Paris, je t'aime

Having lived in France for almost a year, I still hadn't yet been to Paris, the epicenter of the French state and the capital of all things delicious...croissants, macarons, and chocolate. Pourqoi pas? I don't know...but who doesn't love Paris, especially in spring when the city is just waking up from winter, and it's about a month away until the start of the tourist season. After some planning (and reading articles to get me excited for Paris. Scroll to the bottom for my complete list of articles), R and I chose the first weekend in April just because...the weather forecast looked promising and we hoped to find the flowers in bloom in Paris' many green spaces.

Nous avons arrivés à Paris après a quick 2.5 hour train ride via the TGV, or le train de grande vitesse. R and I brought reading materials, breakfast, and my knitting, but we ended up watching the show out our window. This is no Acela train. The TGV is quick (understatement), and we sped by quaint villages with big churches, stately châteaux, meadows with sheep, cows, and old stone farmhouses. To me, this is France..the beautiful flowing countryside. I sighed appreciatively as R and I pointed out different things to each other as we sped by them. Before we knew it, 2.5 hours had passed and our train was approaching Gare de Lyon, our destination.

Swiss knoepfli in a herb butter sauce

Sorry I haven't posted any stories or photos of Paris yet. Since returning from Paris last Monday night, R and I have been quite busy, doing daytrips to Geneva then Lyon. And on top of that, we've had brilliant weather. Warm enough that I'm wearing skirts, shorts, and my Tevas everyday.

On Friday I spent many hours shaping the garden, planting seeds and transplanting some of the seedlings that had been germinating in the serre, including tomatoes, leeks, salad greens, courgettes, kales and kohlrabis. After a long day of gardening and on my knees, a good warm shower never felt better. As the sage, chives and thyme plants are growing strong, I decided to make something using fresh herbs. And what better then a big plate of Swiss knoepfli or spätzli which is sort of like German spätzle.

Fun with new camera

Over the past 10 days since I've received my Canon, I've taken 600 or so photos! Half of them are practice shots, as I'm acquainting myself with Canon's many options and settings. The other half are sort of artistic shots taken on walks and hikes, or when I'm feeling creative in the kitchen. I am still learning about the Exposure Triangle of aperture, shutter speed and ISO. View the few dozen photos I've posted on Facebook.

Hiking Le Vuache, on my birthday

This morning the late winter sun rose again on another February 13th, and I turned one year older. In Boston, I usually spend birthdays with family and friends—and sometimes not just one birthday celebration but one spread across several weekends with different friends. This happened last year. I felt lucky because some years, my birthday plans are foiled due to pesky Noreasters and blizzards! But this year, there is little to no snowfall in my part of the Juras. Instead of spending my birthday indoors, R and I got a little closer to nature with some new friends.

We met at the church at Chaumont, next to the mairie. I could tell this was going to be a great hike...because the starting point of Chaumont is just beautiful, with old farmhouses, a very quaint centre-ville composed of one main street basically, and views of the château ruins atop the highest point of Chaumont. Our group of fifteen (including me and R) were composed of expats from different countries around the world. We already knew a few Dutch friends, and quite coincidentally, there was a Scottish woman there who was also in R's softball league years ago. But for the most part, the rest were complete strangers, but not for long. During the day, each of us took turns leading the group. I started conversations with a good number of people who were hiking alongside me at different points of the trail, meeting a Norwegian (this time I knew a bit more about Norway), two Turkish, a Peruvian, a Hungarian-German, a Malaysian, a Scot, a true Genevoise (born and raised), and a few Swiss Germans. 

Singer, American or not?

Last week while at Helene's house, I noticed a beautiful piece of needlework in the living room. The piece, handmade by Helene's grand-daughter many years ago, was of a needlecraft workshop. Colorful spools of thread, skeins of yarn, a scarf in the making, buttons, a cute little sign saying "Home is where the heart is", sewing baskets. And in the middle a Singer table sewing machine.