From the city to the country

No news, good news… since we arrived in Paris a month ago, we’ve been quite busy taking photos, visiting family, and getting back to the countryside ways… We stayed about a week at my sister’s in Paris and spent our days trekking through the city in search of stock photography, which is easy to find… We walked four to five hours each day and covered the big tourist attractions: Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Place des Vosges, and a few more… but there are still plenty of shots left for our next visits!

do we look cold???

Even though I lived there for 5 years before, it was nice to be like a tourist in Paris: I hadn’t been back at the Eiffel Tower since I was six, and I had never been to the Sacre Coeur!



Anyway, Paris doesn’t change much: busy, impressive, cool stores everywhere, fairly dirty, and expensive… in fact, with the exception of the architecture, it is much like New York! Well, and I think Parisians smoke a lot more too… hehe, old habits die hard! ☺

Dark but impressive, Notre Dame interior

My sister's daughter

Anyway after a week, we moved on again towards the countryside this time. We stopped for a quick hello at my brother’s place between Paris and the south, and then down we went, to the middle of nowhere in southwestern France, somewhere between Bordeaux and Toulouse, close to wine country, in the heart of foie gras country, and definitely also in the heart of medieval castle country. The region was at the border between the British and French kingdoms during the Middle Ages, hot spot of wars between the countries, and so, almost every village is built on a hill, and every village has its own castle!

Gargoyle @ the Sacre Coeur

My house is in a tiny village of about 200 inhabitants (with its own castle ☺; well, the remains of it anyway: there wasn’t much left already, and the main building burned down over the past summer, leaving only the walls!). It is nice to be back where I grew up; many good memories for me there and plenty of gardening and artwork for us to work on.

photo from an old sanctuary not far from my house

There’s also plenty of photo opportunities as well so I think Paul’s handling the lack of ocean fairly well…