Back to Work

A little while since we last updated the blog, but we haven’t given up writing yet.

We are now in India having spent a week with Dan’s mum in the UK (eating delicious roast dinners for the last time in 6+ months! Thanks mum) and a weekend courtesy of Craig and Karen in their lovely new home. Thanks so much for the hospitality and chance to prove that boys are always better at Trivial Pursuit than girls and somewhat less thanks for the new WII addiction guys.

We travelled to India with Virgin and got the last chance to use my Gold Card to get into the clubhouse. The clubhouse (Virgin’s lounge) is the only possible glam perk in any road warrior’s life. Free massages, a three course a la carte meal, wine, cocktails, plenty of goodies to ‘borrow’ and free hi-speed internet (a luxury when you know that you have months of crappy connections ahead). We arrived approx. 6 hours early to take full advantage! We looked the part too in our ‘functional’ clothing and walking shoes! Not sure the average backpacker starts their journey this way.

Delhi’s new airport met expectations in that the baggage belt constantly kept freezing. Had we not been knackered we could have been amused by the repetitive process of engineer coming over, moving a bag to unstick the belt, walking away, belt shifts two more bags, belt sticks,  wait three minutes for the engineer to notice..... then repeat the process for 199 passenger bags....welcome to India!!

The new terminal in Delhi as very nice. First of all (unless you fly budget) no longer do you have to play the lottery of ‘see if I can convince the airport employee that the internal bus (from international to domestic terminal) really needs to leave now if I want to catch a flight that leaves in the next hour’. Secondly, they seem to have done a fairly decent job of the new terminal with a good food hall, WH Smiths and even an M&S! However, the carpet throughout the terminal appears to have been modelled on a 1980’s British high street Indian restaurant (the type most often frequented at about 11.30pm on a Friday night) – I kept looking around for Del-boy.

Guwahati (capital of Assam) had not changed much in the 10 months since we left (still dusty, dirty, smelly and unfeasible busy). However, we didn’t care as 24 hours without sleep meant we dived under the mosquito net and slept for a good 12 hours.

With Uttam Teron, founder of Parijat Academy

We started our volunteering at Parijat Academy last Thursday (18^th) – more about that in the next blog, but you can visit www.parijatacademy.org if you are curious.

Our social life always gets much busier when we get to India – and it always amazes me how people manage to fit in earning a living when there are people to visit, events to attend, and three or four day marriages to celebrate. All of which are made more time consuming by placing a chaotic road system in between.

Our next blog will be dedicated to our volunteer work at the school – it is a heart warming organisation led by a very enthusiastic and impressive man!

So far we have been to...... the opening of an excellent new home entertainment / music centre (Ace music junction http://aceacoustics.co.in/home.htm) courtesy of Monali’s cousin who is a partner in the business – the local news photographers took as many pictures of the white man as they did of the pianos!


A trip to the Zoo (no this is not a sarcastic reference to the Guwahati town centre) with the entire family and maids! Sadly, the conditions are really not that great for the animals.

Gulliver and the Lilliputs at the Zoo

We have also been to a wedding – another lavish affair with plenty of ghee laced treats to give your heart a kicking. The particular highlight (if a little mean) was watching some other poor couple suffer the four or five hours of greeting and feeding distant relatives, long lost friends and other random people off the street. It seems that we are not the only couple in Guwahati to find this experience somewhat torturous – while the groom gratefully grasped and consumed a bottle of water like a man stumbling through a desert, his bride offered us some sweet supari (traditional Indian offering to freshen the breath) along with an attempt at a smile which rather resembled a painful grimace. Unfortunately for this particular couple-this was only their first reception (this one being for the bride’s family and friends). A second reception was to be held at the groom’s house the following day for his friends and family. Didn’t realise how lightly we managed to escape. Wedding fever is mad over here-looks like we have 4 more weddings to attend before we leave but think we might give them a miss as not sure how many more ‘happy’ couples we can bear to see suffering (not to mention they are a little bit boring). 

Greek Islands

TINOS

Tinos - pretty.......boring

Hello everyone-it's Monali writing for the first time. Dan finally got bored of writing the blog so he
decided it was my turn.To be honest,I was quite enjoying doing nothing!

So we left Athens after a few days to head off to Tinos  (a very tiny Greek Island). We had initially picked
this Island for the exact reason of it being small, and we thought we could hang out on the beach, grill fish,
read our books and do absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas.....welcome
to the Island of gail force winds, rain and near freezing temperatures. We were picked up by a lovely Greek
lady named Nikoleta who took us to her guest house (Nikoleta's Rooms) and showed us a very nice room with a very disgusting bathroom. Now I am sure every woman will agree with me-it does not matter where you sleep, but a clean bathroom is essential. Luckily while another room was available, it did not seem to come with any heating. So i spent the first night sleeping with about 5 layers of clothes. This is crazy-I thought Greece was warm!!!!!!

Enjoying the Greek warmth!

We awoke the nex morning feeling more positive and decided to take a walk, only to find myself literally swept off my feet when I stepped out (unfortunately it was not Dan, but the wind that was responsible). The next few days were pretty uneventful as we tried not to go out at all due to the cold and got very, very, very bored. There are only so many books that one can read and we eventually tried sleeping for long periods of time just to get through the days (and to think some of you were jealous).

The only interesting information regarding Tinos is the fact that it houses one of the most famous icons in Greece in the Church of Panagia. The icon was found in 1822 and there are mass pilgramages from all over Greece to come to this Church. The church is situated at the top of hill and there is a rubber strip down the side or the road so that worshippers can crawl up to the church on their knees. Dan and I took the heathen approach and simply walked up to the church only to find out that no-one is actually allowed to see this supposed icon- instead you have to pray to some golden doors in the knowledge that the icon sits safely behind them. Call us cynics but we were really left wondering how special this major attraction is considering the following: it was found around 100 yrs ago; no-one will actually state the age of the icon; it appears to draw alot of tourist business that the island would otherwise not have and it was found on a remote Greek Island fairly far removed from where JC used to hang out.

Crawling on hands and knees to the Icon

Oh, one other interesting fact on Greece which I never knew about-you can not flush toilet paper in the toilet  but have to put it in a bin near the toilet as Greek plumbing is notoroiously bad. Going to the bathroom was not my favourite Greek experience as a result.

We almost ran onto the ferry for Naxos 5 days later. It is safe to say we will never return to this Island!!

NAXOS

The first thing you see arriving in Naxos is magnificent  (the ancient temple of Apollo, not the idiot in the foreground)

Naxos was a breath of fresh air after our Tinos experience and definitely somewhere we would come back to. This was mainly due to our accommodation which really made the whole experience. We stayed at the Pension Sofi which was an inexpensive guest house rated #1 by Tripadvisor. We soon found out why. It is a family establishment run by a man by Panos and in all our travels, it has been the best place we have EVER stayed. It wasn't that it was luxurious (although it was extremely clean), it was the fact that Panos treated us as guests of the family. There was no restaurant but there was a small kitchen / reception and every morning one of the family would insist on feeding us fruits and making us greek coffee. In fact, Theodoros (one of
the family), showed me how to make his special Greek Coffee.

Starbucks, Greece

Panos would try and feed us wine and olives and salads every day. When I innocently voiced that I liked the oranges sold in Naxos, we were bundled into their car and they took us to their private orchard some distance away so that we could pick as many oranges and figs as we liked. This was then followed by a trip to visit the pigs and sheep (who aren't looking forward to Christmas and Easter feasts). It was better service than a 5 star hotel and I look forward to returning. They even gave us a goodbye gift (a fridge magnet) which was really touching.

Pigging out at the orchard

As far as wondering around Naxos itself, we headed to the mountains for day and visited a 'Kitron' distillery which is a local drink distilled from the leaves of the Kitron plant. Being out of season there was not much else going on out in the countryside so we settled on walking around and relaxing in the main town for the rest of the time. Naxos itself is a very nice town with and old labyrinth style set of streets built into castle walls as well as the usual sea front full of cafes and tavernas. Of course our main hobby was eating and we found great Mexican food (via Brazil) and chicken gyros.

We also spent much of the week planning our trip and now finally have our round the world trip tickets in hand!!! We are currently sitting on the boat taking the 5 hour trip back to Athens. We then fly back to the UK where I will proceed with getting my Indian visa and then off to start our volunteering in India.

Athens

Hello from the Speedrunner III en route to Tinos Island in the Aegean Sea. We have just left our base off Piraeus, Athens where we have been staying for the last three(ish) days.

Since we arrived in Athens on Tuesday we seem to feel more relaxed. Not sure if this is because we are finally wound down from our day jobs or just as a result of a more laid back approach to life in Greece. It is certainly less hectic than Rome.

We travelled via a very efficient X96 bus directly from Athens Airport to Piraeus (the Port town just West of the Capital) , deciding that it was easier to stay in the port and get the metro into Athens centre for sightseeing rather than lug our rucksacks around town.  Dinner of traditional Greek Souvlaki  (pork kebabs ), spicy cheese and prawns was wonderful until interrupted by HSBC informing that some scumbag in Rome had stolen my card details and was helping himself to a new wardrobe as a result.

On Wednesday we headed into Athens via Metro. Athens (like Rome) has  a reputation for pickpockets with the Piraeus to Athens stretch particularly bad. We didn’t feel like being the victim of crime again so we kept our hands in our pockets like they were affixed with superglue and braved the trip  looking like tourist idiots. As an aside the Metro system in Athens is excellent. Like Rome it costs just 1 Euro to get anywhere, however unlike Rome the trains and stations are spotless. Many of the stations also double up as museums as they incorporate ancient structures and archaeological finds from when the metro was built around 10 years ago.

First stop Acropolis. The Greeks know how to strike. While those dastardly French cause chaos for all, the Greek approach to striking is to picket the ticket office at the Acropolis making it free for all the tourists to get in. Thanks chaps.

If only the French were this helpful

The site itself is magnificent. Set upon a serene wooded hill in the centre of otherwise traffic clogged Athens it is a little like an oasis. You could easily spend an afternoon sitting there in the shade amongst the ancient ruins (and dozing cats & dogs) day dreaming about the Greek Gods Poseidon or Athens.

The Parthenon is the centre piece – the building that (I think) most people associate with the Acropolis. It is amazing to think it has stood since 438BC and even survived us Brits pinching key bits of it (the Ancient Greeks always intended that they should end up in British Museum).

Entering the Acropolis

After the Acropolis it was time for a bit of lunch. I always thought that pies and savoury pastries were solely a British tradition. However, it seems that the Greeks are pretty fond of them too – we tried the chicken and the spinach varieties and while  I am sure it did not help our fitness objective they tasted great. Desert of baklava was equally rewarding on the senses.

We wandered through Athens after lunch, stopping by the Temple of Zeus (again much of which now stands in the British Museum), the national gardens and parliament where for some reason the Greek army stations two of its finest in tights, silly hats and pom-pom shoes. They also perform (for no obvious reason) movements not dissimilar to those of John Cleese in the Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks sketch. It may have worked against the Spartans 2 millennia ago, but not surprised the Germans got in here quite easily.

Fearsome Greek warriors

Our walk continued up to the National Archaeological Museum –noted as one of the world’s best museums by the Lonely Planet. My god, you have never seen so many vases, round ones, tall ones, thin ones and most of them were bloody broken. If you can get over the cookware the sculpture is pretty impressive even to laymen, cynics like us. There are marble and bronze statues from 0 – 800BC with bodies where every wrinkle, muscle, bone and sinew appears so lifelike it could be one of those idiots painted silver who stand in squares for money. The face of one particular boy riding horse (see picture below) is so full of character it still tells its powerful story today, some 2000 years after it was completed.

Boy jockey and horse circa 220BC

On our second day we stayed in Piraeus and lazed around. We hit Starbucks (the first proper Americano since we left the UK), shopped at yet another Carrefour and found out our Ferry for the next day had been cancelled! Luckily, there was a faster (more expensive) ship going a little later so we booked tickets for that instead. A haircut and a new pair of sunglasses for Monali (5 Euro specials) and we ready to retire to the hotel for an early morning wakeup call in order to catch the Tinos ferry.

Btw we are now onto Season 5 (via illicit internet streaming) of Entourage. However, this will not last forever and therefore, we would welcome suggestions for our evening viewing!

Roma

Three nights in Rome in order to tick off the big things that we missed last year.

Arrival on Saturday afternoon was a little delayed due to waiting for baggage and then playing musical platforms at the airport train station as the FM1 to Trastevere moved from platform 1 to platform 3 and then platform 1 again. Sounds painless enough, but with a 20kg backpack its a bit of a ballsache. I guess the people of Rome can't complain too much - it costs 1 EUR to get anywhere in the city (other than the airport)  - can't see Boris matching that anytime soon.

Another good (and cheap) hotel, just outside the city, but right next to a train station and nowhere near any gypsy communities (Monali's sister can recommend a 'thrilling experience' tour of Rome including such attractions if anybody is interested). A great pizza, an ice cream treat (the first of many trip) and then sleep in preparation for a big day of sightseeing.

Italian ice cream - bigger smile than the wedding?

We had two days for sightseeing and we chose to spend day one away from the Vatican, because the Pope was creating the first Australian saint-sadly it wasn't the Crocodile Hunter.

Day One: Rome Sightseeing

So we stumbled into town courtesy of train and bus both of which seemed to our panicky eyes to be full of likely pickpockets, but more likely full of people looking at two idiots overprotecting bags and pockets. First destination was Tiber Island - which is a tiny little island in the middle of the Tiber (hence the name I guess). It has two bridges which don't look very impressive, but have been standing since the first century AD. Amazing considering modern day Italian engineering seems to rust after about ten minutes.

Bridge lamppost - padlocks left by young couples expressing their love! Handcuffs more appropriate?

From Tiber Island we walked through the ancient streets and ruins to reach the Disk of Truth. The name might sound like a crap quiz show, but apparently telling a lie whilst you hold your hand inside the disk's mouth will result in the mouth shutting and chopping off your arm. Luckily either everybody was telling the truth or the disk wasn't too hungry during our visit.

Disk of Truth - seems pretty 'armless to me

We moved onto Circo Massimo which was a huge 200,000 capacity chariot racing stadium in Roman Times. Sadly it is now more of a huge field and it takes imagination to visualise the excited crowds chanting on the competitors and their steeds. Luckily for us there was some kind of Roman reenactment going on - the context wasn't historically accurate, but I guess it did make it feel a little more special.

A rather diminished Roman army

Onto a more traditional Rome sight - The Trevi Fountain. It is customary to throw a coin into the fountain which will ensure that you will return to Rome. It seems we might not be coming back! It was so packed with other tourists that you just couldn't get near the thing.

We thought these were the Spanish Steps, they are not. We are stupid.

Our final sight of the day (if you exclude a hurried rush past the real Spanish Steps and the huge, funky McDonalds McCafe in Spagna) was the crypt of the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini (thank you wikipedia).

I think the colour really brings this room alive

For some reason the Capuchin Friars had a different approach to interior design. Stained glass windows and wooden pews were 'so last year' to them. Instead they decided to use the remains of around 4000 of their order to create lampshades, pillars, wall hangings and ceiling decorations. Just in case looking at six rooms of death doesn't creep you out enough, the monks decide to remind you once more of your own mortality in the final room with a sign reading "What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be..."


Day two: Catholic Disneyland.

We were both excited to visit the Vatican on day two as this was the biggest part of the Rome 'sights' that we had missed last year. All in all its a good show - thousands upon thousands of sculptures, paintings and other priceless antiquities that countless Pope's have appropriated from across the Catholic empire. However, you cannot help questioning how this place is so fundamentally linked to Christianity. Granted, St Peter's tomb is within the Basilica so there is link there, but most of the other big sights of the Vatican are from Renaissance or at a push Medieval times. I guess its just difficult to understand the reverence with which the Vatican is held compared to Jerusalem or elsewhere in Palestine.

The map room

As I said the contents and buildings themselves are magnificent - its amazing to think that with a population of round a 1000 or so the Vatican still has ruled one of the world's biggest empires for centuries. The spoils are here to prove it!

Next stop Athens - yet more history!!

Leaving France

On reflection it was an excellent time to leave France. The airports are running out of petrol, the public sector is running out of workers (Sarkozy heading towards his very own 1984 moment i.e. Thatcher not Orwell) and we are running out money by eating foie gras and quaffing red wine each day.

One thing we forgot to put in the last blog was that we did manage to do some exercise while in France, in fact we even managed a 20km walk to nearby Genis one day just to eat at Jerome's restaurant. The food must be good as Jerome is renowned locally for needing a gastric band as a result of his food being so irresistible.

Action Barbie

Our last day in France was spent in Toulouse which turned out to be a great city. We dropped off the car at the airport and then headed into town via the FlyBus to our hotel destination, the IBIS (ok, not really a backpacking hostel but we are too old for that crap).

The city is bigger than I expected, but still quite walkable in an afternoon and we soon determined that it contains a shopping capacity that Monali deems worthy of a return visit...soon.

We enjoyed free entrance to les abattoirs which has been turned into a modern art gallery, though we lack the artistic knowledge (or perhaps are just too cynical) to enjoy many of the exhibits. Ironically the centre piece was a bunch of packing boxes / crates  - leading us to believe that we missed a trick when we had not charged visitors for viewing exactly the same bunch of boxes artistically placed throughout our flat for the last month.

Dinner was taken at a little fast food mexican place called Mex. They only served tacos, sopas and tamales but it all tasted great and the food  is probably the best mexican we have eaten outside of the US. Not sure if it is a chain, but we will be looking out for them in the future.

Excellent mexican

As I am sure you are all well aware Toulouse is the home of Airbus and Monali was very 'excited' about the the four large 'transporter' planes we spotted sitting at the other side of the airport. I think these used for moving A380 (that huge big plane) wings made in the UK to France - what a great production decision that was (aren't subsidies great?).

Plane spotting

So goodbye France and hello Italy....another country where strikes are not uncommon. Its ok, I am sure that their president isn't an arrogant little short arse who creates chaos..........oh shit.

Animal Farm

So we lasted nine days 'on the farm'. Spiders and Silverfish were bearable (just), but then things got furry.

This is a Dormouse........
Note: This is a library picture of a dormouse as we were too scared to handle it ourselves, even for the sake of the blog!

Friendly looking critter huh? Well cute he may be frolicking in the fields and hedgerows, not so cute when he and the family Dormouse decided to make our living room their French retreat. So we left post haste and now we are on the road.

Its been a week or so since our last blog and to be honest we've been a little lazy. The thing is that when you don't have to do anything, you don't feel like doing anything. We have made vague attempts at exercise in an attempt to work off the after affects of the amazing French food we have been glutonnising every day but have now given up as we are now simply to heavy to even move.

We did take a trip to Perigueux (I must have typed that into a hotel search engine 10+ times and I still I spell it incorrectly). Quite a nice city (much nicer than Brive) which apparently used to be one of the biggest spots in Roman France. Anyway, much more importantly it now contains an obligatory Irish pub avec free wifi - they could build straight roads, but they couldn't bring you facebook!

Dan in front of the Temple de Vesone in Perigeuex. A monument to the City's Goddess.

As we said earlier we had not really done too much up until the last few days. Preferring to spend a lot of time unknowingly chilling with our vermin friends in the cottage. Our three top lazy french activities being:

1. Waving to frankly unimpressed cows:

2. Chestnut roasting on an open fire:

3. Avoiding the local French delicacy (aka Flopsy) in the supermarket

In the last few days we have moved around a little. Night one in a motel room outside Perigueux which reminded me of the final scenes of No Country for Old Men - not a positive memory for those who have seen the movie.

We then moved on and remain in a nice hotel just outside Sarlat. Sarlat itself is lovely - a sprawling medieval town, only problem being that we bring down the average tourist age to 72.

So rather than eat cakes and drink tea like the septuagenarian coach trip massive, we drove over to an endangered wildlife zoo thing which was very pleasant. A lot of the enclosures were built such that you walked through them...meaning that we could see and hear the anger in the lemur's growl as we disturbed them en coitus.

 

This looks like a Lemur who got what he want....

In fact it appears that the people that run this place take their role in species preservation seriously. Perhaps this Lemur behaviour was spurred on by little blue tablets in the food? Certainly the ant-eater (who sadly had no mate in sight) was ready to do his bit for the cause...:

note the fifth leg

So on Friday we will drive to Toulouse and drop off the car in anticipation of our flight to Rome on Saturday. Of course no holiday in France would be complete without some form of obligatory French strike, and kindly enough the whole country has decided to take an open-ended holiday to protest about removing retiree's benefit of free garlic or something. I'm sure Sarkozy will be more than happy to pay for any hotel rooms resulting from any delay!!

Speak to you all soon

Dan & Monali

Le Clos Roussillon

Cote de Roussillon

Vitrac

France

Blog 001 Photos

You'll always find Monali by the warm fire

Walking in the rain

The bovine motorway passes right by our house

Writing the first blog