From Café to Lourdes

Hello again!

First morning in Paris and first café au lait is memorable! Sitting on the terrace, enjoy first caffeine‘s dose of the day and look at the Parisians hurry to their work is another experience too!

Then morning after we go to Gare Montparnasse to catch TGV to Lourdes:

Three months before departure date, I bought train ticket online of SNCF and could grab some heavy discounted tickets -called PREM- One thing you have to bear in mind: train in France is very punctual; they will leave almost on time, so be early or you might find you have to buy new sets of tickets with double the price your prepaid-discount-non-refundable PREM :

Paris - Lourdes journey will take nearly 6 hours with TGV train (high speed train) and will stop at those stations: Poitier, Angouleme, Bordeaux St Jean and few more stations then Pau and finally Lourdes

See you in Lourdes!

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Paris: The Iron Lady still as charming as ever!

Yay! We're here, stand in front of the "Old" famous Iron Lady of France , Lady Eiffel! Seeing her the first time under day light was a bit disappointed! But as we turned around, she was lit up as a Lady with fresh make up and oh she so beautiful






Paris WAS our city in dream, being studied French since I was a teenage girl (oh my beautiful youth days now so farrr away...) we also learnt about its history, a bit of its art, a bit of its literature and of course, our dream by that time was one in the lifetime stand on Paris ground admire Eiffel tower, a dream seemed lot of difficult to be true at that time.

Paris now IS my reality, standing at the bases of Eiffel tower, crêpe in hand, blend in the surrounding noise, the people, the view and like exacly in my dream: Paris IS perfect!

In my opinion, the proper way to approach Eiffel is from Trocadero, where I were greeted by Palais de Chaillot, the statues, the fountain and the Iranian protectors:

Before we head to our hotel, we had a goodbye from Paris sky, beautifully under the sunset !

Our first day in Paris was another nearly perfect image: the Montparnasse tower and the metro Edgar Quinet light up just the moment we head off from the metro. Good night!

Incheon Airport

Before I continue with my 2009 trip, let me say few things about Incheon Airport.


This airport is the best IMO: modern, airy and thoughful for travellers whose in transit.

I loved that some part of this airport has woody floor and it warm and cozy feeling .

We flew with Korea Air, and they provided us accomodation on outbound flight as we have to wait for more than 5 hours in transit. The accomodation was top notch: it was 5* Incheon Hyatt Regency. It was a shame that we had only few hours to laid our back on their comfortable beds, however, we enjoyed their breakfast the morning after - thought we had to hurried to catch our connecting flight!

Here is Air France check in counters, and some of the airport pictures here

Internet lounge:



Clean and airy:


There's even a phone card vending machine:



For someone who freak out of public toilet seat, here's a prove that you won't have to worry same matter at Incheon :

Our 2009 trip: Not a smooth start... because of the Red Menace

The adventure and the trip of our dream started here:

4:30 AM 23 Sep 2009, I woke up as the alarm rang follow by the phone: Hello Mrs, are you ready? I am here to pick you up to the airport!
The very first time the driver from Airport shuttle Hoang Do called me, not I called them as the previous trip! It must be a good signed I thought. Without having our morning coffee, we loaded our luggage into the van waiting at our door, locked the door and off we went! On the way to Sydney airport the driver picked up another lady who went to Port Douglas, poor lady she got a Rendez-vous with her old friend for a leisure weekend and she didn't travel in the last 20 years!
We chatted on the way to airport and suddenly I realized that the frog was a big thick, I said to my self that our flight may delay due to the bad weather - as it was happened few days ago- but I never thought that was worse than I thought!
As the hours passed, I saw news on TV and knew that we'd had a long day : We're end up waiting 8 hours at the airport and our plane finally took off at at 5:00 P.M, our original schedule was 7:55 A.M!!!!
But Paris is well worth the wait.....

This is the airport poster which I took at 6 AM



This is what I saw outside the boarding gate at 6:30 AM as we were about ready to board Grrr!!!

Note the Singapore girl sat on the tarmac: that was the only flight took off that morning!! How lucky her passengers were!

The airline (or may be the airport) provided us food voucher while passengers seem lost and the Sydney airport at that point became a zoo: crowded and chaos everywhere . At the end we had 2 vouchers: one for breakfast and one for lunch; but we still had to wait - as the result of air traffic when ALL international flights were diverted to Melbourne (Queensland was effected worsen than Sydney that day I 've heard) then ALL of them had to returned to SYD !

1 P.M:


3 P.M:
And finally at 4 P.M, my girl the Korean Air appeared, beautiful blue as the sky at the moment:



We boarded and the aircraft soon took off and the attractively crews started their service routine:




One thing I want to note here: if you have a chance to fly with Korean Air, don't forget to have their Bibimbap, as this is the national dish and it tastes so goooodddd

This is how to essemble the dish: Add hot steam rice into the vegetable bowl







Then pour in the sesame oil, hot pepper sauce, mix well and enjoy

Contrast with a hard day, looked out the window we saw a spectacular skyline as the sun about to set:

And then the crew turned off the light, we all had a few hours rest prepared for the next day.

Until then, you too have a good rest.....

See you soon!

Laziness has caught me

OK, this is not a travel journey - but somehow it link to the tittle :)- : I didn't post anything for such a looonnggg time; despite we went to Malaysia in June 2008. I put the blam on my dearest son, who lost most of my photos during a helping time - He tried to re-organize all my travel photos into a new portable hard disk as a gift for my birthday; therefore will leave more space on my main PC :) by his stupid(ness) he didn't check before delete all photos in old folder and yes, you're right; the new hard disk was failed to stored my photos folder so bang... they were all gone!
Posting a travel memory without photos, to me it as same as reading a cookbook without any pictures! But thank goodnees, we just return from a trip to France ( Lourdes and Paris that is ) and few days in Seoul. Now before I can put the blame to anyone else, I think better I start to recall my memories now....
Shall we start now?