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eyesopen2019 · 5 years

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Eurostar to Paris

On the 4th June we caught the train back to London and got on the Eurostar to head to Paris. We had watched some videos of the making of the tunnel and were all interested to see what going on a train under the water would be like. The train travels up to speeds of 300km per hour and covers the 490km in 2 hours and 15 mins with 50 km of tunnel under The English Channel. The journey is very smooth and you can hardly notice you have entered the tunnel or exited it and certainly don’t see any fish or sealife much to Lani’s disappointment. We arrived in Paris in the afternoon and made our way to our Airbnb in Izzy. Navigating the subway system the first time was a challenge especially as I had no data on my phone and we couldn’t use apple maps! When we arrived at our house we found a 3 storey home with views out to the Eiffel tower from the upstairs bedroom. There was heaps of room to stretch out and the kids made themselves at home. Hung and I opened a bottle of French champagne, one of several bottles of wine, which had been left in the fridge for us. Lani was excited to find some kids toys in the house to play with and spent ages making up games with them.

On our first day out in Paris it was overcast and drizzling and we caught the bus into The Arc de Triumph and wandered down the Champs-Elyssees. We found our lunch of baguettes, cheese, ham and salami in a local supermarket. I enjoyed looking at all the gorgeous buildings and tree lined boulevards which reminded me of our trips to Saigon.

The next day was a lovely sunny day and we took the opportunity to head to the Eiffel Tower where we climbed the stairs to the second level then took the elevator to the top. It was a fairly easy climb up the couple hundred stairs but we took it pretty slowly. The view from the top is amazing and it’s interesting to try to pick out all the major landmarks throughout the city. We again bought lunch in a nearby supermarket and sat in the park under the Eiffel tower for lunch. During our time in Paris we enjoyed the amazing baguettes bought very cheaply everywhere as well as the amazing variety of cheeses. Each day we would buy a baguette to stick in the backpack for when Leon or Lani were suddenly starving! Leon also especially enjoyed the chocolate croissants and I think was trying to get a record when he had 6 in one day.

Another day, Hung and I had a day out with Lani and left the boys at home. We wandered around the Notre Dame Cathedral which unfortunately suffered a huge fire a few months ago. We explored the area around the Louvre and over several nearby bridges. Lani loved to checkout all the love locks which had been placed around, and see which were the oldest ones. Hung and Lani each bought a special leather hat from a small shop down an alleyway which were all made onsite and handcut and sewn. Hung’s hat reminds me of his Dad’s hat he used to wear everywhere and I think it will be his ‘old man hat’ now until he is very old and it will be passed down to the kids! Lani choose a black leather beret which looks really cute and she says reminds her of Ong Noi’s hat. We had a lovely lunch out at a little French café near the Notre Dame Cathedral and Hung and I enjoyed a glass of wine while watching the passing traffic. Lani bought a slime making kit which she enjoyed putting all the bits together to make her own slime when she got home.

There are so many museums to visit in Paris but we only ventured to The Louvre but on the day we had planned to go we arrived to find it sold out. We were a bit more organised the next day and bought tickets online but unfortunately when we did get inside it was so crowded and hot that it was not very pleasant to wander around. We made a beeline for the Mona Lisa and checked out a few other areas before retreating to the open space outside again. The kids were fairly unimpressed with the Mona Lisa and couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about. They were more interested in the sculptures, especially one called ‘The Fisherman’. Leon was puzzled why everyone in the paintings and sculptures was naked and why in all the paintings people had no eyebrows!

We wandered a lot in Paris, seeing many gardens, statues, palace’s and plaza’s throughout the city. It is a very walkable city and you can venture from area to area easily. Everywhere there are small coffee shops and restaurants with an endless array of food to try. Eating out was generally expensive, as was coffee at $7-9 a cup, needless to say we didn’t eat out much! It was also very difficult to find public toilets and often we had to pay for them!

One of my favourite days was when we went to a flea markets which was not that great but from there we wandered up the hillside to Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris (Sacre-Coeur) which is a Roman Catholic church set on the highest point in Montmarte hill. It was built in 1875 and since 1885 there has been constant prayers, day and night, by patrons within the church. We had seen the basilica from the Eiffel tower when we climbed to the top and had wondered what it was. We looked inside the church and then climbed the stairs to the dome for an amazing view of the city and saw all the landmarks we had visited over the previous week.

On one of our last days Kai and I decided to check out The Catacombs where we patiently waited in the drizzling rain for several hours. The Catacombs, a series of tunnels under the city which were originally dug out in the 15th century for the stone and used in the buildings of the city. The quarrying stopped after a series of land collapses and remained abandoned for many years. In the 1700’s when the population of the city grew and the officials were worried about diseases from the dead they placed the bones of millions of graves in the tunnels. There are hundreds of kms of tunnels, many of which are not mapped. You are able to explore a series of 1.5kms of tunnel which is a bit morbid but it was interesting to see how the bones have been placed and presented for viewing since the 1800’s.

We left our lovely Parisian Airbnb on 11th June to check into a very budget hotel (IBIS budget) near the Paris Orly airport which was not very pleasant and definitely not one I would recommend. We were due to leave Paris on the 11th June but we changed our plans so we could see a friend of Hung’s, Kevin, and his family who were in town on holiday from Colorado. We were only sleeping at the ‘hotel’ so we survived – but only just, especially Kai. Hung and Kevin were friends in their 20’s and hadn’t seen each other for over 20 years. We had a lovely dinner out with their family and ours and I’m sure we will see them out in Australia sometime.

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armlickers · 5 years

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Anthem World Tour :: Enmore Theatre :: August 8 2014

(Originally posted to my LiveJournal on August 9 2014.)

HOLY FUCK.

Last night’s Hanson concert has to be the best show I’ve been to for any band. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun at a concert, and I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Friday night.

The fun started before last night, though – it started Thursday afternoon. I went to my hotel straight from uni – walked all the way down Broadway from the UTS Tower to Pitt Street and met up with my friend Donna at the Hotel Ibis World Square. We went to the Hi-Fi together last tour and decided to split a hotel room for a couple of nights this tour. Soon as I got to my room I had a quick shower (because let’s face it, it’s a fair hike from UTS to Pitt Street and the hoodie I was wearing turns into a sauna if it’s warm enough) before doing my nails for the next evening. We had dinner from room service and because I was heading out to Channel 9 in the morning I turned in early – it was 9:30pm when we turned the lights out.

Friday morning I woke up at 5:00am, got dressed and headed out to Town Hall station via the 7-Eleven on Bathurst Street, and caught a train out to Artarmon. The Channel 9 studios are in Willoughby so I had to walk there – took me a good twenty minutes. There was already a small contingent of fans there when I rocked up – a few of my friends and fellow Street Teamers included. In the end there were around fifteen of us who turned up in the hopes of being allowed in the studio for either Today or Mornings. At first we were told we wouldn’t be allowed inside because it’s a closed set, but at around ten to 10am a couple of people from one of the shows’ social media teams came out and took a photo of all of us – twenty minutes later one of the security guys said we could go inside after all, provided we put our phones on silent and didn’t use the flash on our cameras. We waited for a good half hour after that before we were told that they’d done a risk assessment (whatever the fuck that is) and decided we weren’t allowed to come in after all. Cue fifteen very disappointed Hanson fans, and fuck Channel 9 for getting everyones’ hopes up. Still, it wasn’t a total waste of time – Hanson left Channel 9 at around 11am, and they stopped their van in the driveway so that Taylor could roll his window down and say hi to us all, and shake our hands. He asked if we were going to the Enmore show, which all of us were (stupid question really), after which they left to head back into Sydney. Those of us who had been waiting dispersed, and I began the mostly-uphill trek back into Artarmon so I could catch my train back into the city.

Back at my hotel, I put my phone on to charge so that I had three full batteries for that night and hopped in the shower (again, because of my hoodie turning into a sauna), changed into my concert outfit and did my nails again because the polish had started chipping. I’d originally planned to paint gold lightning bolts on my nails, but I couldn’t find a thin enough brush so I just put a clear top coat on to keep my nails from chipping again. Donna and I headed over to World Square after that and ducked into Coles to try and get some glowsticks for that night (the Street Team had something planned, which I’ll get to in a little bit) and also to grab something for lunch. No luck with the glowsticks, but I got a very nice sausage roll from Pie Face so that made me happy. Went back to the hotel and I hopped on Facebook for a little while before packing my handbag with everything I needed for that night. We left for the Enmore at around twenty to/quarter to 5pm, got there just after 5pm (as Donna had a M&G pass and needed to be there an hour and a half before doors), I checked in on Foursquare, and we met up with our friends Desiree and Angela. At about 5:30pm Donna left to go to the M&G, and I went out to dinner with Desiree and her friends Jen and Kat. Had Thai for dinner (a very hot massaman curry that I couldn’t finish), and headed back to the Enmore at about a quarter to seven. Got to meet my friend Zoe in the lineup as well – we’ve been friends for ages on Twitter and Facebook, but we’d never met before last night. Doors opened at seven, and the first thing I did as soon as I’d had my ticket scanned was buy my merchandise – I got an Anthem World Tour shirt with the Australian and New Zealand tour dates on the back, a hoodie, and a copy of the Anthem Live In New York DVD. Cost me $135 all up but it was worth it.

Hanson’s opener for the tour, Adam Martin, came onstage bang on eight o’clock. I was expecting him to be absolute shit, because he was on The Voice a few years ago and I have an automatic and intense disdain for anyone who goes on The Voice or The X-Factor. But he actually wasn’t that bad. Definitely won me over with his cover of Oasis’ Wonderwall – it’s one of my two favourite Oasis songs (the other one being Champagne Supernova), and I would have been very upset if he’d muffed it. People kept trickling into the auditorium during his set (which I probably would have done myself if I’d gone on my own) – there were a LOT of guys in the audience last night, more than I expected, and even though it was all-ages I only saw one kid. Adam finished his set at 8:30pm, and there was a half-hour intermission while the stagehands got the stage set up for Hanson’s set.

Hanson hit the stage nearly ten minutes late (running on Hanson Standard Time as per usual), but more than made up for it with what may well be the longest set list for any Hanson concert I’ve ever attended. 1. Fired Up 2. I’ve Got Soul 3. Where’s The Love 4. Scream And Be Free 5. Thinking Of You 6. You Can’t Stop Us

Acoustic set:

7. On And On 8. Weird 9. Too Much Heaven (Bee Gees cover) – a cappella 10. Hand In Hand (Isaac solo) 11. Get So Low (Zac solo) 12. A Song To Sing (Taylor solo)

13. Juliet 14. You Never Know 15. Tragic Symphony 16. Thinkin’ ‘Bout Somethin’ 17. Waiting For This 18. A Minute Without You 19. Penny And Me 20. Give A Little 21. MMMBop 22. Get The Girl Back 23. Something Going ‘Round

Encore:

24. This Time Around 25. In The City

I mentioned that the Australian Street Team had something planned for during the show that involved glowsticks – basically, during the NSW branch meetup in May we discussed the possibility of bringing glowsticks to the show and clapping them together during one of the songs. We decided to do it during Get The Girl Back, to be specific during the bridge. We all kept it under our hats for weeks and last night we pulled it off perfectly. It looked amazing from where I was sitting. During MMMBop Taylor knocked his mic stand over, which cracked me up – though to be honest it had nothing on his mic stand continually swinging down toward the stage during the 2005 Enmore show. Still pretty funny though.

My highlights? Finally getting to hear Weird and Thinking Of You live. Before last night I’d never heard either song performed live (and no, 5 of 5 doesn’t count). Waited 17 years and it was worth every second. Not only that, but Taylor made the same promise he did during the last Australian tour – and I quote, “If you come back, we’ll come back.”

I have another concert next Friday night, in Fremantle – not only is there a MOE before the show, but it’s one of the shows with a fan-voted setlist. So that’ll be exciting. I’m hoping to hear Cried and Yearbook at that show. *crosses fingers* Spending the entire weekend in Perth because I’ve never been and let’s face it, there’s no point going home after two days when I have an entire city to explore. ;)

My photos from this show can be viewed here. The camera I used was a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FH1.

#hanson #concerts #anthem world tour #review

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