Week 1

Bonjour de Cherbourg

It’s been less than a week but feels like we left Brisbane a month ago. But we are definitely in France – I’m sitting writing this next to a window and here’s the view

The trip over was long but no dramas and we got picked up at the airport in Paris at about 7.30 am. Felt more like middle of the night as the sun doesn’t even start to come up till after 8.30 and dark again by 5pm.

Paris was its usual cold and wet self (from my experience anyway). We were staying just up the road from the Galeries Lafayette so went to check out the Christmas tree and decorations which were quite spectacular. How that place remains in business is a mystery. They have an army of security personnel everywhere through the store and plenty of tourists like us having a look, but nobody was buying anything.

Next day was too rainy to walk around much so we went to the Louvre. They say that they average 15,000 visitors every day. I think the rain bumped that number to double the average. Clearly the most popular exhibit is the Mona Lisa and there are signs up everywhere with directions on how to find her. Which many people managed to do….

On the wall opposite Mona was Les noces de Cana (The Wedding Feast at Cana) – a painting the size of a half tennis court. You could have a lot of fun wandering around the Louvre and making up captions and new titles for these paintings. This is a small section from the painting. I would name this Perche stanno guardando le mie tette (Why are they looking at my boobs).

 

Couple of observations about Paris:

• traffic is insane. Apart from buses, everybody drives a very small car or motor bike so they squeeze into any tiny available gap in the traffic, beep the horn and plant their foot. Amazing that we didn’t see any prangs. Also sirens are constant. Police just plant a blue flashing light on the roof and take off, with a dozen or so motor bike riders immediately behind, taking advantage of the slip stream.
• everybody smokes. Thankfully it seems to be banned indoors, but streets are full of smokers, especially young people.

So we left Paris for Cherbourg on Thursday. Train trip was about 3 hours of very bleak and wintery landscapes. Looking forward to seeing the same country side in the summer. We were met at the station by Kelly from Defence who took us to the apartment. It’s been renovated and supplied with new furniture and appliances. We were also given some starter packs with bedding, towels and kitchen stuff so we were pretty well set up from the start. Defence have really thought of everything and the next day we were picked up and given a orientation tour of the town and shown where to find hospital, pharmacy, Lee’s work, etc as well as the major shops. We were then taken to a phone shop to sort out mobile phones and then on to the bank to open bank accounts. That was an interesting experience. Took about 90 minutes and a ton of forms to sign just for a very basic bank account. And can’t open a bank account till we have phone numbers.

Anyway, that’s our first week nearly done. We have been walking around Cherbourg to try and find our bearings and it is a really lovely place. Stay tuned for photos.

love

L & M