Travel

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Working Away

I felt like I was barely home long enough to get the laundry from our anniversary getaway done and I was back on the road, heading to Pincher Creek on Thursday, May 22nd, for the Lightchasers Nature Photography Conferences. McBain has been a title sponsor since it started 4 years ago and this is will be my 3rd year working it.

The plan was for me to meet our Outings and Workshop coordinator, Jileane Harsch, and General Manager, Rene Rodrique, at the Pincher Creek Community Hall to set up our booth to be ready for go time Friday morning. They beat me there and had it pretty much done when I arrived, so we finished up and headed to the Heritage Inn Hotel & Convention Centre to check in to our rooms.

Check in was smooth and after a bit of a rest, we headed out for supper and found The Hut Café (Resto Bar & Patio). We enjoyed a good meal, then went in search of a photo or two before we had to retire for the night. Usually, we go for a drive in search of adventure but Rene and I decided it would be an early night so we walked downtown to see what we could find.

I didn’t feel overly inspired but driving days often go that way. Hopefully, tomorrow will offer up more things that catch my eye.

After a pretty decent sleep and the breakfast buffet at the hotel, it was time to get ready for the masses at the convention.

This year’s set up is the best one I’ve seen so far. The convention centre has plenty of room for attendees and us vendors with room to spare. This bodes well going forward.

The day zoomed by alternating between fantastic presenters and people coming to the booth to shop, lunch, repeat the morning’s order and suddenly, it was 5 o’clock. Time to pack up for the evening, relax for a bit, and then grab some supper. Tonight, the destination is the Twin Butte Country General Store for some fabulous Mexican food. Our Sigma rep, Danny Lee, met us there as he had never tried it. We were not disappointed.

We headed south and east for a change of pace and found some stuff that caught our eyes.

We were starting to lose our nice light as we headed back but manage to make 1 more stop.

I saw a couple of places that would have been nice to stop at but the light wasn’t favourable so perhaps another time.

With Rene, heading into Lethbridge to pick up stock from our store there, Jileane and I were free to avoid yet another hotel breakfast, so we decided to try Seeds. They are supplying the lunches for the convention and yesterday’s was pretty good. Their breakfast was pretty good as well and we headed to the hall to set up for today’s festivities.

It was another hectic day of taking and filling orders and listening to some pretty good presenters and seeing some outstanding photography.

Spookie_Bugz enjoyed it as well.

After a bit of rest time, Rene picked us up some pizza and wings for supper. We enjoyed it outside on a pretty sketchy picnic table at the hotel before joining Fujifilm at their breakout session – Limber Pine Ridge Sunset. I was pretty happy with this outing as I had borrowed a Fujifilm GFX-100SII medium format digital camera and a 45-100 f/4 lens from them and was looking for an opportunity to use it.

100 megapixel camera with a large sensor, I’ll probably hate it.

The downside of doing a sunset shoot on a ridge is it’s all up hill. It looks like a big hill but when you have a camera there’s lots of excuses to stop and take a photo and not look like it’s a rest stop.

Still had a lot of hill to climb, oh look, pretty yellow flowers.

Not at the top yet, but getting closer.

I finally made it to the top of the ridge. There are some pretty nice views to behold from up there.

I liked the character some of the trees had.

I found evidence other photographers were about.

I thought I’d try a couple of photos at opposite ends of my zoom lens.

The light was so nice and I photographed as many different angles as I could.

The light was still nice and as much as sunset probably would have been fantastic, we decided we didn’t want to walk down the hill in the dark so we said our goodbyes and started back down to the car.

I wish I could say that shooting with the Fuji sucked, but the weight wasn’t at all bad and I really, really liked the files. I’d have to sell all my Sony stuff to get one. Hmmmm.

One more long day tomorrow and the conferences will be over.

Jileane and I had breakfast in at the hotel with some of the reps and the boys from The Camera Store as Rene was once again heading to Lethbridge to restock us. Yesterday’s breakfast was way better.

We set up for the day and enjoyed more great speakers between spurts of being really busy.

And suddenly, it was all over and we were packing up. Shane Turgeon and his crew did a phenomenal job with the conferences. It looked like attendees got their monies worth and it sounds like most are planning on attending again next year.

We dropped off our stuff at the hotel and hit DQ for a quick supper before heading down to Waterton Lakes National Park of Canada. We saw a brown phase, black bear not far from the townsite but had no place to stop for a photo so we carried on our way towards Cameron Lake.

We didn’t get very far when Rene like the look of the landscape so we pulled over to see what was what.

I had my Zeiss Batis 135 f/2.8 lens on my camera as I got out to scope out some photos.

As I looked around I decided my 40mm lens is what I wanted to switch to. But, since Rene had locked the car and wandered up the hill and I wasn’t doing any climbing 2 days in a row, I set about to use what I got.

My 40mm is a lot better as a macro lens but I thought I’d try a few flower photos anyway.

I went back to the area Jileane and Rene went to to sit and wait for them. I manage to fit them both into a photo.

Because they were both down in the gully, they didn’t see the wildlife I could. Since I had my biggest lens on, it was a cinch to get a photo. Well. cinch is not exactly correct but I thought it made for a nice environmental portrait of the bighorn ram.

The ram had already laid down when Jileane and Rene came back so I don’t think they saw him.

We headed a bit further up the road to see what else we could find to photograph.

We decided it was time to head back to the hotel for the night so it wouldn’t be too late getting in.

I saw some moose and a couple of coyotes on the way back but it’s not like the lens I had would have done the job to photograph them so I never pointed them out. Some other places caught my eye to revisit at some point. Hopefully, I’ll remember some of them.

After we got all our stuff packed into the vehicles and checked out we decided to have breakfast together before we got on the road. I had liked the coffee at The Hut Café and wanted to try their breakfast. We all had a power bowl and it was pretty darn good.

I had decided I would take the scenic route home as I had never been to Lundbreck Falls Provincial Recreation Area in all my visits to the area.

It was a nice stop and I headed up highway 22. There was bridge construction in a few spots so I had a few delays along the way but since I wasn’t in any hurry, it was kind of nice.

As I drove along, I thought it ironic that as a photographer, I often capture images in fractions of a second, but I was really enjoying the scenery slowly changing as I drove.

Since I was on highway 22, I was really close to my happy place – Big Hill Springs Provincial Park. It makes for a convenient pit stop and since the park itself wasn’t very busy, a good excuse to photograph some waterfalls.

Feeling refreshed, it was time to make the final drive home. I got home around 5:20pm. It had been a long day and that had been my choice but it was nice to be home.

Lightchasers was a good experience and even though it make for some long day; not as long as attendees days if they chose to do the breakout sessions, it was a lot of fun. I get to meet new people, see familiar faces and see and hear some fantastic photographers. I’ll be up to go back next year if the powers that be deem it so.

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Venturing South

Saturday, May 17th, 2025 dawned as another day of mixed sun and cloud. Today is our son’s 25th birthday and hopefully, he isn’t too busy at his job as we are only half way through our getaway.

Today, we are heading south to check out Little Hell’s Gate on the North Thompson River. It is about a third of the way to Kamloops from the cabin. We’ve been to Hell’s Gate on the Fraser River a few times, but this is our first time exploring this area.

After about an hour and a half, we reached the goat path road down to the falls. A couple were leaving as we got there so we had the viewing platform all to ourselves.

While it’s not as impressive as the big Hell’s Gate, but it had a nice roar to the falls. It wasn’t loud enough to drown out the train that was heading up the valley though.

As we were leaving, we met a nice young couple from Germany who are exploring Canada in a van for 6 months. They’ve already visited quite a few countries in their young lives and were excited to spend so much time in Canada.

We headed back north to Blue River to grab lunch at Grizzly Food Shack. I’d seen it rated well in reviews and the menu looked good so we decided to check it out.

Wasp saved us a table while we waited for your food. Lunch was pretty tasty and I would go back again if I’m ever in the area.

We started heading back towards the cabin looking for photo opportunities along the way.

It wasn’t very far to River Safari and Lynda really wanted to check it out. It looked like an interesting excursion, I wasn’t willing to pony up the money they wanted for the tours. I told Lynda to save her pennies and bring me another time.

We continued up the highway towards Thunder River as the map showed a train bridge that is supposedly photogenic. The road on the map to it didn’t exist so we turned into Blue River Black Spruce Provincial Park.

The road that climbed the mountain from there looked interesting, but it was closed so we continued up the highway some more.

The little bridge on the road to Bone Creek Wilderness Retreat looked interesting so we drove down the road.

The view from the bridge was the best one along that road.

We continued up the highway and stopped in Valemount so I could take a photo of the Fire Station. I really liked the mural on the building and wanted to get a shot of it.

I had one more stop planned before we went to the cabin for the night. The Tete Jaune Spawning Grounds Recreation Site was just a minute or so from the cabin so we went to check it out.

We were getting hungry so we headed back to the cabin to buy some firewood so we could cook our flatbread pizzas we had brought. Lynda built the fire and looked after the cooking. I was okay with that as it gave me time to sit on the porch and relax. Holidays can be rough. Lol

The pizza was good, not pizza in Nice good, but it was a lot cozier then Nice.

After our meal and cleanup, I had time to look for some photo to take.

It was starting to get dark so we decided to head inside for a nice cup of tea before bed. Tomorrow we’ll head into Jasper.

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Happy 28th Anniversary

One of the downsides of having a nice cup of tea before bed is having you bladder wake you up early in the morning. Friday, May 16th, 2025 was no different in that respect. What I saw when I got up wasn’t usual though. I saw a whitetail doe nursing a small fawn in the field out in front of our cabin. I only had to go about 10 feet to grab my camera, but even with that, they were gone in the 10 seconds it took me to get the and get back to the window. So, no photos but at least I hadn’t woken Lynda up to show her. 4:00 am was a little too early to be up for the day so back to bed for at least a couple of hours before we go find something to do for our anniversary.

I managed to get some more sleep and got up to face the day at a more reasonable hour. After we cleaned up our breakfast dishes, we made ourselves lunch sandwiches for the road on the Booyah Bagels I had bought yesterday with this in mind. Booyah makes awesome bagels but they only do breakfast sandwiches and as great as those are, I like to have ham or pastrami on a bagel every once in a while.

We decided to drive west on Old Tete Jaune Road towards McBride. It looked like it would be a lot more scenic than taking the highway.

We had barely started when I spotted this old truck.

I liked the truck but couldn’t get an angle I really liked but thought maybe switching to black and white would help.

I liked it but it still wasn’t what I’d envisioned when I first saw the truck.

Onwards we go.

But not too far.

As we drove, Lynda said; “Bear”.

We turned around to have a look and when we pulled up to the spot, all we saw was the north end of a south bound grizzly bear booking it. So, no bear photos but it was cool to see. Not wanting to stress him/her further, we turned around to continue on our way.

It wasn’t long before we saw so white water so we stopped for a look.

It wasn’t a very spectacular location but the sound of the running water was soothing.

It was a short distance to the Shere Lake Recreation Site and we drove down that road to check it out. Luckily, there was no one around as it’s a 1 lane road through the bush to get down to the lake.

The water level was higher than the buoyancy level of the boardwalk so I never got down to the water’s edge.

We continued to Dunster.

There isn’t much in Dunster to see but one of the local gentleman asked me about my truck and I chatted with him while Lynda checked out the Dunster General Store.

The Dunster Station Museum is right across the road from the store so it was a very short walk to check it out. Unfortunately, it was closed so a couple of exterior photos is all I got.

We got back on the road and headed into McBride.

We cruised into McBride and took all of about 3 minutes to drive around town before we stopped at the Visitor Center in the old train station.

I came with the same warning sign back when Lynda and I started dating.

There is a bistro, art gallery and gift shop and a model railroad among other things in the visitor center. I never went into the bistro as we had brought our own lunch, but I did get a chance to check out the model railroad. It’s been a long time since I was around such stuff. I missed it for a minute or two.

We wandered back outside and found a place to sit and have some lunch before exploring the town.

We drove down main street and parked to walk around town.

The “Sarcasm. Now served daily” sign in the window at Welcome Home Cafe & Gifts hooked me right away and we wandered in to check it out. They had some interesting gifts and I got myself a few sarcasm related stickers. Lynda got a London Fog that she said was quite tasty and I got a really, really good blended raspberry lemonade. I’d go back just for another one of those.

I grabbed a photo of a couple of old cars in a yard before we headed down the highway back towards the cabin.

At one point, I had to slow down for a moose crossing the road. Not sure if my dash cam caught it or not but no photos of him either.

We had brought some flatbread pizzas to cook over the fire but decided neither of us wanted to cook over a fire today.

We headed into Valemount in search of food and decided that Caribou Grill looked pretty good. And we were not disappointed. The food was really good and the service was great. We really liked the look of the Caribou Coupé dessert but we were too full to have any and having ice cream in it, it wouldn’t travel very well, so we decided we had an excuse to come back.

We had a pretty good day to celebrate our anniversary and had and while there was no wildlife in the yard, it was a nice quiet evening to sit and relax and enjoy the peace and quiet.

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Anniversary getaway

I couldn’t afford to take Lynda on an exotic getaway for your 28th anniversary, so I picked someplace closer to home that we’d never stayed at. The cabins at The Mica Mountain Lodge in Tete Jaune Cache, BC, looked to be a nice quiet getaway.

We left Thursday, May 15th and headed west on highway 11. We stopped at Bighorn Service near Crescent Falls to top up the tank as I figured that would be the most inexpensive fuel I’d see for a while. At least it was a nice day for the fellow who locked his keys in the truck and was waiting for someone to come and let him in.

I love spring in the mountains as there are so many different shades of green as the trees are all budding at different rates and grasses are struggling to grow. It was a nice drive up the Icefield Parkway and the trees were looking pretty good for the most part. That is, until you get close to Athabasca Falls, then you start to see the destruction from last summer’s forest fire. The trees were burned on both sides of the highway and river right up to the top of the tree line. There were a few unburned pockets here and there but for the most part, it was total destruction. Highway 93a was closed from the Falls end so my plan to drive up that way were foiled.

There were clouds obscuring the top of Mount Robson, so we didn’t bother to stop like the last time we were in that neck of the woods. We continued on down to Valemount to go try the Valemount Bakery, formerly, The Swiss Bakery. But, like the last time we tried to visit, they were closed, for renovations this time. The owner came out and talked to us, explaining they were building an apartment above the shop so they wouldn’t have to commute so far to work. Maybe, third time will be the charm, so I guess we’ll have to go back again.

It was now time to check in to our cabin so we headed back north to get settled in. We rented the Pine Bungalow and it is a lovely little cabin. We got our stuff inside and sat on the covered porch for a while, just looking at the mountains in the distance.

We sat and had our lasagna we brought for supper before heading up to meet our host, Elke. She was pretty friendly and we chatted with her for a while before heading back to our cabin. She was going to come by and move her horses out of the pasture and up to their place in a bit so I took a couple of photos while we waited on her. My bride was pretty excited to see the horses. Me, not so much, but if it makes her happy…

I went for a quick walk in the trees to see if I could spot the deer we’d seen earlier. And I did, but I didn’t exactly have the proper lens on my camera to get a great photo of her so see if you can spot her in the picture. You can just see her belly if you look about dead center of the frame. She used the trees wisely.

Elke came by and we followed her to the field. The horses were both being brats and wouldn’t come see her when she called them, so she said no cookies for them and she went in to retrieve them. I took a couple of photos while I waited for her.

Neither horse looked all that happy to being led out of the field, but they were at least, going quietly.

Apparently, the little one is the trouble making ring leader.

Lynda was happy to pet the horses before they went on their way.

I had an idea for a photo I wanted to try with Lynda but I needed it to be a bit darker before I could try it so I grabbed a couple photos of the cabin area.

Finally, it was dark enough to try my idea. It didn’t work out the way I had hoped but it was still fun to try.

It was nice to have an eager participant, too bad what I had in my head and what I got didn’t jive. I’ll have to try a different approach next time. (Spoiler alert; we didn’t do a next time.)

After a bit of reading, it was time for bed. No solid plans are in place for tomorrow but long driving days seem to make me a lot more tired than they used to. I guess we’ll come up with a plan of attack in the morning.

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Taking the Scenic Route Home

Thursday, October 31st had arrived and Lynda and I had to go home today. Our whirlwind vacation was coming to an end.

We said “goodbye” to Curtis and thanked him for his hospitality and generosity as he headed out to work and we got ready to go get some breakfast.

We headed off to where we’d had our 1st meal on this trip and the last meal on our last trip; Le Circus.
Lucille had never been there for breakfast, so we sat enjoyed a leisurely breakfast that was quite good.

I took a few photos of the neighbourhood on the way back to the apartment.

I thought it would be easy to guarantee yourself a job for life if you were a brick layer or stone mason.

It didn’t take us all that long to get back to the apartment. We made sure we had all our stuff packed and said goodbye to Casper. He didn’t seem to know if he wanted us to stay or go.

We were going to take the RER back to the airport as it was the most inexpensive option and no slower than a taxi or Uber.
Lucille was worried about my bionic arm and insisted on bringing my suitcase for me. It is literally uphill, most of the way to the RER from the apartment, but she still took it for me.

It wasn’t to long of a wait for our train and when we got on, we saw that more than half the stops between us and the airport were closed for one reason or another and we arrived in well under an hour.

Aéroport de Paris-Charles de Gaulle is a huge complex and when we got near our gate in Terminal 2, we saw that it had been changed to a gate in Terminal 1. So we got some extra steps in as it’s about a 20 minute walk from one to the other.

It was time to check in so I took my suitcase back from Lucille and said our goodbyes and wished her luck with next weeks move to Houston, Texas.

After check in and security, we had to hike to a bus to bring us to our gate. It was a longer drive than expected and another long walk to the end of the hallway to our departure gate.

I took 1 final photo in France of a couple of aircraft sitting in the fog as part of my Telephoto Thursday project.

We were again back in the middle seats, in steerage class, near the back of the plane so a whole lot of passengers boarded ahead of us.

We got settled in and listened to all the pre-flight stuff and then waited, and waited some more, before the captain came on the intercom and told us that, between the foggy weather and the airport being really busy, we were delayed in taking off and it would be about an hour’s delay.

About 40 minutes later, they restarted the engines and we got pushed back from the gate and started on our way. They must have done all their checks while we were waiting because we taxied towards the runway and seemed to speed up while making the turn from the taxiway onto the runway and we kept accelerating until we were flying.

It was a fairly uneventful 9ish hour flight back to a -4 degree Celsius Calgary, Alberta.

It took about an hour to get through customs and get our suitcase so we could meet our ride, our son, Adam.

It was foggy like Paris had been when we left but it was dark here so Adam took his time and we made it safely to East Side Mario’s on the south side of Red Deer for a late supper. The food was good but not on the scale as what we’d been having across the pond.

We got home around 9:00 pm after a very long day.

Our vacation was over. Technically, not as we were both off work on Friday before starting back at it on Saturday, but really, it’s over.

Even with our compressed time, I thoroughly enjoyed our holiday. We again saw and did a lot of things and still saw and did so little. I Had a lot of good food again, drank less than last time and didn’t feel like I had missed out.

We visited some familiar places and a bunch of new places and enjoyed them all.

We enjoyed pretty good weather all in all and took advantage of such as much as possible to sit outside for meals.

Maybe it was because I was just on a holiday, but the lifestyle vibes I got sure made it easy to believe that I would enjoy living in Europe.

I don’t know if having to work while living in a place like Paris would change my impressions at all but I’d be willing to try it.

Adieu Paris.
May we meet again.

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Doing tourist stuff

With Wednesday, October 30th, 2024 being our last full day in Paris, I wanted to do some touristy type stuff. (More touristy than we’d been doing.)

Lynda and I had come across the tail end of weekly neighbourhood markets a few times during our visits but we hadn’t actually been to one. So our day started out by walking Rue de Tolbiac up to Rue de la Glacière to see the one that sets up there on Wednesdays.

While it was a nice market with lots of fresh stuff, there was nothing there calling my name, so we left empty handed.

Lynda wanted to pick up a couple bottles of the Champagne she likes as we can’t find it in Canada. (It’s hard to even find a demi sec Champagne of any brand it seems.) So we walked down Rue de Tolbiac in the opposite direction to Nicolas – the wine store.

Lynda and Lucille were successful in their quests. (I don’t remember what Lucille was looking for.)

We took the scenic route back to the apartment to drop off the wine so we could catch the subway to go down to Place du Trocadero.

Place du Trocadero sits on the right bank of the Seine, northwest of the Eiffel Tower and provides some nice views of the tower. A lot of broadcasters set up there during the 2024 Olympics. The athletes gathered in the garden below for the opening ceremonies. The finish line to the bicycle road races was down on the bridge.

We took the #6 subway from our usual stop at Glacière right to Trocadero.

It’s not very far from the subway stop to Palais de Chaillot – Architectural, naval & ethnographic museums, above fountains & gardens with Eiffel Tower views.

I took the same photo with my 18mm, 40mm and 85mm lenses to see/show the differences.

With the haze/fog hanging in the air, we couldn’t see as far as we should be able to.

Musée national de la Marine de Paris.

The square.

The view from the square. Technically, the panorama from the square.

We wandered around and took in the views for about half an hour before we decided to walk down by the river. We’ve never strolled along the river and thought we’d give it a try.

@Spookie_bugz wanted to pose for me so I took a few photographs to keep him happy.

I liked the look of some of the boats with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

The wind that was blowing up at the Trocadero had felt a bit cool, but down here by the water it was downright cold, so we headed back up to the road.

We came up by Flamme de la Liberté – “Gold-leafed torch & unofficial Diana memorial, built to commemorate American/French friendship.”

We started up Ave George V heading north to Av. des Champs-Élysées.

As we were passing the Four Seasons Hotel George V, I noticed a few shiny cars sitting out front and since I hardly ever see an Aston Martin at home, I took a photo of the one sitting there.

Surprise, surprise, another building I liked the look of.

Since we joined Av. des Champs-Élysées at Louis Vuitton, @spookie_bugz wanted to strike a pose. They are renovation a massive building right next door to look like a metal case and it looks like they will be moving soon.

We walked the 5 or so blocks up to the Arc de Triomphe and I did my best tourist impression getting a couple of photos.

There are 12 roads that come down to the traffic circle that the Arc sits inside of. We only walked to the 1st spoke to Av. de Friedland to go looking in search of some lunch. We stopped when we got to Brasserie Le Balzac. We had eaten lunch there on our trip a couple of years ago and thought we’d try it again. Sadly, it was too cold for the girls (I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it either) to sit outside.

Lynda contemplating what to get. Or maybe she’s wondering how she got here.

We all decided that since it was our last day here, dessert and tea for the girls and a coffee for me, was the appropriate course of action.

Lucille’s choices.

My choices.

We headed back south on Rue Balzac towards Av. des Champs-Élysées with the new Louis Vuitton in the distance.

It was busier than I expected for late October.

We walked southeast along all the shops we couldn’t afford to shop in until we were down at Statue du Général Charles de Gaulle. We were going to meet one of the girls Lucille had been in French class with as she wanted to give Lucille a gift before she left the county.

While we were waiting, I decided to take some photos of the Petit Palais and Grand Palais. I had so wanted to get into the Grand Palais, but it wasn’t open to the general public while renovations were going on.

The Petit Palais as a wide angle panorama.

Lucille’s friend arrived and they chatted for a while.

A doorway at the Grand Palais.

@spookie_bugz wanted a portrait take there.

I took a couple of photos of Hôtel des Invalides across the Pont Alexandre III.

We continued down Av. des Champs-Élysées and through Place de la Concorde.

As we walked through Jardin des Tuileries, Lynda could see La Roue de Paris – the giant ferris wheel we had seen in our trips to this area and she really wanted to go on it. It is a tourist day afterall.

The line up either wasn’t too long, or we just cut without noticing, but it was less than 10 minutes for us to get on. Lucille doesn’t do heights, so she sat on a bench and waited for us. It was a bit challenging taking photos through the plexiglass but you do whatcha you gotta do.

My wide angle shots seem to look okay. I wasn’t sure if they would as I dropped my lens on the sidewalk yesterday. (I sent it for repair when I got back to work.)

It was pretty neat to see some of the areas we’d been to from the higher vantage point.

After 3 trips around, it was time to get out.

It was getting on towards supper time and we wandered north on Rue de Richelieu to meet Curtis at his favorite restaurant – Goiko; a hamburger restaurant that’s only a few blocks from Palais Garnier.

Supper was pretty good and we made our way to the subway station at Opera to take the #7 train down to Tolbiac for the short walk back to the apartment.

We’d covered more ground than yesterday, but more than half of it was on the subway so I only got 23, 516 steps in today.

The 4 of us had a bottle of Champagne and snacks before we went to bed. We wanted to say goodbye to Curtis in the morning so we weren’t staying up too late.

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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.

by

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.

by

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.

by

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.