Bonjour from Castellane

We left Nice after a week (with a day trip to Monaco - the photos are on Flickr).



We're now in Castellane, our home for the next month. We are staying in the Grand Hotel du Levant, which is owned by Gwil's family friend, Marie-Therese. She is completely spoiling us - giving us a great hotel room, as well as feeding us chef-prepared meals every day that we eat with the hotel staff... which are always full of cream and cheese and taste delicious!!


The Hotel du Levant


Marie-Therese, Laura, Tibor with Em & Gwil

Castellane is a very small town. It has no traffic lights, one round-about, and everything closes each day between 1-3pm so that people can have lunch and a siesta. There are fantastic markets here twice a week - every Wednesday and Saturday morning - which bring amazing cheeses, breads and fruits to the town square (which in the afternoons doubles as a boules court for the older men of Castellane!)

The rest of the staff in the hotel here speak very little English, which makes for interesting meal times. Em thought that it would be good to practice her French... but they all speak so fast here that it's difficult to keep up in conversation! But we're getting on with them, and we both make them laugh with our attempts at French!

We were here for the France v Spain World Cup match (where France won - sorry Sal!), and the atmosphere was crazy! We're looking forward to Saturday night, when France plays in the quarter-finals. There are a few bars in town, but we're going to watch the match in the hotel with the staff, and then head to the town's only Discoteque!! Allez les bleus!

Today's questions...

These are the things we've been questioning today....

- Why is it good luck for a bird to poo on you? Gwil didn't think it was very lucky today!

- Why is Tina Arena headlining a music festival in Monaco, that lists Nelly Furtado waaaaaay down the line-up? Was there a Tina Arena revival that we missed while in Eastern Europe?

- And, WHO is downloading Paris Hilton's new song in iTunes (it's now #6!)?

Any answers?

Small dresses and small dogs

Ohhh Nice.

We love it here.

It's nice to be back by the beach, as apart from Estonia (where it was far too cold to swim) we haven't seen one since Vietnam. But the price differences between Vietnam and France are amazing - there can't be that many places in the world where you can get away with charging around $45 AUD just for a beach chair and an umbrella, compared to the $1 we were paying in Vietnam!



Nice is packed full of tourists, but many of them are French - so we still get to listen to French accents which we love hearing!

The fashionable accessories here seem to be:
- a tan
- a small dress (not necessarily just for women... cross-dressing is also very popular here)
- and, an even smaller dog (women walk them on leads, men carry them like babies in their arms)

We arrived without any of the above, but have been working hard on the tan, and Gwil bought a small dress... which was for Em, not for himself!



Today we went rollerblading to check out the full length of the beach. At the very south end of Nice we found some elderly guys playing Patonque - which was a great French cliché that we'd been looking out for!



Tomorrow, we're going to get the train to Monaco before heading to Castellane on Monday... the Monte Carlo casino has a very strict dress code though, and without heels, suit jackets and ties in our backpacks, we don't think we'll be allowed in!

Nice is nice

Vive l'Australie! (who would have thought we'd get so into soccer??!)

What a great World Cup game it was tonight! It was so exciting to watch Australia move through to the next round, surrounded by cheering Aussies in a bar in Nice. And wierdly enough - Em again randomly bumped into a girl she went to uni with in Sydney, who was at the same bar!



It's really hot here tonight - it's after midnight and still 24 degrees. We spent today on the beach in Nice, soaking up the sun, and eating baguettes filled with jambon and fromage (ham and cheese)! We've had a baguette every day since we arrived here!



Yesterday we were lucky enough to be in Nice for the Fete de la Musique - a huge free music festival that happens on June 21 each year all over France, including the streets of Nice, and the beach promenade. We saw some great DJs, some of the best were hidden in tiny alleys in Vieux Nice, which is the old part of town - imagine laneways lined with shuttered windows... it's beautiful!



There was also an incredible stage set up on the harbour in Nice - which had a backdrop of some of the biggest boats we'd ever seen!

Hungary, England, France in a week...

What a crazy week we've had.

After Slovenia, we caught the train back to Hungary. We stayed in Lake Balaton, which is a resort area in Western Hungary. Our hotel was right on the lake.



We spent our last full day in Hungary in a small town called Heviz, which is famous for it's outdoor thermal lake. The water in the lake is 31 degrees, and is apparently slightly radioactive (!!!) which is meant to be really good for your joints. We swam in it for a while, but the smell of the sulphur got the better of us eventually!



After Hungary, we flew to London for our stop-off before France. We stayed with Gwil's brother and sister-in-law, Tom and Emma, and their gorgeous little girl Abi. We only had the chance to catch up with a couple of friends from home though (including an amazing night out with Bill and Oli seeing the new De La Guarda performance
Fuerzabruta at the Camden Roundhouse. If you ever get the chance to see this show, do it!)



Right now, we're sitting in a cafe, on Promenade des Anglais, drinking espresso, looking out over the beach at Nice. It's a bit cloudy, but very warm. Em's getting to practice her French a little, but everyone seems to speak English - so we're looking forward to getting to Castellane next week which is a much smaller town where we'll stay for a month, and Em will get to parle Français.... we're not sure if anyone will speak English there!



Em had another random run-in with an old friend in the airport at Toulon. Collecting our bags, we bumped into Sarita Kwok, who Em went to primary school with! She's over here performing at the Aix-en-Provence music festival.

More soon.

Art in Ljubljana

From Metelkova and the streets of Ljubljana...










and this one by Gwil...

This is how you say cheers in Slovenian...

Ljubljana has one of the world's few illegal artist communities.

It began years ago, when the army barracks were deserted, and squatters moved in. The majority of them were artists, and they began decorating the barracks and the old jail with incredible grafitti and sculptures. The area is called Metelkova, and most of the people who live there today are still doing so illegaly, but the government overlooks it. We spent a day out in Metelkova yesterday, and have some amazing photos of the artworks out there... but we can't upload them yet. Once we get to London we'll put them up!

We stopped to watch some grafitti artists the other night who were working on a wall across from a small bar playing Balkan music. We met some locals - a guy named Ali who is a chef, and an 'artist' who was nameless and very very very eccentric! We had some beers with them while they taught us the art of Balkan dancing, and a few things about Ljubljana and it's culture:

- you can trust everyone in Ljubljana. People don't lock up their bikes, they just leave them on the side of the street. "You shouldn't take bikes - but if you do need to use one, make sure you return it to the same spot with some beers in the basket"!

- never believe a Slovenian when they tell you how to say 'cheers' in their language. If they've been drinking, they'll think it is hilarious to teach you all sorts of rude phrases for you to shout out at each other while you chink glasses!!

- Ljubljana is the best located city in Europe. It's only 100kms to the snow lined alps, to the coastal beaches, and a short train trip to Italy, Croatia, Hungary or Austria.

Surprise...!

We're in Slovenia.

It's a spontaneous and unplanned stop, but we're so glad that we've come here. We decided to jump on a train from Zagreb to Ljubljana... and in the short time that we've been here, it has already made it right to the top of our favourite cities list.

There are only a few days left now until we fly to London, before heading to France, so if you're going to be in the UK next weekend, we'd love to catch up.

Tom, Em & Abi - we can't wait to see you, and we hope you have a great b'day Tom on the 13th.

Bill & Oli - looking forward to some cocktails in Wimbledon

Rod & Saph - if not next weekend, then on the Greek islands!

x

Busking in Zagreb

Not us... but lots of others were giving out performances on the streets over the past few days.

We arrived in Zagreb during a week-long street performance festival, so the pavements were buzzing with buskers and performance artists. Once the performances died down at night, the World Cup fever kicked in, and bars and clubs were packed with soccer fans.



Zagreb has an amazing fruit and vegetable market called Dolac, with local produce on display and available to taste.



We bought a fresh creamy goats cheese that had been just poured into a mould, as well as amazing tomatoes and herbs... and sat in the sun for a great picnic. Complete with Croatian beers.



We're getting more and more sunshine here now, and will definitely be back to Croatia later in the year to check out the islands and beaches along the Dalmatian Coast.

Shorts are getting shorter...

We only spent 5 days in Budapest... but we'll be going back to Hungary next week before we fly to London on June 15.

We met up with a few people in Budapest that we'd stayed with in Romania (Matt and Ben from USA, and Lisa from Canada), and checked out a few Hungarian clubs and bars - including one called Szoda which was wierdly very similar to Funktrust!

We also went to the House of Hungarian Wines in Buda with Matt, Ben, Meghan and Kirk . $15 for 50 open bottles of wine in a big wine cellar, all you can drink in 2 hours... it all got a bit silly, but we had such a fun night.



After Budapest, we caught a train across to Zagreb, which is where we are now. We're staying in a room here with Fed (Em's work friend from Sydney) and Lisa. We weren't expecting much from Zagreb as everyone seems to use this city as a stop off to head to the Dalmatian coast, but there's lots to do at night here - great clubs, bars, and restaurants, and the pre-World Cup soccer games are on, so anywhere with a tv is packed when a game is on!

It's starting to get a bit warmer, shorts are getting shorter, and posters for the summer music festivals are appearing! We'll definitely make the most of it now, incase we need to start looking for work in 2/3 months time!

Snaps from Budapest

What are the chances of running into someone you worked with back in Sydney, in a hostel in Budapest?!! We're staying at the Aboriginal Hostel (we didn't pick it for the name!) in Pest, and on our first night here, in walks Fed, who Em worked with at PeopleSoft!



We went to Castle Hill, which is on the Buda side of Budapest yesterday. It's covered in amazing old buildings, churches, Buda Castle, and even has a labyrinth underneath the town! The labyrinth was originally naturally formed caves, but was extened to be used as a hiding place during the war, and also as a wine cellar for the castle.



Budapest is really beautiful, and has great restaurants, bars, clubs, shopping... It's probably a good thing that Em's credit card was eaten by an ATM machine a few weeks ago!!

We've put some shots from yesterday onto Flickr. Here are a couple for you now.

Dracula

We have spent 5 days in the land of Dracula - Traaaaansylvaaaaania, Romania!



It is the most amazing place... beautiful scenery (the mountains still have snow on them), clean towns full of gypsies and friendly Romanians, and Dracula's castle was hilarious! Gwil and I got fake vampire teeth and walked around the castle taking photos... here's a few of them.







Dracula's Castle is actually called Bran Castle. Dracula was a guy called Vlad 'The Impaler' Tepes, who was well known for impaling his prisoners through the spine so that they would die a slow death... he didn't suck their blood. Vlad also never lived in Bran Castle, but the castle does look quite spooky!

We stayed in a great hostel, and have been living cheap... buying fruit and vegies from the gypsy ladies at the markets, and big bottles of Romanian wine which are really cheap. We are yet to try 'crap' though! (apparantly it's a fish spread?!)



Next post will be from Budapest, Hungary!