Beautiful Avignon

Today we arrived in Avignon, France. It's a small walled city situated on the banks of the Rhone River. Avignon is unique in that the entire city is still within the medieval walls.

Avignon was at one time the location if the head of the Catholic Church. A French pope decided to move the Catholic Church from Vatican City to Avignon-where he was originally run. The Italians disagreed with the move, rejected the Pope, and elected a new pope to run the church from the Vatican. This power struggle lasted nearly 100 years. During which time the church was being run by two popes.

Avignon is a beautiful, well preserved, historic city.

The pope built this castle and cathedral upon moving the church to Avignon. 

By lucky coincidence we happened to be there for the Avignon Festival! I've never seen so many weird street performers in my life. 

Guten Tag from Switzerland!!

We arrived in beautiful Switzerland last night! The ride from Paris was long, but the scenery was incredible. 

After a delicious Swiss dinner prepared by the TopDeck chefs Margo (from South Africa) and I climbed to the tallest free-falling waterfall in Europe. 

Today we woke up early for breakfast and boarded a train for Jungfeau- The Top of Europe. It's the tallest easily-accessible point in Europe. A rock slide delayed the trains, but we finally made it on to a Cog train to take us to the top. Margo and many of the Australians had never seen snow before!! It was gorgeous: 

We drank hot chocolate and went tobogganing before starting the long decent to Interlakken.

We got to shop a little before making our way back to the bungalows. Now it's time for some wine and fondue! 

Auf Wiedersehen!

Paris in the Rain

We got an early start in Paris this morning. Since our hotel was located a bit outside of the city, we took the Metro in. It was really easy to navigate. First, we used a lesser-known entry to the Lourve and got right in to visit these ladies:

The Lurve was an amazingly beautiful building. Our leader had said that if you spent 30 seconds viewing each piece in the permanent collection, it would take 9 months to see everything. We walked through most of the building and saw the highlights.

After the Lourve, we made our way through the pouring rain to the Pompidou Center. The Pompidou Center is a cultural/ modern art museum in Paris. We didn't have much time to tour the whole thing, so we stuck to just checking out the public (free) spaces. The building was really interesting architecturally: 

We found a great cafe for lunch and then took the metro from Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower where we met up with Fat Tire bike tours.

Even though we got absolutely soaked and had to take cover under a bridge at one point, the bike tour was excellent. Our tour guide was from Brooklyn and was the only American I've spoken to since leaving Boston. We got to ride beach cruisers through the streets of Paris and the guide told pointed out places of interest and told us all kinds of interesting stories and historical anecdotes. 

Dinner was a soggy picnic at Champ de Mars. Even though the weather was dreadful, the picnic was good fun. We got to see the set-up and symphony rehearsals for tomorrow's Bastille Day celebrations. Having a picnic on a rainy day in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower as a full orchestra plays the Star Was theme is just SO Parisian!! 

After dinner, we boarded the coach and headed to a bar before the Cabaret. The Cabaret was possibly the strangest show I've ever seen. It was sort of a strip club/circus/drag show combo. At one point there was an act where female ballerinas danced alongside male karate masters. We're talking leotards and gees on stage at the same time- whilst euro trash techno beats boomed.... It was fantastically obscure....

One day was definitely not enough time- I already have a list of things to see when I return to Paris!

Au revoir!!

Bonjour Paris!

 We've arrived in Paris! Today we've had to drive, take a ferry from Dover to Calis, and then drive some more to get to Paris. By the time we took the "city lights" tour at night, we were all exhausted.

Dover had some stunning white cliffs: 

The ferry was no Island queen... More like a cruise ship with comfy seating, restaurants, and shopping. 

Once in Paris we went to dinner and everyone tried these bad boys: 

Escargot. They were like calamari, cooked in a very rich garlic pesto. We are staying at Hotel B+B. The rooms are TINY, but clean and comfortable. 

The City Lights tour was excellent. Our leader gave us lots of information on the history and layout of the city. 

I'm sure tomorrow will be a full day!

Cheers, London!

After a pleasent British Airways flight (of which I slept the majority of), I arrived at Heathrow Airport at 8:30am (read: 3:3am).

I was able to navigate my way through the massive airport, through customs, and to the underground station. It could not have been easier to take the Picadilly Line to Kings Cross Station. 

Only a short walk and I was at the Clink78 Hostel- my accommodations for the evening. I have never stayed in a hostel before... It's a very different experience! 

$30 bought me this cubby hole for the evening: 

At this point I was just happy to have a place to lay down!! Once made up, it's like a cozy little cave:

There's a safe, reading light, and power outlet and the room was quite clean.

After lunch at a pub (fish and chips and a London Lager) I was happy to relax, read some of my book, and take a short nap. I'll have 3 days in London after the tour, so I didn't feel urgency to see all the sights today. 

After my siesta I showered, changed (it was 53 degrees!) and headed downstairs to meet some tour mates in the kitchen. I was a bit nervous but got this tidbit of advice: 

Everyone was wicked nice and I was at ease right away. We had dinner and drinks and decided to call it an early night- up at 5am tomorrow to start the tour!!

Cheers!! ❤️

Goodbye for 5 Weeks!!

I know 5 weeks is such a minuscule amount of time compared to the time that some people have to be away from family and friends, but nothing makes you feel more loved than when people take the time to see you off. I had an amazing past week with my family, and friends who rearranged schedules so that we could spend time together. One of my favorite quotes from a friend over beers on the beach went something like: "May Carly make lots of great new friends- but none as great as present company". 

It was definitely hard to say goodbye to Moxie... She was giving my suitcase the evil eye during my final preparations...

Only a half hour until Bon Voyage!!

Adventures in Packing

Since people have asked.... Here's the packing rundown! I have never gone away for this amount of time before and turned to the interwebs for friendly advice. Time and time again the experienced travelers proclaimed: packing cubes! So thanks to Amazon, I am now the proud owner of a multitude of packing cubes and I will say this- I'm in love.

The idea is that you categorize your wardrobe and then put those articles in an appropriate sized cube. For example, tops in one, underwear in another. The cubes then pack nice and neatly in your suitcase so that it doesn't explode with a mixture of clean and dirty laundry every time you open it. I packed enough outfits for 12 days and will count on doing some laundry along the way. Here's my packed suitcase:

I added a few more things but overall have some extra room for things I might collect along the way. 

Packing efficiency at its finest!