Somehow even after all this time the beauty of this city takes my breath away every time I cross a bridge over the Danube , I had one crossing today on tram 6 over Margaret bridge at dusk , with the whole city , parliament and castle hill in pink candy coton light and later from the other side crosssing at nite everything aglow in golden night lighting.Breathtaking.

I guess I should stop gushing and there is plenty places tht are a bit shabby , dodgy or just plain ugly , but it just makes me love it more.With all that I like about Paris and all its architectural beauty there is rarely that I get the same feeling I have every single time I cross the Danube. Its home i guess.

Could have something to do too with the fact that I got contact lenses today and for the first time in a long while aactually had some spatial sight , well and could actually see.

As for wedding stuff , we got lots done while DF was here fun stuff like cake tasting, choosing first nite suite, tasting the menus , meeting the priests (slightly less fun more nervwracking) and thanks to our lovely wedding planner things seem to go smoothly.

Although after almost a whole week of it and another full day to come tomorrow, I have a sudden urge to take a nap from all things wedding and just wake up after all of it is done . Then again I'm way too perfectionist about details and all matters easthetic to just lean back and let other people deal with it.I never thought i could get sick of it all but , though i still look forward to it , im starting to get sick of the planning , the worrying about documents and shedules and family and budget and all of that. Maybe I just need a holiday from my holiday or something like that...

Sailing...

I just desperately fell in love...though DF doesnt have to worry just yet, I fell in love with a ship, Its called Sea Cloud, and I guess DF would still be worried as its far out of our budget. In fact their website www.seacloud.com doesn't even mention prices .It does however mention butler service, gilded faucets only 60 guest per ship etc. But the ships are heavenly and I love being on ships where you get gusts of saltwater into your face , that are closer to the water with lovely wood plank flooring and oil paintings hanging in the dining room. I guess we'll just have to save it for our 10th wedding anniversary (another good reason to stay together) until then i'll just be hopelessly in love...

(images from www.sevenstarsandstripes.com-view of the cabin, www.jhcbh.com for image of the ship)

Hah feel pretty damn smug these days, its been almost a month since I started with the whole lets loose weight thing and so far am down by 6 kg( 12pounds), turns out my friend kc was right , I just had to stop whyning about it, stop packing away the amounts of beloved junk food and it would work just fine. Vanity is great motivation, whats the point after all of a great photographer if I wont like myself in the photos anyway.

We are still fighting germann / french buroucracy, who knew there are that many documents we need to get together, looks like the easiest country to get married in Europe is England , of all places. All you need is birth certificate, passport and seven days stay in the country. If only we'd have known about a year ago. Now there is no way we can get another week holiday off, so we'll have to just get a notary and all the docs together for the mairie here.

Can't wait for Saturday , am off to Budapest, have already a completely full schedule , but oh how blissfull it will be two full weeks without work even if its busy, though i can't really complain, we'll have about two trial dinners with DF , chose the cake (cake!) pick up wine from Austria, meet up with priests , dress trials etc... cant wait!Plus hankg out with my girls, yeay!

I guess its a bit boring to complain about January , but honestly , is there a less inspiring month???

Am working two full weeks plus saturdays in a row which is sucking away my energy especially paired with the diet, and having some issues getting papers for our city hall wedding in France all together. One would think that the European Union being the EUROPEAN UNION we would not need special documents as an EU citizen to get married in France , but of course the French bein French and German buroucracy being what it is, which is quite frankly a pain in the ass, I've got one more thing to worry about.

If anyone out there has thought about getting married in France (I mean the official marie/city hall mariage) let me just tell you certificat de coutume, and certificat de celibat, oh well in good old Hungarian fashion I still think everything will work itself out in the end.

The good news is when I went dress shopping for the town hall wedding this week things FIT me, I was quite proud of my dieting efforts. Even if I didn't find anything , though we did buy DF's tux.
Its very lovely and made from the same fabric that E. Zegna uses (apparently from the same roll, whatever that means) but we bought itin this small shop and for half the price of a Zegna suit. Its called Arthur & Fox and had a women's section too, completely nodescript store but apparently where all the ladies'n gents from the 16th buy their suits and cashmere coats. Lovely shop.
Another Paris tip is la maison du whisky which is on rue d'anjou in the 8th and pretty much a whisky lovers paradise. Speaking of whisky and tuxes our shop assistant let us in on Cary Grants secret for his shiny / almost laquered shoes apparently he rubbed his shoes with a slightly wet cottonball.So thats my gift to you , for today: shiny shoes! ;-)

of course my real old movie star crush is Bogie but in those pictures i must say Grant looks pretty damn well. ( images from google.com/images)

My mom did the sweetest thing yesterday , she sent me a care-package. Yup I'm 26 and got a care package from my mom yesterday , funny , but it made me very very happy. Wasn't anything special just my favourite lip balm that i'm out of and cant get in France and an Audrey Hepburn postcard and Volker Schlondorffs a Love of Swann dvd. One of her gifts for Christmas was Prousts A love of Swann( might have translated that wrong as the book is in German) and I've been complaining to her how very pretentious and cynical I find Proust , so she sent me the movie to sweeten it , I guess.

Either way it was lovely. Epecially since I'm sightly stressed out work is very very busy, though even when it gets stressful its still fun essentially its a very girly office. All of us tell each other about our relationships and exchane all kinds of info from what to do against UTI to sugar-olive oil scrub( my secret soft skin weapon) to what we bought on lunchbreak etc etc... it just goes on we bought our boss slippers so she can take of her sky high boots in the office and still look inconspicous when the big boss comes in ( they are audrey hepburn style with a ferragamo bow)and feted her birthhday today with rose champagne and 3 kinds of cake.

As for all things wedding , am slightly getting pissed off at our planner. She promised to send over trial menu before christmas and nothing yet , we are going back to Budapest in 2 weeks and need to have acaterer set, so we can try the foods) ahhh exactly why I hired a planner was that i didnt wanna sit in paris and worry bout things not getting organized and its happening!Just crossing my fingers...

At least our invites go out this weekend, so we can tick off another thing from our list. Oh yeah nd I'm on a radical sugar rehab , aka diet, which as far as healthy foods go is fine by me , but im in near desperation without sweets, thus the rehab.which is making me think of how i'd love cupcakes which made me think of Nigella (adore her) so there you have it Nigella with cupcakes curtesy of the dailymail.co.uk.

The year!

Ah a new year , new beginnings and all that.

2009 did start pretty well. Had a very grown up new year celerating at Juveniles (wine bar near Palais Royal) with friends amazing food and well lots of wine and champs.
The tiny restaurant was filled with lovely people kind of like one big dinner party, then we moved on to the Caveau de Montpensier (bar where DF used to work) and had a few more drinks ,then crawled back home by 5am, though I must say those last few did me in and I had a massive hungover on the first. Not helped by the fact that DF decided to make himself a lovely english fry up with bacon eggs and the like while I was officially on my first day of diet.He did bring me a bouquet of roses in the afternoon, to start the year right, so all was forgiven.

Today it was back to work , but for once we get to spend a whole weekend together which is very exciting. I have surprise date for DF planned tomorrow and we're going to the Fumoir for brunch with a bunch of friends on Sunday. Am very excited as its been a while that we could plan weekend things together like normal people , and taking over the big table at the Fumoir with friends is always fun, even if I'll have to take a little break in my diet for their eggs benedict.

2009 makes it official. We are getting married in 6 months , its insane , really, just the thought, and so soon. No cold feet though just a bit increulous at how grown up that sounds.

Oh and our invitations arrived from the States along with my earrings . Both are beautiful, the earring are perfect, a bit bling but not too big and will work nicely with a half-updo.

The invitations are elegant but..... well..... HUGE!!As in twice the size I imagined. Almost a bit embarrased. They have the perfect colour and everything , only the size does make it feel a bit like we are inviting to a state dinner. Oh well I just hope they wont raise expectations too high.

Back to it all...

It was back to work today as if Christmas has never happened, my mom's visit was way to short and am a bit bugged by the fact that I didn't get to spend any time at all alone with her. I dont mind my stepdad, he's a good chap, but I've lived 7 years only with my mom and miss hving time on our own to chat without the guys being there judging it all. Oh well I guess now that they're married it will be even harder to get her to myself once in a while.

Had a lovely short Christmas all in all. DF made stuffed turkey (ok so the base was from Picart) with all kinds of side dishes and I did a fig tart and we all drank too much wine and claret. It was slightly weird as the weather was so sunny that we got the impression that it was June and Christmas all make believe. I guess I shouldn't complain about it being sunny thogh ,as they forecasted icy rain for tomorrow . Oh joy!

I'm working on my New Years resolutions as well as eating anythng not healthy and all leftowers from the holiday feast from our fridge. Which means eating toasts heaping with fois gras , cause if its around on the first of January it will be thrown away. I'm gonna have to be strict, I've only got a month till dressfitting and its winter which makes things harder.

We finally have the dates for our next trip to Budapest and can start planning the meetings with all kinds of wedding related peoples.
Can't wait to leave Paris behind for a few days. Its depressing that at work and and in the TV and so on people can't stop complaining about economy and such like. My stepdad may say that i'm naive and living in a dreamwold, but I'm thinking , if you can't change matters then why complain about them. Lets just take things as they come and be happy with what we got.Then again; I love to complain too, but hearing it 24/7 at work makes me sick of it. So I'll just try to stay positive and keep daydreaming of us moving to the Philippines for a while and takig daytrips to Luzon , oh so beautiful...

Ok what is happening now is that for the past 15 minutes I have been trying to find the cable that lets me upload photos from the camera. Can't find it.So you'll get a post wthout pictures.