France: An Unanticipated Extended Stay in the Land of Wine, Cheese and Love, and, Finally, Au Revoir Europe!

After our 3 months of gallivanting around most of Europe, we were ready to switch from "traveler" mode into "chill out" mode (we make a point of not being "tourists", a word which offends us - we are travelers, wanderers, explorers, nomads, and gypsies). We'd planned to hang out in and around Paris at Felix's grandmother's place for a week while we waited for our Indian visas to be granted, doing not much other than washing, sleeping, eating cheese and drinking wine. The plan was going perfectly, we even managed to spend a few days in Normandy at one of the Lamarche's holiday houses...

The Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre. Those steps were the most exercise we did all week.

 They did give us a magnificent pigeon's-eye view over Paris though, so it was worth it.

Paying our tributes to a great man in the Père Lachaise cemetery. RIP Jim Morrison.

 Bumming around with Alice and her friends at 'La Druelle', in Normandy, just a few hours north of Paris. A great place to do not much!

 Except, of course, visiting the Mont-Saint-Michel, surely the most beautiful fortified town in France, if not the most famous.

 We were lucky to be there during low tide, so we could walk around the "island". Mmmmm, wet sand, get on ma toesss....

After 10 days of low intensity activities, we found out that we hadn't been the only ones who had been lazy that week; the Indian Embassy didn't have our visas ready. This was minorly frustrating, and we had to postpone our flights to Thailand for a week. Being rather strapped for cash, we signed up for a week of light work at an outdoor adventure centre an hour south of Paris, in return for free accommodation, food, and fitness classes(??). The family and the other helpers there were mostly all French Canadians - between their accents, tendancy to sing traditional French Canadian songs and the Canadian theme of the outdoor centre, it felt like we spent the week in Quebec.

Sleeping in a treehut can be fun, but dangerous if you need to go to the bathroom during the night. It was all fun and games 'til a Canadian fell out of the tree hut, dislocated his wrist and broke his elbow...

 Fitness classes in the Forest of Fontainebleau. We didn't know what we'd signed up for. Sir yes SIR!

This place literally had the facilities for every sport you could imagine. Volleyball, underwater hockey, rock climbing, slacklining... They even had their own high ropes course through the trees!

You'd think it would end there, as did we. But no, our Indian visas were still not ready.  By this point it was getting majorly frustrating, and we had to put off our flight for another week. Luckily France is a pretty big country with no shortage of things to do, and Felix's French family is pretty big with no shortage of people to see. We headed to Lyon, where we were very warmly welcomed by Felix's cuzzie Coralie. We were particularly well fed - the menu included calf's head, blood sausages and pig intestines, all Lyonaise specialities.

 Coralie and her partner Gilles were very proud to show us their urban garden.

Downtown Lyon, roooaaarrrrr. Ha, just kiddin', there aren't many lions round here, only French people, and these ones don't bite as much as the Paris lot do.

Another catpic for those cat lovers out there ;)

Finally, we thought we'd take a trip to nostalgia valley; we headed back to the Alps to see Felix's aunt Juliette and to visit Sainte Foy, the place where it all began. We were pretty happy to be back in the mountains, but it seems the feeling wasn't mutual; it rained almost the entire time we were there...

The clouds parted for a moment as we arrived in front of the chalet we'd lived in over winter. Avid blog followers (hi mum and dad) might recognise the chalet from our winter blog posts, minus the snow. Hi there, old fella.

Sainte Foy is a bit of a ghost town during the in-between seasons. Not so many people on the slopes today...
And where are the marmots?

We and Neal were put to good use helping Juliette make jam, an occupation which is anything but part-time. Blueberry picking might look like a stroll in the park, but let us tell you it is a physically gruelling, mentally challenging and fiercly competitive sport.

The jam-making process isn't for the faint hearted either. It's a lot more similar to dissection than we could have imagined. But seriously, if anyone is in need of some outrageously good jams, head to the Bourg-Saint-Maurice seasonal markets, you will not be disappointed!

And, finally, a month later, we were back to Paris to pick up our long-anticipated visas and to catch our flight.

Europe, quite frankly you've been amazing. Keep it real, and until next time.


Next time: Switching back into traveler-mode in Thailand!

Istanbul, Gallipoli & Bucharest: One Train to End Them All.

With the end of our Eurotrip in sight, we arrived in Istanbul, the city at the end of Europe, and the only city in the world in which you can get lost in and end up in a completely different continent. As you might expect from a city that stretches from the European continent to the Asian continent, Istanbul is a pretty awesome clash of cultures. For Westerners it feels very different to the rest of Europe, yet there are still some aspects of it that remain European (wide pedestrian streets with big stores on them, a few castles here and there…). However the first thing we noticed about Istanbul is how enormous it is. It literally took an hour from the moment we entered Istanbul on the motorway, to be dropped at the bus station, driving on the motorway the whole time.

We couchsurfed with a guy named Faruk – it was really sweet to get to chat to a local about the happenings of Istanbul (especially recently), and get a nice driving tour around the city. The traffic in Istanbul is probably the craziest out of all the cities we’ve been to, which is saying something after Naples. In the words of Faruk, when you drive around you have to “be really quick and not respect anyone else on the road”. At least he knew what he was doing.

She's a happening place she is, the old Istanbul. Built on dreams and history. 

(It's hard to always come up with captions that make sense, ok).

If we earnt a lira for every time we heard someone yell "Bosphorous Tour!" we'd be able to afford twenty Bosphorous Tours by now. Here Phoebe poses in front of a happy group of tourists, crossing the Bosphorous to the Asian side of the city. We spent most of our time on the European side.

Dressing up for a visit to the Blue Mosque. Very crowded, but a rather spectacular building inside and out, nonetheless.

The Grand Bazaar was like a scene out of Aladdin, with Felix being Abu the Monkey. It was nice enough, but a bit more upmarket than we were expecting. It seems you need a substantial amount of money to really enjoy the Bazaar...

...We preferred to spend our time at the spice market. Much more affordable, just as colourful, and ten times more delicious. Seriously, those Turkish desserts are to die for. The kunefe was probably our favourite - crispy noodles soaked in sickly sweet syrup, covered in minced pistachios and filled with melted cheese. Perfection, equalled only by the mighty baklava itself.

Istanbul was full of kitties!!

Like many other New Zealanders before us, we made the journey out to Gallipoli to visit the battlefields where so many Kiwis lost their lives. It was pretty special to be able to see the places we'd heard so much about at school, places that held so much significance for our country, in such a far away land.

Close to Anzac Cove, where it all began.

The predominantly Australian cemetery at the Lone Pine.

Anzac Trenches.

The casualties from the Maori Contingent, on Chunuk Bair. 

So far in Turkey we’d been catching buses, because they’re quite cheap and the rail network is less than extensive. Regardless, we decided to give the train from Istanbul to Bucharest a go, as we’d heard it was reliable enough… It took us 20 hours on the train to get to Bucharest. TWENTY HOURS. On a plane, we could have made it to Australia in that time. Look how close Bucharest and Istanbul are on a map. LOOK.

Slowest. Train. Ever. Phoebe's smile does not at all reflect our feelings at this time.

We did make it though, so I guess it was reliable enough. Bucharest is the capital of Romania by the way. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, but overall it feels like a pretty nice, safe place. The outskirts are very run down and perhaps not a place you’d want to hang out in at night, but the centre is the complete opposite. We heard that Bucharest has the most bars per capita in all of Europe, which would not surprise us. It’s also outrageously cheap, which gains big points with us. We met some young Aussies from Tasmania who were more than happy to sample the nightlife with us – we had a few laughs, mostly at them rather than with them.

Conveniently our hostel was situated just around the corner from the childhood house of Phoebe's Greek grandfather! We think the new inhabitants were a little suspicious of us photographing their house.

We did the free walking tour in Bucharest, which didn't teach us so much about the history of Bucharest, but did teach us many fun facts about the city. Did you know that the Romanian Parliament (background on the right) is nicknamed the 'Iceberg', because it extends further beneath the earth than above it? It's also the largest Parliament building in the world (regardless of the fact that the inside remains unfinished!).

When Bucharest became the capital city, they began designing heaps of buildings that were modelled off buildings in Paris, earning Bucharest the nickname 'Paris of the East'. We could keep spewing Bucharest-facts all day if we wanted to.

Money-saving Intiative #38: We only paid for one night of accommodation in Bucharest - the second night we spent in the airport, waiting for our 6am flight to Paris. It is not something we would recommend to anyone as we arrived in Paris extremely exhausted and smelling like feet. 

 Thus ended our 3 month Eurail journey around Europe....

Next time: Recovering in Paris, before the Asian leg of the trip begins.

Turkey: Is This Even Planet Earth?

Some would say the essence of traveling is discovering places which are dramatically different to where you live, experiencing cultures and meeting people that are completely different to ones you are used to. By this measure, Turkey is definitely one of the best countries we've been to so far. The moment we landed in Marmaris, the mosques and foods and people and signs and smells all yelled at us: "HI GUYS, YOU'VE JUST LANDED ON THE ASIAN CONTINENT".

We only stayed a few hours in Marmaris (it's actually a pretty filthy resort town, the beach was covered in dusty gravel and rubbish), and hopped on a bus to Pammukale instead, a small inland town famous for the huge travestine pools and the old Roman city of Hierapolis by which it's built. We hadn't booked accommodation in advance, but we must have stood out as a pair of Western tourists walking round with huge bags, as within half an hour we had half the town running round offering us the cheapest deals in town.

The huge expanse of travestine pools in Pammukale (travestine is a kind of limestone). The water is meant to have healing powers, which was the main reason the Romans built a town so close to it. Not so sure about the healing powers, but as long as it's bringing in the tourism dollars, let the tourists think whatever they want. A pretty spectacular place!

We felt like completely different people after rubbing the healing sediments over our skin.

Too far, Felix.

 Hierapolis is one of those Roman cities that takes a bit of imagination to picture what it was like...

If Pammukale seemed like a bit of an unusual place, Cappadocia was completely insane. We stayed in Goreme, a little town that survives on tourism, bang in the middle of Cappadocia in central Turkey. Cappadocia is famous for the crazy rock formations that exist throughout the region, and the many churches and dwellings that were carved into the rocks hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years ago. It's a pity none of the cave dwellers still used the rock caves and 'fairy chimneys' as permanent habitations, they seem like pretty awesome places to live. Unique, if nothing else.

Goreme. Some of the rock dwellings are still used as hotels, but they're pretty expensive, and we felt the novelty of sleeping in a cave would wear off pretty quickly.

A nunnery at the Goreme Open Air Museum, made for very small, nimble nuns.

 The most mind boggling thing was the sheer amount of weird rock formations all over the place. We got lost amongst them for hours, meeting the odd Turkish family along the way. Seriously, is this even planet Earth??

Inspired by the stunning scenery, Felix insisted on this mildly racist outfit for his modelling shoot.

The Cappadocia Hot Air Balloons, every morning at sunrise. We had nowhere near enough money left in the budget for a ride, but we felt like we got a way better deal watching from the ground anyway. It cost us zero dollars!!!

 The cheapest way to get around in Cappadocia: split a car between 5. Less than $15 per person for the day, including gas! It ran on LPG, so essentially we were driving round in a glorified barbeque. 

Street cred was through the roof.

We stumbled across the local hangout spot, at the geothermal Lake Nar. Anyone playing 'spot the foreigners' at this lake on this day wouldn't have found it too difficult.

The Cappadocians weren't satisfied with just building houses in funny shaped rocks, they went and built whole cities underground, too. This one is Kaymakli underground city. It was actually pretty impressive - it extends 8 storeys underground, has heaps of really narrow and steep 'streets', kitchens, churches, wineries and even stables. It also had some 'extra for expert' sections, where they didn't have any lights on.

Being underground does weird things to people...

To top it off, Turkey's even got a few canyons. You da bomb, Turkey.

Next time: The big beautiful 'bul.