Today, I met Monceau, a flickr friend and we went to Cimetière du Père Lachaise.
It was our second cemetery walk together. The last time was back in November 2007 and we had gone to Cimetière du Montparnasse.
We met outside the cemetery and chatted while walking around and taking photos.
I told her about the hundreds of photos sitting on my hard disk, unprocessed and waiting for me to find time to have a serious look at. I mentioned walking and ElderExercise and she asked me if I had a pedometer.
I said that of course I did and we both got our pedometers out and guess what?

We have identical pedometers!

I have been to Père Lachaise many a time. I never really look for specific graves and just go wherever my steps take me, except of course when going with Leo and Elly Reynolds who always have specific goals. So I knew that Marcel Proust’s grave was there but I had no idea where.
Well today we came across it.

With Proust’s famed madeleine on it

We actually walked by the grave as two men, holding a bag of madeleines, and enjoying one passed us. I didn’t see them put the madeleine on the stone, but there it was, ready to be photographed.
We spent three or four hours there and enjoyed gorgeous sunshine. So much so that now and then we complained that the sun was preventing us from taking adequate photos, because of unwanted shadows.
There’s no pleasing some people.

Sleeping lady

We will, no doubt take another walk together. I haven’t been to Cimetière Montmartre in a long time. So when I go, I’ll give Monceau a call.

I enjoyed taking the photo but you wouldn’t make me go on either of these. Too scary!
If you want some of the atmosphere, I also took a video.

I took this photo last August while crossing Jardin des Tuileries, the garden that goes from Place de la Concorde to the Louvre.
On the left, rue de Rivoli and at the back Le Louvre. This is a walk a particularly enjoy, as it’s a good way of going from the Left Bank of the Seine to the Right Bank, or vice-versa.

via Steve Garfield’s Off On A Tangent: Daily weblog on pop culture and technology..

Homer Simpson tries to vote for Obama

Thanks, Steve.

Geese are soooo loud! They always seem to be in the middle of an argument.
But maybe it’s their way of saying: I love you!

Goose talk

This was taken at the beginning of our trip last summer not far from Hadrian’s Wall

On a different note, thanks for your good wishes on my birthday everyone
Thanks for your encouragements and your advice, too.
Just one thing, even if beetroot was going to lower my blood pressure, there’s no way I could eat it. I’d rather take medication. I hate everything in beetroot, its color, its texture, its flavour, the way it stains every other food around.
Not many things I won’t eat, but beetroot is one.

I turned sixty-four, (one of my favourite songs by the Beatles) last week and between the gifts, the get-together with my daughter and the walking, I have been pretty busy.
It’s been a year of change. It started badly, with having to admit that I did have high blood pressure, that my triglycerides were too high and my cholesterol out of order. Not to mention the pounds that had added up during the last… ten years. I didn’t mind the last so much, but the high blood pressure represented the first regular medicine I had to take. Talk about getting old.
Four years ago my body failed me when I found myself with breast cancer. But just when I started feeling that this was behind me, I had to accept a daily pill.
I must admit that I hate taking medicine and seeing doctors. So, this was a blow but when the doctor suggested that if I didn’t take the medication and if I didn’t try to mend my ways I’d be a good subject for CVA, I figured that it was time to do something.
There I was lucky, because I joined a programme, which, besides a thorough checkup, offered a three-day session, during which you were offered advice for starting up exercising and changing your way of eating.

My daily pill

So I did make a lot of changes to my way of life.
My goal at the time, was to stop taking my high blood pressure medication one day and to avoid having to take statins to fight cholesterol. Those two things may never happen, since my blood pressure is OK WITH the daily pill, and although triglycerides are back to normal, cholesterol is still a bit high.
But on the really positive side, I have rediscovered exercise!
As I am the queen of gadgets, I purchased a pedometer. And several pedometers later, here is the queen of pedometers, discovered by Sara, a faithful member of ElderExercise

The queen of pedometers for the queen of gadgets

And I started walking, and walking… and walking. And what seemed almost impossible at the beginning, has become my daily routine.
The doctor also prescribed brisk activity of some kind. I told you earlier about purchasing a reclining indoors bike, which, I must admit is OK. Except that I don’t enjoy pedalling as much as I enjoy being outdoors and walking. So I save the bike for really rainy days. And I must admit that ever since I got back from Normandy, I haven’t used it yet. But I know there’ll be days.
I do try my best to have at least three brisk walking sessions a week, –between 30 and 40 mn each–, four sessions the weeks I am lucky
Another thing I do is record my daily progress on my Google calendar, for my record and also at ElderExercise, one of Naomi’s brilliant ideas.
I am also having a one-hour weekly Feldenkrais session, but I did that before starting the programme, and have added a stretching session, which has done me a lot of good.
I have added a weekly splash at the swimming-pool and hope this good resolution will hold out throughout the winter…

This has had the most wonderful effects on my mood and on my health. I have gone down from size 20 to size 16, and I am not out of breath when I climb up stairs any longer. I used to complain about joint pains all the time, and although they are still here when I get up in the morning, they subside as soon as I get moving. Quite a lot has happened since I wrote this post, back in August 2006

At the top of Durham Cathedral

So should I thank cholesterol and high blood pressure?

The down side of all this is that I can’t keep up with everything. In other words, you have noticed that I am not as faithful a commenter on your blogs as I used to be and that I don’t post much on my own blogs. Off walking

I am rather late in posting as yesterday was a pretty busy day.

This is a picture of Millenium Bridge in Gateshead, near Newcastle. Catherine and I were lucky enough to stay in Gateshead with Mrs K. (one of my faithful commenters) and Joan. Mrs K. drove us to the Angel of the North and then near Millenium Bridge.
Newcastle is a stunning place and as it was rather sunny that day, we walked around for quite a while.

When we got to Housesteads, it felt like we were in the middle of a demonstration. Baa here and baa there, went the sheep.

It took me a while to understand what all this racket was all about.

Ewes and lambs at Housesteads

It seems that we got there right after they had separated the moms from their young, and both sides were either protesting or calling.

More of my Housesteads photos here

Or maybe, as Catherine suggested, they were just counting us

One of the places we really wanted to visit was Holy Island, also called Lindisfarne. And in fact, we went there twice. Once with Peggy, but that time, we had somehow disregarded the hours of tides and the island is only reachable at low tide. That time, we just got in view of Holy Island and gave up, but not until I had filmed a snail’s progress .
The second time, the weather was not as good, but Holy Island is a magic place and although it was misty at best, and raining at worst, we really enjoyed our visit.

More photos of Holy Island here

Peggy wanted to have her car washed. We were on our way to Culzean Castle, and stopped over. Of course, I used my camera! Aren’t the colours amazing?

Carwash

I don’t think I have been in a car being washed since I was a child. I am not even sure that in France, you can remain in the car these days.

One of these days when we hadn’t read our guidebook closely. It turned out that Souter Lighthouse was closed on that day.
We had planned to climb up and see the view, but it couldn’t be done. It didn’t stop us from taking a walk and admiring the cliffs.

Lots of cormorants to be seen on a huge rock, and this small memorial on the grass

Then we drove on to Gibside
A lovely day.