To market, to market, to buy a fat pig, Home again, home again, jiggety jig.
Many of you said we couldn't do it... A number of you said that we were all talk... But here it is; the last and final blog post!
When we last left our intrepid travellers, they were waiting for a flight out of Heathrow Airport. After an uneventful flight from Heathrow to Lisbon, we exited the terminal, followed the signs to the taxi rank and found a driver leaning against his taxi. It was about this time that we realised neither of us spoke a word of Portuguese. After much consideration, we pulled out a piece of paper and pointed to the address. This did not achieve the desired effect. Within seconds, the drivers from about twenty other taxis gathered round and began talking animatedly. Giving him the benefit of the doubt we decided that he must be new. 10 minutes later as we passed the Sousa Marins Statue for the fifth time, we had to concede that they must have been discussing the longest possible route to our hostel and knew that there wasn't a thing we could do about it.
We spent five fantastically relaxing days in Lisbon. We did the touristy thing and jumped on a double-decker tour bus with grand plans of hopping off to visit museums and historic landmarks. We highly recommend that if you visit another country, to find out a bit about it first. We were so caught up with plans for the Appalachian Trail that we didn't think we'd actually make it this far. Despite not having a really touristy time in Lisbon, it's still great just to absorb a foreign city. Walking along the foreshore, we felt like locals as we sat and watched the fisherman, interrupted only by the occasional whispered offer by passers by of "hashish, hashish!"
We hopped a train from Lisbon to Madrid and enjoyed being able to finally understand a little of what was being said. We even worked out how to order a 'numero quatro' from burger king, and in a push we could order a 'numero seis'.
On our fourth morning in Madrid, we awoke to the sound of fighter planes and military looking helicopters flying circles over the city centre. Using the only Spanish we knew, we walked to burger king and ordered a 'numero seis' (desperate times call for desperate measures) and sent a message to Mike's mum asking if the world was ending. It turned out to be a practice for the following day's national holiday.
Our tour of Madrid's fast food restaurants was over before we knew it and we found ourselves in Paris. What can we say about Paris except, "le plume de ma tante est sur la table".
We knew we were in Paris as soon as we saw the skyline with the Eiffel Tower. It was much more impressive that we'd expected and didn't even slightly resemble the giant television towers that you see in North Sydney. Even though this wasn't the first time that we'd seen the Eiffel tower on our trip (refer back to the entry of Las Vegas), it's pretty impressive walking through the Champ De Mars towards the tower. We went to the top the next day and the view was, as the French say, "le bloody unreal".
Lines at the Louvre were not nearly as long as we'd been told and we were soon standing in front of the Mona Lisa. We walked down the Champs-Élysées and stood under the Arc de Triomphe. Notre Dame was spectacular and we spent quite some time sitting, staring up at the roof. We'd had a restaurant recommended to us where the owner happily spoke English and we enjoyed a lovely meal of venison, Pâté, a cheese platter and Crème Brûlée. We had drinks at a street-side cafe on the Bastille with some family friends of Zan who are living in Paris for two years.
We were soon staring at the 'White Cliffs of Dover' from the decks of the P&O channel ferry. It felt great to be back in a country where you didn't have to get out the phrase book every time you looked at a menu. We caught a bus back to London and to Zan's uncle's house (henceforth known as the 'London townhouse').
For the next two weeks we did a whirlwind tour of England. We started off in Southampton visiting Jill, Harry, Dominic and Julia S (Family friends of Zan). We saw Lord Nelson's ship The Victory in Portsmouth, The Roman Baths in Bath, Shakespeare’s Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, had dinner with Zan's Aunt and her family in Burton, visited the Peak district and went exploring with Tim and Laura and painted the town pink with David and Danann in London.
We want to thank everyone who made us feel so welcome when we visited them throughout this trip. And to those of you who have posted comments we really enjoyed seeing them. And we would like to apologise to those of you who were distracted from their university studies, work, housework, television, exercise and life in general over the last eight months.
And just to keep up the suspense... there maybe another post.
When we last left our intrepid travellers, they were waiting for a flight out of Heathrow Airport. After an uneventful flight from Heathrow to Lisbon, we exited the terminal, followed the signs to the taxi rank and found a driver leaning against his taxi. It was about this time that we realised neither of us spoke a word of Portuguese. After much consideration, we pulled out a piece of paper and pointed to the address. This did not achieve the desired effect. Within seconds, the drivers from about twenty other taxis gathered round and began talking animatedly. Giving him the benefit of the doubt we decided that he must be new. 10 minutes later as we passed the Sousa Marins Statue for the fifth time, we had to concede that they must have been discussing the longest possible route to our hostel and knew that there wasn't a thing we could do about it.
We spent five fantastically relaxing days in Lisbon. We did the touristy thing and jumped on a double-decker tour bus with grand plans of hopping off to visit museums and historic landmarks. We highly recommend that if you visit another country, to find out a bit about it first. We were so caught up with plans for the Appalachian Trail that we didn't think we'd actually make it this far. Despite not having a really touristy time in Lisbon, it's still great just to absorb a foreign city. Walking along the foreshore, we felt like locals as we sat and watched the fisherman, interrupted only by the occasional whispered offer by passers by of "hashish, hashish!"
We hopped a train from Lisbon to Madrid and enjoyed being able to finally understand a little of what was being said. We even worked out how to order a 'numero quatro' from burger king, and in a push we could order a 'numero seis'.
On our fourth morning in Madrid, we awoke to the sound of fighter planes and military looking helicopters flying circles over the city centre. Using the only Spanish we knew, we walked to burger king and ordered a 'numero seis' (desperate times call for desperate measures) and sent a message to Mike's mum asking if the world was ending. It turned out to be a practice for the following day's national holiday.
Our tour of Madrid's fast food restaurants was over before we knew it and we found ourselves in Paris. What can we say about Paris except, "le plume de ma tante est sur la table".
We knew we were in Paris as soon as we saw the skyline with the Eiffel Tower. It was much more impressive that we'd expected and didn't even slightly resemble the giant television towers that you see in North Sydney. Even though this wasn't the first time that we'd seen the Eiffel tower on our trip (refer back to the entry of Las Vegas), it's pretty impressive walking through the Champ De Mars towards the tower. We went to the top the next day and the view was, as the French say, "le bloody unreal".
Lines at the Louvre were not nearly as long as we'd been told and we were soon standing in front of the Mona Lisa. We walked down the Champs-Élysées and stood under the Arc de Triomphe. Notre Dame was spectacular and we spent quite some time sitting, staring up at the roof. We'd had a restaurant recommended to us where the owner happily spoke English and we enjoyed a lovely meal of venison, Pâté, a cheese platter and Crème Brûlée. We had drinks at a street-side cafe on the Bastille with some family friends of Zan who are living in Paris for two years.
We were soon staring at the 'White Cliffs of Dover' from the decks of the P&O channel ferry. It felt great to be back in a country where you didn't have to get out the phrase book every time you looked at a menu. We caught a bus back to London and to Zan's uncle's house (henceforth known as the 'London townhouse').
For the next two weeks we did a whirlwind tour of England. We started off in Southampton visiting Jill, Harry, Dominic and Julia S (Family friends of Zan). We saw Lord Nelson's ship The Victory in Portsmouth, The Roman Baths in Bath, Shakespeare’s Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, had dinner with Zan's Aunt and her family in Burton, visited the Peak district and went exploring with Tim and Laura and painted the town pink with David and Danann in London.
We want to thank everyone who made us feel so welcome when we visited them throughout this trip. And to those of you who have posted comments we really enjoyed seeing them. And we would like to apologise to those of you who were distracted from their university studies, work, housework, television, exercise and life in general over the last eight months.
And just to keep up the suspense... there maybe another post.
posted by Mike & Zan :-) | 12:48 pm
2 Comments:
Nice to see that u guys have got round to writing this up now, you've only been back what like a week and half :-p
Thanks for the great posts. I have really enjoyed following your adventures. Congratulations on all your achievements and best wishes for your future endeavours.
Regards
Doug
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