I reach the penultimate Paris post with a simple couple of photos:

Here’s the Champs-Elysees looking toward the Arc de Triomphe. I love the blue lights on all the trees that frame the Arc so nicely.

As far as I can tell, this Ferris Wheel was put up ‘temporarily’ in 2000 and has been in the Place De Concorde ever since, sitting halfway between the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe ever since. When IM Pei’s pyramid was built, people freaked out about it not fitting in with its surroundings. Meanwhile, this Ferris wheel breaks up one of the more famous stretches of city in the world, and I didn’t even know it was there until I was walking towards it. Still, I think this photo is pretty cool with the ferris wheel sitting in front of the obelisk.

Ok, I have a number of posts for Paris and I have no particular order. My time there was short and it was mostly spent in the basement of a building setting up the new network, but the free time I had I feel as though was well spent.

My last trip to Paris, which I still haven’t posted about (the film is still on 2 disposable cameras), I ate very well. Two or three of the meals I had were just amazingly satisfying. However, it was during these times that the stress of knowing very little French was overwhelming. It’s very hard to look at a menu and have no clue what 1/2 of it is. So there’s a little adventure involved. This time around, my first night was a late night (finished work around 9:30pm) and I let my French coworkers choose and they wanted Italian. Good pizza, but not French food. My second night, I wanted French food, but I was tottering around exhausted and didn’t want to stress too much about it. I found a review in a crappy guidebook I had about a place that pretty much did steak called Le Relais De l’Entrecote. So I braved the cold and trekked out to find it. I walked up to it, realizing it was a Saturday and worried it would be a little full. Well, it was packed to the gills. Being very tired, I ended up settling for a baguette, cheese, swiss cookies and some Belgian beer. Not bad, but not quite the same.

Sunday rolled around and I decided that this place seemed intriguing. It was in a posh section of the VIIe arrondissement but the street it was on was full of mostly quiet, relaxed restaurants and this one was teeming. I figured, Paris being a city of late, marathon dinners, I would go near there and see when they began seating people. I showed up around 6pm and the place is pitchblack. But there’s already 4 people waiting out front and a sign on the door shows they open for dinner at 7pm on Sundays. Still, it’s completely dark inside. It’s freezing, so i head down the street a ways to get a beer and warm up. I show up at a quarter to seven and the line has only increased to about 8-10 people in front of me but the restaurant is still empty and dark. It nears 7pm and the line is about 20 people. Suddenly, at almost exactly 7, I see a couple of people stirring inside (you knew it was 7pm because the Eiffel Tower was completely lit at the top of the hour). Then, the lights flip on, the doors open and they start seating us.

I didn’t have to worry about my crappy language skillz because there was no menu. I got a nice seat i a corner to take in all the action and a friendly waitress wearing some sensible version of a french maid outfit. She asked if I wanted wine (yes, a house red please), water (still) and how I wanted my steak (medium). Meanwhile, in 10 minutes, the place was full, a line for the second seating was forming already. They started with a nice simple salad of greens, walnuts and some sort of mustard-based dressing. They have a private label house red which was nice.

Then out came the steak and frites:

The frites were tasty and the steak was nicely cooked. The sauce was interesting. Apparently, it’s one of those ‘we’ll never tell you the secret ingredients’ kind of sauces. There was definitely olive oil and mustard in it (they like mustard), but beyond that, I have no idea. But it was all really really good. Even crazier, the portion seemed a little small, but I was feeling happy and mopping up the sauce with some bread when out comes my waitress with another portion. Seconds! Cool! I finished it off with a helping of Lemon Sorbet soaked in a shot of Vodka. The dessert was when it was revealed that they technically have a menu. It’s for wines (but everyone was having the house red) and desserts.

So basically, they march people in and they serve you one dish that they do very well. I’ve never been to a restaurant where people are waiting outside for it to open. They operated on their own schedule and they knew what they were doing. I walked out full and very content to find there was still a line standing out in the freezing cold. Another successful French meal! Here’s the inside which was nicely decked out and felt like a large French bistro:

Last night, after a late dinner preceeded by a long day at work, I was walking back to my hotel which is right off Boulevard Haussmann. This also happens to be conveniently where the very large department stores are located. And, for the holidays, they appear to go all out. The exteriors are decked out in many many lights and the displays are linked together in winter themes, all done very nicely. It might have been 11pm and the stores might have been closed, but the windows were crowded with people checking out what the offerings this season were. Allow me to demonstrate pictorally:

This store takes up a city block and the entire store is covered in lights. It’s very impressive to check out.

The next block is home to Au Printemps. Even without the lights, I think this would be an amazing 19th century building (just look at the sign on it). Their lights were a little more subtle but had strobes flashing as accents as well.

I mentioned the window displays. Here are a couple of samples from Au Printemps

Every other window contained scenes of automated marionettes. This is a chorus of owls which would raise their wings in unison. A band is playing to the right of the photo. There were also scenes of foxes and deer.

In between the whimsy were the more classic windows with maneqins but still fit with the white winter theme of the more lively windows.

Another month, another trip to a European city 🙂

Here’s  my standard ‘suitcase in front of hotel bed pic’

The trip had a very cool beginning. The Eurostar to Paris has moved stations from Waterloo to St Pancras. They’ve taken a classic old station and fixed it up very nicely. On top of that, they’ve built dedicated rail through South London, which is notoriously conngested which means you can get to Paris in 2hrs 15min. Even better, St Pancras is literally 15 minutes from my flat, which means I can get from London to Paris in about 2 1/2 hours. Very cool. Here’s a shot of the trainshed at the station (I believe it’s one of the biggest in the world):

I’m here for work which has gone very smoothly so far. Coming up, some damn cool shots of Paris at Christmastime.

With almost 300 stops and a penchant for having names that sound a little odd to American ears (Cheapside, Elephant and Castle, Wapping), you would think it would be hard to come up with the funniest tube station name (which would likely correspond to a name of an area). Well, let me tell you, it’s not even close. I’ll give you a hint:

(It ain’t Heathrow)

Not only in the stop in question snicker worthy (I’m not the only one. I swear!), but it’s the end of the line for the Picadilly line which means you get to hear it multiple times when going north/eastbound and you get signs like the one above just screaming it at you. 🙂

Someday soon, you’ll have a picture of me at that stop. And I’ll have to find a pub in the area.

After seeing the vast array of history and culture that the British Museum has to offer, it was time for a little something different. Look at the two images below and please write a 5000 word essay on the differences:

An Egyptian mummy in the museum

An “Egyptian” statue at Harrods surrounded by luxury goods 🙂

I go in circles to say Carolyn and my next stop on our little London tour day was Harrod’s which is one of those gigantic department stores. It’s very large and is very beautiful but it’s quite different from a museum. We were most curious about the food hall since neither of us is much of a shopper. It was impressive, but the numbers of people got a little overwhelming:

We decided to check out some of the less crowded parts of the store and take in the wide array of goods to be purchased.

If you thought I was done with the British Museum after my first trip, you are sorely mistaken. Carolyn and I decided to hit up a little culture while she was in town and, when I found out she had never been, we hopped a train to see some of the British Museum. Last time, I focused on the large monumental Egyptian pieces that had been ‘acquired’ from that part of the world. This time around, it was time for the funerary practices. That’d be mummies. Cool!

When you think of Egyptian burials, you think the iconic image of King Tut. However, when a civilization lasts in various forms for 4000 years, the trends differ, sometimes in small ways sometimes in large ways. For example, as Egypt lost it’s independence to the Romans, you suddenly start seeing the style of the portraits on the front of the coffins/sarcophagus’ take on a very Roman look. There’s one in the museum’s collection that is actually a frieze that looks like something found in Pompeii. There were also different types of wrapping. Depending on the person, the quality of what they were bured in could be quite different.

This was a very well-to-do citizen’s sarcophgus. These are the two inner-most parts of her burial. She was buried like one of those Russian dolls with layer upon layer of coffin.

Since the Egyptians belief in the after-life was that you ended up in a world not unlike the temporal world, they wanted to make sure you had everything you needed to live a good life. So they added things like food, coins and, in this picture above, beer to your tomb so you could enjoy a nice ale (right) while chilling out for eternity.

Since Carolyn had never been to the museum, we back-tracked to the monumental Egyptian section so she could see the large statues and the Rosette Stone. This allowed my to get a picture of the arm that used to be part of a very large statue:

It’s not 100 feet long, but it’s pretty big. 🙂

So my company in the US has had some cool locations for their holiday party’s the last few years. We dined next to a Tyrannosaurus Rex 2 years ago and last year, we ate with the fishes at the Aquarium. Now, the setup in the UK isn’t quite as large scale, but they managed to put on a nice party for us anyway. It was a little cramped, but I imagine it’s harder to find a space to fit 150 people for dinner. The best part, as I’ve mentioned, was that Carolyn flew into town. So, I got to introduce her to people who she’ll see quite a bit more of very soon. Alas, most of the photos I took look like shit, but here’s at least one picture of me and Carolyn:

Note my new suit! That was quite amusing. I’ve never been known to dress nicely at work and my coworkers, none of whom are known for wearing nice clothes either, were all shocked at how I managed to clean up 🙂

Anyway, tomorrow’s a little touristy fun in London, so I’ll be sure to have more pictures.

The New River isn’t a river at all but a man-made aqueduct built in the early 1600s to provide water to London as the city grew. Originally, it stretched almost 40 miles north of the city using gravity to bring the water down to London. Today, it officially terminates about a mile north of my flat, but it used to carry the water just west of my office. Now, the unused above-ground sections have been converted into a park and create a beautiful way to see some green in the city. As luck would have it, it’s the best way for me to get from my flat to the nearby farmer’s market. Since I like to walk along it often, I thought I get some photos of it while I went to pick up some meat and veg this fine Sunday morn.

A beautiful fall day along the New River. Since the river no long supplies water to anyone, many parts have got algae on it. But this section is still clear.

A nice bridge across part of it.

I am amazed at some of the cool wildlife you can still find here. One day, I’ll have my camera around when I see a fox. The bird pictured above likes to hang out along the river, as I’ve seen him a few times. I know absolutely nothing about birds, so I don’t know the type of bird this is. He’s pretty well conditioned to having people around as you can see how close I can get to snap a photo.

For those of you unaware, Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated here. Yeah, yeah, it’s a complete shocker. However, this being only the second Thanksgiving I’ve celebrated without my family, I wanted to do something other than work. Since part of this holiday has always been a little about excessive eating, I wanted a place that would mimic that well. I managed to wrangle up a few other coworkers and set about trying to get a booking at some place that would fit the needs of a Thanksgiving meal. I’d previously been to a pub somewhat near my flat which seemed to fit the bill called the Marquess Tavern. It has plenty of interesting beers, but the more important part was the choice of beef. To order it, you select a weights of beef from a chalkboard:

You pick the weight you want and it comes out freshly cut from the bone along with some green vegetables, potatoes, gravy and yorkshire pudding. We picked #1 and #6 which meant we ordered 5.5lbs of beef. Half of that (it came out on two plates) would look like this:

Tasty food! We managed to finish it all and felt good and full afterwards :). For those of you interested, here would be my companions for this years Thanksgiving:

On the left are Bhavin and Christiaan and on the right are Ben and Hang. It was a very international little group. We ate, imbibed and generally had a jolly old time.

The interior is very nice as well.

Anyhoo, there was no turkey or family, but it was a fun time. I’m hoping to try to get as many people as possible together sometime next year (yikes! that’s pretty close) and see how many of the choices of meat we can knock off the chalkboard.

It was a dark and stormy night. The fellowship of Froddo, Bilbo, myself, Dina and Adrian were in a tight spot. Do we take a hike in the woods, unprotected with no hope of a beer at the, or do we journey to the town of Adrian’s birth, where his kinsman still live and the pubs are a plentiful?

In this case, we chose to check out Shoreham-by-Sea, which happens to be where Adrian grew up and much of his family still lives. After my very very quick trip to Stockholm, I landed at Gatwick Airport which is about halfway to Brighton. So I decided to take a little overnight trip down to say hello. After a festive evening, we figured it was a lovely Saturday to take a little walk and get some exercise. Our choices were many, but the walk from Bramber to Shoreham sounded pretty and gave me a chance to see some English towns I’d not yet seen. The walk began in Bramber and meandered along the River Adur which, as Anne pointed out, sounds like it’s right out of Tolkien. The walk itself was about 5 miles and allowed us to see a number of cute villages, a gently flowing river, an old cement factory/chalk quarry and a few churches. Come hither and I shall show thee:

Bramber used to be home to a large Norman castle. During the English Civil War, Cromwell had a number of these castles torn down. Only the one wall you see in the distance remains (as well as some of the foundation). It must have been very impressive when it was in one piece.

After soaking in a little history, we decided to hit the local pub. It’s a cute old pub/inn.

Here is the River that traverses Middle Earth. At its widest, it was about double this length. Near Shoreham, we even got to cross the remnants of a very rickety bridge that apparently still had car traffic over it into the 1970s. After a nice walk along the river with a detour to Botolphs, we reached our destination.

No not the Red Lion Inn. Shoreham! This pub used to be where coaches would stop for the night. The wooden beams make the ceiling so low, I couldn’t stand up straight near the bar. Good selection ales, happy vibe.

Once we reached Shoreham, we met up with Adrian’s mum and made merry until it was time for me to return to the land of London and my cute kitties. As always, it was a pleasure to spend a little time out of the city and see the beauty that is the English countryside.

While taking a walk along the River Adur (not Ardur!) with Dina and Adrian, we came upon the Parish Church of St Botolph. Apparently, this parish now only numbers 50-60, but the church is significant because the main part of it is from about 950, making it one of the oldest churches still standing in England. It was always designed to service the nearby farming communities. St Botolph is pretty obscure but he’s apparently the patron saint of travelers. The church is situated in an isolated feeling section of southern England. It’s only about 3.5 miles from Shoreham, which has about 20,000 people living there, but you wouldn’t know to come walking upon it.

The tower part is somewhat newer (if you consider the 13th century to be new).

Apparently Anglo-Saxon churches tend to be of simple decorations and design, but it’s got a nice quiet contemplative feel to it. And the acoustics in all these old structures is always impressive.

Greetings once again from Stockholm. I had one of the weirdest flights here. I ended up flying a low cost Danish carrier called Sterling. Until I got on the plane, I didn’t actually see a single person directly employed by them. The ticket counter had some company called Servisair. The gate just had some Gatwick employee. And, until I was on the plane, I could have managed to have no idea who I was flying with. Zero branding. Very odd in this day and age. Even better, they left the gate early. They had everyone on the plane, so they left 10 mintues early. And Stockholm is so efficient, I was off the plane and on the train to the city centre in 15 minutes. That’s getting off the plane, passport control, baggage claim, buying a ticket and an elevator down to the train. And the train goes like 100mph. Sweet.

Anyway, here’s yet another shot of another hotel room. This is another 2 day trip in and out. But it’s freezing and there’s only like 5 hours of daylight this time of year anyways 🙂

Living in a capitol city has some major perks. One of them is the abundance of free museums. In my younger days (my first trip to London 15 years ago — wow!) I was amazed and awed by the British Museum. So, you would think, living a train or bus ride away, I’d be there every weekend. Stupid me, I hadn’t gone even once in 7 months. This past weekend, I vowed to change that and see how the place sized up when I was older and wiser.

Well, it’s still pretty impressive. It doesn’t feel as large and some of the pieces I remembered are smaller, but still very big (more on that in a minute). But it’s still an amazing museum. I need to book some tickets for Carolyn and myself to see the terracotta warriors this spring. But for my first of many trips back, I chose to focus on the Egyptian (non-mummy) part of the museum. I figure, with free admission, I can just pop in for an hour and really check out each part. So that’s what I did.

The classic front to the museum. I love how it’s on this seemingly tiny little charming street filled with old book and antique shops as well as a decent tourist pub and other touristy kind of food.

After you enter the main entrance, you find yourself in the Great Court which is definitely not the same as it was 15 years ago. It’s a decent combination of old and new and the glass roof gives a sensation of being outside without actually being there so you can still have works of art out in the open.

This head was part of a large statue. When I talked about how huge things felt merely big now, this would be it. Next to the head is the arm of the statue. In my younger days, I remember it being 100 feet long. Now, it’s a mere 20 feet long which would still make the full statue gigantic 🙂

This is the crown of the museum and a perfect example of colonialism taking other country’s heritage. The Rosetta Stone has the same text in Hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek. It allowed people to finally understand the language of Ancient Egypt. What I find even more fascinating is that, by the time the stone was carved, no one really used Hieroglyphics for writing. It was the original written language of the Egyptians. However, as the written language evolved from pictures and symbol into more abstract characters, it was used more for ceremonial and religious purposes. Demotic (the language below it and more recognizable as a language to our modern eyes) was the day to day written language of the literate Egyptian. Greek, at this point, was the language of official Egypt, the language of the government.

What’s sometimes even harder to realize is that most people of this time couldn’t read any of these languages. Until the printing press and the Industrial Revolution democratized the written language by allowing for mass production of words, literacy was something that was unobtainable to most people. It wasn’t until the 19th and 20th century that literacy began to spread far and wide (particularly through the industrialized world — there’s still many people who cannot read or write).

Anyway, that was my first trip to the British Museum. It’s made me think and made me marvel at some amazing things. I don’t know which part will be next, but I hope to share it with you here.