Heir to the Empire

Front profile, 12.5 weeks, originally uploaded by Racmol.

...or an indistinct smudge, depending on your point of view.

If you know what you're looking for, you can see the eye sockets and the jaw.

The highlight of this morning's scan was seeing the baby flap both arms vigorously.

Getting a low-risk nuchal translucency result of 0.7mm was pretty good too.

ETA: 11 March 2007

Friday Cat Blogging: Bank Holiday Bagpuss

Handy food safety tip from Jules's boss

Never eat shellfish in a month that doesn't have an 'R' in it.

Or in France, at any time.

The Attack of the Parisian Bistro

Poor Jules has been very sick all week and is signed off work for seven days, with a nasty fever and a suspected intestinal parasite. It all comes of being too polite - he thought his mussels were not really hot enough on Sunday but was reluctant to send them back in case they got nuked.

The meal in question was not even the worst we had in Paris - that honour goes to Le Vieux Bistro, near Notre Dame. Don't even THINK of eating there, unless you think a cassolette is a big bowl of oil with overcooked carrots and crunchy raw potatoes floating in it. Bleah!

This morning, Jules said plaintively that he had contemplated moving the mattress from the sun lounger into the bath and sleeping there, so as to be close to the toilet, but in the end he just settled down in the spare room, sweating and shivering under his towel and some clothes he found there. Didn't seem like a good moment to say: 'You don't mean the CLEAN WASHING, do you?'

A busy and domestic weekend ahead, by all accounts.

A Parisian dragon

A dragon outside the Natural History museum, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Weekend in Wien

Just back from a flying visit to Vienna, where we did a lot of walking and ate a small farm of meat, as you do in that part of the world.

We arrived on Friday night, quickly realising that we have now become so blase about travelling that neither of us had the first clue where our hotel was. Had to ring them up and ask for directions, but we got there in the end.

On Saturday we took the u-bahn out to Schloss Schonbrun and spent a pleasant few hours wandering around the palace and gardens. The palace is quite impressive, but much like any other European palace in many ways - you know, Room of Mirrors, grand ballroom with chandeliers and frescoed ceiling etc. The interesting bit was the history of the Hapsburgs - had never realised, for example, that Marie Antoinette was one. As Jules said, the whole 'let them eat cake' story is doubtless a gross misrepresentation - and actually indicated nothing more than the Viennese faith in the peace-making powers of coffee, Sachertorte and a bucket of whipped cream...

After a pleasant lunch in the Bierhof, we went for a wander around the museum quarter, stopped for obligatory afternoon cake and then went to the Leopold Museum - mainly 20th century Austrian art - which was excellent. They had huge black and white reproductions of Gustav Klimt's three murals he did on health-related themes for a university. Sadly the university rejected them as too suggestive of death and then the originals were destroyed in a fire. But you can see they would have been very impressive.

That night we went on a long trek in the rain in search of a pork knuckle. Would have helped if we'd realised the Prater was a park, not to be confused with Praterstern or Praterstrasse, but we found the place in the end. I asked for a 'kleine' pork knuckle, but that turned out to mean 900g instead of the standard kilo. Jules amused himself taking pictures and texting family members things like 'Rac just ate half a pig'.

On Sunday morning Vienna was a ghost town and finding breakfast was a bit of a mission. Then we went to the Kunst Historisches museum, which is full of the sort of art I hate - still lives with dead fish and deer, and fat naked people pretending to be Greek and Roman Goddesses complete with grotesque cherubs. One or two interesting Rembrandt portraits and a single Vermeer but by and large I would give it a miss.

After an ample pub lunch, we walked across to the Belvedere, an old palace converted into an art gallery, where there is a lot of early 20th century Austrian art - Klimt, Egon Schiele, Anton Kolig etc. They have Klimt's The Kiss, which is huge and a lot more textured than you'd imagine. Infinitely better experience than the KHM.

And then it was time to catch the train to the airport.

Back to the burglary - the new laptops, cameras and so on should be arriving this week so we'll be back in business photo-wise soon.