Wonewee, oh so wonewee!!!!

Just waved goodbye to mum as she got on the shuttlebus to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, lugging behind her all my moroccan goodies... (thanks mum) and suddenly I feel very alone again! We've been together virtually every second of every day for a whole month, probably the most of our lives!! Well, since I was a baby, anyway. And while we certainly got on each other's nerves, we had many an adventure together and it suddenly feels so empty without mum here!But for better or worse I'm heading back to Rome on a late night flight tonight, and will be reunited with my studies in Rome tomorrow. I've never been more motivated! Haha.

The last three days in Paris have blown my mind. Somehow I expected it to be just another cheesy European capital city, with the same beutiful big buildings and architecture and crappy weather... well I was right about the weather, but of all the big cities I've been to so far, Paris tops the list! The place is neverending, and aside from the hundreds of tourist attractions, every corner you turn reveals a new cafe, patisserie or funky shop. It sprawls out for miles in every direction, with each arrondissement having its own particular flavour, and everything just blending in nicely in between. People of all races speaking all languages mill the streets, and with my elementary french to break the ice, there was not a SINGLE sign of the stereotypical snooty-french-waiter-type. They were all absolutely charming! What's more, it has none of the artificiality, chaos or filth of Rome or many other cities, with the tourist merchandise shops being few and far between, and the tourists themselves blending in easily with the multicultural population. To top it all off, every time we jumped on the metro we were greeted by live music, ranging from clarinet solos to entire mini-orchestras! So very atmospheric.

We did it all, considering how little time we had. Freezing our buns off, we did a night tour of the city on bikes to get our bearings. We also did a full day tour of Versaille. We walked from Notre Dame right along the "historic axis of symmetry" through the Louvre, the Tuileries gardens and down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomph. We spent an evening drinking champagne and watching a show at the Moulin Rouge, climbed the huge hill to the Sacre Coeur, wandered through the Musee D'Orsay where we could literally have touched many famous works of Van Gough, Monet and many others, and said goodbye to the city shrouded in grey from atop the Grande Arche, in the funky and enormous business district, La Defense. We also did our best to stuff ourselves full of French bread and pastries, and struggled through a delicious meal of Fioe Gras and Duck Magret, having only just rediscovered our appetites after Morocco. Which leads me to another sotry.

For the first few days in Morocco we could not believe the amazing flavours you could get with just a few dollars, and were filling up on Tagines and sweets left over from ramidan. But just as we were getting over our culture shock from the medinas and about to head away from the hectic Moroccan cities and onto the backroads..... the dreaded bug hit. Six of our crew of eleven went down overnight, quite violently, several of them vomiting uncontrollably. Mum and I were amongst them. We assumed food poisoning was the culprit, as the other 5 sat smugly, feeling quite good about themselves. We had a full day on the bus that day, and had to stop every ten minutes or so, so that someone could have a chunder on the side fo the road, or to find toilets. I sat shivering, huddled up to mum, wrapped in about 50 thick layers of clothes. The mood was pretty low. I don't remember anything about midelt beause I slept for 18 hours that night.

Eventually everyone else caught the bug as well, so that by the end all of us got hit, except our blessed young Japanese doctor, who was taking a short break from her 2 years of solo volunteer work in Africa and probably ended up working harder on her holiday than she would have in Africa. Her boyfriend Tristan was pretty flat out translating, too, as she didn't speak English and only two of us could speak French with her.

As it turned out we all rallied and were well enough to at least get on our camels and ride into the Western Saharan sunset, although I don't think anyone's stomach enjoyed the sensation too much! We couldn't do justice to the enormous berber-cooked tagine either, as tasty as it was! Nonetheless, the desert remained a hilight for all of us, as the sound of bongo drums and berber songs carried on way into the night, and the stars were unlike any I've ever seen before. I got to see my first shooting star, too! Sa'id, our Moroccan guide, did his best to keep us all laughing and well-informed about Morocco right to the last hour of the trip, despite our low morale. I also spent rediculous amounts of money, unable to resist all the cheap prices (which of course when all added together are no longer cheap!!!), and splashed out on hand-woven bedspreads, a leather jacket, beautifully decorated tagines and tonnes of other tidbits. I don't feel too guilty though, since mum bought a large silk carpet....!

So that is just about the end of my adventures, until my last hurrah, which will be 5 days in Barcelona and San Sebastian with Ilaria. I may get some surfing in after all! Meanwhile I will be studying hard and hopefully making daily breakthroughs in the climate change problem, hahaha!

Love to all!

Kel xox

Culture shock....

Mum and I have now been in Morocco since yesterday morning and it's only now starting to warm on us. It could have something to do with the fact that it took us 2 days of getting up at 4am to get here, and that we came from 2 blissful days of getting close to nature at the Cinque Terre... so when we flew in yesterday morning we were exhausted, stressed and probably fairly sick of each other, only to be hit hard with the heat, the awful smells and the poverty of the area. There is clearly no garbage collection system here and the plastic bags and bottles fly around the place, accumulating in alleyways and dried up agricultural fields, while fruit from the street stalls rots in the gutter an flies buzz around everywhere. The men sit in cafes and watch us strange western women walk down the street; women are nowhere to be seen. But it would seem our hotel in Casablanca wasn't in the nicest area...

Today we got the train to Meknès and have seen the medina and mosque. It is cleaner, more colourful and more cosmopolitan. So I spent money on stuff at the first opportunortunity! Very uplifting :-) In the meantime I am LOVING the food (tagines every day so far, mmmmmm) and everything is SO cheap! We have a small tour group of all ages and a few diff nationalities where I think everyone will get on great for the next 10 days. I have also fallen in love with the Moroccan children - while their Arabic parents can be quite judgemental and give us funny looks, the kids are inquisitive and give us cheeky grins, flashing their beautiful wide brown eyes: I wanna take one home!!!!

Tomorrow we leave for Fez where we will have 2 nights, can't wait!!!

Cinque Terre - not as spectacular as I had expected, as everyone had talked it up so much as THE place to be, and I certainly don't agree with that! However it is a really unique place; you would never find 5 coastal villages, all so different and yet so close, withing a national park. Really glad I saw it and did the walk, it was a beautiful 2 days!!! Especially since we got to catch up with Sonia; our Italian exchange student from '03 (who, incidentally, has not changed a bit!).

Rome and Florence in a day

I just about managed to murder both the parentals by dragging them around Rome all day in the blistering heat, but we saw everything we needed to see, well almost. Guided tour of the colosseum and the roman forum, Trevi fountain, Castel Sant'angelo, Tiber River and St Peters. We had to skip the Pantheon as their poor old legs were just over it! But to be quite frank, the whole day jusit reinforced my perspective on Rome - it is a magnificent city rich with thousands of years of history, a testiment to the amazing engineering powers of the Romans, and it is so superficial and commercial and crowded with tourists and dirty that I can never wait to get the hell away from the place!!! I'm so glad I'm living outside the centre of Rome now!

Florence, on the other hand, has been a beautiful experience. We shipped dad off on Tuesday morning back to Australia, well and truly ready to leave I think! Now it's just the Adlam women let loose in Europe. This is my second visit to the city of art, but since I was 15 the last time I was here I have certainly appreciated it a lot more. We were fortunate with trains and managed to get here from Rome at about lunchtime (1.5 hour eurostar trip) after accompanying dad to the airport, so we knocked off all the major sites on the first day - Duomo, Baptistry, Piazza della signoria, Arno River and Piazzale San Michelangelo (from which we watched the most AMAZING firey sunset over the city, a very pleasant surprise!), dined under the ancient city walls and cruised back via a very talented busking flautist outside the Uffizi gallery. And there hardly seemes to be any people or any annoying vendors selling their stupid noisy little toys - couldn't have had a better start to the stay.

Yesterday (Wed) was full of random encounters! I left mum to explore the Uffizi gallery in her own time while I perused the markets alone - dangerous for two reasons. First, I spent all my money on leather goods. Second, I stupidly wore my beautiful Australia T-shirt which always seems to make me a lot of friends wherever I go (it's awesome coming from a country that everyone loves!!!) and made a few less than desirable friends. Most of them were just interested in making a sale and were very sneaky, and just would NOT give up! One guy Luca was interested in other things... I agreed to have a glass of wine with him, in their family shop as he seemed like an interesting, well travelled sort of guy, and pretty cute to boot, except he just wasn't interested in talking so it all ended up pretty awkward... I avoided that street for the rest of the afternoon! But then I met a really sweet Mexican guy who didn't even try to sell me anything! So I decided he was trustworthy and had a decent chat to him - turned out he was just on a working holiday so didn't really care about selling leather, very nice change! His name was Elio and we had a good chat about languages, as he spoke Spanish and I'll be going there very soon! What a sweetheart he was! Lastly and most unexpectedly, as I sat waiting for mum to come out of the Uffizi, one of the millions of Moroccans who get around all the major cities selling illegal goods sat down next to me for a rest and, once again, didn't try to sell me anything. So I had a chat to him about Morocco and he was really nice too! He showed me a picture of his brand new baby nephew, just born in Italy, obviously very proud of his brother for establishing a family in Italy! He explained that alhtough the police fine them for selling their goods, nothing happens if they don't pay the fine. So there's not much they can do to stiop it!!!

Today we are off to Riomaggiore, the first of the Cinque Terre, and spending the afternoon there with Sonia, the crazy Italian girl who stayed with us for 5 months! Only she sounds so settled - she has a job, a licence, and a boyfriend of 3 years! Can't wait to see her! Oh, and also can't wait to walk the 9km from start to finish of the paths along the Cinque Terre. I hope I can get some photos up!!

Ciao for now,

Kels (and mum)

More cycling pics!

Our last dinner at Hotel Dory was a bit of an event, since this is their 10th year.

Is it just me or do we all look slimmer than when we started?

This was an amazing view to reward us for our 5km ascent. Where the blurry background changes colour slightly in the photo is the horizon on the Adriatic sea... no that you can tell!

It's a tough life but someone's gotta do it!

Today's route was the most scenic of them all, with breathtaking views, although I have to say there were some much better ones than this! We were just going too fast to get my camera out...

See, I really was there, I did do it!

Mmmmm Vino Santo - so sweet and so good. I can't believe we all made the 20km back to the hotel! Dad bought 3 bottles...

New gear - my Hotel Cory cycling nicks and dad's kickass new jersey!

End of chapter on cycling in Italy

We had our last ride today, a cruisey 65km, and will be sorry to wave goodbye to our beautiful carbon Scott road bikes. Riding will never be the same again. However, having gradually killed off or broken every slow member of our group since the first day (except one, but he got allocated a guide all of his own) we managed to go out with a bang, at least. With a much stronger group we didn't have to wait so long at the tops of the hills, which was lucky because there were two stretches of around 5km each of steady climbing. Surprisingly a overtook most people on the way up - the advantage of young legs I guess, cos after 2 months of travelling I am NOT at my fittest! Then the descents... wow, it felt like flying! I cracked 60km/h at one point, and trust me in lycra, on a bike, that feels REALLY fast! So much fun! We also probably had the best views of all today - massive castles in the distance and the stopping near Gabicce Monte for coffeem 200m above the Adriatic coastline. We dined in the hotel restaurant with all our new friends (every English speaker we could scrape together, really! We were a bit thin on the ground really. Thin on the air... just generally quite slim hahahahahahaha) and got through several glasses of wine, then sat through 1 and a half hours of photos and presentations by the hotel owner and guides in a haphazard and fairly incomplete mix of Italian, French, German and English! Unfortunately the only language any of them speaks fluently is Italian, and there was not a single Italian cyclist among us. It would seem, however, that the French and German are right up there, along with the Belgians. We were certainly the minority.

Tomorrow the hard work begins - the long-awaited meeting of the real parents and the Italian host family! My brain will be very sore by the end of the weekend, but there should be some good laughs come out of it. Then there's Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Paris & Morocco!

The funny things is, I'm dying to just get back to Rome and get on with the study. As amazing as this has been, with the good food, luxury accomodation and amazing rides, I feeling strangely exhausted. Though being in only adult company (and playing translator for mum and dad and many others) could have something to do with it. It's not as fun as I might have thought!

I'll leave this here and chuck some photos in, but posting will be more difficult after today. Hopefully we'll get lucky with internet access at hotels!

A big hello to all those still sticking with these installments!

Kel xox

Photos from Venice!

Guest author

Mum may have omitted to mention that it was HER writing the below installment in the Adlam biking saga... just to clear up any confusion! Photos later!

Kel

A new different perspective on Italy

Dave and I have been in Italy for 5 days now and have loved every single moment. The weather could not have been more perfect, the people could not have been more charming - they even deal with my truly pathetic attempts at Italian, and the riding has been wonderful. Thankfully Kel's Italian and French skills have smoothed the way for us constantly and, as a result,
Kel and I were unepectedly able to join a group trip to Venice yesterday - something I thought I would have to earmark for our next trip. It was an amazing experience - almost beyond words. We had a four hour bus trip from Riccione to Venice then a ferry ride into the city proper. A step into a different world - a city of marble, incredible embellishment, great humour and picture post-card views in every direction. It is everything you've heard and more. The laneways and caffes were teeming with people, the little shops stuffed with beautiful glassworks, clothes etc. And the food outlets seemed to sell an incredible array of goodies - we bought Dave back some fab goodies so he didn't feel too left out. To top it all off Kel insisted I allow pigeons to sit on my head and arms for a photo - I can still feel their scratchy little claws on my scalp!
To top it all off, the central square, San Marco, had a number of little orchestras entertaining the diners and tourists. Sadly we had to leave before sunset - an extra hour to sit and drink a wine or two, listen to the music and just take in the whole place would have been lovely.
We're not done yet - Kel and I are off to Urbino today while Dave does yet another ride through the amazing countryside to see more castles.

Biking in Italy photos - 1

Here we are BEFORE we rode 70km on our first day... All smiles!

Check out the Italian countyside whizzing by!!

Cycing in the Adriatic

Two days in, and some very sore legs and bums in this hotel room of ours! Mum and I are very grateful of a day off tomorrow - we are getting on a bus with a bunch of French speakers (will be a very confusing morning...) to Venice!! What an opportunity for mum! Dad, on the other hand, who ahs already been to Venice, is ploughing ahead with the Tuesday challenge - a 115km "grand tour" through the hills (although after looking at the ride profile I should say mountains) of Emilia Romagna. They have a 20km long climb to do in the middle of it. Mum and I have to leave at 6 and won't get back until 11. SO I imagine we will all be absolutely shattered by tomorrow night!

Meanwhile, we have been having an absolute blast. The hotel package we are on is pretty much all-inclusive, so we get breakfast, a packed lunch, rider's buffet/3 course dinner with wine and beer, non-alcoholic drinks at the bar, daily massages, washing service, sauna, terkish steam room, spa complete with waterfall and pool! And we're right near the beach and a whole lot of AMAZING shopping! We've done 130km over two days (not bad considering it's only my 2nd time on a road bike ever...) and come up against some pretty serious hills! My legs were burning after some of them! But the bikes we're riding are the latest technolog carbon fibre - you could pick them up with one finger and they are soooooo smooth! Stark contrast to the clunky old mountain bike! And the guides are real characters too, all of them european (Swiss, Italian..) and all well aged, clearly very, very elite cyclists in their time, and all with a wicked sense of humour. Today we had a massive bbq lunch out in the country at the hotel owner's vineyard, which was a very jolly time - about 200 sweaty but satisfied riders chowing down on good food and wine. Then we has to ride home!!

Oh, a news flash, just when I thought my travelling was almost over - I'm going to Barcelona and San Sebastion in November with Ilaria for a few days!!! Well, hopefully. There are some really cheap flights and we both really want to go! Then I need to STOP travelling and STUDY. It's so hard with everything just at my fingertips and so many budget airlines!!! Argh! Somebody stop me!

Kel