France Day 2

This is on 16th April, Day 79 of my exchange:

2nd Day in France :) We left off with our group (YW, FC, Me, JH) ad a guy who was a friend of the girl who hosted us! haha, lucky guy! and we were lucky to get to stay there too! After several hours of driving, YW parked our car at a place near St Malo and we went to walk around the beach to take in some sceneries. It was not easy to find a parking place, but we managed to park it, thanks to the european culture of parallel parking at roadside with 2 of the wheels on the pavement :P HAHA! If I saw that in s’pore I’ld think tt the car got into an accident!!

Anyway, onto the wonderful views!! Here:

 

And there were lots of pretty flowers too!

There was a ship-building place and some castles around. Initially, we were thinking of just walking over to St Malo, but upon climbing onto one of the castles, we found that it was still quite inaccessible :(

We had to go all  the way back to find our car and drive to St Malo, find a parking place nearby (I think we might have parked in a reserved spot, but who cares! St Malo is a small walled city-like place. The tall fortress-like walls surrounding the city gives it a scenic look great for pictures and of course, tourists like us! Another side of its beauty is that it’s mostly surrounded by water!

And below is a view of the high-rise buildings inside. The ground floor is covered with shops, but i’m not sure what or who is inside these buildings. We walked around the buildings a bit before settling at a place to feed our hungry stomachs. Too bad I couldn’t afford those GIGANTIC cakes :(  But no worries, they had something vegetarian for me! I forgot the name of my lunch, but it had salads and some pastry thingy with lots of veges baked into it!

Next, we went into some of the buildings: Cathedrals, creperies, random sweet shops by the roadside.. and then, we climbed onto the wall and went over to the other side of the St Malo.

 

And there were beautiful little parks and beaches by the walkway! We could see the inside of the city on our right too! And then, we spotted a nice thin extension of land into the sea and since ppl were there, we went down to get ourselves there too! But before that, a wonderful shot: I had to take about 20 pictures before getting to this one:  Do click on it to make it bigger! There is a bird sitting at the edge of the cannon with a kid looking on:

And a jump shot of the peeps travelling with me:

The pathway was filled with seashells, I felt so bad stepping on them. Anyway, we had to climb up this slope and everyone got tired. But the weather was wonderful, we stopped for a rest. It also happened to be a scenic photo place :))

And then, it was time to move on to the top!

And the wind was super strong at the top! All of us just laid down on the grassy ground to enjoy the wind and rest! After reluctantly getting up to leave, climbing down was the best part cos i got to jump over rocks to make my way down on the other side! We then decided to go on to another castle-like ‘island’ nearby which was connected too! And this was fun cos the climbing needed some balancing skills!

I wished I could spend several more days here, but I guess it’s better to leave cos I also didn’t want such a wonderful place to get boring :P We went back to the walled city and tried to make our way to the exit as shops propped up on the streets for the evening sale. And for those waffle fans out there, here are the french making waffles!

haha, I dunno why i kept thinking that they were expensive. They sold at 5 sing dollars for the plain one. Okay. It IS ex :( HAHA.

Every place I visit is like a secret location, hiding lots secrets. The secret book opens up when i visit it and closes as i leave! haha, away from the secret world of St Malo, our car remained untowed so that we could get on it to ride back to Rennes. All of us slept on the car except YW. Poor thing! He’s really a super man for managing to stay awake and alert for hours to drive us around! We dropped by a supermarket to buy some groceries for dinner, thanks to the guy who was with us to give us directions to it! We also refilled our food bags with some supermarket goodies to last us for the next few days. Getting back, we made dinner at the girl’s room WHICH was a SINGLE room with attached KITCHEN and BATHROOM and TOILET! and she was paying about the same fees as us!! Their dorm building reminded me of Ridge view residences, when I went to visit pradeep. Alrights, folks! That’s all for the dayy! More coming up, stay tuned!

France Day 1

This is on 15th April, Day 78 of my exchange:

Fong Chi, Jiang Heng and I left for France from Eindhoven on a Euroline bus on the night of 14th april. The bus was supposed to leave at 11:59pm, but I think we got there about 2 hours early. Johnny earlier missed a Euroline bus and ended up taking an expensive train. ~200 euros, i think! ouch :( The night was cold, but still, bearable. I didn't bring my down jacket, so I had to make do with my sweater and jackets and bag! We kept running between the 2 sides of the road and around the area since we didn’t really know where the euroline bus would stop at. There were some familiar faces but they got onto another bus. When a euroline bus pulled up to the other side of the road, we rushed over to board. There were lots of ppl boarding and the bus was crowded. There were barely any seats at all!

Welcome to France!

The bus ride was quite horrible since I was squeezed in with this fat fellow who took up a portion of my seat :( There were breaks in between during which i had to remain awake, waiting for him to come back and take his seat! anyway, we made it to the euroline interchange in paris at about 7 in the morning. We were supposed to meet up with Fong Chi’s BF before going up north to some American memorial. We took the subway to the main train station in France. And we walked around a bit once we got there. We had a small breakfast consisting of stroopwaffles, some packed bread and milk :)

We rented out the car once we met up with YW. I treid driving and managed to get out of the parking lot, after which we decided that it would be safer for YW to drive! haha, my previous driving experience was during my driving test :P We then tried to change the name of the driver to him, but that wasn’t possible, he was added as the secondary driver.We also had to go back again to get a new GPS system since the one given to us wasn’t working!! After about 200+Km/5 hours of continuous driving, we got to Omaha beach memorial. There were lots of Americans there, and some school kids were having their field trip as well. The memorial building was small but very thoughtfully built. The beach was gorgeous and the wind was chilling since spring wasn’t full blown yet.

After the memorial visit, our pro driver started driving again! I wondered how he could keep the alertness up all the way for hours! The GPS system got quite cranky in its directions now and then and so we got lost once in a while. But it would always reroute and bring us back. We used the road directions a bit to help us get the the expressways was well. Finally, after another ~100km of driving for abt 3 hours, we started getting glimpses of Mont St Michel! It was an amazing scene! I’d seen pictures of it on the net but seeing it for myself was GREAT!! Here is one of the first few sightings of it! Thanks to the quickness of FC’s camera which was in my hands for the trip :)

And then, it started getting bigger and bigger until we got on to the bridge linking it to the mainland!! Yipee! haha, I took this shot with the mont and our dear driver:

We had to park by the road since the ‘carpark’ below would be drowned when the tide comes in in the evening. HAHA! What a strage thing, rightt! 

It felt really cozy walking in to the Mont. Such a small snug place with creperie, restaurants, houses but still with a stunning view. We went up and down, trying to set our little feet on every part of it! HAHA! Here is the stunning sea view of the tide coming in! I took the below pic as i was playing around with the modes in FC’s camera!

Going there and walking around made me feel like I’m in some fairy tale world with castles and a princess for me to save! And there was a museum inside too! And here is my dinner for the night: We caught the beutiful sunset as we came out of the Mont. But I noted that it’s not really possible to cover the Mont and the sun together cos the sun was in a different direction. So, all those sunrise/sunset postcards were photoshoped!!  don’t buy them!

After driving for several more hours, we arrives at Rennes, where we were supposed to meet FC’s BF’s friend’s malaysian friend to stay at for the night. That place had a university and so we stayed in their dorm :) The place was quite difficult to find with the GPS cos it failed us again, so YW had to call the ppl up for directions. One of the guys’ room was empty since he was travelling during that time and so the 3 of us guys took his room. FC slept with the girl. It was a great night for us as we all had blankets, unlike FC :P haha, onto the next day!!

Sweden Day 7: Back to Eindhoven

This is on 30th march, day 62:

Our night train left Stockholm pretty much on time. We were very well on our way to Malmo. I was on the uppermost berth. It had power points and all. Here:

Azri and I went to sleep after brushing our teeth. Here is a pic of the sunrise at 530am!! NICE RIGHT!!

We reached malmo on time to change to the next connecting train. We got down fast and managed to find and board the other train in time. I forgot my camera's charger and battery though. It was still on the night train, charging. It was too late to go and get it. And here is a beautiful pic along the journey, near copenhagen:

The train was crowded with office-goers. We finally reached copenhagen at 7:17am!! yipee!! Our connecting train was to leave at 7:45. So, we had some time to take pics of Copenhagen :D

And then.. our ICE train finally arrived. It was our first time on a ICE train. The seats were wonderful, like in some aeroplane. It was supposed to take us from Copenhagen to Hamburg. The conductor on board was smart enough to ask us to write the date. So, that's 2 days gone on our ticket.

And we had our breakfast of bread with honey and apples on board :D Roedby was one of the stations along the way. OUR ICE TRAIN WENT ONTO A SHIP!! We had to get out and stay outside of the train for about 45 mins. We went around to see the ship. We then figured out that there were 2 other trains on the ship as well!! And there were busses and cars on another floor. We had to go to the top few floors where there was a restaurant, supermarket and a place to view the sea. The video below shows the journey on a bridge from Vordingborg station to Nykoebing F station and a view of the ship that our train was in on the way to Puttgarden from Roedby:

I saw a lot of windmills as we were leaving Puttgarden. And it is really difficult to take a good picture from inside the train. It moves super fast, my camera takes forever to focus and there is the window reflection problem on top of that. Nevertheless, I managed to take this shot:

And we finally reached Hamburg. You'll see another copy of this picture soon :P

And we managed to again, switch to the connecting train at Hamburg since we had 30 mins in between the trains. We were both tired by this time. We reached Dusseldorf after a good sleep.

And later, reached Kalden Kirchen, which is the last station before getting into Netherlands!! We had to take a small and old train to Venlo which is on the border of Netherlands. We felt at home the moment we reached Venlo. Everything seemed to familiar and comfortable, unlike the places that we've been to.

We got off at Venlo and went to a sheltered place. I then realised that one of my gloves had dropped off somewhere. I last time I wore them was during the ship ride and I wasn't sure where they were. So, I asked Azri to take care of my stuff and ran back to the train to have a look at the place where we were sitting. I checked the place and glove was not there. That was when the door closed by itself! I tried to open it, but couldn't! And then.. the train started moving!! oppsie!! hahah, I went down the train and found 2 conductors chit-chatting. I told them what happened. They checked the train timings for me and told me to alight at Kalden Kirchen to take the next train back to Venlo in 45 mins. Well, I alighted at KK but didn't want to wait for 45 mins for the next train. So, I decided to walk back to Venlo, along the train tracks :D The walk took about 1 hr. I managed to take some good pics along the way though. It was sunset!:I had to crawl through some bushes for this pic of a house along the way:

I had to pass by a depot before entering the Venlo Station. There were some conductors there who approached me to ask me where I was coming from. I told them that I'm from Germany :P They didn't understand everything at that. So, I explained the whole story to them. They then told me that it is forbidden to walk near the tracks and asked me where I was heading to. I said I was heading to Eindhoven. That guy happened to be a conductor and so, he said ".. yea, get on the train! We'll pick up your friend and head on down to Eindhoven!" This will be one of the most unbelievable things that I had heard during my exchange term.

So, I boarded the train and it started rolling towards Venlo in about 10 minutes. I positioned myself at a door where Azri would be standing in front of. I was off by 1 door. I managed to re-position myself in time :D The door opened and he was about to board it! hahaha! He was thinking of getting everything down to Eindhoven first. We found a nice seat, got back to Eindhoven, bid farewell and reached home :D

This post marks the end of the Sweden trip!! yay!

Sweden Day 6: Hello to icy stockholm

This is on 29th march, day 61:

We had or last few sightings of snow for the winter as we got nearer to stockholm. The temperature at stockholm was about 3 to 4 degrees. So, no heavy snow there. Here is one of the main stations we passed by, Gavle Central. We passed by Umea too! That is calista's place! But I think i was asleep at that time. I saw it on the way there though:

And I have a better pic of the restaurant on board the train. I visited it to get the breakfast 'feel'. Azri and I had the bread we got from supermarket for breakfast :D

and here, you can see the snow starting to dwindle ald...

And then... welccome to stockholm central station! We reached the station at about 10:30 am. We were planning to tour around till evening and take the night train to Copenhagen and go home through germany.

We had to get the tics for the following night train at stockholm first, before going out to tour. So, we took a queue number at the conter and waited. We met this plump guy while waiting opposite the counter. He claimed to be a lawyer and seemed nice. He was excited to meet us, asians. But then, our Q number came up fast and we had to go to the counter. He said he'll look after our bags and we left our bags with him. I kept looking behind to check as Azri entertained the counter lady. I then noted that his Q number is gonna come up soon too! So, I went back to take all our bags over to the counter. The man said that it was okay and that he had cancelled his Q number via sms to look after our bags! haha! I totally don't believe him lor! There didn't seem to be any such number on display or anything! He then understood that I was adamant in bringing over the bags and say goodbye to him. He then started welcoming me to his home if I were to come back to stockholm again. And he even said, "... you don't need to bring your friend over. Just come alone and we can have a good time! I can help you with stuff like money, if you need help..." haha! I gave a humble acknowledgement, picked up as many bags as i can and brought them over to the counter! hahah he was gone by the time he finished getting our night train tickets.

We helped ourselves to some maps at the tourist info center at the station and started going around. We could see the big river as we got away from the station:

We then crossed the river to reach the other side, took some pics along some palace and went over to this Vasa museum that the man suggested to us. It was a museum with a big ancient war ship that was recovered and museumised. The museum had a show during which I had a great sleep, and some history of the time of the ship, info about its occupants and so on.

We then walked on to this palace on the other side of the river. There was a small guard changing ceremony when we were there! the guard just started shouting when we were taking our pics. And this bunch of soldiers starte marching in from the corner. Here is a clip of the entire parade:

We walked over to this place called Gamla Stan. It's supposed to be a small island with narrow streets and old buildings and a big palace. The shops are cute too! So, here are some of the more interesting pics:

And then.. I had a ASIAN meal!! how wonderful!!! here: I think it costed 6 euros. But very nice and spicy and vegetarian =D

After this, we walked back to the stockholm central station and looked around for a supermarket. We then found Azri's s'pore friend who was living there for a while. He directed us to a supermarket which was so out of the way. The nearest supermarket was a 20 min walk from the central station! can you believe that??!! We met up with a backpacker from holland on our way. He was also looking for a supermarket. We bought our things and got back to the station in time. The train we were travelling on was full. So, we had to get our tics checked before boarding and the conductor didn't look at our calendar again. lucky us :D

It was so full that we didn't even get to stay in the same cabin! That's all for today!

Sweden Day 5: Goodbye to Kiruna!

This is on 28th march, day 60:

After all the adventures that we had been through for the past few days, it was time to wave goodbye to Kiruna and get on a long train ride back home with a stopover at stockholm. The video below shows my feet walking in snow:

We got to the train station real early since we had to check out of our hostel in the morning. I had a great sleep. There were lots of other backpackers coming into the station to take our train. The station was super crowded. Our train was delayed for some time. We went outside to freeze ourselves in sub-zero temperature for the last time. I took this video of a train stopping at the station. It really shows how cold it was and the view of the station.:

and no blog post is complete without a pic of me. So here:

And we boarded the direct night train to Stockholm. It was a great train to sleep in. It had a little restaurant on board too:

The sleeper train has several rooms. 1 room has 6 beds, 3 on each side. The bottom 2 beds can be converted to seats for daylight hours. Anyway, there were no other people sleeping in our cabin. So, It wasn't so cramped. The cabin has several power points too! Really worth the money.

We managed find the hidden ladder and convert the seat into beds. And before I forget, here is me having my dinner :D

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