cheese, crackers, and fireworks

Yesterday was the 14th of July and the French national holiday. After a quick supermarket trip for brie, biscuits, and cheap wine, we headed to the Eiffel Tower to set up camp on a nice patch of grass where we enjoyed our food and the most scenic game of Bartok ever.

Hm...that big towery thing...looks familiar...

view from our picnic spot

After getting kicked out of our spot by some seriously unfriendly gendarmerie, we went to check out the setup for the festivities, namely a giant stage for a free conecrt tribute to French music.

Eiffel tower, stage at the end, and tour Montparnasse in the background

The concert itself was a little cheesy (and not quite to Tom's taste) but it was cool to see and all the French people were getting into it. I now know of a few random French popstars and we took part in a cool event. On a slightly cooler note...the special guest was James Blunt (which kept a singing-loudly Tom happy.)

Simona...we're getting older...

Not a bad shot for a free concert, huh? Finally afterwards there was a seriously impressive fireworks display set to Opera music for half an hour. I rated it better than any Sydney NYE (maybe cos of our spot though.)

Ka-BOOM!

Moving day tomorrow, so today has been a pretty chilled day getting ready. Zara came to town on Sunday for a pilgrimage to James Morrison's grave and some nice cheap crepes!
And back to work tomorrow for me.

Bisous
Amanda

THE ROAD TRIP (Part 2)

finally continued...

The next morning we took a bus to Venice! There were lots of tourists everywhere, especially in the Piazza San Marco, as well as the usual cheap tacky souvenir stalls, which was a surprise since we’d so far been off the beaten track. The canals and ultra-narrow streets were pretty unique, but as a whole I was actually a little disappointed. The whole feel of the city was a little sad – everything was slowly decaying or sinking. We did however manage to get lost (WITH a map) in our first 30 minutes there. A cheerful (though corny) sight was the gondoliers complete with navy stripes and cute hats.

After a few hours we headed back to the car for the drive up to Germany via Austria. We saw some really beautiful countryside – classic northern Italy slowly changing to mountains, with cliffs galore.

We stopped for pizza along the way at a restaurant whose staff spoke no English, French, or German…we had a good laugh trying to gesture to the waitress what we wanted. The Austrian landscape was familiar with its typical style of houses and snow-capped peaks. We then arrived in Munich (to our surprise since there was no actual border to cross from Austria to Germany) to stay at ‘The Tent” which we’d read about in our travel guide. It was a really awesome campsite with room to pitch your own tent or you could have a bed in a huge main dorm-like tent. It had its own café with breakfast and dinner (all organic) and the cheapest beer we found of the whole trip. The showers were really clean (and solar-heated), the staff were friendly…we couldn’t have asked for a better place to stay. That night we watched Germany vs. Poland in the Euro cup – it was amusing to see how passionate the Germans were about their soccer…I mean football. We also met a nice Aussie bloke named Ben from Newcastle to chat to about travelling and everything else.

The next day we drove to a town called Fussen which is near Neuschwanstein castle, which is this awesome fairy-tale castle perched on a hill. It was Ludwig II’s (who was mad) and the inside was completely painted with scenes from Wagner operas and swans. We took a guided tour which was fairly interesting, and had a nice wander through the woods around the castle checking out the view. I wouldn’t have minded living there – even the servant’s quarters were pretty impressive. That evening we went into Munich and had a wander around the city through the shops. We saw the coolest buskers ever who were a band with a pan-flute and stopped for a beer in a beer garden. (Which you can’t come to Munich and not do!)

Hotel reception and a lazy boyfriend

We finally have a place to live and I have a job :) I started yesterday as a receptionist for a 2* hotel (www.preludehotel.com) and I really enjoyed it. The rest of the staff are really friendly, my hours are 2-9pm, I get paid more than the bakery...its pretty good overall. 90% of the guests are English-speaking and I'm starting to get the hang of the silly hotel software.

We're moving on the 16th to share a big apartment with this batty old french woman (our own room and share kitchen/bathroom for 400/m which is a great deal) and then she leaves on vacation for a month and a half...leaving us the whole thing for that price. It's a bit further out of town, but hey, it makes the groceries cheaper, and being on the 13th floor we get a cool view of the city.

The plan was to go to the Louvre today (free first Sunday of the month!) but Tom has decided to stay in bed. (We had to do it early since I start work at 2). I was going to go alone but for I decided to pay to go another day for Jenny's sake since she would be upset if Tom never got to the Louvre during his stay in Paris (which he wouldn't if I didn't make him.) He still doesn't have a job...and isn't really looking...but the apartment is usually nice and neat when I get home.

It's holidays at home now so there have been lots of friends in Paris randomly which is pretty cool. During the week we met up with Robbie Diamond, Charley Stollmann, Jess Lewis, Tom Shaw, and Amza. It was bizarre to see so many people I knew after 6 months of meeting new ones. We checked out Notre Dame and the Panthon with Robbie (both a walk from our place). The Pantheon has this giant pendulum in it that was used in the 1800s to prove the Earth's rotation and now works like a giant clock. It was pretty cool. Notre Dame is very pretty in that scary gothic kinda way, but the inside was actually a little disappointing after having been to the Prague cathedral (which I never got around to writing about...my bad)

My work is really close to the Moulin Rouge so I'll check it out before or after work sometime soon! Yoghurt was on special and I kinda over-bought it so we have tons to eat up now.

Thats all the news I can think of for now.
xox
Maz