Polystyrene floats too, of course

So, three things came together today: the strong, blustery wind blowing away all the cobwebs and also the moulded polystyrene that misguided householders are putting out today for next week's inorganic collection (They don't take polystyrene, people! It's going to blow down the street and end up wedged in a bush till kingdom come! Don't do it!); my new glasses, which may not be a total success since they're making me cross-eyed when I read, which isn't the aim, I believe; and a story by my colleague Angela in the Sunday Star-Times about one day on our Rhone cruise, when we toured Arles, went to Les Baux and visited an olive mill.

The connection is the wind, which in France was the Mistral blowing icily from the north down the river valley, and so strongly that it whipped my glasses off my face and sent them bowling merrily over the cobblestones of pretty little Les Baux, perched on its hilltop. The glasses had already been broken, by me trying to straighten a bent arm/leg/wing after sleeping on them on the flight from Abu Dhabi, and instead snapping it right off, so that I had to wear them from then on as a kind of pince-nez, which made me feel silly and - rightly, as it turned out - insecure. That was back in mid-April, and I only got my new glasses yesterday, which is a long time to walk around behind a screen of scratches (though I did get a new arm a week later, for FREE! in Lyon).

That was also the first full day on the boat, Uniworld's River Royale - my stories have yet to be published, but I've been doing my best since then to sell the concept of river cruising to anyone who will listen, and was enthusing about it just yesterday at a party. I pretty much always enjoy all my trips (Macau and the Gold Coast are the stand-out exceptions) but the two river cruises I've done, along the Rhine and the Rhone, were both so exceptionally and completely lovely that I'm wondering already how I could wangle myself another. So much to enjoy: great food, comfortable cabins/suites (even if not huge), excellent friendly staff, unpacking only once, always having something to look at, and being deposited every time right in the centre of the towns and cities we visited. It's a brilliant way to travel, truly: not cheap (so I'm told, cough) but really worth treating yourself. Do it!

2012, wrapped up

The most remarkable thing about this year is that I didn't go to Australia. (I'm still feeling that I've used Oz up - although I'd be happy to be proved wrong. Anyone listening? Kimberley cruise, Kakadu, Maria Island, WA for the wildflower season...?) 

I did pass through, though, a number of times, on my way to more distant destinations; but my first travels this year were domestic, first to old favourite Waiheke Island, just across the harbour but in another zone entirely, ambience-wise. Beautiful, relaxing and laid-back, it never fails to please - even when the weather disappoints.

The weather gave us the runaround for the next trip, too: doing the Crater Lake walk on Ruapehu with the daughters - but after driving down there through thunder, lightning and torrential rain, the day of our ascent to and traverse along that precipitous crater rim was one of glorious sunshine that showed off the turquoise of the lake to great effect, while the cloud that came to swirl around beneath us made us feel like gods, on top of the world in both senses.

My Pavlovian addiction to checking my emails dozens of times a day was reinforced by an invitation popping up there in February to go on a LAN tour of South America. It was a wonderful circuit in a small but jolly group through Santiago to Buenos Aires, to the literally over-the-top spectacle of Iguassu Falls, to Lima where the food was a revelation, and then to Easter Island, which was very special and totally worth foregoing the Travcom/Cathay Pacific Media Awards (in which I was only Runner-Up, so, pft).

In April I began my longest trip yet, flying Etihad to Abu Dhabi, where the Grand Mosque was astonishing, though I could really have done without the sweaty nylon robe I had to wear. Next stop was France, for a glorious, fabulous cruise up the Rhone from Arles to Lyon and finishing at Chalon-sur-Saone. I do so love a river cruise, and Uniworld's River Royale was just perfect, with the best staff ever.


Then it was England for a wedding and old friends, and another cruise that didn't go so well, when I managed to dislocate my shoulder leaping off a boat in the Norfolk Broads. Ouch. But I soldiered on, fortunately joining an Insight coach tour of Eastern Europe for the next 3 weeks where I was very well looked after. It was all about history, war and architecture, subjects which would have bored me rigid in my youth, but which now I find deeply interesting. It helped too that on the way to starting the tour in Budapest, we'd called in at Zagan in Poland to visit the site of Stalag Luft III where my father had been a prisoner, which was a moving experience as well as being fascinating.




Home again after 5 weeks away, I was anchored to the sofa for the next three months, writing, writing, writing with a cat at each side and a dog at my feet. I popped down to Christchurch for a look at my sadly shaken hometown, and was both horrified and inspired by what I saw - the vast empty spaces, blowing with dust, and the cracks in everything; but also the optimistic spirit of the people I met, and their bright plans for the future.

September saw the start of another flurry of travel, beginning with flying with Emirates to Dubai again, where I went up to the 124th floor of the Burj Khalifa, and on to Portugal for a scant 5 days mostly in the province of Alentejo where I loved the fortified hilltop villages, the gnarled olive trees, the sheep with bells on and the friendly people; but hated the food-focused itinerary and unprofessional behaviour of one of the small party.




Back home for one night, I was away again next day for a week of glorious relaxation in the Cook Islands, purely a holiday of lying about, sleeping in the sun (not recommended: the sunburn was epic and I still bear the unsightly tan-marks) and doing very little of anything. Stand-out was the day spent cruising on and wallowing in the WMBL (world's most beautiful lagoon) at Aitutaki - just perfect, in every way.

Then, four days later, I was off to North Viet Nam in another group which was lots of fun. We had a brilliant guide, Duke, who took us from Hanoi up into Ha Giang province for a homestay, a day's trekking through the paddy fields and villages, and a long drive into the Dong Van Karst Geopark, which was just brilliant: spectacular peaks, cute kids, colourful villages and a mind-blowing road. The traffic throughout was fascinating - even in Ha Long Bay out on the water amongst those absurdly picturesque islands.



After a fun day out on the train down to Matamata for a look at the obsessive detail of Hobbiton, the year finished back on the sofa with, sadly, just the one cat now at my side. I've had 49 stories accepted for publication, about half of those in the NZ Herald, as well as writing around 30 blog entries for Air France and others for the Yahoo! website. I've been to lunches and dinners and a cooking class, learned how to take the top off a champagne bottle with a sabre, had massages, ridden a camel and a Segway, eaten insects as well as fabulous meals, and been given a huge and beautiful bouquet for my services to Australian tourism, having had over 100 stories published about that immense country. Ironic, or what?

It's been a good year and I've been to some amazing places, met lots of lovely people and written masses of stories (if you're interested in reading some of them, click on the links over there to the right). It's been busy, and tiring sometimes, but I've loved it and am looking forward to more of the, er, different: Alaska, maybe? Africa? Who knows - can't wait to find out. Watch this space!

The only shiny things in the loo were the cockroaches

While the planet either burns up or gets washed away, depending on which bit of it you're living on, it's nice to look back - way back - to gentler times. I'm currently writing about river cruises in Europe, on the Rhone, Rhine, Seine and Danube, and trying to rank them. Impossible, of course. They have lots in common, and each has its particular delights, so you really can't go wrong.

I wrote here a wee while ago that my first cruise was in Fiji - but it wasn't at all, I now remember. Leaving aside, for obvious reasons, my voyages between NZ and the UK back in 1957, the first time I travelled anywhere on a boat - apart from the Interislander ferry here - was in 1980, on the Irrawaddy in Burma/Myanmar. 

It was part of the Big Trip, back to England from NZ in 1980, and we started the cruise at Mandalay. We'd got there from Rangoon/Yangon on a battered old Fokker full of odd seats, and spent the day exploring what was then a quiet, sprawling city full of trishaws, pony carts and freely grazing cattle and sheep. We wandered around the grounds of the palace, encountering a snake and lots of lizards, and climbed, bare-footed as per custom, up the 1729 steps to the top of Mandalay Hill. Tourism was still a novelty then, and so were we, to the locals - only fair, really, though it got a bit tiring having people constantly offering to buy my watch, and asking if I had pens, cosmetics or clothes to sell.

We visited the big and beautiful pagoda, went to a market to buy mosquito coils - not the simple transaction you might expect - and then visited Amarapura, including temples, innumerable Buddhas, various handicraft workshops, and U Bein's picturesque bridge.

The ferry to Pagan/Bagan left that night, and we were really taken aback by what we'd let ourselves in for: lower deck packed with baskets of produce, upper deck like a scene from Exodus - not an inch of free space, people crammed in everywhere. Even our little "first-class" bow cabin had only four bare wooden bunks and a toilet heaving with cockroaches.

We and an Italian couple spent the night easing from one aching hip to another, woken at 4am when two more couples - German and American - came into the cabin, and the boat finally set off with loud shrieking from the hooter above our cabin. The others slept lay on the floor and table. 

The following day was a repeated pattern of gliding slowly down the super-wide, shallow river, periodically easing sideways to the bank to put ashore/take on passengers. Snack sellers came on board too, but we restricted ourselves to bananas and mangoes - oddly, not tempted by the fried grasshoppers wrapped in leaves so popular with the locals. A monk came on board at one stage and was seated in our cabin with great reverence.

The boat eventually stopped for the night well upstream of where we'd expected to go ashore, but with the help of a Burmese teacher on board who spoke English, six of us tourists splashed out on hiring a private boat for the exorbitant sum of $55. We were taken to it through the village on a pony cart, and caused a sensation, hordes of kids rushing up to shake our hands. After a 90 minute cruise further down the river, we came ashore again, got into another cart, drawn by a bad-tempered pony who had thought his working day was over, and crept through Pagan's moonlit temples to, finally, a lodging with a proper bed.

Uniworld, it definitely wasn't. But memorable, for sure... (Read more here.)

Hard times. No, really.

This was a first (and probably a last, too): this week's NZ Herald Travel, me on pages 10 and 11, the Firstborn on page 18 - my story about a cruise up the Rhone, hers, bar-hopping in Samoa. Type-casting? Never...

Though this was my third Uniworld Rhone story to be published, I do actually have another hanging about, looking for a home. That's quite good going for one event, I think (they are different stories, though obviously with a similar core) - and it's the only way to make any sort of money out of travel writing. Even better would be to sell the same story twice or more times, and I have done that in the past; but it's become less and less possible now, with publications automatically slapping stories up on their websites for the whole world to see. That's good for your personal overall Google-rating, but back when a newspaper story was wrapping cod and chips the next day was much better for overall recyclability.

Fairfax has gone even further in consigning travel writers to garrets by making them sign a contract dictating that not only do they have exclusive use of the story for one year (after acceptance, not publication, as some doughty writers have battled long and hard to establish) but they may also retain it online for as long as they want - which of course means that it's never going to be attractive to a different publication. Unless you didn't tell them, but it would be the work of moments for them to check, and there goes your credibility. And all this to earn, in the Fairfax newspaper sector at least, a few pence from their "tiny budget" (editor's own description) or, more likely, nothing at all, if you're willing to sell out on principle.

Fairfax's opposition APN at least pays almost what has been the going rate for, I'm told, about the last 30 years (how fabulous 40c/word must have been back last century!), but even that is under threat from the big bosses. So thank goodness for the magazines that still pay a respectable rate per word and for photos (separately), even though they're monthly at best, and extraordinarily hard to get a foothold in. All of which is to say that I'm so pleased that I'll soon be seeing my second story this year in Mindfood magazine - especially since it's the one about rhino poaching, which will hopefully galvanise some reader reaction.

Now that really would be a great excuse for a drink.

Goghing... gone

Naturally, going to the Van Gogh Live show that came to Auckland recently was always going to remind me of Arles. The show is a multi-screen projection of a good selection of his paintings, from early to last, with a bit of modest animation in some of them. The screens are all around the arena, at different angles and heights, and there are several paintings projected at once, so you have to keep looking around - including on the floor (though clearly not everyone felt that responsibility).

Each set has an accompanying quote from his letters or diary, in a handwriting font that takes a bit of effort to read, and the pace is brisk enough that it's far from a relaxing experience. It's good, though, and his paintings, especially the starry night ones, really benefit from the large-scale, super-bright treatment. It's fairly short, so I watched it twice. Overall, though, the story is sad. Poor man. He sold only one painting in his (self-shortened) lifetime. 

Regular 😀 readers will recall that I went to Arles back in - sigh - 2012, beginning a river cruise there with Uniworld along the Rhone, which finished in Lyon. Arles is where Van Gogh spent his most productive, if dramatic, years, and on a tour around that lovely, and appealingly lived-in, town, we visited a number of the scenes that he painted, most memorably the yellow Café la Nuit. 

Incidentally, the self-portrait with the bandaged ear confuses a lot of people: it was the left ear that he sliced at (possibly off) with the knife, but the picture shows his right ear bandaged, because he was painting his actual mirror image. 

Anyway, it was several days later, when fishing the next clean coffee mug out of the drawer, that I saw it was decorated with one of his swirly cypress paintings. I'd forgotten all about it - and also, where I'd bought it. So that occupied me on and off for a few more days, until the mug reappeared in the morning coffee cycle. I suddenly remembered then that I'd bought it at the National Gallery in London, where I'd gone on a Silversea cruise in - sigh - 2019. 

Shamefully, despite having lived in England for years and going to London many times, it was my first visit to the gallery - it was always one of those 'next time' things. If nothing else, recent events should have taught us not to put stuff off, don't you think? Just made that one in time.

That was a chastening lesson, but I was still quietly triumphant about having remembered where I'd bought the mug. Turns out, though, that all I had to do was turn it over.

Bon appétit

  

There was a Taste of France evening at our local fancy supermarket tonight, and they did a pretty good job. Not only was there a surprising number of actual French people giving tastings of excellent cheeses, charcuterie, crèpes and flans, but the food itself was délicieux, especially the coquilles St Jacques and the duck confit that I had, and the tarte tatin afterwards. Lots of the food was imported from France, and I was especially pleased to see (and taste) Valrhona chocolate there.

On my cruise up the Rhone last April with Uniworld, we stopped at the twin towns of Tain-l'Hermitage and Tournon, facing each other across the river and joined by a rather lovely old wooden suspension bridge. Surrounded by vineyards, there was naturally a lot of wine talk, and many of the passengers went to a wine-tasting but I, not yet - tragically - having had my red wine epiphany, skipped that and made a beeline instead for the smallish showroom of the Valrhona chocolate factory. It's a kind of Willy Wonka-esque fantasy where the walls are lined with bars and bags of chocolate with edge-to-edge bins of free samples below them. It was fabulous, especially as I had, fortunately, already had the dark chocolate epiphany. 

After I'd grazed my way around the room and brightened up the grey afternoon, we were treated to a musical carillon in the church around the corner, lively tunes played on 8 ancient bells. The man who arranged the performance for us came to chat with our cruise director, Laurent, and together they made a pair of such cliché Frenchness that they surpassed even the striped jumpers and berets of the Farro staff tonight.

Ballet and burgers

Bit of culture tonight: the Moscow Ballet performing The Nutcracker, which was little odd to see in May since it's a Christmas story - but as it's autumn and I lived for a long time in the northern hemisphere, it was a reasonable fit as long as I didn't think about it too hard. Much more difficult was not mentally resurrecting all the advertisements that have used the music over the years; but the dancing was as diverting as it should have been, and the costumes were very pretty. Not the original Nutcracker's though, which was rather grotesque with its huge mouth and ranks of teeth - far more nightmare material than dream, I'd say.

It reminded me of Lyon, where on our route march down from the basilica on top of the hill through all the hidden alleyways and narrow lanes, we passed a restaurant with huge nutcrackers in the window. It was one of our stops on the Uniworld cruise up the Rhone - it was here that we took a left turn into the Saone - and the biggest city on the route. Our tour ended near Le Sud restaurant, one of Paul Bocuse's establishments, which balanced out the McBaguette ads we'd walked past, though I was still alarmed to see in Monoprix ready-assembled burgers requiring just a quick nuke to be ready to feast upon. Hummm, indeed.

Others spent the afternoon's free time in the restaurant and/or the shops, but since I was working, I tried out this museum of automatons, which turned out to be rather sweet, full of older ladies with grandchildren they were trying to keep focused on filling out a worksheet while the kids just rushed, enchanted, from one tableau to the next. I was quite taken with them all myself, despite their being rather primitive: charmingly so, really, and very French in their subjects. Quasimodo was there with Esmeralda, there were bucolic country scenes with peasants harvesting the grapes, the priest in a town square where old men gambled with cards behind his back, and a scene from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, with a remarkably handsome Captain Nemo centre stage. As I said, very French...