Ambling Ramblings #10-Passing through Pisa

We paused in Pisa to pass through and eat platefuls of pizza and pasta and patter down pavements and peer at postcard-worthy places (can you tell I'm an English teacher with all the alliteration in that sentence!).
Our accommodation, although located on a main street and so therefore fairly noisy, was filled with Italian rustic charm, with a frescoe on the ceiling of our room, antique decor throughout, lace curtains, patterned tiles on the floors, lovely old furniture and a very quaint feel to it. Compared to my impressions of France, Italy is very unassuming, quaint and charming- there are still old buildings everywhere and beautiful sights to see, but somehow it's not as pretentious or overbearing, it's far mo subtle and I feel that there is more of an adventure to experience in peeling back the layers and becoming familiar with this place so full of history from so long ago! We quite easily found the famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint of this architectural failure turned national monument!) Leaning Tower of Pisa, which is surrounded by a very ancient looking wall and a lovely old church. Located nearby is a statue of Romulus and Remus with the she-wolf, eliciting an ancient history lecture from me to my poor traveling buddy (she has had to put up with me being fascinated by all this 'old stuff' for a week already now!). I found Pisa to be a lovely place for a stopover and enjoyed our day of shopping and wandering the cobble-stoned alleys, through old buildings and across a quant bridge over the river. Now all I need to do is improve my Italian vocabulary and then I'll be better able to communicate here!

Ambling Ramblings #9- A Note from Nice

The French Riviera is certainly a place that I would love to come back to and visit for longer...the views of the deep and brilliant blues and greens of the Mediterranean, the snow capped mountains, red rocky outcroppings not the ocean and a beautiful sunrise combined to create a most picturesque scene. Not to mention all the farms and old buildings, and even the odd castle and fort ruins along the way! I have come to a point in my life where 3 degrees celsius feels warm and I start shedding layers! Arriving in Nice, we found our hotel after only getting a little bit lost and have decided that this is our favorite hotel thus far! Not only did we get a choice of rooms on arrival, but the room we chose is huge compared to our other ones. It is an attic style room on the top floor with a skylight window and quite a big bathroom. We went for a walk around Nice and found the ocean and enjoyed some time in the sunshine! We went for a climb up more stairs to some viewing platforms to see out over the ocean as well as over Nice and to the snow capped mountains in the background-lots of good photo opportunities as it was truly beautiful! Back on a train today to the next country on our list. Au Revoir France!

Ambling Ramblings#8- Perusing Paris

Paris, I have concluded, is a melting pot of opposites, the ancient and the modern, the very wealthy and the very poor, fast and slow, the old ways and new ways. The population of paris would be at least 1/3 of African descent with a lot of other ethnic groups making up the other 2/3 along with caucasians. The place we were staying in was near 'little India' as i chose to call it, the streets were lined with sari shops and Indian restaurants. The juxtapositioning of the old world and modern world blends and works in a way that is quintessentially Parisian and wouldn't work in any other context. The ancient buildings with designer label shops in them, the opulent displays of wealth in stores with beggars sitting out the front of them....it is certainly a city with character! Although it is famous for being the 'city of lights' I think it could equally be known as the 'city of sirens' as we heard and saw numerous emergency vehicles every day we were in Paris. It could have something to do with the hazardous roads-driving seems to be a free for all with a lot of roads having no lane markings and cars queuing 3 across intersections and people pulling out in front of each other all over the place! I am very glad I was not driving in it-sitting on a bus was enough of a Parisian road experience for me! Walking across the roads was scary enough-we discovered that there comes a time when you do push the big red button, although a lot of the pedestrian crossings in Paris are on a timer and you don't have to push a button to get a green man signal, there are some where you have to push a big red button, just like the buttons you are always told not to push! 
We very quickly put our limited French to use, saying 'Merci' and 'bonjour' at every turn! We navigated the metro system, which thankfully is well signed and although all of the stations are a maze of tunnels, stairs, corridors, escalators and moving walkways, we successfully got to each of our destinations. The Louvre was our first stop, and one of my favorites, it is definitely worth it and I could have easily spent days there! The Mona Lisa was just as beautiful as I had thought it would be. We then boarded 'les cars rouges' a big red tourist bus so that we didn't have to navigate the streets ourselves! This way we saw most of the major sights and could get off and on whenever we wanted to. The Notre Dame cathedral and Arc de Triomphe were both spectacular in their own ways, we climbed up both of them and froze in the wind while looking out over a rather cloudy and smoggy city, that is somehow still pretty through the haze. I loved all the Gothic architecture everywhere, the gargoyles and swirls and sculptures -it seemed that in any space possible to put a flourish, there was something and even when there wasn't space, there was still a flourish of some kind anyway! 
By far my favorite place in Paris was not in the city; the Palace of Versailles was absolutely amazing, the palace itself is spectacular and gorgeously decorated, let alone the gardens that surround it that are impressive, even in winter! The Eiffel Tower was definitely worth facing the cold night air for and I discovered that elevators can move on an angle (something I had not experienced before). Another of my favorite places was the Musee de Orsay, an old train station that was converted into an art gallery where I was able to see some original Monet's- definitely one of my favorite artists as I love the peace and tranquility of the scenes he paints as well as the color and texture that he uses. The museum itself is very cool, being an old train station certainly gives it character. 
I must have blended in fairly well in Paris and not looked too much like a tourist as I was asked for directions or stopped and asked something in French numerous times! I was also asked by some Malaysian tourists to have a photo taken with them on the Eiffel Tower. It certainly was an adventure trying to figure things out in a foreign language, but we just smiled a lot and most people were very friendly and tried to help. 
All in all, Paris was certainly an adventure, from getting stuck in the lift at our hotel the first night (a story in of itself there!), to navigating our way through the streets, figuring out a new currency, communicating in a foreign language and getting very very cold (well below zero if you add the wind chill). Next, we begin our journey south, hopefully to somewhere warmer and with blue sky and sunshine, out of the big cities.