Bonjour Parisites!

The next day begins with the now regular routine of loading up, checking out and vamoosing outta town. Some of us approach this task a little gingerly after the previous night's street drinking escapades.

And so to Paris, where our first challenge is to get rid of the Eurobeast. Upon arrival at the Europcar drop-off point, we're told that the car is too big to fit any of their nominated undercover parking bays. Our search for a spot to dump the Beast provides us with an intimate and unneccesary knowledge of the streets surrounding the Gare Du Nord train station. In the end, we find a parking bay whose legality is questionable but we're ready to play the stupid tourist card if required. But if parking with the Beast brought us grief, it's parting with the Beast that brings such sweet sorrow.



Naturally, Captain Designated Driver is gutted.



Actually, the truth is none of us are all that sorrowful until we embark on the trek towards the Perfect Hotel by foot. Without the Eurobeast serving as our trusty carriage, we are now our own pack horses. Here's us at the start of our journey. Gem is smiling because she still thinks we're catching a train.



So in true rock & roll fashion (with a twist of zelig), we arrive at the hotel ready for a nap. However, having pretty much slept through most of the drive, a siesta would be wasted on Gem and I so we wander around the neighbourhood looking for food. Soon it becomes clear that Gemma's Food Finding Finger is, compared to John's, quite Feeble.



Fortunately, we're in the city now and soon, my love affair with the French omelette is rekindled in a busy cafe in Montmartre. While there, we found that place where Nicole Kidman sang in an elephant. Robin takes a much prettier photie of it later.



Quite by accident, we stumble upon the local cemetery whose clientèle includes Adolphe Sax, the man who discovered the conveniently-named saxophone. Ina way he's the father of the sound that defined an entire generation. Why it had to be mine, I dunno.



As we stroll past the marble slabs and statues commemorating generations of dead French folk, it occurs to us that we're in the worst possible spot for a zombie uprising. Hopefully, most of them, like this fellow, will have spent their eternal rest watching their garden grow and therefore, not crave brains.



As l'apres-midi does a runner, we head back to the hotel. Our timing is fortunate for we arrive just in time for Gem to intercept John as he measures the trajectory of a TV flying out the window.


She reminds him that now is not the time for rock & roll shenanigans for we must prepare ourselves for A Very Special Reunion, which deserves its own post.

Next: zelig step out for A Very Spe-well, duh.

Stand Up and Be Conty-ed

With only one sleep left before the Eurobeast is due to be returned in Paris, we break away from the coast and head inland. Along the way we stop off at Amiens, home to France's tallest cathedral. We're here long enough to take a peek at the big old thing:



The two stony-faced gentlemen with the somewhat displaced noggins on the right are Saints Victorius and Fuscian. As legend has it, they were tortured with iron spikes shoved into their nostrils and ears by the Romans before having their heads lopped off. However, to achieve sainthood, they had to have some kind of superpower which, in this instance, had them picking up their heads and walking off for a couple of miles. One wonders why more chickens haven't been canonised.

Our last night on the roadtrip part of our tour finds us in Conty, a small town not too far from Paris.



In fact the town is so small that we are lucky to find lodging. Even John's much-vaunted Fabulous Food Finding Finger loses some of its mojo around these parts.



"Over there!"



"Over where?"



"Umm...there!"



"Ok John, you know what? We're just gonna head back to the hotel...."



Later that night, we stroll around in search of some Hot Saturday Night Action, which in Conty, means bingo at the local rec centre.



Emboldened by the knowledge that most of the townfolk are occupied with looking for two fat ladies, we spend the night drinking on the streets - because we can.



Next: La Paree qui est gay

Touquet or Leave It

The breakfast at the Faidherbe doesn't look like much (The French word for breakfast is petit dejeuner which literally means "little lunch" - it's the "little" that seems to be the operative word here.) so Gem and I pop out to look for les oeufs which we find in this pretty eatery.



By the way, the saucy French maid in the background is just a painting. The real ones don't come out till lunch, by which time, we'll be well out of town.

Later, back at the hotel, as we're getting ready to go, my cellphone rings. It's an old schoolmate of mine, known only to me and now readers of this blog all over the world as Sickie. She's calling from Melbourne, thinking we're in Perth. I inform her that not only are we in France, but we're also a day or so away from catching up with a couple of other schoolmates whom I haven't seen for 25 years. She squeals intercontinentally.

A few weeks before we left, I managed to track down, via this fabulous interweb that you're looking at right now, the two other guys with whom I'd misspent my youth back in high school in Malaysia. It is when we decide to meet up in Paris that the phrase "trip of a lifetime" takes on a whole nuther dimension. More on this later....

With the Eurobeast loaded and locked, we travel further down along the coast, arriving at Le Touquet for lunch. Also known as "Paris by the sea", it's a touristy spot that once served as a holiday home for the likes of Noel Coward. Like his titular Mad Dogs and Englishmen, we find the midday sun here quite accomodating.



Once again, thanks to John's Fabulous Food Finding Finger, we settle on La Queen Italia for lunch. After 3 days travelling along the coast, we finally get to sample les fruits de mer that the region is famous for.



Before we leave town, John decides to enact an old Rainbow Warrior vendetta and blow up a small portion of France. It's not much but it's a start.



It's also a good reason to hightail it outta town right away.

We Boulogne Together*

It's not just the sprawling white beaches that draw visitors to Calais, it's also the last stop for England-bound travellers to stock up on cheap wine. The French, after all, are very serious about their cheap wine and as fellow budget oenophiles, zelig respects that.



Our quest for lodging for the night leads us to Boulogne-Sur-Mer, which I'm guessing is French for "Sausage-Upon-the-Sea". It's a fishing port town where, according to history, Napoleon had gathered his Really Big Army to prepare for the invasion of England. The English, not too keen on having to learn a whole new bunch of words to replace the perfectly-good-ones they already had, kept Napoleon's RBA at bay with their Really Big Navy. As an added bonus, everyone picked up some excellent bargains at the Wine Temple.

By dint of being smack-bang in the middle of town, the Hotel Faidherbe is our choice of digs for the night. The rooms are small but chocolate-box pretty. We even get our own colour schemes:


Once we're roomed, rested and refreshed, we head out to see how the Sausage swings on a Friday night, as the sun scurries off to service the other side of the world. Speaking of the other hemisphere, we're tickled pink to see evidence of our cultural footprint all the way out here:



I think the boomerang font used for the sign is a subtle hint to patrons to come back soon. We don't stay here for very long because, well, we didn't come all this way to drink Foster's, now, did we? However, we do stay long enough to do the traditional Aussie thing and...



...pick a fight with the local patrons.

Meanwhile, John is feeling lucky and stops off for some supplies.



(OK we keed, we keed - observant readers will note that he's standing on the weighing machine adjacent. There's still a joke to be made here but we don't do that sort of cheap low-brow humour.**)

One might imagine that it would be easy to find good food in this country, seeing as they practically invented French restaurants here. However, the Euro is strong against our dollar and the restaurants here take great delight in collecting lots of them. Our dithering over dinner takes so long that John and Marty use their time to rehearse their Riverdance routine:



Perhaps this will come in handy on their trip to Dublin.

We decide upon a Swiss restaurant festooned with cotton wool. My guess is they're going for that "OMG-it's-snowing-indoors !" look. Marty and I share in a meal that begins with this contraption:

(Please excuse the poor photies but you might also note that the carafe of wine on the left, not unlike the photographer, is getting rapidly drunk.)



It's essentially a mace with chunks of beef stuck on. The meat is then covered in whisky and set alight, with the juices dripping into a bowl of potato gratin below. The result is: several tender morsels of smoky, boozy beef, lashings of beefy, boozy, cheesy potatoes, two well-fed boozy gents and one ugly instrument of torture, sorry, "enhanced interrogation".

Once again, zelig came, zelig saw and zelig consumed.



zelig happy.

We'll be right back.

* Gem thinks these post titles are approaching Neighbours-level awfulness. Tee-hee.

** Besides he's bigger than us and we bruise easy.

Calooh! Calais!

(Many apple logies for the irregular posting - stupid real life work commitments!!)

It's pretty safe to assume that no one living in the town centre of Ghent owns an alarm clock. The church bells here ensure that everyone is up at dawn's unsightly crack and they stay up for as long as the ringing prevails. And prevail they bloody did.

It's a do-your-own-thing morning for zelig before we hit the road again. Robin and Girly head off to explore more of the town. We do the typical caryandgemma thing and....



check out the markets...



taunt the local fauna...



and of course, indulge in treats off the streets - in this case, 3 euros for a dozen snails swimming in vegie soup - mmm- MM!

Meanwhile, Marty and John get some laundry done...



From Ghent, our journey heads towards the coast and in doing so, we cross the border into France. Here's where I begin to resuscitate my long dormant O-Level French from high school which enables us to graciously turn down their kind offer of free children...



Our lunch stop du jour* is in Dunkirk, a town that's seen plenty of war action.



Thanks to John's Fabulous Food Finding Finger, we arrive at the Wilson Bar, named after the first US president to visit France. Their freedom fries are OK but the steak sandwich is, quite frankly, lost in translation.



Moving further along the coast, we find Calais, where a magnificently foggy beach provides the perfect location for our Bergmanesque existential surf flick:




"Let's go surfin' now...



everybody's learnin' how...



come on and engage in a discourse over the metaphysics of nature with me!"

However, it's getting late and John (who, by sheer virtue of having both an International Driver's Licence and a perfectly healthy ass, is now Captain Designated Driver of the Eurobeast) is all kinds of knackered. Our next stop will have to involve food, lodging and rest for everyone.

Meanwhile, here's a money shot of us (and a lady in the background whose dog is probably halfway across the Channel by now):



Next: Sausage By The Sea!!



*(see that there? O-frickin-level, mes amis)

On the Road a-Ghent

The morning starts off slowly as we wait for news from the freshly-surgerised Marty. Once we get the all-clear text, we bust him out of the joint and the zelig road trip is GO!



...that is, once Robin works out some general directions on his laptop with the GPS (an awesomely handy device whereby under the watchful eye of the Satellite Gods, we never get lost in the woods)

...and John works out which side of the car he's meant to be on.

Our Eurobeast is, in fact, a 9-seater van which is plenty for the six of us. John is now a grumbling fixture in the driver's seat with Robin navigating beside him. Girly, Gem and I take up the middle row quite comfortably and with more stitches on his butt than a retired Muppet, Marty occupies the back row of seats.



Crossing national borders by road is pretty subtle round here, marked only by a change in language on the road signs. Thus, the zelig invasion of Belgium is largely unnoticed by everyone, least of all, those of us who slept most of the way.

As the sun slips past the yardarm, we arrive at Ghent (it's actually Gent - the extra 'h' presumably stops English people from looking for an equivalent Lady nearby). The two things that immediately endear us to this town are a) cheap outdoor parking and b) cheap indoor accomodation.

For 130 euros, we get bed and breakfast for the whole lot of us upstairs above the Saigon Store, local purveyors of exotic Asiatic tat by day and exotic Asiatic cuisine by night.



The rest of the day sees us on a quick lick around Ghent's splendiferously old streets. The spot by the canal below is the Graslei which is the hangout of choice for young Ghentlings on a lazy Thursday afternoon.



It's certainly a town that merits more than an overnight stay but the Eurobeast has a date with destiny in Paris. That night, we find fun right on our doorstep at the cafe opposite the Saigon Store. The owner, Nic, is a true Ghent gent who proceeds to ply Robin and John with copious amounts of Trappist beer.



At 11.5% alcohol per shapely glass, it's quite obvious that the most fitting tribute to those devoutly silent monk brewers is to make some noise.



Next: We invade France (sure it's old hat - but zelig are not afraid of old hat.)

Here we go, here we go, here we d'oh!

And so the next leg of our journey begins as we pile into the Eurobeast, hit the open road and throw ourselves at the mercy of the European countryside....



...fields of gold...



...croquet trees...



...windmills that John Howard seems to think will break the economy but appear to be working just fine over here...



….um, except that we didn’t....yet.

The truth is, on the morning of Day 4, Marty returns to the doctor to check if he's travel-ready, butt-bothering condition and all. By morning’s end, we’re rushing him to the emergency ward where the Dutch Division of Derriere Doctors will prod, probe and prognosticate on his beleaguered behind*.



While Marty finds all this attention towards his junk flattering, he is diagnosed with the kind of thing that requires immediate surgery and an overnight stay at the hospital.

Marty is now officially Tour Casualty #1.

As for the rest of us, we spend our day driving to and from the hospital, driving around looking for an extra night's accomodation and driving around looking for appropriate parking (it turns out that the Eurobeast will not fit into a cheaper undercover parking complex.)

Of course, by "we", I mean John.



(Did we mention how John hates driving in Amsterdam?)

By the end of the day, we're all relieved to find the Leidse Square Hotel which doesn't quite offer the same services as the place where Marty is spending the night. Nonetheless, it's a) not too shabby and b) not the van.



Moreover, like a Disney casting session, we're sleepy, grumpy, filthy and the rest.

Later that night, Gem & I sneak out for one last tryst in our love affair with Amsterdam. We heart this town.



Next: Go back to the start of this post, read again up until the windmills and we'll see you there shortly...

* Yes, I'm showing off now.

It's All Gezelig*

As it turns out, there is this part of Amsterdam called the Red Light District, which sounds like a really odd way of dealing with their lousy traffic.

It looks to be in the poorer part of town where the womenfolk are unable to afford drapes, decent lighting and much in the way of clothing. Despite such adversity, they seem awfully friendly and will probably do your laundry if you asked politely. Sadly, we can provide no photographic evidence of this as the menfolk are a superstitious lot who believe that if you take a photo of them, you lose a bit of your soul....to them.

John, on the other hand, is a man driven entirely by his urges. Within minutes, he is utterly transfixed, drawn to the sweet, luscious temptation on such flagrant display.



Here's someone thinking - "I'm single, I'm on holiday and dammit, I'm in freakin AMSTERDAM...why the hell not? My only problem is having to pick....which one?"

Luckily, Gem's around to help him choose...



Problem solved.

At this point, Marty was last seen heading back to the hotel muttering something about a Megasaurus and some Morrocan he had to meet up with. We end up catching up with Robin and Girly in the much posher Mauve Light District.



Our next day is Museum & Gallery day (AKA the first day after Easter when stuff opens.) As we'll be taking the tram, the RentaBeastOnWheels would not be required. However, parking the van is itself a rollercoaster of emotions. Observe John's elation brought about by actually finding a parking spot with a working meter:



Followed by the calculation of how many beers he won't be drinking as a result of parking the van:



On our journey towards the Van Gogh Museum, we are distracted by a giant reminder for the benefit of those who, for one reason or another, might have forgotten what city they're in.



After a quick flashback to the 90s...


"Are you on one matey???"

...we head on to look at paintings by that guy who probably didn't have an extensive range of glasses late in his life. It also appears that the same menfolk we encountered in the Red Light District spend their days here at the museum so... no photos for you!!

Later on, a sub-committee of John, Gem and Cary explore the Stedelijk Museum of Contemporary Art, but it's under renovation so we only get a portion of the wacky-new-art goodness:




Now according to the thing that loosely contitutes a plan, this will be our last full day in Amsterdam so we're all in a festive mood.



Except for Marty who, by now, has sought medical attention for his crisis a posteriori ** and is now on more drugs than he'd anticipated.

Next: we leave Amsterdam....or do we?


* "Gezelig": a Dutch word that kinda loosely translates into "cosy/friendly" - how cool is that?

**Delicate flowers speak Latin!

Tulips to kiss you...

(Note to regular visitors (hey, both of you - leave a comment!!): this is so obviously not written in real time. Be patient....)


Our Dutch digs, when we do finally get to check in, is the Hotel Freeland, with its pretty, Ikea'ed-up, theme-decored rooms and stairways just a few degrees away from being completely vertical.


Going by the giant rainbow flag out the front of John & Marty's balcony, it's gay-friendly, too.



...thank you, Captain Visual Aid!

Day 2 begins with the Freeland's awesome breakfast - all the healthy goodness to make up for the rest of the day....



We're a short stroll away from Leidseplein, the restaurant centre of Amsterdam where we meet up with Robin and Girly. After everyone gets settled in, we embark on a general roam around this splendid city which would probably have been even more splendid had it not been Easter Sunday when understandably, most everything is closed.



but, thankfully, not everything is closed...



The next morning, John & Marty return from Europcar with an ice-cream truck-sized beast of a van that will serve as our Mystery Machine for the next few days.



The unalloyed joy on display here will, sadly, be shortlived as one of the boys above will soon find driving a real pain in the ass, while the other will find a real driving pain in the ass. Apparently, this is not uncommon in Amsterdam.

So for our first mini-adventure on wheels, we decide to go hunting for tulips. With his spanky-tech wireless GPS setup, Robin is able to spot the tulips from outer space.



But seriously, as hunting prey go, tulips are a lot easier than, say, rabbits.



They're brightly coloured which means even George, whose eyes are, quite frankly, a couple of beads sewn to his face, can spot them in a field.



They tend to congregate in large amounts and pretty much stay there regardless of how much noise you make trying to sneak up on them.



But one must remember that there's a lot more of them than you - so be careful. Girly was lucky she married Robin all those years ago so that he'd be around should she have to fight off marauding tulips. Poor child never got to marry nobody....

As we return to the hotel, it's clear that Marty is not having the mega-awesome-sexy-tastic time he should be having. It turns out that, on his way towards Europe's nether regions, Marty acquired a bit of a sore spot within his own.*



And John just hates driving in Amsterdam.


Next: more loose recollections from a rapidly-deteriorating memory!


*I am delicate like a pretty flower!!

Return to the Land of Nether

(At this point, Robin and Girly have left a week ahead of us to take in the pretty bits of Italy and Germany and will meet us a couple of days later in Amsterdam.)

Our trip begins in earnest when we're several thousand k's up in the air, fiddling with our inflight entertainment console, looking for a movie without Leonardo DeBleedin Caprio and ripping the plastic wrapping off of just about everything.

There's a brief stopover in Singapore where we've heard that you're only allowed to bring in a single pack of cigarettes. Even though he doesn't smoke, John manages to find a way around the rule:



After a quick bite of the local nosh, it's up, up and away again, this time for the long haul. As we're flying back in time, we get to enjoy the longest sunrise ever.



In fact, when we arrive in A'dam, it's still morning and hence, our hotel rooms aren't ready for check-in yet. In any case, after 17 hours in a plane, a leg-stretching stroll through town would do us some good (except for the initial backpack-laden search for the hotel. That was teh suck.)



For Marty, Gem & I, coming to Amsterdam is a chance to revisit grounds previously-stomped. It's even more beautiful in the spring. As it's John's first time, it must be a gobsmacking experience to have an SBS movie (mit der late night boobies) come to life before his eyes.



However, it doesn't take that long before things start to take on a cosy familiarity.



As John says, "It's weird how everything feels so normal here", shortly before taking all his clothes off and jumping into the nearest canal, singing "pass the dutchie on the left hand side..." *

Next: we actually get past Day 1!


* This may not have actually happened. One's perception of reality is pretty negotiable in this town.