One month of silence

(En francais un peu plus bas)

Well, we just spent 5 lovely days in Banstead, Surrey, England, United Kingdomof Great Britain, Europe, the World, the Universe. We got really cold, and a little bit depressed with the rain and fog, but we had a some great moments by the fireplace, and last saturday was a late Bonfire night. The whole family and friends were there, and it was lovely to sit by the fire at the bottom of the garden, drink mulled and roast marshmallows until 2 o'clock in the morning.

Unbeliebably enough, we are back on the plane tomorrow. Destination: Egypt. We are going for 4 weeks in total (Egypt for 3 and New York for 1) and will not have acces to the internet until we come back. So please don't come and check for some updates for the next month. I will send you an email to let you know when there is something new. Phil is buying his camera at the airport tomorrow, the one he's been dreaming about for 1 year. He is very (VERY) excited about it and hoping to impress you with some nice shots, so keep yourseves posted.

Before I leave, I would also like to apologise to everyone I owe an email or two to, meaning, most people on my address book. I have been very busy lately and will not be able to write until I come back. I love you all very much, though :)

While you are waiting for Phil's photograhic pieces of art, please have a look at this website/blog. It's funny, well done, advert-free and for a good cause. Enjoy.

http://www.monbeausapin.org/

No, Phil is not trying to danse like Mickael Jackson, he's jus t trying to warm himslef up,
just outside the Heathrow, at a nice 5 degrees.

Voila, c'est deja la fin de notre sejour chez les parents de Philip ou nous avons passe 5 jours tres agreables avec la famille et les amis. Il est deja temps de repartir. Demain matin, nous prenons l'avion pour Sharm el Sheikh, les poissons de la mer Rouge nous attendent de pieds fermes, parait-il! On sera en Egypte pour 3 semaines et a New York pour une.

A notre retour, on publiera nos photos, mais en attendant, ca va etre silence total sur le blog. Je vous enverrai un email pour vous dire quand nous aurons mis nos photos sur notre blog, pas la peine de checker entre temps, on y sera pas! Mais ca risque de valoir le coup puisque Philip s'achete son nouvel appareil photo demain, a l'aeroport.

Je voudrais aussi m'excuser a tous mes amis et famille a qui je dois un email ou deux. J'ai ete tres occupee ces derniers temps, je suis sure que vous comprenez. Je serai toute a vous des mon retour.

En attendant notre retour, je vous invite a visiter un blog. C'est drole, bien fait, sans pub, et pour la bonne cause. Que demande le peuple?

http://www.monbeausapin.org/

A bientot sur vos ecrans, Ju et Phi

A la sortie de l'aeroport, on essaye de se reachauffer, mais sans succes. C'est officiel, il fait un froid de canard.

Il fait tellement froid ici, c'est meme pas drole!

Et oui, ça y est, la grande aventure australienne est terminée.

L'aventure australienne est bien terminée, oui, mais (malheureusement pour nos empreintes de carbones), l'aventure de Julie et Philip n'a pas ecnore touche sa fin. Et non, il nous reste encore 2 continents à visiter avant de commencer la vraie vie!

Et temps que la vraie vie n'a pas encore commencé, on continuera a publier des jolies photos. On repart mardi, pour l'Egypte, et 3 semaines plus tard, on part du Caire pour New York.
Comme nous l'a si bien fait remarquer Valentina, ça va être intéressant de visiter un pays à l'histoire si ancienne et une ville à la population si dense après avoir vécu en Australie, un pays si récent et si peu peuplé.

Notre voyage de retour s'est très bien passe, même si un tantinet trop long (3 jours de voyage, peu importe toutes les cacahuètes gratuites qu’on nous donne dans l’avion, c'est quand même trop!).

On était super content de rentrer. Ça fait tellement de bien de revoir notre chère Grande Bretagne. Le choc quand même, à l'aéroport de Heathrow, d'entendre tous ces gens qui parlent anglais avec un accent... anglais, et à la sortie, de sentir nos poumons se réduire de 9/10eme. On a bien cru qu'on allait mourir d'hypothermie. Le papa de Philip est venu nous chercher, et pendant tout le chemin du retour à la maison, j'avais le sourire aux lèvres. Ca me rendait tellement heureuse de voir ces magnifiques arbres aux couleurs automnales, toutes ces minuscules voitures sur les routes, et de savoir qu'une bonne tasse de thé nous attendait à la maison.

Vingt-cinq tasses de thé plus tard, je suis toujours aussi heureuse d'être de retour.
J'ai beaucoup aimé l'Australie et toutes ses splendeurs naturelles et ces habitants très sympathiques, mais je me rends compte que mon cœur demeurera toujours en ici. Bien sûr, j'ai adoré les palmiers, la mer, les barbecues, le désert, la forêt tropicale, les koalas, et bien sûr, le soleil qui brille quasiment tout le temps, mes mais racines, c'est ici, où les arbres donnent des pommes, pas des noix de cocos, où les animaux qui traversent la route sont des chats, pas des kangourous et où à Noël, on se réchauffera près de la cheminée, plutôt que de se rafraichir dans la piscine.

Ce voyage m’a permis de me rendre compte de qui je suis vraiment, d’où je viens et où sont mes racines. Mais ça m’a aussi permis de rencontrer beaucoup de gens intéressants, de m’apercevoir que tout le monde est différent, de concevoir qu’il y a d’autres manières de vivre que la nôtre, de constater que notre planète fait la taille de l’infini et que je n’en ferai jamais le tour et finalement de contempler le fait que je ne suis qu’un petit bout de chair sur cette Terre gigantesque (en gros, avec toutes ces grandes découvertes Da Vinciennes, j’espère moins me prendre la tête dans le futur).

PS : Gros Bisous à Olivier et à toute la Corse ! Bienvenus sur le blog.
Jess, promis, je t’appelle dès que j’ai une minute.
Valentina, je ne crois pas que notre vie en Angleterre sera assez intéressante pour continuer le blog. Une photo de la pluie qui tombe, ça fait pas trop rêver.
Moz, j’espère que tu vas vite te rétablir. Je t’aime de tout mon cœur. Laisse tomber la grève, t'as la crève!
Et, last but not least, Croqueuse-de-pomme, j’ai écris ce billet sur Word exprès pour pouvoir mettre des accents et des cedilles, juste pour toi parce que je sais que le manque d’accents et de cédilles t’empêche de dormir. (Et Benjy aussi, mais là, je peux rien faire. Sorry sister.)

Our journey through the biggest island and driest continent on the planet

The tip came from our friend Valentina. She told us she would like to see the itinerary of our trip through Australia. Thinking this was an excellent idea, we decided to publish a map (drawn by our in-house artist, of course), the trail of our adventure, spiced up with photographs we think represent the places best.
The map is a bit small, so just right-click on it to blow it up in a different tab, so you can view the map and the photographs at the same time.

1st stop: Sydney




2nd stop: Blue Mountains



3rd stop: Milawa Gourmet Region




4th stop: Melbourne




5th stop: Great Ocean Road




6th stop: Adelaide, but we don't have any photographs for it.
This is how interesting this town was.



7th stop: Barrossa Valley




8th stop: Coober Peddy. Again, coudn't take any interesting photographs of this place in the middle of nowhere. This is what, we think, reprents Coober Peddy the best :)




9th stop: Oodnadatta track. Here: Lake Eyre




10th stop: Uluru




11th stop: Alice Springs. The town itself is pretty depressing.
This is a picture of the McDonald's Ranges, next to Alice.



12th stop: Barrow Creek.
No pictures for that one either. Just a memorable place for us as it is there, in the middle of nowhere, that our car decided to let us down and broke down.
That exact same place an English backpacker got killed.
Thank you car.


13th stop: Katherine Gorge




14th stop: Kakadu National Park




On our way to the East coast.
This was a looong journey. And it all pretty much looked like that!




15th stop: Mission Beach




16th stop: Cairns




17th stop: Cape Tribulation




18th stop: Great Barrier Reef



19th stop: Whitsunday islands




20th stop: Fraser Island (the place of the famous race with a dingo)

Final stop: Brisbane

We knew he'd do it.

So for once there is a positive buzz about on the world scene. The critics will be quick to pounce, but for the moment we are just enjoying riding the wave and will savour actually having so many people's dream and hopes coming true. He may not be our leader and when I look at Mr Brown, I cannot help but feel a little, well, deflated and uninspired. So, I'll just look accross the water to see what the yankydoodahs are doing.

We first heard about this fellow just over two years ago and right from the start we had our money on him. Only we didn't put it where our mouth is. Shame. The odds would have been good if we did.

Well, let's hope he doesn't go Tony Blair on us. Full of promise and hope and then went totally insane with a brigt flash of hubris. Time will tell, but for the moment I am delighted he won and it is the closest thing to good knews, internationally speaking, I have witnessed since the Berlin Wall crumbled. At least that I can think of anyway. While his policies may not be water tight, considering the alternatives, I am delighted.

If any of you have some spare money and a time machine, I suggest buying a couple of first edition, first print copies of his two books... because they are now worth a fortune and will certainly be a collector's item if he lives up to expectation.

Interesting meeting at the swimming pool

Can I just remind you that my drawings are based on true facts only...
What a waste of carbon footprints for her to have flown all the way to Paris.

Fingers crossed

Not that it will make any difference, but we thought we'd show our colours.

Surfing (or trying to) in Noosa

Seeing the end of our time in Australia approaching at high speed, we thought we'd better start learning how to surf! It's not that we absolutely wanted to become surfers nomatterwat, but it was more that we felt we needed to use that board we'd been carrying on the roof rack of our Nissan, all around Australia, even through the Red Centre, one of the driest parts of the world, where it rains like, once a century and where what are commonly recognised as lakes are no more than vast areas of dried salt. So if we didn't want to leave the country feeling like we'd been a bit silly to have kept the surfboard, we thought we'd better get wet.

But what we didn't know before making that decision, is that surfing is not just about getting wet; it's also about getting hurt! We'd surfed a bit in Scotland, and the water temperature being close to 10 below 0, we were wearing super-duper wetsuit, and were provided with ice-axes, because it's easier to surf if the ice is broken. But here, the water being 20 degres and all, no need for the thick wetsuit. And this is where it hurts, really hurts. Each time you throw yourself on the board, you make the bruises on you ribs a little bigger, darker and sorer.

Personally, I was just hopeless, no denying that. I managed to take a few waves, but would always fall trying to stand on the stupid board. I actually blame the size of the stupid thing, it's far too big for me. We didn't choose it, it came free with the car, so I can't really complain. But I can blame it :)
Phil was (a little bit) better, I don't know if it's because he's bigger, or feels the pain less than I do, or if it's because he's not afraid of having his head chopped off by fellow surfers... but he did better than me. But only slightly.


We have embraced some parts of the Aussie culture full-heartedly (like BBQs and beach) but surfing just won't be one of them. Oh well, never mind, at least I had a good laugh watching my husband falling off the board a good 1000 times (still not as funny as my husband running after a wild dog...) and it made cool photographs.

That's our board, but no one's on it

And when Phil was bruising himself in the water, I was enjoying reading my book, lying on the hot sand (Did it not just snow in London?). Of course, upon arrival on the beach, I covered myself of a thick layer of sunscreen, but it looks like the brainwashing hasn't completely worked on me as I forgot to put some again after splashing in the waves. The ozone layer being at its thinnest above Australia, pasty-English skins like mine don't do very well over here. This is why I quickly became the same colour as tomatoes.

And I'm still paying the price for it. In two ways. First, because the back of my thighs are so burnt, it hurts when I sit down on the toilet, and second, because my face is so red, parents hide the eyes of their children when seeing me in the street, and frown upon me, and tut-tut at me as for the Aussies, being sunburnt is a taboo, it means I made the grave error of not putting sunscreen on. It's much worse than eating with your elbows on the table, crossing the road when the little man is red, or farting in public. You just don't do it.


But heh, last weekend wasn't just about bruising and burning our bodies! We also saw something very rare: a koala on the move! Now, that's a scoop! And by some miracle, I had the camera handy at the time.



So please, ladies and gentlemen, consider yourselves extremely lucky, as I give you, in exclusivity, the premiere of 'A Koala on the Move'. (I didn't mention this in the post about koalas, but it is believed that koalas are stoned; all the time. Completely spaced-out. A bit like our friends, the French backpackers. But koalas find their supplies of hallucinogenic substance in eucalyptus leaves. And because this is all they eat, they are constantly high. This explains why they sleep most of the time, and move only very rarely.)
So, sit back, put your feet up, and enjoy this truly incredible sight.