South America

Hi all,

Hopefully you all enjoyed the weekend and the All Blacks thrashing the Wallabies. Amy and I are now in Nimes (sort of) after saying goodbye to Romain and the sleepy village of Bourgoin. We had a lazy week there and are now on our own for three days before we go to a friend's house just outside of Nimes.

During my blogs I have tried to stay away from the 'rant', but after today I am going to ignore my rule and just take the hand off the steering wheel for a bit. Please excuse me.

Today we moved from our hotel in the centre of Nimes to a more affordable option which was suppossed to be just on the other side of the main centre. As such we packed up of bags early and thought we would grab some breakfast near our new hotel. After all we were in no rush.

We considered walking to our new hotel as it was only 4km from where we were according to google maps. Luckily we were both a little weary so caught a cab. It cost us almost 20euro on country roads to get to our next hotel which was not in Nimes but in a small village about 10km from the outskirts of town. Brilliant. The taxi driver even laughed when he saw how surprised we were at our location.

No panic. Surely there would be a low cost way into town for travellers, right? Nope. Upon presenting the question, the lady at the desk told me to drive. I told her I had no car at which point she was puzzled. I don't think she had ever come across this problem before and she ended our conversation with a shrug. Another employee said we might be able to catch a bus from the closest town (a 30min walk), but buses didn't run on Sundays and she didn't know where the bus stop was. OK, paintence running out.

Amy and I thought that we would walk the 30mins to the small village to grab lunch (still not having eaten at this stage). It was sunday and nothing was open, not even the supermarket. We thought our timing was off but no problem. We would walk back, eat at the hotel restaurant and then come back later to get supplies when shops reopened. Upon returning to the hotel and asking about the restaurant, we discovered that it was closed on the weekends. How convenient to be closed when everything else within a 5km radius was also closed. I asked the lady how we were supposed to eat. Once again a new problem for the staff and no real solution could be found.

We thought we would go to the hotel across the road, but they politely told us that they did not open until 7pm. As a last ditch attempt to eat something before 7pm, we went in to town again in the blistering sun to see if the shops had reopened. No luck. French people deteste work and one lady would not even open the door to her shop to sell us water, despite her being 3 feet from it. Absolutely crazy!

So we both had to wait until 7pm to eat anything for the day. If you know me, then you will understand how much this would have irked me. I weighed myself the other day at Romain's house and I have lost 8 kilos while I have been away. Now, I am blaming this solely on the French, despite how illogical this is. Drives me insane that they have to shut their shops for up to 3 hours at the most inconvenient times. How does anyone get anything done!

Anyway, I have had my rant and I feel a lot better now. Thanks for listening. Oh... and it just started to rain with thunder and lightning. Can't do much but laugh.

Bonjour tout le monde.

I am now in Paris with Amy after a gruelling interview in London. Nice to be back on holiday again.

The night before I was to join Amy in Paris, I discovered my flight was cancelled to a french strike (no surprises there). Luckily, I ended up booking a bus from London to Paris at about 11pm the night before but it was going to be an 8 hour trip. Not the greatest way to spend the daylight hours of your birthday.

I arrived at the apartment where Amy and Carolyn had spend the last 5 days at about 7pm, following which we headed out to the LIDO on the Champs-Elysses. The show was typically parisien and very entertaining. It was a great way to end what had been a trying day. Many thanks to Carolyn for shouting us both to such a spectale.

The following morning Amy and I were on our own as Carolyn had to take an early shuttle to Charles de Gaulle to get her flight home. We wandered the street, taking our coffee in a small cafe just off the Rue de Rivoli. Carolyn had given me 2 tickets for a guided tour of the Louvre for that afternoon. I didn't know that many people in Paris (given most were in the south of France for the holidays) so I decided to take Amy with me. We had a great time seeing the most famous works housed in the museum, but the place is so big that you can never see it all.

We stayed in Paris another two nights before jumping on a train to Bourgoin-Jallieu on Saturday to stay with my friend Romain. That night we went out to dinner and yesterday we spent the day at his parents country house swimming and eating far too much. Last night we went with Romain, his girlfriend laure, his parents and brother to a traditional restaurant called Quatre Vents (I mention the name solely for Hugh. Romain tells me you love the place mate). There we ate frogs legs for dinner and drank french wine, followed by liquer until about midnight. A real experience.

Today we are in Lyon (just 40mins on train from Bourgoin-Jallieu) and tomorrow we are going to Anncey. Romain and his family have been extremely hospitable. It allows you to wander off the tourist trail and see how a regular french family live.

We are both well and looking forward to heading further south. There is so much to see and so little time.

Take care all.

Matt

Hey all,

We are now in Madrid after a busy few weeks in Spain. I will begin where I believe I left off on my last post; Ibiza.

Ibiza is a party-goers dream. Every night the bars and clubs rage, while sunburnt brits fill the beaches during the day. It was a real experience. The beach is not a nice beach like we have in NZ. In fact, it is littered with as many beer cans as bodies, but for some reason the brits love it. We spent four nights going out and lazing on the beach, but I must say that four nights in one of the biggest party resorts of the world was more than enough for most of us.

We caught an 11pm flight from Ibiza to Barcelona and spent last Thursday night sleeping in the Barcelona airport (something I would not recommend, but a necessity for us). We then caught a 7am bus to Pamplona which lasted 7 gruelling hours in seats designed for Gary Coleman. By the time we arrived in Pamplona and found our accommodation, very were exhausted.

Amy had managed to get us into a campsite just outsite Pamplona for the San Fermin festival (erroneously known as running of the bulls). This involved sleeping in two man tents on lilos. Brilliant! The good thing was that it was cheap, available and had regular buses running into the festival. We hit the sack early that night, but, thanks to some inconsiderate irish drunks, failed to sleep more than 2 hours.

Sam, cam and I got up at 5:30am to catch a bus into town for the running of the bulls. The bulls run every morning of the festival through the streets and are then locked away to fight the matadors that evening in the bullring. Six fighting bulls run with 6 herding bulls, so 12 in total. We decided to watch the running on the big screen at the bull ring, the final destination for all the runners and the bulls. During the running many people were injured including 3 in a critical condition. Yeehaw! After the fighting bulls are locked away, they release young bulls with corked horns one at a time into the ring full of punters. It was great fun to see arrogant foreigners get monstered bulls that they were teasing. Two were taken away on strechers, but many more seemed to suffer minor injuries. Suffice to say we had a great time watching all this.

That night we all went to the bullfight. I managed to negotiate a good price with a scalper outside the venue, but this meant that Amy and I sat in one area and Sam and Cam sat in another. A bull fight involves 6 bulls being fought by 3 matadors, one at a time. First the bulls are stabbed in the neck to anger them, then they are speared by men on horseback, then torredors stabb at their lunds with 6 banderillas (long knives) and finally the matador comes in to finish the job on the wounded bull. It is a viloent display and many would call it cruel. I am going to reserve judgment on the sport as I can see that the spaniards have a great amount of respect for the bull and what it represents. They perceive it to be an honour to die in the bull ring.

The show was great (although violent; a matador was gored, a horse was gored and all the bulls died obviously), but the atmosphere around the stadium was incredible. We were drenched in sangria and the crowd showed their approval of a matado´s death stroke with screams of excitement or a flurry of insults. We were lucky enough to be adopted by a spanish group of people that explained the sport to us, gave us sangria and beer and even shared their homemade paella with us. Sam and Cam had a similar experience in their seats also. The spectacle ended with the President of the bull fighting club awarding both the bulls ears to Joserillo for an excellent display on the last bull. Just like the movies, people threw their hats into the ring to show their approval and someone even threw a rose which he clenched firmly in his teeth. I`m not sure if I will ever go to another, but it was a great experience for all of us.

I jump now to the World Cup final; a once in a lifetime experience. There was a large screen set up in the Pamplona town square. We met up with about 10 other kiwi mates and joined the rabble in the square awaiting the start of the big match. The atmosphere was electric with vuvuzelas sounding and people being merry. When the winning goal was scored by Iniesta the whole square erupted, sangria flew and I believe that the ground actually shook. We partied into the early hours of the morning with the locals until we thought it wise to retire to our lilos. After all we were busing to Madrid the next day and, given our last bus experience we thought we would need to have some gas in the tank.

The bus trip was short 5hours, followed by a quick metro ride. What awaited us up the stairs from our local metro station was very unexpected (we should have known better). There were thousands of people partying in the streets waiting for the spanish team to parade past with the much coveted World Cup. We hurredly made our way to our hostel where Alex Hazledine was waiting for us. Amazingly enough, we had a balcon that looked out upon the parade, so many of the hostel guests piled into our room to see the Champs parade past. When they did, the place went absolutely mental. Another great accommodation choice by Amy.The Spaniards have still not stopped celebrating their victory so sleep has been a little hard to come by, but not to worry.

Yesterday we all went to El Prado Museum, which houses the most famous works of both spanish and international artists such as Velazquez, Goya, Ruebens and Rembrant. After this we went wandering to the Royal Palace and checked out Plaza de Espana and an Egyptian Temple that is over 2,200 (gifted to the Spanish in 1968 by the Egyptian Government as thanks for their help restoring temples in Nubia). We finished the afternoon with beers in La Plaza Mayor while the rest of Spain took a siesta.

Today we visited El Museo Reina Sofia and saw the works of Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso, including arguably his most famous piece, Guernica. I was so pleased to have seen Guernica as I studied the painting in a Spanish Civil War paper at uni. We all really enjoyed the visit, but the more recent art works did not strike a chord with any of us. Maybe it will appreciate over time...

Amy and I are about to part for a few days. She is going to Paris to meet her Mum, while I need to return to London for a job interview. I am meeting them both in Paris on the 21st of July (special day that one) and will spend a few days there with them.

I hope this blog finds you all well. Apologies for the gap between blogs but there is so much to do and internet is not as cheap as in South America. Stick it out though, because I will come through for ya.

Much love to the fam. Love you all.

Matt

Hi all,

It has been a little while since my last blog and for this I apologise. We are now in Ibiza, Spain, after 4 nights in Barcelona where we had a little incident that put a slight downer on the trip. We are all OK, however, so no need to worry.

We were at a bar on Thursday night and out of the blue I was put in a headlock by one of the bouncers, dragged onto the street and king hit several times knocking me unconscious and splitting my lip open. I cannot remember much from the incident but it was obviously pretty scary for the others seeing me unconscious for 20 of 30 seconds. The bouncers also got physical with Amy and threw Sam in a bush when he was trying to get my wallet from inside which was returned without my cash in it (the definition of adding insult to injury I believe). All a little dramatic but the others managed to get an ambulance and police there pretty quickly. Seven hundred NZ dollars and a face full of stiches later and we were off home a little worse for wear.

All in all it was a pretty surreal experience and we are all at a loss for words as to how or why it came about. The main thing is that we are all fine and my face will heal. It could have been a lot worse. So once again, no cause for concern here. No expectations that the police will do anything about it despite us having multiple witness` contact details. Pursuing it seems like it will be more trouble than it is worth.

Other than our night at hospital, Barcelona was great. We went out every night and met some really cool people from all over the world. I seems that people love NZers (except the odd bouncer). We ended up watching Spain play Paraguay at a bar on Saturday night and going straight from the bar to our 7.30am flight to Ibiza. We were all wearing Spanish jerseys celebrated Spain´s winning goal with a little dance we created through the bar (much to the delight of onlookers). Fair to say we were all exhausted by the time we got to our hotel at about 11am. Our thanks go to Amy for getting us all there in time for our flight.

Ibiza is now our home for four nights before making our way back to Barcelona and then onto Pamplona to run with the bulls.

Hope all is well with everyone at home. I´ll try make it back onto the blog site in a few days.

Hasta la vista.

Hello all,

We have now arrived in London and are staying with Charlotte and Robin Andrew (family friends) in Teddington. Arriving in London felt like we had arrived home. There is a sense of familiarity here, which is nice. We now have a few days to rest and reflect on our travels so far.

New York was a jungle. This was expected, but it was a huge contrast from the countries we had been previously. I think this tainted Amy's impression of the city somewhat. She decided that she didn't really like New York in comparison to places like Peru and Mexico. She wished we had spent a greater amount of time in these countries, something I would have been happy to do. It is basically the centre of consumersim and seems to be a very materialistic society. I guess NYC is one of those cities though that you either love it or hate it.

We arrived late on Sunday night at JFK airpot. I was taken away at customs for some reason and had to wait in a room for 45 mins. They never told me why I was there and just let me go after a while. Very strange but it happened to me last time I entered the states also. Maybe I'm blacklisted. Anyway, we then decided to catch a train to Manhattan as taxis were very expensive (but then again everything was expensive).

There were issues with the train lines and we arrived on the east side of Manhattan at about 1:30am. Unfortunately we were staying on the Upper West side, so we decided to walk the 30 or so blocks to our hostel. This included a walk through central park, something Amy was not too stoked about given the time of night. We eventually arrived at our hostel and hit the hay immediately.

Accommodation in New York is ridiculously expensive. Our budget each day was $65 US dollars each, but we had to pay $50 each a night just to have a bed to sleep. The hotel was a pokey place. Hard to believe it was a hotel really. We had a small room, but it was clean enough which is the main thing.

While in New York, there were few things we thought we would do; broadway show, empire state building, world trade centre site, wall street, central park, fifth avenue, times square etc. We managed to visit all these place in our 6 days in the city. We also visited battery park and saw the statue of liberty, but the line for the ferry was huge (over two hours) so we thought we flag visiting it. Not too much to it really anyway.

On Thursday night (after several failed attempts) Amy won tickets in the lottery rush to the musical Wicked. The tickets were in the second row and valued at US$212. We paid $26.50. We both really enjoyed the experience and were very fortunate to get such great tickets.

On Friday night Amy and I went out for dinner with a distant cousin of mine we had met two days earlier. We had a lovely meal in Nolita (northern little Italy) with Sam and his girlfriend. This was great as it was the only restaurant we went to in New York (the expense thing again).

We flew out of JFK at 1 am on Sunday morning after a delayed flight and arrived in London at 12pm. We arrived at Charlotte and Robin's place, just in time to see the All Whites historic draw with Italy. We are now taking a couple of days to rest and recuperate, but will most likely head into London centre tomorrow or the next day.

We are both well and still talking to each other. After London, we have no idea what we are doing, but we will sort that out in the next few days. Exciting stuff.

Hope you are all well back at home.

Stay tuned.