The weather was glorious in south-west France during my short sojourn there. It was lovely to feast my eyes on azure blue skies part-filled with flossy white clouds, to feel the warmth of the sun on my back and to experience a succession of rain-free days. I was staying in Lisle-sur-Tarn a pretty medieval bastide (fortified) town between Toulouse and Albi. If the name Lisle-sur-Tarn sounds familiar perhaps you read Tracy Chevalier’s The Virgin Blue which was set in the town.
Category Archives: Travel
Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val
Briefly in Birr
I was briefly in Birr this weekend just gone by. I stayed less than twenty-four hours as I arrived early on Saturday afternoon and left not long after a nine o’clock breakfast on Sunday morning. Birr, in case you don’t know, is a heritage town in the Irish midlands. I was there on a short break with a small group of friends. It was a catch-up-with-friends opportunity rather than a weekend for in-depth exploration of the town and surrounding countryside. J our organizer had booked us into the local four-star County Arms Hotel on an amazingly good value deal (details at the bottom of this post).
Filed under Travel
Les Deux Abeilles
I have enrolled in a digital photography evening class which starts this coming Tuesday. Now what you may well ask has that to do with Les Deux Abeilles a rather charming café in Paris’s seventh arrrondisment. Well here’s the rather tenuous connection; this weekend in advance of my first photography class I was scrolling through the thousands of images I have taken since I started blogging last year. Among the images were some photos of Les Deux Abeilles, which I took when I was in Paris last November. I had planned to write a post on the café when I returned home but it somehow slipped my mind. Still it’s often better late than never so here we go.
A Day in Dublin
I have been thinking wistfully these past few weeks that it has been some time since I last visited Paris. The thing I most love to do when I go to the City of Light is simply to wander around at a leisurely pace stopping as the mood takes me to: look at pretty courtyards, admire magnificent historic buildings, visit a museum or to lunch at a favourite café. So I decided this Saturday to do a version of my Parisian wandering in my native Dublin.
Hello from Westport
I have just arrived, following a four-hour drive, in Westport a smallish town in County Mayo in the west of Ireland. Westport is a laid out town as opposed to, a hey let’s just stick another building here and there topsy-turvy type town. Architect James Wyatt designed it in the eighteenth century. His client was the then Lord Sligo, from nearby Westport House, who wanted a place for his tenants and workers to live.
Filed under Travel
♥ Retail Therapy
I love shops in a bonkers allsorts fashion. By that I mean I am as happy to wander around furniture or haberdashery emporiums as I am to gaze at the latest fashions in a boutique or department store. This love of shops doesn’t equate to a love of spending (though naturally I do from time to time).
Filed under Paris, Shops/Shopping, Travel
♥ Breakfast in Paris: Café Constant
The Café Constant is on my list of favourite Parisian cafes. It’s not that I have visited all the thousands of cafes in the City of Light to compile a definitive list of my top ten: rather the Café Constant became a favourite by default as it’s close to where I normally stay when I visit Paris. It’s good, so if I hadn’t discovered it by virtue of its proximity I am sure I would have truffled it out with the aid of one of my trusty guidebooks.
Filed under Paris, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
♥ Paris: Lunch at Merci
Merci is a whimsical wonderland of a concept store that is large, bright, airy and chock full of eclectic and interesting stock. Merci seems to sell almost everything: clothes, furniture, perfume, household items, books, stationery, haberdashery…
Filed under Paris, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
♥ Lost in Paris
I am not at the moment lost in Paris, nor was I lost when I was staying there. What I did lose in Paris was my Cannon SLR camera, which has been my constant travelling companion since I started blogging earlier this year.
♥ Bonjour de Paris
I cannot think of another building or structure that is more symbolic of Paris than the Eiffel Tower: it’s named after its creator the engineer Gustave Eiffel. Built as an entrance archway to the 1889 World Trade Fair and to celebrate the centenary of the 1789 revolution, the original plan was that the tower would be a temporary structure to be demolished when its twenty year building permit expired. Still standing proud in the twenty-first century it’s a magnificent sight especially at night when every hour on the hour the 20,000 light bulbs, attached to it to celebrate the millennium, twinkle magnificently.
Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 