A New Career in a New Town (?)

Grand Theatre, Bordeaux, from http://roccoco.free.fr/dotclear/index.php/2006/09

So, right now I'm en France and struggling with the French keyboard in my rather splendid office in Bordeaux. Here they're gearing up for the Presidential elections, which is good because it gives me a fighting chance of understanding things on TV (the politicians have to speak clearly to make their points, of course). I've also been reading "Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers" and have thus expanded my rather shaky French vocab to include "hibou" (owl) - very handy, I'm sure.

Being a complete idiot, I didn't take my camera (well, it's a work trip, after all) so I'll add a picture later.

What a beautiful city! Of course I am always enchanted by old city centres, cathedrals and trams. Oh, trams! But the trams here are very clever - they use a ground-level power supply system in the city centre, originally not to muck up the historic centre with overhead cables. Smart. See ye olde Wikipedia for more details...

Mountain Song

Canadian Rockies, Banff National Park. Photo by vikingchild

I'm not a big climber or hillwalker. Hey, I'm not even a small hillwalker, come to that. But I do like the mountains and I do like the hills. I guess I feel like breaking out with a quick chorus of "The hills are alive with the sound of music" every now and then, and I think that this photo (taken not far from the previous one) makes me feel that, just sitting here. The combination of the light hitting the features on the mountain, the blue, blue sky and the evergreen skirting the landscape is all there.

As implied in the previous post, this area of the Rockies can be overpopulated - it's very much a tourist route. But early in the year, between ski season and summer, it's quiet enough to very much feel away from it all. As the nun said, "I go to the hills when my heart is lonely...."

Back In Black

Lake Moraine, Canadian Rockies. Photo by vikingchild

Wow. It's been a while...last blog was just before I went on holiday, and it took me a long while to stop moving. In the words of "the Boys", I've been around the world for a number of reasons, I've seen it all, the change of seasons... So, time for a retro blog. Yes, I know a lot of people blog whilst travelling, but I'm usually too busy actually doing stuff - even if it's just relaxing.

So let's start with some holiday stuff. Crossing the Rockies is never disappointing, however you do it. However, I must say that the day this photo was taken we woke up to a heavy mist. With rather heavy hearts we set off, with a rather phlegmatic "what will be will be" attitude. Not far on, we actually climbed out into the mist and into the clear, fresh air and blue skies which followed us on most of the rest of our trip. I love this photo - you can taste the air. Not only that, but this is spitting distance from Lake Louise which is beautiful but always infested with people, even "off-season". Lake Moraine was tranquility itself.