My niece was wrapped in five layers of clothes and she also had her mittens and hats (yes, hats) on, yet among the first things uttered by the adorable 15-months-old was “cold cold”. Oh, she was happy to be out of the car, cheerfully demanded we hold her hands so she can “walk walk” – no one can accuse the girl of not knowing what she wants! – but the wind was strong and relentless. Not too many steps later, she gave up battling the wind-opposed walk in favour of being carried by her mummy, and only her mummy.
After taking a few obligatory scenery and family photos, her parents decided it would be best to take her into the visitors’ centre where it would be warm and cosy. Meanwhile, Frédéric and I stayed on for a short walk along the designated visitors’ path, partly to admire the beautiful cliffs, partly to stretch our legs after a long drive in from Wexford. I’ll let the photos take you through our path.
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Thanks to a hat-tip by Sam, I was out this morning to check out at Place de la Sorbonne to check out the Ride Béret Baguette 2013. In its third year, the aim of the group is to promote the (rhyming) culture of “rétro et vélo”, and boy have they delivered! A few hundred people and bikes were there, all dressed up and ready to bike around Paris.
The programme for 2013 edition included a “caravan” (that showcased all kinds of things in rétro style, including fashion, accessories, styling and, of course, bikes!), a bike race, a vintage ball, and a bike ride to cap off the wonderful weekend. If only I’ve known about this ahead of time, I probably would have participated (a fellow blogger, Lauren Lou, did!), at least in the bike ride on Sunday. Next year, I shall be there ;)
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Despite the nickname, Wexford was not particularly sunny when we visited recently. Like most part of Europe, it seemed to be mired in the unescapable winter chill, accompanied by frequent showers. The transition between sunny and rainy happened often and rapidly, making it singularly difficult to predict if we could go for a walk yet not be roasting under our winter coats and/or be drenched without a brolly.
Nonetheless, maybe I present, by photos, the County of Wexford that we saw, however briefly it may have been.
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I called it “mets”, with an emphasis on the T, but Frédéric duly corrected me – it’s “mess”. Whaaaaat? But why?
*Gallic shrug*
“That’s just how it is.”
So I did a little digging. The name had its (Celtic) origin in Mediomatrici, which was then shortened into Mettis, before finally settled on Metz. The T was certainly part of the pronounciation in the past. This changed during the period of German occupation of Metz between 1871 and 1918. Annexed to the German Empire, the occupiers’ guttural speech seemed to make the T more pronounced than ever. The unhappy people rebelled in their own little way by dropping the sound of the T and voilà – you’ve got “mess”! Obviously, the pronounciation persists to this day.
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A whirlwind week away can only be matched to a whirlwind week at home, right? Well, it may not look it but it certainly felt like it. As I set my to-do list for the next few days, and reviewed my calendar for the coming weeks, I realised things are liable to be crazier than ever. On the plus side, I manage to sneak in some reading time, which makes me pretty content at the same time.
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20 May: I know, a photo taken at Marks & Spencer is hardly exciting but have a read at the labels of these bottles. Juices with red pepper or asparagus in them? We tested out the one with asparagus in it and it actually was quite nice. Granted, there wasn’t too much asparagus in it to start with, but enough to give a hint of the taste. Honestly though, I miss the food hall of M&S. There are a couple of them in Paris; the food section in the branch on Champs-Élysées is very limited and the other branch is a bit far in Levallois-Perret (actually outside of Paris), thus why I’ve not yet been there, but it does boast a much bigger food hall so maybe I should at least check it out once!
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River Saar flows from Mont Donon to Trier, its length splits to sit nearly half-half between France and Germany. In the region of Saarland, Saarbrücken is at about the half-way point of the river. A little further south, it even acts as the natural border for the two countries, where the towns of Grosbliederstroff and Kleinblittersdorf are linked by a short bridge.
Our third train since leaving Nancy in the morning took us to Saarbrücken, followed by a tram ride to Kleinblittersdorf to check-in to our hotel, before crossing the bridge to Grosbliederstroff to attend C&V’s wedding. Since we don’t have time to explore any of these towns, the best I could do is to share the few photos that I took while we were there.
Grosbliederstroff
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When an opportunity presented itself for travel, I’m hardly one to refuse the chance to do so. I guess some of my go-go-go-travel attitude must have rubbed off Frédéric as he ambitiously planned for our trip to his cousin’s wedding to be flanked with day-trips to Nancy and Metz. I have friends who agreed that both cities are small enough to be visited as day-trips, and after visiting them, I am more of the opinion that they make good spots for weekend trips.
A TGV ride between Paris and Nancy takes approximately 1.5 hours and our early start means we arrived in Nancy just shy of 10am, affording us a day of exploration given we were also staying overnight in the city before heading off to Grosbliederstroff the next morning. We were lucky to have arrived on a sunny morning for what was to be a forecasted-to-be-cloudy-and-wet weekend. The day did progressively get glummier, but not before we saw the splendour of Place Stanislas in the full sunshine.
I am no historian so I won’t go into the birth and the development of the city, even if we did see the free exhibition of La Ville Révélée at the Palais du Gouvernement (daily except Monday, until 31 August) which looks at these aspects in details. The exhibition is part of the programme of Renaissance Nancy 2013, which has an interesting agenda that makes me want to stay longer so I can check them out.
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There’s a change in the pace of my personal life this week, and instead of slowing it down a notch to catch a breather, it got cranked up to include reasonable amount of travelling for a couple of weeks. We just came back from the region of Lorraine where we attended a wedding over the long weekend, just to unpack and repack today for a week in Ireland. All these travelling is going to test my resolution when it comes to this blog’s schedule – I have opted not to travel with a laptop and I’m not normally someone who plans post(s) in advance either. Guess I will have to learn the how-to now, stat!
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6 May: It is May but the sunshine pretty much comes and goes, its level measurable by the amount of people sitting at the cafe terraces for a drink or two. On a good day, it could be a real challenge scoring a table from an already tightly packed terrace, never mind the best effort afterwards not to wince when presented with the bill that appears to have packed in also a cost for the beaming sunlight onto your table. Often (just often, not all the time), it’s worth it though.
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Today marks another milestone in my life. The next steps are up to me to make them work, and a friend sagely advised that I should have some sort of anchor that I can focus on during this period of time. She is not wrong. It could be easy for me to drift if I don’t have goals to aim for, discipline to keep.
This is where Day Zero Project comes in. I can’t remember how I came across this a while ago (maybe after I drew up my previous list of 50 goals in 5 years?), and it has always been at the back of my mind to revisit the idea. I finally did, and this new list of medium-term goals was born. I will not be tracking them on DZP website though; just here, on this website itself.
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What a day today has been. The emotional rollercoaster evoked by the general election in Malaysia, which undermined the true spirit of fair and clean election, was followed by the disenchantment that the popular vote didn’t translate into electoral win (because, you know, when the margin is small and one does 5 recounts to include “forgotten” ballot papers, one suddenly wins and that’s the end of recount!). Malaysians deserve more than polarising rhetorics from the ruling party, race-based politics, vigilantism against phantom voters, and bald faced lies propagated through the government-controlled media… :(
On the positive side, voters are more aware of their rights and more politically involved than ever – in the past, many didn’t even care because they felt change was a hopeless quest. They know better now. Their voices will be heard louder in the coming years. For now, time to look onward and upward.
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29 Apr: There are many sculptures tucked within the Jardin des Tuileries and it seems I’m still discovering new ones each time I popped over for a stroll. Today’s find is one simply entitled Column, by Antony Cragg. Tucked just behind the Jeu de Paume, had I not been at the WHSmith to look for books and then decided to take a small walk, I may still not be aware of its existence!
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