♥ pretty-la

Monday, June 23, 2008

If you had been reading my blog for some time, u might notice that i blog more often when i'm busy. like during study period. haha, maybe blogging is more of a stress relief activity for me?

And when i'm free and on holiday, who cares about blogging?! I've got better things to do... Hahaha

Anyway, looooooooooooooooooooads of pictures below.

And i really mean loads. From the short trip i had with Odelia, Tom, Wan Hang and Jasmine. Let the pictures talk shall we..

First stop, Nimes (France).

Why on earth to Nimes, you may ask. Thats because the flight tickets were dirt cheap. 11pounds nett from liverpool airport to Nimes.

We had to suffer the inconvenience for being such cheapo-s though.
The airport shuttle to the city travels only once every 2 and a half hours!
And the best part of it, we missed one.
While deciding on alternatives, we took our time strolling around the deserted area.
Sweet smelling lavenders were growing everywhere!

We decided that it was too long a wait.
We hitched a ride from an old lady who speaks English!!
She was such a nice and kind old lady, who just dropped her daughter and grandchildren off at the airport.
We learnt later through the journey that she and her husband lived in Singapore for a few years, before I existed!

And thanks to the kind old lady, we had a free ride to the train station in town.
What a beautiful way to start our tour as backpackers!

We were told that the most convenient way to travel around Europe is by train.
So we bought Eurail passes (210 Euros!!) that will carry us through 3 countries for 5 days in 2 months.
From Nimes to Lyon we nabbed this cute little boy.

Lyon is a beautiful city.
We only visited the older part of it, but it is really beautiful.
I like France!

We had an unforgettable night in Lyon which only us three can tell.
None of us would like to repeat a night like that ever again.
But no i dont think they will be very happy if i blogged about it, so i shall leave that as a mistery.

We then moved on to Lake Lucerne (Swiss).
A very very beautiful city, and extremely expensive as well.
I've been there before, with my mom and aunt during Easter, but with Tom and Odelia, it was a whole new experience.
As you will see from the pictures below, the sky was very very gloomy.
So there goes our hopes of admiring the fascinating view from the tip of the Alps :(

Next up, Paris.

Another city I've visited during Easter.

But that time we were busy shopping and we left out almost all the important sights of Paris. It was almost like i've never been there before.

And now I proudly claim that I have.

The Notre Dame Cathedral

as stunning as it people claimed it to be.

Whatever the tower below is, you know better than me.

We waited till the sky turned dark just to see the lights on it.

Extremely beautiful.

As quoted from Tom, the sight of it lighted up alone is worth the trip to Europe.

We didnt climb it (7Euros) as we wanted to see the lights from far.

We visited the Lourve as well.

I didnt go in (9Euros), but the other two did.

They saw the Monalisa portrait, so ask them not me!

And there outside the Lourve, we met up with our 4th tour mate - Jasmine.

She's Odelia's friend (now ours) from science.

A very bubbly, cheerful and fun girl.

She speaks excellent chinese!! (shy away you banana-s! haha)

From Paris to Madrid (Spain), we travelled by a sleeper train.

We four shared a carriage (very very tiny one) with four beds, it felt as if we were sleeping in a cradle thanks to the jerky train.

After a good night's rest, we woke up in Madrid!

They have very unique street signs, with pictures describing the place, as a lot of the spanish there in the early days were illiterate.

The symbol of Madrid, the bear and the tree

We bought the same drink - Spirit.

Because again we are cheapo-s. 3 for 2 Euros.

We even visited the Real Madrid stadium!

The gift shop only lah.

Madrid Charmatin Train Station.

They have tropical plants!!

Next stop, Barcelona (also Spain).

Spot us below.

Did you notice we have a new member in our group?

Yes its obvious now, that's Wan Hang!!!!!!

I'm so glad to meet her in Barcelona and have her travel with us.

And yes there's a beautiful beach in Barcelona.

We visited a church, i dont know what church, but its in Barcelona (obviously).

This is the first time i posted the insides of a European church i think?

Oh my, after visiting so many haha.

Candles can be bought and lit up to receive 'blessings'?

?!!!!

And the picture below shows someone confessing his sins to the pope who was sitting inside.

I couldnt take a clearer shot as it wasnt very appropriate, i concluded.

We visited also in Barcelona, a church that's still under construction after 116 years @@

It was such a freaky sight!!!

Ghastly and scary.

That gave us a very realistic idea of how the ancient people built their churches and how the now magnificent buildings used to look like.

And after that we had some time to shop around in Barcelona.

From Barcelona, London.

Did you know that at one point in time these telephone booths were demolished or sold by the British because they wanted to change to more modern telephone booths?

The most ridiculous story i heard was that the Japanese bought them to be used as SHOWER CUBICLES!!!!!! @@

We chanced upon Princess Diana's memorial in the Harrods.

Can anyone enlighten me on what the ring in the middle is all about???

St Paul's Cathedral

W for Wellington

And can you believe it -

WE SAW THE QUEEN WITH OUR VERY OWN EYES!!

we were in our free tour outside buckingham palace when the Queen her very self came home!!

I had it recorded in a video!! but it may not be obvious in the video because all you can see is her car, and not her inside.

but the people present at that moment saw her, wearing her infamous blue hat.

Yup that was her car.

We made the guards laugh.

Caught ya!

And we also saw Princess Ann returning home!!

She even waved to us!

I also video-ed it, but nope, not very obvious so i didnt bother attaching it here.

Malaysian flags are really popular in England!

This is the first time we all saw a Singaporean flag though.

See how excited the Singaporeans were.

Big Ben and the Eye of London.

oh and we didnt know that Big Ben refered to the bell inside the clock tower, and not the clock tower itself!

Now we know.

And from there we bidded goodbye to Wan Hang and Jasmine.

We moved on to Birmingham.

Again cheapo-s like us bought really cheap swiss chocolates without realizing they were expired. We bought 8 bars. And i finished 4 bars. Odelia dumped all of hers to me. haha that partly explains my added weight.