Retour d'Angleterre

Hey ! That's it, we're back in France.

We've spent a beautiful last day in London, with our friend Gareth.

He brought us to an italian restaurant in Camden, we had some marvellous ice creams.

He showed us Camden market too, a must see, we should visit it next time we go to London.

We were able few days before to have a last sushi time at Hi sushi, all you can eat.

It was cheap and fairly good enough for the price.

First time we are full (almost too full) leaving a sushi restaurant.

This post is quick. Check our pictures on Flickr to look at our last days.

Now that we are back in France, we aim at improve our lifestyle, not being stuck in annoying systems. It means preparing ourselves to new ways to earn a living, and improve in anything. We will post some thoughts on this blog, so people can react.

Kisses everyone !

London : It was worth it !

Hey guys following us ! Thank you all to read our news again !In the last post, we told you about our will to give London a second chance, because it might be worth it. Well it was ! We will now tell you why, and count the points we gave to London in this re-discovery :

• 1st good point : Our host Gareth
  
  
  
  The thing that was annoying on our first stay in London, was that we could not stay.Accomodation needs planning, now we know it. And planning is effective : we asked Gareth if he could host us when we were in Edinburgh. Trying to find a long time ago is the key.He is so kind and funny, sings & plays amazingly the guitar or detuned piano, loves when you cook some crepes and is a tough chess player. Stephane could play many times with him, and Emilie didn't even try to not be humiliated, telling that she is "not enough competitive" :) Well, that is the truth anyway !
  

  
  
  Emilie could jam with him too, at last ! Remember the last good jam was back in Edinburgh? Well this time what a pleasure to discover a great musician, and a detuned piano in the living-room. 
  

  There was magic in the air

  
  

  

  And there's also this great garden we could discover on a sunny sunday

  
  

  We are so glad to have met this guy, and he kindly offered to stay at his place until the 19th of November, and even if we had already found other people in London, we decided to accept and stay with him.
  
  

  Thanks for all Gareth !

• 2nd good point : How people decided to marry us
  
  Gareth brought us to his colleague Katie's birthday (they are english teachers for foreigners) and there was a vicar there. On a idea from James, an irish guy, they called for the priest that was present at this party, and everyone was on the funny and lovely enterprise to marry us. We had a lot of fun there, and so we had a wedding waltz to please the guests, and we could get the congratulations of everyone. Great & warm time :)

•  3rd good point : Visiting without bags on back

• Bricklane

Our sunday started in the garden was full of discoveries. First we headed to Bricklane, the road to the eastern culture. On our way we could see the market in Wood Green, and then take the tube to the Liverpool station to walk down the famous street. We decided to eat out and taste many things on our way to complete our meal. So we began with 2 spicy vegan samosas (yum), then we found a japanese food stand selling Okonomi-yaki (a japanese pancake with vegetables and cheese, topped with sea weed). Then we tried indian food with 2 big "something", one filled with vegetables, and the other with lamb and curry. Both were very spicy again, and tasty. During our meal walking (we wanted to do like everybody we've seen there) we could here some music, see many shops and galleries, and notice that this street was half market, half mess. You should go there if you want to see something crowded but relaxed, and somehow alternative. 

• Baker Street : Sherlock Holmes' place
  To give reminiscences and please ourselves and to Emilie's big brother Julien, we went to Baker Street, especially at the 221b... The most famous adress in London (as we prefer fiction and Conan Doyle's stories than the Royal buildings with tons of tourists). We could not take the visit of the museum, but we could enter the building and view many goods about the greatest detective ever.

Don't forget all our travel pictures are organised and viewable on our Flickr account : http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyr/collections/72157622604154162/

So this is a high score that London made on our stay so far. We knew of course that with somewhere to sleep and cook, everything would seem easier and better, but at first London looked just like a big crowded mess. And it still is. But we could enjoy it this time !

One more anecdot? Oooookay...

See this picture?

These are escalators in the London Underground.

The one on the left goes down.

The one on the right goes up.

Both worked perfectly at this time.

In the middle, this is not an escalator.

These are stairs.

Don't ask why, Emilie started climbing them RUNNING.

In the end, legs hurt.

And we noticed that climbing running was exactly the same speed as quietly waiting staticly on the escalator.

What would have you chosen?

Oh shit, we didn't count the number of steps. Let's go back!

This is it (so far) for our discovery of London, and we still have more days left to discover again...

Who knows if London will take some more good points?!

We almost forgot to talk about : Sushi time in Bristol !

Before leaving Bristol to go to London the 12th of November, we went the day before at a japanase restaurant, to fill our appetite and craving for sushi again (remember? we talked about our need to find sushi quickly in our previous post). Though the restaurant was empty, the sushi were delicious, and most of them were half price! So we could have double of our serving, and taste some new, like the surfclam, or cooked sushis. It really is a very nice place to go. It is called O'bento on Baldwin street (http://www.obento-bristol.co.uk/). 

Our great and relaxed second sushi moment of our travel, this time in Bristol

All for today people, as you can see, it is always worth giving someone/something a second chance. Do it and you might be rewarded with good moments, and amazing discovery !

Kisses !

Second Chance for London

Hey everyone !
We are so unlucky with the internet connection. We are writing to you from the hostel where we stayed at the beginning of the month, we sneaked in to be able to connect comfortably in a couch :)

Our concern was to get a mail from Gareth, he will be our host in London, until the 16th at least (maybe more as he told us)So yes, we are giving a second chance to London, and leaving tomorrow by bus at 13:30.We would like to be able to have a positive view of this big hive London is. 

And actually there was few solutions : stay in Bristol and rent a room (a bit expensive), give a try in other cities (but we needed accomodation there too) or going to London, where we had an host since our requests from Edinburgh. So now it is chosen!

Let's talk about our stay in Bristol since last news. We stayed at Mark's place, a cool guy, post-it crazy (as there are plenty on the walls) and well we could talk to him only one day, but he let us stay for 9 days at his flat because he was in London (check out our mattress bed on the picture on the left). We had to clean a bit for the place to be bearable (germs speaking) and on top of all he didn't have the fucking internet. There was living Jeja, a serbian girl, that was a couchsurfer like us, but then stayed to live with Mark since May....

Everyday we went out for our one or two  hours of connection, but it was really hard, so we had to comfort our need for computers with video games emulation, ahah. We finished The Battle of Olympus & The Lion King, and just began the super extra Square's & Toriyama's Chrono Trigger roleplaying game. We needed that to feel better :) What a good invention, emulators...

During these days we had several walks in town, and could discover good places and funny ones, like "Build a Bear" a cute shop where you chose your cuddy toy, you chose a sound to put on it when you squeeze it, then you fill, and dress it.

Check out our Bristol folder on Flickr to see some pictures we've taken.

Enough for now, we might be looking for a Japanese restaurant now (our sushi craving comes in every town) and we will be visiting Geoff Barrow's art gallery when we come back in Bristol later.

Kisses everyone,

and wish us luck to have a better Londonian time !

The Bristol Discovery

Hey people!

Thanks for your reactions on our post about London, made us laugh about our suffering, and showed us all your support !

Now, we arrived in Bristol, in south-west of England. It's been two hours by bus from London.

 We wanted to go there because it seemed so artistic, and obviously, it is the city where the Trip-hop musicPortishead, Massive Attack, Tricky... check out on Wikipedia : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trip_hop in french ) style was born (

The first day we arrived, we were so tired, remember, it had been 3 days since we didn't sleep at all.

We went like zombies in the first hotel taht we could find, to be able to rest a little. Well, Steph could sleep, Emi just watched TV all night long (that makes 4 days without sleeping for Emi, yeah let's give her a medal)

At laaast : shower, bed, warm ambience, bed, bed, bed, shower.... uuuhhhhh bath ! yessss :)

The great thing was that on our way to find somewhere to do our laundry, we've seen many graphics on the walls : looks like this city tolerates artists more than everywhere, we could say they're even promoting them. Some guy actually hugged us when we arrived, telling us we had to save the world (he might have great informations about us..)

After a night in the hotel, we were planning to find some place cheaper to stay, or some couch surfers.

So we ordered a room at the Full Moon Hostel, and had a dormitory. But we were just the two of us in the room, so it was cheap and convenient.

We had some walks in the city, but not too much (remember our hurting bodies aaaaawww) and so we discovered the great harbour, and some other cool places, but we were too much exhausted to walk like in London.

Now we've been looking for a rental until the 7th of december, we will be back in France in this time.

Today we sent several requests to couchsurfers, so we can meet great people and sleep in this lovely town without emptying the bank account. So for now it is all about finding a good place to stay and for Emilie to work a little to  try to make some concerts before leaving in one month.

It is not impossible. We hope we'll make it !

Ok. We lied and didn't came by bus. Here is ou Spaceship :) 

After some rest, we were all cute again, check it out (we've taken this picture in the Full Moon hostel)

Well then , kisses everyone, we're gonna try to sleep well tonight to be able to find a place tomorrow, and we will surely give you news as soon as possible :)

As they say in England : Cheers !

%$@# London

  Bye Bye Florian & Simon, & Thx for everythin' !

Hey everyone !
Looks like we've been not giving news for 5 days. But heh we've got some good reasons... Let us tell you the whole story...

• Leaving Edinburgh

On the 27th, we left Edinburgh @ 11:30 pm. We didn't slept much (well not at all to be honest), maybe too excited and worried about the new destination, and the 9 hours long bus trip awaiting us. London, biggest city in Europe, 7,5 millions inhabitants, must be something.

So the journey on the road went well, a bit long, and too bad it was at night, we couldn't see anything around us. So we watched some serie on the computer, talked a lot, Steph managed to sleep almost1 hour, Emilie not at all again. Notice that it is for now 2 days without sleeping.

•  London : ye old Horrible
  

At 7:30 am, we arrived at the Victoria coach station. From there, we entered for the first time of the day (you'll understand why later) in a Mc Donald's, providing free wifi and good coffee.
There we stayed looking for a place to stay for about 2 hours.
We decided to got for a good nice walk. Buckingham palace, famous streets, red buses, people all around...
After few hours, we've had seen the Brixton poor side of London, Center town,  and then comes the 2nd Mc Donald's. Remember we went there for wifi, not the burgers. Oh okay we had some.


Then started the madness.
Too many people on the wireless broadband.
About 3:00 pm.


We decided to take the "Tube", Underground, metro, horrible buried train. We've found that the Oyster card is Londonian best friend, as it has the power to turn a £4 horribly expensive few minutes trip in a £1,60 horribly cheap trip. So we got 2 for us.
Here we go, to King's cross, a stop at the library advises to do so, to find some place to stay for cheap, as we were not even thinking anymore on couchsurfing... Well well well guess what? Here is our 3rd Mc Donald's visited on day, wohoo new record ! Only wifi this time, we promise. Not even feeling bad anymore if we didn't order anything. So many people, and the employees didn't really care about us ordering or not.
Tired, not finding any cheap place to stay. £100 for an hotel, £60 for a youth hostel, dormitory, without internet, nightmare. Some bastard even proposed us £15 shower because we wanted to take one, yes, we were had not washed since ...... Edinburgh. We really began to feel upset.
The day was slowly turning into night. Night. And no f*cking place to stay. Let's walk again to look for a place outside, made us mad that we knew all the pages on internet by heart.
Okay.
Here it comes. Yes. The 4th Mc Donald's of the day ! You fools never say Mc Donald's is shit. It has saved our lives in London. They really were there for us, when no place offered Wifi or decent coffee.
But the computer battery cannot last for life. 20 minutes left only. Let's put an emergency request on CouchSurfing to find a host. Hope. Only things left, it is 8:00 pm.
Let's do something useful, like washing our clothes. Great, we've seen a "launderette" in our mad walk in London near Euston. But... it closed when we arrived, and a less than polite old woman shouted something at us like "Naaah we're closed heh"
A curse. It might be a curse.
And now starts Real Madness. Walking. Walking. All day. Not been sleeping for 2 days, remember?
We've went through all zone 1 and 2 during all day. The only pee time was on our 5th Mc Donald's. Nor wifi, nor burgers, only willing to pee somewhere.
6th Mc Donald's time was for nothing, because there was too much people waiting to pee. Steph notices it is ONLY 11:00p... Emi cries for the 2nd time of the day.
We both have 10 kilos on the back. Now our whole body hurts. We crash in some place we have not seen all day. Where all drunken people go. We just stopped there and watched disguised people trying to walk straight, but never managing to do so. Exhausted, we're not even ok for a beer or something. Nothing can be relaxing, but a safe, warm good place to stay. And we didn't have it.
Trying to ask for advices to some drunken girls, they talk about Camden town. So we start hoping we're just idiots, and that the only place where we did not go is gonna save us. We use another tube trip to go there. The last one on our Oyster card.
First people to talk to us is proposing drugs. And the 2nd. And the 3rd. Did we say we felt uncomfortable?
Now we were really worrying about the twist night time could take.
We're deciding to go back to the center.And so have to go back to the point where we took the underground, and then go back to the center. No one in the streets. We couldn't believe it. Biggest bloody town in Europe, no one in the streets when you go after midnight. Only taxis and few drunken fellows sleeping in buses stops. It took about a big good hurting hour again. Maybe more. We don't know. There was only one thing that could save us at this point : going back to this silly Buckingham where hundred of people were looking through the bars in the morning. It might feel safe there.

Oh well, there was something else that could save us at this time.... dougnuts.
Look at us. Doughnuts at Buckingham Palace.

What a luxury delightful moment...

Let's say it was really cold, around 3:00 am, and that might be the time when the big decision came : leaving London, as soon as possible. A shame? Nah. London sucks, really. When you go there, just try to have something really strict and go to the point, then leave. Having a good time in London is reserved to psychotic alcoholic or work addicts. Or maybe rich people. So we went back to the Victoria station, and felt sitting for a while was a big mistake : we could feel the pain on the back, feet, head... let's just say whole body again.

Around 4:00 am, we realise the coach & buses station won't open until 6:00 am. Woo Haaaa....

So let's just... sit on the floor there. Yes. Until that guard come and ask if we're hobos or just waiting for a bus. He really did looked suspicious when we answered we where really waiting for a bus to come and save us from hell. Yes, remember, now it is  

3 days without sleeping.

Nor taking shower. No we don't want a medal, thanks, we had already on our shirts.

We noticed many people sleep at the train station. Travellers, homeless. Depressing moment.

Impossible to sleep there. It did not even cross our mind a second. At 6:00 am, we went to the bus station to take the freedom ticket. Well, the ticket selling office opens at 7:00 am. The first bus is at 8:30.... hope is near. We arrive at the office "Huuu the bus is full".... okay, there is one at 10:30 am.

At this time, we had a small meal : 2 clubs sandwiches and a coke. Emi started laughing at anything, Steph could not stand up. Exhausted. Yes the bus is here...

And we left the bloody London city.

We've been in London for 27 hours.

If you consider that a human being walks at 5 km/h

and that we're enough conciliant to say that we only walked for 20 hours,

we've walked in that single day

around 100 kilometers. No kidding.

A thought for our bodies, still feeling the pain.

We'll tell the whole thing about our arrival Bristol tomorrow,
because it is 05:41 am in here, and we're still tired.

Why?Well folks just Check out on our blog post tomorrow! 

>>> The Bristol Discovery !

Oh yeah, and we are allright after all. Just in case you're worrying ^_^ !

Kisses everyone. We'll also upload pictures on Flickr tomorrow...

Let the music transport you !

Next Destination : London !

Hey everyone ! Thanks to follow us on our journey.
We had the pleasure to be invited to a cool flat party at Kevin's place,
wich was really sympathic. There we met with several people from all around Europe, a nice and good moment. We could make some music and drink some beers (not that much heh Simon had to work the next day)


Today we've chosen and booked our bus tickets for London.
We tried to chose a place that best fits our needs,and hesitated at first to gradually go down in United Kingdom. But after some days of debate, we agreed that the most important point was to find a place that would be musicians and travellers-friendly.London appears huge to us, but there we're sure that it won't be too hard to find places to play and to stay if we really want it.

We'll be leaving Edinburgh on Tuesday October the 27th,
wich let us one more week to prepare the continuations :

• Music : Learn how to book dates, preparing a press kit, practice for live...
• Couch Surfing : Our first experience of sleeping @ people's home http://www.couchsurfing.org
  

The travel will be overnight, let's say it will be damn loooong. But the tickets were cheap : 11£ each, and with the possibility to pay in our Euro currency, so we hope to not be charged commisions. We don't know how long we will stay in London,it will depend on oportunities to play live and our wishes. We already know we will be passing by Bristol before leaving United Kingdom. We're still deciding if we're going back for Christmas and New Year's Eve to south of France before leaving again....

Kisses everyone,

Stay unique & strange !

Some rain and some work

Hey everyone !
At last came some rain, we started to believe people lied about Scotland and it's rainy days. I have cleaned my music set today, and got some work to do next to be able to play live, and need some self confidence too, looks like I'll never do it, for a change ahah :)

We discovered yesterday the Forest cafe, a place owned by volunteers, free wifi, good teas and cakes, good vibes and musician place. I could play the piano and enjoy the warm ambiance.

That's all for now, we walk, we eat and sleep well.
We're so damn allright !
Kisses to you all !