Fete De La Musique

Ok, I know its cold and miserable back home, but I guess the good news for you is that the days will start to get longer now. Over here of course, people are a little depressed as now we begin the long slow slide into the deep dark coldness of winter. But there is still a couple of months of summer to go and what better way to celebrate the summer solstice than to have a massive nationwide party.

As far as I can work out every year on the night of the summer solstice, France hold a festival called 'Fete de la Musique' literally, The Festival of Music. I saw some ads for this and I had in my mind the idea that this festival, would involve a whole stack of large stages in parks around town where everyone would go and see some free music. Oh how wrong I was. The festival is sooo much bigger than that, there were bands and music on pretty much every street corner and outside every bar all over the city. On our street alone, there were about 8 or 9 sites where you could go and watch music, and there were people absolutely everywhere, it very difficult to describe just how big it was.

This was the scence on our street at about 10pm, 20m from our front door.


So we grabbed a beer and joined the festivities in our local area. I reckon we wandered around and looked at about 25 different places where music was being played all within about a 1km radius of our house, you name a genre of music and you would find it. From Rap & Hip Hop, Indie, Grunge, Reggee, Rock, Jazz, Classical, Drum & Bass, Electronica, whatever you want you can find it somewhere. There must have been thousands of bands and artists playing all over the city on the night, judging by just the small sample size that we saw.


Sadly it was a Sunday night but that didn't stop us (espeically myself) from having way to much to drink and waking up on Monday morning with quite the hangover.

The South of France

We made our first trip down to the south of France on the Mediterranean Coast last week. Thursday morning we flew from Paris down to Marseille, hired a car and then made the hour drive around to Cassis (where Rach was going to a conference) and then onto La Ciotat (where we were staying)

I have to say it was pretty nice, I went and hit the local sports store to grab myself a snorkel so I could go snorkelling in the Mediterranean, as the weather was pretty hot, (32 - 33 degrees)
We went to a few "beaches" (I use quotation marks as I would hardly describe them as a beach in the traditional sense, as we are used to in Aus)

This particular part of France is famous for 'Calanques' which according to wikipedia, is a geologic formation in the form of a deep valley with steep sides, typically of limestone , in part submerged by the sea. It can be considered a Mediterranean fijord. So I went swimming in a few Calanques, and it was pretty cool, and there were heaps of awesome sea creatures to look at and generally have a relaxing snorkel.
This is a small Calanque we went swimming in

We went to a couple of other more normal sorta beaches with sand and stuff that were pretty choc o bloc full of people on the weekend. (and chicks sunbathing topless, which is the thing to do here apparently)

Generally its a pretty nice area, there are a lot of people with much browner skin than me, and a lot of people with much bigger boats than me as well. (There were some enormous boats in the marina in La Ciotat)

France v England - Rugby League Test

Some interesting illustrated points on Rugby League here in France

1) Rugby League is not called Rugby League here, its called 'Rugby XIII'. Normal Rugby, (with 15 players) is called simply Rugby like at home and not 'Rugby XV' as you might expect based on the logic in the name for Rugby League.

Here is the French 'Rugby XIII' team pre match

2) People don't give a shit about Rugby League here. I would guess that last Saturday night at the Penrith v Manly game at Penrith stadium, more people turned up to see that than turned up for a test match between France and England in Paris. The crowd at the test match we went to was a whopping 7,500. Infact I just checked and 15,806 people went to Penrith Stadium on Saturday night, so thats twice the crowd at the test match.

Look at the massive crowd below (the referee was Aussie Jarred Maxwell)


3) France suck arse at Rugby League, (just incase you didn't already know)

This was the score 18mins into the first half


The game was mildly entertaining, the Poms did score some very entertaining trys, however it was pretty much one way traffic for most of the first half, and the French defense really struggled.



There were not a lot of Poms in the crowd, so it was a pro french crowd. (and of course we were going for them as well) Sadly there was not much to cheer about in the first half, infact there was nothing to cheerabout at all. (As you can see below)


Here is the halftime score


We were entertained however throughout the entire match by a bunch of uni students in a band who were sitting very near to us and kept the crowd entertained with music and cheering throughout the game, and a few choice songs at half time.



The second half was a little better for the French (who actually managed two tries) and restricted the poms to 4 . However the most entertaining part of the second half, occured with about 10 mins to go. A gentleman jumped the fence, wearing nothing but his underwear (I am sure you know where this is going) and then ran onto the field. Once he was on the field (and still running) he decided now was the time to remove his underwear. He fumbled around with his jocks for about 15 seconds, finally tripping over them as he tried to pull them past his feet.
On the ground but not preterbed, he jumped back to his feet and begun more of his merry run around the field, this time being hotly pursued by a security guard. There was no gang tackling as you would expect at home, the security guard casually grabbed him, (as the man knew his game was up) and he was casually led from the field, to cheers and applause from the massive crowd.

Here is the streaker beind led away


10 mins later, and the misery was over for the French, the final score,
England 68 - France 12

More London

The following 2 days in London were spent catching up with friends, and doing some sightseeing. London was interesting but not quite as exciting as I had always thought of the 'Mother Country'

But I did have lunch at a Gordon Ramsay resturant, which was very nice (although around the same time I heard he had had some fairly fruity things to say about Tracey Grimshaw) Whatever he said I couldnt care less, cause his pork belly was freakin awesome.

We also wandered around the Tower of London, and had a look at all of the usual touristy stuff oh, and we had Nandos TWICE in London, mainly because there is no Nandos to be found in Paris so had to get my fill of yummy Nandos before heading home to Paris.



I could not find the Hoff anywhere!



I found the name of both of these places rather amusing for some reason

London - The Cricket

OK, so we awoke to grey skies on Saturday morning, which was the day we were supposed to be going to the cricket at 'The Oval' to see a double header in the 20/20 World Cup. The first game was to be between New Zealand & Scotland, with the second game scheduled to be Australia v West Indies.

We were staying in a hotel very close to the groud (a lot closer than we realised) and decided to catch the Tube to the ground (which invloved changing trains) We later discovered where we hopped on the tube (Vauxhall) was only 500m walk to the oval. (There were people getting off the Tube obviously going to the game as we were getting on)

We alighted from the Tube at the Oval tube station, and stepped out into grey skies and rain. It was still pretty early in the morning, (9:30) and the first game was supposed to start at 10. Once inside however as a result of the rain the covers were on the pitch and the likelihood of play was very low. ( As seen in these pics)



However around midday the rain stopped, they started to peel off the covers, and by 12:30 it was declared that at at 1pm we would have some cricket. The first game, NZ v Scotland would be reduced to a 7 over contest. (How utterly ridiculous, WG Grace would be turning in his grave if he knew such a thing was going on) Scotland batted first and made a very respectable 89 runs from their 7 overs, but expectedly NZ, peeled off the runs with 1 over remaining.



The Aus v WI game started at 2:10 and was to be a full 20/20 and indeed they managed to get all of the overs in. Australia were 3/30 after about 5 overs and really struggling, Dave Warner made 59 and was by far the highlight of the innings, he smashed a massive six that went right out of the ground. Ricky Ponting was out for a duck, and didn't almost everyone in the ground love that.

I felt sorry for myself and all of the other Aussie who were there in the crowd because there were:-

a) West Indians
b) New Zealanders
c) Scots
d) Pommies


all baying for some Australian blood. Especially all of the Poms, who were depressed at the fact that their team had lost to Holland the night before. So every Australian wicket, and every West Indian six, was greeted with great excitement.

In a nutshell, Australia got smashed, and everyone enjoyed it.





There were a few strange things about being at the cricket here

1) It was freaking freezing. The weather never got above 16 degrees the whole day and got down to about 10. It felt like being at the footy in the middle of winter it was that cold. I have never worn anything more than shorts, a t-shirt and thongs to the cricket in my life.

2) Beer. It was served in pints and full strength (it was Fosters sadly)

3) Food. I had a curry for lunch, (which was great because the weather was f##king freezing)


I should be thankful that we got to see any cricket at all, although a different result would have been nice. When we left the ground we walked back to our hotel and were suprised to realise just how close we were actually staying to the ground. Indeed it was less than 10 mins walk away. It also showed how much time we wasted in the morning catching the tube there.

London - Part 1

Arrived in London last weekend, (on the train, only 2 1/4 hrs from Paris, and 1000 times for comfortable) specifically for the cricket, but also went around and did a few other sight seeing type things and managed to cram plenty into what seemed like an all too short weekend.

First of all I am going to do a little bit of a multiple choice quiz with you. See if you can choose the correct answer.

The weather in London was :-


a) Cold
b)Wet
c) Windy
d) All of the above


The correct answer is "D - All of the above"

Yes thats right, I dont think I saw the sun the whole time we were there. But we didn't let that deter us. As proper tourists in London for the first time, we took in the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. (I was looking for Lindsay Buckingham, but I couldnt see him anywhere. Or any other members of Fleetwood Mac for that matter)



After that we wandered into town and had a look at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament




Which was then follwed by a trip on the London eye. I must say the actual eye is a fairly impressive thing, and the ride, is not overly exciting. Lets face it, London aint exactly the most prettiest city going around. I am sure if the Thames was not so brown, the city would look a lot nicer.


In the evening we went to Shakespere's Globe Theatre, to take in some Shakespere. I was suprised how much I enjoyed it. Thankfully we saw a comedy, 'As You Like It'. I thought it would be a little bit boring, but it was about 50x better than I expected.

Carni Alert!

Went to an awesome Carnival thats in one of the park on the edge of town called "Faire du Troine" Its basically like the Easter Show's side show alley, that rocks up to Paris for a couple of months every spring. To be honest I can't stand travelling carnival attractions. I think working in a theme park for so many years turned me into a bit of an amusment park snob. Theres something that just never looks safe about temporary attractions. Also it sadens me to report that French Carni's do not look as feral as their Australian counterparts.


(We went on this ride)


There were a lot of the usual carnival treats, We had a lot of people screaming at us in French to come over and try out their games of skill. (75% of which involved shooting) Also on the subject of the carnival games, superficially it appeard to me that there were some pretty awesome prizes that could be won on a lot of the games. Plasma TV's, WII's, PS3's XBoxes, Iphones all appeard to be very standard type prizes across a lot of the games there. But I guess having all this cool stuff on display is what is supposed to sucker you into playing. That being said, had I have won a 42" plasma TV, I am buggered if I know how the hell I was going to take it home on the metro.

There was one pretty good looking temporary roller coaster there simply called 'King',


and it was by far the best temporary roller coaster I have ever seen in my life. It wasn't like most of those crap 'wild mouse' style coaster you see at the easter show, etc etc, it was a real fair dinkum roller coaster, that was an actual train of carriages all joined, as opposed to the usual one or two carriage thing you see.