Steve & Ella's Excellent Adventure

London : MACBETH - Featuring Patrick Stewart! On Saturday (the 29th September), Steve and I decided to increase our cultural experiences a little more and head out for a traditional and cliche dinner and a show! We actually purchased tickets for this show before we went to France, just after I dragged Steve to 'We Will Rock You'. We were wandering down Shaftsbury Avenue and saw that Macbeth was opening at the Gielgud Theatre. Steve being a dedicated Star Trek series watcher and a fan of Captain Pickard.. LOL.. INSISTED that we get some tickets. I figured it was a fair trade - I got to see 'We will Rock You' and he gets 'MACBETH' with Patrick Stewart. I also thought that I should go and get myself informed and see what MACBETH was all about. I only ever did Romeo & Juliet in high school, so I figured I should experience this as well. Just a little history on the Theatre itself, it first opened on December 27th in 1906 as the Hicks Theatre. In what named the ...

Destination : Cannes to Paris! Saturday (22nd September), brought the end to our French Riviera experience in Cannes - a very sad, pouty end to our Summer experience... *sighs* We headed back to Paris by TGV (Trains a Grande Vitesse). The bright side was that we got to enjoy the trip back along the coast between Cannes and Marseille and the proceeded to fly through the French country side until we reached Paris at Garè De Lyon around 3pm. Steve and I had booked the same hotel we had at Garè De Nord at the start of our Paris experience, so we caught the Mètro from Garè De Lyon, back to Garè De Nord. On arrival, Steve and I kicked off our shoes and jumped into bed for an afternoon nap. Well I did anyway, Steve booted up the lap top to check email because we didn't have wireless internet at the hotel in Cannes! LOL... He just can't help himself sometimes.... ;o) A bit later on, feeling refreshed from our 5 hours trek across the French country side, we decided to head down to the...

Destination : Monaco - Monte Carlo! Friday (the 21st September), Steve and I awoke to another beautiful morning greeted by the sunshine blaring through our rustic wooden shutters. On awakening, I decided after breakfast we were going to find a way to get to Monte Carlo as advertised in some of the brochures we had seen when we arrived in Cannes a couple of days earlier . I myself had grown up watching Grace Kelly movies and reading about Prince Ranier , Prince Albert and his sisters Stephanie and Caroline, so curiosity just killed the cat. I wanted to get there and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and how the Rich and Famous have flocked over decades to Monte Carlo. After having a glorious breakfast by the beach again, Steve and I headed to the train station on how to get a train ticket to Monte Carlo. For 12 Euro's each return, we hopped on a train and started our 55km journey along the coast towards Monte Carlo. This train was not nearly as luxurious as the TGV tra...

Cannes : Ile Sainte Marguerite! On Thursday (20th September), Steve and I woke up with the sun blaring into our room... and the day had greeted us with a glorious start. Enthusiastic, Steve and I went down to the sea shore boardwalk to find ourselves some breakfast! I impressed the lady in the kiosk by ordering our breakfast in French (a panini for each of us and a strawberry milkshake), so much so she went on to ramble off in French some more. Embarrassed by the fact that I could not understand a word of what she had just said to me, smiled and said "Merci Beaucoup Madam!" *chuckles* That strawberry milkshake was no ordinary one, it was made with real strawberries blended in. What a perfect start to the day, we had our breakfast "Al Fresco" relaxed and in the morning sunshine..with a view to match. With our bellies full (as usual!) Steve and I set out for our truly exploratory walk of Cannes. With the sun now blaring, Steve slapped some sunscreen on every exposed p...

Destination : Cannes! Wednesday (19th September) rolled around and we packed our bags and said Goodbye to Paris for a few days and jumped on a fancy French Fast train - Trains à Grande Vitesse. These guys travel up to speeds of 300km/h which is pretty cool. They are such comfortable trains and have a split level double story almost that can fit heaps of passengers and is roomy and comfortable at the same time. We need those trains back home in Australia I think! I am not so sure Steve is so keen on train travel, me on the other hand love them. For a couple of reasons, one because I grew up on them practically and travelled on the trains with my DAD! The second is that they are the only form of transport involving motion that doesn't make me ill... Cars are OKAY only if I am driving. LOL I know, shocking isn't it? With the idea of future travelling presents the problem of HOW we are going to travel. After our horrendous flight over here (with Steve having not only to nurse me, b...

Paris : Le Tour Eiffel! On Tuesday morning (18th September) Steve and I checked out of our hotel at Garè De Nord and migrated our belongings to our new home for the day/night at a hotel near Garè De Lyon. On arrival we discovered that the dècor in our new hotel was particularly girly... purple infact! LOL.. oh well after a few hours I figured we wouldn't even notice the colour of the walls! After a little rest in our new hotel room, Steve and I set out on foot for our daily dose of exercise and a visit to the Eiffel Tower. That particular day Paris gave us some nice cool weather (after our drenching the night before), I found myself rugging up in a couple of layers. After the nice sunshine we had in Paris until then, feeling a bit cold was a bit of a surprise. Steve and I walked along The Seine River for what seemed like FOREVER to reach the Eiffel Tower. We passed the Museè D'Orsay (which we had been told to visit and was apparently well worth a visit!) and eventually found ...

Paris: Musèe De Louvre! Monday (17th September), Steve and I had a little bit of a sleep in after our late night out on Steve's birthday and our excursion to Avenue Des Champs-Elysees and then to the Trocadèro to view the Eiffel Tower. It was well after lunch by the time we had our errm... BRUNCH and got organised. We decided to try and take the Louvre off our list of things to see as we were told it would be very busy and we would waste half the day lining up! Well, that was a complete falsity if I ever heard one! We got tickets straight away.. INFACT my line up to the ladies toilet prior to entry to the Louvre was longer than lining up for tickets! LOL... The lack of the line may have had something to do with the fact that we arrived at the Musèe De Louvre at around 3pm after a lazy morning and a lazy walk from our hotel room. The weather was also looking a bit dubious that afternoon, so it may have had an affect on the number of people normally visiting the Museum that day. By ...

Paris : Arc De Triomphe! Sunday (16th Sept) & HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY!! Today, Steve and I had a sleep in and of course the Birthday BOY, truely deserved one!! *chuckles* A lazy Sunday, I think it was well around lunch time when we finally ventured out for the day... but the day also blessed us with a glorious day with delicious sunshine... After a yummy lunch near to our hotel room, Steve and I set out on foot to explore Paris in more detail. In our trip planning, we had booked another hotel room close to Gare De Lyon on our final night in Paris before travelling to Cannes from that station. We thought we would be clever and have a test run and fuse the Metro to travel from Gare De Nord to Gare De Lyon. From Gare De Lyon set into our second day in Paris at a leisurely pace and stopped at Jardin Des Plantes. On arrival I took the camera out to take a photo of the interesting looking Dragon figure and realised the memory card was missing! BUGGER - someone had left it inside the laptop...

Destination : Paris! Saturday morning (15th Sept) and a rather early morning brought the excitement and somewhat nervousness about our trip to Paris! Viva La France, here we come.. LOL We planned as much of our trip, booking hotels, looking up the Mètro Map and researching the language so we didn't look like complete bafoons when we got there! I even chatted to some of my internet pals that had visited not only Paris but elsewhere in France to get their opinions and impressions of the French folk. We also brought one of those typical tourist EYE WITNESS Travel books a couple of weeks before hand in order to read about French life, a menu decoder, typical phrases we would need on arrival as well as an intricate chapter on French History. Clichè as it sounds, those books are really worth the buy and we got like an extended remix version with all the provinces of France, what you could see there, a detailed description of architecture and a detailed map of Paris as well as a tonne of ...

London - We Will ROCK you! Saturday (September 1st) Ok, so this blog does not need explanation.. All you die hard Queen Fans out there (BOYS this means you!) pay attention! Steve and I wandered around in London for a bit on Saturday looking for somewhere interesting to have our dinner and not spend another Saturday night indoors. We decided to check out some of the cheaper ticket booths for theatre shows running in London and it seems to be the best way to acquire cheap tickets and half decent seating. After some asking and going from booth to booth we had given up on the idea on going to "We Will Rock You" because all the tickets were either expensive or restricted view seating. Pouting (well I was anyway!), Steve and I started to look for somewhere to eat for the evening and to plan an evening of some cocktails and perhaps finding a club to party in... anyway lucky for us (and much to MY excitement), we found a stray ticket booth somewhere, near Covent Garden or there abou...