Here are some pictures from our aimless wander around the Pompidou Centre.
Being able to find interesting things at every few steps you take, makes Paris so awesome.

This fountain is called Fountaine Stravinsky, and it features sculptures that represent the work of Igor Stravinsky, the composer.
In the dreary rain, colorful and whimsical sculptures immediately stood out.

This one should be La Sirène (The Mermaid).

Then we went into Paroisse Saint Merri, which is well old and beautiful. It was built in the 1500s and looks a little worse for wear, not being as famous as Notre Dame.
But it exudes a wonderful Gothic atmosphere and had some interesting artwork in it, like that patchwork quilt.

I think it's so gorgeous.

There's a lady who's sitting in the chair in front of the amazing stained window.

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 Instragram-edited these photos just for the hell of it.

They take their coffee making very seriously. I have never seen such an amazing espresso machine and such care in the craft. The espressionist got a precise amount ground coffee from the grinder that he measured on a scale.

I didn't know what to get so I chose their namesake, the ristretto. It's like an espresso.
It was very malty and fragrant, with a bunch of flavors bouncing in my mouth, but the aftertaste was surprisingly clean.
It was awesome.

Saw this shiny thing that was completely covered in sequins. I like how you can create your own patterns on the dress by flipping the sequins over.

 
This post marks the beginning for the backlog I have for the Paris/London trip my mom and I took in August.

Emirates had a sweet deal for Charles De Gaulle. I used AirBnb to book us a place in the heart of the city, Rue Quincampoix, to be precise. It's kinda near the RER station Chatelet Les Halles, so we just took RER B from the airport to CLH (10 euro for zone 1).
And then we dragged our luggage around the underground, not knowing which exit was right, before emerging above ground to drag our bags around in the light rain. 

Ah, Paris. I've missed you.

Rue Quincampoix is a cobbled street perpendicular to Rue Rambuteau.

This was the building we would be staying in.
Proper old building with a cafe, Anticafe, downstairs.
The wifi we accessed was kindly supplied by them. lol

The interior was chic. Sofa bed, balcony opening to the street below.

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Lululemon hosted this mass yoga event at Orchard Road on 1 Nov.


My friend asked me along - all I had to do was register on the website and bring my own mat.
Easy.

So Lululemon is a lifestyle / yoga gear shop from the US that opened its first store here.
It was pretty cool of them to organize this free yoga class on the most famous road in Singapore.
By the way, as my friend pointed out, they didn't shut down Orchard road for the event, it's scheduled to be closed to vehicles on the first Saturday of every month.

We waited around for the road to be cordoned off and while in the queue to get into the space, there was some drama involving a ridiculously petty passerby and one of the girls in the queue. The big older guy made a big fuss with a young girl who apparently said something when his wife bumped into her. He harangued her for a few minutes even after the wife came to accept her apology/apologise for crazy husband. It was totally wtf.

 Anyway, we were finally allowed on the road, which was pretty amazing. I never thought I would walk on the vehicle-less Orchard road, much less do yoga on it.
Lululemon gave us freebies like a frigging yoga mat and a bottle of juice.
It was orderly and everyone was excited, especially the ladies in front of us, who showed off their flexibility by stacking themselves on top of each other.

The main stage was far away, where they had some performances.
We sat there in the middle of the road, bored, surrounded by curious pedestrians armed with cameras, and Lululemon staff armed with cameras, and media people armed with cameras.
I did my best to ignore them.

When it was finally time to do yoga, that was when you really had to concentrate on not caring that you look like a fool.
And having not done yoga for eons, it was quite brutal. I couldn't quite hear what the instructors were saying, but luckily I could count on looking at my friends to know the right movements to do.

My hair was stuck to my face from all the fluid pouring out of my pores, and sometimes the crowd cheered when they thought we did something cool.
Once it was time for the 'corpse pose' / final cool down, where you lay on the mat and let the humid air evaporate the sweat off your broken body, I was glad.
The drone camera flew over us, taking photos for Lululemon.

It was an interesting and unique experience to say the least.
And I have been doing my version of yoga at home ever since.

 Bill Bailey !!!

So so so glad I didn't cheapskate and went for this. $92!

Bill Bailey is my new favorite guy ever.
I read a bunch of his interviews with the Independent and the Guardian this morning, which only reinforced how awesome he is.

This was part of his comedy tour for Limboland, where he graced us with his terrifically clever yet gentle, surreal and beautiful humor and song.

My favorite bits (basically of all it):
- "Keep the car running!" since he couldn't say much about our gov't (lightning box with too much power)
- West London youths unable to buy the right cheese because it cramps their gesture-style
- One Direction as sad moths to talent
- Nihilistic birthday song to a 5 year old
- The single word tipping point with the person you see yourself having a future with
- Jamaican Downton Abbey
- His impression of the Queen wanting to "bag a hippie"
- Sideways tongue when playing guitar
- Attempt at Singlish when singing death-metal that sounded HKglish.
- God and his 2 sons, Jesus and Graham

Tea Chapter 
(Neil Road, Singapore)


X and I were roaming the Chinatown / Maxwell area and passed by this tea shop that occupied 2 shophouses.
The nice lady at the counter said that it was a shop but the tea drinking place was upstairs. Since we were looking for somewhere cool to kill time, we decided to check it out.

 Upstairs was an explosion of soothing wood tones and elegant Chinese cultural stuff.
A very friendly server took us under his wing and introduced us to his place with pride, first by making us take off our shoes.
It was obvious that he has a lot of experience working there and is passionate about tea. Or something.

 Down this corridor was the Western-style seating area, with chairs.
He extolled how the Queen Elizabeth II, sat in that very room in the corner to have tea in 1989 (?).
Not being royal-fans, we smiled politely.

 The interior was really lovely, I have to say. You could faintly hear the bustle of the traffic outside.
We sat in the Asian-style booths where there was a well for us to put our legs.

 Friendly server prepared a pot of water and a flaming combustion thing to boil the water, as well as the tea gear. We were info-entertained by his talk on the various types of tea, the tea equipment, and the correct way of brewing.

Basically, green and white tea have the most caffeine, since they have not been fermented. They are best drunk in the morning. White tea is good for your skin, apparently.
The fermented / processed teas are the pu'er, oolong, the reds, etc, which are good in the afternoon, if you want to sleep.
And amazingly, teas can leave the fragrance of champagne, honey, or milk, etc, in your mouth.
I think the best thing about tea is its aroma.

 Since we didn't know anything about brewing tea, he showed us how.

The temperature of the water has to match the type of tea you're making. Fermented teas need hotter water than the others!
Also, crushed leaves tend to make the brew more bitter, so be gentle with the leaves.
The tea can be re-used about 4 times, with the steeping time adjusted in 5 second increments, from 20 seconds onwards. Don't leave the leaves in water, so pour everything out into the serving pot after steeping.
And those slim vessels are for sniffing the aroma.

There was a lot of water being poured over pots to warm them, sipping Jasmine tea from little cups, talking about The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

A nice experience, with a damage of $12~ each for a $16 tea blend.
Next time, we'll try the one with the milk fragrance.

Sigtuna


We had 6 hours to kill before our flight back to Singapore, since we arrived at Arlanda airport from Copenhagen in the morning.
This cute little old town is within the same transport zone as Arlanda, so we stuffed our suitcases in the airport lockers (wasn't too expensive) and got bus info and single zone tickets from the tourist info counter person at the airport, who seemed in a hurry to get rid of us.
Sigtuna was 2 bus rides away, since we missed the direct bus.

The town was founded in 980, and contains the main old shopping street, with castle ruins, rune stones, a really old church and a lovely view of the bay.

We arrived with empty bellies and wanted to get some grub. It was nearly 2 pm so the lunch specials were nearly over. Surprisingly, we couldn't easily find any attractive / affordable eateries.
After walking up and down the main street, Stora gatan, in the hot sun, we decided on a okay looking place. It served okay food. I had salty stew on rice and mom had tuna and potatoes.

Then we went to find the tourist center and got a comprehensive map of the town.
This building here is the town hall, in fact, the smallest town hall in Sweden.
We went inside - it was only as big as 2 bedrooms!
The nice lady there said that it used to be a prison. Now it's a museum of sorts.

That's a view of Stora gatan, surrounded by old wooden buildings that have been painted in various pastels and re-purposed as shops. The ones of interest have a little plaque outside stating its history.

That's the edge of the town, ending with the huge lake / sea.
It's a park with people playing miniature golf and kids doing random stuff.

Ducks, boat, houses, trees, all very picturesque.
It feel wonderful just looking out at the expense of water.

Many houses near the park. This one has a bicycle for a gate!

I had to go see the ruins.
This, S:t Olaf church ruin, was one near St. Mary's.
This is the ceiling of St. Mary's Church. It was finished in 1255!

A fine example of medieval brick work.

The exterior looks very modern though.

Then we went back to the S:t Olaf's ruins next to the church.
It was already atmospheric in the middle of the day. Imagine what it would be like at dusk!

We went up a little hill that offered a view of the bay.
There was the klockbacken nearby too.

Another ruin. This was stunning.
S:t Peter's church ruins.

The tower looked fine, but all that remained from the rest of building were walls, pillars and arches.
There were mysterious stands in the high windows.
It was super cool.

To get relief from the sweltering heat, we got iced chocolate from the cafe on Stora gatan. It was nice!
And we got a cake too.

This is a cute book kiosk for people to borrow books freely.

Stora gatan again.
It's very sleepy.


And it was goodbye Sweden!

We went to the park to look at the water lapping at the pebbled shore and see people feed ducks.
Then it was time to catch the bus back to the airport for our flight to Helsinki, then home.

Den lille havfrue - The little mermaid


The mermaid waits at a section of a huge park called Langelinie next to a yacht harbour. We took bus 26 near Osterport station and alighted at Indiakaj street. From there, follow the signs for "den lille havfrue". There was an American family that walked the wrong way because they expected signs in English.




The wiki entry for the statue provides an interesting read. 
The founder of Carlsberg commissioned this after watching a ballet based on H.C. Anderson's tale of the little mermaid. 
We did see a version of the statue at Visit Carlsberg, set in the middle of a fountain. But this version, unveiled in 1913, somehow captured the public's imagination.
Basically, it is a piece of art that has become iconic and Copenhagen has taken advantage of it to establish it as their mascot.
The mermaid is part tourist magnet, part representative of the spirit of city, and an easy target for people who want to make the news.

The setting of the lone little bronze maiden in her vulnerable pose, gazing over the water, is very poetic, romantic and wistful, capturing the spirit of Anderson's story. 
Except that the background is full of industrial buildings.
This guy was sketching her in his notebook. It looked good.
 

There were some flowers strewn on her.
We visited in the late evening, after the busloads of tourists are not longer there.
She was still very popular as we had to wait a bit to get a solo shot with her.

We walked along the edge of the water and saw people chucking sticks in the water for their dogs to fetch.

The sunset had a lovely pink tinge.


That's a view of Kastellet, a star-shaped fortress from the 1600s. The shape looks amazing in Google maps.
Actually I didn't know what it was, but the bridge that allowed access to the fortress was already closed, so I couldn't explore.

Summer flowers.

That's the Gefion fountain, which is huge - humans in the photo for scale.

There it is from the back.
This was also contributed by the Carlsberg group and features a Norse Goddess on a chariot driven by beasts.
Somehow it doesn't fit in with the atmosphere of the place.
Too grand and imposing!

And this was my last photo of the lovely city of Copenhagen as we took a bus home.
The next day, we had an early flight back to Stockholm.

The Copenhagen Zoo


I didn't expect to go to the zoo, since I tend to avoid them on trips. They are usually depressing for me and the animals.
But since it was the only attraction anywhere near Visit Carlsberg, we took a short bus ride to get there.
And to my surprise, I enjoyed it a lot. I think it was to do with the Danish sense of design. The animals looked well, the zoo was a mixture of ultra-modern and traditional and it was generally very interesting.

It was founded in 1859! Making it one of the oldest zoos in Europe.

The first tall structure you see is the observation tower (no photo here) and nearby is this traditional looking building, which houses the zoo gift shop and some restaurants and bars.
We visited late afternoon and there were quite a few families with kids in tow.

The first animals we saw were the flamingos.

Nearby was a dual cage set-up for cute monkeys.

One of the fancy new exhibits was the Arctic Ring, which looked like an exciting white space dome from the outside. You had to walk for ages in the spacious ice-themed walkways to get to the actual polar bear bit in the center.

And of course, there were no polar bears to be seen.
I don't even know why we bothered. haha.
But we couldn't stay mad because the exhibit did offer us respite from the summer sun. And there were interesting polar-bear games for kids to try, like swat the seal on the screen to test if you have quick reflexes like the bears do. If you are successful, the screen gets splattered with red blood. Lovely.

Check out the design. So cool.
There are even lounge bean-bags on the deck.

There was reindeer.

A terribly bored bear who stood on its hind legs and sniffed at us.
Watching it kept me very entertained.

There were a bunch of dusty elephants. This is the baby.
Apparently there is a glass domed Elephant House, but I didn't see it at all.

I saw this though. I think it was the old elephant house.
If you watched Madagascar (the movie), buildings like these remind me of the old brick buildings they use in their New York zoo. Back then, people put animals in human houses, and even humans in zoos.

The most depressed chimpanzee I have ever seen.
It was just lying in front of the glass separating us from it, staring at us with an incredibly dour face for a while, until it was sick of looking at us and turned to its side to sleep.
I hope it wasn't feeling sick or depressed or murderous.

We went to the green areas after seeing the sad chimp, not expecting much.
But it was beautiful. Lush, loads of different birds flying and alighting, butterflies, toucans, and these crazy looking things that decided to parade in front of us.

Lazy seals basking in the sun.

I loved watching the tigers. There were 3 of them, and one of them jumped in the pond to swim.

Farm animals are a must. Except that these cows were huge!

And there was a goat enclosure. I saw this cute young girl romping with the baby goats inside the pen, and went in as well.
She was so into petting the kids, it was adorable, in a slightly terrifying way, because she was climbing over and under things to get close to them.

I thought this zoo was a really good attraction, especially if you go at the same time we did, since it wasn't crowded at all.