"Welcome to Scottland"
I took the bus to Dundee today and met up with my good friend Paul!
everything is going well, have checked into the hostel and whatnot, and have finnnnnally been able to upload the photos.
Made a new friend in Paul's dog Baily, hes cute.
he says "woof".
tonight we're going out, should be fun.
enjoy the photos!!!
- Louisa
^ on the train to Edinburgh
^ Squat party in london
:D
enjoy!
more soon, i hope.
damn lack of internet!
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Jazzing it up!!
hey everyone, in Edinburgh at the moment.
caught the train from london yesterday, so sad leaving frenchie :'(
have done a lot, but i'm using a fellow traveler's lap top so i should be quick.
highlights since i last wrote... which really was a mammoth blog wasn't it?
anyway, highlights!
- CS meeting in London, met a bunch of couch surfing people, was great
- Train to Edi, SAW HEEPS OF SNOW!!!! YEAAAAH!
- Comedy club last night
- Jazz club tonight
made friends with an canadian, and an american named Jo.
turns out not all Americans are as uncool as everyone thinks.
lol, will write more hopefully when i get to dundee.
hope everything is ok!
- Louisa
caught the train from london yesterday, so sad leaving frenchie :'(
have done a lot, but i'm using a fellow traveler's lap top so i should be quick.
highlights since i last wrote... which really was a mammoth blog wasn't it?
anyway, highlights!
- CS meeting in London, met a bunch of couch surfing people, was great
- Train to Edi, SAW HEEPS OF SNOW!!!! YEAAAAH!
- Comedy club last night
- Jazz club tonight
made friends with an canadian, and an american named Jo.
turns out not all Americans are as uncool as everyone thinks.
lol, will write more hopefully when i get to dundee.
hope everything is ok!
- Louisa
Monday, December 1, 2008
From Paris to London
It has been a CRAZY past couple of days and i have been itching to get it all down.
i miss you all alot, but i have having an absolute ball.
On friday i left Paris, and its been a crazy crazy journey, so let me start from the begining.
9am Friday morning i left the Paris appartment and headed to Le Lourve to meet Mathieu, a French friend i have since affectionatly named "Frenchie".
So Frenchie was late for the meet up, so i sat in the cool winter's air outside the enterance to the Lourve, munching on a musli bar and getting snapped in tons of photos. Sitting under a big statue thing became less and less of a good idea. Keep an eye out for me in random peoples photos.
Anyway, finally the limping frenchman (he hurt his foot) rocked up and we were on our way!
In Europe, the trains are very expensive, as we later found out, so the cheapest and most interesting way to travel is to hitch hike. Frenchie is a pro, so we caught the metro, and then a bus, to the outskirts of Paris.
After getting dropped off at the bus stop, it took a few attemepts to get onto the highway... and a couple of nessisary bits of backtracking, but we finally found the turn off to the highway. Once we had, we were good to go.
The first time is always the wierdest, but after the first car pulled up a smiling face spoke a whole bunch of french i didnt understand, i realise everything would be O.K. lol, it was pretty cool, we got picked up by a bunch of different people, going from petrol station to petrol station. We were trying to go straight to London, but unfortunetly one car dropped us at a really crap spot which we waited at for about an hour. Eventually we gave up on the idea of getting to london, and decided on the train. After this decision was made, a car soon rocked up. This guy, i dont know where he was going, but for the first time we left the highway and spent about an hour driving through french villages.
French villages, are freakin' awesome.
they looked like something out of an old timey film... i totally didnt expect it. Nothing looked... bad or poor. was so cool.
oh oh and the land is like flat... its crazy.
Anyway, when this guy dropped us off, we were pretty much imediatly picked up by a truckie.
truckies are awesome.
lol, this guy was so cool. his truck seemed to be his home, so he had it decked out. He turned on some dance music, and showed us his pimped out truck. lol, he turned on a flurecent light he'd installed in the roof and is like "BLUE LIGHT DISCO!". At this point i thought to myself "truckies are cool."
The ride in the truck was awesome, but it got dark, so we got dropped on the outskirts of a french town called Lille, and caught a ride to the trainstation.
TRAINS ARE EXPENSIVE.
lol, €200 the guy quoted us. I almost had a heart attack. thats like 400 australian dollars!!!
but there was a discount the next day, so we decided to stay a night in lille.
lucky i bought my guide book, because we quickly found a place to get rid of the really really heavy backpack in a nice little hostel.
I had some noodles i brought along for the journey, so we ate that for dinner, and i turned out to be a hit in the kitchen... although it wasnt food related. lol, was talking to a middle eastern lady, and she was really really excited to be talking to an Aussie, i felt popular :P
Anyway, after tea, we set off to find a pub.
Apparently, now, this is apparently, im not sure i trust Frenchie on this, but Lille is a student town. Well, for a student kinda town, we spent ages finding a pub. To aid in this quest, we devloped the game "ask a student!" which required frenchie (as he speaks french) asking students where a good bar is. it was fun, and eventually we found a nice little irish pub to drink at. Pleasntly suprised to find alcohol is quite cheap in europe, so we enjoyed a beer, then headed back to the hostel.
the next morning we woke up, got our stuff together, and checked out of the hostel.
checkout was 10am, and the train was 1.50pm, so we had time to kill.
we headed to the trainstation to check out their locker facilities, but it cost €5, so we decided to spend the €5 on something else instead. across the road was a shopping centre, so we bought ice cream and slushies and chilled out for a while. then we went and bought bread and cheese for lunch... and a bottle of vodka for that night.
we managed to kill a lot of time and almost missed the train... also partly because i got questioned by the UK authorities about how o'd support myself in the UK. Kinda pissed off that hes all "oh ok, no worries." when i mentioned mum and dad were around.
But anyway, finally made it on the train, and before we new it, we were in london!!!!
as soon as i got off the train the whole... paranoia about people became kinda obvious. CCTV is everywhere, and there are always chemtrails in the sky. Its a bit depressing.
Anyway, we got off the train and headed to an internet cafe to find a place to stay.
Frenchie had a place lined up, and luckily enough, his friend Ania, a polish girl, let me stay aswell.
We went back to her place, chilled out for a bit, and cooked up a nice feast.
the we went to possible the coolest pub in london.
no joke.
well, ive only been to one pub in london, but i have to say it was the coolest pub ive ever been in.
i have a couple of photos i'll check up when i get a chance.
but there were sculptures, paintings, photos, organic beer, was AWESOME.
only downer was they stopped serving at 11pm, and closed at 12.
but the night only got better.
from there we went to a squat party.
its like... a squat, that opens up, and all the hippies and whatnot go there.
it was possibly one of the craziest, most amazing things ive been lucky to see.
it took two hours of waiting outside in the cold (they forgot the key to the place, haha), but finally it opened up and we were in.
We sat down on a couch and a guy took a seat next to us.
i ask him if he'd been to many of these, and told him it was my first. he said he'd been to loads, and in a quote that i think sums it up, said something along the lines of "right now, you're in the lowest of the low, and its the best place to be in london." he was right, the floor was wet from a hole in the roof, it was cold, and covered in griffiti, but the enery there was awesome. He said this place had some of the best people you could hope to meet, and although it had a couple of the worst, from what i saw he was right.
It was a good night, we danced, sung, chatted.
i have photos which i'll stick up later, but it was pretty damn awesome.
we got home about 7am and yesterday was spent sleeping, pretty much.
today we did some sight seeing, and tomorrow i leave frenchie and head to edinbrugh.
ive also noted down the following:
observations:
paris has a sore lack of internet cafes.
the toilet paper always seems to be coloured.
the french dont really eat beef.
you have to pay for the toilets.
stuff im appreciating:
free toilets
food (im eating anything atm)
warm showers
clean clothes (i need to do the washing...)
a warm place to sleep
well, thats about it.
and with 7 minutes to go on my internet time!!!!
i will talk to you all soon.
lots of love.
- Louisa
i miss you all alot, but i have having an absolute ball.
On friday i left Paris, and its been a crazy crazy journey, so let me start from the begining.
9am Friday morning i left the Paris appartment and headed to Le Lourve to meet Mathieu, a French friend i have since affectionatly named "Frenchie".
So Frenchie was late for the meet up, so i sat in the cool winter's air outside the enterance to the Lourve, munching on a musli bar and getting snapped in tons of photos. Sitting under a big statue thing became less and less of a good idea. Keep an eye out for me in random peoples photos.
Anyway, finally the limping frenchman (he hurt his foot) rocked up and we were on our way!
In Europe, the trains are very expensive, as we later found out, so the cheapest and most interesting way to travel is to hitch hike. Frenchie is a pro, so we caught the metro, and then a bus, to the outskirts of Paris.
After getting dropped off at the bus stop, it took a few attemepts to get onto the highway... and a couple of nessisary bits of backtracking, but we finally found the turn off to the highway. Once we had, we were good to go.
The first time is always the wierdest, but after the first car pulled up a smiling face spoke a whole bunch of french i didnt understand, i realise everything would be O.K. lol, it was pretty cool, we got picked up by a bunch of different people, going from petrol station to petrol station. We were trying to go straight to London, but unfortunetly one car dropped us at a really crap spot which we waited at for about an hour. Eventually we gave up on the idea of getting to london, and decided on the train. After this decision was made, a car soon rocked up. This guy, i dont know where he was going, but for the first time we left the highway and spent about an hour driving through french villages.
French villages, are freakin' awesome.
they looked like something out of an old timey film... i totally didnt expect it. Nothing looked... bad or poor. was so cool.
oh oh and the land is like flat... its crazy.
Anyway, when this guy dropped us off, we were pretty much imediatly picked up by a truckie.
truckies are awesome.
lol, this guy was so cool. his truck seemed to be his home, so he had it decked out. He turned on some dance music, and showed us his pimped out truck. lol, he turned on a flurecent light he'd installed in the roof and is like "BLUE LIGHT DISCO!". At this point i thought to myself "truckies are cool."
The ride in the truck was awesome, but it got dark, so we got dropped on the outskirts of a french town called Lille, and caught a ride to the trainstation.
TRAINS ARE EXPENSIVE.
lol, €200 the guy quoted us. I almost had a heart attack. thats like 400 australian dollars!!!
but there was a discount the next day, so we decided to stay a night in lille.
lucky i bought my guide book, because we quickly found a place to get rid of the really really heavy backpack in a nice little hostel.
I had some noodles i brought along for the journey, so we ate that for dinner, and i turned out to be a hit in the kitchen... although it wasnt food related. lol, was talking to a middle eastern lady, and she was really really excited to be talking to an Aussie, i felt popular :P
Anyway, after tea, we set off to find a pub.
Apparently, now, this is apparently, im not sure i trust Frenchie on this, but Lille is a student town. Well, for a student kinda town, we spent ages finding a pub. To aid in this quest, we devloped the game "ask a student!" which required frenchie (as he speaks french) asking students where a good bar is. it was fun, and eventually we found a nice little irish pub to drink at. Pleasntly suprised to find alcohol is quite cheap in europe, so we enjoyed a beer, then headed back to the hostel.
the next morning we woke up, got our stuff together, and checked out of the hostel.
checkout was 10am, and the train was 1.50pm, so we had time to kill.
we headed to the trainstation to check out their locker facilities, but it cost €5, so we decided to spend the €5 on something else instead. across the road was a shopping centre, so we bought ice cream and slushies and chilled out for a while. then we went and bought bread and cheese for lunch... and a bottle of vodka for that night.
we managed to kill a lot of time and almost missed the train... also partly because i got questioned by the UK authorities about how o'd support myself in the UK. Kinda pissed off that hes all "oh ok, no worries." when i mentioned mum and dad were around.
But anyway, finally made it on the train, and before we new it, we were in london!!!!
as soon as i got off the train the whole... paranoia about people became kinda obvious. CCTV is everywhere, and there are always chemtrails in the sky. Its a bit depressing.
Anyway, we got off the train and headed to an internet cafe to find a place to stay.
Frenchie had a place lined up, and luckily enough, his friend Ania, a polish girl, let me stay aswell.
We went back to her place, chilled out for a bit, and cooked up a nice feast.
the we went to possible the coolest pub in london.
no joke.
well, ive only been to one pub in london, but i have to say it was the coolest pub ive ever been in.
i have a couple of photos i'll check up when i get a chance.
but there were sculptures, paintings, photos, organic beer, was AWESOME.
only downer was they stopped serving at 11pm, and closed at 12.
but the night only got better.
from there we went to a squat party.
its like... a squat, that opens up, and all the hippies and whatnot go there.
it was possibly one of the craziest, most amazing things ive been lucky to see.
it took two hours of waiting outside in the cold (they forgot the key to the place, haha), but finally it opened up and we were in.
We sat down on a couch and a guy took a seat next to us.
i ask him if he'd been to many of these, and told him it was my first. he said he'd been to loads, and in a quote that i think sums it up, said something along the lines of "right now, you're in the lowest of the low, and its the best place to be in london." he was right, the floor was wet from a hole in the roof, it was cold, and covered in griffiti, but the enery there was awesome. He said this place had some of the best people you could hope to meet, and although it had a couple of the worst, from what i saw he was right.
It was a good night, we danced, sung, chatted.
i have photos which i'll stick up later, but it was pretty damn awesome.
we got home about 7am and yesterday was spent sleeping, pretty much.
today we did some sight seeing, and tomorrow i leave frenchie and head to edinbrugh.
ive also noted down the following:
observations:
paris has a sore lack of internet cafes.
the toilet paper always seems to be coloured.
the french dont really eat beef.
you have to pay for the toilets.
stuff im appreciating:
free toilets
food (im eating anything atm)
warm showers
clean clothes (i need to do the washing...)
a warm place to sleep
well, thats about it.
and with 7 minutes to go on my internet time!!!!
i will talk to you all soon.
lots of love.
- Louisa
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