clog blog

Friday, 1 April 2011

Safe and Sound

Apologies for the lack of blog posts recently. We had a technical difficulty loading posts at our accommodation in Paris. We are not sure if it was an internet connection issue or a problem on Google’s side. So please find below the Lisbon and Paris blog.

We arrived safely in Rotterdam on Friday afternoon after a good week in Paris. We had a few things to organise in order to make our empty apartment comfortable for the night and next two weeks until our furniture arrives. We managed to buy sleeping bags in Paris and on Friday we acquired an inflatable mattress, towels, a set of pots (to boil water and cook with), and a few other odds n ends. At least our place already has a fridge, stove top and washing machine. We had a cosy first night’s sleep which was made more comfortable by the purchase of two feather pillows on Saturday!

After another admin-filled day on Saturday we headed out to Keukenhof, the gardens in the bulb growing area of Lisse, on Sunday. Wow! So many colourful flowers! Tulips are the most well-known of the bulbs cultivated in and exported from Holland but there are many more. They also grow many varieties of daffodils (Narcissus family), Amaryllis, Hyacinths, Irises and many others. We thought we would see the miles and miles of colourful fields one hears about but Keukenhof is just the garden within the fields, lol! Next time we plan to see more of Lisse and the surrounding area; apparently there is a 32 km stretch of colour to see!

Keukenhof is only open for two months in Spring. The gardens opened last Thursday, 24 March, and are open until 20 May. It is still early in the season, so not everything was in flower and the trees do not have leaves yet. But we bought a Spring pass so we will be back a few times! Ditto with the bulb fields, hopefully next time there will be more colour. Also, I think Keukenhof staggers the planting of bulbs so that there is always something in flower throughout the season.

The theme for this year is Germany (one of the main importers of bulbs and cut flowers) and there are different activities and shows on at Keukenhof every week. This week we saw the Amaryllis, Freesia and Tulip show and the Orchid show (which I think is on all season). The Orchids were really impressive! Such a different and difficult to grow plant! We really liked them. We bought a little Orchid which we have named Oliver. He is quite small in size and his flowers are small too. His flowers are a light yellowy-green colour which goes well in our yellowish apartment!

I didn’t know there were so many different types of Tulips; there are varieties in every colour and size imaginable! There are tall ones, shorts ones, large flowers, small flowers, very open ones, more closed ones, double petals, frilly-edged petals, stripey, solid colour, mixed colour, wow, so many! One of our other favourites were the miniature Irises; small plants with fine tiny flowers. We are feeling inspired to grow our own Tulips! We have a little enclosed balcony and plan to put some flower boxes there.

We also saw the Keukenhof Windmill. So I worked out why Holland has so many windmills, it’s because it is so windy here! It’s like living in Cape Town…. From far windmills look like they move so slowly which makes them look lethargic. But once you get up-close you can see that the arms actually move quite fast! There is quite a complex mechanism in the windmill which required some intricate engineering! We hope to be back at Keukenhof again soon!

This week is mostly an admin kind of week. We need to register, investigate opening a bank account, investigate different internet contracts, organise work gear for Justin (first day on Friday) and other things. We started the process of registering today. Justin registered at the Gemeente (local authority) and we made an appointment for registering at the IND (immigration); the earliest date we could get is in two weeks’ time. In order to take out any kind of contract we need to have a bank account (so that the amount can come off automatically each month) and to do that we need a V‑number (ID-type number) which we can’t get until we have finished the registration process. It will be at least two weeks until we have a V-number and probably another two weeks or so after that until we have a functional line. So it’s a little complicated and will be a while until we have everything sorted. In the mean time we will check email sporadically at the library. We also have a pay-as-you-go sim‑card for now. If you would like the number, email us and we will send it to you (don’t want to post it on the web).

Some other info is that daylight saving time started on Sunday (27 March). The clocks moved forward one hour so we are now the same time as South Africa. Sunset is now at 8 pm, yay! Come on Summer, come on! Having said that it is still quite cool here. We do have some sun but it is not as warm as it was in Spain, Portugal or even Paris. Hoping that changes soon! We watched our first movie on Saturday night, ‘Rango’! Lucky for us most of the movies here are in English and subtitled in Dutch as are most of the foreign TV shows; which will also help us to learn the language. Justin is keen to play cricket this Summer and we were fortunate to meet a captain of a team during our week here in Feb and his first practice is on Tuesday evening (30 March), wish him luck!

But for now just to let everyone know that we are safely here and enjoying our new little place. We are slowly getting to know our area and are having fun exploring. It is also good to be back in a place where we understand at least some of what people say! After travelling around Europe we feel that the Netherlands was a good choice for a first European country to live in; amongst other things it will be much easier for us to integrate having an Afrikaans background.

Until next time, sterkte for Two Oceans training! Please email us and leave messages on the blog, we love hearing from you!

PS: What happened to our cricket team?!

Smelling the flowers at Keukenhof (yes, tulips do have a scent!)

Tulips at Keukenhof

The windmill at Keukenhof

Fresh hot stroop wafels, yum!! What a treat!

Pancakes in Paris

Bonjour!

What a great week in Paris! Seven consecutive days of sunshine, temperatures in the high teens, flowers everywhere and sunset after 7pm; the promises of summer. We love Spring!

Last week Saturday we arrived in Paris after an easy flight from Lisbon, except for the usual mishaps at security. Again no passport control, I love Europe! Sunday was our first day to explore and after sorting out some admin we headed to the Arc de Triomphe. After climbing the stairs to top we were greeted with amazing views over the city, from the Grand Arch to the Sacre Coeur past the Champs Elysees and the Eiffel Tower. Wow! Definitely worth the hard climb up! The rest of the day was spent orientating ourselves in the city and planning the week ahead. We decided to get a 4 day museum pass which meant we had access to 60 museums in Paris and theoretically skip the queues. After walking down the Champs Elysees, we made our way to the Rodin museum to see the famous Thinker and other pieces by the sculptor. We liked the setting of the bigger pieces in the garden and smaller pieces in the house. After popping into the Louvre to get a map it was time to head back to a home cooked meal! Our accommodation had a laundry area and our room had a kitchenette so we got back to a little bit of normality this week doing laundry and making our own dinner. Maybe we missed out on some French cuisine but it was good practice for the weeks ahead; Justin was able to get the creative juices flowing again! Paris was very busy and vibey on Sunday and it was a good welcome to the city.

Monday was an early start at the Musee du Louvre. I didn’t know it was originally a palace, it’s absolutely massive! I think we were feeling a bit paintinged-out when we were at the Louvre because we didn’t see as much as we wanted to although we were there for about 4 hours. The museum was also very full being one of the only museums open on a Monday. We did however see the Mona Lisa and lots of cool statues including Michelangelo’s entrapped slave. We were planning to come back on Wednesday when the museum is open until late but it didn’t happen. Next time!

Next stop was the Notre-Dame Cathedral. The queue to walk to the top was a bit long so we just went inside the cathedral. It is huge inside with many little chapels. Also very busy with a choir rehearsing for a concert. After the Notre-Dame we made our way to the Pantheon. Modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, it also has a dome and many columns; an interesting design for a church. Many great French citizens rest in the crypt, including Marie and Pierre Curie, the chemists who discovered radiation, and Victor Hugo, the writer who wrote The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

Almost time for sunset, we headed back to the Arc de Triomphe for views over Paris at sunset. Last stop for the day was the Grand Arch at La Defense, a business centre with many tall buildings. Much bigger than the Arc de Triomphe, the Grand Arch is a hollow cube with enough space to hold the Notre-Dame!

Tuesday morning we headed back to the Notre-Dame and braved the queue to climb the stairs to the top. It was well worth it! The views over the city were awesome and it was kewl to get close to the gargoyles and other creatures that watch over the cathedral. We couldn’t however see the flying buttresses from the top as they are on the other side of the cathedral. We saw the great bell of the cathedral and the wooden bell tower. The bell weighs ~3 tons and the clapper about half a ton. A team of 12 ringers is required to ring the bell and it is only rung on special holidays. The bell tower is made of wood to absorb the impact of the ringing bell so as not to crack the figures and rest of the cathedral. How did they get it up there all those years ago?!

After the Notre-Dame we headed to the Musee d’Orsay for a fix of impressionist paintings. Originally designed as a railway station, the outlay of the museum is very interesting! Many stairs to would-be platforms and a great clock to keep the time. The museum is home to a real mix of art including works by Matisse, Monet, Manet, van Gogh and Cezanne as well as a section on photography and many sculptures. The less random of the impressionist era, for more random modern art head to the Centre Pompidou!

Last stop for the day, the Eiffel Tower! We ascended the North Pillar right to the top. A bit early for sunset but still kewl nevertheless. Although it was a beautiful sunny day, it was quite windy and cool at the top. Awesome views over Paris, a bit different from so high up, 376 m! It was a bit hazy but apparently on a clear day you can see as far as Chartres Cathedral 72 km away.

Wednesday we started with Les Invalides, home to the Musee de l’Armee and Napoleon’s tomb in the crypt of the Dome church. We saw Napoleon’s tomb, a huge red sarcophagus, the church and also walked through some of the museum’s collections. The parts we saw were the armoury, housing a vast array of ancient armours, the section on Charles de Gaulle and the section depicting the history of France from Louis XIII, Napoleon and the Revolution. Very interesting but obviously from the army’s point of view. Since visiting Paris, I feel inspired to learn more about Charles de Gaulle and read the story of Quasimodo!

Next we made our way to the interesting Pompidou Centre. President Pompidou had a vision for a place dedicated to modern art and the Pompidou Centre was born. An interesting ‘modern’ building, you feel like you are in a Guinea pig cage going up the escalators closed off with plastic pipes on the outside of the building. Matisse, Dali and Picasso are featured here and are the more tame of the modern art. There is also an emphasis on photography and other visual and audio arts such as movies and music etc. There are a lot of random pieces and we didn’t stay too long, lol.

Thursday was our last full day in Paris and also the last day of our holiday touring Europe *sigh* Our museum passes were up (only 4 days) so we spent the day exploring outside areas. Feeling melancholy, we headed out to the Luxemburg gardens. Originally the gardens of the Luxemburg Palace, these public gardens are full of joggers and sun worshippers even at 10 am on a Thursday. We love people gazing and enjoyed watching groups practising Tai Chi and the old retired gentleman playing tennis, what a great way to pass your retirement in the Spring sunshine! A walk down Boulevard St Michel to the Metro station and onto Place de la Bastille. There isn’t anything left of the old prison where the French Revolution broke out, but there is a monument to the victims of the revolution in the middle of the square. Many cafés line the square and we enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere over a croquet monsieur and sugared crêpes. Also in the area is Place des Vosges, a beautifully manicured square surrounded by 36 houses. Once the home of aristocrats, today the area is lively with antique shops and cafés.

Feeling a bit better, we headed to Montmartre on top of a hill, most well-known for the Sacre Coeur and the Moulin Rouge! I love the Sacre Coeur, it is one of my favourite churches in Europe. Even though it was pretty busy inside, it was still quiet and peaceful, unlike other European churches we have been to. It is a huge church and well decorated but not overly ornate like so many others. We enjoyed walking around the streets of Montmartre with many patisseries and artists. Eventually we found the Moulin Rouge! It is in a bit of a dodgy red-light district and we didn’t hang around too long! It is still open though, and for between 90 and 180 euros you can have dinner and watch a show including the French can-can.

After a busy week it was time to pack and get ready to head back to Rotterdam. Although we are sad that our holiday has ended, we are still at the beginning of our adventure and have many things to look forward to! Paris is only 2.5 hrs from Rotterdam on a high speed train which means we will be back for many weekends away! Other nearby places we want to explore include Brussels in Belgium and many parts of the Netherlands. Our first Netherlands adventure is a day out to Keukenhof on Sunday, the colourful bulb fields!

Justin starts his new job next week Friday (April fool’s day, a coincidence?) and we have a confirmed delivery date for our furniture. Our goods arrive on the 11^th of April so we have about 2 weeks of an inflatable mattress and sleeping bags. We managed to acquire two sleeping bags this week but still need to find an inflatable mattress and some other odds n ends to make the next few weeks comfortable. We don’t have internet at home yet but the blog will continue when we are set up and organised! =)

Daylight saving time starts on Sunday morning. The clocks switch forward one hour at 2 am so we will be the same time as South Africa until the last Sunday in October when daylight saving ends. We are looking forward to even longer days but still find the idea of changing the time strange!

Hope you are all well and that Autumn is treating you kindly.

Arc de Triomphe by day...

....and by night

The Eiffel tower

Rodin's the Thinker

Musee de l'Armee at sunset

The Louvre

The Mona Lisa

Michelangelo's entrapped slave

The Notre Dame

Stained glass windows at the Notre Dame

Gargoyles watching over the city

Sunset from the Arc de Triomphe

View of the Grand Arche and La Defense from the Arce de Triomphe at sunset

View of the Eiffel Tower from the Arc de Triomphe at sunset

At the top of the Eiffel tower!

View of the Arc de Triomphe from the Eiffel tower

Armoury at the Musee de l'Armee

View of Montmartre and the Sacre Couer from the Arc de Triomphe

The Sacre Couer

In Montmartre

The Moulin Rouge

Last night of holiday dinner

Sun, sardines and sangria!

Portugal, what a great country! We almost skipped Portugal due to train limitations and I’m so glad we didn’t. Lisbon and Estoril surpassed our expectations and we had a really good time here.

Last week Monday was our first night train experience on the way from Madrid to Lisbon. Hm, an interesting experience! It was a 9 hour journey but definitely not 9 hours of sleep! Our cabin was pretty small but the use of space inside was impressive. Bron naively hoped that there would be a shower somewhere on the train, wishful thinking! At least we had a basin in our cabin. The actual ride wasn’t that smooth and the noise kept us awake a lot of the night but apart from that it wasn’t a bad first experience; it definitely beats a 9 hour flight!

Portugal is one hour behind the rest of Europe, the same time as London and two hours behind SA, so we gained an hour when we arrived. Arriving in the morning gave us an advantage of having an extra day to explore which we spent wandering around the coastal towns of Estoril and Cascais. Tuesday was a beautiful warm day and it was so nice to not need a jacket! We found the Cascais lighthouse, the yacht basin, the land reclaimed from the sea and the Boca de inferno (a hole in the rocks which creates an angry sea!). For lunch we tried the sardines and sangria at a restaurant Justin discovered when he was here in 2006 for an engineering conference. They are very serious about their sangria!

Wednesday was time to explore Lisbon! The first stop was Belém where we visited the Torre de Belém, the Monument to the Discoveries and the Mosterio Dos Jerónimos. Torre de Belém was originally in the middle of the river where it protected Lisbon from an invasion from the sea. Today it is right on the shore and a national monument. The Monument to the Discoveries honours the sea-faring Portuguese explorers who discovered new lands and trade routes, such as Vasco da Gama. Part of the monument is a world map on the ground showing where and when important discoveries were made. The Mosterio is a monastery of the order of Saint Jerome and contains the tomb of Vasco da Gama. We love the Manueline style of the cloister with its archways and depictions of ropes, the cross, images from nature and sea creatures.

We took the tram to the centre of Lisbon where we explored the areas of Baixa and Alfama. Baixa is the area behind the Praça do Comércio where the streets are laid out in a grid, one of the first examples of town planning in Europe. East of Baixa is the Sé Cathedral, Alfama and Castelo de Sáo Jorge. The single yellow trams are a quaint symbol of Lisbon and watching them pass by the Sé added to the scenery. We enjoyed wandering around Alfama with its narrow cobbled streets and tourist shops selling items made of cork and the symbol of Portugal, the chicken. The last stop for the day was Castelo de Sáo Jorge, the remains of a Moorish castle which became a royal residence and later a theatre and prison. The views of Lisbon from the castle were magical and the setting sun made it even more romantic.

Thursday we boarded an early bus headed to Sintra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to many royal castles and palaces. Sintra is a very hilly area and most of the day was spent walking up hills! Although we didn’t go in, the first palace we saw was Palácio Nacional de Sintra. The most striking external feature of this palace is the two large chimneys which protrude from the kitchens below. Much further up the hill is Castelo dos Mouros, a 9^th century Moorish castle. The castle is mostly ruins now, similar to St George’s Castle, and was used as an observation post for monitoring the coastline.

On an adjacent hilltop is Pálacio de Pena, a mixture of colours and architectural styles. We loved this palace! The rooms are a decent size that befits a royal residence (not like the tiny rooms of the Residenz in Munich) and the views from the palace are amazing. We liked the Manueline style and the decorative tiles. The gardens for the palace are magnificent. If we had more time it would have been awesome to explore them more. The last stop for the day was Quinta de Regalaira, the summer residence of the Carvalho Monteiro family. The house is quite large but not much of the original furniture remains. The garden is massive and full of weird and wonderful statues and other wonders. There is a chapel, a lake, a waterfall, caves and tunnels connecting various parts of the garden, castle-like towers and 27m deep wells with stairways to the bottom. Someone in the family was an enthusiastic botanist evidenced by the many different tree and plant species in the garden, including a cycad and a sequoia tree (a ring from a trunk of a giant sequoia tree is in the National History Museum in London). After a full day out it was time to celebrate St Patrick’s day at an Irish Pub in Cascais. Justin felt he deserved a Guinness, or two. We enjoyed the home-made beef and Guinness stew and the live traditional music.

Friday we headed back to Lisbon and visited the Oceanário de Lisboa. The second largest in the world, the oceanarium has one main centre tank and four smaller tanks on each corner of the main tank. The main tank represents the open ocean and the four smaller tanks represent the Atlantic, Antarctic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. We missed the turtles of the Durban aquarium but enjoyed seeing a real manta ray. Our favourites though were the three otters in the Atlantic tank. These guys, girls actually, are so playful and cute! I could watch them all day! They are so fluid and graceful in the water and play with each other all day. They rub their faces, tails and tummies with their hands, so human-like. They really were so cute. Otters eat a third of their body weight each day to maintain an internal body temperature in the cold water but we think it’s because they play so much! The aquarium is well laid out; there is one way traffic through the aquarium and you can view the tanks from above and below. The oceanarium focuses on the plight of our seas and educating people on awareness and smart consumer choices. We really enjoyed our visit to the oceanarium and highly recommend it! The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering through the streets of Alfama soaking up the atmosphere before it was time to head back to pack and get ready to move onto Paris on Saturday.

Portugal was much warmer than the rest of Europe and even Spain. We enjoyed soaking up the sun and not needing a big jacket! Although the wind cooled things down quite a lot. Our hotel room had a 180° view of Estoril, the ocean and Cascais. When we weren’t exploring, we enjoyed our relaxing chill-out time in the sun on our balcony watching the view. One of our other favourite things in Portugal was our mission to try as many of the traditional custard pastries, pasteis de nata, at as many different bakeries as possible! Clearly we have to be more serious next time as we only managed about 6 in one day. We loved the colourful decorative tiles used everywhere; covering whole buildings and used signs. However, we do not approve of the public toilets! The public loo’s in Italy, Spain and Portugal leave a lot to be desired. I eventually got used to no toilet seat but one public loo at Cascais took the cake. It was a stand-alone corrugated metal building with only a porcelain bowl in it. However, it was not obvious how to use the toilet as the bowl did not have a pipe leading from it or an obvious way of flushing it. Definitely not ayoba!

On Saturday we braved airport security for a flight to Paris. Paris is sunny but not as warm as Portugal! We are in Paris for 6 nights until Friday when we head back to Rotterdam. We have a preliminary furniture delivery date of 11 April which should be confirmed this week and means that we only have one week in Rotterdam with no furniture, yay! On this week’s agenda is to find sleeping bags! At least our new place has a fridge and a washing machine.

We will not have internet the first little while in Rotterdam until we get sorted. If we don’t manage to post a Paris blog before the end of the week, apologies! It will follow as soon as we have internet again. And our blog will not stop just because we are back in Rotterdam, we will keep you informed of ‘going Dutch’.

Hope you are well and had a good weekend! Have a good week ahead!

Until next time, au revoire!