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Bordeaux

February 14th, 2008 Posted in Europe, France | 1 Comment »

I went to Bordeaux for a few days to visit Emily.  I’d intended to just go for a day, so asked my hotel in Paris if I could extend my stay for one day, then I’d get a morning train to Bordeaux and a night train back, but they were fully booked.  So I had to stay there for a night at least.  I went to the train station to arrange my tickets, and found that the first available train to leave Bordeaux was three days after I got there!  Well that was a lot more time than I’d had in mind, but that was the way it had to be…

I’m very glad for it - it was such a nice place.  Reasonably small, but much cleaner than Paris, certainly things were easier to find.  I think it’d be a very nice place to live, in fact my top two places to live from the whole trip would be Stockholm and Bordeaux.

My hotel was on a pedestrian street, right by a 1.2km pedestrian-only shopping street.  We went to the beach on my second day there, and I went to a medieval town from around 1200 called St Emilion on the third day, which was nice enough but mostly closed until Summer.  They did sell a lot of wine, though.

The Grand Theatre, across from the hotel.

Rue St Catherine, the 1.2km shopping street, at night.

The beach at Arcachon.

I guess this is a winery, at St Emilion.

Paris

February 14th, 2008 Posted in Europe, France | 1 Comment »

Paris was nice enough, but a little too big - it’s nothing like what I’d imagined.  There are lots of things to see, but most aren’t within (easy) walking distance of each other.  The food is reasonably good, though.

I was staying in a fairly bad neighbourhood, with big crowds of people out on the streets yelling and making all sorts of noise till 3 or 4 each morning.  One guy even practiced the trumpet or trombone at 3am one night…  But I was only 100 metres from the metro station, so it was easy enough to deal with. 

Shopping is expensive here, but I suppose that comes as no real surprise.  There are some very nice stores!

The Eiffel tower wasn’t as large as I was expecting…

 
…until I started to climb it.

This wasn’t even from the very top level.  My god that was a lot of stairs!

And at night time…

Paris at night - quite a nice city.

And with the lights on.  The night before it had flashing lights that looked like it sparkled, not sure why that doesn’t happen again the next night.

The Arc de Triomphe.  Despite having about a third as many stairs as the Eiffel Tower, I’d say it was a MUCH more difficult climb.

Building crews work at about the same speed here, it seems.

From the top of the Arc de Triomphe, looking down the Champs Elysees, towards the Louvre.

A (long) walk later - the Louvre.

From the inside of the new entrance.

And inside again.

The largest Sphynx outside of Egypt.

The gardens outside the Louvre.

Amsterdam

February 6th, 2008 Posted in Europe, The Netherlands | 2 Comments »

Well, not being interested in drugs or hookers, I decided to come to Amsterdam to take a look around anyway.  I’m glad that I did - it has the same to offer that every other city I’ve been to did, just something a little extra for some other people.

I spent my first day on a tour of Amsterdam, getting a general overview of the city, followed by a bus trip to Volendam and Marken, two Dutch fishing villages.  They were very nice places - I even had some fish, which I generally hate, and liked it.

Windmills are used here to pump water from lakes into canals, so that people can live on the land beneath what was once a lake instead.

Clogs aren’t QUITE made the same way they used to be… This one took less than 5 minutes, using a wood carving fax machine.

After seeing this town, we went to a cheese farm to taste test a lot of cheeses.  The farm was right by a little town called Edam, if that rings any bells…  Nice, but they wanted you to buy stuff.  I’m not sure I feel like eating a kilo of cheese on its own while on holidays.

This, would you beleive, is the beach that was promised in the brochure!

After the tour I went and had a look around the red light district.  It’s an interesting place, although I felt bad for the girls there.  The prostitutes actually sit behind a glass window in a tiny little room showing off trying to get you to sleep with them.  Watching the men walk around eyeing up all the ladies and moving on to see what else is out there reminded me of old ladies in the fruit shop making sure that they get the best watermelon for their money before pulling out their purses.  Very degrading, but was an interesting sight anyway.

I went into a sex museum and had a look around, and they had a thing about how the prostitutes in Amsterdam aren’t being exploited, and that they chose to do it and not to feel bad for them, etc.  It might be true, but if thats their life choice, I still feel bad for them for that.

Oh yeah, subtle!