Life is made of many beautiful moments. If you are not careful, they might just pass you by and you may not even realise it. Sometimes though you can be lucky and capture those moments in photographs.
And when that happens, share for the world to see, so they can all know how beautiful the world, and of course life, is.
It is my last day here in Paris after 2 weeks of awesome family holiday (which I still have a lot to write on), and I have some time to spare before my train from Gare du Nord to London in 3 hours’ time. It is lunch time and raining – a sensible person would have taken this opportunity to go to a nice café to sit and have some proper lunch before catching the train.
Unfortunately (or fortunately in this case), I’m not a sensible person. I went to a nice café alright, but instead of having a sandwich or salad like a normal person would, I decided to have dessert for lunch.
Café de la Paix was recommended by a friend of mine and his exact words to me were: “If you have the time and money to spare, please go to café de la paix and order a millefeuille.”
I did have the time and just enough money to choose between a salad or a millefeuille for lunch. I obviously chose the latter.
As we were entering Salzburg by train, my mind was already firm with a conclusion: Salzburg is my favourite city in this trip.
Never mind that we are only halfway through the trip and we still have the whole of Switzerland that we haven’t seen. But how can you not declare your undying love for a place when coming in the city by train you pass through green hills and mountains studded with small cottages? Also, this was the city where the Sound of Music was filmed, a movie that I practically grew up with. So my premature conclusion was perfectly justified, really.
Immediately in my mind, I was humming the lyrics of ‘My Favourite Things’ from the Sound of Music.
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kitten
Bright copper kettle and warm woollen mitten
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favourite things…
We were greeted by sunny weather and clear blue sky, a perfect weather for us to go about the city in bikes. We had places reserved for all of us with the Frauhlein Maria Bike Tour, and check out the post card view that I snapped at the start of the tour.
Everything was perfect.
Up until the point when we saw ominous clouds approaching when we were at one of the squares.
I know I have promised to write more often when I’m in Europe, but to be frank this is the first time I have had some down time, just sitting down for a few hours and staying awake. Other times I had been simply walking around exploring and getting lost (my laptop lying forgotten in the hotel room) or collapsing either on a train couchettes or on my hotel bed out of exhaustion after the said walking.
So many things have happened over the past few days, and most of them have been really good. Apart from that day in Paris when we were panicking because we thought that we were going to miss the train but we actually ended up really early at the train station; or the time in the train from Paris to Berlin when I did not know I had to activate my Eurail tickets at the train station and almost cost my family a total of EUR 1,000 just to buy another set of tickets (luckily the ticket inspector took pity after a little bit of pleading, tear shedding and some help from a nice German passenger who shared our compartment). But other than those minor glitches, we have seen beautiful buildings and structures, eaten yummy food and ice cream and taken in much history lessons.
The point is travelling had been good so far.
Until Prague.
The city was very pretty alright, and I loved the rustic and ancient feel of it. But I think everyone has their own kind of luck with a city – some places are just meant to make your lives difficult and you just want to leave. Just like how Pisa was to me five years ago (I will write a post about my disastrous time there one day), by the end of it, I felt my money was cheated dry and I could not wait to leave Prague.
I realised I haven’t been the most clear at conveying messages. I have every now and then for the past few weeks spoken about me going for my “trip of the year”, having to apply for visas, travelling some few thousand miles up north, receiving train ticket passes, etc. But never have I explicitly told you what I’m up to with all those ramblings. I guess if you put two and two together, you would probably have figured it out, but let me just write it down once and for all.
I am now in Europe (Paris, to be exact) and will be in this part of the world for the next five weeks.
I’m really excited since this is the first time I’m going for a long trip ever since I started this blog. I will try to update this space as often as possible with things I observe, the sights I love, the mistakes I make along the way, the things I eat, the places I stay, or simply how I feel about a particular thing.
But first, let me introduce you to my new friend here in Paris. Meet Jay Jay. She is one of the hosts at the apartment where I stay for my first night here.
It must have been a record breaking silence since the inception of this blog, but I can assure you that it is well justified. In my 13 days of absence from blogging, I have managed to travel 6,663 miles up north, made some progress in what I’m going to do for the next one year and completed my long to-do list before the trip. Apart from all those, I have also discovered new things about myself, like the fact that I think I may possess slightly below average level of intelligence.
I know that some people will rush to refute me on this. All my life people have called me smart. But sometimes I suspect that it was all a cover up, that they are employed by my parents to put me in a bubble and make me think that I actually possess certain level of intelligence. My latest encounter with an instant pass photo box heightened this suspicion.
I was about to apply for my UK visa and I got to the visa application centre before realising in horror that I have been using the same ID photo for the visa application for the past 2 years (and we were supposed to only submit pictures taken within the last 6 months). Not wanting to risk not getting my visa rejected because of some silly old photo, I decided to make use of the instant photo booth facility at the application centre. Although expensive, 12 dollars at the point in time seemed like a pretty good trade off compared to the risk of not being able to enter the UK.
I went to the booth, and tried to follow the instructions on the screen. It seemed easy enough. First I needed to adjust the seat height so that I would be at the correct eye level with the camera. I even pat myself on the back a little for understanding some of the instructions in Japanese. I sat down, pressed some buttons and took the photo.
The result: I was off centre, one of my shoulders was out of the frame and I wasn’t even looking at the camera.
I must sincerely apologise for the slow posts over the past few weeks. It’s been hectic, almost manic, with so many things going on. Apart from completing the long to-do list, a few more things have cropped up, like recovering from annoying sickness and preparing myself to be a wedding emcee for the very first time and I had to do it in Mandarin. (Fortunately, it all went very well yesterday, with only very minor glitches when I mispronounced some of the champagne toasts, but everyone thought it was all scripted so my reputation is still intact).
Anyway, just when I thought that I might collapse anytime soon under all the pressure, two things arrived at my doorstep that lifted my spirit up immensely almost immediately.
First, my Eurail pass is here, much earlier than expected! Opening it was extremely exciting, just like unravelling some long-lost treasure. It even came with a map of Europe showing all the railways connecting one city to another.
Denali National Park, Alaska.
I have always thought that our planet is a beautiful place. But I have never really comprehended nor imagined how beautiful it can be before visiting Alaska in 2012. It was my first time travelling for nature – previously it has always been for a mix of historic sites and culture plus a bit of nature but never was the entire trip dedicated to immerse myself in nature, from the landscape to the animals that depend on it.
When my dad first sounded the idea that we should visit Alaska, I looked at him incredulously. Mainly because I mistakenly thought that Alaska and Antarctica were the same thing (and I found out later on that a lot of people had this misconception). How on earth were we supposed to get there? And what is there to do besides looking at vast expanse of nothing but white?
This is the part where I’m glad that I’m such a dutiful daughter that despite thinking the idea was out of this world, I still went ahead and did some research. Of course, the first thing that I found out was that Alaska was NOT the same as Antarctica (how did I even make the connection?). I mean it was still cold, but summer seemed manageable and even pleasant. Secondly, it was not that hard to get to Alaska. Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is well connected to other parts of the States and Canada. Alternatively you could take a 8-day cruise to and from Vancouver or Seattle. Which was what we did – we booked an 8-day Royal Caribbean Cruise from Anchorage to Vancouver and before the cruise we drove about 300 km to Denali National Park.
As it turned out, there is so much more to Alaska than the coldness it seems to have a reputation of. Here are my favourite moments in Alaska that hopefully will inspire you to get visiting next summer.
With my upcoming trip of the year looming closer, I can’t help but feeling a little stressed about it. I’ve got so many things I need to do, perhaps jotting them down here will make me feel a little better.
So much to do, so little time.
I love looking at old travel pictures. Besides bringing back so many wonderful memories, they give me the reassurance that I have indeed grown up over the past few years, albeit very slightly.
My visit to the Statue of Liberty was testimony of this. Since the conversation about New York City has come up a few times recently, I decided to look through pictures from my very first visit to New York and the United States back in 2009. And boy, I know people have often called me childish, but if they had seen how I behaved back then, they would probably think I am a proper mature adult now.
The visit started normally enough. We made our way from Wall Street to Battery Park Ferry Terminal rather uneventfully, except for some cheeky stranger who deliberately told us to take the wrong Subway line and me pretending that the clouds were speech bubbles.
And off we went to Liberty Island, leaving Manhattan behind us.
missruslee 