paris – Sheila365

Que ç’est triste.

The news today of the fire and destruction of Notre Dame in Paris made my heart sink. What a terrible loss. Many, many millions of people feel a connection to the 8 centuries old gothic cathedral. As I post this, Notre Dame is still burning, its roof and spire have fallen. I can’t imagine much more of a charred shell will remain. I pray that noone was injured or killed.

I was 16 on my first visit. I was immediately awed by the beautiful arches, stained glass windows, towers, transept, arches, and side chapels. I have enjoyed more visits since then, every time I passed through Paris. These pictures were from my last visit, 4 years ago…

How does one connect with a place? It must be the intertwining of a place’s beauty, its history, and cultural significance with one’s own imprinted memories. I’ve only visited as a tourist; lit a candle, sat in the pews, listened to mass being said, walked all around it, toured the towers. I cannot imagine what Parisians who have lived with it every day of their lives must be feeling today.

One of my favorite novels, Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, tells the fictional life story of Tom Builder, a man who built cathedrals in England & France in the 12th century, as Romanesque architecture evolved into Gothic. Notre Dame was a masterpiece. Its flying butressess allowing the ribs, pillars, arches and roof to be taller, and more open inside, leaving room for its legendary stained glass windows. I don’t know how or if it will be possible to restore or repair it. But, it will never be the same. Something has truly been lost for the ages.

I ♥ d’Orsay.

TripAdvisor just announced their list of top museums in the world, ranked by their travelers. At #1 is my favorite, the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. I’ve visited Paris on four different trips, and hope to make it a few more before I’m through. And when I do, I will walk through the entire d’Orsay again. It’s beautiful – a restored train station, the Gare d’Orsay, that was built for the 1900 World’s Fair. It opened as the Musee d’Orsay in 1986. Its exhibits are diverse and gorgeous.

Here is a pic from my last visit, it looks just like any other taken of its expansive great hall, around and through which its galleries are placed.

IMG_6897 (1)

And another pic of the old clock, with a bit of my own artistic treatment (using the Brushstroke app).

You simply must visit on your next trip to Paris.

And poof … 5 years gone by.

Sunday was the 5 year blogoversary for sheila365! I meant to draft a post ahead of time, and post it bright and early on March 8th. But I just looked at the calendar and time has snuck by on me once again.

That’s ok. In these 5 years sheila365 has evolved, and I think I have a bit, too. My blog started as a post-a-day 365 project during the first year or two, which had me snapping photos during the day to make sure I had something that I judged “share-worthy;” and now it has become more of a leisurely, post-every-week-or-so project, which I have to say has been much easier, though less artistic in terms of trying to capture beautiful photos, but rather just moments from my day that struck me as special or interesting in one way or another.

So happy blogoversary to me! 🙂 I thought I’d go back through my posts from year 5 and pick a photo from one post from each month that especially makes me smile. I have to say it was very hard to pick just one picutre from each month.

March 2014: Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. A visit to the walled El Morro. Beautiful Caribbean views.

April 2014: British Virgin Islands sailing trip – this was taken while snorkeling off Cooper Island.

Turtle dude surfacing - 2 — Turtle dude surfacing – 2

May 2014 – A trip home to Seattle. One of several last year. It is a beautiful, special place for me.

June 2014 – Back in Austin for fun on the lake with some of my crazy sailor friends.

July 2014 – An amazing trip to Panama City Beach to celebrate a very special anniversary with a very special family.

August 2014 – A roadtrip to the Texas Gulf Coast. One of my favorite places to relax.

September 2014 – A lovely anniversary trip through the Texas Wine Country.

October 2014 – A fun girls’ trip to Washington, D.C. Lots of laughs, lots of wine, and lots of walking. 🙂

The residential streets are lined with historic townhouses.

November 2014 – An oh so special birthday.

December 2014 – Family visiting means showing off Austin and the Hill Country. Never gets old.

January 2015 – Hiking as many trails as I can before I had to go back to work after taking a few months off.

February 2015 – Yep, more tulips.

What an amazing lap around the sun!

Thanks for coming along for the ride. 🙂

Speed bump.

Today we had our broadband upgraded. We used to have download speeds around 2 Mbps and upload speeds of about 1/4 of that. Which we perceived to be getting progressively slower. Today my phone logged these speeds:

Not too shabby. I used ookla’s free speedtest app on my iphone to measure.
To see how much faster I can now upload a photo to my blog, I picked this one from my Paris trip.

Wow. That upload was very zippy! This is a shot along the Seine. The Left Bank is, well, on the left. Île de la Cité is to the right. The bridge in the foreground is Petit Pont, and Pont San Michel beyond it. It was such a lovely fall day. See, I’ve almost forgotten about yesterday’s Super Bowl loss……

Stained glass trilogy.

I’ve enjoyed playing with the iPhone app called Brushstroke. It’s a pretty versatile app for adding water-color / oil painting effect to photos.

These are three shots I took in different cathedrals on my birthday trip to France, with a little post-processing with Brushstroke.

Notre Dame. Paris:

Cathedral Notre-Dame de Chartres. Chartres:

Sainte-Chapelle. Paris:

Ohmigosh, 2015 already!?!

I want to wish you a most happy New Year and all the best to you and yours in 2015! I have been away a while. Partly due to distractions. But also partly due to the fact that I had run out of online storage space for my blog @ wordpress, and I wanted time to think about how and or whether to upgrade the options for my blog.

In the end I decided to simply buy a storage upgrade (to add an additional 10G to the default 3G limit). When my domain options are up for renewal next year, I might consider upgrading to Premium on wordpress, which includes the increased storage, but I bought myself some time.

I think last we crossed paths out here in the blogosphere I was headed home from a long visit in Seattle, back to Austin. Suffice to say I have not been idle.

The day after coming home, we left for a fantastic week in Paris – a trip we took with little pre-planning; celebrating a birthday in a place we both love. And since then: Thanksgiving, family visiting, Julie graduated and left Austin to take the next step in her life’s path (sniffle), Christmas & New Year’s, and we have spent some fun times with friends.

Somewhere in there 2014 slipped away. Today I find myself on the second day of a new year — a few weeks delinquent in blog posts but looking forward instead of behind.

Here are just a few picks to fill in since last I posted:

Bon Anniversaire!

Post-Thanksgiving Day sail:

A day trip through the Hill Country and a hike to the top of Enchanted Rock on a clear December day with my sister & brother-in-law:

Christmas Eve:

And New Year’s Eve:

I can’t wait to see how 2015 unfolds….

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