. We took the train and when we arrived I was thouroughly excited to see a snowy path leading to the top. I could barely contain myself and was running around like an over excited child.

Snowy path

When we got to the top we headed up the tower and found the view of the alps in all directions. It was amazing!

View over Zurich

The sun started to set so we headed back down the the tower and began to construct a small snowman on a park bench which I was actaully able to pick up and carry around with me until I picked him up off of a chair and he lost his balance, his head falling off.

Snowman!

By this time it was getting pretty late and we had a dinner date with 100 other CouchSurfers out in the countryside. This event was run by the Zurich CouchSurfing group and was basically 100+ people in a big cottage in the countryside eating over 20kgs of cheese fondue and drinking too much wine. It was a whole heap of fun! There were heaps of Swiss people and many others from all over the world there too. One guy I talked to had even cycled from Belgium to Serbia in 4 months, crazy!

the CHEESE

This went on ’till the early hours of the morning and when Lia decided that she has drunk far too much, we headed home.

The next day the weather was terrible, it was raining something atrocious, so instead of checking out any more outdoor sights we planned a scenic train trip. This would be from Luzern to Interluken. So we got on the train and headed for Luzern. When we got there we had some time to kill, so went for a short walk in the city, over the famous bridge:

Some old bridge

and past some very cool decorated buildings:

Decorated house

Soon it was time to get on the train, so we headed back to the station, boarded the train and we were off. In no time you could feel the pull of the train heading upwards and soon enough we were engulfed in snowy forest and paddocks. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before! We opened the window of the train at one point when it stopped to get some photos and the woman sitting infront of us ended up covered in snow! It was snowing like I’ve never experienced.

Lotsa snow!

In what seemed like no time at all, the night fell and we were headed back to Zurich to meet the CouchSurfers again for their monthly meeting which just ended up being a number of people drinking in a bar. It was good to see some of the people again from last night and meet more new people. I can’t keep track of all the people I’m meeting everywhere, there are too many!

That was my final night in Zurich, it really felt like it had gone much too fast but it was definitely a great time. In the morning I was off to Bern.

Oxford!

I haven’t posted in a few days due to having spent the last few nights in Oxford – yup, the university city.

The main reason I travelled to Oxford was to catch up with a friend of mine (and Mattinum), Isaac. He goes to university in Manchester, but luckily for me he was back at his parent’s place for summer holiday. It also turned out that he was good friends with the manager of the hostel which I stayed at (Central Backpackers) which was good as this allowed him to come into the hostel for drinks and things. It was good to catch up with Isaac and hopefully I will go and visit him again in Manchester at the end of the year.

But enough about that, here are a few highlights from Oxford. Firstly, the buildings. These are (for the most part) even older and more interesting than the buildings found in London. I think that may have something to do with the great fire of London in 1666 though, as many of Oxford’s buildings are from well before that.

The Oxford Library

This building was epic. Built in the 1300s, the Oxford Library (according to Isaac) has the largest collection of books in the world, all stored underground. Apparantly they had some deal with a large number of publishers who would give them a copy of every book they published. I’m unsure if this is still going now but i’m told it was in occurance for a large number of years.

The Oxford Castle

The Castle is a newly opened attraction in Oxford as it only ceased to be a prison in 1996. It’s creation first started in 1071, making it one of the oldest buildings in the city. It was very cool to see, but unfortunatly due to it’s former prison status, I don’t think it works overly well as a castle tourist attraction. And the fact that it is in the middle of town makes it rather hard to take a decent photo of it.

But the buildings which are most commonly talked about in Oxford are the colleges. This was truely amazing. I had originally thought that there was one Oxford university and that was how it has always been. This was proven to be untrue. There are historically around 40 different colleges in Oxford, now all brought together to form the prestegious university you all know. Every college building was more impressive than the next, with architectural feats such as this:

A university square

The above image is just one of the 40 colleges seen in the city. They all now appear to house different faculties of the university from history to physics. But what I thought was the grandest of all the colleges was Christ Church. This place was amazing, just like something from a book or a film, which seems appropriate as Harry Potter was filmed there and Alice in Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass were both written there.

Christ Church

Entrance to Christ Church

Isaac also took me to a pub called the Turf Tavern, which is supposed to be one of the oldest pubs in Oxford. The roof was so low that it was less than 6″ away from from the top of my head at the beams. Isaac could not stand in it properly without having to bend sideways! We got some pints of Sadlers Worcester Sorcerer Ale and sat down. Here are some fun facts I read on the wall: in the 16th centuary, the owner died in the pub. In the 17th centuary, swordfighting was a common sport loved by patrons of the pub. And in the 18th centuary, cockfighting!

The following day, I got to experience something even more exciting (even thrilling if you lose your balance). This was known as punting. It’s the British version of the Italian gondola, and you propel yourself down a calm river by pushing the riverbed with a long aluminium pole. At first I was all over the place and almost fell into the river (which was pretty haggard, baby poo-eqsue colour), but soon i got the hang of it. The worst part about it is when you slide the pole up out of the water, it all drips down your arms and you end up kinda wet, but apart from that it’s pretty good fun!

Punting!

There was also two ways which it can be done. In essence, they don’t physically differ at all, it all depends on which end of the punt you stand on. In the picture above, I’m standing on the platform which is considered to be Oxford style. You can also stand at the other end, which is not as solid. This is known to be Cambridge style. Apparantly they have Oxford-Cambridge races and such which I can only imagine would be pretty amusing to watch.

So yes, Oxford was a pretty interesting little city. Unfortunately I forgot to go up the lookout tower, but  I’m sure I can do that in many other places along my travels.

My next port of call is Southend-On-Sea in Essex, then off up to Warwickshire for the RetroRides 08 Festival which should be very cool.

Tate Modern

Yesterday I went for a wander into the city. My first stop was Tate Modern – the modern art gallery.

 

Tate Modern

This place was very cool. I got to see original Picasso and Litchenstein works which was pretty exciting. There were 4 huge gallery spaces separated into different artistic periods + smaller areas for video and performance art. There was an awesome video piece on psychics and telekinesis which had a soundtrack of an intense drum build up only to end in static in sound and on screen. Errant Uncle Prasnaglava would have been more than amused. 

I am also now enthralled by the work of Cy Twombly.

Along side all the permanent works was a short running installment about street art. They had brought over a number of international street artists and had given them space to do work around the burrows behind the Tate building. I only managed to get to two of them yesterday but am going to try and do the whole tour today.

 

Tate Street Art by 3TTMAN

Not only had they filled the surrounding streets with fantastic art installments, but they had also given 6 artists an area on the front of the Tate Modern building to do work on. These were absolutely amazing and epic in proportion.

 

Art on the front of Tate Modern

After I had finished at Tate Modern, I headed over the The Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare used to perform his plays, although obviously now more modern. I think that I will go and see Timon of Athens next week perhaps. It is only 5 pounds to stand like a peasant on the ground – I feel that this will be the best way to see it. The guy at the information desk said it was the only way, after he referred to the booklet as “his book”.

Next I headed back over the Millennium  Bridge towards St Paul’s Cathedral. This building is epic, I haven’t ever seen anything like it before (I’m sure I will in the near future ‘though) and I can’t wait to actually go inside it. Here is a shot from the outside, though. ‘Tis crazy!

 

St Paul's Cathedral

Awesome! I will go back next week some time and try to get a better look around both in and out side. It is hard to get a good photo of it because it is so packed into the city and surrounded by other buildings it never really fits well in the frame.

Time to go now, Soho and Camden Markets today, and a further wander around the Tate street art installment.