The past few weeks have taken us to four very different countries and through a myriad of landscapes, languages, football teams and socio-economic strata.
After all the rustic villages we have frequented of late, Cannes proved a quite refreshing change of pace (and a source of cheap Asian food which we have all been craving!) We joined the glamorous throng each evening strolling the Croisette (and walked it a couple of times in our cozzies and thongs!) We donned our silk scarves and big sunnies to drive the amazing coast road to Monaco and followed Ferraris around the Grand Prix track (several times in fact) looking for a parking spot in downtown Monte Carlo. We huddled beneath the moldering colonnades of the Place de Garibaldi in Nice, watching the city’s heaviest downpour of rain in decades, the very same rain that claimed the lives of 26 people that day, just a little to our north-west.
Then it was on to Italy, to a friendly homestay in a gelato coloured village high in the hills above the Ligurian town of Levanto. From here we did the famous cliff-top walk between the five villages of the Cinque Terre and enjoyed our last tranquil dip in the Mediterranean Sea. The real highlight for the kids - for all of us in fact - was John’s discovery of fireflies in the fields around our village. This proved one of the really magical moments of our trip, crouching in the darkness late at night, watching fireflies light up the olive groves around us like a thousand flashing fairy lights.
Making our way north to Switzerland, we stayed overnight in the lovely alpine town of St Vincent in Italy’s Aosta Valley where we sat in the midst of a crowd of raucous young Italians to watch New Zealand draw 1-1 with Italy in the football. We were the only Kiwis (and token Kiwis) present and we intended to keep a low profile but were quickly outed when New Zealand scored that first spectacular goal. Lawrence became quite apprehensive – the Italians were very full on - but I was (fairly) sure that they wouldn’t attack a mother and her children. We had John’s dad on the phone from New Zealand during the match – it was, without a doubt, the highlight of the Marychurch family’s World Cup!
The drive across the Alps next day was also unforgettable. We decided to avoid those awful long tunnels (which are no doubt very useful for people doing this drive every day), and drove over the top through the Grand St Bernard Pass. It was a bright blue day as we zigzagged up through the mountains - Mattahorn to your right,boys - Mt Blanc to your left. As we approached the border however, the weather suddenly closed in until we were romping about in icicles and snow (and – yes - a t-shirt in John’s case, of course!) Emerging from the clouds, we found ourselves in Switzerland - the complete chocolate box – meadows of flowers, chalets with geraniums and the hills alive with the sound of cowbells. It was so goddamn pretty, it was hard to believe it was real, sitting there in a high alpine meadow, munching on bread and fragrant Fontina cheese.
For me (Alison), Geneva was mostly about work. It was stressful but fantastic to finally meet with my UNHCR clients at Head Office and I had a really satisfying time there and secured some excellent interviews. Meanwhile, John took the kids to see the Large Hadron Collider (‘the LHC’ in nerd-speak) where the world’s physicists are gleefully slamming bits of atoms together in a tunnel 100 metres under Geneva (at a speed of 99.999999% the speed of light, Francis informs me) in an effort to discover new subatomic particles. In retrospect, it’s hard to say who should have been the more nervous that morning - John and the boys or me!
Once work obligations were behind me, we still had one day left to explore Geneva and its surrounds. We spent the morning touring the UN Palais des Nations which we all found very interesting, despite the fact that the main conference in session was the World Conference on the Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations! We then spent a beautiful warm afternoon out on Lake Geneva. We thought that taking the ferry would be a cost effective option but no - this is Switzerland – it cost us the equivalent of AUS $80 to go 1.5 hours each way! Food too is prohibitively expensive In Geneva even on (particularly on) the Alison Gibbs Writing Service business expense account! The most modest looking restaurant in town ended up being as dear as Assiette or Aria in Sydney and it was a good thing that we were staying in France and crossing the border every day.
We are back in France this evening and on the home straight now. We are spending our last five days in Strasbourg in Alsace, from where we will cross the Rhine to give the boys a brief taste of Germany.
As a result, this is likely to be our last blog entry. It has been a wonderful adventure – a real necklace of jewels - but I think we are all feeling ready to come home. We can’t believe we’ll find a new Prime Minister in The Lodge. Clearly we have some catching up to do on goings on in Australia!
Thanks to everyone who has followed our doings via the blog and kept in touch with us along the way. Until next week, a bientot!
Alison, John, Lawrence and Francis
26 June, 2010
14 June, 2010
Bridges and bells in Provence
Travelling across Languedoc on our way to Vaucluse (Provence), we crossed the new and mighty Viaduct de Millau. This bridge is truly marvelous, floating high above the Tarn valley like a fleet of sailing ships. It is perhaps the first wonder of the 21st century and even more wondrous for the fact that the French took just three years to build it! (Lawrence commented at the time that the man across the road from us in Ashbury has taken longer to renovate his house.)
We were headed for the small hilltop village of Lourmarin in the ruggedly beautiful Luberon region of Vaucluse where we have based ourselves for the past two weeks. We are right in the thick of it here, in an extremely cute house on the top of the hill, wedged beneath the town clock tower and the village church and – yes - it has been a serious case of “The bells! The bells!” They strike the hour and the half hour, 24 hours a day. Over the past ten days they have also rung for two masses, two sessions of evening prayer, a baptism, a wedding and a funeral. It is amazing what you can get used to, however. We all sleep through them now.
My father Stan has joined us here which has been very special. He has coped admirably with the stairs in the house and the steep village streets, heading out on his morning boulangerie duty. Together we explored the surrounding villages of the Luberon, Aix- en-Provence and Avignon as well as Europe’s largest and deepest spring (380 metres deep) where the entire River Sorgue comes bubbling out of a mountainside and cascades down through the pretty town of La Fontaine de Vaucluse. We enjoyed many excellent games of 500 on our rooftop terrace and the odd, very pleasant kir or two in the village square. Yesterday we waved Stan off to Prague on the TGV where he is staying with his good Czech friend George.
John, the boys and I have also visited Orange and Arles where we have wandered around wonderful Roman ruins and ‘stepped inside’ many of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings – that café on the street corner, the asylum/hospital gardens, the stairs to the bridge across the Rhone - they are all pretty much as we know them. From there, we continued south to The Camargue, the massive swampland at the mouth of the Rhone River where we saw fantastic birdlife, including hundreds of flamingoes, recently arrived from Africa on their annual summer vacation.
Tonight we are heading down to the village square to watch France’s first World Cup game against Uruguay. All day we have enjoyed watching Lourmarin’s three cafés battle it out for World Cup supremacy. In answer to “our” Chez Gaby’s pathetic little French flag pinned above the bar, the establishment opposite has unfurled a massive French flag down its façade. Now both have been gazumped by café No. 3 which, around lunchtime, unveiled a huge plasma screen (facing their tables of course), sending all the other waiters into an anxious huddle. We note that there were no such preparations for the women’s final of the French Open last week which we watched alone in Café Gaby with one waiter of Italian descent.
Anyhow,it’s salut for now. We are relieved to hear that friends in Lennox Head have escaped the worst of the tornado. We wish all you sodden Sydneysiders and North Islanders finer days ahead. Alison, John, Lawrence & Francis.
We were headed for the small hilltop village of Lourmarin in the ruggedly beautiful Luberon region of Vaucluse where we have based ourselves for the past two weeks. We are right in the thick of it here, in an extremely cute house on the top of the hill, wedged beneath the town clock tower and the village church and – yes - it has been a serious case of “The bells! The bells!” They strike the hour and the half hour, 24 hours a day. Over the past ten days they have also rung for two masses, two sessions of evening prayer, a baptism, a wedding and a funeral. It is amazing what you can get used to, however. We all sleep through them now.
My father Stan has joined us here which has been very special. He has coped admirably with the stairs in the house and the steep village streets, heading out on his morning boulangerie duty. Together we explored the surrounding villages of the Luberon, Aix- en-Provence and Avignon as well as Europe’s largest and deepest spring (380 metres deep) where the entire River Sorgue comes bubbling out of a mountainside and cascades down through the pretty town of La Fontaine de Vaucluse. We enjoyed many excellent games of 500 on our rooftop terrace and the odd, very pleasant kir or two in the village square. Yesterday we waved Stan off to Prague on the TGV where he is staying with his good Czech friend George.
John, the boys and I have also visited Orange and Arles where we have wandered around wonderful Roman ruins and ‘stepped inside’ many of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings – that café on the street corner, the asylum/hospital gardens, the stairs to the bridge across the Rhone - they are all pretty much as we know them. From there, we continued south to The Camargue, the massive swampland at the mouth of the Rhone River where we saw fantastic birdlife, including hundreds of flamingoes, recently arrived from Africa on their annual summer vacation.
Tonight we are heading down to the village square to watch France’s first World Cup game against Uruguay. All day we have enjoyed watching Lourmarin’s three cafés battle it out for World Cup supremacy. In answer to “our” Chez Gaby’s pathetic little French flag pinned above the bar, the establishment opposite has unfurled a massive French flag down its façade. Now both have been gazumped by café No. 3 which, around lunchtime, unveiled a huge plasma screen (facing their tables of course), sending all the other waiters into an anxious huddle. We note that there were no such preparations for the women’s final of the French Open last week which we watched alone in Café Gaby with one waiter of Italian descent.
Anyhow,it’s salut for now. We are relieved to hear that friends in Lennox Head have escaped the worst of the tornado. We wish all you sodden Sydneysiders and North Islanders finer days ahead. Alison, John, Lawrence & Francis.
27 May, 2010
Up the Dordogne with a paddle
We are drawing towards the end of a wonderful few weeks in the Lot, near the Dordogne Valley, and will be very sorry to leave. This is an absolutely beautiful part of the world, dotted with a jumble of tiny stone villages, each with their own very distinctive character, church and market day. Castles and towns cling to the rugged limestone cliffs above the Dordogne, Vezere and Lot rivers and the cliffs themselves are riddled with caves and some of the earliest examples of human art.
We have walked miles here, from village to village, through forests and fields, down into marvelous cave chambers, through every station of the Cross on the way up the steep cliff to the mighty Rocamadour, an abbey on the ancient pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Unlike the pilgrims, however, we did not accomplish this on our knees!
One of our favourite afternoons was spent kayaking the Dordogne River, drifting under cliff tops and castles and soaring birds of prey. The current was running strongly in our favour with small areas of easy white water for thrills and every bend revealing some extraordinary new vista. Blissful!
We are sharing our very comfortable stone ‘farmhouse’ outside the village of Les Quatre Routes with Merle, Joe, Beth and Barbara - family friends from the far north coast of NSW. It has been nice to have others to share tales of the day and games of 500, not to mention the excellent local wine, cheese and every imaginable (and unimaginable) part of the duck’s anatomy.
The freezing winds of Brittany have become a distant memory with the temperature climbing over 30 degrees some days. Spring is now well advanced down here: the walnut orchards are in full leaf, cherries are ripening on the trees and the fields and hedgerows are a riot of wild flowers – red poppies, wild roses, buttercups, Queen Anne’s Lace. We are seeing red squirrels and molehills and a range of wonderful storybook birds – woodpeckers, robins etc – but continue our search for a hedgehog that is not squished flat on the road.
On Saturday we do the long drive to Provence, via the mighty new Millau suspension bridge. We’ll be meeting my Dad at Avignon station the following day and spending the next few weeks with him. He is already in France – in Strasbourg at the moment - and we are in daily text and phone contact.
We are managing to get the odd postcard off to people but we are a bit slack on that front, we know. We buy them but with our days so full and with journals, photo filing, blogs, school work and French lessons to get done, we struggle to get them written.
We all send our love. We continue to enjoy your news and messages from home.
We have walked miles here, from village to village, through forests and fields, down into marvelous cave chambers, through every station of the Cross on the way up the steep cliff to the mighty Rocamadour, an abbey on the ancient pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Unlike the pilgrims, however, we did not accomplish this on our knees!
One of our favourite afternoons was spent kayaking the Dordogne River, drifting under cliff tops and castles and soaring birds of prey. The current was running strongly in our favour with small areas of easy white water for thrills and every bend revealing some extraordinary new vista. Blissful!
We are sharing our very comfortable stone ‘farmhouse’ outside the village of Les Quatre Routes with Merle, Joe, Beth and Barbara - family friends from the far north coast of NSW. It has been nice to have others to share tales of the day and games of 500, not to mention the excellent local wine, cheese and every imaginable (and unimaginable) part of the duck’s anatomy.
The freezing winds of Brittany have become a distant memory with the temperature climbing over 30 degrees some days. Spring is now well advanced down here: the walnut orchards are in full leaf, cherries are ripening on the trees and the fields and hedgerows are a riot of wild flowers – red poppies, wild roses, buttercups, Queen Anne’s Lace. We are seeing red squirrels and molehills and a range of wonderful storybook birds – woodpeckers, robins etc – but continue our search for a hedgehog that is not squished flat on the road.
On Saturday we do the long drive to Provence, via the mighty new Millau suspension bridge. We’ll be meeting my Dad at Avignon station the following day and spending the next few weeks with him. He is already in France – in Strasbourg at the moment - and we are in daily text and phone contact.
We are managing to get the odd postcard off to people but we are a bit slack on that front, we know. We buy them but with our days so full and with journals, photo filing, blogs, school work and French lessons to get done, we struggle to get them written.
We all send our love. We continue to enjoy your news and messages from home.
18 May, 2010
Braving the breezes of Brittany
Hi everyone,
We fell out of contact for a while there, sorry, spending two weeks deep in the Brittany countryside without WiFi or internet cafes and paying far too much to sit and blog on in the tourist office in the nearby town of Dinan. For a while, in fact, we were worried that we had fallen out of France altogether with so many of the farm houses in the area (including our own) now owned by retired British couples. All of a sudden we found ourselves with only British TV channels (endless election coverage) and a kitchen stocked with tea and HP Sauce!
The weather changed too with a chilly wind blasting down from Scotland (their fault again). You know it’s cold when you find yourself going into cathedrals to get warm as we did one freezing day in St Malo, and many a planned picnic was abandoned for long lunches in cosy creperies.
Nevertheless, we had lovely times there, getting to know the local area quite well, having days where we simply wandered the fields and banks of the beautiful River Rance or went about our business in the fabulous mediaeval walled city of Dinan complete with ramparts, city gates and steep cobbled streets of wonky half-timbered houses. It’s quite strange to be doing mundane things like supermarket shopping and getting haircuts etc in a place like that.
Every other day we travelled further afield to explore Brittany – taking in the iconic Mont St Michel, the walled port of St Malo (the cold day), sections of the Rose Granite Coast with its extraordinary tide variations, the busy port city of Brest and the central forests, dolmens and fairytale castle town of Josselin.
Probably our favourite day was spent on the tiny Ile de Brehat off the northern coast, with a rich fishing history, Breton lighthouses, bicycle paths (no cars there), rugged pink granite coastline and fields of wildflowers. We got so carried away with exploring the place that we only just made the last ferry back to Paimpol.
We are now experiencing long twilights with the sun setting well after 10 o’clock at night. It’s beautiful but it keeps you up late and makes those French shops even harder to catch open in the mornings. We continue to struggle with the cat and mouse game of French business hours. If it’s not Sunday or Monday, then it’s a public holiday (we had two of those in just over a week in early May) or it’s lunch time or it’s nearly lunch time and they can’t fit you in, or they choose to shut on Wednesdays as well. It’s all very lifestyle friendly, but you do find yourself wondering how some of these businesses can survive in this day and age, or what would happen if France were to have a large south-east Asian immigration!
We saw the same economically irrational phenomenon when we went to the circus in a neighbouring town. It was a real old travelling family circus, very common in France, but we were one of only three families in the audience on the Saturday evening (there were almost more people in the circus). The ‘spectacle’ was stunningly amateur – a seriously depressed monkey in uniform that wouldn’t salute, a 4-year-old girl dropping her hoolah hoop constantly, a cat running through a pipe, turning around and running back through again – da daa! It all looked very shabby chic charming but was clearly struggling to survive this age of multimedia entertainment. The whole show was only held together by grandpa’s corny clown banter and the genuine talents of the very earnest 11-year-old boy. He really won our hearts. We all hoped that he would run away one day to join a different circus!
We spent two packed days in the Loire Valley on the way down south where we visited Chateau Villandry with its beautiful geometric gardens made almost entirely of vegetables, a large winery and the remains of an 19th century troglodyte village. The village where we stayed ourselves was absolutely riddled with underground passages and caves – very exciting for boys with torches.
We are now settling into our second longer stay house – this time in the Lot Valley (near the Dordogne). It’s a huge and beautiful farmhouse owned by a family friend from Lismore and we are sharing it with four other North Coast NSW people, including a couple who live on the farm across the valley from my Dad. The area has wonderful markets, food, fortified villages and prehistoric cave paintings but that, as they say, is another blog entry.
Love to you all and thanks for all the snippets of contact and news.
Alison, John, Lawrence and Francis
We fell out of contact for a while there, sorry, spending two weeks deep in the Brittany countryside without WiFi or internet cafes and paying far too much to sit and blog on in the tourist office in the nearby town of Dinan. For a while, in fact, we were worried that we had fallen out of France altogether with so many of the farm houses in the area (including our own) now owned by retired British couples. All of a sudden we found ourselves with only British TV channels (endless election coverage) and a kitchen stocked with tea and HP Sauce!
The weather changed too with a chilly wind blasting down from Scotland (their fault again). You know it’s cold when you find yourself going into cathedrals to get warm as we did one freezing day in St Malo, and many a planned picnic was abandoned for long lunches in cosy creperies.
Nevertheless, we had lovely times there, getting to know the local area quite well, having days where we simply wandered the fields and banks of the beautiful River Rance or went about our business in the fabulous mediaeval walled city of Dinan complete with ramparts, city gates and steep cobbled streets of wonky half-timbered houses. It’s quite strange to be doing mundane things like supermarket shopping and getting haircuts etc in a place like that.
Every other day we travelled further afield to explore Brittany – taking in the iconic Mont St Michel, the walled port of St Malo (the cold day), sections of the Rose Granite Coast with its extraordinary tide variations, the busy port city of Brest and the central forests, dolmens and fairytale castle town of Josselin.
Probably our favourite day was spent on the tiny Ile de Brehat off the northern coast, with a rich fishing history, Breton lighthouses, bicycle paths (no cars there), rugged pink granite coastline and fields of wildflowers. We got so carried away with exploring the place that we only just made the last ferry back to Paimpol.
We are now experiencing long twilights with the sun setting well after 10 o’clock at night. It’s beautiful but it keeps you up late and makes those French shops even harder to catch open in the mornings. We continue to struggle with the cat and mouse game of French business hours. If it’s not Sunday or Monday, then it’s a public holiday (we had two of those in just over a week in early May) or it’s lunch time or it’s nearly lunch time and they can’t fit you in, or they choose to shut on Wednesdays as well. It’s all very lifestyle friendly, but you do find yourself wondering how some of these businesses can survive in this day and age, or what would happen if France were to have a large south-east Asian immigration!
We saw the same economically irrational phenomenon when we went to the circus in a neighbouring town. It was a real old travelling family circus, very common in France, but we were one of only three families in the audience on the Saturday evening (there were almost more people in the circus). The ‘spectacle’ was stunningly amateur – a seriously depressed monkey in uniform that wouldn’t salute, a 4-year-old girl dropping her hoolah hoop constantly, a cat running through a pipe, turning around and running back through again – da daa! It all looked very shabby chic charming but was clearly struggling to survive this age of multimedia entertainment. The whole show was only held together by grandpa’s corny clown banter and the genuine talents of the very earnest 11-year-old boy. He really won our hearts. We all hoped that he would run away one day to join a different circus!
We spent two packed days in the Loire Valley on the way down south where we visited Chateau Villandry with its beautiful geometric gardens made almost entirely of vegetables, a large winery and the remains of an 19th century troglodyte village. The village where we stayed ourselves was absolutely riddled with underground passages and caves – very exciting for boys with torches.
We are now settling into our second longer stay house – this time in the Lot Valley (near the Dordogne). It’s a huge and beautiful farmhouse owned by a family friend from Lismore and we are sharing it with four other North Coast NSW people, including a couple who live on the farm across the valley from my Dad. The area has wonderful markets, food, fortified villages and prehistoric cave paintings but that, as they say, is another blog entry.
Love to you all and thanks for all the snippets of contact and news.
Alison, John, Lawrence and Francis
30 April, 2010
24-27 April: All Pretty Bloody Great on the Western Front, Mate
Bonjour tout le monde,
Here we are in a rustic stone farmhouse in Normandy just outside Bayeux, with a free and easy internet connection - hurrah! For the past few days, the lucky ones amongst you have been receiving urgent correspondence from the far corner of Hotel de Ville carpark in Vernon. That's an excellent travel tip but this is far more comfortable - and much easier than embroidering a 68 metre long tapestry to tell of our exploits!
But I digress by a number of wars and about a thousand years...
After Paris, we picked up our Citroen Picasso and headed north to the WWI battlefields of the Somme with the help of our velvet-voiced GPS, Paloma. We stayed near the small town of Villers-Bretonneux which, by coincidence, was recaptured by Australian forces on 26 April, 1918. It was the first time that Australian troops had fought under Australian command (General Monash) and, along with Gallipoli, this is the only place in Europe that celebrates Anzac Day. We knew all this but we were totally unprepared for the warmth of the welcome we received and the genuine feeling held here for the Australian people.
It was so sweet and unsophisticated - from the fluttering flag outside our homestay to the painted plywood kangaroos in the grounds of the Town Hall and the children's artwork in the local school. We spent the 24-25 April visiting various war cemeteries and memorials and attending a fabulous game of Aussie Rules between the very serious team from Villers-Bretonneux and a bunch of knockabout Aussie tourists thrown together in the wake of the volcanic cloud. The locals won by 20 points but, true to form, the team called Aussie Spirit found plenty of excuses for that! It was a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon and the atmosphere was amiable and relaxed. The town had held Aussie Rules workshops for local children during the morning and in the quarter breaks, they threw a ball around with Australian (Victorian) children.
It was the local primary school, however, that really brought a lump to the throat. It is called Ecole Victoria in recognition of funds raised by Victorian children to rebuild the school in Villers-Bretonneux following WWI. Entering the playground, the boys were astounded to see the huge painted motto "Do Not Forget Australia" emblazoned across the weather shed (see photos) . The WWI museum itself is housed within the school grounds and was staffed by eager school children during the Anzac Day weekend. As a touching footnote, children from this school have spent the past year diligently raising funds to rebuild a primary school destroyed by the Victorian bushfires.
We stayed in a farmstead converted into a number of small gites which - surprise, surprise - were all occupied by Australians at the time. It was a great and varied group of people (a number of whom are reading this now - hello y'all!) and, to the satisfaction of our jovial french hosts, we came together to share an impromptu and memorable barbecue under the trees the night before Anzac Day. Among us was Professor Linda Shields from Curtin University, who was preparing to represent Australian nurses on the Somme for the very first time - a personal crusade for her and a moment of real connection for the rest of us at the dawn service the following morning.
The dawn service itself was really beautiful. As many of you know, John and I are not huge Anzac Day/Australia Day afficionados but driving through those darkened fields in the chill of pre-dawn towards the Australian Memorial illuminated on the hill was one of the more memorable moments of my life. About 2,500 Australian and French people attended. My ALP comrades will be glad to know that Steven Smith spoke beautifully on behalf of the Australian people and that he is known here as 'le renard en argent'. The bugler stood atop the looming monument as the sun rose behind and during the minute's silence, all you could hear was the rising twitter and song of birds in the surrounding fields.
Afterwards we returned home for breakfast and then hurried into Villers-Bretonneux for the (very french) ceremony outside the town hall celebrating the town's liberation - complete with hatted gendarmes, Mayor, local band, Steven Smith etc.
In our three days on the Western Front, however, the real stars of the show were the fields of France themselves. From the ploughed furrows to the lines of poplars, from the Roman roads to the rows and rows of white war graves, the entire landscape there was all about straight lines and squares. I had expected something drab and dreary but the pastures were emerald green, the canola fields were unfurled like scarves of blazing yellow and the cemetries scattered across the landscape were lined with almond blossom. It was beautiful and it was sad and you couldn't help thinking of Willie McBride or 'thighbones tugged excitedly from the soil by french children on picnics'.
We have since moved south to Giverny where we dabbled briefly in the peace and quiet of Monet's watergarden before subjecting ourselves to that second great conflagration - the D-Day landings in Normandy. These beaches are truly dreary, I can tell you, even in this unseasonly bright weather. They are no less interesting for that, however, and at least we are able to return each night to the bucolic pleasures of our stone cottage at the end of a beautiful country lane leading to the village of the Cahagnes. There are dogs, there are cats, there are black and white cows, there are four-week-old kittens - the boys are happy and we are all looking forward to a few weeks respite in our little house in Brittany.
But before then, we have to conquer Britain and the Bayeux tapestry - allons-y!
Love to you all. It's so nice to receive your messages back, no matter how brief and newsless.
XXX
Alison, John, Lawrence and Francis
Here we are in a rustic stone farmhouse in Normandy just outside Bayeux, with a free and easy internet connection - hurrah! For the past few days, the lucky ones amongst you have been receiving urgent correspondence from the far corner of Hotel de Ville carpark in Vernon. That's an excellent travel tip but this is far more comfortable - and much easier than embroidering a 68 metre long tapestry to tell of our exploits!
But I digress by a number of wars and about a thousand years...
After Paris, we picked up our Citroen Picasso and headed north to the WWI battlefields of the Somme with the help of our velvet-voiced GPS, Paloma. We stayed near the small town of Villers-Bretonneux which, by coincidence, was recaptured by Australian forces on 26 April, 1918. It was the first time that Australian troops had fought under Australian command (General Monash) and, along with Gallipoli, this is the only place in Europe that celebrates Anzac Day. We knew all this but we were totally unprepared for the warmth of the welcome we received and the genuine feeling held here for the Australian people.
It was so sweet and unsophisticated - from the fluttering flag outside our homestay to the painted plywood kangaroos in the grounds of the Town Hall and the children's artwork in the local school. We spent the 24-25 April visiting various war cemeteries and memorials and attending a fabulous game of Aussie Rules between the very serious team from Villers-Bretonneux and a bunch of knockabout Aussie tourists thrown together in the wake of the volcanic cloud. The locals won by 20 points but, true to form, the team called Aussie Spirit found plenty of excuses for that! It was a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon and the atmosphere was amiable and relaxed. The town had held Aussie Rules workshops for local children during the morning and in the quarter breaks, they threw a ball around with Australian (Victorian) children.
It was the local primary school, however, that really brought a lump to the throat. It is called Ecole Victoria in recognition of funds raised by Victorian children to rebuild the school in Villers-Bretonneux following WWI. Entering the playground, the boys were astounded to see the huge painted motto "Do Not Forget Australia" emblazoned across the weather shed (see photos) . The WWI museum itself is housed within the school grounds and was staffed by eager school children during the Anzac Day weekend. As a touching footnote, children from this school have spent the past year diligently raising funds to rebuild a primary school destroyed by the Victorian bushfires.
We stayed in a farmstead converted into a number of small gites which - surprise, surprise - were all occupied by Australians at the time. It was a great and varied group of people (a number of whom are reading this now - hello y'all!) and, to the satisfaction of our jovial french hosts, we came together to share an impromptu and memorable barbecue under the trees the night before Anzac Day. Among us was Professor Linda Shields from Curtin University, who was preparing to represent Australian nurses on the Somme for the very first time - a personal crusade for her and a moment of real connection for the rest of us at the dawn service the following morning.
The dawn service itself was really beautiful. As many of you know, John and I are not huge Anzac Day/Australia Day afficionados but driving through those darkened fields in the chill of pre-dawn towards the Australian Memorial illuminated on the hill was one of the more memorable moments of my life. About 2,500 Australian and French people attended. My ALP comrades will be glad to know that Steven Smith spoke beautifully on behalf of the Australian people and that he is known here as 'le renard en argent'. The bugler stood atop the looming monument as the sun rose behind and during the minute's silence, all you could hear was the rising twitter and song of birds in the surrounding fields.
Afterwards we returned home for breakfast and then hurried into Villers-Bretonneux for the (very french) ceremony outside the town hall celebrating the town's liberation - complete with hatted gendarmes, Mayor, local band, Steven Smith etc.
In our three days on the Western Front, however, the real stars of the show were the fields of France themselves. From the ploughed furrows to the lines of poplars, from the Roman roads to the rows and rows of white war graves, the entire landscape there was all about straight lines and squares. I had expected something drab and dreary but the pastures were emerald green, the canola fields were unfurled like scarves of blazing yellow and the cemetries scattered across the landscape were lined with almond blossom. It was beautiful and it was sad and you couldn't help thinking of Willie McBride or 'thighbones tugged excitedly from the soil by french children on picnics'.
We have since moved south to Giverny where we dabbled briefly in the peace and quiet of Monet's watergarden before subjecting ourselves to that second great conflagration - the D-Day landings in Normandy. These beaches are truly dreary, I can tell you, even in this unseasonly bright weather. They are no less interesting for that, however, and at least we are able to return each night to the bucolic pleasures of our stone cottage at the end of a beautiful country lane leading to the village of the Cahagnes. There are dogs, there are cats, there are black and white cows, there are four-week-old kittens - the boys are happy and we are all looking forward to a few weeks respite in our little house in Brittany.
But before then, we have to conquer Britain and the Bayeux tapestry - allons-y!
Love to you all. It's so nice to receive your messages back, no matter how brief and newsless.
XXX
Alison, John, Lawrence and Francis
22 April, 2010
Clear Blue Skies Above Paris, France - 16-23 April
Hi all,
How lucky were we to have train reservations from Amsterdam to Paris last Friday! We could have flogged them for a packet at Amsterdam Central where the ticket office was in meltdown. As things turned out, the only 'eruption disruption' for us was the train being 1.5 hours late as they attached extra carriages and the daunting challenge of pulling two children and four suitcases through the mayhem at Gare du Nord on arrival - possibly the most panicky moment of the trip so far!
Once settled into our tiny two room apartment on the left bank, however, the only volcanic fallout for us has been bright clear skies above us, shorter queues and one extraordinary chance encounter in a Paris metro tunnel at peak hour.
Once again, Paris has well and truly lived up to the hype and we have had a fantastic time here. Even those obligatory tick list items - the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre etc which John and I may not have done again have been fresh and thrilling with the kids. We spent hours up that tower - hours - lift up and stairs down with Francis counting every step of the way. We spent a long time with the lovely lady Lisa at the Louvre but better (and bigger) by far was Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana on the opposite wall. The boys know every inch of that painting having spent much of the January holidays doing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of it and here it was in all its glory 'and not a single piece missing'!
We have wandered for miles through the city and passed a golden Saturday afternoon with at least half of Paris, walking on the grass, eating icecream and watching furiously competitive petanque in the nearby Jardin du Luxembourg. We have enjoyed astonishingly affordable meals in the little bistros of Rue de Mouffetard where the boys have both developed a liking for snails. They are both going well with their bonjours, bonsoirs, mercis and pardons and have each managed to go and buy bread by themselves at the boulangerie across the road. All good.
On Tuesday we went our separate ways - the men to les Invalides to check out Napoleon's tomb, and me to the Marais via Lafayette to fossick about in the shops. On my way home, trudging through miles of metro tunnels under the Place de la Republic during the evening rush, turned a corner and ran straight into my cousin Margaret, Peter and their son Michael trudging the other way. They were not even meant to be in Paris but had been grounded here on a two day stopover from London. In twenty years of living in Sydney, I have never run into them by accident and the Gibbses amongst you will be amazed to hear that Margi and I were momentarily struck dumb. We quickly recovered, however, squealed a bit and went upstairs for a beer. We did make plans to meet for dinner the next day but by that time, Malaysian Airways had them back on a plane.
Indeed, as we strolled the vast corridors and gardens of Versailles yesterday, the sky was criss-crossed with jetstreams. Europe is back on the move. And so are we tomorrow when we pick up our car and head north to the Somme for the Anzac Day dawn service at Villers Bretonneux, a town liberated by Australian troops in 1918. Perhaps it's those jets that are cloud seeding Europe's drizzly skies because we are expecting our first drops of rain on the 25th -suitably sombre, perhaps.
Today is small scale pleasures, after the rigours of Versailles - African hot chocolate at a Belle Epoque salon de the and the like...
This has been quite a post and the breakfast croissants have gone cold. For those of you who have skipped straight to the end, hello!
Cheers,
Alison, John, Lawrence and Francis
How lucky were we to have train reservations from Amsterdam to Paris last Friday! We could have flogged them for a packet at Amsterdam Central where the ticket office was in meltdown. As things turned out, the only 'eruption disruption' for us was the train being 1.5 hours late as they attached extra carriages and the daunting challenge of pulling two children and four suitcases through the mayhem at Gare du Nord on arrival - possibly the most panicky moment of the trip so far!
Once settled into our tiny two room apartment on the left bank, however, the only volcanic fallout for us has been bright clear skies above us, shorter queues and one extraordinary chance encounter in a Paris metro tunnel at peak hour.
Once again, Paris has well and truly lived up to the hype and we have had a fantastic time here. Even those obligatory tick list items - the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre etc which John and I may not have done again have been fresh and thrilling with the kids. We spent hours up that tower - hours - lift up and stairs down with Francis counting every step of the way. We spent a long time with the lovely lady Lisa at the Louvre but better (and bigger) by far was Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana on the opposite wall. The boys know every inch of that painting having spent much of the January holidays doing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of it and here it was in all its glory 'and not a single piece missing'!
We have wandered for miles through the city and passed a golden Saturday afternoon with at least half of Paris, walking on the grass, eating icecream and watching furiously competitive petanque in the nearby Jardin du Luxembourg. We have enjoyed astonishingly affordable meals in the little bistros of Rue de Mouffetard where the boys have both developed a liking for snails. They are both going well with their bonjours, bonsoirs, mercis and pardons and have each managed to go and buy bread by themselves at the boulangerie across the road. All good.
On Tuesday we went our separate ways - the men to les Invalides to check out Napoleon's tomb, and me to the Marais via Lafayette to fossick about in the shops. On my way home, trudging through miles of metro tunnels under the Place de la Republic during the evening rush, turned a corner and ran straight into my cousin Margaret, Peter and their son Michael trudging the other way. They were not even meant to be in Paris but had been grounded here on a two day stopover from London. In twenty years of living in Sydney, I have never run into them by accident and the Gibbses amongst you will be amazed to hear that Margi and I were momentarily struck dumb. We quickly recovered, however, squealed a bit and went upstairs for a beer. We did make plans to meet for dinner the next day but by that time, Malaysian Airways had them back on a plane.
Indeed, as we strolled the vast corridors and gardens of Versailles yesterday, the sky was criss-crossed with jetstreams. Europe is back on the move. And so are we tomorrow when we pick up our car and head north to the Somme for the Anzac Day dawn service at Villers Bretonneux, a town liberated by Australian troops in 1918. Perhaps it's those jets that are cloud seeding Europe's drizzly skies because we are expecting our first drops of rain on the 25th -suitably sombre, perhaps.
Today is small scale pleasures, after the rigours of Versailles - African hot chocolate at a Belle Epoque salon de the and the like...
This has been quite a post and the breakfast croissants have gone cold. For those of you who have skipped straight to the end, hello!
Cheers,
Alison, John, Lawrence and Francis
14 April, 2010
Spring's awakening - Holland, 9-16 April
Okay, here are a few photos for those of you who are hassling. We had to leave it a few days until (a) we'd done some some stuff and (b) I'd taken the time to learn how to drive this blog thing but I'm driving it beautifully now - and on the right hand side of the road!
We are having a beautiful time back in Amsterdam. Spring is busting out all over and the sky is actually blue - John and I may have lived here back in 1991-1992 but it was autumn/winter then and blue skies and tulips are both things that we have never seen here before.
As you can see from the pics, both are suddenly in abundance now and we had forgotten how much we love this gorgeous little city. We are staying in a -let's call it cosy - houseboat on the Kaisergracht (the third canal from the centre of the Amsterdam horseshoe), waking every morning to the clang of church bells, the whirr of bicycles and smells from the bakery beside us.
Nothing in Amsterdam has changed a bit on the surface, which is great for people doing lots of traipsing down memory lane. Our old house on 3e Helmerstraat is still owned by the same grumpy artist in the garret and Cafe Helmers is still on the corner. I went swimming yesterday in the beautiful old swimming pool behind the Reichsmuseum where I set my first published short story and we have loved showing the boys "best hot chocolate", "best hot chips with mayo" - all pretty much where we left them. That said, it is such an excitingly modern city. As Lawrence said, every glimpse you get inside these 350+ year old canal houses looks like a page out of a state-of-the-art interiors magazine. John and I are getting a little annoyed with working offices that contain nothing more than a Mac on a white wood desk, a red apple, a bunch of tulips/daffodils and a quirky piece of modern art on the wall.
We've done lots of wandering along the canals, the Van Gogh Museum, the Amsterdam Historical Museum and Anne Frank's House. Francis has already managed two performances in the Leidseplein, a famous place for buskers, once playing a nice bit of Percy Grainger on the trumpet (courtesy of a very nice Colombian trumpeter with whom he struck up a conversation) and secondly doing football tricks (called on because of the dimples in that case, not for any particular proficiency at football tricks!)
Today we took the train to Haarlem, hired bicycles and headed south towards Lieden through the tulip fields which, after a very cold spring, are suddenly bursting into bloom. They were quite spectacular and the riding was great - you never even have to change gear in a country that has been made with the aid of a spirit level. Did the whole cliche catastrophe at one point - up a windmill, looking out at tulips, following a man in clogs, listening to a steam organ playing "Walk Like an Egyptian".
At the crack of dawn tomorrow, we'll (hopefully) be seeing the other end of the industry at the massive international flower auction at Aarlsmeer, about 20km from Amsterdam. Every day, crateloads of fresh flowers - tulips, daffodils, hiacynths etc - are auctioned off and flown all over the world from what is apparently the largest commercial building in Europe. You can see it on googlemaps. It's the size of a small town.
But hark, I hear the Westerkerk bells strike eleven so I'm not going to get to the flower auction if I don't leave this alone now.
Nice talking with you all. Lovely to hear from those of you who have responded.
Love etc, Alison, John, Lawrence and Francis.
We are having a beautiful time back in Amsterdam. Spring is busting out all over and the sky is actually blue - John and I may have lived here back in 1991-1992 but it was autumn/winter then and blue skies and tulips are both things that we have never seen here before.
As you can see from the pics, both are suddenly in abundance now and we had forgotten how much we love this gorgeous little city. We are staying in a -let's call it cosy - houseboat on the Kaisergracht (the third canal from the centre of the Amsterdam horseshoe), waking every morning to the clang of church bells, the whirr of bicycles and smells from the bakery beside us.
Nothing in Amsterdam has changed a bit on the surface, which is great for people doing lots of traipsing down memory lane. Our old house on 3e Helmerstraat is still owned by the same grumpy artist in the garret and Cafe Helmers is still on the corner. I went swimming yesterday in the beautiful old swimming pool behind the Reichsmuseum where I set my first published short story and we have loved showing the boys "best hot chocolate", "best hot chips with mayo" - all pretty much where we left them. That said, it is such an excitingly modern city. As Lawrence said, every glimpse you get inside these 350+ year old canal houses looks like a page out of a state-of-the-art interiors magazine. John and I are getting a little annoyed with working offices that contain nothing more than a Mac on a white wood desk, a red apple, a bunch of tulips/daffodils and a quirky piece of modern art on the wall.
We've done lots of wandering along the canals, the Van Gogh Museum, the Amsterdam Historical Museum and Anne Frank's House. Francis has already managed two performances in the Leidseplein, a famous place for buskers, once playing a nice bit of Percy Grainger on the trumpet (courtesy of a very nice Colombian trumpeter with whom he struck up a conversation) and secondly doing football tricks (called on because of the dimples in that case, not for any particular proficiency at football tricks!)
Today we took the train to Haarlem, hired bicycles and headed south towards Lieden through the tulip fields which, after a very cold spring, are suddenly bursting into bloom. They were quite spectacular and the riding was great - you never even have to change gear in a country that has been made with the aid of a spirit level. Did the whole cliche catastrophe at one point - up a windmill, looking out at tulips, following a man in clogs, listening to a steam organ playing "Walk Like an Egyptian".
At the crack of dawn tomorrow, we'll (hopefully) be seeing the other end of the industry at the massive international flower auction at Aarlsmeer, about 20km from Amsterdam. Every day, crateloads of fresh flowers - tulips, daffodils, hiacynths etc - are auctioned off and flown all over the world from what is apparently the largest commercial building in Europe. You can see it on googlemaps. It's the size of a small town.
But hark, I hear the Westerkerk bells strike eleven so I'm not going to get to the flower auction if I don't leave this alone now.
Nice talking with you all. Lovely to hear from those of you who have responded.
Love etc, Alison, John, Lawrence and Francis.
10 April, 2010
Arrive Amsterdam - 6am, 9 April
We are here! Well, not France yet, but a sunny, warm Amsterdam.
The flights were long. Even so, the boys coped wonderfully and were wide eyed - until they couldn't keep their eyes open.
Lots of straat and gracht walking today. Visited our old home on 2e Helmerstraat. Survived bikes and trams driving on the wrong side of the road. Absolutely brilliant weather. The cafes are out on the streets.
Our houseboat on the Keizergracht is cosy - photos tomorrow.
The flights were long. Even so, the boys coped wonderfully and were wide eyed - until they couldn't keep their eyes open.
Lots of straat and gracht walking today. Visited our old home on 2e Helmerstraat. Survived bikes and trams driving on the wrong side of the road. Absolutely brilliant weather. The cafes are out on the streets.
Our houseboat on the Keizergracht is cosy - photos tomorrow.
01 April, 2010
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