Decembrska LJ

Just to show you how pretty our capital is in December :).

no lights; lights :)

 

Hmmm....doesn't really have anything to do with the festive season, but if you need something to make you smile, this might help ;).

France #2

Last month I went to France again. Visited Fady. Saw a lot of sights, places :). A bit tired right now. Don't feel like writing too much ;). It's going to be mostly pictures :)

Paris by night

Lyon
relatively small, cute city by the river, yaaay :). Actually, two rivers: Rhône and Saône

Asnières-sur-Seine
suburb of Paris, ~ 8km from the centre of Paris; I was staying there :)
Parc de l'Ile de La Jatte - beautiful autumn colours, warm weather...:) (+ I've heard that in Slovenia that day was really cold and foggy, heh ;))

Paris
Tour Montparnasse
a 210 m tall office skyscraper (untill this year it was the tallest skyscraper in France), 59 floors, it's supposed to have the fastest elevator in Europe! From the top you have a 360° view :)

starry sky in Paris ;)

Café de Flore

A cafe with rich history and legendary clientele: Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Lawrence Durrel, Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, etc. But really expensive! :( (8 euros for a hot chocolate)

(bottom right is a postcard...how the cafe used to look like)

Pont de Bir-Hakeim

a 2-level bridge over Seine river; a lot of movies take place on this bridge (e.g. Inception)

Fécamp, Normandie

Windy + cold! But at least it wasn't raining. That much ;).

Asnières

Le Cimetière des Chiens; Dog cemetery
The world's oldest public pet cemetery (opened in 1899). "Pere Lachaise for pets".

Le château d'Asnières, the Castle of Asnières

Versailles; Château de Versailles
beautiful palace

 

heheh...taking pictures with iPad... :D

Paris
Centre Pompidou = a museum of modern and contemporary art, a cinema, there are performans halls, bookshops... I saw two exhibitions: Danser sa vie (Dance your life; Dancing through life) and Edvard Munch (but the Scream wasn't there). The one about dance was really interesting...the second one as well, but I was already a bit tired.

The river Seine
picnic :)

Enajstke! :)

For number freaks :)) One-derful ;)

PARIS

For my only real summer holiday I went to Paris, to visit Fady, who I met in London. At first I didn't really like this city. It seemed in a way dirty, old... I don't know, I just didn't like it. Plus, the underground trains are sooooo old (some of them at least; oh, there is network in the metro! hehh...how funny). And (comparing to London) people weren't that friendly, polite. They didn't offer their help with my luggage ;), and 1 guy actually gave me the evil eye for not stepping off the curb (to the street) soon enough?! That was weird! :P But then..walking around it, realizing it's rather small, and cute...I started to like it better.

Now, I'm going to tell you what you should see if you have one week of time ;).
- Paris streets, houses with balconies

- Sacre Coeur + Montmartre
(went here with Slovenian friend Mateja, who went to Paris (and back) exactly the same time as me! :) And we found out about this just 2 days before our flight, heh)

 cimetiere Montmartre; not really a famous sight, but we didn't have anything to do...so we walked around a bit :)

 

Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Opera, Galeries Lafayette, Louvre

- the Louvre, Musée du Louvre

In Paris almost everything, well...a lot of museums, etc are admission free if you are under 26. Grrr... ;). Anyway, the Louvre is huge!! It has 3 floors + the ground floor. So, after 1.5 hours of wandering around and seeing just 1/2 of one floor I decided to just look for the "famous" objects. And even this took me almost another 2 hours! 

 

Seated Scribe, Statue of Ramesses II, Medieval Moat, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, The Wedding Feast at Cana, The consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I, Mona Lisa, Aphrodite ("Venus de Milo")...; isn't that mummy of a cat cute? ;)

- Jardin des Tuileries

Love this area!! :))) And those iron chairs! So great :)

- boat trip on the Seine river

Nice :). 

Eiffel tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the building that was the model for the White house (the White house is 7-times bigger than this one)

- Disneyland Paris
Last time I was there, there was just one theme park and I got the impression that Disneyland is more for kids. But now there are 2 parks. And the second one has more interesting attractions :). Of course, there are still carnivals.

 

- Pere Lachaise Cemetery; Cimetière du Père Lachaise

The largest cemetery in the city of Paris. It's said to be the world's most-visited cemetery. A cemetery, where a lot of famous people are buried (e.g. Honore de Balzac, Vincenzo Bellini, Federic Chopin, C. S. Hahnemann, Jean de La Fountaine, Moliere, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde). They actually have maps showing where the graves are. It's kind of a weird feeling walking around the cemetery with a map in your hands. But it's a nice cemetery with a lot of trees...

There was something really weird. People were giving kisses to Oscar Wilde's tomb! And now I've read in the paper that they had cleaned it (because the lipstick was bad for the tomb) and they'd put glass all around it.. Well, when I was there, it was still full of kisses.

- Parc des Buttes Chaumont
A park where you can lie on the grass and get some rest.. Nice view, too.

- Place St Michel (with the fountain that looks the same as the Trevi fountain in Rome), the Sorbonne, Pantheon, Paris plages (sandy beaches)...

- Cite des Sciences et de l'Industrie; + La Geode
Really interesting!! Science museum, with interactive exhibitions.... There was also a (temporary, I think) exhibition called Health Games, a circuit exhibition which measured your well-being. There were some questionnaires, health questions, pictures of healthy and unhealthy body parts (you had to pick the sick one), math questions, physical tests... A lot. There was a polygon where you could try to open doors, drive on different slopes, grounds.. with a wheelchair. Not easy.
La Geode is a giant "ball", that's actually a cinema! :) There are screens all around you...

- Jardin du Luxembourg
With the iron chairs again :)). But you can't walk or lie on the grass.. :(.
While I was there, enjoying the sunny weather, doing nothing...all of the sudden I heard music. There was a festival of Caribbean music! Perfect for that sunny day :)

- Arc de Triomphe + Champs-Elysees; blinking Eiffel tower

C'est tout ;).

Well, actually not quite :). Some music videos featuring Paris (if you want to see even more of it): 1, 2 (not really that much of Paris in this one), 3.

Beautiful Slovenia

Because of all the studying (I know it might sound like I was kidding...but I'm not...really! :)) I only had time for 1 day trips, but they were nice :).

Veliki Draški vrh, 2243 m
A peak with a great view from the top. And there was still snow in the middle of the summer.

 

Soline, Salt-pans

We were really lucky to get the chance to go to Sečoveljske soline and harvest salt from salt evaporation ponds. In these artificially made ponds sea water evaporates, leaving the salt behind. On the bottom of the ponds is so-called petola, a special bio-sediment, microbial mat that prevents the mixing of the sea mud with crystallised salt and also prevents some undesired ions (iron, manganese) from incorporating into the salt crystals. Petola is a really thin mat, so when you harvest salt you have to be very careful not to hurt it, because it takes a long time to grow again. To walk on it you have to wear special shoes. :) But even after just 1.5h of working there you realize that this is not an easy job. Good for your feet though :).

 

Kostanjevica na Krki

 

Pišece

 

Iški vintgar

by bicycle :)

Gorenjci near Adlešiči

Jezero Jezero v Jezeru ;) (a lake "Lake" in the village "Lake")

 

sončnice, ki so se obračale stran od sonca??

Mesečev zaliv

I couldn't believe that this beach is in Slovenia ;). Really nice...I just wish the water was a bit cleaner too. And it was even too warm!!