It's a long way home

Once upon a time in a fairy tale land a young girl clicked her heels three times and said "there's no place like home". In this case she was trying to leave land of Oz but recently I was wishing I had me a pair of those ruby slippers to get me back to Oz.

I’ve discovered in recent months that when people realise I’m Australian the inevitable response is that they’d love to visit Oz but it’s too far to travel. After all who’d want to spend 24 hours sitting on a plane? 

My stock standard quip, while trying to supress an eye roll has become ‘well why do you think we all travel for such long periods of time?’ (Another observation they generally make).

But today I’ll swallow my pride and admit it; all those people I mentally rolled my eyes at in the past are right.

In the past month The Boy and I packed our bags and prepared to jet off home for the wedding of the Bestie and my Bro, but due to obligations here in Paris our trip was to be a flying one – a grand total of 10 days including our travel time. When I’d booked the tickets months earlier I’d arrogantly bragged to myself that we’d both done this trip a few times already, it’d be easy peasy, a cinch, there was absolutely nothing to worry about.

Clearly it hadn’t clicked in my head that in the space of a week I’d be spending a whopping 52 hours sitting on my ass reading or watching movie after movie while being force fed plane food – and I challenge anyone not to struggle with that. Not to mention that waiting for me on both ends was a crippling case of jet lag.

But still we did it and excitedly planned out our Oz days while sitting on the bus to the airport and riding through Paris on a sunlit afternoon  – beach, family, beach, friends, beach BBQ, beach and then a wedding to top it off. And if we had some time in between, we’d spend some time at the beach.

By the first stopover in Dubai a mere 14 hours into the first plane trip we were already bored. By the second surprise stopover in Singapore hours later we were like robots muttering ‘beach, beach’ over and over to ourselves as we passed through customs yet again. 

By the time we landed in Autumnal Brisbane at 1am we were delusional. Greeted by The Parents dressed in cardigans and jackets The Boy and I were stripping off layers and dancing around outside exclaiming about how warm it was (to be fair we had come from an early European spring so it probably was).

Waking a mere four hours later to a steamy morning it dawned on me, the last two times I’d done this trip I’d been so excited about what lay at the other end that I’d somehow blocked out the torture of the flight, to the point I’d willingly undergone it again numerous times, and I was left with only vague recollections of struggling to stay awake in the afternoons and bouncing around in the pre-dawn light.

But this was the important thing for me. As sappy as it sounds the crazed non-sleeping state of early mornings and the zombie-like afternoons were still worth it when I was sitting around a dinner table full of lovelies, having an early morning cuppa with The Parents after a morning walk, an afternoon swim at the beach or, best of all, watching The Bestie and a Bro get married.

And Oz was still Oz. Paris might be able to boast thousands of years of European history and stunning architecture but Oz is lush and has a natural beauty that can't be rivalled.

But it was with my tail firmly between my legs and more than a little dread at the end of the week I returned to the airport for that flight back to the land of wine and cheese with weeks of jet lag- or even double jet lag if that's possible -  ahead of me again.

So the next time I have someone tell me that stock standard phrase of they'd love to visit but it's just too far to get to Oz I'll suppress that eye roll and simply smile and say "yes it is, but do you know at the other end there is a beach?"

Oh, and these lovelies...

Paris in the spring time...

Jardin du Tuileries

The Boy imitates Venus

Lazing in the sun

Enjoying the 5pm sun

Montmartre turns green

A glimpse of Sacre Coeur

 Pardon the pun, but it's bloomin' marvellous.
I've never experienced a proper flowers blooming, tree budding, golden nights and everything coming alive spring before.
I'm in love

A song for every occasion

I think it would be fair to say the story of my life could be told through a random collection of songs. A strange idea I'll grant you but stick with me here and I'll try to explain.

I come from a family of music lovers and many of my early memories of days spent at the beach, family dinners and even the long car trips that were common in my formative years have their own soundtracks.

I grew up listening to a mix of classic 1960s and 70s rock and classical music thanks to my parents (and also developed, along with my brothers, the ability to throw a record on the turn table without scratching it with the needle at a very young age) but shortly after I decided that The Bangles were the BEST BAND EVER at the grand age of 4, both my brothers also began to influence me with their music choices from Vanilla Ice and Guns 'n' Roses to New Kids on the Block and Deborah Harry. Not the grandest start to a love affair with music but hey, we were children of the 80s growing up in the 90s after all.

The whole idea for this blog actually dawned on me when I was cutting limes one quiet Thursday morning at the pub I work at here in Paris, listening to the playlist I created shortly after I arrived and the only way I could describe it was that it suffered from musical ADHD. It bounced around from John Lennon's Imagine to Ash Grunwald, Rage Against the Machine to the Jackson 5 and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Pop, rock, punk, jazz and dance were intermingling freely and I was very much in my happy place.

 And I got thinking about what drew me to such a variety of different music. If a perfect stranger was to scroll through my MP3 player they'd find a strange collection before them and probably have no way to guess if it belonged to a 50 or 15 year old.

I've said before that one of my favourite ways to explore a new city is to put on my headphones, some comfy shoes and set out armed solely with a map. The result of this is that I now have vivid memories of sitting on a train headed to Spain trying my hardest not to rock out to Grinspoon and failing miserably, writing in a tiny Paris apartment the first time around listening to Dire Straits' Romeo and Juliet, and wandering the hot and crowded streets of Venice chilling to Song for Holly by Esthero. And being the poor backpacker that I am I even had to create a sleep playlist which means that even to this day Ben Lee's Ache For You reminds of the wracking snores of a Scottish woman in Florence who successfully managed to be the only person to sleep in a 20 bed dorm.

It seems music has underscored most of the important points and relationships in my life. 

The Boy and I bonded over a shared love of music in our early, heady days and took great delight in heading out to gigs or playing each other personal favourites and arguing over which was better. And the first time I moved out with the Bestie it was common to come home to find her stereo blaring while she studied in the kitchen or we cooked up a storm as best we could.

Then there are the drives to and from university, road trips to the beach, nights out with friends or just sitting around the dinner table at my parents house with my father asking the name of the bands or songs to whatever CD or record was playing in the background.

Even now it's not uncommon for my brothers to introduce me to new bands and music genres, developing my taste for chilled out tunes and even Aussie hip hop. 

And I've got to admit I wouldn't have it any other way, so I'll embrace my eclectic music library and keep it growing. After all, there's now a whole array of French jazz and blues to delve into.

Edith Piaf anyone?

Yum yum in my tum

I love spicy food.

Indian, Thai, Mexican, generic miscellaneous curries, I love them all. If it were physically possible I would eat a curry for every meal, every day, which why I'm struggling in a city where it's next to impossible to find a decent curry.

Now don't get me wrong, France richly deserves its culinary reputation and there are more than enough curry houses throughout Paris but in a country where restaurants offering international cuisine have only been allowed to open in the past few decades it's near impossible to get a curry which is more than flavoured coconut milk.

This may be why many of my food adventures on my travels include hunting for a good curry.

On a previous visit to London I"d dragged The Boy to the infamous Brick Lane for a feed and stumbled out a few hours later with an over-full stomach and a big grin. The Boy however only uttered "I've had a better curry in Bayswater".

On my most recent trip to London we were booked into a hole of a hotel in Bayswater, and my curry hunger was once again ignited. But I was foiled when out on a pub crawl with friends in West London. I figured there was only so many times I could enthusiastically yell "curry!" (or later on in the pub crawl slur it), before I earned myself a punch in the face. It was about this time that a friend, let's call her B, suggested bypassing curry for Eritrean. I could still get my chilli fix and we'd branch out cuisine-wise a little more than before.

"Eritrean, what the hell is that?" was circling around in my head, but B is easily as big a foodie as The Boy and after having experienced her cooking first hand I had learned to trust her taste in food so off we trundled on a big red bus to Westbourne Park.

The street might have been littered with roadworks, but pushing inside the door of Mosob was like entering a different world where the food actually comes second to the dining experience and you quite literally have to earn your meal. We were seated and immediately given a puzzle - name the nearly 20 capital cities in the world which begin and end with the same letter -  to solve by the time our food was brought out.
The meal, which was absolutely delicious, was served on a huge platter for every one to share although we were strictly warned to only eat within our borders, and we were given more puzzles to solve and general info about Eritrea itself.

This time again I stumbled outside into the cold night with an over-full stomach, but it wasn't the food that The Boy, B and I spoke about on the way home but rather about the experience itself.

And I left London a day later a very happy girl!

I wouldn't normally do this but I enjoyed Mosob so much I want to spread the word so check them out at: http://mosob.com/

Edinburgh: the windy city

I have recently discovered one thing about myself - if I were ever to live in a city with an honest-to-goodness castle in it the first words out of my mouth most days would be "holy shit, there's a castle in my city!".
And there may or may not be a little jig-like shuffle that goes along with that.

Now I know that I already have more than a few palaces in my own city that I pass every day, but there's something about visiting a city like Edinburgh, with a gothic-looking medieval castle looming high above the cobblestone streets which is still absolutely surreal to me and images of knights in shining armour and damsels in distress - or vice versa - immediately flash through my head.

Edinburgh is an amazing city, even second time around there was plenty I still wanted to see and do and explore.

The first time I visited Edinburgh was a flying visit of only two days and just enough time to run through the castle, climb Arthur's Seat and have a wander through some of the streets before moving on again so this time I was determined to do and see a lot more.

With labyrinth-like streets I had thought it would be a city to get lost in, to wander around aimlessly and imagine all that had taken place on those roads over thousands of years but The Boy and I very quickly discovered that was nearly impossible to do.

We set out just after dusk to explore, walking past the lit up castle and down some side streets only to wind up in centre of town but we did discover along the way one of the best pubs I've ever been to. The Brass Monkey. Cold and thirsty (hey, we are Aussies after all) we walked past the front door twice, only catching glimpses through the window of what looked like a small, generic pub which didn't really take my fancy but The Boy was persistent. But walking inside there were rooms filled with board games and chessboards, couches as big as beds surrounded by tables where, we later found out the pub screens movies weekly.

Warm and toasty with a few ciders inside my belly it was hard to bring myself to walk back out into the frosty air but we had disgusting touristy stuff to do like go on ghost tours. Actually not the scary experience I was expecting but a good way to see the town and learn some history.

Bright and early-ish the next morning The Boy and I set out into the sunshine to hike our way up Arthur's Seat to look over the city.

I've heard it described as a big hill, but still after two times I arrived at the top breathless and with shaky legs but amazed at the beautiful views over the city.

However my amazement didn't last long as gale force winds kicked in, and the child in me took over. Jumping and leaping around like idiots The Boy and I were literally being blown away.

But with clouds gathering and the feeling in my fingers and toes gone we started the descent, picking new paths down to see what we could see before rushing up to the castle.

Small but beautiful, Edinburgh Castle is almost exactly what you would expect if you asked a child to describe  a medieval castle. Perched on an extinct volcano the small buildings play home to dark cobblestones and winding alleys, beautiful gardens, a quaint little church and wide halls for banquets and dancing. There's even a little cemetery for the dogs of the soldiers. Most impressively the castle is also now the home of the Stone of Scone, the ancient rock Scottish Kings and Queens have been crowned on for centuries which the English captured and used themselves. Returned by Queen Elizabeth II the stone is now back where it belongs.

As night began to fall we took shelter from the cold, first in the Royal Oaks, a cool traditional pub where the locals all gather to sing Scottish songs, then in Brew Dog, a funky bar where they brew their own beer from traditional ales to beers so strong they are sold by the nip. But the threat of an early flight eventually drove us back to the hostel, and we took the slow walk back to the hostel along Princes Street next to the dark and silent gardens.