Breakfast.

My breakfast this morning.

Les Bulles

The two younger boys and I went out to play with the bubble set I gave the youngest for his birthday. It may have been selfish of me, but I made sure I had my camera and then coaxed them into going outside to play with bubbles so I could take cute photos of them. They turned out pretty cute, but it's really easy to do when the kids are cute to begin with.

For the past week or so I had been stressing out over planning. Planning a weekend trip for a bunch of girls, planning my sister's arrival and subsequent travel plans, planning photoshoots with several changing factors. But I feel like I made a break through and just had to let out some steam by talking endlessly to my ever patient friend Gaby. What I have done is booked a return trip train ticket to Caen, where I will hop on a bus and go to the Omaha Beach of Normandy and visit the American cemetery and take the train back that night.

That takes care of checklist item number 1: Normandy. That left the problem of me wanting to see Claude Monet's house in Giverny and the famous Mont St. Michel. I have decided to just take a day trip to Giverny in the coming weekends and when my sister arrives from London we will use our train passes to go to Mont St. Michel and save the 70+ some euros for each person.

I was also able to schedule a couple of photoshoots which will hopefully come to fruition so I can display the photos here. I am very excited about the concept and can't wait to show them off. I just hope I can get them done in time.

A plutot!

I Love Paris.

Photos Worth a Hundred Posts.

Galeries Lafeyette- Huge Mall

Beautiful display at the Printemps department store. The following one is the same entrance.

Corner entrance to Grand Palais, where Corinne took me to see the Redon Exhibit.

Inside of Anish Kapoor's Monumenta. It felt like beign inside of a vacuum.

The outside of the room in the pictures above.

Watching the sun rise from my window view. Long night.

Inside of a willow tree in the park next to the Champs des Mars. 

I love Paris.

The backpacking plans.

Although pretty much all of my friends can attest to the fact that I normally don't plan things and just do them, I am now realizing that perhaps the reason I don't plan things is because I go into overdrive when I do. I am learning new things about myself. I have realized that I either need to just let things go out of my hands, or take an overly scrutinizing micro managing approach. I am sure I have a middle ground somewhere, but right now I just can't tap into it.
Right now I am trying to plan our backpacking schedule and a trip to the coast for four days in June, and I am finding it very hard to just relax and not worry about it. It kind of feels like a trip to Disneyland. You either go and try to see everything and go on every ride so that by the end of the day your feet hurt and everyone sleeps on the way home, or you just go with your friends and people watch, possibly go on one or two rides and go home mid afternoon.
Sorry if this is slightly nonsensical. I have been looking at flights, trains, buses, hostels, wikisites and everything else for the past few hours and am feeling slightly perplexed.

Gulliver's Travels.

I began reading Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift a long time ago and have just recently finished it. It took such a long time, not only because of the length of the book but because of it's repetitive nature. Gulliver is safe at home with his wife and children, decides to leave to make a small fortune, is wrecked upon something or for some reason deserted and discovers a new world. Once in this new world he tells his host of his home, England, and then he has the host give his response which is always a negative view of the way society as we know it was run. He then finds his way home after several years, and within months decides to leave his family and start over again. Dal Capo al Coda. It is called one of the greatest satires existing, and that must be because the entire book is straight criticism coming from the narrator and the people he lives with. It almost reminds me of how women used to make fun of other women's habits to get ahead of the group and place herself amongst men. There were some redemptive parts, and it was very interesting to read but I was just not impressed with such criticisms that did not encourage the reader to think for himself whatsoever. The mhost enjoyable part for me was actually reading the footnotes, which included where Swift came up with the names and languages of the peoples he visited, how his own expressions actually influenced common language, and explaining which parts of history Swift was mocking. All in all, my least favorite book I have read this year. I am starting Wuthering Heights, which I have become very concerned about starting due to the dramatic preface left by the historians and Emily Bronte's sister Charlotte.

The Public Library in NYC

The Sufjan Stevens Concert.

This Monday, my American friends and I went to a Sufjan Stevens concert. Matt stop reading. It was amazing. If you don't know who he is, look him up, he has some of the most beautiful folk songs and tons of up beat electro music that is really just too cool to watch being created on stage. His pianist/back up vocalist opened for him and it just kept getting better. I actually was kind of sad because I haven't heard any of his more recent songs and that was the majority of his performance, but for his encore he did my three favorite songs followed by a wave of balloons from the ceiling. I have been listening to his new songs since and have been very pleased.

Unfortunately I did not have my camera charged and only got a few shots from the beginning of the show. The finale was unbelievable.

Disneyland Paris Round Two.

Thanks to my other half and her mother, I had two free tickets to Disneyland Paris that were soon to expire. So my friend Henri and I went last Sunday to check out the park, dreading huge lines and tons of kids. But it was not very crowded, the sun wasn't too hot and it was free, so obviously we had a great time. I have already posted a blog about how Disney Paris is much different from Disneyland, but I had no pictures to show the differences. 

Wall E

They have a whole park dedicated to Hollywood.

Space Mountain has a loop and corkscrews.

 

More of that good old American decoration.

Toy Story Playground, a lot like the Bugs Life Playground.

Instead of caramel apples, it's candy apples (They don't taste as good).

Odd Treasure Island References on Adventure Island.

Pirates is so different, everything is backwards and styled the same way Disneyland was before the politically correct adjustments.

Favorite, Dragon underneath Sleeping Beauty's Castle.