Bought our tickets to Paris

Have you experienced the delightfulness of finalizing travel plans and itineraries? I certainly did and have been feeling excited all week! T and I are planning for a trip to Paris and Madrid in April 2014! We'll be visiting family members, enjoying the cool spring and exploring old and new places! This time, we'll be flying via Finnair. It requires a transit at Helsinki, but the 2-way tickets cost SG$1000/pax. It was a fabulous deal! We'll be spending 3 weeks in Paris, 4 days in Madrid and hopefully 1 day in Helsinki.

I am not a Francophile, but I always wanted to visit France since I was a little girl. It started from my fetish over Disney's Beauty and the Beast. When I first visited Paris in 2010, the beauty, history, architecture and arts intrigued me. (That's 4 years ago! How time flies!) We took some time to browse throuhg the photographs while planning the itinerary. The pictures were excellent reminders of the great time that we had. I was relatively surprised by the sheer number of places we visited during the short trip! We visited some iconic places in Paris, slipped a day trip to Brussels, as well as a short visit to Bretagne.

This time, we hope to spend more time with our family members, visit a Pierre Hermé patisserie, be overwhelmed by majestic Sainte Chapelle cathedral and Versailles, relax at Jardin du Luxembourg and go shopping! In Madrid, we'll stay around Puerto del Sol, enjoy local cuisine at Mercado san Miguel, visit Bernabeu stadium, watch a Flamenco dance and hangout at Retiro park. 

Looking forward!

Pictures taken from our last trip in 2010

Centre Pompidou

Paris canal tour

Paris Science museum

Notre Dame Cathedral

Notre Dame Cathedral

Hotel de Ville

Eiffel tower

Arc de Triomph

Fountain at Tuileries

Sacre Coeur

Mona Lisa painting at Lourve

Château Amboise

Bretagne

Ouessant

Belgian waffle truck

The Grand place at Brussels, Belgium

Belgium chocolates!

Chinese New Year 2014

This CNY felt especially different for me and my husband's family. After the demise of his beloved grandmother, culture dictates that the family does not partake in festive celebrations. Despite that, we decided to resume with the reunion dinners with our respective families. The dinner get-togethers were perfectly cosy and enjoyable. Being a Hakka, I prepared the traditional hakka abacus seeds as well. (The recipe is chronologed here)

- 19 Jan, Sun with my Dad's extended family

- 26 Jan, Sun with my Mom's extended family

- 29 Jan, Wed with my husband's extended family

- 30 Jan, Thurs with my husband's immediate family members

The pictures below show the reunion dinner table setup at my mil's place. She is a very talented cook and prepared numerous delicacies for 9 of us. Needless to say, we had a great time catching up and bonding with our family members.

CNY table setting

Longan, white funges, red date dessert

Chap Chye

Fish maw soup

Yusheng

Yam ring

Peng chye