What's up?

What an amazing weekend away in St Malo, Brittany, France!! It is a gorgeous city, and the trip was made all the better having spent it with some great friends, new mates and eating and drinking wonderful food and wine.

Firstly a picture and then I shall go into it a little more:



On Thursday after work Mark and I headed up to London to meet up with Em and Aaron before we started our 12 hour journey to France on the train and ferry. Although we were tired from work we were so excited about the coming festival and the trip away that we stayed up until the early hours of Friday morning chatting and drinking wine... Getting up that morning was a bit of a struggle, but we got to the train station on time all buzzing with excitement for the coming events.

The ferry ride over was much better than expected. We met up with 4 others on the way there who were all heading to 'La Route Du Rock' (the festival we went to) as well, so from then on we had a little posse of like minded people together, and when we got there a nice little camping group. After many a beer on the ferry over we were all a bit pissed, thankfully we had a shuttle bus organised to pick us up from the port and drop us straight off at the camping site/festival grounds.

The actual gigs were held inside the medieval fort of St Pere in the countryside about 15 minutes drive from St Malo. The first night we went to see Mercury Rev, who I'd never seen or heard before but became a new fan of theirs after seeing their gig. They're quite reminiscent of Pink Floyd, although not quite as depressing as Pink Floyd can be.
After Mercury Rev we met some French people who spoke pretty good English, so while La National were playing we chatted away to them. I seemed to have my natural freak attraction powers working in over drive and this French guy who spoke bugger all English accosted me to tell me that he loved me, that I was his sister and he could drink the rain and eat the wind. No matter how many times I protested and told him that I didn't understand French he would still continue on his rant with me getting more and more frustrated. After a while he became quite agitated and began to cry! I had no idea what he'd been saying and was pretty alarmed to think that I had made this guy cry without even saying anything that he could understand. After his bout of tears he finally left me alone and one of the English speaking French girls explained that it wasn't me who'd made him cry but that he was really pissed and had been talking to me about the apocalypse and the end of the world and how all the beautiful people like me and the others I was with were going to die!! Not what you need when you can't understand a word and are trying to have light and simple conversation!!

After Le National finished the French group invited us back to their camp site so we went along with them and continued chatting and drinking until sunrise. Sunrise was amazing - the sun coming up as a huge white orb rather than the yellow glow that we're accustomed too. Also for the four days we were their it was a special time in the stars. This side of the world hits an asteroid belt in late summer, so we were gifted with a view of a thousand shooting stars each night - 12 ever minute to be exact.

On Saturday we were blessed with gorgeous weather, beautiful blue skies, high twenties in temperature and a soft breeze. After barely a wink of sleep the night before we spent the day lazing about in a field, smoking, chatting and dozing off in the sun. The bands didn't start until about 7pm each night which left us the daylight hours to explore or just hang out like we did. There was a free bus into town which was handy, until we realised that they were trying to squeeze several hundred onto a 50 or so seater bus. The option of chilling in the field became even more alluring after that!

On Saturday night the headlining act for the whole festival was to play - THE CURE. Before hand the Ravonettes whipped the crowd into frenzied anticipation, and all around were Robert Smith lookalikes. Some not looking as alike as others....

The Cure were great. Funnily enough Robert Smith looks almost exactly the same as he did in the eighties, just a little more haggard and stooped. Most of their set were tracks from their 'Wish' album but there were a few classics thrown in, like the Spider one and 'Boys don't cry'. They gave us 3 encores and the crowd was huge seeming to have swelled to about 3 times that of the night before.

The Cure:


I have no recollection of who played after the Cure, Mark and I headed back to our tent for a night tipple and some much needed rest.

On Sunday morning we headed into St Malo. The European cities I have seen so far (all two of them) are beautiful and have a real sense of history and important things having gone on. St Malo is the same but even more so. Each street beckons you to simply walk down it and enjoy the architecture and soak in the feeling of time that it exudes. The stalls, markets and shops all seem so colourful and enticing. St Malo town centre is surrounded by castle walls which you can walk along the tops of looking out to sea on three of the four sides as it is stuck out on a point into the sea. In the 1700's it was a country in it's own right, as was Brittany and even today the people from St Malo and Brittany consider themselves apart from the French. We were all hankering for some fresh St Malo mussels and we found a restaurant which had only mussels on the menu, in every kind of way you could think of, from natural to curry to provinciale. We all ordered different ones and got to try some of each. All were delicious, and the cheap house wine was sumptuous too!!

At about 6.30pm we caught the shuttle bus back to the festival for the final acts. It was a lovely day walking around St Malo, sitting in some of their sweet little pubs, trying out the delectable food and wine, checking out the art at the markets and shops in town and being a complete tourist by taking pictures of nearly everything.

On the final night we were entertained by 'The Polyphonic Spree' who are a group of 18 Californians who are all part of the same cult in Texas. They bounced onto stage in pale blue kaftans with red lightning flashes across them. I'd never seen or heard them before and couldn't help but begin to make a joke or two about a group dressed as prime targets for a bit of piss taking. But as they started their set the jokes became less and less and the energy in the crowd rose. Everywhere you looked the spectators had huge grins on their faces, people were dancing and taking part. The group are electric, full of energy, and their music is actually pretty good - it's just their dress sense which lets them down. And so I have become a new fan of them too, although I doubt I'll be traveling to Texas to find out more about their religious beliefs. By the time they had finished their hour and a half gig I felt as though I'd taken drugs and that I'd been watching them for a mere half hour, they were so good, and again I'd become a new fan.

Polyphonic Spree:


After the Polyphonics, Sonic Youth played. I haven't seen them since I was about 17 years old at the Big Day Out in Melbourne. They were good, but nothing could top the energy of the band before and we left on that high to head back to the tents and chill out with our new friends on the last night we had in France.

Monday was a long day, we left the festival at about 9am and didn't arrive back home until 12.30 that night. The ferry was delayed, as were the taxis from Poole. Still with that being the only hitch for the whole weekend I think we did really well. We had a brilliant time and already I am thinking of the next opportunity to go back and spend some time in that most beautiful and alluring of cities - St Malo.

Just a reminder of Amsterdam before I begin to skyte about France, and the beautiful St Malo....

Sooo Amsterdam - what can I say? From the moment we landed I knew it was gonna be a bit of fun. From passport control til when we left again everyone we met was really helpful and friendly. We struck up a conversation with an indian/Dutch guy at the tram stop who offered to take us out to a club the following evening, but we didn't end up taking him up on the offer.

The Dutch are some of the nicest people on the planet that I have ever had the fortune of meeting in their own country. They all seem to speak really good English - or the ones I spoke to anyway, and sometimes when you're listening to a conversation on the tram or down the street it sounds almost like they're talking English anyway. Really lovely and nice - nothing is a problem with the Dutch. The police are really helpful too.

We arrived on Friday evening and went directly to our hotel, dumped our bags and had a quick look about town. One thing that struck me when I was there was the feeling of open space. Maybe I've been in England for too log, but the wide tree lined streets and canals make for a really open feeling to the city. And the canals themselves are lovely, ducks and geese floating along, quacking loudly. We even saw a whole flock of them cross a busy road, the traffic just stopped and waited, and not a soul tooted their horn once!

On Saturday we headed into town on the tram - almost the same trams as Melbourne, those crappy new ones with all the mouldings and bugger all seats but longer- for a look about, try to find the galleries and see what was on offer. We managed to get lost pretty much straight away and spent the entire day wandering about in and out of coffee shops, bars and cafe's. The city is beautiful - wide open boulevards with canals down the centre and trees lining the streets. It's a big change from England where everything seems to be built so close together, small winding roads and not much light filtering through to street level.

I got some good photos (I have my camera back at last!!) I think, and we tried some new and different things, but didn't actually manage to find any galleries or do the touristy thing that day, aside from walking about taking pictures. After spending most of the day walking around staring at things it was time for some dinner (a yummy steak) and then we headed into the red light district. Now that's a weird one. Imagine walking through the back streets of Melbourne CBD, but instead of looking up to closed windows and office blocks, your looking up at open windows of old houses each full with it's own representation of woman kind in various stages of undress. But not only up in the windows, in the basements just below street level, everywhere you look alomst! I didn't think I was that prudish until I went there - I didn't know where to look, and my camera (fortunately or not depending on your point of view) stayed firmly in my bag... Towards the end of the night on the way back to the tram stop we passed by the sex museum, and were going to go in, but being about 11pm they were just about to close. Unfortunately we couldn't find it again, so didn't actually make it inside.

On Sunday we woke to rain, grey skys and wind... Oooh it was cold. I didn't really want to get out of bed, but when you only have a few days somewhere you have to make the most of your time regardless of the weather dontcha?? So we headed out to the city again, and with a little more confidence than the day before seeing that we'd had a good look around. I could tell that from my aching feet - and all that we'd seen, or rather tried to.

We headed to the Van Gough museum first - I was hoping that the rain would ease so that we could go to the sculpture beach. Anyway, once we got there we decided that 13 euros to wait in line in the rain wasn't our idea of fun, so insted went to the Rijkmuseum (I hope I spelt that right!) where all the dutch masters are kept - not actually - that'd be a touch too creepy for me. That was brilliant, Rembrandt, a few Van gough and lots of other master painters that I can't remember the names of.
It was still raining after that though so it was back to a cafe to watch the world go by... and then home again home again, jiggity jig. Hoping to see the sculpture beach on Monday before we left.

Monday is the only day that the museums, galleries and other 'cultural' places are closed, so after checking out the hortus botanicus - botanical park - again we headed to some cafe's. Fortunately it was a lovely day again, Mark sat scetching the square and the quaint buildings that all lean in against each other and I read and wrote as we whiled away the hours to our flight back to England.

So that was Amsterdam, lots of fun, but nothing hugely world breaking. Definitely glad I went and I will definitely go back again too. The streets are so clean, the people are so nice, and it just feels good there.

I'd best go, get some dinner or something.

I miss you all and wish that you had've been with me on my birthday, I'm sure you would've enjoyed Amsterdam too and all that it has to take in. Maybe next year if I make it in time to share the begining of the dirty thirties with you all!