Volume 4: Pete in Europe Part 3. A young balding mans journey through 10 countries and back
Day 5 – Paris to Lyon
Today we headed off to the city of Lyon, or as it always seems to be pronounced; “Lyon - The Gastronomic Capital of France”. Our first stop was the official Contiki wine chateau, Chateau de Cruix. We were told it was there we would enjoy some wine tasting. When someone tells me I’m going to partake in some wine tasting I assume that I’m about to taste more than one wine. This assumption proved to be wrong. When I went to the Melbourne wine festival a few years back they didn’t rent a few acres at the exhibition centre and have the same wine at each of the stalls. The fine folk at the Chateau talked about around 5 wines they produce, but must have only felt confident that only one of them was a decent drop because they refused to crack open any other bottles. We also were taught the correct way to taste wine. The first step is to hold the wine up to a light source to see the colour. The second step is to swirl the wine around the glass to gauge the alcohol content. The third step is to put your left foot forward to give “your boys some room”. The fourth step is to suck the wine through your front teeth to clean your palette. The final step is to skull the wine and go get another glass. This is a Contiki tour; you don’t want more than 4 hours a day spent being sober.
It was earlier in the day we experienced our first rain on tour. I couldn’t remember that being mentioned in the brochure and was on the verge of asking for a 1/21st discount on the cost of the tour, but the day soon cleared up and all was good again.
We reached Lyon – the gastronomic capital of France, late in the afternoon. I was pleased to discover there were no annoying street hawkers in Lyon – the gastronomic capital of France. When on tour you want to embrace the cultural differences, but with the hawkers you just want to punch the cultural differences in the face. You feel like grabbing them by the scruff of the neck and saying “If I said no to twenty-five others selling the same crap as you, why would I say yes to you?”.
It turned out the elevator in the hotel was made by Europa 2000, the same as the previous hotel. I’m not sure what the 2000 stands for, maybe the number of minutes it takes to advance one floor in this make of elevator. You couldn’t really complain about this elevator as it was probably twice as fast as the elevator in the previous hotel, which of course meant you would have only had enough time to translate half of the bible into a different language before you reached your destination.
As we all headed off for dinner that night we walked past a dog taking a dump into an empty beer bottle. Which naturally forces you to ask some questions. How do you train a dog to do that? Who trains their dog to that? I found the whole thing odd; here was an animal that spent all its day sniffing the butts of other dogs, yet somehow had standards when it came to dropping a turd. I guess it’s better to not ask questions, just embrace the cultural differences.Dinner turned out to be an interesting experience as a Spanish/French/English speaking fellow name Andre served us. He managed to keep all the ladies on our table entertained with his antics and truly earned his tip that night. I’m sure the wine made him seem funnier than he was, but everyone had a good time and that’s all that counts. Also while eating dinner a group of women celebrating a Hens night walked passed our table, which is sure to happen any time you sit outside. The woman about to be married was dressed up as a baby and was carrying a basket and handing out condoms. I figured she must have been just about to start a family and was doing the right thing by the community by giving away her condom stash so that they could still be put to good use.
The night finished in my room, or as I dubbed it “The party capital of Europe”, with civilised games of “Shithead”, “Snap” and “Pig”. A few people almost lost an eye while playing Pig as the game requires you to touch your nose at the end of each hand, with the last person touching their nose getting a letter from the word Pig. The drunken noise was well contained so that only two floors were kept awake.
Day 6 – Lyon to Nice
This day was spent largely on the bus, and as such was largely uneventful. As we made the long journey to Nice I saw my first major road accident, well post major accident, on a highway in Europe. Some guy had rolled his truck over and thus spilled the entire contents of its load. Thankfully, it appeared that no beer was lost in the accident. On a lesser note, I think the driver was okay too.
We reached Nice late in the afternoon and I was pleased to discover there wasn’t a hawker in site. Nice came across as having a wealthy population, so wealthy they could afford to kill all their hawkers and cover it up with no questions asked.
After we all checked into the hotel and tidied ourselves up, we were off to Monaco for dinner. It was as we gathered at the Hotel entrance, or exit depending on which way you’re travelling, we noticed a guy walking his dog. The dog looked like it had a dodgy hip, which affected its hind legs and its use of its tail. The owner of the dog, wanting his dog to keep some self-respect, walked behind it holding its tail up. Fellow Tourer Glenn, a vet in the UK, quickly diagnosed the condition and said the dog really wouldn’t be feeling much pain, probably just pins and needles in its hind legs. I don’t think he agreed with my diagnosis that the dog had been drinking and that it was on its way to becoming legless.
Another thing you notice about Nice is that there can’t be many empty beer bottles on the streets, so the dogs are forced to dump on the footpath. Judging by some of the specimens a lot of the dogs had been looking for an empty beer bottle for about a month before they just gave up and emptied their small and large intestines. Some of the samples were so big you’d swear that Nice had cross bread its dogs with ponies.
Dinner tonight was a Contiki optional. Judging at the pace at which they served and removed the food from the tables our tour manager had informed the restaurant we were in hurry. A hurry like a man told he has 24 hours to live and he wants to do everything he never accomplished before he dies. The plates were virtually being thrown onto the tables like Frisbees, and being removed just after they landed. Brad H had made the mistake of keeping his fork off his plate for more than 3 seconds, leaving the restaurant staff with an opening to remove his plate. Apparently it didn’t matter that there was still food on the plate.
After the whirlwind dinner, I think it was dinner I blinked and missed most of it, we headed off for the Casino Royale. It was there we had an hour to try and generate the 1 million euro required to buy citizenship in the tax haven that is Monaco. The casino was located at the hairpin on the Formula 1 track, another chance for me to annoy people back home by pointing out each lap of the race “I’ve been there”. My game of choice was a mechanical horse game where you could gamble on 6 little horses that ran around a little oval. When I won 11 euro on the first race I knew I was going to like this game. A few races later I won 8 euro and later 6 euro. With ten minutes before our departure time I had succeeded in turning that vast fortune back into the 5 euros I started with. For my last race I decided to bet on 5 of the 6 horses, ignoring the favourite and thus assuming I was about to say goodbye to my 5 euro. Well, it’s hard to describe the excitement you get when you see a 60-1 horse fly around the outside and to certain victory. I knew the horse was home a fair way out from the finish line so it gave me a few extra seconds to take it all in. I was now only 999,940 euro away from citizenship in Monaco. I couldn’t find a government official to make a 60 euro deposit on citizenship, so decided to hang onto my newly acquired wealth and shout the boys the first few beers of the night.
It turned out those first beers would be served in one-litre steins. Man, I was beginning to love this region of the earth. Unfortunately the bar turned out to be ridiculously hot and over crowded so we all decided to head back to the hotel and consume some of the fine wine some people had acquired from various supermarkets throughout France. We tried to do the right thing and find an area of the hotel where we could make noise without waking anyone. We were told by reception we could go to the fifth floor where there was an open area with chairs and apparently no one on the floor. I say apparently because at least two times some French guy burst his head out of his room and told us to go to bed, or something along those lines. My French isn’t that good when I’m drunk. If the French had had that sort of fire during WWII then maybe it would’ve taken more than a week for the Nazis to reach Paris. Around 2am Frenchie got his way and we departed back to our rooms. Some of us carried on the party in Aalok and Brah H’s room (my room, “The party capital of Europe”, had been shut down due to the fact my room was next to the tour managers room). It was about 4am when my body decided it should get some rest, so I sent it back to my room for a solid 4 hours sleep.
Day 7 – Nice
It’s hard to make a day that was spent mostly with my ass firmly planted on a towel on a beach interesting, but I’ll try.
Brad H and I decided to head down to the beach where we were supposed to meet Mojo at 10:30am. When it got to 11:15am we decided that wasn’t going to happen so decided to wander around Nice. The amount of crispy, brown/yellow locals was amazing. There were also a lot of people running along side the beach on the promenade. It appears that the most important part of running in Nice is your technique needs to be as pretentious as possible and you should be aiming for a look-at-me action. I saw more different running techniques in an hour at Nice, than I’d seen in my entire existence. It’s amazing that a simple thing like running can be done in so many amusing ways. Another thing that catches your eye on the beach is the huge number of breasts. It was just a sea of breasts, if that is the correct collective noun to use. Judging by the talent on the beach I believe the collective noun should be a “Nice of breasts”.
Somehow dragging ourselves from the Nice of breasts, we went looking for an internet café. When another couple on tour said they had passed three that were closed, we gave up and got something to eat. Whilst sitting outside enjoying my meal, a swarm of around ten cops on a combination of motorbikes, foot, and in cars dived on some shady guy and threw him in the back of the cop car. It all was over so fast I didn’t have time to reach for my camera and take an action shot.
As it was a hot day, and the beach seemed so inviting, Brad H and I decided the only alternative was to head back to the hotel and get our swim wear and towels and had for the beach. We ran into Todd B on the way to the hotel and it appeared that he and Carmen found the idea equally as good and were on their way to the beach as we headed to the hotel. It was hard to keep Brad H’s excitement down as he rushed to the beach. Sure I was excited too, but I knew that many breasts couldn’t leave inside the hour it was going to take for us to return to the beach. On the way back to the hotel I noticed that the two to one car to car park ratio also applied in Nice. All the cars were at least an inch smaller than when they had been when they rolled out of the show room.
At the beach we met up with Mojo as well, and it turned out there was a discrepancy in what we thought the meeting point was, and what she thought it was. We dropped our towels, took off our shoes and dived into the ice-cold water of the Mediterranean. It was highly refreshing, and highly conducive to shrinkage. Todd B, Brad H, and I were delighted when we discovered there was a guy walking around the beach with an esky selling beer. Beer and breasts, all I needed now was sport on a big screen and I would’ve been in Utopia. After a few hours, the ladies headed off for some shopping. Us boys decided to just kick back on the beach and relax. That lasted about an hour until a freak wave came up and almost washed our stuff away. We moved back about a metre, only for the next wave to come in even further. We then went back two metres and were ready to get back to relaxing when the third freak wave come up again and drenched half our stuff. We took that as a sign that our butts weren’t destined for that part of the beach and decided to go for a walk to check out the talent. There were two chicks who waved us over, but one of them had a boyfriend so we figured three didn’t go into one and it was going to be too much of a logistical nightmare figuring out the situation so we didn’t make our way across. I spent so much time on the beach that day that I developed sunburn on my face. Well, all over my face except for where I had my sunglasses on. This meant I had a big white area around my eyes, something my fellow tourers were all too keen to point out. I, personally, thought it was a good look that bought the blue out in my eyes.
Dinner for the night was described by many as “cat food”. Enough said.
After dinner it was off to a pub called Chez Wayne’s, another establishment that survived on the many Contiki people that went through. It was there that I partook in some Karaoke and vast quantities of beer. That was followed up by a long session of dancing on tables until closing time. How I managed to avoid falling from that shaky table is something you’d have to ask the Gods, as I’m sure at least one of them was holding me up that night. I couldn’t remember how I got home, so I know it must have been a great night.
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