Hot chocolate at Notre Dame

"Guilty of the crime of murder!"

Well murder of the French language, at this cafe in the shadow of the most famous Cathedral in France!!!

Sacre bleu!!!!

There you see I've done it again!!!!

Having learnt French as a language 7 million years ago at secondary college & never spoken it since, I mean you remember a word or a phrase here or there and throw it into a conversation, to all of a sudden be in THE country where it is THE language and trying to dredge up what is dead and buried is doomed to failure!!!!

Well after an early morning wander around Notre Dame, before the tourists, and still in that dazed, awestruck space from having been in a special place. Not talking, almost meditative, my beloved and I became overcome by a need, on this cold morning, for hot chocolate.

This was the cafe that suffered from my surreel attempt at language. Ordering 2 hot chocs and croissant just put this humble voyager into fits of laughter as I attempted to order and be put in my place for murdering the cafe owner/workers language.

Guilty as accused your honour!!!!

Memories: Paris

I love the stark red of the Pasquale Bruni shop in this shot against the more earthy and black colours of the young lady walking past.

This shop is in the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, I'm reasonably certain...
correct me if I'm wrong please.

Little more to remember except that my beloved and I were doing the tourist walk. You know see as much as you can for the very limitted time that we had in this fascinating city.

It's a little bit about waiting for the someone to walk past, in order to make the shot more interesting. The more interesting thew person looks the better the shot is going to be.

Street, or candid shots are always the best. A person shot in a public space is OK to be photographed. Although it is always better if you do ask their permission to take a candid shot.

Oh where have we gone in the last few years re a persons rights for anonymity or privacy. Very frustrating for photographers who sell their work to have to chase a person to get a disclaimer giving their permission for them to be in the photo.

Did I permission for this shot? No I didn't. But this young lady is in a public area.

Le Marais, Paris

 Le Marais quartier was one of the poorest areas of Paris. It is now a sought after residential address and home to Paris’s oldest Jewish sector and has a thriving gay community.

 Le Marais used to be an uninhabitable marshy area used for market gardening but was eventually drained and built on. Most of its pre-Revolutionary architecture has been well restored and the narrow cobblestone streets hide small squares and gardens, cafes and bars, galleries, boutiques, and some notable museums, such as Musee Carnavalet and Musee Picasso.

Le Marais is best experienced on foot.

Saturday, the day we were there, is the Jewish Sabbath so it is not   overcrowded but not all the shops are open either.

Don’t think that Le Marais can be seen in a quick visit.  There is so much that grabs your interest and as I was taking photos the whole area is very photogenic. Much fun was had.

Paris 2010

My beloved and I have recently been to Europe for a three and a half week glimpse of France, northern Spain and central Italy.

Our first stop was Paris. Now I have heard a lot of positive and negatives about this supposedly magic city and its people. I admit I wasn’t that thrilled about visiting a big city with a reputation for its arrogant and unfriendly citizens, regardless of its other qualities.

Let me say right from the outset that I loved Paris!

That’s right, for a non-city living, non-city loving country boy I thought it was a wonderful city to visit. We had way too little time to explore areas such as Montmartre and the East Bank or any of its galleries. But we did walk a lot, saw a lot and experienced even more. That’s what it’s all about isn’t it, the experience?

Two days, with jetlag, is not time enough to explore many of the places we wanted to visit and the afternoon sleep became imperative. But it did prohibit the evening visit to many places.

Oh well another time with more time is what’s called for.

We got to places early before the tourist coaches arrive, as we did with Notre-Dame Cathedral. Mornings were easy as our internal time clocks were out of kilter! The series of flights from Australia totalling twenty-three hours in all wasn’t fun.

A friend suggested that we use the double-decker tourist buses that seem to abound in European cities and hop on and off as often as we like. As our time was restricted we found that it worked for us. It helped us to get our bearings and at least see all the major tourist spots before we continued our journey south.

Strangling the language and laughing our way out of any really embarrassing situations added to the fun of our time there. Remembering the basics of schoolboy French lessons from only a million years ago was a wee bit hard at times. But we had to make do and we did find that if we attempted to speak some of the language it was accepted and the Parisians generally responded generously. Communication and the willingness to try is always acceptable no matter how pulled apart a language is.

My beloved did over hear one funny interaction between two American women in a department store complaining to each other, “you’d think that they [the French] would speak the language.” Hello we are talking about the French, in their country and they do speak the language! Their own, not the American one!!!!

Finding out that we weren’t English or American and were actually Australian seemed to break the ice and be acceptable to a lot of the French we came across.

Was our acceptance because we are older travellers or because we live on the other side of the world that most of them may never visit in a place called Australia or that they don’t have any old animosities with Aussies that they do have especially with the Brits? I don’t know and really it didn’t matter.

We had such a good time and the people were generally very friendly and helpful.

More next time