#r2bcheerful39 – Taking Mum to Paris

Last year we were fortunate enough to travel to travel to Europe for a few weeks. Although we mainly spent time in the UK we did get a chance to travel to Paris for a few days and enjoy the sites. As it was a family affair, I can strictly say that I was taking mum to Paris (albeit the mother of my children!)

And what better way to celebrate this then an image of Gustav Eiffel’s famous iron tower?

Built as a temporary structure for the 1889 World’s Fair this remains the tallest building in Paris and is the most visited paid monument in the world, over 125 years later. Looking up at this icon how can one fail to have a reason to be cheerful?

~ Richard

January 17, 2018 3

Haiku: Love Locked

~ Love Locked ~

Locked there forever

On the fence at Montmartre

A shared sacred heart.

~Richard

August 2, 2017 0

So nice to go traveling

Wow, it has been over a month since I posted a blog! I am appalled with this failure of what started out as a rebooted daily discipline, back in Jan 2016, but there’s been a good reason for this.

In mid-June I was fortunate enough to have taken an extended family vacation back to England and include a brief 2-night sojourn to Paris too. I had grand plans of writing blog entries and posting images as we traveled but, to be honest, I was too busy enjoying myself “in the moment,” as they say these days.

And that’s how it should be.

I will play a bit of catch up over the next few weeks and months as I process the hundreds of photographs I did take that will jog my memory. And I’ll start off with the first three that I worked on yesterday evening, from Brighton, Paris and Amesbury.

The time went very quickly and we saw family, several friends, and many of our old stomping grounds and tourist attractions. We were even fortunate with the notoriously unpredictable British weather.

It would have been nice to have stayed longer and spend more time with even more friends and family but, alas, time caught up with us and it was with mixed emotions that we returned to our home in Pennsylvania. After a day or so I admit that it’s good to be home and to appreciate the life that we have here.

That’s the philosophical part of traveling, perhaps!

~Richard

July 13, 2017 0

St. George’s Day and a lesson from the French?

Last year I wrote this post relating to the patron saint of England, St. George. One year on and as Britain is stumbling forward through its self-inflicted exit from the European Union, I see little change in the mood of Little Britain, at least from what I read in the media.

Today, on the “other side of the channel” as we tend to call it, we saw the potential for a change in Europe as Emmanuel Macron finally gave Marine Le Pen a good run for her money and established that the center left candidate may actually stand a chance to win in a two-horse race for the Presidency for La Republique. Perhaps we will see a tide change and just maybe this will have a knock-on effect on the results of the snap election that Prime Minister Theresa May has called back in the UK. After all it may not be so much about St. George killing the dragon anymore but rather that the slumbering dragon, in the form of the disenfranchised populace who weren’t motivated to cast their democratic vote last time, will actually see that their opinions do count and turn up at the polling stations to make their mark.

Perhaps it is time for the dragon to roar…

~Richard

April 23, 2017 0

#r2bcheerful28 – A Little Drop of Claret

At the end of the day, or perhaps with an appropriate lunch or dinner, a little drop of claret goes down well. Claret, of course, in the quintessentially British term for red wines produced in the Bordeaux region of France, using a blend of grapes from Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec and rarely Carménère. The term is believed to derive from the French word “clairet” which was a dark rosé imported into Britain from the 12th century until the 18th century. Claret now really means a dry, dark red Bordeaux and is generally associated with the English upper class.

So, in Ian’s lyrics he was probably referring to the ability to get hold of “a little drop of claret” as something of a treat for most people and therefore a true “Reason to be Cheerful”

I also thought it would be fun to use one of our Tipsy Wine Glasses for today’s image, a recent xmas gift from our friends in California.

Cheers!

~Richard

January 12, 2017 1

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Tag: france

#r2bcheerful39 – Taking Mum to Paris

Haiku: Love Locked

~ Love Locked ~

So nice to go traveling

St. George’s Day and a lesson from the French?

#r2bcheerful28 – A Little Drop of Claret

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~ Love Locked ~

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