Ingrid and Tony's Travels

A beautiful day today just ambling around our area Le Jardin Tuileries to the Louvre and then some shopping.

Breakfast in a street cafe, croissants, baguettes and eggs and ham, then into some of the great  shopping  in this area. Less frenetic than the Champs-Élysées shopping precinct and little kinder on the feet after the 10 or so kilometres of walking yesterday.

The pictures always tell a better story

A good start to to the day

Traditional French architecture

Le sucriteur (sugar yummies and biscuits

Le bisciteur

Angelina an amazing chocolatier and pattiserie

Mmmm…

and more…

Our hotel, just a stone’s throw from all of the above

Walking through the gardens

A pleasant way to spend Sunday

That’s me taking a breather (black singlet top)

Sharing this space with the locals

Through the Gardens to the Eiffel tower

The Louvre

.. and yet more Louvre. It never ends

Lining up to get in The Louvre. Busy day.

Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in the Gardens

And our own bit of the Gardens in the Hotel.

Today, we decided to be at the finish line for the Peking to Paris rally. Sounds good in theory you say, but in practice, well it was anything but. Having been told that the rally cars including a Citroen which was raising money for  Tasmanian devil research, would end at the Arc de Triomphe  we walked from our hotel just up from the Tuileries Garden.  Arriving at the famous monument, we were just in time to see the rally winners, including the 1974 CitroenDS23 driven by owner entrepreneur Rob Sherrard, and which finished third, zoom past us back down the Champs-Élysées towards Cleopatra’s Needle  (in the same direction from where we had just come). So we tramped back again to find the cars, parked on display just 100 metres no less, from our hotel! The achilles are not going to recover for a little while now.

But it was a good day, meeting up with Tassie friends, Michael Aird (who is chairman of the Save Tasmanian Devil Appeal) and Jane McGee, and Paul and Margaret Lennon, who have just completed a cruise and are heading to Scotland.  Michael and Jane, like us, will be going to the UK to cheer on the Australian Test cricket side for The Ashes, the latter needing as much support as it can get.

A few photos to show some of the highlights of the day.

At Cleopatra’s Needle

The Arc, a long way away

Decided to skip Maxim’s for lunch

…but stopped for a coffee break

.. and a little Sephora shopping

to the eventual rally winner, a Leyland P76 – heavily modified!

.. even the VWs got in on the act

To the Tassie Devil Research Citroen with campaign chairman, Michael Aird

After the long haul  Hobart-Sydney-Dubai-Paris,we are here. While not much has been done yet, we still had time to  settle in to our hotel, the Westin Paris near just about everything! On arrival our challenge was to sort out a few IT  issues  in the hotel itself and with our OS iPhones. Makes you feel almost naked not being ‘connected’ but fortunately today we have been able to catch up online as you can see. Our destination last night was Aux Lyonnais, a  restaurant recommended by Testsuya himself.  Yes, we have influence! Some photos of Paris in my next update.

En route

Tony’s idea of breakfast in the Dubai Emirates lounge

Just a few French flowers in our hotel

Out to dinner with friends

Chicken en cocotte (in a pot)

Seafood quenelles (like a fish souffle)

A nice find – the quaint Aux Lyonnais

Welcome to our next adventure – starting from June 27 till August 23.  Off to France and Italy before some heavy cricket commitments in the United Kingdom  (three men’s Tests and two Women’s Tests) and a trip to Ireland in amongst this.

Stay tuned on this site for photos and a bit of a giggle.

And add your comments if feel you want to.

(A taste of cricket, with the Members’ area at Lords, as the feature header and which is where we’ll be on July 18 – yes Greta, we’re celebrating your birthday there!).

Just a quick dash up to the Hollywood sign before we leave LA.  Luckily we were there before the rain as it has been pretty persistent throughout this afternoon wherever we drove.

Some of the signs show we were in unfriendly territory too!

Next stop Melbourne.

It’s been sometimes challenging but overall we have seen a lot and have loved what we have seen. A birthday celebration to remember.

Watching Steve Winwood (of  Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Blind Faith fame) was a truly memorable experience.  His voice at age 64 is still amazing and his musical skill, indescribable.  Last night’s concert at The Greek was perhaps the highlight of our trip.

Not only is The Greek a beautiful theatre acoustically and for fantastic viewing, it was the experience of seeing this amazing musician live, with his backup group, playing his new songs and reliving some of his hits of years ago such as Dear Mr Fantasy, Higher Love, Back in the High Life Again and Can’t Find My Way Home.

Needless to say, everyone was on their feet singing, clapping and swaying to the music.  We old stagers can’t be kept quiet at  concerts (she says as she relives the Rolling Stones Melbourne concert)!

Quite prophetic that the beautiful Can’t Find My Way Home was still ringing in our ears as we tried to find our car in the car park.  Moment of panic at the end of the evening, but we can report that we made it back to the hotel – over an hour’s drive from the other side of LA – courtesy of our wonderful GPS which continues to keep us on the straight and narrow.

A fabulous night.

Our seats were amazing!

Tony and the wagon have to get a mention too! Well done to him, and his lady friend.

The boy and the wagon

Historic day today. Tony took instructions all day from a woman – and not once did he grumble. Yes, our GPS is a female and she got us where we wanted to go and home again without one cross word, one wrong turn or indeed any tantrum – from him!

Went on a bit of a coffee tour today courtesy Anthony Harrison.  Stopped at Intelligentsia in Venice. A very trendy, Chicago-based coffee roasters/cafe with not only great coffee, but heaps of atmosphere – very Bohemian, very Melbourne.  The second stop was Luxxe in Santa Monica which immediately sprang to mind as the South Yarra of coffee/shop locales in a more upmarket area of Santa Monica. ‘The Real Housewives of Santa Monica’ were everywhere!

Of course we made a stop at Venice Beach, drove on through Santa Monica and looked up at the Pacific  Palisades where the rich and famous live, and then made our way back to our hotel, conveniently located near LAX airport.

Tonight is the Steve Winwood concert which we are both seriously looking forward to and then tomorrow, home.

Arrived in Los Angeles late last night from NYC.  Good to feel a bit more warmth in the air, although a little smoggy out there!  We don’t appreciate how good is our fresh air until we are away from it.

We are heading out in our hire car now and hoping our GPS will take us where we want to go – preferably out of the car park!

Update coming soon!

This is Fabio Viviani of Top Chef fame.  Great cook and charismatic chef to boot.  Tonight we had dinner with him in the Top Chef kitchen accompanied by fellow Top Chef , Antonia Lofaso.  Their menus were fabulous and we each both chose the other chef’s menu so we could taste both together.  Fabio and Antonia prepped all the food while a mass of sous chefs  plated everything to give Fabio and Antonia time to mix with their guests chatting and having photos taken.

We were going to watch them cook but good old Hurricane Sandy put a stop to that and so tonight’s event was purely a set menu which we sat, enjoyed and had the opportunity to talk to them both about .  Had a fantastic night and such a bonus to meet the celebrity chefs we (Ingrid) watch on Bravo TV each season.

Great experience.