Introducing TTT

We're now in Florence, Italy, and I shall say more about our second trip to this Renaissance city in another post, but for now, the focus of our trip shall take center-stage.  Introducing the newest member of the extended clan: TTT!!

He is quite the tall, DARK, and handsome fella 

Hello, this is Yiyi (aunty) here!  When you are older, I shall include you in my educational talks and productive trips.  Yaaay....aren't you excited?!

And here are your cousins, the ones who have been bickering at the top of their lungs and disturbing your sleep since they arrived a few days ago.

And here is your Yi Cheong (uncle), relieving your Baba so that he can laze on the sofa and play Wii.  (Well, no, actually, to be fair, he is a very dedicated hands-on father and an extremely loving husband.  Especially after he witnessed your birth.)

Jokes from a 6-year old

Question: What do you call a crazy squirrel?
Answer: NUTS!


Question:  Why did the tyre go to bed?
Answer: Because he is TIRED!


Question: Why did the sheep cross the road?
Answer: To get to the BAAA-rber.


Question: Why can't two elephants go swimming at the same time?
Answer: Because there is only one pair of trunks.  




(No, she didn't make them up herself.  But she did a good job of telling them)

The cheeky one

At home

At Chateau Vaux le Vicomte

Lunch

The Louvre in the background

Waiting to enter the Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte

In Stockholm, Drottningholm Castle in the background

Weekends in Paris - Part II

On yet another weekend, we rented a small Perodua Kancil-lookalike (it's called the Panda, so maybe there *is* some obscure link there) to visit the Chateau de Vaux le Vicomte, in the south of Paris.  

We took the opportunity of having some wheels and not having to lug 2 kids, a 10-kg bag, a 7-kg stroller PLUS our enthusiasm in a packed stuffy metro, to explore the other Chinatown in the 20th arrondissement, Belleville.  After that trip, I begun to have a sliver of fondness for the original Chinatown in the 13th.  Yes it was that bad.  

We started the drive to Vaux le Vicomte around 6pm.  Now I've been criticised for planning too much, but time and again, the worst happens when I don't.  This time we arrived at the castle at 7:45pm, only to be confronted by a 10-metre queue outside the only eating place inside the castle.  So we waited for an hour for our turn and by the time we started to explore the grounds, it was past 9pm.  Oh well, c'est la vie...

What is special about this castle is that they are one of the few (if not the only one) that offers candlelight visits.  This means it is open at night for visits, and the interior and grounds are lit only by candles to recreate the atmosphere of the past.  

The chateau is also famous for its role in the creation of the mother-of-all French castles, the Versailles.  It was built in the 1600's by Nicolas Fouquet, the Financial Secretary, with the collaboration of three famed masters of his time - the architect Le Vau, the painter-decorator Le Brun, and the landscape gardener Le Notre.  To cut the long story short, King Louix XIV, who had already planned the arrest of Fouquet as part of some political intrigue, burst with jealousy after seeing the magnificent castle and witnessing the admiration of the people for Fouquet, and was even more determined to get rid of him.  Fouquet was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonement, his belongings including the castle seized, and eventually died in prison after 19 long years.  

In the meantime, the King engaged the services of the same 3 masters to create another bigger, better castle for himself, and viola, we have the Versailles.

It is impossible to take a good picture of a castle in darkness, lit only by flames from candles.  So, trust us when we say this is the Vaux le Vicomte, and not a haunted mansion (hmm... actually it could very well be...)  

Waiting for dinner

We queued for 45 minutes to enter the castle.  It was almost 10pm.  The kids should be in bed, and yet here they are, leaping about with unbridled energy.  Predictably though, Ju conked out within 10 minutes of entering the castle. 

Chandeliers took on an surreal aura inside the dim rooms.

View of the candle-lit gardens from a window in the castle.

One of the bedrooms.  

Sorry I can't get anymore specific than that, coz guess who had the audio guide?  Not me.

And there we are!

Fireworks at midnight to cap it all off

This weekend, the weather took a distinctly cold turn, so it's time to dust off the jackets and gloves.  YL made a rare request to go shopping, so we headed off to the Opera area, and had  lunch in Little Japan.    

Heading off to catch the bus

We are, after all, Chinese East Asians.  We need our rice & noodles, even in the land of gastronomic paradise.  It wasn't fantastic, but certainly served its purpose.

The Opera Garnier in the background

Close up of the Opera Garnier. I must admit, the French have some pretty impressive buildings.  But then, this is probably the reason why Gaston Leroux set his novel, The Phantom of the Opera, here.  And yes, there really is a man-made lake beneath it.  Not sure about phantoms, though. 

Wandering in the streets of Paris

We finally staggered home around 7pm, and hid from the drizzle by ducking into the nearest restaurant which turned out to be a creperie.  

 I had crepes with honey, bananas, sugar and vanilla ice-cream.  Yes, it was my dinner.  No, I did not feel guilty.  It was heaven.

Weekends in Paris - Part I

Have been quiet on the blog, but please be assured that we are by no means resting on our laurels here.  We I have a checklist (mais bien sur!), and we're I'm making sure we get through it.  


So, <deep breathe> here we go...  

One sunny Sunday morning, we went for lunch at the famous (or so I was told) salon de the, Angelina Tearoom, in the 1st arrondissement.   

We got there before noon, and was shown to a table at the back, but we would have much prefer a table in the sunny bright section out front.  But they probably kept them available for good-looking customers, and certainly not for those without toddlers and shrilly kids.  But no complaints.  A queue was starting to form so we were lucky to be seated immediately.  By the time we left, a veritable queue had formed, snaking its way out onto the street walkways.

They are famous for their pastries, so we saved room in our stomachs for two of their signature creations, the Mont Blanc (meringue, light whipped cream and chestnut cream vermicelli) - the brown blob that looks like cr*p on the right - and the Saint Honore (puff pastry, caramel-coated and whipped Bourbon vanilla cream) - a much more virginal-looking piece of art.  Our verdict: the Saint-Honore. 


YL also had their goey thick hot chocolate, another house favourite.  It was thick.  And goey.    And chocolatey.  You can tell what a big fan of chocolate I am. 


To digest the feast, we took a short stroll over in the Tuilleries Garden overlooking the Place de la Concorde, which is probably France's most impressive square.  In one glance, you can spot the Eiffel Tower in the horizon, the Pont Alexandre III (that's the one with the 4 golden gilded pillars in each corner), the 3,000 year-old Egyptian obelisk, and rue de Rivoli, one of the grand Parisian streets where even the pavement oozes of luxury, cash, celebrities and fashion.  Place de la Concorde is also, of course, the exact spot where several thousands people were guillotined during the French Revolution, including the king and queen, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.  

OK, let's take a break from the violence.  Soph is mimicking a statue in the Tuilleries Garden.

Partial view of the Place de la Concorde from the Tuilleries.

In one of the corners of the Tuilleries stand the Musee de l'Orangerie, once a greenhouse that stored the orange trees (hence the name) in the Tuilleries.  Today it is famous as the permanent home to 8 of Claude Monet's famous Water Lilies series, and a decent collection of Impressionist paintings by other master such as Renior and Matisse.   

Gorgeous (the painting, I mean)

A closeup of one of the works

The kids meddling around with - you guessed it - the audio guide, while YL and I take turns to admire the paintings.  

They did a good job with the renovation of the museum.  Natural light floods the stark white walls of the exhibition room from above, contrasting the blues and greens of the paintings beautifully.  The idea of Impressionism is relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes to quickly capture the essence of the subject, rather than its details, an emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, and the inclusion of movement as a crucial element.

Other works in the small museum.  

(If you have to paint something, why not a naked woman with real curves and fat?)

Young Girls at the Piano, by Renoir.  This one is a second and (deliberately?) unfinished version.  The first sits in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.  You can see it here.

Fast forward to the following weekend.  We again took advantage of the sunny warm weather to go to the Jardin d'Acclimitation.  While we spent some time on the mini train ride and boat ride, the highlight was probably the marionnette show.  

This is where we really appreciate when plays transcend the language barrier.  Obviously it was in French, but I think we more or less got the gist of the story.  Sophie kept asking me "what are they talking about??", and I think I made up my own story and explanation based on what I could see on stage.  Ju was simply mesmerised by the dancing rabbits.  That's all he needs to know, anyways.  

Sophie's Milestone

Ju is in a phase where he breaks a record or achieves a "first" every other week.  First time he sleeps without his pacifier, first time he slept on his own away from our room, first time he sends a cryptic SMS to YL's boss using YL's iPhone, first time he crashes my laptop, etc.  

For Sophie, milestones are fewer and definitely more tricky to define.  But this week, at 6 years old, she hit her own first.    

The Italian stallion is here!

Yiyi and Yi Cheong welcomed their little Italian stalion yesterday, who came in weighing 3.64kg.  He's got his father's double-eyelids and chocolate skin colour, his mom's nose and both their dimples.  This one is going to break some hearts...!!