The Cuillin View Cafe

 

 

Elgol has one tiny shop and one cafe ... but an excellent one!  Or maybe we were just very hungry.  Managed to get Marion to pause from eating her toastie long enough for this picture.

View From Elgol

 

Elgol is a tiny fishing village on the West of Skye at the end of 14 miles of single-track road.  From there, you look out onto the Cuillin Mountain Range to the north and the island of Rum to the South.

Misty Glen

 

This is three photos stitched together to make a panorama of the middle of Glencoe.  You might need to click on it to see it properly.  

Over The Sea To Skye

The day after Boxing Day is our wedding anniversary.  To mark the occasion we are going to the Duisdale Hotel on the island of Skye.  This should show where it is on Google Maps.  Our route takes up one side of Loch Lomond and then on through Glencoe (where they filmed the end of Skyfall) to Fort William.  From there we head to the fishing port of Mallaig and get the car ferry over to Skye.  We'll be back home by Saturday night.

Boxing Day

 

By the time we got to Dany Metzstein's house, her son Mark's new baby boy had fallen asleep upstairs so we couldn't get to see him at all.  Had to make do with iPhone photos of him.

From there, we walked down the hill to Louise's house.  There was a bit of a commotion because Tommy Gormley the film director (Star Trek etc) had been standing too near a shelf with lit candles on it and the back of his shirt had gone on fire!  While they were finding him a new shirt to wear, they kept smelling something burning and thought it was from his shirt.  Finally, Louise remembered that she had bought pizza for us, put it in the oven to cook and had forgotten about it.  As you can see, it was pretty well cooked.

Weird Japanese Toilet

 

A Glimpse Of Sun

 

Sunday 23 December: the days are getting longer now and it has stopped raining.  For a few brief moments, we even had sunshine in the West End of Glasgow.

Red Stockings

Drove over to Film City near the Science Centre to meet John.  He is up in Glasgow working on a new TV programme with comedian Victoria Wood.  Rachel had given him presents for Jess & Izzy and I had a parcel to go to Alfie so we exchanged gifts at the door.  We now have two large red Xmas stockings waiting for you.

Japanese Garden

Albert Kahn was a very rich man who lived at the start of the 20th century & wanted to create a photo record of the world of his time.  For the first time ever, it was possible to take good photos in colour.  He used his fortune to fund expeditions all over the world.

We went to the museum in Paris that holds his huge archive of 100,000 photos.  Next to it was his gigantic garden.  More like a small park, really.  He had created a Japanese Garden using Japanese designers and materials.  He went so far as to import real Japanese houses.  Even in winter when everything is bare, they looked amazing.  Must go back there when everything is in flower.

Tuilleries, Paris

You can see how cold, wet and misty it was on the Friday.  The reason that bird is walking on water is because there is a sheet of ice just below the surface.

This is also where I took the photo of the man feeding the little birds outhis hand.
     

Notre Dame, Paris

When we arrived in Paris, we had a ten-minute walk from the train station to our hotel.  The route took us right past Notre Dame cathedral which was swarming with police. We thought there must have been a bad accident or a terrorist attack -- there were so many police.  Not only that, they would not let us pass by the cathedral to get to the hotel.  Then we noticed all the huge signs about Notre Dame being 850 years old and all the security fencing etc ... every important person in Paris was about to turn up for the grand birthday ceremony.

It is very difficult to get an idea of how huge Notre Dame is.  Here are a few photos in my web album.  The first four are of Notre Dame.  After that, we went to the Sainte Chapelle  nearby, which is quite small and the walls are nearly all stained glass windows which are being restored at vast expense.  You can see there are some bits temporarily missing from the round window.

Bird Man

Jardin des Tuilleries, Paris.

This man was feeding the little birds that live in the bushes.

From the look of things, he must do this all the time because the birds seemed to recognise him

Paris Window Displays

This is the giant fashion store 'Au Printemps' in Paris which is famous for its Christmas windows   This year, the theme was Dior Fashion and the marionettes all wore beautiful miniature copies of real Dior evening dresses.  This video clip is just one window ... there must have been about ten of them in all, every one different.

Swan Lake

Chinese acrobats do amazing things with this famous ballet scene.

Paris? You Must Be In Seine!

This Wednesday, we are flying to Paris for a few days.  The hotel we've booked is on an island in the river Seine as you can see from the Google map.  Right next to it is the island with the world-famous Notre Dame Cathedral on it.

What? No deer?

 















Making up the collection areTwitch the raccoon, Grind the rabbit, Splodge the hedgehog and Smudge the squirrel. Each has met a sticky end on their way across the road (and has the tyre marks to prove it). A zip on either side lets you pack their spilled organs back in, but sadly no amount of roadside assistance is going to bring them back from teddy heaven – each one comes already zipped in its own clear plastic body bag. 

Two Photos By Jess at Loch Lomond

   

Luss Legs

 

Photograph of the extremely rare 8-legged seagull at Luss, Loch Lomond