In which PhysicsGirl is somewhat sidetracked

I have, finally, finished my Provence pictures and am now out of France and heading to Greece, skipping over Venice. Pictures-wise, that is. I had uploaded the bike-trip part of my Provence trip last... er... August, but ah, took a little time to finish the Avignon portion. However, they are finally done and here they are:

From Provence 2010

Somewhere in this city is a cupcake with my name on it.

I would have done these pictures last week, but I have been a little sidetracked by a new toy. I just got an HP TouchSmart laptop. The idea is that I will use it with a projector instead of writing on the blackboard. I will be able to save my lessons for a) posting to the web site and b) future reference (for when I have one of the lessons where everything goes so well I want to reproduce it, but later can't remember exactly what I wrote on the board). I even bought a pocket projector, so I don't have to fight for the use of one at school. I had to buy the laptop off e-bay, since HP has pretty much abandoned the tablet pc in favour of a pure tablet, and it arrived minus the stylus, so I'm waiting on that to be resolved. So far, I'm very pleased. Solitaire is a lot of fun using the touchscreen.

Ahem. Anyway. New toy. Slight sidetrack. But now I am using the new toy to work on my pictures, so two birds, one stone!

Greece next. I've promised myself baklava and "blood of the pigeon" tea from Arabesque when those are done. Καλησπέρα. Τα λέμε!

And so we, finally, bid farewell to the City of Lights...

My Paris pictures. Are. Done.

Yes.

Again, to my Facebook peeps, click on "View Original Post" below to come over to actually see the pictures. If you're reading this on the actual blog site, ignore the previous statement. Everyone click the title below the pics to see more than just the one. Or click on the link at right to see all the albums in their glory.

I took pictures of Luxembourg Gardens, the St-Martin Canal, the Eiffel Tower, back to the Jardin des Plantes, and Père-Lachaise cemetery. Twice.

From Paris 2010: Cityscapes and Walking Tours

I finally went inside Notre Dame for more than a few minutes.

From Paris 2010: Look Ma, Culture!

I also did a bike tour to Giverny.

Giverny 2010

I've also uploaded pictures into my daily life and oddities albums.

Paris 2010: La Vie en Rose

Paris 2010: Ça m'amuse beaucoup!

Wahoo! Only the rest of Provence, the Greek Cruise, Athens, Delphi, London, Oxford, Bath... Salisbury... QM2... NYC...

Suddenly? I feel a little tired.

But, she said, brightening, I have these to look forward to, as I promised myself two months ago:


I may have cheated a wee bit and bought them on Sunday in anticipation, since I only had a few dozen pictures left to go. I did take them to my brother and sister-in-law's, and I did hold back while they took first choice. But they might not have eaten all of them. And Aged P may have bought me a macaron recipe book. And I may have bought a few extra to come home to...

In knee news, the scab has fallen off, and I've got a rather angry red scar bisecting my kneecap. It's still quite sore, especially when I've been sitting for a while. Perhaps it will be back to normal just in time for summer's end.

In which more pictures are posted...

My week 4 Paris photos are online! This quickness is entirely due to several facts. First, I posted my annotated pictures of Mont St-Michel the day after I got back. Second, I had renamed the rest of the photos, which is a way lengthy process, sometime last summer. Third, I spent most of that week vegging out since I had been on the go every day the previous week.

However, I did manage to grab some cards and tour a new part of the city: Palais Royale and the Opera quarter.

From Paris 2010: Cityscapes and Walking Tours

I also took a trip to Brussels and Mons to visit two old friends from my exchange days: Magritte and Laurent.

Brussels/Mons 2010

And just for good measure, even though they've been online for over a year, my pictures of the trip to Mont St-Michel.

Mont St-Michel 2010

I am nearly done renaming the pictures from my last week in Paris, which included the bike trip to Giverny. I can nearly taste those macarons...

Baby steps

I finally uploaded my Loire Valley and Versailles photos. You can see them here:

Loire Valley 2010	Versailles 2010

I'm a little behind on the rest of my Paris photos; the Loire Valley and Versailles pix only take me up to April 13th of last year. I still have a thousand or so photos to cull, name, resize, and comment on before April 18 if I'm going to stay on track. Somehow I doubt that will happen.

However, baby steps. Look! Pictures!

A mighty wind is blowing...

So, last night, we were concerned about the possibility of rain, and the guides had contingency plans all set out for us. I woke up this morning to a howling outside my windows. The rain is nothing; I could definitely bike in this rain.  The wind, on the other hand, is quite strong.  Blow us into the Rhône strong. As in, it's too dangerous to bike this morning.  Jenn (the other guide) said "Yes, the wind is disconcerting."  Understatement!  So we're being stuffed into a van and taken to Arles.

Hopefully the wind will have calmed down enough by this afternoon.

30 k + 40 k = a lot of biking

Yesterday, I was flying down a winding road next to a deep gorge in Provence and I thought: This is amazing. I saw wild poppies blooming by the side of the road. Wow, I thought. I saw olive trees and vineyards aplenty. Suddenly the fact that my cell phone will not be able to charge anymore and that my Palm Zire has suddenly given up the ghost didn't worry me as much anymore.

Whereas I owe it to Photoshop...

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. -- Claude Monet

I went on a bike trip to Giverny yesterday. The gardens were beautiful, and it was fun trying to take pictures as Monet would have framed them. I will put up my pictures some time in the very near future, I promise, but in the meantime I decided to have a little fun with photo-enhancement software...

Here's the original photo:

Look! New posts!

I've put up posts and pictures of my trip to the Loire Valley and my trip to Mont St-Michel. The pictures from my week of the museum pass, including the rest of the Loire Valley pix, will take a bit longer to go through. I'll let you know when they are up.

There are a few other posts about daily life and the exciting thing that happened on top of l'Arc de Triomphe sprinkled in as well.

My Mont St-Michel pictures are here:

Mont St-Michel 2010

It turns out that last week was just a warm-up...

I knew that I wanted to see Mont St-Michel. It's a UNESCO world heritage site, and more importantly, it plays a role in the 1940's espionage novel Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes. The scene where the hero is saved from discovery by the dangerous Nazi being sucked into the quicksand near the mount left quite an impression.

In which our intrepid heroine gets to see a bit more of Brittany than she expected...

It was supposed to be a very simple plan: train from Paris to Rennes at 2 pm, bus from Rennes to Mont St-Michel at 4:40 pm, check-in at 6ish, dinner at around 7, wander off to see the village at around 9 pm, take spectacular photos of the mount lit up at night around 10 - 11 or so, then back to the hotel to sleep the sleep of the just.

Something Robert Burns said springs to mind all of a sudden...

Once upon a time...

Note: I had decided not to try and catch up before posting recent ramblings...  And I had this post all written when some gremlin didn't save it.  I'll try to redo it, but it's a week later as I type this and I may not remember all the witty things I wrote before.

I have seen how the other half lived, and let's just say it's good to be king.  Until an unruly mob drags you from your bed...

Yesterday, I took a bus trip to the Loire Valley with Paris Vision. Well, a minivan trip: it turns out only six people registered.  Four of us were in the van when the guide said "We are just waiting for two more."  We looked at each other in some dismay; it would be kind of squishy with two more people in the van.  I said: "I hate to seem uncharitable, but I hope they don't show up on time."  Fortunately, they didn't and we were very comfortable.  So comfortable, in fact, that about 15 minutes after we left, almost everyone was asleep.  It was very early.