October

The month of October has flown like the rest of this year! October is a busy month, for me especially. I celebrated my birthday in Munich with my dear family. We enjoyed a delicious lunch out with a group of good friends and then traveled to Austria again to breath in that mountain air. It is also the month of other beloved friend's birthday celebrations. It's Spring at home in Australia now and Autumn here in France. The brisk and chilled mornings promise a cold winter. My parents told me the alps had a frosting of white fresh snow already!

Now at the end of the month I find myself in Paris again. How I love this "city of lights", this city filled with such history and magnificence. It is SO BIG, a sprawling metropolis of unbelievably stunning buildings.... they are at every corner.
Statues to commemorate a revolution, a famous composer; domes encased in gold leaf and architecture that simply stops you in your tracks. The Pantheon near the Sorbonne, the Invalides where Napoleon's body in entombed. The sights are almost over whelming. How can there be SO much in one town? I love the buzz of the Champs Elysee, the grand Arc de Triumph at one end dominating the Etoile and guarding the road that leads to the Tuilleries and finally the Louvre. On the way, pass the Grand and Petit Palais, their halls filled with exhibitions that make us gasp with admiration. There is a special exhibition on Monet for a few months......I aim to go tomorrow.
Jump on the Metro, Paris' underground labyrinth of trains that take you to every corner of this great city. Half the population must be underground at any given moment. Thousands of tunnels join one station to another to the point you can spend your life traveling under Paris from station to station if you so desired. There are stores and buskers and smells! It's endless. From Montmartre to Chateau Vicennes; from the central Opera area surrounded by a shopper's dreamland and Saint Lazare down to Montparnasse or Notre Dame gracing the little Isle de Cite. Have dinner somewhere in my favourite St Michel or nip over to the Tour Eiffel and then have a coffee at the Galleries Lafayette and then rest in the Luxembourg Gardens before wandering the markets at the Bastille. Or just stroll along the banks of the Seine, the glue that sticks it all together.

Paris has thousands of museums, thousands of quaint streets filled with fashion houses, hotels, restaurants or small cafes where chairs are lined up for people watching. There are beggars, street vendors and tourists. A menagerie of people from the world. As I wrote once before, you can spend a lifetime here and never see it all. But you try! You HAVE to! It's just TOO magic and once you have been to Paris, you will return again and again........Paris is an addiction.

My evening was spent at a concert tonight. The opera was booked out BUT I managed to obtain a great seat for the legendary Michael Buble. I have always been a fan and my CD collection boasts a few of his recordings. The dynamic Michael Buble in Paris! One MUST go! A brilliant awesome concert that had the stadium shaking to a fever pitch. Buble slid and spun around as he sang to an audience that cheered and adored him. He graced the stage with his "Sinatra" voice and had us in stitches when he "became" Michael Jackson, voice and movement........We all joined him with "Cry me a River" and "Me & Mrs Jones"....Charismatic and professional, this Canadian was a hit. The depth and strength of his voice enthralled me and finally at the end of the show he sang to this mega audience WITHOUT a microphone. I couldn't believe it, the Palais De Bercy is a mammoth stadium and we could all hear him. Clearly! That is talent with a "capital T".

I still have four days here until I find my way back to Brittany and my cottage. But for now, I must head to bed. It's been an amazing but exhausting day!