The tourists of Pisa

This is a photo blog dedicated to the tourists of Pisa. I am assuming of course everyone one knows what Pisa is famous for, here is a tribute to the stupidity that is the leaning tower pose.

Night fever, night fever ...

Tai chi anyone?

I has the power....see this?

Strike a pose

The mime....or just mental

I feel pretty, oh so pretty

Moon walking maybe?

Oh! My! God! Its so biggg!!!!

Ernggghhhh..

I know kung foo....kapow!

And I just belong in the 80s....seriously...

At least we don't look stupid.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Travelling through Arles in France, the land of the wild white horses, we made our way to Nice, our next stop. The French Rivera is stunning, they don’t call it the Cote de Azure (The Azure Coast) for nothing. Our evening out in Nice was spent in the Principality of Monaco. We first stopped at the Rock, the area of Monaco where only people of the Gramaldi family may live. We stopped to look at the Church of St Nicholas on the Rock, and as luck would have it, Prince Albert Jnr and his finance were there, we speculate that they were having a wedding rehearsal before their wedding on the 2^nd of July.  

An evening out to Monaco though would not be complete without a visit to the famous Monte Carlo casino area where the rich and famous come to show off. Several fabulous cars, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Rolls Royce’s, Jaguars, are parked out the front of the casino, where their rich beautiful owners stroll around in towering high heels on the arms of more senior gentlemen of the wealthy sugar daddy variety. The new fashion trend here has also been set, a white Persian cat carried around on one’s shoulder. Not very inconspicuous, the entire bus load of us turned around and stared at the woman.

Hola!

Over the Pyrones and into Spain, Barcelona is the next two night stop on our tour. The Spanish have a very laid back way of life. They work from 8am to around 1pm, have a siesta in the afternoon where all the shops close, then open again around 5pm to 8-10pm. They have dinner late, usually after 8pm. It’s all very nice and everything, but it makes being a tourist rather tricky. One has to adjust to their timetable to make Spain work. Barcelona is a fascinating city but with nearly 40% unemployment, the presence of seller’s on the street can be overwhelming. Largely from Northern Africa these people took advantage of the fact it was pouring with rain while we were out with the group sightseeing. Every second person was trying to sell you an umbrella.

The Sagrada Familia, the biggest and most iconic building in Barcelona was the first stop on our sight seeing tour. The building has been under construction for well over one hundred years, they don’t expect completion for at least another fifty. The buildings vast array of architectural themes its mind boggling. Melting arches, bowls of fruit on spires, geometric blocky figures, scenes depicting many biblical storeys with carved statues. The building gets its brown colour not from the stone, but from the pollution from the city. There are currently 20 architects working on the building, 19 are from Spain, 1 is from New Zealand.

Other sights on our tour of Barcelona included the Palace of Ferdinand and Isabella and the Olympic stadium. An afternoon strolling down Las Ramblas then a Flamenco in the evening competed our day in Spain. 

Flying Pigs

So the last blog I wrote we were in Paris. We have now moved on and are in Italy, but I will update what we have done to date.
On route to Barcelona from Bordeaux we passed through an area called Aquitaine, which is a region of France. The area is famous for a lady by the name of Elanor, who through her second marriage, married the King of England,  Henry the 2^nd. They had four children, two of whom were King Richard the Lion heart and King John who is featured in the legend of Robin Hood. The fortified village of Carcasonne where we stopped for lunch, was the castle which Robin Hood prince of thieves movie was filmed. The legend of the castle goes that Dame Carcas was besieged in the castle by Charlemange. Near the point of total starvation she filled their last remaining pig with wheat and threw over the wall at the army. The army below, thinking they had so much food they were throwing it away, surrendered. Carcasonne is a beautiful example of a medieval fortified village, thankfully minus the sewerage flowing through the streets.

Paris madness

Let me just start off by saying that people in Paris don't think when they drive. If you ever plan to go to Paris, don't drive unless you happen to be suicidal. The traffic is atrocious, not helped by the fact that there is 12 million people in greater Paris and that their appears to be no road rules and certainly no lane markings. Only in Paris do they have one of the world's busiest round about's (The Arc de Triomphe) with 12 exits, and create a road rule that creates chaos. Instead of the normal rule where you give way to people on the round about, you give way while ON the round about to people coming onto it.

Parisians are erratic drivers anyway, they just drive and then think, they park where they please, and their main form of driving communication is honking and waving fists. About 50% of Parisians seem to drive scooters (a wise choice if you ask me) and the other half drive smart cars and citrons.

However this is not a blog about Paris traffic. We did actually do other things in Paris beside sit in traffic (although sometimes it didn't feel like it). The first night we were there we went to the famous Lido cabaret on the Champs-Elysees. Stunning show, and just when you think you have seen everything a horse comes on stage, then an ice skating rink, then an Egyptian pyramid. Amazing and definitely one of the best things we did there. After the show we saw the Eiffel tower with its lights on at night. I would say its definitely prettier at night.

The next day we took in the sights of Paris, Notre Dame,  Eiffel tower again, the Lourve, the Val-de-Grace (where Napoleon is buried) and Concorde square (where Louie the 16th and Marie Antointete were beheaded).

That afternoon we went to the Palace of Versailles. The palace has 2000 rooms and was the home to King Louie the 14th. He was a bit full of himself, he is depicted in almost every room. The palace itself was enormous, really was very over the top inside, most rooms were made of marble. The grounds though were stunning, and probably the better bit. They cover several hundred acres themselves. The first picture shows the smaller side. The second picture shows the gardens at the back of the castle. If you look at the horizon of the picture, the fuzzy blue stripe (it was raining) in the middle of the bushes is actually the canals of the gardens. Google probably has better photos, ones that weren't taking in the pouring rain.

So now we are in Bordeaux. Much nice city personally than Paris, about 400,000 people here. My French is improving, I can now converse with about five words. Turns out that's all you need really, that and lots of pointing and weird gesticulations. 

Final days in London

Its been a few days since my last blog, so I will be posting a couple of blogs tonight to update anyone who is actually reading this drivel. This blog will be about our last couple of days in London, from memory the last one I wrote was about the tower of London and St Pauls. So following that we did a day tour on Friday the 3rd to Bath, Windsor castle and Stonehenge. All were amazing places in their own right.

Windsor castle was the first stop on the trip. It was originally built to guard the one of the roads into the city of London, so hence its location. Huge place with stunning rooms. Unfortunately like a lot of the places we saw (mostly religious buildings and royal buildings) you cant actually take photos of the inside. One of the rooms in the palace is actually dedicated to Queen Mary's doll house. To give you an idea of the size the house took up an entire room itself. Quite amazing and any girls dream really.
We were at Windsor on a Friday and apparently the Queen goes to Windsor in the afternoon to spend the weekend. We happened to get a glimpse of one of her corgis being exercised in the private gardens.

Other than that Windsor was much like other royal buildings we are seeing on our trip, ostentatious, huge, with impractically high ceilings. As an aside you can also see Eton college from Windsor castle where both the princes (Harry and Williams) were educated. The fees are in the realms of 30,000 pounds a year or something to that extent according to the guide.

Bath was the second stop on the trip. Stunning white stone buildings. Apparently Bath was bombed during the war like a lot of London was and some of the buildings they re did in the 50's and 60's were down right ugly. So they have gone ahead and demolished a lot of those buildings and built new ones in the same style as the rest of the city.

Bath was well, really old. What you can see in the photo is pretty much it apart from the museum and a few side rooms with more old rocks. It was more the architecture of the city as a whole which was stunning. An area of Bath known as the circus was particularly amazing.

The actor Nicholas Cage used to own one of these apartments up until a year ago when he got in some financial trouble.

Stonehenge was the final stop on the trip. It literally is a lot of very old rocks in a field. What's fascinating is how on earth they got them there. They think that the rocks come from two main places, Wales and somewhere about 20kms from the stones. The circle was build in two stages, about 200 years apart about 5000 years ago. There is also the remains of an even earlier circle being there before that. The history of the place really is quite interesting to read up on.

So that's all for that tour. The next day (Saturday) we visited Richards great aunt and uncle in Littlehampton, south of London. We then went over to Brighton, and left very soon after getting there. Brighton was very hot and there were masses and masses of people there. It just was not nice at all. London is busy but in a very organised way. Its quite an impressive city with the efficiency of the tube (except on Sunday when some of the lines weren't operating) and the impressive way that they herd thousands of tourists around attractions with precision and skill. I could spend a lot more time exploring the city, but I don't think I could live there!

Royal Bling

Three days into our trip now. Yesterday we went to St Pauls and climbed 250 something stairs to the dome. Absolutely amazing building, so much bigger than it looks like in person to. There are no photos of the interior though because of the no photography rule for religious buildings.

St Pauls Cathederal

 From there we walked across the millennium bridge to Shakespeare's globe theatre.

Shakespeare's globe theatre

Looking at tower bridge

 Next on the agenda was the Tower of London. We got stuck by the tower as they were in the process of doing a 60 gun salute to mark the queens coronation. Once in though we joined a Yeoman Warder tour of the castle. According to the bloke below to become a Beefeater you have to serve 20 years in the Royal Army and have medals for service and conduct. They live on the grounds of the tower with their families along with the Governor of the tower of London and the tower surgeon. The particular guy who took our group round is also the keeper of the ravens that live at the tower.

Yeoman warder at the tower of London

At the tower we also saw the Royal jewels or bling, which were fabulous, but we did have to queue for about 1/2 and hour. 

Afterwards we joined a Jack the Ripper tour round Whitechapel, looking at the locations where the actual ripper murders occurred with a rather gruesome description from the guide on how the ripper skinned and butchered his victims.  

Original houses in Whitechapel