The countdown is on.... 9 days till I arrive in hopefully sunny JHB for the start of my summer vacation. A quiet saturday passed, with Lauren and Grant moving into their new flat, which turned out to be a lot less furnished than they had expected. So they were off to Ikea for some home shopping and it was our turn to try to return the flat to some sort of order... vacuuming, dusting, stacking the dishwasher and setting the washing machine going. It's amazing how quickly time goes by when you are trying to clear up... 4pm eventually rolled around and we were finished. So it was time for some relaxation in front of the tv..... with the usual problem of 999 channels and nothing to watch.
Sunday morning was a crisp morning with and early start to head to Zulus for the spit. Notorious as usual, everyone was late... sitting at the bar you had the smell of the spit wafting through and making everyone hungry.. i think if we didn't get food for Eric he would have taken a bite out of someone. But we were all seated at a long picnic style table and everyone ate their fill, some even eating all the leftovers. We all migrated to the large leather couches to let the food settle. After a couple more beers and ciders the food had taken it's toll and most of us were falling asleep. So we were off to find ourselves on the couch at home having a quick cat nap, then a shower and off to bed, ready for the next week.
So it's monday night and i'm bored... so for once i decide to get organised so that it's not a mad rush next monday when i decide to get things together and pack. So I have all my papers and passports, etc etc... but have you ever noticed, that no matter how organised you are there will always be something at the last minute that will put you into a flat spin. I'm trying to be most effient this time round but inevitable the cab will be outside hooting and i'll still be trying to find things. But I'm flying at 17:50 so it does give me a fair portion of the day to get things sorted out.
At the moment I'm sitting at the office on and 8 to 6 shift, and my eyes are threatening to close on me at any second. It is different when you only have to be at work at 9:30, it's light when you leave the house for one. Leaving at 6:45 means it's still dark and will stay that way for a while.... i'm longing for the sun to be up before me for once.
So i'm off to see the wizard.... maybe he has some coffee to wake me up.... I really hope so.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Week 45 - Bonjour - Je ne parle pas français - But anyway
Another fantastic weekend has passed.... along with a number of euros. Friday morning was a fairly early start with myself, Kev, Lauren, Grant and Doc heading off to Waterloo to catch the Eurostar to Paris. Being a pretty cold morning we were all wearing most of the clothes we owned, and looking somewhat like the Michelin man. The trains that we were expecting to be packed with early morning commuters were actually relatively empty... lucky for us because of all the luggage we had between us. Arriving at Waterloo we made our way down to the Eurostar entrance and waited for the rest of our group.... also being South Africans they were still working on "africa time" and arrived about 20 minutes late. Once we had organised everything we were off to the train. Onboard spirits were high and since the first plane had already flown over the guys headed to the bar. Unfortunately I don't think the bar really catered for a carriage full of rowdy SA rugby supporters, and they soon ran out of decent beer. Which left us with Duvel, which is a Belgium beer weighing in at over 8% vol... and tasted terrible, so the girls switched to whisky. We arrived at Gard du Nord in Paris a little after 2, their time, then it was off to find the hotel, which proved to be quite amusing, we walked around a bit and eventually found the right road... so after going 2 blocks out of our way we found the hotel to be only about 100 meters from the tube exit... never trust men to give directions. Checking in was another fun point with most of the people trying to speak french but not getting anywhere close - "bonjour, ek wil my room keys have please" as I heard one of the guys say. So once we'd all moved in to our respective rooms it was off to explore Paris... and with Doc leading the way we didn't actually get too lost. Our first stop was the Champs-Elysees. The most expensive area in Paris. We wondered up towards the Arc de Triomphe. After Kevin had a run in with a group of pigeons, we all had an amusing time avoiding one of the mechanical street cleaners, whos driver was aiming to knock down a pedestrian. Another thing is they all drive on the wrong side of the road... a bit confusing when you are trying to cross. So getting pretty cold we made it to the Arc, where we looked around at the magnificent architecture.... While Doc was taking pics of the eternal flame it started snowing, and not the little flakes one would expect, but rather lots of them all at once. We got some pics, along with a fluffy white haircolour, which melted soon after we went inside. Grant, Lauren and Jane wanted to grab some McD's but the rest of us decided to head into a quiet little corner pub and have a glass of port or wine and in my case coffee (personal note, coffee in france is the equivalent of an espresso). Unfortunately for our grumbling stomaches they had already finished serving lunch, so it was off to another cafe to try to find some food. The next place we came across you had to ring a bell before you were let inside, but once inside it had very low lighting and red velvet all over the place... so a quick look at each other decided that this was not the best of ideas, after a bit of investigating it turned out to be a type of brothel.... so leaving there at speed we looked across the road to a little cafe called Le Balzac where we had crepe and a glass of rouge wine... and that was pretty much the start of things to come. We heard that most of the group had ended up in St Germain for an evening of exploring the local nightlife. Arriving in st germain we headed in the direction with the most lights blinking and figured it was a good place to start. Our first stop took us to a cute little bar on a corner which had a sort of plastic protection around it... we managed to seat ourselves around a table probably meant for 6 year olds and ordered our glasses of wine, which to our delight came with table snacks of honey nuts and olives.... a trend that was followed throughout the night. We were perfectly warm under the heaters until after our drinks arrived at which point Kev was getting inexplicably cold but Doc and myself were still toasty warm... it turned out that our waiter hadn't quite zipped the plastic sheeting closed behind Mr Burden and he was getting the brunt of the cold wind. So freezing cold outside and getting warmer inside we headed off to our next experiment. Etages St Germain had the cutest waiters that I have ever seen... getting better at ordering red wine in french we each had a different kind of wine to decide if we should get a bottle... although all were fairly nice the best would have to be the Cote du Rhone which I had. With sitting right next to the door and having the breeze hit us every time the door opened we decided it was time to move on to another restaurant where we met up with the rest of our group... but since we had found warmth and a good bottle of wine we decided to call it home for a while. Shortly following that we headed for supper at a lovely Chinese/Thai place. And then to bed to prepare for the following day. We awoke on Saturday morning a little later than anticipated due to the time difference and red wine delay and headed off once again into Paris with the hope of seeing the Eiffel Tower. Which after Grant called and said visibility was down to 200meters we decided to attempt later and hopefully have some more luck then. So we were off to Notre Dame to look around and stand on the stone... which legend has was the centre point of Paris way back in the day and if you stand on it now you will always return one day. After milling around the Cathedral for a while we headed to the Latin Quarter for some lunch, and subsequently a quiet stroll along the Seine.... when the wind had sufficiently frozen us we headed for the Metro to make our way to the Eiffel. On the way Kev noticed a sign that said Bastille, which we all agreed was a good idea.... of course not realising that when it was seized in 1789 it was also raised to the ground.... oops... so we walked around looking for it for about half and hour. After being told numerous times that the Bastille opera house was the Bastille we gave up the search in favour of a warm glass of Gluwyn at the Falstaff with the intention of checking the net when we got back to the hotel to see where exactly the Bastille was located. Back at the hotel we donned our best green and gold and headed out to the Stade de France for the reason we were there... the SA vs France rugby match. It was very festive outside the stadium, with trains bringing an endless stream of people..... even a strange frenchman with a rat who was drinking his beer..... Before the game we had transferred out OBS (to keep warm with) into plastic coke bottles, as most stadiums won't let you in with glass bottles, we never thought that you weren't allowed any alcohol in the stadium, so in we went, with the officials assuming that what was in the bottles was actually coke. Doc and I found our seats and were quite charmed to find they were on the one try line, only 6 rows back. With much action, and for the SA supporters, who were really expecting a last second come back, much dissapointment we headed out of the stadium, not quite as noisily as we went in and stopped off for a final beer at the Heineken tent before trying to make our way onto the train and back into town. Once again back at the hotel we warmed our feet and headed to a bar on the corner to analyse the game to death, as the boys tend to do, when the bar closed a small group went out to finish the party else where while we climbed into a bottle of Jameson at the hotel and got an early night. Sunday morning was comprised of packing and making our way to the train station, and then bidding a fond farewell to France and heading back through snow covered fields to London. Another week has started and our landlady has had double glazing put in so the flat is much warmer and the heating bill has gone down. Not much happening on the social side, but we are going to be having a spit braai... WITH PROPER MEAT on sunday... and after that we'll have to see
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