Happy mid-January New Year!

Happy New Year! Sorry I'm 16 days late. I had a wonderful time over New Year as we caught the train to Paris and had three days there. We stayed at a lovely apartment in the 17th arrondissement of Paris and on the first day headed to the Opera to go on an English guided tour of the Palais Garnier, a massively ornate opera house that was commissioned by the emperor of France and opened in 1875. 

Obviously we went in the emperor's entrance, only kidding this is now the 'down the side, out of the way' entrance for all the tourists.

The tour was excellent and the inside of the opera house was amazing. There are many stories about the building and the people who worked on it. The architect was Mr Garnier, who they eventually named it after, though not originally. 

The massive gold tyres in the main foyer are some modern art to celebrate something at the opera house this year, something to do with Saturn I think. Pretty interesting decorative addition and also needed a security guard to watch them. He freaked out a bit when I posed for this photo. 

We then went on a (free) tour of the relatively new Musée du Parfum, which was very interesting and educational. 

We visited a picturesque typical Paris street Rue des Martyrs for lunch and for midnight celebrations went to Montmartre near the Sacre Coeur where we watched the low level fireworks and a sparkly lit Eiffel Tower along with hundreds of other people. 

The next day we did a lot of walking along the Promenade Plantée and the île de la Cité and the Seine. Including a visit the the very small but lovely park Square du Vert-Galant. 

In the evening we went to see a ballet performance at the Opéra Bastille opera house, which is a newer building which is 30 years old this year. It belongs to the Opéra National de Paris which runs ballet and opera out of the Bastille and Garnier buildings. We went to see Cinderella with music by Prokofiev and choreography by Nureyev. It was a fabulous performance, especially the music played by the Orchestra Pasdeloup. It was also great to have a glass of French champagne in the first interval! 

On our final day we were planning to visit the Musée d'Orsay but there was a seriously massive line outside so we visited the Musée Rodin instead, which had no line. It was a lovely old hotel that was turned into a museum when Rodin died. 

We did some shopping and then headed home as we were rather tired from our three days of walking around Paris. We did manage to buy some tasty macarons from the rather famous Ladurée shop, so hard to only choose six! 

Last week was our first week back at university and it was nice to see my fellow students again after the holidays. The classes are still really enjoyable and interesting and our teachers are great. On Thursday morning we woke up to a massive fall of snow and it continued to snow all day. The locals told us this much snow is not normal and to enjoy it, which of course we did! There have been a lot of street sweepers around clearing the snow from roads/footpaths/carparks etc. 

View out the window on the Thursday morning.

My street.

Path to uni.

Uni in the snow.

Snowing this week.

Snow still on the cars days later.

Serious snow! 

Snow cleared streets mean piles of snow on the side of the street.

 The beautiful old town centre of Salzburg in the snow:

I hope those in Australia aren't boiling too much in the hot weather. You don't want to know how many layers of clothing I put on to go outside! Luckily it's warm inside with central heating.