Day in the 'Dam' to 'Barthelona'

Well guess where I am...

That's right, its the home of the bicycle, canals, coffee shops, fabulous art galleries and rain... it seems... and there I was with no umbrella looking veeeeeeeeeeeeery miserable!

I had such high hopes for my revisit to one of my favourite cities in the world, but I did not bank on bucketing cats, dogs and drenched pigeons and very quickly found myself as soggy as a sweat band. Here's a pic of a miserable day in a stunning little town.

 Bikes, bikes and more bikes! May this be the future of Melbourne... one day..

 Matching couple preparing to also leave town... Bless them and their colour coordination, they even match the train!

Needless to say, I survived my cold, wet and battering day and was actually grateful to get back on the cattle-class plane and land in...

Hooooooooooooooooola Barcelona!

But more on that fine city when I return in a couple of weeks...

Nudey Rudies in Canton

So it’s the 14th July 2012 and I'm not really sure if it's first thing Saturday morning, midday or sometime in the afternoon; time travel will do that... but I do know I'm half way in my mammoth flight with seven hours to kill in Canton before embarking on the next torturous leg.


Seven hours I thought, that's heaps of time, hope the hotel they're putting me up in has a pool and great food, well noodles at least... and interesting fellow transit-travelers.... hmmmm, wrong on all accounts.
Firstly, it took over three hours in painful queues with the over-bearing need to go to the loo increasing and the fact that I was over-dressed becoming more and more obvious as the smog-induced tropical temperatures crept into no-mans-land, namely the transit queues of Canton Airport.

After those said three painful hours and finally in the hotel, I was handed a key swipey thingy with the room number handwritten on it and headed up to my room.

By this stage, I was so hot, and busting, and over it, all I could think was to get all my Melbourne winter clothes off as soon as humanly possible.

So I achieved that and also used the loo, hand washed my smalls in the bathroom sink and lay down on the bed to read the hotel menu to see if they mentioned that pool; I didn’t want to shower if I was going swimming first!

Well, I'm lying (facedown thankfully) on the bed with my head around the corner from the door and arse in clear view when the door opens, someone kind of shrieks, apologizes and quickly closes it.

Now most sensible people would think, 'hmmm, someone just entered my room while I was lying on the bed nude, I should probably put some clothes on and figure out why that happened...'

But I wasn’t in a sensible state, after not really sleeping and crossing a couple of time zones, not to mention being dehydrated and just too damn hot; so all I did was go and lock the door properly, (I thought all hotel doors lock automatically, apparantly not; lesson learnt!) and go back to lie down and finish reading the catalogue, still no mention of the pool that was suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure to exist!
After a couple of minutes, there's another knock on the door, better than a walk-in I guess and I was forced to ram my sweaty body into some clothes and open it. The Chinese staff had to use Pictionary, charades and power of the finger point to explain that I was in the wrong room and mine was the next one down the hall. Great!

I grabbed my things and shamefully sauntered as quickly as possible, I didn’t want to run into whom ever had suffered the misfortune of being exposed to my bare, white arse and closed the door fast.... but unfortunately, the poor staff had to interrupt me again to tell me I'd left my wet underwear hanging in the shower and had to go collect. God, the humiliation.
Needless to say, I managed to get everything back, hid in my room till I could stand the moldy walls no longer and spent the day wandering the cigarette-packet, rotting mango and general rubbish laid streets carefully avoiding any contact with potential springers. even going as far as catching an early bus back to the airport, just because I loooooooooove the place so much. BTW, there was no pool.
Another three hours of queues and finally I'm on my flight to Amsterdam. It's somehow 11pm again, (where did like four hours go??!!) and I'm actually relieved to be sitting in a cattle-classical little seat away from the smog, away from the pollution and away from anyone that saw just a little too much of me today and may be under the impression that a particular room in that hotel comes with a few extras, for the bargain price of .... well free... one doesn’t want to set one's standards too high now...

The Map of Tassie

The Map of Tassie!

Well it was in the middle of a miserable Melbourne winter that two classy* ladies decided to escape the bitter winds and sideways rain and spend a fabulous four days in Ye Olde Hobart Town... possibly not the best choice for a sun-change but certainly a great place to clock up spy photos of fluro clothing and meet charming 20-something year old boys with very creative pick up lines... that was for Sue, not me, she got all the testosterone-based attention this trip!

So after wandering the Armageddon-like streets after arriving on Thursday night and finding only a bar with chubby toothless drunken men, we started Friday with a bit of work (best get it over with before its liquid lunchtime!) First stop was a meeting at Theatre Royal to discuss the prospect of a tour of Miss K.

I was immediately in love.....



Theatre Royal: Oldest Working Theatre in Oz!



Chips in a cone and a setting worth kissing by... Sue declined my offer sadly..

Happy Sue in her puffer jacket... much to my disgust but Hobart's pleasure. Boy they love their puffers!!

We both bought new blue jackets!!! Let the cat walk show begin!

Mind you, we've got nothing on Hobart's fine fashion sense!!

Loving the Sidney Nolan piece at MONA, especially as it sets our new jackets off so well... 

One last bevvy at 'Joe's Garage' where we were delighted by the performance of a drunken fella that managed to pull a wedge on his mate so high it was able to wrap over his head and the two fell on the floor in a happy heap no doubt satisfied at their achievement..

So by the end, obviously we were pretty spent... but not as spent as this guy....

Next stop Europe. Stay Tuned!!

*a lie

K in the UK

Well it's good-bye sunshine, farewell every other language than English, so long food that is fresh, we've hit the UK and it's Fringe time, hooray!!! Now... it's just a matter of choosing a show.... hmmmmm
Perhaps this puts things into better perspective...
Cider is the drink of choice in this country and I can tell you, it does NOT come in small volumes!!!

We were lucky enough to score a fabulous if not slightly creepy for the ghosts allowed to roam free apartment right in the heart of East Melbourne, ops, no it wasn't, it just looked a lot like it... who knows what the suburb name was.. who cares, it was walking or at times stumbling distance from the festival hub and it was really, really big!!! It even had a key to a 'private' garden shared by all the other Scottish yuppies in the block. This is our street.. The front door.. our homely kitchen where we actually prepared some real food!!!
This was our favourite street. I suddenly realised that all my tight-arse budgeting for the trip had left me with pounds in my pocket. It was time to spend, spend, spend!!!
A typical Edinburgh street
Some dicks we found in a pub. Their mother's must be so proud!!!
Edinburgh Castle..The building, not the pub in Fitzroy. I was afraid it was going to fall off that steep cliff, it's quite amazing that its managed not to so far!
A travel souvenir I picked up
The break-up. See ya sister, thanks for the laughs!!
A shop display at Heathrow that I simply had to 'capture'Something like 3 days of flying and no sleep to be had. Ahhhh I look good!!!!

Was it love, or just Paris?

After spending the better half of two hours dragging our heavy back packs, newly acquired giant babushkas, bootleg vodka and stomach bugs derived from too much cabbage, potato and said bootleg vodka about the largest round about I've ever seen looking for the airport bus, we gave up, had our last broken Russian conversation with the cab driver and flew out of Cyrillic land and into the land of the baguette. This..... is Paris!!!
This was our favourite bar that reminded me of my favourite cafe back home: The Gal. We wasted the better part of a rainy afternoon here, gotta love holidays!
Sacre Cuer
Roller cop! There's definitely an 80's film in this... or perhaps just a damn fine film clip. People tubes: Pompadour
K's store... I must have been here before....?
K in Paris Sea of tourists at Montmart
Montmart picnic
Montmart liquid lunch: Jan style.
Eiffel K
French pigeons....
Our fancy pantsy Parisian dinner. Bonn Appetite
Drinking the rain away.... Jan in Paris
Barks in Paris, looking the part I might add.
Kissing K

Rainy day in Paris #1
Rainy day in Paris #2
A K between 2 K's
Rainy day in Paris #3 Rainy day in Paris #4
How we spent our rainy day in Paris...
This amazing little bar was like a mix of marilyn in laopard on speed. The bar, and its owner, were fabulous. What better way to appreciate it than with a K-based photo shoot! This was the matradee...
Bar posing with Jan
Bar posing with Winks ...with Jan again...
...with Barks... Ok, enough already!!!

Well in a fast becoming tradition, I got sick the night before the day we were due to travel, so instead of kissing a fine Parisian gentleman on the River Seine, I instead found myself bent over its wall contemplating sending my 'delivery' over the ledge and wondering if it would make it... I'm sure I'm not the first to stand in that spot and contemplate that same dilemma. Needless to say, I made it home, spent the night riding the porcelain train and wishing I didn't have to leave the city that makes me feel like a lady and allows me to talk like I'm pretending to be Audrey Tattou. But as they say, the show must go on, Edinburg; you'd better be worth it!