Europe - Day 9 - Monaco

Viva Le Tour!

On the 4th of July, we took the train to Monaco for Stage 1 of The Tour de France. The first couple of hours were walking around looking at the local wildlife:


If you don't know much about Le Tour (like me), before every stage there is a big parade, and all the sponsors go by in cars and and hand out goodies to the fans. It's amazing what people will do for a free sample of dishsoap:



Grown adults were knocking over kids to get free cheap hats:

Not us, though, we wrestled my hat from a grown-up fair and square:

We planted ourselves right in front of the starting gate two hours before the racing started. Not that it did much good, though, because all the photographers swarmed in front of us just before the start, blocking our view, and we couldn't see a thing. I did manage to get one shot of the Prince of Monaco:

I was worried I wouldn't recognize Lance Armstrong when he came up to the starting line. You totally can't miss him, though. The dude is a machine.


After sort-of-seeing-but-not-really Lance starting, we hurried and made our way to the finish line to watch Lance zip on by:


Here's another shot of the finish line - squint and check out all the yachts in the back.

After the 200 riders went by on by one (it took about 3 hours), we took a stroll around Monaco to see for ourselves this playground of the rich and famous:



We walked around quite a bit, but we didn't dare take a step into the Monte Carlo. We were pretty grimy from our long day in the sun, and heard people inside there were wearing tuxedos for goodness sakes. I didn't think my free Carrefour hat and flip-flops would fit in next to the woman in the ball gown.

Tomorrow is a travel day - 7 hour train ride to a city in Switzerland called Yverdon. Goodbye, France. : (

Europe - Day 8 - Grenoble to Nice

David and I decided to fly to Nice instead of take the train, because it was a 45 minute flight vs. a 6 hour train ride. On paper. However, the time for bus ride plus the waiting at the airport plus having to get off the plane because the intercom wasn't working plus reboarding the same plane after they fixed the intercom to fly to Nice plus taking the bus to the hotel (which was right by the train station anyway) was a good 7 hours or so. So that didn't exactly work out too well. It also didn't help that I made the mistake of "questioning the blue dot" (Google Maps/iPhone users will get this reference) trying to find the hotel, which resulted in a not-speaking-to-each-other few minutes between me and David. Never question the blue dot.

Boarding a plane from the ground instead of walking down the little tunnel always seemed impossibly exotic to me, and I've always wanted to do it. However when you have to get on and off the plane twice, this involves lugging all your carry-ons up and down the stairs twice and waiting for the shuttle to take you to and from the terminal twice. I no longer think it's cool.

After arriving in Nice, we did have time to stroll around that afternoon and evening. After refreshing ourselves at a sidewalk cafe overlooking the Mediteranean, the day's previous trials were forgotton.

Nice was filled with some great old statues:

Pretty architecture:

Narrow alleyways filled with shops:

And one pretty cool church:

Today was my day (sightseeing, cheese, wine and chocolate), and tommorow is David's day. There won't be any fireworks and outdoor BBQ's here in France (it's the 4th of July), but we're heading to Monaco to watch the 1st Stage of Le Tour de France. Viva le Tour!

Europe - Day 7 - Grenoble, France

Today is my 36th birthday. I'm not quite sure how to feel about it. Usually I make a huge deal about my birthday, counting down weeks in advace and making sure everyone else knew exactly how many days until my birthday. This year was a bit different. First of all, I didn't have any friends with me to celebrate with, and second, my phone wasn't working in France and couldn't even call my family.

Anyhoo, it was a bit anti-climactic because I really didn't do anything. I worked at the internet cafe most of the day, and then had dinner with David and one of his work colleagues at the hotel for dinner. I did treat myself to lobster, though! And cheese for dessert. They don't mess around with their cheese here in Europe. Yum.

Europe - Day 6 - Grenoble, France

Number one on the agenda today was to see the Fort De La Bastille (not The Bastille, the one in Paris, there's another one), up on top of one of the mountains. Here's a pic from the bottom:

And here's a view looking down on the older part of Grenoble from the top. I liked all the red rooftops:

My tour guide was lovely and extremely enthusiastic girl from China whose first language was Mandarin, her second was English, and was in the city to be a tour guide to learn French as a third language. Impressive. She took me all around the fort, teaching about the history of the Bastille in Grenoble, which is very interesting though it was never actually needed for use in war. Here's a view of Liberation Ave., which is both the longest straight road in France (8k or so), and the road that the Allied Forces marched up at the end of WWII. I can imagine what a sight it was if you could see it from this perspective.

For some reason, this sign was on the wall overlooking the city. I've thought about it and thought about it, but I still don't get it:

These bunks are still left from WWI, when soldiers stayed here in case they were needed, and they've been sitting here ever since. That's almost 100 years, folks:

Even though the fort was built strictly for defense of the city, it still had some great architecture inside:

Turret base from WWII:

I was there by myself, but had a great time anyway. Viva la France!

Did I mention that I took the easy way up (and down) by cable car? Did I mention there was also a heat wave? So basically you shut yourself in a sauna-pod for 10 minutes on the way up and down. Good thing it wasn't too busy today, so I only had to smell myself.

Back down in the city, I was reminded that Ice Age 3 was out. I don't speak any French so it was the "3" that tipped me off. : )

Tomorrow is my birthday!!!!!

Europe - Day 4 - London to Herford

Today = Train to Hertford, England in which my sunglasses were stolen out of my bag on the Tube. Work from Hotel Room in Hertford. Dinner at a Thai place in town where we were the only customers in the place. (Good food, though.) Tried to sleep but there happen to be a heat wave through the UK and we had a hotel room with no airconditioning. I thought we left the heat back in Singapore! Pic above is the town square.

Europe - Day 5 - Hertford to London to Lyon to Grenoble

Looooonnnggg travel day. Nothing was stolen out of my bag this time, though! And I'm in France!

Europe - Day 3 - London

Today was a full blown Tourist Day. We asked the conceirge to point us toward the Westminster Abbey and didn't come back until after dark that evening.

So far Parliment is #1 on my list of They Don't Build 'Em Like They Used To.

Right across the street is Westminster Abbey, which was closed for services, an unfortunate part about sightseeing on Sunday. Not that the outside wasn't impressive enough:

I always wondered what Truth and Justice looked like. No American Way, though:

Did you know how many people are actually buried at Westminster? Along with royalty such as Edward I ('Longshanks'), Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, there are also poets like Charles Dickens, Lord Tennyson and Rudyard Kipling.

And then right around the corner there's Big Ben!

A walk along the river (The Thames) produced some interesting sights, including The London Eye:

This guy (I have no idea):

And a place where the London teenagers hang out:

We stopped at Shakespeare's Globe Theater, but we couldn't go in because there was a show on, so instead we took a tour of the Rose Theater (the one in Shakespear in Love) instead.

The best part was our guide, which can make or break any tour. I wish I could tape the accent and the jokes and upload it. We pay only for funny.

We were pretty tired of walking around by this time, so we bought tickets to a Hop-On Hop-Off tour, and spent the rest of the afternoon seeing London by bus.

The last two places I'd like to go back to, instead of frantically taking pictures as we whizzed on by, are the London Bridge:

And the Tower Of London, where they imprisoned people like Anne Boleyn before she was beheaded. (The gore always makes it more interesting.)

There was fish and chips for dinner, and the day was complete. Whew.