photography – Page 7 – Where is Phil now?

A wee stroll in the sun – in London !

Day 262, Saturday 22 September 2012 – London

A much better sleep was had last night and I took the opportunity to doze for a little bit before having breakie in bed and a session on Skype with a friend back in NZ.

It is a lovely day today and with rain forecasted for the rest of the week ahead I took the opportunity to head out for the day with the intention to see some of London’s parks and meet Elias, an old friend from my Richmond days in the mid-eighties.

I walked down to Dartford town centre, past the local – I will try it out before I leave 🙂

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And then strolled through the market, it was busy but uninspiring – maybe an unfair call on Dartford market as markets are not my thing anymore – I have seen too many! The highlight, which I did not take a photograph of, was a stall blasting out and selling reggae CD’s, in a seemingly white middle aged suburb it was rather incongruous – good luck to them!

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I took the train into London, I was going to pick up a tube to Tottenham Court Rd and check out some of the camera shops for some pricing for future reference. However, the line was closed from Charing Cross so I alighted there and went straight to Trafalgar Square – which was on the plan for the day anyway.

What wasn’t on the plan was the National Gallery – it should have been ! I really enjoyed my time walking though the gallery – sadly no photos allowed, but I did sneak a quickie of Leonardo De Vinci’s “The virgin and child with St Anne and St John the Baptist” from 1500.

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Wow ! I have never been a De Vinci as an “artist” fan (ignorance ), much preferring art from the turn of the 20th century. However this drawing blew me away, the detail was stunning and I just loved it. Definitely my favourite piece from the gallery; a massive call given some of the works there. Another big call is – I enjoyed this more than the Louvre, it is smaller and simpler, but it does have a different focus so unfair to compare I guess.

What did I like? Seurat’s “Bathers at Asniers” – I love that painting, awesome to see it in the flesh. It was also great to see some nice Signac, Pissaro and Monet. My favourite Manet – “Execution of Maximilian” was here along with Renoirs “Umbrellas”. I am not a huge Renoir fan, but really like Umbrellas’. It is the same with Van Gogh, I have never been overly excited by his art, I do like “Van Gogh’s Chair” and Flowers is here as well, though that painting is all a bit ho hum IMHO.

I had an unexpected good time at the gallery – and it was a 4 pound donation, rather than a massive entry fee- good on you London!

This chewed up a chunk of my wandering around time, so I stopped for a sandwich and coffee in the sun on Trafalgar Square than walked through Admiralty Arch.

Past the stature of James Cook.

Round to the back of Horseguards Parade.

Past Downing Street.

And on to Waterloo station to meet my old friend Elias. It was great to catch up with him, haven’t seen him since 1987 when I left England. We walked along the South Bank of the Thames for a couple of hours and chatted about our lives in the past 25 years. We headed over to Embankment and had a drink before wandering back to Waterloo so Elias could make his next appointment. I strolled back over the Thames.

And got the train back to Dartford.

It was a really good day, the gallery was fabulous, the walk refreshing and enjoyable and it was great to catch up with Elias, we will meet again when I return from Africa for sure.

A place to bury strangers @ Komedia in Brighton

A place to bury strangers are a band from New York and have been a favourite for a while now. It was great their UK tour coincided with my birthday week so I nipped down to Brighton to see their show at Komedia.

The venue holds about 400 but disappointingly it was only half full, but I did get to take my camera in and as I was not really getting in anyone’s way I shot off and on through the set. The lighting was really no friend to any photographer, totally back and side lit and for virtually all the show it was strobing. Very hard conditions, I took a lot of photos, deleted loads and kept the rest, this is the best of a bad bunch.

The show was great, sound was good for the first three quarters and then for some reason vocals were dropped so low in the mix as to be virtually inaudible. They did play a bunch of my favourite tracks including a great version of “I live my life to stand in the shadow of your heart”, though not the full 20 minute noise fest version which I was hoping for !

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The support band was Sealings, I had never heard of them but liked their set.

Brighton

Day 252, Wednesday 12 September 2012 – Brighton

I am using another laptop this week and thought the last blog post I was writing in MS Word had been saved to Dropbox but it hadn’t, so missing a post, for now anyway. Not that it was particularly exciting of course, but for the sake of my records I will post it later.

Another highlight of my birthday week; heading to Brighton to see (and hopefully photograph) my current favourite band, New Yorkers (by way of Auckland for the bass player) A place to bury strangers.

It seems that going anywhere in the southern part of the UK by public transport means a trip through one of the main transport hubs in London, and the ride from Brentwood to Brighton was no exception. The bus I was taking left Brentwood at 9:45 and went all the way into central London to Victoria bus station before heading back out again to the coast – not that I was in any particular rush, just needing to be there before the gig tonight.

The journey was OK, a wee bit tedious, though it is always good to see a bit more of the English countryside. The bus got us to Brighton on time in the early afternoon. It was sunny but with a very strong wind – which was naturally a head wind for the longer than anticipated walk along the water front to my hotel for the night – the Brunswick Square Hotel, which funnily enough was on Brunswick Square.

I decided to mooch for a while and leave the hotel a couple of hours before the doors opened and do my waterfront sightseeing on the way. I am conscious that I have a massive run in four days time and I need to be doing some decent resting rather than hours of sightseeing. Naturally while I rested the weather turned to crap 🙂

The cloudy and windy skies made for quite a good walk along the front, at least I got some decent photos – I was getting sick of all those clear blue skies in Spain ! As I was going to a gig I decided to take the big Canon rather than the little Panasonic GF1 I have been using. I am so glad I did, I love that Canon and I think it loves me back, I was pretty happy with the images I got this afternoon, though it is a lot more to lug around than the GF1!

The hotel is probably a mile up the road from Brighton Pier and it is a pretty good walk from a photographic perspective, I should probably have taken a bit more time than I did, but I wanted to eat before the show and with doors opening at 7:30 I couldn’t muck around too much.

The Pier is an interesting beast, so typically English, I don’t think there is any other country in the world who could do this as well, I arrived too late to see any fun fairaction but I did like the almost closed feel to it as well.

Helter Skelter – I am not sure if I have ever seen one of these in New Zealand!

And a double rainbow !

I had pizza and a couple of reds at a local Italian restaurant before heading up to Komedia Brighton to see what was happening at the A place to bury strangers (APTBS) gig. I wanted to see if there was a support act – there was a band called Sealings, what time the bands came on – and most importantly, if I could take my camera in- I could – Yes !

I went to a local bar and had a drink before heading back to the venue for 8:00 just before Sealings came on. The venue is pretty cool, small, low ceiling, good size bar and good view of the low stage, it would be a favourite if I lived here. Sealings were pretty good, a young trio – made a lot of noise, which is always good. The lighting was very dim with most of it being back lit, a nightmare to photo and not having shot a band for a while it took a bit of experimentation to get back into the groove, though I was happyish with the results.

APTBS came on about 9:30 – I love noise restrictions ! they played for an hour or so and were pretty loud, though not as bad as I expected. They were also fabulously awesome, playing most of my favourites, with a good chunk from Exploding Head, definitely my favourite album, with a searing version of “I lived my life to stand in the shadow of your heart” which is such an awesome track. The whole show was lit from the back and side of the stage and mostly by strobes, it was a brutal to shoot, a lot of the shots I did get were shooting bursts and hoping to get exposure and timing to coincide. I was also shooting wide open and at max ISO so it was never going to be pretty, especially as Dion (bass ) and Oliver (guitar) barely stood still for half a second the whole show.

I will post some more gig shots in another post.

It was a good night 🙂

Capileira

Day 213, Saturday 04 August 2012 – Capileira

I did not rush out of bed this morning, my day has me checking out at some time after ten and then catching a bus to the bus station for my next stop, Capileira. Once up I finally found what I have been looking for for days – breakfast. I had some great bacon and eggs and a pretty good coffee, all for 6 euros as well. Shame it had to be last day !

With the great breakfast under (soon to be hanging over ) my belt fortune was obviously smiling on me as the local bus arrived as soon as I got to the bus stop near the hotel. The bus took a very round about route to the bus station, but I was so early I did not mind. Even though it is after 10 am on a Saturday morning so much of Granada appears to be closed. I was again lucky at the bus station as I easily managed to work out how to use the ticket machine and it is a cheap ride to Capileira, 2.5 hours and 5.59 Euros ! Awesome.

Capiliera is a small village in the Sierra Nevadas, it is a tourist town with summer walking and winter ski-ing. The village is ancient, and has seen people living here for many centuries, Goths (not my sort obviously – too hot for all that black) , then Moors until 1528 when the Catholic Spanish took over. I am going there to do a bit of walking and see some of Andalucia’s famous white villages.

Once off the highway the road up to the villages is narrow and twisty and goes up and up, Capiliera itself is at 1500 metres. The bus stopped at numerous small towns – all unrelentingly gorgeous and I could not wait to get to my destination for a look see.

The town of Pampeneira, just down the hill from Capileira.

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The bus delivered me at 2:30 and I found my wee hotel by a stroke of good fortune – I saw a van with its name parked outside:) Unlike the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia that are significantly cooler than the coast, the Sierra Nevada’s are hotter than the coast, I had read it but wow, quite a difference, even from Granada – I was glad I found my room quickly – not that there is air con or a fan, but there is a window and a good bar downstairs and it was cooler than the street.

For lunch I finally, finally, managed to get Paella ! I have been wanting one since arriving in Spain, but always seem to be at the wrong time, or the wrong day, or as I found last night in Granada – one person short of the two minimum. It was great, the calamari was delicious and ate all the mussels and everything else – very unusual as I am not a big seafood eater. I ate lunch sitting on a street side table jealously watching as loads of mountain bikers went past after coming off the mountain, I was hoping to get a bike tour but there is nothing in this town, I perhaps should have gone to one of the bigger centres. But still great to see such a fantastic sport is well patronised here.

After lunch and a wee lie down, I went for a walk around the village and snapped a few photos – and as I said above, just unrelentingly gorgeous !

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The flat roof houses are known as Terroos and are one of three distinct types of house style.

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Naturally the museum was closed…

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as was the church.

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Capileira is blessed with a fresh water spring that flows through the town – possibly why it is here ? but there are water fountains all over – the water from this was surprisingly cold.

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As the sun was dropping behind the opposing ridge I went for a wee look above the town, up the trail I would be walking in the morning.

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According to Spanish TV, there is only one country competing in the Olympics ! Though it appears i am missing some of the events I wanted to see…

I have to get used to the Spanish not using i before e, it is hard to change a life times spelling !

La Alhambra

Day 211, Thursday 02 August 2012, Granada

Discovered last night that the internet, while free – is slow as a wet week – not that I have had a wet week since I left England! But trying to upload blog posts and photos was hopelessly slow – I had gotten to used to the fast access at Ian’s place.

The hostel room is not too bad, bed is comfy, shower is awesome, but let down with paper thin walls – the party people who arrived at 4:30 am were very audible and I didn’t really get back to sleep after that, though I didn’t actually get out of bed until 8:45 – ahhhhhh, luxury.

My plan for the day was to get a La Alhambra ticket for tomorrow as getting one on the day is supposed to hard in peak season and then cruise Granada’s barrio streets and see the non-Alhambra highlights. I meandered off in the direction of Alhambra to get coffee and breakfast on the way, I picked a cafe at random, had a good coffee – an average pastry and the shittest service yet in Europe, I waited a good ten minutes standing at the bar waiting to pay – it’s not as if the place was crowded either, I was so so tempted to walk. Not going back there tomorrow !

The walk up the Sabika hill was not as bad as I expected, the guide book suggests taken a bus, but that would have been stupid. It was a shady and cool walk thankfully but the wait in the queue for tickets was exposed to the sun and was quite hot (come on Spain, even the Vietnamese had shade provided for long queues). The queue was frankly – ridiculous, These guys must have read the “how to make queue fucking awful” guide, I have no idea why they had to make buying a ticket so damn hard, this made queuing in Paris seem easy. As there were options for entering the site today I decided to enter now rather getting a ticket and coming back tomorrow. Of course I then had to queue to get in…

La Alhambra (red fort)- one of the most visited tourist places in Europe, was original an Islamic Moorish castle/palace from the 12th century until it was conquered by the Catholic Spanish in 1492. The majority of the site was built under the Moors but some additions were made by the Spanish.

I kinda liked it, it was hot- but not humid, so completely bearable after some of the places in SE Asia – in fact I am pretty used to hot now, scarily so…. It was too crowded for my liking, but given it is school holidays it is to be expected. I just hoping I am not over visiting historic sites, I was not overly impressed to be perfectly honest. I mean, I enjoyed it, but I was not – WOW !

But I did take a lot of photos, mainly of the various views over the city and of some of the large scenes, there was not a lot of interesting detail to document, or maybe I was just in the wrong places!

First I visited the Generalife, which were one of the garden areas of the palace, with some great views of the main site.

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I then took a wander around the main site and I love white birches, they are just fantastic trees.

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Before entering some of the key areas, such as the Alcazaba, with its glorious views over Granada.

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And the Palacio de Carlos V. This building is pretty cool, yet controversial as it is a fairly chunky piece of real estate built in the 1500’s under the reign of Charles 5th, compared to the more delicate and petite Moorish sections of Alhambra it is a bit of a monster. What I liked, apart from the cool eagle and lion rings on the square outside, was that the interior is circular and quite coliseum like.

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From the palace I joined another queue in the sun for my 12:30 entry to the Palacios Nazaries, the Moorish highlight of Alhambra. OK, maybe it was too crowded or too hot or I didn’t read the guide book well enough to see the detail, but I was non-plussed by the whole thing – sorry folks ! (Angkor really kicks its arse). Even my camera was not excited, some crap photos were taken – I am of course blaming the technology, if I had my good camera, they would be stunning!

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I left the site via the Torre de la Justice

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And past the statue of Washington Irving, the American author of “Sleepy hollow” and “Rip van winkle” who lived here for a time in the 1800’s. The hotel named after him has not fared so well!

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I took a leisurely stroll back to my hotel with the aim of joining the locals in the siesta. P1140961

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I stopped for a beer at a small bar near the hotel – ended up having three as each beer came with a tapas – I had pototoe with chilli, blood sausage (yeah I know, but I had to try it) and the best gazpacho yet, yumbo. A wee siesta was had…

After my siesta – and no I did not sleep, I wandered off to check out the Capilla Real, the crypt at the nearby cathedral, the crypt holds the remains of Fernando and Isobell the first Christian rulers of the area, both passed away in 1516. Sadly no photos were allowed – a fact i found out after I paid to go in. It was moderately interesting, but that was some awesome ironwork in there and some fabbo paintings as well – but I cannot show you.

i did like the fountain in the plaza though.

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I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do, it was “only” 7:00 Pm so too early for dinner apparently, my stomach disagreed of course, so I wandered around a bit, settled on a couple of beers and went back to my room with my standby packet of potato chips and finished last nights wine and blogged.

Today, my heart just wasn’t in it, Granada deserves more than I gave it! I took some shouse photos today, so some brutal culling took place and these really were the best of the bunch.

[edit] I cannot believe this posted on the first go ! last night it took numerous attempts and it hardly had any images. I create my posts and insert images using program called Blogdesk, heaps quicker than trying to upload images via WordPress’s interface. However, it can create one big upload that can be tricky on a slow internet connection. So yay, first time upload [/edit]

Gallery – Street art in Barcelona

There is a huge amount of graffiti in Barcelona, most of it is just scribbled tagging, though I am sure there is some pithy political statements in among the scrawl, sadly it is all Spanish to me, so you my eager audience, do not get to see it either ! Anyway, statements are not always art and art is what I am in to, whether you agree with my tastes or not.Most doorways have something sprayed, brushed, inked or stuck on them so there was a variety of things to look at.

Here are some of the ones that caught my eye – BTW, I am a huge sucker for anarchy symbols. Less so for real anarchy!

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Viva Barcelona

Day 195, Tuesday 17 July 2012, Barcelona

Well – I was warned in the reviews on various hotel web sites that the noise at the Barcelona Center Inn can be quite bad, and the reviews were correct, lots of noise from the hallways as people arrived from their nights out and then an alarm went off at 5.00 AM, and 5.30 and 6.00 etc etc. I didn’t really get much sleep until an hour or so from 6.30. I didn’t use the air con either so found myself in a pool of sweat when I did wake, it has been a while since that has happened!

I was up late and faffed a bit, had my old standby breakfast of egg on toast from the cafe downstairs and then caught up with some blog posts until I left the hotel about 11:00 with no real plan, apart from wander the streets in the general direction of some of the key sights and hit the gothic quarter.

The day was sunny and already hot by the time I left, it is really nice to be wearing t-shirt and shorts again – and not with leggings underneath like I was in Cornwall. I picked myself up a Spanish SIM card as it is possible I will be staying in Spain for a while – plus I like having mobile access to the internet – I am a net junkie…

My first stop was the Palau de la Musica Catalana, though I did not pay to go inside and my photos from the outside sucked a bit due to some really savage light… though it had some interesting bits.

I soon discovered the Barcelona Cathedral, the bulk of which was constructed in the mid 1400’s. It was a pretty amazing building and it was great to be able to take photos inside, though it was a heaving mass of tourists.

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I particularly liked the paintings in the small chapels that contained some lovely 15the century paintings, this was my favourite from an unknown painter and completed in 1475.

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I also really liked the small carvings I found while waiting for the rickety lift to the roof, they remind me of LOTR !

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There seems to be a mass of renovation projects going on in Barcelona, perhaps it is work created by various government bodies during these recessionary times, but a huge number of buildings are under cover. The roof of the cathedral was one, though the view was good.

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And the gargoyles were awesome.

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From the cathedral I just wandered the streets for a couple of hours, mainly in the old gothic quarter, the streets are so narrow there are very few cars, and the area is full of bars and galleries that do not open until much later in the day. It was relatively peaceful and cool compared the bustle of the big squares. I took a lot of photos ! Most of the doorways have been graffitied in some fashion, some good stuff, but a lot of aimless tagging as well. I did take a number of photos of the stencil and sticker art which I really like and will post those separately one day.

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The small touches were fantastic, this old well in one of the squares was a favourite.

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It was the alleys and the 5 or 6 story buildings looming overhead that I liked the best.

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I did accidently wander into Plaza George Orwell.

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Now I knew where I was I went and visited Palau Guell (Guell Palace). This is one of the big attractions in Barcelona and since renovation is now a UNESCO protected building. It is not particularly old but was designed by Antoni Gaudi and completed in 1890. Gaudi (possibly where gaudy comes from ?) was a Catalonian and designed a number of the key buildings in Barcelona. The Guell Palace, was semi-interesting, I am not hugely into furniture and floorings etc, but it did have some nice touches, I liked these doors

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And the roof was very cool, with all the decorated chimneys.

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Plus I liked the roof top photo opportunities.

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I wandered off for lunch and a beer and was heading towards the Picasso museum when I realised I had the wrong debit card in my wallet and could not get any cash out ! so I meandered back to the hotel.

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I had a wee rest before heading out again in the early evening, got some cash (whew) and walked up to the Temple de la Sagrada Familia – another Gaudi designed building, sadly the skyline was broken by a number of large cranes and the ground was broken by about 1 billion tourists, maybe a million, a lot anyway. The building is stunning though and I may go back one morning for a quick lool before the hoardes arrive.

The queue to get in was not worth effort so I wandered back down to the hotel.

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On the way back I passed Salesians church, built in the 1870’s and designed by Joan Montells, who was a teacher of Gaudi’s. It is unsual in that the bell tower is in the front of the church.

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I spent the rest of the evening ripping my hair out trying to do two things online. Firstly i wanted to transfer some cash from my NZ bank to my English one. I had already jumped through the various hoops to get overseas transfer set up, but this was frustrating as I had to fill in so many boxes – and find the information for those boxes – that by the time I had finished the session with the bank had timed out and I had to log in again and start all over, grrrrrr. And I am not even sure it worked yet…

Secondly I wanted to book myself to Malaga, I started with bus and trains, found the best options for dates, length of travel and cost, and decided on train. The train web site would not accept either of my two NZ credit cards, so bus – yeah 16 hours is a long time but I have done it before – same result on bus web site, grrrr… Next resort – fly. Ryan Air, looks good, price is cheap(ish), convenient time departing and arriving (so my cousin can pick me up). Booked it , YES, payment accepted. Go to add a second bag as booking only allows one bag – 48 frigging euros !!!!!! the fare was only 62… WTF Ryan Air! So my cheapish flight cost way too much..

But anyway… I am staying here in Barcelona for one more day, I leave Friday morning for Alcaucin, a small village about 40 minutes from Malaga where my cousin Ian lives. Looking forward to it.

Gallery – GBWY

A very short walk around Cimetiere de Montparnesse in Paris.

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“Cheeseburger”

Day 190, Thursday 12 July 2012 – Paris

I have been having a minor financial crisis for the past few day, well less of a crisis – more of a financial niggle in the back of mind.
I am stuck in that weird place where my money is in one country and I am in another and I have limited access to cash. I have not replaced the NZ ATM card I lost in Laos – not through lack of desire to replace, but through lack of desire to jump through hoops to get it, so do not have direct access to my bank account.

I have been relying on foreign currency travel cards to get by, but my UK pound card ran out of funds while I was on the Coast Path Run which came as a real surprise, I transferred some money over (thank God for Internet banking), but have forgotten the travel card web site log in so cannot check as to why I ran out of funds so soon. I have also set up an English bank account but have not been able to transfer funds into it as I need to ring the bank in NZ to set up an overseas transfer account as it cannot be done on line. So very soon I am going to run out of easily accessible cash, it is time to ring the bank in NZ. Pity I cannot find my NZ sim card…

In the end I borrowed my friend Emily’s recently acquired French pre-pay mobile to call the bank in NZ. I started with the travel card company and got as far as being asked my secure code before the phone ran out of credit – Merde ! But it did poke some brain cells into life and I remembered my login for the travel card site. I did discover that I have been screwed on bank fees which I will take u with the bank, but I had bought less pounds than I thought so, whew, nothing untoward had happened to my cash.

The plan for the day was an ambitious one that involved one heck of a lot of walking and some rides on the Metro, Paris’ version of the London Underground. The Metro is way more complex than London, with a lot more lines to choose from. We chose to take the Metro to the furthest point for the day and meander some of the way on foot, as this really is the best way to see a city.

Well, we ended up just taking the Metro to Gare de Nord and walking to Sacre Coure (SC) from there as it was not too far and Gare de Nord is the most confusing station in the whole world (that I have been too anyway!) SC is one of the older churches in Paris and sits on a hill above the River Seine, I am not clear on the history of it as I frustratingly do not seem to have internet access at the moment. SC is split into three viewing areas, the main chapel, which is free – but no photography and the dome and crypt, both of which are charged for but you can take photos. We visited all three, awesome !

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Peace out !

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If I was thinking of buying a hand bag, an old church would definitely be my first stop…

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The chapel was very cool, some great statuary and frescoes a wonderfully lit space, but the highlight was definitely the dome. There are three hundred steps to the top, which obviously keeps the worst of the tourist hoards out, the steps are up a winding narrow spiral staircase, and the wear marks in the stone show how many people have been this way.

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The views from the top are magnafique !

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The crypt was pretty cool as well, but quite dim (of course), it wasn’t as crypty as I expected, and a lot of the memorials were to soldiers fallen in the wars of the last century. I did love this statue though.

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From SC it is a short hop to Montmartre, I wasn’t quite so thrilled with the place, it is very cute, lovely cobble stone streets, but packed with tourists and very much catered to the tour bus crowd.

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We did visit the Abbey St Pierre de Montmarte a Benedictine abbey started in 1147. There was also quite an interesting photo exhibition next door from a Japanese photographer whose name alludes me now, but they did have a Panasonic GX1 which I drooled on for a bit…

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We scarpered from Montmarte fairly smartish and headed down hill towards the Montmarte Cemetry, one of the two ‘big name’ cemeteries in Paris. I loved this bit of art on the way down the hill.

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The streets here are just lovely and if I had to live in Paris (and had loads of money) this is where I would live.

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We had a wander around looking for Edgar Dega’s grave but couldn’t find it. It is incredibly complex mass of tombs and crypts, some immensely complex and detailed and others plain. It was very interesting to say the least and I am really looking forward to visiting the Montparnasse Cemetery in a few days time.

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Yo !

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After the cemetery we walked on down past the Moulin Rouge and caught the Metro to the shopping district and Gallerie Lafayette.

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Metro station.

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After some faffing we stopped for a hot chocolate at Angeline’s in the Gallerie Lafayette, the cafe has been around for over a hundred years and the hot chocolate is a must have item, it was delicious, unlike my photo of it which was out of focus…

We dropped in to see one of Emily’s Parisian friends at his office on Avenue De Opera – with an awesome view !

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And then took a slow walk down some more back streets, I just love how deserted Paris is when you got away from where the tour guides suggest, these streets are one back from the hell of the main roads. The buildings are fantastic, and of course I just love the bicycles !

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to Place Vendome where we drooled over the (beyond) big name shops, drooled some more on the two Lambos parked outside the Paris Ritz – where Princess Di spent her last evening.

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We visited the Madelleine which did allow some photography inside, again, like SC earlier in the day, stunning examples of statuary and frescoes.

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And then wandered back up to the Printemps department store in the shopping district to admire the fantastic domed roof of the restaurant.

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and from there caught the Metro back to St Michel. It had been drizzling all afternoon and was raining quite hard when we got out of the station so we stopped for a vin at a cafe and then dinner at Tabac de la Sorbonne. Emily ordered her meal, a bottle of wine and a bottle of water in rapid fire French, when the waiter looked at me all I could manage was “Cheeseburger”, not even please- complete brain freeze. Fortunately this was seen as quite amusing by all, at least the waiter had a sense of humour!

The cheeseburger was very nice, the service excellent and the wine great – a rare tip was left.

I tried ringing the bank in New Zealand again tonight, this time to activate transfering moneey overseas – ie to where I am. The recorded message said a wait of four to five minutes, at three Euro a minute for the call – I hung up…

Deux soupe d’oignon s’il vous plait

Day 189, Wednesday 11 July 2012 – Paris

Earlier start to breakfast today, coffee wasn’t any better, damnit ! had a bit of a planning session morning and a visit to the local laundromat. While the washing was on we went to a cafe round the corner and had a great espresso and I spent an hour preparing yesterdays blog post. The internet in the hotel is sporadic and even when it is working it hopelessly slow – at least it is free I guess.

We headed off for a late lunch up Boulevard St Germain where I had a great onion soup and a Stella Artois, while people watching near the Seine. I loved how some of the buildings are sagging in the middle – a bit like me.

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Notre Dame from the Seine

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After lunch we checked out the Bastille.

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And then Place de Vosges

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With its homage to Victor Hugo.

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We then wandered the streets back towards Notre Dame.

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How is this for a location for a basketball court !

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The queue for Notre Dame was ridiculous..

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So we headed off from there to the smaller queues at La Conciergerie and Sainte Chappelle. Both part of the historic Palais de la Cite, now the Palace of Justice.

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La Conciergerie started off in the 6th century but most of what can be seen is from the 14th when King Charles V left for a more secure location and left the palace in charge of a concierge who was given power to run the palace and the nearby prison. Numerous prisoners of state were kept there until the revolutionary period of the 1700’s when it used by the various revolutionary council factions to house their opponents during trial and up to execution day. The most famous being Queen Marie-Antoinette and Robespierrie himself who was part committee that set up law of suspects which led to the “reign of terror” that swept Paris in the 1750’s.

I loved the vaulted ceilings in the Hall of men at arms, originally started in 1302.

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After the dubious charms of La Conciergerie we joined another short queue for Sainte Chapelle. A chapel built under the wishes of King Louis IX (later Saint Louis) between 1242 and 1248 to house the relics of the passion of Christ.

The entry is via the lower chapel.

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The upper chapel, houses the great shrine, which contains the relics of the passion of Christ, including the crown of thorns.

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Even the floor was ornate.

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The interior of the building is stunning, it is constantly under minor renovation but the stained glass is all original and amazing to look at, a bit too far to photograph under low light, but I highly recommend a visit to the chapel.

Dinner was bread, ham cheese and wine – oh and another bottle of my new favourite beer, Punk IPA.

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