Blois

I've taken a quick two day taste of Blois, where I will be studying with l'école nationale supérieure de la nature et du paysage later on in the trip.

I must say that I'm sort of gutted to be away for a whole month before I get to really entrench myself in the town. Some of my future classmates where actually nice enough to come and meet me at the Gare (train station). They showed me around the town and also took me out for a few drinks at their local HQ. They laboured through my French even though their English is ten times better and even tried to teach me how to dance properly.

While they had class I sorted out a few things with the exchange coordinator, checked out their lesson and took a look around Blois. It really is exactly what I was looking for in coming to France, its seems like a sort of mix between a big village and a small city. The photo above was taken from one of the three bridges across the Loire river from the older town to the newer one.

The flat in which I'll be living is in the old town and is only about 4 minutes walk from the école. There is a slight climb up the hill between the house and the école that many of the frogs to perceive as a mountain... I get the feeling that the girl heading to Wellington will be in for a bit of a surprise when she first climbs Durham Cres.

The Flat itself is fantastic. It has a great view of one of the older churches in Blois, with the river in the background, and is almost right above the best boulangerie in the town too. Best of all, it has its own library! The bibliotheque at the école is also very good, but the collection of books in the lounge (pictured above) makes for an excellent supplement.

I'm really looking forward to returning and getting settled into the French lifestyle as best as I can.

Paris, Continued

For those of you who don't know: I didn't get the best impression of Paris the first time I visited. All I can remember is being horribly jet-lagged and bloody cold to boot. We were only there for a day so all we did was the arbitrary trip to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.

However this week I've managed to both avoid much of the standard touristy activity and rid myself of any negative feelings towards Paris and the Parisians. They are, contrary to popular belief, a wonderful and generous bunch of people. The number of people who willingly sat through my horribly garbled French without complaint was excellent. The best experience was visiting Chartier, a classic joint where, to quote one review, 'The food is ordinary. The service is brisk and not always friendly -- and you will be asked to leave when you are through.' 


However this is not a bad thing! The place is efficient and best of all very sociable. You are seated wherever there is space, which meant for me a seat across from an ex-cabbie who knew Paris like the back of his hand but didn't know any English. This was fantastic!  I managed to labour through two hours of conversation with him in French (and in laypersons sign language). True to the French tradition we drank a bottle of wine and when we ordered a coffee at the end he also got a small apératif which he mixed with our coffees, leaving me to wander off feeling rather light-headed. 

This is another interesting restaurant I found just behind the jardin du luximberg. It's called 'Kiwi Corner' and although I didn't get to go in (like many restaurants in Paris it was closed on Mondays) it certainly looks like an interesting one. I hope to give it a proper visit some time next year.

I also visited several parks this week. Parc de la Villette is still a topic of some debate within the Landscape Architectural community. Some people say that this is because it was designed by an Architect, not a Landscape Architect. I found that in person the park did have certain merits. It was very difficult to just breeze through, you were almost forced to experience the majority of the parks design elements. However this also seems to have lead to less use by people who don't have time for a full scale tour. It was, in fact, almost completely unoccupied. Just a few teenagers in the more private corners of the follies doing what they could with the weekend. However there where a few cyclists too, and here you can see them mucking about between my favourite part of the whole park...  The giant pieces of bicycle (which are part of an art instillation as opposed to a part of Tschumi's design).

Also visited, though I didn't take pictures, was parc Clichy Batignolles by my future studio coordinator at ENSNP. This was an excellent combination of leisure, 'WSUD' and planting. It walking through this space seemed like much less of a chore than Villette. It made use of rail-tracks, highlighting the sites SNFC history. I do have some issues with the skatepark, but I think these come down to the way its been built rather than the design intent itself.

At the moment I don't have access to a scanner, but when I do I'll add some pictures of drawings taken at Clinchy to this post.

J'ai un peu de la gueule de bois

Well I've been a bit lazy about posting so far. Plug the title of this post into Google Translate to find out why. For those who are interested 'gueule de bois' actually means 'mouth of wood' ... Quite appropriate indeed.

I'm staying here in Paris at my friends parents (who are actually back in NZ at the moment) apartment. It's really fantastic. It remands me so much of the apartments from The Hedgehog although the gardienne is a lot nicer here. So far I've really just been doing 'touristy' stuff like wandering up and down the champs-élysées and standing aimlessly outside the Louvre. However soon I'm going to get stuck in to the parks next week.

I've only been out for a drink the one night here so far. I headed up to the Montmartre district in amongst the red-lights of the Moulin Rouge and many other less desirable institutions. Met up with a couple of Yanks and some French-Canadians. We breezed around ordering drinks in broken Franglais and talking about hockey (they didn't know anything about cricket). Certainly not a habit to get into if I want to learn French, but it's ok for once.

Of coarse I'm not the first to have a big night in Paris. This picture here is of the edge of the pont neuf  here. The story goes that all the nobles told the King he was an idiot when he proposed to build a bridge out of stone instead of wood. So when it succeed he threw a party to rub it in the nobles faces. He got them all plastered drunk and then made his artist in residence to draw quick characterised sketches of their drunken faces. The next day he got his sculptor to make the face of each noble and stick them up on the bridge to further shame his critics. As you can see they've made a recent addition.

Well, actually, that's me in Edinburgh after a Scotch two. Didn't think to turn the camera on myself at all during the obligatory party snaps last night. Scotland was fantastic though. Really enjoyed Edinburgh, I honestly think I could live there comfortably; it's nice and windy. Hilly too. The Parliament (which was the main reason I visited) is fantastic. I focused mostly on the exterior elements, however I did get inside for a while and even watched a little bit of a session (most of the ministers where of on a coffee break though, much like your average Beehive session). The best part of the project for me is defiantly the way Arthur's Seat (the large plateau pictured below) is dealt with, borrowed to become a part of the site.

That's it for now, expect more posts soon.

On My Way

Here I am in Paddington station, sitting in the McDonalds enjoying an affront to the word 'coffee' and free Wi-Fi. Its been 29 hours of flying, but I didn't find it too bad. I'm hoping to throw together an In Defence of Airline Food post later on.

What I've packed.

 I had hoped to get a post up here before I left, but things ended up being pretty tense in the last few days of organisation. I became even more uptight than usual, fuelled in particular by multiple viewings of In the Loop. One character, in particular, has me exited for my pending visit to Edinburgh: 'The crossest man in Scotland' (Caution: Explicit Language).



Off to meet a friend for a quick tour of some good 'landscape' spots around London. Expect more updates here soon.