A Pinay in Europe

Today I am taking you to a virtual trip to Paris in the comfort of your cozy rooms. We were there today and at 6degC, it was freezing cold that our faces were as cold as ice cubes when we made our bisous-bisous with friends whom we met up with. It was also an expensive sightseeing trip for we kept sitting in cafes, eating light snacks in restaurants just for the purpose of warming up. All in all, we spent 100euros, trains fares included, oh well, It’s Paris and we just adore walking the streets of this beautiful city, looking at shop displays and artistic sights!

Our first stop: rue des Rosiers
(”street of Rose bushes” in English)

This is the Jewish quarter of Paris where Jewish boutiques, snack bars, restaurants and food shops are found.

This is the tile facade of what used to be a historic deli,”Goldenberg”, closed several years ago and now taken over by a fashion boutique

 
Hale, bagels… all Jewish bread

A boulangerie selling Latkes or Jewish potato pancakes

queueing up for falafel, a vegetarian snack of chickpea patties and fita bread….5euros if take away, 6euros if eaten in their restaurant

This is the falafel, so good and so filling!

rue des Francs-Bourgeois
A trendy street of fashion boutiques and ancient hotels

“Je ne suis pas inspiree”……(I am not inspired)

door of an ancient hotel

door of Hotel d’Almeras (1612)

I wonder if these candles are scented?

This book sells at 15euros

 
The Rooster signifies fortune, luck, fidelity, protection as well as bossiness.

A plate of oysters and a poster

Vintage toy horse

The Good and the Bad

The flying shoes

Foie Gras Royale

Sepulcher maintenance, all cemeteries
I’ll take note of this

The Parisians

Off for a smoke break

on the Metro

Homeless and patriotic. Wait, why the British flag….?

Flowers, Flowers….

Flower shop in Blvd Haussmann

This flowering plant looks so good to eat, it reminds me of the lettuce

Daffodils infront of the Notre Dame Cathedral

Art for Art’s Sake

The small picture at the bottom is supposed to be an apple

If you are wondering what is that hole at the bottom, it’s actually the entrance to the basement

The metallic trimmings of the main door of the Notre Dame Cathedral

More Photos:

“Moving to a new accommodation? Our company can do the transporting of your household effects”..so says the ad on the mover van

The saints of Notre Dame Cathedral

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“Vide Grenier” in French literally translates to “Empty the Attic”. It is the same as ”flea market” in English and is normally held on Sundays or public holidays. For many, it is one good reason for a Sunday out and to be amongst the crowd, for the others, it’s a way of finding collectables and basic items at bargain prices. Today, we went to our first Vide Grenier of the year, held in our local car park. We are lucky with the weather as it has been raining the past few days but it was freezing cold nevertheless.

We had a fun time looking at treasure-troves and some odd and outlandish items! 

A vintage gas cooker, a collectable item!

Vintage bar chair

This copper vat is old.  It belongs to the grandmother of the seller.  It costs 150euros!  Great for cooking jams.

One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.

This could be made into a wedding dress…”something old!”

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After the photoshoot in Sermaise, I wanted to put my new P&S into more tests.

For Motion Photography, here are the shots taken from our moving car:

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The (now bare) tree-lined avenue of Le Val du Marais.  This road gets thick with foliage in the summer.

This old manor house now the seat of our region’s Conseil General

 Chateau du Marais
Le Val du Marais, Ile-de-France

Everytime we drive around this roundabout, I can’t help but notice this perfection, thanks to the town gardeners who meticulously trim the grass, pluck off the weeds and change the flower display every turn of the season.

A car barbecue? No, the wood is too long…..oh well, just pray that no traffic police is in sight

(Almost) Close-Up Photography 

My mint plant is coming out! Hurray! Soon, we would be enjoying mint tea evenings, curry meals, mint and tomato salad to accompany a meal of grilled fish, etc..

After the snowdrops, now the primroses!  I just love Spring!

Didn’t feel like cooking lunch so we went for a sandwich formule at a bar-tabac. A Formule is a combination of a bite and a drink for a reasonable price. Here, we had ham and cheese sandwich accompanied by glass of beer, all at 5.70euros

A miserable dog…

…in his miserable sweater….in a miserable winter afternoon

What are these? They are the diggings of MOLES!
These small mammals attack in the winter and early spring. They are the bane of farmers, gardeners and golf clubs because they ruin lawns and damage gardens.

Verdict on my P&S:  Very Good!

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To test my brand new Point and Shoot camera (Olympus), we went driving in the countryside today for some photoshoot. Despite the grey skies and the light drizzle, I think this camera is not bad, considering that at 79euros, it did not really break the bank!

First stop: The village of Sermaise
30 km southeast of Paris, 10 km from Versailles

Cross at the entrance of the village

The village of Sermaise

Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Side entrance to the church

A guard dog. In 1855, the first tax on dogs was voted in Sermaise. One Franc for guard dogs and 5Francs for hunting dogs.

A monument to the memory of the children of Sermaise who died for France

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We went to a nearby shopping centre today to finally buy the Point and Shoot camera we saw yesterday. Not really a high tech gadget, just a simple one to get my photographic juices flowing continuously while waiting for my SLR to get fixed. On the way to Carrefour, we saw a cooking workshop ongoing and it’s quite cute to watch kids getting so absorbed preparing their chocolate tarts out of Nutella.

It’s the two-week winter holiday in France and school children have until the end of the month to take advantage of the free activities on offer like this cooking class offered by the centre management.

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It’s Sunday and our feet are aching to go walking in the woods! How we miss our Sunday walks in France! Well, we did go to the parks in Dubai, explored the Marina Walk, went strutting in the Corniche, window-shopped in their largest malls but nothing beats nature-tripping in France! It’s our way of getting up close and personal with nature, in itself, the best way to relax mind, body and soul. Luckily, where we live in the outskirt of Paris, we don’t have to travel far to attain this as we are surrounded by farmlands, forests, rivers and natural sceneries.

Here are scenes of our Sunday nature walk this morning:

Ahhh…winter is slowly coming to a close. People are out and jogging.

Spring is around the corner. Trees are starting to grow shoots…..

and Forsythias are in bloom….

The brussel sprouts that provided the farmer delightful winter soups are nearing exhaustion.

It’s time to take the fishing baits out of the attic as fishing officially starts in one month’s time.

And very soon these fishing cabanes will be bubbling with activity.

The weather is great and this baby llama is out of his pen, seemingly curious about his surroundings.

So, too, is this ostrich.

Like after an educational field trip, we went home refreshed, re-inspired to start another week filled of optimism. I just love Sundays!

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Ile-de-France
 
You might also like:    Driving on a Sunday in Ile-de-France

We went driving in the countryside today and despite a light drizzle and a foggy scenery, it put us in excitement mode again!  I just love this country!  Sadly, my Canon 40D is not well and I just took the first three shots using H’s iPhone.  Luckily, after manipulating my SLR a bit, it successfully clicked and got the shot I wanted, that close-up photo of the snowdrops! 

My favorite tree-lined avenute taken today

The same avenue taken in Summer 2010

Snowdrops are out! This tiny heavenly-smelling flower is the first to pop out from under the snow and it heralds the arrival of  Spring!   Spring officially starts in one month’s time.

(taken by my Canon 40D despite it not being well)

Took home a cluster of these snowdrops to scent the sitting room and of course, to adorn today’s post!

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It’s rather too late to edit my New Year’s Resolution now but I am bent on adding one more on my list and that is:  Using more herbs and spices for better health!

When I used to work in Dubai in the late ’90s, I always raved eating everything Indian and this passion stayed up to the present where cooking curry is part of my culinary calendar.  H always gets excited everytime it’s curry weekend and we even make it a point to buy pita bread to complete the Indian feast.

However, our month stay in Dubai has taken me into a gastronomic re-discovery of Indian cuisine.  My sister cooks great Indian food and my brother-in-law treated us to the best Indian restaurants and the most mouth-watering take-away meals.  And in most of our sightseeing stints, H and I unrelentingly sat in the most humble snack bars in Deira and raved about their most ambrosiac samoussas and other concoctions dipped in ”to-die-for” coconut sauce spiced up with cardamon and mustard!

This whole gastronomic experience got me more curious about Indian spices so I did a lot of research and discovered that they are not just there for flavour but also for their abundant health benefits.  As I’ve rambled about in my earlier posts, H and me spent majority of our time in Dubai nursing the flu virus which I contracted in Paris and eventually passed on to him.  That time, I wondered why nobody seems to be ill in that city.  We have been all over the place walking, dining, sightseeing but not a single soul coughed nor sneezed!  Has the desert dust blowing around rendered their lungs pollution-resistant and more immune to virus? 

Now I got the answer:  it’s the spices!

Take for example the cumin, its health benefits aid digestion, piles, insomnia, respiratory disorders, asthma, bronchitis, common cold, lactation, anemia, skin disorders, boils and cancer.  Cardamom’s medicinal uses range from relieving stomach dyspepsia, increasing appetite, soothing the mucus membranes, relieving gas and heartburn.  Cinammon can lower cholesterol.  Turmeric is a potent natural anti-inflammatory, clears toxins from the body and relief from sore throat, runny nose and blocked bronchial tubes.  Need I say more?

Here are the spices I brought home from Dubai. Our kitchen may now reek of Indian smell but who cares? It’s our health and dining enjoyment (or vice-versa) that counts!

These dried pink rose blossoms is great for tea. I made some last night after dinner and we slept like a log!  My research says rose petal tea  has an uplifting effect on the nervous system and can relieve insomnia, depression and fatigue.  Cool!

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When our plane touched down at CDG airport this morning, I could hear myself echoing Macaulay Culkin’s famous one word, “Yes!”.  What a great relief to be back in Europe again, particularly Paris!  

After one month of living in Dubai’s concrete landscape, H and I instantly felt revitalized, invigorated, as soon as the greenery and woodland wend through the window of the train that was taking us home.  This is what we have been missing: nature, and tons and tons of it!  Living in Dubai had been a fascinating experience but our body craved for all those pleasant walks that took us to awesome terrains,  to the riverside, to the verdant meadows abound with flowers, strange plants, creatures great and small (insects, llamas, cattles, horses), the rolled bales of wheat in the fields and practically everything green and natural that my ever-hungry photographic eye spies!  

We also  miss the arts, European culture and the fashionable Parisians!  Thank God we live in Paris!

To resume my European photoblog (as I’m sure you are now pretty overwhelmed with my thousand and one Dubai photos hehehe) here are some images taken at CDG airport:

“Welcome to France”..this is one of the many welcoming banners that greet arriving passengers to Paris. This is the Pont Alexandre III bridge, the most ornate and flamboyant bridge in Paris, and I must say, it actually looks nicer in pink! 

The arrival-departure board.  Whoever designed it is very innovative!  Not only that its form is architecturally pleasant, it’s also user-friendly, at least for the near-sighted..

I love this mural! Very Parisian indeed, except that they are found in all the airport’s public restrooms! 

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I saw these two lemon-and-chilli thingies on the same day and I wondered if the Indian Community in Dubai are up for another celebration or something.  The first image, I saw at the door of the apartment next to ours, and the second, at a shop window in Deira.  Later that day, I found out that it’s an Indian tradition to use this as talisman to ward off bad luck and evil spirits.  

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