Posts from — January 2009

That’s right – we’re coming home!  Wow – we are so excited.  Not that we haven’t had the most magical five months of our lives.  But we miss our suburban oasis – the big backyard full of gum trees, the large house where we can all have our own room…or two, and the huge suburban shopping centre up the road that you have to drive to.  No – only kidding – we don’t miss that at all!  But we are very pleased to be coming home.  HOME!!

So – before we get on that plane I figured I better update this travel blog for the last time, becaue from next week it will revert to being a craft blog.  We’ve been in Paris for three weeks so it’s going to be kind of long.  Better get yourself a glass of wine and get comfortable

First there was Noël which we quietly celebrated in our apartment with good company (us!), good food…ok and some good champagne too.  It’s not everyday you get to celebrate Christmas in Paris now is it?

Then we celebrated New Year’s Eve at the Champs Elysée.  It was so beautiful – the lights glimmering in the trees all the way along the boulevard to the l’Arc de Triomphe.  I would show you some photos of the glorious fireworks we took the kids to see….except that we found at at 12.01am on New Year’s Day that they don’t actually have fireworks in Paris for New Year’s Eve. Oh dear – that took some explaining to the poor cold and tired kids who had been watching the Sydney spectacular on cable television earlier in the day as preparation for the big event. Whoops!

Anyways…we all got over the disappointment of the lack of fireworks and proceeded to visit some of the major city attractions…créperies, brasseries, pâtisseries, boulangeries, fromageries, and a few good restaurants to boot.  Mmmmmmmmmm…..soooo gooooood   Speaking of Parisian institutions – see what you can make of this strange site:

That’s people queuing in the snow to get into the local pâtisserie.  I was actually going there myself but was a bit turned off by this queue, so I walked 10 metres down the road to the next pâtisserie where I smugly bought my Galette des Rois from chez Paul without queuing. I didn’t feel so smug the next day when I passed another pâtisserie named ‘Paul’ at a Metro station.  It appears Paul is a chain store.  I wondered in horror…had I bought my galette from the Baker’s Delight of Paris?  Things weren’t helped by the fact that on closer inspection it appears the pâtissier from the establishment above has won first prizes for his galettes. It turns out he is the ‘rois’ of the Galette des Rois and has trophies to prove it!  Oh well – lucky for me he also has trophies for his baguettes and his croissants and I have consumed many of both to make up for my galette mistake.

Have I spent this entire post talking about food?  Hmmm – easily done!  I better wrap things up with some snaps of other things.  As I mentioned above we had snow in Paris and as if things here weren’t pretty enough we got to see sites like this:

this:

and of course this:

Do you think the kids look cold?  Well let me tell you they were, and so were we!

Right – nearly finished.  Since this blog is about to revert back to being a craft blog I thought I better post a few craft related photos to finish off.  Here is the first of 50 fabric shops I visited one Saturday morning in Montmartre:

This particular shop was literally across the road from this:

Pity the view from my local Spotlight store isn’t quite so nice!

Here is a clothes shop with a fab window display:

Can you see – the whole window is lined with vintage sewing machines?

And this is something I passed on the way to the Picasso museum today:

Wow – I could keep going about the wonderful things we have heard, seen and eaten in this great city.  It truly is spectacular.  But as I said – we’re very excited to be going home now.  Paris is sensational.  But home is home – and we miss it.

And since we will be leaving for home in just 24 hours time I better leave this blog now and pack my bags.

See you in Melbourne!

$2…$5…per glass? Come on – we’re in Paris!

$8..$12 per glass? Umm…remember the Euro and the Aussie Peso?

$15 per glass?

Nup.

We just paid $18 per glass. And we ordered 3 glasses…

Ouch

Ta-da!  Miss Zoe in her hand-knitted cardigan

I really enjoyed knitting this for Zoe.  It made me remember how enjoyable knitting can be.  And seeing the finished product makes me remember how frustrating it can be.  It’s a cute cardi – extremely practical considering how freezing it is right now and since this is her only woollen jumper she is getting heaps of wear out of it.  Would I knit it again if I were about to embark on my trip again?  Yes!  Am I about to start on a new one?  No!  Which is a bit unfortunate because Hamish keeps asking me when I’m going to knit him one.  I’m thinking I’d like to do hats, which should be much quicker and much cuter.  I wonder how he will feel about a hat?