Europe - 4

Still in Chamonix today, and I've been deliberating whether or not I want to go paragliding at a nearby paragliding school since we arrived. Chamonix in the summer also offers hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing… and an adventure park!

Chamonix has a lot to offer, but when you're not sure if you're leaving today, or tomorrow, or in a few days' time, it's very difficult to plan what you want to do. Given the price and the timing, I sadly dropped the paragliding idea and we went for the very adult decision of going to Les Planards adventure park!

We awoke in our free hotel room to spend a day roaming the touristy yet placid and beautiful town of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, wedged in the heart of Chamonix Valley between Mont Blanc, Le Brévent and Aiguilles Rouges.

With last night's tartiflette digested, the day was spent generally vegetating around the town while we waited for news on the car that broke down yesterday. We returned to the tourist information office to exploit their free Wi-Fi and did a little bit of shopping.

This morning we were in Avignon — a city once full of religious old farts popes and anti-popes — indeed quite a powerful place, if I understand correctly. After consuming what can barely be described as the dregs of breakfast from the Etap, we headed out into the town to investigate.

However, we had a slight conundrum to deal with first…

Awoke this morning with a goal of getting the real part of the road-trip started. Now that the wedding was over, it was time to decide which way back to Brussels we were going to take. Specifically, we were trying to decide which side of France to traverse.

Armed with the 2€ road atlas that Scott and I bought on a whim just prior to taking our trip and a coin, it was decided relatively adventitiously that we would return via the Eastern side of France…

After a long sleep-in, we awoke to a boiling hot day in Aigua Blava. Since we could see Wedding HQ from our rear terrace, we noticed things were a little bit hectic over there. This isn't really surprising, considering Cath & Max were to be wed today!

We decided to head into Begur for some lunch, but indecision kept us from choosing a place to sit down for lunch…

After catching the last remnants of breakfast, and a brief visit to the ATAC in Aumont-Aubrac for some bottled water (and some other… stuff…) we headed back on the A75 through the Massif Central.

While heading over a ridge, I noticed a bridge in the distance that appeared somewhat familiar, if not somewhat enormous. An excited idea popped into my head that it could be the Millau Viaduct — the very bridge Scott and I were looking for when we were crossing back into France from Spain…

Being invited to Cath & Max's wedding in Spain, Aline and I took it upon ourselves to take a little holiday. Living in Belgium, it seemed perfectly logical to go on a little road-trip — there and back.

Two years ago Scott and I embarked on a road-trip that had many ups and downs but taught me many things about how a road-trip can be conducted. Scott has fortunately maintained his website, Smile in Europe, which contains a few photos taken along that particular journey.

With my birthday coming up in a few days, I've been struggling to find some time for myself. I keep inventing projects for myself, but never actually have the time to dig into them and make any satisfying progress.

One example is that I still haven't made any progress on my appalling level of French, and there's no hope in hell that I'll be running in the 20km of Brussels half-marathon this year.

I suppose I need to keep in mind what Ferris Bueller once said, “Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

It's been quite a while since my last little Benespection post, and considering it recently snowed for the first time this year — surprisingly just as winter officially ended — I thought I might share some snow pictures with you all.

Being Australian, I tend to have a slight fascination with snow, but on this particular occasion some of us were actually trapped by it…

Rollercoaster Season has once again rolled around as marked by the opening of the Walibi season for 2008 this weekend. As with last year, an early glimpse into what's changed within the park — or what's not working yet — is somewhat necessary.

This season opener didn't highlight anything spectacular to report, except that the Vertigo was once again being tested and wasn't taking passengers. There was once unique aspect of this visit though: It was snowing!

I'm flying home today, surrendering the fantastically warm and sunny weather here in Melbourne and returning to the gloomy, miserable, cold weather in Brussels.

This also means psyching myself up to return to the office: Urgh.

Sadly I missed out on seeing a few of my friends, but maybe you lot can come over to Brussels at some stage!

So long Melbourne; I'll be back!

A friend of mine has recently started working for Thalys, and therefore she's gained access to some free tickets for the Thalys network as an employee perquisite. We decided to exploit this for some time away from the Christmas-shoppers in Brussels by going to The Hague for a weekend of tourism.

Well, at least the original idea was to go for a bit of tourism…

At the risk of seeming a bit like Seven Up!, I thought I'd have another crack at this day in the life stuff. After last year's effort, I was curious to see what had changed.

Apparently, not much!

I couldn't possibly have a Christmas without my Mother asking for pictures of Christmas lights in Brussels. Not much has changed since last year, although this year's lights on the Grand Place are even more tacky…

I’ve been trying to avoid using my holiday time from work so that I can use most of them for my eventual trip to the arse-end of the world at the end of this year, thus keeping as many holiday days for next year as possible. To this effect, I haven’t taken much in the way of time off this year at all.

So hectic was last month, I didn’t really get much time for myself to decompress, and the national holiday of November 1^st gave me the perfect excuse to was time to relinquish some holiday time to finally unwind a little.

Fortunately Aline was kind enough to offer an escape by way of her family’s chalet in Chiny, so on Thursday morning we trundled down towards the French border with John for some well-earned time away from everything and anything for four days.

…Or so we thought.