Florence

I was a bit at loose ends in Florence. While my last trip was extremely quick, it was thorough and I saw most of the main sights. This time, I decided to take it easy and go see some of my faves and anything I missed out. This involved getting up at the crack of dawn to go to the Uffizi.

Long time readers of this blog may remember that last time, I had to do the entire place in 90 minutes because I had at train to catch. This time, we gave it the entire day and planned to get up bright and early at 6:30am, arrive around 7:30, thus beating the usual queue . The best laid plans...out sleep was first thwarted by a crowd of rowdy Americans who were staying next door, and then by some incredibly horny cats. Anyway, we did managed to get there around 7:55, but this was the queue outside the doors.

Lydia is actually standing at what was the end when we arrived, about 1-200m away from the door. It got longer too!

But a good time was spent inside - about three hours!

We then went to a restaurant that seems to be widely regarded as the best in Florence by many guidebooks/articles etc. We had the specialty - bistecca all Fiorentina, 900g of T bone steak, seasoned with herbs and lemon and grilled over an open flame. Ooooh yeah. Both of us ordered it and the waiter seemed very distressed that two little asian girls were going to have a first course followed by that giant hunk o' meat.

This was how it started out

And this was the result after I'd been through it.

It was great - medium rare so that pink juices flowed out when it was cut. The meat, so soft and tender. I totally would have chewed the bone if I were at home. As it were, I just had to be satisfied with the amazement of other customers.

Then I went home and passed out for a few hours.

Venice loves and loathes

Loves:
Our hotel room. It was in a separate annexe so it was like having our own apartment! Ok, we paid through the nose to have the convenience of being right behind S Marco, but it was right behind S. Marco! A few times me and Lydia would let ourselves in from the street and you'd hear someone go *ohmigod, did you see that girl go into the door? I'd love to have an apartment right here!*
The views. It still looks like like any painting you've seen of the place. I went to a Singer Sargent exhibition of his Venetian watercolours - those places were downright recognisable.

The signage is (almost) completely useless, somewhat comically so. It's possible to be in an alley or square and see signs pointing to S. Marco/Accademia/Ferrovia in completely different directions.
My favourite sign is this one with an arrow pointing in opposite directions.

Loathes:
The tourists. Didn't get a photo of that but I feel kinda sorry for the people who have to live there.

Getting lost. At first its amusing, but then it just mutates into megafrustration. On the first day, Lydia got so lost, she swears she passed the same beggarman three times. I got so lost once when I finally conceded defeat and looked on a map, I found out the area I was in wasn't on the map and then I got sunburn trying to find my way back. On another night when we were going to dinner, we heard someone yell out *OH WHAT?!?! WE'RE HERE AGAIN!!!!* Okay, that last bit was pretty funny.

The pigeons. They are DISGUSTING. You've got to literally wade through them to cross S. Marco.I don't understand how people can stand there and let them crawl all over them. They're like rats with wings.

Lovely, lovely Venice

Ah Venice. That wonderful, melancholy, smelly, beautiful city. It's supposedly not sinking anymore, unless you were taking the Venetian guy on the bus to Beauvais seriously - he was telling the Scots that every morning he had to bail out his kitchen and that he could go fishing from his bedroom.

We arrived there pretty late (past 10pm) and took the good ol' vaporetto to our hotel. Since there were no restaurants open, Lydia and I had gelati for dinner before going home so that I could provide that sugar as a meal to the mosquitos in our room. Days were spent trying to avoid the tourist hoards - ohmigod there were so many tourists they blocked other bridges in their attempt to get a view of the Bridge of Sighs. My favourite (relatively) tourist-free spots were the Giardini where the Biennale was on (but I got a bit sunburnt walking all the way there) and Zattere dei Gesuati.

Giardini

Nasty looking cat down at the Giardini

View of the lagoon from near Giardini looking towards St. Giorgio, St. Marco and Redentore

The view down each end of Zattere from some bridge

Yes, I sure look happy here!

Admittedly Zattere is where the Hilton drops off their tourists, but there's a really good gelati shop down there where you can watch the lagoon and tourists dropping in and leaving.

The Scottish Invasion

Scotland invaded France while we were in Paris. And hey, why not? It's the land of cheese-eating surrender monkeys! No no, it was really for the World Cup Group Match on September 12.

But really, over the time we were there, there was an increasing presence of grown men in tartan kilts and sometimes the whole kit proudly striding around Paris. And then they started singing around Paris. And then they set up a camp near our hotel with a giant banner saying *Tartan Army*. I didn't get a pic of that, but here's a video of some of them at Trocadéro.

They seemed kinda dirty and smelly and singing and drunk, but I got to talking to some on the bus to Beauvais after one of the young Scots girls loaned me her Gameboy to kill the boredom. They were really nice! And funny! And great parents - I think it was really nice of him to take his teenaged daughter all the way from Edinburgh to Paris for a few days.

So while they clogged up the Métro, vomited in the streets, sang through the night, and were a bit of a nuisance, the Scots get the thumbs up from me!

Last days in Paris

Well, all good things had to come to an end. On the last few days in Paris, I introduced Pooey to the joys of crepe avec nutella et banane (although she wanted hers avec crème aussi), which we got from a street stall in Bastille. Nums!
We also took the elevator up the Eiffel tower and further dumb shots at Trocadéro.

After Pooey left, I got back to work and went to visit a lab. My recent correspondence was one-sided, to say the least, to the extent that when I actually turned up and reported myself to building security, security said the researcher wasn't expecting me (WHAT?!?) but since I had travelled all the way, come on up! I had prepared a short talk to give to them, but seeing as they had nothing planned for me, I just gave it in his office only for them to interrupt me a few times so they could gather even more people to listen. Eventually there was about six of us crammed in there. I got to meet some other students and we compared results/techniques and other geeky stuff before I headed off to congratulate myself with a new pair of shoes.

Lydia and I had morrocan food for dinner, and then a traditional french one where we ate a bunny. It was delicious!

Getting ready to dig into the delicious bunny!

And then after one last visit to the markets for pate, cheese, baguette, and two euros worth of incredibly great green salad, we were off to the next stop on European Tour 2007 - Venice!

Paris - Stupidity in the Louvre and the Best Value Meal in the World

Lydia bypassed the opportunity to see the Louvre again so that left me and Pooey to treat such revered works of art with our usual family brand of stupidity and imitation.

*Now where is the entrance...?*

Since we were in France, we decided it was best that Pooey finally meet our French relos, namely Alix. We met up at Place de la Concorde - Alix did the doublekiss that Pooey was soooooooo not expecting, hilarious! - and met up with Alix's friends for and then to Pont de l'Alma to meet up with a friend of friends. Shame on me, I can't remember any of their names but friend of friend looked a bit like Cillian Murphy or Gaspard Ulliel being tall, thin, darked haired with very pale eyes, and smoked like a chimney. I thought he was hot. Pooey found him scary. I chalk that up to him doing the doublekiss on her which she totally wasn't expecting either. Hehe.

With Alix and something in the background

We all went to a cafe which had the Best Value Meal Ever. I wish I wrote down which street it was but basically they were offering a baguette, a dessert, and a drink for only....5 euros. That's about $AUD8. YOU CAN'T GET THAT KIND OF VALUE!!! I had chicken baguette, creme brulée and a fanta. Pooey had chicken baguette, tarte au citron and water. I can't remember what Alix ordered but he got a mille feuille. Num nums!!!

Pooey with her tarte au citron and Cillian/Gaspard in the background

Trying to eat the mille feuille

Enjoying that creme brulee

Afterwards, we went and blew a lot of money in the shops.
But that's for another time.

Paris - Touristy days with Pooey

Due to Smee's hatred of Paris, Pooey has been waiting for the francophile me and Lydia to arrive to make her visit more pleasant than Smee's.

We kicked it all off with a good French lunch - a trip to various stores to get baguettes, two different cheeses, some mousse de canard and a whole lot of fruit in Place de Vosges. The food was nummy-nummy-num-NUM!!!! She doesn't look too happy in this picture, but take my word for it, she was pleased.We also met some really cute French toddlers. I think its their clothes that make them so cute. Particularly this little girl who kept coming towards us and our fruit, then running away. But she did eventually take our offer of a strawberry and Pooey has photographic proof (above)! As Lydia has been to Paris many times before, we split up and I took Pooey on a walk down to Rue de Rivoli to Notre Dame where tourists were allowed inside, even though there was a full on service going on at the time. Doing our best Catholic impersonations, we took photos of the various altars and went to climb the bell tower...which we ended up not doing because the queue was really long and even worse, not moving. So we took a pleasant walk down the banks of the Seine to the Musee d'Orsay to see Impressionist works.

The Hotel de Ville (town hall) where gendarmes searched our bags

Naughty photo of he Notre Dame service - should have at least kicked the tourists out during it!

Pooey with a Monet

Fun with the polar bear!

Lydia rang to say that she was at the Tuileries and did we want to drink chocolat at L'Angelina, a chocolate shop on the Rue de Rivoli that's been selling cakes and drinks since the 19th century, complete with decor. As a review on Tripadvisor says, 'Hot chocolat oui, service non'. While I understand that the waiting staff are to memorise the entire order rather than write it down, the waitress forgot my chocolat a l'ancienne! And they ran out of the specialty Mont Blanc cake that Pooey was really looking forward to enjoying. Ah well, c'est Paris - c'est la vie! But a highlight was the very cute doggie that was sitting only a few tables away from us.

Enjoying my substitute apple tart

The happy dog

Yes, they do allow doggies into Paris cafes.

That night, we went and did something that Pooey has been craving for ever since she went to London - finding good, authentic Pho! We went down to the 13th arrondissement and joined the
queue to get big steaming bowls of pho dac biet and a pho bo for Lydia.

Where we had our pho

Asian Maccas!

And all continued to be well in the Ville Lumière (a.k.a Paris).

Paris things backblog

(Un)luckily for all of you, despite not having access to a computer for weeks, I kept a day-by-day, blow-by-blow diary of what's been going on during this trip! And while it won't be transcribed into this blog, you'll probably be getting most of it.

Picking up after the conference, Pooey was late to Waterloo Station. Our original plan was that she was going to go to Primark in the morning, then meet me at Amandine's whereby we would tube together to Waterloo International. That plan was scrapped when I got a message at 12:30 (the ending time of the conference) saying that she just woke up. It must have been all that exertion from eating the Smee made Curry Laksa the night before. Because I got there early, I proceeded to chat to some friendly looking South Africans who were travelling to Paris for the World Cup and reacted with disgust when I said I was an Aussie. Eventually, Pooey made it and we checked in, I bought a Glamour mag which came with free shampoo and conditioner (yay!) and we took this pic on the Eurostar.

Me crazy, she uninterested

We arrived moderately on time, but it took us a while longer to get to our hotel in the Marais because I couldn't figure out how to use the Metro ticketing machine, and when I did, we realised it didn't take notes. Damn Metro ticket window girls are grumpy! Our hotel was in a little alley near the Place de Vosges off Boulevard St. Antoine. We had to pass lots of shops that had awesome shoes in their window! And it was no surprise to us that when we met Lydia in our hotel, she had already bought a pair from one of those shops.

We went out for dinner (crepes avec fromage, champignon et jambon pour moi) and then went to see the Champs Elysee by night for Pooey.

Damn people wrecking our photoThe two of us wrecking the view

We also went to Passy to try and meet up with Alix for a party on a bateau mouche that supposedly had much alcohol and a buffet, only to find that the boat had left without us. So we rocked on over to Bastille where Lydia and I knew full well we'd easily find a few bars and good cocktails to keep alcoholic Pooey (and me) happy.

Classic view from PassyLydia and I get ready to enjoy our drinks

Really enjoying the drink!And so on that boozy note, our first night in Paris ended. Touristy stuff with Pooey next!

London things backblog

Sorry for the delay. Days were so jam-packed in Paris that I didn't go out to find a net cafe, and the net was such a ripoff in Venice...yuk. But my place in Florence has free net (yay!) so here I go again! Apologies in advance for any spelling or punctuation mistakes - these European keyboards have things in different places. But no photos cos this is a communal machine. I'll leave a note where a pic will appear.

In any case, I didn't take many photos between Kensington gardens and going to Paris
so there's not much missing. Work pretty much took up the days in London. I finally got to present my poster at the conference. The poster set up was in my opinion quite bad because it was in a zig-zag formation that meant you could only really have 2 people, 3 max, standing in front of the poster or it would just get too crowded, and the space for all the posters was simply too small - it got so crowded in the poster hall that you could feel the temperature gradient. I simply couldn't stand there too long because it was so hot (not me being slack), but I did get a few comments from people saying that they thought my project was interesting and that they'll keep a lookout for when I publish (eep!).

My poster was placed next to someone from a rival lab from....Sydney. That's right. I flew 23 hours just to be next to Aussies again! But it wasn't so bad - other people from his lab were around and we all had a merry chat about the pros and cons of various techniques, antibodies and exchanged details in case we ever turned up at the same international conferences again.

I then visited a lab at UCL to discuss a technique and try to get insight as to how to get it to work consistently. It turns out they did do some steps differently to us, but the person who did it did confess that making it work was akin to black magic. I had a chat and lunch with some of the PhD students in the lab and was pleased to find that they were all nice and normal.

On the second last day of the conference, I attended a symposium on pannexins - I didn't realise they were so controversial until it looked like several researchers were going to come to blows about what they do. Voices were raised! Hands were gestured! On the very last day of the conference, even though I had a train to catch to Paris, I still attended the very last symposium and was highly unimpressed when a fire alarm went off and the whole thing got held up by 20 minutes! There was a lot of anxious hand wringing from people other than me - I guess we all had planes/trains to catch - but I impatiently sat through the rest of the meeting and then hurried back in time to get to Waterloo station by 2pm to meet Pooey...who was late.

Next blogs - Paris!

Conference days and mucking around with Lydia

Remind me again why I'm a scientist? I had my first full day at the conference on Wednesday and while it wasn't bad, it wasn't that fantastic either. The people who were there didn't seem to make eye contact! Things weren't looking promising when two old women were standing in front of my poster talking in Spanish and making various gestures. I said hello to them but one just shot me a dirty look! Eventually I did meet some people, shake a few hands, exchange a few emails, and best of all, got a few comments saying that my project was good!

Lydia also arrived and since I didn't think the afternoon symposia were relevant, we spent some time mucking around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens and taking dumb photos.

Taking afternoon tea at The Orangery at Kensington Palace

Posing with Physical Energy by G.F. Watts
Contemplating life at the Round Pond

And again at Serpentine Bridge

Yes...life is good. Tell me why I'm a scientist again?

Dinner at Le Gavroche

To celebrate many things on Wednesday, Me, Amadine, Miss Amandine's housemate, and Handbag, went to dinner at Le Gavroche. For those who don't know, Le Gavroche is a restaurant in Mayfair. A two-starred, formerly three-starred Michelin restaurant in Mayfair. Former people who worked there include Marco Pierre White, Marcus Wareing, and Gordon Ramsay.

As you can tell from my description, it's considered a really good restaurant. And it was. It was so good, Handbag had to wear a jacket inside - and they even gave him one. With gold buttons and everything. The interior is what I imagine old-style private clubs would be it like - dark corners, plush furnishings, discreet waiters who can do anything. Seriously, these waiters could carve piglet, speak two or three languages, discreetly escort you to the toilet or tell a co-worker to do it...ANYTHING!

I couldn't afford to order an entree but that didn't matter because they gave us an appetiser and an amuse-bouche. The appetiser were two little tartlets, I can't remember what one of them was because the other one was celeriac garnished with a flake of truffle. It was AWESOME. The amuse bouche was caramelised onion on pastry and some deep fried fish. The deep frying was so perfect: crunchy yet not oily, a perfect compliment to the succulent fish flesh. For main, I had scotch filet with red wine sauce and foie gras, paired with truffled macaroni and cheese.
I love foie gras (despite all the unethical things associated with it's production) and this was perfect - the melt in your mouth kind that's like When Harry Met Sally. And all macca and cheese should contain truffles. When the flavour just dissolved in your mouth, you understand that it's not just a fungus, it's a damn good one. For dessert I had a glass of tawny port from portugal...although it tasted a bit like sherry.

After this, we rolled home and I had merry merry dreams of a life well-lived.

Touristy stuff with Uncle Loi

Uncle was taking a break from Chennai to spend a long weekend in London. Since he was craving some asian food, we all met up and went to have what is supposedly the best Viet food in the city. It was ok. Not fantastic and not the worst, but if this is the *best*, I wonder what the worst is like. here are some pics of us happily digging in.

Uncle digs in Yummy yum sugar cane! Pooey and foodies

Later we decided to cram in a whole bunch of touristy stuff before he flew out, including...

Some photos at the Millenium Bridge looking to St. Paul's Around Westminster Being eaten by Landseer's lions in Trafalgar Square!

And then after this is had to fight the crowd to get to get to Amandine's but here we are chillaxing on the floor.