>Bridesmaids

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Occasionally I see films without any foreknowledge of what they are about or what to expect. This was one of them. I noticed from the poster that Aussie actress Rose Byrne features and so, always happy to support films with Aussie connections, I went along to a screening. As it happens there is another Aussie connection with comedienne Rebel Wilson featuring in a side gag with no apparent relevance to the main plot.

Annie (Kristen Wiig) is invited to be Matron of Honour by her best friend Lilian (Maya Rudolph) and finds herself at odds with an odd collection of bridesmaids; in particular Helen (Byrne) with whom she enters an immediate and increasingly frenetic rivalry. What follows is two hours of gross and rather obvious comedy.

The film opens with the sort of sex scene that a pubescent teenage male would consider orgasmic involving Wiig and pay television’s hunk de jour John Hamm whose name wisely does not appear in the credits despite his multiple appearances in the film. Hamm in real life is seen as having a great deal of sex appeal but to my mind he looks far better wearing a business suit than his birthday suit as this film confirms.

Having watched it I assumed from the grossness of the film that it must have been written by men and was surprised to learn from the end credits that the writers were two women including Wiig herself. I have to concede that I laughed quite a few times but be warned, this film is the antithesis of sophisticated comedy.

>Can anyone help?

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Can anyone help me? This is a question for those, who like me, use Blogspot.

I’ve been unable to add any comments to my own blog since I returned home. I just get caught in an endless cycle of sign in requests when I try to publish a comment (or a reply to a comment) to any of my posts.

Does anyone else have this problem at the moment? Does anyone have a solution?

>Postcards – past their ‘use by’ date?

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Has modern technology overtaken ‘snail mail’ to the extent that the latter is no longer useful for short trips? My latest experience suggests the answer is yes…definitely yes.

I sent a dozen or so postcards to friends in Australia from Germany one week into my recent overseas trip with two weeks still to go before my return home. I also sent most of these friends an email or two when the internet service allowed.

Not one of my postcards beat me home. Perversely, all of the postcards I sent to friends at the hospital were amongst the mail I collected from the Hospital’s mail room as part of my volunteer’s role on my first day back at work and I delivered them by hand to the addressees. I might as well have carried the cards home myself and saved on the stamps!  Just as perversely, the card I sent to the Nursing Home arrived the next day, a few hours after my return to work there.

All of my emails to the same recipients arrived without delay and were welcomed, even the one liners, as evidence that I was alive and well and having fun. Frankly my impression is the emails were welcomed more than the postcards.

Tempis Fugit (even if the postcards do not).

>What’s in a degree?

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It’s strange how cold Sydney can feel. We have such mild temperatures in winter compared with other cities in Australia and overseas and yet I’m sure I’ve felt colder here than in those.

Yesterday I returned to Sydney after spending four days in Paris where on the last day the temperature was only a degree higher than here and yet whilst I walked around Paris feeling chilly but not frozen I felt really cold here and couldn’t wait to get the heater and blankets out.

Perhaps it is the wind chill factor but yesterday the rain was pouring and I doubt there was any breeze let alone wind about.

>Arriving home

>About to land in Sydney at around 6.20am…

…cold and raining cats and dogs.

>Taking off

>Some snaps as we waited our turn for take off and then what little view of Dubai was possible though the heat haze….

…lunch…

…dessert (blueberry crumble)….

>In transit

>Our four hours transit in Dubai was quieter then the similar transit on the way over. Still plenty of people around but we camped on seats at our departure gate and watched the world go by until our flight was called.

It was very hazy and hot outside.

The view of airport traffic from my seat on the plane

The view straight ahead for the next fourteen hours

>Paris – last day

>Our holiday officially ended last night with the river and dinner cruise on the Seine and most of the travellers are moving on to their next destinations or home today. Our flight out of Paris was at 1010pm effectively giving us an extra day in the city.

Following weeks of early starts we had a comparatively late breakfast and then wandered from the Louvre down the Tuileries, through the Place de la Concorde and the Avenue Des Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. (There, that’s my bit of French done and dusted and some of it may even have been spelt correctly.) It was cold and there were rain showers about.

The Tuileries

Place de la Concorde

Avenue Des Champs Elysees

The man in the blue jeans stopped to ask me what street we were on. Me? He asked me? Did I look like a local shivering in the cold with a camera slung over my shoulder? And he asked what street are we on? Perhaps the most famous street in the world after Wall Street? Oh well, he was good looking!

Gosh…you know this one…

When we entered the Avenue des Champs Elysees I noticed a queue of people across the Avenue queued to enter a very smart looking premise. I assumed it was a queue for the Visa Office of an Embassy, something we had noticed in other cities on our European trip. On our return walk down the other side of the Avenue we found a queue still in place…

Did you catch what they were queueing for? It was on the plaque on the gate. They were queueing to get into the…Abercrombie and Fitch clothing store! And with gatekeepers like these below who wouldn’t want to queue?

After a baguette lunch at a Brasserie we adjourned to the hotel with the remainder of the group flying out on our flight to wait in the bar for our transfer to the airport and departure. We flew out of Paris on time headed for Dubai.

>Paris next day

>This morning the group travelled to Montmartre in the north of Paris a very touristy area promoted as a traditional artists’ colony. On return to the city I took myself off to the Paris Opera for a self tour of the theatre and in the evening rejoined the group for a river cruise and farewell dinner.

We travelled to Montmartre by the Metro; requiring two trains in each direction. Three of the four train trips were in packed carriages. It looks like the Paris Metro has very extended peak periods.

Montmartre sits high above the rest of Paris…

This woman had her silhouette done…

The Paris Opera is spectacular to excess…here is a side lounge running the length of the auditorium…

…the dome in the auditorium…

…a section of the auditorium…

…on the other hand there was not much glitter in the men’s toilet…

The river cruise was a disappointment not because of the dinner nor for the sights available to be seen along the Seine but for the fact that it was all done and dusted by 9pm. We were expecting to see Paris ‘illuminated’ as per the brochure for our trip but with daylight saving and the Northern Hemisphere’s longest day approaching Paris was still in broad daylight at 9.30pm so no buildings were illuminated at that time; indeed even the streetlights had not yet been activated.

>Paris

>In the morning we were taken on a city tour mainly by bus. It’s not the way to get an in depth appreciation of a city, certainly not one with as much to explore as Paris but at least the tour put various locations in a context for further exploration. It is 38 years since my previous visit and my memories from that time are fairly vague so I certainly welcomed this refresher.

The one stop we made was to visit the Eiffel Tower which surely must be one of the most photographed and visited locations on earth.

My photo is no different from hundreds of millions of identical predecessors but the taking and publishing of it is no less satisfying for the image has been seen and taken by myself and so I inflict it on you.

We had tickets to take us up to level 2 which is the second of the platforms you can see in the photograph. That is still a long way short of the summit at level 3 which is the bubble near the top but I can assure you if you have not visited the tower that level 2 nonetheless provides spectacular views across the entire city.

As we queued to pass through security and ticket check electronic signage indicated delays of up to 45 minutes reaching level 2, such were the number of visitors. I imagine there are far longer delays on many busier days. It was sobering to note soldiers in bum hugging camoflage uniforms and with machine guns slung over their shoulders patrolling the grounds, a sight we saw repeated at various venues later on.

We entered the tower through the East pillar.

Some of my snaps from level 2…

Soldiers patrolling the grounds…

We found another nearby Brasserie for our lunch following which we walked back across to City Island to visit the Musee D’Orsay where we marvelled at magnificent paintings by Manet, Van Gogh and Gaugin amongst others. Photography was not permitted there.

After resting at our hotel a group of us spent the evening at the Moulin Rouge dinner and show. Again photography was not permitted.

After returning to the hotel at around 11.20pm I rushed out with my camera to capture the Eiffel Tower by night as seen from the Louvre…

…and finally our hotel at night…