“Paris is always a good idea.” - Audrey Hepburn On Summer Solstice day in June 2024, when the world was looking east for the International Day of Yoga, we headed west to Europe. We had an ambitious plan of conquering Paris in three days, swinging by the sunny coastal town of Montpellier in South of France, hopping over to Marseille and then a flight to Rome where we would see the legacy of the Romans and the Renaissance before heading to Florence to see some of Michelangelo's classics such as David. We would then come back towards Asia by taking the morning train from Florence to Rome, the afternoon flight from Rome to Paris and the night flight from Paris to New Delhi. The morning flight from Bangalore to Mumbai at 8:30 AM was packed with mostly people heading to Maximum City for a day of business and perhaps try to come back by a late evening flight. We reached Mumbai, crossed Immigration and reached the Vistara gate for our Paris...
We woke up to a cloudy and rainy day in Paris. It was drizzling on and off and we decided to step out with our raincoats, shortly after breakfast. Our first halt is the Tuileries Gardens. As we walk towards these gardens, the only other people we see on the streets at this early hour on a Saturday morning are other tourists like us wanting to make the most of their visit to Paris. The Tuileries Gardens, which lies between two major Parisian landmarks - the Louvre Musuem in its south-east and the Arc de Triomphe in its north-west direction, was created by Catherine de' Medici as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in 1564 and it became a public park after the French Revolution. It's a bit like the Lal Bagh of Paris, however with the difference that it has seen a fair share of battles from the French Revolution to World War II. We walk by some of the sculptures in the garden - among historical characters there's Augustus Caesar, still looking like he was an emperor and there...
Henry David Thoreau, in his 1854 book, Walden , narrates his experience of living in solitude for two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst the woodland. While we didn't have the luxury of spending as much time around our neighborhood Kaikondrahalli Lake , this Saturday morning walk around the lake was a delight with the variety of birds, bird calls and nature on exhibition. We reached the lake at around 9 AM by when most of the joggers and serious bird watchers with the telescopic zoom lenses have left. We start the walk with the call and sighting of a White Cheeked Barbet.The barbet is rarely seen outside the thick green foliage of mature trees and it is a rare sighting for us to see it perched on an electric wire. A White Throated Kingfisher flies to its perch - a wall on the edge of the lake and a little egret takes flight, splashing along its liquid runway. We walk towards th...
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