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This Sunday I returned from the oh-too-short trip to Paris, and now I can post the last pictures from the “City of Lights”. I found it very unpleasant that the weather was great while I was in a meeting room and got bad when I started to roam the city.

However – wind, cold and occasional rains didn’t stop me from using the camera to try to capture Paris in autumn. This being my third time in Paris I was more looking to roam the streets and just enjoy a stroll. Enjoy the photo gallery!

Some of the highlights of the trip:

• taking a walk in Quartier Latin, and people-watching while sitting at a cafe
• browsing 3 art galleries (from the countless present) in St Germain quarter
• visiting St Denis basilica, the burial place of French monarchy
• Chateau de Vincennes, with it’s interesting fortress – which was used to “house” (read: imprison) the Marquis de Sade amongst others (this was before the Bastille became the lodging place for important prisoners)
• a short visit to the Quai de Branly museum, which houses current art from Africa or Asia and also temporary exhibitions ( I went to a ‘photography from Iran’)

I am now frantically searching my room for the iPhone warranty. It seems that the problems it has cannot be solved by a simple restore. Of course, what I did manage was to wipe my music and podcasts collections. Fortunately I still have my old iPod, so I just need to charge it again.

After some rigorous testing – involving a lot of restarts, some swearing and googling around – it seems that the problems are not going away without a trip to the phone doctor. But what does it do? Actually it no longer does things. Like connecting to a WiFi network (ant network). Or seeing any Bluetooth devices around. So beside cellular data, I am connectionless.

I noticed this lack of connectivity in Paris, when I wanted to browse the free WiFi. And today it was confirmed that it’s a real problem, and not a bad settings combination (as I hoped).

I’m actually sad. I am looking now at a phone with WinMo and find it so ugly and lacking of any style. But it will have to do for the moment…

And now, back to searching for the *&%^*% warranty.

Oh, and the picture? Just eye candy.

Today was the first free day spent in Paris. After the beautiful Wednesday and Thursday, today the weather proved…uncooperative. It was extremely cold, it rained a bit, and the wind was freezing cold. This however didn’t stop me from visiting a bit.

I started with the basilique St. Denis – the burial place of the French kings. Very nice place to see, and the fact that I joined a group with a French guide (a professional one, nonetheless!) helped me to understand a lot. Very interesting information – how the cathedral was built, why did the kings of France start getting buried there, how the French Revolution made a mess of eveything, and so on. I even got to stay at a mess for Marie Antoinette!

After freezing the whole morning, I decided to continue the day with some walking around Montmartre and the the rest of Paris. From this second part of the day I attach some photos, while the ones from St Denis will come later.

It was very pleasant to see again Montmartre, Pigalle, the Moulin Rouge, Vendome, The Louvre, and other places from the spring trip. Only the biting cold put an early end to my trip – not only was I shivering but my camera batteries were dying.

Now I am planning tomorrow’s visiting, while enjoying the warmth in the hostel.

flying AIr France somewhere over Budapest

Maybe the fact that I left the office in a hurry, with a lot of projects left hanging incomplete, I was very stressed on the plane and when I arrived. However, first steps in Paris changed all that back to ‘happy mood’.

Beside the slight annoyance that RER ticket vending machines work only with coins or credit cards (and it happily ignored MY card) everything is good. I’m staying at a nice hotel, even though it’s far from the center (I am used to booking hostels right in the middle of the city). The weather is pleasant – cold yet mostly sunny. And hearing French on the streets -  a real pleasure!

And the first smell of a boulangerie assured me I’m back to the city of coffees. Speaking of which, I’m off to find something to snack on until tomorrow’s breakfast.

As promised, this is part two of the Versailles day trip. The gardens of the castle provided huge photo opportunities. I hope you enjoy this album.

In the established tradition (he he) this is another post and photo gallery put online with a pretty big delay. I suppose people got used to seeing my travel posts long after returning home. I hope people will not complain too much (hint: like they did regarding my previous post).

But let me get back to the subject: a beautiful visit to the Versailles palace and gardens. Versailles is the old ‘de facto’ capital of France, and now one of the top tourist destinations for people visiting Paris. For anyone staying a few days in Paris, doing a short (or long) day trip to Versailles is a very good idea.

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As most of you already know my short holiday to Paris came to an end on last Sunday. Although now I am back to Romania, you should still expect to receive short bits on Paris and most importantly pictures from there. There were different reasons for which I was not able to blog on-the-go so now I will try to compensate.

If I haven’t already said this – Paris is an amazing city. From all the places I have visited this is the most crowded city in terms of interesting, fascinating, places to see and visit. Every step brings the traveler to a new monument, church, square or at least a nice cafe.

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Update: long-awaited gallery is here!

In last post I made some mentions about the open-air market in “place de la Bastille”. Unfortunately I do not think that I had any picture showing this market. This is going to change now. About the delicious strawberries I already talked so I will not insist on that.

Also on Sunday just I was strongly considering the benefits of talking my rollerblades in my next trip I stumbled upon a pretty big event. With the ocasion of the “Red Cross Day” some of Paris skaters met to do a march (on skates, of course).

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At this moment I have 2 posts ready to publish. They just await some picture – after all this is mostly a photo blog.

Right now I am in Paris, trying to upload the pictures with Picasa, from the WiFi in the hostel lobby. However, it seems that the hostel employees are trying to ration the bandwidth excesivelly. A lot of services are not working, and the ones that do are sluggsh as hell. It is annoying as hell – first Skype breaks, Picasa, I get timeouts on all the webpages.

SO for the moment I have to find alternate ways to upload the pictures. And beside trying that at 3am, I have no better idea. Hopefully I will find something.

Yesterday (Sunday) was a pretty interesting day in terms of visiting. I arrived at Centre George Pompidou but discovered that the interesting exhibition was closed. Then Hotel de Ville proved also closed. Brancusi expo (near Pompidou) opened at 2pm. So, seeing as visiting museums was not in the menu I started to walk around.

Beside Place de Vosges, Place de la Bastille, Ille de la Cite (again), the greatest discovery was the open-air market near Bastille. It was huge – and there was literally everything available for sale. From delicious food to clothes, vegetables and shoes… As I am not a great fan of shopping I just took pictures and ate a lot of strawberries (a little shop was trying to finish the day so they were selling 500g for 1euro). 4 hours later I was still feasting on strawberries (I had more than 1 kilo with me!).

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