Things we've been doing while we're waiting.....

for our apartment!

Well - the biggest thing that we can possibly say is that we've managed to reach a new plane of enlightenment thanks to some help from our new mate.....



Walked past his house, popped in and he gave us the path to enlightenment - consequently we're now sorted. ;-)

Actually we just walked past his place on Baron's Court Road while we were flat hunting. He was almost directly next door to:



Which Damo thought was almost equally impressive - anyone who can design aeroplanes has got to be a bit of a champ....

This week we had a bit of drama with our flat mate - she had her handbag stolen on Tuesday night, and we both get a phone call from her telling us, and also informing us that the handbag had her house keys, and also the address to our flat..... Great thinks us....

Nikki was all the way at the other side of the city, and Damo was still at work, so we were pretty much resigned to the fact that our flat would be ransacked when we got back to it.... Thankfully it wasn't - we had a bit of money floating around at that time (which we've sorted out now), but we had our 2 months rent for the new flat in cash in the flat, so we were packing it.....

Speaking of flats - hopefully we've finally sorted a place out to live - we're waiting to hear back about our reference checks, but we're a little worried at the moment because we are basically starting from scratch as far as credit history goes, so it makes things extremely difficult.

The flat itself is not too bad a place - we're based at a place called Hammersmith Grove, Hammersmith (go to http://maps.google.co.uk and type in 'Hammersmith Grove, W6' and select aerial view, and we're about halfway along the street - up from the Hammersmith undrground stations.)


(This pic of Damo was taken at the Design Museum in London....)

It will, however, leave us absolutely mollified financially. But on the plus side, we absolutely positively can't wait to get into our own place. Damo is pretty happy too because it's probably going to put him about 10 mins closer to work too, so that's a good thing.

Nikki's facing a bit of a dilemma at work at the moment because they're wanting her to go full time, and she is about to tell 'em to go jump (well not in so many words..... but you get the point), so it's going to be interesting how they take that... even though it shouldn't be because she's only temping, but they treat her like she's a full-time employee.

We went out on Friday night with Steve (Damo's mate from his old work - he just got back from 2 weeks around Italy and France) down to Fulham and grabbed a bite to eat and went out to a place called the Havana Club - we had a pretty good night, though not without the usual bull-shite of trying to get the last tube home. So far it's always turned out to be a bit of a nightmare trying to get one of the last tubes home. But we had a fairly decent night anyway.

Last night we decided at the last minute to go and see a stage show we'd heard about called 'The Vegemite Tales' starring Blair Mcdonald (ex-neighbours, ex-big-bother runner-up), and as it turned out, it was it's final night, and it's been running for about 5 years. We hadn't pre-booked and we figured that if we couldn't get tickets off a tout (the name they use for scalpers over here), we'd be pretty much stuffed - Nikki had called earlier and they said that sometimes there might be bring-backs, but we weren't really holding our breath being it's final night - anyway, we went up to the box office at about 7.40 for an 8.00pm start, and asked if they had any tickets and they told us that they had a couple that we could have - we were stoked.



Went and watched the show and it was absolutely hilarious - about a share-house in london of a bunch of aussies - it was piss-funny.


The set...

Anyway - we had a blast - it made Damo a bit nostalgic and miss home a bit, but it was great!

Today (Sunday) Nikki took Damo to a F1 design exhibition at Shad Thames (near Tower Bridge) for Damos birthday to have a look around - he his was in element and loved every minute of it - it was sensational, and it finishes up in a couple of weeks time too, so twas good to get in when we did.

On the walk on the way there, we went past some old stomping ground - this was all the area (over the road from...) where we were dossing when we first got here...


(This picture is particularly for Leigh - Nikki thought she'd be interested to see how much concrete there was here, with one small amount of water running through the middle of it - naturally Nikki dropped her phone in the water.....)



*Damo speaking*The F1 exhibition was sensational - there were definitely times when I was getting goosebumps - hearing Senna talking about the way that he used to concentrate prior to going out qualifying, listening to a Honda V10 getting tuned etc.

It was sensational to read a bit about the history of ground effect and actually hearing some of the people that came up with these ideas talking. Seeing Colin Chapman, reading a bit more about Sir Jack Brabham - there was so much cool stuff to see - it was a bit overwhelming. *end Damo speaking*


Mario Andretti's JPS car...


Nigel Mansell's Championship winning Williams...


Damo next to the Ferrari F2004.... One of (Perhaps the) most dominant F1 cars of all time....

There are a lot more photos but we won't bore you with the details. (Well any more than we have already...)

*Nikki speaking*Bore with the details? You guys didn't have to go to the thing! ;-) *end Nikki speaking*

Anyway, things over here are going swimmingly at the moment, and it would appear at this point in time that we've brought the good weather over with us - they are having one of the mildest October's recorded - there's been all sorts of weather records set since we've been here - Damo reckons it's because we're so hot.... ;-)

Then again it could be global warming from all of the crap that comes out of his mouth.....

Nikki is really loving getting to see her neice and nephew on Skype video - Damo wishes he could say the same.... ;-) *Damo speaking* I know, I know - yeah I'm easy to reach on it.... *end Damo speaking*

Stay safe all, and we miss everyone heaps!

Moving House

OK - sorry we've been bad with our updates lately, but we've had to start looking for new accomodation.

Damo has started his new job too, and it's out at Stockley Park, which is out at Middlesex. On a bad day, it can take 2 hours to get to work, and the same back home.... but on a good day he can do it in 55 mins.... it's crazy. 55 mins isn't too bad for a commute time, but 2 hrs is bad.

We've finally found a place, though our house exploits have definitely not been without drama. We've been screwed over by a couple of landlords twice already, and we're not even into one of the places yet.....

But we got confirmation today that, all things going well, we'll be moving into our own place at Hammersmith on the 21st October - we are sooooooooo looking forward to getting our own place. It's all been a bit of a drama thus far, but we're reasonably happy with the place we've ended up with. We're at a place called Hammersmith Grove. It's about a 5 minute walk to Hammersmith Tube station, which is a fairly good spot for us.

We're toying with the idea of getting a car, so we're probably going to get a rental car for a week to see if it's going to be worthwhile.

Anyway, we haven't got many photos this time around, because our life for the last couple of weeks has consisted of little more than going to work, coming home from work to go flat hunting, coming home and cooking dinner, cleaning up, going to bed - rinse and repeat..... We've been teeing up appointments for every night, and also both days on weekends. If nothing else, it's been good to get out and about to check out the neighbourhoods!

It certainly hasn't been that good viewing the apartments though - we've seen some pretty dodgy places, and our budget is even reasonably fair - for £250 a week, we went to one place that looked like it should have been on a horror movie set - the bathroom was like something we'd never seen before! It was hilarious - a dude answered the door half-naked, closed the door again, asked us to wait, we're pretty sure that he went and extinguished his bong, and then came back and asked us in - the lounge room had a bed on the floor. I'm reasonably certain that we hadn't seen such a dodgy toilet and shower in our lives....

There've been all sort of different places that we've seen. Some good, some not so - but it's finally over now, thank god!!!!!!! It has been an interesting experience though - one day, we had a 6:30pm viewing at Hammersmith, and Nikki had to get from Liverpool St (the other side of London), and it was raining, cold, windy - she had no credit in her phone to ring Damo and tell him that she was running late - which wouldn't have been any good anyway because he was stuck on a tube for an hour and half on the way back from Heathrow... we still ended up making out appointment somehow!!!

The next day, was almost more or less the same, only this day it was capped off by being stood up by the Real Estate agent - they pulled a no-show. We were pretty happy, that's for sure.

It's certainly been a fairly traumatic experience, that's for sure - Damo said that he didn't have anywhere near this much stress on either of the houses that he bought, so it's odd that it's so full on just for a bloody rental place!

Anyway, unless we get screwed again, we'll be in our own place in 2 weeks time! We're having the flat warming in 3 weeks time if any of you want to come over for it.... ;-) We've even got a spare bed!

We saw Ree and Bruce and the kiddly-winks this morning on Skype - it was great to see them!!! Ryan was hilarious - when he could see Nikki on the screen he was trying to hug the screen... It was so nice to see them all. We also found out this morning that Nik's dad, Adrian, has gone and bought himself a fancy-schmancy new car with a sports kit on it - Damo asked him when they were going to go cruising for chicks - he told him that he wouldn't want to show him up now!!! :-)

It was strange today - we were walking along past Earl's Court tube station, and we heard a buzzing noise coming from a bin straight outside the tube - needless to say, we were a little concerned, so Damo mentioned something to a London Underground worker who was standing right near there, and his response was "We don't deal with that sort of thing - that's not our area - we just look after the tube" and then he left it alone. We headed off at a fairly brisk pace thinking it might be best to get out of there sooner rather than later.....

We've had a fairly domesticated day today, catching up on washing, cleaning the unit, and we've pretty much finished packing ready to get out of here when we can. We haven't given notice yet, but we've got to give 2 weeks notice, so we'll probably have a bit of overlap but it won't be too bad.

And now that we've got the unit sorted out, our next trip shouldn't be too far off either! (Thank god.......)

Anyway, we hope you're all well - we miss you all heaps and we've heard whispers that some of you might be coming over here, so we are looking soooooooooo forward to that excessively.

A lot of Australian legends have been dying lately.

We just thought we'd better post to let you know that we're both OK.

2 in a row coming up - Damo only just realised that we had only saved the last posting as draft and not published, so you get twice the boredom this week!!!! :)

Damo heard back about a new contract this week, and he got the job! The biggest drama is that it's located out of London a bit, but it shouldn't be too bad - it's out near Heathrow, so we may be moving a little further out that way - not heaps, because we don't want to live too far out of London, but possibly Hammersmith or somewhere near there (2 tube stops closer to Heathrow than where we live at the moment).

He'll be working for BP, so he's now the one that you get to blame for the high oil prices!!!! It was a pretty painful interview process, with 1 telephone interview, one face-to-face interview out at Sunbury (which is miles away) and 1 more telephone interview.

Damo went for a wander in his lunchhour the other day and went and saw Westminster Abbey. It's only a fairly short stroll from his work, so that's pretty cool!



We caught up with Travis and Nicole for Trav's birthday on Friday night. He was heading off to Russia on Saturday morning, so it wasn't a big night, but it was great to catch up with them. So a big Happy Birthday to Trav..... and have a great time in the big Russki! We went out to a little Turkish restaurant just around the corner from Trav and Nic's place.


Trav.....


and Nicole.

On Saturday we went out to the Portobello Road Markets to have a look around and also to take a couple of piccies of it - it was great.



We didn't buy much , but we had a good afternoon anyway. Saw the house where author George Orwell lived.....



After the markets we headed home to get changed because we were going to meet Tory at her place at London Bridge and then head on down to a little bar/club at Clapham.



We were at Tory's house for ages and we didn't even really end up heading out until about 10.30 but this wasn't that bad because we were all on a budget and we ended up drinking a bottle of Vodka between the 3 of us.... We were both pretty shattered before we headed off to Tory's for the night though and it wasn't looking likely to be a big one, and Damo only went downhill from there and developed into a full-on flu. We only stayed out for perhaps an hour or so and decided that we'd try and get the last tube home - and we literally did - we had to change 3 times on the way home, and each one that we got was the last one on the line, so we were really lucky.

Today is Sunday and we're having a much deserved day in bed, just chilling out with Damo trying to recuperate from the flu. We've got to go over Steve's place at 4.30pm for a bbq, but that's about the extent of the day.


Steve....

Anyway, we miss everyone and hope you're all kickin' ass!

(*Damo speaking*)First and foremost, Vale Brocky! You were a hero of mine for my entire life, and this was only enhanced many years ago when I got the opportunity to meet you.

We were walking around outside the circuit down at Indy one year, and I spotted Peter sitting in a gutter talking to what I think were a few of his mates. Anyway, we went up to him, excused ourselves for interrupting, and asked whether he'd mind posing for a photo with us. I was soooo nervous, because I was worried that one of the few people on the planet that I idolised would turn out to be a complete dick by saying something like 'get stuffed' or other, but instead he replied 'Of course not! You guys are the ones that make me who I am. I wouldn't exist without you'.

I think this story sums up how much of a legend he really was, and also sheds light on not only was he one of (the?!) best Australian racing drivers ever, but also that he was a real human being with a very down-to-earth outlook on life. Notwithstanding the polariser times, he was a shining beacon in Australian motorsport, and I have no doubt that his legacy will live on.(*end Damo speaking*)

The last week has been a combination of busy and not so. Damo had a work drinks thing organised by his Agency on Thursday night. Needless to say that it turned very shabby - out of about 20 people, they drank £1500 of alcohol. They were smoking £20-£30 cigars!!!! Damo ended up in a terrible state of affairs by the time he got home, but he obviously fared a bit better than others because there were a number of them who didn't even make it into work the next day!!!!


This was early in the night - it went downhill from here.....

We went out on Friday night for dinner to Zizzi's at Earl's Court and then we went and saw another movie - it's funny - we very rarely went to the movies when we were back home, and here we have been 2 weeks in a row! Anyway, we went and saw The Break Up with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston. We thought that it was only ok, and not quite as side-splittingly funny as we would've hoped! Well that's 2 from 2 now - we might leave the cinema go for a while perhaps!

Ended up going home after that on Friday night, and we woke up Saturday morning with the intent of starting to look for accommodation (we've got to find a new place in the next month or so), so we had a look on the Gumtree and went up to Kensington (Olympia) to have a look at a Lower Ground floor flat, and Wow! What a dump! We were intending to try and get our own place, but based on what we saw, we may end up sharing again yet - we'll have to wait and see. We did a spot of shopping on Saturday morning at an Oxfam shop (an op-shop) near where we live, and Damo picked up a brand new shirt (from an up-market store over here called Zara - it still had the label on) and a pair of almost new Merrell shoes for a grand total of £14!!! Bargain. Of course, Nikki got nothing!!!! :-( We also ended up buying a heap of travel guides for about £0.99 each too, which was a hella bargain!

After this we headed into Westminster and got out of the tube station. It's right where Big Ben and Parliament are, and just across the river from the London Eye - which was our ultimate destination for that afternoon/evening anyway! This was after Nikki had realised that she had bought her spare phone battery instead of her camera battery and we had to head home to get it.....




We took the opportunity to take some more photos of Big Ben and Parliament and also of the London Eye itself.



We wandered across the bridge and Damo queued for tickets for the London Eye for approx. 1/2 hr.

Once we got the tickets, we went and lined up (again) to get onto the Eye itself. Thankfully this line wasn't that long. We were quite amazed to see that after the capsule's are emptied of the previous passengers that the capsules are security screened prior to boarding again - some security guys go around them with mirrors under the seats etc. It was pretty cool. The ride itself takes about 1/2 hr (All up we were in line for longer than what the ride went for),
and we managed to watch the sun set while we were up there - the timing ended up being quite good - as we were coming down the lights on Parliament were turned on, and it makes the building glow like it's made out of gold - it looks spectacular.


The view from the top



and a nighttime view of the Parliament building....




After we finished here, it was about 19:45 at night, and we had heard from Tory that she was heading out to Putney Bridge a bit later on and that we should go along - we headed home, got changed quickly and caught the tube down to Putney Bridge. (It's only a few stops further out on the District line than where we live.)



This is what we though was Putney Bridge, but actually turned out to be the Putney Bridge rail crossing - no wonder we were curious as to why people had been saying that it was a lovely bridge (well as you can see above, the view is quite nice, but the bridge was nothing to look at)..... We were in the wrong place - little did we realise. Anyway, after much confusion we ended up finding the place we needed to go to (It was a club/restaurant called Thai Square) right on the banks of the Thames at Putney Bridge, and by this time, we were both starving, so we met up with Tory, but we pretty much headed straight upstairs to get a meal. The food was quite nice, and the wine was sensational. Finished our meal, met up with Tory and Dave and a few others next door at some bar, and by this time is was getting on to be about 11:30 so we thought we'd better try and get the last tube home.

Damo had to work on Sunday, so Nik ended up doing a heap of housework and went out to the shops to have a quick look around.

We hope everyone is well over there, and we're always thinking of you all!

A gun rack... a gun rack. I don't even own A gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack. What am I gonna do... with a gun rack?


This gun rack is part of the Armoury at Tower of London - read on for more details....

This past week has been a bit quieter as we were both pretty exhausted from Paris.

We had a very quiet Friday night - Damo went for a couple of quiet ones after work, and then we just went out to the movies and saw You, Me and Dupree.

(*Damo speaking*) I thought it was average to OK at best. Not a complete waste of time, but I'm not sure that I left feeling as though I had been completely entertained....

Anyway, as some of you will no doubt be rushing off to the cinemas to see it, based on my history with movie critiquing, we'll try and keep this blog post relatively short.......(*End Damo speaking*)

Saturday we got up and did a few chores around the house, and got ready to go into the City. We caught the tube in, and got out here.....


....Piccadilly Circus

After this we went to Carnaby St, and checked it out - it lacks a bit (more like a LOT) of the zing as portrayed in the Austin Power films (Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Elvis Costello and Mr Burt Bacharach) - it was ok, and there were some cool little bars, but the shops were excessively overpriced, and not anywhere near as unique as we would've expected.


This is what we were expecting!

But not what we got! We didn't even get to see Heather Graham or Mike Myers! ;-)

We didn't get any photos when we were there, but Damo works relatively close to it, so he'll go in one day just to snap a few piccies, not that there's that much to take photos of anyway!

We wandered around that area for a number of hours, went and did a bit of other shopping (but didn't buy anything) and then we ended up heading home - we didn't get up to much on Saturday night, but still stayed up pretty late so that we could call home and wish both of our dad's a Happy Father's Day - and a Happy Father's Day to any of you other dad's out there that are reading this - hope the young one's looked after you well for your day!


It's Father's Day in June over here, so it wasn't even possible to get a Father's Day card anyway!

Got up on Sunday and decided we'd do a bit more sight-seeing, so we decided that we'd go and check out the Tower of London. It was excellent - we'd seen the outside of it plenty of times before, but we'd never been through it until now! It was great - we both enjoyed it immensely.


The tower bathed in rare sunlight (even though it's supposed to be Summer over here....)

It was very weird standing on the same spot where people had been executed and tortured and stuff - We got escorted around by Beefeaters (Yeoman Warders) for a guided tour and our guide was hilarious.


This is what the Beefeaters look like.

We went into the Chapel there, and we also followed the exact path through the Tower of London that all of the headless corpses follow after they were beheaded. We checked out the Torture Chamber....




(Yep - that's right - this is a rack...)

and also saw heaps of Armour from King Henry VIII....




(and Damo with a replica of it....)

...and we also checked out the Crown Jewels - they were fairly impressive, that's for sure. The chapel was amazing - the Yeoman Warder spoke about how at one time in the 1800's they decided to do a refurbishment on the church, which included ripping the floor up because it was sinking, and they ended up exhuming 1500 bodies from there - they were able to positively identify 33 of them - some of them from hundreds of years before then!!!! They mentioned that there was a sarcophagus in the middle of the room, and they opened it up and instead of finding bodies, they found the church's font (the thing that holds the holy water). Pretty sure that Anne Boleyn might have been buried beneath this church, also!

All in all, it was a great day, and comes highly recommended to any of you who might get the chance to travel over here - there's no rush though - the place has been there since the 1000's when it was commissioned to be built by William the Conqueror....

After we'd finished here, we caught the tube from Tower Hill tube station to Temple tube station - holy crap - what a shit hole of a place that is - We walked out of the tube stop, and thankfully we weren't dressed up much because there were beggars by the truckloads - heaps and heaps of them. It was fairly dodgy, that's for sure - Damo ended up helping a fella in a wheelchair get up the hill and then we ended up wheeling him to wherever he was going (Sardinia St, near Covent Garden) - he said he was having a bad day because they'd run out of food at the place near the tube stop..... The place where we ended up taking him to looked pretty dodgy too, but we left him to it - didn't really fancy heading into the middle of all that again, if we didn't really need to.

We did all of this on our way to Covent Garden, where we decided to go for Tapas and a couple of quiet glasses of vino. There was a really cool reggae band playing a heap of Bob Marley songs, and we were just sitting there listening to that and enjoying our meal - it was sensational.


The Reggae Band


The restaurant

We headed home not long after this, and walked in the door, and we got a phone call from Tory saying "I'm having dinner in a restaurant in your street! Come on down!", but even though we were both exhausted, we did anyway. We went there and Damo had a beer and Nikki had a green tea. It was a very strange place, but we were told that the food was nice, so we'll possibly consider going back - especially because it's only a few doors down from where we live....

We got a photo of the people that we went out with!


Tory's on the left.

We got home pretty late, and we're buggered today, but it was a good weekend anyway.

Vale Steve Irwin....

I'll post my proper update soon, but just thought that I'd add a special post to bid a fond farewell to Steve Irwin.

Crikey, mate! I can't believe it's happened! Poor bugger, though in all truth he probably didn't even have a chance to know what had happened, but in reality, his poor family.

Anyway, the news reaches far and fast - I heard about it first thing this morning our time.....

I guess it won't be long until the joke factory starts churning them out.

Here's a start though. ApparentlySteve managed to find those crocs in the sewers in NYC....

We've just returned from a long weekend in Paris. We had an absolute blast. Contrary to what we had heard from most people, the place wasn't that dirty, the people weren't rude, and it was amazingly picturesque and pretty. You can't help but feel a bit overwhelmed by the history on occasion, that's for sure!

We caught the Eurostar (train) over there through the Channel Tunnel, and it was quite quick and good - we unfortunately didn't get to see the countryside though as we travelled at night. It was a bit frightening at first when we got there as this was the first time that we've been to a country that speaks predominantly another language (well by ourselves anyway - when we were in Kenya we had Pascal's amazing family to help us....), so negotiating our way through the Paris Metro system was to prove to be an interesting experience....

We were standing in Paris Gare du Nord train station, trying to work out how to buy tickets for the metro, when a helpful man came over to us and starting speaking to us in English and it was quite a relief as he tried to help us with the ticket machine - he then goes on to insist that we owe him €61 (euro) for the tickets that he just bought for us (trying to claim that they would do us for our 3 day stay.... Damo said "No way mate - we haven't got anything like that sort of money on us" and it was then that we worked out that he was trying to scam us..... The very first thing in Paris - Nice!!!!

Anyway, we didn't get taken, we did end up working out how to buy our tickets and travel to Madeleine, and we also managed to find our hotel with minimal difficulty, so everything worked out fantastically.



The hotel was nice, and it was a mere couple of blocks from the Champs-Elysees and also from Place de la Concorde. It was also right near a huge church called Madeleine (Church of Mary Magdalene). Brilliant location.


Madeleine


Place de la Concorde


Champs-Elysees....


.....and again with Nik

We spent much of the first day trying to work out where we could buy breakfast (Petit Lejeuner) on the Champs-Elysees and wandering up and down trying to work out the best place to convert some of our money. We also went into a few shops (Damo says "thankfully not too many!!!") and generally had a pretty good day. We made our way up to the Arc de Triomphe (sp?), took about a bazillion photos, and then purchased our tickets to climb it - apparently it's 50 metres high, and 284 steps to climb it.


...Arc de Triomphe at night

After we'd finished with this we went and found a little cafe and had some lunch. We wandered back down the Champs-Elysees and bought a crepe with nutella off a street vendor and sat in a beautiful park while we ate it and relaxed near a fountain.


The fountain.....


Damo and the crepe.....

We were pretty shattered after a late night the night before, so we decided to go back to the hotel for a nanna-nap in the afternoon, and then we got up later on and decided to go out for dinner. We ended up in a little place called L'imperial on Rue de Rivoli (which is not far from The Louvre), and the food was amazing - Nikki got Onion Soup (otherwise known as French Onion soup when you're not in France ;-) ) for entree while Damo got Foie Gras (Pate), and Nikki got a steak with bearnaise sauce and Damo got a steak with mushroom sauce and frittes (fries). It was soooo good - we had a couple of glasses of Champagne, and also a nice red with dinner (I think it was a Bordeaux). The atmosphere of the place was lovely, and the waiter was amazing - we've definitely never seen anyone as efficient anywhere else in the world - which I guess means that they live up to their reputation.

The next day we got up and decided that we would go and check out the markets out near Bastille - this was a great move, as they were pretty much food markets, and it was far enough out of the touristy area that we more or less almost had to converse in french - which was heaps of fun - they spoke enough english, and we spoke enough french to get by. This really felt like what you would do if you were Parisienne, and we really enjoyed this heaps - a bit of a break from the usual touristy stuff.


The markets....

After this, we went and had a coffee in a little cafe and spoke to the family for a little bit. Then we jumped on the Metro and headed down to Montparnasse which had some art markets down there, and, after getting lost for a little while, we went and had a look through - they were actually a little disappointing, and we later read in the lonely planet that they've sort of sold out - they used to be good, but not so much any more....

We had a look through them anyway, and then we went and had Lejeuner (lunch) in a small creperie on a side street off Montparnasse. It was amazing - it was an entire street filled with creperies - anyway, after looking at a few of the menus and being able to discerne little, we ended up deciding on one, went in, sat down, and then realised that there were better sounding crepes in a different restaurant - so not wanting to cause a scene, we waited for the waitress to vanish, and then we did - just up the street. This would have been fine, except that Nikki had left a book behind on the table, so we walked into the restaurant that we wanted, and then a moment later, the waitress comes into this restaurant to hand us the book..... not at all embarrassing....!!!!!

Here is a piccie of the one where we ended up having lunch.



The food once again was sensational, but it was smothered in butter - we could both feel our arteries hardening just looking at it.....

We went from here, to the Louvre and we were going to go in, but decided that it was a bit late in the day, and that it might be a good idea to go to the Eiffel Tower for sunset. We were at Place de la Concorde, but decided that a stroll down the banks of the Seine on the way would be nice. And it was.






This bridge is the famous one off the Nescafe ad on TV - I think it might have been black and white and used to have some french music in the background....

We walked to the Eiffel Tower, and it was amazing - the Eiffel Tower (Tour d' Eiffel) really is an amazingly impressive structure.

Our first pictures.....


and then


The view from the top (the white thing in the sky is the light that goes around on top of the Eiffel Tower - a bit like the Stefan Skyneedle in Bris.... except a bit more powerful I think.)


I hung my camera off the side to take this one....


We were at the Eiffel Tower for ages - it was about 23:00 by the time that we ended up leaving the general area, and we decided to walk home - we ended up strolling down the Champs-Elysees past the Arc de Triomphe on the way home, and we were starving - we ended up finding a place that was open, and we got some dinner - it was about midnight by the time that we got there, and the food was lovely. We watched all the people walking by, and ended up strolling home.

Woke up the next day, and it was pissing down! We were pretty shattered by this point in time,
so we slept in a bit. Got up and packed, went to check out, and the chick at the counter tried to rip us off by about €30. Damo was having none of it though, and ended up having a bit of an argument with her, and she relented and accepted the initial quoted price. (Damo says "I would've gone off my rocker if she hadn't - it was expensive anyway.....")

We put our stuff in a cupboard/small room and then headed off for the day - went to the Madeleine Church first off. This was a very impressive church, and due to the gloomy weather, made it feel quite eerie.

We lit a candle and put it in front of Joan of Arc.


This was a photo of the church in general - it was huge!


We then decided to head to the Louvre - we walked there, and then by the time that we got there we realised that we'd left the laptop in a fairly unsecure location, so we ended up walking back to the hotel to get it again.

On the way back to the Louvre (again), we were walking to the Place de la Concorde, and as we walked past the Hotel de Crillon, noticed that there was a crowd gathered, and barriers in place. We stopped to find out what was going on, and apparently Madonna was about to come out of the hotel (or so we were told.....). Anyway, an hour and a half later, she did. Nikki has got a video of it, and I've got a photo of her car speeding away with a police escort.


Madonna is in this car - ohhh I can all hear you say...... ;-)

After this we headed to the Louvre. The Louvre can't even be described, because it would be longer than the rest of this post (which is already huge......). Needless to say that we saw a few of the key items - Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo etc. etc.

You were not meant to take photos of Mona Lisa - we got one anyway! :-)


We also got plenty of photos of Venus


It was all pretty amazing - it's quite strange being there though - you know that you are very much in the presence of greatness in many ways, and even the Louvre itself is a work of art, but it's like your senses get overwhelmed - sort of like you can't see the forest for the trees. There is so much amazing stuff that it all sort of blends in to one.

We were there for about 3 or 4 hours, and I think we managed to skim through about a quarter of it, and this was certainly not paying much attention to much at all. We definitely will go back though.

The Louvre




This pretty much saw the end of our France trip. The Eurostar home was a lot slower than it was meant to be and it was delayed by about a half hour, so we didn't end up getting into London until about 11:30 and then we had to catch the tube home - we walked in the door at about 12pm, so needless to say that it was an absolutely exhausting weekend. We certainly walked a lot though!

Paris Gare du Nord


All that can be said of Paris is that, if it is at all possible in your lifetime, you must go there! We both thought that it was an amazing place, and the history of it is such that it is almost scary - buildings built in the 1300's etc. Very full on! We had an absolute blast!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!