Chinese New Year meetups.

 Paternal relatives.  Older folks sit in the front row!

A separate catch-up.

Maternal relatives.

A lovely three days!

More looking at Singapore

With Kin Mun's tummy and my cold, we had to cancel two lunches, and took it easy over a couple of days.  Feeling much improved today.

But some pics...

We went for a wander around Katong.  It is not easily reached (yet) by the MRT, so we took a taxi.  It is an area of Singapore where there has traditionally been a lot of peranakans (chinese who have lived in the area for generations and absorbed many local customs)  as well as english speaking local households. 

Some Chinese New Year decorations, private and public.

It is the year of the Horse.

Today we went to Clementi, way out in the "heartland" and where Singapore's best known sewing machine company is.   To get there, we had to go through some heartland food stalls, and it is still possible to find mess in Singapore.  But I must say, it is clean mess.

And a new dish...  The tadpoles are a kind of jelly with tails.

Bits and pieces

Travel is catching up with us.  KM has a tummy upset, and I have, hopefully, hay-fever and not a cold.  Kin Mun cancelled our lunch tomorrow, and we will stay in.

But today we went to Orchard Road to Kinokuniya - KM to buy a gift for tomorrow's host, and me to get in and out without spending anything.  But I got lost in the Japanese-language craft section and managed to escape, just Sg$11 poorer, with a dress pattern.  Japanese are great with diagrams, and Google translate is a good back-up.

Pics around the traps today.

In the MRT (subway)  station - contradictory messages!

 

The surfaces are SO enticing for all these modes of transport!  But no fines involved.

Ran out of space to put the "g' in Sing?

 

Claudines

We decided to enjoy a nice meal at one of the many restaurants in Singapore.  We tried Les Amis, which has 3 Michelin stars, but they had a rigid requirement of having to eat 3 courses - which I just cannot manage.  So we opted for another french  restaurant - Claudines - instead.  They had bouillabaisse (for the fish/pulpo/prawn eaters)and  ile flottante for me!

Beo Lan kindly drove us there.  It was a lovely setting - a former RC  church, in Dempsey Hill.  Some pics...

A shared bouillabaisse - a mixed seafood casserole, from Marseille, in the south of France. There is a lot there that I don't eat, but seafood makes a beautiful looking meal!

I had Murray Cod, which was  another name for barramundi -  or is it the other way round?!

 Kin mun had lobster roll.  Sorry, no pic.

And dessert was a re-constructed ile flottante!  Ile flottante, literally floating island, is poached meringue adrift on custard, and other decorations like caramel, nuts and whatever the cook decides. 

Very unusually, it came to the table like this:  We were given careful instructions on how to deconstruct it.

Firstly, you lift the lid:

 

 And then you pierce the meringue to allow the custard to flow over the base of the plate.

All lots of fun!

Singapore

 A good flight from Sydney last Sunday.  Several periods of turbulence - one quite bad but didn't knock over my glass of water.  Singapore Airlines is quite strict now, as are other airlines.  They have lost a passenger due to turbulence (2024), so they aren't mucking around.

Went ringing Monday evening, nice bells but with a massive draught, and two layers of rope guides  Good to catch up with the ringers we have met before.

And dinner with Beo Lan, with food cooked by Beo Lan and Mugyi.

Notre Dame

We were keen to see Notre Dame.  After the devastating fire in 2018, it had been rebuilt.  The opening was just a few months earlier.

But getting tickets had to be via a website/app.  They were only available for the next few days, and were usually "epuisse" - sold out.  But sometimes spots became available at the last minute.

We were having lunch at Saint Denis (the suburb) when our app showed tickets were available if we got there by 3pm.  We could, so quickly put our name down for 3 tickets.  When we got there, we just walked straight in.

It was so crowded inside.  Still, good to see, but hard to get an impression of the scale of it all.  We had a much better idea at Saint Denis!

However, some pics....

Inside....

This is the cock that was atop the original spire.  It was thought lost, but found again in the rubble.  Google the rooster of notre dame for more!

Soaring spaces!  The beauty of gothic architecture.

And a Metro snippet....  literally, "I mount with, I descend with.." 

Later in our trip, we found that baggage "abandonee" plays havoc with rail services.  They stop everything and check it out.

basilique cathedral de Saint-Denis

 

Today we went to the basilica of Saint Denis, to the north of Paris.  It was where the french buried their kings - when they had them.  But during the Revolution, the bodies in the tombs were thrown into pits and I believe the metal in the coffins used for other purposes - like weapons.   But somehow, many of the memorial statues survived, and are on display at Saint Denis.

The amazing thing, to me, is that this basilica is a record of every French monarch.  You can think of England,  where the kings and queens are buried at various locations around the country.

Saint Denis was the first bishop of Paris, and is the patron saint France.  He is also a cephalophore - one of several who had their heads cut off, but just picked them up and continued on their way. I bet the executioner just scratched his (own) head and wondered what to cut off next!  Pic from Google, of Saint Denis.

    

 The basilica from the outside

 

At the back of the church are the royal tombs.  Once inside, I was so busy studying the various monuments that I forgot to get an overall pic.  This one is from Google.  And there were over 70 tomb monuments, each one described.. 

 

Below is Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.  Not cephalophores!

 

However, the actual bones were scattered during the French Revolution. They were gathered and put together in an ossuary.  There are panels with the names of those whose bones are here

 Archaeological crypt

 

 

"If a grain of wheat falls on the ground, it doesn't die, it rests there. But if it dies, it has much fruit".  Not much of a sales pitch!

Crowded skies

We know that international flights have had to change paths given the unrest in the Middle East.  This trip, I saw many other planes in the sky.  

I saw SIX on  the flight from Yerevan to Paris.  

Hard to photograph, but here are some.

Another SQ flight, between Paris and Singapore

 

 

And the map seemed to reflect the changes...

 

Abbaye royale de Fontevraud

We all know King John of England, who was forced to sign the Magna Carta, in June 1215.  It is called a charter of rights, but they weren't rights for you and me - they were rights for noble folk, the barons - who had something to lose.

King John was an Angevin (Anjou) king, also known as the House of Plantagenet.  Such were the links between France and England, that his parents (Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine), his brother (Richard the Lionheart), and his second wife (Isabella of Angouleme), are buried at Fontevraud.  King John himself is buried at Worcester Cathedral - in England. 

Some pics:

Entrance to the Abbey complex.

The Abbey Church.

The giseants (recumbent effigies). The tombs were ransacked during the Revolution, and the bodies lost, but the effigies survived.

Richard the Lionheart

Eleanor and King Henry II

Henry II

Eleanor

Isabella

More pics of the Complex.

The refectory

The Kitchens

The town.