Aix-en-Provence and Avignon

Walking with Tricia - seed pod full of bugs ew!
Red dirt pine trees and rocks - Provence

Mount Sainte-Victoire

Low reservoir

Dam

Priory atop Mount Sainte-Victoire

Hazy view from the top

Scary fish at market in Marsielle

Paintings in the church

Model ships and airplanes used in rescues or sunk at sea

Golden mosaics

Early morning flight

Avignon airport and Ralph our pilot

another one pot wonder!

Avignon and is famous half bridge (dont quite know why they like this bridge so much when half floated away)

Because our bus only stops at a few destinations and no where in between we had to make our own way to our next destination Aix-en-Provence. We caught a local bus for 21 euros each and arrived in Aix (x) just after midday. There we were met by Ralph who is my second cousin twice removed... or my grandads cousin with a generational gap (its complicated i know, lets just say he is whanau).

We drove back to Ralphs house to meet his lovely wife Tricia and have a beer and some lunch, this was just the beggining of a great five days. The weather was not its best but we decided to chance it and ventured out for a walk with our jackets. The rain cleared and we walked through some forestry land where everyone can go walking in any season except for summer due to a very high fire risk. Feeling comforted by the recent rain we through a landscape that is a rich red colour with lots of bluffs and cliffs, olive trees and wild thyme rosemary and lavender. It was the first of many nice walks.

We filled our time with visiting a few local markets and trying all their olives mmm so good! And a few more walks around the bottom of a mountain one day and up it the next. The mountain (Mount Sante Victoire) is named after a battle fought on it in 1st century BC where they say the river ran with blood and the valley running down from the mountain is named after the stench of the rotting bodies, yet another roman victory over the celts. The mountain is mostly all bare rock so it made for a very hot hike but great views of a very hazy landscape, maybe due to the huge refinery just over another range. At the top there was a little Priory from the 1500 century where a bunch of people were doing an archiology dig, and a huge cross at the summit where we were rewarded with a great view and a cool breeze.

The following day we took it easy and visited Marseilles a huge city on the coast. About half of the population of Marseilles are migrants so the city has a very different culture along with a huge crime rate. On a hill overlooking the city we checked out a church that was dedicated to the seafarers, it was really different to any other church we had been into, it was still ornate and stunning but was covered with model ships and small paintings people had given when a family member had been saved from a tragedy at sea, it was nice to see one of these churchesa bit more connected to the people than the rest we have seen. The markets were amazing with a lot of arab and african influence so a huge variety of food. Our gudie Tricia treated us to a few things we had never seen or tasted before.

That evening Ralph and Tricia treated us to a ´congratulations on getting engaged´ dinner which was really nice as we had not really had one yet. We tried globe artichokes which as interesting, its a bit of work to eat your meal but they are really tasty! The next morning we had to rise early to catch a plane to Avignon. Ralph who has been learning to fly decided to try to couple a lesson with flying us to Avignon in a little Cessna, many people were dubious that our oversized packs would fit in the plane but luckily the instuctor was not. Ralph was supposed to fly as if he were flying in cloud so he could not look up and had to fly only by instruments. It made for a bumpy flight but he flew well so we made it in one piece. The flight was beautiful as we were in the air as the sun rose through the smog and flying only about 900m above the ground so we could see everything. We landed in Avignons small airport where no buses go so we had to catch a taxi, not too big a deal as it saved us a big walk with our heavy packs. After settling in we checked out Avignon which is an walled in town that used to house the Pope in the one of the biggest palaces in Europe. It was a nice town with a lot of character but we were a little too tired to really appreciate it and soon headed back for an afternoon snooze crashing for over 2 hours!

Cinque Terre and Nice

Pisa and a righted tower thanks to the hulk
Deiva Marina on a stormy day

Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre

Fishing boats in the street Cinque Terre

Cingue Terre

Nice at night

From Florence we headed to Pisa to see its famous leaning tower, we had about and hour here and it really was enough, we found ourselves in little awe of the slightly leaning tower but all the same we ticked it off the list with one of the classic photos holding it up which by the way is not so easy to work out how to take, especially with hundreds of others trying to do the same!

From Pisa we headed to the coast getting off the bus in La Spezia. From here on in the travel was not so easy it took Andrew and I a good couple of hours to work out where exactly where needed to go! As it turned out the camp ground we had booked was not actually in the Cinque Terre where we wanted to be but about 20 Min's further away! All the train timetables were only of the Cinque Terre so we had no idea of how to get to where we needed to be... finally after a lot of harassment one of the information ladies sold us a ticket and pointed to a train stating "I think this train goes to where you need to be" a very promising statement indeed! Not knowing when our stop would arrive we looked out the window at each stop, of which there seemed to be many especially as we where heading further and further away from where we had planned to be (we had been looking eagerly forward to this part of our trip for a long time now!). At one point our train (being an ever reliable form of Italian public transport) stopped in a tunnel and would not start again for a further 20minutes and all we knew was that there was a problem which we heard muttered by a passing attendant to another, yay! We travelled on and on (time seems to take slow when you don't want it to) and Sharon became more and more annoyed at the camp ground and its description of being `within the Cinque Terre.´ When we finally got to the station and were lucky enough to catch the free shuttle to our campground just in time (other wise we would have had to wait three hours), with something going finally right for us! We checked in, sorted out or stuff, cooked yet another `one pot wonder´and settled down for an early night to the sound of some young Americans who not being able to drink back at home made up for it that night... nice, thank God for ear plugs! The next day we decided to just relax and headed to the local beach, (it turned out that our camp ground was were the Italians came for their holidays away from the busy tourist area but still by a beautiful beach) and soak up the rays. It was a beautiful day we lazed around, swam in clear water in which one could see fish swimming under you, and ate ice cream. That night the heavens opened and we experienced the thunder storm of a lifetime with thunder rolling constantly around the hills on which our camp was located and every 20seconds the sky lighting up in a blaze. This continued for not most of the night and therefore was another difficult night to sleep especially since my side of the bed being wet due to Andrew despite my warnings leaving the windows of the tent unzipped and the wind blowing my side....Now I know that at times I have been known to exaggerate, however you can ask Andrew it was honestly a crazy huge storm and the biggest storm either of us had ever seen! By mid morning the storm had passed and we packed our day bag keen to head out on the famous Cinque Terre walking paths and to see the 5 cute towns that are now UNESCO world heritage sights. We hopped eagerly into a full shuttle and were dropped off at the local train station to catch a train 20Min's to begin our walk.... however this was not to be the case as the before mentioned Italian public transport once again lived up to its name and had decided that today they would be on strike and no one was going anywhere.... so instead of seeing beautiful sights we spent the day doing washing and walking along the now very empty sea front to watch the storm out at sea.

The next day we crossed our fingers and toes and headed out again for the destination that we had come to see, today we where lucky and the trains were running, hooray! However we were told that we could not walk between the towns on the well know tracks due to the weather making the tracks unstable... with our spirits slightly dampened we headed out to what turned out to be an amazing day exploring the old towns (which we travelled between by train) and swimming and eating the local produce and taking excessive amounts of pictures all of which were justified due to the beauty of the place... definitely recommend!!

That night we finally had an uninterrupted sleep and with trains actually working (thank goodness) we headed back to La Spezia to catch our bus and once again travel onwards, out of Italy and up into France, more specifically Nice.


The trip to Nice was pretty neat with our bus winding its way along the coast line at some points on the edge of high cliffs, we were able to look down upon the richness of Monaco (this is the second smallest country in the world and to be a resident one must put down 1k and then also be one of the 30 accepted that year, failing to be accepted the 1k is not returned and one must put down another 1k and try again), and tried to spot the houses of famous stars such as Elton John, Bono and Tina Turner. We arrived at our destination, tracked down our hostel and then some food and chatted to our room mates, one of which turned out to be incredibly self absorbed and incredibly annoying... and also loved to talk.... only the best combination! The next day was beautiful and sunny so Andrew and I spent the day chilling on the beach, wandering through the old town, checking out little local markets and going for a wee walk up a hill for the view. Luckily we had used this day well and to its full as the next day turned out to be miserable as it poured down with rain, and not wanting to return to our room (due to the self absorbed and annoying girl lying in bed waiting until someone would come in so she could once again complain about her terrible life and her recent break up from her `soul mate´and the nose that needs plastic surgery and how tarot readers told her that she would have health problems and so now she believes she does due to a one months stint in which she took up smoking.... and yes this does go on for another couple of hours or so) we spent the day trying to keep dry and window shopping. We spent our last night in Nice with another Kiwi couple in our room. We ate a nice dinner with them and chatted over a few drinks into the early hours of the next morning.

Venice - Rome - Florence

The narrow streets of Venice!

St Peters Basillica, Rome. some extra holy pope!
A Raphael Room in the Vatican museum
Vatican museum
Coloseum
Gothic church in Orvieto Rome
Sweet ride!!
Grape thief!!!Caught in the act!
Wine in Tuscany
Florence
Florence
Florence

Venice, a city that is sinking lower while the sea is rising, a really unique city that is totally packed with mosquito’s, people and ridiculously over priced Gondole’s.
We were staying at a camp ground 30minutes out of the city that was situated right beside the airport, like if you climbed the fence out of camp you were on the runway. But we had a tent to ourselves and the camp had a swimming pool and two Jacuzzis, very nice when it is so hot!
We spent two days here wandering around the narrow streets and along the many canals doing what all the tourists do; that is getting hopelessly lost. We invested 2.50 on a map but it was of little use due to the fact that when a street is only just over a metre wide they don’t bother putting its name on the map, and these streets comprise 50% of Venice! The first day we wandered around a part that seemed to be a haven for local artist and we checked out some amazing little galleries where you can see the artist working away in the corner, it was really neat and after being through so many markets where vendors are selling the same pieces of copied art it was refreshing to see so much genuine stuff. To combat getting lost we decided just to walk and head for nowhere in particular but end up everywhere. It worked fairly well till we tried to get back to the Piazza that the bus dropped us off at. The second day we wandered around the rest of Venice, avoiding the masses of tourists who seemed to be condensed all into a few main streets and one square. Oh yes and we must mention that we also had a few gelatos, mmmm the Italians really know how to make ice cream!

On a side note, before Venice we spent the night in Munich and as most hostels in Italy France and Spain don’t seem to have kitchens we bought a gas cooker and a saucepan. I can tell you now that after 12 meals cooked we are amazing at one-pot-wonders!!! (If your lucky we will cook some for ya when we come back). Once the meal is cooked we eat it out of the pot with for the first week our one fork and now with our one fork and one spoon. Breakfast in the first week was cornflakes in our tupperware container eaten with a fork… all good fun!

After three nights in Venice we got back on the bus and travelled all day to Rome, watching the movie Gladiator along the way, a very good movie to amp you up for Rome.
Because Rome is Rome and it has an amazing history we decided to spend some money on a walking tour. So the first day we followed a passionate Canadian Roman history graduate around the ruinous part of the city for four hours. The tour was well worth the 18 euro ticket and taught us a lot about the city and Roman history. They were some pretty crazy people, our guide stressed that Romans didn’t do anything unless it was way over the top and totally unnecessary (and also that Margarita Pizza is the best Pizza)! But they did build a huge empire that lasted a thousand years and buildings that have lasted two. Rome sits over a huge aquifer and so as you go around the city there are clean drinking fountains every second corner, great as it is prone to being a little warm. Mussolini did a lot of work in excavating the ruins of Rome and trying to get back a piece of what Rome used to be, he also passed legislation that made all cats of Rome Roman citizens, this means that they are even allowed to vote!?! Rome is the centre of Catholicism and has 900 churches with most of them being ornate marble master pieces, but the Pope went a bit crazy consecrating things so now apparently the Coliseum is consecrated as a catholic church!?!
The third day we made our way to Vatican city the smallest sovereign country in the world about 1 square km. We finally relented to standing in a queue and waited to get in to the Vatican Museums that hold a lot of pillaged Egyptian art pieces and the paintings of Raphael and many other significant Renaissance artists. The art works were amazing and the museum had a great progression leading finally to the grand finale, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. It is definitely a must see! The pieces from it that we see all the time are actually really small and look very different amongst all of the other works, it was amazing and really indescribable. Leaving the chapel and the museum we were a bit numb and brain tired from all the art but still had to go and visit St Peters Basilica. This is the church that has been built over the tomb of the Apostle Peter “You are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18) It has the largest interior of any church in the world and also was amazing!

After Rome we headed off to Florence, stopping along the way to visit a little township called Orvieto situated on top of a sheer cliff face only accessible by a cable car. This cute little village along with its good views, cute local art and cobbled streets also had the most impressive Gothic style church we had seen to date, a very nice stop!
We were told that after the busyness of Rome it was nice to be in Florence for a slower pace of life, appealing to hear but as we were soon to find out this was not the case….
To describe Florence I would like to quote Lonely Planet which we found very truthful of our experience; ‘Florence has a strange effect on visitors. Travellers who normally loathe art galleries queue for hours to get into them, and people with no interest in Renaissance architecture start raving about tiered facades and frescoed apses. But break the spell and you’ll find that Florence can be disheartening. Much of the centre has been surrendered to tourism and in the summer heat, pollution and crowds can be stifling’… That said, looking at all the old buildings whilst trying to forget the rest you could see that it was a very pretty city. Another saving grace of Florence ended up being our little hostel, and by little I mean only 20 beds in the whole place! The girls who worked there were so lovely you felt that you wanted to do something for them and all the other guests were helpful and loved to chat…sometimes a little too much, but mostly this was nice. Only having two days in Florence we spent our first checking out the city and the second we splashed out for a wine tour in the surrounding Tuscany area. The wine tour was great we first went to a little farm and the owners brought us out all homemade food and wine for a huge brunch (reminded me a little of Nikau cave before the café) then we walked a little way to look at their goats (cheese) olives (oil) and grapes (wine). We headed off very, very full further into the country side with our bus driver having the tricky task of navigating a huge bus full of people up little country roads, we were all very impressed! We arrived at a very expensive winery and were guided through the wine making process and at the end we were able to drink three different kinds of their wine, one of which was called ‘holy wine’ as this is what the priests drink at Christmas, WOW ha! Very sleepy we all headed off to our last stop which was an old fortress to wander through the little town and eat Gelato Ice Cream, and then back home… a very good day with good company and good food and wine! Andrew and I finished off our day with a trip up a hill over looking the city to watch the beautiful sunset and a stroll back to the hostel for a light dinner as still full from the brunch!

Police baffled as dozens of 'suicidal' cows throw themselves off cliff in the Alps

This happened while we were in Lauterbrunnen, amusing but very unfortunate for the farmer . Read on... (article taken from the internet)

Police baffled as dozens of 'suicidal' cows throw themselves off cliff in the Alps

In the picturesque Swiss village of Lauterbrunnen the locals are worried.
Dozens of alpine cows appear to be committing suicide by throwing themselves off a cliff near the small village in the Alps.
In the space of just three days 28 cows and bulls have mysteriously died after they plunged hundreds of metres to rocks below where they were killed instantly.
In each case local mountain rescue services using a helicopter had to be called in to remove the bodies because of the danger to the local groundwater of pollution.
A police spokesman said: 'There are no large carnivores living in the Alps anymore who would once have disposed of the bodies so they have to be moved.
'We are investigating because cows growing up in the mountains normally can estimate dangers and do not plunge down cliffs.'

According to local reports there had been violent thunderstorms in the area which may well have have spooked the animals.
Cows wandering at high altitude are a common sight across much of the Alps, where farmers let them loose to graze on the green plateaus above the villages.
Often carrying large bells around their necks, most are dairy cows as the mix of vegetation and grasses at that high altitude are particularly good for milk and for making cheese.
Cows do occasionally fall to their deaths in these Alpine regions although it is rare for so many to fall in one particular place.
There has been speculation in the past that when this does happen it is because a tightly-grouped number of cows have followed each other as they search for more grass.

Most scientists generally believe that animals are incapable of committing suicide.

Switzerland, the other stuff, nice but not nearly as exciting!

The beautiful town of Thun

Freestyle Kayaking world champs

Swimming in Lake at Meilen

Rauckelete

Dama and Thomas and us after yet another swim... the storm was brewing

Dama, Sharon and Thomas at the Castle

Trummelbach waterfalls

Jungfrau Mountain

English church in Werfen

Evening stroll

We spent our first few days visiting Dama who lived with her husband Thomas in a wee town called Meilen about 20km from Zurich. They lived in a very nice apartment right on the lake. That night Dama cooked us a traditional Swiss meal of Rauckelete. For this you have a wee bbq/grill oven kinda thing on the table with meat cooking on the top and then in a little personal dish you melt a slice of cheese 10cm x 10cm square and 1cm thick which once grilled you pour over a boiled potato and eat with the meat cooking in front of you (there’s a photo don’t worry), very nice.
The first day we borrowed their bikes and rode along the lake stopping and swimming and sun bathing at the parks along the way. The water was really clean and a perfect temperature, very nice. The ride took us to a cute old little town Raperswill. Here we did a little bit of shopping as Andrew had broken his second pair of sunglasses (damn things)! And we needed to find some more. Then in the evening we headed back the 12km we had ridden to Meilen, worn out from a day in the sun and with sore bums unaccustomed to bicycle seats.
The next day we took it easy sorting our life out on the net and going for more swims. We had decided to cook dinner for our hosts, who insisted we not spend a cent of our own and had given us 100 Francs to buy food, so on the way back from our swim we stopped by the supermarket. When we had finished our shopping we went to get our bikes and I realised with a sinking feeling that I had taken the keys for the locks out of my bag. We were stuck in the underground parking lot with locked bikes and no key. And about this time the heavens opened and it rained horses and elephants with thunder and lightning every 20 seconds…. Bummer. As it was my (Andrew) mistake I decided to run back to the apartment which was a long way up a steep hill and get the spare keys and as it was pouring I decided to strip down to board shorts and bare feet and go for it! When I reached the apartment I tried to explain myself to Dama through puffs and went and looked for the keys… hmmm… oh no! I realised that I must have packed them after all and they were in the bag with Sharon sitting beside the locked bikes in the underground car park! So I grabbed a jacket and ran back down in bare feet to Sharon and there they were!!! It was only raining cats and dogs now so we decided to ride home me with our bag and the jacket over top and Sharon in her bikini (sorry I missed the photo opportunity, very amusing for all the people we passed though!), and we finally made it back and cooked a delicious meal which was finished off with chocolate fondue.

On Wednesday we had to meet up with our bus in Bern about an hour and a half away by train, Swiss trains are really expensive and this short trip cost us about $140 kiwi, ouch! But we made it to Bern and I was able to sneak off and make Sharon a ring right under her nose (you watch our bags I am just gonna go and find a supermarket and get some food for dinner) ;-). The bus arrived at 5:30pm and took us to Lauterbrunnen where we were lucky enough to get a whole cabin to ourselves… poof! Its amazing how fast you can make a mess with a couple of packs!
The following day I proposed which you can read about below. And the next day we left our camp to go back the way we had come to Thun were we had been invited to stay with Damas parents. Our train left at 4.30pm but we had to check out at 10am, luckily we were able to leave our packs at the camp so we only took our day bags and a load of washing. We stashed all this in a locker at the train station and wandered around the town. In the quest for a nice quiet shady spot we found a trail heading up the mountain to another village so decided to head up. It was a very steep track and a very hot day but the village was very pretty and I got a sweet engraved Swiss Army knife (they are way cheaper here! Who would have thought) (and we needed a corkscrew) (and a saw) (and tweezers and a toothpick, a can opener…. You get it) and Sharon got a little cow bell.

We arrived in Thun at 6:30pm and were picked up by one of Damas brothers who took us to his parents house where we were looked after by a very bewildered younger brother who had no idea what was going on and thought for some reason that we were competitors in the freestyle kayaking world champs which was about to start in the middle of town. But we finally corrected him and it was all worked out when Dama arrived too. Dama and Thomas showed us around Thun the next day and we saw a castle, watched the kayaking which wasn’t really started yet so people were just practising and also a demonstration by a group of anti-fascists, a bunch of about 200 rugged men dressed all in black some in masks yelling that they wanted a revolution etc etc, they looked pretty angry so we stayed out of their way. That night we were treated to a Swiss desert made from some nutty thing only found in Switzerland that they never told us the name of but which tasted awful, I ate mine and felt ill and Sharon gave up after a few bites. On the Sunday we went back to Lauterbrunnen and headed to the Trummelbach waterfalls consisting of 10 falls which are the only waterfalls in Europe inside a cave that are still accessible. It was so amazing and we were stunned anew at each different turn. After heading back to the camp and organising our stuff again we headed into town and took a train up to Wengen for the church service. It was a traditional Anglican service with about 10 people in the church including the minister so the hymns sounded great, even if a little off key ;-p but it was a really nice service all the same and a beautiful evening stroll back to Lauterbrunnen for our last night.