TravelStream™ news feed for member glenn_christie on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/glenn_christie en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:54:14 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1184009040/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1184009040/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1184009040/tpod.html Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:54:14 -0400 Who says we have the travel bug? The adventures of our 3 month working holiday in France.

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Valdeblore (St Dalmas), France

While at work, Glenn just couldn't resist the chance to take part in an electric bicycle test, promoting green transport in the area. These were basically battery assisted bicycles and Glenn's work had sectioned off an area where you could take the bikes for a spin. So Glenn jumped on and did a lap, quite impressed at the assistance the bike gave when climbing hills. However, Anne-Marie, the secretary of the group where Glenn works, was armed with a camera and by the afternoon, not only had the picture been posted up at work, but had been sent back to Australia with the comments of how hard Glenn was working...On Friday night we had dinner with a work mate of Glenns in Vence. There was lots of translation necessary but lots of fun. Were again spoilt with dinner of scollops and prawns! We didn't get home until 1am so we were a bit weary when we had to get up for our drive to the mountains.Glenn's secretary here in France invited us to stay with her at her mountain retreat in the mountains behind Nice this weekend in St Dalmas / Valdeblore. Anne Marie has pretty much been Glenn's surrogate mum during our time here and is constantly doing things to help him out, find him the information he needs, encourage his French and give him a good kick up the bum when necessary. So we were both pretty happy about getting to spend the weekend with her in an area that we have never been to before. (Apparently a lot of locals don't even know about it even though it's only an hour away from Nice).We set off on Saturday morning for the drive up to the mountains and couldn't believe how quickly the scenery changed. It was so beautiful and different in such a short space of time. Following the instructions Anne Marie had given us, we managed to find her town without too much hassle (apart from Christie freaking out a little at the height). The road leading up to St Dalmas rises in altitude from about 484m to 1335m high in one part.Anne Marie called just as we were about to arrive and asked us to meet her for a coffee in town. Mmm, coffee, Glenn and Anne-Marie are both addicted to the French coffee. After recharging the coffee batteries, we grabbed our bags and then it was off to her cute little apartment overlooking the town of St Dalmas and the mountains behind. (On the way to her apartment she dropped into the bakers to tell them that Glenn would be picking up the croissants in the morning!).She had arranged to stay in a friend's apartment for the weekend so that we could have her apartment to ourselves. The apartment was inside the old medieval part of the village which dates back to 1634. Pretty special.She had arranged a weekend of food for us too. Firstly it was Foie Gras (Liver Pate). Something that we had been meaning to try but hadn't been able to bring ourselves to do without knowing what to get. It was pretty good too!Then it was a cooked lunch and a siesta before a drive to the larger town in the area called St-Martin-Vesubie, first stopping for a beautiful view over St Dalmas. It was a beautiful old town although much busier and touristy than St Dalmas. It also had a medieval old town, with a little paved channel of water that runs the whole way down the steeply inclined street. Known as gargouille, this is a rare feature today.On the way back to St Dalmas we stopped off a restaurant nearby to visit some of Anne Maries friends and have a drink with a beautiful view over the mountains. We could just imagine the atmosphere of everything being covered in snow in winter.Glenn had seen photos of St Dalmas covered in snow and had insisted that when we visit it must have snow. Well, she provided some photos anyway.After that it was back to Anne Marie's flat and another feast. This time Anne Marie made us some mountain cuisine - Raclettes. Melted cheese over boiled potatoes served with pickles, Italian ham and saucission (deli sausage). Though the cheese wasn't just melted, she actually had a special Raclette machine with special little pans for the cheese that went under a round grill. There was a hotplate on top to keep the potatoes warm. You took a potato, peeled it, chopped it up and then slid the cheese on top. After that you added what you liked to it from the rest of the ingredients.After dinner we had some of Anne Marie's home made Lemoncello (mmmm...) and then it was game time. We decided to play Boggle in both French and English at once. The two languages made for a very interesting game and it was fun trying to explain some of the more slang / lesser known English words to Anne Marie (like "nag" - hmmm... you can only guess how Glenn described that one!).Anne Marie had given Glenn the job of getting the croissants for breakfast, so the next morning we walked through the village to the boulangerie (baker) and picked it up. We had a slow breakfast enjoying the view over the mountains and then Anne Marie took us for a walk into the Bois Noir (Black Woods/Forest), just behind the town. Along the way into the forest we came across wild cherry trees and wild strawberry plants, all full of fruit. Of course all of the cherries that would have been in normal reaching distance had already been eaten. There was a big drop off the edge of the path and it wasn't possible to walk around the tree, so Glenn had to try his hardest to get to the cherries. The strawberries were delicious, however very tiny.Once into the forest we were surrounded by pine trees, the smell was pretty amazing and brought the memories of the pine forests of Lithuania flooding back to us.After our walk in the forest we went back into town to pack a picnic and then we took a drive up to Le Boreon which is a really picturesque little area with a stream running through it down to an aqua blue lake which is surrounded by pine trees. As we arrived at lunch time on a Sunday the place was busy with families having picnics, flying kites and kids splashing in the water. We decided to head upstream to find a quieter spot for our picnic. We managed to find the perfect spot, with a table in the form of an old tree stump, surrounded by boulders for seats, right next to the stream. We plonked our wine and beer in the fridge (the stream), and set about another feast of foie gras, bread and saucisson.With all of this rich French food we are both turning into little boombaladas and our clothes are starting to get a bit tight. But hey, we can eat salad when we get home. We are really enjoying the food this time around, that and we are being spoilt rotten by our friends here wanting to feed us only the best all the time! We might need some of you to meet us at the airport to roll us off the plane!After picnic we made our way to the nearby wolf sanctuary. Due to 1000 years of hunting wolves eventually disappeared from France in 1930. Over the last 10-15 years the wolves have slowly been making there way back over the alps from Italy and now the sanctuary has been built to help the wolves survive and to give knowledge to the public. There are viewing platforms in the sanctuary to try to spot the wolves without disturbing them. We didn't have much luck at first, but we did manage to spot quite a few in the end.Once we had finished our visit to the sanctuary we were all pretty exhausted, so it was back to the apartment for a pick me up coffee and then we made the drive back to Antibes.(Glenn's boss from Australia would join him at work on Monday, so the coffee abuse will have to continue).
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1183403580/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1183403580/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1183403580/tpod.html Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:36:47 -0400 Who says we have the travel bug? The adventures of our 3 month working holiday in France.

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Castellet, France

After an email from AVIS that the car was due back some weeks ago and that we actually had 3 separate contracts, not one (oops), we decided it was time to retire Benji the mini van.Glenn asked what else was possible in the same category, and after telling Christie, there was no way he could get something else - Pergeot please. So a Pergeot 307 it is, and after prebooking, we had YASU (Yet another Stuff Up), Glenn was told that the car they reserved had too many kilometers and couldn't be given to him (being a bloody Australian who is used to driving many kilometres). After a bit of protest, there was one more Pergeot 307, but it was garaged and would take an hour or so... So stubborn Glenn waited it out and was rewarded with BenjiQ, the cute 307 that really goes. With a 1.6L turbo diesel, it has much more zip than the van and has leather seats, chrome pedals and gear stick, automatic mirrors, lights and rear parking sensors. Best of all, it was a pleasure to drive, so Glenn soon bonded with BenjiQ (BJQ) and with the sound system pumping drove back to greet Christie.Something that we have decided about this trip to France was that we needed to see new things and have new experiences. There's no point just doing and seeing the same things as last time we were here. So along with our previous weekend in Italy, we decided to do something different this weekend and get away from the coast by travelling to the Luberon area of France, which is very Provencal.The summer holidays had officially started in France on this weekend, and we were a little worried about finding accommodation, particularly because this is lavender country, and the lavender is at it's prime right now (they only let the lavender flower for a few weeks before they cut it).We managed to find a room in a bed & breakfast for the Saturday night in a very small village named Castellet. We weren't sure what it would be like but most other places were booked out so we decided to give it a try, we may not have a chance to come back to this area again.On the Saturday morning we started the drive towards Aix en Provence on the A8. It wasn't long before we hit the holiday traffic. It was a very slow drive. Once we got to Aix we decided to drive through the centre of town to get to a smaller road that would take us to the area we wanted to drive through on the way to Castellet. This was a big mistake, Aix was more full of traffic than the A8 and it took us about 40 minutes to drive one kilometre. We finally found the rural road we needed to be on and left the traffic behind us.Most of our stops were quick ones.Our first stop was Loumarin, where we stopped for lunch at a Salon de The. (Home to Peter Mayle, author of A Year in Provence).Bonnieux is now famous, being the village used for the filming of the Russell Crowe film "A Good Year" (based on Peter Mayle's book). Apparently locals proudly proclaim that Russell's second child was conceived in the town (and the mayor has offered baby Crowe honorary citizenship!). View over the rooftops of the town is pretty spectacular, you can see farmland and lavender fields for miles to the horizon.We drove through Apt, the capital of Luberon in the hope of finding the tourist office, but couldn't find it so we went straight to our accommodation in Castellet to check in as we were already running late.We checked in and couldn't believe again how lucky we were. Our room was amazing with beautiful views of the fields and the mountains and of course the lavender. And the village was picture perfect but quiet! Amazing.Decided to take a quick drive around the small villages and fields closer to our place to take advantage of the afternoon light before heading back for a home cooked dinner.Dinner at our guesthouse was pretty amazing too. Our hosts were an Irish lady and her French husband who was very thankful that Glenn spoke a little French. He said that he had been speaking in English for 3 days and needed a break! The food included stuffed vegetables for entrée, duck for main, caramelised bananas and chocolate ice cream for dessert and of course cheese after that. We were spoilt with unlimited red wine (that was pretty damned good), and a digestif after that. We enjoyed the company of our hosts for a while and then it was time to roll our big fat bellies into bed.The following morning the view from our room looked even more spectacular than the night before. We went downstairs for breakfast and had to do a double take. The table was so full of food that there was hardly any room to eat! From fresh baguettes and pastries to home made muesli, farm fresh fruit, brewed coffee and hand pressed orange juice - we were impressed, especially since breakfast was included in the price of the room (about $100 AU a night! - we are in Western Europe right?). Unfortunately we had to leave our little peace of heaven in Castellet, although we did vow to our hosts that we would be back! But, we had sightseeing to do and after a quick stop at the near by crag top village of Saignon which looked stunning with Mont (Mountain) Ventoux as the backdrop, we decided to head up to Sault - about an hours drive, be it through scenic field upon field of lavender. It ended up being about a 2 hour drive with all the photo stops it was so beautiful. We had decided to stop in Sault for lunch, and as soon as we got out of the car the smell of lavender just hit us, we couldn't believe how good and strong the smell was! We found the tourist office just before it closed, and the lady there told us that the smell is so strong in mid summer that she is surprised that everyone isn't asleep! She also told us that a little town nearby (Ferrassieres) was having a fete nearby and that it would be a great experience to go. She then suggested a beautiful drive from that town and basically helped us to plan the rest of our afternoon!So off we went to Ferrassieres, driving past families having picnics in the fields. Now we knew what we were going to do for lunch! We parked the car and walked into the little village. They had lots of market stalls set up selling lavender, soaps, oil, honey, meats, breads and cheeses - We thought we were back in heaven again! So we stocked up with bread, cheese, meat, honey and some fresh apricot nectar and decided to go and have a picnic of our own. Glenn also managed to find a particular type of meat that he had been wanting to try for ages. The way he explained it is that the meat is cured by salt, not cooking, over a long time. They bury a raw pig (!!) in salt and then three years later, voila!, you have a very tasty and expensive meat product. Perhaps Glenn's understanding is a bit basic, but it sure was great.We decided to continue with our drive as planned and hoped that we would find a nice place to have our picnic along the way. Well we definitely found it, just outside the town of Montbrun-les-Bains, right next to a lavender field and a running stream with a close up view of Mont Ventoux poking up behind the village. This was the Provence experience you read about, that you think you would be lucky to ever have in your life, and here we were, it all seemed a bit surreal. That was until it started to rain! We had a great little picnic though (under the door of the car boot) and we met a couple of French tourists (two older blokes) who had stopped to take photos of the lavender. They were pretty impressed by our stash of goodies, which we offered to share with them. They politely declined, however they did offer to take our photo - see photo of us together in the lavender attached.The afternoon was ticking on and there were still a few places we wanted to see before we had to head back to Antibes. So we drove a little closer towards Mont Ventoux to catch a glimpse of the picturesque town of Brantes, and then we made our way back down towards Sault and on to the town of Roussillon.This area is known for it's rich coloured ochres, which some 2000 years ago the Romans used to use for producing pottery glazes. These days the whole village of Roussillon - even the cemetery - is built of red stone. Non residents are not allowed to park inside the town and have to park in the paid car parks outside, at the cost of about 2 Euro. Glenn was a bit miffed about having to pay for parking, but he resigned himself to the fact that it was a necessity. He parked the car and as we were locking it up, the couple parked behind us were leaving and generously gave Glenn their parking receipt so we didn't have to pay! (tinny bugger, tinny bugger). We of course spent the 2 Euros on an ice cream in town! By this stage of the afternoon we were both getting tired, Glenn was getting increasingly frustrated by his defunct camera, and we weren't enjoying it quite so much anymore. So had a quick walk around the towns and the market, before we decided it was time to call it a day.There was however, one more thing that Christie wanted to see before we left the area. The Abbaye Notre-Dame De Senanque. A Cistercian abbey founded in 1148 - which is framed by fields of lavender in the month of July, hence the reason we had to see it now. The road leading down was quite narrow and steep and being that it is peak tourist season for the Abbaye there were many cars on the road. At a few points cars could not pass in opposite directions meaning that cars had to continually reverse up or down the road to let other cars pass. It made for a much longer and stressful drive than it should be. But we made it okay and found a park for the car. Unfortunately the weather was now very overcast, so not so good for scenic photos of the Abbaye. It was still extremely beautiful to see it in real life, and although we arrived too late to see the inside of the Abbey, we were glad we found the energy to see it at this time of year. Then it began to rain.After this we were both exhausted and decided to call it a day and make the drive back to Antibes.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1182991080/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1182991080/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1182991080/tpod.html Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:36:25 -0400 Who says we have the travel bug? The adventures of our 3 month working holiday in France.

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Cinque Terre, Italy

After a recommendation from one of Glenn's work mates, and with it having been on Christie's "I would love to see list" we decided to go to Cinque Terre (pronounced "chink-wah terra"), Italy. With our location in France being so close to the border, and with us having explored a lot of this part of France before, Italy was singing for us to come! Cinque Terre is named after its 5 villages: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza & Monterosso. The towns are linked by a 12km walking track, which passes the coast. It's a National Park protected by Unesco.Glenn went for jog the day before (Thursday) during lunch with two of his work mates. One of them was a marathon runner (Glenn doesn't do things by halves) and he soon learnt actually how fit you have to be to keep up (or even try). That afternoon was tough, but Glenn still managed to sort out some accommodation in Corniglia for the Friday night, even though almost everything else seemed booked out.A quick stroll that evening around Juan Les Pins, led Glenn to understand that he was far from being a marathon runner and about 10 years out of practice. Let alone being sore from running, his hip joint decided to turn into an old man's version as retaliation.Friday was a painful experience, so being that we had to leave early anyway, Glenn decided to take the day off work and rest up a bit before leaving. And considering we missed a public holiday in Aus, we considered it "in lieu".We set of in Benji for the drive to Italy on Friday mid-morning, feeling a little unusual crossing a border without having to show your passport. We also changed from driving on an "Autoroute" to an "Autostrada".We are both reading a book at the moment (ok, Christie is finished and Glenn is struggling to get past chapter 2), which is basically a travel diary (Tuning Out, by Katrina Blowers), where she describes arriving in Italy with her husband and taking a break at a petrol station on the Autostrada. The dialogue goes roughly as follows: "We see a sign for a service station and pull into the carpark... A young couple move like lightning, serving customers. I look at the menu and it becomes clear that this is no Australian truck stop with soggy meat pies and cartons of chocolate milk. We are in the middle of nowhere, yet we have found our first Italian espresso bar... the big stainless steel machine dispenses a trickle of chocolate-coloured liquid, tiger-striped with crema, into tiny glasses. A dollop of silky foam finishes them off. She plonks the cups unceremoniously on the counter in front of us.... They're perfect. We stand and sip, trying to act like we do this all the time. Carried away in the moment, we have two more each and spend the next hour with caffeine jitters.This particular part of the book has been on Glenn's mind before we had even decided to travel to Italy. Now, he loves his French coffee, but all his mates here tell him the Italian coffee is better (that must mean something coming from the patriotic French). So of course as soon as we come to the first petrol station on the Autostrada he was well and truly ready for his first Italian coffee experience...and he wasn't disappointed. If it wasn't for the massive queues he would have gone back for two more as well.The drive towards the Cinque Terre was easy and we found our way without a problem. We then made our way into the national park area and found the road to Corniglia. It became a very skinny and windy road with sheer drops as we headed down towards the town. Pretty hairy and scary, Christie had white knuckles there for a while. No wonder when the road had blind corners and even though two way, was hardly big enough for one car, and to top it off had a lovely scenic drop straight down. We knew that there was no parking in the town and that we would have to park somewhere on this street and walk in. We were told that being summer it would be pretty busy and we may have to park the car a fair way back. So we drove down as far as we could, and managed to somehow find a park right at the entry gate to the town ("tinny bugger" Glenn).We walked into town, backpacks on and tried to find the address we were given for the accommodation. The street numbers weren't very well sign posted, although we thought we had found the right place as the bell had the correct surname (Monti) - so we rang the bell. We could see a lady inside but she didn't come out to greet us, so we rang the bell again and she finally come out, an old lady struggling to walk up the path. We told her that we were looking for Maria Monti and she said no, no Maria, and motioned at us to keep walking up the hill to Maria's place. Oops, we felt bad that we had disturbed her like that, but we were thankful for her help.After a bit more of a trek up hill, we finally found Maria's place and rang the bell. There was no answer. We rang again and still no answer. A younger woman popped her head around the corner and said something to us in Italian that we didn't quite understand, which she soon realised and then said in English "one moment please". Finally came Maria, an older lady walking around the corner clutching a bag of lemons and a piece of paper. After a bit of discussion and confusion (in Italian), she realised who we were and told us that we needed to walk with her back into town, which is where we would be staying. At least it was what we guessed she was saying. She led us back into town through the little cobbled streets saying "ciao" (hi) to everyone that she passed. It wasn't long before we arrived. There were a couple of blokes sitting on the steps to Maria's place having a beer and they said hello to us in English, Christie said hello back and Glenn his very Aussie G'day. They picked up on this and said "You Aussies are ya?" "Yup, you bet ya", and with big smiles they said "Well, welcome to skippy house!" We left the Aussies to their beer and followed Maria up the steps to our room, all four floors of them. When we finally got to our room and filled out the paperwork, we arranged a time to meet Maria on Sunday morning and then she left us to enjoy the amazing view from our room. We couldn't believe that we found such a beautiful place on such short notice. We decided to see a bit more of Corniglia that afternoon as we would begin our hike to Vernazza and Monterosso early in the morning. We found the Aussies still hanging out on the steps and discovered that they were a family travelling around Europe. We had a chat to them for a while and then set off about the town.It didn't take us long to discover the beautiful Corniglia, it was such a small town, quiet and tranquil, so most of our time was spent taking photos and just enjoying it. We decided to head out for dinner after that (to one of the two restaurants in town!), other than trying to communicate with Maria earlier in the afternoon, this was the first time we had to try out some Italian. We got a table overlooking the ocean and the waiter brought us our menus. We greeted him with "Buongiorno!" and got a look of shock straight away. The waiter then said in English "No, No, No my friend, it is "Buonsera" in the evening, actually after around 2pm in the afternoon". There is only one way to learn, and although we felt a little stupid, at least we tried and the waiter was really lovely about it. After that it was a clumsy mix of English and Italian (and probably a bit of French) for the rest of the night. We knew that the area (the town of Levanto in particular) is famous for its Pesto, so that was on our checklist of things to try during our weekend in Italy (along with coffee, wine, pizza, wine, seafood, and ummm.... wine), so we both ordered pasta with pesto and a bottle of local wine, so local that it was produced in Corniglia. We weren't disappointed with anything that night, the food, the wine, the service, the moonlit view over the ocean - everything about it was perfect - talk about la dolce vita!Before dinner we had stopped in at the little deli/supermarket in the village to pick up some water and came across a bottle of Limoncello (a sweet lemon liquor), which we had tried in France a few weeks before. So we bought it and after dinner we took it up to the terrace of Maria's place and had a few Limoncello's (in a couple of espresso cups - all that we could find!) to finish the night with a beautiful view of the village lit up at night. But we couldn't enjoy ourselves too much we had a 4 hour hike ahead of us the next day, so it was off to bed.Well our early morning didn't turn out so early, and we began our hike at 9am. We were surprised how quiet the trail was (guess that's the benefit of starting in the middle). It was a reasonably hard walk to Vernazza, with quite impressive climbing up through the vineyards and terraces to be greeted by glimpes of stunning coastline. But well worth the effort.We passed a local bakery and were seduced by some amazing little pastries inside. So there we were, sitting on some steps in the town watching life go by and ruining all that hard work we just did walking. After a wander around the town and a few photos, we continued on the hike to Monterosso. This was the hardest part of the hike (lots of up and down - don't you love this technical description), and we were glad to see the beach of Monterosso as we descended into the town some 5 hours after we started the hike. There was a bit of a celebration going on in the town and there was a big feast, with old blokes cooking little fish and fried bread - selling it to the crowds of people queuing up for it. It was a simple and cheap meal and not the rewarding restaurant lunch we had originally envisaged when we finished our hike, but we loved the simplicity of it, and the atmosphere (and the food) was great! (We later found out from a lady in Corniglia that this feast only happens one day a year and is done in celebration of the towns patron Saint. Oh, and she also told us that the fish were anchovies! Never thought we'd say we had eaten them!).We caught the local train back to Corniglia and had a siesta for a few hours. We decided to go to Levanto (town after Monterosso) for dinner, but as soon as we got off the train we realised it was a much bigger town than we had thought and seemed to lack the atmosphere of the Cinque Terre towns. According to the town map, the centre was quite far, so we went straight back to the train station to catch a train back to Corniglia. (Of course we had just missed a train and the next one decided to run very late, and so we didn't get back until 10pm and had to walk uphill to town - yes Corniglia is built up much higher than all the other towns, and the steps up alone turn a lot of people away). We decided to 'share the love around' and go to the "other restaurant" in town and although we were grateful that they were willing to serve us so late at night, the service was very rushed and the food, although good, didn't equal our experience from the night before. The Aussies were at the same restaurant that night and we caught up with them on how our days went and then they left the restaurant before us. The previous night we had spotted a quaint little wine bar which we weren't game to stop at because we had a big hike the following day. But this night we didn't have such a big day planned for the next day, so we decided to go to the bar after dinner to wind down a bit after our Levanto disaster and rushed dinner. Who should we find but the Aussies, and we decided to join them to finish of the night, sharing our travel experiences. The owner of the wine bar was an amazing lady. She spoke perfect English and managed to pick our taste in wine exactly just by asking us a few questions. The Aussies were leaving for France the next morning, so they called it a night and left us chatting to the lady at the wine bar.We got to bed about 1am and the church bells (something we forgot to mention earlier) kept us awake for a while. We somehow managed to wake at 7am and felt okay (not bad as we had expected to feel a bit sore from our hike the day before). After breakfast we packed our bags and took them up to the car. We walked back into town and after a morning coffee we met up with Maria as planned and said our goodbyes. We then started the walk in the other direction to Manarola and Riomaggiore. We say walk, because it was much easier than the previous day. We soon arrived in Manarola and loved the town. There were people jumping off rocks into the water, and it had a nice relaxed feel about it. We decided we would head to Riomaggiore and then come back to Manarola for lunch. We walked to Riomaggiore on the Via dell'Amore (Lovers Lane), famous as part of the walk but now basically lots of graffiti of who loves who. But we saw the padlocks again which seems to be something universal as we have seen them in many countries from China to Latvia.Riomaggiore wasn't as special to us as the other towns and after Glenn took a dip in the very rocky beach we walked back to Manarola for lunch. (When we say very rocky, these were boulders, not pebbles like in France, making it a serious challenge to get into the water - oh, and there were waves here!) We had spotted a nice little restaurant before away from the waterfront, and now it was a very busy place which seemed to be popular with Italian familes and that was good enough for us. Glenn tried the seafood with a pasta marinara and Christie had the gnocchi with pesto again. It was another amazing food experience and it was kind of nice to be surrounded by the rowdy Italian familes. It created a nice atmosphere and it was lovely to be around people who were enjoying life so much.We decided to take the train back to Corniglia, and escape the scorching heat. A brief stop back at the wine bar landed us with lots of wine to take home. The lady remembered us (we wish we asked her name) and after giving us few free tastes her husband arrived and she proceeded to tell him all about us (that Glenn was working in France and we were living in Antibes), all things that she had remembered us telling her from the night before. It's so nice that they had taken such interest and they were both lovely people, and of course now we have the wine to remember them by.We then met up with Benji again and started the drive back to France.We stopped in at Portofino on way home, and noticed a big contrast. There was a lot of money here (supposed to be the Italian version of the French Riviera) and although it was nice, we were both so awestruck by the Cinque Terre and also very tired that we didn't hang around for long.It was here that Glenn's precious camera decided to cark it, making him a very unhappy chappy. Looks like it's the point and shoot camera for the rest of the trip, so we are hoping our photos don't suffer too much. Guess that we will just have to be more creative.We continued on our drive, but Glenn couldn't leave Italy with one last road stop espresso. Needless to say, when we finally made it home, it was a little difficult to sleep.The following evening we had to move house, into the centre of Antibes. It was the last thing we felt like after such a full on weekend, but to date our Italy side trip has been our highlight!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1182213060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1182213060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1182213060/tpod.html Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:36:02 -0400 Who says we have the travel bug? The adventures of our 3 month working holiday in France.

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Menton, France

After a surprise phone call on the Mobile from home on Saturday, we set off in the afternoon to Menton, close to the Italian border. Menton is the closet beach town to the Italian border and was therefore filled with many Italians visiting when we stopped. We wandered around the streets, getting a feel for the place and then found a nice restaurant on the water serving grilled scampi. Yum! It was nice to stop and relax for a bit.We had left home with the intention of taking one of the walking trails between the small medieval villages of Gorbio and St Agnes up in the hills behind Menton. Unfotunately the guy at the tourist office in Menton said that the walk was pretty difficult and would take some hours to complete. With Christie suffering some serious blisters (new shoes) and as it was already 3pm we weren't sure if the walk would be possible.We drove up to Gorbio, which was a little hairy due to the steep and narrow roads (more than a little according to how Christie was gripping onto the car). It was such a quiet little place - everyone must have been having their afternoon siesta. It was no problem for us though, we were happy to have found a place to explore on our own without all of the pushing and shoving that is happening elsewhere on the coast being that the summer tourist season has started. Although Christie had put her boots on ready for the walk when we arrived in Gorbio, her feet didn't want to cooperate. We decided that even with all the band-aids in the world, her feet were not going to cope with a difficult walk so we decided to drive to St Agnes instead.The village of St Agnes is larger than Gorbio and a little more popular, however it was still very quiet with the locals going about their business. It's Europes highest seaside village at 780m and the coastline views are breathtaking. We set about exploring the village and came across a wedding celebration that was being held at one of the restaurants. Christie has decided not to take any fashion tips from the bride though. Her dress was an 80's flash back: tight sequined top half with the bottom half being lots of ruffles - the skirt was really short at the front (think mini skirt) and longer at the back. She was standing out of the front of the restaurant having a smoke. Oh and not to forgot the big blonde hair and the hot pink lipstick....mmmmm....classy.After appreciating the view a little longer (of the coast, not the bride), the weather was starting to look a little grey, so we decided to make the trip back home via the coast road through Monaco.After dodging all the traffic full of rich cars, we ended up driving through Monaco without really seeing a lot, but with the traffic we were happy to be on our way home.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1181601420/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1181601420/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1181601420/tpod.html Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:35:43 -0400 Who says we have the travel bug? The adventures of our 3 month working holiday in France.

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Aix en Provence, France

Being that the one thing we were disappointed to miss on our world trip was to catch up with our friends in France, to have this opportunity was too good to pass, and high on our to do list was to visit our good friends Olivier and Nathalie.We drove to Olivier & Nathalie's place in Aix En Provence on Friday night, about a 2 hour drive. Upon arrival we met their 18 month old daughter Noeme (pronounced "No-em-ie") and she was so cute! For dinner we had a crepe party, but watched with amazement when Noeme had her dinner and followed it with a big chunk of Roquefort Blue Cheese for dessert! Our eyes nearly popped out of our heads! She is an amazing little girl with a beautiful personality. And Olivier and Nathalie spoilt us, even giving up their room for us while they slept on the sofa bed in the lounge!The following day we walked into Aix to see the Saturday market. It was interesting, seeing all the local produce, flower markers and weird fish. After lunch with Olivier & Nathalie, we took a drive up to Miramas-Le-Vieux. This was a charming old town, and a particular favourite for Olivier of Nathalie, not just because of the beautiful views but also the amazing ice cream (anyone noticing a theme here?). The town was open to cars for residents only, so we parked at the bottom and walked up assuring ourselves that we were getting the exercise we needed to reward ourselves with an ice cream at the top. Upon reaching the top, the town was beautiful. After admiring the view, we soon found the ice cream place and it too was beautiful with a lovely view of the countryside and nearby lake. We were brought a menu and it was about 10 pages of different ice cream combinations! We were a bit confused by it all but we finally made our decision. As other peoples orders were served we couldn't believe our eyes, they were serving massive amounts of ice cream in glasses the size of flower vases - we were wondering if we would get the same. Well, our ice cream arrived and it was pretty damn sensational. We all agreed that dinner probably wouldn't be necessary that night. Noeme wasn't really fussed about all of these adults getting excited about ice cream, she was more interested in playing with the rocks on the ground (we would find out later that this little girl loves rocks!).The scenic drive back to Aix seemed the way to go and we went via a beautiful little town called Ventabren. We had a quick look around however we couldn't stop for too long as we had to get back to Aix to freshen up as we were heading into Marseille that night for dinner, where we would also drop Noeme off at Olivier's mothers house. We all jumped in the same car, and we both took the opportunity to hang out with Noeme in the back seat, trying to amuse her in English. Olivier started the car and out pumped the BB King. After the ACDC earlier in the day Glenn had to proclaim to all present that Olivier had great taste in music (Nathalie and Christie weren't so sure). However Noeme was on the boys side and started dancing away in her car seat smiling and clapping in her car seat (daddy's girl for sure). Towards the end of the journey the rest of us were doing the same!We arrived at Oliviers mothers house in Marseille and met Oliviers family. It was kisses all round and it wasn't long before Olivier's mum was insisting that we sit down and was bringing out the drinks. Such a lovely family. The four of us jumped in the car and went into Marseille, towards the port. Unfortunately parking was difficult that night and by the time we finally found a park it was 10pm. We had a bit of trouble deciding on a restaurant and ended up going for the most popular one being that it was so late at night. Unfortunately the wine was warm, the waiter was on another planet and the food wasn't sensational - but we didn't care, we had great company and a great day and nothing could really spoil it for us.The following day we all decided to head to Moustiers Ste-Marie. On the way we stopped at a town called Valensole, popular for the surrounding lavender fields, but really just a small local village. We had told Olivier and Nathalie that we were hoping to see some lavender in France this time as it was winter last time we were in France, and they graciously sought it out for us. We parked the cars and walked into the town. At the entry to the car park a lady was trying to park her car and a truck was blocking the way. A bit of an argument insued and Olivier and Nathalie turned around and then looked at each other smiling as if to say "did they really say that?" (Olivier then translates for us) The lady wound down the window of her clunky old Mercedes and yelled out for the truck to "move his arse" and two old (and possibly slightly tipsy) old local blokes who were walking past retort "hey lady, it's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, everyone is happy. What's wrong with you? Didn't you make love last night?!" (Not sure if this is exactly what was said, we are sure Olivier translated it politely for us). But he explained that we are now in the country, where the locals are more laid back and enjoy the little things in life. We like it!As we arrived close to lunch time, most places were closed in town, including the tourist office, so we couldn't find out any information about the surrounding lavender fields. Nathalie did her best to ask the locals for some advice and it wasn't long before we were back into the cars heading out of the village into the surrounding farm land to search for the lavender. We did find a few patches of purple but it wasn't in full flower yet, so we vowed to return another day and so continued on to Moustiers.Lonely Planet describes Moustiers: "Strung between two limestone cliffs towering either side of the little village of Moustiers Ste-Marie), a 227m long gold chain bearing a gold star was suspended, so legend claims, by the Knight of Blacas, grateful to have returned safely from the Crusades... Beneath the star, clinging to a cliff edge is the 14th-century Chapelle Notre Dame de Beauvoir, built on the site of an AD 470 temple. A trail climbs up to the chapel and its waterfall...".After a lovely lunch in the village, we decided to walk the trail to the chapel, something that Olivier & Nathalie had not done on their previous visits to the town. It turned out that we walked the "back way" up a rocky trail rather than the intended route. People were passing us in hiking boots and Christie was a little concerned about the fact that she was wearing thongs (flip-flops for you non-Australians), but she managed fine and it was nice to do the walk in that direction as we actually walked down towards the chapel and the view was stunning. We were the only ones up there when we arrived and we all noticed the peacefulness and stillness of the place, particularly in the chapel itself. Noeme was completely oblivious to all of this - there were rocks to play with!After we walked back down the correct path and relaxed with a drink, it was time to say goodbye to our friends - they would head back to Aix from here and we would go on to Juan Les Pins. We were all very exhausted from the weekend and we are sure that Olivier and Nathalie were happy to have some peace and quiet to relax after we left! They are amazing friends, so giving and thoughtful - we only hope that we can return the favour when they visit Australia one day (and yes, you will visit Australia guys!).
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1181169300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1181169300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1181169300/tpod.html Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:35:20 -0400 Who says we have the travel bug? The adventures of our 3 month working holiday in France.

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Antibes, France

After a very long flight and a broken down plane that had us stuck on the tarmac in Dubai for four hours, we arrived in Nice, France, almost 30 hours after leaving Sydney, tired and in desperate need of a shower.This is where we met Benji, our transport for the next three months. After walking past all of the Peugeots and VW's (Christie getting excited that we may finally be getting her dream car), our eyes met Benji, who Glenn says can only be described as a mini 'spakka' van. Our big Opel Mariva was no grunt master or little zippy (our previous cars in France), and left us wondering how on earth we were going to park him.But, we had no choice and no time to argue, we had to meet our agent Nathalie at our apartment, we were already 4 hours late for our appointment with her and she wasn't going to wait any longer (it was Sunday night after all). Glenn managed to negotiate the streets without too much hassle and after getting a little bit lost we finally found Nathalie. We were impressed with our apartment. It was much nicer than the photos we had seen before leaving home, although the almost flouresent yellow walls had us wondering how we were going to sleep at night. Nathalie showed us around and on leaving, rather than wishing us a good night, she wished us a "bonne douche" (a good shower!). Unfortunately there was no bonne douche to be had - there was no hot water - aaarrgggghhhhh!!! Christie was understandably devastated. After pizza for dinner we figured out the hot water situation and went to bed dreaming of a hot shower in the morning. Glenn would start work that day.Our first few weeks have been spent finding our feet, settling in and catching up with our French friends. There are a few photos attached to this entry that show views of the Antibes/Juan Les Pins area which is where we are living this time.One weekend we had a fantastic dinner with our mate Patrick and his son Sebastien. Christie is a magnet for children and it wasn't long before her and Sebastien were friends (he had only just been born last time we were here in 2001). Patrick put on his chef's hat and spoiled us with a big feast that kept our bellies full for days. Despite his protests that he couldn't cook we were pretty damned impressed. There are a few photos attached from the night. Unfortunately Sebastien had gone to bed before the camera (and the Cognac) came out.We also happened to arrive in the South of France just in time for the end of the Cannes Film Festival, so we decided to catch the train to Cannes one night to see if we could catch a glimpse of the stars on the red carpet. (It's only a 5 minute drive but it would have been crazy to take the car there during the Festival). Unfortunately the trains were running late that night and we didn't make it into Cannes on time to see the stars going into the Palais des Festivals. We took the opportunity to take a few photos anyway, when an Italian guy in a tuxedo spotted Glenn and his big camera and he was asked to play photographer for a while. The Italian guy insisted on returning the favour, hence the attached photo of us next to the red carpet. We decided to hang around in Cannes for a few hours, hoping that we may catch a glimpse of somebody famous. We went back to the Palais des Festivals later in the evening and we managed to see a few stars: Robert Duvall, Joaquin Phoenix and Eva Mendes whose film Walk the Line was being shown that night. As well as Naomi Campbell who managed to keep a smile on her face all the way up the red carpet. There were also a few big name French stars there that the media went crazy for, but were sorry to say that we didn't know who they were.We are enjoying the sunshine and took the opportunity to take the coast drive to Saint Raphael via L'Esterel, one of our favourites. Our mistake was to do it on a Sunday when there is a lot of traffic on the road, which took away from the fun a bit. However the cliff faces of L'Esterel have a few walking tracks down to the water where you can find relatively secluded beach alcoves. The one we found was covered in rocks and boulders, but Glenn couldn't miss the opportunity to take a quick dip before we trekked back up to the car and continued our drive to St Raphael, where we finished off a lovely day with probably one of the biggest ice creams we have ever had.Next weekend we will start the sightseeing again with our friends Olivier, Nathalie and their daughter Noeme in and around Aix en Provence.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1179597600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1179597600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/france_2007/1179597600/tpod.html Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:31:40 -0400 Who says we have the travel bug? The adventures of our 3 month working holiday in France.

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Sydney, Australia

It's all lies. I can pack on time! Yes once again Glenn was up late the night before packing for another long trip, but there was other stuff to do before that was more important! (Glenn's excuse). To be fair, we didn't have a huge amount of warning once again for this trip, so with only the work planned and with no time yet to dream about sightseeing the purple fields of provence, we had our last sleep in Australia before our flight.Well, a little tired, we are ready to set off again for France, Glenn to be working again, and Christie, "en vacance". We are not sure what it will be like a second time around, having seen a lot of the sights in 2001, when Glenn worked in France the first time. But we really enjoyed it then, so here's to looking forward to having a new adventure.On y va!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/rtw_2005-2006/1160271000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/rtw_2005-2006/1160271000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/rtw_2005-2006/1160271000/tpod.html Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:41:49 -0500 Are we there yet??? Our round-the-world trip 2005-2006

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Machu Picchu, Peru

We woke early and looked outside... "Bugger, crap weather". Glenn had organised to go paragliding in the Sacred Valley, near Chinchero (and Christie was coming along as we were continuing on afterwards to Machu Picchu), but on meeting up with the paragliding instructor at 8am, it was bad news. "Sorry, the weather is no good... come back in 1.5hrs..." Not a good start.Returning after the time expired, the instructor decided that we were good to go, and with another group of 4 young girls going, we set off. The jump off point was a "mirador" (viewpoint) that we had passed on our Sacred Valley tour, but it was overcast there (meaning no thermals) and with no wind either. We waited there for another hour, before the instructor decided to try another spot that "he knew" which hopefully had better conditions for flying. The views at the Mirador were spectacular, so we weren´t too disappointed, but were worried about the quality of the flight that we might get today.A bit of 4 wheel driving and we were at the next mountain, again with panoramic views over the valley. The weather was supposedly a bit better here, but again with no thermals, we were relying on wind, and there was hardly any of that there too. One of the girls took the first flight and it looked pretty poor - they had hardly any elevation and ended up circling a lot not that far off the ground to get 10mins in the air - well short of the supposed 45min flight time (minimum 15mins). The next girl got a bit more elevation at first, but again, spent time "fluffing" at the bottom, so when the weather turned black - with crazy storms, Glenn wasn´t too disappointed that he missed out his turn. He wasn´t looking for a lame "fluff" for his first paragliding flight. We got a refund, so that was good, especially since he provided lunch as well, and they dropped us off at Chinchero, with our daypack stuffed with gear to last us a few days.It was raining, and it put a bit of a dampener on our sightseeing interests, so with not much point in hanging around, we caught a bus onward to Ollantaytambo. Our train to Aguas Calientes was at 8pm that night, so we had a lot of time to kill.We had previously visited the ruins of Ollantaytambo on the Sacred Valley tour, so this time we decided to walk around the town itself. The town was also constructed by the Incas, and quite well preserved, with only the second stories being added since the Inca times. Some of the doorways were fascinating - trapezoidal doors and lots of construction taking into account earthquake resistance.The town was actually quite impressive, with wonderful views and kids playing in the streets. After wandering around the town, we decided to find where the train station was and made the long walk down. It was still way too early, and with the town done, the only other way to kill time was to eat! We decided to head back uphill but when Glenn spotted a Peruvian "moto-taxi" - basically a tuk tuk, he just had to have a go! We jumped in and loved the experience again - noisy and polluting yes, but what fun! We both had big smiles on our faces when we jumped out at the top. We picked a restaurant (with them all trying to outdo the other) and were really surprised and impressed with the quality of meal we got. It was a fantastic dinner!We headed back downhill and waited for the train. Of course when it arrived, we were waiting at the wrong spot, but getting on it we were relieved - by now we were very tired. Even though it was dark, the views outside were still quite beautiful, but squinting through tired eyes was tough and we soon nodded off...The train arrived at Aguas Calientes, the town nearby the ruins of Machu Picchu, at around 10pm and the station was absolutely crazy with people, touts, and general chaos. We pushed our way through the crowds, ignoring all the touts and ended up in the main square. It was here we spotted our hotel (that we had the sense to pre-book) - too easy, and the lady at the door was even expecting us! We settled in and were in bed by 11pm. We had a big day planned for tomorrow!Glenn was interested in hiking up to see sunrise, but on learning that they wouldn´t open the gates until 6am, we decided instead to get the first bus up there, which would get us there at as the gates opened, but without the 1.5 hour hike uphill! We got up at 4.30am (yawn) and queued up at 5am to get tickets for the 1st bus up to Machu Picchu. Glenn was a bit bitey due to the lack of sleep and at a few comments by another tourist about pushing in the queue he snapped - but when it was clearer that they were talking about the girls in front, he apologised... oops... bit grumpy at this hour of the morning!We arrived at the ruin site just as the gates opened and hiked straight up to the watchman´s house for the classic view of Maccu Picchu sprawled out in front of us, with "Huayna Picchu", the sharp peak immediately behind the ruins, peeking out through the fog that was trickling over the site. The view was simply amazing. The fog which would at times encompass the whole site and then open to leave peepholes views of the ruins - it made it so atmospheric. We spent a lot of time at this viewpoint, having a few pictures taken with the llamas that decided to join in and watch the sunrise.While here, we saw the Inca Trail hikers arrive and were happy to see our friends Barbara and Henrik who we had met in Cusco arrive from their hike.We continued to explore the ruins and then decided to climb Huayna Picchu - yes, you can actually climb the big mountain behind it! And yes, Christie did join Glenn in climbing to the top! The climb was a little tough at times, even going through a small cave on our hands and knees at one time to continue the climb, but the views were pretty amazing. It is a VERY different view of the site from behind the mountain, to the famous one from the watchman´s tower. Really - it looks completely different. But it was interesting to see the amount of terracing that was around the site, which is not evident from the famous view. With storm clouds threatening a thunderstorm and a down pour of rain, we opted for the sensible option to get the hell down the stairs quickly (actually Christie had to drag Glenn down who just loved being "on top of the world", and climbing the inca stair cases which had sheer cliff drops below).We ended up walking around the rest of the ruins and got another chance to take some good pictures with the afternoon light setting in... by this time we were exhausted.Instead of the bus, we ended up walking down from ruins along the trail that Glenn originally wanted to climb. We are glad that we took the bus up, because it would have been a tough slog up in the morning. The walk down took a bit longer than we thought (1.5hs!) so we were pretty stuffed when we dragged ourselves back to the hotel. All in all, we spent about 9 hrs at the site! The next day, Glenn left Christie to sleep in bed and climbed up another mountain (Putukusi) with a view over Machu Picchu. Yes, one was enough for Christie (slightly more sensible). It was a 5am start again, and the information that Glenn managed to get was that there were a lot of ladders to climb. First thing in the morning, it was indeed a tough climb (2hrs) up 5 ladders (almost vertical and with quite alot of rungs... these were to get up the cliff faces!) and climbing steep paths. Glenn finally got to the top, soaking wet from the humid weather and effort, but was a wonderful spot for breakfast.Back in Aguas Calientes, there wasn´t a lot to do for the rest of the day - they had hot thermal baths (where the name comes from), but with the weather hot enough, we weren´t nuts enough to go in. With a wander or two around town, including the touristy part and non-touristy part (quite an interesting difference!) we had an early night, as it was yet another 5am start the next day to get the train back to Ollantaytambo!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/rtw_2005-2006/1159639980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/rtw_2005-2006/1159639980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/rtw_2005-2006/1159639980/tpod.html Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:13:55 -0500 Are we there yet??? Our round-the-world trip 2005-2006

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Cusco, Peru

Before leaving home, Glenn got a "streamline" haircut, which was not overly welcomed at home, but when checking in at Sydney Airport, the LAN lady made mention that she liked it a lot more than the "mop" in his passport! Ha!After a night in Santiago (yes, again very bad food - you would have thought we would have learned from the first time), we were up at 3am and caught a taxi organised through the hotel to the airport. The taxi driver was a real character and he really lifted our spirits before we caught our early morning flight to Lima (with stories about Machu Picchu being an aphrodisiac - hence his 7 children!), and then had an afternoon flight to Cusco. We are now back on track from when we left for home.We flew into Cusco on another small plane, the landing was a little hairy but we made it okay. The airport was also small, and as soon as we stepped off the plane we knew that we had arrived at a prime tourist destination - there were people dancing in traditional costume, handing out food and free gifts - get us out of here! We grabbed our bags and negotiated with a taxi driver to take us to our guesthouse in town. We had hoped to stay at the Casa Grande and lucky for us they had one room left. A little dingy and on the bottom floor, but we really din´t care at this point - after 3 days on planes and serious jet lag (not to mention the altitude) we needed sleep! And after a quick walk around the centre of town to get our bearings that is just what we did - sleep!We went to bed at 3pm, but didn´t wake up until 10pm! It was too late to go out, so we decided to keep sleeping, but couldn´t get out of bed until 11.30am the next day - we had overslept too much and felt yuck!We changed rooms to a much better room upstairs and then went out for lunch, spoiling ourselves with some expensive pasta. We had a bit more of a wander around town and tried to find the tourist information office. Cusco really does have something special about it, we can understand why it is so popular (other than it´s proximity to Machu Picchu). The central area is steeped in history and it very much tourist central, which is fine, but it only takes a short walk from town to get away from all that too.After our expensive lunch we decided on a cheaper dinner at 3.50 Peruvian Sol each (just over $1US). It was a little strange. A soup for starters which was good, but then an omelette served with rice. Don´t know how the rice is supposed to go with an omelette!That night Christie was not feeling really well (no it wasn´t the cheap meal) and we were worried that the flu she had managed to fight off at home was coming back, so it was straight to bed for her.The next day our worries were realised and Christie´s flu was back with a vengeance. She spent the whole day in bed while Glenn caught up on guidebook reading. A little better the following day we went into town, met a few of the local kids and took a few pictures but with Christie still unwell it was a short day as well.Christie decided to be a tough cookie the following day and we headed out of Cusco for the day to the nearby market town of Pisac, being Sunday it was the biggest day for the market there. First we had to find the bus station for the local bus to Pisac. We eventually found it, a patch of dirt with a tin shed for a ticket office. Glenn went to pay for the tickets and they told him his 5 sol coin (about $1.50US) was a "falso" (a fake). Yes he was devastated for a while, but it wasn´t long before he was planning how to palm it off onto someone else!The bus to Pisac took around an hour and as we got off the bus at the bridge there was a local guy eager to help us out and point us in the right direction. He wasn´t a tout, just a really friendly guy. We walked up towards the market and decided to go to the church first (to try to catch the procession we had read about), but there was not much to see as the service was still happening. We went back into the market to take some photos, hanging out in our favourite part of any market - the fruit and veggie section (always the most colourful and lively). We had fun buying different fruits (like little oblong apples, passionfruit and a dessert-like huge bean (whose insides was creamy and delicious).After a couple of hours of this we did some shopping - after all it was market day. By this time it was too late to head up the nearby mountain to see the Inca ruins, so after having a late lunch, we walked back to the bus stop for Cusco. Being the end of the day the first bus was very full, so we waited for next one (which was just as full!). Glenn managed to get rid of his falso coin on this bus!The full day out in Pisac was too much for Christie and she felt horrible again the next day. Lucky for Glenn he had met up with a Danish couple, Barbara and Henrik, a couple of days before who had asked him along on a day trek to some nearby Inca ruins.So with Christie stuck in bed again, Glenn set out with Barbara and Henrik to hike to visit four Inca sites nearby to Cusco. We snaked our way through the back streets of Cusco, winding our way and puffing up the steep streets and stairs to the control gate for the site. Glenn bought a 10 day ticket (needed later to do the sacred valley trip) but Henrik realised that they had left their tickets back at the hotel, so he had to run back down to get them... the walk up was bad enough! The first Inca site, also being the biggest and most impressive was called "Sacsayhuaman", also nicknamed "sexywoman" due to the pronunciation. This site had huge stones, seemingly impossible to lift, carved precisely to fit the stones around. This was not a case of dumping rocks on top of others - this was precision stonemasonry, and the size of the stones was the most impressive! It was not as if someone could simply lift them up to check the fit, some stones weighed up to 130 tonnes! Luckily Henrik and Barbara had a more detailed guidebook, so we were able to pick out a few of the important features - like the Puma´s foot as part of the wall. We climbed the hill nearby, called the Inca´s throne, and to our surprise on the other side, some local kids had found a better use of the rock face - a huge slippery slide! As tempting as it was, we noticed the ragged state of their jeans, so thought better of it (as we still had a few more months wear out of them!). Maybe we are just getting old!We continued on to "Q'enqo", which is an Inca temple and amphitheatre, but we weren´t able to understand a lot. A few tour groups arrived, so we tried to listen in a bit, but the rain decided that we weren´t being fair and started to bucket down. Standing on top of the ruins - carved into the rock face, wasn´t the most stable place to be with rain. We didn´t get a lot out of this site, except to note the zigzagging drainage lines running down from the top - like an alter site, where perhaps blood or Chicha (corn based alcohol) may have run.With the rain, the prospect of hiking the 7km or so to the next site was not so inviting, and with a taxi waiting there offering his services - well, it was too good to turn down.We arrived at "Puka Pukara", also called the red fort, due to the colour of the stone, and we had a pretty good view around the valley, but other than that it was not so exciting, so we continued a short way down to "Tambo Machay", with its natural spring water flowing through the Inca stone work. Legend has it (from what Barbara and Henrik had learnt) was that those that drank from the spring would live to be 100 years. So of course we had to have a drink!Walking back to the road, a bus was passing, so we flagged it down and got a lift back to Cusco. Too easy. With the rain before we had been dreaming of hot chocolates, but by the time we got back, we were starving, so ended the day with a feast of "Chifa" (Chinese)!The following day, with Christie getting better, we walked up to the San Blas area of Cusco. After visiting the local church, which was quite beautiful inside (but no photos allowed :( ) we tried to walk up to the highest point for a view and it wasn´t long before we were met by a little helper, a young boy wanting to show us the way. We couldn´t shake him, so we had a bit of a chat to him instead - he was really a nice little guy who just seemed like he was really bored. We found the viewpoint and took some photos and then said goodbye to our little mate before heading back down to do some shopping. After spending a day organising all of our tickets and transport needed for Macchu Picchu, we decided to join a tour of the Sacred Valley the next day.On the tour we visited the main sites of the valley, including Pisac again (we got to see the ruins this time), Ollantaytambo, Urubamba and Chinchero. It was great to see some Inca sights and actually get some decent information on them, our guide was very informative. It would help us out when we visited Machu Picchu in a couple of days. Ollantaytambo and Chinchero were our favourite places of the day and we were glad that we would be visiting them later on our own. Chinchero just had the most amazing light when we visited (as you can see in the photos).
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/rtw_2005-2006/1156820400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/rtw_2005-2006/1156820400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/glenn_christie/rtw_2005-2006/1156820400/tpod.html Thu, 02 Nov 2006 15:48:18 -0500 Are we there yet??? Our round-the-world trip 2005-2006

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Sydney, Australia

We arrived home in Sydney on the morning of 28th August. Glenn´s amazing Dad fought so hard for us and we made it home in time to say our goodbyes before he passed away that afternoon.As you can imagine, this has been a very hard time for both of us, and we have only got through it due to the amazing strength, support and love of our families and our beautiful friends.We have truely cherished our time at home, and although it has been incredibly sad, we have experienced some really beautiful moments as well, including:- Meeting our niece Emily for the first time. We are truely besotted and are already missing her cuddles.- Playing with our niece Madison, and hearing her call us Uncle Glenn and Aunty Christie for the first time (okay, Gwen & Chrissie, but close enough for us).- Being in the country while Christie´s cousin Matthew and his wife Cindy welcomed their twin boys, Aidan and Sean, into the world. We are actually looking forward to the baby sitting guys!- Being there for Christie´s cousin Erin and her fiance James engagement celebrations, and being able to share in the enjoyment of our engagement with everyone as well.We were so glad to be soaking up all of this time at home, but we also realised that we had a dream that wasn´t complete, and it wasn´t only our dream, but Glenn´s Dad´s dream too - to finish our travels. Just the thought of Dad´s excitement at all of our travel stories was enough to stir the drive in us to keep going. So we are off again to South America, after almost a month back at home. Let the adventure continue!
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