Europe Trip: South France

3 - 16 May

So as you are aware all did not go as planned with my barge visit and I left early feeling a little home sick for NZ and leaving William at a boat yard some two hours tram/metro ride from the centre of Paris where my backpacker for the night is.

I booked into Oops hostel in the Latin Quarter and met a awesome lady from Lithuania who is studying in the Netherlands for 6 months. We hit it off and spent Saturday hanging out in Paris going on a huge walk through the weekend flea markets catching some sites discussing everything from pineapple lumps to culture/family and had a brilliant lunch including some very French cuisine - Escargot.

At 3pm we parted ways I proceeded to the main train station for my four hour train ride down to Marseille's - Frances second largest city situated on the Mediterranean coast.

Upon arrival I discover its already a good 10 degrees warmer and that Marseille is 2013’s European City of Culture and this evening there is a fire festival. I have paired up with another visitor from the hostel and pop out for the evening down to the port to check out the festival only to discover from my friendly French man that 2.5 million people are attending the evening. Just a small eye opener.

The following day I moved out of downtown and to the beach. Very cool the beach is a 3 minute walk brilliant great to swim at lots of golden sand. I have discovered the statue of David and walked back into the centre to travel out to Archipel du Frioul and the Island D`If where it was used to house prisoners, a rhino for the pope in 1515 and where the Count of Monte Cristo was set . Weather has been good and I had a great walk around the Frioul. At the backpacker I met two Swedish girls who have invited me to go walk the 10km out to Les Calanques and Calanque de Callelongue to scope the area for their rock climbing the next day. The area is very different and it makes me smile to see the English and French tourists catching a few rays on the rocks.

Unfortunately I cannot join the two Swedish ladies climbing as I am travelling onwards to Nimes.

Where there is still a lot of roman culture - in fact (if you are a movie buff) it is where Gladiator was filmed. I like Nimes, after Paris and Marseilles it is so clean!! The city was built around local springs and the towns main gardens are beautiful, back in the day the citizens used to worship the spring gods and the goddess Diane the hunter here. Currently the temperature is around 24 - 26 degrees and in summer they can hit as high as 42.... Great spring vacation place.

The locals are friendly and a few of them come to the backpacker for their evening drink of local wine. I have met another guest who has a car! and they offer to take me out to Pont De Gau nature reserve and beach (about 45 minutes from Niems) for the day which is brilliant - flamingos, wild horses, cattle a swim and some sun!

I travelled to Ales to spend a day at a Feira and I must admit it was a rather crazy day! , Bull fighting has been tradition in the south of France for the last 150 years and definitely has its followers. I meet some Italians who indicated to join them which I thought was cool share a experience with but then I realised that we were attending a anti bull fighting protest, after having lunch and seeing the riot police (50 of them yep 50) with full kit on including batton, cuffs, 9mm glock I carefully departed thinking it might be safer else where. So off to discover further delights of the festival - a lot of Spanish influence and culture. The paellea is fantastic (kind of like a rice risotto with seafood, giant prawns, muscles, octopus, prawns etc) bands, dancing and bull fighting. There is also a game which I quite enjoyed watching where the public (young and keen for a little danger) can taunt a yearling bull. You will think me nuts but after “protesting” I did attend the bull fighting Grande Corrida De Toros evening session and had more of a pat down by the police entering the arena than I have ever had before. I met some very enthusiastic French spectators who tell me that bull fighting is beautiful..... I must admit, there is skill and the initial 10 - 15 minutes of dancing about is very impressive - I just don't like the drawn out end definitely a male sport and understand why people protest. As I am aware it is banned in Italy and Barcelona Spain.

Monday (13th May) I travelled 5 hours by train to Bordeaux where I'm couch surfing (shhh don’t tell my mum she isn’t aware that I’m giving this ago and I quite like my ears) before travelling back to Paris and over to the East of Germany. For those of you unaware the idea behind couch surfing is the host will provide a couch for you to spend a night or two on for nix and in return they get to meet some new people. Supposably if you travel and use the site you should in future host travellers.

My host is pretty relaxed and is a brilliant tour guide we checked out a few sites such as the local cinemas, gardens and the reflective water feature down by the river. I even saw a air bus barge on the river taking plane wings to the factory to be fitted onto a plane - interesting. Bordeaux has its own charm and is currently going through a change with areas of buildings being removed to create parks. I have spent some of my time a the local wine school as Bordeaux is very famous for its wines (which I’m sure you know) and the school does tastings it also offers the cheapest wine in town very pleasant.

Whilst out on my walk I did discover a Otago Rugby Shop - Very Surprised and yes they do state that it is New Zealand check out the website and let me know what you think I reckon we could open a similar franchise.... www.otago-rugby.com/shop_otago was just there in the middle of the street - unfortunately the owner spoke no English so I could not ask a lot of questions and I have had my first brakeage of my travels - sunglasses and have lost my camera charger but this will be rectified in Berlin.

Will let you know how the upcoming week goes as Im catching up with old friends from CHCH who I used to sing with (Christchurch City Choir) and attending my friends wedding which is extra special!!

Hope you are all well and for those of you at TDC not missing Spence too much (there was a nice article in the herald)

-Gabrielle