Springtime in Paris

My first picture of Paris - I'll never forget what it felt like to stand on Le Pont Neuf, looking out at the Seine for the first time, with the beautiful city in the background. Just amazing...


La Musee Du Louvre
The sheer size of this building meant that the only way I could get a picture of the entire this was from the top of the Eiffel Tower. I have never been that overwhelmed by a building before - the Louvre is bigger than a city block, and it would probably take a week to see everything inside.







I can't even describe the "bigness" of Notre Dame Cathedral. It literally took my breath away. Even from the top of the Eiffel Tower, you can see it clearly among the hundreds of other buildings. Such a beautiful work of art...





This is the "Hotel de Ville", a very famous Parisian landmark, and the place where many political decisions were made before, during, and after the French Revolution. Just like everything else in the city, the architecture is amazing.

I can't have pictures of Paris without including the Eiffel Tower. I'm pretty sure that there are about 50 pictures of this incredible landmark - after going through and deleting some. Simply put, it's one of the most photogenic things I've even been lucky enough to photograph.



There are several more pictures, which I will probably post at random times, but these few caught me eye today.

My last photograph of Paris. It seemed fitting to capture the sunset over the Seine...

springtime in London

While people back in Canada are enduring the annual March snowstorms and cold, wet days, London is warm and sunny. (Well at least today was sunny - we seem to be getting bursts of rain at random points during every.)


Another walk in Hyde Park led to more pics of the beauty that lies right in the heart of this busy city.


This is by far my favourite picture taken of a swan since we moved here - the light was perfect and even though it took a few minutes, he posed very nicely for me:



There seemed to be hundreds of birds all over the park - the usual seagulls, swans, geese, ducks, and other small water birds, as well as an unexpected visitor:


Right at the end of the Serpentine, where there are tons of people and birds all around, a grey heron (we thought it was a whooping crane) sat at the very top of a tree. I was pretty excited, since we don't see them around very often - and got an even better surprise when he flew down to the water to get some of the treats that a little kid was throwing to the other birds.


Since herons are such solitary birds, and usually stay out in the middle of the river where it's hard to get decent pics of them, I was really happy to get such good close-ups. It will also be the only time I can expect to get a photograph of a heron eating a french fry...

around London

A swan in Kensingon Gardens

The London skyline from a City Building (and a cameraphone)

Skateboard park near Notting Hill

Rainy days in the schoolyard

Sunset over North London

update

I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to bother with this photoblog... I haven't been motivated at all to post pics regularly, and it takes so long to upload pictures and organize them here that I might just stick to posting pics in my regular blog.

For now, here are several pictures taken in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park during the last couple of months. Hope you enjoy them!

The London Aquarium

As I mentioned in my other blog, Jeremy and I went to the aquarium this week. The front entrance was pretty impressive, lots of interesting lighting and several tubes of water with glowing jellyfish in them.

There were so many amazing fish there, I have weed out about 40 pictures for this post. Here are the ones that I thought turned out really well.

This pufferfish has the creepiest eyes I've ever seen - instead of a regular eyeball, it's a bunch of little glowing blue dots.

Not sure that I'd eat that kind of shrimp... they're way too pretty

Sometimes they swam a little too quickly and I couldn't get a decent picture
Creepy piranhas

Strange mini-eels starting at themselves in the mirror

This was the weirdest fish we'd ever seen - they look normal for a little while, then suddenly flatten out like something squashed them. They swim like rays, but look like flattened fishes. Very strange.

Giant goldfish

A tiger shark looking like he's getting hungry...