City of Love

After much thought over our choice of holiday destinations which included Galapogos, Amazon and South Africa, we decided to venture to the City of Lights, mainly due to the zillion ‘Oh you must go to Paris’ responses we got.

Rest assured that Paris is still an European city and one of the main tourist destinations in the world, though you might not think so after reading the rest of the blog.

The train ride from London to Paris was lovely. The arrival at Gare du Nord, considered to be the busiest railway station in Europe, was a SHOCK! The unbearable smell of urine was overwhelming, the bird poo, the cigarette butts, the dirty stained glass, the little food outlets which offered seats covered in bird poo, the lack of information and the lack of proper sign posts, was not what I expected to see in Paris.

Transport

Though old, dirty and smelling of pee, the Metro in Paris is still better than the Underground in London. The Metro runs on time and is regular and costs less than half the price for what seemed like a much better service. However, all signage was in French and there was no clear indication on how to use or buy tickets.There are a few sign boards in English placed at random intervals which I am sure an Englishman planted on the sly and the French would remove if they ever discovered them! Also God help you if you are obese or even slightly chubby  because you will not get through some of the Metro gates, which seemed to have been designed for stick insects. Any kind of luggage, dogs, goats or cattle will most definitely have to be left out as not all stations  provide luggage exits!

Food

The very picky DH (Dear Husband) booked a lovely hotel in what seemed like a nice part of town. With kids dropping their ice creams in wonder at the sight of me clinging to what must have seemed a crossbreed of a Frenchman in his hat, I wandered the streets looking for a café that had an impressive menu. Cafes were aplenty; food was not. All cafes seem to serve the same 5 main courses. Very little choice, very bland food and yes, they speak only French in France. 

Once upon a time...

The 26th of December is a memorable day for both of us..... 

If ever there was a true story that was stranger than fiction, we think you will find this is it. From the bride’s dress to the groom’s shoes, from the facial to the flowers ... it seemed like everything that could go wrong WOULD go wrong … but as all of you who attended our wedding would know … we made it ... and yes, we loved every minute of it!

The Decision…

After contemplating over it for many many months and going through what seemed like a million arguments, we decided to celebrate our love in front of family and friends. We both agreed we wanted a small but very special wedding where we could just have fun with our loved ones.  Little did we know that planning the dream wedding … especially planning one in Sri Lanka, while you are in the UK is much easier said than done.

The Dress…

So in June 2007, the extremely fussy Bride to be (hereon known as B2B) checked out over 975 dresses in shops and online in the UK.  After countless nights, she short-listed four and sent them to the bridal dresser for her approval.  The dresser picked one dress – and the B2B realised she could not remember where she found it!  B2B posts a message on a wedding blog asking for help to locate the dress and spends the next couple of weeks looking for the dress.  She finally gets a response but the suggested shop did not have her size!

Amboseli National Park, Kenya

There are several great national parks in Kenya but we didn’t want to spend too much time on the road going from park to park. However, we decided that we HAD to go to Amboseli just to get some shots of Elephants against a Mount Kilimanjaro background. But being the “lucky” couple  that we are, we found the mountain engulfed in  thick dark clouds from the time we got there. For the whole 2 days that we were doing safaris, the clouds opened up only for 15 mts!!! Yes, just 15 mts! Fortunately, we were around some elephants when that happened and were able to get a few shots. Not the composition I wanted but at least it was better than nothing.

Petting Rhinos and Cheetahs

Our next destination, after our 4 days at Masai Mara (2 days at Nyumbu Camp and 2 days at Serena Lodge), was Amboseli. It would have been too tiring to drive there directly so we decided to do a stay-over in Nairobi.

On our way out of Masai Mara, we came across this Southern Ground Hornbill who seemed very willing to pose for us. I swear she batted her eyelids at me as well but when she saw Michelle, she backed off!

Since it was a black bird being shot against a very bright background with very harsh lighting (mid day sun), it was difficult to get the full dynamic range in camera. So, for the first image  I created 3 images from a single raw file to create an HDR image. The 2nd image is a single shot and you can see the colour and impact is much less than the first one - though there was quite a bit of dodge/burn to bring out the details in that one. 

Masai Mara - Day 3 & 4 - Serena Lodge

After two unforgettable nights at Nuyumbu Camp, we headed to the other side of the Mara. Here we were going to stay at the Mara Serena Lodge.

Located within the park, the Lodge offered great views of the plains and contained plenty of bird life, which almost made us not want to go on the game drives. We were greeted at the entrance to the lodge by this large colourful Red Headed Rock Agama

We had heard that the ‘Mara never disappoints’ and it didn’t! But we had to forgo many photo opportunities because they were “off track” and we were not allowed to stray away from the official roads. One of those missed opportunities was the only sighting of a leopard during the whole trip. We heard that a leopard and her cub were resting in a tree but since there were no pathways to it, we could not get close enough for a proper view. We parked ourselves as close to it as possible and waited very patiently for a couple of hours. However, all we could see was the tail and this is the best shot we got.

Ironically, the next day we heard that as soon after we left the spot the mother and cub had come down for a stroll and waited for awhile, right next to the vehicle that was parked there!