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!

Tromsø: Above the Arctic Circle

I landed in Tromsø at around 9 o’clock at night. Ula (the girl I was staying with) had given me pretty good instructions as to how to get to her place, so I decided not to follow them and got off at the wrong bus stop. This seems to be becomming a common theme of this trip. So, after wondering where in the world I was supposed to go, wandering around looking lost, I found my self in a psychiatric hospital – asking for directions. I was only 100m away!

I soon found my way up to the 5th floor of the Tromsø University student house where Ula lived. She was a Polish masters student of English Literature. I would spend two nights with her, and then I was to spend the following two nights in the room of her neighbour, Phil, who was a biology masters student, spending his time in a greenhouse germinating seeds taken from Svalbard. That night I also met a couple more students plus Phil’s friend Doris from Vienna. We all stayed up pretty late and Doris and I decided that the next day we would climb the local mountain which during the correct season is usually accessed by cable car.

The next morning I awoke and went out onto the deck. This was the view.

View from Ula's Deck

The weather was not so nice, but it wasn’t raining, so Doris and I set out for the mountain.
As we got close to the harbour, the mountain became visable. It dosen’t look so big, but I gaurantee you that it is definitely steep.

Climbable?

We crossed the massive bridge which links Tromsø to the mainland,

Bridge and Harbour

Passed the modern-style church,

Triangle Church

And headed up into the forest. The path was pretty crazy, it spent about and hour going along the bottom of the mountain and we figured that at this rate it was going to take forever to get to the top, zig-zagging across the mountain. After passing a good number of streams, we finally got to a more intesnse part which, more or less, went directly up.

Mountain Stream

It took about another hour of ascention to reach a point where we decided to go no further. It was freezing, windy and starting to rain. But the view was amazing.

View From Mountain

Me and the View

Soon it was starting to get dark so we began to make out decent. On the way down the sunset, though cloudy, was very amazing. Here is my favourite picture of it:

Mountain Sunset

That night Ula made a very nice Polish-style tomato soup and her and I and Doris and Phil all ate together and talked into the night. The following day Doris was going back to Oslo (where she studies German literature), so we made morning plans and then we all headed off to bed.

The next morning I awoke to this:

Morning View

The weather was amazing! Doris and I went walking again and had to stop and take pictures of the Tromsø Island lake on the way to town.

Central Lake

We got to town and decided that we wanted to walk to the very south end of the island. So we set off, passing some pretty cool street art,

Street Art

and Mack’s brewery, the world’s northern most beer brewery.

Macks Brewery

We never made it to the south tip of the island. We walked for so long but in the end it seemed as though Doris might miss her flight if we kept going. So we left the town goodbye and headed back to the student accommodation. Doris left for Oslo and I moved into Phil’s place. I then pitched the idea of tramping out into the darkness to Phil to try and see if the northern lights were going to show. He agreed, and after a nice dinner of vegetables and rice we bussed back into town, over the bridge, and walked up on of the cross-country skiing trails into the valley and beyond town’s visable light. We walked for hours and hours and the northen lights decided they were not going to show. I was not too happy about this, but cheered up after we did some interesting photography.

Phil and I

We had missed the last bus back but it was getting late and cold so we decided to make out way back home. When we reached the point where we could see the lights of Tromsø, we decided to take a few photos, the first looking like this:

Subtle Lights

We had to double take at the picture because there was definitely some green in there. The sky was almost blank but the photo showed up green. So we waited for a while. And sure enough, the northern lights appeared to us, albiet very subtly. I would have loved it to be amazing and bright and full of different colours, but I guess that it was a bit too early in the season. We watched the subtle green colours dance across the sky for around 20 minutes before they disappeared and then headed off home. We had been (mildly) victorious.

Subtle Lights

It was a long walk back with no bus to catch, but Phil and I got on so well that we never had nothing to say to each other, and we were home before we knew it. It was also very fun to throw rocks onto a frozen lake and listen to them bounce off emmitting a laser-gun like sound.

The following day I slept in. It was well deserved after all the time I have spent getting up early and walking around cities, etc. What happened that day was not a lot. But in the night Phil and I decided that we would do another night hike. So once again it was up the mountain for me. We got layered up in warm clothing, brandished head-lamps, and then set off along the forest trail. It seemed very different at night and we went much slower than I has previously gone with Doris. But soon we had made it as far as we thought we should go – this time we were not going to miss the last bus.

The view was very cool, and it was amazing how much orange from the city was reflected off of the clouds.

Orange City

The next morning it was time for me to head off, I had a lot of travelling ahead of me: A flight to Bodø, a night train to Trondheim, a day train to Oslo, one night in oslo, then a plane to Stockholm at 8am the next day, followed by a train to Borlänge where I was to stay with my childhood au pair, Marie.

UK Arrival

After yet another long plane flight, this time 12.5 hours, I finally arrived in the UK to no one waiting for me. Adam was supposed to be here, had he forgotten? After about half an hour, I was about to give up and went searching for a a way into the city and maybe somewhere to stay, then he turned up. Phew!

After an extensive train ride from the airport, it turns out that Adam lives close to Wimbledon. This is in the 3rd train zone which doesn’t seem to be too far out from the city. Adam then left for work and I just relaxed for the rest of the day, telling him that I would meet him at his work in the city later on. And what a task that was!

He actually gave me pretty good instructions, it was just that the street signs were eluding me to a the point of insanity. I walked up, down, left right, north… and probably east, but who knows? For what was supposed to be a 10 minute walk from the Blackfriar’s Tube Station, it took me about an hour and a half, due to my intrepid trek halfway across London Central.

I did, how ever, manage to find the Tate Modern and St. Paul’s Cathedral, both of which I’m going to go back and have a look at today. After meeting up with Adam finally, we went for a mission to find a shisha bar, end up at Picadilly Circus (which is basically a round-a-bout). The area was a high-class shoppers dream with every brand name you could possibly think of – even the Apple shop was majestic. We did manage to find the shisha bar, but it turned out that there was a bouncer and that everyone in side was dressed to impress, suit-style. And in our uniform of t-shirts and jeans, we were doubtful about getting in, so we decided to call it a night and after being awake for over 50 hours, I too thought that was a good plan. Homeward ho!

This really is quite a pretty city.

P.S. I will finish up Hong Kong soon. ‘Tis just a lot to write.