paris | from above

It was a cold and grey Parisian day when D and I queued for a zillion years to climb the Eiffel Tower.  Okay so "a zillion years" is clearly an ever-so-slight exaggeration, but we were there for a long time, and it didn't help that we initially joined the wrong queue for something like 45 minutes, although I cannot now for the life of me remember what was wrong about it ... I think that perhaps we were happy to climb the stairs rather than take the lifts (work off those French pastries!), but the queues all snaked around so much that we couldn't quite tell which was which and then wound up in the wrong one before realising and then having to start queueing all over again.*  Merde.

* In case you were wondering why we didn't just stay in the lift queue, it was the end of our trip and we were trying to save money, so we just wanted stair tickets to the second floor as they were only five euro each.  In addition, D hates heights so there was no point going all the way to the top as he probably would have spent the whole time up there feeling rubbish.

Anyway, I was going to say "back to the story," but that really is the story, I guess.  We queued and queued and queued, and then we climbed the stairs and got puffed, and then we took photos of lovely Paris from a modest height.  I just love all those creams and greys ...

All photographs © Natasha Calhoun

paris | opera garnier

The Opera Garnier in Paris is one of those places where you wander about with your jaw gaping open, because it is just that opulent and beautiful and ridiculously amazing.  Truly!  Can you imagine what it must be like when there is a performance on?  I like to imagine it as being full of beautifully dressed people milling around on that amazing staircase, or having conversations on those little balconies ... elegant women in floor-length dresses and men in tuxedos ... it is Paris, after all!  Nobody seems to make much of an effort for the opera in Sydney (although I have only been one time, so perhaps I am making a sweeping generalisation!), which I think is a shame - it's always lovely to have an excuse to dress up! :)

All photographs © Natasha Calhoun

a pretty cool monday (rambly post about cats and photography)

Image © Natasha Calhoun

Poor Monday.  Nobody really likes it.  Really, it's the pariah of the week, no? and that must feel ... crap.  If days had feelings, that is.

Anyway.

This Monday, however (as in today, which I know has yet to happen in other parts of the world, but much of which has already transpired Down Under), has been pretty cool.  In case you hadn't already guessed from the title of this post.

First and foremost, I had the day off work, and so it has been my very first, for real, ME day since D and I got married.  That's sixteen months, people!  Now, I love D, and I love spending time with D, but I also love spending time alone; I can positively feel the recharging as I sit here and type.  There is stuff to do around the apartment, but it can wait a little while.  The Fur Kid is meowing her head off - hopeful, little meows - presumably for her dinner, because having someone at home seems to throw off her Stomach Clock completely (it's currently late afternoon) and so it's just dinner time, all the time.  Right now, she is sitting on the floor and gazing up at me with narrowed eyes.  She would probably love to kill me, but knows that if she did, then she wouldn't have a hope of opening a can of food herself, what with the lack of opposable thumbs and all, so she is letting me live.

For now.

In other news (if you could call any of that "news"), the reason that I had the day off work was because - eek! and hooray! - I visited the new West Elm and Williams Sonoma stores in Bondi Junction this morning to take some photos for a column in the next edition of Adore Home Magazine (this is what my little "squee!" blurt was about in last week's "This Week" [well, that was confusing] post).  Strangely, I wasn't even nervous, which is major for me!  Admittedly I felt really conspicuous, and it was weird to hear people refer to me as "the photographer" but overall it went really well and I will share some of my outtakes once the magazine has been released next month :)

Happily, on the train ride to and from Bondi Junction (I was about to abbreviate that to "BJ" but ... well, you know), I also got a chance to start reading Susan Cain's Quiet and I am loving it so far.  One of my favourite quotes from the Introduction is this:

"[A]t school you might have been prodded to 'come out of your shell' - that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same."

Snails and turtles immediately spring to mind, but I think that it's a lovely quote nevertheless (not that there is anything wrong with snails and turtles, mind you, except perhaps for the snails that keep eating our woeful herb garden.  They are annoying).

Okay well I think that this is enough rambling from me for one day.  Plus the Fur Kid has finally worn me down and officially wins the war.  Again!