Trepid Journeys

published fortnightly on wednesdays.

about this blog

Dave Barr is the comic alter ego of a nondescript human person from Aotearoa New Zealand who confusingly is also called Dave Barr. He has not seen all that much of the world, and has no right to be writing a travel blog. Or any kind of blog whatsoever. Recognising his shortcomings, he has pretty much just resorted to talking rubbish on any particular topic. He really should stop calling this a travel blog.

recap

In Episode 36 Dave travelled to Rome, and a Gorilla escaped from the London Zoo! In this episode, he takes a break from the narrative to have his gall bladder removed.

 

pain

A few months ago I awoke in the early hours of the morning to a ridiculous amount of pain in my abdomen and thought I was going to die. So, being a man, I took the only reasonable course of action in the circumstances and waited for it to get better on its own. Which it did, proving my judgment to be very sound indeed.

However, this was not the end of the story. If it was, this would be a very short episode of this blog. Or, as it should be, no episode at all as this is a travel blog. Blogging about my trip to the hospital is a real stretch.

Over the next few months I continued to suffer from intermittent severe pain so I decided to google my symptoms. After some reading on wikipedia it was determined that I had gallstones (and this was subsequently confirmed by a doctor).

gallstones

A gallstone is a stone formed within the gallbladder out of bile components.  Most people with gallstones (about 80%) never have symptoms. However, 1–4% of people with gallstones suffer from what wikipedia describes as “a crampy pain in the right upper part of the abdomen”, and what I describe as “fucking Jebus kill me now pain in the who cares where just please do something about it for the love of god”.

In the developed world, 10–15% of adults have gallstones. Rates in many parts of Africa, however, are as low as 3%. Gallbladder and biliary related diseases occurred in about 104 million people (1.6%) in 2013 and they resulted in 106,000 deaths.Women more commonly have stones than men and they occur more commonly after the age of 40, leading me to suspect that I am in fact an elderly woman.

hospital

Early one Monday morning I woke up at 0530 to travel to hospital for an early admission for surgery.

And that, together with the drive home, qualifies this as a travel story.

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy

The technical name for the procedure to remove my gall bladder was a “laparoscopic cholecystectomy”.

Basically they cut a hole in your belly button through which a pipe is inserted. Through that pipe they pump in CO2 to inflate your belly, after which three further small incisions are made. Through these incisions they inner a camera and all the surgical tools needed for the operation – unless something goes wrong in which case they then cut a further massive hole. Luckily for me nothing went wrong so they were able to proceed with the four-hole belly-balloon surgery.

recovery and post surgical

After a few healthy doses of morphine and an overnight hospital stay, I was off home with few side-effects other than the inability to properly put together a travel blog.

 

 

next episode

Dave goes to the colosseum. Will you be entertained?

So I learnt a few things these past few months:

• Gall stones are painful.
• General anaesthetics really knock you around.
• Morphine really knocks you around.
• Tramadol really knocks you around.
• In light of the above 3 bullet points, planning on writing a blog while recovering from a laproscopic cholestysectomy is not as smart as it sounds (and that is in full acknowledgement of the fact that it doesn’t sound smart to begin with).

Trepid Journeys will return on 30 November. Apologies.

published fortnightly on wednesdays.

about this blog

Dave Barr is the comic alter ego of a nondescript human person from Aotearoa New Zealand who confusingly is also called Dave Barr. He has not seen all that much of the world, and has no right to be writing a travel blog. Or any kind of blog whatsoever. Recognising his shortcomings, he has pretty much just resorted to talking rubbish on any particular topic. He really should stop calling this a travel blog.

recap

In Episode 36 Dave travelled to Rome, and a Gorilla escaped from the London Zoo!

rome

My usual holiday strategy is to to visit all the tourist attractions in each city in one hit, to free up as much time as possible for drinking and eating. Rome presented a large difficulty for me in executing this strategy, due to:

• too much touristy stuff;
• too much foody stuff; and
• aperol spritzes.

As a result, I decided to split up the touristy stuff into two categories:

• religo; and
• non-religo.

This plan fell apart as soon as I looked at a map and found that the Trevi fountain (non-religo) and pantheon (religo) was on the route to the vatican (religo).

After a quick rethink I split the activities up into categories of:

• Dan Brown booksy; and
• non- Dan Brown booksy.

With the change in plan I was able to proceed to the Trevi fountain. but instead I found a cafe and ordered a pastry and a coffee.

italian coffee

For those who have not visited Aotearoa-New Zealand, there is a little known fact about the place where they filmed lord of the rings where everyone wishes people would stop going on about it being the place where they filmed lord of the rings: Aotearoa-New Zealand has amazing coffee.

England does not have amazing coffee. It has, at best, coffee.

France does not have amazing coffee. France has passable coffee.

Italy does not have amazing coffee. But after 10 days of crap to barely passable coffee, my cappuccino in Rome tasted like amazing coffee. The pastry and coffee was a good decision.

trevi fountain

The Trevi fountain, commissioned by Pope Urban VIII*, is constructed on the terminal point of one of the aqueducts that served ancient Rome.

Now it is famous for being surrounded by an inordinate amount of tourists with selfie-sticks and a completely unreasonable ban on swimming.

*Pope Urban VIII is considered the father of urban planning. The Trevi Fountain was part of his vision of urban regeneration of key community focal areas leading to the revival of historically important districts within a city. This fact is based purely on his name and is backed up by no research or factual basis whatsoever.

pantheon

Next on the tourist trip of Dan Brown sites was the pantheon.

Interesting fact about the Pantheon: if you take a photo in the right amount of sunlight it will look like a painting:

vatican

The next destination on the Dan Brown tour was the smallest country on earth – the Vatican City. With an area of about 44 hectares, and a population of roughly 1,000, the vatican has both the highest proportion of land area covered in queues (~78%), and the highest proportion of its population currently standing in queues (1,200,000% – most of whom are tourists).

The only people in the Vatican who aren’t standing in queues are tourist guides who are selling the opportunity to skip the queue by signing up to a tour. As refined as they are at sucking tourists into their sales pitch by appearing to proffer helpful information before actually selling the tour, I only got caught out 15 or 16 times before I wised up to their game.

Once inside the Vatican, we looked around some of the places that I learnt about having been raised catholic. Like Versailles, it seemed that every wall and ceiling was covered with amazing artwork.

Or lined with maps

Although the ships were not painted to scale

In St Peter’s Basilica I saw this statue of Pope Jedimindtrick

But then Pope Oiyougetthehellout told me to leave, so I left.

catholicism

[section deleted due to concerns about offending 1.2 billion people who have a 2,000 year-old jewish carpenter for an imaginary best friend] 

next episode

Dave does more stuff in Rome!

published fortnightly on wednesdays.

about this blog

Dave Barr is the comic alter ego of a nondescript human person from Aotearoa New Zealand who confusingly is also called Dave Barr. He has not seen all that much of the world, and has no right to be writing a travel blog. Or any kind of blog whatsoever. Recognising his shortcomings, he has pretty much just resorted to talking rubbish on any particular topic. He really should stop calling this a travel blog.

recap

In Episode 32 Dave visited the most famous museums in Paris for the second time, but this time they were open.

train strike the first 

On a Thursday I rose in Paris to news that the trains were on strike. given that trains were the only way to reach my destination, I decamped to a cafe for a crepe, a coffee, and three beers.

versailles

My destination was the former residence of King Louis the XIV – Versailles. This was the second former residence of King Louis the the XIV that I visited, have earlier thrice visited the Louvre. Like the Louvre, Versailles was now a museum – but the building and grounds are so impressive that the palace complex is the museum.

Walking through the front gates it was immediately clear that this was a building designed to impress people. And it worked. I was impressed.

Each corridor was marble floored, arched, and statue lined.

The roof painting contractor really went to town:

There were stunning statues and busts just built into alcoves in each corridor.

And this painting of Louis the XIV. The mind boggles as to how well trained the horse was to hold that pose for long enough to be painted:

And then it was on to the famous shall of mirror, where the roof painting contractor had just gone nuts:

Overall it was Gaudy and overdone, suggesting that Louis XIV, like an owner of a Porsche Cayenne, had plenty of money but no taste.

I left the palace for the gardens feeling less than whelmed.

the versaille gardens

The gardens at Versaille provide a very impressive view of the palace:

And, by rotating your body through 180 degrees, a very impressive view of the fountains , gardens and canal.

A wander down the path and a saunter to the right finds you in some maze like paths, filled with statues that are somewhat reminiscent of the fourth Harry Potter movie, but without the corpse of Robert Pattinson

As you wander through the garden the sheer scale of the lines of trees and long lawns is amazing, like this example of one of the trickiest fairways ever constructed:

When you caught a view of the canal the perfect symmetry of the gardens, and made you appreciate just how difficult the gardens would have been to care for prior to the advent of ride-on lawnmowers.

Walking around the Gardens, every now and agains you would catch a glimpse through the trees of the palace.

More photos, just because:

politics

The construction of Versaille was in part a ploy by King Louis the XIV to transition from a weak to absolute monarchy. The palace consist of some 350 apartments, where nobility from all over France were forced to reside in an attempt to prevent the development of regional power.

Rather than being the expansive palace that it appears to be today, Versaille at its peak was a cross between a crowded apartment building and the world’s flashes prison.

the Trianon

The Gardens of Versaille were so expansive and massive and awesome that they neatly concealed a further palace complex (the Trianon) containing two further palaces (the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon).

Basically what would happen is the french kings had realised the advantages in housing their wives some 3km down the road, while housing their mistresses in apartments above their own. Smart.

The Trianon was the home of Marie Antoinette, who I know nothing about other than she said “let them eat cake ” (history lesson courtesy of Freddie Mercury).

Trianon garden:

World’s toughest pool table:

The canal was a giant cross, and this  is the cross piece:

Best BYC venue ever (or so I thought at the time:

World’s bravest snail – just hanging in the open in Paris:

All in all a full day spent walking around the gardens and I was impressed. And tired. I thought of the Les Miserable lyric “a fly can fly around Versaille cos flies don’t care” and thought “bullshit”. It would take a very motivated, driven fly to fly around Versaille, as my dedicated effort on foot had left me exhausted and only one-third of the grounds had been covered.

And then as I left the grounds I passed the bicycles and golf carts for hire stands. Bugger.

next episode

Dave goes to Italy!

published fortnightly on wednesdays.

about this blog

Dave Barr is the comic alter ego of a nondescript human person from Aotearoa New Zealand who confusingly is also called Dave Barr. He has not seen all that much of the world, and has no right to be writing a travel blog. Or any kind of blog whatsoever. Recognising his shortcomings, he has pretty much just resorted to talking rubbish on any particular topic. He really should stop calling this a travel blog.

recap

In Episode 32 Dave visited the most famous museums in Paris, all of which were closed. He then promised to tell you all about it in this episode. Spoiler Alert: He breaks that promise.

apology

There are many reasons why I don’t meet my own deadlines. Once, when I should have been writing my blog, I was instead drinking wine in a lovely little bar in Ponsonby, Auckland, called Mea Culpa – that was my fault.

Other times, my professional alter ego has too much work on, that work being necessary to pay the bills (the satire travel blog with limited readership and zero revenue streams game is not as lucrative as you might think).

As you have probably now guessed, the reason I am writing this apology is because I have to apologise for something, namely that I have not yet completed my episode on the parisian museums.

Unusually the main reason for me not meeting my deadline was meat. Namely, Texan style slow cooked BBQ meat. Lots of Texan Style BBQ meat.

Let’s strap ourselves into a Delorean, switch on the flux capacitor, and travel forward in the timeline of this blog a week and a half, where we find ourselves in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In Copenhagen, there is a Brewpub called Warpigs. Warpigs serves the most delicious Craft beer and Texas Style BBQ I have ever had.* Since going there, it has been my goal to go back. Since this is somewhat impractical, last week I bought myself a Big Green Egg BBQ, which is capable of the “slow low” cooking style that is the hallmark of Texas BBQ.**

I then visited the local liquor store and bought a selection of Garage Project IPA’s and APA’s, and lit the BBQ. The results?

• Drunkenness;
• Meat Sweats;
• Deliciousness; and
• no work done on my blog.

I apologise profusely, and falsely, because I’m not actually sorry. It was worth it. And the Big Green Egg is now my favourite piece of cooking equipment (it also works as a pizza oven and a charcoal grill. And it does beer can chicken).

* noting that I have never been to Texas. 

** as the BBQ cost significantly more than tickets to Denmark, this may have been poor economics.

next episode

Dave actually does go to the Louvre, the Musee d’Lorangerie, and the Musee d’Orsay, again, but this time they are open. And he goes to the Catacombs and wanders how they aren’t more famous.

published fortnightly on wednesdays.

about this blog

Dave Barr is the comic alter ego of a nondescript human person from Aotearoa New Zealand who confusingly is also called Dave Barr. He has not seen all that much of the world, and has no right to be writing a travel blog. Or any kind of blog whatsoever. Recognising his shortcomings, he has pretty much just resorted to talking rubbish on any particular topic. He really should stop calling this a travel blog.

recap

In Episode 31 Dave travelled to Paris and ate healthily… for Paris. It’s subjective.

Omelette

Awaking on my second day in Paris I awoke to find that I was now awake.

Leaving my hotel I wandered down the street to discover that the cafe featured in movies with the red awning and red chairs outside is in fact every cafe in Paris. Stopping at the fourth one on the left, I had a delicious omelette and an espresso, discovering in the process that french coffee is pretty rubbish.

French omelettes however, are amazing.

Paris landmarks

After breakfast I meandered off to see the sights of Paris. remembering that Paris had many sights, I then decided that a meander was an inappropriate pace so lifted my cadence and stride length to a light stroll.

Walking through Paris is an assault on the olfactory senses, with every few steps causing an alternation between overpowering smells of faeces, delicious food, and urine as each odour competes for territorial dominance.

The Seine was a foul smelling brown sludge. Despite this, it still managed to be quite beautiful.

I’d been warned about the level of crime in the area, but the real extent of this only hit home when I crossed this bridge where thousands of bicycles had been stolen over the years, with the thieves leaving only the padlocks that had chained the bicycle to the bridge behind.

My plan was to spend the majority of the day at the Louvre. Arriving at the Louvre to discover it did not open on Tuesdays, I decided that would be an incredibly boring way to spend the day. So I moved on to the Musee de L’orangerie, which also did not open on Tuesdays. Luckily for me, the Musee d’Orsay was also nearby, just a short walk across the Seine. as I cannot walk on water, I strolled (consistency) across a bridge to the Musee d’Orsay to discover that it was also closed on Tuesdays. So I went to the Eiffel Tower.

Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower in Paris, completed in 1889, is a replica of the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas.

The Eiffel Tower is one of those tourist destinations that more or less does what it says on the box. It towers. And if Eiffel was a verb, and not the name of the architect whose firm designed it, I’m sure that the tower would eiffel more than any other building had ever eiffeled.

Everywhere near the tower was signs pointing toward the tower saying “tour Eiffel” which is exactly what I wanted to do – a tour of the tower.

Each of the four legs to the tower had a ticket office, where lift or stair passes could be bought. As I was keen to retain my Susanne Somers thighs, I opted for the stairs. After several hundred stairs I reached the first floor, which gave me access to several hundred more stairs up to the second floor, where the view was amazing, and, more importantly, I could buy a beer.

From there I could purchase a lift ticket to the top floor, which it turned out was no better a view than the second floor. So out of protest I refused to take any photos.

Having descended the lift and then the stairs I reached terra firma and was unsurprised to find exactly what I would have expected at the base of a giant phallic object – a giant set of nuts:

After that exertion, I lay down on the lawn in front of the tower and had a well deserved nap.

notre dame

From the Eiffel tower I walked to another of Paris’ famous landmarks, the medieval Notre Dame Cathedral.

Upon entering I immediately saw the hunchback hard at work.

On entering the church I was surprised to see that the insides of medieval cathedrals look much like the insides of modern cathedrals.

Which was surprising given that the outsides of medieval cathedrals look like a giant spider taking a shit.

arene de lutece

After stepping back from the 1800’s construction of the eiffel tower to the 1100’s construction of the Notre Dame cathedral, it was back over a millennia again to the roman arena used for gladiatorial battles. It was incredibly surreal to walk through a seemingly nondescript park into an arena that was home to gladiatorial bouts, people being executed using death by lion, and other forms of barbaric entertainment by the highest civilisation of the time.

Being in a roman arena in the middle of Paris, it was incredible to think that Asterix and Obelix must have at one time set foot on the same patches of ground.

At this stage, I was hungry, but it was ok because it was Paris and there was a good restaurant nearby, because it was paris.

After dinner it was time for another stroll back along the Seine which is when Paris really came into its own. The smell went down (with the exception of the smell of urine as you passed under bridges) and the view became exceptional as the brown water of the Seine turned blue and began to reflect the many lights.

This sentence is here solely so that this episode will top the 1,000 word mark and I won’t feel lazy.

 

 

 

next episode

Dave goes to the Louvre, the Musee d’Lorangerie, and the Musee d’Orsay, again, but this time they are open. And he goes to the Catacombs and wanders how they aren’t more famous.