Where is Paige today?

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Greece (and also Turkey) is the word!

After getting up at 2am (Is that even a time you can get up? I go to bed later than that most nights at home!), trudging to the bus station, missing my bus by five minutes, being totally confused by my connecting bus and freaking out that I was going to miss my plane but actually making it with time to spare, I made it to Istanbul in one piece! Unfortunately the same cannot be said for my luggage, which tragically lost its pull-out handle. You know how in that “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot” song, they say, “You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone”? Well LET ME TELL YOU, internet, I didn’t know how important pull-out handles were until mine was broken, but more on that later.

I went to Information to report the breakage, and they sent me to the special phone corner with a connecting number to call my airline’s office at the airport. However, after 15 minutes of sitting there like a schmuck listening to the fruitless ringing of the phone, I figured that this Information guy either gave me a fake number or everyone at British Airways was on a scone break or watching EastEnders or something. I sheepishly went back to Information Dude, who made a few calls and told me someone from security would come get me. As promised, someone showed up for me, but getting to the airport’s offices proved a problem – apparently, according to Security Scanner Dude, my passport looks fake.

Now, I promise you, Internet, my passport is real (although let’s be honest, I wouldn’t tell you if it wasn’t SO MAYBE YOU’LL NEVER KNOW), but apparently my photo “looks nothing like me”. Now, don’t get me wrong, that photo is très unflattering, and my face kind of looks like a potato, but no other border control has ever questioned it (so I guess I just have a potato face. Dang.). But Security Scanner Dude was insistent – he wasn’t going to let me back through security with that “fake passport” in hand. Eventually we compromised – I could go through, but my passport had to stay with him. Out of all the decisions that have happened in history, this wasn’t my favourite – I’m pretty sure there are articles on SmartTraveller about not, you know, giving your passport to strange men. But I did it, and, after some very tricky language barriers, I was able to report my luggage issue, grab my passport, and get to my hotel with the help of a Turkish guy I met when I was wondering around in the main square totally lost. He was nice, but I think he wanted me to get him an Australian Visa. Not gonna happen, dude – with my “suspicious” passport photo, I’ll be lucky if I can get into Australia again, let alone bringing anyone else with me. Plus you were a little gross.

Now, by this point my calves were black and blue from the constant collisions with my luggage – it turns out, not only does the fun pull-out handle make it so you don’t have to bend over, it also creates a safe distance between the metal and hard plastic of your luggage and the frailty of your human flesh – so I was pretty excited to get to my hotel (hotel, not hostel! A real hotel, with a bed that isn’t part of a bunk, and a TV with strange Turkish X-Factor-style shows (on about 23 different channels at one time, and I’m hardly even exaggerating)) and wait for Jamie.

Jamie is one of my best friends from home, so, needless to say, I was pretty excited that she’d opted to ditch the Swedish summer (and the Swedish boyfriend) for two weeks to come hang out with me! It meant that I could spend my birthday with a friend, which is a much better option than spending it with randoms in a dingy hostel (no offense, dingy hostel randoms – you’ve all been great, but sometimes you want a birthday with someone who already knows the background to all your crazy grandma stories, so you can launch into them without all the small-talk). That said, because of some unfortunate Turkish airport delays, Jamie was a little later than expected, and I’d already a fun list of about 80 unfortunate deaths that had probably happened to her before she showed up. But eventually she DID show up, which made me happy, because I have no idea how to say “kidnapped” in Turkish and that would have made dealing with the police a little tricky.

After a night of gossip and kebabs, we went to sleep, and woke up ON MY BIRTHDAY!!! Birthdays are always great, especially when they’re filled with hotel buffet breakfasts, lovely birthday messages from family and friends, turkish baths with free unlimited hot apple tea and oil massages, and trips to Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar with birthday icecream (everyone should try Turkish ice cream. Strange but gooooooood)! That night, we wondered around looking for something to eat that was a) appropriate for special birthday times but b) compatible with a backpacker budget, and we found an option that seemed to be too good to be true! Rooftop terrace, incomparable views of the city and waterways, fancy waiters who do that thing where they pour your wine with one hand behind their backs… Wait. This really DOES seem too good to be true, or so we thought. We then had a panic moment, where we realised we hadn’t checked the currency of the menu, and there was no way you could get a meal this good for that price in LIRA – it had to be in Euro. Now, there are about 3 Lira to a Euro, so this would have quickly sent our meal from “fun birthday treat” to “we’re not eating for the rest of the week”, so we were a little nervous. So nervous, in fact, that we spent the entire time waiting for our meals pretending to take phone calls so we could walk outside and look at the menu plastered on the window (which showed NO CURRENCY MARKERS. Seriously, some people.). Eventually, after looking at their lunch specials, spying on other diners, and trying to make sense of the Turkish version of the menu in case the prices on that menu were different, we came to the conclusion that the prices were actually in Lira! Turns out we had just snagged a killer bargain. We celebrated our saving by spending money on cocktails and cake.

Birthday cake! Like regular cake but better

The rest of Istanbul was, frankly, a bit of a blur. We were there for 5 days, and those five days were PACKED – visits to the Grand Bazaar, the Spice Bazaar, the Hagia Sofia, Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque, the New Mosque, the Mosaic Museum, the Archeological Museum, and many, MANY trips to Taksim Square for Kumpir (the world’s most delicious baked potatoes, hollowed out, their insides mixed with butter, salt and cheese, and mixed with every filling you can imagine including couscous and cut-up hot dogs), Turkish pide (kind of like a pizza, but spiced and served on turkish bread and generally pretty darn fab), pomegranate juice (pro-tip – ALWAYS add the sugar they offer you, and add it liberally. That stuff is TART), pretzel thingies with Nutella… just generally a lot of food. If anyone is considering going to Istanbul, you need a minimum of five days. Or some kind of drug that means you don’t need to sleep. Or both. We also had a LOT of people trying to get our attention, using methods that varied from “LET ME SHOW YOU HOW TO SPEND YOUR MONEY” to yelling out “Shakira!” to us. The Shakira thing actually happened a lot, which is strange since Jamie and I are both clearly too white and uncoordinated to be Shakira.

The Blue Mosque

Anyway, after Istanbul, we got an overnight bus to Bodrum. Now, overnight buses have their pros – you don’t lose a day of sightseeing and you don’t have to pay for accommodation – but normally, on a Fun Scale that starts with Root Canal and ends with Disney World, you’re going to be on the lower end. But if you were ever in a situation where you could take a night bus anywhere in the world (NO I DON’T KNOW WHAT SITUATION THAT WOULD BE SHUT UP INTERNET JUST KEEP READING), choose Turkey. Trust me. With free ice cream, a flight-attendant-style bottomless snacks and non-alcoholic drinks service, and personal screens which one can use to browse the internet, watch movies (in Turkish, but still), or follow the bus’ journey on a fancy-schmancy satellite map, Turkish buses are like flying, but better because you get free ice cream, wifi, and toilet breaks. And because there’s no turbulence. And the seats aren’t in those annoying blocks of five. So really they’re like planes but 600 times better.

Anyway so BODRUM. Bodrum was the first time Jamie and I had been to a beach together since Australia, and, given the weather in Turkey in the summer, and the fact that, for all the night bus’ fabulous attributes neither of us slept THAT well, we were both pretty keen to lie on a beach for the foreseeable future. I’d love to say that we did sightseeing in Bodrum, but I’m gonna level with you, internet – we enjoyed a fabulous buffet breakfast at our hotel, went down and spent the day at the beach, got totally lost coming back to our hotel, and then had dinner at our hotel because we were too tired to go anywhere else. And then the next day we got on a ferry to Greece.

Jamie in Bodrum! What a cutie.

But does that mean I have no fun stories to tell about Bodrum? NOPE IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT. Well this is less “fun” and more “maybe don’t tell my parents except oops they read this blog and the blog is actually hosted on my dad’s website”. Anyway, after lounging on sunbeds on the beach all day, I was keen for a waffle. Waffles, weirdly, are a huge thing in Turkey, and it was the one Turkish food that I’d desperately wanted to try and hadn’t, and it was our last day in Turkey, so GODDAMMIT I WAS GOING TO GET MY DAMN WAFFLE. So I went up to one of the many waffle guys, asked the price of the waffles, and, displeased, I walked away. Eventually the guy managed to win my business after much haggling with the promise of a half-price waffle, and with him telling me that the six-year-old behind the counter thought I was pretty (although the expression on the kid’s face when his Dad/employer/someone said that makes me think that was less true and more of a marketing ploy. But whatevs). It wasn’t until I’d been giving this guy a hard time over his prices for about 10 minutes that I realised HE HAD A GUN ON THE COUNTER. NEXT TO HIM. I HAD ALMOST PUT MY HAND ON IT.

I’m really glad I stopped haggling when I did. I feel like “Death by Waffle” would be a confusing title for my headstone. Maybe “This is why you shouldn’t eat junk food, kids” would be better. Anyway, point is that we made it to Greece without any bullets in us, and with waffles in our bellies.

Kos is beautiful! There’s a lot of hype about Santorini and Mykonos, but I think that Kos (and Rhodes, for that matter), have just as many natural wonders, and the same relaxed and friendly atmosphere, with way fewer tourists (and a lower price tag). After being in Turkey where there’s a whole museum dedicated to one set of Ancient Greek mosaics found near Istanbul, it was a bit of an adjustment to see mosaics from a similar period just lying, uncovered and unprotected, next to a bunch of beer bottles near an apartment block. It seems like the Greek Islands have a bit of a laissez-faire (or maybe it’s more “CBF”) approach to conservation and restoration, but that was a plus for us – climbing ancient ruins is super fun. It just might not be a plus in 100 years when all the mosaics are stained with 100-year-old Redbull from rampaging bogans (or whatever the Greek word is for bogan. Point is, judging by the broken beer bottles and Redbull cans, there was a definite colony forming there).

STANDING ON ANCIENT MOSAICS LIKE WHAT

Amongst all the amazing cheap gyros, icecream, beaches and ruins, we did have one disaster of a day – the day we went to Antimachia. After stumbling across a Greek tourism site when looking for things to do the next day, we found that the charming small town of Antimachia is an absolute MUST DO, especially if you happened to be there for a huge religious festival, which happened to be on the next day! Kismet!

Or so we thought.

After happily hopping the bus the next morning (and almost missing the stop), we found ourselves in… A total ghost town. All the signs definitely said “Antimachia”, and the windmill was definitely the one from the picture (or at least it was before the guy rolled up the sails for the day), but there was nobody around, nothing on, and certainly no signs of festivities. We found a Traditional House which was open to tourists, which passed a solid 20 minutes, but after that there was pretty much nothing, and the next bus didn’t come until after 3:00pm. We decided to go for a walk – if we looked hard enough there HAD to be something. The internet NEVER lies! Walking in the 40-degree heat, we found as we gradually became totally lost, out of drinking water and surrounded by donkeys, is generally a bad idea. Eventually we found some houses with people having lunch in their backyard – pretty sure these were the legendary celebrations we’d read about, but they seemed to be strictly quiet family affairs, and I’m pretty sure we weren’t invited.

Total ghost town!

Eventually we found our way back to the Main Street and, revived by smoothies, decided to go find the ancient castle nearby! Or at least, that was the plan until we found out it was a 6k walk. By this point it was the hottest part of the day, so we went with a solid ‘Nope’. We wondered around a little more, and eventually decided to go wait for the bus. We found where the stop was, and were thoroughly, definitively reassured that the bus was “Coming, coming!” by the patrons of the nearby café, so we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And played Heads Up on my iPhone!

And waited.

And, after about an hour of waiting, the men looked less sure when I asked about the bus. The only thing we were all sure about was that it was definitely the last bus of the day, and it was definitely a loooooong way back to Kos Town. Eventually, after asking at 2 cafés and being given very confusing advice, we ended up walking to the airport, catching an airport bus, and finally making it back to the comfort of Kos Town, where we could drown our tears in gyros. But we had eachother, and that’s the best thing about travelling with someone – misery is a lot more fun when you’re miserable with someone else. Ditto sunburn, dehydration, bus disappointment, and all the other things we experienced that day. Being with someone else is what turns FailDays into Adventures. Plus the next day we found the beautiful beach of Tigaki, where the buses actually exist, so that made it all worth it.

My last stop with Jamie was Rhodes. Because this blog post is reaching novella-esque proportions I’ll keep it brief, but Rhodes is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen – its old town is surrounded by a medieval castle build by the Knights of St John, and is incredibly well-preserved, and full of winding cobblestone alleys, spectacular turrets, and 1€ icecream (there was a lot of icecream on this trip, in case you didn’t notice), there are two spectacular Acropolises (Acropoli?) – one in Rhodes Town and one in Lindos, there’s an incredible mountaintop monastery with wild peacocks and panoramic views, and there are jaw-dropping beaches, particularly in Lindos. Jamie and I spent an afternoon floating in a cove where we could see through dozens of metres of clear blue water to the sea floor, and basically the only conversation during the hours we whiled away there consisted of variations of “Can you believe we’re actually SWIMMIMG here?”. I think that day is one of my favourite memories of my trip so far.

In conclusion, go to Rhodes.

So pretty in person it makes this photo look like a giant butt. A GIANT BUTT.

After Rhodes, Jamie and I had to say our goodbyes. Well actually we had to yell them across an airport, because Jamie had some last-minute trouble with her RyanAir flight. Not quite how I’d imagined saying an indefinite goodbye to my friend, but at least it stopped us from dragging it out!

And with that, I was onto Athens for a very jam-packed 24-hour trip. Why only 24 hours, you ask? Because I figured you can’t go to Greece and not see Athens, but the thing about being an Australian citizen is that you only get 90 days in the Schengen region of the EU (basically all of Western Europe), and all of my days bar one were either used up or spoken for, so 24 hours it had to be! I got up early, had a power breakfast with lots of cereal and watermelon and bread with tomato and feta, and then met up with a free walking tour. This was probably one of my favourite walking tours of my trip (I’ve done about 20 thus far), because firstly our guide was a multilingual American actor who had studied in Russia (does it GET more interesting than that?!) and secondly because he gave us waterguns to use on the tour. Not only does this break the ice between the tour participants, but it also makes walking in the 40-degree heat for 3 hours a lot more fun. I also managed to fit in a trip to the Acropolis Museum and to the Acropolis proper with a few new friends from the tour before grabbing one final gyros, some frozen greek yoghurt, and hopping a train to Bulgaria!

BEHOLD THE MIGHTY ACROPOLIS and also me and my friend Siew

But that’s a story for another blog.

October 3, 2014
Heeeeeeeeey, it’s a party in the UK!

Okay, I’ll admit it, I was looking forward to returning to somewhere where people spoke English (yeah, yeah, lazy Aussie traveller award goes to me). Oh, and, for context, this all happened in late July/early August. Yeah, I’m behind, I know.

After possibly being distracted by my last fabulous breakfast at my hostel in Lisbon, I was kind of worried I was going to miss my plane, but I shouldn’t have, since I was flying with RyanAir. RyanAir, you may or may not know, are pretty much eternally delaying/cancelling/mysteriously rescheduling flights. So after my first Macca’s since leaving Australia (hey, no judgement – there’s nothing else to eat in Lisbon airport and I had a long trip ahead!) and a strange, unexplained RyanAir delay where we were all ushered into the hallway where you normally board your plane (the flight staff had checked our boarding passes and everything) and then ended up sitting there for 40 minutes on the floor, we eventually made it to London!

Now I say “London”, but what I actually mean is “Stanstead”, which is billed as a London airport but is actually a flibbityjillion kilometres away. And, although I didn’t know this until I had booked my bus from London Victoria to Cambridge, is actually closer to Cambridge than it is to London. So I was in for a lot of very repetitive scenery today, and a LOT of time spent in transit. But eventually I found my merry way to Cambridge, where I was meeting up with Max. Max is a friend from home who, due to his smart-cookie status, was doing a summer course at Cambridge University, and had graciously offered to host me secretly in his dorm room for a while.

Now, travelling is great, don’t get me wrong, but after 2 months of it, I was ready for a holiday from my holiday. I was ready to talk to someone with whom I could be grumpy or judgemental or lazy without worrying about being judged or rejected, and I was definitely ready to have a movie night (or 7). Don’t get me wrong, Max and I clocked some tourist time – we went to market square, visited colleges and college gardens, spent hours in heritage-listed bookshops and shopped (well, Max shopped. I, thanks to low baggage limits and low funds, mostly just told Max how cute he looked in various cat shirts), but it was also nice to just eat junk food and watch Cougar Town and complain about boys. I spent two weekends with Max, and then a day in a hotel room in London (Thanks, Max’s mum!) with him before he got his flight back home.

This worked really well, because it meant I got to spend weekdays in Cardiff and Liverpool and a very hectic 48 hours in Edinburgh while Max had classes, and then we could both take breaks together. It was nice. What wasn’t nice was sharing a single bed for a week and then finding out that you can actually get a second single put in your room by the college, no questions asked, for five pound. WHY DID WE ONLY FIND THIS OUT AFTER I HAD TO SLEEP IN A NEST MADE OF CLOTHES BECAUSE MAX AND I BOTH SCREWED OUR BACKS FROM SHARING A SINGLE. WHYYYYYYY?

Plus, you know, the fact that THIS was the view from his window was pretty cool too. Just a bit.

Pretty much Hogwarts

As I mentioned, I also visited Cardiff. Awkwardly, when people ask me why I wanted to go to Cardiff, the truthful answer is “I wanted to know about Wales because nobody ever talks about it and DOES IT EVEN EXIST and also do people still speak Welsh there and what does it sound like because no language should have that many consonants”. But, you know, that’s kind of a mouthful, so mostly I just said it was because I was curious. But Cardiff is actually really lovely – it’s really easy to walk around there, and it’s full of museums, ranging from the community-run “Cardiff Story”to the gorgeous national art museum, which actually has a very impressive impressionist collection, thanks to some very generous private donations. Oh and my FAVOURITE museum was St Fagans, which is basically a huge stretch of land to which they have relocated heritage buildings from all over Wales to form an oldy-worldy village, complete with butter churning demonstrations and buildings from pretty much every century dating back to the 1100s. The city is full of parks, and, relative to the rest of the UK, is pretty affordable in terms of food and accommodation. And shots. There were 1 pound shots. That was pretty great. And we went to the beach, which, for a beach in a country where it rains 99% of the time, I have to admit was pretty darn lovely, with grassy hills and soft sand (although the sand was kind of a strange colour. But you can’t win them all, Wales. You tried.). I think I even got sunburnt!

Look at you, Welsh beach. You did good, kid.

Onward to Liverpool! Liverpool, although freaking freezing (DAMN YOU ENGLISH WEATHER – IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SUMMER), is buzzing with things to do. After being awarded the honour of EU Capital of Culture in 2008, Liverpool has really tried to live up to the title, installing new museums, running with their “home of the Beatles” fame (and running HARD. Seriously, if I hear one more karaoke singer singing Yellow Submarine I will drown myself. Using a yellow submarine), and building Rundle-Mall-esque open, pedestrian spaces. I also met my first Adelaidians since leaving Adelaide (Sorry Max, you don’t count), and they happened to be med students, which is always very exciting for me, since I think I hang out with more med students than most med students do. Tijana, one of the Adeladians, and I became dinner buddies, and made some pretty inspiring couscous one night, if I do say so myself. Running out of oil so cooking the chicken in peach juice instead? Genius!

The Liverpool docklands are really the place where everything happens – from museums to music to great people watching, this is the spot to be in Liverpool. I saw A LOT in Liverpool – the Tate Liverpool (twice), the Museum of Liverpool, the Piermaster’s House (3 times – oops! But there were actors demonstrating life in wartime! I like actors demonstrating things!), their beautiful city library, the Walker Art Gallery, the Liverpool Museum (WHICH HAS A KARAOKE ROOM. And no, I did not sing Yellow Submarine.), the cathedral, and, best of all, the Bombed-Out Church. The Bombed-Out Church, like much of Liverpool, was brutally bombed during WWII, and, instead of being re-built, it’s just kind of lingered in the streets, growing wildflowers and being overtaken by vines and moss. Now, the space, with it’s glassless windows and bomb-crafted skylight, is used for yoga and meditation, as well as for performances and community gardens and the like. I would have loved to see or perform in a show there – it was such an atmospheric space.

Seriously if it didn’t rain 99% of the time in Liverpool I would spend all my time here

So Liverpool was lovely. After Liverpool, I came back, spent the aforementioned night in Max’s fancy hotel, ate a hotel breakfast so big I couldn’t eat all day and wasn’t even really that hungry the next morning, and hit the town of London, which never disappoints. I went to the BFI and used their free mediateque to finally see BBC’s Pride and Prejudice (okay, everyone, you were right – it’s pretty darn fab. Although it’s no Lizzie Bennet Diaries 😉 ), I explored the Southbank Centre, which is a huge arts centre in London that just happened to be hosting The Festival of Love! This meant love-themed shows, free love-themed film screenings, fabulously-gaudy heart decorations and just a really lovely (haaaa, get it?) atmosphere. The festival also had, on loan from the larger museum in Zagreb of the same name, its own little Museum of Broken Relationships, to acknowledge the fact that love doesn’t always go the way we want it to. I must admit that this one hit a little close to home for me, but it was still super interesting – people sent in artefacts from their own broken relationships (letters, jewellery, CDs etc), with a brief description of their breakup. It’s amazing to see how mature some people are about break ups. And, you know, the opposite, too. That’s also pretty amusing.

Anyway, after that I took a leisurely stroll along the Thames, before having to hop another night bus (one of many many many night buses I took in the UK) to take me to Edinburgh!

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I get a little crazy come Fringe time, both in terms of free time (i.e. I have none, because I’m out reviewing 3342345 shows every night) and in terms of general excitement. I love Fringe. I love the way the arts take over Adelaide for a month and run amok with our streets, our parks, our theatres and our populace. So, of course, I wasn’t going to miss a chance to see the only Fringe that is bigger than Adelaide’s – the Edinburgh Fringe, even if I had to pay a schmajillion dollars for accommodation (shoutout to Mum, who actually helped me out with the price of accommodation – you’re the best, Mum! Without you I would have had to choose between Fringe and food. And then, you know, starved).

For more info on the shows that I saw and the differences I noted between Edinburgh Fringe and the one back home you can check my other blog, but basically, I was in town for about 40 hours, and managed to see four shows, and to polish off a walking tour, and to rendezvous with the lovely Hannah, whom I met in Madrid, and who was running an excellent gourmet donut stand with her brother in one of the Fringe hotspots of Edinburgh. Anyone who happens to be around the UK, keep an eye out for Teadough! I’m sure you’ll be hearing big things about them soon. Anyway, so Edinburgh was crazy, but it reminded me why I love the place; I’d been here once before on tour with the Australian Girls’ Choir, and, although I’d forgotten a lot of the gory, quirky history of the city, I’d remembered that I loved it, and now I know why – the atmosphere, the literary heritage, the total artistic chaos (of course, that’s more specific to EdFringe than it is to Edinburgh year-round)… it all just kind of grabs you.

I was really sad to leave so quickly, but I was also super excited to start my long pilgrimage to Istanbul (via London, with the rejuvenating hospitality of the lovely Matt and Rose – thanks again for letting me crash, guys!), and to one of my closest friends from back home.

Stay tuned for the next post, which will be about Turkey and Greece and will feature the lovely JBo!

September 7, 2014
The rain in Spain (and Portugal) falls mainly in the…

…Nowhere – it’s summer, silly internet! Well, it did rain one time in Barcelona, but I was asleep so it didn’t count.

My trip to Spain actually started quite eventfully; after hopping a plane from Toulouse to Barcelona, I made my way to the train station to catch an overnight train to Granada. Now, I wasn’t that worried about communicating in Spain, because clearly getting a HD in the one semester you took of Spanish two years ago means that you’re permanently fluent, right? Turns out that a) No, and most of the things you do remember are flirtatious words you heard on American sitcoms like “caliente”, or words from Dora the Explorer (not that I watch Dora. At all.), like “vamanos!” and these aren’t really as useful as you think and b) In Barcelona they speak Catalan, not Spanish. To an extent, this was a relief, because it explained why none of the signs made any sense even to an expert Hispanophone like myself, but it also meant that, for the first time this trip, it was “Point to things and smile hopefully” time, rather than “speak the language” time.

Anyway, after getting stuck in the toilet at the station and getting the maintenance guy to help me (suitcases were not meant to accompany us in toilet cubicles, guys. Let’s just write that down and put it on the fridge and never forget it), I was pretty ready to chill on my couchette for the night and wake up in Granada. Unfortunately, it was not to be! Well, I DID wake up in Granada, but the chilling was not to be.

In my compartment (which was NOT as much like Harry Potter as I anticipated, guys. It was WAY smaller and nobody comes around selling magic chocolate frogs.) there were three lovely women, but between us there was a bit of a gigantic language barrier. There were two girls from South Korea who spoke a teensy bit of English but no Spanish, a very elderly Spanish woman who only spoke Spanish, and me, who technically speaks both of those languages but doesn’t really speak Spanish enough to, you know, do anything. Now, even though the other three had no way of communicating between themselves, they seemed to have some kind of unspoken thing going on because without me knowing, they appeared to have an election, electing me Boss of the Compartment and Communication and Bedding. At first it was great – we had a whale of a time, the elderly women and I, trying to pronounce my name (we got as far as Paigggghhhhhhhhhhhie and I decided that was adequate and gave up) and I managed to ask her some questions in Spanish with the help of my phrase book and my ailing Spanish vocabulary, although I couldn’t, you know, understand her answers or anything. But whatever.

After a while, our conversation transitioned from me asking her questions about how many children she had and nodding and saying “si, comprendo” a lot (even though actually no comprendo. At all), she started gesturing and saying something about las camas (the beds). Now, to get the folding beds down, you need to get an attendant to help you – they come around and do it for you at a certain time, but you can ask earlier if you want, which is what I think this poor lady was getting at. But, since I had no idea how to ask the attendant to get the beds down and was also wedged under a billion suitcases, I wasn’t really in a position to help, and I also wasn’t sure that that was what she wanted because really the only word I understood was “cama”, and then when I asked her in broken Spanish if she wanted the beds folded down I would receive, rather than a simple yes or no, some rapid Spanish paragraph answer. That may have been because it turns out I was actually saying “Do you like beds going down?” and not “Would you like the beds taken down” and maybe she thought I was hitting on her or something, but regardless, it went on for a really long time and the Korean girls kept asking me what was going on and not understanding my answers, so it was really just a chain of language confusion. But eventually the attendant came by and pulled the beds down and we slept and it was all good in da hood.

Now on to actual Spain! Granada was beautiful, and had the same hot, dry climate that you expect of Australia (oh how I missed you, weather-that-everyone-else-hates!). I wish I could have been in Granada for longer, actually, but I had fun with the time that I had – I did a walking tour and found out that left-handed soldiers rarely died in Granada because the entire fortress is designed so you can’t defend yourself with your sword in your right hand and your shield in your left (take that, lefty haters – we ARE good for something!), I ate ridiculously cheap and delicious food (3 euros for a glass of sangria, two tapas and some paella? WELL OKAY THEN IF YOU INSIST), went on a tapas crawl, and, of course, did the famous Al Hambra. I was actually quite worried that I wouldn’t be able to do Al Hambra, after being told you often have to book weeks in advance or get there reeeaaaallly early. So I tried to get there reeeaaaalllly early, but for me, really early ended up being more like 9:30. Oooops. But luckily, there was almost no line for tickets and I got a pass to the castle at the perfect time! I also met a stray kitty who lived in Al Hambra (highlight of my day? Maybe a little), and a little girl who, upon hearing me Speak, asked (in Spanish) “Do you speak English?” and when I said yes, replied with the proudest “Me too!” I have EVER heard in my life and it was adorable. And, you know, Al Hambra was good too – centuries-old castles and jaw dropping architecture and a totally unique Islamic-Christian mix of restorations. All that jazz.

Al Hambra! Does it make me super uncultured that whenever I say that name I think of Alejandro, the song by Lady Gaga? Probs.

All too soon, I had to board my first of about a billion Spanish buses, this one from Granada to Malaga. Malaga is big, and cosmopolitan, and has a huge fortress similar to the Al Hambra, although nowhere near as grand. Picasso spent some of his childhood there (and trust me, Malaga won’t let you forget it), and there’s some beautiful architecture. Don’t get me wrong, this is all fab, but the highlight for me was something that probably didn’t draw many international tourists, particularly those whose Spanish vocabulary is pretty similar to that of a three-year-old – Les Miserables! Or Los Miserables, technically, but same diff. I was off on what seemed like the world’s longest ATM search, and what did I stumble upon but a) the largest theatre in Malaga and b) the touring truck for the Spanish tour of Les Miserables! Anyone who knows me knows that the fact that it was in Spanish would hardly be a deterrent, seeing as a) I know the English score off by heart so could always follow the story and b) I totes speak some Spanish. Enough to know that ‘Chicas Guapas’ was the Spanish version of the song ‘Lovely Ladies’, anyway. And really, do you need any more than that?

Sitting in the absolute nosebleeds, but it was worth it.

On to Madrid! Other than that it was the capital of Spain, that my mother enjoyed her time there, and that the area I was staying in might or might not be “sketchy” (thanks random guy in my hostel room in Toulouse for scaring me about that), I came with very little knowledge about this city. I learned a lot though. I learned that Madrid has the third highest pickpocketing rates in the world (after Rome and Barcelona), I learned that El Museo del Jamon (the ham museum) is a real food chain in Madrid and you can buy awesome sandwiches there, although it’s not actually a museum dedicated to celebrating ham 🙁 I met the lovely Hannah (who will also feature later in this blog so WATCH THIS SPACE) and Cara, and saw the Reina Sofia, the Prado, and El Parque del Retiro, which is an amazing park, bigger than Central Park in NYC, with boats and restaurants and art installations and crystal palaces (which, okay, is actually just a big glass building, but they CALL it a crystal palace. Those sneaky Spaniards).

My favourite things in Madrid were the royal palace (NOT the one made of glass in a park), where the art, architecture and artefacts were stunningly beautiful and opulent, and the Teatro Real. This theatre is actually incredible because (I hope this is all true, because these factoids are testing my memory a little bit), although it was destroyed various times, often because of fire, they insisted on keeping the original design, even as productions became bigger, sets became more complex, and backstage space became a necessity. The stage there has no wings, which makes set changes, at least the kind we see most commonly in Australia, impossible. To cope with this, the theatre has been built up vertically – sets are kept below the stage and brought up to the stage at the right time (usually during an interval) using a kind of wheeling motion, which is run by crazy gears. Even if you’re not a giant theatre nerd like me, I’d recommend doing a tour here, and, if you can, seeing a show. If you’re under 26 and you book at the last minute, the tickets are something crazy like 90% off, so really you’re SAVING money (this attitude to theatre/food may or may not be why I am broke).

Madrid Palace! Chilling with the royals

OH and I went to the last night of the Pride Festival in Madrid and we got alcoholic milkshakes and crazy donut burgers (which are basically regular burgers but they use donuts instead of bread).

So delicious but so heart-attack-inducing

Barcelonaaaa! I had been so excited for Barcelona for so long, partially because I had heard great things from everyone who had been, and partially because I was about to be reunited with Sarah, my theatre-soulmate who I met in London at the start of my trip, who very graciously invited me to join her on the last leg of her trip. Sarah is a kickass individual, a Shakespearean and classical actor, and… did I already say she was kickass? It’s very, very true, anyway. Barcelona has some amazing things to offer (although I must admit that Sarah and I were lazy and didn’t necessarily see them all). We DID however do a walking tour, an opera house tour (the Barcelona Opera House is another must-see – it has the highest seating capacity of any in Europe, and its original private funding means it’s incredibly over-the-top and glamorous – although I think it often gets overlooked in favour of Gaudi architecture and beaches and drinks where they offer you free shots.) Honestly, thanks to a few creepy experiences with fairly insistent members of the opposite sex which made it difficult to go out at night, I didn’t enjoy Barcelona as much as I expected, but there were plenty of things that I did love – the beach (although they import their sand! Leave Egypt’s sand alone and get your own, Barcelona. Jeez.), the aforementioned opera house, and the incredible fresh food market, where you can buy everything from icecream to complete, made-before-your-eyes-from-fresh-market-produce meals, to delightful pastries, to pretty much every variety of fresh juice ever in some very pronounced colours that I don’t think are possible in the natural world. And of course, spending time with Sarah was a blast. We swapped national delicacy stories (I now REALLY want to try poutine), went to nationally-premiering operas in accidentally matching ensembles and looked like the cutest couple ever, and I introduced Sarah to churros! I am very lucky to have met her.

Are we not the CUTEST couple?

After Barcelona, I said goodbye to Spain, hopefully not for the last time, and headed to Portugal. Portugal was the first location on my trip where I didn’t speak the language at all (although, as mentioned previously, my Spanish isn’t, you know, great at the moment). I taught myself the basics (hello, thank you, excuse me), and hoped that what I’d read about the Portuguese having exceptional English was true, even though I hate being the “Um, excuse me, DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?!” tourist. Honestly, I don’t know if the Portuguese speak better English than anywhere else, but we got by, which gave me a new confidence in my mime skills (seriously, people underestimate that skill. It should be a Year 12 course or something). My hostel was tiny, and hidden away on the third story of a run-down apartment building, which made me nervous, but it was actually a charming place, with the best hostel breakfast I’d ever seen. Seriously, the day I left, I stuffed like 4 mini-muffins in my bag. But they were so nice! And individually wrapped! They were basically ASKING me to swipe some for the road.

My first full day in Lisbon I spent doing a quirky, lovely walking tour with a woman who, in telling me how to get 1 euro sandwiches (they’re made with pork and called Bifanas, and they really hit the spot) and where to find the best chocolate cake in Lisbon, won me over completely and easily, and this tour was also where I met a bunch of other travellers, one of whom had a birthday to celebrate that night! And what better way than with 3 euro cocktails? In Portugal it’s legal to drink on the street, and, when all the bars close at 2am (this is when the clubs open), the promptly kick you out to do just that. With everyone drinking on the street though, the street BECOMES your bar! Only there are no bathrooms, so watch out for that. Drug dealers are also REALLY forward in Lisbon; generally I think I give off a pretty powerful goody-two-shoes vibe, but here people were offering me drugs left, right and centre! It wasn’t scary, because it was in populated areas in the middle of the day with policemen nearby, but it was definitely an experience. Is this what non-goody-two-shoes people feel like all the time?

The best chocolate cake? With a little more whipped cream it would have been life-changing, but as it was it was pretty damn good.

Anyway, this blog is getting absurdly long, so to summarise, I also visited a beach town near Lisbon for a day trip, went to MODA, their fashion and design museum (which, I’m just saying, had a LOT of chairs that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen at my crazy grandma’s house), ate about 6 catrillion custard tarts (it’s LISBON guys. If you’re not eating nata, you’re persona non grata. I think that’s in the national anthem there.), browsed at some supercute vintage shops but didn’t buy anything because RyanAir will sell my soul to the highest bidder if I exceed their 20kg baggage limit, and saw the world’s most expensive chapel with the world’s most excitable volunteer to insist on explaining all the information panels to me (even though they were in English. But still, thanks guy!

And so that was Spain and Portugal! Stay tuned (hopefully not for too long this time) for a painfully-detailed recount of my second UK excursion. I’d promise to make that one shorter, but we know I won’t keep that promise. Can I just promise to throw in some light comedy to make the length a little more bearable? And to keep capitalising important words so you can just skim the blog and tell me you read it to protect my self-esteem? Bueno.

August 25, 2014
France-ing with Myself (and others. But, you know, puns)

So yes, it’s been a while since my last blog post. In my defence, I’ve totally been working on it! In fact, I’ve been working on TWO blog posts, so don’t judge me, internet.

That said, I’m totally going to start posting more often to avoid the mammoth post that I assume I am about to write.

Okay, so France! The land of cheese, and striped clothing, and baguettes, and smoking, and tiny, tiny dogs EVERYWHERE. I legitimately thought most of these were exaggerations or stereotypes, but it turns out that noooooope. Especially not the tiny dogs thing – I saw so many tiny dogs in fancy clothing stores that I started to wonder if the French had secretly worked out how to create doggie-cashiers (or cashuahuas) and just didn’t tell anybody. And piano accordians! When I was living in the old town in Nice, there was an accordianist who would play to the patrons of the bar under my window every night. Does it get more French than that? Nope. Am I a little bit sick of hearing Hello Dolly and Que Sera Sera? Surprisingly not. But like, maybe a little break from both of those songs couldn’t hurt. Just for a little while.

I spent a month in Nice, studying French with the Alliance Française, which was heaps of fun, despite an awkward experience that involved assuming “preservative” in French was “preservatif” (it’s not, for those of you playing at home. ‘Preservatif’ means ‘condom’, although if anything I think condoms are meant to be STOPPING you from preserving anything, but whatever. Anyway, the sentence was about not wanting to eat preservatives in food, so it still works.Pretty much. Nobody wants condoms in their food.).

But the great thing about living in the French Riviera is that, no matter where you live, all the other little towns along the coast are just a skip, jump, and 1.50 euro bus away, so I actually saw a lot more than just Nice. So, voilà! The Paige Mulholland Guide to the French Riviera:

Nice
Nice is beautiful, and has totally awe-inspiring views of the port and the city if you head down the the Colline du Chateau. And if you’re willing to embrace the possibility that you may never have use of your legs again after climbing EIGHTY BILLION STEPS.

This view was almost worth losing the use of my legs

It also has beautiful beaches, although they’re pebble beaches. Pebble beaches have their plusses, including not getting all sandy after your trip to the beach and never being blinded by sand as it’s disturbed by children or rambunctious youths running past, but they also have their minuses, including sitting up with rock marks all over your legs after lying on the beach for an hour, and, you know, the INABILITY TO WALK AS ROCKS MAKE TINY HOMES ON THE INSIDE OF YOUR FEET. And the Nice beach (as well as, I think, all the beaches along the riviera) are topless, too, if that’s your kinda thing. Warning, though, 99% of the topless people on topless beaches are precisely the people you don’t want to see topless. But hey, you still have like a 0.00001% chance of happening upon a topless celebrity or something, so it might be worth it.

Let’s be honest, though, Nice is a tourist city. And while this is great if you don’t speak the language or want to take a tour or see a show, it does mean that it’s super duper expensive. But you know what’s not expensive in Nice due to competition so excessive I’m pretty sure there’s at least one of these stores for each citizen? Ice cream. Seriously, especially in the old town, every second store is a “glacerie”, offering flavours ranging from Nutella (of course – it’s Europe) to Basil and Tomato (… a little less obvious. But like, I’m sure it’s a valid and completely un-gross flavour. Probs). And if you decide that you can’t live on icecream alone (this is a poor decision, but in true journalistic style I will give you unbiased information even if I think you’re wrong) then there’s a fab Spanish bar called La Sansa’s, with easily the most affordable drinks I found in Nice. And food. Probably. Not gonna lie, I was more focused on the 3.50 euro margaritas than the food. But I feel like there was food.

Cannes
I feel like all anybody really knows about Cannes is that one month a year there are a bunch of celebrities there, but there are other things in Cannes too! There’s a beach with a crazy little bridgy thing that you can balance-walk across through the water to get to a little rock island (it was pretty much just me and a bunch of small children who wanted to do it because i think all the fuzzy mossy crap on the bridge put the adults off, but it was totally the funnest thing on that beach so they missed out), there’s an old town with more spectacular views (and more stairs and more Paige-complaints and more blisters, but whatever), and there’s a beautiful fresh market where not only do most of the vendors not speak English (this wasn’t a problem because we were speaking French) but they also don’t speak French (this WAS a problem, because we were speaking French.). They said they spoke Arabic, but a girl in my group then began to speak fluent Arabic to them and they didn’t understand. So I don’t know what they spoke. We might have been better off with Cashuahuas.

My favourite thing that happened in Cannes was using the produce we eventually managed to buy from the aforementioned market (and, okay, some sneaky biscuits and 2 euro wine from a supermarket) to have a picnic in the park, and running into a little girl from Manchester who, apparently, had been begging her parents for a picnic for her ENTIRE holiday. So of course, we invited her to join our group, which consisted of my Australian self, Medena from Canada, Samara from Mexico and Alessia from London. Now this little girl, of course, had no trouble understanding Alessia as a fellow Brit, or Medena, because her accent sounds like a Disney Princess or something, but with mine and Samara’s we may as well have been speaking French to her. So there was a lot of “How old are you?” “….” “Paige is trying to ask how old you are, sweetie” “Oh! I’m four.” going on. On the plus side, worrying about the comprehensibility of my English was a nice break from worrying about the comprehensibility of my French.

What? No, we didn’t want to take the children and bring them home with us. Much.

Villefranche-sur-Mer
Villefranche was actually my favourite place on the French Riviera, despite knowing nothing about it before actually arriving there. In addition to, as is a common theme in this part of France, having a beautiful and breathtaking (in that I couldn’t breathe after CLIMBING ALL THE STAIRS), old town and views of the sea, the beach here was incredible. Sandy, with clear, calm blue water that gets deep so quickly that ten steps into the sea I couldn’t touch the bottom even if I dived. But also probably you shouldn’t dive, because a friend of mine got stung by a jellyfish. Being from, you know, a normal country, she was like “Oh, that stings. Bummer. I’ll just sit in the sun for a while”, but being from Australia, my response was “Oh, do you think it’s a deadly jellyfish? They have those, you know. You might die”. Which, you know, probably wasn’t the best thing to say. So in the end Alessia had to take her and explain to the cashier at the local kiosk that Medena “had a problem with a jellyfish” (whatever, guys, we might have an ‘Advanced’ level of French according to our certificates, but “stung” isn’t a word that you learn that often. Neither is “jellyfish” actually, but we googled that.)

Medena and Samara, pre-jellyfish attack

St Paul de Vence
Super duper pretty! I just realised this post is exploding to lengths out of all control, but luckily, St Paul de Vence is simple – gorgeous views of mountains and valleys, and a charming little town with beautiful art galleries and artists everywhere (art is to St Paul de Vence as ice cream is to Nice. Except it’s not that cheap). That said, probably don’t dedicate a whole day to it, which we tried to do. Otherwise you’ll end up impulse buying a bunch of expensive biscuits like this:

Samara, our lovely biscuit wench

Eze
Eze is not coastal, but I feel like it’s still part of the Riviera, because you could still SEE the ocean, it was just that to actually get to the ocean you would have had to jump off the jagged mountain. And you would probably die. But anyway, Eze! Possibly even MORE stairs than the other places, but still very nice. We did a tour of the Franongard factory (for those who don’t know, this is a super fancy cosmetics/perfume brand), and they let us smell all their base scents, which are surprisingly hard to identify when you’re smelling one after the other really fast, because your nose kind of just freaks out and goes all, “I DONT KNOW IF THIS IS PASSIONFRUIT OR STRAWBERRY, BRAIN, PLEASE STOP MAKING ME SMELL THINGS”. Eze also has a medieval fortress and an old town, and a beautiful botanic garden although, word to the wise, “botanic gardens” in France are pretty much just cacti, because for the French it doesn’t GET more exotic than that. Oh but there are little chaise-lounges where you can sit at the top of the cliff in the gardens and enjoy a spectacular view of the cacti/French riviera bay.

Seeing this while lying in a botanical garden chaise? It’s a hard life

Monaco
The fact that you can board a metro bus for an hour, pay 1.50 euro, not show your passport and end up in another country is mindblowing for me. I mean, I think Monaco is technically a principality and maybe not a country, but still. And, as you get off the bus, you definitely feel like you’re in another country – suddenly the pedestrian lights make sounds like in Australia, the streets aren’t all called “Victor Hugo” or “Notre Dame”, and, get excited, THERE ARE FEWER STAIRS! Like, still lots to get to the palace and stuff, but fewer. Instead, they have public elevators set into pretty much every hilly area, and they have little shopping centres set into some of the mountains, so when you get out of the elevator you’re sure you’ve accidentally entered some super villain secret headquarters, but then you turn the corner and see a supermarket. We also went to the zoo (which was like 60% Australian animals, weirdly. But still, flying across the world just to see more kangaroos is still good fun. And there were also giant bunnies!), the royal palace, which I actually thoroughly recommend, and the botanical garden, which is meant to be one of the most beautiful in the world, but, I admit, still just looked to me like a bunch of cacti.

Does this look like a supermarket to you? No? SEE WHY THIS WAS CONFUSING?

Antibes:
Ah, Antibes. In a series of expensive, touristy towns, Antibes is like an Australian beach – cheap, sandy, with toilets that are free to use, albeit totally disgusting (who knew France still used squat toilets?). It was nice to be at a beach that was simply that – a beach, with no pretension, exclusive areas or postcard stores in sight. Also the fact that Antibes is a cove (or something similar, anyway. Geography was never my strong point, you can ask my Year 12 teacher), means the water is beautiful, clear and calm.

Oh yeah, this happened too

Toulouse:
Okay so technically this isn’t on the French Riviera and you can’t get here on a 1.50 euro bus, but putting it here made more sense than putting it in my next post, which will be about Spain. I flew to Toulouse, and, after getting to my hostel and finding nobody around to talk to, I was feeling a little lonely, which, as I’m sure many solo travellers would agree, can pretty easily turn to homesickness. Luckily, then came my knights in shining armour, bearing not only scintillating conversation, but free dinner! Well, free bread, cheese, wine and meat, which is totally a legitimate dinner if you are in France. I met Mark, Dan, Danielle and Leon, and we somehow ended up at a hole-in-the-wall jazz club that, although I had to sign some form that may or may not have sold me into slavery/meant that I have to eventually give up a kidney or something, but then I got 1.50 euro wine! Worth it. Plus there was a crazy lady who kept trying to take sips of people’s drinks, and who eventually kissed a member of our party who shall not be named (Mark) on the head! I’m hoping he gets some kind of crazy lady superpowers like if you get bitten by a radioactive spider, but nothing of that nature has happened yet, as far as I know. Anyway, the next three days included museums built in converted monasteries, failed attempts to go to garden music festivals (it was RAINING, guys. And the hostel was all warm and cosy), and emergency handbag shopping trips after mine tragically fell victim to a horrid zip incident, and many a good chat about culture, travel and Daniel’s life on his little farm in the south of France, which, on a side note, sounds like the most freaking pleasant thing to ever exist. Ever.

So that was France! I promise the posts will be shorter from now on. I’m currently on a bus from Madrid to Barcelona, which is an insanely beautiful drive, but, admittedly, my butt is definitely starting to feel the 8-hour drive. But more about that next time!

July 13, 2014
Nice times in Nice and… London… times in London?

Okay so London doesn’t pun as easily as Nice does. Let’s accept it and move on.

I’ve been away for about a week and a half now and times have been crazy (I wrote ‘cray cray’ and then decided that if some potential employer googles me that might not work in my favour, but then I decided that any employer who doesn’t accept ‘cray cray’ as an apt adjective isn’t someone I want to work for so maybe I should change it back? BLOGGING IS HARD). A big part of why I wanted to take this trip was to get out of my comfort zone, and that’s definitely been a recurring theme thus far.

I arrived in London last Sunday, and, thanks largely to my lovely mother’s insistent planning and travel-adapter-giving and tube-map-app-downloading in the weeks before I left, I managed to get to my hostel with pretty much no dramas (although, looking back, 11-days-ago-Paige was so cute, not knowing how to use her Oyster card and clutching her 600 bags to her chest because she thought everyone on the tube wanted to rob her). And pretty much the minute I got to my hostel, I had made my first friend, booked an Alternative London street art tour with her, and headed out for drinks. Did you know that “schooner” is a solely Australian term? I asked for a schooner of cider, super proud of myself for having worked out how British money worked and with my 5 pound note burning a hole in my fist, and the bartender looked at me, all shifty like, and was all “Ah, you’re Australian and you’re new here.”

I mean, she was Australian too, but still. JUDGEMENT MUCH.

Wow, this is a long description, so maybe I’ll try to condense now.

My hostel was right near London Bridge, and therefore right in the thick of things. This was awesome, because I was a five minute walk from Shakespeare’s Globe, the Tate Modern, the Tower of London and the all-important Zone 1 tube station. Although, it was slightly less awesome on nights where some kind of sporting event (soccer? I feel like there’s some kind of World Cup coming up for that soon) was happening and the streets flooded with crazy sports fans chanting things. But hey, lucky by that point, after a week of living in a hostel situated above and around about 9 different pubs, I was a super-heavy sleeper.

The view from my hostel room, including grotty hostel window marks. I’m nothing if not authentic.

London was fab – more theatre than I could possibly (afford to) see in a million years, dozens of museums that were both free and better stocked than any I’ve seen in Australia, and a public transport system that is so efficient that I have no idea why people even bother running to catch a train here (Seriously AngloBros, if you miss that one, there will be another one in less than five minutes! If I’M the one telling you to chill you know you’ve got a problem)

Highlights from the week included:

Accidentally happening upon a practice run for an epic military parade while attempting to catch the Changing of the Guard on our walking tour, therefore beating the crowds by a week and seeing pretty much the entire parade (minus the queen driving by behind tinted windows) before anyone else. Spoiler alert: there are lots of pimped-out horses, brass instruments and tanks. LOTS of tanks. It kind of looked like World War III, which was simultaneously exciting and terrifying

I’m still about 70% sure this was actually the beginning of WWIII and they just didn’t tell me.

Seeing Wicked for the tenth time (double digits baby!) and being confused by the British accents, because every production I’ve seen (including all the Aussie ones) uses a twangy, American accent, and being especially confused when Elphaba’s accent violently fluctuated between British and American. That said, it turns out that the current Elphaba is Willemijn Verkaik, who is Dutch and has performed the role in three languages as well as performing it in the US and the UK, so she can probably be forgiven.

IT’S JUST THE BEST, OKAY?

Spending hours between London and Bath and London and Oxford on the train, watching the countryside roll by, listening to my iPod and pretending to be in a super dramatic movie montage while I looked seriously out the window, and taking advantage of the free wifi on one of the trains. Oh, and actually GOING to Bath, and seeing the remains of the mineral baths from when the Romans ruled over England. And actually going to Oxford and geeking out on an Alice in Wonderland/Harry Potter Tour.

GUYS THESE STAIRS ARE IN THE FIRST HARRY POTTER MOVIE. I PRETTY MUCH WENT TO HOGWARTS. I PRETTY MUCH AM NOW HERMIONE GRANGER.

Spending the day with Helen, my Canadian friend, going to the Tate Modern and doing the aforementioned street art tour, which I will describe better on my other blog at a later date.

London’s street art is probably cooler than you. I don’t even care who you are. Unless you’re Lucy Durack, in which case nothing is cooler than you and I’m really sorry for implying otherwise.

Spending the day with Sarah, my also Canadian friend, and being slaves to the capitalist system on Oxford street and seeing the truly awesome Good People, which is a realistic and unpretentious comedy playing on the West End right now which I thoroughly recommend.

Look at how cute we were as we tried in vain to find a London pub that wasn’t closing at 11:30 at night (!!!)

And I think that’s it for London! I’m now in Nice, which is probably the most beautiful town/city I’ve ever been to, with more icecream and cool bars and topless women than you can shake a stick at, but I think that shaking sticks at topless women will have to wait for another day. As a teaser though, look at the place:

C’est belle, oui? Oui.

June 5, 2014