Paris- Museum d'Orsay

This is the last entry on my Paris trip. On our last day, we visited the museum of Orsay and Versailles (covered in previous post). Contrasting with the Musuem of Lourves which exhibits ancient and classical arts, Museum of Orsay contained many contemporary works including arts from schools of impressionist, naturalist, symbolismnist etc etc.

The museum itself used to be a railway station.

Even today, the grand clock stands proudly at the most visible place in the museum.


The museum exhibits some very well known paintings by extrodinary artist from early 20th centry, such as Monet, van Gogh, Renoir


My favourite painting is this one, can't remember the artist, but it's called the 'Wheel of Fortune' from the school of symbolism. It signifies how fortunes goes in turns just like the wheel, sometimes you'll be on top, and sometimes you'll end up under the wheel.

At the end of the museum, there's a whole model of Paris under glass-panel floor.

Museum of Orsay is really a spectacular museum, unfortunately me being an idiot when it comes to art, I dare say this would've been a much more enjoyable trip for ppl who understands art better. It did inspire me to well, take new approach to things, as contemporary arts isnt' about what's in the painting, but rather the meaning, or the feeling behind it.

What other ways to end my Paris trip with a shot of food right? What you are looking at is authentic French cheese crepe. As expensive that thign was (about $7 euro), it was certainly satisfying and absolutely loaded with cheese!! Yummy~~

And on that note I've finally finished my travel blog on Paris! It was truly an eye opening and extraordinary trip! I would recommend everyone to go and have a look, but perhaps wait till sky rocketing euro dollars drop a bit :P

Paris

Paris is definately a city enriched with culture, style, history and amazing architectures.

From the ancient design of Basilique du Sacre-Coeur or the Basilica of Sacred Heart situated at the summit of montmatres (highest point in Paris). A Roman-style cathedral.

and the Arc of Triumph.

to the decidedly more modern arc, Le Defence,

to the most well-known landmark of Paris, the Eiffel Tower (which gave countless opportunities for shameless lame poses)

at the top of Eiffel tower, the lame posing continues...

The night gives Paris a total make-over, revealing its beauty under shimmering lights.

The Eiffel tower, standing tall, claiming its place in Paris landmark even at night.

Arc of Triumph viewing from Champs Elysees.

The arc of Triumph looks different, somewhat familiar under its yellow coats.(p.s. to ff8 fans, can you recongize this from one of the areas in ff8? ;) )

Interior of Lafayeal

The department stores takes the opportunity to show off their extravagance, lavishness and luxuriance during the xmas season. (

LV orginial shop

While some other shops relies on its orignial products for decoration

The fact is, Paris is a stylish city no matter how you look at it, for example, in the picture is a building under construction, the wacky building is the design of the covers over the building.

Even the entrance to the Metropolitain is screaming with stylish flair.

Paris is definately a city worth visiting.

France- Orleans and Chartres

Orleans is a city Southwest of Paris

It is famous for the house of Joan of Arc (can you see which one is joan's house?)

and the Cathedral of Orleans

The Catherdal has everything I would expect to see in a cathedral...

beautiful glass windows that depicts stories from the bible, or in this case the story of joan of arc.

confession chambers
and HUGE AS organs.

and If i am perfectly honest, my impression from the 3 cathedrals I've visited from this trip is that it's all very dark, almost hauntingly ghastly, not to mention the coldness in the churches. It's nothing like the nice central heated churches you find in NZ. I guess me not being a Catholic may affect my feelings towards cathedrals, but upon entering those buildings, I feel like I might attack by devils at any second ^^;

Later we visited the cathedral of Chartres. It's signature two high vaults were results of a fire which burnt down half of the cathedral, a second vault was thus built in the 'Gothic' archtecture style.

The very special part about this church is the use of light blue stained glass on Mary which was very rare when it was constructed. The blue was hence named "Chartres blue".

And ending on that note, our next destination take us to Paris! for real this time. (think i'll make that separate post) ^^

Tours - France

We arrived at the Charles De Gaulle airport nice and early in the morning. The airport was absolutely huge, it took the plane a good 20 minutes to travel to the arrival gate after landing. And even after that, walking from the gates to the customs require going through tunnels and tunnels of escaltors!! At some point, it almost looked as though we were walking through a real life version of a huge aquarium, without all the fish and the water. While we are on the subject on flying, I just want to point out that Malaysian airline is like.. way better than EVA and air New Zealand in service!

Our first days schedule is to drive pass Paris to Tours to visit two castles. There are over 3000 castles along the river Loire, according to dad, all the old castles (chateau) has to be close to a water source so that the human waste can be dispose of easily.

Driving along this peaceful, almost enchanted path we arrived at our first destination - Chateau de Chambord.

The chateau is absolutely amazing! the exterior looks like everythign I would imagine what a chateau would be, and this one even got a bit of a hauntingly feel to it just like the caslte in 'Beauty and the Beast'. Apparently the exterior design is a blend of traditional French Renaissance and Medieval architecture. It as over 300 chimney.

Chateau de Chambord was built by King Francois I as a hunting lodge. Which meant that apart from a few game collections, the castle is almost empty because the chateau would only be decorated prior to arrival of the king. Due to the relatively early ancient in its design, the castle is absolutely freezing (despite having over 300 fireplaces).

The only interior design worth mentioned of is Da Vinci's double helical staircase, which Da Vinci specially designed for King Francois I.

The whole point of the the staircase is that whilst you can see the people from the other side of the staircase, in reality you can never meet them.

After our morning exercise around the castle, we arrived at this little cafe "Cafe du Midi" in the little town in Tours. The cafe has got a real homy feel to it, with a humourous owner.
We got to try some of the real local cheese that France has to offer!

Next up, we drove across the country side to our next destination. The country side of France is completely different to what you see in New Zealand, its old and yet peaceful, as if nothing in the world has disturbed its tranquiality since hundreds of years ago.

Our next destination was the Chenonceau Castle, which was a castle built over the river Cher. Unlike Chambord which was rarely occupied, Chenonceau was home for 6 mitresses in the past including Henry II mistresses Diana de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici and the wife of Henry II Louse de Lorraine. Each occupants has expanded/renovated it.

In the beginnng, it was just a river mill (the little building on the right), but eventually got expanded to a whole arch spanning across the river.

Due to the constant occupants in the castle, there were a lot to see within the castle, there was a chapel.

Furnitures and paintings.

A seeminly haunting stairway to the basement which would leads to a ...

fully equipped kitchen.

There is even a maze outside of the chateau.

But I guess what is most memorable about Chenonceau is the stories surrounding its occupants, like the love triangle between Henry II, Catherine and Diana,

...and the sobering widow Louise (the White Queen) for her early deceased husband, who decorated her room in complete darkness with silver paints as symbol of her tears.

And that concludes our trip around Tours, next up is Paris!!

Kuala Lumpur

Our first destination of our 8-days Paris trip was to Kuala Lumpur because we took Malaysia airline, and since we arrived in KL in the morning, and the plane to Paris doesnt' leave until 10pm, we spent the first day of our trip in KL. It's a really great opportunity to see what many of my friend's hometown is like. So..er.. to all my Malaysian friends, if you find any mistakes/things I can't put a name to in this post, please let me know, coz I really can't remember :P

KL airport is an uniquely designed airport in the way that there's a jungle in the middle of the airport. Later the tour guide explained that is in symbol of the great natural resources in Malaysia.

My first impression of Malaysia out of the airport was.. the HEAT!!!! It was hot, humid, almost suffocating. I was glad.. it was only 30m walk to the tour bus.

Our local tour guide first took us to this restaurant close to the airport, which was apparently commonly know as Asian Hollywood or somethign, coz a lot of Asian stars dined there before.

I couldn't help but order a nice coconut to cool down. The coconut was probably the best I've ever had, the juice was a lot sweeter than any coconut I've had. It was weird however, how on the the coconut it stated "from Thailand"... guess that coconut wasn't from Malaysia afterall.

The toilet in that restaurant is beyond shocking! it was old! not to mention the squatting toilets (horror!!!), the entire toilet was wet (in fact.. all the toilets i've visited in Malaysia are wet) and well.. think I'll stop there. :P

Next stop was the Perdana Putra, or the Prime Minister's Office complex

It's apparently built to seperate politics from the business centres to prevent overcrowding in the city. The building design is quite well thought out, like how from the prime minister's office, you can see the entire complex. The infrastructure was also designed in a way to accomodate the three ethnicities.

Our next stop was Dataran Merdeka or independence square

it is literally.. just.. a square patch of grass. I guess the symbolism is greater than what it actually is... but across the street from the "patch of grass" is the building where they filmed Rush Hour 3 which i thought is worth mention of (thus the goofy pose)

Then we visited the Petronas Twin Towers. As ignorant as I am.. i never heard of the Twin Tower in Malaysia until this trip. It is quite a masterpiece, two huge towers with a bridge (or 2) conneting the two.

A lot like Taipei's 101, there's a shopping complex right next to it.

We had about 90mins to walk around this department store before dinner, and what did we use this opportunity to do?

FOOD!!! hahaha should've guessed right? THe thing about food in Malaysia is that it's CHEAP AS!!! seriously, you woudl think food from a department stores would be higher priced than usual... but all the food we bought were really cheap. first up was some sort of curry noodles, it was really really flavourful.

Then there was laksa which was too spicy for my liking.

Then we had this char koey teow (thx c for the name) which Hui told me I MUST have in KL... which I must agree, it's really really tasty. Not sure if it's the food we ordered, but the impression I got from the Malaysian food is that it's all very strongly flavoured and tend to be on the salty side.

In our attempt to find Roti (another recommendation by Hui) we found... this... which I can't even remember what it's called, but it wasn't called Roti, It's got masala inside. This was a bit of a disappointment, maybe after all those heavily flavoured food, this comparatively was quite blend.

This was followed by ICE!!!! YUMMY

And it didn't stop there, we went for some more mango delights!

Lastly there's leh tea (or pull tea) which was another food item recommended to me. It's basically milk tea, but they mix it in a funny way (from cup to cup over an arm's distance) I have to say I can't taste anything particularly special about this tea. About few weeks later I also found leh tea in nightmarkets in Taiwan, but again I fail to er.. appreciate it as how Hui described it... I blamed it on the ppl who make it :P

And that concluded our 1 day trip in KL... next up is Tours in France