ANZAC day and tour

Sitting in an internet cafe in Kuşadasi, we are soaked and pretty cold - sunny Turkey this is not at the moment! But thinking back to our experience at Gelibolu (Gallipoli), this is nothing compared to what those guys went through in 1915. It was a pretty sobering experience being there. It's an absolutely beautiful place and it's hard to believe that such a horrendous battle took place there for eight months. But we went to remember and the two ceremonies that we went to (main dawn service and the NZ service at Chunuk Bair) were really great. Amelia was stoked to see Judy Bailey in all her 'mother of the nation' glory, while Adrian was well impressed by Winnie's speeches (Amelia reckons he's got good staff at the moment...). You may have even caught us on TVOne news?? Amelia has had at least two pieces of fan mail so far...

The day started off rather disorganised in Istanbul, but we eventually arrived and squeezed into a pozzie on the grass and settled in for the night. Man was it cold! But the -7 degree sleeping bags did their job admirably and kept us toasty for those 10 second patches you could actually fall asleep. After the dawn service we motored up the hill to Chunuk Bair and got a great sleep on the lawn in the sun (although the wind made it bitterly cold still). After the NZ service and a lengthy wait for the bus we made our way to our hotel - absolute luxury after the previous night! We are most definitely spoiled compared to what they experienced 93 years ago.

The following day we headed to Kuşadasi via Pergammon (currently called Bergama) where we saw some ancient ruins. We also went to a Turkish carpet co-operative and saw how they weave them - it was really interesting but neither of us had a spare thousand dollars or room in our packs (much to the chagrin of the salesmen). That night was spent in the cheesiest Irish pub imaginable - line dancing, cocktails with sparklers in them, conga lines and obligatory dancing on the bar - as they actually do say here, 'very nice' (insert Borat voice here).

Today we went to a leather goods factory and the ruins at Ephesus. Ephesus was fantastic, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. They had the biggest Roman ampitheatre in the world, seating 24,000, and also the first ad in the world - for a prostitute no less! They've only uncovered 4% of it and it's already an impressive sight - they reckon it will take another 1000 years to do the rest!

It's raining pretty heavily as I said, but we're pressing on to the Greek Islands anyway. Forecast is due to improve by Thursday so we'll see how we go - might not be camping until then at least!So 'güle güle' Turkey for the meantime, we'll see you again in about two weeks.

Istanbul

The tour has started! 
Day three of our holiday and we are in Istanbul - home to more mosques than you can shake a stick at (the call to prayer is fantastic to hear). We've seen the Blue Mosque, the Aya Sofya, the Grand Bazaar, the Spice Bazaar, a whole bunch of other ruins and the Topaki Palace which had more rubies, emeralds and diamonds than we ever thought possible. We've also done a ferry ride on the Bosphorus, a walk in new Istanbul (we're staying in Sultanahmet - old Istanbul), and are just off to a hammam tonight (Turkish bath).

But enough of the sight seeing, what about the kebabs?? Having saved up for the last 6 months to have an authentic one, we've been doing our best to try every variation we can see. Not a bad one yet! The pomegranate juice was Amelia's favourite, whereas Adrian just can't go past the kebabs... 

We're staying at party hostel central, so are feeling very virtuous by the amount of touring we're doing compared to most of the other the Antipodeans who don't tend to get out of bed until midday at the earliest. Getting up at 4am for the dawn service should be interesting!

Everything's pretty reasonable, particularly our favourite dinner place where we can both get a huge meal for about NZD5 each. We got a bit gipped paying NZD9.50 for a pint while we were watching the football the other night, but soon felt better once we learnt that a double measure of spirits in the same place was NZD41!

Onto Gallipoli tomorrow.

Aiguille de Midi

On our last day in France we headed over to Chamonix to go up the Aiguille de Midi cable car. It's an amazing cable car that heads up to 3800m to the highest point of the French Alps that you can get to without climbing!

The first cable car heads up to le Plan de l'Aiguille at 2300m. The second cable car is definitely vertigo inducing as it heads up on a single cable with no supporting pylons in sight. It traverses the Les Pelerins glacier before rising up to 3800m.

It was FREEZING up there! The wind on one side was just incredible and we were well under-prepared in terms of how many layers we were wearing! The views over to the Italian Alps were fantastic and it was cool to be able to see all the people heading off on the Vallee Blanche ski run. The vertigo came on in the most unexpected places - particularly looking up and then back down.

Enjoy the video and there are loads of photos here as well.

Au revoir France - bring on the rest of Europe!

The planned route

Here's our planned (although more than likely subject to change!) summer backpacking itinerary:

• Turkey, 20th - 27th April (including ANZAC day at Gallipoli)
• Greek Islands, 28th April - 11th May
• Turkey, 12th - 25th May
• Croatia, 26th May - 8th June
• Italy, 9th - 26th June
• Corsica, 27th June - 4th July
• France, 5th - 11th July (south of France)
• Spain, 10th - 12th July (Pamplona for the running of the bulls)
• France, 13th - 17th July (Pau in the Pyrenees for the 'Tour de France' and Bordeaux)
• Sweden, 18th - 27th July (Stockholm to visit Amelia's friend Stina)

Everything from this point forward is contingent upon bank balances!

• Denmark/Netherlands/Belgium, 28th July - 3rd August
• Paris, 4th - 8th August

If you've got any great suggestions for things we absolutely have to do or would like to join us at any point, then definitely email!

Telemark day

I can ski and I can snowboard, so I thought I would learn to tele-mark. On my day off I rented a pair of tele-mark skis and boots and got a lesson first thing in the morning. Renaud my instructor took me for an hour and a half (he chucked in an extra half an hour, nice guy, who ever said the French are all bad). At the end of the lesson I had the idea of what I needed to do, and had even done one proper tele turn. My legs however were starting to burn already, but with the gear for only one day I pushed on. 

I think I got the hang of it by the end of the day, even if I didn’t have complete control the whole time and couldn’t do a whole run without stopping. I will definitely look to give it another go, even if it did take my legs a couple of days to recover. It was a great day again with no lift lines, perfect snow and sunny, warm conditions.

 

On the same day, Amelia swapped over her rental board for a brand new Rossignol board as they were having a demo day at the top of the St Gervais lift. We also got to try out a new shockproof Olympus camera and take as many photos as we liked before they burnt them onto CD. All the (good) photos of the day are here.

Excursion to Lille

Elsie, my host sister from 1999, was back in Lille from her current address in Reunion Island for a holiday in March so it was perfect timing for me to head up to visit for a few days. It was great to see them again (I had last visited in 2004) and, even better, my French was coping perfectly well with the situation – not at all like when I arrived there for the first time in ’99!

I also met up with several friends from school, namely, Sylvain, Magalie, and Clémence. Sylvain works as an engineer for the SNCF (French rail service) and was telling me about how he gets tickets on regional trains for 1 euro…considering my return ticket was 150 euro I wasn’t exactly too pleased to hear about that!

Magalie came out to NZ for three months several years ago to do some work experience at The Warehouse head office. She still absolutely loves NZ (see if you can recognise the pictures behind us in this photo) and can’t wait to come back. I keep telling everyone I should be back for Christmas 2009 so we might have some people camping on the lawn! The top photo is of (L-R) me, Nilo (Sylvain’s girlfriend), Sylvain, Magalie, Damien (Magalie’s boyfriend) and Magalie’s sister and the bottom one is of Clémence and her boyfriend Gregoire.

Clémence has just finished some work experience at the European Parliament in Brussels, sounded fascinating! She’s keen to do more traveling too so again, another tent in the garden perhaps… Luckily Lille put on a beautiful day so I took a video of the walk from the metro station into the Grand Place.

Here are some fun pics of Elsie’s farewell party where we found some dress ups which had been worn a few weeks earlier at one of the north’s famous carnivals - my best ‘Waynetta’ impersonation and Elsie showing that pretty girls really can turn ugly if needs be… 

On my last day I had lunch with Chantal, Elsie, and Chantal’s new boyfriend Jean-Claude. We had a traditional northern meal of ‘frites’ (hot chips), salade (self explanatory I think) and ‘potjevlesch’ which is a terrine of pork, chicken and rabbit in jelly served cold. It was actually much nicer than it sounds!

Finally, I managed to catch up with Ulla and her husband Pierre while they were in Lille too – Ulla’s about to leave on an AusAid posting to Indonesia but is in Lille at the moment with Pierre as he’s got a job as a lecturer here.

So all in all, my little jaunt up to Lille was fantastic. It’s a really cool town and I would recommend a stop off there if anyone’s going from London to Paris or anything like that. It’s definitely changed heaps too since we’ve been gone; it was European Capital of Culture in 2004 and Vieux Lille (Old Lille) in particular is now a maze of fantastic shops and great restaurants with a really fantastic vibe.

Loads more photos are here if you’re interested too.

Chamonix

Ever since watching “The Blizzard of Arhhhs” during my second season I have wanted to ski Chamonix. Today it was to happen! I was still tired from my exploits the day before so I started at what I thought was a reasonable hour, getting to Argentière at 9:15am. Unfortunately I arrived right in the middle of the rush which meant I had to wait for an hour to get my lift pass. Thankfully that only cost 3 euro as I had a season pass. I had however arrived too late to get a ticket up the Grand Montet which takes you to the top (they sell only a limited amount each day).

I got back to my skis to find someone had taken my skis (instead of theirs). Talk about a pain in the arse. I waited another hour for them to return, but no luck. When my boot popped perfectly into the binding I realised the other person probably didn’t even notice, as the skis were pretty much exactly the same (mine were 6cm longer, but his poles were nicer). Not a great start to the day. Luckily the rest of the day was great, perfect blue skies, the lift lines weren’t too bad, and the snow was soft even if it was tracked.

End off the day (I caught last chair), I skied down to find the car was having issues starting. After half an hour of waiting and trying and starting to think I was going to have to give it a push it finally started. Not a good end to the day.