In the country side....

Paris is now behind us & we are heading south through the French country side.
The stress factor has now wound back considerably. If you are watching the Tour De France Highlights at 6pm on SBS the
country side is just like that. We are very happy to be out of the city & driving through these ancient villages, all of
which are only 3 or 4 klms apart. There are many deserted buildings in the villages, I suppose this is a symptom of the
decline in the French population in the country side.

We have been driving the last 2 days in constant freezing drizzling rain, while only a few hundred kilometres away on Corsica
The TDR has started in glorious sunshine. Fine weather is predicted to move here tomorrow. We had great difficulty yesterday
in finding accomodation around Dijon but finally got a lovely comfortable little room in Sur L'darc, about 20klms south.
We stayed in a 450 year old building ( I think it may have been renovated sometime during that period)
It was the most comfortable & cosy accomodation we have yet had on this trip.
The locals don't consider 450 to be excessively old & it is hard to imagine that the building had been standing for over
200 years when Australia was discovered.(I don't think the traffic was as bad then.)
We ate at a great restaurant where we met a Belgian couple on holidays. They were the only ones who could speak any English at
all & were very entertaining. They told us that the further south we go the less people can speak English.
We have found this to be true, as since then we have met no one else capable of speaking any English at all.
We did impress ourselves in ordering a drink of wine in 3 languages. The waiter was speaking French, so I only caught about
2 words, so I asked him if he spoke German, as Germany is only about 200klms away, & he said yes. But to my dissappointment
I was 3 times more fluent in German than he was. So we proceeded to organise the drinks in words of French, English & German.
The result was we got what we wanted & and a good laugh to boot.

Today the language problem has continued as no one at all has been able to speak any English at all.
We still seem to be able to get our meaning across & were even able to use a complicated system in the laverie (laundromat)
'
The surprising thing is that 200klms north of here the word for laundromat is 'blanchisserie' here no one seems to understand
that & the word is 'laverie'. We are now slowly learning to decipher written signs & we are picking up new key words.
In the super market I was able to say 'moneit pur lavage machine' to get some change for the laundromat & this evening was able
to book into the hotel with the host unable to speak any English.
I must admit this does add a level of stress to the holiday & it is much easier in NZ & USA.

Well I better sign off as Yvonne is starving & has hinted at me 3 times to go to the restaurant.
I don't know when we will post this as there is no internet available in this village.

Back from dinner & feeling very smug as we were able to order dinner & wine succesfuly.With a little help from the German
and French menus, I was able to ask for the bill & answer
a question as to how far we are travelling, enquire about the time for breakfast & wish the host goodnight.
The entertainment for the evening was the dog fight. In France people bring their pet dogs to restaurants & tonight there were
2 large shaggy dogs as big as Rocko already in the restaurant when we arrived. This was fine until a large black dog arrived
with his owner for dinner, then there was much growling barking & snapping & chairs being knocked about with owners pulling
hard on leashes.

Ville Motier.. W

View out of our hotel port hole

450 year old hotel. (top right round window was our home)

Street scene

Yvonne among the flowers

Flower close up

Paris continued............

Well I just had a shower & feel much better. We don't get a lot of sleep as the sun doesn't set until well after 9pm & even now at 10.20 pm it is still quite daylight outside.
After yesterdays stressful day, today was quite the opposite, With our new found knowledge of the Metro we quickly made our way to 'Notre Dame de Paris'. I believe this building to be more spectacular than the Eifel Tower but pics can not do it justice, so I may or may not put them in.
From here we wandered along the Seine to the Louvre & its distinctive glass pyramid. The complex is vast with much of it underground. Again this was far better than we expected & we both enjoyed it very much.
We wandered through Napoleans' chambers which were unbelievably ornate, looked at 600 year old paintings that looked like they were painted last week & sculptures up to 1000 years old.

But Yvonne was keen to see some small painting of a round faced girl & we had to fight the crowd to get there as apparently she is very popular.
We considered doing an open topped bus tour but instead chose a sidewalk lunch & getting pissed on really good wine & I am glad we took the cultural option as it topped off a great day.
Tomorrow we point the C4 Southwest toward Switzerland & see how far we get.

Rungis... LL

Last day in Paris... Just arrived home in Rungis. Really big & enjoyable day out.
What a hectic 2 days it has been, I was too tired last night to add anything but a couple of pictures to the blog.
For those of you who don't have a life & are willing to read any crap I will briefly recap.

Picked up our brand new leased Citroen c4,a far fancier & roomier car than we expected.
Because I normally drive & enjoy a manual, this induced a brain fart, which led me to order a manual.
I will not detail any of the stressful horrors we experienced driving on the wrong side of the road in a diesel car with stick
 shift on the wrong side, in indescribably horrendous Paris traffic.We survived, just, & Yvonne will no doubt tell you that I
was calm & collected through whole ordeal. I can say that as she never seems to post anything on here anyway.

As our luck would have it, Paris is having some type of aviation spectacular & every hotel room in the city was booked.
Lucky for us we met a young hotel employee who could almost speak English & he decided to see if he could help us.
And help us he did. We were fortunate enough to be allocated the broom cupboard, which had a blocked drain overflowing the
entire floor & floating Yvonnes pyjamas out of the shower room.
 But we did have internet, which is very fortunate as the French would never lower themselves to have any English language
programes like every other country in Europe.

As for going into Paris city it was an order of magnitude more difficult than organising an intersteller colonisation program.
We had to catch a bus (but which bus?)from Le Delta to the Metro underground at Denfert Rocherau.That particular Metro Hub
has at least 4
levels of underground stations, with multiferous platforms & at least 2 different types of trains.All ticket selling booths
are purposely  closed & locked & prior to any tourists arriving in the morning. This leaves only self serve machines for
ticketing. All self serve machines except 1 are French only. The one that is multi language is exactly the same with some
language program added to the touch screen.(heaven forbid they should add that program to more machines)
The line of tourists with luggage in tow buying tickets to the airport stretched all the way outside the station.
This was the line we had to join.There were further difficulties in deciding which (unmarked) zone we were travelling to.
I will go no further into detail as I am sure you have better things to do with the rest of your life.

We eventual arrived at Duplex Metro station, not far from the Eifel Tower & found the 'sortie'.
The entire drama taking several hours.

By contrast today we have accumulated several very handy things.
.1.A detailed map of colour coded underground Metro lines.
.2. Knowledge of where & when the correct bus runs
.3. A few more key French words. The French are very good at forcing you to learn their language.
.4. site map of the city.

Today we breezed into the city in 45 minutes & I even helped a Spanish speaking girl who was in the same position as we were
yesterday. Not bad considering I don't speak any Spanish (yet).

We were suitably impressed by the Eifel Tower, much more spectacular than any photos can convey, in fact breath taking.
As it was quite a stressful day yesterday the Eifel Tower was of course closed due to industrial action, so we walked across
the Seine to the arc de triumph & watched the insane vehicular battle taking place around it.
I have made a short video of this & will try to put it on the blog. Not sure if I can.

Handsome dude in front of the 'Louvre" entrance

A few small wines & lunch on the sidewalk

Me preparing this blog post today, in front of the French air conditioner

                                                   Paris is crazy busy & crazy traffic.

The saddest sign of all

In the air again...
We have just departed Berlin for Paris, Orly. We are barely 15 minutes into the flight & Yvonne is already asleep,
she is getting very good at sleeping on planes. It has been raining & blowing all day in Berlin with the temp around 10 degrees
It has been so heavy that it seemed almost like night time.
Now @ 30,000ft the sun is streaming in, a snow white field of cloud beneath us & a cobalt blue sky above.
It is 25 to 8 & the sun is still high in the sky. Drinks & dinner are on their way. The forecast for Paris is fine & 20 degrees.

I reckon I have already put on a kilo or 2.
Dinner now complete,very unusual when I booked this flight on the net, I had the option of a chef prepared meal (ha ha ) from a very large
menu for a very small charge. We have now received that meal. It really was hot & spicy as ordered & delicous & big.
We must have been the only ones on this full plane to order a meal as everyone else got a packet of peanuts or a Mars bar (which we also got).
tHE SMELL OF OUR 2 meals wafted through the whole plane.There was some serious meal envy going on.

Well this is quite a short flight (1.15) so so we just finished climbing out & are now decending into Paris so I will shut down before I am told to.

Next morning..What achange to fly into Paris compared to every other airport.
Off the plane we walked a good 20 minutes. including travelators to finally reach baggage claim.Yvonne got the passports out
& all the usual stuff you need to escape the clutches of an airport, only to find that when we walked out of baggage claim
we were on the street.No customs, no passport control, no security, just nothing.
At this point I may also mention to those people who may travel to the USA & NZ may recall departure cards, arrival cards,
passport control, security & baggage checks, x- rays, body scans, finger printing, photos & retina scans.
In oiu oiu Paris this does not apply.

              This is what is parked infront of our hotel room... Concord

                                      Yvonne enjoys health food at a Berlin outdoor Beer Garden


Great day in Berlin. We cycled around all the main sites in Berlin. The 10k bike ride in 4.5 hrs turned into
 25 - 30k  & 5.5 hrs.
All this was achieved without anyone wearing a helmet & no waivers needing to be signed, in fact we stopped during the tour
for lunch & were urged to drink as many 1 litre beers as possible to make the cycling even more enjoyable & the proximity of
buses less daunting.No one was asked to pay for the tour until we returned, relying completely on peoples honesty.
 It was just grab a bike & lets go. All a bit different to over regulated Australia.

 It was fantastic, with a group of 22 riders including the guide, we cycled through every red light in Berlin,
cut off traffic, buses & trucks included & we were only 1 of probably 30 bike tours running all over the city.
The car, bus & truck drivers are very tolerant, unlike Australia. Our guide was funny & thoughtful.
He asked Gunther to ride as sweep ( nothing new there ).For his trouble he received an authenticated piece of the
 Berlin wall & a 0.51L stubbie of German beer. ( now empty )
The bike tour is a must for anyone ever going to Berlin.
Bikes are ubiquitous in Berlin, probably many more bikes than cars, great for a totally flat city & cheap to hire anywhere.

The city is truly lovely with many green & park areas. There are many canals, which are well used.
The cycle tour was comprehesive in its scope, with avery high level of adrenalin delivery.
Nearly evryone on the tour escaped with minimal injuries.

As I type this at the desk in front of our hotel window, it is raining & miserable outside.
We were very lucky yesterday to have had good weather for our ride.
Shortly we are going into the city to catch a few things we didn't have time for yesterday.
Public transport is very good here & much easier to understand than in Brisbane. Even with a different language.
This evening we are catching a 6.45pm flight for Orly in Paris & we will still arrive in daylight as it doesn't get dark
until after 9.30pm.  I will probably continue this on the plane...........

Yvonne & Gunther at the Brandenburg gate 'No mans land' Berlin.

Made it to Dubai, finally..Glad for the overnight rest. Flew diagonaly across India, with some very rough air off the west coast of India & on into the Gulf of Aman & on to the Persian Gulf.
Dubai is HOT !! 38 degrees & 100% humidity blowing in from the gulf & WOW what an airport.. We had some language difficulties on arrival & English signage is minimal, so after some confusion we obtained a handfull of Dirham (local currency )from a machine.Everything here is clean, new & bold & no graffiti at all. Great hotel with an early departure in a couple of hours for Munich.
I am writing this at 3.30am after a fabulous 10 hour sleep, our bodies still think it is 9.30am so we are now wide awake, great for an early departure.
The hotel has offered to make us an early boxed breakfast to go. Travelling west following the sun makes early departures very easy. I guess it will be the opposite on the way home, but as luck would have it we will be having evening departures.

A couple of hours later........... We are now sitting in a lovely new A380 with a window seat heading out over the Gulf for Afgahnistan..
Our first flight today will take us directly over Bahgdad & past all the other Stans & be in Munich around 1pm
Change planes to Air Berlin then onto Berlin by 4pm. The menu has just been delivered & for breakfast it will be traditional Arab mezze ((moutabal, labneh ball,halloumi cheese, chick peas balila & fresh crudites )
Deli platter, croissant & tea or coffee. Don't know what most of it is but it will be fun finding out.
Lunch is..Shrimp cocktail, chicken cacciatore, lamb biryani with banana suchard, cheese & biscuits & chocolates for desert.
I have stuck all this crap in as I am not keeping a diary & we may like some of this stuff & I can refer back.

The Gulf has a large amount of shipping, as you would expect & there are numerous oil outlets in the sea, some of which have
burning chimneys on them
We have just flown over Kuwait. The whole country looks like an enormous sand pit with lots of lines on the sand & numerous
oil wells dotted around with burning chimneys.
Iraq is not much better, but with farms crowded around the Tigris river. The area around Bahgdad is desolate.
It is hard to believe that all those problems are still going on only 10 Klms below us, while we sit here in luxury enjoying
great food.

We have carefully skirted around the border of Syria. I guess so that no trigger happy rebel fires amissile at us.
As we are now approaching the Turkish border we can clearly see many snow capped mountains in Iran along the border with Iraq.
It is hard to believe that the snow can exist in this incredible heat in summer.Southwest Turkey also has many snow capped ranges.
We have stuck another airport photo in todays blog as up to now thats what we have seen most of.
I think I will have to start a separate blog page just for airport photos. We can then put in all the other airport photos &
we will then have a magnificent collection of airport pics ( how exciting ).
The scenery below is now changing & becoming even more mountainous with proper buildings & towns & better sealed roads.We are getting closer to Europe.
( If you are getting bored with this rambling crap just skip to tomorrows post, which may be worse )

 The moving map only goes to English labels every few minutes, the rest of the time it is in Arabic & so are the announcements
on the plane. Yvonne says she is sick of hearing Arabic.Tomorrow I think she will be sick of hearing German. At least one of
us will understand whats going on.
So much for Yvonnes theory that most people will speak English. That has not been our experience in Dubai.
As I type this there are enormous lakes from dams below us in the middle of very
mountainous & arid country. I am sure this multi armed lake is in excess of 100klms. This area has to be worth a road trip at
some future date.
The computer battery is running low but I have just found a convenient power point on the seat back in front of me so I am
now on charge & can continue rambling.
On our right I can now see the coast of the Black sea. I think the other side of the black sea borders Russia, I will have to
refer to an atlas.
This is a great geography lesson as I can now see how all these places relate together.
We have now again altered course & are headed directly toward Istanbul. ( I am sure thats in Turkey )
Ooooops more turbulence, set belt sign on, not too bad in this big bird though.
Three hours to Munich & I am enjoying typing this much more than watching some movie, even though there is quite a large selection.

A quick note on toilets ???
 In the most spectacular airport terminal engineering structure on earth, we find the toilets rather interesting.
Upon opening the cubicle door there is a hole in the floor with a stainless steel surround which you squat over & crap in,
beside you is a hose to spray your arse with on completion of your task.I discovered this on arrival in Dubai & found there
were western toilets in the rear 2 cubicles after completing my business. I did not mention this to Yvonne as I thought she would enjoy discovering this
for herself. Yes sure enough Yvonne did need to use the oblutions this morning as we were waiting to depart & no she did
NOT find the western toilets in the rear cubicles. This gave me a warm glow on her return, while she was complaining.
She will discover the truth when she reads this & look to the rear on the return journey.
Just passing Ankara, I think thats in Turkey too. Turkey is big.

The plane has many muslim women aboard, mostly dressed in full black burkas with only a slit for their eyes,
while the men wear mainly western clothes.The men not wearing western clothes wear white dresses & sandals.
The woman must roast in their black sacks in this crazy hot weather.

We are now approaching North Western Turkey & will be flying over the southwest corner of the Black sea.
The country below is now quite forrested & totally different to the arid middle East.
WOW !!! The Black sea is Blue !!! Who would have thought.

Anyone who has had the stamina to read this far will be praying that our next flight will be much shorter.
Yvonne is asleep (again).

Well it looks like I won't see Istanbul as it is on the left side & we are sitting on the right side, but lunch is coming
down the isle, so its all good.

Lunch was excellent.The country below is now totally different, many villages & cities & most of the rest, neat cultivation.
We are now over Europe proper & everything is green & lovely below. The day is clear & cloud free.
We are flying paralell a river, it seems very large.

A while later..... We are now crossing into Hungary, Budapest is just ahead on the right side, out of our window.
Budapest is where our river cruise from Amsterdam ends.
I have been for a walk to strech my legs & met the aircraft manager & had a chat. It seems that Emirates now has 22 of
these A380s' with another 55 on order, with 1 being delivered every 3 months. They also have 1 new 777ER being delivered
every month until 2015.

Germany has just popped up on the map ahead of us, so my prattle will soon be coming to an end.
18 degrees on the ground in Munich, fine day, just starting our decent from 38,000 feet.
Decending over the Austrian alps, There is still quite a lot of snow around considering it is summer.The air is crystal clear.
Can see many ski runs on the mountain sides, pity it is such a long trip to get here as it would be beautiful in winter.
Closing up for landing now. (Thank god I hear you cry. )

On the ground in Berlin, after a short 1 hour flight from Munich. It is quite warm here. Yvonne is having a nap as she is not feeling well.
Yvonne gets crook everytime we travel. She says she caught something from the guy across the aisle.
Well I think that fairly thoroughly wraps up events for today. Tomorrow we cycle around Berlin. I am now going downstairs to
the bar for a well earned drink....................................

Dubai...M

In the transit lounge, Changi Airport Singapore after 7.30 flight, not quite so bushy tailed anymore. 6am local time. Waiting to re board flight to Dubai another seven & a half hours. Yvonne is starting to get grumpy.

Well its 10.30pm we have cleared security & customs & are boarding in 20 minutes. The flight has been oversold so they asked if we would defer until tomorrow night & in return we would be given return tickets to anywhere in the world valid for 12 months. Didn't have time to think about it so knocked it back. How dumb are we ?? Probably could have squeezed them for business class as well for tomorrow night.

GREAT IDEA !!!!
After our last US trip where everyone had ribbons to identify their bags, so we still didn't know which ones were ours, we have decided to paint all handles bright yellow.
I guess we will get to baggage claim & see 1000 cases with yellow handles.

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Only 4 days to go...

Are we ready ??

No idea we've never done this before!!