My 100 Day World Trip with Contiki

My 100 Day World Trip with Contiki

Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Lifen Chen

www.chineseinterpreter.net.au

Published by Sarah Lifen Chen at Bookbaby.com

ISBN: 9781618422507

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Every effort was made to insure the accuracy of information in this journal, but the publisher and author do not assure, and hereby disclaim liability for any loss or damage caused by errors, omissions, misleading information or potential travel problems caused by this journal.

Prefix

This world trip began on 30 May 2010 and ended on 4 September 2010. During the 100 day trip, I joined 3 Contiki tours to visit 19 countries: Firstly, the Ultimate European plus Egypt Concept Tour in Europe and Egypt for 45 days, which began and ended in London; Secondly, the Great Northern Time-out Tour in the United States of America and Canada for 25 days, which began in New York and ended in Los Angeles; and thirdly, the Grand Adventure Tour in New Zealand for 13 days, which began in Auckland and ended in Christchurch. In between the tours, I spent 17 days visiting 2 additional countries by my own arrangements.

It took me over one year to complete this journal. It contains 927 images of sceneries taken during the trip, as well as detailed information of most of the visited tourist attractions from Wikipedia.

In order to protect the privacy of my fellow travellers who were in the same groups with me, images of them are not included in this journal. Pseudonyms have also been used.

I had been planning for this world trip since the age of ten. After that, I endeavoured to learn English well in order to communicate better with people from different countries.

I was one of those people who worked 40 hours a week plus occasional overtime on the weeknights and weekends. It took me a while to save enough money for my trip, but I’m glad that with years of preparations, I could finally put my plan to action! ☺

The reason why I decided to join 3 Contiki tours was that they could take me to the main tourist attractions to 19 countries. Later on, I could choose to go back to the countries I really like for more extensive travelling.

This type of tightly scheduled tours are definitely not for the faint-hearted, as we were required to literally get up at 6 am and weren’t able to sleep until mid-night most of the days during the trip. It also involved a lot of walking, and running at times.

One thing I would like to clarify is that Contiki management was not aware that I was keeping a journal to be published throughout my trip. In my opinion, the only way to ensure an authentic experience with Contiki was to travel with them without involving their management! ☺ I guess they could thank me later for writing such a detailed experience with them. Maybe they would invite me to travel with them for free, but I am not sure when I would be able to do that.

Countries and cities that I have travelled to are:

England: London, Birmingham

France: Paris, Beaujolais Wine Region in Lyon, French Riviera, Versailles Palace

Spain: Barcelona

Monaco

Italy: Verona, Venice, Florence, Rome, Pompeii

Vatican City

Greece: Corfu, Athens, Kavala

Egypt: Cairo, Aswan, Luxor, Hurghada in the Red Sea

Turkey: Canakkale, Gallipoli , Anzac Cove, Troy, Istanbul

Bulgaria: Sofia

Serbia: Belgrade

Hungary: Budapest

Austria: Vienna, Hopfgarten im Brixental in Tyrol

Germany: Munich, Rhine Valley, Lauterbrunnen , Heidelberg

Switzerland: Lucerne, Swiss Alps

Liechtenstein

Netherlands: St Goar, Volendam Amsterdam

Scotland: Glasgow, Stirling Castle

United States of America: New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Sioux Falls, Corn Palace, Badlands National Park, Crazy Horse Memorial, Deadwood, Mt Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, Cody, Yellowstone National Park, Jackson Hole, Salt Lake City, Kanab, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Las Vagas, Los Angeles

Canada: Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, Niagara Falls

New Zealand: Auckland, Waitomo, Rotorua, Taupo, Wellington, Christchurch, Franz Josef Glacier, Fox Glacier, Queenstown, Milford Sound, Lake Ohau

Dedication

To my dear friends and family, who have encouraged and supported me to take this world trip;

To my awesome travel companions, who have shared beautiful moments with me throughout my journey;

To my wonderful partner Andrew Y. S. Lam, who assisted in numerous aspects of the process of my journal writing;

To those who have a passion for travel, who helped spread love, joy and peace to bring the world closer between countries and regions.

Perth to London Own Arrangements

Saturday 29 May 2010 Perth Airport 9-21 °C

-- My Day 1

After finishing my last minute pack-up and bidding farewell to all my lovely friends and ex-colleagues, I was finally on my way to my world trip that I had been planning for years! ☺ I had booked and paid for 3 Contiki tours – one in Europe, one in US & Canada and one in New Zealand.

My flight departure time was at midnight. I was very excited when I was waiting to board the flight to London via Singapore with Singapore Airline. I hadn’t felt so excited for a long long time. All the stress from long periods of work and frustration from messy relationships seemed so far away from me. Although I was feeling very sleepy at mid-night, I hadn’t felt so free and yet so anxious about my long due journey.

I am very curious about how different people think about life, how they live, what their values are and what their cultures are like in such a diversified world etc. I hope this journal could somehow help enlighten me.

My friends wished that my holiday would be full of romance, but I just laughed loudly after hearing their wishes, since romance was not the reason for my travel. Thanks to all the past failed relationships, I had learned to be independent and able to enjoy my own company. This was my time-off for soul-searching!

After half an hour delay, finally it was time to board the plane. All the passengers had been in a long queue waiting for quite some time. The airline assistants had been calling the last couple of business-class passengers for nearly 15 minutes before the economy class passengers were allowed to board the plane. It would have been more efficient to just let the economy passengers to go on the plane at the same time without the 15 minutes calling for only a couple of other people.

Saturday 29 May 2010 Singapore Airport Terminal

The Singapore airport terminal was quite convenient. A lot of different types of food from different restaurants were available inside the terminal. I had no trouble finding one of my favourite Japanese noodle restaurants. Nice!

Free wi-fi internet was easily accessible in the Singapore airport. All I needed to do was to give my passport to the assistant at the information desk for her to give me a user name and password and then I was given 6 hours of internet access with my own laptop. The assistant even directed me to an Australian standard power point access – very helpful indeed! ☺

My sleepiness kicked in when I finally boarded the plane from Singapore to London, so I just put on my eye shades and ear plugs to sleep for a while. Breakfast was just a few hours away.

The lady sitting beside me had her special fruit platter meal, since she had made a special order at the time she checked in. It’s such a good idea not to have the awfully cooked flight meal with meat and funky smell followed by a stinky breath! I asked the air hostess to give me extra fruits and skipped the meat dishes. Then the lady beside me gave me her soy milk and yoghurt since she didn’t like dairy products. ☺

I was really grateful that I had chosen to fly with Singapore Airline. I remembered how horrible it was when I previously flew with Tiger Airways, one of the budget airlines that operate flights from Perth to Singapore. I was sitting just next to the toilet, therefore I couldn’t lower my back rest as far as the passenger in front of me could lower his back rest. Subsequently, the front passenger’s head was just about one foot away from me. I could literally smell his hair!

I was quite happy that Singapore Air had upgraded their mini movie players, so that we could choose to play, pause and fast forward/backward movies. It was such a pain that a few years ago, I had to keep pressing the backward button for nearly half an hour, just to get back to the previous scene when I missed the movie because of talking to the person sitting beside me on the flight.

The lady sitting beside me was a very nice person. When I tried to get the flight attendant to hopefully give me a power adapter to adapt the voltage from 110V to 220V for my computer, she offered to lend me her own adapter. I planned to buy one when I got to Europe so that I would be able to make sure to buy the correct one.

We started chatting and talked about travel and work. She worked in the medical equipment manufacturing industry.

I didn’t think there were many factories in Singapore since it’s generally believed to be a very small and green country, but apparently the Singapore government had implemented very favourable policies for investors to operate medical equipment factories in Singapore, which was very beneficial to the nation. They had a very smart president indeed!

It was a 12 hours and 25 minutes flight from Singapore to London! This was the longest flight I’d ever taken in my entire life. After only 6 hours sitting in the plane, I was already feeling quite stiff and restricted in such a small and confined space. Time for another movie!

Sunday 30 May 2010 London Heathrow Airport 10° - 16°C

-- My Day 2

London Airport, UK

Heathrow Airport was a lot smaller than I expected. There were two long rows of people holding name plates in order to find specific persons on arrival.

A very helpful airport staff approached me to see if I needed some assistance. He pointed me the direction to the hotel transport pick-up counter.

There were a few ATMs labelled Money Machine right opposite to the arrival hall at the airport, so it was quite convenient to exchange currencies.

I noticed the airport staff did not check and match the baggage tickets before they let go of the baggages at the airport at all – wasn’t that a bit scary?! How could they make sure people didn’t swap suitcases for illegal reasons?

It also amazed me that there was visibly no rubbish bins inside the London airport! It seemed like they were cutting the costs of maintenance of the airport terminal.

My travel agent had arranged the Hotel by Bus for me, so after checking in with the hotel bus service counter, I had to wait for the next bus pick-up for 40 minutes.

On the bus, first thing I noticed about London was that the trees were so green and lush! I love the look of fresh green! To me, green trees emit an aura of energy and preservation. I saw many hotels shared a common wall with other hotels. At a time, I saw 4 different hotels in the same big complex with different colour of wall and decorations. All the apartment buildings seemed to be quite Lego-look-alike.

I asked the bus driver to take me to the Royal Hotel in London, but he didn’t know the exact location. It took him quite some time to guess where it was and he had to do a big U turn to get to the Hotel. We ended up arriving at the hotel just in time for me to catch the Contiki check-in meeting at the Contiki Basement. Phew! ☺

The hotel reception told me to go to the Contiki basement just outside of the hotel. There was a set of long and steep stairs to the Contiki basement with no lift or escalator! Luckily some nice guy helped me to carry my heavy suitcase down the stairs. After the stairs, there was a big descending step to the reception, which I totally missed! Thankfully I didn’t hurt my ankle!

Finally I made it to the Contiki basement reception. I was required to fill out some forms for checking in the hotel. Five minutes later, the pre-tour started. We were told that Aiden was our tour guide and Shane was our tour bus driver. They both seemed to be quite young and nice.

In fact, every group member seemed to be quite young. We were supposed to be between 18 to 35 to be able to join any Contiki tour. I could tell that most of our group members were 18 to 25. There were 45 people on our tour, among which there were more girls than boys. About 25 people chose the Ultimate European plus Greek Island Option tour and the rest including me chose the Ultimate European plus Egypt Option tour. I just figured that I couldn’t miss the pyramids and Sphinx after reading about the fascinating history of Egypt! ☺

Back to the hotel, my roommate hadn’t shown up. I took a shower and went out for a walk by myself. It was very warm in the hotel, but it was chilly, dark and rainy outside. I didn’t really care about the weather, since I was more afraid that a minute spent in the hotel would be a minute less spent on capturing the scenery of London, somewhere I may not return for the rest of my life! I went around the block of the hotel to look for food and drinks. There was a convenience store just across the street of the hotel. Excellent!

I kept on walking to see if I could find a cafe for lunch. Surprisingly there were many Subway sandwich bars in London. Not far from the hotel, there was a park called Russell Square with lush green plants. I couldn’t stop taking pictures, although it started raining right when I started taking pictures! All new things interest me, especially with all the waiting and preparation for the journey to so many countries at once! I felt like I could finally breathe in the lush green freshness! ☺

On the traffic light screens, the actual words Waiting and Walk lit up at respective time. Interesting! We didn’t have such traffic lights in Perth or China.

The streets seemed to be quite dark and wet, but not as dirty as I thought it would be, since most movie scenes set in London that I saw displayed the wet and dirty streets of London. I noticed all the chairs outside the little cafes were facing outwards. Londoners must like observing passers-by.

Then I went into a small alley way, where there was a nice Italian bistro. Suddenly it started raining heavily – lucky enough I brought a mini-umbrella with me! I must have looked like that I was lost when I was looking at everything with great interest, a waiter from the restaurant kindly asked me if I needed any help with directions. I said no and thanked him before walking on – so far London was a very friendly place to me.

I was quite surprised that there were so many smokers on the streets of London though. Seven out of ten passers-by were holding a cigarette, totally oblivious of everyone else’ possible objections. It’s difficult to believe that the open streets could be presumably more polluted by cigarette smoke than the space inside the restaurants!

My roommate for the night Kadiah was already in bed when I opened our hotel room door. She seemed to be extremely tired after the long flights. We had a brief chat before I went downstairs for a power adaptor and access to internet.

Kadiah was a university student that studied environmental science, but she dropped out for one year to work. She then decided to resume university after this trip. It’s always good to finish university before starting work, in order to open more channels to a good career.

Thankfully there was free internet in the hotel, but only at the hotel lobby. I could get a power adaptor from the room service with a deposit of 5 pounds.

I couldn’t wait to start my first tour tomorrow! ☺

Europe and Egypt - Ultimate European Tour

Ultimate European + Egypt Tour Map

Day 1 - Sunday 30 May 2010 London to Paris Crossing at Dover Port 13-17°C

-- My Day 3

Today we travelled from London to Paris and then went for a Paris city tour at night. We also tried some champagne and French snails! We stayed at Camping Paris for 3 nights.

Early in the morning, there was a massive line for weighing the luggage before we could go on the tour bus. Kadiah met up with her friend from Geraldton and her new friend Vladana. My suitcase was 23 kg, three kg heavier than the Contiki luggage weight limit for the bus trip. The Contiki representative told me to take some stuff out from the suitcase and put it in my bag pack before I was allowed to take the suitcase on board.

Our Contiki Tour Bus

On the tour bus, Aiden gave us a very long briefing about the 45-day trip and then put on some pop music for the start of the trip. Our Theme Song was Let’s See How Far We’ve Come sang by the band Matchbox Twenty. This was the most played recording in Australia in 2008. He played this song every morning of our 45-day journey together. Aiden had a lot of different songs on his phone to connect to the bus stereo.

Before I like a song, I will have to like the lyrics of the song. Perhaps I’ve been a translator for too long, so the meaning of words is paramount to me when it comes to enjoying my music. I believe the world is burning to the ground; the world is headed for hell composes part of the theme song, which to me sounds a bit desperate and depressing although the rhythm was quite sprightly. We didn’t get to choose the tour song, so we would have to bear with it even if we didn’t like it. It’s after all an organized tour.

It’s summer for Europe. Sweltering weather urged us to push the air conditioning of the bus to the highest. Highest also means we would hear the loudest noise from the air conditioner. We could barely hear what Aiden was saying about the scenery that we were passing, so I requested the air conditioner to be turned down a bit so that we could hear him.

A few of us were quite annoyed, since they would rather feel cooler than listening to what Aiden had to say about the scenery. After 2 minutes, my request of turning down the air-conditioning was automatically void. Oh well, I decided to check out the history and background of the scenery later on. The commentary on the scenery from Aiden may not be 100% accurate after all.

I got to know Ninah on the bus, since she sat beside me. She’s a TV production manager from LA who has recently finished her last assignment. She said she planned to sort out her relationship with the current boyfriend hopefully after the trip. She worked project by project and at times with very intense workload, which was probably why she would like to take some time-off travelling to recuperate from work.

Aiden arranged a Speed Dating for everyone on the bus, so we got to sit with different group members for a chat. He asked the people sitting on the right side of the double seats rotate their seats clockwise facing the driver, while people sitting on the left side would remain in their seats. At the same time, Aiden started to play a song. Every few minutes he would stop the song and signal us to move to another seat to change dates.

I could hardly remember all the names of people I met on the bus, simply because my brain wasn’t registering while I was on a holiday mood! Haha! All I remember was that there were a couple of chefs, a few part-time waitresses and a few students on board.

For some reason, our driver Shane disliked us calling our tour bus a bus, he insisted, It’s a coach, not a bus! And all of us had to refer to the tour bus as a coach. The British dictionary describes that a coach is a single-decker bus, especially one that is comfortably equipped and used for longer journeys. To call it a bus is totally legitimate and correct. Driving a coach is effectively driving a bus. It makes no difference. Was there any need to be annoyed about that? His stubbornness was quite funny.

After two hours of driving, we stopped by a resting point for lunch. Ninah and I tried to find an ATM and we found one, but it didn’t work! Luckily we could use our debit cards to pay our food. It’s always recommended to carry a small amount of local currency cash when travelling!

It was a long drive to the Dover port, but we were completely oblivious of the duration, since we were overwhelmed by the excitement for the first day of our trip. Aiden signalled us to look at the white cliffs near the port. Without being able to hear what he said due to the loud air-conditioning noise on the bus, I was not very interested in looking at the plain white cliffs. However, I found the description of it on Wikipedia later on:

The White Cliffs of Dover are cliffs which form part of the British coastline facing the Strait of Dover and France. The cliffs are part of the North Downs formation. The cliff face, which reaches up to 107 metres (351 ft), owes its striking façade to its composition of chalk accentuated by streaks of black flint. The cliffs spread east and west from the town of Dover in the county of Kent, an ancient and still important English port.

The cliffs have great symbolic value for Britain because they face towards Continental Europe across the narrowest part of the English Channel, where invasions have historically threatened and against which the cliffs form a symbolic guard. Because crossing at Dover was the primary route to the continent before air travel, the white line of cliffs also formed the first or last sight of the UK for travellers. (Reference released under CC-BY-SA)

White Cliffs of Dover, UK

From then on I planned to check out the information of any places of interest on Wikipedia. It’s such a brilliant website with free information of everything - well, almost everything. ☺

Back on the bus, a rooming list was passed down from the front seat by Aiden for us to fill in our names to stay in different cabins. There were four blanks for one cabin, which means four of us would stay in one cabin with four beds. Ninah and I wrote down our names first and then Sally and Katie joined us in the same cabin.

I just found out the difference between a Concept Tour and a Time-out Tour from Aiden when the tour started! Silly me!! I purposely joined the longest trip available on Contiki’s entire tour selection for Europe, but it turned out to be a completely wrong choice since it’s a Concept tour, which means half of the time we would stay in designated cabins in various camp sites with no air-conditioning in the mid summer! Well, the damage was done. I was glad my next tour was a time-out tour in the US & Canada.

We finally got to the camping site to have dinner.

Aiden previously assigned 4 of us to assist in cooking and 4 to assist washing dishes whilst staying at the Contiki Cabins/Camps. Those of which were referred to as Cookies and Dishes respectively. I found this arrangement rather unfair. We did pay our tour fees, why did we have to serve meals ourselves? I felt like I had entered into a Boy Scout arrangement with this tour.

About two months before my journey, I watched a documentary about The Message of Water authored by the Japanese Doctor Masaru Emoto. He did a unique experiment by attaching printed letters love, gratitude and hatred to hundreds of containers of distilled water. Then the containers were instantly frozen to - 5 °C. The results of the tests revealed that the ice with Love and Gratitude attached formed very beautiful and symmetrical patterns, whilst the ice with Hatred attached formed very irregular and ugly patterns.

The test was meant to reveal that human emotions have a substantial effect on the molecular structure of water. Our bodies comprise 90~94% of water. So, if the animals were not treated well before they were slaughtered, chances are they had a lot of hatred inside their bodies and if we ate their meat, we could be affected by the transferred hatred. Although this outcome was still debatable, I seldom ate meat after watching the documentary.

When I found out that I could actually arrange a vegetarian diet throughout the trip, I decided to have vegetarian food for the rest of my trip. Since there were only two vegetarians in our tour, the two of us were served first before the rest of our group members at times.

I didn’t expect the included meals to be excellent since this was a budget tour. After all, the main reason for me to join the tour was to enjoy the scenery, not the group food.

After dinner, we drove out to town for some champagne and French snails! I had tried Chinese snails before and I was curious whether the French snails tasted like Chinese snails. It wasn’t easy to fork the snail out from its shell even with the metal tool. The taste of it were quite overpowered by the sauce, but the texture of it was as rubbery as the Chinese snails.

French Snails in Paris

After the snail tasting, we drove to the famous Eiffel Tower. It didn’t look as spectacular as the day time since it was quite dark at the time, but we lit up the whole sky with our excitement through big smiles and laughters taking photos – and of course with the camera flashes! ☺

Aiden tried to make sure everyone was loaded with enough cash for the optional activities that required extra cash, so just right after we got back to the campsite, he assigned Rollie, a Contiki campsite representative, to take us to the closest ATM machine near the campsite. I happened to walk side by side with Robbie and was too close to him to not have a conversation.

I decided to be the ice breaker. Hey Rollie, what would you like to do in your life? I don’t know if my question was too deep, but I don’t normally ask silly questions to people that I don’t know well.

Without taking any thought, he swiftly answered, Well I just wanna get drunk and silly whenever I can!

I think going to the gym would be more interesting and healthier for you… I was such a wonderful and pleasant adviser when the last thing he wanted to hear was some random advice from some half stranger! :-p

A blank moment passed, I asked if he could tell me where to buy a power adaptor. He said he would give me one for free, since he had collected quite a few of them that were left from people during their stay in the campsite. He asked me to wait for him at the Bar, which was the only bar in the entire campsite. I went there and waited for him.

A few girls from our group were drinking and smoking there. I generally don’t associate with people who smoke and drink excessively, but I made an exception since I decided that for once in my life, I was not going to generalize people by their habits. However, after listening and talking to them, I found that their topics mainly revolved around boys – who’s the hottest in the tour, who looked really cute etc.

Meanwhile, many mosquitoes were flying around looking for preys. I finally had enough mosquito bites and second hand smoking, so I decided to go back to my cabin after 20 minutes of waiting. I had no interest in talking about boys that I barely knew. It’s all right. I didn’t need the power adapter urgently! My roommate Ninah kindly lent me hers for the night anyway.

Day 2 – Monday 31 May 2010 Paris Monday 9-16 °C

-- My Day 4

Today’s plan was to visit Versailles Palace, which was a few hours drive from the campsite. We then get dropped off at the biggest museum of the world-De Louvre museum, where we could go in and see the famous Mona Lisa painting by Da Vinci. Afterwards, we got picked up by 5 pm at the drop-off spot. Dinner was at the campsite. After dinner, we drove out to climb the Eiffel Tower at night.

I took my time to wait for my turn for breakfast at the tent set up at the Contiki campsite. We had a joined breakfast with another tour. Before I knew it, all of our tour members had gone to catch the bus leaving at 9 am.

Cafeteria in Contiki Camping Paris Campsite, France

I had to go to the toilet before getting on the tour bus, since Aiden couldn’t emphasize enough how important it was not to use the toilet in the bus. Boo! I missed the tour bus just for 5 minutes! I couldn’t believe the tour manager didn’t want to wait for even five minutes! I was totally disappointed! I doubt that he counted the number of tourists on his tour before the bus took off. Well, I would have to visit Versailles Palace another time!

Just when I was feeling desperate and wondering what I should do next, Vanessa, a very kind Contiki representative, came to help. Upon direction from Vanessa, I took the bus #101 and then took a train to downtown Paris by myself. That took me nearly an hour, since the bus #101 only came near the campsite every 30 minutes.

The bus driver was quite a handsome young man, but he couldn’t speak a lot of English. It was France after all! However, I tried my very best using simple English to ask him directions to downtown Paris. He could only used sign language to say that he would signal me at the bus stop closest to the train station, where I could take a train to downtown Paris – I was actually proud of my first conversation with a local! ☺

As I sat down on the bus, I couldn’t conceal my big smile, welcoming the new environment I was facing: A little girl was happily giggling and playing with her mother; a lot of strangers were sitting on the same bus, either talking or looking out of the bus windows; and scenes of beautiful houses along the bus route were flashing by – this was France! And I was heading to Paris, by myself, on public transport in a completely strange city for me!

The train trip was quick with the help from a local named Pascal, a governmental statistics analyst. I met him at the train ticket machine, when I was trying to figure out how to get a ticket to downtown Paris. He saw I was frowning at the route map and kindly offered his help.

He explained that I had to change a train at a junction and it happened that he would get off the train at that junction, so he would be able to show me the way to the other train station for transfer. He actually took out a train map from his pocket and point out the way for me. We chatted about work and life in general. Before we realized, he was at his destination.

He pointed me to the right direction and left me with the map, then he told me to be careful of pickpockets before he departed for work. Just before we said good-bye, he gave me a big and firm handshake, pecked me on both my cheeks and then said, Good luck! With a big smile – I guess that’s a French good-bye for strangers? It felt so good to be able to talk freely to complete kind strangers from a strange country! Such sense of freedom and a feeling at home was overwhelming!

As I set foot on downtown Paris, I totally lost my direction! Luckily a security guard with a smiley face kindly pointed me to the right direction to De Louvre Museum, where I found the insanely long queue at the entrance. It looked like it was going to take an hour to queue up. With such limited time to explore the city, I decided to spend my time elsewhere in Paris rather than in a queue!

Street in Paris, France

Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, a triumphal arch in Place du Carrousel, built between 1806 and 1808 to commemorate Napoleon’s military victories of the previous year, Paris, France

Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, a triumphal arch in Place du Carrousel, built between 1806 and 1808 to commemorate Napoleon’s military victories of the previous year, Paris, France

Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, a triumphal arch in Place du Carrousel, built between 1806 and 1808 to commemorate Napoleon’s military victories of the previous year, Paris, France

Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, a triumphal arch in Place du Carrousel, built between 1806 and 1808 to commemorate Napoleon’s military victories of the previous year, Paris, France

Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, a triumphal arch in Place du Carrousel, built between 1806 and 1808 to commemorate Napoleon’s military victories of the previous year, Paris, France

Street of Paris, France

My plan was simple – find the tour bus pick-up spot, have lunch and then walk around De Louvre before getting picked up at the pick-up spot. The pick-up spot was next to the Obelisk. It was an easy task to find the Obelisk, which was just near the end of the Concord garden.

After finding the location of the pick-up spot, I walked to the St Madeleine Church to take some photos. Then I found a little boutique bakery/café that made the most delicious Sandwiches – it’s one of the illy franchised cafés.

The bright red French boysenberry fruit tart there was also very tasty. The toilet in the cafe located quite secretively, since there were rows of little square tables right in front of the entrance of the single unisex toilet. I had to ask the waiter for direction to find it. Well, at least they had a toilet for a cafe sized that small!

Sitting outside of the restaurant right on the street, people kept walking by on the narrow strip with the tiny white square tables from the café occupying half of the strip. I must have appeared quite happily eating my meal - within 15 minutes, the empty row of tables were suddenly filled with people joining me for lunch! Awesome! ☺

After lunch, I kept walking through the shopping area, took loads of pictures before I found myself lost, again! Then just when I went across some main street, I heard an elderly couple speaking English with a strong Australian accent, which gave me a feeling of home! I excitedly ran to ask them for direction.

The old man pulled out his map and glasses and then started telling me the directions, If you turn right from here and then turn right again, turn left there and then turn right and then... Without another word from him, I suddenly realized that obviously he was just joking!

Are you joking? That can’t be right! He looked at me with a blank face for a second and then we started laughing! Haha! His wife just smiled and shook her head, glancing at her smirking husband. Finally, he studied carefully with his map and told me the exact way that I needed to go to find St Madeleine Church, so that I could find my way back to the pick-up spot from the church.

L’église de la Madeleine (Madeleine Church; more formally, L’église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine; less formally, just La Madeleine) is a Roman Catholic church occupying a commanding position in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. It was designed in its present form as a temple to the glory of Napoleon’s army. To its south lies the Place de la Concorde, to the east is the Place Vendôme, and to the west L’église Saint-Augustin. (Reference released under CC-BY-SA)

Madeleine Church, Paris, France

I decided to hunt for some postcards to send to my friends and family. On the street, I had to ask quite a few people before I could find my direction to the post office nearby. Then the long queue took me at least half an hour just to get to the service counter.

To kill the waiting time, I had a nice chat to a girl originally from Berlin named Barbara. She told me that her husband was from Australia and she liked Melbourne a lot. It’s amazing how open-minded and friendly the people were in Paris when they found out that you were a tourist. I started to like the place and I don’t mind being a tourist most of the time if possible! ☺

The post office visit took much longer than I expected. By the time I finished with it, I didn’t have much time left before the bus pick-up time. I quickly ran to the Concord to meet up with the other group members. They all wondered where I had gone and some said that at first they didn’t notice that I was not on the bus.

Joan of Arc statue at Place des Pyramides, by Emmanuel Frémiet, 1874, Paris, France

Iris, Place de la Concorde, Paris, France

Equestrian Statue of Louis XV sculpted mostly by Edmé Bouchardon (1698-1762), and completed by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714-1785) after Bouchardon’s death, Place de la Concorde, Paris, France

Fontaine de la Concorde, Paris, France

Fontaine de la Concorde, Paris, France

Fontaine de la Concorde, Paris, France

Fontaine de la Concorde, Paris, France

Finally Aiden appeared at the bus pick-up spot. I told him that I was left behind and stated that he should have checked whether everyone was on board before departure. He didn’t take my criticism too well and defended that it was my responsibility to be on time for the bus ride. He said he was not going to make sure everyone was on the bus before departing, which was the most irresponsible thing I had ever heard from a tour guide.

I used to be a tour guide for a while in China. I always made sure everyone on my tours was on board to carry out the excursions and returned home safe and sound after the tours, although I decided to quit shortly after being a tour guide, reason being that I didn’t want to rip the tourists off for my own survival. I finally let go of my anger, since we still had 43 days to spend together and I didn’t want to hold any grudge against anyone to spoil the fun.

We went back to the campsite for dinner and then headed out to the Eiffel Tower for a night time peak.

Les Invalides (The National Residence of the Invalids), Paris, France

There was a massive queue at the Tower elevator. Although Aiden said it would have been easier to climb up to the middle level instead of queuing up for the lift, the stairs were closed, which left us only one option - using the paid elevator to go up.

Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

At the ticket office, I noticed that they charged different rate between people from age under 12, 12-24 and 24+! The ticketing assistant asked everyone about their age before she charged for the tickets. A couple of us lied about their age, saying they were under 23 just to get a lower rate, but since I made a comment out loud about how stupid the charging rule was, the ticketing assistant overheard me, so she just gave me the most expensive ticket without even asking about my age – I just learned the travel rule number one – never complain about the local rules! Not that I wanted to avoid paying the fee that I was supposed to pay, it’s just that rules were made by people and you wouldn’t want to offend too many of them! :-p

Aiden told us that the pictures taken from the mid-level of the towel normally looked better than those taken from the top-level, which was quite true. He also told us that the entire towel would be lit up at 10:05 pm, so it would look nice from a distance.

After queuing up for about 25 minutes for the lift, we finally reached the middle level of Eiffel Tower and took some nice photos. Then we had to hurry to queue up for the top level. We couldn’t stay at the top level for long, since we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see the big lighting show.

We lined up for nearly 30 minutes at the top before we could finally take the elevator down to the bottom of the tower. Then we waited in between the two sections of lawn for nearly 30 minutes, only to find out that the lights on the tower were still as black as the sky.

Aiden’s impatience was clearly written on his face. Firstly, they started with a 3-hour traffic jam this morning, leaving me behind; the next thing happened was that the stairs to the tower were closed; finally the day ended with this supposedly light show that did not happen as scheduled! – It’s truly not his luckiest day!

Downtown Paris from the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

After waiting for 45 minutes, we walked back with disappointment to the bus.

Just as Shane ignited the engine of the bus, the entire Eiffel Tower was lit up all of a sudden! Aiden was more excited than any of us, he happily shouted, Hey guys, we can now go out and take some pictures of the glowing tower!

So finally we were doing something he planned for us all! After that, thanks to Aiden’s enthusiasm, we switched location by parking illegally for 5 minutes for everyone to take more photos in a prime spot. Well, at least I didn’t miss that bit! In fact after everyone found out that I was left behind, some group members started to make an effort to make sure that I was on board for future excursions and I really appreciated it! ☺

Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Day 3 – Tuesday 1 June 2010 Paris 11-16 °C

-- My Day 5

Today we were dropped off near Musée d’Orsay before going to different places on our own. Afterwards, we were picked up at the mini-arch near De Louvre Museum for a French dinner and then went to see the famous Cabaret show.

I especially made sure that I actually got on the bus at 9 am sharp this time! No more being left behind!

We were given a Things-to-do sheet of Paris on the bus just before our own exploration in town. It mainly included information of the major tourist attractions in the city.

I suggested to Aiden that we would be more informed if we were given the Things-to-do sheet on the previous day. He said he did that in the past, the tourists would always lost the sheets, so he decided to give the sheets out only when we were on the bus to the relevant places.

I suppose this was one way to make sure everyone had the information of tourist attraction on the very day, but it was not convenient to read on the bus, especially when we were trying to make new friends. We would have wasted the opportunity to see more of the tourist attractions if we were to read the Things-to-do sheet just after we got off the tour bus. It’s difficult for me to choose between making new friends and reading about what we were going to visit.

I begged him to give me the sheet beforehand, but he refused to.

Street in Paris, France

De Louvre Museum, Paris, France

De Louvre Museum, Paris, France

De Louvre Museum, Paris, France

Equestrian statue of King Louis XIV, courtyard of the Louvre museum, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), Paris, France

De Louvre Museum, Paris, France

Partnered with my roommate Ninah, we decided to visit Notre Dame first by Metro, as the queue at the Musée d’Orsay was quite long. With my first day experience in Paris taking public transport on my own, I became quite an expert in taking the Metro, which has made our way extremely easy to get to Notre Dame - by far the biggest cathedral that I had ever visited.

Notre Dame de Paris (French for Our Lady of Paris), also known as Notre Dame Cathedral, is a Gothic, Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra (official chair), of the Archbishop of Paris, currently André Vingt-Trois. The cathedral treasury houses a reliquary with the purported Crown of Thorns.

Notre Dame de Paris is widely considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture in France and in Europe, and the naturalism of its sculptures and stained glass are in contrast with earlier Romanesque architecture. The first period of construction from 1163 into the 1240’s coincided with the musical experiments of the Notre Dame school.

The cathedral suffered desecration during the radical phase of the French Revolution in the 1790s, when much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. An extensive restoration supervised by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc removed remaining decoration, returning the cathedral to an ‘original’ gothic state.

Notre Dame de Paris was among the first buildings in the world to use the flying buttress (arched exterior supports). The building was not originally designed to include the flying buttresses around the choir and nave. After the construction began and the thinner walls (popularized in the Gothic style) grew ever higher, stress fractures began to occur as the walls pushed outward. In response, the cathedral’s architects built supports around the outside walls, and later additions continued the pattern. The cathedral was essentially complete by 1345. (Reference released under CC-BY-SA)

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France

We walked around the building to take photos of the exterior and then decided to painstakingly queue up to see the interior of it. After waiting for half an hour, we were finally inside, eyes packed with a vast amount of altars. However, without proper knowledge of the Bible and religion itself, they didn’t mean a great deal to me at all.

I had several attempts to finish reading the Bible a few years back, but the 280 pages of the Old Testament with totally implausible stories put me to sleep every time I tried to lift another page of it! :-p

Growing up as a Catholic, Ninah was quite interested in the entire interior exhibit, so I just followed her around inside the cathedral. It’s not an easy task to following anyone around inside the heavily congested cathedral! I had to look for her quite a few times just to keep our team adventure afloat! Phew!

We then went to queue up for nearly an hour to enter the Musée d’Orsay. Numerous of paintings and naked or half naked statues were all over the place! They were quite interesting for a while, but after seeing hundreds and hundreds of them, my interest started to wander elsewhere. Within an hour we finished our exploration inside the museum and started to head back.

The Musée d’Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d’Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It is probably best known for its