The Fatloaf European Vacation

From Fatloaf Wiki

Itinerary
18/12/05	Brussels
19/12/05	Brussels
20/12/05	Brussels
21/12/05	Geneva
22/12/05	Interlaken
23/12/05	Lucern
24/12/05	Lucern
25/12/05	Lucern
26/12/05	Como
27/12/05	Nice
28/12/05	Nice
29/12/05	Nice
30/12/05	Nice
31/12/06	Paris
01/01/06	Paris
02/01/06	London
03/01/06	London
04/01/06	Britain
05/01/06	Britain
06/01/06	Britain
07/01/06	Britain
08/01/06	Britain
09/01/06	Britain
10/01/06	Singapore
11/01/06	Singapore
12/01/06	Singapore
13/01/06	Home

Contents 1 Journal 1.1 Jan 12th - The End 1.2 Jan 10th or 11th or something 1.3 Jan 9th 2006 1.4 Jan 8th 2006 1.5 Jan 2nd 2006 1.6 Dec 28th 2005 1.7 Dec 25th 2005 1.7.1 Update - Late on the night of the 25th 1.8 Dec 20th 2005 1.9 Dec 17th 2005 1.10 Dec 14th 2005 1.11 Dec 11th 2005 1.12 Dec 7th 2005

Journal

Jan 12th - The End

Well here it is sports fans, the last post at the end of a gruelling holiday trip.

I'm typing this at Changi Airport as we wait for our flight to come back home. Our time in Singapore has been busy and can be distilled down to one word - shopping. A lot of people said that shopping is bad in Singapore, but let me tell you, its there you just have to dig a little deeper to find it.

Kylie and I have both had a great time on this trip, and its been great sharing some of our memories with those of you who were interested in following us.

To Scott - thanks for the blogging space, very much appreciated as always, and to all of you who have kept an eye on where we are, thanks for watching.

I'll sign off now, see you all in a few hours.

PJ

Jan 10th or 11th or something

Greetings Friend. Well we arrived in Singapore on our way home without incident. After waiting at Heathrow for 5 hours (we had no where else to go) and then 12 hours on a flight my body clock is complete knackered. Effectively we've lost a day of our lives, I for one can't figure out where it went, its probably down the back of the couch. It was late afternoon when we got to Heathrow and dropped off the car, then after waiting, eating, looking at duty free (its cheaper in Singapore), we got on a plane, after some kind talking to the stewardess we got a wing seat which makes all the difference in the leg room department, and at 10:10 GMT we left Europe. We arrived at Singapore at 19:20 Local the following day. My brain is telling me its still 13:30 but my body is telling me i've been awake for 2 days.. very disconcerting feeling.

We've just finished dinner, and went for a quick walk around the markets which don't close here until about 10pm. All is going well so far only a couple more left before were back home.

Anyway time to sleep I think...

See you all soon.

PJ & KJ

Jan 9th 2006

Well its our last day in Europe. We've just visited Windsor castle, and are now killing time before we go to Heathrow for our flight out.

We're both feeling a lot better today so hopefully the altitude wont play havoc with our sinus's too much. We fly out at 10pm local tonight, and arrive sometime later in Singapore (local) after being in the air for 12 hours.. hows that for screwing with your body clock.

Then its shopping time in Singapore for two days before we're home. Have to say that after almost 6 weeks living in hotel rooms and out of suit cases we're looking forward to coming home. It's amazing how quickly you miss good quality showers and days that aren't dark at 4pm. Hopefully it wont be too hot in Singapore or Adelaide, but we're not holding our breath.

I'll try and sneak in one more post in Singapore, hope everyone is well.

PJ

Jan 8th 2006

Just a quick hello to everyone. We're in Oxford after racing around the countryside of Britain for the last 4 days.

We've been to Bath, then Stratford-on-Avon, then prayed at the alter that is Old Trafford.. wait till you see the photos!

We then went up to Newcastle, and made a quick stop across the scottish border. We culled Edinburgh as it ended up being too rushed.

We're going to Windsow tomorrow on our way to the Airport, then its Bye Bye Europe.

We're both a bit run down and sniffly, but still having a blast. We've got two days in Singapore and then we're home..

See you all soon, Gav please make sure the roof is reattached to the house before we get back.

PJ & Kylie

Jan 2nd 2006

Greetings all from London!

Well a lot has happened in the last few days so I've decided to make this a reasonably detailed post.

To begin with let me fatten out the details of the trip to Nice. Kylie and I have got these really cool Eurail passes which allow us to travel on just about any train in Europe for free, however there area number of trains that require a reservation. The train from Como to Nice was one of these. Now we have gotten use to travelling in 1st class, lots of space, sometimes a little snack.. its all good... however the Italian train system is a different story. We had to swap trains in Milan to get to Nice. Milan train station is just nuts, about 10000 people all trying to make there way to where their going without much organisation, we finally found our train and got on to discover that its not like any other train we've been on. 1st class is 2 sets of 3 seats facing each other in little cabins. Also on the Italian system, you can still get on a train even if you don't have a reservation, you just have to stand instead. So after finally finding our seats we discovered that our sequentially numbered tickets were actually for the two seats facing each other in the middle of four very loud, older Italians. Now I like Italians, don't get me wrong, but 5 1/2 hours later I wanted to shoot myself.

We finally got in to Nice, and got to the hotel, one of two two star hotels we were staying in this trip. Bad bad move, there is a very big difference between 3 star and 2 star for those of you planning to travel, for the extra $40 or so per night, go for the 3. The hotel reminded me of living with Andy and Gav, perfectly livable but what exactly is that odour...

We went for a sight seeing tour of Nice, a beautiful city in itself that over its history has been controlled by the Greeks, the Romans, the English, the Italians and now the French. Needless to say its a great mix of architecture and design.

That night we headed to Monte Carlo for a night time tour and a quick run of the Casino. Monte Carlo is just plain crazy. It beautiful with a population of just 32,000 people and 800 police, its safe and its full to the ceiling with cash. Being poor in Monte Carlo means you only own a 50 foot yacht, and a 2004 Bentley.

Our tour gave us time to do our own thing, so being the person that I am Kylie and I headed to Royal Monte Carlo casino, this is the real deal, very ornate, suits must be worn to enter. Firstly you start off down because you have to pay 10 Euro to get in, but once in its oppulance all the way. Its roulette tables are huge and are managed by four guys at once, Kylie and I decided to warm up by playing some "real" slot machine, the old school style with the handle on the side, after that I decided to give blackjack a shot, but decided at the last second to leave it alone when I discovered the minimum bet was 100 Euros (ouch). So we moved to Roulette, Kylie surprises me sometimes, she sat back and let me play for 1 spin in which lucky 14 came up and we were ahead, then she was in giving me her "feelings" about what the next number would be, and I have to say she was within 2 each time, great person to have on a roulette wheel when your betting streets, so at the end of the night we walked out of Monte Carlo having taken from them about 220 Euros not a bad effort all told.

The following few days in Nice, were nice (pardon the pun) and relaxing, with some walks along the beach, some good food and just some general relaxation. It was good to stop and recharge for a couple of days, even if the hotel wasn't that good.

On Dec 31st we headed back to Paris for New Years. This was a much better train with 1st class having space again. Kylie and I sat in seats facing each other on their own with a little table between us, where upon we proceeded to play Gin for 5 hours, a marathon game that neither of us would stop playing. It certainly made the trip go quickly.

We arrived back in Paris, and had a quick walk around before heading back to the hotel to prepare for New Years at the Eiffel Tower...

We made a wrong stop on the Paris Metro trying to get to Eiffel tower, so proceeded to walk for some 40 minutes to get there.. as you can imagine i'm not a big walker and after all the walking we've done this trip neither Kylie or I were that excited by the time we got there..

So on a very cold December 31st evening we waited for the new year to come in at one of the greatest historical landmarks on the planet.. as midnight approached Kylie and I waited for the great fireworks show with about a million french people, in the crowd a few people let off their own crackers, then at midnight... nothing. Just some pretty twinkle lights on the tower, just as it does every hour on every other day. No fireworks, nothing.

You have never seen two people more disappointed with the outcome than we were.

So we trecked back to the hotel completely stuffed, and very very pissed at France.

The following day we went out to Versallie and walked around the gardens, before heading back to the city for one last walk around. Then it was quiet dinner at the hotel for our early start the following morning.

The following morning we took the Eurostar from Paris to London, a great trip which includes a 20 minute stretch in the tunnel under the English Channel. Arriving in London we took the London Underground to our hotel. The Tube is a fantastic piece of engineering, and while it does break down often, moves millions of people around London in relative comfort very quickly.

We checked in to our hotel then quickly made our way to London, checked out Trafalgar square, then the British Art Gallery, then made our way around to the London Eye and took some photos of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, very touristy of us.

Today was our "Lets visit London in one day tour". In the space of twelve hours we visited the National Science Museum (they have the real Apollo 10 command module on display) the Grenwich Observatory, the Tate Modern Art Museum and the Tate Britain Museum. Tonight we caught "Stomp" in the West End, an absolutely brilliant performance.

That pretty much brings you all up to date on where we are at the moment, tomorrow we're going to the British Museum and then we pick up the Hire car(finally no more walking) for our next leg through England.

For those of you who wanted to know were going from London to Bath, Bath to Stratford Upon Avon, to Manchester (Go you Reds!), to Edinburgh and then back to Heathrow for our trip home over the next week.

We're staying in little Bed and Breakfasts for this leg of the trip so I don't know how much Internet access we'll have, so this may 'possibly' be the last post we make of this trip. Once I get home we'll get some snaps up to go with it before it gets filed away in the fatloaf archives.

Thanks for keeping tabs on us while we're away, we'll see you all very soon.

PJ & Kylie

Dec 28th 2005

Greetings all, quick hello from Nice. Made it down here on the whackiest Italian train ever, and then arrived at what has to be the worst hotel we've stayed in (rule to remember don't book a hotel based on their photo's on the internet!). Regardless we're still having a great time, did a tour of Nice this morning, and we're of to Monte Carlo tonight (woohoo!).

Not much else really to discuss, we're both well and enjoying ourselves.

PS - Thanks to all my friends who remembered my birthday.. I guess I can't complain, I always forget yours.. :)

Will post again soon.

PJ

Dec 25th 2005

Merry Christmas sports fans coming to you from Lucern, Switzerland (or Lucerne or Luzern depending on what language the map your reading is in). I'm typing this on a German keyboard.. an interesting experience to say the least.. Y is a Z and vice versa so please ignore mz spelling mistakes. :)

We've discovered a lot of you are keeping track via this site so we'll make todays post a little more detailed.

Well after our debarcle in Brussels (read the below post) we ventured to the Brussels North(Bruxelles Nord) train station to make our way to Switzerland. Kylie spent 20 minutes at the information desk organising tickets and getting assistance. As an IT person I refused to read the manual or get help, so I sat and watched our luggage in a crouched Chuck Norris (sans the shoulders) like stance.

Kylie came back to inform me that all was now well with our Eurail pass and that we had now booked all our tickets for the rest of our trip.. nice work Kylie. Now I have to digress here, without Kylie on this trip I would probably be sleeping in a cardboard box in Amsterdam by now, her ability to read the most bizarre timetables on the planet has been of great benefit.

We took a train to Brussels South (Bruxelles Zuid) without a ticket, to this day we still have no idea how you actually get a ticket but no one checked so we dont really care.

Once in Brussels South we bought our tickets for the Eurostar to London for later on in our trip, and we were once again all organised. We then boarded the Thalys train which took us from Brussels to Paris at just under 300km/h. Now sitting in 1st class eating a free meal with all the space in the world is just a great feeling. If any of you plan on coming to Europe and buy a Eurail pass make sure you pay the little bit more to get a 1st class upgrade it makes all the difference. We arrived in Paris without incident and then proceeded on to Geneva on a French TGV high speed train, again a great journey, however because we had left the booking until too late we could only get 2nd class seats, still comfortable but it was like getting out of a Stretch Limo and in to a Charade. We stopped over night in Geneva where we feasted upon Mexican food.. a nice if not expensive meal, as we have since found out food is expensive here in Switzerland.

We left Geneva the following day for our trip to Interlaken. Interlaken is a small but beautiful town surrounded by some of the biggest mountains we've ever seen. Our hotel room on the 5th floor of the Metropole had a fantastic view, of which we took some great photos (we're having real trouble finding somewhere to upload them but as soon as we do we'll get some up). the highlight of the day was seeing a base jumper leap from the roof of our hotel and whizz past our window close enough to wave and say hello. Perhaps I should have been wearing pants at the time.

The following day we took the train to Lucern, we were expecting this to be a normal train ride, and were surprised to find its actually a scenic train with the largest windows ever. The views as the train wound its way up the mountains and around Lake Geneva were spectacular.

Finally arriving in Lucern we spent the first afternoon walking through the old quarter buying lots of gifts and chocolate, including what could possibly be the best chocolate ever made, but more about that when we get home (if there are any left). We also had our best meal in Europe so far at a little Italian restaurant, it was fantastic.

After our wonderful meal we made our way to the Lucern Casino, we got dressed up as thats what they told us at the hotel, to discover when we arrived that we were the best dressed people there, infact we we're so well dressed they thought we had lots of money and gave us a very personal introduction. Lucky 28 worked its magic on the roulette wheel and we came out a little up for the night. (Scotty, Andy, Ben - You haven't played blackjack until you play at a table where they speak German, It's enough to give you a headache trying to keep up!)

Yesterday we went up Mount Pilatus, all 4000 feet of it. At first we went to the wrong station and found the train doesn't climb it in winter, so after wasting 2 hours we finally got to the cable car and made our way up. The mountain is fantastic and has the longest toboggin run in the world (1.4 Km). Now Kylie and I have never tobogginned before, so you can imagine two aussies with toboggin's in hand standing at the top of an almost sheer cliff wondering what to do.. in true Aussie spirit we jumped on and went down.. about 5 metres before I came off and slid the other 50 on my backside and face, Kylie had a bit more success but came off as well. After some practice runs on the kiddie park we finally had the basics of toboggining down pat so headed off down the main track. All I can say is it was great. It makes go-carting seem tame, and the speed you can get up is amazing. We had so much fun infact that were planning on going back today to try the faster run.

Thats about it for the moment, its been great fun up until now, unfortunately its already half-way gone. We leave Lucern tomorrow for Como and then on to Nice and back to Paris for New Years. We'll post again soon.

Paul & Kylie.

Update - Late on the night of the 25th

Hello again, had to make a second post, today was just great. We proceeded back to Mt Pilatus with a bit more understanding in order to toboggin again. We completed the track in about a quarter of the time of yesterday and went back for a second run, where we found to our delight that there was a "difficult" track. Being the adventerous spirits we are, we decided that after 2 passes down the "easy" track that we were now sufficiently skilled to attempt this. We were very quickly put back in our place as the difficult track is just that. Effectively its just a series of cliff faces covered in snow and ice, after just managing to make our way down the first two hills unscathed I came a cropper and proceeded to cause the most amount of pain ever to my well cushioned backside, a rather unpleasant experience but fun none the less. Apparently Kylie found my plight rather amusing and now has some great photos of me very unceremoniously sliding down a very large hill about 3 metres in front of my toboggin doing lovely slow counter-clockwise spins down the ice. Now Kylie is escaping unscathed here, she also had some lovely up close and personal discussions with the snow, but somehow she always seemed to even fall off with poise and grace, I guess its a dancer thing, where as I was effectively a human avalanche.

Needless to say by the time we finally got back to the hotel we were both very sore and very tired, its now time to pack and get ready to roll out nice and early tomorrow on our way to Como.

More to come.

PJ

Dec 20th 2005

Greetings sportsfans from Brussels. We've been here for the last 3 days and what can I say about Brussels. Well, it's crap. Its the meeting place of the European Union, needless to say people here think their the capital of Europe. Belgium is a French speaking country, and they have real attitudes to go along with it. Needless to say being an English speaking relatively happy person doesn't go down to well in this town. We've spent the last 2 days in an assess and recover mode, we've found a laundromat after what could have been the longest walk ever in the history of man (rule to remember, when Kylie asks if we should go one more block, say no. One more block will inadvertantly become the city square, or the coastal border.) We've also organised to send some stuff back home to shrink our bags a little.

Today has been our most testing day on this trip, after everything going so well for so long, we've suddenly had it all come to a grinding halt. In the space of 24 hours we've:

• Had our card swallowed by a Brussels ATM machine. (For you geeks it rebooted in to windows 3.11)
• Had to send two packages home no bigger than a shoebox.. total cost 104 Euros
• Discovered that Belgium post offices don't accept VISA.
• Discovered that the Brussels main mall has only 4 ATM's of which 3 weren't working
• Discovered that the 4th ATM would stop for periods of up 5 minutes for no apparent reason (I later found out they apparently "do this" around lunch time)
• Discovered that our Eurail tickets also require reservations on some trains (at a cost!).
• Discovered that our train for tomorrow is fully booked. I believe we're now getting to Geneva with livestock.
• Found the most confusing metro system on the planet. Typified by Kylie's question at the information desk "Where do we get a map of the train network? Train network? I give you trams, or go ask where you buy tickets"
• Discovered that where you buy tickets is actually a machine, and no it doesn't speak to you.
• Discovered that Brussels "Trams" hold 150 people.
• Discovered how Brussels has figured out how to fit 230 in to the same space.
• Discovered how uneven Brussels footpaths are by spraining my ankle "again" less that 40 metres from our hotel.

As you can see all in all our experience of Brussels has been a little jaded. I'm sure it has some nice points, but in the mad rush that has been our time here, we've never been able to see them. We're now both at the point of "lets get the hell out of here", and this is exactly what we expect to do tomorrow morning. Next Stop Geneva, Switzerland. Bring on the snow...

See you all soon.

PJ & Kylie

Dec 17th 2005

Hello from Amsterdam.. Well finally, the tour is over.. no more 6:30 starts no more being told when and where to go, and also no more safety net. From Munich we moved on across Germany travelling via Heidelberg, and then on to Cologne. Now let me quickly discuss German cuisine for beginners. Wurst (german sausage), sauerkraut and potatoes is not the sort of thing you should eat during a quick lunch stop before getting on a tour bus for 3 hours.. needless to say Kylie was suitably embarassed when the old "Johnson Iron Stomach" came in to its own in all its glory 2 hours after lunch.

Yesterday, the final day of the tour before we hopped off we arrived in Amsterdam. After a sight seeing tour and a canal boat ride we had a final dinner together as a group. I've got to say while I will probably not tour on a coach again, I was very impressed with Trafalgar Tours and our host Michael. It was a great trip with a pretty great bunch of people, but once your comfortable with Europe, you want to do things on your own, and the tour isn't great at giving you freedom.

So today was our first days as real tourists, and so far so good, we had our Eurail tickets validated today, and tomorrow we head off to Brussels for our first train ride all going well.

Kylie has recovered from her bout of the flu is now firing on all cylinders, needless to say I haven't won an argument since.

Now a number of you have asked for an itinery of where were going from here, so its now on the right hand side of this page. We're travelling around Britain by car, I haven't got the Itinerary with me. I'll let you know exactly where were going in a later post.

Anyway, its getting late here and my internet time is running low. I'll update this post and let you know what else were doing tomorrow.

PJ and Kylie.

Dec 14th 2005

Guten nacht everyone, really quick addition to the journal today. We have just arrived in Munich after crossing from Venice, through Austria and in to Germany. Its been a full on trip, and Kylie has come down with a cold and is having a well deserved sleep session tonight to try to recover. Venice was beautiful and much bigger than most people here will probably think. We did the typical touristy gondola ride before heading back to our hotel on the mainland. Today has been full on moving from relative warmth of 6 degrees up to the mountains at Innsbruck in Austria and a chilly -2 degrees, then a quick sleigh ride through the forest before heading off to Munich for tonights sleep. so far so good, only 3 days to go on our tour before we're on our own.

Also today is Kylie's birthday and I got her suitably embarassed by having the entire tour group sing her happy birthday at breakfast. Also, via sms today The Boy and I confirmed that when betting someone a dollar, that the dollar is the australian dollar, not the euro or the franc.

See you all soon.

PJ

Dec 11th 2005

Bonjour all...

Well were now in Rome after coming down from France through Switzerland and in to Italy via Milan. The trip through Switzerland was fantastic its a very mountainous and beautiful country and the swiss franc is almost one to one with the Australian dollar, and most people in Switzerland speak English which makes getting around great. I highly recommend anyone coming to Europe to visit a small swiss town called Lucern, about the size of Adelaide, its absolutely beautiful.

We then travelled down through Milan to Rome, we've done the usual touristy things, the Parthenon and the Colosseum. All brilliant. Some amazing pieces of architecture and engineering, the coloseum especially. Built in 240AD its 45m high and has 50 gates that allowed 80,000 people to enter and leave the stadium in 15 minutes. They also were able to flood it an re-enact famous naval battles using small model ships.. brilliant.. Rome itself though is very dirty, and just covered with people trying to sell you something, that being said I picked up a rolex for 5 Euro's today (AU$8.47) and Kylie was looking intently at a Prada bag but could get the guy to drop below 10 Euros.. :) Shes a real bargin hunter..

Finally on something completely off topic I've just found out Richard Pryor has passed away.. the death of a comic genius..

Anyway we're off tomorrow for Florence and then Venice on our way to Austria. We'll keep in touch.. Hope all is well.

PJ & Kylie :)

Dec 7th 2005

Everything is going great over here, we arrived fine after a fight at French Passport control, and got to our hotel. It's cold over here, but not too cold.. about 6 degrees C. We spent most of the first day walking around and then got an early night, yesterday we went to the Arc Di Triomph and then at night to the Eiffel Tower which we then went to the summit of.. very very cool.

Today we had a morning tour of Paris by bus, followed by lunch in the artists quarter of montement. Finally we spent 6 hours walking around the louvre. So far weve managed to not spend too much money.. however Kylie has bought a jacket and i've bought a beret.. very Parisian of us..

Anyway gotta run, we have a 6am start tomorrow for our next leg to Switzerland.\n\nHope all is well with everyone, well see you soon!!

Paul and Kylie