Brendan and Sarah are alive and well and living in Paris...

First up, ten points if you got the title reference. (Did that sound smug? I hope so...)

Indeed we are both alive and well, with our only problems being continuing rain here in Paris (life is so full of troubles!) and the fact that we leave this wonderful place tomorrow morning.






To sum it all up is simple: We saw the usual list of suspects (Pantheon, Notre Dame, Louvre, Versailles, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coeur, Eiffel Tower etc.) but to convey the feeling of this little town is not so easy.





We have been staying in a lovely apartment in the Quartier Latin, just off my new favorite street in Paris, Rue Mouffetard. For the trivia buffs, its less than a minutes walk from Hemingway's old digs, but our place sounds nicer than his did...




The weather has been average, as I alluded to earlier, and has handicapped some of the walking around we would have liked, but nevertheless, our feet are sore and we are exhausted from a very active week. It been a wonderful time, and we can't wait to return to this view... in about a month!

The Northern Highlights

Hello!

Well, we have been to three cities since we last wrote so here goes...



We arrived, late again by 2 hours, in Helsinki on Wednesday midday after a long, squashed flight from New York. Our first Finnair flight, and it wasn't a Boeing, it was called an MD-11 or something. I swear the seats were even smaller than a 747 and it was packed. And no back of seat screen with on demand movies. Boo.

So we caught a train to the cheapest accommodation in Helsinki, Rastila Camping. It was ok, perhaps a step up from our New York place, except you had to walk a bit through snow and ice to get to the bathrooms, which meant of course that we needed to go about 10 times every night.




We had a beer from the supermarket, the only cheap thing in Helsinki, besides our cabin. Then fell asleep till 8.30. Except we didn't know if it was 8.30 at night or in the morning. Turned out it was night and we weren't going to get much more sleep that night either. I remember looking at the time at 5am and thinking "Good, I can get up soon". Unfortunately the sun doesn't rise till about 9am...




Anyway, while jet lag was my main memory of Helsinki, we did do some other things. Like eating salmon soup from a market on the harbour, which was yummy and reviving. We went to The Helsinki Design Museum, where we learned about important things like the much loved Alvar AAlto vase which seems to be one of the Finns proudest inventions (its a swirly shaped vase, like this one) and is sold in practically every shop.



We found that they also love Marimekko and the children's books about Moomin.




So after a couple of days not sleeping in our cabin we moved to this nice new hotel in the centre of the city called Hotel Glo. It was pretty plush, you could even plug your ipod into the Tivoli radio. The bed was comfy too, which was good, since the hours of lying awake till the sun came up were at least spent in comfort.

We ate a lot of salmon, soup, salmon for dinner, smoked salmon for breakfast twice and for lunch once. And B had reindeer, which was really tasty.
I liked Helsinki, it was so small and quiet, it was perfect for not doing much, but in a nice place. And the last night there it snowed like crazy, and I got to roll my suitcase through the slush in the morning which was a fun experience!

So last night we arrived in London, 2 hours late for the 3rd time out of 4 flights, and went to our hotel on the tube which was in Hoxton. There we met up with the lovely David Matthews and Gil and went and had pizza and wine and chats, which was great fun and made us excited about the moving to London part which is steadily approaching.

And I woke up at 2am, but went back to sleep straight away, yay! I was very happy this morning.

And now we have the wonderful Paris to contemplate which we have done this afternoon after an easy train journey on the Eurostar. We have an apartment in the 5th which you can see here.



And here is the view of the Pantheon from our window.




We have already eaten crepes and drunk a bottle of champagne while we cooked our own dinner for the 1st time since we left. We have been dying for homemade pasta and it was delicious!

So, we both hope that you are all going well, leave us a comment or send an email cos we are having fun, but we still miss you lots!

Au revoir, nos amis!

Goodbye New York!

Well it's our last night here and we're all packed up and ready to go. It would be really sad, but luckily we've got some more exciting places to visit before this trip is over.

We have been a bit slack with photo taking so here is one of B in Central Park the other day... How pretty!



And here I am in Battery Park. We went for a ride on the Staten Island Ferry, but unfortunately it was all enclosed because of the weather so we didn't get any good Statue photos. So you get me instead.



Sunday we went for a stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge and into DUMBO which is the area of Brooklyn between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. It was nice and quiet, lovely to escape the hustle and bustle. The city has been especially busy because of Thanksgiving weekend.



We wandered around and stumbled upon a show of Hamlet played by marionettes. Sort of. It was a bit more like actors running around playing Hamlet while carrying puppets, but oh well, it didn't really make up for our Broadway show being cancelled...

Then we ate pizza at Grimaldi's which is supposedly the best pizza in New York. It was yum.


This is the Brooklyn Bridge by night.

There's lots of other things we've done. We went on a Hip Hop Tour of Harlem and the Bronx which was interesting. It was led by a guy named Grandmaster Caz who wrote some of the rhymes for Rappers Delight. He was quite bitter about the fact that he has never been paid any money for it, but still he was entertaining and it was a good way to see these areas and imagine what they were like back in the 70s and 80s.

Today we went to MoMA and to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes. We figured it would be fun since we missed out on seeing a musical. It was pretty corny, but fun. And it has huge amounts of money put in to it. It had a 3D movie, real fireworks, falling snow, live animals (sheep, camels,a donkey!), a life size double decker bus, and the sets were amazing! They do 3 shows a day and most sell out, so I guess they can afford it.

Anyway, I could go on forever but I might only be entertaining myself, so I'll stop now.

See you in Helsinki!

New York state of mind...

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! A great day for chilling out and trying to recover from the 50+ kms we've walked since we got here on Friday.

What a city! I love this place! I can't really describe it without a bevy of worn cliches, rather I will just generally enthuse. So far the list is pretty standard - Statue of Liberty, Staten Island ferry, Alphabet City, Katz's and Tiffany's... but it's more about the feel of the place, the atmosphere. Makes Sydney feel like Yass with a nice harbour and way too much pretension...



This is from when I was doing my King Kong impression... It was incredibly cold up there, and rather windy, but what a view! I wish I could do a 360 photo or something, cos this don't do it justice.



I love Central Park! It's so massive! Incredible that wedged in between such a bustling noisy metropolis, this serene, beautiful place could exist, and on such a scale! And it makes for such nice photos...
It's easy when you have a great location and an ever better subject!



Rockefeller Centre... wish I was there...

Anyways suffice to say, believe the hype, everyone IS your friend in New York City, and it's pretty hard to beat.

Seeya!

Stevie Concert

Wow.......

Sorry, I cant rotate the images..... Here is B in his new New York oufit. HOT!


And me....




B eating Matzo ball soup at Katz's deli, do you think he's having what she had? Hmmmmm....





Here our our sideways corned beef sandwiches. mmm mmm




Hi Eamon!



Here is our crazy room in the east village. But it's cute anyway and cheap...

oh by the way, we saw Stevie Wonder last night, it was amazing, Best concert experience ever. Prince got up and played Bass to Superstition and tony Bennet sang along to For Once in my Life. And Stevie was fabulous and heaps of fun. It was too much to even properly explain.

Anyway, in the spirit of Stevie we love you all and miss you!

xxxxxxxxxxxx

More Disney Photos

We actually didn't take that many photos, sorry....



It's A Small World, done up for Xmas. The ride was different too, they sang Jingle Bells as well as Small World, but not in other languages, and everything had decorations on it. The Hanuted Mansion was also done up as Nightmare Before Xmas. It was ok, I think it's better the normal way.




B on the teacups ride.



B trying to post some postcards in Toon Town, to a talking post box...



Main Street done up for Xmas.

That's it! We were obviously having to much fun to take pictures!

We're in New York now so will post about that soon...

The Wonderful World of Disney

Here we are again having spent two long days at Disneyland and its neighbour Disney's California Adventure. Fun.



This is us riding a rollercoaster called California Screamin'. It was fast and good, but not as scary as B's face looks, but more scary than mine looks. I don't know what's happening to the guy behind us.


Here we are after getting soaked on a white water rafting ride. B actually let a stranger take our photo after being offered many times since we left.




Thank god they had beer at California Adventure. Yes!

...confidential

The LA journey continues, with yesterday being Hollywood, Beverley Hills and Rodeo Drive.
Today we went downtown, things were sure great downtown!




The new(ish) Walt Disney Concert Hall is awesome. We both agree, that it takes, nay stomps upon, the mantle from the SOH as best modern music-type place. If only it were on a decent harbour...

After that it was Olvera St for a little Mexican flavour, and then onto the freeways once more to Anaheim for some Disney action!



How good is the view from our motel here? I had heard that LA is a great big freeway, but this is ridiculous!

Anyway, there was only way to deal with it!

LA Story

Hello!
Here is me driving along the beach at Santa Monica, well I am not driving, B is. He is driving on the wrong side of the car. Arggh! So scary!



B is at the Getty Museum. What a wonderful place. We took lots of photos at sunset. Pretty... And B got to take some of his favourite water photos.



He he. I'll get in trouble for that.



After Getty we drove along Mulholland Drive back to Hollywood. Nice view.

We just ate some weird food and the waiter came and said something to me and I didn't understand so I just said Yes. Then he said 1 or 2? Wha? So I said one. Turns out he was giving me a takeaway container to put our mountain of leftover food in. Now we have enough to last till we leave LA. Cool!

So now we are drinking some gin in our suite at the guesthouse. It's really big and around the corner are all these cafes that have real coffee, except we haven't worked out what they call a flat white here, we think they call it cappucino, but a latte comes in a really big flat white cup.

Crazy Americans!

More soon....