La Belle Paris

***The following entry is backdated to Friday 24 Aug 2012. You must imagine that I am sitting in a cafe in Paris writing it, all excited and touristy. ***

 

 

What a day in beautiful Paris. I continue to be astounded by how quick the transit is over here. In less than the time it takes to drive from Saskatoon to Calgary (or barely even Regina), I hopped on the Eurostar train over to Paris Gare du Nord and was in central Paris by lunchtime.

 

I was a little apprehensive at finding my way in the city, but luckily my expert map reading (ha) came in handy and I am much better at reading French than speaking it. Also, everyone here speaks English...They see the panicked look in my eyes after we get past the "bonjour" part and they usually jump right into English.

 

I worked out that it has been 7 years since I last visited Paris during my high school tour....a little bit scary but yes it was back in 2005. I found myself remembering lots of the whirlwind two and a half days I have spent here and the things I wanted to revisit and explore on my own.

 

Also there is a large difference between being on a school tour and navigating Paris on your own. I did well and just making my way to my hostel was the biggest relief. I am staying in a great location - in the Latin quarter - which is within walking distance of some of the big sights - the Louvre and the Seine, and also near the Metro for everything else. I am also conveniently located near the Luxembourg Gardens - Paris' answer to Hyde Park - where I spent the afternoon lounging, strolling and just generally trying to take it all in and wrap my head around being in Paris.

 

I visited the Musee d'Orsay, which was one of my favorite memories of my last visit to Paris. It has paintings from all the great Impressionist artists and I recall really falling in love with Monet especially. It was cool to re-visit those paintings and feel like we've got a relationship going - me and the awesome art :) I also visited some new friends - Gauguin, Renoir and others.

 

It was raining after I came out of the museum so I ate my dinner crouched beneath the shelter of the museum - baguette, boursin, blueberries and some Milka chocolate - it was very romantic. After trying to gauge whether I could wait out the rain I purchased what it possibly the worst umbrella ever for 4 Euro from the dude outside the museum. It kept me dry for the half an hour that mattered when I would have been soaked, but I am a little skeptical to see what will happen when I try to open it again.

 

My day was not yet over - I walked along the Champs d'Elysees - the BIG shopping street in Paris. I am now enjoying a hot chocolate before turning in for the night.

 

Day 1 in Paris - exhausting, exciting, challenging and beautiful.

 

As my father would say, c'est bon!

There's No Place Like London...

I'm writing to you this morning from the humid bubble that is my bedroom on the second floor of this house in London. I'm actively sweating from the exertion of sitting here and typing. But hey this could be the last nice day in London for a while - so I may as well enjoy it!!

I figured an update was in order as I seem to have been getting up to quite a bit of adventuring lately. After my weekend of Welsh adventures I returned to London for another whirlwind of funtimes including my first visit to the London Eye and two more shows on the West End!

One of my favorites so far has to be Sweeney Todd - so creepy and so well done, plus it is a uniquely London musical. The gentleman playing Sweeney (Michael Ball) and Mrs. Lovett were both excellent - so much so that I feared I may have nightmares of gruesome barbershops and bakehouses. Thankfully I am still alive and have my hair on. The musical definitely showed a darker side to this city and the millions of people that have been crowded within its walls over the years.

It is sometimes hard to wrap my head around the fact that I can just drop down to Leicester Square to see a show anytime I like. In thinking about what the next step will be for me I already know I will be so, so sad to leave London. It is such an incredibly beautiful city and has re-opened my eyes to so many possibilities that I know it will always be a special place for me. But it is not an especially realistic place to live, at least not considering some of the other goals I have yet to achieve. Something I've been thinking about a lot in the past little while....

BUT there are still many more adventures to come before I have to leave lovely London, including a trip to Paris over the long weekend bank holiday coming up. Which means only a four day work week ahead :) I remember feeling at the begining of the summer that surely this holiday would never come. I would be stuck working full time for 9, 10 weeks in a row - and without batting my eyes here we are at the end of August.

Today I am going to try to enjoy a day of quiet and rest after all of the craziness of the past little while. I will be taking it easy (as much as I am able) and hopefully enjoying the London summer while it's here.

Welsh Weekend Adventures

This is a photo of me and my new friend Max, the horse that I was riding this past weeked during my adventuring weeked in Wales! He is really nice except for the fact that he was really hungry and wanted to stop and eat lots of ferns and plants along the way. He took me all the way through the Brecon Beacon mountains in Wales and it was very beautiful - postcard perfect. The morning looked a little misty but it cleared right up and we were riding through a valley in this national park in the midst of sheep and wild horses. I'm pretty sure I saw a unicorn.

This is a photo of the "hostel" we stayed at during the adventuring weekend. I use the term hostel very loosely as it was the most mansion-like hostel I will ever stay at, I am fairly sure. For one thing when we walked in the door there was a Welsh couple awaiting us to say "Welcome to the Baskerville Hall Hotel"....

It is the real Baskerville Hall from the Hounds of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This means that we were staying in the same grounds that the author of Sherlock Holmes did - very cool. And the hotel is still very much in its original state. The girls on the tour shared a chilly but comfortable dorm room and we ate breakfast in the dining room overlooking stunning grounds and the Welsh countryside. Add to this the fact that we were fairly far out in the middle of nowhere and I could almost believe that I was in a Jane Austen novel as I drank my coffee and had baked beans for breakfast.

This is the only photo I took during our stop to Hay-on-Wye, also known as the Town of Books. They have a yearly literary festival every year in May and have something like 30 plus bookshops in this tiny Welsh town. Needless to say I was in heaven!

I exercised restraint and only bought one book from this bookshop which was yes, in a legitimate castle. The whole main floor of the castle has been converted into rows upon rows of dusty old books, photos and other vintage knick-knacks for sale. There was also a massive bookshop inside of an old cinema that we visited.

Other stops during the adventuring weekend in Wales included Chepstow Castle - the oldest stone castle in Europe, and Tintern Abbey where the monks used to live hundreds of years ago and which was made famous by the poet Wordsworth.

Overall I really really enjoyed Wales - definitely a highlight of my time so far. The atmosphere was so peaceful and incredibly beautiful. Surrounded by so much natural beauty it was hard not to enjoy the slower pace of Wales and just try to take it all in. The horseback riding was a great way to experience the mountains and see some sheep close up. The weekend felt like it was a couple of weeks long and it was like going back in time and entering another world to leave the hustle and bustle of the city.

On the way back to London I seriously considered a new life plan that involved moving to a secluded cottage in Wales to write a novel and while away my days in the countryside. I will try and give plenty of notice if this plan is to go ahead but in the meantime it is back to work in London for me. I'll be dreaming of Max, unicorns and the gorgeous Welsh countryside all day long...

Adventures in Olympic Park

Going to the Olympic Park in London is a little bit like entering another reality. It reminded me of Disneyworld in that everywhere I looked everything was London 2012 - the food, the signs, the people dressed head to toe in London 2012 gear. Even the flowers were sculpted in the colours and design of London 2012. Brand name bliss in East London...

There were staff members literally every few feet directing people which way to go. This is not an exaggeration. I would like to see someone try to approach the ticket booth without having their tickets ready for inspection. We were informed at one point that we were unfortunately standing in a non-standing area and if we wished to stand we should join the others in the standing area, which was a small circle of fenced-off area that very strongly resembled a pen.

Please do not think that I did not love Olympic Park, because I did love it, in the way that a child loves Disneyworld, because it is magical and fantastic. I also now love Coke, Adidas, Parasonic and Field Hockey. It was nice just to be in the middle of thousands of people (in our venue alone) who were there to have a good time and cheer on their country whether they were winning or losing.

It was neat to see the spectacle and enormity of the summer Olympics, which I did not truly appreciate until I was part of the sea of people streaming through the gates of the Park from the tube station. I often forget that London is a city of 7 million people and the Olympic Park is its own city within London for these few weeks out of the year. I will not be one of those Olympic fanatics who goes all out but I am definitely in the spirit of bringing countries together and people supporting their nations win or lose. We watched two matches of women's Field Hockey - USA vs Argentia and Australia vs Germany. The Aussies were definitely the loudest. Being amongst so many Europeans has definitely increased my own level of national pride, which is something that I feel is not celebrated often enough in Canada.

I cannot help but be impressed by the magnitude of the whole thing and all that has been accomplished to bring the Games here. I also cannot help but think that if all these countries can come together to support each other and sponsor their athletes and find funding and housing and build stadiums to such an enormous degree then surely they can put the same kind of considerable resources to bettering the world not just in terms of sports. But that is a larger question of its own which I won't get into right now. After all, I'm still on my Olympic high.

I also have a strange craving for a McFlurry...