Snowboarding trip, Post 1: Luxembourg

So, our snowboarding trip!! Here goes...

On Saturday 16^th Feb, we set off around 3:30am to drive to Folkestone, where we were taking a ridiculously early EuroTunnel crossing slot (5:20am) since it is much cheaper to travel at inconvenient times. :) On the train, we loaned some sticky tape to the people in the two cars in front of us, who used it to attach their improvised headlight converters fashioned with pieces of cardboard, as they had forgotten to buy the proper converters. (These are a legal requirement when driving in Europe, to stop oncoming drivers being dazzled in right-side drive countries.)

After arriving in France, we hit the highway and headed for the home of our friends Elaine and Francisco in Luxembourg, 4.5 hours away. Once there, we were shown to the attic – the fourth floor of their house – to inspect the work that Francisco, his father, and his brother David have been doing to turn the space into a guest room and storage area. Francisco's mum was making lunch, and after Elaine came back from shopping, the seven of us sat down to a very delicious meal.

Afterwards, we ate the apple pie that Ben had made for them, which dominated the conversation for quite some time as he was asked all about how he'd made it (with Elaine and Francisco translating)! Francisco's parents speak Spanish and French (plus a little German – and maybe Luxembourgish?), and Francisco, Elaine and David all speak English, Spanish, French, German and Luxembourgish – very awesome!!!!

That afternoon, Francisco and Elaine drove us to a few spots in Luxembourg for a taste of the national activity: walking!! :) First, we parked in an area known locally as “Little Switzerland”, and walked along a scrub/bush (forest doesn't feel right :P) track below some small rock cliffs alongside the road. We saw a pretty stream, an awesome stone arch bridge, and “Luxembourg's most photographed waterfall” (about a metre high)! Afterwards, we stopped for a quick drink before continuing our drive.

The next spot we stopped at had an amazing collection of giant rocks with a maze of fissures forming “hallways” (or open-topped tunnels) to walk through – and yes, Ben and Francisco hid up ahead and jumped out to scare me!! It was absolutely breathtaking (the rock corridors, not the being jumped out at)... the rock walls had big bubble-like holes and were quite green, the ground was covered in orange-brown fallen leaves, and there were actually icicles hanging from the rock in some places! Will let the photos explain the rest!

Later on, we stopped for a quick look at a castle ruin.

That night, I played the guitar and sang for Elaine and Francisco, and discovered one of the most appreciative (and willing to sing along!) audiences I have yet had the pleasure to come across. :D Very very fun!!! (When we arrived back at their place the following weekend on our way home, we learnt that they had found “Cows With Guns” (one of my recent repertoire additions) online and had been singing along to (and laughing at) it all week!!!)

On Sunday, we went to their meeting, which was in French, German and English, with simultaneous translation (using microphone/headphone sets) into the other two languages occurring much of the time!!

We hit the road straight afterwards, en route to Munich (4 or 5 hours) to collect Donna before getting to Kaprun that night (2 or 3 hours). Anyway, this entry will have taken long enough once I add all the photos, so I will start the next one in Munich and take it from there. (Can you believe that, until tonight, I was silly enough to think I might have been able to write about the entire snowboarding trip in only one blog post?! Haven't even seen a snowboard yet in this saga!) Goodnight!

Photos from Austria

At the top of Schmittenhöhe...


Crossing the frozen lake at Zell am See...


Proper update once we get home! :)

Snowboarding trip!

The following maps show you where we'll be for the next week or so!

Saturday 16th - Crawley to Folkestone to Calais to Luxembourg (A-B-C-H on map)

Sunday 17th - Luxembourg to Munich (collecting Donna H off train) to Kaprun, Austria, where Matt and Kat already are (H-E-F)

Monday 18th to Friday 22nd - snowboarding/ sightseeing! :D

Saturday 23rd - Kaprun to Zurich (dropping Donna home) to Luxembourg (F-G-H)

Sunday 24th - Luxembourg to Calais to Folkestone to Crawley (H-C-B-A)



Anyway, we're leaving at 3:30am tomorrow morning and we haven't started packing yet, so goodnight!! Hope you all have a lovely weekend/week.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!!!!!!!!!!!!! oxoxo

Europe, Post 13: Un jour en France!

Bonjour! Okay, I've been slack at getting the final installment of our Europe trip up on the blog, but it's high time to do so as tomorrow we'll be back in Europe – and I'll never get it done if I have all the excitement of a new trip to write about as well! So here it is...

When we found the little village in the north of France where we would be staying on Monday night (my birthday), we decided we should get some cash and fuel before checking in at our B&B. I can't remember the name of the village, but it was 15 minutes from Saint-Omer. Anyhow, after driving around the deserted-looking village for some time with our fuel warning light glaring at us, we eventually came to the realisation that both cash and fuel may need to be sought further afield. This was confirmed by Ben's attempts to ask the only shopkeeper in the town whether there was a “cash automatique” around (thanks Lonely Planet phrasebook): “non”.

After almost an hour and a couple of unsuccessful attempts on Tommy's part (he's the GPS) to lead us to a service station, we eventually got everything sorted out and headed back to our B&B. Well, it was lovely! The room was spacious, charmingly decorated and gorgeously “French”, and the middle-aged couple whose house it was were very friendly and helpful. They had three guest rooms but we were their only guests that night. Along with the B&B we stayed at in Brussels for two nights (with the cats, kids and WiFi), it was our favourite accommodation on the trip.





Following the recommendation of our hosts when we asked where we should go for my birthday dinner, that night we dined in Saint-Omer. On the way, Tommy inexplicably took us down such a tiny dirt road through the fields that we were convinced it was someone's private farm track!! Anyway, we found a lovely restaurant called La Belle Epoque, decided against the snails and frogs legs on the menu as I didn't want unpleasant birthday memories, and ordered an entree of deep fried cheese and mains of duck in honey almond sauce (mine) and rabbit in prune sauce (Ben's). Ben's was passable and mine was scrumptious! :)

The waiter/chef (owner?) was very friendly and told us he had lived in England for a while. When Ben went to pay, he told the man that it was my birthday, so he came over, wished me a happy birthday, and presented me with a pen that had the restaurant's details printed on it (“this is all I have to give you” he said) – very sweet! (It was actually the pen I used for the second half of my exam on Tuesday, after the button from the top of my first pen sprang off and hit the wall.)

The next morning, a previously unheard-of thing happened. For the entire length of breakfast, both of our hosts sat at the table with us in their dining room, and chatted with us as if we were their personal (rather than paying) guests! They told us about their three grown up children's studies, jobs and travels, and we talked about everything from Australia and our travels, to their past jobs and B&B start-up, to what sights we should see in their area that day! It was amazing – such a nice feeling and also a little unnerving to have them watching us eat their breakfast (a bit like it would feel to have the chef sitting at your table in a restaurant, I suppose)! Between them and the waiter, I must say that the French were excellently represented and we saw nothing to indicate the necessity of a “be nice to tourists day” (although, granted, that measure was introduced for Parisians, not French people in general)!

After we checked out, we headed to La Coupole. This description is from the La Coupole website: “Situated in the Pas-de-Calais, 5 km from the town of Saint-Omer, LA COUPOLE is a gigantic underground bunker designed by the Nazis, in 1943-1944, to store, prepare and launch the V2 rockets (first missiles to reach the stratosphere), the secret weapon that Hitler was counting on to destroy London and reverse the course of the war. Rehabilitated as a History and Remembrance Centre, LA COUPOLE reveals, in an impressive setting, the challenges of total war and the stages in the conquest of space, which paradoxically resulted from the V2 technology. ”









Anyway, we had intended to fit a few things in that day, but La Coupole ended up being so extensive and interesting that we stayed for 6 hours! We got to walk all through the bunker and its huge tunnels, surrounded by 5m-thick concrete walls and water dripping from damp bits around us. We had headphones with audio commentary and there were large-screen videos throughout the different sections. There were displays on fighter pilots and planes (biographies, items recovered from crashes etc), models and information on the construction of the bunker and V1s and V2s, and a section on space travel (I think that was the first time I'd ever watched Neil Armstrong's moon landing!).









There was also a lot about the history of WWII and the concentration camps. I found it quite emotionally draining to see so many graphic photos, videos and descriptions of the unbelievably horrific conditions in the concentration camps, but it was good to somewhat increase my limited knowledge of history. By the time we left we still hadn't seen everything, but it was time to find somewhere to eat an early dinner before heading back to England on the train.

After a bit of driving and wandering around the town of Calais, we decided on a sports-themed restaurant called “The Hovercraft”, so called because hovercraft used to be one of the ways to travel between France and England! I had spaghetti bolognese. Ben, to be adventurous and try a new meat for the second night in a row, ordered mussels. An enormous pot of them arrived and while they didn't taste too bad, I found it best not to look at them too closely!! They were also quite fiddly and time-consuming to get out of their shells, so mussels have gone into the “good to try once but we won't be having them often” category!

Not too much later, we boarded our train (much quicker than on the English side), travelled back to England while sitting in our car under the ocean floor, popped up in Folkestone, and drove home! The next morning we were back at work with the strange thought that we'd had tea in France the night before. And that was our trip to Europe! :D

Off to London again

Today I went to London for my exam, and I am pleased to announce that this time there were no huge fires! (Although there was one only three days ago - Camden Market was ablaze on Saturday night. Click here for BBC photos and here for the blog entry of our visit there in August.)

Like last time, my exam (which was for my Corporations Law subject) was held at the University of East London. I was quite happy with how it went considering how last-minute the majority of my studying was!!! :S Thankfully it was an open book exam, so if I didn't know the answer I simply looked it up - it's quite a strange feeling to be able to do that in an exam!

Afterwards, I hopped off the tube at Canary Wharf for a bit of exploring. I didn't know what was there but could vaguely recall reading something about a nice shopping area.

Anyway, as soon as I stepped out of the tube station I was surrounded by enormous skyscrapers in what was obviously a high-flying financial district. There were giant towers containing acres of reflective glass with identifying logos right at the top - HSBC, Bank of America, Barclays, Reuters etc - and lots of professional-looking people striding around in dark suits. I also found Canada Square, which had an ice skating rink in the centre.

I didn't do much at Canary Wharf, just bought a book and had some lunch before continuing on home, but here are a few photos that show a different side of London to what has previously been focused on in this blog - i.e. modern, expensive and impressive instead of old, expensive and impressive! Note the window cleaners at work - AURGGHHH!!!

Unusual uses for a frozen chicken and more...

On Saturday we had Trev, Sharon, Matt and Kat over for dinner - Sharon cooked a delicious meal and Ben made a yummy strawberry and apple pie for dessert.



Then we tried out Chain Reaction, the new game we bought from Hamley's last weekend with Matt and Kat's Christmas gift voucher...

In a nutshell, players are divided into teams and given a challenge card (see some of our favourites below), which the team members take it in turns to answer as many times as possible in 30 seconds. Each answer must be different from previous answers and correctly meet the challenge before the next player in the team can take their turn (the girls' team managed to achieve 20 answers in 30 seconds during one round!).



The things that emerge under the pressures of time and teammates are hilarious - for instance, that a frozen chicken could be a unit of measurement, cream-filled chocolate eggs can be eaten while sky diving, "have both" is valid agony aunt advice, and "neigh, I'm a dog and I eat grass"!!!



Some of the challenges require actions rather than words... check out the girls' team's discussion of the challenge in the last photo above (warning: this video contains high pitched voices)...

...And then our actual timed attempt at it (warning: so does this one)!!!

In conclusion, to all people with a similar taste in board games to ours: you need this game!!!!!

New videos!

I've just uploaded some videos to older blog entries, so here's where to find them...

September 2007
"Notting Hill Carnival 2007" - 2 new (click here to go straight to entry)

December 2007
"Our weekend in the west" - 1 new (click here)
"Europe, Post 2: Christmas markets in Brussels" 1 new (click here)

Enjoy!

In and out of The Mousetrap...

Yesterday we had a fantastic day in London with Dotti, Matt, Kat, and Elise. (Note of introduction re new blog characters: Dotti recently flew in from Oz to study at Nottingham Uni for a year, and Elise is a long-term Aussie expat whose entire family has been over here for about 7 years. So we had five and a half Aussies in our group of six!)

We met up with Dotti at about midday after she travelled down from Nottingham by train. By a great joint effort of overlooking/forgetfulness, Dotti and I had both neglected to transfer each other's mobile numbers from our recent email correspondence to our phones, so before she could find us at Covent Garden, Dotti had to ring Roxy in Australia to get my number!!!!!

Here's how our day went...

Enjoying the sights at Covent Garden, an area of London with fantastic shops (including The Tintin Shop, where Dotti and I split a pack of badges, and I got a Tintin and Snowy fridge magnet :P), market stalls selling all sorts of fantastic goodies, and lots of buskers and street performers...

Click here for a video of a kilt-wearing performer with a surgical glove pulled down over his head, using his nostrils to blow it up until it explodes!



Walking through West End to Hamley's, an enormous toy store in Piccadilly Circus that Matt and Kat gave us a voucher for as a Christmas present. We bought a game called Chain Reaction (by the makers of Articulate) so are looking forward to trying it out soon!...



Meeting up with Matt, Kat and Elise in time for our 5pm engagement: going to the world's longest running stage production, the Agatha Christie play "The Mousetrap". It was absolutely brilliant, but we can't tell you whodunnit because we've been instructed to keep it locked away in our hearts!...



And going out for a delicious tea in nearby Chinatown after the play.



Afterwards, Dotti came back to Crawley with us and stayed the night, and we put her on the train back home after the meeting and lunch today.

All in all, it was a thoroughly lovely weekend and SO awesome to see Dotti over here!! No doubt she'll feature on here again as we've got a few more plans underway... :)