Posted 2:35 AM by Ryan Thiessen
Okay, we have arrived safely in Paris, and are enjoying ourselves immensely except for the jet lag. We are staying in a very nice hotel in downtown Paris within a two minute walk from the notre dame cathedral. anyhow, everything is great so far and we are happy as clams. I'm running out of time so that will be all for now
miss you all!
It's the end of our first day in Paris. We got up ridiculously early in the morning (4:30 Paris time) so we went for a walk and saw some of the sights before the crowds got there, which was a great idea. We saw the Notre Dame at sunrise, and visited the Parthenon and the Sorbonne (University of Paris), all before 7:00. Actually, they left the doors open at the Sorbonne and we went in, only to have the security guard politely escort us out! =) I was still jet lagged and went to sleep, but Jeanette was intrepid and went shopping for essentials.
Then, we met up with some of Ryan's friends from home (Becky and Julien) at went to visit the Jardin De Plants (basically, the 'plant garden') and the Catacombs. FYI, the catacombs are a burial ground when they ran out of space in the cemetaries. Anyhow, it was fairly creepy -- there were over 5 million people estimated to be buried there on display! In the evening they went to see the Eiffel tower, but we had already seen it and instead went out to read by the Notre Dame catherdral and the Seine river until dark.
Posted 12:59 PM by jette girl
Day 2 in Paris. Jeanette discovered a good pastry dealer this morning. "Pepites" from heaven! ahh.... i knew there was good food around here somewhere. our other dining experiences have been less than stellar, but that's probably just the tourist district. After breakfast we meandered over to Pompidou Centre which holds the museum of modern art along with a library, cinema, etc. There is an amazing view of the rest of paris from the top of the centre. It was a nice rbreak to watch the urban sprawl from on high rather than fight our way through it for a little while. Jeanette explored the grand mosque of Paris which seems like an interesting taste of things to come in Tunisia. Ryan visited the museum of natural history but unfortunately for him, it was all in french!
On the language front, mom, you will be pleased to know that i had an entire conversation with an telephone operator in french while attempting to find the number of a hotel. the 5 weeks in quebec was good for something! jeanette is tres excited by random conversations in french with real francophones, which is good, because there will only be more....
tomorrow, if all goes well, we will arrive in Bordeaux and enjoy some bachanalian exploits!
Posted 11:39 AM by Ryan Thiessen
okay, I am writing this from a web cafe in Arcachon which has a weird keyboard so I can't write much, it's too hard. But pictures will come soon, I promise, I've taken 71 pictures already. We've been in Bordeaux since yesterday, which is a very neat town that we are enjoying quite a bit. We have a very pleasant hotel room and it is very nice indeed. Today we spent in Arcachon, which is a delightful resort town with great beaches. The highlight so far was the sand dunes (yes) just outside the city, it is very beautiful -- hard to explain without pictures.
Anyhow, thanks to all who sent email, it is nice to know we are loved. And to those who have not yet emailed, shame on you =) okay more later, plus pictures, but this keyboard is horrible. Bye for now.
Saturday, August 25, 2001
Posted 11:44 AM by Ryan Thiessen
Okay, I know I promised pictures but they will still have to wait! The machine at our internet cafe is broken so I can't post it right now. Hopefully tomorrow.... Today we spent on a delightful wine tour through Bordeaux's Medoc region. We learned some history as to the making of wine in the area, which was very interesting, then we visited two Chateaus which were great, especially the second one (Chateau
Siran). One thing we haven't mentioned yet is the extreme heat of the summer here... today Bordeaux is the hottest area in Europe, according to the newspaper we have.
Tomorrow!!!!
Posted 7:27 AM by Ryan Thiessen
Another day, another excuse for not posting pictures. We are trying, I promise. This time we are in Perpignan, near the coast in the south-west of France, and all is well, though it is still extremely hot. Yesterday we went looking at prehistoric places in Perigieux, and some some places were humans lived over 50,000 years ago!! As well, we some some neat caves with stalagmites etc. Today we have spent most of the day on the train traveling across the country to the south-west. We are trying to reach the coast tonight in a small town called Collioure, if we can find something cheap enough.
Jeanette will hopefully post tomorrow or the next day with pictures. We are having a grand time still, but have to go catch a train that leaves in a 1/2 hour.
Wednesday, August 29, 2001
Posted 12:39 PM by jette girl
bonjour encore! c,est Jeanette. we spent yesterday on the beach at a popular
French holiday town called Argeles-sur-mer. the med beaches were beautiful, warm, and just packed with tourists of all
European nationalities. needless to say, i got sunburned, and even Ryan got a little extra colour. We had dinner at a restaurant with a view of the beach. i was brave and ordered an unknown fish and 3 of them arrived with heads eyeballs and tails intact - it was a new experience for me to have my food look at me! then took a little tourist train home because our hotel (yes! a real bed!) was quite a ways from the water. the train went through all the campsites of the area, all the while playing a tune like an ice cream truck. we are still uncertain if the driver was entirely sane.....
today we had a French Laundromat (laverie) experience because all our clothes were filthy from sleeping in the dirt at collioure. later; we took a train to nimes, the birthplace of denim (hence, de nimes) but
it's got a lot more to it than that. in the center of town is a huge roman amphitheatre dating back to the first century which is still in use: in fact, there is a big
concert happening there tonight. there's also a roman temple to Diana, goddess of the hunt, nearby, and by bus, a famous roman
aqueduct, the pont du gard.
ryan thought it would be nice to detail our habits when we arrive in a new city. first; we find the tourist office to get a map. second, we find our hotel and drop off our evilly heavy packs (sweaters and jackets are completely useless here and i resent every extra gram of weight they represent) third, we find a place which sells orangina - for those of you who donùt know, its a marvelous combination of orange juice and pop - and buy a litre of it! we also have found a cool french grocery store called champion which sells huge oranginas for 10 F (qbout 2 dollars). the cashier in the store was quite intrigued that we were canadians, which is refreshing coming from aaaan over-touristed town where we were only cattle to take money from. mooo! and our concierge here is a canucks hockey fan, of all things.
france is a strange and fun land of foie gras and fizzy drinks.
as an aside, it is quite funny to try to choose a restaurant with ryan because he is always concerned about not knowing what things are:) we,ve had italian a few times as a default, because those names don,t change much. our choices in italy should be really easy!
Posted 2:10 AM by jette girl
hi guys! today we are writing you from sunny Nice on the French Riviera. we arrived here two nights ago and stayed in a groovy little hostel close to everything useful (ie. patisseries, internet cafes, etc). Yesterday we did a day trip to Monaco and Monte Carlo (a region of Monaco city) and it was really beautiful. a word to the wise however - the entire city is made of stairs! not a good place for the lazy. we started off with a trip to the exotic gardens, not being really sure what to expect. 400 vertical stairs later...it turned out to be a really cool cactus and cactus-like plant garden built onto an extremely steep slope overlooking the town and the mediterranean. Ryan became very excited when one cactus shot a bud at him in an attempt to impregnate a vulnerable Canadian tourist. i think it was unsuccessful, for the good of the Langley area:) The gardens also included a tour of some impressive underground caverns (300 stairs up and 300 stairs down, as a sign warned us) with stalagmites and tites and possibly some connnection with prehistoric animals and people. unfortunately for us, the tour was in french, so we will never really know. there was also a small museum of prehistory which had been dedicated by grace kelly. lots and lots of little pointy rocks...
after the gardens we took a look at the royal palace, from the outside only. ryan then proceeded to nap on terrace close to the huge aquarium and i went in and looked at pretty fish and ugly fish and things i wasn't sure if they were fish. one highlight of this place was a life-sized paper mache rendition of moby dick descending from the ceiling. who says the french (speakers) don't have a sense of humour? after the guppies we took a look at the fish bowl of the casino in monte carlo. lots of expensive looking cars and tourists and not much else. no backstreet boys or spice girls were in attendance, sadly:(
and today we take a ferry to corsica!
ryan is trying to upload some pictures today. you can try to look at them at www.ryanthiessen.com/travel/pictures if you miss our pretty faces and/or want to see a lot of pictures of cactuses.
love jette
Hello again, Ryan here. A couple of things to add to Jeanette's post today. The day before yesterday we traveled from Nimes to Avignon and Nice. Avignon had a really cool walled city, still pretty much intact, and had a very famous bridge (in the french nursery rhyme), and a castle that looked like it was from a fairy-tale. One more thing: we have been trying some excellent new foods. I discovered that duck, done properly, is quite excellent. Jeanette has discovered that french chocolate croissants are the perfect breakfast food (with Yop yogurt). But yesterday we were both relieved to have some fresh sushi... it was very expensive but worth every penny.
Anyhow, the 134 pictures are online now at this link so check them out and pretend that you are coming along the ride with us! It was very expensive to develop them, so I probably won't post any more for awhile, not for a few weeks anyhow.
Posted 9:02 AM by Ryan Thiessen
Whoo hoo! It's been an interesting couple of days for us. We've travelled to the beautiful land of Corsica, which is off the coasts of France and Italy. The ride here was terrible though. We were under the impression that the boat ride would be a pleasant 2 1/2 hours, but instead made us sea-sick for 6 1/2. I've never been more impressed with the way that BC Ferries works, as we watched the ferries load and unload cars one-at-a-time.
It was completely worth it to get here though. We are staying in Calvi, which is a small tourist town in the north-west corner of the island. The busy tourist season has mostly ended, which means that hotel rooms are available and things are a tad cheaper here. And the scenery is plain-and-simple gorgeous, with the blue-green water sparkling clean and wonderful to swim in!
Anyhow, on to the exciting stuff. Yesterday we went for a short hike along the water towards a lighthouse, which was supposed to be a short hike. We proceeded to get lost a few times (they should mark the paths better), and we ended up hiking for over 20 kilometers! We were quite exhausted by the end, but the hike was great and we were both glad we went. And today, we went scuba diving!!! That's right, we took an "intoductory dive" off the coast of Calvi and swam with the fishies. We were both quite nervous but it was well worth it because of how spectacular the sights are down there.
We are both quite happy to be in Corsica instead of on mainland France. The weather is much nicer (cool coastal breeze), and we are away from the hustle and bustle of the city (less people, no "europe smell", more relaxed). Until next time...
Posted 8:39 AM by Ryan Thiessen
Okay, another posting from Corsica. We left Calvi for the inland city of Corte, situated in the middle of some very impressive rugged mountains. The first day, we explored the city and the musee, which was pretty neat. The next day we went for a long hike in one of Corte's famous gorges in the mountains. This time, we managed to stay on the paths, but I was exhausted after climbing a moutain for 2 and a half hours! But it was gorgeous scenery up in the hills, it felt great to be away from civilization for awhile... just us, the trees, and the mountains. We relaxed at the end of the trail (near a scary suspension bridge) and read and relaxed in the beautiful scenes around us.
In the past few days, we have tried some traditional Corsican cuisine. We have tried Figatellu (fried liver sausage), Brocciu (a mild corsican cheese), two Corscian beers and some Corsican wines. I tried Corsican beef stew with fresh pasta, which was very nice, and Jeanette was extremely brave and had some wild boar (she really did). Also, Jeanette had a wonderful Chestnut cake for dessert, also a Corsican speciality. And finally -- the bottled water here -- Zilia -- is excellent, which is odd to say about a water, but true.
Anyhow, today we left Corte for Ajaccio, the capital city of the province. It's a much larger city, quite a change from the past few days. We had a difficult time finding a hotel, the south of Corsica seems fully booked!! It's quite frustrating to try to find a hotel in a new city, marching all over town with our large packs. But we found a really nice place for tonight and visited a museum of the history of Corsica. Ajaccio is the birthplace of Napolean, and they seem very impressed with that here. There are several different museums dedicated to him, and streets are named after him, and there are statues of him as well: Napolean crazy!! Tomorrow we press on -- we'll let you know where when we get there!
Posted 3:54 AM by Ryan Thiessen
well, we haven't written in awhile and have a lot to report! we got stuck in southern corsica and could not find a place to stay anywhere in town, so we left by ferry to the southern island of Sardegnia. It was a bit dissapointing because Bonafacio is a wonderful looking town with a dramatic clifftop fortress... our pictures will be gorgeous, you'll see!
It was also beautiful, but without the ruggedness of corsica which is odd considering how close the two are. We spent the first night in Sassari in northern sardenia, and felt that it was a truly italian experience, without tourists or anything... really neat place. From there we went by train to the major city of Cagliari... and had some trouble on the train because we didn't stamp our tickets. Thankfully the people there were friendly (we met a really super-duper friendly bus driver that took us out for coffee during the bus trip), and we got it all sorted out! Anyhow, Cagliary (pronounced 'Calgary' for some reason) is a gorgeous city in the south of the island, and we did some exploring there. Unfortunately everything was closed because it was saturday and sunday when we were there... but enjoyed it nonetheless.
From there, we travelled to Tunisia (North Africa) via Trapani (Sicily). Two horrible ferry rides... the first one we had no place to sit because there were no seats or cabins available, so we picked a free spot next to the loud, staticy italian TV and slept there. We had a few hours in Trapani and explored a little, we found a neat little market near the beach and took some pictures... we will be back, I'm sure. They took our passports when we boarded, and it was confusing getting our passports back because we don't speak italian, but a nice Italian man helped us out and we boarded for Tunis. That ride was much rougher but less fulll; we spent most of it outside and met some neat people, Peter and Keiran from Australia.
We arrived in Tunis and immediately someone tried to scam us with an expensive taxi, but we we smart enough to avoid it... then we caught a taxi and told the driver to take us to our hotel, and showed him where it was on the map.... well, I don't know what the breakdown was, but we ended up in the wrong part of town (a long ways away) at another hotel with a similar name! But the man at the reception was intensely helpful, and walked us to the train station. There we met a tunisian who had a friend in montreal, and another person who told us how to get to town. The people here are really really friendly, and have a high opinion of Canada! Apparently a lot of Tunisians end up in Montréal... when we say we're from Canada they ask: from Montréal? Oh well, we found our hotel easily and it was nice. We went out for dinner and co-incidentally ran into our Australian friends!! wierd luck in a town of 1.9 million.
Yesterday, we woke up and explored the Roman and Punic (Phoenician) ruins of Carthage, which is a suburb of Tunis. We managed to see a bunch of neat things after meandering around for some time. We joke that Jeanette and I are "meanderthals" ha ha. We booked a packaged tour (in french and german) because all of the bus schedules are in Arabic and it seemed too difficult for our time schedule. Then, we got back to the hostel and heard about the attack on the trade towers and the pentagon. ah, to be in an Islamic country during something like that! Everything seems fine here though, so don't worry about us. People are still friendly and are not harassing us or anything negative like that. We went to the Canadian Embassy today and they report that all is fine for now, and don't expect a change, so we will continue our trip as planned (we leave monday night for Trapani).
Posted 9:50 AM by Ryan Thiessen
Wow, yesterday was a crazy (good) day. We went for lunch in a popular 'authentic' Tunisian restaurant opposite the great mosque of Tunis, and the restaurant was so full that me and jette had to sit at our table with other patrons! Luckily for us we met a friendly man from Belgium, and a resident of Tunis, so we had a good conversation and the Belgian man ended up buying us lunch, which was great! Me and Jeanette both had the excellent couscous with Lamb, without the Lamb... we are brave, but don't want to get sick! We spend the evening in a beautiful suburb called Sidi Bou-Said, which is known for the gorgeous exteriors painted white with blue trim. The best features are the ornate doors, tourist such as ourselves spent a long time going from place to place photographing the doors of the residents... they must think we are crazy!! On the way back we met a great tunisian named Anis, who took us out for coffee at a local café and had some interesting conversations (in french only, thank you Jeanette!).
This morning we went to the great mosque of Tunis, which was very nice but we were a tad disappointed that we were cordened off from the vast majority... even the courtyard was off-limits. But it was worth the trip anyhow. One thing that I haven't mentioned is that much of this (our hostel, the lunch restaurant, the mosque) took place in an area called the medina, which is a large market in the center of town with plenty of small shops with people aggressively trying to sell trinkets (and some nice stuff too). The streets are very narrow and packed full of people, it is almost as if we are salmon swimming upstream!! =)
Today we left Tunis for the tourist town of Hammamet, Tunisia. We are in an expensive hotel (about $35 CAD) which is the best we have stayed in yet, and we had lunch in a very nice but touristy restaurant (three forks=5 stars, one of the best in town) and had some wonderful freshly squeezed orange juice which was probably squeezed right before we drank it! Anyhow, we are leaving early (5:00 AM) tomorrow morning for a three-day trek through the southern Tunisia, which includes the Sahara desert!! So don't expect any contact with us for at least a few days, because I doubt there will be a fast internet connection in the sand dunes!
Posted 5:00 AM by Ryan Thiessen
Well, we have had some more extremely interesting days our in the desert! I don't even know where to start, it has been so full of things to tell.
Day 1: We started in Hammamet at 5:00 AM, and we didn't know what to think at first because the car was about 1 hour late, which concerned us a bit because we didn't really know what was going on (everybody speaks mainly arabic here...) but once we arrived we took off south through the desert. Much to our surprise, we shared our Land Rover with two wonderful people, Fred and Marielle, who live in Metz, France. It is an extreme co-incidence because we already have friends in the town of 200,000 people and are going to visit there later on our trip. As they say, it's a small world... Anyhow, our first stop was at the giant roman collesium of El-Jem, which was very interesting because we could walk through it, the same as gladiators did thousands of years ago! One funny thing: the road we were one went from Tunis, through Libya, to Cairo... listening to our driver play tunes that ranged from Arabic to American Pop music. You haven't lived until you've been driving "on the road to Libya" listening to George Michael, Paula Abdul, and Celine Dion!
Next stop, for lunch, was the Berber village of Matmata. Matmata is known for its underground houses made of clay which they built to escape the heat. You would recognize it from watching the first star wars movie, its the house of Luke Skywalker in the desert. Then we travelled to a little village outside of Douz, and rode camels in the Sahara desert... how many of you can say that?? Our camel guides were interesting Tunisian children who we told about canada. Of course they had already known of canada quite well because Tunisia had recently beaten us in soccer! And you can imagine our shock when we arrived back at Douz to find a gorgeous 5 star hotel in the middle of the desert, complete with pool and great buffet dinner.
Day 2: We got to sleep in a little, and traveled through the salt desert (its what you imagine, I'm sure) and arrived at our hotel in Nefta after a lunch stop in Tozeur. The hotel was nice as well (not quite as nice as the last one, but we are spoiled now!) and we got much-needed free time, but me and Jeanette went to sleep immediately and almost missed our evening trip. We travelled through the date palm oasis of Nefta and got a demonstration of the date harvest, and got to drink palm juice and smoked some Tunisian tobacco. It was very funny because the guide to the palm oasis did not speak english at all, but in his mind he did and tried to give an english expanation as well. unfortunately, his idea of english was german with the occasional english word thrown in for good measure. one explanation was as follows: "okay, english! (german, german, german, german) pomegranite (german, german, german) figgen, you know, figs (german, german, etc)" so we didn't know what was going on but had a good laugh anyhow!
Day 3: We started early again, and visited the berber villages near the border with Algeria in the west. It was interesting, but also a bit frustrating because of the number of tourists at these small villages, and the children constantly trying to sell us trinkets. The landscape was impressive though, and it was the locations for the movies "Star Wars" and "The English Patient". We also visited the "grand cascades" of tunisia, which might be impressive if you have never seen a Canadian waterfall... to us it seemed like more of a dribble. We did a lot of driving this day, and listened to our driver blast Arabic music at very loud decibals, but we still managed to get some good conversations with Fred and Marielle which was great. We arrived in the evening in Kairouan, which is the fourth most important islamic city, and visited the medina, and saw the mosque (unfortunately, we couldn't go inside, only muslims allowed). Back in Hammamet, we went for dinner and drinks with Fred and Marielle, and fell fast asleep after another long day.
So here we are back in Hammamet, and we will fly to Roma tomorrow from Tunis in the morning. Until then...
Posted 10:23 AM by jette girl
The Pope says hi! we have arrived in Rome, the eternal city after a happily uneventful flight from Tunisia. We spent Monday in Tunis. Ryan unfortunately was experiencing a bit of "Tunisian revenge" and spent the day in the hotel, moving very little. I went out adventuring into the city alone... i call it adventuring because, being a lone woman who is obviously too melanin-deprived to be a local, the tunisian men all seemed to consider me fair game in a "coffee, tea, or me" kind of way. But, souvenir shopping must be done come heck or harrassment! so i went into a local artisan's cooperative shop and bought a beautiful carpet that had been handmade by a tunisian woman in unfortunate circumstances. The really nice thing about this shop was that the women receive 47% of the purchase price. (more) Ethical consumerism, as it were. The shop is called Mains des Femmes (hands of women) for those of you who are interested and may be visiting in tunisia in the near future:)
Tuesday we arrived at the Tunis airport at 6am and groggily learned the ins and outs of Tunisian air travel. This involves filling out numerous sheets of paper detailing who you are, where you were born, where you are coming from and going to, the name of your first pet and your favourite couscous restaurant in Kairouan. Then numerous officials in various uniforms will check your passports every hundred metres until you actually board the plane (10-30 checks later). It was a little confusing, but we appreciate that they are very thorough in establishing who gets on the plane. Although we half-expected it, there was no mid-air passport check (or maybe i slept through it).
Now we are staying at the apartment that Ryan's parents have rented in Rome for a week. It is on a lovely old historic street in a building occupied mostly by locals. It is very nice to have somewhere to call home for a few days and to have someone else do the map reading and restaurant choices:) Today we hired a private guide and did a tour of the Colliseum, the Roman Forum, and the Pantheon. Christina, our guide, spoke Italian, German, French and English, and was extraordinarily well informed about the immense history of Rome. She had a funny story about French tourists appearing surprised that Romans had Triumphal arches and she was quite insulted because, obviously, the romans had done it first!
the internet cafe is closing... till next time!
Posted 5:20 AM by Ryan Thiessen
hello all! We are still in Roma, and are enjoying a little bit of relaxation for a change. I'll finish off Jeanette's story now that I have more time. Our tour guide Christina was very informed about Roman history, but the most interesting part (to me) was just discussing with her various things, like the French people, and life in Rome. One other funny story: she was so patriotic about italian art, she claimed that the Louvre in Paris was full of Italian art, and the French sections were mostly empty! I suspect that there is still a bit of rivalry going on between the two countries!
Anyhow, the next day (Yesterday) we explored the city of Rome. I couldn't really describe it properly, and pictures don't really do it justice either. It seems like you cannot go a few blocks without running into some sort of Roman or Christian statue or massive building or temple! They seem to fit it all into the city and just build around everything with crowded, windy streets filled with extremely small cars and scooters. And the scooters are everywhere, and don't seem to follow any sort of traffic laws... a bit unnerving, but you get used to it after awhile. In the afternoon we visited the Musee Borgese with my parents, which was a fine collection of Italian art and sculptures from the 16th century. After the boys went back to do internet and reading at home, while the girls went shopping! For dinner we went to another fine Italian restaurant... you can't beat the food here, that is for certain.
And for today, we went off to the Vatican... which is quite an experience in itself. The churches were very beautiful and after we visited the Vatican Musee and the Sistine Chapel, which was gorgeous and very interesting from a historical perspective as well. But by the end, we were all pretty tired of walking around and seeing the same old thing again, even though it was still spectacular. It is strange how quickly you can adapt and no longer be affected by the great works of art around you!
Tomorrow we are following my parents to the Amalfi coast, which will be a relief from the bustling city of Rome... hopefully things will be a bit quieter there! Can you believe it, we will be back next Monday? It seems like we've been gone forever and a half!
Posted 5:07 AM by Ryan Thiessen
Good afternoon... I'll give you a quick update on our situation. Right now we are in a small town called Positano. It's on the Amalfi coast south of Naples. It is a gorgeous little town, perhaps a bit too touristy but still nice. It was quite the effort to get here from Rome, a good story involving a train, then a bus, then a ferry, then another bus, a taxi, and finally some stairs. But it will have to wait until internet time is not a precious commodity!
Tomorrow we go to Pompeii, then after that to Metz to visit our friends there and to prepare to come back to Canada. It's crazy, we'll be home in a week!
Posted 3:27 AM by Ryan Thiessen
Hello all. Right now we are in the town of Strasbourg, on the border of France and Germany in Northern France. It is a wonderful city... Jeanette and I were both delighted to arrive here, where we understand more of the language, and people seem more relaxed and friendly. Anyhow, I'll do a re-cap of the last while since leaving Roma.
We left Rome for Positano, and my what an adventure it was. We didn't really have a clear indication about how to get there, and it stung us a bit, but we emerged stronger! =) We took the train from Rome to Salerno in the morning, and caught a bus from Salerno to Amalfi. If you've never been on a bus in this area, you can't really understand how difficult the lives of the bus drivers must be. The buses are forced to wind their way down windy roads and make sharp blind turns, causing then to consistantly honk their horns to warn the oncoming traffic. This causes major problems when two buses are facing each other: there is rarely enough space for them to pass each other, and they have to back up and do this while fighting regular traffic that is understandibly impatient, and those !£$^£^ scooters that weave in and out of moving traffic with no regard for their lives. This happened twice in our trek, and it was quite comical, involving a bit of yelling, we actually hit a bus, and the side of the moutain at one point!! Of course, Jeanette couldn't tell you this, as she slept through the entire incident.
Anyhow, we were so sick of the windy bus that we took a ferry from Amalfi to Positano, which was a very wise decision. Arriving in Positano we were blown away by this gorgeous little town... I overuse the term gorgeous but it applies, so stay with me! =) But we don't really know where we were going, and the town is built on a cliff, and we had many bags (especially my parents), so we took a bus. The biggest problem was that we didn't know where to get off the bus, so we ended up exiting prematurely, and then we caught a very expensive taxi ride the rest of the way.
but we made it, and it was worth it completely! The view from the place my parents rented was amazing (you'll see the pictures eventually) and the little town was great. Everything was accessible only by stairs, and a lot of them, but we needed the workout and it was great to have it forced upon us. We separated the next day, as Jeanette and my mother went on a hike, while my dad and I relaxed for a bit and enjoyed a slower pace for a day. My parents took us out for some great food, and everything was good and happy. The place was very nice, its hard to explain it really.
The next day we took off for Pompeii and Metz. We caught the boat to Sorrento (we learned our lesson with the buses) and from Sorrento we caught the train to Pompeii. For those of you who don't know (shame on you) Pompeii is a Roman city that was buried in a eruption in around 80 AD and was preserved remarkably well. Many of the houses and shops were sitting there much as they had been two thousand years ago. It was strange to think that the street was once lined with Roman Cafes, and regular houses. We got to see some of the art that was preserved on the walls as well, which was very interesting. You know how in movies the romans are always portrayed with white walls and white columns, everything plain and simple looking? Apparently thats because the paint had worn off and people thought that was how it once was... in fact the walls were decorated with bright yellows, reds, and blues: they really liked to use strong colors in the interiors. Anyhow, after a few hours we had enough and moved on.
Using some fine manuevering of schedules, we hopped on to Naples, and from there to Rome. From there we caught a night train to Basel (in Switzerland) and stayed in a fine first-class cabin, complete with folding sink, beds, little mouthwash and hand towels... basically a little hotel room that moved. Unfortunately neither of us slept really well: for me the beds were not quite long enough, and the train stopped too often for Jeanette to get a full sleep either. But overall it was a neat experience, the cabin train! From Basel we transferred to Strasbourg, and in a few hours we will be leaving for Metz. Until then...
Posted 9:34 AM by Ryan Thiessen
okay we are in metz now... it is a really cool city and we like it lots... internet time is precious and there are only 4 days left so we will finish at home and do a nice recap zith pictures:.
thanks for reading!!!
ryan and jeanette
Posted 1:13 PM by jette girl
Hello Everyone! We have arrived in Canada safe and sound after an uneventful flight home. We were thankful that added security in the airports did not amount to any extra stress, hassle or time. It is great to be back in the land of ice and snow (our international moniker) but at the same time it feels surreal to be back in familiar places with people speaking a language we understand. Small warning: It may take Ryan some time to get used to not talking with his hands, used allegedly for the increased comprehension of his non-anglo conversation partners:)
We had a really good few days in Metz, France, before returning home. This is the city where Ryan's friend Becky is spending a year working and learning French. We spent some time with her and her friends exploring the city and even made a day trip to Luxembourg, 45 minutes by car from Metz. Apparently, Luxembourg is some kind of tax-free shopping haven which attracts a lot of day trippers from the surrounding countries. There doesn't seem to be much to do in the main city other than shop, but for those of you who may be in the area, they have a lot of cool shoe stores! Ryan bought a pair, which by their very europeanness, have increased his fashion rating by at least +3. Metz itself is a beautiful town of 200,000 or so, but it is not really touristy. This was a nice change for us, as shop keepers and waiters were all interested in asking where we came from, what we thought of Metz, etc, as opposed to the complete disinterest in overtouristed cities. As Canadians, we may also have gotten a good reception because Canada used to have a base in Metz in the 60s and people seem to remember it positively. A lot of French - Canadian marriages resulted, at any rate. Metz was a good chance to see what a real French town is like and we left with a positive last impression of France.
We also managed to meet up with our friends Fred and Marielle whom we had met in a Land Rover in Tunisia. They took us out for traditional Alsatian food (from the region of Alsace) at lovely restaurant in a former World War One soldier's bunker out in the woods. This is an experience we never would have had without local friends. The dining itself was relaxed and lengthy. For starters, we had the traditional region aperitif, Kir, which is wine flavoured with black currants, and a hot Munster cheese puff pastry dish. Fred and Marielle then chose our main course for us. Ryan and Fred shared a choucroute, which is a French-German fusion dish of sauer-kraut with various sausages and pork on top. This dish alone could have fed 10 people for a week. Marielle and I had trout (heads and tails attached of course) in a locally-herbed sauce, accompanied by Alsatian white wine. After dinner we tried a popular digestive drink called Mirabelle made from fermented yellow peaches. It tastes deceptively like fruit juice but is 40% alcohol. The souvenir bottle i brought home would last a cheap drunk (like me!) about 5 years. After dinner and drinks etc., Ryan and I were ready to hit the hay, but Fred and Marielle invited us back to their place for a finishing bottle of champagne. It just about finished us off! I think I can safely say that it would take years of intensive training to be able to eat and drink as well as the French. Good luck Becky!
Getting out of Metz to catch our flight out of Paris was a bit of an adventure. We had originally planned to make an 8:45am train out of Metz to Paris so that we could have a bit of time to wander the Champs Elysees before going to the airport, but this didn't quite work out. At 8:42am we were sitting on the train, ready to go, when Ryan realized he had left his passport, plane tickets, rail tickets etc, back in the hotel room. Oops! Frantically scrambling off the train, we just made it before the train started to pull out of the station. Ryan retrieved his documents with no problems after that and we spent another 3 hours in the station waiting for the next train, watching local pigeon dramas. Upon the arrival of the next train to Paris, we saw a Canadian flag bobbing on a backpack in the crowd ahead of us. As we came closer, we saw an Air Transat (our airline) baggage tag dangling under the flag. This was too strange of a coincidence to let pass by, so we said hello, and sure enough, this Canadian girl Jennifer was on the same flight as us! Miniscule world. So it turned out that Ryan's forgetting his passport worked out really well. We spent the remainder of the day with Jennifer and this was really fortunate because she had a better idea of how to navigate the system to get us out to the airport. The departure point for Charles de Gaulle airport, the Gare du Nord, was located without much difficulty, but once inside it was a bit of a nightmare. Just as a warning to anyone who might be using it, the Gare is under construction and extraordinarily confusing at the moment. We eventually found our RER train track, and got on, very proud of ourselves to have conquered one more French obstacle. Unfortunately, 15 minutes into the trip, we discovered we had got on the wrong train (there being two possible destinations for the train, we had picked the wrong one). We jumped off this train at the next station, in a generic unknown Parisian suburb, with no idea of what to do next. Luckily, Jennifer speaks good French and asked a local lady what we should do. Unbelievably, she was also going to the airport and offered to help us get there, even carrying one of Jennifer's heavy bags. Once at the airport, we found our gate after only an hour and a half of looking. Hooray! good thing we had allowed 7 hours before our flight. From there on it was smooth sailing.
Thanks everyone for reading and emailing while we were away. Ryan's digital pictures should be available soon at www.ryanthiessen.com/travel/pictures and for those of you nearby, eventually in person.
Til next time!