The Road Home from Austria

Saturday 19 August 2000. We have to say goodbye to Austria as the coach set off north for Belgium. We were to stay overnight in Belgium and then back to the UK the following day.

Gazing out of the coach window brought a few reminders of the scenery we had enjoyed during our few days in Austria.

At times it threatened to remind us of some of the weather we had sheltered from during our evening walks!

We said goodbye to the musical box chalets that had been almost the only shape of building we had seen for a week!

We had seen so many chalets and other buildings of the same basic design that I was actually looking forward to seeing a house without a balcony and with a four-sided roof! The Austrian-German border came and was crossed and we turned onto a road with markers every kilometre. We would stay on this one road for several hours and the first marker read 510 km.

The Germans were building a new high-speed railway and we saw construction works every now and then as the road weaved its way alongside, over and under the embankments and cuttings of the railway.

There were also the occasional castles to break the monotony of the flat landscape. I watched throughout the day as we stayed on this one road until a marker said 1 km and we reached the border with the Netherlands.

The following day, rain spattered the coach window as we left the hotel in Belgium. "Where's your camera?" demanded Janet! It didn't do very much though and we set off from Antwerp towards France and the ferry port of Calais. A stop at a Belgian chocolate factory found the factory already full of visitors but the same firm had an outlet at the wine cash & carry near Calais so no-one seemed unduly worried! The border posts on the Belgian/French border were still there but were now deserted for most of the time as Europe had opened its frontiers to other European countries.

Er... the white bits (top left) are the reflection of the coach windows on the opposite side of the coach and not - as they might at first appear - a ghostly washing line of Y-fronts...

The odd reminder that 2 world wars were fought over this land and several typical French farms and villages flashed by until we reached Calais. The ferry crossing was smooth and we transferred to our feeder coach, swapping news and views with the people we had travelled from Blackpool with 8 days before.

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On Our Way Home

Monday 31 May 1999. So here we are heading back towards Calais, where a stop at a hypermarket is "in store" for us. The drinks were to prove cheaper than even the duty free - ridiculous really... But I suppose the French must be taxed in other ways. Anyway all the coaches suddenly got fuller!

This is a toll booth on the main road. At Calais Phil informed us that it was busy as the Channel Tunnel was on strike. Then he announced that the bad news was that so were the French port workers...

Our passage was booked for 4:30pm and we had arrived early expecting to be allowed to take the next available ferry. We had only 45 minutes to wait though so we were quite relieved when we later heard that anyone who had arrived without a booking was having to wait up to seven hours for a crossing. We boarded the ship and headed for the restaurant straight away to beat the rush. After quite surprising me all weekend by eating more or less anything that was put in front of her, Miss Franny joined me for a steak and kidney pie and calmly piled up all the pieces of kidney at the side of her plate... A good job we hadn't been expected to partake of frogs' legs or snails...

We sailed from a dull Calais and arrived back to a sunny Dover. As we docked, we went down in search of our coach and I walked past it as they had renumbered each coach. Jimmy shook his head at me and said, "You'd have thought after three days, you'd know what it looked like!" The coach trundled off the ferry and we found ourselves back at the coach interchange where we had to say goodbye to many of our companions.

There was a long ride back up to Blackpool and it was to be 2:00am on Tuesday when we got another chance to compare Blackpool Tower to its older French sibling. As we boarded the coach after a stop on the motorway around 11:30pm I leaned over to cheekily ask 86-year-old Edna if she was behaving herself. Her face lit up in a grin; "Oh no!" she assured me! Well folks, thanks for sharing our holiday - I hope some of the other people on it catch a sight of these pages and once again a big thank you to Leger who made it all possible!

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Vimy Ridge War Memorial

Monday 31 May 1999. Ah well, all good things have to come to an end, but we are not totally finished with this holiday yet! We are leaving Paris certainly, but now there is a few hours travelling through the French countryside and a stop at Vimy Ridge, scene of terrible fighting during the First World War.

The storming and capture of the Vimy Ridge by the four Canadian Divisions in April 1917 was thought a turning point at the time and brought Canada new status in the eyes of the world. 3,600 Canadian soldiers died on the first day alone - 9 April, 1917. Their sacrifice and hard-won achievement was overturned in the stalemates, advances and retreats of the Somme, later in the war. The area was left devastated by shelling and mining. Not a blade of grass lived. This crater, more than 80 years on, shows something of the ferocity that the men lived and died through. 80 years of wind and erosion have levelled it out somewhat, but also consider that approximately two thirds of the material blown out of the ground goes straight up and therefore falls back into the crater it created.

Whilst elsewhere throughout northern France, the ground has been levelled and returned to farmland, here at Vimy it has been left as a reminder of those days and as a tribute and memorial to the victors of Vimy.

Tons of unexploded material is still under the mounds and shell holes of the area and most of it has been fenced off. The grass and trees were all grown from seed sent from Canada, as France gave the land to the Canadians in gratitude and recognition of their bravery and achievement. A small building houses displays, maps, artifacts and a story. The story of the entire army of a country, 100,000 men, working together in a single action to capture the highest ridge of land in the area.

Between April 1917 and the end of the war, 19,000 Canadians gave their lives for their country and their allies. Their bodies lay buried in the fields and villages near Vimy. This is a place for reflection and remembrance. But also a place to gain understanding and respect. The Memorial signifies also the soaring hopes for future peace. Whatever one's feeling about war are, unless there are those who are willing to risk and sacrifice all for their beliefs, then those who care nothing for the rights of others, their life, or ownership, will have their way unopposed.

The Memorial has a number of sculptures, carved where they now stand from huge blocks of stone. The monument took 11 years to build and was deigned by Canadian sculptor and architect, Walter Seymour Allward. Six thousand tons of limestone brought from a Roman quarry in the Adriatic, stand on a bed of concrete. The massive figure represents Canada, a nation mourning her dead. Carved on the monument are the names of the 11,285 Canadians who died in France and whose final resting place had not been found.

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Sacré-Coeur

Sunday 30 May 1999. Once we had left the coach on the Boulevard de Rochechouart, we passed a line of sex shops and live shows that all the men would have liked to see and all the women were determined we wouldn't. We made our way excitedly towards the highest point in Paris.

After climbing through narrow streets to Rue Tardieu we saw the gardens and the 237 steps up to the church of Sacré-Coeur (Sacred Heart). "Stop worriting about those sex shops, Mildred," muttered one of our party, looking in dismay at the long series of steps, "I've changed my mind..."

One look at all the steps leading upwards made some of the party look left towards the funicular railway, but then first to start springing up the steps was Edna, whose 86th birthday it was that day. Everyone else followed... Buskers were at work on the steps, including one hopeful who was trying to get people either side of him to sing along in competition with the other side! Reportedly Sacré-Coeur is not the favourite Parisian monument with the locals... The stone secretes calcite whenever it rains and thus bleaches the outside, leaving it the eye-catching pure white that is seen above. At least one guide book condemns it simply: "The interior is cavernous and little else. You'd do better to stay outside on the terrace..."

We did venture inside (not having taken the guide book with us!) and there certainly was not much to stick in the mind except what I can only describe as bouncers on the door...

There was a rather spectacular view over the city from the top of the terraces. We are about to enter the area of Montmarte and the artists' quarter. The ladies are once again asking if anyone knows the French for "cup of tea laced with bromide".

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Palais de Versailles

Sunday 30 May 1999. The coach set off at 9:00am for Versailles and although warm, it was rather dull. By the time we reached the palace it was obvious that a storm was in the offing.

None-the-less we left the coach - no choice actually as it was not stopping in the coach park at the palace - and we walked into the huge cobbled courtyard and joined a horrendously long line of people waiting to go into the palace itself. The people on the right are somewhere near the back of the queue and the front of it is between the two wings on the right.

It was going darker and darker and I left Fran in the queue and went to see if there was another way in. There wasn't. On the way back I photographed the statue of Louis XIV and the sky gives you some idea. It was to get darker however. As I got back to Fran I was surprised to see she had moved up the line quite a way. The more nervous were bailing out and heading for the cafe and toilets! A few drops of rain fell - I notice these things, being bald...

Hardly had the rain started than it suddenly got a lot darker. The automatic sensors assumed it was night and the floodlighting came on. There was a test flash of lightning and it was successful so there came a lot more... Suddenly it stopped raining and instead the air turned to water. At least that's what it felt like. I've been in Florida thunderstorms which I thought were bad but this was unbelievable. In no time at all everyone was soaked through to the skin with icy water whilst thunder and lightning were horrendously close. I'll show you the scorch marks later... The cafe and shop closed its doors as there were so many people fighting to get in they were in danger of suffocating. People were literally screaming - the air was so full of water that you could hardly breathe or see.

The gutters and drains of Versailles are wonderful. Water is collected off the roofs and pours out the mouths of gargoyles. Beautiful in a shower, but in this storm the people in the narrow space between the two wings of the building were subjected to the equivalent of a row of fire hoses directed onto them from the rooftop. It was ten minutes before another door was opened and by then the mass of people was so compacted as we huddled together that we were just swept into the building. In no time the floor of the foyer was awash as all you had to do was grip a bit of clothing and water would gush forth.

It took a long time to get tickets to go into the palace proper as by then the foyer was choked with people wandering aimlessly and dripping in several different languages. The caissier had given over asking and was simply ringing up the till and pointing at the displayed price. My glasses were misted over - I took out my handkerchief and added some water... Having got the tickets we squelched up the staircase and decided the jackets we were carrying were simply making our arms wetter. We stuffed them in a plastic carrier bag and forgot about them.

When the Revolution emptied the palace of its inhabitants and showed them what a good time you could have in a condemned cell, all the furniture was being taken out and auctioned off until it was realised what was happening and what remained was left alone. Consequently many of the rooms are empty of furniture. Some contain paintings and some contain odd items. The decor though in all rooms is stunning. Gilding is in evidence throughout and there are some wonderful ceiling paintings and mouldings.

Some national stereotypes were emerging. The French were standing, dripping and sullen. The Germans were all organised and taking coats off, folding them and putting them into bags. The Brits were taking shoes off and tipping them up to literally pour a stream of water out, shouting to their mates: "Ha ha ha! Look at this!!!" A peep though a window showed that the rain had almost stopped and certainly the storm had passed over. We were later told that Paris had never had such a storm. As I said - I'll show you the scorch marks later...

It must have been heartbreaking for the staff and custodians as almost everywhere the exquisitely tiled floors were just full of water from people's feet. They were lucky the floors weren't carpeted. Meanwhile back to just before the Revolution, Paris could be dangerous and the chateau at Versailles was far enough away to have warning of any mobs but not so far as to be unaware and unable to send troops. Besides, Louis' court lived there also and thus he had them under his direct control. From 1682 to 1789 Versailles was the home of the kings of France. Everything had been built especially for Louis XIV: the palace itself, the town to house the builders and the tradesmen who served and fed them, the gardens, the water supplies, and a large hunting park. There was only a couple of villages full of peasants who had to be ejected before work could start...

The hunting park is no longer part of the estate but even so there are 800 hectares of land, 20km of roads, 200,000 trees, 35km of canals, 2153 windows, 700 rooms and 67 staircases... We had no time to go through all the rooms and the ones that we did see we saw only briefly, taking a quick glance, a photo and moving on, leaving a little puddle of water if we paused too long... Happily, water is a distinct feature of Versailles and the fountains in the garden are absolutely beautiful. We shall see some of them later, but the fountains are only switched on for a limited time and for most of that time we were indoors...

Carrying on our trip around the Palace of Versailles we complete one wing of the building and find ourselves back looking through the doorway at the beautiful Royal Chapel. Whilst the rain had stopped, as you can tell from the trousers of the chap on the left, we were still all very wet! I was relieved to find my cameras were ok. Later when Fran checked her bag, we found that any paper in it had tended to fall apart - like money for instance... I checked my pockets and brought out a few soggy scraps of paper myself - money and tickets to the garden... They had just disintegrated and there were just lots of half-inch tatters of paper!

Louis XIV's clock of 1706 in the Mercury Drawing Room. On the hour, animated figures of the King and of Fame descend from a cloud. The room was the State Bedchamber in 1682 and now contains the bed that Louis-Philippe had made for the bedchamber of Louis XIV when Versailles opened as a museum.

The Hall of Mirrors connects the War Drawing Room and the Peace Drawing Room, all devoted to the victories of Louis XIV. It was decorated from 1678 to 1686 and it was here that courtiers would wait, hoping for the ear of the King as he passed through on his way to morning worship in the Chapel. The room was spectacular to say the least and it was easy to visualise the masked and full dress balls that were held within these mirrored walls.

One of the candelabra from the Hall of Mirrors. M'sieur Vallaire had told us that there were no bathrooms or toilets in the palace. Certainly, they didn't wash as much as modern folk, believing that too much washing destroyed the body's natural resistance to disease. He also said, Napolean liked a bit of smell and always sent a messenger home two weeks in advance to warn Josephine not to wash! Perhaps that's the real reason for "Not tonight, Josephine!"

This is one of gallery rooms, hung with massive paintings, thronging with saturated tourists. The paintings depicted Napolean and someone had carelessly left a dirty great column standing in the middle of the room. Not mentioned in the guide book, I can only suppose that in a state of excitement someone put it down and forgot to pick it up again...

This gorgeous room was Queen Marie-Antoinette's bedchamber. It was here that the queen gave birth publicly so that there could be no doubt as to the true identity of the heir to the throne. In her memoirs, Madame Campan, First Woman of the Bedchamber described a huge crowd rushing into the room to witness the Queen give birth, actually climbing on the furniture for a better look. The King and Queen each had their own apartments, decorated similarly.

Ok folks, we are about to go into some very soggy grounds and gardens. The lightning scorch mark is somewhere outside - you may want some time to prepare yourselves...

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Sur Les Pieds (On Foot)

Saturday 29 May 1999. Penultimate round-up of the day as we find ourselves out of the coach with a couple of hours to ourselves. We've already used a good chunk of it in a shop... So let's crack on.

We left the Galeries Lafayette and promptly got lost by coming out onto a different street than we had entered from! Well, not exactly lost, because all we had to do was circle the building, but a bit more of our precious two hours away from the coach tour was being eaten up. We found our way back to L'Opéra and made our way down the boulevards back towards the Louvre, which had been in silhouette when we were there in the morning.

Cafe de la Paix. We thought we had better wait until we were coming back to see if we had time left to lounge at a table with a glass, so we carried on walking. It took longer than expected to get to the Louvre and by then Fran's foot was sore. She thought her shoe had been rubbing but then found when she took it off that her sandal had left patterns of sunburn on her foot and the straps had been rubbing against that. She had seen a Scholl shop somewhere from the coach and has always liked their shoes but we hadn't been able to find the shop.

So we didn't exactly stay a long time at the Louvre. Just about long enough to take a quick photo and then we thought we had better head back, not knowing if Fran's foot would get worse and slow her down. We didn't want to miss the coach!

We passed this teddy bear, busily blowing bubbles, then Miss Franny saw the shop she had been looking for and dragged me in. Would my French be up to this I wondered... Fran found some shoes and I managed to ask if they had them in her size (which luckily she knew, continental sizes being nothing like our modest numbers).

So I ordered what to me sounded like a pair of clown-sized shoes and was told "Assayez la," which I knew meant either "wait" or "sit" over there so we waited for a bit then - oh no! She came back with a different pair! But my thanks to the lady on the ice cream van for reminding me of the word for "same"!

I probably mixed up my verbs a bit but, "Ces n'est pas la meme," elicited another look at them from the sales assistant, who drew a breath and tutted at her own mistake and she tootled off and brought back the pair Fran wanted. Phew! Success!

I felt ridiculously proud of myself, Fran acted as though it was nothing at all and she knew I would cope (huh???) and she changed into them straight away and by the time we were back at the hotel preparing for our evening out for a meal and night-time coach excursion she declared herself fit for a marathon.

Refreshed and changed, we got back on the coach and headed back into Paris for our meal, where we sat next to the resident musician. Now regular visitors to my site will know I play the odd instrument myself... So I know that playing to a totally unresponsive audience can be soul destroying and I made a point of applauding after every tune. Which was obviously appreciated and although he didn't speak English, I knew enough to get talking to him and we got on famously. I declined his offer to turn round and play the piano that was behind me as, although I play keyboards, if my left hand gets a rhythm going on piano, my right hand seems to want to play at windscreen wipers...

He played both clarinet and saxophone and was very good on both. I asked him how long he had played and he told me he had played since being a young boy. After the meal we parted with smiles and I even got the traditional French embrace and then a rather merry group weaved its way back to the coach to find Lucy and Elizabeth, two young girls on the trip who had not come for the meal, sitting waiting and tapping their watches at me with a huge grin on their faces - they had been 5 minutes late back onto the coach that morning and had a few comments from Les Miserables on the coach!

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The Eiffel Tower

Saturday 29 May 1999. A smaller page than some of the others, but I felt that the one main symbol of Paris should have a page all to itself! We are having a look at the Eiffel Tower prior to having a bit of time to ourselves to wander around or just sit at a cafe table watching the world go by.

The paintwork was duller than I expected - though why I should have expected a "sparkling" tower I have no idea! But the tower does not disappoint at all, though sadly there was no time to go up to admire the view from the viewing platforms.

The weather was scorching and the roses in the flower beds added a dramatic touch of red to the photo above, though there was no way of having both roses and an uninterrupted view of the tower.

I was by now sporting a baseball cap with 'Paris' emblazoned on it, bought from one of the kiosks along the banks of the River Seine. Otherwise the old bald head would have been glowing enough to confuse drivers at night...

Ok, time for a bit about the tower itself! Twice as high as Blackpool's but without the house of fun at the bottom - 'Nowt to take brass' (Nothing to take money) is how the Blackpool owners thought of the french inspiration for their own tower - it was designed by Gustav Eiffel for the World's Fair of 1889. The structure appalled many Parisians and there were protests against it. But for it being such as success as a platform for a radio antenna it would have been demolished in 1909.

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The Louvre Area

Saturday 29 May 1999. We wake in our hotel in Bougival. Every time I hear the name of the town, district or whatever, I immediately start to hear the song Boogie Nights in my head. Darn, there it goes again...

Vallaire got us all onto the coach and we headed for Paris, with him pointing out points of interest along the route into the centre of the city. One of these was the marks on the wall of the tunnel where Princess Diana died just two and a bit years ago - I'm not sure I wanted to see those, but the manner of her death is a part of the city's history now and is destined to be a part of any courier's duties when passing through that tunnel I suppose.

We pulled up in the Louvre for our first stop of the day. The arch is the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel, not the more famous Arc de Triomphe, but a smaller arch, built in 1808 by Napoleon to commemorate his Austrian victories. The four horses galloping across the roof are copies of four that Napolean stole from Venice. The originals were restored to their rightful place on St Mark's Basilica after the Battle of Waterloo. I say that loosely, because the Venetians had stolen them in the first place, from Constantinople. Through the arch is Le Jardin des Tuileries, a garden created for Catherine de' Medici. It was here that deckchairs were first invented. Or last invented come to think of it...

The Louvre was originally built as a palace in 1200 by King Philippe-Auguste. It served the purpose of filling a weak spot in the early city walls. It remained in use as a royal palace until Louis XIV, the Sun King, decided to build Versailles, moving his court there in 1672. Louis XVI planned to open the Louvre as a museum but lost his head instead. However, the rebels either thought it a good idea or thought up the same plan for themselves and in time it became the world's most famous museum.

The Louvre contains many priceless works of art and famous paintings including of course Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa. Sadly we were not going into the Louvre today, but apparently the Mona Lisa is much smaller than people expect, being only 77 x 53cm (30 × 21 inches).

The Town Hall. The boulevards are lined with trees and greenery and everywhere you are reminded that, unlike central London, people live not merely work in the heart of Paris.

We were ushered back onto the coach which was parked near the Arch de Triomph du Carousel for a trip around some of the sights of Paris.

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Travel to France

It's Friday 28 May 1999. Ugh! What's this??? 4:30am and we are tumbling out of bed to get down to Blackpool Tower to be picked up by a feeder coach taking us to Dover to catch the ferry to Calais. The majority of the photos on this holiday were taken on a very early digital camera and the quality may be not quite as pristine as I would normally like! We are on a weekend trip with Leger Coach Tours to Paris and the Palace of Versailles.

We got to Blackpool Tower a bit early for the coach and crossed to sit on a bench on the Prom. This at 5:30am! A family came and stood in the lay-by, then a couple and we stayed on the Prom until the bus came and then got on still half asleep after the others had got on. Then we made a few more stops to pick people up and then motored south, stopping for breakfast on the motorway.

As we stood in the queue for breakfast Fran said "I know that woman!" and the couple who had been picked up in Blackpool turned out to be one of Fran's work colleagues and her husband! One of the feeder coaches had missed someone and had had to go back for them, so many of the tours including our own had to wait for them to get back to Dover. Above we see the coach interchange where the coaches line up in order - each tour is numbered - and luggage and passengers transfer from their pick-up coach to their tour coach before the crossing to France.

Miss Franny's not looking too happy here and this is before the ferry had even moved away from the dock! I knew I shouldn't have taken her to see Titanic at the cinema... In the background a P&O ferry, freshly arrived from Calais, prepares to reverse into its docking bay. A couple of floors below us, the trickle of cars and wagons onto the ferry has stopped and preparations are being made to cast off. Miss Franny is probably contemplating whether she wants to eat or do a little reversing herself...

The ramps are lifted and the water churns as the ferry slowly pulls away from the dock, the land, and England. This will be our first visit to mainland Europe and our first to a country that speaks a different language to us. I won't call it a foreign language because this time it will be us that are the foreigners!

We stood along with a few of our fellow passengers at the ship's rail, feeling the hitherto unknown sway of a ship larger than the local boating pond rowing boat and staring at the receding line of Dover cliffs, wondering whether we would make it across the 20 odd miles of mountainous seas, crowded navigation ways or whether we might be struck by the kraken or plucked from the deck by a giant octopus, only to be half drowned then stung by thousands of irate jellyfish... It were proper boring in th'end though...

Even Miss Franny decided it was calm enough to risk eating something and by the time we re-emerged onto the deck, Calais was only a short surf, swim or jet-ski away.

We were herded back onto the coaches - "Shep, come by...". Once off the ferry, our courier for the weekend boarded the coach and introduced himself as Vallaire. Hailing from Belgium, he kept up a steady patter throughout the weekend and ensured that we knew what it was we were looking at. We motored south through France, staring at all the countryside and wondering where they hid the towns...

We still had a spell in the coach before us, and it was to be gone midnight by the time we reached our hotel in Bougival. We stopped for a break at a rest stop and I tried out my French for the first time since school almost! All went well happily and although Miss Franny ended up with a toastie instead of a sandwich I felt good that I had managed to avoid having to call on the staff's knowledge of the English language - which would have undoubtedly been better than my French!

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