A New Year Begins

How quickly time flies and I’m very sorry for not being as diligent with the blog updates.

Here’s a mega recap since I last updated the blog (5 very long months ago!!).

I had a few work trips that led up to the Election (New Mexico and California). It was a busy time and although the results of the Election were not in my favor, I was ready to enjoy the downtime. I was able to host a lot of gatherings to see friends who left to work on the Election and had returned.

I usually take a vacation every 2 years after an Election. The last real vacation I had was in 2008 when I traveled to Vietnam for 10 days. In the interim, I’ve taken smaller trips such as 3 days to London etc..but I find my definition of a vacation is 5 – 7 days, depending on how far I need to travel to get to my destination.

This year I decided on Paris!

It was a great time – food and fashion abound!

Although I have a reputation for appreciating fashion, I was unable to do any shopping.  I managed to spend the 1^st day of the trip wandering the city, and the 2^nd day was New Year’s Eve so a lot of the shops closed early.  Although the stores are usually open on a Saturday, it was also New Year’s Day so they were closed for the weekend.  The best that I could do was enjoy the decorations of the exterior doors.  This was probably the least expensive vacation that I had ever taken thus far!

My favorite outing was to the Rue Mouffetard Market.  It’s been around since Roman times.  It has a lovely cobblestone street with an open market where vendors sell everything such as cheese, pastries, wine, flowers and many more.  The smells are delightful – roasting chickens and potatoes fill the air.  Cafes to relax and wile the time away. 

Since there is a large Asian population, I decided that I wanted to visit that particular neighborhood.  Walking along the streets, I stopped hearing French and started hearing other languages such as Vietnamese and Chinese.  It was very cool to see how the architecture had changed and of course, I had to try some Vietnamese food.

That was a quick recap of Paris during New Year’s.  It was a wonderful way to start 2011.  How did you start your year??