Firenze coat of arms - looks pretty like a flower.
And I'm back home with a sprained ankle and a left foot that's acting up. Talk about speaking too soon.
But the two days I did Pisa and Florence was lovely (in spite of bad ankle).
There is something so satisfying about exploring a city on your own... it (the city, the wanderings physical, mental, emotional) becomes extremely personal that when you're done, you leave with some sort of self-made connection to the place.
It's like, if I ever go back there in the distant future, I'll definitely be swamped with feelings of nostalgia over and over again walking down the same paths, seeing the same sights, noticing the same etchings on stone walls you once sat against and stoned (sans weed of course) till your hearts content.
Man beheading another man. Quite disturbing if you ask me. The stuff coming out of the neck looks all entrails-ish.
And then there was the place at the Piazza Della Signoria with about a dozen statues (replicants of the originals like the one above) in a hall-like area with steps where I sat down, took out a book and munched on Snickers (too lazy to find lunch). And this on the way to Ponte Vecchio which is a bridge notable for the shophouses all along it selling touristy stuff.
Ponte Vecchio
And the gelato. Omg, the gelato. *love*
And I should prolly mention that my Olympus battery went kaput on the morning of day 2 so most of my Florentine sights were captured on my not so canggih W660 cameraphone.
Santa Maria del Fiore (cathedral) at the Piazza Duomo, Florence. One of my favourites. The intricacies of the architecture was absolutely breathtaking. Four or six times I walked past this structure to and fro from the hostel and four or six times whenever my eyes set upon it, I had an awed moment. No kidding.
When I saw the leaning tower of Pisa, I chuckled, amused by its determined inclination (pun) to the aberrant. No, but seriously, it looked so silly leaning to one side and all.
Conquered Pisa - proof. Check out that blue blue sky - not Photoshopped at all!
A gajillion people were on the grass in that square camwhoring with the tower, pushing it, pulling it, leaning on it, keeping it up with one finger, holding it up with feet while lying on the ground, carrying it, making sure it doesn't fall down, etc watever you can think of lah. Quite the funny.
I have a theory: the shorter time you have in a place, the more you appreciate it.
Other than that, I discovered I have horrifyingly fat arms (when did that happen?).
And that the cats in Greece talk back in Greek (ask Ee Lynn why). I named this one Alpha. Ignore the fat arms.
And that anything, any situation, put Indians to it and it becomes funny. Like Heathrow immigration officers. Like American-accented yuppies on a Eurotrip lost and rushing in the airport (think lots of Kal Penns):
"Dude, hurry up, what airline are we on?" "I dunno, check the screens!" *pause* "It's all in Greek!!"
ROFL. You-had-to-be-there kind of thing.
But I digress. This post is about Greece.
And we climbed an active volcano, swam in sulphurous hot springs (after which our bathing suits and clothes stained orange and smelled funny), slapped on (or rather slathered it on) extra high protection sunscreen every two hours, slept in like kings of the universe, sneezed, got up late to do whatever the hell we damn well pleased and ended up to the brim with arrival, departure times, boarding gates and passports. Travel is a killer.
It's the destination that makes it seem worth it.
I still wanna sit on my Glasgow bed and rot rot rot oh how doth i miss the days of rotting at home, dying of boredom, nothing to do throwing precious life away pls help me God.
Land of canals, trams, legal highs and bicycles, easy sex and quaint houses.
I'm all dizzy from my trip. A tonne of chocs (literally) (I blame the influence of Kak Yan). Stroopwaffles, ... bleh, what's this annoying PSD profile annoying my Nemo inbox.
Funny dogs and geese parading themselves around Europe.
When the SAS plane bumped onto onto Kiruna ground, I woke with a start, looked out the window and saw this:
Cheyy, nolah, tipu. The view at the airport not so hebat. More like this:
But still! White white white!! Everywhere white! Okaylah, I've been to Aviemore slopes for skiing and it's all white there too but I still can't get used to the fact that my surroundings are predominated by the colour white. Soft snowy white.
At this point in the trip, my heart was racing already! Excited-nyerrrr!!
At the airport
Then a Swedish dude with killer radio station tracks in his van came late to pick us up which got us worried a bit.
No really decent picture of him so here's an artsy fartsy one.
What really kills is that he can't speak any English and we don't understand any Swedish. So our entire trip with him sending us around, we had to try very hard to communicate with sign language and whatnot. Actually most of the time we nodded like we understood while he went on happily mumbling in Swedish like a Sims character. Lol.
First night, we rode the snowmobiles to see the Northern Lights but the weather was bad (not Aviemore ski trip bad but just a lil too snowy to ride up the mountains) and it was snowing so we couldn't see any Northern lights that night. Boo hoo. But Cherie, Lynno and I built the first snowman:
A lil cacat but HEY! damn hard to build a huge snowman kay?! The snow was so soft, it didn't want to compact itself and the more snow you put on it, doesn't seem to make a difference to the size so we made do with the small size snowman we had. =D
After that, Kah Wei went and trampled on it like so mean. That barbarian. =(
The next day found us snowmobiling again in the sunny sunshine! The sunlight glittered off the snow flakes so the whole area looked so glittery like glitter dust!
See the sparkles?
Snowmobiling is the bee's knees, yo!
Fo shizzle! Dunno why Cherie didn't want to drive the snowmobile at all - she say thumb pain. I ambil kesempatan and offer to be her driver for the entire trip. Lol!
Up the mountains we go on our frickin' cool snowmobile.
Emo at top of mountains pic.
Then Desmond made us pose like this. =S Haha. But it's all good. Chinaman got some nice photos on his cam there.
Back down again for some authentic Swedish cuisine - reindeermeat with potatoes and lingonberry jam. Slurp slurp. Yummeee!! Also warm lingonberry juice to drink as we sat on warm reindeer skins by the smoky fire!
Salivate!
Then for the dog sled ride we went!
The stupid dog look. Darn cute!
'Course we do! So cute! So handsome! How not to love?! Sumore purposely make cute face for the camera! Wa piang!!
Off we go through the snowy wilderness of the woods where if you're lucky, you can catch sight of reindeer tracks in the snow and maybe even spot one!
Of course we didn't. We saw reindeer in the city tho and not only on our lunch plates!
On our last day in Kiruna, we went to the famous Ice Hotel! It was so amazing! Ice sculptures of every kind! Even a church that people can go get married in and then honeymoon in the hotel and also the Absolut Ice Bar!!
An ice toilet us Asians all gathered around to camwhore with.
Best room in the Ice Hotel. A dragon sculpted into the walls with the tail you can see at the left, the body going round the room ending in the head (which is the bed) in the middle of the floor. Awesome possum.
The other best room in the hotel. You can't see it well in the picture but those are three ice horses we're riding up there. They look really cool cuz they're so real.
The other other best ice sculpture in the hotel: It's an ice car! The headlights would be lit but you can't see them in this picture. The tracks ran along the walls of the room.
Colourful cocktails at the Ice Bar served in ice glasses which are SEK 25 which is about RM 12 per glass. The green colour one was custom-made for Kah Wei. Apple-flavoured too. The yellow is lychee, blue is blueberry, the red one is lingonberry juice.
Cherie advertising the cocktail. "Drink Ice Tundra cocktail for good health! Made from essence of bear's bone and fortified with 24 vitamins and minerals. Drink Ice Tundra and get healthy and energetic today!"
We be chillin'. Me and Lynno be smokin' cigars and sippin' colourful drinks while having intelligent conversation upon the ice chairs.
Klah. A ton of other Ice Hotel pics buthen too many to post up. So moving on!
Random French dude running out onto the icy snow in his tinies into sub-zero temperatures in the camp after steaming in the sauna for about an hour:
Steaming hot!
Unrelated, but some French dudes wanted to invite Lynno to the sauna for some uh... intelligent conversation and hot tea! Lol. French magnet!!
ICE FISHING!!
I'd be lying if I said we caught 35 little fishies that day!
Our Snow Slide Architect Anson Tan!
He built all the snow slides we slid on. Got different difficulty levels sumore, kay, don't play.
Video of Cherie on the most dangerous most steepest slide of all!
Evil Lynn scheming to throw a snowball at Hansel!
A good picture of me and Leif, the tour operator with the funny Swedish accent!
XD
Leif: "You all have to be careful on the snowmobile! Every year, 5 tourists die while on the snowmobile" Us: *stun* Leif: "I joke!"
Us very kesian sitting on reindeer skins huddling up on the cold cold cold misty area of the frozen lake with frostbitten fingers and toes just to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights on our very last night and caught a glimpse of it we did and complete our Kiruna experience it did.
MORE cute doggies!! This time they're all caged up in their van cage and ready to go home to their home! Such sad eyes they have!! Why??
I know it sounds extremely cliche but I'll take the risk, all in all, Kiruna was truly an experience I'll never forget. Dog sleds, snowmobiling, snow slides... sub-zero temperatures, Northern lights... Aiyuh, where else?? Was so sad to leave the place and go back to depressing Glasgow where abundant work awaits and lurks in the depths of my messy uncleared study desk. =(
But blogging this just made me happier already! Hahah! Oh yah, not to forget, Yannee made a nice Kiruna trip video that I like which nicely sums up other aspects of the trip. Go watch go watch! Got nice soundtrack also!
That's me stoning in awe at the most beautiful sight ever at the top of the snowy mountains in Kiruna. We drove our awesome snowmobiles up there (and back down again).
From Aviemore on the way to the slopes of Cairngorm Mountain...
The White Witch lives here I honestly kid you not!
Skiing may have sucked donkey balls (excuse the vulgarity but those are the only words fit to describe how it went) but the view and the scenery was amazing!!
Yea yea so the wind chill at the top of the mountain was a happy -30 degrees Celcius and the instructor just made us ski ACROSS the slope (not downwards) for the two hours we were up there... freaking hard to ski ACROSS the slope without actually slipping downwards which was gee, I dunno, the most natural physical thing to do since us humans are not quite free from the governs of the laws of physics and maybe say gravity might pull us downwards the slope but NO! apart from not knowing how to ski, we had to learn how to ski ACROSS the slopes!!!!!!
So it was snowing as well up there and the wind was blowing it straight into our faces and when the instructor told us to look at her, look at how she's doing it! we mostly had our faces turned away from the wind and away from her and honestly you couldn't face upwards at all because little flecks of icy cold snow was beating into your face like miniature daggers, after awhile, your cheeks will turn red and hurt like mad from frostbite which would have already made your fingers hurt like mad too and they were very hard to move. You also couldn't speak properly after that because your face was frozen stiff.
Also, if you think your scarf and beanie was gonna keep you warm, hah! Think again cuz the snow just collects on the scarf and beanie and your breath will melt the ice on the scarf so little icicles form on them like candy floss when you lick it. And your black beanie is so white with snow it's grey! And icicles form on your face and eyelashes as well and if they don't they prolly melt so you have a very very wet face.
After two hours up there, I was about to cry and so so ready to give up. We trudged back to the train downwards and like little abused puppy dogs, we climbed ourselves back onto the bus (our refuge from the cold) and ate our lunch sandwiches and waited the hour before we went home.
We didn't even feel like skiing again on the lower slopes like the others did (they had so much more fun than us!) and we didn't even feel like going out to play in the snow and camwhore with the beautiful white mountains behind us... It was like 60 pounds burnedddddddd. Psstttt...
I soooo hope Kiruna isn't bad like this. Haih. It was cool tho cuz everywhere around you was white white WHITE!! Soo cool!!! And the snow collected on the tree branches and made them look like in the fairytalessss!!! And I sooooo felt like prancing around in the snow covered woods and going on mysterious adventures and chancing upon some friendly fauns who will take me back into their lovely warm homes hidden somewhere in a burrow under the snow and we'll have biscuits and warm tea by the fire and I'll fall asleep from all the merriment and wake up to find that I've been kidnapped by some evil White Witch and now my trusty friends will have to come find me and save me!!! Wooott!!! So magical I tell you.
If only!
The only picture of me and Cherie with the white mountainous slopes behind and our skis and poles. Taken well before the horrors of -30 degree Celcius wind chills began. We were actually smiling!!!
Tomorrow will find me stuck in a lab messing around with tablet-making machinery and god knows what else and that is assuming my ever concerned supervisor whom I see only once a month has formed a work plan for us all like he promised way back last month to which we have not heard a single word from him regarding it. I wonder if I should start worrying myself.
Two and three days ago found me flung high up in the highlands of bonnie Scotland all the way in the wee village of Drumnadrochit (yes, try pronouncing that if that's your first time seeing that name) to visit the famous famous Loch Ness and visit it we did and traversed some part of it by boat we did and frolicked around and did the Msian thing (camwhored) around the ruins of Urquhart Castle we did and survived the near zero temperatures and played with snow when we saw it and cooked in a communal kitchen and sat around singing songs of merriment and made joy and happiness surround us and we feasted like kings and queens of the highlands and slept almost uneasily but luckily Sony Ericsson headphones saved the bloody night *gives Amir the evil eye* we did.
So anyway, as I was taking photos atop the highest point in the castle (which isn't very high lol), Nessie poked his head out and I didn't notice till I went through the photos on my camera just now.
When I went through my pics, I also found out that I am a very very bad photographer. I take stupidly random photos of scenery that doesn't really focus on anywhere anything oh I'm such a failure. Related to me and whom also has a problem of being out of focus (as in the subject of the photo appears anywhere but in the middle where you want it to be) is my mum and I conclude that this trait in inherited and shall rest my case dear goodness.
Looking back two three weeks, I had a wonderful holiday season. First time I didn't just sit around and waste away like a rotting carcass on the side of the highway. Now everytime I think about starting labs and work and whatnot, my heart and my spirit just drop literally drop I can so feel it drop to the bottom of my stomach and it presses against my intestines and then I get constipation. Grrr.
Today we traversed the forgotten realms of Middle Earth, reiterated the footsteps of a ranger elf striding stealthily through the woods, relived magical fantasies of childhood innocence ala Enid Blyton complete with red-orange leaves crunching satisfyingly under footsteps (which made being a stealthy elf even harder), hidden spaces in nooks and crannies for the hiding when sulking at the parents and stashing of beloved odds and ends, quaint cobblestone bridges crossing over rivers onto the other side where the chimney sweep lived, climbed The Pollock Beech Tree (THE!!), followed white rabbits down rabbit holes and Totoro-like underpasses with leafy tunnels, and by inches missed the cunning trickery of evil witches who lived under evil trees with evil branches ready to snap out a wily hand and pull us down into the undergrowth so she can fatten us up for little children stew.
And I came home wondering if like us, English children ever dreamed of having a kampung childhood in the sawah padi, wooden house of stilts, kelapa trees for the climbing sort of environment and if they don't, would they be dreaming it if they were brought up reading books about above-mentioned kampung childhood?
And then I also thought that all childhoods are precious things whatever type it is, whatever country you're in, whatever environment it is, as long as you have fun, run around carefree like a child should, create games you entertain yourselves with, then you haven't any regrets.
It's a cool place. Very la happening. It's a melting pot of so many different nationalities and races, you even have a whole road (Edgeware Road) catering to Arabic cuisine (think shisha, hommus and lamb shawarma).
Dunno why but it's a trend for Malaysians to stay in Bayswater which is where all the food is at. There's so many different kinds and all along one convenient road. There's the kebabs, chinese food, japanese, waffle cafe, pub grub. And the Tesco there sells HALAL CHICKEN MEAT which is cheaper than the non-halal kind. Unfair lar. Glasgow should have a larger Muslim community! Then finding good food wouldn't be such a pain.
Expenses-wise, it's prolly cheaper to live in Glasgow... I mean, in London, travel is already effing ex (£1.50 for a single tube trip - without an Oyster card, it's £4 which is what I kena-ed the night I arrived XD) oh yea, 90p per bus ride (w/o travel card its £2) and London is big kay, so you GOTTA take public transport to go out and have fun.
Cheapest kebabs there are say £3 and the portions are pretty small so I'd say the food in Glasgow is cheaper... Or at least, the kebabs in Glasgow are cheaper - £2.75 for a "small" kebab and it'll last you for lunch and dinner.
However, like I said earlier on, it's happening. Got lots more things to do - musicals, plays, cinema, bowling, ice-skating, sports, food, clubs, etc. Generally more stuff happening there every night compared to here where the locals usually just go to pubs to have fun. Should be hard to get bored in London...
Now have to catch up on studies. The guilty feeling already permeating the bones like an early morning chill.
At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Aug07. And the goon laughing in the background is me. Oh I love to see people make fun of themselves.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
PARIS
The city I've wanted to visit all my life. Blame the media and whatnot for all the hype.
The city is very good for sightseeing and walking around all day till your feet hurt like mad (but that's how you know it's been a good day, right?). Perhaps the most impressive sight I saw when there was the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Very amazing architecture - very detailed and it struck me with awe at how a cathedral this huge and beautiful was built way back then. Breath-taking.
GERMANY
I liked Heidelberg best tho - small and cosy like grandma's cottage with milk and biscuits by the crackling fireplace. Very small town - the whole town can fit into one postcard picture or onto a keychain the size of a 20cent coin! Just castle, bridge, church, one main road Hauptstrasse - 20min walk from one end to the other, and then the modernized part with the Hauptbahnhof.
Did you know that Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, the guy who invented the Bunsen burner which we all use in Kimia labs today, was a professor from the University of Heidelberg?
....
Frankfurt, we didn't see so much of. I doubt the Romer and the Romerberg and St Paul's Church is all there is to Frankfurt. Not as personal as Heidelberg but I like Germany in general. What more, our hostel landed us smack in the middle of the red-light district. WOS - World of Sex right next to our front door and a whole street, both sides lined with XXX shows.
And a tram missed Hansel by an inch on his left side. Just like that.
The Merc car my dad drives around in KL like it's so posh and classy... well in Germany, they use those for taxis.
TRAVEL TIP #1: We may look cosy there but sleeping in airports and spending nights in train stations is prolly not a good idea if you plan to do some heavy sightseeing the next day - you'll be too sleepy to enjoy the city.
