Day 3

Yesterday was day 3. My reason behind typing out it’s events a day late is because our last hotel didn’t actually have an outlet to charge the computer. Yesterday was mostly a travel day. We were up bright and early to be on the road again. Our tour guide told us that Avignon wasn’t the most exciting place in the world and that we only really stop there because Barcelona is too far of a drive for a single day. Don’t believe that – Avignon was great! We stopped for wine tasting about half way there and got to sample a red wine, white wine and sparkling wine. The white was ok, the red was a little better in my opinion (Matt didn’t care for it at all), but the sparkling wine was amazing! Amazing enough to pick up a bottle. A bottle of wine from France!! Bought in France!! I’m so excited!

Afterwards we continued on our long journey and finally made it in Avignon. The “not the most exciting” scenery of Avignon was stunning. There was a music festival going on, so there were people all over the place. Street performers juggled batons of fire on a unicycle, swallowed balloons and sold all sorts of jewellery and knick-knacks. We saw Pope’s palace and wandered around the outside of it.

We didn’t stay out as late as some of the group and wandered back to the hostel relatively early. The hostel was... not a 5 star hotel, but we did luck out because while the rest of the groups had 4 people, Matt and I were on our own again because of the way numbers fit together. We had a bed, a bathroom that contained a sink, a shower, but no toilet. The shower didn’t have an enclosure of its own- it drained in the middle of the bathroom floor. The internet was too expensive to bother with so we had a relaxing night in.

Day 2

Today was another day of lots of excitement!  Matt and I were up for breakfast and preparing for the day around 9.  The first thing we decided to do was see the Eiffel Tower, so we walked over to the subway, bought a day pass (which was not the easiest task to do when everything is in French) and made our way over. We didn’t go to the stop closest to it, but instead picked one where the tour guide told us was a nice viewing point. It definitely was! Our photo taking lead us closer and closer to the tower until finally we were right underneath it looking at the people lined up to go inside. We decided to wait in the line while deciding whether we were going to go up the Eiffel Tower, or make our way over to another tall tower for a nice view of Paris. We ended up choosing to stay at the Eiffel Tower, so while I was in line waiting, Matt looked around to make sure we were in the right line and see where the other lines went. He noticed that the line for tickets to take the stairs up the tower rather than the elevators was much smaller, so we decided to trek up the stairs in order to save time and be able to see more of Paris. By this point it had started to rain and people were turning back and heading for cover. We stayed where we were and got through the line in about 15 minutes!

The stairs weren’t actually too bad to climb. There were a lot of them but we were too excited to really notice them. The views were stunning and it brought back a lot of memories from my trip in highschool. I was so happy to be able to share the experience with Matt J.

After the tower, we grabbed some late lunch/early dinner at a Chinese restaurant (which ended up just being buffet foods microwaved, but still didn’t taste bad) and checking out the Louvre. The Louvre was closing in 45 min by the time we got there, so we decided it wouldn’t be worth the admission for the short time. We wandered around the area, took lots of pictures and then decided to check out Jim Morrisons grave at the cemetery.

We almost got there on time to enter before the gates closed, but ended up being distracted by a parade happening right on the street we were walking down. We stopped and watched as zumba dancers and people from all ethnicities came down the street, dancing to all sorts of different music. It was really cool to watch. Matt asked someone what was going on and he said “Carnival!”. We spent quite a lot of time there enjoying the performance. Afterwards, we got back to the cemetery which was long since closed, but we took pictures of eachother headbanging at the cemetery gates since it reminded us of the Pantera song.

We wanted to see the Eiffel Tower at night and how it lit up and had some time to kill before dark, so we decided to head back to Notre Dame to see if there were any street performers or anything interesting going on. As it turned out there wasn’t too much, so we went for another walk to check out interesting statues and buildings in the area before going back to the tower.

We finished off the evening sitting on the stairs in front of the Eiffel tower, eating crepes and just enjoying the amazing view. When the tower lit up it glowed a bronze colour at first and then started to sparkle. It was amazing to see and really the perfect way to end a night in Paris.

Afterwards, we hopped back on the tube, transferred a couple times and came back to the hotel for showering, blogging, uploading pictures to the computer (just in case anything happens to the camera) and getting ready for tomorrow. 

Eurotrip Day 1

Hey guys so at long last the trip we’ve been saving our money for is upon us and has begun quite well.  Lets start with yesterday though.

Yesterday was our last day in London and it was considerably busy.  Most people would take the day off work to sort out details but we had tried to book enough in advance to make things easier on us.  Unfortunately work dragged on longer than usual and we could not make the appointment at our ideal storage facility where 2 of our luggage bags were going to be stored while in Europe.  After several phone calls and sending Tracey off to the secondary option we just barely managed to secure somewhere to store the luggage but had to actually bring the luggage before 11pm.  Between eventually doing this and clearing out the flat we did not stop to rest really at all until midnight.

Today then began promptly at 5am.  This time again turned out to be a wee bit optimistic about ...

Tracey: Sorry about that break in thought everybody. I am carrying on with what Matt had already started typing. Anyways we were a bit optimistic of how much time we would require to pack up our final things, return the keys of the flat to the company we rented from, have the last minute sweeping and throwing things away and be on the tube.  For some reason in our tired state yesterday, we thought it would take about 40 min to do all that. With a lot of rushing around, we did it in 50 and still managed to get to our departure point, 10 minutes early instead of 20, which as it turns out didn’t matter at all because the bus was held up in traffic and running late.

In out wait time, Expat offered us free champagne mixed with orange juice, which we enjoyed with a chocolate bar we brought from home (didn’t have time to pick up proper breakfast). It was a pretty amazing start!

The bus tour itself was alright. We did about 10 hours of driving including rest stops, the border and ferry crossing. The ferry was huge and although moving quite fast, we didn’t even realize it was moving until we looked out the window a little later. It was only an hour and a half so by the time we grabbed some lunch, sat to look out the window and had a conversation with some of the others on the trip, it was over. The tour guide seemed quite strict and set on scheduling and preciseness, but she had a sense of humour. She asked all of us to go up and share a bit about ourselves and no one at all volunteered... until she offered a price for the first person. Of course I can not say no to a prize, so I was the first one up, rambling about how I am a heavy metal fan who is into old Nintendo video games, science fiction and museums. No one else had as long or as interesting of an introduction. She also asked for someone’s Ipod to put some music on the bus and no one except myself volunteered one, so we listened to Sea shanties and rock n roll. I am quite sure I’m the weird one on the trip, but so far I haven’t been shunned from conversation.

We got to Paris just after 5 and checked into our hotel. A change of scheduling gave us twin hotel rooms rather than 4 room dorms, so we are comfortable and get to sleep when we want to without being woken by roommates. It is clean, nice and really everything we need for a couple nights.

After spending about an hour in the hotel getting organized, we had our guided bus tour of Paris. The stops were all out of order because of traffic. We were told we could leave at one of two stops, Notre Dame Cathedral or the Eiffel Tower as long as we found our own way back to the hotel. We jumped off at Notre Dame Cathedral and went for a walk to take pictures of a famous bridge with engraved padlocks all the way across it on both sides. Our tour guide told us before that couples engraved their initials on them, attached them to the gate and threw their keys into the water to symbolize their eternal love. She also mentioned that it was illegal and the locks were cut every 6 weeks or so. We got our photos and wandered back to check out the cathedral, getting distracted by people who were feeding birds and having them land right on their hands. A man gave us free bread to try it ourselves and we had a blast. At one time, there were 3 tiny little birds eating off my hand! We decided to stop for dinner and ended up getting shwarmas (cheapest food around) and then trying to check out the cathedral once again.

Outside the cathedral, there were men about my age rollerskating up ramps and doing all these tricks in the air right in front of the crowds. They were jumping pretty far into the air and doing some impressive tricks. We stayed and watched a bit, then carried on forwards.  There was a man who appeared to be fishing in a tiny bucket. When we got closer, we saw that it was a bubble wand that made massive bubbles. There was a man elegantly balancing a glass ball on his arms, neck and fingertips quite well. At some points it looked like it was floating. 2 Others were twirling batons into the air, which appeared they would later light on fire.

We finally got to Notre Dame at that point and wandered in as a movie was showing. We walked around the building to take a look at its architecture and headed out again.

At this point it was getting fairly late. We walked over to check out a statue that Matt had seen in the distance and then looked at the maps at the bus stop and in our Expat Booklets to find our way to the nearest subway system. We got to where it looked like it should be and pulled the map back out to find out specifically where to go next. As Matt was pulling out the map, I noticed people walking up stairs from underground in a not so well marked... subway station! We put the map back, went to the machine and figured out what the French screen options were and how to use the automated system to get tickets home. Once we had those printed, it was 2 transfers and just under an hour to get back to the hotel which we are sitting at right now. We have both showered and it’s 11:10pm now, so we will figure out what we are doing during our free day in Paris and finally get a proper nights sleep.

Abbey Road, planning for Europe

So the end of the trip is nearing now. In just under a month, we will be going on our big Europe tour.  This means what we have been doing lately is a lot of housekeeping in order to be ready to leave the country with little preparation time later.  Since we will be working right up until the day before the tour, we have been taking care of banking, set up an inventory with the estate agent, did tons of cleaning, weighed all our bags to see what can go home with us and what we need to sell, planned and paid for the tour, checked into paper work for the agencies we work for, dealt with the pay company, rent, deposit, applied to jobs in Canada, sold things, arranged for storage of things while we're on the tour, booked a hotel for when we get back to London the night before the flight... It's been a busy week.

Aside from that, we finally got to see Abbey road. It was hilarious. There was a ton of traffic and every now and then, there would be a tiny break which would leave just enough time for someone to run into the road, get their picture, and run the rest of the way across it, only to bolt back to the other side to redo the picture.  Fortunately for us, there were friendly people willing to take our pictures if we took theirs. It was a difficult process, with no real order. We would wait 20 min, finally be able to walk onto the road and find that crazy teenagers have decided to run into the picture and play dead in the middle of the road, so we would have to wait again. Pain in the butt! We were able to give one of the tourists information though. Suggest things to see and where to go to get there. It's pretty cool to be able to know London England well enough to say oh, yeah, check out the Science Museum. It's just outside of the South Kensington Station. Just follow the signs from the station, or hmm check out the Freud Museum. It's not too far from here, just take the road to Finchley Road Station and walk. I like having a sense of direction and knowledge of the city. I probably know London better than Windsor, due to always taking the bus to the same places in Windsor and not really bothering with the rest.

Aside from all that, what we have left is about 4 weeks of work, groceries, cleaning and doing the rest of our sightseeing. I can't believe one of the Americans I was talking to said he'd seen everything he wanted to see in 4 days. I still haven't seen it all. Then again, I don't believe I've seen all I want to see in Windsor either. Always further exploration to do.

Well I suppose for now this will be my update. I may get around to another blog or 2 before leaving but for now everything interesting is covered. I wonder if I can blog on tour... Maybe on the bus. Definitely want some sort or written record to read back through and giggle at later.

An interesting idea

Sorry, I have taken forever and then some to update this again.  It is now May, I've last updated .. probably about a couple months ago.

In that time there have been some highlights.  Lori came to visit us a month back or so.  It was nice to see her again and to catch up on everything.  We went to Camden together, the metal bar... that was unfortunately about it.  Matt and I worked all day while Lori wen't exploring, then by the time we came home, cooked dinner, tidied house and dishes... the day was coming to a close.  I am glad though that she got to see London and had somewhere to stay.

What else has happened since then... Lots of working for sure.  I asked the company to give me as much teaching work as possible (rather than teaching assistant work) and they have been trying.  Some days (like today) there is no work, but most other days, I am all over London. We live in Northwest and end up everywhere else.  This week I may end up just outside of London on the South East some days.  The travel is a bit of a pain (with some schools an hour and a half away) but it's kind of exciting, being somewhere new every day, new scenery, schools, methods of teaching... Yesterday I was in Enfield, just outside of London in the North.  That was quite the change of pace!! Walking to work I saw open fields, horses, a forested area... Everything was beautiful green and dripping from the rain.  It was almost like passing by the rainforest on the way to work.  The school was tiny- split grades all through the school, and everyone on staff knew one another.  I really liked it, aside from it being more expensive to get to and taking a while.

I was on Google Maps yesterday looking at directions from The Shire (London) to Mordor (over near Amsterdam) and Google Maps amused me by saying "One does not simply walk into Mordor". Now I have the compulsion to prove that wrong.  You see, it's 263 miles away- a little over 2 days walking, and I'm tempted to do it, just so I can say I did simply walk into Mordor. (I do realize that it will probably take more like a week or 2 since we won't be walking 51 hours straight). Not everyone get's to say that!  So now I am wondering if I can actually make that possible.  Maybe I could get into contact with a charity.  Maybe others can sign up and we could raise money for it (a little as food and accommodation expenses, most to donate).  Maybe a big group of geeks from London would all simply walk into Mordor.  I'm not sure if that idea will actually go anyplace, but I do think I will ask around next time I'm at Geekpub.  Arranging a big charity event doesn't look too bad on a resume.

Aside from that insanity, pretty much the usual is going on. Work, food, sleep. Add in some Dungeons and Dragons, a board game night, some heavy metal and an arcade and that's pretty much routine.  I love our routine.  There's also some random that get's added into the mix every now and then, mainly when we buy something off Groupon and travel half way across London to pick up what we bought- bubble tea, ice-cream, a deal at a restaurant... Also some random get's added in when we decide to go see a sight from Matt's list of unusual places in London or we decide to take the tube to a random station and wander around.

It's definitely exciting! I still absolutely love the subway system (even though those from London completely disagree due to the rush hour madness) and still love how many new and interesting things there are to explore all the time. I also love sticking around at home, playing on the computer, playing some video games, rambling to Matt about Psychology, life the universe and everything.  I love that every day has so much happiness and laughter, even while making dinner, doing dishes, brushing our teeth.  I know this sounds a bit lame since you hear it all the time, but life is what you make it, so make it awesome.  To some it may sound like London is the place to be and that they would love to be doing this, but in my opinion Canada is better and there are things to explore and enjoy no matter where you are.

On a completely random note, someone just called and asked for Mr. Monday. What a cool name!  Anyways, enjoy your day!

Oops, I was slacking on updating this again

I'm not going to write a day-by-day of the last month or anything, just hit some of the highlights of the more exciting things that have happened over the last month.  I'm not sure if my writing will be as fluent as usual - I have had a cup of particularly strong coffee and now my mind seems to be jumping from topic to topic all over the place.

One sunny afternoon, we decided to check out Camden Town with one of our new friends.  Camden is an odd place known for it's... interesting shops and alternative products.  Camden was a blast because as we walked through, we got to see a huge street market.  In this market was vendors selling every type of food imaginable as well as some funny merchandise.  There were pacman icetrays, gothic boots and clothing, glow in the dark everything, t-shirts that lit up to the beat of music... All sort's of interesting things.  We spent the afternoon going through all these odd -shops, including Cyberdog just to see all the neat and interesting items, try on some funny hats and just have a good laugh.  The description I have just given Camden does not do it justice!

Another morning, I woke up and decided to surf the web before tending to breakfast.  I was looking on Gumtree (The UK's Kijiji) and stumbled across something interesting- Cirque Du Soleil tickets!  Matt and I bought them for half of what they normally sell for, and that same evening, we were watching the show :)  The acrobatics were amazing.  People were stacked on top of people who were stacked on top of people who were stacked on top of people :)  They were spinning and climbing and swinging through the air.  The stage had sections that could move around in order to alter the scenery.  There was amazing lighting and visual effects, some of which made it look as if the people on stage were actually swimming around underneath some water.  It was stunning! I will say though- when looking at the performance of the actors alone and ignoring the fancy props, I do believe that the acrobatics show I witnessed in Beijing last summer was slightly more impressive.

Another highlight was seeing Alestorm in concert.  For those who haven't heard of them, Alestorm are a Pirate Metal band from Scotland.  They have high-energy music about sailing the sea and drinking rum.  In concert, they sounded just as good if not better than they do on their CD's.  Matt and I spent the time of the concert hanging out with a friend from Metal Warriors.  This friend and I both dressed up as pirates (my Halloween costume was a pirate, Matt didn't have pirate clothes) and all 3 of us had a great time singing along with our own glasses of rum.

After the show, we all went to a bar called Slimelight.  It was a gothic/industrial club with multiple rooms playing different types of music.  There were glowsticks everywhere! We fit in just fine in our pirate outfits, although we didn't stay too long as it was getting late.  Matt and I ended up with memberships (because they were almost the same price as a nightly entrance fee) so now we are part of a prestigious club where you need to know people to sign you in as a member.  Whether or not we go back at some point, that is pretty cool.  All we need to do is pick up our membership card once it's in.


Stanmore park was another interesting place we visit.  Although Stanmore is only 15 min away or so on the tube, we had to take part of the ride on the tube and then 2 busses because it was out of zone.  It was worth the journey though because it was the first proper part we had been to since we got to London.  Rather than being a football field like the last park, this one had all kinds of trees and paths to explore.  Matt and I definitely want to go back for another walk there at some point.

This past Saturday, we woke up and decided to go to the Hellfire Caves in West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.  We mapped it out and it turned out to be about 3 hours away, 2 tube rides and 3 busses.  That was just fine, so we got ready and were on our way out.  The tube portion of the journey went exactly according to plan.  The first bus was right on schedule, although we were only on it for 1 stop.  Had we realized that we could have walked.

The 2nd bus however took nearly an hour to get there, and when it did we found out that our bus passes were not accepted since the bus belonged to a separate company.  We got our day tickets for that company (because the bus after that would be with their company as well) and hopped on anyways.  The bus got stuck behind a huge truck and couldn't go anywhere for a good while.  When the bus driver tried to go around, he scratched a car, creating lots of paperwork and a longer wait.  This caused the people on the bus to start laughing, see the humour in it and talk to the people around them.  I snickered to myself finding it amusing that it took all that for people to say hello to the person next to them.

We eventually arrived at our stop and looked for the bus stop for our 3rd bus.  Eventually we realized that this bus didn't run on Saturdays at all, and started looking at other options.  No other bus went where we wanted to go.  One went part way- but it was a 3rd company, so we had to pay again, bus 10 min, and walk the rest of the way.

It was a relatively long walk, especially towards the end where it steeply headed uphill.  We walked and walked and eventually reached the top of the hill, only to ask for directions and find out the caves were down by the bottom- where we came from.  It was worth going up anyhow as the view was fantastic!

Back at the bottom of the hill, we finally got to the entrance.  We were told they had run out of food (which we had already paid for with our cave ticket online) and were given substitutes.  They were not worth the value of what they ran out of, but it was still tasty.

The caves were not natural caves like we had envisioned.  They were dug out of the hill and heavily processed, giving even the real rocks an artificial look.  Within half hour or so, we had seen the caves and were ready to go home.  Home involved walking 1 hour to the 2nd bus stop to carry on our journey.

It may sound like this day was a disappointment, but it was anything but that.  Matt and I were laughing the entire day, making the best of it.  We thought of it as new sights, good exercise, and a lesson in our planning.  Overall, a lot of fun!

Yesterday we have been going over the details for the end of the year tour.  We have picked something out- a 24 day budget tour by coach which hits 11 different countries.  Now we are saving out money, and trying to find ways to earn a little extra, in order to put a deposit in and raise the money for the rest of the trip.  Lori is planning on coming to visit in June, which I'm looking forward to- I think she will love it.

Living with Matt has been fantastic.  We plan everything together, get all our house work done together and are always finding new things to see and explore.  Sometimes, it seems we are in competition to be nicer to one another.  We recognize every nice gesture that we do for one another, and try to continue doing anything that makes the other happy.  I'm pretty sure that this is not how a normal relationship goes, because we still have never argued over anything, but that is ok by me. Soon we will be sending out resumes and cover letters again, with the hope of finding something close to home where most of our friends and all of our family are.

Hope everyone reading is having a decent Monday. Cheers to a great week (and fantastic weekend) ahead!~

G'day Mates!

I decided it was about time for another update. Things here have been going really well here. We are both still working, keeping up with maintaining the house and keeping it tidy, keeping the refrigerator filled with healthy meals and still having some time to relax and time to go out.

Over the weekend, we went out to another meetup with some people at the heavy metal bar. This of course was awesome as always. Matt and I made some Disaronno jello. Someone made jello shots for everyone last time and since we didn't particularity care for the Disaronno, so it was a good way to get rid of it. We hung out with some people that were there the last time and some new people. The music was great and again late in the night there was dancing, yelling out the song lyrics and just having a great time.

We also went out for bubble tea in central London. It was excellent and had exploding boba in it :) We got Caracatures done on the street. Mine has a ridiculously large grin and Matts has the biggest teeth you will ever see in your life hehe.

On Monday, I registered with another recruitment agency, this one dealing with long term positions, with many of the openings in Special Needs Schools.

Today has been fantastic. We slept in a bit and went to the London Zoo. It was gigantic and had any animal you could possibly want to see. My favorite part of this was: when we were walking through the monkey area, one of the monkeys jumped right into my purse :) I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. The Zoo Worker in the area did not agree. She asked me to walk further away from the ropes because the monkeys steal things off people and bite. There was also an aquarium, lizard building and a butterfly conservatory. The butterfly conservatory was awesome! Butterflies flew past and above us as we walked by. They stayed relatively still to eat and sit, so we were able to take some really cool photos. A butterfly even landed on my hat! It took off before we got a chance to take a picture unfortunately.

Right now, Matt is making seasoned salmon with vegetables and rice for dinner. I am really looking forward to it! After that, we will probably play some Mario Party and grab a movie to finish off the evening.

Hope all is well back home. Keep me updated every now and then please :)