Oh wow! After several months my tags are back! Great! Except they are all called "keyword-*insert number here*" and not my actual tags.
Want to hear a gross story? Of course you do.
Last night, after an evening of fine movies with fine people, my brother and I got home to discover a large cockroach lying in wait in the living room. And then two in the bathroom. And another couple in the living room... And one or two in our bedrooms. Roaches EVERYWHERE. A killing spree ensued and I went to bed in horror, only to wake up at 1 am to the sounds of rustling in my waste paper bin. ARGH. Couldn't get to sleep after that. On getting up in the morning, I discovered four cockroach corpses. In total, we encountered about 14 cockroaches in an 8 hour period. W.T.F.
I just don't understand where all those little shits came from. It's not like we live in some hovel. We don't leave food lying around inviting bug activity. The doors weren't left open while we were out. I've never seen so many cockroaches ever. Tonight? Not a single roach in sight. So I'm thinking, did the Super Moon have an impact on the bug activity last night? We don't usually see too many cockroaches in the house so I've never considered the bug/full moon question before, but I wonder if there's anything in it...
In other news, LJ has completely eaten most of my tags and seems to be trying very hard to be hip and cool and facebook-y, apparently there are games now?
Last night, after an evening of fine movies with fine people, my brother and I got home to discover a large cockroach lying in wait in the living room. And then two in the bathroom. And another couple in the living room... And one or two in our bedrooms. Roaches EVERYWHERE. A killing spree ensued and I went to bed in horror, only to wake up at 1 am to the sounds of rustling in my waste paper bin. ARGH. Couldn't get to sleep after that. On getting up in the morning, I discovered four cockroach corpses. In total, we encountered about 14 cockroaches in an 8 hour period. W.T.F.
I just don't understand where all those little shits came from. It's not like we live in some hovel. We don't leave food lying around inviting bug activity. The doors weren't left open while we were out. I've never seen so many cockroaches ever. Tonight? Not a single roach in sight. So I'm thinking, did the Super Moon have an impact on the bug activity last night? We don't usually see too many cockroaches in the house so I've never considered the bug/full moon question before, but I wonder if there's anything in it...
In other news, LJ has completely eaten most of my tags and seems to be trying very hard to be hip and cool and facebook-y, apparently there are games now?
Reflective Lake, originally uploaded by jenctate.
So, here we are in Britain. Incredibly snowy. Never seen anything like it, but it's beautiful. We were lucky enough to have blue skies on our first day in the Lake District and the scenery was stunning.
Funniest thing that happened in the Lake District? We went out to a pub called the White Lion on Sunday for a roast. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.6){kind=small}
the_moriarty bought a pint of Thwaites, an English beer, sat down, sipped and said completely innocently "hm, this beer isn't as cold as it could be.... oh right. England."
Check out this robin:
What a cutie. It attacked Moriarty as soon as his back was turned. Let this be a lesson! Robins are mean. Or maybe they just like the smell of sandwiches.
We're in Cardiff now, and it looks like there hasn't been much snow. Woohoo! Having frozen toes was getting a bit old.
- Location:Cardiff, Wales
Prison guard converses with doctor and hobo from the streets, originally uploaded by jenctate.
I see this photo and I cannot stop laughing. Cork Gaol is pretty great. The audio tour is really interesting, and voiced by someone who sounds like Terry Wogan (I don't think it is Wogan, but still) and the gaol is full of creepy, life-like plastic models, with exquisite hand detail, and, in one cell, a lactating boob. Well, it's not actually lactating, but it's doing a good job of pretending to.
At the end of the audio tour, we were ushered into one of the towers of the jail and left alone to enjoy a wacky yet informative audiovisual display, which made good use of the walls of the tower. Fremantle got a dishonourable mention as the destination of a convict.
Remember that time I went to Ireland and it snowed? In November?! Apparently the prevailing wind at the moment is coming from the North Pole rather than the usual temperate Gulf Stream. There are a lot of travel disruptions at the moment; I'm hoping things will warm up so that our flight to Manchester on Sunday isn't cancelled! Our flight to Dublin was delayed by nearly three hours due to the snow. It was snowing in Paris as well, but only lightly, and Moriarty was very excited ("there's a snowflake in my hair!"). I don't think either of us were expecting an actual blanket of snow in Dublin!
We're in Cork now and I think it's been a bit warmer here, the snow seems to have mostly melted but I wouldn't be surprised if we get more overnight.
I've had a brilliant couple of weeks. Switzerland was stunning (and warmer than I expected):
We stayed in Geneva but went on a day trip to Lausanne, where I took that photo. I preferred Lausanne in the end; I think Geneva was a great base for us (especially in terms of getting to CERN!) but Lausanne was much more chilled and beautiful.
I think one of my favourite places on this trip so far was a place called Carcassonne in ye olde France:
We were actually staying inside the castle walls which was awesome. Nothing quite like walking through the gates of a medieval castle at the end of a long day of walking around the area. Carcassonne has featured in several films including Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Now I want to watch this again, as well as many more Carcassonne films (we went to a exhibition in Paris that actually showed clips from some of these films).
Speaking of Paris - best ever! In all my 16 years of living in England, despite going to France many times, I never actually made it to Paris. Nuts, I know. One of the truly great things about Paris is that they have recently implemented free entry to many of the touristy stuff for EU citizens under 26. Score! These are a few of my favourite things:
Millions of photos on Flickr: France, Germany, Switzerland and Ireland.
- Location:Cork, Ireland
- Mood:
cheerful
Getting to Toulouse from Marseille turned into something of an ordeal. We decided to take the TGV at about 12:30 which would directly deposit us in Toulouse by about 4. Unfortunately, SNCF has decided to put a quota on rail pass seat reservations for TGV trains (which is kind of unfair since we've technically paid for a ticket already) and the best the harassed man at the ticket office could offer us was to take three regional trains, Marseille - Avignon, Avignon - Narbonne, Narbonne - Toulouse, meaning we'd arrive in Toulouse at 8:15. Well, it was our only option so we took it.
It was going pretty well until we got on our last train at Narbonne, only to sit there at the platform for half an hour before being told the train had been cancelled. A train full of people were then told to wait an hour and take the TGV, which would normally require a seat reservation. There were so many of us that we filled the aisles! Amusingly enough, Moriarty and I found ourselves standing in first class, where I had to explain the situation (in French! Woohoo) to a rather snooty woman who looked most displeased to see us standing next to her with our backpacks and plebeian air.
In the end we arrived in Toulouse only an hour after the cancelled train would have got us there, but that was still 5 hours later than we had intended. Siiiigh. The rail pass seat allocation was not a total surprise, thanks to the wonderful seat61, but it's still kind of annoying. There's nothing wrong with the regional trains; in fact, they're really nice, but TGV does get you there faster. On the upside, there's no reservation to pay on regional, so it feels free.
A really horrific thing happened to me yesterday as well which made the delay in Narbonne that much worse. I was utterly desperate for a shower, because on the Avignon - Marseille leg, the train jolted particularly violently while I was visiting the loo... and a freezing cold wind forced its way up the toilet from the tracks... you can see where this is going. Thank God the toilet had paper is all I can say. Quelle horreur! It was quite traumatic but I think I took it quite well, if you can call mildly hysterical laughter well.
After all that, it turns out Toulouse was well worth the ordeal.
It was going pretty well until we got on our last train at Narbonne, only to sit there at the platform for half an hour before being told the train had been cancelled. A train full of people were then told to wait an hour and take the TGV, which would normally require a seat reservation. There were so many of us that we filled the aisles! Amusingly enough, Moriarty and I found ourselves standing in first class, where I had to explain the situation (in French! Woohoo) to a rather snooty woman who looked most displeased to see us standing next to her with our backpacks and plebeian air.
In the end we arrived in Toulouse only an hour after the cancelled train would have got us there, but that was still 5 hours later than we had intended. Siiiigh. The rail pass seat allocation was not a total surprise, thanks to the wonderful seat61, but it's still kind of annoying. There's nothing wrong with the regional trains; in fact, they're really nice, but TGV does get you there faster. On the upside, there's no reservation to pay on regional, so it feels free.
A really horrific thing happened to me yesterday as well which made the delay in Narbonne that much worse. I was utterly desperate for a shower, because on the Avignon - Marseille leg, the train jolted particularly violently while I was visiting the loo... and a freezing cold wind forced its way up the toilet from the tracks... you can see where this is going. Thank God the toilet had paper is all I can say. Quelle horreur! It was quite traumatic but I think I took it quite well, if you can call mildly hysterical laughter well.
After all that, it turns out Toulouse was well worth the ordeal.
- Location:Toulouse, France
- Mood:
calm
Blue Skies Over Venice, originally uploaded by jenctate.
Italy was a pretty wacky place! Rome was insane; apparently this time of year is pretty much high season there because the weather is mild, and this showed in the massive crowds. Our greatest success story was to follow a tip in the Lonely Planet and visit Palatine Hill before the Colosseum and get tickets for all the historical attractions there, because by the time we got to the Colosseum the queues were miles long and we were able to just stroll right past! Unfortunately, we found out right after our visit that the following week, the underground Gladiator tunnels were to be opened to the public for the first time. You win some, you lose some.
I think the weirdest thing that happened in Italy actually happened in Naples train station. Moriarty and I were in the tourist info office, trying to find out where to catch the train to Pompeii when in walked sci_fi_lullaby! This encounter would have actually been a lot more weird if I hadn't already known that she was staying in Rome at the same time as me, and arranged to meet her for lunch, but we had even been on the same train! What are the odds?
Pompeii was amazing. I had pretty high expectations for excellence but it was just so much better than I expected. Check out how well preserved this commercial type street is:
Incredible.
We had lunch with Anne on our second last day in Rome, at a restaurant with no English menu. Neither Anne, Moriarty nor I can speak Italian, but fortunately we were with a friend of Anne's who could. Unfortunately, he didn't know what was in the ravioli except that it might contain some kind of "sausage sauce".
the_moriarty and I decided to risk it, only to discover that the ravioli, served in a bolognaise style sauce, seemed to be stuffed with something that tasted a lot like marzipan. This was without a doubt the weirdest meal I have ever eaten in my life. I later found out that "ravioli di zucca" is actually pumpkin ravioli, and one of the online recipes I found called for the stuffing to contain nutmeg and biscotti. Go figure.We went to Vatican City on the last Sunday of October - which means free entry to the museum! It also means three hour queues! I will go out there and say this now - I don't think I've ever queued so long for anything in my life. And we hadn't intended to queue for that long, but you how it gets to a point that you've been queuing for so long you'd actually lose more from leaving? That's how we ended up justifying the wait. So worth it though, I am not kidding; the collections of art, Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts were pretty much second to none.
Leaving Rome turned out to be just as nuts as Rome itself. We took a train to Venice having booked seats from one of the Trenitalia ticket machines. Brilliant! Avoiding the queues. Turns out a computer doesn't realise that a human being doesn't like sitting in a train corridor for six hours and allocated Moriarty a non-existent seat which meant he would have to sit on a fold down seat if our compartment filled. Which of course it did. The moral of this story is to never trust a computer. Fortunately someone left the compartment shortly afterwards and the rest of the trip was uneventful. I watched several episodes of Heroes. What a show, where has it been all my life?
In Venice we met up with a couple of friends from Moriarty's Vodkatrain trip, Ben and Alicia, who shared a room with us and were good peoples. Venice equals Moriarty's birthday (I gave him a Doctor Who Intergalactic Travelling Guide) and getting lost in labyrinthine streets. And LOTS of canals. It was a beautiful, if sometimes funny smelling city. Not quite so overrun with pigeons as I'd heard, but for the thrill seekers out there, there is the option of buying corn and inviting the birds to sit on you and eat. I also partook of this exercise. Fortunately the birds didn't crap all over us, but I was left asking the question "you can't get rabies from birds, right?" Classic me.
You can see some Italy photos here!
I'm now in France (hello France!) and it's good to be back after about ten years! It's cool to be in a place where I can (to a certain extent) speak and understand the language. We're in Marseille at the moment, which has a nice vibe to it and smells like Vietnam. Unfortunately, Chateau d'If is currently closed for conservation work, so we couldn't visit that, but it's been cool to wander round the Vieux Port and old town. Tomorrow we're off to Toulouse and then it's off to Carcassonne. Woo!
- Location:France, Marseille
Oia at Sunset, originally uploaded by jenctate
You'll be pleased to hear that I made it safely to Athens and managed to meet up with our intrepid exploring friend the_moriarty without getting lost or mugged. As if that would happen in Greece anyway!
I'd always heard that Athens was a bit of a dump, smoggy and not really worth visiting. So not true, as it turns out! Unfortunately, my arrival totally ruined the weather and we ended up with thunderstorms, but we still managed to pack a lot in. Not for us the stereotypical Parthenon against blue sky photos. Nope, we got absolutely drenched up there. I say we but I mostly mean me, because my 12 year old anorak has perished and is no longer waterproof. Gonna have to buy another one of those. We didn't make it to the Athens archaeological museum unfortunately, because the metro line we wanted to use had apparently been ripped up indefinitely, and any alternative route would have meant a walk through a dodgy neighbourhood in the dark. I'll just have to go back one day.
We went island hopping after Athens. Mykonos was another surprise for me. We've all heard about how it's a mega party island but it was really quiet.. I guess this is because it's the low season, and maybe because we weren't staying in a major resorty area. The views were stunning. And I got to pose with a windmill, which is good cause for celebration:
I'm not sure what those windmills are used for, but considering some of them have "Private" signs up, I suspect they might be houses. Must piss people off when jerks like me (I wasn't the only one, in my defence) pose outside their homes.
After Mykonos we caught a ferry to Santorini, where I experienced the most terrifying bus trip of my life. People stick around a town called Oia to watch the sunset, which happens at around 6:20 this time of year. The next (and last) bus to the main town was at 7:50 so by the time it arrived there was about 20 - 30 too many people to fit on the bus. So we all crammed on anyway - the alternative was a two hour walk or a 15 Euro ($22.50) taxi ride. Well, we're too cheap to have taken a taxi, and by this point it was dark, and we'd already done the walk earlier in the day, so bus it was. I ended up standing in the back stairwell without much to hang onto. The main towns on Santorini are on high cliffs and the roads are winding. Every time the bus went round a bend, I thought it was going to roll over, or that the doors would open and we'd be spewed out onto the road. Fortunately, we were away from the cliff drop side of the road. The only saving grace to that journey was that I got talking to an American lady, who was very impressed with our system of paying for university, and that it gave me a story to tell, I guess. Arriving in the main town in one piece was such a relief. Food and wine have never tasted so good.
After Santorini, we ferried over to Heraklion, of Cretan fame. I've been to Crete before, but it was over 20 years ago so my memories are fairly hazy. I didn't remember Heraklion at all, but I did remember Knossos which is a cool Minoan Palace archaeological site. I think I got more out of this visit than the last though. It was found by a guy called Arthur Evans who seems to be widely derided in terms of his interpretation of the findings at Knossos. Even the information boards seemed to be apologetic about what he had done there.
Our next stop was Chania, which I remembered much more clearly than Heraklion. I love Chania. It's where I started my love affair with taramousalata and squid. The harbour and the Venetian influences are awesome:
Man, I was so sad to leave Greece, but all good things must come to an end. I'm currently in Rome, sitting in our hostel updating this with a massive (660 ml) bottle of Birra Moretti to hand. I've never been to Italy before so I'm pretty excited. I don't speak Italian but I feel like I'm in much more familiar territory than in Greece – at least here I can read the signs, and my knowledge of French means that I can understand some of what's written.
We found out on arrival that the Rome Film Festival starts tomorrow. A Western Australian film, Little Sparrows will be screened (after we leave, but I've seen it before anyway). We're going to see if we can get tickets to see Burke & Hare with a Q & A session with John Landis.
Anyhoo, I think we're going to go and get some dinner soon, so ciao! More Greece photos here.
- Location:The Yellow Hostel, Rome
- Mood: cheerful
Ah, England. You are thrilling and depressing. Tough times here at the moment with planned spending cuts, and a big announcement on further cuts is expected next week. Last week I was in Burnley to visit my Grandma, a town which apparently has the highest rate of people on jobseeker or disability allowance. The place is dead; there is no work and its glory days were in the 19th Century cotton boom. Sad, sad. Incidentally, the town where I was born has the highest rate of allowance claimants in the south of England. Can you see why I'm not sorry I left? (To be fair I only lived there til I was 4 but went back in 2007 and it was miserable.)
I have been enjoying myself though, believe me! I do love coming back here, all things said and done. I found a conker last week! And I've eaten stuff you can't get at home. And spent time with family. And enjoyed the lovely countryside.
I'm off to meetthe_moriarty in Athens on Sunday. Hooray! Should be good to get some warm weather! It's been pretty good here actually, but really cold over the last couple of days.
I miss you all! I've felt really cut off with this minimal internet access, I am clearly dependent on it.
I have been enjoying myself though, believe me! I do love coming back here, all things said and done. I found a conker last week! And I've eaten stuff you can't get at home. And spent time with family. And enjoyed the lovely countryside.
I'm off to meet
the_moriarty in Athens on Sunday. Hooray! Should be good to get some warm weather! It's been pretty good here actually, but really cold over the last couple of days.I miss you all! I've felt really cut off with this minimal internet access, I am clearly dependent on it.
- Location:Nailsea, Somerset, England
Recent update fail! I'm getting worse and worse at this whole Livejournal thing. Hardly any posts this year! I intend to post on a semi regular basis while I'm away, but we'll see how that goes, because I recently promised a post about Melbourne and it's yet to happen. Oh well.
I recently finished work; I was temping, supposedly for three months but in the end seven. It was an ok job in the end - the people I worked with were all lovely (they bought me a card and a huge bunch of flowers when I left) and I did get some legal work experience under my belt along the way. I think I put up with the job quite well because I knew it wouldn't be a permanent thing. If it was all I had, I'd probably be bashing my head against the wall.
I finished last Friday to give myself a week to get my shit together for going to Europe next week - instead I've been moving furniture, ripping up carpet and carpet grips, tiptoeing around the tiler and painting skirting boards. Speaking of which, I need to do another coat soon. Wah.
I am seriously unprepared for my trip. I spoke to my Grandad last week who said it is cold in England at the moment. Come on, in September, is it so much to ask for a late burst of summery weather? I haven't got any wintery clothes to speak of, so I think I will have to buy stuff there. I'm also freaking out slightly about the extra weight all this winter gear will mean - I'm used to backpacking in fairly temperate weather with lightweight clothes. I should probably do a test pack. My Mum is going to Tanzania (jealous) in eight weeks and she's already packed! (NB perhaps a bit too well organised).
Apart from my slight freakouts though, I am mega excited about going :D
I recently finished work; I was temping, supposedly for three months but in the end seven. It was an ok job in the end - the people I worked with were all lovely (they bought me a card and a huge bunch of flowers when I left) and I did get some legal work experience under my belt along the way. I think I put up with the job quite well because I knew it wouldn't be a permanent thing. If it was all I had, I'd probably be bashing my head against the wall.
I finished last Friday to give myself a week to get my shit together for going to Europe next week - instead I've been moving furniture, ripping up carpet and carpet grips, tiptoeing around the tiler and painting skirting boards. Speaking of which, I need to do another coat soon. Wah.
I am seriously unprepared for my trip. I spoke to my Grandad last week who said it is cold in England at the moment. Come on, in September, is it so much to ask for a late burst of summery weather? I haven't got any wintery clothes to speak of, so I think I will have to buy stuff there. I'm also freaking out slightly about the extra weight all this winter gear will mean - I'm used to backpacking in fairly temperate weather with lightweight clothes. I should probably do a test pack. My Mum is going to Tanzania (jealous) in eight weeks and she's already packed! (NB perhaps a bit too well organised).
Apart from my slight freakouts though, I am mega excited about going :D
- Mood:
hungry
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