Avignon

Our next (and last) stop in France was Avignon. What a beautiful old city! The Palais du Papes was amazing. As were the lovely gardens behind the Palais called the Rocher des Domes. The Ponte d'Avignon was also quite lovely, however we decided not to pay the €4 each to walk along a half-finished bridge! We also loved seeing our first glimpse of the Rhòne river - we spent two of our three days in Avignon having lunch by the river. We spent most of our time in Avignon walking around the streets, admiring the buildings and relaxing by the Rhòne as the museums in Avignon were a bit costly for our budget! It was good to just relax as we felt a bit museum-overloaded after Paris and Dijon. Our forays into trying food from Provence weren't too successful. One night we visited a restaurant which had three course meals starting from €11, which we tried as the tantalising menu promised "roasted lamb cooked in provencàl herbs served with green beens or rice". It turned out to be a small lamb steak with a sprinkling of dried herbs which looked like it came from a supermarket-bought herb bottle. Infact, we're pretty sure there is an actual Masterfoods Provencàl Herbs product! Oh well, what can you expect for €11!

Views around Avignon -

Dijon - city and mustard

After our sojourn in Paris we travelled by TGV train to Dijon for two nights. Dijon is a small city with a large, young university population so it has quite a different vibe from Paris.
We spent our two days walking around the coblestone streets of the old city centre, admiring the beautiful old Burgundy Ducal buildings as well as visiting some of the (free) museums and the botanical gardens. Unfortunately, we couldn't visit the Dijon Mutard (mustard) museum/factory because it is closed at the moment! However, there was lots of mustard for sale in Dijon shops so we bought a few bottles. You can buy all sorts of Dijon mustard here, including seeded, taragon, basil and also blueberry (yuck) mustard. Also, some cafes and restaurants had little sachets of mustard instead of sauce sachets!

Views around Dijon -










The hotel we stayed in - previously it was an old relay posthouse

Paris in the Spring time!

We arrived in Paris in the Spring - a beautiful time to see this city for the first time - blue skies, lovely weather, blossoming trees and mating pidgeons!! (A spectacle that is surprisingly entertaining - at least for Jason). We enjoyed our short stay and did lots of sight-seeing and walking! Walking is a great, cheap way to see the city and to walk off all the pain au chocolats, glacès and nutella crèpes we ate! On our first day we walked from our hostel in Monmatre to the Sacrè Coeur to the Louvre and then onto the Eiffel Tower! Needless to say, we caught the Metro home that day! We also visited the Musèe D'Orsay and the Louvre and felt we walked the length and breadth of Paris in those two museums alone! We were very good and got to the Louvre early to avoid the long que - although a lot of good that did as they were late in opening it up. While we waited in the que we entertained ourselves by making up conversations of the Security Staff who were walking around looking very impotant but not seemingly doing too much!
(Read with a strong French accent)
Jean-Pierre: Jacques! I hive lost zee key to zee Louvre!
Jacques: Mon Dieu Jean-Pierre! Where deed you last zee it?
Jean-Pierre: Ah! It was vhen I vas buying a croissant! Quick! To the croissant stand!
Jacques: Oui! Oui!

Our commentary seemed to amuse some of our fellow foreign tourists lining up with us.

We also walked along the banks of the Seine, visited Notre Dame du Paris and the Botanical Gardens. We saw a lot of Monmatre and found a charming square near the Sacrè Coeur called Place du Tertre - here artists were painting scenes of Paris as well as tourist portraits, surrounded by many cafes, bistros and restaurants! We visited this square several times during our stay.

Our first visit to the Sacrè Coeur was amazing as we arrived early on Easter Monday morning, when there were hardly any tourists around. After we'd looked at the view of Paris, we made our way inside to be greeted by the etheral sounds of a small choir of nuns singing hymns in French. It was such an emotional experience to walk around this beautiful Basilica, admirering the gold mozaics with these heavenly voices reverberating off the cavernous ceilings uplifted in praise!

Streets of Monmatre


Views around Sacrè Coeur



Views around Paris







Jo infront of the Venus De Milo in the Louvre



The back of Notre Dame

Fish and carpets

We visited the local fish market earlier this week and also visited the souk again...where we bought our first carpet on this trip! It's an Iranian carpet with kilim and is a couple of years old. It's currently staying with Lauris and David while we travel. Here are some photos...






Big cat!









Our new carpet!

Oman safari - Wahaybah Sands

After the Wadi we headed further inland to Ramlat Al Wahaybah or Wahaybah Sands. We enjoyed sand dune bashing in our 4WD in the afternoon, which was pretty hair-raising, especially when our guide went straight over the side of a 15m tall dune and slid down to the bottom! After this very thrilling experience we drove further into the sands (following what looked like a dry creek bed/informal road) to the camp where we were going to stay for the night.

At 5:30pm we went out into the dunes again with our guide to see the sun set from the top of a dune. It was an amazing sight to watch! It was also getting pretty windy by this time, and as a consequence very sandy! Here's a tip for any budding desert travellers: while it's important to have things like sun cream and lip balm - don't wear any lip balm when it's windy as you'll get an unattractive and annoying grainy gloss over your lips! We were glad to get back to the camp and have showers and change.

The desert evening was gorgeous...we enjoyed a cool, moonlight evening with a slight breeze and absolutely no noise, apart from the sounds made by other people at the camp. It was just such a peaceful experience. The camp had a huge communal tent set up where all visitors could relax on soft carpets, enjoying the evening, drinking tea and coffee and eating fruit and dates. Bliss! We liked it so much we've decided that when we return home from all our travels we'd like to style our own sort of outdoor evening rest area with carpets and cushions.

We saw lots of camels while at Wahaybah and also visited a Bedouin dwelling and tasted Kawah (Omani coffee - a mix of coffee, rosewater and cardamom - ours was so weak you couldn't distinguish any of the three ingredients!) and dates. Jo was also dressed up in a Bedouin woman's headdress (see photos below). It wasn't to her taste, though, as she could hardly see out of the face mask. We suppose it's different if you've grown up wearing one of these masks.

After Wahaybah Sands we headed home, back to Muscat. By this time we were pretty tired, however it was lots of fun seeing some very different parts of Oman!












It was hard work getting up here!