Sunday, October 25, 2009

Le Sénat

Keeping dry before the tour of the French Senate. 


The Senate is located in my absolutely most favorite gardens in Paris - Jardin du Luxembourg.  The senate is located in the palace that was built by King Henri IV's queen, Marie de Medici.  The palace, which was built in the early 1600's, resembles the Palazzo Pitti in Florence where Marie spent her childhood.



Where the Senate meets...



The throne of Napolean the 1st..




After the tour, we headed to our favorite pub along the Seine River and watched the Paris rugby game.

I love lemon!!

Tom brought home this wonderful lemon tarte for me the other night.  It was so lemony - exactly the way I love it.



Tom bought himself this wonderful chocolatey thing.  I had a small taste - it was so incredibly delicious!


Lucky for us, the patisserie is right up the road from us!

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Poor Tom!

The morning after we got home from Tunisia, Tom left for a 4 day meeting at this château.


This was Tom's front door...

The main hallway...



Jules Porges built this spectacular château in Rochefort-en-Yvelines for his wife and daughter in the late 1800's.  He descended from a prominent Austro-Hungarian family.  He was born in Vienna and was raised in Prague, where his father was a master jeweler. By the 1860s he had settled in Paris where he quickly established himself  in the diamond trade and founded Jules Porges & Company.  The château is located about 40 minutes south of Paris.

Another book signing

I went to another book signing on Thursday night at WH Smith.  The book was Elegant Entertaining:  Seasonal Recipes from the American Ambassador's Residence in Paris.  It was written by Mrs. Craig Stapleton, wife of the former U.S. Ambassador to France and Philippe Excoffier, executive chef to the American Ambassadors for more than 10 years.  The book has wonderful recipes as well as wonderful pictures of the food and pictures of the inside the US Embassy.
For the book signing, they served wonderful champagne and scrumptious little muffin/cupcake sweets.  Yum!

Tunisia, Africa

Yipee!! I'm cleared to enter Tunisia!! No H1N1 !!
Here is where we stayed...The Royal Nozha in Hammamet
The beautiful Mediterranean..
The sea was so clear...
Shopping in the souks...
Next to the Medina...


View from our room..

Our purchases!! We are really excited to start cooking in our new tagine!

Quick facts about Tunisia:
- Located in north-east Africa on the Mediterranean Sea
- Located between Algeria and Libya
- Arabic is the official language but French is widely spoken as well

Thursday, October 8, 2009

WH Smith

We went to a wonderful booking signing tonite at WH Smith at 248 rue de Rivoli. The author, Charles Timoney was signing his new book A Certain...Je Ne Sais Quoi: The Ideal Guide to Sounding, Acting, and Shrugging Like the French.

Here is Kim giving us a pre-book signing glass of French wine. Sorry Kim, I have no idea what happened to this picture. You can tell it's Kim by her wonderful smile! It looks like there were light sabers in my photo...help me Leesa!!!

Charles Timoney...

Thanks to Kim for taking this picture of me and Tom shrugging. I was supposed to be frowning but with Kim around that is not possible!!




It's so wonderful living in Paris because I have access to so many different cultural events. It only takes me about 30 minutes to get to WH Smith (2 different metros) and a very short walk. I'm enjoying every minute of my time in Paris!!

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The Man in our Bathroom

This is the "man" on one of our shower tiles who watches over the bathroom. Who do you think he looks like? This post is really about our bathtub/faucet problems. They have been going on for almost a month now. First, it started with a crack in our tub. Various plumbers came through and their views were vastly different on how to fix it. Obviously, the tub had to be replaced. Some of the plumbers said that every tile around the shower and tub had to be replaced. Some said that just half of the tiles had to be replaced. And some said that only the tiles on the front of the tub had to be replaced. This went on for weeks with a parade of French (oo la la) plumbers showing up at my door. Meanwhile, we had duct tape holding the crack together (sorry no picture). Then, the next issue was when could the work be done. Some plumbers could do it in October while others couldn't do it until December.

Well, as you can see from the following picture that our tub was replaced and only the front tiles had to be replaced. However...now the problem became the faucet. Our old faucet worked fine but for some reason it was replaced. We could only get freezing cold water or burning hot water - nothing in between. We had to use our spaghetti pot to mix the water together to get temperate water. This went on for several days while we waited for the plumber to come back.

Next, we had an upside down faucet (a bidet if you will). It did work for giving us the right temperature water .

While the faucet is turned off...a little odd..


Anywho...the good news is that the plumbers came back again tonite and now everything is wonderful again.
The owners of the apartment who paid for this are wonderful. They are a cute retired couple who live in the building next door.


Sunday, October 4, 2009

The boys go food shopping!!

So, Tom and Bob went food shopping at Carrefours yesterday. I had 2 things (more or less) on the shopping list. They found out that if they spend more than 150 € that they would get free delivery. Below is what was just delivered! I don't know where we are going to put all of this stuff!!


5K

I participated in the 5K walk/run today with the Canadian women's group. The 5K raised money for breast cancer research and the start was at the Château de Vincennes. What a great event! This year more than 14,000 participated in this event. Before the "race"...
Getting ready to go though the starting gate....


Wonderful views from the start...

And we're off...so many people ahead of us...as far as the eye can see...


Photo-op during the "race"...


Very picturesque walk..


And we made it!!! Only 1 hour and 11 minutes and 10 seconds after we started!!!


Celebrating at the finish line!



Merci beaucoup, Diane, for coordinating the "race" for us!!