Have you ever asked yourself what makes your Mar mott? Neither have I.

Today we excelled ourselves and climbed up a huge mountain at the back of our resort. We climbed an altitude of 500m (to 2850m) and back in 4 hours. The views and wild flowers were spectacular.

For the past week we have seen ‘Marmotts’ in the souveneir shop windows. Today we saw 4 of them scampering across the mountain tops. They are the size of a large Jack Russell with quite long hair and bucky teeth like a beaver. One of them scampered away, but then sat in his hole watching us up the hill. I crept up closer to take a photo and he wasn’t fazed at all!

Unlike the ‘real’ mountain hikers we saw on our travels, we had half a bottle of water, no hiking gear, warm weather gear or hats… but we filled our bottle up with melted snow and Col was prepared to go hunting and build a log house if we needed one. Yeah… right.

pics here

Yesterday we went for a trip to a little town (name is beyond me!) and then climbed another mountain.

At the top of the mountain there was a cross. Not sure if that meant others didn’t make it but it wouldn’t surprise me LOL! When you consider the buildings at the base of this photo are 10 stories high, it gives you an idea of the size of the mountains!

The French think nothing of tunneling through mountains. We have been through many tunnels which would be at least 1k long on little insignificant roads in the country.  Many of them have waterfalls in them so the car gets drowned and you can’t see a thing. At the town we visited yesterday, there was a ‘fun train’ ride which went right through the base of a mountain and went for several kilometres. It wasn’t open (like a lot of things in skiing areas such as this) or we might have been tempted to go for a ride (see pics).

We are off  to Lyon (pron: Lyour) tomorrow for one night, and then to Paris for 4 nights. This will finish our time in France and Italy and begin our time in the UK.  More pics…

Beaufort, France

I noticed today that the passenger side brake pedal doesn’t work very well!

We drove 70k to Beaufort in the Alps of France. It took 2hours because the road was very narrow and winding around steep cliffs and mountain tops. It had hairpin bends the whole way and at times, it was terrifying. We had to drive in 1st gear to manipulate around the hairpin bends, they were so tight. There were over 200 cyclists on the road (often riding 2 abreast and without helmets) and lots of caravans and cars. In some parts we had to pull over when oncoming traffic was coming because the road was too narrow. Of course the French drive the road at 80kph down the middle of the white line and overtake on blind corners. Although the trip was hair raising, I am sure it was scenic… but I couldn’t be sure because I was too busy clinging onto the door handle. I managed to video tape some of the driving on the return trip so once I get home I will put it up on YouTube to share.

Cyclist 'owning the road' !

When we reached Beaufort it was 30 degrees and I was all dressed up in my woolly thermals. It is an odd feeling to be so close to snow capped mountains in the warm sun. We enjoyed a tour of the cheese (Fromache) factory and ate a magnificent lunch in the hotel. We declared it the best chocolate icecream we had ever had. Hmmmmm;) I almost poured the jug of wine onto my salad, thinking it was salad dressing, but other than that, we managed the ‘non-English speaking’ shop and restaurant owners without too many funny hiccups. We have re-named wine ‘salad dressing’ (code name).

Today was my first experience of the French ‘communal toilets’. I walked out of toilet cubicle and ‘wa la’ there stood a man at the urinal! Anything goes here it seems. Thankfully, my Twitter friend @philhart warned me of the toilet habits of the French so after my initial shock I just carried on like it was quite normal, which, of course, it is.  Before you ask… no… there are no pics.

More photos here

‘The hills are alive… with the sound of our teeth chattering…

Col in his shorts and tshirt on arrival

Our drive to Tignes (pron Tiniea) took 4.5 hours. The scenery was breathtaking but so was the temperature change. We are here for a week in a timeshare unit with a view of the snowy mountains out the window. We are at 2500m with the ski lift to the glacier 50m away.

Tim and Suzanna arrived for the night on their motorbikes later on our first day, after spending it inside reading (me!) whilst watching the SNOW fall. It is snug inside, but being ill equipped for these temperatures, we are having to wear everything we own to keep warm. Dinner with Suzanna and Tim was called ‘Wa la’ (everything we could find in a pot). Our evening was filled with laughter and stories and we appreciated having friends for the night!

Tim, Suzanna, Col and I

Col went grocery shopping yesterday and after having a heart attack at the cost ($10 for a small pkt of cereal), he arrived home with 2 funny stories…

1: He couldn’t find the eggs and the manager couldn’t understand him so he did the chicken dance. This worked a treat. The man is probably still laughing!

2: He bought what he thought was toilet rolls, with capsicum, carrots etc on them (!) but we discovered it was paper towel rolls. He decided to cut them in half with a bread knife so now we have vegetables on our toilet paper and a rather jagged edge to them.

Our mountain climbing expedition

Today we went mountain climbing up the mountain next to the resort. It was heavy going but I was encouraged by the eternal photograph moments and the various wildflowers growing… so I kept going and survived! There are lots of activities here, like a typical timeshare, such as archery, air rifle shooting, tennis etc. I just need to find Col a ‘playmate’ now.

I have gone crazy with the camera (after 2 days) but the photos don’t do the spectacular views any justice at all;(

Check out the photos…

Internet image

My horse;( It is on a 90cm stand, which is difficult to see in the pic

Orange (pron Oohronzhhh) was a welcome relief from the tourist packed cities we have been visiting. A township in France, with only 30,000 people, has some of the oldest Roman ruins in existance. The ‘Orange Antique Theatre’, built in 93AD is an enormous structure which seats 9000. It is still used for Opera, concerts and stage performances. The photo doesn’t really show you how big it is but if people were standing on the stage at the base, they would look like ants.

The shops were quaint, the pattiserie delicious and the pace restful. I fell in love with the French country style shops and wanted to purchase a ‘useless item’ which would have taken up my whole suitcase. It was a hand carved horse on a rusty carousel stand, which stood about 90cm. I don’t understand what the problem with bringing him home was;( I even offered to post all my clothing home so I could fit him into the case. Such a spoil sport Colin is! I took a photo so I could become bitter about it and dwell on the injustice for a very long time. Not that I am one to do that he he.

Rubber thongs and shorts didn’t deter us from doing a spot of bushwalking. We were excited to discover our own Roman ruin in the bushland above the Theatre. It had plantlife growing through it and was quite a challenge to get to but we named it  Arc de Triumph Wood.

More photos can be seen here

Marsaille by day (Notre Dame in background, about 10 k away)

Our Trip to Marseille in France could be a remake of ‘Mr Beans holiday’. It was quite terrifying to be the driver AND the passenger in our little Citroen manual car (with the gears and steering wheel on the opposite side). I had to hone in on my experience as the parent of 3 learner drivers and appear calm inspite of the internal panic. Colin was perspiring profusely and on the verge of ‘losing it’ the whole time.

We got the car in Nice, which is a busy place, and had to negotiate the car out of a very tight spiral decent from the 6th floor of a car park. Col is having difficulty judging the distance on the right side of the car so I am spending my time watching the things which we are almost ‘collecting’ and calmly saying ‘move to the left darling’.

My other job is to turn off the windscreen wipers after he has attempted to put on his indicator. On the Motorway, we dutifully kept to the left and ended up with very angry traffic abusing us (oops!!!) until we realised that those of us not going 130kph should be on the right lane. We were not prepared for the tolls on the roads and were instantly given a choice of 10-12 lanes with options of payments (while travelling at great speed). Every toll was done differently and cars were zooming all around us. We did it and survived!!

Once we got to Marseille, the nightmare intensified. The traffic there is much much worse than Melbourne city in peak hour. Once we negotiated the one ways lanes and roaring traffic, we stopped out the front of our hotel, dragged our luggage out, only to be told that they had over booked and we were to go to another hotel across the other side. It was 8.30pm at this point. I could not get the GPS to find the new hotel so tried the map. By then we were pretty uptight and ‘over it’ Col had difficulty driving without my assistance and I couldn’t read the map… so we got lost. Then I got the GPS to work and 45 minutes later we arrived at Hotel Monthyon (which we have re-named Hotel Monty Python). We had 40 stairs to negotiate with our luggage and entered a room which had the stench of cigarette smoke and was extremely hot and stuffy (it was 34 degrees at this time which was by then, 9.30pm). If we needed a break from the smell in the bedroom, we could go to

the bathroom, which smelled like sewerage. We hadn’t had tea so Col went to the supermarket and bought a bottle o’ wine and 2 sandwiches. Our bed had

one ‘sausage pillow’ (one long cylinder pillow) and since the temp in the room was 30 degrees all night, it was difficult to sleep. The parking for the car is $26 per day so for the 2 days we are here, $54. It is tempting to leave it there in the parking bay and catch a train.

Col learning French culture from the waiter

Our attitude was much better in the morning, particularly after eating the best chocolate crossaint in the world (courtesy of the French bakery down the road) for breakfast and realising the beauty of Marseille. We then moved BACK to the original motel via the GPS and much stress, where we whinged a little about our plot in life, since we had paid for a 3 star hotel with air con and internet and got a 1 star hotel with free smelly hot air! They upgraded our suite to the Kings and Queens room with breakfast included. I feel kinda bad about that, underneath (somewhere). Its not that we are not used to roughing it, a lot of our rooms have been hot and difficult to access and we expected the standard to vary.

The adventures we are having !!!!

Tomorrow we drive to ‘Orange’ (pronounced with a gutteral nasal sound) and then to the French Alps for a restful week to a place called Tignes (pron with a gutteral nasal sound).

Photos here

Thanks Janet and Steve for the DECAF cappuccino gift!!

San Remo was a nice enought place to stay for one night, after spending 7 hours on trains to get there. We are quite adept at getting around the Italian language barriers and the train system. It is an enormous success that we have got to the end of our Italian trip without getting hit by cars or having any mishaps!! We will miss Italy very much and hope to return some day to visit the less worn paths.

At breakfast we met a couple from London who invited us to spend a day with them once we get there. We warmed to their ‘British sense of humour’ and look forward to catching up with them again.

Now… trains again and then the CAR DRIVING in France. Yikes!

My newest favorite place in the world is definitely Venice. We arrived on the train and water bus, eventually finding the convent we are staying at(Istituto San Giuseppe) on the main island, Castello. The Nun who answered the door bell on our arrival, who doesn’t speak English, greeted us with gestures and Italian banter. She insisted on addressing her requests to Colin, who had no idea what she was trying to say. He just kept shrugging his shoulders and pointing to me. In the end I managed to understand that we cannot exit or enter the convent without a Nun removing or giving us our room key, we are to be inside and quiet by 10.30pm and that we were on the 3rd floor of a rabbit warren. We feel like we have gone back to being teenagers. The next morning, Colin was asked to go to the Mother Superiors office to pay the bill. She spent 10 minutes writing it carefully into her ledger book and proudly presented him with a receipt. No computers or English speaking people here so it is as far away from ‘the norm’ as we can get.

Venice by night

It is such a quaint place to stay. We have twin beds in quite a spacious room with our own bathroom. Colin will go insane as there is no TV and when he wakes at 5.30am, he usually goes out for a walk so I can sleep. He has nothing to read or do. Arrrggghhh!!! Mind you… the only TV (in English) he has seen so far is the BBC news, which is repeated every 15 mintues. The awesome thing about the convent is that it is right on the island a block from San Marco. It is definitely a unique experience, not to be missed. All of our accommodation is within walking distance from the main transport system (thanks to COlin’s careful planning and skillful internet usage) and this has really made a difference to our ability to get around easily and see everything.

Venice is a lovely peaceful place, especially after the traffic in Florence and Rome. There are thousands of tourists, but we are not in fear of getting flattened by a car, bus or motorbike, since there are none.

WhyThe gondoler operators charge about 80Euro for a 30min ride ($160.00 Aus) but I am still hoping for the romantic serenade to happen. I may pass out holding my breath for that one!!!

Every ‘street’ or alley I go down is a ‘photo moment’. I have so many photos my camera is about to explode. The shop windows are so quaint and beautifully displayed I can’t stop photographing them. I am in love with Pinnochio and the beautiful face masks and costumes which are EVERYWHERE! The shop windows are a sight to behold, especially the stationary and mask shops. I stood outside the ‘oldest papershop in Italy’ with my bottom lip dropped (it was closed). Each shop window is a work of art.  Sometimes the windeows are only about 1 metre wide so they are very quaint. I can feel a shopping frenzy coming upon me. I may have to throw some of Colin’s luggage out to fit the shopping in. What I would love to purchase is BOOKS. The art, costume, pinnochio and photo books are just stunning, but of course much too heavy to lug about.
While we were standing at San Marco square, an old Italian guy persuaded us into going to an island on a boat ‘no obligation’ to see the glass factory. After 20 mins on the boat we started to wonder if we were being abducted and would never see the world again. This was one of those moments my mother always warned me about. I am glad to say, we really DID go to a glass factory and were amazed at the gorgeous artistic work they had created. It was quite unlike what I expected. A lot of it was very ‘funky’ and Picasso like. Most of the work was $2000 Aus upwards so we didn’t fill our suit cases and true to their word, we were not pressed to make a purchase. Otherwise, we would be sleeping under the bridges for the rest of the trip.

More photos here

We arrived in Florence from Siena by bus, which was relatively easy. Our accommodation is near the railway station, but this made no difference. We still got lost and lugged our bags in the wrong direction for 30 minutes until our arms felt like they would drop off! The roads are so narrow and the buildings so high, it is very easy to get lost. We didn’t have a map either so that didn’t help.

So far we have been to Ufizzi gallery, Leonardo Di Vinci Mechanical expo and we have climbed every tower and high point of Florence to get the best views. The ‘Biggest Loser’ challenges ought to include getting around these hills and stairs with luggage.

Florence is a beautiful, bustling place with art work that takes your breath away. The art in the Ufizzi gallery cannot be fully appreciated without spending several days there, which of course, we didn’t.

There are Pinnochio masks, puppets etc everywhere. I guess there are a lot of lying children living in Florence who need to be taught a lesson?

View from the cupola

We are now very experienced at getting lost and asking directions in an Italian/English language of our own making and getting up and down stairs and onto transport with way too much luggage.

On the home front… Sophie, who won a scholarship to go on placement to China, has had a hiccup and the kindergarten in China. They do not want them to come (they are afraid they will give the children Swine flu) so the trip was cancelled. She is off to Hong Kong (today) with a couple of the girls for a short holiday to compensate.

Off to VENICE tomorrow! We are staying in a convent so there won’t be any internet or TV for a while and we have an 11pm curfew. No more nightclubs for us;(

More pics: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=86746&id=561229505&l=525e945bee

10/6/09

We arrived at Siena via bus with our 50 k of luggage and discovered that our accomodation was in the old part (as in the pic to the left) where transport is not allowed. We walked 4k up and down cobblestoned hills and 6 or 7 flights of stairs with our luggage (because we were lost!!!) and then got told our B&B was back where we started and not at the address we were given. Oh BOY! My arms were aching by then!

I can’t even describe Siena. It is by far the most beautiful place I have ever been to. So awesome I am lost for words… and THAT is really saying something!!

We were only in Siena for one night and caught the bus to Florence the next morning but managed to c over the sights in Siena and finished it off with wine and risotto outside looking over the ‘James bond racing arena’. Ahhh!

We visited the Museo Dell ‘Opera, Battusteri, Cripta and Duomo (which is the most garished building I have ever seen!!).

At the Duomo (which we climbed… of course!!) we met a little old man from Birmingham, UK who picked our accents. I took this pic of him, Col and an Italian man on a seat…

More pics: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=86590&id=561229505&l=f8dd2ef9a3