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Hiya my devoted reader or readers (surely there is one or two still reading)
WARNING: This blog is very long and may contain micro sleeps!
Part 1 (France)
Finally I have the chance to sit and try and finish this blog, I have made many attempts but always seem to get caught up with something less exciting like washing, cleaning or cooking! It seems the sock fairy is universal as it doesn't matter how many socks I put in the machine, one or two always go missing. Why is that I wonder?
Well where does one start I wonder! Thanks to everyone who rang/emailed me for my birthday. I had a lovely day and was spoilt by Brian and the girls, perfume and a little bling to help celebrate my last year being 30 something! Now it's time to start counting backwards.
Brian and the kids have settled back into school a little dazed from different time diffs. Caitlyn walked into the kitchen the other day and told me that she needed 1 euro for 'out of uniform' day at school. They have gone from dollars to pounds to euros and now back to pounds again, thank goodness we have no plans to go to Japan!
I still haven't had much luck finding work but I am starting to find my feet a little more. I had a lovely day last week with some of the other mums from the girl's school. What started out as a lunch get together ended up being a tour of a nearby vineyard with samples galore, by the 3.30 school pick up I was well and truly ready for a nanna nap on the lounge. Having had such a great day we decided to meet up again later that night for a 'girl's night'. We had a fun night and when everyone started to talk about coming to visit me back in Oz I thought it only fitting that I stand on the chair and give them my best rendition of 'Advance Australia fair'! Getting into the spirit of things they all put on their best crocodile Dundee voices and we had many versions of 'now this is what I call a knife'and 'put another shrimp on the Barbie mate' lol, geez do we really sound like that! Anyway I really enjoyed myself and it was a much needed laugh.
Its daylight savings time here now and the days are certainly longer with it getting dark around 8.30-9.00 but still no sign of warmth. I crave warmth!! Everyone keeps telling me how lovely it is here in summer but I am starting to wonder if summer is just a vicious rumour, at this rate I would be just as happy if the rain stopped. I can't seem to let a blog go by with some mention of the weather, how very English of me!
I have heard from a very reliable source that the evenings in Oz are starting to cool down now, all I can say is HA HA
Two things that I can't believe, firstly how fast the two weeks away went and secondly that we all fit in our tiny Mitzy space wagon (luggage and all, ok so we couldn't breath but breathing is overrated anyway) I am positive that I have never walked so much in my life. The Lourve, Notre Dame, Eiffel tower and Disney Land were just a few of the places that we visited. Brian and I both feel in love with Paris and decided that it really could be the city of romance if you didn't have 4 grumpy kids and feet that screamed 'I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired' with every step youtook!
Brian was in his element hunting around the museums and churches while the girls and I opted for sampling crepes drizzled with Nutella, banana and fresh cream in the side walk cafes. Josh on the other hand decided to occupy his time by asking every 5 minutes how many days until we went home, needless to say he wasn't impressed when we all donned our berets in the middle of Paris and pretended to be the Partridge family...
THE TOILETS!!Now weren't they an ordeal and of course we wouldn't be the Griswalts if we didn't have a tale or two to tell…
Toilets in Europe are scarce and cost money, I am sure between the 6 of us we had donated enough in toilet funds to shout the Mona Lisa a new set ofpearly white caps.
The first morning that we arrived in Paris the girls decided that were 'busting' so without a toilet in sight we thought we would go to a café, have coffee and use their loo, sounds harmless right.
We were ushered to a table and presented with a menu completely in French (fancy that in France) Brian and I looked at each and realised that we were in a restaurant and had to order a meal. Not being able to find a 'Banco' earlier that morning Brian checked his wallet and we managed to scrap together 60 Euros. It was then that we also realised we had two options
A)We could wait for the waiter to walk away and quietly escape without ordering OR
B)We could try and order something cheap from the menu and pray we had enough
Option A appealed the most but we both had visions of Emilee still sitting in the restaurant after we had gone saying 'But I'm hungry'
To cut a long story short we picked a few French words from the menu, ordered them like we knew what we were talking about and ended up with 3 boiled eggs with mayo for the girls, an anorexic pheasant's drumstick for Brian and a lump of raw mince for myself. We left with just 3 Euro to spare! 57 Euro (87 oz dollars) and we learnt an expensive lesson.
TIP: When in France 'oui oui' before you leave home!
After a full day of sight seeing we decided that McDonalds would be a nice safe universal place to eat, how can you go wrong with a Big Mac, yeah right! Again nobody spoke English, 20 minutes later and I had done every charade/hand gesture I could think of to order 3 Big Mac meals and 3 happy meals, the waitress finally understood and we got to eat.
TIP: Think twice before ordering a Mc Chicken or a fillet of fish in France!
The languages were hard but we managed somehow, I have to admit that I was quite proud of myself for being able to direct us around France. The road signs of course were in French so when we came to an exit sign that had a picture of a car exploding and a huge red cross through it I got the general idea that it wasn't the safest exit to take!?!
The tolls in Europe are everywhere and we spent an absolute fortune in tolls with 58 Euros ($97) being just one leg of the journey we had to pay, I think driving from Calais (France) to Italy one way we paid around 5 tolls in total. One day we paid $10 and realised 200 meters down the road that we had taken the wrong road, we then had to pay another $10 to get off it and another $10 to take the right road, what an expensive u-turn that was. Most of the tolls are computerised but that didn't stop Brian from giving it the bird and muttering under his breath about being a 'rip off'! But more on tolls later… The kids all had a great day at Disneyland and the whole park was brimming with things to see and do, they say that Disneyland is the happiest place in the world and there were smiles all round. Emilee was in her element when she got to meet Sleeping Beauty, I seriously thought she was going to faint. Taylah and Caitlyn on the other bought an autograph book and were happy chasing all characters around for signatures. They are both very proud of their book and can't wait to tell their friends they met Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Captain Hook, Aladdin and some baboon (I know I should know who it is). The only disappointment was the lines for the rides being a 2 hour wait; I shudder to think what the high season is like. Stay tuned for part 2 ( Italy ) Cheers,Dee xxx
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