Africa Europe France Tunisia Tunisia Trip 2018

8 hours in Lyon

It makes absolutely no sense. I wanted to fly from Montasir (the airport near Sousse, Tunisia to Djerba, Tunisia. The flight should have taken an hour. Maybe. The buses were too slow and the train doesn’t go to the island of Djerba, so I was set on flying and doing so today. Well, the only flight that came up in multiple searches was a flight from Montasit, to Lyon, France, and to Djerba. It seemed ludicrous…but the flight did offer an 8 hour layover in Lyon. That was appealing. I haven’t been to France in years and never to Lyon. So I booked it.

When I arrived at the airport for my 6:30am flight, the guys at check in thought it was crazy. One even offere

d to put me on a flight that connected in Tunis, but I declined. I was already looking forward to a coffee in the old city.

An 8 hour layover doesn’t mean 8 hours of walking around Lyon. It means 5 hours max. There are a few tricks to these just-long-enough-to-leave-the-airport layovers. I try to check in for both flights at the beginning and check my bag through to the end, so I’m not messing around with bag collection and checking in. That wasn’t possible for this flight, so I took my bag as a carry on and left it in the luggage storage at the train station. I also study ahead of time. If you’ve only got a half day, there isn’t time to figure out when you are there what you want to see or do. So I do my homework and determine what areas I want to visit and what I want to see and how I am going to get around. If I can (as I did in Lyon), I buy my transit tickets online ahead of time and I get foreign currency before landing so I don’t have to waste time in queues. And most importantly, I study maps intently. Like I am planning a bank job. I want to know, as much as possible, what exit to take from the metro and which bridge to walk across and what street to turn left on when I get to the other side. This satisfies both my desire to make good use of my short layover and my fondness for maps.

It all worked well today. I probably could have even spent another hour in the city but I didn’t want to risk missing my plane.

I took the express airport train and then the metro to Vieux Lyon; the old city…and also the most touristy, but it is popular with visitors for a reason. The streets are so charming, with old buildings hung with old signs, narrow lanes lined with cheese shops and quaint cafés, patisseries, and churches.

And overlooking it all is a cathedral on a hill.

I walked up and down the streets, stopping for a coffee and a pink praline tart – apparently Lyonnaise specialty. So good and disgustingly sweet.

I walked down the river for a bit, photographing churches and buildings.

Back on to the Rue Ste Jean, looking for number 53 or 54 and for a plain door, which would lead to one of the many traboules – hidden passages which lead between buildings to other streets and also to private residences. There are apparently 315 of them, but only a few are accessible or known to the public. According to the good book (Lonely Planet) some of them date to Roman times and the rest were in the 19th century. It was indeed a long passage, in some places providing access to apartments. Who doesn’t love secret passages? If only i had to pull a candlestick to gain access.

I then took the funicular up to the Basilica Notre Dame de Fourvière, which is a beautiful 19th century cathedral overlooking the city. There were priests wandering around, as well as worshippers, but they were outnumbered by tourists, so I was able to take pictures.

I then walked to Place Bellecour and took the train to Hotel de Ville to see some of the fancy buildings in that area.

At that point i headed back to the airport. I probably could have spent another hour, but I didn’t want to be rushing to catch my flight. I saw what I wanted to see, had an afternoon in France, and was on my way back to Tunisia.

Andorra-Lithuania trip 2024 Europe

European Hopsctoch

How I planned my trip to Barcelona, Andorra, Vilnius, Riga, & Stockholm

I had booked a trip to go to Lebanon and Syria in May 2024, and I was excited about it. The flights and hostels were booked; the itinerary was made…but then the war in Israel and Palestine spread a bit north into Lebanon. This didn’t affect my plans initially, but when some of the bombs landed in or near Beirut and some airlines cancelled their flights, I started to think twice. I wasn’t concerned about the violence affecting me per se, but I was concerned about flights being cancelled and getting stranded. Work wise, I just couldn’t afford to be stranded in anywhere. So I cancelled my bookings, and I had to book another trip with just about two weeks’ notice. I don’t relish in a last minute trip. I like to languish with travel books, maps, and blogs, researching and anticipating. As I always say, however, travel teaches one flexibility.

This new trip couldn’t be anywhere that required an advance visa or anywhere that needs a lot of pre-planning. Plus, with only two weeks out most of the flights were expensive. So I traded in my desire for adventure and decided to go for a European trip. On the plus side, this would give me an opportunity to visit a couple of new to me countries, plus revisiting some other places that I like. I found a good price on a round-trip ticket to Barcelona, and from there I would visit Andorra, with a little stop in France, I would fly to Lithuania, travel by land to Latvia, fly to Stockholm, before returning to Barcelona, via Zürich on the way. It sounded delightful.

I had been to all of these countries before except for Andorra and Lithuania. Fortunately, flights within Europe tend to be inexpensive and the trip was looking to be fairly affordable. The one thing I didn’t factor into my trip planning, and my budgeting was Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift and the price of Hostels

I am in no way anti Taylor Swift, but I don’t really give her much thought at all, or at least I didn’t before this trip. When I arrived in Barcelona, I discovered that all of Europe was buzzing with her tour dates getting underway. Just after I arrived in Barcelona, she had a couple of dates in Paris and half of the girls staying in my dorm in Barcelona were on their way to the concert. One of them even lived in the United States and said it was cheaper for her to fly from Los Angeles to Europe and buy tickets there than it was to buy tickets in the States.

All of this meant that the price and availability of hostels in Barcelona and Stockholm were not great. Nowhere was this truer than in Stockholm. I had never been to Stockholm, but I had heard it was expensive, so when I started looking for hostel dorms and I found that they were in the $250 CDN range, I thought, “well I guess that’s just Stockholm prices,” and maybe it was a little more expensive because I was booking at the last minute. What I didn’t realize was that my three days in Stockholm corresponded exactly with Taylor Swift’s three days of concerts there. All of the accommodations were three to four times what they normally were and almost every place was full. I did pay $250 CDN a night for a rather unremarkable dorm bed in Stockholm – one that lacked even a privacy curtain, a towel, or a free breakfast. It is, to date, the most expensive hostel accommodation I’ve ever had.

*Hostel bunks in Barcelona and Stockholm, the latter (Bunk 4) was the $250/night one*

On the plus side, although I am not a ‘Swifty’, I couldn’t help but be charmed by all her fans, particularly in Stockholm, where they seemed to overtake the city but were so cute and wholesome that it was impossible for me to be irritated by them.

Anyway, that was just a blip on what otherwise was a very enjoyable trip to multiple places, starting in Barcelona…

Algiers-Nice-Athens 2024 France

Two Perfect Days in Nice

Algiers to Nice

I left Algiers absurdly early on February the 13th. My destination was Nice, France. I had been to France multiple times, but never to the South. I was curious to see Nice, but my real reason for going there was to make a day trip to Monaco. But fly to Nice I did; a short hop from Algiers to Paris to Nice. I arrived at about 7:00 AM and I would have three days and three nights in the city before moving on.

From the airport I took the tram from the airport into the city centre. Easy. I walked a few blocks to my hotel, the Hotel du France (which was very nice, with great staff, quince wallpaper, and not too expensive), and dropped off my bag. I walked a few blocks to the sea.

Nice Impressions

I’m not a big fan of the ocean. I live about a block from the ocean in Vancouver and I almost never go to it. I like that it’s there and I like being near it, but I have very little desire to look out at it. I know people who are happy to just gaze out at the sea and frankly I don’t understand what the appeal is. I would much rather sit at a sidewalk cafe in interesting city, or, if I had to look out at nature, I’d much rather look at mountains or a valley than the ocean. But as I gazed out at the Mediterranean from the boardwalk in Nice, I think I kind of got it, at least for a moment. It was so stunningly beautiful. The colours of the water and sky and this uninterrupted stretch of beach were just lovely. And the fact that I could look out at it without actually having to step on sand was even better. They have these strips of chairs along the boardwalk where people can gaze out at the beach and the water. And people did. And so did I.

I liked Nice instantly. For the moment I got off the tram it was beautiful. Beautiful buildings, beautiful streets, beautiful lemon trees, and beautiful people. It just had this wonderfully calm and elegant atmosphere. No one was rushing. It surprised me little. I generally prefer chaotic and loud cities, but something about Nice won me over. And I hadn’t even seen the old city centre at this point.

Day One

I walked through the city and eventually made my way over to the old part of Nice, which was even more charming. The buildings were perfect. They were old and colourful with warm tones of yellow and ochre, coral and tangerine, many with small flourishes of design and just the right amount of weathering to give them character. It was so charming.

Because it is France, many people smoke, and while many people smoke cigarettes they don’t look down their nose at people who smoke cigars, so I was in a good place. I had already mapped out a few cigar stores, some of which had seats outside, but I didn’t need particular cigar lounges, as I was welcome to enjoy a cigar on any patio. I found myself a seat on a patio and had a cigar and a coffee and watched people parade past.

Generally speaking, the people in Nice were dressed beautifully. Even out for a casual stroll they were well put together with smart blazers, jaunty scarves, beautiful bags and sunglasses. Subtly stylish and comfortable. Because I had known that I would be going to Monaco on this trip and I had wanted to smoke cigars and visit the casino there, I had dressed nicer on this trip than I usually do, and I was thankful for it when I arrived in Nice. I didn’t feel out of place. I still had my combat boots (for comfort and possible altercations) but my little black dress, blazer, and oversized sunglasses seemed to work well. Did I look like I fit in? Maybe; but that facade was all done away with once I opened my mouth, and I spoke French like a child.

I walked to the Place Massena where the famous Sun Fountain stands. It features a large statue of Apollo flanked by smaller statues of Earth, Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. It was originally built in 1956, and was somewhat controversial, because Apollo, who, in mythology, leads a chariot with four horses across the sky each day to bring light, was depicted as without his chariot and with his four horses nestled onto his head like kind of a crown. Moreover, he was nude, and not everyone could agree if he should have been or if he was too well endowed. The artist performed a sort of ‘reduction’ on the statue to please the public, which it did not, and it was taken down for many years and put into storage until finally being fully re-erected, no pun intended, in 2011. Problematic history aside it is an impressive piece, framed by salmon-coloured, curved buildings and set on a black and white checkerboard tiled square.

I spent my first day in Nice walking around and looking at buildings and taking pictures, stopping for coffee and cigars. It was very pleasant. I didn’t really have an agenda in Nice. I just wanted to see it and visit Monaco so I felt no need to take anything off a list, which was good. I had a thoroughly awful meal that evening. I made a mistake of eating at a restaurant that I think catered to tourists and I had a pizza which was gross. (As much as I like France, it still is one of the countries with the least options for vegetarians, in my experience.) While I was eating the pizza (and trying and failing to do so elegantly) outside on the patio, a pigeon flew into the window and landed under my table, in trauma. I spent the entire meal checking on it and trying to give it drinks of water hoping that it would regain its consciousness, but it died around the time I asked for the cheque. C’est la vie.

Day Two

The next day, I made my way back into old Nice (just a few minutes’ walk from my hotel) for the morning flower, fruit, and vegetable market. As if the old city needed to be anymore charming. But it was more charming. I walked around; I ate a pear and had a cigar in a coffee. I had my eagle eyes on the socca stand, waiting for it to open up. Socca is a Nice treat. It’s kind of like a very thin, crispy pancake made from olive oil and chickpea flour, sprinkled with salt and pepper and served from various stands around the city. It’s very tasty.

More beautiful buildings. I couldn’t get enough photos.

It was February the 14th. Valentine’s Day and I was in Nice, in France. I saw people out for romantic meals and holding hands, but none of that was for me. I went on a walk up to the Cimetière du Château – because why not hang out in a cemetery on Valentine’s Day?

The walk up the hill was pleasant, and past an aggressive fountain and various tile work pieces displaying Neptune another underwater creatures. At the top is the cemetery and stunning views over the city and the sea.

I wandered around up there for a while before making my way back to the Old Town.

I walked the streets a little bit more, popping into some of the shops. There are delightful vintage stores in Nice. Tiny little boutiques with well curated collections of clothing and accessories. I bought a blazer in a handbag. I’m really not a shopper, but somehow ‘Nice me’ wanted to go shopping. I then went for a very ladylike lunch of an onion tart, a glass of cheap wine, and a cigar.

As I walked around, I noticed that the hours of the restaurants and shops in Nice. I’m from Canada, where things are pretty much open seven days a week and generally long hours. Some things are open 24 hours a day. Why should we be denied the opportunity to buy toothpaste at 2:00 in the morning? But in Nice many of the shops were closed at least two days a week and their hours of operation during the day were chaotic. For example open Wednesday to Saturday from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. What this told me was that people there have some sort of quality of life. There wasn’t the need to be working every minute of the day or to be catering to customers 24/7. You want to eat in my restaurant? You fit my schedule; not the other way around. It was kind of refreshing.

I popped into the Palais Lascaris; built in 1648 as the home for the Lascaris Vintimille family until the French Revolution, it is now a museum. It was pleasant to walk through the ornate rooms and there was a particularly good collection of antique musical instruments.

I had really wanted to visit the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, but it was closed for some sort of renovation. So I went to the Chagall museum.

I’m not a big fan of Chagall, so this museum wasn’t high on my list, even though most lists of what to do in Nice will include this is one of the top attractions. It was fine. I have a better understanding of Chagall’s work now, but it’s still not my cup of tea. However, if you like his paintings this would be a ‘must see’.

That evening, I took myself out for a quasi-romantic dinner-for-one on the patio of an Afghan restaurant in the old city of Nice. Of course I had a cigar. It was exquisite.

Nice had thoroughly charmed me and turned me into somehow a classier more relaxed version of myself. The next day would be my day trip to the micro-country of Monaco.

Africa Algeria Algiers-Nice-Athens 2024

Alighting in Algiers

I wanted to visit Algeria. The largest country in Africa, sitting on the north coast between Morocco and Tunisia, stretching from the Sea to the Sahel. It seems to have it all: stunning desert vistas, a vibrant capital, rich cultural traditions, ancient ruins…I was smitten. I particularly wanted to visit the south, with its isolated, ancient desert cities. I’ll tell you now that I did not get to the south. I still plan to visit, but it didn’t happen this time.

Logistics

Algeria is one of those countries that has been very difficult to visit. Visas required with invitation letters and mandatory tours, consulates that don’t respond, and expensive fees. This have been getting better in the past few years, but when I went it was still not super easy. To go, I needed a visa, which required sending my passport to Ottawa with an application, fees, my bank account statement, a letter from my employer, an itinerary, and an invitation from a tour company. I’ve never done a multi day tour and wasn’t interested in it, but I had heard that it might be possible to travel independently after I took a tour. I understand this is now possible; then it was not – or so I was told. There were a lot of competing stories at the time. The tour company said I could only get a visa for the length of my tour. I did ask how much a tour would be if it included a few days in the south, but it was prohibitively expensive. So I reached a compromise: I would only visit Algiers (this time) and worked out a short visit (so it wasn’t too costly) that gave me some time on my own as well as with a guide.

I had heard so many horror stories from people who sent their passport into the Algerian consulate in Ottawa and never got the visa, or that it took months; I don’t know how I got so lucky, but I mailed in my application on a Monday and had my passport back, with the visa, by Friday of the same week.

The arrangement I had was with the Fancy Yellow tour company. They arranged to pick me up at the airport and drive me back to the airport and I had a half day tour on my second day.

Overnight in Paris

I flew from Vancouver to Paris, where I spent the night; arriving late and leaving early. I stayed at the hotel Libertel Gare Du Nord Suede, which was cheap and serviceable, and went for a late night was around the area, just to stretch my legs and soak up something of being in Paris. I got a sandwich and had a small cigar in the chilly February air before going to sleep.

Arrival

The next morning, I flew to Algiers. No hassles at the airport. I had my visa. It was about 12:45. I met my driver, changed some money, and drove to the ABC Hotel. What it lacked in charm or character it made up for in being in a central location and being clean and functional with a nice free breakfast and helpful staff.

I immediately went out to explore.

Algiers

I walked all around the central part of Algiers, taking in the streets and walking past landmarks and impressive buildings. Algiers is lovely. Like a cleaner Paris in some areas. Gleaming white buildings with decorative balconies, flower sellers, tree-lined streets, statues, and squares. It was lovely and felt safe and, while I was dressed quite modestly anyway (all in black with a loose knee-length dress, sweater, blazer, scarf, tights, and combat boots), I didn’t feel like that was strictly necessary. Certainly there was no need to cover my head or wear an abaya.

Post Office

I took photos of the stunning mosques (they didn’t seem to be open for interior visits). I got a Mhajeb, also known as Mahdjoub (a delicious flatbread/crepe-like thing stuffed with, in this case, different greens) being sold from a window. A few men on the streets played the Algerian mandole for donations.

Most people in Algiers spoke Arabic, with some French, and Berber, with the written language of Tifinagh, a written form of Berber appearing on many signs. Tifinagh is a very intriguing looking language; almost like a language that would be engraved on some alien artifact.

Language barriers notwithstanding, it seemed like an easy place to visit. But I hadn’t been to the Casbah yet. The Casbah was the most appealing part of Algiers. An historic quarter of the city, rising up a hill, with the buildings mostly dating back to the 17^th and 18^th centuries. It is a UNESCO heritage site, but due to years of conflict, colonization, and neglect, parts of it are in very poor repair. Readings about the Casbah, most reports say it is dangerous; that tourists should not visit it without a guide. I didn’t let that stop me, and had no issues wandering the narrow, crooked alleys. I was a bit shy about taking pictures that day, not wanting to attract any hostility. (I made up for it the next day.)

Had this been my only visit to the Casbah, I would have been quite happy, but I admit that I had a better visit the next day with my guide, as there was so much history I didn’t know and areas I had missed.

But it was a perfect wander, and I finished it off with a coffee and a cigar on the excellent patio of Le Tantonville Grande Café d’Alger. Dating back to 1883, it has history and a perfect patio for people watching as you sip your coffee. It was, apparently popular with French bohemians, artists, writers, and philosophers, including Camus and Sartre. I felt rather sophisticated.

I went back to my room just after dark. It had been a long journey. I thoroughly enjoyed my first day in Algiers, but I will say that the city felt a bit quiet. It wasn’t busy or bustling, and just felt subdued. There is nothing wring with that, but I felt like it lacked excitement, but it made up for it in history and looks.

The next day I would have a guided tour and see much more of the city.

Wandering North

8 hours in Lyon

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Algiers to Nice

Nice Impressions

Day One

Day Two

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Logistics

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Arrival

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