30th April - Depart Paris - Iceland - Hello NY

We left Paris on Iceland Air and we flew to Iceland. We were only there for about 1 hour and the city is to far away for us to have visited. We ran around trying to buy food for the flight with the left over Euro as Iceland Air does not serve food on international flights- you have to buy it. When you attempt to buy food they are sold out of anything that you might even be tempted to eat. We ended up having a picnic on the floor of the airport. We were all concerned about the Volcano but itwas well behaved and did not interfere with our flight.
Many hours later we arrived in New York. We had to wait quite awhile at the airport for the bus to arrive- much to Bill's annoyance. The hotel was magnificant and we put our suitcases in our room and headed across the road to an Italian restaurant. Then it was off to bed. We have to meet Bill at 8.00am tomorrow for our next challenge. Our room was a full suite with a living room and bedroom. It was so palatial that when Lily first went into the room she couldn't "find" the bed because it was in a separate room.

When we went downstairs in the morning, the scores that the teams had accumulated put the winners so far ahead that no matter who won New York it would make no difference to the first, second and third place placements so Bill decided to close the game - give out the prizes and take the photographs. I am proud to say that the "Littlepage" family took first, second and third place.

Zoe and Rainey - Lawyers without Borders - took first place for the second year in a row.Heidi and Lily - 100% Bajan - took second place and Christine and Barbara - Barbara and the Barbadian - took 3rd place.

Zoe and Rainey are leaving New York around mid day. Christine - my Mum left immediately for The Zammetts house. Barbara left with her husband to attend someone's graduation so t left only 3 teams in New York. 100% Bajan, Maddogs and Indiana Roadrunners. Bill had arranged a finally dinner at a fancy restaurant and we met back at 6.00pm for dinner.

Lily and I had breakfast with Zoe and Rainey and Kit and Joanne. Then we had tearful good-byes. We had had a terrific time and it was s sad that all the excitement was over and it was time to unwind and head home.
We hooked up with Kit and Joanne and wondered around New York city so that Lily could see some of the big apple. Kit and Joanne were so kind, willing to do things from a 13 year olds perspective. We walked down to Time Square, stopping on the way to buy tickets for the matinee show of Wicked.

Time Square is so full of life and action it really is an amazing place to visit. Then we caught the Metro down to the ferry as we were hopeful to visit the Statue of Liberty. When we got down there, it was an 11/2 hour wait to get through security and that would have made it too late for our show. We took pictures of the statue of Liberty in the distance.

Lily got to see some guys who were doing amazing street dancing

Lily wanted to have her portrait done in charcoal, when the artist started with her eyes and hair I thought it ooked like Lily but find he made the bottom part of her face too heavy. She had a great time posing and walked all over the city with her portrait under her arm.

From there we took a metro to Ground Zero, which is under construction but it still gave me goosebumps to stand on the pavement and know that thousands of people lost there lives there.

Then we took another metro to The Flat Iron building. This is a funny triangular shaped building. It was actually one of the challenges that we had to do if we had done the scavenges.

Then it was time to say more good-byes to Kit and Joanne. I know we will see them at dinner but it will be different with everyone else around. They had been great fun all day and I will miss them. We had to leave so we could make it to the show Wicked in time. I really hope I will get to see them again in the near future.

I had seen Wicked before but this time we had seats in the 6th row so we could see the costumes from up close that they really are phenomenal. Lil was completely fascinated and has come home and listened to the music from Wicked all the time.

When we left Wicked we walked home, stopping to buy a drink and some coffee. We walked right pass where later we would learn that a SUV had been parked as a car bomb. We went and got all dressed up in the clothes that had been shipped to New York by Zoe's office so they were all clean and a little dressier.
Bill had a wonderful dinner. I had lamb and I have never had better lamb. The conversation was light with many funny antidotes about the trip. It was the perfect end to a perfect trip. Both Lily and I have been very blessed to have been given the opportunity to have this experience. It will change Lily for a lifetime and it certainly has given me a totally different perspective on life.

After dinner we decided to meander back down to Time Square to see it at night. The lights are so much brighter and the bill boards so much more impressive at night. Much to our dismay all of Time Square was corded off by the police as some one had attempted to detonate a car bomb but some very efficient street vendors had questioned the parked car and had alerted the police and it had been defused.

W wandered bout for quite awhile with Kit, Joanne and Rebeca. Then back to pack up and get ready for our 4.30am departure for JFK and on to home sweet home.

30th April 2010 - Last Day in Paris

We got up at 6.00 am to catch the train and get to Gare d' Austerlitz. We are going to take an early morning trip down the river Seine on the shuttle called Vogueo. The weather is lovely, cool but not cold. The shuttle started at 7.00am and we scrambled on board. We are the ONLY passengers at this time in the morning but the river is lovely and the bridges that we go under are spectaular. I am so glad that we decided to make the time for this journey. You get a totally different perspective of Paris. It is kind of sleepy and still trying to wind up to full speed.

Zoe and I decided that we would go to the - Sorbonne (the university in Paris) and engage an international student in conversation.Tell them about your adventures - that was the challenge.

We headed to the train station (remember we had a 3 challenge restriction) so that was to be our second challenge. The train was on the platform and Zoe and Rainey stepped into the train and the doors closed - yup Lily and I were on the outside of the train and it disappeared into the tunnel. The next tran arrived a few minutes later and we continued on to the Sorbonne. There was no sign of Zoe and Rainey. Much to our disappointement all that we walked and everybody we spoke to NONE were students. Finally someone informed us that the university was on holiday and the students were gone. I was so disappointed so much time wasted to no avail. Suddenly a young man walked up to us and asked us if we were looking for a student. We sad yes and we discovered he was the gy that Ze and Rainey had found and seeing us with our scavenge book in hand he had approached us. He was very nice and we got our points - Hurray!!!


Next stop was to visit the Cimetiere du Montparnasse and find 3 tombs Susan Sontag, Serge Gainsbourg and Jean- Paul Sartre. When we departed the train who do we see ahead of us but Zoe and Rainey. It really is a small city. Jean- Paul was easy to find as he was right by the front entrance to the cemetery. The guy who was running the gate gave us a map and pointed out where to find the other 2 graves. Evidently when Kit and Joanne (another team) had gone, nobody knew where Susan Sontag was and they had done all the research on how to find her. By the time we got there the guy marked it on the paper for us. Even with his help she was not easy to find.

Serge Gainsbourg's tomb was covered with flowers but there were also hundreds of metro tickets thrown all over. We thought this was weird until we were told that he had written a song about the metro.

Susan Sontag was actually an American author who had spent most of her life in France, she died in New York city atthe age of 71 but as her wishes she was taken to Paris and buried by her son in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse.

Jean- Paul Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was the first person to refuse tomaccept a Novel Peace Prize and when he died in 1980 it is estimated taht 50,000 people attended his funeral.

IIt was now about 9.15 and we have check in at the hotel for 10.00am. We took off at a run to try and get to "Visit the 59th floor or Frances tallest skyscrapper"...

This building did not open until 9.30am and it was a 5 minute walk to the hotel so be thought it would be a steal to go to the bottom take the elevator up 56 floors walk the last 3 take the elevator back down and be at the hotel with minutes to spare... Think again.. We are in Paris wth the most unmannerly people in the world. When we arrived at the ticket counter to buy the tickets there was a group of about 20 teenagers with their teachers. The teachers were still trying to collect the money from their students and had not even joined the line as yet. The ticket seller would NOT sell us the four tickets until the group had paid. The clock was ticking and these adults painstakingly counting out nickles and dimes to try and get the amount they needed for the group to visit the tower. Eac time we figured great they are finished they came up short and they would go back to the group and collect more money. This went on repeatedly ... finally believe it or not they got it together. The time is now 9.45am .. we hustled on to the elevator and zoomed to the top of the world....out the elevator.... run- scramble and rush up the last 3 flights of stairs. We are all so out of breathe we can hardly breath. The view was out of this world. It is a full 360 degree out look over Paris. It was raining or the experience would have been even more breathtaking.

We took our photos ..looked around... I wish I could have spent more time there... ran back down the 3 flights of stairs....down the 53 stories by elevator and ran at full speed down the road to check in... We made it with 1 minute to spare. I thoughtI was going to be sick with all the adreniline that was pumping through my body.... We had done it all to the very last. We had gained our last 35 points in this game.

We were told we were leaving the hotel at 11.15 to get to the airport. We are flying to New York city via Ieland on Iceland Air. Hey wait a minute isn't Iceand the place tat caused all the confusion in air travel last week when its volcano erupted? What ever... I have never been there and even though it s only a 1 hour lay over at least I can see it through the window.

Lils and I ran down the road and bought some chocolate filled croissants for breakfast and the hurried back to our room to zip up our suitcases and head off to Charles Le Gaulle Airport. What a whirl wind visit of Paris.. We will have to come back and do it at a more leisurly rate.

29th April 2010 (afternoon) - Central Europe – Basal and Paris

This is a small town which sits on the border of three countries, Switzerland, Germany and France. In fact we were never sure which country we were in at any time. If you bought anything i.e. eating challenges somewhere in Francs you realized you were in Switzerland and if you paid for something in Euro you knew you were in Germany and this all happened on the same street. In Basal we had to split the teams with Rainey and Zoe because of the new 3 scavenge rule but Basal is so small that we were constantly running into them or bumping into each other no matter how hard we tried to be separate. At one point we had to move our bags from the German train station and move them across town by tram to the out of the Swiss/ French station so they were in the correct place for us to catch our train to Paris. These bags are such a trial, at some point you want to literally give them to the next person you see on the street because you are so fed up with lifting and pulling them.

In Basal we only had six things to do. We had to find 2 museums in 2 separate parts of town, in fact the foundation Basal Museum was 15 minutes out of town by tram;' there were suppose to find a Rothko painting, a Monet and identify a picture he had given us. Our luck was that Henri Rosseau was on display and all the Rothkos were on loan to another museum. The unidentified painting was also out on loan so we were only able to see the Monet. This was a huge 3 canvas/one piece painting of Water Lilies. I usually like Monet's water lilies but this one was very dark and dreary. It was displayed in a huge room by itself. There was a large white sofa placed across from the work of art and the end of the room was a huge glass window which bought in lots of natural light. The view out through the window was quite spectacular as well.
We were not allowed to take photos in the museum, infact they took away our cameras.

We then had to head back to Basal and had to find the Picasso room in the KunstMuseum. This was challenge turned out to be interesting to me, even though I am not an art enthuses. At the Kunst there were many pieces of Picasso on display. On the third floor there were about 6 pieces of his work on display , then on the second floor there was 1 piece and on the first floor there was an entire room devoted to Picasso. I had only ever seen the more radical works of art that Picasso had painted. In this display I realized that Picasso's first works were quite normal, for example one of his earlier pieces was a "loaf of bread on a cutting board", he repeatedly painted this piece and you could see the "deterioration" in his work as he got older. The older work of " loaf of bread" was very unrecognizable compare to the first one. I also could not believe that I could stand in a room with a dozen pieces of Picasso's collection. It was kind of cool. I also never knew that Picasso had done so many different works of art.
We were not allowed to take photos here either but I sneeked one.

We also had to find :- the clue stated " In Munster Church one of my favorite humanist lies; to paraphrase him --- intolerance is a bummer. Find his tomb. The man was Erasmus von Rotterdam who died in 1536. We found a large marble plaque inscribed in gold in the church in remembrance of him. Munster church had a neat sundial clock on the side. If you look carefully you can see it on the side above the patterened roof.

Then it was off to the Marketplatz where, we had to buy something in the market, we bought a huge pretzel to eat on the train.

We also had to find something that represented the FC Basal Football Team. There colours are red and blue. I don't think that Basal is so proud of their team because it was very difficult to find anything from the team. We finally found a shirt but it cost $125.00 Euros so we decided to let Lily take a photo wearing it. We caught a tram back to the train station to collect our bags out of storage and get on the train to Paris.
We managed it all and caught the train again with minutes to spare. In fact Rainey stopped to go to the bathroom and we were sure he was not going to make it. In fact he would not have made it if the train did not sit for 10 minutes. We are off to Paris – that is many hours from now - but we are on our way. We are getting much closer to the end of this leg.

The train was so full that we couldn't find our seats so we sat where ever we could find some empty seats but a few stops later some people came and tossed us out of our seat. We realized that it was time to find our purchased seats. There is no none to help you, no conductor to show you where your seats are, the cars have no numbers on them. We knew we had 2^nd class tickets and when we walked all the way through the train we could only find first class cars. We were really lost. Finally someone told us that the very first car, the one 3 cars down through 1^st class was the last 2^nd class car. Who figures, so we struggled down the entire length of the train through hundreds of people to our seats and when we finally made it to our seats they were full of another family, two grandparents, their daughter and a sleeping baby. They were real spread out with their suitcases, maps, newspaper, baby pram and food everywhere. They had made themselves very comfortable and they were very disgruntled when we had the "audacity" to request OUR reserved seat. Here is a familar picture of Lily as she tried to bring her blog up to date.
When we finally made it to Paris hauling our luggage, we stopped and asked directions to our hotel by the local metro. We had to change trains four different times, each time we had to haul our suitcases, backpacks and handbags – out the train up flights of stairs down the next flight of stairs to the next train platform. When we finally got to the closest train station to our hotel and we struggled up the ""final" set of steps, we were dreaming of showers and clean clothes and an end to this suitcase nightmare, when we found ourselves in an enclosed park with a chain link fence 6 feet tall encircling it and no way out. I thought that Zoe was going to start crying because she was so frustrated but we had no other choice but to head back to the station and try another exit. This entailed carrying those miserable bags back down the steps. I had had enough, I was tired and miserable so I stood on the top step and I pushed my suitcase down the stairs, much to all the passerby's amazement. We then trundled through the station again. We finally limped into the hotel, looking very bedraggled and sorry for ourselves. We had one more surprise coming our way - we lined up at the reception to check- in to discover that there are 2 hotels of the same name in Paris and the one we really needed was close to the first train stop, four stations ago. I was so disappointed I wanted to cry. We were all at the end of our nerves, we were all ready to just throw the game and quit. While we stood there looking at each other we realized that 2 of the challenges in Paris were close by, so we checked our luggage with the bag check and headed back to the train station. The one good thing was that both the restaurant that we had to do an eating challenge at was next door and 1 train stop away was the Arc de Defense that was 50 points.

We visited the arch, took the train back and did the mandatory eating at St. Georges, had dinner and then called a taxi to carry us to the right hotel. $150.00 euro later we had driven through the whole of Paris on our way to the right hotel but it gave Lily the opportunity to see some of the famous sights as they whizzed by. We finally got to our correct hotel at 8.00pm.
We had arranged to go to the Moulin Rouge Show for 10.30 pm and to meet up with Zoe and Rainey there. Lily and I were suppose to go out and scavenge. Scavenge what! Lily and I had long hot showers and she spent an hour getting ready for the show. She was so excited that she could hardly sit down. She did her hair, put on a pretty dress and we set off looking like humans instead of bums for the show, feeling quite proud of ourselves. We arrived at 10.30 and watched the show. It was an experience to watch Lily's face, she was so enthralled with the costumes and dancers that she was more fun to watch than the real show.

After the show was finished she did a Moulin Rouge dance on the steps which I videoed for points. It was about midnight at this point and we had plotted that there was a weird or different sculpture very close to Moulin Rouge in the Montmatre Square. We found a statue of a man climbing out of the wall. Someone had even painted his fingernails red. Lily discovered that there was an air vent in the ground and if she stood on it we could take a Marilyn Monroe photo.

It was very dark and a little scary as there was a tent in the corner of the square where people were living. I was praying that I would find a TAXI in this remote part of town, as the metro closes at 12.00a and as luck had it, one minute later a taxi cruised by and we jumped in and set off to do 2 mre scavenges. We ran around the Paris until 1.30 collecting some points, we drove through the famous fashion district with all the Dior and Channel etc stores. She was in her element and kept wishing that Savannah was present to see all the high fashion.

We visited the Flame de Liberty which sits above the tunnel where Princess Diana met her demise. People are still leaving her flowers as tributes. We had a spectacular view of the Eiffel Tower all lit up at night from that bridge. Then we headed back to the hotel where we ordered room service and had "dinner"

We are meeting Zoe at 6.00am in the lobby so again it was a night of 3 hours of sleep. Our bodies are getting so accustomed to little sleep that we will have to relearn normal sleep patterns when we get back home.

23rd April - Sri Lanka -Kandy and Nuwara Eliya

We stayed at the Queens Hotel next to the Temple of the Tooth, across the road from Kandy Lake. Very old English style, little run down but quaint. I think this is the answer to one of the challenges. It says: Who lives in Queens House. We think it is visitors.
The challenge was :- Take in the daily pujas near The Temple of the Tooth. Puja is the entire ceremony where worshipers bring their gifts and offerings and lay them on the altar. This ceremony starts at 5.30 am. While we were standing in line without an offering other worshippers in the line gave us these locust flowers to use as offerings. They had a wonderful smell.

It is believed that one of Buddah's teeth now resides in this temple, the ownership of this "tooth" has been both political and religious through Sri Lanka history. Whichever city had ownership of the tooth had control over the country. Once a year the tooth is paraded through the streets on the back of an elephant with lots of pomp and circumstance. We had visited the first home of the tooth in Polounawara.

Loud drums beat and pulsate through this ceremony. At one point the temple door to the tooth area was opened and about 20 people were allowed to go into and inner sanctuary, the door closes and everyone else is left outside. The Sri Lankans really take their worship seriously.

We then went out of Kandy to visit the Elephant Orphanage. This is where they take hurt elephant and help them get recovered, they are not rereleased into the wild because they are too friendly to people. There are many wild elephants in Sri Lanka, their biggest enemy is the human and visa versa, every year many villagers are killed by elephants and many elephant hurt and maimed by villagers. One old boy was called Simari, he only has 3 feet as he stepped on a land mine and blew off the other. He looks very old and some of his skin looks like it got scorched but he is there in a safe home with 80 more elephants in his pack. If you look carefully you can see that Simari's front right foot is missing his toes and the bottom part of his foot. He does not put weight on it, he limps along.We were there for feeding time of the baby elephants and got to hold the bottles and feed them. How cool is that ?? This is Zoe feeding the baby with an enormous bottle. This was definitely a highlight but anything with animals always is for me.. It is so unbelievable we will be driving down the road and coming towards you is an elephant or swimming in the rivers below the bridges is an elephant. It's all so neat!!
We took the train down to Nuun Olyb which is very close to Nuwara Eliya. This town is also called Little England. It is amazing in the middle of nowhere in Sri Lanka is an English village with red double decker buses, Tudor house, strawberries and potatoes growing and acres and acres of tea. We are in the Ceylon Tea section of this island. We visited a Pedros Tea factory and the guy showed us which tea leaves to pick.

We posted a card at the post office and had tea at the Hill Club. To be allowed in we had to buy membership for the day.

They were a little reluctant to allow these rassy people in especially Lily as she is under aged. But with a little persuasion in we went to the Old English sittingroom decorated with a fireplace (which they offered to light for us) and pictures of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip hanging on the walls between stuffed and mounted animal heads. Again a very surreal experience. The temperatures up here at very much cooler and it is damper just like England.

Collect another TAXI to drive us to Adams Peak, which is a mountain about 3 hours away. When the TAXI driver discovered he had to travel so far he asked if he could pass home. He needed to get some supplies and a warmer jacket for the drive. He was a Tamil (one Hindus, this country has been in turmoil for many years as the Tamils and the Buddhist fought, I always thought that the Tamils were scary) in a Buddhist country. When we got to his house he invited us in (I did not know that Yoga was a Tamil until after we left his home) and gave us some dinner of rice and some kind of chopped up meat and vegetables.

There was no running water in his house but it had electricity and an older TV set and a sewing machine. They cooked on a wood stove in the corner of the kitchen. His family were so lovely and gracious. We were sorry to leave but we have to be at Adams Peak by 10.00pm because we are not allowed any intercity travel between 10.00 pm and 5.00am so we have to be in place in a rest house at the bottom of the mountain before 10.
We are to climb Adams Peak tomorrow. I am terrified, it is 4800 steps both ways. You have to climb it before dawn. I hope to get to the top. We have just spent hours on a train getting down here with all the people around us telling us the horror stories of climbing this beast. The climb is worth 400 points and we are going to give it a try. I hope I live to tell the tales of this scavenge. I think I am crazy to take Lily up there but she is determined that she can make it and wants to try. So it is Adam's Peak tomorrow in the middle of the night. Pray for me.

29th April 2010 - Central Europe - Freiburg

When we first looked at the train schedule we thought that we would have to be in Freiburg until 1.30 pm so we could sleep in. But I finally discovered that if we could leave the town by 10.15am we could actually fit in another town called Basal. Freiburg is a bonus city which had about 4 or 5 parts to it. If you don't do all you lose all the points but because it is technically one challenge the two teams could do it together.
The only think that had a time limit was climbing the bell tower of the church. That did not open until 9.30am, could we climb it, run back to the hotel, collect our bags and be on a 10.15 train? Well we decided to try. The first part was to get to the top of a certain walk, see what was there and visit. Well this was a 20 minute hike up hill at the top was a spiral staircase, ice-cream cone shaped tower with 200 steps to the top. Well we huffed and puffed up the hill through the woods.
This was a lovely experience early in the morning. The woods were green and crisp with the dew still sitting on the leaves as the sun had not come up as yet to burn away the dew. The climb up the tower was a little stressful on the legs after the uphill climb but if we wanted to catch that train we had to book it to the top and back down. The tower was very neat from an artistic point of view as it ws a spiral stainless steel staircase being support by these enormous, extremely long and thick tree trunks.

We took a different path down hoping that it would bring us out close to the city gates, the bachles and the church. On the way down we passed this cross just randomly standing there, it was so beautiful backed by the brilliantly blue skies.

We then walked and found the city gate as was required. We had to find some bachles, these are the small little steams that wander through the town . We were also required to learn the legend of the bachles asn as legend has t, if you dip your foot into the backles ( stream) you will marry and remain in Freiburg forever

. We made sure that Lily only pretended and she did not actually get her feet wet, we don't want to lose her to Freiburg:)

Freiburg houses look like something off of a postcard. They have the little streams, the climbing literia flowers and the pastl paint and the shutters etc. So peaceful looking.

The church was still closed so we sat in the town square as the morning market was being set up and eat the food mandatory of currywurst sausage in bread.
We were the first in line to climb the very narrow spiral staircase the 350 steps to the top. The church actually has 3 levels of which you can choose how high you can climb.

We had decided to go all the way to the top to be on the safe side but the church is under restoration and the last section at the top of the steeple was closed. The view was still stunning .

We ran down the steps and ran back to the hotel and caught the train with 2 minutes to spare but we were now on our way to another town called Basal where we could pick up some more points. This day is just clicking together absolutely like clockwork. Basal here we come, suitcases, backpacks, cameras and all!!!!!