Day 91 Born to Walk

As we send this final blog we are about to head to the airport to catch our final flight home. We would like to thank all the people who have read this blog and hope that in some small way you have enjoyed our adventure. Writing this blog for us has been a lot of fun and we want to thank all who made comments and the occasional corrections. We did famously write once, that ‘we were on a ferry that went on a train’ but fortunately one of our readers picked this up so we corrected our error to say ‘our train went on a ferry’ (remarkable enough really). To end with adjectives would be impossible because we have used wonderful, adventurous, exciting, delightful and fabulous already far too many times. We have had the holiday and adventure of a lifetime and we are very grateful to have had this opportunity. We will end with a few statistics that in some way sum up our 91day trip around the world – Born to Run 2008.

Countries Visited: 15 countries and two principalities.
Highlights: Too many
Lowlights: Very few
Plane Distance Travelled: 56 233kms
Train/Tram Distance: 16 538kms
Taxi: 200 kms
Bus : 688 km
Boats: 389 km
Walking: 1 266 kms
Total Distance a little over 74 744 kms
Cost: Let’s just say we achieved our goal of living off our salaries for three months -no big bills when we get home. Yippee!!!

We need to thank our kids Hannah and Tim for looking after the house, cars, bill paying and dog for three months. We need to thank our employers for long service leave and the Australian Government for not abolishing this wonderful working condition that seems to be enjoyed by very few people around the world. We are looking forward to catching up with our many friends and family over the next few weeks.

Michael Pallin said recently that travel made him realise two things- that the world was actually smaller than he thought and not nearly as scary. We would agree with that conclusion and add that it is also more diverse, wonderful, beautiful and interesting than we had ever imagined.

Finally we end as we began with Mark Twain’s wonderful words

“20 Years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the boundaries. Sail away from the safe harbour and catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, dream, discover".

Day 90 A splurge on the way home

After 13 weeks on a tight budget our greatest highlight in Hong Kong is our accommodation. Before our trip began we booked all our accommodation except for Hong Kong. The plan was to see how the budget was going and maybe book a nice hotel online on the way home. In fact we are about 22% under budget for the whole trip so we decided it was fitting to end in style.

We booked a room in the Shangri La, a fancy 5 star hotel in Kowloon. We had stayed in one of their other hotels in the past and we knew that we were in for a treat. However what really convinced us to stay here was the following items that were thrown in as part of a package deal (seemingly almost designed for us)

a. Free airport transfers in a limo. After countless metro, train, bus, tram and long walking excursions to find our accommodation this sounded like a wonderful treat.
b. Free laundry. For 13 weeks we have hand washed our clothes every night and hung them out in various places around our often very small rooms to dry. After seeing some of our clothes come back from the laundry we are astounded to be reminded of their original colour. Had we paid for the laundry they have done for us it would have cost a ridiculous $250!
c. Free Breakfast. Probably the most challenging meal each day of our trip has been breakfast. When we had cooking facilities we could organise some cereal and milk but often we had to resort to a bread roll, croissants or bagette. About half we through the trip we bought a small plastic container, which served as Wendy’s breakfast bowl while Richard used a metal travelling mug. Free breakfast, with lots of choice, is heavenly.

d. Free Internet. We have had this in some places, especially hostels, but after many weeks of being Internet pirates it has been nice to end connected.

e. Late check out at 6pm on the final day. Again this was perfect as our flight home leaves at 11pm

f. TV in English! Again such a treat and as we have not had TV in English for about 7 weeks.

The room is sensational, the bed is such a delight (we could write a series of blogs about the standard of beds around the world but we might leave that for another day), the harbour view is resplendent and it’s so nice to end in a style that we are not used to at all!

As much as we enjoy this 5 star treat it is worth reflecting on the whole trip. We estimate that had we stayed in this standard of accommodation throughout the trip the total cost of our adventure would probably have been 2 or 3 times as much. So Born to Runs in the future will need to continue to be on a tight budget,but there is nothing quite like a celebratory, end of trip, under budget splurge!

Day 89 Asia's world city

Our final destination before home is Hong Kong. To be honest we hoped to have a stop over on the way home and we asked our travel agent to book us into any destination that she could get for us as ‘frequent flyers’. You may remember that our 11 flights for this trip were all part of an around-the-world frequent fliers Qantas package which we were able to redeem without cost (apart from $600 for taxes). Lois managed to get us a flight to Hong Kong, a place we had never been to, so we thought – why not! And again we have been incredibly surprised and delighted by our short stay here.

We have done the touristy things. We rode the tram to The Peak and viewed the city and harbour at sunset. We sampled just a small slice of the vast opportunities for shopping. We rode the old and cute double decker trolley cars up and down Hong Kong’s main island. We caught the Star Ferry across the harbour for the total cost of 22 Aussie cents. We even experienced the sparkle of Hong Kong’s famous nightly light show. We can’t help but love this crazy Asian city, which feels like Chinatown on steroids.

Hong Kong is in many ways fascinating. As the model of Chinese capitalism it shimmers. There seems to be more French, New York and Italian designer shops here than anywhere in Europe. There also seems to be many more Asia tourists than western tourists. At the same time it’s obvious that the city is increasingly associating itself with its new status as part of China. Olympic fever is almost at boiling point and Chinese nationalism is evident, yet they still tolerate a permanent protest outside the main ferry terminal staged by the members of Falun Gong. The food is cheap and better than any Chinese food we have eaten at home and the aggressive hawkers on the streets, who try to sell us suits and watches, only add to the exotic flavour.


Hong Kong rightly deserves its boast that it is Asia’s World City.

Day 87,88 Mama Mia!

We are very fortunate, as we draw this adventure to a close, to have lives that we love, waiting for us at home. As much as we are sad that this journey is coming to an end we are looking forward to going home and seeing our family, our friends, our church and our community and of course the dog.

We left our apartment in Paris early and travelled by metro to Gare Nord for our final train trip in Europe. The Eurostar to London did not let us down. Two hours and ten minutes later we had arrived at St Pancreas station in London – it was a perfect, fast, smooth train trip that reminded us yet again that there other fast ways to travel, apart from cars and aeroplanes. Train travel in Europe has been a smorgasbord of wonderful and challenging experiences. We have been on very fast trains and very slow trains, sleek modern trains and old rattlers, clean well-organised trains and Italian regional trains (enough said). What really surprised us is that 98% of these trains have been electric; the Europeans are in much better shape to endure a post ‘oil-reliant’ world than many other parts of the world.

Once in London we had about 9 hours to wait until our flight left for Hong Kong at 9.15pm. We had planned to put our packs into the luggage storage at the station and spend the afternoon looking at a few sights in London that we had missed on previous visits … but we had not counted on the rain. London is notorious for drizzle, but on this day we encountered a whole months worth of rain on one day – and not for the first time we had to resort to Plan B. With the help of the tube we found our way to Leicester Square and a cinema to watch a pre-release session of the new movie Mama Mia.

Having seen only one movie in 3 months it was great to sit in a theatre and watch a movie in English. With Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth as part of an all-star cast, and with the hits of Abba surely this movie couldn’t go wrong. Well the movie was bizarre, curious and also a delightful experience. Bizarre, because musicals are a strange genre, and also because none of the middle- aged leads could really sing – although they do try hard. Curious, because the story has been made up to try and tie together a group of very diverse songs. Delightful, because as teenagers of the 70s we laughed, and cried and sang along to a movie shot on location in a glorious part of Greece. We wondered what younger people would make of this strange musical that invites the audience to laugh at itself, but it did fill up our afternoon in a most enjoyable way. With a little more time to kill we found ourselves in a wonderful bookshop in Charing Cross Road where we were delighted to find a whole bookshop packed with titles in English (while in Europe we have often been restricted to one shelf). Of course we couldn’t resist the temptation and we bought a couple of books for the trip home.

We left Britain from the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow; which now seems to be working perfectly. British Airways looked after us for 11 hours and even provided a spare seat next to us, which made our trip not so ‘squeezy’. It was nice to hear English being spoken around us but we were puzzled about how the UK could be so close to Europe and still have such terrible food.

Some 24 hours after leaving Paris we arrived at the final three-day stopover on the Born to Run 2008 Tour, Hong Kong.

Day 86 Being ourselves

Day 86 was our last full day in Europe. As has been the pattern for this whole trip we easily filled the day. In the morning we visited the Musee d’ Orsay, we admired the wonderful old building, which had once been a railway station and loved the opportunity to see some of Europe’s finest artworks. We enjoyed the rest of the museum but the impressionist paintings of Monet and Renoir had the greatest impact. In the afternoon we ended our almost perfect 6 days in Paris with a Bateaux Cruise up and down the Seine. We have seen Paris by bus and on foot and also with the help of the metro, but to travel along its famous river was a wonderful way to end our trip to a city that deserves its reputation, as being the most beautiful city in Europe.

Our final dinner in Paris was like no other dinner of the whole trip. Daniele, the delightful French woman, who has rented us her apartment, invited us to her house for a home cooked meal. To end this way was perfect, but we did have one dilemma.

Like any couple we have our own unique likes and dislikes. One thing about us that is very unaustralian is that we don’t drink alcohol. We are not reformed alcoholics and it is not really for religious reasons it’s just that early in our marriage when money was very tight we simply could not afford to drink and we got out of the habit. With a job as a pastor, Richard is basically always on call, and he feels that he cannot really afford to be affected. Also after years of not drinking it seems really too much effort to start. We tend to annoy waiters in restaurants by asking for tap water, but we do like the fact that we can keep our costs down by not drinking wine. Also from a pastoral point of view we have seen, at close quarters, the destructive impact of alcohol on too many lives and communities. Even though we are in no way ‘members of a temperance society’ we just find it easier to enjoy a cup of tea rather than a glass of wine.

However once we were invited to Daniele’s for dinner we started to worry about what we should do. How can we refuse wine, which to the French is so much a part of a meal? Should we take a bottle of wine? (a very hard thing to do when you have no idea what to buy) Should we relax our no wine policy for just one night and be polite to our hostess? In the end after lots of agonising we decided to just be ourselves, and be ready to apologise for our preference for water. We also decided to take our hostess chocolates and flowers instead of the usual bottle of wine.

Daniele has been the perfect landlady and she proved to be the perfect hostess as well. When we arrived the inevitable question arose about what we would like to drink with our meal. Meekly we apologised about wine and asked for water. Our host responded with delight. She too was a non-drinker and was more than happy to treat us to water. She told us how embarrassed she often felt when guests (especially Australians) arrived with a bottle of wine, plonked it on the table and said “Open her up!”. Danielle confessed that she was not very French as she doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink wine and she doesn’t even eat cheese. She told us that in her opinion the perfect guest in France always bought flowers, not wine. What a relief and a nice reminder that we are, who we are, and on the road or at home it pays to be true to ourselves, rather than trying to live up to the expectations of those around us.

Two months in Europe has been an education, an adventure and a delight. Home cooked Quiche Lorraine, apple flan and bottled water with a view of the Eiffel Tower ( from the widow) was the perfect conclusion.

Day 85 With a little more digging

We have used many sources to seek out the lesser-known places in the cities we have visited and Daniele, the owner of the apartment we have rented became a great source of information about Paris. We had previously visited the Louvre and this time we were planning to visit at least one of the other famous art galleries in Paris, The Musee d’ Orsay. Our local expert was able to mark on a map another lesser known gallery where we could find a really remarkable exhibition of impressionist art; a gallery called the Musee de l’Orangerie.

Because the weather was again a little cool and bleak we were pleased to arrive at the gallery right on opening time and avoid a long wait in the rain. The building was originally part of the palace gardens but has since been renovated to display Monet’s eight huge canvases called Les Nympheas which follow a common theme; waterlilies. The paintings line the rounded walls of two rooms that form a double ellipse. The largest of these paintings is over 18 metres long. Without the crowds of the major galleries we were able to enjoy Monet’s greatest works in relative peace. We were also able to appreciate these wonderful works all the more because we had actually been standing in Monet’s garden the previous day.

Speaking of maps we probably need to confess that there have been several wonderful places that we have missed because in spite of a trusty tourist map we just could not find them. Sometimes the maps are a slightly inaccurate. Often middle-aged eyes miss the odd detail. Occasionally we pay the penalty for holding the map upside down and then sometimes we write down the address incorrectly which does not help. On Day 82 we had failed in our jaunt through the Latin Quarter to find a famous English bookshop called Shakespeare and Company. On Day 84 we again went looking for this Paris landmark, we almost missed it again but eventually we found this real treasure. This bookshop is over 60 years old and has a quirky and fascinating collection of old and new books in a tiny shop quite close to the River Seine. The shop looks like an old house and it contains almost twice as many books as it really has room to hold. But the atmosphere, the clientele, the books, and in short the ‘vibe’ of this place made it a real find.

Paris is a city that is filled with treasures. Many of these are clearly evident for everyone to see, but with a little digging and a degree of perseverance, rarer finds can be made, which are even more precious.

Day 84 I'm only good at two things- painting and gardening.

Claude Monet once said that he was only good at two things- painting and gardening. Before taking the opportunity to view some of Monet’s beautiful impressionist paintings we travelled out, on Day 84, to the little town of Giverny, which is about 75kms from Paris to visit Monet’s Garden. This was to be our last journey using our two-month Eurail passes.

Monet was quite correct about his own assessment of his ability to garden. Having bought a little place in the Normandy countryside Monet’s garden grew over the years, as he was able to buy other blocks of land from his neighbours. The garden is a
cottage garden and although it was showing the effects of Europe’s recent heat wave the garden was a delight. Like an English cottage garden Monet’s garden is a wash of colours; pink, blue, purple, mauve, white, with splashes of red, orange and yellow. It is a garden of varying plant heights and foliage and is dominated by perennials. Roses, salvias, windflowers, geraniums, lavender, and daisies form the understorey of the garden with beautiful weeping willows and other trees framing the gardens’ canvas. The centrepiece of the garden, is of course, Monet’s wonderful lily pond which he painted over 600 times. With the river running down the side of the garden Monet was able to divert the water to feed his pond. The garden paths wind around the pond and the whole garden is reflected in its still waters. The water lilies and their flowers are highlights while the beautiful bridges allow the visitor to cross the pond and enjoy just being part of the whole landscape.

A cottage garden is often filled with beautiful flowers, but sometimes the ‘dead heads’ on the plants can be as interesting as the living flowers. We were rather pleased that the garden was far from perfect and we thought that it looked more authentic than some other professional perennial borders which have had every trace of death removed. With the clever use of annual planting using geraniums, impatience, begonias and petunias the gardens just looked like an artist’s pallet.

The town of Giverny remains quite unspoiled and charming. We sat in a sunny park and ate our baguettes, which we had brought with us for lunch. During a long walk through the village we discovered the local church and Monet’s remarkably ordinary family grave. With a delay to get a return bus we filled in another hour eating pate and chips (French Fries) at a local hotel made famous by the artists who flocked to this country village during Monet’s life.

Monet’s house and garden left us with many images of country life in this lovely part of rural France and we left feeling inspired to get home and fill our own house and garden with colour and life.