Upcoming Trips

I'm not really interested in the European tradition of taking one month off a year to go sit on the beach somewhere. For starters, I can't take one month off from work. I work for myself and my marketing campaigns need fairly constant monitoring. I can take a few days off or even a week but a month is out of the question.

Secondly, I can't think of anything worse than sitting on a beach or visiting just one place for a month. How boring! I like to visit cities where I can walk around the old streets, visiting cafes and little shops, learning about the history of the city and the people. That's my idea of a holiday and that's why I like to live in Europe.

Three or 4 days is generally enough to visit one city although a week is better for great cities like Rome or Sydney and a lifetime is possibly not enough for the best city of them all - Paris. So over the next couple of months I have booked a few short city trips. I took advantage of the discount tickets on offer on the new TGV Est and have tickets for:

• Luxembourg
• Strasbourg
• Stuttgart

Then I'm supposed to be going back to Australia for a visit but I haven't booked that as I really don't want to go. My parents have offered me their frequent flyer points to book the trip so it's not going to cost me anything so I can't use lack of funds as a reason not to go. I suppose if I got a job I wouldn't be able to take time off. Do I really want to take that drastic action?

Quick Trip to Milan

Did I mention that Ferbent has gone away? Well, not permanently of course. He's in Albania visiting his mother. He wants to get a visa for her to come here to live but, being Albania, it's not easy. He has been gone for more than a month. Who knows when he'll be back. Hopefully in time for our trip to Luxembourg next month.

Before he went to Albania we spent a few days together in Milan. We've got some friends there which explains why I've been to Milan at least 5 times. There can't be any other explanation as it's one of the crappiest cities in the world.

Milan has the worst weather ever. In summer it gets extremely hot and extremely humid. I'm from Perth which is a very hot city but it's generally very dry. It's the humidity which I can't stand. We briefly considered living in Milan before moving permanently to France and I'm so glad we didn't do it. It would have been a nightmare.

Reasons to never visit Milan:

1. It's too hot.
2. It's too humid.
3. Milan is expensive (not when compared to Paris though).
4. The pollution is a nightmare.
5. There are no trees anywhere. Like nowhere!
6. There only seems to be 2 parks in the entire city.
7. There are no places to sit down. So forget about sitting down in Piazza Duomo or any piazza or street or wherever.
8. My friends are too cheap to eat out even though you can get pizza for €5.

Reasons to visit Milan:

1. Great shopping.
2. Great ice cream.

Well, the shopping isn't better than any other big city, it's just different and you can obviously get great ice cream anywhere in Italy. So don't bother visiting Milan.

I had to put all these reasons in writing so I remember to never ever go to Milan again, no matter who I know there.

Typical French Men?

I was pretty bored at the gym last night so when some short French guy headed over and started gossiping with the couple next to me, I didn't hesitate to turn down my iPod and eavesdrop on their conversation. It's not a good thing to do, I know, but anyway...

So first of he starts going on about Facebook and how great it is. That's the first sign that there's something wrong with this guy. Facebook is a complete waste of time. (Ok, I admit I do have a profile and login every day but it's still crap! Oh and you can add me to your friends list if you like, hehe).

Then short French guy starts going on about how he has to work out for 2.5 to 3 hours a day because he gains weight so easily and he couldn't think of anything worse than to be fat. Tall French guy responds by saying that when his wife gains 2 kilos she completely freaks out as it really 'shows' on her. Yeah, she's about 180cm and very thin so 2 kilos will definitely make her look chubby!!

Next these 2 idiot guys start going on about how all women start to lose their looks after 23. They were completely serious. Then tall French guy turns to 25 year old wife and says, 'but not you honey'. He's got to be close to 40 so I can really see that marriage lasting.

It makes me wonder what these guys think of women like me. I'm 33 and more than chubby. They must think I'm repulsive. Although I did catch short French guy checking me out the other day so who knows.

This is the image I have of the typical French man. Obsessed about his appearance and that of his girlfriend/wife. Being overweight shows a lack of discipline or interest in life or I don't know what. I read something once that French men like to go out with curvy women, just not in public. Nice!

New Machines at the Club Med Gym

I paid around €1000 for my gym membership (for 1 year) and even though it's a lot of money I really think it was well worth it. It gives me access to 22 gyms around Paris but I've only ever been to the one, in the 16th. It's quite a large gym with a swimming pool, 3 aerobics areas, a huge cardio area, 2 weights areas, and one spot for stretching or doing ab exercises.

There have been a couple of little upgrades while I've been there (8 months) but a couple of weeks ago they changed ALL the machines for new ones. So new cardio machines and new weight machines. The cardio machines have individual TV's with around 20 channels which you can listen to with headphones.

Although I was quite used to the old machines and there is less variety now, I'm pretty impressed with the new ones. There were always big screen TV's around but they were all on the one channel and there was no sound. I use my iPod when working out but having a bit of TV to watch makes the time go that little bit faster, which is important when you're virtually the same exercise day in day out. Of course, neither the iPod nor the TV is as entertaining as watching the most attractive guy I've ever seen if my life working out! Hehe. Oops, now you my real motivation for going to the gym every day!

Nice Young Plumber Boy

I just had a very nice young French boy stop by to fix my leaking shower. He did put a big hole in the tiles and the wall but at least he found the problem. Water is leaking through the tiles or the grout or something so it will have to be retiled or grouted or whatever. He put some silicone around and now it's up to the building syndicate to send someone to do the tiles.

So it took them (Century 21) more than 6 months to send someone to open up the shower to find the problem. I wonder how long it will take them to send someone to actually fix it? Another 6 months? I won't hold my breath.

I had a bit of water leaking from my hot water system and the very kind plumber boy replaced the broken part and fixed it for me free of charge. It's amazing what happens when you smile nicely at a young boy! You should have seen his face light up when I said how much I loved France. So sweet!