Paris, France

Paris, France, Sunday (29/05/05)

Getting close to the end of our journey, tomorrow we leave Paris to head for the coast and soon we will be back in London. We think that 2 months is been the right amount of time, enough to see a lot but not too much so that we are overwhelmed with data.

Here is what has happened up till now...

Troyes, France (Thursday)

From Dijon we ride to Troyes. The interesting thing about Troyes are the half wood houses. Half wood houses look like they have been built by Dr. Seuss, they lean at all manner of weird angles and the tops are wider than the bottoms. Most are 3 stories high and they are built together without nails. It is amazing that they stand up at all.

We enjoyed Troyes and spent the day walking around checking out all the old buildings. We finished off the day with an African meal (nice to have something without cheese for a change).

I must point out that the weather now has started to get hot. I think that the temperature was around 31 (and this continued till Sunday in Paris)

Paris, France (Friday, Satruday, Sunday)

We managed to book a hotel from Troyes in Paris. Luckily we phoned around first because the first 5 we tried were booked out. We ended up having to up our price and managed to find somewhere in the Latin Quarter. The hotel has no air-conditioning and is on a busy road, I hate to think what the cheaper places were like! We spend the night weighing off heat Vs noise in the desire to sleep.

We had got into Paris by around 12PM, so we donned our walking shoes and headed straight for the Eiffel (via the Siene). We climbed our way up to the second level, which had pretty good views and didn't bother goin further because there was about a 2 hour queue for the lift (people were giving their tickets away). We had a rest and then headed back via the Batobus (boat bus).



Saturday we did a big walking day (with some help again from the boat) and saw most of the sites of central Paris (from the outside at least).

Sunday, Laura was buggered from all the walking the day before, so we decided to have an easy day and see the Catacombes, which were nearby to where we were staying. Unfortunately, when we got there they were shut for reconstruction.

Side note: Almost every city that we went to had at least some portion of some famous building covered in scaffolding. It became a joke that we should just take the photo's anyway because it will be one of our memories of travelling.

So we had a lazy day, Laura hung out on the hotel and I went for jaunts around Paris finding info for the ferry and food. We did manage to get a market in and buy some stuff we wanted (e.g. Groovy french steak knives that we had admired in restaurants - they look like hunting knives but don't fold up). I also tracked down the local Vespa dealer, which we will check out tomorrow when we leave (Laura is thinking about getting a scooter blanket)



Here are some other interestign Paris photo's...


Franken-scooter


Bigscreen fun

Paris, France

Hi all,

We are almost at the end of our trip. We will be back in London Wednesday and then back in Australia the following Monday. I doubt that I will get a chance to post again before we get back. So I will leave the blog for now and finish the last leg when we get back...


Us in front of the Effel Tower

Dijon, France

Dijon, France, Wednesday (25/05/05)

We have spent the past two nights in Dijon, the home of the mustard and fine food, apres then...


Montreaux, Switzerland, Monday

There is nothing much to Montreaux, I spent the morning hunting for a camping store as we decided that we need a different cooker for making coffee (we have a fuel cooker which is not good for indoors). There are no camping stores in Montreaux, also the Piaggio dealer did not seem to have any Piaggio's.

To fill in the day we went to the Chateau de Chillon, which is a castle built on the lake side. That was pretty impressive and looks a lot bigger on the inside than the outside (thanks to crypts, cellars and prisons below ground).



Of course we could not leave Switzerland without having a Fondue. However, by now, I felt my blood was flowing with cheese after many quatre fromage pizza's, bagets and cheese etc. So the fondue was good but a bit of an effort.

Also of note, if you want a Swiss Army knife buy it in Australia, they are cheaper there.


Dijon, Tuesday

We left Switzerland via Vallorbe. No more high Swiss mountains, but from Montreaux to Dijon, we followed the lake, gazing up at terraced vineyards. Then into France we travelled through the greenist fields and had a very pleasant ride.

The only thing that went wrong was that we got caught out by the French lack of petrol facilities for foreigners (i.e. We had to back track because the town we went to only had French credit card automatic petrol machines). We just made it back to the previous town, my scooter cut out a few times and I free-wheeled as much as I could. On the bright side, we found a camping store in the process and got our cooker.

In Dijon everything was booked out, so we ended up in a hostel a few km's from town. We are booked here for 2 days. We walked into town and had some food there and a quick look around.


Dijon, Today

Breakfast at the hostel was from 7 to 8AM, so we missed that :) Had our own breakfast and I got a coupe (hair cut) and then headed into Dijon on the scooter. We stumbled across a walking trail around Dijon,with arrows to follow. So we did the walking tour seeing some pretty interesting sights. Dijon seems like a really nice place to live, a combination of French class and student crustiness (refer to photo of ferals swimming in the fountain).




Dijon is also fqmous for gargoyles

One of our wedding presents was money for a gourmet meal from Neil and Daphne. Guys, your money was well spent, it got us a 7 course degustation meal at the best resturant in Dijon, Hostellerie du Chapeau Rouge . Since our meal was paid for, we washed it down with a AUS$160 bottle of wine and a couple of champagnes. To say the least the night was tres fantastic. Also, the service was great (i.e. Not snobby).

Montreaux, Switzterland

Montreaux, Switzterland, Sunday (22/05/05)

"We all went down to Montreaux... Dah, dah, daah. dah, dah dah-dah... Two-stroke smoke on the water, fire in the sky..."

Yes, we are in the Montreaux from the Deep Purple song, here is the story to date...


Desenti, Switzerland (Saturday)

What can I say about Switzerland but roads, roads, roads. I will put some pictures but they can never do the scenery justice! We enter Switzerland via Tirano, buy our highway toll sticker (about $30 each) and then start the roller coaster drive through the mountains (which is 75% of Switzerland).

Although it is winding, the towns rarely have a traffic light so it is fairly quick. Unfortunately though, it does not seem that we have the same "scooter" priveledges that we had in Italy - so we obey the road rules like everyone else (drive at 50 when the sign says 50).

We stay the night in Disenti, in awe of the mountains around use. The next day though we look back at those mountains as pretty ordniary as we go increasingly higher through mountain passes.

I cannot describe how beautiful it all is in words or pictures. The drive to Montreaux, through the Farka pass (which now has a Melbourne SC sticker at the top) was amazing. The forecast was for thunderstorms, the thunder never came but the scenery changed with every blink of an eye, one minute dense fog, next we are above the fog, through green fields and snow at the sides of the road up to 3 metres high. Every turn I wanted to take a picture but felt no regrets not doing so as the next turn was more impressive than the first... I resign myself just to taking mental snapshots...

To give you an idea of how wintery it was, we were going to go to Interlaken, but the Grimsel pass was shut. Judging by the mini avalanches across the road that we were driving on, I guessed that closed really meant closed!

Here are some of the pictures we did take...


Green Roads


Mountain tops


Mountain passes


Cold but fun


Montreaux scooter

Dimaro, Italy

Dimaro, Italy, Friday (20/5/05)

I am sitting here typing, looking out the balcony door of our hotel at the snow covered peaks of Mount Brenta (photo below)...



Here is what has happened between here and Florence...

Ravena, Tuesday

We say goodbye to Florence and make our way towards Rimini. The plan was to take the scenic route (green road on our map) through Stia, Arezzo and then up through San Marino.

Although the GPS is good, I have it only telling me the right direction to go in, and scenic roads normally mean winding mountain roads. So we get lost, following an Italian road sign which was intended for veiwing from another direction. Although we were still heading in the right direction, the wrong road also had road works blocking it completely. We lost about an hour backtracking and decided to give Rimini a miss and go to Revanna (closer to Venice).

Again luck is on ourside, we travel again through amazing mountains, so high that we are in the cloud. We also have one of our best meals in Stia, eating the local specialties (a lot of sheeps cheese, honey, bread).




Venice, Wednesday + Thursday

From Ravenna we followed the straight road to Venise. Not very pretty and full of potholes. We managed to get ahead of the trucks at lights, which was at least some compensation.

In Venice we went to a "camping in town" campsite because we had a 10% discount voucher from Florence. Turned out though that the "town" we were camping in was not Venice but a couple of towns away and next to the airport. There was a bus service and cabins, so we decided to stay (however I would not recommend doing this yourself).

While Laura read a book, I went and checked out Venice and found that there is scooter parking on Venice (although we did not use this knowledge later). I also checked out a local scooter shop as I really want to know why no one rides Gillera Nexus scooters. No luck, he did not speack English (however they cost 6,900 euro which is 900 more than the Piaggio equivalent).

After that, Laura and I hit Venice by bus. We took a ferry ride and a walk around. Venice is very beautiful, also if you are careful where you buy stuff, it is not "that" much more than elsewhere in Italy I.e. expensive (though watch the tricks... Iwe got charged 12% service charge, plus two cover charges - I think we were ripped off but I didn't have a chance to check with the tourist office).

Thursday we spent the whole day in Venice. We also did the big 3 course Italian lunch. Laura was too full to finish, so we skipped the desert.

Venice is definitely a highlight, I will let the pictures say the rest...


What people come to Venice for, the Venetian blinds


A boat


Another boat


Dimaro (Today)

From Venice, we headed towards Brescia, again via the scenic route. It turned out that the scenic route was quicker than the direct route. Fast, winding mountain roads, through outstanding scenery. We decided just to carry on the way we are heading and not bother going back to the non scenic way, so tomorrow we will be in Switzerland!

Florence, Italy, update

We got a deal on the campsite so we decided to stay 3 days in Florence to rest (our legs are still tired from Cinque Terra).

Yesterday we had a look around the city and did some shopping. I managed to find a couple of Vespa t-shirts and we got some stickers for our cases (which are now getting quite covered).

We went over an old bridge which had jewelry shops on it. There was a statue in the middle, which had a fence covered in locks with couples names on (we thought it must be a traditional good luck thing). The next day we saw workmen cutting them off with an angle grinder (a short lived tradition).



Most of what we have been doing is wondering about looking at statues, buildings and markets. Today we mailed off our excess baggage back to Australia, seems that we have collected a lot of scooter stuff... Clocks, posters, models, books, postcards...


Florence = lots of tourists and lots of statues

Florence, Italy

Florence, Italy, Saturday (14/05/05)

Another fun packed day,we are now sitting in a bar overlooking Florence, supping beer of course :) We have paid 30 euro for a tent. Considering the campsite has fantastic views of Florence and 70 euro is a low end hotel, we have done well. Here is what has happened over the last few days and I will finish off with what happened today...

Manarola (12/05/05)

We head off from Santa Margherita Ligure down more winding roads, the short distance of ~40Km and even that takes us over 2 hours. Laura parks her scooter on slope outside the tourist hut and it falls over... There goes the resell value... Nothing too major though, just a few scratches.

We head down the road to Monterosso and park our scooters in the paid car park, hopefully they will be there the next day when we finish our walk!

Side Note: We are in Cinque Terra, 5 villages that are perched on cliff faces and you can walk between them via traditional farming tracks which have been built into the hills using stone.

After being ignored in a café, we buy some cheese and bagets for lunch and head off on the trek. Laura counted 20,000 steps on her step counter thingo and most of those would have been stairs going up or down, it was very hard going but worth the effort. We could see our scooters in the distance and impressed ourselves with how far we walked.

We gave up at the 4th village though and stayed the night (only to find out that the last bit was dead easy). However we had a great meal in a restaurant watching the sun set over the mediterainian and a great room for the night. A will let the pictures say the rest...


Where we parked the scooters taken from one point where we walked.


View from the track


Uno of the 5 villages


Pisa (13/05/05)

The next day we took the boat back to Monterosso, where our scooters were safe and well. We then headed for La Spezeia(?) but decided when we got there to go further to Pisa.

We checked into a hotel room at 105 euro! Not only was it expensive it was half the size of the room the night before (which was 50 euro).

We had a wander around Pisa though and that was pretty cool. We also had a meal in a great little place in a side street.


Pisa on a lean

Florence (Today).

We had planned a short day (because of our extra journey the day before) but it is to be an exciting day because we visit Pontedera, the home of Vespa. We travel the 40 Km from Pisa to Pontedera and then when we get there wonder where to go. Once we find the tourist office, we find the friendliest person behind the counter. We not only find out where to go but leave with posters, maps and a whole bag of things to do in Pontedera (if you go to Pontedera go to the tourist office!)

Side note: Pontedera is not a bad little town. In hindsight I would have based ourselves there and travelled to Pisa.

The Vespa muesum was great!!! It was free and the only downer was that they did not stock their shop well. I was really looking forward to getting a Vespa t-shirt but they had none in my size (I also found out that Piaggio frown on anyone else using their logo, which explains the lack of scooter t-shirts on Italy). Again I will let the pictures tell the rest...


The big scooter


We hope to buy this model to get back to Australia in


Scooter bookshelf

Florence was another big city nightmare. It took us less than a hour to get there but about 2 hours to find a place to stay. It is great having a tent and that plan "b" has helped us again!

Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy

Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy (Wednesday 11/05/05)

We are now in Italy, my face is black with road grime and I am second in the shower. Here is what has happened since last post while I wait...

Digne-les-Bains, France (9/05/05)

From Avignon we headed east through the mountains of Provence. The map we have puts a green line beside any scenic roads, and this one is green most of the way. Simply stunning roads through valleys and up mountains. The terrain though is becoming noticably more "Australian" as we get closer to the coast, with red lome and hotter weather. The houses too look more Spanish.

We break our journey with a stay in Dignes, which is nothing much but it is good to have a hotel after 3 days of camping!!!

Nice, France (10/05/05)

From Dignes we follow another green road to Nice. Again simply stunning, with all manner of rock formations (and some fossils which we did not stop to look at). We stocked up on local cheese, fig paste, honey and bagets from a store on the side of the road. We then picnic on a mountain top looking down at the road we will soon travel... simply magic.

We also drop into Cannes and the place is packed, no wonder as it was the day before the film festival started (and the population trebles). We kept an eye out for Margaret and David (SBS/ABC movie show) but we saw no one famous. We also looked out for Cannes Film Festival t-shirts and postcards but without luck, which is a shame because the logo features a scooter.

From Cannes, getting into Nice was a nightmare. At one stage my GPS showed Nice 13 Km away and an estimated travel time of 5 Hours!!! The Lonely Planet guide loves to say how great big cities are but anyone that has to drive in one (even on a scooter) has a different opinion. We found Nice not nice. The good thing though was that we stocked upon scooter spares from a shop and the owner (although he could not speak English) proudly showed us a picture of his Vespa tour to Niger.

Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy (Wednesday Today)

We head along the coast road to Italy through Manaco. Previously the roads have been through valleys, now we are winding our way along cliffs overlooking the ocean. Very beautiful but very, very slow. Once in Italy we find that there are 2 types of road, the motorway, which bans motorbikes under 149cc and scooters under 249cc (or PX's are 200cc) and the other roads, which are all 50 km zones. We thought that we would be missing out Rome, now it is assured (oh well, another big city is no big drama to miss).

Italy is scooter crazy!!! Every set of traffic lights gathers up to 20 scooters and it is great fun as everyone takes off. Scooters have their own road rules to follow. At one point Laura and I jump on to a scooter conga line of 10 scooters, heading up the centre line of the road, through a traffic jam (preventing any other conga line forming in the opposite direction). If you think the police should care, they are just as bad, we saw one cop pull a wheelie, just to show off!!!

It takes us 8 hours to get from Nice to here, that is an average of 25Km an hour!!! We are tired but at least the roads are nice and being slowed down by a winding cliff road is not a bad thing. We get a hotel and go out for a great meal. Tomorrow Cinque Terra...

Alive and well in Avignon, Francee

Using a shit internet kiosk - will try and find a better place tonight and update everything... ok , updqted, here is a dump of where we are now...

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Cork to Roscoff Ferry 30/04/05

We are now sitting a bar on the ferry from Cork, Ireland to Roscoff, France. A very surreal experience, I am supping a Welsh beer, Duran Duran is playing in the background, kids are playing in the pool, everyone is speaking french... A floating 10 storey high night club... a chance to fill you in on what has been going on (note: I should have backfilled the rest of the journey)...

Killarney, Ireland (Wednesday and Thursday).

We spend a day riding down from Galway to Killarney (gateway to the Ring of Kerry), very windy and raining, this is what we expected the whole trip so it is not bad to get it for one day. When we hit Killarney, the weather broke and gave us the usual unusual sunny skys. Killarney is amazing, on the edge of a national park, with a castle, lake, deer, the works. We decide to use it as our base and book two days.

On Thursday we leave out luggage and scoot 160 Km around the Ring of Kerry. This was amazing, we stopped at one point to take photos, looking down a green valley across at another peninsula with hills tipped in mist. Next thing we know, we are on our scooters again, driving up through the mist and then over looking at another peninsula - just like flying - magic. Hope to add a photo or two below...








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Bordeaux, France (Tuesday, 3/05/05)

This our second day in France. So far we have mixed feelings...

Off the ferry at Roscoff, we headed south. Our initial plan was to go to La Rochell but we decided that was too much for one day. First impressions were not that good, we drove to Vannes, everything was shut, I ran out of petrol, motocyclists drove by making kicking actions at us and it was hard to find a hotel in Vannes and it was ugly...

However, we are pleased to say that the first impressions were wrong...

Everything was shut because it was 1st of May (May day) so it was not a typical Sunday. The kicking action is how motocyclists wave of each other as they pass (because th closest hand is on the throttle). Vannes was quite stunning, when we had a walk around, the centre was like very old (1600's) with twisted houses, 3 stories high and amazing twisted streets hiding catherdrals and gardens.

The next day we headed for La Rochell, we decided to avoid the highways as they were boring. We soon found that the back roads were really slow. It took us 9 hours to drive 300Km. We saw lots of great scenery but it was a bit too much time on the scooters. We reconsidered our plan and decided to stay a few days in Bordeaux (and booked in a wine tour).

So far I am finding it OK to get by with French, with the odd stressful moment were someone was shouting at me to move the scooters (in France they park their cars sideways across their driveways and leave the garages shut - so they get very upset if you prevent them doing that by parking either side of a entry way).

We have not been taking many pictures, maybe we will have a few from today's wine tour.



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Avignon, France, Sunday (8/5/05)

We are now in Avignon. For those that have seen our route, you will know that this is not in the plan. Basically the motorways are fast and boring and the non-motorways are slow, so we decided to sacrifice distance for pleasure. So we skipped going to Barcelona and cut across France instead.

The decision has been a good one, you know that you have made the right choice when you see hundreds of motorbikes one the same road!!! We ended up going down the "Tarn" which is a gorge that goes East from Millau. Simply stunning, one hour you are riding looking up at rocks faces towering above you (with the river still far below and no barriers to stop you visiting them too) and the next hour you are on top of the very same mountains looking down at the road we had just travelled. If you are ever in France, do the Tarn!!!

It is not just great roads but every 20 or so km's, there is some magical village. The highlight of one day was buying bagets and Rochefort cheese in one village, then having lunch by a clear river under a bridge in another village deep in a valley (St Enimie).

On the way from Bordeaux we stayed the night in a hostel in Cahors. We have discovered that it is French holiday season, lots of holidays in one week so everything is shut. We have to ask someone to buy us petrol because our cards don't work in the French automatic fuel stations. Another drama is getting a flat tyre on the way (thank god for Vespa spare tyres).

The next stop after Cahors was Millau. Yes another public holiday and all the hotels booked out. The good news is that I have my big tent and camping is easy. So we set up camp just across the river and can walk into town (which just happens to be market day and all the streets are blocked off to traffic and full of stalls).

Now in Avignon we are camping again and have taken a few days. Today has just been walking around the walled city and taking it easy.Tomorrow we hit the road again....