paris on the cheap
An uncle with an unused apartment in Paris is extremely convenient! We set up base for two weeks to explore parts of France there. Accommodation prices in Paris were astronomical so for us to be able to save that much money, we were able to make our money go a little further!
Here we are in France in September and it is still hot. This heat wave that has hit Europe was giving us an extra long experience of summer. We spent our days in Paris walking the streets, exploring the touristy things as expected but also experiencing it as if we were a local. We caught the metro from the apartment, we shopped at the local supermarket to pick up breakfast, lunch and dinner, we tried using some high school French that we knew… not that J’ai douze ans (translation: I’m 12 years old) would EVER come in handy.
As with any other person’s holiday to France, we also visited Versailles to be wide-eyed at the Palace and its gardens. One word to describe it: “magnifique”. We spent most of our time in the gardens, exploring and wandering and if there is ONE tip that we can offer, it is this: Be prepared to pay 5 Euros for orange juice in a tiny plastic cup.
We also got a taste of the Loire Valley by catching a train to Tours. All the tours to the chateaus were fully booked so we resorted to having a taxi driver for the day to take us around for 80 Euros. He took us to Chateau de Chenonceau, apparently the most impressive. Impressive it was but now we want to see the others. Its now been slapped onto our to-do for future.
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brussels and amsterdam
After two months living as nomads in hotels, we finally got to stay in a home and get home cooked meals. We stayed with family in Brussels and used this as our base for a week. We spent most of our time getting to know cousins, aunties, uncles, grandpa… it was lovely to feel like we belonged somewhere. From Brussels, we visited Bruges and the Netherlands (a.k.a Holland).
The day we visited Mannekin Pis, there was a festival on so instead of seeing the usual statue, we saw the boy dressed up. There was music and a procession before the boy was unveiled dressed in what appeared to be a Musketeer outfit. Obviously it was all in Flemish or French so we were only able to observe without really understanding. We did get to see him au naturale though when we returned from Amsterdam and were in the vicinity again.
Now Amsterdam is a very small city. A city easily explored on foot or on bike….The latter of which is a very popular mode of transport. We have never seen so many bicycles parked in any one place ever! One of our must-dos for Amsterdam was to visit Anne Frank’s house. Having read her diary when we were younger, we were keen to see for ourselves what her living quarters were like. It seemed like everyone else had the same idea, hordes of people trundling up and down through the narrow house. It was a very touching and sad experience all the same.
Being in the Netherlands and not eating cheese, seeing windmills, or trying on clogs would be considered outrageous! So we did a day trip to Volendam and Marken where we experienced all those three things in one day!
Belgium and the Netherlands are two very quaint countries that we would one day like to come back and explore some more.
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curve balls in London
It might be hard to believe for some but we saw blue skies in London and to gloat even more, the entire week that we were there was filled with sunshine and blue sky. There was nothing to complain about in London. Everything from visiting Windsor Castle to buying a donut at Harrods, day trips to Oxford University and the Cotswolds. London has it all when it comes to things to see and do.
But to be fair, let’s just London did throw us come curve balls!
One day, we went to eat Yum Cha. To be clear, it is known as Dim Sum here….which we needed to get our heads around. Then once seated, we expected the waitresses and waiters to start wheeling round the trolleys full of goodies. Sadly, this was not to be…. We had to order off the menu. What?!! That’s not Yum Cha… that’s just a la carte!
And then there was the night where we went to watch Phantom of The Opera, which was fantastic! Before we saw the musical though, we had a pre-dinner meal at an Italian restaurant. Who would expect that we would be serenaded by a 4-man band and an accordian and then have to pay a tip to them. Hadn’t seen that one coming, honestly thought it was restaurant entertainment thrown in.
Admittedly, this was probably our obnoxiousness, but how can they NOT have chicken salt for their chips in the UK? There we were ordering some hot chips at a takeaway joint, and then we asked for some chicken salt. We may as well have had green heads climbing out of a UFO. Geez!!
And lastly, we hopped on a bus en route to the “city” (apparently) until we reached a “terminus” where the driver told us to get off and wait for the bus across the road that will take us back to the city. So we did as we were told and waited by a bus stop that had a notice which read, “Bag snatching area! Beware of thieves!” Great!! Just great, we had been dumped in the middle of nowhere by a bus driver so we could be mugged. Anxiously we waited for the bus, and over the crest it came to save the day. And who else would be driving the bus, but the same bus driver that had just kicked us off…. What the???
There’s no need to share much more about what else happened in London (and the surrounds) as we are very sure everyone else who has been there can rattle off all the typical tourist sights…. And despite the little bit of madness, we enjoyed it ever so much!
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stones, spiders in bath, oh my!
The last fortnight we have stayed in York, Cardiff and now Bath.
Arriving in Bath and staying at Travelodge Bath Waterside – we have never experienced such appalling conditions ANYWHERE. Let’s just name a few of the disasters:
- there were spiders EVERYWHERE in the hotel. Webs along the corridors nesting lots of spiders
- a spider ran across the bed as we lay in bed
- the room smelt like sewerage
- used tissue paper stuffed back into the tissue box
- extremely incompetent and rude front of desk staff: we were expecting a phone call from some family in Bath and the hotel told them that no one by our names were staying there and apparently they didn’t have stamps for postcards to Australia (whatever that was suppose to mean)
But anyway, enough whinging on our behalf and onto what we actually got up to.
“Oh, who can ever be tired of Bath?” Catherine Morland (Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey) – and we could somewhat agree – Bath is a gorgeous city. It was also a convenient base for us to do a few other things; visiting/meeting family was a major reason!
On one of the days, we visited the Roman Bath Museum and were able to try the natural hot springs bath water – which tasted like stale warm water. But besides that, what a remarkable museum. We are not really museum type of people but thoroughly enjoyed this one.
On another day, we visited Stonehenge and the Avebury Stone Circles – walking around listening to the history behind these rocks. There will always be theories about it but will we ever really know how Stonehenge was built and why? These types of mysteries will all be intriguing. On the road, we also saw 2 of Wiltshire white horses. Gosh, this area of the world fascinates us so much.
View more pictures from our trips in Photo Gallery
wise monkeys abroad 