Paris - September 2008

It wouldn't be a year in Europe without travelling to the best city the world has to offer - Paris.

Well, the best city we have been to - others are entitled to their opinion, just as we are.

At any rate, Paris was, yet again, beautiful - with wonderful weather, stylish and interesting people to observe, stunning sights to see and to top it all off, fabulous food to enjoy.

What more could you want?

As we have visited Paris several times previously, we simply walked around from place to place with no real plan apart from wandering and enjoying ourselves.

Of course, our loose plan involved walking from one high profile sight to another and just seeing what was on the way.

On the second day we took the Metro to Montmartre, had a brief look around this most beautiful suburb of Paris and then wandered down to central Paris and along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower.

Was a decent walk, but extremely enjoyable.

We also visited Canal St Martin for the first time, which again, was very interesting and a pretty cool place to simply walk and enjoy a morning stroll.

The Louvre is always a decent place to sit in the courtyard and have a rest or a look around and so it was on this trip to Paris also.

On this trip, we stayed near a market road called Rue Mouffetard, as we had done previously - a pretty nice place to stay with very nice restaurants and we even had a view from our room to the Pantheon on top of the nearby hill....all good.

We also wandered through one of the most beautiful parks Paris has to offer - Jardin du Luxembourg.

A wonderful park that we have visited several times before, in all seasons, with this time being particularly beautiful with a large array of flowers to enjoy.

Overall, as Paris is a favourite city of ours, we again enjoyed ourselves greatly and we'll undoubtedly be making plans to return for our yearly trip in 2009!

Holy Island (Lindisfarne) & Warkworth Castle - September 2008

We had been planning on going to Holy Island for some time but since it is a tidal island, it does take a little planning.

As it happened, the tides suited, and despite the rain and the floods in nearby Morpeth, we headed north to Northumberland and Holy Island.

It was a bit wet and the Abbey was closed but we were still able to wander around the island for an hour or two, taking a few pics, as you can see.

St Cuthbert was an Anglo-Saxon Monk and the patron saint of Northumberland apparently and the interesting thing about St Cuthbert is that when he was moved from various burial site to burial site, including just down the road at Chester le Street - finally to Durham Cathedral, he was apparently not decomposed at all....therefore, he was accorded a sainthood.

So there you go.

Warkworth Castle in Warkworth, Northumberland is a very nice town.

The castle itself is pretty good and in excellent condition, all things considered and it was really cool to wander around and have a look around.

Another interesting day.