My Life in Words

Ok. So where did I leave off last time. I think with Easter dinner on Sunday. The rest of my time in the south of France was a little less busy, which was nice. Monday we had a car so we drove up to a town called St Paul De Vence. It was quite a cute little town on a mountainside, looking down towards the water and Nice. We wandered around looking at the shops (art shops mostly) and walked along the town walls for a bit. Tuesday I took the train to Cannes and on Wednesday I went back to Nice. Since the weather was nice both days, I did a lot of water front promenade walking and reading in the sun. In Nice I hired rollerblades and skated the beach front walk - probably about 5 or 6km each way. That's the first time I've been on rollerblades in maybe 10 years, but it came back to me right away. Tuesday night, Liz and I went out in Monte-Carlo for an "authentic Monegasque experience." First we went to a cool cocktail bar called Buddha bar which was housed in what used ...

Hello Friends Post number 2 from Europe. I believe I left off last time having just arrived in Monterosso, Italy. Monterosso is town number 1 of the 5 cinque terre towns. Cinque Terre is on the west coast of Italy, between Genoa and Pisa. As the name indicates it's made up of 5 towns along the coast; Monterosso, Verrazano, Cornigila, Manarola and Riomaggiore. There is a train that runs between the 5, but the better way to see them is to hike. The main "blue" route is a hilly 11km from Monterosso to Riomaggiore. I spent the afternoon wandering around Monterosso and taking photos. I stopped for a glass of wine in the sun in the main square and started chatting to a friendly American couple about my age. I was asking them about the hike, as they had just done it and there was some confusion about which trails were open. The woman at the tour agency told me that the Blue trail was completely closed so if I was going to hike, I would need to do all the longer back trails. ...

Bonjour de France! Je suis en France avec mon ami, Liz, qui habit en Monaco. And that is enough French for today. My French really isn't great. I find reading and writing it comes back to me, but trying to string a sentence together on the spot when a French person is speaking to me is just embarrassing. Luckily, Liz's French is pretty good so that's been helpful. I'm also findi that Quebec French is really different from France french and that expressions I learnt in grade 10 French make all the French people laugh at me... Anyway, my flight was very long, but ok. I was on an A380 for the first time from Sydney to Dubai - it's huge. It felt like being in an apartment complex which is trying to become airborne. The most eventful part of the flight was when they turned the lights on 2 hours out of Dubai to feed us. The flight attendant comes on the PA and says, "ladies and gentlemen, while you've been asleep we've had a serious mechanical error. We'...

Hi Everyone. Last post from India - I'm on my way home now, writing this from somewhere over Indonesia. Thank you to everyone who has been reading this and sending me nice messages.  I've been really enjoying blogging in India and it's nice to know people have been enjoying it! Anyway, last time I wrote, I was in Goa. Not much else to report from there. It was a pretty laid back week, which was definitely needed after the hectic busy season I had at work, and after 4 weeks of screaming children. I really enjoyed Goa; the place really grew on me. It doesn't have the worlds most beautiful beaches, or a fantastic party scene, and there are no exciting attractions, but there is something about the place that makes a person want to stay. I think the fact that its sleepy and relaxed without being too quiet or boring is what's appealing. The beaches are nice enough and everyone is very laid back about everything. There is no charge to sit in beach chairs, and there are no ...

Hello. Me again. I never know how to start these things.  Anyway, I'm in Goa now, which is on the west coast of India, about 600km south of Mumbai.  I arrived Thursday via what turned into a long day of travel.  First, my  9am  flight was pushed forward to 8am  and then I was delayed 3 hours (on top of my 2 hour layover) at the shockingly terrible Mumbai Domestic terminal.  There wasn't even a proper restaurant in it - just a few pretty average coffee shops serving up pre made sandwiches.  I managed to hold out until noon before I caved and got myself a glass of wine. I'm staying in a hostel here which is prison themed. All the windows are two way glass and the doors are bars.  It's quite new (opened in September) so its pretty decent - good showers, comfortable beds, etc.  One of the best features is that they have a bunch of scooters which are free for us to use, which has been handy. So my last week up north was good. Last weekend was...

Hello Everyone Firstly, thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes.  It's nice hearing from home when I'm so far away from everyone and everything. So, since I last wrote, we've spent 5 days traveling around Rajasthan. On Saturday we drove about 5 hours to Jodhpur aka "the blue city". Many of the buildings in the city are painted a periwinkle blue colour, which gives a  very pretty effect when looking over the city.  Apparently the blue colour helps keep the buildings cool and the bugs out.  I don't know if I buy that - if it were true, I would think there would be more blue cities out there. But it looks nice at least. When we arrived we went to....take a guess.....another fort! I wasn't super excited, however I ended up really enjoying it and it's my favourite one so far.  There was an audio tour with it, which was spoken by someone with a British accent (so it was understandable) and was quite well done.  The palace within the fort was in use until ...

Ok, post number 3. Week 2 is in the books and I don't have a lot to report.  It was a fairly quiet week; working at the orphanage in the mornings and sight seeing in the afternoons. To be honest, I'm pretty Forted out.  I think I've been to more forts in the past 2 weeks, then the rest of my life combined.  We've probably seen 5 or 6 now.  They are all beautiful, but I'm a bit over it. They are all starting to look the same - the amber fort, the tiger fort, the red fort, the monkey temple, etc.  They sound very different by their names, but in actuality they are not.  They are all similar colour (due to pollution), they all have monkeys, and none have tigers.  Anyway, think its time to lay off the forts for a while so that I appreciate them more again. I figured I would use this post to talk about Indian life a bit - what it's like to be here.  The day to day cultural differences are the most interesting thing about this trip so far; how even simp...