Hundreds of bottles of beer on the wall!

You know you´re in a good place when you´re visiting a chocolate museum in the morning and a beer factory in the afternoon - with samples included of course! Belgium was definitely a treat for the tastebuds.

Apparently there are over 300 beers in Belgium. We were like kids in a candy shop with all our favourite beers from the Belgium beer cafes in Sydney, and more, on offer for only 2 euro each! Winners included the infamous Kwak, Grimbergen, Judas and Bush (12%!). The handmade chocolates, hot waffles, frites with mayo and flemish beef beer stew all confirmed that Belgians sure know how to eat well!

Scenic highlights included seeing the grand square of Brusselses and bumping into a massive street party of 2000 or so uni students moving down the street with a line of 10 open semi-trailers that were pumping out dance music and serving out gallons of beer to the students holding up glasses, plastic jugs, buckets and anything else they could find! Who said Brussels was boring!?

We also visited the smaller towns of Brugges and Gent where we wandered the cobble stone streets, admired the gothic architecture, explored the canals and took in the ghostly city lights at night.

While it all might sound very glam, there are definitely down sides to being a budget traveller... one being the bedbugs that took a liking to Em´s shoulder and arm. The other downer is that it´s getting very cold and we are running out of warm clothes to layer! As a result Em has invested early in a pair of fluffy snow walking boots which she is sporting under her jeans!

Following up from our last blog, the prize for the fastest and best french translation goes to Julia Mackie who perfectly translated our french spiel with the following....

"Paris was great! We were busy because we were learning lots at French school, we made new friends and of course saw all the sights of Paris. We tried to discover as much as possible about French culture, even though once we ate fast food and also went to the cinema to see the American film, '40 year old virgin'. We hope to come back to Paris soon, but above all we hope that we will have able to have a conversation when we take the cable car at Les Arcs! We will have to practice a lot for the next month!"

Thanks Julia for also confirming that we actually made sense!

After a quick overnight stay in the Dutch town of Maastricht, we are now in Berlin where it is forecast to snow on the weekend! Fingers crossed that we get this novelty as compensation for freezing our butts off!


Huge main square of Brussels, Belgium

A small section of the student street party in Brussels - well and truly cranking at 5pm!

The canals of Brugges, Belguim

Array of beers in a Belgium bottle shop

Like a pig in mud!

We like the simple answer the chocolate museum gives to this age-old question! Nice in theory.... (Click on picture for closer view)

Gent, Belgium

The canals of Gent at night

The nightlights of Gent are so good that they´re UNESCO listed (although admittedly everything seems to be UNESCO listed for something around Europe!!)

Parler la française à Paris!

**Bit of a long one this time as we've been here for a while...

For starters, we know there are a few of you who've been firing up a bit of french recently - or not so recently for others - so we've started with un petit peu de français! The first 3 people to email us back an accurate translation will make it onto an honour roll next blog update! No internet translation cheating allowed! Bonne chance!

Paris était super! Nous avons été très occupés parce que nous avons appris beaucoup à l'école française, nous nous sommes faits de nouveaux amis et bien sur nous avons vu tout les spectacles à Paris! Nous essayions de découvrir autant que possible le culture française, bien que, un fois, nous avons mangé au fast food et aussi nous sommes allés au cinéma regarder le film americain, " Quarante ans, toujours puceau!". Nous esperons revenir à Paris bientot, mais surtout nous esperons que nous pourrons avoir un conversation quand nous prendrons le télésiège aux Les Arcs! Nous pratiquerons beaucoup pendant le mois prochain!

We've spent the last 3 weeks in Paris and have loved every minute of it! It's actually felt a little like a home away from home as we've got back into a routine with daily french classes and homework; have spent some time hanging out with new friends; and have been able to communicate much better with the locals than other euro countries! Despite the stereotypes, we have found the Parisians to be the most friendly bunch yet, often striking up conversations and always being patient with our slow, and sometimes weird, responses!

Some highlights have included:

1. Attending a two week intensive french course and meeting a great bunch of people from around the world. While our french is very far from fluent, it has given us a great boost.

2. Meeting up with an Aussie university minister, Daniel Mullins, and his wife Debbie and cooking for 60 christian french uni students on a weekend away camp, run by Daniel and his team, near Versailles. Camp food takes on a new meaning in France with full hot 3 course meals for lunch and dinner and 10 litres of milk that needs to be heated for breakfast! It was hard work but was great to see so many energetic and passionate young french christians meeting together.

3. Meeting Sylvia, a french-egyptian med student, on the camp, then being invited to her place in Paris for dinner.

4. Seeing some of the classic Parisian sights, eg Tour Eiffel at dusk, L'Arc de Triomphe with a spectular french flag flying under it on Remembrance Day, wandering the streets of the Latin Quartier and Montmartre, and taking in all the spectacular architecture and churches.

5. Staying in a studio room for a week and cooking up some cuisine to accompany our recent wine purchases from Burgundy.... although the studio wasn't much more than a bedroom and a bathroom with a stove and barfridge in it! (Dishwashing was done in the bathroom basin!)

6. Attending an english speaking church in the middle of Paris and finding the people so friendly we could barely get out the door! We started chatting to an english guy, Dan, who gave us the classic line "Oh I've got two friends in Sydney... you might know them" and then found out he was talking about Tam and Jake Jonker!!!! It is an extremely small world!

7. Enjoying the local bars, cafes and restaurants and discovering one particularly cool, always packed and most importantly cheap Vietnamese restaurant.

8. Great shopping... we tried to hold back, with our limited budget, but just couldn't go past a pair of great G-star jeans for GP that were half the price than in Aus!! (plus they are actually long enough which is a minor miracle in itself!)

9. Finding out Australia are through to the world cup soccer finals next yr in Germany! makes up a little for all the heckling we've been getting for losing to England in the Rugby and cricket recently. And from GP's memory last time we played the poms in Soccer we won 3-1!!

Next stop is Belgium. Beer, chocolate and moules frittes here we come!!!!

A typical morning break at our french school


The Sacré Coeur

Arc de Triomphe by day

Arc de Triomphe on the night of Remembrance Day

Candles in the Notre Dame cathedral

The group of french uni students sitting down for lunch on the camp. Our new friend Slyvia is the one in the pink/purple top at the front!

Montmartre


Champagne Paris!

Take one new hat, a fresh baguette, a drop of red and GP.... and this is what you get!

View from the top of the Tour Eiffel at dusk

Self-take in front of the T.E

All safe in Paris

Hey all,
We've had a few questions lately asking whether or not we are safe here in Paris with all the riots etc going on.
see article attached

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/chirac-heads-crisis-talks-as-riots-escalate/2005/11/07/1131211968577.html

The riots are happening pretty much outside the centre of Paris so we haven't been affected at all. From talking to some locals here it's directed at the police rather than citizens and is not expected to escalate into the centre of Paris with the execption of those small incidents. So no real worry for us fortunately.

Certainly an interesting discussion point here at the moment though.

Everything else is going well and we will write another proper blog update soon!

Thanks for your concern
Cheers

Gav & Em

Drinking and driving through the vines

After a week with the Peacocks we continued the wine tasting trail in search of some classic french wine. We were not disappointed.

First stop was Beaune, a beautiful town in the heart of the Burgundy wine region. Beaune is surrounded by rows of golden vineyards and underneath the town is an incredible labyrinth of underground wine cellars, plenty of which are open for wine tasting tours.

We were lucky enough to have wheels again so were able to tour the surrounding world famous vineyards and sample some great drops, our favourites being the Mersault chardonnay and the Volnay Pinot Noir. We also sampled more than our fair share of premiere cru grapes straight off the vines!! Very tasty.

While wine tasting we tried to sound like informed and sophisticated wine connoisseurs, which proved particulalry difficult given that it was all in french! Things took a turn for the worst when Em got her french a bit mixed up and asked one of the local wine makers if he was a toilet!!

Next stop was champagne where we stayed in Epernay and did the infamous Moet and Chandon champagne house tasting tour. All very glam and also fascinating to see how enourmous their underground cellars are.

We are now in Paris for 2 weeks having narrowly avoided driving around the Arc de Triomphe on our arrival!

The Cote D'or, Burgundy

Our treasured bottle of Mersault (bit of a step up from the 3 euro bottles we've been drinking!)

The good stuff

The man behind the bubbles