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.
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.
It’s been 2 days since a massive wild fire roared through part of the town of Jasper, Alberta. It’s looking like about 30% of the buildings were destroyed, but luckily, none of the infrastructure ones. Updates have been slow in coming so I don’t know if the Pines Bungalow survived or not. I know some of the buildings across the river at the Japer Park Lodge were destroyed and some damaged.
My news cast broke the story that the fire had entered the town around 6:40 pm and it wasn’t long before I saw a photo that hurt my heart to see; The Maligne Lodge and Wicked Cup were fully engulfed in flames and it was obvious that there would be nothing left to save. As they are on the south west edge of town, all I could imagine was the fire roaring through, leaving nothing but smoking remains behind. Thankfully, this wasn’t to be the case. Firefighters managed to save more than they lost. A most impressive feat considering flames were reported to be over 100 meters high and moving forward at approximately 15 meters per minute, pushed by up to 100 kilometer per hour winds.
While I am happiest outside and I can generally find happiness in most of the places I’ve visited, Jasper is one of my favorite places in the whole wide world. Even with everything being either uphill or downhill, I always found the pace of life around Jasper to be relaxing. More importantly, my bride finds it relaxing and that makes me happy as relaxing isn’t exactly her strong suit. I can re-visit places in Jasper over and over and never get bored, be it, a point of interest or restaurant I like, and there are many of those.
Wicked Cup has become our go to place for breakfast and or tea/coffee over the past few years. The staff changes enough that we didn’t actually get to know them all that well, but we never had a bad experience there.
Outdoor breakfast at Wicked Cup, August 2021
Looking at the map of where the fire has gone, it appears that both the Whistler and Wapiti campgrounds are probably gone. With no official update out though, I can’t be sure of that. Lynda and I have camped at Wapiti a time or two over the years. Once Adam came along, we’ve stayed in an oTENTic at Whistler and that changed our camping habits for a few years.
The lap of luxury at site #5 back in August of 2014
While it’s not exactly inexpensive to go to Jasper, it’s not really all that bad as a long weekend holiday and Lynda and I have made those happen for getaways to relax and recharge over the years.
We’ve stayed at different hotels over the years and have never really had a bad experience. None of them were the Ritz, but I’ve never stayed their so I don’t know if I’m missing out on anything.
Looking over the Tonquin Inn in August of 2021.
I’ve always preferred Japer to Banff even though my first job after graduating from SAIT back in 1992 saw me as the camp photographer at the Banff National Army Cadet Camp by the base of Cascade Mountain. I would come out of the barracks every morning, look up at the mountain across the road and exclaim; “That is the coolest thing ever.” It never got old once in the 8 weeks I was there. The 17 straight days of rain wasn’t a fun time, lol. Even back then, the townsite of Banff was just so busy with people everywhere. Jasper by comparison, feels like Mayberry, and I never watched The Andy Griffith show.
Once, we had to wait in line for a venue, well twice if you count the hour plus traffic line up for construction on the way to the Jasper SkyTram. The wait for the tram was about the same, but 10 years have passed and in multiple trips since, the wait for anything has been pretty much nonexistent.
Jasper from above, August, 2014
While Japer isn’t exactly a metropolis, it isn’t hard to find good food. Some places like Wicked Cup and Evil Dave’s Grill have become go to favorites, while a place like L&W is a comfortable old favorite.
A slow evening at L&W in August of 2021
I mentioned earlier that I found my time in Jasper relaxing, even when my bride drags me out before midnight to go look at the Perseids Meteor Shower up at Pyramid Lake. I got a few photos I was happy with and we even got some with the northern lights. Even with getting back to the hotel after 2 am, that night was totally worth the lack of sleep.
Lynda and I made our last trip to Jasper last October for her birthday. We stayed in Hinton to reduce costs and accepted the extra hours drive to get to places. We attended Symphony Under the Stars at The Jasper Park Lodge and afterwards, drove up to Maligne Lake hoping to get some night sky photos. It was a bit surreal being the only ones at a major tourist attraction but so much fun. Even with having to drive all the way back to Hinton afterwards. Somehow though, morning came super early but fatigue wasn’t an issue. I’m going with the mountain air as the reason.
The Jasper Park Lodge in October of 2023.
While watching the news tonight, I heard Jasper’s mayor say he’d lost his home in the fire and it was the only one on the block to be lost. It was his 2nd birthday when his family moved in, 67 years ago. People often say their leaders are out of touch with the masses. I believe that as life shattering as this is for everyone affected by the fire, having someone in exactly the same boat will benefit the town in the long run. The problem will be that it probably will be a long run.
I have no doubt that Jasper will rebuild. I have no doubt that in some ways, it will be better than ever. It’s just never going to be the same for many of us.
I was hoping to get to Jasper next month for holidays but even if I can find a place to stay, I don’t know if I could handle seeing the destruction. It’s been bad enough seeing all the dead trees from the pine beetle invasion. Charred remains don’t sound any better.
Even though the idea for this post has been rattling around my brain for a couple of years, I still didn’t get on it to publish it when I wanted to. I did think the date I was shooting for was in July but even so, I still wasn’t ready for that either.
They say that home is where the heart is and even though we left the sticks of Quebec four decades ago; I still think of it as back home.
June 2nd, 2018 marked the 40th anniversary of the Broomfield clan arriving in Red Deer. I was 12 years old, my brother; Kevin, was 11 and my baby sister; Lucille, was 5.
We left our little winterized cottage at Keatley Lake, Quebec on May 26th, 1978. Five of us in a green 1970ish Mercury Meteor heading towards Fort St. John, BC in search of work for my dad.
This is from 2011. It looked a lot better when we left it. Gone is the covered stone veranda, large picture window and screen door. The chimney looked better back in the day as well.
The view is pretty much the same as when we left. We had a gravel driveway here and that’s about all that’s different.
I don’t really remember much of the actual trip other than it was a lot of sitting in a hot car. I know we stopped in Sault Ste. Marie and English River as our Ontario sleeping spots and Brandon as our Manitoba stop. I don’t remember the other sleeping spots.
I remember seeing the vegetation thin out as we approached Sudbury and the closer we got, the less plants there were. It seemed a bit surreal driving through a city that looked like it should be on the surface of the moon. We saw the giant “nickel” up on the hill and the really, really tall smokestack that was the cause of the lack of vegetation.
I do remember stopping in Lethbridge when we had car trouble and dad was going to look for a job until we saw a group of people sitting in a park passing a brown paper bag around and drinking out of it and mom was “nope”. I remember getting to Calgary as it was getting dark and mom was “too big”.
I remember as we were approaching Red Deer and were coming down Antler Hill my sister really, really had to pee so we pulled to the side of Highway 2 for her to squat. Turns out this would be foreshadowing of her need to learn how to use squat toilets when she moved to Beijing, China in 2012.
The barn was in a lot better shape when we stopped there the first time.
Wouldn’t want to stop along here these days.
We got to Red Deer and drove through town, stopping on the north side near the edge of town at The Bluebird Motel for the night. The motel was torn down years ago and I couldn’t find any photos of it.
Former location of the Bluebird Motel
When mom and dad went in to register; the desk clerk looked at their last name and said he had some other Broomfield’s there already. “A really tall guy with a really short pregnant woman?” My mom asked.
Turns out my uncle Jerry and aunt Annette who had left about 2 weeks ahead of us had arrived at the same motel the day before us.
Mom liked the look of Red Deer and decided we should see what we could find here for work and housing.
I don’t remember how long we were at the motel but soon we were all moving into a duplex on 63rd Street in the Highland Green neighbourhood. Dad got a job at the Revlestoke lumber yard for $4.50/hr – $2.00/hr less than what he was making in Quebec.
My aunt and uncle only stayed with us a couple of days before deciding to head back to Quebec. My cousin Anita was born down there a couple of months later. They would move to Calgary a couple of years later.
We were only in the duplex for a month or so. We moved a bit north to the Mustang Acres trailer court. That’s right, we were now officially trailer trash.
Same address but different trailer than what we lived in.
The park has changed some in the ensuing years (it’s actually trashy now).
I started grade 8 at GH Dawe school that September. Apparently my grades were good enough that I didn’t have to do my grade 7 exams. I remember laughing when people said the K-grade 8 school was big. As a little grade 7 student I was in a grade 7-11 school with over 600 student and an attached French school with around 800 students.
Looks a lot different today than 40 years ago.
Grade 8 was the best year of my scholastic career. I wasn’t an A student by any means (except in French. It was like my grade 2 Quebec French so it was actually easy.) My new friends and I spent every lunch hour out playing sports and our principle, Don Campbell, came out every day to coach us, no matter the weather. I was part of the “Outstanding Students” group that year. I still remember how mad the brainiacs were at us. Apparently they didn’t base it on grades for the first time ever.
Summer of 1979 saw us all fly back down east to visit everyone and arrange to get some of the stuff we left behind. I really don’t know how my parents managed to have enough money for airline tickets and be able to rent a car for the couple weeks we were there, but somehow they did it.
It was nice to go back as that would be the last time I would see 3 of my 4 great grandparents. I also got to spend a bit of time with my friend Adam Kerr (who I knew as Darren at the time). I haven’t seen Adam since, but FaceBook allowed us to re-connect.
Dad had moved on to work at the Coca-Cola plant and then he was working in the construction field for Bennett and White on the new Normandeau school.
Because we lived north of 67th Street I couldn’t go back to GH Dawe for grade 9. I had to go to Normandeau.
Another year, another school. And what a shitty school it was. I had an English teacher that was abusive (not to me, but others) and a bit crazy. (He left part way through the year and we drove the substitute out too.) Their replacement was a good guy though. The gym teacher had a bad case of short man syndrome and I’m pretty sure he still does. I did have a couple of teachers that were good. The students were another thing at that school. I think I know what it feels like to attend reform school. I had more bullies in one class than I’d had in my previous 8 years of school and I’d had more than a few over the years.
January of 1980 saw us move to the Belvedere Apartments complex on the south hill. It was a low rental townhouse complex but they were still called apartments.
The fences are new since we lived there.
These trees weren’t here back in the day.
As much as I hated being at Normandeau School, I hated the idea of going to a new school even more so I refused to switch to West Park Junior High like my brother did. I figured it would be bad enough to that I had to go to high school in the fall and I already knew my school bullies.
I managed to pass all my grade 9 classes with fairly average marks. I had decided not to take French for the first time in my life as it was optional. I took Art instead and was really enjoying it until my pregnant teacher had to leave to have the baby and her substitute and I did not see eye to eye. I managed to transfer into French for 1/2 a semester and apparently got the 3rd highest mark in the City on the final exam. (Something I didn’t even know until someone I beat on the test told me in grade 10.)
I tried band for the 1st and last time in grade 9. I tried to play the trombone because the 2 cutest girls in the band played it. (Turned out I couldn’t read the music but I could kind of follow along. I transferred out of band too.)
September of 1980 saw me start at Lindsay Thurber Composite High School (Later changed to Comprehensive.).
It was the start of my 4 years there. (Yes I know high school is only 3 years but I had some issues and I never really liked being in school.)
My son Adam and his friend Taylor ahead of their graduation earlier this year.
Well that is enough early history of the Broomfield clan in Alberta.
And so while a whole lot of my history has happened out here in Alberta I still sometimes miss the quiet life I had in Quebec. I wasn’t happy to leave my friends and life behind to move but as I’ve aged I have come to be thankful that we made the move. While I don’t think I would of been an ignorant hillbilly if we had of stayed, I realized that I learned different things living in the city. And for that I am forever grateful to my parents that we made the move.
I’ve been back 5 times in 40 years and I was hoping to be able to go back this year. There is still time so you never know.
Hank's Blog - Musings of a Wandering Mind 