Archive for May, 2006
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au revoir, France.
By Karen | Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 | No Comments »
Kurt and I have arrived in Montpellier today to await our morning train to Barcelona. It was our last day with our beloved little red Renault Clio, which despite her tininess, served us well these past 5 days in Provence. We loved her so much that we’ve decided to name a future pet cat Clio. Kurt seemed against the idea of using it on a daughter. Personally I think it a cute name.
I am in the process of trying to upload all the photos we’ve taken so far. That is roughly 500 of them! The super-slow connection in Cassis took an hour to upload just 28 pictures but this cybercafe we’ve found near the train station in Montpellier is a gamer’s paradise so we’ll have no problem here.
Highlights thus far: the Eiffel Tower at night; Cafe Rousillon in Paris; being in the belfry when the bells tolled on the Notre Dame; driving wild Provencal roads; feeling like we landed on Mars at the peak of Mont Ventoux; seeing a donkey; saying place names in a French accent and being correct (Manitoba should learn something from this); going totally in the wrong direction in Montpellier that we nearly shorted the car on a tram-only bridge; seeing Kurt successfully speak French; dipping our toes in the Mediterranean.
Observations thus far: the ‘walk’ signal is a green man; every stop sign says ‘STOP’; the pop radio station DJs must all be cloned; wine at lunch is much cheaper than ordering sparkling water (though our newfound love of Badoit will make us search Vancouver for it); you can have a beer with your Big Mac and dip your nuggets in curry sauce (there’s a turban on the lid) or ’sauce chinois’, will we believe to be the sweet-and-sour equivalent.
Yes, we did just eat at McDonald’s tonight. It has been an exhausting day of travel and we’ve been inundated with various modes of fowl fat since we got here. Besides, I wanted to see if they had any regional variations on the menu. For breakfast, their english muffin equivalent is something called a ‘Croque McDo’, which I imagine is a croque monsieur. Was hoping for more… in the Philippines, I recall spaghetti.
Well, better get back to task. A plus tard!
greetings from Paris!
By Karen | Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 | No Comments »
Bonjour tout le monde,
After a whirlwind of a wedding weekend, Kurt and I arrived in Paris Monday afternoon and have been living it up ever since. We have been trying to limit our use of English when conversing with locals so by the time we get to Provence (where I assume we’ll have a tougher time finding bilingual folk) we should be fine. According to a book we read called “French or Foe”, as long as you make the effort to speak in French, and introduce yourselves and your reason for visiting, the locals can be quite hospitable. Just tonight, for example, we had a fabulous dinner at La Maree Verte in the Latin Quarter, and at the end of the meal, after complimenting their chef and explaining it was our honeymoon (”lune de miel”), the owners congratulated us with complimentary Champagne, and made us feel very welcome. We had a similar experience last night at Cafe Roussillon on Rue Cler, where the server engaged us in a conversation about where we planned to go during our trip. It was very nice to keep up with the pace of the conversation, even if we did stare blankly a few times and have the phrase repeated before we understood.
So far, we’ve taken in the Eiffel Tower, walked by the Ecole Militaire, visited Notre Dame and climbed the towers, had a picnic at Pont Neuf on the Ile de la Cite, and have had a plethora of the most amazing food and drink. Our favourites to date are the Cote du Rhone red we had tonight with dinner, and Kurt’s Magret de Canard at the cafe. The Oeufs de la Neige that I had for dessert tonight was to die for! Definitely something I’ll try to make when we get back home. Anyone want to be our guinea pigs?
On the horizon is a day of museums, a trip to Sacre Coeur (just for you, Kyle) and hopefully we can catch a ballet or opera at the Opera de Paris Garnier. Friday will be our Versailles day trip and Saturday we leave for Avignon.
I have a ton of photos already (including food photos, of course) but our computer at the hotel doesn’t allow me to upload stuff to the desktop to transfer to Flickr. Will have to find another internet cafe tomorrow.
For now, may I direct you to Raf’s blog for a synopsis of the wedding and some pics?
A bientot,
Karen Hamilton =)
t-minus 2 days.
By Karen | Thursday, May 18th, 2006 | No Comments »
With today being my last day at work before our wedding, I’m starting to be less Bride-zilla more Bride-xcited. Kurt and I woke up super early just to act like squealing pop-fangirls. Eeeeeee!
Last week was a flurry of activity so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. Click into each photo if you want to see further descriptions…especially in the Stagette photoset.
- Engagement Photos
- Hamilton Wedding Shower
- Clement Bridal Shower (video highlights)
- Pivotal Shower Lunch
- One Last Salsa Fling (photos from Raf)
- Karen’s Stagette (
Leanne blogs about itno longer, she’s on Facebook, boo) (Pole Dancing video) (Cross-border run to Jack in the Box)
There are videos from the Clement shower and the stagette but we’ll see if there’s time to upload them. They’re over the 100MB YouTube.com limit so I’ve been looking for freeware AVI –> MPEG converters to squish down the file size. Any suggestions?
Bridezilla on the rampage.
By Karen | Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 | No Comments »
Don’t even mention the wedding to me or I will kill you. Direct all questions to the wedding party or to Kurt.
In the same 24-hour period:
- a bridesmaid came down with something like the measles, which resulted in a giant amount of rearranging that i don’t even want to deal with this soon before the wedding
- our emcee lost his voice, but he reassures us that he’ll be better for saturday
- our officiant can’t make it for our rehearsal ceremony…which was to rehearse the ceremony with the officiant
- lost my purse at Chocoatl last night, which contained Jonny and Jane’s card & gift, my wallet, my brand new prescription and contacts pick-up receipt, my dentist receipts, and most of my wedding-day makeup
We. are. getting. married. no. matter. what. happens. this. week.
this is not good.
By Karen | Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 | No Comments »
Sometimes I hate Vancouver. Better have a backup plan. And umbrellas.
It must be love.
By Karen | Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 | 1 Comment »
Kurt’s lucky that I’m okay with gadgets. Just spent $4000 on him for his 27th birthday tomorrow:
- 42″ Sony WEGA HDTV
- Shaw HD + PVR
- HDMI monster cable
- fancy schmancy ESQ watch (technically it’s his wedding gift from me but let’s throw that into the costs today)
All this to complement the Yamaha surround sound speaker system he got in the new year and all the crazy-expensive monster cable he’s accumulated to date.
So I expect at least a 60GB iPod and Nintendo Wii from Kurt for my birthday in October. Or the entire countertop appliances suite of Kitchenaid in Empire Red, if the wedding doesn’t help with that (shameless registry plug: The Bay). Or a shiny new tablet PC. Or all of the above.
Happy salsa birthday party, Daudi.
By Karen | Monday, May 1st, 2006 | No Comments »
Dominic and Daudi’s cameras took lots of photos at Daudi’s birthday at the Polish Hall on Friday. It was the first time I had returned since I became addicted to Fridays at the Law Courts. It was also the first time in a long while that I got to dance with some of my favourite Polish Hall dancers: Jason, Daudi, Dominic, and William. Danny’s still missing in action…boo-urns.
A good time was had by all and the birthday cake was super yummy!
- Daudi’s photos on Yahoo
- Domenic’s photos on Smugmug.com
- My Flickr photo highlights, stolen from above and with some extra comments
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