CANAL

water! the horrors!

One of the advantages of having a brand spanking new puppy to try and keep trained and/or exhausted is getting to know some local scenery. I walk down by this canal near our apartment a lot, and the enclosed pathway has been very useful for teaching the pooch a bit of off-leash training and recall. It's quite a pretty walk and great for keeping watch on the unfolding spring season...and I imagine that without the persistent prod of a pooch that wants some outdoors time, I would never even have found out about it.

EASTER AT MEERT

The pricey but exquisitely turn of the century chocolate, pastry and tearoom known as Meert is the jewel in the Vieux Lille crown. However, aside from popping in for the occasional packet of old style syrup filled waffles (gaufres), it's not an experience I can readily afford. But window shopping is free...(and they're pretty chill about letting you take photos).

THE HUNCHBACKED CAT AND THE BLUE SHEEP

The hunchbacked cat

Rue des Deux Epees (Two Sword Street), Rues des Chats-Bossus (Hunchbacked Cats Road), Place des Oignons (Onion Place), Rue du Bleu Mouton (Blue Sheep Road)...if there's one thing you can say about Lille, it's that the street names and architecture will give you no end of distraction. The end of a small era is drawing to a close - that of my first experience living in the dead centre of a city (I've only lived rurally or in the nearby suburbs of a city before) and it has been fantastic - especially as a cyclist/pedestrian.

BRADERIE

It's all action in Lille at the moment as this weekend welcomed the nationally famous 'Braderie de Lille' (where the city basically transforms itself into a giant open air flea market). It takes place every September and about 2 million people show up and expect to be fed.

ART AND INDUSTRY

Once a municipal pool done in extravagant art-deco style, the 'piscine de Roubaix' has since been transformed into a museum although has kept many of the interior features of its former incarnation. I've been meaning to visit this spot for ages - a stunning must-do of Lille tourism tucked away unexpectedly in one of the city's less interesting suburbs. In much the same way as we all don't get around to visiting cool local stuff until we have a guest (why is that?) I took my mother here on her most recent trip over.

LILLE ZOO PART DEUX

But wait, there's more...
Some scenes from the pond;

A TRIP TO THE ZOO

At the heart of Lille's old citadelle (now a fantastic and much needed green space near the city centre) there's a free public zoo with a modest collection of animals. I head down there quite often as it's a great place to get out to breathe and unwind or catch up with friends for a stroll. Since getting my DSLR camera I've been keen to get down there and get some decent shots. So this weekend I headed over to see who was out on view...

LE CHAT BLEU

First photos with my new digital reflex (Nikon D50), at a gourmet chocolate shop in Lille.

DAY OF HAPPY

Someone has calculated that today - the 23rd of June - is the happiest day of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere at any rate). And I'll have you know that I spent this allegedly momentously joyous day on active mold duty as this apartment (told you I'd complain about it eventually) tries to pass itself off as The Best Little Sporehouse in Texas.

HOUSEWARMINGS

Current view of our internal courtyard - it's coming along gradually, and has finally evolved slightly beyond the the three primary colours of moss, putty and cement by some orange marigolds and an ornamental kumquat given to us as a housewarming present. Crossing fingers that it doesn't turn up its leaves and die within the first month (considering my criminal track record with nursery plants that are any older than 6 months and retail for anything over 20 euros  - just ask my recently departed ficus). It's only because they load them up with chemicals and grow them in perfect hermetically sealed greenhouses (i.e. their 'ideal growing environment' or some such rubbish), so that the minute you put them into the real growing world (where they might get too over or under enthusiastically watered, the pollution diluted stuff filtering through the dirty window doesn't actually count as light, and there's dust clogging up their stomatas), they just go and die ungratefully on you.

SHOPPING MAD

I don't know why I do this to myself but when it comes to clothes shopping it's rarely, if ever, a good idea to tackle a clothing quest when you specifically want something. So why oh why did I find myself braving a hot and sticky day, without sunglasses and wearing the wrong shoes (which I need to unlace, take off, put back on, relace) and the wrong pants (unzip, peel off, sob at pasty white wobbly legs in mirror, put on, rezip) as I desperately lurch from one stretch cotton mecca to another, half dying of heatstoke and ignoring a rapidly increasing thirst in search of A Pair of Jeans that Fits and Does Not look Like it's from the 80's. And try not to get distrac - ooo, that's a pretty top - by the fashion pitfalls along the way. Mission:Impossible is finding a pair of jeans, and if I get dehydrated and faint from lack of food and too much walking along the way, well, that just might make the difference between the zipper closing and not.

FOR WHOM THE BELL DINGS

Not my actual bike, but representative of the coolness of my bike - despite its lack of ding bling
Now that spring is (allegedly) on it's way, I've pulled the bike (and my ever expanding butt) out of winter hibernation and found it's had little banlieu rats nibbling away at it while it was stored in the private communal courtyard of the Paris apartment block. For starters, someone tried to have a little chomp away at the bike lock and being too lame to properly steal a bike I figure they just decided to steal the bell instead. How much street cred does that get you these days?
One thing I have learned about living in Paris is that whatever it is, if it's not nailed down, someone will steal it. The other thing about Paris - is that if it is nailed down, they will steal the nails. And then they will steal it.

NORTHERN LIVING

New life, enjoying;
- I can practically leave the pot on the boil during the time it takes me to pop out and run an errand (I also frequently do this when I go for a run around the block with scissors)
- The car is currently parked about 3m from the front door (vs the standard approximate 4km radius of Paris).
- Residents parking fees are actually very reasonable - for any country where a garden/carpark/garage is not some kind of automatic birthright
- Bike paths, everywhere bike paths
- A very spacious UNESCO classed heritage site just a short stroll away
- The fact that I hear more birds than cars, despite being in the city centre.
- Ground floor versus 5 flights no elevator (my lazy arse is happy)
- Art nouveau architecture
- Private internal courtyard...it's inside, but outside
- People actually doing recently forgotten polite things (holding open doors, stopping at pedestrian crossings, smiling, not scowling at you for daring to read on public transport)

WELCOME TO LILLE

Well, I’m slowly finding my feet. They’re slipping about all over the place in the ice and snow, but my feet are there, nevertheless. And I haven’t gone bottoms down onto the pavement yet either, so I’m pretty proud of myself all in all.

OLD BONES GET NO REST

Visiting damp tunnels full of centuries old skeletons is probably not everyones idea of a great day out, but there's something I rather like about roaming about in tunnels. And if there's one thing that Paris has got a lot of, it's tunnels. In this case, Paris' famed catacombes.

These particular tunnels were originally limestone quarries - some dating back to Roman occupation (of what was then Lutece). During the late 1700s, there were severe problems with overflowing graveyards and poor burials - especially in the region of Les Halles (once a famous marketplace, now a tragically designed commercial district). To combat the disease caused by these unsanitary conditions (becoming even more problematic during the revolution), it was decided to transfer the bodies to the former quarry sites and create mass graves.

There's something very anonymous about this sort of experience. Graveyards at least give you an indication of who each person was, but here I found myself wondering, as I looked at the rows and rows of skulls, who they were, how they lived, how they died. Though it's sure that these old bones get no rest with all us tourists wandering through day after day.

PICASSO MUSEUM

Europe on a shoestring travelling pro-tip: Museums in France are free on the first Sunday of every month. I recently took advantage of a free cultural day and strolled down to the Hôtel Salé to check out the Picasso Museum (and to compare it with the Barcelona collection...)

DAILY BREAD

Some new change that's been gnawing away at my daily routine and equilibrium. My favourite baker has shut up shop and her bakery has been taken over by new management.
Bakeries are probably the only establishment to outnumber pharmacies in a country where bread in plastic bags that is designed to last longer than 24 hours is relegated to some obscure back aisle of the supermarket. And choosing the right one is a tricky process. Bakery A does great pain au chocolat, but the croissants are too salty. Bakery B has superb buttery croissants but the chausson pommes is too gluey. Bakery C has lovely crusty baguettes, but their brioche isn't sweet enough. And even when they get it all fairly right, they also have to be NICE. You visit them every other day, so someone a bit more amiable than just tolerable is always welcome. My last local baker at Saint Ouen was fairly sour, and her pain au chocolats were underwhelming. So I was chuffed, upon moving, to find a lovely bakery very close to us, with great produce, not too expensive, and a charming funny lady running the place. It was with great dismay that I saw the 'closed - change of ownership' sign up in place a couple of weeks ago. It has recently reopened, and I have popped in once. But everything is more expensive now, the resident cat and kitten have departed, and strangely enough - I feel like a bit of a traitor.

SUMMER IN PROVENCE III

The wild Camargues horse is found only on the watery plains and salt marshes of southeastern France.

And now a quick tour around the Arles and the Camargues region, close to the Mediterranean coast - where bicycles were ridden in the wrong direction, I watched some men chasing bulls in an ancient Roman arena, wild flamingos were seen feeding in the depressingly polluted saltmarshes and I got a tan on my lower back that turned my skin a kind of deep mahogany colour that I did not know was possible...

30! HELP!

This is it.
The big three oh.
Had to happen eventually right? I remember as a teenager that I could never possibly image EVER being so old as 30. Well, it happened. All I had to do was wait, time did the rest.

JUNE IN THE DUNES

This past weekend was a fun trip up to the northern coast to hang out at a seaside(ish) apartment in Merlimont (near Touquet)