Sam Bell
Staying true to form here is an update on the burn situation - I've actually gotten proper lucky and have a bronze glow, a true Adonis. Peel scarring is minimal, only real backlash I've received is a filthy tan line. Solid effort.
The train ride from Venice to Dijon turned out to be pretty hectic - our train was halted and thoroughly searched by Swiss Border Patrol at approximately 3am, meaning many confused/bewildered teens who were extremely tired later on in the morning. After what happened at the Ancona train station I was beginning to wonder if all our travel across borders would be interrupted (luckily Eurostar was pretty decent, if uneventful).
Once in Avignon we made our way to our hotel in Beaucaire. After the density/volume of my previous blog posts I truly am sorry to disappoint readers, but there isn't much to say about Beaucaire.
- It was definitely the nicest accommodation we encountered on tour, with a spacious 4 boys per room, a pool, and 3 course dinners provided for us by the hotel (* favourite meal simply has to go to the escargot we had on our last night for entree * least favourite would definitely have to go to a dessert which was a marinated tomato, filled on the inside with bitter raspberries - not bad, just very odd).
- Many, many croissants & pan au chocolat were devoured (by the end of Paris I was at the point of turning down pastry).
- Favourite monument can only be the Pont Du Gard - incredible piece of architecture, great dive bombing into the river, great looking girls everywhere… just great all round.
After a reasonably brisk train ride we were in Paris, the city of love, and I was happy to have been rooming with Jack at the Hotel Gay-Lussac.
With very little turnaround time we got straight into activities & sightseeing as we caught the metro to Notre-Dame Cathedral, a simply amazing Gothic Church with awesome stained glass windows. We managed to rock up during a service which was top notch, but I can't say that I enjoyed the heavy smell of incense in the air. After walking through the streets of Paris we arrived at the Louvre Palace+Pyramids - oh damn, the most I'd ever seen of this had been in Angels & Demons/The Da Vinci Code, so to see it in the flesh and get some photos was cool (at this stage I was on edge wanting to go inside). After continuing to walk for a while, seeing an impressive Arch and Obelisk on the way, we were released for an hour to roam the Champs Elysees, where I fulfilled my main goal when in France - going to McDonalds and purchasing a "Royal with cheese" and "Fries with mayonnaise" in true Pulp Fiction fashion (I'd certainly not recommend the Royal to anyone, however New Zealand needs to start giving out Mayo with fries because we are well behind) - Bucket List goal crossed off. After boys threw their money away left, right and centre we came face-to-face with the Arc de Triomphe - very cool, very very ginormous compared to other arches we'd previously seen.
The next day was supposed to be a trip to Les Invalides (the military museum) however as The Don happened to be in Paris and going there also, we respectfully made way for him. Our replacement destination (The Louvre) was not too shabby though… In fact it was remarkable.
The Louvre deserves its own paragraph.
Once inside I decided to opt against roaming freely as I had done in past museums, instead sticking with Bucko - a good call seeing as I would have been stumped by most of the artwork I loved without his presence.
Highlights included the Mona Lisa of course, which was easily the most crowded painting in the museum, and for good reason in my opinion. I tested and found that her eyes/smile do in fact follow you wherever you are in the room. In my eyes though I thought the best part about Da Vinci's masterpiece was the attention to detail that he took on the background, an often understated part of the Mona Lisa that I think can only be appreciated when you are standing up close to it.
Other highlights include some fantastic landscape paintings by Giovanni Paolo Panini, a thrilling depiction of the underworld by John Martin, Guardi's Venice collection, and the Carravaggio's that lined the walls of the Louvre.
After the Louvre we ventured out to La Defence to listen to Oscar's nice speech on what was a truly "disgusting looking arch" (Travis Moore, Master in charge) - Modern art/arches just doesn't quite capture the magic of the old.
We then jogged off to Sacre Coeur, a church on Paris' only major hill. 'Twas Oscar's prerogative to get an artist to draw a sketch of himself, Jack and I - the sketch turned out pretty good for the time restraints we had given the artist, and definitely shows me in a favourable light without any blemishes - so understandably I'm all for it.
Friday July 14th was possibly my favourite day of the trip. Bastille Day in Paris promised to be good and boy oh boy was it ever.
Oscar, Jack and I spent the morning hours recreating the cover of an album that we're all very fond of (Tame Impala's 'Lonerism') as the legitimate album cover was taken at the nearby Luxembourg Gardens.
Attending celebrations on the streets of the Champs Elysees was pretty reasonable, if not extremely crowded, and I took some decent photos of Macron flexing France's military power in front of his guest Mr Trump Side Note - Many of the boys were secretly hoping for some sort of demonstration against Trump to spice things up, myself included. Didn't occur :(
We then make our way to Les Invalides, a French military museum which didn't particularly interest me (I've never been into the whole guns & war thing), however I thought the museum had something for everyone, and many of the boys enjoyed the Nazi section (given that I'm in the midst of reading Mein Kampf I thought this to be very interesting), as well as enjoying Napoleon's whopper of a tomb. My god is this thing big. Take a look at the couch at home, and imagine another couple stacked onto of it - only then do you have an idea of the size of his coffin. He was a hero in France, no doubt about it.
A quick visit to St. Denise in the ghetto of Paris exposed me to more tombs of the monarchs - this time Louis XVII and Marie Antoinette were highlights but all in all a pretty creepy place to be.
Side Note - St. Denise is said to have been decapitated, picked up his own head and walked 15km before collapsing at his grave site; what a load of crap… surely stories like these must make the Christian faith waver on occasion.
Now by this point my day had been as cool/exciting as any other on the trip. It was Bastille Night that made the difference. Many of the boys were not particularly keen on Bucko's idea to attend a classical music concert in front of the Eiffel Tower from 9:30-11:30. I on the other hand was optimistic that it would be a pretty relaxing night and was looking forward to it.
Relaxing, it was not. I'd say that the crowd size was at least 200,000 and more likely stretching to approx. 250,000. This meant that getting a good seat was a tough exercise, though in Oscar Zambuto I had good company, and we barged up the side of the crowd as near to the front as we could, to get a better look at both the band and the Tower. The opera singing was pretty choice, with some of my favourites such as La Donna' Mobile and Sogno being sung, and I was very glad to be in the company of people who enjoyed it as much as I did (both Oscar and the local crowd getting behind the performances).
It wasn't until the French Anthem started playing, the 250,000 strong crowd all started singing along, and the Eiffel Tower was lit up as the French flag till the occasion hit me. I had been impartial to French people up to this point, however watching volumes of people (men and women alike) crying while they screamed their anthem around me was definitely, without a doubt, the coolest/most surreal moment of my entire life. Even a week on I am, and probably forever will be, lost for words.
A morning trip to Le Pantheon the next day saw me staring at the face of death, as most/all of France's heroes were buried there. Highlights included the tomb of Marie Curie, and the tomb of Louis Braille (whose name had been written in Braille alphabet, nice touch). Saw a few monuments/cool things later that morning such as Fauchon, an uber expensive store (they charged 4E for a small coke for crying out loud!!), and a French copy of Trajan's column - this depicting Napoleonic feats.
Our afternoon excursion was a trip to the Palace of Versailles, the place where WW2 was started, as me and Jack joked. Very ornate, very OTT, very very golden exterior. Other than the Hall of Mirrors (where the Treaty of Versailles (1919) was signed) the interior of the palace was a bit of a yawn. Once we reached the Palace gardens it was all gravy baby. They were big, there were fountains, there were light shows, there was classical music - what more could you want from a garden?
When we got back it was free time, which thus meant waiting in line for hours to fatiguingly make our way up the stairs of the Eiffel Tower to see a view that probably wasn't worth the struggle. Happy I did it, unhappy that another group of boys did it in half the time by taking the lift. Ugh.
Another day, another Museum. This time the Musee d'Orsay, featuring the artworks of impressionists and new wave artists (something we weren't used hoped to seeing after being brought up on the brilliant ancient paintings held in the Uffizi and Louvre galleries). Favourite painting may have to go to Van Gogh's 'Starry Night', while most overrated artist in my opinion may just be Claude Monet (purely for what I perceive to be a lack of skill in comparison to the rest of the esteemed art world). The day trip we then took to Chartres was hindered by a pure lack of things to do in Chartres. They had a rockin Cathedral which had some great features non-existent in other churches, namely the 'heavenly beam of light' that protrudes through the stained glass into the Cathedral (cool photo alert). But, Chartres didn't have much else, resulting in a long wait for the train ride back to Paris. Sunday Night television in France is absolutely raucous, with channel 17 screening 2 hours of soft-core porn - definitely an odd moment on the trip having 7 boys in my room at night watching porn on the tv… when in Paris I guess.
The trip on the Eurostar was, as aforementioned, entirely uneventful. For the first couple of days in Britain, this day in particular, I was rather sick with the flu. Thanks to the mum of the trip (Oscar Zambuto) I was sufficiently medicated/hydrated so I somehow managed to stay alive. After quick stops to see the Big Ben (not as impressive in person as I would have hoped, but still one to check off of the list of landmarks) and the House of Parliament we went to Evensong at Westminster Abbey - I found this to be truly dreadful, as I was experiencing major dizzy spells during the long periods of standing, while when I was sitting the choir lulled me to sleep. After walking through to Buckingham Palace (again less impressive, and less grand than I'd envisioned it would be) and through Hyde Park we got back to the hostel which allowed me some much needed rest. Only at night did I realise how bad our hostel was, with 12 boys to a cramped room and only one smallish window meaning intense sweating overnight. Oh how I miss my bed at home.
The British Museum was underwhelming unfortunately, and while it contained the Algen Marbles and the Rosetta's Stone, the other exhibits I was interested in seeing were either closed off or desperately lacking in show stopping art/sculpture.
Bucko lets us roam free at Camden markets - this is where I do a fair bit of shopping. Bought a couple of deluxe edition vinyl (Joy Division and Frank Ocean) for a much better price than I'd have received in NZ (with no scratches) as well as some clothes.
Making our own way to evensong at St. Paul's I got a bit lost and so arrived later than the rest of the group, but just in time so that I didn't miss anything. With my head feeling better I could appreciate the church and the song much more than the prior night. Cool church, cool experience.
Jumped on a train to Cambridge the next day - the best part of Cambridge is definitely the university and it's treasures. We were lucky enough to be toured around by a Grammar Old Boy who is now a professor of Physics at the Uni, and it was great to have the opportunity to enter the library at Corpus Christi College, which contains a collection of manifests/books that were at times over 1000 years old.
Having come back from Cambridge I trotted off to Lillywhites, a sports department store in Piccadilly Circus that had some mighty good bargains. Copped a pair of shoes - am happy with my purchase, they suit me well.
This morning we boarded a double decker to Hamley's, a 5 story toy store. Had I been 10 years younger and many IQ points lesser I would have certainly wasted a bunch of pounds there, however I did my best to keep a grown up attitude and not make any buys. After Hamley's we walked through the rain (typical of any cold English Summer) to the National Gallery (which stood before Trafalgar Square, where I gave a rousing speech). Some fantastic works at the Gallery, including a decent Carravaggio, a great Da Vinci, and Rubens' great rendition of the trial of Paris, a painting I'd seen in far too many Classics slide shows. In my free time which ensued I nipped out to Abbey Road to recreate that classic Beatles album cover - done and dusted. Then took the underground to Harrods to pay an exorbitant price for the mug that Mother has been longing for. After these excursions I prepared for the theatre show I had purchased tickets for: 'The Book of Mormon', winner of 9 Tony Awards including Best Musical, and written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
By golly that was simply the best show I've ever seen, containing huge laughs and a gripping storyline. Whatever you may think about South Park, their satire on the Mormon religion is something to be enjoyed by all audiences - apart from Mormon's of course. Another magical experience for my mates and I on tour.
I'm writing this in bed during my last night in England. Im definitely looking forward to seeing London Tower and London Bridge, though mostly I'm looking forward to going home. At 1 month, this has been a long time away from home, and while I got on well with all the boys I was with, I'm very ready to see family again.
Am loving and missing everyone back home,
Sam.
The train ride from Venice to Dijon turned out to be pretty hectic - our train was halted and thoroughly searched by Swiss Border Patrol at approximately 3am, meaning many confused/bewildered teens who were extremely tired later on in the morning. After what happened at the Ancona train station I was beginning to wonder if all our travel across borders would be interrupted (luckily Eurostar was pretty decent, if uneventful).
Once in Avignon we made our way to our hotel in Beaucaire. After the density/volume of my previous blog posts I truly am sorry to disappoint readers, but there isn't much to say about Beaucaire.
- It was definitely the nicest accommodation we encountered on tour, with a spacious 4 boys per room, a pool, and 3 course dinners provided for us by the hotel (* favourite meal simply has to go to the escargot we had on our last night for entree * least favourite would definitely have to go to a dessert which was a marinated tomato, filled on the inside with bitter raspberries - not bad, just very odd).
- Many, many croissants & pan au chocolat were devoured (by the end of Paris I was at the point of turning down pastry).
- Favourite monument can only be the Pont Du Gard - incredible piece of architecture, great dive bombing into the river, great looking girls everywhere… just great all round.
After a reasonably brisk train ride we were in Paris, the city of love, and I was happy to have been rooming with Jack at the Hotel Gay-Lussac.
With very little turnaround time we got straight into activities & sightseeing as we caught the metro to Notre-Dame Cathedral, a simply amazing Gothic Church with awesome stained glass windows. We managed to rock up during a service which was top notch, but I can't say that I enjoyed the heavy smell of incense in the air. After walking through the streets of Paris we arrived at the Louvre Palace+Pyramids - oh damn, the most I'd ever seen of this had been in Angels & Demons/The Da Vinci Code, so to see it in the flesh and get some photos was cool (at this stage I was on edge wanting to go inside). After continuing to walk for a while, seeing an impressive Arch and Obelisk on the way, we were released for an hour to roam the Champs Elysees, where I fulfilled my main goal when in France - going to McDonalds and purchasing a "Royal with cheese" and "Fries with mayonnaise" in true Pulp Fiction fashion (I'd certainly not recommend the Royal to anyone, however New Zealand needs to start giving out Mayo with fries because we are well behind) - Bucket List goal crossed off. After boys threw their money away left, right and centre we came face-to-face with the Arc de Triomphe - very cool, very very ginormous compared to other arches we'd previously seen.
The next day was supposed to be a trip to Les Invalides (the military museum) however as The Don happened to be in Paris and going there also, we respectfully made way for him. Our replacement destination (The Louvre) was not too shabby though… In fact it was remarkable.
The Louvre deserves its own paragraph.
Once inside I decided to opt against roaming freely as I had done in past museums, instead sticking with Bucko - a good call seeing as I would have been stumped by most of the artwork I loved without his presence.
Highlights included the Mona Lisa of course, which was easily the most crowded painting in the museum, and for good reason in my opinion. I tested and found that her eyes/smile do in fact follow you wherever you are in the room. In my eyes though I thought the best part about Da Vinci's masterpiece was the attention to detail that he took on the background, an often understated part of the Mona Lisa that I think can only be appreciated when you are standing up close to it.
Other highlights include some fantastic landscape paintings by Giovanni Paolo Panini, a thrilling depiction of the underworld by John Martin, Guardi's Venice collection, and the Carravaggio's that lined the walls of the Louvre.
After the Louvre we ventured out to La Defence to listen to Oscar's nice speech on what was a truly "disgusting looking arch" (Travis Moore, Master in charge) - Modern art/arches just doesn't quite capture the magic of the old.
We then jogged off to Sacre Coeur, a church on Paris' only major hill. 'Twas Oscar's prerogative to get an artist to draw a sketch of himself, Jack and I - the sketch turned out pretty good for the time restraints we had given the artist, and definitely shows me in a favourable light without any blemishes - so understandably I'm all for it.
Friday July 14th was possibly my favourite day of the trip. Bastille Day in Paris promised to be good and boy oh boy was it ever.
Oscar, Jack and I spent the morning hours recreating the cover of an album that we're all very fond of (Tame Impala's 'Lonerism') as the legitimate album cover was taken at the nearby Luxembourg Gardens.
Attending celebrations on the streets of the Champs Elysees was pretty reasonable, if not extremely crowded, and I took some decent photos of Macron flexing France's military power in front of his guest Mr Trump Side Note - Many of the boys were secretly hoping for some sort of demonstration against Trump to spice things up, myself included. Didn't occur :(
We then make our way to Les Invalides, a French military museum which didn't particularly interest me (I've never been into the whole guns & war thing), however I thought the museum had something for everyone, and many of the boys enjoyed the Nazi section (given that I'm in the midst of reading Mein Kampf I thought this to be very interesting), as well as enjoying Napoleon's whopper of a tomb. My god is this thing big. Take a look at the couch at home, and imagine another couple stacked onto of it - only then do you have an idea of the size of his coffin. He was a hero in France, no doubt about it.
A quick visit to St. Denise in the ghetto of Paris exposed me to more tombs of the monarchs - this time Louis XVII and Marie Antoinette were highlights but all in all a pretty creepy place to be.
Side Note - St. Denise is said to have been decapitated, picked up his own head and walked 15km before collapsing at his grave site; what a load of crap… surely stories like these must make the Christian faith waver on occasion.
Now by this point my day had been as cool/exciting as any other on the trip. It was Bastille Night that made the difference. Many of the boys were not particularly keen on Bucko's idea to attend a classical music concert in front of the Eiffel Tower from 9:30-11:30. I on the other hand was optimistic that it would be a pretty relaxing night and was looking forward to it.
Relaxing, it was not. I'd say that the crowd size was at least 200,000 and more likely stretching to approx. 250,000. This meant that getting a good seat was a tough exercise, though in Oscar Zambuto I had good company, and we barged up the side of the crowd as near to the front as we could, to get a better look at both the band and the Tower. The opera singing was pretty choice, with some of my favourites such as La Donna' Mobile and Sogno being sung, and I was very glad to be in the company of people who enjoyed it as much as I did (both Oscar and the local crowd getting behind the performances).
It wasn't until the French Anthem started playing, the 250,000 strong crowd all started singing along, and the Eiffel Tower was lit up as the French flag till the occasion hit me. I had been impartial to French people up to this point, however watching volumes of people (men and women alike) crying while they screamed their anthem around me was definitely, without a doubt, the coolest/most surreal moment of my entire life. Even a week on I am, and probably forever will be, lost for words.
A morning trip to Le Pantheon the next day saw me staring at the face of death, as most/all of France's heroes were buried there. Highlights included the tomb of Marie Curie, and the tomb of Louis Braille (whose name had been written in Braille alphabet, nice touch). Saw a few monuments/cool things later that morning such as Fauchon, an uber expensive store (they charged 4E for a small coke for crying out loud!!), and a French copy of Trajan's column - this depicting Napoleonic feats.
Our afternoon excursion was a trip to the Palace of Versailles, the place where WW2 was started, as me and Jack joked. Very ornate, very OTT, very very golden exterior. Other than the Hall of Mirrors (where the Treaty of Versailles (1919) was signed) the interior of the palace was a bit of a yawn. Once we reached the Palace gardens it was all gravy baby. They were big, there were fountains, there were light shows, there was classical music - what more could you want from a garden?
When we got back it was free time, which thus meant waiting in line for hours to fatiguingly make our way up the stairs of the Eiffel Tower to see a view that probably wasn't worth the struggle. Happy I did it, unhappy that another group of boys did it in half the time by taking the lift. Ugh.
Another day, another Museum. This time the Musee d'Orsay, featuring the artworks of impressionists and new wave artists (something we weren't used hoped to seeing after being brought up on the brilliant ancient paintings held in the Uffizi and Louvre galleries). Favourite painting may have to go to Van Gogh's 'Starry Night', while most overrated artist in my opinion may just be Claude Monet (purely for what I perceive to be a lack of skill in comparison to the rest of the esteemed art world). The day trip we then took to Chartres was hindered by a pure lack of things to do in Chartres. They had a rockin Cathedral which had some great features non-existent in other churches, namely the 'heavenly beam of light' that protrudes through the stained glass into the Cathedral (cool photo alert). But, Chartres didn't have much else, resulting in a long wait for the train ride back to Paris. Sunday Night television in France is absolutely raucous, with channel 17 screening 2 hours of soft-core porn - definitely an odd moment on the trip having 7 boys in my room at night watching porn on the tv… when in Paris I guess.
The trip on the Eurostar was, as aforementioned, entirely uneventful. For the first couple of days in Britain, this day in particular, I was rather sick with the flu. Thanks to the mum of the trip (Oscar Zambuto) I was sufficiently medicated/hydrated so I somehow managed to stay alive. After quick stops to see the Big Ben (not as impressive in person as I would have hoped, but still one to check off of the list of landmarks) and the House of Parliament we went to Evensong at Westminster Abbey - I found this to be truly dreadful, as I was experiencing major dizzy spells during the long periods of standing, while when I was sitting the choir lulled me to sleep. After walking through to Buckingham Palace (again less impressive, and less grand than I'd envisioned it would be) and through Hyde Park we got back to the hostel which allowed me some much needed rest. Only at night did I realise how bad our hostel was, with 12 boys to a cramped room and only one smallish window meaning intense sweating overnight. Oh how I miss my bed at home.
The British Museum was underwhelming unfortunately, and while it contained the Algen Marbles and the Rosetta's Stone, the other exhibits I was interested in seeing were either closed off or desperately lacking in show stopping art/sculpture.
Bucko lets us roam free at Camden markets - this is where I do a fair bit of shopping. Bought a couple of deluxe edition vinyl (Joy Division and Frank Ocean) for a much better price than I'd have received in NZ (with no scratches) as well as some clothes.
Making our own way to evensong at St. Paul's I got a bit lost and so arrived later than the rest of the group, but just in time so that I didn't miss anything. With my head feeling better I could appreciate the church and the song much more than the prior night. Cool church, cool experience.
Jumped on a train to Cambridge the next day - the best part of Cambridge is definitely the university and it's treasures. We were lucky enough to be toured around by a Grammar Old Boy who is now a professor of Physics at the Uni, and it was great to have the opportunity to enter the library at Corpus Christi College, which contains a collection of manifests/books that were at times over 1000 years old.
Having come back from Cambridge I trotted off to Lillywhites, a sports department store in Piccadilly Circus that had some mighty good bargains. Copped a pair of shoes - am happy with my purchase, they suit me well.
This morning we boarded a double decker to Hamley's, a 5 story toy store. Had I been 10 years younger and many IQ points lesser I would have certainly wasted a bunch of pounds there, however I did my best to keep a grown up attitude and not make any buys. After Hamley's we walked through the rain (typical of any cold English Summer) to the National Gallery (which stood before Trafalgar Square, where I gave a rousing speech). Some fantastic works at the Gallery, including a decent Carravaggio, a great Da Vinci, and Rubens' great rendition of the trial of Paris, a painting I'd seen in far too many Classics slide shows. In my free time which ensued I nipped out to Abbey Road to recreate that classic Beatles album cover - done and dusted. Then took the underground to Harrods to pay an exorbitant price for the mug that Mother has been longing for. After these excursions I prepared for the theatre show I had purchased tickets for: 'The Book of Mormon', winner of 9 Tony Awards including Best Musical, and written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
By golly that was simply the best show I've ever seen, containing huge laughs and a gripping storyline. Whatever you may think about South Park, their satire on the Mormon religion is something to be enjoyed by all audiences - apart from Mormon's of course. Another magical experience for my mates and I on tour.
I'm writing this in bed during my last night in England. Im definitely looking forward to seeing London Tower and London Bridge, though mostly I'm looking forward to going home. At 1 month, this has been a long time away from home, and while I got on well with all the boys I was with, I'm very ready to see family again.
Am loving and missing everyone back home,
Sam.