Well after the brief interlude of all this weeks excitement, I thought I'd get back to the recent trip to France!
The evening after spending the day with the cats we went back to the camp site and had a relaxing evening on the patio. We had a pleasant meal in the outdoor air. Well the food was pleasant, the visitors that we had were less so! I have always had a thing against wasps, they freak me out and I constantly panic at the thought of getting stung.
The next day we visited a small town called Provins, situated about 50km's from the camp site where we were staying. It is a small, medieval, walled town that has the distinction of not growing outside of it's original walls. Well barely growing out of it anyway - if you take a look at Google earth you can see that it's starting to grow.
We arrived and started with a gentle stroll to the town gate (taking copious amounts of photos of course) taking in the centuries old Ramparts and towers timber framed buildings. It is really amazing that this is a working, living town still and yet as you walk up the street from the visitors centre to the town gate it is still a castle wall surrounded by countryside.
We found the town square and picked which of the crepe houses we wanted to eat at. I had never realised that there was so much choice! Brittany, Normandy and other styles were available there. I'm ashamed to say that I have forgotten what style we chose, but it was very nice! Crepe with egg and ham inside it. It was delicious!
After lunch we took a walk around the church, and a tour of the keep later (complete with a couple of vertigo dizzy spells when at the top).
To finish off the day we decided to do the 'train' tour. It's a small van converted to look like a train with several carriages hanging off of it. Very cliché I know, but it meant that we could sit down and see what we had missed; and get some information on the buildings that we had seen during the day. There were some more great views to be seen from the roads outside of the town that we would never have gotten by foot - but it was probably the most uncomfortable ride of the week (including the Disney roller coasters) as the suspension of the trailers behind the engine unit seemed to be from the same period as the town!
Here are my photos taken in and around the town:
Hi Stacy,
ReplyDeleteSome more really neat photos. You do a terrific job with the composition. And how cool is that, having a town inside of a castle.
I for one am enjoying your vacation.
Hugs,
Cynthia
How did you get such a good result with the stained glass? So often the contrast is too great to do it justice. France is full of treasures if you have the energy!
ReplyDeleteCyntia: Thanks! I'm getting better at composition - though it's still quite down to trial and error. If it wasn't for the 24GB of storage I took with me I would have been in trouble (I used 20 of them). The problem with a nice camera is that it takes a nice amount of space for each shot. I think I took between 300 and 400 per day and I have just been selecting the best ones. Some of these are going to be printed to be hung in the house as well (I'm vain enough to love having my own shots as large pictures in the house rather that buying stock posters from Ikea)
ReplyDeleteCaroline: The stained glass was an example of the trial and error - I had taken 10 shots at various settings to get this shot. This one was ISO 130, f5 and 1/200.
I actually had more problems trying to get both the building and the sky in shot at the same time. The sun was bright that day and when looking at the screen on the 5D it just looked washed out. I was starting to take multiple shots actually, in the hope of finding some HDR software to help me, in the end it turned out that most of them were good enough anyway, so the HDR shots would not have added anything.
Stace
Hi Stace, I'm a new amateur crossdresser who is just exploring the community over the Internet. I'm glad I found your blog via someone else's blog. I really liked your article and how you describe the part of Europe I'm hoping to visit some day, thank you for sharing it. You see I'm in the States and have only traveled to Central, and South America, but I'm still looking forward to visiting Europe starting with France, then to Italy, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Norway,Sweden...and other countries. I really liked your photographs, they're simply beautiful and very clear. The ones I liked the most are the ones taken from a very low angle looking up at object (castle/structures/mountain)...it's very cool the way you got such perspective. Your article was very informative and I'll be looking around for your blogs to see if maybe I can find other entries of your trips. I wish I had skipped your article's part about the Crepe with eggs and ham...since I haven't had my breakfast yet! indeed it sounds delicious. Well, once again thank you for sharing such a wonderful article, looking forward to your other entries. best wishes. Kisses. Mymysterycd...Lisa
ReplyDeleteThanks Lisa,
ReplyDeletethe low angles make for interesting shots - but the pain in my knee and back to try and bend down into the position that you need for the shot can be quite bad! :)
Good luck in getting your trip organised. I would like to visit the states at some point, but I have such a fear of flying (actually I love flying, but have such a fear of crashing) means that I will probably never see it...
Stace