What Do You Want?

Paris is always worth a visit. There are countless museums, impressive buildings and grandiose parks. And if you need a break after all the sightseeing there is always a restaurant nearby where you can get excellent food.

Silke and I dedicated our recent trip to the art of Claude Monet. We started by visiting the Musée de l’Orangerie which reopened in 2006 after seven years of renovation. Here we could finally see Monet’s magnificent paintings of the Water Lilies. For Silke a dream came true. While she had already seen other smaller paintings of the Water Lilies before she really wanted to see the eight tremendous canvases in the Musée de l’Orangerie.

The next day we went on a trip to Giverny a picturesque village in the Normandy. Claude Monet moved to a country estate in Giverny in 1883 and bought it in 1890. With the help of his family he planted a beautiful garden on the property. Monet spent most of his remaining life there and made his home world famous by painting the water lilies in his water garden. Silke and I were curios to see what the garden looked like which inspired Monet that much. When we got there we began to understand.

You can really feel the ambiance and tranquility that his garden has. And it would be even better if it wasn’t full of tourists.

What else did Silke and I do in Paris? We visited several parks, walked along boulevards, went shopping at Fauchon, Betjeman and Barton and the Galeries Lafayette and enjoyed a lot of very good food. But there are still so many places in Paris that we want to see.

The last two Star Trek movies were quite disappointing. When I heard that the newest movie would be about the young crew of the original Enterprise I thought it would be even worse. But a very favourable review by Spiegel Online whose critics normally despise any remotely entertaining movie sparked my interest.

And Star Trek didn’t disappoint me: action, humour and drama presented at Warp speed. The actors playing the crew of the enterprise are excellent, in particular Chris Pine. He plays James T. Kirk as a daredevil who you hate and love at the same time. He even manages to remind you of William Shatner without being sappy. After two hours which seem to pass in an instant a whole new universe opens up in front of you.

So far Star Trek is definitely the best movie I’ve seen this year.

A new X-Men movie about Wolverine played by Hugh Jackman. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Well, nothing really. Just like the X-Men movies X-Men Origins: Wolverine is full of action, humour and special effects. The movie reveals a lot about the events before the first X-Men movie including of course Logan’s past. If you liked the X-Men trilogy this movie is a must.