Month: November 2019

Radiotherapy has started, I had my machine line-up on Friday last week and then I went to catch a train to head to Paris. This last minute trip came about as a friend was flying home from a conference and had to go via Paris, so we decided to catch-up for the weekend. I arrived to a very wet Paris, but thankfully I knew that my hotel wasn’t too far away. So off I headed, one of the things I love about old cities is you can turn a corner and just find something, such as the Fontaine George Cuvier – here is the link to the Wiki page – I didn’t take a photo as it was dark, raining and I had my bags and an umbrella – https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontaine_Cuvier
After getting to the hotel, I dried off, unpacked my bag to check for anything that had got wet – thankfully nothing and I went to meet K at the Metro. What I wasn’t expecting to see on my walk to the metro was the burnt Notre-Dame cathedral – it is interesting you can still smell the burnt wood, and that is from across the river – I smelt it before I saw it! After K and I meet up we popped into a nearby Brasserie for our dinner and low and behold another fountain in our view – Fountaine Saint Michel – this wiki page is in English – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontaine_Saint-Michel

The following day, and after breakfast at our hotel, we headed out for a walk across the river through the Louvre heading for Galleries Lafayette Haussmann as I had always wanted to see the building. It isn’t that much from the outside, but my goodness the inside is fantastic. And they had their Christmas tree up – which I actually co-ordinated with as I was wearing a bright pink jumper. After a very expensive and very nice glass of Champagne we headed off to find somewhere for lunch. A small creperie was located after much searching – we wanted something light – we headed to the Metro to only discover that we couldn’t get to the station we wanted to go to because of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests). I hadn’t realised that it was a year since the protests had started, and to be honest I hadn’t seen any protesting since summer. So after a rethink about what to do we walked back over the river to the Musee D’Orsay – took one look at the queue and decided it was insane and I must admit by this stage I was shattered, I had just done too much walking. So instead we headed for Café de Flore – one of oldest coffee houses in Paris – where we sat for 45 minutes drinking one of the best hot chocolates I’ve ever had. Then back to the hotel for a bath and a rest before heading out for dinner. My fit app on my phone stated that we had done over 10km of walking!!!

Sunday we decided to head out of the hotel for breakfast, so after signing out and leaving our luggage, we headed off to a local café for an omelette and a coffee – coffee in Paris is much more expensive than my local area – around double the price! But as we both felt like eggs for breakfast it was a much an enjoyable breakfast. We were again on foot – off to the Musee D’Orsay and as it had only been open for 30 minutes – no queue – we headed through security and dropped our coats off at the cloak room (interesting that we still call them that and not coat rooms?) and off to the top of the gallery to see the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. It is interesting what art speaks to you at different times of your life, I loved a self Portrait by Van-Gogh (the shades of blue were just wonderful) and I was really enjoying work by Odilon Redon – someone I hadn’t recalled noticing previously. There are some photo’s below. We finally had to leave the gallery and by this stage decided that taking the metro as far as we could back to our hotel would be a good idea, so this we did. We then went to a restaurant near our hotel, called Le Passage, for both of us definitely the best meal we had the whole time we were in Paris. We parted ways, both feeling incredibly full and I walked back to the station to get my train – this time through a garden – which had a Wallaby enclosure??? Back on the train with a snack and the realisation that I was getting a cold, so as I write this, I’m in bed trying not to feel sorry for myself as I have a sore throat and a bunged up nose. But it was worth the cold for a wonderful weekend in Paris.

For now, à bientôt, from our wonderful part of France – Delia

After the exciting week in Champagne it all feels a bit flat. We are in a kind of limbo, unable to travel much whilst Delia is undergoing her radiotherapy. This happens every weekday until a week after Christmas – apart from a day off at Christmas and one for New Year’s Day. So even though I have my visa (and our houshold belongings are currently on the high seas voyaging to Oz), we are still hurrying up to wait before we can go ourselves. We have to get Delia’s treatment completed before we go, I wouldn’t want to interrupt that but I don’t have to like it.

Not a lot happened this week, we did pop over to our (ex) language teacher for a visit, and several other people turned up later too. Also, last night we had our first “dinner party” well, two friends for dinner anyway. We have had visitors but this is the first time they’ve gone home straight afterwards 🙂

The weather has often been cold and wet though, as usual for here, the afternoons often fine up. Stirred up by the release of a totally unaffordable new Sony camera I have been playing around with my existing Sony camera. The new one can do a lot of fancy low light things and I managed to find a tutorial that did something similar in photoshop using my own one with many shots (60 in fact). Below is a shot of La Jolie Maison at night. Low light shots need to be extra sensitive (high ISO for what its worth) and this can lead to a lot of random flaws on a photo. Taking lots means these can all be put together, the two crops below it show the difference.

And below that is a panorama of my regular morning walk, its still sunny albeit a bit chillier.

I’m sitting on the couch writing this, whilst looking out the window (hey I’m a touch typist I don’t have to look at the keys/screen) at the absolutely foul weather we are having here. It feels like winter and yesterday was identical. Though having such hideous weather did make me feel that yesterday it was fine not to go outside, not get out of the pj’s, light the fire and just chill for the day. It was a lovely time, watching some You Tube videos, reading my book, playing a game or two, very relaxing. Today would have been identical but one of our friends is having a birthday tomorrow and is having a little get together later this afternoon so we will be heading out into the wind and the wet.

It has in all honesty been a very quiet week. Monday I had an appointment at the hospital to explain the radiotherapy and to have the preliminary scans. This went very smoothly and once again we were very thankful for our translator as there were a lot of questions to answer and information to go through. Radiotherapy starts mid November. I’ll put a more detailed blog up about this on my fit & fab blog later in the week.

The rest of my week was quiet, we worked, walked Siena – and I was even able to get up on Friday and do the walk to the boulangerie and back – this hasn’t happened in a very long time. It’s been nice to have my energy back, unfortunately I do know with the start of radiotherapy that this will once again decrease – but thankfully not until the end of the treatment.

I’ve started a new painting in art class, I was at a bit of a loose end as to what to paint this time, as last week I actually took my rooster picture back and did a bit of a background on him – I felt he needed it (after Pat suggested it). I’ll put the before and after photo’s below.

For now, à bientôt, from our wonderful part of France – Delia