On the final legs

We feel like we are almost home although still in Sheffield. We are heading to London on Sunday for two nights then fly to Hong Kong and spend three nights there and then home! Not looking forward to going back to work but definitely looking forward to seeing my wardrobe!
Not much to report about Sheffield. Got another paper written while I was here, did a seminar for some students, had lunch with the lovely Julia, coffee with lovely Pat Sikes, dinner at Jackie's house, lunch with Guy Merchant.
Don't know if my lack of enthusiasm is because of Sheffield itself or because I'm already in home headspace. Certainly doing course profiles, readers, and finding tutors via email etc doesn't help!

Collage of photos taken on our trip to York

Playing with Picasa - didn't realise you could create these collages automatically - kinda fun!

Sheffield

So here I am sitting in the beautiful Julia's office- such a pity she is not here but I still get to check out her books and cute postcards, dolls,. posters etc. Not much else to check out because the weather is absolute CRAP! After a glorious Friday and Saturday we woke to drizzle on Sunday and it hasn't stopped since- and today is Thursday! I just feel like I am in Melbourne in the middle of one of those miserable dreary grey drizzly weeks that come in around July. But this is summer here - come on Sheffield - let the sun shine in! And Peppi will think this is very funny as I did nothing but complain about the weather in Jyvaskyla while we were there - so maybe it's me that grey weather is following around the planet!

Bronte Country

We hired a car for the day in Sheffield and drove to Haworth, the home of the Bronte sisters and the Parsonage Museum. I realised on the way there as we drove through Yorkshire, that it was my fictional world become reality. Everyone from the Brontes to DH Lawrence even to Barbara Taylor Bradford have written about these towns, and mills and mines, the black of the coal still staining the brick work of the houses, the long narrow hilly streets - close your eyes and picture the miners walking back home after their shifts.
And the museum!! I had always known that the three sisters read each other's writing each evening and walked around a table as they read. But when you see the room - it is tiny - maybe  it would take three steps to walk the length of the table - another three steps and back down the other side - past the sofa where apparently Emily died - lying on this short uncomfortable sofa. All the windows in the parsonage have blinds on them to protect the furniture but I so wanted to see out - to see what they saw when they looked out the window to the moors.
Had a drink with the drunken Branwell at the Black Bull - no matter how much they try to reconstitute him as someone we should feel sorry for I'm still with Charlotte
You ask about Branwell; he never thinks of seeking employment, and I begin to fear that he has rendered himself incapable of filling any respectable station in life; besides, if money were at his disposal, he would use it only to his own injury; the faculty of self-government is, I fear, almost destroyed in him. You ask me if I do not think that men are strange beings? I do, indeed. I have often thought so; and I think too that the mode of bringing them up is strange: they are not sufficiently guarded from temptation. Girls are protected as if they were something very frail or silly Indeed, while boys are turned loose on the world as if they, of all beings in existence, were the wisest and least liable to be led astray.

Joyce Hotel Paris

We found the Joyce Hotel on Laterooms.comand then checked it on Tripadvisor - it was the first hotel where the reviews were as good as the price so we went for it and the reviews actually were right! Apart from this very weird layout of the room it was terrific. These photos show the route from bed to bathroom - along a narrow corridor - at last a reason for carrying a torch all this time!!

This was such a good choice of hotel thank goodness!! It's so hard to find a decent European hotel especially if you are using Australian dollars to pay for it!

Notre Dame and the Gargoyles

The Notre Dame Cathedral and its amazing gargoyles-

These were Sandy's favourite part of the cathedral !

The Louvre and more

I love this photo - this is the crowd at the Mona Lisa. No one actually looked at the painting with their own eyes - they all viewed it through the viewfinder of their cameras/video cameras. Pushing and shoving to get a spot at the front so they could capture their own photo - which would never be any good because of the reflection of the glass frame!!
Walking down a staircase this view of one of the galleries closed - a jumble of antiquities!
Joan of Arc in gold!!
We caught the metro and train line to the Eiffel Tower and then did a one hour boat cruise around the river