** Warning: This is an EXTREMELY long note. You might want to read it in a number of sessions. **
So I’ve just finished my 9th month of traveling, and I am sitting on the EuroStar train on my way back to London as I am writing this. What have I been up do since the last update? It’s only been two months since the 6-month update but I was trying to do an update every three months so here is the 9-month update.
I just can’t believe that I am over ¾ done my year of traveling. Guess it’s true, time does fly when you’re having fun! For those of you who knew me since the beginning of this trip, you’ll see that I’ve altered my plans a little, more on that later. I am now down to my last two weeks in Europe, and it has been a fantastic and fascinating ride. A brief recap:
January – New Zealand
February – New Zealand, Fiji
March – Australia, Singapore, Egypt
April – Egypt, Greece, Turkey
May – Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Germany
June – Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
July – Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Spain, Portugal, Morocco
August – England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland
September – France, Monaco
October – Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland
As some of you know, I’ve always wanted to go to Europe more than any other continents and I have to say that I am so glad I did. I’ve learned and experienced so much in the last 6 months in Europe, met tons of cool people and gained some priceless memories.
Enough sentimental reflections, let’s bring on the stories!
At the last update, I ended off with July in Spain. At the end of the tour, I took my first flight since April and flew from Madrid to London. I would have taken the train to keep my streak going, but I decided I wanted to have an extra day in London instead of on a train.
This being me, I cannot have a normal trip. Right before I left for the airport in Madrid, I got a text from the person who I was supposed to stay with in London. He gotten sick and so it was probably not a good idea for me to stay. To say that I was shocked and in a little bit of a panic was like calling the pope Catholic. After texting him back and not getting a response, I took a page from ‘The Hitchhiker’s guidebook’ (don’t panic) and told myself to take a deep breathe. I put on my resource hat and decided to go to the airport first and check in before tackling the problem of hoe to find a place in London last minute and with me arriving at 1am. I’ve decided to enlist my brother to help me track down some numbers for me to call. After a few emails and calls, I managed to nail down accommodation for the night and the rest of the weekend.
So, arriving in London was exciting. London, together with Paris, has been at the top of my list of cities to visit for as long as I can remember. Even though I had arrived in the middle of the night, I couldn’t help but feel psyched and itching to explore.
London was fabulous! It was everything I’ve imaged and more. The 10 days I’ve spent in London were probably not the typical tourist trip but I love it. I alternated between visiting the affiliated clubs and wandering around the city. The days that I was there was beautiful, sunshine the entire time except for the last day or so. I must have hit the sunshine jackpot as England had experienced nothing but rain the entire summer. I wasn’t about to complain! 🙂
After about 5 days in London, I took the train to go up to Scotland to do some visits around there. I started off in Edinburgh and managed to hit the city just as the festival season was starting. There was the Fringe Festival and the Book Festival, not to mention the famous Military Tattoo was starting. I was very fortunate and got a ticket to see the Military Tattoo so I was very happy and excited. It was wonderful! I highly recommend seeing it if you get the chance, but do remember to buy tickets in advance because this sells out fast every year. I liked Edinburgh, it was a very compact version of London, similar yet different.
While I was in Edinburgh, I managed to get in contact with Carly (hi Carly!), whom I’ve met on the awesome Kiwi Bus in New Zealand back in February. She invited me to stay with her in her village for the weekend and I jumped at chance to see her and Sophie again, plus visit a little English village that most tourists won’t see.
So after a short trip to Aberdeen, I took the train down to Pewsey, where Carly picked me up and we went to her village, All-Canning. I had such a great time with Carly and her family. Carly and her boyfriend at the time took me out to Bath, Avebury and a drive through the countryside of England. I went to the local pub and had a traditional Shepard’s pie which was huge and delicious, plus an amazing BBQ with her family. Thank you so much Carly! 🙂
After leaving Carly and her family, I went back to Scotland, to Glasgow. While I was there, I took a short trip to Oban to visit the distillery of my of my favourite single malt scotch, Oban. It was a great visit, the town was very picturesque and the distillery tour was informative and cool. Not only did I learned how malt scotch was made, I also learned about a few other scotches in Scotland. To visit a lot of the distilleries in Scotland, a car is very useful, so I definitely would love to come back and do a scotch-tour of Scotland. 🙂
Glasgow was interesting. It is more industrial then Edinburgh and not as pretty but it is still a nice city to wander around. Glasgow has a special place in my heart simply because it is the city where I finally finished reading “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. For those of you who don’t know, I am a big fan of the Harry Potters book. The last one came out in July and I put off buying a copy because it is a big and heavy book and I didn’t really want to carry it around with me. However I do want to read it. So my solution was to go into bookstores wherever I was and read a few chapters. This works great since there is a bookstore in all the train station and so I was able to read a bit while waiting for my train. This method took me about two weeks to finish the book. After I finished it Glasgow, I was so impressed that I wanted to read it again! In the end, I ended up buying the book back in London. It was that good that I was willing to lug it around with me. From that point on, long train rides were my friends. 🙂
Going back to London was a joy to me. It wasn’t just the city that I loved, but also the people I’ve met have been awesome. I think it’s quite funny that most people you meet in London aren’t really from London! That’s what makes it such a cosmopolitan city. Since The Vancouver Club has a lot of clubs in London, I spent a good chuck of my time visiting various clubs in different parts of London, which gave me the chance to get orientated. I also managed to meet up with some of the London Couch Surfers at various meetings and events, like picnics, BBQs, drinks, etc. What a bunch of cool people! Everyone I’ve met were interesting and all with their stories and reasons why they’re in London. I’m looking forward to seeing them again.
Ah…Couch Surfing… For me this website has been one of the best tools for me on this trip. Not only is it possible to cut down on accommodation cost by staying on someone’s couch, it’s a way to meet people who actually live in the city you’re in and learn about the city through their eyes. Since I am not a fan of crowds and doing things the ‘traditional’ tourist way, this has been the best thing for me to travel the way I want. A big heartfelt thank you goes to Bliss and Seamus for telling me about the site.
So what happens after London? As much as I didn’t want to leave London, I wanted to see Ireland. I also wanted to see Northern Island but wasn’t sure how I wanted to do it. I was thinking of doing a small tour similar to the Kiwi Bus, but then Neil, who I met in New Zealand, called and said that he’ll be back in Belfast and when was I coming? I ended up staying with him and his family and he drove me all around Belfast and told me about the history, the troubles and the division that is still there today. It was such an eye-opening experience to be there and see the city as it starts to emerge from its dark history. He was going to drive me to the Giant’s Causeway but I ended up visiting a potential club instead so I’ll have to go back to Belfast again one day. To top off the trip, we went to an outdoor festival/concert featuring The Killers. It was a fun day, which was a little tainted by a lot of pushing and someone tossing a lit cigarette into my bag and burned holes into my jacket. Oh well, I think I’m getting too old for outdoor concerts. Thank you, Neil, for a rocking good time! 🙂
From Belfast I moved onto Dublin. One thing I will always remember about Dublin is that it has a Tim Horton’s. Yes, you heard me right, there is a Tim Horton’s outlet inside a convenience store. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was so strange I just had to take pictures of it! 🙂
I visited a reciprocal club and met up with Paul, yet another person I met in New Zealand. 🙂 He drove me around to various spots and walked around the city. We visited the Guinness Brewery, but only to the shop cause I didn’t really want to take tour. We also went to a little church where his great grandfather did the stained glass windows. How cool was that? Paul got a job with Shell and was in the process of moving to The Hague in the Netherlands so it was good to catch him before he left. He also very generously offer his spare bedroom if I go The Hague. This was very much appreciated as I wasn’t sure what my plans were after Paris, so it’s good to have an option available. Thank you Paul! 🙂
I left Paul and Dublin to catch an overnight bus back to London in order to catch the EuroStar train to Paris. I would have to go back to Ireland because I didn’t have time to visit the rest of the country. My planning for August was a little spotty and I didn’t budget enough time for UK and Ireland.
After a surprise invite by Erik for breakfast, I got all my bags and went to Paris, where I had an apartment waiting for me for a month!
Paris. There are so many adjectives I can use to describe my time in Paris but I don’t think it’ll suffice. My month in Paris was incredible and brilliant and amazing and I met so many Parisian Couch Surfers who treated me like one of them. There were so many events and meetings that I could have filled up my entire month just partying. Quiz nights, homemade cassoulet picnic, birthday parties, house warming parties, pasta party, running parties, the list just goes on and on. My goal in Paris was to live like a Parisian and I definitely accomplished that. I didn’t really do much of the touristy things until my friends visited. It was a very cool experience to have friends visiting and staying with me in my tiny 12m² apartment, as if I actually lived in Paris. Melroy, who I met in London, came for a couple of days and Sheri and James came all the way from Vancouver! It was so great to see my friends from home and to hear about everything in Vancouver. We survived living in such close quarters for a week and James was such a trooper, sleeping on the floor. I hope you guys had a great time in Paris.
While I was in Paris, I took numerous day trips out to different cities, getting a taste of the French countryside and life outside of Paris. Mark (yes, another person I met on the Kiwi bus in New Zealand!) invited me to stay with him in Normandy for a few days and he was such a great guide, driving me around to touristy Mont St. Michel and also to the various D-Day landing beaches. I learned more about World War II and D-Day from him and my stay in Normandy than I did in school. Really, learning about history is much more interesting for me in the places it happened than from textbooks. You just can’t grasp the magnitude of what happened unless you were there, or for our generation, being in the cemeteries and seeing all the graves. It was a humbling experience visiting the D-Day sites that day. Thank you, Mark, for everything.
I also visit Champagne, Burgundy, Loire Valley, Brittany, Rhone etc on day trips and it was a really good way for me to visit key cities in each region and see specific sites or things that each region is famous for and not feel rushed. France is a beautiful country and its train service is quite good and extensive, and it’s a very enjoyable way to see the country.
Completely off the France map, I also went to Milan for the day because I had made plans to meet up with Tim and Sequoiah, (no, I did not meet them in New Zealand!) who I met on my tour of Spain, Morocco and Portugal. It was a blast walking around the city and window shopping. We also went to a designer outlet place and got some cool stuff. We ended the day with a great dinner of pizza and risotto at a little Italian restaurant, where Tim told me some jaw-dropping stories about his grandfather fighting in WWII. Seriously, if his grandfather was my history teacher, I would have become a history major! I had planned on taking the night train back to Paris so that I would be able to go hang out with Sheri, James and some Couch Surfers, but I was having so much fun that I decided to accept Tim and Sequoiah’s offer of crashing on the floor of their hotel room and catch a train in the morning. Good plan…except the hotel receptionist would not let me as the room is only for two people. If I wanted to stay, I would have to get my own room! Because I had missed the night train, I had to stay in Milan, but I refused to stay in that hotel based on principles as the receptionist was so rude and so condensing that I would rather walk around and look for a different place. It’s just one of those things. Anyways, long story short, I got a place, got very little sleep and caught the first train back to Paris.
As my month in Paris passes, I began to rethink my plans for last few months of my trip. My original plan was to spend September in France, October in Italy and then catching the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian trains from Russia to China via Mongolia at the end of October. From China, I would make my way back to Singapore and then flying back to Australia and New Zealand for December, come back to Singapore for my cousin’s wedding at the end of December, then fly up to Hong Kong in Jan and back to Vancouver at the end of January.
The Trans-Siberian/Trans-Mongolian tour that I had booked was cancelled and so I would be doing it on my own which I actually preferred. However, the more I thought about it, the more I felt it would be better to do the train trip from Russia to China a different time. One main reason is that I would be doing it in winter when I did not have many winter clothes with me and also because of the amount of luggage I had. There is also the issue of the visas. I also had not made any decisions about Italy as I was debating between traveling on my way and booking a tour. So with so many unanswered questions, I decided to skip the train trip and go back to London until I fly to Singapore instead.
Not long after I decided to skip Russia, I got an email from my friend in Vancouver, Sally, who wanted to know what I was doing in October because she’s thinking of coming to Europe. It was a big surprise but I was delighted because it would awesome to see her. This also help solved my dilemma about what I was going to do for Italy in October. I spent the last couple of weeks in Paris planning Italy, with lots of emails and phone calls back and forth with Sally.
Towards the end of my stay in Paris, I was getting a little sad at the thought of leaving. I really had just a marvelous time, meeting all the cool Parisian Couch Surfers, hanging out and partying with them. Alas, all good things come to an end and so, after a month of living in Paris, I packed up, went to The Hague in The Netherlands to leave one (big) bag at Paul’s place so that I would only have to travel with one suitcase, and took off to Bordeaux and the south of France.
I had a great time in Bordeaux, even though I’m not really a huge fan or Bordeaux wine. I stayed with Sebastien, a Couch Surfer, who lived in a beautiful old building that used to be a jail. I didn’t believe it because the building was just magnificent. That would be a jail I wouldn’t mind being going to! The two nights I stayed with Sebastien were fun and fantastic. The first night, he decided to invite a few friends over and it turned into a cool little impromptu party. 🙂
The second night, he and I organized a dinner out at a place called the Restaurant la Cassolette, a cool spot where you can mix and match from the choices. We had quite a few people show up and all had a good time. Afterwards, a small group of us went to a funky wine bar where there are real trees growing inside, which makes the whole place like a courtyard. It was a very interesting place.
While I was in Bordeaux, I explored a bit of the city, but didn’t manage to make it to the cheese buffet that Terry and Jessica told me about, so next time! I did manage to go to St. Emillion, one of the premier wine regions of Bordeaux. It is a very old and quaint little village and the wine producing chateaus were very impressive. The time of the year then was the most important, grape harvest, so the cellar tours were not offered. By good fortune, I managed to tag onto an Australian family going to do a private visit of a chateau in town. It was brilliant. Our guide is an Australian wine maker, working for a company that includes Hardy’s wines, who is in France on a sort of a wine-maker exchange program. (It’s not really an exchange program but you know what I mean.) He told us all about the process, the equipment and the best part, the cellars.
There were so many bottles of really old wines there that I went picture happy. Then he showed us the private cellar where the owners kept his personal collection. To say it was impressive is an understatement. I think his collection would be classified as priceless. In fact some rich oil tycoon offered to purchase one of the rare bottles and asked the owner to name a price, he wouldn’t sell. It was priceless. As impressive as it was, I couldn’t help but wonder, is the wine really that good to command such prestige and price tag? Especially if the wine is bought and then stored in the cellar. I mean, there were wines there that were over 70 years old!!! Would the wine still taste good after all that time? Then again, most of the wine collectors never drink the wine anyways, so what’s the point? Someone needs to help me understand the logic of paying a lot of money for a bottle of wine that will never be drunk.
Ok, enough ranting…After the tour was over, we got to taste the wine. The chateau I visited was Chateau Guadet St. Julien, whose wine is classified as Grand Cru Classe, which is the highest/best classification for Bordeaux wines. We tasted a 2004 and a 2002 vintages. I was impressed. For someone who doesn’t really like Bordeaux wines, because they have a taste that is too ‘earthy’ for me, I quite like these wines. The 2004 didn’t have what I called a typical Bordeaux taste and it was very nice. The 2002 was better. It was great because you can actually taste the difference the two extra years of aging does for the wine. In fact, I liked the wine so much that I bought two bottles, a 2000 vintage, which was one of the best years, and a table wine, that is considered their lower quality wine. Since this is still a Bordeaux wine, I was curious to see what lower quality means. I was debating on whether to get the 2000 or 1998 because I couldn’t remember which the ‘better’ year was, but I settled on 2000. (After checking online, I found out that both years were pretty much similar.) Considering that 2000 was one of the best years, it only costs about 30euros, which is about $45C, which is pretty cheap for a high-end Bordeaux wine. Guess that’s a great thing about buying wine directly from the wine maker, in the country it was made as opposed to buying it from your local wine store in Vancouver where you pay twice as much due to all the taxes and import fees tagged onto it!
After my very favorable Bordeaux wine experience, I moved onto a very long train ride to Barcelona. That’s right, I decided to go back to Barcelona because, if you remember, I was only there for 20hrs the first time back in July. So this time, my plan was to stay two nights, play beach volleyball and go check out the sights. It turns out that Hannah, a Canadian girl from CS is having her going-home party the same weekend so I finally got to meet her! My beach volleyball plans didn’t work out as it rained, which is for the best as I had to organized my travel plans for the next couple of weeks, as well as finish plans for Italy with Sally.
When I finally managed to get out of Zsuzsu’s place, I went on a tourist sight seeing mission and wandered around the city for a bit. I even found a cool tea shop and found some Matcha tea! The first tea shop I went to that actually sells Matcha! Mmmmm
Then it was time to go to Hannah’s going-home party. What a fun get-together! Everyone bought a food item that is supposed to be from their home city/country. What did I bring? I brought along some mini-donuts cause of Tim Horton’s timbits and donuts, a Canadian tradition. I met and chatted with a few people, but being tired, I left the party early and went back to Zsuzsa’s place. I was supposed to meet up with Tom and Johann, who I met playing volleyball, but things didn’t work out. Too bad.
After Barcelona, I took another long train ride to Aix-en-Provence, where I stayed with Anne-Lise, a friend of Christiane. Aix-en-Provence was very nice and Anne-Lise was cool and introduced me to her friends. I felt bad for invading her space as she had started school, so I was staying with her in her dorm room. One thing about staying in a dorm room though is that it allowed me to claim that I have been in one, as I went to university close to home so I didn’t live on campus. Oh and also, it reinforced the fact that I am definitely not interested in going back to school. Guess that’s that option out of the window.
From Aix-en-Provence, I visited a few cities on day trips, including Nimes, Avignon, Nice, Marseilles, and Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo was interesting, especially since I went the wrong way and went to the industrial part instead of the glitzy part. I managed to get myself back but didn’t have enough time to explore more closely, so another place on my list of places to visit again.
I was planning on going to Turin to visit some Piedmont wineries as my favourite red wines come from that region. However, I decided to make a detour and go to Munich instead because I wanted to check out Oktoberfest and a few CSers were going to be there. It was a blast hanging out with Josh and Mike, both Americans from Cincinnati, plus we met up with Mark, from Atlanta. It definitely was an experience being at Oktoberfest, checking out the huge beer tents, the fairgrounds and the amount of people was crazy. Glad I decided to take the trip.
After Munich it was onwards to Italy where I am to meet Sally at the Rome airport. For those of you who knows me pretty well, you would know that Italy has been a dream country for me to visit for the longest time. There is this mystic around it, with its history, its arts, food and wine. It sounded like my kind of place. Since I had such a great time in France, which is one of my countries I’ve always wanted to visit, I figured Italy would be the same.
Boy was I wrong about this. People will probably be shocked and protest, but I was not a big fan of the country. I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would and I can count the number of things that I love on one hand. Am I being harsh? Probably, but that was my experience and nothing anyone can say will change my mind. It’s not so much any specific thing that happened, it was more about how I felt in the country, the feeling I got and experienced. But nonetheless, I will give the country a second chance and go back one day. What didn’t I like about the country? Let’s not get too negative and concentrate on what I did like. I love Venice, the gelato, the food, and the art. What about the wine? Well I still love Italian (Piedmont) wine, but only by what I had before I came to the country because the wine I actually did have in Italy were awful. I’m sorry to say the Sally didn’t have a good time either so between the two of us we were a couple of disappointed gals. She decided to go home earlier than planned, so you can imagine how much fun she was not having. To top everything off, I got sick towards the end of the trip. It was the first time I’ve gotten sick this year and after everything that happened, I decided to throw in the towel, leave Italy and go to The Hague and take Paul up on his offer of his spare bedroom to recuperate.
Thank you so much Paul! To be able to just sleep, veg on the couch and watch non-stop North American sports (I love satellite TV!), NHL,NFL, MLB, was a soothing balm to my tired soul. It was a bit of home in Europe. Even the weather in The Hague reminded me of Vancouver, dark, cloudy with no sign of sun. I hibernated for almost a week before I decided I had recovered enough to go out. I went to Brussels and Antwerpen in Belgium, where I bought a LOT of chocolates, some beer to try (chocolate, raspberries, and apple flavoured), and ate mussels, frites and waffles. I also went to Luxembourg and did a day trip of Switzerland by train. You may laugh, but I managed to see Zurich, Bern, Basel, Interlaken and Lucern in Switzerland, plus the stunning train trip between Lucern and Interlaken with ranks just below the Mydral-Flam train trip in Norway in terms of breath-taking scenery. Since it was October, the fall colours were out in full force and added their brilliance to the picture. You know, I have to admit. I didn’t think I would like Switzerland, but I love it. The cities were big enough to have all the amenities yet small enough to retain the quintessential Swiss look and feel. I would definitely be going back to Switzerland one day.
Yes, I did go to Amsterdam and no I didn’t like it that much. Pot makes me sick, the smell of it gives me a headache, so walking around the area with all the coffee shops (or maybe it was just people smoking on the streets) took its toll after a while. I did go on a canal cruise and that was nice. I tried to go to the Red Light District to see what the fuss is all about. But the maps were pretty vague about exactly where it is so I thought I found it and thought it was pretty tame. Paul told me that I probably didn’t see the ‘real’ thing; it was probably just a side street or something. I mean, it had the windows and the girls in them, how was I supposed to know there were different streets?
Anyways, I had about enough of Amsterdam by that point and so I went back to The Hague, packed up my bags and went back to London.
I should mention that by this point, I have now finished 9 months of traveling. Many people along the way have asked me if I was tired yet. Well, I wasn’t tired after month 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6.I was feeling a little wary by the end of month 7, with is why I was glad to have my own place in Paris for a month. But the wariness grew and now, at the end of month 9, I was tired. Not tired of traveling or seeing new places or having new experiences. I was tired of lugging my bags with me, tired of packing and unpacking only to have to pack again, tired of only having certain clothes or shoes to wear, tired of wearing the same things over and over again. (I missed my wardrobe back in Vancouver where I had choices of what to wear.) I was tired of trying to figure out where I want to go next, how to get there and what to do once I am there. I was ready to stay put in one spot just so I don’t have to think about packing. So this is why people keep asking me if I was tired of traveling yet. Because it’s true. You do get tired. It all depends on what your threshold it. For me, I realized that I can safely go traveling for up to six months before I start feeling wary. Things you learn…
The funny thing is, even though I am tired of the nitty bitty details associated with traveling, I don’t want to stop yet. I don’t want to go home yet. I still want to keep going. I guess my desire to travel is still stronger than my tiredness. Another interesting thing to learn.
So, we have now reached the end of this very long, very detailed and very varied update. If you have managed to read to the end, wow!
If you are on Facebook, be sure to check out my profile cause I update it almost every day (I’m addicted to it!) and also I post my pics on there. www.facebook.com You can also check my website, but I am embarrassed to say that I am very bad at updating this one. http://yingying-lee.spaces.live.com
The next update you’ll probably get will be one when I get home in about 3 months time, the conclusion to my year of traveling.
Lots of love,
Ying Ying =)
