#AlbertaPhotographer

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A day of quests

Tuesday, October 29th, 2024 started as a cloud day in Paris, France.

I had a couple of things I wanted to do today before we saw where the rest of the day had in store for us.

I wanted to go see a library and I didn’t realize that Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, on the edge of the 13th, wasn’t in a cool old building. But in fact it was a fairly modern looking building. The other thing I wanted to do was to try and find a Harley Davidson tee shirt that would fit my friend, John H Read. He likes to wear them big so I was on a quest to find a 3x or 4x that looked as such and not what he usually finds when he goes looking – maybe they would fit a 140lb person.

I thought it was a good sign that a Harley Davidson motorcycle was parked at the gas station when we got onto Rue Tolbiac. We were going to follow it east all the way to the library.

We were about 1/2 way there when we came to École supérieure de journalisme de Paris. Of course I had to take a photo of the place as John likes to tell me he’s a real photographer as he has an arts degree in photography and I’m just a journalist.

Maybe it’s the tourist in me, but I’m pretty sure there is an interesting building, if not more, on every block.

While it wasn’t an interesting old building, Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, is set up to look like 4 open books marking the edges of the building about the esplanade (fancy name for a promenade).

You have to climb up to the promenade to go down into the library and Lynda was still smiling as we hadn’t walked that far yet today.

I wasn’t sure what to go see inside so I paid the $5€ fee each for us to get in. Apparently there are free access areas and I’m sure that’s all we were in, but I really didn’t mind ponying up to get in.

The book towers are connected by hallways that resemble a box and we’d made a circuit and looked at a few things when we decided to move on to our next stop.

These girls were practicing their dancing when we went in and since they were still at it when we were leaving, I had to grab a photo of them

We crossed over the curvy and very cool Passerelle Simone-de-Beauvoir heading over towards Bercy.

As we walked through Parc de Bercy, we decided we should find some lunch, so we headed in the direction of Accor Arena. We knew we could find food over there as we’d been to a concert in there a couple of years ago.

We decided to try Terrasse Bercy as they had a large and uncrowded patio.

We all settled on French onion soup (it was much better than the soup I had in Strasbourg) and a water with some lemon syrup. I ordered a medium, not realizing that was 500ml. (That’s like a months worth of water for me.) I probably should have stuck with a small like the girls did, but it was pretty good, for water.

With lunch done, we pushed on to complete our quest and were soon walking past Gare de Lyon. It really didn’t look like much until we got to the front side.

Onward and upwards.

Soon we were at Place de la Bastille. The description of which is; “The July Column rises above this iconic square’s bars & cafes, former site of the Bastille prison.

My bride decided to have a rest as I took photos, so I took her photo as well.

I was pretty sure I would be able to find a shirt for John, even if Harley Davidson didn’t have any. On our way up road we passed by BMW, KTM, Triumph and Royal Enfield.

Lucille and Lynda walked up the block to Éclat -coffee thé, which bills itself as having the best chai latte in all of Paris.

I found what I was looking for and took a couple photos of the motorcycles outside. The fellow in the shop told me they had just consolidated there merchandise and bikes to 1 location just a week ago and the day after they did that, someone came and smashed all their windows. New windows arrive tomorrow.

Éclat -coffee thé was a cute little shop with some charm and friendly staff and Lynda bought me an espresso. It was good but not the best I’ve ever had. The girls told me their chai lattes were very, very good though.

The girls were warmed up so we continued on our walk with no particular destination.

As we walked along I saw a camera store – Photo Ciné du Cirque – Panajou. I stopped in but they were out of business cards, so I left them one of mine. They had a used shop just a few doors down, so I left them a card as well.

Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione is actually a round building and not a wide angle panorama.

We found ourselves up at République – subway station.

We started making our way back in the general direction of the apartment.

We walked for quite a way and came to The Centre Pompidou. It is a very interesting looking cultural center.

It wasn’t very far to Hôtel de Ville – city hall, and some construction has started since the Olympics were in town.

Between the fencing and the courtyard being ripped up, I couldn’t get any good close up photo so we crossed the bridge to go over to Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris.

Notre-Dame was still closed and wasn’t scheduled to re-open to the public for just over a month yet. I’ve never been inside as it was closed during both times I’ve visited Paris. I would have loved to have seen the inside. But, at least this time we could get closer to it as the fences were closer than last time. And, it was a lot more visible.

We again started for the apartment so we could meet up with Curtis before supper.

So far today, we’d done 15 kilometers and we are going out for supper a bit later.

Our plan for supper was to go to Le Relais de l’Entrecôte for steak and frites. It is a fabulous French restaurant that opens for lunch from 12-3 pm and closes, re-opening at 6:30 pm until 11:00 pm for supper. They don’t take reservations, so you go line up and hope you can get in at the desired time. We left the apartment around 5:30 pm to walk over. We knew the way as Le Relais de l’Entrecôte is just down the block from La Rotonde. We arrived to a short line up and it wasn’t a problem to get in for the 1st seating.

Once the doors open, you get hustled in and are seated very quickly. The waitresses zoom around taking orders fast and furiously.

Not only don’t they take reservations, they don’t have a menu. Well, technically, they do but not for an entrée. They have a decent drink menu and a fantastic dessert menu but all they serve for a meal is steak and fries. You have a choice of medium or well done steak. Of course the correct choice is medium.

You get a starter salad. It’s a simple salad but the dressing was pretty good.

The presentation is plain but it was a good steak and the sauce is pretty good.

You actually get 2 servings of steak and fries for the 29€ price. (Most of us got a bit extra as Lynda can’t eat that much, so she shared.)

So many of the desserts looked good and we tried 3 of them. Lucille and Lynda shared one. They were all sooooooooo good.

168€ for 4 of us didn’t sound that bad to me. It was a very good meal with great service and atmosphere. Of course, with our super weak Canadian dollar, I think it was about $500. Lol.

The line-up was fairly long when we left around 8:00 pm to head back to the apartment. We walked back a slightly different way to mix it up a little.

I took this photo for no real reason but when I put it in black and white, it became my favourite night image so far.

My Fitbit showed just shy of 31 thousand steps and just under 26 kilometers walked today. That’s a better than average day.

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To Montmartre and beyond

Monday, October 28th, 2024 started out as a mix of sun and clouds, with more clouds than sun.

We headed out for a late breakfast.

One of the things I had researched for our last trip to Paris was which cafes Ernest Hemmingway had frequented in his lifetime. We never did get to check any of them out last time, so I was bound and determined to get to at least one this time.

He had spent a lot of time in a couple of cafes in Montparnasse, which wasn’t all that far from the apartment. So we headed in that direction.

I think the wall needs a good scrub.

A little farther up this road is Centre Pénitentiaire de Paris-La Santé – a prison that opened in 1867. It was partially closed from 2014 until 2019 to undergo rehabilitation. Which seems ironic to me as rehabilitation is supposedly the goal of prison.

I liked the door. Apparently, it’s a retirement home.

We arrived at La Closerie des Lilas about 10 minutes later.

I was kind of glad it wasn’t open as I looked at the menu board, both because it seemed to serve mostly seafood, which isn’t my thing, and also because it was ridiculously expensive. It was a pretty nice looking place however.

Luckily, it was only about a 5 minute walk up Bd du Montparnasse to La Rotonde. That was another establishment Hemming had spent time in. Not only was it open and still serving breakfast, but it was not very busy so we could sit outside.

I tried to channel my inner Hemmingway by visualizing the scene in front of me as black and white. I tried to figure out how much would have changed since the 1920s. I like to write, as evident by my blog, but I’m no Hemmingway, again, as evident by my blog. But I did think it was cool to sit and look out at the world like so many had before me.

We sat an enjoyed out continental breakfast.

We could see the stairs of our subway stop, Vavin, from our seats.

The #4 line was the one we needed to catch to go up to Montmartre. It is a fully automated subway line and has no operators on the train. It was kind of neat to sit near the front and see where we were going. It was about a half hour journey to our stop at Barbès – Rochechouart. It was a fairly short walk through the neighbourhood to the steps below Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre. I’ve seen many churches labeled as sacred heart, but none have been as spectacular as this one.

It is a lot of steps up to the church and there were plenty of people all over them.

There were also plenty of tourist taking photos.

It had clouded up pretty good so the view from the hill didn’t show as much as it could have.

@spookie_bugz wanted to have a photo or two taken of himself while we were there.

Even though I have no use for any religion, I would have been happy to go see the inside of Sacré-Cœur, but there was no way I was going to stand in that line to get in. I probably would have if I was a devout Catholic, but that would be the only way I’d line up.

We decided we’d go see what it looked like from the side.

We discovered that there was a road that went around the back and through the neighbourhood.

It was a lot quieter back here.

We started to explore the neighbourhood on our way through.

I really liked this balcony and tried to imagine sitting there with the plants, sipping a coffee, and looking over the city.

As we wandered around, it became apparent that the area right behind Sacré-Cœur was going to be the quietest spot in the neighbourhood.

The market was a busy spot.

We had been walking downhill and soon came to some stairs. Not as many stairs as we had climbed up though.

Apparently I don’t get out enough as I had never heard of them, world famous or not.

We found ourselves at the “I love you” wall. Well, Lucille did lead us there, but still.

I thought it was interesting, but it didn’t wow me like some of the things I had seen on our trip. We headed off in the general direction of Moulin du Moulin Rouge.

I liked all the flowers.

Between the people and the traffic, getting a good photo of Moulin Rouge is a bit tricky, and I wasn’t in the mood for tricks. I suspect that it’s a lot more interesting all lit up at night, but during the day I found it a bit, meh. I still acted like a tourist and took a couple of photos however.

Lynda was getting a bit thirsty so she stopped into the Starbucks across the street for a drink, and Lucille and I discussed walking back to her apartment. We figured it would take a couple of hours if we didn’t stop anywhere. We thought as long as Lynda had a drink to keep her happy, we’d not mention that.

So we started heading towards the river.

More doors that I liked the looks of.

We found ourselves at the Louvre Museum. It looked as busy as the other times we were there.

We were about a third of the way home when we crossed the river to the left bank.

I almost looked for a book, but I didn’t want to carry any more weight.

We decided that since we were so close, we should got to Galway Irish Pub for a drink. Galway was the first place Lucille and Curtis took us for lunch on our first visit and it was a favorite of theirs.

Lucille took us on the scenic route to get there (because the 16 thousandish steps we had already gotten didn’t seem like enough.)

Galway served up a good, stiff margarita and I really enjoyed my little drink.

The sun was starting to set as we left the pub to go meet Curtis for supper.

The last time we walked past Fontaine Saint-Michel, there was a market happening there.

We passed an Au Vieux Campeur – The Old Camper, well, we passed a few as there are literally 20 of them in a 20 block radius. They spread out which gear is in which store to keep the rent down vs having a really big store.

We passed within a few blocks of the Panthéon. I’ll have to get back to Paris so I can go see it one day as we hadn’t been yet.

As we were heading to Place d’Italie, we passed by Arènes de Lutèce and I ran in to get a photo with much less contrast than my last visit.

The light was fading and I took a couple of photos before we met Curtis at Hippopotamus.

We enjoyed a good meal and got what we ordered this time. Last time we were there we got a really nice steak skewer, but we’d ordered chicken. No food photos but I got a lovely cell phone shot of our drinks. I had sugar but no alcohol.

It was about a 20 minute walk back to the apartment and we’d managed just shy of 25 thousand steps today.

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Sunday in another Country

We awoke to a mix of sun and cloud in Strasbourg, France, on Sunday, October 27th, 2024.

The view from our room.

The balcony looked a bit sketchy to me. I think the pigeon is heavier than he appears.

The view of our room.

Breakfast was included with our room and we ate a very average meal before we checked out. They did let us check our bags for the day so we could go out exploring before our train trip back to Paris.

When I had looked up Strasbourg on the map, I noticed that it was right up against the border with Germany and there were bridges to cross the Rhine River to the city of Kehl. I was looking forward to adding Germany to my country count as that gets me to 8 I believe. Lol

We headed to the tram that would take us across the border.

At least that was our plan. We managed to pick a tram that went near the bridge and back to town.

So, we strolled onto the bridge and towards Germany.

Straddling the border. My left foot is in Germany and my right in France.

There was 1 lady sitting on the top deck enjoying her coffee all by her lonesome.

The flowers in Germany still looked good as well.

We walked down to the river and wandered through Rhein Promenade – riverside peace park.

We walked along the river for a bit and we went over to Weißtannenturm – Well-known observation tower on the Rhine with views of France & the Black Forest.

It’s a 30 meter climb to the top, or, if my math was correct, 198 steps.

I tried, but failed to get anyone to climb up with me, so I slowly made my way to the top. And the view was totally worth it.

A panorama with my 40mm lens.

My traveling companions keeping the bench warm.

A panorama with my 85mm lens.

The Kehl water tower. It’s a 50 meter tower that was built in 1904. It was shutdown in 1980 and the tower was renovated in 2003. Apparently, it’s a very popular tourist attraction, but we didn’t go over there.

@spookie_bugz posed for me at the top of the tower in the homeland of his forefathers.

A panorama with my 18mm lens.

I had lollygagged at the top long enough, so I descended to meet up with my group at ground level.

We decided to walk along the lake to explore the town a bit.

As we walked along, the church bells tolled. I can’t link a video on here because I’m too cheap to pay for that plug in, but they sounded very nice.

While we were looking at the water I noticed a couple of turtles. And, with heavy cropping, so can you.

As we got near the end of the lake, we veered off to go more into town. We passed by Stadthalle and saw there was a tattoo convention going on. Decided I didn’t need any ink, so we kept walking.

We made our way to Market Square and saw the rather impressive Friedenskirche – Protestant church.

And I thought mosquitos were big in Canada.

We walked around the square trying to decide where we should find some lunch. Being Sunday, choices were a bit limited.

We decided that the patio at el Bolero Mexican restaurant looked good.

I thoroughly enjoyed a very good strawberry margarita while looking at Friedenskirche, awaiting what turned out to be some very good Mexican food.

I wandered around the square a bit more after lunch grabbing a few more church photos before we moved on to see what else was around.

We wandered up and down a couple of streets. Not a lot of things grabbed my attention but I liked the sign on the building.

I found another pretzel. We also got some for the road as we figured it was time to head back to Strasbourg. This time, we took the tram right across the river and into the middle of downtown.

I tried to grab as many photos as I could in the late afternoon light.

Another round building from a wide angle panorama.

We came across the bilingual French-English church, Liberté! Church and I liked the way the sun was hitting it but it was pretty tight quarters to photography it.

I think Curtis was starting to look for places to grab supper.

Soon we were wandering by Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg. It is a massive Catholic Church that, was the world’s tallest building for 227 years (between 1647 and 1874), and, when we were there, was bathed in some nice pre-sunset light. Unfortunately, the square in front of the church is much too small to easily photograph it to show it in all it’s glory. I tried to shoot it as a panorama but I didn’t like my results, so I’ll include a few pieces of church shots.

It was pretty crowded around the church so we headed off and found ourselves at Place Gutenberg. I liked how the buildings were lit up and the Carrousel looked interesting. I mean, it’s not everyday I see a 2 level merry-go-round.

My sunset light was gone and it was time to find some food. We ended up at The Dubliners, an Irish Restaurant. We sat outside and I enjoyed a really good burger watching the world walk by.

It was fully dark when we made our way in the general direction of the hotel to pickup our bags.

Bags retrieved, we headed over to the train station for our 2 hourish trip back to Paris.

There really wasn’t much to see along the way being dark and all. The photo I took of Lucille and Curtis “not sleeping” will remain on my phone and not be seen here.

As we approached Gare de l’Est, Curtis decided he didn’t want to take the subway and walk, so he arranged an Uber to pick us up. It was my first Uber experience. Seemed okay.

We got back to the apartment a little before midnight and went to bed pretty much on arrival.

I got in almost 18 and a half thousand steps today. Not bad all in all.

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On the rails again

Since our visit to France was going to be a bit of a whirlwind compared to our 1st visit, I wanted to get in as much sightseeing as possible.

With that in mind, I had looked into a few different options for day trips so Lynda could see some countryside like she wanted. I had considered going to Rouen to check out the Normandy area. I had also considered trying to go to Reims to check out the Champagne region. I thought that one might get a bit expensive since my bride has no dislike of champagne.

Lucille suggested going to Colmar way over on the eastern side of France. Once I looked it up and saw it was a bit south of Strasbourg and near the German border, I was in.

So we were up and on our way long before it was bright and early on Saturday, October 26th to catch the TGV at Gare de l’Est.

It had rained overnight and there was a crispness in the air, but not a lot of people on the streets.

We walked over to Café circus, up the hill and through Butte-aux-Cailles to Place d’Italie so we could catch the metro.

It was about a 20 minute ride to the train station and it wasn’t all that long a wait before we were boarding the TGV.

It doesn’t take very long to get out of Paris and up to speed in the countryside and we were soon zooming along at speeds up to 320 km/hr. It was hard to get any good photos of the outside world through the window as it zooms by at those speeds. So I took a “self portrait” while we were in a tunnel.

We got to Strasbourg in just under 2 hours and it wasn’t a very long wait to catch the train to Colmar.

It was only a half hour ride this time.

Colmar is a pretty small place and their train station didn’t seem to have any obvious luggage lockers, so we went in search of a luggage drop as our 1st stop.

It was fairly close to the station and once we were unencumbered, we set off in search of a pretzel. I mean, adventure.

As we got into the old town, Lynda spied an outdoor market and as we were heading in that direction, I found a pretzel place. The pretzel was good but a whole lot saltier than I liked.

Narrow streets and old buildings. How could I not take photos?

Even though it wasn’t even noon yet, we started searching for a lunch spot as we’d been up for quite a while already.

No luck at the first place.

The long row of Jack Daniels bottles caught my eye.

Collégiale Saint-Martin de Colmar is a lot bigger and a lot less round than my photo would suggest. Doing a multi frame panorama is a problem when using a wide angle lens hand held, but I didn’t have the patience to shoot a lot more frames with a tighter field of view.

It was lightly misting as we walked around and we were actually getting a bit cold, so we stopped at Café Jupiler to grab some lunch. We were almost a half hour early for food service so I grudgingly (happily) had a coffee as we waited. The café was pretty full and they put us way in the back. It had an interesting decor, but like the opera house, some ugly lighting.

We enjoyed our drinks and ordered lunch as soon as we could. It was a decent meal and once done, we headed back outside to explore.

My bride and Lucille crossed the road in search of souvenirs. Shockingly, I just waited and took a photo or two.

We wandered around some more checking stuff out and we arrived at Place de la Mairie and I took photos of Carrousel Hôtel de Ville de Colmar. Which, I see from Google Maps, is now permanently closed.

As we wandered around the streets, Curtis said it would be nice to have an app that showed us where we’d been. I went, “Hey, I have a couple of those to track my walking.” So I enable my MapMyWalk app.

I probably should have actually looked at the map because we didn’t know exactly where the canal zone that’s called Little Venice was, so we asked Curtis to find the canal. Apparently we needed to be a bit more specific with him as he used his phone map and took us out of town to the canal. At least it was a nice day for a walk. I know it doesn’t look like it, but when I zoom in on the app our route resembles art work a 4 your old would draw on the wall.

The canal we got to.

We took a different road back and I found a few more interesting things to photograph as we walked towards the canal we were looking for.

I don’t know what this head was all about, but I thought it was interesting. Creepy, but interesting.

There were more nice flowers still blooming than I would have expected near the end of October.

We found the canal we were looking for. We had take the scenic route but it’s not like we had anything planned to do that we were missing out on.

We walked past some of the original wall that protected the city to get to Marché Couvert Colmar. Erected in 1865, this covered venue features merchants selling produce, meat, cheese & more.

There was lots of interesting stuff to see in the market but it isn’t overly easy to photograph.

We went back outside to check out the neighbourhood before looking over the canal area a little more.

As we walked, we came across Fontaine Roesselmann.

I really did enjoy wandering around those old, narrow streets. I know that for the people living there, it’s just part of everyday life to see that, but for me, it was an awesome field trip.

These little trains were everywhere and usually full of people, not many of which were actually smiling though.

We headed back towards the market area and it was getting a bit busier again.

We found another train and a canal.

When we were looking into coming to Colmar, the guide book suggested that a half day was all you needed to see the town. We thought that was reasonable and decided that going back to Strasbourg for the night so to spend a day there, would be a good plan. So, we started heading back to get our luggage and then make our way to the train station.

They didn’t look much like Christmas trees, but most of the trees on this street had colored ball hanging from them.

The train station is undergoing renovations so I couldn’t capture it in all it’s glory.

I thought another TGV was passing through and got all ready for a high speed pass, but it turned out to be pulling in so I never got the shot I thought I would.

My last photo in Colmar was the inside of the train station.

We had spent well over half a day exploring Colmar and it was very dark when we got to Hôtel des Arts Strasbourg to check in and drop off our bags before we went out to find some supper.

I believe we tried Au Vieux Strasbourg. It wasn’t very far from the hotel. I know I didn’t enjoy the waiter’s attitude, but the food was okay. Hence, why I’m not totally sure of where we ate.

We headed back to the hotel right after supper for a fairly early night. We had another full day of exploring ahead of us again tomorrow.

Thanks to Curtis’ directions, I had managed to get just over 21 thousand steps today. My biggest total so far on our trip.

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An Afternoon at the Opera (House)

Friday, October 25th dawned as a nice sunny day in the 13th arrondissement.

We got off to a later than expected start to the day so we stopped at Boulangerie Brun on Rue de Tolbiac for some treats for breakfast.

We kept heading east and discussed what we should do for lunch.

Lucille pointed out that we were near Chinatown and we could probably find some bubble tea there. We thought that was a great idea, so we turned south in search of said bubble tea.

We found some bubble tea, but not only did I not take any pictures of it, I honestly don’t know which place we got it from. I know I liked it, but just not sure how to find it again. (Like I’m rushing right back there and all.)

We started heading back to the apartment to meet Curtis before we headed off to Palais Garnier.

Not long after we booked our trip over to Paris, Lucille asked me if we had been to Palais Garnier, and I told her we had not been there yet.

So, she had Curtis book the 4 of us an after hours tour.

We were on the bus heading back from our castle tour yesterday when Curtis got the notification that, due to a mix up, we didn’t actually have any tickets to do the tour. They apologized and refunded his money, and offered us free, general admission tickets.

We were disappointed as it would be a lot quieter after hours, we were happy about free tickets, so we headed out to be there by 2:30 pm.

The building is undergoing an exterior renovation so, typical of Paris, it’s all covered up. It’s basically a giant billboard as the front showing what it will look like. Which, as a photographer, was very disappointing.

It was pretty obvious that Palais Garnier is a very popular destination with the amount of people there. It was also obvious that it’s a fairly dark building with really ugly lighting, but I upped my ISO and took photos never the less.

There were plenty of tours going on along with the general public.

The staircase is a pretty popular spot.

It seems like every ceiling panel is painted and there were plenty of patterns and textures everywhere you looked.

The brightest spot in the whole place seemed to be by the windows upstairs that looked out to a very cloudy sky.

We saw what we believed was everything we could in just over an hour, so we headed off to find something for an early supper.

We didn’t have to go very far to find La Brigade – Opéra. It was trying to rain but we sat outside under an umbrella and enjoyed a nice meal. I don’t know what everyone else had, but I had a really nice steak and fries.

It was done spitting when we started heading to the subway to go back to the apartment.

Looks just like a regular movie theatre to me.

We caught the subway back to near the apartment and were in bed fairly early as we have an early start coming up in the morning.

Seemed to walk a lot today but had slightly less steps than yesterday. I ended up with 15,727.

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Day Trip!

When Lynda and I discussed what we wanted to do on our trip, the only things she wanted to do was see a castle, do a wine tasting and go to the Louvre.

Thursday, October 24th would check off two of those as we are going on a castle tour with a wine tasting at the 2nd castle in the Loire Valley. (Spoiler alert; we never did get into the Louvre.)

It was an early start as we had to be at Les Catacombes de Paris for 7:00 am to catch the bus and it was a half hour or so walk to get there.

The bus was a bit over half full as we headed south for almost 3 hours to reach Château de Chambord.

The tour description says you get 75 minutes to explore Château de Chambord and grounds but that time goes by really fast. If we didn’t have a 20 minute pit stop at a gas station along the way, it would have been nice to add the time to the stop. (Like we were told would happen.)

According to Wikipedia; “The Château de Chambord in Chambord, Centre-Val de Loire, France, is one of the most recognisable châteaux in the world because of its very distinctive French Renaissance architecture, which blends traditional French medieval forms with classical Renaissance structures. The building was constructed by the king of France, Francis I.

Chambord is the largest château in the Loire Valley; it was built to serve as a hunting lodge for Francis I, who maintained his royal residences at the Château de Blois and Amboise. The original design of the château is attributed to the Tuscan architect Domenico da Cortona; Leonardo da Vinci may have also influenced the design.

The château features 440 rooms, 282 fireplaces, and 84 staircases. Four rectangular vaulted hallways on each floor form a cross-shape.”

I can tell you that it is a pretty impressive structure.

It probably took us about 20 minutes or so just to get inside to look around.

We walked up the really cool staircase to the top floor to overlook the grounds and castle itself.

Apparently, before WWII, a bunch of the art collections from the Louvre, including the Mona Lisa were stored at the Chateau. We were told there is a replica Mona Lisa still at the castle but we didn’t take the time to try and find her.

@spookie_bugz posed for me on top of the parapet.

It seemed like we barely had time to walk around the upper level before we had to head back down the stairs so we could start getting back to the bus.

Our guides had told us that Château de Chambord was the inspiration for the castle from Beauty and The Beast.

We were back on the bus, heading to “Enjoy free time for lunch in the quaint town of Blois,” according to our itinerary. It also states that it’s a 2 hour time slot.

There was a lot of blah, blah, blah from our two guides about the town of Blois and where they’d recommend to have lunch as we walked as a group from where the bus parked towards the restaurants.

Yeah, we picked the same spot they were having lunch and even though the place was busy, service was not exactly slow and we still barely had time to get lunch and pay the bill (had to track them down to pay it) before we had to rush back to the bus. So there was zero time to actually explore any part of the quaint town. Lunch itself was quite tasty so no disappointment there.

The downside of going down all these stairs for food, was having to climb back up.

This square between the bus and food amounted to the sum of our “exploring” in Blois.

It was about a 45 minute drive to our next stop; The Château de Chenonceau.

Which, according to Wikipedia is “a French château spanning the river Cher, near the small village of Chenonceaux, Indre-et-Loire, Centre-Val de Loire. It is one of the best-known châteaux of the Loire Valley.

The current château was built in 1514–1522 on the foundations of an old mill and was later extended to span the river. The bridge over the river was built (1556–1559) to designs by the French Renaissance architect Philibert de l’Orme, and the gallery on the bridge, built from 1570 to 1576 to designs by Jean Bullant.”

It was quite a walk from the bus to the “cave” we were to have the wine tasting in.

The wine tasting consisted of a rosé, a white and a red, in that order. While I am not much of a wine drinker, I found the taste of the wine got worse and worse as we went along. I suspect that part of that was us having to use the same glass for each wine. The rose wasn’t terrible but the white wasn’t good in my opinion and the red was terrible. Lucille even grabbed one of the extra rosé glasses to get the taste of the red out of her mouth. I’ve never been to a wine tasting before but it would make sense to me to have a clean glass per flavour to make it easier to tell them apart. Another thing I noticed is while we got a splash of wine to try, our guides got full glasses. If I had actually enjoyed it, I would have been a bit pissed off at that instead of just annoyed that I saw that.

We headed outside to check out the castle and try to get the taste out of our mouth.

While @spookie_bugz looked a bit out of place, he looked good posing along the river.

We ventured inside while we had some time. I wanted to try a panorama of the windows in the chapel, but it didn’t work out so I’ll just put a couple of the shots here.

The bedrooms were pretty clourful with a lot of different patterns.

Our guides seemed quite enamoured with the flower arrangements but I suspect the wine had something to do with that as they didn’t seem all that special to me.

We headed back outside as it was getting to be time to start heading back to the bus. I took a few photos of interesting stuff on the grounds but I totally forgot to take a photo of the bus like I had planned.

Soon we were back on the bus for the 3ish hour trek north to Paris. I saw a few interesting things on the drive but didn’t bother to try and get any photos through the window.

We got back to The Catacombs a little after 8:00 pm and started walking in the general direction of the apartment looking for food.

We stopped at Café d’Orléans on Av. du Général Leclerc for a decent meal before wandering back to the apartment.

Even with spending 6 hours on a bus, still managed to get over 15 and a half thousand steps today. Not too shabby all in all.

I wish I could say the same about the tour. I liked what we saw and the drive was good but what they sell by description and what you actually get don’t exactly jive and that part was disappointing.

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A full day in Paris

We hadn’t had enough Champagne last night to blame our sleeping in on that, but we weren’t exactly off to an early start on Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024. So, it was closer to lunch time than breakfast time when we left the apartment to go looking for adventure. We had no place we had to see in mind today so we let Lucille pick the direction we took.

We walked out to Rue Tolbiac and headed in the general direction of Le Circus. Once there, Lucille suggested we follow Rue de l’Espérance up the hill to the Butte-aux-Cailles neighbourhood to look for some food.

There was a choice of restaurants right at the top of the hill and we picked Café Nenesse to try. Their uncrowded patio was a factor for me and we grabbed an outside table.

We enjoyed our lunch but Lucille and I both wanted dessert and we each ordered the apple pie and caramel sauce.

Butte-aux-Cailles is noted for it’s small bars, restaurants and street art. We saw some of everything as we wandered through the neighbourhood.

We still had no particular destination in mind and Lucille asked us if we’d like to see the old Roman Arena in the Latin Quarter. We though it sounded like a thing to check out so we headed of in that direction. It was quite a walk to get there so I took a bunch of photos along the way. (I know, that’s so unlike me.)

I liked how much art is incorporated as part of the building without it just being some taggers “message.”

I also like how history is on display in so many places. I mean, it’s not like Paris has a history that is very long or very exciting or anything.

Seems we were taking a bit of a scenic route to get there but that never really bothers me so I happily walked along taking more photos.

After walking down one side of a hill and back up the other side, we came to the entrance to Arènes de Lutèce. I know it doesn’t look like much but I think it’s pretty impressive that something built in the 1st century AD is still around. You’re pretty hard pressed to find anything even 100 years old in Alberta.

Lucille and Lynda sat on a bench while I ran around trying to get photographs of a few different angles. I wasn’t enjoying all the contrast I was getting with the sun being out, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.

The stairs were so narrow but so deeply worn from all the feet passing over them for so long.

We have no idea of how or when the car got there as I had walked over there to take the overall photo and there was no sign of it.

Our rest stop done, we continued on our walk and meandered our way towards the Seine.

One would think I would have taken more photos with the street signs in the frame to remember where I was, or at the very least, just taken a photo of the sign but you know what they say about hindsight.

I really liked the little square being cleaned up after the weekly market had been there.

We walked on Rue Mouffetard, which had been a Roman road way back when. It’s a pretty narrow street with a lot of restaurants, shops, and cafés and also has a street market on it.

Seems I wasn’t walking around with my camera glued to my eye as it was about 10 blocks from the Mayflower to the river bank looking across to Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris and I don’t have any photos of anything in between. Maybe it was just a boring section to walk in?

There were still plenty of signs of the rebuilding construction as it was scheduled to re-open to the public in about 6 weeks from now.

I had brought @spookie_bugz with me and he was in a bit of a posing mood so I got a photo of him with Notre-Dame in the background.

We crossed the bridge and I took some photos of Notre-Dame, but I wasn’t all that thrilled with them so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

As we started heading back towards the apartment, Lynda and Lucille saw some souvenirs they liked.

I stood outside and took a few photos of that area.

As we walked south on Rue Saint-Jacques, I spotted this courtyard at Église Saint-Séverin.

According to Wikipedia; Gothic church with an ornate facade, striking stained-glass windows & a 13th-century bell tower.

I couldn’t really see that from our view but I liked the courtyard.

I’m not sure if this is still just a girl’s school or not but it obviously was one at one point.

We passed one of the buildings that make up The Sorbonne. I think it might be the main building as it was as long as the block and it was a long block.

I liked the look of this building and found out afterwards that it is Bibliotheque Patrimonial as College of France – The Heritage Library.

We were about a third of the way home when this sign caught my eye.

Like so many of the signs, it’s a street named after someone who lived a long time ago, but I liked this one so I did a bit of research on it and found;

The name given to this road in 1846 honors the memory of Abbot Charles-Michel de L’Épée (1712-1789), founder of the National Institute for Young Deaf People in Paris , which adjoins the street.

At about the halfway mark on our journey, we walked down the back side of Musée du Service de santé des armées – Museum of the Armed Forces Health Service. It’s a pretty impressive looking building from the back, but we never saw the front. Making a panorama with my wide angle lens makes it look curved, but it was not.

At about the 2/3rd mark we passed this cool door.

Apparently it’s the Institut Protestant de Théologie – Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris.

We made it back to the apartment to drop off the girl’s shopping bags and get Curtis so we could head out for supper.

We only went a couple of blocks to Le San Giovani. It’s a very nice Italian restaurant that we’d been to before and liked it so I was happy to go back. We were the first ones there so we got a table in the front; probably to show they were “busy”.

They only had a couple of other tables occupied when we left so I’m thinking Wednesdays aren’t all that busy for them.

We headed back to the apartment, no champagne tonight as we have an early morning tomorrow. I only got 18 and a half thousand steps today. Seems low for what we saw, but that’s what my watch tells me.

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Paris 2024

No. Not the Olympics or even the Paralympics.

Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to be able to experience any part of the Olympics as I am a self described Olympics whore. I soak up all thing Olympics during the games. I will watch sports I really don’t care about just because it’s part of the Olympic games. But, since getting to Paris for the Olympics wasn’t in the cards, I soaked up as many minutes of it on television that I could.

This post isn’t about my disappointment in missing out at all, but it is about a short visit at the end of October, 2024 with my bride.

One of the reasons my wife, Lynda, and I had thoroughly enjoyed out European vacation for our 25th wedding anniversary back in 2022 was we were able to stay with my sister, Lucille, and her husband, Curtis Moffat. We hoped that we’d get back there one day but at the end of July, we got the news that Curtis was to be transferred to Houston, Texas by years end so we weren’t putting much faith in being able to go.

I hadn’t booked any holiday destinations for our planned time off at the beginning of September as I just wasn’t feeling any destinations calling to me. Usually, Jasper, Alberta is our go to if we need a break from the real world, but with the devastating wild fires that roared through the town and park, I didn’t believe it would be a wise thing to even try to get to Jasper this year. Not even if we just volunteered to help clean up as I doubt there will be any places to stay.

We were drinking some wine and while watching the men’s cycling road race for the Paris 2024 Olympics and Lynda was recognizing some of the places we had been to when suddenly she asked me; “Where’s that? Why didn’t we see that? I’d like to see that.”

So, I kept checking flight to Paris to see if prices got inexpensive enough for me to jump at them. Sadly, nothing was in the price range to entice me, but if I was willing go for 10 days (really 8 days and 2 half days) at the end on October, I could get flights for half the price we paid 2 years ago. Well, damn, seems like a sign. I even sent Lucille a message to see if it would be okay to come visit so close to their November 7th moving day.

Checking our work calendars showed us that no one else was off on those dates, so, I booked the flights and we put in our requests in to change our vacation time. My sister got back to me afterwards to say it was okay to come and she’d sell the couch after we were there and not before. I was glad to hear that as I really am getting too old to sleep on the floor.

So, on October 21st, our son, Adam, worked until noon, came home, drove us to the airport (he promised he’d pick us up in 10 days) to catch our 7:40pm flight, drove home and went back to work to help out a short handed crew.

After 17 hours on the clock but only 9 flying hours, we arrived at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

My sister, Lucille Moffat had pre bought our train tickets and met us after we cleared customs and we headed to the RER to go to her apartment. The walk to her place is all downhill from the RER stop at Cité Universitaire and since it takes no longer than a taxi but at about 1/7th the cost, I thought it was worth it.

We dropped off our luggage and went in search of a really late lunch.

Having visited Paris just 2 years ago, of course we “knew our way around the neighbourhood” and ended up at a “familiar place” – Le Circus on Rue Tolbiac. It’s only about 4 blocks from Lucille and Curtis’s apartment so convenience was part of the plan.

So, I bought my wife a crispy chicken ceasar salad for her birthday meal as we hadn’t gone out to celebrate it when it happened, just 4 days before.

Of course, we ate outside.

@spookie_bugz came on this trip and of course, he had to have a photo or two taken.

He wanted to get a feel for the streets, so we went out back to check it out.

By the time we were done, Curtis was off work and on his own for supper.

We went back to the apartment have some French bread and Champagne and a bit of a visit before an early bed time.

Disappointingly, I got less than 5k steps in on my long day. We’ll strive to do better tomorrow and the rest of the trip.

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Road trip in the fog

Well, I started out in the fog but I had to stop and add some air to one of my tires and the fog left me behind. I had managed to get a few photos I liked while enjoying the absolute silence I was engulfed in.

I was hoping for a pristine field but the marshmallows were too good to pass up.

I had ended up at a familiar location, having photographed the grain bins on numerous occasions, but never in the fog.

As I looked at the hay bales, I was trying to decide if horizontal or vertical would work better for photos. I tried both but I feel horizontal works better.

Since I had to go put some air in one of my tires, I realized the fog was lifting from south to north and I would be hard pressed to get back into it.

I headed east while keeping an eye on the line of fog marching steadily northward.

The steam coming from the heat exchangers at the Joffre Plant caught my eye so I stopped to try a photo or two.

At 18mm it all fits in nicely but doesn’t really show how high the steam was going
40mm fits the frame better but cuts off the top of the steam cloud.
Shot as a panorama in vertical to fit in the steam cloud

I really liked the grain bins with the background steam so I tried the same shots with my polarizer filter.

I really didn’t see much difference between using the polarizer and not. I’ll have to try again with the sun a little more off to the side of my subject.

I headed north to get a shot of the Joffre Plant with the fog back in the background.

A longer lens would have made for a cooler image but I liked the colour of the barley so I kept my 40mm on.

From here it was a short drive to the Ellis Nature Center so I headed over there to get a walk in. Most people wander around the farm area, visiting the pond and visitor center but I usually head over to Sandpiper Pond and then walk through the West Woods.

Since I didn’t have a long enough lens with me to try any bird photography, I concentrated on some close ups.

As I was taking the photo of the thistle, I couldn’t help but notice how many pollinators were feasting on them. So, I took a few photos and cropped the hell out of them.

Having annoyed some insects for a while, I decided it was time to start heading into the woods.

Moss growing on a tree that looked moldy to me.

There isn’t much to see while walking in the woods unless there are some birds around, there weren’t any.

I sat down on the bench I came across and tried to see the beauty in where it was facing.

It is a bit of an underwhelming scene so I thought I’d try a different approach. I focused fairly close up and shot the same scene out of focus to concentrate on the colour. I’m not sure about it but I’ll try to apply the same technique somewhere else down the road.

I don’t find it any worse to look at.

I’d like to say that I decided to practice some intentional camera movement for my next couple of photos but the truth is the camera was bumping into my hip as I was walking and I found these 2 kind of interesting. (Out of about a dozen)

The trail I was on took me along the edge of the fields on my way back to the visitor center area. It wasn’t there the last time I visited the West Woods and it was nice to add a bit extra to my walk. Trail maintenance needs to be worked on a bit as it was a bit overgrown in the middle part and it felt like I was doing some bushwhacking along the way. While it’s not a hard walk, it was a bit uneven so for anyone with mobility issues, it would be a bit challenging.

Nothing jumped out at me to photograph on my walk until I got back to the gazebo by the pond. The pond is a bit scungy with the heat and lack of rain this summer but it was clear enough to get a nice reflection of the little cabin.

While it wasn’t an overly exciting road trip, it was a pleasant way to spend 3 and a half hours. I was hoping being gone would make it quiet enough for my wife to sleep but apparently, she had trouble getting to sleep and had barely gotten there by the time I arrived back home.

She’s off tomorrow so maybe we’ll try to go on an adventure together.

Last Breakfast in Paris
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Last Breakfast in Paris

I can’t dance so it’s not like I’d be doing a tango on my last morning in Paris.

Monday, October 3rd had arrived. Lynda and I would be going home today; on what would of been my dad’s 82nd birthday.

We were up early enough to see Lucille before she left for school to thank her profusely for having us these last 3 weeks.

We headed out to find somewhere to have breakfast before we had to get to the airport.

We ended up on Rue de Tolbiac at Le Circus. It was cool enough that we decided to eat inside for a change. It wasn’t overly busy so I took a few photos of the place.

Still needs the phone to translate the menu

After an hour or so we headed back to the apartment to be all packed for when the taxi arrived.

We weren’t setting an land speed records on our walk back and I took photos of the neighbourhood along the way.

Gas was $0.40/litre higher than yesterday
My last photo in France

We got back to the apartment and made sure we gave Curtis his key back before we finished packing.

We said goodbye to the cats; Bella and Casper. I had visited with them in Beijing back in 2015 and I was still allergic to them. I was happy the antihistamine my Doctor had prescribed had worked great.

It was time to say goodbye to Curtis and thank him for everything and putting up with us for the last 3 weeks.

It seemed surreal that our adventure was coming to an end but it was time to head back to reality.

We could of taken the RER to the airport but lugging 2 suitcases and carry on bags didn’t make that prospect very appealing so we had booked a taxi to pick us up around noon.

When the cab came, he had half his trunk full of kitchen appliances and could only fit one of our suitcases in there. He wanted to call us another cab but we were on a schedule so I told him to put the other suitcase on the front seat. He didn’t seem too happy about it, but he went with my suggestion.

Our driver seemed to be a bit surly during the drive and the slow moving traffic didn’t seem to help his mood.

We came to an overturned van in the oncoming lanes and Lynda wondered how that could of happened. Our driver wondered the same and he seemed in a more talkative mood after that and traffic sped back up afterwards.

Soon we were doing 140km/hr in a 90km/hr zone to make up time. He said that the police were too busy with terror threats to really worry about enforcing the speed limit.

We got to the airport unscathed and on time.

We checked in and waited for boarding time. I met a young couple from Vancouver while Lynda was off looking for something to drink. We were on the same flight but they were a lot closer to the front than we were.

It was a long uneventful flight on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The seats were the biggest ones we’d had on any of our flights. A nine hour flight in slightly bigger seats is still a 9 hour flight in one place.

We got into Calgary just before 5:30pm and took a little over half an hour to clear customs and get our bags.

Our son had agreed to pick us up but he had a bit of a hectic school schedule and my friend Steve had come to get us.

It was sunnier and warmer than it had been in Paris all those hour ago. It was nice to see there were still plenty of yellow leaves on the trees and that fall wasn’t over.

Steve got us home just after 8:00 pm and we managed to stay up until around 9:30 pm before getting to bed.

Only managed to get around 5700 steps today. Seemed pretty low for such a long day.

Back to the real world tomorrow as I had to go to work but Lynda had taken a recovery day off before she had to go back. (She is smarter than me.)

It really was a trip of a lifetime for us and we enjoyed every minute of it. (Well, I did but I’m betting the ferry rides in the Canary Islands weren’t so good for my bride.)

We ate and drank whatever we wanted and all in all I think we ate pretty healthy. (Lynda lost 15 lbs. on vacation.) (We walked a lot and we really didn’t snack very much.)

We went with the flow and did and saw so much. (And didn’t see so much at the same time.)

I tried to narrow down what I enjoyed the most and I think the overall experience itself is it. I liked how it wasn’t real life. (We took mini vacations while on vacation.)

l really loved spending every waking moment with my bride for three weeks.

We had good food pretty much everywhere and I think Hotpot was my favorite in Paris. The Indian food in Amsterdam was fabulous. Every place we tried in the Canary Islands (with the exception of on the ferry) was fantastic.

I really like that we could walk or take a bus or jump on the subway and get somewhere in no time at all.

I loved walking along the promenade in Nice while holding my brides hand.

I loved walking along the beach on Gran Canaria watching my bride and my sister laugh their asses off while jumping around in the surf.

Best vacation ever doesn’t even come close to summing it up for me.