James & Heather Travelogues

As the date came closer and closer and the weather got progressively worse; I was seriously contemplating pulling out due to "illness". Nevertheless, on the day we were due to set off, I got in the car. The journey down was uneventful and the weather looked as if it was going to clear up... Fat chance, within 24 hours it was pouring down; by the end of the week our campsite was a swamp (not helped by a farmer pulling out stuck cars with his tractor and chewing up the ground in the process). The rain by itself wasn't too bad, but it was also windy with it - I thought I was going to develop trench foot at one point and I ended up chucking a load of clothing that was damaged by the rain.

Still there was the beer to keep me sane...

Just a quick posting to vent: we have just suffered the misery that is Charles De Gaulle Airport. I have been through some dodgy airports (the one in Lanzarote springs to mind) but seriously this CDG is the worst by miles, or more accurately lightyears.

On arrival at the airport station, you are presented with 3 choices of terminal to go to but no information as to which airlines fly from each terminal. Not a problem except each terminal is a couple of miles from the station and you have to catch a shuttle bus to each one, except terminal 3. We took a random guess of it being terminal 1, but it turned out to be terminal 3- naturally. We caught the shuttle bus back there and then had about a 1km walk to get to the actual terminal itself. During this walk, I suggested to Heather that the airport has to stop the traffic when a plane takes off because it looks as if they share the same road.

On arrival, we had a queue of hundreds in front of us and the check in staff quite frankly were not only slow but at random intervals wandered off for no apparent reason. When we eventually got to check in, the check in clerk said "your boarding time is now" - and we still had the joys of passport control to get through. However, that was not a problem as there were still people stuck behind us, so they had to delay the flight to get them all processed.

On getting through passport control, we were keen to get something to eat & drink because we had left the hotel at 6am. €19 Euro later, we were the proud owners of a sandwich and a coke each. I was tempted to get them preserved in isopon rather than consume them at the price we paid.

In short Charles De Gaulle airport is terrible and I will never whinge about Heathrow terminal 4 again.

After our all too brief stay in Germany, we caught an express through to Paris. Although this was not originally in our plans, a good friend of ours had a business trip there and it seemed like a good chance to get to catch up and watch a couple of world cup matches.

At this point, let me be frank: France is the capital of love and a cultural & fashion centre etc, however Heather and I had both been there before and really there are only so many times you can look at the Eiffel Tower before you long for fish & chips, sticks of rock and seagulls flying overhead. As such, when we were not in the pub watching football matches, we were catching up on sleep or in transit to the pub. As such, our activities in Paris were a bit limited - even more so once we realised that a beer weighed in at €7.50 per pint. It was a bit of a shock after the cheap beer in Bratislava, Prague and Cologne.

One of the most important games that we saw while in Paris was the final group game for Australia. I had two very happy Australians with me after that match, however it was nothing compared to the French game played after that. Once France won the game, the Parisiens went nuts - more than nuts, stark raving bonkers as if they had won the World Cup. After the match, the Champs Elysee was chock-a-block with cars blaring their horns, people leaning out the car windows and everyone hugging each other. If they win the damn thing, it's going end up in a mass orgy - or maybe a riot, as that's what the French are more famous for