Stockholm

It's our last night in Stockholm...

We've spent the last few days staying with Rupert, and it's been great. We've become pretty lazy tourists while here. We searched for a Roxette or Abba museum, but as we couldn't find one we've spent our time in Stockholm with a limited amount of touristy activities.



Rup works in an amazing outdoor terrace bar in the centre of Stockholm called F12. The music is pretty cheesy, but the crowd is VERY attractive... as is most of Stockholm.



We've also gotten to meet Rup's Swedish girlfriend Janna, who is lovely and gorgeous! She took us to the Vasa museum to see a ship that had sunk in the waters off Stockholm in 1628, and was perfectly preserved under a layer of silt, and only rediscovered 50 years ago. Amazing.

Tomorrow we fly to Poland to spend some time in Gdansk. We're then going to travel south, before sailing the Croatian coast for a week!!!! Can't wait!

Norweigan adventures

We're at the train station in Oslo right now, having just said goodbye to Philippa, Cornelia and Jon, and ready to go to Stockholm to see Rupert.

The last week in Norway has been so much fun! Em first met Cornelia when she came to Barker as an exchange student 9 years ago, and she's still just as crazy!! She and Jon made sure our week was packed full of as much as we could see - we went to Bygdøy to see Viking ships,


we went sailing on the Oslo Fjords,


we spent a night in the mountains and did a 17km hike at Besseggen,


we climbed to the top of Hollmenkollen (the ski jump from the 1952 Olympics),


and even got to visit a Vinmonopolet (which translates as "wine monopoly" and is a government run bottle-shop, and the only place where you can buy spirits and wine in Norway... meaning the prices are always kept sky high!).


Norway has definitely been an expensive place to travel in. We've eaten a 20 dollar ham sandwich, and a 30 dollar bowl of pasta. But we were introduced to the cheapest place to get a good meal by Corny and Jon, and ate dinner there twice... IKEA!!! The Ikea in Oslo is enormous, and even has a garden centre and a restaurant! Highly recommended for cheap eats!

Thank you!!

Thank you all for the lovely comments and emails.

We had a great few days in London catching up with Tom, Em & Abi, and also some friends from home. We went out for a great Brick Lane curry night with Bill, Zars, Brad and Kerry.

Now in Oslo staying with Cornelia and Jon. Having a great time! Will add stories and photos soon.

x

We have news............

Click on the picture and see if you can guess what it is!

J'adore Paris

We must be the most spoilt travellers in the world. We are now in Paris, staying in an apartment within walking distance of Montmartre (Frederique's mum Gaby usually lives here, but she is visiting the country), and we can see the Eiffel Tower from our bedroom window! Thank you Fred and Gaby for letting us stay!

Paris is fun, beautiful, elegant, and there is so much to do and see here (but it can also be stinky during peak hour on the metro with all those arms up in the air! phwoarh... deoderant??!)

We had an awesome day catching up with Glenn and Chris on Sunday. A quick tour of the sights (Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, Pompidou Centre and Notre Dame) before we relaxed on the edge of the Seine, drinking beers in the sun.



After an amazing French dinner that night (including the best strawberry creme brulee we've ever tasted), we headed to the Eiffel Tower to watch the light show.



The next day, we followed Fred's advice, and hit Galleries Lafayette. We've been called "flashpackers" rather than "backpackers", but Christian Lacroix, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Chanel are still a little out of our budget. We did lots of window shopping though, and the lovely ladies at Christian Lacroix gave Em the latest catalogue, which is a hard-cover book full of photography that comes in an embossed Lacroix bag... so it looked like we'd been shopping, even though we hadn't!

We also checked out Moulin Rouge, but only from the outside. Gaby has recommended a cabaret show called Crazy Horse which we'll try to check out later this week.

We've put photos of our Parisienne adventures on Flickr. There are photos from Sacre Coeur, Montmatre, The Catacombs, Dali museum, the fruit store from Amelie, Pigalle (sex district), Moulin Rouge, Galleries Lafayette, Eiffel Tower and the Seine. Have a look.

Dijon. It also has wine.

This is part of the Hotel de Ville in Dijon. When we first started travelling around France, we found a Hotel de Ville in almost every town we visited, so we thought it must have been the main hotel in each place. But it's not. It's the name for the town hall! (Luckily, we never tried to ask for a room in one!)



The cellars of the Chateau de Marsannay, in Burgundy, where we did wine tasting. The tastings are held 9 metres underground, and the walls of the cellars are lined with barrells and bottles.

You have to pay to taste wine at the caves (cellars) in Burgundy, and the wine production is controlled by all sorts of rules:
* it's forbidden to list the type of grape on the label of a Burgundy wine - instead you list the region (ie. Burgundy) and if your wine is good enough, you can list the town you are from (such as Marsannay). The consumer is meant to know what type of grape comes from which region.
* a wine tasting committee will tell you whether your wine is good enough to have the town listed on the label before it goes to sale (Would love to know how we get onto this committee!!!)
* Burgundy vines are not allowed to be irrigated when it's dry, or covered when it rains... you must take whatever nature gives you!

We paid, we drank, and we had a great time!




There are more photos on flickr

ps. still searching for "mon cul"!

Dijon... like the mustard

We left Castellane, with teary eyes, and terrible hangovers, last Friday.



Our last night was spent at the Discoteque, at their 'Fluro' night (a room full of people decorated in glowing jewellery!).



We jumped on a bus the next morning and followed the windy alpine roads to Grenoble, from where we grabbed a train to Lyon.

Lyon was beautful. Full of history, amazing architecture, palatial maisons, hidden 'traboules' (covered walkways that link blocks of apartments), and is also famous for puppets and silk weavers.



From there, it was on to the home of 'moutarde', Dijon. The head chef in Castellane has told us that mustard is no longer made right in Dijon, but in a small town nearby called 'Moncul' (which translates as 'my arse'). Perhaps he is pulling our leg, but maybe he was being serious. Does mustard really come from 'my arse'?

We're yet to find Moncul on a map, and neither of us is game to ask a local if they can show us where 'my arse' is!