Hello lovelies! ♥ Gareth and I just wanted to produce a small echo here to all our dear readers that we are in fact still here :)

Alive and well, we are now two post-Europers suffering from travelling blues, back as full-time students as opposed to hostel-jumpers!

We have good news too! We’re going to continue on with our Les Deux adventures, but altering the angle a bit so we continue to keep it interesting since there will be no more (at least for a while) travelling tales to keep you all culturally entertained. We’re back in Sydney and staying put for the time being.

And for those that faithfully follow us on Facebook, we have some exciting site changes ahead! We’re moving from Tumblr to our new domain with a new slicker layout, so make sure you come back soon. I’m working on finalising the layout at the moment since you know, Gareth is lazy and doesn’t know how to use Wordpress…

And here’s a preview of the beauty of Shanghai… soon to come!

It’s always tough to leave somewhere that you’ve called home for an extended period time. Just as it was hard to leave Sydney for the first time (in 2006 for me and 2009 for Hel), it was trying to have to vacate our small international studio in Cergy, France. Luckily, it was not straight back to the reality of university, work and winter. Instead, we had, as originally planned, 10 days in China to discover a totally different culture after our European saturation.

So, it was a rather large touch of sadness that we left Paris on June 25, knowing that we would be back but that the next visit might not come around for quite some time. Our post-exchange blues, however, were definitely softened by our first stop in Beijing!

Beijing’s summer palace

Beijing is what can definitely be qualified as a tourist city. It may lack the glitz and glamour of Shanghai, but it has oodles of tourist attractions and an ease of passage facilitated by the modifications carried out for the Olympic Games.

Ultra-modern tourist spots

Its tourist attractions can broadly be categorized into two groups – temples and other stuff. One of our personal favourites was the so-called ‘Temple of Heaven’, situated in a huge park.

The temple of heaven

The temple itself is quite impressive, but the surrounding area, where Chinese seniors come together to play cards or dance or sing is a real break from the over-commercialised aspects of the city.

Music in the park

Beijing is far from the culinary capital of China – just like Paris in France. Nevertheless, like Paris, it does have a few signature dishes and on top of that list is of course Peking Duck. We sampled one at a popular restaurant - that was definitely a memorable eating experience and light on the wallet too!

Scrumptious peking duck

One slight disappointment was the monsoonal type weather we endured whilst at the Great Wall. With visibility reduced to 50 metres or less, it was perhaps not the day to get that quintessential snaking picture of that most impressive construction – for another visit and another less-touristy part of the Wall!

Exams are finally over and done with, woo! Gareth and I finished our last exam in Financial Engineering (don’t ask…) yesterday morning, and since then we have been busy with retail therapy! Which means of course… a fashion dose soon on Les Deux!

But before we go on a style tangent, I thought that it was finally time to show you the splendour and the magical inspiration that was Monet’s artworks - his house, Japanese-inspired pond and bridge and of course, the magnificent gardens - all accessible by a 1.5h train+bus ride from Paris to Giverny.

We went with our friend Westie a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday, that was filled with plenty of tourists and other frenchies. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a terribly great day in terms of the weather but we still managed amidst the light rain. Here are some of my favourite flowers and photos from the day! Have a great start to the weekend and go the AUSSIES tomorrow in the World cup! :)

A new sidekick has being added to our collection - come check out STOCKHOLM here!

Enjoy :)

PS. Special thanks to CC and E for their accommodation contribution, and of course to our dear Dennis for his pointers ♥

Something that the French do really well and quite often is random mass-scale demonstrations regarding some sort of industry or part of their heritage. That’s why there is basically une fête for every possible thing - la fête de la musique, la fête du pain (bread festival)…. So it was no surprise that last weekend, a brilliantly sunny day (and not before time), l’Avenue des Champs-Elysées, the most famous street in the world, would be transferred into a living, breathing forest and farm.

It was all part of the Nature Capitale festival that aimed to sensitize Paris’s population to both the importance of France’s forestry and farming industries as well as the environmental issues that exist today.

It was really quite surreal to see that familiar street transformed virtually overnight into a 2km long botanic garden. Lay down some bark chips, ship in 8000 plants and 4.2 million euros later you’ve got an impressive green space.

Apparently 2 million visitors passed over the avenue in its 3 days. True, it may seem like a bit of a waste of money in these Euro-crisis days. Then again you get the feeling that people are just so happy that spring has finally arrived that they’ll find any excuse to get out in the sun. In any case, definitely a sight to behold!