Caves, lights, ACTION!

Last weekend, Boy and I decided to escape Paris and go for a jaunt to a little town called Chateaudun. Tis about an hour and a half away by train. It was bootiful. Very old and picturesque with a lovely castle and old tottery buildings and gardens and caves. We went for a mooch round the castle, which was almost totally deserted, and had a really cool exhibition about cooking in medieval times, including a but that I got very overexcited about....even though it probably isn't that exciting. They had 9 goblets that sent up puffs of flavoured air and you had to guess what they were. Apparently according to some research from some bloke or other, every flavour ever can be broken down into some or all of these 9 components. Ooh er. AND one of them was lemon. That therefore gives me medieval carte blanche to continue using it in all my cooking. Teehee.

We then went to the caves, where we were tacked on to the end of a french coach tour who had evidently been in the pub for several hours....or possibly days, it was hard to tell. They made the poor tour guide (Begonia)'s life very difficult, stealing her props and shouting over her at all intervals. Twas very surreal meandering through a network of caves with a song about starfish being warbled and yelled in slurred French. And then there was the light show.

We were seated in a big caverny bit....and then the most ridiculously 80s light show began with carbon and hydrogen talking to each other, and much red flashing (flames) and blue flashing (storm). Begonia had been very proudly telling us about how much more elaborate the light show had recently become....and sure enough....there was a wonky illuminated sign that said 2006 :S . And then stars were projected on the ceiling and a crackly french song about liberty (and again....they all sang along. Tunelessly.) It. Was. Weird!

In other news, we went to the annual chocolate festival on friday (blagged a free press pass hehe) and ate lots of free chocolate from master chocolatiers. It's a hard life. Then there was (naturally) a fashion show, in which C list french celebs paraded on a catwalk in couture dresses featuring chocolate detailing. There was a woman with a chocolate headdress, another with slabs of chocolate sewn into her skirt, and another with chocolate transfers on her kimono. It was really quite impressive despite being more than a little odd.

Vati and Rob have been visiting this weekend too, so we were touristy and went on a bateau mouche and climbed the arc de triomphe. Twas good. Also discovered 2 very lovely restaurants...one of which was very classy despite its bovine themed decor (eek).

Think that's enough rambling for now,

Byeee

The fate of Coco...burlesque wondercake

Oops, lots of time to fill in....so will start with the most tragic of my anecdotes:

I decided to come over all domestic goddesslike last weekend and bake a chocolate cake (of joy...it had golden syrup in it and eeeeverything)....however....twas not to be, as the gods that control David's oven tried to cook it at the temperature one might find inside a volcano. It was blackened and had to be chiselled out of the tin, which buckled under the burnt cakey might. *sigh* David still ate a big slab of it though, bless him!

What other things have I been up to? Ooh yeah, went to an exhibition of Dragons at the Natural History Museum, which was cool, had an audioguide that narrated stories and dragonmyths. Also have now met up with a real live French person (gasp) through a conversation exchange. It felt really good to actually be speaking french for more than a few minutes at a time, and she's really lovely, so hopefully we'll meet up again soon.

Went for a wander with rufus wainwright the other day (courtesy of mp3 player) and have decided that he is the perfect parisian accompaniment, cheered me up a lot just wandering around in time to music and taking photos. Paris is so pretty at the moment! (Jen wins the "stating the bleeding obvious" award).

Work is still bon, haven't had anything published for a while, wrote an article last week which they didn't have space for which was a pain, but I'm still really enjoying it.

Also have decided to skidaddle to Cambridge for a few days in november to see people, which I'm very excited about. Oh yeah....alsoalso....am going to Disneyland! EEEEEEE!! The tickets came a few days ago and Emma and I will be off there on her birthday....so wonderfully mature aren't we?! Being ladies what lunch while surrounded by giant Disney characters is perhaps ever so slightly less sophisticated....but I'm excited and I don't care :P.

Am going to a poetry reading tomorrow night in a pub called "The Highlander" which is apparently English....should be interesting. Will keep you posted. Gonna go make tea now.

Bye byeee xxx