Travel Newsletter

This post was originally a group e-mail I sent out to family and friends to tell them about my French trip, here it's just filling up space.

Hello everyone!
Here's an update since the last travel newsletter; I've gone skiing not once but twice, I went to Marseille and also got a haircut. Now the latter might not seem like much (my wallet doesn't think so, at a cool 12,50€), but there were a few subtle differences:

• The sheet thing they cover you up with (to stop hair getting on you) had arm holes, so I could put my arms through and wave them about
• This guy was absolutely nuts with the scissors, he was just choppin' and choppin', I was worried he going to lop an ear off
• The actual salon was tiny, although still very trendy (it had a water feature, it was pretty cool)
• He didn't accept cards, so I had to duck out and run around to try and find an ATM after he had cut my hair
  

If you read that and you're thinking "all hairdressers are like that" then remember that when it comes to getting my hair done, I don't get out much. Anyway I thought I'd better get a haircut because the weather here is hotting up, unfortunately that means there are less and less opportunities to wear the Doctor Who scarf (Mum, you'll be happy to know that I have received lots of compliments about the scarf). Still on the weather; I don't know if you've seen it on the News but there has been some wild weather up here in Europe. High seas, strong winds; Spain's been put on Red alert and several other countries have been put on Orange alert. It's pretty intense, there have been big cargo ships washing up on beaches and stuff (today one of them broke in half, spilling nasty stuff into the water). The weather here in Saint Quentin hasn't been so bad, it's been a bit gloomy and rainy the last couple of days and last week was very very windy (prompting questions like "do you get much wind in Australia?"), but today was pretty good; warm and sunny, 18°.

Anyway, the snow (where it's certainly not 18°) was absolutely great. French Alps kick ass. About 2 weeks ago my host family took me skiing during the 2nd week of the holidays. We stayed at their ski chalet up in the mountains about 10 mins away from the nearest skiing area at the town of St Martin De Belleville. It's part of the 3 Valleys ski resort (which is the largest ski resort in the world, right here in France imagine that!) but we didn't stick around there to ski because the snow wasn't very good (there was more snow there than I had ever seen in my life!). We skied across to the next town, Les Menuires, and the mountain opposite it, La Masse. We went skiing pretty much everyday (but only in the afternoons because we were on holidays and couldn't be bothered getting up early and also one day we finished early because of bad weather) and everyone thought my skiing abilities were really good; which I can only blame on Matt and Josh on Ski Trip '07, pushing me to the extremes (you daredevils you).

I'll put full details of the ski trips (the one with the family and the one earlier with the school) up on the blog you're currently reading at www.you're already reading the blog.com at some time in the near future (you can also read about my trip to Marseille, available exclusively if you scroll down).

Bisous, Simon.