8 posts tagged “travel”
So Lloyd has been busy and filling in every second of his trip.
He went to the house Anne Frank was hidden in during the war. He said there was always a long line of people waiting.
He also went to Dachau Concentration Camp which would have been pretty amazing.
From there it was a quick visit to London then off to Madrid then Granada and Seville where he sent me an email from a computer that had no letters on the keyboard. He did well considering.
Then it was on to Lisbon and Barcelona. he said he really liked Lisbon as he said it was the city I have been in that felt like the real europe as I envisioned it.
He said Barcelona has a lot of crazy looking weird shit. And he went to the Picasso Art Gallery.
He had cocktails in Lagos in Portugal where he said the beaches had the coldest water he had ever known.
And then it was time for La Tomatina. Where 40,000 people pack into the narrow streets of Bunol in Spain and pelt each other with tomatoes.
He told me the way to imagine what it was like was to pretend you're at The Big Day Out when Wolfmother is playing. Then add a lot of tomatoes. he said it was basically 40000 australians.
Photo from the herald of the big day out.
And today he woke up and got on a train to Brussels.
He tells me he's been eating a lot of banana sandwiches. Cheap and filling.
Not a good feeling to wake up this morning to hear 150 tourists have been killed in a plane crash in Madrid, when I know Lloyd is flying in Madrid about now. Had a funny butterfly tummy. He knows I always have a coffee and check my emails when I wake up so he had sent me an email to say he was still standing.
What a terrible thing to happen. Scary how much damage can be done when a plane crashes before it's even taken off.
So last week Lloyd had been to Venice and Vienna, which he said is his favourite place so far. He had been to Prague, where he told me they went into the woods one night for a good meal, dancing and drinking. I'm left wondering if he's joined a cult.
He had a visit to Hundertwasser House which is a pretty amazing place in Vienna. Its a bright, quirky apartment building with uneven floors, an earth and grass roof and trees growing in rooms out the windows.
Since then he's been to Munich, (maybe a visit to a beer hall), then on to the Swiss Alps for a couple of days and a train trip through the Eiger Mountain.
Then it was back to Germany and a visit to Heidelberg and a trip to Lorelei. Had to look Lorelei up. Apparently Lorelei was a beautiful young maiden who committed suicide because of an unfaithful lover, by jumping from the rock. She then became a siren, luring shipmen to their deaths with her hypnotising voice.
Then he went over the Dutch border to Amsterdam. Hmmmm. They were going to a cheese farm, because his girlfriend is a mad cheese fan. He actually gave her a cheese platter for her christmas present last year.
Hard to believe a month has gone already.
I have just done the most brilliant reverse park you could hope to see. And it was in the main street. When I got out of the car I actually stood on the footpath for a minute to admire the positioning. I almost stopped a person walking by to say - check that out.
Once when I was 17 and driving around a carload of drunken friends I did a perfect reverse park outside the Forster RSL club, in a tiny space. There was a lot of cheering from everyone. This one was almost as good as that.
It almost made me get over my annoyance at spending two hours in the office trying to reconcile the July accounts. But at least they were out by $ 198.00 which seemed like an actual amount of some thing. Not like when its out by .07 cents or something and you have to go over everything.
Quick Lloyd travel update for the week.
He has been to Verona - home of Romeo and Juliette where he rubbed Juliettes breasts for good luck. Then it was on to Venice, then to Vienna where they stayed a coupe of days. Then off to Prague in the Czech republic.
Remember when you were at school and Czechoslovakia was always in the list of spelling words. I always wondered why we needed to be able to spell it. It was like the king of spelling words. Extra points for knowning that one.
Why is it that as soon as my son heads off overseas, the world goes insane.
Just before he left there was the australian guy bashed and thrown into a fire pitt in California by the homeless men. Now we have that terrible incident where the young australian guy was bashed to death by the bouncers in Greece. Seeing his father on TV last night was very sad. Mistaken identity. Which is such a load of crap. Even if they did think he stole a bag - which he didn't - its not really an excuse to kill him is it.
And I think Lloyd is only making 2 greyhound bus trips. But still. That sure was some freaky shit.
Not to mention the guy who cut his girlfriend up and took some photos of her. WTF people.
I've been having some bad dreams lately due to all this. Plus there was a car accident here through the week and a young mother died and we had some other bad news.
I sometimes feel like finding a small cave somewhere and hiding away from the world. I want to gather my brood and put them back in the safe box I had them in.
You know I remember when Anita Cobby was killed. And it was one of the most shocking things we'd ever heard of. Everyone was horrified and it was probably the beginning of feeling unsafe for a lot of women out at night. But you know, things like that happen so much now, we're not even surprised. You hear that someone has had their head cut off on a bus trip, for no reason, and you're so desensitised, you're not even that disturbed by it. You can just keep cooking dinner like it 'twas nuthin.
I wonder sometimes what will become of the world. It seems so violent you wonder how the tide can be turned. I have this vision of it ending like Escape From New York.
I hope Snake Plissken is there. He can share my cave.
The cat from france likes to sing and dance
but my cat likes to hide in boxes
Now that was a good book. If you have a small kid - thats the book to have.
I was thinking about that book because I was thinking about Lloyd making his way around France and it popped into my head.
So I can give you a bit of an idea what Lloyd has been up to this week as he left me a copy of a very detailed itinerary, which includes sentences such as - attempt to catch bus from Boston. Worry about that later.
For now lets see what has happened in the past seven days.
A visit to world war 1 battlefields in France.
The Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame.
Paris Caberet - with a question mark - so maybe not
Beaujolais vineyards - couple of days
Avignon - city of popes - which is a bit funny considering just about all the popes of the world are in Sydney at the moment.
Monaco
Monte Carlo casino - better check his bank balance
Then today it was to be either Cannes beach or shopping at Nice. Well he's not much of a shopper but he is with two girls and one very non beach type guy, so I can't pick that one.
I'm jealous.
Well Lloyd has arrived in London. We really are the arse end of the world here in Australia. Amazing to think you have to sit on a plane for 25 hours to get there. Made me think of the poor convicts doing the trip here in ships. That must have been a hell of a trip for them. Maybe it was just hell in general.
So he met up with his girlfriend who is working over there for 12 months. He said she cried when she saw him. Poor guy - has women crying when he leaves them and crying when he greets them. He has four friends working there for the year and they will go off on a jaunt around europe together for a month before he heads off on his own.
A lot of australian kids go to England for twelve months after school. I think the government is setting up a deal with the US so its just as easy for australian kids to do their gap year there. Be a lot cheaper with the dollar as it is at the moment. Lloyd wasn't too impressed when he handed over $200 and got back just under 100 pounds. Euro is about the same.
But he's there and now I can rest easy.
I watched a documentary once about lions. And it showed a scene where a lioness was protecting her three cubs from a pack of hyenas. Unsuccessfully I must say - I've been traumatised ever since. (Of course not so much as I was after watching the whole Joey scene in Faces in The Mob).
But I often think of that lioness because I often feel like her. The urge to protect my children is sometimes overwhelming. And often over trivial matters. Of course the older they get the harder it is to protect them. They are out in the world. Out of your control. In fact at the moment I find myself having very fond feelings towards a large pacific island gentleman who is a bouncer at the pub that Kimba goes to and has become a friend of hers. I sleep easier knowing he's looking out for her and will smash to pieces anyone that bothers her. Its good to know.
And then theres Lizzie. A couple of days ago she had a stye form on her eye. It was red and sore so I told her to come home if it got too bad. So she went to the sick bay at lunch time and told the woman in charge. This woman told her it wasn't bad enough to go home and no she couldn't have any panadol either. And that she should just pin her hair back because thats like a major germ spreader and what do you expect and to go back to class. Well, when Lizzie told me this, I felt like going up to the school and finding this woman and smashing her head against a brick wall. I really get this internal rage that someone will decide this for my child who is not a whiner or complainer or trouble maker and its just a couple of bloody panadol.
Sigh - and Lloyd. Off to jaunt around europe and america next week. He's gone out in town tonight and I won't sleep until I know he's home safely in bed. Yet I find him researching web sites such as sleepinginginairports.com. He asked me today will I miss him but I told him that basically I'll just be blocking him out for a few months and pretending he doesn't exist so I don't have to worry about him. I remember once when Lloyd was about five he told me a boy was bullying him at school and one afternoon I got him to point this kid out and I stormed up to him and told him what a nasty little loser he was and basically threatened him.
So anyone - tell me about New Orleans airport at midnight? If you have to - lie to me.
