Category: London and ParisPage 2 of 3

Hello St.Pancras

For all the publicity in London about the opening of the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, passengers leaving Paris on its inaugural day wouldn’t have been any…

Au revoir Waterloo

Last Tuesday evening I bid farewell to Waterloo International, the last day that Eurostar will serve this station before it transfers to St Pancras ‘in the (other) heart…

Finishing my course – travelling to Iran by train

Since my last post, I have been rather busy!  The lack of posts on this blog since then can be attributed in part to the large amount of…

Metro entrance – TGV promotion on stilts

Going home from work is always such a pleasure when it’s such a beautiful day… On my way home through Gare de Lyon I saw three stilt walkers…

Things to do in Paris ⋕1: Go to Lyon

This Monday I did “le pont”, which is when French employers give their staff an extra day off between the weekend and a bank holiday, in this case,…

Pre-‘fab’ wooden house in Hackney

Over the last few days the way we live, architechnophilia, and inhabit have all been covering a new pre-fab wooden house in Hackney designed by David Adjaye. Pre-fab…

Fischli and Weiss at the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris

    Last night I went to the brilliant and rather amusing Fischli and Weiss exhibition “Flowers and Questions” at the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de…

Presidentials

There has been an obvious lack of posts on this site for some time now.  I would like to be able to say that the reason for this…

Pigeon sympathy now out of fashion

It is possible that in my previous post I may have shown some sympathy toward pigeonkind.  Well, all that is over with, as this afternoon, one of their…

Birds of a feather mourn together

I noticed this dead pigeon at the bottom of the Rue de Faubourg St Denis.  It was surrounded by several other pigeons who were just staring at it. …

Flying the TGV from Paris to Strasbourg

It’s not just about the trains.  It’s about the track, the gentle curves, the tunnels, the soaring bridges… click this link to fly the route of the TGV…

Trainspotting: TGV at 578 kmph

Choose life, choose reducing your carbon footprint, choose highspeed train travel instead of flying Thank you SNCF, for making trainspotting cool, at least for a day. Yesterday, a…

TGV in 354mph record attempt – 1pm

As part of the preparations for the eagerly anticipated TGV Est-Européen, which will operate from June 10th between Paris and Strasbourg, the SNCF are hoping to break their…

Gergiev and the LSO at the Salle Playel for a spot of Stravinski and Ravel

Last night I was lucky enough to get tickets to see the LSO perform at the Salle Playel. The auditorium was reopened back in September after being fully…

Ugly Duckling / Le Vilain Petit Canard

Wobbling la Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69NA8E11IDM] I was invited on Wednesday to go and help wobble the Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir (previous posts here and here). The wobbling was being sollicted in order…

Tube Challenge – Project update: wobbly floors

Tube Challenge I always dreamed of doing this when I was a lonely and boring teenager. All the tube stations in one day. Thanks to Mary for sending…

Opening of the Cité national de l’architecture et du Patirmoine

Last night Lorenzo (a fellow engineer from work) and I blagged our way into the opening of the permanent exhibition at the newly refurbished Cité National de l’architecture…

Metro Entrance Gare St.Lazare

The other morning I found myself in northwestern central Paris around the Gare St.Lazare. This is not my normal stomping ground, so I took the time to go…

“The late worm avoids the bird” and other stories…

I have my cousin Ralph (of Stringfever fame – see link to the left, under music) to thank for that piece of advice, which makes me laugh each…

Womb with a view

Paris is slowly encircling itself in tramways. The latest tramway to open, connecting the disparate ends of several metro lines is the T3, which skirts inner Paris’ southern…

The Metropolisians

My mate Ronan is in a band called the Metropolisians. A month or so ago they won their heat in a battle of the bands contest for which…

Le vide grenier de l’onzième

We were recently asked in one of our French classes to write an article about a business in the style of short piece for a newspaper. The brief…

Too hot in Paris

Austrian windfarm Originally uploaded by eiffelover. It has been a gloriously warm day today in Paris. Too warm in fact. I wish more countries would follow Austria’s example…

Meet Mr Alphand

When Haussmann was busy tearing down and rebuilding large swathes of Paris, he wasn’t doing it all by  himself.  His chief engineer was this fellow, M Alphand.  In…

Making New Contacts

Today I developped the film that I shot while in the south of France over Christmas. It is magical watching the images appear out of nothing in the…

Happy New Year

hello readers I would like to apologise for the lack of posts of late. This blog was meant to be about engineering and my life in Paris. Well,…

Photography Course

dsc02040b.jpg Last week I got wind of a course at ENPC in photography. After a little research I found out that it is actually an advanced course for…

Déja vu?

Although I have now been living in Paris for five or so weeks, I only had my first full week of lectures last week. We had to give…

Unconventional non-sanctioned corrugated football

Tuesday lunchtime saw the end of the SPEIF (semaine préparatoire pour étudiants ingénieurs en Français – a stunning acronym). With our free afternoon a group of us students…