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@celwis
Raw raspberry fudge pops / Recipe
Omg super yummy I want...
And so it begins...
Cette année là - Claude françois
It's on my set list that I have to listen to for revision.. and I don't think it will EVER leave my brain. #gotdafunk
A little montage of some of the pictures we took at the fondation Vasarely!
Ciara has an absolute shocker part 3 (Yep - there is a part 3)
Booking my flight home this week was a very effective way of jolting me out of the francophonian sun-soaked stupor that I have recently been basking in and got my mind whirling thinking about everything that has been going on in the past 2 months - and how to even begin explaining what happened ‘this time’.
And so, for the benefit of trying to lighten the ‘matter’ I have written this poem..
Ode to a thief
Twas a warm summer evening (ok so it was February, but it was WARM, like WARMWARM) and all through my halls,
Not a creature was stirring, from beyond my room walls.
My dinner was cooking in the kitchen with care,
In hopes that in my belly, food soon would be there.
My laptop was nestled all snug on my bed,
With visions of ‘totally edgy house artists’ which I respect’ed’.
And me, in my jammys, postponing a nap,
Went to fetch my cooked dinner, leaving the door locked with latch.
When returning with pasta I hoped wouldn’t make me fatter
I realised that something was definitely the matter.
For my door was ajar, and I saw (in a flash),
That my laptop(and iphone) were gone, with a man on the dash.
I immediately ran out into the night shouting ‘NO!’
But the thief had departed, I realised with woe.
The security guard, appeared as one not to action take, saying
“Thieves here are common, and the security cameras are fake.”
So alas, alone to my room I returned,
With my appetite gone and my chicken all burned.
I called up my mother to tell of my plight,
and decided to sleep in my friend’s room that night.
I suppose, that what you can take from this tale,
Is that whatever you do, make sure you don’t fail,
In insuring your laptops and gadgets, for you see,
Otherwise catastrophically broke you will be.
Luckily, my Uni forced such insurance upon us,
And a new laptop and phone are a definite plus,
However, to you who stole my possession that night,
Well, I hope that your life is utterly sh*te.
Ciara Elwis 11/04/14
So, as you can imagine it has been a fun couple of months trying to work out insurance documents (which required literally every type of proof possible, including my plane ticket to France, despite the fact that I had a police report from Aix-en-Provence police station..) However, luckily the lovely Geraldine who dealt with my situation was fantastic and all is back to normal now (thanks to my external hard drive.) Also, due to the whole - my room being broken into - thing I was allowed to move, so I am now on the other side of the building, with all my friends (yes it’s a plural I promise), meaning that I don’t have to lug all my kitchen equipment on a 20 minute (I may be exaggerating) AIXpedition (see what I did there?!) every time I want to cook with them.
This is, for the most part, a good thing, minus the fact that it was the only exercise I got in a week.. Luckily, the problem of a distinct lack of exercise in my life has been resolved by our decision to start going along to the free ‘Zumba’ classes put on by the Uni and run by a crazy Thai/Spanish/French/Columbian woman who doesn’t seem to know how to speak any of those languages properly, and simply communicates in a mixture of them all, muddled in with occasional grunts and an offensive amount of ‘wooo’s’.
Just after having my very own ‘taken’ experience - which was made all the more realistic by my mum, who decided to send a ‘we know where you live and if you don’t return this phone you will pay the consequences..’ text to my phone, and accidentally sent it to my French phone, resulting in me getting a rather confused jolt of anxiety when I read said message and thought that, not satisfied with my laptop and English phone the thief was after me as well…- I left for Ski trip take two which took place on what was to be known as my ‘birthday week’ (because I actually get a week not just a day) and what better way to take your mind of a severe lack of technology in your life than go somewhere where non of it f**ing works anyway! This did mean that any birthday calls I received were short lived and crackly.. However, a full morning on the slopes in the sunshine followed by champagne on the ski lift after lunch was more that enough to make up for it! Not to mention the ice cream cake..
My birthday week actually ended up mutating into a birthday fortnight (much to my dismay - not), as after the week in the alps I made the 16 hour journey to Scotland. Luckily, my ability to sleep (very embarrassingly and obviously I might I add) on public transport is second to none, so the vast majority of the journey was spent catching up on some z’s on the shoulder of some crazy french woman with no teeth who kindly, even after the ordeal I’d put her through, offered to buy me a sandwich when we got to the train station.. I honestly think she was worried about my health/general sanity..(she would be right.)
A week in Scotland came at exactly the right time as it gave me the chance to sort out all the insurance related stuff which would have realistically been a nightmare from France. I don’t want to ‘diss’ the french post system but my last letter from Scott arrived almost a month after it should have.. although some would say I’m perhaps being too trusting to believe he actually sent it when he said he did. (Anyway valentine’s day's more about the thought isn’t it..)
Being back in Scotland also reminded me how, despite a series of unfortunate events, I am still incredibly lucky to be getting to spend my 3rd year worrying about getting weird tan lines instead of sitting half my degree. It also gave me the incredible opportunity to have theee most depressing bank balance ever upon leaving the apple store with a new laptop:
Bank balance for savings account: £0.00
Bank balance for current account: £-1,249.31
Available balance: £0.69
...Greggs for dinner it is then.
I returned to Aix in blazing sunshine - a clever ploy, I am convinced, on its behalf to make up for the oceans 11-esq excitement of the previous weeks - (It totally worked). Unfortunately, with my first Spanish exam looming I couldn’t commit to the rays in the way I would have liked. As it transpires, myself and two other ERASMUSees may have made a slight misjudgment in thinking that the stipulation that you must be of at least ‘B1’ (GSCE/AS-LEVEL) standard in order to take the course, was actually serious/unattainable, and it turns out it is in fact actually quite difficult to learn an entire language from scratch in a week, especially when you have missed the last two weeks of classes. Not to be deterred, I did as any good student does and went to the internet for help and I am please to announce that myself and ‘hoot’ the owl from the online learning website ‘duolingo’ are now making excellent progress..
Having started to feel the strain and stress of being 6 weeks from operation ‘get all my stuff back to Scotland’ - which will be no mean feat. considering I have spent the vast amount of my ERASMUS grant replenishing the diminished wardrobe I took over here because I didn’t have enough space.. and also worried that our various plans to visit enough small French towns to never run out of things to say about /picture to show of our year abroads, may now be out of our reach. I hadn’t even done all the things there were to do in AIX yet, surely?!
Luckily, the answer to this came when Scott paid his second visit. Wanting to ensure that we did something vaguely more cultural this time than taking a ‘selfie’ with the ‘fountain de quatre dauphins' as we stumbled home from a night full of tapas, german beer and chocolate milkshakes (nailing the French thing), I decided to check trip advisor’s list of ‘top tourist attractions in Aix.’ This to my dismay, did not fill me with the pang of guilt at how little I had seen whilst living here. In fact, attraction number 14 on said list is ‘the mossy fountain’ which is exactly as exciting as you might imagine. So exciting in fact, that I had walked past it almost every day and never even noticed it was there. However, the ‘fondation Vasarely’ art AIXhibition (lol) came to the rescue, and although it must be said that it didn’t go far in convincing me that modern art is not, the vast majority of the time, to art what One Direction are to the Beatles, (So yes they are both British and ‘musicians’ (this being used in the loosest term possible) as such, but I’m not expecting to see three of 1D’s albums in the top 10 of NME’s ‘greatest albums of all time’ (or even one of their albums, anywhere on the list) anytime soon/hopefully ever/if that ever happens I hope I am 10 feet under at the time, if not deeper. That said, some of the magical carpets of 3D looking shapes were actually quite cool - and we got some edgy photos, which, I’m sure you will agree is what it is all about anyway.
With my exam timetable now out and a mere two weeks left of holidays to make the most out of the south of France in its prime, I have compiled a, rather large, list of all the places I want to go/see before my year in AIXile (weyhey! did it again!) comes to an end! This will start tomorrow when my mother and sister arrive for a four day visit so that we can, at last, answer the one question that’s been on everyone’s lips this year: If these rooms are too small for two people, then how fun will three people be! Current hypothesis: Not very fun.
Anyway, I hope that next time I’m writing an update about my year abroad AIXperiences (sorry i’ll stop now) I will be the culturally enriched, hopefully completely franco-fluent individual I dreamed of becoming when I set off to France in September. But for now, there is a bug buzzing in my ear and it’s really annoying me so I’d better ‘fly’ (no? ok..) Until then, Ciao, Hasta Leugo et Au revoir!
Cxxx
As promised.. the visual aid to my ski trip! (sorry it's like almost 2 months late) Click for more!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Happy new year! and before you say it, yes, I know Chinese new year was yesterday and our new year is now an all too distant memory. However, what with the great gatsby party, sister visiting, exams, Christmas, everyone else’s new year (some time in Dec/Jan I believe..), more exams, ski trip and Scott visiting feat. the flu.. I haven’t been able to get myself to the point where I feel ready to embrace a whole new year - well, ready to start doing all the things I said I would do in 2014 that is.. And so here we are! The first of February! And the proper start to my, up-to-date blog writing, twittering, gym-going, hard-working, self.. Or we’ll see how it goes anyway..
But anyway, now is not the time for forward thinking, now is the time to rewind over all the happenings of the last 2 months..
In December one of my family decided they loved me enough to brave the cold winds of Aix and came to visit me - bringing with her the realisation of a serious misjudgement I had made regarding co-habitation of my tiny bedroom and (even tinier) bed. How could it be that even after 21 years of existence in the Elwis clan I had not learnt that Morag simply cannot share a bed with anyone. On the off chance that I was allowed to sleep with my full body in the bed I was still deprived of pillow and Duvet and took to cuddling to my soft toy penguin Franklin for comfort and warmth. Her visit also gave me the wonderful opportunity to flaunt my newly acquired language skills.. Or not as it transpired - within the first five minutes she’d corrected me twice, on reflexion I probably should have chosen on the family members NOT studying French at Oxford to show off in front of.. I think by now it may be quite clear to you who the ‘runt’ of the litter is.. Another favourite moment was when we attempted to go to the nearby (although not as ‘nearby’ as I thought..) village of Arles which was home of Roman amphitheatre, baths, colosseum etc.. unfortunately we both got somewhat too excited by the first sighting of a sign for this colosseum.. resulting in us getting off the bus in the wrong village.. with no bus for another 4 hours.. I won’t go into too many details but it turns out taxi services in small unknown southern french towns are pretty ‘cher’..
As soon as Mo left I was crushed by the impending doom of my first exams in french, and so I took refuge in a local cafe ‘Coco bohème’ for the next week and a bit as I struggled through the most exams i’d had to sit since GCSE’s. This situation was not made any better by the fact that all around me my friends were leaving to go home for christmas, even the copious amount of vin chaud consumed could not make up for it..Mince pies beckoned.. As soon as I got out of my last exam of the week I headed straight for the Airport with ‘driving home for christmas’ on repeat on my ipod.
After the whirlwind of Xmas with the family, and having eaten enough roast dinners to last me until the end of my year abroad, I returned to Aix for Exam week 2 (Oh the joys). However, soon the painful blisters on my hands from note copying were long forgotten as the week after was the ‘fac de droit’ (law faculty) semaine de Ski in Superdévoluy. The week was undoubtably the best since i’ve been here but is definitely better described with photos rather than words and so i’ll post up a visual aid after this post.
After ski trip I knew that the end was nigh, the ‘eat sleep ski rave repeat’ routine was clearly not going to be sustainable and yet we tried our best (minus the Skiing of course). However, the illness I was convinced was looming didn’t come until half way through the next week, whilst my boyfriend Scott was visiting. This meant that we spent probably three quarters of the time he was here asleep, (woops) although to be fair there really isn’t that much to do in Aix so I think we pretty much covered it. On his first day my friends from ski trip suggested we all go to this ‘really cool café’ together. Trusting their judgments, I agreed. However, when we arrived at this place the distinct lack of chairs/proper tables/lights/wallpaper made me realise that they had meant cool in the most edgiest possible sense of the word. While we sat there with shisha and homemade smoothies I couldn’t help but speculate that this perhaps wasn’t the best first place to take Scott, who probably now thinks that I have spent most of my year abroad hanging out in, what looked like, a crack den. In an attempt to maintain this facade of ‘my edgy year abroad’ I took Scott to one of the electro-acoustics festivals in Dock des Suds. This was perhaps another rash call as Scott is much more of a one direction - love a good tune - kind of guy, and I am pretty sure he will count the experience as one of the most dull in his life..He was perhaps not bored quite ‘to death’ but at least to a ‘bad flu’ in any case. Ah well, you win some (or so I hear), you lose some.. His visit was of course, amazing, mostly because he, as a non french speaker was much more impressed by my linguistic abilities.. but also because it gave me the chance to actually BE the annoyingly happy couple in the little ‘cave’ in coco bohème for once. Oh and also because I beat him at scrabble #lifewin.
Anyway, now I am flu-free and starting off the new year like any self respecting citizen of the new world, with a blistering hangover and a two-month over due clothes wash pile that is threatening to take over my room.. bring on the new year! - have a good 2014 everyone!
Great evening at the Xmas market/Cours Mirabeau's bars and restaurants pretending we've finished exams :)
As promised, the HILARIOUS (I watched it sober just to make sure and yes it really is..) "you're a wizard harry" video..
Warning: Contains bad language.. like a lot of it.. in fact its mostly just bad language.. happy watching!
Suchhh an awesome video/song in general.. love his voice - going to go check for new stuff of his now!
So yeh this is what I had stuck in my head during our near sleep over in St Charles train station..
Sophocles' (Ci)oedipus
Thought it was high time I brought everyone up to date on me-having-an-absolute-shocker part two.. The reason for it having to taken so long to tell this tale is, truthfully, because it makes me want to throw things when i think about it. Yes, that bad.
Firstly: let me bring you up to date on the structure of Greek Tragedies (this is not me being a pompous ass - ok it is a little bit but its relevant i promise) - and apologies to any classic scholars out there because my summary is VERY brief!
SO. In Greek tragedies, the protagonist has a 'fatal flaw' which causes them to make a 'tragic mistake' thus the tragedy of the play is the irony that the characters demise is through their own doing. It is important here to note that excess, especially excessive passion - be that through frivolities, obsession, whatever, was viewed by the ancient Greek gods as a bad thing as it was 'impious'. In the end the protagonist must suffer in order to bring 'catharsis' - practically meaning that you learnt your lesson and have become a better person for it..
On that note, let me set the scene..
After returning home from an amazing two week visit home, the word on the streets of Aix was that a return trip to 'Dock des Suds' had been planned for Halloween.. On that fatal night we all fake blood/glittered up and caught the 'parrddaayy' bus to Marseille.
Having spent a wonderful journey listening to the youtube video spoof of 'you're a wizard Harry' (which I will post here - no one should be allowed to miss out on it.) We arrived, spirits high, at Dock des Suds and quickly got stuck into the 'merriment' that surrounded us.
However, disaster first struck after drink number 1. when Jordan gave me the sudden grab and 'we need to go outside' that could only mean one thing.. kudos to the bouncer for not chucking her out despite the fact she was projectile vomiting into a plant pot mere cm's away from him. It was shortly after this the fatal words were uttered: 'I want to go home.'
Considering this was only an hour into the night drastic action had to be taken, and was, in the form of force feeding Jordan what must have been 2000000 bottles of water. To give credit where credit is due, Jordan's recovery from her previous state was almost as magnificent as the resurrection of Christ himself. - If ever I had wished to have a before and after photo it would have been for those 20 minutes. Anyway, fully recovered and once again, 'Pret a feter' we rejoined the masses.
I must, at this point admit that, despite the way the night turned out I did actually have a very good time, this is even more impressive when considering the fact that we seemed to be spend more time trying on the selection of sunglasses that some people were selling than watching the acts we'd paid to go see. It was while we were gathered around the stall that I found true love in the shape of an big inflatable banana (see pictures for details) that I insisted on taking with me when we headed into the 'salle de sucres' ready to tear up the D-floor once again.
Build up completed, I will now explain how my own little Greek Tragedy of life came to pass.
My 'fatal flaw' here was my 'obsession' (excess) with the idea of keeping my banana and not letting anyone steal it (also greed - not good either).. This caused me to make the 'tragic mistake' of trying to deflate the banana and put it in my (very small) bag. This brought on the 'tragedy' that because there was not enough space in my bag, all my other stuff (phone, camera and purse) fell out, and I lost them..all. Through the catharsis that was, firstly, having to spend 35 euros each (Jordan and myself) on a taxi home because we decided to leave and then found ourselves stranded in St Charles station with a four hour wait until the next train (like a hobo by Charlie Winston springs to mind here) and secondly, the last month or so of utter hell trying to replace everything I lost, I have learnt the valuable lesson of not trying to steal bananas that aren't mine..
So yeh.. cheers to Zeus etc for that one, lesson well and truly learnt.
N.B: Big shout out to Jordan for lending me money for a good 2/3 weeks whilst my cards made the treacherous journey from Scotland to France.
Also: can I just have a massive (Greek comedy style) 'Boo' to Tmobile and SFR, SFR for continuing to charge me for (now) 2 months after I cancelled my sim (the website I could still access through having had a number was clearly such good value for money) and to Tmobile/ee/whatever sorry excuse for a phone company you want to call yourself, for managing to take 6months so far to unlock my Iphone.. and no it's still not unlocked, i'm not angry, i'm just disappointed.
p.s I hope Zeus hits you both with a lightning bolt.
No ravin' or mis'behavin' for me this weekend! Just eat sleep repeat! #cantwait #pjparty #recoveryweekend
Nearly 50 years after its release, Bob Dylan’s classic “Like a Rolling Stone” has finally got an official music video, and it’s pretty much the best thing ever.
EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET ON THIS! Possibly the coolest music video ever. Bob Dylan’s ‘like a rolling stone’ - the interactive music video!
Seems only right to post this as it was practically our soundtrack to Venice.. (Sorry Rosa). I love the original too but this cover is pretty special!
The scots take Venice! (aka.. The tale of Othello and Deborahmona..)
As the saying goes, a picture tells a thousand words, so I have let the above choice few photographs show what I'm sure most would have already assumed: Yes, we had a jolly good time.
But just incase that isn't sufficient, I'll give you all a quick run down of what we got up to! So after a particularly mundane week of lectures in Aix, myself and two friends decided we'd had enough, we needed an adventure, flights to venice we're going cheap and so, despite the fact that none of us spoke italian and that we had already (due to our sub-standard living conditions) been living off pasta for the past 2 months - we put on our finest 'Scotalien' accents and headed off in search of colder climates and better ice cream..
Upon arrival to our 5 star accommodation, which went by the enticing name of 'Camping Jolly' we were greeted by the protagonist of this tale.. 'Othello' the camps handy man, agony aunt and all round good guy.. Well, we think thats who he was, he spoke very little English, and, despite our lack of knowledge of Italian.. we were pretty sure he didn't speak that either.. Nevertheless, we put decades of charades to good use, and, after a couple of additional incomprehensible shouts and gestures from Othello, we found our way to our cosy port-a-cabin.
Truth be told, our accommodation was pretty decent considering the mere pennies we were paying for it.. and thankfully due to Deborah's inner child convincing her that she wanted the precarious-looking fold down bed that was bolted onto the wall, and the fact that Rosa made the rookie error of going for the bed close to the window.. I manage to snag myself a decent place to sleep.. GET. IN. (I was, consequently, the only one who had a good night sleep the entire time we were there..moihaha..) As requested (we think) by Othello we checked to see if our little cubby hole was fully equipped and discovered we were one pillow case short.. alas, if only at that moment we had thought to google the italian for pillow case then so much hassle could have been avoided.. Unfortunately none of us thought that far ahead and stomachs a-rubbling we headed off for our first italian meal in the camps bar-come-restaurant-come-nightclub..
It was on our way there that dear Deborah-mona was nearly swept off her feet as Othello glided by -at speed- on his bike, grabbing her in the process - we presume to get her attention? He then asked his fair lady whether she required anything.. Request for pillow case made, we journeyed on..
How do you solve a problem like.. not knowing the Italian for pillow case.. well, it only took about 5/6 different attempts and presentation of different possible objects for our room before we got lucky..
Our first day in Venice did not start all that smoothly, unknown to us the bus that takes people from Camping Jolly into town had to be booked about a month in advanced, as for some reason the Italians do not understand the concept of supply and demand and instead run two minibus' for the entire place (over 200 lodges) per day. Not to be deterred, us fearless Scots demanded the location of the nearest bus stop and off we went.. Unfortunately, it appears all the knowledge of map reading gained doing my Gold Duke of Edinburgh award only worked for Scotland, and we got very lost.. Luckily, our guardian angel came in the form of a very grubby, tiny, and wrinkly Italian man who randomly walked up to Deborah and proceeded to shout at her in Italian whilst waving a small knife.. Deborah, confused by this approach, thought that the man was attempting to mug her, and asked me whether I thought she should hit him.. I hastened to point out the small bag of mushrooms the man had in his other hand, and suggested that the knife was probably because he had been digging up mushrooms, and the waving, most likely gesticulation (a common Italian stereotype which could in fact not be MORE true.. unlike the scottish stereotype that we all walk around in kilts drinking whisky the whole time (I wish!)) Anyway luckily this seemed to convince her that flattening the small old man was probably not the best way of proving to people that another standard stereotype of the Scottish - excessive violence, was in fact not deserved.. We thanked our saviour with the most enthusiastic 'Grazie!' each of us could muster and were off..
By some miracle we actually managed to get to the bus stop and the rest of the day was mostly spent swanning around Venice getting used to bridge climbing, taking pictures every few steps we went, oohing and ahhing ALOT and stopping off in every museum/art gallery we came across.. this included an incredible exhibition on Da Vinci's inventions.. As it transpired, asides from being one of the most incredible painters ever, he also had made sketches of hot air balloons, bicycles and other weird and wonderful inventions, centuries before anyone else thought of them! Interesting as it was I can't deny that I came out of the exhibit feeling a little less 'inspired' and a little more 'why am I so bad at life..'
After the culture became a bit too much for us we had a well deserved rest in the Hard Rock cafe for a break from Bolognese and more importantly, the chance to escape each others company for a little while and make the most of the outside world thanks to their unlimited wifi! 3 hours later we emerged, filled to the brim with the America's finest cuisine and fully 'au courant' with our own little world's happenings. We then climbed took the elevator.. to the top of the tower in San Marco square (see photos) and admired the views for probably a little to long.. judging by the filthy looks we were getting when eagle-eyed tourists past us for the 5th time eager to get into our prime photo-taking spot..
I won't bore you with a play by play of all events but we did manage to pack a considerable amount of sight seeing/eating into our stay.. personal favourites included:
Our gondola ride round the city: (80 euros for the trip so we had to convince some fellow travellers to come along with us and split the bill) It was massively over priced for the 20 mins of - i have no doubt skilled- pushing the gondolier did for us.. however, it was worth every penny to feel like that much of a boss, floating round the city whilst the 'peasants' took the bridges. By the end of the journey Deborah had planned her full proposal in Venice (much to myself and Rosa's amusement) complete with champagne, strawberries, a gondola ride and a trip to the opera house.. Gents, take note..
Our trip to Verona for a day: Despite the fact that all three of us, embarrassingly enough, teared up at the sight of Juliet's window (the entire courtyard is COVERED from roof to the ground in love letters) (Chh! Classic girls..) The colosseum was also incredible.. although not as incredible as the free Christian rock concert we got to go to inside it.. (ahem..)
Sitting in one of the many Italian restaurants/cafes we visited: Sipping on Bellini or Spritz (whatever native Venetian drink took our fancy at the time) and feeling SUPPPEERRR cultured as we watched people go to and fro..
The time we decided to go 'all out' Venice food style: After wandering around starving (and bursting for the loo) for FAR too long, we found an adorably Italian little restaurant (complete with masks hanging from every inch of the roof), and made it our home for the next four hours as we struggled through our 4 courses - each more filling than the next, and washed down, bien sur! with the restaurant's finest second cheapest Prosecco.
One of our many following encounters with Othello: Especially the one where we realised, during a particularly frustrating conversation on the 3rd day about the fact we had STILL not had a warm shower in the morning, something we had tried (and failed) on numerous prior attempts to communicate to him.. that he was actually French! (oops probably should have checked that one..) We then proceeded to have a lovely conversation with him (this is when Deborahmona and Othello's love truly Blossomed.. Maybe that Venice proposal isn't so unlikely after all :o..)
The fact that each and every one of the four days we walked back from the bus, we managed to go the wrong way (different each time) and spent an average of about 1 and a half hours completing the 15 minute walk home.. every day. Which is good, especially as Rosa had blisters the size of a child's finger on her heels..
One particularly enjoyable trip to Maccas: (Mcdonalds) (and its different in every country, so yes its cultured) (and yes i was INCREDIBLY excited to discover McDonalds in Italy do pasta..) (Yes, of course I still got nuggets, i'm not a moron.. everyone knows it is the superior maccas choice.) ANYWAY, on this afore mentioned visit we came across a charming group of Italian boys who attempted to woo us with their extensive knowledge of the English language..
"Hello.. How are you.. The Queen."
Safe to say they had me at hello..
All too soon Doomsday was upon us.. We arrived at the airport in very good time as previous experience of Deborah's inability to do ANYTHING and I mean ANYTHING, quickly meant that this was of the essence. However, another reason for our keeness was that, in my state of over-excitement I had booked Venice not realising that my flight back home left from France 30 mins after I got in from Venice.. Oh well the airport is tiny, should be fine.. (SH*TSH*TSH*T). As anyone who has flown Ryanair before will not have been able to avoid knowing: "Last year over 90% of Ryanair flights landed on time, beating every other European airline." So 90%.. my odds were good..
The journey started really well, we queued up for ages so as to be one of the first on the plane (eager to be near the front incase I needed to make a run for it!). However, we needn't have worried because upon boarding the plane the flight attendant asked if we were all together, and then offered us the reserved first row seats of the plane.. (why is it the only time in my life I get upgraded its on a Ryanair flight?!) Anyway - life win. Life win no.2 came when we were sneaking peaks into the cockpit, fascinated by this unknown area of all importance.. and, seeing what we were looking at, were told that we could 'go in if we wanted' EH. YES PLEASE?! We spent the rest of the flight being told about the banterous existence of a flight attendant and learning the sign language they use to talk to each other from one end of the plane to the other (could have been useful for Othello?). All in all, we were having a great time - until I looked at my phone and saw that we should have landed.. and we were still messing around, seat belts well and truly unfastened!
In the end, it all turned out ok though, as despite getting off the plane at the time my gate was closing, the wonderful thing about Ryanair is you can always rely on them to not board on time. I arrived, having sprinted with my case and dressed in full 'airport chic' (all the clothes I could possibly wear as I only had hand luggage) to find myself waiting in a cue for the next 30mins. Alas, such is life.
It was onwards, upwards and off to see how Edinburgh was coping without me.
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Definitely need to cross a few of these off the bucket list..
Cute little carousel in parc jourdan next to where I live #soadorable #iwantaturn