One way to the UK?

To begin with, Germany has weird keyboards and the z and y keys are swapped around so forgive me if some of the words seem weird as I’m just going to type everything to try and fill you in on our trip so far!

So the travelling party consists of myself (planner haha), Elissa and Mara. On Friday 31 August we woke up early, stuffed the last few items into our packs, threw out a few more items from the packs (including my black fleecy jacket as it wouldn’t fit easily) and then headed for the tube station, where we caught the underground to Waterloo Station. From Waterloo Station we caught the Eurostar from London to Paris, and then Paris to Nice. In London we got there exactly 30 minutes before the train departed, so rushed through securiy and customs as fast as possible, and then waited for the train to be ready for boarding! Eurostar was quite nice, and we had a four-seats to ourselves around a table which was nice (and what we booked). On arriving in Paris, we had 45 minutes to get from Gare Du Nord (North) to Gare De Lyon (South), so we ran from train, lined up to get our RER (Paris metro) tickets and then went through the gates to find the metro train… well Mara & I went through the gates, but Lis got stuck on the other side!!! She put her ticket in, but the gates opened and closed really quickly and she didn’t get through them!!! So she had to run and find a station helper to get her through, and we were panicking a little at this stage about the time! So we ran downstairs to get the RER, and then on the actual platforms the letter signs disappeared! So we watched our train depart, and then had to wait for the next one, onlz 5 minutes behind. So we got to Gare De Lyon and rushed up all the stairs thinking we would just make our train… but once again we had to wait in lounge area looking at the TV screen for our platform to come up! Finally did, and we were on our way to Nice! We arrived in Nice in the late-afternoon, which was nice as it gave us time to look around the Hotel area and to visit the beach — pebble beach mind you, so not the nicest thing around but the ocean colour was absolutely amazing!

I’m doing pretty well with this weird keyboard! Just taking me ages to type!

Saturday in Nice we headed to Monaco for a look around, and we spent a few hours there climbing up the huge hill (there is a defribulator at the top in case people suffer once reaching the top!), looking at the Castle, watching the changing of the guards and looking around the amazing Musee de Oceanographic AKA Aquarium, which was first commissioned decades ago by Prince Ranier the First. It was a nice day out topped off with Gelati! We also saw Prince Albert go by in his car, surrounded by Motorcade so that was a bit of excitement!

On returning to Nice, we went to the beach again and sat for a while, and then headed into a part of town to see a big flower market… well that was supposed to be there, but it wasn’t really all that big – however not a waste of time at all because we found all the great restaurants of Nice there!!! We chose this one for dinner, where you could get All You Can Eat Moulles (mussels) and Fries for only €11.90!!! Fantastic! Mara and I had two pots of mussels each. We then headed to Wayne’s Bar, which we tried out because Brenton (Grove Road flatmate) had told us about the place saying he loovved it when in Nice! Well we soon found out it was an AUSSIE bar! We have been so good so far since leaving home, to avoid all the typical Aussie pubs and bars etc, but decided to stay in Wayne’s for a while anyway as the staff were nice, it was busy and there was live music! Some UK girls we met said the same band plays the same songs every night, but as we were only there for one it didn’t bother us! So thanks for the tip Brenton – I thought Nice was really great second-time-around.

Sunday morning we were up early to catch the first sector of our Busabout Trip, taking us from Nice to Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland! After a few service stops, lunch and hours of driving, including one of the longest tunnels in Europe (17km) we arrived in the chilly valley town of Lauterbrunnen! The campsite was nice like last time (2005) except this time the heaters were not working in any rooms! Argh! Not good. Mara and I went white water rafting along with two Kiwis, Fran and Craig that we met. The water was well cold, and we were zipped up in wetsuits, then a wetsuit jacket, life jacket, booties and helmet! The rapids were pretty tame when compared to Tully in Queensland where I’ve been rafting before, but it was still a great day out!!! We had 8 people on our raft, plus the NZ guide Koren. Two Koreans were on our raft, and my god the girl was as useless as a sprouting sack of potatoes! I think she maybe paddled three times, and that was when some of us, including her husband, jumped into the freeying water for a swim and then had to be pulled out before the next rapids came, but he could not swim well at all, and kept going further away from the raft… so we had to chase him in our raft, all paddling like buggery.,., except for her – so Koren yelled out “sweetheart if you want to save your husband you can bloody well paddle too” hahaha god it was funny!!! When the man got back into our raft (he was rescued by the other raft after ours got stuck on a rock in the middle of paddling to get him) and Koren said “i think once you get back to Korea you need to take swimming lessons!!!”. It was still a great day out, but they lied to us about warm showers at the end of the trip, cuz all we got was a cold spray of the hose!!! Cheeky buggers.

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