cyclists on the champs elysee

et voilà, le tour de france arrive à paris.
(isn't that bruce willis?)

le tour de france

the country's obsessed with it: some 3500km of hard bicycle slog. and a yellow shirt. and also, the lesser well known spotted shirt. (the white with red spotted shirt is awarded to the bloke who does the best in the mountains). this year's race started with all sorts of pomp and ceremony in london before it traversed la manche (or the english channel, depending on what side of it you are) and headed for the hills. up and down. i don't know how they do it- especially being as we've been up and down quite a few of them in our non spotted shirt winning peugeot. oh, now here's the crazy bit: this week the dude who had the yellow shirt, a danish bloke, was kicked out for failing to do a blood test at the appropriate moment (and then making up a big story about where he was as opposed to where he actually was...) and so he lost the yellow shirt to a spanish guy. now spanish guy isn't so good at the time trials (different type of race they do on the flat bits to keep the punters interested) and today was nearly beaten by an australian. nearly. so, (you can exhale) he retains the yellow shirt. pascal spends whole afternoons watching the race. it is a little addictive- if only to see what the next drama/accident will be.
tomorrow is the final day and the cyclists will be zooming in to paris, up the champs elysee. so guess where we'll be going? oh, i'm very excited.
we'll be off on our tour de france soon. might as well being as paris will be shut.
xx
b

fromage

for a reason i haven't yet manage to fathom, the whole of paris goes on holiday for the month of august. the pharmacist goes on holiday and closes his shop. the cafe owner goes on holiday and closes the cafe. having nowhere to get the coffee in the morning the boutique owner closes shop and buggers off as well. the boulangerie, seeing its clientele reduced drastically exchanges the patisserie flour for beachside sand, on holiday..... the market stalls stop. the metro is reduced. even my knitting lady at the local wool shop has bought the ticket. the city goes on holiday.
for the 3 remaining parisians i imagine that life is a bit of a misery dealing with tourists and the city heat. so the mayor of paris makes little gifts available to soften the edges of this hardship. like paris plage. importing thousands of tonnes of sand and dumping it on the seine banks, putting in potted palms and little umbrellas, the beach comes to paris.
and, like free parking. yes, for the month of august residential street car parking in our district is free.
but, this is august. not july. and for some reason the cheese vendors seem to have packed up shop and gone to the hills early. we're lucky enough to have 2 markets nearby that alternate days where we do a lot of our shopping. the markets are lively, with the vendors competing for the euro in your pocket yelling "un euro, un euro, un euro" and then something else that's probably enticing you to buy from them. but not the cheeseman. oh no. monsieur le fromager is noticibly absent. no wafty cheese smells invading tender nostrils at these markets. so what's the alternative: the supermarket? oh, i hear you saying: what's a pregnant woman doing taking such an interest in cheese... we're in france!!! there's no such thing as 'tasty cheese'!!!! (all cheese here is tasty) but, ventures into the supermarket to search the alternative expose that really, there aren't any. what am i supposed to limit myself to la vache qui rit? (little plastic cheese triangles, and anyway, i have a firend who worked at the factory who says its made from camembert that fell on the floor). seriously. if there really was such an issue with cheese the french nation would cease to exist. obviously, i'm avoiding all super manky, stinky, mouldy cheeses. and some cheeses do smell a bit 'ripe'.
so, august looms, next week its curious arrival has us all on the edge of our seat. the museums are already filling up while the little 'local' cafes close down. apart from the supermarket i don't know where else to shop. it will be a little strange to have parked up in a city that has gone on holiday and to be overwhelmed by loud tourists when they're nearly my least-favourite creatures. especially being as i'm neither parisien nor french.

updated

friends, we've changed our front page. we've added a few pictures (including pictures to older blog entries), edited our profile.

this, i guess, heralds the beginning of the new era.

i hope you'll follow us on this journey as well
xx
b

new journeys

many of you will be familiar with this type of picture; some of you won't.
this is a picture of our future, our child, 7 weeks old and the size of a bean (currently called harry, as in, haricot).
happy and lucky? totally elated, and equally scared...
and what a new beginning this is. is this the point when we say: that's it? hanging up the backpack?? folding up the map?? getting out the knitting needles!
well, maybe. but this is a completely different journey now, a journey into the real world of grown-up parenthood. oh, we've talked about it for a long time; but now it's there, now it's an actual moving, little soul, its heart beating...
so, steps along the path: pascal has applied for and been granted his visa for NZ- he has the rite to stay for 2 years and in between times apply for residancy;
we've bought the ticket home: one way ticket to chch. oh, i know it's not the first, and possibly not the last.
is it safe to talk about plans now? i mean, now we've actually got someone else who is making them for us!
i don't think that i'll be hanging up the backpack forever (got to use it to get home yet!); it's just going into storage- the journey that we're about to undertake needs a different type of backpack ;)

and yes, i will keep you posted
xxx
b&p &h

bastille day

14th of july, bastille day- french national holiday celebrating revolutions and be-headings and overthrowing of bourgeois establishment and giving the power to the people.
in fact it's not about that at all, so it seems.
there're are concerts all around the town on bastille eve, finishing with firework displays. on the day itself (the french don't refer to it as jour de bastille at all, they just call it 14th of july) there are huge military parades up the champs elysee, the president has a wee speach and then the french airforce puts on an aerial display. it's a great song and dance. it's a great show of excess wealth and opulence. it's not terribly ecologically sound. and despite all this i was awake very early yesterday morning, as excited as a 5 year old; camera at the ready- our apartment has a great view of the air parade.
the day finishes with a bal populaire (an outdoor ball) and lots of people all patriotic and happy. normally, feeling extra patriotic and super strong, a french dude will win today's yellow shirt in the tour de france; but today he was beaten by a german (and a coupla spaniards). oh well.

views

i'm sat in paris, our apartment overlooks pere lachaise cemetery. a little over to the left (say, between 10 and 11 o'clock) is montmartre and sacre coeur; further to the left is la defence and if you poke your head out the window you can see la tour eiffel. quite a view.
the sky is grey, not a menacing take-your-umbrella-out grey, but more like a (clouds:) "we can't be bothered to go to england so we'll just stay here" type grey; sun squeezing through every half hour or so just to fool the tourists who think they're having a summer holiday in paris. the view changes with the light. obviously the big things stay in the same place, but depending on the angle and brightness of the sun, and how deep or menacing the clouds are, the horizon can change drastically. for example, the other day, just before a huge and scary storm, la defence (paris' central business district) looked like a huddle of evil giants plotting to take over the city and sacre coeur, bathed in white light, was going to be our saviour. 10 minutes later with a quick cloud reshuffle sacre coeur started to look a little less sacred and la defence stood round looking a bit puzzled, wondering what they were doing there....
i like this little corner of paris. the cemetery is filled with large trees, (nourished by all those dead people i guess) and is rather soothing to the eye. it's on the edge of a rather large jewish/arab district (kid you not, i'm sure if you put the mayor of paris in charge of the gaza strip it'd all be fine) which means i can buy humous at every supermarket. it's not far from bastille and being as it's nearly bastille day that's not bad.
the horizon is an early geometry lesson: rectangular box apartments, triangular church spires, cranes and aerials.

the circle

so, how long has it been since i wrote? despite promises of updates, with photos. i wouldn't be at all surprised if you haven't nodded off or, that indeed, you've buggered off completely. oh you've never been far from my mind, dear reader, i compose blog entries in my head daily. but as for getting round to tapping the keys....
so, right. new leaf and all that. new leaf. and quite rightly too.

blog entry title is the circle. because that was life is all about really, completing/creating circles. but before i get into that i shall quickly (sorry) describe the last month (ooh, is it nearly 2? dreadful!)

voyage to prague was as expected but at the same time not quite. i fully expected there to be some sort of family ordeal (you've met my family? you understand! bless em) especially being as my bro was bringing along his girlfriend and therefore changing the whole family dynamics: new girl vs old girl? (please, no offence meant here) but in fact none of that occurred at all. the dramas were all from my bro! and once he got them out of his system everything was all good. beer (no pastis) and lots of food- shopping aside i think we all went home a coupla kilos heavier.

zip- prague-geneva-chamonix- lyon... pop in on some friends; zap- lyon- marseille les goudes, where we were very kindly lent a little holiday home by the sea to lounge about in for a coupla days, profiteering from all the sunshine and sea air before we went off to provence.

provence: lavender, olives, wine: my favourite consumables. an outdoor aromatherapy session in the nature- and oh the nature!!! an escaped garden. we camped a few days in the verdon gorge, a climbers' mecca, and slowly wandered a few trails while we were there. i say slowly not because we were unfit (oh no, 5 months at 2000m altitude makes you into wonderwoman when you're at sea level again! despite... g of tobacco and....l of wine per week) but because i had to stop every 20 metres to inspect some wee plant or other.

and then we went to corsica.

well, when i was a wee thing i read asterix in corsica (in fact i read most of the series- it's where i learnt my history of france) and was quite taken by it for some reason, deciding that some day, amongst the already growing list of places, i would go there. and, well, some years later, our little peugeot rolled off the ferry into the bright ajacio sunshine and we hit the corsican road. first destination was one of the islands most important archealogical sites: filetosa. first occupied by humans some 9000 years ago this impressive site is covered by carved menhirs (of the type that obelix would deliver) which more than resembled large penises. all this before lunch! and a good thing too. by midday it was unbearably hot- not even the Windows Open While Driving (WOWD) aircon was sufficient.... so we zoomed towards the coast and parked up, set up the tent and went to the beach!!!!
oh la la la la, la mediteranee!!! how beautiful. the beach!!! golden sand, azur sea and totally cloudless sky.
in actual fact this poses a large problem for your average lazy as all buggery freeloaders like ourselves. if left alone we'll quite happily get out of the tent at about 1030ish, smoke, drink coffee- 1130ish, bathroom activities and weyhey- we're ready for action at midday. midday, corsica: 30odd degrees. no time for hitting the beach or walking off into the hills. time for a siesta!!!
in an effort to combat this dilemna we discussed getting up early (like 9) but getting up that early requires consuming another meal and by the time you've gotten down to the boulangerie for a croissant and all that- well, the extra time is gone! even earlier you say? well, probably not a bad idea as they seem to sell out of croissants before 830!!!
(here's some mathematics for you: people on 2 week holiday are obliged to get up and hit the streets early- an hour and a half lounging in bed every morning over 14 days is a whole day lost!!! this is why we take month long holidays)
anyway, we never managed to figure out that dilemna in the whole time we were there. in fact the last day was the only day that saw us getting up early and that was because we were catching the ferry.
ok, sorry, getting side tracked.
corsica is quite rightly referred to as l'île de beauté (the island of beauty) and it swings gaily between ragged coastline, huge, dominant mountains and quaint little towns perched on the edge of them both. its incredibly rich and long history includes being dominated by, protected by/from, bought, sold and damn near discarded by every european power since the year dot. the language is closer to italian than french and i didn't see one single donkey the whole time i was there (which was the only real disappointment).
but i think it's best you just go there and see for yourself.
aiie corsica. it will remain close to my heart for the rest of my life.

so, back to the circle.
after corsica we went back to the alps to collect our belongings- (very wierd after feeling like i had closed that door). and despite slight emotional upheaval the alps were absolutely breath taking: green green soothingly green, carpeted in alpine flowers with bell-wearing cows, tourists and cyclists all over the shop. we followed former tour de france routes and could sense the pain in mounting the extremely high, thin aired summits. (we were travelling in a fully laden maggie after all)
and then down the other side, back through lyon, side step through haute-marne and circle almost complete: paris.
paris.
paris.........
well, i have a whole other blog entry coming on now. a proper explanation for the real meaning of the circle. it might be a whole novel's worth. and i will write it.
soon
i promise
xxxxx
b
oh, and of course- attach photos ;)